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How quickly we forget — if we allow ourselves to.

For journalist Jason Dove Mark, bald eagles represent what the planet can lose, what it can regain, and what it can still lose in the process.

His new book, The Earth Said Remember Me: How to Revive Our Memories and Restore the Planet (W.W. Norton, published July 14), examines what scientists call “shifting baseline syndrome”: how we quickly forget the way things used to be.

For example, skies that once abounded with bald eagles — or the skies from which they once nearly vanished.

The Revelator is proud to present this excerpt from The Earth Said Remember Me. We don’t think you’ll forget it easily.

For hundreds of thousands of years, during those long centuries when the New World was still old, bald eagles lived nearly everywhere in North America, their one and only natural home. Eagles flew over the tidal estuaries of the Atlantic Coast and the rugged seashore of the Pacific. They built their nests in the folds of western basin and range, on the prairie, throughout the north woods. There were likely a half million of them, an eyrie perched every few miles along fish-rich rivers like the Schuylkill, the Hudson, the Columbia, the Colorado. Up to 14 pounds in weight and with a wingspan that can stretch eight feet from tip to tip, the bald eagle was sovereign of the American sky, the apex predator of the air.

The First Nations perceived a great power in the bird. Many Native cultures considered bald eagle feathers as sacred and used them in ceremonies or for ritual healing practices. For the Lenape people of the Delaware River region, it was considered a sign of courage and good luck to wear an eagle feather that had been plucked from a living bird. In the Southwest, the Pueblo and Zuni kept domesticated eagles in large aviaries. Across diverse cultures, Indigenous lore esteemed the eagle as a chief, the bird of heaven. “In an eagle there is all the wisdom in the world,” the twentieth-century Lakota spiritual leader Lame Deer (aka John Fire) once said. “Eagle” was very likely the most common animal clan name continent-wide.

When the newcomers arrived from across the sea and encountered this bird they had never known, they also apprehended its strength. Perhaps it was just anthropomorphic projection. Bald eagles mate for life and carefully tend their young, and maybe the settlers imagined some kind of puritanical family values. Bald eagles also have a passion for building — their nests can weigh up to a ton and last for decades — and maybe the restless settlers appreciated the bird’s industriousness. At the very least, the new Americans liked the bird’s military bearing, with its steely gaze, broad chest, and bone-white crown. In 1782, the bald eagle became the central symbol of the Great Seal of the United States, the unofficial national bird — George Washington in feathers.

But it was a conflicted relationship. The eagle had become a symbol of America, yet many Americans didn’t like the actual animal. “He is a Bird of bad moral Character,” Benjamin Franklin famously wrote. “He does not get his Living honestly.” Franklin was referring to the bald eagle’s habit of stealing fish from the smaller osprey, its penchant for poaching, and its taste for carrion. Settlers complained that eagles often snatched their lambs and chicks. Against all common sense, the myth spread that bald eagles could carry off human babies from the crib.

A campaign of ecocide began. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Americans murdered eagles mercilessly. Farmers and ranchers shot them on sight — “We kill all the eagles we can,” one sheep farmer said — while some state and local governments paid bounties for dead eagles. In Alaska alone, hunters killed some eighty thousand eagles to cash in on the territory’s bounty. By the turn of the last century, the birds were vanishingly rare in most of the country. “Twenty years ago, I used to see a dozen or more along the river in the spring” the nature writer John Burroughs noticed in the early 1900s, “where I now see only one or two, or none at all.”

Image by Hans Toom from Pixabay

Eventually, the American public realized the country’s mistake. In 1940 the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act outlawed killing the bird. But the protection came almost too late. A new danger worse than bullets and buckshot threatened the species: the powerful insecticide DDT, which government agencies and farmers were spraying all over the place. The bald eagle — along with osprey, peregrine falcons, and pelicans — became collateral damage in the war against insects. DDT weakened the eagles’ eggshells and lowered females’ hormone levels, impacting the species’ ability to procreate. In Silent Spring, Rachel Carson wrote, “Something is at work in the eagle’s environment which has virtually destroyed its ability to reproduce.  The reports differ in detail, but always repeat the theme of death.” By 1963, there were just 417 nesting pairs outside of Alaska.

In a spate of legislative urgency that these days feels like some-thing out of legend, lawmakers rushed to address the crisis. Congress banned DDT, which was pulled off the market in 1972. When the Endangered Species Act became law in 1973, the bald eagle was among the first species to come under its protective umbrella. The Clean Water Act helped too. An eagle can’t survive if it has nothing to eat, and by the 1960s many of the United States’ rivers served “as little more than sewers to the sea,” in the words of one senator. The Clean Water Act prohibited industries from using streams, rivers, and lakes as dumps for their chemical crap. Freed from pollution, the waters slowly came back to life. Fresh waters again furnished the food web.

The descendants of the destroyers became the restorers.

State fish and wildlife agencies launched captive breeding programs in which biologists, often assisted by volunteers, pantomimed the behavior of eagle parents to raise chicks. Using a technique called “hacking” that was already common among keepers of trained falcons, biologists reintroduced young eagles to lakes and rivers. Citizen scientists kept vigil over nests and helped count bald eagle numbers. Popular attitudes changed. For many Americans, to kill a bald eagle came to be something akin to burning the flag.

The heroic labor paid off. In 2007, the bald eagle was removed from the endangered species list. Between 2009 and 2021, the number of bald eagles in the lower 48 quadrupled, from about 72,000 to more than 300,000 — a figure not all that far from the estimated baseline before European arrival in the Americas. In the space of a couple human generations, the nearly extinct became common again.

It was as if the great hoop of time had spun all the way around. Once — that word that weighs the scales of every shifting baseline — could be used in celebration instead of lamentation.

Image by Alexa from Pixabay

After an absence that stretched beyond memory, the bald eagles arrived at Madison’s Warner Park in the summer of 2020. Warner Park is one of the largest parks in the Wisconsin state capital, one of those jewel boxes of city nature that — like New York’s Central Park or Audubon Park in New Orleans — forms an eco-tone where the urban, the cultivated, and the undomesticated meet. Braceleted by the tracks of the Wisconsin & Southern Railroad, encircled by modest middle-class neighborhoods, and just a five-minute drive from the local airport, Warner Park is no wilderness. But it’s still a wild place, home to beaver and muskrat, deer and fox. An unruly copse — locals call it “the Big Thicket” — is packed with red maple, ash, and walnut. A massive bur oak, some 250 years old, has lived there since well before the first settlers appeared. Warner Park is one of those spots where people can watch wildlife and the wildlife are just comfortable enough with humans to watch back.

For the eagles, Warner Park had what they needed to make a home. When a mated pair began building a nest on an island in the park’s cattail-ringed lagoon, neighbors quickly spotted them. The birds became minor celebrities, symbols of hope in that eerie season of pandemic lockdown. “It was this brilliant beacon of light during a very dark time,” Beth Sluys, a Warner Park neighbor and amateur naturalist who had long been involved in local conservation issues, told me. “Observing the birds living their lives, there’s something magical about that.”

A neighborhood teenager named Elsie Olmanson who had started watching the eagles with her father after hearing about them from Beth also found joy in their arrival. “You’re happy that they are able to have a recovery, and that they’re coming more and more back into the world,” she told me. The eagles, she said, were “adorable creatures.” The nesting eagles seemed to her “like a married couple — they will bicker with each other.”

By the time of autumn leaf fall, the nest was impossible to miss: a lump of sticks and branches some thirty feet up, the whole mess wedged in the crook of two limbs, like a leather sofa had been dropped from the sky. The calendar flipped to 2021, and that March the bald eagle couple hatched a single eaglet. At which point a minor controversy broke out. Just a few hundred yards from the eagles’ home lagoon sits “the Duck Pond” — a small stadium that is home to the Madison Mallards, a collegiate summer baseball team. Every Fourth of July the Mallards stage a big fireworks display, and some of the eagle fans feared the fireworks would scare away the birds. A few folks petitioned the baseball team to halt the pyrotechnics or, at the very least, post-pone them until after fledging time. “We were concerned that this might potentially impact the fledglings at a critical time,” Elsie’s father, Eric, said.

Other eagle enthusiasts were nonplussed. Patrick Hasburgh, a passionate outdoorsman who owns a fishing bait and tackle shop on the edge of the park, was among the first people to spot the nesting eagles, and he felt like the fireworks controversy was overblown. “I’ve been watching the nest since it was built,” he told me, “and the eagles don’t seem to mind [human activity] at all. They are used to people. It’s an urban environment.”

In an age of mass extinction, the dustup over whether a fireworks show would disturb an eagle family seemed to me like something of a First World problem. Fifty years ago, there were just 108 eagle nests in all of Wisconsin; by the time an eagle pair started stacking sticks in Warner Park, that number had climbed to nearly 1,700. With eagle survival no longer in doubt, the question had become how best humans might help eagles to thrive. Here was another form of shifting baseline syndrome — an example of how progress, every bit as much destruction and diminishment, can be difficult to remember.

Too much of environmental history is a litany of losses. Ghost stories haunt the landscape: the passenger pigeon, the Tasmanian tiger, the ivory-billed woodpecker. But running parallel to the string of disappearances are stories of recovery and resilience. The bald eagle is not alone.

Image by Dave Eslinger from Pixabay

Think about the forests of North America: there’s more forest in New England today than there was in 1850. Consider the air and the water: both are clearer now than before the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act were passed. Recall the beaver — now numbering in the millions across North America — or loggerhead turtles, whose population increased by nearly two orders of magnitude in the last twenty-some years. The California condor, at one point on the doorstep of extinction, is on the wing again. Take a breath and remember the whales, saved from annihilation. Seen from one vantage, many of those success stories could also be evidence of shifting baselines, of how our ideas of abundance contract generation by generation. Sure, there are more wolves on the American landscape now than there were fifty years ago — and there are also far fewer wolves than there were 150 years ago. But Mia Monroe, the co-founder of the Western Monarch Count, often brings up such wildlife recoveries as examples of the possibilities that also exist for her beloved butterflies. If we could save the bald eagle, what else can we save? “In my life I’ve watched the gray whale return and the peregrine falcon and the otter,” Mia told me once. “I don’t know what’s ahead for monarchs. But I do know that when people realized there was a problem, and we did something different, then nature responded. I always remember those examples.”

