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The country is currently facing a runoff election to choose its new president. National organizations representing Indigenous Peoples and peasants have outlined a critical agenda to ensure full respect for their rights.

The post Peru: Indigenous Peoples and Peasants Mobilize Against the Threat of a Setback for Democracy appeared first on La Via Campesina - EN.

In an increasingly divided nation, Americans agree on at least two things. For one, politicians across the political spectrum are scrambling to get more housing built, which happens to be an accidentally powerful way to fight climate change. And two, Americans love their parks: A recent poll found that 88 percent of them visited one in the past year. Nearly 90 percent of people who voted for Kamala Harris, and 80 percent of those who voted for Donald Trump, consider these spaces critical infrastructure in their communities. 

That alone should encourage elected officials to build as many of them as possible. But a new report finds another, potentially even more motivating, factor for American cities: For every dollar invested in parks and recreation, communities reap $3 in local economic benefits each year. “You really do get so much goodness out of them,” said Will Klein, director of parks research at the Trust for Public Land, which produced the report. “People are healthier, people connect with each other. They drive business activity, especially for small businesses.”

Parks aren’t as much about land as they are about people. In an increasingly commodified world, they’re one of the few remaining public places where folks can roam without the pressure of spending money. That makes them a critical kind of “third place,” somewhere to gather beyond the workplace and the home. Whereas people must pay a premium to use a gym, they can use a park or rec center for free.

This brings huge benefits, and cost savings, to public health. The new report notes that the United States spends $5.3 trillion annually on health care. Physical inactivity, which greatly increases the risk of chronic problems like cardiovascular disease, costs the country more than $200 billion a year. “Our polling this year showed that the most popular place in America in 2025 to run around and play and exercise are parks and public spaces, much more popular than private gyms,” Klein said. “That physical activity has real health and economic benefits, about $2,000 per person in health care savings each year.”

Parks boost mental health as well. Simply being among greenery boosts positive well-being, research has shown. Parks also foster social interaction and reduce loneliness, which is a public health crisis of its own. This kind of commerce-free third place is especially important for the elderly, who may be living on fixed incomes and can’t afford to frequent cafes and the like. “There’s movie nights in the park, concerts in the park,” Klein said. “Just playing on the playground, talking to neighbors, having barbecues — all that stuff allows people to afford that higher quality of life.”

Even though they exist outside of the frenzy of capitalism, parks provide major economic value. The crowds they attract, for example, filter into surrounding neighborhoods, buying food and drinks for picnics or perusing mom-and-pop shops and boutiques. Famous green spaces — New York City’s Central Park, Chicago’s Millennium Park, San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park and newly minted Sunset Dunes — attract tourists, too. The Trust for Public Land says that the Florida Gulf Coast Trail, the 420-mile greenway it’s helping develop, will bring $200 million in economic activity in Sarasota County alone by attracting bicyclists and other recreationists.

Read Next Pocket gardens: The tiny urban oases with surprisingly big benefits Matt Simon

Even if you own a home near a park but never visit it, you’re benefiting economically in a way. “People want to live near green spaces,” Klein said. “So you see increased property values, which supports a broader tax base, which can be reinvested into community benefits through the increased property tax revenue.”

The trick is ensuring everyone — not just those who can afford condos and single-family homes — can enjoy the aura of these jewels. While new housing developments might seem at odds with green spaces, the two can exist in harmony. Even if they’re crammed into the densest of cities, affordable complexes can incorporate pocket gardens, which have the added benefit of reducing increasingly unbearable urban temperatures. Some developers are even building communities around working farms, known as agrihoods, which bring yet another benefit of local food production.

Any additional green space will also help cities adapt to one of the stranger consequences of climate change: It’s raining a lot harder. City sewer systems were designed to handle the rainstorms of old, but are overwhelmed by the additional water falling today. By soaking up some of that liquid, parks help save money in two ways: They reduce the amount of water that a city has to pay to manage, and they help prevent the surrounding neighborhood from flooding, avoiding property damage. 

