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Restoration of the Broadford Bridge oil site in West Sussex is due to begin this summer, officials have confirmed.

The Broadford Bridge oil site during operation. Photo: Weald Action Group

The site, near Billingshurst, is subject to two council planning enforcement notices after the operator, a subsidiary of UK Oil & Gas plc (UKOG), failed to return the well pad to farmland.

Broadford Bridge has had no planning permission since March 2024 when West Sussex County Council refused an application for a fifth extension of consent. Before that, the site had been mothballed since 2018.

An operation to plug and abandon two Broadford Bridge wells ended in February 2026.

But the well pad, fencing, gates and soil bunds remain, despite a planning condition requiring the operator to return the site to farmland. West Sussex County Council took enforcement action in January 2025 and February 2026.

A council spokesperson said today:

“Two Breach of Condition Notices (BCNs) were served on 13 February 2026. These remain live and require the operator to remove all associated infrastructure (including buildings, plant, machinery, fencing, gates and other structures) and restore the site in accordance with the approved restoration scheme by 31 December 2026.

“The operator has advised that the intention is for restoration works to commence this summer with a view to achieving restoration by the required date.”

Restoration includes work to clean and remove surface stone layers, take-up impermeable membranes, in-fill drainage ditches and regrade the soil from surrounding earth bunds to return the site to its original appearance and use.

Access application Access track application plan. Source: WSCC/036/26

The restoration timeframe emerged in a new planning application for Broadford Bridge (WSCC/036/26).

The application, to keep the site access track, was submitted on behalf of Sheila Francis by the Zetland planning consultancy which has previously worked for UKOG companies.

It revealed: “the well site is to be restored (Summer-Autumn 2026)”.

The application seeks to retain the 450m track to the well site for “agricultural purposes” and the junction of the track with the B2133 Adversane Lane. The application does not seek to retain the former well pad area and fencing around it.

Comments on the access track application can be made online. The deadline for comments is 20 August 2026. A decision is expected by 21 September 2026.

The National Park Service is reportedly weighing a land swap that would allow a data center to be built inside Prince William Forest Park in northern Virginia, one of the D.C. area’s largest green spaces and a Civil War-era site.

Developer Highland Digital owns an “inholding,” land inside the park’s boundaries that was privately held before the park was established, and was considering building a data center there. But that site has wetlands and streams that complicate permitting, so Highland Digital came up with a workaround: swap its wetland-heavy inholding for other Park Service land nearby that would be easier to develop. It hired lobbyist Jeff Small, a former senior Interior department official in the first Trump administration, to work on the swap in May 2025.

According to the National Parks Conservation Association, the deal looks balanced on paper but actually leaves “the developer com[ing] out ahead” with land “primed for development.” Representative Eugene Vindman’s office asked the Park Service in mid-July whether it even has legal authority to trade park land without congressional approval and says it never got a response, while Highland Digital has since withdrawn a permitting application and scrapped a public meeting without explanation. Since becoming Interior secretary, Doug Burgum has been a vocal advocate of artificial intelligence and data centers.

Huffman, Dexter launch investigation into Energy Fuels execs

Members of the House Natural Resources Committee have opened an investigation into whether Energy Fuels executives traded on advance knowledge of President Donald Trump’s decision to shrink Bears Ears National Monument by more than 90 percent. The company’s CEO, Ross Bhappu, bought 74,000 shares on July 7, the largest insider purchase in company history, and Chairman Bruce Hansen bought 4,000 more the next day, just five days before Trump stripped monument protections from nearly 1.4 million acres, including uranium-rich areas the company has eyed for years.

Representatives Jared Huffman and Maxine Dexter say the company’s lobbying ties to the administration, including a former Trump Interior official on retainer, “may have enabled” Bhappu and Hansen to learn of the announcement early, and they’re demanding Energy Fuels’ communications with Interior, Agriculture, and Defense officials.

Quick hits Opinion: Doug Burgum is the real vandal behind Trump’s failed Reflecting Pool renovation

Daily Beast | Bismarck Tribune

Trump’s fire chief defends crackdown on letting wildfires burn

E&E News

Opinion: Proposed changes to federal oil and gas provisions are bad for public land, private property owners and democracy

WyoFile

Organ Pipe monument closes roads to clear path for 2nd border wall construction

Arizona Daily Star

‘A day of infamy’: Construction bulldozes through Big Bend National Park

GearJunkie

Opinion: Why is Burgum licking Trump’s boots?

Dickinson Press

Six takeaways from the slashing of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante

Outside

OnX tool connects Montanans to public land comment opportunities

Bozeman Daily Chronicle

Quote of the day

In the desert, there is no more valuable habitat than where the trees grow… In this arid region, diversity and abundance of plant and animal species is nowhere greater… This is what they chose to destroy first.”

—Former Big Bend biologist Raymond Skiles on border wall construction inside the park, GearJunkie

Picture This

@Interior

A single lightning strike can reach temperatures nearly 5 times hotter than the surface of the sun. At White Sands National Park, that incredible heat can fuse gypsum sand into formations called fulgurites, better known as “fossilized lightning.”

Feature image: Trail along creek in Prince William Forest in Virginia; Source: Diana Robinson/Flickr

The post NPS is quietly considering a data center deal inside a Virginia forest appeared first on Center for Western Priorities.

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Meteorologists' report shows record and near-record temperatures across the globe in 2025

Source

Originally published at the “Earth Chxrch” page of Neil Young’s Times-Contrarian. Talen is the religion editor at the Contrarian.  

The distance between our realization and actualization has changed — and it is a tragic dangerous thing that you and I share. Realizing can come in many forms. With the environmental movement the realization was the reading of Silent Spring. (For others among us, it was Edward Abbey’s The Monkey Wrench Gang.) That book by Rachel Carson made the danger from toxic chemicals in the air, water and soil — and our bodies — very real. We saw the danger. We could imagine and fear it. We were motivated to act.

We need to study the distance between realization and actualization, between oppression and revolution, between information and fight-or-flight. That distance, the billionaires and captains of the investor class have discovered, is the key to their control.

The old belief in journalism, and in the courts, and in the common sense of democracy is “If we have the facts, we can act.” In the United States the distance between realization and actualization has become an impassable distance. Our sensory experience of a thing has been blown up and filled with light, with attention-manipulating vibrating light, a bubble of signals the size of Grand Central Station, and we float around inside its delicious weightlessness — and we can’t kill the screen and get out of our chair.

If we become aware of the global heatwave that flared into fires and droughts in the summer of 2023 and is still overheating us, then we have before us endless pages of pixels, featuring the agony and suffering of the innocent of the world. We struggle to walk thousands of miles with climate refugees. We cry with parents of a child overcome by heat. We listen to wise biologists, as systems of natural life die and extinction looms.

So far all this reality on the screen amounts to one big human hesitation. We keep wondering why there is no uprising against the current increasingly silent spring. We are lost in the over-developed realization of danger. Ironically, the realization is increasingly unreal. We are growing a vivid and very convincing realization of a mass mortality event, but we can’t kill the screen and rise from our chair.

The strongmen and the billionaires are aware that AI will gives us as never before the sensation of democracy while pushing any action off the horizon. All-information, all-the-time will leave us overloaded and listless. Big money learned long ago to handle the irony of that in the age of AI. The ordinary computer users would know much more about the truth of their toxins and bullets, union-busting, and tax-evading. But the masters of the universe are secure in the knowledge that we will stay put in our dopamine drop.

Meanwhile the revolution against the Earth killers cannot be put off another day. The disappearance of life of all kinds is only accelerating. The climate change may be irreversible now, but if we don’t try, if we continue to put our hopes in the COP parlays with big oil, if we go on believing that our radical standing up cannot happen — then consumerism, the products and the screens and nonsense wars must prevail. Realize a dead planet with the occasional billionaire bunker…

Now is a moment in our history we cannot get wrong. And there is a battle that can set things right. The data centers multiplying now like an international rash are plundering energy and water, buying off local politicians, and daring us to cross from our realization to our action. The all-partisan uprising against the ugly super-warehouses is heartening. But the State of Virginia already hosts over 600 data centers. This battle may go on for years against the might of Silicon Valley, but in the struggle we will dramatize a clear message… and escape from that cathedral size bubble of pixels.

Will we escape that AI mind-prison? Will we take what we realize over into what we actually do? It’s like remembering how to love.

Remembering How to Love

There would be a moment in the realization-actualization cycle where we could be independent, kill the screen and stand up and walk into media-free reality…. and let’s call that moment The Decision. As the realization becomes the actualization there is a border, a moment when all the information is gathered and we stop, we make the decision to act. We commit.

We shut down the information which favors inactivity, sluggish consideration, endless assessment (although with AI maybe it’s more like a happy druggy sort of drifting… ). When we are finally free of all that, we say “Got It! Let’s Do It! Let’s Go!”

We are simplifying, aren’t we. We are consciously sharpening that learn-decide-act sequence. Why is this important. It’s that this preventable mass mortality event that is taking place — we’re sitting in a chair watching a screen. We could be organizing a drama at the door of Gaza-financing and AI-financing JPMorgan Chase, or we could be singing at a data center-resisting rally, or we could be screaming through the cyclone fence at an ICE concentration camp.

But the screen addiction takes our body far away from the global emergency. In our consumer society nowadays, with the screen the main product, consumerism is in a battle with the crisis of the physical environment. This is a battle for the attention of the consumer.

If the product wins, we lose our lives.

That is the message we tell ourselves at the moment of The Decision, at the start of action. So far for most of us, The Decision and the start of action continue to be a watching-only experience. Even if The Decision is consciously a turning away from this strong medium; even if we know we won’t be able to do our work for the Earth unless we turn away from the screen — chances are we are still watching. Oh yes, lots of the most powerful condemnation of the computer is done at the very computer that is being condemned.

The Revolution Will Not Be Computerized. In the end, we need to sober up. And for most of us, The Decision can’t be vague and shaky. We must make the decision to act with computers or iPhones not in the room.

Let’s practice. Demonstrate to ourselves that we can do it. Practice ending the incoming information. Practice stopping and making the decision. Practice obeying the decision, moving into the action.

Go to the wild Earth every day, walk in the woods, float in the lake. The infinite mystery of the Earth saves us if we let it. That’s the way that the Earth will save herself, taking the humans off-line. Letting us remember how to love.

The post Remembering How to Love Again in the Time of AI appeared first on The Revelator.

Replacing a gasoline car of any age—even a brand-new one—with an electric vehicle will almost always lower overall carbon emissions, according to a new analysis. The findings resolve a key conundrum about making the switch from gasoline to electric vehicles, the researchers say.

Driving an electric vehicle (EV) produces less emissions than driving a gasoline car, and the disparity is growing ever wider as electric grids decarbonize. So it has been obvious for a while that if you’re in the market for a new car the best choice for the environment is an EV. But manufacturing an EV produces more emissions than manufacturing a gasoline car, and this has led to uncertainty about the break-even point.

That is, if you own a gasoline car that works fine now and are considering when to replace it with an EV, should you drive the gasoline car into the ground, staving off the hefty emissions burden of EV manufacture for as long as possible? Or should you replace it as soon as budget allows, and start to reap the benefits of the EV’s much lower operating emissions?

“Even if you scrapped a new gas car, the EV still wins,” says study team member J. Elliott Campbell, chair of the environmental studies department at the University of California in Santa Cruz.  “The environmental advantage of EVs is now crystal clear.”

Campbell and his collaborator Roland Geyer, at the University of California in Santa Barbara, calculated the life-cycle carbon emissions of keeping a gasoline car on the road for 16 years (the typical lifetime of a passenger vehicle) compared to replacing it with an EV.

They considered many different vehicle types and timelines for replacement, as well as electricity sources, individual driving habits, battery size, and other parameters.

Replacing a gasoline car with an EV makes climate sense across a broad range of scenarios, even when the gasoline car is new, the researchers found. Of course, that won’t be affordable for most people. But it’s a stark illustration of the climate benefits of EVs.

 

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

 

In the analysis, climate benefits were generally greatest when gasoline car was scrapped in year 1, leading to an average 58% reduction in emissions over the 16-year period. It takes about three years of driving an EV to make up for the greater emissions involved in manufacturing it.

