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An Arizona tour company is suing the Trump administration over higher national park fees for people who don’t live in the United States, arguing the policy goes beyond the administration’s legal authority.

Under the Trump administration’s policy, nonresidents are charged an additional $100 per person at some of the nation’s most-visited national parks, and nonresident annual passes now cost $250, compared with $80 for residents. Across Arizona Tours says that the Interior department never had the authority to set the fees, and that only Congress can authorize federal fees.

The tour company is represented by the Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF), a libertarian law firm that focuses on property rights and limiting federal regulatory power. PLF has historically been on the opposing side of conservation groups, like in Sackett v. EPA (2023), which sharply narrowed Clean Water Act protections for wetlands.

Across Arizona Tours’ Carole Stapleton spoke with 80 to 90 potential customers who didn’t book a tour. Many of them cited the higher fees.

Businesses near the Grand Canyon warned about this before the fee took effect in January. About 14 percent of the park’s nearly 5 million annual visitors come from abroad. Last December, Julie Aldaz, general manager of the Red Feather Lodge in Tusayan, said business was already down 15 to 18 percent.

An Interior spokesperson told The Hill that foreign tourists “are paying higher entrance fees to help maintain our parks and improve visitor experiences.” But the surcharge brought in $22.5 million in the first half of 2026. Over roughly the same period, the administration moved at least $90 million in park fee revenue to Washington, D.C., for July 4 fireworks and President Donald Trump’s beautification projects.

Quick hits Opinion: Protecting our water means prioritizing local voices

Colorado Newsline

Billionaires in the wilderness

Mountain Journal

The Forest Service is poised to hand off one of the West’s most visited landscapes

High Country News

Arizona tour company sues over Trump’s nonresident fee at national parks

The Hill | SFGATE | Arizona’s Family

Nevada officials fight to protect public lands from unchecked tech development

Las Vegas Sun

Feds order Colorado coal plant open for another 3 months

Colorado Sun

Research on New Mexico’s Petroglyphs among park projects cut by Trump administration

Santa Fe New Mexican

Developer’s latest hydropower proposal on Navajo Nation draws scrutiny

KNAU

Quote of the day

It’s a myth that in order to make money, you have to trash the environment or that if you protect the environment, it’s going to cost our nation in lost economic productivity.”

—The late businessman and conservationist Ted Turner, speaking with Mountain Outlaw in 2017, Mountain Journal

Picture This @katmainpp

We have a new fat Bear Champ! Bear 89 nicknamed “Backpack”

As Fat Bear Week comes to a close, we’re celebrating more than crowned champions and epic bear glow‑ups, we’re celebrating all of you!

Your votes, your posts, your favorite bear campaigns, and your shared love for Katmai’s wild places turned this week into a collective story shaped by thousands of voices. It’s a reminder that just like America’s 250th anniversary, traditions endure because people keep them alive.

This year, we honored resilience in our bears and in our nation, recognizing the landscapes, communities, and shared stories that connect us. Thanks for being part of the journey. Until next year, enjoy the bears, salmon, and human connection that keeps Katmai’s ecosystems alive.

Photo and graphics courtesy of Explore.org and Sara Wolman

 

(Featured image: Tourists at Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona. Photo by Marek Slusarczyk, Wikimedia Commons)

The post Arizona tour company sues Trump admin over nonresident park fees appeared first on Center for Western Priorities.

The Republican-controlled Senate will soon formally announce a legislative “permitting reform” deal to speed the development of AI data centers and energy infrastructure. We expect the Senate will then rush through a vote in the lame duck session immediately after the midterm elections, sending the bill to the Republican-controlled House of Representatives before a new Congress is seated in January 2027. While the text of the bill has not yet been released, credible intelligence suggests that the bill, if passed, would prove to be the largest rollback of environmental and public health protections in U.S. history, weakening the Clean Water Act, Endangered Species Act, National Environmental Policy Act, and more.

The bill would erode state and Tribal authority provided by the Clean Water Act to review and certify federal permits to protect that state or Tribe’s water resources. The bill would also hand developers new exemptions from Clean Water Act permitting for natural gas pipelines and other infrastructure. These provisions would compound the Trump administration’s own deregulatory attacks on the fundamental law  and the Supreme Court’s disastrous 2023 Sackett v. EPA decision, which radically scaled back the Clean Water Act’s jurisdictional scope. In New Mexico, this resulted in the loss of federal protections to upward of 96% of the state’s rivers, streams, lakes, and wetlands.

The deal would also weaken Americans’ right to participate in federal planning and decision-making processes, setting the pace of permitting based on developer interests, rather than those of the community. Worse, the deal would weaken the public’s ability to seek justice in federal court when their interests are threatened or harmed, tilting the scales in favor of development interests. Adding salt to the wound, the bill would even create a new cause of action for AI hyperscalers, fossil fuels, and other development interests to challenge legal, regulatory, and other requirements that they deem treat them “unfairly.”

While proponents justify the deal on the basis it will prevent the Trump administration’s obstruction of renewable energy projects, the legislation would do no such thing. Instead, it is predicated on a promise by President Trump that he will merely “ease” his obstruction, based on reporting, of only 30 out of 300 renewables projects. Given the administration’s chronic pattern of lies, deceptions, and broken promises, that so-called “win” is illusory.

Interests promoting the bill also claim it will set the stage for future presidents, once Trump is removed from office or his term ends, to accelerate the buildout of renewable energy infrastructure by providing developers with permitting “certainty” and “parity.” A close read of relevant “certainty” and “parity”  legislation introduced into Congress over the past year demonstrates that this is not the case and that the deal would instead hobble future presidents, handing the keys for the country’s energy future over to developers and erecting barriers in the way of climate, conservation, and environmental justice action that seeks to address the harms caused by AI data centers and fossil fuel infrastructure.

The permitting deal’s provisions risk grave, irreparable harm to the western U.S., and not just relative to clean water. More than 45 million acres of pristine roadless lands in national forests across 36 states and Puerto Rico, the entire 245 million acre public lands system managed by the Bureau of Land Management, and beloved landscapes such as Greater Chaco in New Mexico are all at risk. In all three cases, the Trump administration is actively rescinding critical conservation and community protections, again with the intent to commodify and exploit these public lands for fossil fuel and other resource extraction and again, for AI data centers. Once these protections are rescinded by the Trump administration, the permitting deal would drastically accelerate the exploitation of these public lands.

The plague of data centers across the U.S. is of particular concern, with more than 2,000 planned that would consume more than 387,000 megawatts of electricity. Critically, the Trump administration is now actively siting AI data centers on public lands in multiple states, including Arizona, Idaho, Nevada, Oregon, and Wyoming, and these efforts will only intensify in the coming months.

“The permitting deal is a betrayal of public lands, water and wildlife, and environmental justice values that Westerners depend on for clean air and water, places to hike, hunt, and fish, and the inestimable sense of freedom the West provides us all,” said Erik Schlenker-Goodrich, executive director of the Western Environmental Law Center based in New Mexico. “Sen. Heinrich has built a name for himself as a champion of these values, but credible intelligence indicates he is poised to hand the Trump administration a major political win that erases that legacy in service of AI hyperscaler, energy, and finance lobbyists. We hope this is not the case. But there is an acute risk he is making a strategic mistake that will hobble the ability of future administrations to enact an ambitious climate and conservation agenda. We desperately need action that opens new doors to a thriving, prosperous world that respects Westerners’ values, not bills like this that bulldoze us and our way of life.”

In this full context, the Western Environmental Law Center urges Congress to do the following:

• Do not betray progressive climate, conservation, and environmental justice values essential to Westerners.
• Build policy ideas that respect people and place and transparently assess, rather than bulldoze over, the tradeoffs between climate and conservation action and infrastructure development.
• Move a standalone grid modernization, transmission bill in the 120th Congress.
• Support state-level climate action action and embrace federal-level strategic patience.
• Develop policy reforms that will create strong, mission-driven federal agencies that serve the public interest—not corporate technology, energy, and finance interests.

