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Contact: Madeline Bove – mbove@fwwatch.org; (202) 683-2539

Earlier this week, environmental justice, climate and animal welfare groups submitted a comment calling on the California Air Resources Board (CARB) to reject the latest, and most egregious, factory farm biogas scheme being pushed through the state’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS). 

The proposed biogas project would allow Bar 20 dairy, one of the San Joaquin Valley’s largest mega-dairies, to gain unprecedented incentives under California’s LCFS by selling factory farm biogas to a nearby facility that will burn that biogas to produce hydrogen. Factory farm biogas is a noxious mixture of climate intensive methane gas and other air pollutants that large factory farms generate when they irresponsibly manage their waste. 

While certainly not the first factory farm to be granted lucrative incentives from their pollution under the LCFS, this instance is particularly alarming because the hydrogen produced is poised to be assigned an unheard of carbon intensity (CI) value of -1887.35 CI (for comparison, most biogas falls around -250 CI while solar panels and wind energy are typically limited to a CI of zero or higher). A lower CI means more money from credit trading. This is the lowest CI in the history of the LCFS. 

In other words, no matter how much pollution they spew into nearby communities, these facilities will be set to gain unprecedented amounts of money from that pollution. 

“The application from Bar 20 takes the LCFS’s “pay to pollute” model to a higher level than we ever thought possible,” said Leadership Counsel for Justice & Accountability Co-Executive Director Phoebe Seaton. “And, once again, it’s California consumers who are paying with their hard-earned dollars and San Joaquin Valley residents who are paying with their health.”

“The California Air Resources Board has an obligation to regulate the factory farming industry’s climate pollution—not encourage it with massive subsidies,” said Animal Legal Defense Fund Senior Staff Attorney Christine Ball-Blakely. “Bar 20 is a mega dairy factory farm choosing to use a liquid manure management system that creates large quantities of methane, which is a potent climate pollutant. Such intentionally created methane can never become renewable fuel. Paying factory farms like Bar 20 to create as much methane as possible is not just bad math—it’s perverse policy.”

“What we’re seeing here is the expected result of what the LCFS has become after it was amended to double down on factory farm biogas production at the largest and most polluting dairies,” said Food & Water Watch Staff Attorney Tyler Lobdell. “Despite the warnings of environmental advocates and community members, CARB has allowed this program to morph into an increasingly perverse giveaway to factory farms that undermines real climate progress. This project shows that in real time as one of the state’s largest dairies is poised to greenwash dirty hydrogen production so that it appears better than zero-emission hydrogen production, on paper. Unfortunately, it’s Californians that will pay for this foolishness at the pump and in their healthcare costs.”

The comment was submitted by Defensores del Valle Central para el Aire y Agua Límpio (“Defensores”), Animal Legal Defense Fund, Leadership Counsel for Justice and Accountability, and Food & Water Watch. 

This comment was also submitted days after another cohort of groups provided CARB with a robust list of suggestions on how to regulate California’s dairy industry to center the concerns of community members and prioritize actual reducing methane emissions over programs like the LCFS that pay polluters to keep polluting. Defensores del Valle Central para el Aire y Agua Límpio (“Defensores”), Animal Legal Defense Fund, Leadership Counsel for Justice and Accountability, and Food & Water Watch also submitted a comment. 

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About the Animal Legal Defense Fund 
The Animal Legal Defense Fund was founded in 1979 to protect the lives and advance the interests of animals through the legal system. To accomplish this mission, the Animal Legal Defense Fund files high-impact lawsuits to protect animals from harm; provides free legal assistance and training to prosecutors to assure that animal abusers are held accountable for their crimes; supports tough animal protection legislation and fights harmful legislation; and provides resources and opportunities to law students and professionals to advance the emerging field of animal law. For more information, please visit aldf.org.

About Food & Water Watch
Food & Water Watch brings together more than 2 million people nationwide to fight for safe food, clean water, and a livable climate. For over 20 years, we’ve partnered with communities to take on polluting industries and win real, meaningful protections for people and the environment.

About Leadership Counsel for Justice & Accountability
Leadership Counsel for Justice & Accountability works alongside the most impacted communities in the San Joaquin Valley and Eastern Coachella Valley to advocate for sound policy and eradicate injustice to secure equal access to opportunity regardless of wealth, race, income, and place. Leadership Counsel focuses on issues like housing, land use, transportation, safe and affordable drinking water and climate change impacts on communities.

The post CA Regulators Poised to Approve Most Egregious Biogas Scheme Yet  appeared first on Leadership Counsel for Justice & Accountability.

To come.

The National Audubon Society recently awarded Wachiska Audubon Society (WAS) a $5,900 Audubon in Action Grant to support its Prairie Pines Buffer Plan, an effort to guide development around its...

Last month, Louisiana’s state legislature officially passed HB670. Soon the governor will sign the bill. This opens the door for a major expansion of the biomass industry. It makes it […]

The post Statement: Louisiana Passes Legislation to Bail Out Biomass first appeared on Dogwood Alliance.

In the midst of increasing grocery prices and decreasing nutrition assistance benefits, food security and access challenges are multiplying by the day across North Carolina. As food security organizations and emergency food assistance programs continue to help their neighbors, Come to the Table (CTTT) is here to help, too.