I remember them, too. They remind me that baselines some-times shift in virtuous directions. The British writer Robert Macfarlane suggests a name for this: lifting baselines. “We can normalize betterment as well as decline and then wish for betterment’s increase,” he has written. “We can run the reel backward.” The bald eagle’s comeback is proof that the passage of time doesn’t always mean loss and decay. Growth and increase are also expressions of time. So is healing.

There is, however, a danger that can come with lifting baselines and the normalization of betterment. To grow accustomed to abundance risks obscuring all the hard work and long years it took to achieve that abundance. Without collective memory, improvements can also be difficult to see. Rebecca Solnit made a similar point in an essay a few years ago when she warned that “forgetting is everywhere.” Solnit wrote that she feels like “a tortoise at the mayfly party,” and cautioned that “change itself becomes invisible when your timeframe is shorter than that change.” The indivisible present can cloak the march of progress just like it provides cover for the grind of destruction.

Environmental progress is especially vulnerable to becoming invisible since, more often than not, it leaves no trace. Many environmental victories are triumphs of harm avoided: the proposed oil pipeline denied, the forest kept free from the loggers, the fossil fuels unburned. Pollution, once cleaned from the air and the water, is another one of those absences that the mind struggles to recognize and remember. Without memory, environmental well-being is always at risk of being taken for granted. To endure, progress requires vigilance — the long view of history.

When I was growing up, the bald eagle was a rarity; the first time I saw one, I was in my mid-twenties. Now, I live in a place where bald eagles are common to the point of mundane. I make an annual winter-solstice pilgrimage to the North Fork of the Nooksack River, where bald eagles stage big convocations. From the small bridge there I can spot scores of eagles perched in the December-bare alder and cottonwood, their calls — skreee, like a door on rusty hinges — echoing off snow and ice. It’s a thrill to watch them scrimmage over salmon carcasses. For me, an eagle sighting never gets old.

My daughter has a different relationship to the bald eagle, especially having grown up in a place where you can spot them at the county dump (He does not get his Living honestly). She barely registers them as special, and she all too often greets her dad’s glee with an eye roll. What is a bald eagle to a child who has never known them as endangered? About as interesting as a wren.

I got a welcome corrective to these worries after spending a morning with the family of Patrick Hasburgh, the bait store owner who has been involved with the Southern Wisconsin Bird Alliance’s formal Bald Eagle Nest Watch since the mated pair showed up Warner Park. The Hasburgh boys — Fletcher, then sixteen, and Ranger, eleven — had spent count-less hours with their parents monitoring the eagles. But the commonplace had not dulled excitement. If anything, their regular eagle-watching had made them fascinated with the birds — appreciation earned through intimacy. Fletcher told me he “absolutely” knew the story of the fall and rise of the bald eagle, in part “because I have, you know, a kind of field knowledge.” Ranger, who was sporting a skater’s cut and an Off-the-Wall black hoodie, said he liked to “see the birds up close and see their whole life cycle.” He liked how, when he uses his dad’s spotting scope to check out the nest, he can “pretty much see every individual feather.”

We strolled the park, and the family shared with me some of its natural wonders: a killdeer nest on the railroad tracks, a pair of sandhill cranes coming in for a landing. The birds were like giraffes on the wing, tumbling earthward and honking madly. It quickly became apparent that the Hasburghs were involved in all sorts of neighborhood-scale environmental stewardship projects. Here was an ordinary American family who intuitively, organically, was embodying the antidotes to environmental amnesia — going outside in all weather and all seasons, emotion-ally encoding their relationships with the living world, writing them down, and transmitting their experiences back and forth between generations. This focus group of four seemed the very model of Emerson’s “practical naturalists.”

As a family, they go outside all the time. When Patrick and his wife, a nurse practitioner named Ashley, started a family, they committed to get their kids outdoors as much as possible because, as Patrick said, “they have more than enough reasons to stay inside.” The family made a point to visit every state park in Wisconsin. They hiked a lot, fished a lot. And they adopted Warner Park as their backyard wilderness. “This park has been a constant through my life,” mop-headed Fletcher said as we walked the paths not far from the eagle nest. “Now, when I’m going through this park, there’s a million stories.”

Over time, the family attuned themselves to the urban wildlife, began to notice things that other people seemed to miss: the cranes and the eagles, tiny frogs in the lagoon, a big snap-ping turtle laying its eggs on the railroad tracks. “For me, it’s one of those things where it’s like: Is it that I’m more aware, or are things changing?” Ashley said. “I see more nature than I remember seeing when we first started walking.   Maybe I’m more in tune, or maybe it’s that it’s actually just kind of started becoming more wild. Or both. Probably both.”

The Hasburghs had made a record of their experiences in Warner Park. In addition to the eagle nest monitoring, Patrick enlisted the family in an initiative to protect the area’s bluebirds, believing that a formal citizen-science project would be a way of “sneaking some education in  without it being their lame dad preaching to them.” On a weekly basis the family checked on eleven bluebird nesting boxes, evicted any sparrow squatters if necessary, and then sent to the Bluebird Restoration Association of Wisconsin information about the number of eggs and chicks. When he was a little kid, Fletcher had taken the work very seriously. Equipped with a clipboard, he studiously went from box to box making observations. “Pretty much half of my entire summer was spent just checking bluebird boxes,” he told me as we inspected one nest box that, it turned out, was empty. By now, Ashley said, the bluebird stewardship was “built into our lives.”

Both boys had become crackerjack birders who could tell a sparrow nest from a chickadee nest from a bluebird nest at a distance. They could see a bluebird chick and tell how many days old it was. With familiarity came emotional attachment: the family imprinted on the birds. “Maybe it’s just in my head, but you build sort of a relationship with them,” Ashley said. “I love it, and it’s fun to see, like, the evolution. And you kind of feel like, you know, a little mama bird.”

Passing on their naturalist knowledge to other kids was a big-ger lift. Fletcher — whose great passion is video games, especially Call of Duty — said he didn’t exactly advertise his conservation endeavors. “I don’t really want to have a big prom sign that says, Come to the prom with me — I look at birds.” And as much as Ranger was psyched about outdoor activities like fishing — the previous winter, he had caught a “monster” thirty-eight-inch pike and a twenty-nine-inch walleye — most of his free time was spent skateboarding.

If anything, the boys had passed their environmental passion not outward to peers but upward to their parents. Patrick said one of the reasons he had gotten into birds is because Fletcher, when he was very young, kept asking for their names. “And I wouldn’t have an answer,” Patrick said. “So then I got curious and then we started looking at other birds and we started a life list.” A child’s inquisitiveness, it turned out, could be a parent’s spark bird.

When we first spoke, Patrick told me that one his great inspirations was Aldo Leopold, whose writings he had been exposed to during a brief stint in college and who moved him to seek out “an engagement with the landscape.” It was A Sand County Almanac that spurred Patrick to start keeping a fishing journal, which turned into a birding journal, and then into an all-around phenology journal that is now entering its twenty-fifth year. “It’s mostly birds and animals and stuff like that,” he told me. “And at the end of the year I go through my journals and notes and send out a little report to friends.”

A famous line in Leopold’s canonical book comes as the author declares, “One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds. Much of the damage inflicted on the land is quite invisible to laymen.” The Hasburghs’ tour of Warner Park made me think that maybe it was time to turn Leopold’s insight onto its head. Perhaps it’s equally true that one of the benefits of an ecological education is that one might, together with friends and family, inhabit a world of wonders. Much of the abundance that remains on the land is made visible by sharing it.

Isn’t this how the world might turn toward environmental progress, one workaday relationship with nature after another? The Hasburgh family was living proof that the task of ecological remembering isn’t necessarily difficult or esoteric; it can be as simple and as easy as a walk in the park. And as much as the Hasburghs demonstrated how to make memories of the living world, they also illustrated why it’s worthwhile to do all this physical, mental, and emotional work. Remembering isn’t about dwelling in the past, but a way of casting oneself forward in time, into the future tense. It was Ranger who helped make this clear. “I like just seeing the eagles and just watching the nest,” he said as we wrapped up our loop around the park and stood, again, not far from the eagle eyrie “That’s, like, a memory that will stay with me for a while.”

The post For Bald Eagles, the Descendants of the Destroyers Became the Restorers appeared first on The Revelator.

Photo Credit: Green Knowledge Foundation, Nigeria.

By Weyinmi Okotie, GAIA Africa, Clean Air Program Manager 

This week, 13 – 16 July, policymakers, scientists, civil society organisations, development partners, and community leaders will gather in Pretoria for the 2026 Africa Clean Air Forum. The theme is “Investment Case for Clean Air and Healthy Cities.” Air pollution is becoming one of Africa’s most pressing public health challenges. The forum is a crucial opportunity to shape the continent’s clean air agenda.

Over the years, the forum has grown beyond an annual conference. It has become a platform for collaboration. This helps governments, researchers, and communities share evidence, strengthen partnerships, and accelerate action on air pollution. Most importantly, it has raised air quality from a largely ignored environmental issue to a critical public health and development priority in Africa.  

Across Africa, awareness of air pollution is increasing as cities are investing in air quality monitoring. More cities are realising that clean air is essential for healthier communities, stronger economies, and climate resilience. 

The growth of air quality monitoring networks across the continent is especially encouraging. Reliable data leads to better policies, stronger accountability, and more informed public decision-making.  

But monitoring air pollution is only the beginning. The real measure of success lies in whether the investments that follow truly reduce pollution and improve people’s lives. As African governments seek solutions, we must ensure that the technologies promoted address the root cause of the problem rather than end-of-pipe solutions. 

While discussions on air pollution often focus on transport, industrial activities, and power generation, waste is a major yet frequently overlooked source of pollution in African cities. 

Open burning of waste is common in many communities due to poor collection systems, badly managed dumpsites, and limited waste infrastructure. Smoke from burning plastics, organic waste, and other mixed materials exposes nearby communities to harmful air pollutants and emits greenhouse gases.  

Open burning of waste accounts for 29% of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) pollution in the air, and, together with other air pollutants, causes nearly 1.2 million premature deaths per year in Africa.

