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By Princess Kemdi Chika-Okafor 

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I have always believed true circularity isn’t just about fixing what breaks at the end of the disposal process; it means rethinking and redesigning our systems from the start.

This was exactly what the Africa Zero Waste Academy was about: rethinking and redesigning our waste systems. As a participant in both the virtual and in-person components of the second edition of the Africa Zero Waste Academy 2026, hosted by GAIA and GAYO in Ghana, I carry away much more than technical blueprints. I am leaving with a renewed understanding of what it takes to build a waste-free continent: a strong combination of technical innovation, strategic storytelling, and grassroots climate justice.

In Kpong, in Ghana’s Eastern Region, our days flowed seamlessly from theory to hands-on practice. In one session, we upcycled discarded textiles into tote bags that served as a tangible reminder of everyday circularity, while strategic advocacy sessions encouraged us to refine our messaging for maximum policy impact.

Pitching the Century 21 Foundation’s capstone proposal to decentralise solar-hybrid cold chains across Africa demonstrated that our local solutions are ready for immediate scaling. By connecting off-grid cold storage with organic waste diversion, we can preserve fresh produce, protect farmers’ livelihoods, and build long-term climate resilience.

Back in Accra, seeing these concepts in real-world operations brought them to life. At the Kpone landfill site, we witnessed an old waste dump being transformed into a sustainable green zone using ClosureTurf technology. A later tour of the Accra Compost and Recycling Plant (ACARP) showcased how large-scale recycling drives the economy, creates green jobs, and supports circularity.

However, the most emotionally impactful moment came on July 31 with the historic launch of the Federation of Informal Sector Waste Workers Associations of Ghana (FISWWAG). Watching informal waste pickers—the unsung heroes who keep tons of waste out of landfills—unite across 16 regions for formal policy recognition was a powerful reminder that true zero waste cannot exist without social justice.

Beyond lectures and field visits, the Academy’s heart lay in the connections we built. Sharing traditional attire, local dishes, and personal stories during our cultural night revealed that, despite our regional challenges, we all share a vision for a resilient Africa. From long bus rides filled with music to intense group debates, we forged an extraordinary network of lifelong allies across the continent. Now, the focus shifts to execution.

For the Century 21 Foundation, our next phase centres on documentary-style storytelling to highlight frontline market women known as (Iya Ojas) in our local parlance, expand source-separation models, and scale our One Plate, One Nation community feeding initiative. With strategic insights, blended finance blueprints, and cross-sector partnerships, we are ready to turn our proposals into tangible impact. 

The future of Africa is green, circular, and already underway.

Writer’s Bio

Princess Kemdi Chika-Okafor is a social entrepreneur and development economist dedicated to solving Africa’s leading agricultural challenge, the dramatic rise in post-harvest food waste and nutritional poverty. As the Founder and Executive Director of the Century 21 Foundation, she is globally recognised as a pioneering thought leader in Afro-Nutrition Sovereignty, championing tech-enabled, self-sustaining circular food economies that move beyond traditional short-term charity.

The post My Chronicles of the Africa Zero Waste Academy 2026: Princess Kemdi first appeared on GAIA.

Frontier Energy says it has secured all major contracts to start construction later this month on the first stage of what will be state's largest solar and battery hybrid.

The post “Fully funded, fully contracted:” Construction team ready to go on state’s largest solar-battery hybrid appeared first on Renew Economy.

New CEOs at CS Energy, CER, Ark Energy and Western Power; new role and hire at CEFC; new additions at AEMO, Sunshine, AEMC, and OptiGrid.

The post Grid Connections 2026: Who’s going where and doing what in Australia’s green energy transition appeared first on Renew Economy.

Scrapping VNI-West and other projects designed to support renewable energy will result in "massive" electricity bill rises, says Victoria's former energy minister.

The post Scrapping VNI-West will “guarantee a massive increase” in power bills, former energy minister warns appeared first on Renew Economy.

Element Zero, the upstart Pilbara green iron contender and survivor of a legal challenge from Fortescue, has won an Arena grant to scale-up of its Perth demonstration plant.

The post Fortescue green iron rival wins Arena cash to scale up Perth demonstration plant appeared first on Renew Economy.

The New South Wales Coalition Opposition's energy and climate change spokesperson, has announced his retirement from politics just half a year out from the state election.

The post NSW opposition energy spokesperson announces retirement months out from state election appeared first on Renew Economy.

Governments must slash emissions further and faster, and keep every climate promise they have made for the planet to be able to return to 1.5C of warming by the end of the century after an inevitable overshoot, a group of prominent climate scientists has said.

In a flagship new report sketching out a way not to lose the most ambitious Paris Agreement goal, the scientists said that global temperatures need to peak at no higher than 1.8C above pre-industrial levels to give the world “a fighting chance” to reverse course. They added that plans to suck carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere can only play a limited role in this effort and cannot substitute for emissions cuts. 

A return to the 1.5C warming limit will only be reached in an optimistic scenario that sees governments turn their full national climate plans – known as NDCs – into reality and meet their additional, more ambitious targets to reach net zero emissions, said the report published by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP). 

Actual government policy is far off that track. Current measures to cut emissions that are funded and in force put the world on course for around 2.8C of warming by 2100, UNEP has previously found. 

Comment: Keeping to 1.5C of warming is no longer possible – but we must still limit the overshoot

Joeri Rogelj, professor of climate science and policy at Imperial College London and one of the report’s authors, said it is necessary to keep the temperature peak as low as possible as there are limits to how fast the world can reverse global warming.

That is because the scale of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) interventions that can be implemented sustainably and in a just way will otherwise not be sufficient and some measures, such as tree-planting or forest management, will be less effective at higher temperatures, he added. 

Commenting on the report, UN Secretary-General António Guterres called for the 1.5C overshoot to be “as small and short as possible”. This, he added, “demands an overshoot of ambition”, involving accelerating the phaseout of fossil fuels and pursuing the renewables revolution, slashing methane pollution, and protecting land, forest and oceans.

