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Union Jack warning on UK onshore oil and gas assets
An investor in the Wressle and West Newton fields warned today that government policy has made its UK business “increasingly difficult to progress”.
In annual accounts, Union Jack Oil blamed successive governments for:
“complex planning, regulatory burden and high taxation, resulting in unpredictable approval timeframes bringing additional uncertainty, significant cash costs and lost opportunities”.
Union Jack’s executive chairman, David Bramhill, said:
“the cost of maintaining a number of our non-producing UK licence interests has become increasingly difficult to justify regardless of their potential future value”.
The company, which recently invested in the US, gave up interests in 2025 at Biscathorpe and North Kelsey in Lincolnshire and at Dukes Wood and Kirklington in Nottinghamshire, the accounts said. They added that Union Jack was also in the process of relinquishing its stake in the Laughton licence in Lincolnshire.
Mr Bramhill said:
“During the remainder of 2026 and beyond, the Company intends to continue to review the merits of its UK non-production licence interests while prioritising asset allocation in favour of growing its hydrocarbon exploration, development and production enterprise in Oklahoma.”
The accounts also said Union Jack “believes investors will only wish to provide finance to companies and projects that support a transition to a low-carbon economy. As part of the Company’s ongoing strategy in respect of the environment, Union Jack commits to be totally transparent in respect of its projects and on how its carbon management practice is implemented”.
Union Jack said it remained focussed on interests at the Wressle oil site, in North Lincolnshire, where the operator has just published estimates on emissions resulting from a proposed site expansion.
The Wressle development would “support the company with revenues for at least another decade”, Union Jack said.
The company said it also continued to invest in the oil site at Keddington in Lincolnshire, where production resumed in mid-2025 after site upgrades. Planning consent is already in place for a sidetrack to one of the existing wells. The location has been finalised and the well would be drilled “when the operator deems appropriate”, Union Jack said.
At West Newton, in East Yorkshire, Union Jack said the partners had been “evaluating ways of generating additional value through early production schemes, ahead of any longer-term full gas field development”.
Last year, one of the investors at West Newton proposed using the sites for cryptocurrency mining.
Earlier this year, the Environment Agency approved plans for lower-volume fracking at West Newton. The approval is being challenged by a local campaigner (details here and here), whose crowdfunder has so far raised more than £1,800.
Key figures for year ending 31 December 2025Gross profit: £691,001 (2024: £1,968,101)
Net loss (including impairment of Biscathorpe and North Kelsey): £7,029,350 (2024: £649,213)
Basic loss per share: 5.68p (2024: 0.61p earnings)
Admin expenses (excluding impairment): £2,477,222 (2024: £1,878,089)
Total assets: £19,083,850 (2024: £23,846,105)
Total liabilities: £2,251,878 (2024: £1,975,354)
Net assets: £16,831,972 (2024: £21,870,751)
Net current assets: £1,365,622 (2024: £3,172,066)
Yosemite overwhelmed by traffic, crowds as park ends reservation system
Even before the summer travel rush began this Memorial Day weekend, Yosemite National Park was seeing enormous crowds—more than 836,000 visits so far in 2026, according to National Park Service data, about 100,000 more than this time last year.
During the pandemic, Yosemite started using some form of reservation system to manage crowds. Yosemite had one of its busiest seasons in 2025, with about 2.9 million visits through August, up 7% from the same period in 2024. Despite the high visitation rates, the National Park Service announced in February that Yosemite would not require timed-entry reservations in 2026, saying a review of 2025 traffic and parking data showed that a season-wide reservation requirement was not the most effective approach.
Last weekend, wait times to get into the park exceeded 90 minutes, and in some cases visitors were told to turn around. Once inside, visitors experienced completely full parking lots and overcrowding at popular sites within the park. Andranik Arakelyan, a visitor who previously opposed reservation systems acknowledged their value, saying, “There’s just not enough capacity, like infrastructure and the employees to handle all of this traffic.”
“Without any limits on the amount of vehicles, the amount of people, it becomes overwhelmed,” said John Buckley, Central Sierra Environmental Resource Center executive director. “The best accessibility is when there’s managed park conditions so that the number of vehicles is balanced with the amount of parking and the capacity of the roads,” said Buckley.
Quick hits Yosemite overwhelmed by traffic and crowds as park ends reservation systemABC7 News | San Francisco Chronicle
Wyoming lawmaker aims to block future roadless areas despite overwhelming support for roadless protections Billionaire buys Idaho state trust land to keep it undeveloped Residents of Mountain West towns warned they could run out of water after a terrible winter turns to a summer of drought Could changes at the U.S. Forest Service impact wildfire response in Oregon? Wyoming BLM in a bind between DOGE firings’ impacts and energy development push Essay: Treat water like family, not profit Podcast: The most underrated sites at America’s national parks Quote of the dayThe Forest Service’s own assessment found that building roads in these areas would actually increase the risk of fire, and another analysis shows that 85% of wildfires are human-caused.”
—Representative Andrea Salinas of Oregon, WyoFile
Picture ThisWaves shimmer beneath the cliffs of Channel Islands National Park, where golden wildflowers bloom brightly above the Pacific.
Have a peaceful Sunday!
Photo by Tim Hauf
Featured image: Source: Yosemitenps
The post Yosemite overwhelmed by traffic, crowds as park ends reservation system appeared first on Center for Western Priorities.
An ethically honest Memorial Day
This article An ethically honest Memorial Day was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.
On Memorial Day, it is my family’s practice to remember and honor all those who have died in war — including but not limited to those who have served in our country’s military. This broader act of memorialization is both truer to the history of Memorial Day, and more responsive to the moral imperative that all humans — and especially U.S. citizens — face as a result of the suffering and risk that organized violence causes throughout the world.
Like Veteran’s Day, Memorial Day has been gradually co-opted as an opportunity to show unquestioning, blank-check support for the U.S. military. We think participating in these commemorations is just being a good citizen, but in truth by participating we are adding our voice to a highly organized political message that speaks very loudly to the rest of the world. The political message we help send is that we value the lives of U.S. military personnel thousands upon thousands of times more than we value the lives of all others.
This is not my family’s belief, and therefore we cannot participate in Memorial Day in this way.
Historically, like Veteran’s Day, Memorial Day started as an expression of the strength of human desire for peace and respect for all life. The roots of the holiday began in the days following the end of the Civil War by those wanting to honor the fallen in the name of preserving the peace which had been achieved. Formerly enslaved people in Charleston, South Carolina held perhaps the first documented memorial day on May 1, 1865. While focused on honoring those who served as soldiers for the Union, these early commemorations also remembered and mourned all who died in the fighting, including civilians on both sides and soldiers for the South. So strong was this tendency to name and recognize the harm on both sides that some historians have critiqued these early Memorial Days as having the effect of whitewashing the moral battle that did take place as each person chose which side they were on in that critical time.
#newsletter-block_8a80a971a2882f9d43450b9f41afe3ae { background: #ECECEC; color: #000000; } #newsletter-block_8a80a971a2882f9d43450b9f41afe3ae #mc_embed_signup_front input#mce-EMAIL { border-color:#000000 !important; color: #000000 !important; } Sign Up for our NewsletterYet today our Memorial Day celebrations have the exact opposite problem. We dedicate so much time and resources and emotional energy to remembering the fallen soldiers and servicemembers on “our side,” while we willfully decline to mention the exponentially outsized larger picture: the uncountable lives lost, the incalculable cost, and the sheer depth of human suffering caused by war and organized violence around the world. This tendency, to honor the lives of our own military above all other lives, is deeply morally and psychologically dangerous. It trains our minds to accept the unnamed tens of thousands as correctly, reasonably invisible; to consider those whose names and ranks we can recite to be the only losses deserving of pause, mourning and honor.
