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Environmentalists, myself included, pay close attention to gloomy topics like species extinctions and Earth’s dwindling life-support systems. It’s not for the love of dark matters that we keep tabs on depressing metrics. Rather, it’s with the hope that they teach us something and guide us toward mitigating future losses.

On the biological front, about a million species could be taken by an extinction vortex by the end of the century. That’s also when linguists estimate about one-third of the world’s 7,000-plus Indigenous languages will go silent — and with them, most of their related cultures.

This is not uplifting news, to be sure. Nonetheless, people concerned with environmental protection can learn a lot from language extinctions. As it turns out, the survival of languages and species may well be linked. And when we wrap our minds around this, the panorama for conservation actually gets a little brighter.

A Confluence of Curious Similarities

Linguistic variation around the world caught the imagination and attention of naturalists going back at least to the Victorian era of exploration, when folks like Alfred Russell Wallace and Charles Darwin traveled across the wilds of South America and the Malay Archipelago.

Wallace marveled at the linguistic diversity shown by communities spread along the edges of the watery world in the Amazon basin and dotting the highlands of New Guinea. He even wrote out partial lexicons to aid in communicating with his guides. Darwin, in his ruminations on the descent of man, went so far as to remark that languages and species are “curiously the same.” He was thinking about human evolution and wondering if languages might evolve by natural selection. With his thoughts on the flowering of languages, he did not give time to their senescence.

It would take more than 100 years, after the concurrent publication of Darwin and Wallace’s theory of natural selection, for scientists to uncover the full extent of global linguistic variation, and also the languages’ risk of extinction. Today the patterns emerging from these discoveries hold lessons for environmentalists.

One of the pioneering explorations was conducted by Larry Gorenflo (Penn State University) and his team of conservation biologists and linguists. Their labors produced some profound findings.

First off, the places on Earth with outrageously high numbers of species also have outrageously high numbers of Indigenous languages. Furthermore, many of the species and languages of these hyper-rich spots are endemic. They don’t occur, much less co-occur, anywhere else.

Gorenflo and team went on to examine language diversity in regions that conservationists designate as “priority areas.” A second striking fact emerged: High-priority conservation regions are home to nearly 70% of the world’s languages.

These results demonstrate we can either win big or lose big, depending on the success of our efforts in these doubly diverse hotspots. It’s like playing a Daily Double, with “How to save life on Earth?” as the question to the answer.

Lullaby for Language

Extinction is forever. Except when it’s not. This isn’t a reference to de-extinction and the facsimiles brought into existence by technology. It’s about languages.

When the last speaker of a language falls into eternal slumber, so does their language. Linguists say that such languages are “dormant.” Dormancy is different from the extinction of biological species, at least in principle.

Sleeping languages can, hypothetically, experience reawakening. That is, they can be spoken again after a period of dormancy, but only under special circumstances. At a minimum there must be a written record of the lexicon and syntax.  For instance, Hebrew came back in the 19th century after a long slumber.

Sadly, however, the vast majority of Indigenous languages only exist in the oral form, making linguistic resurrections nearly impossible. This is why dormancy and extinction are, for all intents and purposes, synonymous. It’s also why we must work to document and teach Indigenous languages before they nod off.

High Tolls for Both Languages and Species

Just as the vastness of language varieties was unearthed, the global decline became apparent as well. Nowadays researchers race to figure out what drives language endangerment. Lindell Bromham and Xia Hua (Australian National University) are two such investigators, who lead a large interdisciplinary team analyzing the subject.

In a recent cutting-edge study of massive scope and scale, the team uncovered the principal determinants that drive the downturn. One of the top three is strangely simple: roads.

“Greater road density, which may encourage population movement, is associated with increased (language) endangerment,” Bromham and team conclude.

You might say that roads compromise the linguistic intactness of a landscape. Conservation biologists, well versed in the dangers that roads pose to natural ecosystems, should relate to that.

A South American tapir crosses a fresh road cut across fragmented habitat in Mato Grosso, Brazil. Photo by Leandro Maracahipes, with permission to use.

This is not to suggest that road effects are perfectly analogous in their impacts on languages and species. There are major differences. They have to do with the paradoxical capacity of roads to both create and destroy connections.

