News Feeds

This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections

Electric vehicle sales are a surprising beneficiary of the Trump presidency – at least outside of the United States.

The Iran conflict caused global oil prices to surge above $100 per barrel in March, April, and May of this year. Gasoline prices soon followed suit, exceeding $4 per gallon in the United States most days since April Fools’ Day.

As the biggest consumer of oil from the Middle East, Asia was hit hardest by its rising prices, shortages, and restrictions. But China’s measures to cut back on its oil imports have prevented global oil prices from escalating as high as many experts predicted.

Electric vehicles are one contributing factor. A recent analysis estimated that China’s rapid adoption of EVs has reduced the country’s oil consumption by 1.5 million barrels per day, or nearly 10%.

A new global electric car market report from the International Energy Agency, or IEA, also concluded that the Iran conflict and associated energy crisis “has clearly reinforced the case for EVs as a way to address energy security and fuel cost concerns," and that it “may therefore further accelerate ongoing shifts in global car markets towards more electrification.”

The share of global new car sales that are electrified – meaning both fully electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids – has grown steadily in recent years, according to the IEA. In 2020, EVs represented under 5% of global new car sales. That share rose rapidly to 20% in 2024 and reached one-in-four new cars sold last year. 

A slump followed by renewed interest

EV policies in China and the U.S. are a big deal, because 38% of all cars sold in 2025 were purchased in China and another 18% in the United States. 

“China and the U.S. are such big markets in absolute terms that they shape the global picture,” explained Euan Graham, senior analyst at the energy think tank Ember, in an email.

As an example, EV sales abruptly slumped during the first two months of 2026, after Republicans eliminated the U.S. federal EV tax credit and China slashed its EV tax exemption.

But on the last day of February, the U.S. and Israel launched coordinated military strikes against Iran, which responded by shutting down the Strait of Hormuz, through which 20% of the global oil supply previously flowed. 

The price of oil and refined fuels spiked, and interest in EVs followed. Since March, electric car sales have surged in Europe, Southeast Asia, Latin America, and Asia Pacific. In Europe, the world’s third-largest auto market, EVs now represent nearly 30% of new car sales. Their popularity has even begun to rebound in China and the U.S.

Electric vehicle sales in various regions during the first half of 2026 compared to the first half of 2025. (Image credit: IEA/CC BY 4.0)

As to just how much the Iran conflict supercharged EV sales, “I think it’s a bit tricky to nail down precisely,” said Elizabeth Connelly, energy technology and transport analyst at IEA and co-author of the report, in an email.

That's because individual countries’ policies and economic conditions have a big influence on consumer behavior. But the data certainly indicate that the war and resulting high fuel prices made EVs more appealing to consumers.

For example, the IEA report noted that in China, total car sales have declined this year due largely to an economic slowdown in the country. That slump has hit internal combustion engine car sales particularly hard. While the EV share fell to 42% of China’s new car sales in the first two months of the year when government subsidies were first slashed, it quickly rebounded after the Iran conflict began. Electrified vehicles set records by exceeding 60% of China’s reduced volume of new car sales in each of the past three months.

That makes the United States’ persistently stagnant EV market unique. 

“As some markets see a step change in EV sales this year, boosted by the conflict in Iran, the U.S. is seeing sales slump having rolled back policy support,” Graham said.

Electrified vehicles have represented under 7.5% of new American car sales in each of the 10 months since federal tax credits were eliminated. Although rising gasoline prices spurred record domestic purchases of hybrid cars and used EVs, new EVs have not experienced the same sales boost.

Read: The rest of the world is lapping the U.S. in the EV race

The share of quarterly new car sales in the U.S. since 2018 that were fully electric (green), plug-in hybrids (blue), and standard hybrids (gray). The start and end of the Inflation Reduction Act EV tax credit availability are indicated in red. (Image credit: Created by Dana Nuccitelli with data from Argonne National Laboratory)

The future of the car market is electric, to China’s benefit

As China’s domestic car sales have slowed this year, the country’s automakers have responded by ramping up their vehicle exports. That’s especially true of EVs, which the IEA reports surged to 35% of Chinese car exports in 2025 and 45% in the first half of 2026.

Total number of car exports (left frame) and percentage of those that are electrified (right frame) from China (red), the European Union (blue), the United States (green), and Japan (purple). (Image credit: IEA / CC BY 4.0)

And the IEA data illustrates that fossil-fueled cars are quickly going the way of the dinosaurs. Global internal combustion engine vehicle sales reached their apex in 2017. The COVID pandemic caused car sales to plummet, and although they have now rebounded to pre-pandemic levels, all of the post-pandemic sales recovery has come from EVs. Fewer cars with internal combustion engines are being sold around the world today than were in 2011.

Global car sales of internal combustion engine vehicles (ICEV; gray); hybrid electric vehicles (HEV; yellow); electric vehicles (EV, including both fully electric and plug-in hybrids; blue); and hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicles (green; too small to be visible), including IEA 2026 estimates (2026e). (Image credit: IEA / CC BY 4.0)

And a recent forecast by JD Power predicted that EVs will comprise a majority of new global car sales by 2033, reaching over 80% of the new car market by 2040.

JD Power forecast of the electrified share of new car sales in China (red), Europe (blue), the U.S. (purple), and the global average (black). (Image credit: Created by Dana Nuccitelli with data from JD Power)

The IEA is a bit less optimistic in its EV sales forecasts. 

“Our two policy-based scenarios project around a 50% electric car sales share by 2035,” Connelly said. 

The IEA is particularly bearish about the U.S., expecting no more than 20% of new American car sales to be electrified by 2035 unless new policies are introduced. 

“The changes in U.S. policy over the past two years have pulled down the projected global EV sales share,” Connelly said. “That being said, there is upside potential to our outlook based on the progress seen in emerging markets and developing economies, and more broadly depending on how policymakers respond to the recent energy crisis.”

Chinese automakers dominate the electrified sector, accounting for about two-thirds of all global EV sales today. Expanding Chinese EV exports have contributed to rapidly growing electric car adoption in countries around the world, including Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, the Philippines, Belgium, the United Kingdom, United Arab Emirates, Russia, and Ethiopia. In total, the IEA reports that 50 countries set records for EV sales in the second quarter of 2026.

Can American automakers survive?

The rapid global transition to EVs and the Chinese dominance of that market have American automakers frightened about their companies’ futures. Recent U.S. government policies and regulatory rollbacks have undercut an already weak domestic EV market, and with the exception of Tesla, American automakers have been unable to compete with Chinese EVs in the international market. 

There remain a few glimmers of hope in the American EV market. California, which accounts for one-quarter to one-third of annual electrified vehicle sales in the country, just launched its own rebate program for first-time EV buyers. And American legacy automakers like Ford and newcomers like Slate are taking innovative approaches in an effort to introduce more affordable electric vehicles.

But unless those efforts achieve success soon, the formerly dominant American auto industry will be relegated to fighting over the scraps of an ever-shrinking internal combustion engine vehicle market as the world transitions to an electrified future, unintentionally supercharged by the consequences of Trump’s Iran war.

This article first appeared on Yale Climate Connections and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

//

About the Photo: Bread & Puppet Theater takes to the streets of Vermont against the Iraq War. This figure is from Peter Schumann’s Grey Lady imagery—figures associated with war, grief, and mourning. Artist Peter Schumann is the founder and director of the Bread & Puppet Theater. Photo: Orin Langelle/GJEP (circa 2003)

Pennsylvania's oil and gas wells reported 72.6 million barrels of liquid waste and more than 825,000 tons of solid waste in 2025, with unconventional wells accounting for nearly all of it. This analysis examines the categories of waste, a conventional-well reporting gap covering roughly 48,500 wells, brine spreading, where the waste ends up, and chemical analyses documenting high concentrations of radioactive and other hazardous contaminants.

The post Tracking Pennsylvania’s Oil and Gas Waste in 2025 appeared first on FracTracker Alliance.

Print article Share

More than 40% of children under the age of 10 globally are already experiencing at least 20 additional “heat-stress days” due to climate change.

This is according to a new attribution study, published in Science Advances, which combines climate models with demographic data to assess the age groups and regions that are exposed to the most hot, humid days.

The study finds that children up to the age of nine already face more additional heat-stress days globally as a result of climate change than any other age group. 

It adds that south Asia, southeast Asia and west Africa are recording the greatest childhood exposure to dangerous levels of humid heat – largely because these regions have a rapidly growing population with the highest proportion of young children.

As the climate warms, children will continue to be more exposed to heat stress than any other age group, the paper warns.

The lead author of the study tells Carbon Brief that the findings should inform discussions about climate justice, noting that children in developing countries “have contributed the least to historical greenhouse gas emissions”. 