There is no doubt that Africa must stop open burning; the question is HOW do we achieve this?

Studies also highlight that around 70-80% of the municipal solid waste generated in African cities is recyclable – such as biodegradable waste, plastics and paper,and could be worth US$8 billion per year if kept in a circular economy. Hence, there is a need to support real solutions to waste management challenges in Africa, such as separation at source, waste reduction, reuse, recycling, and composting initiatives.

Increasingly, the industry is promoting waste-to-energy incineration as the solution to Africa’s municipal waste challenges. However, this is a false claim!

Incineration does not eliminate waste. It changes waste into emissions, toxic ash, and greenhouse gases. It also relies on a steady supply of combustible waste, creating long-term dependence on generating and burning materials that should be reduced, reused, recycled, or composted.  

For many African countries reviewing their waste systems, this is a critical moment. Decisions made today will shape urban infrastructure for decades. Investing in costly combustion technologies risks locking cities into a waste-management mode that competes with recycling, undermines resource recovery, and diverts limited public resources from real environmental justice efforts. 

The forum’s focus on increasing investment in clean air is both timely and necessary. Africa urgently needs more financial support to strengthen air quality monitoring, improve enforcement, build institutional capacity, and implement effective pollution control measures.  

However, as we work to increase clean air finance, we must ensure that the funds are NEVER used to support false solutions in the waste management sector, which are already known to emit a cocktail of noxious substances into our environment.

Funding for the waste sector should not support false solutions such as waste-to-energy incineration under the guise of reducing pollution. Clean air finance should prioritise interventions that prevent pollution at its source—such as waste separation, composting, recycling, organic waste recovery, material recovery facilities, and the integration of informal waste workers into modern waste management systems.  

These approaches do more than reduce emissions. They create jobs, improve public health, reduce methane emissions, strengthen local economies, and advance the transition toward circular economies. They address multiple environmental challenges simultaneously rather than shifting pollution from land to air.  

I hope this forum continues to inspire strong leadership—not only in acknowledging the scale of Africa’s air pollution crisis, but also in choosing solutions grounded in science, public health, and environmental justice, especially in the waste management sector.

My desire for Africa is that we do not confuse costly technologies with meaningful progress. That we resist the temptation to fund projects simply because they seem modern or innovative. That communities most affected by pollution are put at the centre of decision-making. And that Africa has the courage to reject false solutions, even when they are proposed as shortcuts to municipal waste management. 

The discussions at this year’s Clean Air Forum will not ultimately measure the forum’s success. It will be measured by the policies adopted, the investments made, and the quality of the air that millions of Africans breathe long after the conference has ended. 

ENDS.

The post Investing in clean air should also mean rejecting false solutions to the waste management crisis first appeared on GAIA.

The UK’s incoming prime minister Andy Burnham has remained tight-lipped on his views on climate change during his leadership campaign.

When asked his views on reversing Labour’s manifesto pledge to stop new North Sea drilling in June – a move that the oil-and-gas industry and right-wing media have pushed for in recent months – he said he had “something of an open mind” on the issue.

But a trawl of Burnham’s past comments about climate change, net-zero and fossil fuels reveals a different picture.

Just a year ago in June 2025, Burnham, while mayor of Greater Manchester, gave his support to the fossil fuel treaty – a proposed international pact on phasing out coal, oil and gas – calling it a “lifeline” that “all governments” should join.

In a video message endorsing the treaty, he also said that “there should be no turning away from net-zero”.

During his last bid to be Labour leader in 2015, he used similar language, saying: 

“Labour under my leadership will never turn our back on either our duty to tackle climate change or the prospects offered by the green economy.”

Burnham has spoken about the threat of climate change since at least 2008, noting in 2021 that accelerated action could “create thousands of good jobs”, but also warning that net-zero risked becoming the “next Brexit”.

Burnham is yet to appoint his cabinet, but there is much speculation that he will select current net-zero secretary Ed Miliband as his chancellor – with their ally Miatta Fahnbulleh having a “strong chance” of taking Miliband’s former position.

Below, Carbon Brief recounts 28 things that Burnham has said about climate change, net-zero, fossil fuels, energy and transport.

Climate change 

“Tackling climate change isn’t just about protecting the planet – it’s a powerful opportunity to build a fairer, greener future for our communities and businesses.”  

Calling for local councils to be given more power and money for climate action, 29 November 2025 

“There is little doubt that Greater Manchester’s biodiversity has taken a hit over the years, with habitats being lost, destroyed and becoming less diverse due to the impact of development, climate change, pollution and invasive species…We are committed to delivering a city-region for all residents to enjoy – a fairer, greener and more prosperous place for everyone.” 

Statement after Greater Manchester declared a “biodiversity emergency”, 25 March 2022

“Over the next decade, if we accelerate our response to the climate crisis, we can create thousands of good jobs, improve homes, overhaul our transport system and make [Manchester] an even better place to live.”

Greater Manchester Green Summit, 18 October 2021

“The environment has never been higher on the national and international agenda.” 

Statement after visiting a peat bog restoration project in England, 9 January 2020

Andy Burnham (left) and others, including members of Massive Attack, endorsing the Fossil Fuel Treaty in June 2025. Credit: Fossil Fuel Treaty

“I think climate change [action] will be driven more quickly from the bottom up, if I’m honest. It’s the will of evolution if you wait for the government to act…When governments aren’t listening you get out and get your voice heard…so I think [climate protesters] deserve our encouragement, not our criticism.” 

Speaking to Manchester Evening News at a student climate protest in Manchester, 24 May 2019

“Labour under my leadership will never turn our back on either our duty to tackle climate change or the prospects offered by the green economy.” 

Labour leadership candidate speech, 15 July 2015 

“Climate change can seem a distant, impersonal threat – in fact the associated costs to health are a very real and present danger…We need well-designed climate change policies that drive health benefits.” 

Speaking to the Guardian about a study on climate and health, 25 November 2009

“The Stern report on the economics of climate change has changed the debate, in this country and around the world. It made it clear that the people who could suffer most from a failure to tackle climate change, or from a lack of ambition in our approach to it, are those living in the developing countries. They are the most vulnerable…[and] Stern said that the cost of not acting would be large. That is why the government took various measures in the recent spending review to ensure that we are prepared to face the challenges posed by climate change.” 

Speaking in the UK parliament on the economic impacts of climate change on his final day as chief secretary to the Treasury, 24 January 2008

Net-zero

“There should be no turning away from net-zero.” 

Speaking after giving his support to the fossil fuel treaty – a proposed global pact to introduce laws to phase out coal, oil and gas – on behalf of Manchester, 6 June 2025 

“An opportunity is opening up for Britain as other countries move away from net-zero. We should seize that…We can make Britain a green leader. This is not the time to tiptoe, it is the time to commit to this path.”

Speaking at Innovation Zero World Congress in London, 29 April 2025 

“[We] need a government that fully buys into the 2038 vision because the UK will not get to 2050 unless places like Greater Manchester are freed up to go faster – and we’re ready to go faster.”

Speaking about Greater Manchester’s aim to reach net-zero by 2038, 19 October 2022 

“In Greater Manchester we have plans to build 30,000 net-zero social rented homes because we recognise that a successful city region needs good quality, affordable accommodation for everyone.”

Speech on the future of cities, 24 June 2022  

“By building a broad consensus behind the drive to net-zero, we can ensure that the transition is a fair one that delivers social justice as well as climate justice. This is an opportunity for all of us to show how cutting carbon emissions in our cities can make a real difference to our communities – away from the abstractions and rooted in the real world.” 

Panel discussion in Glasgow during the COP26 climate summit, 12 November 2021 

“To the extent that people have picked up anything from COP26, it’s a sense that the drive to net-zero will mean cost and inconvenience for ordinary people and offsetting for the wealthy and entitled. All of a sudden, you can feel how net-zero could become the new Brexit –  a debate that gets very divided on class grounds…This has got to be a wake-up call. We cannot let this happen. We need to act now to build a broad social consensus behind the drive to net-zero. How to do that? It starts with taking control of the climate narrative from those steering it in the wrong direction and turning it around…We must show how, if done in the right way, the drive to net-zero is actually an opportunity to reduce the cost of living; to make people’s lives better and society fairer.”

Writing for the London Standard, 5 November 2021 

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“The drive to net-zero is a chance to re-industrialise the north of England, this time in a clean way. Create really good jobs, future-facing jobs for people, better public transport, improve people’s homes…If we go quickly towards net-zero, it’s the quickest way to level up the country.” 

ITV interview at COP26, 1 November 2021 

“If we really embrace the drive to net-zero, that is the route to level up the country…But it needs substantial investment, upfront, now, of the kind that Rachel Reeves, shadow chancellor [and chancellor under Keir Starmer’s government], has been talking about. We need long-term predictable funding.” 

Interview with GB News at COP26, 1 November 2021 

“I would have preferred to hear slightly less about carbonated wine and much more about a decarbonised economy.” 

Referencing a UK budget, which included tax cuts for sparkling wine and other drinks, 28 October 2021 

“Decarbonising is not just about lowering costs on to people. It’s the route to get better, cheaper public transport. It’s the route to getting homes that are cheap to run. It’s actually the way we can create thousands of good jobs for the people who live in Greater Manchester. This is the route to levelling up the country by going further and faster on decarbonisation.”

Speaking to Manchester Confidential, 20 October 2021 

“[I am] asking people to stop seeing the environmental agenda as a cost and a burden agenda. I think this is a barrier that we’ve got to get over. Already in the media interviews I’ve done today, people are saying ‘can you afford it?’, ‘can it be achievable when times are tough?’. 

“My answer to that is, at some point in the 21st century, all homes will be zero-carbon. At some point in this century, all buildings of any kind will be zero-carbon…All cars will be zero-carbon, all public transport will be zero-carbon…The question is: when? And surely the places that embrace those things first are putting themselves in a position of economic strength when it comes to facing up to the future. Rather than seeing the whole agenda as a burden, we’ve got to see it for the benefits that it can bring. 

“There may be a greater upfront cost in a zero-carbon home, but let’s stop thinking, as we tend to do in Britain, of the short-term, the short-termist approach to life. Surely let’s start talking to the public about the lifetime cost.”

