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Several critical water bills that we are tracking at Restore the Delta were heard in the Legislature this week – here are some key updates. 

SB 872 Passes Through Committee

SB 872, a bill that would create a dedicated fund to address two major threats to California’s water supply, aging levees in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta and sinking canals in the State Water Project (SWP), passed the Assembly Appropriations Committee with unanimous approval. 

We’re excited by the bill’s passage of this hurdle, as it nears final approval by the legislature. Thank you to Senator McNerney for advancing legislation that prioritizes safeguarding California’s water supplies, protecting critical infrastructure, and preparing the state’s water system for future challenges. SB 872 continues to an Assembly floor vote before it returns to its house of origin for reconciliation.

We encourage you to call your Assemblymember, urging their “aye” vote on SB 872.

Please find and call your representative to tell them:

You support advancing legislation that prioritizes safeguarding California’s water supplies, protecting critical infrastructure, and preparing the state’s water system for future challenges.

AB 2218 Passes Through Committee

AB 2218, a bill that seeks to address inequities in California water policy inflicted on California Native tribes, passed the Senate Appropriations Committee AB 2218 continues to a Senate floor vote before it returns to its house of origin for reconciliation.

As California faces growing climate-driven challenges, policymakers and communities increasingly recognize that equitable and sustainable water management must incorporate Tribal rights, traditional ecological knowledge, and Tribal governance. AB 2218 directs state agencies to strengthen consultation with Tribes during water rights investigations and develop policies that address water related harms resulting from state-sanctioned termination, removal, and assimilation of California Native American tribes.

We encourage you to call your Senator, urging their “aye” vote on AB 2218.

Please find and call your representative to tell them:

• Recognizing historical wrongs and considering solutions does not substitute concrete actionable plans to remedy historical inequities on California Tribes. 
• Healthy rivers, resilient fisheries, and thriving landscapes are inseparable from the cultural and subsistence practices that have guided stewardship for generations.

AB 2026 is Held in Appropriations 

In another positive development, AB 2026 was held in Senate Appropriations, effectively killing the bill for this legislative session. AB 2026 is not the narrow groundwater recharge measure its supporters describe. Instead, it creates broad new pathways to divert already-over allocated surface water, weakens public and environmental review, and shifts risk onto rivers, Delta communities, salmon, Tribes, and existing water users.

Restore the Delta supports responsible groundwater recharge, but AB 2026 is the wrong approach. We will continue to advocate for groundwater recharge policies that are guided by science and administered through the State Water Board’s established regulatory framework, not through broad statutory shortcuts that bypass water-rights, fish and wildlife protections, and the public interest.

CLICK TO FIND AND CALL YOUR REPRESENTATIVES 

The U.S. Forest Service on Tuesday moved forward with its plan to repeal the 2001 Roadless Rule, threatening the fate of 44.7 million acres of national forest. The proposal, published in the Federal Register today, would strip road-building bans from roadless areas in every state except Idaho and Colorado, which have their own separate rules, and would handle the 9.4-million-acre Tongass National Forest in Alaska through a related executive order.

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins framed the repeal as a wildfire measure, but a group of wildland fire experts wrote to Rollins last year warning that wilderness areas have the lowest number of wildfire ignitions of any forest type. New roads tend to be associated with more human-caused fires, not fewer.

The public has already weighed in on this matter when USDA first floated this repeal last August. Out of 625,000 comments submitted during a preliminary comment period, 99 percent opposed it, according to a CWP analysis. Colorado College’s 2026 Conservation in the West poll found that two-thirds of voters across Western states oppose building new industrial roads in undeveloped public lands for mining, oil and gas development, or timber harvests.

Public comments on the new proposal are due by September 21.

Minnesota governor moves to shield the Boundary Waters from mining

Four months after Congress voted to lift a 20-year federal mining ban in the watershed of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz signed an executive order Tuesday directing state agencies to halt new leases, permits, and environmental review for nonferrous mining in the Rainy River Headwaters Watershed, covering roughly 350 square miles. A poll conducted for Save the Boundary Waters last August found that 57 percent of Minnesota voters oppose sulfide-ore copper mining in the watershed, compared with 23 percent in favor, and that 68 percent statewide want permanent legislative protection to be a top priority.

Quick hits Trump admin announces intent to move forward with Roadless Rule repeal

NOTUS | E&E News | The Hill | New York Times | Associated Press | Flathead Beacon | Oregon Capital Chronicle | The Guardian | More Than Just Parks | KNAU | Colorado Public Radio | Statesman Journal | GearJunkie | Center for Western Priorities [press release]

Walz executive order moves to block copper mining near the Boundary Waters

MPR News | E&E News | Wes Siler’s Newsletter

Opinion: When the bulldozers move before Tribal consent

Native News Online

Border wall expansion brings protests to Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, other Arizona locations

KJZZ | 13News | KOLD [photos]

Proposed changes to rules that protect historic sites ignite pushback in Colorado

Colorado Sun

A watchdog says Yosemite is using Flock cameras. The National Park Service is pushing back

Outside | 404 Media

Native fish displaced in lower Dolores after drought, fire

Durango Herald

‘Extreme Motus’ all-terrain wheelchair now available to rent at Zion National Park

ABC4

Quote of the day

I just think that every American should be free to visit our national parks without their location being traced and tracked by the federal government. Wild places are at the core of American freedom and nobody should be afraid to visit them.”

—Anonymous NPS park ranger, 404 Media

Picture This
@coparkswildlife

Science at work ✅ Antero Reservoir – Our salvage

It’s no easy feat to corral, capture and then transport nearly 1,000 trout in a few hours –– especially when they’re mostly 18+ inches long and weigh several pounds. But, our aquatic biologists, hatchery, state park and local staff did just that earlier this summer.

During the last stages of draining the reservoir, it became crunch time to salvage as many fish as we could. First, we had to wait for the water level to be perfect –– low enough to safely work in the dam’s outlet channel, but high enough to still hold fish. Once the remaining fish were concentrated in the outlet channel, there was just enough room to work with block nets, holding pens and electrofishing equipment.

In the waist-high pool of water, our teams temporarily stunned the fish so they could be caught and consolidated into holding net pens. The fish were then taken to hatchery trucks waiting nearby, and driven to Eleven Mile State Park.

 



Featured photo: Trillum Lake, Oregon Mt. Hood National Forest. USFS<

The post Forest Service moves to repeal Roadless Rule despite 99 percent public opposition appeared first on Center for Western Priorities.

You can’t win them all, but a new bridge between Detroit and Windsor, Ontario is winning pedestrians and cyclists on both sides of the US-Canada border.

The bicycle and pedestrian path on the brand new Gordie Howe International Bridge opened on Aug. 5 — nine days after the bridge itself opened, and despite President Trump’s threatening to hold up its opening earlier this year amid deteriorating relations and trade disputes with the country’s northern neighbor.

“It is quite the game-changer,” remarked Chris Palmer, one of more than 3,400 visitors of the path on its opening day. “It is … a remarkable political phenomenon. It was a great experience.”

So great, in fact, that bridge officials temporarily closed the path to manage the massive inaugural crowd.

Drivers must pay to cross the 1.5-mile span, but access to the car-free portion is free and open to the public year-round. Visitors can explore scenic trails and protected bike infrastructure at both ends of the trip — neatly documented in an online map created by the Detroit Greenways Coalition, a Michigan-based bike advocacy organization.

The Gordie Howe Bridge has one of the only bikable crossings between the US and Canada.

The president, meanwhile, spent the better part of the year leveraging the Gordie Howe in US-Canada relations — and succeeded in delaying its opening by a month. The Canadian government, which funded the entirety of the project, disinvited US officials from the bridge’s opening.

All that drama failed to put a damper on the thrill of a new bike connection for Detroit-Windsor locals.

Recommended ‘Big Brother’ At U.S. DOT: Bike Lanes Aren’t Just ‘DEI,’ They’re Also Unsafe Gersh Kuntzman July 17, 2026

“This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity,” said Todd Scott, the executive director of the Detroit Greenways Coalition.

Scott has advocated for the inclusion of bike and pedestrian access on the bridge since 2009, when the Gordie Howe Bridge — named for the Canadian-born star player for the Detroit Red Wings hockey team — was little more than a hypothetical. But when Canada first sought public input on the bridge’s design, the two most common responses were requests for biking and walking access.

“I have to imagine that [the bridge’s planners] are super glad with their decision,” said Scott.

The cable-stay bridge contains a twelve foot pedestrian and bike pathway, connecting the US and Canada.

Seventeen years later, both sides of the border have significantly upgraded their waterfronts to include bike routes, protected lanes and car-free trails.

On the Detroit side, the under-construction Joe Louis Greenway circles the city with nearly 30 miles of car-free routing. Pedestrians and bike riders can use the greenway to connect virtually anywhere in the city upon its completion in the early 2030s. Six new miles are expected to open by the end of this year. The route will connect directly to the Gordie Howe Bridge, extending its benefits across the border.

“‘This is one, I think, of the most important urban trail projects in the country,” said Scott.

The Gordie Howe Bridge has spurred infrastructure investments throughout Detroit.

The ride across the Gordie Howe rivals the extensive infrastructure upgrades on each of its ends.

“You’re riding over a piece of art,” Scott said. “It just looks stunningly beautiful.”

Americans aren’t the only ones celebrating the newly-opened link.

“It was absolutely thrilling,” said Lori Newton, the former executive director of Bike Windsor Essex, which spearheaded advocacy for the bike trail on the Canadian side. “It changes the whole view and the whole feeling of the neighborhoods that it goes through.”

Pedestrians and cyclists have advocated for nearly two decades for a path across the Detroit River.

The ride across was particularly impactful for Newton, who has spent several years advocating for the path alongside Scott and whose cyclist husband passed shortly before the bridge’s opening.

“He would be so excited that I was going up there for a ride with Todd,” she said.

Newton and Scott’s longtime partnership reflects one of the more extraordinary benefits of the newly-established car-free route. Windsor and Detroit have long celebrated a close relationship, but after the US tightened border security following the Sept.11 attacks, the two cities’ relationship weakened.

The new bridge represents a new day for the two cities. The inclusion of a car-free lane on the Gordie Howe promises immense economic benefits for the entire Great Lakes region — which won over otherwise bike-skeptical politicians and business leaders.

“There wasn’t a fight … it was building a business case,” Newton said.

Recommended Study: Bicycling Generates $365 Million in Economic Activity in Iowa Angie Schmitt January 26, 2012

And the largest benefits of the trail are those still yet-to-be seen.

Local advocates hope to see new tourism and local investment as a result of the bridge. Newton hopes bridge will bring a wider array of people onto bikes, particularly seniors searching for an accessible way to stay mobile.

“Cycling is more than 20 guys in Lycra on bikes zooming past,” she said.

O dzisiejszych problemach możemy mówić w kategoriach społecznych, że zatraciliśmy się w konsumpcjonizmie, nacjonalizmie i wzroście gospodarczym. Ale możemy też ujmować je jako doświadczenie osobiste, jako separację i odcięcie się od naszej rodziny i przyjaciół.

Z Edouardem Gaudotem, autorem „Les sept piliers de la Cité” („Siedmiu filarów miasta”) i Adamem Ostolskim rozmawia Jamie Kendrick.

„Siedem filarów miasta” zaczyna się od obserwacji, że żyjemy w świecie rozpadających się przekonań i brakuje nam głębszego poczucia sensu. Co skłoniło cię, aby opis sytuacji, ujmowanej na ogół jako kryzys gospodarczy, demokratyczny czy ekologiczny, przenieś na głębszy, niemalże duchowy poziom?

