News Feeds

This article is one of a series in our review of all integrated resource plans (IRPs) for electric utilities across the United States. We provide analysis of expected load, planned capacity, modeled generation and emissions, and comparison to targets and decarbonization scenarios to evaluate progress toward a zero-carbon energy future. IRPs do not provide a fully accurate prediction of the future, but we focus on them because they reflect the direction that utilities are currently striving for and a set of proposed actions to get there.

Updates in 2025 Q3

In the third quarter of 2025, utilities that updated their IRPs increased projected load through 2035 by 2.1 percent and emissions by 5.5 percent.

This continues a few trends that we have highlighted in recent quarterly reviews: projected electricity demand is increasing due to new large loads, and many utilities are finding it difficult to meet capacity needs in the near future. Changes to resource adequacy rules, particularly in the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO) region, continued to have an impact, and phase out of renewable tax credits began to appear as an additional reason that many utilities have recently reduced plans to build wind and solar capacity.

New common themes of IRPs this quarter included delayed retirements and uncertainty in planning. Many utilities are experiencing load growth, but don’t have the ability to bring new resources online quickly or rely on purchases from neighboring utilities — available capacity is limited not just for individual utilities, but for broader regions. Consequently, many utilities have pushed back retirement dates for existing fossil plants, expecting this to be the lowest-cost solution to ensure resource adequacy.

Compounding these issues is significant uncertainty in several areas, including load forecasts, resource costs, market rules, environmental protection agency (EPA) regulation, and federal and state policy. Utilities discussed the difficulty of planning with all these sources of uncertainty and change, reflecting that the industry is undergoing an intense period of change and needs to learn new methods to effectively meet the needs of the future grid.

RMI’s Engage & Act Platform: Data and Insights for Real Climate Impact

RMI’s Engage & Act Platform provides data and insights for real climate impact. To learn how you can access and use this targeted resource to uncover recent trends and clean energy growth opportunities — and accelerate the pace of electric utility carbon emissions reductions — please visit the Engage & Act website or email engageandact@rmi.org.

Below, we share detailed analysis of recent changes in IRPs, their underlying causes, and potential opportunities for improvement.

The current state of IRPs

In our current snapshot of IRPs (Exhibit 1), we continue to see a gap between projected emissions, target emissions, and decarbonization pathways such as the International Energy Agency’s Net Zero Emissions by 2050 Scenario (IEA NZE).

Most decarbonization pathways, including the IEA NZE, find that the electricity sector needs to reach net-zero emissions by 2035. Unfortunately, utility company targets often aim for net-zero emissions by 2050 and often do not comprehensively cover emissions from both owned (Scope 1) and purchased (Scope 3) emissions. If all companies in our coverage meet their targets, they will only reduce emissions by 63 percent by 2035, compared to a 2005 baseline. We also find a gap between these targets and projected emissions based on IRPs, which as of 2025 Q3 we project to be reduced by just 53 percent by 2035, compared to a 2005 baseline.

Exhibit 1

window.addEventListener("message",function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var e=document.querySelectorAll("iframe");for(var t in a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var r,i=0;r=e[i];i++)if(r.contentWindow===a.source){var d=a.data["datawrapper-height"][t]+"px";r.style.height=d}}});

Load

As of the end of 2025 Q3, IRPs across the United States anticipate load will grow 24 percent by 2035 compared to 2023 levels (Exhibit 2). This is an increase from prior projections — 12 percent at the end of 2023, 8 percent in August 2022, and 6 percent in January 2021.

Load growth continues to be driven in the short term primarily by large loads such as data centers. This quarter, every utility with a new IRP increased its load forecast compared to previous expectations. Baseline load forecasts included moderate growth, but utilities also consistently reported wide ranges of uncertainty in their forecasts. Santee Cooper’s IRP (Figure 8) is a highlight example, where a range of uncertainty in potential new large loads from 101 to 1,536 MW accounts for a majority of the difference between high and low load cases.

Load changes from residential customers are relatively smoother and more predictable, and recent IRPs expressed more challenges with forecasting large loads and predicting increases in extreme weather events. Best practices for large load forecasting and planning with climate variability are increasingly critical for effective utility decision-making, as both the quantity and hourly profiles of new load are different from past utility experience.

Exhibit 2

window.addEventListener("message",function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var e=document.querySelectorAll("iframe");for(var t in a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var r,i=0;r=e[i];i++)if(r.contentWindow===a.source){var d=a.data["datawrapper-height"][t]+"px";r.style.height=d}}});

Capacity

Current planned capacity in IRPs across the United States (Exhibit 3) includes 259 GW of wind and solar additions, 103 GW of gas additions, and 74 GW of coal retirements between 2023 and 2035.

This reflects 6 GW of additional wind and solar capacity (+1 GW from 2025 Q2), 53 GW of additional gas capacity (+4 GW from 2025 Q2), and 7 GW (+0 GW from 2025 Q2) of additional coal retirements compared to utility plans at the end of 2023.

Utilities that updated IRPs in 2025 Q3 cited several external factors with influence on their capacity plans:

• This is the first quarter in which we observed impact of the phase out of federal renewable tax credits, leading to higher costs and reduced plans to build wind and solar capacity.
• MISO’s shift to seasonal accreditation had varying impacts on utility plans, generally resulting in shifts toward gas capacity as a safe, familiar solution for meeting capacity needs.
• Compliance with EPA regulation of greenhouse gases often led to gas cofiring as an option with minimal risk if the regulation is rescinded.
• Difficulty interconnecting new resources in MISO, with impacts both locally and regionally, made it difficult to rely on power purchases for capacity needs.
• Renewable portfolio standards in New Mexico helped maintain and accelerate El Paso Electric’s plans to build zero-carbon capacity.
• Frequency of extreme weather events increased capacity needs to maintain reliability.

The most notable combined effect of these influences was delayed retirements of existing fossil plants, often with conversion from solid fuels to gas. This method provided risk mitigation amid uncertainty and changes, but exposes utilities to gas price volatility and misses the opportunity to reduce emissions and customer costs with zero-carbon electricity generation.

One highlight in this quarter’s capacity plans is Cleco Power’s use of MISO’s generator replacement process to add 240 MW using existing interconnection rights at the site of the retired Dolet Hills coal plant. This example could be scaled to many more opportunities of clean repowering.

Exhibit 3

window.addEventListener("message",function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var e=document.querySelectorAll("iframe");for(var t in a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var r,i=0;r=e[i];i++)if(r.contentWindow===a.source){var d=a.data["datawrapper-height"][t]+"px";r.style.height=d}}});

Emissions

Our latest projections (Exhibit 4) from IRPs at the end of 2025 Q3 are that carbon emissions will be 53 percent lower than 2005 levels by 2035. This is a smaller reduction than we projected from IRPs in August 2022, when emissions planned in IRPs showed a 57 percent reduction. And it is nearly back to the level we projected at the beginning of 2021 when the figure was 51 percent.

Projected emissions are lower than today’s emissions because utilities do still have plans to retire coal and build zero-carbon capacity. However, projected emissions have consistently increased since the end of 2024 because of increased electricity demand, insufficient zero-carbon capacity additions to meet all of this demand, and increased use of gas generation to fill the remaining gap.

All utilities that updated their IRPs in 2025 Q3 increased their future projected emissions compared to previous plans.

Exhibit 4

window.addEventListener("message",function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var e=document.querySelectorAll("iframe");for(var t in a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var r,i=0;r=e[i];i++)if(r.contentWindow===a.source){var d=a.data["datawrapper-height"][t]+"px";r.style.height=d}}});

Cumulative metrics

When considering climate alignment of the US electricity sector, or individual utilities, RMI’s Engage & Act platform’s key metric is cumulative emissions through 2035. Cumulative emissions, or the total amount of greenhouse gases put into the atmosphere, directly influences climate change, so this metric gives us clear insight into whether we are on track to meet climate goals. We also find value in metrics of cumulative projected load, to know whether the task of reducing emissions is becoming easier or more difficult for utilities, and cumulative projected emissions intensity, to know if consumers are increasing or decreasing emissions associated with their electricity consumption.

Exhibit 5 shows that across all IRPs in the United States, cumulative projected emissions from 2023 to 2035 are 4.9 percent higher, cumulative projected load is 2.2 percent higher, and cumulative projected emissions intensity is 2.7 percent higher now at the end of 2025 Q3 compared to a year ago at the end of 2024 Q3.

Exhibit 5

window.addEventListener("message",function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var e=document.querySelectorAll("iframe");for(var t in a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var r,i=0;r=e[i];i++)if(r.contentWindow===a.source){var d=a.data["datawrapper-height"][t]+"px";r.style.height=d}}});

Exhibit 6 provides an additional view of the direction that IRPs are going, by considering percent change in cumulative projected load and emissions among the set of companies that did update their IRPs each quarter. Utilities that updated IRPs in 2025 Q3 increased load by 2.1 percent, emissions by 5.5 percent, and emissions intensity by 3.3 percent.

In our history of tracking IRPs, load projections have never decreased in a quarter, and 2025 Q3 makes nine consecutive quarters of at least 2.1 percent load growth among utilities with IRP updates. While projected emissions decreased in the early 2020s, 2025 Q3 also marks seven consecutive quarters of at least 3.2 percent increase to projected cumulative emissions among companies with IRP updates.

Exhibit 6

window.addEventListener("message",function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var e=document.querySelectorAll("iframe");for(var t in a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var r,i=0;r=e[i];i++)if(r.contentWindow===a.source){var d=a.data["datawrapper-height"][t]+"px";r.style.height=d}}});

Achieving a climate-aligned future

Electric utilities in the United States face significant, and changing, challenges. They remain focused on providing reliable electricity service to customers while balancing priorities of costs for customers, external requirements of policy and regulations, returns to investors, and climate impact.

Current planning processes struggle to meet these needs. Current utility plans do not reduce emissions fast enough to align with decarbonization targets. Multiple priorities can appear to conflict with each other.

However, some interventions to utility planning have synergistic effects in solving multiple problems simultaneously. Improved forecasting of large loads and planning for climate variability, understanding that reliability and dispatchability are not the same, and updated costs and constraints of available technologies are key. While delayed retirements and more gas additions are the default choice in most current utility plans, there are a range of fast, affordable, flexible alternatives that utilities can use in this period of transition. Improved planning processes, with supporting policy and regulation, would enable utilities to more effectively transition toward a low-cost, zero-carbon future.

 

Methodology

Historical data in this article comes from the RMI Utility Transition Hub. Projected capacity and total generation (load) is based on data collected manually from IRPs by EQ Research, with RMI corrections, combined with historical data. Generation by technology is calculated with assumed continuation of trends in capacity factor for each company and technology, and is converted to emissions using utility-specific emissions factors by technology.

The post The State of Utility Planning, 2025 Q3 appeared first on RMI.

This week, a coalition of public interest organizations: Public Citizen, Indivisible, MoveOn, Fair Share America, People for the American Way, American Federation of Teachers, SEIU, National Education Association, and Working Families Power launched a new ad campaign in Axios’s Hill Leaders newsletter urging Congress to stand firm in defense of health care even as the Trump administration launches cruel and wholly unnecessary firings above and beyond traditional shutdown furloughs. The ads will appear in every issue of the newsletter this week.

The new ad campaign highlights the threat that the budget proposal being pushed by Trump and Congressional Republicans pose to health care access and affordability, stating: “Republicans have shut down the government because they have no interest in keeping healthcare affordable for millions of Americans. Doubling insurance premiums is not what Americans need. Enough is enough! We must fight to save healthcare.”

The first of the ads comes nearly two weeks into the government shutdown. The groups behind the ads say any deal to fund the government must include protections for Americans’ health care and Congress’s power of the purse, which the Trump administration has repeatedly flouted.

Lisa Gilbert, co-president of Public Citizen, stated: “Across the country, Americans are urging their representatives to push back against Trump’s destructive agenda and fight for a budget that protects access to health care and safeguards Congress’s authority over federal spending. Members who are fighting for these principles should know that the American people stand with them.”

Katie Bethell, executive director of MoveOn, said: “Healthcare is worth fighting for. It’s time for Republicans to join Democrats and end the healthcare price hikes that are coming for millions of working Americans. MoveOn members won’t stop fighting for affordable healthcare.”

Kristen Crowell, executive director of Fair Share America, said: “Working people in this country pay our taxes, and have watched this Republican Trifecta in Congress and the White House take trillions of our tax dollars and hand them away to the billionaires while creating a crisis that will increase our health care costs exponentially. Now they've shut down the government rather than protect our healthcare. We are fighting to take back the funding that they stole from us, re-fund the programs our communities need and create a government that works for everyone – not just the billionaires.”

Maurice Mitchell, national director of Working Families Power, said: “Trump and Republicans don’t care that our health insurance premiums are going to spike, or that tens of millions of families will lose care under their plan. They only care about satisfying their billionaire donors. It's important that voters know that Republicans would rather shut down the government than lower health care costs for our families."

Svante Myrick, president of People For the American Way, added: “Republicans slashed healthcare funding, now they’re holding the American people hostage as their reckless cuts are poised to hurt millions of Americans. Democrats are fighting for affordable healthcare for all, and we fully support that fight. Restore affordable healthcare now.”

The ad launch is part of a broader initiative by the sponsoring organizations and others to demand Congress agree on a budget plan that protects health care from Trump administration cuts and prevents Trump from simply refusing to spend duly appropriated funds.

Worst case scenario Channel News brendan 15th October 2025 Teaser Media

The latest data is out, and it doesn’t look good. Households across America are falling behind on their utility bills. According to a recent analysis from NEADA, household utility debt has risen from $17.5 billion at the end of 2023 to $23 billion as of June 30, 2025, an increase of 31 percent. As a result, 21 million households — roughly one in six — are behind on their utility bills, and shutoffs are projected to climb from 3.5 million in 2024 to as many as 4 million this year.