“Congress cannot legislate its way out of the multiple crises we face and serve the public by surrendering to AI hyperscaler, fossil fuel, and finance interests,” said Schlenker-Goodrich. “But it can exhibit strategic patience and methodically build power for change with people and communities that can be leveraged once a new Congress is seated in January 2027. That empowers us to fight our way out of the ruins of the Trump administration, together. Making a deal with the devil fails the American people here.”

Contact:

Erik Schlenker-Goodrich, Western Environmental Law Center, 575-751-0351, eriksg@westernlaw.org

The post Five-alarm fire: Radical Senate ‘permitting reform’ bill threatens to eviscerate environmental, wildlife, water, climate laws appeared first on Western Environmental Law Center.

This is an in-person event if something of interest. Ticket details are here:
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/suing-shell-what-it-takes-to-hold-a-polluter-to-account-tickets-200048499747

byPrimrose Hill Lecture Series Part of the Primrose Hill Lecture Series 2026 collection Church of St Mary the virgin Primrose HillLondon, Greater London Wednesday 30 September  •  7 PM – 9 PM Overview

Environmental lawyer Dan Leader in conversation with author & journalist Steve Crawshaw

Suing Shell: What It Takes to Hold a Polluter to Account 7pm, Wednesday 30th September

Environmental lawyer Dan Leader in conversation with author & journalist Steve Crawshaw

Q: WHAT HAPPENS, when ordinary people demand that one of Britain’s largest companies, Royal Dutch Shell, cleans up its pollution?

A: For most of corporate history, the answer has been: very little.

Dan Leader, leading environmental and human rights lawyer, has spent a decade trying to change that, representing more than 13,000 African farmers and fishing communities whose lives have been devastated by oil spills, and taking Shell all the way to the UK Supreme Court.

The full trial for remedy and justice begins next year, in a David and Goliath battle whose ending is not yet written – one that could reshape what polluters owe the communities and the climate they harm. It is one of the most important environmental cases of our time.

Dan will be in conversation with author, journalist and human rights advocate Steve Crawshaw, whose acclaimed new book Prosecuting the Powerful asks the question at the heart of this conversation: can the law reach those who believe themselves untouchable?

The lecture forms part of St Mary’s programme for Creationtide, the Church’s annual season of prayer and action for the environment, and marks a step in our journey towards a bronze Eco Church award.

____________

This lecture begins at 7pm. Doors and Bar will be open from 6.30pm.

St. Mary the Virgin Primrose Hill is an Anglican church in the liberal catholic tradition. Founded in 1872 it is now celebrating its 150th anniversary. St. Mary’s has a long and proud history of supporting some of the most vulnerable in society. Part of this is running the winter homeless shelter partnered with Camden Camden Community Cold Weather Shelter (C4WS), and is proud to provide a home to the Mary’syouthwork charity which provides practical care and help to local young people at risk.

Funds go to aid St Mary’s Church – a vital base for community the and local outreach services for vulnerable people.

Tickets

Single ticket (in-person attendance): £5

_______________________________________________

Booking Fee: All bookings are subject to a small booking fee which goes to Eventbrite, which provides us with this convenient online booking service.

Ticket Availability: Ticket sales will be available online until 4pm on the day of the lecture and after that, on the door, subject to availability. Online ticket sales will be available to purchase until 6pm on the date of the event.

For info contact the Parish Office by contacting 020 7722 3238 or by emailing office@smvph.org.uk

In the event of a SOLD OUT situation, we will run a returns waiting list and tickets will be offered on a first come basis, as they become available.

Refund Policy: We allow refunds up to one day before the event . In the event of a postponement or cancellation of the date (decided by the organisers) a refund or transfer to new date will be offered. On sold-out events, we may be able to accept refunds after this time if we have a waiting list for people awaiting return.

Suing Shell: What It Takes to Hold a Polluter to Account was first posted on September 30, 2026 at 3:59 pm.
©2018 "Royal Dutch Shell Plc .com". Use of this feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this article in your feed reader, then the site is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact me at john@shellnews.net

Contact: kayla@unbendablemedia.com, Climate Justice Alliance / ashley.sullivan@weact.org, WE ACT for Environmental Justice/ Edderdiazmartinez@greenlatinos.org, GreenLatinos/ sweeney@westernlaw.org, Western Environmental Law Center/ Jordan@ienearth.org, Indigenous Environmental Network

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, Climate Justice Alliance, GreenLatinos, Indigenous Environmental Network, WE ACT for Environmental Justice, and Western Environmental Law Center led a broad coalition of national organizations representing thousands of frontline, environmental justice, and Indigenous communities across the U.S. to oppose a dangerous deregulatory permitting reform proposal, disingenuously titled the ‘Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act’, currently being negotiated in Congress. We share a deep frustration and outrage over this sidelining effort which shows continued disregard for communities who have spent years demanding policies that protect their health, rights, neighborhoods, and pocketbooks, while also benefitting the larger public good. 

We issued the following joint statement:

We cannot allow the lies to continue, as the facts are clear: If this backroom permitting reform deal is pushed through, it will enable a no-guardrails buildout of dangerous projects that will harm our health and environment, drive up energy costs, and violate our rights. This will be especially harmful for communities of color and lower income neighborhoods already overburdened by pollution and climate impacts. Indigenous Peoples, Black, Latinx, Asian Pacific Islander, and working class white communities disproportionately live near fossil fuel infrastructure and endure greater climate impacts due to a legacy of prejudicial redlining practices. Legislation like this claims to advance clean energy, but will only lock in more fossil fuel projects for decades to come, continuing the immoral and damaging practice of using vulnerable communities as sacrifice zones. 

Environmental justice communities are sick and tired of being left out of conversations that impact them most, and yet this deal was negotiated in the dark and follows years of similar bad faith legislation communities successfully opposed (e.g. SPEED Act, EPRA). At a time when we need strong leadership to defend our rights from an administration putting polluter profits over our lives, we instead get another effort to remove accountability and democratic processes that give industry a free pass to harm. As energy demand grows, especially from rapidly expanding hyperscale data centers, Congress must not accelerate detrimental infrastructure buildout by shifting its costs, consequences, and risks onto the rest of us.

Communities have already shared practical and evidence-based policy solutions for building clean energy while safeguarding our rights, health, environment, and democratic participation, including:

1. Investing in federal agency capacity through funding and training to build expertise on clean energy development and community engagement; 
2. Embedding early and meaningful community engagement into permitting processes; 
3. Establishing robust environmental and public health analysis that includes cumulative impacts; 
4. Addressing transmission barriers acceleration directly rather than weakening environmental review; and
5. Increasing transparency via publicly accessible information on permitting status, project details, environmental and public health impacts. 

These recommendations are shaped by successful project examples, literature review, and expertise demonstrated in the NEPA Does Not Delay StoryMap report, and are core aspects of the community-informed A. Donald McEachin Environmental Justice for All Act. 

This permitting reform proposal cannot be separated from the broader rollback of environmental and public health protections, as well as democratic rights under attack by the Trump administration. If passed, this package would further limit communities’ ability to protect themselves from harmful projects by completely gutting the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and Endangered Species Act, among other bedrock environmental laws. In addition to being a climate-killer, this bill would leave Tribal lands, sacred sites, and historical and cultural items at risk of permanent destruction by restructuring and undermining the government-to-government consultation process under section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act. 

Our coalition of environmental justice leaders and advocates across the environmental, conservation, public-health, climate, and energy movements and our partners will continue to oppose deregulatory permitting proposals that put corporate interests ahead of communities, and will advance solutions that deliver clean, affordable energy while protecting our health, democratic rights, and our shared environment.

