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Introducing: On Common Ground, a new podcast about the fight to maintain our public lands
Kate and Aaron run through the weekly news, including the Trump administration’s plans to repeal the Roadless Rule and upend the Forest Service’s travel management planning process. Then, we play the first episode of On Common Ground: An American Inheritance, a new podcast from Eleven Dollar Bill studios, for you.
In this first episode, host Bill Hedden traces how the fight we were allowed to win concealed the one we lost. Bill has spent half a century defending the public lands in southeastern Utah. He is joined by co-host John Leshy, former Solicitor of the Department of the Interior and our foremost scholar of public-lands law and history, along with voices from across the political spectrum. Together, “The Theft” lays out what was taken, how it happened, and why you weren’t supposed to notice until it was too late.
News- The Forest Service’s own review finds repealing the Roadless Rule could increase wildfire risk and harm communities – Westwise
- Roadless Rule repeal could cause more wildfires – KHOL
- ‘One-Two Punch’: After Attacking Roadless Rule, Trump Targets Off-Road Vehicle Limits – Common Dreams
- Comment on the Roadless Rule repeal – regulations.gov
- Comment on the Travel Management Rule – regulations.gov
- Comment generator for Roadless – FUSEE
- Keep Parks Public Tour — RSVP to Tucson!
- On Common Ground: An American Inheritance
- Watch this episode on YouTube
Produced by Aaron Weiss, Lauren Bogard, Kate Groetzinger, and Lilly Bock-Brownstein
Feedback: podcast@westernpriorities.org
Music: Purple Planet
Featured image: Book Cliffs, Utah; Photo by Bob Wick
The post Introducing: On Common Ground, a new podcast about the fight to maintain our public lands appeared first on Center for Western Priorities.
As Eastern Washington Burns, a Long-Term Resilience Strategy Is More Important Than Ever
Wood Thrush Quadrupled at this Hudson Valley Sanctuary
Skeptical Science New Research for Week #35 2026
Carbon emissions exacerbating the Western US water crisis, Williams et al., Communications Earth & Environmen
In the western US, limited water supply and high demand--accentuated by anthropogenic climate change--have resulted in overallocated water resources and rapidly depleting groundwater. Simultaneously, legal and policy mechanisms are being pursued regarding the contributions of large emitting entities (“Carbon Majors”) to such impacts. Here, we quantify impacts on western US water resources attributable to the Carbon Majors, and compare results with a simpler-to-use (‘proportional’) approach. Anthropogenic climate change has driven large decreases in water supply (snowpack and streamflow) and increases in water demand (irrigation demand), with roughly half attributable to the Carbon Majors. These changes have led to a widening seasonal gap between water supply and demand, and with Carbon Majors emissions accounting for ~1/3 of observed, climatically-driven groundwater loss in the Central Valley during 2003-2024. Though both approaches yield similar results, consistent over- and underestimations are present in each variable, suggesting caution is needed when using the proportional approach.
Evolution of Global Sea-Level Rise Projections and Their Uncertainty, Garner et al., Earth's Future
For more than 40 years, scientists have projected future sea-level change. Documenting how sea-level projections have evolved is vital for tracking progress, uncertainties, and future research needs. Here, we update and analyze a database of global-mean sea level (GMSL) projections dating from 1982 to 2025, identifying five key findings. First, GMSL projection generation has been concentrated in a small number of developed countries, with 95% of projections produced in the United States, United Kingdom, European Union, or Australia. Second, while GMSL projections for 2050 and 2100 have been published regularly since the early 1980s, only 30 of 103 studies have produced projections extending beyond 2100; all but one of these 30 studies postdates 2010. Third, among studies providing multiple estimates, the range of highest GMSL projections for 2100 has broadened since 2007, reaching 0.6–2.0 m across publications since the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Report (AR6). Fourth, GMSL projections from the IPCC have historically been conservative compared to projections from individual studies. Prior to AR6, ∼66% of 2100 projections at the upper end of uncertainty intervals from individual studies exceeded the corresponding upper projections from IPCC reports. However, the inclusion of “low-confidence” GMSL projections in AR6 to assess higher amounts of GMSL change of poorly known likelihood reduces this problem: the 83rd percentile of these low-confidence projections is exceeded by <25% of upper estimates from individual studies. Finally, analyses suggest that the arrival time of key GMSL milestones are often similar for projections spanning multiple eras and using various methodologies.
Equatorial Extreme Convective Storms Are Expanding and Becoming More Persistent, Zhuang et al., AGU Advance
Extreme rainfall is projected to intensify with climate warming, yet changes in the spatiotemporal structure of extreme-producing storms remain poorly understood in the tropics, as the most convectively active regions of the world are also the most data-scarce. We here leverage the first long-term, sub-kilometer, sub-hourly observational network in equatorial Singapore (730 k?m2), with 122 rain gauges reporting 5 min intensities for 2020–2024 and 82 stations with hourly accumulations for 1980–2024, combined with X-band radar (5 min, 100 m) to produce a high-resolution gridded rainfall reanalysis. Our findings indicate that extreme rainfall in Singapore is becoming larger and more persistent, with intensification resulting in higher storm rainfall volumes while rainfall peak intensities remain largely unchanged. Furthermore, extreme rainfall storms are strikingly compact, with spatial and temporal correlations halving over just 2 km and 4 min, decaying faster than previously recognized and observed elsewhere. This suggests that analyses based on coarse data sets or single stations may have misrepresented rainfall intensification under warming.
From this week's government/NGO section:Survey reveals gap between climate change concern and actual news coverage, Climate News Tracker/Kantar
A survey of journalists and production staff across UK public service media concluded climate reporting needs new approaches. Broadcast journalists in Britain say they rank climate change and environmental issues above many of the traditional pillars of news coverage – including the National Health Service, international conflict and immigration – yet this is not reflected in what audiences actually see and hear. More than 80% of respondents said crowded news agendas and packed running orders hinder climate coverage. Program editors and channel schedulers may be willing to extend a bulletin for a dramatic, unexpected and consequential story, but the climate crisis rarely meets the threshold for such immediate editorial prioritization. The planet heating up is a slow-burning story whose significance has developed over years rather than hours, making it harder to compete with the urgency of daily news. Journalists also highlighted the difficulty of finding strong editorial “pegs” for climate stories outside major weather events or political announcements. Some 65% said climate stories do not always have a clear or timely news peg.Climate change is driving unprecedented European ocean temperatures, with severe impacts for marine life, Bergin et al., World Weather Attribution
Researchers from Switzerland, Sweden, the United States, Ireland, and the United Kingdom collaborated to assess the extent to which human-induced climate change altered the likelihood and intensity of the extreme sea surface temperature (SSTs) conditions along the European coasts in July 2026. This year’s high SSTs have been remarkable not only in their intensity, but also in how early in the year they were reached. To assess whether all of the observed warming is attributable to human-induced climate change, we combine observations and climate models. In the Celtic region, climate models and observations show very similar trends, while in all other regions the observed trends are much stronger than those simulated by climate models. Despite this, the authors found that in the two Mediterranean regions, the increase in warming attributable to human-induced climate change is about 2°C, substantially surpassing the level of global warming, even under this conservative estimate. 121 articles in 54 journals by 866 contributing authorsPhysical science of climate change, effects
Disturbance characteristics and forest properties regulate surface warming and recovery across Europe, Su et al., Nature Geoscience 10.1038/s41561-026-02071-5
Strengthening impact of Indian Ocean Basin Mode on ENSO under greenhouse warming, Zhao et al., Global and Planetary Change 10.1016/j.gloplacha.2026.105688
Transient Global Overturning Following the Shutdown of North Atlantic Deep Water Formation, Sun & Thompson, AGU Advances Open Access 10.1029/2026av002462
Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Understanding the role of contrails and contrail cirrus in climate change: a global perspective, Atmospheric chemistry and physics, 10.5194/acp-24-9219-2024 25 cites.
Observations of climate change, effects
A Subtle Atmospheric Shift Is Redefining Winter Hydrology on the Tibetan Plateau, Chen et al., Geophysical Research Letters Open Access 10.1029/2025gl121477
Attribution of Summer Warming Trends in the North China Plain during 1968–2023, Li et al., Journal of Hydrometeorology 10.1175/jhm-d-25-0102.1
Carbon emissions exacerbating the Western US water crisis, Williams et al., Communications Earth & Environment Open Access 10.1038/s43247-026-03900-6
Equatorial Extreme Convective Storms Are Expanding and Becoming More Persistent, Zhuang et al., AGU Advances Open Access 10.1029/2026av002370
Evolution of Climate Extremes Over the Indian Subcontinent Using a Revised CEI, Thota et al., International Journal of Climatology 10.1002/joc.70467
Recent Warming Amplification in the Yangtze River Basin Compared to the Global Land, Liu et al., Journal of Geophysical Research Atmospheres 10.1029/2026jd046491
State of the UK Climate in 2025, Kendon et al., International Journal of Climatology Open Access 10.1002/joc.70470
Synoptic drivers of the August 2024 record-breaking rainfall in the Chadian Sahara: dynamics, thermodynamics, and socio-economic consequences, Tchinda et al., Weather and Climate Dynamics Open Access pdf 10.5194/wcd-7-1425-2026
Widespread coral bleaching across subtropical and temperate Japan under record marine heat stress, Kurihara et al., Scientific Reports Open Access 10.1038/s41598-026-65095-2
Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Drivers and Impacts of the Record-Breaking 2023 Wildfire Season in Canada, Nature Communications, 10.1038/s41467-024-51154-7 295 cites.
Instrumentation & observational methods of climate change, effects
A Guide to Single Changepoint Tests for the Climate Researcher, Lund & Shi, Journal of Climate Open Access pdf 10.1175/jcli-d-25-0681.1
Application of spatial statistics for climate-sensitive natural hazard management, Reinprecht et al., Climate Risk Management Open Access pdf 10.1016/j.crm.2026.100873
Historical cold biases exaggerate future elevation-dependent warming over the Tibetan Plateau, Deng et al., Atmospheric Research 10.1016/j.atmosres.2026.109288
Sensitivity to climate Delta selection in Pseudo-global warming simulations of mesoscale convective systems: case study of the august 2022 event in northern Japan, Tahara & Hiraga, Frontiers in Climate Open Access pdf 10.3389/fclim.2026.1921704
Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Tipping point detection and early warnings in climate, ecological, and human systems, Earth System Dynamics, 10.5194/esd-15-1117-2024 92 cites.
Modeling, simulation & projection of climate change, effects
100 m resolution projection of future urban heat Island of a tropical Coastal City, Chen et al., Urban Climate Open Access 10.1016/j.uclim.2026.103100
CMIP6 Historical Evaluation and Future Changes of Climate Extreme Indices at Regional Scale From the US-Mexico Border Region to Central America, Ramos-Esteban et al., International Journal of Climatology 10.1002/joc.70536
Disentangling Anthropogenic Effects on Southern Hemisphere Circulation and Surface Climate: A Multi-Model Large Ensemble Approach, Diaz et al., Journal of Geophysical Research Atmospheres Open Access 10.1029/2025jd046229
Projection and Uncertainty of Midsummer Precipitation in the Northern China Monsoon Region by CMIP6 Models, Yang et al., International Journal of Climatology 10.1002/joc.70438
Regional Temperature Trends and Future Warming Risks in Pakistan Using Bias-Corrected CMIP6 Ensembles and Machine Learning Techniques, Ullah et al., International Journal of Climatology 10.1002/joc.70497
Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
IMO2020 Regulations Accelerate Global Warming by up to 3 Years in UKESM1, Earth s Future, 10.1029/2024ef005011 22 cites.
Advancement of climate & climate effects modeling, simulation & projection
A sea ice free Arctic: CMIP7 Assessment Fast Track abrupt-127k experimental protocol and motivation, Sime et al., Geoscientific model development Open Access pdf 10.5194/gmd-19-5881-2026
Drought forecasting across multiple temporal scales using CMIP6 projections and hybrid deep learning models for Central Anatolia, Türkiye, Citakoglu et al., Atmospheric Research 10.1016/j.atmosres.2026.109271
Evaluating North American Winter Extreme Precipitation Variability and Its Drivers in CMIP6 Models, Jeong et al., Weather and Climate Extremes Open Access pdf 10.1016/j.wace.2026.100948
Evaluation of Downscaled CMIP6 Performance for Rainfall and Wind Over the Maritime Continent, Alifdini et al., International Journal of Climatology 10.1002/joc.70476
Evaluation of the ALARO1-SFX (CY43T2) regional climate model over Belgium across different resolutions, Dewettinck et al., Geoscientific model development Open Access 10.5194/gmd-19-7911-2026
GCAM-Europe v7.2.0: enhancing policy-relevant climate modelling through spatial and sectoral detail, Sampedro et al., Geoscientific model development Open Access pdf 10.5194/gmd-19-7741-2026
How Observation-Based Data Influence Uncertainty in Local Climate Projections, Taylor et al., Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology 10.1175/jamc-d-25-0146.1
Representation of Long-Term Observed UK Winter Precipitation Trends and Variability in UKCP18 Global Climate Models, Carruthers et al., International Journal of Climatology Open Access 10.1002/joc.70540
The CMIP6-downscaled CORDEX-Southeast Asia (SEA) ensemble: evaluation and benchmarking for megacities of SEA, Nguyen et al., Geoscientific model development Open Access 10.5194/gmd-19-7653-2026
Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Pushing the frontiers in climate modelling and analysis with machine learning, Nature Climate Change, 10.1038/s41558-024-02095-y 157 cites.
