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Nearly 69 million people in the United States speak a language other than English at home, yet weather warnings have long been issued almost exclusively in English. 

Municipalities and federal agencies monitor U.S. waters for microcystins, a toxin produced by harmful algal blooms in Lake Erie, but a University of Michigan study shows that the blooms produce a greater range of potentially toxic compounds than previously known.

Amidst the ongoing awful, we take wary solace in the modest routs newly inflicted on our wannabe Great Dictator. He lost yugely in multiple courts as judges reopened his bogus IRS suit, froze his slush fund, ripped his name from a D.C. landmark and, in Kenya, told him to take care of his own. Meanwhile, his trashy shitshow of a 250th celebration has devolved into "red-meat-for-the-rubes" blood sport and a dud of a concert after most of the low-rent performers bailed because, "Nobody wants the stink."

The buffoon who would be king keeps trying and flailing to rise to the authoritarian task in a spiraling presidency in free fall. Seeking to regain control of the narrative, he continues lashing out in increasingly deranged ways: After months of courts blocking his efforts to get state voter lists to steal elections, his Postal Service has proposed a Hail Mary move of only sending mail-in ballots to voters registered with the feds; he's proposed sweeping changes that would allow his toadies to kill NIH and other grants vaguely not "aligned with" his "priorities"; fighting for the dubious right to go after enemies like sacking James Comey's daughter from a New York U.S. Attorney’s Office, he's argued he has the power to fire anyone, even for pure political malice, which the latest court to shut him down called "a novel and breathtaking theory" about presidential power.

To deflect from the stubbornly enduring issue of pedo bestie Epstein, he's reflexively pivoted to his once-winning scapegoat of immigrants with maybe the most racist and "lamest shit ever": A website declaiming, "THEY WALK AMONG US" of "millions of illegals who have arrived under the cover of darkness and embedded themselves directly into our society." Complete with "alien arrest map” and more AI slopaganda - a UFO lifts a man over a wall as YMCA plays WTF - the text hisses that, for years, "Aliens (have) shopped in the same stores, attended the same classes (and) and lived seemingly normal human existences. With one exception — They do not belong here," all until when one "bold" bigot had "the courage (to) call out the real danger Aliens pose" to every American family and community. Alas, notes Dem. Gov. Ned Lamont, "We are still looking for intelligent life in the White House.”

Other horrors go on. Agriculture Sec. Brooke Rollins - net worth $15 million - boasted thanks to $186 billion in long-term cuts they’ve “lifted” 4 million hungry people off SNAP benefits so they can now achieve “the American Dream”; though cuts were in the name of “fraud,” she admitted they “don’t have actual data” (in reality zilch) got people “kick(ed) down the elevator shaft.” "Testifying" before the House, Pam Bondi threw her deputy under Epstein's bus, refused to answer questions and argued it was "not appropriate" to acknowledge survivors standing behind her. Bald mini-Nazi Stephen Miller sneered Texas' James Talarico (cis, straight, meat-eating) was the Dems' "first transgender Senate candidate." When Dems retorted, "Shut up you ugly fuck,” Miller's wife blasted "violent rhetoric." Chill Talarico: "I'm an 8th generation Texan - I've been eating BBQ since before Ken Paxton's first indictment."

Sadist Greg Bovino crawled out of his fetid cave to tell Nazis at a “Remigration Summit” in Portugal he is now “in battle” against MAGA cowards who have “lost their will” to deport brown people: “Mullin’s a great plumber...But a hundred million illegal aliens is not a leaky faucet.” Vietnam has had to exhume bodies from ancestral gravesites to make room for a shitty new Trump golf course and hotel supposedly at another site; one 72-year-old is “outraged” the U.S. paid him just $2,660 compensation for the grievous removal of his son and parents. Always classy, Trump also just posted more AI garbage, literally: He throws Colbert into a dumpster and portrays Obama’s presidential library as a giant trash can. And displaying their usual lofty priorities, Minnesota Republicans at their state convention held a moment of silence to honor...George Floyd's killer Derek Chauvin.

In glad contrast, many judges are holding the line against the darkness and stupidity. The law, and the justice it can bring, inevitably moves more slowly and quietly than the atrocities we're daily bombarded with. But it is moving, and last week several judges took the ball and damn near ran with it toward MLK's blessed arc of justice. In perhaps the least substantive but most killingly symbolic move, Judge Christopher Cooper of the U.S. District Court in D.C. ruled the boy-king can't just slap his name on the Kennedy Center when his fragile ego needs a boost. Rejecting a final, desperate board "argument" the removal of the world's most despised name would render the Center "financially nonviable" (add many LOLs here), Cooper found "no competent evidence" and ruled the Center's statute "makes crystal clear" no name can be added to it without Congress' approval.

In his decision, a response to a lawsuit brought by much-abused Dem ex-officio Board member Rep. Joyce Beatty after Trump brazenly hijacked the Board and chairmanship in 2025 - prompting pretty much any sensible performers to abandon it - Cooper ruled the foul Trump stain must come off everything - building facade, website, materials - within two weeks. An unexpected cherry on top: Cooper also found the Board was "derelict in discharging (its) responsibilities to the Center” when it voted to close it for two years of Trump's suddenly announced "renovations," and no they can't exclude Dem members, like Beatty from decisions, because democracy. Kennedy niece Maria Shriver offered a "Translation: "Due to the name change...no one wants to perform there any longer, so it's best to close it and build a new one so everybody will stop talking about that."

Ever gracious, the world's worst loser responded with a fuming, whining, 700-word tantrum. "There has never been a (boy-king) treated so unfairly by the Courts as I,” he wailed. "Unless I am free to do what I do better than anyone else, and bring this failing Institution" - rust, rot, rats oh my! - back," he has "no interest" and will transfer said empty shell back to Congress. He also attacked both "Trump-Hating Barack Hussein Obama Judge Cooper" and his wife, a former Dem federal prosecutor, who "probably told him to do so!" Cooper "has a total Conflict of Interest," he raved, "and should be brought up on charges for not revealing these facts." God, still a prince among men. Former Rep. Joe Kennedy III: JFK "would remind us it is not buildings that define the greatness of a nation. It is the actions of its people and its leaders...and our commitment to the rights of all.”

Now judges are also coming down hard on his "felon-to-felon" slush fund. A federal judge in Virginia just froze its scuzzy $1.8 billion until a June hearing; Judge Leonie M. Brinkema barred any action “pursuant to (its) creation or operation" because "taxpayer dollars should not reward blind, and sometimes violent, loyalty to a single politician." Her ruling came as Democracy Forward filed another legal challenge charging "blatant abuse of power." Too bad, so sad: Now MAGA cronies, including dozens of convicted Jan. 6 thugs since charged or convicted for serious new crimes - child sex abuse, rape, burglary, home invasion, death threats against officials, fatal DUI crashes - may have to wait for their payouts. Even then, state Dem lawmakers - New York and New Jersey Assembly members, Gavin Newsom et al - plan to slap 100% taxes on them, with the House and Senate to wisely follow suit.

Digging even deeper in the Southern District of Florida, Judge Kathleen Williams just re-opened Trump's bullshit $10 billion lawsuit against himself - his DOJ vs IRS - after three dozen bipartisan retired judges filed a motion against his "fraud on the Court." Friday, Williams ordered Trump to respond to charges his suit, from which he laundered his billion-dollar-plus payout and lifetime audit immunity, was "premised on deception" to "avoid judicial scrutiny of a lawsuit collusive from the start." Even Kenyan courts are rejecting his outrageous schemes. After gutting international aid and facing an Ebola outbreak in DRC that's killed hundreds, Trump moved to simply bar immigrants or Americans who might have it and send them to...Kenya? As they scrambled to replicate in days care the US built over decades, the day the clinic was set to open a Kenyan court blocked a plan that, like all his others, "raises grave constitutional concerns."

Other woes, born of his boundless incompetence, beset him: At a DOJ rapidly spiraling down, the lead prosecutor for the absurd James Comey Seditious Seashell case just withdrew; experts agree it'll never make it to court. His grifty, flaking, no-bid paint job on Lincoln's Reflecting Pool - from sober grey to tacky motel pool blue - has soared from $1.8 to $13.1 million skimmed from National Park entrance fees and is getting trashed. Five countries from his Board of Peace (sic), which promised 20,000 troops to help "ease Gaza’s transition to a peaceful Jared Kushner theme park," has delivered no troops, no money, nada. His beloved gazillion-dollar ballroom remains a rubble-strewn hole in the ground amidst "a busted-ass trash palace" after another judge ruled "no statute comes close" to giving him the authority to build it. And Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin rocket exploded on its Florida launchpad; NYT Pitchbot warns of new layoffs at The Washington Post.