COALITION QUOTES

Mar Zepeda Salazar, legislative director at Climate Justice Alliance: “Six years, the same message from frontline communities: listen to us, protect our health, and build solutions with us. Instead, each version of this backroom deal gets worse, and now, rather than listening to their own constituents, politicians are trying to force through legislation that will allow data centers to explode at an even faster pace, even as families across the political spectrum are saying enough is enough. Announcing a deal before the public can even see the bill is simply undemocratic. They may call it affordability, but affordable for whom and at what cost? You don’t make energy cheaper by sacrificing our health, our neighborhoods, and our children’s future. We’ve offered common-sense solutions. We’ve helped craft better policy. And once again, communities are being sidelined for industry gain under the very risky assumption that we won’t make our voices heard at the ballot box.”

Irene Burga, Climate Justice & Clean Air Director, GreenLatinos: “Frontline communities should not have to sacrifice their health, their voices, or their rights in the name of faster permitting. Latino communities already bear disproportionate pollution from highways, oil and gas operations, warehouses, ports, and other industrial facilities. Weakening environmental review and public participation will only make it easier to pile new harms onto communities already carrying far too much. Congress should be strengthening the protections communities rely on — not bargaining them away.” 

Leslie Fields, Chief Federal Officer at WE ACT for Environmental Justice: “Here we go again, with the low down dirty deal of permitting reform redux. We must break the cycle of sacrificing vulnerable communities of color and lower income neighborhoods through deregulatory permitting reform. This proposal, like those before it, does not appropriately account for the burdens it will impose on communities, while vastly overstating the clean energy benefits it will achieve. It will instead further condemn communities of color and low income communities to even more environmental, health, and economic degradation. The dual climate and public health crises demand urgent energy policies that advance an affordable and fair clean energy future through processes that actually protect and support communities.”

Erik Schlenker-Goodrich, executive director of the Western Environmental Law Center based in New Mexico: “The permitting deal is a betrayal of public lands, water and wildlife, and environmental justice values. Senator Heinrich has built a name for himself as a champion of these values, but he is poised to sweep aside that legacy in service of AI hyperscaler, energy, and finance lobbyists. This deal will also hand the Trump administration a major political win that will hobble the ability of future administrations to put in place an ambitious climate agenda that opens new doors to a thriving, prosperous world that respects—and does not, as this deal would do, bulldoze over—people and place.”

Jordan Harmon, Policy Specialist at Indigenous Environmental Network: “Indigenous Peoples deserve better than being treated as a negotiation pawn in backroom permitting deals. Any member of Congress who would vote to destroy the Tribal consultation process and violate the Treaty and trust obligations is no climate defender and no ally to Tribes.”

###

More detailed information and resources about permitting reform follows:

Permitting reform: myths vs facts
Permitting reform and communities fact sheet
CJA July 20th bicameral letter on permitting
Post about NEPA/permitting

 

The post Broad Coalition Demands Affordable, Safe Energy, Rejects Polluter-Driven Permitting Reform appeared first on Climate Justice Alliance.

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The UK has avoided the need for gas imports worth £5.9bn since the start of the Hormuz crisis as a result of record electricity generation from wind and solar, reveals Carbon Brief analysis.

While gas prices are surging towards levels not seen since the 2022 energy crisis, the UK has been generating record amounts of power from wind and solar, up 14% year-on-year.

This unprecedented clean-power generation is directly cutting the need for gas-fired electricity, which is down by nearly 10% year-on-year in 2026 to date.

In total, wind and solar have generated a record 41% share of the UK’s electricity needs in 2026 to date, compared with 25% from gas, according to Carbon Brief’s analysis.

The figure below shows that wind and solar generation has avoided the need for UK gas imports worth a total of £5.9bn since the outbreak of war between the US and Iran in February 2026.

The analysis shows that these avoided gas imports would have required the UK to secure the equivalent of more than 100 additional tanker deliveries of liquefied natural gas (LNG).

The £1.3bn import saving in September 2026 to date is the result of record wind and solar output, at nearly 10 terawatt hours (TWh), combined with surging gas prices.

Wholesale gas prices in the UK have remained elevated ever since Russia cut off supplies to Europe in the wake of its invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Gas averaged 90p per therm from 2023 until the start of this year, roughly three times above 2019 prices, before the Covid and Ukraine crises.

Since the outbreak of war in the Middle East in March, gas prices have climbed higher still, averaging 134p per therm or nearly four times the level seen in 2019.

In September 2026 to date, gas prices have averaged 189p per therm, reaching their highest level since the global energy crisis in 2022, as shown in the figure below.

UK gas prices are spiking again because winter is approaching – meaning higher demand for heating – and there is no end in sight for the Hormuz crisis.

At the same time, European gas stocks are low. This means Europe will have to compete with Asia to secure the cargoes of LNG needed to keep warm.

In the UK, high wholesale gas prices are hitting household gas bills under the price cap set by energy regulator Ofgem – but thanks to clean energy, electricity bills have barely increased.

From this Thursday, 1 October, typical household gas bills will be 33% higher than they were in April, some £200 per year, according to thinktank Nesta.

In contrast, household electricity bills will only have risen 4%, according to Nesta’s analysis.

Andrew Sissons, director for sustainable future at Nesta, explained in a social media post that “the link between electricity and gas prices has already begun to break”.

The UK and other fossil-fuel importing nations are being hit not only by high gas prices, but also by high prices for oil, diesel and other refined fuels. The EU has reportedly had to pay an extra €100bn for fossil-fuel imports since the start of the crisis.

For example, UK diesel prices this week hit record levels of nearly £2 per litre. In contrast, recent Carbon Brief analysis shows that electric cars are up to nine times cheaper to drive.

In her speech to the Labour party conference this week, energy secretary Miatta Fahnbulleh said that energy bills were high because the UK is “exposed to global fossil-fuel markets”.

In his own conference speech, prime minister Andy Burnham said the expansion of clean energy was easing the impact of high gas prices on electricity bills. He said:

“We are already taking more control of our electricity prices with a massive expansion of home-grown renewables and nuclear. I have asked Miatta to speed up the breaking of the link between what we pay for power at home and the international gas market, to get bills down.”

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The post Analysis: Wind and solar save UK from gas imports worth £5.9bn during Hormuz crisis appeared first on Carbon Brief.

Too many Australian households are being locked into high energy use, high bills and uncomfortable living, a new policy scorecard has revealed – but some states and territories are much worse than others.

The post Dismal energy efficiency policy is costing Australian households dearly – in some states more than others appeared first on Renew Economy.

PJM had planned to accept offers for backstop power supplies from Sept. 30 through Oct. 21 after falling short of its reserve margin targets amid aggressive data center load growth. But FERC only partially approved its plan, zeroing in on cost allocation concerns.

We invite you to watch these videos of "Radical Visions Reconnecting Academia and Nature: A Community Truth, Reckoning and Right Relationship" from a two-day event in March 2026.

The post Radical Visions Reconnecting Academia and Nature: A Community Truth, Reckoning and Right Relationship appeared first on CELDF - Community Rights Pioneers - Protecting Nature and Communities.

Bee U NYC is using urban beekeeping to teach young people about food systems, biodiversity, and environmental careers, while fostering the next generation of pollinator stewards.

Bees, along with other pollinators, help reproduce 35 percent of the world’s food crops and nearly 75 percent of flowering plants, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. But the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service reports that pollinators are under growing pressure from habitat loss, the climate crisis, pests, and pesticides. Bee U is raising awareness of these issues while supporting the broader ecosystem around pollinator research.