Greater Manchester Green Summit, 21 March 2018 

Fossil fuels

“I’ve got something of an open mind, you know. I don’t have a sort of fixed position.”

Speaking on the issue of new North Sea oil and gas in a New Statesman interview, 3 June 2026

“We would fight this in GM [Greater Manchester]…Communities across the north would face all the danger and disruption while big oil and gas walk away with all the profits.”

In response to Reform’s call for fracking, on X, 25 August 2025

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“I am proud to endorse the fossil-fuel treaty proposal today on behalf of Greater Manchester. It’s not just a plan – it’s a lifeline. It’s a call to end coal, oil and gas, hold polluters accountable…I urge all governments, nationals and subnationals to join this fight.” 

Statement upon endorsing the fossil-fuel treaty, 5 June 2025

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“Fracking is the past, it is not the future.”

Speech at London climate protest, 20 September 2019

“I have called for a moratorium on fracking. Far too many potential risks and unanswered questions.”

On X, 22 June 2015

.cb-tweet{ width: 65%; box-shadow: 3px 3px 6px #d3d3d3; margin: auto; } .cb-tweet img{ border: solid 1.25px #333333; border-radius: 5px; } @media (max-width:650px){ .cb-tweet{ width:100%; } } Energy and transport 

“What I would do, if successful, is lay out a plan for more public control over water, energy, transport, so that over the period we can get those bills down, fares down, and give people and give businesses breathing space.”

LBC interview, 2 July 2026

“I am all in favour of tough decisions at a national level. I don’t believe there should be a third runway at Heathrow, for instance. But I think those are decisions for national government.”

Guardian interview, 13 June 2019

“There is a debate to be had about aviation, isn’t there? There are changing public attitudes about aviation. Rather than just saying no to people flying, don’t we need to accelerate research into low and zero-carbon forms of aviation?”

Guardian interview, 13 June 2019

“Today, I stand alongside the mayors of some of the greatest cities in the world. I’m committed to a cleaner, greener and healthier future for Greater Manchester. Around a third of greenhouse gas emissions in our city-region come from transport.”

When signing the C40 Fossil-Fuel-Free Streets Declaration, which includes support for zero-emissions vehicles and walking and cycling, on behalf of Manchester, 14 September 2018

UK withdraws millions in funding from world’s second-largest rainforest in Congo 

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Analysis: UK newspapers have already printed 63 editorials in 2026 backing North Sea drilling 

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Analysis: UK sales of electric vehicles just overtook petrol cars for the first time

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25.06.26

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The post 28 quotes from next UK leader Andy Burnham on climate, net-zero and fossil fuels appeared first on Carbon Brief.

Stopping neonic-coated seeds could mean the difference between survival and extinction for endangered pollinators like the rusty-patched bumblebee.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: July 14, 2026

Berkeley, CA — Thirty-one environmental organizations, including GAIA (the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives), are calling on environmental agencies in seven US states to ensure strong safeguards for plastic recycling and disposal facilities. On Tuesday, July 14, the organizations submitted a joint letter urging regulators not to surrender oversight of those facilities by adopting the “Responsible Markets (REM) Standard,” which weakens existing state and federal protections for community health, worker safety, and the environment. 

The groups also raised concerns around a lack of adequate public consultation on the draft standard, proposed by the Producer Responsibility Organization for packaging Extended Producer Responsibility schemes in California, Colorado, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, Oregon, and Washington. 

Press contact:

María Guillén, Communications & Network Development Manager, U.S. & Canada

mariaguillen@no-burn.org

###

The Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA) is a member-based, environmental justice network working at the intersection of waste, climate, and justice. In the United States and Canada, GAIA supports grassroots organizations that advance zero waste solutions, challenge the plastics and petrochemical industries, reduce methane emissions, and promote safe, sustainable practices for electric vehicle battery production and recycling.

.stk-hb1ya7z {height:78px !important;} REM standard – joint letter 2026Download

The post 31 Environmental Organizations Call on Regulators in 7 States to Protect Oversight of Plastic Recycling Facilities first appeared on GAIA.

Today, conservation groups and a fishing guide filed suit in federal court in San Francisco to challenge the Trump administration’s new interpretation of the Endangered Species Act (ESA) that “harm” to species does not include destroying their habitat. The new decision reverses 50 years of bipartisan agreement that protecting species’ habitat is at the heart of the ESA and, without it, many species will go extinct.

The conservationists assert that no matter how the administration contorts the legal term “harm,” its plain meaning, as confirmed by the Supreme Court in Babbitt v. Sweet Home, includes destroying species’ habitat. Indeed, the ESA itself states its first purpose is “to provide a means whereby the ecosystems upon which endangered species and threatened species depend may be conserved.”

“This is war on the forests and rivers of the West,” said Pete Frost, attorney at the Western Environmental Law Center in Eugene. “No longer protecting where grizzlies, salmon, and owls live will make them extinct. We’re hopeful the court will clarify what the ESA has always meant.”

Chris Daughters, a licensed fishing guide on the McKenzie River in Oregon, decided to join the lawsuit as a plaintiff, because “my business depends on cold, clean water in which salmon thrive. Without good habitat, we won’t have salmon, and I won’t have customers.”

“Marbled murrelets depend on coastal old-growth forests,” said Tom Wheeler of EPIC. “The administration’s twisted interpretation of the ESA means ancient forests could be logged—and the murrelet doomed to extinction. Not only does that wrongly fully interpret the ESA, it’s reprehensible position for the administration to forward.”

“Removing habitat protections for spotted owls would not only mean a death sentence for spotted owls, but a death sentence to old-growth forest ecosystems of the Northwest as we know them. What’s at stake isn’t just one species, but the web of life that countless other wildlife depend on,” says Sydney Wilkins, conservation attorney for KS Wild.

Lost habitat is the very reason most species are listed under the ESA. And habitat loss causes more species to go extinct than any other single factor. To illustrate, the Sierra Nevada yellow-legged frog, which is now 90% gone, is nearing extinction due to its alpine lake habitat being destroyed, not because people are stomping on frogs. Similarly, spotted owls and murrelets are not directly harmed by logging – these birds are not crushed by logging equipment. Rather, logging removes viable habitat for vital life activities such as nesting and foraging, leading to the slow unraveling of entire populations as breeding and nesting areas disappear, prey becomes scarce, and the ecosystem balance they depend on quietly collapses.

Likewise, the four recent dam removals in the Klamath River Basin are for the first time in decades allowing wild salmon to swim hundreds of miles upstream to reach historic habitat. But this may not have been possible without the prior longstanding, sensible interpretation of the ESA: habitat matters.

The idea that burning down a person’s house does not ‘harm’ that person defies all logic,” said Bethany Cotton, conservation director with Cascadia Wildlands. “The Trump administration’s interpretation that destroying an imperiled species’ habitat is not harmful is absurd and will not stand.

The conservationists ask the court to set aside the administration’s new rule and require it to first evaluate what this radical change will mean for protected species analysis, which they illegally failed to do for this major change in interpreting and applying the ESA.

Cascadia Wildlands, KS Wild, EPIC, Friends of the Shasta River, and Mr. Daughters are represented by attorneys at the Western Environmental Law Center.

Contacts: 

Pete Frost, Western Environmental Law Center, 541-543-0018, frost@westernlaw.org

Tom Wheeler, EPIC, 206-356-8689, tom@wildcalifornia.org

Sydney Wilkins, Klamath-Siskiyou Wildlands Center, 541-488-5789, sydney@kswild.org

Bethany Cotton, Cascadia Wildlands, 503-327-4923, bethany@cascwild.org

The post Lawsuit challenges Trump’s decision to stop protecting species’ habitat appeared first on Western Environmental Law Center.

As China erects the largest hydropower installation on Earth atop an active fault line in the Himalayas, Chinese scientists are calling on engineers to guard against risks from earthquakes.

Read more on E360 →

The United States government is responsible for environmental regulations. It has promised to take action on climate change. But lately, it has been going back on those commitments. 

Some state governments are stepping up to fill in the gaps.

Requiring Manufacturers to Take Responsibility for the Waste the Create

Extended Producer Responsibility, or EPR, is one of many interlocking policies that are crucial for developing a robust circular economy, where waste is reduced and reused. Without EPR policies, taxpayers and governments are left to clean up waste. That waste is often hard to recycle or reuse. 

But EPR policies make sure that companies that make things have to think about what happens to their products after they are used.

Communities on the frontlines of mining and mineral production benefit from good EPR policies and other policies that support a strong circular economy. Mining harms people and permanently damages the environment, including by contributing to greenhouse gas emissions that are warming the planet. 

The easiest and best way to make mining less harmful is to do less of it. Recycling and reusing minerals that are already above the ground is part of that equation.

New Jersey Forges the Way for Electric Vehicle Recycling

In 2025, New Jersey became the first state in the country to pass an EPR law for electric vehicle batteries. 

The batteries in electric vehicles slowly become less effective. After ten to fifteen years, they usually stop holding enough power to make a car work. 

The New Jersey bill requires manufacturers to create management plans for electric vehicle batteries after they wear out. These batteries still have two-thirds of their original capacity. They can be used for other things, including stationary storage.

European Union Battery Recycling Policy Sets the Example

The governing body of the European Union has taken similar action. States can learn from the EU’s experience. 

A few years ago, the European Commission passed sprawling battery regulations. The rules touched on many parts of the battery supply chain. 

This includes EPR policies and recovery requirements for when batteries are recycled. 

Recycling is the next step after reuse in a strong circular economy. Ideally, it should only happen once the batteries have been reused and only under the strictest environmental and labor laws. 

New Colorado Law Sets the Standard for Electric Vehicle Battery Recycling

In June 2026, Colorado Governor Polis signed Senate Bill 26-003, End-of-Life Management of Electric Vehicle Batteries. Earthworks partners Western Resource Advocates and the Union of Concerned Scientists supported the law. 

Dr. Jessica Dunn at the Union of Concerned Scientists said the bill “will set the standard for the rest of the country.” 

It goes beyond what’s in New Jersey’s bill. SB26-003 requires recycling to recover a certain percentage of minerals. It requires battery-makers to report on how they’re recovering the minerals. It makes it easier to reuse batteries, too, by allowing auto mechanics, scrap yards, and other businesses to reuse or recycle batteries or have the automaker collect them free of charge.

