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Sometimes a big story can be told with a very small object.

Take the hazards of plastic pollution in the ocean, and a single bottle cap floating in the Pacific Ocean near Japan.

Captured in a net by scientists aboard a Japanese research vessel in 2023, this plastic cap had been transformed into a tiny ecosystem of hundreds of creatures. Through careful detective work, scientists unraveled a journey that brought the cap, and its stowaways from tropical waters far to the south.

The discovery, detailed in a new paper in Marine Pollution Bulletin, underscores the ways in which life is adapting to an increasingly plastic-filled ocean, and the potential for buoyant, virtually indestructible bits of trash to serve as rafts for invasive species.

“We found organisms that normally live in southern tropical waters,” said Naoto Jimi, the lead author and a scientist at Nagoya University. “Geographic range extensions of some species may be occurring under the radar.”

The potential for ocean-borne plastic to act as a raft for enterprising species has been a concern for some time. Famously, Japanese flotsam from a 2011 tsunami washed ashore in North America bearing nearly 300 coastal species. Scientists have surmised that tiny floating islands of plastic in the middle of the ocean are creating novel ecosystems of their own.

In the case of the bottle cap, that ecosystem was just 35 millimeters in diameter. Despite its small size, when scientists inspected the cap they discovered a little world inhabited by 307 individual organisms representing 9 different taxa. Perhaps most impressive was a Eunice bipapillata, a type of polychaete. This particular species of bottom-dwelling worm resembles a millipede with a slender, flat ribbon of a body lined by dozens of short legs.

 

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The worm had built a protective mucus shell, which in turn offered a landscape to be colonized by a marine menagerie, what the scientists described as “a miniature reef.” The residents’ identities provided some clue about the cap’s distant origins. The worm normally is found in the tropical western Pacific.

A closer analysis of some of the organisms offered a more detailed account of their travels. The shells of foraminifera, tiny organisms commonly known as forams, provide a temperature record of the surrounding ocean water in which different parts of the shell are made, much like tree rings vary from year to year depending on rainfall. Scientists can measure ratios of two isotopes of oxygen in the parts of the shell to determine water temperature.

Two of the foram shells revealed a movement from warmer to cooler waters, with a peak of nearly 30°C down to around 22°C – roughly the water temperature where the cap was caught.

The scientists traced the movement with still more detail by using a computer model of regional ocean currents. Simulations of a tiny object dropped in the ocean arriving at the spot where it was caught revealed a likely origin in the Philippines, a journey of some 70 days and more than 1,500 kilometers. That route was a match for marks on the cap, tracing to a Philippine beverage brand.

The findings illustrate that “the marine plastic problem should therefore be considered not only from the perspectives of aesthetic damage, ingestion, and entanglement, but also from those of biogeography and invasive species risk,” said Jimi.

With an estimated 30 million metric tons of plastic already floating in the ocean, and more arriving every day, that’s a lot of bottle caps waiting to be turned into mini-reefs.

Jimi, et. al. “Multi-proxy reconstruction of bottle-cap rafting using biofouling communities, stable isotopes and drift modeling.” Marine Pollution Bulletin. July 7, 2026.

Photo: Inside a 3.5 cm plastic bottle cap: A miniature ecosystem of 307 organisms drifted from the Philippines to waters south of Japan.© Sugashima Marine Biological Laboratory, Nagoya University

Lindsay Fenlock is a senior researcher in the Climate and Energy Program at the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL). Nikki Reisch is a human rights lawyer and social justice advocate who leads the Climate & Energy Program at CIEL.

Much has been written about when fossil fuel companies knew their products cause harm to the climate, public health, and the environment. Less attention has been paid to just how long governments have known, too, and what they did or failed to do with that knowledge. That information is not just a matter of historical record – it’s a matter of legal responsibility. 

A year ago this month, the world’s highest court affirmed that countries have been under an obligation to curb climate change since they knew about the foreseeable risks it posed and to remedy its harms. This historic advisory opinion opened the door for States to be held accountable not only for failing to act on climate change, but also for making it worse by perpetuating its primary cause: fossil fuel production and use.

While the ruling is clear about the content of climate duties under international law, it is silent on when those duties first applied to specific countries or how long they have been breaching them. The earlier governments knew about the drivers and dangers of climate change, the longer they have been under an obligation to prevent it, and the greater their potential liability for the resulting harms.

Once they were informed of the risks fossil fuels posed to the climate, States had a duty to do everything in their power to prevent those risks from materializing – and at a minimum, to refrain from exacerbating them. But, as trends in fossil fuel dependence and climate destruction make clear, they did not.

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Early knowledge

A new report from the Center for International Environmental Law shows that the governments of many major emitting countries have known since at least the 1960s that fossil fuel use was warming the planet and, if continued, could lead to dire impacts –  including melting of the polar ice caps, catastrophic sea level rise, and extreme heat.

Yet some of the countries responsible for the largest cumulative shares of carbon emissions have claimed that global awareness of climate change emerged only in the late 1980s, around the time the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was established and negotiations of a climate convention began.

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Why? Because admitting that they have known about the chief causes and foreseeable consequences of climate change for the better part of a century would mean they had a duty to prevent it that they’ve been flouting for decades.

Drawing  on a wide range of publicly available government records and scientific studies, CIEL’s research exposes when knowledge of climate change made its way onto policymakers’ desks and into public discourse. The report synthesizes some of the groundbreaking research by scholars such as Naomi Oreskes on the history of American climate science, putting their findings into a legal context and broadening the discussion to other countries.

First findings in 19th century

The origins of the climate harms the world is experiencing today – more extreme storms, deadly heat waves, floods, and sea level rise – stem from around 1850, when industry began burning so much fossil fuel that the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere began to rise.

Scientists figured out quite quickly that the release of these ancient carbon stores could warm Earth. The first paper that modeled the potential warming impact of fossil fuel use, for example, came out in 1896, while the first studies that confirmed global temperatures were rising came out before World War II. 

Government records show international cooperation on climate change research picking up around 1957, when countries worldwide coordinated funding for thousands of research projects as part of the International Geophysical Year (IGY).

The IGY spawned the world’s first program to monitor atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, and the 69 participating governments were apprised of the results. By this time, governmental scientific organizations in most of the world knew that continued fossil fuel use could heat the planet dramatically, with potentially significant adverse impacts. Many countries also became aware of industry research on climate change during this decade through their state-owned oil companies.

Big emitters knew

In the 1960s, the world’s top atmospheric scientists, chemists, and geophysicists concluded that fossil fuel emissions not only could warm the earth, but they were already doing so. They also concluded that continuing to release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere was likely to cause serious harm to food systems, ecosystems, human health, and communities, including through sea level rise and deadly extreme weather events. By the 1960s and 1970s, many governments had ample warning that continued reliance on fossil fuels could have profoundly dangerous global consequences. 

Evidence indicates that this information reached public officials —  in some cases at the highest echelons of government. In the United States –  the largest historic emitter of carbon dioxide –  White House officials exchanged memos over what to do about the “carbon dioxide problem” during the 1960s and a presidential report published in 1965 unequivocally attributed warming to fossil fuels and warned about catastrophic levels of temperature and sea level rise if trends continued. 

Excerpt from a letter sent by US diplomat Daniel Moynihan to President Richard Nixon’s administration Excerpt from a letter sent by US diplomat Daniel Moynihan to President Richard Nixon’s administration

In the United Kingdom, the greenhouse effect was first raised in a parliamentary debate in 1969, and in France, a state-owned oil company published a magazine article about the dangers of atmospheric carbon dioxide in 1971, while the Canadian environment ministry regularly published articles about climate change in its employee magazine throughout the 1970s and 80s. 

Even the most generous reading of this information shows that many of the world’s largest contributors to climate change, including the United States, Canada, Germany, and Australia,  knew enough to change course over two decades before the first meeting of the IPCC  in 1988, if not far earlier. 

The story does not end there. As an illustrative compilation of publicly available, English-language evidence, CIEL’s report is not a complete survey of what all major emitters knew.  And facts about what a given country knew are not, on their own, sufficient to secure accountability. But, together with evidence about how that knowledge was subsequently acted upon –  or, as was often the case, denied, dismissed, and distorted – and about how climate impacts have unfolded, they solidify foundations for climate justice and repair. 

The post Major emitting countries knew of climate risks decades earlier than claimed appeared first on Climate Home News.

Headline News:

• “Environmentalists Decry Trump Administration’s Changing Of ‘Harm’ In Endangered Species Act” • The Departments of Interior and Commerce made a change to the language of the Endangered Species Act that environmental groups believe could open protected habitats to development. The definition of the word “harm” is to be rescinded from the Act. [ABC News]

Whooping cranes (US FWS, public domain)

• “Fastest Renewable Energy Growth Ever” • Renewable Energy Statistics 2026 released by the International Renewable Energy Agency shows that renewable electricity generation grew by 9.8% in 2024. This is significantly higher than the growth recorded in 2023. Overall, renewables accounted for 31.7% of the electricity generation globally in 2024. [CleanTechnica]
• “Solar PV Offers Finland Big Untapped Potential” • Despite its high-latitude, Finland is poised to build nearly 70 GW of solar PV that complements rich wind resources and outcompetes new nuclear power. A stream of energy system research reveals how the “midnight sun” and deep sector coupling gives solar PV an important edge. [pv magazine Global]
• “Cuba Plunged Into Third Nationwide Blackout In Two Weeks As Power Grid Collapses” • Cuba has suffered another blackout of the National Electric System, or SEN, leaving the entire island country without power, officials said, in what was the third such incident in less than two weeks as a US oil embargo stresses the island’s grid. [Euronews]
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For more news, please visit geoharvey – Daily News about Energy and Climate Change.

They wanted to hold Exxon accountable. Then they got hacked. A decade after climate activists’ emails were breached, a court case is shedding new light on who allegedly orchestrated the hacking.

By Matt Simon

Illustration by Grist / Getty Images​​

Jul 23, 2026

Topic

Climate + Transportation

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This story is published in partnership with the Guardian.​

On a cold January morning in 2016, Kert Davies joined a group of climate advocates and lawyers at the Rockefeller Family Fund’s office in Upper Manhattan to discuss an audacious goal: holding Exxon Mobil, one of the world’s largest fossil fuel companies, accountable for climate change. A few months earlier, a set of explosive media reports had revealed that the company’s own scientists determined as early as 1982 that the extraction and burning of fossil fuels caused climate change — but Exxon went on to fund climate denial campaigns anyway.

For Exxon, it was a public relations crisis that carried potentially devastating legal consequences. Davies, the founder of the Climate Investigations Center, a group that monitors the fossil fuel industry, had been strategizing with other climate advocates to make those consequences stick, using the hashtag #ExxonKnew to raise public awareness.

About a month after the meeting in Manhattan, Davies received the first fishy email. It appeared to be from Facebook and said, “Kert, you have 5 poke.” Similar messages arrived over the next few days — emails that looked like notifications from people on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

Not realizing he was being phished, Davies clicked some of the links embedded in the strange messages. But he soon felt a creeping sense of dread. In early March, he asked his colleagues on a climate activist listserv: “Has anybody received weird emails?” They replied that they had. Some had clicked links and entered their passwords.

Inundated with ominous emails, the feeling of constant danger started to stifle the group’s communication. Then, the following month, a Wall Street Journal reporter reached out to Davies about a detailed agenda she had obtained for the January meeting he’d attended at the Rockefeller Family Fund’s office. In April 2016, details from the email were published by the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Free Beacon, a conservative news publication, which alleged “secret coordination” against Exxon by climate activists. 

Although Davies didn’t think it was unusual for environmental advocates to meet to strategize against one of the world’s largest polluters, Exxon soon latched onto the media reports to fight subpoenas and lawsuits it was now facing from 17 attorneys general. Defending itself from the investigations, Exxon quoted the meeting agenda in its court filings to argue that activists were conspiring against the company.

A criminal investigation would later reveal that the email obtained by the two publications had been hacked. But details about who ordered the hack have long been a mystery. Now, court documents allege that the hack was ordered by a firm representing Exxon itself — the very company Davies and others were trying to hold accountable for climate deception.  