“Many young New Yorkers have limited opportunities to learn directly about pollination, biodiversity, urban agriculture, or where their food comes from,” André Ware, Executive Director and Co-Founder of Bee U NYC, tells Food Tank. “Through beekeeping, participants begin to see the connections among pollinators, plants, climate, food production, neighborhood green spaces, and environmental justice.”

The organization’s paid Urban Beekeeping Fellowship teaches young people between the ages of 16 and 24 how to manage hives, identify pollinators, understand bee biology, and explore careers in sustainability and agriculture. This year, Bee U NYC accepted 46 Fellows, its largest class to date. Since 2021, nearly 100 young people have completed the program.

“We believe that a more sustainable food system requires a more inclusive workforce,” Ware says. “It is not enough to teach young people about environmental challenges. They need paid opportunities to build skills, develop professional networks, and imagine themselves as future environmental leaders and scientists.”

The program also builds community partnerships. Fellows learn in local community gardens, urban farms, cultural institutions, and neighborhood organizations instead of traditional classrooms. These experiences connect pollinator health with food production, environmental justice, and local history.

The organization’s work comes at a time when public investment in agricultural research faces growing uncertainty. Following the closure of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s century-old Beltsville Bee Lab, food systems researchers like Dr. Jennie Durant, a food systems researcher at UC Davis and former USDA fellow, warned that the loss of research capacity and technical expertise could weaken support for farmers and reduce crop yields over time.

Programs like Bee U NYC can translate science into action by educating future beekeepers, supporting pollinator stewardship, and building stronger connections between communities, the environment, and local food systems. Their work helps ensure that research does not stay in laboratories but reaches the people who will shape the future of agriculture.

Ware says pollinator education must extend beyond honeybees. “Supporting pollinator health also means understanding the science behind native pollinators, planting diverse forage, harmful pesticide practices, and managing urban hives responsibly,” he tells Food Tank.

As bee populations continue to face new challenges like rising temperatures and loss of habitat, Bee U believes that education may become one of the most valuable conservation tools.

Articles like the one you just read are made possible through the generosity of Food Tank members. Can we please count on you to be part of our growing movement? Become a member today by clicking here.

Photo courtesy of Bee U

The post Bee U: Urban Beekeeping Protecting Our Food Supply appeared first on Food Tank.

August and September passed without a single Atlantic hurricane, thanks in part to a powerful El Niño. Forecasters are now raising the prospect that the season could conclude with zero Atlantic hurricanes.

Read more on E360 →

In Brazil, the plastic crisis isn’t limited to the streets, landfills, or recycling cooperatives. It also extends to the courts, legislative assemblies, and decision-making forums that determine who bears the costs of pollution and who participates in the solutions.

Since 2017, the Institute of Collective Law (IDC) has been working to ensure that the rights recognized in Brazilian law do not remain merely on paper. Its strategy combines legal counsel, strategic litigation, research, and institutional advocacy, based on one premise: the problems affecting communities require collective responses.

“The IDC was founded at a time when Brazil was undergoing a profound political and administrative crisis. There was a great deal of important legislation that remained on paper and was not implemented,” explains Tatiana Bastos, president of the organization. In that context, a group of legal experts and allies decided that defending constitutional rights required coordinated action.

Nearly a decade later, the Institute has established itself as a national, multidisciplinary, nonprofit organization based in Rio de Janeiro. Its network brings together more than 150 partner organizations in nine Brazilian states and the Federal District, including waste picker cooperatives, rights advocacy groups, communities, and social collectives.

Its work is structured around three pillars—democracy, inclusion, and the environment—and, within the latter, plastic pollution is taking on an increasingly prominent role.

Plastic Is Also a Matter of Social Justice

For Direito Coletivo, the plastic crisis cannot be addressed solely as a pollution problem. Its consequences are distributed unevenly and particularly affect those working at the bottom of the waste management chain.

Waste picker cooperatives face the consequences of a system that puts large quantities of packaging on the market without ensuring that it can be recovered or sold. Materials that fail to find buyers end up becoming waste, imposing economic and labor costs on those who sort them.

“For us, the fight against plastic isn’t just an environmental cause—it’s also a social justice cause,” says Bastos. “Much of the burden of poor plastic management falls on those who work directly with recycling: the recycling cooperatives.”

This perspective guides the “Less Plastic, More Justice” project, which seeks to hold manufacturers accountable and defend the rights of recycling workers. One of the pillars of the project was the study “Recyclers for Less Plastic,” conducted in partnership with Fluminense Federal University (UFF), GAIA, and Break Free From Plastic (BFFP). The study found that plastics with low recyclability could account for between 45% and 64% of the rejected waste analyzed at the participating cooperatives.

Although some of these containers are marketed as recyclable, in practice there is no market or economic viability for their recovery. The study estimated monthly losses of between 1,200 and 3,700 reais (approximately 235 and 725 USD) per cooperative, in addition to up to 15 hours of work per month spent sorting materials that are ultimately discarded.

The data made it possible to move from research to action. The IDC used the evidence to support a public civil action aimed at holding the companies that produce this packaging accountable and brought the debate to the Rio de Janeiro Legislative Assembly. “It was a rare case in which we managed to close the loop: technical research, institutional advocacy, and legal action, with waste pickers at the center of the strategy,” notes Bastos.

This experience encapsulates one of the organization’s core commitments: generating knowledge that can be transformed into legal and policy tools while ensuring the participation of those most affected by the crisis.

Incineration: Another Battleground

Waste management has opened up another area of work for the Institute: the expansion of incineration projects, including those presented under concepts such as waste-to-energy or energy recovery.

Bastos explains that these projects are moving forward in various Brazilian states despite the socio-environmental impacts highlighted by organizations, including emissions of toxic pollutants and the potential disincentive to material recovery.

Among the cases he mentions are the Barueri plant in São Paulo, touted as Latin America’s first waste-to-energy facility, and a similar project in Rio de Janeiro that, as she explained, was in the licensing phase.

In light of these processes, the IDC identified a problem that transcends the specific characteristics of each project: the lack of coordination between lawyers and the organizations working on the ground. “Legal action against these projects was highly fragmented: lawyers, social movements, and local organizations were working in isolation, without access to legal precedents, court documents, or shared strategies,” explains Bastos.

To address this challenge, the organization created a working group for legal advice and coordination that connects lawyers from different regions of Brazil. The initiative includes regular meetings, the exchange of experiences, a shared database of case law and technical documents, as well as templates for legal instruments that can be adapted to the needs of each region. The goal is to strengthen local capacities and prevent each community from having to start from scratch when facing an incineration project.

A Network to Expand Local Struggles

The IDC’s growth is also reflected in its network. According to data shared by Bastos, the organization went from 100 partner organizations in 2023 to 124 in 2024 and 151 in 2025.

For an organization dedicated to strategic litigation and the defense of collective rights, expanding the network allows it to conduct assessments and provide legal support to cooperatives, Quilombola communities, and collectives in different regions of the country. “None of these cases moves forward in isolation; they all rely on networking,” says Bastos.

This logic also explains the Institute’s participation in BFFP. For the IDC, being part of an international movement provides access to research, facilitates the exchange of strategies, and connects the experiences of local organizations with a global agenda.

The collaboration with GAIA and BFFP, in particular, has helped advance research on recyclability and corporate responsibility, as well as broaden the dissemination of its findings. “Participating in BFFP is very important for the IDC because of the access to technical expertise that this network provides,” says Bastos. “Organizations from different countries produce top-tier research and evidence on the plastic crisis, which directly strengthens our own legal and advocacy work in Brazil.”

International coordination also makes it possible to connect local problems with dynamics that transcend borders. Cooperatives and communities facing specific problems in a municipality can link their demands to movements in other countries and to companies operating on a global scale.

