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By now, you’ve seen the headlines, and there’s more of them every day: It’s “jaw-dropping.” It’s poised to make global warming worse. California has just declared a statewide state of emergency. This year’s El Niño — a shift in Pacific Ocean trade winds that scrambles global weather patterns — has been hotly discussed as one of the strongest on record, and one that could bring about potentially disastrous consequences. One study projects that it may cause as many as 451,000 heat-related deaths around the world by February.  

The current El Niño has also been given an array of eye-catching descriptors. When Jeffrey Shaman, a climatologist at Columbia Climate School, heard the phrase “super El Niño” for the first time earlier this year, he said, “I literally googled it.” The phrase isn’t officially used by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration or the World Meteorological Organization. But he still sees value in the label as a way of communicating the significance of this year’s likely unprecedented El Niño to the general public. 

“It’s colloquial, and there’s nothing wrong with that at all,” Shaman said. 

By all accounts, this year’s El Niño will also give the world a glimpse into a future of unabated warming due to the burning of fossil fuels — and an opportunity to change course before the worst effects occur.

People wade through a flooded road caused by monsoon rains in Apalit, Pampanga, Philippines, on August 20.
Daniel Ceng / Anadolu via Getty Images Water buffaloes emerge from the remaining water in a dried-up lake in Polonnaruwa, Sri Lanka, on September 4. El Niño is worsening the drying of lakes and other water sources amid an ongoing drought.
Thilina Kaluthotage / NurPhoto via Getty Images Back up — what is El Niño?

El Niño is a naturally occurring weather phenomenon that begins when sea surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean rise above average. Although it doesn’t occur on a set timeframe, it tends to happen every two to seven years. Typically, trade winds blow east to west across the Pacific and push warm ocean water along the equator toward East Asia. But during an El Niño year, these winds slow down and sometimes reverse. The warm water that typically gets dragged westward sloshes back, now toward the western coast of the Americas. 

This change in sea surface temperatures has ramifications far beyond the Pacific. It drives extreme weather across the globe, threatening crop harvests in several key agricultural regions, as well as worsening both drought and severe rainfall. 

The impact of climate change on El Niño is complex. Research has shown that global warming has led to more frequent El Niños. But El Niño events are also associated with jumps in global mean surface temperature — or the average temperature of the Earth itself, a measure commonly used as a stand-in for climate change. It’s not easy to delineate how much additional warming is from El Niño and how much is from climate change, but what is clear is that the combination will be devastating. This year may turn out to be the hottest year on record, and 2027 may be even hotter. It could be a preview of the typical levels of warming the world might see by 2040, according to one high-end estimate.

Scientists don’t know exactly how that combination will play out. “It’s going to be a very, very strong event occurring against a backdrop of very rapid global warming,” said Christopher Callahan, a climate scientist at Indiana University. “I think we’re going to, unfortunately, learn a lot this year,” he said.

A firefighter in Indonesia tries to extinguish wildfires at Sungai Rambutan Regency in Ogan Ilir, South Sumatera, on September 12. El Niño conditions are helping to fuel wildfires across the country.
Muhammad Fajri / Anadolu via Getty Images Francisco Molina shows corn kernels that failed to germinate at the village of Los Piches in Honduras on September 4. Locals say the drought is one of the worst they can remember, attributing its severity to the powerful El Niño weather pattern.
Orlando Sierra / AFP via Getty Images What makes this El Niño ‘super’?

There are many ways to measure the strength of an El Niño event. (NOAA keeps track of several of them here.) Some measure the sea surface temperature in different regions of the Pacific; there’s also indexes that take into account atmospheric changes as well as oceanic ones. The one used most often today is called the “Niño 3.4 anomaly.” In the U.S., in order for NOAA to declare an El Niño event, warming in this region of the Pacific must be 0.5 degrees Celsius above normal. If warming is 1 degree above normal, that gets labeled as “moderate”; if it’s 1.5 degrees above normal, then it counts as “strong”; and if it’s 2 degrees above normal, then it’s considered “very strong.”

The term “super” is broadly considered to be synonymous with “very strong.” However, a recent analysis of sea surface temperatures by Carbon Brief, released this week, shows that as of Monday, warming in the Niño 3.4 region reached 3.11 degrees.

That number is significant, because it means this year’s El Niño has already broken the record for the strongest El Niño, which peaked in November 2015. 

El Niño events typically peak around December or January. (Fun fact: The phenomenon was named El Niño by South American fishers who noticed its timing and associated the warmer temperatures with the story of baby Jesus.) It’s possible that sea surface temperatures in the Pacific will drop over the next few months. However, that looks increasingly unlikely. Sea surface temperatures in June, July, and August were the warmest we’ve ever seen, and forecast models show that there is now a 90 percent chance that this El Niño will stay “very strong” through the end of the year. 

“I was a little bit skeptical earlier this year of some of the more dire predictions,” said Callahan. But as more data kept coming in, he said, it became clear “that we’re going to see a generationally strong event this year.”

A worker monitors wind speed and direction in the Pacific at the Peruvian National Emergency Operations Center as part of national multi-hazard drills in preparation for the arrival of El Niño. Carlos Garcia Granthon/ Fotoholica Press / LightRocket via Getty Images Workers secure a container ship as it passes through the Cocoli Locks of the Panama Canal on September 3 ahead of reduced transit measures linked to the El Niño weather phenomenon.
Martin Bernetti / AFP via Getty Images Where did the phrase ‘super El Niño’ come from?

While it might sound like a phrase an overzealous journalist invented, “super El Niño” was actually coined by scientists — a fact that surprised Jovana Vurdelja, an ecolinguistics researcher in Serbia. “I really thought it was just media sensationalism,” she said. The phrase first appeared in a 2003 paper looking at how a strong El Niño can be followed by a strong La Niña, its cooler counterpart, according to Vurdelja.

