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Statement from Executive Director Jim Warren —

Don’t be surprised if Duke Energy soon reduces power generation from its nuclear fleet in the Carolinas as record-breaking drought and heatwaves continue across the region.

It’s happened in Europe. It happened in the US South a few years ago.

Each of Duke’s nuclear plants requires a vast amount of cool water – as much as a city – each day, both to produce steam for power and to prevent the reactor core from overheating.

When river and lake water get warmer and the levels drop, safety limits can require Shearon Harris and other plants to stop generating power.

The irony: As air conditioning becomes more vital to health and business in a rapidly warming world, the Achilles Heel of new nuclear is its need for massive amounts of cool water.

Duke leaders propose to bank our future on up to ten very large AP1000 reactors – the same model Duke failed six times trying to build between 2005 and 2017.

By contrast, solar plus battery storage (SPS) requires no water, is far cheaper and fairer to the people of North Carolina. Yet Duke leaders continue to stifle SPS.

We again call on Governor Josh Stein to press Duke Energy to finally begin a transition to renewable power.

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Now in its 38th year, NC WARN is building people power in the climate and energy justice movement to persuade or require Charlotte-based Duke Energy – one of the world’s largest climate polluters – to make a quick transition to renewable, affordable power generation and energy efficiency in order to avert climate tipping points and ongoing rate hikes. 

The post Nuclear Plants Could Fail During Heat and Drought — Statement from Executive Director Jim Warren appeared first on NC WARN.

This is a re-post from The Climate Brink by Andrew Dessler

I am finalizing a textbook on climate risk and am posting chapters as I finish them. I’d previously posted chapters about embedded energy, physical climate risk, and transition risk. This post is a chapter on attribution of extreme weather to climate change. It is an emerging battleground in the public debate over climate change, so this chapter is an opportunity to get up to speed on the science.

Introduction

In the aftermath of any major weather disaster, the question inevitably arises: “Did climate change cause this disaster?” However, this is a bad way to think about the problem.Climate change does not cause a rainstorm, a heatwave, or a hurricane in a direct sense. These hazards would still occur in a world without human influence on the climate: hurricanes would still form over warm ocean waters, heatwaves would remain a product of stationary high-pressure systems, and low-pressure systems will always generate rain and the occasional flood.

But climate change can make these events more intense. It takes a heatwave and pushes the temperature higher. It adds moisture to a rain event, generating more intense rainfall, enhancing flooding. Warmer oceans make a hurricane’s winds stronger and its rainfall more severe.

Therefore, the scientifically interesting question is not “Did climate change cause this?”, but about influence:

1.How much morelikely did climate change make this event?

2.How much moreintense did climate change make this event?

Answering these questions is the work of a rapidly advancing field of science called Extreme Event Attribution. This chapter will explore the methods scientists use to disentangle the roles of natural variability and climate change.

To understand the two different ways of looking at the problem, let’s examine a hot 38°C (99°F) day in a hypothetical city (like Houston, Texas) and examine each question in turn.

1. How much more likely has climate change made a 38°C day?

This figure sets up how scientists look at the problem.It shows two hypothetical distributions of daily temperature for the city. The red curve is the present-day distribution: the climate as it actually is today. The distributions tell you how often each temperature occurs in that world.For example, today’s temperature distribution peaks around 35°C with a value of 17%, meaning that 17% of days have temperatures around 35°C.

The blue curve is a counterfactual: the distribution that would occur in a world without climate change. For this hypothetical example, climate change has shifted the climate a few degrees toward warmer temperatures.

Given the two distributions, we can now answer the question of how much more likely a 38°C day is.In the counterfactual no-climate-change world, a 38°C day occurred on roughly 1.5% of days; in the present-day climate, it occurs on about 6% of days.

We define the relative risk to be the risk of the event in today’s climate divided by the risk in the counterfactual climate:

where Pa is the probability of the event in the world with climate change (6%) and Pc is the probability in the counterfactual world (1.5%). Thus, the relative risk in this example is 6%/1.5% = 4. We can therefore say that, “Climate change made this 38°C day four times as likely” or that, “The relative risk of a 38°C day is four.”

Because of the shape of the distributions, the relative risk increases with temperature.Using the same curves, a 42°C day occurs on 0.013% of days in the counterfactual world and 0.19% in the world with climate change, implying a relative risk of 15.This confirms that the hotter the day, the more the relative risk of that day has increased.In fact, we are approaching a world (if we’re not already there) with so much climate change that events occur that could not have occurred in the counterfactual world (Pc ≈ 0).For those events, the risk ratio is infinity.

Temperatures near average have a risk ratio around 1, meaning their probability isn’t changing much due to climate change.Below average temperatures (e.g., 27°C) have risk ratios less than one, indicating that they are occurring less often than in the counterfactual world.

2. How much did climate change warm this day?

This is a different way to ask the same question: how much hotter was the day because of climate change?To answer this, we look at the graph horizontally. We find the probability of a 38°C day on the present-day curve and trace it back to the same probability on the counterfactual curve.

In this example, we find that the same probability for today’s 38°C corresponds to a temperature of 36°C in the counterfactual climate. In this case, we can say, “Climate change made this hot day 2°C warmer.”

While some economic actors (e.g., governments, insurers) may focus on probability, most impact evaluations are clearer when examined through magnitude changes. In other words, it may be of more practical use to know that climate change warmed this day by 2°C or increased total rainfall by 30% than knowing that climate change increased the probability by a factor of four.

Thus, we can express climate change’s contribution to this hypothetical 38°C day in two ways.We can say that 1) climate change made the event four times more likely, or that 2) climate change added 2°C to the temperature.

Determining the counterfactual world

As discussed in the last section, estimating the impact of climate change on a meteorological event requires assessing the distribution of those events in the present-day world and in a counterfactual world without climate change.