Humid heat

High temperatures can be deadly. For example, the heatwaves that swept across Europe in the summer of 2026 have been linked to tens of thousands of “excess deaths”.

A prominent 2021 study found that children born in the 21st century will be exposed to more extreme weather events in their lifetimes than their parents and grandparents. 

Four years later, a study conducted by scientists from the same team found that more than half of children born in 2020 – around 62 million people – will experience “unprecedented lifetime exposure” to heatwaves, even if warming is limited to 1.5C.

Now, the latest research from the same team finds that children already face greater  exposure to dangerous levels of humid heat than adults as a result of human-caused climate change.

Extreme heat is particularly dangerous when combined with high humidity. In hot weather, the human body produces sweat to cool itself down. However, as humidity increases, sweating becomes less effective.

The study uses indoor wet-bulb globe temperature – a measure of temperature that takes humidity into account – to calculate heat stress. It defines a “heat-stress day” as any day with a wet-bulb globe temperature above 28C, as this is considered the threshold for “moderate heat stress”

The authors then use climate models to simulate global temperature patterns in the present-day climate. (The authors use the climate of 2023, in which human activity has caused 1.3C of warming, to represent the “present-day”.)

They then count the number of heat-stress days that each country records on average, per year. The authors then repeat this exercise, simulating a pre-industrial climate without human-caused warming.

By comparing the number of heat-stress days in the present-day climate with the number in a pre-industrial climate, the authors can determine how many extra heat-stress days were driven by climate change. They refer to these as “extra” or “attributable” heat-stress days.

The authors find that “low-latitude” countries, located in the tropics, record the most extra heat-stress days.

#gform_wrapper_5[data-form-index="0"].gform-theme,[data-parent-form="5_0"]{--gf-color-primary: #204ce5;--gf-color-primary-rgb: 32, 76, 229;--gf-color-primary-contrast: #fff;--gf-color-primary-contrast-rgb: 255, 255, 255;--gf-color-primary-darker: #001AB3;--gf-color-primary-lighter: #527EFF;--gf-color-secondary: #fff;--gf-color-secondary-rgb: 255, 255, 255;--gf-color-secondary-contrast: #112337;--gf-color-secondary-contrast-rgb: 17, 35, 55;--gf-color-secondary-darker: #F5F5F5;--gf-color-secondary-lighter: #FFFFFF;--gf-color-out-ctrl-light: rgba(17, 35, 55, 0.1);--gf-color-out-ctrl-light-rgb: 17, 35, 55;--gf-color-out-ctrl-light-darker: rgba(104, 110, 119, 0.35);--gf-color-out-ctrl-light-lighter: #F5F5F5;--gf-color-out-ctrl-dark: #585e6a;--gf-color-out-ctrl-dark-rgb: 88, 94, 106;--gf-color-out-ctrl-dark-darker: #112337;--gf-color-out-ctrl-dark-lighter: rgba(17, 35, 55, 0.65);--gf-color-in-ctrl: #fff;--gf-color-in-ctrl-rgb: 255, 255, 255;--gf-color-in-ctrl-contrast: #112337;--gf-color-in-ctrl-contrast-rgb: 17, 35, 55;--gf-color-in-ctrl-darker: #F5F5F5;--gf-color-in-ctrl-lighter: #FFFFFF;--gf-color-in-ctrl-primary: #204ce5;--gf-color-in-ctrl-primary-rgb: 32, 76, 229;--gf-color-in-ctrl-primary-contrast: #fff;--gf-color-in-ctrl-primary-contrast-rgb: 255, 255, 255;--gf-color-in-ctrl-primary-darker: #001AB3;--gf-color-in-ctrl-primary-lighter: #527EFF;--gf-color-in-ctrl-light: rgba(17, 35, 55, 0.1);--gf-color-in-ctrl-light-rgb: 17, 35, 55;--gf-color-in-ctrl-light-darker: rgba(104, 110, 119, 0.35);--gf-color-in-ctrl-light-lighter: #F5F5F5;--gf-color-in-ctrl-dark: #585e6a;--gf-color-in-ctrl-dark-rgb: 88, 94, 106;--gf-color-in-ctrl-dark-darker: #112337;--gf-color-in-ctrl-dark-lighter: rgba(17, 35, 55, 0.65);--gf-radius: 3px;--gf-font-size-secondary: 14px;--gf-font-size-tertiary: 13px;--gf-icon-ctrl-number: url("data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg width='8' height='14' viewBox='0 0 8 14' fill='none' xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%3E%3Cpath fill-rule='evenodd' clip-rule='evenodd' d='M4 0C4.26522 5.96046e-08 4.51957 0.105357 4.70711 0.292893L7.70711 3.29289C8.09763 3.68342 8.09763 4.31658 7.70711 4.70711C7.31658 5.09763 6.68342 5.09763 6.29289 4.70711L4 2.41421L1.70711 4.70711C1.31658 5.09763 0.683417 5.09763 0.292893 4.70711C-0.0976311 4.31658 -0.097631 3.68342 0.292893 3.29289L3.29289 0.292893C3.48043 0.105357 3.73478 0 4 0ZM0.292893 9.29289C0.683417 8.90237 1.31658 8.90237 1.70711 9.29289L4 11.5858L6.29289 9.29289C6.68342 8.90237 7.31658 8.90237 7.70711 9.29289C8.09763 9.68342 8.09763 10.3166 7.70711 10.7071L4.70711 13.7071C4.31658 14.0976 3.68342 14.0976 3.29289 13.7071L0.292893 10.7071C-0.0976311 10.3166 -0.0976311 9.68342 0.292893 9.29289Z' fill='rgba(17, 35, 55, 0.65)'/%3E%3C/svg%3E");--gf-icon-ctrl-select: url("data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg width='10' height='6' viewBox='0 0 10 6' fill='none' xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%3E%3Cpath fill-rule='evenodd' clip-rule='evenodd' d='M0.292893 0.292893C0.683417 -0.097631 1.31658 -0.097631 1.70711 0.292893L5 3.58579L8.29289 0.292893C8.68342 -0.0976311 9.31658 -0.0976311 9.70711 0.292893C10.0976 0.683417 10.0976 1.31658 9.70711 1.70711L5.70711 5.70711C5.31658 6.09763 4.68342 6.09763 4.29289 5.70711L0.292893 1.70711C-0.0976311 1.31658 -0.0976311 0.683418 0.292893 0.292893Z' fill='rgba(17, 35, 55, 0.65)'/%3E%3C/svg%3E");--gf-icon-ctrl-search: url("data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg width='640' height='640' xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%3E%3Cpath d='M256 128c-70.692 0-128 57.308-128 128 0 70.691 57.308 128 128 128 70.691 0 128-57.309 128-128 0-70.692-57.309-128-128-128zM64 256c0-106.039 85.961-192 192-192s192 85.961 192 192c0 41.466-13.146 79.863-35.498 111.248l154.125 154.125c12.496 12.496 12.496 32.758 0 45.254s-32.758 12.496-45.254 0L367.248 412.502C335.862 434.854 297.467 448 256 448c-106.039 0-192-85.962-192-192z' fill='rgba(17, 35, 55, 0.65)'/%3E%3C/svg%3E");--gf-label-space-y-secondary: var(--gf-label-space-y-md-secondary);--gf-ctrl-border-color: #686e77;--gf-ctrl-size: var(--gf-ctrl-size-md);--gf-ctrl-label-color-primary: #112337;--gf-ctrl-label-color-secondary: #112337;--gf-ctrl-choice-size: var(--gf-ctrl-choice-size-md);--gf-ctrl-checkbox-check-size: var(--gf-ctrl-checkbox-check-size-md);--gf-ctrl-radio-check-size: var(--gf-ctrl-radio-check-size-md);--gf-ctrl-btn-font-size: var(--gf-ctrl-btn-font-size-md);--gf-ctrl-btn-padding-x: var(--gf-ctrl-btn-padding-x-md);--gf-ctrl-btn-size: var(--gf-ctrl-btn-size-md);--gf-ctrl-btn-border-color-secondary: #686e77;--gf-ctrl-file-btn-bg-color-hover: #EBEBEB;--gf-field-img-choice-size: var(--gf-field-img-choice-size-md);--gf-field-img-choice-card-space: var(--gf-field-img-choice-card-space-md);--gf-field-img-choice-check-ind-size: var(--gf-field-img-choice-check-ind-size-md);--gf-field-img-choice-check-ind-icon-size: var(--gf-field-img-choice-check-ind-icon-size-md);--gf-field-pg-steps-number-color: rgba(17, 35, 55, 0.8);}

X/TwitterThis field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Free fortnightly newsletter