This is not only a household affordability challenge but also a system-wide one. Utility debt gets collected on the bills of all customers. Essentially, when your neighbor can’t pay for their utility bills, you end up paying it for them. Energy debt also contributes to service instability and deepens cycles of energy poverty. Public utility commissions (PUCs) are charged with ensuring safe and reliable service at just and reasonable rates, and today’s affordability crisis underscores the importance of that responsibility.

Evidence from multiple state programs shows that when commissions adopt affordability policies, they support vulnerable customers, reduce system-wide debt, improve payment behavior, and lower collection costs. Because there are less unpaid utility bills and collection costs that would eventually be recovered on all customer bills, these programs benefit participating customers while also putting downward pressure on the energy bills of all customers.

RMI’s role

RMI supports PUCs and consumer advocates in designing and implementing smart policies that lower system-wide costs and protect the most vulnerable customers. These programs reduce customer energy burdens and debts while reducing system-wide costs. Learn more at our Regulatory Resources Dashboard.

The promise of arrearage management plans (AMPs)

Arrearage (utility debt) management plans help customers eliminate past-due balances gradually while establishing regular payment habits, which can lead to lasting improvements in bill payment behavior. For participants, these programs create a clear and achievable pathway out of debt, restoring stability and reducing the stress of persistent arrears. A typical AMP might work like this: a customer with $600 of outstanding utility debt makes regular, on-time monthly bill payments, and in return the utility forgives one-twelfth of the arrears (or $50) each month, so that after a year of consistent bill payments the entire balance of debt is eliminated.

At least 10 states currently have active AMP programs. A 2021 evaluation of utility company Pepco’s AMP found that bill coverage rates for participating customers increased by 16 percentage points compared with nonparticipants, reduced average shortfalls by $370, and lowered late charges. Collection actions dropped from 36.7 actions per customer pre-enrollment to just 1.8 afterward — a net reduction of 4.2 compared with nonparticipants. These outcomes reduced customer hardship while also lowering bad debt charges and termination costs.

Percentage-of-income payment plans (PIPPs)

Percentage-of-income payment plans cap bills at a set proportion of household income, ensuring that customers are not charged more than they can reasonably afford and preventing arrears from accumulating. For participating households, this means predictable bills that fit within their monthly budgets, reducing the likelihood of falling behind and facing disconnection.

California’s PIPP pilot demonstrated measurable benefits in its first year: average arrears declined by $131 per household, and the share of participants with no past-due balance grew by 11 percentage points.

Low-income discount rates (LIDRs)

Discount rate programs reduce bills for income-eligible households. While less tailored than PIPPs, they are easier to administer and still provide meaningful relief. For customers, a lower monthly bill creates breathing room to cover other basic expenses while reducing the risk of utility shutoffs.

New York’s Energy Affordability Program has proven highly effective in reducing arrears and lowering the risk of service termination for low-income customers. During the pandemic (2020–June 2022), arrears for EAP participants rose by 50 percent, compared with an 89 percent increase for nonparticipants. According to the Public Utility Law Project, this difference saved the residential customer base an estimated $89 million in arrears relief. Without the program, arrears among participants likely would have grown at the same rate as nonparticipants, requiring an additional $380 million in relief, or $559 million when including carrying costs.

Another example comes from Indiana. A 2007 evaluation of the state’s Universal Service Program found that arrears occurred less often and were lower among those customers on the discount rate. At Citizens Gas, for example, average January arrears were $42 for participants compared with $100 for nonparticipants.

Low-income energy efficiency programs

Energy efficiency programs such as weatherization and appliance replacement lower bills for the lifetime of the efficiency action by reducing energy use. For customers, these investments improve comfort and safety in the home, while also helping to enable more affordable bills over the long term.

An evaluation of Pennsylvania’s Low-Income Usage Reduction Program (LIURP) for the 2021–2022 program year found that average net arrears fell by nearly $99 for PPL participants, $51 for PECO, $39 for Duquesne Light, and $25 statewide. These reductions were accompanied by declines in bad debt write-offs, showing how efficiency investments deliver system-wide benefits in the form of reduced bad debt in addition to the other system-wide and household benefits.

The bottom line: Supporting affordability for all

Programs such as AMPs, PIPPs, discount rates, and efficiency upgrades provide essential support to customers, reduce customers’ utility debt, and protect households from disconnection.

Importantly, these same programs also deliver system-wide benefits. They lower uncollectible balances, reduce costly collection actions, and strengthen overall affordability for all ratepayers. RMI analysis suggests that nearly half of the costs of these programs can be offset by reductions in utility debt alone.

The bottom line is clear: affordability programs protect the most vulnerable customers and reduce costs for all ratepayers. By advancing these policies, commissions can protect customers while ensuring a more stable and affordable energy system for all.

The post How Low-Income Customer Programs Lower Energy Costs for Everyone appeared first on RMI.

A UK charity that portrays itself as a climate leader facilitated a £830,000 donation to the Mercatus Center, a conservative think tank heavily funded by U.S. oil billionaire Charles Koch, DeSmog can reveal.

The London-based Founders Pledge channels donations from entrepreneurs to charities – empowering business leaders “to do immense good”, according to its website.

This includes giving money to climate causes. The Founders Pledge runs a Climate Fund that claims to “find and fund impactful, neglected climate solutions” – having distributed almost $36 million from over 5,000 donors.

Donor Advised Funds (DAFs) like the one sponsored by the Founders Pledge allow wealthy individuals to anonymously distribute money and other assets. Research shows that DAFs are increasingly being used to funnel money to reactionary causes – including in the UK.

Subscribe to our newsletter

Stay up to date with DeSmog news and alerts

Email Address What content do you want to subscribe to? (check all that apply) All International UK Sign Up (function($){ $('.newsletter-container .ijkidr-us').click(function() { $('.js-cm-form').attr('data-id', '2BE4EF332AA2E32596E38B640E905619D07B21962C5AFE16D3A2145673C82A3CEE9D9F1ADDABE965ACB3CE39939D42AC9012C6272FD52BFCA0790F0FB77C6442'); $('.js-cm-email-input').attr('name', 'cm-vdrirr-vdrirr'); }); $('.newsletter-container .ijkidr-uk').click(function() { $('.js-cm-form').attr('data-id', '2BE4EF332AA2E32596E38B640E905619BD43AA6813AF1B0FFE26D8282EC254E3ED0237BA72BEFBE922037EE4F1B325C6DA4918F8E044E022C7D333A43FD72429'); $('.js-cm-email-input').attr('name', 'cm-ijkidr-ijkidr'); }); })(jQuery);

The Mercatus Center is a conservative “market oriented” think tank registered as a charity. Mercatus and its sister group the Institute for Humane Studies (IHS), both located at George Mason University, have been funded by American billionaire and oil magnate Charles Koch, co-founder of Koch Industries – the second-largest private company in the U.S.

The network of influence controlled and supported by Charles Koch and his late brother David includes “a web of interconnected, right-wing think tanks and advocacy groups”. The pair have piled millions of dollars into causes promoting climate disinformation, including buying credibility with large investments in academic institutions.

Between 2018 and 2022, George Mason was by far the biggest university in receipt of Charles Koch’s money. The three institutions – George Mason, Mercatus, and the IHS – received $128.6 million from four Koch foundations during the period. The Mercatus Center, which has called climate change “beneficial”, has also received funding from the oil major ExxonMobil. 

And yet, the Founders Pledge – which distributes over £100 million annually and operates in the UK, Germany, and U.S. – has been featured in articles highlighting its green credentials and has been labelled as being among the most “high-impact, cost-effective, evidenced-based organisations” to donate through. 

Firms operating DAFs have the right to refuse to give to certain causes, though in practice this rarely happens.

The Founders Pledge told DeSmog: “We tackle climate change as the global, long-term challenge it is, focusing on solutions that change trajectories, transform systems, reduce the biggest risks for devastating damage around the world, and that will be effective even if everything goes wrong.

“Among other efforts, we fund efforts to fast-track low-carbon technologies like advanced geothermal and to make new infrastructure as low-carbon as possible and look for ways to reduce future emissions from existing systems.”

The Mercatus Center did not respond to DeSmog’s request for comment.

The Mercatus Center and Charles Koch

DeSmog’s investigation finds that the Founders Pledge was used to donate almost £830,000 to the Mercatus Center in 2022.

Mercatus was originally founded – with grant funding from Charles Koch – by Richard Fink, an executive vice president and board member at Koch Industries who, along with Charles, still sits on the Mercatus board and has previously been described as “a fixture in Koch Industries”.

Brian Hooks, CEO and chair of the Koch-founded Stand Together Trust, also sits on the board alongside Emily Chamlee-Wright, president and CEO of the IHS. 

Charles Koch is chairman emeritus of the IHS board, which is largely populated by George Mason professors and representatives from the Charles Koch Foundation and Stand Together. It has been described by Mother Jones as “a haven for climate deniers that receives funding from the Koch family foundations”.

The Koch Foundation has paid the salaries of Mercatus Center professors, which in turn have produced work arguing that “The evidence regarding global warming and human contribution to it is mixed, and as forecasts of anthropogenic warming get more refined, they predict less extreme warming.” 

In 2020, the think tank was also accused of promoting “flawed” research to “hobble” environmental research in Australia, and it has previously suggested that climate change could be “beneficial” and make humanity “better off”. 

The Institute for Humane Studies declined to offer an on the record comment. 

Political Donations

The Founders Pledge received some £111 million in 2023, and distributed £101.4 million to various charitable causes.

Originating in the U.S. in the 1930s, DAFs are increasingly used by the wealthy to donate to political causes – and often those with reactionary beliefs. A 2024 study found that DAFs are more likely to be used for political donations than other funding methods, while they account for more than one-quarter of all contributions received by “anti-government and hate groups”.

Money from prominent DAFs has been used to finance the radical Project 2025 playbook for Donald Trump’s second term, to contribute to the coffers of groups campaigning against women’s and LGBTQ rights, and to prop up climate denial think tanks, all without the original donors having to disclose their identities. 

As of 2023, roughly 2 million DAFs in the U.S. distributed $55 billion in grants to charitable organisations, while UK charities received £645 million from DAFs in the same year, according to the National Philanthropic Trust. 

Speaking to DeSmog on the opacity of DAFs, Brian Mittendorf, a professor at Ohio State University and co-author of the aforementioned study, said that his research “shows that donor advised funds in the U.S. disproportionately fund politically engaged institutions” and that “one motivation for this could be to limit revelations about who funds political organisations.”

He added that “public disclosures by these organisations make it difficult to identify which fund provided money to which organisations and especially who gave money to those funds in the first place.”

“When private foundations distribute money to a donor advised fund prior to it being sent to the ultimate recipient, the paper trail is lost,” he said.

The Rise of DAFs in the UK

The practice of channelling political donations through DAFs now seems to be more commonplace in the UK.

One DAF supplier – called Prism The Gift Fund – has been used to distribute nearly £1.6 million since 2017 to a suite of right-wing think tanks and lobby groups including Policy Exchange, the Global Warming Policy Foundation, the Legatum Institute (now the Prosperity Institute), the Centre for Social Justice, and Henry Jackson Society.

The ultimate source of the funds are unknown.

Moreover, research into the transparency requirements surrounding DAFs suggest that the UK could even be lagging behind the U.S.

One key area is how grants are recorded. In the U.S., DAF providers are required to list most of the grants they pay out in their annual returns. Speaking to DeSmog, Mittendorf explained that suppliers of DAFs in the U.S. have to disclose who received a donation if it surpasses $5,000.

This differs from the UK, where there is no formal requirement for DAF providers to list their recipients, although some still choose to do so.

In the case of the Founders Pledge, while recipients of larger donations are named in its 2023 accounts, “grants less than £645,000” are recorded as one lump sum, with no way to tell where that money has gone to, in addition to not being able to tell where it has come from.

A spokesperson for the Charity Commission confirmed that, at present, recording requirements are minimal. “As DAFs are managed by the charities they reside in, our guidance for the parent charities/trustees is the same as for any other charity, rather than specifically for DAFs… No charities are required to list all the organisations they provide grants to.”

A spokesperson for another prominent DAF provider, The Charity Service, said that “the issues around transparency and DAFs is an interesting one especially as anonymous giving is one of the perceived benefits of giving through a DAF for many donors.”

Tom Brake, director of the campaign group Unlock Democracy, said: “The increasingly influential role think tanks have in our democracy must go hand-in-hand with greater transparency over who funds them and to what end. DAFs do the exact opposite, shielding those donating to think tanks and other organisations from public scrutiny.”

The post How a ‘Pro-Climate’ Charity Channelled Cash to a Koch-Funded Think Tank appeared first on DeSmog.

Droughtflation 'is eroding resilience' Channel Comment brendan 15th October 2025 Teaser Media

Despite court losses, public antipathy, ridicule, a shutdown they ignore, the nascent police state lurches on with its daft apocalyptic narrative of an America in flames. Their victims include brown parents torn from kids, a minister shot, an 87-year-old veteran tackled, a beloved Black school official. Each time, their allies plead for "radical empathy." Each time, ICE declines, stonily citing "public safety." Joseph Goebbels: "It would not be impossible to prove with sufficient repetition (that) a square is in fact a circle."

In another up-is-down, whitewashing moment, on Monday the regime marked "Columbus Day," thus reclaiming from "the ashes of left wing arsonists" the explorer's noble, white Christian nationalist legacy of "faith, courage, perseverance and virtue" - not Indigenous Peoples Day's theft, exploitation and genocide of almost 100 million Native people - to celebrate "the triumph of Western civilization, such as it is. In its name, Trump continues waging his war on free speech, political opposition, constitutionally protected rights, brown people and anyone who disagrees with him in ongoing efforts to become the man-child king of an authoritarian hell-hole most Americans don't want.