Finally, whaaa, nobody wants to come to his birthday party and "testament to his vision to celebrate America’s monumental 250th anniversary" with the lamest, trashiest, most corrupt and barbarous show on earth, even though after heedlessly turning the White House environs into a hoarders' trailer park he then plastered the city with banners proclaiming, "We are making D.C. safe and beautiful" Maybe the whole, crude debacle, "our latest national concussion," stems from the fact - just hear us out - a Malignant-Narcissist-In-Chief has made America's anniversary "about one hideous thing - himself." Starting with the grotesque call to mark the date by "watching men beat each other senseless in a cage on the same grounds where Lincoln walked." It's gladiatorial bread and circus - food and fun to dispel questions about empire - but "he's keeping the circus and taking away the bread."

His UFC match, with day-trading on the side, will feature combatants pummeling each other often to bloody pulp in a "sport" so violent John McCain called it “human cockfighting"; many states banned it at its inception, though its almost non-existent rules now prohibit gouging out opponents' eyes. It's an unsettling but unsurprising choice from a long "violence-curious" (except in Vietnam) bully who weirdly wears more makeup and hairspray than your average drag queen while urging supporters to beat up protesters, joking about extrajudicial killings, and injecting inane bing-bong noises into descriptions of missile strikes. Decades ago, he tried to create a mixed-martial-arts brand with a brutal fighter named Fedor the Russian: "His thing is inflicting death on people." It became Affliction Entertainment - really - but crashed after two fights, because everything he touches, even that, dies.

As a ghastly arena rises on the White House lawn, Trump is clearly hyped by the approaching blood-fest: "I have never seen anybody want anything so much as people want those tickets.” So is his wife-slapping accomplice and $3-million donor UFC CEO Dana White, who admits, "It’s really big for the brand." About 4,000 supporters will watch in person, with Trump as usual likely close enough ringside to be splattered by blood and sweat. Another 85,000 can watch on giant screens from the Ellipse, home to the Jan. 6 "rally." The Pentagon is reportedly recruiting hundreds of troops to attend in uniform, but no fatties please; they must meet height and weight requirements to "look good on camera." They also have to pay for their own travel. In another classy move, sharp-eyed observers note that renderings of the event show an American flag with just 48 stars.

At last count the other big event, a Freedom 250 concert kicking off a 16-day "Great American State Fair," will feature just two stars - or more accurately two bargain-bin, has-been-or-never-were performers, the only survivors of nine originally announced of which seven quickly dropped out. (Oof. Was it something/everything he said?) They were Young MC, Flo Rida, Bret Michaels, Morris Day & The Time, The Commodores, Vanilla Ice, "real” Milli Vanilli Fab Morvan, Martina McBride and Freedom Williams of C+C Music Factory. Full Disclosure: We haven't heard of any of them. Michaels evidently won Celebrity Apprentice in 2010, McBride's a four-time CMA Award winner who's sold 23 million albums and performed for multiple presidents, Morvan's the surviving member of a pretty pair of guys brought low by a lip-syncing scandal. Honestly, we dunno who the others are.

Within 48 hours of them being announced, most had cancelled. They cited “misleading information,” “divisive” or partisan politics, miscommunication; a couple said they’d never been contacted in the first place. Reportedly remaining are Flo Rida, Fab Morvan and possibly Freedom Williams, or, per Dean Blundell, "one nostalgia rapper, one lip-syncer with intellectual-property issues, and a guy ranting from a toilet" - that would be Williams, who filmed a seven-minute rant about "niggers," "motherfuckers," and how he doesn't give a fuck about Trump or the rest of us but after the Internet told him to bail he thought he'd fuck them all and play. Despite a broad consensus that watching the entire show as planned would be akin to "staring into a septic tank for hours," MAGA was pissed at the drop-outs, especially McBride, the headliner, railing she'd even performed for "the Obama regime."

Trump was gracious about the changes. Just kidding. In "prime wallow," he railed against "these highly paid, Third Rate ‘Artists'...getting the yips," and said he's thinking instead about "bringing the Number One Attraction anywhere in the World, the man who gets much larger audiences than Elvis in his prime, and he does so without a guitar...the man who some say is the Greatest President in History" to give a speech at a "wild MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN RALLY" with "Only Great Patriots invited." While even supporters griped another speech instead of a concert would be "lame and boring," nobody knows what latest chaos will befall the event. What many of us do know is that all the detritus of this shameful historic moment - the names, arches, gimcracks, breaches, endless cruelties of a tyrant's resolve to "impose himself on the world" must go. With a nod to Walter White, we look to Ozymandias, a poem "to outlast empires," for hope and guidance.

Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Carbon Tracker analysis finds widespread under-reporting of automaker emissions creating hidden transition risks for investors

LONDON, 2 June, 2026 

New research from financial think tank Carbon Tracker shows that several legacy automakers carry climate-related financial risks comparable to traditional oil and gas producers. The findings are particularly relevant for Japanese OEMs ahead of the country’s AGM season, given their continued reliance on hybrid vehicles and their outsized role in global vehicle production.

The research, from financial think tank Carbon Tracker, finds that major automakers are systematically understating the emissions linked to their vehicles. Across a sample of 17 of the world’s largest OEMs, representing 80% of passenger vehicle sales, Carbon Tracker found an average discrepancy of 33% between reported and real-world emissions from vehicle use.

This “Carbon Gap” stems from widespread use of unrealistic lifetime mileage assumptions, optimistic plug-in hybrid vehicle (PHEV) usage estimates, and the exclusion of upstream fuel-production emissions.

Using a standardised methodology designed to reflect real-world vehicle usage, Carbon Tracker found that several automakers exhibit carbon intensity levels higher than major oil and gas companies when measured on the basis of emissions as a proportion of enterprise value (tCO₂e/EVIC).

Ben Scott, Head of Energy Demand at Carbon Tracker and co-author of the report, said: 

“Automakers are the gatekeepers of future oil consumption. Passenger vehicles are the largest source (27%) of global oil demand and every ICE or hybrid vehicle sold today locks in 10-20 years of additional consumption.  

Automakers’ flawed emissions reporting masks the reality that a dollar invested in legacy automotive firms is in many cases just as carbon intensive as a dollar invested in oil and gas.” 

Leaders and laggards 

The analysis identifies major differences both in transition strategy and emissions disclosure practices across the automotive sector, with some automakers aligning more closely with electrification trends and transparent reporting than others.

Renault and Stellantis emerged as relative leaders on emissions transparency, with reported Scope 3 emissions closely aligned with Carbon Tracker’s estimates, while companies such as BYD and BMW demonstrated substantially higher BEV sales shares than hybrid-heavy peers.

These issues are particularly relevant to Toyota, whose AGM falls on June 17. As the world’s largest automotive manufacturer by volume, with more than 10 million annual vehicle sales, Toyota maintains a hybrid-heavy strategy, selling approximately 27 hybrids for every battery electric vehicle in 2024.

Michael Wells CFA, Analyst at Carbon Tracker and co-author of the report, said: 

“Toyota’s hybrid emissions are an outlier in the sector, exceeding the total emissions of entire manufacturing groups such as BMW. Its hybrid-heavy resource allocation indicates a commitment to technology that faces obsolescence. As major markets move toward outright bans on internal combustion components, Toyota’s hybrid-heavy portfolio risks becoming a fleet of stranded assets.” 

Ken Maeda, Founder of Undertones Consulting, said:  

“Toyota’s heavy reliance on hybrids has delivered short-term sales success but carries significant long-term financial and market risks for both Toyota and the wider Japanese automotive industry. By locking in long-term oil consumption, this strategy heightens stranded asset risks at a time when global peers are accelerating electrification.”  

Mazda and Mitsubishi display the highest emissions intensities, of 10.2 and 9.9 tCO₂e/EVIC, respectively, compared with 4.0 for Shell, the highest intensity oil and gas firm featured in the report.