.preheader p{ margin-top: 0; font-family: 'PT Sans', sans-serif; font-weight: var(--type--3--font-weight--bold); color: var(--button--color); font-size: var(--button--font-size, inherit); } .newsletter-inline{ display: flex; border: solid 1px #333333; padding: 1em; background: #ffffff; } .inline-email{ display:inline-block; margin-right:1em; margin-top:0 !important; margin-bottom:0.5em; } #field_submit{ display:inline-block; margin-top:0 !important; } .gform_wrapper .gfield+.gfield{ margin-top:0 } Email gform.initializeOnLoaded( function() {gformInitSpinner( 5, 'http://www.carbonbrief.org/wp-content/plugins/gravityforms/images/spinner.svg', false );jQuery('#gform_ajax_frame_5').on('load',function(){var contents = jQuery(this).contents().find('*').html();var is_postback = contents.indexOf('GF_AJAX_POSTBACK') >= 0;if(!is_postback){return;}var form_content = jQuery(this).contents().find('#gform_wrapper_5');var is_confirmation = jQuery(this).contents().find('#gform_confirmation_wrapper_5').length > 0;var is_redirect = contents.indexOf('gformRedirect(){') >= 0;var is_form = form_content.length > 0 && ! is_redirect && ! is_confirmation;var mt = parseInt(jQuery('html').css('margin-top'), 10) + parseInt(jQuery('body').css('margin-top'), 10) + 100;if(is_form){jQuery('#gform_wrapper_5').html(form_content.html());if(form_content.hasClass('gform_validation_error')){jQuery('#gform_wrapper_5').addClass('gform_validation_error');} else {jQuery('#gform_wrapper_5').removeClass('gform_validation_error');}setTimeout( function() { /* delay the scroll by 50 milliseconds to fix a bug in chrome */ jQuery(document).scrollTop(jQuery('#gform_wrapper_5').offset().top - mt); }, 50 );if(window['gformInitDatepicker']) {gformInitDatepicker();}if(window['gformInitPriceFields']) {gformInitPriceFields();}var current_page = jQuery('#gform_source_page_number_5').val();gformInitSpinner( 5, 'http://www.carbonbrief.org/wp-content/plugins/gravityforms/images/spinner.svg', false );jQuery(document).trigger('gform_page_loaded', [5, current_page]);window['gf_submitting_5'] = false;}else if(!is_redirect){var confirmation_content = jQuery(this).contents().find('.GF_AJAX_POSTBACK').html();if(!confirmation_content){confirmation_content = contents;}jQuery('#gform_wrapper_5').replaceWith(confirmation_content);jQuery(document).scrollTop(jQuery('#gf_5').offset().top - mt);jQuery(document).trigger('gform_confirmation_loaded', [5]);window['gf_submitting_5'] = false;wp.a11y.speak(jQuery('#gform_confirmation_message_5').text());}else{jQuery('#gform_5').append(contents);if(window['gformRedirect']) {gformRedirect();}}jQuery(document).trigger("gform_pre_post_render", [{ formId: "5", currentPage: "current_page", abort: function() { this.preventDefault(); } }]); if (event && event.defaultPrevented) { return; } const gformWrapperDiv = document.getElementById( "gform_wrapper_5" ); if ( gformWrapperDiv ) { const visibilitySpan = document.createElement( "span" ); visibilitySpan.id = "gform_visibility_test_5"; gformWrapperDiv.insertAdjacentElement( "afterend", visibilitySpan ); } const visibilityTestDiv = document.getElementById( "gform_visibility_test_5" ); let postRenderFired = false; function triggerPostRender() { if ( postRenderFired ) { return; } postRenderFired = true; gform.core.triggerPostRenderEvents( 5, current_page ); if ( visibilityTestDiv ) { visibilityTestDiv.parentNode.removeChild( visibilityTestDiv ); } } function debounce( func, wait, immediate ) { var timeout; return function() { var context = this, args = arguments; var later = function() { timeout = null; if ( !immediate ) func.apply( context, args ); }; var callNow = immediate && !timeout; clearTimeout( timeout ); timeout = setTimeout( later, wait ); if ( callNow ) func.apply( context, args ); }; } const debouncedTriggerPostRender = debounce( function() { triggerPostRender(); }, 200 ); if ( visibilityTestDiv && visibilityTestDiv.offsetParent === null ) { const observer = new MutationObserver( ( mutations ) => { mutations.forEach( ( mutation ) => { if ( mutation.type === 'attributes' && visibilityTestDiv.offsetParent !== null ) { debouncedTriggerPostRender(); observer.disconnect(); } }); }); observer.observe( document.body, { attributes: true, childList: false, subtree: true, attributeFilter: [ 'style', 'class' ], }); } else { triggerPostRender(); } } );} );

For example, the paper finds that people living in Côte d’Ivoire currently face 112 heat-stress days every year. It adds that around half of these are due to human-caused climate change. 

In contrast, Germany sees only 0.1 heat-stress days per year in today’s climate on average, which is largely attributable to human-caused climate change.

Rosa Pietroiusti, a PhD student at Vrije Universiteit Brussel and lead author on the study, explains why this number may seem lower than expected.

She tells Carbon Brief that the paper “really focuses on humid heat, at levels that are relatively rarely felt in Europe”. She adds:

“Our data also doesn’t capture the urban heat island effect, due to the resolution of the data we use, which also would lead to underestimations of heat stress locally, and lead to a mismatch with what people are experiencing at local scales, particularly in cities.”

Inequality

Extreme heat affects some people more severely than others. Children, people over 65 and those with pre-existing medical conditions or certain disabilities are among the most vulnerable. This is because their bodies are less able to regulate their temperature. 

The authors use gridded demographic data to determine the age structure of each country. From this, they calculate how many people from each age cohort are exposed to extra heat days as a result of climate change. 

The research finds that globally, 583 million children under the age of 10 already live through at least 20 attributable heat days every year. This accounts for 44% of all children in this age bracket. 

In comparison, 190 million people aged 60-69 face at least 20 attributable heat days per year, accounting for 30% of this age cohort.

The authors find that children face the greatest exposure to humid heat for two main reasons. 

First, there are more young people alive today than older people, with 1.3 billion children aged under 10 in the world, compared to 0.6 billion people aged 60-69.

Second, they find that countries in Africa and Asia typically have rapidly growing populations with more young children. In contrast, many countries in the northern hemisphere – which are typically cooler – have older populations.

The map below shows how many extra stress heat days each country currently faces as a result of human-caused climate change. Darker reds indicate a higher number of attributable heat days. The blue circles show the percentage of the population under the age of 10, with larger circles indicating a higher percentage.

The number of extra heat days faced by the global population at present-day warming levels as a result of human-caused climate change. Source: Pietroiusti et al (2026). Warming world

The authors also repeat their analysis for a 1.5C and 2C warmer world. They use population estimates from the SSP2 scenario, which projects that the world’s population will peak at more than nine billion in the second half of the 21st century, with most growth occurring in low-latitude regions – especially in sub-Saharan Africa.

The research finds that, in today’s climate, 11% of all under 10s currently experience 100 or more extra heat-stress days per year due to climate change. In worlds warmed by 1.5C and 2C, the percentage rises to 13% and 23%, respectively.

In contrast, only 6% of all people aged 60-69 currently face 100 or more extra heat-stress days each year due to climate change. This number rises to 9% and 17% for 1.5C and 2C worlds, respectively. 

These results are shown in the plot below. The three rows represent the climates of 2023 (top), a 1.5C world (middle) and a 2C world (bottom). The columns show different age cohorts, from the oldest on the left to the youngest on the right.

Each circle contains 100 coloured dots, with each dot representing 1% of the age cohort. 

The colour of the dot represents exposure to annual heat-stress day, with darker dots indicating more heat-stress days. Grey dots mean that people experience fewer than one extra heat-stress day per year due to human-caused climate change, while black dots mean more than 150 extra heat-stress days due to climate change.

The figure shows that higher warming levels expose more people to heat stress and that younger cohorts tend to be worst affected.

For example, the top-right circle represents heat stress for under 10s in the present-day climate. Three of these dots are coloured black, indicating that 3% faced at least 150 attributable heat-stress days in 2023.

Attributable days of heat stress for different age cohorts (columns), at different warming levels (rows). Each circle contains 100 coloured dots, with each dot representing 1% of the age cohort. Darker dots indicate more heat-stress days. Source: Pietroiusti et al (2026).

Pietroiusti tells Carbon Brief the study uses wet-bulb globe temperature because it is a “well-established heat stress metric”. However, she notes that it was not “explicitly defined to focus on children”. She continues:

“A really important step forward in the research community would be to link up climate science and health science experts to do research on what metrics are really most representative of, for example, health impacts and educational impacts that children will be suffering.”

