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The University of Toronto could generate a quarter of its electricity from on-site solar power, according to our new report. Despite U of T’s ambitious climate and sustainability goals, existing solar installations currently supply less than 1% of the university’s total electricity needs. Our new report, Scaling Solar Power at the University of Toronto, finds

The post University of Toronto could generate 25% of its electricity with solar power appeared first on Ontario Clean Air Alliance.

The Place:

Morrell Nature Sanctuary is a 110-hectare (270-acre) preserve of coastal Douglas-fir forest in British Columbia that volunteers battle to keep safe from invasive species. The sanctuary is a shelter for a biodiverse ecosystem where fir coexist with massive red cedars, Garry oaks, and twisting, hard-as-stone arbutus trees with their shocking, ever-peeling red and pistachio-green trunks. The forest’s undergrowth is dominated by salal, Oregon grape, and ferns. But those are just a few of the more than 100 species of plants that provide a home for animals, including deer and bears. Ravens and barred owls regularly oversee our work.

Why it matters:

According to the Coastal Douglas-fir Conservation Partnership, this type of forest is the most at-risk zone in British Columbia, yet it contains the highest diversity of plant species in the province. Morrell Nature Sanctuary is a volunteer-led organization trying to maintain a small piece of this forest for all.

A barred owl looks down on Morrell. Photo: Tanya Berry (used with permission) The threat:

The forest is in peril. Always creeping in from the edges or growing from bits dropped by birds are invasive Christmas-card perfect holly trees and very pretty, but toxic, daphne laurel. The open, rocky bluffs that the arbutus and Garry oaks favor are at risk of being taken over by Scotch broom. Local lore attributes the broom plague to a sentimental Scot who planted a few seeds to remind him of home. Now the broom has taken over any disturbed (literally and metaphorically) location across large swathes of southwestern British Columbia. It runs rampant up hydro lines, along trails and ditches, and in lots clearcut and then abandoned by developers. We curse the homesick Scot even as we grudgingly admire the bright yellow blooms in late spring.

It’s not just the sanctuary volunteers who engage in the Sisyphean labor of cutting blooming broom as close to the ground as possible. Many groups work to eradicate it, worrying the highly flammable, toxic bush will kill the native species and fuel a forest fire. It is dangerously everywhere.

The invasive-fighting volunteers have heard the arguments. Isn’t it natural evolution to let plants grow as they wish? That’s hard to believe if you witness the monoculture left under the canopy if you let daphne laurel grow at will. Isn’t it a waste of time? I can’t tell you how gratifying it is to liberate an arbutus from a surround of broom and know that even if you need to come back to cut baby broom next year, the arbutus is free for now. Parts of the sanctuary are close to pristine, where breathing is easier for everyone — and that can’t possibly be a waste of time or labor.

So we persist against the holly, daphne laurel, and broom while occasionally tackling other problematic plants in our neck of the woods: Periwinkle, English ivy (homesick settlers take note!) and Himalayan blackberry have also taken root.

My place in this place:

Of all the invasive plants, it’s the blackberry I find most difficult — and not just because of its vicious, rope-thick cane and brambles. There’s actually very little of it in the sanctuary, but when I occasionally come across it, I morph into a blackberry terminator, lasering in on the plant as I approach for the kill.

The author at Morrell.

My technique involves clipping back as much of the vine and cane that I can until the roots are exposed, which I pull out of the ground with specially designed “puller-bears.” These heavy contraptions are very useful for pinching around the base of a plant and then slowly levering the roots out of the ground. They’re indispensable for clearing daphne laurel and smaller holly trees, which will regrow if cut. But never use a puller-bear on broom: You’ll just disturb the soil and create the perfect nursery for thousands of dormant broom seeds to sprout. It’s better to cut blooming broom off at the base, which will likely kill it.

But back to the blackberries. In the sanctuary I gleefully eradicate them. It’s when I leave that problems arise, as I wrestle with my hypocritical lust for a perfectly ripe blackberry. As soon as I touch a plump fruit, I know whether I should immediately pull it to my mouth or drop it in a bucket to freeze for delayed gratification over the winter. The ripe ones come to you willingly, almost falling into your hand as you caress them and then offer explosions of sweetness leaving a lingering, subtle, delicious tartness on your palate. There’s a reason “hints of blackberry” is often used to describe rich red wines.

As I walk to the sanctuary on summer mornings I assess the readiness of the crop, justifying my greediness with every step. They’ll still be there, taking over fields and ditches if I don’t eat them. And it’s free food! (Monetarily, at least.)

The coastal Douglas-fir ecosystem also has native trailing blackberries. Their fruits are smaller and sweeter, and many claim more delicious, than Himalayan blackberries. The trailing blackberry vine is also more delicate, and there’s no cane. While Himalayan blackberries would make an extremely effective defense against invaders, trailing blackberries allow animals to move through and coexist with salal and Oregon grape. Nonnative blackberries grow prolifically, not allowing anything else to grow and even competing with broom in disturbed sites. I believe it’s the alpha blackberry that will win out.

Have I mentioned the thorns the size of tacks that tear at your clothes, sometimes piercing the armor you donned before heading out on the hunt? For a month or so every summer the invasive blackberries dare you to come and get ’em if you’re brave enough to try. It’s not a chore for the unprepared. No matter the weather, you have to wear thick clothing and closed-toe shoes, if not boots. Mesh-topped running shoes won’t last a minute. The wise bring hand clippers to carve out a relatively safe space to pick. My husband carries an old broomstick with a bent nail banged into one end, which he uses to snag berry-laden branches and pull them within reach. He favors cutting his way in where others dare not go and picking in one spot. I wear a thick work glove on my non-picking hand to maneuver fruit nearer as I skim along the surface of the brambles. We’ve enviously watched seasoned warriors lean ladders against three-meter-high blackberry hedges to get at the ones the rest of us can’t reach.

My love of blackberries illustrates the issue at hand. Many invasive plants were originally planted in gardens because they’re pretty or taste good. I, along with everyone else, need to tamp down our selfish need for plants that don’t belong here. Inevitably as I enter the sanctuary, my mouth stained a deep purple, I relax because it’s always cooler there when it’s hot out. On rainy days the towering canopy gives protection. I stop and breathe and know that given the choice of this or blackberries, I will choose the forest every time. That’s what we are fighting to protect.

Who’s protecting it now:

Volunteers. In addition to the Morrell nature sanctuary, volunteers with organizations such as BroomBusters are working in the region to eradicate invasive species, Scotch broom in particular.

Photo: Tanya Berry (used with permission) What this place needs:

The smallest actions, such as ripping out an invasive plant as one walks by, can quickly add up, clearing areas remarkably effectively. But local government leaders also need to step in and recognize the threat posed by invasive plants. The wildfires should terrify us all and spur action to legislate the removal of plants such as Scotch broom or fine those who don’t take action. Another step is to make the disposal of invasive plants easier. Right now, it costs us to take bags of pulled or cut plants for disposal; we need support, not barriers.