General Motors exhibits the sector’s largest absolute emissions gap, driven by a high-intensity product mix heavily weighted toward trucks and SUVs in the North American market, combined with the most significant disclosure deficit in the peer group. 

Subaru showed the largest relative reporting gap, with emissions potentially understated by more than 200% due to reporting assumptions that fail to reflect the high-mileage reality of its predominantly US-based fleet. 

Geopolitical Uncertainty and Consumer Lock-in

The financial risks of delaying the EV transition are being compounded by global energy shocks. The ongoing crisis in the Strait of Hormuz underscores the extreme vulnerability of the legacy automotive business model. Automakers persisting with ICE and hybrid technology are effectively locking consumers into highly volatile, inflated fuel costs for decades to come.

This exposure is particularly acute for the Japanese automotive sector. Japan is overwhelmingly dependent on foreign energy, importing more than 90% of its oil, largely from the Middle East through vulnerable chokepoints like Hormuz. By continuing to build vehicles that rely entirely on liquid fossil fuels, domestic giants like Toyota expose both their global consumer base and their home economy to structural macroeconomic instability.

Scott added: “The crisis in the Strait of Hormuz is a stark reminder that the real-world cost of driving a legacy vehicle isn’t static. When an OEM sells a hybrid or an ICE vehicle today, they aren’t just selling hardware – they are anchoring a consumer to the oil tap for the next fifteen years. In an era of acute geopolitical supply shocks, failing to decouple transport from crude oil is no longer just an environmental misstep; it is active destruction of consumer value and an unhedged risk for investors.”

Investor implications  

Carbon Tracker argues that that inconsistent and potentially understated emissions reporting creates material challenges for investors attempting to assess automaker transition risk and carbon exposure accurately.

The report finds that differing assumptions around vehicle lifetime mileage, hybrid usage and fuel-cycle emissions can materially distort reported Scope 3 Category 11 emissions, reducing comparability across issuers and potentially leading to the mispricing of carbon-intensive business models.  

Giuseppe (Joseph) Jacobelli, Managing Partner at Bourne Impact Capital Ltd and Founder of actE, said: 

“As for many other industries, carmakers failing to transition from carbon-intensive legacy assets to bankable ones face significant financial liabilities. Institutional portfolios must navigate this ‘bumpy flight’ by prioritising the economic inevitability of the green shift to prevent systemic capital erosion and asset stranding.” 

Carbon Tracker said that investors should move beyond headline emissions disclosures and scrutinise the assumptions underpinning automaker climate reporting, particularly ahead of key shareholder votes and transition-related engagements, such as Toyota’s AGM on 17 June. 

In particular it urges investors to focus on BEV Sales Share as the core transition KPI and incorporate carbon intensity (tCO₂e/EVIC) into corporate valuation models to avoid mispricing high-emission business models. 

 

Notes to editors  

The report, Oil Companies in Disguise, can be downloaded free of charge from here. 

 To arrange an interview please contact:   

Conor Quinn conor.quinn@greenhouse.agency  +44 7444 696 214 

Greenhouse Communications  TrackerGroup@greenhouse.agency     

A Japanese version of the press release is available here.

The post Legacy automakers are just as carbon-intensive as oil and gas firms, new analysis shows appeared first on Carbon Tracker Initiative.

Feeding Change at the Milken Institute recently released a report providing Food Is Medicine (FIM) stakeholders with a framework for designing, governing, and sustaining partnerships. The report, Activating the FIM Ecosystem: A Framework for Stakeholder Partnerships, seeks to help nonprofit, for-profit, and public policy actors collaborate in an increasingly complex sector.

According to the report, FIM began as a community-based response to unmet nutrition and health needs, evolved into a national movement, and has now reached a critical inflection point.

FIM programs rely on an expanding range of activities, from clinical referrals and care coordination to reimbursement, data sharing, and food delivery. Coordination requires an increasing number of stakeholders, including health care providers, community-based organizations (CBOs), participants, food retailers, funders, and transportation companies.

This growing complexity can create barriers to collaboration, the report says. FIM stakeholders interviewed for the report describe challenges including unclear roles, misaligned incentives, redundant responsibilities, uncertain payment pathways, and decision-making structures that struggle to adapt as programs evolve. This causes strained relationships, reduces efficiency, and reduces the ability to scale FIM programs.

Increasing resilience in an ever-changing FIM landscape requires thoughtful partnership design and adaptable models, Holly Freishtat, Senior Director of Feeding Change, tells Food Tank. Rather than prescribing a single model or a universal solution, the report offers a variety of tools.

The report is designed to help stakeholders quickly navigate to the sections most relevant to their objectives, sector, and stage of engagement in the FIM ecosystem, the co-authors explain. And certain sections are interactive and customizable. It was intentionally designed for stakeholders across the FIM ecosystem, Anna Lin-Schweitzer, Associate Director at Feeding Change and co-author of the report, tells Food Tank.

“We wanted to make sure that the toolkit was not designed just for one sector or just for one stakeholder, that it was going to be useful to anyone who picked it up,” Lin-Schweitzer says. “Whether they’re a nonprofit or a health plan or a food retailer, whether they have been in the FIM space for a long time or they just started.”

To develop the framework, Feeding Change conducted 43 interviews, two sector-specific working sessions, and a 40-person roundtable, while also incorporating feedback from FIM program participants. Freishtat says the resulting recommendations were grounded in qualitative analysis and stakeholder experience.

The report is organized around three themes. The first, Designing Partnership Architecture, explores a range of partnership structures applicable to a variety of goals, funding mechanisms, operation scales, and stages of development.

The Optimizing Funding Partnerships for Collaboration section, explores existing funding pathways, ensuring stakeholders are aware of their options and encouraging a diversified financing approach.

And Building Shared Understanding and Long-Term Value, focuses on challenges that commonly emerge as partnerships develop, scale, and adapt to changing circumstances. According to the report, aligning goals, responsibilities, decision-making processes, and measures of success can help organizations navigate these tensions in the long term.

Looking ahead, Lin-Schweitzer highlights the importance of cross-sector and cross-regional collaboration, which allows stakeholders to learn from one another and build on existing successes. Lin-Schweitzer also emphasizes the value of keeping program participants involved in, and at the center of, FIM discussions.

According to Freishtat, “if we want to see reduced healthcare costs and improved health and nutrition outcomes, we need to be very intentional and strategic and disciplined on how we continue to design, evolve, and grow FIM for this country.”

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 Inigo De La Maza

The post Report Explores How Food Is Medicine Stakeholders Can Build Lasting Partnerships appeared first on Food Tank.

Nurses at Saint Mary of Nazareth Hospital in Chicago, Ill. gave notice to their employer today that they will hold a strike for one day on June 11 to protest the administration’s retaliation against nurses who speak out about unsafe conditions.

This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections

Thanks to the transition from fossil fuels to clean technologies, what used to be considered the worst-case climate change scenario now appears to be outside the realm of plausibility, climate scientists said in a recent study.

That study made headlines in May when President Donald Trump falsely claimed that climate scientists had admitted that their projections had been wrong, a claim akin to an anti-vaxxer gloating that the official end of the pandemic proved that COVID was never a problem.

And the study contained sobering news: The best-case climate scenario is close to slipping out of reach, and a business-as-usual scenario is still a very dangerous one, with high risks of widespread species extinctions, extreme heat-related illnesses and deaths, and expanding vector-borne diseases like malaria.

World makes progress on climate change

Scientists developed the worst-case climate change scenario known as RCP8.5 nearly 20 years ago.

A 2010 paper described RCP8.5 as representing the 90th percentile of plausible climate-warming emissions, cautioning that the RCPs “are neither forecasts nor policy recommendations, but were chosen to map a broad range of climate outcomes.” A 2011 paper summarizing RCP8.5 noted that this scenario envisioned a world with high population growth, slow improvements in energy efficiency, and a heavy reliance on fossil fuels, including a nearly tenfold increase in coal consumption.

Although the U.S. government under Trump favors high birth rates, has dismantled energy efficiency programs, and supports coal and other fossil fuels, policies implemented around the world over the past decade have shifted us away from the characteristics of RCP8.5, leading scientists to say it is now implausible.

Spurred by the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement and dramatically falling costs of clean energy technologies, many countries have increasingly transitioned away from climate-warming fossil fuels. All global growth in electricity demand last year was met by clean sources – predominantly solar panels – European energy think tank Ember and the International Energy Agency recently reported.