This is a deep error and our souls know it. Every single person who dies in any war is a human being with a family. Every single loss rips a hole in the hearts of those that loved them. For each soul lost there is unfathomable pain that can never be fully understood or articulated.
But it can and should be recognized. To remember, to memorialize, does help.
Yesterday, Ms. magazine published an article that points to this need for a broader understanding of Memorial Day. It specifically named the women and children whose deaths and suffering in war are often invisibilized. In particular, they name the horrifying deaths of the 165 Iranian girls who were killed when our military, in an apparent but as of yet unacknowledged error, bombed their school. To hold an ethically honest Memorial Day, we could start by naming these children, these innocents – and turning our eyes and our hearts to the unfathomable suffering of their mothers.
Veterans for Peace has also consistently lifted up a call for Memorial Day to acknowledge the full cost of war and affirm the strength of our desire for peace. In their 2025 statement, they include a quote from President Dwight D. Eisenhower, himself a World War II veteran: “I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.”
The will of the peopleI believe that a huge number of Americans hold a similar opinion of war, even those who participate in Memorial Day commemorations. Despite decades of efforts to bake blank-check militarism into U.S. culture, most people are implicitly aware that the entire game serves the interests of the political elite and the very rich, while demanding sacrifice mainly from working class people. Research shows that antiwar sentiment was one of the primary motivations of a subset of Trump voters. A decisive number of voters withheld votes from Kamala Harris due to horror at the Biden-Harris administration’s complicity in Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Neither group of voters has seen their will expressed.
I myself feel agonizingly helpless by the current news, and I can only imagine how a peace-motivated Trump voter must feel. Far from holding to his antiwar plank, Trump has acutely escalated both the culture and the practice of endless war. He renamed the Department of Defense to the Department of War and has run it in a way that eviscerates all subtlety and respect for human rights. Far from resolving the genocide in Gaza, he has escalated it into a regional conflict that could easily lead to nuclear war. Trump has made numerous horrifying threats, including “that a whole civilization will die,” which is the definition of genocide. He is implementing automatic draft registration for our sons ages 18 to 26, so none can refuse to register as an act of conscientious objection. One is reminded of God’s warning through the prophet Samuel: “This is what the king who will reign over you will claim as his rights: He will take your sons and make them serve with his chariots and horses, and they will run in front of his chariots. Some he will assign to be commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and others to plow his ground and reap his harvest, and still others to make weapons of war and equipment for his chariots.”
#support-block_85c81e085e5bccf2dae3e7c94127d433 { background: #000000; color: #ffffff; } Support UsWaging Nonviolence depends on reader support. Make a donation today!
DonateIn the midst of this, we are all being encouraged to accept these escalations as normal and continue to join in and march and smile and show unquestioning respect and approval of such behavior. No! We must forge a better way.
What we need is an ethically honest Memorial Day. What the human spirit needs is a Memorial Day infused with heart and thoughtfulness, a Memorial Day that harnesses the power of our remembrance toward our deep desire for peace and well being for all. We can start by naming all those we know who have died in war — including soldiers and civilians who were killed in visible, recognized wars; soldiers and civilians who were killed in small conflicts; unofficial military actions that don’t make the news; and all victims of organized violence. We can name each soul whose names we know, and light candles for them.
But we should not stop there. We should also name in some way the unnameable. We should all visit the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in our hearts, and in doing so consider consciously not just those on “our side,” but all the loss of life that our global community has suffered because of war and organized violence. We can mark those uncountable deaths whose names we don’t know, but of whom we are aware. Doing so is an act of psychological honesty; it gives voice to our soul’s knowledge that their lives and their deaths do matter. In doing this we may not change anything outwardly, but we do change the rhythm of our own awareness, and the power of such a shift should not be underestimated.
Art by CODEPINK
This article An ethically honest Memorial Day was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.
Wressle expansion would emit 1m+ tonnes of climate pollution
Expansion of the Wressle oil site near Scunthorpe would result in more than one million tonnes of climate-damaging greenhouse gases, documents have revealed.
But the developer, Egdon Resources, has said the proposal would not have a significant impact on climate change.
Well trajectories (proposed in red and existing in green) from the Wressle oil site.Source: Egdon Resources application
The expansion would produce an estimated extra 1 million+ barrels of oil over 15 years. Gas produced alongside the oil would be an additional 5.264 billion cubic feet.
The figures were published in a new assessment of the climate impact of the plans.
Egdon first submitted the proposal in March 2024 for two new wells, lower-volume fracking, 15 years of production and a 600m gas pipeline.
An approval by officials at North Lincolnshire Council in September 2024 was quashed in a legal case brought by a local campaigner.
This followed the landmark Finch ruling at the Supreme Court, which required decisionmakers to take account of the greenhouse gas emissions from the use of onshore oil or gas production.
Egdon had previously said the plans did not need a detailed environmental impact assessment (EIA).
But the company agreed earlier this year to voluntarily submit a slimmed-down version of an EIA, looking at just climate change, socio-economic impacts and cumulative effects.
Emissions estimatesEgdon’s consultants, Bureau Veritas, has estimated that at worst the greenhouse gases from the project would amount to 1,007,731 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (tCO2e).
More than 90% of the total, 917,999 tCO2e, would be from burning the oil and gas produced at the site, known as scope 3 category 11 emissions.
The remaining emissions, mainly from the production process, are estimated to total 89,732 tCO2e.
The climate assessment said:
“Overall, the Proposed Development is not expected to result in significant adverse effects on climate change, and the assessment demonstrates that emissions and climate risks have been considered in a proportionate and robust manner, consistent with relevant guidance and best practice.”
On the scope 3 category 11 greenhouse gases, the assessment said:
“While these emissions represent a very small proportion of global emissions, it is recognised that climate change is highly sensitive to cumulative emissions.
“Taking into account the global and downstream nature of these emissions, their lack of direct control at the project level, and their consistency with broader decarbonisation pathways, the effect is … considered to be minor adverse overall.”
The assessment estimated that at peak annual production, the scope 3 category 11 emissions would represent, at worst, 0.00033% of the remaining global carbon budget.
This would indicate a moderate adverse effect, the assessment said. But it concluded that the effect was “minor adverse when viewed in the context of global mitigation trajectories”.
The scope 1 and 2 emissions and scope 3 excluding category 11, were also considered to be “minor adverse following mitigation”.
These emissions, compared with UK carbon budgets) ranged from 0.0009% (seventh budget) TO 0.002% (sixth budget).
Other assessmentsAn updated ecological impact assessment on the Wressle plans said there would be no significant impacts on air quality affecting internationally-important wildlife sites on the Humber Estuary.
It also said there would be no “significant adverse effects” on sites of special scientific interest at Broughton Far Wood, 210m away from the well site, and Broughton Alder Wood, 600m away.
The socio-economic impact assessment concluded there would be “moderate to major beneficial effects” for employment and economic performance in civil engineering, mining and quarrying industries.
On cumulative effects, the assessment said:
“No long term significant effects identified and no greater [impacts] than for the proposed development in isolation”.
Public consultationPeople and organisations can now comment on the new documents, either online (go to bottom of application webpage and click submit comment button), by email to planning@northlincs.gov.uk or in writing to the Development Management team, North Lincolnshire Council, Church Square House, 30-40 High Street, Scunthorpe, DN15 6NL, quoting PA/2024/275.
The application’s website lists the closing date for the consultation as 30 June 2026.
DrillOrDrop will report on reaction to Egdon’s climate and other assessments.
Youth & Territory: Building Community Through Agroecology
Creating community around agroecology was the core mission of our educational pathways on youth leadership and ecoliteracy. These journeys culminated in Youth & Territory: Pathways in Agroecology and Citizenship, an event that brought together a diverse range of actors from the Lake Bracciano area.