Colorado’s bill is a victory for circular economy advocates. It’s also a victory for communities affected by mining or processing minerals for batteries.

States Can Lead the Way to Less Need for New Battery Minerals

National laws and regulations would be the best solution. Until those exist, other states should look to Colorado’s example. 

States where electric vehicles are popular or becoming popular can have the most impact. But every state that takes action can move us forward.

The post States Step Up to Require Recycling and Reusing Electric Vehicle Batteries appeared first on Earthworks.

Suresanathan Murugesu is the country director of Action Against Hunger in the Philippines

The Philippines is caught in an extreme weather trap. Here, forecasts for a strong El Niño in the months ahead do not just indicate a period of drought – they also point to torrential rain and flooding.

It could hardly come at a worse time, threatening communities that are still struggling to recover from previous typhoons, such as last year’s Typhoon Tino, as well as two strong earthquakes – in Cebu in September 2025 and last month’s 7.8-magnitude quake in Mindanao.

Forecasts point to the arrival of one of the most intense El Niños in recent history this year and into 2027, with the United Nations warning that it could be the strongest in decades around the world.

The peak of the El Niño is expected towards the end of the year, but the weather phenomenon is already estimated to have caused agricultural losses of nearly €30 million (£25.9 million), potentially affecting the livelihoods of 4 million farmers.

• May 12, 2026 News Scientists warn El Niño could intensify climate extremes in 2026 Climatologists say a particularly powerful weather pattern could amplify wildfire risk, heatwaves and flooding worldwide as global temperatures continue to rise Read more
• Jun 11, 2026 Science WHO issues new guidance on heat-health action plans, as El Niño sets in Amid warnings of “unprecedented” weather extremes this year, the World Health Organization urges governments to strengthen protections for vulnerable groups Read more
• Oct 23, 2025 Justice Philippines storm victims to seek damages from Shell in “unprecedented” climate claim The case is the first civil claim to directly link an oil firm’s climate impact to deaths and personal injury in the Global South, its backers say Read more

On the climate frontline

For many, El Niño is a figure in a report or a distant headline, but for those of us who live and work on the ground, it is a reality that is already hitting the most vulnerable families.

When I travel through the communities of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region – in the south – or speak with families on the island of Siargao or in the Zamboanga region, I do not see data or graphs.

I see a father looking at his cracked rice field, wondering how he will pay off the debts from a harvest that is already lost before it has even begun. I see a mother walking under a relentless sun because her village’s well has dried up, carrying the water that sustains the health of her children and her entire community.

And what we are seeing today – 26 provinces experiencing drought and millions of dollars in agricultural losses – is only the beginning.

Loss and damage fund delays first project approvals as needs dwarf resources

Many Filipino families are still trying to rebuild and recover after last year’s typhoons and the two earthquakes. In Mindanao, where the recent magnitude 7.8 earthquake displaced more than 90,000 people and destroyed over 19,000 houses, uncertainty remains about when the people will be able to fully recover and return home. 

Today, they are trying to protect the meagre possessions they have and, if they are lucky enough to have their home unscathed by typhoons and earthquakes, their homes from flooding; tomorrow, they will have to survive the hardship and impact of drought.

The effects of El Niño threaten to exacerbate their troubles.

Struggle for basic needs

Many low-income Filipino families already face significant challenges to meet their basic needs.

In our daily visits, we see how life is becoming increasingly difficult for millions of people. Rising fuel and transport costs are driving up the price of basic foodstuffs, making them unaffordable for many families. At the same time, crop failures and income losses are leaving households without livelihoods, while disasters contribute to further suffering.

A farmer collects rice along the side of the road during a hot day in Candaba, Pampanga, Philippines, April 30, 2024. REUTERS/Eloisa Lopez A farmer collects rice along the side of the road during a hot day in Candaba, Pampanga, Philippines, April 30, 2024. REUTERS/Eloisa Lopez

But we are not just talking about hunger. We are talking about health, safety and dignity. Water shortages are forcing many people to resort to unsafe sources, increasing the risk of disease. And, as is the case in so many crises, it is the most vulnerable who bear the heaviest burden: walking long distances every day to fetch water or food, enduring enormous physical strain and facing risks of violence and insecurity.

Building resilience

Faced with this reality, our response is based on a simple idea: to be there before the crisis reaches its most critical point. At Action Against Hunger, we work alongside communities to anticipate the situation, assessing the impact of the drought and activating early response mechanisms to protect their livelihoods and access to water.

We translate climate forecasts into concrete action plans: from support for farmers to programmes ensuring safe water. All of this is done in coordination with local authorities and international partners, because we know that what we do today will make the difference tomorrow.

A supercharged El Niño is coming – are we ready?

The hardest months are yet to come. But the question is not just what will happen, but what we are doing now to prevent it. How many tables will remain empty and how many children will see their health compromised will depend on our ability to act in time.

We cannot stop El Niño. But we can prevent it from becoming a crisis of human dignity. We cannot afford to look the other way whilst the earth cracks and opportunities disappear. Because behind every statistic, there is a family struggling to get by. And that is a reality we cannot ignore.

The post A strong El Niño spells more climate pain for the Philippines appeared first on Climate Home News.

A variety of climate action strategies improve people’s quality of life, including strategies that require people to shift their behavior to use less energy, according to a new analysis. The study challenges the conventional wisdom that fighting climate change imposes a burden on the public—and offers a hopeful message about people’s willingness to engage.

In the past, most of the debate about policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions has centered on cost versus amount of carbon saved. The new study adds quality of life as a third, previously overlooked dimension to the picture.

Researchers used computer simulations of national energy systems to evaluate how six different climate mitigation strategies affect various aspects of quality of life, performing this analysis for 18 countries.

They analyzed one so-called “supply-side” strategy focused on replacing fossil energy with clean technologies and one “demand-side” strategy involving reduced use of energy and materials for each of three major economic sectors: transport, buildings, and industry.

Until now, most research on climate mitigation has emphasized supply-side strategies, in part because of an assumption that demand-side measures would make people’s lives more difficult and thus be unpopular.

That’s not the case. All six climate strategies improve overall quality of life, the researchers found.

Both high-income and low- to middle-income countries see quality-of-life benefits from climate action, challenging the usual narrative that fighting climate change pits countries’ interests against each other. “Framing the climate change mitigation conversation around quality of life could break political stalemates” arising from this mistaken assumption, the researchers write.

 

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The researchers analyzed six different dimensions of quality of life—household income, jobs, health, energy security, fairness, and environmental conditions. Demand-side interventions perform slightly better across a wider range of quality-of-life aspects, the researchers found.

The best performers overall are demand-side interventions: reducing energy use in buildings by beefing up insulation and tweaking thermostat settings, and shifting car trips to other modes of transport like public transit, walking, and cycling.

The researchers also surveyed between 800 and 1,400 residents in three of the countries—the Netherlands, Brazil, and China—making the study one of only a few studies that have provided both objective and subjective data on the quality-of-life dimension of climate action.

In all three countries, people were open to both supply-side and demand-side climate strategies, and expected both to improve their quality of life. “People evaluate demand-side strategies positively, even if there is a tendency to evaluate supply-side strategies even more positively,” the researchers write.

What’s more, sharing evidence about the quality-of-life impacts of the six climate strategies tends to increase people’s support for them, the researchers found.

Overall, the findings suggest that in designing climate policy and selling it to the public, policymakers should emphasize well-being, not just cost-effectiveness—and they shouldn’t shy away from proposing demand-side measures, the researchers say.

Source: Grubler A. et al. “The undervalued quality-of-life benefits of demand-side energy and climate strategies.” Communications Sustainability 2026.

Image: © Anthropocene Magazine.

 

• July 14, 2026

OPEN LETTER: GREEN CONNECTION QUESTIONS ISRAELI OIL COMPANY’S BID FOR SOUTH AFRICAN OFFSHORE BLOCK AMID ICJ CASE

Environmental justice organisation The Green Connection has written an open letter to President Cyril Ramaphosa about reports that Israeli-owned Navitas Petroleum LP is set to become operator of offshore oil and gas exploration Block 1 CBK in the Orange Basin off South Africa’s West Coast. The organisation believes that the proposed transaction raises questions about whether South Africa’s commercial decisions align with the principles underpinning its international stance on Israel and Palestine, including its ongoing case against Israel before the International Court of Justice (ICJ). The Green Connection’s letter has thus far been endorsed by thirty-five (35) civil society organisations,
and counting.

“The Green Connection is not calling for the transaction to be automatically rejected. It is urging government to provide clear political and policy leadership on commercial engagement involving Israeli-owned companies while South Africa continues to pursue accountability through international legal processes,” says Lisa Makaula, Advocacy Lead at The Green Connection. 

Block 1 CBK is the northern-most offshore block on South Africa’s West Coast, extending about 250 kilometres west along the South Africa–Namibia maritime border and covering approximately 19 907 square kilometres. Media reports say Navitas Petroleum LP, through Navitas Petroleum Africa Limited, has agreed with Eco (Atlantic) Oil and Gas Ltd., through Azinam South Africa Limited, to acquire a 37.5% participating interest in Block 1 CBK and assume operatorship. If completed, Navitas and Eco Atlantic will each hold 37.5%, while Orange Basin Energies (Pty) Ltd will retain 25%.

South Africa instituted proceedings against Israel before the ICJ in December 2023, alleging violations of the Genocide Convention. The case remains before the Court, which has issued provisional measures. This includes requiring Israel to prevent acts prohibited under the Convention, enable humanitarian assistance and halt action that could bring about the physical destruction of Palestinians in Gaza.

“This is about far more than a single commercial transaction,” says Makaula. “South Africa earned international respect by taking the unprecedented step of asking the ICJ to hold Israel accountable under the Genocide Convention.

The eco-justice organisation also argues that the proposed transaction is inconsistent with South Africa’s commitments under the Just Energy Transition Partnership, which aims to accelerate a fair and equitable shift to cleaner energy rather than expand offshore oil and gas development. A just transition involves moving away from carbon-intensive fossil fuels that drive global warming and climate change, towards cleaner, more sustainable and safer energy sources.

