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A new kind of gold rush is sweeping the West, and this time the prize isn’t minerals but megawatts. From Phoenix to Colorado’s Front Range, data centers are arriving with outsize demands for power and water. In a new report, the regional environmental advocacy group Western Resource Advocates (WRA) warns that without stronger guardrails, the financial and environmental costs could fall on everyday households. 

Across Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Utah, new data centers are expected to create a surge in resource use, raising consumers’ power bills while jeopardizing climate goals. By 2035, the surge in new data centers could send the Interior West’s electricity demand soaring by about 55 percent, WRA warns.   

The unprecedented extent of the industry’s energy requirements risks derailing decarbonization goals in several states. Energy experts say the astronomical power needs may keep fossil fuels like coal and gas in use longer. NV Energy, Nevada’s main utility, now expects its carbon emissions to rise 53 percent over 2022 estimates because of new data center growth. 

Deborah Kapiloff, a clean energy policy advisor with WRA and an author of the new report, highlights the incredible scale of the additional power needed for the region’s tech infrastructure boom. By her calculations, within the next decade, the West’s planned data centers will burn through enough electricity each year to power 25 cities the size of Las Vegas.

Who covers data center power costs?

In some cases, the industry is outsourcing these energy costs to the public. Kapiloff explains that consumers are likely to shoulder the burden of expensive new power infrastructure, because typically utilities spread construction costs across all users. With the unprecedented demand of power-hungry data centers, that logic breaks down. “When the customer is this large, the old assumption that ‘growth helps everyone’ doesn’t hold,” she said.

In Colorado, regulators are struggling to keep up. John Gavan, a former Colorado Public Utility Commission member, says that utilities in his state may need to roughly double total power production within five years to cope. “The scale here is mind-boggling,” he says. “A single hyperscale data center could consume 10 percent or more of the entire state’s load.” 

A recently constructed QTS data center just outside of Denver in Aurora, Colorado. RJ Sangosti / Media News Group / The Denver Post via Getty Images

Officials say that current pricing rules could push higher electricity costs from new data centers onto residential customers. Joseph Pereira, the deputy director at the Colorado Office of the Utility Consumer Advocate, says this may mean rate increases of 30 to 50 percent for households — and those costs could double or even triple in the long term. 

Pereira also emphasizes the risks of building new power generation and transmission for data centers that may never be constructed. “If we build the infrastructure and then data center loads don’t show up, somebody is left holding the bag (for the costs),” he says. “Today, that’s existing customers.”

Water on the line

Data centers also bring heavy demands on water. Near Tucson, Arizona, a proposed data center in the Sonoran Desert of Pima County has become a community flashpoint because of the project’s heavy demands in an already water-stressed region. Initial designs suggest the controversial Project Blue will require “millions upon millions of gallons,” says Pima County Supervisor Jennifer Allen, although the official numbers were not disclosed. 

“Tricking people out of their water is a clear line that, even in this divided country, people agree on,” said Duke University teacher Allegra Jordan. As a community advocate on data center projects, she’s repeatedly seen local authorities asked to approve developments without key information on their impacts.

Community members gather at the Tucson Convention Center on August 4, 2025 for a public forum to discuss the proposed Project Blue data center. Wild Horizons / Universal Images Group via Getty Images

In Arizona, community backlash against Project Blue forced a redesign, and the developer now asserts that the new plans will use little or no water, though Allen says she hasn’t seen any documentation to support that assertion. Kapiloff notes that transparency around water use is a common problem. “We have a lack of information about how much total water data centers are using — it’s a big black box,” she says. 

Where the potential water needed for new data centers can be estimated, the scale is sobering. In Nevada, for example, currently proposed new data centers will consume an estimated 4.5 billion gallons of water in 2030, if built with conventional cooling. That number rises to 7 billion gallons by 2035 — the equivalent of water for nearly 200,000 people.

Fast-tracked deals, facts under wraps

Yet the speed and secrecy of data center development deals often keep even officials in the dark. During the first phase of Project Blue in Arizona, Pima County Supervisor Jennifer Allen says that she and the rest of the board of supervisors were asked to vote on the proposal without having access to the project’s full information, due to NDAs signed by county staff that extended to elected officials. “Shrouded in secrecy was the game,” she says.

Jordan believes that communities deserve informed consent on the impacts that data centers will have on their power bills, water use, and environmental impacts. “The moral issue is whether or not people should have consent in whether or not their power bills go up, or how their water is being used,” she says. 

She also points out that, lured by the promised fiscal gains, local government entities sometimes don’t fully disclose what’s being given away in data center incentives and exemptions. “Often the data center proponents say, ‘this will bring in new property taxes and jobs,’” she says. “But many communities don’t actually understand what they’re giving up. And while the community government is the entity that gets that money, the people paying, in terms of larger electric bills, are everyday citizens.”

Building better: A playbook for responsible development

In response to these mounting pressures, some communities are stepping in with safeguards. After the Project Blue debacle, for example, the Pima County Board of Supervisors implemented new regulatory requirements, including NDA limits and a “sunshine period,” where findings must be made public before votes. Other potential interventions WRA recommends include energy-efficiency requirements, ending tax incentives for data center development, and prioritizing data center projects that commit to renewable power generation.

Consumer advocates like Pereira are also working to ensure that large-load customers pay their own way, helping keep existing customers off the hook if proposed data centers are never built. WRA’s report highlights key tools like specialized rate classes designed to make sure large or unusual customers pay rates that reflect their unique impact, and requirements that data centers pay for their forecasted power needs, even if demand declines or never materializes. Clean transition tariffs, or special electricity rates that help big energy users switch to cleaner energy, could help fund renewable projects to power data centers. Finally, creating standards that keep loads to off-peak hours can help protect both ratepayers and resources.

Energy efficiency best practices and “behind the meter” approaches can help, too. In Europe, innovative models include a cluster of data centers under construction in Finland that will use the heat generated to warm approximately 100,000 homes in Helsinki, and a data center in Norway that provides heated water to support aquaculture nearby. Those techniques can work in the United States too: A new development in San Jose, California is seeking to become one of the most sustainable data centers in the world, embedding energy sources onsite and using waste heat to power equipment chillers. 

While tools like these can help, without swift reforms, even the best planning policies won’t prevent the impacts of rapid data center growth. Many communities are facing aggressive data center prospectors and still lack enforceable guardrails and transparent rules that shield ratepayers from costs and protect the environment. 

As Kapiloff says, “When you have some of the most highly capitalized corporations in the world building these data centers, does it make sense to have that cost be borne by everyday folks? I think the answer to that is a resounding no.”

Western Resource Advocates is a regional nonprofit fighting climate change and its impacts to sustain the environment, economy, and people of the West. The organization is driving state action to advance policies that create a healthier and more equitable future for all communities. As the go-to experts for more than three decades, WRA’s on-the-ground work deploys clean energy and protects air, land, water, and wildlife.

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toolTips('.classtoolTips4','The process of reducing the emission of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that drive climate change, most often by deprioritizing the use of fossil fuels like oil and gas in favor of renewable sources of energy.');

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The West’s new gold rush is the data center boom on Oct 28, 2025.

Labor’s environment laws look set to fast-track development by handing approval powers back to state governments who have shown they can’t be trusted to protect the environment or listen to communities.

They don’t build many basements in Breezy Point anymore, but Ed Power’s got one. Breezy Point is a remote stretch of New York City along the coast of the Rockaway Peninsula, colloquially known as the “Irish Riviera.” A longtime firefighter who retired as a deputy chief, Power grew up in the neighborhood and raised his kids there. For decades, his basement caused no problems.

But over the last 15 years, it’s begun to flood regularly, the water line moving steadily higher. Breezy Point was decimated by Hurricane Sandy in 2012, but Power stuck it out and returned. “The only reason I’m here is because of the ocean. I can see it, I swim in it,” he said. “And the water continues to rise. Another Sandy and I’m out of here.” 

Now Power sees a different threat to the beach: the Williams Company’s Northeastern Supply Enhancement, or NESE, pipeline, which has been revived and fast-tracked over the past few months. The pipeline would add to a 10,000-mile network that runs all the way to Texas, carrying fracked gas from Pennsylvania through New York Harbor and terminating off Rockaway Beach, where it will connect to an existing pipeline off the coast of Long Island.

“Everything about this is a horror,” said Power. Since 2018, the NESE pipeline proposal has been rejected three times because it failed to meet New York’s water quality standards. The state’s Department of Environmental Conservation, or DEC, warned that its construction would dredge up mercury, copper, and other decades-old contaminants dumped off the coast of the city, endangering marine life and the health of local swimmers.

Despite this, Williams recently resubmitted essentially the same proposal, frustrating pipeline opponents who are concerned that the new head of the DEC, appointed by New York State Governor Kathy Hochul in May, could reverse course.

That’s because the White House has stepped in and said that it expects Governor Hochul to do just that. In April, President Trump’s Interior Secretary, Doug Burgum, ordered a halt to a $5 billion wind energy project off the coast of New York, but the administration made an abrupt turnaround a month later. The administration says they cut a deal with Hochul, asking her to allow the pipeline application to proceed in exchange for them allowing the wind project to go forward.

Governor Hochul has denied any quid pro quo, although Anders Opedal, chief executive of the wind project developer, told the Financial Times that the pipeline was “very helpful” in restarting the offshore development. Hochul had called him on May 18 to tell him she’d found a solution to the federal stop-work order; the order was lifted the following day. Though no deal was ever confirmed, Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy nonprofit, filed a formal complaint calling the alleged deal a “lurid political shakedown.” 

Governor Hochul’s office and the Williams company did not respond to requests for comment by a Monday evening deadline. A representative from the DEC said that it was “committed to protecting public health and the environment and subject all permit applications to rigorous review process.” They did not clarify whether or not it was planning to deny the resubmitted pipeline application.

The Williams pipeline proposal was fast-tracked in early July, when the DEC announced that it would be holding a 30-day public comment period with no hearings, which experts say is unusual for a project of this scale. (Previous applications included a public comment period of 45 days and two public hearings.) The public comment period was extended to 45 days after an outcry from environmental groups, but the decision on hearings was final. 

As of press time, the pipeline remains in limbo. Environmental activists worry that the abbreviated process is a sign that the administration has changed its mind on the proposal, in spite of the evidence previously used to justify striking it down.

“The water quality impacts of the pipelines are the same, the science is the same. The climate science is the same or worse. The pipelines are still an expensive [piece] of infrastructure that would be paid for by ratepayers and then become stranded assets when they have to be phased out thanks to New York’s climate law,” said Laura Shindell, the New York State Director of Food and Water Action. “The question is: Is the governor going to knowingly build something that’s been determined to be dangerous, expensive, and unpopular?” 

A report from the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, or IEEFA, found that the NESE pipeline would cost ratepayers an estimated $1.25 billion and provide no permanent jobs; only 9 percent of temporary construction jobs would be located in New York. National Grid, a U.K.-based company that serves as New York’s gas utility operator, claims that the pipeline is necessary to ensure a reliable gas supply during extreme weather, citing a cold snap during 2022’s Winter Storm Elliott, during which New York City came close to outages.

National Grid also pointed to an increase in energy needs from the massive data centers being planned by the country’s largest tech companies, as well as vague plans from the U.S. Department of Energy to build a data center at Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island. But much of the data center hype may also be overblown; across the country, utilities are dealing with duplicative requests and the IEEFA report estimates that as many as 50 percent of projected data centers may never materialize. 

“I can’t argue that these data centers don’t need energy. But that’s how you’re going to justify polluting my water and killing my firemen and warming the planet?” said Ed Power, the Rockaway Beach resident. “Not in my eyes. I can’t argue that point.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline In New York, a pipeline proposal that just won’t die on Oct 28, 2025.

When automobiles first started tearing through American streets a century ago, they weren’t exactly welcome. One of the main problems was that they were killing children: in 1921 alone, 286 children in Pittsburgh, 130 in Baltimore, and 97 in Washington, D.C. Cities memorialized the dead with monuments and solemn marches. A safety council in Detroit commemorated traffic deaths by ringing bells at city hall and churches; another in Brooklyn put up a “Death-O-Meter” near a major traffic circle that kept a running tally of those injured or killed.

It wasn’t just in cities. At the beginning of the 20th century, rural residents revolted as drivers of “horseless carriages” rammed into their livestock and their neighbors. Across the country, they threw stones and dung at cars, shot at them, and trapped them in ditches dug across roads, or with ropes and wires strung between trees. 

The arrival of automobiles was at first greeted with skepticism that they could ever replace horses and then shock at the dangers they posed. Newspapers in the early 20th century called drivers “killers” and “remorseless murderers.” Cars weren’t seen as necessities but rather the dangerous playthings of those wealthy enough to afford them. Today, media coverage defaults to the passive voice and to calling crashes “accidents” even as they continue taking lives — more than 39,000 people just last year in the United States.

This history of hostility to cars has been largely forgotten. “There’s the myth that the Model T rolled off the assembly line, and it was love at first sight,” said Doug Gordon, co-author of the new book Life After Cars: Freeing Ourselves From the Tyranny of the Automobile. Gordon wrote the book, an accessible account of the collective damage the automobile has brought to the world, with his fellow hosts of “The War on Cars” podcast, Sarah Goodyear and Aaron Naparstek.

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It’s part of a growing opposition to car culture in the literary world — a trend that suggests more people are willing to entertain these criticisms than in previous years, at least by publishers’ estimations. September brought the release of Roadkill: Unveiling the True Cost of Our Toxic Relationship With Cars, a philosophical book arguing that cars don’t represent freedom, as we’ve been told, but constraint. Depending on cars drains our bank accounts, limits our transportation options, and locks in damage to our health and the environment. Roadkill was published the same day as Saving Ourselves From Big Car, a condemning investigation of the way automakers, oil companies, and related industries gained control of the road to rake in profits, no matter the consequences.

The facts about cars are alarming: Far more Americans have died from car crashes than from all the wars the United States has fought. The average driver in the U.S. spends more than three-quarters of a million dollars on cars in their lifetime. If the fleet of SUVs around the globe were a country, they would be the world’s fifth-largest emitter of carbon dioxide, behind Russia and ahead of Japan. 

None of these problems are new — in fact, people have been warning us about many of them for decades. So why is it so easy to ignore these glaring flaws? 

A tableau featuring the Grim Reaper and an auto collision serves as a reminder to all personnel at a military base to drive with care over the Labor Day weekend in 1954. Bettmann / Getty Images

One theory is that growing up in a world dominated by vehicles puts them in a collective blind spot. In other words, car culture changes your brain. “It’s so endemic, it’s so pervasive, it’s so ubiquitous that people don’t recognize just how much it is all around them,” said Ian Walker, an environmental psychologist at Swansea University in the United Kingdom. “And if it’s all around you, it’s shaping your perceptions.”

Walker coined the word “motonormativity” to describe this bias, which causes people to apply laxer moral standards to driving than to other activities. Take the matter of air pollution. In 2023, Walker’s research found that 75 percent of people in the United Kingdom agreed with the statement, “People shouldn’t smoke in highly populated areas where other people have to breathe in the cigarette fumes.” But when two words were swapped — “People shouldn’t drive in highly populated areas where other people have to breathe in the car fumes” — only 17 percent agreed. 

The bias can come from a conscious love for cars or it can be learned subconsciously as people go about their days living in places clearly designed for driving, as opposed to those built to make walking or biking easier. Walker’s study earlier this year found that people in the Netherlands, where biking is encouraged by urban design and much more common, have lower levels of pro-car bias than those in the United States or United Kingdom.

The reality is, without great transportation alternatives available, most people find it easier to ignore the risks of getting in a vehicle. “Driving a car or being a passenger in a car is by far the most dangerous thing that most of us do on a daily level,” said Sarah Goodyear, a co-author of Life After Cars (and a former Grist writer). “If you allowed yourself to think about how dangerous that is, it would be debilitating.”

As cars began to dominate the road — pushing out bikers, horse-and-buggy drivers, streetcar riders, and children playing in the street — the early critiques of them mostly faded away. But they never entirely disappeared.

A 1939 issue of the Superman comic book shows the superhero smashing cars after a reckless driver killed his friend. He terrorizes Metropolis’ mayor into rigorously enforcing traffic rules and confronts an auto company executive about prioritizing “profits at the cost of human lives” before wiping out his automobile factory. A few decades later, Ralph Nader’s 1965 book, Unsafe at Any Speed, uncovered how the auto industry resisted safety features like seat belts in favor of making flashy, visually appealing cars, sparking a national conversation that led to President Lyndon B. Johnson signing into law the first mandatory federal safety standards the following year.

Car companies poured a lot of effort into overcoming criticism. The auto industry spread the term “jaywalking” in the 1920s through a campaign to shame and blame pedestrians for traffic deaths, which included Boy Scouts reprimanding people who crossed the street wherever they wanted. In 1939, the same year Superman launched his war on cars, General Motors introduced a utopian vision of skyscrapers and seven-lane highways at the World’s Fair in New York, Futurama, which proved to be the most popular exhibit. It wasn’t long before those highways got built, and cars were sold as symbols of freedom and prosperity, with ads of families riding into the sunset on road trips. Even the phrase “America’s love affair with cars” was an industry invention, first coined in a Chevrolet ad in 1957. 

Automakers still spend billions on advertising every year. Every football game on TV is punctuated by trucks rampaging through fragile deserts, woodlands, and streams, often accompanied by Will Arnett’s husky voice-over. What’s rarely seen is the reality of being stuck in traffic. “The industry isn’t just selling cars with those images,” write the authors of Life After Cars. “What they’re really hawking is a fantasy veiled in chrome and steel, the fantasy of power and control and independence. The American dream on wheels, no matter where in the world one lives.”

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Cars have become intertwined with our lives, not just a practical way to get around but an aspirational one, tied to our social status and identity. It’s a tough combination to break free from, one that would require overhauling the system that feeds us a message of car dependency: the design of streets, the laws that encourage driving, the advertisements, and more. “Until especially the public and the policymakers recognize there is actually a problem, I think we’re pretty stuck,” Walker said. 

Walker has found that his idea of “motonormativity” resonates with people trying to make the transportation system more sustainable and more welcoming to other modes of travel, but not so much with the general population. (Street engineers, he says, are especially hard to convince.) 

Getting people to listen to criticisms of cars may feel as daunting as ever, but Goodyear and Gordon say there are some promising signs. “I would say more people are ready than you might expect,” Gordon said. 

Recent years have given people a glimpse of how the transportation system could change: The burst of outdoor dining after COVID-19 presented a picture of what streets could look like when cities didn’t prioritize cars. E-bikes, too, have become increasingly common, offering another way to get around. Drivers may find themselves open to other options as they struggle to pay for their vehicles, especially as more of them fall behind on their car payments. Policies are changing, too: Earlier this year, New York implemented a congestion pricing plan that put a toll on driving in lower Manhattan. Already, it has led to less traffic, more transit riders, fewer car crashes and cleaner air.

Taken together, these trends help explain why books like Life After Cars are now on bookstore shelves for the public to peruse, not just marketed to bikers and transit nerds. “It’s almost impossible to imagine this book coming out 10 or 15 years ago from a major publisher,” Gordon said.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline What we lost when cars won on Oct 28, 2025.

We know the awful, the stupid, the cruel goes on, but we're heartened by the birth of "a new unified theory of American reality" to help explain the darkness. It's called, "Everyone is twelve now." Suddenly, we get it: the right's puerile idiocy, pointless vengeful assaults on law and decency, poop-bombing and racism, staggeringly simplistic solutions to issues like, "Let's arrest everyone" and "Why don't we just blow them up?" At 12, they learned to slap nasty names on anything they didn't like; now, they still do.

What one grateful patriot calls "the most important political thread of our time" came from one Patrick Cosmos, a musician and frequent Bluesky user who goes by @veryimportant.lawyer. All we know about him is that his moment of snarky political clarity swiftly spread across much of social media - an irony unto itself given that many attribute the current Infantilization of right-wing discourse, at least in part, to a scattershot Internet that gives an instant platform to the most vicious and pea-brained among us. Still, many argue the notion those in power never got past being 12-year-old, emotionally stunted losers deeply resonates in a grim cultural moment of conservative ascendance that feeds on ignorance, bullying, fear and lack of critical thinking.

Opening the door to this moment of unashamed intellectual regression was, of course, the orange cretin who rode down his fake golden escalator and into our nightmares by proclaiming the way to solve the complex, longtime, political and moral issue of illegal immigration was to build a big wall across the southern border of an entire country - a dumb, mean, juvenile, sadistic "solution" on a par with last week's video abomination in which, ever more demented despite his glorious "person, woman, man, camera, TV" recitation, he acted out dropping a planeload of shit on millions of Americans who oppose him, because he's a sociopathic 8-year-old, not yet 12, whose only response to any challenge is to sneer, "Oh yeah? I want to. Watch this."

In an America where "the only two speeds are gun and burger," his knee-jerk, self-serving response was appealing, especially to a frustrated, ill-educated base who'd long been told they had to grow up already. They could say, Cosmos noted, "I’m strong and I want to have like fifty kids and a farm." "Of course you do," he notes. "You're twelve." They could say, "Potatoes are the only vegetables I'll eat, I like guns and I'll cry if you take them away, I want a robot that can draw Star Wars pictures and do my homework, if there's crime we should just send the army, I don't like needles so I'm not getting shots, I want ice cream for dinner which RFK Jr. says is healthy, and I don't wanna watch a Super Bowl where in the middle a guy sings in a different language.

For some, "Everyone is 12" is the explainer, the "cruelty is the point" for Trump 2.0. In our raunchy, Trumpy-world, they no longer had to ditch their worst instincts. They were back in mean-mouthed middle school. They could say nigger or fag, put down women, make fun of disabled people, be consistently wrong but insist by dint of loudness or citing Jesus they were right. They could argue they deserve something and whine about it till they got it. They could trash a girl who doesn't want to go out with them and vow to destroy her life when one day they were powerful. They could remember when they were 12 they learned the word "fascist" or "lib-tard" or "woke" and mindlessly persist in applying the words to anything that threatened or confused them.

Trump lit the flame, offering his base dumb, simple solutions - and visible scapegoats - for big, scary problems. Other factors kept it burning. The deterioration of public education has dumbed down voters, turning them into frightened, ignorant victims vulnerable to misinformation; the National Literacy Institute reports over half of US adults read at a below-sixth-grade level. The democratization of media feeds agitprop, the more sensational, the more fast-spreading, from Hitler's, Mussolini's, Eva Peron's radio broadcasts to Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck to Fox News in every airport and of course the deep dark corners of the Internet, where everyone gets to throw their tantrums and have their malignant say.

Led, still, by the lying Showman-In-Chief. Now in Japan, faced with reality, he's still frantically raving. He won "THREE Elections, BY A LOT." He's "getting the best Polling Numbers...People see how strong the Economy is...Ending 8 wars in eight months, no men playing in women’s sports, no transgender for everyone, rapidly falling Energy prices." NOT. And the "Radical Left Losers are taking fake ads, not showing REAL Polls...saying I’m Polling at low levels...These ads...are FAKE!" The stupid and the lies keep coming, echoes of former V.P. Dan Quayle: "What a waste it is to lose one's mind. Or not to have a mind is being very wasteful. How true that is." Also, "I have made good judgements in the past. I have made good judgements in the future."

The king's jesters, his band of faithful, petty 12-year-olds, do his grade-school dirty work to keep the fictions afloat. Crazed Kash Patel, the alleged head of the FBI, is giving out "challenge coins." Press Barbie, asked who made the bad choice of Budapest for a meeting, retorts, "Your mom did." Pam Bondi, refusing to answer questions about troops headed to Chicago, sneers they're going to protect you. RFK Jr. spews insane claims for autism - Tylenol! Circumcision! - and the gang members nod. A new White House timeline seeking support for the Epstein ballroom stuck in puerile crap - Bill Clinton's blowjob, Obama's turban. After Trump put up the image of an auto-pen in lieu of a Biden portrait, his clowns took and posted leering photos, praising his "sense of humor."

But nobody follows the ditsy, malevolent pied piper as loyally as OG mean girl, dress-up ICE Barbie and her gang, who've been using agitprop, fear-mongering and white supremacist imagery so relentlessly in recruitment efforts that the Dept. of Homeland Security website reads like "a white nationalist content mill, churning out bigoted, jingoistic schlock." According to extremism watchdog Hatewatch, the sources for their mainstreaming of white supremacy include the racist work of a white Christian nationalist published by neo-Nazis - "Report All Foreign Invaders" - and rabid dog-whistles - "INVASION,” “CULTURAL DECLINE,” “HOMELAND”- all imbued with a childish, nostalgic glow: Coke bottle on big red car with, the plea, "America is worth fighting for."

Their latest kitschy mess features knights - you know, American knights in medieval times - wielding swords at each other, urging "Defend your hearth and home" against "the enemies at the gate," like all those brown gardeners. Savage responses include, "The enemies are at the doors of the ballroom...My neighbors are not enemies....You mean the Gravy Seals?...Is the enemy in this room?...Did you run this by a focus group or kindergarten class?...Do Notsee any enemies here." Many reference Monty Python or Charlie Kirk circle jerks, note dudes' swords are aimed at each other, ask, "Is this satire or fascism?" and suggest, "Say we are turning into 1930’s Germany without saying we are turning into 1930’s Germany." Proving, finally, "Everyone is 12 theory remains undefeated."

— (@)

A new Queensland Government groundwater report has identified several Great Artesian Basin-fed springs as at risk from coal seam gas extraction for the first time.

History is unfolding in the Atlantic Ocean right now. Hurricane Melissa has spun up into an extraordinarily dangerous Category 5 storm with maximum sustained winds of 185 mph, and is set to strike Jamaica this afternoon before marching toward Cuba. This is only the second time in recorded history that an Atlantic hurricane season has spawned three hurricanes in that category. Melissa has already killed at least three people in Haiti and another in the Dominican Republic.

The threats to Jamaica will come from all sides. The island could see up to 40 inches of rain as the storm squeezes moisture from the sky, like a massive atmospheric sponge, potentially causing “catastrophic flash flooding and numerous landslides,” according to the National Hurricane Center. Melissa also will bulldoze ashore a storm surge of up to 13 feet — essentially a wall of water that will further inundate coastal areas. “No one living there has ever experienced anything like what is about to happen,” wrote Brian McNoldy, a hurricane scientist at the University of Miami.

It will take some time for scientists to determine exactly how much climate change supercharged Melissa, but they can already say that the storm has been feeding on warm ocean temperatures made up to 800 times more likely by global heating. This is how climate change is worsening these tropical cyclones overall: The hotter the ocean gets — the seas have absorbed 90 percent of the extra heat that humans have pumped into the atmosphere — the more energy that can transfer into a storm. “The role climate change has played in making Hurricane Melissa incredibly dangerous is undeniable,” Marc Alessi, a climate attribution science fellow at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said in a statement. 

Scientists can already estimate that climate change has increased Melissa’s wind speeds by 10 mph, in turn increasing its potential damage by 50 percent. “We’re living in a world right now where human-caused climate change has changed the environment in which these hurricanes are growing up and intensifying,” said Daniel Gilford, a climate scientist at the research group Climate Central. “Increasing temperatures of the atmosphere is increasing how much moisture is in the atmosphere, which will allow Melissa to rain more effectively and efficiently over the Caribbean, and could cause more flooding than otherwise would have occurred.” 

Making Melissa extra dangerous is the fact that it’s undergone rapid intensification, defined as a jump in sustained wind speeds of at least 35 mph in a day, having doubled its speed from 70 to 140 mph in less than 24 hours. This makes a hurricane all the more deadly not only because stronger winds cause more damage, but because it can complicate disaster preparations — officials might be preparing for a weaker storm, only to suddenly face one far worse. Research has shown a huge increase in the number of rapid intensification events close to shore, thanks to those rising ocean temperatures, with Atlantic hurricanes specifically being twice as likely now to rapidly intensify.

At the same time, hurricanes are able to produce more rainfall as the planet warms. For one, the atmosphere can hold 7 percent more moisture per degree Celsius of warming. And secondly, the faster the wind speeds, the more water a hurricane can wring out, like spinning a wet mop. Accordingly, hurricanes can now produce 50 percent more precipitation because of climate change. “A more intense hurricane has stronger updrafts and downdrafts, and the amount of efficiency by which the storm can rain basically scales with how intense the storm is,” Gilford said. Making matters worse, Melissa is a rather slow-moving storm, so it will linger over Jamaica, inundating the island and buffeting it with winds.

As Melissa drops rain from above, its winds will shove still more water ashore as a storm surge. The coastlines of the Caribbean have already seen significant sea level rise, which means levels are already higher than before. (Warmer oceans have an additional effect here, as hotter water takes up more space, a phenomenon known as thermal expansion.) All of this means the baseline water levels are already higher, which the storm surge will pile on top of. “Just small, incremental, marginal changes in sea level can really drive intense changes,” Gilford said. 

Jamaica has an added challenge in its mountainous terrain. Whereas water will accumulate on flat terrain, it behaves much more unpredictably when it’s rushing downhill because it easily gains momentum. “When you get a storm like this that is approaching the higher echelons of what we have observed, it’s harrowing, especially because it is pointing at a populated island with complex terrain,” said Kim Wood, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Arizona. “You’re dealing with a funneling effect, where that water, as it falls, will then join other water that’s coming down the mountainside and exacerbate the impacts.”

Maybe the only good news here is that the National Hurricane Center was able to accurately predict that Melissa would rapidly intensify. And in general, scientists have gotten ever better at determining how climate change is supercharging hurricanes, so they can provide ever more accurate warnings to places like Jamaica. But that requires continuous governmental support for this kind of work, while the Trump administration has slashed scientific budgets and jobs. “We couldn’t do this without continued investment in the enterprise that supports advances in not just science, but forecasting and communicating the outcomes of those forecasts,” Wood said.

Update (October 28): This post has been updated with Hurricane Melissa’s current wind speeds and estimated landfall time.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline How Hurricane Melissa got so dangerous so fast on Oct 27, 2025.

Free Speech For People, a national nonpartisan legal advocacy organization, today filed a formal request urging Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul, Cook County State’s Attorney Eileen O’Neill Burke, and Chicago Police Superintendent Larry Snelling to open criminal investigations into the unlawful actions of federal agents operating in Illinois under the Trump administration’s so-called “Operation Midway Blitz.”

The filing details an escalating pattern of criminal activity by federal agents conducted across Cook County in September and October 2025, including unlawful detentions, violent assaults, destruction of property, kidnappings, and racially motivated targeting of communities of color. Free Speech For People’s letter alleges that these acts were part of a coordinated criminal conspiracy directed by President Donald Trump and senior administration officials, intended not to enforce federal law but to punish and terrorize immigrants and political opponents.

“These are not law-enforcement operations; they are acts of political violence,” said Courtney Hostetler, Legal Director for Free Speech For People. “President Trump and his agents are using the power of the federal government to kidnap residents, terrorize communities, and attack people for exercising their First Amendment rights. State officials have both the power and the duty to act.”

Announced by the Department of Homeland Security on September 8, 2025, “Operation Midway Blitz” was purportedly aimed at apprehending gang-affiliated noncitizens. Yet public evidence, including Trump’s own remarks, shows that the operation’s true intent was to “brutalize, terrorize, and intimidate” residents of Chicago and its surrounding communities.

In the weeks following the operation’s launch, federal agents engaged in a series of violent and unlawful actions, including:

• Killing Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez, an unarmed driver, without cause;
• Raiding homes without warrants or probable cause;
• Rappelling from helicopters and deploying military vehicles in residential neighborhoods;
• Separating families and detaining children without due process;
• Assaulting clergy and elected officials, including the shooting of Pastor David Black and the detention of Alderwoman Jessie Fuentes; and
• Targeting and arresting protesters, journalists, and community leaders engaged in constitutionally protected activities.

At the Broadview detention facility, originally intended for short-term immigration processing, federal agents have unlawfully detained individuals for days in inhumane conditions, denied them access to counsel, and responded to peaceful protests with escalating violence.

The letter outlines numerous violations of Illinois criminal law, including murder, assault, aggravated battery, criminal trespass, burglary, and intimidation, as well as potential hate crimes and civil rights violations. It further contends that Supremacy Clause immunity does not protect federal agents who act outside lawful authority or engage in conduct they know to be unlawful.

“Federal agents do not have a license to commit crimes,” said Ben Clements, Chairman and Senior Legal Advisor at Free Speech For People. “The Constitution does not give the president or his subordinates permission to terrorize citizens or weaponize law enforcement against political opponents. Illinois law applies equally to everyone, including the president.”

Free Speech For People emphasizes that while federal prosecutors have been compromised by the administration’s own misconduct, state and local authorities retain independent jurisdiction to investigate and prosecute crimes committed within their borders.

“When federal officials become the perpetrators of violence and illegality, it falls to the states to defend the rule of law,” said Ben Horton, Counsel at Free Speech For People. “Illinois must not wait for and, with this lawless administration, cannot rely on Washington to police itself.”

To read Free Speech For People’s letter to the Illinois Attorney General, Cook County State’s Attorney, and Chicago Police Superintendent, click here.

To read Free Speech For People’s cover letter to the Illinois Governor, click here.

To read Free Speech For People’s cover letter to the Chicago Mayor, click here.

As the United States grapples with electricity affordability and meeting soaring demand, both red and blue states have begun to embrace advanced transmission technologies (ATTs) as a valuable tool. ATTs, which include grid enhancing technologies (GETs) and advanced conductors, help utilities deliver more electricity through existing infrastructure by routing power more efficiently and safely through existing lines.

Numerous studies have shown that ATTs can be deployed quickly to reduce consumer bills and accelerate interconnection of cost-effective generation. For example, RMI’s Getting Connected in PJM analysis showed that GETs deployment in five PJM states could accelerate interconnection of 6.6 gigawatts of new generation, saving PJM customers more than $1 billion annually.

As pilots and small-scale deployments continue to demonstrate the benefits of ATTs, state legislators have collaborated across party lines to encourage ATTs. Over the past year, 10 red and blue states (seven with republican governors and three with democratic governors) have passed laws to accelerate deployment, joining six states that already had laws on the books.

To realize the lawmakers’ intended benefits, utilities and the regulators that these laws empower must leverage their vested authority to actually deploy ATT solutions and reduce electric bills.

Snapshot of state ATT laws

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While the language in state ATT legislation varies, most follow one or more of the following approaches:

1. Planning laws require utilities, public utility commissions (PUCs), and/or grid operators to study the economics and feasibility of ATTs during resource and transmission planning. Some laws require ATT deployment if studies show they are cost-effective; others leave more discretion to utilities and regulators. Some planning laws require that ATTs be included in integrated resource plans (IRPs) or require large transmission owners to submit a separate GETs evaluation.
2. Siting and permitting laws require PUCs to evaluate ATTs during their considerations of proposed grid infrastructure as part of the Certificate of Public Convenience and Necessity (CPCN) process.
3. Cost recovery laws can guarantee that ATT expenditures can be included in rate base for cost recovery. Montana’s advanced conductors law offers a higher rate of return for advanced conductors through “cost-effectiveness” criteria.
4. Study requirements require state agencies to examine the impact of ATTs without connecting the study to a particular planning or siting and permitting process.

For most these approaches, regulators have significant freedom on how they implement the new laws. If regulators thoughtfully leverage the tools these laws provide, they can cost-effectively expand transmission capacity and reduce bills, as the legislators intend.

Implementing ATTs in planning processes

To realize the value of ATTs, utilities and regulators must include them throughout generation and transmission planning. Because planning with ATTs is relatively new, utilities may need to upgrade their processes. Fortunately, Quanta Technology recently released an Advanced Transmission Technologies Planning Guide that suggests best practices for integrating ATTs into planning.

As detailed in Quanta’s planning guide, optimal IRP planning incorporates ATTs into modeling assumptions. Quanta recommends an iterative study process that co-optimizes generation and transmission planning and solves for both system reliability and least-cost procurement. In this way, planners can optimize investments inclusive of both ATT costs and benefits.

While implementing Quanta’s suggestions may require utilities to upgrade their planning process and software, those relatively small planning investments should yield significant customer savings given the fast return on investments common with ATTs. For example, a dynamic line rating pilot in AEP’s service territory cost $0.5 million to install and paid for itself in about a month, with a total estimated savings of $11 million. Utilities may benefit from working with vendors and other technology experts to develop ATT modeling assumptions, while referring to analysis of recent successful deployments.

Implementing ATTs in siting and permitting processes

Most new state CPCN laws require state PUCs to consider the prudency of ATTs when evaluating new transmission lines, with the presumption that, in many cases, ATTs will reduce upgrade costs. As an example, using the same transmission towers and right-of-way, advanced conductors can double transmission flows at less than half the cost of building a new line. Given expected demand increases, these deployments will likely provide a quicker return on investment as they help avoid or defer more costly upgrades.

Where CPCN requirements are legislated, state PUCs should require that utilities include cost-benefit analysis in their applications. If that analysis is insufficient, regulators could require utilities to resubmit or revise the submission. If utilities decide not to use ATTs as part of the project, they should be required to explain why ATTs were not selected and provide adequate evidence to support their claim. Transmission owners may seek to avoid using ATTs, due to misaligned incentives created by cost-of-service regulation, which rewards regulated utilities for capital expenditures. Because ATTs are so cost-efficient, they can often be overlooked by utilities. Accordingly, PUCs should be prepared to apply a rigorous evaluation of any utility explanation for avoiding the deployment of ATTs.

PUCs should also consider providing pathways for ATTs to act as a bridge technology for new construction. GETs, such as dynamic line ratings, advanced power flow controls, and topology optimization, can increase system capacity and minimize outage durations when new lines are being constructed. For instance, a study by topology optimization provider NewGrid found that reconfiguration of power flow could reduce the cost of power from $600/MWh to $25/MWh at a congested point while transmission reinforcements were built.

From policy to performance: states must act swiftly to close the implementation gap

If implemented robustly, ATT laws could cut customer costs, relieve congestion, and improve reliability. States that lead on implementation will create blueprints for others to follow, showing how to quickly and cost-effectively unlock no-regrets investments. Passing state ATT laws is a vital first step. Now it’s time to turn policy into performance and deliver the modern grid that the moment demands.

The post How State Regulators Can Utilize the Latest Legislative Trend to Make Electricity More Affordable and Reliable appeared first on RMI.

The city of Clyde sits about two hours west of Fort Worth on the plains of north Texas. It gets its water from a lake by the same name a few miles away. Starting in 2022, scorching weather caused its levels to drop farther and farther. Within a year, officials had declared a water conservation emergency, and on August 1 of last year, they raised the warning level again. That meant residents rationing their spigot use even more tightly, especially lawn irrigation. The restrictions weren’t, however, the worst news that day: The city also missed two debt payments.

Municipal bond defaults of any kind are extraordinarily rare, let alone those linked to a changing climate. But with about 4,000 residents and an annual budget of under $10 million, Clyde has never had room to absorb surprises. So when poor financial planning collided with the prolonged dry spell, the city found itself stretched beyond its limits.

The drought meant that Clyde sold millions of gallons less water, even as it imported more of it from neighboring Abilene, at about $1,200 per day. Worse, as the ground dried, it cracked, destroying a sewer main and bursting another quarter-million dollar hole in the town budget. Within days of Clyde missing its payments, rating agency Standard & Poor’s slashed the city’s bond ratings, which limited its ability to borrow more money. Within weeks, officials had hiked taxes and water rates to help staunch the financial bleeding.

“There’s more to a drought than just the cost of water,” said Rodger Brown, who was mayor at the time and is now interim city manager. “It tanks your credibility.”

Drought, of course, isn’t the only climate-driven disaster hitting places like Clyde. Hurricanes, floods, and fires are bankrupting cities across America. After flames ripped through Paradise, California, in 2018, the town’s redevelopment agency defaulted on some of its obligations. Naples, Florida, resorted to selling $11 million in bonds to rebuild its pier after Hurricane Ian in 2022. Earlier this year, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power had a harder time raising money after massive fires swept the city. Kerr County, Texas, is in the midst of raising taxes after devastating floods in July. 

Each episode underscores how climate shocks once seen as exceptional are now straining local budgets. But drought may be the most insidious of these threats. Compared to other types of disasters, it often hits everyone in a community, affects large areas, and can last months, if not years. There are also fewer defenses and relatively limited government assistance. Experts worry that drought could ultimately prove an enormous risk to the $4 trillion municipal bond market that underwrites everything from roads and schools to the water running through millions of taps.

“I personally think this is a dark horse in the conversation right now,” said Evan Kodra, the head of climate research for the financial data company Intercontinental Exchange, or ICE. “It should be a bigger deal.”

This year alone has seen droughts in at least 43 states, from Vermont to California, affecting 125 million people. And ICE projects that more of the currently outstanding municipal debt will be located in areas prone to drought by 2040 than hurricanes, floods, and wildfires combined. The financial effects of prolonged water woes can mount in ways not seen in one-off events, said Jeremy Porter, the chief economist at First Street Foundation, a nonprofit climate research firm.  

“Drought is one of those things, if there is an impact, there’s a step-function impact,” he said. “You just don’t have the capacity to cover the risk.” 

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Average weeks per year in severe drought conditions

30-year change in drought risk

Increase in severe drought weeks from current conditions to 2055

Source: First Street Foundation Clayton Aldern / Grist (function() { const INIT_KEY = '__grist_drought_maps_initialized__'; if (window[INIT_KEY]) { return; } window[INIT_KEY] = true; })();

Droughts are particularly difficult for cities to guard against. While building codes and insurance discounts can encourage homeowners to raise their houses, use wind-resistant shingles, or clear brush to slow fires, the options for making sure people have enough water are far more limited without curbing development. 

Also unlike with its headline-grabbing cousins, drought has a much weaker federal safety net when something does go wrong. The Department of Agriculture offers some aid to farmers, but there’s little funding for individuals or municipalities. The Federal Emergency Management Agency hasn’t issued a drought-related emergency or disaster declaration in the United States since 1993, despite states requesting aid. “There is no adapting to drought,” said Porter. “The federal government is probably not going to come in.” 

As the planet warms, the dry conditions that sent Clyde into the financial abyss are only set to become more frequent and more intense. Intercontinental Exchange researchers found that even in a “best-case” climate scenario, drought, heat stress, and water stress will place billions of dollars of municipal bonds at risk by 2040. Under a worst-case situation, that number could reach hundreds of billions. While Clyde’s default was relatively tiny, municipal debt is the bedrock of everything from hedge funds to retirement accounts, making a string of such events potentially catastrophic for the economy.

But well before dramatic rolling defaults, the financial pressures of drought will likely alter daily life in many regions. That’s already the reality for one community in Arizona, where the rush for water has turned into a years-long financial and political standoff.

Rio Verde Foothills lies on the outskirts of Scottsdale. Residents there have been trucking water in from its larger neighbor ever since the unincorporated, “wildcat” development was founded in the early 2000s. The arrangement worked well until 2021, when a severe drought gripped the area, and Scottsdale decided it could no longer spare the dwindling resource. Cut-off residents of Rio Verde scrambled and eventually signed a $12 million contract with the state’s largest private water company, Epcor Utilities, to build a permanent supply line.

Three years later, though, the feud continues. Scottsdale agreed to keep providing water through the end of this year while Epcor Utilities built new infrastructure. But construction is months behind schedule and Scottsdale is sticking to its deadline — leaving the foothills once again facing a cutoff. (Epcor remains confident this won’t happen.) 

Even when the new line is connected, Rio Verde Foothills residents could see their water bills double or triple. Hikes like that are going to be a far wider concern across the West than outright disconnection, says Sara Fletcher, an environmental engineer at Stanford University who works on water scarcity issues. “Water prices are going up, and up, and up,” she said. “They are going to go up much faster than inflation for the past decade.” 

City of Clyde, Texas

The irony of drought is that as people conserve water to combat it, there is less money for the utility, whose costs remain relatively fixed. That results in “drought surcharges,” or other fees, for customers. It’s a cycle that was on full display in Clyde. 

By August 2023, the wave of aridity that hit West Texas had stretched for months, and officials in Clyde declared a stage 2 water emergency, which targets a 20 percent decrease in demand. By the following year they raised it to stage 3, or a 30 percent decline — one step below mandatory rationing. The measures worked, but at a cost. “Water sales are one of the main things that a city, almost any city, has,” said Brown. “That’s big for a city’s revenue generation.”

According to Clyde’s financial statements, it sold 7 million gallons less in 2023 than the year prior. It also had to import water from nearby Abilene at a premium of around $3 per thousand gallons. While Brown didn’t know exactly how much Clyde bought, he said it wasn’t as much as in some previous droughts but still significant. The bigger blow came when the parched ground split, shifted, and ruptured a major sewer line. The roughly $250,000 repair bill turned the cracks in the town’s finances into crevasses.

“You can’t have people out here without the services. So we had to fix it,” he said. These new liabilities and dwindling income came on top of millions of dollars in debt that Clyde had amassed over the years, despite having kept taxes or utility prices relatively flat. It created what Brown called a “perfect storm.”

On August 1, 2024, the city missed two bond payments — one for $354,325, another for $308,400 — and filed a claim on its bond insurance to cover them. By the end of the year Clyde had failed to meet a total of $1.4 million in liabilities. Standard & Poor’s slashed the ratings of the bonds with missed payments from A- to D, and the city’s creditworthiness to B, moves that will raise future borrowing costs for the city. 

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While drought wasn’t the whole story, Brown called it a “significant reason” for Clyde’s woes. Whatever the cause, the fallout rippled quickly. The city council raised property taxes by 10 percent and tacked a $35 surcharge onto monthly utility bills. “We have people in this very room who have to decide already, do I buy medicine [or] do I buy groceries?” pleaded one person at a city council hearing. “This is reality in Clyde. You can’t raise their typical water bills any further.”

So far residents have absorbed the added costs, which has allowed the city to continue to operate. But the spiral from expensive, inaccessible, or nonexistent water could have been much worse. High bills can lead to compromises in daily life, whether that be letting parks wither or skipping showers. Over time, those inconveniences could make a town a less desirable place to live, which, in turn, might result in lower property values, a dwindling tax base, and, consequently, more financial troubles.

“If you don’t have water, if you don’t have a functioning city, there is a vicious cycle dynamic that could come into play,” said Kodra at Intercontinental Exchange. “Once your property tax base is decently lower than it was, then it’s harder to borrow money to dig out of that hole.”

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First Street Foundation estimates that 11.1 million Americans are expected to move due to strained water resources by 2055. While it didn’t isolate drought specifically, the analysis also found that property values are slated to drop by $1.47 trillion over that same time period due to climate risks. 

“We haven’t hit the point yet where people can’t get access to water,” said Porter. But there are inklings of that future, especially in the West. In Arizona, for example, water supply requirements for new developments are already beginning to halt some new construction.. According to Fletcher, “the fraction of the population that will face unaffordable water in the future is likely to increase unless we do something major.”

First Street also provided Grist with county-level data showing how the risk of prolonged water scarcity will change over the next 30 years. Of the 10 counties with the largest jump over that timeframe, seven are in Texas and three are in Florida. By 2055, more than 20 counties across the West will have a one in five chance of being in severe drought for at least 11 months out of the year. Over 500 counties could see six or more months. According to Fletcher, “the fraction of the population that will face unaffordable water in the future is likely to increase unless we do something major.”

Solutions won’t be easy to come by, and certainly won’t be painless. One logical conclusion might be that municipalities that are at risk of climate impacts — like Clyde with drought or Tampa Bay with hurricanes — should simply pay more for their debt. In most sectors, risk and interest rates traditionally correspond but, according to multiple studies, that’s not the case with municipal bonds. 

“Climate poses a systemic credit risk to the municipal industry, of which it has never experienced,” said Thomas Doe, founder of Municipal Market Analytics. “[But] the marketplace is not pricing climate risk into bonds.”

The conundrum arises from the fact that people primarily buy municipal bonds to receive tax-exempt dividends. Demand, therefore, isn’t particularly sensitive to the price of the bond, but rather the risk of default, which remains extremely low. Another major bulwark against climate pricing has been the federal government, which pumps billions of disaster aid into communities across the country — money that would have otherwise come out of state or municipal budgets. 

“Bonds initially dip in price on the news of the event. Then they end up recovering because the federal government essentially rebuilds,” explained Doe. That support is in jeopardy with President Donald Trump’s deep cuts to government spending, and that could eventually trickle into the municipal market. In the absence of aid, Doe says, bonds could start being priced in accordance with the risk.

Not all climate debt, however, is bad. 

This fall Norfolk, Virginia, is planning to break ground on a $2.6 billion flood protection system, featuring a nearly 9-mile long seawall. The city is responsible for roughly $1 billion of that cost and is expected to issue new debt to help cover it. But Doe says that this type of climate-adaptation debt is generally considered good and should be encouraged, explaining that “if it’s proactive, credit ratings look favorably.” 

While you can’t build a wall against drought, the same principle applies for the admittedly limited tools that are available. Cities could, for instance, spend money making their water system more efficient, or building gray water recycling projects. Green infrastructure can also help keep rain from running off. More drastic steps might involve relocating people or repurposing especially dry land for other uses, such as clean energy.

Although Clyde isn’t yet at a point where it’s climate-proofing its infrastructure, Lake Clyde is spilling over this year. That has provided the city a respite during which it can financially heal. Brown says the city has repaid its bond insurer, is back on track with debt payments, and is slowly rebuilding its emergency funds. The hope is that higher prices making the city’s recovery possible will mean less pain the next time the water runs low.

“We haven’t dug completely out,” said Brown. “But we’re still digging.”

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This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Drought is quietly pushing American cities toward a fiscal cliff on Oct 27, 2025.

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(bring cash for tips!)

Food and agriculture will be under the spotlight at the upcoming round of global climate negotiations in northern Brazil.

Representatives from nearly every nation will gather from 6-21 November in Belém, a regional capital and gateway to the Amazon, with most countries far off target to deliver deep cuts to carbon emissions — the only way to halt the worst impacts of catastrophic climate change.

Some food and climate groups hope this thirtieth annual Conference of the Parties (called COP30) summit can be a game changer for reforming food systems, which emit around a third of all a third of all greenhouse gases.

After all, Brazil — which holds the presidency of COP30 — has a reputation for skilled diplomacy, and has made agriculture objective number three on the conference agenda.

At home, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has lifted millions out of hunger, and pledged to protect endangered ecosystems in the Amazon rainforest and Cerrado savannah. Brazil also has clout as the world’s eleventh largest economy, as well as an agriculture powerhouse where multi-billion-grossing beef and grain exporters rub shoulders with the state-supported family farms that produce most of the nation’s food.
 
But advocates for ambitious food system transformation will have their work cut out in Belém, where they will run up against entrenched opposition led by Brazilian agribusiness, which has been preparing its lines of attack throughout 2025.

The agriculture sector is under pressure to clean up. It produces a cocktail of harmful and potent climate-heating emissions  — from the nitrous oxide emitted by fertilizers, to the rising volumes of methane released from the digestive tracts of the world’s 3.5 billion cows, sheep, and goats. 

The United Nations’ foremost climate science body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has made clear that climate action must include swift reductions in emissions from food and farming. Big Meat, in particular, is in the spotlight as the source of nearly a third of methane emissions.

Campaigners have described slashing agriculture’s methane pollution — which outstrips that of the oil and gas industry —  as “the fastest and most cost-effective lever available to slow warming within our lifetimes.” The best way to pull this “emergency brake,” according to peer-reviewed science, is to consume less red meat — particularly in rich and middle-income nations.

But in Belém, agribusiness will insist that it is, in fact, the solution to climate change. To keep cuts to production off the table, delegates from Brazil, the United States, and other livestock producer nations will downplay agriculture’s impacts, argue for technical solutions that cannot reliably reduce emissions, and cast binding regulation of their industry as a threat to human health, prosperity, and well-being. 

In a move welcomed by civil society and policymakers, the Brazilian COP presidency has championed “Information Integrity” at this summit to fight back against the tidal wave of climate mis- and disinformation. But agriculture’s greenwashing is harder to spot.

Here are eight arguments to be ready for in Belém:

Regenerative Agriculture Served with: grass-fed beef, regenerative grazing, carbon farming, carbon positive

Free from universally accepted definitions or standards, the term “regenerative agriculture” — which broadly references environmentally friendly farming practises that can lead to increased storage of carbon in healthy soils — is a firm favourite in the net zero plans of polluting firms like McDonalds and Cargill.

It’s the subject of no fewer than 27 panels scheduled for the climate summit’s “Agrizone Pavilion” (one of several spaces holding themed events on the sidelines of the official negotiations), which is hosted by Embrapa, Brazil’s public agriculture research body, and sponsored by both Nestlé and pesticide firm Bayer.

The cropland practices loosely grouped under “regenerative,” such as organic and no-till farming, have benefits that do include long-term storage (or sequestration) of carbon in soil, along with boosting biodiversity.

However, a growing body of science has found that carbon sequestration in soil can offset at best a tiny fraction of the agriculture sector’s emissions. 

The beef industry, in particular, likes to insist that regenerative cattle grazing and manure management can significantly lower the sector’s carbon emissions — which are roughly equivalent to the entire nation of India.

 
At past climate summits, organizations like the Protein Pact, a lobby group for the U.S. meat industry, have stressed the environmental gains mady by flagship ranches to suggest that intensive cattle farming is synonymous with sustainability and nature protection.
 
 But meat’s outsized contribution to methane emissions leaves scientists in no doubt of the industry’s impacts — and how to tackle them.

Grass-fed beef hamburgers for sale at a Costco in Los Angeles, California. (Credit: David Tonelson/Alamy)

In a 2024 survey of 200 experts, published by the Harvard Animal Law and Policy Program, 85 percent agreed that “animal-sourced” foods must reduce in the diets of rich and middle-income nations to bring about a 50 percent drop in  livestock’s greenhouse gases by 2050, to stay within the climate goals agreed in Paris.

Note: Touting regenerative credentials also holds financial promise for agribusiness. Recent changes to the Paris Agreement have opened carbon markets to “soil-based credits,” which are now being traded under UN markets.

Tropical Agriculture Often paired with: regenerative agriculture, climate-neutral, carbon offsets

Brazil’s “special envoy for agriculture,” Roberto Rodrigues, will come to COP30 ready to persuade negotiators that his country can take lead in “low-carbon tropical agriculture.”
 
This Latin American twist on regen ag is used to suggest that warm-region soils and tree planting can absorb enough carbon to offset the methane generated by Brazil’s 195 million head of cattle. 
 
In the lead up to the summit in Belém, major agriculture polluters have invoked tropical agriculture to make “carbon neutral” claims. Among them is Brazilian meat giant JBS, which had greater methane emissions in 2024 than ExxonMobil and Shell combined. 

The scientific underpinning for this idea comes largely from Brazil’s state research agency Embrapa. Its “low-carbon” and “carbon-neutral” beef labels are now central to the industry’s marketing.

But independent research shows soil cannot absorb enough methane to offset livestock emissions in the region. “Emissions from livestock can be reduced,” says leading soil scientist Pete Smith. “But any claims that soil carbon could be increased to anywhere near the extent to offset emissions in preposterous – and not supported by the evidence.”

Other experts question elements of Embrapa’s methodology, saying it does not sufficiently account for the fact that most Brazilian pastures are created by clearing forest, which releases far more CO₂ than new trees can recapture.

Cattle grazing on cleared tropical rainforest land in the Amazon region, Para, Brazil. (Credit: Jacques Jangoux/Alamy)

Claudio Angelo, the chief communications officer at Climate Observatory, a coalition of climate NGOs, agrees that Brazilian farming has made improvements that can sequester carbon on a limited scale — by recovering degraded pasture, managing grazing, and integrating agro-forestry into cattle farms.

But to call the sector highly sustainable based on this would be “intellectual dishonesty,” he recently told Bloomberg.

Angelo points to the wider context. Brazil’s methane footprint has risen 6 percent since 2020, and agriculture drove over 74 percent of its total emissions in 2023. The expansion of croplands and cattle operations has also driven the loss of 97 percent of native vegetation over the past six years.

The cheerleaders of tropical agriculture insisting that their sector can continue to grow are out of step with the scientific consensus. A September 2025 paper published in the peer-reviewed journal One Earth found that current food system trends present an “unacceptable risk,” and prescribes changes to diets in all scenarios to stay within a livable climate, and to avoid tipping points past which major ecosystems such as the Amazon rainforest and coral reefs cannot recover. 

“To align with the Paris Agreement, absolutely huge reductions in feed production (including grazing) and animal-sourced food  production would be required in this region,” said Harvard University climate and food systems scientist Helen Harwatt in an email. A “massive  reduction in beef consumption” is also needed, she said, noting that Brazilians eat 20 percent more beef than Americans, even though the U.S. is the world’s leading beef producer. Harwatt contributed to the Harvard Animal Law and Policy Program’s report.

Yet if a recent COP30 position paper from the Brazilian Agribusiness Association (ABAG )  is anything to go by, the trade group will be promoting its industry at the summit as a “low-carbon agriculture leader” — and make no mention of the need to reduce livestock.

Special Envoy Rodrigues has gone a step further. He is fronting an industry call for allowing Brazil, and countries like it, to factor carbon sequestered in soil through tropical agriculture into their emissions reporting.

In response to questions, Embrapa stated in an email that “emissions related to deforestation are embedded in the carbon calculator over a 20-year timeframe,”  adding that “the protocols [Low-Carbon and Carbon-Neutral Beef] are scientifically grounded and follow metrics recognized by the best available science.”

No Additional Warming Often associated with: climate neutrality, GWP*, tropical agriculture

The subject of how to best measure methane emissions is likely to come up frequently in Belém, as nations with long-standing, large, and highly polluting livestock industries attempt to lock in methodologies that work in their favour.

Their tool of choice is GWP* or “global warming potential star.” Used at a global scale, GWP* can be a helpful metric for comparing the growth in emissions of short-lived heat-trapping gases like methane with the impacts of long-lived CO2. The controversy arises when GWP* —  which is not used by the IPCC — is applied by a nation or corporation to itself. This leads to dramatically understating the emissions of large meat and dairy producers, while small increases elsewhere are punished.

Promoters of GWP* include powerful U.S., Australian, and Latin American industry groups along with the Oxford University academic Myles Allen, who first developed the metric. This year, for the first time, its proponents include governments — most recently New Zealand, which just enshrinedGWP* into its domestic climate goals and thereby weakening its target for cutting methane pollution.

Called an “accounting trick” by critics, and dubbed “fuzzy methane maths” in a 2021 Bloomberg Green headline, researchers warn that adopting GWP* will disguise rising methane emissions, allowing big polluters to claim “climate neutrality” without cutting herd sizes or methane output.
 
Environmental scientist and economist Caspar Donnison likens GWP*-backed claims of climate neutrality to “claiming you’re fire-neutral because you’re pouring slightly less petrol on the blaze.”

A global group of climate scientists has publicly advised against adopting GWP* as a common metric on the grounds that it “creates the expectation that current high levels of methane emissions are allowed to continue.” 

Oxford’s Allen, meanwhile, has called COP30 an “opportunity to “reframe climate policy” around alternative metrics like GWP*. In response to a request for comment, Allen said in  email, “I think corporate and national climate claims should be informed by their impact on global temperature. I don’t mind how people calculate this, provided they do so accurately.”

Agribusiness trade groups in Brazil have picked up the baton, adding GWP* to their tropical agriculture toolkit, and Embrapa’s support for the metric is growing.
 

Bioeconomy Often paired with: circular economy, biogas, biofuels, socio-bioeconomy

Much like regenerative agriculture, the term “bioeconomy” encompasses varied ideas for transforming production and consumption to make economies run in harmony with nature. 

The term has taken on an altogether different hue, however, since it become a byword for green growth in Brazil and Europe, embraced by both agribusiness and government. Critics say they have hijacked the term to put a green spin on the expansion of destructive farming.

In the hands of  corporations such as Cargill and dairy firm Arla, bioeconomy has morphed into a byword for a set of controversial, supposedly “green” fuels, such as so-called “biofuels.” Typically, biofuels refers to liquid fuels produced from organic materials (termed “biomass”), ranging from corn-based ethanol, a gasoline additive, to biodiesel from soybean oil. In the U.S., animal fats from meat processing plants are another major feedstock for biofuels, according to the Energy Information Agency.

Environmental scientists and campaigners have strongly critiqued biofuels because their production at scale requires using vast large tracts of land for monoculture crops of sugar cane and soy, which can lead to deforestation and biodiversity loss, as well as create competition with food crops.

The nations in the Global Biofuels Alliance, launched at the September 2023 G20 Summit in New Delhi, India, are among the world’s biggest food exporters and fossil fuel producers. Standing from left, Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, U.S. President Joe Biden, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Argentine President Alberto Fernandez, Mauritius Prime Minister Pravind Kumar Jugnauth and UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed. (Credit: Brazil Presidency)

Meat giants such as JBS, as well as food multinationals like Cargill, are also expanding into biogas: methane gas captured from sources such as manure or decomposing crop waste. Advocates for biogas are attempting to brand it as “clean” energy that may become a viable substitute for natural gas-fired power. However, it’s not yet clear whether biogas can be produced at industrial scale, with one recent analysis suggesting it may replace no more than seven percent of gas-fired power.

Worse still, since biofuels are produced from organic matter, they still release greenhouse gases when burned. An October study by advocacy group Transport and Environment found that for every unit of energy biofuels create, they emit 16 percent more CO2 than the fossil fuels they replace, due to the associated impacts of farming and deforestation.

As a major producer of ethanol from sugar cane, Brazil will bet big on bioenergy at the climate summit. According to a leaked document seen by The Guardian,  Brazil plans to champion a global pledge to quadruple what it insists are “sustainable fuels,” chiefly biofuels and biogas.

We Feed the World Often paired with: efficiency, emissions intensity, Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), nutrition, “Brazil is only just off the hunger map”

The meat industry put this claim front and centre in its lobby plan for COP28 in Dubai, and it’s likely to make a comeback this year at COP30, particularly around Brazil’s anticipated launch of the “Belém Declaration on Hunger and Poverty”. 

Agribusiness will employ this argument to suggest that any attempt to regulate the industry in line with science-based recommendations to safeguard the climate will make the poorest go hungry.
 
This claim hides an inconvenient truth: The planet already produces 1.5 times more food than it needs, yet hunger persists because of waste, poverty, and inequality — exacerbated by rising climate impacts.
 
 Hunger is solved by politics and good policy, not production. While animal agriculture remains vital to healthy diets in some parts of the world, research shows that expanding industrial meat and dairy has done little to improve food security in low-income nations. Instead it is fuelling over-consumption in wealthier countries, where excess intake of meat (especially red and processed meats) has been linked to ill health.

Around 50 percent of maize and 75 percent of soy goes to animal feed, not people. Climate scientists and the EAT-Lancet Commission have stressed that cutting meat production in high-income countries would free up vast areas of cropland for grains and pulses that could feed many more people, with far fewer emissions.
 
 A 2016 study showed that it is smallholder farms that supply the majority of food in the regions that are home to the highest numbers of people going hungry, producing more than 70 percent of calories in Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, and Southeast Asia. 

When Brazil exited the UN hunger map — rightly celebrated as a huge step forward — its success came not from agribusiness exports, but from the state’s local food policies and investments in small farmer support programmes.

The EAT-Lancet Commission — which looked how to feed all the world’s people a healthy diet without breaching planetary boundaries — has proposed a diet richer in whole grains, legumes, and seeds for protein. The commission’s landmark 2019 report suggested that people should eat an average of 50 percent less red meat in all but two regions of the world. 

Other studies have confirmed that reduced consumption of meat would be a global win-win-win by reducing climate-heating pollution, conserving biodiversity, and improving human health.

As climate changes’s impacts worsen, the real challenge, according to University of Texas professor Raj Patel, lies in how to channel funds to more resilient and diverse “agroecological” systems, which receive a fraction of the financial support provided to industrial agriculture, rather than by expanding factory farming under the guise of feeding the world. 

Big Ag Is Progress and Development Often coupled with: economic development, Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

Scan Brazilian radio and social media during the summit, and you may hear the catchy strains of “agronejo”, a genre of country music with twists of hiphop and electronic pop, which paints agriculture as synonymous with wealth, prosperity, and power.
 
 Agronejo is just one example of the agribusiness industry’s powerful cultural PR campaign in Brazil, where it has it’s own TV channels, programmes and publishers, as well as dedicating resources to “build empathy for producers” among children in Brazilian schools via textbooks, audiobooks, and teacher resources (a tactic also used in Ireland and the U.S). 

As the climate conference approaches, JBS is sponsoring COP30 content in major Brazilian newspapers including Valor Economica, El Estadao, and El Globo.

This line of mythmaking casts agribusiness as a modernising force throughout the global South. In JBS’ recent announcement about expansion into Nigeria, it stated that its factories will create jobs and bolster food security — claims disputed by local food system experts.

By contrast, small producers in the global South are framed as unhygienic,  and much more polluting than industrial-scale meat and dairy operators, which claim their carbon emissions are much lower per kilo of milk or meat produced.   

This arguments subtly shifts the emphasis from the sector’s total greenhouse gas emissions — where high and upper-middle-income nations sit at the top of the list, far outweighing the  10 percent of pollution produced by “inefficient” low-income nations,

Evidence suggests that agribusiness claims about wealth and jobs also ring hollow. A 2025 study showed that even though farmers in the global South produce 80 percent of food consumed globally, profits from agriculture are disproportionately captured by governments and companies in the global North, via high-profit activities such as the marketing and distribution of food.

In the run-up to COP30, which small farmers are billing “the agribusiness summit”, Brazilian civil society is holding a People’s Summit that will compete with Big Ag’s shiny PR for tech-driven solutions. Focused on an alternative vision of agriculture, the People’s COP will champion locally-grown and sourced foods, and the power of Brazil’s ecologically-minded smallholder farmers to nourish Brazil’s population.

Efficiency Is Enough Often paired with: emissions intensity, innovation, new technologies, producing “more with less”, “We feed the world”

Global North dairy farms, which send large numbers of delegates to climate summits, are going to press home the argument that its portion of climate crisis can be fixed through efficiency, not transformation.

By producing “more with less,” they say, carbon emissions can fall even as supplies of milk and butter continue to grow. They argue this is possible thanks to technologies such as feed additives that reduce dairy’s  “emissions intensity”: the amount of methane created per pint of milk produced.

On close inspection many of the bold carbon reduction targets announced by dairy firms are of intensity, not absolute pollution, which continues to grow. The latest industry figures show, while these groups touted emissions intensity reductions of 11 percent from 2005 to 2015, emissions of the dairy industry rose overall by 18 percent  — due to herd sizes growing by nearly a third.

Danish dairy giant Arla, New Zealand’s Fonterra and China’s Mengniu are among those to have set reduction targets for their Scope 3 (supply chain) missions on an intensity basis only.

Unless limits are placed on production — which agriculture is hellbent on avoiding at all costs— there is no guarantee that more efficient production will bring down pollution.

That’s because making something more efficient usually means you use more of it, not less — a phenomenon known as the Jevons paradox. Dairy companies in Ireland, for example,  pollute less per unit of milk, but they have done so by scaling up production. And the money saved was ploughed into increasing herd sizes. The result? According to the latest available figures dairy’s methane emissions continue to rise. 

It’s a testament to the power of the livestock lobby that the “solutions to climate change” which took centre stage in the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO)’s long-awaited 2023 “Pathways to lower emissions” livestock report were … “technology” and “voluntary efficiency”, which would allow the sector to keep growing. This conclusion ignored the peer-reviewed science that consistently comes down in favour of prioritizing government policies that shift diets away from animal products, with technology playing a minor role.

Fertilizer and pesticide giants — which are also under pressure to lower both climate-heating emissions and environmental impacts use efficiency-based arguments too, such as touting drones, precision spraying, and chemical-coated seeds as green solutions.

However, agrochemicals are key drivers of ecological destruction and the pollution of soil, air and water, and are most heavily used to support production of damaging monocrops, which are at the core of industrial animal agriculture systems.

While small efficiency improvements matter, experts warn they are no substitute for absolute cuts in methane, fertilizer, and land use change. “Efficiency” may be good for business—but not for the planet.

Fossil Fuels Are the Real Problem Often paired with: “Agriculture is a solution,” “Agriculture is unfairly villainized,” “We are making great strides in reducing our emissions”

When challenged on agriculture’s climate impacts, farm lobbies have a history of deflection: pointing the finger of blame elsewhere.

Ahead of the climate summit, Latin American trade bodies are trying to get themselves off the hook by shifting the blame onto the fossil fuel industry. One major trade group has bemoaned how recent conferences have had a “distorted” focus on agriculture over “obvious sources of emissions”.

For its part, the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA) — which represents large producer countries — has declared that its goal in Belém will be to “remove [agriculture] from the dock of the accused.” In response to a request for comment, Lloyd Day, the Deputy Director General of IICA, said that while he would not characteris agriculture in this way, he felt agriculture had been unfairly cast as a “villain” at climate discussions, such as the annual climate summits, when the sector was really “part of the solution.”

Theis tactic of deflecting to other industries has also been used by agriculture trade groups and industry allies in the U.S, which have argued that the sector’s contributions to the climate crisis pales in comparison to fossil fuel-guzzling sectors like transport. It mirrors classic “delay and distract” techniques used by the fossil fuel and tobacco industries, framing farming as a scapegoat even food systems consume at least 15 percent of all global fossil fuels in the forms of fertilizers, transport, plastics, and feed.

While coal, oil, and gas remain the largest contributors to climate change, emissions from food systems alone, if left unchecked, have the potential to take the world over 1.5 C. 

The food system now has the unhappy mantle of being the largest driver of all other planetary boundary transgressions. ranging from forest destruction and the collapse of wildlife populations to the pollution of fragile fresh water supplies.

Agriculture also surpasses fossil fuels in its methane and nitrous oxide pollution — which together are responsiblefor more than a third of global warming to date.

By claiming fossil fuels are the “real culprit,” the industry diverts attention from its own footprint and stalls meaningful reform. Climate experts counter that tackling global warming requires confronting both sectors with equal ambition.

JBS, PepsiCo, McDonalds, and the New Zealand Government did not respond to requests to comment before going to press.

Additional reporting by Gil Alessi and Maximiliano Manzoni

The post Look Out for These 8 Big Ag Greenwashing Terms at COP30 appeared first on DeSmog.

The Trump administration moved last Monday to slash federal jobs across two key environmental and conservation agencies, targeting employees who work on scientific research and the enforcement of anti-pollution laws. 

At the Environmental Protection Agency, staff received a new round of furlough notices as funding dwindles amid the government shutdown. The Department of the Interior disclosed plans to permanently cut more than 2,000 positions, according to a court filing by its chief personnel officer. 

The Interior Department layoffs, also known as a “reduction in force,” are at the center of ongoing litigation over President Donald Trump and his administration’s efforts to further gut the federal workforce.  

Monday’s filing came in response to a judge’s order requiring the Interior Department to disclose its layoff plans for unionized employees. The administration said it intends to eliminate 2,050 Interior Department positions, a decision made before the government shutdown began.

That timing contradicts Trump’s recent claim that government layoffs stemmed from the shutdown. 

Most of the planned cuts would hit the U.S. Geological Survey, or USGS, the Bureau of Land Management, the National Park Service’s regional offices, and Interior’s main headquarters, according to the filing. 

The Interior Department manages national parks, wildlife refuges, and other public lands. It oversees environmental and wildlife conservation, fulfills trust obligations to Alaska Natives and Native American tribes, and conducts scientific research on endangered species, water resources, and natural hazards like flooding and wildfires so officials can better respond to them. 

Read Next Why Trump’s purge of ‘negative’ national park signs includes climate change Kate Yoder

Those research positions would be especially hard hit by the planned layoffs, including projects focused on the Great Lakes ecosystems and the USGS Columbia Environmental Research Center in Missouri, where scientists study toxic contaminants such as PFAS, a class of chemicals Trump’s health and human services secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has pledged to address. 

Asked for comment, the White House referred questions to the Interior Department, which did not respond. 

Environmental groups described the move as part of a broader campaign by Trump and his administration to eliminate research and data collection on environmental contamination after carrying out what EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin called the largest rollback of environmental protections in U.S. history. 

“This plan would eviscerate the core science that every American depends on,” said Jennifer Rokala, executive director of the conservation group the Center for Western Priorities, in a statement about the new Interior Department cuts revealed last week. 

Rokala said the planned cuts “would devastate scientific research across the Rocky Mountains, Great Plains, and Great Lakes,” while harming workers who “make our parks and public lands the envy of the world.” 

Rokala also said that Monday’s filing revealed only the planned layoffs for unionized employees: “We don’t know how many non-union offices and positions are also on the chopping block.”

At the EPA, the new furlough notices arrived as the agency’s funding dries up. Earlier this month, Trump said the shutdown was an opportunity to dismantle “Democrat programs that we want to close up or we never wanted to happen.” He has repeatedly cast environmental protection, conservation, and related public health issues as “woke” and left-wing. 

Some of the country’s key environmental protections, and in fact the EPA itself, date back to the Republican Nixon administration.

“Only Trump’s EPA would lay off the people who protect our kids from breathing polluted air and drinking contaminated water but keep the pesticide office open to greenlight more poisons,” said J.W. Glass, EPA policy specialist at the conservation organization Center for Biological Diversity.

Glass, in a written statement, accused the administration of using the shutdown to dismantle the EPA, leaving “our communities paying the price.”

EPA press secretary Carolyn Holran said in a written statement that the suggestion that the furloughs are part of a deliberate campaign to dismantle the EPA “is both inaccurate and unfair to the dedicated EPA employees who continue working to protect human health and the environment.”

Holran blamed Democrats for the government shutdown and said the EPA was taking a “calculated approach” to ensure “that we remain able to deliver on presidential priorities and avoid actions that directly impact or harm the American people.” 

Asked for details about the number of furlough notices sent and which offices they impact, Holran called it “a ridiculous question to ask.” 

In a written statement, Peter Murchie, senior director at the nonprofit Environmental Protection Network and a former EPA official, called on Congress to intervene and stop the “systematic dismantling.”

“The health harms facing American families — cancer, childhood asthma, infertility, organ failure — don’t pause for politics,” Murchie said. “When EPA’s expert staff are sent home, large parts of the agency’s work simply stop.”

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This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Trump targets federal employees working on conservation and environmental protection on Oct 26, 2025.

It made headlines when Cermaq, MHSS, and the Ahousaht Nation joined for a press release about A full production cycle with no mechanical sea lice treatments in Clayoquot Sound.

But wait! New technology?

Never heard of such a thing!

Here is Alexandra Morton’s inquiry to the Fisheries Minister, the Honourable Joanne Thompson, asking the tough questions about those bold promises:

“September 10, 2025

Dear Fisheries Minister, the Honourable Joanne Thompson,

I am writing in regard to the public announcement by salmon farming company Cermaq regarding their “new technology” that controls sea lice. They don’t say what this technology is and every opportunity to verify their claim has been blocked. I hope you can help.  

The biggest public challenge facing the global salmon farming industry is failure to prevent their pathogens, including sea lice, from infecting wild salmon. So it was big news when Cermaq, MHSS, and the Ahousaht Nation said they had used new technology to successfully reduce the number of sea lice to below thresholds set by Fisheries and Oceans Canada. 

Norway, where Cermaq is based, identified sea lice as a “crisis” on Sept 1, 2025 with no mention of “new technology”.  In BC, Grieg Seafood currently reports salmon farms in Nootka Sound infected with lice exceedances in excess of 34 adult lice per farm salmon.  Mowi reports lice exceedances in 43% of their sites from north Vancouver Island through the Central Coast despite use of drugs and mechanical delousing. DFO set a limit of 2.8 lice per farm salmon to protect wild salmon.  Cermaq won’t tell us how many lice they have.  

The success Cermaq claims with their “new technology” cannot be verified.  In August 2024 they were the only fish farm company in BC to abruptly cease public lice reporting.

DFO did conduct six sea lice audits of Cermaq farms earlier this year, but they visited two farms twice, so only four of Cermaq’s 12 sites were checked for lice.  It is unknown if these 4 farms were stocked with juvenile Atlantic salmon known to be lice-free at saltwater entry, or the lice-bearing adult fish which are the concern.   

DFO reports Cermaq used four “infeed [drug] treatments” in January and February with no reporting after June 19, 2025. This is old technology with failing efficacy.

Access to Information A-2025-00442 (left) includes DFO analysis of whether semi closed “skirts/tarps” (the new technology?) reduced sea lice exceedances, but the results for Clayoquot (Cermaq) are redacted. Someone would have requested the Cermaq results not be made public.  

Access to Information A-2025-00049 includes reports and video from DFO staff reporting “a massive area below the SCCS [semi-closed containment system] covered 100% with feces and fish feed” (pg 32) at Cermaq’s Millar Pt site in Clayoquot Sound. If this is the “new technology” it is extremely dirty. They state Cermaq refused to produce required records (pg 31), a breach of licence, and your staff struggles to deal with the damage to the benthic environment under this so-called closed system. 

I am aware this is a critical time for the BC salmon farming industry and that the current Liberal Government is being pressured to rescind the previous Liberal Government’s 2029 “Ban” on open net salmon farms. Many people are very encouraged by the huge returns of wild salmon to regions where eight First Nations and the federal government closed ~50% of salmon farms on the BC coast. Places where salmon farms continue to operate have not seen these significant increases in wild salmon. The very large increases in chum and sockeye took DFO by surprise, suggesting that whatever caused the surge in numbers has not been properly assessed by DFO. To date, no theories other than relief from exposure to industrial aquaculture pathogens, supported by considerable academic science, has been offered. If wild salmon rebound when fish farms are removed, does this mean salmon farms are responsible for the collapse of BC salmon fisheries?  Could this become a matter before the courts?

To confirm that Cermaq’s “new technology” claim is not unfounded over-reach, we need their “new technology” to be identified. We need the monthly sea lice data from Cermaq’s farms, the redacted efficacy analysis from A-2025-00442. We need to know why the seafloor under Cermaq’s semi-closed system was buried in farm salmon feces. We need to know that the other pathogens, bacteria and viruses, are also prevented from infecting wild salmon via this “new technology.

I hope you are being adequately briefed on the unexpected and extraordinary 2025 Fraser River sockeye salmon returns.  You need to be certain whether the black line in the graph below—the number of sockeye that entered the Fraser River this year vs the previous 3 generations—is related to the fact that this is the first generation of this brood line not exposed to salmon farms in the Discovery Islands when they went to sea in 2023.  

The Liberal Government’s policy to follow recommendation #19 of the Cohen Commission into the Decline of the Fraser Sockeye which suggested removing salmon farms from the Discovery Islands appears to be an unparalleled success. Please also review the 2024 Fraser sockeye and chum salmon returns east of Vancouver Island.

I understand confidentiality is preferred by some companies, but Cermaq is making claims that will critically affect wild salmon in public waters throughout British Columbia. 

In closing, below are photos of a sample of juvenile chum salmon that were trying to migrate to sea past the Mowi salmon farms which are currently over the lice limits DFO set to protect these fish. This infection is worse than 2001 when I first brought this problem to government attention. Clearly, DFO efforts to protect this generation of young salmon from the salmon farms still in operation on the BC coast is not working.  

Thank you for your attention to this matter. I hope to hear from you.”

Guest Blog by Alexandra Morton, independent biologist and author of the bestseller, Not On My Watch.

The post Cermaq’s mysterious “new technology” controlling sea lice? appeared first on Clayoquot Action.

by Panagioti Tsolkas, art by Marius Mason

This update on political prisoner Marius Mason was originally published by Agency in collaboration with Fifth Estate Magazine.

Earlier this year, Marius Mason — an anarchist, environmental and animal rights activist, vegan, artist, and trans advocate — was denied his scheduled gender affirming surgery by the Trump administration and transferred to a women’s prison. The Republican candidate’s campaign spent $27 million on ads condemning gender affirming care for prisoners and the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) quickly remanded those detained back to prisons corresponding to the gender they were assigned at birth.

Marius is serving nearly 22 years for acts of property damage carried out in defense of the planet. After being threatened with a life sentence in 2009 for acts of sabotage, he pleaded guilty to arson charges at a Michigan State University lab researching genetically modified organisms for Monsanto and twelve other acts of property damage. No one was physically harmed in these actions. At sentencing, the federal judge applied a so-called “terrorism enhancement,” adding almost two years to an already extreme sentence requested by the prosecution, for a total of 22 years of incarceration and a multi-million dollar fine. This is the harshest punishment of anyone convicted of environmentally motivated sabotage.

Marius began his incarceration in the high security Administration Unit at the Federal Medical Center Carswell in Fort Worth, Texas. The unit was meant to house prisoners “with histories of escapes, chronic behavior problems, repeated incidents of assaultive or predatory behavior, or other special management concerns…” according to the Carswell information packet. Marius did not have a record of violating prison rules, but it was apparent that he was being held in this unit because of his political beliefs.

As a result of  consistent advocacy, in 2017, Marius was finally moved to a unit more closely resembling the general prison population. In 2019, his request for transfer to be closer to family and friends was granted and he was sent to the federal penitentiary at Danbury, CT.

While in prison, Marius has continued studying, making art, and contributing to the wellbeing of his fellow prisoners. His paintings have had several exhibitions and he has written articles for Fifth Estate magazine. Because of accumulated good time, he has a year and a half to go on his sentence, with a release date of January 10, 2027. A next step in long-term support is in gathering resources for post-release life.

HIS FIGHT FOR TRANS RIGHTS

Marius came out to friends, family and supporters as transgender in 2014. Previously known as “Marie Mason,” he changed his name, uses he/him pronouns, and embarked on a course to get a medical diagnosis that would allow him to seek gender affirming surgery and hormone therapy.

The BOP diagnosed Marius as having gender dysphoria, and made clothing and commissary accommodations in accordance with their established policy. Subsequently, Carswell ran medical diagnostic tests to screen him as being healthy enough to receive the care he requested. Finally, in 2016, Marius received his first “T” hormone (testosterone) injection. In 2021, he won his fight to be transferred to the male section at Danbury.

Mason had been approved by the BOP for gender-affirming surgery in 2022. He was transferred from the Danbury male facility after living there for two years to a federal prison medical facility in Fort Worth, where he was to undergo surgery. This was the culmination of a 10-year process beginning in 2013 when Mason asked to be considered for the new BOP transgender medical policy after a lawsuit created a pathway to medical transition.

But in January 2025, on Trump’s first day, his fascist-right administration issued an anti-trans executive order denying gender-affirming medical care to trans prisoners, among other scapegoating attacks. As a result, Marius was denied surgery and moved back to the women’s unit at Danbury.

Lawyers with the ACLU and other organizations challenged the order, arguing its violation of the 8th and 14th Amendments. In February 2025, an injunction was granted in a D.C. case. This ought to have constrained the BOP and preserved the status quo, meaning that all trans prisoners, including Marius, should have remained where they were and continue to receive the healthcare they were already receiving. But it has not been applied consistently, and as a series of lawsuits continue to wind their way through the courts. It remains to be seen whether the current administration will care about compliance with judicial orders.

HIS ACTIVIST HISTORY

Marius has a long history of activism going back to his high school years. Born in 1962, his early activism included anti-war and environmental organizing, as well as anti-nuclear work and writing for theFifth Estate. As Marius deepened his involvement in environmental and animal rights campaigns, he organized non-violent civil disobedience direct action campaigns, including ones to protect public lands, tree-sits to protest development, and anti-fur demonstrations.

Marius’ advocacy also involved work with many conservation and human rights groups tackling issues of water grabs and poverty, while fighting to create local spaces like community gardens. His work spans many organizations, such as Earth First!, Sweetwater Alliance, Food Not Bombs, ADAPTT (Animals Deserve Protection Today and Tomorrow), Anarchist Black Cross, and Books for Prisoners. He was active on workers’ rights issues, primarily through involvement with the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) for nearly two decades.

Marius needs our mutual aid for his remaining time in prison and for when he is eventually released.

Venmo donations can be made through Fifth Estate (@Fifth-Estate). Please include a comment noting your donation is for Marius. Funds can be sent via checks or money orders, made out to Julie Herrada or Peter Werbe, with “Marius Mason” on the subject line, and mailed to: Support Marius Mason, PO Box 201016 Ferndale, MI 48220.

Additionally, writing letters is one of the most important things you can do. Letters are a lifeline for those inside prison walls. As a federal prisoner, Marius has not been able to effect his name change through legal channels, so it is important for mail to be addressed to “Marie (Marius) Mason” on the envelope, along with his prisoner number. See his address below and the guidelines for letter-writing at supportmariusmason.org

Another way to support Marius is by organizing for both the Jan 22 Trans Prisoner Day of Action and the International Day of Solidarity with Marius Mason and All Anarchist Prisoners on June 11 of each year.

Write Marius at:

Marie (Marius) Mason #04672-061

Federal Satellite Low

33 1/2 Pembroke Rd. Rte. 37

Danbury CT 06811

As with all political and environmental prisoners, they’re in there for us; we’re out here for them.

Check out more of Marius’ art:

Panagioti Tsolkas is a former editor at the Earth First! Journal and Prison Legal News, and a member of the Agency editorial working group.

Fifth Estate is an anarchist magazine published by a volunteer collective. It was founded in Detroit in 1965 and is one of the longest-running English-language anarchist publications in North America.

Chlorophyll decline shows a vital life-support system is weakening, threatening food chains and the climate

Source

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Italy is set for rapid renewable energy growth, but with that comes an increasing exposure to grid infrastructure limitations for renewables investors, according to the latest report from global analytics provider Aurora Energy Research.