An Exxon Mobil gas refinery, as seen in March 2006 in Baytown, Texas. Benjamin Lowy / Getty Images

The potential link to the oil company came to light last year, after the U.S. government issued an arrest warrant and attempted to extradite Israeli private investigator Amit Forlit from the U.K. Suddenly, Forlit was facing hacking and wire fraud charges that could land him in prison for up to 45 years. In the indictment from the U.S. attorney’s office in New York, which was unsealed earlier this year, prosecutors alleged that a public affairs firm working on behalf of an oil giant matching Exxon’s description hired Forlit to execute a project that involved hacking climate activists. In court documents, Forlit referenced the indictment and alleged that the hacking was commissioned by DCI group, a public affairs firm with a longtime relationship with Exxon. Separately, Reuters reported that the FBI had investigated DCI Group regarding the hacking operation.

DCI Group and Exxon deny involvement. Exxon Mobil did not reply to a request for comment, however, the company has previously said it has not been “involved in, nor are we aware of, any hacking activities. If there was any hacking involved, we condemn it in the strongest possible terms.” The company has said it acknowledges “climate change is real, and we have an entire business dedicated to reducing emissions.”

“We do and always have directed all our employees and consultants to comply with the law,” Craig Stevens, a partner at DCI Group, wrote in an email. He added that his firm has “been told by the government that neither DCI nor any of its personnel are under investigation” and that they had “no knowledge or understanding” of the alleged hacking activity. “Any insinuation otherwise is completely false and unsubstantiated,” he wrote.

Through his lawyer, Forlit declined to comment. He has pleaded not guilty.

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Today, as a direct result of the revelations about what Exxon knew about climate change and when, the fossil fuel giant and others are fighting lawsuits brought by states and cities that could result in hundreds of billions of dollars in damages. And in the past decade, threats to climate advocates have only grown more dangerous; fossil fuel companies have worked with security firms or police to surveil activists who opposed pipeline projects like the Dakota Access Pipeline and Line 3. Cybercrime has grown more sophisticated, and a global hack-for-hire industry has, so far, faced few consequences.

Davies, who is still monitoring Exxon, hopes the Forlit case will reveal whether the oil giant was involved in the hack. “None of that has been proven yet. So any furtherance of that story and that proof is really important to me, personally, and to a lot of the people who were attacked by this operation 10 years ago,” he said. “It’s personal, because I really don’t like bullies or liars or cheaters.”

About a year after Davies began receiving those strange messages, an investigative reporter who was covering financial fraud in Germany began receiving similar emails and flagged them to the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab, which investigates efforts to surveil civil society. John Scott-Railton, a senior researcher at the lab, quickly determined they were phishing attacks. Citizen Lab researchers noticed that the links in the emails used a custom URL shortener. They then developed a technique to figure out the full unshortened URLs containing target email addresses, giving them a comprehensive list of those targeted.

Many of the victims were people at environmental groups and advocates campaigning against Exxon, but Scott-Railton and his colleagues found that the hundreds of targets also included the families and friends of activists. Non-environmental groups — for example, hedge funds, short sellers, and financial journalists — were targeted as well.

“We began toying with the idea that perhaps this was a mercenary group and they were taking commissions,” Scott-Railton said.

Scott-Railton contacted Davies in the fall of 2017. By then, Davies was experiencing another wave of phishing attacks. This time, a number of emails mentioned Exxon, including one pretending to be his colleague sharing a Dropbox document titled “ExxonMobil (confidential).docx”.

Davies still had no idea where the messages were coming from. When he met with Scott-Railton, the researcher showed Davies that he was on a long list of targets — one that included far more activists than just those in his circle of Exxon critics.

“It was really a relief to know that I wasn’t imagining that we were being targeted,” Davies recalled.

As he investigated the hacking group, Scott-Railton helped Davies and other potential targets search their inboxes for evidence that the strange messages were phishing attempts that could be traced to a single hacking group. Davies alone had received more than 80 such emails. Armed with this evidence, several targets of the phishing attacks shared Citizen Lab’s findings with the Department of Justice, or DOJ, which then began gathering evidence of a coordinated scheme. 

The Justice Department uncovered correspondence that showed a group of unnamed co-conspirators had emailed Israeli private investigator Aviram Azari, suggesting “we can make some money working together” and inviting him to a business meeting in India. The group then used phishing attacks to successfully hack into the email accounts of various targets located in the U.S. Based on this evidence, in September 2019, federal agents arrested Azari at the John F. Kennedy International Airport while he was on his way to Disneyland with his family. He was charged with managing hacking projects and pleaded not guilty. (Azari’s attorney did not reply to requests for comment.)

As the government continued to build its case, Davies met with DOJ investigators in early 2020 and told them everything he knew. A few months later, Citizen Lab published a groundbreaking report revealing that the phishing emails came from Dark Basin, a hack-for-hire group based in India. The climate advocates were just one group of targets among many; the hackers had attacked thousands of people across six continents, including politicians, prosecutors, CEOs, journalists, and human rights defenders. The report revealed the hackers had a highly detailed understanding of the Exxon critics and their relationships — suggesting they’d been provided with instructions. But the client who ordered the hack was still unknown.

Climate activists protest on the first day of the Exxon Mobil trial outside the New York State Supreme Court building in October 2019. Angela Weiss / AFP via Getty Images

After languishing in a New York prison for years awaiting trial, Azari pleaded guilty to the hacking charges in 2022, but denied knowledge of the client. Sentencing documents revealed that he played a crucial role in a global hacking campaign that targeted thousands of people — stretching well beyond the #ExxonKnew campaign — with clients paying him more than $4.8 million over almost five years for managing intelligence-gathering and phishing campaigns. He directed hackers, including the group in India, to target specific victims’ online accounts. 

The DOJ investigation confirmed the successful hacking of more than 100 of Azari’s victims, including those involved in the #ExxonKnew campaign. The government’s sentencing memo said that some of the hacked documents that were stolen from climate advocates’ online accounts were leaked to the press, and that articles about those hacked documents were incorporated into Exxon’s court filings as it battled state attorneys general investigations. DOJ investigators also asked Davies and others to write victim impact statements for Azari’s sentencing. Davies wrote that the attack had caused “anxiety, paranoia, depression, sleeplessness, and fear.”

But despite the revelations from the Azari case, the client who allegedly ordered the hack remained unknown — until the DOJ issued a warrant for the arrest of Israeli private investigator Amit Forlit and requested his extradition.

Forlit’s extradition case sent shockwaves through the U.S. climate community and began providing the answers Davies and others had been waiting for. Davies knew that Exxon had a long working relationship with DCI Group, a strategic communications firm based in Washington, D.C. Public documents show Exxon was a major client of DCI Group, spending more than $3 million on lobbying, including $320,000 in 2015, the year the hacking was allegedly commissioned.

In a filing arguing against his extradition last year, Forlit’s lawyer named the alleged client for the first time: “The hacking is alleged to have been commissioned by DCI Group, a lobbying firm representing ExxonMobil, one of the world’s largest fossil fuel companies.” 

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Davies was elated. Finally, what he had suspected all along was trickling out in court documents. “There’s been periods of time where I thought, ‘Oh, that’s over. There’s no way to ever figure it out.’ And then all of a sudden — this breakthrough,” he said.

With Forlit potentially facing decades in prison if extradited to the U.S., his lawyer referenced the then-sealed DOJ indictment and named the companies in a legal filing. The lawyer argued that one of the reasons for his prosecution in the U.S. was to “advance the politically-motivated case of pursuing ExxonMobil, with Mr. Forlit a form of collateral damage in that endeavor.” But the court didn’t find this argument persuasive, and in April, Forlit was extradited to the U.S.

The U.S. indictment was unsealed in April, offering tantalizing new details. It alleged Forlit was “a leader of a sprawling cybercriminal enterprise” via Israel-based intelligence-gathering firms, and that his actions involved co-conspirators in the U.S., U.K., Israel, and India. The indictment says the operation targeting climate activists was carried out on behalf of a client: “one of the world’s largest oil and gas corporations, with headquarters in Irving, Texas.” (When the indictment was first filed in 2022, Exxon Mobil was the only major global oil company with headquarters in Irving, Texas.)

The exterior of Exxon Mobil’s campus on the outskirts of Houston, Texas, where the company relocated its headquarters from Irving, photographed in February 2022. Brandon Bell / Getty Images

The indictment described allegations using ciphers instead of specific names of people and companies, but the names were clear to anyone who had read Forlit’s U.K. court filings opposing his extradition. The indictment laid out a chain of events connecting Forlit and Azari to a “lobbying firm” — which Forlit’s U.K. filings say was DCI Group — and in turn the lobbying firm’s “client,” which the U.K. filings say was Exxon Mobil. The indictment alleged that in October 2015, the client asked the lobbying firm for help responding to civil investigations it was facing related to climate change. 

According to the indictment, a principal at the lobbying firm contacted Forlit about a project that would target people working on climate and environmental issues. In a memo to Forlit, the principal laid out a plan for how they “would operationalize the research on the bad guys.” The principal sent the memo to Forlit with a cover email that said: “This is what I gave the client yesterday.” The memo referenced “recent attacks” on the client — the oil and gas company in Irving, Texas — “over climate change by groups on the left” and the “opportunity to go ‘on offense.’”

Prosecutors alleged that Forlit then emailed the principal a proposal for the climate change project, with a $125,000 monthly budget, outlining how his firms would gather intelligence for the client’s use in lobbying and legal proceedings. Forlit then allegedly contracted Azari and others who, in turn, hired hackers. 

The indictment alleges that the hackers successfully breached the accounts of two targets who worked for a climate advocacy nonprofit in February and March of 2016 (around the time that Davies heard from the Wall Street Journal reporter) and continued their phishing spree, successfully hacking more targets, until late 2017. The indictment alleges the stolen materials were funneled through Azari and Forlit to the principal at the lobbying firm and ultimately used in lobbying work and climate litigation filings for the client. Between 2014 and 2017, Forlit’s firms allegedly earned $7 million through the scheme, including work on the climate hack.

A decade after they received a flood of phishing attempts, the targets are now poring over the unsealed indictment, trying to piece together the identity and motivations of those who attacked them a decade ago. Although the government investigation confirmed the successful hacking of 100 victims, the Forlit indictment focuses on five unnamed victims.

Lee Wasserman, director and secretary of the Rockefeller Family Foundation, has reason to believe he is “Victim 5.” He and others received letters from the DOJ stating that they were victims of the scheme, although the government never confirmed to them whether they were successfully hacked.

Wasserman believes he was targeted because he supported a Columbia Journalism School investigation into what Exxon knew about climate change that was published in the Los Angeles Times. He also met with the New York attorney general to talk about Exxon. “We think Exxon and their allies’ conduct was the most consequential corporate deception of all time,” Wasserman said. 

But the phishing attempts had a chilling effect on their accountability efforts, he added. They switched from email to phone calls, and at times, Wasserman found himself whispering because he wondered if someone had bugged his office or home. He pondered whether cars could be lurking outside to follow him or his colleagues.

A Mobil logo is seen on a gas station in Los Angeles in November 2023. Jakub Porzycki / NurPhoto / Getty Images

Wasserman hopes the court process will reveal how the idea was hatched, who directed the operation, and who paid for it. “We’re all sitting on the edge of our seats waiting to see if we hear that at trial,” he said.

In 2016, Jennifer Cunningham was a partner with SKDKnickerbocker, a public affairs firm, and a policy consultant to the New York Attorney General. She was involved in the climate litigation work and recalled receiving phishing emails, which she believes were attempts to obtain information about the litigation strategy.

In an interview with Grist, she initially said the hackers were not successful. “I remember there were a couple that I really narrowly avoided, because [they appeared to be] from a colleague,” she said. Her office turned over the phishing emails to federal prosecutors.

But later, after reviewing the Forlit indictment, she was fairly certain she recognized herself in it. “Wait — I must be Victim 3?” she wrote in a text message. “If so, I guess they were successful in hacking in, which I never knew.” She hopes the court case will reveal more details, including the communication between the companies and the hackers.

Scott-Railton, who first exposed the hacking operation, said, “The #ExxonKnew hacking campaign stands out, in my mind, as one of the largest and most brazen hacking attempts I’ve ever seen against environmental organizations — or for that matter, U.S. advocacy organizations in general.” These groups continue to face digital threats, he explained; phishing attempts still occur, and hacking has progressed to include more sophisticated methods of intrusion that don’t require targets to click on anything. For instance, the Israeli cyber-intelligence firm NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware had been used to target human rights defenders and journalists. “I have no doubt that a version of this is going to come again,” he said.

This year, Davies received a letter from the DOJ stating that he was a “victim” in the Forlit case. He hopes that the people who ordered the hacking operation are named and held accountable.

“I still live not knowing if I was hacked,” Davies said. “I don’t have proof that they did hack me, that they did get my password. I don’t have proof that they didn’t. And that’s the thing that still rests with me: Am I secure?”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline They wanted to hold Exxon accountable. Then they got hacked. on Jul 15, 2026.

