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Miles Wu will never forget the first time he saw an Indigo Bunting. This past May, as the 14-year-old was finishing his shift as a collision monitor with Project Safe Flight, he heard a thump; the...

In San Francisco on Wednesday, Sept. 30, more than a thousand nurses, along with community members, will mobilize against the notorious artificial intelligence giant, Palantir. Palantir has a track record of building A.I. tools for large-scale data collection and mass surveillance that threaten human rights.

Under the fluorescent light of a Discount Tire sign, hundreds of people gathered in a strip mall parking lot near Austin, Texas. In between chats with volunteer naturalists, many lounged in lawn...

“The Hub” is a weekly round-up of transportation related news in the Philadelphia area and beyond. Check back weekly to keep up-to-date on the issues Clean Air Council’s transportation staff finds important.

It’s the last week of the Pretzel Pedal Challenge! Log your bike rides during September to automatically earn points that qualify you for gift card drawing and prizes! Create a Share-A-Ride profile to join!

Week Without Driving starts next week Thursday, October 1st. There are a few events that Philadelphians can take part in during this week. Click here for how to get involved!

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WHYY: SEPTA unveils wishlist for improvements and upgrades, but no sign of funding to make it happen – SEPTA released a list of goals and ideas in their “Accelerate” plan this week. Accelerate highlights the ideal future for SEPTA if there was a more reliable funding source from the state. Accelerate focuses on a few main ideas: increasing the number Philadelphians served with frequent transit, increasing the number of accessible stations, and connect more jobs in the city with frequent transit. The lack of dedicated funding sources has stalled long-term improvements to the system.

Image Source: WESA NPR

WESA NPR: Pittsburgh transit advocates call for bolder plan, ask riders to weigh in on bus line update – Pittsburgh’s Bus Line Refresh, a cost-neutral plan, will rework service to improve and boost ridership. Routes with low ridership are in danger of being cut, but transit advocates warn against cutting people off from service. Pittsburgh Regional Transit faces a fiscal cliff at the end of this state budget year without a dedicated funding source from the PA Legislature. Comments are requested to improve the plan by September 30 and can be submitted here.

Image Source: The Inquirer

The Inquirer: SEPTA got 24 commuter trains from Montreal, but it could be months before you can ride one – SEPTA purchased surplus train cars from Montreal’s transit system, and they have arrived in PA. The cars are in Malvern for some modifications before joining the Regional Rail fleet late this year. SEPTA avoided paying the estimated $3.5 million extra in tariffs after research showed U.S. Customs and Border Protection that the cars were not subject to import duties.

Other Stories

WHYY: Philadelphia announces $2 billion investment to improve city airports as PHL ranks last in consumer satisfaction

Transit Forward Philadelphia: We Rode Transit for 24 Hours!

Philadelphia Today: Roosevelt Boulevard Gets $134M in Upgrades as Subway Debate Continues

Philly Tribune: SEPTA’s new bus network drives ridership growth across city

On a Saturday afternoon in June, volunteers sat at tables in the Chicago Architecture Center quietly building birds out of scrap fabric. One cut out black strips for a Magnolia Warbler’s breast...

The decision in a suit brought by Harris County, Texas, follows a similar ruling last week. A Harris County judge called it “a really important victory for energy resilience.”

I am not a climate scientist, and I want to say that plainly. What follows is the account of a metabolism researcher who kept finding something she wasn’t looking for, until the pattern became too consistent to file under coincidence.

My colleagues and I run randomized clinical trials to answer a narrow question: What happens to a person’s health when they change how they eat? We recruit volunteers, assign diets, and measure what clinicians care about — insulin sensitivity, weight, cholesterol, blood sugar. The work is aimed at the body, not the atmosphere. The atmosphere intruded almost by accident. We had run a trial in adults with type 1 diabetes, the autoimmune form no diet can cure. Half our participants adopted a low-fat diet built around vegetables, fruit, whole grains, and legumes; the rest ate a conventional diet with meat and dairy. The clinical results were what we’d hoped: better insulin sensitivity, less insulin needed.

Image by Joanna Wielgosz from Pixabay

But we also had detailed food records from 12 weeks of real eating, so someone on the team asked a question that had nothing to do with medicine: What was the environmental footprint of all that food?

When we looked into it, we found that the greenhouse gas emissions embedded in participants’ diets had fallen by more than half. The energy required to produce that food dropped nearly as much. Nobody had set out to produce that effect — these were people managing a brutal, lifelong disease. The climate benefit came along for the ride. I might have filed that under coincidence. Then it happened again, in a larger trial of 244 overweight adults randomized to a low-fat vegan diet or no change, followed for 16 weeks. Once more the emissions embedded in participants’ food fell by about half, driven mostly by less meat, with dairy and eggs close behind — roughly what you’d save each day by leaving a gasoline car parked instead of driving it four miles. The third time, we sharpened the comparison, still for health reasons: a low-fat vegan diet against the Mediterranean diet, the pattern nutritionists and environmentalists alike celebrate as the responsible choice for both body and planet. If anything was going to match the vegan diet’s footprint, surely it was this one. It didn’t. The Mediterranean diet cut diet-related emissions by about 20%, a real improvement, its green reputation earned. The

vegan diet cut them by 57% and slashed the energy demand of the food system by 55%. The Mediterranean diet barely moved food-related energy demand at all; its signature olive oil even nudged the footprint upward. The gap wasn’t the vegetables — both diets had those. It was the animal foods that persisted in one diet and vanished from the other.

Image by Jill Wellington from Pixabay

Three trials, three populations, three designs, each run for a medical reason that had nothing to do with climate. The same finding surfaced every time.

Here’s why I think this matters past nutrition. Almost everything we ask of people for the climate is a sacrifice: a cost paid now, by you, for a benefit collected later, by someone else, somewhere else. Insulate the house. Pay the carbon tax. Trust a ledger you’ll never personally see balance. Economists call this intertemporal discounting — weighing a certain cost today far more heavily than an uncertain, diffuse benefit decades out. Climate communicators have spent decades trying to talk people out of that instinct through duty, fear, or guilt, and global emissions keep rising anyway.