Lessons from the fight:

A small group of mostly retired people working a few hours a week can make a surprisingly big difference. But we Morrell volunteers are only working on a tiny piece of the landscape. If more people started working a bit more broadly, I believe much more of the forest could be protected. For example, I regularly walk through a Nanaimo park that’s choking on invasive plants. Holly and daphne are everywhere, and the cedars and firs are covered in ivy. Yet it’s obvious where people have stepped in to eradicate the interlopers, leaving pockets of forest in a clean state. It can be done.

Learn more:

To find out more about the Morrell Nature Sanctuary, visit their website or follow them on Facebook.

To see the work of another invasive fighting volunteer organization, with inspiring examples of small groups who made big impacts, visit the BroomBuster’s website.

To learn more about the coastal Douglas-fir ecosystem visit: https://www.cdfcp.ca/about-the-cdfcp/.

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

Protect This Place: The Florida Panhandle vs. Petrochemicals

The post Protect This Place: Coastal Douglas-Fir Forest of Southwestern British Columbia appeared first on The Revelator.

Registered nurses at Olympia Fields Hospital in Olympia Fields, Ill., voted 82 percent in favor of joining National Nurses Organizing Committee, an affiliate of National Nurses United, the largest and fastest-growing registered nurse (RN) union in the nation.

Almost three-quarters of the 72 five-year plans published by China this year include policies or targets related to climate change and energy, according to Carbon Brief analysis.

Five-year plans are an important part of China’s policymaking process, signalling key priorities and setting targets for the coming years.

The post Interactive: What China’s dozens of ‘five-year plans’ say about climate and energy appeared first on Carbon Brief.

This week on the Talking Headways podcast, we’re joined by Dr. Wendy Zhou to discuss her recent USC dissertation on dynamic accessibility — you know, how static maps without a time-based dimension don’t tell the whole story on access and how it’s time for a “people-based” accessibility.

And you know that there’s three ways to play the weekly Talking Headways game:

• Put on some headphones and click “play” in the player below:
• Read an excerpt of our exhilarating conversation below the player.
• Read the entire text (with some transcription typos) here.

Here’s the excerpt:

Jeff Wood: How did you get interested in transportation policy?

Wendy Zhou: I grew into later in life. My interest started in urban planning, not specifically transportation, when I did my college in China, and then I did my Masters in Berkeley.

I was not a specific transportation person. I was more environmental. For example, when I did my research in undergrad, I visited different communities to see how people actually interact with neighborhood green space. So I know people use the infrastructure differently, and the urban planning benefit different people, so that’s kind of how I get interested in urban planning in the first place.

And it’s about how people live in a city that’s got me interested in the first place. And then, I got more exposed to transportation when I was in USC, where I work with my adviser, Geoff Boeing.

Jeff Wood: Geoff’s been on the show before.

Wendy Zhou: Oh cool. That’s when I got more exposed to transportation planning and transportation policy. One thing that kind of bugs me is the accessibility map that I see in, for example, the USDA’s food desert. It’s based on the home census tract and it draws a one-mile buffer around the centroid of census tract to see whether, for example, there are supermarkets within that buffer.

It bothers me because it’s not the case from my experience of how I live. I live in San Gabriel, and where I live is actually marked as a food desert on that map, and I was shocked because I never feel that way. And then I realized because I go to school that has a Trader Joe’s. And sometimes I drop off my husband in Pasadena, where his shuttle is, and there are Whole Foods, like every grocery store there.

It occurs to me I never buy grocery close to my home, and I think maybe perhaps how we measure it can be different from how people living there and experienced accessibility, and that’s the idea that interests me and the dissertation idea came from.

Jeff Wood: Obviously that’s an issue, but I’m curious what led you to think that this was something that needed extra research, that the static maps weren’t quite working for planners and others who are thinking about these issues like food deserts?

Wendy Zhou: That’s a great question. … Take smartphone data, which was not a thing that we used to have as planners. With that data, we can know where people are across different times of day, which should be a better information to just proxy people from where they live. So that’s the new opportunity of this research.

And I think the problem is more based on my own experience because I know how you proxy from people’s home is not what people experience. We know there are data there and know how people experience it differently and want to see how they come together.

Jeff Wood: So what do access metrics look like now? You did basically a review of about 160 different papers. I’m curious what it looks like currently in the world.

Wendy Zhou: So it’s still based on places. That’s most likely still using census tracts, census blocks, and then use that place to proxy people’s home location.

So for example, “more Asians live in that place,” or “more White people” or “more Black people,” and use that to proxy different people’s accessibility. So basically it’s based on their home. But I see the development is more like the time fact, like people are more incorporating the time sensitive, like transit data.

Unlike decades ago, maybe more people are using just straight line distances or like network distances. But now they more incorporated the time difference, the travel time difference by bike, for example, by transit, by drive. So that’s kind of seeing like the temporal dimension they’re incorporating. But most likely they’re based on places like the home census tract.

From 19 to 23 October, FAO headquarters in Rome will host the 54th session of the Committee on World Food Security (CFS), one of the leading multilateral forums on food security and nutrition. The CFS brings together governments, UN agencies, civil society, Indigenous Peoples, researchers and the private sector to tackle the root causes of hunger and malnutrition, advance the right to food, and build sustainable, resilient food systems. High on this year’s agenda are food system resilience and critical and emerging issues for food security.

The meeting opens just over two months after the release of a FAO–UNOSAT report that shows starkly what it means, in wartime, to lose not only access to food but the very ability to produce it. In the Gaza Strip, just 3% of cropland is both accessible and undamaged.

As of 24 June 2026, 4,091 hectares were accessible, 27% of the total agricultural area. Yet only 448 hectares were intact and could be farmed without first being restored, while the remaining 3,643 accessible hectares had been damaged. Since October 2025, the area of accessible, undamaged farmland has shrunk by a further 25.5%. In Rafah, 97.2% of agricultural land and 98.4% of greenhouses are out of reach. Across Gaza, just 224 hectares of greenhouses, 16.6% of the total, remain both accessible and intact.

According to FAO, the main reason less land has been available in recent months is not further physical damage but loss of access to the fields. Land can still be fit for farming and yet produce nothing, because farmers simply cannot reach it. Even where access is still possible, production is held back by shortages of seeds, fertilisers, irrigation equipment, fuel and other essential inputs. Livestock farmers are struggling to find animal feed and veterinary medicines.

