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

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

To the apocalypse! And beyond! Possible futures in and beyond UN climate modeling …

Coastal Erosion at Atherington by Chris Richardson Wikimedia

By Paul Atkin

The new modeling now being used by the UN Panel on Climate Change to map possible futures has shifted its methods. I’m going to attempt to get behind the jargon to spell out what the projections indicate, but also to highlight some flaws in the process.

Key differences are

The old “no action” baseline projection of what would happen if nothing was done about climate breakdown at all has been dropped on the grounds that some action is being taken and will continue to be: so the points of comparison now are between the consequences of sticking with the current level of action, and advancing or retreating from it.

The overall effect is to remove the highest, most damaging scenarios, as fossil fuel use is peaking – despite Trump – and they can no longer be considered the most dominant future fuel source. This reflects the partial success of actions to date.

The inevitable claims by Trump and his acolytes that the removal of projections based on what would happen if the “drill baby drill” polices they advocate were universally applied that this proves climate breakdown itself is “a hoax” are beyond surreal. To spell this out. If the world were to act with blithe insouciance and just double down on fossil fuels in the way that Trump wants to do to secure “US Global Energy Dominance” based on them, the worst case scenario would be back with a vengance. In fact, if “every last drop” of fossil fuels on the planet were to be burnt, as they advocate, that would drive a rise in temperature of 16C.

On the contrary, this drop in the worst case scenario is a sign that the world is not being completely bullied into its own self destruction. As there is now $2 trillion a year investment in renewable energy (double the current level of investment in FFs) so most new energy even in the US, and even in Texas, is now being provided by renewables; as they are now too cheap to be replaced by coal. But, $1Trillion is still being invested in Fossil Fuels annually. This is because the rate of profit on the investment is four to five times greater than for investment in renewables; so the search for returns is risking all our futures.

Nevertheless, dropping the worst case scenario has come in for criticism, as it replicates at international level what the Trump administration is trying to do to the still legally mandated US National Climate Assessment. In so doing, it implies that the worst outcomes are not possible – which it would be rash to assume – and therefore that taking action has less urgency – which is dead wrong.

This is particularly the case as the lowest scenarios have been revised upwards, reflecting the rapidity with which the climate is heating – and implicitly highlighting the inadequacy of the measures taken so far to stop it.

The headline from this is that 1.5C will be overshot. Although the IPCC only counts a threshold being passed after ten years on average, we are evidently already there, or thereabouts. 1.4C this year. Possibly 1.7C next. Again, this has been seized on by climate deniers to argue that “the battle” that they didn’t want us to engage in in the first place “has been lost”; so we’d best just give up and adapt to a new normal.

The problem with that is that a new normal of unchecked climate breakdown is not a slightly balmier set of stable conditions, in which Yorkshire becomes like Tuscany, but a state of spiralling crisis, weather whiplash between extreme droughts and torrential rain, failed harvests and hunger; and the more we put off action the worst it will get. The UN has noted that even a temporary overshoot will do “irreparable damage”. Battles are only lost if we give up, and every tenth of a degree is a front line.

The deeper point about “overshoot” is that we’ve been overshooting since we passed the 350 CO2 ppm mark in 1986, so everything we are now doing is about damage limitation. We care now at 430ppm, and rising.

The possible futures they spell out are clear and make it clear that what happens next depends on what we do, and don’t do, now.

Possible futures

The new assessment puts forward seven scenarios ranging from high to low emissions trajectories. In these scenarios the range of possible heating is between 1.6C and 3.3C by the end of the century.

• The high scenario envisages emissions of 55 billion tonnes a year, significantly up from the 38 billion tonnes now. This gets us to 3.3C by 2100.
• The medium scenario, based on existing policies, projects 34 million tonnes a year, a minimal reduction. This gets to 2C by 2050, 2.9C by 2100 and 3C by 2150.
• The low scenario based on accelerated action cuts emissions to 9 billion tonnes but temperatures still rise to 1.8C by 2050 and fall back to 1.5C by 2100.
• The old baseline warning of the likely consequences of no action – the policy favoured by Trump, Reform, and now the Conservative Party (which has banned anyone who takes climate change seriously as a possible Parliamentary candidate) – was a possible rise of 4.6 – 4.9C by century’s end, and more beyond. Meltdown, basically. If these forces win in enough places, that is back on the table.
• As “there are no good outcomes above 1.5C” we are in for a lot of trouble at least for the rest of this century. This is why it is so mind bogglingly idiotic for the BBC to post a story entitled “what will you tell your grandchildren about the summer of 2026?”, as if what we have just experienced is a one off, a weird anomaly after which we get back to normal, not a warning of Summers to come, during which we may well reminisce fondly about how relatively cool it was just to have 35C heatwaves.

All these projections are essentially technical. And that the changes already in train will develop with an orderly predictable Fabian gradualism that we can slowly adapt to. tPlaying down the potential for sudden catastrophic shifts as we reach tipping points – the mass deaths of coral – the Amazon becoming a carbon source not a carbon sink – accelerating methane release from melting permafrost – gives a false impression that everything is under control. The point about tipping points is that that seems to be the case, until it isn’t. A report just out indicates that “Warming-induced” emissions of greenhouse gases from natural sources – including permafrost, wetlands and wildfires – could amplify global temperature rise by a further 20-30% for example.

We have to bear in mind that the rise in greenhouse gases driven by human industrial and agriculture activity now is 40 times faster than during the Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximum 50 m years ago and over 100 times faster than during the warming at the end of the last ice age. Those who say that the Earth’s climate has always changed for natural reasons are right, but wrong to ignore the way our actions are giving it such a ferocious acceleration in such a short space of time. In the case of the PETM it took about 3,000 years for global temperatures to increase by 5-8C. On average, that works out at between .0017 and .0027 C a year. At the moment the temperature is increasing on average by .35C a year. So this is almost unbelievably fast, and so must our response be.

And we should bear in mind that the last time the Earth had a 430ppm concentration of CO2 was during the Pliocene, three million years ago, when temperatures were 3-4C higher than the pre industrial average and sea levels were 5 – 25 metres higher.

This is the East coast at a 5 metre rise, the low end of that projection. Peterborough and Cambridge are on the Wash.

And the Thames Estuary would start around Wapping. At 25 metres it would start at Windsor. Current IPCC projections are for a 1 metre rise by 2100, with an outside chance of 2 metres, but the rate is rising and it keeps going after that.

A recent report from the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries (the Insurance Industry essentially) and Exeter University applied a planetary solvency model on the basis that the existing technical models underestimate the risks and the knock on negative impacts that are already being felt and are accelerating.

