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File:  ltr to Congress, 76 scientists 2012.pdfResource Type: Letters

File:  ltr to Congress, 76 scientists 2012.pdfResource Type: Letters

This is a guest blog by Peter Crisp of Fossil Free Football, a fan campaign aiming to kick big polluters out of the world’s favourite sport.  

The ongoing 2026 FIFA World Cup will likely be the hottest ever, produce more pollution than any event in history, and promote the world’s biggest oil company to billions of viewers. Yet it could also be a turning point. As football’s vulnerability to the climate crisis becomes impossible to ignore, more and more fans and players are calling for sporting authorities to do better.

The Heat Threat 

The climate crisis is fuelling extreme heat across the planet, driven by decades of burning coal, oil and gas. And the 2026 World Cup is not immune. Researchers predict that 14 out of 16 match venues this year will exceed dangerous temperatures with one in four matches expected to be played in hazardous heat conditions. Just last year, a June heat wave hit multiple World Cup host cities at once. A repeat this year could put attendees at real risk. On June 24 2025, it was 102F/39C  in Boston. This year, on June 23, England will play Ghana in that same city  in a stadium without shade (see below) at 4PM…

Gillette Stadium, Boston, which will be used during the tournament, offers little heat protection to fans and players. Source: Nathan Macoul, Unsplash

The heat threatens safety and changes the game itself. Extreme heat means slower tempo, less pressing and earlier substitutions. 97 of 104 scheduled matches face a higher probability of performance-impairing conditions due to climate change — meaning fans paying record prices are increasingly likely to watch a less intense game. And while players have medical teams and cooling breaks, fans are often left to fend for themselves. While 3 of the 16 venues are air-conditioned, fans in queues, fan zones and on transport routes can be exposed to dangerous heat for hours — often far longer than the players on the pitch.

The International Federation of Association Football or FIFA (which is the governing body of world football), has done little to keep fans and players safe from obvious heat risks during World Cups. We’ve already seen the consequences when it doesn’t: In June 2024, an assistant referee collapsed during a Copa America match, while last year’s Club World Cup saw players and fans sheltering inside as heat again became a major point of concern. Despite this, FIFA has selected many stadiums without any shade, in locations that are not typically used for summer sports. 

A group of experts recently told FIFA that it should do more to keep players and fans safe. They called for it to lower the temperature threshold at which matches are delayed. Currently, FIFA will only consider pausing play at 32°C (measured in Wet Bulb Globe Temperature or WBGT, a scale that accounts for heat, humidity and sun exposure together). That bar is so high that it wouldn’t be triggered at 45°C with 20% humidity, or 35°C with 80% humidity — conditions that would be dangerous for anyone, let alone athletes playing at full intensity. Seventy professional players have also publicly backed those calls. FIFA has added water breaks to all matches regardless of temperature — fundamentally altering the experience of the game — but experts say those breaks should be doubled to six minutes to properly protect players. Many fans have pointedly noted that FIFA may be equally motivated by the advertising slots these breaks create.

FIFA’s unserious attitude on heat risks extends to its broader engagement with the climate crisis. Despite holding a “green card for the planet” and committing to net-zero by 2040, FIFA President Gianni Infantino has massively expanded the tournament, and the pollution it will produce as a consequence. He has added an extra 16 teams and 60 matches, and spread the World Cup across North America so that huge amounts of flying are required. Researchers estimate the whole tournament will generate over 9 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent worth of pollution. 

FIFA President Gianni Infantino once held a ‘green card for the planet’ to show his commitment to sustainability. Source: FIFA

Promoting Fossil Fuels to Billions

FIFA’s massive emissions are worsened by its sponsorship choices. It is reportedly earning about $100m per year to advertise the world’s largest oil company, Aramco. Billions of fans are therefore now receiving pro-oil messaging, just as we must urgently move away from fossil fuels. 

Aramco is 98.5% owned by the Saudi state and is a dominant source of the regime’s funding, earning $33.6bn in the first quarter of this year. These profits have bankrolled Saudi Arabia’s recent push into world sport including football –  often framed as part of its post-oil ‘Vision 2030’ diversification strategy. But the fact that Aramco is being globally promoted, (instead of any other non-oil enterprise) makes clear these sports investments are about protecting fossil fuel profits, not moving away from them. Sponsorships have helped promote Saudi Arabia and shielded it from criticism of its commitment to fossil fuels. It’s clear that the Aramco deal too is part of a broader pro-oil strategy that includes blocking climate talks and ‘hooking’ poorer countries on its oil. 

SoFi stadium, Los Angeles, USA vs. Paraguay, June 13. Source: image supplied

Aramco has been given top billing, with its brand splashed around stadiums at kick off, including at the tournament opener. Notably, the fixture was a repeat of the 2010 World Cup, but nostalgic fans looking back to iconic images from that year might have noticed a surprising (and disturbing) difference. While the 2010 tournament was sponsored by solar energy, this one is promoting Big Oil. Aramco’s World Cup advertising centres around its supposed “innovation” ,but there is nothing innovative about drilling, extracting and burning fossil fuels. The real breakthroughs are in solar, battery storage and electric vehicles — technologies that are cleaner, cheaper and faster-growing than oil has ever been. 

Opening match of 2010 World Cup, featuring solar sponsorship.

The Bigger Picture: Global Access to Sport Under Threat 

This summer, the heat impacts felt by football’s elite will be impossible to miss. But if the climate crisis is reaching its most well resourced event, then grassroots football,  the foundation the whole game is built on,  is surely being hit much harder. For every high-profile match affected by heat, there are thousands more unseen players around the world that are harmed by heat or flooding rain. FIFA profits billions from an ever-expanding tournament and big oil sponsorship — but it is ordinary fans and players who bear the cost, in dangerous heat and a worsening climate, without seeing any of the cash.

Credit: Sadhin Mahmud, Unsplash

Climate Damage: the Ultimate Fan Ripoff  

Many football fans feel our loyalty is being exploited. FIFA’s incessant focus on profit is stripping away the essence of our beloved game — and we must use this discontent, linked to the climate crisis, as a powerful opportunity for change.

The pattern of FIFA’s constant prioritisation of revenue over tradition and affordability is consistent. Unprecedented prices for match tickets, public transport and fan zones. Commercial “hydration” breaks inserted into matches. Fans banned from bringing their own water. Big oil on the stadium hoardings. Everything FIFA does turns up the heat for supporters while lining its own pockets. Its response to obvious heat risks at the next two World Cups hosted by Morocco, Spain and Portugal, and then Saudi Arabia, has been to float moving the tournament to winter, discarding decades of tradition rather than addressing the cause.

Hundreds of millions of fans have every reason to demand better. As heat impacts worsen and the costs of fossil fuels become impossible to ignore, football lovers have real power to push for a fundamental reset that puts players and fans before FIFA’s bottom line.

Source: Quang Nguyen Vinh, Pexels

What Could Serious FIFA Climate Policy Look Like?

FIFA claims its core mission is to “unite the world” by making football accessible to all. Delivering on that mission means putting the climate first, because we can’t play in dangerous heat or on a flooded field. Here’s what that looks like in practice:

• End the expansionist mentality. More teams, more matches, more flights means more pollution. Growth cannot come at the planet’s expense.
• Revise heat guidelines. Current thresholds don’t protect players or fans. FIFA must lower the bar for match delays and take welfare seriously.
• Ease the fixture calendar. An oversaturated schedule drives player burnout and unsafe conditions. Less is more.
• Drop the polluters. Sponsorship deals with oil companies like Aramco must give way to partnerships with clean, innovative industries.
• Put climate at the centre. Every decision FIFA makes should be guided by one question: does this make extreme weather worse?

The most popular sport on the planet needs to stop scoring ‘own goals’, and start playing for the right team.

If you’re a fan who is ready to take this message to your club or national association, connect with us at Fossil Free Football on social media and join our next online campaign session! 

The post 2026 FIFA World Cup & Extreme Heat appeared first on 350.

Standing in Tofino, looking out at the rainforest-covered mountains, you would never know that up the inlets, trouble is brewing…

Floating open-net pen fish farms dot the inlets. These facilities spread pathogens, parasites and poop, and are pushing wild salmon to the brink of extinction.

The crowded open net pen facilities do nothing to contain tiny viral particles or salmon lice. Most farms are infected with PRV, a deadly virus from the Atlantic ocean. Because fish breath through gills, it is dead-easy for a wild salmon migrating past to become infected. Salmon farms are parasite incubators. The lice pass freely through the nets to infest baby wild salmon, which are too young to have developed protective scales. One louse can be a fatal load…

Then there’s the poop and uneaten pellets. These simply drop out the bottom, smothering any creatures living on the ocean floor. One fish farm emits salmon sewage equivalent to a city of 150,000 people! And there are 20 fish farms in the Clayoquot Sound UNESCO Biosphere Region…

Removing fish farms works!

On a good note, removing fish farms from the ocean works. Forty percent of salmon farms in BC waters have been removed since 2020, thanks to First Nations on the east coast of Vancouver Island.

And those Nations are being richly rewarded, with abundant returns of wild salmon. This has been going on since 2022, when the first Pink salmon runs not exposed to fish farms returned to their natal streams. And every cycle, they return in greater abundance!

More good news: the Canadian government has banned open-net pen salmon farms from BC waters as of July 1st, 2029. This winter, the Federal Court of Appeal upheld the Minister’s right to use the precautionary principle when making decisions, noting the dire consequences that declining wild salmon stocks could have for First Nations rights, the economy, and the social fabric of British Columbia.

