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Amid the many political casualties of 2025 — mass federal layoffs, shuttered agencies, and clean energy spending cuts — the passing of one of the last decade’s defining political projects went almost entirely unnoticed. On December 31, 2025, the Green New Deal Network, a coalition of climate, labor, and social justice organizations, officially died. 

The coalition wasn’t intended to last forever, but its demise was sped up by the political mood that got President Donald Trump reelected in 2024, when the momentum that the movement had enjoyed under Joe Biden’s administration seemingly evaporated overnight. As Trump launched an all-out assault on environmental regulations and climate policies, the climate movement was left at a loss, unsure how to push for change with the public increasingly focused on other issues, like the cost of living, and a federal government hostile to its cause.

“The conditions under which the Green New Deal Network was founded have fundamentally changed,” the coalition’s site said, explaining its decision to fold. “The mission of climate, jobs, and justice is far from over — but the structure built to win a specific moment is no longer the right vehicle for what comes next.”

Saul Levin, who was the network’s director of campaigns and politics, knew what was next for him personally: fighting AI data centers. The artificial intelligence boom has created a surge in construction of giant facilities that process digital information, and communities across the country are working to stop them from being built, concerned about water usage, soaring energy bills, and Big Tech taking over. Over a year ago, Levin had started a Signal chat to help people opposing data centers get organized. Now his chat has about 350 members across 40 states, and he’s busy with his new podcast, “The Hum,” capturing their stories and highlighting successes.

Many climate activists are following a similar path. Concerns about greenhouse gas emissions, air and water pollution, and social justice fit organically into the growing anti-data center movement, which has attracted a much broader, bipartisan coalition than the Green New Deal ever did. “The climate movement is increasingly realizing that this is a fight that’s both an important fight and a strategic fight,” said Evan Sutton, an anti-AI advocate who’s helping connect people who oppose data centers. 

Read Next America’s data center backlash is bipartisan — can it stay that way? Zoya Teirstein & Kate Yoder

Take the Sunrise Movement, whose members stormed Representative Nancy Pelosi’s office in 2018 to demand a Green New Deal, catapulting the idea into the national conversation. “We’ve definitely seen a surge of interest in data center fights around the country,” said Aru Shiney-Ajay, the group’s executive director. Local Sunrise hubs have been mobilizing to stop data centers in Dallas, Denver, Pittsburgh, and Lansing, Michigan, Shiney-Ajay said. 

There’s a logical reason for the climate movement to get involved: These hyperscale data centers are poised to cause carbon emissions to spike. A new report from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory found that data centers could account for about one-third of the growth in U.S. electricity demand between 2024 and 2030. This thirst for energy is driving the expansion of infrastructure for natural gas, a fossil fuel. A typical AI data center demands as much electricity as 100,000 households, but some of the largest ones being built may use up to 20 times that, according to the International Energy Agency. The rapid expansion of data centers threatens to “undo a huge amount of the progress that we made in terms of moving toward clean energy,” Shiney-Ajay said. “If we don’t really seriously start to pass policy that mitigates that, then they could be a disaster for our climate.”

Sunrise Movement protesters call for a Green New Deal at Representative Nancy Pelosi’s office in Washington, D.C., in 2018. Michael Brochstein / SOPA Images / LightRocket via Getty Images

Some established environmental organizations have gotten on board with suspending hyperscale data center construction. A letter sent to Congress this month calling for a nationwide moratorium was signed by more than 500 groups, most of them related to the environment, climate change, or environmental justice — such as Greenpeace USA, Third Act, GreenLatinos, and Food and Water Watch. But some of the biggest names of the U.S. environmental movement were absent from the list, including the Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and the Nature Conservancy.

That’s not to say they’re pro-data center, though. “The speculative rush to build data centers is harming ratepayers, our climate, and community health, which is why we urgently need protections from states and the federal government,” Jeremy Fisher, the Sierra Club’s principal advisor, said in an emailed statement. The organization advocates for holding Big Tech to a higher standard in terms of environmental and health impacts and argues that companies should invest in clean energy to run their facilities instead of fossil fuels. “Data centers can and should be powered with renewable energy that does not threaten our environment and our health, our wallets, or our environment,” Fisher said.

Read Next A solution to data center backlash? Put them in oil fields. Jake Bittle

Thomas Meyer, the organizing projects director at Food and Water Watch, which led the letter to Congress, said that powering data centers with clean energy doesn’t solve the problem. In Washington state, for instance, Amazon outbid the utility Puget Sound Energy in an auction for an enormous Oregon solar farm, leaving the utility concerned about competition for renewable resources as Amazon races to build energy-hungry data centers. “What about the things that that solar power would have gone to power instead?” Meyer said. “You haven’t grown the pie. You’ve just shifted it from one place to another.”

Big green groups may also be taking cues from Democratic politicians, many of whom, like Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, have been friendly to data center development. “The unfortunate reality is that some organizations tend to follow rather than lead, especially when it comes to mainstream positions of Democratic Party leaders or elected officials,” Meyer said.

Meyer witnessed a similar dynamic a decade ago when working as a field organizer on campaigns to ban fracking: a disconnect between grassroots energy and mainstream institutions. Established environmental groups tend to move more slowly than bottom-up movements, said Valerie Costa, co-executive director of the Oil and Gas Action Network, a nonprofit that supports grassroots groups working to move the U.S. beyond fossil fuels. “One of the things that grassroots movements do really well is shifting when there are more immediate threats, and being able to respond quickly,” Costa said.

That was recently in play in Seattle, where the climate activist group 350 Seattle joined the push to pass a moratorium on new large data centers after the news broke this spring that five major facilities could be coming to town. If all the projects were actually built, they would require about one-third the amount of power that Seattle uses on a typical day. The Seattle City Council passed the moratorium unanimously earlier this month, making it the largest city in the U.S. so far to suspend approvals. For local activists working on an issue as amorphous and overwhelming as climate change, it was invigorating to get involved in a mission with a concrete, local outcome. 

Audrey Wang Gosselin, a member of the Soapbox Project and a board member of 350 Seattle, speaks in favor of a data center moratorium at a Seattle City Council meeting. Courtesy of Renaissance

“For us, it was a very good on-ramp for people who just want to do something and want to turn that powerlessness into something meaningful,” said Nivi Achanta, the founder and CEO of Soapbox Project, a local climate action group that advocated for the moratorium. The group’s Signal chat buzzed as the city council weighed the policy: “People were, like, pulling out drinks and grabbing their popcorn and actually watching these city council politics unfold in a way that’s so much more fun than anything I’ve experienced outside of this, in the general climate movement,” Achanta said. 

In Washington state, known for its progressive climate policies, new natural gas infrastructure driven by power-hungry AI data centers threatens to produce an additional 13.5 million metric tons of carbon dioxide each year, about 14 percent of the state’s current annual emissions. That could derail its attempt to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 95 percent below 1990 levels by 2050, as required by the state’s Climate Commitment Act. Even in a blue state, there’s an understanding that opposition to data centers has to be bipartisan if it’s going to be successful, especially since most data centers are being proposed in rural areas. “We can’t just rely on the West Coast, or on the blue corridor from Bellingham down to Vancouver, Washington, to get something done,” said Lauren Redfield, a voluntary organizer with the Washington AI Resistance.

As climate activists join local fights, they may find themselves teaming up with people they don’t agree with on everything, or on much at all. Data centers are a rare issue that unites Americans across the political spectrum, with 75 percent of Democrats and 63 percent of Republicans opposed to building data centers in their area, according to polling from Gallup. All kinds of people — punk musicians in Utah, farmers in Oregon, beauty salon workers in Maryland — are coming out for all kinds of reasons, according to Levin, the host of “The Hum.” But their differences aren’t stopping them from working together. 

“Again and again, we hear from organizers who are like, ‘I don’t care if you’re here for climate change, and I’m here because I think it’s going to be ugly, and that person’s here because they hate AI’ — all of us think this is a bad project,” Levin said.

In the first three months of this year, data center opponents blocked or delayed at least 75 facilities worth nearly $130 billion. One reason this resistance has been effective is because of its people power — the hundreds of thousands of people who are turning out to town halls, meeting up on porches, and otherwise showing up to fight. In an age of loneliness and political disillusionment, it’s a sign that something is changing. 

“I’m really hopeful that this is the thing that gets communities re-engaged in local politics,” Redfield said. “We’ve seen a lot of apathy over the last several years, and I’m really hoping that this civic engagement can help us build that community that can help us stitch our society back together.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Climate activists take on a new foe: Data centers on Jun 29, 2026.

Toronto — KEVIN LOCKHART, director of the Buildings program at the Pembina Institute, made the following statement in response to the federal government’s announcement of new home retrofit funding via the Canada Greener Homes Affordability Program:...

