Grist

Deirdre Macnab was reading her local newspaper this spring when she learned that Rio Blanco County, where she lives in northwest Colorado, had taken the side of oil companies in a major lawsuit before the Supreme Court. Suncor and Exxon Mobil were trying to get out of standing trial — the city and county of Boulder had sued them, seeking damages for the rising costs of adapting to heat waves, wildfires, and floods.

After ranching for a decade, Macnab had seen those costs firsthand. During one of the worst fires in Colorado history last year, 60 of her neighbor’s cows burned to death. Record heat and drought this year parched the land so thoroughly, ranchers had to pay thousands of dollars to haul in feed and water for their animals. Some ranchers, headed toward bankruptcy, had to sell part of their herds or put their land up for sale. 

“It really disturbed me that the county was taking sides,” Macnab said, “and in particular, supporting oil companies whose operations, we now know, are putting the human population and wildlife, livestock, everything, at risk.” Rio Blanco County spent thousands of taxpayer dollars in legal fees to join the brief alongside other Colorado counties where the oil industry has a large presence.

Macnab rallied ranchers around Colorado to join her in urging the Supreme Court to side with Boulder. They wrote that local governments can’t keep absorbing the increasing costs from worsening heat, drought, fires, and flooding and still provide the resources — disaster relief, grants, infrastructure repairs — to keep ranchers in business. The oil companies argue that federal law not only protects them from needing to defend their actions in state courts, but also shields them from being liable for damages. 

The Supreme Court is set to hear oral arguments in the case on Monday. The court’s decision could have huge ramifications for efforts to hold companies accountable for deceiving the public about the dangers of burning fossil fuels — and the larger question of who pays for the costs of adapting to a hotter world. Oil majors have pulled out all the stops to stymie the dozens of climate lawsuits that local and state governments have brought against them, with billions and billions of dollars on the line. With a conservative-dominated Supreme Court and the Trump administration’s Department of Justice as a powerful ally, oil companies saw their chance to stop these suits, said Alejandro Camacho, a professor at UCLA School of Law.

That calculus changed slightly this week when Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, a strong conservative with financial holdings in oil companies, recused himself from the case. His withdrawal makes it harder for oil companies to get at least five justices — a majority of the court — on their side.

The city and county of Boulder, Colorado, originally sued Suncor and Exxon Mobil in 2018. The lawsuit slowly wound its way through the court system. Oil companies tried to dismiss it or move it to federal court, a more industry-friendly venue, but Boulder won at every stage. In May 2025, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled that the case should proceed in state courts.

Much of the support for Boulder and the oil companies falls along familiar, partisan lines. Republican states and business associations tend to side with the oil companies; Democratic states and environmental advocates typically back Boulder. A watchdog organization found that 25 of the 38 briefs filed to the Supreme Court in support of Exxon and Suncor were written by groups with financial ties to the fossil fuel industry or foundations opposing climate science and regulation. But Colorado ranchers aren’t the only surprising source of support for Boulder’s case — some conservative thinkers are challenging oil companies’ arguments.

Read Next States want to make Big Oil pay for climate harm. Now, courts are weighing in. Joseph Winters

To understand why, it helps to know that the case before the Supreme Court isn’t really about the substance of the lawsuit: if oil companies should pay damages for climate change. The first question is whether the Supreme Court can take the unusual move of stepping in before the case has gone to trial in state court. If the justices decide that they can, then they’ll consider oil companies’ arguments. Suncor and Exxon’s lawyers argue that Boulder’s suit is essentially a backdoor attempt to regulate emissions through state courts. They also say that the Clean Air Act and broader constitutional limits on state power should prevent Boulder’s claims from proceeding.

“If someone has harmed you, you should be able to go to court and make the case that they harmed you and that they need to pay you for it,” Camacho said. “It’s a centuries-old common law principle. And these companies are basically trying to say, ‘You shouldn’t be able make the case in court.’”

Some conservative legal scholars argue that there’s nothing in the federal law or the Constitution that would prevent the lawsuit from moving forward in state court. That includes Jonathan Adler, an environmental law professor at William & Mary Law School. Two former heads of the EPA under Republican presidents, Christine Todd Whitman and William Reilly, are other prominent proponents of that argument. 

The oil companies appear to have recognized that their arguments about the Clean Air Act aren’t very strong, Adler said, because they’ve moved away from them over time, toward other arguments about the limits of state power. In his view, courts generally shouldn’t override claims brought under state law “unless there is a clear basis for doing so.” Adler sees why some conservatives argue that the litigation in state courts is an improper way to drive climate policy, but he thinks it’s possible that skepticism about the merits of the lawsuit might have influenced some of their views on the narrower questions before the court.

Some Republican-dominated jurisdictions have also found themselves challenging oil companies. Coastal parishes in Louisiana are suing Chevron and other oil majors, seeking compensation for restoring coastal lands. “There are going to be conservative communities, or predominantly conservative communities, who see that they are being forced to pay millions of dollars to protect their towns because of the actions of fossil fuel companies,” Camacho said. 

Colorado ranchers, not exactly known for their liberal views, are left with few options for dealing with the environmental changes that are bankrupting them. Macnab said she hopes the Supreme Court sends Boulder’s case back to state court where it belongs, so that oil companies will be forced to face accountability.

“Until they’re held responsible for the consequences that they have known about for decades, they are not going to be part of the solution,” Macnab said. “They need to be brought to the table, because humankind and our food production is what’s at stake.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The surprising allies backing Boulder’s climate case before the Supreme Court on Oct 1, 2026.

This story is published through the Indigenous News Alliance.

After retiring from a long career as a conservation officer with the Canadian government, Derrick Pottle devoted himself to guiding people on the land, carving, hunting, and training bear guards.

Pottle, an elder and skilled guide from the Inuit community of Tikigâksuagusik in Nunatsiavut, founded BearSafe Planning in 2005. The program trains and certifies students to guard against the polar bears and black bears found throughout northern Labrador. The three-day course is advertised as offering “safety, protection, confidence in bear country.”

More than two decades later, that work has taken on renewed urgency. As climate change reshapes the Arctic — particularly the sea ice polar bears rely on to travel and hunt — Inuit are seeing the animals at different times of year and in places they rarely encountered before. Pottle says those changes are increasing the need for people who know how to keep people and bears safe. That, he said, is “the whole objective of the course.”

Graduates of the program keep watch for bears to prevent encounters and learn to recognize signs that a bear is not comfortable. “They may feel threatened, they may feel intimidated, and they may even charge or attack you,” Pottle said. He teaches students “how to recognize those signs, how to prepare yourself for them, the tools you have to use to do your job.”

Canadian officials say encounters between people and polar bears are becoming more likely as a lengthening ice-free season keeps bears on land longer. Inuit and Cree communities have reported polar bears appearing more frequently and in places where they were once rare. Researchers have linked the increase to several factors, including longer ice-free periods, changes in bear abundance and condition, and growing human activity in polar bear habitat. 

Pottle developed BearSafe Planning’s training program with input from groups that included Parks Canada, conservationists, Inuit elders, and academics. It started “out of a necessity,” Pottle said, after the creation of Tongait KakKasuangita SilakKijapvinga, (Torngat Mountains National Park) under the 2005 Labrador Inuit Land Claims Agreement. 

“They needed bear guards,” Pottle said. We didn’t have trainers in Nunatsiavut at the time. Somebody had to do it.”

Inuk elder Derrick Pottle founded BearSafe Planning in 2005 to keep people and bears safe. That work has taken on renewed urgency as climate change reshapes the Arctic and encounters with bears grow more common. Frey Blake-Pijogge / IndigiNews

The Arctic is warming nearly four times faster than the rest of the planet. As climate change remakes landscapes across the North, the need for guards is only for “all species of bears,” Pottle said. 

“We’re seeing more and more bears now in this time of our lives than we ever saw before,” he said.  “People are seeing polar bears in this part of Inuit Nunangat — where polar bears used to travel north late in the spring — and now are staying all summer long.”

The province’s Endangered Species Act lists polar bears as “vulnerable,” while the federal government deems them a “species of special concern.” Sixty to 80 per cent of the world’s polar bear population lives in Canada, according to Environment and Climate Change Canada. The massive carnivores, which can weigh as much as 1,400 pounds, rely upon sea ice to travel, mate, and hunt. “Climate change is the main threat to polar bears,” the agency notes.

Becoming a bear guard can offer employment opportunities, but also can be used for personal safety. “Lots of people just use the bear guard course for their own personal protection when they’re out on the land with their families fishing, hunting and participating in Inuit lifestyle.”

Sherri Wolfrey, a mother of four, is a trained bear guard in Tikigâksuagusik. She recounted how, in 2015, she became “interested in the program and just thought ‘OK, maybe someday I might want to try for a job that involves bear monitoring.’”

Wolfrey is the secretary of Northern Lights Academy and uses her training when she’s out on the land. Last year, she put her certification to work professionally for the first time, when she was contracted as a bear guard in Akami-Uapishkᵁ-KakKasuak (Mealy Mountains National Park Reserve). “Especially up in that area in the bottom of the Mealy’s, it was so beautiful up there,” she told IndigiNews.

She finds the skills valuable even when she isn’t working as a bear guard. “It’s good to have the training,” she said, “because when you do what I like to do, especially being at the cabin … you could know what to expect and what to do if you came upon a bear.”

Read Next Troubling scenes from an Arctic in full-tilt crisis Matt Simon

Pottle’s experiences started “before there were bear guards.” People in his community would ask him to escort them on outings with boats, dog teams or snowmobiles because he knew the land. 

BearSafe Planning offers its course on demand, and has taught as many as 30 students at a time. And though he is an instructor, Pottle also considers himself a student, drawing from the experiences of others. 

“I talk to the Elders, I talk to the hunters, I talk to the students,” he said. “A lot of these people live on the land all their lives, so they have lots and lots of experiences and stories. So we learn from one another.”

Employment opportunities for certified bear guards vary by season and can range from day trips to longer-term, full-time work, Pottle said. Cruise ship operators, for instance, hire guards to keep tourists safe when they visit the North, while group outings and land-based programs in Nunatsiavut and elsewhere across Inuit Nunangat also rely on them. Inuit governments and agencies employ trained guards for outings as well.

Pottle sees professionally trained bear guards as “no different than any other aspect of the workforce.”

“It’s not always easy to find employment in the North, and bear guarding can give people — if they choose to — an opportunity to make a good living from it.”

Two decades of teaching students about bear safety has been personally rewarding, Pottle said.

“You’re doing something you love, and you’re going into communities, and you’re … bringing knowledge,” he said. “Our role is to keep people safe, and make sure people enjoy the land and enjoy the surroundings — and get the job done and come home safe at the end of your work day.”

This story was originally published by IndigiNews and updated with additional information by Grist.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline In a warming Arctic, Inuit bear guards protect communities on Oct 1, 2026.

Last week, another federal judge blocked New York’s so-called “climate superfund law,” the state’s attempt to make fossil fuel companies pay for climate-related damages linked to their activities. Signed in 2024, the legislation inspired other states to start drumming up their own ways to hold Big Oil financially accountable for the costs of a warming planet.

The two rulings are certainly a blow to the law’s advocates. But they’re not a death knell for this approach. That’s according to seven lawmakers from Connecticut, Hawaiʻi, Rhode Island, New Jersey, and New Hampshire, who told Grist the decisions have limited relevance to their states. Most expressed continued interest in advancing their own superfund legislation.

What may be more threatening to these kinds of pollution-accountability laws is Suncor v. Boulder County, a case the Supreme Court will hear beginning next week. Though a decision may not come until next spring, the outcome could nullify all state-level attempts to make fossil fuel companies pay for climate costs. 

“Worst case, they rule that federal law — both statutory and constitutional federal law — preempts all of these cases, throws them all out,” said Pat Parenteau, an emeritus professor at the Vermont Law School. This could quash not only superfund proposals, he added, but also consumer rights cases, racketeering cases, and antitrust claims, leaving every state in the country with “billions and billions of dollars piling up with no recourse.”

New York’s climate superfund law sought $75 billion from fossil fuel companies to help pay for costs associated with climate change, including recovery from extreme weather and adaptive infrastructure projects like upgraded stormwater drainage systems and new cooling systems in public buildings. The law was inspired by the federal Superfund Act of 1980, which made chemical and petroleum companies financially responsible for cleaning up heavily polluted sites across the country. 

The two court decisions found that the New York law was preempted by federal law, specifically the Clean Air Act. In the first ruling, Judge Brenda Sannes of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York wrote that the measure was “simply beyond the limits of state law,” siding with the fossil fuel companies and 22 red-state attorneys general that had sued. New York is expected to appeal both cases.

To date, Vermont is the only other state to have enacted a climate superfund law. It’s facing a legal challenge from some of the same plaintiffs as New York, and in the past month alone Parenteau said there’s been a “flurry” of briefings and press statements calling for its repeal. Republican attorneys general and industry interests have also used the legal strike against New York to oppose climate accountability in other states. In New Jersey, Republican state Senator Michael Testa said in a statement that pursuing a climate superfund measure in his state would be “a waste of time and resources.” West Virginia Attorney General JB McCuskey told Bloomberg Law that if any other state passes this type of policy he will sue them “almost instantaneously.”

Read Next How a Koch-funded campaign is trying to reverse climate action in Vermont Austyn Gaffney

But Grist spoke with several Democratic lawmakers who remained interested in advancing climate superfund legislation despite the losses in New York.

“I don’t think it’ll make any difference,” said Karl Rhoads, an outgoing senator in Hawaiʻi who sponsored a superfund bill last year. “There’s no reason for the rest of us not to continue.”

Rhode Island Representative Jennifer Boylan and Connecticut Representative Josh Elliott both said they’re planning to reintroduce climate superfund bills during their next legislative sessions. “I’m full speed ahead,” Boylan said. She dismissed the idea that the New York case would doom similar legislation elsewhere as “a convenient strategy to try to scare us all.”

Legislators from California, Illinois, and Massachusetts told Bloomberg Law last week that they were interested in putting forward new superfund bills, too.

In New Jersey, a climate superfund bill sponsored by Democratic Senator John McKeon stalled before the Legislature’s summer break but may still be considered during the year and a half that remains in the state’s legislative session. McKeon said he’s unconcerned by the New York ruling, as New Jersey is in a different court circuit and is governed by different laws.

Tony Caplan, a Democratic representative from New Hampshire, last year sponsored an unsuccessful bill to “determine the monetary costs of climate damage to the state of New Hampshire and the best means of recouping such costs.” He said he’s now focusing on decarbonization legislation and doesn’t plan to introduce another superfund bill — but that’s because of long-standing opposition to climate accountability measures from his state’s Republican-controlled Legislature, rather than anything new from the New York decisions. 

“The lawfare goes on,” Caplan said. “The [New York] decision can be appealed, obviously, and there are blue states … that will continue to push forward with these kinds of bills.”

Climate activists held a rally outside Governor Kathy Hochul’s Manhattan office in 2024 to deliver thousands of petitions asking her to sign the Climate Change Superfund Act.
Erik McGregor / LightRocket via Getty Images

Rachel Rothschild, an assistant professor at the University of Michigan Law School, said states “can and should push ahead” with their various climate liability initiatives, as they don’t have to abide by anything the New York District Courts have said — or even anything that the higher-level Second Circuit Court might decide, if the New York superfund lawsuits are appealed. A bad outcome in Suncor v. Boulder County, however, is a much more significant threat. 

Narrowly, the Supreme Court case considers whether a 2018 lawsuit brought by Boulder County and the City of Boulder against Suncor and Exxon Mobil can be heard in state court. Fossil fuel interests have argued that it shouldn’t, because it represents an attempt to dictate federal climate policy. 

If just 5 of 8 justices rule that the case is superseded by the federal Clean Air Act or the Constitution, that precedent will be binding across the country (Justice Samuel Alito has recused himself from the case). States could be severely limited, if not outright barred, from seeking any kind of recompense from fossil fuel companies, whether via tort lawsuits or via climate superfund-style legislation.

“My fear,” said Rothschild, “is that this is going to be another notch in a long list of decisions that are threatening to our broader country and democracy, leaving states without the ability to do much on very flimsy and poorly reasoned legal grounds.” 

Another, less consequential possibility is that justices will punt on the case, since it hasn’t yet traveled all the way up the Colorado court system. Rothschild described this as a “wait-and-see” approach that would be preferable to a total victory for fossil fuel interests. But she worried this outcome would leave “bad law” on the books, referring specifically to the New York state superfund decisions and two others that favor federal preemption for issues of transboundary pollution.

If Boulder prevails, then its lawsuit and other state-level accountability measures will be able to proceed. States waiting to see if this happens might get some insight into what kinds of climate claims are permissible and consistent with the limits of state authority. For example, the justices might suggest in their written decision that states can only claim damages for climate pollution released within their borders, or that they can only collect penalties for demonstrated climate harms.

“That might give us something of a yardstick with which we could evaluate what could be done under the climate superfund statutes,” said Jonathan Adler, a professor at William and Mary Law School. “We’ll have to pay a lot of attention.”

toolTips('.classtoolTips4','The process of reducing the emission of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that drive climate change, most often by deprioritizing the use of fossil fuels like oil and gas in favor of renewable sources of energy.');

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline States want to make Big Oil pay for climate harm. Now, courts are weighing in. on Sep 30, 2026.

In Omaha, Nebraska, during the recent early September heat wave when temps hit the mid-90s Fahrenheit and lows stayed in the 70s, Pat Wilson-Johnson came to the Salvation Army’s North Corps Community Center for lunch.

The location functions as a cooling center during high heat days. From growing up in Omaha, Wilson-Johnson remembers cool summer nights when she could let the breeze in through an open window. Now, she said, that just lets in the humidity.

“Nine o’clock at night, it’s still 90, 91 degrees. That’s not right,” Wilson-Johnson said.

Scott Harris, who works at the center, said many people will have lunch and then sit in the lobby to cool off and drink water. The location also gives out bags of ice for people to stay cool when they leave.

The Siena Francis House, a nonprofit that serves people experiencing homelessness, operates another cooling center during heat advisories. While they’re typically open from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., Kristy McKern, director of case management and permanent supportive housing, said the organization has staff and protocols in case people need resources outside of these times.

In Lincoln, the Lincoln-Lancaster County Health Department created an extreme heat response plan over a year ago. While the department has focused on high daytime temperatures, they are beginning to look at nighttime temperature data, a department spokesperson said.

