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Virginia law requires counties to post the minutes, agendas and agenda packets on their websites within seven days, but Sussex County’s site includes no information on meetings before 2025 and is missing minutes from some meetings after that date.

State law § 2.2-3707.2. says, “Posting of minutes for local public bodies. Except as provided in subsection I of § 2.2-3707, any local public body subject to the provisions of this chapter shall post minutes of its meetings on its official public government website, if any, within seven working days of final approval of the minutes.”

However, attempts to access the links on the site for meetings before 2025 yield this message: “Sorry! That page doesn’t seem to exist.”

Checks & Balances Project (C&BP) has asked county supervisors, the county attorney and the commonwealth attorney for comment about the failure to provide transparent information about county government. So far, only Supervisor Thomas Baicy has responded.

“I apologize for any inconvenience incurred,” Baicy told C&BP. “When I joined the board a few years ago I brought the website issues to then county administrator Richard Douglas (recently fired ) that the website is woefully in need of an update /upgrade .

“Any  inquiries should be shared  with our ACTING CO ADMINISTRATOR.

“Again apologies and I hope the problem gets fixed.”

Steve White, the chair of the Sussex County Board of Supervisors, is the current acting county administrator, a position he holds in apparent violation of state law.

C&BP had to file a Freedom of Information Act request to get the minutes from the Sept. 18, 2025, meeting, which is not even listed on the county website.

Shilton Ricks-Butts, the clerk for the board of supervisors, supplied the minutes.

Minutes that are available from 2025 meetings show concerns about the county’s problems funding emergency medical services and the lack of financial information from some EMS providers, such as the Stony Creek Volunteer Rescue Service, which is run by White.

Ray Locker is the executive director for Checks & Balances Project, an investigative watchdog blog holding government officials, lobbyists, and corporate management accountable to the public. Funding for C&BP is provided by Renew American Prosperity and individual donors.

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The post Lack of information on Sussex County website appears to violate Virginia law appeared first on Checks and Balances Project.

USDA is proposing to withdraw three finalized Packers and Stockyards rules intended to protect contract growers from unfair treatment. This statement explains what is at stake for growers and why RAFI believes these protections should remain in place.

The post RAFI Statement on P&S Rules Rescission appeared first on RAFI.

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The general public often underestimate support for climate action, while overestimating the real-world actions taken by other people to address the problem, according to new research.

The study, published in Nature Climate Change, explores the differences between people’s support for climate change, their behaviour and their assumptions about other people’s behaviour.

It is based on multiple surveys of more than 5,000 people across Germany and the US.

The study expands on previous research on how the general public systematically underestimate the climate commitment of their peers.

The difference between actual and perceived support for climate action among the public is sometimes known as a “perception gap”. 

The surveys tested how people’s perceptions of climate attitudes and behaviours relate to their own willingness to contribute and undertake “climate-friendly” actions.

One of the authors tells Carbon Brief that this perception gap is not due to “ignorance or bias”, but because “people are just not good at making good estimations”.

The research also reveals that people’s opinions and behaviours are more “nuanced than previously assumed” and suggests that simply “correcting misperceptions” does not automatically lead to greater climate action.

Measuring climate actions

The study notes that correcting the perception gap is often seen as a “cost-effective” way to promote public engagement and drive action to reduce the intensification and impacts of climate change. 

Most studies that explore the perception gap have primarily focused on surveys that have asked people to report their willingness to support climate change. 

In other words, researchers have relied upon people saying they would support efforts to tackle climate change, rather than measuring people’s real-world actions, such as financial donations, attending protests or changing their behaviour.

To fill this gap, the researchers behind the new study surveyed a total of more than 5,000 people in Germany and the US over 2024-25. Surveys were split across five different experiments, each focused on public perceptions of climate attitudes and how they relate to individuals’ actual behaviour:

.cb-table tr td{ word-wrap: break-word; word-break: normal; font-size: 0.9em; } ExperimentWhat they didSurvey oneParticipants were asked if they were willing to donate 1% of their household income to WWF – and then were given the chance to do so. Follow-up questions asked participants to predict how many of their peers said “yes” and how many actually donated to the charity.Survey twoParticipants read a constitutional complaint against the German government, led by Greenpeace, which demands for stricter climate policies. They were asked if they were willing to participate as a claimant and/or donate to the cause – and then were given the chance to do so. Follow-up questions asked participants to predict how many of their peers said “yes” and how many went on to support the complaint.Survey threeParticipants were requested to complete an online “work for environmental protection task” where the more “pages” they completed  resulted in more donations to WWF. They then predicted how many pages their peers completed. Participants also rated their individual behaviours and support for eight climate policies and then estimated the same for other people.Surveys four and fiveParticipants were split into three groups that were either informed that 4% of participants had donated 1% of their household income to WWF, that “68% were willing to contribute” or given no information. They then had to state whether they were willing to support WWF and then were given the opportunity to do so. 

The authors note that Germany and the US are two of the “top 10 CO2 emitters” and are places where climate action is “especially necessary”. However, they add that the two countries are not reflective of “diverse cultural contexts” and further research is needed across the world.

The perception gap

The researchers find that most of their participants supported climate action, but much fewer actually performed verifiable behaviours. 

For example, survey one finds that 37% of participants said they were willing to donate to WWF, yet just 4% did when given the opportunity.

Participants generally overestimated the climate actions of their peers, predicting that 23% of other people donated. Willingness, on the other hand, was slightly underestimated with respondents averaging around 34%. 

The results from survey three suggest that this perception gap is likely due to general cognitive processes within the human brain that make accurate estimations about large groups difficult, say the authors. 

The chart below shows the actual percentage of people who supported different environmental policies and performed climate-friendly behaviours (blue dots) compared to average predictions from the surveys (red dots). 

They reveal a “consistent pattern” where “small proportions were overestimated and large ones were underestimated”, the authors say, driving predictions towards the middle. This phenomenon is known as “regression to the mean”.

In other words, where public support for a policy was high, participants in the survey estimated it was lower than it was. When the support was lower, estimates would be higher.

Comparison of actual percentage (blue dots) with the mean estimated percentage (red dots) across two main categories: policy support and individual behaviours. Source: Tiede, et al (2026).

The study finds that individual and environmental factors played a role in shaping people’s perceptions of their peers’ climate actions, which were distinct from general misestimations. 

For example, people who were already involved in climate action, had more frequent climate discussions and consumed more climate-focused news and media predicted a higher proportion of climate support “across the board”.  

The results from the fourth and fifth surveys show that knowing the context of other people’s beliefs and behaviour in surveys can impact the attitudes of participants.

Participants that were told that 68% of people were willing to donate 1% of their household income to the WWF were more willing to donate. 

In contrast, participants that were told that 4% of people actually donated did not report more willingness to “discuss climate change, sign petitions or donate” than the control group. 

However, there was no obvious impact on actual donations for any of the three groups, the study notes.

Lead study author Dr Kevin Tiede, scientific managing director of the Institute for Planetary Health Behaviour at the University of Erfurt, tells Carbon Brief that the findings suggest that “just telling people how many people support climate action is likely not enough to really change something”. 

However, Tiede adds that “direct comparability” between people saying they would donate and actually donating is “limited” and that giving people more time to answer and autonomy over where to donate might result in more people taking action. 

‘Pluralistic ignorance’ 

Tiede explains that the study findings demonstrate the existence of “pluralistic ignorance”, where a person believes their own views differ from the majority.

For climate change, this means that the “vast majority of people around the world support climate action, but people considerably underestimate the extent of this support”, the study says. 

However, the surveys reveal that pluralistic ignorance “in the climate domain” is more nuanced than previously thought, say the authors. 

Prof Madalina Vascleanu, an assistant professor at Stanford University’s Doerr School of Sustainability, who was not involved in the study, tells Carbon Brief that encouraging climate action is complex. 

It may take multiple and repeated “attempts” at effective communication, or for people to directly “experience” the “norm” that climate change is widely supported, she says, rather than simply being told.

“Observable” behaviours, such as “identity signalling” – which could involve anything from protesting to vegetarianism – might have more of an impact on encouraging climate action among peers than “private behaviours like donations”, she adds. 

The study is a “great addition to the literature”, Vascleanu says, because “correcting” the perception gap did not have an effect on climate-friendly behaviour, as “scholars had previously assumed”. She adds that it has “sparked several new hypotheses” that her “lab is now working on”.

Prof Mauro Bertolotti, associate professor of social psychology at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, explains that the “attitude-behaviour gap” revealed by the research is a “rather common finding”. 

However, he is “sceptical” of the “simplified and abstract” measures, warning that experiment environments often come with “assumptions and expectations” that are different from real life. 

As a result, they might not “replicate” the process people go through when choosing to “make a donation to an environmental cause”, he says.

‘Targeted’ communication strategies

The researchers argue that it is more effective to focus on “targeted” communication strategies – encouraging climate-friendly behaviours that aim to reach the majority who already support climate action, rather than trying to convert climate sceptics.

They call for attention to be paid to the attitude-behaviour gap between people saying they support efforts to tackle climate change and following up with real-world climate actions. 