Tla-o-qui-aht First Nations stopped the loggers on Meares Island in 1985. During Clayoquot Summer 1993, nearly a thousand people chose to commit civil disobedience to protect ancestral forests. It paid off—30 years later, local First Nations were able to announce with the BC government that 62% of their territories is protected from industrial logging. Now it’s time to ensure wild salmon will continue to feed these rainforests for years to come!

130 First Nations want salmon farms removed from the ocean—along with 75% of British Columbians. Washington State has banned fish farms. BC is now the only jurisdiction on the west coast of North America allowing fish farms in the ocean.

As someone who loves, visits, or lives on the west coast, you have an opportunity to take a stand for wild salmon. Take action, no matter how small. Refuse to purchase farmed salmon—always ask your server ‘is your salmon wild or farmed?’. Please take a moment to sign our petition, reminding government officials that people like you care about protecting Nature.

Dan Lewis is Executive Director of Clayoquot Action.

The post Backbone of the coast appeared first on Clayoquot Action.

Radical Democracy, Autonomy, Earthy Governance & Climate Justice: a virtual re-encounter #03 - 13/07/2026 In 2025, the Global of and its allies organized various gatherings in different parts of the world. Following our last virtual gathering, this session brings together participants from the encounter we held on GTAGTAalternativesGTAalternativesGTAGTAGTAalternativesalternativesAlternativesAlternativesalternativesAlternativesalternativesTapestryAlternativesalternativesalternativesGTAGTAalter…

People of the Forest is working with the Yawanawá People of Mutum Village in Acre, Brazil to regenerate degraded forest, empower community members and leaders, and advance Indigenous food sovereignty. A new fundraising campaign aims to help the project deepen its impact.

The project uses agroforestry and Traditional Ecological Knowledge to regenerate degraded Yawanawá land, which spans approximately 500,000 acres of the Amazon rainforest. Their holistic approach aims to strengthen ecological leadership, learning pathways for young people, seed-saving, and community resilience.

“If you know how to use the resources you have in the forest, this is wealth,” Julia Yawanawá, a community leader, educator, medicinal plant wisdom keeper, tells Food Tank.

The project recently entered its third round of fundraising. Donations made through Ma Earth, a collaborative fundraising platform, will be matched through July 21. Provided by Biome Trust, Naia Trust, Imaginal Seeds, and Ma Earth Foundation, the matching funds will help increase the impact and create a greater opportunity for positive change.

According to Ma Earth, there is an estimated US$1 trillion per year funding gap preventing regenerative and community-led initiatives from accessing the resources they need.

Extractive practices, including logging, mining, and ranching, harm the local ecosystems of the Yawanawá territory. The effects of the climate crisis, industrialized farming practices, and the introduction of processed foods further threaten the community members’ wellbeing and livelihoods.

Three years ago, Chief Matsini invited People of the Forest to visit Mutum, the second-largest village of the Yawanawá, and collaborate on a project to support healthier food systems for his people. “A person with a bad heart comes—you give him food and he will feel good,” Chief Matsini tells Food Tank. “Food is the greatest unifier.”

The Indigenous-led initiative is hoping to restore a natural equilibrium between people and the land, which the Yawanawá have stewarded for thousands of years. Its three main goals are to regenerate food systems, reforest native plants, and educate the local communities.

More than 20 Yawanawá have been trained in regenerative practices and over 1,000 native fruit and nut trees have been planted. A 10,000-square-foot agroforestry demonstration plot offers community members a place to engage in land stewardship and ecological leadership. Film, photography, and field documentation also help to amplify Indigenous voices. Through mentorship, youth are learning how to tell their stories in their own voice.

“It is important that this project doesn’t depend on us, it is theirs,” Timo Granzotti, Co-Founder of People of the Forest, tells Food Tank.

The next phase will expand its agroforestry work into other communities by cultivating household kitchen gardens and building nurseries to propagate native species. It will begin community-led design of aquaculture infrastructure to further build local food systems and continue to educate community members. Funding will also provide emerging Indigenous leaders with scholarships to agroforestry schools in Brazil.

“We are not guardians. We are multipliers,” Yawanawá says. “We sow the world, we sow the forest. We are the hands that multiply the food.”

Articles like the one you just read are made possible through the generosity of Food Tank members. Can we please count on you to be part of our growing movement? Become a member today by clicking here.

Photo courtesy of Archie Macpherson

The post Indigenous-led Project Advances Food Sovereignty in the Amazon appeared first on Food Tank.

A version of this piece was featured in Food Tank’s newsletter, released weekly on Thursdays. To make sure it lands straight in your inbox and to be among the first to receive it, subscribe now by clicking here.

Before I travel on ground-truthing trips to rural and agricultural communities around the globe, the Food Tank team does prep research. Sometimes, the first data points that jump out at us are challenges that folks are facing, global crises hitting close to home.

But here’s the thing: When I’m in Guatemala or Ethiopia or even at home here in Baltimore actually talking to people on the ground, what shines far brighter are the visionary individuals and organizations working hard to make their communities better.

By highlighting these stories of hope and success from on-the-ground efforts to build better food systems, Food Tank aims to be the antidote to the helplessness and hopelessness we might feel sitting at a computer or scrolling on our phones. There’s plenty of good in the world, too, if we open our eyes to it!

This week, we’re sharing 10 bright spots—big and small—in the world of food systems, guiding us like beacons toward more equitable, resilient, nourished communities.

Andhra Pradesh Community Managed Natural Farming, India

This agroecology project, led by the organization Rythu Sadhikara Samstha, is one of the largest and most successful in the world. The project earned the 2026 Food Planet Prize for their work empowering women farmers, helping them transition to practices that are better for them and the environment.

“What we are doing is very simple but very profound. It’s something anybody can do anywhere in the world,” says Vijay Kumar Thallam, Executive Vice Chair.

Asociación De Agricultores Tinecos (ADAT), Guatemala

I was fortunate to spend time with women coffee farmers in the ADAT co-op during a ground-truthing trip to Guatemala, where I saw how women are involved in every part of the supply chain—from planting to harvesting to roasting to selling—giving them access to resources they often lack.

“Every step we take opens a door for another woman,” group members told me.

ARISE-Farmers, Asia-Pacific Region

Since ARISE-Farmers was launched in 2021 to champion producer-led solutions, the program has reached over 20,000 farmers in 12 countries across Asia. It’s supported by the Asian Farmers’ Association for Sustainable Rural Development (AFA), to strengthen food and nutrition security and improve livelihoods.

CIMMYT, Global

CIMMYT, a Spanish acronym for the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center, is demonstrating how science-driven approaches can help farmers respond to shifting weather patterns, improve local systems and access to innovations, and boost productivity sustainably.

“The innovations we invested in together are now protecting harvests and building resilience for millions of farmers across Africa and beyond. This is what science diplomacy looks like in practice — and it is a model the world needs to see more of,” says Gisele Fernández Ludlow, Ambassador of Mexico to Kenya.

In just a couple weeks, I’m heading to Mexico to visit CIMMYT researchers there, so stay tuned for dispatches from on-the-ground.

EMBRAPA (Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation), Brazil

At EMBRAPA, researcher Mariangela Hungria was named the 2025 World Food Prize laureate for work helping Brazil become an agricultural powerhouse while proving that success is possible while reducing farmers’ reliance on harmful synthetic inputs. Take a listen here to a fascinating conversation I had with Dr. Hungria last year on the Food Talk podcast!

ROAM Ranch, United States

At ROAM Ranch in Texas, Katie and Taylor Collins are showing their neighbors the power of regenerative agriculture. Thanks to their stewardship practices, the creek on their property is flowing again after not flowing for decades, and wildlife from deer to birds have returned to the land.

OzHarvest, Australia

OzHarvest, Australia’s leading food rescue organization, is using innovative food redistribution models, social entrepreneurship, advocacy, and education to tackle food waste and deliver food to those in need.

“We have forgotten how to value our farmers’ effort it takes to grow food,” says Ronnie Kahn, OzHarvest Founder and “Visionary in Residence.” “If you can embed this in young people, perhaps we’ll start shifting and changing the narrative.”

Solid’Africa, Rwanda

Solid’Africa provides medically tailored meals to more than 100,000 patients in public hospitals, connect public schools with healthy food and nutrition education, and support market stability and training for regenerative farmers.

“If you are building toward regenerative school meals, hospital meals…it has to be a plate that is full of health, full of taste, and most importantly that’s full of dignity,” says Isabelle Kamariza, President and Founder of Solid’Africa.

Sicangu Food Sovereignty Initiative, United States

The Sicangu Food Sovereignty Initiative, rooted on the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota, is helping community members learn how to grow, produce, harvest, and prepare their own food. The initiative’s 7Gen project has also helped revive buffalo populations; the organization’s buffalo range has grown from 50 to 1,000 heads since 2020 alone.

Svalbard Global Seed Vault, Norway

Tucked inside a mountain in the Norwegian Svalbard archipelago, the Svalbard Global Seed Vault (or “Doomsday Vault,” as it’s sometimes known) is the largest backup facility for the world’s crop diversity. As of June 2026, new additions to the vault have brought the total collection to 1.4 million seed samples, a major milestone.

Each of these bright spots began as a small, visionary point of light in a community. That, to me, is so inspiring because it reminds us all of our power to make a difference.

So let’s let these stories illuminate our own work to transform the food system, too!

Articles like the one you just read are made possible through the generosity of Food Tank members. Can we please count on you to be part of our growing movement? Become a member today by clicking here.