My trials kept showing me that food is one of the rare places where the ledger balances immediately, in the same body, in the same season. The changes that lowered participants’ carbon footprint also lowered their insulin needs, their weight, and their cardiovascular risk. There was no gap between actor and beneficiary to bridge. The benefit to the planet and the benefit to the body weren’t competing for the same scarce willpower — they were the same act, seen from two angles, landing on the same afternoon.

That convergence is rarer than it sounds, and our institutions are poorly built to notice it. Climate policy has organized itself, sensibly, around problems with a genuine collective-action structure — emissions trading, grid decarbonization, treaties — built for diffuse, delayed, free-rider-prone harms. That architecture is necessary; energy and transportation remain the largest levers, and no dietary shift substitutes for decarbonizing them.

But that toolkit is poorly suited to an intervention whose discount rate is close to zero, because the payoff shows up in a person’s own bloodwork within weeks. Food systems account for roughly a third of global emissions, on par with energy, yet they’re still treated as a footnote about cattle methane rather than a demand-side lever with an unusually favorable incentive structure. Health systems have been just as slow: Dietary counseling remains a peripheral, underfunded sliver of chronic-disease care, even though a doctor’s conversation about insulin resistance is, in effect, also a conversation about emissions.

Image by PIRO 4D from Pixabay

I want to be careful here, because overreach is how researchers lose people’s trust. These were secondary analyses, not the trials’ purpose, built on self-reported food records over weeks, not years, from volunteers rather than a random slice of humanity. No single study, nor all three together, can carry the weight of the global climate problem.

What they can do is point to a category of climate intervention our institutions aren’t built to reward: one where the beneficiary isn’t a future stranger but the person making the choice, this week, at their own table.

I still think of myself as a metabolism researcher. I arrived at this subject not through conviction, but by running the same kind of study three times and watching the same shadow fall across the results each time. That’s the pattern a scientist learns to trust most — not the striking one-off, which might be chance, but the finding that refuses to go away no matter how many times you look. This one has refused to go away.

Conflict of interest: The author directs clinical research at the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, a nonprofit that advocates for plant-based nutrition, and led the trials cited in this piece.

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

Dangerous Drinking: Is Bottled Water Really Safer Than Tap Water?

The post Climate Policy Has a Sacrifice Problem. My Clinical Trials Kept Solving It by Accident. appeared first on The Revelator.

The decision affects a 750-MW, mixed technology project in Virginia, which Oklo said would be delayed by at least 18 months if it misses the current interconnection cycle.

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Antarctic sea ice has recorded its third-smallest winter peak extent since satellite records began 48 years ago, new data reveals.

Provisional data from the US National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) shows that Antarctic sea ice hit its annual winter peak on 14 September, with an extent of 17.59m square kilometres (km2).

The organisation notes that the data is still preliminary, adding that “large fluctuations in extent are typical of Antarctic sea ice near the seasonal maximum”.

One expert tells Carbon Brief that it is “concerning to see these low values persisting”, but says that scientists need more time to determine whether this represents a “structural shift” in Antarctic sea ice extent.

Meanwhile, at the Earth’s other pole, Arctic sea ice reached its annual minimum on 12 September, ranking as the joint-10th lowest in the satellite record.

The NSIDC notes that the last 20 years have seen the lowest 20 Arctic sea ice extents in the satellite record.

Antarctic peak

Dr Lettie Roach, a polar climate scientist at the Alfred Wegener Institute in Germany, tells Carbon Brief that this year’s Antarctic sea ice maximum was “well below average for the season”. She warns that, “after several decades of stable or increasing winter Antarctic sea ice conditions, it is concerning to see these low values persisting”.

She adds:

“Compared with the Arctic, it’s less clear how recent changes in Antarctic sea ice are attributable to human-caused warming vs natural variability. We need more years of observations to better understand whether this is truly a structural shift.”

Dr Clare Eayrs, a postdoctoral researcher at the Korea Polar Research Institute (KOPRI), tells Carbon Brief that, since recording a “near-average February minimum” extent, Antarctic sea ice has “returned to unusually low winter coverage”.

She notes that Antarctic sea ice extent in July and August this year were the fifth and fourth lowest on record, respectively, adding that “all five of the lowest July extents have occurred since 2022 and all four of the lowest August extents since 2023”.

The chart below shows Antarctic sea ice extent in 2025 (dark blue) and 2026 (red) so far. For comparison, the chart shows decadal averages (dotted lines) as well as 2023 (mid blue), the year of the smallest winter sea-ice maximum on record.

Daily Arctic sea ice extent for 2026 and 2025, with decadal averages for comparison, based on data from the NSIDC. Chart by Carbon Brief.

Eayrs tells Carbon Brief that the regional pattern of Antarctic sea ice cover “changed substantially during the growth season”.

For example, she says that “in April, the Bellingshausen Sea remained almost entirely ice-free, while the neighbouring Amundsen Sea had more ice than usual”.

However, by late August, changes in atmospheric pressure and wind meant that “the Bellingshausen deficit had largely recovered, while ice was unusually scarce in the Amundsen Sea and across much of East Antarctica”. 

Map showing the main regions of the Antarctic. Credit: Carbon Brief
Arctic minimum

Meanwhile, the Arctic recorded its minimum summer sea ice extent on 12 September. At 4.60m km2, this year ties with 2025, 2010 and 2008 as the 10th-lowest sea ice extent on record.

The chart below shows Arctic sea ice extent in 2025 (dark blue) and 2026 (red) so far. For comparison, the chart shows decadal averages (dotted lines) as well as 2012 (mid blue), the year of the smallest summer sea-ice minimum on record.