Their projection is that by 2070 – 2090 the impacts will be so severe that world GDP will halve and 4 billion people will die. While fact check websites poo poo this, this is actuaries making this projection based on insurance industry risk projections, so shouldn’t be dismissed out of hand. And if it is even the most remote possibility, it should concentrate minds and give us more of a sense of proportion…and urgency.

Social and geopolitical factors

And here’s the core of the problem. All of these projections seem to be based on presumptions that all other factors are equal, and that existing social economic and political structures stay essentially the same, when there is actually no way that they can; if only because of the impact of climate consequences that are already baked in.

They rest on UN projections that the global population will rise from 8.23 billion now to 9.6 billion by 2050, peak at just over 10 billion around 2080, then slowly decline from then on. By the end of the century, the projection is that people will be, on average, 10 -25% poorer than they are now.

But, there is no average person, no average state. Projections of climate impacts vary – with the Canadian government projecting rises of 3-5C by 2100, with 10C in the Arctic, the threat of mass deaths from wet bulb temperature events at a global average of a 2C rise primarily in Northern India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Eastern Asia, the Arabian Gulf and the African Sahel Zone. Lets not forget that the medium scenario gets us to 2C in 2050 – 24 years from now.

Further, the existing state of affairs is not socially or economically static. It is characterised by rapid shifts in wealth and power within states and between them. The ever growing concentration of wealth in fewer and fewer hands in the West under neoliberalism, the increased global weight of the BRICS in general (with a combined economy now greater than the G7) and China in particular, with its colossal exports of renewable products and technology. Part of this is an attempt by the Western ruling classes to sustain their bloated lifestyles by keeping the global South as poor as possible to keep kits carbon footprint down. The UK government decision under Starmer to cut ODA, including climate finance to pay for the first installment of increased war spending expresses this perfectly.

These questions will be resolved in political struggle within and between states. The most decisive of these now is to defeat the attempt by the United States to sabotage international cooperation, to shore up its slipping global imperial dominance by preparing itself and its allies for an apocalyptic war, to roll back the deployment of renewable energy and transport, to secure “global energy dominance” through its own abundance of fossil fuel reserves, control of those of other states, and enforced dependence on its exports by those without. Part of this is an attempt to sustain the bloated lifestyles of the western ruling class by keeping the global south as poor as possible. The UK’s cut of ODA, including climate finance, to pay for the first installment of increased war spending expresses this perfectly.

The good news on this is that we could be reaching tipping points in this energy shift. The cost of renewable technology, wind, solar, batteries, has dropped so far and so fats that they are now cheaper than FF alternatives just about everywhere. More than half of countries have passed peak FF use and China is plateauing, with solar now producing more energy there than coal for the first time and other GS countries having a viable sustainable path to development which also liberates them from FF dependence and everything that goes with it. Its possible we could move not only away from unipolarity but through multi polarity to no polarity as a result. And because electric energy is so much more efficient that FFs, every unit of additional RE displaces 3 units of FF energy. And the total amount of extractive mining needed for all the resources needed for the transition up to 2050 is equivalent to the amount needed just for coal, just in 2024. Once the initial bottleneck of grid upgrades is dealt with, costs will drop even further. Quids in.

The post To the apocalypse! And beyond! Possible futures in and beyond UN climate modeling … first appeared on Greener Jobs Alliance.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has issued a sweeping new directive that attempts to strip imperiled wildlife of protections from most activities that can kill or injure them.

“This stabs at the very heart of the Endangered Species Act by giving federal approval to the killing of some of America’s most beloved wildlife,” said Brett Hartl, government affairs director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “The Trump administration is desperate to annihilate environmental protections, but this incredibly radical measure is both cruel and profoundly unlawful. Killing endangered wildlife is illegal, whether that’s your purpose or not.”

The Sept. 14 memo from Brian Nesvik, director of the Fish and Wildlife Service, attempts to fundamentally rewrite the Endangered Species Act’s prohibition on “take,” effectively ending nearly all potential law enforcement activities under the Act.

The unintentional or incidental killing of an endangered whale, for example, would no longer be considered illegal, even if it was easily foreseeable.

“A vessel that inadvertently strikes a whale has not taken it, because the vessel’s course was not set against the whale,” the Nesvik memo says. “Felling a tree is not a take of the bats roosting in it unless the tree is felled for the purpose of killing or capturing them.”

The new directive goes substantially beyond the administration’s recent elimination of the longstanding regulatory definition of “harm.” It declares that prohibited “take” requires an intentional act directed at a particular animal that directly and immediately affects that animal.

The administration’s July rule rescinded the regulatory definition of “harm,” which had expressly covered significant habitat modification that actually kills or injures protected wildlife. But the Sept. 14 directive goes considerably further. Rather than merely interpreting the word “harm,” the directive establishes requirements that it says apply to “take” generally — a statutory term Congress defined to include “harass, harm, pursue, hunt, shoot, wound, kill, trap, capture, or collect.”

The directive also violates the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Babbitt v. Sweet Home Chapter of Communities for a Great Oregon, where the majority rejected the contention that “take” is limited to conduct intentionally directed against particular animals.

Under the new Nesvik directive, Fish and Wildlife Service personnel are instructed to look for four elements: an affirmative act; an act intentionally directed at an animal; a direct and immediate effect; and a particular animal rather than populations, future occupants or unoccupied habitat. That could radically shrink the universe of activities the government considers to constitute unlawful take.

The directive could have far-reaching consequences for logging, mining, development, water diversions and other activities that foreseeably kill or injure endangered wildlife without deliberately targeting individual animals.

“If you chop down a tree full of endangered birds or race a huge ship through a pod of endangered whales, you should be held accountable for your destructive acts,” Hartl said. “But this administration wants to give wildlife killers a ‘Get out of jail free’ card. Imposing new limitations on the entire definition of take is a flagrant and illegal attempt to rewrite the Endangered Species Act via unilateral fiat. This would drive imperiled species over the cliff to extinction.”

Scientists push for fungi protection Channel News Catherine Early 17th September 2026 Teaser Media

Betraying MAHA, Senate GOP farm bill would erase progress on regenerative agriculture Anthony Lacey September 17, 2026 Anne Schechinger, M.S. September 17, 2026 Overview

• Regenerative agriculture is part of the Make America Healthy Again agenda that top Trump administration officials often tout.
• Conservation funding for regenerative practices from one program decreased by over $400 million in 2025.
• House and Senate Republicans are trying to cut conservation funding in the farm bill, which would lead to even less money for regenerative agriculture.

Leaders in the Make America Healthy Again movement like to tout their support for regenerative agriculture as a way to cut farm pollution and pesticide use, among other benefits. 