Neville van Rooy, Outreach Coordinator and Ambassador at The Green Connection, says that offshore oil and gas decisions directly affect coastal communities. He says, “Small-scale fishing communities often carry the risks of offshore oil and gas development while seeing few promised benefits. Too often, decisions affecting our oceans are made without meaningful participation from the people whose livelihoods, culture and food security depend on healthy marine ecosystems.” 

In its letter, The Green Connection calls on the Presidency to ensure that the government develops a lawful, transparent policy position on commercial engagement involving Israeli-owned entities, that is consistent with South Africa’s constitutional values, international obligations and stated foreign policy positions. 

“We are not asking for political interference or automatic rejection,” says Makaula. “We are asking for any decision, including under section 11 of the Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Act, to be made lawfully, transparently and with proper regard for South Africa’s constitutional values, international obligations and stated commitments.” 

“This is ultimately about South Africa’s credibility,” says Makaula. “The world has looked to South Africa for principled leadership because of our willingness to stand up for justice. Today’s decisions will show whether our commitment to human rights, international law and justice extends beyond our words.”

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The post OPEN LETTER: GREEN CONNECTION QUESTIONS ISRAELI OIL COMPANY’S BID FOR SOUTH AFRICAN OFFSHORE BLOCK AMID ICJ CASE appeared first on The Green Connection.

Dalam tradisi pemberitaan klasik, sebuah informasi dinilai layak dipercaya apabila didukung oleh sumber yang dapat dipertanggungjawabkan. Prinsip tersebut tetap relevan hingga saat ini. Berbagai ahli di bidang teknologi menjelaskan bahwa permainan modern umumnya memanfaatkan sistem yang telah dirancang dengan mekanisme tertentu. Hasil yang muncul selama permainan tidak dapat dipastikan hanya karena seseorang baru pertama kali bergabung atau membuat akun baru.

Pengalaman banyak pengguna juga menunjukkan bahwa setiap individu dapat memperoleh hasil yang berbeda. Ada yang merasa beruntung pada awal permainan, sementara pengguna lain tidak mengalami hal serupa. Perbedaan pengalaman tersebut menjadi bukti bahwa klaim “member baru pasti turun scatter” tidak dapat dijadikan patokan umum. Oleh sebab itu, masyarakat perlu membedakan antara pengalaman pribadi dengan fakta yang dapat diverifikasi.

Dari sisi keahlian, pemahaman mengenai sistem permainan online perlu didasarkan pada informasi yang bersumber dari penyedia resmi maupun penjelasan teknis yang kredibel. Banyak platform menerapkan teknologi yang dirancang agar setiap putaran berjalan sesuai mekanisme sistem, bukan berdasarkan status pemain sebagai anggota baru ataupun lama. Dengan demikian, peluang yang diperoleh pengguna tetap bergantung pada mekanisme permainan yang berlaku.

Aspek otoritas juga menjadi bagian penting dalam menilai suatu informasi. Media yang bertanggung jawab tidak hanya menyampaikan kabar yang sedang populer, tetapi juga memberikan penjelasan yang seimbang agar pembaca memperoleh pemahaman yang benar. Sikap kritis terhadap judul-judul sensasional merupakan bagian dari literasi online yang perlu terus dikembangkan, terutama di era ketika informasi dapat menyebar dengan sangat cepat melalui berbagai platform media sosial.

Kepercayaan publik dibangun melalui penyampaian informasi yang jujur dan transparan. Oleh karena itu, masyarakat dianjurkan untuk tidak mudah mempercayai klaim yang menjanjikan hasil tertentu tanpa adanya bukti yang dapat diuji. Membandingkan informasi dari beberapa sumber terpercaya merupakan langkah yang bijaksana sebelum mengambil kesimpulan.

Sebagai penutup, istilah “Member Baru Pasti Turun Scatter” lebih tepat dipahami sebagai ungkapan yang berkembang di kalangan komunitas pengguna daripada sebagai fakta yang telah terbukti. Pendekatan yang mengutamakan literasi, pengetahuan, dan verifikasi informasi akan membantu masyarakat mengambil keputusan secara lebih rasional. Dengan mengedepankan prinsip pengalaman, keahlian, otoritas, pembaca dapat menyaring setiap informasi secara objektif sehingga tidak mudah terpengaruh oleh klaim yang belum memiliki dasar yang kuat.

These technologies represent a new offensive by corporations to commodify life, seize control of seeds, and disregard the rights of the peoples who have protected biodiversity for millennia.

The post Latin American Organizations Unite Against Gene Editing in Agriculture and Seed Control appeared first on La Via Campesina - EN.

Charting a path to protect human health during prolonged gas flaring in Kitimat

July 14, 2026 – In May, Douglas Channel Watch allies in Kitimat, British Columbia (BC) contacted ALERT. The community of 8,300 residents is a marine port at the head of the Douglas Channel, a principal fjord along the BC Coast, in the traditional and unceded territory of the Haisla Nation. Previously, I worked with First Nations and Canadian allies in a successful multi-year effort to block the proposed Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline project that ended in November 2016 when the Canadian Prime Minister cancelled the project.

Much has changed in ten years. Kitimat now faces another daunting situation – a looming liquified natural gas (“LNG”) boom in northwestern BC, as part of the federal government’s plan to export liquified natural gas from Albert’s oil and gas fields to China. Exhausted from the pipeline battle, there was little resistance to the next wave of development pressure – this time for an LNG facility in Kitimat. No messy mixture of tar sands oil, but a clean natural gas! What could possibly go wrong?

Construction started on the Shell-led LNG Canada facility in fall 2018. According to an investigative report by The Narwhal, LNG Canada first tested its system to burn off gas by firing up its flare in fall 2024. By December, officials knew something was wrong – the 90-meter, roaring flare was a clue that the facility’s equipment was malfunctioning. LNG Canada first reported non-compliance with government air waste dumping permits in May 2025, adding that it could take up to three years to fix the problem. Nonetheless, the first tanker-load of natural gas shipped out to China in June 2025, and cargo continues to be shipped to this day.

In fall 2025, Kitimat residents first voiced health concerns from the natural gas flaring, despite offers from LNG Canada to temporarily relocate and pay people not to make complaints or raise concerns about LNG Canada’s flaring to government regulators, the media, or the District of Kitimat. By the end of 2025, LNG Canada was the estimated highest source of LNG flaring emissions in the world, based on 2024 emissions.

Kitimat is now “a compromised airshed.” A Northern Health study found Kitimat has 74 percent higher rates of asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease than the rest of the province. While the Rio Tinto (formerly Alcan) aluminum smelter, operational in Kitimat since 1954, is likely the source of these chronic health issues, the local nurse in Kitimat is concerned that the LNG flaring is exacerbating these illnesses – and he is among the health care providers and advocates calling for government regulation.

On July 7, at the Kitimat Airshed Group general meeting, Ott spoke about the need for symptom-based health assessment – something the U.S. National Response Team now recommends for oil-chemical workers, and science supports. Symptom-based surveys more accurately define the health risk and the health impacts that can occur from annual, persistent, low-level exposures to gas flaring emissions – even though exposures may be well below the mandated standards. Generally, symptom-based health monitoring gives a more accurate estimate of health risk than numeric-based standards when complex mixtures of chemicals in various phases (gas, aerosol, particulate) are involved and interacting with other chemicals in the atmosphere such as occurs during LNG flaring.

The extended Q&A session revealed a path forward from ALERT’s perspective. Kitimat residents could:

1. Petition the Kitimat town council with new information on the health risk of persistent, annual, low-level exposures from LNG emissions and ask the council to reverse its vote and support the call for a cumulative health impact assessment;
2. Petition federal regulators for stationary air monitors in Kitimat and downwind communities to augment the sparse RAM (“remote area monitoring”) data, collected by one vehicle; and
3. Work independently with the University of Texas TILT Research Team to conduct a pilot health study in their community and others in the Kitimat airshed.

Meanwhile, Canada’s first major LNG facility may soon be joined by others. Construction has already started on the Cedar LNG plant near LNG Canada in Douglas Channel. It is Canada’s (and the world’s) first Indigenous majority-owned LNG export facility. It promises to have “one of the cleanest environmental profiles in the world.”

What could possibly go wrong?

. . . . .

It bears mentioning that, over the last two decades, there have been other changes. Indigenous peoples have emerged as leaders in Canada’s renewable energy transition and are leading development in wind, solar, geothermal and utility-scale batteries. Even when faced with daunting situations, concerted efforts by people can lead to positive changes.

 

In solidarity,

Ding dong the witch is dead, the wicked witch is dead.

Senator Lindsey Graham died Saturday night of an apparent heart attack. Another horrible human being bites the dust. As Mehdi Hasan said it in his Zeteo column, Graham “never met a Middle East County he didn’t want to invade.” And in those invasions he wanted to “level” Gaza and kill as many brown, mostly Muslim, people as possible. The consummate opportunist, when it seemed impossible that Donald Trump would get the 2016 Republican nomination for president, Graham called him “a race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot.” By 2026, when Graham was well entrenched in Trump’s inner circle, Trump became “the greatest president of all time. . . Mr. President, you’re not far behind God.” Such great people as Benjamin Netanyahu and Volodymyr Zelensky rushed to say what a “wonderful friend” and “true believer of freedom” Graham was. As chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee he helped pack the Supreme Court with the rightwing justices we have today and made sure federal justices were groomed by the Federalist Society, whose goal is to turn the country into a presidential autocracy. In Britain, Lindsey would be what they call a “reverse ferret.” In the U.S., we can just call him a blood thirsty monster.