Edouard Gaudot: W jakimś punkcie życia każdy z nas napotyka kryzys, który zmusza do zadawania pytań i rodzi potrzebę przebudowania siebie. Podobną podróż odbywają również społeczeństwa. Jest wiele znaków, że coraz więcej osób nie odnajduje w dzisiejszym świecie poczucia sensu i w efekcie bardzo trudno jest nam zbudować cokolwiek jako zbiorowość.

Wspólne przekonania rozpadają się. Niektóre uległy zniszczeniu. Utrata sensu w demokratycznych społeczeństwach jest moim zdaniem kluczem do dzisiejszego kryzysu. Widzę przed nami trzy drogi. Pierwsza to odbudowanie przekonań, które nas kiedyś łączyły, powrót do korzeni. Druga możliwość to rezygnacja ze wspólnych znaczeń – ale nihilizm nie jest dobrą receptą na budowę wspólnoty. Trzecią opcją byłaby zmiana sposobu myślenia, kształtującego naszą praktykę polityczną. I o to właśnie apeluję.

Adam Ostolski: Moje odczytanie tej książki idzie w przeciwnym kierunku. W tym, co piszesz, Edouardzie, najbardziej inspiruje mnie zaproszenie, aby nie zamykać się w tym przytłaczającym poczuciu kryzysu i zwrócić większą uwagę na to, co już mamy. Przede wszystkim, jesteśmy żywi, co zbyt łatwo przyjąć za oczywistość. Żyjemy i dzielimy ze sobą ten świat. A także, czy nam się to podoba, czy nie, dzielimy wiele przestrzeni w obrębie świata. Mamy przyjaciół i rzeczy, o które się troszczymy. Potrafimy zmieniać się i nie musimy grzęznąć w naszych wierzeniach. Możemy wątpić w źle działające instytucje i być nimi rozczarowani, ale nawet w tym jest wielki potencjał. Nawet na gruzowisku małe roślinki zapuszczają korzenie i przygotowują grunt dla nowych gatunków. Twoją książkę odczytuję jako gest otwarcia, poszukiwanie twórczego potencjału w obecnej sytuacji, jakkolwiek jest ona bolesna.

EG: To jest lekcja „Gwiezdnych wojen”: zawsze gdy zdaje się, że ciemność zwyciężyła, pojawia się wybuch światła. Ilekroć myślisz, że dobro zatriumfowało nad złem, pozostaje jakaś drobinka zła, która zaczyna kiełkować w ciemnościach.

Dekonstrukcja – innymi słowy, kryzys, który obecnie przeżywamy – była konieczna, abyśmy dotarli do kresu tego doświadczenia i dzięki temu mogli dowiedzieć się, czym jesteśmy, gdzie jesteśmy i kim jesteśmy. To jest podróż tak samo niezbędna dla jednostki, jak dla zbiorowości.

O dzisiejszych problemach możemy mówić w kategoriach społecznych, że zatraciliśmy się w konsumpcjonizmie, nacjonalizmie i wzroście gospodarczym. Ale możemy też ujmować je jako doświadczenie osobiste, jako separację i odcięcie się od naszej rodziny i przyjaciół. Takie doświadczenie może być niewiarygodnie wzbogacające, jednak nie nadaje się na fundament dla projektu zbiorowego. Refleksji nad doświadczeniem siebie brakuje mi we wszystkich współczesnych nurtach politycznego myślenia. Oczywiście potrzebujemy polityki dla zbiorowości, ale nie można ignorować tego, jak zbiorowość wiąże się z tym, co osobiste.

Twoja książka nie jest siedmiopunktowym programem czy manifestem. Co masz na myśli, mówiąc o „siedmiu filarach”?

EG: W rzeczy samej, programy są dla komputerów, nie dla polityki. W mojej książce usiłuję przedefiniować intelektualne, polityczne i duchowe ramy, w jakich uprawiamy politykę. Potrzebujemy zmiany w trzech obszarach. Chodzi o polityczną relację, jaką utrzymujemy sami ze sobą, polityczną relację w odniesieniu do innych oraz polityczną relację wobec planety. Tego właśnie dotyczy moje „siedem filarów”.

Dwa pierwsze filary wyznaczają konieczne, lecz niewystarczające warunki zmiany. Pierwszy z nich – niezbywalność życia – oznacza, że nie możemy zignorować niczego, co żywe. Potrzebujemy zmienić nasz sposób widzenia świata i nasze podejście do wszelkich żyjących istnień – nie tylko ludzi, lecz także zwierząt, roślin, rzek – zmierzając w stronę zrozumienia biosfery. Drugi filar, wypływający z tych samych źródeł, wymaga zmiany naszego postrzegania własności. Rywalizujemy o zasoby niczym dwie pchły sprzeczające się o to, która posiada psa. A przecież to my naprawdę należymy do Ziemi, nie odwrotnie. Jak by powiedział Mały Książę, nie powinniśmy tylko używać rzeczy, lecz także sami być użyteczni dla tego, co posiadamy.

Gdy już zmienimy te dwie perspektywy, możemy przejść do sedna, czyli zmiany politycznej. Tego dotyczy trzeci, czwarty i piąty filar w książce. Filar trzeci wiąże się ze zmianą gospodarki. Obecnie jesteśmy pożywką dla maszyny, która nie ma z nami nic wspólnego. Obojętnie, czy nazwiemy to kapitalizmem, neoliberalizmem czy konsumpcjonizmem. Ta machina przejmuje kontrolę nad naszym życiem i wcale nam nie służy – to my jej służymy. Potrzebujemy więc ekonomii nastawionej na życie. Nie chodzi po prostu o gospodarkę okrężną czy cofnięcie wzrostu gospodarczego, lecz o bardziej zasadniczą przemianę tego, jak wszystko produkujemy, od żywności po odpady i z powrotem.

Kolejny krok to zmiana naszej relacji z innymi. Polityczną formą dla inności może być tylko demokracja. Oznacza to, że nie tylko potrzebujemy odnaleźć się w równej wolności, równej godności i wzajemnym uznaniu, lecz także nauczyć się być „wolni razem”, to znaczy. wolni „z” innymi raczej niż wolni „od” innych. Zapożyczam tu sformułowanie Carla Schmitta, modyfikując jednak bez żalu związane z nim rozróżnienie „przyjaciel-wróg”. Zamiast wypierać tę opozycję albo nieustannie skupiać się na wrogu, powinnyśmy zwrócić większą uwagę na przyjaciela.

W piątym filarze chodzi o zmianę naszych relacji politycznych, nie tylko z innymi ludźmi i z planetą, lecz także z samymi sobą. Ekologię postrzegam jako ścieżkę duchową. Ekologia to nie tylko nauka i jest także czymś więcej niż polityką. Chodzi w niej także o zmianę sposobu widzenia świata i siebie, o bycie częścią czegoś większego. Otwarcie się na to może przypominać inicjację religijną bądź duchową. Masz objawienie i zaczynasz rozwijać swoją wiedzę, doświadczać złożoności. Aż w końcu docierasz do pojmowania świata jako całości, nie jako czegoś odrębnego – dochodzi do połączenia nauki i świadomości.

Z inną gospodarką, inną demokracją oraz nową relacją do siebie i świata docieramy do dwóch ostatnich filarów: anarchistycznego rządzenia i świadomości planetarnej. Przez anarchistyczne rządzenie rozumiem taką organizację instytucji, w której od hierarchicznego układu władzy przechodzimy do relacji o znacznie bardziej poziomym charakterze. Nie chodzi mi o to, żeby nie było instytucji, chodzi raczej o ład bez władzy, nieograniczony do jednego miasta czy miejsca. Zwieńczeniem tego wszystkiego jest filar siódmy – świadomość planetarna. Podążając za Bruno Latourem, kończę na wizji Europy, na duchu europejskim jako projekcie pojednania, dzięki któremu nasze wzajemne relacje opierają się na prawie i współpracy zamiast na sile.

AO: Największym atutem, a zarazem pewną słabością twojego podejścia jest właśnie to skupienie na duchowości. Duchowość może oczywiście istnieć bez religii. Ale nie jest wówczas możliwa do utrzymania w dłuższym okresie, ponieważ nie wytwarza tradycji. A jeśli buduje wspólnoty, to najczęściej są to niewielkie sekty.

Napięcie między duchowością a religią jako kształtującą wspólnotę ludzi instytucją jest równie dawne jak sama religia. W doświadczeniu jednostki duchowość może się obyć bez religii, ale nie jest wówczas istotna politycznie. W tym kontekście warto też przyjrzeć się pojęciom herezji i ortodoksji oraz relacji między nimi. Zarówno herezja, jak i ortodoksja potrzebują wspólnoty ludzi, którzy podzielają pewne wierzenia, ale nie zgadzają się między sobą w kwestii tego, jako owe wspólne wierzenia interpretować.

Wracając do kwestii bliższych sprawom politycznym, żyjemy w świecie wielu religii, co jest bardzo dobre. Nie chcemy, aby to się zmieniło. Większość ludzi, gdy odkrywają dla siebie jakąś formę duchowości, robi to w ramach którejś z wielu różnych tradycji. Jeśli więc chcemy przełożyć tę duchową wizję na coś bardziej praktycznego, to potrzebujemy – z zachowaniem niezbędnej delikatności – pomyśleć o tym, jak uruchomić i zorganizować polityczne myślenie o religii w sposób, który posunie nas naprzód.

Jakiś czas temu na zjeździe socjologicznym przysłuchiwałem się sesji na temat „alternatywnych stylów życia”. Justyna Kajta przedstawiała wyniki swoich badań biograficznych nad działaczami skrajnej prawicy w Polsce. Jednym z odkryć było to, że badani przez nią młodzi mężczyźni deklarowali, że wolą życie pożyteczne od życia szczęśliwego. Pomyślałem wtedy: „Kurczę, potrafię się w tym rozpoznać. Nie podzielam ich poglądów politycznych, ale i w moim życiu chodzi przecież o coś więcej niż mnie samego”. Potrzebujemy duchowości nie tylko po to, by odkryć i opanować siebie, lecz także po to, by siebie przekroczyć. Z tego samego powodu potrzebujemy tradycyjnych zorganizowanych religii, z różnorodnością sposobów, w jakie odnoszą się do sfery publicznej i polityki.

EG: Patrząc historycznie, ruchy skrajnej prawicy na swój sposób próbują ponownie wnieść wartości duchowe w materialistyczny świat. Tak właśnie czytam choćby „Fight Club” – zarówno książka, jak i film mają silny rys faszystowski. Lecz tym, co nadaje im taki charakter, nie jest ani przemoc, ani wątek paramilitarnej organizacji popełniającej sabotaż. Główny bohater, Tyler Durden, daje młodym mężczyznom poczucie przekroczenia swoich ograniczeń i przekroczenia życia zdefiniowanego przez konsumpcjonizm i brak odwagi. Przesłanie jest głęboko faszystowskie i silnie duchowe.

Skrajna prawica odwołuje się do tej tęsknoty za czymś większym niż ja. Poza nią jedynym nurtem myśli politycznej apelującym do tego samego pragnienia jest ekologia. To dlatego uważam, że XXI wiek będzie konfrontacją między ekologią, która wykracza dalece poza ramy partii zielonych, a skrajną prawicą. Jasna i mroczna strona naszego stulecia to zielona wizja świata stojąca naprzeciwko wizji brunatnej.

Czy nie ma ryzyka, że to zainteresowanie sobą i nacisk na duchowość funkcjonuje jako forma ucieczki? Że gdy nie udało nam się zmienić świata, siadamy pod drzewem i próbujemy zacząć od zmiany siebie? A może odwrotnie, to poprzez dążenie do utopii – przez politykę, która może zmienić świat – zmieniamy również siebie?