Change in annual global electricity demand (blue line) and the amount met by fossil fuels (gray bars), solar power (dark green bars), and other clean sources (light green bars) between 2000 and 2025. (Graphic: Ember)

Clean energy has gotten a boost from the Iran conflict, which spiked prices of fossil fuels and spurred many countries to accelerate their efforts to wean themselves off oil and natural gas. China’s exports of solar panels, batteries, and electric vehicles to many regions, including Southeast Asia and Latin America, have surged. And the International Energy Agency has said that the world has reached peak coal consumption.

Read: What the Iran conflict means for gas prices, clean energy, and the climate

Annual electric vehicle sales in China (red), Europe (dark blue), the U.S. (light blue), and the rest of the world (green). (Data: International Energy Agency. Graphic: Dana Nuccitelli)

New climate scenarios

Because the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is heading into its next cycle of climate change reports, a group of scientists called the Scenario Model Intercomparison Project was tasked with establishing an updated set of emissions scenarios. In the new paper, they outline six new scenarios ranging from a best-case “very low emission scenario” to a worst-case “high-emission scenario.”

Their scenarios show that meeting the climate targets set in the 2015 Paris Agreement is becoming increasingly difficult as the years pass and global emissions continue to rise. A middle-of-the-road scenario involving continued climate policies would result in high risks of dangerous outcomes like extreme weather-related deaths and widespread species extinctions.

And a new worst-case scenario involving a Trump-style rollback of climate policies would likely result in catastrophic climate change.

The good, the bad, and the ugly

The new high-emission scenario envisions that many countries could weaken or abandon climate policies. The researchers’ description of this scenario may sound familiar to some Americans, suggesting that “a rollback of climate policies could result from a lack of public support for the energy transition. This could be related to, for instance, local opposition to building new wind farms or concerns about impacts on fossil industries related to jobs and national energy security.”

Climate scientists Zeke Hausfather, Glen Peters, and Piers Forster described this scenario as “a more Trumpian future where current policy is rolled back and clean energy deployment slows.”

In this scenario, atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations rise from about 430 parts per million today to around 700 parts per million in 2100, when temperatures reach about 3.5°C above preindustrial levels, up from about 1.3°C today. That outcome would still likely represent a climate catastrophe, but it’s less severe than the 936 parts per million and nearly 5°C global warming that would have resulted from RCP8.5 by 2100.

The new medium-emission scenario and very-low emission scenario have fairly similar carbon dioxide and global warming trajectories to their previous counterparts, called RCP4.5 and RCP2.6, respectively.

Global average surface temperature change in the old scenarios (solid lines) and new scenarios (dashed lines). (Graphic: Dana Nuccitelli).

The new medium-emission scenario envisions that climate policies continue at the current level. Climate pollution declines slightly into the middle of the century and then remains flat thereafter, resulting in an extremely dangerous 3°C global warming by 2100.

And the new very-low emission scenario illustrates the increasingly difficult challenge of meeting the Paris Agreement to limit global warming to “well below 2°C above preindustrial levels.” Achieving that goal would require rapid reductions in global climate pollution starting today, reaching net-zero emissions around 2050. The previous best-case scenario allowed for a more gradual emissions reduction, not approaching net zero until the 2070s, because there was more time left when it was developed.

 

Check out “Censored News” coverage of May 16

Protest in Utah against Energy Fuels uranium mines and mill

“CENSORED NEWS: Shut Down Energy Fuels — Uranium Mining and Radioactive Dumping on Native People”

By: Katie O’Reilly, Sierra Magazine Some have nicknamed it “Keystone Light.” But this fossil fuel pipeline, if it becomes a reality, would not be small by comparison.  If approved, the newly proposed expansion of the Bridger Pipeline through Montana would transport 1,047,000 barrels of tar sands oil—a heavy crude that’s among the most environmentally destructive …

The post Bridger Pipeline Is the Latest Attempt to Revive the Keystone XL “Zombie Project” appeared first on Montana Environmental Information Center - MEIC.

Levels are “three times higher than what we’re allowed to shower in, or drink,” UMass Amherst researcher says.

Artificial intelligence shows promise for supporting physicians, but patient health questions are best left to human doctors, according to Penn State researchers.

A new study published in the journal Nature Geoscience by researchers at the IBS Center for Climate Physics (ICCP) at Pusan National University in South Korea shows that the Antarctic ice sheet became more sensitive to climate forcing following a major shift in Earth’s ice age cycles about one million years ago, providing new insight into how ice sheets respond to long-term climate change.

A fish–microbe partnership may produce minerals that help shape the marine carbon cycle.

By KAY MATTHEWS

Kit Carson Electric Cooperative CEO Luis Reyes just announced that the company has hired GZA GeoEnvironmental/Glorieta Geoscience (GZAGeoEnvironmental recently acquired Geoscience, which is based in Santa Fe) to conduct a water study of the proposed hydrogen facility in Questa. Kit Carson has only contracted for Phase 1 of that study, that states it will “assess the influence of pumping the Chevron production well (RG-14117-POD-18) on the groundwater flow conditions in the Questa, NM area.” However, the Phase I study will only develop a “three-dimensional visualization model,” which doesn’t involve well testing, drilling flow logs, measuring the rates of aquifer replenishment, and other critical water studies. If requested, Phase 2 would create “a groundwater flow model, calibrate the model, and prepare a report that summarizes the groundwater modeling work.” 

The Questa Watershed Coalition has received a detailed letter from a local hydrologist that lays down the details and requirements that a competent water study must include. The letter begins with this statement: “This will be a critically important study, and it is paramount that it be technically sound, comprehensive, and independently and impartially reviewed and validated.” The hydrologist emphasized that both Phases, 1 and 2, are necessary to “adequately predict hydrologic impacts. The visualization model should be accompanied by a conceptual model (which is basically a qualitative description of the flow system) and a quantitative water budget for all relevant hydrologic components (recharge, flux, discharge to rivers and wells, etc.) along with a clear statement of the objectives of the modeling exercise. He also stated that the 100 afy extraction rate is probably inadequate and 250 afy, the well’s adjudicated capacity, will be more likely needed. The Coalition will use the input in the letter to help assess the GeoScience study.

Questa Watershed Protectors have been asking Reyes for a comprehensive water study for months, as concerns over drought and the climate crisis are exacerbated by this year’s extreme situation. Snowpack measurements for the Sangre de Cristos are the lowest ever recorded, and both of the Questa acequias, Cabresto Lake Irrigation Community Ditch Association and Llano Community Ditch, have seen a significant loss of irrigation water. The well that will provide water for the hydrogen project is a Chevron exploratory well that they call the tailings facility water well. It’s 500 feet deep and will supposedly supply clean water for the project (the OSE will have to provide an assessment). A mile-wide study was done that said four other wells could be affected by the Chevron well, but Questa’s wells are not within that one-mile radius. A two-mile radius could affect 58 wells, including the many private wells in the community.

While GeoScience promotes its hydrogeology analyses and has worked all over the state, the president and senior hydrogeologist, Jay Lazarus, has an extensive history in the Taos area that may not bode well for an unbiased, comprehensive study of water quantity and quality in the Questa area that could be affected by the hydrogen facility. He’s been a longtime consultant for the Abeyta Water Rights Adjudication (Taos Pueblo) that resulted in a settlement in 2013. As such, he was a vocal opponent of the Public Welfare Statement that was drafted by a group of citizens as part of the Taos Regional Water Plan, back in 2006. The statement laid out the criteria for determining whether proposed water appropriations or transfers from the Taos Region to other regions and within the Taos Region from one sub-watershed to another are consistent with the public welfare.

Public welfare is one of the criteria the Office of the State Engineer is supposed to use to determine whether to approve a water transfer, but has rarely done so. That’s why the citizen committee urged that the Public Welfare Statement be incorporated into the Taos Regional Water Plan. But the parties to the Abeyta settlement raised objections to the proposed PWS, claiming it would prevent the implementation of the settlement and that it was contrary to state law. They, represented by Lazarus, wanted nothing to interfere with whatever transfers might be necessary for implementation of the controversial Abeyta Settlement.