But Senate Republicans’ farm bill includes drastic funding cuts that would stall progress made by farmers adopting regenerative agriculture practices, undermining MAHA’s goal.

The practices include cover crops and riparian buffers. These efforts can help decrease air pollution, including nitrous oxide emissions, and increase farm resilience and profitability, while also improving the environment. Although they need reform, these programs help reduce agriculture’s climate emissions and water pollution, add to farm resilience and improve food safety.

Considerable progress had been made in farmers adopting regenerative agriculture practices, thanks to increased funding from the Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA. But that progress had already started to slide backward when conservation funding for regenerative practices from just one program decreased by over $400 million between 2024 and 2025. 

The Senate bill would make a bad situation even worse. The bill cuts over $2 billion from two of the nation’s most widely used conservation programs – the Agriculture Department’s Environmental Quality Incentives Program, or EQIP, and the Conservation Stewardship Program, or CSP. The programs give farmers and ranchers incentives to implement conservation practices on their land, including regenerative practices.

Last year, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., leader of the MAHA movement, announced the administration’s MAHA plan, which laid out a clear vision for EQIP and CSP. The plan pointed to efforts aimed at “empowering farmers and keeping solutions voluntary by expanding programs like” the two conservation programs. 

Kennedy continues to highlight the benefits of regenerative agriculture and why these conservation programs are successful.

Instead, Senate Republicans’ farm bill joins the House counterpart in committing to cuts in funding for these programs – despite their growing popularity.

If the cuts became law, there would be considerably fewer regenerative practices on farms and fewer environmental and climate benefits – and thousands of farmers would be turned away from conservation funding. 

Progress is being undone

Much more funding went to farmers for regenerative practices in 2023 and 2024, thanks to the IRA. But that decreased substantially in 2025, during the Trump administration, and will continue to go down if the farm bill cuts are adopted. 

The 2022 IRA established almost $20 billion in new funding for farmers through multiple conservation programs. This conservation funding was required to go to farmers for regenerative agriculture. Because of the additional funding, total EQIP obligations to farmers went up, from $1.1 billion in 2022 to $1.5 billion in 2023, and then even higher, to $2.5 billion in 2024. 

Many of the climate-smart practices that farmers received IRA funding for in 2023 and 2024 were regenerative agriculture practices like cover crops, reduced or no tillage, and nutrient management. 

EWG has identified a list of 43 regenerative agriculture EQIP practices that lessen climate emissions from farming and help farmers become more resilient to extreme weather. 

In the 2025 One Big Beautiful Bill Act, congressional Republicans retained the extra conservation funding from the IRA, but removed the requirement that it be spent on regenerative practices. Now lawmakers are going back on this promise and attempting to cut conservation funding. 

EQIP obligations for regenerative practices on EWG’s list went up in 2023 and 2024 but then dropped in 2025. The USDA under the Trump administration designated significantly less total EQIP money in 2025 at $1.8 billion. 

Obligations for regenerative practices went from $415.9 million in 2022 to $546.0 million in 2023 then all the way to $1.18 billion in 2024, before decreasing to $773.6 million in 2025. That means regenerative funding fell over $400 million between 2024 and 2025. (See Figure 1.)

Figure 1. EQIP funding for regenerative practices went up in 2023 and 2024 before decreasing in 2025. 

Image

Source: EWG, from USDA, Natural Resources Conservation Service, or NRCS, Financial Assistance Program Data

Additionally, the number of regenerative practices that were among the top 10 that received the most money went up in 2023 and 2024 but down in 2025. Four of the top 10 practices were regenerative in 2023, while five were regenerative in 2024, and only four were regenerative in 2025. 

Farmers received more funding in 2023 than they did in 2022 for 29 of the regenerative practices on EWG’s list. Then in 2024, farmers received more money for 33 practices than they had in 2023. But that dropped in 2025 – farmers only collected more money for 16 of the practices in 2025 than in 2024, meaning that 60% of the regenerative practices lost money in 2025 compared to 2024. 

Funding for some of the regenerative practices declined steeply in 2025. Cover crops were the top paid EQIP practice every year from 2022 through 2025. But spending for cover crops went down by half, from $352.7 million in 2024 to $176.3 million in 2025. 

There were also three regenerative practices that didn’t get any funding at all in 2025: strip cropping, contour buffer strips, and herbaceous wind barriers. And four other practices got less than $100,000 each nationally: contour orchard and other perennial crops, filter strips, riparian herbaceous cover, and salinity and sodic soil management. 

As EWG has found, among all conservation practices, some of these unfunded and low-funded practices have the biggest potential for reducing climate emissions. 

The majority of states also lost money for regenerative EQIP practices in 2025. There were 54 states and territories that got payments for regenerative practices in 2025, but of those, 43 had less funding for regenerative practices in 2025 than in 2024. Only 11 states had more money in 2025 than in 2024. (See Figure 2.)

Figure 2. The 10 states with the biggest losses in regenerative EQIP funding between 2024 and 2025.

Image

Source: EWG, from USDA, NRCS Financial Assistance Program Data

MAHA’s pilot program won’t have much of an impact

While the Trump administration claims to care about regenerative agriculture, this analysis shows that funding for regenerative practices actually went down during the first year of the administration. 

The administration’s only real action to support regenerative agriculture was establishing the Regenerative Pilot Program, or RPP. But the program prioritizes a small amount of conservation funding to regenerative practices, without providing any new funding for them. 

The RPP prioritizes EQIP and CSP funding for regenerative practices, with $400 million going to regenerative practices through EQIP and $300 million through CSP. However, RPP only includes 15 primary regenerative practices funded through EQIP, which is much fewer than the 43 practices on EWG’s regenerative list.  

And $400 million for regenerative practices may not actually change how any of the EQIP funding is spent. Over $400 million already went to farmers for these practices in previous years: $775.9 million for the 15 primary RPP practices in 2024, and $470.8 million for those practices in 2025. 

Assigning $400 million to a list of practices that were already receiving over $400 million a year means the program won’t increase funding for these practices at all. 

The House and Senate Republican farm bills even block the implementation of the RPP as it was designed by prohibiting funding from going to testing soil health or whole-farm planning. Farmers and ranchers looking to access the regenerative market would have to pay for their own testing, rather than get help from the federal government.

USDA conservation funding must be protected

When federal conservation programs have adequate funding, more farmers sign up and put the money toward the most environmentally beneficial and cost-effective regenerative agriculture practices. But the House and Senate Republican farm bill proposals would further reduce funding for the EQIP and CSP.