A Global Treaty That Goes Beyond Paper

For Direito Coletivo, the need for a legally binding global plastics treaty stems from the limitations of current responses. “We need a robust, fair, and legally binding treaty capable of reducing plastic production at its source, rather than merely addressing the problem once it has already become waste,” argues Bastos.

His concern extends beyond the content of international commitments to their implementation. From his perspective, an ambitious treaty requires binding targets, clear timelines, and monitoring mechanisms to ensure compliance.

IDC’s experience in Brazil informs this position. Its work stems precisely from the need to translate rights and commitments into concrete actions, with mechanisms for enforcement and participation.

“The Global Plastics Treaty must move from paper to practice,” says Bastos. “For those of us who work directly with the people suffering the concrete effects of this crisis—such as grassroots recyclers—the urgency lies not only in negotiating a good treaty but also in ensuring that it translates into effective public policies and real accountability on the part of manufacturing companies.”

The Institute’s position thus links international negotiations to the day-to-day challenges faced by cooperatives, communities, and local organizations. A treaty would not be an end in itself, but rather a tool whose effectiveness would depend on its implementation on the ground.

In 2025, the Amazon rainforest shrank by exactly 1.63 million hectares. But nobody can say how much wildlife vanished with it.

This illustrates one of the biggest challenges confronting scientists and others working to stem the loss of biodiversity. While satellites offer a sweeping birds-eye view of the planet, it can seem like ecologists tracking the ebb and flow of species in a place like the Amazon are studying a distant galaxy through a pinhole.

“If a tree has fallen almost anywhere in the world we know it almost in a matter of days. But I can tell you almost nothing about how biodiversity is faring below the canopy,” said Amy Rosenthal, who heads conservation initiatives at Planet Labs, a U.S. company that specializes in producing satellite imagery for various purposes.

But technology has reached the point where scientists and more than two dozen organizations including Planet are betting that they can pierce the forest canopy and create a near real-time view of trends in wildlife across the vast Amazon.

Last week, they announced the project Amazon.ia (the “i.a.” is an acronym for “inteligencia ambiental” or “environmental intelligence”). The plan calls for a network of between 10 and 30 sites across the Amazon, equipped with wildlife-tracking instruments. Their output can then be fed into computer models. Other sites could be added on a temporary basis. The end goal is a high-resolution picture of the state of biodiversity across the region, updated continuously as new data flows in.

While the project is still in its infancy, and observers caution that it may not be able to make good on all of the grand promises, there is also a sense that tools developed in the last decade are now at the point where it’s reasonable to launch such an effort.

“We’ve been talking like ‘Oh, we need to take an ecosystem and just do it,’” said Tanya Berger-Wolf, an Ohio State University computational ecologist who isn’t part of the initiative. “We need to monitor everything everywhere all at once and make sense of it all, often in real time. … This is the holy grail.”

In recent years, scientists have been working to devise ways to improve wildlife monitoring by marrying new tech with powerful artificial intelligence. Data from cheap, durable audio recorders and motion-activated cameras is crunched by computer programs capable of identifying individual species and discerning patterns. Increasingly, automated field labs can collect and sequence wildlife DNA from insect traps. Satellites equipped with hyperspectral imaging can see a broader light spectrum than visible light, enabling researchers to detect things like tree stress brought on by drought. Computer models can combine such data streams with a detailed map of a region’s geography to estimate what’s happening in places well beyond a specific research station.

Some of these new approaches were highlighted in a recent XPrize competition in which competing teams used drones, rapid DNA analysis, audio recorders and other technology to document hundreds of species in a patch of Amazon rainforest in 24 hours.

The new initiative would equip core sites with camera and audio recorders as well as insect traps and links to computers capable of making sense of the data. The organizers include several South American research groups already running field stations that will be among the first to feed into this network, including ones in Peru, Ecuador and Brazil.

The new initiative should help in part by enabling scientists to discern patterns across the entire region, rather than noticing them in one place and wondering what’s happening elsewhere, says Corine Vriesendorp, an ecologist and head of science for the Peruvian organization Conservación Amazónica, which operates a station on the Los Amigos River that’s in the new program.

One example of such blindspots is recent research showing that populations of birds in intact forests at a field station in Ecuador and another in Brazil have decreased. Based on scattered existing data, it’s not clear if it’s part of a broader trend. Nor do scientists know if insect populations – a food source for many of the birds – have also fallen.

Such region-wide insights could also help galvanize political action, she said. “Being able to say something about what’s going on in all of these places will be super important politically and also from a science research perspective.”

It remains to be seen whether Amazon.ia can live up to that hope. The organizers say they need $100 million to run the program for 10 years, with much of the expense in equipment, computers, staffing and training people in the various countries. So far, the group has raised around $20 million, said Rosenthal, with some $14 million of it from the philanthropic Bezos Earth Fund. They have recruited five locations to act as data-collecting points, including the Los Amigos site, leaving between five and 25 to be brought on board.

There are technical limitations that will almost certainly emerge. For instance, acoustic data can currently help scientists know whether a particular bird species has passed nearby. But it’s not very good at telling you how big that bird population is, says Justin Kitzes, a quantitative ecologist at the University of Pittsburgh who specializes in bioacoustics.

Then there is the challenge of producing a reliable, detailed view of things happening across a river basin spanning 7 million square kilometers, roughly the same size as the lower 48 U.S. states combined.

Even with advanced computer models and dozens of observation posts, Kitzes expects efforts to understand how biodiversity is changing across the Amazon will run up against a lack of data. “With 30 stations spread across the Amazon with that type of technology, will you know everything going on in the Amazon? Of course not,” said Kitzes. “Will you know a lot more than you used to? Probably.”

This is the first in a series of monthly columns from Climate Home News Editor Megan Rowling. They are exclusively available to Pro subscribers.

The deadly flash flood that thundered down Nepal’s Bhote Koshi valley a month ago may have been hard to predict given the complexity of monitoring glacial slopes in the high mountains. But it should come as a surprise to no one that such a disaster could happen in a world set to barrel past the 1.5C warming limit governments agreed to in 2015.

I say this with confidence because even before the ink was dry on the Paris Agreement, former colleagues and I were writing extensively about the dangers posed by accelerating glacier melt in the Himalayas. I went back to look at what we covered, often working with local journalists in Pakistan, India and Nepal. It was substantial.

Comment: The response to Nepal’s disaster is a test for global climate institutions

In one story from a conference on climate change and geology, Bill McGuire, a professor who then led the Benfield Hazard Research Centre at University College London, was quoted as saying: “The most likely thing we are going to see soon is an increased level in giant landslides in mountainous terrains, huge collapses, millions of cubic metres of rock.” 

That is precisely what unleashed Nepal’s most recent disaster, some 13 years later.

Other articles zoomed in on internationally funded programmes to prevent glacial lake outburst floods; studies warning of the rising risks to downstream communities; and cross-border efforts (or lack of them) to set up monitoring systems. But information has not led to sufficient action.

Falling behind intensifying impacts

Reporting on climate-related disasters over the past 20 years (it was way back then that UN aid chief John Holmes started referring to extreme weather as the “new normal”) has been a pretty frustrating beat, as things have gotten dramatically worse.

There’s no question that our understanding of the risks has grown hugely – alongside our knowledge of how to protect people and infrastructure in the face of fast-growing threats. 

Yet governments and businesses have dragged their feet on adaptation policies and practical measures, even when confronted with the numbers showing it’s far cheaper to prevent and prepare than to clean up and rebuild after a flood or a storm. This intransigence has left a yawning chasm in the world’s ability to deal with climate change-driven impacts. 

Let’s call it the adaptation accountability gap.