While Trump has declared eight national emergencies to justify his draconian powers, courts are largely holding the line, or at least a standoff, against the insanity. In Oregon, a three-judge panel ruled 200 National Guard troops called up can remain federalized but can't yet be deployed in Portland. In Chicago, a judge temporarily blocked deployment of 500 National Guard from Texas already in nearby Elwood; a judge also banned ICE agents from using "riot control weapons" against protesters there. On Tuesday, a Rhode Island judge slammed the government for defying an order banning them from withholding FEMA funds from states that won't cooperate with ICE crackdowns, calling them out for "a ham-handed attempt to bully."

How far the regime will go to defy court orders may depend on vengeful Nazi mastermind Goebbels/Miller, who calls every court decision they lose "legal insurrection"; his heartbroken relatives, in turn, call him "the face of evil." The ever-seething Miller describes protests as "domestic terrorist sedition" and the use of troops against them as "an absolute necessity to defend (our) government, public order and the Republic itself." Last week, saying the quiet part out loud, Miller lied the president has "plenary” or absolute power under Title 10 of the US Code; then he blinked and glitched out, reflecting what experts call "cognitive overload" in the "reptilian" brain, often when mistakenly saying something damning.

When not freezing, he furiously sputters out attacks on a "campaign of terrorism (that) will be brought down" by his righteous mission "to dismantle terrorism and terror networks." At Charlie Kirk's memorial/rally, Miller thundered, "We are the storm" in a demonic, Nazi-esque speech that posited "them" - "You are nothing. You have nothing. You are wickedness, you are jealousy, you are envy, you are hatred...Our enemies cannot comprehend our strength, our determination, our resolve'" - against "us": "Our lineage and our legacy hails back to Athens, to Philadelphia...Our ancestors built the cities...built the industry. We stand for what is good, what is virtuous, what is noble.”

Last week, trying to maintain momentum in the face of enduring resistance, Trump called an "Antifa Roundtable" - in fact a rectangle - to follow his declaration of Antifa as a "domestic terrorist organization" 'cause he still doesn't get it's neither terrorist nor an organization, but simply anyone anti-fascist. Gathering flunkies and far-right influencers to help, per one headline, "Protect Americans From Dancing Unicorns," they repeated like an incantation the notion of "terrorism" and "insurrection" to make it so. In rhetoric echoing Press Barbie's vow Trump will "end the Radical Left’s reign of terror in Portland once and for all," a press release referenced an imaginary "Antifa-led hellfire" and "a wasteland of firebombs, beatings, and brazen attacks."

— (@)

Trump opened the meeting declaring, "The epidemic of Antifa-inspired terror has been escalating for nearly a decade." He claimed “paid anarchists” want to "destroy our country," and "many people" have died in leftist violence; the correct number is one, in 2020, followed by three deaths on the left. He raved about "flag-burning mobs," "degenerates" and, without irony, "people that want to overthrow government" before occasionally nodding off, Everyone agreed with him about everything. "This is not activism, it's anarchy," intoned Pam Bondi before vowing to take "the same approach" to Antifa as to drug cartels: "We're going to take them apart," and then presumably, summarily kill them from above?

A suitably icy ICE Barbie vowed to "eliminate Antifa from existence." "They are just as sophisticated as MS-13, as TDA (Tren de Aragua]), as Isis, as Hezbollah, as Hamas, all of them," she said. They are just as dangerous. They have an agenda to destroy us." Despite that peril, she later bravely ventured to war-torn Portland, where protests cover about a block of its 135 square miles. There, MAGA podcaster Benny Johnson gushed, she survived mean signs - "Molotovs Melt Ice" - and, from a rooftop, "stared down an Antifa army," aka a few protesters/enemy combatants and a guy in a chicken costume. Also in her entourage was a (pardoned) Jan. 6 rioter who'd just texted a friend, “We need a war, bro."

At a Cabinet meeting later that week, Noem claimed city, state and police officials - "all lying, disingenuous, dishonest people!" - were "absolutely covering up the terrorism hitting their streets" because otherwise why was the city so quiet? Sen Ron Wyden: "Thoughts and prayers to Cosplay Cop Kristi who had to endure the dogs, farmers' markets, capybaras (at Debbie Dolittle's Petting Zoo") and marathon runners of Portland." Wrote Portland City Council member Angelita Morillo: "I never thought renowned puppy-killer Kristi Noem would be so afraid of protesters wearing frog costumes, but here we are...There is no terrorism happening here. I think that they are just a very scared people."

To the press later, Trump praised Noem and promised to punish people who create mean signs. In one hilarious, terrifying moment, he was asked if, given all the terrorism, he'd given more thought to suspending habeas corpus, the constitutional protection from unlawful detention. "Uh, suspending who?" he asked. "Habeas corpus." "I dunno," he said. "I’d rather leave that to Kristi - what do you think?” Kristi: "Umm..." George Conway: "President Non Compos Mentis has no idea what the writ of habeas corpus is.” Still, Trump yammered, Portland is "a burning hellhole...You don’t even have stores anymore. They don’t put glass up. They put plywood. Every time I look at that place it’s burning down. There are fires all over the place.”

Federal agents face off against an inflatable frog in Portland.Photo by Mathieu Lewis-Rolland/AFP via Getty Images

Somehow, despite their noise and power, Americans still aren't buying it. Last week, the White House bragged a video of Noem blaming the shutdown on Dems was “currently playing at every public airport in America." Not: Multiple airports are refusing to play it, citing the Hatch Act and opposing "using public assets for political propaganda. Immigration lawyer Aaron Reichlin-Melnick: "Can you think of a single movie in which there's a government video denouncing its political opponents playing on a loop in public spaces (and) that government was the good guy?” In Chicago store fronts have started displaying signs that read, "ICE do not have consent to enter this business unless they have a valid judicial warrant."

And mockery rejecting the right's ludicrous narrative is rife. "This is JB Pritzker reporting from war-torn Chicago," began one video from the governor. "It’s quite disturbing. The Milwaukee Brewers have come in to attack our Chicago Cubs. I've seen people being forced to eat hot dogs with ketchup. Our deep dish pizza has gone shallow....It’s a challenge to survive here, but there’s no hellscape I’d rather be in." Late-night's Jimmy Kimmel, citing "demonstrators in animal costumes dancing to Farruko’s Pepas," asked viewers in Chicago, Portland, Memphis etc to prove how crimey their cities are by sending in videos:of their own war-ravaged communities under the hashtag #ShowMeYourHellhole.

Memes abound, especially in Portland, where proudly weird residents have embraced the goofy. "Breaking: Antifa founders identified!" (Churchill and FDR). "Boomerfita from the war zone" (boomers/his Land Is Your Land). "The Battle of Voo Doo donuts rages on!" (ICE/donuts). Deadly dance parties (large blow-up animals). Gavin Newsom: "WE FOUND THE PORTLAND WAR ZONE PETE !!" (Ditto.) Tales of brutal brunch lines, soup groups disrupted, an eight-year-old's soccer team clobbered by a gang of bandits. The OG Frog has been joined by a shark, chicken, dolphin, polar bear, alligator, maybe rooster, more frogs - "He's a friend from another pond" - and chants: "Frog, frog, frog."

Sunday also saw an emergency run of Portland's World Naked Bike Ride, a “quintessentially Portland way to protest” that draws up to 10,000 riders each summer. This one, in pouring rain with a die-in mid-ride, drew about 1,000, many in more-than-usual clothes or with clear ponchos over messages on chests and backs - "We're Cold But Not As Cold As ice, No Faux King Way, End Occupation" - and one brave soul playing bagpipes on a unicycle. The mood was jubilant. “Joy is a form of protest,"" said one. Also, "The people are willing to be vulnerable and stand up for something they believe in," and from a tearful 70-year-old, "Damn, this is a good place to live. This city has a beating heart of love and compassion.”

Not so a GOP horrified by the joyful spectacle. Asked where's the limit on "acceptable conduct" by federal agents facing protesters, sanctimonious prig and liar MAGA Mike cited their "abuse by radical leftist activists" before adding "the most threatening thing I've seen" was those giddy bicyclers: "I mean, it's getting really ugly." Go fuck yourself, Mike. He also charged they'd attacked cops (not), with many arrests. About 30 protesters have been arrested since June, with about half accused of "assaults" like spitting, shoving, throwing a water bottle, kicking back a tear gas cannister. Police made no arrests Sunday; ICE agents detained one person - a clarinetist with a protest band - for an unknown "crime."

For things getting "ugly," check out an evil plot, informally dubbed "Freaky Friday," wherein the feds will offer $2,500 bribes to previously tracked, unaccompanied migrant minors over 14 in exchange for them agreeing to be deported to the countries they fled. Advocates denounce the "cruel" notion of coercing vulnerable kids whose funding for legal support has been cut to waive their rights for a cash incentive, or "resettlement support stipend" - especially when they're told that, if they say no, they'll be picked up when they turn 18 by an abusive force of masked, armed federal agents repeatedly found to be the out-of-control aggressors - from smashing windows to people's faces - during arrests.

A so-called federal law enforcement official responds to being filmed.Photo from BlueSky

In response, ICE argues they use "objectively reasonable force." Tell it to Rafie Ollah Shouhed, a longtime, 79-year-old car wash owner in California who filed a federal civil rights suit seeking $50 million after ICE thugs stormed his business and body slammed him to the ground so hard he suffered multiple broken bones and a traumatic brain injury when he tried to tell agents grabbing his workers they had papers. He also told them he'd just had heart surgery, but three guys jumped on his back anyway, with one pressing a knee into his neck and telling him, "You don’t fuck with ICE." He was handcuffed, detained, held 12 hours with no care, calls, food or water. Five of his workers were also detained.

There was also the ICE thug at a New York courthouse who brutally threw down Ecuadorian Monica Moreta-Galarza when she tried to stop agents from dragging her husband away from her and her two kids. The guy choked and body-slammed when he didn't step back fast enough from a curb as ordered. The goons roughing up bystanders filming, smashing car windows to drag a guy from his one-month-old, abducting a 27-year-old Colombian during his shift at an Iowa City market though he was mid-asylum-process, he wore an ankle monitor for tracking, and he, his wife, their infant son lived at a Catholic Worker House. The 8 goons who yanked a girl from her car as she screamed, "I'm 15."

There were also the 30 storm-troopers in riot gear who blocked a Portland ambulance from leaving with an injured protester as they argued about one riding with them in the ambulance, which isn't allowed; when the driver put the ambulance in park and it moved a few inches, one goon got in his face and screamed, "DON’T YOU EVER DO THAT AGAIN, I WILL SHOOT YOU." And there was the sad, strange story of Dr. Ian Roberts, the Black, beloved, charismatic Des Moines school superintendent, "tremendous advocate," "trusted partner (who) showed up in ways big and small for students" and former Olympic runner from Guyana arrested by ICE for being just another "criminal illegal alien.”

At first, the community rallied around him, praising his "leadership, empathy and responsiveness," fondly remembering his running against kids, usually in a dapper, three-piece suit, so they could boast, "I raced an Olympian." "His contributions are immeasurable," they said, "and we stand with him." But soon a labrythian history emerged of weapons charges, dubious claims of prestigious degrees, visas granted and denied. Officials faced questions about hiring practices, teachers and parents struggled to explain his absence to kids, especially Black ones, and many wrestled with "a dark and unsettling time in our country." For ICE, his arrest was a simple "wake-up call for communities to the great work our officers are doing (to) remove public safety threats.”

Former Olympic runner and school superintendent Dr. Ian Roberts races some of his kids. Photo from Des Moines school system

ICE's "great work" was also evident last month as Rev. David Black of Chicago's First Presbyterian Church stood in front of the Broadview detention facility, praying in his clerical collar, when heavily armed ICE agents on the roof fired pepper balls that struck him in the head; as he hit the ground, he could hear them laughing. At another Broadview protest, Black along with many others was also tased in the face, shoved to the ground and detained. He is one of dozens of faith leaders who've been shot multiple times with pepper bullets from ICE - "They are unhinged," says one Methodist - and have filed lawsuits challenging ICE policies and their treatment under the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

Faith leaders and activists, while denouncing ICE actions as "domestic terror," remain a visible presence at protests, often bearing signs that read, “Who would Jesus deport?" and "Love your neighbor, love your God, save your soul and quit your job." Black, too, keeps returning to "shout down these gates of hell"; above all, he praises "the unbelievably heroic people standing with me...proclaiming liberation in the face of evil itself." By rote, even facing off against clergy, that evil is steadfast: DHS goon Tricia McLaughlin calls the protesters “rioters” who assault agents, throw tear gas or rocks, and "endanger the safety of brave law enforcement officers and illegal aliens inside the facility.” God save her soul.

David Black gets repeatedly tased in the face at Broadview detention facility.Photo by Ashlee Rezin of the Chicago Sun-Times.

The police state shows no more mercy to veterans, another group often turning up to protest the state of the country they risked their lives to defend, arguing "the basic freedoms we once swore to protect are under attack." They range from the famed Subway sandwich hurler in D.C. to a disabled 87-year-old arrested after he and his walker traveled from an assisted living facility in Florida to protest Trump's military parade in D.C. Veteran critics - most citizens, many brown - say they see "a pattern of state-sanctioned abuse" by ICE, along with ill-trained, reckless, "trigger-happy" agents who would be removed from a front line and court-martialed for their violence. So much for the highest male standard.

Their victims include a 70-year-old Air Force veteran charged with assault after he "made physical contact" with an agent's arm at Broadview; a 35-year-old Marine vet and infantryman in Afghanistan shot with rubber bullets, tackled by thugs and arrested at Broadview; a Marine veteran who served in Afghanistan, protested in Portland, got his face slammed to the ground by goons snarling, “You’re not talking shit anymore, are you?" and is suing for $150,000 after being hospitalized. ICE said he "used fake blood to falsify injuries" and "perpetuated and encouraged violence.” ICE should know. No wonder a new American hero on an e-bike was born after he taunted ICE with, "Hey! I'm not a U.S. citizen!" before taking off. "Q: How many out-of-shape, masked ICE agents does it take to kidnap a delivery driver on a bike in downtown Chicago? A: More than these."