The Senate Republican farm bill, which recently passed out of the Agriculture Committee along party lines, would leave more than 56,500 valid farmer applications unfunded by EQIP over the next few fiscal years. Many of those unfunded applications would be for regenerative practices. 

The bill would undermine efforts to advance regenerative agriculture, running counter to the MAHA agenda.

The farm bill instead must maintain conservation funding, especially for regenerative practices. Farmers and ranchers have been promised this money – Congress shouldn’t take it away. 

Restoring funding for EQIP and CSP would not only reduce agriculture’s environmental and climate impact. It would also provide reliable support to tens of thousands of farmers and potentially reduce the costs of ad hoc disaster assistance and crop insurance payouts covered by American taxpayers. 

Big tobacco made Lunchables to hook kids on highly processed food Anthony Lacey September 16, 2026

Lunchables have been popular since the 1980s, giving kids a quick meal on the go. 

But most parents don’t know who had a hand in creating them and getting kids hooked: Big Tobacco. The make-your-own lunch kits were developed by Kraft General Foods, then owned by Philip Morris. And Philip Morris brought more than money to the table. 

The tobacco giant also brought the insight and strategies it had used to sell cigarettes, according to recent research. And it applied the marketing tools and formulation savvy it had developed over decades to making food more enticing.

Tobacco expands into the food industry

The tobacco industry consolidated in the 1980s through a series of strategic mergers and acquisitions of huge food companies. 

In 1985, Philip Morris purchased General Foods. Three years later, it acquired Kraft. And in 1989, the two companies were merged into Kraft General Foods. Around the same time, R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company acquired Nabisco.

In a recent study in the American Journal of Public Health, previously undisclosed internal Philip Morris documents revealed the purpose of the company’s food acquisitions: to create new ways to profit in the food business using classic tobacco industry tactics.

Creating products with pleasure and appeal

According to researchers, Philip Morris focused on two specific ideas.

The first was prioritizing products for consumer pleasure and appeal. The company called this “consumer-driven product development.” 

To sell cigarettes, the company used consumer research to refine their taste, sensation and delivery – and make them so enjoyable people would want to buy them again and again. 

When it came to selling food, the brand’s product developers started by asking what consumers wanted most. Focus groups found that kids wanted “control over their lunch” and “permission to play with their food,” while busy parents wanted a “last-minute lunch” that was “better than junk food.” Lunchables checked all the boxes. 

Over time, new product lines like “Lunchables with Pizza” were engineered to maximize pleasure, novelty and overall appeal. 

Providing options for health-conscious consumers

Philip Morris’ second idea was what study authors described as a “better for you” strategy.

In 1964, cigarette sales dropped after the surgeon general linked smoking to lung cancer, chronic bronchitis and emphysema. 

In response, Philip Morris introduced filtered and lower-tar cigarettes. The goal was to regain public trust by providing a product that spoke to consumer concerns about health and made some cigarettes seem safer than they actually were.

The company later applied the same playbook to Lunchables. In 1995, the company introduced Low-Fat Lunchables and marketed them as a “healthier” choice to consumers who were concerned about childhood obesity. Parents who may have said no to regular Lunchables suddenly had fewer reasons to turn them down.

But making Low-Fat Lunchables wasn’t as simple as removing fat. To preserve the flavor kids expected, Philip Morris added artificial chemicals – and an “all natural” label to ease any concerns. 

The company also enlisted tobacco scientists with expertise in flavor and consumer research and used sophisticated brain-wave testing, called electroencephalography, to study how people responded to different foods. 

As one researcher put it, Philip Morris used “cigarette science” to design its foods. 

Same playbook, different industry

Eventually, Big Tobacco faced lawsuits and public scrutiny over the harms caused by cigarettes. But by then, researchers say, its product development and marketing strategies had already helped shape today’s ultra-processed food, or UPF, landscape.  

Today, evidence linking UPF to poor health continues to grow. Studies have linked diets high in these foods to conditions including Type 2 diabetes, heart disease, cancer and even dementia. 

With UPF making up an estimated 73% of the food supply, they are not easy to avoid. And the food industry has only become more advanced in creating and marketing products with appeal. Research shows that some UPF even have addictive properties. 

This puts parents in a tough spot at the grocery store – especially when they’re tempted to reach for convenient options they know their kids will actually eat.

Policies are needed to protect public health

Public attitudes toward UPF have begun to shift, much as attitudes toward cigarettes did decades ago.

Yet the Food and Drug Administration continues to delay releasing its definition of UPF, due in part to industry pressure. A legal definition would open the door for policies like front-of-package labels or school nutrition standards that could help people eat healthier.

In the absence of federal action, states are stepping up.

Last year, California enacted a landmark law removing the most harmful UPF from school meals. Now a bill awaits the governor’s signature that would create a non-ultra-processed-certified seal to help shoppers spot less-processed foods at the grocery store.

What you can do now

Avoiding UPF altogether isn’t realistic for most people – the food industry has made sure of that. But it can help to understand what’s behind the marketing so you can make informed choices for your family.

Labels like “low-fat” or “all natural” don't always tell the full story. Check ingredient lists and nutrition facts, usually found on the back of food packages. Look for more whole foods and avoid longer lists of additives and chemicals you probably wouldn’t find in a home kitchen.

EWG’s Food Scores can help make that easier. The database lets you compare more than 150,000 foods and beverages using ratings based on nutrition, ingredient concerns and degree of processing. If you’re on the go, you can use EWG’s Healthy Living™ App.

Nicole Pajer is a freelance journalist.

Areas of Focus Food Ultra-Processed Foods Children’s Health Food Chemicals Guest Authors Nicole Pager (for EWG) September 17, 2026

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High Court ruling allows Bille community to argue that Shell is responsible for all relevant oil pollution in the region — including pollution that cannot be traced to one of 106 individually identified spills

A major new dimension has emerged in the long-running litigation over Shell-related oil pollution in Nigeria’s Niger Delta.

On 10 September 2026, Mrs Justice Lambert handed down judgment in Alame & Ors v Shell Plc & Anor [2026] EWHC 2332 (KB).

Much attention has understandably focused on another part of the ruling: allegations that Shell witnesses knowingly relied upon false or misleading factual assertions during the company’s earlier jurisdiction challenge are now to be dealt with as the litigation moves towards trial.

That development was examined in our earlier article, “Shell Nigeria Case Takes a Dramatic Turn: High Court Allows Allegations of Misleading Evidence to Be Tried.”

But the same judgment contains another ruling which may ultimately prove just as significant.

The High Court has rejected Shell’s attempt to prevent the Bille community from advancing what the judgment describes as its “primary” or “all-spills” case.