Hadirnya koleksi game yang semakin lengkap membuka kesempatan bagi pemain untuk mengenal berbagai konsep permainan dalam satu platform. Mulai dari tema petualangan, mitologi, budaya Asia, hingga dunia fantasi modern, setiap permainan memiliki karakteristik dan mekanisme yang berbeda. Variasi ini menjadi salah satu alasan mengapa banyak pengguna tertarik menjelajahi berbagai pilihan yang tersedia.

Pengamat industri hiburan menilai bahwa keberagaman permainan merupakan faktor penting dalam meningkatkan pengalaman pengguna. Tidak hanya mengandalkan tampilan visual, para pengembang juga menghadirkan fitur-fitur inovatif seperti putaran bonus, animasi interaktif, serta mekanisme permainan yang dirancang agar lebih menarik. Dengan demikian, setiap permainan mampu memberikan sensasi yang berbeda tanpa kehilangan ciri khasnya.

Istilah “slot gacor” sendiri kerap digunakan oleh komunitas pemain sebagai sebutan populer untuk permainan yang dianggap memberikan pengalaman bermain yang menyenangkan berdasarkan persepsi maupun pengalaman masing-masing pengguna. Perlu dipahami bahwa hasil dalam permainan berbasis sistem acak tetap bersifat acak, sehingga tidak ada jaminan hasil tertentu pada setiap putaran. Karena itu, istilah tersebut lebih mencerminkan tren pembicaraan di kalangan komunitas daripada sebuah kepastian.

Di sisi lain, perkembangan teknologi turut mendorong kualitas permainan menjadi semakin baik. Grafis beresolusi tinggi, efek suara yang imersif, serta kompatibilitas dengan berbagai perangkat membuat pengguna dapat menikmati permainan dengan lebih nyaman. Baik melalui komputer maupun perangkat seluler, akses terhadap berbagai pilihan game kini semakin mudah dilakukan kapan saja.

Tidak hanya dari sisi teknologi, para penyedia permainan juga terus memperluas koleksi judul game dengan menghadirkan pembaruan secara berkala. Kehadiran tema-tema baru memberikan warna tersendiri bagi pemain yang ingin mencoba pengalaman berbeda. Langkah ini sekaligus mencerminkan tingginya persaingan industri dalam menghadirkan hiburan digital yang lebih inovatif dan relevan dengan minat pengguna.

Berbagai komunitas daring juga turut berperan dalam memperkenalkan permainan-permainan yang sedang menjadi perbincangan. Melalui forum diskusi maupun media sosial, para pemain saling berbagi pengalaman mengenai fitur permainan, tampilan grafis, hingga mekanisme bonus yang mereka anggap menarik. Aktivitas tersebut menciptakan ekosistem informasi yang membantu pemain mengenal lebih banyak pilihan game.

Meski demikian, para pengguna tetap disarankan untuk mengedepankan sikap bijak dalam menikmati hiburan digital. Menentukan batas waktu bermain, memahami aturan permainan, serta tidak menjadikan permainan sebagai sarana mencari keuntungan yang pasti merupakan langkah penting dalam menjaga pengalaman bermain tetap positif dan seimbang.

Secara keseluruhan, hadirnya game yang semakin beragam telah membuka cakrawala baru bagi pencinta permainan slot digital. Variasi tema, teknologi yang terus berkembang, serta inovasi fitur menjadi daya tarik utama yang membuat kategori permainan ini terus diperbincangkan. Dengan memilih permainan sesuai preferensi pribadi dan menikmati hiburan secara bertanggung jawab, pengguna dapat merasakan pengalaman bermain yang lebih nyaman, informatif, dan menyenangkan.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture plans to close the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center, a 6,500-acre agricultural research station in Maryland that is home to the nation’s premier bee research and disease diagnosis hub. The closure comes at a critical moment for bees.

Issue 94, Green Energy Times’ July –October 2026 Edition, has gone to press and will soon be available at the usual locations.

It can be downloaded as a pdf file HERE.

Individual articles will soon be available. 

"The effects on farmers, livestock and crops have been catastrophic. The AGRIFISH Council, which is due to meet on 13 July 2026, must include measures to tackle this situation."

The post ECVC: The AGRIFISH Council Must Take Action to Tackle the Intense Heatwave Situation appeared first on La Via Campesina - EN.

TV must showcase real animal lives Channel Comment brendan 15th July 2026 Teaser Media

Drowning in manure: How livestock farms threaten Iowa’s drinking water and public health rcoleman July 14, 2026 Ethan Bahe Anne Schechinger, M.S. July 14, 2026 Overview

• EWG found 15,309 Iowa factory farms producing over 107 million tons of manure a year.
• The number of large animal facilities increased by 13% between 2019 and 2025.
• The state’s livestock produce significant amounts of manure that pollute drinking water and recreational water, leading to public health harms like cancer.
• Because of inadequate oversight, polluted drinking water results from all sizes of facilities.

Iowa – the nation’s top hog producer – had more than 15,000 factory farms in 2025 producing over 107 million tons of manure, a first-of-its-kind EWG analysis finds. This waste can pollute water, exposing people to serious health risks like cancer.

EWG mapped every livestock facility across Iowa to uncover the massive scale of the farms and their manure. The waste generated would weigh the same as over 53 million Ford F150 pickup trucks, and would account for 33 tons of manure each year for every person in Iowa.

And the problem isn’t limited to Iowa. 

A third of all pork raised in the U.S. is produced in Iowa, which is by far the largest hog-producing state. Minnesota, the runner-up, makes up only 12% of total U.S. hog production. If you’ve eaten pork, it’s very likely that you've eaten pork from hogs raised in Iowa. The consequences of huge Iowa hog farms extend far beyond the state borders.

The Iowa Department of Natural Resources tracks the number of hog and other animal feeding operations and their locations, with a data file showing just under 11,000 facilities.

In contrast, EWG’s well-established methodology located thousands more facilities that are not included in the state’s dataset. This analysis found more than 15,000 factory farms on the ground from aerial and satellite imagery, providing the most comprehensive picture yet of Iowa’s enormous industrial livestock footprint. 

This investigation updates a 2020 EWG analysis that mapped the state’s largest animal operations only. That study found there were 3,936 large factory farms in the state in 2019. Our latest research found a 12.9% increase in large facilities, to 4,444 in 2025.

The vast amounts of manure these facilities generate are often applied to nearby farm fields as a fertilizer, since it contains nitrogen and phosphorus, nutrients that feed crops. But manure and its components can wash off farm fields, leach through soil into drainage systems that empty into nearby rivers, streams and lakes, and get into groundwater. 

Nitrogen can form in drinking water as nitrate, and consuming this contaminated water can increase the risk of birth defects and cancer. Iowa is the state with the second-highest rate of new cancer cases. 

Manure runoff can also create potentially toxic algae blooms in recreational waters when more nutrients are applied than crops can absorb. EWG has reported on algae toxins in bodies of water throughout Iowa.

To help reduce the environmental and public health damages caused by livestock raised in these facilities, consumers can choose to eat less meat or eat meat not raised in a factory farm. And federal and state-level policies must change to improve public health and the safety of water for Iowans. 

Iowa produces huge amounts of manure

Animal feeding operations are concentrated facilities and feedlots that produce livestock for meat, eggs and dairy products. Hundreds and even thousands of cattle, swine, chickens, turkeys and other animals are raised in large buildings or, in the case of cattle, in open feedlots. Over 90% of U.S. livestock are raised in factory farms. 

EWG found that Iowa had 15,309 such facilities in 2025. Hogs made up the vast majority of facilities in the state, at 66%. 

There were 10,172 facilities housing 33.4 million hogs, 336 poultry facilities housing 178.6 million turkeys and chickens, and 4,801 operations that contained 2.7 million cattle.

Together these facilities produced 107.6 million tons of manure in 2025.

Two-thirds of all factory farms produced swine last year. They also produced the largest share of manure. (See Figure 1.) 

Figure 1. Hog facilities generated over 64% of total manure in Iowa. 

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Source: EWG, with data from Department of Agriculture National Agriculture Imagery Program and Iowa DNR 

The five Iowa counties with the most animal feeding operations in descending order were Sioux, Lyon, Plymouth, O’Brien and Washington. These counties contained 3,095 factory farms, or one in five of all facilities in the state. 

Water quality problems are especially prevalent in the counties with the most operations. This map shows the locations of all the state’s 15,000-plus factory farms:

Interactive map Iowa livestock facilities in 2025

EWG mapped every livestock facility in the state using aerial and satellite imagery, uncovering a much greater industrial footprint than Iowa’s own data suggests.

View map here Large operations have increased since 2019

Iowa has seen a substantial increase in the number of large animal facilities in just the past few years. The largest operations generate the most manure, exacerbating manure storage issues. It becomes increasingly difficult to manage waste without applying excessive amounts to nearby farmland, where it contributes to water pollution and other environmental problems.

For this analysis, EWG used the Environmental Protection Agency’s definition of concentrated animal feeding operations, or CAFOs, to determine farm size. According to the EPA, small facilities have fewer than 300 “animal units,” medium facilities have between 300 and 999, and large facilities have 1,000 or more animal units. 

An “animal unit” is defined as an animal that’s equivalent to 1,000 pounds of live weight. For example, a single animal unit would be one 1,000-pound beef cattle, 2.5 hogs or 125 chickens. Large CAFOs house at least 1,000 beef cattle or 2,500 hogs or 125,000 chickens – a lot of animals generating an enormous amount of manure.

The number of large swine operations increased the most between 2019 and 2025, at over 400 facilities.

The largest facilities produced a disproportionate amount of manure. The 4,444 large facilities accounted for 29% of all facilities but generated 60% of all manure.

Medium-size facilities made up 51% of operations but only 35% of the manure. Small farms accounted for only 20% of facilities and 5% of the manure. 

This expansion between 2019 and 2025 reflects the continued consolidation of livestock production into larger, more intensive facilities with greater waste management and drinking water challenges.

Sioux, Kossuth and Hamilton counties were the three with the greatest number of large animal feeding operations, where manure application in these counties likely has a big impact on water quality. 

Existing regulatory requirements

There were also thousands of factory farms just below the “large” size designation. These operations generate significant amounts of manure but are not required by the EPA to get a National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System, or NPDES, water permit.

To obtain the required permits, large animal feeding operations submit applications that include manure management plans identifying the fields where manure will be applied each year. 

Management plans aim to prevent multiple facilities from applying manure to the same fields or applying manure above the agronomic rate. 

Animal facilities that have more than 500 animal units but under 1,000 need to submit a manure management plan to the Iowa DNR, but they do not have to get a NPDES permit. 

Although manure management plans are an important safeguard, they are often incomplete and inconsistently enforced. In 2025, there were only 745 inspections of manure management plans for Iowa facilities that had over 500 animal units. 

Operations with fewer than 1,000 animal units are exempt from many of the permit requirements faced by larger facilities, despite generating enough manure to pose water quality and public health risks similar to the risks of waste generated by large facilities. And those under the 1,000 animal unit threshold with manure management plans are only infrequently inspected.

A total of 3,276 operations had between 950 and 999 animal units – just 50 animal units short of the large CAFO designation. These facilities represented 21% of all facilities in the state and produced a lot of manure, but they are not regulated the same way as operations with 1,000 or more animal units are. 

Threat to water and public health

Human waste usually goes through a multistage treatment process before being released back into the environment. 

But the more than 100 million tons of manure produced annually by Iowa’s animal operations are typically spread, untreated, on nearby agricultural fields as a fertilizer. It’s the most common disposal option because the waste contains nitrogen and phosphorus, which feed the crops.

But once spread, the nitrogen in manure gets into groundwater, leaches through soil into drainage systems that empty into nearby waterways, and runs off fields to contaminate lakes and streams.

EWG recently released an analysis of nitrate levels in drinking water served by community water systems across the U.S. The report found that, in Iowa, 822 community water systems tested for nitrate between 2021 and 2023. 

Of those systems, 146 provided drinking water to almost 1.2 million Iowans and had at least one nitrate test at or above 3 milligrams per liter, or mg/L. During that time, 81 community water systems serving just under 800,000 people tested at or above 5 mg/L, and eight systems serving over 56,000 people tested at or above 10 mg/L.

Nitrate contamination in drinking water poses significant risks both to public health and the environment, with the potential harms varying based on the amount of nitrate (see Figure 2).  