The post Come to the Table Technical Assistance Opportunities appeared first on RAFI.

As wildfire seasons grow longer, storms intensify, smoke travels farther, heat waves become more dangerous, and power outages become more common, disaster preparedness can’t stay trapped inside the bunker fantasy.

Listen to the full podcast episode

We all know the image: shelves of canned food, buckets of grain, a generator in the garage, weapons by the door, and a plan built around keeping everyone else out. Some of the basic advice is useful. Water, flashlights, batteries, radios, medication, first aid supplies, and backup power can save lives. Preparedness itself is not the problem. The problem is the story that’s been wrapped around preparedness.

The bunker fantasy tells us that disaster reveals our neighbors as threats. It teaches us to imagine survival as something that happens inside a fortified private household. It turns structural vulnerability into individual blame: were you ready or not? Could you afford the supplies or not? Did you have a car, storage space, a generator, a spare room, and somewhere to flee, or not?

But real disasters don’t work that way. In real disasters, people survive because someone checks on them. Someone shares information. Someone has a truck. Someone clears a road. Someone translates an alert. Someone brings medication. Someone opens a church basement, school gym, library, union hall, or community center. Someone knows which neighbor lives alone, who uses oxygen, who has kids, goats, dogs, cats, mobility equipment, refrigerated medication, or no car.

In other words: people survive because of relationships. That is why the first tool in a solarpunk disaster-prep kit isn’t a bunker. It’s a care map.

What is a care map?

A care map is a living picture of the people, needs, skills, tools, spaces, and relationships that already exist around you.

It isn’t a surveillance map. It’s not a secret list of everyone’s private business, or a spreadsheet where one self-appointed neighborhood captain decides who is “vulnerable” and who is “useful.”

A care map is a way to notice connection. It helps us ask: Who might need support if the power goes out?

Who has transportation? Who needs medication kept cold? Who knows the back roads? Who speaks more than one language? Who has tools, first aid training, a clean-air room, a generator, a solar charger, or a spare room? Who is likely to be missed by official alerts? Who is already doing the quiet care work that keeps people alive?

The point isn’t to divide people into helpers and helpless people. Everyone has needs. Everyone has capacities. Not the same needs. Not the same capacities. Not at the same time. But everyone belongs to the network.

A disabled neighbor might need help getting downstairs during an outage and also be the best person to design the communication plan. A teenager might not own a car but might be the fastest person

on the block at texting everyone. An elder might need help carrying water and also know which roads flood first. A renter might not control the building, but they may know every neighbor by name. You are not building a hierarchy. You are building a web.

1. Start small

Don’t begin with the whole city. Start with an area small enough to act.

That might be your block, apartment building, workplace, school community, church, union local, mutual aid group, or circle of friends. It might be five households. It might be three people in a group text.

A citywide disaster plan is too big for one person. A building is possible. A neighborhood is possible. A small network of people who know how to reach each other is possible.

Keep it small enough to finish, to update, and to actually be usable when something happens.

Listen to the full episode 2. Ask with consent

Care mapping begins with conversation, not extraction.

You don’t need to open with, “Hello, I am making a disaster map.” That might be a bit intense. You can start simply:

“A few of us are trying to make sure people are more connected before fire season, just in case. Is there anything you would want neighbors to know or help with in an emergency?”

Or: “If the power went out for a couple days, what would you be worried about?”

Or: “If we had to evacuate quickly, would you have transportation?”

The point is consent. Ask. Don’t assume. Don’t pry. Don’t collect sensitive information people do not want to share. Share only what needs to be shared, and protect what needs to stay private. A care map isn’t about control. It’s about trust.

3. Map needs

Once people are willing to participate, start with the practical questions.

Who lives alone? Who is elderly? Who has young children? Who has pets or livestock? Who might need help evacuating? Who does not drive? Who may need medical equipment powered or medication refrigerated? Who might not get alerts on a smartphone? Who might need information in another language? Who works outdoors during smoke or heat? Who is unhoused nearby? Who may be isolated, anxious, or unlikely to ask for help?

These aren’t abstract questions. They’re survival questions. An evacuation order without transportation support isn’t a plan. A power outage without backup for medical-device users isn’t just an inconvenience. A smoke alert that does not reach people in a language they understand isn’t enough. Information only becomes useful when people can act on it. A care map helps us see what official systems often miss.

4. Map capacities

Next, map what people can offer.

Who has a vehicle? Who has a trailer? Who has tools? Who has a chainsaw? Who has first aid training? Who knows the back roads? Who has a generator, battery pack, solar charger, or extra power strip? Who can cook for a crowd? Who can watch kids? Who can help with animals? Who speaks more than one language? Who has organizing skills? Who knows local officials, librarians, school staff, nurses, firefighters, or community groups? Who has a spare room? Who has a cool room? Who has a clean-air room?

This is where mutual aid differs from charity. Charity says: I have something, so I’ll give it to you. Mutual aid says: Our survival is connected, so we organize together to meet needs that systems are failing to meet.

Everyone has something to contribute. A phone call. A ride. A porch. A language. A memory. A spare outlet. A list of names. A cooler. A relationship. A skill. A willingness to check on someone else.