Cryosphere & climate change
Enhanced interannual variability of early-winter snowfall in northern Xinjiang since the 1990s and its relationship with Arctic sea ice, Han et al., Global and Planetary Change 10.1016/j.gloplacha.2026.105684
Event-driven atmospheric forcing and meltwater lake response in maritime antarctic, Shah et al., Frontiers in Environmental Science Open Access pdf 10.3389/fenvs.2026.1916729
Fate of heat approaching the Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf mediated by continental shelf eddies, Stewart et al., Science Advances Open Access 10.1126/sciadv.aec8232
Historical and Projected Antarctic Sea Ice Trends Across High-Resolution Coupled Model Hierarchies, Bushuk et al., Geophysical Research Letters Open Access 10.1029/2026gl124043
Multiyear tropical warm pool warming drives slowdown in Antarctic mass loss, Wang et al., Nature Open Access 10.1038/s41586-026-10912-x
Reconsidering the drivers of ice-shelf collapse, Arthur et al., Nature Communications Open Access pdf 10.1038/s41467-026-76772-1
Relationships between Arctic sea-ice concentration, temperature, and specific humidity in the lower troposphere during 1980–2021, Uhlíková et al., cryosphere Open Access pdf 10.5194/tc-20-4585-2026
The multilayer ocean circulation melting the 79N Glacier ice tongue, Reinert et al., cryosphere Open Access pdf 10.5194/tc-20-4563-2026
What SAR Labels Hide About a Changing Arctic, Mahmud, Earth s Future Open Access 10.1029/2026ef008828
Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
The West Antarctic Ice Sheet may not be vulnerable to marine ice cliff instability during the 21st century, Science Advances, 10.1126/sciadv.ado7794 38 cites.
Sea level & climate change
Addendum: Sea level much higher than assumed in most coastal hazard assessments, Seeger & Minderhoud, Nature Open Access 10.1038/s41586-026-11017-1
Evolution of Global Sea-Level Rise Projections and Their Uncertainty, Garner et al., Earth s Future Open Access 10.1029/2025ef007836
Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Tropical Cyclone Storm Surge-Based Flood Risk Assessment Under Combined Scenarios of High Tides and Sea-Level Rise: A Case Study of Hainan Island, China, Earth s Future, 10.1029/2023ef004236 16 cites.
Paleoclimate & paleogeochemistry
Asian summer monsoon orbital variability directly paced by CO2 and precession, not eccentricity, Millot-Weil et al., Nature Communications Open Access pdf 10.1038/s41467-026-76856-y
Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Dry hydroclimates in the late Palaeocene-early Eocene hothouse world, Nature Communications, 10.1038/s41467-024-51430-6 10 cites.
Biology & climate change, related geochemistry
Arctic and Tibetan Plateau Tundra Show Divergent Temperature and Precipitation Thresholds Under Climate Change, Zhu et al., Geophysical Research Letters Open Access 10.1029/2026gl124727
Breaking Boundaries: Multidirectional Responses of Malagasy Bats to Unmitigated Future Climate Change, Stewart-Roberts et al., Diversity and Distributions Open Access 10.1111/ddi.70254
Brood Chamber Carbonate Chemistry in the oyster Ostrea edulis Is Dynamically Shaped by Warming, Acidification, and Ventilation, Gray et al., Global Change Biology 10.1111/gcb.71007
Carbon emissions exacerbating the Western US water crisis, Williams et al., Communications Earth & Environment Open Access 10.1038/s43247-026-03900-6
Climate Controls Cold- But Not Warm-Adapted Sphagnum Distribution and Carbon Sink Capacity, Wang et al., Global Change Biology 10.1111/gcb.71006
Climate warming drives thermal shocks and accelerated freshwater habitat fragmentation, Wang et al., Nature Climate Change Open Access 10.1038/s41558-026-02731-9
CO2 physiological forcing mitigates climate-driven water limitation on vegetation growth and carbon uptake, Kang et al., Nature Communications Open Access pdf 10.1038/s41467-026-76835-3
Comparative Distribution Projections of Hydrophilic and Xerophytic Invasive Species in Turkey Under CMIP6 Climate Scenarios, Tursun et al., Ecology and Evolution Open Access pdf 10.1002/ece3.74172
Distribution Shifts of Vaccinium Berry Wild Relatives in China Under Climate and Land-Use Changes, Pang et al., Ecology and Evolution Open Access 10.1002/ece3.74154
High elevation shrubification in the subarctic during the Holocene Thermal Maximum and 21st century, Harning et al., Communications Earth & Environment Open Access 10.1038/s43247-026-03965-3
Hot temperature during development alters iridescence in Morpho butterflies, Rubin et al., PNAS Nexus Open Access 10.1093/pnasnexus/pgag243
Impacts of Climate Change on Alpha and Beta Diversity Patterns of Cerrado anurans, Sabino et al., Ecology and Evolution Open Access 10.1002/ece3.73983
Increasing CO2 levels fertilize C4 grass production, Simpson et al., Nature Open Access 10.1038/s41586-026-10935-4
Limits on the capacity of an ectotherm to buffer temperature extremes through the construction of a central refuge, Ord & Blazek, Oecologia Open Access pdf 10.1007/s00442-026-05959-6
Modeling the effects of climate risk on primates globally: New perspectives on conservation priorities, Teng et al., Science Advances Open Access 10.1126/sciadv.aeg0031
Population Structure of a Living Fossil, the Atlantic Horseshoe Crab, and Its Vulnerability in the Face of Imminent Climate Change, Luo et al., Diversity and Distributions Open Access 10.1111/ddi.70256
Post-heatwave immune challenge reshapes selection on heatwave responses, Salo et al., Royal Society Open Science Open Access 10.1098/rsos.260674
Prediction of the Potential Distribution of Cirsium vulgare in China Under Climate Change Scenarios Based on Its First Recorded Occurrences in Southern China, Hu et al., Ecology and Evolution Open Access 10.1002/ece3.74028
Projected Effects of Climate-induced Changes in Phytoplankton biomass in the Southern South China Sea, Kiel et al., Biogeosciences Open Access 10.5194/bg-23-5827-2026
Responses of Antarctic seabird populations to past climate change, Ng et al., Ecography Open Access 10.1002/ecog.08322
Soil Warming Shifts Seasonal and Soil Depth-Related Root Growth Dynamics in Subarctic Grasslands, Bhattarai et al., Global Change Biology pdf 10.1111/gcb.71055
The giant Antarctic amphipod Paraceradocus miersi will not fare well if freshening continues in the Southern Ocean, Spicer et al., Marine Environmental Research Open Access 10.1016/j.marenvres.2026.108368
The policy relevance of climate-change scenarios for biodiversity research, Schoeman et al., Nature Reviews Biodiversity 10.1038/s44358-026-00193-7
The ‘Lifeboat Hypothesis’: Aquatic Microplastics in a Warming World—Climate-Resilient Refugia for Bacterial Pathogens, Quilliam & Ormsby, Global Change Biology Open Access 10.1111/gcb.71078
Thermophilization: Concepts, Methods, and Implications of Changes in Community Composition due to Global Warming, Feeley et al., Global Change Biology pdf 10.1111/gcb.71063
Widespread coral bleaching across subtropical and temperate Japan under record marine heat stress, Kurihara et al., Scientific Reports Open Access 10.1038/s41598-026-65095-2
Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Impacts of marine heatwaves in coastal ecosystems depend on local environmental conditions, Global Change Biology, 10.1111/gcb.17469 37 cites.
GHG sources & sinks, flux, related geochemistry
A global atmospheric methane record from a tropical ice core, Lamantia et al., Nature Open Access 10.1038/s41586-026-10938-1
Analysis of the temporal variability of CO2, CH4 and CO concentrations at Lamto, West Africa, Tiemoko et al., Tellus B Open Access pdf 10.1080/16000889.2020.1863707
Carbon dioxide and methane emissions from plants and peat soil in a Cyperus papyrus wetland in Uganda, Farmer et al., Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences Open Access 10.1098/rstb.2025.0048
Decorrelating carbon and water fluxes in the Amazon Basin, Worden et al., Nature Communications Open Access pdf 10.1038/s41467-026-75526-3
Environmental controls over greenhouse gas dynamics of tropical peatlands of the Central Congo Basin, Girkin et al., PubMed pmid:42619525
Experimental warming alters iron–carbon interactions and CO2 and CH4 emissions in pristine mangrove soils, Molitor et al., Atmospheric Environment Open Access 10.1016/j.atmosenv.2026.122315
Extensive parasite transmission and variation in a functional receptor associated with drug resistance in endemic Schistosoma mansoni, Berger et al., Science Advances Open Access 10.1126/sciadv.adt3721
Hydrological controls on dissolved carbon export from permafrost peatland catchments of northeastern China, Wang et al., Frontiers in Environmental Science Open Access pdf 10.3389/fenvs.2026.1915601
Lakes Amplify Carbon Emissions Relative to Downstream Export in Aquatic Networks, Alriksson et al., Geophysical Research Letters Open Access 10.1029/2025gl120340
Land-use change causes rapid carbon losses in Congo Basin peatlands across climate scenarios, whereas the effects of climate change alone are uncertain, Young et al., Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences Open Access 10.1098/rstb.2024.0486
Limited blue carbon potential of intertidal seagrass meadows in the Wadden Sea – a case study in a tidal basin, Mohr et al., Biogeosciences Open Access pdf 10.5194/bg-23-5715-2026
Mesenchymal stem cells receive adaptive islet–derived miR-151–containing sEVs to promote β cell compensation in obesity, Guo et al., Science Advances Open Access 10.1126/sciadv.adu4196
Methane Emissions From U.S. Lakes Dominated by Ebullition, Shallow Zones, and Anthropogenic Drivers, Shen & Raymond, Geophysical Research Letters Open Access 10.1029/2026gl124792
Precipitation-dependent nonlinear accumulation of soil organic carbon in response to warming via microbial residues, Chen et al., Communications Earth & Environment Open Access pdf 10.1038/s43247-026-03941-x
Quantifying climatic drivers and identifying spatial risks of vegetation carbon sink instability: a case study of central–western Inner Mongolia, Liu et al., Frontiers in Environmental Science Open Access pdf 10.3389/fenvs.2026.1819623
Shaping of developmental gradients through selection on multiple loci in Antirrhinum, Bradley et al., Science Advances Open Access 10.1126/sciadv.adx2011
Soil disturbance in wetlands by feral pigs increases greenhouse gas emissions, Adame et al., Biogeosciences Open Access pdf 10.5194/bg-23-5781-2026
Strategic design of methane observation networks to improve emission estimates: A case study in Africa, Li et al., Atmospheric chemistry and physics Open Access pdf 10.5194/acp-26-11893-2026
Surface-water carbon exchange from mangroves and responses to global warming, Ouyang et al., Nature Communications Open Access pdf 10.1038/s41467-026-77058-2
The Fragile Sink: Reconceptualizing Soil Carbon Stabilization and Its Vulnerability Under Global Change, Iqbal et al., Global Change Biology 10.1111/gcb.71071
Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
A large net carbon loss attributed to anthropogenic and natural disturbances in the Amazon Arc of Deforestation, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 10.1073/pnas.2310157121 41 cites.
CO2 capture, sequestration science & engineering
Bamboo carbon pathways: sustainable approach to climate change mitigation, TK & S, Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution Open Access pdf 10.3389/fevo.2026.1876587
ForestERW: a spatially explicit carbon dioxide removal model for practical enhanced rock weathering applications in United States forests, McDonnell et al., Frontiers in Climate Open Access 10.3389/fclim.2026.1855001
Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Non-aqueous alkoxide-mediated electrochemical carbon capture, Nature Energy, 10.1038/s41560-024-01614-7 27 cites.
Decarbonization
Multi-Scenario Carbon Peak Prediction for Aviation Logistics Based on an Extended STIRPAT Model: Empirical Analysis From Guangxi, China, Zhang et al., Geoscience Data Journal Open Access pdf 10.1002/gdj3.70089
National hydrogen policy inequality in aviation: a hidden barrier to climate mitigation, Rostami et al., Climate Policy 10.1080/14693062.2026.2713870
Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Future hydrogen economies imply environmental trade-offs and a supply-demand mismatch, Nature Communications, 10.1038/s41467-024-51251-7 180 cites.
Geoengineering climate
Mapping the future of ocean carbon dioxide removal in Australia: site suitability for electrochemical ocean alkalinity enhancement, Benjamin et al., Frontiers in Climate Open Access 10.3389/fclim.2026.1854445
Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Technical note: Ocean Alkalinity Enhancement Pelagic Impact Intercomparison Project (OAEPIIP), Biogeosciences, 10.5194/bg-21-3665-2024 9 cites.
Black carbon
Warming potential of atmospheric black carbon modulated by particulate matter, Liu et al., Nature Geoscience 10.1038/s41561-026-02068-0
Aerosols
Future projections of surface dust concentrations in major dust source regions of the Mesopotamian plains, Abadi et al., Atmospheric Research 10.1016/j.atmosres.2026.109282
Particle Size as a Key Remaining Uncertainty in Dust Direct Radiative Effect After EMIT: An Earth System Model Study, Li et al., Geophysical Research Letters Open Access 10.1029/2025gl121571
Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Has Reducing Ship Emissions Brought Forward Global Warming?, Geophysical Research Letters, 10.1029/2024gl109077 73 cites.
Climate change communications & cognition
A caution on climate hope, Blakey & Hudson, Environmental Politics 10.1080/09644016.2026.2721047
Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
A 27-country test of communicating the scientific consensus on climate change, Nature Human Behaviour, 10.1038/s41562-024-01928-2 47 cites.