The EPA’s legal limit for nitrate in drinking water – known as the maximum contaminant level, or MCL – is 10 mg/L. This standard was set based on 1960s science to guard against “blue baby syndrome,” a potentially fatal condition that starves infants of oxygen if they ingest too much nitrate. 

More recent research shows strong evidence of an increased risk of colorectal and other cancers, thyroid disease and birth defects at 5 mg/L and other levels far below the woefully outdated federal legal limit for nitrate in drinking water. 

Figure 2. Levels of nitrate in drinking water and their associated health risks. 

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Source: EWG, Drinking water of almost 1 in 5 Americans contains nitrates linked to cancer and birth defects

These findings are especially concerning in Iowa, which has the second-highest incidence of cancer cases in the nation and continues to experience rising cancer rates. 

Considerable evidence connects nitrate consumption to increased risk of bladder cancer and colorectal cancer. Emerging research also links kidney, ovarian, thyroid and pediatric cancers with consumption of nitrate in drinking water at levels below the MCL. 

The risks of negative birth outcomes for infants also go up when pregnant people drink water contaminated with nitrate, even at levels far below the MCL – preterm birth, low birth weight and birth defects, including neural tube birth defects like spina bifida.

Beyond its impacts on human health, excessive fertilizer and manure application contribute to climate change. Nitrogen from commercial fertilizers and livestock manure is converted in soil into nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas nearly 300 times more potent than carbon dioxide. 

Agriculture is one of the largest sources of nitrous oxide emissions, making improved nutrient management critical for protecting both water quality and the climate.

How consumers and policymakers can help

Consumers

Iowa is the largest producer of pork in the U.S., and swine facilities are the largest contributors of manure in the state. Consumers can choose to eat less meat or eat meat not raised in a factory farm, in turn helping to reduce the environmental and public health damages caused by raising livestock in these facilities. EWG’s Meat and Dairy Label Decoder helps users decipher what individual meat and dairy labels mean about how the livestock generating those food products were raised. 

The decoder suggests consumers look for these labels on meat packages at the grocery store to avoid factory-farmed meat: 

• Animal Welfare Approved by AGW
• Certified Humane, if the package also includes “grass fed” or “pasture-raised” 
• Global Animal Partnership, if the steps are 4, 5 or 5+. 

Pictures of EWG’s recommended meat labels are provided below. 

Image

These labels can help consumers choose products from animals raised on pasture, not in factory farms. Pasture-raised animals cause much less of a manure problem.

Policymakers

Changes to federal conservation policy could help reduce one of the largest sources of water contamination in Iowa. Millions of dollars from the Agriculture Department’s Environmental Quality Incentives Program, or EQIP, support infrastructure that compounds the problems of industrial livestock production rather than practices that protect water quality, one of the stated goals of the program. 

That is, this money subsidizes infrastructure that supports factory farms. 

According to EWG’s Conservation Database, two of the top most-funded EQIP practices in Iowa between 2017 and 2024 were animal manure storage facilities, and roofs and covers for them. Together these two practices received $44.7 million in federal funding during that period, representing 17% of all EQIP dollars awarded to Iowa farmers. 

Instead, federal conservation funding should prioritize proven conservation practices that reduce nutrient runoff, improve soil health and protect drinking water. Funding should be prioritized so it goes to practices that improve water quality, like those on EWG’s list of regenerative agriculture practices.

Iowans should also press their state officials to create policy changes that would reduce the amount of manure that gets into water. 

The amount of manure that animal feeding operations produce, and where the manure is applied, could be better regulated with a number of policy changes. Many of these policy updates could reduce the risk of cancer Iowans currently face.

One idea that could attract bipartisan support would be to shift the regulation of animal feeding operations to counties. Iowa’s DNR currently manages how livestock facilities operate and expand, as well as the application of manure to farm fields. 

Shifting that decisionmaking authority to county governments would give a greater voice to the people who live and work near animal facilities and are most likely to experience the health outcomes tied to the operations. 

With this change, county officials would decide whether to approve proposals for building new facilities or expanding existing ones. These officials would also manage the amount of manure that is produced and where it is applied. 

Taken together, these achievable federal and state policy changes, along with consumer calls for action and changes to their eating preferences, could make a welcome difference to Iowans’ health.

EWG: Iowa’s 15,000+ factory farms produce over 107M tons of manure, risking public health Anthony Lacey July 14, 2026

MINNEAPOLIS – Iowa has 15,309 livestock farms that generated 107.6 million tons of manure in 2025, polluting the state’s water and putting Iowans’ health at risk, a landmark Environmental Working Group mapping project finds.

For this comprehensive report, EWG mapped every livestock facility in the state using aerial and satellite imagery, uncovering a much greater industrial footprint than Iowa’s own data suggests. The state Department of Natural Resources tracks just under 11,000 facilities – a significant undercount, compared to the 15,000-plus EWG found.

Much of the manure generated ends up applied – untreated – to nearby farm fields, where it can leach into groundwater or run off into rivers, streams and lakes, polluting tap water.

When manure leaves the fields it is applied to, the nitrogen it contains can form nitrate in drinking water. Research links nitrate – found in manure and commercial fertilizer – in drinking water to an increased risk of colorectal, bladder, kidney, ovarian and thyroid cancers, as well as adverse birth outcomes, including preterm birth, low birth weight and spina bifida. 

Iowa has the second-highest rate of new cancer cases in the nation, and its cancer rates continue to rise.

“Iowa is drowning in manure from factory farms,” said report co-author Anne Schechinger, EWG’s senior director of agriculture and climate research. “The health threats of manure ending up in recreational and drinking water are well known and need to be addressed.”

The manure generated by Iowa’s factory farms is equivalent to 33 tons of waste for every person in the state each year – the same weight as over 53 million Ford F-150 pickup trucks

Many large factory farms

Hog operations dominate Iowa’s factory farm landscape, accounting for 66% of all facilities, EWG’s mapping found. Iowa produces a third of all U.S. pork, so the pollution problems linked to the large-scale factory farming of hogs aren’t limited to the Hawkeye State. 

Minnesota, the second-largest pork producer, accounts for just 12% of U.S. production.

The number of large animal facilities – those with 1,000 or more “animal units” – increased by nearly 13% between 2019 and 2025, from 3,936 to 4,444. Those large facilities represent just 29% of all operations but generate 60% of all manure.

EWG also found 3,276 operations with between 950 and 999 animal units – just below the threshold that triggers Environmental Protection Agency requirements for water permits and manure management plans. These facilities produce large amounts of manure but are not regulated as stringently as larger operations, leaving nearby communities without adequate protection.

Nitrate pollution associated with the application of these facilities’ manure to fields is alarming. EWG recently released an analysis of nitrate levels in drinking water provided by community water systems across the U.S. It revealed that in Iowa, 146 community water systems had elevated levels of nitrate at some time between 2021 and 2023. 

Manure runoff from farm fields also fuels toxic algae blooms in recreational waters, posing additional risks to public health.

“Science increasingly links this waste to serious health harms, including cancer. We can’t keep ignoring the problem – real policy changes can help and are overdue,” added Schechinger. 

Potential policy solutions

The federal government spends billions annually on farm conservation programs. But EWG’s analysis of the Agriculture Department’s Environmental Quality Incentives Program, or EQIP, finds that federal dollars are not being directed to where they could make the most difference.

Two of the most-funded EQIP practices in Iowa between 2017 and 2024 were waste storage facilities and manure storage structure covers – infrastructure that supports factory farming. Together those two practices received $44.7 million in federal funding, representing 17% of all EQIP dollars awarded to Iowa farmers.

“Federal money subsidizes the very practices that drive this water pollution problem. That has to change,” said Ethan Bahe, the report’s other co-author and EWG senior GIS analyst.

EWG recommends redirecting conservation funding to practices proven to reduce nutrient runoff and protect drinking water, including those on EWG’s list of regenerative agriculture practices. Expansion of permitting requirements to cover more facilities would also ensure greater oversight of factory farms, which should include more local authority over them.

Consumers can also help by choosing to eat less factory-farmed meat, which could reduce the market demand that leads to the proliferation of facilities in Iowa and across the country. EWG’s Meat and Dairy Label Decoder helps consumers identify products from animals raised outside industrial operations.

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The Environmental Working Group is a nonprofit, non-partisan organization that empowers people to live healthier lives in a healthier environment. Through research, advocacy and unique education tools, EWG drives consumer choice and civic action. Visit www.ewg.org for more information.

Areas of Focus Water Farming & Agriculture Factory Farms Farm Pollution Midwest Number of large facilities jumped 13% since 2019 Press Contact Alex Formuzis alex@ewg.org (202) 667-6982 July 14, 2026

Our July Common Sense monthly newsletter dives into how injustice is fundamental to the U.S. legal system and was deliberately incorporated since the founding of this nation. This is why revolution and various forms of disruption are not just justified, but essential.

The post “Common Sense” Newsletter – July 2026: Injustice Calls for Revolutionary Disruption appeared first on CELDF - Community Rights Pioneers - Protecting Nature and Communities.

Lies about the correct size of a monument, the history of the Antiquities Act, and hunting and fishing access were all used to justify the downsizing On July 13, President Donald Trump sat in the Oval Office, surrounded by Utah’s entire congressional delegation, Governor Spencer Cox, and Deputy Interior Secretary Kate MacGregor. He signed two proclamations slashing Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments by roughly 3 million acres, shrinking both monuments by about 90 percent. Grand Staircase-Escalante went from 1.87 million acres to roughly 182,000, and Bears Ears from 1.36 million acres to 121,000. The president and the officials around him leaned on claims that range from misleading to flatly false. Hunting and fishing

Describing the monuments, Trump said they were set aside “for nobody to use, right? Can’t do anything. You can’t go hunting. You can’t go fishing. You can’t do anything. You can virtually not even walk on it.” MacGregor replied, “That’s exactly right, sir.”

This is completely wrong, and MacGregor knows it—as do Utah’s leaders. Hunting and fishing are explicitly allowed in both monuments, and are, in fact, managed by the state. In both Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante, hunting for deer, elk, bighorn sheep, black bear, mountain lion, and turkey is permitted. President Joe Biden’s proclamation restoring Bears Ears celebrated its “unparalleled rock climbing” at Indian Creek and its “hunting, backpacking, canyoneering, whitewater rafting, and mountain biking” destinations. His Grand Staircase-Escalante proclamation likewise highlighted “world-class outdoor recreation opportunities” including hunting, hiking, river running, and horseback riding. Far from being lands nobody can walk on, these are lands people come from around the world to see and use.

Monument size

MacGregor also offered a misleading history lesson. She noted that “the first monument that was created was only 1,200 acres,” implying that Presidents Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden invented large landscape monuments, which is not true. In 1908, President Theodore Roosevelt, who signed the Antiquities Act, protected more than 800,000 acres at the Grand Canyon as a national monument, which eventually became Grand Canyon National Park. A year later, he designated 610,560 acres as Mount Olympus National Monument, now Olympic National Park.

Perhaps most misleading of all, the proclamations dismiss the landscapes themselves as “ordinary” and claim they should be smaller. The Bears Ears text writes off “deep sandstone canyons, broad desert mesas, towering monoliths” and calls the region’s cultural sites, like petroglyphs and pictographs “not unique,” while the Grand Staircase proclamation labels its cultural and paleontological resources as “relatively common.” In fact, Grand Staircase-Escalante makes more than 200 million years of Earth’s history visible through cliffs and plateaus, a landscape so rugged and remote it was among the last places mapped in the contiguous United States. The Kaiparowits Formation, located inside the monument, has become one of the most productive dinosaur laboratories on the planet, yielding more than two dozen species new to science, including horned dinosaurs found nowhere else on Earth. Just last month, scientists from the Natural History Museum of Utah uncovered a rare skeleton of a baby duck-billed dinosaur in Grand Staircase-Escalante. The canyons of Grand Staircase also hold one of southern Utah’s richest concentrations of Fremont and Ancestral Puebloan sites.

Bears Ears National Monument, Moon House site; Source: BLM/Bob Wick

Bears Ears contains one of the densest concentrations of archaeological and cultural heritage in the United States, an estimated 100,000 sites spanning thousands of years of continuous human presence, from Archaic hunters to the cliff dwellings, kivas, granaries, and petroglyph panels of the ancestral Puebloans. To the Hopi, Navajo, Ute Mountain Ute, Ute, and Zuni Tribes, the twin buttes and surrounding canyons are not relics but a sacred homeland, which is why the five Tribal nations came together to request landscape-scale protections in the first place. Scientists say these places cannot be understood as scattered sites, but as a single landscape whose trails, sightlines, and stories make the whole far greater than the sum of its parts. Calling that “not unique” ignores the scientific record, as well as Tribal knowledge. And it also runs counter to the 1920 Grand Canyon legal precedent, which held that large landscapes themselves qualify as protectable objects.