To establish the present-day distribution of climate events (red curves in the plots above), researchers rely primarily on a combination of real-world observational records and numerical climate-model simulations of the present-day climate. To estimate the counterfactual climate (blue curves), the world that would have existed had human activities not altered the climate system, scientists will often run these same climate models but with human influences removed (e.g., carbon dioxide and other climate forcers set at pre-industrial values).

Researchers can also use historical observations to estimate the counterfactual climate. In some cases, researchers can use observations from a time period when human influence on the climate was small, such as the late 19th or early 20th century. As an example, this is a plot of Houston’s daily maximum temperature in the 1970s and 2016-2025:

There is a clear shift in the climate between these two periods, much — but not necessarily all of it — due to climate change.This shift made a day with a maximum temperature of 37°C (99°F) about 6.5 times more likely (i.e., risk ratio = 6.5); alternatively, it increased the temperature of this day by 2.3°C (4.1°F).

Notably, in the 1970s, daily maximum temperatures above 40°C (104°F) never occurred in Houston, but they did occur in the 2016-2025 period.Such days would therefore be considered virtually impossible without climate change.

One thing to look out for: After every extreme event, fossil-fuel interests will take to social media to point out that a more severe event — e.g., more rain, higher winds, and higher temperatures — occurred in, e.g., 18XX (some year in the late 19th century). They use this to incorrectly imply that climate change therefore could not have influenced the event.

But that’s a logical error.If you look at the probability distributions from Houston, you’ll see that you could have had a 39°C day in the counterfactual 1970s world (it’s just very unlikely). But the existence of a 39°C day in the 1970s doesn’t contradict the conclusion that the 37°C day you just lived through was enhanced by climate change.

Traditional detection and attribution

There is another way scientists connect climate change to extreme events known as detection and attribution.This approach focuses on trends in some quantity — for example, the trend in the annual maximum 1-day precipitation amount, with units of mm/decade.This is different from extreme event attribution, which focuses on individual extreme weather events.

As a simple example, suppose we have an observational time series of the aforementioned maximum daily rainfall at a station in the U.S. This gives us one number each year: the maximum daily rainfall in 1950, the maximum daily rainfall in 1951, and so on:

We want to know whether the variations in in this observed (synthetic) time series can be attributed to greenhouse gases from human activities, aerosols (basically air pollution and dust, this is partially due to human activities), or some combination of them. These different drivers have different trends over time: greenhouse gases have been steadily increasing, while aerosols in the U.S. increased until around 1970 and have declined since then.

The first step in detection and attribution is to run climate models to estimate the fingerprint of each process. To do this, scientists run climate models with just the increase in greenhouse gases, and then run the models again with just the changes in air pollution.These runs tell us what the observations would look like if just this forcing was present in the atmosphere.

We then compare the observed time series to the model fingerprints. A simple way to do this is with a regression model:

Here, obs(t) is the observed time series. G(t) is the greenhouse gas fingerprint timeseries, and A(t) is the aerosol fingerprint timeseries.

We then use regression techniques to estimate the coefficients bGHG and bAER, which tell us how much of each fingerprint is present in the observations. e is the residual, the part of the observations not explained by the fingerprints.

Here are the results:

In the left panel, the blue line is the synthetic observations and the orange line is the fit:

where G(t) and A(t) are the fingerprints above.As you can see, we can closely fit the observations with the fingerprints for greenhouse gases and aerosols.

Next, we examine the estimated coefficients (bGHG and bAER) and their uncertainty ranges (right panel). If a coefficient is statistically different from zero, we say that fingerprint has been detected. That’s the case here — the uncertainty bars do not cross zero — so the fingerprints for greenhouse gases and aerosols are detected.

This is the basic logic of detection and attribution.

Importantly, detection and attribution does not allow us to link specific events (e.g., Hurricane Harvey) to climate change.Rather, it allows us to connect the trend in some type of extreme weather (hurricanes) to human activities.

If you want to play around with a simple demonstration that shows how this works, click here.

This is an extremely powerful technique that has laid the foundation for much of our understanding of how climate change is affecting extreme weather.Here are some key results:

• Hot extremes and heatwaves: Humans are clearly making hot extremes more frequent and more intense through human-caused greenhouse gas emissions.

• Heavy precipitation: Human influence, especially greenhouse gas emissions, is likely the main driver of the observed global-scale intensification of heavy precipitation over land.

• Flash flooding due to extreme rainfall: Scientists have high confidence that stronger extreme precipitation leads to more frequent and larger surface-water and flash floods.

• Drought: Scientists have medium confidence that human-caused climate change has increased drought1 in some regions.

• Tropical cyclones: Scientists have medium confidence that human influence has contributed to extreme tropical cyclone rainfall.In addition, the global proportion of the strongest tropical cyclones has likely increased over the past four decades, a change that cannot be explained with natural factors alone.

• Fire weather: Scientists have concluded with medium confidence that compound hot, dry, and windy conditions have become more likely in some regions.

Confidence in attribution studies

In reading the previous section, you saw that scientists have varying levels of confidence in the attribution statements.Some conclusions are termed likely or very likely, and confidence may be medium or high.How is this confidence determined?

The foundation of any attribution study is a solid physical understanding of why climate change would affect a particular type of event. If we can’t provide a mechanism, you really can’t believe an attribution study.

For many extreme events, the physics is well-understood and there is a clear connection between the climate and the severity of the events:

• Heatwaves: Greenhouse gases trap heat, shifting the distribution of temperatures toward warmer values, thereby making extreme heat more probable.

• Rainfall: The connection is the physical fact that a warmer atmosphere can hold more water vapor. This means that when a storm system develops, there is more available moisture to convert into rain, leading to more intense downpours.

• Wildfires: Warmer temperatures produce a drier atmosphere, dry out vegetation and make it more flammable.Thus, wildfires are expected to be bigger and more intense in a warmer climate.