Agronomy, animal husbundry, food production & climate change
Circular nutrient recycling via Juncus effusus-derived biochar: impacts on soil properties, sorghum yield, and GHG fluxes, Wilson et al., ENVIRONMENTAL SYSTEMS RESEARCH Open Access 10.1186/s40068-026-00496-w
Climate-Induced Severe Water Scarcity Events as Harbingers of Global Wheat Price, Trnka et al., Earth s Future Open Access 10.1029/2025ef006095
Modeling agricultural water deficit risk in finland under CMIP6 climate scenarios, Jahromi et al., Scientific Reports Open Access pdf 10.1038/s41598-026-65956-w
Overcoming barriers to achieving a Net Zero agri-food sector: Challenges and solutions, McGuire et al., Environmental Science & Policy Open Access pdf 10.1016/j.envsci.2026.104469
Research on the impact mechanism of climate risks on financial vulnerability of farmers in typical ecologically fragile regions of Northwestern China, Liu et al., Frontiers in Environmental Science Open Access 10.3389/fenvs.2026.1892381
Social network structure and climate change adaptation information diffusion among dairy farmers: evidence from northern Tunisia, Gara et al., Frontiers in Climate Open Access pdf 10.3389/fclim.2026.1848645
Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Optimistic growth of marginal region plantations under climate warming: Assessing divergent drought resilience, Global Change Biology, 10.1111/gcb.17459 36 cites.
Hydrology, hydrometeorology & climate change
A Subtle Atmospheric Shift Is Redefining Winter Hydrology on the Tibetan Plateau, Chen et al., Geophysical Research Letters Open Access 10.1029/2025gl121477
Carbon emissions exacerbating the Western US water crisis, Williams et al., Communications Earth & Environment Open Access 10.1038/s43247-026-03900-6
Equatorial Extreme Convective Storms Are Expanding and Becoming More Persistent, Zhuang et al., AGU Advances Open Access 10.1029/2026av002370
Synoptic drivers of the August 2024 record-breaking rainfall in the Chadian Sahara: dynamics, thermodynamics, and socio-economic consequences, Tchinda et al., Weather and Climate Dynamics Open Access pdf 10.5194/wcd-7-1425-2026
Time Series Analysis of Temperature and Precipitation Dynamics Using CETA and MCETA Methods, Gul et al., International Journal of Climatology 10.1002/joc.70484
Warming-driven rise in soil moisture entropy signals growing instability risk in the Asian Water Tower, Xie et al., Nature Communications Open Access pdf 10.1038/s41467-026-76955-w
Yellow River sediment sinks exhibit divergent decadal responses to anthropogenic and climatic forcing, Li et al., Communications Earth & Environment Open Access 10.1038/s43247-026-03969-z
Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Declining Reservoir Reliability and Increasing Reservoir Vulnerability: Long-Term Observations Reveal Longer and More Severe Periods of Low Reservoir Storage for Major United States Reservoirs, Geophysical Research Letters, 10.1029/2024gl109476 26 cites.
Climate change economics
Developing double materiality for climate-related financial policy, Stiroh, Nature Climate Change 10.1038/s41558-026-02725-7
Extreme temperatures and low-income household finance: evidence from payday loans, Xie et al., Nature Communications Open Access pdf 10.1038/s41467-026-76945-y
Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Equity weighting increases the social cost of carbon, Science, 10.1126/science.adn1488 25 cites.
Climate change mitigation public policy research
Fast Today, Fair Tomorrow: Competing Priorities Shaping EU Climate Law and Policy, Accogli et al., Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews Climate Change Open Access 10.1002/wcc.70081
Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Climate policies that achieved major emission reductions: Global evidence from two decades, Science, 10.1126/science.adl6547 303 cites.
Climate change adaptation & adaptation public policy research
AQUA v1.0.0: The Application for QUality Assessment for the Climate Change Adaptation Digital Twin – the core engine, Nurisso et al., Geoscientific model development Open Access pdf 10.5194/gmd-19-7725-2026
Climate change adaptation strategies of rural women-headed households in southwestern Ethiopia, Sherif et al., Discover Sustainability Open Access 10.1007/s43621-026-04230-5
Ethical and governance frontiers in big data for climate resilience, Pokharel & AlQahtani, Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability Open Access pdf 10.1016/j.cosust.2026.101723
Incident Risk Prediction for Global Maritime Networks Under a Changing Climate, Azadnia & Miller-Hooks, Risk Analysis Open Access pdf 10.1111/risa.70340
Leveraging social capital for climate change adaptation in the Mara River Basin, Kenya, Omondi, Environmental Sociology 10.1080/23251042.2026.2721649
Thermal justice in urban climate change adaptation, Gobatti et al., Nature Climate Change 10.1038/s41558-026-02727-5
Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Lessons from a decade of adaptive pathways studies for climate adaptation, Global Environmental Change, 10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2024.102907 114 cites.
Climate change impacts on human health
Climate change and hypertension: global trends, temporal patterns, and regional insights, Ye et al., Frontiers in Climate Open Access 10.3389/fclim.2026.1703142
From climate hazards to early warning: Salmonella as a sentinel for the Climate–AMR–WASH nexus, Tang et al., PLOS Climate Open Access pdf 10.1371/journal.pclm.0001040
Global analysis of sub-daily urban impacts on atmospheric variables and thermal comfort in a climate change scenario, Hoffmann et al., Urban Climate 10.1016/j.uclim.2026.103079
Marine heatwaves and undernutrition in low- and middle-income countries, Gray et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Open Access 10.1073/pnas.2528506123
Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Integrating effects of overheating on human health into buildings’ life cycle assessment, The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment, 10.1007/s11367-024-02353-3 11 cites.
Other
Ecological regime shifts decouple organic carbon sequestration from nutrient-driven productivity in Anthropocene shallow lakes, Huang et al., Global and Planetary Change 10.1016/j.gloplacha.2026.105686
Gender, power, and tokenism in nature-based solutions to climate change, Yamoah & Nyantakyi-Frimpong, Climate and Development 10.1080/17565529.2026.2712491
Perfluoroalkyl substance release in permafrost surface waters is projected to increase under global warming, Yu et al., Communications Earth & Environment Open Access pdf 10.1038/s43247-026-03946-6
Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
The history and future of IPCC special reports: A dual role of politicisation and normalisation, Climatic Change, 10.1007/s10584-024-03788-1 13 cites.
Informed opinion, nudges & major initiatives
Future Projections of Burned Area in Europe Highlight the Importance of Human Action, Billing et al., Global Change Biology Open Access 10.1111/gcb.71043
Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Bring digital twins back to Earth, Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews Climate Change, 10.1002/wcc.915 29 cites.
Unlocking California's Flexible Load: A Durable Blueprint for Affordability and Reliability, Cutter et al., GridLab, Kevala, and Energy and Environmental Economics
Realizing the full potential of flexible load requires consolidating California’s fragmented landscape into a clear set of complementary pathways anchored by three core principles: compensating below verified avoided costs, paying exclusively for measured performance, and building on standardized, interoperable program architecture. Time-of-use (TOU) and dynamic rate structures can drive persistent behavior shifts without counterfactual baselines or aggregator overhead, but they are unlikely to fully deliver the benefits that many hope for. Only by advancing rate design and programmatic pathways together can California fully unlock the state’s load flexibility potential. To capture the value rates leave behind, load-serving entities (LSEs) should deploy three standardized mechanisms:- Retail Pay-for-Performance: Accessible, non-firm, as-available load reduction compensated against verified individual-level regression baselines. - Firm Capacity: Contracted, predictable load shift carrying Resource Adequacy (RA) value and clear performance accountability.- Wholesale Market Access: Streamlined direct California Independent System Operator (CAISO) market participation tailored for large commercial loads and sophisticated aggregations. Locationally targeted dispatch specifically tailored to defer infrastructure upgrades at high-value, constrained distribution nodes.Evaluating the implementation and effectiveness of heat action plans, Sobhaninia et al., Red Cross Red Crescent Global Disaster Preparedness Center
The authors analyzed the content of Heat Action Plans (HAPs) from different regions of the world, interviewed local officials involved in HAP development and implementation to understand their impact then developed and piloted an actionable HAP Implementation and Effectiveness (HAPIE) Tool that can help cities to track the implementation and effectiveness of HAPs.Advancing policy coherence for agrifood systems transformation, Bedeau et al., Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
The authors examine how policy coherence is being advanced in practice to enable agrifood systems transformation, drawing on experiences from 10 countries. It explores the continuous and iterative processes that countries are following to align agriculture, climate, biodiversity, nutrition and equity agendas and translate shared goals into policy processes, institutional arrangements and coordinated action across sectors and levels of governance. By focusing on implementation rather than policy design alone, the authors highlight enabling factors, common challenges and practical entry points to move beyond siloed approaches. The publication is intended for policymakers, practitioners and development partners seeking actionable insights to advance multiple agrifood systems outcomes in complex national contexts.Climate change is driving unprecedented European ocean temperatures, with severe impacts for marine life, Bergin et al., World Weather Attribution
Researchers from Switzerland, Sweden, the United States, Ireland, and the United Kingdom collaborated to assess the extent to which human-induced climate change altered the likelihood and intensity of the extreme sea surface temperature (SSTs) conditions along the European coasts in July 2026. This year’s high SSTs have been remarkable not only in their intensity, but also in how early in the year they were reached. To assess whether all of the observed warming is attributable to human-induced climate change, we combine observations and climate models. In the Celtic region, climate models and observations show very similar trends, while in all other regions the observed trends are much stronger than those simulated by climate models. Despite this, the authors found that in the two Mediterranean regions, the increase in warming attributable to human-induced climate change is about 2°C, substantially surpassing the level of global warming, even under this conservative estimate.Water Reuse Energy Demands and Water Quality Metrics, Shurtliff et al., Idaho National Laboratory
The authors discuss strategies for enhancing water resilience in energy production by advancing water reuse and reclamation technologies, particularly for thermoelectric power plants and data centers. The focus is on efficiently closing the water loop by processing discharged cooling water to recover valuable minerals, thereby reducing energy-intensive water sourcing and management. This approach aims to alleviate water scarcity issues, especially in arid regions, while also promoting operational sustainability.Water Availability for Cooling Systems: Assessing Demands, Constraints, and Alternative Sources for Thermoelectric Plants and Data Centers, Bastidas Pacheco et al., Idaho National Laboratory
The authors address Water-for-Energy by focusing on improving water management to provide additional cooling water to further thermoelectric energy production and support data center deployments. They assessed existing demands and constraints on cooling water and identified alternative sources of water to meet growing needs of large-scale water and energy users.All hazards operational guidance: responding to climate disruption, Chartered Institution of Highways & Transportation
The authors provide guidance to help local highway authorities (LHAs) design, implement, and test their operational response to disruption to their networks caused by extreme heat, flooding, wildfires, and other hazards. Leaders must ensure that an operational framework is in place that allows the authority to act quickly when faced with credible risks from such events, prioritize interventions where consequences for communities are greatest, and make available suitably qualified, experienced, and empowered professionals to take timely, defensible decisions under conditions of uncertainty. The operational framework should facilitate coordinated action across the organization and with partners, supported by “good enough” information, sound governance arrangements, and effective communication. It should also ensure that decisions are recorded and used after the event to inform future planning and investment.Climate Resilience as Strategy: Scaling Corporate Action on Physical Risks from Climate Change, Radulovic et al., Systemiq and the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions
Most companies now acknowledge growing physical risk and have begun strengthening business continuity. But maturity still lags exposure. Many adaptation plans push implementation far into the future — and only 25% of corporate adaptation measures are genuinely strategic in nature. A key gap is valuation — the ability to quantify avoided losses in ways finance teams trust. Without this, resilience falls down the priority list against nearer-term initiatives. The mismatch between capital planning cycles and multi-decade physical risk trajectories compounds the problem. Guidance is expanding quickly, and strongest on risk assessment and disclosure. But it remains fragmented and uneven on the elements that convert insight into action: valuing resilience, building financeable pipelines of interventions, and enabling ecosystem collaboration.Survey reveals gap between climate change concern and actual news coverage, Climate News Tracker/Kantar
A survey of journalists and production staff across UK public service media concluded climate reporting needs new approaches. Broadcast journalists in Britain say they rank climate change and environmental issues above many of the traditional pillars of news coverage – including the National Health Service, international conflict and immigration – yet this is not reflected in what audiences actually see and hear. More than 80% of respondents said crowded news agendas and packed running orders hinder climate coverage. Program editors and channel schedulers may be willing to extend a bulletin for a dramatic, unexpected and consequential story, but the climate crisis rarely meets the threshold for such immediate editorial prioritization. The planet heating up is a slow-burning story whose significance has developed over years rather than hours, making it harder to compete with the urgency of daily news. Journalists also highlighted the difficulty of finding strong editorial “pegs” for climate stories outside major weather events or political announcements. Some 65% said climate stories do not always have a clear or timely news peg. That is disappointing.Current Best Practices on Wildfire Risk Reduction for Electric Transmission and Distribution Systems, Coleman et al., Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
To help utilities, states, and municipalities address growing wildfire risks, the authors prepared a comprehensive report outlining current best practices for wildfire planning, prevention, response, and recovery. They highlight utility-led strategies for mitigating wildfire risks from electric transmission and distribution systems. This work underscores the urgent need for proactive investment in resilience as wildfire threats intensify across the nation.Managing construction in a changing climate, Suzanne Davenport, NHBC Foundation
The authors explore how climate change is affecting construction across the UK, the effects of extreme weather on construction quality, programs, materials and costs, the risks to worker health, safety and wellbeing, practical guidance and checklists for site managers to prepare for extreme weather, and, resilient construction solutions, technologies and techniques to improve climate adaptation on site.U.S. gas power proposals tied to data centers nearly double in six months, Jenny Martos, GEM
Driven by rapid data center expansion, U.S. gas-fired power capacity in development jumped 50% to 378 GW, with Texas leading the push and developers pivoting to faster-to-install engines to skip supply backlogs. However, severe turbine supply constraints, project delays, local moratoriums, and mounting public opposition leave the true scale of this US$647 billion gas buildout highly uncertain.Evaluation of ARPA-E's Mission and Goals, Marchant et al., National Academies of Science
The Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) was established in 2009 to address barriers to developing transformational science and technology solutions for the nation's energy and environmental challenges. The authors evaluate ARPA-E's operations and assesses the effects of its' programs to date. The authors also explore the agency's future challenges and opportunities, recommending ways ARPA-E can build on its' early successes to respond effectively to emerging energy needs. Key recommendations address funding and leadership stability, strategic planning and evaluation, risk and failure management, process innovation and experimentation, and transparency and public communication. About New ResearchClick here for the why and how of Skeptical Science New Research.