“I was shocked that even scrapping a hybrid gives big climate benefits,” Campbell says.

In 92% of the scenarios the researchers ran, replacing a gasoline car or hybrid vehicle with a battery electric vehicle before the end of its lifespan reduced overall carbon emissions. The exceptions: scenarios involving the least efficient EVs drawing power from the dirtiest electric grids; plug-in hybrids; and gasoline cars that are driven very few miles annually.

The energy mix of local electricity grids can shift the break-even point. But across most of the United States, it’s worth replacing even the most efficient gasoline cars early. And for the most common gasoline car models sold in the United States, early replacement makes climate sense even in areas with the dirtiest electric grids.

The benefits of switching to an EV will become even greater in the coming years, as electric grids decarbonize and battery recycling technology improves, which will decrease manufacturing emissions associated with EVs.

Campbell is now working on an analysis of the mass of materials involved in EVs compared to gasoline cars. “An EV has a 0.5 ton battery but a gas vehicle can use 20 tons of petroleum in its life,” he says. Batteries can be recycled, “but once you burn petroleum it’s essentially gone forever.  I think more work needs to be done to explore this material advantage for EVs.”

Source: Campbell J.E. and R. Geyer. “The climate benefits of retiring a fully operational internal combustion engine vehicle.” Science 2026.

Image: © Anthropocene Magazine.

As Brazil cracks down on the illegal clearing of forests, farmers and ranchers are moving into Bolivia, helping to fuel a wave of deforestation in a country where land is cheap and enforcement lax. 

Read more on E360 →

Headline News:

• “Plastic Made From Sugar Can Be An Alternative To Harmful Microplastics” • A Massachusetts lab, CJ Biomaterials, ferments sugar to make plant-based polymers that microbes will consume. These alternatives to traditional plastics made of fossil fuels are seen by some as one of many solutions needed to confront global plastic pollution. [ABC News]

Plastic tableware (Alanthebox, public domain)

• “FEMA Says It’s Providing Water Trailers To Puerto Rico Amid Water Crisis” • The Federal Emergency Management Agency said that it’s providing water trailers to Puerto Rico as the island grapples with a water crisis. The trailers will be distributed for up to 30 days initially, following the Puerto Rican government’s request for federal support. [ABC News]
• “CATL Battery For Electric Aviation Passes Important Safety Test” • CATL, the world’s largest battery maker, has developed a battery for use in electric aircraft. In particular, this battery is designed for passenger eVTOL aircraft (electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft). The battery has now passed an important safety test in China. [CleanTechnica]
• “Drought Declared In ‘Almost Three-Quarters’ Of England, UK Government Says” • Some 71.3% of England is in drought, the UK government said. This year, the nation experienced its driest July on record, with a fifth heatwave and scant rain forecast for the week ahead. Farmers battling low crop yields warned of possible food shortages. [Euronews]
• “Drought Forces Water Restrictions Across Nearly 70% Of France, Government Says” • “As France is experiencing a particularly severe drought, the effects of climate change continue to increase pressure on water resources,” the ministry for ecological transition said, adding that “nearly 70% of French territory is subject to restrictions on water use.” [Euronews]

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

Korean and international civil society organisations have formally called on SK Telecom to end its investment in a cookstove project in Myanmar that has been carried out in collaboration with an abusive military junta, and to put in place a responsible system for managing climate-related risk.

On 11 August, 28 civil society organisations from around the world — including the Myanmar Policy Institute, No Business With Genocide, Plan 1.5 and the Global Forest Coalition — issued a joint letter to Jung Jae-hun, CEO of SK Telecom. Citing the risk of human rights abuses associated with the project and the inflation of its claimed emission reductions, the letter sets out three demands: (1) end the company’s investment in the project; (2) refrain from trading the carbon credits already generated by the project; and (3) establish an internal system to fairly and accurately assess and verify international mitigation projects.

SK Telecom and 11 other SK Group affiliates have invested in the project since March 2018. In February this year, the project became the first in the world to have credit issuance approved under the Paris Agreement Crediting Mechanism (PACM). According to the Korean NGO Climate Change Center (CCC), which runs the project, SK Group has obtained 648,783 credits. Other Korean investors, including Korea Electric Power Corporation (KEPCO), ended their involvement after the military coup in Myanmar. SK Group’s 12 affiliates are now the only companies still invested in the project.

The signatories to the open letter point out that since the 2021 attempted coup, the project continued to be implemented by the Dry Zone Greening Department (DZGD) — an agency under the command and control of the military junta. Justice For Myanmar, a Myanmar civil society group, has criticised this arrangement, stating that “working with them on projects linked to international carbon market mechanisms lends administrative legitimacy to the junta and effectively grants impunity for their crimes under international law”.

The signatories also note that Sagaing, Mandalay and Magway, three of the regions where the project operated and emissions reductions were claimed during the crediting period (January 2021 to May 2022), are among the areas worst affected by military attacks on civilians. They argue that presenting communities as “beneficiaries” of improved cookstoves when the agency running the project is so clearly linked to the very forces attacking those communities is a contradiction.

Zaw Tuseng, Director of the Myanmar Policy Institute, said: “Communities in Sagaing and Magway are living through airstrikes, displacement, the destruction of villages and severe restrictions on movement. Under these conditions, credible monitoring, meaningful consultation and informed community consent cannot simply be assumed. SK Telecom should not use carbon credits generated under such circumstances to claim climate progress. It must disclose its involvement, suspend the use of these credits and support an independent, conflict-sensitive review that listens directly to affected communities.”

Due to the conditions on the ground, no on-site inspection of the project was carried out over the course of the verification process in any of the project’s locations. The project’s verification reports were prepared on the basis of online interviews rather than field verification, citing the difficult security situation caused by the conflict. Although the project presents women as its principal beneficiaries, only a very small number of women were interviewed as part of the monitoring or verification processes.

The signatories also raise the issue of inflated emission reductions. According to analysis by the European think tank Carbon Market Watch (CMW), the project was approved for the issuance of roughly 7.2 times more PACM credits than its actual emission reductions likely warrant. Most of the credits obtained by SK Group, the organisations say, are “junk credits” that deliver no real emission reductions.

SK Telecom itself has acknowledged that the emission reductions claimed by the Myanmar cookstove project cannot be verified. In its 2024 SK Telecom Taxonomy Report, the company classified the project as ‘not Aligned’ under the Korean Green Taxonomy(K-Taxonomy), citing “practical difficulties in verifying the greenhouse gas emission data of cookstoves used in Myanmar.” The project has thus been excluded from the green economic activities SK Telecom reports to investors. Despite this, it has still been allowed to generate hundreds of thousands of PACM credits for SK Group. 

Sooyoun Han, Policy Campaigner at Plan 1.5, said: “If SK Telecom uses credits with no assured emission reductions to meet its obligations under the Korea Emissions Trading Scheme (K-ETS), the environmental integrity of the scheme will inevitably be undermined. And if these junk credits are placed on the market to be used towards a Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC), the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C goal will only move further out of reach.” She added: “If SK Telecom ends this investment before it is too late and builds an internal system to assess and verify international mitigation projects, it can prevent this from happening again and demonstrate that SK Group’s ‘Double Bottom Line’ — the simultaneous pursuit of economic and social value — is more than a slogan.”

Oli Munnion, with the Global Forest Coalition, said: “If the very first project to be cleared for crediting under the Paris Agreement’s new carbon market scheme is so clearly mired in controversy due to human rights abuses and over-crediting, what hope is there for the thousands of other projects in the crediting pipeline? If claims of “high-integrity” are to have any meaning whatsoever, then the main organisations behind this project—SK Group as financial backers and the PACM Supervisory Body with ultimate responsibility for oversight—must ensure that these junk credits are never used to offset very real and harmful emissions.”  

The organisations have asked SK Telecom’s CEO to respond to the open letter by 24 August.

Signatories:

60+ Climate Action
Adjunct Senior Research Fellow Griffith University
BigWave – Youth Climate Action Group
Biofuelwatch
Blue Dalian
Campaign for a New Myanmar
Carbon Market Watch
Climate Communications Coalition
Colectivo VientoSur
Earth Ethics, Inc.
Extinction Rebellion Korea
Federation of Community Forest Users, Nepal (FECOFUN)
Global Forest Coalition
Global Justice Ecology Project
Green Korea United
Indigenous Environmental Network
Institute for Green Transformation(IGT)
International Campaign for the Rohingya
Korean Civil Society in Support of Democracy in Myanmar
Korean Federation for Environmental Movement(KFEM)
Korean Women’s Environmental Network(KWEN)
Link-AR Borneo
Myanmar Policy Institute
No Business With Genocide
Plan 1.5
Practicing Buddhist Monk’s Association
Rainforest Action Network
Red Dominicana de Estudios y Empoderamiento Afrodescendiente(RedAfros)

Over the last two weeks, oil companies have announced eye-popping profits from the spring quarter. Exxon Mobil pulled in $14.5 billion. Chevron landed $12 billion, its highest quarterly profit on record. Shell posted $9.8 billion — more than twice its earnings from the same time last year.

These profits are largely a product of supply constraints brought on by the war in the Middle East. With the Strait of Hormuz effectively blockaded, oil suppliers have rerouted shipments over land and through pipelines. The resulting supply shortages, constrained refining capacity, and higher transportation costs have driven up oil and gasoline prices, delivering windfall profits for producers. 

But companies aren’t using those profits to drill lots of new wells or explore untapped oil fields. Instead, they’re pocketing the cash and paying their shareholders, experts say. What was once an industry defined by the “drill, baby, drill” ethos is now defined by another term: “capital discipline.” It’s a phenomenon in which rampant drilling and production growth has given way to tightened belts and bigger payouts to investors. 

Oil executives expected a weak financial year in 2026 due to a supply glut, but the closure of the Strait of Hormuz constrained oil production and allowed companies to charge top dollar for use of their refineries outside the Middle East. 

“While we didn’t anticipate the current situation, we were prepared for it,” Exxon CEO Darren Woods said in a July call with analysts, according to the Wall Street Journal. “Despite the temporary loss of approximately 10 percent of our upstream production, we delivered exceptional financial results.”

Chevron executives offered a similar assessment. In July, Chief Financial Officer Eimear Bonner told Bloomberg that the company didn’t adjust their production as prices rose. “We did not change any of our plan,” she said. 

The Trump administration’s focus on “unleashing” U.S. energy is running headlong into oil companies’ growing commitment to financial discipline. For instance, the administration assured the public that oil majors would leap at oil fields in Venezuela after the country’s leader, Nicolas Maduro, was detained in January. But drilling stayed low throughout the administration’s efforts to pry open public lands for oil development, and corporations have been wary and selective about new opportunities in Venezuela. Similarly, even as the administration has opened up U.S. federal lands for drilling, companies have shown only a lukewarm response. As Americans bleed cash at the gas pump, President Donald Trump has even accused oil companies of “making too much money” from the war, unable to otherwise influence them to significantly ramp up their production.

“Oil and gas companies respond more to financial incentives than they do to political signaling,” said Clark Williams-Derry, an energy finance analyst at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis. “They’re going to be looking at their finances first rather than politicians’ demands.”

If the U.S.-Israel war with Iran had occurred in 2012, oil companies might have seen the price spike as a chance to drill more wells. As fracking took off and prices rose during the 2000s, many companies tied their CEO compensation to production growth. Investors poured money into oil companies. But those days of aggressive production eventually ran into price crashes, especially after a Saudi-led coalition of oil-producing countries flooded the market with crude in 2014 and the COVID-19 pandemic sank prices again in 2020. 

In the last five years, as investors soured on drill-happy oil companies, they embraced a new, more disciplined approach to capital expenditure. Investors wanted steadier returns. Rather than rewarding aggressive production growth, they pushed companies to focus on lower-cost drilling, restrain spending, and return more cash to shareholders.

“What is perhaps most telling about the corporate response to the turbulent forces impacting the oil and gas sector is just how little changed [in 2026],” Tom Ellacott, senior vice president of corporate research at Wood Mackenzie, said in a July press release. “Capital discipline has proved more durable than either the bears or bulls expected.”