I want to tell a little story about how Congress came to be filled with people like Lindsey Graham. I recently read most of Rick Perlstein’s massive (914 pages) Reaganland: America’s right turn, 1976-1980. In his chapter “What is an Orrin Hatch?” Perlstein lays out the history of what became known as the “New Right,” or as Paul Weyrich, one of its main proponents put it, “radicals working to overturn the present power structure in this country”—meaning liberal elites. Rather mind boggling, this is where the notion of the Republican Party being the party of the working class originated, a notion that Missouri Senator Josh Hawley recently proclaimed while leading the charge that Donald Trump won the 2020 election. Another of these proponents, Kevin Phillips, a former Nixon justice department official, wanted to build “a cultural siege-engine out of the populist steel of Idaho, Mississippi, and working class Milwaukee, and then blast the Eastern liberal establishment to ideological-institutional smithereens.” Also mind boggling is that these guys thought Barry Goldwater was too much a member of the establishment. Ergo, Orrin Hatch, the political neophyte elected senator from Utah in 1976 would be the torchbearer for the New Right. He represented the fundamentalist Christian coalition (he was a Mormon) that would soon come on board while the Heritage Foundation think tank would provide the intellectual underpinning. In 1973, University of Chicago economist Milton Friedman won the Nobel Prize, signifying that his “trickle-down economics” would become the economic bible of the New Right. The election of 1976 also saw the rise of the neoconservatives from the flames of the Old Left: as Irving Kristol (Commentary magazine and the American Enterprise Institute) described them, a “liberal mugged by reality.” He was joined in the movement by all our favorite neocons of the George W. Bush era: Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Elliott Abrams, and Richard Perle.

There’s a lot of history between then and now—Newt Gingrich’s reign of terror in the House of Representatives, George W. Bush’s “war on terror,” the Tea Party rebellion—that led to Trumpism and the failure of the left to be the alternative. This, unfortunately, gives some credence to the critique of journalists like Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi that our obsession with the election of Donald Trump was more detrimental to journalism than it was to democracy. Theirs is a broader critique that our obsession with him distracted us from examining much else that needed examining: what the so-called “deep state,” i.e., the CIA, the NSA, the FBI, etc., are doing to spy on us, foment regime change abroad, murder people with drones, or any of the nefarious things they’ve been guilty of for years without legislative oversight. Lindsey Graham and his senatorial cohort (we can’t really tell if that includes Mitch McConnell anymore despite his picture from the hospital) are our “Orrin Hatch.” Donald Trump is their God.

 

DENVER—President Donald Trump today signed proclamations attempting to shrink the boundaries of Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears national monuments, reducing the size of each by about 90 percent. Bears Ears National Monument will be reduced by over 1.2 million acres, and Grand Staircase-Escalante will be reduced by nearly 1.7 million acres.

During the signing, President Trump falsely stated that “You can’t go hunting, you can’t go fishing, you can’t do anything, you can virtually not even walk on it.” Deputy Interior Secretary Kate MacGregor followed up by saying, “That’s exactly right sir, so you are remedying that today.”

In fact, Bears Ears and Grand Staircase explicitly allow hunting, fishing, and outdoor recreation inside the monuments, something that the State of Utah’s own hunting regulations confirm.

MacGregor also misled the president and reporters when she claimed that the first monuments Teddy Roosevelt protected under the Antiquities Act were small in size. In fact, Teddy Roosevelt used the Antiquities Act to protect 800,000 acres of public land at the Grand Canyon. The Supreme Court later confirmed that such landscape-scale protections were proper under the Antiquities Act, and that large landscapes were considered “objects” under the Act.

The Center for Western Priorities released the following statement from Executive Director Aaron Weiss:

“We all know that President Trump has very little understanding of what he’s told to sign. But Kate MacGregor knows better. Giving the president documents to sign based on false information is unconscionable. If she’s going to take over running America’s public lands while Doug Burgum plays pool boy, the least she can do is be honest with the president and the American people.”

The proclamations also attempt to open the land originally inside the monuments for sale or lease to oil, gas, mining, and logging companies beginning in 60 days. Weiss added:

“Senator Mike Lee’s attempt to sell off America’s public lands failed last year. Now he’s a sore loser, trying again with language in the president’s proclamation that makes it clear America’s public lands are up for sale. The people of Utah and the entire country have spoken with one voice: These lands belong to all of us, not Mike Lee, President Trump, or the mining companies his kids are in business with.”

The Bears Ears proclamation also attempts to disband the Bears Ears Commission, a body that was created at the request of the five Tribal nations that advocated for the designation of the national monument. The new proclamation would create a new “advisory committee” that drastically dilutes Tribal input.

Public opinion: When the first Trump administration asked the public in 2017, it received 2.8 million comments, 98 percent of them in support of keeping national monuments in place. A 2024 poll conducted on behalf of the Grand Canyon Trust found 71 percent of Utah voters support keeping Bears Ears as a national monument and 74 percent support keeping Grand Staircase-Escalante, including majorities of Republicans. Three-quarters of Utah voters support presidents’ authority to protect public lands as national monuments. Across the West, Colorado College’s 2025 Conservation in the West poll found that 89 percent of Western voters, including 83 percent of Republicans, believe national monument designations made over the past decade should be kept in place.

The post Trump signs orders attacking Utah monuments based on false information appeared first on Center for Western Priorities.

DENVER—An attack on Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments is reportedly scheduled to happen today at 4:30 pm ET behind closed doors at the White House, according to sources cited in news stories out of Utah.

President Donald Trump’s public calendar lists the 4:30 pm Oval Office event only as “sign an executive order,” with no mention of Bears Ears, Grand Staircase-Escalante, or the roughly two million acres of protected public land on the chopping block. The signing is marked as closed to press, and the White House has no press briefings scheduled today.

The Center for Western Priorities released the following statement from Executive Director Aaron Weiss: 

“Planning this attack behind closed doors and providing no notice to the press, the five Bears Ears Tribes, or the public shows the administration knows it’s on the wrong side of history.

“When Trump tried to shrink Bears Ears and Grand Staircase in 2017, he flew to Salt Lake City and announced it from the state capitol in front of Utah politicians. This time, the president wants as few cameras in the room as possible. The five Tribes of the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition and the American people will learn what happened to their land from a press release.”

Public opinion: When the first Trump administration asked the public in 2017, it received 2.8 million comments, 98 percent of them in support of keeping national monuments in place. A 2024 poll conducted on behalf of the Grand Canyon Trust found 71 percent of Utah voters support keeping Bears Ears as a national monument and 74 percent support keeping Grand Staircase-Escalante, including majorities of Republicans. Three-quarters of Utah voters support presidents’ authority to protect public lands as national monuments. Across the West, Colorado College’s 2025 Conservation in the West poll found that 89 percent of Western voters, including 83 percent of Republicans, believe national monument designations made over the past decade should be kept in place.

Background: President Bill Clinton designated Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in 1996, and President Barack Obama designated Bears Ears National Monument in 2016 at the request of five sovereign Tribal nations. In December 2017, President Trump cut Bears Ears from 1.35 million acres to roughly 228,000 acres and Grand Staircase-Escalante from 1.87 million acres to about 1 million acres, the largest rollback of public lands protections in American history. Lawsuits from Tribes, conservation groups, and businesses challenging those cuts were put on hold in early 2021 and remain pending in federal court in Washington, D.C. President Joe Biden restored both monuments in October 2021.

Learn more:

• Trump Orders Largest National Monument Reduction In U.S. History (2017) — NPR

• America to Trump and Zinke: Don’t touch national monuments – Westwise

• In defense of Bears Ears National Monument – Westwise

• STATEMENT on proposed Bears Ears National Monument management plan – Center for Western Priorities

• Bears Ears Plan Makes History – Grand Canyon Trust

The post Trump plans secretive attack on Utah national monuments, underscoring unpopularity appeared first on Center for Western Priorities.

President Donald Trump is expected to sign an executive order this afternoon shrinking Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments in Utah. Sources told ABC4 the signing is planned for 4:30 p.m. Eastern in the Oval Office. A White House official called the reports “pure speculation” in statements to multiple outlets.

This would be the second time Trump has attempted to shrink the two monuments. In 2017, Trump reduced Bears Ears by 85 percent and Grand Staircase-Escalante by nearly half. President Biden restored both monuments in 2021, and lawsuits over Trump’s original cuts remain pending in federal court in Washington, D.C. The 10th Circuit Court of Appeals recently allowed a separate Utah lawsuit challenging Biden’s restoration to move forward.

Reducing or eliminating national monuments is a broadly unpopular idea across political parties. “The American people have made it clear over and over again that they want our national monuments protected, not sold out to drilling and mining companies. President Trump and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum would be wise to remember that,” said Center for Western Priorities Executive Director Aaron Weiss in a statement.

A 2024 poll conducted for the Grand Canyon Trust found 71 percent of Utah voters support keeping Bears Ears as a monument, and 74 percent support keeping Grand Staircase-Escalante. Colorado College’s 2026 Conservation in the West poll found 91 percent of Western voters, including 87 percent of Republicans, want existing national monument designations kept in place.

Trump administration finalizes rule weakening endangered species protections

The Interior Department and NOAA Fisheries finalized a rule Friday redefining “harm” under the Endangered Species Act to exclude habitat destruction, reversing a long-standing interpretation. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said the change “restores common sense, respects private property, provides much-needed certainty for landowners and follows the statute Congress actually passed,” while critics say it clears the way for oil and gas drilling, mining, and logging on habitat that imperiled species depend on. “For more than four decades, the definition of ‘harm’ recognized a simple truth: if you destroy the places wildlife need to survive, you are putting species on a path to extinction,” said Ben Greuel, wildlife campaign manager at the Sierra Club.

Quick hits Trump expected to shrink Bears Ears, Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments

Fox13 | ABC4 | Deseret News | KSL | Backpacker | Heatmap | KMYU | Center for Western Priorities [press release]

Trump administration finalizes rule weakening endangered species protections

Washington Post | Reuters | E&E News | Associated Press | Fox 13 | Los Angeles Times

Park ranger exposes impact of 2025 public lands layoffs

Denver7

Interior proposes to rewrite grazing rules on 155M acres of BLM land

Deseret News

‘L.A. at rush hour.’ ‘Disney World.’ American national parks feeling the strain this summer

CNN

Amid blistering drought, feds tap New Mexico aquifers to build border wall without permits

WBUR

Trump administration clears path for controversial Mojave Desert water pipeline

Los Angeles Times

Opinion: Selling off your off-road trails was never about affordable housing. Mike Lee’s latest vote proves

RideApart

Quote of the day

There’s no money for overtime in a lot of national parks, there’s less people to save people when they get in trouble in national parks. So, less people to come for search and rescues, less law enforcement rangers to respond, less normal rangers to clean bathrooms. It is causing rangers to also have to go outside of their job description, which again is not what we signed up for, but we are public service, and a lot of us will do it because it’s for the greater good of the public.”

