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OVER TWO DECADES AGO SHELL UNSUCCESSFULLY TRIED TO SEIZE THIS WEBSITE DOMAIN NAME: ROYALDUTCHSHELLPLC.COM. THERE HAVE BEEN SPECTACULARLY EMBARRASSING CONSEQUENCES FOR SHELL, INCLUDING WRITTEN PERMISSION FOR JOHN DONOVAN TO DEAL ON SHELL’S BEHALF WITH EMAILS MEANT FOR SHELL.
‘Alfred Donovan was right about the culture of deception. He was right about the reserves. He was right about the spies. He was right about Nigeria. He was right about Hakluyt. He beat Shell in the High Court, in the WIPO proceedings, and in the court of public opinion.’  *By our Special Correspondent in the Department of Ironic Outcomes*

There is a particular kind of hubris that afflicts very large organisations — the unshakeable belief that, because you employ 119,000 people across 145 countries and own more than 3,300 trademarks in nearly 190 nations, you are entitled to win everything. Every lawsuit. Every arbitration. Every domain name dispute. Every confrontation with a retired British marketing consultant and his octogenarian father.

Royal Dutch Shell — now rebranded to the snappier “Shell plc,” presumably in an effort to distance itself from its own history — learned this lesson the hard way in the summer of 2005, when it filed a 44-page complaint with the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) demanding that one Alfred Donovan, an 87-year-old war pensioner operating from 847a Second Avenue, New York, hand over three domain names: royaldutchshellplc.com, royaldutchshellgroup.com, and tellshell.org.

Shell lost. Comprehensively. Embarrassingly. At the hands of a pensioner who represented himself.

But the story of *how* Shell ended up in this predicament — suing an elderly shareholder critic over a website domain rather than simply, you know, registering its own company name before announcing it to the world — is a masterpiece of institutional incompetence, decades in the making. To understand the fiasco properly, you have to go back much further than 2005. You have to go back to the reserves fraud, and to the extraordinary family that watched it all unfold from the ringside.

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## PART ONE: THE ANATOMY OF AN OWN GOAL

On 28 October 2004, Royal Dutch/Shell made a public announcement that it was restructuring its notoriously baroque corporate structure — two parent companies, one Dutch, one British, lashed together since 1907 in an arrangement that had served mainly to make accountability extremely difficult — into a single parent company to be called “Royal Dutch Shell plc.”

The very next day, Alfred Donovan registered royaldutchshellplc.com.

This is, when you stop to think about it, an astonishing fact. One of the largest corporations on earth had just announced the name of its new parent company, and it had failed to register the corresponding .com domain *before making the announcement*. Not a month before. Not a week before. Not even an hour before. The morning of 29 October 2004, Shell’s legal and communications teams awoke to discover that the name of their new company was already occupied — by a pensioner with a grievance, a working internet connection, and, one imagines, an excellent sense of timing.

To be fair, Shell did eventually register royaldutchshell.com. But royaldutchshellplc.com — the exact name of the actual company — was gone.

The natural response to this situation, one might think, would be a quiet word in the legal department along the lines of: “Right, we’ve rather made a hash of this, let’s see if we can find a polite solution.” Or, alternatively: “Actually, does it matter? The man is using it to host critical commentary, not to impersonate us. We have admitted he’s entitled to criticise us. Let’s not embarrass ourselves further.”

Shell’s response, instead, was to file a 44-page legal complaint.

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## PART TWO: THE WIPO DEBACLE IN DETAIL

The WIPO proceedings — formally styled *Shell International Petroleum Company Limited v. Alfred Donovan*, Case No. D2005-0538 — unfolded with the stately inevitability of a corporate tragedy. Shell deployed a legal representative. Alfred Donovan represented himself. A three-person WIPO panel was assembled, consisting of Daniel J. Gervais, Michael D. Cover, and Diane Cabell.

Shell’s argument, stripped of its 44-page lawyerly scaffolding, ran roughly as follows: the domain names royaldutchshellplc.com and royaldutchshellgroup.com were “essentially identical” to the company name; an innocent internet user searching for Shell might accidentally land on Donovan’s criticism site; and anyway, Donovan had registered royaldutchshellplc.com the day after the restructuring announcement specifically to pre-empt Shell from owning it — which, the company argued, constituted bad faith.

There was also a certain amount of creative huffing about how Donovan had been known to refer to himself as “Alfred Donovan of royaldutchshellplc.com,” which Shell suggested might mislead people into thinking he had “some connection with the Complainant or at least some authority to speak on behalf of the Group.”

The WIPO panel was not persuaded.

On the question of trademarks, the panel found a fundamental problem with Shell’s case: Shell had never actually registered “ROYALDUTCHSHELL” as a trademark. The reason for this, Shell’s own legal filing helpfully explained, was that the name had “always been used as a collective name for a related group of companies” and that registering it as a trademark “would therefore be of questionable validity.” In other words, Shell was attempting to claim intellectual property rights over a name that Shell itself admitted was not really a trademark.

The panel, noting this with what one imagines was barely concealed judicial amusement, found that the Complainant had failed to establish trademark rights in “ROYALDUTCHSHELL.” Same problem with “TELLSHELL.” The whole edifice of Shell’s complaint rested on foundations that Shell had, in its own filing, described as shaky.

On the question of bad faith — did Donovan register the domains to harm Shell? — the panel was equally unimpressed. The evidence showed that Donovan ran non-commercial criticism websites, had never attempted to sell the domains, had never traded under Shell’s name, and had been doing this sort of thing for years before the disputed domains were registered. His purpose, the panel found, was plainly to draw attention to his criticism of Shell’s conduct, not to prevent Shell from using its marks.

The Complaint was denied.

Shell — operator of more than 3,300 trademarks worldwide, employer of 119,000 people, a company with a legal department larger than most nations’ judiciaries — had just been beaten by an octogenarian with no legal representation, writing from a flat in New York.