Daily Antarctic sea ice extent for 2026 and 2025, with decadal averages for comparison, based on data from the NSIDC. Chart by Carbon Brief.

Roach tells Carbon Brief that although this minimum is not “record setting”, it is still “lower than any sea ice minimum before 2007”. She adds:

“Human-caused climate change has reduced Arctic sea ice cover and thickness, so the region is fundamentally different compared to a few decades ago.”

Scientists have been tracking Arctic sea ice thickness using a reanalysis produced called the Pan-Arctic Ice Ocean Modeling and Assimilation System (PIOMAS) since 1979.

In March 2026, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) terminated a global dataset of air pressure that scientists relied upon to produce PIOMAS, forcing both datasets to stop publishing updates.

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The PIOMAS website says it will take “considerable effort and time” to find alternative data to use in their reanalysis. It adds that “we don’t yet have a good sense if that’s possible with available funds and if so, when we will be able to resume production of a new PIOMAS timeseries”.

Roach also notes that August saw record-breaking heat sweep across much of the world, explaining that high temperatures “extended into Arctic coastal regions, close to regions with substantial sea ice loss – particularly the Barents-Kara and East Siberian seas”.

Dr Zack Labe, a scientist at Climate Central, tells Carbon Brief that the absence of a new record does not mean that ice cover is becoming more “resilient”. He says:

“Local weather patterns across the Arctic play a really important role in year-to-year sea-ice extent, even as the long-term trend is clearly downward.”

Labe tells Carbon Brief that weather in the Arctic this summer was “influenced mainly by lower pressure toward the central Arctic, which brought cloudier and cooler conditions that limited surface melt and delayed the start of the melt season”.

He explains that this “was most obvious across parts of the Beaufort and Chukchi seas, where the melt season didn’t really kick off until after early July, which was more than two weeks later than normal”. 

In contrast, he says, the Atlantic side of the Arctic “had a much more extreme summer”, with sea ice in the Barents Sea recording its “earliest melt-out on record”.

This was partly due to “unusually warm air and ocean temperatures”, Labe says. He notes, for example, that parts of western Siberia saw unusually persistent temperatures more than 5C above the 1981-2010 average for much of the summer, which extended out over the Kara Sea and contributed to substantial ice melt in this area”.

Map showing main regions of the Arctic. Credit: Carbon Brief

Labe tells Carbon Brief that, going forward, scientists need “more data and observations of other sea-ice metrics, like ice thickness, which may give us better insight into the overall condition of the ice pack, especially during years like 2026 when it is very fragmented”.

(In March 2026, Arctic sea ice reached its peak extent for this winter, clocking in as the joint-smallest in a satellite record going back almost half a century.)

Related Guest post: Climate change has caused one-fifth of Pine Island glacier retreat 29.06.2026 Antarctica ‘Very alarming’ winter sees Arctic sea ice hit record-low for second year running 27.03.2026 Ice Q&A: How Trump is threatening climate science in Earth’s polar regions 20.02.2026 Antarctica Limiting warming to 2C is ‘crucial’ to protect pristine Antarctic Peninsula 20.02.2026 Antarctica

The post ‘Concerning’ low sea ice persists as Antarctic hits third-lowest winter peak appeared first on Carbon Brief.

What would taking a week off of driving cost you — and how much would you gain if your city made living car-free a realistic choice?

Ahead of next week’s Week Without Driving event, check out the latest from Bike Bike Nudge Nudge, where he calculates all the places he can’t go, activities he can’t participate in, wasted time he can’t get back, and rides he has to beg his wife to give him … all because his city is primarily planned around the automobile.

Mark your calendars for October 1 through 8 to take the Week Without Driving challenge yourself — or better yet, tell your elected officials who have never gone a day without getting behind the wheel to do it with you.

Watch this video on YouTube here.

As the Arctic warms and tundra thaws, minerals long trapped in frozen soil are leaching into rivers, turning them orange and acidic. A study from northern Alaska found “rusting” waters to be more metallic and acidic than drainage from metal mines.

Read more on E360 →

Sit down to a plate of freezer-burned broccoli and beef, and the experience of chewing this mummified cardboard will remind you of a basic truth: unless you store your food in liquid nitrogen, it slowly deteriorates—even in the freezer. But a new study suggests that warming up our freezers by several degrees could cut millions of tons of greenhouse gas emissions—without compromising the safety or quality of our food.

The idea of dialing down our freezers has been percolating for yeas now. A 2024 report estimated that if the worldwide standard food-freezing temperature was dialed back just three degrees, from -18°C to -15°C, the reduced energy consumption would avoid 17 million tons of CO2 equivalent emissions per year. 

The new study, published in NPJ Science of Food, addresses the next logical question: whether freezing at warmer temperatures would negatively impact the quality or shelf-life of food.

The authors subjected nine frozen foods, including crispy chicken, fish fingers, salmon fillets, vegetables, pizza, and plant-based meat balls, to 18 months of freezing at temperatures of -18°C, -15°C, -12°C, and -9°C. Every month, samples of each food at each temperature were thawed and evaluated on several measures of quality, including bacterial abundance, nutrient content (vitamin C), fat degradation or rancidness, and attributes affecting palatability, including appearance, aroma, taste, and texture.

 

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

 

Compared to -18°C, none of the higher temperatures caused significant increases in bacterial abundance—considered an indicator of food spoilage. Meanwhile, for measurements of palatability, fat degradation, and vitamin C contents, the quality did gradually decline over time in at least some of the foods; and these declines were incrementally more rapid at warmer temperatures.

But overall, for most of the products stored at -15°C, all quality measures remained within acceptable limits until after the “use-by” date—which varies from product to product, but is generally less than 18 months.

The authors concluded that raising the standard food-freezing temperature from -18°C to -15°C was feasible, and would reduce the direct energy requirements for cooling by roughly 7 percent.