Before October 2023, agriculture accounted for around 10% of Gaza’s economy and supported the livelihoods of more than 560,000 people through farming, livestock and fishing. The hostilities have struck not only crops and infrastructure but an entire food ecosystem: soil, water, seeds, farming knowledge, labour, local trade and the ability of people to keep producing their own food over time. This is where the question of seeds becomes crucial. A seed is not just another input to be imported. It is the first link in a community’s food autonomy, because it holds the possibility of saving, reproducing and adapting crops. The freedom to save and exchange seeds and the protection of biodiversity are fundamental to food sovereignty. When land, water, seeds and local productive capacity are lost, dependence on outside sources grows instead. FAO itself lists among its priorities safe access to land, the entry of agricultural inputs, and investment to rehabilitate fields and rebuild local agriculture.

As the CFS meets in Rome, Gaza raises a question that reaches far beyond the Strip: can we talk about food security in terms of food availability alone, without also considering whether communities are able to produce it? For Navdanya, this is exactly where food sovereignty begins: with the freedom to safeguard seeds, regenerate the land and keep the power to feed themselves in the hands of communities.

Ruchi Shroff 

Navdanya International

Thumbnail: “Palestinians commemorate Land Day in the ‘buffer zone’ of the eastern Gaza Strip” by Joe Catron, CC BY-NC 2.0, via Flickr. No changes made.

Increasing use of AI systems to manage public utilities creates new risks for critical infrastructure, regulators said.

Flying is one of the fastest-growing sources of greenhouse gas emissions, according to the European Commission. And while road transport emits more carbon over, flying is energy-intensive per person. Flying from Lisbon to New York and back produces roughly the same emissions as an average European Union citizen heating their home for a year.

The aviation industry has adopted several measures to cut its emissions. But data on the impact of these measures has been limited.

Researchers from the German Aerospace Center provide some new insights in a study in the journal Science Advances. The researchers estimated the effects of sustainable aviation fuels and modern efficient engines on aircraft pollution.

“Our findings demonstrate that a substantial reduction of particle emissions requires a synergistic approach, combining the use of alternative fuels with modern engine technologies,” the team writes. “The results may support the optimization of future engine technologies for lower particle emissions…and thereby help to reduce the impact of aviation on climate and public health.”

In addition to carbon dioxide, jet engines emit ultrafine particle pollution, composed mainly of tiny soot and sulfate particles. These emissions impact human health on the ground. Under the right atmospheric conditions, the particles also lead to contrails. That’s because hot water vapor in engine exhaust condenses on the tiny solid particles and freezes. Contrails can persist for hours and trap heat in the atmosphere.

Reducing aviation’s non-carbon dioxide emissions will be key to meet the Paris Agreement’s goal of limiting global warming to 1.5°C, past studies have shown. Sustainable aviation fuels and modern lean-burn engines, which use a higher air-to-fuel ratio, should both reduce particulate emissions.

 

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But “the influence of the fuel composition…on particle emissions in rich-burn and lean-burn combustor conditions has hardly been explored in flight experiments,” Rebecca Dischl and colleagues write in the paper.

So the team analyzed measurements of in-flight particulate emissions from two Airbus airplanes. Both planes flew on lean-burn engines, but one used conventional fuel while the other used sustainable aviation fuel.

As the airplanes cruised, a smaller test aircraft equipped with inlets on the fuselage followed. The test craft had various instruments for measuring aerosol particles and trace gases. Two instruments mounted under the wings detected ice particle number and size. The test flights were conducted in November 2021 and March 2023.

Earlier this year, the research team reported that aircraft made contrails even when they produced less soot. Liquid particles such as engine oil droplets, it turns out, led to contrail formation.

Their new analysis shows that the advanced engines reduce soot particle emissions by three orders of magnitude compared with conventional engines. Further, under the rich-burn conditions, soot particle emissions depended exponentially on the hydrogen content of the fuel burned.

Meanwhile, volatile particle emissions from sustainable fuels increased with the sulfur content of the fuel. And the emissions varied considerably even between engines of the same type, the authors found.

By comparing particle emissions from different aviation fuels and aircraft engines, the findings enhance the understanding of aircraft emissions in the low-soot regime. This data should serve as valuable input for advancing jet engine model development, the researchers write. Optimizing fuel composition and engine technology would reduce particle emissions, improve airport air quality, and mitigate contrails.

Source: Rebecca Dischl et al. Mitigating aviation’s environmental impact through alternative fuels and cleaner engines. Science Advances, 2026.

Image: ©Anthropocene Magazine

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The latest surge in fossil-fuel prices means it is now up to nine times cheaper in the UK to drive an electric vehicle (EV) than a petrol or diesel car, shows Carbon Brief analysis.

Since February, when the US first attacked Iran, the average price of diesel has increased by 38% to £1.96 a litre, according to Carbon Brief analysis of government figures. 

Following the attack on the Kapotnya oil refinery in Russia on 20 September and with tensions in the Middle East growing, this is expected to pass a record £2 a litre. 

(Russia was the second-largest exporter of diesel in the world, but its refineries have been hit every three days on average in the first six months of 2026.)

Similarly, petrol prices have surged by 31% since February to £1.72, based on government figures, with some locations reaching nearly £2 per litre, according to BBC News.

These increases have been driven by oil prices jumping to more than $100 per barrel as the conflict between Yemen’s Houthis and Saudi Arabia escalates – a roughly 50% increase from June. 

As such, it now costs an estimated 21p per mile to drive a diesel car and 20.1p per mile for petrol, according to Carbon Brief analysis of the latest figures from the Department of Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ).

In contrast, it is currently nine times cheaper to drive an EV charged using an off-peak tariff, at 2.3p per mile, as shown in the chart below. 

Even if charging with electricity bought at the domestic price cap – the maximum amount a supplier can charge for a unit of energy and standing charge, set by the regulator Ofgem every three months – it still only costs around 7p per mile to drive an EV, three times cheaper than the price for petrol or diesel cars. 

The price cap is set to increase in October, but almost all of the increase is for gas, with the unit rate of electricity only expected to rise by less than 1% from 26.1p per unit to 26.3p.

A larger 20% increase in electricity unit rates under the price cap is expected in January 2027, as higher gas costs filter through to an increase in wholesale electricity prices. Nevertheless, EVs would still remain far cheaper to drive than petrol or diesel cars.

UK drivers could save around £80 by charging an EV at home, in comparison with filling up a petrol car at the pump, as shown in the figure below. This is based on comparing the cost of an average full tank of petrol with the cost of enough electricity to drive the same distance.

Despite their much higher running costs, petrol still dominates the UK’s roads, making up 55% of all cars on the road. Only 6% of the roughly 35m cars on the road are fully electric battery EVs, with a further 3% being plug-in hybrids that can run on fuel or electricity.

However, sales of EVs are continuing to increase, with around 30% of new cars sold in August being battery EVs, according to the Society of Motor Manufacturers & Traders (SMMT). This is up from 26.5% in August 2025.

Separate analysis from Carbon Brief in June suggested that the UK’s EV drivers were saving £1,100 a year in fuel costs, compared to petrol car drivers. Following the latest hike in fuel prices, these savings would now be even higher at £1,200 a year.