Drilling in the U.S., as measured by the number of oil rigs, has ticked up during the summer, Williams-Derry noted, but only after the president launched a war in Iran that drove up oil prices. As of June, it had only recovered to the rate recorded at the same point last year, according to data from Baker Hughes, an energy technology company.

In this new mode, Williams-Derry said, international oil companies have used wars, notably the conflicts in Ukraine and Iran, to boost their revenues so they can maintain large payments to their Wall Street investors. In times without price spikes, oil majors collectively took out debt as they paid their investors, their revenues unable to support the payments on their own, according to Williams-Derry’s internal analysis of their cash flow statements. In an ironic twist, oil companies have benefited more from constraints on global oil production than from “unleashing” it.

The climate implications of this new ethos are complicated. Already, oil companies’ tight spending has drawn most of them away from renewable energy investments. France’s TotalEnergies is the one supermajor that has charged ahead with its renewables business, though the Trump administration agreed to pay the company more than $900 million to cancel two offshore wind projects off New York and North Carolina. More discipline may also push companies to capture and resell the leaking natural gas from oil fields because maximizing revenue from existing wells has become more attractive than drilling expensive new ones. And this new attitude could keep oil and gasoline prices higher for longer, maintaining the appeal of electric vehicles and renewable energy sources. (Chinese solar panel and EV exports to some countries have spiked during the war.)

At least one analysis firm, Wood Mackenzie, believes disciplined oil companies could fall behind global demand, causing them to lose a share of the global oil market to nationally owned oil companies like Saudi Arabia’s, potentially changing the politics of energy security for Western countries.

Ultimately, however, this phase of “capital discipline” may only be temporary, Williams-Derry said. No oil company wants to be so disciplined that it begins to decline. Eventually, some growth will likely be necessary. 

Still, those companies have proven as capable of benefiting from energy shocks to U.S. consumers as they are of relieving them, an important note for political actors hoping to rely on oil companies for energy security. 

“At least for now, production of oil is no longer the way executives are getting paid,” Williams-Derry said. “What matters is their ability to generate cash.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline They’re making record profits, but oil companies still won’t ‘drill, baby, drill’ on Aug 11, 2026.

Visitors to the Palo Alto Baylands Nature Preserve, captivated by gliding birds overhead and golden hills across the Bay waters, could be forgiven for failing to notice that the preserve is also home to the Bay’s newest levee. 

Most levees look like steep, barren embankments or riprap-clad seawalls, designed to prevent flooding by adding extra feet of height. But this project, though it shares a name, is a different type of infrastructure altogether. Seeded with over 35 species of native plants, the site is a pilot for what’s known as a horizontal levee, or living levee, blending into the estuary’s natural scenery as it spreads its feet of added height over a longer area. 

In stark contrast to a traditional levee, the Palo Alto Horizontal Levee Pilot Project’s natural appearance and gradual slope are designed to interact with Bay waters the same way natural estuaries do. 

“When you look at levees that are along the bay front, a lot of times they’ve got really steep faces and big, huge rocks in front of them to protect them from wind waves,” explained Mark Lindley, lead engineer on the Palo Alto living levee. “By having this flat, gradual slope with really dense vegetation on it instead of having rock, the waves break on that slope like they do on a beach.” 

The project is part of a growing trend in California’s Bay Area of using this type of green infrastructure to provide both flood mitigation and habitat restoration. Completed in 2017, the Oro Loma Horizontal Levee near Hayward, California, was the first of its kind and informed the design of the Palo Alto project, and others. There are around a dozen in various stages of design and development around the Bay.

But the Palo Alto pilot project is the first to be hydrologically connected to the Bay. Beneath the plants, soil, and gravel layers, plumbing connects the slope of the horizontal levee to the Palo Alto Wastewater Treatment Center across the street, allowing treated wastewater to irrigate the levee’s plants. As it does, the plants remove nitrogen from the water before it then filters into the Bay. Nitrogen, which can lead to harmful algal blooms in excess, is generally high in wastewater — though, the water from the facility currently meets regulations to be released into the Bay, said Samantha Engelage, senior engineer for the City of Palo Alto. The added treatment is purely a bonus for water quality. 

A sign explains the horizontal levee pilot project to visitors at the Baylands Nature Preserve. Visitors are also encouraged to submit photos to help researchers monitor the site. Charlotte Burks

By mimicking the natural world, the horizontal levee also provides the conditions native species need to thrive. One beloved Bay Area resident that may benefit from the approach is the salt-marsh harvest mouse, affectionately known as “salties.” The cinnamon-colored rodents, which fit in the palm of a hand, climb vegetation to escape rising tides each day. But due to encroaching development, they’ve been listed as endangered for decades — and their niche habitat also makes them vulnerable to the changing climate. “All you need is a couple of really, really bad storm and tide events to knock out a [local] population,” said Katie Smith, a wildlife biologist and saltie expert. 

By design, the horizontal levee will restore the vegetation and habitat that salties and other estuary wildlife rely on. According to Smith, the plan for the levee appears to create the “optimal potential option for salt-marsh harvest mice.” 

Stretching just 500 feet along the shore, the pilot project restores only a small portion of salties’ habitat — and it does not provide the full flood control needed at the Baylands. But it will provide something else: data. Over the next five years, researchers from the United States Geological Survey, universities, and local nonprofits will monitor qualitative benefits, such as recreational use, and quantitative benefits, like impacts on biodiversity and water quality. The results could help justify the higher costs often associated with green infrastructure projects like the horizontal levee, explained Engelage. 

The project has been almost a decade in the making. And although the levee is now visible to observant visitors at Baylands Nature Preserve, it is not fully operational yet. According to Engelage, delays in the project have sprouted from complexities in connecting the plumbing from the wastewater treatment plant to the levee. 

But its gentle slope is already acting as a flood break. And it is clear that for Bay Area residents big and small, the additional protection of this levee and others like it could not come too soon. In the Bay Area alone, sea level is projected to rise 3 to 6 feet by 2100. More imminently, the forecasted El Niño weather system could bring the Bay 6 inches of temporary sea level rise — a taste of what future decades may hold. 

“Twenty years from now, what we see at king tides is just going to be a normal high tide,” said Lindley, referring to the highest tides of the year. “Those areas that we’re seeing flooded at king tide, they’ll be flooded every day.” 

Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated Samantha Engelage’s title.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline A new type of levee is taking root in Northern California on Aug 11, 2026.

This coverage is made possible through a partnership between Grist and BPR, a public radio station serving western North Carolina. 

Hush Sinn delivers needles, naloxone, and other medical supplies to people in the mostly rural mountain communities of Madison County, North Carolina. Sinn does this through Holler Harm Reduction, a grassroots organization that strives to minimize the risk of overdose and infection in a region where many residents are still recovering from the devastation of Hurricane Helene.

Sinn, who uses the pronoun they, believes the nonprofit, often known simply as “Holler,” has prevented a lot of tragedy. But nearly two years after the storm they and other harm reductionists have noticed a troubling pattern.

“While overdose rates are still trending down, we get these weird spikes,” Sinn said. “And the spikes we get, we kind of consistently are able to relate back to Helene.” Financial stress, ongoing trauma, and unstable housing have disrupted some people’s recovery and thrust others into dangerous, even deadly, patterns of substance use.

Sinn’s observations reflect a broader pattern across the region. A Pennsylvania State University study published last month found that severe flooding was associated with higher overdose death rates in economically distressed Appalachian counties — increases that can persist for at least a decade after the water recedes.

Kristina Brant, the study’s lead author, began the research after watching health-care providers struggle to maintain addiction treatment and harm reduction services during catastrophic floods in eastern Kentucky in 2021 and 2022.

“After such a huge disaster, especially in a small community where so many people wear so many hats, the same person that provides one public health service is also going to be asked to jump in on flood recovery, right?” she said. Brant began to understand services could be interrupted for a long, long time, and wondered what that might mean for both those in long-term recovery and those actively using opioids.

Brant’s team analyzed federal records of opioid overdose deaths and severe floods in rural Appalachia, comparing 118 counties that experienced major flooding between 2000 and 2017 with 101 that did not.

The researchers found that overdose deaths began rising in the years after an inundation and remained elevated for at least a decade. Over that period, annual overdose deaths in flooded counties increased by about 28 percent, while overdose mortality rates rose by 26 percent compared with the year before the flood. These changes were most pronounced in economically distressed and lower-income counties.

The findings prompted Brant’s team to ask why the effects endured for so long. Interviews with health-care providers, harm reduction workers, and others involved in the response to Kentucky’s 2022 disaster identified several factors, including disrupted treatment and harm reduction services, prolonged housing and economic instability, and the lasting effects of trauma. 

Read Next Hurricane Helene shattered lives — and the systems that keep people sober Katie Myers

“It’s important to have a number of important ingredients in your life, like access to a safe home, like access to a well-paid, meaningful job, like access to social support,” Brant said. “And for many people, the flood upended those things.” 

One clinic Brant spoke with closed after the flood because the costs of reopening were simply too great. Flood-related disruptions can also interrupt treatments like methadone, forcing some people to return to illicit opioids to stave off the unpleasant and often dangerous effects of withdrawal. After weeks or months in treatment or recovery, that return to use can be especially dangerous because people may not realize how much their tolerance has changed. 

Losing a job, stable housing, or reliable access to food can take a heavy toll on people’s mental health and increase the risk of an overdose, said Cassie York. She works in behavioral health at Mountain Community Health Partnership in Yancey County, North Carolina. The flooding that followed Helene killed at least 10 people in the county and caused landslides that destroyed 1,400 homes. Another 2,300 were heavily damaged.

“I think the main issue here, and probably not just here, is a lack of resources in general,” York said. “Housing, which has always been a shortage here, is even more so since the hurricane.” 

Addressing the instability that so many people are still dealing with two years after Helene is what harm reduction is all about, Sinn said. “We’re also seeing so many people still living in trailers,” they added. “These things that were supposed to be temporary are now permanent, you know?”

Brant believes people like Sinn and York who work directly with affected communities should be involved in disaster planning and recovery from the start. That’s something health-care providers have also begun to publicly support. 

“When it comes to things like flood preparedness conversations or flood recovery conversations, it’s not the case that often a substance use service provider might have a seat at that table,” she said. “Anything that could make care easier to access generally, every day, for rural people, would also help to limit disruptions after disaster.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Floods can leave communities facing higher overdose deaths for years on Aug 11, 2026.

Amid plantation monocultures and industrialized farms built to maximize production at the expense of social and ecological costs to the public, there are also many communities where the economy and ecology are not in conflict.

This blog was a collaboration between the Environmental Paper Network, Fórum Carajás, and the Global Forest Coalition.

The promise of “green steel” has become an attractive narrative in global efforts to decarbonize heavy industry. After all, the steel industry is responsible for around 7% of global energy-related carbon dioxide emissions. Companies highlight claims of reduced carbon emissions, renewable charcoal, and sustainable forestry as evidence that steel production can become environmentally friendly.

In Brazil, some steel producers market eucalyptus-derived charcoal as a renewable, low-carbon or even carbon-neutral substitute for fossil coal. However, behind these claims lies a reality that many rural communities in Brazil know all too well: land conflicts, environmental degradation, and threats to traditional livelihoods.

Illustrating this contradiction is Aço Verde do Brasil (AVB), a Brazilian steel producer that has 50,000 hectares of industrial eucalyptus plantations for charcoal production, and has declared its factory in the state of Maranhão the “world’s first carbon neutral steel plant”. However, long-standing conflicts over land with communities in the area show why industrial decarbonization cannot be assessed through carbon accounting trickery alone. It must also be judged by its consequences for impacted territories and communities.

Formiga Community Faces Intimidation

The community of Formiga in the Baixo Parnaíba region of Maranhão has been in a dispute with AVB over approximately 600 hectares of land for several years. Formiga residents claim the land as theirs under community ownership laws, and argue they hold documents asserting their rights over the disputed area. However, AVB also claims the land as its own, and plans to clear it, in order to expand its eucalyptus plantations.