“Governments must over-deliver on national climate plans, net-zero commitments, and beyond,” he urged in a video message. “The fight for 1.5 degrees is the fight for humanity.”

Overshoot, peak and decline

The report comes out nearly a year after the UN conceded for the first time that it is inevitable that global warming will exceed 1.5C temporarily and the world should focus on making that overshoot as small and short as possible.

UNEP’s Executive Director Inger Andersen told journalists that 1.5C remains the key goal, but “we now need a different approach from above”, while stepping up efforts to adapt to a warming world. 

“A return to 1.5C is not assured,” she added. “But limiting the magnitude, duration and consequences of overshoot, while preserving the possibility of bringing temperatures back down, is the best remaining option to protect vulnerable people, reduce losses and secure a livable future for all.”

Battle over cleaning up shipping set to resume at London talks

Scientists warn in the report that warming above 1.5C should not be seen as safe or acceptable. Climate risks above that threshold intensify with every additional fraction of a degree of warming, they said. The report paints a grim picture of expected climate impacts: glaciers could lose more than a quarter of their remaining mass by 2100 and global food production could fall by as much as 14% by 2050 without effective adaptation.

Some small island developing states and low-lying coastal cities could be partially or completely submerged, while damaged ecosystems could further accelerate climate change.

To tackle these impacts, the report emphasises that adaptation and emissions-cutting measures are mutually reinforcing approaches and must advance together, while being responsive to emerging risks, which could be non-linear and arise abruptly.

“This report is a ‘fork in the road’ moment for the planet,” said Surangel Whipps, Jr., president of the Pacific island nation of Palau. “It is a further glimpse into a perilous future that has already arrived. To continue to have a fighting chance, calls for greater ambition are no longer enough – we need to see an urgent and unprecedented increase in political will and investment in a climate-safe future.” 

Cut emissions first, remove carbon after

The authors call for a three-phase approach to bringing temperatures back down: an “immediate response” of deep and rapid emissions cuts and urgent protection for the most vulnerable as warming approaches and passes 1.5C; a “coping and containment” phase focused on reaching net-zero emissions and building resilience as temperatures peak; and a “long-term resilience” phase of net-negative emissions through carbon dioxide removal (CDR) and lasting adaptation as temperatures eventually decline.

Richard Betts, who leads climate impact research at the UK Met Office, said CDR is not a “get-out-of-jail-free card” and should only be additional to emission reductions that need to be achieved with “even more urgency than before”.

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Critics of CDR have long pointed to the technology’s record of overpromising and underdelivering, and warn it has been exploited by the fossil fuel industry and some oil-producing states to try to delay the clean energy transition.

Not everyone was fully convinced by the UNEP overshoot report. Veteran climate scientist Bill Hare from Climate Analytics said it “does a good job of describing the hole we’ve dug ourselves into” but “a poor job of showing us that there is a way out”. He argued that its thin treatment of the need for a fossil fuel phase-out and ambitious mitigation pathways to cut emissions risk “turning it into a call to apathy rather than a call to arms”.

“Host of challenges” with CDR

Debra Roberts, honorary professor at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa, told journalists that limiting global warming to around 1.8C is needed to give the world “a realistic and fighting chance” of returning to the 1.5C limit because of the “questionable” feasibility of interventions above that threshold. 

CDR comes with “a whole host of challenges”, she added, including the impacts on food and water security of rolling out large-scale programmes and the unanswered questions of whether newer technologies will work at scale and who will foot the bill. 

“It’s going to happen in a very, very complex decision-making space where the risks and impacts are dramatically becoming more complex and interrelated,” she said. “That’s why the pressure there is keep those emissions as low as possible because they give us the greatest fighting chance of the return to 1.5C in a more equitable and just way.”

The post UN sets out narrow path back to 1.5C warming after inevitable overshoot appeared first on Climate Home News.

• About three in 10 U.S. drivers think there’s nothing wrong with speeding, according to a AAA poll. The reality is, there’s plenty wrong with it, like the fact that it kills people. Nearly a third of traffic deaths involve excessive speeds. (Jalopnik)
• Miriam Pinski argues that one reason transit projects take so long and cost so much is because we ask them to do too much — beautify the neighborhood, save the environment, create jobs, etc. — when the most important thing is to create a reliable system people will choose to ride (Works in Progress). Meanwhile, Reece Martin went into even greater depth about the same topic (The Transit Brief).
• The Federal Railway Administration is loosening a lot of train safety regulations. (Trains)
• The California legislature sent Gov. Gavin Newsom a bill cutting red tape for high-speed rail. (EIN Presswire)
• Maryland’s $22 billion, six-year transportation budget includes just $100 million for Red Line planning (Daily Record). Meanwhile, an audit found that the state failed to collect more than $800 million in tolls (Maryland Matters).
• West Virginia groups asked a federal court for an injunction to stop the last phase of the Corridor H freeway project. (WDTV)
• The Southern Alliance for Clean Energy opposes Florida’s plan to use federal funds for EV chargers for flying taxis instead.
• Pittsburgh is replacing its 30-year-old light rail cars. (WTAE)
• Portland is considering offering city government employees free transit passes while Interstate 5 is closed for construction. (Willamette Week)
• Colorado has become a national leader on clean transportation, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council.
• Governing magazine honored Randy Clarke as one of its public officials of the year for revitalizing the D.C. Metro.
• Riders on Charlotte’s Gold Line now have to request a stop when they want to get off the light rail train. (Queen City News)
• The European Union wants member states to make the default urban speed limit 30 kilometers per hour, or about 20 miles per hour (Euro Cities). Birmingham, England has already beat them to the punch (BBC).
• Piggybacking on the discourse Streetsblog NYC stirred up over bike helmets, Belgium has made them mandatory for scooters that go over 20 kph. (Zag Daily)

Agriculture’s climate emissions are rising but fully funding conservation can slow them Anthony Lacey September 2, 2026 Anne Schechinger, M.S. September 2, 2026 Overview

• Agriculture produces around 10% of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, and the sector’s emissions are rising.
• Under current policies, that 10% could jump to between 18% and 41% by 2050.
• The next farm bill should prioritize and fully fund regenerative agriculture practices to stop the sector from becoming the largest source of emissions.