Compared with average pump prices of £1.72 per litre of petrol or £1.96 per litre of diesel, it would cost as little as 20p – around nine times cheaper than petrol – for an equivalent amount of electricity using off-peak charging.

As shown in the figure below, even charging at the household price cap would only cost the equivalent of 60p per litre, making EVs still significantly cheaper to drive.

Public charging points remain significantly more expensive than domestic rates. However, the UK government estimates that around 90% of electric car charging takes place at home.

In addition, the government plans to introduce a pay-per-mile tax on EVs from April 2028. This would add 3p per mile to the cost of driving an EV. Yet the considerably lower fuel costs mean they will remain far cheaper to drive than petrol or diesel cars.

related Analysis: Global fossil-fuel emissions set to fall in 2026 amid Hormuz crisis 16.09.2026 Emissions CCC: Heathrow expansion could push flights to ‘80% of UK emissions by 2050’ 16.09.2026 Emissions El Niño: Indonesia fire emissions in 2026 ‘on track’ to match record for this century 11.09.2026 El Niño and La Niña UK aviation emissions to be 50% higher than thought by 2050, government admits 10.09.2026 Aviation and shipping

The post Analysis: EVs are now nine times cheaper than petrol or diesel to drive in the UK  appeared first on Carbon Brief.

Headline News:

• “Senator Sanders Has Introduced A Bill To Ban Artificial Superintelligence And Create Deptartment Of AI” • Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Greg Casar introduced legislation that would ban artificial superintelligence, pause development of advanced AI systems, and create a Department of Artificial Intelligence. [ABC News]

Bernie Sanders (Anderseidesvik, CC BY-SA 4.0, cropped)

• “OECD Lifts 2026 Global Economic Growth Forecast To 2.9% Despite Iran War” • In its interim outlook, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development raised its growth projection for 2026 by 0.1% from June. It says the world economy “has weathered the energy supply shock triggered by the conflict in the Middle East better than expected.” [Euronews]
• “OpenAI, Anthropic CEOs At UN Call For Global Cooperation On AI: ‘We Are At A Crossroads” • The leaders of OpenAI and Anthropic delivered a clear message to the UN Security Council: the threat of AI is real and the time to act is now. Addressing high-level foreign ministers, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said “this moment calls for extreme care.” [ABC News]
• “Gulf Nations Have Found Ways To Keep Oil Flowing” • When Iran shut down the Strait of Hormuz at the start of the war, to choke off sea passage for 15 million barrels of oil a day, many feared that rising prices would crater the world economy. But oil exporters and the US military found multi-layered workarounds in a clandestine game of whack-a-mole. [ABC News]
• “NYSERDA Approves State Renewable Energy Projects” • The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority is initiating eight new bulk energy storage projects and thirteen large-scale renewable energy projects in the state. Combined, these projects are expected to provide 1.7 GW of new large-scale energy resources. [Solar Power World]

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

Labour Day 2026 in Toronto was not just our time for a lovely parade and a picnic. It isn’t what it used to be when...

The post Labour Day 2026: Workers show solidarity against ruling forces first appeared on Spring.

'Bartolina Sisa' reaffirms their commitment to continuing the struggle as socio-economic and political challenges persist, rejecting the IMF loan, which they argue is plunging Bolivians deeper into debt.

The post Bolivia: ‘Bartolina Sisa’ reaffirms its mobilisation and denounces the lack of constitutional freedoms appeared first on La Via Campesina - EN.

This law marks a new chapter and brings new hope for the implementation of agrarian reform - a long-awaited step toward achieving a fairer restructuring of agrarian relations that favors farmers and the people

The post Indonesia: Agrarian Reform Regulation Law Passed – SPI calls it a vital step for agrarian justice appeared first on La Via Campesina - EN.

Leevin Camacho was brushing his teeth one day last fall when his mother called. The water is contaminated, she said. Moments later she texted him a photo of a flyer issued by the local water authority. “Cancer risk,” it warned. “Increased likelihood of adverse impacts on the liver.” And in bold capital letters, “DO NOT DRINK.”

Camacho stared at the message. Water flowed from the faucets as his children, who were 10 and 12, gulped and spit, their faces reflected in the mirrors above the two bathroom sinks.  

Thumbing at his phone, Camacho googled dieldrin. The results included words like “organochlorine” and “insecticide” and “persistent environmental pollutant” that the United States had banned in 1987. Worse, high levels had been detected in his community’s water since at least 2008. “Our kids have been drinking the water,” he realized. “They’ve been cooking with the water for almost their entire lives at this point.” 

Camacho lives in Yigo, a northern village on the island of Guam. In time, he would learn that the U.S. Air Force base next to the well serving his house had reported “very high levels” of the pesticide, which it had listed as a “chemical of concern” since at least 1993. The Pentagon’s investigation, led by officials at Joint Region Marianas, is in its early stages. Local officials caution that although they suspect the base is a source of the pollution, there may be others because dieldrin was once widely used.

Leevin Camacho stands before the well serving his home in Yigo, which was found to have been contaminated with high levels of dieldrin. Anita Hofschneider / Grist

For Camacho, the news felt like the unfolding of a familiar story — one both predictable and infuriating.

Camacho had grown up as an Army brat, raised to think of the United States as Guam’s liberator from Japan during World War II. But over the past two decades, his understanding of that legacy has changed. 

“There are certain actions that the military takes that are contrary to the interests of the people who are from Guam and who live in Guam,” said Camacho, whose measured tone rarely changes, even when discussing something as emotional as what his children have been drinking. 

To Camacho, dieldrin is the latest reminder that the people of Guam continue to bear the costs of militarization. Unexploded ordnance litters jungles and lagoons. PCBs contaminate the fish. Pollutants taint the groundwater. The island and its people, who are U.S. citizens, have been inalterably changed by more than a century of American military presence.

Rear Admiral Brett Mietus, the head of Joint Region Marianas, the U.S. Navy’s regional command for Guam and neighboring islands, said he can’t speak to past pollution but the command is committed to protecting the environment and the people of Guam. 

“We spend a lot of time and we spend a lot of money making sure that we meet every U.S. regulation when it comes to anything that we’re going to do here,” he told Grist. “We’re meeting every letter of every law for environmental regulations and rules, and we’re doing that while we’re spending a ton of money to defend this island from the most advanced missiles in the world.”

A sign warns passersby not to enter a live-fire range in northern Guam. Anita Hofschneider / Grist

Today, Guam sits at the center of an ongoing military buildup, one that is reshaping the island even as it spreads across the Pacific. On Yap, more than 1,000 graves could be disturbed to make way for an American seaport and airfield. Indigenous leaders on Palau are suing to protect their lands. Less visible but just as impactful are the climate impacts of this expansion. The Pentagon is already the world’s largest institutional emitter of greenhouse gases, and its buildup will do more than contribute to the destruction of the region’s reefs, forests, and Indigenous sacred sites. It will accelerate the climate crisis that threatens the survival of Pacific islands.