More so than ever before, then, the humble green space is a surprisingly powerful way to solve a bunch of problems at once — improving mental health, helping cities adapt to climate change, and supercharging economic activity. “Parks,” Klein said, “are actually one of these solutions hiding under the feet of all these local leaders.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Your local park is bringing in the green (and by that, we mean money) on Jun 5, 2026.

A gentle shower fell as four people in rain gear made their way deep into a spruce-fir forest high in Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Ducking beneath bright green underbrush and stepping away from the road, a hush took over.

Just a few steps in, they came across an aging yellow birch tree covered in moss.

But it wasn’t just moss. James Hollinger, a retired computer scientist turned amateur lichen scientist, leaned closer and spotted a rare, spongy lichen that has been documented about a dozen times in the park. As far as he knows, it does not appear in any botanical guidebooks.

“So, we could, right here right now, come up with a common name for it,” Hollinger said excitedly, as fellow volunteer and lichenologist Laura Boggess unfolded her magnifying lens. Counting carefully, she found more than 17 other moss and lichen species on just one side of the tree. 

Every square foot of the Smokies teems with life that most visitors never notice: lichens clinging to bark, fungi hidden in fallen logs, and salamanders darting beneath damp leaves. Scientists and volunteers say paying attention to those small creatures — and returning often enough to notice when they change — has grown increasingly urgent as climate change alters the park’s ecosystems and federal agencies see deep cuts that threaten long-term monitoring and biodiversity research.

Hollinger, Boggess, and the others in the group call themselves the Gang of Retirees in Search of Life’s Diversity, or “GRISLD.” Not all are retired — Boggess is beginning a teaching job at Warren Wilson College in the fall — but they share a habit of spending hours moving deliberately through remote corners of the park, documenting species few people will ever see. Connected through a listserv and their keen interest in the Smokies’ rich biodiversity, the group quietly contributes to a long-running project called the all taxa biodiversity inventory, or ATBI, conducted in partnership with the park. 

The Great Smoky Mountains are the most biodiverse site in the national park system. Every square foot of the park teems with life, much of which park visitors rarely see. Katie Myers / Grist

“We’ll hike into these places that other researchers don’t have the resources, the funding to,” Hollinger said. “We watch all these things and keep an eye on how things are changing.”

The Smokies project is one of the oldest and longest-running all taxa biodiversity inventories in the country, one of several decades-long efforts to document biodiversity in dozens of ecological hotspots around the world. That work has taken on increasing urgency in the Great Smoky Mountains, the most biodiverse site in the national park system and a global hotspot for salamanders, fungi, mosses, and other less-studied forms of life.

The mountains’ varied elevations and countless microclimates may help some species survive a warming world by providing pockets of cooler habitat. But climate change is also reshaping the park in visible ways, from an increase in invasive insects and dying trees to more frequent floods, fires, and violent storms. The inventory is conducted with the park and managed by the nonprofit Discover Life in America, where Will Kuhn — one of the hikers threading through the wet forest that morning — leads scientific research.

“We’re up to over 22,000 species of everything that has been documented here in the Smokies,” Kuhn said. More than 1,000 of them documented since 1998 are new to science, a number believed to just scratch the surface.  “That is maybe a third to a quarter of the actual diversity here.” 

Finding a new species might seem like a rare joy, but it happens regularly, Kuhn says. Larger, charismatic species are well documented, but little ones, such as mites, mosses, and microscopic plankton-like rotifers are often understudied.

Much of the park’s biodiversity data is collected during spring and summer, when academic researchers tend to visit, Kuhn said. Volunteers are there year-round, however, tracking species that are active in colder months or, like many birds, pass through while migrating. “The park’s really known during that time of the year, but what about the things that are off-period?” Hollinger said, turning over a log as a red-cheeked salamander scampered into the wet leaves. 

A red-cheeked salamander scampers under a log. Volunteers take photos of every species they log and upload them to iNaturalist, a citizen science database. Courtesy of Will Kuhn

Although the Park Service grants permits to academic researchers, its relationships with local nonprofits and tourism-dependent communities allow it to support ecological work it cannot manage on its own. Those organizations can also raise money in times of need, in one recent case helping to keep the park open while salaries were on pause during the 2025 government shutdown. 