Right now, the Lincoln area has one cooling center that operates overnight.

As in many other places, Nebraska’s minimum temperatures have shot up, presenting an often overlooked, overnight threat to people, livestock, and crops. In the coming decades, the minimum temperatures in Nebraska could be in the low 70s – more like what you’d expect in southeast Kansas and southern Missouri, said Eric Hunt, a University of Nebraska-Lincoln agriculture meteorology and climate resilience extension educator.

For people, heat can stress the cardiovascular system, kidneys, respiratory system, and mental health, said Jesse Bell, director of the University of Nebraska Medical Center’s water, climate, and health program. But these high minimum temperatures don’t affect everyone equally. People at higher risk include the elderly and those with certain health conditions and on certain medications. It’s also more dangerous for people without working air conditioning, people who are houseless, student athletes, and people who work outside.

Siena Francis and its partners travel throughout Omaha during high heat days, providing water, snacks, and sunscreen to folks who are outside. The organization works with some people who have mental illnesses and substance abuse problems.

“A lot of these people don’t have access to just the essentials like you and I would have,” McKern said. “So again, for us to be able to provide those things to them, so they don’t end up in the hospital, or they don’t end up dehydrated or passing out or fainting.”

Read Next Whether it’s ‘super’ or ‘Godzilla,’ El Niño is already breaking records Frida Garza & Kate Yoder

On average in the United States, more people die from heat-related deaths than any other weather event.

And it matters even when it’s not deadly. High heat at night also makes it difficult to sleep. According to a report organized by Climate Central, residents in Omaha and Lincoln are estimated to have lost about 30 hours of sleep annually between 2020 and 2025 due to heat, and three of those hours are attributed to climate change.

For those with air conditioning, the heat continuing into the night can mean higher energy bills. Residents living in low-income housing or older homes and buildings that haven’t been weatherized could face more hardship during heat waves.

Air conditioning accounts for a large chunk of electricity use from residential and commercial customers, according to the Energy Information Administration. Energy use increases in the summer throughout the day as temperature also rises. The usage maxes out at around 5 or 6 p.m. But as nighttime temperatures rise and air conditioning units work harder longer, the demand on utility companies grows. At the same time, these companies are currently experiencing multiple pressures to increase energy generation from customers like data centers. To meet demand on the grid, some utilities are deciding to keep fossil fuel generation online.

Beyond Nebraska’s urban centers, the rising nighttime temperatures also pose a concern for agriculture, the state’s biggest industry. 

Higher nighttime temperatures mean that corn and soybeans — Nebraska’s two leading crops — use more energy instead of storing it, which can impact growth. Depending on the timing, duration, and intensity, the higher nighttime temps could result in smaller and fewer seeds and biomass for soybeans, said George Graef, a UNL agronomy and horticulture professor focused on soybean breeding and genetics. And if there are multiple warm days and nights, corn crops begin “shutting down and losing a week or more of filling time in late summer and early fall that we would normally get, which pretty significantly impacts yield,” said Tom Hoegemeyer, a retired UNL professor specializing in agronomy and horticulture. 

In the short term, there is concern that these higher nighttime temps combined with drought could mean increased usage of groundwater in irrigated production, Hoegemeyer said. Fungi and bacteria could also hurt corn crops when it’s hot and humid at night, which means farmers may be driven to spray more chemicals on crops to protect them, Hoegemeyer said. 

Given these nighttime temperatures, Graef said the soybean industry is employing new technology and capabilities to evaluate and adapt the crop to the changing conditions. He’s confident new variants will be identified.

While the corn industry has been aware of this issue for the last 30 years and has been able to adapt corn crops to better tolerate these conditions, Hoegemeyer is worried about how effective this will be long term.

“If you believe the projections as to what temperatures will be like, say, by 2100, we may not be able to do that,” Hoegemeyer said. “There are limits to what we can do with genetics and technology.”

Livestock, including cattle, pigs, and chickens, make up a number of Nebraska’s leading commodities. The rising nighttime temperatures pose a concern for livestock in eastern and central Nebraska, where humidity is also rising.

“The effects of heat stress overall tend to affect larger, more productive animals the most,” said Rick Stowell, a UNL professor and animal environment extension specialist. “So, if you think about heavy animals, mature animals, fat cattle and a sow, for example, or a high-producing dairy cow, they are generating a lot more body heat, and so they have a lot more heat to get rid of.”

To adapt, producers are building more shade structures in feedlots, something Stowell has seen more of over the last 20 years. Other strategies: increased ventilation in buildings, altered feeding schedules, and sprinkling water on the ground and in feedlots for cooling. 

“Most livestock producers and poultry producers (in eastern Nebraska) are well aware that the situation is getting more challenging,” Stowell said.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Nebraskans couldn’t escape the heat this summer — not even at night on Sep 30, 2026.

If you scroll down on the list of “Carbon Majors,” the 178 producers that are responsible for most of the world’s fossil fuel emissions, you will eventually get to a company called Continental Resources. This firm is ranked around 150, well after giants like Saudi Aramco and ExxonMobil, but it has still produced almost 600 million tons of carbon dioxide since 2005 alone, equivalent to the combined carbon footprint of around 2 million Americans over that same time. The founder of this company is a man named Harold Hamm, the spitting image of an American oil executive — he grew up dirt-poor in Oklahoma and worked his way into fracking riches, but he still speaks with a Southern drawl. He now uses his wealth to influence the government, raising millions of dollars for Republican candidates and funding crusades against green energy.

If you squint, the protagonist of Alejandro González Iñárritu’s new film Digger could pass for Hamm, or for the Hamm-like archetype that has bled into the American psyche. The film centers around an oil executive named Digger Rockwell, a Texas-accented plutocrat who has built his father’s wildcat oil company into a global concern with offshore rigs in Greenland and Alaska. As depicted by Tom Cruise, he is the ideal of the Southern businessman-ideologue, partial to monogrammed private jet seats and roaring rants about his own genitalia. Other than making money, his sole concern seems to be the welfare of his white cat Maggie, whom he is trying to keep alive against veterinary advice even as she decomposes in his arms.

Digger examines two questions. First, how much responsibility does such an individual bear for the deaths and displacements caused by global climate change? Second, what is the right way for an artist to consider the first question? If you think you already know the answers to these questions, this may be the movie for you, though I can’t promise you’ll enjoy watching it. In trying to construct a fable about the hubris of oil titans like Hamm, Iñárritu has produced a film that says nothing except what the viewer already knows. He is all too aware that political parables about corporate greed are of limited artistic value, but he can’t manage to escape the confines of parable. The result is a mess of shrieking and spittle that will leave even the most climate-conscious viewers reaching for an Advil. 

After an opening scene in which the audience is given the chance to marvel at Cruise’s physical metamorphosis into a flabby oil executive, the plot arrives with the delicacy of a tornado siren. A technician on Digger’s rig in Greenland calls to tell him that a methane leak has opened up a large crack that threatens the stability of the island’s enormous ice sheet. Before Digger can even finish a monologue about how he’s not going to shut down a billion-dollar platform because of a tiny crack, another group of company officials arrives on his doorstep to tell him that the rig has blown up and the Greenland ice sheet has already collapsed. Now a massive iceberg is headed straight for Europe, with the potential to flood the continent and kill hundreds of thousands of people. Digger confers with the president (John Goodman) to figure out what to do, and they quickly decide to keep drilling.

This opening act achieves a level of heavy-handedness that remained out of reach even for Adam McKay’s Don’t Look Up, the last major film to satirize those responsible for global warming, which likened climate change to a comet about to hit the earth. Digger’s proposed response to the crisis is to deploy a digital tool called the “firewall” to censor all mentions of “methane,” “iceberg,” and “climate change” from the Internet, while the president and his conservative cronies make predictable suggestions about bombing the iceberg or praying to God for deliverance. Whereas McKay opted for CNN-toned realism, Iñárritu’s aesthetics are a more interesting mix between Wes Anderson and Thomas Hart Benton — Digger’s boardroom is full of Art Deco murals depicting oil discoveries, and above the table hangs an obvious sculpture of a snake eating its own tail.

Digger Rockwell (Tom Cruise) meets the president in a boardroom to discuss the iceberg approaching Europe. Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures

The dialogue is full of jokes about climate change that will likely be catnip for the small minority of viewers who already spend most of their days thinking about it. There are references to the outsize global warming potential of methane and to a supposed “COP30 fiasco” at which the U.S. alienated its allies by withdrawing from the Paris Agreement. (In reality, they were almost happy to see us go.) There’s even a reference to thawing Arctic permafrost that will be familiar to devoted Grist readers. The vehicle for these revelations is a series of dialogues between Digger and his in-house scientist Ganesh (Riz Ahmed), each of which devolves into a fusillade of worn-out culture war tropes. Ganesh rejects Digger’s offer of delectable sashimi on the grounds that the bluefin tuna population has declined by 97 percent, “even though this administration won’t label them endangered.” He then tries the sashimi and loves it. 

Whether or not this satire provides an accurate picture of the world economy, it does not make for enjoyable moviegoing. Well over half the movie consists of people screaming their lungs out about methane or the stock market, culminating in an unbearable scene in which Digger berates the European parliament, calling them hypocrites for using his product while condemning his company. The Danish and German legislators howl at him from the benches, accusing him of genocide for allowing the iceberg to hit Europe, and Digger screams back for several minutes about how the world needs his crude. “You want me to keep producing,” he says. “You demand, and I supply!” If you’ve ever worked in climate change, participated in climate politics, or gotten into a debate about climate change on social media, the whole exchange will feel familiar, and not in a good way.

If I hadn’t been assigned to review the film, I might have walked out after the European parliament scene — not because of what Digger was saying, but just because it was ugly, loud, and unpleasant. Regardless of whether you agree with Digger or with the Europeans, who wants to listen to all that? In a Cruise-appropriate twist, the most pleasant moment of the entire film is when the U.S. Air Force scrambles a squadron of fighter jets to carpet bomb the iceberg. It’s almost the only moment in the movie where everyone shuts up. 

The movie includes a twist, or perhaps better to say a reveal, that is intended to show that Iñárritu is up to more than McKay was in Don’t Look Up. At the risk of giving too much away, this isn’t just a parable about climate change, it’s a parable about a parable about climate change. The apparent intention of this narrative complication is to ask what might be achieved by subjecting a viewer to a ham-fisted metaphor like the one the audience has just endured.

McKay’s obvious hope in Don’t Look Up was that such fables might spur people to action, and we can see how well that worked out a few years later — Donald Trump, a climate denier, received almost 80 million votes and triggered a global trend of “climate hushing,” or refusing to look up. Watching a movie about a tyrannical oil executive isn’t likely to make anyone buy an electric vehicle any more than reading the list of the largest emitters would. 

So why bother? Iñárritu seems to want to make the case for the value of chronicling our state of affairs, even if that chronicle drifts into caricature. A few guys really have gotten rich selling a product that has enabled global welfare while also threatening the continuity of that welfare. Those guys are much more inclined to continue selling their product than to stop. Isn’t there some value in preserving that truth for our descendants? During a scene whose context I won’t reveal, one character says the following: “It’s ridiculous, and it’s scary, and it’s funny, and it’s stupid. It makes no goddamn sense, but it’s what happened.” 

Be that as it may, a film still needs a heart, and Digger doesn’t have one any more than Digger himself does. Despite the shots of Cruise looking longingly at his disintegrating cat or at an oil rig sunset, it doesn’t even achieve the level of emotional resonance of a Marvel movie. It has about as much human warmth as a Twitter debate about permitting reform, and its final suggestion that stories can provide solace in times of great calamity is a classic instance of an artist telling where he should be showing. 

If Iñárritu’s point is to show through metaphor that corporate greed has abetted the climate crisis, well, he has made that point only too well. If the point is that this kind of metaphor is simplistic and of dubious political utility, he has also made that point. Even so, viewers looking for stories about the sins of big business may wish they had spent their hard-earned wages on a showing of Coyote vs. Acme, the acclaimed recent Looney Tunes revival. At least there, when the TNT crate drops, you don’t have to think before you laugh.

toolTips('.classtoolTips7','A powerful greenhouse gas that accounts for about 11% of global emissions, methane is the primary component of natural gas and is emitted into the atmosphere by landfills, oil and natural gas systems, agricultural activities, coal mining, and wastewater treatment, among other pathways. Over a 20-year period, it is roughly 84 times more potent than carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere.');

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline ‘Digger’ is the year’s big climate movie. This climate reporter hated it. on Sep 29, 2026.

After returning to office last January, President Donald Trump made it clear to America’s universities that federal money comes with strings attached. Since then, the administration has frozen or withdrawn billions of dollars in federal funding from top schools and launched investigations into them, using its leverage to influence admissions, hiring, and DEI policies. The consequences have been stark: According to the Academic Freedom Index, institutional autonomy in the United States dropped sharply last year, placing it on a steeper descent than those seen in Hungary, Turkey, and India.

A new study argues that this attack didn’t come out of nowhere. In the paper recently published in the journal Energy Research & Social Science, researchers show how corporate interests, including oil companies, have sought to influence universities for at least half a century, using big donations to shape research agendas. That weakened schools’ defenses against outside influences, the authors say, paving the way for Trump’s attack.

“Private donors had been practicing a smaller version of the same playbook for years by offering funding in exchange for a say over how university programs are run,” said Noel Healy, the lead author of the paper and a professor of geography and sustainability at Salem State University, in an email.

This pattern, called “corporate capture,” gives donors sway over who gets hired, what researchers study, and what’s taught in classes. Some experts trace the current strategy to a 1971 memo written by Lewis F. Powell Jr. a year before he became a Supreme Court justice. Powell told the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that it should defend free enterprise by funding scholars to evaluate textbooks and urging boards of trustees to correct the “imbalance” caused by too many liberal faculty members.

The conservative Olin, Scaife, Koch, and Bradley foundations helped drive the corporate capture of higher education, the study says. These foundations, formed by tycoons who made their fortunes in fields such as chemical manufacturing and fossil fuels, also spent decades funding The Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank behind Project 2025. That far-right playbook for the Trump administration lays out strategies to bring universities into closer ideological alignment with conservative priorities.

“I mean, you go back and read the Powell memo, you already had the agenda of the Trump administration,” said Robert Brulle, an environmental sociologist at Brown University.

A handful of schools have caved to some of the Trump administration’s demands, including Columbia, Brown, and Northwestern. The administration has targeted climate initiatives in particular, revoking $4 million in grants to Princeton partly because it said the research was fueling “climate anxiety.”

Many of the funders influencing universities are linked to the fossil fuel industry. One analysis found that Exxon Mobil, BP, Chevron, Shell Oil, ConocoPhillips, and Koch Industries donated at least $700 million to 27 U.S. universities from 2010 to 2020. BP funded Princeton University’s Carbon Mitigation Initiative for a quarter century before letting its contract expire in 2025. An email uncovered in a congressional investigation showed a BP executive in 2020 celebrating how its relationship with Princeton was “becoming increasingly synergistic (as of course we had planned!)”. 

A free after-school STEM program for students in Houston is hosted at the ExxonMobil Foundation Teen Engineering and Tech Center in January 2026.
Raquel Natalicchio / Houston Chronicle via Getty Images

These kinds of relationships can sway the direction of research and even go on to shape policy discussions: A study in 2022 found that reports published by MIT, Harvard, and Stanford while they received funding from oil companies were biased in favor of natural gas compared to independent research. A 2011 report from MIT, funded by fossil fuel interests, popularized the framing of natural gas as a “bridge fuel” to a cleaner future, a phrase repeated by former President Barack Obama. Meanwhile, a famous 2004 paper from Princeton, which was significantly shaped by BP, vaulted carbon capture into international climate policy discussions — but it remains unproven at scale today.

“Corporate capture isn’t necessarily blatant propaganda; it’s a slow drift toward market-friendly climate solutions and away from anything that threatens the industry,” Healy said. It’s not just oil companies that have shaped higher education: pharmaceutical companies, agricultural interests, and other industries have followed a similar strategy — in some cases, for more than a century. Electric utilities ran a wide-ranging propaganda campaign in the 1920s to promote free-market ideals, hiring academics to rewrite textbooks and develop curricula, according to a congressional investigation at the time.

In addition to universities, K-12 education has been a target of oil propaganda for decades. Fossil fuels are such a part of the fabric of life in some states that the industry’s efforts aren’t questioned. The Louisiana Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association claimed that “the oil and natural gas industry makes the back-to-school transition possible” in a post in 2022, highlighting how backpacks, glue, and crayons are all derived from petroleum.

The withdrawal of federal funding deepens universities’ reliance on these kinds of private donors. “As budgets have gotten tight historically, that’s been one of the reasons why university administrations have been more willing to make some of these deals with funders that bypass normal academic practices,” said Ryan Wishart, a co-author of the paper and a sociology professor at Creighton University.

Many funding arrangements remain hidden from public scrutiny. The authors of the paper call for a dedicated congressional investigation into fossil fuel influence in higher education and for schools to disclose their donor contracts and outside partnerships. Brulle, who wasn’t involved in the paper, warned that these solutions have limits. The University of Texas, he pointed out, is subject to the whims of the Texas state legislature, which has deep ties to the oil industry. 

The first step, in Wishart’s view, is for schools to stop falling in line with the Trump administration before it’s asked of them. “I think university leaders need to stop engaging in anticipatory obedience [and] self-censorship,” he said.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline How elite universities got tangled up in politics and petroleum on Sep 29, 2026.

The first thing Brightline wants you to know about its bankruptcy is that the trains will keep running.

“BUSINESS AS USUAL,” read a message the company sent to customers after filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The move followed months of discussions with bondholders, according to the Financial Times, and will give the privately operated higher-speed rail line time to borrow another $490 million as it strives to increase ridership enough to keep up with payments on $4.4 billion in debt accumulated building, expanding, and operating the railroad.

Despite the setback, trains will continue zipping between Orlando and Miami at up to 125 mph because the filing does not include Brightline Trains Florida, the division that operates the line. It also does not affect Brightline West, which is developing a run from Las Vegas to Los Angeles.

The company began offering service between Miami and West Palm Beach in 2018, then extended service to Orlando beginning in 2023. It has been held up as an example of how the private sector can bring high-speed rail to the United States, especially in regions with few transit options and little in the way of financing for them. The system saw ridership increase by 14 percent, and revenue by 17 percent, between January and August compared to the same period last year. It is also moving ahead with plans to expand service to Tampa and add a station in Cocoa.