For other phenomena, the physics is murkier. For example, there is no robust theory explaining how the total number of tropical cyclones will change as the climate warms (tropical cyclone is the general term for storms known as hurricanes in the Atlantic, typhoons in the Pacific, and cyclones in the Indian Ocean).Right now, there are around 80 tropical cyclones per year around the planet, and we can’t explain why that’s the number.Why isn’t it 8?Or 800?We don’t know.Without such an understanding, we can’t really trust climate models’ counterfactual world for this.

But this doesn’t mean that we know nothing about tropical cyclones.There are strong physical arguments that tropical cyclones will get more intense (higher wind speeds) and rainier as the climate warms, which will cause more damage.As an example, severalgroupsanalyzed the impact of climate change on Hurricane Harvey’s enormous rainfall totals over Houston, Texas and they found that climate change increased rainfall by ~20%.The increase in wind speed means that we expect the fraction of tropical cyclones reaching the major storm category (cat 3-5) will increase as the climate warms, in general agreement with our observational record.

Once you have a physical mechanism, the other factors that determine confidence are things like:

• How good is the observational record?For some things, like temperature, we have good observations going back to the 19th century.For others, like tropical cyclones, good observations are only available during the satellite era, i.e., since the 1970s.With a shorter dataset, your confidence in any attribution study will be lower.

• How good are climate models at simulating the weather phenomenon?Most attribution studies require climate models to generate the various counterfactual worlds (the world without climate change).Climate models do a really good job with temperature, which is a large-scale atmospheric phenomenon.But they do a much poorer job with precipitation, which is a very small-scale process that models struggle with.

• How many independent studies have confirmed an attribution statement?In science, the gold standard for a rigorous conclusion is that it has been multiply replicated by independent scientific groups.While any individual study might be flawed, the odds of a major error go down significantly if several groups have independently reached the same conclusion.

It is also worth noting that there may be times when detection and attribution studies fail but extreme event attribution studies can still identify a contribution of climate change to an extreme event. For example, high quality time series of some extreme events (e.g., tropical cyclones) may go back only a few decades, which may be too short for confident detection and attribution. Extreme event attribution approaches, which do not rely on long time series of observations, are nevertheless able to conclude that climate change is making specific hurricanes stronger.

Conclusion

The science of extreme event attribution has transformed our ability to discuss the impacts of climate change. We can now make statements about how climate change affected the likelihood and intensity of individual events as well as the trends in extreme events. This helps demonstrate that climate change is indeed increasing the ‘hazard’ component of climate risk.

As the science of extreme event attribution has developed, it has increasingly moved into the legal and public policy arenas. Fossil fuel interests are terrified that someone will use extreme event attribution science to sue them for their contribution to a natural disaster, or that policymakers will use extreme event attribution science to justify policies to restrict fossil-fuel use.

Because of this, the legitimacy of extreme event attribution is frequently contested by fossil-fuel interests. So don’t be surprised if you hear a lot of misinformation about extreme event attribution in the future.And don’t think that, just because people are criticizing these studies, that criticism is legitimate.

Note that the techniques described in this chapter deal with the effects of climate change on hazards.A new subfield, extreme event impact attribution connects climate change to the actual impacts (e.g., number of houses burned down in a wildfire, dollars of flood damage).This is an emerging area of research, and I expect that this is something we’re going to hear a lot more about in the future.

This is a draft of a section of my climate risk textbook (slightly edited & reformatted to make it appropriate for Substack). I’d very much like to identify errors now, so if you see any, please let me know in the comments.

1 Different types of drought respond differently to climate change. In this case, we are talking about agricultural and ecological droughts.

Very often, in cities, rural areas, and along roads, we see birds perched on power lines. For many people, this image is part of the everyday landscape: a bird resting on a power line, or small...

More than 600 financially vulnerable hospitals across the United States are set to experience an aggregate increase in financial deficits of between 50 and 75 percent. The financial losses, estimated in a new research study, present an extreme risk of cuts and closures of essential health care services for millions of people across the country.

GARNER, N.C. – North Carolina lawmakers included a major investment in farmland preservation in the budget passed on July 2, including a $46.9 million nonrecurring allocation to the Agricultural...

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is considering a proposal to increase line speeds in pork and poultry processing plants. Its goal, they say, is to increase efficiency, lower grocery costs, and strengthen the supply chain. But policymakers, workers groups, and advocacy organizations are voicing concerns about worker and food safety, animal welfare, and negative economic consequences.

“As Secretary, my responsibility is to ensure that American families have access to affordable, safe, and abundant food,” says U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins. By updating slaughterhouse regulations, the USDA aims to lower production and grocery costs, create a stronger food system, and remove barriers to efficiency.

If adopted, the proposal will raise line processing speeds to a maximum of 175 chickens per minute (from 140) and 60 turkeys per minute (from 55), and remove the limit for pigs entirely. It also eliminates the requirement that New Swine Slaughter Inspection System (NSIS) plants submit an annual attestation that documents working condition monitoring. This effectively leaves all worker safety regulation and reporting to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).

“Lifting the cap on the rate of meat slaughter shows a disturbing lack of care by USDA for the safety of the men and women working in meatpacking plants,” U.S. Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) tells Food Tank. He adds, “Increased slaughter line speeds are inhumane for the animals and will make workers collateral damage to the meatpackers’ relentless drive toward ever higher profits.”

An average of 27 workers a day sustain severe injuries, including the loss of a body part, or require an overnight hospital stay, according to an article by Debbie Berkowitz and Patrick Dixon. The USDA’s own study finds that piece rate—a metric of job-specific line speeds and staffing levels—can cause an increase in musculoskeletal disorder, which 81 percent of plant workers are at high risk for. Of the 40 percent of workers who experience moderate to severe work-related pain, almost half did not report it to their supervisor, according to the USDA report.