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## PART THREE: THE LONGER BACKSTORY (OR: HOW SHELL EARNED THIS)

To appreciate the full richness of this outcome, you need to understand the history between the Donovan family and Shell, which makes the domain name dispute look like a minor parking disagreement.

Alfred Donovan — described in his own letter to Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands as being 87 years old at the time of writing and a “war pensioner” — founded the Shell Shareholders Organisation after what he described, with magisterial understatement, as a “series of legal actions against Shell.” The Donovan family had previously enjoyed a “mutually successful business relationship” with Shell that had, by Alfred’s account, deteriorated rather dramatically when Shell allegedly stole business ideas from them.

Shell settled the first three claims for a total of £260,000 plus costs. When the Donovans sued again, Shell’s response was, according to Alfred, to hire undercover agents. His sworn affidavit, filed in the High Court, alleged that his family, key witnesses, and their lawyer were “besieged and intimidated by undercover operatives,” that burglaries were carried out at their residences, and that threats were made.

Shell and its solicitors, DJ Freeman, admitted in writing the activities of one undercover agent who was caught “in the act of illegally checking our mail.” They also advised Alfred’s son in writing that other agents were investigating the family, though they denied the burglaries.

Shell’s spying activities extended beyond the Donovan family. The company, it emerged, had used Hakluyt & Company — a private intelligence firm staffed by former MI6 officers — to run undercover operations against campaigning organisations including Greenpeace and the Body Shop. This was exposed in a front-page Sunday Times story. Some of the Shell directors to whom Alfred had written complaints about the surveillance turned out, he later discovered, to be shareholders and, in some sense, “spymasters” of Hakluyt itself.

Meanwhile, Shell was simultaneously funding a private army of 1,400 police spies supporting what Alfred described as “the then murderous regime in Nigeria,” and — as would emerge in full legal horror much later — engaging in what prosecutors would describe as a $1.3 billion corruption scheme involving Nigerian oil licences.

Alfred Donovan had been warning Shell’s board, Shell’s shareholders, pension funds, and the Dutch royal family (who had, he noted, personally lost nearly £250 million when the share price collapsed) about the company’s ethical culture since at least 1999. His letters to Queen Beatrix warned of “a culture of deception and cover-up deeply ingrained at the highest levels of Shell.”

In April 2004, following the eruption of the reserves scandal — in which Shell was forced to admit it had been systematically overstating its oil and gas reserves — newspaper headlines confirmed his warnings with remarkable fidelity:

*The Independent: “Lies, cover-ups, fat cats and an oil giant in crisis”*
*The Guardian: “Trail of emails reveals depths of deceit at the heart of Shell”*
*The Scotsman: “Shell admits reserve ‘lies'”*
*Daily Telegraph: “Memos expose Shell’s years of lying”*
*London Evening Standard: “Shell bosses lied to the City”*
*Minneapolis Star Tribune: “Dutch/Shell Group exec was ‘sick and tired’ of lying”*

“Many people must have thought I was a crazy old man,” Alfred wrote to Queen Beatrix on 1 April 2004, with impeccable timing. “I therefore feel vindicated.”

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## PART FOUR: THE RESERVES FRAUD CONNECTION

It is at this point that the domain name fiasco reveals itself as something more than mere corporate embarrassment. It is, as the headline of John Donovan’s original article correctly identifies, a *direct consequence* of the reserves fraud.

The reserves scandal — in which Shell’s senior management repeatedly misled investors about the scale of the company’s proven oil and gas reserves, ultimately restating them downwards by a catastrophic 20% — produced the class action lawsuits, the regulatory investigations, and the corporate restructuring that begat the announcement of “Royal Dutch Shell plc” in October 2004.

And that announcement, fatefully, was made without anyone in Shell’s vast legal empire thinking to check whether the domain name was available.

Why not? One theory: the company was rather distracted by, say, US Securities and Exchange Commission investigations, multiple class action lawsuits alleging fraud, and the small matter of having to explain to shareholders why its reserves were substantially less than previously claimed. Shell paid $120 million to settle SEC charges. It paid $90 million to settle US shareholder class action suits. It faced investigations in multiple jurisdictions.

Another theory: institutional arrogance. The possibility that a pensioner critic might race them to their own company name simply had not, in the fever dream of corporate hubris, occurred to anyone.

Either way, the result was the same. The company announced its new identity to the world, and Alfred Donovan registered the domain the following morning. This was, one must acknowledge, a feat of either extraordinary prescience or extremely good reflexes.

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## PART FIVE: THE DEFAMATION CASE THEY ALSO LOST

The WIPO fiasco might have been dismissed as an isolated embarrassment, had it not been accompanied by another legal adventure of comparable outcome. Eight companies within the Royal Dutch Shell Group jointly sued Dr John Huong — the Shell production geologist who had blown the whistle on the reserves scandal — for defamation over allegations published on the Donovan website.

Eight companies. Against one geologist. Represented by the Donovans.

“We managed to torpedo Shell’s case,” John Donovan notes, with admirable restraint, “and Shell was forced to settle the litigation.”

One begins to detect a pattern. Shell, it seems, had a remarkable capacity to pick legal fights it then lost. This is expensive. It is also, in retrospect, quite funny — in the way that watching a very large man repeatedly walk into the same glass door is funny, provided you are not the one paying his medical bills.

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## PART SIX: THE MOST IRONIC DETAIL

Perhaps the richest detail in this entire saga is one that rewards close reading of the WIPO proceedings. Shell’s 44-page complaint argued, among other things, that Donovan had registered royaldutchshellplc.com on 29 October 2004 — “the day immediately following the re-structuring announcement” — as evidence of bad faith.