—Anonymous park ranger, Denver7

Picture This
@u.s.forestserviceGolden hour? Nah, this is legendary hour.

Coconino National Forest offers a field of sunshine with a side of dramatic skies.

Drop a pin, drop your jaw and hit the trail in your big backyard.

(Forest Service photo by Deborah Lee Soltesz.)

 

Featured photo: Indian Creek at Bears Ears National Monument, Utah. Bob Wick, BLM

The post Trump expected to shrink Bears Ears, Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments appeared first on Center for Western Priorities.

By KAY MATTHEWS

Editor’s Note: Robin Collier of KCEI radio 90.1 recorded the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) July 7 meeting on the Questa Chevron Superfund site where the Kit Carson Electric Coop’s (KCEC) proposed hydrogen facility will be located. He sent La Jicarita the transcript, which I read and am reporting on in this article. The EPA provided detailed information that I can’t adequately cover in this article, so I’ve focused on the agency’s relationship with Chevron, the company responsible for the clean-up at its former molybdenum mine, and how that may affect the proposed hydrogen facility. Kudos for Robin for recording almost all the community meetings held to discuss this controversial proposal.

Representatives of the EPA (Region 6 based in Dallas), the New Mexico Environment Department (NMED), and New Mexico Minerals and Natural Resource Department introduced themselves and after their presentation on the Chevron Superfund site agreed to take questions. They explained how a situation becomes a Superfund site, when an assessment that contamination is present then leads to what type of contaminants are present and what options are available to clean up that site. Those options are ranked and then a NEPA-like process ensues with a proposed plan presented for public comment. An ROD (Record of Decision) is then released. The Chevron Questa ROD was filed in December of 2010. The Chevron molybdenum facility closed down in 2014.

What followed was a detailed explanation of the risk assessment period that tries to identify risks to human health and the environment at the Superfund site. There was also a lengthy presentation by a representative from the Department of Health who stated that the Town of Questa municipal water system has to meet federal drinking water standards but there is the possibility of future private wells being contaminated. People can request tests of their wells that would provide updated information to the state.

An EPA representative went through the cleanup activities that are being overseen by that agency. The site was divided into five different areas to address the remedy for each one, whether it be the groundwater or the soil that have contamination. The first area was the mill, where the PCB contaminated mining material was removed. At the mine site, there are 300 million tons of waste rock material. These piles of rock were regraded to a slope that’s stable and doesn’t potentially have the ability to move should there be an earthquake or other types of activity. They are then revegetated. Seepage interceptor systems are in place to rout the water away from the waste rock material. There are also groundwater extraction systems, located inside the mine area that handle the water that’s in the underground workings. At the tailings facility the ROD calls for the material to be covered and revegetated. There are also provisions for seepage collection and groundwater extraction. She then discussed what has already been achieved in the clean-up up process, what is next on the agenda, and the various agreements that Chevron has agreed to.

Finally, there was an announcement that a public meeting for the issuance of the Chevron Questa National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit will be held at the VFW in Cerro on July the 23rd.

Public comment then ensued and the moderator quickly got to the heart of the matter with this statement: “ . . . okay, I hear you, are we shilling for Chevron?” People wanted clarification on the EPA’s relationship with Chevron, and who was responsible for the clean-up. The moderator explained that the EPA doesn’t use taxpayer dollars on a clean-up when they have a responsible party “that made the mess and can afford to clean it up.” The EPA does oversee some Superfund sites that break the terms of settlement agreements, but so far, Chevron has been cooperating.

This raised the issue that if KCEC) disturbs the tailings area where the hydrogen facility is proposed, will it be the responsible party. Under the consent decree Chevron is required to provide the EPA with a 60-day notice of intent to lease or sell any land on the Superfund site. There are deed restrictions placed on the property that includes the clause that if the new owner or lessee encounters tailing material on that property, they are to immediately notify Chevron of that. They also have to notify the state and the EPA to further investigate those areas.

A member of the audience then asked if the agencies knew that the Village of Questa had rezoned the tailings area for heavy industrial use. The representative responded that the ROD lists the use as light industrial. She went on, “We don’t have a lot of power over the hydrogen plant unless it messes with our remedy at the tailings facility. And if we find out it’s going to mess with the remedy, EPA has a lot of power.” She made it clear that KCEC never notified the EPA Superfund that it was going to construct the facility and that they have no record that it will occur on the tailing facility. The solar array is not on an actual tailing site, but people asked about dust from the tailings that could blow onto those acres. The EPA position is that it’s not harmful for people to breath that dust.

The NMED is going to investigate whether there are any permits for the solar array that’s currently under construction. They’re now looking to see if in fact Kit Carson has applied for necessary construction permits that are covered under the construction general permit. If someone is disturbing an acre or more, they’re required to submit a notice of intent for coverage under the construction general permit. As a part of the permit, they have to provide a stormwater pollution prevention plan and they have to identify any type of critical species that are identified. EPA will coordinate with NMED on this.

The transcript of this presentation will eventually be on the Chevron Questions website.

 

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By Mariah Meek, Michigan State University and Karrigan Börk, University of California, Davis

It wouldn’t make much sense to prohibit people from shooting a threatened woodpecker while allowing its forest to be cut down, or to bar killing endangered salmon while allowing a dam to dry out their habitat.

But that’s what the Trump administration is doing by changing how one word in the Endangered Species Act is interpreted: harm.

For 50 years, the U.S. government has interpreted the Endangered Species Act as protecting threatened and endangered species from actions that either directly kill them or eliminate their habitat. A new federal rule change, announced July 10, 2026, keeps the first part – protecting against the direct killing of the species – but removes habitat destruction.

That matters, because most species on the brink of extinction are on the Endangered Species list because there is almost no place left for them to live. Their habitats have been paved over, burned or transformed. Habitat protection is essential for their survival.

Green sea turtles, like this hatchling in Florida, are endangered due in part to habitat destruction and fishing nets. Keenan Adams/USFWS

As an ecologist and a law professor, we have spent our entire careers working to understand the law and science of helping imperiled species thrive. We recognize that the rule change could green-light the destruction of protected species’ habitats, making it nearly impossible to protect those endangered species.

The Legal Gambit

The Endangered Species Act, passed in 1973, bans the “take” of “any endangered species of fish or wildlife,” which includes harming protected species.

Since 1975, regulations have defined “harm” to include habitat destruction that kills or injures wildlife. Developers and logging interests challenged that definition in 1995 in a Supreme Court case, Babbitt v. Sweet Home Chapter of Communities for a Great Oregon. However, the court ruled that the definition was reasonable and allowed federal agencies to continue using it.

In short, the law says “take” includes harm, and under the regulatory definition at the time, harm included indirect harm through habitat destruction.

The Trump administration has now changed the definition of “harm” in a way that leaves out habitat modification.

Critical habitat throughout the U.S., including many coastlines and mountain areas. Note: Alaska is not to scale. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

This narrowed definition unravels the most significant protections granted by the Endangered Species Act.

Why Habitat Protection Matters

Habitat protection is the single most important factor in the recovery of endangered species in the United States – far more consequential than curbing direct killing alone.

A 2019 study examining the reasons species were listed as endangered between 1975 and 2017 found that only 17% were primarily threatened by direct killing, such as hunting or poaching. That 17% includes iconic species such as the red wolf, American crocodile, Florida panther and grizzly bear.

In contrast, a staggering 81% were listed because of habitat loss and degradation. The Chinook salmon, island fox, southwestern willow flycatcher, desert tortoise and likely extinct ivory-billed woodpecker are just a few examples. Globally, a 2022 study found that habitat loss threatened more species than all other causes combined.

As natural landscapes are converted to agriculture or taken over by urban sprawl, logging operations and oil and gas exploration, ecosystems become fragmented and the space that species need to survive and reproduce disappears.

The Catalina Island fox is endemic to Catalina Island. Habitat loss, diseases introduced by domestic dogs, and predators have diminished the population of these small foxes to threatened status. Catalina Island Conservancy/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA

Currently, more than 107 million acres of land in the U.S. are designated as critical habitat for Endangered Species Act-listed species. Industries and developers have called for changes to the rules for years, arguing it has been weaponized to stop development. However, research shows species worldwide are facing an unprecedented threat from human activities that destroy natural habitat.

Under the new change, development could be accelerated in endangered species’ habitats.

Gutting the Endangered Species Act

The definition change is a quiet way to gut the Endangered Species Act.

It is also fundamentally incompatible with the purpose Congress wrote into the act: “to provide a means whereby the ecosystems upon which endangered species and threatened species depend may be conserved [and] to provide a program for the conservation of such endangered species and threatened species.” It contradicts the Supreme Court precedent, and it would destroy the act’s habitat protections.

The golden-cheeked warbler breeds only in Texas, primarily in Texas Hill Country. It has been losing habitat as development expands in the region. Steve Maslowski/USFWS, CC BY

Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum has argued that the recent “de-extinction” of dire wolves by changing 14 genes in the gray wolf genome means that America need not worry about species protection because technology “can help forge a future where populations are never at risk.”

But altering an existing species to look like an extinct one is both wildly expensive and a paltry substitute for protecting existing species.

The administration has also didn’t conduct the usual analysis of the environmental impact that changing the definition could have. That means the American people won’t even know the significance of this change to threatened and endangered species until it’s too late, though wildlife groups are already planning to sue over the change.

The ESA is Saving Species

Surveys have found the Endangered Species Act is popular with the public, including Republicans. The Center for Biological Diversity estimates that the Endangered Species Act has saved 99% of protected species from extinction since it was created, not just from bullets but also from bulldozers. This regulatory rollback seeks to undermine the law’s greatest strength: protecting the habitats species need to survive.

Congress knew the importance of habitat when it passed the law, and it wrote a definition of “take” that allows the agencies to protect it.

This is an update to an article originally published May 13, 2025.

Mariah Meek, Associate Professor of Integrative Biology, Michigan State University and Karrigan Börk, Professor of Law, University of California, Davis

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The post Harm: How Redefining One Word Strips the Endangered Species Act’s Ability to Protect Vital Habitat appeared first on The Revelator.