“Super El Niño” has taken off in English-speaking countries but also across Europe, where it’s been adopted by speakers of Serbian, Norwegian, Italian, German, French, Croatian, and other languages. 

When extraordinary weather is on the way, people reach for amped-up language to communicate the scale of the hazard. But finding the right word to match that danger is like trying to find the right shoe size, Vurdelja said. The language can be too small, minimizing the threat, or it can be too big — exaggerations that can lead to nihilism or desensitization. “It’s extremely important that the word communicates the seriousness, the magnitude, the severity of the event itself,” Vurdelja said. She thinks “super El Niño” hits the mark, since it’s been embraced by scientists and the media alike.

A boy plays in the water of a public fountain as he cools off amid high temperatures linked to the El Nino weather phenomenon in Cali, Colombia, on September 23.
Joaquin Sarimiento / AFP via Getty Images Crews work along the Southern California shoreline on September 15. A strengthening El Niño is worsening coastal erosion, threatening homes in Dana Point, California, where several were red-tagged after powerful waves associated with Hurricane Marie battered the coastline.
Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images What comes after ‘super El Niño’?

If super El Niños become a common occurrence — that is, if warming in the Pacific regularly reaches 3 or more degrees above normal — the language we use to describe these events may need to evolve. Some scientists have already suggested that the phrase du jour doesn’t go far enough: “This is going to be so far beyond a super El Niño, if the models are right, that we sort of need a new term for it,” the climate scientist Zeke Hausfather said in the podcast Shift Key last month.

We’ll “need stronger words, stronger language, and that’s when we get into this spiral,” Vurdelja said. That’s how you end up with scientists reaching for words like “mind-bogglingly crazy” and “gobsmackingly bananas” (a phrase Hausfather coined) to describe record heat. The term “Godzilla” El Niño, now taking off in news headlines, was coined by NASA climate scientist Bill Patzert in 2015. 

The official categories for what counts as a strong El Niño used to make sense. “We hadn’t gotten above 2 degrees Celsius except occasionally,” Shaman said, and so the language experts initially settled on “seemed like a reasonable place to be.”

Whatever you call it, the most important thing will be planning for the potential impacts of this very strong El Niño — to understand what it means for food production, hydropower generation, public health, and extreme weather in the coming year. Given California’s recent state of emergency declaration, for now, maybe “super” will do just fine.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Whether it’s ‘super’ or ‘Godzilla,’ El Niño is already breaking records on Sep 25, 2026.

Dear Leslie,

I’ve noticed a real divide between my mindset and my mom’s. She’s a boomer, I’m a millennial. When she furnished her house through Amazon and Wayfair, the thing she was proudest of was how cheap it all was — same with clothes. For me, cheap usually means bad and disposable, not something worth bragging about. I don’t know whether to try explaining my point of view or just let her have hers. Am I missing something about where she’s coming from, or is it OK to think I know better here?

— Generational Divide

Submit a question for a future Ask a Climate Therapist column

Dear Generational Divide,

I’m glad you’re bringing curiosity to the divide you experience with your mom, rather than just frustration. I think the key here is not about who knows better, but about being able to build a cross-generational bridge — something absolutely crucial to the broader climate movement. 

Ask a Climate Therapist tackles your questions about how to navigate the emotional side of climate change, with leading climate-aware therapist Leslie Davenport. Have a question? Ask it here!

As you likely know, a lot of boomers came of age in an era of real economic turbulence: oil-crisis inflation, layoffs, and mortgage rates that hit 18 percent in the early 1980s. Getting more for less was truly a survival strategy — one many of them absorbed at home first. Their own parents had lived through the Great Depression and World War II, and that generation’s habits of rationing, saving, and stretching every dollar shaped how boomers were raised. 

Our economic stressors — and our sources of bargains — have changed over time, but for some people, finding the best deal never stops feeling like a win.

Of course, this isn’t just a boomer impulse. A college student today who shops for a back-to-school outfit at H&M isn’t necessarily anti-sustainability or pro-fast fashion. Consumer choices are often about what’s within reach, not what a person truly values.

I’d recommend starting here: An empathic statement as simple as, “I get why that felt like a success for you” could validate your mom’s thinking on this, and from there it may be easier to have an honest conversation about why you would approach the home furnishing project, for instance, with different priorities. You might also be able to open the door to even more intergenerational learning. Try asking your mom what she used to make from scratch, or what her own mother taught her to fix instead of replace. The meaning of sustainability was different then; it was just how things were done. 

Finding an alignment with your mom matters beyond just resolving family tension, because intergenerational alliances carry real political weight. And the prevailing belief that older generations don’t care about the planet is overstated. Research from King’s College London found that roughly 7 in 10 people across every generation, boomers included, think that environmental problems are serious enough to justify real changes in how we live. But keep in mind, the actions taken by different age groups may be different. Research points to some general trends: Older people tend to be more consistent voters, while younger people are more likely to turn out for protests and the like (though some organizations are aiming to buck that trend by specifically mobilizing older Americans for climate activism).  

If sharing your sustainability values with your mom is important to you, look for the common ground where you can build that intergenerational solidarity. Try meeting each other halfway — share small things you each already do that are beneficial for the planet. If you’re open to learning from one another, you can invite each other in on your beliefs and practices. Two people, two generations — one relationship that’s worth the effort, and one planet worth uniting for.

In this with you,
Leslie

I’m Leslie Davenport, a licensed therapist, educator, speaker, consultant, and internationally recognized voice on the emotional and psychological dimensions of climate change. If you’ve got a question about climate and mental health, please consider submitting it for a future column. Submit a question for a future Ask a Climate Therapist column More from Ask a Climate Therapist

• How to deal with burnout on a burning planet

  Licensed therapist Leslie Davenport offers advice to two readers facing paralysis from different points in their climate journeys.