The WIPO panel, reviewing this argument, essentially responded: yes, that’s true; but it doesn’t prove bad faith if the person’s intent was legitimate criticism rather than commercial exploitation. And anyway, if Shell was so concerned about someone else registering this domain, perhaps Shell might have considered registering it first.

This is not a direct quote from the panel’s decision. The panel was considerably more decorous. But it is an accurate summary of the logic.

Shell had, in the very act of filing a complaint about someone else registering its company name, drawn an international arbitration panel’s attention to the fact that Shell had failed to register its own company name before announcing it to the world. The complaint itself was an exhibit in the case against Shell’s competence.

This is, in the annals of corporate legal strategy, difficult to surpass.

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## EPILOGUE: THE WEBSITE THAT WOULD NOT DIE

Today, more than two decades after Alfred Donovan first registered his Shell-focused domains, royaldutchshellplc.com continues to operate — now run by his son John Donovan — accumulating more than 21,000 archived pages on the Wayback Machine, cited by the Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal, Reuters, Bloomberg, Forbes, CNBC, the US Securities and Exchange Commission, and the UK House of Commons Select Committee, among others.

Shell, having failed to acquire the domain through legal proceedings, having rebranded to “Shell plc,” having paid hundreds of millions in regulatory settlements, and having navigated the OPL 245 Nigerian corruption scandal (in which a secretly recorded phone call of its CEO discussing how to handle the matter was published on the Donovan website), has apparently concluded that the better part of wisdom is to let this particular battle go.

It now even has its own chatbot on the site — “Sir Henri Deterding, resurrected” — the controversial and outspoken founder of Royal Dutch Shell, haunting the very website Shell once tried to seize, dispensing “informative and satirical insight” to all comers.

There is a poetry to this that no corporate communications department could have planned.

The lesson, if any is needed, is straightforward: if you are going to announce the name of your new company to the entire world, you might want to check whether the domain is available first. Especially if you have spent the previous decade accumulating enemies with internet connections and long memories.

Alfred Donovan was right about the culture of deception. He was right about the reserves. He was right about the spies. He was right about Nigeria. He was right about Hakluyt. He beat Shell in the High Court, in the WIPO proceedings, and in the court of public opinion.

And he got there by a day.

—

*This article is satirical commentary based on publicly documented legal proceedings, published correspondence, and the WIPO arbitration decision in Case No. D2005-0538 (Shell International Petroleum Company Limited v. Alfred Donovan, decided 8 August 2005). The WIPO decision is in the public record. The letters quoted were published by the Donovan family. All characterisations of legal outcomes are drawn from the official published decisions.*

A Deep Dive Into the Most Spectacular Own Goal in Corporate Legal History was first posted on June 8, 2026 at 8:41 pm.
©2018 "Royal Dutch Shell Plc .com". Use of this feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this article in your feed reader, then the site is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact me at john@shellnews.net

Kalamazoo registered nurses, who are members of Michigan Nurses Association and its parent union National Nurses United, will hold a rally and community event on Saturday, June 13 to demand long-term solutions to maintain services at Beacon Kalamazoo Hospital and advance nurses’ Vision for a Healthy Society.

Contact: Madeline Bove – mbove@fwwatch.org; (202) 683-2539

Earlier this week, environmental justice, climate and animal welfare groups submitted a comment calling on the California Air Resources Board (CARB) to reject the latest, and most egregious, factory farm biogas scheme being pushed through the state’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS). 

The proposed biogas project would allow Bar 20 dairy, one of the San Joaquin Valley’s largest mega-dairies, to gain unprecedented incentives under California’s LCFS by selling factory farm biogas to a nearby facility that will burn that biogas to produce hydrogen. Factory farm biogas is a noxious mixture of climate intensive methane gas and other air pollutants that large factory farms generate when they irresponsibly manage their waste. 

While certainly not the first factory farm to be granted lucrative incentives from their pollution under the LCFS, this instance is particularly alarming because the hydrogen produced is poised to be assigned an unheard of carbon intensity (CI) value of -1887.35 CI (for comparison, most biogas falls around -250 CI while solar panels and wind energy are typically limited to a CI of zero or higher). A lower CI means more money from credit trading. This is the lowest CI in the history of the LCFS. 

In other words, no matter how much pollution they spew into nearby communities, these facilities will be set to gain unprecedented amounts of money from that pollution. 

“The application from Bar 20 takes the LCFS’s “pay to pollute” model to a higher level than we ever thought possible,” said Leadership Counsel for Justice & Accountability Co-Executive Director Phoebe Seaton. “And, once again, it’s California consumers who are paying with their hard-earned dollars and San Joaquin Valley residents who are paying with their health.”

“The California Air Resources Board has an obligation to regulate the factory farming industry’s climate pollution—not encourage it with massive subsidies,” said Animal Legal Defense Fund Senior Staff Attorney Christine Ball-Blakely. “Bar 20 is a mega dairy factory farm choosing to use a liquid manure management system that creates large quantities of methane, which is a potent climate pollutant. Such intentionally created methane can never become renewable fuel. Paying factory farms like Bar 20 to create as much methane as possible is not just bad math—it’s perverse policy.”

“What we’re seeing here is the expected result of what the LCFS has become after it was amended to double down on factory farm biogas production at the largest and most polluting dairies,” said Food & Water Watch Staff Attorney Tyler Lobdell. “Despite the warnings of environmental advocates and community members, CARB has allowed this program to morph into an increasingly perverse giveaway to factory farms that undermines real climate progress. This project shows that in real time as one of the state’s largest dairies is poised to greenwash dirty hydrogen production so that it appears better than zero-emission hydrogen production, on paper. Unfortunately, it’s Californians that will pay for this foolishness at the pump and in their healthcare costs.”

The comment was submitted by Defensores del Valle Central para el Aire y Agua Límpio (“Defensores”), Animal Legal Defense Fund, Leadership Counsel for Justice and Accountability, and Food & Water Watch. 