5. Build a contact tree

After you begin mapping needs and capacities, create a contact tree in three layers.

The first layer is digital: a group text, Signal group, WhatsApp chat, email list, Discord, Facebook group, or whatever people actually use.

The second layer is phone: a basic call list for people who do not use apps, do not check them, or may miss alerts.

The third layer is analog: door-knocking, printed flyers, a porch sign, a bulletin board, a known meeting place, or a list taped inside a cabinet where people can find it when the internet is down.

The analog layer matters more than we often think. When the electricity fails and the signal dies, paper still works. Feet still work. A knock on the door still works. A text from the county may be ignored. A knock from a neighbor you know may save a life.

6. Pick one hazard and one project

Do not try to solve every possible disaster at once. That is how people freeze.

Pick one likely local hazard. If you live in the West, maybe it is wildfire smoke. If you live near the coast, maybe it is hurricanes or flooding. If you live in a city, maybe it is extreme heat. If you live rurally, it might be blocked roads, well pumps, livestock, and power outages.

Then choose one practical project. A smoke plan. An evacuation ride list. A list of who needs power for medical devices. A shared shelf of water. A clean-air room.

A neighborhood check-in system for heat waves. A pet evacuation list. A printed resource sheet. A small gas fund. A box of N95 masks. A first aid kit. A charging station. Make it small enough to finish.

Solarpunk is not only the beautiful future city covered in vines and solar panels. It is also the folding table with bottled water, masks, phone numbers, and a handwritten sign that says: “Check in here if you need help.”

7. Practice it

A plan that has never been tested is mostly a wish.

Test the phone tree. Walk the evacuation route. Assemble the box-fan filter before the smoke arrives. Print the contact list. Ask who did not get the message. Find out whether the proposed meeting place is actually accessible. See whether the person who said they could help with rides is home during the day. Update the plan.

Preparedness is not a one-time purchase. It is a living practice.

This week, talk to three people. Ask them three questions:

What would you worry about most in a fire, flood, heat wave, outage, or evacuation?What would you need help with?
What could you offer someone else?

Write it down. Share what needs to be shared. Protect what needs to stay private. Start small. Keep going.

Listen to the full episode

In a striking op-ed published today by the Sacramento Bee, Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, Executive Director at Restore the Delta, argues that the Delta Tunnel is on track to become California’s next High Speed Rail project, a massively expensive project that fails to deliver on its promises. 

In the piece, Barbara notes that the Department of Water Resources (DWR) has already spent more than $700 million planning the Delta Tunnel, yet key information about that spending and the project itself remains inaccessible to the public. As costs continue to escalate, the project still lacks a clear financing plan. She asserts that the consequences extend far beyond taxpayers’ wallets, threatening the ecological future of the Bay-Delta estuary as well as the communities, industries, and wildlife that depend on it.  

Barbara points to the urgent need for California to pursue alternative solutions, such as the Water Renaissance Plan, which would move the state away from costly, unreliable water imports toward local, sustainable solutions that provide reliable water supplies at an affordable price.

In addition to advancing these solutions, Barbara calls on lawmakers to conduct a full audit of DWR’s spending on the Delta Tunnel so Californians can understand how their money is being spent. She also urges legislators to reject AB 2215, a bill that would pave the way for controversial projects like the Delta Tunnel while weakening regulatory oversight.

Read the full op-ed here. 

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This legislative session, Audubon Great Plains was proud to stand up for Nebraska’s clean energy future—and for the birds, wildlife, and communities that depend on it.We successfully helped...

Massive loss of bee colonies, lower crop yields, and higher price tags at the grocery store are among the impacts industry experts anticipate following the closure of the United States’ largest bee research lab.

The U.S. Agricultural Research Service began shuttering Maryland’s Beltsville Agricultural Research Center (BARC) in late April and plans to relocate its programming elsewhere in the country, citing “outdated or underutilized” buildings. The center’s bee research lab is a global leader in bee health research and supports American beekeepers through free testing, disease management, and the development of pest control techniques.

The closure follows a few challenging years for American beekeepers, who lost around 60 percent of their colonies nationwide in 2024 and early 2025 to viruses spread by varroa mites, the nation’s dominant bee pest. At the time, researchers from the Beltsville Bee Lab traveled to several states to collect samples for analysis. In February 2025, the Trump administration fired thousands of U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) employees. Department officials also “prohibited” Beltsville researchers from sharing their findings with beekeepers, according to Dr. Jennie Durant, a food systems researcher at UC Davis and former USDA fellow.

“What was most frightening—and this is where we’re so scared about losing Beltsville — is that these mites were all resistant to the most commonly used pesticide that beekeepers use to control mites,” Durant tells Food Tank. “Beltsville Bee Lab is the number one lab that’s been helping beekeepers control mites.”

The lab, which has operated for over a century and has been in Beltsville since 1939, is best known for its Bee Disease Diagnosis Service, through which American beekeepers can submit samples of bees or brood comb and receive free disease analysis reports. As varroa mites continue to develop resistance to new pesticides and tropi mites—a newer pest in the U.S.—begin to decimate colonies, experts like Durant hope that the lab’s closure is reversed.