A legal catastrophe Channel News brendan 29th June 2026 Teaser Media

A listing of 28 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, June 21, 2026 thru Sat, June 27, 2026. Stories we promoted this week, by category:

Climate Change Impacts (10 articles)

• Efforts to save kelp forests from ocean warming are ramping up Healthy kelp forests need cool, nutrient-rich seawater to survive but as ocean waters warm, kelp can no longer inhabit parts of their former range, resulting in a rapidly escalating crisis for ocean ecosystems. Grist, Richard Schiffman, Jun 21, 2026.
• Arctic marine heat waves surge since 1980s, with record event lasting 480 days The available data show that the duration, intensity and frequency of marine heat waves in the Arctic have increased significantly since the 1980s. Phys.org, Roland Koch, Jun 21, 2026.
• The water is rising in Chesapeake Bay. Can Tangier Island be saved? A mayor changes his mind about why his island is vanishing. Inside Climate News, Charles Paullin, Jun 22, 2026.
• Heat stress exposure climbed from 16% to 22% worldwide over 50 years, study shows The number of people exposed to dangerous heat stress worldwide has risen sharply over the past half-century, propelled by climate change. Phys.org, Daniel Lawler, Jun 22, 2026.
• 40°C is just the beginning. DrGilbz on Youtube, Ella Gilbert, June 22, 2026.
• Extreme heat cancels climate change event on adapting to extreme heat Extreme heat in London has led to the cancellation of a climate event on the topic of extreme heat. The Independent News, Maira Butt, Jun 23, 2026.
• Europe`s Heat Has Scientists Asking: How Much Hotter Can It Get? Records are being broken for the second time in a month, leading scientists to probe the upper limits of what the warming climate can dish out. NYT, Raymond Zhong, Jun 23, 2026.
• How climate change is influencing Europe's record-breaking heat wave NPR's Michel Martin speaks with Jennifer Francis, senior scientist at the Massachusetts-based Woodwell Climate Research Center, about the impact of Europe's heat wave and its links to climate change. NPR, Michel Martin, Jun 24, 2026.
• Why Is Europe the Fastest-Warming Continent The burning of fossil fuels is raising temperatures worldwide, but local factors, on land and at sea, determine which regions warm most rapidly. NYT, Raymond Zhong, Jun 24, 2026.
• Texas` refusal to plan for climate change created a crisis in Corpus Christi Stubbornly unrealistic assessments of the region’s reservoir system turned this year’s drought conditions into an emergency. Inside Climate News, Dylan Baddour, Jun 25, 2026.

Climate Education and Communication (5 articles)

• Climate fiction envisions the future of hurricanes and sea level rise Three excellent cli-fi novels envision a plausible future where sea level rise and climate change-intensified hurricanes cause massive economic disruption in the U.S. Yale Climate Connections, Jeff Masters, Jun 19, 2026.
• Cooking up the Climate Stripes, with Ed Hawkins Skeptical Science, Baerbel Winkler, Jun 20, 2026.
• New Publication: Identifying Flawed Reasoning in Contrarian Claims about Climate Change Skeptical Science, Baerbel Winkler & John Cook, Jun 23, 2026.
• True at the same time 'We can sometimes fall into the trap of framing climate as a binary: catastrophe or complacency, despair or denial. Reality is messier.'' Climate Trunk, John Lang, Jun 23, 2026.
• Former NOAA Employees Revive Climate.gov Web Site The database of federal global warming research recreates a website that was closed amid the administration’s broad retreat from climate science. NYT, Quinn Glabicki, Jun 23, 2026.

Climate Science and Research (5 articles)

• National Science Foundation halts plans to dismantle oceans observatory project The NSF issued a statement saying that it “appreciates the concerns raised by the range of stakeholders” and would halt efforts to remove or disable equipment. It also said it will redeploy equipment that already was removed from the water and convene an expert panel to determine the future of the network. AP News, AP News , Jun 22, 2026.
• Introducing Project Cosmos: Carbon Brief`s `universe` of climate science Carbon Brief, Carbon Brief Staff, Jun 22, 2026.
• Recreating the legendary heatwave summer of 1976 in today’s climate Climate Lab Book, Ed Hawkins, June 24, 2026.
• Beyond Denial: How Oil Execs Shaped a Landmark Climate Study How British Petroleum helped to foster a major climate solutions myth, allowing the fossil fuel industry to monetize more petroleum over the course of decades. ProPublica, Katie Worth, Jun 25, 2026.
• Feedbacks upon feedbacks: Rock weathering and the climate Rock weathering may release or draw down carbon dioxide—it depends on the rock. Ars Technica, Howard Lee, Jun 26, 2026.

Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation (2 articles)

• Getting rid of an old fridge? Here's what you need to know Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Amy Briggs, Jun 19, 2026.
• Experts: Why carbon removal needs a `major scale up` to return warming to 1.5C Last week, more than 260 researchers convened in Milan to discuss the opportunities, challenges and risks involved in scaling “carbon dioxide removal” (CDR) to help curb climate change. Carbon Brief, Cecilia Keating, Jun 19, 2026.

Climate Policy and Politics (2 articles)

• Is It Warm Out There? The Atlantic, Joshua Partlow, Jun 23, 2026.
• Climate leadership is contagious, but so is retreat Op-ed suggests that shaping the safety and health of our future based on today's price for gasoline is poor political leadership. New Statesman, Mary Robinson, Jun 25, 2026.

Miscellaneous (2 articles)

• 2026 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #25 A listing of 28 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, June 14, 2026 thru Sat, June 20, 2026. Skeptical Science, Bärbel Winkler & Doug Bostrom, Jun 21, 2026.
• How US renewable-energy growth persists despite federal policy uncertainty Despite recent shifts in federal energy policies, our analysis shows that the US transition to renewable energy is continuing. Carbon Brief, Modi et al., Jun 25, 2026.

Public Misunderstandings about Climate Science (1 article)

• The gas industry is sneaking into kids` science classes The Switch Energy Alliance markets its free classroom materials as “objective.” But they are backed by the fossil fuel industry, a HEATED investigation shows. HEATED, Marin Scotten, Jun 24, 2026.

Public Misunderstandings about Climate Solutions (1 article)

• Where does climate action go from here? A conversation with climate scientist Dr. Katharine Hayhoe Youtube, Project Drawdown, June 23, 2026.

If you happen upon high quality climate-science and/or climate-myth busting articles from reliable sources while surfing the web, please feel free to submit them via this Google form so that we may share them widely. Thanks!

At first glance, Lent Hill Dairy Farm in Steuben County, New York, looks like most other industrial dairies. There are red buildings that house some 4,000 cows, a staggering manure pit, and two gigantic dome-like structures that serve as anaerobic co-digesters.

These giant machines break down manure and local food waste to produce biogas. This renewable natural gas, or RNG, is then typically transported for use as electricity, heating, and fuel. But at Lent Hill, the gas produced isn’t just heating homes or running tractors. It’s also powering an on-site cryptomine.

The operation, run by Pennsylvania-based Ag-Grid Energy, is the first of its kind in the country. The company claims the anaerobic digestion of manure and food waste could be a game-changer, not only in powering crypto, but data centers, which currently use 4.9 percent of the country’s electricity, a figure that could double by 2030.

“At the end of the day, our model is providing value to the rural area that we are in,” Rashi Akki, the founder and CEO of Ag-Grid Energy, told Sentient.

The project claims to recycle more than 45,000 gallons of food waste per day and the manure of 4,000 cows. “What we want to do is also provide, if possible through fiber optics, [the] value of the AI computing capacity to that same regional area,” Akki said.

While Ag-Grid Energy wants to work with midsize dairies to create on-site power generation for small-scale data centers, the world’s largest technology players have bigger visions. Tech giants are increasingly searching for fossil fuel alternative fuel sources to power hyperscale data centers that won’t put a strain on the grid.

Read Next America’s data center backlash is bipartisan — can it stay that way? Zoya Teirstein & Kate Yoder

Biogas proponents — a broad coalition of industries, including agriculture, fossil fuels, utilities, and waste management — are pushing renewable natural gas, sourced in part by manure digesters, as a sustainable way forward.

In California, Microsoft has partnered with Enchanted Rock to use RNG for backup data center power. Vanguard Renewables, a waste management company and portfolio company of Black Rock, has touted RNG as “the fuel of the AI age.” Critics, however, fear the digester-to-data-center connection will give digesters an economic lifeline at a time when they’re struggling to stay online.

Renewable natural gas from digesters are touted as a drop-in energy solution, Sarah D’Onofrio, a scholar and advocate who works with digester-impacted communities across the country, told Sentient. This means the RNG can be used without changing existing fossil fuel based infrastructure, and can be added to other fuel sources like natural gas so companies could claim they are fueling data centers sustainably, according to D’Onofrio.

But researchers like D’Onofrio argue that to truly reduce emissions, we need to transition to clean energy fuels rather than rely on renewable substitutes for fossil fuels.