These injuries are a result of supervisors pressuring employees to work as fast as possible, according to Axel Fuentes, the Executive Director of the Rural Community Workers Alliance. He says that workers have no time to sharpen and sheath their knives, causing them to stab themselves or their coworkers. Workers do not get bathroom breaks, putting them, especially pregnant individuals, at risk for developing a urinary tract infection. While OSHA is meant to protect workers, it cannot regulate line speeds. The USDA, which oversees line speed regulation, will only do so to ensure food safety. 

But Fuentes tells Food Tank that plant workers have seen USDA inspectors “just turn their eyes away” at food safety violations. Current line speeds are so fast that “meat gets piled, it can fall on the floor. [Workers] have even seen supervisors coming and picking up the meat from the floor and putting it back on the conveyor belt when it’s already contaminated,” says Fuentes. Because of the pressure to maintain line speeds, workers are unable to stop the conveyor belt to clean it.

Increasing line speeds can also negatively affect rural economies, Mark Lauritsen, International Vice President and Director of the Food Processing, Packing, and Manufacturing Division at the United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW), tells Food Tank. He says that this proposal can lead to further industry consolidation, causing plant closures and eliminating jobs. 

“When you take that kind of revenue out of the town, the tax base diminishes, the businesses diminish, the school gets diminished… and that’s going to really have a bad impact on rural America,” Lauritsen explains. He points to the Tyson plant closure in Lexington, Nebraska as an example and adds that greater efficiency means fewer working hours and smaller paychecks for plant workers.

Rules and regulations are in place that protect meat processing workers and ensure food safety, but these measures largely fail, especially under the current administration, Lauritsen says. With the increase in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids, undocumented workers are reluctant to report job-related injuries out of fear of deportation. These individuals make up an estimated 30 to 50 percent of the meatpacking workforce, according to a study in the Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics.

In the Missouri plants where Fuentes organizes, workers are now less likely to complain when they are mistreated by a supervisor, including women who experience sexual harassment. Without the NSIS annual attestation requirement, he expects that workplace injuries are likely to be further under reported. Fuentes is also receiving more phone calls from workers experiencing mental distress since the administration change as stress levels rise.

“This government is not protecting workers at all,” says Fuentes. “The only way to tackle this is getting organized… and [using] the collective power to make sure that the company can treat the workers better and can avoid violating workers’ rights.”

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 U.S. Government Accountability Office, Wikimedia Commons

The post Worker Advocates Challenge USDA Proposal for Faster Slaughterhouse Lines appeared first on Food Tank.

Video: Ian Angus speaking at the Canadian launch of Metabolic Rifts: Capitalism’s Assault on the Earth System

Source

Developers are asking Pittsburgh City Council to vote on another major tax giveaway scheme – giving up to $200 million dollars to a handful of Downtown private real estate companies, without any requirements around public benefit. This vote to implement the Downtown Transit Revitalization Improvement District (TRID) will divert tax revenue from the Strip District, Downtown and the North Shore for the next 40 (!) years into the coffers of private corporations.

Right now, when working people and our public agencies are struggling to make ends meet, Pittsburgh City Council is being asked (via the Urban Redevelopment Authority) to hand the Golden Triangle yet another golden ticket.

Take Action: Tell Council to fund neighborhoods, not developers What is the TRID proposal?

A TRID is a type of legislation intended to fund transit improvements—but this one won’t do that. Instead, here’s how this proposal would work: 

• The City (i.e., taxpayers) would initially borrow $50 million to invest exclusively in the TRID area: the Strip District, parts of the North Shore, and Downtown. This money would effectively be a grant paid to wealthy developers, with the City gambling on future tax revenue to pay down the debt.
  • Many Downtown developers are concurrently challenging their commercial property assessments, so that they could pay lower taxes in the future.
    
• Only 20% of this money would be invested in public infrastructure—but they’ve not named any particular public projects that would benefit. By contrast, the remaining 80% has been earmarked for specific, private, for-profit real estate developers.
  
• All future public tax dollars from Downtown, the Strip District, and the North Shore for the next 40 years would be diverted to a “Golden Triangle Reinvestment Fund”, exclusively financing development in a small pocket of Downtown. This fund would be controlled by the non-elected Urban Redevelopment Agency (URA)—not City Council, a public body that is accountable to the public.

Members of Pittsburgh City Council and the Mayor’s administration have said that we are facing a massive City budget crisis. So why are they fast-tracking a $200 million handout to Downtown developers, with almost no public process? 

What’s at stake

We have already given almost a billion dollars to Downtown developers in tax breaks over the past 5 years. Enough is enough. 

Our communities deserve so much more: public transit infrastructure, affordable housing, local food initiatives, street and sidewalk repairs, childcare programs and more. These are critical investments for the well-being of our City—and we cannot fund them if our City Councilmembers signs away millions in tax dollars to private developers for the next four decades.

Transit riders must tell our elected officials to vote NO on implementing the Downtown Transit Revitalization Investment District (TRID). Public dollars – whether borrowed or generated from tax revenue – should be invested across all communities – from Fairywood to Fineview, Brookline to Bloomfield. Our resources should be allocated through the annual City budgeting process, with robust public input to ensure that our tax resources are distributed equitably and address the needs of the moment.

We say: no more handouts to Downtown corporations until our neighborhoods, our small businesses, our workers and our students are given their fair share!