Photo courtesy of Jono Hirst, Unsplash

The post These 10 Bright Spots Are Beacons for a Stronger Global Food System appeared first on Food Tank.

Checks & Balances Project (C&BP) has filed a complaint against the Stony Creek Volunteer Rescue Squad and Sussex County Supervisor Steve White with the Department of Health and Human Services inspector general.

The complaint cites alleged potential fraud involving billing for ambulance calls conducted by the Stony Creek Volunteer Rescue Squad (SCVRS) and the lack of transparency in the squad’s finances.

C&BP has reported that SCVRS lost its federal nonprofit status in 2023 for failing to file tax returns for three straight years. C&BP also reported that in the five years for which tax returns are available – 2015 through 2019 – SCVRS reported a $304,000 surplus.

Minutes from county supervisors’ meetings show that then-Fire Chief Nick Sheffield questioned the squad’s finances, saying it was impossible to determine where the squad’s money went. In September 2025, White engineered the defunding of the positions of Sheffield and his deputy, Chris Bailey.

The next month, records show, the county signed a memorandum of understanding with SCVRS to pay the squad $422,250 for ambulance services for the next year.

Apparent violations

White has engaged in an apparent violation of Virginia’s conflict-of-interest law for elected officials by voting to direct taxpayer funds to the rescue squad.

White is also in apparent violation of Virginia law by serving as Sussex County’s acting administrator after he pushed the firing of County Administrator Richard Douglas in April.

C&BP has filed complaints with the FBI, Virginia state police, Sussex Commonwealth Attorney, Virginia attorney general and the Virginia Office of Emergency Medical Services. It has offered to brief each of these agencies, with no word back yet from Sussex Commonwealth Attorney Regina Sykes.

Funding for emergency medical services has been a consistent issue in Sussex County for the last three years. Supervisors voted on Thursday to approve the construction of a 500MW solar farm that will generate an estimated $4 million a year in taxes, which is twice what the county spends on EMS services.

Ray Locker is the executive director for Checks & Balances Project, an investigative watchdog blog holding government officials, lobbyists, and corporate management accountable to the public. Funding for C&BP is provided by Renew American Prosperity and individual donors.

You may also want to read:

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The post Checks & Balances Project files complaint with HHS inspector general appeared first on Checks and Balances Project.

This week, the Federal Reserve released its July 2026 Beige Book, offering a snapshot of economic conditions across all 12 Federal Reserve Districts. The report shows that the economic fallout from the conflict in the Middle East continues to spread through the economy: Federal Reserve contacts reported that families are cutting back, businesses continue to raise prices, and the rapid buildout of AI is reshaping hiring and increasing costs.

Trump’s economic chaos has made daily life more difficult for working Americans. Low-wage and rural workers in Chicago and Minnesota report it’s getting more expensive to get to and from work, as the president’s war in Iran rages on and drives up fuel prices. July’s Beige Book further reveals demand for food assistance has surpassed COVID levels in many parts of the country, as President Trump and Republicans in Congress slash federal food aid programs. In Philadelphia, contacts reported that any increase in sales reflects higher prices, as consumers spend more on essentials and cut back wherever possible.

Working families are desperate for relief, the report offers little comfort for Americans struggling to make ends meet in Trump’s economy.

Groundwork Collaborative’s Chief of Policy and Advocacy, Alex Jacquez, reacted with the following statement:

“The president’s choice to renege on his own shaky ceasefire agreement means working families are paying the price for his war in Iran. This month’s Beige Book reflects increasing pressure on business owners, who are choosing to protect their own profits by passing operating expenses onto consumers in the form of price hikes. Across the economy, Americans are cutting back and making sacrifices to keep up with Trump’s high prices.”

Bike lanes are unsafe. Speed cameras cause crashes. Safety redesigns cause congestion and injuries.

Or, as Big Brother said, freedom is slavery, war is peace, ignorance is strength.

President Trump and federal Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy have made it clear for more than a year that they object to bike lanes, automated enforcement cameras and other proven safety measures — with Duffy going so far as to say that bike lanes are just government “DEI” activism — but neither man went out of their way say that such safety measures were, in fact, unsafe. Until now.

Sometime between June 30 and July 10, the Trump-run Federal Highway Administration changed its web page of “Proven Safety Countermeasures” to eliminate safety strategies that, before President Trump’s second term began, the agency had long supported, including protected bike lanes, speed cameras and road diets:

The previous safety page had proven infrastructure and enforcement strategies (top, circled) that President Trump and Sean Duffy have deleted (bottom).

The administration had previously criticized road diets — the removal of a lane of traffic to make room for bike lanes or pedestrian safety measures, or also to improve flow with turning bays — by claiming without evidence that they cause traffic congestion. The agency has also canceled grants for projects that it deemed hostile to cars.

But the changes to the web page reflect the administration’s new contention that safety measures are not merely annoying to drivers, but unsafe.

Activists can’t believe it.

“Bike lanes and road diets are still legitimate safety measures,” said Ken McLeod, policy director at the League of American Bicyclists. “Absolutely nothing has changed about their effectiveness or the data that led them to be placed on the Proven Safety Countermeasures list in the first place.”

And until July, the FHWA certainly agreed. On the archived web page, the agency said protected bike lanes “can mitigate or prevent interactions, conflicts, and crashes between bicyclists and motor vehicles, and create a network of safer roadways for bicycling. … State and local agencies should consider installing bicycle lanes.”

Bicycle lanes align with the Safe System Approach principle of recognizing human vulnerability — where separating users in space can enhance safety for all road users,” added the web page (which, ironically, was illustrated with a protected bike lane in Washington, D.C. that the president sought to remove earlier this year).

The agency said that creating separated bicycle lane to protect cyclists from car traffic “reduces crashes up to 53 percent.”

And on road diets, the FHWA (at least until July) said they “can improve safety, calm traffic, provide better mobility and access for all road users, and enhance overall quality of life.” The agency said conversions of roadways from four lanes to two (plus a turning bay) lead to:

• Reduction of rear-end and left-turn crashes due to the dedicated left-turn lane.
• Reduced right-angle crashes as side street motorists cross three versus four travel lanes.
• Fewer lanes for pedestrians to cross.
• Opportunity to install pedestrian refuge islands, bicycle lanes, on-street parking, or transit stops.
• Traffic calming and more consistent speeds.
• A more community-focused, Complete Streets environment that better accommodates the needs of all road users.

It promised a 19- to 47-percent reduction in crashes.

And on speed cameras, the agency’s archived page boasted that can reduce crashes by 54 percent. In New York City, which has the nation’s largest speed- and red-light camera enforcement program, officials reported a 95-percent drop in speeding at locations with cameras, and that locations with cameras experienced 14 percent fewer injuries and
fatalities compared to control corridors without cameras.

But as of July 10, those measures are no longer considered safe by the federal government. In a statement, an FHWA spokesperson did not address Streetsblog’s questions about why the agency now considered its own safety countermeasures to be unsafe.

“The Federal Highway Administration is conducting an ongoing administrative review of its ‘Proven Safety Countermeasures’ to ensure they align with US DOT policies and the Administration’s priorities,” the statement read. “The Department is taking action to reverse the last administration’s policies that decreased lane capacity and increased congestion. Drivers paying taxes and vehicle fees expect their dollars to be reinvested into our roads, not social initiatives that burden their commutes.

“Under Secretary Duffy, the Department is getting back to basics and putting safety first,” the statement concluded.

The agency did not respond to a follow up question: “We understand the administration’s position on road capacity, but are bike lanes and road diets now considered unsafe?”

Clearly, bike lanes, road diets, speed cameras are just as safe now as they were a month ago, when they were promoted on the very same agency’s site, advocates said.

“Nothing has changed; no new evidence has emerged to indicate that separating cyclists from motor traffic or slowing and better ordering motor traffic with fewer lanes are anything but tremendously successful street safety measures,” said Jon Orcutt, a former top official with the New York City Department of Transportation under then-Mayor Mike Bloomberg, a Republican, and Mayor Bill de Blasio, a Democrat. “Their removal from FHWA’s proven safety list is the latest step in Sean Duffy’s intentional infusion of stupidity into US DOT policy.”

Orcutt included in that list Duffy’s war on congestion pricing, which also ended up being a stunning safety and traffic-reduction success.

Orcutt added that FHWA’s action “could be harmful” because there are many places in the country “where the efficacy of bike lanes or road diets is contested, or state or city officials are still foot-dragging over them.”

“In places smart enough to already implement such measures — like the 80 cities that are members of NACTO — [the FHWA change] will be rightly ignored,” he added. “If FHWA tries to use the change to interfere with specific projects, local and state agencies should take their cues from New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority and sue the Trump DOT early and often.”

The irony, of course, is that until very recently, federal officials did not dare to testify under oath that bike lanes are unsafe. In ruling earlier this year against the Trump administration’s attempt to remove the 15th Street bike lane in Washington, the court wrote, “The government does not dispute, and it did not submit any data that would contradict, plaintiff’s contention that the dedicated bike lanes reduce collisions. As counsel for defendants acknowledged at the motions hearing, “[t]here is information in the record that says as a general principle, protected bike lanes prevent collision.” 

One former FHWA administrator said there’s a reason that even the Trump administration didn’t put on the record that bike lanes are unsafe — because they remain safe.

“We should be making decisions about safety based on evidence,” Stephanie Pollack, the former acting administrator of the FHWA under President Joe Biden, told NPR. “It’s hard for me to understand how you could say you’re putting safety first, and then make arbitrary decisions about what does and doesn’t improve safety.”

Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed. 
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.