Vulnerability

Dr Qinqin Kong, a postdoctoral researcher at the departments of medicine and health policy at Stanford University, who was not involved in the study, praises its “robust” methodology.

He tells Carbon Brief that the research provides “a timely quantitative evidence for discussions of climate justice, children’s rights and intergenerational equity”. 

However, Kong suggests that the paper “may overstate the contrast between children and the elderly and underestimate the relative burden of older adults”.

He says:

“The elderly may also be more vulnerable due to their social circumstances. Children often benefit from parental supervision and caregiving, whereas many older adults live alone, have limited mobility and face barriers to accessing cooling or emergency assistance during heat events.”

Kong also notes that “people and societies in the mid-latitudes [for example, across much of Europe and North America] are less adapted to heat”, which may make them vulnerable to its impacts.

For example, he says that Europe “shows substantially stronger relative risk of heat mortality likely due to less heat-acclimatised populations, lower air conditioning prevalence and urban designs that don’t favour heat dissipation”.

Similarly, Dr Daniel Vecellio – a researcher at the University of Nebraska, who was not involved in the study – tells Carbon Brief that children are an “understudied cohort”. 

However, he says there is “reason for hope” because “children are typically pretty good behavioural adapters to extreme heat” and because people who are “chronically exposed to extreme heat” will “have a better chance at better acclimatisation”.

Pietroiusti tells Carbon Brief that global reporting on heatwaves is often skewed towards wealthier nations. 

For example, she notes that large-scale databases of disasters, such as EM-DAT, often underrepresent heatwaves in Africa, due in part to a lack of news coverage and formal reporting. She adds:

“Studies like this, which start from the climate data, can start to fill some of these gaps.”

She adds that the paper should inform discussions about climate justice, noting that children in developing countries, who are most severely affected by the increase in heat-stress days, “have contributed the least to historical greenhouse gas emissions”. 

Pietroiusti, R. et al. (2026) Age-specific exposure to human-induced increases in humid heat, Science Advances, doi:10.1126/sciadv.aeb3232

related Experts: Why carbon removal needs a ‘major scale up’ to return warming to 1.5C 19.06.2026 Carbon dioxide removal Guest post: How a record-high ‘energy imbalance’ is driving global warming 10.06.2026 Climate system Guest post: How declining cloudiness is accelerating global warming 26.03.2026 Climate system Mapped: How climate change affects extreme weather around the world 19.03.2026 Attribution

The post Climate change exposes 580 million children to 20 extra ‘heat-stress days’ every year appeared first on Carbon Brief.

When logging companies cut down trees to thin overcrowded forests, they are left with a costly headache: giant mounds of limbs and spindly trunks worth so little that it’s easier to burn them.

But they could turn this biomass trash into carbon-rich treasure, both making money and trapping much of the carbon dioxide that rises into the atmosphere from these blazing slash piles, according to new research.

In many parts of the arid western United States, companies could earn billions of dollars by simply burying the wood debris underground and selling carbon credits, according to research published today in Science Advances.   

The new work shows that “pairing these two pathways together could enable more forest restoration as well as carbon storage,” said Sinéad Crotty, an ecologist and manager at the Carbon Containment Lab, a Connecticut-based nonprofit that studies ways to reduce greenhouse gas pollution.

The strategy is deceptively simple. Plants are the ultimate carbon capture device, sucking carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and storing it in wood and leaves. But the long-term fate of that carbon hinges on what happens when those plants are cut down or die.

Burn them, and much of it goes back into the atmosphere, where it contributes to global warming. Let them decay, and the same thing happens. But if you stick them underground and shield them from the air, much of that carbon should stay put. After all, that’s basically what happened with all that oil and coal we are now burning. It was once ancient vegetation buried under sediment.

 

.IRPP_ruby , .IRPP_ruby .postImageUrl , .IRPP_ruby .centered-text-area {height: auto;position: relative;}.IRPP_ruby , .IRPP_ruby:hover , .IRPP_ruby:visited , .IRPP_ruby:active {border:0!important;}.IRPP_ruby .clearfix:after {content: "";display: table;clear: both;}.IRPP_ruby {display: block;transition: background-color 250ms;webkit-transition: background-color 250ms;width: 100%;opacity: 1;transition: opacity 250ms;webkit-transition: opacity 250ms;background-color: #eaeaea;}.IRPP_ruby:active , .IRPP_ruby:hover {opacity: 1;transition: opacity 250ms;webkit-transition: opacity 250ms;background-color: inherit;}.IRPP_ruby .postImageUrl {background-position: center;background-size: cover;float: left;margin: 0;padding: 0;width: 31.59%;position: absolute;top: 0;bottom: 0;}.IRPP_ruby .centered-text-area {float: right;width: 65.65%;padding:0;margin:0;}.IRPP_ruby .centered-text {display: table;height: 130px;left: 0;top: 0;padding:0;margin:0;padding-top: 20px;padding-bottom: 20px;}.IRPP_ruby .IRPP_ruby-content {display: table-cell;margin: 0;padding: 0 74px 0 0px;position: relative;vertical-align: middle;width: 100%;}.IRPP_ruby .ctaText {border-bottom: 0 solid #fff;color: #0099cc;font-size: 14px;font-weight: bold;letter-spacing: normal;margin: 0;padding: 0;font-family:'Arial';}.IRPP_ruby .postTitle {color: #000000;font-size: 16px;font-weight: 600;letter-spacing: normal;margin: 0;padding: 0;font-family:'Arial';}.IRPP_ruby .ctaButton {background: url(https://www.anthropocenemagazine.org/wp-content/plugins/intelly-related-posts-pro/assets/images/next-arrow.png)no-repeat;background-color: #afb4b6;background-position: center;display: inline-block;height: 100%;width: 54px;margin-left: 10px;position: absolute;bottom:0;right: 0;top: 0;}.IRPP_ruby:after {content: "";display: block;clear: both;}Recommended Reading:The idea of burying wood to store carbon is so simple it almost sounds absurd. But is it?

 

While people are wrestling with the climate crisis, there is a simultaneous forest health emergency. Many western U.S. forests are overgrown and filled with flammable vegetation, thanks to a combination of dense forests that regrew after logging and decades of suppression of wildfire and Indigenous burning. Pair that with the current mega drought gripping much of the region and you have a recipe for the massive wildfires that blanket states in smoke this time of year.

Crotty and her collaborators wanted to see how viable it would be to tackle both the climate and forest problems by finding a revenue stream to help pay for forest thinning while simultaneously capturing some of the carbon inside the vegetation.

They compared the costs and carbon emissions from different scenarios: the conventional approach of burning the wood waste; burying it in a specially made landfill; burning it for energy and capturing the carbon rising from the smokestacks; letting it rot; or cooking it into a charcoal-like substance called biochar.

To make the calculations more realistic, the scientists considered factors that could affect the cost and effectiveness. They estimated the distance from forest thinning to sites where the wood could be buried or burned. They mapped variables such as rainfall that would influence how deep the wood needed to be buried to avoid rotting and emitting greenhouse gases.

The modeling revealed that in many cases, burying the vegetation made the most sense. Over a century, burning keeps just 4.5% of the carbon stored. Letting it rot is nearly as bad. Biochar stored 44% of the carbon. By contrast, burial in a special landfill captured 78% of the carbon, on par with the 81% from burning and carbon capture. With such carbon capture projects extremely rare, burial appears more realistic in the short term.

The financial math backed up these findings. Burning is the costliest, losing $49 for every ton of carbon dioxide due to expenses such as manpower and planning. If companies can sell carbon credits for $100 per metric ton—a common benchmark in the carbon credit world—burial would earn around $21 per ton, bioenergy would earn $12 and biochar would break even if the leftover char is sold.

With the federal government proposing to treat 3.5 million acres of forest this year, those cost differences add up. Rather than costing $3.1 billion to burn the leftovers, burial could store some 60 million tons of carbon dioxide and earn around $2 billion, the scientists found.

Some companies already see the possibility of spinning this wood waste into buried gold. One company, Graphyte, is turning wood into solid blocks, encasing them in plastic and burying them. It plans to open a plant in Arizona using wood from forest thinning. Colorado-based Woodcache is burying slash on a small scale, while Mast Reforestation is entombing dead trees left after wildfires.

Still, the researchers caution that burial won’t always be the right answer. Factors like soil conditions and rainfall can affect whether the carbon, once buried, will stay in the ground.

“In the wrong soil, digging a burial chamber can release more carbon than the wood could ever store,” cautioned Leah Clayton, the paper’s lead author and incoming Ph.D. student at Stanford University who previously worked at the carbon lab.

That puts a premium on detailed planning for individual sites.