EG: Nie chodzi o „najpierw ja”, lecz o „również ja”. Nie powinniśmy mylić utopii z idealizmem. Ideały, choćby nieosiągalne, są tak częścią polityki, jak i rozwoju osobistego. Tym, co zmienia człowieka, jest zmaganie się z trudnościami, by coś osiągnąć – zaprawić się w sporcie, opanować język. Ważny jest wysiłek, a nie ostateczny cel.

W pełni zgadzam się, że przemiana siebie, jeśli nie wiąże się z jakimś projektem zbiorowym, jest tylko samorozwojem. I szczerze mówiąc nie jest to aż tak potrzebne światu. Z drugiej strony projekty polityczne nie mogą ignorować jednostki. Aby zadbać o innych, musimy czuć się dobrze ze sobą. Ktoś, kto sam się o siebie nie troszczy, nikomu nie pomoże. To jak procedura bezpieczeństwa w samolocie: najpierw sam załóż maskę tlenową, potem pomagaj innym.

Więc tak, samorozwój musi się łączyć z czymś większym. Historia pokazuje, że kolektywne projekty, które nie troszczyły się o jednostki, okazywały się w końcu skrajnie złe, przeważnie totalitarne. Nie chcemy zbiorowiska jednostek, które mają za nic społeczeństwo, i nie chcemy społeczeństwa przekonanego, że samo wie najlepiej, co jest dla wszystkich dobre.

AO: Dla mnie punktem wyjścia do troski o siebie jest dostrzeżenie innych i wyjście im naprzeciw. Przemiana siebie nie musi zaczynać się od wewnątrz, jej katalizatorem mogą być wyzwania związane z obecnością innych ludzi, z którymi łączyć nas może przyjaźń, antypatia, wspólna praca, pożądanie czy cokolwiek innego.

To samo dotyczy naszej kolektywnej wizji siebie jako społeczeństwa. W Twojej książce jest wspaniały fragment poświęcony laickości, gdzie wyjaśniasz, jak to pojęcie stało się obecnie we Francji narzędziem kolektywnego samopotwierdzania raczej niż otwartości, której początkowo miało służyć. Ucieleśnieniem tego jest polityka Macrona. Jego wystąpienia na temat „islamskiego separatyzmu” pokazują, jak polityczne elity we Francji próbują rozwiązywać szereg problemów, od bezpieczeństwa narodowego przez edukację aż po politykę zagraniczną za pomocą ustawodawstwa dotyczącego religii. Jest w tym głęboka ironia, że dzieje się to w państwie, które uważa samo siebie za ostoję świeckości.

Francuskie kłopoty to przykład problemu, z którym mierzą się dziś wszystkie zachodnie demokracje. Jesteśmy zaaferowani pytaniami o to, kim naprawdę jesteśmy, jakie jest moje prawdziwe imię i jak mogę wyegzekwować je od świata, a także jakie jest poprawne imię innego. Czy można go nazwać imieniem tego właśnie narodu, tej właśnie płci, czy tą właśnie inną etykietą?

Ta kwestia wyrasta z tradycji religii abrahamicznych: judaizmu, chrześcijaństwa i islamu. Troska o prawdziwe „ja” – na poziomie indywidualnym i zbiorowym – a także o to, jak poprawnie można nazywać innych znalazła się dziś w centrum zmagań politycznych po lewej i po prawej stronie. Religie monoteistyczne, zwłaszcza w powiązaniu z duchowością, są niezbędne i pomocne w budowaniu demokratycznej sfery publicznej, ale mają swoje ograniczenia. Potrzebujemy również inspiracji tradycji nie-abrahamicznych jako swoistego kontrapunktu, który pozwoliłby nieco poluzować to kurczowe przywiązanie do kwestii tożsamości.

W książce postulowane są trzy zasady dla współczesnej polityki. Po pierwsze, chodzi o zachowanie, ochronę i przywrócenie naturalnej równowagi i warunków życia. Po drugie, o poszerzanie wolności, o ile nie kłóci się to z zasadą pierwszą. Po trzecie wreszcie, o powiększanie dobrostanu materialnego, o ile nie jest to sprzeczne z dwiema pierwszymi zasadami. Ale ludzie już przecież wzburzyli „naturalny porządek rzeczy” dogłębnie i na wiele sposobów. Czy nie powinniśmy raczej zaakceptować naszego sprawstwa, zamiast silić się na odbudowę równowagi w przyrodzie?

EG: Niektóre z naszych największych osiągnięć zawdzięczamy temu, że potrafimy w przemyślany sposób wycofać się z ingerencji w przyrodę. Myślę na przykład o rezerwatach morskich czy niektórych parkach narodowych, gdzie pozwalamy dzikiej przyrodzie, by sama odzyskała równowagę. Czasami najlepszą formą sprawczości w odniesieniu do przyrody jest pozostawienie jej w spokoju – przykładem takiego myślenia jest choćby unijne rozporządzenie o odbudowie zasobów przyrodniczych (Nature Restoration Law). Nie znaczy to, że mamy się odsunąć ze świata, jak chcieliby zwolennicy nurtu ekologii głębokiej. Jesteśmy częścią tego stworzenia i tej równowagi. Ale musimy się nauczyć, jak unikać zaburzania równowagi w przyrodzie, jak szanować i podtrzymywać ją.

My, ludzie, jesteśmy organizmami, a każdy organizm to w istocie organizacje rozmaitych procesów równowagi. Aktualne wyzwanie polega na tym, byśmy ponownie włączyli się świat, tak abyśmy mogli kształtować go jako organizmy, a nie manipulować nim jako pochłaniające wszystko mechanizmy. To wymaga „sprawczości”, ponieważ wycofanie się to za mało. Potrzebujemy zreformować nas samych. Dlatego właśnie uważam, że ekologia jest formą duchowości.

Tak że istnieje przestrzeń na ludzkie działanie. Chodzi o wycofanie się tam, gdziekolwiek to możliwe, lecz również przez reformację, gdziekolwiek i kiedykolwiek to możliwe – przy założeniu, że nie mówimy o geoinżynierii czy terraformowaniu Ziemi.

AO: Ludzie są także częścią ekosystemu. Nie powinniśmy na przykład myśleć o wycofywaniu się z terytoriów, gdzie równowaga w przyrodzie zależy od obecności ludzi. W miejscach, gdzie zabroniono społecznościom rdzennym kontrolowanego wypalania lasów, efektem często są megapożary.

Z drugiej strony, kiedy dajemy więcej luzu naturze, możemy też trochę poluzować oczekiwania wobec społeczeństwa. Wiemy, że bardzo dużo można uzyskać dzięki temu, że po prostu pozwolimy drzewom rosnąć czy zostawimy przestrzeń na niezakłócony rozwój ekosystemów morskich. Dodatkowa korzyść jest taka, że nie musimy poświęcać aż tyle uwagi temu, jak namówić wszystkich do weganizmu czy powstrzymać ludzi przed podróżami lotniczymi. Oznacza to, że moglibyśmy zmniejszyć presję na nasze style życia i ograniczenia nakładane na nas jako jednostki i społeczności.

Oczywiście nasze style życia wymagają reformy. Ale możemy zrobić to w sposób bardziej organiczny, jeśli nie traktujemy tego jako jedynego rozwiązania. Mechanizmy można naprawiać, ale organizmy zdrowieją. To, co można naprawić, trzeba naprawić. Lecz również potrzebujemy stworzyć – zarówno dla ludzkich społeczności, jak i ekosystemów – przestrzeń, której potrzebują dla uzdrowienia.

Co chcielibyście, żeby czytelnik wyniósł z tej książki?

AO: Polityczne etykiety są często używane jako obelgi. Myślę, że to błąd. Konserwatyzm jest szlachetną tradycją polityczną, dającą cenną perspektywę na człowieka i społeczeństwo, ale ma również ciemną stronę. Tak samo liberalizm, socjalizm, feminizm czy ekologizm – każda z tych tradycji wnosi coś cennego do naszego rozumienia człowieka i społeczeństwa i oferuje wspaniałe wizje wspólnego życia. Ale każda z nich ma też swoją ciemną stronę.

Wyobraźnia ekologiczna może wzbogacić nasze myślenie o demokracji. Ekologiczne myślenie o demokracji nie polega na tym, aby poprawiać czy naprawiać innych, narzucać im nasz sposób myślenia i zmuszać do akceptowania jedynie słusznych rozwiązań. Przeciwnie, chodzi o myślenie o tym, jak uwzględnić te różnorodne glosy w taki sposób, aby nie były krzywdzące dla innych. To duże wyzwanie, ze względu na wpisaną w każdą ideologię polityczną jej ciemną stronę. Ale to także szansa na zbudowanie wspólnego świata.

Nie powinniśmy zaczynać od tego, co mówi prawo, jaka jest prawda, czy jakie jest właściwe rozwiązanie. Punktem wyjścia powinno być pytanie o to, jak mogę dzielić ten świat, to państwo, tę Unię Europejską czy to miasto z ludźmi, którzy są ode mnie inni. Znalezienie równowagi nie jest oczywiście, na przekór pewnym modelom ekonomicznym, równoznaczne ze stabilnością. W przyrodzie równowaga jest zawsze dynamiczna, ciągle się zmienia.

To jest moim zdaniem lekcja z tej książki. Możemy uczyć się od konserwatystów, liberałów czy jakiejkolwiek innej tradycji bez utraty własnego kompasu. To daje nam szansę na zbudowanie świata, w którym możemy żyć razem. Dla mnie to jest właśnie istotą ekologii w polityce.

EG: Chciałbym zaprosić czytelnika do refleksji nad sobą. Myślę, że zawsze powinniśmy pielęgnować umiejętność wątpienia i pogłębiać nasze rozumienie siebie. Podczas gdy ciemna strona wszelkich światopoglądów sprowadza nas do dogmatyzmu, introspekcja zakłada pragnienie bycia lepszym – nie tylko w sensie lepszego funkcjonowanie, lecz bycia lepszą istotą żywą. Dla różnych osób oznaczać to będzie coś innego: udział we mszy, medytację, działalność humanitarną czy co komu w duszy zagra. To nie przypadek, że jedną z największych lekcji zachodniej filozofii jest wciąż aktualne „Poznaj samego siebie”.

Z języka angielskiego przełożył Adam Ostolski.

This article is part of Food Tank’s primer series, “Food Tank Explains.” Each installment unpacks the ideas, innovations, and challenges shaping today’s food and agriculture systems, offering clear insights into complex topics. To explore more articles in the series, click here.

Land tenure is the legal or customary framework governing the ownership, control, and transfer of land. Land tenure systems determine who can use land, for how long, and under what conditions.

Secure land tenure refers to the assurance that individuals and communities can exercise recognized rights to access and benefit from land without fear of eviction, displacement, or competing claims. Tenure security varies with local conditions, including legal protections, social recognition, and the institutions that uphold land rights.

Ownership, tenure, or use rights are formally documented for just 35 percent of the world’s land, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). And almost one in four adults worldwide, or 1.1 billion people, believe they may lose rights to some or all of their land or housing in the next five years.

Historically marginalized groups are particularly susceptible to tenure insecurity, often facing disproportionate challenges in accessing and securing land rights. 90 percent of landholdings in low- and middle-income countries are not documented.

Indigenous Peoples and other customary tenure holders hold ownership rights for only one of the 5.5 billion hectares of land that they occupy. And men are more likely than women to own or hold secure rights to land in almost every country with available data.