Agriculture could become the nation’s leading producer of greenhouse gases by 2050.

Most other sectors of the economy, especially transportation and electricity, are expected to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions dramatically in the coming decades. That decline is mostly due to voluntary industry efforts and changing technology.

Agriculture’s climate pollution is driven overwhelmingly by nitrous oxide and methane. Nitrous oxide accounts for 52% of agricultural greenhouse gas emissions, while methane accounts for another 46%. And the sector’s emissions keep rising – they’re projected to go up a quarter of a percent every year through mid-century.

That should be a wake-up call for Congress. 

Agricultural conservation practices – like riparian forest buffers, tree establishment, diversified crop rotations and nutrient management – can help reduce climate emissions or store carbon, so agriculture doesn’t become the biggest source of emissions. 

These practices also have other benefits, such as reducing air pollution and protecting waterways. 

But the billions of dollars both the House and Senate farm bills propose to cut from federal conservation programs would make it harder for farmers to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. 

Congress, through the farm bill, should maintain conservation program funding, and prioritize the money for regenerative practices, instead of continuing to send so much money to structural practices that bring little, if any, climate emissions reductions. 

Agriculture’s growing share of emissions

Agriculture is responsible for at least 10% of annual U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. When combined with emissions from fertilizer production, the sector’s share is even higher.

Climate models show that if the sector’s emissions increase slightly while emissions from other sectors fall, as projected, agriculture’s share of U.S. emissions will grow.

Agriculture ranks fourth among U.S. economic sectors for greenhouse gas emissions, behind transportation, industry and electricity and ahead of buildings and “other” sources.

But that ranking is unlikely to last.

Under policies in place today, agriculture’s share of emissions is expected to almost double by 2050, from 10% to 18%. Agriculture would move up to being the third largest greenhouse-gas-producing sector, after industry and transportation.

But the U.S. has previously made international climate commitments, including through the Paris Agreement, that have led to federal rules aimed at reducing greenhouse gases from most other sectors, including industry and transportation. 

Even though the Trump administration – in both the first and second terms – withdrew from the Paris climate pact, the industry and transportation sectors are still rapidly reducing their emissions.

There are no broad federal greenhouse gas rules in place to force cuts in agriculture’s emissions. As industry, transportation and other sectors lower their overall emissions, agriculture’s share rises – unless the sector also acts to cut emissions. 

Under the scenario in which the U.S. reduces total emissions to levels agreed on in the Paris Agreement, the agriculture sector would make up 41% of total U.S. emissions in 2050. In this scenario, agriculture would be the economic sector producing the most greenhouse gas emissions, because the other sectors would severely cut their emissions. (See Figure 1.)

Figure 1. U.S. emissions by economic sector in 2026, and predicted emissions in 2050 under two scenarios

Image

Source: EWG, using data from Energy Innovation’s Energy Policy Simulator.

Agriculture must reduce its emissions to avoid becoming the No. 1 source of U.S. climate emissions. (See Figure 2.) Scientists warn that if emissions from agriculture don’t go down, the worst impacts of the climate crisis will be inescapable.

Figure 2. If the U.S. follows its international commitments in other sectors, agriculture could top 40% of emissions by 2050

Image

Source: EWG, using data from Energy Innovation’s Energy Policy Simulator.

Nitrous oxide and methane are agriculture’s main climate emissions

Agricultural soil management is the main driver of the sector’s nitrous oxide emissions, particularly the widespread use of fertilizer on crops like corn. Microbes in soil turn nitrogen from fertilizer and manure into nitrous oxide.

Even though nitrous oxide makes up a small share of total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, it is a potent greenhouse gas. Nitrous oxide stays in the atmosphere for over 100 years and has a global warming potential 273 times more powerful than carbon dioxide.

Global nitrous oxide emissions grew by 40% between 1980 and 2020, and they are expected to increase another 30% between 2020 and 2050. Corn production makes up over half of all nitrous oxide emissions from agriculture.

Nitrous oxide does not just contribute to climate change; it also depletes the ozone layer. And ammonia nitrous oxides can form with other compounds to create particulate matter, with exposure leading to premature deaths. 

Methane makes up the second largest share of greenhouse gas emissions from U.S. agriculture. Most agricultural methane emissions come from livestock. Enteric fermentation from beef and dairy cattle – their natural digestion process – accounts for about 25% of total U.S. methane emissions. 

Manure management also contributes to both methane and nitrous oxide emissions, making up 9% of total U.S. methane emissions and 4% of total nitrous oxide emissions. 

Methane does not stay in the atmosphere as long as carbon dioxide or nitrous oxide, but it has a global warming potential 28 times that of carbon dioxide over 100 years. 

Regenerative agriculture practices can reduce emissions

Conservation practices implemented on farm fields can help to lower agriculture’s greenhouse gas emissions.

A 2022 report from the Boston Consulting Group and the Walton Family Foundation found that practice changes could slash greenhouse gas emissions from farming by almost 22%. 

The report showed emissions could go down as a result of changes in fertilizer applications, tillage practices, grazing management, the use of cover crops, livestock feed additives, soil amendments and the targeted use of trees, among other practices. 

EWG found in a 2025 analysis that many conservation practices can reduce farming’s greenhouse gas emissions. Even if they are adopted on only a small number of acres, they can have a big climate impact. 

The conservation practices applied to Midwest corn acres that would most lower climate emissions are riparian forest buffers, tree or shrub establishment, hedgerow planting and windbreak establishment.

Other practices, including no-tillage, cover crops, and diversifying crops so there is a conservation crop rotation, would also reduce climate emissions. 

But federal conservation program funding needs to be prioritized for practices that help farmers reduce climate emissions and adapt to extreme weather conditions tied to intensifying climate change. 

EWG has identified a list of regenerative agriculture practices that decrease a farm’s greenhouse gas emissions and increase climate resilience. 

Farmers can receive funding to implement these regenerative practices from the Agriculture Department’s Environmental Quality Incentives Program, or EQIP, one of the largest federal conservation programs. 