The Pentagon often cites growing geopolitical tensions to justify the buildup. “The security environment in the Indo-Pacific is becoming more dangerous and defined by an increasing risk of confrontation and crisis,” Navy Admiral Sam Paparo, commander of U.S. Pacific Command, told Congress in April while seeking $122 billion for new weaponry to counter China, including offensive missiles on Guam. Three months later, a ballistic missile launched from a Chinese submarine flew near the island, underscoring why many on the island see America’s military presence as both a source of vulnerability and protection.

Sometimes it can be too much to think about. “I need to compartmentalize these things,” Camacho said. “That’s sometimes the only way that you can do this, because otherwise you will just be overwhelmed by the sheer amount of things that are out there, the amount of injustice that is out there.”

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Those injustices collide in Yigo. Neighbors lost their homes earlier this year to typhoons fueled by warming seas. The Army Corps of Engineers will soon begin clearing bombs from a nearby dump site created in 1945. A new machine gun range just opened alongside a federal wildlife refuge to support the arrival of 5,000 Marines from Okinawa.

Then there’s the dieldrin contamination. “At some point,” Camacho said, “someone has to force them to do what’s right.”

Years before he became one of Guam’s leading critics of the military buildup sweeping over the island, Leevin Camacho was a young lawyer who liked to run before work. As his sneakers hit the pavement, the sun rose over Yigo. Roosters crowed and streaks of pink lightened the sky. The road, little used and lined with jungle brush, was one of the few places he could run without encountering stray dogs or morning traffic. He always ran at first light, before oppressive heat would reflect off the asphalt and the concrete buildings. It was the perfect start to what was often a day spent listening to depositions and wading through case law.

It was 2009. Camacho had returned to Guam after law school and was making more money than he ever had as a school teacher. “You dream of going to law school to provide services and to fight for people who don’t have the ability to fight, right? I’ll be honest with you, I lost my way,” Camacho said. “I had a bunch of student debt and I was satisfied just kind of going by day to day and just focusing on myself and my family.” 

The U.S. military was the backdrop to Camacho’s life but not something he worried about. He didn’t think much about the invasive tangan-tangan trees lining his running route, or the fact they had spread across Guam after the U.S. scattered their seeds to reforest the island following the war. On his morning runs, he was more likely to hear a military jet overhead than a native bird song. 

Leevin Camacho gestures at photos of his family in his home in Yigo. His grandparents lived through the brutal Japanese occupation of Guam and rarely talked about it. Anita Hofschneider / Grist

It hadn’t always been that way. Guam was among the first Pacific islands settled by seafarers from what is now the Philippines, who navigated by the stars and waves an estimated 3,500 years ago. The CHamoru people built a thriving island society known for its towering latte stones and swift outrigger sailing canoes.

That changed when Magellan landed on Guam in 1521. Spain claimed the island and the rest of the archipelago, beginning more than 500 years of ongoing colonization. The Spanish forced the Indigenous people to embrace Catholicism and banned their canoes. The United States took over the island from Spain in 1898 and imposed military rule. Naval governors burned CHamoru language books and blocked Indigenous efforts to gain U.S. citizenship. 

Then came Japan. Its invasion in 1941, on the same day it attacked Pearl Harbor, wasn’t unexpected. The U.S. Navy evacuated sailors’ dependents but left 20,000 CHamorus to endure nearly three years of forced marches and labor, malnutrition, and sexual servitude. More than 1,000 would die. When American forces retook Guam in 1944, they were welcomed as liberators. The island still celebrates Liberation Day every July. “I can’t remember a single discouraging remark that my maternal grandmother would have made about the U.S.,” Camacho said. But he does remember her saying of the Americans, “They saved us.’”

Nearly 18,000 CHamoru were relocated to Manenggon and other concentration camps before the Battle of Guam. Joe Rosenthal / AP Photo

That was the narrative that Camacho grew up with. Even the military taking his family’s land — part of a massive military land grab after World War II —  was accepted by his grandparents as the price of freedom from Japanese oppression. It wasn’t until Camacho learned that the Pentagon’s expansion plans would close his running route that he began to question what it meant for Guam to be an American military outpost. He pored over the buildup’s planning documents and was struck by the disconnect between how the military described its plans and the reality as he knew it. “They paid consultants a bunch of money. The comment was, ‘We drove by and we didn’t see any cars, so there’s no impact,’” he said of the running route. “And that was it.”

As Camacho read thousands of pages of documents, he saw the same pattern again and again. Proposals for bombing and machine-gun ranges, expanded undersea explosives, and projects that threatened forests and ancient latte stones were accompanied by detailed assessments that minimized what they would mean for the islands.

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On a flight home from Honolulu, Camacho was reviewing the environmental analysis of the buildup on his laptop when one passage stopped him. The proposed influx of 80,000 people would leave too little water for fire suppression, particularly in Yigo. The solution, according to the document, was to send surplus water from Andersen Air Force base to civilian communities. “That was the first time I just kind of lost it, just how stark it was,” he said. “The aquifer is our aquifer, right? Like, you’re taking our water for your people and then we don’t have enough and they’re going to divert whatever you’re taking from us that is extra.” 

Camacho and other concerned residents started We Are Guåhan, a community group focused on raising awareness about what was happening. (Guåhan is the CHamoru word for Guam.) He sued to stop a machine-gun range from being built at Pågat, an ancestral village that’s home to millennia-old latte stones. Their campaign protected the site and helped persuade the Navy not to expand its landholdings on Guam. The Department of Defense also reduced the planned transfer of Marines from Okinawa from 9,000 to 5,000. 

But it didn’t stop the buildup. The Pentagon activated Marine Corps Base Camp Blaz six years ago, and opened a new machine-gun range alongside a federal wildlife refuge just north of Yigo. “It’s so heartbreaking,” said Lola Leon Guerrero, another member of We Are Guåhan. (She is not related to Governor Lou Leon Guerrero.) “All of that effort and it still happened.”

The yellow excavator scraped away at the pale rock that lies beneath Camp Blaz under the hot May sun. A limestone forest had already been bulldozed to make way for a new machine-gun training range. A sign next to the fence read, “Guam National Wildlife Refuge” with an arrow pointing to the left and a picture of a turtle. 

“Wow,” said Moneaka Flores, one of Camacho’s clients in the lawsuit he filed against the Navy to protect the island’s endangered species. She stopped at the side of the road to watch the digger work. It had been months since she’d been here, and they’d cleared so much more forest than she realized. 

Busy construction vehicles are the most obvious sign of the Pentagon’s buildup. Beyond the new Marine Corps base, the Department of Defense is upgrading the island’s port and strengthening its infrastructure to support docked nuclear submarines. The agency is also pouring $8 billion into 16 new missile defense sites. After World War II, the Navy took two-thirds of the island. “Whatever made most sense for the military, the island was theirs for the taking,” said Michael Clement, a historian at the University of Guam. “Everyone was in refugee camps. They had the bulldozers. They built where they wanted to build. And then a year or two later, they started saying, ‘OK, where are we going to put the natives?’”