Read Next This new machine churns out carbon-storing biochar on the cheap Matt Simon

“Why would you want to incorporate that [RNG] into our fuel system during the period of climate change?” she said.

D’Onofrio has helped communities in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Georgia, and North Carolina defeat proposals for large-scale co-digesters. She fears data centers are creating a new, massive market for the manure-to-energy industry, which could in turn incentivize the further proliferation of factory farms.

“It attaches these industrial food operations into our energy system and makes us really dependent on them over time, because the more it becomes intermingled with agriculture, the more it’s going to concentrate agriculture,” said D’Onofrio.

Animals raised on factory farms in the U.S. produce an estimated 941 billion pounds of manure each year, which pollutes air and water in communities all over the United States. In addition to problems with leakage, digesters do not make the manure disappear. The digested waste, or digestate, is meant to be recycled, potentially into a range of products, such as fertilizer and animal bedding. But there are a number of challenges with these downstream products, from economic to environmental. Digested manure can be more polluting than manure that hasn’t been digested, according to USDA research.

In 2023, Victoria Gehrke, a community organizer who owns recreational property in Lind, Wisconsin, learned that a leader in the waste-to-energy field had proposed a co-digester in the town, touting it as a way to manage manure and reduce waste.

Gehrke and her fellow organizer Laurie Knutzen quickly discovered the impacts a co-digester would have on the community: hazardous air emissions, trucks going in and out delivering industrial food waste — and few restrictions about where that waste would come from — and water pollution. The project intended to send about 41,000 gallons of waste per day into a tributary of Walla Walla Creek, which empties into Lake Michigan.

Read Next Blood in the well: One town’s fight against the slaughterhouse polluting it Maddy Lauria

“These are manure and industrial food-waste processing and biogas-producing facilities, they are not ag accessories,” Gehrke said of co-digesters. “They don’t belong on ag land,” she explained, “and what they’re really doing is having our small rural communities — because we’re so vulnerable — we become sacrificial dumping grounds for the industrial waste that other big places don’t want to put in their communities.”

After more than a year of relentless community opposition, the town of Lind denied Vanguard’s application in the spring of 2024. The organizers celebrated the decision as a win for Lind, but Vanguard is still “developing and operating” more than 50 co-digesters across the country. It aims to have more than 100 completed projects by the end of 2028.

Patrick Serfass, the executive director of the American Biogas Council, told Sentient that biogas is an “excellent fit” for data centers in search of a reliable and high-capacity fuel source.

“We’re really excited about the prospect of biogas systems being able to provide power to data centers, because they can provide that reliability,” Serfass says.

Data center demand could lead to the expansion of co-digester buildouts across the country, he said. Serfass estimates that the U.S. has only built about 10 percent to 15 percent of the biogas market’s capacity.

“The data centers are going to be so hungry for power that they could eat up pretty much all of the supply that the biogas industry could create,” Serfass says.

Read Next This simple farming technique can capture carbon for thousands of years Matt Simon

Vanguard Renewables makes a similar pitch. “As energy demand from data centers continues to grow, there is increasing interest in solutions that are both reliable and lower carbon,” Vanguard Renewables told Sentient in an email statement.

The company is yet to partner with any data centers directly, but they have partnered with energy delivery companies like TotalEnergies and Enbridge, and both of these companies have relationships with hyperscalers and data center operators. In November 2025, TotalEnergies signed a 15-year deal with Google to provide solar energy to support the company’s data center operations in Ohio.

Anaerobic digesters are not new. They have long been hailed as a way to reduce emissions, capture methane and manage waste — a solution to agriculture’s methane problem with few tradeoffs.

The technology has received billions in subsidies at both the federal and state level. The California Low-Carbon Fuel Standard, a climate program implemented to incentivize the production of alternative fuels, funds nearly 200 digesters across 16 states; in 2023, Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act provided over $150 million in funding to biogas projects across the country; and the Michigan Strategic Fund has approved more than $100 million in private bonds for digesters.

Akki said tax credits are incredibly important in making Ag-Grid Energy’s projects a reality. While most of the subsidies given to digester projects have been to support electricity and fuel for transportation, she wants to see fiscal support specifically for co-digesters that power AI.

Read Next A solution to data center backlash? Put them in oil fields. Jake Bittle

“Tax credits — just like what we had with the Inflation Reduction Act — for electricity production for AI would really support our projects,” Akki says.

But using tax-payer dollars to support digesters has lost favor with the Trump administration’s Department of Agriculture. In May, the USDA extended a 90-day moratorium on loans for anaerobic digesters through the end of the year amid environmental concerns and delinquent loans. According to a review of USDA lender data by Inside Climate News, 11 percent of the 746 project lenders across the country were considered over 90 days delinquent.

On top of this, a growing body of research raises questions about whether digesters make economic or environmental sense.

Government subsidies for digesters create a “perverse incentive where the value of manure or animal waste starts to compete with the value of the milk,” Brent Kim, a researcher at the Johns Hopkins Center for a Liveable Future, told Sentient. In other words, farmers are incentivized to produce waste for profit, not to produce milk for human consumption.

Kim and his colleagues published a scientific review of the touted benefits and downsides to the controversial technology. “The reality is nuanced,” he said of digesters. While they can reduce methane emissions in the short term, they may also lead to an increase in ammonia emissions, toxic byproducts, and other pollutants released into the environment, a phenomena Kim calls “pollution swapping.”

“So sure, all else being equal, you do have a reduction in methane, but if they’re incentivizing growth in the industry, the larger herd size is going to release more methane,” Kim said.

Some research suggests digesters aren’t always effective at reducing methane either. As Sentient has previously reported, research from the World Resources Institute found that digesters offer limited climate benefit given their cost. Digesters reduce methane from manure storage by only about 25 percent, the WRI research finds.

A report from Friends of the Earth found that dairies with digesters increased herd sizes by 3.7 percent annually, or 24 times the growth rate of dairies without digesters. In Kewaunee County, Wisconsin, herd sizes grew by about 58 percent since they were installed.

The trend comes as no surprise to Lynn Henning, a soybean farmer in Michigan who lives near a Chevron-owned co-digester. When manure becomes “more valuable than the milk,” it creates incentive for growth, and changes what farming is all about, she told Sentient.

“The system is changing farming. They’re shifting from producing food for people instead to producing manure so they can be paid more by the government,” Henning said.

Kathy Morrison, a farmer in Fremont, Michigan, has similar concerns. She lived next to a co-digester for years, and it significantly impacted her quality of life. The smell was unbearable, sometimes so bad it woke her up in the middle of the night. She described it as being at a giant music festival and all the Porta Potties are overflowing. That smell was digestate, the liquid solid waste that’s left over and spread on fields after the digestion process.

Morrison is not against the technology of digesters themselves, particularly at the local level, but with so many private companies looking to make a profit, equitable implementation and scale is hard to control. Data centers (which come with their own environmental impacts) would likely expand those opportunities for profit.

“I would be all in favor of small, very controlled, community-size digesters, but when they’re large scale like this, and they’re operating for profit, corners get cut,” she said. But this is something else, she said. “All the different industries that have come together to turn this into something insanely profitable. …There’s just so many industries behind this. It’s wild.”

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 Cow manure could be the next data center fuel on Jun 28, 2026.

Headline News:

• “A ‘strategic mistake of colossal proportions’ Why Trump is losing the war on renewables” • Despite the Trump regime, solar overtook coal in the US electricity mix for the first month on record in May. According to energy think tank Ember, sunlight supplied a record 12.8 % of US electricity, while coal fell to 12.2%, its fourth-lowest monthly share ever. [Euronews]

Protest sign (Leo_Visions, Unsplash, cropped)

• “Climate-Tech Claims Need A Red-Flag Pass Before They Get Money” • Climate-tech claims usually arrive with a promise of a solution for some hard part of decarbonization and a request for support. Sometimes the claim deserves serious diligence. Other times it deserves a narrow demonstration. And there are times it deserves a polite but firm no. [Cleantechnica]
• “The Next Frontier: Offshore Wind Power” • Besieged by high electricity costs and heavy reliance on fossil fuels, the Philippine archipelago is positioning itself as a prime destination for Asian offshore wind investment. With massive coastal wind resources, the Philippines recognizes that offshore wind offers the path to energy independence with lowest cost. [MSN]
• “Europe Is Still Sweltering With Record-Breaking Heat” • The brutal heatwave is still griping Europe. Paris banned drinking alcohol in public over the weekend, while the city’s Pride March has been postponed, and the Louvre museum and the Eiffel Tower are closing early. Temperatures in the French capital has touched 39°C (102°F). [Euronews]
• “China Is Quietly Winning The Clean Energy Trade War” • China’s clean energy dominance is growing. Buoyed by fast rising energy needs and the projected demands of the artificial intelligence boom, clean energy projects are getting greenlit at a breakneck pace. Beijing has near-total control of global supply chains for clean energy tech. [OilPrice.com]

For more news, please visit geoharvey – Daily News about Energy and Climate Change.

