News Feeds

This position paper was developed for the 113th Session of the International Labour Conference (ILC) to contribute to the General Discussion on innovative strategies for addressing informality and advancing transitions toward formal employment that supports decent work.

Grounded in the ILO’s Decent Work framework, WIEGO, HomeNet International, the International Alliance of Waste Pickers, IDWF, StreetNet International, and UTEP advocate for a rights-based approach to formalization. This approach prioritizes risk reduction, access to social protection, and economic policies fostering enabling environments for cooperatives and social and solidarity economy enterprises. It also calls for legal frameworks that secure labour rights and collective bargaining for all workers, including those in informal employment.

MUST READ AND RECORD YOUR VOICE READING THIS! Nets and WIEGO Position Paper Formalization June 2025Download Global-Position-Paper-on-Formalization-June-2025-FrenchDownload DEBE LEER Y GRABAR SU VOZ LEYENDO ESTO Redes y WIEGO Documento de posición Formalización Junio 2025Download

APRIL 22, 2025

Over the past two years, FCWA hosted a series of dialogues, focus groups, and hearings for workers across the food chain to discuss how they’re experiencing the climate crisis now, and to uplift a food worker vision for climate and environmental justice. Many of our members are engaged in this work already, whether fighting to establish heat protections for workers, stop the use of pesticides, or defend communities from air pollution.

This Earth Day, we’re releasing a new platform based on these conversations and a Food Worker Climate Justice Declaration to guide our movement building and organizing into the future. It is critical that our food worker movement fight alongside the global movement for climate and environmental justice. Equally, our comrades fighting the climate crisis must center worker leadership and support worker organizing. Click here or read below to see what workers are saying about climate justice and the priorities laid out in our Food Worker Climate Justice Declaration.

“The laws that exist are not sufficient or strong or enforced to protect us.
We decided to take climate change as a central issue in our union in
Washington… It is an issue that is very local but international at the same time.”
– Familias Unidas por la Justicia

“Temperatures have been unbearable for bakery workers in the past year.
Bake rooms are reaching over 100° with no air conditioning and bosses
dictating to stop complaining, and ‘get in there and make bread.’ Workers
passing out, leaving work, even dying of heat stroke — workers that we don’t
think of as being affected in cities.”
– Bakery Worker

“There is an increase of animal pests, so the use of pesticides goes up. Pesticide
effectiveness goes down, which causes even more pesticides to be used. With the
higher heat, the chemicals become vaporized, which equals more pesticide
exposure for farmworkers.”
– Farmworker

The post Food Workers for Climate Justice appeared first on Food Chain Workers Alliance.

Many far-right groups claim that migration drives environmental destruction, from river pollution to climate breakdown. These ‘ecobordering’ narratives greenwash racism and cover up the political and economic causes of ecocide.

As world leaders gathered at the COP26 climate summit in 2022, members of the fascist group Patriotic Alternative (PA) unveiled a banner declaring ‘Reduce immigration to reduce CO2’. The same day, the opaquely funded think tank Migration Watch UK posted an image of a forest fire hellscape emblazoned with the words, ‘Mass migration puts pressure on our precious environment’. These are just two examples of an emerging set of ‘ecobordering’ narratives which frame reducing – or eliminating – immigration as environmental protection.

Fascists declare that borders are climate action. Source: Patriotic Alternative via Telegram.

The far right sells racism as the solution to white people’s anxieties. If we want to develop up-to-date antifascist responses and avoid reproducing far-right narratives ourselves, we need to keep up with far-right storytelling. We also need to understand how mainstream discourse legitimises far-right issues. This article outlines how the British far right exploits ecological anxiety to push for harsher immigration policy. There are two main narratives: one claims that migration raises emissions and increases pressure on British nature; the other casts migrants as an invasive species threatening both British nature and the ‘indigenous’ population of white people. Both narratives are fed by the liberal mainstream.

Migration Watch UK illustrates ‘mass migration’ with climate disaster imagery. Source: Migration Watch UK via Twitter/X.