Meanwhile, population growth and urbanization are driving demand for land, degradation is reducing suitable farmland, and, according to the World Resources Institute, administrative barriers to ownership are growing.

According to international organizations including FAO, UN-Habitat, and Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty, and research published in the Journal of Land Use Policy and Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems, clear, secure, and equitable land tenure and property rights are fundamental to improving food security, reducing poverty, supporting climate resilience, and advancing gender equality.

Land insecurity can lead to lower productivity, says FAO Chief Economist Maximo Torero.

Many practices that increase production require investments that may take years to produce returns. Growers may hesitate to invest in infrastructure or soil improvements without certainty that they will retain long-term land access, Nikhita Jain, Senior Urban Agriculture Program Associate at LAFPC, tells Food Tank.

For many rural communities, access to land underpins livelihoods, and insecure tenure can limit economic opportunities and perpetuate poverty. Informal arrangements can also make it harder to access certain grants and government programs that require documentation of land tenure, Jain explains.

By supporting investment in agricultural productivity, improved access to credit and financing, and more stable livelihoods, secure tenure can help reduce vulnerability to poverty and food insecurity. “Secure land tenure is the difference between short-term survival and long-term food security,” says Torero.

Secure land tenure can also support more sustainable agriculture and climate action. Clear, protected rights can encourage farmers to invest in sustainable land management. Clear tenure can also make it easier to identify and manage land for conservation, restoration, and other climate initiatives.

Women produce more than half of all grown food, but rarely own the land they work and often have limited control over its use. “Women feed the world, but we would say that they feed it on somebody else’s land,” Michael Taylor, Secretariat Director of the International Land Coalition, tells Food Tank.

Discriminatory laws and social norms, inheritance and marital property rules, and weak enforcement can limit their rights, contributing to a gender gap that exceeds 20 percent in nearly half of countries with available data.

According to Landesa, an organization that has strengthened land rights for more than 700 million people, at least one-third of married women believe they would lose their land rights if their marriage ends. This insecurity not only restricts economic opportunities, but also increase vulnerability to poverty, hunger, displacement, and violence.

Land tenure is increasingly reflected in global development and climate commitments. U.N. Sustainable Development Goals 1, 2, and 5 address secure land rights, including access for small-scale producers and women, while the FAO’s Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure (VGGT) establishes international guidance for governing tenure. At COP26, the U.N. Climate Conference 2021 (COP26), 141 countries pledged US$1.7 billion to secure Indigenous Peoples’ and local communities’ land rights.

Experts recommend multiple paths to stronger tenure security. The Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty highlights recognizing Indigenous and traditional territories and supporting community-based management. WRI calls for simpler processes for communities to formalize their rights, and measures to reduce imbalances between communities and companies competing for land.

Landesa points to several approaches for strengthening women’s land rights, including improving legal literacy and expanding women’s access to and role in governing land under customary tenure systems.

Society for Conservation Biology researchers caution against one-size-fits-all approaches, recommending that interventions account for local conditions, traditional governance, and customary practices.

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 Luiza Braun

The post Food Tank Explains: Land Tenure appeared first on Food Tank.

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The UK is pioneering the use of “super batteries” that can store energy for long periods, smoothing the output from wind and solar power as the country moves towards net-zero.

It is aiming to build “long-duration energy storage” (LDES) that fills up when supplies are plentiful, to help cover the gaps when the wind does not blow and the sun does not shine.

These periods can last for days or even weeks – sometimes referred to as “dunkelflaute”, a German word meaning “dark doldrums” – whereas the current batteries on the electricity system only last a matter of hours.

The nation’s energy regulator Ofgem has now identified 16 LDES projects that it is “minded to” support under a new “cap-and-floor scheme”. 

The technologies selected can be used to store energy for long periods in the form of gravity, chemical processes or electrical charge.

These include pumped hydro, which has dominated long-term storage in the past, through to large lithium-ion batteries, “flow batteries” with novel chemistry and compressed-air storage.

The use of these technologies is expected to cut energy system costs in the UK by more than £24bn between 2030 and 2050.

This Q&A looks at what LDES means and where it can come from, why it is needed and what the UK and others are doing to support its use.

• What is LDES?
• What types of LDES are available?
• How much LDES will the UK need?
• Which types of LDES is the UK planning to use?
• How could LDES impact energy bills?

Article Contents Expand menu

• What is LDES?
• What types of LDES are available?
• How much LDES will the UK need?
• Which types of LDES is the UK planning to use?
• How could LDES impact energy bills?

What is LDES?

LDES is a broad category of technologies, with some variation in definition. 

The UK government defines it as technologies that can store energy for anywhere from four hours up to years. Ofgem uses a slightly different threshold of eight hours and upwards. 

Sir Chris Llewellyn Smith, emeritus professor of physics at the University of Oxford and lead author of a Royal Society report on large-scale electricity storage, tells Carbon Brief: 

“[The Department of Energy Storage and Net-Zero] (DESNZ) seems to describe it as including things which we would regard as some short duration or medium duration [storage]. It’s a big confusion…For us, long duration is stuff that can last not just into seasons, but into years and into decades.”

LDES can be used to support several different aspects of the electricity system, including the integration of variable renewable energy. 

Currently in the UK, there is 2.8 gigawatts (GW) of LDES, made up of four pumped-hydro energy storage assets in Scotland and Wales.

(This article refers to the UK throughout, but strictly relates to the island of Great Britain made up of England, Scotland and Wales. Northern Ireland is part of the separate all-Ireland electricity system.)

The largest of these existing sites is the Dinorwig power station in North Wales, sometimes referred to as the “electric mountain”. This is a 1,728 megawatt (MW) station opened in the 1980s, which is used to manage short-term surges in electricity demand. 

Turbine hall in Dinorwig hydroelectric power station, Wales. Credit: Clynt Garnham Environmental / Alamy Stock Photo

For example, during England’s football World Cup match against the Democratic Republic of Congo on 1 July 2026, electricity demand rose by around 1.2GW at half-time and 1.7GW at full-time. This is equivalent to the total electricity demand for the cities of Glasgow and Leeds, combined.

Pumped storage, alongside batteries, has been used to keep the electricity system balanced during such moments by providing enough electricity to keep the system secure very quickly. 

As the UK’s electricity system becomes increasingly dominated by variable renewables, however, the need for LDES to manage peaks and troughs of generation is growing.

George Martin, principal for power system modelling at analytics company LCP Delta, tells Carbon Brief that wind power creates a particular need for LDES. He says:

“[LDES is] really important for the system, particularly in a wind-driven system. You get more peaks and troughs in your renewable output and, [while] short duration [storage] can obviously help with that, with things like ‘dunkelflaute’, long-duration storage is what is needed.”

As such, the UK is working to expand the capacity and duration of storage available through LDES, as well as the range of technologies this system is based on. 

For example, in May 2026 the UK’s largest vanadium “flow battery” site opened, co-located with a 3MW solar farm in Uckfield, East Sussex. (A flow battery stores energy in liquid chemical mixtures that are pumped between tanks, via an electrochemical cell.)

The Uckfield site consists of 90 vanadium flow batteries, which can be used to store 21 megawatt-hours (MWh) of electricity. This is equivalent to seven hours of peak output from the attached solar farm and is roughly enough electricity to power 3,000 homes for a day. 

The batteries can be used to store surplus daytime solar generation, which can then be used in the evening and overnight.

Other LDES technologies with a longer storage capacity could be used to similarly help manage power supply and demand, but over weeks, months or seasons. This could include compressed-air energy storage, hydrogen storage and others.

The diversity of LDES technologies reflects the range of roles it is expected to play in the electricity system in the UK. This could be meeting short-term surges, helping to utilise surplus renewable energy generation or providing longer-term flexibility. 

What types of LDES are available?

There are numerous types of energy storage technology, although most fall into four main categories: mechanical; thermal; chemical; and electrochemical. 

For example, a pumped-hydro project uses surplus energy to pump water uphill to a reservoir. The mechanical energy is released when the water flows down through a turbine.

Thermal storage could be a tank of gravel that is heated up, then later used to warm up water. Electrochemical storage is familiar in the form of batteries.

Finally, chemical storage relates to energy stored in molecular bonds, for example, making hydrogen from water. (Similarly, the energy in fossil fuels, which is ultimately derived from the sun, is a form of chemical storage.)

A key consideration for each LDES technology is the amount of energy it can store, measured in watt-hours (Wh). For example, a 1MW battery with four hours of storage contains 4MWh of electricity. It can therefore be used to deliver 1MW continuously for up to four hours.

Another consideration is whether the energy can be stored for long periods before use – and whether it is economic to do so.

In recent years in the UK, battery energy storage – predominantly lithium-ion batteries with a duration of one to four hours – has dominated the storage sector. The lithium battery sector in the UK has grown from almost nothing in 2015 to more than 6GW today.  

However, as lithium-ion batteries have only tended to hold a few hours of storage, they cannot help support the grid during longer periods of low renewable energy generation. 

Technologies such as vanadium-redox flow batteries, compressed-air energy storage or hydrogen salt-cavern storage could potentially help manage supply and demand over days, weeks or even years. 

A range of LDES technology options are shown in the table below.

TechnologyTypeDurationHow does it work?Gravity storageMechanicalHoursA heavy object is lifted, storing kinetic energy that can be turned back into electrical energy by a generator.Lithium-ion batteriesElectrochemicalHoursLithium ions move between a negative anode and a positive cathode through an electrolyte within the battery.Liquid airMechanicalHours to daysAir is compressed and cooled until it becomes a liquid. When the air becomes a gas again, it drives a turbine.Vanadium flowElectrochemicalHours to daysLiquid chemical mixtures are pumped between tanks, via an electrochemical cell.Compressed airMechanicalHours to daysAir is compressed to a high pressure and stored in underground geological formations, such as salt caverns or disused oil and gas wells.Pumped hydroMechanicalHours to daysWater is pumped up a hill to a reservoir and then released to drive a turbine.Hydrogen salt cavern storageChemicalSeasonsSurplus energy is used to make hydrogen from water. The hydrogen is then stored in underground salt caverns, before being burned as fuel.Thermal energy storageThermalSeasonsA material such as gravel is heated with surplus energy and kept in an insulated store, before being used to warm water.

Each option has specific advantages and disadvantages; for example, while pumped hydro storage has a high upfront cost, it has a long lifespan of over 50 years. As such, its capital cost per kilowatt hour (kWh) is lower than many other storage options over time. 

(Pumped hydro is the most established LDES technology in the world, but no new projects have been built in the UK since the 1980s.)

While it has historically been a short-duration form of storage, some lithium-ion batteries can now store power for much longer chunks of time. 

Lithium-based grid batteries now often offer 8-12 hours of storage and – as shown in the table above – even longer durations are possible

As Ed Porter, director for Europe at data company Modo Energy, quipped on LinkedIn following the cap-and-floor scheme results: 

“Lithium [is] going far beyond 8 hours; that debate must surely be dead now.”

While even 12 hours is of limited use for gaps in generation of days, weeks or seasons, there are numerous benefits to lithium-ion batteries in comparison to other LDES technologies. For example, the cost of these batteries has fallen by an average of 20% per year over the last decade. 

Given the variation in technologies – including scale, lifespan, commercial readiness and aspects such as necessary geography – comparing the costs of each technology is challenging. 

However, utilising a diverse set of storage technologies is expected to be particularly beneficial for electricity systems, according to experts. 

Julia Souder, CEO of industry group the LDES Council, tells Carbon Brief: 

“The UK is leading the charge on technology diversity. We’re witnessing matching different LDES solutions to the real differences in market structure and country needs.