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Visual Interaktif yang Menambah Daya Tarik

Aspek visual memiliki peran penting dalam mempertahankan minat pengguna internet. Slot Maxwin umumnya menghadirkan grafis berkualitas tinggi yang dipadukan dengan animasi halus serta efek suara yang mendukung suasana permainan.

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Selain menghadirkan tantangan, sistem permainan yang variatif juga memberikan sensasi tersendiri bagi mereka yang menikmati unsur strategi sederhana dalam menentukan waktu bermain maupun memilih jenis permainan yang sesuai dengan preferensi masing-masing.

Pengaruh Komunitas Digital

Fenomena meningkatnya popularitas Slot Maxwin tidak dapat dipisahkan dari berkembangnya komunitas internet. Forum diskusi, grup media sosial, hingga platform berbagi video menjadi tempat pengguna saling bertukar pengalaman, berbagi informasi, maupun memberikan ulasan mengenai berbagai permainan.

Rekomendasi dari sesama pengguna sering kali memiliki pengaruh yang cukup besar. Ketika sebuah permainan memperoleh banyak ulasan positif, rasa penasaran calon pemain pun ikut meningkat. Efek ini menciptakan penyebaran informasi yang berlangsung secara organik.

Tidak hanya itu, konten kreator juga berkontribusi memperluas jangkauan informasi melalui pembahasan fitur, ulasan visual, hingga pengalaman bermain yang mereka bagikan kepada audiens. Kehadiran berbagai sumber informasi tersebut membantu pengguna memperoleh gambaran sebelum mencoba sebuah permainan.

Inovasi yang Terus Berkembang

Industri hiburan digital dikenal sebagai sektor yang bergerak sangat cepat. Pengembang terus menghadirkan pembaruan agar pengguna memperoleh pengalaman yang lebih menarik dibandingkan sebelumnya.

Inovasi tidak hanya terlihat dari sisi tampilan, tetapi juga pada peningkatan performa sistem, optimalisasi kecepatan loading, kompatibilitas dengan berbagai perangkat, serta penyempurnaan antarmuka. Langkah tersebut dilakukan untuk menjaga kenyamanan pengguna sekaligus mengikuti perkembangan teknologi yang terus berubah.

Kemampuan beradaptasi inilah yang menjadi salah satu faktor penting mengapa Slot Maxwin mampu mempertahankan daya tariknya di tengah persaingan hiburan digital yang semakin ketat.

Fleksibilitas dalam Menyesuaikan Preferensi Pengguna

Setiap pengguna internet memiliki karakter dan kebiasaan yang berbeda. Ada yang menyukai permainan singkat sebagai hiburan di sela aktivitas, sementara sebagian lainnya lebih menikmati sesi bermain yang berlangsung lebih lama.

Keberagaman pilihan permainan memberikan fleksibilitas kepada pengguna untuk menentukan pengalaman yang sesuai dengan preferensi masing-masing. Faktor tersebut membuat Slot Maxwin mampu menjangkau berbagai kelompok pengguna dengan kebutuhan yang beragam.

Di samping itu, perkembangan teknologi personalisasi memungkinkan rekomendasi permainan menjadi lebih relevan. Pengguna dapat menemukan pilihan yang sesuai dengan minat mereka tanpa harus menghabiskan banyak waktu melakukan pencarian.

Peran Teknologi dalam Meningkatkan Pengalaman Bermain

Perkembangan infrastruktur digital turut memberikan dampak positif terhadap kualitas layanan. Kecepatan internet yang semakin baik, perangkat dengan spesifikasi tinggi, serta teknologi komputasi modern membuat permainan berjalan lebih lancar dan responsif.

Pengalaman pengguna juga semakin meningkat berkat optimalisasi pada sisi keamanan data, stabilitas server, dan efisiensi sistem. Kombinasi tersebut menciptakan lingkungan digital yang lebih nyaman sehingga pengguna dapat menikmati hiburan dengan gangguan yang lebih minim.

Selain aspek teknis, inovasi pada desain pengalaman pengguna (user experience) terus menjadi perhatian utama. Tata letak yang intuitif, navigasi yang jelas, dan waktu respons yang cepat memberikan nilai tambah yang semakin diapresiasi oleh pengguna internet masa kini.

Kesimpulan

Popularitas Slot Maxwin di kalangan pengguna internet lahir dari perpaduan berbagai faktor yang saling mendukung. Kemudahan akses, tampilan visual yang menarik, variasi mekanisme permainan, perkembangan komunitas digital, hingga inovasi teknologi menjadi elemen penting yang membentuk daya tariknya.

Seiring meningkatnya kebutuhan masyarakat terhadap hiburan digital yang praktis dan interaktif, kategori permainan ini diperkirakan akan terus memperoleh perhatian. Meskipun demikian, setiap pengguna tetap perlu menjadikan aktivitas bermain sebagai bentuk hiburan yang dilakukan secara bijak, dengan mengutamakan pengelolaan waktu dan penggunaan yang bertanggung jawab agar pengalaman digital tetap positif dan seimbang.

Tempest: Thanks, Izzy, for taking the time to talk with me about your work with the group of activists that have been resisting the detention, and building solidarity with the detainees at the Delaney Hall facility in Newark, New Jersey. Could you start by describing, first of all, what’s happening on the inside and why people have been mobilizing in support on the outside?

Izzy: So, at Delaney Hall some of the people being held there, the hostages, went on a hunger strike and a work strike because they’re being paid less than a dollar a day to maintain the facility, and this is intolerable. Their demands are posted on Cosecha NJ’s site — they are specifically demanding the release of the elderly and minors and people whose health is in jeopardy. And they want [New Jersey] Governor Mikie Sherrill to come and see their conditions. Their demands boil down to freedom, right? Everyone needs to be free.

But it is not only a hunger strike, it is also a labor strike. And the operator of the facility is GEO Group, which is a for-profit operator that the federal government is paying to hold these people. And so the activists have gone on site to support the strikers in their resistance to GEO Group and their exploitation by the people who are holding them in detention.

Tempest: Can you say any more about why activists have chosen to come out in solidarity and mobilize outside the facility? What does this particular struggle represent for people? What motivated you to go out and what’s it been like out there?

Izzy: I was actually quite motivated by seeing friends who have gone there and the way that we can physically manifest this kind of resistance, to these kinds of totalitarian moves, with our physical presence. The people inside Delaney Hall don’t have a choice about being there, but we can choose to be there and be present with them, and that feels better to me than staying far away and consuming news about it. Seeing people report from on the ground just became harder and harder for me to stay away. If the question is, why was I out there, I felt like I had to be.

The people inside Delaney Hall don’t have a choice about being there, but we can choose to be there and be present with them, and that feels better to me than staying far away and consuming news about it.

And it felt risky, and it felt legally risky. It felt physically risky, and nowhere near as dangerous as what the hostages inside are enduring. And seeing for myself what that physical situation is. It’s an industrial strip. I understand that there was an action filed today for a health inspection at the location because there’s not supposed to be human habitation out there. When city and state actors…are now trying to get access to the space in court in order to check that it is actually reasonable to hold human beings there, like that really resonates for me. It is not an easy place to be.

Tempest: Along those lines, it’s striking to me that both Governor Sherrill and Newark Mayor Ras Baraka are progressives or liberal leaders in a so-called blue state. They’re Democratic Party figures with a national profile, which echoes some of the dynamics in Minneapolis, where there was also liberal Democratic Party leadership. And now, in Newark, it’s Baraka who’s imposed the curfew and Sherrill that’s decided to call in the state troops to enforce it and police the protesters. What does that say to you both personally, and what does it possibly suggest for the Left in terms of strategy?

Izzy: What upsets me most coming from these electeds is the misinformation that they are promoting coming from whatever law enforcement is telling them about what’s happening there and why. What they are describing doesn’t match what I saw. When I saw violence, it was violence coming from law enforcement. And when I was injured, it was law enforcement putting their hands on me. What the electeds are saying about what was happening to me and the other activists there just isn’t truthful. Strategically, what to do when politicians are lying is a really good question. But knowing the truth for ourselves is at least a starting place.

What upsets me most…is the misinformation that the [electeds] are promoting coming from whatever law enforcement is telling them…What they are describing doesn’t match what I saw. When I saw violence, it was violence coming from law enforcement. And when I was injured, it was law enforcement putting their hands on me.

Tempest: It’s striking that some of the major confrontations with ICE have happened in liberal states, that the Trump administration has thrown down a gauntlet to these “blue states.” So then the question becomes, what do we as a movement make of that, what lessons do we draw from that?