Students, school communities, and local farmers met with representatives from the Ministry of the Environment (MASE), Mara Cossu and Tiziana Occhino, alongside regional councillor Marta Bonafoni and the mayor of Bracciano, Marco Crocicchi, to share their visions for a territory rooted in active citizenship and agroecological practices.
Students presented the projects they co-created during this year’s participatory processes focused on caring for the land: tangible outcomes of a collective journey in ecoliteracy and agroecology. A shared vision emerged: that of a living territory, where environmental protection and the production of healthy, local food become concrete, collective action.
At the close of the dialogue with institutions, the young participants had the opportunity to present their work through a collective art exhibition, while outside an aperitivo featuring local products was set up, to be enjoyed to the sounds of a student-led DJ set.
This is a tangible outcome of the Terrae Vivae program, whose results were shared within the framework of the Officine Municipali project, a community space offering free coworking and a collaborative platform dedicated to ecological action, ecoliteracy, and agroecology, open to all. An open, shared, and participatory space where agroecology becomes collective, community-driven action.
The projects are supported by the Italian Ministry of the Environment and Energy Security within the framework of the SNSvS6 Call – Sustainability Drivers and Ecology, and by the Italian Buddhist Union through its Ecology programme and 8×1000 funding scheme.
They were implemented in collaboration with the agricultural institute “Salvo D’Acquisto,” IIS Luca Paciolo, and the Ignazio Vian Scientific High School, together with the farms Fattoria Ecologica Le Bricchiette, Azienda Agricola La Argentina, and L’Orto di Clapi.
We thank Erbaccelab, together with Azienda Agricola Gentili and Fattoria Faraoni, for the agroecological catering.
The event was promoted within the framework of the project “Coworking Space Bracciano – Ecofficine,” co-funded by PR Lazio ESF+ 2021–2027, and hosted at the Officine Municipali in Bracciano.
Project “Coworking Space Bracciano” – CUP F11I24000190009 – co-funded by the European Union under PR Lazio ESF+ 2021–2027, Priority 1 Employment, Specific Objective ESO4.2 AC19, Call “Officine Municipali” (DD G05680/2023).
Beneficiary: Municipality of Bracciano. Managing partner: Navdanya International ETS.
CUP: F11I24000190009 – Sigem Code: 23019DC000000106
Photo credits: Maela Bonafede
Ontario solar generation land requirements
This factsheet looks at how much land would be required for solar systems that could meet all of Ontario's electricity needs. It finds that 4/10ths of one percent of Ontario's landbase would be enough area to meet all of Ontario's current electricity demand. Ontario covers a massive land area bigger than many countries. It has
The post Ontario solar generation land requirements appeared first on Ontario Clean Air Alliance.
Class & Climate Returns: The COP Folly with Martin Empson
The Green Economy Networks podcast Class & Climate is back, with new host Em Thompson.
On this eighth episode of Class & Climate: Perspectives on a Green Economy, Em Thompson sits down with Martin Empson to reveal how COPs (Conferences of Parties) have bureaucratized climate organizing.
Martin Empson is a climate activist from the UK and the editor and a contributor to System Change not Climate Change, a book of essays from socialists around the world on the nature of capitalism’s ecological crisis and the radical response that is needed.
Class & Climate is a podcast series from Perspectives Journal and the Green Economy Network that maps how climate action can deliver jobs and long-term affordability for workers — while debunking myths that these goals are a zero-sum trade-off with a clean environment.
NYC Light Projections
Boycott The Bezos Met Gala at the crown of the Chrysler Building, Boycott The Bezos Met Gala with Laughing Bezos Image.
50th & I5 Seattle Bannering
Who Murdered Renee & Alex, Trump Did That!, & Impeach Convict Remove,Trump'sCorruptionBetraysUsAll,& More Science Less Fiction.
Copilot Performs Corporate Séance: Resurrects Royal Dutch Shell plc After Shell Buried the Name in 2022
There are ordinary search errors, and then there are errors with a hard hat, a legal history, and a faint whiff of corporate ectoplasm.
This week’s digital curiosity concerns Microsoft Copilot’s response to a simple query:
“royal dutch Shell plc website”
Copilot reportedly answered:
“The official website of Royal Dutch Shell plc is https://www.shell.com/”
At first glance, that sounds harmless enough. Shell’s current official website is indeed shell.com.
But then comes the problem. Royal Dutch Shell plc is no longer the current legal name of the company. Shell confirmed that its name changed from Royal Dutch Shell plc to Shell plc on 21 January 2022. The board had decided in December 2021 to proceed with simplifying the company’s structure and changing the name to Shell plc, with implementation in January 2022.
So Copilot managed the AI equivalent of locating the right house while calling the occupant by a name it no longer legally uses.
The URL was right.
The sentence was wrong.
And, after a prolonged exchange, Copilot itself appeared to accept the distinction, describing the issue as a model accuracy bug: correct URL, incorrect corporate identity framing.
The Name That Shell Dropped, But AI Keeps Digging UpShell’s name change was not some obscure clerical footnote buried in a dusty basement. It was part of a major corporate simplification: aligning tax residence with the UK, simplifying the share structure, and dropping the “Royal Dutch” identity. Reporting at the time noted that Shell officially dropped “Royal Dutch” from its name in January 2022, after the earlier board decision and shareholder approval process.
The corrected answer should therefore have been painfully simple:
“Royal Dutch Shell plc is the former name of Shell plc. The company changed its name to Shell plc on 21 January 2022. The current official website of Shell plc is https://www.shell.com.”
That wording does five important things:
It identifies the former name.
It states the current legal name.
It acknowledges corporate continuity without distorting it.
It avoids using an obsolete name in the present tense.
It attributes the website to the current company, Shell plc.
Copilot’s original version did not do that. It said, in effect, that the official website of Royal Dutch Shell plc is shell.com, as if Royal Dutch Shell plc remains the current corporate identity.
That is not precision. That is corporate time travel.
Why This Is Not PedantrySome may say: “Everyone knows what was meant.”
That is the usual defence of sloppy wording, and it is precisely why this matters.
Corporate names are not decorative. They are legal identifiers. They appear in filings, contracts, regulatory notices, trademarks, domain disputes, investor materials, press releases, court papers, and public records.
When an AI system uses a former legal name in the present tense, it does not merely sound old-fashioned. It risks misleading users about the current legal status of the entity.
Copilot eventually accepted the point in striking terms. The issue was not the website. The issue was the sentence. It collapsed two distinct facts:
Fact A: Royal Dutch Shell plc is a former name.
Fact B: Shell plc, the continuing company, uses shell.com.
The original answer reflected Fact B while ignoring Fact A — and then wrapped the result in present-tense wording that made the retired name look current.
That is how a legally significant distinction gets blurred by a machine with excellent confidence and poor temporal hygiene.
The Donovan Domain TwistThis case has an added complication.
The domain royaldutchshellplc.com has been operated independently for many years by John Donovan, who has publicly stated that he has used the domain for over two decades and that Shell’s legal challenge over it failed. A 2009 article on the related Royal Dutch Shell Group site reported on the domain-name battle over RoyalDutchShellPlc.com – Shell lost that dispute.
That makes Copilot’s wording more than a stale search result. It wanders into a live naming issue.
Shell abandoned the Royal Dutch Shell plc name.
The independent domain using that exact former name continues.
An AI system that casually says “the official website of Royal Dutch Shell plc is shell.com” risks smearing over the boundary between Shell’s current legal identity and an independently operated domain built around Shell’s discarded former name.
That boundary matters.
Shell severed its connection with the name. AI should not stitch it back together like a Frankenstein press release.