“But make no mistake: a handful of LDES technologies will do the heavy lifting over the next decade. We’re seeing that play out in which technologies are winning through the UK government’s new cap-and-floor mechanism for long duration storage.”

How much LDES will the UK need?

LDES is expected to be a key component of the UK’s electricity system in the future, particularly as it moves away from easily stored and dispatched fossil fuels such as gas. 

The government has set a target of “clean power by 2030”, in the lead-up to the wider net-zero by 2050 goal. 

In 2024, the Labour administration set out an “action plan” for reaching the 2030 target, which included substantial increases to electricity generation technologies. 

This included setting widely discussed targets to double offshore wind, triple onshore wind and quadruple solar capacity by 2030, alongside rebuilding the UK’s nuclear fleet. 

But the action plan also set a less well-known target for 4-6GW of LDES, to help balance this renewables-dominated electricity mix. This is in addition to 23-27GW of short-duration battery energy storage, new interconnectors and a big push to develop consumer-led flexibility. 

There is also a major expansion of LDES to 3.8-5.3GW by 2030 in the most recent “future energy scenarios” report from the National Electricity System Operator (Neso), as shown in the chart below. 

Neso’s pathways show LDES rising to between 16.6GW and 13.2GW by 2050, mainly dependent on how hydrogen is used in the electricity system. 

The Neso report notes that few LDES schemes are likely to come online before 2030, due to the long project development and planning times, as well as high capital expenditures.

Which types of LDES is the UK planning to use?

While the UK is pursuing a diverse range of LDES, certain technologies are likely to make up the bulk of LDES in the next decade or so. 

This is evident in the technologies that have bid successfully into the UK government’s new “cap-and-floor” mechanism for LDES. 

The scheme was first announced in 2024 and is designed to guarantee a minimum level of revenue for energy storage operators – the “floor” – as well as to put a limit on profits via the “cap”. 

(The mechanism will be funded through electricity bills. However, Ofgem expects it to be broadly cost-neutral over time.)

Similar mechanisms have been used to support the development of other technologies in the UK, in particular those with high upfront costs, such as interconnectors. Ultimately, it minimises the risk for developers by guaranteeing a certain level of future revenue. 

In 2025, 171 LDES projects with a total capacity of 52.6GW applied to enter the cap and floor scheme, which is administered by Ofgem. Of these, 77 projects (28.7GW) were deemed eligible to enter a second “assessment” phase. 

These were made up of nine different technologies, as shown in the figure below. However, lithium-ion batteries dominated the process, making up more than 20GW of the 29GW total. 

No pure vanadium-flow batteries, liquid-air energy storage, iron-air batteries, sodium-sulphur batteries or hydrogen batteries were deemed eligible for the second phase. 

(Conventional hydrogen storage was not eligible to bid into the process either, but could be supported through other means. The government is expected to release an updated hydrogen strategy later in 2026.)

Ultimately, Ofgem announced in June 2026 that it was “minded to” support 7.6GW of LDES capacity, spread across 16 projects. Of this total, 4GW is expected to be online by the end of the decade, at the bottom end of the range said to be required for the clean power 2030 target. 

The 16 projects are listed in the table below. They comprise four technologies: pumped storage hydro (3.9GW); lithium batteries (3.6GW); one vanadium-zinc flow battery (65MW); and one compressed- air energy storage site (50MW).

NameTechnologyRegionCapacity (MW)Duration (hours)Storage capacity (MWh)Earba PSHPumped storage hydroNorth Scotland1,8001527,000Coire GlasPumped storage hydroNorth Scotland1,4403246,100Loch Kemp StoragePumped storage hydroNorth Scotland6602214,500East Claydon StorageLithium batteryEast England500126,000Sundon StorageLithium batteryEast England50084,000Field NethertonLithium batteryNorth Scotland400166,400Field New DeerLithium batteryNorth Scotland400187,200Field Lond StrattonLithium batteryEast England400166,400SpringwellLithium batteryEast Midlands400114,400Drakelow (Innova)Lithium batteryWest Midlands38593,500Field RigifaLithium batteryNorth Scotland200183,600Field FyrishLithium batteryNorth Scotland200173,400Ocker Hill BESSLithium batteryWest Midlands14581,200Thornton BESS 2Lithium batteryEast Midlands100111,100Frontier LegacyVanadium-zinc flow batteryNorth Wales658500TeesCAESCompressed airNorth-east England50301,500

Welcoming Ofgem’s initial decision on the cap-and-floor mechanism, energy minister Michael Shanks said in a statement: 

“Forty years after the country’s last pumped storage facility, this government is getting Britain building again… 

“We are [going] further and faster in delivering the clean-power mission by rolling out a new generation of pumped-hydro storage and state-of-the-art batteries – making more of the clean, homegrown power we already produce, cutting waste, lowering bills and strengthening our energy security.”

Collectively, the provisionally successful projects can provide between eight and 32 hours’ worth of electricity storage. The top ten projects in terms of duration that applied for the mechanism – those with at least 12 hours’ worth of storage – all moved forward.

Following Ofgem’s “minded-to” decision, the regulator launched a consultation that ended on  7 August 2026. It will now make a final decision on the projects that will be supported through the “cap and floor” mechanism. 

Martin tells Carbon Brief that “it’s not over” yet, with Ofgem likely to face scrutiny over the methodology it used to determine these final results. He adds: 

“There’s going to be a lot of activity and a lot of responses to that consultation. I don’t expect the overall amount of capacity that’s been awarded to change, although they could increase it – it could only go up, probably.

“But there might be some change in what projects end up getting approved as a result, or maybe they end up making some changes for the next window [of applications for LDES support].”

Alongside the cap-and-floor process being run by Ofgem, the government introduced legislation via the Planning and Infrastructure Act to support the introduction of the scheme. 

Additionally, in August 2026, Innovate UK – the UK’s national innovation agency – announced new funding for “ultra-long” duration battery energy storage. 

Up to £3m will be invested in demonstration projects as part of the first phase of the funding, with £10m available in the sector to support the development of technologies capable of storing and discharging at least 100 continuous hours of electricity. 

In a statement responding to the new funding, Dr Jamie Speirs of the University of Strathclyde and co-director of the UK Energy Research Centre, said achieving the UK’s low-carbon ambitions will rely on “unlocking” LDES to support a highly renewable system. He added:

“By providing flexibility across hours, days and even seasons, LDES could enable a resilient, low-carbon electricity system – reducing curtailment, strengthening security of supply and ensuring that intermittent renewables can maximise their contribution to the grid in all conditions. 

“Investing in innovation opportunities such as this call to support market deployment of LDES technologies is a key way to support these technologies to market, giving us the best chance to meet our net zero targets.”

Phase one of the funding is open for applications until 30 September, with grants of between £350,000 and £700,000 available for the successful projects.

Seamus Garvey, professor of dynamics at the University of Nottingham, welcomes the new funding. However, he cautions that more needs to be done to ensure the future markets for medium- and long- duration storage are not compromised by early commitments to storage at shorter timescales. He tells Carbon Brief:

“Energy storage will be required over many timescales and as we decarbonise further and further, the requirements for longer durations grow and grow. 

“One key problem in my opinion is that because we are tending to buy into lots of short-duration stores now, we are actually removing pieces of market that could be accessible by longer duration stores and that is making the (already-difficult) problem of financing these stores ever more difficult.” 

How could LDES impact energy bills?

The rollout of LDES technologies is widely expected to help reduce energy bills as the UK transitions to a clean-energy system.

There is still a significant amount of uncertainty over the development of LDES, due to the wide range of options, nascent stages of development and lack of market maturity. Nevertheless, most research agrees that it will cut electricity system costs by the middle of the century, relative to a world where LDES is not used. 

For example, adding 20GW of LDES could reduce electricity system costs by £16-51bn between 2030 and 2050, compared with a scenario that has limited flexible capacity, according to analysis for the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ), by thinktank Regen and LCP Delta. The analysis, published in 2023, found that 20GW of LDES could reduce costs by around £26bn. 

Analysis by LCP Delta in 2025 found that building 20GW of established medium-sized LDES technologies – pumped hydro with a capacity of 8-12 hours – by 2050 would have a system benefit of more than £10bn. 

LDES could reduce total UK electricity system costs by £7-13bn annually by 2040-2050, according to a report from the Transition Finance Council – a public-private body launched by the City of London Corporation and the UK government – citing a range of other studies. 

Windfarm in Cornwall, UK. Credit: David Noton Photography / Alamy Stock Photo

The council says this would predominantly be by avoiding “curtailment”, where some generators are paid to switch off because the electricity grid cannot accommodate their output. It says that LDES would defer the need for additional grid investment and would reduce balancing costs, including curtailment.

(In the financial year 2024-25, balancing costs reached £2.7bn, adding around £40 to the average household electricity bill. Some £1.9bn of this – £28 per household – related to constraints, where wind is “curtailed” and gas plants are switched on elsewhere.)

Curtailment is a particular issue in Scotland, where much of the UK’s wind capacity sits behind congested sections of the national electricity network. Porter notes on LinkedIn that this helps explain why 79% of the LDES projects by storage capacity are located in northern Scotland. 

Martin says LDES will allow the UK to “use our renewable fleet more efficiently”. He adds: 

“[LDES] is able to increase renewable energy and then decrease gas generation during high-demand periods, and that brings all sorts of benefits to the system.

“It reduces emissions, it reduces the overall cost of the system, it can help reduce bills for consumers. So those are the types of benefits that we’ll see as a result of [more] LDES being [on the system].”

The Transition Finance Council report adds that despite the upfront cost, LDES quickly pays for itself. It estimates that each gigawatt of long-duration flexibility on the system requires around £2-2.5bn in investment, but yields annual system savings of £0.5-1bn once operational. 

As such, even accounting for the upfront cost of developing LDES, the technologies would provide £30-60bn of electricity system savings over 25 years, the council says. It adds that this means LDES “will repay itself several times over”. 

related CCC: Faster electrification of UK will ‘put money back into people’s pockets’ 24.06.2026 Electricity Analysis: UK’s EV drivers are now saving £1,100 each a year – and £3bn in total 15.06.2026 Electricity Q&A: Can China turn hydrogen into its next clean-energy industry? 27.05.2026 Electricity Q&A: How the UK government aims to ‘break link between gas and electricity prices’ 21.04.2026 Electricity

The post Q&A: What is ‘long-duration energy storage’ – and why does the UK need it? appeared first on Carbon Brief.

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• Apparently downloading music is more important to some drivers than not killing people, because researchers found that traffic deaths rose by about 15 percent on the release dates for major albums, and the trend was even more pronounced among young people. (CNN)
• A University of Minnesota study found that cheap infrastructure like bollards and curb extensions made drivers more likely to slow down and stop for pedestrians.
• Drivers have killed 28 people in Washington, D.C. already this year, topping last year’s number of 25 for all of 2025 (DC News Now). In Maryland, motorcycle deaths are up, but overall traffic fatalities are trending lower than last year’s (WTOP).
• Despite “near universal” support among visitors, Seattle is scaling back car-free hours at Pike Place because some merchants perceive that sales will drop over the winter. (The Urbanist)
• Kansas City needs to find a stable source of funding for transit instead of bailing out its transit agency at the last minute over and over. (KCUR)
• Tailpipe emissions in Utah have fallen by 73 percent since 2011, even as the population and miles driven have grown, thanks to a cleaner type of gasoline. (KUER)
• Nashville is committing another $100 million to Choose How You Move transportation projects. (Fox 17)
• A Nebraska fund is offering loans to businesses affected by Omaha streetcar construction. (KMTV)
• Charlottesville officials and cyclists are calling for safer conditions. (Right Now)
• Florida wants cities to get rid of their rainbow crosswalks, but apparently faux brick is fine. (Suncoast Searchlight)
• Villanova students are using virtual reality to study how drivers would behave before going through the expense of building new infrastructure. (NBC Philadelphia)
• An Outside contributor writes about how her Denver family became a one-car household.
• The U.S. could’ve had high-speed rail 120 years ago. (CT Mirror)

The following submission was in response to “Waymo Speaks: We Have More In Common With Urbanists Than You Might Think” by Arielle Fleisher, Waymo’s Policy Development and Research Manager.