Izzy: Yeah. What I would say is, while I live in a blue state, I have loved ones in red states, and what I draw from that is you organize where you are, and you hold space where you are. When DHS is bringing this level of violence right here in our neighborhoods, then this is where we confront them.

Tempest: Can you say a few things about what it looked like outside Delaney Hall when you were there and what you experienced?

Izzy: The Delaney Hall facility is out in an industrial park outside of Newark. Supplies have to be shuttled in. At the south end of the facility, there is a driveway where hostages are brought in and out of the building. And one of the strategic goals…was to witness and potentially disrupt the transfer of hostages in and out of Delaney Hall, especially hunger strikers. At least one organizer [from inside the facility] was removed from Delaney Hall to some other location. Having an understanding, on the part of those outside, about what might be happening to the organizers and to the hunger strikers is one of the goals. When I was there, there was a focus on that access point where we’ve seen buses and vans coming in and out and wanting to have a sense of whether people are being moved.That’s what I was working on while I was there, observing vehicles coming in and out to have a sense of how people are being moved around. And so the night I was there, the protesters were occupying the lane of traffic facing Delaney Hall, and then the other lane of traffic was being held open for the trucks…And there were activist marshals that were working to try to slow the trucks down and keep the activists safe from trucks and cars racing through. I’d been told that the previous night that ICE agents had tried to push activists into the traffic as it came through. And I saw a situation where an activist was…on the ground very near a truck, and for a moment it looked like maybe their leg had been run over.They were okay. But it was a dangerous situation.

And law enforcement was not trying to keep anybody that I could see safe. They were creating even more dangerous conditions on top of semis barreling down on us on the road and we didn’t know when they were going to try to push us out into that lane of traffic.

And there’s a lot of preparation for those mobilizing outside at Delaney Hall because the support is not really there on the ground other than what [people bring to the family tent] and what activists bring, and the New Jersey police have been destroying the water, supplies and first aid supplies that activists have brought, as part of the police clearing the area.

Tempest: And to what extent are activist and family member networks being built, where ties of solidarity are being created and connections made on the ground to help strengthen the organizing going forward?

Izzy: It’s very clear that this is a moment, out at Delaney Hall, where activists from all over the region are finding each other and finding a common project to work on, building connections and building trust. And that’s happening out there on this desolate and dangerous road, and that feels important.

Tempest: So what opportunities might be offered here, in building on these connections and those movement spaces?

Izzy: Well, I don’t really want to frame a hunger strike for release from appalling and inhumane conditions as an opportunity.

Tempest: You can see this in campaigns in solidarity with people behind bars, that there’s a synergy and comradeship between what those who are incarcerated are struggling to achieve behind bars and what people are doing on the outside. There’s potentially an opportunity to build cohesive movements and to shine a light on what people behind bars have experienced.

Izzy: My understanding is that the hunger strikers are taking our presence there as supportive and as following their lead. And it is a bigger need than just, like, the North Jersey folks should be expected to shoulder. We’re a big city and we can get to Newark, to the extent we can, to show our support. We know that the people inside could see the activists out their windows, and I think one of the reasons that law enforcement demanded that the governor clear the activists out was so that the hunger strikers couldn’t see that they had support.

And what I saw on the ground, makes me think that the law enforcement actions with the horses and the mass arrests was about characterizing the activists in certain ways and about making us invisible to the leaders of this particular action [inside Delaney Hall].

Tempest: So where do you see the struggle going, the movement for justice for the strikers, the detainees and their families, and also for the activists on the inside. Clearly elected officials – with the curfews and armed troopers — are trying to shut down the solidarity protests. But at the same time, the hunger strikes have spread nationally. At Delaney Hall, there was a teenage hunger striker who was just released [and others have followed since the interview took place]. What are your thoughts on where this might be going, both locally and more broadly?

Izzy: I think that this kind of activism works. I think that by shining a light out there we continue to build the case to abolish ICE right now. The electeds who think that they can successfully characterize this protest as disorderly or violent or any of that without accounting for the disorder and violence of ICE, and ICE agents, and the abductions on our streets, in our neighborhoods, I don’t know why they think we’re going to be that easily deceived because it’s perfectly obvious who the perpetrators are here.

I was thinking today about how I have survived a cancer diagnosis. I have survived parenting a child through junior high. If these goons think that I’m impressed by whatever fascist ethno-state they think they’re building for my benefit as a middle-aged white woman, they don’t have any idea what middle-aged white women want, what we’re capable of, and what is pissing us off right now. What I’ve been through, I was not afraid of what they had to offer, which was just dumb brutality.

If these goons think that I’m impressed by whatever fascist ethno-state they think they’re building for my benefit as a middle-aged white woman, they don’t have any idea …what we’re capable of…I was not afraid of what they had to offer, which was just dumb brutality.

Tempest: It feels to me right now like Delaney Hall represents or is reverberating for people the way Minneapolis did,  almost a shorthand for police violence, racism and standing up to ICE. It seems likely that people will continue to be in the streets.

Izzy: Yeah, if they’re gonna keep giving us these symbolic moments, I think they are vastly overestimating their ability to wear us. So, look up the families of the strikers, learn about what they’re facing and how to support those families. There’s fundraising for commissary. Connect with your friends and neighbors and let them know that this is something you care about. You may be surprised that they care about it too. And whatever your local strategy is for building something that resists all of this, that’s the thing you should be chasing.

Opinions expressed in signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of the editors or the Tempest Collective. For more information, see “About Tempest Collective.”
Featured Image credit: Jwswikiuser191; modified by Tempest.

The post Solidarity with striking ICE hostages! appeared first on Tempest.

Headline News:

• “Solar And Wind Each Produced More Electricity Than Coal In USA In April” • Solar and wind power plants are growing rapidly in the US, as coal keeps declining despite the federal government putting its thumb so heavily on the side of coal. In April alone, wind and solar each produced more electricity than the nation’s coal plants. [CleanTechnica]

Solar, wind, and coal (Arno Senoner, Unsplash)

• “Rooftop Solar Systems Can Provide Five Hours Of ‘Free’ Air Conditioning Per Day. But Is It Green?” • AC has consistently been proven to reduce heat mortality during heatwaves. The 2021 Lancet Countdown report estimated that cooling units prevented nearly 200,000 premature deaths in 2019. But with greater demand comes greater emissions. [Euronews]
• “Iron-Air Battery Project Aims To Cut Emissions And Boost Renewable Power” • Dutch startup Ore Energy secured what could be Europe’s largest iron-air battery agreement. The firm has signed a deal with energy supplier Budget Thuis to deploy 1 GWh of long-duration energy storage, starting with 400 MWh to be delivered in 2028. [Energy Live News]
• “The Nuclear Renaissance Is Missing One Key Ingredient” • The Trump administration is all-in on nuclear energy. It has committed to loaning a total of $17.5 billion to companies that build new reactors. But utilities don’t appear to have much interest. Their investors are too worried about the high cost and long delays of nuclear construction. [MSN]
• “Swiss Nuclear Plant Shut Down As River Temperature Rises Amid Heatwave” • In Switzerland, the Beznau nuclear plant, the world’s oldest active nuclear power facility, was temporarily shut down due to high water temperatures in a river used for cooling, the operator said. The water temperature in the Aare river has been measured at 25°C (77°F). [Yahoo]

For more news, please visit geoharvey – Daily News about Energy and Climate Change.

Clip from our recent episode about Graham Platner and the Democratic establishment trying to destroy anyone challenging them from the left. For decades the Democratic establishment (today exemplified by Schumer,…

How one contaminated stream exposed Maryland's failure to investigate PFAS pollution from fire training facilities.

By Pat Elder
June 26, 2026

PFAS-contaminated water from the old Montgomery County Fire and Rescue Training Academy in Rockville flows nine miles downstream through Muddy Branch before entering the Potomac River immediately adjacent to Pennyfield Lock (Lock 22) on the C&O Canal, shown here.

‍Muddy Branch Exposed a Statewide Failure to Investigate PFAS Contamination from Fire Training Facilities across Maryland.

‍The “discovery” of severe PFAS contamination in Muddy Branch was entirely predictable. The former Montgomery County Public Safety Training Academy used carcinogenic firefighting foams for 40 years. The training academy had direct hydrologic connections to nearby streams and stormwater ponds.

Across Maryland, there are well over a hundred locations like Muddy Branch where firefighting foams containing PFAS were historically used. These sites include military bases, civilian airports, municipal fire stations, and firefighter training grounds. These locations are expected to have contaminated nearby surface waters, groundwater, sediment, fish, and wildlife in much the same way that we are witnessing the contamination unfold in Muddy Branch.

‍The Maryland Department of the Environment (MDE) has not publicly acknowledged the likely PFAS contamination associated with the Maryland Fire and Rescue Institute (MFRI)  regional fire training centers across the state, despite the well-established history of aqueous film-forming foam (AFFF) use at fire training facilities across the staate and nationwide. ‘

The regional training centers are listed here.