These savings may seem small on a global scale, but for nations without extensive electric grids, they could be pivotal–reducing the demands on local energy sources, such as generators, solar, and wind turbines. Combined with nascent technologies for more energy-efficient cooling systems, it could allow the global food cold chain to reach into new areas.

This could reduce food waste in local communities, where the food supply is already stretched. It could also improve the incomes of poor farmers, by allowing their crops to reach boarder, more distant markets without spoiling.

Serena, et al. “Increasing storage temperature of frozen foods: effect on sustainability and food quality.” NPJ Science of Food. 2026.

Image: ©Anthropocene Magazine

Headline News:

• “Germany To Abandon Fossil Fuels By 2045” • Germany has unveiled a plan to end its fossil fuel reliance by 2045. It is the third in Europe to publish a plan. France was the first, though the plan’s end date is 2050, and the Netherlands has a plan. Other countries are being slow to detail their paths forward, though they had promised to do so. [Euronews]

Wind turbines in Germany (Barbara Horn, Unspash)

• “Rising Seas Are Sinking Futures: The UN Adopts Declaration On Seal Level Rise” • The UN Declaration on Sea Level Rise was adopted by consensus on as the UN chief warned that rising sea waters are already threatening the future of coastal communities worldwide. Without drastic emissions cuts, seas could rise by a meter by the end of the century. [UN News]
• “Envision Unveils 8-MW Unit For Europe” • Envision Energy has introduced a new onshore wind turbine for the European market. It is an 8-MW onshore wind turbine with a 175-meter rotor. The company said the turbine, introduced at WindEnergy Hamburg, is designed for sites with medium wind speeds and complex operating environments. [reNews]
• “Solar Farms Could Cut Dust Pollution” • Large arrays of solar panels can slow winds close to the ground and help stabilize the soil, reducing amounts of dust in the atmosphere. Modeling done at Nanjing University suggests that expanding solar farms in line with China’s 2060 carbon target could reduce airborne particles in northern China by almost 14%. [Phys.org]
• “LA Metro Secures 220 Battery-Electric Transit Buses” • LA Metro approved the purchase of 220 battery-electric buses in a major step towards Metro accelerating implementation of its zero-emission commitment to 100% electric buses. The 220-bus purchase will more than double the number of electric buses in Metro’s fleet. [CleanTechnica]

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

A unique gathering of Indigenous people impacted by conservation has demanded that “our ancestral lands, including those grabbed for parks and wildlife sanctuaries, be returned.”

This Saturday, September 26, 2026, community members are gathering to mourn and protest the killing of Kaleym Davy, a Black 19 year-old who was shot...

The post Justice for Kaleym: Saturday rally demands answers for teen killed by police first appeared on Spring.

Freefalling agricultural yields, severe health problems due to rampant pollution, and livelihoods that have to be built anew: these are the daily realities of residents in India’s automotive manufacturing hub of Pune, where producers have for years disregarded environmental safeguards. And despite regulations mandating supply chain due diligence, components made in the region still make their way into the vehicles of Europe’s biggest carmakers. A Follow the Money investigation.

For 30-year-old Nilesh Mandikar, living in toxicity has become the norm. Sitting in his two-room home near Pune city, a three-hour drive from India’s Mumbai, he gestures at a sewage pipe discharging into an open plot some six metres away.  

“I had to stop cultivating fruits, grains, [seeds], and vegetables,” he says. “The soil at my plot degraded because of water pollution.” 

A foul smell lingers in the air; litres of green-white, foamy wastewater slurp from a big underground pipe into the open agricultural plot.  

Mandikar lives in Ambethan, an area part of a buzzing hub of multiple factories that are polluting the area. They produce components for cars that, an investigation by FTM shows, are then sent to Europe, where automakers – including Mercedes-Benz, Volkswagen, and Renault, amongst others – assemble them into their vehicles.   

While Europe is racing for a cleaner environment and is increasingly betting on electric vehicles, its car production has severe consequences in India, the investigation reveals. Having analysed data points on global trade data platform Panjiva, FTM identified more than 1,000 export shipments from three factories in Pune to Europe between April 2020 and February 2025. 

The shipments included, for example, electrical connectors, metal bars, or rots for the gearbox – key components for both electric vehicles and combustion engine cars.  

For Mandikar, the pollution had life-changing consequences. With failed harvests having become more regular, Mandikar has stopped farming over the past few years. He now works as a driver, earning some 280 euros a month. And he’s not the only one: almost 90 per cent of the farmers in the village have stopped farming due to similar reasons. 

This, like days when hundreds of dead fish floated dead in a river in the region, has sparked protests across the region, with hundreds of people gathering in front of the local municipalities multiple times a year – but with limited effect. Factories seem to keep flouting environmental rules.  

“Manufacturing companies and public administrations on both sides of the chain must fulfil their obligation to enforce environmental and labour regulations,” said Claudia Bosch, head of the Fair Electronics campaign, which advocates for ethical supply chains. “A change of model is needed, one that guarantees environmental protections and, consequently, the protection of affected local communities throughout the value chain, whether for electric or combustion vehicles.” 

Toxic waters  

Dubbed the “motor city”, Chakan city is the country’s largest automobile and manufacturing hub in the sprawling metropolitan region of Pune. It is home to some 40,000 inhabitants and over 750 factories. The world’s biggest car brands, like Mercedes and Volkswagen, have their own factories there. Even more carmakers source their components from subsidiary factories.  

Residents in Ambethan, the village in Chakan where Mandikar lives, see few benefits. They attribute much of the visible pollution – think water, air, soil, crops – to factories around them.  

“Continuous noise and air pollution from factories cause constant health issues,” Mandikar said, adding that these ranged from headaches and skin allergies to waterborne diseases. 

Balasaheb Padwal, another resident, echoed the assessment. 

“Sites of industrial waste being burnt [in the open] or heaps of plastic of polluted and colourful, smelly liquid being discharged openly into drains or in open plots are common,” he said. 