• Sep 23, 2026 News UN Climate Summit: UN chief says world has tools to end fossil fuel age At the UN Secretary-General’s climate summit in New York, countries shared their energy transition plans while Nepal and island nations advocated for more international support Read more
• Sep 24, 2026 News Threatened by rising seas, small islands secure right to keep their statehood Efforts to protect marine ecosystems and coastal communities have risen up the political agenda at the UN General Assembly in New York Read more

These days we see the effects all around us – in hospital emergency rooms where workers and older people struggle with heat exhaustion; in campsites and hotels abandoned by holidaymakers fleeing forest fires; in flooded streets piled high with mud, broken furniture and twisted cars.

The only bright side to the growing climate chaos we’re experiencing is that it’s become practically impossible for politicians and corporate bosses to ignore the evidence – and the rising cost to their balance sheets. Voters who can no longer afford to shoulder the economic and social burden of this damage need to let their leaders know time’s up.   

1.5C overshoot means adapting differently

Last week, during Climate Week NYC, I moderated an event packed with experts who work on adapting to climate change – from Nepal to Brazil, from Sierra Leone to the Marshall Islands, and from communities to the top of governments and UN agencies. They spoke of tree-planting to stabilise slopes, heat insurance for informal workers, a climate risk guide for midwives, drought-resistant seeds and solar panels to irrigate farmland along the Nile.

Amid the diversity of experiences and approaches, there were two common threads: first, as underlined by the UN Environment Programme’s new report on overshooting 1.5C, we may have missed the boat to catch up on adaptation as we know it. 

With global warming continuing apace, we’ll need to come up with new “transformational” strategies if the coral reefs, ice sheets, oceans and other natural systems on which we rely cross tipping points and unleash cascading consequences. Nepal’s flash flood is being flagged as an example of the kind of disaster that requires a major change in how we think about adaptation.

Second, the investment required to adapt to intensifying climate shocks and stresses can no longer be seen as something to be squeezed out of shrinking foreign aid budgets. There are a growing number of tried-and-tested funds and mechanisms for channelling finance at the local, national and global levels – these must be filled, replenished and used without delay. 

Businesses need to get stuck in too, not least to safeguard their assets, operations and profits – but also because in some sectors like agriculture or water there are opportunities for a return. Despite this, there are many activities governments will have no choice but to pay for, such as moving people out of the path of rising seas.

Finance not flowing where needed

Mikko Ollikainen, who heads up the UN’s pioneering Adaptation Fund for developing countries, told the event the fund has a portfolio of projects worth $1.6 billion but a pipeline waiting to be financed to the tune of $1.8 billion. Yet, in recent years, as needs balloon, donor nations have failed to meet its annual fundraising target of $300 million at COP climate summits. 

The chair of the UN climate body for implementation, Julia Gardiner, said she expects to see more pressure on governments at November’s COP31 summit in Türkiye to show how they will meet a goal to triple adaptation finance by 2035 and fill the under-resourced coffers of the fledgling Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage (FRLD).

Prakriti Dhakal, personal under-secretary to Nepal’s prime minister, speaks at an event on adaptation held on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly and moderated by Climate Home News, on September 24, 2026 in New York. (Photo@ Photo: Corinna Schutte / United Nations Foundation) Prakriti Dhakal, personal under-secretary to Nepal’s prime minister, speaks at an event on adaptation held on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly and moderated by Climate Home News, on September 24, 2026 in New York. (Photo@ Photo: Corinna Schutte / United Nations Foundation)

Nepal, meanwhile, is still waiting for a formal response to its request to the FRLD for urgent support to tackle the aftermath of the flood. Manjeet Dhakal, a Nepali scientist who advises least-developed countries in the UN climate process, said the disaster – which killed over 1,450 people and left nearly 6,000 missing – cannot be treated as just the latest climate crisis that grabs the headlines before it’s replaced by another.

That was backed up by Prakriti Dhakal, personal under-secretary to Nepal’s prime minister, who has been working closely on the emergency response. She said she had received many condolences and warm words of support during her meetings in New York. 

But, she asked, “when you go home, will you continue having that sympathy for us that translates into something rational, something long-term, to strengthen the communities in Nepal?” A fitting response would be for governments to get behind a new Himalayan Climate Resilience Mechanism, proposed by Nepal’s leader at the UN last week, as one way to start closing the adaptation accountability gap.

The post Nepal’s disaster has laid bare the world’s adaptation accountability gap appeared first on Climate Home News.

The upcoming French presidential election next May carries weight far beyond France’s borders. A victory for fascist candidate Marine Le Pen—in a major world economy—would...

The post Will France have a fascist president next May? first appeared on Spring.

Headline News:

• “GM Really Wasn’t Kidding About Those New LMR EV Batteries” • GM was among the US automakers that pulled back on their EV lineups when the federal EV tax credit was killed. But the company still kept its LMR batteries going through Ultium Cells, a joint venture with leading firm LG Energy Solution. Now that could pay off. [CleanTechnica]

LMR battery (Courtesy of GM)

• “Global Economic Impact Of Iran War ‘Unbearable,’ Qatar Warns” • The Iran war has put an “unbearable” strain on the global economy, Qatar warned. It said meetings aimed to reach a deal are continuing and Doha has resumed its role as a mediator between Washington and Tehran. However, it warned its role could come to an end. [Euronews]
• “Connecticut’s Reckless Drive For More Nuclear Power” • New England governors are meeting to push for more nuclear power. Supposedly there’s a crisis, a need for lots more electricity for AI. There’s a crisis, all right, but it’s not some desperate need for AI. Instead, it’s the fires, droughts, glacier breakdowns and extreme weather due to collapsing climates. [CT Mirror]
• “UK’s biggest AI supercomputer may have to wait until 2030s for enough power” • The launch of the UK’s largest planned AI supercomputer, due to open next year, could be delayed until the 2030s because of problems securing enough electric energy. The site is being developed in Loughton, east of London, by the UK-based start-up Nscale. [Euronews]
• “Italy’s Battery ‘Gold Rush’: Energy Storage Creates A New Market” • Huge battery storage systems are needed to support a grid dominated by renewable energy, able to absorb surplus energy and feed it back later. Their role is so important that it started a “gold rush,” with Italy in a leading position. Italy will need about 72 GWh of storage by 2030. [Euronews]

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

Last week, another federal judge blocked New York’s so-called “climate superfund law,” the state’s attempt to make fossil fuel companies pay for climate-related damages linked to their activities. Signed in 2024, the legislation inspired other states to start drumming up their own ways to hold Big Oil financially accountable for the costs of a warming planet.

The two rulings are certainly a blow to the law’s advocates. But they’re not a death knell for this approach. That’s according to seven lawmakers from Connecticut, Hawaiʻi, Rhode Island, New Jersey, and New Hampshire, who told Grist the decisions have limited relevance to their states. Most expressed continued interest in advancing their own superfund legislation.

What may be more threatening to these kinds of pollution-accountability laws is Suncor v. Boulder County, a case the Supreme Court will hear beginning next week. Though a decision may not come until next spring, the outcome could nullify all state-level attempts to make fossil fuel companies pay for climate costs. 

“Worst case, they rule that federal law — both statutory and constitutional federal law — preempts all of these cases, throws them all out,” said Pat Parenteau, an emeritus professor at the Vermont Law School. This could quash not only superfund proposals, he added, but also consumer rights cases, racketeering cases, and antitrust claims, leaving every state in the country with “billions and billions of dollars piling up with no recourse.”

New York’s climate superfund law sought $75 billion from fossil fuel companies to help pay for costs associated with climate change, including recovery from extreme weather and adaptive infrastructure projects like upgraded stormwater drainage systems and new cooling systems in public buildings. The law was inspired by the federal Superfund Act of 1980, which made chemical and petroleum companies financially responsible for cleaning up heavily polluted sites across the country. 