“Ultimately, we’re able to spend money on things that benefit the park but that a federal agency just can’t do,” Kuhn said.

Retired biologist Paul Super coordinated research in the park for over two decades. He’s interested in lichens, mosses, insects, and other small creatures in part because of the way they hold moisture, keeping the mountain cool and foggy. If they die, the water cycle will change. 

“Regulating the moisture in these high elevation areas is pretty important because we’re at the top of the watershed, and everybody’s drinking water is downhill from here,” Super said.

In the decades he’s spent in the park, he’s seen long-term changes unfold. Warming temperatures are rippling through the food chain, making way for invasive parasites like the woolly adelgid. The tiny insect, which is native to Asia, has infested and killed thousands of the park’s hemlocks, a towering tree sometimes called the “redwood of the East.” Other pests have attacked Fraser firs, elms, and white and green ash trees that keep streams cool for temperature-sensitive aquatic species like the beloved brook trout.

The high-elevation ecosystems of the Smokies are “sky islands” –  isolated pockets of unique species that depend upon cooler, wetter conditions. When the climate warms, there’s nowhere else to go. Some may disappear before anyone even knows they’re there.

To Super, logging these species is about noticing the minute, day-to-day, month-to-month, year-to-year changes that become earth-shattering over time. “The visitor coming here for a day or a week is not going to notice things and know that this is not what it used to be,” he said.

Laura Boggess was born and raised in western North Carolina and drawn to science through a lifetime love of climbing the region’s remote cliffs. She considers these data-gathering trips a critical way to monitor the changing climate from the ground up. “The small ways, the paying attention, the naming of a species, which isn’t a small thing, but it’s like an accumulation of small, cooperative creation,” she said. “It is even more important as we enter into even more rapid change.”

There is so much to see in the park that it took the volunteers about two hours to go half a mile. Even as they left the trail and returned to the road, they found a rare parasitic fungus. The magnifying glass came out, and everyone slowly leaned in for a good look.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline In the Smoky Mountains, a volunteer effort aims to document every species — before it’s too late on Jun 5, 2026.

An encounter with a singing cardinal in a quiet spring woodland prompts a reflection on what birdsong can teach us about listening and the overlooked connections that bind human life to the wider living world.

In flood-prone northern Bihar, women transformed savings groups and kitchen gardens into a thriving local market that boosts incomes, strengthens food security and helps communities adapt to increasingly unpredictable climate.

Many participants framed the first international Conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels in Colombia as a historic turning point. But with no binding pledges and reliance on voluntary coalitions, its impact now hinges on whether governments turn rhetoric into enforceable policies.

In the second of our Breaking the Sword dispatches from the West Bank, Farah, Calico and Noah report on the Israeli practice of establishing Shepherding Outposts as an instrument for grabbing Palestinian land

The post Zionist pogroms and shepherding outposts in the West Bank appeared first on Red Pepper.

Regulator seeks feedback on range of updates to retailer guidelines, following a series of market rule changes and reforms aimed at demystifying electricity bills and keeping retailers honest.

The post Regulator drafts new retail energy guidelines in push for “honest and fair” consumer experience appeared first on Renew Economy.

CATL launches world’s biggest open-source energy storage testing platform, as it starts mass production of sodium-ion batteries and points to lithium-air..

The post CATL launches world’s largest energy storage testbed, starts mass production of sodium-ion batteries appeared first on Renew Economy.

Update: Marin and Sonoma County voters came through to keep SMART trains moving! With 70% of the vote, Measure B passed! This decision will renew the existing quarter-cent sales tax for SMART train service and the adjacent multi-use pathway. 

Measure B doesn’t create a new tax. It keeps existing investments alive—securing the next 30 years of service.

The Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit (SMART) train carries over 4,000 riders each weekday, offering a proven alternative to car travel that eases Highway 101 congestion and cuts greenhouse gas emissions. But without renewed funding, SMART cannot sustain current operations, let alone grow.