Amphenol Company that manufactures EV componets discharges waste water in open drainage in Bhosari in Pune. © Varsha Torgalkar 

Groundwater is yellow, and even a representative of the local governing body, who requested anonymity due to fear of repercussions, said he accepted that it’s no longer drinkable. 

Local residents FTM spoke to said that they used to get 2.5 tonnes of peanuts from one acre just a few years ago – now, they could only get 10 to 20 kilogrammes, they said – a fall of more than 99 per cent.  

Motherson Sumi factory is part of the industrial hub in the area and situated in Ambethan. A billboard at its factory gate claims that its pollutant levels are within permissible levels – but that doesn’t seem to reflect reality: its wastewater exceeds toxicity limits.  

Reporters collected untreated sewage samples from the location where Motherson Sumi factory discharges its wastewater for Follow the Money and sent it to a lab. The test shows chemical oxygen demand (COD) of more than 2,200 mg/l – several times above the legal maximum of 600mg/l for water discharged into a public sewer, or 250 mg/l for inland surface water. COD measures how fast contaminants in the water can be gotten rid of, meaning that high levels of COD indicate higher levels of pollution. Similarly, the water’s biochemical oxygen demand – which measures specific pollutants such as pesticides and industrial chemicals – is almost double the legal limit.  

The building of village local body at Ambethan in Chakan of Pune. Mothersonsumi in Ambethan pollutes fertile soil land. © Varsha Torgalkar 

Shailaja Deshpande, environmental expert and the founder and director of Jivitnadi Living River Foundation which works to protect rivers in Pune, said that the heavy metals shown in the lab results were “directly connected to the food chain and extremely dangerous” for human health and aquatic life.  

“The raw sewage and soil reports are not only alarming but scary,” she said. “Both results convey that the water and soil both are extremely contaminated and not only harmful to humans, aquatic and terrestrial life but will be retained in water and soils for longer periods.” 

Motherson Sumi declined to comment. 

The situation doesn’t look much better in other parts of the Pune region.  

About an hour’s drive further south sits the Amphenol factory. There, the factory seems to be discharging untreated wastewater into open drains, which flow into the Indrayani and Pavana rivers. A lab analysis shows that the soil surrounding the factory contains heavy metals cadmium and nickel – both above safe limits under Indian law.  

© Varsha Torgalkar 

The two metals are highly toxic and pollute the environment, including agricultural land and water. Cadmium can also carry severe health consequences, such as renal dysfunction, bone demineralisation and respiratory problems. Nickel, meanwhile, can cause cardiovascular diseases and respiratory issues and increases the risk of cancer.  

Since it doesn’t corrode easily, cadmium was widely used for steel plating; because of its toxicity, it is heavily regulated in some parts of the world and carmakers have switched to alternatives. However, it is still being used in electrical connectors and some specialised coating, for example. It rapidly seeps into groundwater and accumulates in the food chain.  

Nickel, meanwhile, is used to produce batteries for electric vehicles, as well as to build wheel components and spark plugs, amongst others.   

Both rivers into which untreated wastewater gets discharged supply drinking water to over 5 million people, and irrigate hectares of agricultural land that provides food to millions.  

Nickel and cadmium levels are elevated across the region and exceed safe thresholds in vegetables such as spinach and cauliflower, a 2025 study found.  

Prashant Raul, an activist who runs an environment collective in Pune, warned of the long-term consequences.  

“Farmers cultivate crops in toxic soils with polluted water and consume poisonous food,” he said. “The percentage of diseases caused by pollution, like cancer, is highest in India.”  

In Dhayarkar Colony, near the Bharat Forge factory further south in Pune city itself, residents complain of similar issues.  

With the factories in the vicinity dumping their wastewater into the surrounding fields without a proper drainage system being in place, an unpleasant odour hangs in the air – and the freestanding water seems to carry its own health risks.  

Not far from the Bharat Forge factory, Abhijit Gaikwad is frustrated.  

The 37-year old activist sees that even groundwater extracted from deep underground is polluted, carrying a yellow and black colour. While residents didn’t drink the water, they still had to use it for washing their clothes and bathing, he said. 

“Residents have to use [that water] every day,” he said. Other residents in the area complained of the same issue.  

This hasn’t gone unnoticed by authorities.  

In 2021, the region’s pollution control authority MPCB asked Bharat Forge, given irregularities in the factory’s measures to prevent pollution, why the “unit shall not be directed to close down the manufacturing activity”, and instructed to file a corrective action plan within a week. 

Activist Abhijit Gaikwad and local residents with a letter of complaint against Bharat Forge to submit to Maharashtra Pollution Control Board. © Varsha Torgalkar 

The warning, obtained by FTM through Freedom of Information requests, found that oil was being discharged in open water outside the factory, and that the sewage treatment was not working at full capacity.  

Three years later, however, the factory was still operating – and received more warnings. In April 2024, the same control authority issued a warning notice to the factory, reprimanding it for showing “negligence towards pollution control and environment protection”.  

“You are therefore instructed to submit [a report on] your action taken … within 7 days,” the control board warned.  

Yet, half a year later, the control board sent another letter to Bharat Forge, asking it to submit details of how its oil was being stored on the premises. And in early 2025, the authority issued yet another warning – this time about complaints about noise and air pollution in the residential area surrounding the factory.  

For activist Gaikwad, who has been sounding the alarm about the pollution for years, the fact that Bharat Forge is still operating shows the lack of teeth the control board has.  

Even if factories are found to be violating the country’s environmental laws, enforcement is inconsistent. For manufacturers, risking fines is often less costly than compliance. Proper wastewater treatment often costs hundreds of thousands of euros. And while environmental penalties could, in theory, be expensive, they are rarely enforced, and barely any closure orders are issued.  

Palak Balyan, research lead at Delhi-based environmental organisation Climate Trends said that “industry in India is a huge contributor of particulate matter and other kinds of pollution”.  