• Ask a Climate Therapist: How do I avoid getting trapped in the system I hope to change?

  A young engineer has a vision for changing their industry, but worries about slowly becoming a cog in the machine. Therapist Leslie Davenport offers advice for staying creative.

• Ask a Climate Therapist: Is it still ‘catastrophizing’ if the threat is real?

  Licensed therapist Leslie Davenport breaks down some of the tools that can help manage anxiety in the face of mounting climate catastrophe.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline My boomer mom’s cheap online shopping habit drives me nuts on Sep 25, 2026.

There’s a crucial difference between places where people thrive and a thriving community. That distinction is the critical ingredient that enables some communities to flourish while others do not.

Rewetting and restoring wetlands, building small dams, and restoring streams create landscape-level breaks that disrupt fire spread by retaining water in the land instead of letting it run off. EcoAtivo is putting this approach into practice.

Historically, the Red Sea and the Bab el-Mandeb Strait have been a strategic region for trade and political dominance; today, we are still shaped by their influence as we remain fragilely interconnected.

We call upon our member organizations and allies to mobilize against the damaging role that global financial institutions, including the World Bank (WB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), play in undermining democracy and food sovereignty.

The post 16 October Call to Action | The International Day of Action for People’s Food Sovereignty and against Transnational Corporations | #16Oct26 appeared first on La Via Campesina - EN.

Participants at COP31 in Antalya will have a “duty” not to interfere in Türkiye’s internal affairs under the country’s hosting deal with the UN, reviving a clause dropped for last year’s climate summit in Brazil that human rights groups warn could put activists at risk.

Türkiye has faced growing criticism from human rights groups over the jailing of opposition figures, journalists and activists and imposed a blanket protest ban around July’s summit of the NATO military alliance in Ankara.

The contested provision is included in the binding agreement between the UN climate secretariat and the Turkish government that sets out responsibilities over logistical arrangements and details participants’ rights and obligations.

The document, signed in June but only made public on Wednesday, gives accredited COP31 attendees immunity from legal action over what they say, write or do in connection with the conference. Climate Home News understands that this safeguard can be applied to what takes place both inside and, in certain circumstances, outside of the UN-controlled COP “Blue Zone”. For the first time, this protection explicitly continues after the summit ends.

Turkish riot police arrested protesters during the anti NATO protest on July 7, 2026 in Ankara, Turkey. (Photo by Sedat Suna/Getty Images)

But participants enjoying these “privileges and immunities” also have a duty to respect Türkiye’s laws and regulations and not to interfere in its internal affairs, the agreement states. Rights groups fear its wide-ranging formulation could be used to discourage criticism of the host government.

Climate Home News understands that whether an action is covered by the immunity or infringes on the host’s internal affairs would be evaluated on a case-by-case basis, with close coordination between the country’s authorities and the UN climate change body.

A separate provision states that immunity shall be waived where the UN believes it would “impede the course of justice”.

‘Chilling effect’

Those same provisions featured in the host country agreements for COP28 in the United Arab Emirates and COP29 in Azerbaijan, both regarded as authoritarian regimes, before being dropped for COP30 in Brazil.

Ann Harrison, climate justice policy advisor at Amnesty International, said it is “extremely disappointing” that the COP31 agreement re-introduced clauses that could “hinder the ability of human rights defenders and civil society organisations to conduct their work safely”.

COP31 electrification pledge leaves out clean power commitment

She added the provisions could have a “wider chilling effect” on rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly, given concerns over the human rights situation in Türkiye, including laws that “have shrunk civic space” and their “abusive” implementation by authorities.

The UN climate change body declined to comment.

Rights groups have documented blanket protest bans, unlawful use of force by the police and prosecutions of journalists, human rights defenders and lawyers across Türkiye in the last year.

Arrests and protest bans

Last July, environmental activist Esra Işık was sentenced to more than two years for “resisting” a public official over what Amnesty International described as a peaceful protest against an urgent expropriation order linked to the expansion of coal mining in south-western Türkiye. She is appealing the conviction.

Ahead of a summit of the NATO alliance in the capital Ankara in July, authorities put in place a 13-day blanket ban on demonstrations, citing “national security”, and arrested over 200 people. Human Rights Watch said the crackdown showed Türkiye’s “ruthless intolerance of freedom of speech and assembly”.

Earlier this month, Turkish police detained dozens of people as part of what rights groups described as the government’s widening crackdown on LGBTQ+ activists and venues.

Questioned by media as to how he would guarantee the right to protest at COP31, Kurum said earlier in September that his team would “try to meet” any request they receive from civil society and give them “a free space to express themselves”.

“Don’t worry, thinking you will not be able to voice your opinions or really share your thoughts,” he said in an attempt to reassure campaigners, adding that he had put former deputy environment minister Mehmet Birpinar in charge of liaising with civil society.

Civic space needed

Camilla Pollera, human rights and climate change campaigner at the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL), said meaningful participation at COP31 is fundamental to the legitimacy of climate action.

“At a climate summit, civil society participation necessarily includes being present, speaking out, scrutinising governments’ decisions and climate policies, and advocating for communities most vulnerable to climate change,” she added.

Thousands march in a COP30 protest calling for climate justice and protection of the Amazon among other things in Belem, Brazil on November 15, 2025. (Photo: Mariel Lozada/Climate Home News)

At last year’s COP30 summit, thousands of Indigenous people and climate activists peacefully marched through the Amazonian city of Belém in the first major demonstration outside the UN venue in four years. Smaller-scale demonstrations were largely confined to the “Blue Zone” at COP27 in Egypt, COP28 in the UAE and COP29 in Azerbaijan.