Earlier this month, Formiga residents were unexpectedly visited by a large group of armed military police officers after AVB filed a complaint alleging that community members had occupied company land. The community rejects this characterization and says that the police contingent arrived without a search warrant.

Mayron Régis, from Fórum Carajás, an NGO that supports local residents and a member of the Biomass Action Network (BAN), explains that “the allegation has no basis. The Formiga community is in a dispute with AVB over 600 hectares and, for some time, residents refrained from planting on this land because of threats made by the company,” he says. “But they decided to begin planting again because they are farmers, and farming is what they know and how they sustain themselves. In response to that decision, the company fabricated this complaint as a way of preventing residents from continuing to cultivate the land.”

The accusation is unfounded. The dispute concerns approximately 600 hectares of land, officially registered in the rural property registry of the national land agency INCRA as owned by the local community.

However, the company claims the land too. For a considerable period, Formiga residents avoided cultivating the area because of threats allegedly made by the company. As farming is the primary source of livelihood for Formiga residents, their collective way of life depends on cultivating their traditional lands. For the community, choosing to cultivate the land was not an “invasion”, but them exercising their right to work the land and sustain themselves, on land they understand to be their own. Rather than seeking dialogue, AVB chose to continue its campaign of harassment and intimidation by filing a complaint that resulted in police intervention. For the community, this represents another attempt to prevent families from exercising their rights.

Communities under pressure across Brazil

 

Events in Formiga are not an isolated example, but rather part of a wider escalation of territorial pressure in the region. Across Brazil, rural communities frequently report that legal action, police operations, and land disputes are used to pressure residents who challenge large-scale agribusiness and industrial projects. As Mayron explains:

“Over the past few weeks, what we have seen in the Baixo Parnaíba region of Maranhão is a considerable increase in attempts to intimidate traditional communities, alongside incursions into traditional territories, particularly by eucalyptus companies and soy growers. It gives the impression that this is all being coordinated. In response, communities in the region are coming together in order to resist the expansion of soy and eucalyptus monocultures, and the landgrabbing and intimidation they bring.”

In 2025, the Pastoral Land Commission (Comissão Pastoral da Terra –  CPT) recorded 1,593 rural conflicts in Brazil, 75% of which involved land. The region of Maranhão led the country in recorded cases of violence related to land, with 190 occurrences. The Commission warns that, even when the total number of recorded conflicts falls, violence against communities remains persistently high.

Photo shared in WhatsApp groups by Mayron Regis from Fórum Carajás

Green rebranding and historical impacts

The current conflict in Formiga reflects the historical harm caused by steel production in Maranhão, which the company is trying to cover up through its environmental branding efforts. A 2023 investigation by Veja, updated in 2024, examined the rebranding of Gusa Nordeste into AVB and contrasted the company’s carbon-neutral claims with the environmental and social legacy of the steel and pig iron industries in Açailândia, where AVB’s steel plant is located. The report described how pollution has affected more than 1,000 residents of Pequiá, a community living next to AVB’s steel plant and a number of pig-iron plants. It also looked at numerous previous legal actions taken against steel companies in the municipality, and historical environmental complaints involving the company.

Veja also reported that the carbon-neutral certification publicized by AVB helped open the way for two green-bond issuances in 2021 and 2022, which together raised R$650 million for eucalyptus planting associated with the production of its branded “green steel.” This indicates that environmental labels are not merely a matter of public image or branding: they also facilitate access to substantial financial resources and support the territorial expansion of plantation-based supply chains.

In its response to Veja, AVB rejected the suggestion that its transformation amounted to greenwashing. It described the charcoal it uses as “biocarbon”, and presented it as a renewable and carbon-neutral alternative to fossil coal. The company stated that it had stopped producing pig iron (which steel is produced from) in Açailândia in 2020, that its newer steel production processes were cleaner, and that it continuously monitored environmental conditions and complied with agreements reached with Maranhão’s environmental authorities.

What is “Green” Coal?

The charcoal used by companies such as AVB is often described as “green coal”—a term referring to charcoal produced from eucalyptus plantations under “sustainable forest management” rather than from native forests.

Unlike mineral coal (coal extracted from mines), eucalyptus charcoal is made by harvesting fast-growing eucalyptus trees, carbonizing the wood in kilns, and using the resulting charcoal as a reducing agent in steel production.

Because eucalyptus can be replanted, companies argue that this charcoal is renewable and significantly reduces greenhouse gas emissions compared to fossil coal. This is one of the reasons Brazil has become internationally recognized for producing steel with a “lower carbon footprint” than many other countries.

However, calling this product “green” is misleading, even if only carbon emissions are considered. Purely on the basis of emissions, burning charcoal actually results in more atmospheric carbon emissions than burning coal per unit of energy. However, international carbon accounting loopholes allow companies to ignore the emissions from burning biomass, including producing and burning charcoal.

Whether using biomass from plantations rather than native forests produces genuine emissions reductions depends on what is counted: the previous use of the land, changes in vegetation and soil carbon, plantation establishment, harvesting, fertilizers and pesticides, transport, emissions from charcoal kilns, repeated rotations and the time required for newly planted trees to absorb the carbon released, among many other factors and impacts. Biomass is therefore not automatically renewable, sustainable or carbon-neutral simply because trees can be replanted.

The Hidden Costs Behind “Green” Charcoal

Investigations by Deutsche Welle and Mongabay have documented the social and environmental impacts associated with the rapid expansion of eucalyptus plantations in Brazil. Several indigenous-focused organisations have also denounced the practice throughout the country.

A November 2025 briefing by the Latin America Working Group of the Biomass Action Network estimates that Latin America produces around 10 million tonnes of charcoal annually, mainly for the steel industry. Brazil alone produces approximately 7 million tonnes a year (almost all of it from wood grown in industrial eucalyptus monocultures) and around 90% of the country’s charcoal is consumed by the iron and steel sector. It documents how industrial biomass supply chains are linked to land concentration, territorial conflicts, water stress, biodiversity loss, precarious labour and corporate control over extensive areas of land. Some of the most significant impacts include:

Water depletion

Eucalyptus grows extremely quickly and has a high demand for water. Communities living near extensive plantations have reported declining stream flows, disappearing springs, and increasing water scarcity. Although water availability depends on several environmental factors, researchers have raised concerns that large monoculture plantations can significantly affect local hydrology, especially in already vulnerable regions.

Biodiversity loss

Replacing diverse native ecosystems with vast eucalyptus monocultures reduces habitat for wildlife and simplifies landscapes that previously supported rich biodiversity. While plantations contain trees, they do not provide the same ecological functions as native forests. Eucalyptus monocultures are uniform production systems designed for repeated harvesting.

Land concentration

The expansion of industrial eucalyptus plantations often concentrates land ownership in the hands of large companies. This limits access to land for small-scale farmers, traditional communities, and Indigenous peoples, increasing social inequality and intensifying land conflicts.

Community livelihoods

For rural communities, land is not simply an economic asset—it is the basis for food production, culture, memory and collective identity. When access to farmland is restricted or communities face legal intimidation, food security and rural livelihoods are directly threatened.

A green image cannot ignore biodiversity and human rights

Reducing emissions in steel production is an important goal. However, producing “green steel” using charcoal is clearly green in name only, no matter which perspective it is looked at. Climate solutions cannot come at the expense of communities living on and from the land.

A truly sustainable transition must consider not only carbon accounting but also respect for human rights, land tenure, biodiversity, and water resources. If “green steel” depends on practices that displace communities, restrict access to farmland, or generate environmental degradation, then its sustainability claims deserve careful scrutiny.

The situation faced by the Formiga community reminds us that the transition to a low-carbon economy must also be a just transition—one that protects both the climate and the people whose lives are most directly affected by industrial expansion. As global demand for “green steel” continues to grow, governments, investors, and consumers should look beyond corporate sustainability labels and ask a broader question: green for whom?

Photo from Fórum Carajás’ Instagram.

Istilah “hujan scatter” kerap muncul dalam percakapan komunitas permainan slot untuk menggambarkan kemunculan simbol scatter secara berulang dalam satu sesi. Bagi member VIP, fenomena tersebut sering dianggap sebagai pengalaman yang menarik karena scatter pada sejumlah permainan dapat berfungsi sebagai pemicu fitur bonus, free spin, atau mekanisme permainan tambahan. Namun, di balik istilah yang terdengar menggiurkan itu terdapat sistem matematika yang tetap bekerja secara acak.

Status VIP biasanya berkaitan dengan program loyalitas yang diberikan sebuah platform kepada pemain berdasarkan aktivitas tertentu. Fasilitasnya dapat berbeda-beda, mulai dari layanan pelanggan khusus hingga penawaran promosi. Karena itu, predikat VIP sebaiknya tidak langsung dipahami sebagai akses khusus menuju kemenangan. Kemunculan scatter tetap bergantung pada mekanisme permainan yang telah ditetapkan pengembang.

Memahami Fenomena Scatter

Secara sederhana, scatter merupakan simbol dengan fungsi khusus dalam permainan slot. Berbeda dari simbol pembayaran biasa, scatter pada beberapa judul dapat membuka fitur tertentu ketika muncul dalam jumlah atau pola yang memenuhi ketentuan permainan. Ada pula permainan yang memberikan pemicu bonus berdasarkan kombinasi simbol tersebut.

Ketika scatter muncul beberapa kali dalam rentang permainan yang relatif singkat, pemain sering menyebutnya sebagai “hujan scatter”. Istilah ini lebih tepat dipahami sebagai gambaran pengalaman bermain daripada indikator bahwa permainan sedang memasuki fase kemenangan. Setiap putaran pada permainan yang menggunakan sistem acak tetap memiliki hasil yang independen sesuai rancangan matematisnya.

Pemahaman tersebut penting agar pemain tidak keliru menafsirkan rangkaian scatter sebagai tanda bahwa putaran berikutnya pasti menghasilkan bonus. Pengalaman sebelumnya tidak secara otomatis mengubah probabilitas pada putaran selanjutnya.

Mengapa Pengalaman VIP Terasa Berbeda?

Program VIP dapat memberikan pengalaman yang lebih personal. Pemain mungkin memperoleh akses layanan pelanggan yang lebih responsif, informasi promosi yang lebih terstruktur, atau berbagai fasilitas loyalitas sesuai kebijakan platform. Faktor-faktor tersebut dapat membuat aktivitas bermain terasa lebih nyaman.

Namun, kenyamanan layanan dan peluang mendapatkan scatter merupakan dua hal berbeda. Kompetensi dalam memahami permainan justru terlihat dari kemampuan membedakan fasilitas administratif dengan mekanisme permainan. Pemain yang memiliki pengalaman panjang biasanya tidak hanya memperhatikan hasil, tetapi juga memahami aturan, volatilitas, batas taruhan, serta ketentuan bonus sebelum mengambil keputusan.

Pengalaman Harus Diimbangi Informasi

Cerita tentang member VIP yang memperoleh scatter berkali-kali memang menarik untuk dibahas. Akan tetapi, pengalaman individual tidak dapat dijadikan bukti bahwa pola serupa akan dialami pemain lain. Dalam konteks permainan berbasis peluang, hasil yang pernah terjadi bukan jaminan untuk sesi berikutnya.

Pendekatan yang lebih rasional adalah membaca informasi permainan secara menyeluruh. Perhatikan aturan fitur, nilai taruhan, mekanisme bonus, dan batas dana yang telah ditentukan sejak awal. Dengan begitu, pengalaman bermain tidak semata-mata bergantung pada ekspektasi terhadap scatter.

Pada akhirnya, “hujan scatter” lebih tepat dilihat sebagai fenomena yang muncul dari mekanisme permainan dan keberuntungan pada sesi tertentu. Status VIP mungkin menghadirkan fasilitas tambahan, tetapi tidak menghapus unsur probabilitas. Pemahaman terhadap cara kerja permainan, transparansi informasi, serta pengelolaan anggaran menjadi fondasi yang jauh lebih penting. Dengan perspektif tersebut, pembahasan mengenai scatter dapat ditempatkan secara proporsional: menarik sebagai pengalaman, tetapi tetap perlu dipahami sebagai bagian dari permainan yang mengandung risiko.