The study suggests strategies for decision-makers to reduce the attitude-behaviour gap, such as “facilitating climate-friendly behaviour” with “convenience and subsidies”. They also recommend ensuring environmental policy prioritises fairness to gain visible and widespread public support. 

They add that the public would benefit from understanding the “effectiveness and co-benefits” of climate action.

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Tiede, K.E. et al. (2026) People systematically under- and overestimate public engagement in climate action, Nature Climate Change, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-026-02668-z

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The post Correcting climate ‘misperceptions’ may not boost climate action appeared first on Carbon Brief.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 

July 30, 2026

Trump administration works to erase Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears National Monuments  Removal of signage for both National Monuments conducted in recent days  

Contacts:
Grant Stevens, Communications Director, Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA); (319) 427-0260; grant@suwa.org
Amy Dominguez, Deputy Press Secretary, Sierra Club, (385) 355-4631; amy.dominguez@sierraclub.org
Caitlyn Burford, Senior Communications Manager, National Parks Conservation Association, cburford@npca.org, (541) 371-6452
Perry Wheeler, Earthjustice, pwheeler@earthjustice.org, (202) 792-6211

SOUTHERN UTAH – Just over two weeks since President Trump decimated Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears National Monuments, the administration is racing ahead with its work to try and erase the National Monuments from both the landscape and public awareness. Last week, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) removed signage from Bears Ears National Monument, starting with the Tribal seals representing the 5 Tribes of the Bears Ears Commission and quickly escalating to the complete removal of the monument signs themselves. By Tuesday, July 28, signs signifying the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument had also been removed from at least 5 gateway locations.

These signs play a practical role. They mark the entrances to the national monuments for visitors, indicating that these areas are some of the nation’s most important protected public landscapes that together protect over a hundred thousand ancestral cultural sites. By clearly communicating to visitors that this is an irreplaceable area created to protect significant cultural and archeological resources, proper signage can help prevent damage. Removing monument gateway signs, coupled with the administration’s illegal reduction of more than 3 million acres from the monuments, will lead to confusion, uncertainty, and chaos on the ground and in surrounding communities. 

The removal of signage carries particular significance at Bears Ears. The signs made visible the role of Tribal Nations in co-managing and stewarding their ancestral lands. Removing Tribal recognition from these public lands erases an indelible part of the landscape. The five Tribal seals were removed from the Bears Ears monument signs following the proclamation that terminated the Bears Ears Commission. The seals represented the formal role of the five Commission Tribes in the collaborative management of their ancestral homelands. Their removal is a visible sign of the dismantling of that framework, but it does not change the Tribes’ connection to the living cultural landscape or their responsibility to care for it. 

The Trump Administration’s efforts to erase history are not new. Over the last year, efforts by the administration to erase or alter historical interpretation on public lands, including removing signs and displays across national parks, have been met with strong public opposition. People have made it clear that parks and monuments should reflect the full history of these places, including the histories, cultures, and living traditions of Tribal Nations. The Salt Lake Tribune, Outside, and other news outlets covered the removal of the Bear Ears signage. Additional information and quotes can be found below. 

“Make no mistake, overseeing the removal of gateway signs welcoming visitors to Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears National Monuments is a part of the plan by the Trump administration and Senators Lee and Curtis and Governor Cox to try and eliminate the monuments from the nation’s collective memory,” said Steve Bloch, Legal Director at the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA). “They’re going to find that it won’t be that easy; attacking public lands has consequences. Americans love their national parks and monuments and ‘won’t let them ‘go gently into that good night.’” 

“Removing the signage at Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument is another example of taking action without prior consent or adequate preparation. It is exactly what we expect from this administration,” said Dr. Jackie Grant, Executive Director at Grand Staircase Escalante Partners. “The signs at Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument do not just mark the boundary, they keep visitors safe by providing them with navigational markers and on the ground information. The signs should have stayed in place until a replacement solution was ready to go.” 

“Removing the signs that announce protected public lands is deeply alarming, and symbolizes the attempted erasure this Administration is undertaking of landscapes that are profoundly meaningful,” said Chapter Director of the Sierra Club in Utah, Franque Bains. “But wiping their existence won’t go without resistance. Utahns have shown up time and time again to defend Grand Staircase-Escalante, and Bears Ears, and this time won’t be any different. We won’t let it.”

“Removing the Tribal seals from Bears Ears first, then tearing down the gateway signs at Grand Staircase-Escalante, tells you everything you need to know about this administration’s priorities,” said Axie Navas, director of designation campaigns at The Wilderness Society. “These monuments exist because Tribal Nations and communities across Utah fought to protect places that belong to all of us. Erasing that history from a roadside sign doesn’t erase our responsibility to pass these lands down intact, so future generations have the same freedom to experience them as we do today.”

“While the Trump administration is removing signage in its attempt to dismantle Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante, this destructive gesture does not decide the monuments’ fate,” said Thomas Delehanty, senior attorney with Earthjustice’s Rocky Mountain Office. “Just as we did with Trump’s 2017 revocations, we will challenge these illegal rollbacks in court. The intent of the Antiquities Act was clear: to protect our nation’s archaeological, cultural, and scientific wonders; not to destroy them.”

“You can tear down signs, but you cannot erase the history, cultural significance, or overwhelming public support behind Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments,” said Chris Hill, CEO of the Conservation Lands Foundation. “Removing monument signs and the Tribal seals diminishes the lived history and our shared understanding of the cultural continuity that these treasured landscapes hold for the Tribes and all of us. These lands remain sacred, beloved, and worth fighting for. Communities across the country will not allow this administration to erase them from the map or our collective memory.”

“President Trump’s proclamations to gut Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments were already an unlawful betrayal of Tribal Nations and the American people. Now, the rush to remove the names and Tribal seals from the landscape feels deliberately dismissive of the Tribes whose histories, cultures, and enduring relationships are inseparable from these ancestral homelands,” said Cory MacNulty, Southwest Campaign Director at the National Parks Conservation Association. “The proclamations did more than reduce monument boundaries. They dismantled historic Tribal co-stewardship structures that recognized Tribal Nations as leaders in the care and management of their ancestral lands. Visitors deserve opportunities to understand their profound significance to Indigenous peoples, not federal efforts that conceal, diminish, or erase those connections.”

Background information about the national monument reductions:

• Statements from Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante Inter-Tribal coalitions
• SUWA Statement on Trump’s Illegal Reductions of Grand Staircase-Escalante & Bears Ears National Monuments
• Full statement and quotes tracking
• Maps of the reductions
• Reporter Background Memo on National Monuments
• Royalty-free assets for media use, please credit creators 
  • Photos of places cut from Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument available here (Google album) and here (Google drive).
  • Photos of places cut from Bears Ears National Monument available here (Google album) and here (Google drive).
  • Video b-roll of Bears Ears for media use is available here

###

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In recent days, prominent climate sceptics and rightwing commentators have shared charts on social media incorrectly implying that Europe is having its “quietest” year for wildfires in 2026.

These include Dr Matthew Wielicki, a former University of Alabama geochemist and self-described “professor in exile”, who was recently appointed by the Trump administration to lead the US Global Change Research Program.

However, these charts paint a misleading picture as they are skewed by encompassing the entirety of Russia in the data – including the vast plains of Siberia.

These charts also use data that include fires that are deliberately lit to manage cropland, which is a declining practice across much of Europe.

In this factcheck, Carbon Brief shows that the area burned by wildfires across the European Union in 2026 is second only to 2022 for this time of year.

The latest data from the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS) also shows that France has set a new modern record for area burned and Spain’s wildfire season is among the worst on record.

The fires have displaced more than a third of a million people across south-western Europe, while an impending heatwave has also raised fears of the fires worsening in the coming days. 

‘Quietest year’

On 27 July, as wildfires raged across multiple European countries, former Conservative peer and climate-sceptic commentator Matt Ridley posted on Twitter that “2026 is the quietest year for wildfires in Europe by some distance”.

.cb-tweet img{ border: solid 1.25px #333333; border-radius: 5px; } @media (max-width:650px){ .cb-tweet{ width:100%; } }

Ridley, who sits on the academic advisory council of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), a UK-based climate-sceptic lobby group that refuses to reveal the sources of its funding, was responding to an article by Daily Telegraph columnist Tim Stanley.

Stanley’s column, headlined: “Climate change is real – and the right needs to get serious about it”, warned:

“This is no longer a matter of speculation: the wildfires of Europe, pitiless and persistent, are the way we live now.”

Ridley included a chart from Our World In Data, showing the cumulative area burned by wildfires by week for Europe. The chart puts 2026 as having the smallest area for this time of year in a dataset going back to 2012.

Ridley’s post was widely shared by prominent rightwing figures – including Richard Tice, deputy leader of the hard-right, climate-sceptic Reform UK party, former Conservative cabinet minister Jacob Rees-Mogg and multiple commentators.

Ridley repeated the claim of Europe having a “quiet” year for wildfires in an article for the Spectator, which was reprinted in the Daily Mail.