But EQIP spending must be reformed. In 2025, only $660.9 million from EQIP, or 39% of all payments from the program, went to farmers for practices on EWG’s regenerative practice list. Only four of the top 10 paid practices were regenerative: cover crops, brush management, forest stand improvement, and pasture and hay planting. 

Prioritizing funding

Six of the 10 most funded practices that were not regenerative were structural, building or equipment practices, which together received $427.1 million. These are practices like irrigation pipelines and animal waste storage facilities, which rarely benefit the climate.

Farmers collected hardly any money for some of the conservation practices that are the best at reducing emissions. Two practices that would generate substantial emissions reductions on Midwest corn acres – riparian forest buffer and hedgerow planting – received only $423,000 and $735,000 from EQIP nationally in 2025, respectively. 

More conservation funding must be prioritized for regenerative practices that have climate benefits. Adoption of more of these practices could slow the growth of agriculture's greenhouse gas emissions so the sector does not produce the largest share of U.S. emissions by 2050.

The versions of the farm bill proposed by the House and Senate cut conservation spending by billions of dollars, including reducing funding for EQIP. 

If these cuts were to go into effect, they would hurt farmers and the climate. 

NSW is looking at tariff reform to encourage big gas users to switch to heat storage.

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Transgrid might be able to claw back some of the more than $1 billion in cost blowouts it has incurred on Project EnergyConnect, but probably not through a re-do of its revenue determination, says AER.

The post Regulator “not satisfied” with Transgrid’s plan to recover transmission cost blowouts, but doesn’t rule it out appeared first on Renew Economy.

A groundbreaking compressed air energy storage project that promises to provide up to eight hours of storage for the blackout prone Broken Hill grid has the green light from the market operator.

The post “Complex and innovative:” Compressed air energy storage project cleared to support blackout-prone grid appeared first on Renew Economy.

Keep It In The Ground August Report Tamarack Sulfide Copper Mine Meeting – Blaine, MN (August 14, 2026) A public meeting on the proposed Tamarack sulfide copper mine was held in Blaine, Minnesota. Upon entering, attendees were greeted by eight tables staffed by mining company representatives, positioned next to a tray of lemon-and-cucumber water, cookies, […]

The high-profile murders in July by ICE agents of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo (52 years old) in Texas and Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero (25 years old) in Maine six days later have added to the growing list of shootings by immigration officials. There have been 41 shootings by ICE and CBP officials since the start of Trump’s second term, in which 11 people have been killed.

This is a direct result of Trump’s terrifying escalation of his mass deportation agenda.

In the face of growing scrutiny, the Trump administration had signaled that it would pause ICE traffic stops. But it quickly reversed that and gave the green light to murder with impunity. Instead of being held accountable for its lethal actions, ICE, a brutal and racist agency, has been rewarded with billions of dollars in federal funding.

The removal of TPS status, following a U.S. Supreme Court decision in June, has now put thousands of Haitians in peril.

Trump will not relent: his attack on migrant workers is the centerpiece of his authoritarian project. It’s the way he divides and conquers the multiracial, multinational working class.

He aims to keep us fighting among ourselves while he cuts taxes for the rich, guts social programs for workers and jacks up funding for imperialist wars. Only working-class resistance can stop this reign of terror.

The current violence is integral to the very nature of the border regime and police. The ruling class divides the working class globally to pit workers against each other. And they maintain migrant workers as a cheap labor force without democratic and union rights.

In the midst of deep social crises, the attacks are only getting worse. ICE continues to escalate its assault on immigrants. Both capitalist parties—the Democrats and Republicans—created ICE and have used it to ramp up arrests, detentions, and deportations.

They also bankrolled the massive expansion and militarization of police forces across the country and have used them against workers and disproportionately against people of color, especially Black people, with impunity. And as the murder of Corey Ruiz last month, an unhoused 38-year-old Black man from Madison, WI, brutally shows, the police continue to kill Black people at nearly three times the rate of white people.

The police are part of the same regime of class rule. They break strikes. They repress protests. They target radical movements of workers and the oppressed. They serve and protect the ruling class. ICE and the police collaborate in enforcing the existing class and racial order.

The Democrats have long been just as guilty as the Republicans, not only paving the way for the right wing but actively increasing border militarization, deportations and funding for the police.

Now Trump has escalated the attack beyond anything we have seen so far. Behind his agenda is an extreme form of authoritarian nationalism driven by his clique of oligarchs. Their agenda is class war at home, imperialist aggression against Venezuela, Iran, Cuba, Greenland and China, and a new form of autocratic rule.

ICE and the police are key to this project. Increased funding means that ICE  would rank as the fourteenth largest military budget in the world.

Democratic mayors in city after city have not resisted these developments but collaborated with them. Their police forces have worked hand in glove with ICE.

The resistance has been led not by the political establishment but rather by migrant organizers. They knew all this was coming and they prepared across the country, setting up emergency response networks, joining with working class organizations, and deepening community outreach and defense.

With this foundation in place, when Trump escalated his assault on migrants, our multiracial, multinational working class was prepared to respond with mass self-defense. Protests have erupted in city after city from LA to Chicago to Minneapolis to Houston, and throughout the state of Maine.

The workers and oppressed of Minneapolis gave Trump his biggest defeat. Despite the high risks of organizing and the stakes of the struggle, they continued to stand up against ICE, CBP and the police, looking to the model of the George Floyd rebellion and building on deep bonds of solidarity and traditions of organizing. So, when Trump deployed ICE and murdered Renée Good and Alex Pretti, among so many others, the people of Minneapolis shut the city down.

Trump reacted, firing Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and demoting Border Patrol Commander Gregory Bovino. But he did not relent. He brought in Tom Homan, who before serving in both Trump administrations was appointed by President Obama to lead the deportation branch of ICE. He was assigned to his latest role by Trump to achieve the same ends with different tactics of deploying agents in a less public-facing manner.