“Beekeepers are used to having the Beltsville Bee Lab on speed dial—and without having that lab with that particular specialization, they’re really concerned about who’s going to do that crisis intervention and support when they’re dealing with major pests and disease,” said Durant, who recently published a book on how industrial agriculture threatens bee health. “They don’t know who’s going to be their crisis support team anymore.”

For many beekeepers, pollination services make up half or more of their income. Bees, which Durant describes as the “gig workers” of American agriculture, are economic powerhouses that play an outsized role in the U.S. food system, pollinating crops worth around US$15 billion every year. Honey production also racked up US$353 million in 2025.

Each February, nearly all of the nation’s commercial bee colonies are transported to California for almond pollination. In 2024, Californian almond farmers alone spent over US$325 million on pollination services.

The lab’s closure may also create long-term impacts on food and agriculture systems, including small upticks in grocery costs. Though seemingly subtle, those increases can “have a real effect for disadvantaged communities,” she said, since bees pollinate a range of nutritious crops, such as almonds, blueberries and squash.

“One of the key dynamics that has happened already is that farmers are getting fewer bees, and there’s maybe a less robust crop or slightly lower yields,” Durant says. “Those lower yields and that scarcity that’s on the market is going to have a direct impact on consumers.”

In addition to mites, the survival of bee colonies is also threatened by several other challenges, including extreme weather caused by climate change, poor nutrition as a result of biodiversity loss, and exposure to certain agrochemicals.

Maryland lawmakers in April described the BARC’s closure—part of the USDA’s larger reorganization plans—as “illegal,” claiming that it violates provisions of the Agriculture Appropriations Act for fiscal year 2026. This also follows the Trump administration’s proposal to defund the U.S. Geological Survey’s Ecosystems Mission Area program, which supports a key research center for bees in North Dakota, according to Durant.

Durant encourages consumers to tell their legislators about the importance of the lab’s research efforts, and when possible, buy organic to support farms where bees face less exposure to agrochemicals. She also warns that following a recent survey of USDA employees slated for relocation—of which 76 percent said they would not continue with their jobs—the BARC’s relocation will strip beekeepers and farmers of critical expertise.

“Researchers are truth-tellers, and truth-tellers provide data that does not match the agenda of this administration,” Durant tells Food Tank. “Most people are not going to move. Even though they love their jobs and they want to serve the community, it’s just not an option for them, and the administration knows that.”

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

Photo courtesy of Simon Kadula, Unsplash

The post How the USDA’s Reorganization Is Straining American Agriculture appeared first on Food Tank.

Growing ecological concerns have prompted state regulators to temporarily halt review of a proposed project that would diminish streamflow in the Platte River. The Nebraska Department of Water...

State conservation funding programs are powerful drivers of on‑the‑ground restoration in the Northern Great Plains. In addition to providing direct funding for conservation actions, state...

This legislative session underscored both the challenges and opportunities of advancing conservation policy—and the impact coordinated advocacy can have. Across Nebraska and South Dakota (North...

In 2023, federal rollbacks stripped Clean Water Act protections from 95% of New Mexico’s streams and up to 88% of its wetlands. New Mexico responded by passing Senate Bill 21 to create its own surface water permitting program. Now, a rulemaking will take place June 8–18 before the state Water Quality Control Commission to decide how SB 21 is implemented. Without strong rules, our water will remain at risk along with the communities, fish, and wildlife that depend on it.

Western Resource Advocates is representing Audubon, Trout Unlimited, Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, and the New Mexico Wildlife Federation. The Western Environmental Law Center is representing Amigos Bravos, the New Mexico Acequia Association, and NM Wild. The groups will advocate for robust rules that protect the full breadth of New Mexico’s surface water, restore protections lost through federal rollbacks, ensure robust public participation, and protect wildlife.

Details: June 8–18 from 9 AM to 5 PM. Public comment at 1 PM daily.

• In person: NM State Capitol, Old Santa Fe Trail, Santa Fe. The hearing will now occur in several rooms around the Roundhouse depending on the day:

• • Monday 6/8 – Room 307
  • Tues-Thurs 6/9-6/11 – Room 309
  • Friday 6/12– Room 307
  • The week of 6/15-6/18 – Room 322
• Virtually: https://nmed-oit.webex.com/wbxmjs/joinservice/sites/nmed-oit/meeting/download/705f1604d77d4ce8bfb4c44c14697e2d?MTID=me02ef4ae5b96453c008f74681b141034
• Visit the state Events Calendar for more information.

Why it Matters:

• Clean water sustains a growing $50 billion annual agriculture industry led by chile, pecans, onions, and fruit.
• Water helps sustain New Mexico’s outdoor recreation economy, generating hundreds of millions of dollars every year.
• Centuries-old acequia systems require clean water to keep New Mexico’s culture alive. The health and wellbeing of our families rely on clean water.
• Over 70% of New Mexico’s birds are dependent on surface waters and wetlands.
• New Mexico’s waters face numerous threats. Climate change is making our state drier every year. With higher temperatures and worsening aridification, our limited water sources need to be protected.
• Industrial growth from mining, oil and gas exploration, and data centers are all increasing demands on our water sources while presenting serious pollution dangers.