Take Action Now

After you send a letter, CALL your City Councilmember to urge them to vote NO (find your councilmember here):

• District 1 (Northside, Strip District, Parts of Downtown):
  Bobby Wilson (412) 255-2135
• District 2 (West End, Sheraden, Elliott, Banksville):
  Kim Salinetro (412) 255-8963
• District 3 (Oakland, Southside, Arlington, Allentown):
  Bob Charland (412) 255-2130
• District 4 (Beechview, Brookline, Carrick, Overbrook):
  Anthony Coghill (412) 255-2131
• District 5 (Greenfield, Hazelwood, Lincoln Pl, Swisshelm Park):
  Barb Warwick (412) 255-8965
• District 6 (Manchester, Downtown, The Hill, Uptown, Perry Hilltop):
  Danielle Lavelle (412) 255-2134
• District 7 (Bloomfield, Lawrenceville, Polish Hill, Stanton Heights) :
  Deb Gross (412) 255-2140
• District 8 (Squirrel Hill, Shadyside, Oakland):
  Erika Strassburger (412) 255-2133
• District 9 (East Liberty, Larimer, Homewood, Garfield):
  Khari Mosley (412) 255-2137

The post ACTION ALERT: Pittsburgh City Council Considers New Slush Fund for Downtown Developers—on our Dime appeared first on Pittsburghers for Public Transit.

CALGARY — Janetta McKenzie, director of the Pembina Institute’s Oil and Gas program, made the following statement in response to the new proposed crude oil pipeline from Hardisty, Alberta to Sarnia, Ontario:“The proposed 3,300-kilometre pipeline...

What if we treated the earth we walk on with the respect it deserves? There is an opportunity to value soil, grow food and support human communities in a way that gives more than it takes. How we respond is up to us. But so long as we remain hooked on fossil fuels, nothing will change.

The post Nebraska soil, Mid-east oil appeared first on CELDF - Community Rights Pioneers - Protecting Nature and Communities.

For decades, toxic lead cables lay like giant sea monsters snaking across the bottom of Lake Tahoe. Installed as early telecommunications lines and owned by AT&T, the abandoned cables contained over 100,000 pounds of lead and were slowly deteriorating, leaching contaminants into one of the most iconic lakes in the country.

In 2021, the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance, or CSPA, filed a lawsuit to force AT&T to remove the abandoned lead cables. The multimillion-dollar litigation dragged on for over two years. Without sampling and scientific testing, it was difficult to make the case in court. Then Roland Peralta, the founder of a new non-profit called WHEN Justice, offered to provide $100,000 for the science needed to support the litigation. The case quickly changed course. 

With the new funding, scuba divers went down to the lake floor to collect samples that helped show that the lead in the cables was leaching into the surrounding waters. The crucial piece of missing evidence was found with lead isotopic testing, providing “fingerprints” that showed the lead in the cables was the same as the surrounding contamination in the lake.

Once the lead contamination was linked to the cables, AT&T settled the case in nine weeks and removed the cables within months. “That was the ‘aha’ moment, where we realized we could scale this model,” said Peralta.

An innovative pay-it-forward model

WHEN Justice is built around a simple but deeply powerful idea: Strategic funding at the right moment in litigation can help public-interest cases win. The non-profit raises funds to help pay for the costly pieces of litigation at the intersection of environmental and human health — like scientific testing, expert analysis, and sampling — that smaller entities taking on massive corporations in court frequently cannot afford. Because environmental lawsuits often include cost recovery, WHEN’s donations can sometimes be used repeatedly, helping fund multiple cases from the same original donation. 

Building off the AT&T case success, WHEN was officially launched on Earth Day in April of 2026. “WHEN made a huge difference in the Lake Tahoe case,” said Erica Maharg, the environmental attorney who represented the sportfishing group against AT&T. “Those funds provided us with the evidence we needed at a critical time in the litigation.”

Colin West, founder and CEO of the nonprofit Clean Up the Lake, sees that role as especially important for groups without deep legal budgets. “Being a smaller organization that is trying to step up and take on big litigation against larger entities is challenging,” he said. “A group like WHEN Justice that has closing that funding gap as their core focus fills a need, and a role that others can’t.”

The litigation bottleneck

Adequate funding is critical in today’s environmental justice landscape. Currently, much of the environmental law enforcement that forces powerful entities to clean up pollution is being done by individuals and nonprofit organizations. “We think of government and regulators as being the primary enforcement mechanisms. But in reality, many environmental cleanups happen because of the efforts of small organizations,” said Maharg.

For those groups, the main obstacle is usually not the legal standard, but the cost of assembling the scientific evidence needed to support the case. “If you’re going up against big companies, litigation is so expensive,” said WHEN’s chief executive and legal officer, Jacqueline Biner. “The way the legal system is set up right now, it sadly is not always about the merits of the case. It’s often just about who has more money.”

WHEN’s model is designed to help remove that barrier. In another current campaign, the organization is fundraising to support scientific analysis and sampling in a lawsuit involving a long-closed hazardous waste disposal site located on the edge of the San Pablo Bay in California. The lawsuit alleges that toxic substances are now leaching from the landfill into the bay. Together, WHEN and the public are funding experts to conduct sampling and analyze the results, showing how the pollution is moving from the landfill toward the bay, grounding the case in science and data.

“There are so many cases out there, like landfills that are leaching contaminants, or factory farms leaking manure and nitrates into water bodies,” said Biner. She sees strategic, targeted litigation funding as a tool that could help fuel a sea change, showing large corporations that it’s more cost-efficient to clean up their own messes and address sources of harm, rather than fighting in court to try to evade responsibility.

A new way to demand accountability

A serial entrepreneur and the co-founder of wellness company Nutrafol, WHEN’s founder Roland Peralta initially envisioned giving back through traditional philanthropy. But he soon began to see an additional, larger opportunity: By directing strategic funding to organizations fighting expensive David-and-Goliath battles against large corporations, he could help create a healthier planet for future generations. “I kept asking myself, what kind of world will I leave for my son?” he said.

By helping cover litigation costs, WHEN can help smaller organizations pursue cases against much larger and better-resourced opponents. “The ability to access funding for litigation is really exciting, because it means that we can take on bigger cases,” said Maharg. “Having a partner like WHEN that can help with fundraising key costs in the litigation makes all the difference in our ability to take on these well-funded polluters.”