In two other separate incidents in Belém, members of the Munduruku tribe blocked access to the conference centre for hours, demanding an end to development projects in their ancestral land, and protesters stormed through the venue clashing with UN security officials.

The COP31 hosting agreement keeps some of the safeguards previously hailed by civil society groups. The government and the UN secretariat commit to upholding “the fundamental human rights” of all participants in the agreement’s preamble.

Under the deal, Türkiye also needs to ensure that security personnel follow “the highest ethical and professional standards and are expected to behave with integrity and respect”.

The post COP31 attendees told not to interfere in Türkiye’s “internal affairs” appeared first on Climate Home News.

Sustainable Research and Action for Environmental Development (SRADev Nigeria) is a professional, non-governmental, non-profit think tank dedicated to environmental health research, advocacy, and action.

Through evidence-based research, policy advocacy, capacity building, and strategic partnerships, SRADev Nigeria works to improve environmental health, strengthen environmental governance, and foster the sustainable management of natural resources. The organisation facilitates knowledge exchange, builds bridges of understanding among stakeholders, and supports practical solutions to pressing environmental challenges.

At the heart of SRADev Nigeria’s approach is the belief that sustainable development can only be achieved when local communities are empowered to lead. By placing people at the centre of environmental decision-making and action, the organisation helps communities become active participants in protecting their environment and securing a healthier, more sustainable future.

SRADev is a member of the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA) and is one of the implementing partners of the GAIA-led Methane Reduction in Nigeria (MAMRN) Project, a major zero-waste and climate-action initiative focused on diverting organic waste from open dumpsites and landfills.

In this piece, we spoke with Jeremiah Ato, Policy/Technical Manager at SRADeV Nigeria, about their work as a partner in Lagos and Abuja.

We are glad to have you join us, Jerry. This project spans several cities in Nigeria and involves different organisations, but with the same goal. 

Can you share insights into best practices for collaborating with other organisations in Nigeria?

Effective collaboration with other organisations in Nigeria is strongest when it is built on clarity, trust, and shared ownership. A key best practice is defining roles and responsibilities from the outset, agreeing on who leads, who supports, and how decisions are made. This helps prevent duplication of effort and minimises conflict, particularly in coalition-based initiatives involving civil society, government agencies, and international partners such as GAIA.

Successful collaborations also require a shared vision and a unified voice, while respecting each partner’s unique expertise, mandate, and comparative advantage. Regular communication, structured coordination meetings, joint planning, and transparent information sharing strengthen relationships, maintain accountability, and keep partnerships focused on meaningful, sustainable impact.

Could you share some perspective on the current waste crisis in Nigeria and how this project aims to address it?

Nigeria is facing a deepening waste crisis driven by rapid urbanisation, population growth, and an over-reliance on open dumping and poorly managed landfills. Major cities like Lagos and Abuja generate thousands of tonnes of waste daily, yet waste collection, segregation, and treatment systems remain inadequate. As a result, large volumes of organic waste decompose in open dumpsites, releasing methane, a highly potent greenhouse gas that is over 80 times more powerful than carbon dioxide in the short term. Beyond climate impacts, poor waste management also contributes to flooding, air and water pollution, public health risks, and the loss of livelihoods for informal waste workers operating without protection or recognition.

Despite existing national policies and Nigeria’s commitment to the Global Methane Pledge, implementation gaps persist. These include weak coordination across institutions, policy fragmentation, limited capacity at national and subnational levels, low public awareness, and insufficient integration of zero-waste and circular economy principles into mainstream waste management practices.

This project directly responds to these challenges by tackling waste-related methane emissions through a multi-solving, systems-based approach. It strengthens the enabling environment for sustainable waste management by supporting evidence-based national and subnational action, building the capacity of decision-makers and municipal actors, and promoting waste segregation, recycling, and organic waste diversion. 

By combining research, stakeholder engagement, capacity building, and strategic media engagement, the project aims to shift waste management away from disposal-heavy practices toward low-methane, people-centred solutions.

Ultimately, the project seeks to reduce methane emissions at source, improve environmental and public health outcomes, and position waste as a resource rather than a liability while supporting Nigeria’s broader climate commitments and advancing a just transition for communities most affected by the waste crisis.

Do you have a personal milestone or favourite moment in this project so far?

A key milestone has been contributing to early national conversations on methane reduction from the waste sector, particularly by helping elevate waste as a climate issue rather than just a sanitation concern. 

Obviously, methane emissions from the oil and gas sector have gained more attention at the global and national level, with National Action Plans setting clear reduction targets for methane; however, the reverse seems to be the case for the solid waste sector, owing to the complexity of waste. 

Therefore, being part of the process that links zero-waste solutions to Nigeria’s methane and developing a National Action Plan for methane reduction from the dumpsite (which could be used to update the current NDC commitments) has been especially meaningful.

What is the path forward for your organisation and possible next steps from this project?

For our organisation, the following are the next steps for this project:

1. Develop a draft advocacy toolkit and training materials.

2. Conduct capacity-building workshops for policymakers and municipal leaders in Lagos.

3. Hold a Stakeholders’ Validation Workshop for the National Action Plan in Abuja.

4. Organise media briefings and engagements, jointly coordinated by our Lagos and Abuja offices.

We have seen these key themes emerge in this project (Organic Waste Management, Infrastructure Development, Waste Picker Integration, Capacity Building and Awareness Raising, Local Government Engagement, National Policy Advocacy and Emissions Monitoring. Could you share experiences (as applicable) on any of these topics within this project so far?

I will speak on the National Advocacy Plan. Within this project, our work has focused on strengthening the alignment between sustainable waste management and Nigeria’s climate commitments. 