Greenbelt Alliance proudly endorsed Measure B and is thrilled that Marin and Sonoma counties are supporting climate-smart transit in their region! Thank you to everyone who showed support for Measure B on the ballot!

Why It Matters

SMART is more than a train. Every trip taken on SMART means fewer cars on the road, less pollution in the air, and a cleaner commute for thousands of North Bay residents. For an environmentally motivated community, Marin and Sonoma’s housing and transportation systems still depend heavily on single-occupancy vehicles. This measure represents a needed investment in public transportation. 

Without Measure B, SMART will not be able to maintain today’s service levels. That means fewer trains, fewer riders, and more cars on 101. It means an incomplete pathway system. And it means abandoning an investment that voters in Marin and Sonoma counties have already made in their shared future.

Protecting and Growing a Regional Investment

Over the past decade, SMART has extended its reach across the North Bay, and the 24 mile pathway running alongside the tracks has become a beloved active transportation corridor for cyclists and pedestrians alike. Measure B protects that progress and opens the door to more: expanded service hours, greater geographic reach, and a pathway system that’s finally complete.

Measure B directly funds:

• Continued daily SMART train service connecting Sonoma and Marin counties.
• A reliable, low-emissions alternative to Highway 101.
• Expansion of service hours and geographic reach across the North Bay.
• Completion and maintenance of the SMART pathway for cyclists and pedestrians.
• Reduced greenhouse gas emissions from the region’s transportation sector. People who ride SMART reduced greenhouse gas emissions by 33% compared to completing the same trip in a car.

A Smart Investment in Our Shared Future

At Greenbelt Alliance, we believe that resilient communities require both healthy lands and healthy transportation systems — the kind that give people real alternatives to driving, reduce emissions, and keep our region connected even as climate pressures intensify.

Thirty years from now, the North Bay can be a place where hopping on a train is as natural as getting in a car—where our transportation choices match our values. This vision is now closer to becoming a reality with the passage of Measure B.

The post WIN: Voters Said YES To Keep SMART Trains Moving appeared first on Greenbelt Alliance.

The economics of building new wind farms in Australia is "getting worse, not better," project developers warn, as rising construction costs and a fickle off-take market block the path to final investment.

The post “Worse, not better:” Developers paint grim picture of wind energy economics – even with CIS support appeared first on Renew Economy.

Believe it or not, America has the largest train network in the world, but it’s mostly used by freight companies who ship coal at five miles per hour. But how on earth did things get so bad for trains that carry people?

If you need a crash course in why it’s so hard to travel a long distance in America outside of a car or an airplane, look no further than one of our favorite YouTube channels, Climate Town, to learn about the last 200 years of U.S. passenger rail history in under 30 minutes.

And because it’s created by the hilarious “guy with a climate science and policy degree” Rollie Williams and his crack team of researchers and producers, we promise it’ll be one of the most informative and funny things you’ll watch all month. Seriously: make it all the way to the end for a truly deranged illustration of a horse, more than one jump scare of Jim Cramer eating Spam, and most important, a recipe for fixing this mess and getting America’s transportation future back on the rails:

• Can more investment save Brightline? The first privately owned intercity rail company in the U.S. since the formation of Amtrak in the 1970s looked like it would be a huge success, but is now on the verge of going bankrupt. It’s not quite fast enough, a bit too expensive, and because it uses existing at-grade rail lines, kills a lot of people. (Fast Company)
• Despite high gas prices, Americans were driving more than ever in April, according to new Federal Highway Administration statistics. (Wall Street Journal; paywall)
• Electric vehicle owners save money on gas and maintenance, but they pay an average of $1,000 extra for insurance because EVs cost more to fix after a crash. (Grist)
• Planners have retreated from politics since the Jane Jacobs area and no longer lead community discussions about transportation or other issues, writes Billy Cooney. (Southern Urbanism)
• Commercial roads lined with aging strip malls could become transit-oriented boulevards with mixed-income housing instead. (Architect Magazine)
• Almost half the miles driven by California’s Waymo robotaxis are “deadheading,” without any passengers inside. (Findings)
• Texas is cracking down on immigrant school bus drivers, already in short supply. (Observer)
• Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek’s administration is treating the failure of a transportation funding referendum as a PR problem, not a policy one. (Oregon Public Broadcasting)
• Voters in two Bay Area counties overwhelmingly approved a sales tax measure to fund rail transit. (KQED)
• The Illinois legislature passed a bill allowing Uber and Lyft drivers to unionize. (Capitol News)
• Transit advocates want to make sure addressing a funding shortfall is at the top of Pennsylvania legislators’ minds. (Capital-Star)
• As the Trump administration continues to make hay over a supposed crime wave on transit, the Federal Transit Administration is now investigating MARTA after a stabbing on an Atlanta train and another at a station. (WABE)
• Minneapolis bikeshare Nice Ride shut down in 2023, but could return with e-bikes. (MinnPost)
• Warsaw is turning a large parking lot in front of a government building into a park. (Pragmatika)
• Coach operator FlixBus restored the route number 666 to a bus connecting Krakow and the Polish seaside resort of Hel. (BBC)
• Walking and biking rather than driving made an Irish Times writer feel more connected to her city.

On April 11 2026, union members from Los Angeles and San Diego crossed the border into Mexico to attend the first Crossborder Labor Summit (Encuentro Binacional) in Tijuana since the late 1990s, organized by the Casa Obrera de Baja California, and hosted by the Telephone Workers Union of Baja California and Sonora (SINDETEL).

Flyer for the April 11 2026 Crossborder Labor Summit.

In recent years, there has emerged an increasingly combative, independent, and organized labor movement in Mexico’s maquiladora industry. It has resulted in largescale wildcat strikes like those of Matamoros workers in 2019, as well as in independent union campaigns in more established industries. Within this context, Casas Obreras, labor organizing centers, emerged as leading hubs of activity in Mexico’s main industrial regions.

The Casas Obreras have been supporting independent, democratic unions that challenge the traditional top-down unionism that has characterized Mexican labor for decades. For example, in 2022 the Casa Obrera del Bajio helped coordinate the victory of the newly organized National Independent Auto Workers Union (SINTTIA) at General Motors in Silao, Guanajuato. In 2024, the Casa Obrera de Baja California, supported the campaign by Luxshare workers to unionize their factory, the first successful independent campaign in the region since 1998. Most recently, they helped the Supply Chain Transporters Union, (SITRABICS) win the right to represent cross-border truckers.

The April meeting in Tijuana created a place for union workers from Los Angeles and San Diego to meet union workers on the Mexican side and learn about labor issues that affect workers on both sides of the border. The event was kicked off with a welcoming message by the Casa Obrera providing a historic background of the Mexican labor movement and labor organizing in Tijuana’s maquiladora industry. Organizers with the Labor Solidarity Action Network (LSAN) opened with a message of solidarity and critical analysis of Trump’s attack on labor and our democratic rights in the US.

Los Angeles brought a contingent of members from the United Steelworkers (USW 675 and USW 137M), SEIU 721, and a few educators. In San Diego, LSAN and SEIU 221 coordinated to bring a large contingent of educators from AFT 1931, AFT1474, UAW 4811 and the CFA. Others came from the flight attendants union, healthcare workers, and state employees. Members of the Tempest Collective, Socialist Horizon, and the Zapatista-affiliated Congreso Nacional Indigena were also in attendance.

Eddie Contreras, a member of USW Local 675, and worker for Savage Infrastructure at the Marathon refinery in Wilmington, CA was also in attendance at the labor summit. He and his coworkers recently organized a union at that workplace and successfully negotiated a first contract. He was impressed by the turnout and saw opportunities for collaboration: “The workers can all learn from one another. Maybe there’s something we tried at my job that they might want to try. Maybe there’s something they tried that we can try at my job.”

Mexican unions in attendance included the SINDETEL, SINTTIA, SITRABICS, UNTA (app/gig workers) and SINDJA, the National Independent Democratic Agricultural Day Laborers Union. UNTA members shared recent organizing updates and some success organizing app and delivery workers. SINDJA members attended the congress to express solidarity and thanks for past support in their own unionization campaigns in the agricultural fields of San Quintin, Baja California.