“Brightline is a critical part of Florida’s transportation network that has changed the way people move around the state,” Patrick Goddard, CEO of Brightline Florida, said in a statement that followed Friday’s filing. “This transaction will be a catalyst for further growth in ridership and revenue.”

Brightline serves about 3.5 million people a year and generates roughly $240 million in revenue, which is less than half the ridership and one-third the income it predicted in 2024, Tim Hynes, head of Global Credit Research at Debtwire, told the Associated Press. That’s why Brightline needed to rework its debt and obtain additional financing.

Beyond its financial struggles, Brightline has faced scrutiny over its safety record. As of January, 182 people had been killed by its trains since 2018, many in collisions at crossings or involving people on the tracks. Brightline says none of the incidents were caused by train operations and points to hundreds of millions of dollars it has invested in safety improvements.

Yet Brightline’s struggles come even as it finds enthusiastic riders.

Ivan Reich enjoys rail travel and often rides Brightline for the 40-minute commute from his home in West Palm Beach to his office in Fort Lauderdale, where he practices bankruptcy law. He also uses it when he goes to Miami Heat basketball games, though he concedes that at $35 per ticket, it is too expensive for daily use. (A round-trip ride between Miami and Orlando can cost as little as $120.)

“Brightline’s literally like going to the airport and being on a plane,” he said. “It’s a luxury experience. It’s nice. It’s pleasant. It’s comfortable.” Beyond the cost of a ride, “there’s nothing to complain about.”

With Amtrak smashing ridership records and Brightline’s ridership rising, Americans appear increasingly willing to travel by rail. Brightline’s financial troubles raise a more difficult question: Who will pay to build the infrastructure needed to give more of them that option?

Brightline West is developing a 218-mile high-speed rail line between Las Vegas and the Los Angeles suburb of Rancho Cucamonga, where passengers could connect to a commuter line for the ride into LA. The roughly $21 billion project has received a $3 billion federal grant and is seeking a $6 billion federal loan as it works to secure the financing it needs to build the line.

Read Next Next stop for California’s high-speed rail: Finding private investors Benton Graham

California’s long journey toward a high-speed rail system connecting San Francisco and Los Angeles approached the problem from the other side of the equation. It has spent nearly two decades relying on public funding and is now exploring private funding.

Jim Mathews, who leads the Rail Passengers Association, sees Chapter 11 restructuring as a beneficial move that “probably gives Brightline breathing room” to get out from under “a crushing” debt load, he told Grist in an email. Improving the company’s financial outlook will benefit passenger rail overall by ensuring more people have access to it.

That said, the government needs to play a stronger role in financing rail because the sustained investment needed to launch projects is often beyond the private sector’s means, even with public-private partnerships. “Building a railroad is very hard and very expensive,” he said. “This is a good example of why governments always have a legitimate role to play.”

Money isn’t the only challenge. Private rail operators must also integrate their systems with existing public infrastructure, said Alon Levy, a research scholar at the New York University Marron Institute. Brightline West’s decision to stop in Rancho Cucamonga rather than Los Angeles illustrates the difficulty, Levy said, because reaching the city would require greater coordination with Metrolink. Building a more integrated passenger rail network will require “top-down federal action,” they said.

Rick Harnish, who leads the High Speed Rail Alliance, argues that rail should be treated more like other forms of transportation. Airlines don’t pay to build airports, and trucking companies don’t pay to build highways. Taxpayers do, because “private capital will not invest in the kind of infrastructure you need to fund public transit,” he said.

For Harnish, rising ridership on Brightline and Amtrak suggests the demand is there. What’s missing is greater public investment in the infrastructure needed to meet it. “It’s time for both the feds and states to start investing in good, high-quality tracks,” he said.

For Brightline, the immediate challenge is keeping the trains running. The larger one — for Brightline and passenger rail in general — is figuring out who pays to build the tracks beneath them.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Brightline shows people want more trains. But who will pay for them? on Sep 28, 2026.

Every year, climate disasters force millions of people to leave their homes. In the aftermath of floods, fires, and droughts, they face the challenge of finding a new place to rebuild their lives. They’re part of a growing population of people on the move without specific legal protections, commonly referred to as climate migrants. Most move within their country, while others seek refuge across borders. 

The hotter the planet grows, the higher the number of climate migrants is expected to climb. At the low end, predictions point to at least 44 million people displaced internally across the globe by 2050. That kind of planetary churn is the equivalent of rehoming the entire population of Argentina. Very few places are planning for this possibility.

Last fall, when Governor JB Pritzker signed the Climate Displacement Act, Illinois became the only state in the country trying to anticipate the ways in which climate-driven migration could transform life for its existing residents and those who may come. The law established a task force to investigate how domestic and international climate migration patterns could test Illinois’ infrastructure, resources, and residents. The first-of-its-kind law requires the newly-formed team to publish two reports over the next year outlining the state’s ability to address climate migration through at least 2050. If the Midwestern state succeeds, it could become a blueprint for how states make room for vulnerable migrants. 

But only a year after introducing the effort, state officials have largely abandoned it. 

Lawmakers have pushed back reporting deadlines and are yet to convene the task force, even though the first report is due in December. 

Pritzker, the state’s top lawmakers, and the heads of several Illinois state agencies were supposed to appoint members to the board no later than 90 days after the law went into effect. For over a year, only one appointment was made to the 17-seat task force. 

Migrants, most from Haiti, trek through the Darien Gap, a 66-mile stretch of rainforest between North and South America, on their journey towards the United States. John Moore / Getty Images

WBEZ and Grist reached out to the state officials responsible for appointing the board, including Pritzker, four members of the Illinois General Assembly, and the heads of seven state agencies. Besides the governor’s office, only Illinois Senate President Don Harmon responded by appointing state Senator Graciela Guzman, who represents Chicago, to the task force after being contacted for comment. 

“Governor Pritzker remains committed to fighting climate change and preparing Illinois for its impacts, including climate-related migration,” Andres Correa, a spokesperson for the governor, said in a statement to WBEZ and Grist. “This work is important, and the administration will continue working with lawmakers, state agencies, and stakeholders to establish a timeline and move the task force forward.”

The Governor’s office did not provide an estimate for when a timeline would be available. 

“We haven’t received a clear answer,” said Guzman, a Chicago Democrat who introduced the Climate Displacement Act and was appointed to the task force last week, about the delays plaguing the climate law she helped pass last fall. “This has been two years in the making … I’m honored to serve on the Climate Displacement Task Force and ready to get to work.”

The law outlines what the reports should address, but it does not include consequences for failing to meet the mandate. The first report, due at the end of the year, requires the task force to compile the latest data and scientific findings to determine the scale of climate migration expected within the United States and neighboring countries in the coming decades. The following report, due at the end of 2027, is supposed to assess how state agencies and existing programs will need to evolve in response to disaster-induced displacement.  

Read Next The biggest climate migration problem may be that there’s not enough of it Julian Hattem

Guzman, born to Salvadoran refugees in Los Angeles, introduced the bill in February 2025 just a month after 14 wildfires tore through southern California, scorching tens of thousands of homes and buildings in the state’s second- and third-most destructive fires. 

“My family, like many families there, were having some really real conversations: If these wildfires were to encroach upon the valley where they lived, where would they go?” she said.

They could come to Illinois.

The temperate Midwestern state is an agricultural powerhouse, adjacent to 20 percent of the world’s unfrozen freshwater, relatively safe from hurricanes and wildfires, and is far enough inland that sea level rise is not an immediate risk. A recent analysis by AlphaGeo, a climate-risk modeling firm, even ranked Chicago as the most climate-resilient big city on the planet, citing these advantages and its “robust urban infrastructure.”

Given these favorable conditions, Chicago, the state of Illinois, and the Midwest have sometimes been billed as “climate havens,” a term for destinations marketed as insulated from extreme weather. But scientists and policy experts have pushed back on these claims for years, countering that no such place exists. They say the nature of climate change is global, and rising temperatures will have cascading knock-on effects on all life on the planet — including the Midwest, where climate change has been leaving its mark. 

This past year, Chicago residents experienced significant and widespread flooding, when its massive tunnel and reservoir system very nearly hit capacity. A record-breaking number of tornadoes, extreme heat, and wildfire smoke that spiked air quality levels for nearly a full week made the past summer unlike any recent memory. 

“It’s all that anybody I’m around is talking about — just the incredible weather events that we have had in our state,” Guzman said. “It’s really laying bare why this kind of planning is important.”

People are seen along Lake Michigan in Chicago ahead of a heatwave in June 2025. Joshua Lott / The Washington Post via Getty Images

Climate haven or not, she said the law is an opportunity for the state to understand its resources and plan for the potential influx of new residents — which could mean building affordable housing or new job programs. But before any of that can happen, the state needs a roadmap. 

Illinois is the only state with an explicit mandate to prepare for population shifts due to climate change. However, other states have begun enacting or at least considering climate-related relocation. Maine has incorporated climate migration into broader statewide resilience planning. And lawmakers in California, Hawaii, and New Jersey have introduced bills to begin planning for the protection of coastal communities vulnerable to sea level rise and to buy out some of the most at-risk properties.  

Earlier this year, Alaska lawmakers passed a law pledging to help the low-lying, coastal communities of Kipnuk and Kwigillingok relocate in the devastating aftermath of Typhoon Halong. 

In the Midwest, the city of Cincinnati is also preparing for newcomers seeking climate refuge. Earlier this year, city officials circulated a blueprint to accommodate upwards of 500,000 new residents by 2050. The plan doesn’t market the city as “climate-proof.” Instead, it outlines ways to improve the quality of life for residents by increasing the availability of affordable housing and investing in public transportation — not unlike Illinois’ proposal. 

Illinois still has a long road ahead, according to Byran Jones, a geographer and professor at Baruch College in New York City, who has worked on landmark climate displacement and relocation reports. 

“It’s a daunting task, and the state of Illinois needs to recognize that,” he said. 

Part of the issue is that the term “climate migrant” is relatively new, and it has no universally agreed definition. Climate refugees also have no legal recognition under international law. Most modern-day protections for refugees are based on the 1951 Refugee Convention, which restricted the definition to someone “persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion.” 

Read Next ‘Every day it’s more barriers’: how the US is shutting out climate refugees Oliver Milman, The Guardian

Modeling climate change and migration independently is also difficult enough without trying to account for the two together. Migration alone is a complicated phenomenon driven by factors ranging from economic prospects to family ties, gender, and poverty, making it difficult to project even before adding the pressure of climate change.

But Jones said that Illinois officials can build on existing research by identifying what makes Illinois special — such as its vast agricultural sector and major metropolitan area — and modeling how it could influence migration patterns. The work, he said, will be time-consuming, but climate change is already affecting migration patterns, and the best way to limit disruptions is to plan for it. 

“It would be of tremendous service and certainly help to get the conversation started where there’s been limited conversation in this country, to this point,” Jones said.

Correction: This story originally misidentified Andres Correa.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Illinois passed the nation’s first climate migration law. The effort has languished since. on Sep 28, 2026.

It didn’t take long for prospectors to stake their claims on land in southeast Utah that was previously protected in Bears Ears National Monument.

On September 11, the first day the 1.2 million acres were opened up, miners filed 16 claims, two months after President Donald Trump shrank the monument by about 90 percent. All of the claims appear to have been filed by small-scale local miners with other jobs, small businesses, and an interest in uranium mining. But the rapid timing of those claims alarmed environmental groups like the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, and they expect more to come. 

“Hobby miners who want to go locate claims, play miner on the weekend, leave disturbance and pollution in their wake, that really damages the monument resources,” said Steve Bloch, an attorney for the environmental nonprofit.

George Schultz, an off-roading guide based in Moab, filed three claims in the Lockhart Basin. He said staking a claim is merely a “step” in the mining process and noted Bureau of Land Management Lands outside of monument protections are meant for multiple uses. 

Schultz declined to say which minerals he expected to mine at his claim sites, but his LinkedIn profile notes experience in uranium exploration.

Thirteen of the Bears Ears mining claims were filed by Kimmerle Mining based in Moab, a family business, including two modifications to the 21-acre Easy Peasy mine and 11 additional claims nearby.

Kyle Kimmerle, a managing member of the mining company, declined to comment. He was appointed to the board of directors of Urano Energy, a Canadian mining company focused on uranium, in 2024. He also apparently operates a Moab-based general contracting business and a tire shop. 

Bears Ears became a political ping-pong ball immediately after the monument was established by President Barack Obama during his final weeks in office in 2016, adding protections to 1.35 million acres of federal land in the southeastern corner of the state.

The next year, Trump slashed the monument’s footprint by about 85 percent. President Joe Biden restored the monument’s original boundaries and also slightly expanded it during his term, only for Trump to once again shrink its size this summer.

Read Next Trump administration advances a plan to open national forests to development Ellis Juhlin

Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in southern Utah, established by President Bill Clinton in 1996, saw a similar back-and-forth between the Trump and Biden administrations.

In the latest proclamation shrinking the monuments, Trump disbanded the tribal commission that managed Bears Ears along with the Bureau of Land Management. He also listed a “grab bag of minerals” the lands “may or may not” contain, Bloch noted, including silver, copper, molybdenum, lead, uranium, vanadium, and zinc in Bears Ears. Trump’s proclamation said that these minerals “create jobs, fuel prosperity, and are essential to important sectors of the economy of the United States.” 

“He was kind of flagging for people that he [and] the administration think that mining is a better use of these areas,” Bloch said.

Kimmerle was also party to a 2023 lawsuit challenging Biden’s restoration of Bears Ears’ boundaries in 2021. His company owns the Easy Peasy mine and dug up 30 tons of ore in search of uranium in 2018. Uranium prices weren’t high enough to make mining profitable at the time, however, and the mine stopped operations.

But with the rise of artificial intelligence and massive projected demands on the electricity grid, the Trump administration and Utah Governor Spencer Cox’s own Office of Energy Development have championed nuclear energy as a solution for powering the country’s future. Uranium is the main fuel for nuclear power.

Having his mining claims “locked up” in the Bears Ears monument made them “useless,” Kimmerle asserted in the 2023 lawsuit, and cost him up to $3 million in lost profits.

Kimmerle attempted to file his Bears Ears claims in July, shortly after Trump issued his proclamation slashing the monument’s boundaries. But the proclamation did not open the lands to new mining claims until September 11 — the same day San Juan County recorded both the Kimmerle and Schultz claims, according to records obtained by the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance.

The CEO and chairman of Energy Fuels also bought thousands of shares of his company’s stock just days before Trump downsized the monument. Energy Fuels operates the White Mesa Mill directly next to the former Bears Ears monument boundary, the last conventional uranium processing site in the country.

Utah was historically the third-most productive state for uranium, according to information from the Utah Geological Survey, with most of those minerals coming from the Colorado Plateau.

Bloch said he doubts there is enough uranium available to justify the expense and environmental damage of mining on lands removed from Bears Ears.

“It’s not like people weren’t poking around in the monument, locating claims, moving dirt, seeing what was there” in the decades before Bears Ears became a monument, and during the first Trump administration when it was originally shrunk, Bloch said. “There were no production-level mines that were established.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline After Trump opened Bears Ears land to business, prospectors swooped in on Sep 28, 2026.

In a modern five-story building in the center of Hamburg, Germany, technicians are preparing to install several new “racks” — gray metal casings that hold computing hardware — alongside the scores that already line the narrow, dimly lit corridors of the German Climate Computing Center, or DKRZ, one of the world’s largest repositories for climate simulation data. The new equipment will add about 5 petabytes of storage capacity to the 254 petabytes of data already stored here. One petabyte of data is equivalent to the storage space needed for roughly 200 million high-resolution images.

Under normal circumstances, the DKRZ’s mission is to provide computing power and storage to the German climate science community. But these new racks will serve a different and highly sensitive purpose: They will store backup versions of climate simulations from the other side of the Atlantic. The operation aims to ensure that essential work performed by U.S. scientists for the next major U.N. climate assessment, due in 2029, cannot be meddled with or compromised by the administration of President Trump, which has slashed funding for climate research, buried scientific reports, removed references to human-caused warming from dozens of government websites, and sought to prevent satellites from collecting key climate data. 

Leaders of German science organizations publicly cite these actions as their primary motivation for creating backups. The German Research Foundation, the country’s main science funding body, believes that the Trump administration could block European access to data and research findings stored in the U.S. “The deletion of data has also become a possibility,” said the foundation’s program manager, Kathrin Winkler, “and there is a risk that [data] could be manipulated to skew findings in a desired direction.” 

Trust in U.S. science policy has fallen to a low point in Europe, and fears of losing scientific data are mounting. The U.S. government quit both the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, and the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change in January, though U.S. researchers are still contributing to global climate science. To support them, the German Research Foundation in late 2025 set up a program, with a budget of $35 million, to provide a safe haven for permanently storing copies of U.S. data from public and open sources.

The DKRZ project is called CMIP7-ark — a lifeboat for the U.S. contribution to the seventh IPCC assessment. Six other projects for U.S. science datasets, with names like SHIELD and SEND (Secure Endangered Earth Data), have also received funding. Christopher Kadow, head of the data analysis division at the DKRZ, said, “We cannot simply accept that important contributions might be lost for technical or political reasons.”

The Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawai‘i is responsible for the oldest continuous record of atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations. The Trump administration tried to shut down the observatory last year.
NOAA

Data collections form the foundation of all empirical science. Climate, environmental, and biodiversity research relies on countless historical and contemporary datasets. Some of these collections, such as the iconic time series of atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations made at Hawai‘i’s Mauna Loa Observatory, have been ongoing for decades and are critical for tracking environmental change. (In 2025, the Trump administration tried to defund and close the observatory, but later Congress rejected its proposed cuts.)

While detailed datasets are essential for research, it is not standard procedure to back them up in alternate locations. Most scientific datasets are physically stored on hard drives or magnetic tapes at the universities or institutions where they are generated. One simple reason for this is that, until recently, the world seemed safe enough that scientists saw no need for off-site backups. Another reason is that transferring and storing such large amounts of information is complicated. Sending petabytes of data through the internet takes months, and renting faster fiber optic cables can be extremely costly. Often, the most cost-effective way to transfer large volumes of data is to put them on hard drives or far cheaper magnetic tapes and send them through the “sneakernet,” which means they are physically transported by car, plane, or ship. 