This week Heat and firewaves

‘FIREWAVE’: Wildfires ravaged Europe and North America this week. France utilised water-dumping planes collecting from the Seine to contain a fire in the Fontainebleau forest near Paris, according to the Associated Press. The Financial Times reported that the UK has had “25 non-consecutive days with temperatures of 30C or more, including nine days above 34C”, creating a “firewave” and putting pressure on emergency services. Meanwhile, an “orange haze from Canada wildfires” could be “seen in Ontario and northern US”, said BBC News. 

‘NEW NORMAL’: Climate events previously seen as extreme are becoming the “new ‘normal’”, said the Met Office, in a report on the UK’s climate. While last year was the UK’s hottest on record, rising temperatures mean it is expected to be surpassed in the next few years, reported Reuters. Liz Bentley, head of the Royal Meteorological Society, told the Guardian that “climate change has been described by scientists for many years but is now increasingly being felt by the UK population in their own homes and communities”. 

Around the world

• ELECTRIFYING PUSH: The European Commission has announced a target for electricity to account for 46% of energy consumption across the bloc by 2040, reported Carbon Pulse. The commission has also made plans to adapt its emissions trading system to “bring relief to industry”, it said.
• FALLING OIL: The International Energy Agency said that global oil demand is expected to decline this year for the first time since 2020, reported the Associated Press.
• US ROLLBACKS: Trump cuts to clean energy support “led to the cancellation ​or delay of $83bn in investment across hundreds of projects”, reported Reuters. The Trump administration has also changed environmental law to allow development in the habitats of endangered species, according to CNN. 
• BURNHAM BEGINS: Incoming UK prime minister Andy Burnham is preparing to announce new North Sea drilling “within days of taking office”, said Bloomberg. Carbon Brief looked at 28 statements that Burnham has made about climate change and fossil fuels.
• DRY JULY: Drought in Uganda led to significant crop losses and at least 16 deaths from starvation, said BBC News. 
• ON AI: Australia planned to implement restrictions on energy and water usage for datacentres “amid [an] AI boom”, said the New York Times. 

38%

The drop in Brazilian Amazon deforestation in the first half of 2026, compared to last year, reported Al Jazeera.

Latest climate research

• The area of land burned by wildfires in Africa each year has reduced due to a shrinking dry season | Geophysical Research Letters
• Most people do not distinguish between climate adaptation and mitigation when thinking about tackling climate change | Climate Outreach
• An “effort-sharing framework” has been developed to support progress towards the Paris Agreement | npj Climate Action

(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)

Captured

Carbon Brief explained how more than 1,000 heat-related deaths in England and Wales during May and June were attributed to climate change, accounting for almost half of all heat-related deaths experienced during those months. The article also unpacked the different methods for estimating heat deaths around the world.

Spotlight Natural History Museum exhibits climate change

This week, Carbon Brief interviews Meaghan Macdonald, senior project and programme manager for London’s Natural History Museum, about their first permanent climate-themed exhibition, Fixing Our Broken Planet.

Carbon Brief: Why are programmes such as Fixing Our Broken Planet so important?

Meaghan Macdonald: One of the main things we’re trying to achieve with Fixing Our Broken Planet is to place the museum as a convener of conversations around the planetary emergency…trying to bring together the different groups of people who need to be involved in this conversation in order to work together to find a solution. 

And we find that a lot of the people who come into the gallery weren’t necessarily coming here to see it; they come across it, which is a really great way to engage people who may not have been engaged in that discussion previously.

CB: How does the exhibition engage and inspire visitors?

MM: A driving force for this exhibition is that you are dealing with a subject matter that can be quite disheartening, and one of the things that we were very careful about is to try to make sure that woven throughout the scientific data… is a sense of hope… to enable people to feel empowered to make a difference. 

We were able to do things like our “what you can do” labels, which give an example that people can take away with them. We also have “conversation starters”, which is a digital screen that asks people a series of questions related to the planetary emergency. Things like: “Should we mine the deep sea to power the green economy?”…And there’s no right or wrong answer. 

We [also] set out very specifically to…forefront the science that’s happening here. We know from multiple studies from thinktanks and organisations that people actually trust our scientists the most. 

Natural History Museum’s Fixing Our Broken Planet exhibition. Credit: Micheal Melia / Alamy Stock Photo

CB: The museum has set out a goal to “create advocates for the planet”. What does this mean? How does it relate to the exhibition and the museum’s wider climate action?

MM: The aim of the museum is to get to a place where both people and the planet thrive. Being a library of the natural world, it is our duty to be standing up for it and to help people find their way, fighting for nature’s side. 

In order to create those advocates, the aim of the [exhibition] and the wider advocacy programmes at the museum is to try to find ways to bring all these people [individuals, policymakers, industry, scientists] together. 

We have the wider programme with Fixing Our Broken Planet. We have Generation Hope…a free graphic panel version of our display in the gallery that we have been able to get into a number of venues in Bangalore…the very long-standing and beloved wildlife photographer of the year [exhibition]…our urban nature movement…[and] an initiative that we are doing with the Department for Education called the National Education Nature Park.

Watch, read, listen

STUBBORN HOPE: For the Conversation, climate scientist Prof Peter Stott argued that researchers need to “talk more about the very worst-case scenarios” and the possibility for action. 

EXTREME: Vox’s the Gray Area podcast spoke to New York Times journalist David Wallace-Wells about the possibility of a “Godzilla” El Niño.

RESPONSIBILITY: For Climate Home News, two researchers from the Center for International Environmental Law explored how “major emitting countries knew of climate risks decades earlier than claimed”.

Coming up

• 13-31 July: Meeting of the International Seabed Authority assembly and council, Kingston, Jamaica
• 17-19 July: 3rd International Conference on Environment and Sustainable Development, London
• 19 July: Presidential election, São Tomé and Príncipe

Pick of the jobs

• Zero Carbon Analytics, research lead | Salary: Unknown. Location: Remote
• Met Office, ocean climate scientific manager | Salary: £54,515-£58,582. Location: Exeter
• National Trust, land use and nature delivery partner | Salary: £44,499. Location: Newcastle or York

DeBriefed is edited by Daisy Dunne. Please send any tips or feedback to debriefed@carbonbrief.org.

This is an online version of Carbon Brief’s weekly DeBriefed email newsletter. Subscribe for free here.

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We occasionally use flowers to decorate food, but few people would think of flowers themselves as food. Now a new study challenges that, finding that the common marigold contains protein levels similar to other plant-based sources.

This potentially opens up a new sustainable protein alternative to meat, especially as the new research finds that these flowers could have diverse uses in food.

For their experiments the researchers sourced an abundant supply of dried marigold flowers, and then set about extracting protein from their petals. First they blitzed these into a powder, creating a mixture that was distilled, centrifuged, and filtered. Next, they applied different chemical compounds including alcohol and sodium chloride to separate and extract ingredients from the mix. Among these were four types of protein: albumin, globulin, glutelin and prolamin. In each case the researchers measured how much protein they had extracted, and examined its structural composition. 

From this, they found they could extract almost 9 grams of protein per every 100 grams. These levels make marigolds nutritionally similar, in protein terms, to other edible flowers like the banana flower, which is commonly used in South Asian cuisine. Perhaps more familiar to many people is quinoa, a grain valued for its relatively high protein content: marigolds had similar protein levels to this popular foodstuff, too.  

This means marigolds could add to the increasing array of plant-based proteins, perhaps diversifying the options to attract people away from meat. But it wasn’t just the nutritional content that struck the researchers: they found that marigolds contained other properties which could make them a valuable additive for the food industry. 

 

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For example, the experiments showed that some proteins in marigolds have a low pH which make them a good emulsifying agent. This would be useful for making foods like mayonnaise and salad dressings where oil needs to be mixed into water. Other marigold proteins were found to remain stable at high temperatures of up to 105 °C—making them more reliable under heat pressure than other plant proteins like chickpeas—suggesting that it could be useful in baking applications. The researchers also highlight that the high globulin content in marigolds gives them a good foaming capacity, which is valuable for making aerated ingredients like whipped toppings for baked goods. 

Finding markets for this food stuff could be a challenge, as with any relatively new and unfamiliar food. But something that drove the researchers’ original interest in marigolds is the ready and abundant supply: huge quantities of these flowers end up as waste each year, especially in India and Mexico where millions of decorative marigolds are used in events and festivals. The researchers estimate that roughly 40% of used marigolds end up being thrown away. 

This is potentially a huge untapped supply of sustainable protein. “People are increasingly aware of food waste and are seeking innovative solutions,” says study lead author Anand Mohan, associate professor of food science and technology at the University of Georgia.

“Demonstrating that something as common and overlooked as a flower can be transformed into a valuable food ingredient makes science both relatable and impactful.”

Mohan et. al. “Assessing Structural, Thermal, and Functional Characteristics of Marigold Flower Protein as a Sustainable Food Ingredient.” ACS Food Science & Technology. 2026. 

Image: ©Anthropocene Magazine

Recent weeks have seen a flurry of reports from public health authorities and scientists that estimate the deaths caused by Europe’s record-breaking summer heatwaves. 

In France, the national public health agency reported 2,025 excess deaths over the week where the heatwave peaked in June. 

Authorities in Germany and Netherlands put the excess death toll during the same seven-day period at 5,753 and 533, respectively.

An analysis from climate scientists in Carbon Brief found that France saw more than 2,700 heat-related deaths over 17 days in June.

Separate research estimated there had been 2,700 heat-related deaths in the UK’s May and June heatwaves – 42% of which had been caused by human-caused climate change.