Contacts: 

Tannis Fox, Western Environmental Law Center, 505-629-0732, fox@westernlaw.org

Rachel Conn, Amigos Bravos, 575-770-8327, rconn@amigosbravos.org

Tricia Snyder, New Mexico Wild, 575-636-0625, tricia@nmwild.org

Allie Ruckman, Western Resource Advocates, 983-203-1103, allie.ruckman@westernresources.org

Itzayana Banda, The Semilla Project, 720-532-3293, itzayana@semillastrategies.org

The post Media advisory: NM rulemaking for Surface Water Permitting Program 6/8-6/18 appeared first on Western Environmental Law Center.

The proposal would require large-load customers to pay for infrastructure built specifically to serve their projects while preserving standard utility charges for broader grid services.

Companies are looking for modern facilities that can accommodate power-hungry automation, industrial experts said in a report first provided to Facilities Dive.

National Nurses United and over 325 organizations, including labor unions, advocates for seniors and people with disabilities, women’s rights organizations, and more, released an open letter making the case that now is the time for Medicare for All, addressed to leaders looking to reform our health care system.

The Trump administration’s lease sale in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge on Friday drew little interest from the oil and gas industry. It netted just $3.7 million, a low result following two prior sales with similarly poor returns. Only two bidders showed up for the auction: HEX Energy, a small Alaska-based natural gas company, and the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority (AIDEA), a state-owned public corporation. Of roughly 60 tracts offered, only five received bids, covering 72,000 of the 689,000 acres on offer.

The ANWR lease sale was the first of four required by 2035 under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which the Congressional Budget Office estimated would generate $452 million in federal revenue over a decade, but the recent pattern of lease sales shows that may be unrealistic. The 2021 sale netted $16.5 million, less than one percent of the $1.1 billion Congress originally projected, and the two private companies that bid later relinquished their leases. The 2025 sale received no bids at all. According to Taxpayers for Common Sense, every tract that received a bid Friday had already been offered in 2021, and either got no bids at the time or was later relinquished.

The lack of industry interest is due to the difficulty of developing in the area. “Arctic projects are high-cost, they take decades to get into production; once they’re in production, it takes decades to earn a revenue back to make up for the cost of development,” saidAndy Moderow, senior director of policy for the Alaska Wilderness League.

Wildfire experts say Trump’s attacks on public land agencies will make this summer wildfire season worse

A new Westwise blog post from Center for Western Priorities Deputy Director Lauren Bogard reveals how wildland fire managers and former federal officials are reacting to the Trump administration’s dismantling of public land agencies during what forecasters expect to be a severe season. More than 2.4 million acres have already burned across the country in 2026, nearly double the ten-year average.

Quick hits Trump auctions off rights to drill in Alaska wildlife refuge, but gets few bidders

The Hill | E&E News | Washington Post | Taxpayers for Common Sense

U.S. Forest Service to open millions of acres to off-road vehicles

New York Times | MeatEater | Field & Stream

The Colorado River’s largest reservoirs are heading toward a ‘system crash,’ experts warn

Salt Lake Tribune | Fox13 | National Parks Traveler | Las Vegas Review-Journal

Park Service orders removal of ‘woke’ quotes at Boston’s Bunker Hill monument

Washington Post | WBUR | NBC Boston

Chuck Sams: The Trump administration wants to kill a rule that protects millions of acres of national forests

The Guardian

The Forest Service wants to close research hubs to save money. That could be costly

NPR

As park fees go to DC, Yellowstone, Grand Teton face $1.5B backlog

WyoFile

Lawsuit filed to stop UFC fight on White House lawn

National Parks Traveler | Associated Press | Variety | NBC

Quote of the day

Anyone who thinks this is a fight between red and blue is deeply mistaken. Few things unite the people of this country like their love of the land. Hunters, anglers, hikers, campers, families of every stripe support the national treasures that are our wild places. We all want a relationship with our land.”

—Chuck Sams, former National Park Service director, The Guardian

Picture This @yosemitenps

The Sierra lupine is bursting into bloom at Yosemite National Park!

When driving through Yosemite Valley, visitors might come across a blanket of purple flowers and green herbage carpeting the forest floor. That is Lupinus grayi, otherwise known as the Sierra lupine. It’s one of 26 documented species of lupine seen throughout the park. Warm weather, open sunlight, and a healthy forest floor make the perfect grounds for these flowers to stretch into the sky.

Please do not trample on, touch, or pick any wildflowers you see. While lupine is common in the park, it remains part of Yosemite’s delicate ecosystem and plays an important role in supporting pollinators and improving soil health. Help preserve and protect the wildflowers of Yosemite so they can grow back just as happily as this for years to come.

Featured photo: Caribou and Brooks Range, Arctic NWR, USFWS

The post Oil industry largely passes on Alaska lease sale appeared first on Center for Western Priorities.

This may be true: That we live in a time of cosmic tragedy, when heedless human expansion has pushed many of the planet’s lives beyond bearing. Marvels such as the universe has never seen before — angels’ trumpets and vaquita porpoises — may be past saving. As ecosystems unravel, so do the cultures that depend on them, and the dreadful, dangerous human genius has not yet found the imagination or will to rescue them. I fear that this is so.