Still, the process is expensive and arduous, so most datasets have been kept in just one place. But in a world where political upheaval, cyberattacks, and armed conflicts are becoming more frequent, this practice is increasingly considered to be precarious. “If data is stored at only one site, there is a much greater risk of loss from events such as extreme weather or infrastructure failure,” said Eleanor O’Rourke, the U.K.-based director of the International Project Office of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project, which coordinates global climate models for the IPCC’s assessments. Climate simulations for the IPCC are now considered so critical that overseas repositories are thought necessary for all contributions.

Until recently, the idea that the U.S. science community would have to track or rescue lost datasets was unthinkable. After all, environmental data generated or funded by U.S. government agencies was paid for by taxpayers and generally remains in the public domain. Yet these datasets exist in physical forms at specific locations and require dedicated experts to maintain them, which makes them vulnerable to human interference, as well as natural disasters, technical problems like short circuits or battery explosions, and neglect. “The data repositories, digital asset management services, and preservation systems that ensure research data remains open and accessible are often overlooked — until they disappear,” data experts Jennifer Gibson and Kaitlin Thaney warned recently. 

Read Next Trump cut their climate jobs. This secretive network found them new ones. Sachi Kitajima Mulkey & Kate Yoder

One example of political interference is the recent threat to 300 federally funded datasets carefully built up over decades by NASA’s Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center, or SEDAC. Alex de Sherbinin, the former SEDAC manager, said the center was founded to “serve as a bridge between the Earth and social-science research communities,” integrating remote sensing data with information on human population, poverty, and infrastructure.

In early April 2025, de Sherbinin was shocked to discover that SEDAC’s datasets had been completely removed by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency team. It took immense efforts by various institutions, quickly scraping datasets from active servers while they were still operational, to secure the information and transfer it to a new host: the Harvard Dataverse Repository. Assumptions that U.S. government agencies will store scientific data long-term “are proving tenuous at best, given the anti-science predisposition of the current administration,” de Sherbinin said.

Numerous similar projects aim to relocate or duplicate datasets within the U.S. But the U.S. is far from the only country where data is vulnerable, and political interference is not the only risk.

Several research institutions around the world, including a multidisciplinary scientific research center in Croatia and an institute for industrial engineering in Germany, have in recent years been the target of elaborate hacking operations, in which intruders block access to files and demand money to restore them. Victims of cybercrimes rarely disclose publicly which files were targeted, but it’s clear that such attacks can affect scientific data collections.

And then there’s war. Russia’s attacks on Ukraine have not only caused mass civilian death and suffering but also immense damage to the country’s science. “Universities and research institutes have been targeted by Russian bombardments, and in some cases they were completely destroyed,” said Anastasiia Lutsenko, a Ukrainian researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition in Munich, whose work focuses on how her country’s science system is responding to the war. The Russians, she said, “know how much lasting harm they can inflict by attacking science.” 

Lutsenko cites the transfer of data and samples to secure locations as an important step. Even before Russia’s 2022 invasion, a German-Polish-Ukrainian collaboration helped digitize records of early meteorological observations — conducted between 1808 and 1880 at eight Ukrainian meteorological stations — and transferred them to a server at the University of Giessen, Germany. This eliminated the risk of losing valuable historical data in the war. A similar transfer took place after missiles struck near the servers holding Ukraine’s contribution to the Global Biodiversity Information Facility’s records in Kharkiv at the start of Russia’s invasion. 

The need for increased resilience — the ability to remain functional despite shocks and fully recover from them — was the focus of the American Geophysical Union, or AGU, gathering held in Berlin this March. There, nearly 100 experts, primarily from the U.S. and Europe, discussed how to respond to the Trump administration’s attacks on science. 

Read Next The plan to make climate science harder to erase Kate Yoder

The AGU represents more than 60,000 Earth and space scientists worldwide, and it has emerged as a leader in efforts to protect science and scientists from the Trump administration’s politically motivated attacks. When the administration refused to send U.S. experts to IPCC meetings in 2025, the AGU formed the U.S. Academic Alliance for the IPCC and nominated nearly 300 U.S. scientists to be authors of the IPCC’s next assessment. And in the summer of 2025, it launched its Data Resilience Project, a global initiative to rethink how science is organized.

AGU president-elect Ben Zaitchik believes that science is at an inflection point. “We have engaged in triage efforts to ensure data remains usable and accessible,” he said at the Berlin meeting. “But we clearly now have arrived at a moment where we must fundamentally reimagine data organization and maintenance for long-term viability and growth.” 

Creating backups of datasets and storing them in secure, distant locations was identified as a priority measure during the meeting, as was coordinating a global data community aimed at mitigating current and future risks. Such an effort was vital not only for scientists, an AGU spokesperson noted, “but also for engineers, public safety officials, health experts, policymakers, and a wide array of industries and communities globally,” which depend on scientific data. As a result of the Berlin meeting, a broad coalition of German national research centers was formed to offer safe storage for public domain information to scientists from the U.S. and other countries.

In addition to the DKRZ efforts, other initiatives have emerged across various fields. For example, the Senckenberg Natural History Museum, in Frankfurt, saves data from wildlife trail cameras in Ukraine and biodiversity data from war-ridden Yemen. “We want to ensure that biodiversity data remains usable even under crisis conditions,” a Senckenberg spokesperson said.

For such transfers, it is critical to store not only the data itself but also any specialized software required to read and analyze it. “We’re developing protocols and procedures for exchanging data, distributing multiple copies globally, and ensuring that the data remains analyzable indefinitely,” said Frank Oliver Glöckner, a professor of Earth systems data science at the University of Bremen and the head of Pangaea, a long-term data repository run by the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research and the university, both of which are preparing to integrate data from a U.S. climate research center slated for closure. 

Glöckner said he believes that President Trump “has, to a certain extent, done science a favor by making it clear how important it is to not just hoard data in one place but to truly share it with the global scientific community.”

“It would be ideal if, in the future, all climate data worldwide were connected via digital pipelines,” said Kadow, of the DKRZ. “That way, in the event of a threat, we could simply flip a switch to secure it elsewhere.” In the future, he said, this could also benefit researchers in Germany, where the AfD, an extreme far-right party that denies climate science, recently won a state election for the first time. “We don’t know what political shifts may occur in Germany,” he said. “We aren’t completely protected from risks or developments like those in the U.S. either.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Why Germany is building an ark for US climate data on Sep 27, 2026.

Jeff Hough did not pull any punches. What his fellow Republican county commissioners were about to do, he said to the packed courthouse, would violate America’s founding ideals. He quoted the Declaration of Independence to make his case. 

The three-person commission was about to vote on an ordinance that would ban utility-scale solar and wind development in Bannock County, Idaho. 

“We cannot deny the entire county the opportunity to exercise their property rights,” Hough said. “That goes against the principles this country was founded on.” 

A few minutes after Hough’s emphatic speech, the ordinance passed by a 2–1 vote. Hough was the lone dissenter.

Since that consequential vote in March 2024, Hough has become the chair of the county commission and has dedicated himself to overturning that ordinance. He will soon have a chance to make that happen. This fall, Hough and the other two commissioners are set to vote on an ordinance with new language that would allow the development of solar and wind, along with nuclear energy, in the county.

The Bannock County vote is a test case of whether — and how — a community can revisit its assumptions about the costs and benefits of clean energy and decide to welcome development it once swore off.

In 2025, nearly 1 in 4 U.S. counties had some kind of ban, moratorium, or impediment to clean energy development, up from 15 percent of counties in 2023. More than 60 percent of counties with bans are rural, according to a Daily Yonder and Canary Media analysis of data from USA Today and the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University. (The Daily Yonder defines “rural” using criteria from the U.S. Office of Management and Budget.)

Bucking this national trend and reversing the ban would put Bannock County back in play at a moment when Idaho needs all the energy it can get. Idaho Power, the state’s largest utility, expects electricity demand to grow by 1 gigawatt by 2030, a roughly 26 percent leap from current levels.

“The need to build stuff now is critical to Idaho’s economic future,” said Aaron Menenberg, the Idaho policy manager for Renewable Northwest, a nonprofit working to decarbonize the region’s grid. “We can’t afford to say no to anything.”

Bannock County, nestled in a valley a few hours north of Salt Lake City and 100 miles west of Wyoming’s Teton Range, is a prime location for new power plants. It’s home to the Populus substation, a critical juncture for getting electrons onto the grid and into Idaho, Utah, Wyoming, and the Pacific Northwest. Building new power plants near a substation is cheaper, and those savings can help bring down costs for utility customers. 

But the biggest opportunity for county residents, as Hough sees it, is not utility-bill savings: It’s economic development. In recent years, Bannock County’s population has grown far more slowly than Idaho’s. The county’s rural communities, meanwhile, are watching essential services disappear, and drought worsened by climate change is making it difficult for family farms to stay afloat. 

County Commissioner Jeff Hough poses for a photograph in Pocatello, Idaho. Otto Kitsinger

Hough believes renewables would bring money into the community. Bannock County’s neighbors offer local proof: In 2024, projects in nearby Power and Bingham counties generated $909,000 and $639,000 in tax revenue, respectively. Hough wants to send a message — to the renewables industry and others — that Bannock County is “open for business,” too. 

“Rural America is in a transition state,” Hough said from his office in Pocatello, the county seat, in July. “How do we make or help rural America … transition to this new way of life, so that they can thrive and prosper?”

Read Next As family farms decline and the climate heats up, farmers weigh what to do with their land Vivian La

Not everyone shares Hough’s vision of prosperity. In south Bannock County, Hough’s campaign has met with fierce opposition. Two camps exist: On one side are residents who are willing to lease their own land to solar energy developers or stand by their neighbors’ right to do so. On the other are those who are skeptical of renewables and believe that leasing land to developers is equivalent to selling out — many of them do, however, support nuclear.

Steve Criddle, a third-generation farmer and lifelong resident of south Bannock County, voiced his support for solar in 2024 before the ban passed. He described the situation today simply: “It’s confrontational.”

Bannock County’s moratorium on solar and wind stemmed from an unlikely source: Hough himself.

It was the fall of 2023, and he had just attended a conference of the Idaho Association of Counties in Boise.

Rebecca Falcon and her cat, Baby, in her living room in Downey, Idaho. Otto Kitsinger

At the conference, the Lava Ridge Wind Project, a 1-GW development slated for more than 57,000 acres of federal land in southern Idaho, dominated the conversation. County leaders from around the state were concerned about clean energy developers running roughshod over their communities. (President Donald Trump’s Interior Department canceled Lava Ridge in August 2025.)

The discussion got Hough thinking. Months before the conference, he had learned that several developers, including Chicago-based Hecate Energy and Moab, Utah–based Balanced Rock Power, were approaching landowners about solar projects in Bannock County.

When Hough returned from Boise, the cautionary tale of Lava Ridge fresh in his mind, he took action. 

“I realized that we didn’t have any kind of ordinance,” Hough said. “So I knew they’d come in and do whatever they wanted.”

On October 12, 2023, spearheaded by Hough, the county commissioners voted unanimously to enact a six-month moratorium on large-scale energy projects. The idea was not to ban solar and wind, but simply to give the county time to regulate the developments and ensure they balanced economic opportunity with responsible land stewardship. A public hearing on the topic was set for the following February, and the commissioners would vote on the future of the moratorium in March.

A building on the outskirts of Downey, Idaho, a rural community in south Bannock County. Otto Kitsinger

But Hough’s moratorium took on a life of its own. In the months that followed, a group of concerned residents organized to make it permanent.

Rebecca Falcon led the charge. A decades-long resident of Downey, a town in south Bannock County, Falcon had been approached by Balanced Rock in September 2023 about leasing a portion of her 80 acres for solar. Appalled, she turned the company away. But Balanced Rock’s proposed Harmon Solar Project (aka Harmon I), a 300-megawatt solar facility with a 1,200-megawatt-hour on-site battery energy storage system, included her neighbors’ land. Stopping it would take more than just Falcon saying no.

Falcon and another neighbor, Dez Hauser, who had also turned away Balanced Rock, encouraged other concerned community members to show up to the February 2024 public hearing about the future of the moratorium.

By the time the hearing rolled around, residents had sorted themselves into two groups: for solar and against it. The meeting attracted such interest that it was moved from the county courthouse to a local high school auditorium in south Bannock County. The venue was still packed.

More than two dozen speakers, nearly all of them from south Bannock County, showed up to say their piece. The vast majority testified in opposition to solar. 

Steve Criddle, a lifelong resident and farmer who considered leasing land to Hecate Energy for solar development. Otto Kitsinger

The commissioners convened the next month to decide what to do with the moratorium. Hough voted to repeal it. The other two commissioners voted to extend it. The commissioners framed it as an additional pause to study the potential effects of large-scale renewable energy development in the county. Yet as the controversy mounted through the spring and summer of 2024, the county declined to take further action. 

The ban stayed in place. Falcon, Hauser, and the other opponents had won. 

Dale Lish, a grain farmer based in Downey, was frustrated with the decision. Recently retired from a career at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Lish became familiar with solar while working on projects in Idaho and Washington through the Rural Energy for America Program. He spoke in favor of the energy source at the same hearing where Falcon and Hauser expressed their concerns. 

“The approach was just no to everything, which bothered me,” Lish said of the county’s decision, in a June interview on his property. “A straight-out ban — I don’t think that’s American. I think we, as private-property owners, ought to have a chance to do what we want within reason.”

The Old Downey Theatre, located on Main Street in the south Bannock County community. Downey has seen many services and small businesses close in recent years and currently lacks a grocery store or hospital. Otto Kitsinger

In 2023, Lish signed a one-year contract with Hecate to option about 400 acres of his land for solar development. Hecate declined to renew the contract in 2024 because of the county’s ordinance. 

The company has since pulled out of the county altogether. Representatives from Hecate did not respond to multiple requests for comment. 

For the two and a half years since that March vote, Hough has been beating the drum of private-property rights while also trying to educate the community on Idaho’s power needs and how they might be met in Bannock County.

While the commission won’t vote until later this fall on the new ordinance, which is still undergoing public review, at least one of Hough’s colleagues may have changed his tune. Ernie Moser, an incumbent who supported the ban in 2024, said in an interview in June that his fears about solar and wind are “not as big” as they were two years ago. Still, Moser, who’s retiring from the commission at the end of this year, stressed that he wants “to do it right” when it comes to revisiting the county’s energy policy. The other commissioner, Ken Bullock, declined to comment. 

Lytton Bastian signed a contract in 2021 to lease Balanced Rock Power his “least productive piece of ground.” Otto Kitsinger

May’s primary elections offered another indication of the county’s divided views. In the Republican primary, Hough faced a challenger from south Bannock County with an anti-solar platform, and though he won his race by 14 percentage points overall, his opponent captured 70 percent of the vote in Downey. No Democrat is running in the race, so Hough won’t face competition in the November general election. 

This year’s results mirror those of 2024, when former county commissioner John Crowder, who voted for the ban in March of that year, won big in Downey but lost to Ken Bullock, an ally of Hough’s. 

“In south Bannock County, it’s a supermajority of residents that do not want this,” Crowder said about solar development. 

Steve Criddle can trace his family’s roots in Downey back to 1876, when his ancestors first filed paperwork for water rights. His grandfather farmed grain, including wheat. Criddle’s father did the same. He’s kept the agricultural heritage alive himself, but because of a changing climate, grain farming is no longer enough to sustain him. 

Lytton Bastian and one of his children in front of the land that he has agreed to lease to Balanced Rock Power for the Harmon Solar Project. Otto Kitsinger

“We don’t get enough moisture anymore,” Criddle said. The fields where he grows crops without irrigation now hardly produce enough to make ends meet. He’s turned some of his land over to cattle grazing and has worked odd jobs over the years to hold on to the farm. 

On a sunny day in late June, Criddle drove me down a dirt road in his wife’s pickup truck. We were headed to one of his alfalfa fields. Three years ago, he said, the field produced some 800 bales of hay. This year, it produced only a dozen. 

“The drought’s been tough,” Criddle told me. Before last year, he’d never had to buy hay for his cows. This year, he’ll likely have to buy hay again, as more than 87 percent of the county is now experiencing extreme drought conditions after a winter with record-low snowfall. 

Lish, who also grows crops without irrigation, said that wells in the valley are limited. 

Transmission lines running across the valley in Downey, near Rebecca Falcon’s property. Otto Kitsinger

“That’s the Achilles’ heel of this area. There’s just a lack of groundwater, and then, of course, sparse rainfall,” he said. To accumulate enough moisture to grow wheat, Lish leaves his fields fallow every other year, allowing the soil to stock up on water. 

While Criddle and Lish have fought to hang on to their land over the past six decades, climate change and the loss of small-scale farming have reshaped their community. 

“You don’t have family farms anymore,” said Criddle’s wife, Keedrin. “The families can’t survive on a farm.”

As neighbors sold their land to corporations or moved out of Downey altogether, the town’s services have struggled to stay open. Over the years, the rural hospital closed, along with the town’s bank, pharmacy, movie theater, grocery store, and farm-equipment shop. Gone too are the dairies and granary. 

Rebecca Falcon points out the location of the Harmon Solar Project in Downey on a printed map. Otto Kitsinger

So when representatives from Hecate knocked on the Criddles’ door in 2023 proposing a lease for solar development, Steve and Keedrin heard them out. And while the couple didn’t sign a contract, they realized how such a lease could bring them a stable source of income, which they could use to hire help and reinvest in the long-term sustainability of the farm. 

The Criddles now have 11 grandchildren, with another one on the way. Steve thinks often about what he’ll leave for the next generations.

“I don’t want my kids to have to work this hard,” he said. 

Lish, who did sign a contract with Hecate, said the decision didn’t come easily. But, he added, it would have been “kind of irresponsible” to not consider the opportunity. With solar, the per-acre income projections were four to five times higher than with wheat alone, Lish said.

Solar panels in Power County, Idaho, which has seen substantial tax revenue from clean energy developments. Otto Kitsinger

“Lots of people have lots of opinions on what you’re going to do to your ground. I get that, and I can appreciate it. But we love this land too, and we’re not going to do something that’s going to be harmful,” Lish said. “We’re just looking at something that’s going to help us continue on to multiple generations.”

A few years earlier, Lytton Bastian, another farmer in Downey, had found himself contemplating the same questions. 