For remote ethnolinguistic groups, a frontier highway increases connectivity. Distances that once required weeks or more to cross may be traversed in hours or days. Lines of communication suddenly open — for material goods, of course, but also for the transmission of diverse ideologies and ways of life.

When this happens with high speed or without guardrails, a collision with cultural traditions and language preservation ensues. Often, such roads are the handiwork of large industries, looking to make money in the frontier, usually at the expense of local peoples whose lands they usurp.

One of the first casualties of enhanced contact is the local vernacular. This is a big blow to culture, potentially harming people’s health, wellbeing, and identity. The loss is accompanied by a shift to another language, usually the parlance of government, business, and education. A new sociocultural reality arises as the highway expansion continues.

By contrast, roads harm ecosystems by severing connections. Effectively, highways fracture natural populations and break the fundamental rules of ecology.

Renowned ecologist and conservation biologist Dr. William Laurance (James Cook University) tells me that bulldozing through forest expanses is like opening Pandora’s box.

“It’s because of the transformative effect that (roads) have,” he says. “They’re the single most important proximate driver of environmental change and degradation. A road goes in and six months later the forest is split open like a splayed fish.”

In distant lands, far from government regulation and oversight, a motorway quickly spawns ghost roads — unauthorized byways branching from the central transit spine. In short order, plantation monocultures flatten forests and open-pit mines erupt like infectious pocks. The cleavage of habitats puts native plant and animal populations at greater risk of declines, even extinctions. Curbside, roadkill piles up.

So while highways and their byways exert harm in different ways, they are nonetheless critical factors that must be reckoned with, for both conservationists and linguists.

We Don’t Need No Education?

The work by Bromham and team produced a result that may run counter-intuitive to every reader of this piece. Next to roads, say the investigators, the biggest threat to languages is formal education.

Educators may shake their heads, but there’s good evidence that Bromham and colleagues are right. They argue that monolingual education can lead to language shifts, with local Indigenous languages yielding to rising tongues. Young people, looking ahead to professional careers, may be strongly incentivized to adopt the language that advances their aspirations.

Various lines of evidence suggest this is, indeed, what happens. An example comes from Papua New Guinea, a tiny nation in Melanesia whose name graces the very top of the list of language-rich countries. That diversity is endangered, in large part, due to high school education, say Alfred Kik (University of Goroka) and Vojtěch Novotný (Czech Academy of Sciences). They’re long-term investigators in Papua New Guinea who have been documenting students’ Indigenous language skills and knowledge of local flora and fauna.

Their work demonstrates a “precipitous” decline in both. The result derives, they argue, from the push for children to learn English, which is used in schools and perceived to be the language of opportunity. The shift is also related to the spread of Tok Pisin, a type of pidgin English used extensively as the lingua franca in multilingual settings, including cafeterias and playgrounds.

The message is not that formal education should be eliminated for the sake of global linguistic diversity. The lesson, rather, is that the language of instruction, which is usually determined by education policy and funding availability, is highly consequential. Multilingual education is a possible antidote, especially in the context of environmental education.

Nature and Knowledge

K. David Harrison (Swarthmore and Vin University), an environmental linguist, emphasizes the “nature-centric” qualities of Indigenous tongues. They are distinguished, he writes, by the great diversity of words that describe plants and animals and the way that grammar encodes information about the world around them.

Harrison attributes nature-centrism to longstanding, intimate relationships between Indigenous speakers and their natural surroundings. It reflects a mindset in which people are part and parcel of nature, not separate entities.

For oral languages, words are key to the transmission of traditional ecological knowledge. This refers to a body of information and concepts held collectively by community members. As such, it is a living, evolving, and growing library that is honed and built incrementally over time and comes to life in use. When language goes extinct, so does the knowledge it holds.

The continued existence of ethnolinguistic groups in remote, harsh, and untrammeled areas is proof that knowledge and communication skills ensure sustainable ways of life. Gorenflo argues that, with a million species at risk of extinction, we should have regard for those who demonstrate a history of conservation success.