Multiple use and mining

The White House fact sheet about the reductions bends the truth further. It promises the unprotected lands “will now be available for multiple-use, sustained-yield management,” as if monument status ended multiple use. It didn’t. Recreation of all kinds continues in both monuments, livestock grazing continues in all of the places it was allowed before the monument, and timber management for restoration and wildfire mitigation continues under existing law. Existing mining and drilling leases are also still valid inside a national monument. The White House also claims that the concept of “objects of historic or scientific interest” established by the Antiquities Act has been “stretched” to include landscapes. Roosevelt protected the Grand Canyon as exactly that kind of landscape object, and the Supreme Court unanimously upheld the designation in 1920.

The proclamations also lean on national security, claiming the Bears Ears region holds resources “vital to energy and resource independence,” including “critical minerals such as silver, copper, molybdenum, lead, uranium, vanadium, and zinc.” The Grand Staircase text lists fifteen minerals, from chromium to zirconium. The government’s own assessments undercut these claims. As the Deseret News notes, the Bureau of Land Management previously found that both monuments have little to offer in terms of oil and gas potential, and Utah’s Department of Natural Resources has stated there is “very little energy potential within Bears Ears.” The Kaiparowits Plateau’s coal exists but is uneconomic, too remote and infrastructure-poor to attract investors, with no active leases since the federal government bought out the existing ones in the 1990s.

Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument; Source: Azuki350/Wikimedia

Local support

Back at the White House, Representative Celeste Maloy of Utah claimed that both monuments were created “over the unanimous opposition of Utah’s federal delegation, our governor, county commissioners, the locals.” Some Utah politicians did oppose the designations. But casting them as the voice of “the locals” erases the Tribal nations, local business coalitions, and everyday Utahns who asked for these monuments in the first place. Neither proposal originated in Washington. Both were brought to the White House by people who live close to these lands and were refined through years of consultation with Tribes, communities, and recreation, and grazing permit holders. Today, polling shows 74 percent of Utah voters support keeping Grand Staircase-Escalante protected and 71 percent support keeping Bears Ears protected. Colorado College’s most recent Conservation in the West poll found similarly overwhelming support among Utahns for leaving existing monument designations in place. If anyone is out of step with “the locals,” it is the delegation that stood behind the president as he signed these orders.

Conservation groups and Tribes are already preparing to fight the reductions in court, where the lies and misleading statements uttered in the Oval Office and embedded in the new monument proclamations will not fare well under legal scrutiny. And if the overwhelming online reaction to the reductions is any indication, they won’t age well in the court of public opinion either.

 

Feature image: Trump signs proclamations reducing the size of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase national monuments, Juluy 13, 2026; Source: White House YouTube

The post How President Trump and Utah leaders lied and misled on Bears Ears and Grand Staircase appeared first on Center for Western Priorities.

By Jeremy Brecher,
Senior Strategic Advisor, LNS Co-Founder

Listen to the audio version >>

While Trump conducts his war against Greentech, many US states are forging ahead with energy expansion based on sun, wind, and water. Greentech’s slashing of the cost of renewable energy production and use has made states turn to it not only to protect the climate but to make energy affordable for their people. 

A photo of Donald Trump in the Oval Office with several of his Executive Orders, January 20, 2025. Photo credit: The White House, public domain.

The US federal system gives states a powerful position in energy policy. States regulate electric generation, local distribution of electricity, and infrastructure siting. They can set policy in myriad other areas from urban planning to public transit to housing that can help shape the utilization of climate-protecting Greentech.

Shortly after his inauguration, President Trump issued an executive order entitled “Protecting American Energy from State Overreach.” The order describes state clean energy policies as “burdensome and ideologically motivated ‘climate change’ or energy policies that threaten American energy dominance and our economic and national security.” The order calls on the Attorney General to take action against these state laws, and she began to file lawsuits against them almost immediately. This executive order was followed by many other Trump efforts to hamstring or outlaw state climate policies, ranging from blocking California emission standards to forced reopening of shuttered coal-fired power plants.

Meanwhile, recent headlines have publicized retrenchment in state climate policies. New York state abandoned its commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 40% from 1990 levels by 2030, substituting weaker and squishier targets. California also relaxed requirements for emission reductions – although the change continues to be contested in the state legislature. In both cases energy affordability was given as a reason, although advocates of both changes acknowledged that they would not bring down energy prices any time soon. Both New York and California changes were preceded by heavy fossil fuel industry lobbying.

Such retreats register the reality that Trump’s attacks are restricting the development of the Greentech New Deal. Federal defunding of climate-protecting initiatives has made them more expensive; regulatory changes and subsidies have advantaged fossil fuels; and legal attack has undermined the Greentech revolution. But these retreats should not conceal the advances the Greentech Revolution has made in US states even during the first year-and-a-half of the Trump era.

Today’s Greentech advances in the states typically combine climate protection with affordability. That’s possible because Greentech has made production and use of renewable energy so much cheaper – rendering fossil fuels non-competitive.

California–Two steps forward, one step back?

California’s electricity is increasingly coming from solar. Photo credit: Tom Brewster Photography, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0. Data Source: US Energy Information Administration

California, now the world’s fourth largest economy, illustrates the collision of the irresistible force of the Greentech Revolution with the immovable object of the Trumpian fossil fuel counter-revolution. In recent years it has faced devastating heatwaves, droughts, storms, wildfires, and other extreme weather conditions resulting from global warming. Not surprisingly, an overwhelming proportion of Californians worry about climate change and back policies to fight it. In 2006 California passed AB 32, the Global Warming Solutions Act, which set targets for greenhouse gas emissions and sets a declining limit on total emissions by the state’s major polluters. Over the next twenty years California substantially raised its targets and implemented many other climate protection policies. From 2001 to 2019, California reduced its carbon emissions by 25%, leaving a typical Californian emitting only half as much as other Americans.

In 2024, California’s natural gas generation fell by 8%; coal is expected to soon be eliminated entirely from its electrical supply. By the end of 2025 the state had 2.5 times more battery storage available than it did in 2022.

As soon as Trump was inaugurated president, he began a massive attack on California’s climate protection efforts. For example, he attacked the state’s first-in-the-nation ban on the sale of new gas-powered cars by 2035. The state sued to preserve the ban. In 2025 it extended the cap and trade program, renamed cap and invest, by 15 years. Then Governor Newsom, under heavy lobbying from California’s oil industry, announced a new plan which offers free pollution permits worth as much as $4 billion to oil refineries and other major polluters. Legislative leaders are refusing to accept the plan, however, and have refused to fund many of Newsom’s other programs until he abandons his plan. Contested negotiations are expected to continue until the legislative session ends in September. The result is hanging in the balance.

Other states go Greentech

The California climate drama should not obscure what is happening in other states.

Soon after Trump’s inauguration, Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey issued an executive order that directs the state to procure 10 GW of clean energy and 5 GW of battery storage by 2035. The governor’s office projects up to $10 billion in savings for residents and businesses. Massachusetts also announced $180 million in immediate utility rate reductions. This cut residential electricity bills by up to 25 percent for two months.

Maryland’s Utility RELIEF (Reducing Energy Load Inflation for Everyday Families) Act provides $200 million from the state’s Strategic Energy Investment Fund to accelerate local clean energy development and storage and provides targeted utility bill relief. An Affordable Solar Act which would add up to 4 GW of new solar capacity by 2035, promote plug-in solar, and improve grid access, is pending in the legislature.

Upon her inauguration, New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill declared a state of emergency on utility costs. An executive order directed the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities to pursue rate relief by pausing new hikes and delivering residential bill credits. Another ordered rapid expansion of solar and battery storage and streamlining of the permitting process. In March, the BPU approved the expansion of the state’s community solar program, adding 3 GW of new capacity, with low-income households guaranteed a discount of at least 25 percent on their bills. According to American Progress, this expansion was the largest of a state-run program in the country’s history, and the program has already delivered more than $70 million in bill credits to households across the state. The governor also signed a measure that increases transmission-scale storage across the state, helping store low-cost clean energy and deploy it during peak demand to reduce price spikes and improve reliability.

In Pennsylvania, the PA EDGE (Pennsylvania Economic Development for a Growing Economy) creates tax credit programs for billions of dollars in energy and advanced manufacturing investment, including clean energy technologies. In June 2026 the Pennsylvania House put a cap on profits from utility company investments in infrastructure and eliminated nearly $1.7 billion in taxes that electricity companies now pass along to consumers as part of their bills.

In Virginia, a clean energy package includes streamlining solar siting, expanding storage connections to the grid, limiting carbon-emitting backup generators at data centers, and expanding virtual power plant programs that let utilities draw on distributed clean energy sources such as rooftop solar and home batteries.

The obstacles fall

One of the main objections to renewable energy has always been that it becomes unavailable when the sun doesn’t shine or the wind doesn’t blow. This objection has been largely overcome by Greentech’s radical reduction in the cost of energy storage. As a result, the most recent wave of state programs has put battery storage front and center.

Illinois’s Clean and Reliable Grid Affordability Act instructs the state to procure three gigawatts of new battery storage by 2030 to help stabilize electricity prices. It also includes a “storage for all” program that provides incentives for income-qualified households and businesses to install battery systems co-located with solar projects. The Illinois Power Agency expects the act to save customers $13.4 billion over two decades.

Pennsylvania is investing $22 million to help battery manufacturer Eos Energy Enterprises expand battery manufacturing operations in the Pittsburgh area. The expansion is expected to create 735 new jobs in Allegheny County. Last year the workers at Eos Energy voted to join the United Steelworkers Union. Eos also announced a plan to develop energy storage projects across Pennsylvania.

Another obstacle facing renewable energy is that the location where it is needed is not necessarily the location where it is produced. So state policies are addressing the extreme inadequacies of the electrical grid. For example, the state of Washington has established the Washington Electric Transmission Authority, a new state entity empowered to plan, site, and finance transmission infrastructure. New Mexico and Colorado have established similar authorities.

New technology doesn’t always mean greater complexity. Witness the emergence of small solar systems that hang on a balcony and plug right into a wall socket. More than a million homes in Germany now have such “balcony power plants,” but they are forbidden in the US. Last year the Utah legislature voted unanimously to let residents use plug-in collectors. 23 other state legislatures are now considering similar bills. According to the New York Times, such legislation would “eliminate one of the technology’s biggest barriers in the United States”: homeowners or renters could install plug-in systems “without approval from their local utility.”

A common complaint against large-scale solar projects is that they use up land that would otherwise be available for agriculture. However, solar projects are now actually supporting agriculture by the new techniques known as agrivoltaics. State policies are now promoting agrivoltaics. Last year, the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities launched a new dual-use pilot project to organize and accelerate agrivoltaics development in the state. The three-year pilot program calls for up to 200 megawatts of solar power, with Rutgers University applying its agrivoltaics research to develop best practices and guidelines. Connecticut, Maryland, and Virginia also have agrivoltaics programs under way.

Renewable energy projects can also contribute to improved land use by utilizing currently degraded spaces like landfills and contaminated industrial sites. An example is New Jersey’s Brownfields Redevelopment Incentive Program, accompanied by a Landfill to Solar online guide for local governments and solar developers, created by the Governor’s Office of Climate Action and the Green Economy. An already completed example is the Toms River project, the largest solar power plant in New Jersey and also the largest solar array on a Superfund site anywhere in the US.

Beyond the blue

Wolf Ridge Wind Farm in Muenster, Texas. Photo credit: Ben (Out with the Old, In with the New), Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0.

The expansion of Greentech in the Trump era has by no means been limited to blue states. Some of the most extensive installations of Greentech are in red states – witness Texas. Utility-scale solar plants produced 45 terawatts from January through September, 2025, up 50% from 2024 and nearly four times what they generated in 2021. Wind power also continued to climb, producing 87 terawatts through September – a 4% increase from 2024 and 36% more than in 2021. Together, wind and solar supplied more than a third of Texas’ electricity in the first 9 months of 2025. Battery use is also growing. Three of the four largest US battery storage projects scheduled to open in 2026 are in Texas. Solar collection and battery storage are now being systematically combined: one dual project is adding 837 megawatts of solar power and 418 megawatts in battery energy storage capacity.