There are a number of methods for how academics and governments tally deaths caused by extreme heat, each with their own advantages and drawbacks.

Here, Carbon Brief looks at the different ways scientists and public health authorities have calculated the death toll of Europe’s record-breaking summer heat. 

• How established is the science of calculating heat deaths?
• What are the different approaches to counting heat deaths?
• What do the latest figures show for Europe’s May and June heatwaves?
• What are the pros and cons of the ‘excess deaths’ method?
• What are the pros and cons of the ‘statistical modelling’ method?

How established is the science of calculating heat deaths?

Economists and epidemiologists have been studying the relationship between heat and mortality for nearly a century. 

A pioneering study published in 1923 by geographer Ellsworth Huntington and economist Margaret Justin that looked at mortality data for New York City over 1882-88 found that deaths increased rapidly as temperatures rose above 17C. 

As global temperatures have risen in response to human-caused carbon emissions, scientists have increasingly sought to understand how warming could impact mortality. 

The study of mortality caused by specific heatwave events dates back a few decades, with a 1995 heatwave in Chicago among the earliest events to be studied in detail.

Over the past decade, a growing number of studies have gone a step further, by estimating the number of deaths caused by a specific heatwave event and then attributing a percentage or number of those deaths to human-caused climate change. 

Carbon Brief covered the first study of this type, which was published in Environmental Research Letters in 2016 and focused on a 2003 summer heatwave that caused tens of thousands of deaths across Europe.

The study estimated that 506 of the 735 summer fatalities in Paris and 64 of the 315 in London were a result of human influence on the climate.

More recently, a study in Climatic Change found that 27% of deaths in a 2018 heatwave in Zurich, Switzerland were linked to human-caused climate change and a paper in Science Advances estimated that 11-15% of deaths in a 2021 heatwave in British Columbia were attributable to global warming. 

Dr Christopher Callahan, assistant professor at the O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University, tells Carbon Brief this type of “two-step” study has “really exploded” in recent years:

“It is really only in the last five to 10 years that we have seen this, partly because it does require interdisciplinary expertise. You need people who know how to run the epidemiological models and you need a climate analysis of the counterfactual [world] without climate change, which is its own effort.” 

What are the different approaches to counting heat deaths?

A central challenge in estimating deaths from a heatwave is that heat is rarely recorded as the primary cause of death on death certificates.

However, exposure to high temperatures has wide-ranging effects on the human body, including the strain of keeping cool. This effort places pressure on the heart and kidneys.

As a result, heat extremes can worsen health risks from chronic conditions and cause acute kidney injury. Researchers have linked heat to increased mortality from respiratory and cardiovascular diseases, as well as dementia and Alzheimer’s. 

As a result, public health authorities and scientists cannot depend on death certificates for a full count of heat-related deaths. They instead estimate heat deaths using a number of different approaches, each with assumptions baked into their calculations. 

Dr Garyfallos Konstantinoudis, who researches methods for calculating excess mortality due to extreme events at the Grantham Institute for Climate Change and the Environment at Imperial College, tells Carbon Brief there is “no ground truth” when it comes to tallying heat-related deaths: 

“We don’t know what the heat-related deaths are, so we rely on different models to describe the picture.”

This makes the study of deaths from heatwaves similar to those from air pollution, he says:

“This sort of health-impact assessment has been done for years on studies related to deaths from air pollution, which have the same problem. Air pollution, until very recently, was not recorded on death certificates. 

“[However], for air pollution, the [scientific] literature is much larger, so no one questions that air pollution is toxic and kills. This sort of messaging for heat is more recent.”

There are, broadly speaking, two approaches to calculating deaths during a heatwave. 

The first involves counting the number of excess deaths relative to a period in the past. 

This method – often referred to as an “excess deaths” approach – looks at how many people died during a particular time period compared to a baseline period where there was no heatwave. 

To do this, public health authorities and researchers rely on official death figures reported by country authorities. 

The heat death tolls published in recent weeks by public health agencies in Belgium, France, Germany and the Netherlands relied on this approach. 

(For more, see: What are the pros and cons of the ‘excess deaths’ method?)

The second method uses long-term mortality data to understand the statistical relationship between temperature and mortality in a given place. The model that emerges can be used to infer the number of deaths from a heatwave in that place. 

In a rapid analysis published this week, researchers at Imperial College London, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) and the Met Office used this approach to estimate that the May and June heatwaves in the UK caused the deaths of 2,700 people.

Dr Callahan – working with Prof Andrew Dessler, director of the Texas Center for Extreme Weather at Texas A&M University – used this method to estimate that more than 2,700 people had died in France over a 17-day period in June in an analysis for Carbon Brief. 

(For more: see: What are the pros and cons of the ‘statistical modelling’ method?)

The majority of the figures released in the wake of Europe’s June heatwave have relied on these two methods.

There is a third way to calculate heat deaths, which is to look at official counts of deaths attributed on death certificates to heatstroke.

Callahan tells Carbon Brief that the “death-certificate coding” appears to have fallen out of favour in Europe – which he says is a “smart move” given that it does not provide a “full accounting”. 

Nevertheless, some public health authorities are still using this method. For example, in the wake of the heatwave in the US earlier this month, public health data showed 29 people in New Jersey and three people in New York had died from “heat-related illnesses”.

Scientists tell Carbon Brief the excess deaths and statistical modelling approaches both have advantages and drawbacks. These are explored below.

What do the latest figures show for Europe’s May and June heatwaves?

The table below shows the death numbers that have been reported by governments and researchers for Europe’s May and June heatwaves, including the approach used to reach the figures.

It suggests that multiple countries in Europe experienced more than 1,000 heat-related deaths during the late June heatwave, with authorities in Germany counting more than 5,000.

Meanwhile, the EuroMoMo mortality monitoring system estimated there were more than 10,500 excess deaths across 27 countries during the June heatwave. 

ReportedSourceCountry / regionDatesDaysDeathsLinkApproach 28/06/2026Public Health France ​France22-27 June61,000santepubliquefrance.fr Excess deaths 29/06/2026World Health OrganizationEurope21-28 June81,300x.com/DrTedros/status Excess deaths 01/07/2026Carlos III Health Institute (MoMo)Spain1-30 June301,033dw.com Excess deaths (all-cause and temperature-attributable) 02/07/2026National Institute for Public Health and the EnvironmentNetherlands22-28 June7480rivm.nl
Excess deaths 03/07/2026Public Health France ​France22-28 June72,025santepubliquefrance.fr Excess deaths 07/07/2026Chris Callahan/Andrew DesslerFrance12-29 June182,766carbonbrief.org Statistical modelling 08/07/2026Chris CallahanEurope15-28 June1413,975zenodo.org Statistical modelling 08/07/2026SciensanoBelgium18 June - 1 July141,747brusselstimes.com

Excess deaths 09/07/2026Robert Koch InstituteGermany22-28 June75,120rki.de Statistical modelling 13/07/2026Met Office/LSHTM/ImperialEngland and Wales22-27 June62,183drive.google.com Statistical modelling 13/07/2026Met Office/LSHTM/ImperialEngland and Wales24-26 May3553drive.google.com

Statistical modelling 13/07/2026EURO Mo/Mo27 European countries22-28 June710,650reuters.com Excess deaths 07/07/2025National Institute for Public Health and the EnvironmentNetherlands22-28 June7577archive.ph

Excess deaths 14/07/2026Germany Federal Statistical Office (Destatis)Germany22-28 June75,753destatis.de
Excess deaths

In most instances, Carbon Brief has linked to the figures published by public health authorities, where numbers were first reported. In some instances, figures were released on dashboards or webpages that are updated weekly. In these cases, Carbon Brief has linked to media reports or archived web content. 

What are the pros and cons of the ‘excess deaths’ method?

The excess deaths approach looks at how many more people died during a particular time period compared to a baseline period of the same length. 

For instance, on 14 July, Germany’s federal statistics agency, Destatis, published figures showing Germany saw 32% more deaths than the average in the week of 22-28 June, which was dominated by the heatwave.

Specifically, the agency said that 23,932 deaths had been recorded that week, compared to an average of 18,179 in that calendar week across the years 2022-25.

This suggests there were 5,753 excess deaths during the heatwave week. (This was a slight increase from preliminary Destatis figures released a week earlier, covered by Bloomberg.)

The Netherlands similarly calculates excess deaths by comparing death figures against an average of deaths in a similar period during unspecified “previous years”.

Data published by the country’s National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM) shows that, during the week of 22-28 June, an estimated 3,626 people died in total in the northern European country. 

This is 577 more deaths than the 3,049 expected at that time of year, it said. (This is a slight revision upwards from the 480 excess deaths reported on 4 July by NL Times based on preliminary figures from NVIM.)

Callahan says that the excess deaths approach has the benefit of being rapid and relatively uncomplicated:

“It is something that public health authorities can put out fairly quickly without having to run a fancy model and do coding like the academic scientists do. It is a short-term, high-impact, rapid estimate of mortality.” 

The drawback to the approach is that it is impossible to decipher what percentage of these “all-mortality” excess deaths are, in fact, heat-related. 

Imperial College’s Konstantinoudis notes that the public often “feels more comfortable” with the excess deaths approach over the statistical modelling approach because the data it is using – the official death numbers – is based on real-world data. 

However, he stresses that excess deaths figures are based on a series of assumptions, including the reference period picked by researchers and how the numbers are interpreted.