Separately, Wielicki also shared a chart on Twitter to imply that wildfires in Europe are declining. Wielicki has previously claimed that the “science is not settled on climate change”.

Author and self-styled “sceptical environmentalist” Bjorn Lomborg has also shared similar charts on Twitter. 

These charts all use data from the Global Wildfire Information System (GWIS). The GWIS category for “Europe” encompasses all the countries on the continent and includes the whole of Russia.

As a result, Russia accounts for about 74% of the area included in the GWIS definition of “Europe”.

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Wildfires in Russia typically account for 80-90% of the burned area in the GWIS Europe dataset. In 2026, fires in Russia are substantially below average. Therefore, including Russia in this comparison creates the false impression that wildfire activity across Europe is unusually low.

Dr Calum Cunningham, a research fellow at the University of Tasmania’s Fire Centre, says that such claims are “highly misleading”, noting that “they rely on aggregating fire activity across an enormous and climatically diverse region”. He tells Carbon Brief:

“A relatively quiet season in Russia can easily mask an exceptionally active season in France or Spain. If the analysis is focused on the regions actually experiencing the current fires, the picture is very different.

“The reality is that western Europe has experienced an extraordinary sequence of climate conditions this year.”

In contrast, the EFFIS provides a subset of wildfire data specifically for the area covered by the 27 nations of the EU, which, therefore, excludes Russia. 

Another difference between the two datasets is that GWIS monitors all fires – including those on agricultural land that are intentionally set alight. The burned area as measured by GWIS contains significant cropland area. 

By contrast, EFFIS uses land-cover data and other information to filter specifically for forest fires. 

Looking at the EU-only data from EFFIS reveals that Europe is far from having its “quietest” year. The bloc’s burned area, as of 29 July, is almost 435,000 hectares (ha) – second only to 2022 for this time of year.

Notably, Wielicki has actually continued to post charts based on GWIS data, even after acknowledging that “includ[ing] all of Russia, including vast areas of Siberia…isn’t a good proxy for Europe”.

French fires

Even looking at EU-wide data misses the scale of this year’s wildfires for some individual countries.

The chart below shows the surge in burned area in France since mid-July.

For much of the first half of the year, the country was having a wildfire season that was only slightly above average in terms of total burned area. However, a notable uptick began in the first week of July.

The third week of the month saw France break its previous cumulative annual record by more than 19,000ha. That gap has widened as the fires continue to burn; as of 29 July, the cumulative burned area in France during 2026 was nearly 24,700ha above the previous record. 

The fires in France follow a record-breaking June heatwave that “dried out vegetation across the region, allowing fires to spread quickly”, wrote the New York Times. 

On 27 July, French president Emmanuel Macron called a “crisis cabinet meeting” in order to address the fires “ravaging several areas of south-west France”, said France 24.

More than 220,000 people have been evacuated due to the Gironde fire, west of Bordeaux, in “what may be France’s largest peacetime evacuation”, reported the Associated Press.

In the Conversation, Cunningham and two other University of Tasmania researchers write that evacuation orders “protec[t] human lives, but makes it more likely houses and other structures will burn if there’s no one to defend them”. They add:

“There is little doubt climate change has made France and Spain’s wildfires worse. They represent yet another reason to redouble our efforts to tackle climate change and stabilise our climate.”

Central Spain scorched

While Spain’s fire season has not broken records in the same way that France’s has, it is on track to be among the worst since EFFIS began reporting data in 2006. 

The chart below shows the rapid increase in burned area in Spain since 8 July. The latest data from EFFIS reveal that, as of 29 July, Spain has almost matched its previous record at this point in the year. It is also nearly five times the average area burned for this time of year.

In Spain, the wildfires have been concentrated in the central part of the country, near Madrid. 

BBC News reported that the fires outside the capital have burned “an area more than twice as large as the city itself”.

Nearly 90,000 people were forced from their homes in central Spain by the fires, said the Associated Press. 

Pedro Sánchez, Spain’s prime minister, called the fires a “painful expression” of climate change.

Meanwhile, the UK, French and Spanish governments have issued joint statements this week in response to the fires. The UK/Spain statement begins:

“This summer’s wildfires demonstrated that climate change was now a national security emergency facing Europe and threatening our way of life.”

updated

This article was updated on 31/07/2026 to include Matt Ridley’s Spectator and Daily Mail articles.

Related Mapped: How climate change affects extreme weather around the world 19.03.2026 Attribution Climate change made ‘fire weather’ in Chile and Argentina three times more likely 11.02.2026 Attribution Global wildfires burned an area of land larger than India in 2024 16.10.2025 Land and soils Analysis: Record UK wildfires have burned an area twice the size of Glasgow in 2025 08.08.2025 Extreme weather

The post Factcheck: No, Europe is not having its ‘quietest’ year for wildfires appeared first on Carbon Brief.

Our previous column addressed a reader’s questions about the psychological benefits of green spaces. This time we examine their follow-up question:

I guess my secondary question is, can sharing this science help persuade these anti-tax activists?

Yes, but it depends on how you present the pro-green space science.

You want to win hearts and minds, so tell a story about how beautiful your town will be when it has green spaces in which folks can meet their neighbors, exercise, observe holidays and celebrations, give kids a place to play that isn’t concrete or asphalt, and relax in the shade of hot summer days. Try not to present overly academic or dry facts in boring charts and graphs; just talk about how research has shown the benefits of green spaces for human use.

Stay positive and pleasant while you make a strong case for more green spaces in your town. If you know someone who’s an illustrator or artist, maybe they can draw some of the town’s landmarks and green them up so people can visualize how nice places can be when they’re enhanced with greenery.

Stay away from “I, me, my” statements. Actively listen to the opposition without interrupting. Watch and listen to great speakers from the past and present — they’re succinct and confident in debates. Journalist Medhi Hassan has written an excellent book on debating, persuading, and public speaking that you can study to help make your case in town council meetings and other community venues.

Above all remain calm, matter of fact, and cool-headed — especially if the opponents to your ideas take a more aggressive approach. Don’t allow the opposition to goad you into reducing your presentation or discussion to yelling or name-calling.

The Social Contract: A Lost Art in the Modern Age

We’ve probably all seen the divisiveness between community members on display at town council meetings, where fights over town resources and policies take an ugly turn. Sociologically and psychologically each community has been influenced long before we got to those town meetings. Powerful forces aim to break our sense of cohesion, making us hostile and rude to anyone who doesn’t agree with our suggestions to improve our common public spaces.

In part the current epidemic of loneliness has been caused by those forces; ruling elites have long understood that they could secure their wealth and power by using a divide-and-conquer strategy against the less powerful, particularly by “othering” them.

Divisive rhetorical tactics have been planned, curated, and disseminated by ruling-class proxies and media since ancient times, and new social platforms have helped to keep people in their silos and sow seeds of discontent  — including about things that should be uncontroversial, like spending a few tax dollars to make our communities better places to live.

Green spaces are actually a great way to break that cycle of alienation and reestablish the social contract. Historically the concept of the “town green” emerged from a central area that served as a communal hub for civic, social, and recreational life. The answer to reuniting the common people today is to listen and learn from each other to find the common ground or town green beliefs we share.

So how do we start listening and talking without friction?

One way is by re-embracing a simple and classic idea: the Social Contract sociopolitical model developed by Jean-Jacques Rousseau in the mid-1700s. It makes the case for a community government based on the good of the people, creating a society where laws are created for the common good, holding above all personal liberty and equality. It was the defining belief system behind the French Revolution and contemporary democratic philosophy.

The concepts in the Social Contract can help guide your presentation by framing mutual respect for maximum efficacy. Psychological skills to develop include:

• Active listening — Listen without interrupting, maintain eye contact, and turn your cell phone off; give each other undivided attention, ask follow-up questions, and try to respect what the other person is saying without dominating the conversation.
• Emotional intelligence — Keeping everyone’s ego intact. If you must offer corrections or difficult truths, do so gently and privately to protect the other person’s dignity.
• Reading the Room — Assess the mood and temperament of the people around you before diving into a heavy or highly energetic topic.
• Boundaries — Social harmony comes from respecting the social scripts and boundaries others set.
• Manners — Traditional, universal practices that keep a civil society together and are effective in not “othering.” These are often reflected in the golden rules, which include treating others as you wish to be treated; showing respect for boundaries; saying “please,” “thank you,” “you’re welcome,” and “excuse me”; and avoiding talking politics or religion until you’re sure of the social landscape around you.

Image by Roy from Pixabay

Approaching oppositional individuals using manners, active listening, emotional intelligence, and boundaries can help us easily find common ground and agreement — about green spaces or other equally important topics.

Get back to us on how it goes and if meeting oppositional neighbors halfway with kind and positive persuasion has helped green up your community.

Cheers,

Dr. Green

What are you struggling with as a dedicated environmentalist and global citizen? Use the form below to send your questions and success stories.

All participants are anonymous. Even Dr. Green has no idea who you are.

Send Dr. Green your questions and stories below:

 

All questions are anonymous and considered intended for publication. Individual replies are not possible.