In Nevada, generally regarded as a “purple” state, a third of all energy demand is now met by solar panels. The state has the highest solar electricity generation per capita in the country, as well as the most solar-industry jobs per capita. The goal of producing half of its electricity from renewables by 2030 is enshrined in the state’s constitution. The Las Vegas region has the highest concentration of residential rooftop solar in the continental US. The city’s chief sustainability officer attributes this in part to the city’s easy permitting. “You’re pretty much in and out of our office with a permit in 30 minutes.”

In the absence of federal support, states are reaching out to each other to create regional alliances to implement Greentech. For example, thirteen states have formed the Geothermal Power Accelerator collaboration to rapidly expand geothermal power development. Another example: The California State Legislature passed Assembly Bill 825 to begin the process of establishing a regional electricity partnership across the West. In late June, the state of Washington joined the partnership along with California and Quebec. And, after briefly withdrawing, Virginia rejoined the 11-member northeastern Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative.

In some states like Texas, the Greentech boom is occurring without much attempt to reap its potential social benefits. But in many states, as we will see in a subsequent commentary in this series, the Greentech revolution is enabling a broader program for jobs and justice that embodies the principles of the Green New Deal. That in turn is laying the basis for a national Greentech New Deal to come.

Looming over recent climate politics has been the issue of energy affordability. Because Greentech has made the production and use of renewable energy so much less costly than fossil fuel energy, states have accelerated their introduction of it. But the energy cost squeeze on consumers has in some cases also led states to shortsightedly reduce investment in Greentech and unleash fossil fuels.

These dynamics are now being exacerbated by the escalation in fossil fuel prices and the threat of energy insecurity that have accompanied the Iran war. The relative expense and unreliability of fossil fuel energy is likely to accelerate Greentech in the states. States that don’t want to render their economies “stranded assets” should go all out for the Greentech revolution right now.

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The post Greentech Revolution in the States first appeared on Labor Network for Sustainability.

On a quiet stretch of land along Stinking Creek, deep in Knox County, Kentucky, the Lend‑A‑Hand Center began with two women who devoted their lives to serving community members in need. Irma Gall, a teacher and farmer, and Peggy Kemner, a nurse‑midwife, came to Knox County in 1958 to serve the community. 

In those early days, Peggy would walk or ride miles to care for a mother in labor, and Irma would build roads, bridges and tend to the farm’s livestock and produce. They would share food at their house and provide Sunday school, 4H, and Day Camp programs for children in the area. Any need someone had, from home repair to help getting back on their feet after a hardship, they would lend a hand. 

Over time, the Lend‑A‑Hand Center grew into a place the community could depend on in times of need for healthcare, food or simply connection. Today, the clinic and the food pantry continue to be critical lifelines on Stinking Creek.  

Now co-directed by Charles and Diann Carnes, the organization primarily relies on volunteers to maintain the center and its services. Volunteers sort donations and operate a twice a month pantry that serves 300 people. 

Like many small nonprofits, it has had to learn how to stretch every dollar. Keeping the lights on, the refrigerators running, and the pantry stocked takes resources. Their utility bill is their biggest overhead, costing them around $500 per month. At the same time, they desperately needed storage. 

Charles and Kathryn of Lend-A-Hand with Josh Bills of Mountain Association and a team from Appalachia-Science in the Public Interest in June 2026

“We were having to turn away donations – things that people around here can really use, like new doors and windows, you name it,” said Charles. 

With support from the Mountain Association, KY Office of Energy Policy, The Nature Conservancy, the Solar Finance Fund and Invest Appalachia, the Center is taking steps to reduce its energy costs by installing solar panels and batteries on a newly constructed building. Volunteers broke ground on the building in April 2026 and are continuing to work through the summer. The wood comes from the 500 acres the center owns with Charles processing each board at their on-site sawmill. 

“This is a generational investment,” said Kathryn Engle, Lend-A-Hand board member. “With this, our overhead will greatly decrease and we’ll be able to invest even more into the community and into our programs.” 

The batteries will serve as a backup source of power for the food pantry during outages, helping ensure refrigerated food stays safe and services can continue when the community needs them most. 

The Mountain Association’s Energy Team has assisted in system design, siting and connections to partner resources like funding from the Nature Conservancy and the KY Office of Energy Policy.

“This project shows how energy savings can be a powerful tool for strengthening communities,” said Josh Bills, Senior Energy Analyst at the Mountain Association. “The solar and battery system will provide reliable power, greater energy security and lower operating costs, allowing them to focus on serving families through whatever challenges they are facing.” 

As volunteers work through the summer to complete the new building, the investment represents another chapter in a story that began 68 years ago, ensuring that the work of lending a hand continues, one meal, one family and one act of care at a time.

The post Lend-A-Hand Grows Knox County Food Pantry with Solar Savings  appeared first on Mountain Association.

The CFS Advisory Group and Bureau meeting will meet to continue the preparation of the upcoming CFS 54 Plenary Session, including an update on the CFS 54 Side Events, as well as a discussion regarding the Building Resilient Food Systems Workstream which did not conclude after the two past round of negotiations.

• Bureau outcomes – May 2026
• Provisional Agenda

Brackground documents

1. CFS 54 – ITEM II -Strengthening coordination and collaborative actions – Draft Conclusions 
2. Building Resilient Food Systems
3. CFS 54 – ITEM IV – Strengthening the Impact of CFS policy products – Draft Conclusions 
4. CFS 54 – ITEM V – CFS Strategic Direction 
   a) Update of the Rolling Section of the CFS MYPoW 2024-2027 
   b) Draft Decision on the Update of the Rolling Section 
   c) Identification of prioritized themes for HLPE-FSN Report 2028 
   d) Draft Decision on the Theme of the HLPE Report 2028 
   e) Draft Conclusions on Critical, Emerging and Enduring Issues 
   f) Draft Conclusions on Strategic orientation in the context of the UN 80 Initiative 
5. CFS 54 – ITEM VI – Indigenous Peoples’ Food and Knowledge Systems – Draft Conclusions 
6.  CFS 54 – ITEM VII – Global Thematic Event on Empowering Family Farmers 
   a) Draft Conclusions 
   b) Monitoring Report – Secretariat’s analysis of the contributions received to inform the Global Thematic Event 
7. CFS 54 Guide 
8. Update on CFS 54 Side Events 
9. Main takeaways from the CFS Bureau and Advisory Group retreat 
10. Workstream updates 
11. Any other business
    
    
    

The post CFS Advisory Group and Bureau meeting | July 27 2026 appeared first on CSIPM.

The UN body that regulates mining in international waters has defended its authority over ocean governance after two subsidiaries of deep-sea mining firm The Metals Company (TMC) launched legal action to halt an investigation into their conduct.

Speaking at the International Seabed Authority’s (ISA) annual meeting in Kingston on Monday, secretary-general Leticia Carvalho said the regulator’s role “matters more than ever” as governments grapple with growing pressure to exploit the deep seabed for minerals needed for the energy transition.

“The deep seabed belongs to no single country and no corporation; it belongs to all of us,” Carvalho said, describing its resources as “the common heritage of humankind”.

“If we lose sight of this,” she added, “we risk repeating on the ocean floor the same injustices and destruction we still strive to remedy on land.”

The conflict stems from TMC’s attempt to bypass the UN process by applying for US-sponsored ocean mining permits offered last year by the Trump administration. The Canadian firm aims to become the first company to mine the seabed for minerals like nickel, rare earths and manganese used in the production of both clean energy technologies and military equipment.

Several governments, including China, condemned the move as a “violation of international law”. In response, ISA member states agreed to open an inquiry into its licence-holders – among them two of TMC’s subsidiaries – to make sure they have complied with international law. If they are ultimately found to have breached those obligations, their exploration contracts could be revoked.

In June, the two TMC subsidiaries – Tonga Offshore Mining Ltd (TOML) and Nauru Ocean Resources Inc (NORI) – filed claims against the ISA at the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS), asking the court to suspend the inquiry while the case proceeds. The companies argue they are being targeted “without lawful procedural basis”, “in breach of due process”, and without “good faith”.

Environmental groups have accused The Metals Company of using legal tactics to block the investigation into its subsidiaries.

“We find ourselves in this Orwellian situation where these companies are trying to effectively get an injunction against the ISA from continuing its inquiry,” said Louisa Casson, who leads Greenpeace’s global campaign against deep-sea mining.

“The stakes are so high and that’s why we’re seeing this pretty extraordinary move to try to get an injunction against the ISA,” she added.

• Apr 25, 2025 News Trump throws lifeline to Canadian deep-sea miner, setting scene for international clash US president’s executive order looks like a victory for Vancouver-based The Metals Company (TMC) and other industry advocates, but fierce environmental and international opposition still stands in the way of ocean floor mining Read more
• Feb 3, 2026 Business UK government faces legal challenge over deep sea mining permits to “opaque” firm Greenpeace says UK may have acted unlawfully by transferring deep-sea mining licences to firm with US ties Read more
• Jul 10, 2026 News Loss and damage fund delays first project approvals as needs dwarf resources The new Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage faces an overwhelming number of initial requests for its limited pot of money and board members decided to take more time to choose which to back first Read more

Mining the deep ocean floor

The ISA has been negotiating a mining code for the deep ocean floor for over 12 years without success. Nearly 40 governments, including the UK, France and Germany, have called for a moratorium or precautionary pause on deep-sea mining until there is sufficient scientific evidence that it can proceed without causing serious harm to marine ecosystems.

Rather than wait for the UN process, industry frontrunner, The Metals Company, decided to apply for US permits offered by the Trump administration last year. In May, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) certified TMC’s application to explore 120,000 square kilometers of sea floor.

The firm wants to mine an area in the Pacific known as the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, which holds critical minerals inside potato-sized rocks found in the deep ocean floor known as polymetallic nodules. The minerals like manganese, nickel and rare earths are used in clean energy technologies like batteries and wind turbines.

But the area is also a little-understood ecosystem inhabited by thousands of unnamed species. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the world’s largest environmental network, says mining this area would threaten the existence of over half of all molluscs reliant on deep-sea vents.

A field of manganese nodules in the ocean floor. (Photo: photo by NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research) Governments launch inquiry

Seeking to discourage companies from bypassing the UN process, the ISA’s member states unanimously agreed to open an inquiry into whether holders of its exploration licences complied with their contractual obligations under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).

“The stage we’re at now is countries grappling with what they can do about this. What tools do they have to constrain this pathway that would go against international law,” Casson said.

Both NORI and TOML continue to hold ISA exploration contracts in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone. NORI’s license, however, expires later this month on July 21st and is up for review.

The inquiry is currently ongoing, but Casson said that if governments decide to cancel NORI’s license, other firms could apply for the ISA permit and compete for mining rights in the area.

“If that happens, it could really put into jeopardy TMC USA’s application (for US permits) because then suddenly that area could be open for a competing claim,” she explained. “At the moment, TMC is trying to kind of play both sides and shore up the area so that there will be no competition.”

Deep-sea mining firms push back

The cases before ITLOS are the first contentious disputes over deep-sea mining to reach the court designed for maritime disputes and the first brought directly by private contractors against the ISA. Among the companies’ legal advisers is former ISA secretary-general Michael Lodge.

Both NORI and TOML claimed that, unless the inquiry is suspended, there is a “real
and imminent risk of prejudice” that “may have significant legal and practical consequences” for
their activities.

The claim was backed by the Pacific island nation of Nauru, which has sponsored TMC’s push to mine the Clarion-Clipperton Zone and would benefit from the economic activity. The country raised “concerns on the adherence of due process with respect to the treatment of NORI”.

The mining companies allege that the ISA has singled them out among other applicants by requesting additional documentation, and that the UN auditors did not give them an opportunity to “meaningfully respond” to their concerns.

The ISA rejected those allegations as “wholly unsupported assertions”. It added that, given TMC’s application for US mining permits, it had done “what any reasonable regulator would do”: with the unanimous support of member states, it opened an inquiry simply to establish the facts.

A view of the International Seabed Authority council meeting in Kinston, Jamaica. (Photo: Andrés Felipe Carvajal Gómez/ ENB) Delay tactics

A decision from the maritime court is now expected by July 18, which has added to a “climate of significant regulatory uncertainty”, according to global law firm HSF Kramer.

As ISA countries meet in Kingston this week, the court’s president asked them “not to act in any way that could hinder any order” the court may make.

At the hearing representing the ISA, renowned human rights lawyer Philippe Sands said the deep-sea mining firms were engaging in “strategic litigation” meant to delay the inquiry and send the ISA into a years-long legal process.