Statisticians and researchers have to make a series of decisions, including what period to use as a comparative baseline. For example, the baseline period could be the week before a heatwave, the same week a year before – or an average of the same week across multiple years in the past. If averaging mortality of a similar period across a number of previous years, they must decide how much “weight”, or influence, each year should have.

They must also decide how to account for spikes in deaths during the Covid-19 pandemic years, as well as the gradual rise in average temperatures due to global warming.

During the pandemic, many governments and the World Health Organization (WHO) used the excess deaths approach to count deaths. The WHO said this metric was more “comparable” and “objective” than relying on national reports of Covid-19 deaths, given that different countries used different criteria for this classification.

A notable example of how assumptions can skew excess death figures came during this period, when the WHO estimated in 2022 that Germany had seen 195,000 excess deaths over two years of pandemic. 

However, after statisticians and epidemiologists pointed out the assumptions in the model were not suited to Germany’s demographics, the WHO retracted the figure and eventually reduced it to 122,000 and then later to 102,000.

Konstantinoudis explains:

“Covid taught us that it is complicated. Depending on the different assumptions used in the excess-mortality approach, you get different results…There is a scientific basis, but we should acknowledge the assumptions.” 

What are the pros and cons of the ‘statistical modelling’ method?

In the statistical modelling approach, researchers use models to determine the specific relationship between mortality and temperature for a particular location and then apply it to temperatures observed during a heatwave. 

This allows them to estimate the overall number of deaths that were caused by a heatwave. 

Previous research has revealed that, in most places of the world, there is a U-shaped response of mortality to temperature – where deaths increase rapidly in cold or hot conditions as daily maximum temperatures depart further from an “optimum temperature”.

For example, research published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2025 found that mortality rates in France rise as daily maximum temperatures move away from approximately 20C. This is shown in the chart below.

Relationship between daily high temperature and all-cause mortality rates in France, estimated using data over 2004-19. Credit: Dr Christopher Callahan, based on data and methods in Callahan et al. (2025)

Indiana University’s Callahan say this approach allows scientists to “formally establish a relationship between the temperature and the mortality”, adding:

“If you do these calculations right, you can credibly say your entire estimate of mortality is heat-related.”

Prof Antonio Gasparrini, biostatistician and epidemiologist at LSHTM, explains the method relies on “timeseries models that apply relatively sophisticated statistical methods in which you ‘smooth’ trends occurring in time, so you control for long-term trends and seasonality”. 

He says that these models also allow researchers to “remove” trends affecting mortality that are unrelated to heat – for instance, the impacts of the pandemic. They can also “add” other information, such as around how air pollution combines with heat to threaten vulnerable populations.  

Gasparrini adds:

“What statistical modelling can bring is that it is more refined. It can link specific temperatures to specific impacts rather than just looking at the event [in the whole]. And also, it can be localised – [data] can be stratified at a fine scale and we can look at impacts at different scales.

“So, it is more informative. But, at the same time, of course, it’s based on more assumptions than the [excess deaths approach] and, of course, needs to be checked and compared.” 

The approach depends on a number of judgment calls from scientists and statisticians, including the years picked to underpin the model and how to capture the lag in deaths in the days and weeks after a heatwave event. 

They must also decide at what threshold to start counting deaths – in other words, whether to count all deaths above the “optimum temperature” or set a higher, more extreme value – and whether and how to account for any adaptation to heat extremes that may have been put in place in the study area.

A benefit of the statistical modelling approach is that it opens the door for being able to attribute a specific number of deaths to human-caused climate change. 

By applying the temperature-mortality curve to both the temperatures of the recent heatwave and a counterfactual world without climate change, scientists can estimate what proportion of estimated deaths only occurred because the world is warming.

For instance, Imperial College, LSHTM and Met Office researchers found that 59% and 38% of heat-related deaths in the UK’s May and June heatwaves, respectively, could be attributed to climate change. Their findings are shown in the chart below.

Number of heat deaths in England and Wales over 21-29 May and 18-28 June attributable to climate change. Source: Barnes et al (2026).

Some climate-sceptic commentators have argued that modelled estimates are hypotheses and should therefore be treated with caution.

On 13 July, climate-sceptic news website GB News covered a blog post by Oxford academics that argued the figure that 2,700 people had died in the UK’s May and June heatwaves was not reflected in the provisional “all-mortality” data put out by the UK’s Office for National Statistics (ONS). Quoting the blog, GB News said:

“Modelling tells us nothing. Models explore possibilities; surveillance tells us what happened. When the two disagree, our instinct should be to investigate the data rather than simply trust the model.”

However, Imperial’s Konstantinoudis – who worked on the models behind the 2,700 figure – says it is important to await the UK Health and Security Agency (UKHSA)’s annual heat mortality report before arriving at any conclusions. He explains:

“While we are entirely clear that our current findings are modelled estimates, this methodology has consistently delivered comparable results to the UKHSA’s own official analyses of observed deaths for past heat events.”

(The UKHSA report will include updated figures and estimate excess deaths from heat based on specific periods of heat in different regions, whereas the provisional ONS figures cover all national deaths during a full-week period.)

Konstantinoudis says both the excess deaths and statistical modelling approaches have been the subject of extensive peer-reviewed scientific study and can provide a “holistic view of what is happening” when used together. 

Studies that have compared statistical modelling approaches for estimating heatwave deaths with excess death figures in the UK have found they yield broadly similar results. 

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In the face of the intersecting crises of demography, technology and economic insecurity, finding solidarity in the care we give each other offers a path to a more optimistic future. But working towards this requires us to challenge the foundational assumptions of the economy that surrounds us, one that devalues rather than celebrates the care we give each other.

The language of crisis defines our collective experience of the 21st century. As our attention is pulled from one emergency to another, we risk overlooking the mindsets that enable these shocks – not only the pursuit of extraction, growth, and profit, but also our collective relationship with care.  

Care shows up in all our lives – in parenting, foster care and paid care work; in receiving care, or being part of communities. At some point, we all need to care for others and be cared for ourselves. Yet care has been systematically undervalued and under-resourced as a result of those dominant mindsets.  

This isn’t a new issue. Unpaid care labour – particularly the assumption that it is labour carried out by women – is a foundational premise of our modern economy. While more women than ever taking up paid labour is a positive outcome of changing social norms, little has been done to reckon with the implications this has for unpaid care. Particularly as people live longer and Europe’s population shifts, the need for change becomes ever more pressing.  

That care has traditionally been women’s work only compounds the perception that it lacks value and due attention.

But doing so is at odds with an economy that only rewards profit and productivity as, statistically speaking, so much of the care we give to each other counts as neither. Social security systems and wider public services that sustain care have seen weakened investment and wealth extraction through privatisation.  

In England and Wales, research shows that those with a closer relationship to care – whether they receive or give, caring services more than the average person – are more at risk of experiencing poverty: children (31 per cent versus 21 per cent for the rest of the population), larger families (44 per cent of children in large families) disabled people (28 per cent, compared to 20 per cent for able-bodied people) and unpaid carers (23 per cent).  

Where the language of crisis sets off panic, solutions are presented in the form of quick fixes like further investment in AI and technology. From managing workflow to increasing accessibility and translations, predicting future need and remotely monitoring vital signs, there are clear uses for technological innovations across social care settings. But additional research shows that both the public and workers are wary of the impact of less human connection in care and healthcare settings. Whilst inserting new technology for the sake of productivity may in fact achieve the opposite – open up more time for human-led care – there is also a risk that this motivation reinforces existing attempts to minimise investment in human care and ignores the role of unpaid care in our lives. 

Rather than seeing care as another crisis to tackle at surface level, it should be seen as the driver of a shift for our economic model. Facing up to this reality will require us to reckon with the importance of care in our lives and to acknowledge  different experiences of care as separate as having more in common than divides them.  

How did we get here? 

Although European countries invest in care to differing degrees, the Europe-wide approach  is rooted in a shared ideology that sees care as either a burden or a deficit. Feminist economics shows that this ideology is inseparable from the logics of neoliberalism. As writer and academic Emma Dowling articulates, “care… is a cost to capital”, and it follows that this cost must be minimised. When economic success is measured according to GDP growth, any such cost is at odds with ideas of economic progress. Feminist economist Emma Holten lays bare the extent to which measures of economic progress and care are in conflict with one another: “[In] the eyes of GDP, taking care of a flock of kids and taking a nap are equivalent. Either way you are unproductive.” 

Whilst some argue we should factor care into GDP calculations in order to appreciate its value, this would merely align care with capitalism rather than engage with the bigger question of whether capitalism will enhance or degrade the quality of care. With a growing number of economists identifying GDP’s dominance over the economy as detrimental to wellbeing, greater ambition over the scale of change needed is essential. 

That care has traditionally been women’s work only compounds the perception that it lacks value and due attention. This gendered divide endures: women, for example, take on at least two and a half times more housework and care work than men globally – despite this being a socially created and maintained inequality. 

Overcoming these gendered and capitalist mindsets will require action across multiple fronts. Our research with grassroots activists whose work spans different relationships with care identified a range of opportunities to act in solidarity towards a more caring economy: in our communities, in the ways we work, and through the welfare state. 

Communities: Care by design 

In our communities, resisting capitalist framings requires us to work together to create a culture that celebrates care and enables it by design. How we design the places we live is one element of this. Conventionally, care is compartmentalised into specific policy spaces; often this means it is squeezed into the remit of health and social care systems. But for many people, care intersects with their lives in a much more comprehensive way.  

In Barcelona, care blocks offer an alternative way of thinking about how the places in which  we live influence our care for one another. The city has applied to care the principles of the commons (the idea that resources are shared and co-governed by their user community), and emboldened them with material resources and participatory local democratic processes in a municipalist approach. 