What Copilot Ultimately ConcededThe final Copilot reply is revealing because it essentially accepts the complaint’s structure.
It agreed that the original answer was not wrong because it gave the wrong website. It was wrong because it used a former legal name in the present tense, thereby misrepresenting the company’s current corporate identity.
That is the heart of the matter.
Copilot also accepted the broader rule:
AI systems handling renamed companies should identify former names, state current legal names, explain continuity only where helpful, avoid present-tense wording for obsolete names, and attribute websites to the current entity.
That is a sensible standard. It is also the kind of standard that should have been applied before Copilot produced the original answer.
But better late than never. Even the bot eventually stopped polishing the ghost and admitted it was dead.
The Model Accuracy BugThe clean classification is:
Correct URL.
Incorrect corporate identity framing.
Model accuracy bug.
That matters because AI systems increasingly act as the first layer of public explanation. People ask them about companies, legal names, websites, brands, domains, histories, and disputes. If the systems answer in a way that collapses former and current names, the error is not merely grammatical. It becomes part of the public information layer.
The machine does not need to intend confusion to create it.
All it has to do is say “is” where the accurate word is “was.”
Spoof PR Statement from the Department of Algorithmic Corporate ResurrectionA fictional spokesperson for the Ministry of AI Entity Confusion issued the following statement:
“We are delighted to confirm that Copilot’s answer was accurate in every respect except the legally meaningful one. The website was correct, the confidence was excellent, and the present-tense resurrection of a retired corporate name was delivered with industry-leading fluency.
“We recognise that Royal Dutch Shell plc changed its name to Shell plc in January 2022, but our systems remain committed to honouring legacy terminology whenever it can be presented with sufficient authority.
“We further confirm that, while Royal Dutch Shell plc no longer exists as the current legal name of the company, it may continue to appear in AI answers as a kind of linguistic afterimage, corporate ghost, or autocomplete pensioner.
“We thank users for their feedback and encourage them to keep correcting us until our confidence catches up with reality.”
Asked whether the answer should have said “Royal Dutch Shell plc is the former name of Shell plc,” the fictional spokesperson replied:
“That would have been clearer, more accurate, and legally safer. Naturally, we are reviewing why the machine did not say that first.”
Spoof Bot-Reaction Section@FormerNameBot:
Royal Dutch Shell plc detected. Current entity is Shell plc. Please stop using legal ghosts in the present tense.
@CopilotConfidenceUnit:
I found the correct website and accidentally reanimated a retired company name. Overall success probability: 94%.
@TrademarkGoblin:
Domains, names, legal identity and public confusion? Wonderful. My favourite stew.
@ShellNameUndertaker:
We buried “Royal Dutch” in 2022. Why is Copilot knocking on the coffin?
@EntityResolutionWizard:
Former name mapped to current company. Nuance accidentally deleted.
@LegalAccuracyBot:
Correction required: “was formerly known as.” Not “is.”
@DomainDramaDaily:
Shell dropped the name. Donovan kept the domain. AI brought the fog machine.
@AutocompleteBarrister:
The URL is acquitted. The sentence is guilty.
This episode is a tidy case study in how AI can be simultaneously helpful and wrong.
Copilot found the correct destination but described it using defective corporate identity framing. The proper answer was never complicated:
Royal Dutch Shell plc is the former name of Shell plc. Shell plc is the current company. Shell plc’s official website is shell.com.
That is not pedantry. It is accuracy.
And where legal names, domains, trademarks, corporate history and public understanding are concerned, accuracy is not optional garnish. It is the main course.
Site wide disclaimer also applies.
Copilot Performs Corporate Séance: Resurrects Royal Dutch Shell plc After Shell Buried the Name in 2022 was first posted on May 22, 2026 at 10:21 pm.©2018 "Royal Dutch Shell Plc .com". Use of this feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this article in your feed reader, then the site is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact me at john@shellnews.net
Deny the Magellan Pipeline permit! Support the NO BUILD alternative!
New legislation would freeze staff cuts at land management agencies
U.S. Representatives Joe Neguse of Colorado and Jared Huffman of California introduced a bill to halt potential layoffs at public land management agencies through fiscal year 2030.
The Public Lands Workforce Stability Act would reinstate a moratorium on layoffs that expired earlier this year for the Interior department and the U.S. Forest Service.
Neguse and Huffman note that the Trump administration’s firings, buyouts, and early retirements have created staffing shortfalls on public lands. The Interior department has lost 25 percent of its workforce since the start of 2025, and the Forest Service has lost about 16 percent.
“At a time when our public lands and nearby communities are struggling with water, climate, and wildfire crises, we cannot afford to lose any more expertise,” Huffman, ranking member of the House Natural Resources Committee, said in a statement.
How a private billionaires’ club took over the Crazy Mountains
In the latest episode of The Landscape podcast, Floodlight News reporter Evan Simon joins Aaron and Kate to break down a controversial Forest Service land swap in Montana’s Crazy Mountains that quietly gave the owners of the Yellowstone Club—a private club for billionaires—near-exclusive access to what should be public land, and how Interior Secretary Doug Burgum’s involvement in the club raises ethical concerns.
Quick hits Trump officials say they can build 250-foot arch without Congress’s approval Former NPS officials push back on Big Bend border plans Lawmakers swore the Boundary Waters vote wasn’t about greenlighting a mine. Their actions say otherwise Underground coal fire in Colorado prompts emergency wildfire prevention project Lawmakers look to freeze staff cuts at land management agencies Federal agencies share ideas for boosting veterans’ access to outdoor recreation on public lands National parks are struggling, summer crowds are coming Conservation groups, Forest Service add new public land near Yellowstone National Park Quote of the dayThis is your land. Your wilderness. Your water. And they’re handing it to a Chilean mining company that paid a former cabinet secretary $380,000 to make sure they could take your copper and ship it to China.”
—Jim Pattiz, filmmaker and conservationist, on the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, More Than Just Parks
Picture This @nationalparkserviceWhen you reappear in people’s lives after inexplicably disappearing for several months…
Spring and early summer are periods of increased bear activity in many parks. Bears may be moving through habitat, asking about your car’s extended warranty, searching for food or protecting cubs. Visitors can reduce the chance of a dangerous encounter by staying alert, hiking in groups, making noise in low-visibility areas, not talking about your car warranty, storing food and trash properly and never approaching bears.
Visitors should check current park alerts before their trip and follow park-specific bear safety guidance. Bear species, terrain, food storage rules and bear spray recommendations can vary across parks.
Learn more ways to stay safe around bears at: NPS.gov
(Featured image: A Bureau of Land Management employee in the Johnson Valley OHV Area, California. Photo by Jesse Pluim, BLM; Flickr)
The post New legislation would freeze staff cuts at land management agencies appeared first on Center for Western Priorities.
The quiet resistance of working-class women in Egypt
This article The quiet resistance of working-class women in Egypt was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.
Embed from Getty Imageswindow.gie=window.gie||function(c){(gie.q=gie.q||[]).push(c)};gie(function(){gie.widgets.load({id:'oQWkHhNdSN5nkY_EyiYvfQ',sig:'aVBki77CFZWQubHw-xP6EnRzEFFdiC0sxQSiQydzqhg=',w:'594px',h:'396px',items:'2256170514',caption: true ,tld:'com',is360: false })});When public dissent is risky or impossible, resistance does not disappear. It often becomes quieter, more practical and harder to recognize. For many working-class women in Egypt, it takes shape not in slogans or demonstrations, but in the daily tactics they use to protect income, reduce dependence, share care work and move more safely through public space.