In 2013, when Blackstone Ranch, which had acquired the historic McCarthy Ranch, “Taos’s last great grasslands” on Upper Ranchitos Road, applied to transfer just under 12-acre feet per year of surface water rights from the Alamitos Acequia to a groundwater well to irrigate landscaping around the “main-house,” a small orchard, gardens, greenhouse, and “fire-prevention pond”—which translates to 6 afy of groundwater. Their hydrogeologist, Jay Lazarus, was quite frank about the reason for the transfer: it would ensure the ranch irrigation water when there isn’t enough water in the acequia. This, of course, sets a bad precedent: As surface water continues to dry up more and more irrigators will want to pump groundwater instead. It’s already happening in southern New Mexico—and on a much larger scale than 12 afy of water—as farmers dependent on Elephant Butte Irrigation District for irrigation come up short and pump groundwater to save their crops. Texas sued, and a settlement agreement will require the retirement of thousands of acres of farmland to provide Texas with its allotted water rights under the Rio Grande Compact.

Finally, in 2025, at a public meeting about Sipapu Ski Area and Resort expansion plans, Lazarus was confronted in two claims he made as the ski area’s consultant on water quality monitoring. When asked about the ingredient surfactant, or Drift, used in snowmaking, Lazarus said that a New Mexico Environment Department study had found no impact on downstream users. The representative from the NMED corrected him that the agency was unable to test for snowmaking because surfactant is already present in the agency’s lab.

Lazarus was also challenged by Robert Templeton, a parciante from Dixon, when he made the often-touted claim that ski areas act as water reservoirs and help downstream users when the snow is released into the watershed in the spring. Templeton argued that stored water is only available during the spring runoff when the river flow is at or approaching flood conditions and is of no use to irrigators. The time that the “potentially stored” water is used for snowmaking is the exact moment when the water is needed in the river for recharge of wells and the sub-surface lands along the river’s course after the irrigation season.

.In a Taos News article Reyes was asked about allocating such a large amount of water during a time of extreme drought. His response was, “I’ve never seen it, living here [that] in a year we’ll get so much snow that it undoes, you know, 10 or 15 or 20 years of drought, but we’re not using [the water] for a while,” Reyes said. “I have faith that, like any cycle, we’ll start to get rains and moisture back, hopefully, like we did in the old days.”

The people of Questa would rather rely on a scientific assessment of what the water situation is right now before a water-guzzling project moves forward. Hopefully, that’s what they get.

RAFI is hiring an FSA Loans Technical Assistance Contractor to support farmers in the Southeast U.S. with Farm Service Agency loan programs. This remote six to 12-month contract will provide one-on-one help with farm numbers, loan applications, farm financials, loan restructuring, and borrower responsibilities. The contractor will also track cases, coordinate with RAFI staff and partners, and support farmer outreach and education.

The post Contract Opportunity: FSA Loans Technical Assistance Contractor  appeared first on RAFI.

This article Resistance is only half the equation was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.

We no longer live in a world where courts reliably enforce limits on executive power; where media calls out abuse as abuse or where politicians depend on legitimacy to hold power. These conditions are eroding, and power is becoming more and more centralized. 

In the U.S., the Supreme Court’s decision in Trump v. United States in 2024 significantly expanded presidential immunity for official acts, raising concerns about accountability. Globally, ruling parties in Hungary and Poland have reshaped judicial systems through court-packing and disciplinary regimes that weaken independent checks on executive authority. And in countries such as India, new laws restrict freedom of the press. 

In response, we see a grinding pattern of reaction from pundits and resisters, but the power of centralized authority remains. Trump has retained power despite his involvement in the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, as well as his name being all over the Epstein files. Leaders in Turkey and Egypt have been accused repeatedly of inciting democratic backsliding, yet they maintain power. At the same time, ecological, economic, cultural and political crises expand. 

This moment demands more than opposition. What is needed is not just resistance against corrupt centralized systems, but to create new, local systems that restructure power so it is dispersed throughout society. Because the problem is not only that those in power abuse it. The problem is that power is concentrated in the first place.

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The work of Gene Sharp stands apart in the field of nonviolent theory for one central reason: his understanding of power. For Sharp, justice, equality, freedom and any meaningful form of democracy do not exist simply as ideals or constitutional rights. They exist only when power is actually dispersed throughout society — embedded in the daily practices, institutions and relationships of ordinary people. Without that dispersion, democracy is little more than a substanceless claim.

Many nonviolent activists and scholars have embraced part of Sharp’s insight. They recognize that governments do not rule by force alone, but by the cooperation and support of institutions, organizations and individuals. From this perspective, power is contingent. If people withdraw their cooperation strategically and nonviolently, regimes can be forced to concede, reform or even collapse. This understanding has shaped movements across the world, from civil resistance campaigns to election protection efforts.

And yet, there is an equally important part of Sharp’s insight they are missing.

The problem of concentrated power

We are seeing how deeply dependent we have become on centralized systems that do not have our best interests in mind. The COVID-19 pandemic exposed how centralized healthcare and supply chains have become, leaving many without timely access to care and essential goods. And recurring, large-scale electrical outages, such as the 2021 Texas power crisis, show how dependent millions are on centralized grids that can fail. 

When power is concentrated — whether in governments, corporations or some fusion of the two — corruption is not an accident. It is a structural inevitability. Systems organized around concentrated power will, over time, bend toward the interests of those who hold it. Policies, resources and decision-making processes become oriented toward preserving and expanding that power, often at the expense of the broader population.

Previous Coverage

Will the real Gene Sharp please step forward?

Even the most well-intentioned leaders operate within structures that reward consolidation, control and self-preservation. For example, in an effort to make the U.S. government more efficient and effective, President Barack Obama reinstated presidential authority, ushering in an era of consolidated executive power. The result is an unfortunate recurring pattern: Inequality deepens, accountability weakens and public institutions drift away from the people they are meant to serve.

When decision-making is centralized, the distance between those who hold power and those affected by it widens, often to the point where meaningful feedback becomes filtered, delayed or ignored altogether. Over time, this creates an environment where leaders are not only insulated from consequences, but are also operating with an increasingly distorted understanding of reality. Citizens, in turn, become disengaged or disempowered, sensing that their voices carry little weight within systems designed to concentrate authority rather than distribute it. The result is not just corruption in the traditional sense, but a deeper erosion of responsiveness, adaptability and trust — conditions without which meaningful reform from within is exceedingly difficult.

Activism as external correction

In response to the erosion of democracy and the increasing inaccessibility of necessities like food, healthcare and housing, activists organize. They build networks to monitor elections, serve as watchdogs on corporate behavior, defend civil rights and provide essential services where governments fail. These efforts are vital. They protect people from immediate harm and at times, win meaningful reforms.

But rather than transforming how power is organized within society, these efforts often function as external correctives. They attempt to restrain abuse, mitigate harm and fill gaps left by failing institutions. In doing so, they implicitly accept the continued existence of centralized power structures, even as they resist their consequences.

This creates a paradox. Activists devote enormous energy to building parallel systems. Yet the underlying structures that concentrate that power remain largely intact.

The burden of endless resistance

Over time, this dynamic places an unsustainable burden on civil society. Activists become responsible for preventing abuse by those in power, holding institutions accountable and providing services that those institutions fail to deliver.

This is, in effect, a permanent state of resistance. It is also a reactive posture. Each new harm requires a new response, a new organization, a new campaign. The work expands endlessly, while the root cause — the concentration of power — remains unaddressed. 

One example of this is the environmental justice movement, particularly the coordinated pushback against federal rollbacks. Coalitions such as We Are Still In and the U.S. Climate Alliance mobilize states, municipalities, businesses and civil society to uphold the commitments of the Paris Agreement. Additionally, environmental groups repeatedly challenge deregulation, while states advance their own regulations. This created a multi-level infrastructure of resistance. Yet, even these efforts are forced into a constant defensive posture, expending vast energy to block or mitigate harms rather than dismantling underlying structures that enable federally sanctioned reversals of policy. 

While it’s true that it matters who holds office — we know that Trump’s policies are far more harmful to the environment than were Biden’s — this distinction does not resolve the deeper problem. The structure of centralized power remains unchanged, meaning that environmental policy can be rapidly advanced or dismantled with each shift in administration. As a result, even hard-won gains remain fragile. This volatility prevents the kind of long-term, consistent action required to address the climate crisis at scale. 