The European automotive industry is slipping deeper into crisis. While this decline has external drivers such as US tariffs and Chinese overcapacities, it is also “made in Europe” in many ways. Can new policy measures save the industry from its woes?

Since 2020, electric car sales have gained momentum, and until 2025, it was widely believed that the era of the combustion engine would soon be history.

While Europe is certainly on the way towards electromobility, this is not a linear process: there are constantly ups and downs with new concerns emerging. There is also much uncertainty in a complex and turbulent geopolitical context in which multilateralism is eroding and “zero-sum-game” perspectives are becoming dominant.

The initial fear about electromobility was that it would lead to job losses, as building battery electric vehicles (BEVs) is less labour-intensive than producing vehicles with internal combustion engines (ICEVs). While some of our earlier publications at the European Trade Union Institute demonstrate that employment loss is indeed a direct consequence of electrification in the powertrain sector – and to a lesser extent in automotive manufacturing at large – the aggregate employment effect across the entire automotive ecosystem is expected to be neutral.

Although this aspect of the transition is certainly important, the greater concern about the future of the automotive industry is how the EU can position itself in a completely new economic geography defined by the EV era and fierce geopolitical rivalries. In this context, the main question is whether EU manufacturers can maintain their core competence and market share.

The developments of the last few years indicate that this is not the case, with the EU automotive sector slipping deeper and deeper into crisis.

A crisis how deep?

With 2.5 million jobs, the automotive industry is not only the largest employer in European manufacturing  – supporting a total of some 13.6 million European jobs – but its transition is also the most complex. The green and digital transformations it faces are intertwined with global value chains that are fully exposed to changing geopolitical realities.

Although fast-track electrification started out as a policy-driven process, there is already a strong business case for the industry to embrace it, and the future competitiveness of each automotive location depends on its ability to adopt the new technology. Unfortunately, it has taken a very long time for incumbent EU car manufacturers to realise that their leading market position in combustion engine technology – and diesel in particular – is not transferable to the era of electric vehicles, where much of the added value will come from batteries and software. Dysfunctional emissions regulation and zig-zagging industrial policies have not helped either.

Transport is the only major sector in the EU economy in which greenhouse gas emissions have risen rather than fallen over the last few decades: since 2010, emissions have grown by 9 per cent. Reversing this trend to meet the EU’s 2040 emissions target and achieve net-zero by 2050 is a formidable challenge.

The reasons for this failure are multiple. The European policy framework for the decarbonisation of road transport has been far from optimal, often hindering the green transition by favouring large and expensive vehicles. Many European carmakers have also been slow to embrace the shift to electromobility, and now face a loss of market share in both domestic and export markets.

Despite this, the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association (ACEA) reported a 1.8 per cent increase in new car registrations in 2025 compared to 2024, even though the number remained 17 per cent below the 2019 level. In the first half of 2026, a further increase of 5.7 per cent took place.

Since 2020, the share of petrol and diesel vehicles in car sales has continued to fall, reaching 22.2 per cent and 7.5 per cent respectively in the first half of 2026. Meanwhile, the share of hybrid electric vehicles (HEV) grew to 37.2 per cent in the same period, and that of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEV) reached 9.2 per cent. Most importantly, sales of fully electric vehicles picked up again in 2026 to reach 20.7 per cent.

These trends illustrate that, while the initial momentum in the shift towards electromobility has been broken, the trend is again upward. But is Europe reaping any benefits?

Figure 1. New car sales by fuel type in the EU (2020-2026 first half), shares (%). Source: ACEA (2026) 

The number of cars produced in the EU grew modestly (by 0.3 per cent) in 2025 (up in Germany and France – by 2.3 per cent and by 15.5 percent respectively – but down in Italy by 22.9 per cent). At the same time, production numbers in 2025 remained 18.7 per cent below the 2019 level, again with significant differences between countries (down by 10.3 per cent in Germany, 38 per cent in France, and 56.7 per cent in Italy).

The automotive industry’s woes become more apparent when looking at the latest trends in foreign trade of cars. While the EU maintains a significant trade surplus in the sector (76 billion euros in 2025), the number shrank by nearly 9 per cent last year. It is noteworthy that 2025 was the first year when the EU’s balance in vehicle trade with China turned into a deficit (with 15.1 billion euros in imports and 8.5 billion euros in exports).

2023 2024 2025 per cent change (2025/2024) Imports  80,266   74,231  71,872 -3.2 Exports  169,802  157,731  147,901  -6.2 Balance  89,536  83,500 76,028 -8.9 Table 1. EU car trade surplus narrows as exports fall faster than imports (2023–2025, €m). Source: ACEA (2026) based on Eurostat data
Note: figures refer to EU trade with non-EU countries.  

The picture looks worse if we look at the trends with the EU’s two most important trading partners, China and the US. Compared with 2024, EU exports (in value) to the US in 2025 shrank by 21.4 per cent, while exports to China saw a staggering 43-per cent drop.

The import side does not look any better, although here a big difference appears between the value and volume of imports. In 2025, total EU car imports from China only grew by 4 per cent when measured in euros, but when measured in volume (number of units), the increase was 30.7 per cent, reaching over one million cars. In other words, cars imported from China surpassed the number of cars produced in France that year. Data for 2026 show an acceleration of the increase. For instance, imports in May 2026 grew by 65 per cent compared to the same month last year. Figure 2 also shows that, between 2021 and 2025, the number of cars the EU imported from China grew by 270 per cent.

Figure 2 EU new car imports from China, number of units. Source: ACEA (2026) 

A further concern in Europe is that China’s share in the European car market is rapidly increasing, having reached 7 per cent in 2025, up from 5 per cent the previous year. Data for the first half of 2026 reveal that China’s share increased further to 10 per cent. This means that the expansion of the EU market in 2026 benefited manufacturers in China, while EU manufacturers suffered a 3-per cent market share loss (with Japanese carmakers also losing 2 per cent).

This is worse than it may initially appear. A report by the Rhodium Group shows that despite punitive tariffs introduced from October 2024, sales figures for made-in-China BEVs in 2025 ​​bounced back to pre-tariff levels. At the same time, the sale of Chinese-made PHEVs and ICEVs – which are only subject to the 10-per cent basic tariff – accelerated. A recent report by Transport & Environment (T&E) supports the view that the 2024 tariffs backfired, showing that they only curbed imports of China-made EU BEVs. While, as of early 2026, made-in-China cars dropped to 17 per cent of BEV sales in the EU, down from a peak of 22 per cent in 2024, the decrease is due to fewer imports of China-made EU cars. The share of Chinese brands in made-in-China car imports grew from 35 per cent in 2024 to 54 per cent by early 2026. T&E also projects that without further policy change, weaker EV targets in the EU would increase the market share of Chinese carmakers in 2035 to 30 per cent of BEV sales in the bloc. 

European manufacturers’ loss of market share also results from their choice to focus business strategies on premium market segments, abandoning the production of smaller, more affordable entry-level electric cars. If the European automotive industry cannot produce affordable clean EVs, this will not only add to inequality in clean mobility but also pose a threat to high-quality jobs in European automotive manufacturing.

EU policy responses

In March 2025, the European Commission launched its Industrial Action Plan for the European automotive sector to boost demand for European EVs. The plan includes a law to green corporate fleets and measures to encourage national incentives schemes and social leasing for electric cars. The declared objective is to maintain a strong European production base and avoid strategic dependencies.

However, the Commission caved in to industry lobbying, providing flexibility regarding CO2 targets. An amendment to the CO2 Standards Regulation for cars and vans enables car manufacturers to meet their compliance targets by averaging their performance over a three-year period (2025-2027), offsetting shortfalls in any one or two years with excess achievements in the other year(s).

The EU Automotive package, launched at the end of 2025, also chose short-term competitiveness over long-term goals. It opened possibilities for plug-in hybrids, range extenders, and ICEVs to remain part of the automotive landscape beyond 2035. The International Council for Clean Transportation estimates that this could slow down EV adoption, with BEV shares expected to drop from 61 to 44 per cent by 2030. Regarding corporate vehicles, mandatory targets are set at the member state level to support the uptake of zero- and low-emission vehicles by large companies. In the run-up to 2035, carmakers will benefit from “super credits” for small, “affordable” electric cars made in the EU.

Meanwhile, the Industrial Accelerator Act (IAA) proposal published in March 2026 seems more like damage control than a strategic initiative. Made in Europe (MiEU) criteria are limited to public interventions and procurement decisions and do not include labour conditionalities. EVs will be required to have green steel, while 70 per cent of their components, excluding batteries, will have to be produced in the EU.

The main purpose of the initiative is to put made-in-China vehicles at a disadvantage in Europe, and to address the growing use of Chinese components in European vehicle production. As Europe struggles to build a competitive battery industry, European carmakers are increasingly sourcing inputs from China. Beyond defining content thresholds and determining what countries (beyond EU member states) will qualify as having MiEU origin, a major challenge is how these requirements would actually be applied in the sector and what exactly the scope of the measures will be. Once the IAA is finalised and the transition period has passed, member states would be required to procure MiEU vehicles exclusively as part of their public procurement, to restrict financial incentives (both EV grants and as part of corporate fleets) to Made in Europe vehicles, and to provide CO2 supercredits only to small BEVs made in Europe.

Several important factors limit the IAA’s effectiveness. Timing is one, as measures are not expected to take effect before mid-2027. Scale is another, given that public procurement accounts for less than 2 per cent of the passenger car market. Supercredits for small BEVs and low-carbon steel requirements matter less for Chinese firms, as they generally have strong CO2 fleet balances. On the other hand, the Corporate Fleet proposal is particularly important. From 2028 onward, member states would be allowed to provide financial support only to corporate fleets operating low-emission and EU-made vehicles. Notably, this would not fully lock Chinese exporters out of the largest demand segment, but put them at a significant disadvantage, and around 30 per cent of the market would remain fully open. And even within the protected segments, original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) would face higher costs to remain eligible for support due to local content requirements. It is also uncertain whether EU manufacturers would be able to provide all the required elements of the value chain.

In summary, measures of market protection would indeed raise a barrier for Chinese manufacturers, but the EU is still lacking in bold, forward-looking, actionable initiatives to prop up European producers. For instance, the bloc’s 1.8-billion-euro Battery Booster Facility is modest when held up against the investment needed to close gaps with global competitors.

As the bankruptcy of Northvolt – a flagship EU project – and the subsequent cancellation of more than 100 GWh of battery capacity illustrate, what the EU automotive industry needs most is investment and innovation; protecting the status quo will not help. Short-term, defensive measures, such as the decision to give carmakers two extra years to comply with the 2025 car CO₂ emission targets, are harmful. The weakening of the zero-emissions target in 2035 is an even bigger blow, as it opens the door to high-emission combustion engine vehicles and undermines the future competitiveness of EU carmakers in electromobility, in particular with regard to Chinese BEVs. These are confusing signals both to the industry and consumers, and divert investment away from electrification at a time when European manufacturers urgently need to catch up with Chinese EV-makers. OEMs have already written off tens of billions of investments into electric vehicle development and launched new combustion engine projects.

Trade unions fight back

Even if 2025 was not a year of crisis in terms of production and sales for the EU automotive sector, it certainly was so in terms of employment. Loss of market share and competitiveness is putting the future of EU automotive jobs at risk.

While the number of car registrations and vehicles produced in the EU in 2025 grew somewhat, production value has seen a downward trend over the last several years. In Germany – the EU’s biggest producer and market – production value in 2025 shrank for both car makers and suppliers (down by 1.1 per cent and 4.3 per cent respectively). Employment fell sharply too: manufacturers cut 18,000 jobs (3.6 per cent of all positions), while suppliers laid off 29,000 (11 per cent of employees). Employment trends were also downward in the EU as a whole, with the European Association of Automotive Suppliers (CLEPA) reporting 54,000 losses among EU suppliers for 2024, and a further 22,000 in the first half of 2025.