Bastian, who was born and raised in Bannock County, is a multigenerational farmer and father of six. He owns over 2,000 acres in the valley. Balanced Rock was interested in 840 of those acres adjacent to the Populus substation, a parcel Bastian currently uses as a gravel pit and as cattle pasture for a month each fall and spring. In 2021, he signed a five-year contract with Balanced Rock that includes modest quarterly payments. If the ban lifts and Balanced Rock installs solar, the payments would increase. 

Bastian’s neighbor is Falcon. She criticized his decision to lease to Balanced Rock, saying that he sold out to make more money than he could with agriculture.

Read Next More than 70% of new solar is being built in states that voted for Trump Austin Corona

“My biggest issue is that it’s all ag land,” Falcon said. “They’ll take the grain; they’ll take the hay; they’ll take the cattle; they’ll take it all.” 

Bastian said he only went through with the contract because Balanced Rock wanted his “least productive piece of ground.” An irrigated parcel would have been out of the question, he said. “Any normal farmer will not sell out good prime ground, because that’s hard to come by.”

At the February 2024 hearing at the high school, Bastian was among the few local farmers who spoke in favor of solar.

For Bastian, the stakes are getting higher. His contract with Balanced Rock is up at the end of this year. He thinks the renewal hinges on the county overturning the ban. Otherwise, he fears that the company could go the way of Hecate and look elsewhere.

“If the ban is lifted, the short answer is yes, we will move forward with our project,” said Katarina Bagri, a senior manager of development at Balanced Rock who’s leading the Harmon Solar Project, which includes Bastian’s land. “If there’s still a ban, there’s not many options, so we’ll just have to see what are the options left.” 

Linda Engle of the Portneuf Resource Council, an environmental nonprofit advocating to lift Bannock County’s ban on renewables. Otto Kitsinger

It’s not just individual landowners who stand to miss out if the ban continues. Property tax payments from solar development would also deliver revenue to help the town bring back much-needed local services, like a grocery store. Balanced Rock, anticipating that the ban would be lifted, offered the city of Downey $100,000 in direct payments last fall via a community benefit program.

If Balanced Rock is unable to build, the city will not receive this money. Hough addressed this directly in an op-ed published in the local paper in February. Counties with bans in place, he wrote, “will watch the projects — and the money — go elsewhere.”

Just outside Downey, the northbound portion of Interstate 15 stretches over a pass and opens onto a sprawling valley. Golden fields give way to towering peaks. It’s part of why Falcon, who grew up in Utah, moved to Idaho: The landscape is all mountains and rolling hills. The idea that solar panels could become part of the view is unthinkable. 

“I think, my goodness, why do you have to build it where we live?” Falcon said. 

Falcon and her husband, Rudy, bought their 80-acre parcel of land in Downey more than three decades ago. That was before the Populus substation was built within view of their house. Now, transmission lines crisscross their land and that of their neighbors. 

“It is the ugliest thing on this planet,” Falcon said about the substation. “I wish it wasn’t there.” 

Read Next A clean energy source is buried under the desert, but it takes water to use it Austin Corona

In the coming years, two new high-voltage transmission lines will join the existing lines running through Populus. They’re part of the yearslong Energy Gateway project being built by PacifiCorp, one of the largest utilities in the West. The goal is to improve the region’s power transportation and reliability as energy demand grows, said Jonathan Whitesides, a spokesperson for Rocky Mountain Power, a division of PacifiCorp that operates in Idaho. 

As much as Falcon doesn’t like looking at the substation, she understands the need for transporting power. Rudy works for the Bonneville Power Administration and is often on the road in Washington and Oregon building substations himself. But solar, to Falcon, is a different story. She said that she struggles with the amount of land it requires to produce power, a talking point that’s been popularized by the fossil fuel industry. 

She and Hauser, her Downey neighbor, have continued to speak out against solar since the 2024 ban. Hauser is active on community Facebook pages, and Falcon runs an email chain to share information with friends and neighbors. “I wasn’t willing to be quiet about it,” Hauser said. 

For years, the women have regularly filed public records requests with Bannock County and the federal government. That’s how they discovered that a month after Bannock County voted to maintain its ban, Balanced Rock applied for federal authorization for a second solar project, called Harmon II. The project, like Harmon I, was slated for 300 MW, and its application outlined solar and battery energy storage development on approximately 1,300 acres of public land administered by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management in Bannock County. Harmon II was proposed on land adjacent to Harmon I, which had stalled because of the county’s ban. 

In July, Bagri from Balanced Rock acknowledged that the company had been sitting on the application. “All of our focus is on the private land, [the] initial 300 megawatts. So once we make progress with that, we’ll figure out whether we want to pursue an expansion,” she said. In August, Balanced Rock officially withdrew its application for Harmon II.

In Pocatello, the county seat, residents are more favorable toward clean energy than those in Bannock County’s rural communities. Otto Kitsinger

Falcon and Hauser saw the second project as evidence of a lack of transparency from the developer. 

“The public has a right to know this will change this valley for 50 years,” Falcon said. “We will have left that mess to our children and grandchildren, because who’s going to guarantee who owns it in 50 years to decommission it and clean it up? You can’t make those kinds of guarantees.”

Bagri said the guardrails the county was considering in early 2024 — which are now baked into the ordinance the commissioners will vote on this fall — include provisions on decommissioning. The draft ordinance stipulates that in order to get projects permitted, developers must pay into a bond and submit a plan for the removal of all energy infrastructure at the end of the project’s lifetime. Bagri said these plans involve restoring project sites “back to as close to preconstruction condition as possible.” Today, project lifetimes range from 35 to 40 years, she said.

Still, for Hauser and Falcon, the feeling of disempowerment persists. Falcon pointed to other counties across the state, including Ada County, home to Boise, that have taken matters into their own hands to “put a limit” on development. In Ada County, solar is now prohibited on prime farmland, as defined by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. In southeast Idaho, some of Bannock County’s neighbors, like Caribou County, have also banned utility-scale solar, though others, such as Power and Bingham counties, have embraced it. 

“If you don’t build in the brakes, they will run you over,” Falcon said. 

E.J. Zita on her property in Robin, Idaho, where she keeps horses and has installed solar to power ranch operations. Otto Kitsinger

For all their ire toward solar, Falcon and Hauser see promise in nuclear energy. That puts them in the majority: In January, Bannock County surveyed residents to gauge public opinion on nuclear energy. Over 700 people responded, with 90 percent indicating favorable views toward the industry. 

Hough was surprised by the results. “I didn’t think our community could agree on anything,” he said.

Southeast Idaho is home to Idaho National Laboratory, or INL, which leads the nation’s advanced nuclear research. As part of the Trump administration’s embrace of nuclear energy, the lab was given priority in May 2025 to expedite construction of on-site microreactor test beds. The U.S. Department of Energy announced in July that INL will receive $60 million as part of a public-private partnership to use AI in nuclear energy development and operation. Buzzy nuclear startup Oklo aims to build its first fission reactor there. 

Plus, next door in western Wyoming, the Bill Gates–backed TerraPower is building what it hopes will be the country’s first utility-scale advanced nuclear power plant. The project, now under construction in rural Kemmerer, is expected to be completed in 2030 and will supply PacifiCorp with up to 500 MW of power. 

The excitement around INL and the TerraPower project leave many in Bannock County wondering when their big opportunity might come along. In July, the Bannock County commissioners hosted a public educational forum with INL to discuss how the county could get involved with small modular reactors (SMRs), microreactors, and nuclear manufacturing. 

Falcon and Hauser were both in attendance. They said they’d much rather see the development of nuclear energy in Bannock County than renewables. “If you can have 30 acres with a semitruck-size nuclear plant on it, why wouldn’t you do that? Why would you give up thousands of acres to solar?” Falcon said. 

E.J. Zita with her horses in Robin, Idaho. Otto Kitsinger

But the construction of SMRs and the broader nuclear revival touted by Trump remain highly uncertain prospects. 

Only two next-generation nuclear projects in the U.S. have received construction permits: TerraPower’s Kemmerer 1 and Kairos Power’s Hermes 2 reactor in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Neither has an operating license, however. 

Even if more projects obtain licenses from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission amid Trump’s push to streamline permitting, the SMR industry is far from a sure thing. Most companies are proposing first-of-a-kind projects rife with engineering and economic unknowns. There’s little to no supply chain for the type of fuel many SMRs are designed to use. The United States’ first fully licensed SMR project was canceled in 2023 over cost concerns. Only two commercial SMRs operate in the world today — one in Russia and one in China. 

Dustin Manwaring, a Republican state representative for Pocatello and a land-use and development attorney for Balanced Rock, is an ally of Hough’s. He said the commissioner wants to usher in a future where Bannock County leads Idaho’s burgeoning nuclear industry.

“[It’s] a worthy, noble thing to do,” Manwaring said. “If you take a step away, I don’t know how realistic that is. I love that he’s trying.”

In the near term, Hough recognizes that bringing nuclear power to Bannock County could take years. That’s why he doesn’t want to turn down other types of economic development — like solar and wind — in the meantime. “Everybody’s claiming nuclear is the future, which it is, but nuclear is 10 years away, maybe, so you’ve got to have something to help get you there,” Hough said.

Wade Egan, former chair of the county’s volunteer planning and development council, at his home near Pocatello. Otto Kitsinger

Some clean energy advocates, like Linda Engle with the Portneuf Resource Council, the region’s environmental nonprofit, are optimistic that the support for nuclear energy could help overturn the ban. “With the nuclear piece in there, hopefully it gets passed,” Engle said.

For all the community debate, the future of clean energy in Bannock County ultimately rests on the decision of the three commissioners. To Commissioner Moser, who in 2024 voted in favor of the ban, the choice isn’t black-and-white. 

Hanging on the walls in Moser’s office are two landscape paintings depicting Idaho’s wilderness. In one, a crisp blue stream is flanked by forest and purple mountain cliffs; in another, two people perch on a log, fishing rods in hand, waiting patiently for a catch. Moser has arranged the paintings, which were created by his now-grown son, so he can see them while sitting at his desk. On another wall, a second pair of paintings depicts the American Revolution. In a snowy forest scene, George Washington kneels beside a horse, praying.

Five days before the Fourth of July, Moser sat in his office, considering the paintings. “I love our country, the freedoms that we enjoy — 250 years is amazing,” he said. “God created this for us. I’m a steward now. I’ve been called to take care of it.”

It is this ethos that guides Moser, a south Bannock County native, as he contemplates the county’s new energy ordinance. 

Moser’s fears have to do with solar site cleanup and the risks of battery fires. Moser is not alone in these concerns; they are often cited by solar opposition groups, which point to rare but devastating instances of battery fires in California. Such anxieties are also spreading nationwide. In December 2025, the volunteer fire departments in Downey and Lava Hot Springs, another rural community in south Bannock County, sent letters to the county commissioners warning that they were unprepared to fight battery fires and would need special equipment and training to do so. 

Rebecca Falcon on her land in Downey, with transmission lines behind her. Otto Kitsinger

Bagri said Balanced Rock has tried to ease concerns about decommissioning and fire risk. During the numerous public hearings in 2024, representatives from both Hecate and Balanced Rock responded to the community’s concerns. “They addressed every one of those fears head-on, concisely with facts, and I thought they communicated very well,” said E.J. Zita, a rancher in Robin, Idaho, who’s had residential solar on her property for over a decade. But she said the anti-solar camp had dug in. “People didn’t listen; they just didn’t hear it.”

Despite his fears, Moser said he understands the weight of his responsibility. 

That’s why he’s tried to educate himself about Idaho’s energy needs over the past two years. In 2025, Moser visited a 40-MW solar project in neighboring Power County, a 20-minute drive west from Pocatello. The visit was organized for the Bannock County commissioners by Balanced Rock. The same year, Moser and Hough attended the energy academy hosted by Idaho Power in Boise and had conversations with Rocky Mountain Power. Language in Bannock County’s new draft ordinance requires energy developers to help local fire departments with training and equipment for dealing with battery fires. 

In June, Moser said he recognized that there’s a need for growth in Bannock County. He’s not the only one whose opinion has shifted. Wade Egan, the former chair of the county’s volunteer planning and development council, was “neutral” about the ban passing in 2024. Egan grew up next door to Dale Lish in Downey and now farms around 5,000 acres in the area. He has friends on both sides of the issue.

This time around, though, Egan is pro-solar. Echoing Hough, Egan said he sees it as a matter of property rights. “I really do believe the right to control and own personal property is as fundamental as speech,” he said. 

Moser, meanwhile, is focused on getting things right for future generations. Pointing to the landscape paintings in his office, he spoke about the Idaho wilderness that he wants his son, and grandchildren, to enjoy. 

“It’s not a personal choice. It’s hard choices,” Moser said. “We wake up at two o’clock in the morning thinking about them, and it isn’t a simple deal.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline A rural Idaho county banned renewables. It’s having second thoughts. on Sep 26, 2026.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dear Leslie,

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

— Generational Divide

Submit a question for a future Ask a Climate Therapist column

Dear Generational Divide,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In this with you,
Leslie

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

• How to deal with burnout on a burning planet

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Read Next Yes, this summer really was as hot as you think it was Matt Simon

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

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

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

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

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

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

Senators are looking toward the Capitol doors as they prepare to head home and campaign for the midterms. Meanwhile, a group of them has been scrambling to reach a deal that some analysts believe is critical to meet the country’s energy needs. 

A bipartisan group of senators says it has come closer than ever before to reaching a long-desired permitting reform bill, which would make it easier to build new energy projects. Many consider the issue urgent as electricity demand surges across the country, partly because of the tech industry’s massive build-out of data centers. 

“America’s energy demand is surging due to advanced technology and manufacturing, but our outdated federal permitting process remains a massive barrier to building the infrastructure we need to stay competitive,” said Marsha Blackburn, a Republican senator from Tennessee, in an August press release.

But the bill’s reception among the public is uncertain due in part to a PR problem: Data centers are a “toxic” subject for voters, according to Alex Lundry, president of D.C.-based public opinion research firm Redbud Consulting. In recent polls, Democrats, Republicans, and independents strongly oppose data centers being built in their communities. 

“If you phrase permitting reform as serving data centers, the polling results get way worse,” Lundry said. This is putting legislators, many of whom are up for reelection in November, in a bind: They want to make it easier to build more electrical infrastructure, which facilitates the data center boom, but don’t want voters to think it’s about data centers. 

The potential bill represents one of the few points of agreement for Republicans and Democrats in Washington, which is that energy permitting is broken.

Complicated studies on project impacts, lengthy reviews by different federal agencies, and legal battles from environmental groups and project opponents constantly delay all kinds of energy projects, industry leaders say.

Lawmakers have tried for years to reform the permitting process, most recently with the failed Energy Permitting Reform Act of 2024, which made it out of committee but never got a full Senate vote. Now, lawmakers from both parties say growing power demand has given the new attempt more momentum than any previous effort. The highest-ranking members of both parties in the Senate’s two energy-related committees are negotiating the bill’s language.

President Donald Trump has signaled he would stop blocking renewable energy projects in order to entice Democrats toward a deal on the bill. Democrats have worried that even if they make it easier to build renewables in law, the White House could continue making it impossible in practice, with some Democrats indicating that these worries have stalled the bill’s progress. 

“I appreciate very much what the Trump administration has done to move in this direction, but in order to brief colleagues on what this really means, we need just a bit more clarity on exactly what return to regular order for wind and solar projects looks like,” Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, the top Democrat on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, told reporters this week. “So that’s still to be done, but that I think can happen in fairly short order,” 

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democrat from Rhode Island, is one of four primary negotiators on a long-sought permitting reform bill in the Senate. Tom Williams / Getty

Politico reported that the senators intend to finish hammering out the bill after the midterm elections, when it could compete with other legislation for attention, especially if Republicans lose control of Congress.

The draft bill’s contents are not public, but stakeholders expect it would make building energy projects easier by reducing the potential environmental and social effects of a project that government agencies must consider when issuing a permit; loosening Clean Water Act and Endangered Species Act requirements that slow down transmission line and pipeline permits; and making successfully obtained permits less vulnerable to lawsuits after they’re issued. 

Such a bill would ease the path to construction for renewable and fossil fuel projects alike — especially solar and natural gas, the power sources with the most momentum. Solar power and batteries account for almost 80 percent of the new power generation expected to be built in the United States in 2026, while natural gas was the largest single source of electricity used in 2025, with projections for continued growth. Natural gas in particular has become a go-to power source for data centers, which are projected to use a lot of it in the next decade. 

Unsurprisingly, both the solar and the gas industries support permitting reform. Tim Pawlenty, president of the Solar Energy Industry Association, has said the country would be “constipated” without it.

A colossal surge in electricity demand has long been expected in the United States, even before Big Tech started its data center build-out. Americans are “electrifying” their lives with heat pumps, electrical appliances, and electric vehicles, all important for reducing emissions. The country has also squeezed most of the benefits out of energy-saving lightbulbs and other fixtures, which had kept electricity use flat by reducing power needs as they spread during the 2010s. Added to all that, the United States aims to draw more manufacturing to its shores, which requires electricity if successful. But data centers are accelerating and intensifying the power-demand spike, and straining grids and supply chains. Data center developers like Google have helped lobby for permitting reform.

Environmental groups like the Natural Resources Defense Council want to speed up renewable energy development without weakening bedrock environmental laws; NRDC executives have called for land-use plans that make it easier to site renewable energy projects while protecting local ecosystems. But Democratic legislators are considering compromising on environmental protections to support renewable energy and keep grids reliable. Meanwhile, Republicans, many of whom deny the severity of climate change, want to power new economic growth.

There is another reason legislators in both parties are keen to build, build, build: Many are anxious that hobbling data centers, and the AI systems they enable, will allow China to become economically and militarily stronger than the United States. Trump administration officials, legislators from both parties, and energy industry leaders speaking at the Clean Energy Week conference in Washington, D.C., in mid-September called on America to be “competitive” and “dominant” through energy build-out. 

“While Communist China cuts corners to get ahead, a mountain of red tape has America fighting the energy war with one hand tied behind our backs,” said Senator Rick Scott, a Republican, in a statement last month.

But Lundry, the pollster, warned that these sentiments are losing popularity among voters. “Being competitive with China used to be an effective message, but it isn’t anymore,” Lundry said. 