This comment was also submitted days after another cohort of groups provided CARB with a robust list of suggestions on how to regulate California’s dairy industry to center the concerns of community members and prioritize actual reducing methane emissions over programs like the LCFS that pay polluters to keep polluting. Defensores del Valle Central para el Aire y Agua Límpio (“Defensores”), Animal Legal Defense Fund, Leadership Counsel for Justice and Accountability, and Food & Water Watch also submitted a comment. 

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About the Animal Legal Defense Fund 
The Animal Legal Defense Fund was founded in 1979 to protect the lives and advance the interests of animals through the legal system. To accomplish this mission, the Animal Legal Defense Fund files high-impact lawsuits to protect animals from harm; provides free legal assistance and training to prosecutors to assure that animal abusers are held accountable for their crimes; supports tough animal protection legislation and fights harmful legislation; and provides resources and opportunities to law students and professionals to advance the emerging field of animal law. For more information, please visit aldf.org.

About Food & Water Watch
Food & Water Watch brings together more than 2 million people nationwide to fight for safe food, clean water, and a livable climate. For over 20 years, we’ve partnered with communities to take on polluting industries and win real, meaningful protections for people and the environment.

About Leadership Counsel for Justice & Accountability
Leadership Counsel for Justice & Accountability works alongside the most impacted communities in the San Joaquin Valley and Eastern Coachella Valley to advocate for sound policy and eradicate injustice to secure equal access to opportunity regardless of wealth, race, income, and place. Leadership Counsel focuses on issues like housing, land use, transportation, safe and affordable drinking water and climate change impacts on communities.

The post CA Regulators Poised to Approve Most Egregious Biogas Scheme Yet  appeared first on Leadership Counsel for Justice & Accountability.

To come.

The National Audubon Society recently awarded Wachiska Audubon Society (WAS) a $5,900 Audubon in Action Grant to support its Prairie Pines Buffer Plan, an effort to guide development around its...

Last month, Louisiana’s state legislature officially passed HB670. Soon the governor will sign the bill. This opens the door for a major expansion of the biomass industry. It makes it […]

The post Statement: Louisiana Passes Legislation to Bail Out Biomass first appeared on Dogwood Alliance.

In the midst of increasing grocery prices and decreasing nutrition assistance benefits, food security and access challenges are multiplying by the day across North Carolina. As food security organizations and emergency food assistance programs continue to help their neighbors, Come to the Table (CTTT) is here to help, too.

The post Come to the Table Technical Assistance Opportunities appeared first on RAFI.

As wildfire seasons grow longer, storms intensify, smoke travels farther, heat waves become more dangerous, and power outages become more common, disaster preparedness can’t stay trapped inside the bunker fantasy.

Listen to the full podcast episode

We all know the image: shelves of canned food, buckets of grain, a generator in the garage, weapons by the door, and a plan built around keeping everyone else out. Some of the basic advice is useful. Water, flashlights, batteries, radios, medication, first aid supplies, and backup power can save lives. Preparedness itself is not the problem. The problem is the story that’s been wrapped around preparedness.

The bunker fantasy tells us that disaster reveals our neighbors as threats. It teaches us to imagine survival as something that happens inside a fortified private household. It turns structural vulnerability into individual blame: were you ready or not? Could you afford the supplies or not? Did you have a car, storage space, a generator, a spare room, and somewhere to flee, or not?

But real disasters don’t work that way. In real disasters, people survive because someone checks on them. Someone shares information. Someone has a truck. Someone clears a road. Someone translates an alert. Someone brings medication. Someone opens a church basement, school gym, library, union hall, or community center. Someone knows which neighbor lives alone, who uses oxygen, who has kids, goats, dogs, cats, mobility equipment, refrigerated medication, or no car.

In other words: people survive because of relationships. That is why the first tool in a solarpunk disaster-prep kit isn’t a bunker. It’s a care map.

What is a care map?

A care map is a living picture of the people, needs, skills, tools, spaces, and relationships that already exist around you.

It isn’t a surveillance map. It’s not a secret list of everyone’s private business, or a spreadsheet where one self-appointed neighborhood captain decides who is “vulnerable” and who is “useful.”

A care map is a way to notice connection. It helps us ask: Who might need support if the power goes out?

Who has transportation? Who needs medication kept cold? Who knows the back roads? Who speaks more than one language? Who has tools, first aid training, a clean-air room, a generator, a solar charger, or a spare room? Who is likely to be missed by official alerts? Who is already doing the quiet care work that keeps people alive?

The point isn’t to divide people into helpers and helpless people. Everyone has needs. Everyone has capacities. Not the same needs. Not the same capacities. Not at the same time. But everyone belongs to the network.

A disabled neighbor might need help getting downstairs during an outage and also be the best person to design the communication plan. A teenager might not own a car but might be the fastest person

on the block at texting everyone. An elder might need help carrying water and also know which roads flood first. A renter might not control the building, but they may know every neighbor by name. You are not building a hierarchy. You are building a web.

1. Start small

Don’t begin with the whole city. Start with an area small enough to act.

That might be your block, apartment building, workplace, school community, church, union local, mutual aid group, or circle of friends. It might be five households. It might be three people in a group text.

A citywide disaster plan is too big for one person. A building is possible. A neighborhood is possible. A small network of people who know how to reach each other is possible.

Keep it small enough to finish, to update, and to actually be usable when something happens.

Listen to the full episode 2. Ask with consent

Care mapping begins with conversation, not extraction.

You don’t need to open with, “Hello, I am making a disaster map.” That might be a bit intense. You can start simply:

“A few of us are trying to make sure people are more connected before fire season, just in case. Is there anything you would want neighbors to know or help with in an emergency?”

Or: “If the power went out for a couple days, what would you be worried about?”

Or: “If we had to evacuate quickly, would you have transportation?”