But this also is true: That a flock of butterflies is dancing around purple lupine in our field. They are tiny, the size of a buttercup, but blue. So blue they look like slips of summer sky, taken flight. Fender’s blue butterflies, Icaricia icarioides fenderii. They once seemed to have vanished from the world in the 1930s, when farmers plowed up most of the prairie flowers. Scientists got ready to pronounce them extinct. But then, in 1989, a young U.S. Fish and Wildlife biologist named Jarod Jebousek found a few butterflies on feral land next to our field.

So now, here they are. We see them lapping up nectar from the furry throats of wild iris. We find their eggs on the undersides of Kincaid lupine leaves. Butterflies gather to lick the mud. There are thousands, and it’s all because young acronym-agency scientists teamed up with landowners to save them. I know that this is so.

How is a person supposed to think about that? How do you hold both truths at the same time — the horror and the hope? How can you accept the truth that destroys hope and at the same time hold the hope that may be the only route toward recovery?

Essayist E.B. White made a joke of it: I arise in the morning torn between a desire to save the world and a desire to savor it. This makes it hard to plan the day. But it isn’t funny. It tears me apart. How can you love Earthly lives and know that forces are advancing to destroy them?

This is the question at the center of my life.

I once asked a group of students to pull out their pens and start writing a list of what they loved too much to lose. They started strong. My daughter. Smell of wet oak leaves. Bees in foxgloves. But the students couldn’t keep it up. Salmon coming home. Nettle soup. Sticky cottonwood buds. A student put his head in his hands. Do we have to do this, he asked. Dragonflies.

Yes, we have to do this, I whispered. We have to keep a list. We have to keep them in mind, all the small glories. We can’t let any of them escape our attention. Every day, every moment, we have to name what we love and stand to lose.

Here is what we will have to do: We will love the world with a tender and ferocious love, and we will do what we can to protect and renew it. Both of these. Even if it breaks our hearts. Even if we fail in the end. That’s what love means. That is why we are here.

That conviction may explain why my husband and I were standing in the center of the field with Kathleen Westly, in that nasty cold fog that afflicts Oregon’s Willamette Valley in December. Up until her retirement this year, Kathleen was the restoration program director of the Marys River Watershed Council, so she was the one coordinating the restoration of habitat for the Fender’s blue butterfly across agencies and landowners.

We were excited because we’d just learned that the Fender’s blue had been promoted from endangered to threatened. A small, even pitiable, victory, maybe, but a significant one, and who wouldn’t be glad for that? Kathleen held a field notebook and pointed with a pencil, as she sketched out how we might change the landscape to make it more welcoming for the butterflies.

Lupines in the field. Photo: KDMoore

Fender’s blue butterflies are rarely found more than 50 yards from Kincaid’s lupines. They may sip nectar from other plants, especially white or yellow composites, and they may lick roadkill, mud, or animal droppings for their mineral nutrients, but it’s Kincaid’s lupines that provide home and sustenance. Fender’s blues need Kincaid’s lupines, and the lupines need open prairie and sunshine. Only 1% of the Willamette Valley’s prairies are left, and these are small islands in a sea of subdivisions and grass seed farms.

So our first goal for us was to keep our prairie intact and connect it with other prairie land along the Marys River.

Kathleen pointed to a Douglas fir that shaded the oaks at the western boundary of our land. Shall we take this out? And this one? Before long, most of the tall evergreens on that border were goners. Frank and I gulped, but we understood that she wanted to give the butterflies an open, unshaded passage, so they could fly from one lupine patch to another.

We had planted the Doug firs that were in the way of the butterfly movements, and if that was a mistake, then we decided we should make it up.

Frank Moore looks for butterflies in the meadow. Photo: KDMoore

The wonderful surprise of this restoration work was to see so many people of skill and good will come together to create a connected corridor of lupine prairie. Along with the Marys River Watershed Council, credit many agencies and nonprofits, including Benton County, Starker Forests, the Greenbelt Land Trust, the Institute for Applied Ecology, and landowners all along the river. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Recovery Program is a big player, providing most of the funds.

The process has been complicated; I do not pretend to understand the acronyms or responsibilities of all the agencies that were involved, but they somehow came together to get the grants written and the work accomplished, from young Indigenous fire crews to those solid-shouldered, old timey ecologists who know everybody and everything. Along with the new butterfly/flower communities, the growing communities of caring people lifted my spirits, at a time when they could use a bit of lifting.

Long tongues that retract and roll up like measuring tapes. Bulgy eyes that see ultraviolet pathways to the heart of a flower. Intestines that collect the remains of the caterpillar that a butterfly used to be. Clear blood. Hairy feet that can taste sweetness. Two eyes that coordinate images from 6,000 lenses. Transparent wings with scales in some of the loveliest patterns and colors on the planet.

These are grand and glorious beings, complicated and clever beyond imagining. I want to ask, who thinks up these extraordinary creatures? But it’s not like that, I know. Butterflies evolved in the Cretaceous period, 100 million years ago. They danced around the feathered crests of dinosaurs, dipped their tongues in the blood of wounded pterosaurs, and drank from newly evolved flowers. Were butterflies beautiful then? Of course they would have been, because there’s survival value in bright beauty that mimics glaring eyes or warns of poison hairs.