Construction on Camp Blaz proceeds in May 2026. Anita Hofschneider / Grist

The military later relinquished some land but still owns at least a quarter of the island. “If you look at where the villages were set out in 1946 and ’47, it’s the land the military didn’t need. So that’s why Guam is kind of weird to drive around, right?” Clement said. “To go across from Tumon to Mangilao, you’ve got to go around Tiyan and the airport. It wasn’t redesigned for civilians. It was redesigned for military purposes.” 

Even the island’s main highway, the six-lane Marine Corps Drive, was designed for the military, not the people. It connects Andersen in the north and Naval Base Guam in the south.

Governor Lou Leon Guerrero is among the many who welcome the financial boost that comes with the military’s investments. “They’re spending billions on their readiness plan,” she said. 

One in nine Guam residents joins the armed forces. Last year, a local economist told the Legislature that every dollar the Pentagon spends adds 75 cents to the island’s GDP and called the buildup an “unprecedented economic opportunity.” The funding infusions have helped Guam become far more commercialized than other Pacific islands, with multiple shopping malls, numerous high-rise hotels, and a growing real estate sector. 

Leon Guerrero thinks activists should pursue political self-determination instead of resisting the buildup. “These guys can yell and scream all they can,” she said. “They’re going to do the military buildup regardless, right? So why don’t we work with them and see how we can benefit?” She wants the Department of Defense to help harden local power lines and fund a hospital. “Our hospital cannot absorb mass casualties,” she said.

There are about 20,600 military personnel on Guam, a figure that’s expected to reach 29,400 by 2037. While the military is investing in additional housing both on and off base, the population influx will almost certainly continue pushing up construction and housing costs. The median home price on Guam was $216,100 in 2010, when Camacho sued the military to protect Pågat. Today it is approaching half a million dollars.

Andersen Air Force base in northern Guam is among the sites of an ongoing U.S. military buildup that stretches across the Pacific. Anita Hofschneider / Grist

Fear of another war also fuels support for the buildup. “We’ve always been a target regardless, because of where we are geographically located,” Leon Guerrero said. Guam is the largest island in the Micronesian region of the Pacific. It’s just north of the equator, a three-hour flight from Tokyo, and has a deep-water harbor that supports naval submarines. “We were a target for Spain. We were a target for the U.S. We were a target for Japan.” She worries about China, which has a ballistic missile nicknamed the “Guam Killer.” “If I’m going to have a choice, I’d rather be under the U.S. than China.”

To Flores, more military presence on Guam heightens the risk of war. In March, President Donald Trump’s decision to bomb Iran prompted military bases on the island to raise their threat level. She feels that, as in World War II, the Indigenous people of Guam are expendable in a broader contest between empires. “What are they really here to protect if there’s so much harm taking place? Are we just collateral damage?” she said. “Because just looking at our history of being occupied by war, being used for weapons testing, it feels like the message is that we don’t matter. Our future doesn’t matter. Our survival doesn’t matter.”

Rear Admiral Brett Mietus, at Joint Region Marianas, said he understands such skepticism. “If I was born and raised on Guam, I would have similar concerns,” he said. But he believes the militaryʻs investment proves the opposite of what Flores fears. “Choice A is not to defend Guam against ballistic and hypersonic missiles,” he said. “Or the other choice, which is the one that we’ve made, is to spend billions of dollars to defend Guam from hypersonic and ballistic missiles. And so from my perspective, that shows a commitment not just to the military things that are on Guam, but also to the people of Guam.”

Yet Flores is far from the only Guam resident who feels expendable. When Pedro Blas, the vice mayor of Yigo, first learned about the dieldrin in his village’s water, his first thought was of his autistic sister. “All of us growing up, all our lives, our water bottles, we fill it up with the tap water, put it in the fridge: That’s our cold water,” he said. “Because we were instilled in our heads our whole lives: Tap water is OK.”

Pedro Blas, the vice-mayor of Yigo, has been hearing from many constituents who are concerned that long-term exposure to dieldrin could have caused cancer in their families. Anita Hofschneider / Grist

So far, Camacho’s firm has helped file more than 700 claims, worth $360 million, against local authorities on behalf of village residents. He hopes that pressures the island to seek compensation from the Department of Defense. “I’m so glad [Camacho] got involved,” Blas said. “We’re not letting it get swept up under the rug.” Mietus noted that Joint Region Marianas has not found high levels of dieldrin in military wells, and the Pentagon is working with local officials to determine the source of Yigoʻs pollution.

Still, Blas wonders why the investigations at Andersen Air Force base are occurring quietly behind the fence, while he hasn’t seen anyone in uniform hand out water to his constituents. “It’s beautiful to be a U.S. citizen, don’t get me wrong,” he said. “But if you really take a step back and look at exactly the impacts that [the military] brought to us over the years, we should have a say in whether or not these practices are going to happen to our island. Even just being called the ‘tip of the spear’ —  we’re susceptible to any war that they’re going fight, and we just have to be OK with it.

“This contamination they bring to our island, it kind of just shows how much they really care about our people,” Blas continued. “And frankly, I think they look at Guam as real estate rather than, ‘Those are our U.S. citizens. Those are our people. Those are Americans.’”

The men and women gathered in the p’ebay, the traditional open-air Yapese meeting house with a triangular tin roof, and settled quietly on the tiled floor along each wall to listen to Camacho speak. A projector, perched above a cardboard box stacked on top of a red cooler, cast his PowerPoint presentation onto a screen. Slide after slide described the American military’s plans. A cool breeze fluttered the fronds on the palm trees surrounding the p’ebay.

It was April in the village of Tamil on Yap, one of four states in the Federated States of Micronesia. Camacho’s dieldrin work was far from over, but he’d put that aside when the island state’s government asked him to help dissect a Navy proposal to expand the seaport and airport. Tamil was one of several villages he visited to explain the plan. 

Over the past decade, Camacho has become one of Guam’s leading environmental lawyers. “The one thing about Leevin is he shows up. Again and again,” said Julian Aguon, a human rights lawyer on the island. “And he brings with him not only deep competence but a deep sense of responsibility to the people and places he serves.”

“Regulatory agencies will bend over backwards to not pick a fight with the military because of the mission and the protection and all of that,” Camacho told Grist. “And ultimately, it’s people who aren’t lawyers who end up paying the price.”

He was elected attorney general in 2018 for one term and led a historic lawsuit to force the Navy to clean up a hazardous landfill it had abandoned in the 1940s. A lower court dismissed the suit, but the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled in 2021 that it could proceed — a decision that eventually prompted the federal government to pay Guam $48.9 million.