Over the next several years, WHEN Justice aims to build an infrastructure for a new kind of corporate accountability — helping identify harmful corporate conduct before it becomes irreversible. They plan to give people a direct way to participate in the fight for transparency and justice through crowd-funding. Peralta and Biner envision an interactive platform, where donors can direct their dollars toward the fights that matter most to them. These funds would support both large, precedent-setting cases, and smaller, community-driven campaigns that help local residents confront injustices in their own backyards. 

Winning is not the only goal, said Biner. “We also believe it is ok to pursue a case that may lose if it will create momentum and pressure. If we educate the courts, place new accountability on corporations, and educate consumers, that moves the needle in a different way.”

WHEN’s goal is also to get the public involved. “We think there is so much more power in a million people giving a dollar than in a single person giving a million dollars,” Biner noted. “We want people to become invested in these cases, to follow them, and to become more informed about the legal process.”

A call to action

That sense of agency is central to WHEN’s purpose. At its core, the model is designed to give people a concrete, accessible way to respond to injustices that might otherwise feel too large or too entrenched to take on.

For Peralta, that means creating a clear path that allows ordinary people to turn outrage into action. “Everybody’s angry and appalled about these massive environmental issues, but as an individual, it’s hard to know how to help,” he said. “WHEN Justice is designed to be the call to action button that everyone has been longing for, to help individuals play a role in shutting this madness down by voting with their dollar.”

WHEN Justice is a charitable crowdfunding platform for legal and regulatory action at the intersection of environmental and human health. From pollution and toxic exposure to climate-related harms, we select and fund high-impact efforts that seek accountability from powerful actors whose actions put people, communities, and ecosystems at risk. Every campaign is open to the public, creating a direct way for concerned citizens to participate in outcomes that affect their families, communities, and future.

LEARN MORE

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Funding the fight against corporate polluters on Jul 6, 2026.

Shaun Martin is vice president for adaptation and resilience at the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) in the United States.

“Adapt or perish, now as ever, is nature’s inexorable imperative.” A century later, H.G. Wells’s warning reads less like philosophy and more like a prediction for the near future.

Last week, the World Meteorological Organization forecast that a powerful El Niño – a naturally occurring climate pattern marked by unusually warm ocean temperatures in the Pacific – will develop in 2026, becoming potentially one of the strongest on record, capable of triggering floods, droughts and extreme heat across the globe.

This warning should make one thing crystal clear: we need to move faster to adapt to the rapidly changing climate.

Scientists warn El Niño could intensify climate extremes in 2026

What does it mean to take climate change adaptation seriously? It means recognising that building resilience to increasing hazards must inform planning and policy-making efforts that go beyond trying to reduce climate emissions.

Rising climate risks like extended heatwaves or massive bursts of rainfall should guide decisions about where homes are built, which crops are grown, and how natural resources are managed. We need to invest in systems that withstand and recover from climate-driven shocks rather than collapse under them.

Impacts arriving ahead of schedule

For decades, climate action has been anchored in mitigation – reducing emissions to prevent future harm. That work remains essential. But it is operating on a slower timeline than the impacts we are now experiencing in real time and ahead of schedule. The strengthening 2026 El Niño makes that mismatch impossible to ignore.

In the first few months of 2026 more than 600 thousand square miles of forest land burned globally – the equivalent of 81 million football fields – the highest on record for this point in the year. Ocean surface temperatures are at historic highs, Arctic sea ice has hit record lows, and multiple regions have experienced extreme, out-of-season heat.

The strengthening of El Niño later this year could push these conditions even further, potentially making 2026 one of the hottest years ever recorded.

El Niño expected to bring next record-hot year as soon as 2027

The climate today is fundamentally different than the one that shaped past El Niño events. Heatwaves run hotter. Droughts last longer. Rainfall increasingly comes in destructive bursts. Even historically cooler periods no longer offer relief.

El Niño’s counterpart, La Niña, now occurs in a warmer world with ocean temperatures during cooler La Niña phases exceeding those seen during past “super” El Niño events like 1998 and 2016. Yesterday’s extremes have become today’s baselines, and this new level of turbulence will test the limits of preparedness across the country.

Pragmatic preparations to build resilience

When it comes to policy-making, the focus should be on strengthening the health and resilience of communities facing growing climate risks. Across the United States, communities are already feeling the impacts of the quickly changing climate. Preparing for and withstanding what’s ahead is not ideological; it’s pragmatic.

WHO issues new guidance on heat-health action plans, as El Niño sets in

Planning that prioritises resilience, modernises infrastructure and invests in adaptation helps safeguard food systems, protect homes and supply chains, and reinforce critical infrastructure. Keeping the strength and stability of local communities at the centre of decision-making is essential to building a more secure and resilient future.

Conservation organisations have long emphasised that adapting to climate change is not just about reacting to disasters, but about building resilience in ways that support people and nature. That means working with communities, governments and businesses to reduce vulnerability to natural hazards, strengthen local capacity, and deploy solutions that improve nature’s ability to protect us.

Adaptation rooted in nature

In coastal regions, for example, mangrove forests act as natural defences – absorbing storm surge, stabilising shorelines and protecting nearby communities.

In Mexico, World Wildlife Fund and its partners are using networks of sensors, drones and artificial intelligence to monitor mangrove health and weather in real time. The project analyses how these ecosystems respond to storms, heat and changing water conditions, helping communities and policymakers adapt their conservation strategies accordingly. It is a glimpse of what climate change adaptation looks like at its best: locally grounded, data-driven and rooted in nature.

Climate risk is not a single problem to solve but a system to manage. Addressing it requires rethinking and integrating conservation, economic development and disaster risk reduction into a single, yet multi-dimensional, agenda focused on resilience.