Disclaimer: This column is not a replacement for therapy, and the advice given is educational in nature, not a replacement for professional psychological or psychiatric therapy. This is a peer-driven support effort by The Revelator to inform and build community with environmental and wildlife defenders.

If you are feeling critically depressed and suicidal, it’s time to immediately find professional help. Go to your closest emergency room or call the following numbers to get immediate help in your area:

SUICIDE HOTLINES

Worldwide: http://www.befrienders.org/support/

United Kingdom: http://www.samaritans.org

USA: http://www.suicidepreventionlifeline.org

1-800-273-TALK

Resources

Dr. Green: Why Some People and Groups Become Resistant to Science

The Social Contract and Discourses by Jean-Jacques Rousseau is FREE online

7 Active Listening Techniques for Better Communication by Arlin Cuncic, MA (2026)

Win Every Argument: The Art of Debating, Persuading, and Public Speaking by Mehdi Hasan

How Othering Contributes to Discrimination and Prejudice: The psychology behind us vs. them by Kendra Cherry, MSEd

Lisa’s Top 25 Etiquette Tips | Golden Rules Gal

Active Listening Techniques: Best Practices for Leaders, based on research by Diane Bergeron, PhD and Andy Loignon, PhD

Revising the Golden Rule for Lasting Social Harmony: Successful social living requires treating people as they want to be treated by Dr. Timothy A Carey Ph.D.

The post Dr. Green: Can Embracing Green Spaces Help Reunite Communities? appeared first on The Revelator.

More than 11 million tons of textiles end up in landfills or incinerators every year in the US alone. Now, engineers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology hope to make a dent in that fabric waste with a recyclable elastic yarn.

The yarn is made from polyethylene, the widely produced plastic used in milk bottles and grocery bags. That means that a discarded garment made from the yarn could be melted and then re-spun into new yarn for fabrics.

Many modern high-performance fabrics contain a blend of materials that impart stretchiness and strength while being lightweight. The yarns are made of a spandex core sheathed in a polyester or nylon. Spandex, or polyurethane, is highly elastic and makes high-performance fabrics stretchy and comfortable. The nylon or polyester add durability and strength. But the blended material make garments difficult to recycle because the polymers have to be separated.

“Eighty percent of textiles on the U.S. market currently contain some amount of spandex, which makes them nonrecyclable,” said Svetlana Boriskina, a researcher in MIT’s mechanical engineering department, in a press release. “There’s no widely adopted technology now that recycles textiles into textiles. With our new yarn, we hope to change that.”

 

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The new yarn, reported in the journal ACS Materials Letters, mimics the strength and stretchiness of spandex-polyester and spandex-nylon blends. But it is made from just one type of plastic, which makes it easier to recycle. Both the stretchy core and tougher sheath are made of polyethylene-based polymers. So the entire fiber can be recycled without the chemical separation required for traditional yarns.

To demonstrate this, the researchers spun a spool of yarn, melted it, and re-spun it into new yarn several times. Even after 10 cycles, the yarn was as strong and flexible as conventional blended fibers. “Because they are exactly the same chemistry, they play nicely together,” Boriskina said. “That’s what makes this yarn very recyclable.”

The researchers believe the technology can be scaled up for industrial production.

Source: SeongHyeon Kim et al. Polyethylene-Based Thermo-Mechanically Recyclable Stretchable Yarns for Circular Sustainable Textiles. ACS Materials Letters, 2026.

Image: Based on Adobe stock/fotoyou. ©Anthropocene Magazine

 

An adaptation story Channel Comment brendan 30th July 2026 Teaser Media

Since the colonial era, India has regarded its native scrublands and savannas as little more than degraded forest. Now, amid a growing recognition of rangelands globally, officials are working to map the nation's ailing grasslands, with a view to restoring these vital ecosystems. 

Read more on E360 →

The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) advanced an agricultural research portfolio that built resilience, boosted yields, and shaped public policies. When the Trump-Vance administration dismantled it last year, their actions created a vacuum that former agency officials hope will be filled by well-intentioned supporters.

Before its closure, USAID’s funding fell into three main buckets. One share went to universities in the United States equipped for advanced agricultural research—some of which were home to the agency’s Feed the Future Innovation Labs, focused on advancing U.S. innovation leadership in agriculture and global food security. Another portion went to international research centers like the CGIAR network and World Vegetable Center, while a smaller chunk supported work in the private sector. 

“We viewed our investments in those three groups of partners in the context of a larger research ecosystem,” Jerry Glover, the former Deputy Director of the Center for Agriculture and Lead for Agricultural Research Strategy and Budget at USAID, tells Food Tank. “Most importantly,” he adds, “USAID had a wide range of highly skilled, world-recognized thought leaders.”

Rather than make isolated investments, the agency aimed to complement and fill in the gaps from funding from the National Science Foundation, U.S. Department of Agriculture, and other institutions. Research covered everything from crop improvement and horticulture to livestock production and policy issues. 

Glover, who managed an annual portfolio of over US$100 million, saw how this work benefited some of the poorest regions of the world, helping farmers and their communities. The goal wasn’t to prescribe a pathway for individual producers, but to create opportunities that they could pursue to increase their yields. 

“There’s this ripple effect” when farmers’ productivity and livelihoods grow, Glover explains. “Greater local and regional production also greatly impacts local food prices in the market. When those come down…very poor people benefit the most.” 

This shift frees up funds for education and more, “laying the foundation for future improvement,” Glover tells Food Tank. “It’s one of the most robust development theories out there.”

USAID’s investments supported farmers domestically as well—a point often overlooked by critics of the agency. As demand grows abroad, it creates new export markets for U.S.-grown agricultural products. Lessons learned and crop varieties developed also helped prevent problems from becoming crises at home. 

As one example, Glover points to research done on sorghum, a crop that many farmers in the Great Plains rely on. Years ago, a pest decimated the crop, costing millions of dollars in losses. With the agency’s support, U.S. researchers worked with partners in Ethiopia to identify a gene that made sorghum strains more resistant to the bug. 

The result was a new variety of sorghum that U.S. farmers can grow without worrying as much about pest destruction. This single crop has led to savings of more than US$750 million per year, Glover says. 

For decades, investments like these saw broad bipartisan support. When the Trump-Vance administration took office and talk of gutting USAID began, “my first thoughts were that…it wouldn’t be possible to tear it down so quickly,” Glover tells Food Tank. But “they just wiped it out.” 

In the year since USAID’s official closure, Glover says that the research ecosystem has been “so disrupted.” The majority of the Innovation Labs closed, funding was cut off, programs ended, and trust with partners has been broken. He believes that there is no replacing the combination of resources and technical capacity USAID was able to offer, but there is still a way forward. 

The Food Security Leadership Council, where Glover now serves as a Distinguished Fellow, is providing guidance to bring back investments—including for research and development—that support global food security. He hopes that as funding returns, their recommendations will help researchers and development partners pick up where USAID left off without repeating mistakes or reinventing the wheel. 

Glover also sees a glimmer of hope: “I’m confident that we are seeing somewhat of a shift in the traditional donor support in the development arena that could have long-lasting positive impacts.” He also hopes that other governments, including middle-income nations, will support low-income countries and encourage them to increase investments in their agriculture sectors.

“I hope that that vacuum is filled with well-intentioned supporters, and not…by those wanting to extract more from low-income countries.”

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Photo courtesy of Yana Petkova, Unsplash

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Research workers gathered in Toronto on July 21 to launch the Organize the Lab campaign, led by the Toronto chapter of Science for the People...

The post Organize the Lab campaign: Toronto research workers demand an end to exploitation first appeared on Spring.

My weather app says it’s 80 degrees, but that’s a lie. I’m standing on a football field at Portland State University with professor Vivek Shandas, and we can feel intense heat radiating off the grass. Instead of being made of cellulose, these blades are plastic, because this field is artificial turf. Whereas natural vegetation has a cooling effect on a landscape — it “sweats” water vapor — this stuff absorbs and radiates the sun’s energy, making the ambient temperature especially uncomfortable.

Shandas, who’s founder and director of the Sustaining Urban Places Research Lab, can prove it. He hands me a Flir (forward-looking infrared) camera that I attach to my phone and control through an app. I point it at the ground and it gives me a color-coded view of the temperature at any given spot — approaching 150 degrees Fahrenheit in parts of the ground beneath my feet, compared to as low as 100 degrees in a patch of real grass in the sun next to it. (In the video below comparing the two, brighter oranges and yellows indicate higher temps, with purple showing lower readings.) We’re actually picking up significant differences even within the field: The darker greens are about 10 degrees hotter than white lines, which are bright enough to reflect some energy away — the same reason you feel cooler wearing lighter colors on a hot day.

At 1:45 in the afternoon, conditions are relatively mild so far. “If you think about a 100-degree day on a soccer game or a football game turf like this, I mean, those ankles are going to blow out, those knees are going to blow out,” Shandas says while pointing his own Flir camera at bits of turf. “Those kinds of temperatures are not good for the joints or physiology generally.”