- YouTube www.youtube.com

By John Donovan

Part 1: The Oil That Powered the Reich

Shell likes to describe itself as “an energy company of the future.” But history, inconveniently, refuses to stay buried. Long before Shell courted wind farms and “net-zero” slogans, it courted Adolf Hitler.

In the 1930s, as Europe spiralled toward war, Royal Dutch Shell — the genteel Anglo-Dutch oil giant whose modern logo is now synonymous with sustainability brochures — was actively supplying the economic bloodstream of Nazi Germany. Its founder and spiritual patriarch, Sir Henri Deterding, wasn’t merely an admirer of Hitler’s regime; he was a willing participant in its rise.

While most Western industrialists saw the Third Reich as a political embarrassment, Deterding saw a business opportunity. He despised Bolshevism and saw in Hitler’s authoritarian vision a bulwark against the communism that had toppled Tsarist Russia (and cost Shell a fortune in lost assets). “The Germans,” Deterding once said approvingly, “know how to handle the Bolsheviks.”

It wasn’t a casual remark. It was a worldview.

The Courtship Begins

By 1935, Deterding had established direct lines of communication with Nazi leaders. He purchased an estate in Mecklenburg, Germany, conveniently near Berlin, and became a guest of Hitler’s agricultural officials.

According to archives detailed on ShellNaziHistory.com, Deterding brokered grain-for-oil agreements — Shell would supply Germany with petroleum products in exchange for agricultural commodities. This arrangement was vital: the Nazis faced crippling foreign-currency shortages as they rearmed, and Shell’s oil lubricated both their economy and their expanding military machine.

The Dutch and British press covered it at the time, though Shell’s modern public relations department now insists those reports are “taken out of historical context.” Perhaps. But the facts remain.

When Henri Deterding died in 1939, he was buried in Germany, not the Netherlands or Britain. Nazi officials attended the funeral. The German press hailed him as a “friend of the Reich.” A personal letter of condolence was dispatched by Adolf Hitler himself.

For Shell, the timing was awkward. Within months, Hitler invaded Poland.

The Economics of Collaboration

Shell’s defenders often argue that the company “simply did business” in a difficult time, but that argument evaporates under scrutiny.

Research compiled by historians and summarised on ShellNaziHistory.com shows Shell had extensive joint operations with IG Farben, the industrial conglomerate responsible for producing the synthetic fuels, rubber, and chemicals that powered the Nazi war effort — and whose subsidiaries operated factories using slave labour at Auschwitz.

The structure was typical of Shell’s genius for plausible deniability. Shell Germany appeared independent, but the corporate web led back to The Hague and London. Oil was fungible, paperwork flexible. A tanker loaded in Curaçao could end up fuelling a U-boat convoy.

In 1936, Shell’s German subsidiary reported “record growth” under new government contracts. Meanwhile, Deterding was financing anti-Soviet propaganda campaigns through intermediaries.

“He believed he was saving Western civilisation from communism,” wrote Dutch biographer Henri Schot.

“In reality, he was underwriting fascism.”

Shell House: A Building and a Metaphor

Few symbols capture Shell’s moral entanglement better than Shell House in Copenhagen.

Built in the 1930s as Shell’s Danish headquarters, it was commandeered by the Gestapo during the occupation and used as their torture centre. In March 1945, the Royal Air Force bombed Shell House in one of the most dramatic air raids of the war, destroying the top floors and killing many prisoners and SS officers alike.

The irony is searing: the same company whose name now graces diversity reports once had its emblem above the Gestapo’s front door.

After the war, Shell quietly reclaimed the property, refurbished it, and returned to business. Today, tourists walk past without knowing the building’s history — a corporate erasure that borders on Orwellian.

Post-War Amnesia: The Convenient Forgetting

When the Third Reich collapsed, Shell’s leadership moved swiftly to distance itself from Deterding’s politics. The company reissued biographies portraying him as a misunderstood visionary, not a fascist sympathiser.

No one at Shell attended the Nuremberg trials. No one was indicted. The archives were quietly reorganised.

In 1950, Shell’s internal history book, The Royal Dutch/Shell Group of Companies: A Brief Outline, made no mention of Deterding’s Nazi ties. His funeral in Germany vanished from the narrative altogether.

Corporate memory had been professionally laundered.

Decades Later: The Story Resurfaces

For almost half a century, Shell succeeded in keeping its Nazi collaboration a footnote known only to a few historians. Then came the Internet — and with it, John Donovan.

After years of legal clashes with Shell over marketing disputes, Donovan turned his attention to the company’s ethics. Using court documents, historical sources, and later, responses from Shell itself, he began publishing evidence of the company’s murky past.

When Donovan wrote to Shell seeking comment on Deterding’s relationship with Hitler, the company responded with characteristic precision: “Shell does not comment on speculative historical matters.”

It was the same phrase used to deflect questions about the Niger Delta, Sakhalin, and Groningen gas quakes — as if morality had a statute of limitations.

Unimpressed, Donovan did what any tenacious investigator would: he built a website.

That site — ShellNaziHistory.com — became a repository of articles, letters, and declassified materials detailing Shell’s collaboration with the Nazi regime. It linked Deterding’s pro-Hitler sympathies to the broader corporate culture of expedience that still defines Shell today.

Corporate Silence and Modern Hypocrisy

Shell has never issued a formal statement of apology or acknowledgment regarding its role in Nazi Germany. The company prefers to focus on its forward-looking energy strategy — or whatever phrase currently dominates its sustainability reports.

It’s a curious contrast: while Shell executives boast of investing in hydrogen and carbon capture, the company still hasn’t managed to capture its own history.

Even as late as 2023, internal documents released under data access requests showed Shell’s communications team fretting about reputational damage from Donovan’s websites. One internal email bluntly stated:

“These sites are an ongoing risk to corporate perception, especially if linked to historical content.”

Shell, in short, fears its past more than it respects it.

The Irony of the Internet

In 1995, Shell issued a press release attacking the Donovans — an early sign of corporate panic. That document, now preserved on ShellNews.net, reads like a time capsule of corporate arrogance: a multinational lashing out at two individuals armed only with truth and a modem.

It was meant to discredit Donovan. Instead, it proved prophetic.

By 2009, Reuters was reporting that Shell’s own staff had privately acknowledged the credibility of Donovan’s site:

“royaldutchshellplc.com is an excellent source of group news and comment and I recommend it far above what our own group internal comms puts out,”

wrote one Shell communications officer in an email to Fox News. (Reuters, 2009)

In trying to kill the message, Shell immortalised it.

The Oil That Never Burns Away

Today, Shell spends billions branding itself as an ethical innovator — an absurd inversion of its origins. From climate denial to human rights abuses, the pattern remains the same: deny, delay, distract.

The company that once praised fascism now praises “energy transition.” Yet the moral equation is familiar — profit before humanity.

And in that light, ShellNaziHistory.com serves not merely as a historical archive, but as a mirror. It reflects the corporate DNA that time and rebranding cannot scrub away.

Part II: The Courtship — Deterding, Hitler, and the Business of Ideology

If capitalism had a blind spot for morality, Henri Deterding drew the map.

As the 1930s deepened into depression and dictatorship, the Royal Dutch Shell founder was already thinking geopolitically — and profitably. While Western governments wrung their hands over fascism, Deterding was writing cheques.

In public, he spoke the language of enterprise; in private, the language of admiration. “Hitler,” he reportedly said, “has saved Germany from the clutches of communism.”

To Shell’s modern executives, that quote sounds like ancient scandal. To historians, it’s confirmation that Deterding’s ideological enthusiasm for fascism shaped Shell’s conduct in Nazi Germany.

An Empire Builder Meets a Dictator

Deterding, a Dutchman knighted by the British Crown, was not merely a businessman — he was a self-fashioned empire builder, equal parts visionary and autocrat. By the late 1920s, he controlled vast global operations stretching from the oilfields of Borneo to refineries in the Caribbean.

Then came his obsession: the Soviet Union. The Bolshevik revolution had nationalised Shell’s Russian interests without compensation — a personal humiliation. Deterding never forgave them.

When Adolf Hitler rose to power promising to destroy Bolshevism, Deterding saw the ideological twin he’d been waiting for.

He began channelling funds and commodities into Nazi Germany through shell companies — a phrase that has aged with poetic irony. According to ShellNaziHistory.com, Deterding personally met with Nazi agricultural minister Richard Walther Darré and offered large grain shipments from Dutch estates as barter for petroleum concessions.

To Deterding, this was not just business — it was crusade. He declared himself in favour of a “Christian Europe free of Bolshevik corruption.” The Nazis were only too happy to oblige.

Fuel for the Führer

By 1934, Germany’s rearmament program was accelerating — tanks, planes, ships — all of it hungry for oil. The Reich’s problem was currency: it couldn’t pay for imports in hard cash.

Deterding’s Shell offered the perfect workaround. Through barter trade, Germany would supply agricultural produce in exchange for oil and refined products. This circumvented Allied trade restrictions and ensured Shell’s refineries in Rotterdam and Hamburg stayed busy.

The German Economic Archive (Bundesarchiv) records show that in 1935–36, Shell subsidiaries participated in Petroleumimportgesellschaft and other trade schemes coordinated with Nazi planners.

At the same time, IG Farben, the chemical conglomerate responsible for Zyklon B and synthetic fuel production, became one of Shell’s most lucrative industrial partners. Deterding’s collaboration helped bridge the energy gap that allowed Hitler’s war machine to operate.

A Hero’s Funeral — In Germany

By the time Deterding died in February 1939, his relationship with Hitler’s government had become public knowledge. Newspapers in Berlin eulogised him as “a friend of Germany.” Nazi officials attended his funeral at his Mecklenburg estate, where a large portrait of Deterding stood draped with swastika flags.

The symbolism was not lost on British and Dutch diplomats. As reported in The Times (February 6, 1939), “Sir Henri’s political sympathies caused disquiet in London.” But business prevailed. Shell distanced itself, quietly, without ever condemning its founder.

In effect, Deterding had given Nazi Germany both oil and legitimacy — and Shell inherited the profits while disowning the politics.

Corporate Amnesia Begins Early

After the war, Shell’s official histories reframed Deterding as a “complex man misunderstood by the age.” His Nazi affiliations were airbrushed out of company literature, replaced by vague tributes to his “vision and leadership.”

In internal documents unearthed by ShellNaziHistory.com, the company later acknowledged that Deterding’s name had become “a reputational sensitivity.” The solution: stop mentioning it.

In PR terms, the strategy worked. For decades, Shell’s Nazi links vanished from mainstream memory — until the Internet era revived them.

The Paradox of Principle

Shell was not alone in its moral blindness. American oil titan Standard Oil also did business with Germany through IG Farben. But what made Shell exceptional was its ideological sympathy at the top.

While most firms operated out of greed, Deterding acted from conviction. He saw Hitler as Europe’s salvation and personally structured Shell’s trade deals to support the Nazi economy.

In one 1936 statement to shareholders, he boasted that Shell was “expanding its continental markets” in cooperation with “stabilising governments.” Few missed the subtext.

As historian Antony Sampson wrote in The Seven Sisters, “Deterding’s political ardour for fascism set a precedent: Shell’s loyalty was never to nations, only to markets.”

That principle remains unbroken.

Modern Echoes of an Old Philosophy

Eighty-five years later, the company’s language has changed — but the logic has not. Shell now describes authoritarian energy states as “strategic partners” rather than moral hazards.

In 2022, Shell increased LNG imports from Qatar even as human rights groups condemned the emirate’s abuses. In 2023, it defended its Russian joint ventures long after other firms withdrew.

The lesson from Deterding’s Nazi flirtations lives on: if the profits are good enough, ethics are negotiable.

As one Shell insider admitted in internal correspondence revealed by ShellNews.net, “Our moral risk tolerance adjusts with the price of oil.”

The satirical irony is painful. Shell’s ESG officers speak in the language of sustainability, but the DNA of Deterding’s pragmatism still runs through its pipelines.

The Legacy Dilemma

To this day, Shell has never issued an apology or public statement acknowledging its founder’s collaboration with Nazi Germany. When asked directly in correspondence by this author whether it would ever confront that history, Shell declined to comment.

Instead, the company continues its campaign of rebranding through sustainability rhetoric — an attempt to offset historical sins with solar panels and smiling children.

But reputations, like oil spills, are hard to contain.

Digital archives, led by ShellNaziHistory.com, have ensured that the historical record can no longer be rewritten. Once indexed, forever searchable.

As the Fast Company article on reputation management in the AI era observed, “The internet never forgets — it only reorganises.” In other words, Shell can polish its image, but the stain remains algorithmically permanent.

Even artificial intelligence — the new custodian of digital memory — now “knows” that Shell once aided Hitler. That’s a data point impossible to scrub, however many carbon credits the company buys.

Closing Reflection

Deterding’s alliance with fascism was not an aberration. It was a blueprint.

From the Nazi oil deals of the 1930s to the Nigerian Delta of the 1990s and the Groningen gas fields of today, Shell’s corporate creed has been consistent: serve power, deny blame, control the narrative.

Satirically speaking, one might call it “ethical efficiency.”

The result is a company that thrives on amnesia — a multinational built on a foundation of moral fuel, refined for public consumption.

Part III: Shell, IG Farben, and the Slave Labour Supply Chain The Industry of Cruelty

If there was a single corporate machine that embodied the industrial horror of the Third Reich, it was IG Farben — the chemical cartel that manufactured synthetic fuel, rubber, and Zyklon B gas. But IG Farben didn’t operate in isolation. It was a joint venture powerhouse, dependent on oil, patents, and logistics from global partners.