Through stakeholder mapping and strategic engagements with the Federal Ministry of Environment and the Office of the Special Assistant to the President on Climate Change Matters, we have helped elevate waste-related methane emissions as a key national climate priority.

A significant milestone has been the ongoing National Low-Methane Desktop Study, which is identifying policy gaps, institutional overlaps, and opportunities to strengthen the integration of low-methane waste management solutions into national policy frameworks, including the National Action Plan and Nigeria’s updated Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC 3.0). The study is also generating evidence to support more coherent policy development and informed decision-making.

These engagements have underscored the importance of cross-sector collaboration, evidence-based policymaking, and stronger institutional coordination to advance methane mitigation in the waste sector. They have also created opportunities to promote zero-waste and circular economy approaches as practical, climate-smart solutions that can support Nigeria’s environmental and sustainable development goals.

The post SRADev Nigeria: Trust and Shared Ownership made the MAMRN Project Unique first appeared on GAIA.

Despite the difficulties facing it, local TV holds tremendous potential. Andy Brain highlights several programmes that show what local television could be

The post Local TV, local visions appeared first on Red Pepper.

Automakers can meet Canada’s 2035 EV sales goals, but with a 100 to 105 g/mile vehicle emissions target by 2030Canada’s auto industry could hit a proposed 2030 vehicle emissions target largely by staying the course — but a stronger target is also...

You are about to time travel. Off the Pacific coast of South America, the band of warm water known as El Niño is mutating into a freak of nature. At more than 3 degrees Celsius above normal, it’s the warmest El Niño recorded since satellites started measuring sea surface temperatures half a century ago, and it won’t peak for several more months, potentially hitting somewhere around 4 degrees by November or December. 

“This event is already in record territory,” said Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist at the research group Berkeley Earth. “And every model expects it to keep growing.”

At the same time, this year’s Atlantic hurricane season, which began in June, is shattering records in the opposite direction. On average, by this time of year we should have seen four hurricanes, two of them major. But so far, the Atlantic hasn’t produced even one. The previous record for the latest first hurricane in a season was September 11.

The two events on opposite sides of the Americas are individually extreme and bizarre. But while they’re both record-breaking, they’re not unexplained. In fact, they’re intertwined in a fascinating way.

To understand the link, we need to talk about the ingredients of a hurricane, which you can think of as an engine. The fuel is warm ocean water, which sends energy skyward. This is why hurricanes have grown so much more powerful and destructive in recent years: The more the planet warms, the more high-octane fuel that can go into cyclones. Additionally, hurricanes like high humidity, as masses of dry air tend to break them up. Lastly, they prefer that the wind move in a consistent direction.

The Atlantic is full of warm water right now, so the hurricanes should have fuel. But it’s the wind that’s getting in the way: El Niño increases wind shear over the Atlantic, meaning air moving in different directions and different speeds at different altitudes. 

It’s a gusty mess up there, basically. “Hurricanes do not like that,” said Brian McNoldy, a senior research associate who studies such storms at the University of Miami. “So if any manage to form, it can limit how strong they get or how long they live. But so far, it’s managed to suppress anything even being able to form in the deep tropics.” At the same time, El Niño spawns dry, sinking air in the region, which is also anathema to humidity-loving hurricanes. “So it’s really, really a suppressed Atlantic hurricane season,” McNoldy added, “basically due to that very strong El Niño that’s taking shape.”

Humans living on the Pacific side of the Americas, though, won’t enjoy this dynamic. Earlier this week, Hurricane Polo spun up into a monster, transforming from a tropical storm to a Category 5 in less than a day. This is an extreme case of a phenomenon called rapid intensification, defined as an increase in sustained wind speeds of at least 35 mph in 24 hours. Like other hurricanes that have been growing that quickly thanks to waters made warmer by climate change, Polo had plenty of fuel to burn, with the nearby El Niño adding still more. Models show it making landfall in Baja California, Mexico, early next week. Another tropical storm, Nolo, spun up into a hurricane Thursday and could dump several feet of rain on Hawai‘i.

Meanwhile, El Niño is already shooting extra warmth into the sky: Scientists project that in the first nine months of the event, heat could kill 451,000 people globally. El Niño also messes with global weather patterns, increasing rainfall in some places, like California and the Southwest, while significantly reducing it in others, like Southeast Asia, the Amazon rainforest, and parts of Africa. In previous events, this has led to extreme drought. “It’s crop failures in those regions that, at least historically, have driven the biggest economic and human impacts of these events,” Hausfather said.

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You might be wondering how just a handful of extra degrees in El Niño waters could ripple across the planet for months on end. In fact, that bump is quite extraordinary. “Those are actually really big changes for the ocean,” said Art Miller, a climate scientist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. “The ocean has a lot of heat content — 1,000 times more ability to hold heat than the atmosphere — so slight changes in the ocean surface temperatures can actually do a lot for the atmosphere.”

While Earth’s temperature will fall once the phenomenon wanes, this is a preview of what the world will look like all the time just 20 years from now as humans continue to bake the planet. Imagine future El Niños layered on top of those higher baseline temperatures.

Now the question is what governments can do to prepare. As droughts take hold, they’ll need to marshal every water resource they can, especially for the people who feed us. At particular risk are the world’s subsistence farmers — if they can’t grow food, they can’t eat or sell their surplus for income. “One of the big things is getting ready for crop failures,” Hausfather said. “Stockpiling food supplies, making sure there’s financial transfer systems to give money to farmers whose harvest fails, so they can buy food.”