In simple terms, the claimants will be permitted to argue at the 2027 trial that Shell and its former Nigerian subsidiary are responsible not merely for pollution attributable to 106 specifically identified spills, but for all relevant oil pollution in the Bille region during the period covered by the claims.

That does not mean that the court has decided that Shell is responsible for all such pollution.

It emphatically has not.

What the court has decided is that the claimants are entitled to try to prove that case.

That distinction is crucial.

The case has moved far beyond 106 spills

The Bille litigation concerns oil pollution associated with pipelines, wellheads and other infrastructure in the Niger Delta between 2011 and 2013.

Following earlier procedural battles, the claimants were required to particularise their case in much greater detail.

The resulting pleadings identify 106 individual spills.

But there is a striking detail in the judgment.

Of those 106 spills, 60 had been identified by the defendants and given incident numbers.

A further 46 spills had not been identified by the defendants and were instead identified by the claimants during the forensic process.

Mrs Justice Lambert recorded that the claimants had produced individual annexes dealing with each of the 106 spills and setting out the systemic failures alleged to have caused or contributed to them.

Those alleged failures include matters concerning:

• pipeline and infrastructure integrity;
• leak detection;
• maintenance and repair;
• protection against third-party interference and illegal bunkering;
• spill containment;
• remediation and clean-up.

These remain allegations which Shell is entitled to contest at trial.

But the claimants’ case does not stop with the 106 spills.

The “all-spills” argument

The claimants contend that evidence concerning those identified spills may permit the court to draw wider inferences about pollution in Bille that cannot be attributed to any individually identified incident.

In other words, if contamination is found in an area and cannot be traced to one of the 106 specifically pleaded spills, the claimants want to be able to argue that it nevertheless resulted from another unidentified spill for which the defendants were responsible.

Shell opposed that approach.

The defendants argued that the claimants should be confined to the 106 identified spills and to damage which could be traced back to those specific events.

Had Shell succeeded, pollution that could not be connected to an individually identified spill would potentially have fallen outside the claimants’ case.

Mrs Justice Lambert rejected that restriction.

The claimants are therefore entitled to advance their broader case.

Doughty Street Chambers, whose Joshua Jackson acts for the claimants, summarised the effect of the ruling on 14 September:

the Bille community may argue that Shell is responsible for all oil pollution in the relevant region even where residents cannot identify every individual spill which produced that pollution.

That is a substantial development.

What the judge did — and did not — decide

The ruling should not be misunderstood.

Mrs Justice Lambert has not found that Shell caused every spill in Bille.

She has not found that every area of pollution came from Shell-operated infrastructure.

She has not decided whether sabotage, theft, illegal refining or other third-party activities caused particular spills.

Those are matters for evidence and trial.

The judgment instead deals with whether the claimants are legally and procedurally entitled to put their broader causation case before the court.

The judge concluded that they are.

Her reasoning illustrates why the eventual evidence will matter so much.

If, hypothetically, the evidence relating to the 106 identified spills showed that the defendants were responsible for virtually all of them and there were no credible competing sources for the remaining pollution, that evidence could potentially support an inference concerning unidentified spills.

If, on the other hand, the evidence presented a substantially mixed picture involving different causes and different responsible parties, drawing such a broad inference could become much more difficult.

The claimants therefore have permission to make the argument.

They still have to prove it.

Almost 300,000 documents

There is another important part of the chronology.

According to Doughty Street Chambers, an earlier High Court disclosure order resulted in Shell providing the claimants with almost 300,000 documents by January 2026.

After that disclosure exercise, the claimants were required to provide detailed particulars concerning parent-company liability, fault and causation.

Their expanded pleadings followed.

That sequence matters.

This is no longer a case being argued principally from general assertions about pollution in the Niger Delta.

The approaching trial will take place after a very large disclosure exercise and after years of forensic examination of the underlying events.

The identification by the claimants of 46 additional spills which had apparently not previously been given incident numbers by the defendants provides one indication of what that forensic process has produced.

A second explosive issue sits alongside the pollution case

The same September judgment also dealt with the claimants’ application concerning aggravated damages.

The claimants allege, among other matters, that Shell knowingly relied upon false or misleading factual assertions from witnesses during the jurisdiction proceedings that occupied the English courts between 2016 and 2021.

Shell had been arguing during those proceedings that its Nigerian subsidiary operated independently of the London-based parent company.

The jurisdiction dispute ultimately reached the UK Supreme Court, which in 2021 allowed the Nigerian communities’ claims against Royal Dutch Shell plc — now Shell plc — to proceed in England.

The current claimants now allege that evidence presented during that jurisdiction battle was false or misleading.

They also make allegations concerning the deletion or destruction of relevant evidence.

Again, these are allegations.

There has been no judicial finding that Shell, any Shell witness, or any lawyer deliberately misled a court or improperly destroyed evidence.

Shell contests the allegations.

But Mrs Justice Lambert rejecte

From 106 Known Spills to an Entire Polluted Region: Shell Faces a Much Broader Nigeria Trial in 2027 was first posted on September 16, 2026 at 7:01 pm.
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EWG statement on EPA rollback of PFAS water permit discharge guidance Monica Amarelo September 16, 2026

WASHINGTON – The Environmental Protection Agency has rescinded critical guidance that helped states use the Clean Water Act National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System, or NPDES, to monitor and limit toxic PFAS “forever chemicals” discharges into wastewater.

The move undermines an important tool for preventing PFAS pollution from reaching the nation’s waterways, where it can persist for decades and become a costly, long-term contamination problem.

For wastewater treatment plants, industrial facilities and state permitting authorities, the change raises questions about whether and how PFAS monitoring and discharge limits will be maintained in NPDES permits.

The agency claims its rollback is an effort to address “confusion” and “inconsistent application” across states. But it creates a glaring contradiction in federal policy: If the EPA continues to defend PFAS monitoring requirements in individual permits, including in a recent settlement involving a Massachusetts wastewater treatment plant, why is it withdrawing guidance that helped states implement those protections?

That question matters because PFAS are exceptionally persistent and difficult to remove once they enter the environment. PFAS have been linked to kidney, liver, pancreatic and testicular cancers; as well as immune system suppression, thyroid disease, reduced vaccine efficacy, reproductive and developmental harm, low birth weight, increased cholesterol, weight gain in children and dieting adults, and a growing list of serious health effects.

Preventing these chemicals from entering waterways in the first place is critical to reducing exposure and avoiding the long-term costs of contamination and cleanup.

The following is a statement from Melanie Benesh, Environmental Working Group vice president for government affairs.

Let’s call this what it is: The EPA is doing corporate polluters’ dirty work at the expense of public health.

The EPA has abandoned its mission, choosing to protect industrial polluters rather than the families forced to drink companies’ toxic runoff.