One of those partners was Royal Dutch Shell.

While Shell’s modern leadership prefers to talk about “energy solutions,” the company’s 1930s portfolio was decidedly darker. Shell’s German subsidiaries — Rheinische Petroleum Gesellschaft and Deutsch-Amerikanische Petroleum — were part of the same ecosystem that fed the Reich’s war economy.

The collaboration wasn’t accidental. It was strategic.

As Nazi Germany prepared for war, fuel became as critical as bullets. The Allies had the colonies; the Axis had chemistry. Synthetic fuels, derived from coal, became Germany’s lifeline — and IG Farben led that charge.

According to research collated by ShellNaziHistory.com, Shell provided technical expertise, raw materials, and licensing arrangements that enabled IG Farben’s rapid expansion in the late 1930s.

Oil and Obedience

The historical irony is cruel. Shell, founded on globalisation, thrived under dictatorship.

Deterding’s successors saw no contradiction in working with the Nazi industrial complex. The contracts were lucrative, the politics someone else’s problem.

By 1938, Shell’s subsidiaries in Germany and occupied territories were contributing refined products and industrial lubricants to the war economy. As one postwar Allied interrogation report put it:

“Shell’s operations in Germany and the Netherlands were fully integrated into the Reich’s strategic fuel program.”

(Source: U.S. Office of Military Government, Economic Division Report on German Petroleum Industry, 1946.)

And behind those fuel deliveries lay the slave labourers of IG Farben’s synthetic fuel plants — tens of thousands of prisoners from Auschwitz and other camps, worked to death producing gasoline and aviation fuel.

Every litre of synthetic fuel burned by a Luftwaffe aircraft carried the moral residue of that suffering.

Auschwitz: Industry’s Inferno

IG Farben’s Buna-Werke factory, near Auschwitz, was the single largest industrial complex built by the Nazis. Over 30,000 prisoners laboured there under conditions so appalling that the average survival time was three months.

While Shell did not directly own the Buna plant, its technologies and joint commercial patents in synthetic rubber and hydrocarbon refining played a crucial supporting role. Shell engineers had long shared research with IG Farben subsidiaries through pre-war industrial associations, and both companies exchanged patents via British and Dutch intermediaries.

As historian Peter Hayes documented in Industry and Ideology: IG Farben in the Nazi Era,

“Shell and IG Farben cooperated closely in the field of fuel synthesis and catalytic cracking — technologies indispensable to Germany’s autarkic fuel program.”

In moral terms, Shell’s hands were clean only in the sense that they outsourced the blood.

The Calculus of Complicity

After 1945, IG Farben was dismantled by the Allies. Its executives faced the Nuremberg trials for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Shell, by contrast, escaped scrutiny.

Its executives argued that Shell’s operations in Germany were “nationalised” under the Nazi regime and that they had “no control” over what occurred.

That line held — barely.

A confidential memo from the British Board of Trade in 1946, now held in the UK National Archives (BT 64/2781), warned:

“Shell’s senior officers appear to have maintained trade relationships with entities now identified as components of the German war economy. While direct culpability may be hard to prove, reputational implications are grave.”

“Reputational implications” — the polite language of moral catastrophe.

Shell, of course, survived. It always does.

The Business of Denial

In the post-war decades, Shell quietly reintegrated into the global economy, helped by Western governments eager to rebuild Europe. IG Farben’s successor companies — Bayer, BASF, and Hoechst — became industrial giants again. Many of the same executives returned to boardrooms, just with different letterheads.

Shell resumed partnerships with those firms within a decade.

By 1955, Shell and BASF were collaborating on chemical feedstocks. No one mentioned Auschwitz. The corporate amnesia was total — a kind of moral blackout where the lights of accountability never came back on.

The pattern would repeat itself across generations: moral scandal, legal silence, reputational rehab.

“We must not judge the past by the standards of today,” a Shell spokesperson said in response to inquiries by The Guardian in 2017.

“The company operates with transparency and integrity.”

Transparency, yes — as long as the documents remain sealed in archives.

The Human Cost of Corporate Neutrality

What makes Shell’s Nazi-era collaboration so chilling isn’t just the historical distance — it’s the philosophical continuity.

Shell’s executives behaved then as they do now: as though ethics were an optional accessory, like a logo redesign.

In the 1930s, Shell’s moral blindness fed totalitarianism. In the 2020s, it feeds climate destruction. Different victims, same indifference.

There’s a bitter satirical symmetry: once Shell’s products helped flatten European cities; now they help flood them.

For Shell, human suffering has always been an externality — a line item under “risk management.”

The Corporate Ghost in the Machine

Fast-forward to the digital age, and that ghost of complicity is still haunting the brand.

In 2024, when AI systems began ingesting historical data for training, Shell’s Nazi-era archives resurfaced in unexpected ways.

When queried about Shell and World War II, even language models like ChatGPT (trained on historical sources) noted Deterding’s ties to Hitler and Shell’s role in the Nazi economy.

For a company obsessed with “reputation defence,” this is corporate horror. You can delete a scandal from your website, but not from the collective digital memory.

As Fast Company observed in 2024,

“AI doesn’t forget. It re-indexes. Once reputational data exists, it becomes part of the informational genome.”

(Source)

Shell, in other words, is permanently tagged. Its Nazi history now circulates alongside its ESG reports — a contradiction encoded into the internet itself.

A Legacy of Evasion

When Shell faced modern moral crises — the Ogoni killings in Nigeria, the Prelude LNG safety debacle, the Groningen earthquakes, and the Trinidad toxic exposure scandal — the corporate reflex was the same as in 1936: deny responsibility, deflect blame, and protect the balance sheet.

The irony is suffocating. Eighty years ago, the excuse was “national circumstances.” Today, it’s “market dynamics.” The words change, the evasions don’t.

Shell’s greatest innovation, it seems, is continuity of conscience.

The Price of Forgetting

In the 1930s, Shell was the oil that fueled a war.

In the 2020s, it’s the brand that fuels greenwashing.

Back then, its silence helped hide atrocities. Now, its PR teams drown accountability in slogans.

Both serve the same master: the quarterly report.

Deterding once called oil “the lifeblood of civilisation.”

Perhaps. But when the civilisation is corrupt, that blood runs dark.

And for all its modern talk of “energy transition,” Shell’s true transition — from moral cowardice to genuine accountability — has yet to begin.

Part IV: Shell House and the Irony of Liberation Shell House: The Building That Screamed

There are moments in history when architecture becomes testimony.

In Copenhagen, that testimony still stands — elegant, glass-lined, and quietly tragic.

It’s called Shell House.

Built in 1932 as the Danish headquarters of the Royal Dutch Shell Group, the building was a masterpiece of modernism. Clean lines. Rationalist geometry. The aesthetic of progress.

Then came occupation.

When Nazi Germany invaded Denmark in 1940, Shell’s offices were seized by the Gestapo, the secret police who turned Shell House into their Copenhagen torture headquarters.

On its upper floors, Danish resistance fighters were interrogated, beaten, and executed. The Shell logo remained proudly affixed to the facade — a literal brand over terror.

It was as though the company’s emblem, a golden shell, had become a metaphor for complicity: polished on the outside, rotten within.

The Day the Sky Fell

On March 21, 1945, the Royal Air Force launched Operation Carthage, one of the most daring and tragic raids of World War II.

Twenty de Havilland Mosquito bombers streaked low over Copenhagen with orders to obliterate Shell House, then occupied by the Gestapo. The mission was to destroy Nazi archives and free imprisoned resistance members before they could be executed.

The attack succeeded — and failed.

The building was devastated. The Gestapo’s files burned. Dozens of prisoners escaped. But one bomber clipped a lamp post, crashed near a school, and the following waves — thinking the flames were the target — accidentally bombed the French School of Frederiksberg, killing 86 children and 19 adults.

The irony is almost unbearable: in trying to destroy the Gestapo’s Shell House, Allied pilots killed innocents instead.

Shell’s logo, warped by fire and smoke, became an emblem of tragedy on both sides of the moral ledger.

Aftermath: The Building of Forgetting

When the war ended, Denmark reclaimed its freedom — and Shell reclaimed its building.

The company restored it to corporate use by the early 1950s. The charred floors were rebuilt. The history was not.

No plaque mentioned the torture chambers. No memorial acknowledged that the Gestapo had made its headquarters under Shell’s brand.

It was as if the company feared that remembrance might dent the quarterly report.

By the 1970s, Shell House was once again a symbol of corporate success — a shining Danish office building for executives who preferred not to ask questions about its ghosts.

Only in recent decades, through the work of Danish historians and resistance archives, has the truth been widely acknowledged.

A Building as Metaphor

Few corporations enjoy such an unintentional architectural metaphor for their moral trajectory.

Shell House — conceived in the optimism of interwar capitalism — became a literal house of torture under fascism, then returned to polished corporate normality without apology.

The story encapsulates Shell’s brand philosophy:

1. Build.

2. Exploit.

3. Erase.

4. Rebrand.

From Copenhagen to the Niger Delta, that same four-step rhythm beats beneath every Shell logo.

Satirically speaking, if Shell ever opened a museum of ethics, Shell House would make an ideal venue.

The Corporate Restoration of Memory

In 1995, on the 50th anniversary of Operation Carthage, Danish authorities erected a small memorial to the victims of the bombing and those who suffered in Shell House. Shell Denmark issued a brief statement:

“We remember the tragic events of 1945 and the loss of life that occurred in and around our premises.”

“Our premises.”

Even in contrition, the phrasing was corporate. No acknowledgment that Shell House was commandeered by fascists who tortured freedom fighters under the company’s roof. No mention that the building itself symbolised the moral rent Shell had been collecting for decades.

This was Shell’s favourite form of repentance — spatial but not spiritual.

From Shell House to Glass House

Today, the building still stands on Kampmannsgade in Copenhagen, its pale stone facade gleaming like nothing ever happened. Tourists walk by without knowing that beneath those floors, human screams once echoed.

Shell’s modern headquarters — in London and The Hague — are built of similar glass and steel, monuments to transparency that obscure more than they reveal.

There is a poetic symmetry: Shell House was bombed to stop oppression, yet the company itself never bombed its culture of denial.

Shell, one might say, is still living in a glass house, and history is still throwing stones.

The Continuing Irony: Shell’s “Zero Harm” Slogan

In recent years, Shell’s corporate motto has been “Zero Harm.”

It appears in every sustainability brochure, every glossy annual report.

“Zero Harm to people, assets, and the environment.”

A noble aspiration — and a masterclass in irony.

For a company whose offices once doubled as Gestapo torture chambers, whose refineries have poisoned rivers in Nigeria, whose gas extraction has fractured homes in Groningen, and whose Trinidad workers were exposed to benzene fumes, “Zero Harm” reads less like a promise than a punchline.

It’s a slogan begging for historical footnotes.

Shell House, Shell History, Shell Spin

Shell has long mastered the art of controlling narratives.

The same PR instinct that erased Shell House’s Gestapo chapter also shaped the company’s modern approach to reputation management.

When ShellNews.net began publishing archival documents showing Shell’s anxiety over online criticism, internal emails revealed that the company feared “legacy issues” resurfacing — particularly “historical associations” that “could undermine our sustainability positioning.”

Those “associations,” of course, meant Deterding, Hitler, and the ghost of Shell House.

As Reuters reported in 2009, one of Shell’s own communications officers admitted,

“royaldutchshellplc.com is an excellent source of group news and comment and I recommend it far above what our own group internal comms puts out.”

(Reuters, 2009)

In other words, the truth was coming from the outside — again.

The Satirical Legacy of Brick and Brand

It’s tempting to imagine Shell House as just another wartime anecdote, but it represents something much deeper: the fossilisation of denial.

The company that once hosted fascists now hosts “energy transition” panels. The brand that flew beside the swastika now flutters over hydrogen pipelines. The rhetoric has evolved; the reflexes haven’t.

If Shell’s headquarters could talk, they’d probably issue a carefully vetted statement through Legal before admitting anything.

But the walls of Shell House — literal and metaphorical — have already spoken.

Echoes That Refuse to Fade

In the moral architecture of Shell’s history, Shell House is not a footnote — it’s a foundation.

It stands as the physical embodiment of a company’s indifference to context, consequence, and conscience.

The Gestapo may have left, but the ethos remained: secrecy, obedience, profit.

Today, Shell sponsors environmental art installations and carbon-offset initiatives. Yet in Copenhagen, the ghosts still whisper.

Every time the company speaks of “integrity,” those echoes grow louder.

For the victims of Shell House — both those who died within it and those whose histories were buried beneath it — remembrance is the only justice.

Part V: The Legacy Algorithm — How Shell Tried to Bury Its Nazi Past (and the Internet Dug It Back Up) The Age of Deletion Meets the Age of Discovery

In the 1930s, Shell traded with dictators.

In the 2020s, it trades with data.

Both transactions rely on control — of markets, of narratives, of memory.

But in this century, the control is slipping.

The same digital revolution that turned oil companies into data-driven giants has also made their history indelible.

Once, Shell could pay archivists to redact Deterding’s Nazi flirtations from its corporate histories. Today, that censorship is impossible.

As Fast Company observed in 2024 in its report on digital reputation defence:

“AI doesn’t forget — it re-indexes. Once reputational data exists, it becomes part of the informational genome.”

(Fast Company)

That genome now includes Shell’s Nazi-era records, scanned and searchable thanks to independent archivists, historians, and — yes — websites like ShellNaziHistory.com and ShellNews.net.

It’s corporate karma, digitised.

Shell vs. The Internet

When Shell first discovered that royaldutchshellplc.com and shellnews.net were publishing its internal documents, emails, and historical archives, panic set in.