These care blocks sprang from Barcelona en Comu (BComu), a political platform that centred feminist economic thinking, reframing care as a public responsibility as opposed to a private issue. They started from a place whereby care is foundational and where those who are the providers of care are centred in policy decisions. Bringing together the many policy threads that impact those who undertake care labour at a local level moved the approach to care – crucially, by foregrounding its place in the city’s economy. 

BComu approached care holistically rather than in a compartmentalised way. Despite bureaucratic barriers, they supported care workers to set up cooperatives and worked to create the abovementioned care blocks whose goal was to enable small teams of workers to support a defined number of people in a fixed geographic location. Workers use a self-managing team model; they also have full-time contracts (as opposed to the more common zero-hours contracts, thereby mitigating economic insecurity), and a space to meet and plan their work. The intention is to improve labour conditions (including travel time between clients), improve the experience of beneficiaries of care, and create a more integrated service with wider health and social services. 

In addition, BComu is creating Centres of Care in these neighbourhoods bringing together a range of services for care workers and those undertaking unpaid care in a range of forms. It expanded its municipal children’s services to enable more women from low income families to undertake paid work. 

Whilst many of Barcelona’s individual initiatives may be familiar to other countries, their political philosophy of bringing different groups together, placing resources in one place, and using a local approach sets BComu’s work apart. By centring inequality and the recognition that “care work is everyone’s responsibility”, they have taken steps to address the devaluing of care in all its forms. 

Work: Rebalancing time 

How we spend our time also significantly impacts our ability to take on different caring relationships. The norms governing paid labour contain fertile ground for change. Across Europe, paid work is failing people with a relationship to care, from disabled people to unpaid carers and parents. The EU’s disability employment gap sat at 24 per cent in 2024, whilst in the UK it’s at around 30 per cent. Meanwhile, some 600 unpaid carers leave paid work every day in the UK alone. Our recent research into unpaid carers’ experiences of poverty exemplifies this, with one unpaid carer telling us, “I was a teacher, but [care] was taking all my evenings… so I’ve got a new job but it’s paying a lot less.” 

Discussions around paid work tend to converge on a vague commitment to flexible working or access to unpaid or low-paid leave for specific groups. Yet such targeted reforms do little to engage with the systems that have led to the norms we have today. Here, solidarity across caring experiences has the potential to embolden campaigns to drive care’s recognition as a collective experience that are currently compartmentalised. Take paid leave. In the UK, different campaigners are working to increase paid sick leave, statutory paternity leave, and paid carers leave. Each of these is an act of rebalancing our paid labour with our wider lives, and any such campaign must speak to the underlying mindsets that devalue care for ourselves and each other.  

Moving from compartmentalised action to transformative change speaks to the increasing recognition in new economic thinking, rooted in feminist economics, that we must recognise the role unpaid care plays in our economy and the need to shift our paid labour model to value and enable care. A more systemic rebalancing of time is needed. 

This year will mark a century since the five-day work week was adopted by the Ford Motor Company, a significant win after a long campaign by unions. A decade prior to this, the average work week was between 50 and 60 hours. Since 1926, average working hours have plateaued, currently standing at 37.5 for women and 39 for men. 

There is growing interest and evidence for a move to a four-day work week, with pilots undertaken globally. Rebalancing the amount of time we spend in paid labour, without loss of pay, is a crucial way to centre care in our lives. In Poland, the government announced a pilot for a shorter working week in 2025 to address some of the longest working hours in Europe. Employers can voluntarily test a flexible approach to shorter working hours, either by reducing daily working hours, increasing the weekend by one day, or providing more annual leave, all whilst maintaining salaries. The pilot received four times the anticipated sign-ups from employers, with over 2000 companies currently undertaking a trial. 

In Germany, 45 organisations were recruited for a two-year pilot to trial a four-day work week, whilst in the UK, a further 61 trialled the same over six months. Across different contexts, results show that productivity improves (an obvious priority for employers), opening space for a better relationship with care. Improvements in wellbeing are also significant, with sick days declining and employees reporting a reduction in stress. 

Social security: Towards universalism 

The social security system is another essential pillar for a more flexible approach to paid work. For those whose caring role means that paid work is not possible, or is limited, the system should provide enough support to live well without having to minimise that care. 

In Europe, improvements in living conditions, shifting attitudes to illness and disability, and innovations in healthcare have meant more of us live longer. Countries have responded to this in different ways, with different degrees of investment in social security and social care. However, the vast majority of care is still provided by family and friends, much of it unpaid. 

In the 1970s, the UK introduced the Invalid Care Allowance (now Carer’s Allowance) for single people caring for a disabled family member. The allowance is now available to all people over 18 who are not in full-time education and are providing care for 35 hours or more a week. There are challenges with the UK model, not least its low payment level, but we can look to it as a starting point for considering how we value and enable those providing unpaid care.  

The idea that our social security systems are there to support our different relationships with care opens up the possibility of more universal provision too. Whilst payments for unpaid carers – and for disabled people who face extra costs – are essential to ensure everyone is able to live well, there is also a case to be made for a universal basic income (UBI) that overcomes the need for boundaries and thresholds around what counts as care. Any model would need to account for the additional costs faced by disabled people in an ableist society, but a foundation of UBI could go some way to enabling care in all our lives. 

Moving from compartmentalised action to transformative change speaks to the increasing recognition in new economic thinking, rooted in feminist economics…

A long road ahead 

Whilst UBI is a longer road, we are seeing early shifts across Europe towards a rebalancing of paid and unpaid labour, towards places designed around care that could enable us all to live well. As a care-experienced collaborator told us of a caring future, it “is imbued with the principles of love, care and freedom for all…we have an obligation to keep that alive and flourishing, to demand a multitude of futures that aren’t eschatological and annihilistic.” Embracing that care is a collective experience, and using that knowledge to act together, in solidarity, to change the mindsets that shape our economy is a source of hope. 

'Cosy games' have grown in popularity in recent years but can they be more than mere escapism? Dr Stephanie Farnsworth investigates

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• Not only is speeding wasteful and dangerous, it only saves the average driver less than a minute off their commute. (Yahoo!)
• The U.S. DOT has removed bike lanes and speed cameras from its list of best practices that have been shown to reduce crashes and save lives. (NPR)
• A long article in tech magazine Noema argues that driverless cars save lives even if most people don’t perceive them as safe.
• People who work from home one day a week drive more than full-time commuters, while those who work from home at least three days a week drive less. (Science Direct)
• A Democratic bill would provide $205 billion over five years for high-speed rail projects. (Streetsblog USA)
• Distracted driving declined 14 percent after Iowa passed a law banning the use of mobile devices while driving. (Government Technology)
• A new depot is essential to the success of Austin’s light rail line. (Metro Magazine)
• Video of police stopping a Black Pennsylvania teen for jaywalking went viral. (Patriot-News)
• The last streetcar bridge in Washington, D.C. will be torn down, allowing the National Park Service to reopen a trail that’s been closed due to falling debris. (WTOP)
• Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava wants to slash bus service and future transit projects to close a budget cap. (Herald; paywall)
• The Milwaukee County Transit System is facing 25 percent bus service cuts. (Urban Milwaukee)
• Bike traffic in Paris increased by 240 percent between 2018 and 2023. (Momentum Mag)
• Some Southeast Asian cities are organized around rivers rather than roads. (Arch Daily)
• Toronto is integrating bikeshare and public transit. (Cities Today)

Nearly half a century after the Iranian Revolution, its outcome is still widely treated as inevitable. The Shah fell, the story goes, and a deeply religious society naturally produced an Islamic state. Clerical rule appears, in hindsight, as history fulfilling cultural destiny. This interpretation is politically convenient and historically wrong.

The Islamic Republic did not emerge because Iranian society was inherently predisposed toward theocracy. Nor was the victory of the clerical leadership preordained. The Revolution was a profoundly social upheaval shaped by competing class forces, organisational strengths, political miscalculations, and strategic struggles within the revolutionary camp itself.

The Revolution did not have to end with clerical rule. Its outcome was fought over and decided.

The Revolution contained democratic and egalitarian possibilities that were defeated through political struggle rather than cultural destiny.

Understanding why matters urgently today, not only for interpreting Iran’s past, but also for understanding why opposition to imperial aggression against Iran cannot be confused with political support for the regime that ultimately consolidated power.

A social revolution, not a religious eruption

The overthrow of Mohammad Reza Shah was the culmination of decades of uneven capitalist transformation imposed from above. Oil revenues financed industrialisation, urban expansion and state-led modernisation, yet political participation remained tightly controlled. Rural displacement accelerated, inequality widened, and millions were pushed into precarious urban existence.

By 1978, dissent had escaped elite circles and become mass rebellion. Demonstrations paralysed major cities, but it was the strike movement,

particularly among oil workers, that fatally undermined the monarchy. Production halted, state income collapsed, and the regime’s coercive apparatus began to fracture.

Across factories and workplaces, workers established councils known as shoras. These bodies supervised hiring, challenged management authority and, in some cases, exercised direct control over production. They emerged organically from struggle rather than religious mobilisation. For a brief historical moment, power was fragmented between a collapsing state and newly created popular institutions.

The Revolution opened a vacuum. What followed was not the automatic triumph of Islamism but a struggle over who would fill that space.

Genuine emancipation, in Iran as elsewhere, can only be the work of those struggling within society itself.