The two court decisions found that the New York law was preempted by federal law, specifically the Clean Air Act. In the first ruling, Judge Brenda Sannes of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York wrote that the measure was “simply beyond the limits of state law,” siding with the fossil fuel companies and 22 red-state attorneys general that had sued. New York is expected to appeal both cases.

To date, Vermont is the only other state to have enacted a climate superfund law. It’s facing a legal challenge from some of the same plaintiffs as New York, and in the past month alone Parenteau said there’s been a “flurry” of briefings and press statements calling for its repeal. Republican attorneys general and industry interests have also used the legal strike against New York to oppose climate accountability in other states. In New Jersey, Republican state Senator Michael Testa said in a statement that pursuing a climate superfund measure in his state would be “a waste of time and resources.” West Virginia Attorney General JB McCuskey told Bloomberg Law that if any other state passes this type of policy he will sue them “almost instantaneously.”

Read Next How a Koch-funded campaign is trying to reverse climate action in Vermont Austyn Gaffney

But Grist spoke with several Democratic lawmakers who remained interested in advancing climate superfund legislation despite the losses in New York.

“I don’t think it’ll make any difference,” said Karl Rhoads, an outgoing senator in Hawaiʻi who sponsored a superfund bill last year. “There’s no reason for the rest of us not to continue.”

Rhode Island Representative Jennifer Boylan and Connecticut Representative Josh Elliott both said they’re planning to reintroduce climate superfund bills during their next legislative sessions. “I’m full speed ahead,” Boylan said. She dismissed the idea that the New York case would doom similar legislation elsewhere as “a convenient strategy to try to scare us all.”

Legislators from California, Illinois, and Massachusetts told Bloomberg Law last week that they were interested in putting forward new superfund bills, too.

In New Jersey, a climate superfund bill sponsored by Democratic Senator John McKeon stalled before the Legislature’s summer break but may still be considered during the year and a half that remains in the state’s legislative session. McKeon said he’s unconcerned by the New York ruling, as New Jersey is in a different court circuit and is governed by different laws.

Tony Caplan, a Democratic representative from New Hampshire, last year sponsored an unsuccessful bill to “determine the monetary costs of climate damage to the state of New Hampshire and the best means of recouping such costs.” He said he’s now focusing on decarbonization legislation and doesn’t plan to introduce another superfund bill — but that’s because of long-standing opposition to climate accountability measures from his state’s Republican-controlled Legislature, rather than anything new from the New York decisions. 

“The lawfare goes on,” Caplan said. “The [New York] decision can be appealed, obviously, and there are blue states … that will continue to push forward with these kinds of bills.”

Climate activists held a rally outside Governor Kathy Hochul’s Manhattan office in 2024 to deliver thousands of petitions asking her to sign the Climate Change Superfund Act.
Erik McGregor / LightRocket via Getty Images

Rachel Rothschild, an assistant professor at the University of Michigan Law School, said states “can and should push ahead” with their various climate liability initiatives, as they don’t have to abide by anything the New York District Courts have said — or even anything that the higher-level Second Circuit Court might decide, if the New York superfund lawsuits are appealed. A bad outcome in Suncor v. Boulder County, however, is a much more significant threat. 

Narrowly, the Supreme Court case considers whether a 2018 lawsuit brought by Boulder County and the City of Boulder against Suncor and Exxon Mobil can be heard in state court. Fossil fuel interests have argued that it shouldn’t, because it represents an attempt to dictate federal climate policy. 

If just 5 of 8 justices rule that the case is superseded by the federal Clean Air Act or the Constitution, that precedent will be binding across the country (Justice Samuel Alito has recused himself from the case). States could be severely limited, if not outright barred, from seeking any kind of recompense from fossil fuel companies, whether via tort lawsuits or via climate superfund-style legislation.

“My fear,” said Rothschild, “is that this is going to be another notch in a long list of decisions that are threatening to our broader country and democracy, leaving states without the ability to do much on very flimsy and poorly reasoned legal grounds.” 

Another, less consequential possibility is that justices will punt on the case, since it hasn’t yet traveled all the way up the Colorado court system. Rothschild described this as a “wait-and-see” approach that would be preferable to a total victory for fossil fuel interests. But she worried this outcome would leave “bad law” on the books, referring specifically to the New York state superfund decisions and two others that favor federal preemption for issues of transboundary pollution.

If Boulder prevails, then its lawsuit and other state-level accountability measures will be able to proceed. States waiting to see if this happens might get some insight into what kinds of climate claims are permissible and consistent with the limits of state authority. For example, the justices might suggest in their written decision that states can only claim damages for climate pollution released within their borders, or that they can only collect penalties for demonstrated climate harms.

“That might give us something of a yardstick with which we could evaluate what could be done under the climate superfund statutes,” said Jonathan Adler, a professor at William and Mary Law School. “We’ll have to pay a lot of attention.”

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This story was originally published by Grist with the headline States want to make Big Oil pay for climate harm. Now, courts are weighing in. on Sep 30, 2026.

Vestas has landed a contract to supply turbines to the biggest wind project to begin construction in Australia in more than two years.

The post Turbine giant lands contract for Australia’s biggest wind project in two years, its second deal in two days appeared first on Renew Economy.

In Omaha, Nebraska, during the recent early September heat wave when temps hit the mid-90s Fahrenheit and lows stayed in the 70s, Pat Wilson-Johnson came to the Salvation Army’s North Corps Community Center for lunch.

The location functions as a cooling center during high heat days. From growing up in Omaha, Wilson-Johnson remembers cool summer nights when she could let the breeze in through an open window. Now, she said, that just lets in the humidity.

“Nine o’clock at night, it’s still 90, 91 degrees. That’s not right,” Wilson-Johnson said.

Scott Harris, who works at the center, said many people will have lunch and then sit in the lobby to cool off and drink water. The location also gives out bags of ice for people to stay cool when they leave.

The Siena Francis House, a nonprofit that serves people experiencing homelessness, operates another cooling center during heat advisories. While they’re typically open from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., Kristy McKern, director of case management and permanent supportive housing, said the organization has staff and protocols in case people need resources outside of these times.

In Lincoln, the Lincoln-Lancaster County Health Department created an extreme heat response plan over a year ago. While the department has focused on high daytime temperatures, they are beginning to look at nighttime temperature data, a department spokesperson said.

Right now, the Lincoln area has one cooling center that operates overnight.

As in many other places, Nebraska’s minimum temperatures have shot up, presenting an often overlooked, overnight threat to people, livestock, and crops. In the coming decades, the minimum temperatures in Nebraska could be in the low 70s – more like what you’d expect in southeast Kansas and southern Missouri, said Eric Hunt, a University of Nebraska-Lincoln agriculture meteorology and climate resilience extension educator.

For people, heat can stress the cardiovascular system, kidneys, respiratory system, and mental health, said Jesse Bell, director of the University of Nebraska Medical Center’s water, climate, and health program. But these high minimum temperatures don’t affect everyone equally. People at higher risk include the elderly and those with certain health conditions and on certain medications. It’s also more dangerous for people without working air conditioning, people who are houseless, student athletes, and people who work outside.

Siena Francis and its partners travel throughout Omaha during high heat days, providing water, snacks, and sunscreen to folks who are outside. The organization works with some people who have mental illnesses and substance abuse problems.

“A lot of these people don’t have access to just the essentials like you and I would have,” McKern said. “So again, for us to be able to provide those things to them, so they don’t end up in the hospital, or they don’t end up dehydrated or passing out or fainting.”

Read Next Whether it’s ‘super’ or ‘Godzilla,’ El Niño is already breaking records Frida Garza & Kate Yoder

On average in the United States, more people die from heat-related deaths than any other weather event.