We walk up a small hill at the edge of the field to get an overview of the I-405 highway. These multilane thoroughfares are consistently among the hottest parts of a city, because the surface soaks up the sun and vehicles generate still more heat with the friction of their tires. In addition, an internal-combustion engine produces a substantial amount of waste heat. You can think of them as thousands upon thousands of little heaters zooming past the Portland State campus every hour. I point the Flir camera at the lanes and from a few hundred feet away get readings approaching 120 degrees — still far cooler than the artificial turf — and pan down to the shaded vegetation in front of us, where it’s in the mid-80s. 

For pedestrians, shade is especially important on sidewalks. Making our way along the side of the field, pavement in the sun is in the mid-130s, dropping 50 degrees in adjacent shaded areas (shown below).

Back in his car, Shandas attaches a small magnetic sensor to the roof. A different app feeds me a constant stream of readings. Here in Portland’s downtown, with its tall, shade-bestowing buildings, it’s 84 degrees. As we move east across the Willamette River, it dips to 82 degrees before steadily climbing — 85, 86, 87, 88, and finally topping out at 89 F. 

There are many reasons for these disparities. The more trees a neighborhood has, the more shade it gets, and the more of that “sweating” cooling effect. (That low reading of 82 came as we drove down a tree-lined street in a residential neighborhood.) Lower-income areas tend to have much less tree cover, and therefore more open pavement that absorbs heat and releases it at night: The highest readings we recorded were in areas with wide roads, few trees, and low buildings, which provide minimal shade. So not only do these areas suffer higher highs during the day, but their residents don’t enjoy as much of a respite in the evening, compounding the stress on their bodies. This is especially dangerous for people who can’t help but be outside, like construction workers and the unhoused. 

Depending on where you live in a city, this heat unfolds in unique ways, hour after hour. “Places with the most buildings and infrastructure tend to be the hottest in the morning,” Shandas says, “but often some of the taller buildings keep it much cooler relatively in the daytime.” Areas with shorter buildings and few trees get blasted all day, taking a heavy toll on residents.

The hotter the planet gets, the wider these disparities grow. On this 80-degree day we’re finding differences of up to 7 degrees between neighborhoods. But during a previous heat wave, Shandas recorded 125 degrees in one notoriously hot area on the city’s east side, compared to 99 in a hilly, verdant neighborhood. “On a 90-degree day, the difference is about 15 degrees to 18 degrees,” Shandas says. “On a 110-degree day, it goes up to 20 to 25 degrees, and on. I don’t know what that limit is. I don’t think I want to find out.”

Read Next Why heat is so deadly and how to stay safe Jessica Stahl

The first step to helping urbanites cope is to understand the nuances of heat, hence Shandas’ regularly driving around with a sensor on his roof. (He’s also trying to get the devices on public buses, which run reliable routes throughout the region.) Different solutions will do different things in different neighborhoods. Portland and other cities, for instance, might prioritize planting trees in areas where heat accumulates and residents don’t have air-conditioning. (Better yet: They can develop urban farms, which produce nutritious food in addition to reducing temperatures.) They might also take the simple step of painting more roofs white, which, like the lines on the football field, bounce energy back into space. (Better yet: Move the urban farms onto rooftops.) Or more simply, they can identify particularly hot bus stops and shade them. 

“There’s just not one solution ever for these things, right?” Shandas says. “And so what we’re trying to do is: What’s the right mix of things that will actually reduce the likelihood of heat-related illnesses?”

For cities, extreme heat is now a many-headed emergency. The hotter it gets, the less productive workers become and the more economies suffer. Heat already kills far more Americans than any other natural disaster, and that only stands to worsen. And the electrical grid is straining as more people are forced to install air-conditioning. “Everything is dependent on that peak temperature,” Shandas says. “It is going to be pretty telling in the coming years, as we see it just crank up more and more.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline These psychedelic images reveal what your weather app isn’t telling you on Jul 30, 2026.

Nel giro di qualche anno, il sostegno alla “remigrazione” – un progetto illegale volto a espellere migranti, rifugiati e cittadini ritenuti “non assimilati” – è passato dai margini al centro del dibattito politico. Questa dinamica è stata resa possibile dalla collaborazione tra l’estrema destra al governo e gruppi extraparlamentari. Come opporsi alla normalizzazione delle idee estremiste quando il dibattito continua a spostarsi sempre più a destra? 

A maggio, circa 500 tra politici, attivisti e influencer di estrema destra si sono riuniti a Porto per la seconda edizione del “Remigration Summit”. La prima si era tenuta l’anno scorso a Gallarate, non lontano da Milano. Proprio nel capoluogo lombardo, questo aprile è invece andata in scena la manifestazione “Senza paura! In Europa padroni a casa nostra”, organizzata dal partito europeo di estrema destra Patriots for Europe. A giugno si è invece svolto a Roma un corteo pro-remigrazione, al quale avrebbero partecipato circa 4000 persone. Due settimane più tardi, il 30 giugno, il “Comitato Remigrazione e Riconquista” ha poi depositato una proposta di legge di iniziativa popolare sulla remigrazione, raccogliendo oltre 130 mila firme (ben più delle 50 mila richieste).   

Tutte queste iniziative riflettono l’ascesa politica dell’idea di “remigrazione”, che secondo i promotori del summit mirerebbe a “prevenire la sostituzione della popolazione attraverso l’inversione dei flussi migratori, ripristinando così la sovranità, l’indipendenza e l’identità dei Paesi attraverso la difesa della loro specificità etno-culturale”. Di fatto, la remigrazione consiste nell’espulsione di massa di migranti irregolari, ma anche richiedenti asilo, rifugiati, e altri migranti legali e cittadini cosiddetti “non assimilati” alla cultura dominante – ovvero, non bianchi e di religione musulmana.  

Appoggio istituzionale 

Il Comitato Remigrazione e Riconquista unisce diverse realtà dell’estrema destra extraparlamentare antidemocratica e neofascista, tra cui CasaPound (i cui membri si  sono orgogliosamente autodefiniti “I fascisti del terzo millennio”), Veneto Fronte Skinheads, Brescia ai bresciani, e la Rete dei patrioti.  

A rendere popolare la remigrazione ha però contribuito anche il suo impiego da parte di esponenti politici di primo piano della destra istituzionale, e in particolare della Lega. Il partito guidato dal ministro dei Trasporti e vicepremier Matteo Salvini è la seconda forza della coalizione di governo e rimane forte in alcune regioni del Nord Italia, ma negli ultimi anni è stato cannibalizzato da Fratelli d’Italia di Giorgia Meloni. Nel tentativo di arginare le perdite, la Lega si è sempre più radicalizzata sui temi identitari.  

Questa strategia, finora, non ha funzionato. A febbraio Roberto Vannacci, un generale dell’esercito eletto con la Lega al Parlamento europeo nel 2024, ha abbandonato Salvini per fondare un nuovo partito, Futuro Nazionale. Più volte criticato per affermazioni omofobe, razziste, e revisioniste del regime fascista, Vannacci è tra i sostenitori più accaniti della remigrazione, e imputa al governo e alla Lega posizioni troppo moderate e aperte al compromesso. Nei sondaggi più recenti, Futuro Nazionale supera il 7 per cento dei consensi, posizionandosi sopra la Lega e poco dietro a Forza Italia, l’altro partito di governo.  

Sebbene la remigrazione rimanga, per ora, un progetto minoritario, la sua ascesa politica ha già creato un clima di tensione. A gennaio, per esempio, durante un evento stampa alla Camera per il lancio della legge d’iniziativa popolare sulla remigrazione, un membro della Rete dei patrioti ha consegnato al giornalista di origini spagnole ed egiziane Youssef Hassan Holgado un finto biglietto aereo.  

“Io mi trovavo lì come giornalista e mi è stato regalato un biglietto per remigrare al mio Paese d’origine. Il problema di quel gesto non riguarda me, che da giornalista ho i mezzi dialettici per difendermi da accuse e aggressioni,” spiega Hassan Holgado. “Quel gesto è un insulto nei confronti di tutte quelle persone di origine straniera che potrebbero non avere gli strumenti per difendersi da questa barbarie.”  

La conferenza stampa, voluta dal deputato leghista Domenico Furgiuele, è stata poi annullata dopo che decine di esponenti delle opposizioni hanno occupato l’aula intonando la canzone partigiana Bella ciao e impugnando la Costituzione. Ad aprile, i 32 deputati che avevano preso parte alla protesta sono stati sanzionati con una sospensione per aver bloccato l’iniziativa. A giugno, Furgiuele ha lasciato la Lega per unirsi a Futuro Nazionale.  

Sia Italia e Germania, […] stabiliscono come nessuno possa essere privato della cittadinanza per motivi politici. Nati dalla volontà di non ripetere mai più le persecuzioni naziste e fasciste, questi principi vengono ora rimessi in discussione in tutta Europa

Razzismo e complotti 

L’Italia, con due partiti di destra radicale al governo, rappresenta un laboratorio importante per l’estrema destra europea. Ma il movimento per la normalizzazione della remigrazione come progetto politico viene da molto più lontano. Un suo antecedente ideologico è la teoria del differenzialismo etnico, avanzata dagli esponenti francesi della Nouvelle Droite e del Gruppo di Ricerca e di Studi per la civiltà europea (GRECE), fondato nel 1968 da Alain de Benoist. Antitetico all’universalismo, che insiste su diritti innati e libertà di movimento, il differenzialismo legittima una forma di apartheid basata non più su un razzismo esplicito, ma sull’idea che i popoli possiedano differenze di fondo impossibili da superare, e che dunque debbano vivere in regioni etnico-culturali separate. 