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Previous editionThe previous edition of Skeptical Science New Research may be found here.
The movement to defend the Minneapolis 15
This article The movement to defend the Minneapolis 15 was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.
When Minneapolis organizer Alec Stewart pulled out of his parking spot on June 16 and headed to work, it seemed like an ordinary day. That is, until Homeland Security Investigations, a detective-like sub-agency of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, rolled up with multiple squad cars and dragged him out of his vehicle.
“I was never told I was arrested,” said Stewart, who goes by Mac. “I was not told what for. I was not shown any warrants. I had no idea [I was going to be arrested] until I was in cuffs.”
Mac was among the thousands of Minnesotans who rallied to defend their neighbors this January when Trump inundated Minneapolis-St. Paul with federal immigration agents who outnumbered regular police 3 to 1. Residents responded with one of the most sweeping, complex and powerful movements of the decade, mobilizing a multitude of existing relationships and organizations to craft a shield capable of fighting off Trump’s domestic militia. Using the encrypted app Signal, they built networks to track officers and warn potential arrestees. They launched mutual aid networks to support those who were in hiding to avoid becoming targets of Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, or ICE. They blockaded roads, tailed ICE vehicles and went out on a one-day general strike.
The charges faced by Mac and his 14 co-defendants, all of whom were arrested on the same day, carry multi-year sentences. The government claims all 15 people indicted “did knowingly conspire … to prevent by force, intimidation and threats, officers and employees of the United States Department of Homeland Security … from discharging the duties of their officers,” while individual defendants have been charged with additional crimes like assault on a federal officer. The alleged “conspiracy” involved everything from conversations in Signal chats about plans to blockade an ICE processing center, to assigning working groups for the Jan. 23 General Strike, to possessing homemade defensive shields or just following federal officers — as tens of thousands around the country have done.
What’s particularly alarming to the defendants and their allies is that the charges don’t cite any specific officers who were assaulted, and the government’s evidence includes mundane activist chatter: discussing protests and ICE locations, posting an article from the anarchist website CrimethInc. Anything provably tied to organizing, or just radical ideas, became proof of conspiracy: renting a U-Haul, purchasing a trailer from Facebook Marketplace, calling on Facebook for the public to “become ungovernable” — all were alleged evidence of malicious intent.
#newsletter-block_ba0195913623622a3a7e208e4a96ceeb { background: #ECECEC; color: #000000; } #newsletter-block_ba0195913623622a3a7e208e4a96ceeb #mc_embed_signup_front input#mce-EMAIL { border-color:#000000 !important; color: #000000 !important; } Sign Up for our NewsletterWhat’s also alarming is how that information was gathered. Recently, the defense filed a motion that revealed the existence of Operation Puppet Master, a program to surveil and investigate Twin Cities labor unions, churches and community groups in advance of the filing of criminal charges. Unions in which defendants were member leaders had their finances quietly inspected, including their national unions’ political donations. Undercover officers attended protest planning meetings and covertly recorded unsuspecting citizens. The level of surveillance was shockingly broad: Homeland Security Investigations had near carte blanche to categorize almost any organization that could oppose sweeping deportation arrests as potentially criminal.
If the government can make these charges stick, it could have a profound chilling effect on one of the largest social movements of the 21st century, and could chart a pathway for the Trump administration to effectively criminalize any opposition. That is why these 15 defendants have vowed to fight the charges, and why they have a committee of supporters who are doing what it takes to support those who have been singled out.
They came for everyone“I think they picked us out because we’re good organizers,” said Treasure Thoreson, a special education teacher who was among those indicted. All 15 of the defendants are union members, and many are leaders in their locals. Thoreson is an executive board member of the Minneapolis Federation of Educators and was a captain during their confrontational strike in 2022. When Trump came back in 2024, she knew deportation defense had to be the priority. She built on her strike experience as she began to organize against ICE in her neighborhood, working with a group of rank-and-file union members called the Workers’ Solidarity Circle.
“This is purely a way to try and send a message of fear and of repression,” Thoreson said of the charges. That opinion was echoed by everyone working on the Minneapolis case, and also by those doing jail support for criminalized protesters across the country.
Protesters rally at the Whipple Building, an ICE processing center, on Jan. 30 in Minneapolis. (Octavio Jones / AFP via Getty Images)The Minneapolis 15, as the defendants have become known, are the latest in what is becoming an institutional strategy by the federal government. In the fall of 2025, a 12-count indictment was issued relating to a shooting of an officer during a July 4 protest outside of the Prairieland Detention Center in Texas. In September, Trump labeled “antifa” a “Domestic Terrorist Organization” and connected the Prairieland case to it. Prosecutors in the case used “antifa” ideology as evidence of “providing material support to terrorists” — support that allegedly came in the form of offering “property, services, training, communications equipment, weapons, explosives, personnel (including themselves) and transportation.”
The Prairieland indictments cast a wide net and tried to implicate protesters, some of whom barely knew each other, in the shooting based on their attendance at the demonstration, participation in a Signal channel coordinating direct actions and, in one particularly shocking situation, having moved a box of political zines that were considered evidence.
Many of these defendants were ultimately convicted of charges like rioting or providing material support to terrorists and sentenced to lengthy prison terms, for a cumulative sentence of more than 450 years in federal prison. The defendant who transferred the box of protest literature received 30 years for “corruptly concealing a document or record.”
“The outcome of this case will haunt movements for decades to come,” wrote the Prairieland defense committee in a public statement. “The Trump administration is using what happened on July 4 to test its ability to criminalize dissent and chill all opposition.”
Also last fall, six demonstrators, including a congressional candidate, were arrested while protesting the Broadview ICE facility in the Chicago suburbs and charged with felony conspiracy to impede a federal official, among other charges, though the felony charges were eventually dropped. Then, in January, 39 people were arrested at the Cities Church in St. Paul for protesting against the ICE officer who served as their lay preacher, and charged with interfering with religious freedom. These arrests galvanized the media because former CNN host Don Lemon, who was covering the event as a journalist, was among those charged, thus sending the message that reporters could be treated as perpetrators.
Reuters found at least 655 cases brought in 2025 and early 2026 under 18 U.S.C. Section 111, the primary law being used against people accused of interfering with ICE, which punishes anyone who “forcibly assaults, resists, opposes, impedes, intimidates or interferes with” federal officers. This was the rationale given by masked federal immigration agents for arresting 42-year-old Minnesota resident Becky Ringstrom after surrounding her car and pounding on her window with a metal object. As a result, she was told, her information was entered into a government database, presumably allowing the administration to further build out a list of activists who challenge their authority.
What’s different about the Minneapolis case, is that it uses another statute, 18 U.S.C. Section 372, focusing on alleged coordination, which widens its potential scope.
With arrests mounting, charges escalating, and the government employing broad infiltration and surveillance, those who are organizing the defense committee hope that their model can be reproduced by communities around the country if and when their resistance is criminalized.
The best defense“A lot of what the defense committee is trying to do is bring attention to the fact that this happened and show support for these people,” said Emily, a Minneapolis organizer who is a part of the defense committee and asked that only her first name be used for fear of government reprisal.
When activists are arrested, they are at a huge disadvantage in terms of resources and finances. A defense committee is critical to pooling community connections and skills that can support them as they head towards trial.
Because legal costs and the expenses of other consequences from facing such extraordinary charges can become insurmountable, creating a fundraiser was the first order of business. The fund had reached over $390,000 as of Aug. 27. Immediate support is often the next priority: helping the defendants pay their rent, get groceries and figure out day-to-day needs, particularly since in this case the defendants were ordered to have no communication with each other by the court.
Previous Coverage“I think that’s another reason they’re doing this is to scare people that this could happen to you if you do anything to protect your neighbors,” Emily said. “You could be facing legal charges and have to go through that process, which could take months, if not [longer].”
This is why Mac says “the process is the punishment,” since the time and money it takes to even win a case, or see it through until it is dismissed, can be enormous. Since the evidence includes things most of the city was doing, the slogan “Minnesota, the land of 100,000 unindicted codefendants” has spread.
While financial and legal support are absolutely critical, so, too, is ensuring that the defendants stay a part of the public conversation and are supported by larger institutional players. Some members of the defense committee work with the media, while others connect with community groups. And as members of unions, the co-defendants have a built-in base of support.
“Today, the Trump administration is trying to criminalize those who speak up for their neighbors — trashing civil liberties, transparency and accountability — and then pepper spraying those who dare to call them out,” said Randi Weingarten, the national president of American Federation of Teachers, of which Thoreson’s union is an affiliate.
Union membership is mentioned in the indictment, as is the historic Jan. 23 general strike, which suggests that labor activism is part of why the Minneapolis 15 were singled out. Unions have played an especially large role in the movement against ICE’s occupation of Minneapolis, above and beyond that single-day strike. Unions like Unite HERE helped to transport vulnerable immigrant workers to and from work, and others, like CWA Local 7250 and SEIU Local 26, built mutual aid networks to support those who couldn’t work for fear of ICE arrest. The Minneapolis Federation of Educators had one of the most central roles, working with parents to prevent ICE arrests at schools by establishing hundreds of weekly watch shifts each week.
Minneapolis teachers, parents and children rally against ICE targeting schools. (Riley Bruce / Take Action MN)Most movements that have faced extreme legal repression, from the Black Panthers to the New Left, have had to maintain long-term support for political prisoners. These efforts are necessary to help to ensure that no one is left behind, though they can require significant time and financial resources. But they also help the larger project survive, which in this case means maintaining the systems of mutual aid and direct action that activists are invested in.
“It would be tragic to see all the work we’ve done get hamstrung by this politically repressive move,” said Mac, echoing what other defendants have said: The best form of support is to continue to defend our communities.
“[We need to] keep on going and doing what we have been doing — organizing, developing decentralized local groups that can have each other’s backs, so that when something happens again, we have this protection — and to continue to get unions involved,” said Emily, in a point echoed by the defendants.
The committee is eyeing upcoming court dates over pretrial discovery motions that will determine how widely the state can cast its evidentiary net. Discovery can be punitive in the same way that the length and cost of a court case can. The process can be used to pull private conversations and information about dissidents into the public record. This can include conversations and internet activity that range from embarrassing to incriminating, often forcing activists to go through a painfully humiliating process of exposure that leads them open to further repression. Putting limits on that is a priority for the committee.
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DonateWith the federal government’s wildly outsized indictment and sweeping surveillance tactics, the outcome could be precedent-setting for what options federal authorities have when looking to infiltrate a particular locality’s anti-ICE network. Given that Trump has also used ICE as a kind of federal protest police, his federal allies need a legal victory that would allow Trump to target any city that defies him.
The only thing that will stop that, besides good legal counsel, is having the community behind them to remind prosecutors and judges that their actions are observable and have consequences ranging from protests to lawsuits and election losses. Trump’s attacks on civil liberties and democracy are sustained primarily where resistance wanes. While the neutrality of courts has held in some cases and bent to Trump’s will in others, what happens outside of the courtroom is just as important as what happens inside it.
This article The movement to defend the Minneapolis 15 was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.
Seminario internacional abordará el rol estratégico de los residuos orgánicos para la acción climática y la transición hacia basura cero
Más de 20 especialistas, autoridades, académicos,organizaciones de la sociedad civil y representantes de movimientos de recicladores de América Latina y el Caribe se reunirán el próximo 2 de septiembre en Santiago de Chile para compartir experiencias,conocimientos y estrategias para impulsar la transición hacia modelos basura cero en la región.
Santiago de Chile, agosto de 2026. — ¿Cómo puede la gestión de los residuos contribuir a enfrentar la crisis climática y, al mismo tiempo, generar soluciones locales y fortalecer a las comunidades? Esta será una de las principales preguntas que abordará el “Seminario Internacional basura cero: el rol estratégico de los residuos orgánicos para la acción climática y la democratización de soluciones”, que se realizará el miércoles 2 de septiembre, de 8 a.m. a 5 p.m., en el Aula Magna de la Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile.
Organizado por GAIA, Break Free From Plastic (BFFP) y la Alianza Basura Cero, el encuentro reunirá a especialistas, organizaciones sociales, autoridades, representantes de gobiernos locales, academia y personas vinculadas a la gestión de residuos de distintos países de América Latina.
El seminario pondrá en discusión el potencial de los modelos basura cero como una estrategia concreta frente a la crisis climática, con especial énfasis en la gestión y valorización de los residuos orgánicos. La agenda contempla cuatro espacios: basura cero como estrategia climática y de desarrollo local; basura cero como política pública nacional; experiencias que demuestran que estos modelos funcionan; y un panel estratégico sobre cómo avanzar hacia una mayor responsabilidad de las empresas frente a los impactos generados por sus productos.
Entre las personas expositoras se encuentran Marcelo Mena, exministra de Medio Ambiente de Chile y director ejecutivo de Global Methane Hub; Juan Pablo Escudero, investigador del Instituto Emmett de UCLA y especialista en derecho ambiental; Kevin Basoa, del Ministerio del Medio Ambiente de Chile; María José Ureta, jefa de la Oficina de Economía Circular de Chile; Miguel Rivas, director de proyectos de Ponguinguiola, quien ha impulsado políticas públicas orientadas a la protección de ecosistemas, la reducción de plásticos y el desarrollo de soluciones climáticas, educativas y comunitarias; Christie Keith, coordinadora internacional de GAIA; y representantes de organizaciones de recicladores de base de Brasil, Argentina y Chile, entre otros especialistas y referentes de la región.