The mass resistance forced the Democrats to be seen as doing something different. They held up funding for ICE. But their only demands were more training, removing masks, and, of course, body cameras. We know that none of these “reforms” stop cops everywhere from brutalizing and killing people. This is not resistance, but collaboration.

Given the continuing escalation of attacks on immigrant workers— the ever-growing numbers of detentions, deportations, and killings on the streets and in custody—it is an urgent priority to build working class solidarity against Trump’s assaults. Political clarity in this moment is a life and death matter, and we cannot afford to have illusions in the two-party system.

Obviously the Republicans are our enemies. But we cannot trust the Democrats either. We can only rely on ourselves. This means that regardless of what we do at the ballot box, we have to build the kind of struggle that can provide a counterweight to politicians’ default mode of capitulation to the system.

This is a dangerous moment. Trump is a wounded beast who is becoming more authoritarian and erratic. He lost in Minneapolis. He is losing the war in Iran. He’s plummeting in polls. And in response, he is threatening our right to free and fair elections.

Steve Bannon, who remains a Trump confidant, is even clamoring for ICE to be deployed at the polls to suppress the votes of Black and Brown people and rig the elections in favor of the GOP. Democracy hangs in the balance.

We must organize to defend what is left of our electoral rights after the gutting of the Voting Rights Act. But we also know that elections will not stop state violence because both parties are part of the problem. Lesser evilism enables the greater evil. Only mass working-class action can pose an alternative. We are not yet ready, but we can direct all our energies to becoming more organized so that we can rise to the challenge of the moment.

Depending on locations, we can fight to create or strengthen Fair and Impartial Policing Policies (FIPPS) that prevent collusion between ICE and the police, we can demand discipline and accountability for criminal violence by agents, we can build and expand defense networks so that whenever ICE comes for someone, they are met with organized resistance.

And above all, we must build the fight to defund the police and abolish ICE, and to fund the pillars of working-class communities: jobs, education, affordable housing, healthcare, public transportation, and environmental measures that can mitigate the climate crisis.

If we are to succeed in these greater goals, we need mass community protests that are bigger, more working-class, and more rooted in unions than those we have seen so far. Only such mass actions can stop the right or pressure the Democrats.

These are necessary objectives to confront the immediate crisis. They are also part of the long-term work of advancing solidarity across divisions of nationality and community toward the goal of liberation for the working class, which can only be achieved in a post-capitalist society through the abolition of borders, the police, and prisons.

There has been a lull in struggle in the run-up to the midterm elections. But once this ends, we have no choice but to ramp up protests in the streets and in the workplace. This is the only way we can prevent more devastating murders by bloodthirsty agents of the state.

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

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Wendell Berry, a farmer, writer, and advocate whose work challenged industrial agriculture and defended the ties between land, food, and community, died at his home in Port Royal, Kentucky, according to the New York Times (NYT). He was 92.

A poet, novelist, essayist, teacher, conservationist, activist, and farmer, Berry resisted easy categorization. “Berry has refused to specialize,” Charles Hudson wrote in the Georgia Review.

Throughout his five-decade career, Berry argued that agriculture was inseparable from the health of the land and the communities that depend on it. He questioned the consolidation and industrialization of farming while championing small farms, local economies, and responsible stewardship.

Born in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1934, Berry grew up in Henry County, where his family had farmed for generations. He earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in English from the University of Kentucky before joining Stanford University’s creative writing program as a Wallace Stegner Fellow.

He later traveled to Europe and taught in New York, but felt increasingly drawn back to his roots. Berry returned to Port Royal in the 1960s. He and his wife, Tanya, settled on a 125-acre farm, where they raised sheep and crops. He spent the rest of his life there writing and farming.

Living in his native landscape kept him accountable to the place and people he described, Berry told the NYT in a phone interview in 2018 for his obituary.

From his home, Berry analyzed the consequences of an agricultural system increasingly defined by consolidation, mechanization, chemicals, and soil degradation. He examined the disappearance of small farms and rural communities, and how their absence threatened individual liberty, local autonomy, and economic independence.

Those concerns became the foundation of his body of writing. Berry published more than 50 books of poetry, fiction, and essays, all written by hand during daylight hours. His farmhouse had electricity, but he refused to use electric lights because, he said, the power was supplied by strip-mined coal.

His 1977 book The Unsettling of America: Culture & Agriculture argues that agriculture is the foundation of America’s culture. The book questioned U.S. policies promoting practices that he argued lead to overproduction, pollution, and soil erosion.

Berry examined these ideas further in The Gift of Good Land and Home Economics, collections that examining organic farming. He argued that the values driving industrial agriculture were eroding family farms and weakening what he regarded as a foundation of American society.

In a New Perspectives Quarterly interview Berry commented that large-scale agriculture is morally as well as environmentally unacceptable: “We must support what supports local life, which means community, family, household life—the moral capital our larger institutions have to come to rest upon. If the larger institutions undermine the local life, they destroy that moral capital just exactly as the industrial economy has destroyed the natural capital of localities—soil fertility and so on. Essential wisdom accumulates in the community much as fertility builds in the soil.”

The issues that animated Berry’s essays also shaped his fiction. Through novels and short stories set largely in the fictional Kentucky town of Port William, he chronicled generations of farmers, families, and neighbors confronting the economic and technological changes reshaping rural life.

Berry also carried his convictions beyond the page. He joined protests against the Vietnam War, nuclear power, mountaintop-removal coal mining, coal-fired power plants, and the death penalty.

In 1979, Berry was arrested for trespassing while protesting the Marble Hill Nuclear Power Plant in Madison, Indiana. Recalling the episode in 2010, he said, “People asked if I wanted to be arrested and I said, ‘Hell No’ but I was willing to be.”

The National Endowment for the Humanities described him in 2012 as “cheerful in dissent” and a person who “writes to document and defend what is being lost to the forces of modernization.”

His writing and advocacy earned more than 30 honors. President Barack Obama awarded Berry the National Humanities Medal for his achievements as a poet, novelist, farmer, and conservationist, and the National Book Critics Circle honored him with its Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award in 2016.

He also earned honors including the T.S. Eliot Prize, the Aiken Taylor Award, the John Hay Award and the Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, according to the Poetry Foundation.