And as landscapes turn to tinder, governments will have to reduce fuels and prevent fires. For one, controlled burns clear out dead brush, so if a blaze does break out, it doesn’t obliterate entire ecosystems and threaten towns. Many farmers also burn waste biomass — cracking down on that will mitigate at least one common way wildfires start. Still, fires will break out, no matter how hard anyone tries to prevent them, so there will be a growing need to stockpile fire-fighting equipment and train more firefighters. 

Keep in mind that the many consequences of this El Niño are adding to the already extreme consequences of climate change. Temperatures are already extra high, landscapes are already bone-dry, and crops are already super-stressed. “Everything’s happening on a baseline that’s much hotter than it was a century ago, which makes these impacts correspondingly more severe,” Hausfather said. “It’s a little glimpse of what the planetary climate will look like.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Why haven’t we had an Atlantic hurricane yet? Thank El Niño. on Sep 25, 2026.

From the forests of the Amazon to the streets of Puyo, FOSPA brought together Indigenous Peoples, Afro-descendants, local communities, and social movements to confront extractivism and build alternatives.

By: Andrea Echeverri Sierra

For six days in August, thousands of people from across the Amazon and beyond gathered in Puyo, Ecuador, to share experiences, strategies and hopes for the future of the region. Indigenous Peoples, Afro-descendant communities, social movements, youth, women, academics and civil society organisations came together through assemblies, workshops, ceremonies, cultural activities and a powerful march through the streets of the city.

The gathering took place against a stark reality. The Amazon is approaching a dangerous tipping point. Once imagined as an almost infinite forest, the region is increasingly threatened by deforestation, degradation, fires and global warming, with potentially devastating consequences for people, biodiversity and the climate system.

Yet FOSPA was not a gathering defined by despair. Again and again, what emerged from conversations, meals, ceremonies, a joint action plan and collective action was a sense that resistance is already happening, and that another future remains possible when people organise together.

The Amazon Under Threat

The Amazon bioregion— larger than the European Union and shared across nine countries—once felt infinite to its ancestral guardians. Today, however, it stands at the precipice of a dangerous tipping point, one that seems straight out of a post-apocalyptic film, the rainforest is rapidly shifting toward savannization. This impending ecological collapse threatens not only the Amazonian web of life, but the entire planetary stability. The consequences are catastrophic: a global climate feedback loop that would render international climate targets entirely unattainable; the disruption of atmospheric circulation, triggering widespread droughts across South America and altering weather patterns as far away as the Asian monsoons and Antarctic ice systems; and a catastrophic loss of socio-agrobiodiversity across ecological, cultural, pharmaceutical, and economic dimensions.

Although there are localized tipping points, such as the savannization in specific regions of Bolivia and Brazil, and the loss of ecological connectivity between the Andes and the Amazon, we find ourselves at a critical and extremely fragile moment in which we must act to prevent the Amazon region from reaching a critical threshold. With scientific models warning that this tipping point could be reached between 2040 and 2050 if current trends of deforestation, degradation, fires, and global warming persist, immediate and transformative action is imperative. Amidst this urgency, grassroots hope and resistance shine through numerous regional and local initiatives.

The Pan-Amazonian Social Forum (FOSPA)

The Global Forest Coalition (GFC) has joined the Pan-Amazonian Social Forum (FOSPA) at different times. FOSPA is a regional, autonomous, and pluralistic platform that brings together Indigenous Peoples, Afro-descendants, social movements, civil society, and academia from the nine countries of the Amazon basin. Formed in 2002 within the framework of the World Social Forum, it has become a key space for political coordination and action to defend life, territories, and justice in the face of the climate crisis and extractivism.

FOSPA 2026. GFC

Although FOSPA is an ongoing process, its most visible milestones to date are reflected in its twelve editions held in various countries of the Amazon basin. In 2026, GFC participated in the 12th edition of FOSPA in Puyo (Ecuadorian Amazon) from August 16 to 21, with the participation of thousands of people from 32 countries, primarily from countries within the basin. The gathering was rich and diverse, including field trips to identify impacts and celebrate alternatives, a market and food fair, a youth camp, cultural and artistic activities, workshops, working groups, plenary sessions, ceremonies and spiritual guidance, Indigenous People´s and women’s gatherings, self-organized events, a large march; and many shared experiences during dinners and meetings to harmonize our feelings about life into new plans and strategies.

The vibrant convergence of ancestral wisdom, daily resistance, and unwavering solidarity through walking the territories, sharing meals, listening to Indigenous elders, youth, and women in spirited assemblies, and participating in spiritual ceremonies is striking, it leaves an indelible mark. Hearing firsthand accounts from defenders whose very cosmogonies, rivers, and bodies are targeted by corporate extractivism shifts our understanding from a conceptual awareness of crisis to a visceral, embodied recognition of interconnected struggles. FOSPA reinforced the conviction that defending the Amazon is not merely an environmental task; it is an urgent defense of plural ways of living, feeling, knowing, and being.

It is deeply moving to witness unity literally in motion, with everyone working tirelessly for a living Amazon and honoring its diverse peoples and cultures. It became clear that no one saves anyone else, nor does anyone save themselves alone; we truly need each other. We need a committed academia, radical church movements standing firm for the transformation of a model that exploits bodies and territories, and civil society organizations that vibrate with life, embracing their role of support rather than usurping the voices of those who dwell there. We need organized women and youth grounding their agendas, Indigenous Peoples constantly demonstrating dignity and a deep, harmonious kinship with Mother Earth, and resilient, joyful Quilombolas and afrodescendents communities bringing a stubborn hope through their words and actions. We need Amazonian city dwellers, artistic collectives, environmental organizations, producer associations… In moments like these, we know that by coming together, we can save the Amazon.