“No single pathway is a silver bullet,” said Clayton. “But there are promising opportunities everywhere.”

Clayton, et. al. “Near-term, geospatial opportunity for biomass carbon storage to address the wildfire and climate crises.” Science Advances. Aug. 26, 2026.

Image: ©Anthropocene Magazine

California bill to require full disclosure of diaper chemicals heads to Gov. Newsom for signature Monica Amarelo August 26, 2026

SACRAMENTO – California’s Legislature today passed a bill that would, if enacted, require manufacturers of children’s diapers sold, distributed or manufactured in the state to fully disclose their ingredients on the product’s packaging and online. 

Assembly Bill 1901, by Assemblymember Marc Berman (D-Menlo Park), now heads to Gov. Gavin Newsom for his signature. The Environmental Working Group, Consumer Reports, Children Now and the Center for Environmental Health are co-sponsoring the bill.

“As a new dad, I have a new appreciation for how important it is for parents to make informed decisions when it comes to the health and wellness of their children,” said Berman.

“We all want the best for our children, but the lack of transparency around diaper ingredients prevents us from knowing what ‘the best’ is when buying the one thing that is touching our baby’s skin every minute of their lives for years,” he said. 

“I’m proud to author AB 1901 to give parents greater transparency about the chemicals in their children’s diapers so that they can make the right choice for their family,” Berman added.

Newborns and toddlers especially vulnerable

Babies spend much of their first two to three years of life in diapers. Yet the federal government does not require disposable diapers to carry ingredient labels of any kind. 

Manufacturers are not required to inform regulators about the chemicals used to make them. Instead, they can hide dozens of chemicals behind umbrella terms like “fragrance” or “colors” – potentially toxic mystery cocktails. This situation leaves parents with no way of knowing what chemicals sit against their baby’s skin day after day.

“A newborn’s skin is thinner, more permeable and still developing, which means it absorbs chemicals more readily than an adult’s does, and diapers are in constant contact with that skin, around the clock, for years,” said Sydney Swanson, a senior science analyst at EWG.

“Right now, parents have no way of knowing what their baby is being exposed to. Every hour of every day, an infant’s skin is absorbing whatever industry decided not to tell us about. Parents can read a nutrition label or a shampoo label but not this,” she added. 

“AB 1901 isn’t asking for anything radical. It’s asking for diapers to contain ingredient labels that are similar to labels required of other baby products,” Swanson said.

Chemicals found in diapers

Recent tests have found diapers may contain volatile organic compounds and phthalates, linked to hormone disruption and reproductive and developmental harm.

Tests have also found diapers containing quaternary ammonium compounds, or quats, used in wetness indicators and linked to reproductive effects, skin irritation and asthma, as well as dyes and bleaching agents that can cause allergic reactions or skin and respiratory irritation. 

Because babies’ skin is thinner, more permeable and still developing, they are especially vulnerable to potential harms from these chemical exposures. 

Many children with special needs rely on diapers for years, prolonging the exposure risk. When manufacturers hide their ingredients, caregivers may feel fearful and sidelined. 

“Transparency isn’t about causing fear but about replacing uncertainty with the facts parents need to protect their children,” said Susan Little, California legislative director. 

“And because an infant’s thin skin absorbs chemicals more easily, hidden ingredients like phthalates can trigger a lifetime of health challenges.” 

“California parents shouldn’t need a chemistry degree to buy a diaper. They deserve to know exactly what is touching their child’s skin. Caregivers want this information,” said Little.

Making baby products safer

California has already shown that more transparency about what’s in baby products can help spur changes that reduce hazardous ingredients and their health threats. After the state required public disclosure of results of heavy metal tests of baby food, in January 2025, manufacturers responded by reducing heavy metal contamination levels in many product categories. 

AB 1901 applies that same principle to diapers while giving parents and caregivers more informed choices. If enacted, it would be a first-in-the-nation law requiring such full diaper ingredient transparency. The bill would require online disclosure to begin on January 1, 2029, and disclosure on the package to begin July 1, 2029. 

“Stronger regulation and full disclosure are needed, and that’s why this bill is so important to protect children's health,” said Little. 

And AB 1901 is something manufacturers can comply with – a 2023 New York law that requires on-label disclosure of diaper ingredients shows that greater transparency is achievable.

EWG has created a Guide to Safer Diapers to help parents navigate the market in the meantime, and diapers earning the EWG Verified® mark meet our strict standards for ingredient transparency and health.

###

The Environmental Working Group is a nonprofit, non-partisan organization that empowers people to live healthier lives in a healthier environment. Through research, advocacy and unique education tools, EWG drives consumer choice and civic action.

Founded in 1936, Consumer Reports has a mission to create a fair and just marketplace for all. Widely known for our rigorous research and testing of products and services, we also survey millions of consumers each year, report extensively on marketplace issues, and advocate for consumer rights and protections around safety as well as digital rights, financial fairness, and sustainability. CR is independent and nonprofit.

The Center for Environmental Health believes everything people consume, from the water they drink to the toys their children handle, should put health first. We insist on laws and policies that protect the public from harm, work to make communities more aware of risks, and push to transform corporate behavior. CEH advances environmental health and justice for the greater good, from the courtroom to the boardroom.

Children Now harnesses collective power to achieve transformational and systemic results for California’s kids as one of the country’s most impactful kids’ nonprofits. Led by experienced policy and government relations teams spanning health, education, early childhood, child welfare, and a range of other areas, Children Now learns from kids and families where they need support and lift up solutions to policymakers with the power to act. 

Areas of Focus Household & Consumer Products Children’s Health Toxic Chemicals Chemical Policy California Press Contact Monica Amarelo monica@ewg.org (202) 939-9140 August 27, 2026

Landmark California bill that would track and disclose PFAS pesticide use heads to Newsom’s desk Monica Amarelo August 26, 2026

SACRAMENTO – Groundbreaking legislation that would address the widespread use of toxic PFAS “forever chemicals” pesticides on California produce today passed the state Legislature. 

It now heads to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s desk for his signature.

If enacted, Assembly Bill 1603, by Assemblymember Nick Schultz (D-Burbank), would require the state to monitor and disclose PFAS pesticide use. State agencies were not tracking the concerning use of toxic PFAS on crops until the Environmental Working Group raised concerns.

More than 2.5 million pounds of PFAS pesticides are applied to Golden State crops each year, contaminating produce sold in the state and throughout the U.S., in addition to soil and water. 

EWG research found PFAS pesticides on nine in 10 California-grown samples of non-organic peaches, nectarines and plums tested by the state, as well as in local waterways.

“As a father, I don’t want my kids eating strawberries contaminated with chemicals that will stay in their bodies for decades,” said Schultz. 

“AB 1603 is a vital step toward ensuring California’s agricultural legacy is defined by health and innovation, not by the accumulation of toxic PFAS in our soil and water,” he added. 

“We need to help our farmers transition away from these persistent chemicals so California can be a global leader in food safety,” Schultz said.

“The state cannot act on this newly revealed PFAS problem if it ignores the issue and pretends it doesn’t exist,” said Susan Little, EWG California legislative director. 

“Right now, the state has no comprehensive picture of where these chemicals are being sprayed or in what quantities,” she added.

The bill would also establish a class-based definition of PFAS pesticides, consistent with other California laws and regulations already addressing these chemicals. That definition matters: It ensures tracking and disclosure requirements can’t be sidestepped with chemical-by-chemical loopholes. 

The definition would also lay the groundwork for action that avoids “regrettable substitutions” – PFAS replacements that can also have health concerns.

Though thousands of PFAS are used today, comprehensive toxicity data is available about very few. But what is known is alarming: The health harms linked to the most well-studied PFAS, including cancer, suppression of the immune system and reproductive and developmental harm, show up at doses far lower than regulators once considered safe.

Other AB 1603 sponsors include Californians for Pesticide Reform, the Center for Environmental Health and the Pesticide Action and Agroecology Network.

Why tracking and monitoring matter

If enacted, AB 1603 will require the Department of Pesticide Regulation to begin systematically tracking and publicly disclosing PFAS pesticide use across the state, marking the first time California has required this level of visibility about where the chemicals are applied.

“Because of their chemical structures, all PFAS share the core characteristics of extreme environmental persistence and potential harm to immune and reproductive systems,” said Varun Subramaniam, EWG science analyst. “That raises serious concerns about the long-term health risks of using PFAS pesticides on food crops.”

“We need to stop spraying our produce with toxic ‘forever chemicals.’ With this bill, we are telling it like it is, so farmers and the public alike can be aware of the extent of this hidden PFAS use,” said Subramaniam. 

Collecting reliable, ongoing tracking data will end the long-running gap in data about PFAS pesticide use in the state. Access to this data will help build a foundation for action that could include use restrictions, farmer transition support, water monitoring and more.