The point is consent. Ask. Don’t assume. Don’t pry. Don’t collect sensitive information people do not want to share. Share only what needs to be shared, and protect what needs to stay private. A care map isn’t about control. It’s about trust.

3. Map needs

Once people are willing to participate, start with the practical questions.

Who lives alone? Who is elderly? Who has young children? Who has pets or livestock? Who might need help evacuating? Who does not drive? Who may need medical equipment powered or medication refrigerated? Who might not get alerts on a smartphone? Who might need information in another language? Who works outdoors during smoke or heat? Who is unhoused nearby? Who may be isolated, anxious, or unlikely to ask for help?

These aren’t abstract questions. They’re survival questions. An evacuation order without transportation support isn’t a plan. A power outage without backup for medical-device users isn’t just an inconvenience. A smoke alert that does not reach people in a language they understand isn’t enough. Information only becomes useful when people can act on it. A care map helps us see what official systems often miss.

4. Map capacities

Next, map what people can offer.

Who has a vehicle? Who has a trailer? Who has tools? Who has a chainsaw? Who has first aid training? Who knows the back roads? Who has a generator, battery pack, solar charger, or extra power strip? Who can cook for a crowd? Who can watch kids? Who can help with animals? Who speaks more than one language? Who has organizing skills? Who knows local officials, librarians, school staff, nurses, firefighters, or community groups? Who has a spare room? Who has a cool room? Who has a clean-air room?

This is where mutual aid differs from charity. Charity says: I have something, so I’ll give it to you. Mutual aid says: Our survival is connected, so we organize together to meet needs that systems are failing to meet.

Everyone has something to contribute. A phone call. A ride. A porch. A language. A memory. A spare outlet. A list of names. A cooler. A relationship. A skill. A willingness to check on someone else.

5. Build a contact tree

After you begin mapping needs and capacities, create a contact tree in three layers.

The first layer is digital: a group text, Signal group, WhatsApp chat, email list, Discord, Facebook group, or whatever people actually use.

The second layer is phone: a basic call list for people who do not use apps, do not check them, or may miss alerts.

The third layer is analog: door-knocking, printed flyers, a porch sign, a bulletin board, a known meeting place, or a list taped inside a cabinet where people can find it when the internet is down.

The analog layer matters more than we often think. When the electricity fails and the signal dies, paper still works. Feet still work. A knock on the door still works. A text from the county may be ignored. A knock from a neighbor you know may save a life.

6. Pick one hazard and one project

Do not try to solve every possible disaster at once. That is how people freeze.

Pick one likely local hazard. If you live in the West, maybe it is wildfire smoke. If you live near the coast, maybe it is hurricanes or flooding. If you live in a city, maybe it is extreme heat. If you live rurally, it might be blocked roads, well pumps, livestock, and power outages.

Then choose one practical project. A smoke plan. An evacuation ride list. A list of who needs power for medical devices. A shared shelf of water. A clean-air room.

A neighborhood check-in system for heat waves. A pet evacuation list. A printed resource sheet. A small gas fund. A box of N95 masks. A first aid kit. A charging station. Make it small enough to finish.

Solarpunk is not only the beautiful future city covered in vines and solar panels. It is also the folding table with bottled water, masks, phone numbers, and a handwritten sign that says: “Check in here if you need help.”

7. Practice it

A plan that has never been tested is mostly a wish.

Test the phone tree. Walk the evacuation route. Assemble the box-fan filter before the smoke arrives. Print the contact list. Ask who did not get the message. Find out whether the proposed meeting place is actually accessible. See whether the person who said they could help with rides is home during the day. Update the plan.

Preparedness is not a one-time purchase. It is a living practice.

This week, talk to three people. Ask them three questions:

What would you worry about most in a fire, flood, heat wave, outage, or evacuation?What would you need help with?
What could you offer someone else?

Write it down. Share what needs to be shared. Protect what needs to stay private. Start small. Keep going.

Listen to the full episode

In a striking op-ed published today by the Sacramento Bee, Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, Executive Director at Restore the Delta, argues that the Delta Tunnel is on track to become California’s next High Speed Rail project, a massively expensive project that fails to deliver on its promises. 

In the piece, Barbara notes that the Department of Water Resources (DWR) has already spent more than $700 million planning the Delta Tunnel, yet key information about that spending and the project itself remains inaccessible to the public. As costs continue to escalate, the project still lacks a clear financing plan. She asserts that the consequences extend far beyond taxpayers’ wallets, threatening the ecological future of the Bay-Delta estuary as well as the communities, industries, and wildlife that depend on it.  

Barbara points to the urgent need for California to pursue alternative solutions, such as the Water Renaissance Plan, which would move the state away from costly, unreliable water imports toward local, sustainable solutions that provide reliable water supplies at an affordable price.

In addition to advancing these solutions, Barbara calls on lawmakers to conduct a full audit of DWR’s spending on the Delta Tunnel so Californians can understand how their money is being spent. She also urges legislators to reject AB 2215, a bill that would pave the way for controversial projects like the Delta Tunnel while weakening regulatory oversight.

Read the full op-ed here. 

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This legislative session, Audubon Great Plains was proud to stand up for Nebraska’s clean energy future—and for the birds, wildlife, and communities that depend on it.We successfully helped...

Massive loss of bee colonies, lower crop yields, and higher price tags at the grocery store are among the impacts industry experts anticipate following the closure of the United States’ largest bee research lab.

The U.S. Agricultural Research Service began shuttering Maryland’s Beltsville Agricultural Research Center (BARC) in late April and plans to relocate its programming elsewhere in the country, citing “outdated or underutilized” buildings. The center’s bee research lab is a global leader in bee health research and supports American beekeepers through free testing, disease management, and the development of pest control techniques.