Based on the testimonies from Mexican workers, we learned of the difficult organizing conditions at such factories as Prime Wheel in Tijuana, maker of aluminum and alloy wheel rims, where workers have been organizing for democratic union representation. Since 2024, workers have called for justice and investigations of the disappearance of Servando Salazar Cano, a worker at Prime Wheel who was leading a unionization campaign in the plant but who mysteriously disappeared in the factory and has never been seen again. His body hasn’t been found, either, and his widow has called on authorities to carry out forensic investigations and accountability.

Alarmingly, journalists, environmental activists, and labor organizers in Mexico are at high risk of violent retaliation or human rights violations for carrying out advocacy work. In recent months, workers at the Camino Rojo mine in Zacatecas denounced management’s negotiations with the Sinaloa cartel to harass and intimidate a unionization drive. Since the case broke, the mining sector, led by Canadian companies, has been under scrutiny for sabotaging union elections. Orla Mining, the parent company of Camino Rojo, was forced to fire top executives thanks to a rapid response clause negotiated in the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement.

During the first half of the meeting, workers from both sides spoke about union elections. During the second half of the meeting, attendees split into working groups to discuss a series of questions focused on the common interests of workers in Mexico and the US. Participants discussed campaigns where US-based unions could support Mexican unions leading the independent labor movement through boycotts, protests, or public pressure campaigns. All working groups agreed to continue coordinating these campaigns and to meet once a year at a similar summit to assess progress and collaboration.

Attendees at the Crossborder labor summit, April 2026.

At the end of the Labor Summit, many participants had discovered common ground and common workplace issues. Jordan Dearden, the First Vice President of USW Local 675, who works as an Instrument Technician at the PBF refinery in Torrance, CA, stated,

The issues we’re having north of the border are the same issues as south of the border. It’s not a border thing. It’s just where you are; you need safer working conditions, better benefits, you know, equal pay for equal work. The issues that we have as workers are the same.

He also pointed out the importance of organizing crossborder meetings at a time when the Trump Administration continues to divide workers with anti-immigrant racism: “I think anytime you’re able to meet and work on a grassroots level, that’s really what impacts. This is how we change things.”

Since the April meeting, organizers on both sides have continued to coordinate efforts and disseminate information about this initiative to labor networks in Tijuana, San Diego, and Los Angeles. In recent weeks, the focus has been on contract negotiations at the Luxshare plant in Tijuana, where in 2024 SINTTIA won the first independent union in the region since 1998. The Luxshare workers, Casa Obrera de Baja California, and its allies hope to continue the string of independent, democratic, union victories.

Opinions expressed in signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of the editors or the Tempest Collective. For more information, see “About Tempest Collective.”
Featured Image credit: Héctor Rivera and Hannah M; modified by Tempest.

The post Rebuilding labor solidarity across the border appeared first on Tempest.

Repairs to one of its three transformers allows Australia's most powerful battery to reach full storage capacity, but still short of delivering its full "shock-absorber" contract.

The post Transformer repair allows Australia’s most powerful battery to reach full storage capacity appeared first on Renew Economy.

Lightsource bp hails "new phase" in global power sector after announcing the start of construction of major new solar and battery project to help power smelter.

The post Power sector enters “new phase” as huge solar-battery project that will supply giant smelter starts construction appeared first on Renew Economy.

In an exclusive interview, Tesla Energy’s Asia Pacific boss Josef Tadich discusses energy abundance (read solar), the role of batteries big and small, hybrids, the EV surge and the arrival of V2G.

The post Tesla Energy boss on energy abundance, EVs, V2G and big and small batteries | Energy Insiders appeared first on Renew Economy.

A new technique based on weather data is the first to successfully predict caseloads.

An international team of researchers including our Department of Geography has discovered a vast geological structure hidden beneath the East Antarctic Ice Sheet.

The body can notice stress before the conscious brain — and that’s no lie.