Manufacturers were discharging heated, toxic wastewater that harmed the flora and fauna, he said.  

“They also emit fumes that cause air pollution, ultimately affecting human health and contributing to global warming,” he said. “This pollution also increases heat and affects the ozone layer. This industrial pollution, proven through research, causes severe health issues like diabetes, water-borne diseases, and cardiovascular diseases, among others.” 

Europe-bound 

From Pune, the components are sent to Europe to be assembled into vehicles. FTM tracked components, such as gear parts, electronic connectors, wiring harnesses, and other  vehicle modules that likely ended up in the supply chain of Audi, Ford, General Motors, Mercedes-Benz, Toyota, and Volkswagen.  

An analysis of trade data shows that  987 shipments from Pune – from Motherson Sumi, Bharat Forge, and Amphenol – to Spain between April 2020 and February 2025, with a combined declared value of approximately $24.5 million, according to Panjiva customs data.  

About a third of them went to the automotive cluster in the northwestern region of Aragon, which includes around 300 companies; some of them are based near Zaragoza city. It is one of the country’s leading manufacturing hubs.  

Motherson Sumi has a subsidiary in the hub: SMR Automotive Systems Spain. That subsidiary, in turn, supplies a bigger European automotive sector. The subsidiary owns two assembly and manufacturing plants in northern Spain: SMP Ibérica SLU, in Palencia, and SMP Automotive Technologies, in Teruel. Electronic components are sent from Pune to produce exterior and interior mirrors, and vehicle modules for Audi, Ford, General Motors, Mercedes-Benz, Toyota, and Volkswagen. The supply programmes include regular, electric, and hybrid cars. Its main customers in Spain are Ford, PSA, Renault, Seat, and Volkswagen. 

Bharat Forge also sends parts to Aragon. It supplies Zaragoza-based Dana Automocion S.A., a leading manufacturer of technologies that makes components, parts, and systems that transmit engine power to the wheels, enabling both traditional and electrified cars to move. Dana Automocion, in turn, supplies Stellantis Zaragoza, according to a Spain-based industry expert. That factory produces cars for Peugeot, Lancia, and Opel.  

Waste water discharged by Amephenol flows in this open public drainage system that runs in the river. © Varsha Torgalkar 

The factory also sends shipments to Etxetar S.A., from which General Motors and Jaguar buy assemblies, and works  with Volkswagen, Volvo, and Ford. 

Amphenol, meanwhile, ships components to several Spanish distributors with a value of almost 6.5 million euros between April 2020 and February 2025. From there, these parts are likely to end in the supply chains of big European brands.  

Mercedes-Benz Spain and Audi told FTM that they are asking suppliers about the case. No other car company or brand responded to requests for comment. 

Another route through which components produced in Pune reach Europe is Morocco.  

Motherson Sumi also has a subsidiary – the Samvardhana Motherson Reydel Autotecc Morocco – in Tangier. There, it manufactures interior modules for Renault cars. The Motherson Sumi factory in Pune sent components to its branch in Morocco until at least mid-2022. The vast majority of Renault’s Morocco output is exported to Europe. 

In total, FTM traced more than 1,000 exports of components from Pune to Spain and Morocco from April 2020 to April 2025.  

Green promises 

The discovery comes amid pledges by the world’s biggest companies to invest in greener technology. 

Stellantis, for example, says on its website that it is aiming to have “a broad positive impact on the environment”.  

This, the company says, also applies to its suppliers. “Our strategy consists in selecting suppliers according to environmental criteria … or their ability to develop products which incorporate green or recycled materials,” the firm says. 

In a similar vein, Renault insists that “compliance with social and environmental requirements is part of both the supplier selection process and supplier relations”. 

And Volkswagen declared that all suppliers underwent a risk analysis, with environmental and human rights being key aspects. “These criteria are mandatory and binding,” a spokesperson for Volkswagen said in an interview. 

But having criteria doesn’t necessarily mean that firms can wash their hands of responsibility for environmental harm in their supply chain. 

Under the German supply chain law, in force since 2023, companies with more than 1,000 employees have to identify and prevent human rights and environmental violations in their supply chains.  

This means that German companies like Mercedes-Benz and Volkswagen have to make sure that when they buy components from factories or middlemen, environmental laws are respected if they impact human rights.  

And that goes beyond simply asking suppliers to promise they are respecting the standards or relying on compliance signs posted at factory gates, says Finn Schufft, a policy advisor on corporate accountability at Germanwatch, an NGO that analyses environmental policies. 

“Relying on reported data by suppliers is not usually enough to meet the standards of the risk analysis required,” he said. “Where companies have reason to believe that there has been a violation, they cannot shield themselves with compliance data from suppliers, but need to take active steps to verify the information.” 

While communities can file complaints with German authorities if they believe that the companies aren’t living up to their due diligence obligations, this doesn’t seem to have yielded tangible results so far. 

“To date, the supervisory authority, to our knowledge, has refused to issue any concrete orders to companies or impose sanctions for violations of the Act,” said Schufft.  

Fair Electronics campaign’s Bosch echoed the assessment.  

“With electric vehicles, we want a just energy transition,” she said, “not a continuation of North-South inequalities or the externalisation of socio-environmental impacts on communities and territories of the Global South, as has been happening with combustion-engine vehicles”.  

Other companies that aren’t covered by German law, however, only have to abide by international law – which is less strict for environmental standards. 

A European-wide law, the corporate sustainability due diligence directive, aims to address that. It imposes similar obligations on companies with more than 5,000 employees and a net turnover of over 1.5 billion euros. 

All carmakers mentioned in this article would fall under the criteria. 

But although it entered into force in 2024, the law will only apply from 2029, and fines will be capped at 3 per cent of a firm’s net global turnover.  

For Mandikar, those laws are too little too late.  

“Common citizens like [us] who have no power except for one vote in elections cannot bring change,” he said.  