Faced with the multiple problems confronting the peoples and ecosystems of the region—and the world—we require diverse and coordinated struggles from different perspectives. In particular, our emphasis on this occasion, together with members and allies of our coalition, was focused on strengthening alliances and joint actions to curb the impact of industrial agribusiness and livestock production, as well as on promoting alternatives to these practices.

The conversion of forests and jungles to make way for new cattle grazing areas and crops such as soy, corn, and oil palm is the main cause of the accelerated loss of vegetation cover. Evidence is alarming; according to a 2023 report from the Amazon Georeferenced Socio-Environmental Information Network (RAISG) and the MapBiomas network, three out of every four hectares deforested in the Amazon over the last four decades have been used for cattle ranching, which accounts for 75% of accumulated deforestation. This figure becomes even more significant when we consider that, of the approximately 86 million hectares (Mha) of natural vegetation deforested between 1985 and 2022 in the Amazon region, 66.5 Mha were converted into pastureland, while of the additional 19.4 million hectares used for agricultural purposes, a large proportion is used for the production of soy or corn, inputs which are then used to feed the same livestock industry.

Unsustainable Livestock Production is Extractivism

During a self-organized event, co-convened by GFC, our members CEDENMA, Brighter Green, and CIPCA, together with Acción Ecológica and GRAIN, we were able to hear diverse perspectives on these impacts in Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia,Brazil and throughout Latin America. Among the key issues were: the serious harm caused by industrial livestock and soy production to Indigenous and peasant communities, which jeopardizes entire worldviews by affecting rivers, soils, and spiritual practices, and which generates sick, sad, displaced bodies and corporate memories; the links between industrial livestock and paramilitarism and drug trafficking in countries like Colombia; the strategies of persecution, harassment, and co-optation deployed by companies and governments against land defenders; the foreign ownership of land and water; the persistent dependence on an export-oriented extractive model; and, in short, the predatory practices of the livestock industry. All of this led us to recognize,along with around 24 organizations participating in this and other activities convened by this same group, that unsustainable livestock is in essence a core form of extractivism, placed on the exact same predatory footing as oil drilling and large mining.

This statement was ratified in the FOSPA Action Plan, which must guide coordinated actions until the holding of its XIII version in Colombia in 2028: “Industrial animal production is one of the main drivers of deforestation, pollution, and land grabbing, as well as human rights violations, and it is a form of extractivism that threatens our territories and ecosystems.” 

Just as there are vehement struggles against oil exploitation and mining extraction, if we want to make the future possible again in the world and in the Amazon, we must add to these necessary battles those aimed at containing the expansion of agribusiness, largely concentrated around industrial livestock farming. These insights from FOSPA directly reinforce our core campaigns and policy positions. GFC has long advocated against false solutions to climate change and exposed the devastating drivers of deforestation and forest degradation. The lessons learned in Puyo validate our strategic focus on challenging corporate-led industrial livestock and agro-industrial models as central pillars of our work on just transitions.

FOSPA 2026. GFC

Environmental justice cannot be achieved while trade agreements, international financing, and corporate supply chains continue to reward land grabbing and ecosystem destruction under the guise of “feed security” or “green growth.” We take away from FOSPA a reinforced mandate to strengthen internationalist solidarity, bridge local community resistance with global policy advocacy, and amplify the voices of women, Indigenous Peoples, and local communities who champion genuine, rights-based alternatives such as agroecology, food sovereignty, and community forest management.

The challenges facing the Amazon and our global climate are immense, but FOSPA did not leave us paralyzed by the prospect of ecological collapse. Instead, it filled us with a deep sense of agency, hope, and concrete collective action.

“¡Si nos juntamos, los atajamos!” (If we band together, we stop them!)

The path forward lies in our unity. As the inspiring rallying cry echoed through the streets of Puyo. We are not the generations destined to watch the Amazon die in a slow, agonizing collapse. We are the generations choosing to stand together, bridging local resistance with global solidarity, to heal our relationship with the Earth and secure a vibrant, living future for all.

The following article was adapted from The Story of Urban Planning by Ivis García and Jason Holt (Caracara Press, 2026), which tells planning history as one connected narrative rather than a set of disconnected movements. Available in print and ebook.

When states were first deciding where their interstates should go in the years right after the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, the Bureau of Public Roads worked from a route-selection standard that more or less came down to this: 

Choose the route that minimizes construction cost, maximizes traffic capacity, and connects the urban core to the suburban ring in the least travel time.

When we read this sentence today, it’s not hard to see where we went wrong. 

At the time, the cheapest land in an American city sat in older, denser, lower-income neighborhoods: the same ones urban renewal was already clearing for the same reason. The path of least political resistance ran through communities with the least capacity to fight a federal program backed by billions of dollars and every state highway department in the country. 

No one had to name a target. The criteria did the selecting, in dozens of unrelated cities, with a consistency no individual decision can explain.

The idea that there’s one “villain” in the story of how the interstates were built is more satisfying, and more comforting, because villains can be defeated and then they are gone. Robert Moses, the unelected official who ran New York’s major public works for more than three decades, routed the Cross Bronx Expressway straight through dense Bronx neighborhoods. He lost his power in 1968 and died in 1981. 

Criteria, by contrast, do not die. They get reauthorized.

That’s not to say Moses didn’t have a harmful impact, or that his specific reasoning isn’t worth reading closely. For the Cross Bronx Expressway he had an alternative, a route slightly south through industrial land that would have taken fewer occupied buildings and displaced fewer families. He knew it existed. He chose the northern route anyway. 

Robert Caro, whose 1974 biography of Moses, “The Power Broker,” remains the standard account of his work, went through that decision in detail and found no tidy explanation. He noted just that Moses did not revisit a route once he had committed to it, and that objections from the people in the path carried little weight with him. Construction ran fifteen years, and estimates of the number of displaced along the seven miles run from forty thousand to sixty thousand people.