The question that follows is both simple and profound: Why do we accept a system in which people must constantly organize to defend themselves against the very structures meant to serve them?

Reimagining the mainstream structure

If we take Sharp’s theory of power seriously, the answer cannot lie solely in resistance.

Withdrawing cooperation from unjust systems is a vital tool. But it is only half of the equation. The other half is construction: building a society in which power is distributed from the outset, rather than concentrated and then contested.

Previous Coverage

Why building inspiring alternatives is necessary to counter authoritarianism

This requires a shift in orientation. Instead of asking how to better monitor and constrain centralized power, we must ask how to redesign the structures that produce it. What would it mean to organize political, economic and social systems so that decision-making authority is broadly shared? So that communities have direct control over the conditions of their lives? So that power is not something granted from above, but something exercised collectively?

In such a system, the need for vast external networks of resistance would diminish. Not because injustice would disappear, but because the mechanisms for addressing it would be built into the fabric of society itself.

And this is key. When power is disbursed throughout society into local communities — for example, when food is grown locally, housing is owned by cooperatives, health care is operated by neighborhood clinics, and so on — then community members can withdraw from or reduce their dependence on centralized, mainstream agribusinesses or real estate corporations or medical institutions. Empowering communities to take care of more and more of their own essential needs is a grassroots process that restructures how power is distributed in society. And the more communities that are empowered by these local initiatives, the more dispersed and decentralized power becomes. 

Addressing concerns of centralized power

The task ahead then is not only to resist concentrated power, but to replace it with distributed forms of governance and organization. To shift from a model of external oversight to one of internal design. In other words, the goal is not merely to challenge power, but to reconfigure it.

Around the world, communities are already doing this. They are realizing Sharp’s theory of decentralized power. By developing community gardens, housing coops and health centers, people can opt out of mainstream institutions and systems, greatly weakening the power those systems have over them. This is not merely an effort to fill in gaps. Instead, it deliberately shifts how power is distributed in society. Because, as dependency decreases, so does the ability of centralized authorities to command compliance. What emerges is not a parallel safety net, but a reconfiguration of power itself, one in which legitimacy flows from local and collective production and governance rather than from those who live far away.  

In the examples below, we see communities around the world building local control over essential needs such as housing, food, health care, energy, technology and safety. Each project that enables people to meet these needs locally — rather than through international corporations or federally controlled institutions — is a step toward local empowerment. As more communities adopt this approach, power becomes increasingly distributed across society.

Housing: Community control over land and shelter A Zapatista slogan on a mural in the autonomous town of Marinaleda, Spain, translates “the land belongs to those who work it.” (Turismo de la Provincia de Sevilla)

In southern Spain, the town of Marinaleda has created a radically different housing model. Following the election of Mayor Manuel Sánchez Gordillo — a labor leader pivotal to the town’s fight for self-governance — Marinaleda expropriated a significant amount of land from the state and launched a de-commodified housing system. Residents build their homes on collectively owned land; the town supplies construction materials and labor while occupants pay minimal mortgage payments tied to maintenance rather than profit. While operating within a broader national system, the town has effectively removed housing from market forces, placing control in the hands of the community itself.

In Jackson, Mississippi, Cooperation Jackson is working to build a solidarity economy rooted in worker ownership and community land control. Based on the model of Mondragon, Spain, residents are reducing dependence on both state and corporate systems.

Food: Feeding communities without external control

Few examples demonstrate community power more clearly than the Zapatista Autonomous Communities in Chiapas, Mexico. There, Indigenous communities have built autonomous systems of governance and agriculture, producing food collectively on communal land. In food forests, families and collectives farm milpa plots (corn, beans and squash) alongside cooperative coffee production. These systems operate independently of state programs and corporate supply chains, ensuring that communities can feed themselves on their own terms.

Community control goes beyond food. Volunteer medical professionals provide training for locals and help operate small community clinics that provide basic care, vaccinations and maternal support. Local community-run schools provide education that includes Indigenous languages, history and agroecology. And security as well as justice issues are brought before community assemblies. 

Power is dispersed by rooting it in the community itself and sustaining it through ongoing practice rather than reliance on institutions organized and controlled far from the people they are meant to serve. This reduces residents’ vulnerability to political shifts, market fluctuations and external control. Participation is embedded into daily life, making autonomy a lived reality rather than an abstract ideal. 

Likewise, in India, Navdanya, a woman- and Earth-centered movement to protect biodiversity, supports networks of farmers who preserve and share native seeds, rejecting dependence on corporate-controlled agriculture. Though funded in part by donations from corporate partners, they maintain seed sovereignty, which allows them to retain control over the very foundation of food production.

Health care: Care as a collective practice

Across many Indigenous communities, healers and midwives operate within community structures where knowledge is passed through generations. Care is often relational, land-based and spiritually integrated. For example, within the Navajo Nation, Diné traditional healing is an active, community-embedded system. And in Maya Ixil regions, comadronas (traditional midwives) guide pregnancy, birth and postpartum care using herbal remedies and spiritual practices. While outside funding supports this work, it nevertheless provides examples of how traditional and alternative healing can replace total dependence on mainstream health care systems. 

These health care practices are examples of mutual aid networks — many of which have expanded rapidly in recent years — in which communities can organize care without institutional backing. Funded through direct contributions and relationships of trust, these networks provide medical support, caregiving and essential supplies outside formal systems.

Energy and technology: Infrastructure in community hands

Energy and technology are often treated as inherently centralized, but communities are challenging that assumption. For example, Barefoot College trains local residents in the Global South — often women — to build and maintain solar infrastructure themselves, placing both knowledge and power in community hands.

Digital infrastructure is also being reclaimed. Community-built mesh networks, such as Guifi.net, provide locally owned internet systems governed by its users rather than corporate providers. These networks demonstrate that even complex technological systems can be decentralized and collectively managed.

Safety: Community-based security and governance

In the Indigenous Mexican town of Cherán, residents expelled external political authorities and established their own system of governance and security. Community patrols replaced state police, and decision-making shifted to local assemblies.

Similarly, within Zapatista communities, systems of justice and conflict resolution are handled collectively, without reliance on external courts or enforcement structures. Safety, in these contexts, emerges from shared responsibility rather than imposed authority.

From meeting needs to redistributing power

It’s worth noting that not all community-based efforts are entirely self-sufficient. Some, like community land trusts, rely heavily on ongoing government funding. And Germany’s energy democracy movement makes use of public grants and corporate support. Additionally, community safety groups provide programs that interrupt violence and reduce harm, but still depend on local police. Yet, they are models for systems and structures that can and sometimes do transition to total independence.

What unites these examples is not perfection but a desire to reduce their dependence on centralized institutions. They demonstrate that communities can meet essential needs through systems they control. That reduction matters because dependence is the mechanism through which power is maintained.

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A fair critique of decentralizing power is that it can fragment capacity and deepen inequality between communities. Not all localities begin with the same resources, skills or cohesion, and without coordination, decentralization can produce uneven outcomes, duplication of effort or gaps in essential services, especially in moments that require large-scale response. It can also risk exclusion or local capture if decision making is dominated by a few voices. 

These are real concerns. But they point to the need for networking, not isolation. They reveal the importance of shared standards, mutual aid across communities and federated structures that allow coordination without recentralizing authority. In this model, power is distributed, but not disconnected. Communities retain control over their systems while participating in broader networks that pool knowledge, redistribute resources and maintain accountability.

When communities no longer rely on governments or corporations for housing, food, energy or care, their participation in those systems diminishes. And their withdrawal is not merely tactical. Rather, it becomes a condition of life that rebuilds societal power structures from the ground up. 

And when this is multiplied across communities, something larger begins to emerge: a society in which power is not concentrated and contested, but dispersed and practiced. This is what it means to take Gene Sharp seriously — not only to withdraw cooperation from unjust systems, but to build the capacity to live without them. 

This article Resistance is only half the equation was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.

Born and raised in Colorado, Cory Kreft began working on a honey farm at 15 years old. He returned to beekeeping after college, eventually buying the business from his former boss. But in 2021, his bees suddenly began dying. He lost 85 percent of his hives. The losses continued the next year, and the next. After extensive testing, he identified the culprit: a relatively new class of pesticides called neonicotinoids, often shortened to neonics. 