La diversidad de voces busca poner en el centro soluciones que no sólo reduzcan los impactos ambientales, sino que también incorporen justicia social, participación ciudadana, trabajo digno y desarrollo local.
Basura cero plantea una mirada que va más allá de la disposición final de los residuos: busca prevenir su generación, recuperar materiales, reducir la contaminación y fortalecer sistemas locales capaces de responder a la crisis climática desde soluciones concretas y democratizadas.
Las inscripciones son gratuitas y deben realizarse previas al evento a través de este link.
Fecha: miércoles 2 de septiembre de 2026
Horario: 8:00 a 17:00 horas
Lugar: Aula Magna, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile
El seminario también contará con transmisión en vivo. Registros en este link.
Contactos de prensa:
Camila Aguilera, GAIA, camila@no-burn.org | +56 9 8913 6198
María Fernanda Pérez R., BFFP, mafe@breakfreefromplastic.org | +58 424 210 8017
The post Seminario internacional abordará el rol estratégico de los residuos orgánicos para la acción climática y la transición hacia basura cero first appeared on GAIA.
Talking Headways Podcast: Measuring the Pulse of Urban Development
This week on the Talking Headways podcast, we’re joined by Karen Seto at Yale University and Zhe Zhu at the University of Connecticut to talk about their new study, The Urban Pulse. We talk about using granular satellite data to measure change in cities and the processes of urbanization.
Longtime listeners know the deal: Hit play on the audio player embedded below, read a full albeit AI-generated transcript here, or check out the edited excerpt at the end of this post.
Jeff Wood: How did you all collect the data, and how frequent was the pulse that you measured?
Zhe Zhu: It’s from Landsat and Sentinel-2. This data came from the NASA Harmonized Landsat Sentinel-2 data. It’s a NASA program that combines medium-resolution images into a 30-meter-by-30-meter resolution cell and removes all the sensor-to-sensor differences. It’s very good at detecting clouds and obtaining a clear observation.
About every three days, you’re going to get an observation based on how cloudy your locations are. And the data removes these atmospheric influences ands bi-directional differences when you view the same vantage point from different locations. The images are very consistent if there’s no change. When there’s change, we can see it based on this time series.
Jeff Wood: How do you see it? There’s so much data and information — how do you actually measure that change? You can see it if you look at one satellite image and another, but how do you systematize that so that you can actually, over time, collect this information?
Zhe Zhu: We built a time-series approach with two components. The first component is the code algorithm, which continuously monitors land disturbances. It basically drills through the time series. You can model what the surface will look like if nothing changes. Take the phenology of trees, which measures their seasonal life cycles. Phenology is going to have up and downs for different kind of conditions: the solar angle, the solar elevation, the topography, and so on.
The second component is where deep learning, machine learning comes in. We need to classify these breaks and the changes we observe. We need to make sure what is real: construction instead of deforestation or some other kind of non-construction related change. We use deep learning because the human patterns are very unique, so we need to combine the time series data and spatial pattern data in order to classify whether something is really a construction-related change instead of, for example, a fire or some other change that occurred on the land’s surface.
Karen Seto: One thing that is so novel about the methodology that Zhe developed is that it departs from the more conventional way of using satellite data, where you take the raw data and classify it into classes, right? Roads, buildings, agriculture — you do it to the next one, and the next one.
Zhe’s method takes the ostensibly raw data with minimal correction to see the signal, and then once there’s a change in the signal, you can say, “Oh, what is that class, given that there’s this big jump?” The methodology treats change as an inherent part of the signal.
Jeff Wood: When you looked into some of the changes, was there anything that was really interesting or jumped out at you? Like, maybe they’re building a subway in Shenzhen or they’re making these changes in Lagos? What are some of the things that popped out to you?
Karen Seto: Well, Zhe and I looked at the data for Dubai right after COVID, and we said, “Oh, this neighborhood in Dubai has no effect. There’s no COVID effect. There’s no drop in activity.” Whereas in other places in Dubai and in other parts of other cities, there was a clear drop. COVID happened, and there were shutdowns — but in this one neighborhood, everything stayed the same. So we, we did some research on that neighborhood, and it certainly corroborated what the data showed. It was surprising.
Jeff Wood: What was happening in that neighborhood? I’m curious.
Karen Seto: Continued development. People were still out and about.
Jeff Wood: Just going around, doing their thing.
Karen Seto: Yep.
Zhe Zhu: Yeah. And the spikiness of the urban development is also something I’m quite surprised about. I always thought of urbanization as something you do steadily, whether increasing or decreasing, but it is not. Lack of development can dominate for a few years, and then you get a big spike, and then nothing happens for a few years. We see that in a lot of places.
To sort or not to sort your recyclables—which is the better climate bet?
In the late 1980s, the city of Phoenix, Arizona made a bet: If residents no longer had to sort glass from paper from plastic, more of them would recycle. Single-stream recycling was born—one bin, one truck—and it spread fast. By 2010, nearly two-thirds of U.S. recycling programs had switched. Europe and Japan, however, didn’t follow suit; they opted for multiple bins and consumer sorting, betting that purity rather than convenience was the real prize.
Then came 2018. China upended the recycling world with the “National Sword,” a policy with an intimidating name that slammed the door on contaminated imports. Overnight, single-stream’s hidden costs became visible.
At first, it looked like the end of the debate between single stream and dual stream. But it turned out to be an inflection point. What followed has been a period of experimentation. Some materials recovery facilities are adapting, investing in optical sorters and robotics. A handful of cities have reversed course to dual-stream, reigniting the debate.
The stakes are far bigger than sorting logistics. The EPA estimates recycling a ton of mixed materials avoids nearly 2.8 metric tons of CO2-equivalent versus landfilling it. In 2018 alone, recycling and composting kept an estimated 193 million metric tons of CO2-equivalent out of the atmosphere—roughly the annual emissions of 42 million cars.
Contamination undermines this emissions math; convenience and greater participation shores it up. So what combination of technology, economics, and human behavior will bend the emissions curve further—now and in the future?
Source: Statista by CC • • • The Climate Case for Single Stream
1. Quantity over quality. Contamination is single-stream’s Achilles heel—but it might be offset if more material is recycled. A number of municipalities that switched to single stream have reported increased collection rates ranging from 20% to as high as 84%. And if the numbers are right, this can translate into carbon savings. A 2022 life-cycle analysis paper focusing on Virginia found that single stream actually saved about 4% more carbon thanks to the higher participation rate.
2. Robots could sort it out. Single-stream recycling doesn’t ask people to sort their recycling, but that doesn’t mean the recycling doesn’t get sorted. It just happens at the collection center instead. AI-powered sorting robots equipped with cameras and trained to recognize and grab different types of plastic promise to make the process extraordinarily efficient. One manufacturer boasted their machines were able to help the facility hit a 99% purity rate and pick out as many as 55 items per minute.
3. Less trucks, lower emissions. Picture a recycling truck in a single-stream set-up, trundling through a neighborhood. By the time that truck has completed its route and gone down each and every street, it may have burned 100 miles worth of fuel. As Quartz pointed out, garbage trucks are basically the worst vehicle possible in terms of fuel efficiency. That may be bad enough, but since multi-stream set-ups often need multiple trucks to keep waste streams separate, they need to run that 100 miles several times to finish the job, increasing their emissions level well over the single-stream truck’s route. That said, electric trucks do exist and are starting to roll out. And since these don’t produce emissions themselves, the distinction may soon be moot.
• • • The Climate Case for Multi Stream
1. Quality over quantity. Multi-stream recycling turns out cleaner material. This is important since contaminated recycling often ends up in a landfill where paper and other organic material decomposes and emits methane and other greenhouse gases. U.S. landfills overall spew the equivalent of 24 million cars worth of emissions per year—and this might be a severe underestimate. High-end landfills do capture some of this methane, but most don’t. Refuse could also go into an incinerator to generate energy. But waste-to-energy schemes have been held back by high costs and big questions around how much they actually save in emissions. The BBC called them as bad as coal.
2. Less downcycling. So let’s say you throw a clear plastic PET bottle into a single-stream recycling bin. It is then mixed with all kinds of other plastic, and unfortunately once melted down, it can never be a drink bottle again. Instead, it’s turned into other, less valuable things like tote bags. That’s what’s known as downcycling. In terms of carbon, downcycling is better than a landfill. But it’s not that much better. One analysis put downcycling’s savings at only 4% compared to incineration (even in the best case waste-to-energy scenario), compared to 27% savings if it was same-cycled. And, as Grist pointed out, downcycling may ultimately be more about delaying landfill, not wholly preventing it. Multi-stream recycling, with its cleaner end products better avoids this problem.
3. Participation is an American problem. Single-stream schemes might seem to boost participation rates, but you know what else does? Being German. The EU as a whole, which mandates multi-stream recycling, enjoys an average municipal recycling rate of about 40%. Germany in particular hits a whopping 69%, thanks to very clear guidance on bin usage as well as pay-as-you-throw schemes, where households pay for garbage by weight, rather than a flat fee. Meanwhile, the single-stream-loving US lags behind at only about 32%.
• • • What to Keep An Eye On
1. Shipping and handling. Shipping raw materials can add significant emission costs and even cancel out the benefits of recycling. One report found that the emissions from truck transport outweigh the emissions benefits for recycled fiber after only 360 miles. Glass was better, at 1,150 miles, and metals could go upwards of 3,200 miles before their benefits petered out, but there was always a limit. Similarly, making a special trip in your car to return reusable containers to the store could end up producing more greenhouse gases than you save using the containers in the first place.
2. Better recycling through chemistry. Many plastics can’t really be recycled currently, no matter how they’re sorted. But new tech using advanced chemistry, enzymes, or even microbes might change that. Recently, for example, a team at Cambridge University built a solar reactor that turns old plastic bottles into clean hydrogen fuel. Another group of chemists in China developed a process to convert hard-to-recycle styrofoam waste into high quality jet fuel at a cost competitive with petroleum-based fuels. And still another lab announced a new chemical process transforms plastic waste into an effective carbon capture material. Many more such innovations are are making their way into commercial markets.
3. What’s powering the recycling plant? Recycling plants require energy to operate and where this energy comes from may end up mattering more than any of the material that actually passes through its doors. When researchers ran the numbers for paper recycling, for example, the results were sobering. If all wastepaper was recycled, emissions could increase by 10%. That’s because recycling paper uses more fossil fuel electricity than making new paper. The emissions would drastically go down if paper production and recycling were powered by renewable energy.“In our analysis,” they note, “landfill practices mattered more than material flows, and energy use mattered the most.”
Top image: by Dropflare/Adobe Stock
Why Climate Resilience Is Worth the Investment
When the United States shuttered the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) last year, programs building climate resilience were terminated. The loss is pushing climate experts to consider how to fill the gaps and keep this essential work going.
USAID invested in a range of adaptation and mitigation efforts, from drought-resistant crops to the restoration of forests that protected against storm surges, explains Alice C. Hill, the David M. Rubenstein Senior Fellow for Energy and the Environment at the Council on Foreign Relations.
The funding required was “modest” compared to the federal budget, she tells Food Tank, but this work had “lasting consequences in terms of helping communities remain stable.” But when the agency was dismantled, nearly all projects related to climate suddenly disappeared.
“I think it comes at a high cost overseas when we cut these programs,” Hill says. “It comes at a high cost to our preparations here, and it also comes at a high cost of our standing in the world as scientific leaders.” Annual losses from physical climate risks may total as much as 5 percent of the global GDP by 2050, according to S&P Global.
“We need to make choices now to keep ourselves safer,” Hill tells Food Tank. That means investing more, not less, in climate solutions like early warning systems and infrastructure improvements to lessen the blow. “It’s simple measures—comparatively—taken on the ground that leave people in a better place.”
Despite the challenging political environment, Hill remains optimistic that this will be possible. “And that’s a good thing,” she says. “We should all be optimists. It helps us deal with these things.”
Everyone feels angst, Hill believes, but tackling these urgent challenges head on can help keep it at bay. “One of the things about working on catastrophic risk is the ability to be involved with something that matters…working with people trying to find solutions brings me great joy,” she tells Food Tank. “That gives me meaning.”
Listen to the full conversation with Alice C. Hill on “Food Talk with Dani Nierenberg” to hear more about how we move forward after the loss of USAID, why trust lies at the heart of successful solutions, and what the COVID-19 pandemic can teach us about building resilience to the climate crisis.
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Photo courtesy of Marcus Kauffman, Unsplash
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New report shows the impact of oil and gas drilling nomination surge on public lands
DENVER—A new report released today by Rocky Mountain Wild and the Center for Western Priorities illustrates how the Trump administration’s giveaway of national public lands for oil and gas drilling is impacting wildlife, outdoor recreation, and cultural resources across the West. The report, “On the doorstep: How a surge in drilling nominations threatens America’s public lands,” uses eight case studies in five Western states to demonstrate how oil and gas development is encroaching on protected public lands under the Trump administration’s policies.
Congress and the Trump administration have been handing out regulatory giveaways to the oil and gas industry on our public lands under the guise of a so-called “energy emergency” and promoting an “energy dominance” agenda that is failing to achieve its stated goal of bringing down energy costs for Americans.
Since 2025, Congress and the Trump administration have:
- Made it free for oil and gas companies to nominate more than 200 million acres of national public lands for drilling;
- Required the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to offer any of these lands for leasing within 18 months of being nominated;
- Disregarded concerns raised by hunters and anglers, local officials, ranchers, and other experts;
- Proposed a rule that would make it harder for the public to provide input on where industry can and can’t lease public lands, as well as make it easier for companies to walk away from their cleanup obligations and leave behind uncapped wells that can leak dangerous pollutants.