“Traditional ecological knowledge provides a glimpse into how people adapt to, and use, resources without destroying them,” Gorenflo tells me.

Along the same vein, Kik is racing against time to document the traditional ecological knowledge of the elders in the highlands of Papua New Guinea. He says it’s an effort to keep language and nature alive.

“Traditional ecological knowledge plays an important role in biodiversity conservation, sustainability, and natural resource management,” he tells me. “It plays a crucial role. If we lose language, we lose knowledge, and then there is a problem for environmental conservation. This will have impacts,” he warns.

Environmentalism, Language, and Culture

As we learn more from the results of interdisciplinary investigations, like those mentioned here, lessons for environmentalists emerge.

The first, of course, is to do more. Conservation biologists and linguists benefit greatly from cross-pollination, and the cause of language and species can profit, too.

In the meantime we know there are key action items that can be focal points for the short term. They include allocating the always-slender conservation monies toward diverse eco-linguistic landscapes, which are now well-documented by the mapping studies of Gorenflo and others.

Other priorities are to support the cataloguing of Indigenous languages and ethnobiological knowledge while speakers can tell their stories. In classroom settings, especially in locations where Indigenous tongues are still spoken, there should be real efforts to include multilingual programming, especially in relation to environmental education. Even better, where elders are able to share, their original voices should be heard.

Undoubtedly today’s environmentalists stand to derive great insights from supporting Indigenous groups in leading their own kinds of conservation. Most importantly, nature and knowledge will be the biggest beneficiaries. But first we must first embrace the idea that the extinction of languages and cultures is an environmental issue.

Republish this article for free! Read our reprint policy. Previously in The Revelator:

Decolonizing Species Names

The post The Extinction of Languages Is an Environmental Issue appeared first on The Revelator.

Utility-scale solar generation is expected to increase 19% this summer compared with last summer, reflecting a 20% increase in capacity, said the Energy Information Administration.

The region should have adequate resources to meet typical electricity demand, but some areas may need to implement emergency procedures or rely on imports during grid stress, NPCC said.

Eversource Energy and other transmission owners in New England could see ramifications from the ruling that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission can order refunds for multi-year periods.

BONN, 11 June — At the UN climate negotiations SB64, civil society organizations, grassroots movements, and climate justice advocates from across Africa, Asia, and Latin America came together today to strongly reject geoengineering as a false solution and dangerous distraction from real climate action.

Speakers from across the Global South warned that geoengineering, which is the large-scale technological interventions designed to manipulate the Earth’s systems, is being advanced despite its profound ecological, social, and geopolitical risks. Rather than addressing the root causes of the climate crisis, these approaches enable business to continue as usual.

At the same time, geoengineering is being advanced through climate policy spaces, particularly through the Paris Agreement’s Article 6 which gives entry to carbon markets. Kwami Kpondzo, Global Forest Coalition said, “Africa must not be taken in or drawn into a new cycle of colonialism disguised in this wave of carbon markets and carbon credits. Polluters are promoting geoengineering technologies to maintain carbon market schemes which continue to worsen the climate crisis.”

The African continent has strongly opposed geoengineering technologies, especially solar geoengineering. This was evident at the African Ministerial Conference on the Environment (AMCEN) meeting last year where governments expressed that “such technologies must not be considered as viable options within the multilateral environmental agenda” and called for “the establishment of a Solar Geoengineering Non-Use Agreement”  which would ban any efforts to normalise these technologies. Kpondzo added, “We welcome African leadership in advancing efforts on an international solar non use agreement.”

Gina Cortes Valderrama, Women and Gender Constituency of UNFCCC added, “The Women and Gender Constituency also calls on the UNFCCC and all UN bodies to recognize solar geoengineering as a category of technology that poses unprecedented risks, that is advancing without consent or justice frameworks, and that functions as a deliberate deferral of the structural transformation we need. We support the Solar Geoengineering Non-Use Agreement.”

Climate justice campaigners also pointed to the colonial dimensions of geoengineering, and intersections between extractivism and the current destructive development model, noting how they reproduce historical patterns of exploitation, turning lands, waters, and skies in the Global South into sites for experimentation and testing.