Similarly, the MDE has ignored the contamination flowing from the county-owned and operated fire training facilities statewide, at these locations.

The old Montgomery County Public Safety Training Academy was located at the intersection of Great Seneca Highway and Darnestown Road, immediately adjacent to the Muddy Branch watershed. It closed in 2016 when operations moved to the new academy at 8751 Snouffer School Road.

The Montgomery County Public Safety Training Academy at 8751 Snouffer School Road contains multiple live-fire training structures where Class B AFFF was likely used for flammable-liquid fire training before Maryland prohibited such training uses in 2021. Because the academy is situated immediately adjacent to the Cabin Branch watershed, PFAS released during historical training activities would be expected to migrate through stormwater runoff and shallow groundwater into nearby Cabin Branch. PFAS in the watershed may ultimately reach the Potomac River at Riley's Lock, about 16 miles away.

Maryland has not undertaken a systematic statewide investigation of either the Maryland Fire and Rescue Institute's regional training centers or county-operated fire training academies, despite decades of PFAS-containing firefighting foam use and the recognition of fire training areas as high-priority PFAS source areas nationwide.

PFAS-containing firefighting foam sits in a storage area at the Mechanicsville Volunteer Fire Department in St. Mary’s County, MD. (Photo Courtesy of Joseph Guyther)  Maryland Matters

Maryland also has hundreds of municipal and volunteer fire stations. Most are believed to have historically stored and used Class B aqueous film-forming foam (AFFF) for vehicle fires, fuel spills, aircraft incidents, and training. While most are not "training academies," they may represent a much larger number of potential PFAS source areas than the academies themselves.

Firetrucks were commonly equipped with AFFF storage tanks, proportioning systems, hoses, and foam nozzles that required routine operational testing. These activities often involved discharging foam onto designated testing pads, training grounds, gravel lots, or other outdoor areas. In addition to emergency responses and firefighter training exercises, decades of routine nozzle testing, system flushing, and accidental releases likely resulted in repeated PFAS discharges at fire stations throughout Maryland. These testing locations have never been investigated and may be heavily contaminated, particularly where runoff flowed into storm drains, ditches, streams, ponds, or groundwater recharge areas.

Airports and Military Bases

The MDE ought to be investigating all major airport and military firefighting training areas.

The Department of Defense has already identified numerous Maryland installations where AFFF was used during emergencies, testing, or routine training.

Here’s a list of military sites that the DOD has identified as having used AFFF during emergencies and routine practice.

Army

Aberdeen Proving Ground
Adelphi Laboratory Center
Fort Detrick
Fort Detrick - Forest Glen
Fort Meade – BRAC
Fort Meade – Active
Fort Meade – Phoenix
Phillips Army Airfield
Weide AASF

Navy

Annapolis Naval Academy
Annapolis Surface Weapons Center BRAC
NSWC Carderock – West Bethesda Campus
Bainbridge
Naval Research Laboratory Chesapeake Bay Detachment
Indian Head Naval Surface Weapons Center
Patuxent River Naval Air Station
Solomons Naval Recreation Center
Webster Field Annex – Patuxent River NAS

Walter Reed National Military Medical Center
White Oak- NSWC Dahlgren DIV

Air Force 

Joint Base Andrews
National Guard Martin State

Maryland Airports       

Aside from the clearly documented use of AFFF during fire training at Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport in Baltimore over the years, Maryland’s regional Airports have likely trained with the toxic foams.

‍Baltimore Washington International Airport participates in annual Aircraft Rescue and Fire Fighting recertification training. The foams used to douse this recent blaze likely cccontained fluorine-free foams, but decades of practice likely involved the deadly foams.  - IAFF Local 1742

‍Regional Airports that likely used the toxic foams

Martin State Airport        ‍

Wicomico Regional Airport     

Hagerstown Regional Airport  

‍Greater Cumberland Regional Airport

‍Frederick Municipal Airport    

‍St. Mary's County Regional Airport   

‍Easton Airport

‍Cambridge–Dorchester Regional Airport     

‍Carroll County Regional Airport       

‍Garrett County Airport   

‍Montgomery County Airpark   

‍Ocean City Municipal Airport  

‍Bay Bridge Airport        

‍Crisfield–Somerset County Airport    

‍Tipton Airport‍‍ ‍

MDE’s botched “take-back” program

The MDE also dropped the ball in implementing the PFAS “take-back” program that the General Assembly had ordered and funded in 2022. Maryland banned PFAS-containing firefighting foam in 2022 and directed MDE to establish a  program to collect and dispose of legacy AFFF.

The department received $500,000, a tiny amount in state funding, to carry out that mandate, yet by May 2026—roughly four years after passage of the law—fire departments across Maryland were still storing drums and containers of banned foam in closets, storage rooms, and apparatus bays while awaiting state action.

MDE's delay in implementing the state's AFFF take-back program created more than a bureaucratic problem. For years after Maryland banned PFAS-containing firefighting foam, thousands of gallons of the material remained stored at firehouses throughout the state. These stockpiles were often kept in plastic containers, storage rooms, apparatus bays, and outdoor locations vulnerable to weather, flooding, punctures, equipment failures, and accidental releases. The continued storage of large quantities of AFFF at hundreds of fire stations increases the likelihood of additional PFAS contamination events long after the state had recognized the hazards posed by the foam. Rather than promptly removing and securely disposing of the material, Maryland allowed it to remain scattered across local communities while the state struggled to establish the take-back program required by law.

The state’s unwillingness to dispose of legacy PFAS-containing firefighting foam raises questions not only about environmental risk but also about cost. Maine's Department of Environmental Protection recently estimated that approximately 50,000 gallons of aqueous film-forming foam (AFFF) remain available for collection across that state. Using a planning estimate of roughly $100 per gallon—derived from New Hampshire's statewide program, Maine projected that collection and disposal alone could cost at least $5 million. In the meantime, MDE recommends facilities “properly” store PFAS-containing Class-B foams, while regularly monitoring for storage system leaks and maintenance needs is necessary.

Maryland faces an even larger challenge. The state has a much larger population than Maine and contains hundreds of potential AFFF-use locations. If Maryland's legacy AFFF inventory is comparable to or greater than Maine's estimated 50,000 gallons, disposal costs could easily reach $5 million to $10 million or more.

‍The estimate does not include the costs of environmental investigation, “remediation”, or long-term monitoring at contaminated sites. These costs could reach several billion dollars at a hundred sites. “Cleanup” would require decades of groundwater extraction, multiple pump-and-treat systems, treatment plants using granular activated carbon or ion exchange, excavation and disposal of contaminated soils, installation of extensive monitoring well networks, repeated sampling of groundwater, surface water, fish and wildlife, replacement of contaminated drinking water supplies, engineering investigations, CERCLA oversight, and decades of long-term operation and maintenance.

‍Scientists cannot agree on what PFAS cleanup ultimately looks like. EPA acknowledges significant uncertainties surrounding the destruction of PFAS through high-temperature incineration, while landfilling merely transfers the chemicals to another location where contaminated leachate must be managed for decades. In many cases, "cleanup" means moving PFAS rather than eliminating it.

Who Bears the Burden?

‍This reality raises a difficult ethical question. When Maine shipped thousands of gallons of legacy firefighting foam to the hazardous waste facility in Emelle, Alabama, it reduced one state's environmental burden by transferring it to another community. Emelle is a predominantly Black community that has long hosted one of the nation's largest hazardous waste landfills. As states confront growing stockpiles of PFAS waste, policymakers must decide not only how to manage these chemicals, but also who will bear the environmental risks associated with their disposal.

‍WSSC prompted MDE to get to work

‍The testing process at Muddy Branch wasn’t initiated by MDE. Testing occurred only after the Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission (WSSC) requested additional PFAS investigation in the Muddy Branch watershed. Following WSSC's request, the MDE conducted more extensive sampling of streams and stormwater ponds in the area. MDE's investigation subsequently identified elevated concentrations of PFAS in surface waters near the former Montgomery County Public Safety Training Academy.

If there is a hero in this story, it is WSSC. Private citizens have tested tap water throughout Prince George’s and Montgomery Counties and found levels of PFAS well under federal guidelines. While WSSC limits drinking water to levels under 4 parts per trillion for PFOS and PFOA, the MDE allows Smallmouth Bass with 574,000 parts per trillion of PFOS to be consumed in the Potomac north on Montgomery County and Largemouth Bass south Montgomery County with 94,200 ppt of PFOS to be consumed by the unsuspecting public. ‍ ‍

The Media Missed the Larger Story

Maryland's major news organizations have not treated PFAS contamination from fire training areas as the statewide story it plainly is. The Washington Post and The Baltimore Sun have failed to investigate the broader pattern of PFAS contamination from fire training academies, county training centers, municipal fire stations, airports, and military installations across Maryland.