Instead, Lundry recommended framing permitting reform as a boost for clean power. Lundry’s firm, Redbud, found in a September poll that 71 percent of respondents agreed that “making renewable energy a bigger part of the country’s energy supply is the right move.” Bringing down energy costs is also likely a big win with voters, the survey showed, with 70 percent of respondents saying their energy bills have gone up in the last year.

Action in the other house of Congress makes it clear that lawmakers are well aware of the public’s antipathy toward data centers and fear about rising energy costs. A few days before senators said they were nearly finished with their permitting draft, the House of Representatives passed a bill calling on states (but not requiring them) to force data centers to pay for their own electricity generation. The bill is meant to help shield regular people from rising bills as data centers gobble up power. That bill is now stalled in the Senate, where some Democrats say it’s too soft-handed.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Gas, solar, and tech companies all want this bill. Will Congress pass it? on Sep 24, 2026.

President Donald Trump’s second term has been a nightmare for global cooperation on climate change. Trump has yanked the United States from the Paris climate agreement, attacked a global agreement on a carbon tax for cargo ships, and threatened countries with tariffs if they get too vocal about climate. 

This week brought a notable exception. World leaders at the United Nations General Assembly on Thursday approved a unanimous resolution on how to handle sea level rise, and the United States did not block it from moving forward. The passage of the accord represents a rare win for multilateralism, made all the more notable by the fact that the agreement includes references to climate change and climate aid for developing countries. 

The declaration could bring new momentum to efforts to help small island states, said Philip Davis, the prime minister of the Bahamas, in an interview with Grist.

“Our landmass is less than 3 meters above sea level, we are already seeing our land being swallowed by water, and the global effort to stem the carbon footprint has stalled,” he said. “I think this declaration will perhaps heighten the flow of action.”

For many low-lying countries, the implications of this agreement could be profound. Some island nations, like Tuvalu and the Marshall Islands, face almost total inundation over the next century as rising temperatures melt the world’s ice sheets and glaciers. It had never been clear what would happen to those sovereign nations. Under the agreement, those states will continue to exist as political actors even if their landmass disappears. They’ll also retain control over their old maritime borders, the stretch of sea extending from the coastline over which a country has exclusive control for fishing, energy development, and other military and economic activity. 

An aerial view of a strip of land between the Pacific Ocean and a lagoon in Funafuti, Tuvalu. The island nation of around 11,000 people is facing total inundation as sea levels rise. Mario Tama / Getty Images

The declaration is the result of a campaign by the Alliance of Small Island States, an influential bloc of low-lying island nations. Recent rulings from international legal bodies have helped affirm countries’ continued rights in the face of sea level rise, but the world’s leaders had never endorsed those rulings. 

“What was long treated as a legal ‘presumption’ is now an affirmation,” said Kamal Amakrane, the managing director of the Global Center for Climate Mobility and the climate envoy for Trinidad and Tobago, which helped initiate talks toward a global declaration. He noted that the world has agreed to preserve small islands “by consensus, in a year when consensus has been hard to come by.”

The document enshrines strong protections for states at risk of losing land. It holds that countries “can … maintain their maritime zones in the face of physical changes resulting from sea level rise,” a principle that the document calls a “presumption in favor of continued statehood.” That echoes a landmark climate ruling from the International Court of Justice last year, which held that “once a State is established, the disappearance of one of its constituent elements would not necessarily entail the loss of its statehood,” and which affirmed that international law requires countries to respect one another’s established borders.

The declaration will go a long way toward helping secure the future of small island states. For the Bahamas, protecting pristine ocean territory is essential to its tourism-driven economy. Davis said that the legal protections will safeguard his country and others against efforts to claim ocean territory for industries like deep-sea mining.

“This cannot be a free-for-all,” he said. “This cannot be might is right, and might takes what is there.”

The agreement also includes strong language recognizing that developed countries and historic emitters have an “urgent” obligation to provide “expanded access” to adaptation funds for small island states. This money could build seawalls or restore mangrove forests to protect coastlines from rising water, or it could help relocate populations from flood-prone areas. 

Prime Minister Philip Davis of the Bahamas addresses the United Nations General Assembly in September 2025. The Bahamas is seeking to protect its ocean territory from exploitation as its land disappears. Charly Triballeau / AFP via Getty Images

The declaration on its own won’t do anything to increase the money available to states like the Marshall Islands. Wealthy countries are currently giving poor ones about $130 billion a year in grants and low-interest loans for clean energy and adaptation, well below the level that experts believe is necessary to avoid catastrophic impacts. The world agreed in 2024 to reach $300 billion in annual aid by 2035, but it’s too early to gauge progress toward that target. Even then, much of that finance is in the form of loans, which are hard for many island states to afford — the Bahamas has billions of dollars of debt already, much of it stemming from damages after 2019’s Hurricane Dorian.

Even so, the mention of adaptation was welcome for island nations. Language about climate aid has been much contested at recent United Nations climate talks, with wealthy nations rejecting calls for trillions that could build flood walls and elevate sinking islands. Trump has gone further and rejected almost all international aid obligations, dismantling the U.S. Agency for International Development and pulling out of dozens of treaties. Yet neither the State Department nor other finance-averse countries rejected the language in the sea level rise declaration. (The State Department did not respond to a request for comment by publication.)

The reason for the cooperation by the United States is that legal protections against sea level rise are in every country’s interest, said Bryce Rudyk, a law professor at New York University who also serves as a legal advisor to the Alliance of Small Island States. The United States and other rich nations could lose land to sea level rise, and in some countries a shifting maritime border might jeopardize sovereign control over natural resources like oil, minerals, or offshore wind. 

“Everyone will lose land, and no one wants to lose ocean territory,” he said. “I think that’s why they were fine with making these relatively strong statements. … It’s in everyone’s interest to say, ‘We don’t want states just disappearing.’”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline UN passes first declaration on sea level rise, protecting island nations’ sovereignty on Sep 24, 2026.

Leevin Camacho was brushing his teeth one day last fall when his mother called. The water is contaminated, she said. Moments later she texted him a photo of a flyer issued by the local water authority. “Cancer risk,” it warned. “Increased likelihood of adverse impacts on the liver.” And in bold capital letters, “DO NOT DRINK.”

Camacho stared at the message. Water flowed from the faucets as his children, who were 10 and 12, gulped and spit, their faces reflected in the mirrors above the two bathroom sinks.  

Thumbing at his phone, Camacho googled dieldrin. The results included words like “organochlorine” and “insecticide” and “persistent environmental pollutant” that the United States had banned in 1987. Worse, high levels had been detected in his community’s water since at least 2008. “Our kids have been drinking the water,” he realized. “They’ve been cooking with the water for almost their entire lives at this point.” 

Camacho lives in Yigo, a northern village on the island of Guam. In time, he would learn that the U.S. Air Force base next to the well serving his house had reported “very high levels” of the pesticide, which it had listed as a “chemical of concern” since at least 1993. The Pentagon’s investigation, led by officials at Joint Region Marianas, is in its early stages. Local officials caution that although they suspect the base is a source of the pollution, there may be others because dieldrin was once widely used.

Leevin Camacho stands before the well serving his home in Yigo, which was found to have been contaminated with high levels of dieldrin. Anita Hofschneider / Grist

For Camacho, the news felt like the unfolding of a familiar story — one both predictable and infuriating.

Camacho had grown up as an Army brat, raised to think of the United States as Guam’s liberator from Japan during World War II. But over the past two decades, his understanding of that legacy has changed. 

“There are certain actions that the military takes that are contrary to the interests of the people who are from Guam and who live in Guam,” said Camacho, whose measured tone rarely changes, even when discussing something as emotional as what his children have been drinking. 

To Camacho, dieldrin is the latest reminder that the people of Guam continue to bear the costs of militarization. Unexploded ordnance litters jungles and lagoons. PCBs contaminate the fish. Pollutants taint the groundwater. The island and its people, who are U.S. citizens, have been inalterably changed by more than a century of American military presence.

Rear Admiral Brett Mietus, the head of Joint Region Marianas, the U.S. Navy’s regional command for Guam and neighboring islands, said he can’t speak to past pollution but the command is committed to protecting the environment and the people of Guam. 

“We spend a lot of time and we spend a lot of money making sure that we meet every U.S. regulation when it comes to anything that we’re going to do here,” he told Grist. “We’re meeting every letter of every law for environmental regulations and rules, and we’re doing that while we’re spending a ton of money to defend this island from the most advanced missiles in the world.”

A sign warns passersby not to enter a live-fire range in northern Guam. Anita Hofschneider / Grist

Today, Guam sits at the center of an ongoing military buildup, one that is reshaping the island even as it spreads across the Pacific. On Yap, more than 1,000 graves could be disturbed to make way for an American seaport and airfield. Indigenous leaders on Palau are suing to protect their lands. Less visible but just as impactful are the climate impacts of this expansion. The Pentagon is already the world’s largest institutional emitter of greenhouse gases, and its buildup will do more than contribute to the destruction of the region’s reefs, forests, and Indigenous sacred sites. It will accelerate the climate crisis that threatens the survival of Pacific islands.

The Pentagon often cites growing geopolitical tensions to justify the buildup. “The security environment in the Indo-Pacific is becoming more dangerous and defined by an increasing risk of confrontation and crisis,” Navy Admiral Sam Paparo, commander of U.S. Pacific Command, told Congress in April while seeking $122 billion for new weaponry to counter China, including offensive missiles on Guam. Three months later, a ballistic missile launched from a Chinese submarine flew near the island, underscoring why many on the island see America’s military presence as both a source of vulnerability and protection.

Sometimes it can be too much to think about. “I need to compartmentalize these things,” Camacho said. “That’s sometimes the only way that you can do this, because otherwise you will just be overwhelmed by the sheer amount of things that are out there, the amount of injustice that is out there.”

Read Next She governs a US territory. But she has no say in who mines its waters. Anita Hofschneider & Sachi Kitajima Mulkey

Those injustices collide in Yigo. Neighbors lost their homes earlier this year to typhoons fueled by warming seas. The Army Corps of Engineers will soon begin clearing bombs from a nearby dump site created in 1945. A new machine gun range just opened alongside a federal wildlife refuge to support the arrival of 5,000 Marines from Okinawa.

Then there’s the dieldrin contamination. “At some point,” Camacho said, “someone has to force them to do what’s right.”

Years before he became one of Guam’s leading critics of the military buildup sweeping over the island, Leevin Camacho was a young lawyer who liked to run before work. As his sneakers hit the pavement, the sun rose over Yigo. Roosters crowed and streaks of pink lightened the sky. The road, little used and lined with jungle brush, was one of the few places he could run without encountering stray dogs or morning traffic. He always ran at first light, before oppressive heat would reflect off the asphalt and the concrete buildings. It was the perfect start to what was often a day spent listening to depositions and wading through case law.

It was 2009. Camacho had returned to Guam after law school and was making more money than he ever had as a school teacher. “You dream of going to law school to provide services and to fight for people who don’t have the ability to fight, right? I’ll be honest with you, I lost my way,” Camacho said. “I had a bunch of student debt and I was satisfied just kind of going by day to day and just focusing on myself and my family.” 

The U.S. military was the backdrop to Camacho’s life but not something he worried about. He didn’t think much about the invasive tangan-tangan trees lining his running route, or the fact they had spread across Guam after the U.S. scattered their seeds to reforest the island following the war. On his morning runs, he was more likely to hear a military jet overhead than a native bird song. 

Leevin Camacho gestures at photos of his family in his home in Yigo. His grandparents lived through the brutal Japanese occupation of Guam and rarely talked about it. Anita Hofschneider / Grist

It hadn’t always been that way. Guam was among the first Pacific islands settled by seafarers from what is now the Philippines, who navigated by the stars and waves an estimated 3,500 years ago. The CHamoru people built a thriving island society known for its towering latte stones and swift outrigger sailing canoes.

That changed when Magellan landed on Guam in 1521. Spain claimed the island and the rest of the archipelago, beginning more than 500 years of ongoing colonization. The Spanish forced the Indigenous people to embrace Catholicism and banned their canoes. The United States took over the island from Spain in 1898 and imposed military rule. Naval governors burned CHamoru language books and blocked Indigenous efforts to gain U.S. citizenship. 

Then came Japan. Its invasion in 1941, on the same day it attacked Pearl Harbor, wasn’t unexpected. The U.S. Navy evacuated sailors’ dependents but left 20,000 CHamorus to endure nearly three years of forced marches and labor, malnutrition, and sexual servitude. More than 1,000 would die. When American forces retook Guam in 1944, they were welcomed as liberators. The island still celebrates Liberation Day every July. “I can’t remember a single discouraging remark that my maternal grandmother would have made about the U.S.,” Camacho said. But he does remember her saying of the Americans, “They saved us.’”

Nearly 18,000 CHamoru were relocated to Manenggon and other concentration camps before the Battle of Guam. Joe Rosenthal / AP Photo

That was the narrative that Camacho grew up with. Even the military taking his family’s land — part of a massive military land grab after World War II —  was accepted by his grandparents as the price of freedom from Japanese oppression. It wasn’t until Camacho learned that the Pentagon’s expansion plans would close his running route that he began to question what it meant for Guam to be an American military outpost. He pored over the buildup’s planning documents and was struck by the disconnect between how the military described its plans and the reality as he knew it. “They paid consultants a bunch of money. The comment was, ‘We drove by and we didn’t see any cars, so there’s no impact,’” he said of the running route. “And that was it.”

As Camacho read thousands of pages of documents, he saw the same pattern again and again. Proposals for bombing and machine-gun ranges, expanded undersea explosives, and projects that threatened forests and ancient latte stones were accompanied by detailed assessments that minimized what they would mean for the islands.

Read Next For Indigenous peoples, conflict means so much more than war Te Aniwaniwa Paterson

On a flight home from Honolulu, Camacho was reviewing the environmental analysis of the buildup on his laptop when one passage stopped him. The proposed influx of 80,000 people would leave too little water for fire suppression, particularly in Yigo. The solution, according to the document, was to send surplus water from Andersen Air Force base to civilian communities. “That was the first time I just kind of lost it, just how stark it was,” he said. “The aquifer is our aquifer, right? Like, you’re taking our water for your people and then we don’t have enough and they’re going to divert whatever you’re taking from us that is extra.” 

Camacho and other concerned residents started We Are Guåhan, a community group focused on raising awareness about what was happening. (Guåhan is the CHamoru word for Guam.) He sued to stop a machine-gun range from being built at Pågat, an ancestral village that’s home to millennia-old latte stones. Their campaign protected the site and helped persuade the Navy not to expand its landholdings on Guam. The Department of Defense also reduced the planned transfer of Marines from Okinawa from 9,000 to 5,000. 

But it didn’t stop the buildup. The Pentagon activated Marine Corps Base Camp Blaz six years ago, and opened a new machine-gun range alongside a federal wildlife refuge just north of Yigo. “It’s so heartbreaking,” said Lola Leon Guerrero, another member of We Are Guåhan. (She is not related to Governor Lou Leon Guerrero.) “All of that effort and it still happened.”

The yellow excavator scraped away at the pale rock that lies beneath Camp Blaz under the hot May sun. A limestone forest had already been bulldozed to make way for a new machine-gun training range. A sign next to the fence read, “Guam National Wildlife Refuge” with an arrow pointing to the left and a picture of a turtle. 

“Wow,” said Moneaka Flores, one of Camacho’s clients in the lawsuit he filed against the Navy to protect the island’s endangered species. She stopped at the side of the road to watch the digger work. It had been months since she’d been here, and they’d cleared so much more forest than she realized. 

Busy construction vehicles are the most obvious sign of the Pentagon’s buildup. Beyond the new Marine Corps base, the Department of Defense is upgrading the island’s port and strengthening its infrastructure to support docked nuclear submarines. The agency is also pouring $8 billion into 16 new missile defense sites. After World War II, the Navy took two-thirds of the island. “Whatever made most sense for the military, the island was theirs for the taking,” said Michael Clement, a historian at the University of Guam. “Everyone was in refugee camps. They had the bulldozers. They built where they wanted to build. And then a year or two later, they started saying, ‘OK, where are we going to put the natives?’”

Construction on Camp Blaz proceeds in May 2026. Anita Hofschneider / Grist

The military later relinquished some land but still owns at least a quarter of the island. “If you look at where the villages were set out in 1946 and ’47, it’s the land the military didn’t need. So that’s why Guam is kind of weird to drive around, right?” Clement said. “To go across from Tumon to Mangilao, you’ve got to go around Tiyan and the airport. It wasn’t redesigned for civilians. It was redesigned for military purposes.” 

Even the island’s main highway, the six-lane Marine Corps Drive, was designed for the military, not the people. It connects Andersen in the north and Naval Base Guam in the south.

Governor Lou Leon Guerrero is among the many who welcome the financial boost that comes with the military’s investments. “They’re spending billions on their readiness plan,” she said. 

One in nine Guam residents joins the armed forces. Last year, a local economist told the Legislature that every dollar the Pentagon spends adds 75 cents to the island’s GDP and called the buildup an “unprecedented economic opportunity.” The funding infusions have helped Guam become far more commercialized than other Pacific islands, with multiple shopping malls, numerous high-rise hotels, and a growing real estate sector. 

Leon Guerrero thinks activists should pursue political self-determination instead of resisting the buildup. “These guys can yell and scream all they can,” she said. “They’re going to do the military buildup regardless, right? So why don’t we work with them and see how we can benefit?” She wants the Department of Defense to help harden local power lines and fund a hospital. “Our hospital cannot absorb mass casualties,” she said.

There are about 20,600 military personnel on Guam, a figure that’s expected to reach 29,400 by 2037. While the military is investing in additional housing both on and off base, the population influx will almost certainly continue pushing up construction and housing costs. The median home price on Guam was $216,100 in 2010, when Camacho sued the military to protect Pågat. Today it is approaching half a million dollars.

Andersen Air Force base in northern Guam is among the sites of an ongoing U.S. military buildup that stretches across the Pacific. Anita Hofschneider / Grist

Fear of another war also fuels support for the buildup. “We’ve always been a target regardless, because of where we are geographically located,” Leon Guerrero said. Guam is the largest island in the Micronesian region of the Pacific. It’s just north of the equator, a three-hour flight from Tokyo, and has a deep-water harbor that supports naval submarines. “We were a target for Spain. We were a target for the U.S. We were a target for Japan.” She worries about China, which has a ballistic missile nicknamed the “Guam Killer.” “If I’m going to have a choice, I’d rather be under the U.S. than China.”