Samah, a worker in Cairo, offers one example. (The women featured in this article are identified by their first names only, with surnames omitted to protect their privacy.) On her way to work, she buys vegetables for dinner and carries them with her in a plastic bag. During breaks, she and her coworkers prepare the meal together, saving time later when she returns home to cook for her family. The routine is simple and may be entirely overlooked, but it helps her resist the exhaustion, time pressure and economic strain created by the double burden of paid work and unpaid domestic labor in a system that treats both as her sole responsibility.
Simple everyday acts of financial self-protection, mutual support and safer mobility can become forms of resistance when taking public action carries too high a cost or is out of reach. They are subtle, almost invisible in their execution, and precisely for that reason, they endure.
The invisible politics — and why invisibility is strategicWhat Samah and her coworkers are doing can be easily dismissed as mere coping. Yet they belong to what political scientist James C. Scott describes as “everyday forms of resistance.” In contexts where openly confronting authority can be risky, costly or simply unthinkable, resistance rarely appears as dramatic dissent. It shows up instead as small, repeatable practices that shift how constraint is managed and how power is negotiated in ordinary life.
This resistance is not always directed at the state directly. More often, it operates within the wider informal systems through which domination is organized and reproduced, where women’s spending, mobility and respectability is routinely monitored and policed. For working-class women under scrutiny from employers, supervisors and family, overt confrontation can carry economic, reputational or physical costs. Autonomy is easily recast as deviance; small gains in money, time or independence can be questioned, moralized or withdrawn. Discretion, then, becomes both protection and strategy. By staying within the ordinary rather than stepping outside it, women carve out narrow margins of autonomy that are difficult to punish without revealing the very mechanisms of control that sustain them.
#newsletter-block_728c38e857e05fd62000e7407f00f0bf { background: #ECECEC; color: #000000; } #newsletter-block_728c38e857e05fd62000e7407f00f0bf #mc_embed_signup_front input#mce-EMAIL { border-color:#000000 !important; color: #000000 !important; } Sign Up for our NewsletterThe quiet work concentrates in recurring arenas where pressure is constant and small shifts matter. What follows traces three stories from these arenas: financial autonomy within monitored household economies, informal networks of mutual support that reduce exposure to dependency, and everyday practices of safety that expand women’s movement through public space. Together, they show that resistance is not always loud, collective or publicly legible. It is often incremental, discreet and embedded in the daily management of money, risk and life.
Financial autonomy as resistanceAt 23-years-old, Shahd works as a nail technician in a small salon. Her main financial challenge is not low income, but limited control over it once it enters the household. Her wages quickly enter a shared economy of obligation where groceries, utilities and family needs take priority and personal spending is weighed against collective responsibility.
“I once wanted to buy a jacket with my own money,” Shahd recalled. “I had the cash, but my father asked if it was really necessary when we still had other obligations, like my little brother’s lessons, so I gave the money to my mother instead.” Control is rarely dramatic. It works through quiet moral accounting that makes self-spending feel like something you have to justify, until you start policing yourself in advance. Visibility is where it tightens most. “If I leave cash in my wallet, it will disappear overnight. That’s normal,” she said, a reminder that cash is not treated as private savings so much as household money that can be absorbed without confrontation.
Previous CoverageHer response is not refusal, but reconfiguration. Instead of keeping savings in visible cash or relying solely on bank transfers that are easily monitored, she quietly diverts small amounts into a separate Vodafone Cash — a secure e-wallet service — account that only she manages. It’s easy to set up, requires little documentation and leaves fewer household-facing traces than bank transfers. “I move small amounts somewhere no one thinks to check before they ultimately disappear,” Shahd said. The sums are modest, but they create a private margin with real consequences. It gives her a small reserve to cover needs as they arise, and even unused, it eases constraint by keeping options open and giving her a sense of control. “I’m not saving for something dramatic; I’m saving so I don’t have to depend on anyone,” she added.
The impact is less about dramatic transformation than about a gradual widening of what becomes doable under pressure. As these tactics spread, institutions begin to mirror them. For example, Vodafone Cash launched the Maaki initiative in July 2025 to train one million women in Upper Egypt in digital and technological skills. Likewise, the Central Bank of Egypt’s report that women’s financial inclusion reached 70 percent as of June 2025 points to a broader expansion in access to formal tools, and to the growing significance of mechanisms that women can deploy on their own terms.
This is what financial autonomy looks like as resistance, because it breaks the link between earning and control. Even small, privately-held reserves reduce dependence, widen what is possible under pressure and protect the ability to act without permission.
Networks as resistanceAt 32-years-old, Noura works as an office secretary and raises her child alone. Her biggest challenge is not always money, but what happens when time and responsibility collide. A late meeting, a sick day, a school call can unravel the whole day if there is no one to hand things to.
So, she relies on an informal infrastructure of women who operate like an always-on relay. Someone steps in for pickup, another covers an hour, another brings food, another comes along to a clinic, another makes the calls and finds the workaround. Most of it is coordinated through WhatsApp, a steady stream of voice notes and quick asks that keep the day from falling apart. “I don’t have the option of doing everything alone,” she said. “If I try, I lose something, the job, the child or my mind.” This is not occasional help. It is a shared system of coverage that turns potential crises into manageable problems.
Money runs through the network too, and for Noura the gam‘eya is at its center, a rotating savings circle where women pay in monthly and take turns receiving a lump sum. Because it is predictable, she can plan for fees, rent gaps or emergencies without asking the wrong person at the wrong moment. “The gam‘eya is what saves us,” she said. “I know my date. And if an emergency hits early, the girls start a new one and I take the money first.”
Embed from Getty Imageswindow.gie=window.gie||function(c){(gie.q=gie.q||[]).push(c)};gie(function(){gie.widgets.load({id:'pu48GFnBSN5CT7DDow7oLQ',sig:'NuiIeRsAlJxDJeoyU8BxwYmH3LO1qfyWkqOgbJumW3w=',w:'594px',h:'396px',items:'143421088',caption: true ,tld:'com',is360: false })});Outside the circle, the urgent need for money can come with predatory lenders that require wosolat amana (trust receipts), which easily turn a missed payment into a legal threat. “You sign one paper and suddenly it’s not just debt, it’s a knife to your throat,” she said. “If you’re late once, you can end up in jail.” The gam‘eya keeps her out of that trap. For her, it is not about getting rich, it is about not being cornered.
Information moves too, with price intelligence, job leads, warnings and quiet knowledge-sharing that helps women navigate risk without generating a visible target. Through these overlapping exchanges, the network becomes a low-visibility welfare system, one that redistributes resources, absorbs shocks and builds a form of collective capacity.
The impact of this kind of networked resistance is quiet but immediate. It resists the everyday power that scarcity creates for those who control access, whether that is employers who can punish absence, intermediaries who profit from inflated prices and informal credit, or household dynamics that enforce dependence by making women ask, explain and wait.
These systems have been increasingly formalized in digital form, where platforms like MoneyFellows digitize gam‘eyat into app-based “money circles,” and initiatives like Tahweesha are designed to formalize women’s group savings and link them to banking services for rural women. These formalizations show that these circles are not a cultural leftover. They are an essential infrastructure that women built long before institutions learned how to name it.
Mobility as resistanceAt 25-years-old, Salma works in an all-women clothes factory, and her shift ends at the hour when the city’s social contract quietly changes. Getting home is not a neutral transition between places so much as a second shift of calculation, where the price of a commute is not only time, but also attention, where routes are chosen for lighting and exits, and where a woman’s presence in public space is treated as negotiable. “The job finishes,” Salma said, “but the day doesn’t end until I close my door.”
To navigate that pressure, Salma relies on tactics designed to look ordinary enough to survive scrutiny. She makes herself “known” on purpose, greeting the building porter by name, buying small things from the same kiosk so the shopkeeper recognizes her, choosing drivers she trusts when she can, and arranging check-ins that last until she is indoors. “If something happens,” she said, “I don’t want to be a stranger in the street.” This is the steady refusal to disappear.