The impact of these giveaways is already clear. Oil and gas companies have nominated nine times more acres for leasing since these policies took effect last year. These nominations include lands that have high-quality fish and wildlife habitat and migration corridors, as well as lands that sit inside recreation areas and near state parks, border crucial water resources, and fall on split-estate lands where the surface is privately owned. Yet American energy costs continue to soar, despite President Trump’s promise to bring down costs with his “energy dominance” agenda.
The Center for Western Priorities released the following statement from Policy Director Rachael Hamby:
“Not only is this administration’s ‘energy dominance’ scheme a complete failure, it’s also destroying wildlife habitats and outdoor recreation areas that are beloved by Americans. While oil and gas companies pad their books and rake in profits, families are being squeezed at every turn. Westerners deserve better. Trump’s failed agenda is wrecking the landscapes, wildlife habitats, and outdoor recreation opportunities we rely on and want to pass on to future generations.”
Learn more:
- Trump’s “energy dominance” agenda is only helping oil and gas companies [Westwise]
- A closer look at the Trump administration’s proposed oil and gas rule [Westwise]
- ‘Energy dominance’ is an epic failure [Westwise]
Featured image: BLM Wyoming via Flickr
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Armed agents enter Tohono O’odham Nation in border wall construction dispute
Armed and masked agents from U.S. Customs and Border Protection, along with border wall contractors, entered the Tohono O’odham Nation without authorization on Tuesday to work on border wall construction, according to Tribal officials. In recent weeks, the Tohono O’odham Nation has posted “No Trespassing” signs and escorted contractors off the Nation in an effort to resist construction of a border wall through Tribal land over the Nation’s objections.
The Nation has also sued the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to block construction. On August 17th, the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. denied a motion for a preliminary injunction, allowing construction to move forward. “Too many critical issues were not adequately addressed, such as inevitable impacts construction will have on the Nation’s land and the permanent destruction of sacred sites,” Tohono O’odham Nation Chairman Verlon M. Jose said in a statement following the denial. “The Nation will consider all possible options for moving forward, as this issue is simply too important to the O’odham.”
The move coincides with a months-long effort to use the border to militarize national public lands, as Center for Western Priorities Creative Content and Policy Manager Lilly Bock-Brownstein wrote in a Westwise blog post in March. Border wall construction through protected public lands has drawn overwhelming opposition at places including Big Bend National Park in Texas and Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument in Arizona.
Quick hits The Texas grid has had a boring summer thanks to batteries Trump proposal could unleash ATVs across national forests The real reason the Forest Service is killing the Roadless Rule As soon as two national monuments were downsized, several companies applied to mine there What the uranium mines left behind As the West dries up, more companies are promising they can make it rain New trails at a state park in southern Colorado are ‘a huge piece of the puzzle’ in reviving nearby town Opinion: National monuments drive economic growth and unite diverse interests Quote of the dayWe have lived in this region since time immemorial. There is no doubt this wall will desecrate countless sacred areas, burial sites, and other important locations.”
—Tohono O’odham Nation Chairman Verlon M. Jose, KVOA
Picture This @parashantnpsStand on any ridge in Grand Canyon-Parashant National Monument and you’re watching America move. Not in miles per hour, but in millimeters per year. The ground beneath your feet is slowly stretching apart, reshaping the landscape in real time.
Parashant sits at the meeting point of two remarkable regions, the Colorado Plateau and the Great Basin. The forces that built these landscapes are still at work today, quietly shaping the scenery.
Much of this story begins with plate tectonics. Off the West Coast, oceanic plates dive beneath North America, creating pressure that slowly spreads and thins the crust. This process, called crustal extension, is what gives the Great Basin region its broad valleys and long north‑south mountain ranges.
Here at Parashant, only about 18 miles of crust separate you from Earth’s molten mantle, a good reminder that the land is always changing. Even if we can’t see it happen, the story of this place is still being written, one millimeter at a time.
Want to learn more about plate tectonics at Parashant? Visit our website!
NPS Photo, Hudson Point
Featured image: Border fence on the Tohono O’odham Nation, Evan616 via Wikimedia Commons/CC BY-SA 4.0
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Nepal-Tibet flash flood shows the deadly price of climate delay
A glacial collapse that resulted in a flash flood in the Nepal-Tibet border shows that climate delay is proving to be deadlier and more destructive than world leaders admit, climate groups said.
Disasters like this are becoming more frequent and more deadly as the Himalayas warm and glaciers destabilize, 350.org said, extending sympathies and calling for immediate international support for affected people and communities.
Aakriti Dotel, National Network Coordinator, Nepalese Youth for Climate Action (NYCA) said:
“The devastating floods in Rasuwa are another painful reminder of the growing climate crisis facing Nepal and the Himalayas. As our glaciers melt and extreme weather events become increasingly unpredictable, communities living downstream are bearing the devastating consequences. We mourn the lives lost and the livelihoods affected and call for urgent global climate action. There must be stronger support for vulnerable mountain communities, and accountability from those most responsible for the climate crisis.”
350.org pointed out that the tragedy exposes the failure of big polluting countries to provide the much needed finance that will enable vulnerable countries like Nepal to adapt to a changing climate, such as technology for early warning systems and other Disaster Risk Reduction measures.
Savio Carvalho, 350.org Head of Campaigns and Networks said:
“Every destabilized glacier in a warming Himalaya is a ticking time bomb that can go off unannounced, and when it does, those least responsible for the climate crisis pay with their lives. This moment of grief has a clear message for world leaders: delay is deadly. Rich countries must finally deliver the finance and protection they owe frontline communities. Without a rapid transition away from fossil fuels, the planet will continue to heat up and lives can be lost in a flash.”
To interview Nepalese climate activists, including those impacted by the flood, kindly reach out.
The circular chemistry that could make cement carbon-negative
Cement is one of the most-used manmade materials in the world. And the kilns that produce this in-demand building material belch about 8 percent of the global carbon dioxide emissions.
But a team from ETH Zurich and the US company Heirloom Carbon Technologies now propose a way to dramatically cut emissions from future cement factories. By employing established technologies, cement factories could not only capture their own emissions, the researchers write in the journal Chem Circularity, but also remove additional carbon dioxide from the atmosphere
The world produces about 4 billion tons of cement every year. Manufacturing cement, which is the key ingredient of concrete, is notoriously difficult to decarbonize. That’s because it requires heating limestone at high temperatures in large fossil fuel-burning kilns. And the chemical reaction itself releases carbon dioxide.
The ETH team proposes powering kilns with clean electricity rather than fossil fuels. That would cut the carbon emissions from heat production. Heirloom Carbon’s direct air capture technology would then capture the carbon dioxide released during limestone conversion. The gas would be compressed and permanently stored underground.
The company’s DAC technology, called calcium looping, is “uniquely positioned for such integration,” the team writes in the paper. That’s because the process cycles calcium between two compounds: calcium carbonate and calcium hydroxide. These are the same materials and chemical conversion steps used in cement manufacturing.
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Limestone, or calcium carbonate, is the starting point. When heated, the limestone breaks down into calcium oxide, also known as quicklime, and carbon dioxide. In the proposed system, adding water to the quicklime would make it absorb more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and turn back into limestone, and the loop would continue.
According to the researchers’ calculations, electrifying the kiln and using calcium-looping DAC could reduce the climate impact of cement production by 78% by 2050.
Heirloom has been running a plant in California since 2023. The plant can capture 1,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide a year. “Heirloom was an ideal partner for us because the company is already operating the first calcium looping DAC systems on a commercial scale,” said Vittoria Bolongaro, a graduate student and lead author of the paper, in a press release.
The team analyzed various energy scenarios. These included operating the plant using the current US electricity mix; using a clean electricity mix consisting of wind and solar energy; and a fully autonomous clean-energy system with photovoltaics and battery storage.
“We were able to show that the technology has a net-negative carbon footprint,” Bolongaro said. “In other words, commercial calcium looping DAC plants with carbon dioxide storage remove more carbon dioxide than they generate over their entire lifecycle.”
Source: Vittoria Bolongaro et al. Life cycle assessment of solid calcium-looping direct air capture and its synergistic dual use for net-negative cement. Chem Circularity, 2026
Image: Getty images for Unsplash+
Rathlin board changes
Rathlin Energy, the company planning lower-volume fracking in East Yorkshire, has appointed a new board member from its majority owner.
Christopher Connolly, the chief financial officer of Reabold Resources, became Rathlin’s secretary earlier this month. The appointment was confirmed by Companies House yesterday (26 August 2026).
Mr Connolly has been Reabold’s secretary since May 2022.
Reabold Resources has a near 80% stake in Rathlin Energy, which has two oil and gas sites at West Newton in Holderness, East Yorkshire.
A local campaigner is seeking to quash consent by the Environment Agency for lower-volume fracking at the West Newton-A site.
Reabold is also seeking to takeover Union Jack Oil, another investor in the West Newton plans. Shareholders ousted the Union Jack board this week.
Other recent board changes at Rathlin include the appointment in July 2026 of Philip Birch, a former director of Africa Energy UK Limited, Impact Oil & Gas Limited and IOG Energies Limited.
DrillOrDrop reported in April 2026 that Rathlin’s founder, John Hodgins (73), a Canadian petroleum geologist, had resigned from the board. He was chief executive of Connaught Oil & Gas Ltd, Rathlin’s former parent company.
The co-chief executive of Reabold Resources, Stephen Williams, has been a Rathlin director since 2019.
A Model Climate Bill, Written Outside Parliament
Hungary has never had such a good climate bill as the one it could have now if, improbably, its parliament were to adopt the draft written by civil society and put out for public consultation. The fate of this draft legislation – which, with minimal changes, could be of outstanding quality even by international standards – depends on the stance of the Tisza government. But how will Péter Magyar and his party proceed?
Last summer, the Hungarian constitutional court ruled that the climate law passed by Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz government – which liked to call itself a “champion of the climate” – was inadequate and unconstitutional. The court annulled part of the law, calling on the National Assembly to “remedy the breach of the Fundamental Law resulting from this failure” by June 2026.
Subsequently, the Fidesz government showed no interest whatsoever in the matter. But a regulatory proposal has been drawn up that is virtually ready for implementation and could even have ensured compliance with the deadline. This document was not drafted by any parliamentary group: it is the joint effort of more than 180 civil society and professional organisations, and the proposal currently under public debate is of a particularly high standard.
Built on solid principles…One of the draft bill’s greatest strengths is that it treats mitigation (alleviating environmental harm), adaptation (adjusting to climate change), and resilience (increasing resistance) as objectives of equal importance. Unusually, the system of guiding principles is also sufficiently detailed: alongside traditional environmental law principles (precaution, the polluter pays, prevention), it also includes distinctly modern, progressive principles such as the “principle of sufficiency” (which focuses on well-being rather than maximum consumption, thereby limiting waste and the over-use of resources), a systems approach, data-driven decision-making, and proportionate individual responsibility. The fact that the prohibition on regression and intergenerational justice are linked to existing constitutional court case law indicates that the drafters of the text drew upon the few effective practices that Hungarian environmental protection has painstakingly developed over recent decades.
Particularly positive is the detailed and forward-looking approach to water management. The proposal entails the requirement to review bilateral water-sharing agreements, ensuring the public availability of groundwater monitoring data, and encourages the use of greywater. These are all elements that were previously absent from domestic legislation and would be indispensable to managing the water crisis Hungary now faces – the most tangible consequence of climate change in the Carpathian Basin.
The section on forest management is also very thorough: avoiding clearcutting, accounting for shifts in climate zones, and calling for support for species migration all point to a distinctly modern approach. Another positive aspect is the inclusion of the concepts and requirements relating to mental health and energy poverty in the cooling sector, which are absent from many otherwise modern European climate laws
The detailed description of the carbon budget mechanism (a legally binding, period-based planning and accounting framework that determines how much greenhouse gas we may emit in each period if we are serious about achieving net-zero emissions) is useful: together, the five-year rolling planning cycle, the carry-over option, the institution of infringement proceedings, and the obligation to submit final accounts form an enforceable system similar to the UK model. The requirement to introduce consumption-based emissions tracking is also welcome, as it can counterbalance the limitations of the territorial approach. The sectoral measures (building renovation, transport, industry, food consumption) are sufficiently wide-ranging and specific, whilst the establishment of an ecological hierarchy for biomass utilisation (modelled on the waste hierarchy) is particularly forward-looking.
One of the draft bill’s greatest strengths is that it treats mitigation, adaptation, and resilience as objectives of equal importance.
… and strong scientific foundationsThe scientific and innovation elements of the concept are particularly strong: the Climate Innovation Centre, the National Climate Data Centre, and the introduction of funding mechanisms similar to Carbon Contracts for Difference initiatives to support emissions-reduction investments create promising institutional and financial instruments. Support for grassroots initiatives and recognition of traditional and community knowledge are also forward-looking and in line with the principle of subsidiarity. Moreover, the obligation to promote climate awareness at all levels of the education system, the development of teacher training, and measures to combat disinformation together form a coherent strategy for shaping public attitudes.
It seems useful to introduce ex-ante climate risk assessment as a separate legal institution to ensure that no government decision may be adopted without such an evaluation. Extending scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions (i.e. those related to purchased energy, on-site emissions, and arising from suppliers, respectively) to cover the entire value chain in environmental impact assessments is also a modern, ESG-compatible, and forward-looking rule.
Involving the Ombudsman for Future Generations in the ombudsman procedure in the event of a carbon budget overrun could also serve as a strong enforcement mechanism. A similar institution once existed, but the 2011 amendments to the Fundamental Law rendered it ineffective.