To Flores, more military presence on Guam heightens the risk of war. In March, President Donald Trump’s decision to bomb Iran prompted military bases on the island to raise their threat level. She feels that, as in World War II, the Indigenous people of Guam are expendable in a broader contest between empires. “What are they really here to protect if there’s so much harm taking place? Are we just collateral damage?” she said. “Because just looking at our history of being occupied by war, being used for weapons testing, it feels like the message is that we don’t matter. Our future doesn’t matter. Our survival doesn’t matter.”

Rear Admiral Brett Mietus, at Joint Region Marianas, said he understands such skepticism. “If I was born and raised on Guam, I would have similar concerns,” he said. But he believes the militaryʻs investment proves the opposite of what Flores fears. “Choice A is not to defend Guam against ballistic and hypersonic missiles,” he said. “Or the other choice, which is the one that we’ve made, is to spend billions of dollars to defend Guam from hypersonic and ballistic missiles. And so from my perspective, that shows a commitment not just to the military things that are on Guam, but also to the people of Guam.”

Yet Flores is far from the only Guam resident who feels expendable. When Pedro Blas, the vice mayor of Yigo, first learned about the dieldrin in his village’s water, his first thought was of his autistic sister. “All of us growing up, all our lives, our water bottles, we fill it up with the tap water, put it in the fridge: That’s our cold water,” he said. “Because we were instilled in our heads our whole lives: Tap water is OK.”

Pedro Blas, the vice-mayor of Yigo, has been hearing from many constituents who are concerned that long-term exposure to dieldrin could have caused cancer in their families. Anita Hofschneider / Grist

So far, Camacho’s firm has helped file more than 700 claims, worth $360 million, against local authorities on behalf of village residents. He hopes that pressures the island to seek compensation from the Department of Defense. “I’m so glad [Camacho] got involved,” Blas said. “We’re not letting it get swept up under the rug.” Mietus noted that Joint Region Marianas has not found high levels of dieldrin in military wells, and the Pentagon is working with local officials to determine the source of Yigoʻs pollution.

Still, Blas wonders why the investigations at Andersen Air Force base are occurring quietly behind the fence, while he hasn’t seen anyone in uniform hand out water to his constituents. “It’s beautiful to be a U.S. citizen, don’t get me wrong,” he said. “But if you really take a step back and look at exactly the impacts that [the military] brought to us over the years, we should have a say in whether or not these practices are going to happen to our island. Even just being called the ‘tip of the spear’ —  we’re susceptible to any war that they’re going fight, and we just have to be OK with it.

“This contamination they bring to our island, it kind of just shows how much they really care about our people,” Blas continued. “And frankly, I think they look at Guam as real estate rather than, ‘Those are our U.S. citizens. Those are our people. Those are Americans.’”

The men and women gathered in the p’ebay, the traditional open-air Yapese meeting house with a triangular tin roof, and settled quietly on the tiled floor along each wall to listen to Camacho speak. A projector, perched above a cardboard box stacked on top of a red cooler, cast his PowerPoint presentation onto a screen. Slide after slide described the American military’s plans. A cool breeze fluttered the fronds on the palm trees surrounding the p’ebay.

It was April in the village of Tamil on Yap, one of four states in the Federated States of Micronesia. Camacho’s dieldrin work was far from over, but he’d put that aside when the island state’s government asked him to help dissect a Navy proposal to expand the seaport and airport. Tamil was one of several villages he visited to explain the plan. 

Over the past decade, Camacho has become one of Guam’s leading environmental lawyers. “The one thing about Leevin is he shows up. Again and again,” said Julian Aguon, a human rights lawyer on the island. “And he brings with him not only deep competence but a deep sense of responsibility to the people and places he serves.”

“Regulatory agencies will bend over backwards to not pick a fight with the military because of the mission and the protection and all of that,” Camacho told Grist. “And ultimately, it’s people who aren’t lawyers who end up paying the price.”

He was elected attorney general in 2018 for one term and led a historic lawsuit to force the Navy to clean up a hazardous landfill it had abandoned in the 1940s. A lower court dismissed the suit, but the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled in 2021 that it could proceed — a decision that eventually prompted the federal government to pay Guam $48.9 million.

The newly opened U.S. Marine Corps Camp Blaz in northern Guam is expecting an influx of 5,000 Marines from Okinawa. Anita Hofschneider / Grist

He has sued the Navy to protect endangered species harmed by the construction of Camp Blaz. “For too long, our island has been treated as a sacrifice zone,” he said.

The risk of Guam falling into enemy hands, as it did in World War II, is so tangible that America’s Pacific military strategy involves spending billions of dollars to spread airfields, seaports, and training ranges across the region to remain competitive in case Guam is once again occupied by enemy forces. The U.S. is invoking decades-old agreements with the peoples of the Republic of Palau, the Northern Mariana Islands, and the Federated States of Micronesia to expand its presence on those islands and upgrade World War II-era seaports and airfields. Under President Joe Biden, the U.S. even signed a new agreement with Papua New Guinea to use its seaports. 

On Yap, the U.S. military wants to dredge the lagoon, including two-thirds of an acre in a marine protected area, to create a seaport. The plan would remove enough sediment to fill 334 40-foot shipping containers and impact sea life, Indigenous fishers, and divers. “Plume spreads up to 800 m from disposal sites,” Camacho’s presentation noted. “Long-term reef decline and impact on reef species (fish, clams, sharks, turtles) not assessed.”  

The Navy also plans to expand the airfield to facilitate two military exercises, each two weeks long and involving up to 200 personnel, per year. The project could disturb more than 1,000 graves, including the 19th-century tombs of Chief Orothin and Chief Yaloth. Camacho noted that the military’s draft plan acknowledges a “significant adverse impact” to these cultural sites and doesn’t commit to rebury the dead or preserve ancestral sites.

Yap has a population of just about 11,500, compared to Guam’s 170,000. Although Yap is less than a 90-minute flight from Guam, it has none of the military bases, six-lane highways, or big-box stores that define the American territory. “In some ways, this will be more transformative for Yap State than the buildup was for Guam because there’s no military presence there today,” Camacho said. On Guam, he said, “It’s normal to hear a fighter jet flying over. It’s normal to see a bomber or C130. They don’t have any of that there. So this would be such a radical change.” 

One month after Camacho visited Yap, dignitaries from across the Pacific gathered in an air-conditioned conference room at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Guam. The hotel sits on a long stretch of white sand beach and looks out over Tumon Bay, where high levels of dieldrin have also been found in fish samples. 

Once everyone had taken a seat, the lights dimmed and the glow of a projector filled the room. A screen showed a map of military activity across the western Pacific: not just bases, but training exercises and the routes of research vessels searching the sea floor for the critical minerals essential to many military technologies.

Political leaders from across the Pacific listen to presentations on the growing military presence in their region at a conference in Tumon, Guam. Anita Hofschneider / Grist

“We’re faced with the reality that we’re part of a larger strategic vision,” conference organizer and former Guam congressman Robert Underwood said. “All of you are in someone’s strategic plans whether you know it or not, whether you like it or not. All of us are in someone’s strategic plan.” 

In Palau, Indigenous people are fighting the Pentagon’s expansion in local courts and international forums. Leaders of Angaur, one of 16 states there, filed a lawsuit accusing the U.S. of violating environmental rules and its treaty with the island nation when it cleared land for a radar facility. Indigenous chiefs from Peleliu are suing to prevent a land transfer that would support American goals. Indigenous Palauan youth filed a complaint at the United Nations alleging the U.S. military violated their right to free, prior, and informed consent to what happens on their land.

In the Northern Mariana Islands and the Marshall Islands, the U.S. military presence that started with World War II is ramping up. On Tinian, the Marine Corps is building an airfield and two live-fire training ranges, one of them for explosives. The Navy is extending its undersea sonar and explosives training across half a million square nautical miles, along with bombing practice on the neighboring island of Farallon de Medinilla.

A U.S. Navy MH-60S Seahawk helicopter assigned to Helicopter Sea Combat Squadron 25 refuels during forward arming and refueling point training at North Field, Tinian, Northern Mariana Islands, in 2013.
Lance Cpl. Antonio Rubio / U.S. Marine Corps / Department of Defense

Some hope the military’s regional expansion will enable other island nations and territories to experience the economic growth seen on Guam. But others worry about the pollution and cultural loss, and other risks that come with being a U.S. military stronghold. 

In public comments written in response to the Navy’s proposal, Jennifer Dugwen Chieng noted that Camacho’s fight to have the Navy address hazardous waste at Ordot Dump went all the way to the Supreme Court. “Additionally, there are sacred private lands and culturally significant ecosystems that no amount of money can ever replace,” she wrote. “The desecration of graves violates the general principles of respect for burial sites and human remains upheld in Yap’s traditional custom.”

She’s also worried about becoming a target in the next war. Like Palau, Yap was held by the Japanese during World War II and experienced heavy bombardment by the United States. Since then, the Pentagon hasn’t paid much attention to the island state — until now. 

“With rising tensions in the region between the U.S. and China, what does the DoD envision combat to look like?” Chieng wrote. “Will it be based on a WWII tactic of island hopping? What is the likelihood of the island becoming a battlefield if tensions were to escalate into war? Yap will be caught in the crossfire. Does the DoD intend to protect and defend the people of Yap, and if so, how does the DoD intend to do that?”

Mietus told Grist thereʻs always a level of risk in being allied with the U.S. during a conflict.

“Sometimes people believe it’s a plan to evacuate U.S. service members or family members if a war starts — there is not,” he said. “I’m in this, living in the same risk as every other person here.” He’s pushed back against Guam lawmakers’ calls for the Defense Department to fund bomb shelters for civilians, contending that the existing military projects like strengthening Guam’s harbor are a better investment. “Oftentimes people see this Department of War as kind of having an infinite amount of money, and we don’t.”

Unlike Guam, Palau and the Federated States of Micronesia are independent countries that have achieved the political self-determination that Indigenous CHamoru on Guam have been denied for centuries. 

Camacho wants a plebiscite to determine Guam’s political status. He believes the island’s status as a U.S. territory — without a vote for president or voting representation in Congress — isn’t working. But while some of his colleagues in We Are Guåhan have focused on independence, Camacho sees his own role as making the government answer for its actions.

“Unless someone’s forcing the issue,” he said, “the Department of War isn’t going to voluntarily agree to be held accountable and agree to do all the things that it’s supposed to do.”

That’s why he feels compelled to seek reparations for the dieldrin contamination. So often, toxic pollution lingers on Guam and no one takes responsibility. “As a lawyer, I don’t want to fall into this situation where we’re like [the village of] Malesso, and they show up every year and say you still can’t eat the fish. That’s just not satisfactory,” he said. 

One question that drives him is what Guam will be like when his kids are grown. Will they be able to afford living there? Will they want to, given how much the island is changing? It’s a constant effort to find the right balance between working toward their future and being there for them day to day.

“I’m going to try to do the best that I can to protect my island and to have a safe place for my kids to want to live on Guam,” Camacho said. “But also be there for them and help them get better dribbling with their left hand and be good human beings.” Even though Camacho moved a lot growing up, his family never considers leaving. “That is not a choice,” he said. “Guam is home — there is nowhere else we are going to be.”

toolTips('.classtoolTips3','Carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and other gases that prevent heat from escaping Earth’s atmosphere. Together, they act as a blanket to keep the planet at a liveable temperature in what is known as the “greenhouse effect.” Too many of these gases, however, can cause excessive warming, disrupting fragile climates and ecosystems.');

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline As the Pentagon expands across the Pacific, Guam offers a warning on Sep 24, 2026.

Last year was a tough time for anyone who studies climate change for a living. The United States, once respected around the world for its sprawling investments in science, suddenly reversed course. Shortly after President Donald Trump began his second term in office, his administration set to work slashing funds for America’s scientific institutions, scrapping billions of dollars in research grants and firing thousands of federal employees at agencies ranging from the Environmental Protection Agency to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. 

People were “in shock,” said Aparna Shrivastava, who was a senior climate official in the Biden administration. In private chats, she found herself in conversation with dozens of experts who had recently lost their jobs or funding, but who wanted to continue studying the rapidly warming planet or trying to prevent its worst effects. But the sudden cuts left many with few options. 

All of them were trying to figure out, “What could we possibly do to address this?” Shrivastava said. Eventually, the conversations started happening in person. At a workshop convened by the Aspen Global Change Institute in Colorado last July, a group of more than 30 climate experts landed on a possible solution — one that would help fund new jobs for laid-off colleagues across the country. Today that idea is a full-fledged initiative, backed by tens of millions of dollars, with Shrivastava at the helm. They call themselves the Climate Reserve, and they’re just now taking their operation public. 

Climate Reserve functions through a network of experts with a mission to identify the most critical climate work left in limbo and find a place where it can continue, even without federal support. Sometimes that means placing a climate researcher with an organization focused on the environment or climate; other times that means finding a new home for projects that the government cut from its budget, Shrivastava said.

So far, Climate Reserve has funded more than two dozen new positions for climate experts. These people, known as their fellows, are now working across the U.S. at nonprofits such as the Environmental Protection Network and institutions like the University of Minnesota. The group has also resuscitated a number of federal projects, such as EJScreen, an online map that shows which American communities experience the worst pollution. There’s international work happening too, such as a project mapping sea level rise on islands in Panama, and another measuring greenhouse gas emissions in five African countries. 

And there’s more that the group isn’t willing to share publicly. The hope is that a measure of secrecy will keep some of its fellows and projects out of the crosshairs of the Trump administration — which has been notably punitive with some of its funding cuts. After all, many of those working within the network still rely on federal funding in some capacity, or plan to apply for federal funding in the future. 

Now that Climate Reserve is making progress, its leaders are willing to take the risk of being more open about their efforts to attract more funding for fellows. So many people are still out of work, Shrivastava said. Even the Lyft driver in Washington, D.C., who drove her to the airport to meet potential funders this spring happened to be a laid-off climate and energy expert.

The name “Climate Reserve” is meant to evoke a nature reserve as well as the Army Reserve — “the emergency group that you can call up to bring people together,” said Brittany Janis, executive director at the nonprofit Open Environmental Data Project, who was involved in the group’s discussions from the start. Her organization recently partnered with Climate Reserve to hire a former senior advisor for environmental justice programs in the Biden administration to keep the now-independent EJScreen tool up to date.  

Funding these positions is meant to provide a kind of “parachute” that can help former federal workers, along with all their specialized knowledge and the relationships they’ve built, land in a safe place, Janis said. “How can we be really thoughtful about parachuting people to the right places so we aren’t losing all that institutional knowledge and that really critical basis for climate action in the U.S.?”

Read Next The plan to make climate science harder to erase Kate Yoder

Unlike a traditional hiring or grant-funding system, the group wants to emphasize collaboration rather than competition, according to Ben Poulter, who leads an emissions-monitoring program at Spark, a climate solutions nonprofit that is in the process of hiring two Climate Reserve fellows. “We realized early on that the changes that were happening could fragment the community even further as resources became scarcer,” he said. “The whole point of Climate Reserve is that we’re all in the same boat and we need to work together.”

This philosophy — dubbed “movement generosity” by several of the group’s founders — means focusing on the broader goals of the climate movement and trying to share resources and expertise across organizations to achieve them. For instance, a single expert funded by Climate Reserve could split their time between two organizations, allowing them to coordinate on similar projects and reduce redundancy. 

Poulter, who previously coordinated greenhouse gas monitoring efforts between federal agencies, now leads a program tracking how ecosystems that are especially sensitive to warming, like wetlands, will release more planet-warming emissions as temperatures rise — a feedback loop that is often overlooked by climate models. One of the fellows working at Spark will coordinate these measurements across five African countries, while another will translate that science into policy recommendations for those countries, Poulter said. 

There’s also a lot of vitally important but “unsexy” data-crunching projects being saved by Climate Reserve, said Sonia Wang, who leads the Center for Climate and Environmental Data at the Data Foundation, a nonprofit think tank. It’s an important, and often invisible, part of understanding the realities of climate change. For example, two groups using satellites to detect methane emissions might end up with different estimates if they aren’t using the same wind speed models. 

Sorting out these discrepancies is “not the flashiest thing, but when you look under the hood, this is really what’s necessary,” Wang said. Her organization has taken on four Climate Reserve-funded experts to help with these kinds of projects that make it easier for decision-makers and scientists to trust climate data, she said.

By the end of this month, Climate Reserve will have placed 50 climate experts in new roles, and it plans to triple its funding by the end of next year, Shrivastava said. And if federal support for climate research eventually returns, its organizers hope the network they are building can make the entire field more collaborative and resilient to political shifts in the future. “We are not at all looking to replace the government. We’re just stepping up to try and meet some of the needs here,” Shrivastava said.

Climate change may be politicized in the United States, but its impacts “affect us all,” said John Balbus, a Climate Reserve fellow who spent 15 years in the federal government. Most recently, he was a senior official in the Department of Health and Human Services coordinating projects to address the health effects of climate change, such as seasonal forecasts for extreme heat and wildfire smoke. He is now continuing that work at the Federation of American Scientists and as an independent consultant.

The climate and health experts that Balbus once worked with would “do anything in their human power” to continue living a life of public service, even without a government job, he said. And the need for this kind of work, he added, isn’t going away. “The need is only going to get stronger every year.”

toolTips('.classtoolTips7','A powerful greenhouse gas that accounts for about 11% of global emissions, methane is the primary component of natural gas and is emitted into the atmosphere by landfills, oil and natural gas systems, agricultural activities, coal mining, and wastewater treatment, among other pathways. Over a 20-year period, it is roughly 84 times more potent than carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere.');

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Trump cut their climate jobs. This secretive network found them new ones. on Sep 24, 2026.

Indigenous lands from Canada to Ecuador to Nepal are increasingly being hit by catastrophic storms, fires, and floods. Worse, these climate disasters often come one after the other as overlapping crises rather than isolated incidents. Still, despite the ongoing destruction, Indigenous peoples continue to prove that they have the knowledge and skills to respond, if only global powers will let them. 

Even amid growing recognition by scientists and policymakers of the power of Indigenous expertise to respond to climate change, the key role that Indigenous governance plays in those knowledge systems has not received as much respect.

That’s according to a new report from Land Is Life that highlights the global success of Indigenous climate adaptation and resilience amid escalating crises. The report also says supporting Indigenous governance through legal recognition, financing, and partnerships — none of which are occurring on a large scale — is the best way to reduce climate disaster risk worldwide. 