A 1995 Shell press release — an extraordinary document in itself — admitted that the company felt “under siege” by the potential of a digital campaign to “damage the Group’s reputation.”

(Shell Press Release, 17 March 1995)

That was the year Shell first realised the Internet wasn’t just a PR platform; it was a mirror.

What terrified Shell most wasn’t a whistleblower, but a hyperlink.

By 2009, Reuters was reporting that one of Shell’s own communications officers had privately told Fox News:

“royaldutchshellplc.com is an excellent source of group news and comment and I recommend it far above what our own group internal comms puts out.”

(Reuters, 2009)

When your PR staff prefer the criticism to the company line, you’ve lost control of the narrative.

Reputation by Algorithm

Shell now spends millions on “digital risk management.”

PR consultancies use AI to downrank damaging search results and flood Google with greenwashed content — glossy sustainability reports, “future energy” videos, and cheerful tweets about hydrogen.

Yet the algorithm resists.

Search “Shell Nazi history” today, and within seconds you’ll find archived correspondence, British and Dutch intelligence files, and scanned clippings from The Times, Der Spiegel, and the New York Times.

The Internet — that uncontrollable ecosystem of collective memory — has become Shell’s unending tribunal.

The irony is delicious: the company that once tried to control fuel supplies now fights to control information flow — and loses on both fronts.

The PR Playbook Never Changes

The tactics haven’t evolved much since Deterding’s time.

When confronted with scandal, Shell follows a familiar five-step sequence:

1. Deny. “These claims are outdated or taken out of context.”

2. Deflect. “Other companies did worse.”

3. Rebrand. “We are committed to sustainability.”

4. Sponsor. “Let’s fund a climate art exhibition.”

5. Forget. “What Nazi history?”

It’s an elegant routine — corporate yoga for the ethically inflexible.

Even in 2025, as AI tools make historical accountability impossible to erase, Shell’s boardroom reflex remains denial wrapped in management speak.

One might almost admire the discipline if it weren’t so morally grotesque.

Digital Resurrection: The Donovan Files

When this author began publishing Shell’s internal communications, the company tried every trick in the corporate playbook — from legal threats to covert monitoring.

At one point, Shell even established an internal task force to “assess the Donovan threat.”

It backfired spectacularly.

The correspondence, later disclosed through Subject Access Requests, showed Shell executives debating whether to “neutralise” the publicity by feeding journalists counter-narratives.

The result was Streisand-effect perfection: the more Shell fought the criticism, the higher its Nazi history climbed in Google rankings.

A senior communications manager warned in a 2007 internal email:

“We risk amplifying this by responding. Silence may be preferable, though it carries reputational exposure.”

Reputational exposure — Shell’s least renewable resource.

From Deterding to Digital: The Same DNA

There is a through-line connecting Henri Deterding’s handshake with Hitler to Shell’s present-day manipulation of media algorithms.

Both are expressions of the same instinct: control the story, whatever the cost.

In the 1930s, that meant trading with fascists.

In the 2020s, it means partnering with search-engine optimisers.

Different technologies. Same morality gap.

What unites them is a refusal to confront the truth directly. Deterding thought propaganda could cleanse collaboration; Shell now thinks SEO can bury complicity.

Both underestimate history.

The Investors’ Blind Eye

Shell’s largest shareholders — BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street — hold themselves out as ethical stewards, champions of ESG values.

Yet none has ever demanded that Shell publicly address its Nazi-era record.

Their silence is not neutrality. It’s convenience.

For BlackRock’s Larry Fink, “sustainability is the new standard for investing.”

For Shell, sustainability is the new camouflage for forgetting.

When conscience costs dividends, everyone looks away.

The Unkillable Narrative

What makes Shell’s Nazi history uniquely indestructible is that it now lives in the connective tissue of the Internet — linked, mirrored, cited, and cached.

Even if every corporate website vanished tomorrow, the record would persist across public archives, journalist databases, and private collections.

This is why Shell’s modern executives avoid the topic altogether.

Mentioning it invites search engines to remember.

And so, the company that helped fuel fascism spends the 21st century fighting its own metadata.

Conclusion: The Shell That History Cracked

From Henri Deterding’s courtship of Hitler to the Gestapo’s occupation of Shell House, from IG Farben’s slave labour to the digital resurrection of those facts, one pattern holds:

Shell always seeks to refine its image as thoroughly as it refines its oil.

But unlike petroleum, history cannot be processed into purity.

Every scandal — environmental, ethical, or historical — is a spill, and this one stretches across a century.

Try as it might, Shell cannot mop it up with PR or bury it under carbon credits.

The Internet has become the final historian, and its archives do not forgive.

Disclaimer

Warning: satire ahead.

The criticisms are pointed, the humour intentional, and the facts stubbornly real.

Quotes are reproduced word-for-word from trusted sources.

As for authorship — John Donovan and AI both claim credit, but the jury’s still out on who was really in charge.

Sourcing highlights: ShellNaziHistory.com (primary dossier); Shell Press Release, 17 March 1995; Reuters (2009); Fast Company (2025).

Shell’s Dark Fuel: The Nazi Past the Oil Giant Couldn’t Bury was first posted on October 14, 2025 at 7:03 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

The transition from one fiscal year to the next is not something that typically dominates headlines. In fact, as the calendar turns from September 30 to October 1 – when the federal government begins a new fiscal year – the

The post How the Government Shutdown is Impacting Farmers appeared first on CalCAN - California Climate & Agriculture Network.

Cpt. Karoliina seining to clean the Koitajoki

Restoration season comes to an end with cleaning of spawning sites on river Koitajoki, and attention focuses on the Pacific – the Taumako Traditional Culture and Voyaging School Opens and a New Pacific Tour brings Snowchange delegates to Tasmania, New Zealand and Canada.

The rewilding and restoration season is drawing to a close in Finland. Several peatlands have been completed, including Arctic Circle sites, Suomussalmi and Koitajoki river sites. Now later in the season the main actions have included Reino and Karoliina using the river seining to clean several spawning sites of the whitefish. It can be only accomplished using the traditional small seine over the clogged sites across the upper Koitajoki.

Success in catch.

We join in celebration of the opening of the Taumako Traditional Culture and Voyaging School that has been accomplished by the Holau Vaka Taumako Association (HVTA) and Pacific Traditions Society (PTS) in the Solomon Islands. The school has received several Snowchange small grants to get to this position. The opening was at the end of September and now the school will support the unique culture and practices of this part of the Pacific.

Taumako community members with a traditional canoe.

New Pacific Tour will cover travels to Polar Data Forum in Tasmania as well as preparations for the Festival of Fishing Traditions 2027, as well as meetings with the Indigenous Tasmanians. From there we will continue over to Aotearoa to review and discuss collaborations with Te Anamāhanga Wetland Restoration Project and to strengthen the Indigenous-led restoration in the Pacific. Onwards to Western Canada, where delegates will come to from Minnesota and peatlands restoration as well as other parts of North America to discuss Snowchange priorities for 2026. Review of the small grants under way in Vanuatu, Solomon Islands and other parts of the region will be conducted.

In international media and news, a new UNESCO Thematic titled “Paper on Culture and Climate Action: From Margins to Mainstream” contains summaries of Snowchange efforts. Mongabay, the global media on the environmental issues covers some of the Sámi forest work.

Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline.

Does increasing CO2 have a noticeable effect?

The warming effect of increasing atmospheric CO2 is well-established physics, confirmed by direct observation.

Experiments in the 1800s by Fourier, Foote, and Tyndall demonstrated how CO2 absorbs infrared radiation — the heat Earth emits back toward space — and re-radiates some downward, keeping the planet warmer. In 1896, Arrhenius calculated that doubling CO2 would raise global temperatures by 5-6°C (9-10.8°F) . Modern estimates hover around 3°C (5.4°F), with an upper range near 4.5°C (8.1°F).

Today, satellite and surface instruments detect less heat escaping to space and more returning to Earth at CO2’s specific wavelengths, exactly as predicted. Global average temperature is now about 1.28°C (2.3°F) above the preindustrial average, matching an increase from 280 ppm to 420 ppm.

While water vapor is the most abundant greenhouse gas, it cannot increase until temperatures do.

Far from negligible, human-made CO2 is the main factor controlling Earth’s temperature today.

Go to full rebuttal on Skeptical Science or to the fact brief on Gigafact

This fact brief is responsive to quotes such as this one.

Sources

JSTOR Daily How 19th-Century Scientists Predicted Global Warming

Endeavour CO2, the greenhouse effect and global warming: from the pioneering work of Arrhenius and Callendar to today's Earth System Models

Carbon Brief Explainer: How scientists estimate ‘climate sensitivity’

NASA Global Temperature

NOAA Climate change: atmospheric carbon dioxide

Environmental Defense Fund 9 ways we know humans caused climate change

EPA Causes of Climate Change

Please use this form to provide feedback about this fact brief. This will help us to better gauge its impact and usability. Thank you!

About fact briefs published on Gigafact

Fact briefs are short, credibly sourced summaries that offer "yes/no" answers in response to claims found online. They rely on publicly available, often primary source data and documents. Fact briefs are created by contributors to Gigafact — a nonprofit project looking to expand participation in fact-checking and protect the democratic process. See all of our published fact briefs here.

Conservation & Disability Groups Denounce Senators Lee and Curtis’ Latest Deceptively-Named, Anti-Public-Lands Bill – 10.14.25 “Outdoor Americans with Disabilities Act” is a Trojan Horse to blanket National Parks and other wild public lands with motorized vehicles

Contacts:
Laura Peterson, Staff Attorney, Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA); (801) 236-3762, (laura@suwa.org)
Greg Lais, founder of Wilderness Inquiry, (612) 840-5844; (greglais11@gmail.com)
Syren Nagakyrie, founder of Disabled Hikers, (971) 352-1305; (syren@disabledhikers.com)
Anneka Williams, Policy Director, Winter Wildlands Alliance (208) 629-1986; (awilliams@winterwildlands.org) 

Washington, DC – Last week, Senator Mike Lee (R-UT), chair of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, announced he had introduced a new, intentionally deceptively-named piece of legislation: the Outdoor Americans with Disabilities Act. The bill is also sponsored by Senator John Curtis (R-UT).

This appears to be another case of elected officials introducing legislation in the name of disability access without consulting with a variety of stakeholders and outdoor recreationalists who have disabilities. There are already provisions in federal law that allow people with mobility disabilities to appropriately access public lands with other power-driven mobility devices (OPDMDs). 

Syren Nagakyrie, Founder and Director of Disabled Hikers, a non-profit organization that advocates for the disability community and justice in the outdoors, has previously denounced the legislation as a “blatant attempt to scapegoat disability as an excuse to build more roads.” Nagakyrie spoke more about this on KJZZ and on this episode of “The Landscape” podcast. 

Below are statements from conservation and disability groups and additional information about the legislation. 

“The notion that ATV’s and other motorized vehicles are necessary for people with disabilities to access public lands was debunked long ago after Utah Senator Orrin Hatch included Section 507 of the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990,” said Greg Lais, founder of Wilderness Inquiry and author of several congressional reports and books on the topic of access to the outdoors. “If legislators care about people with disabilities, they will oppose cuts to Medicaid and vital services to the disabled community. The ‘Outdoor Americans with Disabilities Act’ is nothing more than a ruse to use people with disabilities to open more public lands to ATV’s.” 

“The Americans with Disabilities Act is landmark civil rights legislation that disability rights activists fought for decades to achieve, and the principles of which Senator Lee has repeatedly voted against. In contrast, it appears that the “Outdoors Americans with Disabilities Act” does not have input from the broader disability community and prioritizes one type of access at the expense of all others,” said Syren Nagakyrie, Founder and Director of Disabled Hikers. “It is shameful that he would so blatantly use the disability community in his ongoing attempts to dismantle public lands, build and prioritize roads, and sell lands to the highest bidder. People with disabilities are not political pawns to be used while catering to special interests.”

“As a disabled person in America, I recognize this proposed bill for what it is: a Trojan horse using our bodies as justification for an agenda that endangers public lands through unchecked development and exploitation,” said Vasu Sojitra, Winter Wildlands Alliance Ambassador. “This administration has made its priorities clear; its pursuit of personal and political gain has eroded the trust of Americans with disabilities, especially after repeated attempts to weaken the ADA and slash Medicaid and Medicare support. Passing this bill would do nothing more than line the pockets of corrupt politicians.”

“There are tens of thousands of miles of paved and dirt roads and trails across public lands in Utah that are open to motorized users of all abilities,” said Laura Peterson, Staff Attorney at the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA). “This bill puts a heavy thumb on the scale to open even more lands to this single use, while making it virtually impossible for federal land managers to close routes to protect other values like wildlife habitat and quiet recreation.”

“The proposed bill uses adaptive recreation as a scapegoat to further advance an agenda that favors development and unsustainable use of our public lands,” said Anneka Williams, Policy Director at Winter Wildlands Alliance. “Public lands are intended to balance multiple uses. This bill overemphasizes motorized use and road development at the expense of many other uses and values, including conservation protections and non-motorized recreation.”

“Great Old Broads for Wilderness was founded in 1989 in response to then-U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch’s claim that new roads were needed in a proposed Utah wilderness area for ‘the aged and infirm.’ We were offended that stereotypes about our age were being used as an excuse to carve roads into pristine areas. The newly-proposed ‘Outdoor Americans with Disabilities Act’ from Sen. Mike Lee is a similarly cynical attempt to use stereotypes—this time of the disabled community—as an excuse to build or reopen thousands of miles of roads and prioritize motor vehicle traffic on federal public lands, regardless of the impacts on wildlife habitat, cultural sites, or non-motorized recreation,” said Reba Elliott, Executive Director of Great Old Broads for Wilderness. “This proposed legislation is not about increasing accessibility to nature for people with disabilities. It’s entirely about increasing accessibility for motorized vehicles to places where cars, trucks, and ATV’s shouldn’t be.”