A series of layoffs and company closures illustrates this trend, as a Eurofound study from early 2025 shows. In 2024, restructuring announcements in the EU automotive industry were dominated by job contraction, with a forecast net loss of 53,669 jobs in the EU, not including Volkswagen’s December 2024 announcement about a 35,000 reduction of its workforce in Germany by 2030. In 2026, Volkswagen management was considering expanding the workforce reductions up to 100,000 by 2030. Further examples include the closure of Audi Brussels in February 2025, which led to a loss of 3,000 quality jobs, and the shutdown of Ford Saarlouis in Germany in 2025, affecting 3,600 employees. But how have trade institutes responded?

In Germany, IG Metall – the country’s dominant metalworkers’ union – and works councils have sought to expand their existing repertoire of collective bargaining and company policy instruments in order to co-manage change. In this regard, collective agreements for securing the future and competitiveness (in short, “future-oriented agreements”) have emerged as the main tools to protect workers’ rights. The 2021 round of collective bargaining in the metal and electrical industries provided works councils, IG Metall, and employers with a collective framework to regulate measures to realise innovations, improve competitiveness, reskill employees, and achieve their continued employment. IG Metall has carried out successful projects to tap into new, previously unorganised workers, such as at the Tesla factory near Berlin. It has also managed to foster creative and disagreement-led company target-setting processes, including at the Mercedes site in Marienfelde, near Berlin. Moreover, works councils at Mercedes have successfully expanded the scope for codetermination.

In terms of content, future-oriented agreements comprise three elements: first, concessions on the part of employees, for example on the subject of working hours; second, a temporary exception from redundancies in operational areas. These processes form the framework for the third element, namely negotiations conducted jointly by management and works councils on the future use of the individual sites. Although these processes are organised at plant level, they are integrated into the coordination structures operating within the company. This practice provides proof that managing change in a forward-looking manner is possible. That said, future-oriented agreements don’t guarantee success.

The developments of 2024 in Volkswagen, where management withdrew from longstanding job security commitments, illustrate this clearly. In an unprecedented move, the company announced it was considering two plant closures in Germany, putting aside the employment guarantees contained in its “2016 Pact for the Future” that was viewed as an example of codetermination and responsible just transition practices. In December 2024, Volkswagen AG, IG Metall, and the works council reached a final agreement on a socially responsible reduction of the workforce by more than 35,000 across the company’s German locations by 2030.

On the other hand, collective social agreements are not a new collective bargaining instrument, but one that has experienced a revival in the wake of site closures and transformation-related pressure on workforces. This is demonstrated by recent collective bargaining disputes at various Continental and Vitesco sites; at the Ford plant in Saarlouis, where production came to an end in 2025; at the Japanese supplier Musashi; and at the supplier GKN Driveline.

The collective social agreement concluded by IG Metall for the closure of the Ford plant in Saarlouis is one of the most comprehensive and generous among such agreements in Germany. Out of the 3,600 employees affected, 1,000 will be kept until at least 2032 and assigned to different projects (Ford car parts and battery recycling, among others), while 1,400 workers will move to a transfer company for further qualification and skills development (18 to 24 months with a compensation of 80 per cent of their previous salary). The rest of the workers are entitled to severance payments.

The stakes

The particular challenge for the automotive industry is that it is undergoing multiple and intertwined changes at the same time, including decarbonisation, the digitalisation of both product and process, the automation of production, and the complete reorganisation of automotive value chains. This is leading to fierce competition between production locations for new developments, with decisions often being focused on labour costs and resulting in relocations and job losses.

How workers can shape the complex restructuring processes of the European automotive industry is decisive for making this transition just, as well as for achieving zero-carbon mobility. Despite its lower labour demand, electrification is the lesser threat to EU jobs; what is most important is how (and to what extent) EU manufacturers manage to keep up with clean mobility needs. This is about re-defining the competitiveness of a key industrial sector in the new era of electromobility under geopolitical pressures from both the East and the West.

In a turbulent and challenging geopolitical environment, market protection is necessary and useful only if it is instrumentalised to foster innovation and technological catching up. Carrying on the old business model of building ever bigger, heavier, and more expensive cars (even if often under hybrid or plug-in hybrid cover) would be a massive failure. Giving up already binding legislative commitments, like the 2035 ban on combustion engine cars, is not only bad for the climate but also jeopardises the medium- and longer-term future of European automotive jobs.

Policy also needs to push towards a more comprehensive transformation of mobility systems. The whole system of national subsidies for both the production and sale of BEVs must be reconfigured to support more affordable BEVs and electromobility services, with a clear priority for social groups most dependent on cars and, recently, most excluded from car ownership.

Emotional meat eaters Channel Comment brendan 11th August 2026 Teaser Media

In western Kenya, youth organising through Farm Labour Solidarity Building is reshaping how communities value agriculture, collective work and indigenous knowledge.

The post Under the Mango Tree: Youth Solidarity and the Seeds of Peasant Agroecology in Kenya appeared first on La Via Campesina - EN.

The recent publication of reflections by former members of the International Socialists (IS) and its youth group, Red Tide, is a welcome, if overdue, recollection of the successes and failures of building a socialist presence in key industries and among high school students in the United States in the 1970s.

From the Free Speech Movement to the Factory Floor (Haymarket Books) offers first-hand accounts of those who sought to implement a rank-and-file strategy with varying degrees of success as they sought to bring socialism from below to key sectors of the U.S. working class.

Unfortunately, the opening for turning some of the militancy of that period into a socialist base was shut midway through the decade by global conditions that proved insurmountable for the IS, as well as the mass movements of that period.1For a broad outline of the period, as well as a summary of IS labor strategy, see Joel Geier, “When Socialists Joined the Rank-and-File Upsurge.” Largely missing from the collection, though, is the perspectives debate that tried to address how these material changes undercut the IS strategy, requiring an altered approach for building a socialist base. The debate is important because it gave birth to the International Socialist Organization (ISO), whose more measured perspective allowed it to carry forward the project of socialism from below during a decades-long working-class retreat.

Strategy under stress

The IS was founded in 1969 near the peak of nearly two decades of mass social movements and deepening radicalization. By the mid-1970s the conditions that gave rise to this period had changed. By 1976 it was becoming clear to some that the general perspectives and strategy that had guided the IS since its founding no longer fit. After a four-month debate with the IS majority over its “mass work” perspective en route to a “workers’ combat organization” and a deepening commitment to strategic implantation of comrades in key industries and unions, the minority, or Left Faction (LF), was expelled in the opening session of a Special Convention held in Detroit in March 1977. After the expulsion, 52 members of the LF convened at the Veterans’ Memorial Building to establish the framework of a new organization, the International Socialist Organization (ISO). The debate leading to the expulsion focused on strategy and tactics, not the foundational principles defining socialism from below.

Although the current period does not replicate the 1970s, there are many reasons that a new generation of socialists looks to the IS experience of building independent rank-and-file organizations in key industries and unions during the 1970s. Two current organizations—Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU) and Labor Notes—are rooted in the IS work of that decade. Both reform organizations were supported by the LF/ISO from their beginning. So, why did the IS expel a third of its members in 1977? The arguments over the 1976–77 IS perspectives provide lessons that the current generation of socialists might find useful in their efforts to build organizations and to construct a perspective that fits the current period and avoids some of the mistakes of the past.

Mass movements prepare the way

It is important to understand the context that led to the founding of the IS in 1969. A mass movement for Black civil rights in the United States and an international antiwar movement against the U.S. imperial war in Vietnam pulled millions into radical activity. In addition, a second wave women’s rights and liberation movement emerged, followed by a movement for gay rights and liberation. These, too, had international links. But it was the uprising of students and the largest ever workers’ general strike in France in May 1968 that captured the imagination of a new generation of radicals looking for revolutionary possibilities. Besides the May events in France that nearly toppled the government, cracks in the Eastern bloc, anti-colonial struggles in Africa, and guerilla insurgencies in Latin America reinforced revolutionary aspirations.

The year 1968 was the watershed year of this period. Beginning with the Tet offensive by the National Liberation Front in Vietnam in late January, which exposed the lie that the U.S. military was winning its war there, and ending with the election of the Republican, Richard Nixon, to the presidency with a plurality of less than one percent of the vote, 1968 screamed for fundamental change. Between Tet and Nixon’s election came President Lyndon Johnson’s near abdication, two assassinations (Dr. Martin L. King, Jr and Robert F. Kennedy), mass uprisings (France, Czechoslovakia), guerrilla struggles (Latin America), and wide disaffection with the Democratic Party after it nominated the war supporter and Johnson’s vice president Hubert Humphrey to challenge Nixon. This turbulent year exposed many of the cracks in the international system of capitalist exploitation, which could no longer impose its will on the masses unopposed.

By the end of 1968, the search for how to organize for revolutionary change was well underway. A generation of activists informed by their experiences now looked for a blueprint, or at least a model, for how to make a revolution. Many looked to the Cuban and Chinese guerilla achievements for guidance. Others looked back to 1917 and the first successful worker-led revolution in Russia. Most of the models were top-down, substituting self-appointed leaders and organizations that would make the revolution for the masses. Working-class self-emancipation (Bolshevism) in Russia had been replaced by a bureaucratic and self-appointed ruling class (Stalinism).2https://www.marxists.org/archive/harman/1967/xx/revlost.htm Reconnecting workers to the tradition of self-emancipation was never going to be easy, but it was worth a try in the context of mass social movements in the United States and Europe, as well as anti-colonial struggles in the South.

Following the breakup of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) in the summer of 1969, the International Socialist Clubs (ISC) and remnants of several SDS chapters (Seattle, Austin, Chicago, Baltimore, Ann Arbor) met over Labor Day weekend that year in Ann Arbor, Michigan, to lay the groundwork for a national organization. By the end of the year, convinced that the period of radicalization had entered a new stage, the IS was launched, setting its sights on joining the working class. What happened in the effort to build a revolutionary workers’ organization as the period of radicalization began to ebb over the next decade is a history that is both instructive and cautionary. It is the history of the International Socialists and its successor organizations, the ISO, and a third organization, Solidarity.

Revolution in the air

Before neoliberalism, globalization, or financialization entered the lexicon, workers in several sectors of the U.S. economy flexed their muscles—sometimes with their union’s blessing, more often in opposition to official leaderships. For the Left this period became known as the “rank-and-file rebellion.”3Aaron Brenner, Robert Brenner, Cal Winslow, eds., Rebel Rank and File: Labor Militancy and Revolt During the Long 1970s. (New York: Verso, 2010); Dan Labotz, Rank-and-File Rebellion: Teamsters for a Democratic Union. (New York: Verso, 1991).In tandem with a growing restlessness and outright insubordination in the military as the war in Vietnam dragged on, an upsurge of workers challenged the status quo and the post–World War II narrative of upward mobility and middle-class status.4David Cortwright, Soldiers in Revolt: GI Resistance During the Vietnam War (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2005). Soldiers who were drafted into a war they only half believed in came home to a country deeply divided. Beneath the flag-waving and imperial chest-thumping a new attitude was born.

The endless war in Vietnam, along with the drive for profits at home, produced a consciousness of resistance among many frontline soldiers and workers alike. A growing attitude emerged that challenged the bosses in factories and officers in Vietnam. Soldiers increasingly refused to follow dangerous orders for a war that seemed pointless (or which they opposed on political grounds). Officers who gave reckless orders became targets for fragging (battlefield assassination).5Allthatsinteresting.com. Gina Dimuro, May 14, 2020.

In factories and warehouses resistance was often expressed individually through “work-to-rule” slowdowns rather than coordinated actions, but united unofficial strikes, often led by rank-and-file militants, were not uncommon. Wildcat strikes grew in this period, accounting for a third of work stoppages, with the 1970 postal strike being the largest (with more than 200,000 workers taking part). Miners struck several times in the decade without official notice and gave birth to Miners for Democracy to fight the corrupt Tony Boyle regime in the United Mine Workers.

Between 1968 and 1971, strikes and labor reform movements reached historic proportions. In auto plants, Black-led shop floor organizations like the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement (DRUM) fought the company on the factory floor and racism in the union. Even during the 1974 recession there were nearly as many strikes as in the peak year of 1970.6Brenner, Brenner, and Winslow, Rebel Rank and File, 141.