“We show that it’s not that they are only the most impacted, but they are already implementing effective solutions,” said Luisa Castañeda Quintana, the executive director of Land Is Life, a global nonprofit dedicated to Indigenous self-determination. “When it comes to adaptation, we don’t really need to create new structures or systems. We just need to see what is working.”

The report adds to an expansive body of research showing that Indigenous self-determination, land stewardship, and cultural knowledge and practices are proven climate solutions. The report, released today, offers dozens of examples. In Kenya, Indigenous Endorois and Tugen women cultivated drought-resistant varieties of sorghum, millet, and other key foods that provided some of the region’s only harvests in years with severe drought. In Brazil, Coordination of Indigenous Organizations of the Brazilian Amazon — the nation’s largest regional Indigenous network — helps organize fire management and response. It also provides training and mobilizes response teams. 

The report is based on detailed case studies and more than 200 survey responses from 46 countries spanning six ecosystems: forests, mountains, drylands, freshwater systems, grasslands, and coastal. Castañeda Quintana said a broad global study was essential to show climate change and environmental disasters are not limited by national or even ecological boundaries, and responses to them must transcend borders. It also is essential to recognize that disasters do not arrive one at a time. More than 80 percent of survey respondents said that they face two or more at once, and over 90 percent reported rising frequency. 

For example, in 2019, the Kichwa People of Sarayaku in the Ecuadorian Amazon faced devastating floods along the Bobonaza River, destroying crops and homes. Daniel Santi, who is the president of the community, which numbers roughly 1,600 and inhabits more than 500 square miles, said that his people were able to respond effectively because of their strong governance structures that were already in place. In other words, self-determination and governance allowed them to decide how best to prepare for, and respond to, a crisis. “This organization makes it possible to confront any problem and any threat,” Santi said. 

The report argues that the combination of Indigenous governance and knowledge is what makes these adaptation strategies so effective. Knowledge rooted in the land can be put into action immediately. Sarayaku elders, for example, noticed rain and lightning patterns at the river’s headwaters that signaled possible flooding and were then able to warn the community. Sarayaku structure includes clear decision-making processes, mechanisms to address the most urgent needs like housing for families with destroyed homes, and dedicated representatives to communicate status updates and needs with external authorities. According to Santi, these responses are guided by minga, a Kichwa term for solidarity and collective responsibility. 

But many countries do not legally recognize Indigenous peoples or their governments, refuse to use Indigenous languages for emergency alerts, and continue to criminalize Indigenous culture. Those conditions can weaken the impact of Indigenous knowledge and governance. 

Read Next As climate change threatens their lands, Indigenous nations demand more power at the UN Dionne Phillips

Santi believes Indigenous peoples have a lot to teach the world about adapting and responding to climate change, but communities like his need support as it continues to accelerate. He is calling for greater legal protections for Indigenous land and authority, as well as resources and partnerships that embrace Indigenous knowledge and decision-making.

In Peru’s Ausangate Regional Conservation Area, Quechua communities joined a conservation organization to document environmental indicators, improve community monitoring, and pursue other efforts that combined Indigenous knowledge with Western research. According to the report, this is an example of how productive partnerships increase resilience. 

The report also found other shortcomings in many of the world’s mitigation and adaptation strategies. They include climate initiatives that focus on short-term benefits, rejecting Indigenous self-governance and imposing external authority on communities, and drawing on or celebrating Indigenous knowledge without supporting the people who provide it. 

Despite growing evidence that shows Indigenous land stewardship is effective and that providing Indigenous communities with direct financing helps with global climate adaptation, funding and legal security remain insufficient. “It’s always the lack of resources and the lack of access to funding that makes it so difficult for us to work, especially when climate change makes us the most vulnerable,” said Anisha Buda, who is from the Kaike Magar community and is a program officer at the national Indigenous Women Forum in Nepal. 

Rather than outlining a specific template for Indigenous governance, the report urges governments, philanthropists, and policymakers to foster the conditions that allow Indigenous communities to thrive. Flexible and direct funding is one of those key conditions. Land Is Life released the report during New York Climate Week specifically to call out the need for more direct financing for Indigenous communities. Despite billions of dollars pledged around the world, barely any of that money is earmarked for Indigenous peoples. And even when it is, Indigenous leaders say that they still don’t receive it. 

“It’s also so frustrating, right?” said Buda. “Because there are so many projects that are supposed to be for Indigenous peoples, but they are implemented by non-Indigenous organizations and non-Indigenous peoples.” 

With the U.S. and European countries pulling back billions of dollars from climate commitments in recent years and wars in Iran and Ukraine stretching global resources, Indigenous leaders worry they will be left even further behind. 

“We are in a moment where resources are scarce,” said Gisela Hurtado, the report’s author. “Where can we put the little money that we have? Where can we put it to make it much more effective? And for me, for the report, the idea is put it into what already is working.”

As the climate continues to change and the world experiences escalating impacts, Hurtado says the Indigenous responses outlined in the report offer a way forward. “What they are seeing in the territories, we’re going to see it also in the future,” Hurtado said. “They are the ones that are much more connected with the Earth to know what is going to happen in the future.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline As climate disasters multiply, Indigenous governance offers a way forward on Sep 23, 2026.

Giorgia Caruso always imagined her children one day inheriting the farm her family has tended for three generations.  

Her daughters would do more than produce organic meat and dairy. They would continue a way of life central to Piana degli Albanesi, a community founded 500 years ago by Albanian refugees fleeing the Ottoman conquest. Perched on a fertile plateau in the mountains south of Palermo, the town has long provided much of the wheat and dairy central to Sicily’s agricultural traditions. Caruso hoped to see her children carry those traditions on.

“I have two daughters I wished could take over our farming business one day, which is like our third child,” Caruso said with teary eyes as she tended the last of the family’s livestock. 

Now she’d like to see them build their lives somewhere safer. 

A flock of sheep graze in a vineyard near Piana degli Albanesi, Sicily, Italy, in October 2017. De Agostini Picture Library / Getty Images

One day in late July three years ago, flames as high as a three-story building engulfed the family’s fields and threatened their home. Caruso and her husband Vito lost several acres of land and almost two dozen sheep, making it difficult to imagine their daughters taking over a business that may no longer exist in a few years.

“Many times we’ve thought of resettling to a safer area, even abroad,” she said. “But it’s just so hard to pack up and leave our homeland.”

Caruso’s family is not alone in facing that decision. A growing number of residents are questioning whether they can continue working the land that has sustained the Arbëreshë, as Italy’s Albanian ethnic minority is known, for five centuries. 

Piana is subject to a microclimate marked by extremes even for the Mediterranean basin, which is warming 20 percent faster than the global average. Summertime temperatures have averaged 85 degrees Fahrenheit over the past decade, with little to no rain. Sicily accounts for nearly half of Italy’s wildfires, and blazes struck in or around Piana in four of the last six years, displacing more than 100 people in 2021 and damaging several homes this past summer.

Firefighting operations took place on the ground and from the air after a wildfire broke out in the town of Piana degli Albanesi, near the city of Palermo in Sicily, Italy, in August 2025. Alberto Lo Bianco / Anadolu via Getty Images​​

As farming — the town’s main source of income — grows more precarious, people are leaving. Piana has lost nearly 17 percent of its population since 2015. That is almost three times the rate of decline across Sicily as a whole, raising fears that climate change is accelerating the erosion of one of southern Europe’s oldest ethnic minority communities.

“If our lands burn, there are no jobs for us, no more homes,” Giovanni Scalora said in Italian. He is a fourth-generation Arbëreshë farmer who owns land overlooking a lake — once Sicily’s largest reservoir — that almost dried up in 2024. “It’s a pity because if we disappear a part of Sicily’s and Albania’s and Europe’s cultural history disappears.”

Arbëreshë elderly talk in front of a cafe before the Easter Sunday Holy Mass in April 2004 in Piana degli Albanesi, Sicily, Italy.
Marco Di Lauro / Getty Images

Piana degli Albanesi and much of Sicily’s interior have long been considered the island’s breadbasket. When the Arbëreshë settled there in the 15th century, they integrated through farm work. Beyond cultivating wheat and raising sheep and cattle, they specialized in making ricotta, a cheese used, among other things, as the filling in the globally-renowned Sicilian cannoli.  

“Legends say we invented it,” Scalora said of the pastry. Each May, the town hosts an international cannolo festival, and for many years those made in Piana have been deemed the best in all of Sicily. “But it’s hard to keep making it if there are no sheep left,” Scalora added.

A strong relationship with the land has shaped the community’s identity for generations, a bond that was tested long before climate change. In 1947, armed bandits killed 11 farmers and injured 30 others during a May Day celebration near the mountain pass of Portella della Ginestra. The massacre became an enduring symbol of the sacrifices Sicilians made for the right to work the land, and it shaped the spiritual connection the Arbëreshë have with it.

A photo from the 1950s shows a member of the Arbëreshë community with a donkey carrying hay. Mondadori via Getty Images

That link, however, is growing increasingly tenuous. An unprecedented drought has decimated fields and livestock across Sicily over the past five years. This summer, entire towns were left without running water or electricity for days as Europe endured one of its worst heat waves in decades. In extreme conditions, particularly when hot, dry scirocco winds blow in from Africa, temperatures can top 100 degrees Fahrenheit. On August 11, 2021, they reached a European record of 119.8 F, and the island is increasingly at risk of desertification.

“Extreme droughts as well as sudden, temporary extreme rainfall are severely damaging agricultural fields,” said Christian Mulder, an ecologist and professor at the University of Catania. “Climate [change] is aggravating the emptying of inner rural areas of the island and forcing emigration.”

The European Environment Agency reports that the impacts of a warming world are increasingly concentrated among already vulnerable groups, including ethnic minorities like the Arbëreshë — a point Mulder emphasized.

“Ancient populations, as well as ancient grains, are at risk of disappearing forever,” he said.

Piana degli Albanesi sits amid mountains and farmland in Sicily’s tranquil rural interior, about 40 miles south of bustling Palermo. Flanked by two smaller Arbëreshë towns, it is the social and cultural hub of the entire community.

Cobblestone alleys lead to the Church of San Giorgio Megalomartire, named for the town’s most revered saint. It is Piana’s North Star, a point of reference for locals and tourists alike. People have gathered there for centuries, most visibly during Easter Week, when residents past and present come together once again, and the town comes alive.

An Arbëreshë priest celebrates the Easter Sunday Holy Mass in April 2004 in Piana degli Albanesi, Sicily, Italy. Marco Di Lauro / Getty Images

When the celebrations end, the streets grow quiet once again. In Sheshi, Piana’s oldest neighborhood, colorful murals of Arbëreshë women in traditional attire offer a reminder of a vibrant culture that endures even as there are fewer people around to sustain it.

Piana’s population has fallen from 6,293 residents in 2015 to 5,245 in 2024, with some of the steepest losses coming in recent years. (The true number is almost certainly lower, because many Sicilian expatriates do not change their residency status.)  Although no data explicitly links the exodus to the changing conditions reshaping Sicily, residents say high unemployment and the resignation that has settled over the town are intertwined with the loss of farmland. Mulder believes what is unfolding there may represent the first case of climate migration leading to the potential loss of an entire ethnic minority in southern Europe.

Sicilian emigration from rural areas, often prompted by crushing poverty and political strife, dates to the late 19th century. Many sailed for the United States, including a small number of Arbëreshë who, attracted by the similar climate, settled in California. For some leaving Piana today, California remains a key destination.

Many of the people moving on are young, and their elders are coming to terms with the fact that they may be the last to work the land. “We adults don’t want to go away,” Caruso said. “But the new generation, the one of my daughters, I’m sure will not grow up here. I’ve told them, ‘America awaits you.’ I want a better life than this for them.”

Farms dot the landscape near Piana degli Albanesi, Sicily, Italy, in September 2015. DeAgostini / Getty Images

Those who choose to stay find hope in the possibility of adaptation. Scalora has seen members of his own family, mainly uncles and cousins, leave for the United States. But he is trying to find a way to remain, and has begun breeding cattle better suited to Sicily’s changing climate after failing to find a breed of sheep that can adapt as well. The tradeoff is that the ricotta Piana has made for centuries with sheep’s milk may one day have to be made with cow’s milk.

“Our cheese will not be the same, but one can leave, or adapt to survive,” he said.

Piana’s city council is trying to adapt, too. Rosario Petta, who has been mayor since 2022, has made slowing the exodus and preventing Piana from becoming a ghost town a goal of his administration.

“One thousand people who leave is an extra 1,000 people who will no longer speak Arbëresh, which can put at risk language and identity preservation,” he said.

Mayor Rosario Petta (on the right) sits in his office at one of the weekly city council’s meetings in Piana degli Albanesi. Courtesy of Rosario Petta

To counter the population loss and wildfires, which often start on abandoned land, Petta has strengthened collaboration with the local committee of the Civil Protection unit and encouraged more residents to volunteer in wildfire prevention to protect their land. But the town is also looking beyond agriculture.

“We are also trying to diversify our economic strategy by encouraging tourism,” Petta said. He is part of an international diaspora committee that is giving Piana opportunities to build ties with the United States, Albania and Kosovo, hoping their shared cultural connections will attract more visitors. Petta said Piana has seen an increase in tourists from the Balkans over the past three years, and he is now lobbying for direct flights between Palermo and Tirana.

But tourism presents its own challenges. Across Sicily, its growth has offered an alternative to agriculture even as development takes over farmland and increasing numbers of visitors place additional pressure on already strained water and energy supplies.

The San Nicola church or sanctuary, built by the Albanians in the 15th century, is the oldest church in Palazzo Adriano in western Sicily, Italy.
elifranssens / Getty Images

Not everyone believes adaptation is enough. Anna Liscari comes from a family of Arbëreshë tailors that has lived between California and Piana for the past 50 years. She permanently relocated to Newport Beach after developing what she called “a love-hate relationship” with Piana because it “seems to be stuck in time in the way it is managing its disappearance.”

Liscari has seen how Piana’s environmental challenges can ripple through the local economy and traditions. Her great-aunt once owned one of the town’s most famous bars, known for selling some of its best cannoli. She eventually closed the business after the organic suppliers she relied on shut down because of constant livestock and land losses to droughts and wildfires.

“We have survived wars, displacement, and poverty over the course of 500 years,” she said. “It’s crazy to think that climate and the inability to manage its effects is what might wipe us out,” Liscari said from her office in Newport Beach, where she works as a tourist agent for American tourists traveling to southern Italy.

The lake of Piana this past spring, after unusually heavier rainfalls in early 2026 briefly reinvigorated it, sits between mountain plateaus in the Palermo countryside. Stefania D’Ignoti

Whether that fate can be avoided depends on decisions made beyond Piana. Salvatore Cona, who leads Sicily’s Civil Protection Unit, said the Italian government must lead the response needed to develop an adaptation strategy that can prevent further population loss. Towns like Piana, he said, simply do not have the resources available at the national level and are, in practice, being left to find their own solutions.

Officials in Rome, however, maintain that the national government is providing resilience funding and that regional governments are responsible for tailoring the response to local needs. Sicilian officials say they lack the resources to meet the crisis.

Mulder argues that the island’s climate crisis has been aggravated by poor governance at both the regional and national level, worsening its effects. In 2023, wildfires scorched 142,150 acres across Sicily, while extreme heat caused more than 200 million euros in damage to agriculture and infrastructure. The following year, after prolonged drought depleted reservoirs and groundwater supplies, Rome declared a national state of emergency and initially allocated 20 million euros to mitigate water shortages. More national funding followed while Sicily committed 100 million euros to help farmers combat and prevent drought damage.

But adaptation is not simply a matter of resources. Like the Arbëreshë, many of Europe’s linguistic minorities live in rural regions particularly vulnerable to climate change. The European Environment Agency says vulnerable groups, including ethnic minorities, must be considered in adaptation planning to ensure their specific risks and needs are addressed.

Petta said that has not happened for his community, which he believes receives far less attention than other ethnolinguistic minorities in Italy.

Anthony Plescia remembers his elders speaking with great reverence about their ancestral home of Piana degli Albanesi, which they referred to fondly by its Arbëreshë name “Hora” even though most of them knew it only from stories told by their parents and grandparents.

Plescia, the president of the Arbëreshë of Sacramento association and a descendant of immigrants who left Piana more than 100 years ago to settle in that California city, grew up surrounded by such stories. 

“I also remember the large Arbëreshë picnics in McKinley Park and the strong sense of cultural pride that pervaded the events,” he said, referring to the park that has long been a gathering place for the Arbëreshë of Sacramento. “The picnics continue to this day, though many of the old family members are now gone.”

Anthony Plescia (on the right) poses next to a painting of a Sicilian chariot, one of the island’s most famous cultural symbols, at a gathering of the Arbereshe of Sacramento. community  Courtesy of Anthony Plescia

Several Arbëreshë families arrived in California as early as 1910. Many chose Southern California for its plentiful agricultural jobs and nascent wine industry; some even established wineries in Etiwanda and Rancho Cucamonga, continuing their heritage of tending the land. Others favored Northern California and the Central Valley, including Sacramento, because its climate and fertile land mirrored that of Sicily. Some of Plescia’s relatives worked in tomato canneries, while his great-grandfather eked out a living gathering corn husks and selling them to local tamale makers.

Language and culture can fade after families leave Piana, a loss that compounds across generations. Plescia was an adult before he learned of his Arbëreshë heritage; he grew up knowing only that his parents were from Sicily. Losing touch with one’s past is, he says, often the price of safety and stability. 

Still, he’s found that, nostalgia aside, he hasn’t met anyone who regrets coming to America, as it invariably improved their lives. Even though California also regularly endures devastating wildfires, Plescia believes it isn’t experiencing the same pressures he sees in Piana. He also believes the state and federal governments are taking the threat more seriously.

In October, Plescia traveled to Piana, where he met Petta. They agreed to explore creating a confederation of the Arbëresh organizations in the U.S. to establish a formal relationship with the town and strengthen cultural ties and exchanges between the communities.

As more young Arbëreshë leave Sicily, those ties could help preserve a culture that has survived so much over the past 500 years, even if fewer and fewer people remain in the town where it first took root.

Reporting for this story was supported by Journalismfund Europe, and is being published in conjunction with the online magazine Magma Magazine.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline This Sicilian community has endured for centuries. Can it survive a changing climate? on Sep 23, 2026.