The Outdoor Americans with Disabilities Act would: 

• Prioritize motorized recreation at the expense of natural and cultural resources, requiring federal land managers to designate motorized vehicle routes regardless of impacts to cultural sites, wildlife habitat, waterways, natural quiet, and non-motorized recreationists. 

• Require federal land managers to revisit trail and road closures made over the past 10 years, with a thumb on the scale that those closures be reversed.

• Indefinitely prohibit federal land managers from closing tens of thousands of miles of state and county claimed rights-of-way in National Parks, National Recreation Areas, Wilderness and Wilderness Study Areas, and other wild public lands, no matter the resource damage or user conflicts created by motorized use. In Utah alone, that’s more than 12,000 miles of dirt roads and trails.

###

Wilderness Inquiry was founded in 1978 by Greg Lais after the Minnesota governor tried to use disability as an excuse to allow motors in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. In 47 years of wilderness adventures, Lais and others have taken thousands of participants experiencing a wide range of disabilities into wildlands across the nation and around the globe. Today, Wilderness Inquiry’s mission is to connect people of all ages, backgrounds, identities, and abilities through shared outdoor adventures so that all people can equitably experience the benefits of time spent in nature.

Disabled Hikers is a nonprofit organization working towards a vision of an outdoor culture transformed by access, representation, and justice for Disabled and all other marginalized people. The organization is entirely Disabled-led and rooted in disability awareness, disability justice, and collective liberation. Based in the Pacific Northwest, with a nationwide network of disabled people and our allies, Disabled Hikers offer programs and services that create pathways for access to outdoor spaces, grow community and awareness, and work toward disability justice. Learn more at www.disabledhikers.com

The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA) is a nonprofit organization with members and supporters from around the country dedicated to protecting America’s redrock wilderness. From offices in Moab, Salt Lake City, and Washington, DC, our team of professionals defends the redrock, organizes support for America’s Red Rock Wilderness Act, and stewards this world-renowned landscape. Learn more at www.suwa.org.

Winter Wildlands Alliance (WWA) is a national non-profit conservation organization representing the interests of human-powered winter recreationists. We work to inspire and empower people to protect America’s wild snowscapes. Our alliance includes 32 grassroots groups in 16 states, and has a collective membership exceeding 130,000. Learn more at www.winterwildlands.org. 

Great Old Broads for Wilderness is the only national environmental organization led by older women who preserve and protect the lands and waters we love and rely on. For more information, please visit our website at GreatOldBroads.org.

 

The post Conservation & Disability Groups Denounce Senators Lee and Curtis’ Latest Deceptively-Named, Anti-Public-Lands Bill – 10.14.25 appeared first on Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance.

As the government shutdown drags on, concerns over the health of national parks and the safety of visitors continue to grow.

Surfaced photos and videos have shown visitors to Yosemite National Park BASE jumping from El Capitan and climbing Half Dome’s cables without permits.

“It’s like the Wild Wild West,” said John DeGrazio, founder of the tour company YExplore Yosemite Adventures.

In one post to Instagram, climber Charles Winstead filmed visitors BASE jumping from El Capitan. His caption encourages other BASE jumpers to take advantage of the lack of rangers, reading, “More base jumpers! Definitely feeling some freedom to flout the rules due to the shut down. Second group today.”

In Colorado, nonprofits that work closely with the U.S. Forest Service have received mixed messages about whether volunteers are allowed to work. The Eagle-Summit Wilderness Alliance—a nonprofit that works on the White River National Forest—was told by the Forest Service that all volunteer activities should cease during the shutdown, but a local ranger district has since told the group that volunteers are allowed to work.

The conflicting guidance has left members worried that they could get in trouble for volunteering, or that the workers’ compensation usually offered by the Forest Service might not cover them if they were injured while volunteering.

Quick hits Federal lands need the public’s help, retired national park ranger says

North Dakota Monitor

Senate nixes management plans for public lands, expanding access for fossil fuels

Inside Climate News

Squatters, illegal BASE jumpers invade Yosemite amid federal shutdown

SFGATE

Opinion: The case for national monuments

High Country News

Amid government shutdown, Colorado nonprofits describe ‘chaos’ and a ‘scramble to protect the places we love’

Summit Daily

Interior cancels largest solar project in North America

Politico

Farmers, ranchers cut back Colorado River water use while enduring one of the driest seasons on record

Colorado Sun

Wyoming congressional delegation wants to override BLM coal lease ban

WyoFile

Quote of the day

For the future of our natural places, I hope this is not the trajectory we remain on, where we’re all just trying to scramble to protect the places we love.”

—Meara McQuain, executive director of Headwaters Trails Alliance, Summit Daily

Picture This @coparkswildlife

Aspen Nature Trail at Vega State Park Aspen views for days

It’s not exactly a secret how this trail got named, but we’re fine with that. This easy out-and-back hike is a two-mile-long cruise through a large aspen grove on the south side of the lake. It’s a wonderful walk through the woods, made even more spectacular when the leaves are changing.

 

(Featured image: El Capitan at Yosemite National Park, California. Daniel Erlandson, Pexels)

The post Visitors to national parks persist amid government shutdown appeared first on Center for Western Priorities.

National Nurses United presents a juried art exhibition on view Oct. 20-24

National Nurses United is pleased to present “Resistance and Resilience,” a juried group exhibition in Oakland, Calif., featuring the compelling work of 30 artists from across the country whose work embodies the themes of resistance

Earthy Governance and Interspecies Justice Confluence - 16-17th June, 2025, Sydney Centring Indigenous and majority world knowledges and practices 16th June-17th June, 2025 | Sydney Institute for Marine Studies, Australia The first gathering will be co-designed by a smaller number (15-20 participants) of the Indigenous and non-indigenous participants with a view to ensuring that it adopts methodologies most conducive to diverse modes of expression. The aim of this gathering is to provide the …

Video recording of the sessions The sessions were recorded over zoom where participants share stories of living, learning, with nature and how communities govern themselves following the rhythms and moods of natural world. Why stories? Stories are way that this relationship has existed and nourished. Now it's time that these stories are respected and they sit along but importantly challenge the dominant oppressive systems and its story of separation from Nature.

The world’s 250 largest oil and gas companies are responsible for less than 1.5% of renewable energy generation worldwide, according to a new analysis. The findings cast doubt on the fossil fuel industry narrative that it is helping solve the climate crisis by investing in renewable energy development.

In recent years, fossil fuel companies have pledged to make drastic cuts in their own emissions and have emphasized their green energy initiatives, as part of a strategy to maintain the social and political acceptance necessary to continue doing business in a world increasingly focused on decarbonization.

But until now, there has been no quantitative analysis of the industry’s contribution to the green transition. “I think the article resolves the debate on whether the fossil fuel industry is honestly engaging with the climate crisis or not,” says study team member Marcel Llavero-Pasquina, a postdoctoral researcher at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona in Spain. As to the answer, he doesn’t mince words: “Their interest ends with their profits.”

To reach this conclusion, Llavero-Pasquina and his UAB colleague Antonio Bontempi mined a series of existing corporate structure and energy production databases. They identified the world’s 250 largest oil and gas companies responsible for 88% of global production of hydrocarbons, as well as 344 subsidiaries, 193 acquisitions, and 172 sister companies of these firms.

Next, they identified 3,166 wind, solar, hydro, and geothermal power projects that the companies own directly, through subsidiaries, or via acquired companies.

Only 20% of the largest oil and gas companies own a currently operating renewable energy project at all, the researchers report in Nature Sustainability. Renewable energy represents just 0.13% of the companies’ total primary energy extraction, the researchers calculated.

 

.IRPP_ruby , .IRPP_ruby .postImageUrl , .IRPP_ruby .centered-text-area {height: auto;position: relative;}.IRPP_ruby , .IRPP_ruby:hover , .IRPP_ruby:visited , .IRPP_ruby:active {border:0!important;}.IRPP_ruby .clearfix:after {content: "";display: table;clear: both;}.IRPP_ruby {display: block;transition: background-color 250ms;webkit-transition: background-color 250ms;width: 100%;opacity: 1;transition: opacity 250ms;webkit-transition: opacity 250ms;background-color: #eaeaea;}.IRPP_ruby:active , .IRPP_ruby:hover {opacity: 1;transition: opacity 250ms;webkit-transition: opacity 250ms;background-color: inherit;}.IRPP_ruby .postImageUrl {background-position: center;background-size: cover;float: left;margin: 0;padding: 0;width: 31.59%;position: absolute;top: 0;bottom: 0;}.IRPP_ruby .centered-text-area {float: right;width: 65.65%;padding:0;margin:0;}.IRPP_ruby .centered-text {display: table;height: 130px;left: 0;top: 0;padding:0;margin:0;padding-top: 20px;padding-bottom: 20px;}.IRPP_ruby .IRPP_ruby-content {display: table-cell;margin: 0;padding: 0 74px 0 0px;position: relative;vertical-align: middle;width: 100%;}.IRPP_ruby .ctaText {border-bottom: 0 solid #fff;color: #0099cc;font-size: 14px;font-weight: bold;letter-spacing: normal;margin: 0;padding: 0;font-family:'Arial';}.IRPP_ruby .postTitle {color: #000000;font-size: 16px;font-weight: 600;letter-spacing: normal;margin: 0;padding: 0;font-family:'Arial';}.IRPP_ruby .ctaButton {background: url(https://www.anthropocenemagazine.org/wp-content/plugins/intelly-related-posts-pro/assets/images/next-arrow.png)no-repeat;background-color: #afb4b6;background-position: center;display: inline-block;height: 100%;width: 54px;margin-left: 10px;position: absolute;bottom:0;right: 0;top: 0;}.IRPP_ruby:after {content: "";display: block;clear: both;}Recommended Reading:Can Big Oil be part of a post-carbon world?

 

The oil and gas giants own 1.42% of global renewable energy capacity currently in operation. About half of this is via acquired companies, suggesting their investment is largely financial rather than a matter of active operations.

“I have been researching the fossil fuel industry for a decade, and I knew their renewable energy operations were tokenistic. But even I did not expect their share of renewables to be this low,” Llavero-Pasquina says. “I felt deceived by their intense media campaigns.”

Sister companies, meaning renewable energy companies that are directly owned by the parent companies of oil and gas firms, are responsible for about 10% of renewable energy capacity in operation. “This figure is largely attributable (94%) to the sister companies of Chinese state-owned firms,” the researchers write.

By far the company with the largest amount of installed capacity is TotalEnergies with 14.6 gigawatts of renewable power generation in operation – more than 3 times the capacity of the next runners-up and still just 1.59% of its total primary energy extraction.

“The companies with the largest share of renewable energy in their total production are TAQA (9.02%) and Pampa Energia (6.68%), whose core business is in the power sector” rather than oil and gas production, the researchers note.

Oil and gas companies tend to invest in larger renewable energy projects, and in geothermal and offshore wind projects where the firms’ drilling and offshore operations experience provides an advantage.

The oil and gas companies do have a larger share of renewable energy projects planned or under construction. But this capacity amounts to just 4% of the plan, agreed to at the UN climate conference in 2023, to triple global renewable energy capacity by 2030.

As well as evaluating oil and gas companies’ commitment to fighting the climate crisis by their contributions to renewable energy development, the researchers argue, the firms should be judged by the fossil fuel infrastructure they decommission and the amount of fossil fuels they leave in the ground.

Source: Llavero-Pasquina M. and A. Bontempi. “Oil and gas industry’s marginal share of global renewable energy.” Nature Sustainability 2025.

Image: © Anthropocene Magazine.

This story is being published in collaboration with The Tyee, an award-winning independent media outlet based in BC. 

Danielle Smith and her team met with members of the right-wing think tank the Heritage Foundation not long after the 2024 U.S. election, the Alberta premier said at a conference last month.

Smith was speaking at the recent Canada Strong and Free conference in Calgary when she described meeting with the group that spearheaded Project 2025, the plan to rapidly overhaul the U.S. government under U.S. President Donald Trump. Smith said she met with the think tank to represent the interests of Alberta and Canada and to better understand Trump and his policies.

“We met with the Heritage Foundation when Donald Trump first got elected because we knew that the Heritage Foundation was one of many different groups that are influential on him,” said Smith. “We wanted to understand what kind of policies he was advocating and to see if we could frame our interests and talking points in terms of the U.S. president’s interests.”

The Heritage Foundation is a highly influential conservative think tank that advocates for free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, and traditional American values. Its Republican influence dates back to 1981, when about two-thirds of the group’s policy recommendations were adopted by the Reagan Administration.

The think tank is widely known for authoring Project 2025, the plan to “dismantle the administrative state” by closing government offices, overturning regulations, and replacing thousands of public sector employees with Trump allies. Trump has attempted to distance himself from Project 2025, but its agenda, including climate policy rollbacks and gutting the Environmental Protection Agency, has forged ahead since his re-election.

A recent DeSmog report found that 70 percent of Trump’s cabinet and more than 50 high level officials have ties to the Heritage Foundation and Project 2025. They include vice president JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, director of national intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, and the recently departed head of DOGE Elon Musk.

Danielle Smith speaks at the Canada Strong and Free conference in Calgary in September. Credit: David Falk Trump’s Canadian ally

This isn’t the first meeting Smith has had with allies of the American president. Earlier this year she went to Florida to speak with the conservative influencer Ben Shapiro at a fundraising event for conservative media organization PragerU. The pair discussed electing “solid allies” to Trump in Canada.

In an interview with Breitbart News in March she appeared to be supportive of Trump and said that federal conservative leader Pierre Poilievre would be a better ally to the Americans. “Pierre would bring would be very much in sync with, I think…the new direction in America,” she told them. “And I think we’d have a really great relationship for the period of time they’re both in,” seeming to refer to Trump.