The closure follows a few challenging years for American beekeepers, who lost around 60 percent of their colonies nationwide in 2024 and early 2025 to viruses spread by varroa mites, the nation’s dominant bee pest. At the time, researchers from the Beltsville Bee Lab traveled to several states to collect samples for analysis. In February 2025, the Trump administration fired thousands of U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) employees. Department officials also “prohibited” Beltsville researchers from sharing their findings with beekeepers, according to Dr. Jennie Durant, a food systems researcher at UC Davis and former USDA fellow.

“What was most frightening—and this is where we’re so scared about losing Beltsville — is that these mites were all resistant to the most commonly used pesticide that beekeepers use to control mites,” Durant tells Food Tank. “Beltsville Bee Lab is the number one lab that’s been helping beekeepers control mites.”

The lab, which has operated for over a century and has been in Beltsville since 1939, is best known for its Bee Disease Diagnosis Service, through which American beekeepers can submit samples of bees or brood comb and receive free disease analysis reports. As varroa mites continue to develop resistance to new pesticides and tropi mites—a newer pest in the U.S.—begin to decimate colonies, experts like Durant hope that the lab’s closure is reversed.

“Beekeepers are used to having the Beltsville Bee Lab on speed dial—and without having that lab with that particular specialization, they’re really concerned about who’s going to do that crisis intervention and support when they’re dealing with major pests and disease,” said Durant, who recently published a book on how industrial agriculture threatens bee health. “They don’t know who’s going to be their crisis support team anymore.”

For many beekeepers, pollination services make up half or more of their income. Bees, which Durant describes as the “gig workers” of American agriculture, are economic powerhouses that play an outsized role in the U.S. food system, pollinating crops worth around US$15 billion every year. Honey production also racked up US$353 million in 2025.

Each February, nearly all of the nation’s commercial bee colonies are transported to California for almond pollination. In 2024, Californian almond farmers alone spent over US$325 million on pollination services.

The lab’s closure may also create long-term impacts on food and agriculture systems, including small upticks in grocery costs. Though seemingly subtle, those increases can “have a real effect for disadvantaged communities,” she said, since bees pollinate a range of nutritious crops, such as almonds, blueberries and squash.

“One of the key dynamics that has happened already is that farmers are getting fewer bees, and there’s maybe a less robust crop or slightly lower yields,” Durant says. “Those lower yields and that scarcity that’s on the market is going to have a direct impact on consumers.”

In addition to mites, the survival of bee colonies is also threatened by several other challenges, including extreme weather caused by climate change, poor nutrition as a result of biodiversity loss, and exposure to certain agrochemicals.

Maryland lawmakers in April described the BARC’s closure—part of the USDA’s larger reorganization plans—as “illegal,” claiming that it violates provisions of the Agriculture Appropriations Act for fiscal year 2026. This also follows the Trump administration’s proposal to defund the U.S. Geological Survey’s Ecosystems Mission Area program, which supports a key research center for bees in North Dakota, according to Durant.

Durant encourages consumers to tell their legislators about the importance of the lab’s research efforts, and when possible, buy organic to support farms where bees face less exposure to agrochemicals. She also warns that following a recent survey of USDA employees slated for relocation—of which 76 percent said they would not continue with their jobs—the BARC’s relocation will strip beekeepers and farmers of critical expertise.

“Researchers are truth-tellers, and truth-tellers provide data that does not match the agenda of this administration,” Durant tells Food Tank. “Most people are not going to move. Even though they love their jobs and they want to serve the community, it’s just not an option for them, and the administration knows that.”

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 Simon Kadula, Unsplash

The post How the USDA’s Reorganization Is Straining American Agriculture appeared first on Food Tank.

Growing ecological concerns have prompted state regulators to temporarily halt review of a proposed project that would diminish streamflow in the Platte River. The Nebraska Department of Water...

State conservation funding programs are powerful drivers of on‑the‑ground restoration in the Northern Great Plains. In addition to providing direct funding for conservation actions, state...

This legislative session underscored both the challenges and opportunities of advancing conservation policy—and the impact coordinated advocacy can have. Across Nebraska and South Dakota (North...

In 2023, federal rollbacks stripped Clean Water Act protections from 95% of New Mexico’s streams and up to 88% of its wetlands. New Mexico responded by passing Senate Bill 21 to create its own surface water permitting program. Now, a rulemaking will take place June 8–18 before the state Water Quality Control Commission to decide how SB 21 is implemented. Without strong rules, our water will remain at risk along with the communities, fish, and wildlife that depend on it.

Western Resource Advocates is representing Audubon, Trout Unlimited, Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, and the New Mexico Wildlife Federation. The Western Environmental Law Center is representing Amigos Bravos, the New Mexico Acequia Association, and NM Wild. The groups will advocate for robust rules that protect the full breadth of New Mexico’s surface water, restore protections lost through federal rollbacks, ensure robust public participation, and protect wildlife.

Details: June 8–18 from 9 AM to 5 PM. Public comment at 1 PM daily.

• In person: NM State Capitol, Old Santa Fe Trail, Santa Fe. The hearing will now occur in several rooms around the Roundhouse depending on the day:

• • Monday 6/8 – Room 307
  • Tues-Thurs 6/9-6/11 – Room 309
  • Friday 6/12– Room 307
  • The week of 6/15-6/18 – Room 322
• Virtually: https://nmed-oit.webex.com/wbxmjs/joinservice/sites/nmed-oit/meeting/download/705f1604d77d4ce8bfb4c44c14697e2d?MTID=me02ef4ae5b96453c008f74681b141034
• Visit the state Events Calendar for more information.