His ideas continue through The Berry Center, established in 2011 to put Berry’s “writings to work” by supporting farmers, land-conserving communities, and healthy regional economies.

Food Tank Co-founder and President Danielle Nierenberg had the privilege of both meeting and hearing Berry speak over the last two decades. She says that he inspired so many of us as food and agriculture system advocates not only with his poems and books, but his love of the land and farmers.

In addition to his wife and daughter, Berry is survived by his son, Pryor, who goes by Den, two sisters, Mary Jo Berry and Martha Baxter, five grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren.

“There’s not enough I could say about him to do him justice,” his daughter, Mary Berry, told the Associated Press.

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Photo courtesy of Wikimedia

The post Honoring Wendell Berry appeared first on Food Tank.

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation recently announced two WaterSMART programs funding stream restoration projects, with multiple rounds of funding through 2028. The Enhancing Water Resources Projects...

It is once again time to vote for MEIC’s board members. Only MEIC members can vote in the MEIC board election. MEIC members are those who have contributed financially or with volunteerism within the last year. If you have questions or concerns about your ballot or the process of voting, contact Denise at drothbarberatmeic.org. Please …

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This is a re-post from By the Numbers by Hannah Ritchie

A few weeks ago, I wrote an article about why the UK needs to get its act together and build some new reservoirs. It hasn’t built one in my lifetime — despite adding 10 million people — and the mismatch between winter and summer rain is probably going to get worse.

Someone asked a very reasonable question: why don’t we just build some desalination plants instead? Reservoirs are pretty big infrastructure projects. They constantly get blocked by local communities. They clearly disrupt the ecosystems and environments where they’re built.

Now, a lot of you will immediately think this is an insane idea. Do you realise how much energy desalination uses?!

I admit, it does seem a bit mad. Rather than just collecting freshwater in a big hole before it goes into the ocean, we’ll let it run in there, get all salty, then use a bunch of energy to pull the salt back out again.

For a long time, I had also held the “desalination consumes so much energy” tightly. It was a mantra I’d been taught a long time ago, and never updated. That is, until a few years ago, when I dug into the latest numbers. Supplying drinking and household water through desalination is really quite cheap, and uses far less energy than I’d have guessed.

How would these numbers work out for the UK? By that, we’re really talking about England, because that is where most of the water demand will be.

The Environment Agency estimates that by 2050, England will need to fill a deficit of 5 billion litres per day.1 Reverse osmosis from seawater consumes around 4 kWh per cubic metre (m3).2 Or 4 Wh per litre. That means we’d need 7 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity to meet all of England’s additional demand from desalination.3

The UK consumes around 290 TWh of electricity a year, so this would add a little over 2% to our annual demand.4 That’s not that much.

The UK’s electricity demand is already set to roughly double by 2050 to meet growing demand from the shift to electrified transport, heating, and industry. An extra 1% or 2% to have adequate water supplies doesn’t seem like a huge deal.

Producing that extra electricity has some (but small) environmental impact, whether it’s the materials or the land use. They also have the problem of managing brine — the plant’s output that they need to discharge somewhere. But reservoirs have environmental costs, too. How do they compare on other measures?

Why wouldn’t we go for desalination?

England already has a desalination plant — Beckton in London — which gives us some insights into how this goes.

How long does it take to build them?

I first thought this would be a win for desalination. Historical experience is actually quite positive. The Beckton plant took six years to build; the first planning application was submitted in 2004, and it was completed in 2010. Compare that to the Abingdon reservoir, which has been a saga going on for more than 15 years.

The prospects for desalination plants looked good until I found out that two plants — Bacton and Mablethorpe — in the early feasibility stages are not expected until at least 2040. That’s no better than a reservoir. It seems that Beckton was built under a far simpler regulatory regime that no longer exists. Desalination projects will be stuck in the long planning and approval queues that almost every infrastructure project now faces.

How many would we need?

If they were the same size as the Beckton one, we’d need around 50.5 The desalination plant the UK has built is small. We could dramatically reduce that by building much larger plants. The Sorek plant in Israel, for example, has a capacity five or six times larger. With these designs, we’d need around 8.

Would they be expensive?

Building desalination plants would be more expensive than many alternatives. The government plans to fill a lot of the water deficit, not through supply solutions like desalination or reservoirs, but by fixing leakages in the water system (which are pretty large) and improving efficiency. Those solutions obviously make sense and are far cheaper than building large infrastructure projects (although there are diminishing returns: the first leaks are very cheap to fix, but there is a tail where things get increasingly expensive).

But for the remaining gap that needs to be filled with new supplies, is it cheaper to desalinate or to build a reservoir?

There are two ways to compare these: the upfront cost to build, and how expensive water is over the lifetime of the project.

Reservoirs are not automatically cheaper than desalination plants. Costed over their lifetime (which can be more than 80 years), they often are. But in the near- to medium-term, I don’t think they clearly win on economics. Reservoirs do come with high upfront costs, even if they’re then cheaper to run. Recent figures from Severn Trent put the average capital cost at £8.12 million per Ml per day for reservoirs, compared with £9.77 million per Ml per day for desalination.6 Desalination is around 20% more expensive to build. But these projected costs have a habit of ballooning, so I could quite plausibly believe that the inverse becomes true.

Desalination plants in the UK are expensive by international standards. In the UK, it costs somewhere between $1.50 and $12 per m3. That range is so large because it depends on how often the desalination plant is running (we’ll come on to this later). That compares to around $0.50 in the Middle East, $1 in Australia, and $2 to $3 in the US.

There are a couple of reasons why it’s more expensive. The UK doesn’t have much experience building desalination plants, so it misses out on some of the learning that drives down costs. Its current plant and proposed ones are small, so we miss out on economies of scale. The UK has strict planning regulations that extend timelines and are costly, even before construction begins. Finally, its plants would be used intermittently — probably only in the summer, and not even every summer. That redundancy drives up costs compared to a plant that runs continuously, as in countries like Australia or the Middle East.