He looks at his poisoned land one last time before walking back to his home, just a stone’s throw from the discharge pipe. The factory hum never stops.  

This article was developed with the support of Journalismfund Europe. It was originally published by Follow the Money. 

By now, you’ve seen the headlines, and there’s more of them every day: It’s “jaw-dropping.” It’s poised to make global warming worse. California has just declared a statewide state of emergency. This year’s El Niño — a shift in Pacific Ocean trade winds that scrambles global weather patterns — has been hotly discussed as one of the strongest on record, and one that could bring about potentially disastrous consequences. One study projects that it may cause as many as 451,000 heat-related deaths around the world by February.  

The current El Niño has also been given an array of eye-catching descriptors. When Jeffrey Shaman, a climatologist at Columbia Climate School, heard the phrase “super El Niño” for the first time earlier this year, he said, “I literally googled it.” The phrase isn’t officially used by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration or the World Meteorological Organization. But he still sees value in the label as a way of communicating the significance of this year’s likely unprecedented El Niño to the general public. 

“It’s colloquial, and there’s nothing wrong with that at all,” Shaman said. 

By all accounts, this year’s El Niño will also give the world a glimpse into a future of unabated warming due to the burning of fossil fuels — and an opportunity to change course before the worst effects occur.

People wade through a flooded road caused by monsoon rains in Apalit, Pampanga, Philippines, on August 20.
Daniel Ceng / Anadolu via Getty Images Water buffaloes emerge from the remaining water in a dried-up lake in Polonnaruwa, Sri Lanka, on September 4. El Niño is worsening the drying of lakes and other water sources amid an ongoing drought.
Thilina Kaluthotage / NurPhoto via Getty Images Back up — what is El Niño?

El Niño is a naturally occurring weather phenomenon that begins when sea surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean rise above average. Although it doesn’t occur on a set timeframe, it tends to happen every two to seven years. Typically, trade winds blow east to west across the Pacific and push warm ocean water along the equator toward East Asia. But during an El Niño year, these winds slow down and sometimes reverse. The warm water that typically gets dragged westward sloshes back, now toward the western coast of the Americas. 

This change in sea surface temperatures has ramifications far beyond the Pacific. It drives extreme weather across the globe, threatening crop harvests in several key agricultural regions, as well as worsening both drought and severe rainfall. 

The impact of climate change on El Niño is complex. Research has shown that global warming has led to more frequent El Niños. But El Niño events are also associated with jumps in global mean surface temperature — or the average temperature of the Earth itself, a measure commonly used as a stand-in for climate change. It’s not easy to delineate how much additional warming is from El Niño and how much is from climate change, but what is clear is that the combination will be devastating. This year may turn out to be the hottest year on record, and 2027 may be even hotter. It could be a preview of the typical levels of warming the world might see by 2040, according to one high-end estimate.

Scientists don’t know exactly how that combination will play out. “It’s going to be a very, very strong event occurring against a backdrop of very rapid global warming,” said Christopher Callahan, a climate scientist at Indiana University. “I think we’re going to, unfortunately, learn a lot this year,” he said.

A firefighter in Indonesia tries to extinguish wildfires at Sungai Rambutan Regency in Ogan Ilir, South Sumatera, on September 12. El Niño conditions are helping to fuel wildfires across the country.
Muhammad Fajri / Anadolu via Getty Images Francisco Molina shows corn kernels that failed to germinate at the village of Los Piches in Honduras on September 4. Locals say the drought is one of the worst they can remember, attributing its severity to the powerful El Niño weather pattern.
Orlando Sierra / AFP via Getty Images What makes this El Niño ‘super’?

There are many ways to measure the strength of an El Niño event. (NOAA keeps track of several of them here.) Some measure the sea surface temperature in different regions of the Pacific; there’s also indexes that take into account atmospheric changes as well as oceanic ones. The one used most often today is called the “Niño 3.4 anomaly.” In the U.S., in order for NOAA to declare an El Niño event, warming in this region of the Pacific must be 0.5 degrees Celsius above normal. If warming is 1 degree above normal, that gets labeled as “moderate”; if it’s 1.5 degrees above normal, then it counts as “strong”; and if it’s 2 degrees above normal, then it’s considered “very strong.”

The term “super” is broadly considered to be synonymous with “very strong.” However, a recent analysis of sea surface temperatures by Carbon Brief, released this week, shows that as of Monday, warming in the Niño 3.4 region reached 3.11 degrees.

That number is significant, because it means this year’s El Niño has already broken the record for the strongest El Niño, which peaked in November 2015. 

El Niño events typically peak around December or January. (Fun fact: The phenomenon was named El Niño by South American fishers who noticed its timing and associated the warmer temperatures with the story of baby Jesus.) It’s possible that sea surface temperatures in the Pacific will drop over the next few months. However, that looks increasingly unlikely. Sea surface temperatures in June, July, and August were the warmest we’ve ever seen, and forecast models show that there is now a 90 percent chance that this El Niño will stay “very strong” through the end of the year. 

“I was a little bit skeptical earlier this year of some of the more dire predictions,” said Callahan. But as more data kept coming in, he said, it became clear “that we’re going to see a generationally strong event this year.”

A worker monitors wind speed and direction in the Pacific at the Peruvian National Emergency Operations Center as part of national multi-hazard drills in preparation for the arrival of El Niño. Carlos Garcia Granthon/ Fotoholica Press / LightRocket via Getty Images Workers secure a container ship as it passes through the Cocoli Locks of the Panama Canal on September 3 ahead of reduced transit measures linked to the El Niño weather phenomenon.
Martin Bernetti / AFP via Getty Images Where did the phrase ‘super El Niño’ come from?

While it might sound like a phrase an overzealous journalist invented, “super El Niño” was actually coined by scientists — a fact that surprised Jovana Vurdelja, an ecolinguistics researcher in Serbia. “I really thought it was just media sensationalism,” she said. The phrase first appeared in a 2003 paper looking at how a strong El Niño can be followed by a strong La Niña, its cooler counterpart, according to Vurdelja.