‍ Local television and radio outlets reported the initial Muddy Branch advisory, but the story stopped there. Initial reports focused public attention on the county's announcement that PFAS had been detected at about 1,600 parts per trillion near the former Montgomery County Public Safety Training Academy. But the fuller MDE data later showed a much broader chemical picture, including 4,465 ppt total PFAS at MB8 near the stormwater pond. That follow-up story—the one that changed the public's understanding of the scale and complexity of the contamination—was ignored.

Maryland's news media have reported on PFAS legislation, fish advisories, military cleanup efforts, and the state's delayed foam take-back program. What has been largely absent is sustained investigative reporting into the contamination of Maryland's fire training facilities themselves—the places where PFAS-containing firefighting foams were routinely discharged for decades.

‍The result is a distorted public record. Residents were told there was PFAS in Muddy Branch, but it was never explained that Muddy Branch is part of a much larger statewide pattern tied to decades of firefighting foam use. When major news organizations fail to explain that pattern, public agencies face less pressure, elected officials face fewer questions, and residents are left with the impression that this is an isolated event rather than a predictable consequence of Maryland's long failure to investigate fire training sites.

‍The failure of the press to follow the evidence allows public misunderstanding to flourish.

‍Still, Muddy Branch will ultimately prove to be the first clear demonstration of a much larger statewide problem.‍ ‍

Bucking a decades-long trend of sidelining questions of international solidarity and silencing Palestine liberation, delegates to the 39th UAW Constitutional Convention in Detroit, Michigan voted June 18 to divest from Israel bonds. The UAW reportedly holds at least $400,000 in these investments. Delegates from Unite all Workers for Democracy (UAWD), the class struggle movement of the UAW, representing UAW members across the country, led the effort to divest.

UAW members have been fighting to divest dues money from Israel bonds for over fifty years. In the 1970s, the UAW Arab Workers Caucus picketed UAW events, struck, and organized for the 1974 UAW Constitutional Convention demanding divestment. Workers redoubled their efforts after the apartheid state escalated its genocide in October 2023.

UAWD developed and organized to advance a class struggle program of Constitutional amendments, grounded in UAWD’s principles of rank-and-file militancy, workers’ democracy and workplace control, international working class solidarity, and political independence. The program includes a stronger version of the divestment amendment to end the UAW’s complicity with Israeli genocide and end imperialist wars. UAWD members brought the amendment to membership meetings in several locals across the country. Members at locals 869, 1115, 2320, 2325, and 7902 voted to send versions of the amendment to the Convention.

UAW leadership initially excluded divestment from the Convention’s agenda. On Wednesday, June 17 UAWD member Olga Karounos, a legal services worker from New York, made a motion to call the amendment out of committee. 147 delegates stood in support, clearing the 128 required to agendize the amendment. The amendment was debated and adopted by the Convention Thursday, June 18 with 321 votes in favor and 287 against. A previous UAW Executive Board vote on divestment failed on May 3, 2024. The vote came after sustained worker pressure and demands for action on the issue from multiple union locals.

Since its founding in 2004, Labor for Palestine has led the effort within the U.S. labor movement to honor the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) picket line. Labor for Palestine has organized protests and resolutions in the UAW and in unions across the labor movement, and many of the UAWD members who advanced the divestment amendment are also long-time Labor for Palestine members.

Earlier in the day on Wednesday, UAWD member Mike Davis, a parts manufacturing worker from Ohio, made a motion to call the stronger pro-Palestine amendment to the floor. In addition to forcing divestment, UAWD’s amendment to End Complicity With Israeli Genocide and Imperialist Wars would support workers who strike to interrupt weapons flows to Israel, set endorsement criteria for politicians, and cut ties with the apartheid Histadrut labor organization. 69 delegates stood in support of Davis’ motion, falling short of the 128 required.

The Proposed Resolutions booklet from the 39th UAW Constitutional Convention and UAWD’s class struggle unionism buttons. Photo credit: UAWD.

The stronger version of the UAWD amendment would’ve enabled weapons workers in the U.S. to take action to shut down the flow of weapons to Israel by giving them job and pay protections while striking or if they face retaliation. UAW’s divestment shows the potential for greater militancy and labor solidarity action within U.S. unions, coming as the working class around the world has mobilized to fight genocide. The pro-Palestine movement in the United States has won the divestment of public investment funds in Michigan, Minnesota, North Carolina, and New York City. Workers in Belgium, France, Greece, Morocco, Spain, Italy, Sweden, and beyond have even refused to handle weapons and Israeli-bound cargo.

UAWD delegates also brought amendments to fight layoffs and ICE to the Convention. UAW leadership also excluded these resolutions from the agenda and UAWD delegates called for them to be debated. These amendments, and the stronger pro-Palestine amendment, threatened to disrupt production and labor-management agreements that maintain labor peace.

UAWD’s amendment to Fight Layoffs with Work Sharing would require UAW negotiators to bargain work sharing provisions, spreading available work across the entire bargaining unit instead of throwing some workers out of a job. The resolution notes that “thousands of UAW members have recently been laid off at John Deere, Stellantis, General Motors, Ultium, and numerous IPS facilities.” On Tuesday, June 16 UAWD member Margie Thornton, a legal services worker from Colorado, made a motion to call it out of committee. 62 delegates stood in support, failing short of the 128 required.

UAWD’s amendment to Abolish ICE and Fight State Attacks on Workers would trigger membership meetings to discuss striking in the event of ICE attacks in the area. UAW Local 2325 has already implemented a similar structure. On Tuesday, June 16 UAWD supporter Andrew Eichen made a motion to call it out of committee. 162 delegates stood in support, clearing the 128 required. Shawn Fain’s United caucus, the renamed Administration Caucus that ruled the UAW through top-down repression for decades, organized against the resolution in their Wednesday morning meeting. As has been the practice for years, delegates were urged to attend the caucus meeting to hear recommendations from top UAW leadership if they want to secure future jobs on UAW staff. The amendment was debated and ultimately voted down Thursday, June 18, following impassioned speeches about the importance of building working-class capacity to shut down production with political strikes.

This Constitutional Convention was the second attended by UAWD, and the first since UAWD split last year after a faction of former leaders’ failed attempt to dissolve the organization. At the 2022 Convention, UAWD called out three amendments from committee, a first in the modern era for the historically undemocratic UAW Convention setting. UAWD’s amendment to begin the calculation of strike pay on the first day of a strike, instead of the eighth day, passed unanimously after top UAW leadership had tried to block it procedurally.

Unite all Workers for Democracy (UAWD) is the class struggle movement of the UAW. UAWD members across the country organized in their locals to send class struggle amendments to the Convention and ran as delegates from their locals.

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

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Washington’s cap-and-invest market goes international Climate Solutions Fri, 06/26/2026 - 12:15 pm

Florida officials announced the closure of “Alligator Alcatraz” on June 25, 2026.

The federal government, with the support of the State of Florida, constructed and operated Alligator Alcatraz in violation of the sovereign rights of the Miccosukee Tribe, who took the government to court for illegally constructing the center without their consultation or consent.

As Native peoples, we have a sacred obligation passed down from our ancestors to care for the land and everyone who depends on it. The construction of the detention center in Florida was on the ancestral lands of the Miccosukee Tribe. The buildings endangered delicate and protected ecosystems. Alligator Alcatraz put thousands of immigrants at risk. The reported filthy and unsafe conditions were a violation of the human rights of immigrants and their families.

The administration’s violent crackdown on migrant communities is an affront to all we stand for as Native peoples. We are opposed to any government operation that violates the human rights of our neighbors and all who reside on this land. As we saw in Minneapolis earlier this year, ICE operations operate with little to no oversight or safeguards, acting illegally in many cases. Multiple people, including babies, have died in, or as a result of, ICE custody. This must end.

The closure of Alligator Alcatraz is a victory for human rights and Tribal Sovereignty, but we want to see an end to all inhumane and unlawful detention of our neighbors who are simply trying to live, work, and raise their families.

This story was originally published in Native News Online.

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Today, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit upheld the national, health-based limit on fine particulate matter (PM2.5), also known as soot, that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) strengthened in 2024.

Soot, made up of tiny toxic particles that lodge deep in the lungs, results in severe health harms, including premature death, and comes from sources like vehicle exhaust pipes, power plants, and factories.

The National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) for PM2.5 set baseline national air quality standards to reduce the harms of this deadly air pollutant for communities across the country. Last year, in an unprecedented move, Trump’s EPA gave up defending the strengthened standard against challenges from industry and aligned states and asked the court to strike it down on narrow legal grounds, without ever disputing the science underlying the standard. Health, environmental, and community groups, along with a coalition of states led by California, continued to defend the standard.