It will also expose vulnerabilities in infrastructure, stress-test disaster response systems and challenge assumptions about what constitutes a “normal” climate year. And it will remind us that even the best forecasts cannot reduce impacts – only preparation can.

The problem is not that we have ignored climate change. It is that we have misjudged its timeline. These hazards are no longer a future risk to be avoided; they are a present reality to be managed. H.G. Wells’ warning remains. We need to adapt or perish, now as ever.

The post A supercharged El Niño is coming – are we ready? appeared first on Climate Home News.

Accra, Ghana – The City of Accra has officially unveiled its LOW-Methane Portfolio, a landmark roadmap that sets out bold actions to reduce methane emissions from the waste sector while advancing climate resilience, public health, job creation, and the city’s  transition toward a zero waste future.

The portfolio outlines Accra’s commitment to reducing methane emissions from waste disposal by at least 30% by 2030, in line with Ghana’s commitment under the Global Methane Pledge and the country’s Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). The initiative supports Ghana’s national target of reducing carbon dioxide (CO₂e) emissions by 21,313 kilotonnes (ktCO₂e) by 2030 through sustainable urban solid waste management solutions.

Developed with technical support from the Green Africa Youth Organization (GAYO), the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA), and C40 Cities, Accra’s LOW-Methane Portfolio provides a practical framework for transforming how waste is managed across the city. It places focus on source separation of organic waste and diversion of organic waste, while centering the role of waste pickers and community groups in reducing waste methane.

“Accra’s LOW-Methane Portfolio is proof that when local governments, national, regional, and global organisations pull in the same direction, climate targets can become real action on the ground. The opportunity to cut waste methane at the local level is enormous, and Accra is showing that cities across Africa are ready to move when communities, governments, and partners co-create practical, locally rooted zero waste solutions,”  Desmond Alugnoa, GAIA Africa, Zero Waste & Climate Program Manager. 

Accra’s LOW-Methane Portfolio is built around three strategic goals that together map a clear pathway to a LOW-Methane, zero waste city. 

• First, Accra aims to achieve at least 50% source-separated organic waste collection by 2030 by establishing and enforcing citywide collection systems. 
• Second, the city will build a decentralised organic waste management system capable of diverting at least 30% of organic waste by 2040.
• Third, Accra will invest in people and data by launching comprehensive public education campaigns on the climate and health consequences of food waste and methane pollution, while tracking progress against the Global Methane Pledge and Ghana’s Nationally Determined Contributions.

“We envision an Accra where climate action is more than a policy commitment; it is a promise to our people, our children, and the generations who will inherit this city. We are demonstrating that when communities, institutions, and young people work together, Accra can become a beacon of climate leadership for Ghana, Africa, and the world,” Victor N. Kotey, Deputy Head of Waste Management, Accra Metropolitan Assembly. 

Together, the Accra Portfolio goals are projected to generate 13,500 tonnes of annual methane reduction by 2040, while creating local jobs, improving air quality, strengthening food systems through compost production, and building energy resilience through biogas utilisation.

For GAYO, the Accra LOW-Methane portfolio calls for partnership and investment for a cleaner, healthier, and more sustainable Accra.

“The next phase must focus on scaling decentralized, community-based zero waste systems rooted in local realities, supported by strong city leadership, and sustained through meaningful partnerships and investment,’’ explains Jacob Johnson Attakpah, Zero Waste Director, GAYO.

He added, “At the core of this transition is recognizing waste pickers as essential actors in implementation. Their knowledge, labour, and leadership must be fully integrated into how Accra reduces organic waste from landfill, strengthens resource recovery, and delivers measurable methane reductions  that advance Ghana’s Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs).’’ 

The city of Accra was recently  recognized among the United Nations 20 cities moving towards zero waste. The LOW-Methane Portfolio lays the foundation for future collaboration with development partners, investors, philanthropic organizations, civil society, and the private sector to scale up zero waste as a just climate solution for the city. The launch of this portfolio marks a significant milestone in Accra’s climate journey and further positions the city as a climate action leader in Africa.

ENDS. 

ABOUT GAIA 

GAIA is a global network of grassroots groups, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), and individuals, in over 90 countries. The organisation envisions a just, zero-waste world built on respect for ecological limits and community rights, where people are free from the burden of toxic pollution, and resources are sustainably conserved, not burned or dumped. GAIA works to catalyse a global shift towards environmental justice by strengthening grassroots social movements that advance solutions to waste and pollution. www.no-burn.org 

For more information, please contact:

GAIA Africa: Ibrahim Khalilulahi Usman – khalil@no-burn.org 

The post [Media Release] Accra Launches Ambitious LOW-Methane Portfolio to Accelerate Climate Action, Advance Zero Waste, and Build Cleaner Communities first appeared on GAIA.

In the United States, PFAS chemicals are so ubiquitous — found in everything from frying pans to skincare — that nearly all of the country’s population likely has measurable levels of the so-called “forever chemicals” in their blood. It’s only in the last few decades that the public and scientists started untangling the health and ecological risks associated with some of the manufactured compounds, which earned their nickname because they don’t break down easily in the environment.

Now, new research from the University of Notre Dame has deepened our understanding of how PFAS can filter through ecosystems and move up the food chain to get to people.

The peer-reviewed study, published this spring in the Journal of Environmental Quality, focused on the Great Lakes. The researchers analyzed 42 years of studies and combined nearly 2,500 samples of algae, fish, birds, and other organisms, in what’s called a meta-analysis to identify trends in PFAS distribution.

PFAS have been linked to a range of health issues, and the chemicals have been identified in human tissue, including in the bloodstream, liver, kidneys, and lungs. Known health risks range from decreased fertility to a higher prevalence of certain cancers. People can be exposed to PFAS in several ways, including through the food they eat. 