While sharing perspectives from Asia and the Pacific regions, Kaveri Choudhury, ETC Group said, “We are deeply concerned by the push for geoengineering proposals in the Asia-Pacific region at a time when climate solutions need real solutions more than ever. Geoengineering is a false climate solution that threatens the very integrity of life on earth. We need to urgently focus on protecting ecosystems for their intrinsic value and centered on the rights of Indigenous Peoples, local communities and peasants who are the guardians of these ecosystems.”

Gina Cortes Valderrama, Women and Gender Constituency added, “Geoengineering is a political choice that sends the message to the people that it is preferable to risk unprecedented harm to planetary systems than to confront the fossil fuel economy and the corporate power that sustains it. We are not here to ask how to govern a technology that should not exist. We are here to support the real solutions already being built by frontline communities.”

“Indigenous Peoples and local communities have the solution for global warming. These include the use of traditional knowledge through agroecology and community forest conservation,” added Kpondzo.

The press conference concluded with a strong call for South-South solidarity, as movements across Africa, Asia, and Latin America continue to build collective resistance to geoengineering. 

Additional Information

1. Press Conference Livestream
2. Policy decision: African Environmental Ministers Call for Establishment of Solar Non Use Agreement
3. Policy Brief: Don’t Geoengineer Africa
4. Press Release: African Climate Justice Movements Celebrate African Leadership in Rejecting Solar Geoengineering
5. Opinion: Africa Is Not a Solar Geoengineering Test Site
6. Geoengineering Projects Tracker 

While fuel shortages due to the Iran war made some countries double down on electrification, they also highlighted one industry that could be quite literally grounded without fossil fuels: aviation. Flying relies on fossil-based jet fuels and is extremely hard to decarbonize.

Researchers in China now report a process that could help bring down flying’s carbon emissions while also tackling the plastic waste crisis. The two-step process converts plastic waste into high-quality jet fuel more efficiently and at much less cost than other methods researchers have reported in the past to convert plastic waste to fuels.

The team’s preliminary analysis, reported in published in Nature Energy, shows that the plastic-based fuel would cut carbon dioxide emissions by 73% compared with petroleum-based jet fuel.

The plastic that the researchers break down is polystyrene. This lightweight polymer, often commonly called Styrofoam, is used to make packaging and insulation. It is notoriously expensive and challenging to recycle. Besides usually being contaminated, it is composed mostly of air, which makes sorting and transportation difficult. Nearly all waste polystyrene goes to landfill today.

The team from Nanjing Forestry University and Tsinghua University designed a new catalyst that breaks down polystyrene at high temperatures in the presence of hydrogen. Their process runs continuously in a tandem reactor.

 

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The first reactor heats the polystyrene to 460°C in a hydrogen atmosphere step. This breaks the long polymer chains in polystyrene to shorter strands. In the second reactor, the fragments are passed over the ruthenium catalyst at 160°C. The resulting chemical reactions convert the fragments into molecules called alkanes. These are energy-dense hydrocarbon molecules that work for jet fuel.

Past work on making fuels from plastic waste include a one-step, low-temperature process as well as a method that is powered by sunlight and also utilizes carbon dioxide. This new method needs higher temperatures, but it is faster, has a much higher yield and requires lower pressures. But still, whether or not it can be cost-effectively scaled up remains to be seen.

In their study, the researchers show that the method converts 94.8% of waste polystyrene to liquid fuels. And their preliminary analysis shows that the fuel would sell for a minimum of $1–1.80 per kilogram, competitive with conventional fossil-based jet fuel.

Source: Jia Wang et al. Ambient-pressure conversion of plastic waste to jet fuel cycloalkanes by tandem hydropyrolysis and vapour-phase hydrogenation. Nature Energy, 2026.

Image: Simply Flying

At one time, kelp forests — which shelter fish, slow erosion, and sequester carbon — grew along a third of the world’s coastlines. Now, scientists are working to bolster heat-stressed kelp by attacking the urchins that prey on them and transplanting hardier kelp varieties.