“Il perno ideologico è il nativismo; l’idea che gli stati nazionali debbano essere popolati dai nativi”, spiega Mattia Zulianello, professore associato di scienze politiche all’Università di Trieste ed esperto di populismo, radicalismo ed estremismo politico. “Oggi, il nativismo si divide in nativismo economico, secondo cui gli immigrati rubano il lavoro ai nativi, sciovinismo del welfare, che sostiene che i migranti spremano risorse senza contribuire, e nativismo simbolico, che vede nei migranti, soprattutto se musulmani, una minaccia per tradizioni, usi e costumi.”  

Alle radici ideologiche e teoriche del nativismo si aggiungono le teorie del complotto come la “sostituzione etnica”, articolata nel 2011 da un altro intellettuale e scrittore francese, Renaud Camus. Nel libro Le grand remplacement (“la grande sostituzione”), Camus sostiene che l’immigrazione di massa verso l’Europa farebbe parte di un piano volto a porre fine alla civiltà europea bianca. Il razzismo di Camus è anche intriso di antisemitismo: sarebbe un’“élite globalista” composta da esponenti della politica e della finanza ebrei e del mondo progressista, a mettere in atto il disegno transnazionale della “grande sostituzione”. 

Leonardo Bianchi, giornalista, scrittore e autore della newsletter Complotti!, sostiene che “La parte ideologica e complottista è il vero cuore della proposta politica, che oltre a essere l’espulsione delle persone migranti, è anche e soprattutto la privazione dei diritti civili dei cittadini cosiddetti ‘non assimilati’, cioè di chi ha passaporto europeo, ma che non è autoctono, come dicono loro, cioè non è bianco e non è cristiano.”  

Jean-Marie Le Pen, fondatore del partito di estrema destra Front National, ha contribuito a diffondere le idee di Camus. Nel suo libro Mémoires scrive che “La grande sostituzione è un fatto” e che “il mondo bianco sta morendo.” Negli anni, la teoria di Camus si è propagata in tutta Europa e negli Stati Uniti attraverso il movimento di ultradestra dell’“alt-right”. Ha anche ispirato gli autori di stragi di matrice terroristica e xenofoba come quella di Christchurch, in Nuova Zelanda, nel 2019. 

Partiti e influencer 

Il lessico della remigrazione emerge in contemporanea con la diffusione delle idee di Camus. “I primi partiti, attori e movimenti a parlare di remigrazione, nei Paesi Bassi e in Belgio, sono stati le classiche formazioni di estrema destra, come gruppi di skinheads e ultras, più o meno estremisti. Queste idee sulla remigrazione, però, avevano ancora poca presa,” spiega Zulianello.  

Tra gli attori politici istituzionali, Geert Wilders (fondatore in Olanda del Partito per la Libertà, euroscettico e islamofobo) e il partito di destra nazionalista delle Fiandre Vlaams Belang (“Interesse fiammingo”) sono stati tra i primi ad appropriarsi del termine tra il 2011 e il 2012.In seguito alla crisi dei rifugiati del 2015, il discorso sulla migrazione si sposta a destra, e partiti come Fidesz in Ungheria iniziano a diffondere le teorie di Camus. Ancora nel 2022, durante il discorso di insediamento del suo quarto e ultimo mandato da primo ministro, Viktor Orbán ha dichiarato: “Considero la grande sostituzione della popolazione europea un tentativo suicida di colmare il vuoto di bambini europei e cristiani con adulti provenienti da altre civiltà: i migranti,” ha dichiarato nel discorso d’insediamento del suo quarto mandato.  

Anche in Danimarca, l’idea che i migranti sottraessero risorse sociali destinate ai cittadini nativi ha preso piede nell’agenda politica: “Lo sciovinismo del welfare è un tema nato dal partito danese, Dansk Folkeparti, che poi ha causato un effetto di emulazione da parte degli altri partiti, i quali hanno cercato di copiare i modelli che funzionavano,” spiega Zulianello. Il tema è poi entrato nell’agenda di vari partiti di estrema destra in Europa. “L’ondata che vediamo adesso è partita da Alternative für Deutschland (Afd).”  

Il 25 novembre 2023, in un hotel sul lago di Lehnitz, non lontano da Potsdam, si tiene un incontro tra membri di AfD, uomini d’affari, imprenditori, medici, membri di confraternite, e addirittura alcuni esponenti del partito cristiano-democratico (la CDU). Martin Sellner, ideologo e influencer neofascista austriaco, detta la linea: parla della strategia politica necessaria per normalizzare la remigrazione: un progetto di lungo termine, destinato a durare decenni. Parla anche di una “città modello” nel Nord Africa in cui trasferire, cioè deportare, due milioni di persone. I paralleli con il progetto nazista per deportare quattro milioni di ebrei in Madagascar sono evidenti. L’incontro di Potsdam doveva restare segreto, ma viene rivelato dalla testata d’inchiesta indipendente Correctiv. 

“Questa teoria non è innocua,” commenta Bianchi: “È un progetto di fatto aggressivo verso le Costituzioni dei Paesi europei, fondate sui principi fondamentali del Dopoguerra. Sia in Italia, con l’articolo 22, sia in Germania, con l’articolo 16, che stabiliscono come nessuno possa essere privato della cittadinanza per motivi politici.” Nati dalla volontà di non ripetere mai più le persecuzioni naziste e fasciste, questi principi vengono ora rimessi in discussione in tutta Europa: da Chega in Portogallo, da Vox in Spagna, da Reform UK nel Regno Unito.  

Secondo Zulianello, la destra radicale europea ha influenzato anche quella statunitense, che a sua volta ha contribuito a sdoganare l’idea di remigrazione. Dopo l’acquisizione di Twitter da parte di Elon Musk nel 2023, i contenuti violenti hanno potuto circolare liberamente, dando maggiore visibilità a personaggi come Sellner. Un report del Centro per lo studio dell’odio organizzato ha evidenziato un picco di 71 mila menzioni del termine “remigrazione” su X tra l’1 e l’8 settembre 2025, seguito a post coordinati dello stesso Musk e di altri personaggi popolari, come l’influencer olandese di estrema destra Eva Vlaardingerbroek.  

Anche Donald Trump ha invocato e messo in atto espulsioni di massa di migranti, usando esplicitamente il termine “remigrazione” sui canali ufficiali del Dipartimento per la sicurezza interna. Ma secondo Zulianello, il vero propulsore di questo movimento resta l’Europa. “Ciò che è interessante nel caso italiano,” dichiara Zulianello, “è che la proposta non è nata da un partito, bensì da un network dell’estrema destra, il Comitato Remigrazione e Riconquista.”  

Come sottolinea Bianchi, la proposta del Comitato “ricalca per filo e per segno il piano di Martin Sellner, che prevede tre passaggi: l’espulsione dei migranti irregolari, la restrizione del diritto d’asilo e del ricongiungimento familiare (che sono anche battaglie di lungo corso della Lega) e la remigrazione volontaria, che è tutt’altro che volontaria e prende di mira tutte le persone cosiddette ‘non assimilate’”. 

La proposta di legge depositata a giugno mira a “disciplinare” i flussi migratori per combattere la migrazione irregolare e lo sfruttamento. Propone di istituire un “programma nazionale di Remigrazione”, contrastare le Ong (che sarebbero “coinvolte nel traffico migratorio”), ridurre i flussi di lavoratori stranieri, favorire il “rientro degli italo-discendenti” e istituire un “Fondo per la Natalità Italiana”. Per farle tutto questo, servirebbe un “fondo per la remigrazione” da 500 milioni di euro annui. Le fonti di finanziamento proverrebbero da sequestri alle Ong, una tassa sulle rimesse dei lavoratori stranieri alle famiglie, e dal fondo per le politiche di asilo. Tuttavia, il problema principale della proposta non è di natura economica, ma legale e costituzionale: la remigrazione viola apertamente i principi antifascisti della Costituzione italiana e la Carta dei diritti fondamentali dell’Unione europea.  

Secondo Zulianello, i promotori dell’iniziativa “sanno che così com’è non è assolutamente realizzabile. Quello che gli interessa è che il tema entri in agenda. Con lo sdoganamento di certi temi, si allarga lo spazio per il dibattito e i partiti tradizionali tendono a voler entrare in quel vuoto, di fatto legittimando il tema e inasprendo le politiche contro l’immigrazione.” 

I risultati iniziano già a vedersi. Nel decreto Sicurezza approvato il 24 aprile è stato inserito un emendamento che premia con un compenso gli avvocati che portano a termine procedure di rimpatrio volontario dei migranti. La controversia legale scaturita da questa misura ha in seguito portato il governo a modificarla.  