The enshrinement of the status of the Scientific Advisory Board on Climate Policy is clearly positive: it operates solely in accordance with the Hungarian constitution and the law and has its own budget and secretariat, and proposals relating to climate targets cannot be adopted without its opinion. The joint nomination mechanism of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (MTA) and the Hungarian Research Network (HUN-REN) also provides a safeguard against political influence. The operation of the government Committee on Climate Protection under the prime minister’s leadership provides an appropriate framework for inter-ministerial coordination, whilst the mixed (partly non-political) composition of the National Climate Protection Council can strengthen its social legitimacy.
The introduction of the concept of “climate endangerment” into Hungarian law is particularly noteworthy: the public prosecutor could also bring proceedings against major emitters, seeking compensation and a ban on their activities, which represents a significant step forward in climate litigation. The privileged legal status of civil society organisations as claimants, their right to bring legal proceedings, and an exemption from litigation fees also provide a significant safeguard. The Advocate for Future Generations’ powers to intervene and to submit motions to the constitutional court are also commendable.
The introduction of the National Climate Protection Fund is a useful initiative, as it creates a dedicated and predictable funding framework (in contrast to current practice, namely ad hoc budgetary allocations and the routine deductions affecting them). The requirement for green corporate governance obligations and transition plans – particularly in light of the fact that these obligations have been substantially relaxed following the narrowing of the scope of the EU’s CSDDD Directive – is a forward-looking and courageous step. Meanwhile, excluding activities relating to fossil fuels from development bank financing is a clear and correct direction. Furthermore, enshrining participation principles in international climate finance would be fair (although, unfortunately, it seems unrealistic in this form).
Areas for improvementAs noted, Hungarian policymakers have never faced such a well-thought-out and complex climate regulation. That said, there are some minor shortcomings and contradictions, which the current public debate could identify and iron out.
Perhaps the most striking omission is the absence of any explicit reference to the institutional framework of climate justice, including climate litigation and state liability. This would be particularly important, as the “no backsliding” and “polluter pays” principles can only be effectively implemented if backed by a strong enforcement mechanism. It would also be worth incorporating a principle of climate equity, which specifies enhanced protection for socially vulnerable groups (the poor, the elderly, and those with a higher health risk), as they bear a disproportionately greater burden from the impacts of climate change.
It is difficult to understand the complete absence of any mention of the transport sector’s resilience in the proposal. For instance, the text could at least allude to infrastructure risks from heatwaves and extreme rainfall (roads, railways, bridges) and to preparing the vehicle fleet. In the transport section, there is also no discussion of aviation and inland waterway transport, even though their emissions are by no means negligible (although, for the time being, European climate legislation also often treats these as separate categories).
The objective of “phasing out harmful state subsidies by 2030” is correct in itself, but its feasibility is doubtful unless it is accompanied by a mandatory review schedule and a public list of the subsidies concerned. Regarding the management of the National Climate Protection Fund, it would be advisable to ensure its independence from political influence and to give civil society organisations a meaningful role in decision-making (rather than merely representing beneficiaries).
The current wording of the green public procurement requirement – “preference must be given” – is far too weak. To ensure effectiveness, a specific quota requirement or a time-bound obligation should be introduced. What is more, the text includes no provision regarding the responsibility of media actors and social media platforms in combating climate disinformation. In the case of the National Climate Protection Council, limiting membership to nine and granting a minister the role of co-chair pose a risk: despite the principles of proportional representation, government influence could become dominant, particularly if the minister’s department also covers the council’s operating costs. It would be advisable to limit the minister’s role to that of an observer or a non-voting chairperson, and to place the funding under the supervision of the National Assembly.
In the case of local authorities, the phrase “The state shall provide adequate budgetary support” is too general and leaves room for abuse. At the very least, the law should set a minimum funding guarantee or a clear allocation method; otherwise, authorities in smaller parts of the country will be unable to fulfil their statutory obligations due to a lack of resources. Rules on conflicts of interest and disclosure obligations for members are lacking as well, which could allow industry lobbyists to influence the decision-making process.
In addition, it would be advisable to establish a mandatory cooperation mechanism between the Scientific Council and the Ombudsman for Future Generations. Both bodies assess compliance with the carbon budget in parallel, and without coordination, overlapping or contradictory recommendations may arise.
The scope of the climate-threatening offence also appears to be narrow, as it applies only to major emitters subject to the EU Emissions Trading System (ETS), whilst medium-sized emitters – whose emissions are significant in aggregate – are excluded. To remedy this, the text should introduce a mechanism for gradual extension.
The possibility of bringing an action for failure to act in the event of a carbon budget shortfall is appropriate, but the provision includes no specific sanction if the government fails to comply even after losing the case, which substantially weakens its enforceability. Furthermore, legality oversight is a useful tool for local authority decisions, but the possibility of withholding funding could disproportionately affect smaller local authorities, which are already under-resourced. So, it would be advisable to establish a graduated system of sanctions and an appeal mechanism.
That said, these are minor details, and there is still time to refine the bill. The more important question is whether, after its historic win, Péter Magyar’s government will have the will to do so – not just to perfect the legislation, but to put an end to the current unconstitutional situation in the first place.
The civil society document is ‘extremely thorough and wide-ranging, comparable to the most comprehensive legislation at European level’.
How will Tisza proceed?“Experts are analysing the text of the civil society draft bill to assess what elements can be incorporated into the draft bill to be tabled by the government,” the press office of the Ministry of the Living Environment announced at the end of July. According to the ministry, the civil society document is “extremely thorough and wide-ranging, comparable to the most comprehensive legislation at European level”. Meanwhile, legislators are also examining which elements should be regulated at statutory level, and which issues are better addressed in strategies or lower-level legislation.
According to the ministry’s position, bolder emission-reduction targets alone are not enough. “A framework must also be established setting out how these targets will be achieved, and what the roles of economic and social actors are in the transition towards sustainability.” The legislation must also address how the country can replace fossil fuels with renewables as well as how it can reduce energy consumption.
Notably, the ministry’s response suggests that Hungary’s new climate law will place much greater emphasis on adaptation than the current legislation. “Hungary is one of Europe’s most vulnerable countries to climate change,” the ministry pointed out. According to a previous ruling by the constitutional court, a legal framework must be established to ensure the preservation of the unique landscapes, wildlife, and natural assets of the Carpathian Basin. Accordingly, “The law must address in great detail adaptation to the inevitable effects of climate change and the development of flexible resilience to climate change.”
Heavy-duty truck market set for faster-than-expected shift to electrification
New analysis shows the sector is approaching a commercial tipping point in the early 2030s that will trigger a rapid shift to battery-electric trucks and reshape competition across the global truck market.
London, 27th August – Heavy-duty transport has long been viewed as one of the most difficult sectors to electrify. Carbon Tracker’s new report, Trucking’s Tipping Point, shows that electric trucks are expected to become economically competitive with diesel across major markets in the early 2030s, overturning the long-held assumption that the sector will be slow to electrify. The analysis demonstrates that China’s rapid freight electrification is poised for swift global export. Equity analysts must urgently reflect this accelerating transition in truckmaker valuations, while portfolio managers should adjust their investment decisions before market re-pricing takes hold.
Drawing on the University of Exeter’s Future Technology Transformations (FTT) model, Carbon Tracker applies an investor-focused analytical framework to assess transition risks and opportunities in the commercial vehicle sector. Calibrated with Carbon Tracker’s proprietary market and asset data, the analysis identifies when commercial tipping points are expected to be reached across major markets and which manufacturers are best positioned for the transition.
Commercial fleet purchasing is ultimately an economic decision driven by total cost of ownership (TCO). The analysis shows that falling battery costs and manufacturing scale are bringing electric trucks towards cost parity with diesel. Once that threshold is reached, adoption is expected to accelerate rapidly across major markets.
For investors, the key risk is not simply when electric trucks overtake diesel in new sales, but how quickly adoption accelerates once commercial tipping points are reached. Faster transition speeds could lead to and then accelerate the write-down of legacy internal combustion manufacturing assets, while rewarding manufacturers that are better prepared for an increasingly electric market.
Ben Scott, Head of Energy Supply at Carbon Tracker said: “Heavy-duty trucking has long been regarded as one of the hardest transport sectors to electrify. While important barriers remain, including charging infrastructure, our analysis shows that improving total cost of ownership will dictate the speed of the trucking EV transition. Investors should not underestimate how quickly adoption could accelerate once those commercial tipping points are reached and should be asking whether manufacturers have credible strategies to compete in an increasingly electric market.”
The report recommends investors:- Stress-test automotive investments against dynamic cost-parity scenarios, rather than relying solely on static regulatory forecasts, to better assess the speed of the transition and the risk of legacy internal combustion assets losing value.
- Use active stewardship to challenge incumbent truck manufacturers on their electrification strategies, including how they plan to scale electric platforms, strengthen supply chains and remain competitive as the market transitions.
– ENDS –
Notes to editors
For more information and to arrange interviews please contact:
Alessandra Moscadelli – alessandra.moscadelli@tracker-group.org
Sally Palmer – sally.palmer@tracker-group.org
About Carbon Tracker
Carbon Tracker is an independent financial think tank working to align capital markets with an accelerated energy transition. Through data-driven research, we assess the risks associated with continued fossil fuel investment and opportunities arising from changes in energy demand, technology and climate policy. Our work empowers investors, policymakers and companies to make informed decisions that support an orderly shift to a net zero emissions future.
The post Heavy-duty truck market set for faster-than-expected shift to electrification appeared first on Carbon Tracker Initiative.
August 27 Green Energy News
Headline News:
- “Renewable Energy Is Winning, Trump Is Losing (Shocker!)” • In the US, the all-important business of climate action continues apace despite Trump’s death cult focus on fossil fuels. Renewable energy now claim 30% of power generating capacity in the US. That 30% figure comes from the US EIA, an independent agency affiliated with the US DOE. [CleanTechnica]
Wind farm in Oregon (Steve Wilson, CC BY-SA 2.0)
- “Finland Plans 26-GW Solar Surge” • Renewables Finland’s updated project portfolio shows that over 26 GW of large solar capacity is being planned in Finland for 300 projects. According to Renewables Finland, 77 projects totaling 4.6 GW have been granted building permits, while another 15 projects representing 1.4 GW have completed the zoning process. [reNews]
- “California Legislature Approves Bill Easing Access To Clean, Affordable ‘Balcony Solar’” • The Environmental Working Group is applauding the California Legislature for passing a bill that will help Californians invest in clean energy while also tackling sky-high energy bills by making it easier to install small, affordable “balcony solar” systems. [CleanTechnica]
- “Evacuations Ordered As Wind-Whipped Ross Fire In Texas Grows To 80,000 Acres” • The Ross Fire, a wind-whipped grass fire near Fort Worth, Texas, rapidly grew overnight to 80,000 acres, triggering evacuations and road closures in two counties, officials said. It was 12% contained on Wednesday morning, up from 5% a day earlier. [ABC News]
- “Delaware Governor Signs Singular Bill to Power Data Centers with Clean Energy” • The Sierra Club is celebrating Delaware Governor Matt Meyer signing into law a suite of legislation that will protect families in the state from having to pay for pricey artificial intelligence data centers. One bill ensures data centers are powered by clean energy. [CleanTechnica]
For more news, please visit geoharvey – Daily News about Energy and Climate Change.
‘Starwashing’: The new space race has an environmental problem
As artificial intelligence devours more land and electricity, a new breed of tech companies promises that outer space holds the solutions to our problems on Earth. If data centers are so hard to find a place for down here, why not put them hundreds of miles above the planet instead? Since power demand surges in the evening, why not send tens of thousands of mirrors into orbit to shine sunlight down on demand, powering solar farms after sunset?
These ideas might sound far-fetched, but they are real proposals from Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and start-ups in the space industry. As private industry drives the new “space race,” now launching more rockets than countries do, even the cosmos is starting to feel a bit crowded. A growing amount of so-called “space junk” has led to concerns that all the metal could collide, creating a destructive layer of debris that anything launching into orbit would have to contend with. Earlier this month, part of a discarded SpaceX rocket unintentionally slammed into the moon at 5,400 miles per hour, blasting a new crater.
As Musk’s SpaceX, Bezos’ Blue Origin, and other companies expand into space, they risk causing more problems for Earth in the process: air pollution, climate effects, and light pollution. The practice of downplaying these negative consequences while trumpeting the message that space operations can make life better on Earth has a new name: “starwashing,” a term the space researcher Melissa E. Yingling helped popularize in an article published in The Conversation earlier this month.
It’s a play on the term “greenwashing,” used to critique companies that highlight small sustainable investments to divert attention from the pollution their businesses cause. Space companies are appealing to a sense of “cosmic wonder” and making promises to benefit humankind, along with promoting their environmental bona fides, Yingling wrote.
For example, Blue Origin says its mission is “to restore and sustain Earth” as it sends rockets and lunar landers up into space, touting reusable rockets, cleaner-burning fuel, and the development of carbon-neutral technologies. Reflect Orbital, the California start-up behind the plan to send 50,000 space mirrors into orbit to provide sunlight on demand, promises “abundant energy” and “a healthier planet.”
All the emphasis these companies place on technological progress is a distraction from dealing with the climate crisis, said Gregers Andersen, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Southern Denmark who has written a forthcoming book about Silicon Valley overpromising tech solutions to climate change. “The problem is, of course, that it takes attention away from actually solving the problems that are here on Earth,” he said. “And I think that’s also what’s meant by the term of ‘starwashing.’”
Whether or not the term catches on, experts say that companies’ optimistic marketing does obscure real environmental risks. Magali Delmas, a professor of management at UCLA’s Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, thinks of the “new frontier” of space as something akin to the Gold Rush. “They were only seeing the positive — they were not seeing the negative impact on the environment of mining,” she said. “This optimism [about space] is really downplaying some of the challenges.”