Read more on E360 →

Headline News:

• “Solar Power Outstrips Coal In US Despite Trump’s Attacks” • Even as President Donald Trump boosts coal over clean energy, solar power is hitting new milestones in the US and remains the leading source of new power. States won by Trump in the 2024 election accounted for 74% of all solar capacity installed in the first quarter of 2026. [Euronews]

Solar power (Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station, CC BY-SA 2.0)

• “France Adds 157,000 Hectares Of Protected Forest” • From the rain forests of French Guiana to ancient woodlands in eastern France, thousands of hectares of forest have new protections. France said it added 157,000 hectares to its biological reserves as it works toward placing 10% of its land under ‘strong protection’ by 2030. [Euronews]
• “This Electric Aircraft Is The First To Take Flight Using Solid-State Batteries” • Helios Horizon, a Florida nonprofit, did what it says is the first piloted flight of an electric aircraft powered by solid-state batteries. Founder and test pilot Miguel Iturmendi carried out a series of short test flights at Zephyrhills Municipal Airport in central Florida. [Robb Report]
• “Trump Claims Over 100 Million Barrels Of Oil Have Gone Through Strait Of Hormuz” • President Trump said a “secret mission” was conducted last month for 200 ships to pass through the Strait of Hormuz. The operation was “wildly successful,” he said. ABC News could not immediately verify the accuracy of Trump’s claims. [ABC News]
• “‘Man Who Killed Offshore Wind’ Now Pushing Fossil Fuels And Nuclear” • David Stevenson, who led a national campaign against offshore wind power for the Caesar Rodney Institute, is now fighting land-based solar and wind farms while promoting fossil fuels and nuclear power with the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. [Energy and Policy Institute]

For more news, please visit geoharvey – Daily News about Energy and Climate Change.

Vishal Prasad is director of Pacific Islands Students Fighting Climate Change.

When the International Court of Justice (ICJ) delivered its advisory opinion on climate change last year, it marked a turning point not just for the Pacific, but for international climate law.

The court was unambiguous: states have legal obligations to protect the environment from greenhouse gas emissions, and they face accountability when they fail. For those of us who carried this campaign from a classroom in Vanuatu to Europe and New York, it was a moment of profound validation.

World’s top court opens door to compensation from countries responsible for climate crisis

But we have always said that the advisory opinion was a tool, not an endpoint. The ICJ affirmed what many in the Pacific have been saying for some time. Now we have a legal blueprint, we must carry this momentum from the courtrooms to the negotiating rooms.

Potential to shape climate politics

The advisory opinion has already begun to reshape the climate landscape. At COP30 in Belém, we saw countries that had supported the campaign citing the opinion in their interventions, while those blocking progress were clearly concerned of its implications. Its potential to shape climate politics and policy is significant.

This year we have arrived at the mid-year climate negotiations in Bonn not only with the advisory opinion, but with a UN General Assembly resolution endorsing it. Despite a fierce campaign from the usual suspects, just eight countries, including the USA, Saudi Arabia, Russia and Iran voted against. That is a victory for multilateralism at a moment when multilateralism is under strain.

UN General Assembly backs “climate obligations” set by world’s top court

But we know that advisory opinions alone are not enough. Legal clarity will not automatically translate into reduced emissions, increased finance flows or stronger national climate plans. That translation requires political will in the negotiating rooms, both here in Bonn and all the way through Fiji and finally in Antalya this November. 

What the Pacific needs from this negotiating year

The Pacific put significant political capital into the joint Australia-Pacific bid for COP31. It is fair to say that the compromise of Australia holding the role of president of negotiations while the COP is held and presided over by Türkiye is not what we imagined.

But we in the Pacific are used to looking for silver linings. Both Australia and Türkiye have acknowledged the important role the Pacific will have at COP31, through the appointment of Pacific champions and the hosting of a Pacific Pre-COP in Fiji with a leaders event in Tuvalu. These are genuine opportunities to bring the world to our shores and ensure that Pacific issues are front and centre going into the final negotiations.

But we are not naive. Envoy positions and meeting locations are just the architecture of goodwill. We need to see that goodwill converted into concrete negotiating outcomes and finance.

COP31 leaders unveil global targets, with spotlight on electrification

The Pacific helped put Australia’s climate minister Chris Bowen in this important position, so we expect to see Australia advocate not only for us, but to turn a mirror towards itself as one of the world’s biggest fossil fuel exporters. 