What followed was a loop rather than a single catastrophe. The elevated structure made the streets beside it loud, which made them less desirable, which moved out the families who could afford to move, which thinned the tax base, which thinned the services, which made the neighborhood less desirable still. The South Bronx of the 1970s had many authors. The expressway concentrated them in one place and sped them up.

The same arithmetic ran everywhere. In Nashville, Interstate 40 took 650 homes and 27 apartment buildings on the North Side, split a self-sufficient Black commercial district in two, and survived a federal court challenge brought by residents and Fisk University.

Read about the “freeway revolts,” the neighborhood campaigns that fought urban highway routes as soon as they were announced and stopped them outright in cities from San Francisco to Baltimore, and you’ll find people who understood this better than the profession did. 

Their argument was not against highways. It was about criteria: that the traffic benefit was smaller than the models claimed, the damage to the urban fabric never appeared on the ledger at all, and the people in the path held an interest the process had no way to count. Those freeway fighters were right about the models. Urban highways induce the traffic they are built to carry, filling to capacity as the access they provide encourages more driving.

Those criteria have followed us into the present. Houston is the clearest case running today. 

The North Houston Highway Improvement Project will take 168 single-family homes, 1,067 apartment units, 331 businesses employing nearly 25,000 people, four houses of worship, and two schools. Through downtown, the right of way grows from 220 feet to 570 feet. The cost has gone from about seven billion dollars to thirteen billion, with completion now projected around 2040. The engineering is better than anything available in the 1950s. The ledger still has no column for a congregation that loses the building it worships in.

That is what the spine of my book, The Story of Urban Planning, is drawn from. In chapter after chapter, planners identify a real problem, act on it with the best tools and knowledge their era hands them, and solve it. Then the solution becomes the problem which the next generation inherits. 

Which brings me to the part that should trouble everyone reading this, including me. Reforms outlive their moment the same way criteria do. The public review processes built to curb the harms of highways are now the ones used to stop projects that would make cities better. 

The freeway revolts won a real victory in the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1962, which required a continuing, comprehensive and cooperative planning process, and in the participation requirements that followed. Those requirements worked. They also became the instrument that now blocks the apartment building, the bus lane, and the infill housing that would take pressure off the fringe. The same tool, pointed at different targets, now protects the status quo instead of the people in the path. 

That is not an argument for taking public participation away. It is an argument that we reformed the process and left the criteria alone, which made it harder to build everything instead of harder to build the wrong thing. Sixty years later, we are still optimizing travel time and still counting displacement as an acquisition cost.

Ask what your region’s decision rule rewards. Then ask what it has no way to count. That second list is where the damage happens. 

• Two of the three most expensive highway projects in the U.S. — the Rose Quarter widening and Interstate Bridge Project — are in Portland. Along with rebuilding the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, they cost more than $2 billion per mile. Others include projects in New Jersey, Louisiana, Washington, California, Wisconsin, Massachusetts and Connecticut. (City Observatory)
• Lifted pickups an rampant speed racing are signs of the MAGA-fication of roadways, (The Guardian).
• About 40 bikeshare trips take the equivalent of one car’s worth of pollution out of the atmosphere, according to a study by Vancouver’s Simon Fraser University.
• Andrew Miller says that transit agencies haven’t adjusted to shifting post-COVID travel patterns; they should be adding service for popular weekend events like sports games and concerts, and focusing less on rush-hour commutes, which never came all the way back. (Changing Lanes)
• The Environmental Defense Fund shares lessons from the successful fight for congestion pricing in Manhattan.
• Florida passenger rail company Brightline is preparing to enter bankruptcy. (Bloomberg)
• Facing deficits topping $100 million, San Diego could eliminate a third of its bus routes and cut service on another third. (Union-Tribune)
• After pulling his support for light rail on the Atlanta Beltline, Mayor Andre Dickens now says he’ll release a funding plan by the end of the year. (Saporta Report)
• Charlotte is growing fast, but it’s still not acting like a big city in terms of transportation infrastructure. (Ledger)
• Despite a complete streets project on Park Avenue in Memphis, residents say it’s still too dangerous to walk on. (Fox 13)
• Sound Transit opened a new light rail station five years ahead of schedule. (KIRO)
• Tampa is offering free concerts on the TECO streetcar every fourth Friday through May. (Creative Loafing)
• Ithaca and hundreds of other cities organize “porch fest” music festivals in walkable neighborhoods. (CNU Public Square)

Registered nurses at Central Maine Medical Center in Lewiston, Maine, voted overwhelmingly tonight to join Maine State Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee, an affiliate of National Nurses United, the largest and fastest-growing registered nurse (RN) union in the nation. In an election held today, September 24, nurses voted 91 percent yes to forming a union.

Researchers at the University of Waterloo are working with government, academic and industry partners to tackle several challenges in Ontario’s agricultural sector, including short growing seasons, rising production pressures and crops that can fail long before anyone sees warning signs.

Lead contamination in soil tracked inside homes can cause dangerous indoor lead dust levels even in residences with no interior lead-based paint, according to researchers with the Rutgers Environmental, Occupational and Health Sciences Institute in collaboration with community scientists: members of the general public who participate in data collection under the direction of scientists.

The Southern Ocean covers almost a third of the world’s ocean surface and connects the basins of every other major ocean, with unforgiving conditions that make research difficult.

Marine carbon dioxide removal (CDR) has advanced significantly, with growing research activity, technological development, private-sector involvement, and movement toward field testing, but major questions remain about whether these approaches can remove carbon dioxide at meaningful scales, how that removal can be reliably measured and verified, potential environmental effects, and how marine CDR should be governed, says a new digital report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

More than a hot summer, it’s a postcard from the future, before we have time to adapt

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