The Deadheading Problem

Ride-hail services such as Uber and AV operators such as Waymo share a structural problem: a large share of the miles are driven empty between drop-off and pick-up. A recent piece by a Waymo representative cites a figure that roughly 40 percent of ride-hail and AV miles run empty. Those miles add to vehicle miles traveled (VMT), congestion, and pollution. Even electric cars still generate brake and tire particulate and contribute to traffic.

Fleisher’s proposed fix is staging: letting AVs park at the curb between rides instead of continuously circling. Staging is already allowed, as cars can pull over to the nearest empty curb space while waiting for the next ride, as long as they follow existing parking rules and fees. Fleisher argues cities should create a specific permitting standard to formalize staging, similar to how taxi stands work.

The centerpiece of the argument is a study, funded by Waymo, by researchers at UC Berkeley and UC Irvine modeling how staging affects VMT for a simulated San Francisco AV fleet. The model simulated roughly 1,700 AVs and found that banning staging and forcing vehicles to circle instead increased daily VMT by more than 200,000 kilometers. That’s a strange comparison, since staging isn’t currently banned in San Francisco. Waymo notes it self-restricts to one staged car per block, but the real concern seems to be a lack of available curb space, not any city law banning staging.

Who Pays for the Curb?

One question the op-ed never answers is whether Waymo wants free curb space or is proposing to pay for it. The premise of modern curb policy, based on Donald Shoup’s The High Cost of Free Parking, is that curb space is a scarce public asset that should be priced to increase turnover. San Francisco already runs a dynamic-pricing meter pilot on that logic. There’s no reason one of the most valuable companies should get free access to a public right-of-way that residents pay for.

The Local Business Claim Doesn’t Add Up

The op-ed also claims staging is a net positive for local businesses: “the cumulative value generated by staging far exceeds that of a curb space occupied by a privately owned vehicle.” For a commercial district, staging could supposedly mean eight to ten times as many potential customer visits compared to space reserved for private vehicles.

I don’t see how an empty Waymo idling outside a storefront generates more value than a parked private car, whose owner at least has some chance of being a customer. The argument rests entirely on total curb turnover, as more vehicles cycling through a spot, in theory, means more potential trip origins and destinations nearby. But that’s a claim about vehicle throughput, not foot traffic to any specific business the AV happens to be parked in front of. An AV staging on a block isn’t necessarily dropping off or picking up passengers on that block, it might just be the nearest available spot. Treating idle Waymos cycling through a space as a proxy for customer visits seems unsupported.

Who Uses the Staging Spaces?

Another question underlies both of the above: are staging zones meant to be exclusive to Waymo and other AV operators, or could locals park there too? I’d assume the former, since the pitch depends on reliable curb availability for the fleet. If so, the “benefit to local business” argument gets weaker: the city wouldn’t just be adding turnover to a general-use curb, it would be converting public spaces into a private company’s dedicated spot. That sounds less like curb management and more like a request for exclusive use of a public asset.

None of this means staging is a bad idea, but a version of this proposal centered on effective curb management would focus on pricing a scarce resource appropriately. A priced staging system could still cut deadheading substantially, since a modest curb fee is likely cheaper for an operator than driving empty, while generating public revenue instead of giving away space for free.

The op-ed’s argument for staging access reads a bit like an ultimatum: “deadheading can never be fully eliminated, so the real question is how many empty miles the public should tolerate in exchange for AVs’ benefits.” That framing positions the VMT and congestion increase caused by AVs as a necessary price for a service that seems to mostly exist to give relatively wealthy people another option to get around in a private vehicle. It also avoids the more obvious lever for cutting AV-generated VMT: limiting how many AVs are on the road in the first place.

San Francisco has no legal permitting authority over AVs. Fleet size, operating hours, and where AVs can drive are all decided by the DMV and the California Public Utilities Commission, not City Hall. In the wake of the July 4th Waymo meltdown, Mayor Lurie called on the state to tighten restrictions on AVs. Maybe it’s also time to give cities authority to manage them.

***

Chris Kucera is a climate and transportation advocate based in San Francisco’s Alamo Square neighborhood. He holds an MBA in Sustainable Solutions.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Rodney Scott ordered a pause on all border construction inside Big Bend National Park, days after footage of construction within the park sparked bipartisan outrage. “Last night I put a pause on all activity in that park as far as construction goes until I can get down there and do a personal evaluation,” Scott said in a video posted to X.

CBP originally denied any construction was underway, saying bulldozers were simply regrading storm-damaged roads, then acknowledged heavy machinery was working on the barrier project but called it “survey and design work — NOT construction of a wall through the park.” Scott insisted CBP was “NOT building a 30-foot wall or stadium lighting” through the park, though the agency’s map had at one point shown a 30-foot steel bollard wall across Big Bend.

“It’s difficult to trust the words of CBP,” said Bob Krumenaker, a former Big Bend superintendent who chairs Keep Big Bend Wild. “We’re hopeful that they’re honest and we can trust them, but it’s too early to know.” Brewster County Sheriff Ronny Dodson also expressed doubts about CBP’s statement: “We can’t count on what we’re reading or seeing or anything,” he said.

Crews have already bulldozed near Santa Elena Canyon without the thirty days’ notice DHS had agreed to provide under a previous court settlement, causing irreparable damage to the landscape and the archaeological sites it contains.

Quick hits Trump blames vandals for dead grass on lawn where he held Fourth of July event

Washington Post

Public lands are at the forefront of Wyoming’s primaries

Inside Climate News

Border agency pauses construction in Big Bend National Park

NOTUS | Public Domain | E&E News | The Hill | The Travel | Axios | Texas Tribune | NPR | Wes Siler’s Newsletter

Judge denies Tohono O’odham request to halt border wall construction

Arizona Capitol Times

Colorado River plummets as lakes Powell and Mead drop to record lows

New York Times

Policy limiting public information on deaths and injuries at national parks raises concern among journalists

Aspen Times

Colorado’s private 14er

Aspen Journalism

Lower oil and gas bonds on federal land could cost taxpayers billions

Utah Public Radio

Quote of the day

If we lose places like Big Bend, we never get them back. The destruction that will be inflicted here will truly be irreparable.”

— Laiken Jordahl, Center for Biological Diversity, NPR

Picture This
@u.s.forestserviceFire personnel return from the fireline on the Black Canyon Fire in Utah.This photo shows the “fuel type” crews are working in. Building fireline in this terrain requires the use of chainsaws to clear a fuel break and hand tools to dig a fireline down to mineral soil. This is often grueling work requiring long hours under harsh conditions.

We thank all our wildland firefighters, the non-fire staff who support them, and the families at home who stand behind them throughout the fire year.

Featured photo: Big Bend National Park, National Park Service=

The post Border agency halts Big Bend construction, for now appeared first on Center for Western Priorities.

As the dusk of summer nears, I feel embodied with a renewed sense of possibility. Summer has a way of inviting us into our bodies and the landscapes we inhabit. With each hike, I feel stronger. I am acutely aware of my heartbeat on steep inclines, sweat rising and drying almost instantly in the summer sun. I am in awe of the orchestra of wildflower bloom, the air alive with aromas of sage, grass, and juniper. Immersion in forests is itself a practice of health.

Summer can bring another kind of abundance through food. Vegetables and fruits that we eagerly await all year pop with the flavors of the landscape. For our family, the long-awaited fruits of the summer are Flathead cherries. Plump, sweet, tart, and minerally. We eat more whole foods grown close to home, carrying memories of soil, season, interactions with other life, and the hands of our community.

This summer, an unknown about my own health shifted the intensity with which I listen to my body. Health is something we wonder about and manage every day, yet sometimes an unknown can bring it into extraordinary focus, reminding us how deeply we value each other and participating in life. It brought me back to three deceptively simple and connected questions: What is health? How do we know what is healthy? And how do we cultivate health?

Across cultures, people have cultivated traditions of health grounded in different epistemologies, worldviews, observations, and forms of evidence. The field of medical anthropology explores this question, examining how health and healing are understood and experienced.

Ayurveda understands health, or svasthya, through balance among body, mind, food, behavior, season, and environment. Food and medicinal plants are integral to maintaining health and treating illness, with transformation central to their effects. The Ayurvedic concept of agni, often translated as digestive fire, considers what we eat and our capacity to digest and transform it, while prana speaks to the vital life force that sustains us. Agni reminds us that the same food may result in different biological exposure in different people depending on their constitution.

Traditional Chinese Medicine and Tibetan medical systems offer their own understandings of balance, including relationships among food, medicinal plants, individual constitution, season, and environment.

Years earlier, during fieldwork with Piaroa and Yekuana Amerindian communities in Venezuela’s Amazonas, I had asked this same question: What is health? Their responses expanded health beyond the individual. Health was collective, expressed through the vitality of families and communities, including the number of people in a community, and through relationships with the landscapes that sustained them. In Amazonian shamanic traditions, health extends further into cosmology. Plants, animals, people, spirits, and landscapes inhabit relational worlds in which healing extends beyond the individual body.

Since 1948, the World Health Organization has defined health as “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.” The NIH Whole Person Health framework similarly considers the whole person, emphasizing interconnected biological, behavioral, social, and environmental domains.

These ways of knowing reveal health as biological, personal, collective, and relational, shaped by what we eat, what our bodies make of it, the communities to which we belong, the living world we inhabit, and what we have access to.

And how do we know what is healthy? People have come to know what heals through observation and experimentation, taste and experience, and knowledge and evidence accumulated across generations. Humans learned to navigate landscapes of bitter, astringent, and potentially toxic plants through their senses and trial and error, discovering that some compounds that deter consumption can also have medicinal properties. This knowledge has shaped what people eat, avoid, and use for healing along a food-to-medicine continuum. This chemical diversity continues to shape medicine, with roughly half of small-molecule drugs tracing their structural origins to natural products.

Biomedical and molecular sciences expand how we know what is healthy through measurement. As a first-year doctoral student, I heard the late food chemist Edwin Frankel lecture on inflammation as a root of disease and the role of foods in exacerbating or mitigating inflammation. Over two decades of evidence later, inflammation has emerged as a biological thread across many chronic diseases, while diets rich in fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, nuts, and seeds are associated with lower inflammation and chronic disease risk. Beyond essential nutrients, these foods contain prebiotic fibers, peptides, and diverse bioactive metabolites that interact with inflammatory pathways, metabolism, and the gut microbiome.

Human health also relies on planetary health. Understanding what is healthy means understanding what health looks like in the living landscapes that produce our food, from soil and biodiversity to the fungi, microbes, and other organisms that sustain food systems.

Omics technologies enable precise characterization of the molecular diversity of foods and their interactions across complex diets, revealing distinct biomolecular signatures. These same tools can measure biological responses to what we eat through biomarkers. AI can also connect food molecular patterns to human proteins and pathways. We can further build new evidence by backtracking to existing epidemiological and clinical studies to link molecular signatures of foods and diets with health outcomes. Predictions can then be tested experimentally and clinically, taking us from food molecular composition to biological exposure and health outcomes.