“What we’re finding is that the food web itself is a vehicle for transferring these chemicals from one organism to another,” said Gary Lamberti, aquatic science professor at Notre Dame and a study co-author. “So it’s a more holistic view than we’ve known before.”

The Great Lakes study focused on six of the PFAS chemicals most commonly tested for, but there are more than 15,000 types out there, according to the National Institutes of Health. Researchers identified a dramatic decrease over the last two decades of one PFAS chemical known as PFOS, following a voluntary phaseout by industries in the early 2000s. 

“If we stop manufacturing these chemicals, they will eventually reduce in concentration in the food web,” Lamberti said. “That’s kind of good news for how we can manage these chemicals.”

Those declines were seen in the lower Great Lakes — Ontario and Erie — likely because these areas are home to the heavy industries that used the chemicals.

But there was little to no decline in PFOS in the upper lakes Superior, Michigan, and Huron, most likely because the water bodies are larger than the lower lakes. In contrast to the shallower Erie and Ontario lakes, which flush out their water about every 2 to 7 years, water can stay in the upper lakes anywhere from about 60 to 170 years.

The study also confirmed that these chemicals increase in concentration as they travel up the food chain. Algae and plants have the lowest concentration, according to the study, because they grow and die quickly. But predators like salmon and eagles had the highest concentration because they’re eating a large amount of prey that have a lot of accumulated PFAS.

Read Next Trump’s EPA vows to fight ‘forever chemicals’ — by loosening regulations Zoya Teirstein

Potentially dangerous levels of these chemicals in fish have prompted warnings by state officials across the country on how much is safe to eat, including in North Carolina, Wisconsin, Montana, and Pennsylvania. Michigan, which borders 4 of the 6 Great Lakes, has been testing fish for PFAS since 2012 and issues “safe fish” guidelines annually.

“If we can understand what the PFAS levels are in the food web, we can better communicate the risk of consuming those potentially toxic food sources,” said Katherine Manz, an environmental health professor at the University of Michigan who was not involved in the study.

While it was easy to find PFAS data on salmon, trout, and some birds, Lamberti said, the information on the “less glamorous” smaller fish, invertebrates, and algae was harder to come by.

Tools to analyze the range of these chemicals are still evolving, said Vernon Lalone, CEO of Wave Lumina, a Michigan-based startup that’s developing a rapid testing kit for PFAS in water and soil.

“It’s like a chicken-and-an-egg situation,” said Lalone, who wasn’t involved in the study. “You’ve got to have an analytical method that’s robust and reliable enough to measure these things before you can regulate them at certain limits.”

Lamberti said there are still plenty of questions about how these chemicals will shift in waterways as temperatures rise due to climate change, ice formation shifts, and as industries introduce new chemicals. But he’s optimistic — his study shows that when forever chemicals are removed from production, food webs eventually cycle them out. There is no national ban on PFAS, but a patchwork of federal regulations restricts certain chemicals, and some manufacturers have phased out other PFAS compounds voluntarily. 

“That’s what we need to be thinking about with these chemicals,” Lamberti said, “how we’re going to remove them from the production and find substitutes for them to do the right thing.”

toolTips('.classtoolTips5','In scholarly research, a “peer-reviewed” study or article is one that has been independently evaluated by other experts in the field to assess scientific accuracy. Not all studies go through a peer-review process, so peer-reviewed studies and journals typically indicate a higher level of confidence in methodologies and results.'); toolTips('.classtoolTips12','An acronym for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, PFAS are a class of chemicals used in everyday items like nonstick cookware, cosmetics, and food packaging that have proven to be dangerous to human health. Also called “forever chemicals” for their inability to break down over time, PFAS can be found lingering nearly everywhere — in water, soil, air, and the blood of people and animals.
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This story was originally published by Grist with the headline New research traces how ‘forever chemicals’ move through the Great Lakes and into people on Jul 6, 2026.

Nate poses questions about our shared future, using headlines regarding a potential ceasefire deal between the U.S. and Iran to confront a subject that has re-entered public discourse with a quiet but startling force: nuclear warfare.

War has become a fever that world leaders cannot seem to break. As militarism spreads, its costs extend far beyond the battlefield, accelerating climate change while consuming the resources needed to confront it.

As concern over falling birth rates spreads across the political spectrum, pronatalist ideas are finding new audiences. But protecting reproductive freedom and respecting planetary limits require rejecting the politics of population growth.

The barrier to renewable energy was never the technology. It’s power: who holds it, who benefits, and what it takes to shift that. The ICONIC Renewable Energy Zones Toolkit is built to help close that gap. It’s a practical resource for NGOs, campaigners, and community partners who want renewable energy to do more than exist — to turn projects into campaigns, and consultation into co-ownership.

Solar and wind are already proven, affordable, and scalable. What usually stands in the way isn’t the technology — it’s the grid operator who won’t connect, the bank that won’t lend, the regulator whose rules haven’t caught up, or the developer who shows up to “consult” once the deal is already done. This toolkit is built for that fight.

It’s organized as a set of modules you can use standalone or as a full campaign workflow — starting with the case for organising around power, not just projects, and moving through strategy, community rights and consent, policy barriers, and finance. It draws on lessons from campaigners already doing this work, from La Guajira to East Africa to the Amazon.

Inside, you’ll find:

• Case studies from real campaigns
• A Theory of Change template and power-mapping worksheets
• A Strategy Menu and Tactics Library
• Tools for community engagement, FPIC, and benefit-sharing
• A plain-language finance module for engaging funders and investors
• Ready-to-use briefing templates for press, officials, and coalitions

Whether you’re building a campaign from scratch or sharpening one already underway, this toolkit meets you where you are.

Download the Toolkit

The post The ICONIC Renewable Energy Zones Toolkit appeared first on 350.

Campaigners battle 'monstrous megalith' AI centre Channel News brendan 6th July 2026 Teaser Media