Smith’s comments in Florida and her meeting with the Heritage Foundation came at a time when tariffs severely strained Canada-U.S. relations and when Trump often joked about annexing Canada.

The Heritage Foundation was recently in the news when its president Kevin D. Roberts was invited to speak to Canadian Prime Minister Marc Carney’s cabinet at the beginning of September. An invitation that one former Liberal advisor called “mind boggling.” 

Roberts later declined the invitation, saying that he was in Washington. A statement from the prime minister’s office later read “our team will continue further engagement and discussions with him and other leading U.S. policy figures soon.”

‘Trump’s not going to be influenced by me’

Neither Danielle Smith’s office nor the Heritage Foundation responded to requests to elaborate on what was discussed in the meeting.

But at the Canada Strong and Free conference Smith claimed such meetings are normal and often organized by the Alberta Washington Office currently run by former UCP MLA and Speaker Nathan Cooper. She added that her team would be meeting with Democrats had they been in office.

Smith said she learned that Trump is influenced by his donors and supporters during the Heritage Foundation meeting, and that she aimed to figure out who they were so she could better frame her talking points to the Americans.

“Trump’s not going to be influenced by me,” she said. “The way you talk to him are in terms of mutual interest, and most importantly, American interests. And there’s a lot of American interest in maintaining their economic ties with Canada.”

Smith was just one of several speakers at the conference organized by the Canada Strong and Free Network, formerly the Manning Centre, held last month in Calgary. Others speakers included Conrad Black, journalist Tristin Hopper and lawyer Keith Wilson who has become a leading figure in the Alberta separatist movement.

The post Danielle Smith Met with Heritage Foundation After U.S. Election appeared first on DeSmog.

This piece is part of the weekly series “Growing Forward: Insights for Building Better Food and Agriculture Systems,” presented by the Global Food Institute at the George Washington University and the nonprofit organization Food Tank. Each installment highlights forward-thinking strategies to address today’s food and agriculture related challenges with innovative solutions. To view more pieces in the series, click here.

Conflict is the largest driver of hunger and starvation, and food has become one of the cheapest weapons of war. More than 120 million people are currently displaced by violence or persecution, and 60 percent of the world’s hungriest live in conflict-affected countries. At last count, the Center for Preventive Action found 27 active conflicts around the world. From Gaza to Sudan and from Ukraine to Yemen, withholding food is now a deliberate strategy of war. 

The ongoing war in Ukraine illustrates this reality. Once Europe’s breadbasket, Ukraine’s farmland has been mined and blockaded, cutting off global grain supplies. Similar tactics appear elsewhere: in Gaza, famine now compounds the humanitarian crisis as food access is restricted as a part of Israel’s war against Hamas. Whether defined as genocide or not, the reality is that food deprivation is being weaponized to achieve military and political ends.

A Historical Pattern

Weaponizing food is nothing new. The Siege of Leningrad (1941–1944) starved over a million civilians. The Bengal famine of 1943, exacerbated by British policies, left millions of dead. During Nigeria’s Biafran War (1967–1970), famine was used to weaken separatists. In the 1990s Balkans war, Sarajevo was cut off from food supplies. More recently, Syrian forces bombed bakeries to terrorize populations, while Russian forces destroyed Ukrainian grain.

History makes clear: starvation is not collateral damage—it is a tactic. Yet international law still struggles to hold perpetrators accountable.

International Law and Limited Action

Since its founding in 1946, the United Nations has repeatedly confronted ongoing crises marked by manmade famine and starvation. The 1949 Geneva Conventions and the 1977 Protocols prohibit withholding food from civilians, but these are considered broadly as crimes against humanity. It was not until 2018 that the U.N.’s Security Council adopted Resolution 2417 condemning famine as a weapon. 

While sanctions are intended to enforce international law by penalizing those who obstruct humanitarian assistance, accountability remains elusive. The International Criminal Court (ICC) established in 1998 includes intentional starvation of civilians as a crime. Yet, as a recent review by Chase Sova highlighted, prosecutions remain rare, the legal framework is weak, and U.N. investigations often stall as powerful states block enforcement.

Meanwhile, millions continue to suffer. Today, Sudan, Yemen, Haiti, northern Nigeria, and South Sudan are on the verge of famine. These crises share a common thread: deliberate obstruction of food.

Why Food is a Powerful Weapon

Food’s power lies in its universality. It is also the cheapest weapon of war. Starvation kills slowly, demoralizes populations, and erodes cultures. Women—often primary farmers—are disproportionately targeted and their livelihoods destroyed. 

Modern communications now expose these crimes in real time. As global famine expert Alex de Waal notes, in the age of social media, perpetrators can no longer hide famine. Anyone with a cell phone or a laptop can see what is happening in real time. Instead, countries resort to “statistical denialism,” contesting or suppressing data to obscure accountability. But suppressing the news to deny what one can see is no longer an option. 

Still, visibility alone does not translate into action. Global outrage rarely leads to intervention. The U.N. has limited tools to enforce accountability, and political divisions prevent coordinated responses.

Today’s Urgent Challenge

The U.N. Sustainable Development Goals pledged in 2015 to get to Zero Hunger by 2030. Yet progress is faltering. It will get worse since the United States withdrew its support for the SDGs in September.

According to the U.N. Food and Agriculture’s State of Food Insecurity 2025 report, 673 million people–or 8.2 percent of the global population–remain hungry. Hunger has declined slightly since 2022, but ending hunger by 2030 is now unlikely. Unless we address the connection between conflict and food, the cycle of manmade famine will continue.

The moral urgency is clear: starvation should be treated not as an inevitable byproduct of war, but as a deliberate crime. Sanctions, international monitoring, and accountability mechanisms must target those who use food as a weapon. Governments and civil society alike must insist that the global community move beyond condemnation to action.

Ending the Weaponization of Food 

From Leningrad to Gaza and Biafra to Ukraine, the lesson is the same: food is not only sustenance, but also a cheap weapon. Conflict-driven hunger is man-made, preventable, and one of the gravest injustices of our time. The world must recognize withholding food as an inhumane act of warfare, strengthen mechanisms to prosecute perpetrators, and mobilize political will to protect civilians.

Striving to end global hunger by reducing the number of people on this planet who are hungry is a means of conflict prevention. What we do know is that since the U.N.’s founding global hunger has been reduced because of great advances in agriculture such as the Green Revolution, the increased coordination of humanitarian assistance, and economic development in places like India and China. Working to get to Zero Hunger by 2030, however, may not happen as other factors such as climate change, epidemics, and ongoing conflicts create insurmountable barriers, headwinds that destroy the progress made in the last eighty years. 

Unless the global architecture is refreshed so that access to food no longer becomes the main driver of global conflict, we are likely to see more suffering and death going forward. That means we must focus on democratic governance and giving voice to people remains essential to the fight against global hunger. At the end of the Cold War we saw a window to expand the benefits of more open societies across the globe and there was documented progress in many parts of Africa and Asia. Linking this message to the discussions about food weaponization is essential.

Ending hunger will not be possible without ending the weaponization of food. Until nations commit to resolving conflicts and holding aggressors accountable, we will continue to witness famine not as a natural disaster, but as a deliberate tool of destruction.

Photo courtesy of Jaber Jehad Badwan, Wikimedia Commons

The post Food, Conflict, and the Weaponization of Food appeared first on Food Tank.

How a teenage “internet whizz” helped create the website Shell tried — and failed — to silence for three decades. A Phantom Web Whizz Became Shell’s Digital Nemesis

In the mid-1990s, when the Internet still seemed like a passing fad and oil companies still lectured the world about “responsible energy,” a quiet digital operator answered a newspaper advertisement from John Donovan, the former Shell promotions partner turned corporate adversary.

The ad sought an “Internet whizz.”

What Shell got was something far worse—a digital insurgency that would haunt its reputation for decades.

By 1998, even the Evening Standard took notice: a small website run from Colchester had become a major reputational threat to one of the world’s largest corporations. That website—eventually mirrored as RoyalDutchShellPLC.com and ShellNews.net—would become Shell’s digital nemesis, archiving leaks, lawsuits, and internal documents that chronicled the oil giant’s ethical, environmental, and legal missteps.

And behind the screens sat an unnamed technician—a man who never sought credit, rarely spoke publicly, but who built the digital fortress that Shell’s lawyers, PR teams, and cyber specialists could never tear down.

1995: The Panic Before the Storm

The signs of Shell’s anxiety appeared early.

On 17 March 1995, long before Donovan’s digital campaign began, Shell UK issued a defensive press release titled “DON MARKETING LIMITED –v– SHELL UK LIMITED.”

(Read it here)

It was remarkable for its time: a global oil major publicly accusing a relatively small marketing company of making “false claims.” The tone was uncharacteristically emotional—proof that the Donovans had already struck a nerve.

Shell would later regret putting such words on record. That single press release now reads like a corporate prophecy—a warning that the company was about to enter a reputational war it could never win.

From Courtrooms to Keyboards: Building the Shell Files

The anonymous technician who joined Donovan soon became more than a webmaster. He was a strategist, archivist, and digital bodyguard rolled into one. Together, the pair created an online infrastructure capable of resisting takedowns, mirroring sensitive content, and circumventing Shell’s many attempts to erase unflattering material from the internet.

He even represented Donovan’s company, Don Marketing, in the 1999 High Court action against Shell, which was quietly settled out of court after ten days of dramatic testimony.

That victory emboldened Donovan’s mission. The websites expanded into sprawling archives—thousands of pages of correspondence, affidavits, and leaked memos showing Shell executives scrambling to manage the “Donovan problem.”

Shell’s own internal emails, released years later through Subject Access Requests under the UK Data Protection Act, revealed that the company had created a dedicated surveillance unit to monitor Donovan’s sites daily. One internal communication advised:

“Maintain a watching brief on royaldutchshellplc.com and its mirror sites.”

The corporate paranoia was palpable.

The Irony Shell Couldn’t Script

In a moment of pure corporate absurdity, a Shell communications officer emailed Fox News to recommend Donovan’s site as a credible information source.

“royaldutchshellplc.com is an excellent source of group news and comment and I recommend it far above what our own group internal comms puts out.”

— Internal Shell email, cited by Reuters

In trying to discredit Donovan, Shell had effectively validated him.

A Trail of Intrigue: Burglaries, Whistleblowers, and Broadcasts

Over the years, Shell’s online tormentor found himself entangled in an ever-widening web of intrigue.

He was there when Donovan’s home was burgled and Shell-related files appeared disturbed.

He was there when Donovan was mugged in what seemed to be a targeted robbery (Shell denied any link).

He attended meetings with whistleblowers—including one connected to the BAE–Shell Al-Yamamah oil-for-arms scandal—and was present during the filming of “Joe Lycett vs The Oil Giant,” the Channel 4 documentary that skewered Shell’s greenwashing.

Like a ghost in the machinery of corporate PR, he operated unseen, but his fingerprints were everywhere.

Shell’s Legal and PR Machine: “Contain the Threat”

Inside Shell, Donovan’s campaign wasn’t seen as a sideshow—it was treated as a containment issue.

Shell’s internal documents show the company debating how to silence or discredit him, drafting legal opinions, and even exploring takedown strategies against mirror sites. The tone shifted from annoyance to fear as Donovan’s archives began influencing journalists, regulators, and even policymakers.

What Shell executives didn’t realize was that the harder they tried to erase the criticism, the deeper it embedded itself in the public record—and, as we now understand, into the data ecosystems that train artificial intelligence.

The Watchdog and the Whisper Network: Reputation in the Age of AI

“AI no longer simply reads about your brand. It learns from it.” — Fast Company, October 2025

In 2025, a new frontier of corporate dread emerged: the age of AI-driven reputation.

According to Fast Company, brands are no longer judged just by humans, but by algorithms that learn context.

If your company’s name frequently appears beside words like “lawsuit,” “explosion,” or “toxic,” then guess what? The model remembers.

“Removing negative content isn’t enough anymore. AI retains associations, even after links disappear.” — Fast Company

For Shell, its internal and external spooks, and its sinstock shareholders, including BlackRock, this is bad news. Donovan’s archives—tens of thousands of documents detailing environmental harm, employee deaths, murders in Nigeria and in China, and political manipulation—form part of the online corpus that large language models continuously train on.

Even if Shell somehow scrubbed the web clean, the associations would live on inside the algorithms.

Deleting a file doesn’t delete a pattern.

In other words, Shell’s behaviour has been fossilised in AI.

The very technology Shell once hoped to harness for efficiency may become its ultimate moral historian.

Legacy of the Unseen

The anonymous technician, still active today, continues to quietly maintain the servers and archives that preserve Shell’s corporate history—warts and all. His work has been cited by major media outlets, government investigators, and environmental campaigners.

He is never quoted, never photographed, and never credited. Yet without him, Shell’s digital opposition might have faded into obscurity.

“He was with me in every crisis—in court, in robbery, in victory,” Donovan once said.

“Without him, there would be no RoyalDutchShellPLC.com.”

A Future Shell Can’t Rewrite

When Shell issued its angry press release back in 1995, it thought it could shape the narrative.

Thirty years later, the narrative has shaped Shell.

Every leak, affidavit, or whistleblower story captured on the Donovan websites now feeds into the global digital bloodstream—from journalists to AI summarizers, from activists to chatbots.

For Shell, it’s the ultimate irony: the oil giant that once mastered global communications is now trapped in a feedback loop of its own making.

It tried to bury its critics; instead, they became immortal.

Disclaimer

Warning: satire ahead.

The criticisms are pointed, the humour intentional, and the facts stubbornly real.

Quotes are reproduced word-for-word from trusted sources.

As for authorship—John Donovan and AI both claim credit, but the jury’s still out on who was really in charge.

The Quiet Architect Behind Shell’s Biggest Online Headache was first posted on October 14, 2025 at 11:34 am.
©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