Ultimately, this growing evidence base is powerful for establishing intake ranges for food molecules whose structures and functions we may not yet know and, where scientifically supported, thresholds for harmful and health-supporting biomolecules to inform dietary guidelines and public health recommendations.

Collectively, this is the frontier of understanding food as biological exposure, one where we should dedicate resources, investments, and capacity strengthening toward healthier food systems. This is perhaps what excites me most about this emerging chapter of my career: the possibility of finally understanding the continuum of soil to food to health at unprecedented resolution and translating that knowledge to improve lives for all.

As our capacity for discovery grows, so must our capacity for stewardship. Access and Benefit Sharing, Indigenous Data Sovereignty, and attribution must advance alongside discovery.

I also thought deeply about what it means to cultivate health this summer while developing an opening keynote for the WSU Bread Lab’s Grain Gathering, Cultivating Health and Nourishing Community with Food Intelligence. Amid the dreamy, diversified farms of the Skagit Valley, the idea came alive. At six in the morning on the second day of the gathering, farmers, breeders, millers, bakers, researchers, and makers gathered around a wood-fired oven making whole-grain bagels. At the center was one of humanity’s most ancient and essential crops: wheat.

Wheat offers a lens into how we cultivate health. A breeder selects for flavor, resilience, nutrition, and performance. A farmer cultivates that potential through soil, biodiversity, climate, and management. A miller determines what flows through the system, and a baker transforms flour with water, microbes, and heat. Our emerging work through The Periodic Table of Food Initiative (PTFI) is revealing how the molecular and health attributes of wheat vary among varieties and shift with production and processing practices, including fermentation. This transformation continues when we eat. Our gut microbes transform components of wheat into metabolites that interact with our immune system, metabolism, and cells.

During the bagel breakfast at the Grain Gathering, I was asked many incredible questions, but one made me stop and reflect: What makes you hopeful? In the face of uncertainty, tragedies, suffering, inequity, and threats to human and planetary health, hope itself can feel audacious. I find hope in the expansive possibility of knowing the continuum from soil to food to health at a resolution we have never known before, toward better lives for all. I find hope in gratitude for this beautiful living world. In love, higher purpose, the greater good, and faith in the goodness of humanity.

I have come to understand cultivation as creating the conditions for flourishing. Health is cultivated in much the same way. We cultivate health through the seeds we select, the landscapes we steward, the foods we grow, the knowledge we generate, the ways we move and rest, and the relationships we nourish. We cultivate it by expanding access, integrating healthy food into healthcare, and creating food systems where the healthy choice becomes the easy choice. Health is deeply personal and collective. Our health cannot be separated from the health of our communities and the living planet we share.

As the dusk of summer nears, I am grateful for the remarkable gift of participating in life. To cultivate health is to cultivate the conditions for life to flourish.

This essay is part of Food Tank’s Flourish Series: Food and Health from Molecules to Systems, authored by Selena Ahmed, exploring how food connects us to the living world while asking what it means to flourish. For more in the series, click here.

Artwork courtesy of Jeannie Ortiz commissioned for The Periodic Table of Food Initiative (PTFI) and Food Tank’s Flourish Series. All rights reserved.

The post Op-Ed | Cultivating Health: Food, Relationships, and the Living World appeared first on Food Tank.

U.S. Forest Service plans to remove forest protections, ignoring public sentiment

DENVER—The U.S. Forest Service on Tuesday announced its plan to move forward with its repeal of the 2001 Roadless Rule, threatening the fate of 44.7 million acres of national forest across the country.

The proposal, which will be published in the Federal Register tomorrow, would strip road-building bans from roadless areas in every state except Idaho and Colorado, which have their own separate rules, and would carve out the 9.4-million-acre Tongass National Forest in Alaska through a related executive order. Public comments on the rule will be due by September 21, according to USDA.

USDA first floated this plan last August and opened a preliminary comment period on it last September. Americans submitted more than 625,000 comments, 99 percent of which opposed repealing the Roadless Rule, according to a Center for Western Priorities’ analysis. Colorado College’s 2026 State of the Rockies Conservation in the West poll found that 65 percent of voters across eight Western states oppose building new industrial roads in undeveloped public lands for mining, oil and gas development, or timber harvests.

Center for Western Priorities Communications Manager Kate Groetzinger issued the following statement:

“The Trump administration already asked the American public what they thought of this plan, and 99 percent of them said no to repealing the Roadless Rule. Now USDA is back with the same idea, dressed up as a move to reduce wildfire risk even though it will degrade drinking water, fragment wildlife habitat, and increase the Forest Service’s $10 billion road maintenance backlog. This is a giveaway to the timber industry that the public has already rejected once and will reject again.”

Learn more:

• Comment analysis finds over 99% opposition to repealing 2001 Roadless Rule – CWP

• What is the “Roadless Rule”? – Sierra Club Oregon

• Roadless Rule Recission 2025 interactive map – Trout Unlimited

Feature image: Mt. Hood National Forest Trillium Lake

The post Trump admin announces intent to move forward with Roadless Rule repeal appeared first on Center for Western Priorities.

Interviews series about Radical Democracy Franco Augusto and Shail Sathi conducted these conversations during the “Global Confluence on Radical Democracy, Autonomy and Self-Determination (RaDASD)” from 1 to 6 February 2025. The recording were produced by Franco Augusto and Basil, edited by Marco Andrade.

AWL Responds to Draft Environmental Impact Statement on Roadless Rule 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 
Date: August 18, 2026
Contact: Anja Semanco | anja@alaskawild.org | 724-967-2777

Washington, D.C. — Today, following the administration’s announcement of a draft environmental impact statement (DEIS) on the future of the Roadless Rule, Alaska Wilderness League is calling on decision-makers to uphold long-standing protections for some of the nation’s most wild and irreplaceable forests, including the Tongass and Chugach National Forests.

The Roadless Rule has protected nearly 60 million acres of national forest lands across the country for more than two decades, protecting wildlife habitat, clean water, and climate resilience. Now, those protections face renewed uncertainty.

“America’s last great backcountry forests are not bargaining chips,” said Emma Powell, Government Affairs Manager at Alaska Wilderness League. “The Tongass and Chugach National Forests are global treasures, home to thriving salmon runs, abundant wildlife, outdoor enthusiasts from all over our nation, and communities whose cultures and livelihoods are deeply tied to healthy, intact forests. From fisheries to tourism and outdoor recreation, these landscapes also support thousands of jobs and generate billions in economic activity each year. Rescinding Roadless Rule protections puts these irreplaceable public lands at risk.”

The Tongass National Forest, the largest temperate rainforest on Earth, plays a critical role in storing carbon and helping to mitigate the climate crisis. The Chugach National Forest, spanning mountains, glaciers, and coastal ecosystems, supports vital wildlife habitat and world-renowned recreation opportunities.

Opening these forests to road building and industrial logging would fragment critical habitat, threaten subsistence resources, and undermine the natural systems that Alaskans—and people across the country—depend on.

Alaska Wilderness League encourages the public to review the DEIS and submit comments by September 21, 2026 in support of protecting the Tongass and Chugach National Forests for future generations.

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This article What we learned from a US bus tour of judges was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.

Over four days in July, roughly 30 judges, sitting and retired, state and federal, climbed on and off a bus at courthouses, coffee shops, a Cracker Barrel, and community centers and libraries from Greensburg, Pennsylvania, to Grosse Pointe, Michigan. The goal was straightforward — to visit with people in their communities to talk about why the rule of law matters in their everyday lives. They engaged one on one, in small groups and in front of large audiences. 

The tour was called Justice in Motion, and was created and run by our organization, Democracy Rising Collaborative, together with Keep Our Republic. We borrowed the model from judges in Poland, who figured out, the hard way, how to defend an independent judiciary when the traditional tools weren’t enough.

We think that borrowed playbook is worth explaining, because we’re planning to use it again, and we encourage you to take similar bold action during this perilous time.

Where the idea came from

Last October, The Carter Center’s Rule of Law Program brought a delegation of U.S. lawyers to Warsaw for a study tour, to sit down directly with the Polish judges and lawyers who had spent the better part of a decade defending their courts. They were joined by democracy leaders from Georgia, Slovakia, Romania and Hungary, as well as the Hungarian Helsinki Committee. 

Participating in that trip was where we first heard in detail how the judges in Poland decided to come out of their courtrooms to march through the streets of Warsaw in support of their judicial independence. They then organized themselves to visit citizens in villages and towns across the country to talk about why the rule of law and an independent judiciary mattered to everyone.

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The tour’s lessons were later written up by two of its organizers — Leanne Webster of the Carter Center’s Rule of Law Program and Melissa Hooper of the German Marshall Fund — in a Harvard Social Impact Review essay, “Turning Back the Tide of Authoritarianism.”

Starting in 2015, Poland’s governing party moved methodically to bring the judiciary under its control: it took over the Constitutional Tribunal, restructured the body that selects judges so that the ruling party effectively chose its members, and created a disciplinary chamber that could punish judges for rulings the government disliked. These tools were used against judges the Carter team met with, to fire them for speaking up for the judiciary or raising questions about judicial appointments, and to replace them with loyalists. All of these actions were framed as democratic accountability rather than capture.

What we found instructive wasn’t the attack — that pattern is familiar by now — it was the response. Polish judges organized through relationship-building, proactive media relations and organizations like Iustitia, a Polish independent judges association, and Themis, another group of judges supporting an independent judiciary. Both were instrumental in mobilizing judges in Poland. 

That work built toward the iconic March of a Thousand Robes on Jan. 11, 2020. Judges, prosecutors and lawyers from roughly 20 countries walked in silence from Poland’s Supreme Court to its parliament building, even passing by the President’s office. Most of them wore their judicial robes, and they were joined by thousands of ordinary Poles lining the route. City officials estimated the crowd at 30,000. They were joined by their judicial brethren from across Europe — a judicial tour de force, judges standing and walking together in a tremendous demonstration of the power of collective action. 

About a year later, judges got into vans, traveling from town to town into places where a sitting judge was someone you might never see. Judges set up in town squares and school auditoriums to hand out pocket copies of the Polish constitution and walk residents through what it actually said. 

Judges who had been forced off the bench did some of the heaviest lifting, since they had nothing left to lose professionally by talking to reporters and shopkeepers. They spoke about what due process meant and why courts weren’t supposed to answer to whichever party held power that year. One of them, suspended from his own courtroom, relentlessly toured the country.

Poland’s governing party lost power in 2023, and most analysts who study the period believe the judiciary’s years-long campaign, including both the vans and the march, was a meaningful part of why.

Why we borrowed this model

Until the last few years, the idea that federal judges in the United States would need to speak to the public beyond the walls of their courtrooms or the words of their opinions was frowned upon, other than periodic school civics classes or university lecture halls. State judges have had more latitude, given that in many states they are elected to office.

But it has become increasingly clear in the U.S. that the role of the independent judiciary — to fairly resolve disputes and act as a check on the other branches of government — is unclear to many Americans. According to Gallup, trust in the judiciary has fallen to 48 percent — down from more than 60 percent before 2022. The Supreme Court’s 33 percent approval rating in July was the lowest since the early 2000s. 

Previous Coverage

How movements can make courts play their role in defending democracy

Furthermore, threats to judges, their families and their staff have risen sharply in recent years. Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett recently testified on Capitol Hill about the surge — the U.S. Marshals Service recorded 564 threats against federal judges in the last fiscal year, up from 509 the year before.