Islamist networks entered this struggle with decisive advantages. Decades of repression had shattered secular parties, socialist organisations, and independent unions. Mosques, religious charities, and clerical networks, however, survived as nationwide infrastructures embedded in everyday social life.

Religious discourse also translated diverse grievances into a shared moral language. Economic injustice, political repression and national humiliation could all be framed as symptoms of moral corruption. This allowed bazaar merchants, students, professionals and the recently urbanised poor to imagine themselves united within a single revolutionary community. Yet this unity concealed deep contradictions.

Islamist leadership mobilised popular anger against dictatorship and foreign domination while defending private property and social hierarchy. It invoked justice for the oppressed while opposing independent working-class organisations and women’s emancipation. Its strength lay precisely in bridging incompatible social interests under a common ideological umbrella.

The decisive question was not whether alliances with such forces should exist. Revolutions make alliances unavoidable. The question was how those alliances were conducted.

The alliance dilemma

Opposition to the Shah necessarily brought together secular radicals, nationalists, liberals, and religious activists. Cooperation during the struggle against dictatorship was both inevitable and legitimate. No single force could defeat the regime alone. The catastrophe emerged after victory.

For a brief historical moment, power was fragmented between a collapsing state and newly created popular institutions.

Large sections of the Iranian Left interpreted the clerical leadership primarily through its anti-imperialist rhetoric. Because it opposed U.S. influence and denounced the monarchy’s Western alignment, it was treated as a progressive partner whose authority should not be challenged during a supposedly transitional stage. Alliance gradually became political subordination.

Instead of maintaining organisational independence while cooperating in struggle, major left currents endorsed referendums legitimising clerical authority, muted criticism of repression and accepted restrictions imposed in the name of revolutionary unity. Independent criticism was postponed precisely when power was being consolidated.

The problem was not cooperation itself. Refusing a united struggle would have isolated the Left from the revolutionary masses. The disaster lay in abandoning political autonomy.

Revolutionary alliances require clarity about divergent social projects. In Iran, shared opposition to the Shah was mistaken for shared visions of the future.

The weakness of the workers’ movement deepened this imbalance. Although factory councils proliferated rapidly, they remained locally rooted and politically fragmented. No national structure emerged capable of transforming workplace militancy into an alternative centre of authority.

As analysed in studies of Iranian labour movements, workers possessed immense disruptive power but lacked durable institutions linking factories across sectors and regions. Without coordination, economic control could not become political power.

Clerical leaders moved swiftly to contain this threat. Strikes were denounced as harmful to national recovery. Appeals to Islamic unity reframed labour demands as selfish disruptions of the Revolution. Workers who had paralysed the monarchy were encouraged, and increasingly pressured, to restore production. Gradually, leverage evaporated.

Counterrevolution from within

The consolidation of clerical rule unfolded not simply through repression but through political struggle inside revolutionary institutions themselves.

Professional and managerial layers anxious about workplace democracy aligned with efforts to restore discipline. Islamic activists reshaped councils into structures loyal to the emerging state. Revolutionary committees increasingly functioned as mechanisms of central authority rather than grassroots power.

Counterrevolution did not restore the Shah’s order. It emerged from within the victorious coalition itself.

By the early 1980s, independent organisations were marginalised or destroyed. Repression followed political isolation rather than preceding it. The revolutionary opening narrowed step by step until clerical monopoly became reality.

Subsequent interpretations often fall into opposing simplifications. One portrays Islamist movements as inherently fascistic enemies, justifying alliances with authoritarian states or liberal elites. The other romanticises them as authentic anti-imperialist forces. Iran demonstrates the inadequacy of both views.

Movements rooted in social dislocation can simultaneously challenge domination and impose new forms of hierarchy. Cooperation in struggle may be necessary, but political independence is indispensable. Without it, the most organised force captures revolutionary energy and reshapes it to its own ends. The Iranian Left’s tragedy was an uncritical alliance.

Iran under attack

These historical lessons acquire renewed urgency amid ongoing military threats and attacks against Iran today.

The Islamic Republic is an authoritarian state that has repressed workers, jailed dissidents and crushed democratic movements. None of this should be minimised. Yet opposition to that regime cannot translate into support for external aggression.

Imperial intervention has never delivered emancipation in the Middle East. From Iraq to Libya, military assaults carried out in the language of liberation have destroyed societies while strengthening reactionary forces. Foreign bombardment does not empower democratic movements. It devastates the very social actors capable of producing internal change. Deliverance cannot come from imperialism.

External attack strengthens authoritarian rule by allowing regimes to present themselves as defenders of national sovereignty. It sidelines internal dissent, militarises politics and fractures civil society. Those who suffer first are workers, students and ordinary civilians, not ruling elites.

Defending Iran against imperial aggression, therefore, does not mean endorsing its rulers. It means recognising that social transformation can only emerge from struggles within society itself.

The same principle applies today as in 1979. Liberation cannot be imposed from above, whether by clerics or by foreign powers.

The endurance of the Islamic Republic should not obscure the contingency of its origins. The Revolution contained democratic and egalitarian possibilities that were defeated through political struggle rather than cultural destiny.

Recurring protest waves in Iran, labour strikes, women-led uprisings and youth mobilisation reveal tensions rooted in that unfinished revolutionary moment. The demands remain familiar: dignity, economic justice and political freedom.

Remembering that the Revolution did not have to end in clerical rule restores historical agency. Outcomes are shaped by organisation, leadership and strategy.

Iran’s experience shows that alliances are unavoidable in revolutionary moments. But whether they liberate or suffocate depends on maintaining independence, clarity, and the capacity to challenge allies once victory reshapes the terrain.

And it reminds us of something equally essential today. Authoritarian rule cannot be overthrown by bombs, sanctions or foreign intervention. Genuine emancipation, in Iran as elsewhere, can only be the work of those struggling within society itself.

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

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Today, multiple news outlets reported that President Trump’s teleprompter operator has been placing profitable bets on Kalshi regarding the content of Trump’s forthcoming speeches. Public Citizen has repeatedly appealed to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which oversees the prediction markets, to investigate and enforce the laws against insider trading. On March 5, 2026, Public Citizen filed an insider trading complaint with the CFTC following highly suspicious trades on the timing and developments of the American invasion of Iran. On April 30, 2026, Public Citizen and Better Markets urged the CFTC to conduct rulemaking on prediction markets trading activity.

Craig Holman, Ph.D., government affairs lobbyist with Public Citizen issued the following statement:

“Betting on political events on the prediction markets has become highly profitable for a small handful of anonymous bettors. Ever since the American invasion of Venezuela and Iran, a few people have been placing very large bets moments before the events take place, and scoring millions in profits. The timing and accuracy of these bets strongly suggest insider trading, probably by a few individuals in the know within the Trump administration.

“News just broke that Trump’s teleprompter operator has been placing such bets on the content of Trump’s upcoming speeches. This is further evidence of illegal insider trading on the prediction markets – an industry that the Commodity Futures Trading Commission has let operate like the Wild West.

“Public Citizen again calls on the CFTC to wake up and do its job of overseeing the prediction market industry and enforcing the insider trading laws.”

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NAS) today published an authoritative report, Attribution of Extreme Weather and Climate Events and Their Impacts, that validates the science connecting individual weather disasters and their lethal societal impacts directly to human-caused fossil fuel pollution. In response, Stephanie Brancaforte, climate accountability campaign director with Public Citizen’s Climate Program, issued the following statement:

“For decades, Big Oil knowingly poisoned our atmosphere and deceived the public about the impacts of burning fossil fuels —all the while lining executives’ pockets as communities continue to suffer from extreme heat, floods and fires.

“The science is clear: the extreme heat killing thousands of people in the northern hemisphere this summer is neither an unpredictable event nor an accident—it is the result of corporate crime. With the backing of the National Academies, survivors of climate catastrophes now have strong evidence to pursue justice against fossil fuel polluters to pay for the devastation they have unleashed.”

The National Academies of Sciences released a report today that puts the full weight of the country's most respected scientific institution behind extreme weather attribution science, affirming that the field can reliably connect specific disasters to fossil fuel pollution. The three-year review comes as nearly two dozen states and municipalities sue fossil fuel companies for climate damages, while roughly a dozen states advance climate superfund legislation that would force the industry to help pay for climate-related damage. Legal experts say the report could significantly strengthen both efforts.

Fossil fuel companies aren't waiting to find out. Congress is weighing legislation, and several states have already passed laws that would shield oil and gas companies from climate liability altogether — including model legislation drafted by the American Legislative Exchange Council for other states to adopt. In response to the report, the Make Polluters Pay campaign released the following statement.

Statement from Cassidy DiPaola, Communications Director for the Make Polluters Pay campaign:

"The National Academies just gave courts, cities, and communities something they've long needed: the full weight of the country's most authoritative scientific body behind attribution science. It affirms what researchers and international bodies like the IPCC have long recognized — that we can say, with real confidence, which extreme weather events were made worse by fossil fuel pollution, and how much damage that pollution caused.

The fossil fuel industry understands exactly what this means. That's why they've spent years trying to discredit attribution science as a field, and why they and their allies in Congress and state legislatures are racing right now to pass liability shield laws. They can't out-argue hundreds of peer-reviewed studies backed by the country's most respected scientific institution, so instead they're trying to make the law immune to the science. They know this research doesn't just describe a hotter world, but draws a line from their products to specific floods, heat waves, and deaths, and from there to who should pay for the damage.

Attribution science now underpins how cities plan for disaster, how insurers price risk, how public health officials prepare for heat deaths, and how courts weigh accountability. The only people with an interest in pretending otherwise are the ones being asked to pay for the damage they caused."