“The ravages of overpopulation”

The British far right often claims that migration threatens the environment via overpopulation. This narrative runs across the far-right spectrum. For example, the fascist Homeland Party takes a similar line to the radical right UK Independence Party (UKIP):

‘The most significant threat to the Green Belt, and the UK environment in general, especially England, is unsustainable population growth, which is predominantly fuelled by uncontrolled mass immigration’ (UKIP, 2020).

‘The environment in which we all live should be protected from the ravages of over-population, the new building projects, and pollution that goes with it’ (Homeland, 2023).

In their environmental policy, Homeland also holds migration responsible for water pollution: ‘When our sewage treatment plants cannot meet the demand of our rapidly increasing population, their only option is to release untreated sewage, causing great harm to our river ecosystems. This is unavoidable until the root cause, overpopulation driven by mass immigration, is dealt with.’

Homeland advertises ethnonationalism as ‘the REAL green solution’. Source: Homeland Party.

Although far-right groups generally apply this narrative to local environmental issues such as housebuilding, some also link migration to rising carbon emissions such PA’s banner shown in the first image. Identitarian group Local Matters and Migration Watch UK have both cited NGO Population Matters to claim that ‘our growing numbers are incompatible with our climate change commitments’. This, they reason, is because an individual’s carbon footprint will grow as they move from a poorer country to a richer country. Green Party candidate and Extinction Rebellion spokesperson Rupert Read voiced similar arguments in a deleted Ecologist article, although he does not advocate for tighter border controls.

These narratives obscure the underlying causes of environmental destruction – organising production and consumption around profit rather than wellbeing – whilst shifting the blame onto those least responsible. For example, English housing stock is already more than adequate for meeting needs and comfort if distributed more equally, but it is in the interests of homeowners as well as the financial and housebuilding sectors to maintain high housing demand through artificial scarcity. Meanwhile, the claim that overpopulation causes river sewage is extremely convenient for the privatised water companies which pocketed billions whilst leaving the infrastructure to crumble. In the case of climate change, ecobordering frames resource-intensive provisioning as inevitable and erases Britain’s responsibility for climate breakdown, instead blaming people who may very well be escaping its impacts.

“Protect our native species”

A second set of ecobordering narratives assumes a unique, spiritual connection between white British people and British nature. As Homeland writes, ‘Our people have an intrinsic bond with our homeland and are its natural stewards’. PA founder Mark Collett expands this idea in The Fall of Western Man, writing that ‘The strength and steel of the Western body was forged […] in the harsh frozen lands of Northern Europe’ through a process of ‘brutal natural selection’. As a result, ‘Blood and soil are the natural callings that must be at the centre of Western man’s mindset.’

The ecological undercurrents of this ‘blood and soil’ doctrine – popularised by the Nazis – present white British people as an indigenous species adapted to thrive in their ecosystem. Unlike overpopulation narratives, this position is mostly held by the ethnonationalist far right which believes that only those of a particular race can belong to a nation. For Homeland, ‘natural law’ dictates that ‘social harmony’ can only be achieved when each ‘ethnic group’ can ‘assert our unique cultural identity in our respective territories.’ Like the ethno-differentialists of the French New Right, Homeland claims to be ‘the true champion of diversity’, using strong borders to conserve a plurality of peoples and cultures.

According to this framework, fascists cast migrants as an ‘invasive species’ preventing the ‘native species’ from living peacefully – or even living at all. In the article ‘Ecocide’, PA writes:

‘By means of their NGOs, they have ferried invasive species across the Mediterranean […] Actions that have culminated in national governments spending billions to cement over bucolic landscapes in their rush to build accommodation for the “New Europeans” and tarmac over ancient woodlands to provide them with roads to aid their rapid access to social security offices, mosques and community centres where they can congregate and displace the indigenous species.’

Here, ‘they’ refers to Jewish billionaires George and Alex Soros, key characters in far-right conspiracy theories such as the ‘Great Replacement’. Replacement is a central mobilising issue amongst British fascists, with PA performing annual ‘White Lives Matter’ banner drops on Indigenous Peoples’ Day.

PA refracts this conspiracy through a blood and soil lens. As a result, the perceived destruction of British nature by migrants becomes inseparable from the eradication of white British people altogether. In one flyer PA alludes to this existential threat with a photo of the red squirrel, a symbolic British animal that has faced harsh competition from non-native grey squirrels. