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After the US-Iran war caused energy prices to soar, ballooning Egypt’s energy import bill, the government has doubled down on plans to boost renewable energy in the country’s power mix – part of its broader plan to become a clean energy export hub for the region.

With abundant sunshine, swathes of unused desert land and plenty of wind, Egypt is seen as having the potential to become a major force in renewable power generation, helping to cut the planet-heating carbon emissions of Africa’s second-largest economy and beyond.

The conflict in the Middle East has given the government’s clean energy plans more salience, making the case for renewable power to bolster the country’s energy security and help it meet its economic development goals by exporting clean power.  

The government recently announced an accelerated timeline for renewables to reach 45% of the electricity mix within two years – up from a previous target of 42% by 2030 and a huge jump from around 13% in 2025, according to think-tank Ember. 

In June, President Abdel ​Fattah el-Sisi met with government ministers to discuss the faster delivery of solar and energy storage projects as well as upgrades to the electricity grid to deliver on the new goal, including 105 renewable energy projects intended to bolster grid stability. 

• Mar 4, 2026 Energy Gulf oil and gas crisis sparks calls for renewables investment Energy analysts and some politicians say the Iran war’s effect on oil and gas prices shows renewables are the path to energy security Read more
• May 22, 2026 Clean Energy Frontier Chinese EV brands woo Yemen’s wealthy elite as war prompts solar boom For the well-off few, buying an EV is the next step in a solar revolution that has helped Yemenis weather years of power outages and high fuel prices Read more
• Jun 24, 2026 News EU, UK lead push for electrification as “powerful weapon” against fossil fuels A group of dozens of countries seeks to build momentum for a COP31 pledge to electrify 35% of global energy use by 2035 as an alternative to fossil fuels Read more

Big challenges lie ahead, among them a parallel bet on continued fossil fuel exploration and the need to upgrade electricity infrastructure, a task that could require multibillion-dollar investments, experts say.

“The technical and financial plumbing – the grid, foreign-currency financing and the supply chain – are the real gatekeepers,” Nadia Elmasry, an expert at the Regional Center for Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency, told Climate Home News.

In a speech to the nation in March, President Sisi said $50 billion worth of investment were needed to overhaul the electricity grid and transmission infrastructure. 

During the COP29 climate talks in 2024, Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly warned that Egypt’s targets for renewable power expansion could be missed without more international support for critical infrastructure. 

Multimillion-euro investment

Modernising and expanding power grids has emerged as a central pillar of an intensifying global push for electrification – a key priority of the COP31 UN climate talks taking place in Türkiye in November.  

As dozens of governments led by the European Union and the UK throw their political weight behind a rapid electrification of the global economy, Egypt’s hunt for foreign investment in power infrastructure has found sympathetic ears.

In June, the EU and its European Investment Bank lending arm announced a financing package of up to €690 million ($795 million) to modernise Egypt’s transmission network – widely seen as a weak point in the nation’s clean energy ambitions. 

The project aims to help the grid absorb 22 GW of renewable capacity by 2030, reduce electricity losses and move power from wind and solar zones to consumers and, eventually, foreign markets, including the EU. 

New substations and transmission lines will connect wind and solar zones around the Red Sea and the Gulf of Suez, reducing losses and preparing the network for future cross-Mediterranean trade.

Under the country’s ambitious regional plans, Egypt would supply clean power via existing interconnections with Jordan, Libya and Sudan, as well as a 3 GW link under construction with Saudi Arabia. 

Further ahead, proposals envision the export of renewable electricity to southern Europe via a subsea cable, and Egypt also aims to be a primary source of green hydrogen and ammonia for European markets.

Conflicts, cash among the challenges

Planned investment in electricity and renewables reached 136.3 billion Egyptian pounds ($2.7 billion) for the 2025/26 financial year, up from 72.6 billion pounds ($1.4 million) the year before, with public investment expected to account for about three-quarters of that.

Grid investment is “the cornerstone” of Egypt’s hub strategy, said energy and environmental economy expert Mohammed Abdel Raouf, allowing it to integrate renewables without destabilising the power system and create the smart-grid infrastructure needed to trade electricity with other countries.

But Egypt’s plans face several major challenges, besides the necessary grid upgrades, which are estimated to cost billions of dollars alone, according to a December 2025 study by the Amsterdam-based think-tank Transnational Institute. 

A man carries baskets of bread on his head through Cairo, Egypt (Photo: MM/Flickr)

Regional conflicts are disrupting supply chains and discouraging investment, particularly in renewable energy, Abdel Raouf warned. High borrowing costs, financing rules, limited EU-compliant capacity and uncertain long-term buyers of Egypt’s clean power could also slow progress, according to the Transnational Institute study.

The Arab world’s most populous country has been grappling with the aftermath of a steep currency devaluation and economic fallout from the Gaza and Iran wars.

Elmasry pointed to pressures from Egypt’s shortage of foreign currency and the need for concessional finance or guarantees to make long-term projects bankable. Egypt says it has mobilised $4 billion in concessional finance for 4.2 GW of renewable energy projects.

Regulatory coordination and workforce development will be essential, particularly as Egypt seeks to trade across grids governed by different technical and commercial rules, Elmasry added.

• Jun 24, 2026 News EU, UK lead push for electrification as “powerful weapon” against fossil fuels A group of dozens of countries seeks to build momentum for a COP31 pledge to electrify 35% of global energy use by 2035 as an alternative to fossil fuels Read more
• Jan 9, 2026 News Israel’s fossil gas power play pushes climate action to the sidelines Even as it faces international condemnation over the Gaza war, Israel is working to boost natural gas exports and offshore exploration to strengthen its strategic and regional ties Read more
• Jul 16, 2026 Comment Africa can lead the Age of Electrification The electrification agenda presents both an extraordinary opportunity for Africa and an immense challenge for the continent Read more

In order to generate an exportable surplus of clean electricity at a time of rising domestic power needs, Egypt also needs to give a bigger role to decentralised minigrid systems such as rooftop solar projects, said Cairo-based solar entrepreneur Hatem Tawfik.

“We will [only] be a hub in 2040 after we produce more than we need,” said Tawfik, co-founder and managing director of Cairo Solar, a solar engineering, procurement and construction company, calling for cheaper loans and simpler permitting and grid-connection rules. 

For Tawfik, such small-scale projects are also fundamental to the government’s goal of shoring up energy security to avert crises like that of 2023/2024, when Egypt’s falling gas output contributed to rolling blackouts during sweltering heatwaves. 

At a time of heightened geopolitical uncertainty in the Middle East, this is even more urgent. 

“In the event of war, or if a country such as Israel, which supplies 40-60% of Egypt’s [imported] gas, suddenly cut off supplies [again], Egypt would be less vulnerable,” he told Climate Home News. 

A man charges his mobile phone thanks to the electric solar panels above his house at Al-Basaysa village as the country struggled with continuous power cuts in 2024 (Photo: REUTERS/Mohamed Abd El Ghany) Home-grown batteries

Storage could determine whether Egypt’s renewable power is merely abundant at midday or commercially valuable around the clock.

“Storage is what turns intermittent renewables into firm, exportable power,” said Elmasry.

In January, Norwegian developer Scatec signed a 25-year power purchase agreement with the Egyptian Electricity Transmission Company for 1.95 GW of solar and 3.9 GWh of battery storage.

Demand for more storage has also raised the prospect of Egypt developing a domestic battery industry.

Chinese company Sungrow plans to build a battery-storage-system factory in Ain Sokhna, its first in the Middle East, with annual production capacity of 10 GWh and operations scheduled to begin in April 2027. It will provide the batteries for Scatec’s energy storage project. 

Egypt has also granted licences for two battery-storage projects in Aswan and Suez worth a combined $800 million. Huawei and Egyptian company AIS have meanwhile signed an agreement to explore local production of grid-forming battery systems.

At the same time, Egypt is conducting an aerial geophysical survey in search of critical minerals across six regions, a first in about half a century. 

Still, Mohamed Gamal Kafafy, president of the World Green Economy Council, said competing directly with China would be unrealistic, suggesting Egypt should instead manufacture under Chinese licences or through joint ventures, reducing imports while building local skills.

The Ministry of Electricity did not respond to Climate Home News’ request for comment. 

Mixed messages?

The government’s climate investment programme aims to add 10 GW of renewable capacity and retire 5 GW of inefficient fossil-fuel generation by 2028, but Egypt is not turning its back on oil and gas.

President Sisi told energy companies attending the Egypt Energy Show in March to pursue a double strategy – intensifying efforts to explore and increase oil and gas production while also accelerating investment in renewable energy. The Petroleum Ministry plans to drill about 480 exploratory oil wells over five years.

Drivers refuel vehicles at a gas station in Cairo, Egypt, after the government introduced power rationing measures due to shortages of petroleum products caused by the war between the US, Israel and Iran (Photo by Sayed Hassan/Getty Images)

The risk, Tawfik said, is that a large oil or gas discovery reduces the incentive to focus on investment in renewables.

“When a major oil or gas discovery, such as the Zohr gas field, leads to overconfidence, it reduces the focus on renewable energy,” he said, noting that renewable project rollouts largely stagnated after the completion of the giant Benban solar park in 2019. 

But major developments such as the El Dabaa nuclear plant and the Abydos solar and energy-storage project demonstrate that significant work is already under way to meet Egypt’s clean energy hub ambitions, Tawfik said.

“Simply implementing the existing plans would be an excellent outcome,” he added.

Main image: The Sharm El Sheikh solar power plant in Egypt (Photo:
Hassan Allam Utilities)

The post Egypt seeks to unlock renewable potential to power regional clean energy hub appeared first on Climate Home News.

Today, government negotiators will sit down in New York for the fifth round of talks at the UN Framework Convention on International Tax Cooperation. It is the sort of conference that might make most of our eyes glaze over.

But what actually happens in these rooms for the coming week is tied closely to our lives, our health and our cost of living. The decisions being made this conference are simple yet consequential to our lives: will polluters profiting from the economic and climate crises that the rest of us are paying for be made to pay their share?  

The price we are already paying Conflicts, oil shocks and rising bills

Since the conflict between the US, Israel and Iran escalated around the Strait of Hormuz — the passage that carries roughly a fifth of the world’s seaborne oil trade, plus major volumes of gas and fertilizer — disruptions to shipping have pulled millions of barrels of oil a day off global markets at various points this year, and crude oil prices have spiked sharply, at times trading well above USD$100 a barrel.

This cost doesn’t stop at shipping routes. We are seeing higher oil, gas and fertilizer prices that in turn raising transport costs, food prices, and electricity bills, for everyone, everywhere. In the US alone, people have already paid nearly USD$67 billion more at the pump since the war began, working out to over USD$500 in extra fuel costs per household. In fact, over USD$700 billion is estimated to be siphoned from households and businesses to the oil and gas industry by the end of 2026 caused by these elevated prices.

Extreme weather

There is a second shock underway too. The climate crisis, fuelled by fossil fuel companies, is making extreme weather events more frequent and severe, taking an ever-growing toll on both human lives and public budgets. This summer has brought Europe’s worst start to a wildfire season on record, with over 434,000 hectares burnt by late July — more than the same point in 2025, itself the worst year on record. France is currently seeing its most devastating wildfire outbreak in half a century, with more than 300,000 people evacuated across France and Spain, and Spain is battling its largest wildfire in modern history, with firefighting costs alone estimated at up to €3.3 billion. Countries like Algeria, Türkiye and Canada too are battling deadly wildfires and around the world, we see increasingly devastating climate impacts like floods, droughts, and heatwaves, upending millions of lives. Every year, our governments are spending more and more taxpayer money picking up the pieces — on firefighting, evacuations, emergency relief, rebuilding and more.

A firefighter battling a forest fire in Saint-Jean-d’Illac, around 30km from Bordeaux, France. Source: Getty

Every fossil fuel price shock and every climate disaster acts like an unofficial second tax on us: charged once through our everyday bills, and again through the public taxes we pay.

Where our money is actually going

This money out of our pockets isn’t disappearing either. While ordinary people struggle, oil and gas majors are posting exceptional profits, not despite these price shocks, but because of them. The volatility unleashed by the US-Israel-Iran conflict has been especially good for business, with the Big ones just having announced shockingly high earnings from second quarter of 2026 (April, May and June):

• TotalEnergies, the French oil and gas giant and France’s largest company by revenue, reported USD$6 billion in profits, more than double what it made a year ago. 

On July 22nd, 350.org activists staged an action at La Défense, the Paris business district, home of TotalEnergies headquarters, denouncing the responsibility of fossil fuel giants in the climate crisis and demanding stronger taxes on their profit – Credit: Rémy El Sibaïe/350.org

• Shell, the British oil and gas major and one of the world’s largest energy companies, posted profits of  USD$9.84 billion for the second quarter, also more than double last year’s figure, and its best quarter since 2022. CEO Wael Sawan told investors the company was built to “thrive through volatility.” BP, another UK based oil company, also just announced a net profit of over USD $5.73 billion, up $2.5bn from the quarter before. 
• US Big Oil companies Exxon and Chevron have netted over a combined USD$26 billion, with it being the largest quarterly profit ever for the latter. 

That’s over USD $48 billion taken in profits by just four large oil companie while the rest of the world is left dealing with climate and energy chaos. To put this in perspective, this is more than the entire yearly national incomes of over 100 countries,

The UN Tax Convention is an opportunity to course correct

There’s something deeply unfair about this picture: the same volatility that’s draining household budgets and straining public finances is the very thing fossil fuel companies are cashing in on. This Convention is a real chance to change that by creating binding rules that shift the cost off households and onto the companies that are recording obscene profits. This genuinely multilateral forum aims to deliver a global treaty by 2027 to end corporate tax evasion and opacity, and establish fairer taxation rules. Governments could use it to make oil and gas majors pay for their role in the climate crisis, including funding lasting protection for affected populations.

This matters most for countries in the Global South, who are often sitting on fossil fuel reserves or living through the worst of the climate damage, with the least power to claim a fair share of profits made from either. It is also important for other countries, where public budgets are increasingly being eaten up to prop up fossil fuel companies or coping with climate disasters caused by the very same industry. Every dollar Big Oil avoids paying in tax is a dollar of our taxpayers money that governments have to cough up. That money has to come from somewhere, and usually it’s taken from budgets for health, education, transport, and other public services.

What should be on the table

Leaders at the UN Tax Convention need to write three things into the treaty at once through tax rules that make polluters pay: 

1. A strong, permanent tax on the profits fossil fuel companies are making right now

Research found that a 20% surtax on the profits of the world’s 100 largest oil and gas companies could have raised over $1.08 trillion since the Paris Agreement was signed in 2015. This money could have gone toward protecting communities from climate disasters, funding adaptation, and speeding up the transition to more stable renewables, instead of sitting with Big Oil shareholders. To see how large that number really is, compare it with what’s currently on the table for climate-hit countries. The UN’s Loss and Damage Fund, set up specifically to help vulnerable nations recover from climate disasters, had received just $817 million in pledges as of late 2025, against an estimated $580 billion a year that experts say will be needed by 2030. A single fossil-fuel surtax, in other words, could raise roughly a thousand times more than an entire climate fund has managed to attract through voluntary pledges in three years.

2. Rules that stop those same companies from shifting profits out of reach before any government can tax them at all 

A surtax on paper profits means little if those profits have already been moved somewhere they can’t be taxed. With around a third of extractive-sector profits routed to low-tax jurisdictions, closing that loophole is the difference between a tax that exists on paper and one that actually collects. Governments at the Convention must also address the the legal loopholes that let extractive firms book profits in low-tax jurisdictions before any tax is ever assessed.

3. A binding commitment that the revenue is earmarked for climate response

Raising the money means little if it simply disappears into general treasuries or gets diverted to unrelated spending. The treaty should lock in that the revenue should be directed to the communities and countries hit hardest by climate disasters, energy poverty, and fossil-fuel price shocks, and to a fast, fair shift to renewable energy. Without that earmark, governments could tax the polluters and still leave the people paying the steepest price for their pollution without dedicated support.

Our leaders cannot keep proclaiming there isn’t enough money for the clean energy transition or other public priorities while vast pools of fossil-fuel profit remain largely untouched. They must tax the exceptional profits of an industry that has known for decades that its business model was driving the climate crisis, and still chose to keep extracting, keep expanding, and keep collecting record profits from it. That means taxing Big Oil’s windfalls, closing the loopholes that let those profits disappear before they’re ever assessed, and putting the proceeds where they’re needed most: with the people and countries paying for a crisis this same industry caused.

What can you do

You don’t need a seat in the negotiating room to have a stake in what happens there. If oil and gas companies keep profiting from every disruption while ordinary households absorb the cost, it’s because a set of rules enables them to do so. But these rules can change.

The week’s convention isn’t an opportunity worth letting pass. Big Oil’s Q2 profits have given us concrete numbers to hold up next to what governments could be collecting instead, right as the room decides whether to write that possibility into the treaty text.

That’s the leverage we actually have here. We are calling on Ramy Mohamed Youssef, Chair of the negotiations, and every government at the table, to write a permanent, unavoidable surtax on fossil fuel companies’ global profits into the Convention, and to spend that revenue on climate protection and affordable clean energy for the people who need it the most. 

Make polluters pay! 

ADD YOUR VOICE

The post This UN Tax Conference might sound boring appeared first on 350.

A pioneering California law meant to sharply limit use of the familiar “chasing arrows” recycling symbol has been blocked by a federal judge who said it probably violates the First Amendment.

In a preliminary injunction issued last month, U.S. District Judge William Hayes halted enforcement of SB 343 after food, packaging and retail groups sued, finding that key provisions were “unconstitutionally vague” and likely infringed protected commercial speech. Enforcement of the law, passed in 2021, was expected to start this fall.

The decision is a blow to environmental advocates, who had hoped to remove the familiar symbol from a huge array of plastic products, in line with a statewide study showing that only a fraction are widely collected and actually recycled. SB 343 said only goods and packaging accepted by recycling programs serving at least 60 percent of Californians and then actually sorted for recycling — not collected and thrown away —  could bear the chasing arrows.

Hayes’ constitutional reasoning surprised supporters of SB 343 because similar arguments against environmental marketing regulations have historically struggled in court.

“The First Amendment protects free expression, not a corporation’s right to commit consumer fraud,” said Nick Lapis, director of advocacy for the nonprofit Californians Against Waste. “We see this exact playbook every time the plastics industry is asked to stop misleading the public — they suddenly hide behind the Constitution.”

In his decision, Hayes applied a standard four-part test to determine whether SB 343 would unduly restrict companies’ speech rights. The law passed the first two tests handily, as it regulates “potentially misleading” speech and was intended to serve California’s legitimate interests in reducing consumer confusion and improving recycling rates.

The next tests are where the law ran into trouble. Hayes, siding with the industry trade groups, argued that the legislation would not advance those “legitimate interests.” Rather than encouraging companies to redesign their products and packaging to comply with California’s real-world recyclability criteria, he said the law would prompt them to remove the recycling symbol altogether. Products recycled at a rate below the 60 percent threshold that the law requires would no longer make it into recycling bins, which could in theory leave more of them bound for the landfill.

Hayes said a less stringent regulation could have better advanced California’s goals. For instance, the state could have passed a law requiring more descriptive qualifiers alongside the recycling symbol. He offered a hypothetical example of a label explaining that an item is “accepted by recyclers in the greater Los Angeles area but nowhere else in California.” Such a label would provide consumers with more and better information, he argued, but would not be allowed under SB 343.

Heidi Sanborn, executive director of the nonprofit National Stewardship Action Council, said the judge’s reasoning reflected a fundamental misunderstanding of the problems facing California recycling systems. People are throwing too much stuff into their blue bins, she said. In addition to not actually being recyclable, much of this refuse — including plastic bags and other plastic films — can gum up sorting machines, causing operational delays and creating safety risks.

“People are wish-cycling, they’re so desperate to recycle,” Sanborn told Grist. “We have to pull all this [contamination] out, which is very labor-intensive, and then everybody wants to know why their bills go up.” 

Read Next How the recycling symbol lost its meaning Kate Yoder

Industry groups welcomed the injunction, saying it would prevent California from “censoring truthful information on packaging.”

Scott Hochberg, general counsel and litigation director for the nonprofit Earth Island Institute, said he’s seen free speech challenges to environmental rules many times before. Big polluters have frequently invoked the First Amendment to oppose regulations that require them to disclose information — like their greenhouse gas emissions — or tone down statements about their sustainability.

“What’s relatively new and concerning is when these arguments succeed and states are blocked from implementing common-sense initiatives to protect their residents,” he said.

A lawsuit Hochberg’s organization is pursuing against Coca-Cola illustrates the same debate. It alleges the company presents itself as a “sustainable and environmentally friendly company” despite its outsize contribution to plastic pollution. Coca-Cola argued that statements about its sustainability efforts — including plastics recycling — were protected political speech rather than commercial advertising. A federal judge rejected that argument in 2024.

The companies that sued California didn’t make that same distinction; their suit is more like one filed in 1992 that sought to block a California law restricting the use of terms like “biodegradable,” “ozone-friendly,” and “recyclable.” A judge upheld the law, ruling that it would not stifle free speech because corporations could still use a restricted word or phrase as long as they included qualifiers explaining how, where, or under what conditions it applied.

The injunction against SB 343 leaves California with few easy options. Hayes’ ruling suggests the state faces a difficult road if the case proceeds to trial. Lawmakers could amend the law to address some of the judge’s concerns, though that may be unlikely given the politics surrounding the issue. California could also appeal the injunction, but the lower court would still have to decide the case on its merits.

Earth Island Institute and Californians Against Waste announced on July 27 that they are joining California as defendants. Hochberg said he hoped to provide the court with more information “about how the recycling system actually works.” Losing the lawsuit will make it harder for other states to pursue similar labeling regulations, he said. 

It could also jeopardize California’s nation-leading extended producer responsibility law, which shifts responsibility for collecting, recycling, and reducing plastic packaging from taxpayers and local governments to the companies that produce it. It relies on the same definition of recycling and is currently being challenged by a separate lawsuit.

Whatever happens next, Sanborn said she’s ready to work with industry to come up with other solutions — including legislation to clarify labeling rules at the national level. “We can and should work together to solve this,” she said. “But you should not have the right to lie to people.” 

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Is the recycling symbol free speech? A judge just ruled it could be. on Aug 3, 2026.

People killed defending nature in Lebanon Channel News brendan 3rd August 2026 Teaser Media

With great growth comes great responsibility … to give residents better transit alternatives.

That was the message coming from Oklahoma City Mayor David Holt in his recent 2026 State of the City Address introducing a proposed sales tax to fund the region’s vision for transit expansion.

Oklahoma City Mayor David Holt

He wants to avoid the mistakes of peer cities like Austin and Nashville that have grown precipitously in recent decades without accommodating additional travel capacity, resulting in hellish levels of congestion. 

He also knows that highway expansion isn’t an acceptable long-term solution. 

“The metro has pretty much reached the point of saturation with highways,” said Holt. “New highways or adding significantly more lanes is just not feasible for most of our existing system. Adding lanes is not the panacea you may think it is.” He then showed the crowd a photo of a jam-packed 12-lane Interstate 405 in Los Angeles. 

Instead of that carmaggedon, Holt is pitching a transit improvement sales tax aimed at giving residents alternatives to the car-based transportation planning that dominates the U.S. 

“We can learn from their mistakes. The time to make a commitment is now,” he added. “That commitment must give us the resources we need to strengthen our existing system of city streets for those who remain in cars, and it must provide public transit alternatives that take some cars off the road and, at the very least, give each of us a choice.”

Oklahoma City has been able to facilitate growth in large part because of its Metropolitan Area Projects initiatives. The first iteration coming in 1993, the one-cent sales tax has funded numerous capital improvement projects aimed at transforming the city’s infrastructure and strengthen cultural amenities.

Past uses of that tax funded what is now the Oklahoma City Thunder’s arena, the revitalization of the historic Bricktown district, the OKC Streetcar, and bus rapid transit projects that are currently in the works. 

Three-quarters of the proposed transit tax would go to bus and rail infrastructure and improvements, with the remaining quarter going to maintenance of existing infrastructure. 

Oklahoma leaders knew that growth would necessitate building for the future. That’s why, in 2019, they formed the state’s first regional transit authority that would oversee this expansion, now known as ONE Transit. 

The agency is comprised of Oklahoma City and its two most prominent suburbs, Norman and Edmond. All three of the cities have experiencede remarkable growth in the past 20 years. The population of Oklahoma City, for example, increased by 17.4 percent between 2010 and 2020 and is on track to increase another 11.4 percent by 2030.

That’s on track for a population of more than 750,000, plus another 130,000 in Norman and 100,000 in Edmond — which are both growing.

The backbone of ONE Transit’s transit expansion plan for the region includes commuter rail that will connect all three cities with key stopping points along the way. The line would be created along an existing BNSF rail corridor. 

This rendering was partly made with AI, according to ONE Transit.

The hope is that the commuter rail line will enable those in the suburbs to feed into Oklahoma City’s more robust transit options in the downtown area, which already includes the improving bus network and the OKC Streetcar.

Future plans also include more robust bus rapid transit lines, including a western route, a route to Will Rogers International Airport to the southwest, and a route to Tinker Air Force Base to the east. A light rail line to the airport would be the final piece of the plan.

ONE Transit understands the value that transit can provide for a local economy, citing an APTA study that shows a five-to-one economic return produced by long-term investment in public transit.

“Collectively, this plan will preserve our quality of life by alleviating traffic congestion, it will preserve the mobility necessary to keep our economy strong and growing, and it will spur commercial development, among other benefits,” Holt said in his address, aligning with ONE Transit’s vision.

There are signs of a growing appetite for transit alternatives in the area. The OKC streetcar recently announced that its free fare pilot program was being extended until Aug. 20 due to increased ridership. The program kicked off in January of this year and brought 37 percent more ridership between January and April versus the same period last year.

The city’s first and only bus rapid transit line also saw a record month this year, with over 60,000 rides in May. 

Levels of support for the tax remain uncertain. Hope in the region certainly took a hit when riders learned that Oklahoma lawmakers failed to include 2027 funding for the Amtrak Heartland Flyer, the line between Oklahoma City and Fort Worth.

The measure is sure to meet a challenge in car-oriented and fiscally conservative Oklahoma, but there is hope that residents will see past success with Metropolitan Area Projects in boosting the health of the city. Holt is calling on Oklahomans to rise to the occasion.

“The resources we have today are not sufficient to meet the challenges of growth,” he said. “Meeting this new transportation challenge is going to require a new commitment from each of us.”

The proposed sales tax would need approval from Oklahoma City, Norman, and Edmond and then could be put up for a vote in 2027.

• Under the BUILD America 250 Act, House Republicans’ transportation budget bill replacing the Biden administration’s Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, funding for transit would plunge by 23 percent, adjusted for inflation. That includes a loss of $2 billion for California and New York alone. The share of funding for highways would grow from 63 percent to 70 percent, according to the Urban Institute. (Governing).
• Cities like New York, Paris, Berlin and London that invested in bike infrastructure during the pandemic and didn’t stop are now reaping the benefits. (Momentum)
• As the war with Iran rages on, driving up gas prices, oil companies are raking in massive profits. (Associated Press)
• Too much overlapping bureaucracy is delaying American infrastructure projects. (Government Tech)
• Automated traffic enforcement cameras make streets safer, but Flock surveillance is giving them a bad name. (Streetsblog USA)
• After a driver killed a Boston transportation official while she was riding her bike, Mayor Michelle Wu, who largely abandoned her pro-bike stance during the recent mayoral campaign, has flip-flopped back to bikes. (WBUR)
• Widening Houston’s Katy Freeway to 26 lanes only made traffic worse — proof of induced demand. (Space Daily)
• Atlanta’s transit system performed well during the World Cup, but will MARTA build on that success or fall back into complacency? (AJC)
• The Ballard light rail line in Seattle is not dead and could be built by 2042. (My Northwest)
• Las Vegas is installing its first protected bike lane. (LV Sports Biz)
• Kansas City set speed and age limits for e-bikes and e-scooters. (KCUR)
• Building sidewalks is a good thing, but in Milwaukee the construction is temporarily forcing vulnerable pedestrians and people with disabilities into the street. (TMJ 4)
• Costco parking lots are a war zone. (USA Today)

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In our latest, we talk with journalist and author Jasper Craven (@Jasper_Craven) about his new book, “God Forgives, Brothers Don’t,” discussing the history of military education and toxic masculinity, the…

NNU castigated the Israeli government for destroying or badly damaging almost all of Gaza’s medicine warehouses as part of its ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people and in flagrant violation of a United Nations resolution prohibiting the targeting of medical facilities and medical workers during armed conflict.

A listing of 28 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, July 26, 2026 thru Sat, August 1, 2026. Stories we promoted this week, by category:

Climate Change Impacts (7 articles)

• State of the climate: Rapidly developing El Niño raises chance of record-warm 2026 Chances of a record setting 2026 El Niño rapidly increase, taking us closer to an important warming threshold. Carbon Brief, Zeke Hausfather, Jul 24, 2026.
• Why is Germany building roads for yesterday's climate? As the Autobahn buckles under heat waves, Germany is still paving roads for a past climate. Engineers know how to fix that — so what's the holdup? DW, Tim Schauenberg, Jul 28, 2026.
• Summer of Heat, Fires and Storms Is a Reckoning for Europe on Climate Europe is experiencing some of its biggest fires and highest temperatures ever; residents are fleeing, leaders are struggling to respond and “it will get worse,” one climate expert said. NYT, Mark Landler and Chico Harlan, Jul 29, 2026.
• `The heat took him from me`: India`s death toll rises amid escalating heat crisis As extreme heat claims the lives of workers in India’s poorest areas, many fear the true mortality rate is being dangerously undercounted. The Guardian, Hannah Ellis-Petersen and Aakash Hassan, Jul 29, 2026.
• 4 things to know about cyclospora and climate change A fragile food system, uneven public health messaging, and global warming are all working to supercharge the parasite’s spread. Grist, Frida Garza, Jul 30, 2026.
• `Was this heatwave caused by climate change?` - we`re asking the wrong question The question is not whether climate change caused the heatwave, but how much hotter and more dangerous heatwaves have become because greenhouse gases, primarily from burning fossil fuels, have accumulated in the atmosphere. The Conversation, Prof. Haley J. Fowler & Prof. Ed Hawkins, Jul 31, 2026.
• Everything on fire DrGilbz on Youtube, Ella Gilbert, July 31, 2026.

Climate Science and Research (6 articles)

• Human-driven climate change largely responsible for last 50 years of worsening fire weather in Western North America, new study shows Just as detectives can find literal fingerprints at a crime scene, scientists can detect human and natural ‘fingerprints’ in climate and meteorological data like temperature, precipitation, and relative humidity— all factors that can influence fire behavior. Science Feedback, Science Feedback team, May 8, 2025.
• How do scientists know if climate change made a heat wave, extreme storm or wildfire worse? When a devastating heat wave, hurricane, flood or wildfire strikes, people often want to know: How much did human-caused climate change influence this event, if at all? The Conversation, Kevin T. Smiley, Deepti Singh, Jennifer Marlon, Jim Hurrell, Jul 24, 2026.
• Low-Level Cloud Loss Amplifies Global Warming A new study adds weight to concerns over the positive feedback effects of clouds on global warming. CalTech, Katie Neith, Jul 24, 2026.
• Canopy-mediated climate feedbacks in the boreal continuous permafrost zone A vast amount of carbon locked up in permafrost is protected by a thin and increasingly threatened layer of vegetation. Nature Climate Change, M. Langer, Jul 27, 2026.
• Rising CO2 Alters Upper Atmosphere Response to Stratosphere Sudden Warming A whole-atmosphere model simulation shows that rising CO2 changes how the upper atmosphere and ionosphere respond to a sudden stratospheric warming (SSW), with implications for future space weather.? Eos, Huixin Liu, Jul 29, 2026.
• Why Hansen may end up being right about 2026 Whether 2026 sets a new record is increasingly likely to be a split decision between different groups The Climate Brink, Zeke Hausfather, Jul 30, 2026.

Climate Policy and Politics (3 articles)

• American Nero: Why Trump is trying to burn down the National Academy of Sciences The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Benjamin Santer, July 26, 2026.
• Trump administration eyes massive coal reserves under federal lands Despite vast contrary scientific evidence, the US executive branch sees vast reserves of coal as a resource desirable to burn. Inside Climate News, Lisa Sorg, Jul 27, 2026.
• Do small climate habits help or hurt the bigger cause? Researchers tracked nearly 2,800 people's habits, protests, and policy views to test whether small green acts help or hurt the bigger fight. Neither, it turns out. Anthropocene, Sarah DeWeerdt, Jul 28, 2026.

Public Misunderstandings about Climate Solutions (3 articles)

•  2026 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #30 A listing of 28 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, July 19, 2026 thru Sat, July 25, 2026. Skeptical Science, Bärbel Winkler & Doug Bostrom, July 26, 2026.
• Fact brief - Do solar plants require backup from fossil fuels? Solar plants require backup, but it doesn’t have to be from fossil fuels. Skeptical Science, Sue Bin Park, Jul 28, 2026.
• The influencer teaching millions to fear solar Alexandra Fasulo says she’s protecting farms and wildlife. How much of her rhetoric is actually true? HEATED, Alex Hannaford, Jul 30, 2026.

Miscellaneous (2 articles)

• `I can`t work in the farce of climate change cruise tourism anymore`: why Antarctic guides quit their dream jobs 'You’d see massive glacier calvings, and you’d just want to cry. But all the guests would be cheering. And you’d be like … ‘can you not put two and two together?’'' The Conversation, Zdenka Sokolickova, Christy Hehir, Elizabeth Cooper, Jul 21, 2026.
• Scientists decry Trump`s `blame game` after he claims Canada `poisoning` US air Trump told Mark Carney ‘you got to stop these fires from coming in’ as experts say wildfires symptom of climate crisis The Guardian, Oliver Milman, Jul 24, 2026.

Public Misunderstandings about Climate Science (2 articles)

• Factcheck: No, Europe`s heatwaves are not being `caused` by declining air pollution Scientists tell Carbon Brief that the framing of heatwaves being “caused” by declining air pollution is “wrong”. Carbon Brief, Robert McSweeney, Jul 24, 2026.
• Hot days, cold thermometers A graph popular with climate change deniers is desconstructed by Zeke Hausfather, exposing its economy of truth. Skeptical Science, Zeke Hausfather, Jul 27, 2026.

Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation (2 articles)

• Can we alter ocean chemistry to absorb carbon? Here are the pros and cons Procrastination on arresting fossil fuels leads to extreme measures; here are pros and cons of "ocean alkalinity enhancement" and pitfalls in public perceptions this technology will encounter should it require deployment. The Conversation, Harris Anderson, Andrew Lenton, Mathieu Mongin, Jul 23, 2026.
• U.S. Raises Threat of Steep Water Cuts in Lower Colorado River Basin A federal plan would impose drastic water cuts on Arizona, California and Nevada in dry years over the next decade. A legal battle could follow. NYT, Scott Dance, Jul 31, 2026.

Climate Education and Communication (1 article)

• Wildfires: why media coverage doesn`t always make the climate connection Exploring how contradictory press coverage can sit on the same front page tells us a lot about how climate change is narrated in the UK, and why climate reporting differs so much from country to country. The Conversation, Doug Specht,, Jul 28, 2026.

Climate Law and Justice (1 article)

• Shell`s hidden climate knowledge under scrutiny as court battle looms As the company faces a landmark climate lawsuit, confidential documents show how British scientist James Lovelock warned executives of the risks of burning fossil fuels in the 1960s. DeSmog, Rebecca John, Jul 30, 2026.

Health Aspects of Climate Change (1 article)

• Trump Administration Is Undoing Plans to Boost Workplace Heat Protections The Biden administration took steps to shield workers from extreme temperatures. The Trump administration is taking a gentler approach with employers. NYT, Scott Dance, Aug 01, 2026.

If you happen upon high quality climate-science and/or climate-myth busting articles from reliable sources while surfing the web, please feel free to submit them via this Google form so that we may share them widely. Thanks!

EWG statement on Senate Republican farm bill proposal Anthony Lacey August 2, 2026

WASHINGTON – The Senate Agriculture Committee, chaired by John Boozman (R-Ark.), on July 31 released an updated farm bill proposal. 

The following is a statement from the Environmental Working Group’s Senior Vice President of Government Affairs Scott Faber:

No one should support a farm bill that fails to support family farmers, feed hungry children, support farmers adopting regenerative practices or build healthy diets.

The farm bill released Friday night by Sen. Boozman fails on all four accounts by failing to close loopholes that tilt the playing field against small farms, by failing to restore the cuts to SNAP that have left more than 1 million children without anti-hunger assistance and by failing to reverse a $2 billion cut to popular farm stewardship programs. 

We need farm and food policies that support healthy diets, the people who feed us, the hungry and our environment, not a farm bill for the 1%. 

###

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

Areas of Focus Farming & Agriculture Conservation Food & Farm Workers Farm Subsidies Press Contact Alex Formuzis alex@ewg.org (202) 667-6982 August 2, 2026

Construction is underway on a $1.7 billion solar and battery storage project in Texas that will turn existing coal mining land into a hub of clean energy generation.

Panamint Capital announced last week that it broke ground on the 1.2-gigawatt Big Rooter Power solar farm in Bremond, about halfway between Dallas and Houston. The project will use some of the land and assets from the adjacent Twin Oaks coal-fired power plant and Calvert surface coal mine, both of which will continue operating.

Panamint’s clean energy project will be among the largest in the nation — and, the developer claims, the biggest solar array ever built at a brownfield site in North America.

“We believe deploying new capacity at existing energy sites is the clearest way to benefit communities, ratepayers, and the environment alike,” said Apolka Totth, CEO of Panamint, a Nevada-based investment firm.

The giant installation will further boost Texas’ thriving solar sector, which this year is expected to generate more electricity than coal in the Lone Star State. The renewable resource is helping meet the state’s energy demand from data centers, manufacturing facilities, and rising air-conditioning use amid more frequent and extreme hot weather.

The Calvert mine is a 19-million-ton surface lignite mine adjacent to the Twin Oaks coal plant. Panamint Capital

Panamint, which is backed by the private equity firm KKR, launched in 2019 with the goals of squeezing more life out of existing fossil-fuel infrastructure while building lower-emission facilities on the same sites. In 2023, Panamint acquired the 310-MW Twin Oaks coal plant and Calvert mine ​“with the express intention of leveraging the site’s existing characteristics to massively and rapidly expand generating capability at the lowest possible cost,” Totth said by email. 

Work has started on the first phase of the solar farm, a 491-MW section that is set to go online in August 2028. Construction will begin in December on the remaining 658 MW, which could start producing power in August 2029.

The 10,000-acre Big Rooter site will also include 1.6 gigawatt-hours of battery storage and 20 miles of new extra-high-voltage transmission lines. The investment firm says it also has the infrastructure and natural gas access needed to build at least 800 MW of gas-fired generation, either for the grid or customers like data center developers.

“Big Rooter is a landmark project that reflects the scale of investment being made in America’s energy future,” George Hershman, CEO of Solv Energy, said in a news release. The contractor is building the site’s solar array, substation, and transmission infrastructure.

Turning coal mines into clean energy 

Big Rooter’s pairing with active coal operations makes it unique within the nation’s small but growing coal-to-solar subsector, which has mainly focused on putting panels on former mine lands and retired industrial sites.

The largest of these projects is the 186-MW Tilden Solar Project in southern Illinois, followed by the 111-MW Martin County Solar Project in eastern Kentucky, which both went online last year atop abandoned coal mines.

In Louisiana, the 240-MW Dolet Hills Solar Project is now being built on a former coal mine property. And the developer BrightNight is advancing the Starfire installation on remediated mine land in Kentucky.

In 2023, when BrightNight announced the Appalachian project, electric truck startup Rivian signed on as the anchor customer, with a 100-MW power purchase agreement. Starfire was initially envisioned as a roughly 800-MW project, but is now on track for 410 MW, with construction slated for late 2027 and planned operations in 2030.

The 111-MW Martin County Solar Project in eastern Kentucky will supply power for Toyota’s automaking operations in the state. Toyota

“Earlier descriptions of a larger project reflected a broader long-term vision for the site, but as development has progressed, BrightNight has focused on the configuration that best aligns with current interconnection, permitting, site, and customer considerations,” a BrightNight spokesperson said by email. ​“We remain very enthusiastic about Starfire and its importance as a major redevelopment project on former coal mining land in Eastern Kentucky.”

Repurposing old mining sites for solar power has an obvious appeal. As opposition breaks out in rural areas over using prime farmland for solar — concerns stoked by Trump administration officials, including U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins — brownfield projects allow developers to sidestep those conversations and put sullied land to use. Doing so has typically proved more complicated and expensive than placing solar panels on flat or uncontaminated fields.

The 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law and 2022’s Inflation Reduction Act provided incentives to make it easier to finance clean energy installations on mine lands, while a $500 million Department of Energy program allocated funding for projects on current or former mines.

But last year, the Trump administration and Congress added more hurdles by phasing out tax credits for solar and wind energy, effectively ending the tax bonus for brownfield developments. And the administration scrapped at least one DOE mine-land award, for Mineral Basin Solar Power, as part of its sweeping cancellation of $7.6 billion in clean energy grants in the 16 states that voted for Democrat Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election.

The Nature Conservancy and its partners are developing solar projects on former coal mines, including at this site in Campbell County, Tennessee.
Cameron Davidson/TNC

“The federal policy landscape for developing clean energy on mines has changed, but the opportunity hasn’t,” said Jessica Wilkinson, the North America renewable energy team lead for The Nature Conservancy, a global nonprofit.

“In many parts of the country, wind and solar are the cheapest forms of energy and are succeeding on economics alone,” she added. ​“And if building on mine lands, brownfields, and landfills has fewer community conflicts, they may be seen as very enticing.” 

The nonprofit and its partners plan to develop 25 solar and battery storage projects on former mine lands that The Nature Conservancy manages in the Cumberland Forest, which spans parts of Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia. The first project, the 10-MW Wildcats Solar in Virginia, is expected to break ground this fall and could start delivering power to the grid next year.

Wilkinson noted that despite the federal pullback, states have continued to show support for what her group calls ​“mining the sun” projects. For example, Ohio and Colorado passed laws to incentivize renewable energy development on former industrial sites. And a handful of federal programs continue providing financial support for cleaning up coal mining areas — a crucial step for enabling future solar development.

“Communities still want to see these lands become economic engines again,” Wilkinson said.

Texas project adds solar — and more coal

Panamint, for its part, said it was able to secure clean energy incentives for Big Rooter Power before Trump signed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act on July 4, 2025, repealing large swaths of the Inflation Reduction Act.

“We ordered long-lead time equipment such as transformers and circuit breakers well before last summer’s OBBBA, so we were largely insulated from those impacts,” Totth said.

She noted that Panamint is partnering with U.S. firms First Solar and Nextpower (formerly Nextracker) to procure domestically made solar modules and racks. Big Rooter is also located in an ​“energy community” — the Department of Energy’s term for brownfield sites and areas affected by coal plant and mine closures. For those reasons, the company says it will receive a federal investment tax credit worth 50% of total project costs.

Read Next For first time, Americans are getting more of their electricity from solar than coal Tik Root

Yet as Panamint begins installing millions of solar panels in Texas, it has no plans to wind down production at the neighboring Twin Oaks coal plant.

“Twin Oaks is an economically competitive unit that provides low-cost reliability to Texas ratepayers, and we see no reason for an early retirement,” Totth said. She added that the company is also investigating both expanding the Calvert mine area and building a terminal facility to rail in coal for continued operations.

As Totth sees it, the new solar array will produce enough carbon-free power to ​“negate” the coal plant’s emissions profile on an annual basis.

It’s an example of the all-of-the-above approach to energy in Texas. Despite the massive amounts of solar, storage, and wind the state has built, it continues to cling to fossil fuels. 

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline This Texas coal mine will soon be home to a 1.2GW solar farm on Aug 2, 2026.

A recent study from Yuka and Harvard Law School’s Food Law and Policy Clinic finds that in the United States, cheap foods are more likely to contain ingredients that negatively impact health compared to more expensive products. The report recommends policies to regulate food safety, hold food companies accountable, and improve public health.

The study analyzed more than 800 packaged foods sold nationwide in the U.S. to determine how a product’s price relates to its nutritional quality. The least expensive products contain 163 percent more additives, 21 percent more sugar, and 10 percent more sodium than the most expensive ones. Some products also contain ingredients that are banned in other countries, according to the report.

“Healthy eating cannot simply be framed as an individual responsibility…without acknowledging the structural realities of the food system,” Julie Chapon, Co-Founder of Yuka, a consumer health app, tells Food Tank.

The products span the 12 most popular processed food categories in the Yuka app that are sold nationwide in major U.S. grocery retailers. Examples include store-bought bread, breakfast cereal, pizza, crackers, cereal bars, and tortilla wraps. The report finds that the products in each category can vary greatly in terms of nutritional quality.

“Most people believe that some types of food are generally healthy and others—like desserts or snack products—are not,” Emily Broad Leib, Director of the Harvard Food Law and Policy Clinic, tells Food Tank. She points to store-bought bread as an example, with the cheapest breads containing four times more additives than the most expensive ones. While many consumers view bread as a healthy part of their diet, the ingredients can vary widely between loaves.

“Even basic staples can be either fairly healthy or heavily engineered, and price is quietly pushing lower-income families toward the latter,” says Broad Leib. These findings demonstrate the nutrition inequity embedded in the U.S. food system and help explain the more than US$1 trillion a year spent on diet-related diseases, according to the report.

One of the major hurdles to overcoming these challenges is the generally recognized as safe (GRAS) exemption. The loophole allows companies to self-certify and introduce new ingredients into the U.S. food supply without U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) notification or review. The report says, “99 percent of new food chemicals introduced since 2000 have bypassed federal oversight.” These novel substances are rarely reviewed by the FDA after entering the market.

The study recommends reforming the food oversight and safety system that allows for this to happen. These include amending the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FD&C Act) to remove the GRAS loophole and require FDA review of new substances. It suggests systematic reassessments and monitoring of food additive ingredients within the food supply, placing limits on specific substances, improving transparency in flavoring ingredients, and requiring the disclosure of ingredient processing and sources.

The report also states that there is a need for policies to reduce consumer exposure to high-risk additives and ultra-processed foods (UPFs). These include banning these ingredients in schools, reforming food procurement within institutional settings, and utilizing tax credits to incentivize product reformulation without these ingredients.

The authors hope that these policy recommendations, along with public pressure, will push companies to reformulate their products and create a more equitable food system. “Healthier food should not be a luxury,” says Chapon, “Public health protections must evolve to better reflect today’s food environment.”

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

Photo courtesy of Haley Owens, Unsplash

The post Study Reveals Hidden Health Risks of Cheap Foods appeared first on Food Tank.

Headline News:

• “Zambia’s Government Delivers On Its Promise To Ramp Up Generating Capacity, With Solar Playing A Key Role” • Zambia made a conscious decision to have an electricity grid powered by renewable energy, mostly hydro. But this bold move has faced severe challenges recently due to prolonged droughts. Now the country is turning to solar. [CleanTechnica]

Boy learning by solar light (Patrick Bentley, CC BY-SA 2.0, cropped)

• “India’s Renewables Hit 20% Power Mix Record in July as Coal Share Drops” • India’s renewable energy generation reached a record 20% of the total power mix in July, while coal’s share fell. But the overall picture was complicated. The total amount generated fell from June, but increased year on year, as electric demand increased. [Whalesbook]
• “Renewable Power Generation Capacity To Hit 12,000 MW By Next March” • Since the 14th government’s term started, about 4,500 MW of new capacity have been added to Iran’s power grid, as the capacity of renewable power plants increased from 1,250 MW to about 5,800 MW. The capacity of renewable power plants will reach 12,000 MW by March 2027. [Tehran Times]
• “Wildfires Spark Evacuations In Washington Amid Dangerous Conditions Across The Pacific Northwest” • A wildfire spreading quickly outside Spokane, Washington, burned more than 2,000 acres and sparked evacuations, according to local authorities. The Old Trails Fire is just one of a number of fires currently threatening the state. [ABC News]
• “KIA Elects To Manufacture The EV3 In Mexico” • The Kia EV3 was introduced two years ago, with the expectation that it would be made at the existing Kia factory in Georgia for sale in the US market. That was before the immigration folks descended on a Hyundai battery factory and hauled off a few hundred South Korean in handcuffs. [CleanTechnica]

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

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More than 50 years after the murder of iconic Chilean folk singer Victor Jara, the last man convicted of killing him has been tracked down and brought to justice. In 1973, a day after Pinochet's coup, Jara was seized, tortured, his hands broken to silence what was deemed music "more powerful than a thousand machine guns." Today, in a world tilting right, he remains an enduring symbol of resistance. Manifiesto: “A song has meaning/ When it beats in the veins/ Of a man who will die singing.”

On Sept. 11, 1973, troops under brutal, U.S.- backed General Augusto Pinochet bombed and stormed the presidential palace in Santiago to depose Salvador Allende, a Chilean physician who'd become the first democratically elected Marxist head of state in Latin America. Barricaded inside the palace, Allende gave a final speech defending Chilean democracy. "My words do not have bitterness but disappointment.," he said. "May they be a moral punishment for those who have betrayed their oath." He thanked the country's workers, farmers, miners, women, intellectuals, students for their heartfelt loyalty to "a man who was only an interpreter of great yearnings for justice." "I will always be next to you," he said. "My sacrifice will not be in vain. History is ours." Then he shot himself under the chin with an assault rifle.

A Marxist activist and singer hugely popular with Allende supporters, Jara had re-written the 1969 song Venceremos - composed by Sergio Ortega with original text by Claudio Iturra - as an anthem for Allende’s 1970 Popular Unity election campaign. Born to a poor farm family, Jara was mestizo, a mix of Indigenous Mapuche and Spanish heritage. He once said his first memory was hearing his mother sing folk songs as she worked in their garden or kitchen; after she died when he was 15, Jara went to seminary school but eventually decided against the priesthood. After military service, he studied theater and music at university, then turned to writing songs that merged tender folk music with political themes - rural working-class stories, brutal evictions of squatters: "We began to create a new kind of song. It was music that was born out of necessity."

In September 1973, widely recognizable, he was seized by soldiers the day after the coup and taken to Estadio Chile, a Santiago stadium now named for him, where about 5,000 people were being held. For four days, he was beaten, tortured, humiliated. An officer threw a cigarette on the ground and made him crawl for it; others played Russian Roulette with him; eventually, they broke both his hands before parading him through the stadium; later, through split lips, he sang a final Venceremos - "We Will Prevail." On his last day, said a fellow detainee, he found a pen and notebook and scribbled one more song, or harsh poem, Estadio Chile, later smuggled out. Two hours later, he was killed, his body dumped near a cemetery. His body had 44 bullet wounds 56 broken bones, including a shattered skull. He was 40 years old.

The Pinochet dictatorship went on to kill or disappear over 3,000 people, and detain and torture up to 40,000 during its brutal 17-year reign. It ended in 1990 through a constitutional process wherein voters rejected extending its rule and elected a civilian president. After years of legal efforts to hold Pinochet accountable, in 1998 a Spanish judge issued an international arrest warrant for his human rights abuses; he was detained in the U.K during a medical visit after the House of Lords ruled he did not have immunity, but Britain ultimately released him back to Chile in 2000 for health reasons. There, Chilean judges pushed their Supreme Court to strip him of immunity to face trial for murders and kidnappings tied to military death squads, but he died under house arrest of a heart attack in 2006, age 91, having never been formally tried or convicted for his crimes.

Victor Jara, one of the regime's most beloved and recognizable victims, swiftly became an enduring international symbol of resistance after the deadly, public silencing of his music. In 2003, Estadio Chile was renamed Estadio Víctor Jara; in 2009, Victor’s body was reburied in a public funeral attended by thousands of mourners; today, an annual 1,000 Guitars event held in his honor at that stadium also draws thousands. Still, the moral arc of the universe moved slowly. Over time, Chilean courts convicted hundreds of military officers and secret police for human rights abuses, but it was not until 2018 that eight retired officers were charged with Jara's murder, and that of Allende's director of prisons Littré Quiroga Carvajal. In August 2023, after five years of appeals and 50 years of evading justice, Chile's Supreme Court convicted them all in a unanimous decision.

The Court sentenced the eight, several in absentia, to 15 years and a day for the murders of both men, and 10 years and a day for their kidnappings, for a total of 25 years. A ninth was given eight years for concealing the crimes. The Court also dismissed all their appeals for annulment, and ordered the state to pay large reparations to the families of both men. Of those sentenced, 86-year-old Gen. Hernán Chacón killed himself moments after police arrived to arrest him at his home in a wealthy district of Santiago. Another, Pedro Barrientos, had fled Chile for the US in 1989; he was extradited back in 2023 after he was arrested in the US during a traffic stop. During his trial, one former soldier testified Barrientos liked to brandish his pistol in a crowd and declare, “I killed Víctor Jara with this!"

Five others have been in jail since then. Only one, Nelson Haase Mazzei, had remained missing since he failed to appear in court in 2018. A retired colonel, Haase Mazzei joined the Chilean army’s notorious Tejas Verde brigade in 1972 and was part of Pinochet’s brutal secret police; he worked closely with its head, Manuel Contreras, sentenced to over 500 years in jail for crimes against humanity before his 2015 death. Last weekend, in likely the final act of a too-long quest for justice, Chilean police announced they'd arrested Haase Mazzei, now 80, in rural Puyehue, south of Santiago. A judge ordered his immediate imprisonment to start his 25 year sentence; one article noted, "Impunity Takes Another Hit." Another said his defense lawyer has requested his transfer to Punta Peuco, a ritzy jail already housing many of the Pinochet era's murderers.

Through the Víctor Jara Foundation, started by Victor's widow Joan, a British dancer and activist who died in 2023 at 96, their daughter Amanda said she welcomes the news of Haase's arrest but, "Half a century after the murders, it is difficult to see this as justice." Still, Jara's songs live on from when Allende, after he won the presidency, spoke before a banner reading, "You can’t have a revolution without songs." "They were on the radio and television," said Joan in 1975. “The song movement was a tremendous weapon." Since then, music has continued fighting the fear authoritarianism depends on, transforming "political grievance into a shared language of survival" - Miriam Makeba, Mikis Theodorakis, Pussy Riot, America's Woody Guthrie to Dylan to Bad Bunny, who launched his 2026 tour in Chile with Jara's song, dedicated to Ho Chi Minh, The Right to Live in Peace.

In 2020, James Dean Bradfield, lead vocalist and guitarist for the Welsh alt-rock band Manic Street Preachers, released Even in Exile, a concept album dedicated to Jara's life and work, along with a three-part podcast. Bradfield discovered Jara as a teen, taken aback by a tenderness he didn't associate with "one of the only truly Marxist musicians. The truth...floats to you like a dream.” He learned more about Jara from poet Patrick Jones, whose brother is Bradfield’s bandmate; Jones had found two compilations of Jara songs in a thrift shop, became "obsessed" and wrote dozens of poems about Jara that, shared with Bradfield, became the album's songs. For Jones, the story of Jara's life and death is "a warning from history" that deeply . resonates with today's rise of the right: "Power is always afraid of those who stand up and say, 'There’s another way.'"

For the album, Bradfield wanted songs that span Jara's life, from his rural childhood to his final hours. He was moved by his singing of Venceremos near the end - "He died defiantly, but with grace" - yet felt, "If you just focus on his death, you ignore the journey." Above all, he wanted to highlight Jara's daunting courage and conviction throughout his life, a "naked truth" that rendered him what Phil Ochs called, when he met Jara in 1971, "the real thing." For Bradfield, it reminded him of the Preachers' 1998 song, If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next. He also deliberately chose to include Jara's final Estadio Chile - "How hard it is to sing when I must sing of horror/ Horror which I am living, horror which I am dying” - which he calls "an anthem that became a prophecy." Of Jara's life and work, he hears "the echo time and time again. I wanted to show here’s an echo that doesn’t die."

- YouTube www.youtube.com

- YouTube www.youtube.com

The Shell Leaks Files SLF-2007-017 The Sakhalin Papers VII: The Whistleblower Warnings — Claims That Shell’s Management Could No Longer Control the Project

Archive Reference: SLF-2007-017
Collection: The Sakhalin Papers
Evidence Standard: Authenticated Shell communications, contemporaneously preserved whistleblower material, official project records, contemporaneous journalism, parliamentary evidence and relevant court-record context.

Introduction

On 2 June 2007, royaldutchshellplc.com published allegations attributed to a confidential source inside the Sakhalin-2 project.

The source made two distinct categories of claim.

The first concerned the project timetable. The insider alleged that senior management was promoting an unachievable December 2007 target for making the onshore pipeline ready to receive hydrocarbons, while specialist personnel believed that completion would extend into 2008.

The second category was considerably more serious. It included allegations that professional advice was being disregarded, personnel were being pressured to endorse the preferred timetable, and questionable relationships existed between project management and certain contractors.

The eventual project chronology supports an important part of the source’s warning: the pipeline was not completed in December 2007.

It does not, however, prove every allegation the source made.

This archive file therefore asks three separate questions:

1. What did the whistleblower allege?
2. Which predictions were borne out by subsequent events?
3. Which accusations remain unproven?

That distinction is essential to responsible documentary history.

The Nature of the Evidence 1. An anonymous source is not an authenticated Shell document

The whistleblower statement was preserved and published contemporaneously. It contained detailed references to Sakhalin Energy’s onshore pipeline organisation, its programme, named managers, internal disciplines and contractors.

Its specificity gives it evidential interest.

It does not, by itself, establish the source’s identity, employment status or personal knowledge.

Unlike the David Greer “Pipeliners All!” email examined in the previous archive file, the whistleblower statement was not subsequently authenticated by Shell or Sakhalin Energy.

It must therefore be classified as a contemporaneously recorded insider allegation, not as an authenticated corporate record.

That does not make it worthless.

It determines how cautiously it must be used.

The Whistleblower’s Central Warning 2. The disputed December 2007 target

The source alleged that Sakhalin Energy management was presenting December 2007 as the date by which the onshore pipeline would be ready for hydrocarbons.

According to the statement, several internal engineering and construction disciplines had concluded that completion would instead occur during 2008. The source alleged that operational, procedural and construction constraints had been excluded from the preferred programme and that information inconsistent with the December target was being rejected.

The allegation was not merely that a deadline might be missed.

The source claimed that management was committed to a date that internal specialists considered technically unattainable.

The statement concluded with the stark assessment:

“The current SEIC management can no longer effectively manage Sakhalin II.”

That was an opinion expressed by an anonymous source. It was not a judicial finding, an official audit conclusion or a statement accepted by Shell.

3. Alleged pressure on project personnel

The source further alleged that members of specialist disciplines were being pressed to endorse the December programme despite their professional reservations.

It was claimed that staff risked having responsibility shifted onto them if the target was subsequently missed: management could point to an apparently agreed programme, while the individuals concerned would carry the professional consequences.

The source described project information as being accepted only when it supported the chosen date and alleged that personnel were being placed under considerable pressure.

Evidential position

No authenticated record examined for this instalment independently proves that staff were coerced into approving a false programme.

The allegation must remain identified as an allegation.

There is, however, authenticated evidence that senior project management was confronting visible anxiety and a lack of confidence among personnel at approximately the same time.

The Greer Email as Corroborative Context 4. “Pipeliners All!”

David Greer’s authenticated email of 18 April 2007 was addressed to a large group of personnel connected with the onshore pipeline operation.

Greer wrote that comments and body language observed at a project meeting suggested the department risked becoming a team that did not want to fight and lacked confidence in its ability.

He attempted to rally the recipients with militaristic language and ended with the instruction:

“Lead me, follow me or get out of my way.”

Shell and Sakhalin Energy confirmed the email’s authenticity after it was supplied to the Financial Times. Greer left the company several weeks later, although Sakhalin Energy rejected as speculation the suggestion that the leaked email had caused his departure.

What the email corroborates

The Greer document confirms that:

• senior management perceived faltering confidence among pipeline personnel;
• the remaining programme was regarded as an exceptional challenge;
• management considered a forceful intervention necessary;
• substantial organisational pressure existed within the project.

What it does not corroborate

The email does not prove that project schedules were falsified.

It does not establish that staff were coerced into signing an unachievable programme.

It does not prove improper relationships with contractors.

It supports the whistleblower’s description of a project under intense managerial and schedule pressure, but it does not authenticate every allegation.

Earlier Internal Warnings About Schedule Pressure 5. The Bouman–Van Spronsen correspondence

The Sakhalin archive contains authenticated internal communications predating the 2007 whistleblower statement.

In 2002, Shell manager Hans Bouman raised concerns with Sakhalin Energy technical director Engel van Spronsen about well design, seismic faults, shallow gas and the danger of allowing schedule considerations to override technical caution.

Van Spronsen acknowledged that he sometimes shared Bouman’s concern about the schedule. Bouman subsequently confirmed the authenticity of his emails to Dow Jones Newswires. Sakhalin Energy said the well design was revised in 2005, while Van Spronsen denied that the issues identified had caused the project’s cost escalation.

One observation from the contemporaneous reporting was particularly relevant:

“I would never ever want to be schedule-driven” on a project of that scale.

These earlier emails concerned well design rather than the 2007 pipeline completion programme. They do not prove the later whistleblower allegations.

They do establish that concern about schedule pressure within Sakhalin-2 was not invented retrospectively.

Testing the Prediction Against the Project Record 6. Was the pipeline ready in December 2007?

The strongest test of the anonymous warning is the subsequent project chronology.

In January 2008, an official Gazprom account of a Sakhalin-2 project visit described the onshore oil and gas pipelines as still under construction.

Contemporaneous reports in November 2008 stated that construction of the approximately 800-kilometre pipeline system had been completed and that filling it with oil and gas had begun.

Sakhalin Energy’s present project history records that gas production from the Lunskoye-A platform began in 2008, when gas first entered the project’s pipeline system. It similarly dates commercial development of the Piltun-Astokhskoye-B area to late 2008.

The available record therefore supports the whistleblower’s central scheduling prediction:

The onshore pipeline system was not completed by December 2007. Substantial construction and commissioning activity continued into 2008.

7. The wider commissioning delay

The whistleblower statement concentrated on pipeline readiness rather than the date of the first commercial LNG cargo.

The wider project timetable nevertheless provides relevant context.

In December 2007, Sakhalin Energy announced that completion of the LNG plant and the first exports would be delayed. Reuters reported Gazprom’s intention to attempt first LNG exports by the end of 2008, while the Sakhalin regional governor said supplies were more likely to begin in spring 2009.

Gazprom’s official project history records that the LNG plant entered service in February 2009.

These developments do not prove that the anonymous source possessed perfect information.

They do demonstrate that the warning of slippage beyond the publicly promoted timetable was substantially correct.

The Contractor Allegations 8. Starstroi and SU4

The source also raised questions about the relationship between Sakhalin Energy management, prime contractor Starstroi and subcontractor SU4.

The allegations included possible conflicts of interest and inappropriate relationships. No evidence examined for this instalment establishes those accusations as fact.

In June 2008, WWF referred to the claims in written evidence submitted to the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee. The parliamentary record stated:

“Allegations have been made by a whistleblower of inappropriate relationships between SEIC management and its contractors.”

It specifically identified Starstroi and SU4 and cited the January 2008 royaldutchshellplc.com article as its source.

What parliamentary inclusion means

The inclusion of the allegations in published parliamentary evidence is historically significant.

It demonstrates that WWF considered them relevant enough to place before a select committee and that they entered the permanent parliamentary record.

It does not mean that Parliament investigated, adopted or proved them.

The wording carefully preserved their status as allegations.

The same discipline should be maintained here.

Court-Record Position 9. What the courts did—and did not—decide

WWF and The Corner House prepared a judicial-review challenge concerning the UK Export Credits Guarantee Department’s proposed support for Sakhalin-2. The challenge was discontinued after Sakhalin Energy withdrew its application for ECGD support in February 2008.

Separate proceedings concerning disclosure resulted in government information about Sakhalin-2 being released. Parliamentary evidence records that two hearings confirmed that departmental responses expressing serious environmental concerns should be disclosed in the public interest.

Those proceedings concerned government transparency and the handling of potential export-credit support.

They did not determine:

• whether Sakhalin Energy manipulated its construction programme;
• whether personnel were coerced;
• whether contractor relationships were improper;
• whether any individual had engaged in corruption.

No judicial finding establishing those allegations has been identified.

Reassessing the Archive’s 2008 Headline 10. Were the warnings “100% correct”?

The archive article published on 6 January 2008 carried the headline:

“The Sakhalin-2 whistleblower warnings which proved 100% correct.”

Under the present evidential methodology of The Shell Leaks Files, that description requires qualification.

What was vindicated

The source predicted that the December 2007 pipeline target was not achievable and that completion would extend into 2008.

The official chronology supports that prediction.

The source also portrayed the project as suffering from schedule pressure, weak confidence and management strain. Greer’s authenticated email provides meaningful contemporaneous support for that general description.

What was not proven

The surviving evidence examined here does not prove:

• deliberate fabrication of project information;
• systematic coercion of specialists;
• an organised attempt to transfer blame;
• improper financial or personal relationships with contractors;
• corruption involving Starstroi or SU4.

The accurate archival conclusion is therefore:

The whistleblower’s central scheduling warning was materially vindicated. The accompanying allegations of misconduct remain unproven.

Correcting that distinction does not weaken the archive.

It strengthens it.

Historical Analysis

The importance of the 2007 warning lies partly in its timing.

It was published before the December deadline had passed, before the pipeline’s completion slipped into 2008 and before the LNG plant entered service in 2009.

It was therefore predictive rather than retrospective.

That gives the schedule warning genuine historical weight.

At the same time, accurate prediction does not automatically validate every accompanying allegation. A source may be correct about engineering progress and mistaken—or insufficiently informed—about motive, misconduct or contractual relationships.

Documentary analysis must resist the temptation to treat a partly vindicated source as infallible.

The proper method is claim-by-claim assessment.

Commentary

The whistleblower’s most dramatic assertion was that Sakhalin Energy’s management could no longer control the project.

That statement cannot be established as an objective fact.

But the record does show a project whose internal timetable had become deeply contested, whose pipeline personnel required an extraordinary motivational intervention, whose completion moved beyond the disputed December target and whose senior project director departed during the resulting public controversy.

In ordinary corporate communications, those elements would have appeared separately:

• a revised completion date;
• a management departure;
• a construction update;
• a reassuring statement about eventual delivery.

The leaked material connects them.

It reveals that the delay was not merely an external surprise announced after the event. Someone claiming detailed knowledge of the project had warned in advance that the programme was not achievable.

That is precisely why contemporaneously preserved whistleblower material matters—even when it must be handled with caution.

Evidence Assessment

Existence and date of the whistleblower statement: Confirmed by contemporaneous website publication and archive preservation.

Identity and employment status of the source: Not publicly established.

Prediction that pipeline completion would extend into 2008: Supported by official and contemporaneous project records.

Description of management pressure and low confidence: Partially supported by the authenticated Greer email.

Claim that project information was fabricated: Not proven.

Claim that personnel were coerced into approving the programme: Not proven.

Allegations concerning Starstroi and SU4: Recorded by WWF in parliamentary evidence, but not judicially or independently established.

Court findings on the whistleblower accusations: None identified.

Document Integrity Statement

This archive file deliberately separates:

• authenticated corporate documents;
• anonymous insider allegations;
• official project milestones;
• contemporaneous reporting;
• parliamentary evidence;
• court-record context;
• historical inference;
• editorial commentary.

The fact that one prediction was vindicated has not been used to authenticate unrelated allegations.

The archive’s earlier “100% correct” characterisation has been reassessed in accordance with the more rigorous evidential standards now applied by The Shell Leaks Files.

Sources and Documentary References Primary and archival material

• Confidential whistleblower statement published on 2 June 2007 and republished on 6 January 2008.
• Authenticated David Greer “Pipeliners All!” email, 18 April 2007.
• Hans Bouman–Engel van Spronsen internal correspondence concerning Sakhalin design and schedule risks.

Official project records

• Gazprom project review recording that onshore pipelines remained under construction in January 2008.
• Sakhalin Energy records concerning first gas and late-2008 commercial development.
• Gazprom record of the LNG plant entering service in February 2009.

Contemporaneous reporting

• Reports of pipeline completion and commissioning in November 2008.
• Reuters, Itar-Tass and The Moscow Times reports concerning delays to LNG completion and exports.

Parliamentary and court-record context

• WWF memorandum to the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee, 20 June 2008.
• Parliamentary account of the proposed judicial review and disclosure proceedings concerning ECGD’s handling of Sakhalin-2.

Related Archive Files

• SLF-2007-011 — The Sakhalin Papers I: How Internal Documents Became Geopolitical History
• SLF-2007-012 — The Sakhalin Papers II: The Cost Escalation That Changed Everything
• SLF-2007-013 — The Sakhalin Papers III: Environmental Inspections, Regulatory Pressure and the Battle for Control
• SLF-2007-014 — The Sakhalin Papers IV: Behind Closed Doors — Internal Communications During the Crisis
• SLF-2007-015 — The Sakhalin Papers V: The Gazprom Agreement — How Control of Sakhalin-2 Changed Hands
• SLF-2007-016 — The Sakhalin Papers VI: After the Deal — “Pipeliners All!” and the Internal Record of Shell’s Response

Archivist’s Note

An archive should not merely preserve old conclusions. It should test them.

The whistleblower’s prediction about the project timetable proved substantially accurate. That deserves to be recorded.

The more serious allegations were never established to the same evidential standard. That must also be recorded.

The credibility of The Shell Leaks Files depends upon preserving both parts of that conclusion.

About The Shell Leaks Files

The Shell Leaks Files is an independent documentary archive preserving authenticated historical material relating to Royal Dutch Shell plc, Shell plc and associated companies.

The archive applies a consistent methodology based upon provenance, contemporaneous corroboration, official records and the explicit separation of documentary fact from allegation, inference and commentary.

Next Archive File SLF-2007-018 — The Sakhalin Papers VIII: The Story Shell Wanted “Killed” — Internal Emails, The Sunday Times and the Battle to Contain the Sakhalin Narrative

The next instalment will examine authenticated Shell correspondence concerning a proposed Sunday Times investigation into the Donovan archive’s role in the Sakhalin-2 crisis.

It will reconstruct what the newspaper intended to publish, Shell’s internal discussion of applying pressure to stop the article, what subsequently happened—and the limits of what the surviving documents allow us to conclude.

The Shell Leaks Files: 1 August 2026 was first posted on August 1, 2026 at 10:25 pm.
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October will witness a massive global demonstration to denounce the damage caused by the agrochemical industry and to end the impunity enjoyed by the multinationals that are poisoning us.

The post Pesticides kill: join us against Syngenta on October 3rd appeared first on La Via Campesina - EN.

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

Listen to the audio version >>

The Greentech revolution makes it possible to pivot rapidly away from fossil fuels. But realizing that possibility requires actually halting and reversing fossil fuel extraction and burning. President Trump is doing everything possible instead to expand such fossil folly – and to crush any efforts to restrain it. But the fight to reduce fossil fuels continues from below.

Oil well along U.S. Route 6 in Railroad Valley, Nevada, July 17, 2014. Photo credit: Famartin, Wikipedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.

The previous commentaries have described how people in cities, states, and communities have been expanding fossil free energy production and reducing energy use through Greentech initiatives.

These are essential aspects of reducing climate-destroying greenhouse gas emissions, but in themselves they will not halt the destruction of the climate through the burning of fossil fuels. That requires halting new fossil fuel infrastructure and accelerating the closing of existing fossil fuel facilities. That is often referred to as a “phaseout” or “managed decline” of fossil fuels. It’s often summed up in the slogan, “Leave it in the ground!”

Greentech and fossil fuels can increase at the same time – indeed, they are doing so today. But the cheapening and improvement of Greentech can have a crucial impact on fossil fuel use. For every decision on future energy use, fossil fuels are worse and renewable energy is a better deal in almost every way (unless you are a fossil fuel company). But we must make the choice not only to create more fossil free energy, but to relentlessly reduce fossil fuel extraction and burning.

Many such actions are now being taken by local and state governments and grassroots activist groups to phase out fossil fuels. Although national and global action will be necessary to phase out fossil fuels completely, in their absence action from below is forming the tip of the climate protection spear.

However desirable a “big bang” shutdown of fossil fuel production and use might be, what is more likely is a persistent squeezing that reduces the value and profitability of fossil fuel investments. Each incremental squeeze on fossil fuel production and use tips the balance toward replacing them with Greentech. The remainder of this commentary will present just a few examples of how this is being done at the local and state level. (The next two commentaries describe another important set of examples — the movement against data centers.)

Facebook reel from Crain’s Detroit Business

One day Ken Klovski, a resident of Lima township in rural Michigan, noticed boreholes on the farm across the road from his home. Klovski checked county records and discovered the farm had a three-year option agreement with the utility Consumers Energy. Then he found a filing with a map showing a proposed 1.4-gigawatt power plant near the farm. A town official called a public meeting where representatives of Consumer Energy denied that they had optioned the land specifically for a power plant. Klovski accused them of lying. The Lima Township Board of Trustees passed a 12-month moratorium on new power-generating facilities. A resident of a nearby town organized Neighbors United Against Noxious Consumers Energy, or NUANCE. On the group’s Facebook page, he began a daily podcast “Dear Garrick,” expressing the concerns of the group’s 1,400 members directly to Consumers Energy CEO Garrick Rochow. Weeks later, the company issued a statement that, “We will release the option on the land back to the property owner and withdraw our application.”

Fossil fuel use can simply be banned on a compulsory timetable. The city of Los Angeles, for example, has committed to get all of its energy from fossil-free sources by 2035 – that is, to ban the use of fossil fuel energy. Shortly after Donald Trump was elected, the city halted use of all electricity produced by coal. Electricity was shut off from Utah’s largest coal-fired power plant to Los Angeles. The plant is being converted to hydrogen. Then it will supply power to Los Angeles that will initially be produced from a mix of natural gas and hydrogen. According to the city’s municipally owned utility, LA intends to transition to 100% green hydrogen made exclusively from water and renewable energy, ending its burning of fossil fuels.

When President Trump ordered old, highly polluting coal-fired power plants scheduled for retirement in Colorado to reopen or remain in operation, the legislature passed “Manage Emissions from Electric Generating Units” law to halt or circumvent the order.  While the state did not have the authority to directly nullify the president’s order, it took multiple pathways to render it less effective. It requires more transparency on the costs incurred from running coal units past their retirement dates; directs the Public Utilities Commission to approve new resources to help the state reach its 2030 climate targets; and requires modern pollution controls for any coal plants operating after 2033. According to a Sierra Club analysis, the Trump Administration’s coal orders have already cost Americans over $330 million, directly affecting ratepayers and the public health of surrounding communities. The Colorado legislation keeps the state aligned with its clean energy goals by curbing coal emissions and reinforces critical retirement dates of coal-fired plants, while also directing Colorado’s Air Quality Control Commission to set limits on pollutants like nitrous oxides and sulfur dioxide. Other states are also challenging Trump’s coal orders.

More than 1,500 institutions worldwide with over 14 trillion dollars in assets have divested from fossil fuels and others continue to join them. In May 2026 the Santa Clara CA County Board of Supervisors voted to divest its 10-billion-dollar investment pool from fossil fuel companies. The pool had already let $30 million in Chevron and Exxon bonds expire. The resolution means the investment pool will not buy any new fossil fuel company bonds to replace them, and the fund will remain fossil free. The decision followed a joint letter from 21 community groups, including Silicon Valley Youth Climate Action, 350 Silicon Valley, and the Pacifica Climate Committee, urging divestment. Carlos Davidson of the Pacifica Climate Committee said, “Just like with divestment from tobacco and South Africa Apartheid, by divesting we bring attention to the fact that the power of the fossil fuel industry is the single biggest obstacle to government action on climate change.” Divestment from fossil fuels has become more attractive as better Greentech alternatives have become available and as fossil fuel investments increasingly risk becoming stranded assets as a result.

Litigation and legislation

State and local governments across the country have filed at least 40 lawsuits arguing that the fossil fuel industry should be held accountable for its role accelerating climate change. For example, Multnomah County, Oregon is suing Chevron and other fossil fuel companies for $50 billion for damages resulting from a deadly 2021 heat dome that brought temperatures to 116 degrees and killed 69 people. “Our case seeks to hold the defendants responsible under Oregon law for their deceptions and misrepresentations and failures to warn about the dangers of their fossil fuel products,” said a lawyer for Multnomah County. The county is seeking $50 million in actual damages, $1.5 billion in future damages related to anticipated heat events, and at least $50 billion for an abatement fund to “weatherproof” the county.

In 2024, the Sierra Club and several community and environmental groups sued the Louisiana Department of Energy and Natural Resources, challenging the Coastal Use Permit for a liquefied natural gas (LNG) export project to construct a massive methane gas liquefaction, storage, and export terminal on the Gulf of Mexico — in wetlands that provide critical flood prevention and other vital ecological functions to local communities and the environment. The project would generate greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to operating 14 new coal-fired power plants or 13 million new gasoline powered vehicles. A Louisiana state court terminated the coastal use permit, finding state officials violated the Louisiana Constitution by issuing the Coastal Use Permit without considering its disproportionate effect on the surrounding communities of color and low-income communities, as well as the climate change impacts and cumulative impacts with other export facilities already in the area.

In February 2025, the state of Michigan – fabled auto capital of America – filed a federal lawsuit accusing ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP, Shell, and the American Petroleum Institute of engaging in a decades-long conspiracy to block the development of clean energy and electric vehicles in order to ensure that their fossil fuel products dominated the market. According to the complaints, acting as a “cartel,” the defendants robbed consumers of energy and transportation choices in “one of the most successful antitrust conspiracies in United States history.”

State legislation is taking multiple approaches to put the squeeze on fossil fuel production and use. For example, Vermont is the first state to pass a law to charge fossil fuel companies for at least some of the damage their emissions have caused. Vermont’s law, the Climate Superfund Act, is largely modeled on the national superfund law. It instructs the state treasurer and Vermont’s Agency of Natural Resources to calculate what fossil fuel emissions have cost the state. The agency then determines the amount of emissions attributable to each fossil fuel company. Each company must then pay into a recovery fund. New York has also passed climate superfund legislation requiring payments to begin in 2028; 11 other states are considering similar legislation. A slew of lawsuits is trying to block the Vermont and New York laws. In May the Trump administration sued both New York and Vermont over their superfund laws and other states over efforts to make polluters pay for harms from climate change. US Attorney General Pam Bondi alleges the laws and other states’ planned legal challenges are “burdensome and ideologically motivated” and “threaten American energy independence and our country’s economic and national security.”

Other legislation to put the screws on utilities is legion; the environmental research group Climate XChange tracked 63 bills in 25 states that cover performance-based pay structures for utilities, limits on utility profits and executive pay, prohibitions on using customer rates for political activity, and expanded price transparency requirements. Hawaii’s SB1396 establishes a “green fee” for transient accommodations to fund response to climate change-related disasters and environmental improvement efforts. The green fee applies to hotels, short-term vacation rentals, timeshares, and similar accommodations and cruise ships.

Such state and local initiatives are far from enough to force the fossil fuel industry to transition to clean Greentech energy. But they contribute to the squeeze on the industry’s value and profits that is already resulting from Greentech competition. And they help lay the groundwork for a future transition from – and abolition of – fossil fuel extraction and use.

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The post Phasing Out Fossil Folly first appeared on Labor Network for Sustainability.

The University Network for Human Rights (UNHR) will host a press conference on Tuesday, August 4, 2026, ahead of a landmark public hearing before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR). The hearing -- "United States: Freedom of Expression and the Right to Peaceful Assembly" -- marks the first time the Commission has held a thematic hearing focused specifically on this issue in the United States. It is also the only hearing focused on the United States during the Commission's current session. “For years, the Commission has heard testimony about attacks on protesters carried out by some of the region’s most repressive dictatorships. Now, it is the United States that will be called to answer for these abuses,” said James Cavallaro, ex-President of the IACHR.

The Commission will hear directly from victims, their attorneys, and experts on excessive force used by the United States to suppress freedom of expression and peaceful assembly during immigration-related protests. The United States government is expected to participate and respond to testimonies by petitioners and questions from Commissioners. The hearing will take place on August 4, 2026, from 4:00–5:30 p.m. EDT at IACHR Headquarters, 1889 F Street NW, Washington, DC.

WHAT: Press Conference on IACHR Hearing on Excessive Use of Force by U.S. Agents

WHEN: Tuesday, August 4, 2026, 2:00–3:30 p.m. EDT

WHERE: Regus, 1500 K Street NW, Room MR-239, Washington, DC 20005

Virtual Participation link here

RSVP here.

WHO: Speakers include:

• James Cavallaro, Executive Director, University Network for Human Rights; former Commissioner (2014–2017) and President (2016–2017) of the IACHR
• Antonio Romanucci, civil rights attorney representing the family of Renée Good and former counsel to the family of George Floyd
• Rev. David Black, witness struck in the head with a pepper-ball projectile by federal agents while protesting outside the Broadview Detention Facility in Chicago
• Locke Bowman, attorney for Rev. David Black
• Susan Akram, Director, International Human Rights Clinic, Boston University
• Naureen Shah, Director of Government Affairs, Equality Division at the ACLU