The newly opened U.S. Marine Corps Camp Blaz in northern Guam is expecting an influx of 5,000 Marines from Okinawa. Anita Hofschneider / Grist

He has sued the Navy to protect endangered species harmed by the construction of Camp Blaz. “For too long, our island has been treated as a sacrifice zone,” he said.

The risk of Guam falling into enemy hands, as it did in World War II, is so tangible that America’s Pacific military strategy involves spending billions of dollars to spread airfields, seaports, and training ranges across the region to remain competitive in case Guam is once again occupied by enemy forces. The U.S. is invoking decades-old agreements with the peoples of the Republic of Palau, the Northern Mariana Islands, and the Federated States of Micronesia to expand its presence on those islands and upgrade World War II-era seaports and airfields. Under President Joe Biden, the U.S. even signed a new agreement with Papua New Guinea to use its seaports. 

On Yap, the U.S. military wants to dredge the lagoon, including two-thirds of an acre in a marine protected area, to create a seaport. The plan would remove enough sediment to fill 334 40-foot shipping containers and impact sea life, Indigenous fishers, and divers. “Plume spreads up to 800 m from disposal sites,” Camacho’s presentation noted. “Long-term reef decline and impact on reef species (fish, clams, sharks, turtles) not assessed.”  

The Navy also plans to expand the airfield to facilitate two military exercises, each two weeks long and involving up to 200 personnel, per year. The project could disturb more than 1,000 graves, including the 19th-century tombs of Chief Orothin and Chief Yaloth. Camacho noted that the military’s draft plan acknowledges a “significant adverse impact” to these cultural sites and doesn’t commit to rebury the dead or preserve ancestral sites.

Yap has a population of just about 11,500, compared to Guam’s 170,000. Although Yap is less than a 90-minute flight from Guam, it has none of the military bases, six-lane highways, or big-box stores that define the American territory. “In some ways, this will be more transformative for Yap State than the buildup was for Guam because there’s no military presence there today,” Camacho said. On Guam, he said, “It’s normal to hear a fighter jet flying over. It’s normal to see a bomber or C130. They don’t have any of that there. So this would be such a radical change.” 

One month after Camacho visited Yap, dignitaries from across the Pacific gathered in an air-conditioned conference room at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Guam. The hotel sits on a long stretch of white sand beach and looks out over Tumon Bay, where high levels of dieldrin have also been found in fish samples. 

Once everyone had taken a seat, the lights dimmed and the glow of a projector filled the room. A screen showed a map of military activity across the western Pacific: not just bases, but training exercises and the routes of research vessels searching the sea floor for the critical minerals essential to many military technologies.

Political leaders from across the Pacific listen to presentations on the growing military presence in their region at a conference in Tumon, Guam. Anita Hofschneider / Grist

“We’re faced with the reality that we’re part of a larger strategic vision,” conference organizer and former Guam congressman Robert Underwood said. “All of you are in someone’s strategic plans whether you know it or not, whether you like it or not. All of us are in someone’s strategic plan.” 

In Palau, Indigenous people are fighting the Pentagon’s expansion in local courts and international forums. Leaders of Angaur, one of 16 states there, filed a lawsuit accusing the U.S. of violating environmental rules and its treaty with the island nation when it cleared land for a radar facility. Indigenous chiefs from Peleliu are suing to prevent a land transfer that would support American goals. Indigenous Palauan youth filed a complaint at the United Nations alleging the U.S. military violated their right to free, prior, and informed consent to what happens on their land.

In the Northern Mariana Islands and the Marshall Islands, the U.S. military presence that started with World War II is ramping up. On Tinian, the Marine Corps is building an airfield and two live-fire training ranges, one of them for explosives. The Navy is extending its undersea sonar and explosives training across half a million square nautical miles, along with bombing practice on the neighboring island of Farallon de Medinilla.

A U.S. Navy MH-60S Seahawk helicopter assigned to Helicopter Sea Combat Squadron 25 refuels during forward arming and refueling point training at North Field, Tinian, Northern Mariana Islands, in 2013.
Lance Cpl. Antonio Rubio / U.S. Marine Corps / Department of Defense

Some hope the military’s regional expansion will enable other island nations and territories to experience the economic growth seen on Guam. But others worry about the pollution and cultural loss, and other risks that come with being a U.S. military stronghold. 

In public comments written in response to the Navy’s proposal, Jennifer Dugwen Chieng noted that Camacho’s fight to have the Navy address hazardous waste at Ordot Dump went all the way to the Supreme Court. “Additionally, there are sacred private lands and culturally significant ecosystems that no amount of money can ever replace,” she wrote. “The desecration of graves violates the general principles of respect for burial sites and human remains upheld in Yap’s traditional custom.”

She’s also worried about becoming a target in the next war. Like Palau, Yap was held by the Japanese during World War II and experienced heavy bombardment by the United States. Since then, the Pentagon hasn’t paid much attention to the island state — until now. 

“With rising tensions in the region between the U.S. and China, what does the DoD envision combat to look like?” Chieng wrote. “Will it be based on a WWII tactic of island hopping? What is the likelihood of the island becoming a battlefield if tensions were to escalate into war? Yap will be caught in the crossfire. Does the DoD intend to protect and defend the people of Yap, and if so, how does the DoD intend to do that?”

Mietus told Grist thereʻs always a level of risk in being allied with the U.S. during a conflict.

“Sometimes people believe it’s a plan to evacuate U.S. service members or family members if a war starts — there is not,” he said. “I’m in this, living in the same risk as every other person here.” He’s pushed back against Guam lawmakers’ calls for the Defense Department to fund bomb shelters for civilians, contending that the existing military projects like strengthening Guam’s harbor are a better investment. “Oftentimes people see this Department of War as kind of having an infinite amount of money, and we don’t.”

Unlike Guam, Palau and the Federated States of Micronesia are independent countries that have achieved the political self-determination that Indigenous CHamoru on Guam have been denied for centuries. 

Camacho wants a plebiscite to determine Guam’s political status. He believes the island’s status as a U.S. territory — without a vote for president or voting representation in Congress — isn’t working. But while some of his colleagues in We Are Guåhan have focused on independence, Camacho sees his own role as making the government answer for its actions.

“Unless someone’s forcing the issue,” he said, “the Department of War isn’t going to voluntarily agree to be held accountable and agree to do all the things that it’s supposed to do.”

That’s why he feels compelled to seek reparations for the dieldrin contamination. So often, toxic pollution lingers on Guam and no one takes responsibility. “As a lawyer, I don’t want to fall into this situation where we’re like [the village of] Malesso, and they show up every year and say you still can’t eat the fish. That’s just not satisfactory,” he said. 

One question that drives him is what Guam will be like when his kids are grown. Will they be able to afford living there? Will they want to, given how much the island is changing? It’s a constant effort to find the right balance between working toward their future and being there for them day to day.