“It’s a delaying tactic, and nothing would make them happier than for you to kick this into the long grass for two years while you sort out the merits. That is what they want this Tribunal, the Chamber, to do. You are being instrumentalized in this process,” Sands told the judges.

The post UN seabed regulator defends authority as mining firms seek to halt inquiry appeared first on Climate Home News.

This article Movements cannot shy away from conflict was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.

This is an excerpt from “For Louder Days: Reaching Beyond a Politics of Powerlessness,” originally published at Convergence.

The truth is, most of the groups and organizations that make up our movements do not have a strategy for winning. They might think they have a strategy. They might tell themselves they have one. They certainly tell their funders or dues-paying members they do, and on their websites there is plenty of stuff written under the header “Our Strategies.” They have mission statements, vision statements or other grandiose paragraphs in flowing prose that say what they think they’re doing. They have lists of programs — the things they do, hope to do or once did.

But they have not, for the most part, spent real time and energy getting a grasp on the challenge their organization exists in order to solve. They are not usually clear on their purpose, beyond the visionary sense and in the narrower, more practical sense — the specific part of all this grave need around us for which they are going to actually take responsibility; the specific point of intervention they are going to make and how that specifically is going to add value to our greater project of liberation. They are rarely clear on the role they play in the broader ecosystem, nor are they willing to adjust it because of what else is going on around them. They don’t often, if we’re honest, have a coherent plan for how to get from here to there despite the real constraints they will face from the world around them and the opponents who continue to forward their own interests. They do not usually know what they want to win in practical terms, nor how they will measure their successes or failures. In fact, they do not often genuinely measure these successes or failures at all, beyond what ends up in self-congratulatory social media posts, glossy end-of-year reports, inflated fundraising documents and glowing emails to the base inviting them to the next thing. They do not, almost ever, know how to make the strategic decision to shut down programs that are failing or sunset their organization to make way for something else. They are aided and abetted in all this by leaders who are conflict avoidant, by members who are more concerned with their belonging than on good strategy, by consultants and facilitators who have made a living helping groups stay on the surface and maintain their business as usual, and by funders who expect this kind of behavior and decide on their survival based on it. And they push one another to do this too, by competing over media attention and limited funding, and bullshitting each other at conferences and coalition meetings.

I know, because I have been in movements for over two decades, played a leadership role at Occupy Wall Street, built organizations and supported some of the cutting edge movement groups of our time. I know, because I have led movements like this, run organizations like this, have been a facilitator like this, have been a fundraiser like this, have been a bullshitter like this myself. Mostly, I have done this out of fear of conflict. I thought I was being good, being noble: avoiding conflict to shield people from pain, to keep resources and activity flowing, to keep my people happy and connected, to keep the train moving. But none of this led to the work we were doing becoming greater than the sum of its parts, or prevented the pain of loss in the long-run anyway. And years later, I can see that I avoided conflict for selfish reasons, too: to shield myself from having to actually justify the thoughts and feelings driving me, to protect my ego, to protect my place in the group (and my income), to maintain an image of confidence and success and security that masked my fear of failure. I avoided conflict to protect my team from loss, but, honestly, to protect myself from loss too.

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Conflict avoidance is widespread in our movements and the organizations that drive them. We avoid conflict by diffusing tension with humor, discouraging anger, expressing negativity with passive aggression and gossip instead of discussing things directly. We sweep conflict under the rug, find surface-level tensions on which to spend our energy or project grievances onto some external actor (like, for example, a facilitator). We replace deep planning with an untenable pace of doing, or with producing documents everyone can agree on but that ultimately don’t change much. We use tools like stack, where people are called on in the order they raised their hands, or progressive stack, where the order is arranged based on the facilitator’s sense of people’s identities. And these tools, although reasonable, often lead to circular, abstract conversations where people are not responding to one another directly but rather saying whatever they wanted to say when they raised their hands 15 minutes earlier. When we see tension come up in a conversation, we move on to the next person on the stack, and the opportunity for engagement flutters off into the ether instead of landing at someone’s feet. We encourage compromise toward a middle ground to avoid polarization, and though compromise is good in many contexts, it can also be the avoidance of choice — a way to mediate conflicting interests and desires rather than pushing to get somewhere deeper, sharper, clearer. We let folks stay on the surface, and accept indirect statements, behaviors that don’t line up with stated intentions and ideas that would fold under cross-examination. We hire facilitators who do all this for us too: steer us away from the bumps, protect the agenda at all costs, smooth things over to support the group feeling connected and help us get to the end instead of to the bottom.

But I have also seen good strategy, been led by people committed to doing the hard work of making it, and even — I am lucky to be able to say — tasted its fruits. It almost always rests on a real orientation to power — wanting it, being willing to sacrifice for it, and it almost always begins with the willingness to tell the truth, even when it is difficult.

On the precipice of good strategy

This retreat center has weird chairs. They are folding chairs without legs, so the bottoms lie flat on the carpeted floor, and the backs sort of crank backward into an L shape, but it’s easy to flop over or sink into them, especially late in the day. I often have to get the participants out of their seats to keep them from drifting.

It’s the fall of 2021 and I’m with Committee Against Anti-Asian Violence, or CAAAV, a long-time New York City community organization that’s been remaking itself for the past few years, organizing Asian tenants to break the relationship between the real estate sector and the government so that their base — mostly Chinese and Bengali tenants — can afford to stay in their homes, in their neighborhoods, in this city. Right now they have an active campaign in Manhattan’s Chinatown, and are building a new base of Chinese, Bengali and Korean tenants in Queensbridge Houses, a public housing complex in Long Island City, Queens. We’ve spent some months now reading Richard Rumelt’s strategy book “Good Strategy, Bad Strategy,” designing what he calls a strategy kernel, and putting it through the wringer. They have gone toward conflict many times already — something we have learned together is critical to good strategy — and they are getting sharper and deeper, but something still isn’t quite landing.

We abandon the weird chairs, and move to stand in a half-circle around the big whiteboard where they’ve scribbled and diagrammed for the better part of a week. As we stare quietly, I am struck, not for the first time, by the scale of the task before them. I wonder how on earth they will beat this much more powerful opponent, how they will turn their small advantages against the opponent’s weaknesses. So I ask, What’s actually going well? Where are you growing? Where are you strong?

Emily, one of the veterans, says: Chinatown. They struggle there too, of course; they constantly feel under capacity, without enough time, without enough money. But they punch above their weight, are in the middle of a campaign that they really have a shot at winning, and are building a solid base. The others agree. They have been in the community for ages; this is the part of the work that CAAAV has always been known for.

I continue: Ok, so then why not take the Chinese organizers out of Queensbridge and put them there? Why not throw down where you have something going already, and really throw your full weight behind the campaign you’re in?

This question is not altogether innocent. I have a sneaking suspicion that no one has made this suggestion because if they moved all the Chinese organizers out of Queensbridge, it will more or less crush that operation, require them to let go of it. Someone says something to this effect. Most of the others nod, and seem to move on, accepting the boundary and continuing to gaze at the whiteboard, as if staring at it hard enough will reveal something hidden.

New York City tenants with organizations including Committee Against Anti-Asian Violence rallied outside of a Rent Guidelines Board hearing to demand a rent freeze. (Instagram/CAAAV)

But then Em, a young Chinese organizer who has been doing that work in Queens, interrupts the quiet pondering: Well, what if we just . . . didn’t do the organizing in Queensbridge anymore?

We all take our eyes off the whiteboard and look at Em. It is significant that this question comes from Em, someone who is doing the work and demonstrating commitment and care for the leaders being developed there. It feels like people are taking this option seriously for the first time, but I know the group might still back away here. They are thinking now about the leaders who they have organized there — poor and working-class Asian tenants who are sacrificing so much to help build something there. They are thinking, too, about the Korean and Bengali staff who have been recently hired to do this work, talented and energetic people who have been trained and invested in, who won’t have a place in Chinatown. They are thinking, probably, about the conflict that going down this road might force them to have in this room, worried about its costs. Maybe they’re thinking also about CAAAV’s reputation, or funders, or partners. They are thinking, in short, about loss — this strange, dark shadow that often keeps us doing things that aren’t quite right because doing them is better than the risk of something new.

Conflict for the sake of good strategy

There are lots of reasons for the lack of good strategy we often see across movement organizations, but conflict avoidance is one of them. Facing that isn’t the only thing we need to do to correct course, but it is a prerequisite, because groups need the capacity to be in healthy conflict in order to develop good strategy and the ability to carry it out.

Sometimes the conflict we are avoiding is between one another on our teams, or between us and other organizations, or with our funders, or our members. But perhaps unexpectedly, often enough, the conflict is inside us — between the parts of us that want to be big and powerful and effective, and the part of us that is ambivalent about power, the part of us that is afraid of the loss that comes with all real choice. Many of us are truly not in the habit of telling the truth when it is hard; we prefer, instead, to stay on the surface, to keep doing what is comfortable and within reach, to keep one another happy, to avoid the hard choice that might put us in conflict with one another or force us to give up things we care about, to protect the little islands we have made for ourselves despite the tidal waves heading straight for us. Conflict avoidance most often looks, in the end, like dishonesty.

But groups that don’t tell the truth cannot form a winning strategy, and they are unlikely to be healthy and strong enough to actualize it even if they did. So much of good strategy — and strong movements more broadly — is about making choices, to prioritize one thing over another, to let go of some things all together, to say many nos for the sake of a strong yes. Good strategy is about painstakingly clawing our way toward the truth: what is real about the opponent, about us, about the world, about our role, about the best way to move from here to there, about what we will need to change, even if it’s painful, in order to get there. Groups that lie to themselves about these things make strategies divorced from reality. Groups that lie to themselves and each other about these things can’t make real hard choices. And groups that lie to themselves about the tensions that exist in their strategy or their group dynamics also lie to themselves about everything else — about what is realistic for them to accomplish, about their competence and levels of accountability, even about their deadlines and when they’ll start their meetings. 

It is understandable that we sometimes avoid the conflicts that might lead to good strategy, because conflict can be difficult and dangerous. Many of us, especially those most often on the receiving end of the systemic abuses of this empire, have faced devastating conflict in our work, in our social lives, even in our movements. We’ve seen conflict break things we care about. Not all conflict, after all, is healthy, and even healthy conflict can be painful. And we have so few models for generative conflict, and often find ourselves unequipped, unpracticed and unsupported to carry it out.

The truth is, if we move toward conflict, we will encounter loss. We’ll discover disagreements where we thought we were aligned, weaknesses where we projected only strength, messiness where there was previously order. Sometimes we will work it out, but sometimes we won’t. In our organizations, moving toward conflict will sometimes mean changing course, letting partners down, disappointing funders or members. Sometimes it will mean parting ways with our teammates, hurting or being hurt, firing or being fired. Sometimes it will mean the group dissolving, leaving before the job is done, finding ourselves without a vehicle through which to do anything about the things we continue to want to change. Sometimes it will feel like failure. I cannot even count the number of times — as a facilitator and as a leader — that I avoided the conflict beneath the surface to escape this pain, to protect the people around me from it, to protect myself. It wasn’t just out of fear and comfort; it was also out of love. I loved the people around me and thought that what was best for them was to stay together, thought that conflict would wreck that.

But failure is a tricky thing. Often when we imagine it, we see groups imploding from infighting, mass firings or quitting, the organization disappearing. This happens sometimes, and it is painful when it does, to be sure. But more often, failure doesn’t look like collapse at all: It looks like organizations continuing forever and ever in mediocrity. It looks like achieving far less of our potential because we aren’t willing to confront each other and get to the bottom of things to become a stronger team with a sharper strategy. It looks like a movement incapable of meeting the moment. Conflict avoidance makes this kind of failure much more likely than open conflict would.

People are, in the end, much more capable of facing the truth than we sometimes imagine; we do it all the time. All we need are small supports, encouragements, structures and processes to do it well. In fact, avoiding it takes an enormous toll, requires immense effort, relies on endless tricks. If we want to build powerful groups, powerful organizations, powerful movements, we will have to cultivate truth telling as a skill, a reflex, a superpower. 

From Chinatown to Zohran

There is a brief silence that covers the room with the weird chairs, as the organizers from CAAAV consider what Em has said. And then Sasha, the executive director, steps into the gap, walks through the door: No, really. This is an actual option. Let’s play it out.

It is rare to have leaders who are willing to say no to something important for the possibility of a sharper, clearer, more powerful yes; rare, I think, to find groups that are really, truly committed to sacrificing things they care about for the sake of winning. But when I am in their company, I can feel it like a kind of electricity, and it is humbling.