Against this background a revolutionary current emerged. Elements of this current could be found in the early sixties, but it was the watershed year of 1968 when the radicalization broke explosively into the open internationally.7Philipp Gassert and Martin Klimke, eds., On the Edge of World Revolution. (Montreal: Black Rose Books, 2018); Chris Harman, The Fire Last Time: 1968 and After. (London: Bookmarks, 1988). Millions of young radicals began to draw revolutionary conclusions from their experiences. It was now time to create the organizations necessary to effectively challenge the status quo of war, hunger, and inequality. Revolution was certainly in the air and nourished a generation eager for change. The May events in France suggested that rebellion was growing in the working class—the material force capable of challenging the capitalist system.

Berkeley ISC leaves campus for the factory floor

The Independent Socialists at the University of California, Berkeley under the leadership of the Marxist scholar Hal Draper was the dominant Left organization there in the 1960s, and played a leading role in civil rights, free speech, and peace movements. Loosely affiliated with ISC groups in Chicago, New York, Ann Arbor, and Baltimore—many of whose members had been comrades in the Young People’s Socialist League and the Student Peace Union—the Berkeley ISC student leaders Joel Geier and Mike Parker determined it was time to establish a national revolutionary organization committed to the principles of workers’ self-emancipation: workers’ control of their workplaces, a government democratically elected from councils of workers, and a movement of workers tied to “neither Washington nor Moscow,” but to international socialism. This socialism-from-below orientation differentiated the ISC/IS from most of the emerging revolutionary groups that identified with the so-called actually existing socialist states of China, Cuba, and the Soviet Union. In the end, it was Maoism that attracted the largest following of the 1970s radicals in the United States.

With the inspiration of the French May, and cracks in the Eastern bloc coinciding with the breakup of SDS in 1969, Geier and Parker broke with Draper, who believed that a national organization was unsustainable and that the period of radicalization had peaked.8https://www.marxists.org/archive/draper/1971/alt/alt.htm Further, he considered their rank-and-file strategy to be effectively dual unionism and therefore divisive. Meeting over Labor Day 1969, with representatives from various student clubs (including the ISC) and SDS affiliates, the foundation for a national organization was outlined.9https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/document/is-us/IS-documents/69/69-09.pdf By the end of 1969 the IS had coalesced with a perspective to move off the campuses and join the industrial working class. Toward that goal, Detroit was chosen as the national headquarters and a monthly paper, Workers’ Power, would lead the way.

While it would take a series of internal arguments to cohere the organization, by 1973 the IS was on its way to carrying out its perspective of implementing the rank-and-file strategy.10Kim Moody, In Solidarity: Essays on Working-Class Organization in the United States (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2014), 75–148. The implementation rested on getting jobs in key industries: auto, steel, telephone, and trucking (freight and parcel) were the initial priorities, followed by postal workers in the wake of their impressive wildcat strike. The plan was to establish rank-and-file caucuses in the affiliated unions and to cohere a group of workers who would be a pole for a new kind of orientation,workers’ control of the workplace.11https://solidarity-us.org/rankandfilestrategy/ This would necessarily involve challenging the existing union leaderships that operated under the principle of business unionism—collaboration with the bosses—which had been firmly established in the post–World War II era.

In brief, the perspective of sending students into strategic industries, building opposition groups in unions, and educating a layer of worker-militants to commit to socialism was a monumental undertaking for an organization of less than 300 members. Nevertheless, with commitment high, promising objective conditions, and some early, if modest, successes in locating like-minded workers, any doubts about the strategy were marginalized.

Successes drive the perspective

One measure of success was the number of rank-and-file organizations built in the targeted industries. By 1975, there were four auto caucuses, five Teamster rank-and-file newspapers, and three caucuses in telephone and steel. In addition, teachers in New York and the Bay Area were active in opposition groups in their respective unions. With the help of a targeted pamphlet, The Struggle for Workers’ Power!, and regular Workers’ Power paper sales at main post offices, several postal workers joined the IS in this period.

A significant breakthrough came in 1976 with the Master Freight Agreement (MFA) campaign, led by Teamsters for a Decent Contract, an ad-hoc group of IS implants and fellow militants in the freight industry, as well as United Parcel Service (UPS) workers. The campaign was spread through rank-and-file newspapers and organizations to some twenty cities, and successfully established a national opposition group in the Teamsters Union that materially helped shape a contract outside official union channels.

This success led to a national rank-and-file organization, TDU, launched in September 1976. Its main orientation targeted both local and national leaderships of the Teamsters, offering a rank-and-file alternative. TDU soon established itself as the main reform group in the Teamsters Union and the organization to affiliate with if you wanted to challenge entrenched leaderships in your local.

In tandem with TDU, embedded IS women working at UPS in Cleveland launched their own organization: UPSurge. Based on their experience, they targeted the company rather than the union leadership with a newspaper, UPSurge, and built opposition groups among drivers and package loaders. Their success in the Midwest brought them in touch with a rank-and-file group in Louisville, Kentucky, that boosted UPSurge’s credibility among Teamsters. Targeting company bosses instead of union heads eventually led to friction within the IS Teamster fraction and became a sharp divide in the perspectives debate in 1976–77.

Successes mask underlying conditions

By the time of the 1976 National Convention in July, the IS could point to several successes in implementing the overall labor strategy. Not only had the freight workers been instrumental in building a successful national contract fight, but in the process they had established a viable national rank-and-file organization, TDU. That success led to a handful of key rank-and-file leaders joining the IS, though few stuck beyond the formation of TDU, especially as an economic recession took hold, leading to layoffs and a dampening of militancy. The mass civil rights movements and women’s and gay liberation movements also were forced to retreat to defend their gains.

Independent rank-and-file organizations were replicated in other targeted industries around the country: telephone workers in New York, Louisville, and Seattle, autoworkers in Detroit, California, and New Jersey, steelworkers in Gary and Pittsburgh, and UPS workers in multiple cities showed what was possible. Overall, the successes covered over the many objective and subjective difficulties that were beginning to erode nearly two decades of militancy and protest. As from a flea on the back of an elephant, the view from a limited vista did not produce a picture of the whole animal. The ride was thrilling, but the destination could not be strategically determined with the small forces at hand, despite the high-level of commitment from IS comrades. Nevertheless, the leadership of the IS was prepared to claim success for its perspective at its 1976 Convention in Dearborn, Michigan, and take the next step—mass work.

Misreading the tea leaves

While there were many implementations of the rank-and-file perspective of which the IS could be proud, they were not sufficient to declare victory. Nevertheless, at the 1976 Convention held in the ballroom of the Dearborn Hilton, the national leadership declared that the IS was ready for the “next step in our mass work perspective… In mass work on shopfloors and around economic issues, we try to give a lead to the backward, reactionary, and cowardly workers as well as to the militants.”12https://www.marxists.org/history. “Mass Work, Politics, Building the Party,” 1976 Executive Committee document.

From an orientation on the “militant minority” to a declaration that the IS was now ready to do “mass work” with a membership no larger than 342 (according to the 1976 National Secretary report), raises the question: Who was leading whom? This triumphalist assessment of the organization’s accomplishments suggested that nothing was wrong with the overall perspectives outlined in the 1975 IS pamphlet The Struggle for Workers’ Power, which boldly projected that in the 1976–77 bargaining round,

[W]e will become a workers’ combat group in the lead of a growing rank-and-file movement or be set back severely.

…By three years from now we want [the workers] to be the leadership of the IS, and a working class and black leadership, which has already started the process of constructing factory branches.

We want to double our membership by the next convention [1976]. In the next 2-3 years, we want to have the core of a party—worker cadres, factory branches, national rank and file movements, a weekly paper, a theoretical journal, a strong youth group, and a working class and black leadership.

This outline for the next period was far ahead of the concrete achievements and completely overlooked the material forces at hand. Even if the membership had doubled by 1976, it would still be well short of the numbers needed to carry out these tasks. Indeed, many at the 1976 convention felt that militancy was beginning to wane, though to voice caution without a clear alternative would have led to isolation, or worse. According to National Secretary Glenn Wolf, adherence to the “Workers Combat” perspective would become a condition of membership.13Notes from Steve Leigh, November 1976 joint meeting of Portland and Seattle IS branches.

Radical period begins to ebb

Internationally much had changed since the founding of the IS. By 1974, the Portuguese revolution was in abeyance and in Chile the socialist government had been crushed by a military coup with the help of the CIA. In 1975, the US retreated from Vietnam, thus ending the antiwar movement. The Black Power movement, which gave rise to the Black Panther Party in 1966, was under physical attack as early as 1969 from local and national law enforcement and was slowly being driven to the margins. An Indigenous movement was literally gunned down by federal agents in South Dakota in 1973. These early warnings signaled that defending and building movements would require a growth in solidarity not seen since 1968.

Even the promise of workers’ power seen in the numerous wildcat strikes and other forms of resistance to the boss’s relentless drive for profits was beginning to wane. An economic downturn in 1973–75 and corresponding layoffs had already weakened militancy in the manufacturing sector.14Monthly Labor Review, September 1983.

Domestically, the election of Democrat Jimmy Carter to the presidency in 1976 signaled a shift from the pro-labor Roosevelt era to a program of deregulation and a neoliberal agenda favoring profits at the expense of workers’ needs. Layoffs soon became the norm as capital looked for cheaper locations to retool, either overseas or in the non-union south. Neoliberalism replaced New Dealism as the framework for exploitation, producing a consciousness of self-preservation rather than a spirit of rebellion and solidarity in workplaces.

In retrospect, it is clear now that the IS perspective had reached its limits by 1976. The leadership’s assessment at the Convention that year exaggerated successes and projected a triumphant period ahead. While there were doubters at that convention, they were unprepared to challenge the perspective openly. They did, however, begin to lay the groundwork for a counter-narrative, which would culminate in a formal factional challenge later that fall.

Employer’s offensive

Before turning to the debate that challenged the IS leadership’s perspective, it is important to note the fundamental shift of capital that was underway by the mid-1970s. No longer was capital prepared to invest in the old manufacturing systems, especially in steel, communications, transportation, and auto. The international challenge from one-time foes Japan and Germany forced U.S. manufacturers to close old production systems and seek new locations to retool for profitability.

In the heartland of U.S. manufacturing from St. Louis to Boston, factories and mills were shuttered, giving rise to what became known as “the rust belt.” Jobs that had once given many workers a middle-class life disappeared. International competition for profits now dominated. Workers, especially in the heartland, were the victims. From the promise of a home, a couple of cars, and college for the children, manufacturing workers suddenly found themselves on the dole.

Known as “the employers’ offensive,” this period not only wreaked havoc on manufacturing workers’ lives, but reverberated throughout the working class. Restaurant workers who catered to auto workers, for example, lost their jobs. Detroit, the city built by the auto industry, lost more than 300,000 residents, or 20 percent of its population, in the 1970s. When mortgages couldn’t be paid, whole blocks of houses were abandoned and fell into disrepair, thus hollowing out the city. Weed patches replaced yards, and one-third of schools were shuttered.

Besides the damage inflicted by corporate restructuring, Carter and Congress legislated pro-capital measures to assist in this restructuring. For example, removing regulations on telephone, airlines, and trucking gave rise to cutthroat competition and lower wages. Jobs that moved to the south, where new auto plants were built, were now union free. Wages fell by more than half. Frustrated resistance often turned against foreigners (primarily Asians) for “taking American jobs,” thus replacing solidarity with xenophobia.

By 1980, with the election of Republican president Ronald Reagan, the rout of labor was well underway. To drive home the point that a new era had arrived, Reagan fired striking air traffic-controllers in 1981. Organized labor’s response was to rally in Washington, DC with more than 400,000 workers eager to challenge Reagan’s anti-worker assault. Unfortunately, official union leaderships looked not to solidarity on the picket line, but rather to a march to the ballot box to elect Democrats to Congress in 1982, ignoring the fact that it was a Democrat in the White House six years earlier who had ushered in the offensive against workers. Not only was this a blow to any meaningful resistance to the employer’s offensive, but it initiated doubts in the viability of workers to bring about positive social change through their own initiative.