These chemicals are commonly used to coat crop seeds before planting, ostensibly to protect the plant from pests and insects during early growth. Thanks in part to a federal regulatory loophole, the use of neonic-treated seed has quietly exploded in recent years, with little regulation or oversight. Almost all conventional corn and more than half of soy seed in the U.S. is now treated with neonics. 

A legal loophole called the treated article exemption allows companies to apply these toxic chemicals to products like seeds without registering them separately as pesticide products. The seeds then fall into the same class as antimicrobial toothbrush coatings or treated lumber sold at major home improvement stores, with few legal limitations around how they are monitored, used, or disposed of. “Anyone can legally go buy this pesticide-treated seed, dump it in a river, and then contaminate the entire water system,” Kreft said.

Promised to be safer, but still toxic

Neonics were first introduced in the 1990s with the promise of being safer than older pesticides. “Neonics are neurotoxins, and they work by attacking critical parts of insects’ nervous systems,” says Jennifer Sass, a scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council, or NRDC. The chemicals target neural receptors that are more common in insects than mammals. 

Neonics are systemic, so they move from treated seed into the tissues of the entire plant, including the pollen and nectar, and the fruits and vegetables that people eat. Manufacturers and government regulators claimed that these properties would make neonics relatively harmless to wildlife and people, and reduce soil and water contamination, since they claimed the pesticides would stay within the plant. 

Those claims didn’t hold up, says Sass, who has been researching pesticides for over 25 years. “They were supposed to be safe for people and wildlife. But none of that turned out to be true.” 

Since then, research has shown that neonics pose profound health risks for pollinators, ecosystems, and likely also people. The pesticides persist in the environment long after application and can travel via wind or waterways, contaminating ecosystems and communities miles away from where they were originally used. Overall, the amount of land treated with insecticide has continued to increase.

Research on seed coatings has found that they don’t typically help corn farmers’ bottom line either. Treated seeds have shown little or no impact on crop yield, so farmers are also paying more for unnecessary chemicals. Even so, pesticide-treated seeds have become so ubiquitous that it’s often hard for farmers to source untreated seed, and many use neonic pesticide-treated seed when they’re not needed. 

Neonics have become nearly impossible for pollinators and people to avoid. “They’re everywhere,” Kreft said, noting that he now buys food to place inside his hives during the summer months to keep the bees from foraging contaminated plant material. “They’re in the corn pollen in Colorado and the Midwest, and almond farmers in California are injecting neonics into their trees and putting them into irrigation systems. There’s absolutely nowhere we can go that our bees won’t be exposed to them.” 

When bees encounter neonic-contaminated pollen, the neurotoxin disrupts the neurological functions they rely on to navigate, forage, and survive. The hive then slowly declines and dies. “Over the last five years, we’ve seen between 60 to 85 percent hive mortality each year,” said Kreft. “It’s about a million dollars in losses for us annually.” 

The impacts of neonic pollution

The regulatory loopholes around neonics don’t end at the seed sales stage. They extend to disposal, too. Judy Wu-Smart, an entomologist at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, has devoted her career to pollinator research. In 2017, she and her team made a disturbing discovery when they checked their beehives at a research site near Mead, Nebraska: The bees in every hive were dead. The pattern continued year after year. “We had almost 100 percent mortality from 2017 through 2020,” she said.

The team discovered that an ethanol plant called AltEn was operating near their research site. Major agrichemical companies use facilities like this to dispose of unpurchased seed before it spoils. The AltEn plant, Wu-Smart said, was processing much of North America’s surplus neonic-treated corn seed, contaminating surrounding ecosystems. Because neonic-treated seed is exempt from many rules that normally govern similar pesticide products, the facility was not subject to the same regulation and oversight as other pesticide disposal locations.

At the same time, residents in the nearby town of Mead began experiencing troubling developments: dead wildlife, sick family pets, and mysterious health problems. The seed disposal plant was selling ground-up pesticide-treated seed residue as a soil conditioner to nearby farms. Farmers were unknowingly applying high concentrations of neonicotinoids to their fields. 

After mounting scrutiny, the AltEn ethanol plant closed in 2021. But Wu-Smart notes that now, no one knows where excess neonic-treated seed is going for disposal. “It’s a big black box,” she said.

A growing push for stronger regulation

While the harm neonics inflict on pollinators is well documented, their effects on humans remain less certain. A recent study found that over 95 percent of pregnant women had neonics in their bodies. The chemicals have been linked to neurological, reproductive system, and developmental harms. Because neonics are now so widespread in food and water, Sass said, exposure has become nearly constant. “It’s everywhere now,” she said. “It’s in breast milk, tap water, even in baby food.”

Sass highlights research showing links to autism and learning disabilities among children from families living and working around farm chemicals like neonics. “I want people to understand that neurotoxic chemicals are bad for our brains, especially with fetal or early childhood exposure,” she said. “Early life exposure is more likely to cause permanent harm, much like lead or mercury.” 

Yet while research into human health effects continues, the regulatory gaps around neonic-treated seed are enormous. Wu-Smart said that when her bees were dying, neither state nor federal agencies could intervene, since there was no clear legal pesticide violation, like using a product in a way that contravenes its label instructions or other rules. Instead, the bees were being exposed through neonics that had spread into the surrounding environment — something current pesticide enforcement mechanisms were not designed to address. The same loopholes that allow treated seed to avoid full pesticide oversight also have created regulatory gaps around storage, disposal, contamination, and exposure well beyond the farm fields the pesticides are intended for.

Advocacy groups like NRDC have turned to state-level legislation. In Colorado, lawmakers recently considered the SEED Act, which would have expanded farmers’ access to seeds without insecticide coatings, while limiting unnecessary use.  The bill highlighted how a handful of major agribusiness companies have dominated the seed market, leaving many farmers with few options beyond chemically treated seeds. 

During the SEED Act hearings in the Colorado Senate, the act’s opponents argued that the legislation could increase costs and administrative burdens for farmers, while supporters highlighted the data showing limited benefits from pesticide-treated seeds and the evidence of the harm that neonics cause to pollinators and human health. They argued that the bill would protect pollinators, waterways, and public health, while also giving farmers more choice.

The act was ultimately defeated in Colorado, but similar laws have passed in New York and Vermont, and neonic regulation proposals have emerged in other states, including Minnesota, Massachusetts, and Hawaii.

Commonsense solutions

There’s an urgent need to close the gaps around neonic regulation by advocating for policies that limit unnecessary neonic use, expand seed options without harmful insecticides, and shift agriculture away from default chemical use. Since most neonic seed treatments are not actually needed to address pest problems, and typically provide no overall benefit, critics say that farmers should not be automatically using the pesticides. Instead, they propose a need-based model that preserves farmers’ ability to use treated seed when truly necessary, while restricting unnecessary use that spreads pollution. Quebec adopted this approach in 2019, with striking results: Neonic treatment for corn seed went from near universal to near zero in just a few years.

Those protections can’t come soon enough. In Mead, Nebraska, the environmental damage from neonic-treated seed did not end when the plant closed in 2021. Wu-Smart said that the pesticide contamination still lingers. “We’re still seeing high amounts of neonics in the honey from our hives in the area,” she said. “I wouldn’t eat it.” 

In Colorado, beekeeper Cory Kreft is not sure he can continue his honey farm. “There’s so much work that goes into beekeeping,” he said. “If I can’t keep my bees alive because this pesticide is everywhere, why would I keep doing this?”

Seed We Need is a coalition of farmers, scientists, educators, and advocates working to change the system. We support eliminating unnecessary neonic use in Colorado and bring safer, more transparent seed options to the table because our land, our health, and our future depend on it.

Join us in fighting for safer seed and a healthier Colorado. 

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This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The fight to protect pollinators and people from the ‘pesticides that are everywhere’ on Jun 1, 2026.

From engaging in door knocking campaigns to speaking at city council meetings, APEN’s youth leadership in Carson plays an important role in our strategy to hold Phillip’s 66 accountable for remediation of their Carson refinery.

Through our advocacy, we were able to pass a resolution to create a taskforce to engage residents, community members, and environmental experts on the refinery remediation process.

Today we hear directly from Jonathan Garcia, a youth leader and Carson resident, on the impact of living so close to the refinery and the future of APEN’s work in the South Bay Harbor Gateway.