“I’m going to try to do the best that I can to protect my island and to have a safe place for my kids to want to live on Guam,” Camacho said. “But also be there for them and help them get better dribbling with their left hand and be good human beings.” Even though Camacho moved a lot growing up, his family never considers leaving. “That is not a choice,” he said. “Guam is home — there is nowhere else we are going to be.”

toolTips('.classtoolTips3','Carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and other gases that prevent heat from escaping Earth’s atmosphere. Together, they act as a blanket to keep the planet at a liveable temperature in what is known as the “greenhouse effect.” Too many of these gases, however, can cause excessive warming, disrupting fragile climates and ecosystems.');

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline As the Pentagon expands across the Pacific, Guam offers a warning on Sep 24, 2026.

Last year was a tough time for anyone who studies climate change for a living. The United States, once respected around the world for its sprawling investments in science, suddenly reversed course. Shortly after President Donald Trump began his second term in office, his administration set to work slashing funds for America’s scientific institutions, scrapping billions of dollars in research grants and firing thousands of federal employees at agencies ranging from the Environmental Protection Agency to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. 

People were “in shock,” said Aparna Shrivastava, who was a senior climate official in the Biden administration. In private chats, she found herself in conversation with dozens of experts who had recently lost their jobs or funding, but who wanted to continue studying the rapidly warming planet or trying to prevent its worst effects. But the sudden cuts left many with few options. 

All of them were trying to figure out, “What could we possibly do to address this?” Shrivastava said. Eventually, the conversations started happening in person. At a workshop convened by the Aspen Global Change Institute in Colorado last July, a group of more than 30 climate experts landed on a possible solution — one that would help fund new jobs for laid-off colleagues across the country. Today that idea is a full-fledged initiative, backed by tens of millions of dollars, with Shrivastava at the helm. They call themselves the Climate Reserve, and they’re just now taking their operation public. 

Climate Reserve functions through a network of experts with a mission to identify the most critical climate work left in limbo and find a place where it can continue, even without federal support. Sometimes that means placing a climate researcher with an organization focused on the environment or climate; other times that means finding a new home for projects that the government cut from its budget, Shrivastava said.

So far, Climate Reserve has funded more than two dozen new positions for climate experts. These people, known as their fellows, are now working across the U.S. at nonprofits such as the Environmental Protection Network and institutions like the University of Minnesota. The group has also resuscitated a number of federal projects, such as EJScreen, an online map that shows which American communities experience the worst pollution. There’s international work happening too, such as a project mapping sea level rise on islands in Panama, and another measuring greenhouse gas emissions in five African countries. 

And there’s more that the group isn’t willing to share publicly. The hope is that a measure of secrecy will keep some of its fellows and projects out of the crosshairs of the Trump administration — which has been notably punitive with some of its funding cuts. After all, many of those working within the network still rely on federal funding in some capacity, or plan to apply for federal funding in the future. 

Now that Climate Reserve is making progress, its leaders are willing to take the risk of being more open about their efforts to attract more funding for fellows. So many people are still out of work, Shrivastava said. Even the Lyft driver in Washington, D.C., who drove her to the airport to meet potential funders this spring happened to be a laid-off climate and energy expert.

The name “Climate Reserve” is meant to evoke a nature reserve as well as the Army Reserve — “the emergency group that you can call up to bring people together,” said Brittany Janis, executive director at the nonprofit Open Environmental Data Project, who was involved in the group’s discussions from the start. Her organization recently partnered with Climate Reserve to hire a former senior advisor for environmental justice programs in the Biden administration to keep the now-independent EJScreen tool up to date.  

Funding these positions is meant to provide a kind of “parachute” that can help former federal workers, along with all their specialized knowledge and the relationships they’ve built, land in a safe place, Janis said. “How can we be really thoughtful about parachuting people to the right places so we aren’t losing all that institutional knowledge and that really critical basis for climate action in the U.S.?”

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Unlike a traditional hiring or grant-funding system, the group wants to emphasize collaboration rather than competition, according to Ben Poulter, who leads an emissions-monitoring program at Spark, a climate solutions nonprofit that is in the process of hiring two Climate Reserve fellows. “We realized early on that the changes that were happening could fragment the community even further as resources became scarcer,” he said. “The whole point of Climate Reserve is that we’re all in the same boat and we need to work together.”

This philosophy — dubbed “movement generosity” by several of the group’s founders — means focusing on the broader goals of the climate movement and trying to share resources and expertise across organizations to achieve them. For instance, a single expert funded by Climate Reserve could split their time between two organizations, allowing them to coordinate on similar projects and reduce redundancy. 

Poulter, who previously coordinated greenhouse gas monitoring efforts between federal agencies, now leads a program tracking how ecosystems that are especially sensitive to warming, like wetlands, will release more planet-warming emissions as temperatures rise — a feedback loop that is often overlooked by climate models. One of the fellows working at Spark will coordinate these measurements across five African countries, while another will translate that science into policy recommendations for those countries, Poulter said. 

There’s also a lot of vitally important but “unsexy” data-crunching projects being saved by Climate Reserve, said Sonia Wang, who leads the Center for Climate and Environmental Data at the Data Foundation, a nonprofit think tank. It’s an important, and often invisible, part of understanding the realities of climate change. For example, two groups using satellites to detect methane emissions might end up with different estimates if they aren’t using the same wind speed models. 

Sorting out these discrepancies is “not the flashiest thing, but when you look under the hood, this is really what’s necessary,” Wang said. Her organization has taken on four Climate Reserve-funded experts to help with these kinds of projects that make it easier for decision-makers and scientists to trust climate data, she said.

By the end of this month, Climate Reserve will have placed 50 climate experts in new roles, and it plans to triple its funding by the end of next year, Shrivastava said. And if federal support for climate research eventually returns, its organizers hope the network they are building can make the entire field more collaborative and resilient to political shifts in the future. “We are not at all looking to replace the government. We’re just stepping up to try and meet some of the needs here,” Shrivastava said.

Climate change may be politicized in the United States, but its impacts “affect us all,” said John Balbus, a Climate Reserve fellow who spent 15 years in the federal government. Most recently, he was a senior official in the Department of Health and Human Services coordinating projects to address the health effects of climate change, such as seasonal forecasts for extreme heat and wildfire smoke. He is now continuing that work at the Federation of American Scientists and as an independent consultant.

The climate and health experts that Balbus once worked with would “do anything in their human power” to continue living a life of public service, even without a government job, he said. And the need for this kind of work, he added, isn’t going away. “The need is only going to get stronger every year.”

toolTips('.classtoolTips7','A powerful greenhouse gas that accounts for about 11% of global emissions, methane is the primary component of natural gas and is emitted into the atmosphere by landfills, oil and natural gas systems, agricultural activities, coal mining, and wastewater treatment, among other pathways. Over a 20-year period, it is roughly 84 times more potent than carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere.');

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Trump cut their climate jobs. This secretive network found them new ones. on Sep 24, 2026.

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