“The United States depends on California for its fruits and vegetables, but right now that produce is  being seasoned with chemicals that never break down,” said Bernadette Del Chiaro, EWG’s senior vice president for California.

“We cannot claim to lead the world in public health while allowing millions of pounds of toxic PFAS to be deliberately sprayed on our most iconic crops,” she said.

States leading on regulation

The federal Environmental Protection Agency regulates and approves pesticides for national use, but states aren’t required to follow suit. 

California operates its own approval system: Its Department of Pesticide Regulation must independently evaluate and authorize each chemical before farmers can use it. That gives the state the authority to protect its residents – power it has largely chosen not to use when it comes to PFAS pesticides.

That authority matters more than ever because of what is happening at the federal level. The EPA has continued to approve new PFAS pesticides at an accelerating pace, greenlighting three more in July. 

With the EPA fast-tracking approvals, California taking the lead in informing the public and local officials about the pesticides that do contain PFAS, while monitoring the pesticides’ use, is necessary.

Banning PFAS pesticides

While California remains one of the world’s largest users of PFAS pesticides, other jurisdictions have moved to restrict or ban them. In 2023, Maine enacted the nation’s first ban on PFAS pesticides, starting in 2030. In the same year, Minnesota banned nonessential PFAS uses, including pesticides, phasing them out by 2032.

Other countries are also acting. The European Union has prohibited 23 of the PFAS pesticides heavily used in California, including bifenthrin, trifluralin and flufenacet.

AB 1603, if enacted, will put California in line with these other states and jurisdictions, laying the groundwork for the nation’s salad bowl to once again be a public health leader. 

“California has been a public health bellwether for decades, from car emissions to chemical safety,” said Del Chiaro. “But we’ve been silent on PFAS pesticides, even though we are one of the biggest users.

“AB 1603 can begin to change that. This is the least we can do for families and communities struggling to contain widespread PFAS contamination in our soil, air, water and food,” she added.

###

The Environmental Working Group (EWG) is a nonprofit, non-partisan organization that empowers people to live healthier lives in a healthier environment. Through research, advocacy and unique education tools, EWG drives consumer choice and civic action.

Californians for Pesticide Reform (CPR) is a diverse, statewide coalition of 200+ member groups working to strengthen pesticide policies in California to protect public health and the environment. Member groups include public and children’s health advocates, clean air and water groups, health practitioners, environmental justice groups, labor, education, farmers and sustainable agriculture advocates from across the state.

The Center for Environmental Health believes everything people consume, from the water they drink to the toys their children handle, should put health first. We insist on laws and policies that protect the public from harm, work to make communities more aware of risks, and push to transform corporate behavior. CEH advances environmental health and justice for the greater good, from the courtroom to the boardroom.

Pesticide Action & Agroecology Network (PAN) North America, is the North America Regional Center for the international PAN network. We work with those on the frontlines to tackle the pesticide problem and reclaim the future of food and farming from the pesticide and biotech corporations that have, for far too long, dictated how we grow food, placing the health and economic burdens of pesticide use on farmers, farmworkers and rural communities.

Areas of Focus Farming & Agriculture Toxic Chemicals Pesticides PFAS Chemicals California Transparency legislation would reveal ‘forever chemicals’ sprayed on the state’s produce Press Contact Monica Amarelo monica@ewg.org (202) 939-9140 August 26, 2026

The new rules shut more migrants out of basic financial and health supports. Here is who is affected, why it matters and why we need to speak up.

What are Ontario Works and ODSP?

In Ontario, financial support is available to some people who need help paying for basic needs.

Ontario Works (OW) supports people with little or no income. The Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP) supports low-income people who meet the program’s disability requirements.

These programs are already small and exclusionary. A single person on Ontario Works receives only $733 per month – nowhere near enough to pay rent, buy groceries and meet basic needs.

That amount has been frozen for eight years.

What did Ford change on August 13?

On August 13, 2026 the Ford government changed Ontario’s OW and ODSP regulations to explicitly exclude people based on their immigration status.

The new rules say that people are not eligible if they:

• do not have authorization to remain in Canada; or
• are only authorized to remain temporarily, including people on work and study permits,

unless they fall within specific exceptions, including having made a refugee claim or certain applications for permanent residence.

The same new exclusion was added to ODSP.

The government also removed an existing protection for some people with enforceable removal orders who cannot leave Canada for reasons completely beyond their control.

The new rules Immigration situationBefore August 13: what the regulations saidSince August 13: what the regulations sayRefugee claimantsCould qualify for ODSP and OW. No change – remain eligible if they meet the other OW/ODSP requirementsPeople who have applied for permanent residenceCould qualify for ODSP and OW. No change – remain eligible if they meet the other OW/ODSP requirements.Migrant workers, international students and other work permit holdersThe regulations did not explicitly say that everyone with temporary status was ineligible. They excluded people categorized as “visitors” and “tourists”.Now explicitly excluded.Undocumented people without an enforceable removal orderCould qualify for ODSP and OW. Now explicitly excluded. People with an enforceable removal order who cannot leave Canada for reasons completely beyond their controlCould qualify for ODSP and OW. Now explicitly excluded.People with an enforceable removal order who have made an H&C application for permanent residenceCould qualify for ODSP and OW. No change – remain eligible if they meet the other OW/ODSP requirements.

Before August 13, the regulations excluded “visitors” and “tourists,” but neither term was defined in the legislation or regulation. 

The Ford government has now removed those words and replaced them with much broader language explicitly covering temporary immigration status and lack of immigration status.

Were migrants receiving OW and ODSP?

Ontario had a longstanding unjust practice of caseworkers treating many people with work and study permits as “visitors.” As a result, many migrants were often denied OW or ODSP. Those who could, challenged those decisions at the Social Benefits Tribunal.

The regulations did not previously say that every person with temporary immigration status, or every person without immigration status, was automatically excluded, so hearings at the Tribunal were often successful. 

The Ministry describes this as a “clarification” of its longstanding policy. But what it has actually done is put a much broader immigration-status exclusion directly into Ontario law.

Who will this hurt?

These rules affect people who may have lived, worked and paid taxes in Ontario for years and then suddenly need help because of illness, unemployment, abuse or another crisis.

Patel: Patel is a 40-year-old man who came to Canada from Bangladesh after fleeing persecution because of his bisexuality. His immigration applications were denied, but he was afraid to return. He was later diagnosed with liver failure and cirrhosis. Because of his serious health condition, Canada cannot remove him. ODSP provides him with essential financial and medical support. Ford has now removed that protection. People in Patel’s situation can now be denied the basic financial and health supports they need to survive.

John: John is a 30-year-old seasonal agricultural worker from Jamaica who has been coming to Canada every year since 2020 to grow and harvest our food. He was diagnosed with cancer in 2024. He could not work while receiving chemotherapy and temporarily relied on Ontario Works.  Today, John is in remission and back at work. Under Ford’s new regulation, most workers in John’s immigration situation are now explicitly excluded from Ontario Works.

Vanessa: Vanessa is a mother from Jamaica who worked as a home support worker caring for elderly people. During the pandemic, she fled abuse from her ex-partner with her children and entered the shelter system. After losing her job, she temporarily relied on Ontario Works while looking for work and child care. Her family later became permanent residents and she returned to care work. Under the new regulations, migrant women on temporary status in similar situations can be explicitly denied basic financial support while trying to escape violence or survive a crisis.

Why is the Ford government doing this?

Meanwhile, Ontario’s Auditor General found that the Ford government spent a record $111.9 million on government advertising in 2024–25. Six of its ten largest advertising campaigns would not have passed Ontario’s former, stricter rules against partisan government advertising.

And while poor people and migrants struggle to pay rent and buy food, Premier Ford used taxpayer money to buy a $28.9 million dollar jet for his own private use. Members of Ford’s government have spent hundreds of thousands of public dollars on hotel rooms and fancy dinners. 

The government announced these changes after media attention around a Social Benefits Tribunal case involving a man who had lived and worked in Canada for decades before losing his home. He challenged the denial of social assistance and won. Ford responded by changing the regulations.

No one should be denied food, housing, medicine or the means to survive because of the immigration documents they have or do not have.

At a time when rent and food prices are soaring and decent jobs are harder to find, blaming migrants will not make anyone’s life more affordable.

Taking $733 a month away from someone with cancer, someone escaping violence or someone who has lost their job will not lower the rent, raise wages or fix health care.

These changes are another attempt to pit migrants and poor people against each other while those responsible for the affordability crisis escape responsibility.

We must reject divide-and-rule and speak up together.

I’m a migrant and I’m worried. Where can I get support?