Why it Matters:

• Clean water sustains a growing $50 billion annual agriculture industry led by chile, pecans, onions, and fruit.
• Water helps sustain New Mexico’s outdoor recreation economy, generating hundreds of millions of dollars every year.
• Centuries-old acequia systems require clean water to keep New Mexico’s culture alive. The health and wellbeing of our families rely on clean water.
• Over 70% of New Mexico’s birds are dependent on surface waters and wetlands.
• New Mexico’s waters face numerous threats. Climate change is making our state drier every year. With higher temperatures and worsening aridification, our limited water sources need to be protected.
• Industrial growth from mining, oil and gas exploration, and data centers are all increasing demands on our water sources while presenting serious pollution dangers.

Contacts: 

Tannis Fox, Western Environmental Law Center, 505-629-0732, fox@westernlaw.org

Rachel Conn, Amigos Bravos, 575-770-8327, rconn@amigosbravos.org

Tricia Snyder, New Mexico Wild, 575-636-0625, tricia@nmwild.org

Allie Ruckman, Western Resource Advocates, 983-203-1103, allie.ruckman@westernresources.org

Itzayana Banda, The Semilla Project, 720-532-3293, itzayana@semillastrategies.org

The post Media advisory: NM rulemaking for Surface Water Permitting Program 6/8-6/18 appeared first on Western Environmental Law Center.

The proposal would require large-load customers to pay for infrastructure built specifically to serve their projects while preserving standard utility charges for broader grid services.

Companies are looking for modern facilities that can accommodate power-hungry automation, industrial experts said in a report first provided to Facilities Dive.

National Nurses United and over 325 organizations, including labor unions, advocates for seniors and people with disabilities, women’s rights organizations, and more, released an open letter making the case that now is the time for Medicare for All, addressed to leaders looking to reform our health care system.

The Trump administration’s lease sale in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge on Friday drew little interest from the oil and gas industry. It netted just $3.7 million, a low result following two prior sales with similarly poor returns. Only two bidders showed up for the auction: HEX Energy, a small Alaska-based natural gas company, and the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority (AIDEA), a state-owned public corporation. Of roughly 60 tracts offered, only five received bids, covering 72,000 of the 689,000 acres on offer.

The ANWR lease sale was the first of four required by 2035 under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which the Congressional Budget Office estimated would generate $452 million in federal revenue over a decade, but the recent pattern of lease sales shows that may be unrealistic. The 2021 sale netted $16.5 million, less than one percent of the $1.1 billion Congress originally projected, and the two private companies that bid later relinquished their leases. The 2025 sale received no bids at all. According to Taxpayers for Common Sense, every tract that received a bid Friday had already been offered in 2021, and either got no bids at the time or was later relinquished.

The lack of industry interest is due to the difficulty of developing in the area. “Arctic projects are high-cost, they take decades to get into production; once they’re in production, it takes decades to earn a revenue back to make up for the cost of development,” saidAndy Moderow, senior director of policy for the Alaska Wilderness League.

Wildfire experts say Trump’s attacks on public land agencies will make this summer wildfire season worse

A new Westwise blog post from Center for Western Priorities Deputy Director Lauren Bogard reveals how wildland fire managers and former federal officials are reacting to the Trump administration’s dismantling of public land agencies during what forecasters expect to be a severe season. More than 2.4 million acres have already burned across the country in 2026, nearly double the ten-year average.

Quick hits Trump auctions off rights to drill in Alaska wildlife refuge, but gets few bidders

The Hill | E&E News | Washington Post | Taxpayers for Common Sense

U.S. Forest Service to open millions of acres to off-road vehicles

New York Times | MeatEater | Field & Stream

The Colorado River’s largest reservoirs are heading toward a ‘system crash,’ experts warn

Salt Lake Tribune | Fox13 | National Parks Traveler | Las Vegas Review-Journal

Park Service orders removal of ‘woke’ quotes at Boston’s Bunker Hill monument

Washington Post | WBUR | NBC Boston

Chuck Sams: The Trump administration wants to kill a rule that protects millions of acres of national forests

The Guardian

The Forest Service wants to close research hubs to save money. That could be costly

NPR

As park fees go to DC, Yellowstone, Grand Teton face $1.5B backlog

WyoFile

Lawsuit filed to stop UFC fight on White House lawn

National Parks Traveler | Associated Press | Variety | NBC

Quote of the day

Anyone who thinks this is a fight between red and blue is deeply mistaken. Few things unite the people of this country like their love of the land. Hunters, anglers, hikers, campers, families of every stripe support the national treasures that are our wild places. We all want a relationship with our land.”

—Chuck Sams, former National Park Service director, The Guardian

Picture This @yosemitenps

The Sierra lupine is bursting into bloom at Yosemite National Park!

When driving through Yosemite Valley, visitors might come across a blanket of purple flowers and green herbage carpeting the forest floor. That is Lupinus grayi, otherwise known as the Sierra lupine. It’s one of 26 documented species of lupine seen throughout the park. Warm weather, open sunlight, and a healthy forest floor make the perfect grounds for these flowers to stretch into the sky.

Please do not trample on, touch, or pick any wildflowers you see. While lupine is common in the park, it remains part of Yosemite’s delicate ecosystem and plays an important role in supporting pollinators and improving soil health. Help preserve and protect the wildflowers of Yosemite so they can grow back just as happily as this for years to come.

Featured photo: Caribou and Brooks Range, Arctic NWR, USFWS

The post Oil industry largely passes on Alaska lease sale appeared first on Center for Western Priorities.

This may be true: That we live in a time of cosmic tragedy, when heedless human expansion has pushed many of the planet’s lives beyond bearing. Marvels such as the universe has never seen before — angels’ trumpets and vaquita porpoises — may be past saving. As ecosystems unravel, so do the cultures that depend on them, and the dreadful, dangerous human genius has not yet found the imagination or will to rescue them. I fear that this is so.