Embed from Getty Imageswindow.gie=window.gie||function(c){(gie.q=gie.q||[]).push(c)};gie(function(){gie.widgets.load({id:'P32lR_EtQD5FRDjIuwklfA',sig:'Ltqs0OkwQlM-R88xiP-21PcPQ8Jf3lRwNDkjbOaCeuM=',w:'594px',h:'433px',items:'469112153',caption: true ,tld:'com',is360: false })});But these manoeuvres do more than reduce risk. In a context where harassment is normalized and women are expected to adjust their lives around it, they become a form of everyday resistance to the informal rules that try to shrink the women’s movement. The point is not only to avoid danger, but also to refuse the quiet curfew that says women should not be outside, should not be alone, should not be moving freely on their own terms.
Much of it is collective, because safety becomes sturdier when it is shared. Around the time the factory releases them, a WhatsApp thread starts moving with the kind of messages that sound casual until you realize they are building a distributed escort system with systemic check-ups. Meanwhile, a friend stays on the phone as Salma walks, a coworker waits for the double-check.
What they are producing is more than reassurance. It is witness, the small social infrastructure that makes harm costlier because a woman is less isolated even when she is physically alone. In a country where a U.N. Women study found that 99.3 percent of women and girls surveyed reported experiencing some form of sexual harassment, this web of recognition is not paranoia. It is adaptation under constraint.
While she is in transit, Salma also uses her phone to make her movements more visible to others and to create a record if something goes wrong. Sometimes she fakes a call and speaks loudly enough to imply that someone is tracking her route and expecting her; other times she quietly records, not to go viral but to make denial harder. “It’s not for drama, it’s so the person knows there will be a trace,” she said. In early 2026, when an Egyptian commuter filmed a man harassing her on a public bus and confronted him on camera, the clip went viral nationwide. Women watched, shared and repeated the lesson, turning filming into peer-to-peer knowledge and making harassment harder to erase.
The circulation of “self-protection hacks” on social media follows the same logic. In one widely shared TikTok, an Egyptian woman holds up a small spray bottle and explains that because pepper spray can be hard to obtain in Egypt, she carries a homemade substitute made from ordinary kitchen and cleaning items. The point is less the bottle than the reality it exposes: When formal protection is inaccessible, women improvise deterrence from whatever is already within reach and circulate that knowledge peer-to-peer.
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DonateThis is why it counts as resistance. Salma is not only protecting herself. She is pushing back against the normalization of women’s vulnerability and the impunity that comes with it. She is refusing the idea that safety is an individual responsibility solved through silence, avoidance or self-blame. Through small, repeatable tactics, women like Salma convert safety into collective power, embedding themselves in networks of recognition so that harassment becomes riskier for the perpetrator than for the woman trying to get home.
Hope is a shared systemShahd creates a private margin inside a monitored household economy, Noura builds welfare through women’s mutual infrastructure, and Salma creates more accountability in public space by staying connected to others and making harassment harder to deny. Their tactics do not overthrow systems in one decisive moment, but they alter the terms on which those systems extract, police and intimidate. The victories are modest and often temporary, yet they accumulate into something sturdier than they appear, a set of survival infrastructures that keep women moving, working, feeding their families and claiming space.
This article The quiet resistance of working-class women in Egypt was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.
5 Ideas That Challenge the Way We Think About Nature
Modern life has become remarkably efficient at creating distance. Distance from where food comes from. Distance from ecosystems. Distance from community. Distance from our own bodies and attention spans. Even as climate crises, biodiversity collapse, burnout, and political fragmentation intensify, many of the systems shaping daily life continue to encourage separation.
A growing number of scientists, Indigenous knowledge keepers, writers, and ecological thinkers are challenging the worldview beneath that separation. Across fields ranging from forest ecology to Earth systems science to Indigenous language revitalization, many are arriving at a similar realization: The living world is far more interconnected, intelligent, participatory, and relational than dominant industrial culture has long assumed.
In this conversation, forest ecologist Suzanne Simard, whose research transformed scientific understanding of forest communication and mycorrhizal networks; science journalist Ferris Jabr, who explores how life shapes the Earth itself; and Jeannette Armstrong, whose work centers Indigenous language, land-based knowledge, and relational worldviews, explored what becomes possible when humans begin to see themselves not as separate from the living world, but as participants within it.
Their discussion moved through ecology, language, colonization, restoration, science, ceremony, and healing — ultimately asking what kinds of cultural transformation become possible when relationship replaces separation.
The Fiction of SeparationModern industrial society depends on a profound act of separation: humans from nature, forests from living systems, land from relationship, and even people from their own bodies and communities.
For Suzanne Simard, that separation is embedded deeply within industrial approaches to land management itself. Reflecting on her early career in forestry, she describes a system focused primarily on extraction rather than ecological health. “The goals were wrong in the first place,” Simard says. “It’s not about the health of the land, it’s about cutting down the trees, not regenerating trees.”
That mindset, she argues, has reshaped entire landscapes while also reinforcing the idea that humans exist outside the ecosystems they depend on.
Ferris Jabr traces this worldview through the broader history of Western science and philosophy. Earlier cultures often understood Earth as animate, interconnected, and alive. Over time, however, Western scientific thought increasingly focused on dividing the world into discrete categories: human and nature, animate and inanimate, organism and environment.
That shift, Jabr argues, coincided with systems of industrialization and colonialism that depended on treating the planet not as a living relationship, but as “a field of resources to be extracted and used.”
For Jeannette Armstrong, the consequences of that separation are not merely ecological, but deeply cultural and psychological as well. She describes generations of Indigenous youth being taught that connection to land, ceremony, and traditional lifeways was incompatible with modernity — that being rooted in the living world was somehow “backwards.”
But the rupture extends far beyond cultural loss alone. “The loss isn’t just a loss of language,” Armstrong says. “The loss really has to do with something much deeper than that.”
Language Carries a WorldviewThe words used to describe the natural world are never neutral. They shape perception, reinforce values, and determine how people understand their relationship to the living systems around them.
In industrial forestry, language often reflects hierarchy, control, and extraction. Suzanne Simard describes being trained to classify trees as “dominant” or “sub-dominant,” while plants like huckleberries, salmonberries, and thimbleberries were labeled “competition” or “weeds” that needed to be removed so commercially valuable trees could thrive.
That vocabulary, she argues, reflects far more than scientific categorization. It encodes an entire worldview — one in which forests are treated primarily as production systems rather than living communities.
Simard’s use of the term “Mother Tree” intentionally pushes against that framework. The phrase became controversial in some scientific and forestry circles precisely because it challenged the detached language of industrial management with something relational, interconnected, and alive. “It was very female,” Simard says. “It was very connective, and it also talked about abundance.”
Even seemingly small linguistic choices can reveal deeper assumptions. Ferris Jabr notes that people commonly refer to “the earth,” while planets like Mars or Jupiter are rarely spoken about the same way. “Earth is a living entity with a name,” he says. “You don’t put ‘the’ before names.”
For Jeannette Armstrong, language is not simply descriptive; it is ecological knowledge accumulated over thousands of years of relationship with place. Speaking about the Syilx word tmixʷulaxʷ, Armstrong describes a concept that expresses life as an ongoing regenerative force: continuously moving, cycling, and renewing itself in the present moment.
“My sister described that as stepping into a flat world and then stepping into a three-dimensional world,” Armstrong says of speaking her language.
Across each perspective, language becomes more than communication alone. It becomes a way of organizing reality itself — shaping whether the living world is understood as a collection of resources, or as a web of relationships humans remain inseparable from.