By stripping away Clean Water Act guidance for PFAS discharges, the agency is deliberately blinding state regulators and giving chemical manufacturers permission to pollute without fear of oversight. The EPA is actively tearing down the guardrails that keep PFAS out of our drinking water.

Hiding behind bureaucratic excuses about “process” and “confusion” is insultingly weak. If the EPA was genuinely concerned about procedure, they would finalize binding, enforceable standards today, not erase the only thin line of defense that communities have left.

Families living downstream don’t get a polite administrative memo when cancer-causing chemicals poison their drinking water. They just get the contamination, the medical bills and decades of forever chemicals in their blood.

At a moment when the science on PFAS harm has never been clearer, the EPA is signaling loud and clear to industry that corporate convenience matters more than clean water.

That’s not regulatory housekeeping. That’s putting industry profits over public health.

###

The Environmental Working Group (EWG) is a nonprofit, non-partisan organization that empowers people to live healthier lives in a healthier environment. Through research, advocacy and unique education tools, EWG drives consumer choice and civic action.

Areas of Focus Water Toxic Chemicals Chemical Policy PFAS Chemicals Agency removes critical tool for limiting ‘forever chemicals’ pollution Press Contact Monica Amarelo monica@ewg.org (202) 939-9140 September 16, 2026

The American Civil Liberties Union and the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) today released a new report, Citizenship and the Affordability Agenda: A Path to Better Jobs, Higher Wages, and Prosperity for All, detailing how the mass deportation agenda is exacerbating the affordability crisis by disrupting critical industries, eliminating jobs, weakening workplace protections, and driving up costs for working families. The findings come as communities continue to suffer the impact of mass de-legalization, record levels of immigration arrests and rebound from the economic toll of militarized enforcement operations like Minnesota’s “Operation Metro Surge."

The report finds that a broad path to citizenship would stabilize jobs and prices across the construction, hospitality, and care industries that families depend on while raising wages for all American workers. It also examines how Congress has committed at least $240 billion to immigration enforcement, while cutting funding for programs that help families afford food and health care, including SNAP, Medicaid, and Affordable Care Act subsidies — and in some cases allowing them to expire.

“Deportations make workers poorer and more vulnerable to exploitation by employers,” said Naureen Shah, director of government affairs, equality division at the ACLU. “When ICE continuously raids a community, everyone pays for it – in lost jobs higher prices and damaged businesses. The only immigration agenda that actually improves affordability is one that creates a broad path to citizenship.”

“Working people are paying the price for an immigration system that is destabilizing entire industries and communities and making it easier to exploit workers,” said AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler. “As this report demonstrates, a broad pathway to citizenship for all would raise wages, create more and better jobs, and strengthen our economy in ways that help all of us. It’s past time to give millions of working people and their families the stability they deserve, and we call on Congress to make citizenship a top priority. Working people know that it’s not an immigrant that stands between them and a good job—it’s the billionaires—and it’s time our laws reflect that.

• Among the report’s key findings: Immigration enforcement enables workplace exploitation. The federal government now spends 91 times more on immigration enforcement than on labor-standards enforcement, which leaves workplaces more dangerous and enables employers to violate wage, safety, and overtime laws while crushing worker organizing. More than a quarter of workers in low-wage industries report minimum-wage violations. While these abuses are highest among immigrant workers, they are widespread enough to suppress pay and standards for all workers in those industries, regardless of immigration status.
• Immigration raids stunt business activity and revenue creation. Immigration raids and enforcement surges have terrified people from going to work, shopping, dining out, and participating in their communities. The report cites an estimated 8.1 billion fewer visits to businesses and between $3 billion and $14 billion in lost annual spending. For example, Minnesota businesses lost $10–$20 million a week during and after “Operation Metro Surge.”
• Mass deportation eliminates jobs held by U.S. citizens. The Economic Policy Institute projects continued pursuit of the administration’s deportation agenda could eliminate nearly 6 million jobs, almost half of which are currently held by U.S. citizens.
• Stripping workers’ legal immigration status is worsening the affordability crisis. The Trump administration’s mass “de-documentation” campaign has stopped work authorization from nearly 2 million people, disrupting key industries like construction and hospitality.
• A broad path to citizenship would create jobs and raise wages. Creating a path to citizenship would create hundreds of thousands of new jobs and substantially raise wages for every American worker= by removing immigration status as a tool employers use to suppress pay and silence workers.

This report, published in partnership with the AFL-CIO, is the third in the ACLU’s affirmative vision series, in which policy and legal experts explore how the Trump administration’s immigration agenda has harmed communities nationwide, undermined our democracy, and wreaked havoc on key industries and weakened the American workforce. The series will also outline steps that members of Congress, as well as state and local policymakers, can take to reform the U.S. immigration system and inoculate against future attacks on our rights and safety.

You can read the full report here: https://www.aclu.org/publications/citizenship-and-the-affordability-agenda-a-path-to-better-jobs-higher-wages-and-prosperity-for-all

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 
September 16, 2026

First Mining Claims Filed in Lands Cut from Bears Ears National Monument – 9.16.26 Within a day, industry clamoring to exploit landscape

Contacts:
Grant Stevens, Communications Director, Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA); (319) 427-0260; grant@suwa.org
Keri Gilliland, The Wilderness Society, (KGilliland@tws.org)
Chaitna Sinha, Conservation Codirector and Staff Attorney, Grand Canyon Trust; (970) 399-9565 (csinha@grandcanyontrust.org)
Amy Dominguez, Sierra Club, amy.dominguez@sierraclub.org, (385) 355-4631
Kris Deutschman, Conservation Lands Foundation, kris@conservationlands.org, (505) 498-0212
Andrew Scibetta, NRDC, (202) 289-2421, ascibetta@nrdc.org
Daniel Hernandez, National Parks Conservation Association, dhernandez@npca.org, (202) 573-2201

SAN JUAN COUNTY, UT – 16 new mining claims (see map) have been filed in previously protected land in Bears Ears National Monument. These lands became subject to mining claims on Friday, September 11 – 60 days after President Trump decimated Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante by shrinking these national monuments by over 90%. All 16 claims were recorded on September 11 by noon; it took until Tuesday, September 15 for them to appear in the San Juan County Recorder’s Office’s online system.