We knew from our own experience the power of visiting communities to listen, learn and engage in dialogue. This same instinct was behind Bill Clinton and Al Gore’s bus trips across the country in 1992. (Steve, one of the co-authors of this article, traveled on each of the 10 bus trips as Al Gore’s deputy press secretary.) Ross Perot’s cross-country “United We Stand” tour drew on the same instinct, as did, decades later, the Tea Party Express. Whatever the cause, the impulse was the same: get off the stage, get on the road and meet people where they live, in their communities and neighborhoods. Engage in dialogue. Listen carefully. Answer questions.

As we launched our organization, Democracy Rising Collaborative, to educate, organize and mobilize lawyers, retired judges and civic leaders for collective action, the idea of a bus trip as a kind of listening tour began to take hold. We drafted a concept paper and shared it with a few trusted colleagues in the pro-democracy space, including colleagues who had been on the Warsaw trip. The feedback was universally positive. Before long, we were talking about actually doing a judges’ bus tour with our tremendous partner Keep Our Republic, a nonpartisan civic education organization committed to the vitality of U.S. democracy by promoting trust in elections, the rule of law and constitutional checks and balances.

Lessons from Poland, brought to the Great Lakes

1. Organizing matters. One judge speaking out is easy to dismiss as an outlier. Some 30 judges from different states, different courts and both parties, appearing together under one banner, are much harder to write off. That’s when the message stops sounding like an opinion and starts sounding like the profession itself telling you something.

2. Creativity is essential. We owe this one first to Romania’s Funky Citizens, whose team told the delegation that civic engagement has to be joyful and shareable, or it never leaves the room it happened in. Earnestness alone doesn’t travel. We built Justice in Motion as a way to connect with ordinary Americans in their own communities, while keeping in mind that we needed the story of the trip to travel far and wide. 

Communications was key — but getting the experience right for the participants themselves mattered just as much. The judges did this by stopping at a donut shop in Wheeling, West Virginia instead of a podium, and holding purple roses — an international symbol of judicial independence — outside courthouses. These clips spread on social media well past the reporters who were actually there. None of that was decoration. That was the point.

Judges meeting with people in front of the Louis Stokes Federal Courthouse in Cleveland on July 9. (Democracy Rising Collaborative/Keep Our Republic)

We also borrowed from an organizer’s account of the Tour de Konstytucja, Poland’s own cross-country Constitution Tour, and its four rules: citizens at the center, no party politics, no party funds, no politicians on stage. Their judges showed up in jeans and T-shirts, with cake, rock music and a reading of the constitutional preamble at every stop. They wore white T-shirts emblazoned with “Konstytucja,” or “Constitution” in Polish — a clear and simple statement of what they stood for.

As the delegation heard, authoritarian power feeds on alienation and division, and so the project was about rebuilding that connection. We didn’t replicate every element, but the instinct showed up in our events — meant to feel like conversations rather than hearings — and in the purple roses our own judges carried instead of pins, a small visual signature of their own.

3. Locality makes the difference. We didn’t want one press conference in a state capital. We wanted a bus tour through big cities and small towns: a coffee shop and courthouse in Greensburg, Pennsylvania, the LeMoyne Community Center in Washington, Pennsylvania, a barbecue in Cleveland, a nearly 100-year-old bakery in Toledo, Ohio and the Grosse Pointe Public Library in Michigan.

That’s where the Polish campaign actually did its work — not in Warsaw, but in the towns national reporters usually didn’t visit. The delegation came back with the same warning we kept in mind while building our route: democracy defense that stays in a handful of big cities never reaches the people who most need to hear the case for independent courts, because they’re the ones least likely to encounter it otherwise. 

Our Wooster, Ohio meet-and-greet drew about 150 residents to a town square on a very hot Wednesday afternoon. Judicial independence stays an abstraction until someone explains it to you, in a room you’re already in, and patiently answers your questions.

4. Solidarity, solidarity, solidarity. In Poland, solidarity wasn’t just a slogan, it involved taking action. It meant having each other’s backs and showing up, over and over. Lawyers sitting in the gallery at hearings for judges under attack, bar associations funding judges whose salaries had been suspended, campaigns telling the public that people were watching and that no judge stood alone. Judges gathered outside their courthouses on the 18th of every month; supporters mailed postcards that read, in effect, I’ve got your back. 

Justice in Motion tried to build that same solidarity in reverse: Rather than waiting for a judge to come under attack and then rallying to defend them, we sent retired and sitting judges out first to build the civic relationships and public trust that make solidarity possible before it’s ever tested. 

Judges meeting with people at the Third Space Action Lab in Cleveland on July 9. (Democracy Rising Collaborative/Keep Our Republic)

That meant making sure judges weren’t the only ones standing at the front of the room. We mobilized local bar associations at many of our stops — including the Cleveland Metropolitan Bar Association — so the message came from the legal community as a whole and not just the bench. Attorneys Rachel Cohen and Brenna Trout Frey joined the tour for the same reason: so that judges weren’t out there on their own, but stood with allies who had been through their own reckoning. The business community showed up too, including Leadership Now’s Richard Stoff in Columbus, Ohio, because an independent judiciary isn’t a legal abstraction to employers and local economies; it’s part of what makes a place stable enough to invest in. 

None of this was incidental. It was the same lesson from Poland: no one advocating for courts should stand alone.

5. Remember history. One of the delegation’s hosts pressed a question built for this moment: what freedom-fighting story does America already have on hand and why aren’t we using it? He pointed to the country’s own revolutionary founding, Black civil rights leaders, disability rights advocates and union organizers, who made the case for fairness to people who started off unconvinced. 

Our judges took that instruction literally. At every stop, they didn’t talk about constitutional doctrine; they talked about a longer American habit of ordinary people insisting that the rules apply to everyone — and they did it in a year built for exactly that story, the 250th anniversary of the country’s founding.

6. Documentation is power. In Warsaw, we heard how much a short, well-made film can do that a press release can’t. Free Courts (“Wolne Sady” in Polish) was formed by Polish lawyers focused on providing information about the importance of a free and independent judiciary. It had learned it the hard way: their first video of lawyers earnestly explaining the constitution went nowhere. Then they reshot the idea as a soccer match where one team simply stops following the rules and starts attacking the referees. That one traveled. 

A good film gets shared person to person and gives people something to sit with after the news cycle has moved on. We took the lesson seriously enough to put a documentary team on the bus for the entire tour, and we’re now producing a 10-minute film of the trip: the stops, the conversations, the judges themselves explaining, in their own words, why they got on the bus. It’s meant to do after the fact what the tour did in person — reach people who never had the chance to see us live.

What the tour actually did

On the ground, we reached several thousand people directly, meeting them where they already were to talk about why the rule of law matters to their own lives: how your money is there when you go to the bank, how the medicine you buy at the pharmacy is safe — or will be recalled if it isn’t. Turnout exceeded even our best expectations, which told us there’s real appetite for this conversation and that it resonates more coming from someone standing in front of you than from a headline. 

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Pairing sitting judges with retired ones, and keeping every stop strictly nonpartisan, also created a permission structure: judges still bound by codes of conduct could show up and participate without crossing an ethical line.

That local work ultimately translated into a much larger reach. Sarah Wire of USA Today asked if she could join us for the whole trip. Putting a reporter on the bus for four days carried some risk, but it paid off — with a strong story online and then the front page, above the fold, a few days later. 

Justice in Motion also drew coverage from NPR, the Associated Press, the Washington Post, and local outlets in every state we visited — along with footage of judges in their robes, holding purple roses outside courthouses that went viral on social media. Altogether we reached millions of Americans, including plenty who don’t follow politics closely, and mobilized local bar associations and legal communities in each location to help carry the message forward.

We can’t yet claim that those four days changed public opinion about the judiciary — no more than the March of a Thousand Robes did on its own in 2020. What that campaign did was compound, over years, into a public that understood enough to act when it mattered. That’s the model we’re building toward. Justice in Motion was our first stop, not our last, and we’re already planning the next route.

This article What we learned from a US bus tour of judges was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.

In an update to its formal filing with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), Public Citizen today blasted the Trump administration’s arbitrary, capricious and exploitative campaign to build the Constitution Pipeline, calling the project contrary to the public interest.

The filing comes days after the Trump administration enforced the annulment of a fourth New York offshore wind project, which included a payment of $1.2 billion of taxpayer money to the company to terminate the project.

RWE U.S. Offshore, the company that had previously been set to develop the New York Bight offshore wind project, agreed to end the project because the company stated that it “determined there is no path forward to permit these projects in the U.S. for the foreseeable future,” according to a release from the company.

“Based upon President Donald J. Trump’s unambiguous statements, his administration is forcing an end to New York offshore wind energy projects in an effort to coerce the state’s Governor to support the Constitution pipeline,” said Tyson Slocum, director of Public Citizen’s Energy Program. “Trump’s coercive quid pro quo campaign is an arbitrary, capricious and exploitative attempt to strongarm unnecessary fossil fuel infrastructure by using taxpayers money to pay off the wind industry. Trump’s entire endeavor to build this pipeline is a massive and unnecessary waste of money.”

The filing today is an update to FERC, expounding on Public Citizen’s initial filing in June, challenging a petition by Oklahoma-based Williams Companies for a certificate of public convenience and necessity to construct and operate Constitution Pipeline. On June 9, on a trip to New York to attend the NBA finals, Trump said that because New York’s governor “broke” a deal to support the Constitution gas pipeline, he would move forward with canceling the wind projects, saying: “so I guess we’re withdrawing those windmills.”

The Trump administration has now stopped two New York offshore wind projects since that threat. Public Citizen’s filing warns that FERC’s inaction to investigate this unlawful shakedown violates the public interest and threatens electric grid resource adequacy.

On Tuesday, Demand Progress and IMEU Policy Project released a poll, first reported in Zeteo, showing that a clear majority of voters oppose a provision in the National Defense Authorization Act, known as Section 219, that would further integrate the Israeli military and Israeli military companies into the Pentagon—giving them special access to U.S. military systems, sensitive technologies and defense supply chains. The military authorization bill, which includes Section 219, was passed by the House in July and awaits a vote in the Senate.

• Read the Full Poll Results

The online poll of 1,217 U.S. likely voters nationwide was conducted by Data for Progress from August 3 to 7, 2026. The poll found that:

• 61 percent of voters oppose a military authorization bill that would deepen the integration of Israeli weapons companies into the Pentagon at a level higher than any other country—this includes 78 percent of Democrats and 73 percent of independents
• 52 percent of voters agreed with members of Congress who voted in July to cut $3.3 billion in taxpayer funding for weapons to the Israeli military—this includes 60 percent of Democrats and 55 percent of independents
• 51 percent of voters believe that Israel benefits more from the relationship between the U.S. and Israel—this includes 58 percent of Democrats and 55 percent of independents
• A plurality of voters, 49 percent, believe President Donald Trump is providing too much support to the Israeli government, compared to only 33 percent who said the president is giving Israel the right amount of support and just eight percent who say he’s giving Israel too little support

“This poll is a flashing red warning sign for any member of Congress who supports the defense authorization bill. A clear majority of voters do not support further integrating the Israeli military and Israeli military companies into the Pentagon, which the NDAA is set to do,” said Demand Progress Senior Policy Advisor Cavan Kharrazian. “It’s time for Congress to listen to the American people for once, and not the same voices who always want to cut Israel a blank check.”

“Israel is a nation committing genocide that just dragged the American people into a disastrous war that is still hitting our pocketbooks. It is the height of absurdity that Congress is even considering a proposal to become more entangled with the Israeli military and use our tax dollars to subsidize their weapons companies,” said IMEU Policy Project Executive Director Margaret DeReus. “Senators take an oath to do what is best for the American people above all; to uphold that oath, they must scrap this ridiculous proposal.”