“Clean air is not a luxury. We are thrilled these vital air quality standards have been upheld by a federal court,” said Patrice Simms, vice president of Healthy Communities at Earthjustice. “The 2024 soot standard is a critical advancement for public health, projected to save thousands of lives every year. Lee Zeldin’s EPA must stop catering to polluters and must instead fulfill its mission to protect public health. The time for implementing the 2024 soot standard is now.”

“Fine particulate matter standards provide critical public health protections. The court correctly rejected EPA’s about-face on the need for a stronger standard,” said Shaun Goho, senior director, Legal Advocacy at Clean Air Task Force. “The science is clear that soot has many serious health impacts, particularly for children, the elderly, and those with asthma. By EPA’s own estimate, implementing the 2024 soot standard will prevent 800,000 cases of asthma symptoms, 2,000 hospital visits, and 4,500 premature deaths in 2032. Today marks an important step in the right direction, but EPA must now implement the 2024 standard without delay.”

“The federal court’s decision to uphold the 2024 strengthened particle pollution standard is a win for public health,” said Katie Huffling, DNP, RN, CNM, FAAN, executive director, Alliance of Nurses for Healthy Environments. “Every day in practice, nurses witness and treat conditions made worse by soot pollution. From asthma exacerbations and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease to heart disease and preterm birth, nurses see the real-world health implications of toxic air pollution. The science shows stronger limits to reduce dangerous soot pollution provide significant health benefits for Americans, especially for those most vulnerable and those exposed to higher levels of particulate matter pollution. We now urge EPA to fully implement the strengthened standard to ensure those health benefits are realized.”

“Today’s federal court decision is good news for clean air in America and for the millions of people harmed by deadly soot,” said Noha Haggag, senior attorney for Environmental Defense Fund. “Soot can cause asthma attacks, lung cancer, and premature deaths. The court’s rejection of the Trump administration’s attempt to eliminate our national health standards for soot will mean healthier, longer lives for people across the country.”

“While the Trump EPA has dragged its heels, millions of Americans have kept breathing unhealthy air,” said Vijay Limaye, climate and health scientist at NRDC. Every day of delay means more premature deaths, more asthma attacks, and more hospitalizations. This decision removes any remaining doubt: the science has long been clear, and now the law is too. The Trump EPA must stop stalling and deliver the healthier air the science and the law demand.”

“The court did the right thing today by standing up for our health and safety,” said Rachel Briggs, Conservation Law Foundation staff attorney. “We should never put the polluting status-quo over people, especially when it fuels chronic respiratory and cardiac illnesses. We’ll never compromise when it comes to the safety of our neighbors, communities, and the low-income and Black and Brown families that continue to shoulder the worst of these toxins.”

Background

Soot is a lethal combination of metals, organic chemicals, and acidic substances so tiny that they can be easily inhaled into our lungs and delivered directly into our bloodstream. It threatens our health and environment — posing especially heightened risks for children, seniors and people with chronic illnesses. Among the health harms it is linked to are death, cardiovascular harms, new and exacerbated asthma cases, lung cancer, and serious neurological harms, like Alzheimer’s disease.

Under the Clean Air Act, the EPA has for decades set baseline national air quality standards for six harmful pollutants, including soot. In 2024 the agency strengthened the soot standard from 12 to 9 micrograms per cubic meter,

According to the EPA, the strengthened soot standard will result in significant public health net benefits that could be as high as $46 billion by 2032. The EPA’s estimate of costs is an order of magnitude less. Polluters’ exaggerated claims about costs have been repeatedly debunked.

After the agency strengthened the soot standard, corporations and attorneys general in allied states sued. Earthjustice, its clients and partners intervened to defend the strengthened soot standard. Earthjustice clients are Alliance of Nurses for Healthy Environments, American Lung Association, Environmental Defense Fund, NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council), Northeast Ohio Community Resilience Centre (formerly the Northeast Ohio Black Health Coalition), Rio Grande International Study Center, and Sierra Club. Clean Air Task Force represents Citizens for Pennsylvania’s Future and Conservation Law Foundation.

A recent white paper found that 75 million people live in counties whose air quality violates the standard. The Clean Air Act mandated that the EPA formally identify the areas that violate the standard by Feb. 6, 2026. When EPA failed to meet that deadline, a group of health, environmental, and community groups, and a state coalition, sued to require it to obey the law. That key step will require pollution reductions in those areas, to bring them into compliance with the 2024 NAAQS.

In mountain regions from the Andes to the Himalayas, Indigenous people see the retreat of glaciers as a sign that they have lost the favor of their gods or ancestors.

Read more on E360 →

Registered nurses at Dominican Hospital in Santa Cruz, Calif., will hold an informational picket on Tuesday, June 30, to alert the community about CommonSpirit Health’s (CommonSpirit) proposed staffing cuts that jeopardize patient safety and undermine quality care.

Montana Residents Challenge State’s Granting of Undisclosed Waiver for Bridger Pipeline Construction Montana DEQ issued illegal waiver by ignoring requirements for public notices and hearings. For Immediate Release: June 26, 2026 Contact: Perry Wheeler, Earthjustice | pwheeler@earthjustice.org Derf Johnson, MEIC | (406) 443-2520, Ext. 103 | djohnson@meic.org   HELENA – Montana residents today challenged the …

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The Aika People Say Freeport’s Grasberg Mine Operates Without Their Consent and Dumps Its Waste in the River. Copper Mark Certified It Anyway.

Just weeks ago, Copper Mark awarded PT Freeport Indonesia a renewed certification claiming that their Grasberg facility “fully meets” all but one of its 33 criteria for responsible mineral producers. The Indigenous Aika Tribe in Central Papua filed a grievance challenging the credibility of the company’s claims.

The Aika People’s complaint against a Copper Mark audit is of global significance. Voluntary mine site audits are on the rise across the world. The majority of deposits of energy transition minerals are located on or near the lands of Indigenous Peoples. The mining industry’s use of voluntary standards to hide or dismiss Indigenous Peoples’ rights violations is an ever-growing concern.

Company Claims Don’t Match Reality

The complaint, submitted on May 25th by the Aika Indigenous Council (LEMASAI), accuses Freeport Indonesia of excluding their community from consultation, compensation and land governance processes despite operating on territory recognized as their ancestral and customary land.

At the center of the dispute is the assessment conducted by auditor Ernst & Young, published on April 8, 2026. That assessment concluded that Freeport “Fully Meets” Copper Mark criteria on Indigenous Peoples’ rights, stakeholder engagement and tailings management.

For the Aika Tribe, the certification renewal represents a glaring contradiction between corporate sustainability claims and realities on the ground.

“How can a company receive ‘Fully Meets’ status when the Indigenous People most affected by the operation say they were never properly recognized or consulted?” asked Mombiot Yoseph Akoha, chairman of the Aika Indigenous Council.

Aika Excluded from Negotiations

According to the filing, the company relied on what the community describes as “proxy representation” through an MOU from 2000 involving other Indigenous Peoples. It excluded the Aika People from negotiations over compensation and benefit-sharing.

The Aika People cite a 2019 decree issued by Majelis Rakyat Papua (a government body charged with protecting the rights of Indigenous Peoples) recognizing the mine’s operational area as part of the customary territory of the Aika Tribe.

In another development highlighted in the grievance, LEMASKO — one of the other Indigenous institutions previously involved in the compensation arrangement — issued a declaration in 2024 acknowledging that the territory in question belongs to the Aika People and suggests that there had been manipulation in the processes that led to the signing of the 2000 MOU and its exclusion of the Aika People.

River Dumping Threatens Livelihoods

In addition to the lack of Free, Prior, and Informed Consent and compensation for the Aika Tribe, the grievance also raises concerns over environmental impacts linked to decades of dumping mine waste into the Ajkwa estuary system. The practice has disrupted traditional fishing routes, navigation channels and subsistence livelihoods for the Aika Tribe.

Weak Audit Affirms Concerns About Industry-Backed Standard

The Copper Mark is one of four industry-backed standards bodies that joined together to form the Consolidated Mining Standard Initiative (CMSI). The CMSI has been widely criticized by civil society organizations, including numerous Indigenous Peoples’ rights groups, for the risks it poses. The weak standard has the potential to uphold and normalize the systematic abuse of Indigenous Peoples’ rights, human rights and ecosystems by the mining sector. 

Both of the Copper Mark-audited mines in Indonesia have resulted in grievances by Indigenous Peoples for the failure of these audits to accurately identify and capture the harms and rights violations they face.

That trend has broad implications. Downstream buyers and investors rely on audits as data points in their due diligence and risk evaluation processes. Policymakers should also be concerned since they integrate voluntary certification schemes into legislation (as the European Commission has in the EU Batteries Regulation and Critical Raw Materials Act).

Learn more about efforts to strengthen voluntary mining standards from the Mining Standards Accountability Alliance.

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