The real problem with desalination plants in the UK is how rarely they’d run

The places where desalination works well have one thing in common: they’re running almost all the time. They don’t just get turned on in a drought. They’re there to provide basic water services year-round.

That’s not how the UK’s current desalination plant works. It’s not how its future ones would work either.

This affects the economics: the unit price is lower for plants running 24/7. But it also affects their reliability.

The Beckton plant was completed more than 15 years ago, and it has only been switched on 5 times. When the UK was facing severe droughts in 2022, it was ordered to come online. Despite assurances that it was ready to go online, it was not. The plant did not run and provided no help whatsoever during the crisis period that it was specifically built for.

This year was a repeat of that. Most of England was in drought this summer. The Beckton plant was “unusable” because it needed “essential operational upgrades”.

The problem is that the infrastructure that is almost never used does not go through the same continual operational testing as stuff that runs continuously.

Here’s an excerpt of a government examination with the CEO of Thames Water:

Chris Weston: The first thing I would say is we have a team at the desalination plant that is working very hard to try to make it work.

Chair: Has it ever worked properly?

Chris Weston: It has worked in the past.

Chair: It is not going to work this year though?

Chris Weston: No, and I share your concerns. The desalination plant is a big problem for us. I wonder why it was built in the first place.

Chair: Two hundred and fifty million pounds.

Chris Weston: Yes, I accept that. It is not a good story, it was not a good investment, and there are no excuses about it. I would point out one thing with the desalination plant: at the moment, it relies on a very complicated and expensive process. Within it, it has certain treatment membranes. Those treatment membranes are at the end of their life.

This is nothing specific to the UK. We see it in Australia, too. Desalination plants have worked well in Perth because they are used as a key source of drinking water, and these plants run almost continuously.

Elsewhere, the story is similar to Beckton’s. Melbourne’s plant was completed in 2012, but mothballed until 2017, when it started delivering water for the first time. The government had agreed contracts to pay for this every year, despite receiving no water in return. In Adelaide, the plant sits idle for most of the wetter months. But Sydney has gone in the other direction: in 2023, the government stopped regarding it as an on-off backup, and it now runs close to a full-time operation. Maybe that’s something Britain can learn from.

For me, this is the crux of it.

I am not worried about the energy demands of desalination for the UK. I think adding 1% to 2% to our electricity demand is not unmanageable. I’d be happy with that trade-off if it reduced the environmental impact of reservoirs and unsustainable extraction from existing aquifers.

The problem is that reserving desalination for emergency situations does not seem to work well. It hurts the economics. It means they sit idle for years, and then are not ready to go when a crisis hits. Desalination plants work far better when you need continuous freshwater supplies. For Britain, that means they’d be far better suited to relieving pressure on existing aquifers (which is less stop-start) than to being kept on reserve for drought management.

If we build them, we should make sure we actually use them.

1 This is partly due to population growth, partly due to climate change, but actually the biggest driver is more water resources to reduce pressure on existing aquifers in environmentally-sensitive areas.

2 This is on the higher end of the estimates, but I'm trying to be conservative/harsh here.

3 5 billion * 365 * 4 = 7.3x10 12 Wh. That's 7 billion kWh (or 7 TWh). One point to note is that electricity generation also uses water (how much depends on the electricity source). But even if this extra demand was being supplied by gas (which uses the most water), it would be far less than 1% of the water deficit: millions rather than billions of m3.

4 7 / 290 * 100 = 2.4%

5 Thames Water previously scoped the plant to have a capacity for around 150 million litres per day. But has since said that its more realistic capacity is around 100 million litres.

6 This report cites a range of £1000 to £9000 per ML. I've converted that to cubic metres, and dollars. https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/157464/html/

(Photo credit: Bold Nebraska)

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Sept. 1, 2026

Airplane Banner Over Osborn-Ricketts Senate Debate Reads: “Billionaire Ricketts Supports Data Centers”
Plane flyover sponsored by local group Bold Nebraska

Grand Island, NE – Attendees of the Nebraska State Fair and scheduled U.S. Senate debate this evening between independent candidate Dan Osborn and incumbent Republican Pete Ricketts will be greeted overhead by a plane flying a banner that reads: “Billionaire Ricketts Supports Data Centers.”

While Ricketts, whose billionaire parents have subsidized his entire political career, has called data centers “a matter of national security” citing Chinese communist bogeymen, Dan Osborn signed onto a candidate “AI Pact” which calls for advocating for mandatory safety reviews for AI models, supporting policies that would create an AI dividend for workers, and ensuring that consumers and companies can sue over harms caused by models – by networking with AI safety groups and other political organizations working on AI legislation.

“Pete Ricketts doesn’t care about our communities and is willing to sell us out to Big Tech,” said Bold Nebraska founder and director Jane Kleeb. “Ricketts uses the bogeyman of China and yet, before Trump’s trade wars, they were a country we sold massive amounts of corn and soybeans to. Rather than creating a bogeyman as an excuse to run roughshod over communities, Ricketts should be proposing laws that have teeth, accountability and guardrails. Policies like ending eminent domain for private gain, closed loop systems, community benefits agreements and funding for first responders. These are all common sense solutions the Senate can act on but instead Ricketts kicks the can.”

Photos and b-roll video downloadable for use by media:

(Photo credit: Bold Nebraska)

B-roll video 1: download

B-r0ll video 2: download

About Bold:
Bold is a network of “small and mighty” groups in rural states working to protect land and water. We fight fossil fuel projects, protect landowners against eminent domain abuse, and work for clean energy solutions while building an engaged base of citizens who care about the land, water, and climate change. (https://boldalliance.org) (https://boldnebraska.org)

# # #

Shell is making another significant move in the United States — this time not in deepwater oil, LNG or shale gas, but in petrol stations, convenience stores and coffee.

On 1 September 2026, Shell announced that its U.S. downstream subsidiary, Equilon Enterprises LLC, trading as Shell Oil Products US, had agreed to increase its ownership of Nashville-based Tri Star Energy from 33% to 100%.