Resistere alla normalizzazione 

I biglietti per il Remigration Summit di Porto costavano da 45 a 325 euro. Un prezzo giustificato dalla posta in gioco: secondo gli organizzatori,  “con la remigrazione, l’Europa diventerà più europea giorno dopo giorno. Senza, sarà sempre meno europea fino a che non cesserà di esistere.” L’Europa di cui parlano i sostenitori della remigrazione (e che emerge sempre più spesso dalla cooperazione tra centro-destra ed estrema destra al Parlamento europeo sui temi migratori) non è tuttavia l’unica possibile. “L’Unione si fonda sui valori del rispetto della dignità umana, della libertà, della democrazia, dell’uguaglianza, dello Stato di diritto e del rispetto dei diritti umani, compresi i diritti delle persone appartenenti a minoranze,” recita l’articolo 2 del Trattato sull’Unione Europea. ” 

Secondo Bianchi, opporsi alla remigrazione e alla teoria del complotto della sostituzione etnica significa innanzitutto non permettere che vengano normalizzate, passando per proposte di buon senso. “Il termine ‘remigrazione’ suona neutro perché viene dalle scienze sociali, ma è un’opera di normalizzazione linguistica: il suo significato e le sue origini sono indissolubili dalla proposta politica.”   

The looming threat of cyclospora — a parasite often found in summer produce that causes severe gastrointestinal distress in humans — has struck fear into the hearts of salad enjoyers nationwide. 

On July 17, shortly after beginning its investigation into the multistate cyclosporiasis outbreak, the Food and Drug Administration announced a positive test result identifying cyclospora on shredded iceberg lettuce grown in Mexico for Taylor Farms, a major U.S. food producer. The company issued a voluntary recall — but the FDA walked back its statement two days later, describing the test as a “false positive” while insisting its investigation is “ongoing.” Representatives from Taylor Farms allegedly asked the FDA for more time before the agency recalled its products, according to a Wall Street Journal report.

At the time, the outbreak had been contained to five states in the Midwest, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Since then, the CDC has linked four more states reporting cases of cyclosporiasis to contaminated lettuce from Taylor Farms, bringing the total of impacted states to nine. The CDC also stated that the outbreak has caused close to 2,000 cases of the illness — although that is likely an undercount. (The CDC is also monitoring cases of cyclosporiasis that appear unrelated to this outbreak.)

There are a number of reasons why it can be difficult to track cases of cyclosporiasis. For example, many people may experience and manage symptoms, which include persistent, watery diarrhea, at home without ever seeing a doctor. 

But the uneven rollout of information from public health authorities during this outbreak has further complicated matters. Former federal food-safety officials have criticized the Trump administration’s handling of what is now considered the largest known cyclosporiasis outbreak in U.S. history. 

Unsaid in all of this is whether climate change and its impact on our globalized food system made this year’s outbreak more likely. The answer is complicated. 

“There are a couple things that make it a little difficult to fully assess what [the role of] climate change or changes in weather patterns could be,” said Jeffrey Griffiths, a professor of public health at the Tufts University School of Medicine. “But I would say there’s still enough information that we have such that we can make some pretty reasonable inferences about how climate change would work.”

First off, what is cyclospora?

Unlike other foodborne pathogens — like salmonella and E. coli, which exist in and on animals — cyclospora is transmitted through food or water that has been contaminated with human feces. When infectious, cyclospora causes explosive diarrhea and other gastrointestinal symptoms in humans. 

Cyclospora can often linger in difficult-to-wash produce with uneven surfaces, like leafy greens and berries. Previous outbreaks have been tied to fresh produce including cilantro, basil, raspberries, and other berries. Thankfully, for anyone feeling overly cautious, cooking fresh produce kills this parasite. 

Whether or not a person who has ingested the parasite becomes ill depends on the maturity level of the parasite at the time of exposure. Cyclospora is not immediately infectious when released in human stool. The parasite must undergo a maturation process that typically takes about one to two weeks. If cyclospora is ingested after that point, then it is considered infectious and causes gastrointestinal distress in its host. However, if the parasite is ingested before it has had enough time to mature, then it will likely pass without causing any illness. 

This window of time wherein cyclospora is in the natural environment (say, in our water supply or on our produce) but not infectious to humans has created a lag in public health authorities’ ability to trace the origins of the outbreak. 

How does human fecal matter enter our food or water supply to begin with?

The exact origin of this specific outbreak is still unclear. Taylor Farms said in a statement that the company has voluntarily recalled its iceberg lettuce products that came from central Mexico “out of an abundance of caution” and has also reached out to “independent experts” to review its food-safety protocols.

But experts say there are a few potential pathways for contamination — most having to do with how water is used and managed for agricultural production. 

In many past outbreaks of cyclospora that have been associated with fresh produce, “we’ve seen that water is critical,” said Kalmia Kniel, a professor of microbial food safety at the University of Delaware. If the irrigation water supply on an agricultural site comes into contact with wastewater, for example, and is not adequately filtered, then it runs the risk of contaminating crops meant for human consumption. 

“There’s lots of different little mechanisms where that could happen,” said Griffiths — like if agricultural fields are located adjacent to faulty sanitation systems. In these cases, storm events resulting in flooding or water runoff could lead to cross-contamination. Additionally, if a farm reuses municipal wastewater as part of its irrigation system and that wastewater is not treated to a high enough standard so as to remove pathogens, it poses a risk of transmitting cyclospora to crops. 

Read Next Would you pay $49 a month to drink recycled wastewater? Matt Simon How might climate change increase the risk of an outbreak?

For one, warmer temperatures help speed up the maturation process that makes cyclospora oocysts, or early stage parasites, infectious to humans. That’s why you typically see more cases of the infection during the summer months. As climate change makes summers hotter — and longer — the window of time when cyclospora could become infectious and present a public health risk is also growing. 

Another way that climate change supercharges the conditions for an outbreak like cyclosporiasis is by disrupting the water cycle. Extreme heat sucks moisture out of the environment, from rivers and lakes as well as the soil and plants. During drought conditions, agricultural producers are more likely to reuse nontraditional water sources, such as municipal and commercial wastewater, to irrigate crops. What’s more, cycling between drought and downpours means that when it does rain on dry soil, more runoff carries more particles and organisms across a landscape. 

Is cyclospora the only foodborne pathogen to worry about?

I wish. Food system researchers have seen how very dry, hot conditions supercharge the likelihood of other foodborne pathogens, such as salmonella and E. coli. In 2024, the U.S. Department of Agriculture released a multiyear study centered on Yuma County, Arizona, where a majority of the country’s lettuce is grown in the winter months. The researchers found that dust kicked up from a nearby cattle feedlot helped carry E. coli through the air and deposit the bacteria on nearby water and soil.  

Holly Bainbridge, a senior attorney at FarmSTAND, a legal advocacy organization, noted that studies like the USDA’s point to a gap in the nation’s regulatory oversight of the food system. “It was a step in the right direction, but the federal government hasn’t really done anything with it,” she said. 

Bainbridge added that the corporate consolidation of agriculture — and specifically, the intensive confinement of animals on farms — makes outbreaks of salmonella and E. coli more likely. 

Last week, the FDA issued a recall of over one and a half million eggs that have been potentially contaminated with salmonella. As of this writing, 98 people across 17 states have been made sick, according to the latest numbers from the CDC.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline 4 things to know about cyclospora and climate change  on Jul 30, 2026.

It seemed an odd request for a poetry magazine. What stuck with me most, though, was the very notion of a “nature poem.” What is such a thing? How in this age of collapse and dislocation do we define it?

A man who sees a forest as an unswept floor, who calls coal “beautiful,” who believes offshore wind is driving whales insane and making foxes obese, isn’t just someone with unusual opinions about nature. He’s someone who doesn’t understand the natural world on a fundamental level and doesn’t care to.

Richard’s clarity and kindness went right into my heart. My activist was ignited again, not to stop the system but to help my community and others adapt. With kindness.

Editor’s note: In July 2026, ten residents of Bali, Indonesia filed a citizen lawsuit against the country’s government, seeking a moratorium on new fossil fuel projects and accountability for climate-related disasters. Below, one of the plaintiffs and a field organizer with 350 Indonesia, Suriadi Darmoko, explains why he joined the case and what he believes is at stake for Bali’s future.

Flooding in the dry season? That was my first question after encountering so many floods, caused by extreme rain, that of all things, fall during what should be the dry season. To me, this situation is an extraordinary anomaly.

Back in elementary school I was taught that Indonesia’s dry season runs from April to September, while the rainy season usually falls between October and March. But in the year 2000, when I still lived in my home village, the rain did not come when it was supposed to. Even after the “coffee-blossom rain” — the first rain of the rainy season, after which the coffee plants would normally flower — more than a month passed and no more rain fell. The ground that had been soaked by that “coffee-blossom rain” turned dusty again. As a result, the planting season for rain-fed farmers — including my own parents — had to be delayed. That is a childhood memory of mine, one I thought things would improve after, but they didn’t. Instead I have lived through seasons that grow more and more unpredictable, even more extreme.