The group begins to loosen, and as they start to talk about what could shift, their eyes light up. Emily and Julie talk about what they could accomplish if Alina and Em joined them in Chinatown; it could mean the difference between winning and losing their campaign to prevent four luxury towers from going up and displacing many of their residents. Em breathes a sigh of relief at the possibility of having a real team, rather than working alone to organize Mandarin-speaking Chinese tenants in Queensbridge while Oni works alone with the Bengalis and Kit alone with the Koreans. They admit that they don’t have much of a chance of winning there.

CAAAV tenants union members celebrate NYC Mayor Mamdani’s two-year rent freeze for stabilized apartments in June 2026 in Queens, New York. (Instagram/CAAAV)

They’ve knocked on every Asian door in Queensbridge, and even if CAAAV was successful in organizing all of them, it would make up only a tiny minority of the population there. Sandra reminds the group of the logistical cost of shifting their operation in such a big way again, offers some thoughts about how to do it. Alina says, voice catching, that she has always dreamed of organizing in Chinatown, where her grandma lives in a small apartment that she spent visiting as a kid and living in with her as a young adult. Every time I visit, she says, a tear escaping despite her best effort, I can see that my grandma is trying to hide some new pain over something lost and gone — a favorite restaurant closed, a service she needed suddenly shut down, an old friend pushed out of the neighborhood. Farihah and Oni start to wonder about Sunnyside, Woodside and Astoria, these neighborhoods in Queens that Bengali immigrants are making home — a huge new base of people to organize. When Farihah, whose ambition and determination are both inspiring and intimidating, shares that Astoria is where her own family landed all those years ago, the fire usually in her eyes is replaced by something softer and more vulnerable, something seemingly aware of the challenge and the need and the stakes. They all go on talking and scheming, and there is some laughter, some arguing, some more scribbling on the whiteboard. And then there is thoughtful quiet again.

Someone asks: But, what about the leaders in Queensbridge? The doubt creeps back into the new quiet, a doubt brought on by real costs — the real impact on real people’s real lives. They say the names of some of these leaders they have supported and trained and sometimes coaxed into the fight, these poor and working-class immigrants who have so much to lose, so few resources, such a hard road ahead. They talk about the time they’ve spent, about the work being unfinished. They talk about heartbreak.

And then Kit, clear and determined, says: We have to do it anyway. We aren’t going to win if we don’t get more strategic. We owe it to our people to build as much power as we can. This is the first time Kit has spoken, and there is a silence bigger than the others after she does, because everyone knows that what Kit is suggesting could very well cost her her job. Kit is Korean, was brought on to organize Korean-speaking tenants in Queensbridge, and one of the most likely scenarios of the pivot the group is moving toward will mean not only throwing down harder than before in Chinatown, but building a new base of Bengali tenants somewhere in Queens, likely Astoria. There may not be a role for her anymore.

I ask Kit how it feels to say this out loud and she replies: Honestly, I feel relieved. I know it’s going to hurt some of our folks. I know I might not have a job anymore. But winning is more important. And now it feels clear, even if it’s a little scary.

The silence now seems proud — reverent, almost. They look at one another with kind eyes, and it feels like a decision. Sasha comes in again to offer structure and process. They lay out the beginning of a plan to gradually phase out of Queensbridge in a way that helps the members there understand the choice, get themselves organized another way and continue on with CAAAV if they want to. They start to design a process to gather data about different neighborhoods in Queens where they might organize this growing Bengali community and make a plan to test the organizing on the ground. They talk about the campaign in Chinatown, which has always felt like a losing battle, but which they now suddenly feel they might actually be able to win. They set next steps to write out the new strategy kernel.

They can’t yet know, at this moment, that these shifts will result in them stopping the towers from going up in Chinatown, but also lead to the embodied conclusion that if they want more than partial victories in these never-ending defensive battles — want to win a city their people can afford to live in — they will need the power of city hall behind them; they can’t yet know that this will lead to their sibling organization, CAAAV Voice, having some of the first conversations, hushed and tentative at first, about throwing down for a longshot democratic socialist mayoral candidate, Zohran Mamdani; they can’t yet know that they will organize a formidable Bengali base to win a massive affordable housing campaign in Astoria against a private developer; they can’t yet know that pouring immense volumes of sweat and tears there will result — alongside the hard work of other immigrant-led organizations like Desis Rising Up & Moving, or DRUM, Beats, and the steady organizing of the Democratic Socialists of America, and others — in the creation of a new power base that will end up being essential to that longshot candidate actually becoming mayor. They can’t yet know that, some short months after this mayoral victory — because of a million small decisions made by a whole host of actors that add up to greater than the sum of their parts — the city will pass a historic rent freeze, something they have only barely dreamed of at this point. They can’t see the future, and neither can I.

But there is enough here: enough clarity about their leverage and their options, enough willingness to take risks and experience loss and enter into conflict for the sake of good strategy; there is enough courage, enough honesty, enough choice, enough possibility.

Telling the truth

Not having good strategy sends resources, attention and activity in different — even contradictory — directions. It’s a waste of what precious few tools we have; it usually means we lose. And the losing that comes with bad strategy shapes us over time, gets swallowed up in the form of despair, calcifies into ideas and behaviors that make up the politics of powerlessness — an ambivalence toward power, where we turn inward on each other rather than face outward to the public and our opponent. 

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In the end, breaking the conflict avoidance that blocks good strategy is really about telling the truth whenever we can. And if we want to be different, we’ll have to practice. We can all begin by doing the small but vital things that are in our control: say what we mean, steer toward tensions instead of away from them, ask follow-up questions when we sense there is something being left unsaid, get curious about what is inside us and inside others, be honest about misalignments when they arise. Every day, little by little, we can just be a little more honest, even when it is hard — about our groups, ourselves, each other, our fears and doubts, our hopes and dreams, the stakes, our plans. We can anticipate conflict, make time for it, create regular rhythms for feedback, have ongoing conversations about how power is being wielded in our spaces, regularly question our own strategic choices and put them relentlessly to the test. We can build all of this into our meetings, our retreats, our planning sessions. We can invite people from the outside to facilitate or advise us in these risky, delicate, transformative journeys; demand that they challenge us, help us fill our gaps, take us through the fire and not around it. 

We should do all of this for the sake of good strategy and stronger groups. We should do it because organizations and movements that have good strategy win more often, and those embodied experiences of winning are some of our best protections from the politics of powerlessness — the choice to stay small and pure and righteous over growing and opening and taking big risks. But we should do it, too, because telling the truth is central to transformation. It is a fundamental part of looking at what is and what might be and making the choice to climb the distance between; a chance to flex that muscle of becoming and becoming again; an opportunity to become bigger as individuals and greater than the sum of our parts as groups. And it is absolutely central to the task we have taken up as movements more broadly: to take control of our lives, to shape the world, to make of it something nearer to the world we all deserve.

This article Movements cannot shy away from conflict was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.

By JEANNE GREEN

Alert: There is still time to comment on the Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS) proposing an increase in nuclear weapons at LANL. The deadline for written/e-mailed comment is July 16th.

You may not have heard about this, even though Taosenos live within about 50 miles of the nation’s only nuclear bomb factory at Los Alamos. The NNSA—National Nuclear Security Administration—is proposing an increase of production of 200+ plutonium pits/year for new nuclear weapons, 80 at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) and 125 at Savannah River, South Carolina.  Plutonium pits are the core triggers for nuclear bombs. This proposal disregards the fact that there are over 15,000 reusable plutonium pits sitting at the decommissioning plant in Amarillo, Texas. These are verified reliable for at least 100 years. There are 1,200 nuclear bombs, ready to deploy a mile from the Albuquerque airport and around 4,000 deployed across the country in silos and submarines, many on hair-trigger alert.

During the Cold War, the U.S. and Russia amassed 70,000 nuclear warheads, fueled by the doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD.) Due to nuclear arms control treaties, 48,000 of these were retired. Now NNSA plans to trigger a new global nuclear arms race with new nuclear weapons that would require testing.

Officially, at least 2,056 nuclear bombs were exploded globally before treaties were established. The 1963 Partial Test Ban Treaty forced testing to go underground due to concerns over radioactive fallout. LANL attributes local findings of radioactive materials, including plutonium in homes, soils, fruits, to global testing. This doesn’t even take into account that the first test was detonated right here in New Mexico, without warning to locals and no accountability for the vast numbers of cancers resulting in local populations. The Center for Disease Control’s LAHDRA report also delineates the historical multitudinous releases of radioactive and hazardous materials by LANL into the air and waters of NM.

The NNSA’s PEIS (Programmatic Environmental Impact statement) required by law, gives short shrift to their justification for producing new nuclear weapons. On page 5, their mission is: “2. maintaining and enhancing the safety, reliability and performance of the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile, including the ability to design, produce and test, in order to meet national security requirements.” But no future production maintains the safety and reliability of the existing tested stockpile. The 2009 JASON (an independent group of elite scientists) report for NNSA verified the longevity of the stockpile until 2080.

NNSA’s mission number 4 is “promoting international nuclear safety and non-proliferation.” In fact, new nuclear pit production conflicts with the Non-Proliferation Treaty. The 1970 NPT, Article VI obliges the U.S. to “enter into serious negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament.” Despite this international treaty, the PEIS states its “missions are conducted fully consistent with current treaty obligations.” No—a new nuclear arms race and testing is the opposite of non-proliferation. Non-proliferation program funding is also being cut in the PEIS. The U.S. is a non-signatory to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons signed by 191 countries.

Pope Francis states that “possessing atomic weapons is a crime against humanity and the future,” and “relying on the fear of annihilation poisons relationships between nations and obstructs real dialogue.” Who would not question the morality of killing hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians in seconds, for what?

LANL, in recent years, has managed to produce one pit per year due to safety infractions, radiation exposures, contamination, criticality incidents, and an aging 48-year-old production facility, the PF-4. Rocky Flats, the previous nuclear bomb factory near Denver, was shut down in 1989 by the FBI for environmental crimes. The massive contamination was imploded down and covered, but it’s still there. This is indicative of the damage we can expect to see in New Mexico with mass production.

Production facility PF-4, containing significant amounts of plutonium, is situated between two fault zones and on top of a fragile layer of volcanic tuff, within 2,000 feet of the nearest fault zone. This has been analyzed by the Defense Nuclear Facility Safety Board (DNFSB) and declared unsafe. In their recommendation 2009-2 to the Secretary of Energy they report that “the critical NNSA assumption that the upgrades addressing seismic issues are adequate is flawed. . .  A major deficiency in the facility’s safety basis exists.” In the late 1990s cautionary upgrades were judged to be cost-prohibitive.

The DNFSB also cites the probability of post-seismic fires which would result in widespread contamination throughout New Mexico and beyond. We have already seen massive fires come within a mile of the Lab boundaries, where 10,000 barrels of radioactive waste sit atop the mesa.

Please send comments to: PitPEIS@nnsa.doe.gov with subject #DOE/EIS-0573. More information is at https://pitpeis.com/

 

Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline.

Do electric vehicles stop working in extreme heat?

Extreme heat can temporarily reduce range, but recent research does not show that EVs are unable to operate in hot weather.

Much of the decrease comes from energy diverted to cool the vehicle, not because EV batteries or motors stop functioning. Modern EVs use thermal management systems to keep components within safe operating temperatures.

U.S. Department of Energy testing in 2024 found EV range fell on average about 14% at an ambient temperature of 95°F (35°C) compared with mild weather. However, the same proportional decrease was measured for gasoline vehicles under comparable conditions. 

AAA testing of popular EV models in 2026 found an average range decrease of 8.5% at 95°F. Meanwhile, a 2025 study of 345,000 real-world EV trips found a 16% reduction at temperatures up to 122°F (50°C).

Extreme heat can reduce efficiency, but it does not make EVs unable to function.

Go to full rebuttal on Skeptical Science or to the fact brief on Gigafact

This fact brief is responsive to quotes such as this one.

Sources

U.S. Department of Energy Impact of Cold Ambient Temperature and Extreme Conditions on Electric Vehicles

AAA TEMPERATURE EFFECTS ON ELECTRIC AND HYBRID VEHICLE EFFICIENCY

Applied Energy Extreme heat effects on electric vehicle energy consumption and driving range

Recurrent How Hot Summer Weather Affects EV Range

Columbia Law School Sabin Center for Climate Change Law Rebutting 33 False Claims About Solar, Wind, and Electric Vehicles

[Based on Evan's suggestion in the comments, we updated the title to eliminate the double negative. July 15, 2026]

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