At Bonn, and then in Antalya, we need ambition on mitigation that reflects the ICJ’s clarity on state obligations and the science. That means action on fossil fuels. 

We need climate finance that is new, additional and accessible to the countries that need it most. In the Pacific we have already demonstrated what that looks like.

The Pacific Resilience Facility is the first climate finance facility designed, governed and managed by Pacific people, built specifically to reach the grassroots and community initiatives that larger funds routinely bypass. We need the international community to meet that ambition with contributions that reflect climate justice, starting with pledges to meet the $500-million capitalisation goal.

And we need the oceans – which are the lifeblood of the Pacific and a critical part of the global climate system – treated as a central element of the negotiations rather than a thematic aside.

Energy crisis driven by imported fossil fuels

The days of speaking about climate and fossil fuels purely as a moral issue are long gone. Pacific ministers recently adopted the Tassiriki Call for a Fossil Fuel Free Pacific, in the context of a deepening energy crisis that has triggered states of emergency in several Pacific nations. Our dependence on imported fossil fuels is both a climate and an economic vulnerability. 

Conflict in the Middle East is pushing our region into an energy crisis. We are dependent on imported fossil fuels for 80% of our energy needs. My home country of Fiji could see an increased fuel bill of nearly three times our annual healthcare budget. 

Comment: COP31 must persuade countries to make fossil fuel transition plans 

We need the technical and financial support to transition to 100% renewable energy. Not only because it is what the world owes us for decades of carbon pollution that continue to render parts of our home uninhabitable, damaging ecosystems and culture. But because we must be part of that transition. Fossil fuels have proven to be the greatest source of damage to our climate, and with their volatility, to our sovereignty as well.

What next?

The demands have not changed. Greater action on mitigation, adaptation, finance, loss and damage: these remain the substance of what the Pacific requires from the international community. What has changed is the legal foundation beneath them.

The ICJ has affirmed that these are not requests. They are obligations. The task this year is to make the negotiations reflect that.

The post The Pacific made history in the courts – now we must do it in the negotiations appeared first on Climate Home News.

The AEMC is about to require more of retailers, but one commissioner says if they'd acted first it need not have come to this.

The post “I would like to see a change in behaviour:” Rule maker wants retailers to act before it has to intervene appeared first on Renew Economy.

Some groups that do research and collect data on the Great Lakes are facing existential threats as the annual budgeting process for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration gets underway.

A proposed budget request from President Donald Trump would zero out programs that scientists say are the foundation of weather observations, water quality, maritime safety, and recreation on the Great Lakes. The president wants to cut NOAA’s budget by $1.3 billion, or one-third of current funding levels, to better match priorities related to halting climate research.

“The investment that we make pays off in terms of safer water, public safety, public health, as well as economic activity,” said Gregory Dick, director of the Cooperative Institute for Great Lakes Research, or CIGLR, a partnership between the University of Michigan and NOAA.

Researchers at CIGLR work closely with NOAA to conduct work on lake water levels, ice dynamics, and harmful algal blooms on Lake Erie. Data is used by state managers, fishers, boaters, and the regional shipping industry.

“That’s the kind of data that you want at your fingertips,” Dick said. “That’s what’s at risk with cuts like the ones we’re talking about.”

Beyond the potential loss of this data, Dick is worried about long-term research on how climate change is affecting the Great Lakes. Water levels are fluctuating and Dick said understanding those dynamics is important for future planning geared toward development projects and the economy.

Another at-risk program is the Great Lakes Observing System, or GLOS, a regional network that coordinates data collection on wave heights, water temperatures, ice, wind, and more. The network makes real-time data available to the public, and it’s often used by boaters, fishers, and other people who spend time in and on the lakes.

“If you want to visit a beach, if you want to take your dog and let it run in the lake, it’s really important to know beforehand if there’s a bloom there or dangerous surf conditions,” said Jennifer Boehme, CEO of GLOS. The system is one of 11 NOAA-funded observation networks across the country that maintain data from oceans and coasts.