The transaction will give Shell full ownership of an additional 320 fuel and convenience retail sites in Tennessee and surrounding states, together with fuel-supply agreements covering another 552 dealer-owned locations.

Financial terms have not been disclosed.

The deal is expected to complete before the end of 2026, subject to regulatory approval and other customary closing conditions.

From minority shareholder to outright owner

Shell is not arriving at Tri Star as a stranger.

Its published annual reports show that Shell already held a 33% interest in Tri Star Energy by 2021, and that holding remained at 33% in subsequent reporting.

The new agreement therefore represents the conversion of a longstanding minority position into full corporate control.

The remaining interest is being acquired from The Parman Corporation, Kimbro Oil Company and related subsidiaries.

Tri Star itself is considerably more than a collection of Shell-branded filling stations.

Founded in 2000, it operates convenience-store brands including Twice Daily, Sudden Service and Little General, distributes fuel through wholesale channels across 23 states, and also owns the White Bison Coffee business.

That gives Shell exposure not merely to fuel margins, but also to the increasingly important non-fuel side of forecourt retailing: food, beverages, coffee and convenience shopping.

More than doubling Shell’s directly owned U.S. retail network

The scale of the deal becomes clearer when compared with Shell’s existing company-owned network.

When Shell completed its acquisition of 45 Brewer Oil retail sites in New Mexico in 2024, it said it then owned and operated nearly 200 convenience-retail sites in the United States.

Adding 320 Tri Star sites therefore more than doubles that directly controlled footprint.

That distinction is important.

Shell already has one of the largest branded fuel networks in America, with approximately 12,000 Shell-branded fuel and convenience locations across 49 states, but the great majority are owned by wholesalers or dealers rather than by Shell itself.

Tri Star materially increases the portion of that network over which Shell has direct operational and commercial control.

Shell’s explanation: concentrate capital where it has an advantage

Shell Downstream, Renewables and Energy Solutions President Machteld de Haan said the acquisition was aligned with the company’s strategy of concentrating capital in businesses where Shell believes it has distinctive advantages and can generate long-term shareholder value.

That language is worth noting because it closely resembles the terminology Shell has been using while disposing of assets elsewhere.

The company is currently engaged in an extensive reshaping of its portfolio.

In July 2026 Shell agreed to sell the Sprng Energy renewable-power business in India to Aditya Birla Renewables for $1.8 billion, describing the move as part of its continuing effort to high-grade the power portfolio and recycle capital.

In August it agreed to sell its European onshore renewables business to TotalEnergies, including approximately 500 MW of operational or development-stage generating capacity and a much larger future project pipeline.

Shell again described the transaction in terms of capital recycling and concentrating investment where it has differentiated capabilities.

Meanwhile, in June Shell agreed to dispose of its 50% non-operated interest in the Na Kika platform and associated Gulf of America assets for consideration of approximately $1.7 billion, subject to adjustments and contingent payments.

So although Shell is selling assets, it certainly is not retreating from investment.

It is reallocating.

Sell renewables, buy convenience stores?

That inevitably produces an interesting contrast.

Shell spent much of the previous decade emphasising the growth of its power, renewables and energy-transition businesses.

The present strategy appears considerably more selective.

European renewable-generation projects can be sold.

Indian renewables can be sold.

Older upstream interests can be sold.

Yet hundreds of American convenience stores can be acquired.

That does not necessarily mean Shell believes filling stations have a greater future than renewable electricity.

It does mean Shell believes that certain retail and mobility businesses can produce returns attractive enough to justify additional capital, particularly where Shell already possesses distribution infrastructure, fuel-supply capability, brand recognition and large customer volumes.

Convenience retail also offers something increasingly important to oil companies: revenue that does not depend entirely on the litres of petrol or diesel passing through the pumps.

Food, coffee, groceries, loyalty programmes and other non-fuel products can materially increase margins at retail locations.

Another piece of Shell’s American expansion

The Tri Star acquisition also sits alongside a broader expansion of Shell’s U.S. retail holdings.

In June 2022 Shell completed the acquisition of a large group of Landmark fuel and convenience sites, arguing that direct ownership would strengthen its position in one of the world’s largest retail-fuels markets and provide opportunities for both conventional and lower-carbon transport products.

The 2024 Brewer Oil acquisition then added another 45 sites in New Mexico.

Tri Star is considerably larger.

Once completed, the transaction will add 320 company-controlled sites in a single move, plus supply relationships with another 552 dealer locations.

That is a substantial downstream acquisition by any measure.

The price remains the obvious unanswered question

One conspicuous detail is missing from Shell’s announcement.

How much is Shell paying?

Neither Shell nor the sellers have disclosed the purchase price. Reuters, Dow Jones and industry coverage all confirm that the financial terms remain confidential.

Without that figure it is impossible for outsiders to determine the acquisition multiple, expected return on invested capital or the valuation Shell has placed on Tri Star’s store network, wholesale contracts and associated brands.

Given Shell’s repeated emphasis on capital discipline and shareholder returns, that will be an important figure if it eventually becomes public.

What the transaction tells us about today’s Shell

The Tri Star purchase is useful because it illustrates the increasingly pragmatic character of Shell’s present strategy.

The company is not simply expanding or contracting.

It is continuously rearranging the portfolio.

Businesses judged insufficiently competitive or strategically peripheral are sold.

Businesses regarded as capable of producing stronger returns are expanded.

And sometimes that produces combinations which would have looked surprising during the height of the corporate energy-transition rhetoric: a major oil company disposing of renewable-power portfolios while spending undisclosed sums to acquire hundreds of American convenience stores.

From Shell’s perspective there is no contradiction.

It calls the process high-grading.

The simpler description is that Shell is following the money.

For the moment, the Tri Star transaction leaves one very large question unanswered:

How much money?

That figure — together with any later disclosure about integration, store branding, employment effects and capital expenditure — will be worth watching as the transaction moves towards its expected completion before the end of 2026.

Shell Goes Shopping in America: Tri Star Deal More Than Doubles Its Company-Owned U.S. Convenience-Store Footprint was first posted on September 1, 2026 at 9:28 pm.
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