But this also is true: That a flock of butterflies is dancing around purple lupine in our field. They are tiny, the size of a buttercup, but blue. So blue they look like slips of summer sky, taken flight. Fender’s blue butterflies, Icaricia icarioides fenderii. They once seemed to have vanished from the world in the 1930s, when farmers plowed up most of the prairie flowers. Scientists got ready to pronounce them extinct. But then, in 1989, a young U.S. Fish and Wildlife biologist named Jarod Jebousek found a few butterflies on feral land next to our field.

So now, here they are. We see them lapping up nectar from the furry throats of wild iris. We find their eggs on the undersides of Kincaid lupine leaves. Butterflies gather to lick the mud. There are thousands, and it’s all because young acronym-agency scientists teamed up with landowners to save them. I know that this is so.

How is a person supposed to think about that? How do you hold both truths at the same time — the horror and the hope? How can you accept the truth that destroys hope and at the same time hold the hope that may be the only route toward recovery?

Essayist E.B. White made a joke of it: I arise in the morning torn between a desire to save the world and a desire to savor it. This makes it hard to plan the day. But it isn’t funny. It tears me apart. How can you love Earthly lives and know that forces are advancing to destroy them?

This is the question at the center of my life.

I once asked a group of students to pull out their pens and start writing a list of what they loved too much to lose. They started strong. My daughter. Smell of wet oak leaves. Bees in foxgloves. But the students couldn’t keep it up. Salmon coming home. Nettle soup. Sticky cottonwood buds. A student put his head in his hands. Do we have to do this, he asked. Dragonflies.

Yes, we have to do this, I whispered. We have to keep a list. We have to keep them in mind, all the small glories. We can’t let any of them escape our attention. Every day, every moment, we have to name what we love and stand to lose.

Here is what we will have to do: We will love the world with a tender and ferocious love, and we will do what we can to protect and renew it. Both of these. Even if it breaks our hearts. Even if we fail in the end. That’s what love means. That is why we are here.

That conviction may explain why my husband and I were standing in the center of the field with Kathleen Westly, in that nasty cold fog that afflicts Oregon’s Willamette Valley in December. Up until her retirement this year, Kathleen was the restoration program director of the Marys River Watershed Council, so she was the one coordinating the restoration of habitat for the Fender’s blue butterfly across agencies and landowners.

We were excited because we’d just learned that the Fender’s blue had been promoted from endangered to threatened. A small, even pitiable, victory, maybe, but a significant one, and who wouldn’t be glad for that? Kathleen held a field notebook and pointed with a pencil, as she sketched out how we might change the landscape to make it more welcoming for the butterflies.

Lupines in the field. Photo: KDMoore

Fender’s blue butterflies are rarely found more than 50 yards from Kincaid’s lupines. They may sip nectar from other plants, especially white or yellow composites, and they may lick roadkill, mud, or animal droppings for their mineral nutrients, but it’s Kincaid’s lupines that provide home and sustenance. Fender’s blues need Kincaid’s lupines, and the lupines need open prairie and sunshine. Only 1% of the Willamette Valley’s prairies are left, and these are small islands in a sea of subdivisions and grass seed farms.

So our first goal for us was to keep our prairie intact and connect it with other prairie land along the Marys River.

Kathleen pointed to a Douglas fir that shaded the oaks at the western boundary of our land. Shall we take this out? And this one? Before long, most of the tall evergreens on that border were goners. Frank and I gulped, but we understood that she wanted to give the butterflies an open, unshaded passage, so they could fly from one lupine patch to another.

We had planted the Doug firs that were in the way of the butterfly movements, and if that was a mistake, then we decided we should make it up.

Frank Moore looks for butterflies in the meadow. Photo: KDMoore

The wonderful surprise of this restoration work was to see so many people of skill and good will come together to create a connected corridor of lupine prairie. Along with the Marys River Watershed Council, credit many agencies and nonprofits, including Benton County, Starker Forests, the Greenbelt Land Trust, the Institute for Applied Ecology, and landowners all along the river. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Recovery Program is a big player, providing most of the funds.

The process has been complicated; I do not pretend to understand the acronyms or responsibilities of all the agencies that were involved, but they somehow came together to get the grants written and the work accomplished, from young Indigenous fire crews to those solid-shouldered, old timey ecologists who know everybody and everything. Along with the new butterfly/flower communities, the growing communities of caring people lifted my spirits, at a time when they could use a bit of lifting.

Long tongues that retract and roll up like measuring tapes. Bulgy eyes that see ultraviolet pathways to the heart of a flower. Intestines that collect the remains of the caterpillar that a butterfly used to be. Clear blood. Hairy feet that can taste sweetness. Two eyes that coordinate images from 6,000 lenses. Transparent wings with scales in some of the loveliest patterns and colors on the planet.

These are grand and glorious beings, complicated and clever beyond imagining. I want to ask, who thinks up these extraordinary creatures? But it’s not like that, I know. Butterflies evolved in the Cretaceous period, 100 million years ago. They danced around the feathered crests of dinosaurs, dipped their tongues in the blood of wounded pterosaurs, and drank from newly evolved flowers. Were butterflies beautiful then? Of course they would have been, because there’s survival value in bright beauty that mimics glaring eyes or warns of poison hairs.

The improbable, beautiful complexity of a butterfly seems like a miracle. But that’s the great miracle of biodiversity, isn’t it? That it’s no miracle at all — just nature doing what it does, according to the only rule it knows, which is to live long enough to produce more life.

The storms of the Cretaceous period could not kill the butterflies. The asteroid that set the world on fire did not kill the butterflies. They survived ice age after ice age, flood after flood, drifting continents and fire-breathing volcanoes. Even with their axes and plows, the homesteaders did not kill the butterflies. Tiny things, delicate as paper lanterns, each allotted only one year to live before they blink out, the butterflies on this land survived everything that 100 million years could throw at them.

I don’t know where or when their journey will end. But it will not be here, and it will not be now.

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

Insects Are Disappearing — Here’s How to Help

The post When the Butterflies Come Home Again appeared first on The Revelator.