The improbable, beautiful complexity of a butterfly seems like a miracle. But that’s the great miracle of biodiversity, isn’t it? That it’s no miracle at all — just nature doing what it does, according to the only rule it knows, which is to live long enough to produce more life.

The storms of the Cretaceous period could not kill the butterflies. The asteroid that set the world on fire did not kill the butterflies. They survived ice age after ice age, flood after flood, drifting continents and fire-breathing volcanoes. Even with their axes and plows, the homesteaders did not kill the butterflies. Tiny things, delicate as paper lanterns, each allotted only one year to live before they blink out, the butterflies on this land survived everything that 100 million years could throw at them.

I don’t know where or when their journey will end. But it will not be here, and it will not be now.

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

Insects Are Disappearing — Here’s How to Help

The post When the Butterflies Come Home Again appeared first on The Revelator.

The U.S. Green Building Council has conferred LEED status on 31 stadiums in North America, from the 9,500-seat Southwest University Park in El Paso, Texas, to the 88,000-seat Estadio Banorte in Mexico City.  

The shipping industry has a harmful secret—hiding just beneath the waterline. Barnacles, algae and microbial slime covering ship hulls may seem like a minor maintenance issue, but they drag on vessels, drive up fuel use and quietly add to global emissions while also spreading invasive species across oceans. Now, Bellona is contributing to a growing international campaign that is putting a spotlight on this overlooked frontier of climate and ocean policy: keeping hulls clean.

It sounds absurdly simple. Clean ships more often, burn less fuel, move fewer harmful species across ecosystems. But that straightforward fix is drawing serious interest from regulators, scientists and the maritime industry, who increasingly see regular hull cleaning as a unique environmental solution with multiple payoffs. In ports around the world, new standards, technologies and cooperative efforts are reframing what was once routine upkeep as something much larger—a practical tool for protecting biodiversity, cutting carbon and making global shipping cleaner from the bottom up.

A solution that went unnoticed

For years, though, the idea remained invisible—even to people working in maritime sustainability. “I had also never heard about in-water cleaning,” Irene Øvstebø Tvedten, a senior advisor at the Bellona Foundation and project leader of the Clean Hull Initiative, said recently. “So it’s the environmental solution that has come completely under the radar.”

That obscurity is part of what makes the current shift so striking. Biofouling—the accumulation of marine life on ship hulls—has long been treated primarily as a technical or economic concern. Shipowners worried about fuel efficiency; engineers experimented with coatings; ports occasionally imposed restrictions from an environmental standpoint. But the issue rarely commanded sustained attention as a broader environmental solution. “It’s not been something that’s been promoted from an environmental standpoint previously,” Tvedten noted. “Mostly from a fuel-saving standpoint.”

According to the International Maritime Organization’s Third Greenhouse Gas Study, shipping accounts for roughly 2.5 percent of global greenhouse-gas emissions. Yet something as mundane as marine growth on a ship’s hull can have an outsized impact. The study estimated that biofouling imposes a roughly 9 percent resistance penalty on vessels, forcing them to burn more fuel and produce approximately 9 percent more emissions than they otherwise would. The Clean Hull Initiative says that finding underscores a simple point: cleaner hulls represent one of the most immediate opportunities to reduce emissions from one of the world’s most difficult industries to decarbonize.

Reframing the problem

Bellona has been chief among the organizations helping change that framing. Through years of research, policy work and advocacy—published in both English and Norwegian—the organization began connecting what had often been treated as separate problems: emissions, invasive species and marine pollution. The logic was simple. A fouled hull increases drag; increased drag requires more fuel; more fuel means more emissions. At the same time, those same layers of marine growth act as transport systems for organisms that would otherwise never cross oceans.

That shift has also become increasingly visible within the shipping industry itself. “The conversation has clearly broadened,” said Heine Stangeby, the global communications specialist for Jotun, a Norwegian firm that specializes in paints and coatings for ship hulls.  “When Jotun launched its Hull Performance Solutions 15 years ago, it was a small revolution as it moved the shift over to performance—meaning measurable speed loss avoidance. This soon became translated to avoided emissions.” More recently, he added, the industry’s understanding has expanded further, with “more awareness on the biodiversity issue” and growing recognition that maintaining clean hulls can both reduce emissions and limit the spread of invasive species.

The scale of the problem is easy to underestimate precisely because it is so diffuse. According to figures cited by the Clean Hull Initiative, biofouling contributes tens of millions of tons of additional carbon dioxide emissions annually—an impact spread thinly across the global fleet but immense when taken together. Meanwhile, it remains “the main vector for the transfer of invasive aquatic species,” as Tvedten put it, quietly reshaping ecosystems far from where ships first set sail.

Bellona’s Irene Østvebø Tvedten, who helped create the new ISO standard.

Yet if the problem is global, the obstacles to solving it are often local. Ports and regulators—those with the authority to allow or ban hull cleaning—have historically been wary of the practice, particularly when it takes place in the water. The concern is intuitive: cleaning a hull might release pollutants or organisms into the surrounding environment. The result, in some cases, has been outright prohibition.