In a memo released with the budget proposal, the White House said that “President Trump is committed to eliminating funding for the globalist climate agenda while unleashing American energy production.” The proposed NOAA budget will cut climate research and save taxpayer money, according to the memo.

NOAA programs focused on the Great Lakes are already adapting to cuts from the previous year. The Great Lakes Environmental Research Lab (which houses CIGLR), for example, lost about 40 percent of its staff last year after rounds of layoffs and early retirements, according to Dick.

GLOS is also in a more vulnerable position this year, Boehme said. The program is up for a contract renewal with NOAA, which happens every five years, and it still has yet to receive all of its appropriated funds from last year.

“Each lapse makes the next one worse, and rebuilding isn’t just a matter of writing another check. The relationships and the seasonal schedules that make the network function can take years to reconstruct,” she said.

Still, the president’s budget is more a signal of priorities than a binding mandate, said Alex Eastman, the Great Lakes program manager at the Northeast-Midwest Institute, a nonprofit policy research group. Appropriations are ultimately decided by Congress, which is currently in the middle of that process.

This year, the House Appropriations Committee passed a bill that would fund most NOAA programs at $1.3 billion more than the president’s budget proposal, ignoring his calls for steep cuts. The regional observation networks, including GLOS, would see an 18 percent increase in funding. Still, the bill is $300 million short of last year’s funding. The Senate hasn’t passed its version of the appropriations bill yet.

Congress ultimately funded these Great Lakes research programs last year after Trump proposed similar cuts, likely because lawmakers know the value they provide for the region and country, Eastman said.

“I do think that the more that Congress pushes back, the more the executive branch and the president will see that they’re not gaining anything by continuing to try to impose draconian cuts,” he said.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline What federal cuts to science funding could mean for the Great Lakes on Jun 11, 2026.

Share of gas in global electricity mix has fallen for the fifth consecutive year, with nearly half of the world’s gas-generating economies already passing peak gas.

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The Noosa Power & Energy Conference examines the key challenges and opportunities shaping Australia's renewable energy transition.

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Spanish energy outift commissions two solar plants in two separate states of Australia, both of which will start supplying on electricity to telecoms giant, Telstra.

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The number of home batteries installed through the federal rebate has now passed 430,000, as new rules start to rein in uptake and dial down average system size.

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Emissions of climate-warming pollutants are at an all-time high, mainly from the burning of fossil fuels.

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SMA boss Jürgen Reinert says decision to close down its Australian domestic business driven by its inability to match Chinese competitors on costs.

The post “We cannot compete:” Why global inverter giant quit Australia’s home solar market appeared first on Renew Economy.

Jürgen Reinart, the CEO of inverter giant SMA, on why the grid can function without spinning machines, and why it quit the Australian home market. Plus: Is AEMO changing course on VPPs, and other news of the week.

The post Energy Insiders Podcast: “The grid doesn’t need rotating mass” appeared first on Renew Economy.

Solar is moving fast. Really fast. Batteries are moving faster. And there is no evidence in either prices or deployment that the system is about to tap the brakes.

The post Solar is already creating the fastest shift in electricity generation in history – and it is still accelerating appeared first on Renew Economy.

Sprawl kills.

That’s the unmistakable conclusion drawn by researchers at Johns Hopkins University earlier this month in an update of their landmark 2014 report on the nation’s ongoing crisis of land misuse: sprawl chokes life out of our cities, undermines opportunities for our children, and, yes, even raises the risk of disease.

Riverside, the Southern California suburb, and Atlanta were at the bottom of the list for “most sprawling” while San Francisco and New York City topped the list as “most compact,” based on established metrics such as density of development and concentration of jobs.

The report, which comprises 233 metropolitan areas in the lower 48 states and covers 85 percent of the U.S. population, is not just about geography, of course, but about the most-basic quality-of-life issues facing the country today. Residents of compact and connected neighborhoods have “lower energy costs, better health outcomes, lower exposure to vector-borne diseases such as Lyme disease, well-connected social lives and greater opportunities for children to thrive,” according to the report, “Who Sprawls the Most? Mapping Sprawl and Assessing Its Impact on Everyday Life” [PDF].