The intensifying climate crisis is growing more widespread and costly

The great flood in Bali that struck during the dry season, specifically on 10 September 2025,  brought that memory rushing back. A memory that returned with a simple question: since when did the seasons become so hard to predict? Now, the rain no longer holds back; it strikes right at the peak of the dry season.

Eighteen people died, 295 were displaced, and 6,309 households were affected. In addition, 520 public facilities were damaged, three bridges were severed, 23 road sections were destroyed, 82 retaining walls collapsed, and 194 houses were damaged. Total economic losses were estimated at Rp28.9 billion.

Flooding in Denpasar, Bali. Photo: Kresnanta – BaleBengong

That same year, extreme rainfall struck again at the peak of the dry season, this time in July — collapsing a section of Bali’s main highway, the Denpasar–Gilimanuk route, into a sinkhole roughly 8 meters (26 feet) deep and causing severe congestion. It wasn’t the first time: a 2022 flash flood in nearby Jembrana, a district on the same route, had already submerged 156 homes, displaced 117 households, and destroyed seven bridges.

Rescue efforts after flooding in Denpasar, Bali. Photo: Kresnanta – BaleBengong

Flooding is clearly nothing new for Bali: it keeps recurring, but it does get worse every year. It no longer strikes only the outskirts, but also tourist areas like Kuta, Legian, Seminyak, Canggu, Sanur, Ubud, and other parts of Bali, none of which have escaped flooding. Today, you no longer need to strain to remember when Bali last flooded — the footage is easy to find online. 

It is ironic: an island marketed as a comfortable tourist destination “the last paradise” is instead being battered by climate disasters that grow more intense and more destructive by the year.

Extreme heat, too, no longer holds back even during the rainy season. Several areas in Bali Province have recorded daily temperatures reaching 36 degrees Celsius. Bali was also hit by a prolonged drought in 2016, which caused drinking-water supplies to plummet drastically. For example, at that time the local water treatment plant  could only operate at 25 percent of its total production capacity of 550 liters per second.

Beyond flooding, coastal areas are also not spared from threats coming from the sea: tidal surges threatening beach destinations such as Sanur, Kuta, and many other locations. The threat from ocean waves keeps worsening, to the point that it could paralyze the sea crossings to Bali at any moment. In mid-2025, a ferry  sank after being struck by a tidal surge in the Bali Strait, disrupting the flow of logistics into Bali; the sinking also claimed lives.

2025 is certainly not the peak of Bali’s environmental crisis, because extreme weather continues to threaten this increasingly deforested island.

When threat meets vulnerability

Increasingly intense extreme weather is colliding with poor land-use practices. According to findings from the PULIHKAN Bali (Restore Bali) Coalition, a public advocacy group, between 2019 and 2024, Bali’s main urban area, the fast-growing region around Denpasar known by the acronym SARBAGITA, lost at least 6,522 hectares of productive rice fields — equivalent to an average shrinkage of 1,087 hectares of rice fields every year, a real erosion of the Subak cultural landscape long celebrated as a world heritage. In the Ayung River Basin (DAS), which serves as the lifeline of Bali’s water supply, the ecosystem is in a state of severe crisis. Forest cover in the Ayung basin, which once reached roughly 49,500 hectares, has now shrunk to only about 1,500 hectares. Meanwhile, Bali’s cities are falling well short of Indonesia’s legal requirement to keep at least 30% of urban land as green space: parks, urban forest, and other unpaved, vegetated areas that help absorb rainwater and reduce flood risk.

The destruction caused by flooding in Denpasar, Bali. Photo: Kresnanta – BaleBengong

To me, it is as if those in power have let Bali become a case of  the classic disaster equation: extreme rain (hazard) plus land-use conversion (vulnerability), compounded by a lack of readiness to face it (capacity).

The root of Bali’s ecological crisis

To me, flooding is only the surface of a much longer chain of root causes. Extreme rain is a result of unstable weather caused by climate change. Climate change is a result of global warming driven by rising greenhouse gases — carbon dioxide, methane, and others. So the question follows: does the root cause i.e. the greenhouse gases also originate from within Bali itself?

A survey by the KemBali Becik Community found that 64 percent of Bali’s greenhouse gas emissions come from tourism industry activities. The tourism and industrial sector consumes 3,737 GWh of electricity, while households consume only 3,153 GWh. And with far fewer customers — 226,942 in the tourism sector compared to 1,468,786 households — business and industrial sectors are far more energy-hungry, making their contribution to greenhouse gas production disproportionately large.

I see no sign of improvement at the island-wide scale, even as promises of an energy transition keep echoing across Bali — whether from the Bali Provincial Government or from international forums such as the G20, which gave birth to the Just Energy Transition Partnership (JETP). In fact, Bali is being shown a policy paradox. Regional and central governments keep clearing the way for massive projects that would only add to greenhouse gas emissions and deepen the climate crisis — including plans for four new gas-fired power plants with a combined capacity of 1,550 megawatts (enough to power more than a million homes), paired with a floating terminal that would import and process liquefied natural gas offshore. To put that in perspective: it’s more than Bali’s entire current power supply — the island’s whole existing electricity system has an installed capacity of just 1,518 megawatts, against a peak demand of around 1,227 megawatts. Rather than pursuing a transition, the government instead seems intent on demonstrating that Bali’s energy-security strategy is anchored in fossil fuels. In my view, this is a false sense of energy security — dependence on gas actually threatens Bali with the risk of future energy crises.

I have tried to untangle this complexity through a bit of philosophical reflection. Under the teaching of Karma Phala — the law of cause and effect that also underpins the moral foundation of Balinese society — it is hard to imagine the impacts of the climate crisis easing while the very causes behind it continue to be funded, reinforced, and built up across Bali. Every infrastructure project that increases carbon emissions, and every political decision that sacrifices water-catchment areas, will eventually bear bitter fruit, coming back to collect its due in the form of floods, droughts, rising sea levels, and extreme weather.

For that reason, fossil energy expansion can no longer be treated merely as a technical matter of power supply, it is now a critical issue of public safety, ecological justice, and the very existence of this “last paradise.”

A path to calming the crisis

I believe the climate crisis in Bali cannot be calmed by stopping just one greedy project alone. One of the best paths to calming this crisis, is to delay, or even halt, the granting of “extractive permits” across the board, all at once. It is on this basis that I chose to take part in this climate lawsuit together with the PULIHKAN (Movement for Environment and Sustainability) Bali Coalition, with one goal: to prevent Bali from being further destroyed.

At this point, it is entirely reasonable for the Court, and for the judges’ gavel, to take on the important role of deciding on the suspension of extractive permits that are undermining efforts to mitigate and adapt to the climate crisis in Bali.

Press conference by PULIHKAN Bali Coalition on July 7, announcing the filing of Bali’s first climate lawsuit Photo: 350.org Indonesia

Through this lawsuit, the PULIHKAN Bali Coalition also hopes to spur the birth of structural policy correction in the form of a moratorium. This moratorium would include a temporary halt on new fossil-fuel energy megaprojects, as well as a halt on permits allowing the conversion of productive agricultural land, water-catchment areas, green open spaces, and protected zones. A moratorium is not an attempt to stop the pulse of the economy — it is the application of a precautionary principle, to ensure that no one becomes a sacrifice made in the name of development.

The road to recovery

Beyond a moratorium on permits, I believe it is also essential to emphasize the urgency of reforming climate and disaster financing. Until now, the handling of climate disasters in Indonesia has tended to be reactive, and heavily dependent on the bureaucratic process of declaring a disaster emergency status. Yet the climate crisis has already transformed the frequency and scale of disasters into a real, recurring threat. Regional preparedness must not be held hostage by convoluted administrative procedures. The government needs to progressively allocate dedicated funding within the national and regional budgets  toward mitigation, adaptation, strengthening community preparedness, rapid emergency response, and community-based post-disaster recovery.

Bali, in fact, has a strong historical track record on the global climate stage. As host of the UN Climate Change Conference (COP 13) in 2007, Bali once stood at the center of the world’s attention in shaping the Bali Road Map. Now, having set the ambitious target of Bali Net Zero Emissions 2045, that commitment is being tested on the ground. Climate commitments mean nothing if they remain mere diplomatic jargon, while on the ground, permits for fossil industries and the destruction of water-catchment areas continue unabated.

Bali’s climate leadership can only be proven through consistent policy: accelerating the adoption of renewable energy, protecting what remains of its natural landscape, halting fossil expansion, and restoring degraded ecosystems.

This citizens’ lawsuit is, in the end, a mirror of the stakes riding on Bali’s future. The decisions made today will determine whether we will find a Bali that is sustainable and resilient, or an island drowning in an ecological crisis of its own elites’ making. The choice at this crossroads is clear: continue down the path of dependence on fossil energy and destructive land-use conversion, or dare to step toward a clean energy transition, protection of the remaining landscape, and governance grounded in public safety.

Bali cannot walk in two opposing directions at once. For the safety of both people and nature in Bali, choosing a safe and clean future is no longer merely an option — it is a mandate that must be fulfilled now.

The post Bali’s Climate Lawsuit appeared first on 350.