The new mining claims (see map) are in two general areas: Lockhart Basin & near the Easy Peasy Mine (the mine has been re-buried). Three Claims were filed by George W. Schultz in the Lockhart Basin area. 13 claims were filed by Kimmerle Mining; two of these claims are adjustments to the Easy Peasy claims first filed after Trump’s 2017 reduction of Bears Ears and 11 are new claims nearby. Kyle Kimmerle (a Managing Member of Kimmerle Mining) was also a plaintiff in one of the cases filed challenging President Biden’s 2021 restoration of the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments. On July 14, 2026, Kimmerle Mining illegally attempted to file seven mining claims prior to the Sept. 11 deadline. Additional information appears below, along with quotes from Tribal leaders and conservation groups. 

“This rush to locate new mining claims in Bears Ears National Monument reinforces the need to be vigilant over the next several years while we work to undo Trump’s illegal actions and restore both Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears National Monuments.“said Hanna Larsen, Staff Attorney at the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA). “As evidenced by the Easy Peasy Mine, claims like these often lead to real and long-lasting damage to the very qualities that make these monuments so special.”

“Immediately after the mining ban was lifted, 16 claims were filed on the lands removed from Bears Ears National Monument,” said Charlie Luke, Utah state director at The Wilderness Society. “This is not a hypothetical threat, it’s the reality of what happens when national monument protections are gutted. We cannot allow special interests to turn a profit on Bears Ears at the expense of future generations.” 

“The speed with which the mining industry moved to stake claims following the dismantling of the Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears National Monuments demonstrates the real-world consequences of stripping protections from some of America’s most important landscapes,” said Bobby McEnaney, Senior Lands Analyst at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). “This sequence of events underscores exactly why Bears Ears was originally established and why this landscape deserves lasting protection. These mining claims amount to a virtual giveaway of public lands.”

“The administration put some of America’s greatest heritage at risk when it opened up Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante for mining,” said Chaitna Sinha, Staff Attorney and Conservation Codirector for the Grand Canyon Trust. “The 16 new mining claims in Bears Ears follow a poll in which the vast majority of Utahns said protections should be restored to all of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante, including 52% of Republicans. 82% of those polled said that Native American tribes should have a strong role in managing lands they hold sacred. It’s a shame our elected officials aren’t listening to the people who elected them. Most Utah voters want these monuments restored to their original boundaries and want tribes to be partners in their management.” 

“Within days of the illegal reduction of these treasured public lands, industry interests are already lining up to exploit them,” said Franque Bains, Chapter Director of the Sierra Club in Utah. “This rush makes clear the consequences of the Trump administration illegally stripping protections from Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante: Irreplaceable cultural landscapes and public lands are being put at risk for corporate profit. We will continue working alongside Tribal nations, local communities, and our partners to defend these landscapes and restore the protections they deserve.” 

“Sixteen new mining claims within days of the deadline is proof that this was never about public access — it’s about clearing the way for extraction,” said Chris Hill, CEO of the Conservation Lands Foundation. “BLM Director Pearce and Governor Cox like to talk about keeping lands open for the public, but when mining companies raced to stake claims on sacred and treasured landscapes, they gave them the green light. This tells you who they’re really working for. A recent Grand Canyon Trust poll found that 52% of Utah Republicans want protections restored to all of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante, and 82% say tribes should have a strong role in managing the lands they hold sacred. Utahns have made themselves clear — it’s their leaders who refuse to listen. We’re going to keep fighting, in court and in communities, until these monuments and the integrity of the entire public lands system are restored.”

“The arguments about access in Bears Ears were clearly about energy extraction, and mining companies have wasted no time staking new claims,” said Sara Cawley, Energy Director at the National Parks Conservation Association. “Three of the claims are located in the Lockhart Basin, a spectacular landscape that contains numerous cultural and archaeological sites and sits next to Canyonlands National Park’s eastern boundary. National park units and their surrounding landscapes are no place for energy development, but outdated laws elevate mining above all other uses on these lands. We will continue to fight to prevent these special places, surrounding communities, and sovereign tribes from being undermined and exploited.”

Background Information on other Mining claims: 

Under President Trump’s proclamations decimating Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante by over 90%, mining claims could not be staked until 60 days after the date of the proclamation: Friday, Sept. 11, 2026. Despite this, on July 14, 2026, Kimmerle Mining filed 7 mining claims (see map) with the San Juan County (Utah) Recorder’s Office. Kimmerle Mining previously filed mining claims after Trump’s 2017 reduction of Bears Ears and excavated a partially reclaimed mine shaft on one of the claims – the so-called Easy Peasy claim (this mine has been re-buried); Kyle Kimmerle (a Managing Member of Kimmerle Mining) was also a plaintiff in one of the cases filed in the District of Utah challenging President Biden’s 2021 restoration of the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments.  

Two mining claims were also filed in Grand Staircase-Escalante, less than one month after Trump’s attack. On August 6, 2026, Craig Rosequist filed two mining claims (see map) with the Kane County (Utah) Recorder’s Office in areas cut out of the monument by the Trump proclamations. According to public records, Rosequist previously located several mining claims in neighboring Washington County, Utah. The Bureau of Land Management should reject claims filed in both national monuments prior to Sept. 11. 

• Map of 2026 claims in Bear Ears, showing the 2021 and 2026 Monument Boundaries and noting the location of the Easy Peasy Mine, created by the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA)
• Map of 2026 Claims in Grand Staircase-Escalante, created by SUWA
• Photo and video assets of Kimmerle’s Easy Peasy Mine and surrounding claims, please credit Tim Peterson. 
  • Gallery & Gdrive 
  • Video b-roll

Background information about the national monument reductions:

• Statements from Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante Inter-Tribal coalitions
• SUWA Statement on Trump’s Illegal Reductions of Grand Staircase-Escalante & Bears Ears National Monuments
• Full Statement and Quotes Tracking
• Maps of the reductions
• Reporter Background Memo on National Monuments

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The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA) is a nonprofit organization with members and supporters from around the country dedicated to protecting America’s redrock wilderness. From offices in Moab, Salt Lake City, and Washington, DC, our team of professionals defends the redrock, organizes support for America’s Red Rock Wilderness Act, and stewards a world-renowned landscape. Learn more at www.suwa.org.

The post First Mining Claims Filed in Lands Cut from Bears Ears National Monument – 9.16.26 appeared first on Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance.

If you took a break or simply lost track of Congress’s efforts to craft America’s massive new federal transportation law this summer … well, so did we. And with the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act set to expire in just a few months, it’s more important than ever that advocates rally together to make our next core infrastructure bill the best it can be.

We sat down with Beth Osborne of Transportation for America to catch up on what we missed, and help us all plug back in to the fight for a better reauthorization. Here are the highlights from our conversation.

Recommended Everything You Want to Know About the Next Surface Transportation Reauthorization But Were Afraid To Ask Kea Wilson July 22, 2025 The big picture on where things stand

Back in the spring, a lot of members of congress swore up and down that this was finally the year they would deliver America a shiny new national infrastructure bill on the day the old one expires — despite the fact that no congress has ever reauthorized America’s core national transportation programs on schedule.