Migrant Workers Alliance for Change is a group of current and former migrants. We come together to support each other and push back against unfair rules and laws like these.

If you live in the Greater Toronto Area, we offer free, confidential, in-person Migrant Support Clinics every second Thursday from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.

You can share what is happening and work with other migrants to understand your options and find solutions.

Fill out our form to sign up.

Can’t come in person? Fill out the form anyway and we will get back to you.

The post Ford just changed who can get Ontario Works and ODSP. first appeared on Migrant Workers Alliance for Change.

The post Ford just changed who can get Ontario Works and ODSP. appeared first on Migrant Workers Alliance for Change.

Dear friends,

Thank you for all your calls, emails, and for turning out for the Board of Supervisors meeting yesterday afternoon. Yesterday evening, AB 2218 successfully passed the Senate Floor, and the Solano County Board of Supervisors voted to reject the current CA Forever draft legislation thanks to your support.

But we still need your help.

The California Forever Trailer Bill is still alive in the State Legislature, despite reduced County Support, and we need your help to ensure it does not move forward.

At the same time, AB 2218 now moves to the Governor’s desk for signature, and we need your support to ensure he signs this important bill into law.

Keep reading to learn how you can take action and advocate for the ecosystems and communities we all depend on.

Oppose the California Forever Trailer Bill

California Forever is a proposed development project in Solano County that would have devastating impacts on the Delta. The project proponents are once again trying to circumvent legislative processes to gain preferential treatment. Similar to our Delta Tunnel Trailer Bill fight last year, California Forever proposes sweeping exemptions from environmental review to move parts of its project forward. 
 

The bill language is now available, and includes dangerous provisions, including: 

Eliminating environmental review for a large new industrial site in Collinsville for shipbuilding and other undisclosed industrial uses.

Vague language, extending beyond its stated purpose, allowing the construction of data centers tied to shipbuilding.

Allows California Forever to unilaterally end tribal consultation, without mitigation or agreement

Override the vote of the people of Solano County who have, since 1984, preserved the right to weigh in on land use changes through the Orderly Growth Initiative

We successfully convinced the Board of Supervisors to reject this harmful legislation, but we need Sacramento to stop this trailer bill once and for all. 

HOW YOU CAN HELP:
 

1. Sign the NEW petition calling on State Lawmakers not to pursue this legislation.

2. Call Senator Cabaldon and Assemblymember Wilson and tell them: 

• You oppose any attempts to streamline the controversial California Forever Project, which would have a direct and detrimental impact on Delta communities and ecosystems; and 
• Trailer Bills that circumvent the policy process undermine our democratic process and should not be entertained

Support AB 2218

On February 19, 2026, Assemblymember Kalra introduced AB 2218, the Indigenous Water Rights Bill sponsored by the Shingle Springs Band of Miwok Indians and the Karuk Tribe. 

AB 2218 would establish a clear statewide policy directive acknowledging and seeking to remedy the inequities inflicted upon Tribes in California through historical state-sanctioned acts of termination, removal, and forced assimilation.

The bill directs relevant state agencies, including the Department of Water Resources and the State Water Board, to incorporate this policy into water rights decisions, regulatory actions, permitting, and grantmaking to address identified inequities. Recognizing historic harms and directing state agencies to center Tribal equity in water policy is not simply a symbolic act; it is a pathway toward stronger relationships, more inclusive decision-making, and better outcomes for the ecosystems we all depend on.

We need your help! AB 2218 will We need your help! AB 2218 moves to the Governor’s desk for signature, and we need your help to move this bill into law. be heard on the Senate floor and we need your help getting it past the finish line.

How You Can Take Action:
 

1. Call the Governor at (916) 445-2841 urging his signature on support AB 2218.

Please call the Governor’s Office and tell them:

• As a constituent, I urge you to sign AB 2218 into law.
• AB 2218 supports the State’s progress towards equitable water management.
• AB 2218 is an important step toward addressing inequities affecting California Native American Tribes in state water policy and ensuring Tribal interests are meaningfully considered in decisions affecting water.

CLICK TO CONTACT GOVERNOR NEWSOM

The U.S. Forest Service just announced plans to erase protections that have safeguarded millions of acres of forests across the country for a quarter of a century.

The new demand response frameworks bring the state in line with other pay-for-performance virtual power plants while keeping NV Energy in the driver’s seat.

California lawmakers pass bill to create landmark ‘non-ultra-processed’ food label Iris Myers August 26, 2026

SACRAMENTO – Today the California Legislature took a major step toward protecting public health by passing a first-of-its-kind bill to create a certified “non-ultra-processed” food label intended to make it easier for consumers to choose less-processed foods in the grocery store.

Assembly Bill 2244, authored by Assemblymember Jesse Gabriel (D-Encino), would develop a state certification program for products that are not ultra-processed, or UPF. If enacted, it would create a new standardized and government-backed seal for non-UPF foods.

It would also require some of the largest grocery stores to highlight these products in store so they’re easier for shoppers to identify. 

The Environmental Working Group is cosponsoring the bill, which now heads to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s desk for his signature.

“Parents shouldn’t need a Ph.D. in chemistry to understand what they’re feeding their kids,” said Gabriel. 

“AB 2244 will empower consumers with clear, trustworthy information and make it easier for them to locate healthier foods that are free from harmful additives. This new seal doesn’t limit consumer choice, it just makes informed choice possible,” he added.

A new standard for healthier food

Under AB 2244, the state would create a standardized label bearing the phrase “Non-Ultraprocessed Certified.” Products would not be permitted to carry the new label if they are classified as UPF under state law. 

Some types of food, such as substances or additives used to manipulate taste and quality, would not qualify for the new label. These food chemicals, such as dyes, flavor enhancers, non-sugar sweeteners and processing aids, are used to make food hyperpalatable and irresistible. 

AB 2244 builds on a precedent-setting earlier law by Gabriel. AB 1264 set the first U.S. legal definition of UPF and banned the worst UPF from K-12 public schools. 

If Newson signs AB 2244, the California Department of Public Health would oversee approved agents’ independent certification of products that meet the state’s non-UPF standard and qualify to use the label. 

AB 2244 would direct the department to accredit these third-party agents no later than June 1, 2029. It would also require product recertification at least every three years.

“This is about setting a higher bar for what we consider healthy food and helping consumers make wise choices,” said Bernadette Del Chiaro, EWG senior vice president for California. 

“Consumers deserve labels they can trust. And families deserve a simple way to tell which foods are closer to what comes from a kitchen rather than a factory.”

“If enacted, the bill would establish a state-verified seal for foods free from the additives, emulsifiers, food dyes and flavors that have come to define the modern American diet,” she added.

Transparency and accountability

The bill includes these strong oversight and transparency measures:

• Certification agents must register with the state and disclose all certified products
• The state can audit certification records at any time
• The state would maintain a public, online list of certified products 
• Misuse of the label would be illegal and subject to enforcement

These provisions are designed to ensure the label’s credibility.

Making healthier choices easier

In addition to creating the label, the bill would require large food retailers to display certified products carrying the label in a way that’s easy for consumers to identify, such as through special signage or physical separation within the store.

This requirement would apply to any grocery store that sells more than 25 individual non-UPF-certified product types and brings in more than $10 million in annual sales. 

Addressing the rise of UPF

UPF are industrially manufactured, chemically modified products often made with harmful additives to enhance taste, texture, appearance and shelf life. 

In the U.S., these foods make up more than two-thirds of children’s diets and more than half the typical adult diet.

Experts say ultra-processed food and drinks, particularly soda, are engineered to trick people into consuming more than they want.

Scientific research has linked diets high in UPF to serious health harms, including cancer, heart disease, Type 2 diabetes, metabolic disorders such as Crohn’s disease and fatty liver disease, and mental health issues.

Obesity is chief among the health problems linked to UPF. Rates of obesity in the U.S. and globally have skyrocketed in tandem with the rising UPF consumption.

Help for consumers

Despite these concerns, consumers have no clear, standard labeling system to help them identify UPF.

With federal regulators slow to update oversight of food additives and processing, states are increasingly taking action to protect public health.

AB 2244 builds on California’s leadership in addressing harmful food chemicals and improving transparency for consumers. 

“Because companies are not required to disclose an ingredient’s purpose, it can be really difficult even for experts, even for people like me who have a doctoral degree in nutrition, to look at a food package and determine whether a food is ultra-processed or not,” said Alyssa Moran, ScD, MPH. 

Moran is deputy director of the Center for Food and Nutrition Policy at the University of Pennsylvania.

“And from a behavioral science perspective, we also know people seldom use information on the back of food packages to make food decisions. So that is exactly why clear, science-backed labels on the front of food packages can be so influential in helping people to make better choices,” Moran said.