Hi, my name is Jonathan and I’m a member of APEN LA. I’ve been a part of that community for about two years now. A lot of our work recently has been focused on Phillips 66 and the refinery closure. 

To me that’s an issue that really hits home because I’ve lived near the major refinery complex in Carson my entire life. 

There’s a lot of pollution, noise, costs, occasional explosions that come with having to live near oil infrastructure. 

I didn’t realize I had asthma until my late high school years. A lot of my peers have breathing issues or cancer in their families. 

Recently, we received political education around the war in Iran and the connections between our national reliance on fossil fuels and our military aggression abroad. 

We discussed how the same fossil fuels that cause cancer, sickness, and death in our own neighborhoods drive resource wars and destruction overseas.

 Destructive forever wars like the war in Iran will keep happening and fossil fuels will keep poisoning our communities unless we transition fully to renewable energy. 

We want renewable energy investments in our people, schools, healthcare, and communities and that can only happen when we stop oil companies from squeezing as much profit as they can out of infrastructure, and declare bankruptcy leaving toxic sites that they refuse to clean up.

That’s why last year APEN LA mobilized and won a taskforce from the Carson City Council to oversee the Phillips 66 refinery closure. 

This coming year, APEN LA will focus on working with Carson City Council and the Planning Commission to build up this taskforce, meet with LA Regional Water Board to understand the remediation process for refinery grounds, and expand our youth membership so we can have a say in the clean up process.

Please donate to our spring fundraiser so we can continue to do this crucial work in Carson and the South Bay Harbor. 

In solidarity,

Jonathan Garcia

Youth Member, APEN Los Angeles

 

The post Holding Phillips 66 Accountable appeared first on Asian Pacific Environmental Network.

With less than two weeks for the Senate to take up Senator Mike Lee’s Congressional Review Act (CRA) joint resolution to undo the management plan for Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, our staff in DC are closely watching the Senate’s calendar. In the meantime, we’re throwing a Virtual Rally for Grand Staircase-Escalante this Wednesday evening! Please join us—and bring any friends, family, neighbors, and colleagues who also love the redrock, Grand Staircase-Escalante, and southern Utah.

Virtual Rally for Grand Staircase-Escalante!
Wednesday, June 3, at 6 pm MT on Zoom
Click here to register

We know the ongoing uncertainty and “hurry up and wait” feeling surrounding the CRA fight has been hard. But our love of the monument keeps us grounded in a world filled with distractions. 

During this virtual rally, you’ll hear from SUWA’s Organizing Team and executive director, as well as some of the many voices speaking out to defend the monument—Native leaders, scientists, former Bureau of Land Management staff, and others! We’ll share the latest on the CRA timeline, hear stories from grassroots activists, and, of course, send you off with the latest actions you can take to protect this remarkable place.

Click here to register now.

Thank you for all you’re doing to speak up and protect Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. Need some inspiration? Check out our “Love for Grand Staircase-Escalante” StoryMap and review this interactive piece from the More Than Just Parks Substack.

 

The post Virtual Rally for Grand Staircase-Escalante! appeared first on Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance.

Orhan Solak is deputy director of Türkiye’s Directorate of Climate Change.

In today’s fraught economic context, everyone is looking to do more with less, and financing climate action is no exception. Yet there are clear opportunities to make better use of existing funding to achieve climate goals, including the repurposing of more than $700 billion in agricultural subsidies to support a just rural transition.

While public support for agriculture and food security has increasingly been reflected in global climate discussions, particularly in the context of the Paris Agreement’s Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA), the scale and urgency of current challenges call for stronger consensus and rapid implementation of practical, context-sensitive solutions.

The need to empower farmers to adopt sustainable practices, such as reducing food loss, cutting waste, building resilience and managing water resources wisely, is not a modern ethos. It echoes the model of Göbeklitepe, civilisation’s earliest-known settlement, built on the principles of solidarity, balance and harmony with nature.

This historical perspective underscores that sustainable resource management is deeply rooted in human development, and it reinforces the importance of aligning today’s agricultural transformation with both environmental integrity and social equity.

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However, to date, public support for farming globally has largely prioritised synthetic fertilisers and input-intensive production models, often overlooking more sustainable, resource-efficient and resilience-oriented agricultural practices.

The good news is that countries are increasingly recognising that climate action cannot come at the cost of food security, dignified livelihoods and greater equality. Any transition to more sustainable food systems must be “just” for the farmers and the rural communities who underpin them.

Enhancing long-term food security

As COP31 President, Türkiye will draw on its unique historical and geographical position as a bridge between regions and civilisations to foster dialogue, strengthen cooperation and mobilise collective efforts toward scaling up finance towards net zero targets, a vital pillar of this year’s COP31 climate talks in Antalya.

Moving forward, greater emphasis should be placed on supporting sustainable and climate-resilient agricultural systems through targeted investments, capacity-building, innovation and nature-positive practices.

Strengthening support for efficient water use, soil health, agroecological approaches and circular production models can enhance long-term food security while improving resilience to climate-related shocks.

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In this context, aligning agricultural policies and financing mechanisms with sustainability objectives will be essential not only for protecting natural resources, but also for ensuring inclusive rural development and intergenerational equity.

A just rural transition that achieves climate goals and zero waste without undermining agricultural communities and economies is not possible without countries providing the necessary financial support. Redirecting agricultural subsidies offers a promising path toward both objectives, but only when reform is carefully designed and sensitive to context. Done well, it can offer a way to ease pressure on governments to find fresh funding.

New high-level panel to offer alternatives

This is the mission of a new High-Level Panel for a Just Rural Transition, recently launched in Ankara. Together with panel members that include former heads of state, senior officials from international organisations, and government representatives from across Africa, the Americas and Europe, I believe we can provide governments worldwide with viable and sustainable alternatives.

In the context of heightened scrutiny over international aid and finance, redirecting existing funding makes both economic and environmental sense.

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In Türkiye, farm subsidies have, for several years, increasingly supported organic farming through an established certification system aligned with international standards. The Green Deal Action Plan, published in 2021, set out objectives to reduce the use of pesticides and chemical fertilisers, promote organic production, increase renewable energy use, and improve waste and residue management.

In addition, Türkiye’s Climate Change Adaptation Strategy and Action Plan (2024–2030) further strengthens this policy direction by integrating climate resilience considerations into agricultural practices and supporting sustainable land and resource management approaches.

Other countries are also embracing innovative approaches. Malawi, for example, is piloting a system in which subsidies for synthetic fertiliser are conditional on other, more climate-positive practices such as diversifying the crops planted to help improve soil health or applying soil conservation measures and managing soil organic matter. Elsewhere, the UK is also shifting to a model that rewards environmental stewardship through its Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI).

The exact ways in which farm subsidies are redirected will depend on each country’s specific circumstances and needs, but the overall approach is one that stands to benefit all nations.

Channelling public support away from high-emission practices is not only a strategy for addressing today’s challenges, but also one that helps build long-term resilience.

Waki Munyalo works on her farm after harvesting her maize insured by an agricultural insurance company that helps small-scale farmers to manage the risk associated with extreme climate conditions, in Kitui county, Kenya, March 17, 2021. (Photo: REUTERS/Monicah Mwangi) Waki Munyalo works on her farm after harvesting her maize insured by an agricultural insurance company that helps small-scale farmers to manage the risk associated with extreme climate conditions, in Kitui county, Kenya, March 17, 2021. (Photo: REUTERS/Monicah Mwangi) Just Transition Mechanism consultations in Bonn

This month’s Bonn Climate Conference will mark an important milestone on the road to COP31, helping to shape the agenda for the negotiations in Antalya six months later.

Countries will consult over the Just Transition Mechanism, the financial framework designed to ensure the transition to a climate-neutral economy is fair. This is a vital opportunity to ensure that agrifood systems and rural communities are placed at the heart of its agenda, and it is a moment to reinforce the philosophy of COP 31: from dialogue to consensus and action.

To accelerate climate action at the “COP of the Future”, we must learn from the past and improve upon it through strengthened dialogue, consensus-building, and concrete, action-oriented outcomes.

Countries should recognise that a just rural transition requires action not only from actors within the agrifood system, but across all relevant sectors and industries. Momentum is steadily growing, and under Türkiye’s COP31 Presidency priorities, this agenda is expected to feature prominently. This momentum sets the stage for a defining COP31 for climate equity and inclusive climate action.

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