“Super El Niño” has taken off in English-speaking countries but also across Europe, where it’s been adopted by speakers of Serbian, Norwegian, Italian, German, French, Croatian, and other languages. 

When extraordinary weather is on the way, people reach for amped-up language to communicate the scale of the hazard. But finding the right word to match that danger is like trying to find the right shoe size, Vurdelja said. The language can be too small, minimizing the threat, or it can be too big — exaggerations that can lead to nihilism or desensitization. “It’s extremely important that the word communicates the seriousness, the magnitude, the severity of the event itself,” Vurdelja said. She thinks “super El Niño” hits the mark, since it’s been embraced by scientists and the media alike.

A boy plays in the water of a public fountain as he cools off amid high temperatures linked to the El Nino weather phenomenon in Cali, Colombia, on September 23.
Joaquin Sarimiento / AFP via Getty Images Crews work along the Southern California shoreline on September 15. A strengthening El Niño is worsening coastal erosion, threatening homes in Dana Point, California, where several were red-tagged after powerful waves associated with Hurricane Marie battered the coastline.
Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images What comes after ‘super El Niño’?

If super El Niños become a common occurrence — that is, if warming in the Pacific regularly reaches 3 or more degrees above normal — the language we use to describe these events may need to evolve. Some scientists have already suggested that the phrase du jour doesn’t go far enough: “This is going to be so far beyond a super El Niño, if the models are right, that we sort of need a new term for it,” the climate scientist Zeke Hausfather said in the podcast Shift Key last month.

We’ll “need stronger words, stronger language, and that’s when we get into this spiral,” Vurdelja said. That’s how you end up with scientists reaching for words like “mind-bogglingly crazy” and “gobsmackingly bananas” (a phrase Hausfather coined) to describe record heat. The term “Godzilla” El Niño, now taking off in news headlines, was coined by NASA climate scientist Bill Patzert in 2015. 

The official categories for what counts as a strong El Niño used to make sense. “We hadn’t gotten above 2 degrees Celsius except occasionally,” Shaman said, and so the language experts initially settled on “seemed like a reasonable place to be.”

Whatever you call it, the most important thing will be planning for the potential impacts of this very strong El Niño — to understand what it means for food production, hydropower generation, public health, and extreme weather in the coming year. Given California’s recent state of emergency declaration, for now, maybe “super” will do just fine.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Whether it’s ‘super’ or ‘Godzilla,’ El Niño is already breaking records on Sep 25, 2026.

Dear Leslie,

I’ve noticed a real divide between my mindset and my mom’s. She’s a boomer, I’m a millennial. When she furnished her house through Amazon and Wayfair, the thing she was proudest of was how cheap it all was — same with clothes. For me, cheap usually means bad and disposable, not something worth bragging about. I don’t know whether to try explaining my point of view or just let her have hers. Am I missing something about where she’s coming from, or is it OK to think I know better here?

— Generational Divide

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Dear Generational Divide,

I’m glad you’re bringing curiosity to the divide you experience with your mom, rather than just frustration. I think the key here is not about who knows better, but about being able to build a cross-generational bridge — something absolutely crucial to the broader climate movement. 

Ask a Climate Therapist tackles your questions about how to navigate the emotional side of climate change, with leading climate-aware therapist Leslie Davenport. Have a question? Ask it here!

As you likely know, a lot of boomers came of age in an era of real economic turbulence: oil-crisis inflation, layoffs, and mortgage rates that hit 18 percent in the early 1980s. Getting more for less was truly a survival strategy — one many of them absorbed at home first. Their own parents had lived through the Great Depression and World War II, and that generation’s habits of rationing, saving, and stretching every dollar shaped how boomers were raised. 

Our economic stressors — and our sources of bargains — have changed over time, but for some people, finding the best deal never stops feeling like a win.

Of course, this isn’t just a boomer impulse. A college student today who shops for a back-to-school outfit at H&M isn’t necessarily anti-sustainability or pro-fast fashion. Consumer choices are often about what’s within reach, not what a person truly values.

I’d recommend starting here: An empathic statement as simple as, “I get why that felt like a success for you” could validate your mom’s thinking on this, and from there it may be easier to have an honest conversation about why you would approach the home furnishing project, for instance, with different priorities. You might also be able to open the door to even more intergenerational learning. Try asking your mom what she used to make from scratch, or what her own mother taught her to fix instead of replace. The meaning of sustainability was different then; it was just how things were done. 

Finding an alignment with your mom matters beyond just resolving family tension, because intergenerational alliances carry real political weight. And the prevailing belief that older generations don’t care about the planet is overstated. Research from King’s College London found that roughly 7 in 10 people across every generation, boomers included, think that environmental problems are serious enough to justify real changes in how we live. But keep in mind, the actions taken by different age groups may be different. Research points to some general trends: Older people tend to be more consistent voters, while younger people are more likely to turn out for protests and the like (though some organizations are aiming to buck that trend by specifically mobilizing older Americans for climate activism).  

If sharing your sustainability values with your mom is important to you, look for the common ground where you can build that intergenerational solidarity. Try meeting each other halfway — share small things you each already do that are beneficial for the planet. If you’re open to learning from one another, you can invite each other in on your beliefs and practices. Two people, two generations — one relationship that’s worth the effort, and one planet worth uniting for.

In this with you,
Leslie

I’m Leslie Davenport, a licensed therapist, educator, speaker, consultant, and internationally recognized voice on the emotional and psychological dimensions of climate change. If you’ve got a question about climate and mental health, please consider submitting it for a future column. Submit a question for a future Ask a Climate Therapist column More from Ask a Climate Therapist

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This story was originally published by Grist with the headline My boomer mom’s cheap online shopping habit drives me nuts on Sep 25, 2026.

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