“If we want to meaningfully curb disease, we need a suite of complementary policies that limit the availability of ultra-processed foods, while promoting non-ultra-processed alternatives. I firmly believe this is the only way we’ll make progress,” she added.

Consumers can consult EWG’s Food Scores database to find products that are less processed. Food Scores also flags unhealthy ultra-processed food and drinks and can help identify alternatives.

###

The Environmental Working Group (EWG) is a nonprofit, non-partisan organization that empowers people to live healthier lives in a healthier environment. Through research, advocacy and unique education tools, EWG drives consumer choice and civic action.

Areas of Focus Food Ultra-Processed Foods Food Chemicals California UPF labeling legislation now heads to Gov. Newsom’s desk Press Contact Iris Myers iris@ewg.org (202) 939-9126 August 28, 2026

Haiti through the eyes of a peasant woman and activist from Tèt Kolé, a member organization of LVC. From the countryside, she speaks to us about food sovereignty, agrarian reform, feminism and resistance, and shows us another side of Haiti, far from the dominant narratives.

The post Haiti: “We are the ones who produce food, we are the force of the land and of life.” appeared first on La Via Campesina - EN.

Fairplay Executive Director Josh Golin released the following statement today:

“This is a watershed moment for the growing movement to protect children from addictive and dangerously designed social media. In addition to a significant financial penalty, the state attorneys general have secured the most significant injunctive relief yet from Meta, including a number of measures to protect young people’s sleep, such as disabling Instagram overnight for minors’ accounts. The settlement also requires disabling addictive and harmful features like displays of like counts and plastic surgery filters and new guardrails to protect children from predatory adults. We also greatly appreciate that Meta will be required to identify both under-13 and under-18 users without infringing on the privacy of adults. We thank the state attorneys general for their historic leadership in fighting for our children’s safety and well-being online.

“This settlement also underscores the need for KOSA, the Kids Online Safety Act. As internal documents have shown over and over, Meta and other social media companies deliberately design their products to addict kids, and that is the root cause of so many mental health difficulties and serious online harms for minors. While it’s gratifying to see state attorneys general take action to hold companies like Meta accountable, we also need our federal government to step in to force these companies to make their products safe for kids by design so that every child on every platform will be protected, both now and in the future. KOSA has robust, bipartisan support from over three-quarters of the US Senate. We call on Senate Majority Leader John Thune and Minority Leader Charles Schumer to bring the bill to the floor for a vote next month.”

Climate change has reduced snowpack by 36 percent and streamflow by 13 percent across the western United States, and more than half of those impacts have been triggered by emissions from fossil fuel companies and cement manufacturers, according to a new report released today by University of California, Merced and Union of Concerned Scientists. Additionally, the report ties one-tenth of the observed groundwater loss in California’s Central Valley directly to emissions from these companies. In response, Aaron Regunberg, director of Public Citizen’s Climate Accountability Project, issued the following statement:

“Millions of Americans are experiencing historic water scarcity. We now know that a small number of fossil fuel companies are responsible for a significant portion of this disaster. And they knew full well what they were doing. Already in 1988, companies like Shell were issuing internal reports predicting that climate change—caused by the burning of their fossil fuel products—would create ‘significant changes’ in ‘precipitation patterns’ that ‘would impact on the human environment, future living standards and food supplies’ and could have ‘major social, economic, and political consequences.’ Yet fossil fuel companies lied to the public about this reality for decades, and continue to block the climate action we need to address this crisis. These companies need to face accountability.”

© Anthropological Survey of IndiaA key UN body has urged the Indian government to suspend the controversial Great Nicobar project, in a major blow to the scheme’s reputation. #

“We lose more than half of everything that we expected to be able to build with the combination of market forces and proactive policy,” said Amanda Levin, NRDC’s director of policy analysis.

This was an international webinar for the People's Climate Summit held in Antalya, Turkey, parallel to COP31 in November, featuring Max Wilbert (CELDF's Co-coordinator of the Community Resistance & Resilience Program and author of Biocentric) as the main speaker.

The post Greenwashing: The Central Strategy of Next-Generation Industrialism with Max Wilbert appeared first on CELDF - Community Rights Pioneers - Protecting Nature and Communities.

This article is part of Food Tank’s primer series, “Food Tank Explains.” Each installment unpacks the ideas, innovations, and challenges shaping today’s food and agriculture systems, offering clear insights into complex topics. To explore more articles in the series, click here.

Food fraud is the intentional deception regarding a food or food ingredient for economic gain. These practices include substituting a cheaper or unauthorized ingredient, misrepresenting a product’s quality or origin, or otherwise altering what buyers believe they are purchasing. Fraud can occur anywhere along the food supply chain, from raw materials and ingredients to finished products, labels, and packaging.

Food fraud, which the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization describes as an uncomfortable and unfortunate part of agrifood systems, takes many deceptive forms, each posing unique public health, economic, and environmental risks.

Adulteration is the addition of unauthorized and often harmful substances, while substitution and dilution involve replacing or reducing a valuable ingredient with a cheaper alternative—mixing lower-cost vegetable oil into olive oil, adding inexpensive syrups to honey, or selling a cheaper fish species as a more expensive one.

Mislabeling misrepresents characteristics such as a food’s identity, origin, quality, or production method. Examples include selling conventional products as organic or farmed seafood as wild-caught. Other common forms of food fraud include fraudulent packages resembling popular products, and the sale of stolen or diverted products.

These practices pose significant risk to food safety and public health. Undeclared substituted ingredients can expose consumers to allergens, while adulterants may introduce toxic substances.

In 2023, hundreds of U.S. children were poisoned after consuming applesauce made with cinnamon adulterated with lead chromate, a lead-based pigment used to enhance color. Formalin, a product used to preserve human bodies, is illegally used to preserve meat and milk, and has been linked to cancers of the nasal cavity and leukemia.

Methanol, a product typically used in a variety of industrial and household products, is added to alcohol to increase the alcohol content. According to a Médecins Sans Frontières database, ethanol-adulterated alcohol has caused more than 1,000 poisoning incidents in over 80 countries, with consequences including permanent blindness, brain damage, and death.

Responding to food fraud imposes a significant burden on the global economy and food producer livelihoods. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) estimates US$10–15 billion per year, while noting that more recent estimates reach US$40 billion. According to the World Trade Organization, food fraud can also create an unfair competitive advantage for fraudulent businesses, diverting significant revenue from legitimate producers.

“Consumers are falling victim to a bait and switch, and the fishers who play by the rules are paying the price,” says Max Valentine, campaign director of Oceana’s illegal fishing and transparency campaign in the United States.

Food fraud can also pose significant environmental risks. The unreported use of highly toxic chemicals and pesticides in food production, and the proliferation of illegal and unregulated fishing, is driving overfishing and biodiversity loss.

And food fraud erodes confidence in the food system. Food supply chains rely on businesses, regulators, and consumers being able to trust representations about what products contain and where they come from, and deliberate falsification undermines that trust.

New and improving technologies are expanding the tools available to identify fraud. Analyzing chemical bonds or isotopes can now be used to assess a product’s composition or geographic origin, according to research published in Trends in Food Science & Technology.

According to the FDA, analytical DNA sequencing and barcoding can help detect species substitution in products such as seafood. And emerging tools such as portable testing equipment and machine-learning models may allow faster authenticity checks.

Traceability technologies can also create more detailed records as products move through supply chains. The more data collected and added to the blockchain, the harder it is for a company to lie about their product, Jayson Berryhill, Co-Founder of Envisible, tells Food Tank. “You have an immutable ledger of what was claimed at a certain time, which creates a disincentive for fraud,” Berryhill says.

But prevention and detection remain a global challenge. Fraudulent practices are designed to escape notice, and fraudulent products often closely resemble authentic ones in appearance, taste, and composition. And, according to research published in the Journal of Food Protection and PNAS, increasingly complex, opaque, and global food supply chains are amplifying opportunities for fraudulent practices.

According to FAO, the FDA, and research published in Trends in Food Science & Technology and Food Packaging and Shelf Life, technology cannot prevent food fraud on its own. Data and data-based tools are unlikely to be a complete solution because food fraud ultimately involves human behavior, FAO explains. A response requires a blend of regulatory measures, enforcement, industry cooperation, and consumer education, according to the World Trade Organization.

Articles like the one you just read are made possible through the generosity of Food Tank members. Can we please count on you to be part of our growing movement? Become a member today by clicking here.

Photo courtesy of Vitaly Gariev

The post Food Tank Explains: Food Fraud appeared first on Food Tank.

A study from Scotland found that living near an accessible urban woodland significantly lowered the likelihood of being prescribed antidepressants.

Read more on E360 →