And it matters even when it’s not deadly. High heat at night also makes it difficult to sleep. According to a report organized by Climate Central, residents in Omaha and Lincoln are estimated to have lost about 30 hours of sleep annually between 2020 and 2025 due to heat, and three of those hours are attributed to climate change.

For those with air conditioning, the heat continuing into the night can mean higher energy bills. Residents living in low-income housing or older homes and buildings that haven’t been weatherized could face more hardship during heat waves.

Air conditioning accounts for a large chunk of electricity use from residential and commercial customers, according to the Energy Information Administration. Energy use increases in the summer throughout the day as temperature also rises. The usage maxes out at around 5 or 6 p.m. But as nighttime temperatures rise and air conditioning units work harder longer, the demand on utility companies grows. At the same time, these companies are currently experiencing multiple pressures to increase energy generation from customers like data centers. To meet demand on the grid, some utilities are deciding to keep fossil fuel generation online.

Beyond Nebraska’s urban centers, the rising nighttime temperatures also pose a concern for agriculture, the state’s biggest industry. 

Higher nighttime temperatures mean that corn and soybeans — Nebraska’s two leading crops — use more energy instead of storing it, which can impact growth. Depending on the timing, duration, and intensity, the higher nighttime temps could result in smaller and fewer seeds and biomass for soybeans, said George Graef, a UNL agronomy and horticulture professor focused on soybean breeding and genetics. And if there are multiple warm days and nights, corn crops begin “shutting down and losing a week or more of filling time in late summer and early fall that we would normally get, which pretty significantly impacts yield,” said Tom Hoegemeyer, a retired UNL professor specializing in agronomy and horticulture. 

In the short term, there is concern that these higher nighttime temps combined with drought could mean increased usage of groundwater in irrigated production, Hoegemeyer said. Fungi and bacteria could also hurt corn crops when it’s hot and humid at night, which means farmers may be driven to spray more chemicals on crops to protect them, Hoegemeyer said. 

Given these nighttime temperatures, Graef said the soybean industry is employing new technology and capabilities to evaluate and adapt the crop to the changing conditions. He’s confident new variants will be identified.

While the corn industry has been aware of this issue for the last 30 years and has been able to adapt corn crops to better tolerate these conditions, Hoegemeyer is worried about how effective this will be long term.

“If you believe the projections as to what temperatures will be like, say, by 2100, we may not be able to do that,” Hoegemeyer said. “There are limits to what we can do with genetics and technology.”

Livestock, including cattle, pigs, and chickens, make up a number of Nebraska’s leading commodities. The rising nighttime temperatures pose a concern for livestock in eastern and central Nebraska, where humidity is also rising.

“The effects of heat stress overall tend to affect larger, more productive animals the most,” said Rick Stowell, a UNL professor and animal environment extension specialist. “So, if you think about heavy animals, mature animals, fat cattle and a sow, for example, or a high-producing dairy cow, they are generating a lot more body heat, and so they have a lot more heat to get rid of.”

To adapt, producers are building more shade structures in feedlots, something Stowell has seen more of over the last 20 years. Other strategies: increased ventilation in buildings, altered feeding schedules, and sprinkling water on the ground and in feedlots for cooling. 

“Most livestock producers and poultry producers (in eastern Nebraska) are well aware that the situation is getting more challenging,” Stowell said.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Nebraskans couldn’t escape the heat this summer — not even at night on Sep 30, 2026.

A few years ago, I watched a bouquet of peonies leave a florist in Oregon for a wedding in Florida. They were tight, blush-pink buds, and they arrived four days later fully open, fragrant and flawless. The same week, a batch of delicate sweet peas made a much shorter trip and showed up limp. Why the difference? Some flowers handle travel well, and some simply don’t.

If you’re picking blooms for a long trip, whether across the country or across an ocean, the variety matters as much as the packing. Here is what I’ve learned about which flowers hold up, which ones struggle, and why.

What makes a flower a good traveler?

Travel stress comes down to three things: dehydration, temperature swings, and ethylene gas. Ethylene is a natural plant hormone that speeds up aging, and some flowers are far more sensitive to it than others. Sturdy flowers share a few traits:

• Thick, waxy petals that lose moisture slowly.
• Woody or firm stems that can take up water even after hours in a box.
• Low ethylene sensitivity, so they don’t drop petals in a closed, warm space.
• Tight buds that open gradually, which means they finish blooming at the destination, not in transit.

That last point is a big one. A flower shipped at the right stage of development can actually look better on day four than on day one.

The flowers that handle long trips best Reliable all-rounders

Chrysanthemums are the workhorses of the flower world. They can last two to three weeks in a vase and tolerate rough handling. Alstroemeria (Peruvian lily) is another favorite of mine, since it drinks well, ships well, and keeps producing new blooms from each stem. Carnations get an unfair reputation as filler, but they are among the most durable cut flowers available, often lasting over two weeks.

Roses deserve a nuance. Long-stemmed roses from Ecuador and Colombia are grown specifically for shipping, and many varieties travel for days without trouble. Look for varieties with dense, high-petal-count heads, which tend to be more resilient than thin-petaled garden types.

Elegant and surprisingly tough

Orchids, especially cymbidium and dendrobium sprays, are excellent for long hauls thanks to their waxy petals. Proteas and other structural blooms are nearly indestructible and dry beautifully afterward. Lisianthus looks like a fragile rose but ships quite well, and snapdragons do fine as long as they stay upright in transit, because they bend toward light if laid wrong.

The divas to avoid

Some blooms just don’t enjoy the journey. Sweet peas, poppies, gardenias, and delphiniums shed or wilt quickly, and delphiniums and snapdragons are highly ethylene-sensitive. Hydrangeas look sturdy but wilt dramatically if their stems dry out, though they can be revived with a warm-water soak. If your trip is longer than two days, I’d pick something else.

Quick comparison by travel time Journey length Good choices Riskier choices 1–2 days (domestic) Roses, tulips, lilies, lisianthus Sweet peas, poppies 3–5 days (cross-country or overseas) Alstroemeria, carnations, chrysanthemums, orchids Delphinium, hydrangea, gardenia 5+ days Proteas, carnations, hardy foliage like eucalyptus Most soft-stemmed spring flowers Borders, paperwork, and timing

When you’re sending flowers internationally, the flowers themselves are only half the story. Many countries require phytosanitary inspection, and some restrict certain species or any soil-grown material. Customs delays of even 24 hours can shorten vase life noticeably, so it helps to avoid shipping right before a weekend or holiday. Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day create bottlenecks that stress both cargo and cold-chain systems.

A few habits make a real difference:

1. Choose flowers cut at the “tight bud” or “show color” stage, not fully open.
2. Make sure stems are hydrated, either with water tubes or gel packs.
3. Keep the box cool, ideally between 34 and 41°F, and out of direct sun.
4. Recut stems at an angle on arrival and place them in clean water with flower food.
5. Let them rest in a cool room for an hour or two before arranging.

Fresh-keeping tips for the receiving end

Here’s a small habit I swear by: strip any leaves that would sit below the waterline. Bacteria grows fast on submerged foliage and clogs stems, which is the number one reason flowers die early. Keep the vase away from ripening fruit, since apples and bananas give off ethylene. And change the water every two days.

Choosing with confidence

The short version: sturdy, waxy, tight-budded flowers like alstroemeria, carnations, chrysanthemums, orchids, and proteas are your safest bets for long journeys. Save the delicate beauties for local delivery. If you want to go deeper, look into cold-chain logistics and country-specific import rules before your next shipment. A little planning up front means the bouquet that arrives looks just as good as the one you imagined.

I spent all my working life in coal mines before retiring in 2020. Since then I have become a passionate advocate for establishing renewable industries in areas where coal mines will close.

The post We must plan for coal mine closures, not approve them because we lack a plan  appeared first on Renew Economy.