The growing space industry could wind up polluting the layers of atmosphere in ways that scientists are just beginning to understand, altering Earth’s climate. Rocket engines release soot into the stratosphere, where it can damage the ozone layer that protects us from ultraviolet radiation. They also release water vapor, which absorbs heat radiated from Earth and amplifies the warming caused by greenhouse gases. Research has found that as satellites disintegrate, they could alter the chemistry of the upper atmosphere, releasing aluminum oxide dust that can lead to warming, the scattering of sunlight, and changes in atmospheric circulation.
Beyond changes to the atmosphere, space expansion has other environmental effects, including the loss of dark sky as satellites reflect sunlight and damage to wildlife habitats around launch sites. That’s not to mention the enormous greenhouse gas emissions involved in building and launching satellites.
Delmas said that some of the companies’ promises are worth considering, and can’t be easily dismissed as greenwashing or starwashing: “Some of it’s actually true — there are these new technologies that are developed that can be just amazing.” There have been some environmental benefits from going up into space: Methane-detecting satellites have uncovered leaks from oil and gas operations in recent years that dramatically exceeded what had been reported, important information for reining in emissions of the powerful greenhouse gas. Astronauts have been shocked by how fragile and delicate Earth’s atmosphere looks from space, and this so-called “overview effect” has turned a surprising number of them into climate advocates.
Read Next Data centers gobble Earth’s resources. What if we took them to space instead? Sophie HurwitzAndersen, however, warned against falling for tech moguls’ narratives of “progress.” He thinks they’re trying to manipulate the public into being optimistic about the future, even as scientists show we’re headed toward an even hotter, more disaster-ridden world. He has a different vision of what should be considered “progress” — not establishing colonies in space, where people would live limited lives, but ensuring that humans can thrive on Earth long-term.
“I think the common human project should be to create a sustainable civilization within the planetary boundaries,” Andersen said. “And I think the narratives that they are presenting are just basically derailing us from that mission.”
toolTips('.classtoolTips3','Carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and other gases that prevent heat from escaping Earth’s atmosphere. Together, they act as a blanket to keep the planet at a liveable temperature in what is known as the “greenhouse effect.” Too many of these gases, however, can cause excessive warming, disrupting fragile climates and ecosystems.'); toolTips('.classtoolTips7','A powerful greenhouse gas that accounts for about 11% of global emissions, methane is the primary component of natural gas and is emitted into the atmosphere by landfills, oil and natural gas systems, agricultural activities, coal mining, and wastewater treatment, among other pathways. Over a 20-year period, it is roughly 84 times more potent than carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere.');This story was originally published by Grist with the headline ‘Starwashing’: The new space race has an environmental problem on Aug 27, 2026.
On Louisiana’s disappearing coast, a natural gas terminal is poised to become the largest in the US
Less than two years after opening, a liquefied natural gas terminal near New Orleans is seeking a multibillion-dollar expansion under the Trump administration’s new “emergency” permitting process that cuts regulatory review and could put nearby wetlands and waterways at greater risk.
Earlier this summer, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers granted Plaquemines LNG fast-tracked permitting under a “national energy emergency” that President Donald Trump declared last year. The agency cut the public comment period from the typical 30 days to 10, and is expected to move quickly to approve the expansion, a step that would allow the terminal to more than double in size, growing from nearly 590 acres along the Mississippi River to about 1,220.
That would make the facility the largest LNG export terminal in North America, according to its owner, Virginia-based Venture Global.
Environmentalists warn that the expedited review will mean less scrutiny of dredging, in-water construction, and the filling of marshlands in a region rapidly losing land. By the Army Corps’ estimates, Venture Global’s $18-billion expansion could damage up to 470 acres of wetlands and river bottoms in central Plaquemines Parish, about 25 miles south of New Orleans.
“Louisiana is already dealing with a coastal crisis,” said Matt Rota, a senior policy director with Healthy Gulf, a New Orleans-based environmental group. “Destroying 400 more acres in Plaquemines Parish is ridiculous. I don’t know how many acres they have left, but it’s not that much.”
The Plaquemines LNG terminal in Port Sulphur on July 28.Christiana Botic / Verite News
Plaquemines Parish has lost more than 250 square miles of land over the past 60 years to subsidence, sea level rise, and erosion. The state’s Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority projects another 300 square miles — about half the parish’s remaining land — could disappear over the next 50 years. Much of Louisiana’s coast faces a similar threat. Since the early 1900s, nearly 2,000 square miles of the state have vanished, an area roughly the size of Delaware.
Hundreds of other projects could receive expedited permitting under the emergency declaration, which Trump said was necessary to maintain a “reliable, diversified, and affordable supply of energy” for the U.S. military and economy. Last year, the Army Corps identified more than 600 pipelines, power plants, LNG terminals, and others that could speed through the normal review process required by the Clean Water Act.
Fast-tracking permits will likely accelerate the growth of an already booming LNG industry. More than 30 LNG export terminals are under construction or proposed in the United States. Plaquemines LNG is the newest of four terminals in Louisiana, including Sabine Pass, Cameron LNG, and Calcasieu Pass LNG, which is also owned by Venture Global. (The Army Corps and Venture Global did not respond to requests for comment.)
LNG is natural gas chilled into a liquid for easier shipment overseas, where demand has surged as countries seek alternatives to coal and Russian gas. The industry’s critics say shipping natural gas abroad conflicts with Trump’s stated rationale for declaring an energy emergency: increasing what he described as the “nation’s inadequate energy supply.”
“It’s hard to see how expanding an LNG export terminal is going to help domestic energy independence and reliability,” said Griffin Bird, a research analyst with the Environmental Integrity Project.
Of the 833 billion cubic feet of gas exported from Plaquemines LNG last year, most went to Europe, with Germany receiving the largest share, at 19 percent, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. The terminal is one of Louisiana’s largest industrial facilities, with 1.3 miles of river frontage, three ship berths, two gas-fired power plants, and nearly 30 miles of natural gas pipeline.
It’s also one of the state’s biggest polluters. Plaquemines LNG is permitted to release about 8.1 million tons of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases per year, according to company records. That’s equivalent to the annual greenhouse gas emissions of 1.7 million gas-powered vehicles.
The only industrial facility in Louisiana that emits more than Plaquemines LNG is an ammonia plant owned by CF Industries that released about 10.4 million tons of greenhouse gases in 2023, the latest year available in the Environmental Protection Agency’s greenhouse gas emissions inventory.
Those emissions, along with the carbon dioxide released when natural gas is burned for energy overseas, contribute to climate change, which is accelerating sea level rise and intensifying the storms that drive land loss in Plaquemines. “Burning more natural gas means we lose Plaquemines Parish even faster,” Rota said.
The terminal’s expansion would increase its production capacity from about 1.4 trillion cubic feet of gas per year to around 2.3 trillion. It’s unclear how the expansion will affect emissions, but federal filings indicate the larger facility could produce at least 9 million tons of greenhouse gases per year. Venture says it plans to use carbon capture and sequestration technology to inject a portion of the terminal’s carbon dioxide emissions underground.
Venture Global’s Plaquemines LNG export in 2024, in Port Sulphur, Louisiana.Ricky Carioti / The Washington Post via Getty Images
Some Louisiana leaders welcome the expansion, saying it will spur economic activity and create jobs.
In April, U.S. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, a Republican from Jefferson Parish, celebrated the rapid development of the Plaquemines site. “This was a cow pasture four or five years ago,” he told reporters during a tour of the facility and the area planned for expansion. “Now it’s the most modern, the most efficient, the largest LNG export facility in the world.”
toolTips('.classtoolTips3','Carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and other gases that prevent heat from escaping Earth’s atmosphere. Together, they act as a blanket to keep the planet at a liveable temperature in what is known as the “greenhouse effect.” Too many of these gases, however, can cause excessive warming, disrupting fragile climates and ecosystems.');This story was originally published by Grist with the headline On Louisiana’s disappearing coast, a natural gas terminal is poised to become the largest in the US on Aug 27, 2026.
The fossil fuel industry is spending record amounts to keep California from regulating it
The fossil fuel industry isn’t just raking in record profits amid the war with Iran. In California, it’s also spending big to oppose climate and worker-safety legislation.
According to analyses by a coalition of environmental groups called the Last Chance Alliance, oil and gas companies spent more than $17 million on California lobbying during the first half of 2026. That includes $10.3 million during the first quarter — a new record for the sector — and another $6.8 million during Q2.
Much of the spending was directed against legislation proposing new costs and liabilities for the fossil fuel industry, like a state bill that would make companies pay for rebuilding following climate-intensified natural disasters. But other bills targeted were more milquetoast, seeking to clarify existing workplace-safety laws and ensure more thorough reporting of cleanup costs when oil companies want to decommission projects.
Faraz Rizvi, campaign and policy director for the nonprofit Asian Pacific Environmental Network — a member of the Last Chance Alliance — criticized companies for “aggressively lobbying” against straightforward measures to protect communities and boost transparency. “They’re not actors that have consumers’ or communities’ interests at heart,” he told Grist.
Last Chance Alliance pulled the data from mandatory reporting to the California secretary of state. The top spenders in the oil-and-gas lobbying category included the Western States Petroleum Association, which spent $4.3 million over the first half of the year; Chevron, whose spending amounted to $3.7 million; and Phillips 66, an oil refiner that spent just over half a million dollars. Much of the money went to consultants and alleged “front groups” that present themselves as grassroots operations but are funded by the fossil fuel industry, like Californians for Energy Independence.
One big target of the sector’s lobbying was California’s cap-and-invest program, which requires companies to pay for a finite — and declining — number of emissions permits each year. The program covers roughly 80 percent of California’s economy and is considered critical to achieving the state’s climate targets, including carbon neutrality by 2045. Earlier this year, oil and gas interests successfully lobbied regulators to green-light a mechanism that could make a vast pool of free pollution permits available to fossil fuel companies. If finalized, the plan could deprive the state of billions in funding that would have otherwise gone toward public transit and housing. The change is currently facing a legal challenge from environmental groups and objections from some Democratic lawmakers.
The sector also fought a bill, currently awaiting passage by the state Senate, to extend California’s Displaced Oil and Gas Workers Fund. Established under a 2022 law, the $30 million fund distributes grants to help oil and gas industry workers transition to new careers. According to one estimate, the fund has already helped 600 people find new lines of work, and supporters have been discussing the potential for new forms of support, including wage replacement during transition periods and financial support during apprenticeships.
Other pending bills that oil companies lobbied against propose creating a task force on safe staffing guidelines for oil refineries; preventing fossil fuel companies from abandoning methane-leaking oil wells; and adding new safety and public comment requirements for offshore oil pipelines. One bill would force companies to submit formal retirement plans before they shutter their oil refineries. The bill follows the closure of a Phillips 66 refinery in L.A. County that environmental groups claim was poorly handled.
A number of the targeted bills have been defeated, giving the oil and gas industry a series of wins. These include SB 1245, which sought to stabilize California’s gas supply, and SB 982, which addressed California’s home insurance crisis. The latter bill would have allowed the state attorney general to sue fossil fuel companies for damages following climate-related disasters like wildfires. It was meant to help pay for skyrocketing property insurance, disaster mitigation, and other expenses that are currently straining the state’s insurer of last resort. Oil and gas lobbying also helped to defeat a bill that would have made it harder for fossil fuel companies to abandon methane-leaking oil wells. There are more than 100,000 of these wells in California, and companies are often able to evade responsibility for plugging them.
Read Next As climate lawsuits advance, the oil industry enters ‘panic mode’ Kate YoderHollin Kretzmann, deputy political director at the Center for Biological Diversity Action Fund, said it’s been a generally disappointing year for Golden State climate policy. “This legislative session was just a huge missed opportunity for California. We didn’t get to show what the world’s fourth-largest economy could accomplish when it comes to protecting our economy, protecting our health.”
The lobbying is a particularly bad look, he added, given the oil and gas industry’s recent earnings. Late last month, Chevron reported $12 billion in net profits during the second quarter, nearly five times as much as it earned during the same period in 2025. Exxon Mobil made $14.5 billion, more than double its second-quarter earnings from last year. These profits have been driven by oil supply disruptions linked to the U.S.-Israel war against Iran, particularly the monthslong closure of the Strait of Hormuz. Supply shortages and higher oil prices have benefited oil producers that don’t depend on the strait to export products, as well as companies with oil refineries in the West.
Still, Chevron CEO Mike Wirth has said threats to oil supplies are straining his company. “Every day that goes by, the situation gets more difficult,” he told CNBC in late July. His company has also blamed California energy policies for high gasoline prices, deflecting accusations of price gouging. Chevron, Phillips 66, and Californians for Energy Independence did not respond to Grist’s requests for comment. A spokesperson for the Western States Petroleum Association declined to comment.
Ryan Schleeter, communications director for the nonprofit The Climate Center, said curtailing Big Oil’s influence over the California Legislature should be a priority moving forward. He suggested starting with the reduction of public subsidies — including from the cap-and-invest program’s free allocations, but also from tax loopholes that allow companies to report only a fraction of their global earnings to the state. “We’re essentially subsidizing their profit margins,” he told Grist.
Kretzmann said more measures are needed to limit both the number of lobbyists visiting Sacramento and the amount of money they’re allowed to spend; otherwise, legislators and environmental advocates will keep running into the same problem year after year. “It gets to the heart of why our policies in California don’t reflect the will of the people,” he said. “I don’t have an easy solution, but we need our legislators to listen to the public … rather than oil industry lobbyists.”
toolTips('.classtoolTips7','A powerful greenhouse gas that accounts for about 11% of global emissions, methane is the primary component of natural gas and is emitted into the atmosphere by landfills, oil and natural gas systems, agricultural activities, coal mining, and wastewater treatment, among other pathways. Over a 20-year period, it is roughly 84 times more potent than carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere.');This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The fossil fuel industry is spending record amounts to keep California from regulating it on Aug 27, 2026.
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