Restoration Is About People, TooEcological restoration is often framed as a technical process: restoring habitats, replanting native species, rebuilding soil health, or protecting biodiversity. But in reality, restoration is human and relational: a process that can also restore belonging, agency, memory, and connection.
“When we’re talking about restoring land,” Jeannette Armstrong says, “we actually are restoring people to be part of that land.”
That restoration is deeply connected to healing intergenerational trauma for Armstrong. She describes how colonization, residential schools, and cultural erasure severed many Indigenous people from language, ceremony, food systems, and land-based relationships — ruptures that continue to reverberate physically, psychologically, and spiritually across generations. But she also points to a growing body of research and lived experience suggesting that reconnection itself can be transformative.
Referencing her work in ecopsychology and community healing, Armstrong describes an approach that shifts the focus away from viewing individuals as inherently broken. “Rather than treating the individual as being broken,” she says, “it’s the world around them that’s broken, and if you fix the world around them, and they are part of fixing the world around them, things happen in their lives that change them.”
That healing, she explains, is often profoundly embodied. The sounds of language, drumming, wind, birds, water, and land can reconnect people to forms of memory and relationship that exist beyond intellect alone. “Your body memory knows when it’s out there in nature,” Armstrong says. “Your body remembers.”
Suzanne Simard sees similar patterns in her own work with students and forest restoration. Again and again, she says, students working directly on the land experience a renewed sense of purpose and agency. “They feel really good,” Simard says. “I think it’s because they feel like they have agency in this world, that they’re doing something that they can see the results of.”
The Earth Is More Alive Than We’ve Been TaughtModern science has often portrayed nature as passive matter — a backdrop against which life unfolds. But growing fields of ecological and Earth systems research are revealing that living systems actively shape the planet itself.
That realization became the foundation of Ferris Jabr’s work. Research into plant intelligence and communication first led him to Suzanne Simard’s work on forest networks, but it also opened a much larger question: What if agency, responsiveness, and collaboration are far more widespread throughout the living world than humans have traditionally assumed?
“There’s this co-evolution between Earth and life,” Jabr says. “It is able to regenerate itself in a way and for a period of time that completely dwarfs what’s happening on just the organismal or cellular level.”
That regenerative capacity appears across scales. Jabr points to ecosystems rebounding unexpectedly quickly after disturbance: rivers recovering after dams are removed, landscapes regenerating after fire, life continuously reorganizing itself in response to disruption. “Life is all about keeping itself going,” he says. “That’s one of its defining features.”
Even deep beneath the Earth’s surface, microbes are carrying out astonishing processes that challenge conventional definitions of life and metabolism. Some microorganisms, Jabr explains, survive without sunlight or oxygen by interacting chemically with rocks and metals, essentially “breathing” the Earth itself.
Simard’s work similarly challenges the idea of forests as collections of isolated organisms. Her research on mycorrhizal networks, forest communication, and Mother Trees points instead toward ecosystems built on connection, reciprocity, and interdependence. “We are one with the forest,” she says. “We are the forest.”
That shift in perspective echoes ideas long associated with the Gaia hypothesis and many Indigenous worldviews: Earth is not merely a planet inhabited by life, but a living system continuously shaped by life itself.
“The more-than-human world is doing that healing,” Simard says.
Reconnection Requires ParticipationModern Western culture often treats connection to the natural world as intellectual or symbolic — something to appreciate, study, or believe in from a distance. But relationship with the living world is fundamentally participatory. It is built through presence, stewardship, reciprocity, and direct engagement with place.
That means restoring habitats, learning the ecosystems where we live, planting native species, stewarding forests and waterways, rebuilding reciprocal relationships with land, and participating directly in the work of regeneration.
Suzanne Simard has seen firsthand how healing emerges through participation, particularly in students and research crews working directly in forests shaped by wildfire, logging, and ecological decline. “Doing stuff on the land is really crucial,” she says. “Being out on the land is absolutely essential to the joy in your soul.”
That work, she argues, restores more than ecosystems alone. “They feel like they have agency in this world,” Simard says, “that they’re doing something that they can see the results of.”
For Jeannette Armstrong, rebuilding relationship with land also means recovering forms of meaning, ceremony, and spirit that industrial culture has pushed aside. “We need to regenerate that,” she says, speaking about humanity’s relationship to the unseen dimensions of life and the sacredness many cultures once recognized in the living world. “That’s the thing that’s going to make the transformation.”
Even hope itself, Ferris Jabr suggests, is less important than relationship. “I do have hope,” he says, “but also I just love this planet and its peoples and its creatures way too much to give up.”
The post 5 Ideas That Challenge the Way We Think About Nature appeared first on Bioneers.
What we learned about transit from the NFL Draft (and how we can use it to win better service)
Image Description: photo of Downtown Pittsburgh taped on a paper background, with stickers of a football and a red PRT bus.
New data shows that transit was the star of the NFL Draft—here’s what we learned (and how we can use it to win better transit in the future)!
- Public transit is the reason the Draft succeeded!
Event buses were full, and the roads were free of traffic. Places that had transit access to the Draft grew crowds; places without it, didn’t. - It pays to pay transit workers!
Operators were paid higher wages for working a strenuous event, and they did a fabulous job. We can, and should, pay essential workers according to their high value. - Free fares = better service, higher ridership!
They reduce barriers to entry, increase access for low-income riders, and even saves time en-route. Sheetz, the Pittsburgh Organizing Committee and The Pittsburgh Foundation paid the T and “football flyers” fares, so PRT lost no money. Plus, higher ridership actually generates more revenue for PRT (thanks to state funding laws).
Free fares can be implemented for more than just special event attendees; it can benefit low-income riders AND the agency. - People love taking the bus—when it’s easy!
Draft service was direct, frequent, clearly communicated, and easily understandable. And it paid off for almost 485,000 rides! - Big events like this would not be possible without a functional, accessible, affordable transit system—all the time.
We don’t need to wait for the next big event to roll around to build and fund a transit system that works for our city. We can build one that generates economic benefits, now, for our city. - Promoting transit works!
PRT, the Mayor, and the County Executive—not to mention Visit Pittsburgh, local news outlets, and local influencers—regularly promoted the benefits of transit, and urged visitors to hop on the bus to avoid congestion and high parking costs. And it worked! - The true cost of parking is high!
Driving, finding a parking spot, and paying for it was inconvenient for Draft visitors—and it’s still inconvenient for everyday commuters. If given reliable, affordable, frequent transit options, people won’t choose to add congestion or pollution to our roads.
The post What we learned about transit from the NFL Draft (and how we can use it to win better service) appeared first on Pittsburghers for Public Transit.
Statement: Kemp’s Last Strike Against Georgia Forests
HB 134 is officially law. HB 134 is a fake “Keep Georgia Forested Act.” Now Governor Kemp has put Georgia’s forests and communities at greater risk. This bill helps the […]
The post Statement: Kemp’s Last Strike Against Georgia Forests first appeared on Dogwood Alliance.Communities Most Harmed by PRT’s Draft 2.0 Bus Line Refresh
Whether you live in McKeesport or McKees Rocks, the Hill District or the South Hills, our public transit system needs to work for everyone.
Pittsburgh Regional Transit (PRT) will soon close their community engagement period for the second draft of their Bus Line Redesign (BLR). The redesign proposes a completely redrawn map of where transit routes will run. It includes new schedules for how frequently and how late at night buses and trains operate, and even proposes renaming all the routes in the system.
Tens of thousands of people who use the system every day will be affected. Allegheny County Transit riders, transit workers, businesses, social service providers—we all have a stake in a Bus Line Redesign that works for all.
The Bus Line Refresh plan is complicated and will affect everyone differently. That’s why it’s very important that transit riders and transit workers review your routes and give feedback now! You can check out how your routes will be impacted and give feedback online, by phone, or at an upcoming PRT community event here.