Warning signals begin to pile up

Yet even before Reagan and the full extent of the employer’s offensive was known, some in the IS began to see the limits of the group’s perspective, especially in its aim of building a “workers’ combat organization” through “mass work.” One clue to these limits seemed obvious to the UPSurge comrades. While UPSurge had built an impressive rank-and-file organization, especially in the Midwest, it was not strong enough to meet the Teamster leadership’s threat to help the bosses fire workers who continued their wildcat strike in 1976.

But it was more than the weakness of UPSurge that signaled the limits of the IS perspective. It was the material pressures on the industrial cadre to adapt to their work environment that exposed the limits of implantation, especially as militancy waned and U.S. manufacturing retooled. Consciousness was shifting away from militancy and solidarity toward self-preservation and adaptation to the emerging neoliberal conditions.

Not comfortable with the exaggerated assessment of the IS leadership at the 1976 convention, and with some prodding interventions from Canadian comrades in attendance, several IS cadre began to question the road ahead. At first, these were informal gatherings of a handful of comrades who mostly asked questions: Why were we only able to recruit a few militants from our rank-and-file work? Why were Workers’ Power sales declining? Are we missing struggles apart from the targeted industries that might be more receptive to our politics? In the wake of the convention several comrades were unconvinced of the strategic role of the mass work perspective and the leadership’s insistence on sticking to the strategy of implantation in strategic industries when layoffs were the order of the day.

Two leading members, Cal Winslow, the industrial organizer, and Barbara Winslow, the women’s organizer, were alarmed by the exaggerated perspective and sought guidance from comrades they had worked with in the British IS in Coventry in 1969. Early in September 1976, the Winslows headed for London, where they met with leaders of the British IS, newly named the Socialist Workers Party (SWP). Here they learned that the British were also alarmed at the IS’s exaggerated industrial perspectives.

Upon returning, the Winslows approached several comrades to determine if a formal opposition should be organized to raise concerns about the mass work perspective. With fifty-eight initial endorsers, the Left Faction assembled in Yellow Springs, Ohio, in early November. Twenty-two members attended the first meeting, along with two comrades from the Canadian IS who had witnessed the debate at the Dearborn convention. A Red Tide representative also attended.

The discussions at this first meeting led to the commission of three documents: “A New Course for the IS,” “Women’s Liberation,” and “Black Liberation.” A later document addressed the Portuguese Revolution, charging the leadership with an exaggerated assessment of the Portuguese Revolutionary Party’s strategy. However, most of the discussion held in branches throughout the four months of debate that followed centered on the leadership’s insistence on doubling down on mass work and sending comrades into the targeted industries even though hiring was at a near standstill.

The Left Faction perspective

On December 8, 1976, the Left Faction submitted a counter-perspective, “The New Course for the IS.”15Marxist Internet Archive, IS Documents Archive, Special Bulletin 3, December 11, 1976. Page numbers in brackets. The twenty-two-page document opened with the following assessment: “We believe the IS is in a deep crisis. The organization’s perspectives have failed. The organization’s politics and policies are shifting to the right.”

Countering the leadership’s assessment that the IS was ready to take the next step toward “a workers’ combat organization,” the LF offered a grim appraisal of the primary areas of work. The auto fraction submitted a sobering report: “We recruited and held no one from the plants in the past nine months. In the same period, we lost a number of members” (p. 6). The telephone fraction efforts were going nowhere and “there is deep demoralization and confusion among those who carry on.” From the steel fraction: “There is dissension in the fraction” (p. 7).

Even amid the major successes—the National Master Freight Contract campaign, the founding of TDU, and the UPSurge-led wildcat strike—the leadership admitted that the IS presence had been “liquidated for a prolonged period of time.” In concrete terms this meant that Workers’ Power had ceased to be integral to the activity of building rank-and-file organizations. The “New Course” charged, “More and more the organization takes on the characteristics of a ‘sect’ in its isolated existence, its frenzied activity, its endless internal meetings, its big talk, to no listeners” (pp. 4-5).

The document went on to argue that the IS’s strategy for building a revolutionary socialist current in the U.S. working class by taking jobs in key industries and challenging do-nothing union leaders was a “substitutionist” perspective that had led to a conservatized and demoralized cadre. Further, it challenged that objective conditions were ignored, thus making any weaknesses or failures of the mass work perspective  “the fault or short comings of the members: a voluntarist load that has crushed many fine comrades” (p. 9).

Whether or not the LF’s assessment of the leadership’s perspective was exaggerated, it nevertheless was a strong indicator that a debate was in order, especially considering the unease among most members in the organization that recruitment had virtually ceased. This fact was especially disconcerting when “mass work” became the description for all IS initiatives, no matter how minor.

The LF argued that the leadership’s adherence to a mass work perspective was confusing: “The IS cannot have it all ways. It cannot, at the same time, orient to the left bureaucracy, and to the ‘cowards and reactionaries’ in the rank and file, and also to the militant minority, in particular to the special demands and struggles of the oppressed” (p. 8).

Black and women’s issues were often lost when adhering to the tenets of mass work. In practice the mass work perspective strengthened “the conservative tendencies already strong in our industrial work.” In other words, the IS was missing its audience.

The principle of “every factory must be our fortress” that “must be the key to building a successful revolutionary workers’ party” (p. 10) in the long run, was acknowledged by the LF, but, they argued, “To reduce the question to one of white-collar vs. blue-collar or workers vs. students misses opportunities in the short-term, especially when conditions have changed.” In addition, “There is no way that a group of 300 can either chart the course of the class struggle, nor can it expect to impose ‘consistency’ on history” (p. 11).

The IS was substituting itself for the lack of militancy among the workers of industries it had chosen as key to the class struggle. Both the mass work perspective and the focus on strategic economic sectors were stand-ins for the real struggles of workers, wherever they might break out. By not coming to grips with the objective conditions, argued the LF, opportunities were being missed to build the organization. Many industrialized members in the targeted sectors, let alone long-time militants, were exhausted and demoralized. “Industrialization conservatizes the individual members and leads to conservatism in the entire organization. It focuses the attention of the organization not on the working class, but on its own middle-class members,” the LF noted. In short, “industrialization is a pessimistic, conservative and a substitutionist strategy” (p. 15).

Perhaps the most serious charge leveled at the leadership’s perspective was that, despite the rhetoric of being “best fighters for Black liberation,” there was little concrete attention paid to Black struggles, nor to training the few Black people who had joined the organization. In fact, the most serious Black work was left to Red Tide, which led a campaign to free a framed Black student, Gary Tyler, from a specious shooting charge. The LF believed it was the adherence to seeking jobs in targeted industries strategy that hampered a consistent plan for Black work, or for that matter, serious women’s work.

By 1976, there was plenty of evidence that the IS perspective had run its course and was only being maintained through a “pseudo-bolshevism” and a perverted interpretation of “democratic centralism”—orders from the leadership without the political backing sufficient to convince the membership that it was on the right track.

In reality, the perspective developed over the life of the organization had ceased to either attract new recruits to the IS or inspire many of its most committed adherents in the organization. It was time to change course.

Key to the perspective advocated by the LF was Workers’ Power, arguing that the small size of the IS required it to maximize its resources with concrete propaganda. Rather than tailing “a nonexistent ‘mass’ audience, at the lowest common denominator,” the paper must be “directed to the advanced workers, those in struggle” wherever they might be—not necessarily in predetermined industries. Furthermore, the paper could prove in practice how real democratic centralism works, when “it actually carries our political ideas” and is used as “our chief interventionist tool” (p. 20).

The LF proposed an outward-looking strategy: “It must turn to the actual struggles of the working class. The IS must develop local perspectives based on the actual conditions in each city and workplace” (p. 21). As the LF pointed out, the best guide for revolutionaries, especially with small numbers, can be found in Farrell Dobbs’ books of the Minneapolis Teamster’s struggles of 1933–34. The LF saw the Communist League’s approach in the 1930s as a model for the IS.

The SWP-UK intervenes

Even before the LF was organized or produced documents, the Central Committee of the British IS/SWP raised the alarm in a six-page letter to the National Committee of the IS in September. The main thrust of its concern was the “triumphalist” assessment of the national Teamsters contract campaign, as well as other efforts in building rank-and-file organizations. They cautioned against the immodesty and exaggeration of the leadership’s perspectives. In blunt terms they also dismissed the focus on strategic industries.

To drive the point home, they offered James Cannon’s observation on the first real success of Trotskyists in the United States:

Our comrades in Minneapolis began their work in the coal yards and later extended their organizing campaign away from the general drivers and helpers. That was not a preconceived plan worked out in the general staff of our movement. The drivers of Minneapolis were not by far the most decisive section of the American proletariat. We began our real activity in the labor movement in those places where the opportunity was open to us. It is not possible to select such occasions arbitrarily according to whim or preference. One must enter a mass movement where a door is open.

In short, the letter argued that the leadership’s perspective was “grossly exaggerated” and was in danger of driving the organization “into increasingly false political positions in an attempt to conceal what will become a growing gulf between pretensions and reality.” Unfortunately, this intervention from a fraternal organization was characterized as traitorous, thus branding any opposition as hostile to the IS project even before the LF emerged.

Was a split necessary?

Was the LF’s call for a new strategy so out of bounds that the majority needed to jettison nearly a third of its membership? In retrospect the split seems indefensible, especially given the conditions of the period and the collapse of the IS less than two years after the debate.

By the end of the four-month debate, both sides were exhausted and ready to move on. In lieu of expulsion (Item 1 of the Special Convention Agenda), the LF proposed a seven-point resolution to avoid a split, including disbanding the LF and accepting the majority perspective without demanding positions on the Executive Committee, even though it represented a third of the organization. Behind the scenes, though, including an Executive Committee meeting with an IS/SWP representative, it was clear that the two sides were ready to go their separate ways and prove in practice their perspectives.

It should also be noted that a small middle faction (Workers’ Power) argued for a compromise. This group, which included the well-known Teamster rank-and-file leader Pete Camarata, left the IS a year later. Soon after, the IS ceased to exist.

Conditions determined perspectives post-split

The guiding politics of “socialism from below” as a principle for revolutionary organization was never in question by any of the contending forces, only how to implement it under unpredictable conditions.

While the IS continued into the mid-1980s (and founded Labor Notes in 1979), its paper Workers Power ceased publishing in October 1978. The ISO and its paper Socialist Worker survived for 42 years and grew to be what was, perhaps, the largest revolutionary Left organization in the United States during the period of long retreat. The ISO strategy focused on campuses, especially those with an activist core. For example, anti-apartheid in South Africa and anti-Gulf War struggles helped radicalize students post-1970s. Through this strategy the ISO was able to introduce student activists to the occasional worker struggles that emerged during the 1990s such as the Caterpillar tractor and Staley sugar strikes in central Illinois and the Hormel meatpacker’s strike in Minnesota.

Several years after the IS collapsed, some of its members, along with recently expelled members of the Socialist Workers Party (US), launched the organization Solidarity, with a perspective of regrouping sections of the Left committed to struggles from below.16The ISO was not one of Solidarity’s targets for regrouping the Left. Solidarity continues to operate as a small socialist feminist organization with a bimonthly magazine, Against the Current.

For any organization aspiring to cohere the self-activity of workers, the lessons—good and bad—from the IS’s decade of trying to build rank-and-file organizations are worth examining. However, the internal debate that concluded that period is integral to understanding the full IS story.

Conditions had significantly changed since the IS’s beginning, and the organization had neither the numbers nor the influence needed to carry its ambitious perspectives forward. In some ways, the IS was a victim of its successes, which blinded it to forces much more decisive than a handful of militant rank-and-file organizations and their socialist backers.

One lesson that stands out from the successes and failures of the IS in the 1970s is the need to temper revolutionary objectives with a measure of modesty. The accomplishments of the IS are inspiring and instructive, but overestimating those accomplishments was fatal for the organization.

Nevertheless, as From the Free Speech Movement to the Factory Floor illustrates, the comrades of the IS, who gave it their all, found the decade they joined the rank-and-file upsurge a meaningful part of their lives, rich with lessons for the current generation of socialists.

Opinions expressed in signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of the editors or the Tempest Collective. For more information, see “About Tempest Collective.”
Featured Image credit: Rafaelgr; modified by Tempest.

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