And in a counter-intuitive development, given the debate over “abundance,” housing in compact cities was found to be more affordable than those in sprawling suburbs when the cost of transportation and energy are taken into account. (Transportation and energy costs are much lower for residents of compact and connected areas.)

Shima Hamidi

The overall housing cost surprised the report co-author.

“The amount we pay for energy is becoming more and more a challenge for people,” said Shima Hamidi, director of the Center for Smart Transportation at the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University. “We found that in compact and connected neighborhoods, residents pay substantially less of their income on residential energy bills, and if you add that to transportation, the savings on these two budget items in a compact and connected neighborhood saves offsets the higher cost of housing in this area.”

Hamidi told Streetsblog that the report hits at a crucial time because of the ongoing debate about high housing costs in the most-walkable, most-livable parts of our greatest cities.

“Sprawl is getting attention these days because there are so many critics of smart growth and growth management policies these days who are arguing that these policies would restrict housing production and will lead to more expensive housing and less housing affordability for residents,” Hamidi said.

But, she added, there are other factors that cast sprawl in a bad light, including the level of social isolation, which leads to disconnected youth, not to mention “heat-related health outcomes … linked to climate change.”

Quality-of-life is simply worse in areas where people are disconnected from each other, job sites and social venues.

“A typical suburban neighborhood is very low density or exclusively single-family housing,” she said. “You don’t see much more other types of uses, like coffee shops, restaurants, bookstores, grocery stores. They are not within a walking distance of residents of these housing units, so residents have to drive long distances. … These neighborhoods are mostly characterized as having cul-de-sacs or dead ends that accommodate privacy and driving, but not really connection.

“In a neighborhood that’s more compact, you have a mix of uses: different coffee shops, restaurants, grocery stores within walking or biking distance. [These are] livable and vibrant types of neighborhoods.”

Can you put a value on that? The report and Hamidi suggests you can: As a result of sprawl, the U.S. has about double the number of “disconnected youth” as Europe — and it
“costs taxpayers an estimated $94 billion each year in lost productivity … with profound impact on the lives of these individuals and their families,” she said. “The future of these individuals is being shaped, and they just are kind of isolated and disconnected, and not getting the opportunities that they need.”

They’re also at higher risk of disease. And the very edge of sprawl, where low-density residential development meets forests or grasslands, creates conditions for higher risk of human-tick interactions, the report stated.

“A 10-percent increase in the county [sprawl] score reduces the risk of Lyme disease by
about 21 percent,” the report said.

The report is not all bad news. Atlanta had a bottom-of-the list score of 41 in the original report and remains second-to-last in the update, but a decade of effort has led to significant improvements in connectivity resulting in a score of 57.2 — a 40-percent improvement (take that, Lyme disease!).

“Atlanta is becoming more compact over time,” Hamidi said. “It takes a long time for urban sprawl to be mitigated, but the progress can be made. Atlanta [officials have had] a sizable impact.”

Save yourself: Recommendations from the report

Sprawl doesn’t have to be like the weather — that thing that everyone complains about but no one does anything about. The report offered extensive recommendations for urban planners and policy makers. Among them:

• Zoning reform: Allow higher residential and mixed-use densities near transit corridors and employment centers
• Provide incentives for infill with tax breaks, density bonuses, and reduced parking minimum requirements (which reduce development cost).
• Transit-oriented upzoning: Require higher densities within walking distance (e.g., 800 feet of major transit stations).
• Affordable housing integration: Pair density increases with inclusionary zoning and affordable housing mandates to ensure equitable access to transit-rich, high-demand areas.
• Parking reform: Reduce or eliminate minimum parking requirements. (Maryland is clearly listening.)
• Design guidelines for livability: Ensure that higher-density areas include green spaces, community facilities, and active transportation infrastructure so density contributes to livability, not overcrowding.

“Local elected officials, state leaders, and federal lawmakers can all help communities grow in ways that support these improved outcomes,” the report concluded. “This study recommends local governments and elected and public officials to consider land-use planning strategies and policies that create more connections and facilitate healthier
transportation choices in walkable, vibrant, and connected neighborhoods that offer both
local and regional accessibility to residents.”