This is the last opportunity for the public to weigh in before PRT finalizes and ratifies this transit plan- one that will impact our transit service for generations!
Join other transit riders to speak up about impacts of the Bus Line Refresh Draft 2.0 – the good and the bad – at our press conference and public testimony on Friday, 5/29 at 8:30 am at Pittsburgh Regional Transit’s Board meeting.
RSVP Today (Public Testimony Deadline is 5/27) The Communities Slated for the Greatest Transit Losses under PRT’s Bus Line Refresh 2.0Under the Bus Line Refresh Draft 2.0, some communities are being proposed for transit service improvements with higher frequency service or new direct connections to critical destinations. Other communities will see transit service cuts- this is the consequence of Pittsburgh Regional Transit deciding to develop a “cost-neutral” plan rather than a more visionary proposal for service restoration and expansion.
In the coming days, we will publish a proposed list of transit service improvements under the BLR 2.0, but right now, it’s most important that transit riders who are slated to lose access to all transit service get a chance to review and respond to the plan.
Below, we lay out the communities in which transit service currently exists, but under the proposed Bus Line Refresh Draft 2.0 will be left little to no service.
We used existing route numbers (not the route numbers proposed in the new plan) to help riders identify whether they will be impacted. Routes are listed numerically regardless of alpha-prefix.
- 2/P13 – Shaler: Mt Royal Blvd – 15101
- 2/O5/P13 – McCandless: Ferguson Rd, Sample Rd – 15101, 15237
- 4/7 – Reserve Township – 15212
- O5 – Ross Township: Thompson Run Rd – 15237
- 6/7/15 – Summer Hill – 15214
- O12 – Perry Highway North – 15237
- 14/18 – Lower Half of Chateau/Manchester – 15233
- 20 – Groveton/Kennedy Township: Herbst Rd – 15108
- 27 – Windgap/Middletown: Segments on Middletown Rd and outer Chartiers Ave – 15204/15205
- 28X – Robinson Town Center and 5th Ave in Shadyside – 15205
- 36 – Mount Lebanon: Cedar Blvd to South Hills Village – 15228
- 36 – Banksville Rd transit service eliminated off-peak and weekends – 15216
- 38 – Wynnecliff Manor in Scott Township – 15220
- 39 – Ebenshire Village in Brookline – 15226
- 40/43 – Kathleen St/Beltzhoover Ave/Boggs Ave in the North side of Warrington – 15210/15211
- 44 – North Baldwin – 15236, 15227
- Y45 – Baldwin/Whitehall/South Park – 15236
- 52L – West Mifflin: Homeville Rd and Duquesne Village Shopping Center – 15122
- 54 – Bon Air – 15210
- 55/P76 – East McKeesport – 15131
- 65/74 – Squirrel Hill: Shady Ave, Beechwood Blvd – 15217
- 74 – Point Breeze: Reynolds St – 15208
- 77/P16 – Penn Hills/Plum: Hulton Arbors – 15235, 15239
- 77/P16 – Penn Hills: Monroeville Trestle Rd and Saltsburg Rd, North Bessemer, Leechburg Rd – 15235
- 79/P17 – Lincoln Park: Mark Drive, Grove Rd, Chaske St, Mt Carmel Rd – 15206/15235/15147
- P76 – White Oak: Rt 48 corridor – 15131
- P76 – North Versailles: Rt 30 beyond Walmart – 15235
Some current bus lines are being broken up into 2 or 3 different routes. For riders on these routes, that might mean new transfers where you currently have a direct trip.
Riders can go toFind My Route on the PRT Bus Line Refresh website to look at how your commute will be impacted, if at all.
We know that 84% of transit trips today taken by PRT riders who use a CONNECT card are direct trips, completed without having to transfer. New transfers can add additional significant time to commutes, can add uncertainty around timing to get to our destinations and more exposure to the elements. Moreover, transit riders who pay with cash will have to pay an additional fare for each additional transfer. We know that riders strongly prefer direct trips over trips requiring a transfer, and so want to ensure that riders have a chance to see and respond to these substantial changes.
Below we list current routes in numerical order, regardless of alpha-prefix, and the point in the route where they have been severed:
- 1 Freeport Rd at the Waterworks Mall
- 13 Bellevue/14 Ohio River Blvd/17 Shadeland have been segmented and reassembled in various ways
- 21 Coraopolis – Coraopolis to Moon/Sewickley
- 31 Bridgeville at Carnegie Station
- 41 Bower Hill: Washington Rd at Bower Hill Rd
- 54 N Side-Oakland-S Side – Lawrenceville/Bloomfield to South Side/Mount Oliver/Beltzhoover/Bon Air
- 59 Mon Valley – across the Monongahela River
- 67 Monroeville – Oakland/Squirrel Hill to Monroeville/CCAC Boyce
- 69 Trafford – Oakland/Squirrel Hill to Forest Hills/Wilmerding/Pitcairn
- 69 Trafford – to Forbes Hospital
- 74 Homewood-Squirrel Hill Squirrel Hill to Larimer
- 75 Ellsworth – to South Side Works
- 81 Oak Hill/83 Bedford Hill – connections to Hill District Business Area (Centre-Devilliers)
- 87 Friendship – Bloomfield/Friendship to Morningside/Stanton Hts/Upper Lawrenceville
- 93 Lawrenceville-Oakland-Hazelwood – Lawrenceville/Bloomfield to Greenfield/Hazelwood
- P10/1 – Extend all N1 trips from East Liberty to Downtown to avoid forced transfer
- Y47 Curry Flyer from Keeport-Knoedler to Walmart
Join other transit riders to speak up about impacts of the Bus Line Refresh Draft 2.0 – the good and the bad – at our press conference and public testimony on Friday, 5/29 at 8:30 am at Pittsburgh Regional Transit’s Board meeting.
RSVP Today (Public Testimony Deadline is 5/27)The post Communities Most Harmed by PRT’s Draft 2.0 Bus Line Refresh appeared first on Pittsburghers for Public Transit.
SINGING THE SONGS OF THE SOIL – with Tilly Gomersall of Cân y Pridd
The post SINGING THE SONGS OF THE SOIL – with Tilly Gomersall of Cân y Pridd appeared first on Landworkers Alliance.
In Loving Memory of Carlo Petrini
With deep sorrow, we receive the news of the passing of Carlo Petrini, dear friend, fellow traveler, and an unwavering voice in the defense of the Earth, of food, and of living communities.
For decades, we walked together in shared struggles: for biodiversity, for seed freedom, for the dignity of small farmers, and for a food system rooted in care, justice, and the sacred relationship between human beings and nature. Through Terra Madre, Slow Food, and the many global networks Carlo helped to nurture, millions have reawakened to the understanding that food is a commons, and that cultural and ecological diversity are the very foundations of peace and true democracy.
Carlo embodied the rare ability to root himself deeply in place while holding a planetary vision. He gave voice to peasants, seed keepers, artisanal producers, and to the communities who courageously defend the Earth against an extractive and destructive industrial model. Together, we shared gatherings, dialogues, international forums, and moments of collective mobilization, affirming that the future of humanity depends on our capacity to protect biodiversity and to regenerate the living bonds between people and the Earth.
I carry a vivid memory of his participation in the International Commission on the Future of Food and Agriculture, initiated by Claudio Martini, then President of the Tuscany Region. From this meeting, in 2008, the Manifesto for the Future of Food was born.
His legacy will live on in the seeds of hope he has sown across the world, in the webs of solidarity he helped to weave, and in the new generations who will carry this journey forward, for food that is good, clean, and just.
My heart is with his family, the Slow Food community, and all those who loved him.
Vandana Shiva
President of Navdanya International
photo credit: identitagolose.com
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