“The main bottleneck here are the ports and other regulators that just ban in-water cleaning,” Tvedten explained. “Often because they don’t have enough knowledge about it and they think it’s just harmful to the environment.”

Cleaning as a solution, not a risk

Bellona’s intervention has been to challenge that assumption—not by dismissing the risks, but by reframing the balance of them. “What we try to communicate is that in-water cleaning is primarily a solution,” Tvedten said. “It’s a solution to the spread of invasive species, because if you don’t have biofouling, the organisms won’t spread.”

That argument, while straightforward, runs up against a more complicated reality. Not all cleaning is equal. Removing thick layers of barnacles and mussels—and what practitioners sometimes refer to, less delicately, as “sea vomit,” or more formally, carpet sea squirt—can release significant biological material into the water if not properly captured. By contrast, removing early-stage growth—thin films of slime or algae—poses far less risk.

This distinction has become central to Bellona’s approach. Rather than treating hull cleaning as a binary—allowed or banned—the organization has advocated for more nuanced, risk-based standards. Clean early, before fouling becomes severe; differentiate between levels of growth; require capture technologies where risks are highest, but not necessarily in all cases. The goal is not perfection, but practicality: a system that encourages frequent, preventive cleaning rather than infrequent, reactive intervention.

Biofouling on a ship hull that has been allowed to develop too far into macrofouling. Photo: Bellona

Industry participants increasingly frame the issue in much the same way. “Would you rather prevent a fire or put out a fire that has already started?” Jotun’s Stangeby said. “We are working on the preventive side of the industry.” Waiting until heavy macrofouling develops, he said, makes cleaning more difficult, more invasive and ultimately less effective than maintaining what he described as “an always clean hull.” Early cleaning, he added, not only lowers fuel consumption and emissions, but can also reduce the likelihood that larger organisms are carried between ecosystems.

“A lot of the cleanings that occur today are reactive,” Tvedten observed—performed only after fouling has already become a significant problem. Bellona’s Clean Hull Initiative, by contrast, promotes proactive cleaning: addressing buildup when it is still minimal, when both environmental and operational costs are lowest.

Writing the rules of the waterline

Turning that philosophy into policy, however, requires more than persuasion. It requires standards—shared frameworks that ports, shipowners and service providers can trust. That is where Bellona’s work with the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) has become especially significant.

The Clean Hull Initiative helped draft a proposal for an ISO standard on in-water cleaning, with Tvedten serving as project leader. The aim was not to dictate specific environmental thresholds, but to establish a common language and process: how cleaning operations should be documented, how their impacts should be measured, and how ports might evaluate them. “If you have an environmental solution that’s new, you need to also create the systems and routines around it,” she said.

The ISO working group in Stockholm. Photo: Bellona

According to Stangeby, collaboration between environmental groups and industry has been essential in bringing the issue into mainstream maritime policy discussions. “Biofouling represents a threat to the environment both in terms of emissions and biodiversity, and no single stakeholder can address it alone,” he said. Environmental organizations such as Bellona, he added, “have helped raise awareness and push the topic onto the policy agenda, while industry contributes operational insight and practical solutions.”

The Clean Hull Initiative, he said, has helped “create a more informed dialogue and build the trust needed to develop workable standards,” including the recently adopted ISO 6319 framework.

In practice, that means enabling regulators to make more informed decisions—moving beyond blanket bans toward conditional approvals based on evidence. Service providers, whether diver teams or remotely operated vehicle operators, are expected to document what they plan to do and what effects their methods have on water quality. Ports, in turn, can assess whether those practices meet their environmental criteria.

Industry participants say cleaning technologies themselves have also evolved rapidly in response to regulatory concerns. “There is a clear shift towards more controlled and proactive approaches, supported by monitoring and data,” Stangeby said.

From standards to global policy

The influence of that work is already beginning to ripple outward. The International Maritime Organization has finalized guidelines on biofouling and hull maintenance, and many of the same experts contribute to both IMO and ISO processes. What began as a technical standard is gradually helping shape broader international policy discussions around environmentally sound hull cleaning.

Meanwhile, the practical case for more frequent cleaning continues to strengthen. Many operators still wait two or three years before conducting in-water cleaning, allowing significant biofouling to accumulate in the meantime. From Tvedten’s perspective, that is often far too late. Cleaning should begin “much earlier,” as a preventive measure, Tvedten said—before buildup becomes a hazard rather than a minor inconvenience.

The implications extend beyond environmental protection. Cleaner hulls mean less drag, which means lower fuel consumption and reduced costs for shipowners. In an industry defined by tight margins and global competition, that economic incentive may prove as important as any regulation.

For now, the shift remains uneven. Some ports are experimenting with new rules and technologies; others remain cautious. But the direction of travel is becoming clearer.

What was once an obscure technical issue is moving onto the international agenda. And in that transition, Bellona’s work offers a reminder that not all environmental solutions require sweeping technological breakthroughs. Some, it turns out, involve paying closer attention to what has been there all along: a thin, stubborn layer of life clinging to the underside of the global economy.

The post Below the waterline, there’s an elegant climate solution appeared first on Bellona.org.