The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee took its first stab at a accomplishing that ambitious goal in late May with the Build America 250 Act … which was roundly panned by advocates as even more expensive, highway-focused, and unlikely to accomplish its goals than the (also car-centric and deficit-fueled) megabill we have now, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.

Build America 250 would place a new fee on electric vehicles — but organizations like the Bipartisan Policy Center warn it wouldn’t be anywhere near enough to bridge the gulf, especially since the Trump administration is doing everything it can to “end the EV mandate” and get Americans into gas-powered cars.

“There’s not enough money coming in through [funding streams like] the gas tax and diesel tax and tire taxes to cover the cost of maintaining the program where it is,” Osborne said. “In fact, there’s not enough to cover just the highway formula funds. We haven’t even gotten to that part of the conversation yet — and that’s always the most painful part.”

Graphic: Bipartisan Policy Center

Rather than explain to election-year voters why they were burying the country in even deeper debt, Congress was forced to pass a temporary extension of the IIJA until December 11, to keep America’s mobility funding flowing and punt sticky questions about future funding until after the midterms.

That “extension”, though, used some budgetary tricks to work in a 20 percent cut to public transit compared to fiscal year 2026, and a staggering 83 percent cut to passenger rail — and the money for the latter wouldn’t even be guaranteed. Highway programs remained untouched.

Worse, Build America 250 isn’t dead — and the pressure is on from the Trump administration to deliver a bill like it that “prioritizes motor vehicle travel over bicycle lanes” no matter what it costs, as Secretary Sean Duffy wrote in a July letter to Congress.

“Apparently making it safe for a kid to bike to school is somehow weird left-wing propaganda now,” added Osborne. “I thought it was traditional, and something that we all aspired to go back to – but [according to the Trump administration,] apparently not. [They think] bike lanes are horrible. Slowing down traffic to the actual posted speed by using design? That’s horrible [to them], too.”

Recommended The Last Straw: Duffy Asks Senate To ‘Restrict’ Funding For Bike Lanes Dave Colon July 23, 2026 Why extending the IIJA is probably our best bet — even if it sucks

Of course, pushing backwards ideas about bike lanes isn’t the only way that the Trump administration is interfering in our country’s transportation future — or its present.

Osborne notes that the executive branch has strained the limits of the current transportation law by freezing, rescinding, running out the clock on and otherwise slashing money for programs and projects it simply doesn’t like, all because they supposedly “violate” broad executive orders against vaguely-defined concepts like “sustainability” and “equity.” Communities struggling to build things, meanwhile, don’t exactly have the money they need to fight those decisions in court, even if they think they’re illegal.

Congress, though, happily passed a new government funding bill earlier this month without any significant provisions to restore transportation funding to communities that lost it — or any new guardrails to prevent Trump from stomping on the spirit of the IIJA going forward.

“I think the real issue is the fact that this administration has not only felt comfortable, but has actually been left to implement the last surface transportation program any way it wanted to — whether it was connected to the law or not,” Osborne added. “And in response to that, the House passed a bill giving them more money … Why wouldn’t [Trump] just continue violating the law?”

Recommended Dems Push for Guardrails to Shield Federal Transportation Grants From Trump Meddling David Meyer June 23, 2026

That’s why Osborne says advocates should call on Congress to extend the IIJA for at least a year, until Trump and his ilk prove they can follow the law for any meaningful period of time — even if the IIJA is making our communities worse.

“I mean, if you if you ask me, the IIJA was not a good authorization at all,” Osborne said. “It didn’t make our roads safer. It didn’t focus on bringing our infrastructure into state of repair. It didn’t make it easier for people to get to work or other destinations. It didn’t lower emissions. It accomplished zero of its goals … I wish we lived in a world where someone [in Congress] would engage in that conversation with us.”

Why electing more Democrats probably won’t set America up for a better bill (and what will)

With the mid-terms coming up fast, Osborne knows some advocates might be tempted to think that simply electing more ostensibly climate-focused Democrats is our best bet to pass a better transportation law.

She warns, though, that even the deeply harmful Build America 250 passed the House transportation committee with broad bipartisan support — and getting a better bill across the finish line will take a full court-press on both sides of the aisle.

“If anyone is under the impression that that if Democrats take control of the House that they will get a better bill, let me disabuse you of that now,” she added. “What will happen is the Democrats will take up the bill they negotiated this Congress, point out that it was passed through a committee almost unanimously, and so why wouldn’t we just copy and paste that sucker and move forward? That’s where we are.”

Advocates’ real challenge now, Osborne argues, is a fundamental one: to get elected officials on both sides of the aisle to realize about just how thoroughly auto-centric policies are failing to achieve any of the goals they might have for our transportation system.

And then we have to get them to care about it — and refuse to fund the endless construction of harmful highways just for the sake of notching an easy bipartisan win.

“What often happens is [advocates] get to Capitol Hill, and they are told by their leadership … that [transportation funding] is bipartisan, and anything is good,” Osborne added. “And if there’s a problem with the program, it’s lack of funding — and there is absolutely nothing we need to do on policy, we just need to spend, spend, spend. I think it’s important … to say no: actually, the problem is we have been spending gobs and gobs of money, and not getting the results promised.”

To have an impact, Osborne argues that advocates need to make noise to their legislators about the failings of the IIJA, and why doubling down on the same car-focused strategies in Build America 250 is a terrible bet.

“People in Congress do not understand what is not working in the transportation program,” she added. “Advocates need to speak up and let them know where their concerns are — and how that is different than just pouring more money down the same rabbit hole.”

The company says it can help large loads better respond to changing weather conditions as data centers are asked to play a more active role in grid management.

For many people in the small communities around Cape Romain National Wildlife Refuge, the best thing about living on South Carolina’s rural coast is also the hardest. The marshes and creeks...

State utility helps to bring major new battery project to financial close, in a deal that secures 50 per cent of the battery's output for 15 years.

The post State utility buys $43 million stake in new big battery, locks in November construction start appeared first on Renew Economy.

Our September Common Sense monthly newsletter shares a message about a new version of CELDF's Democracy School debuting in 2027, how much of what has been called a movement during the past two decades is more accurately understood as a collection of moments, and explains why and what we need to do to give ourselves a shot at challenging and collapsing the dominant system for all life, not just people.

The post “Common Sense” Newsletter – September 2026: Community Movement Building with Democracy School & Trainings appeared first on CELDF - Community Rights Pioneers - Protecting Nature and Communities.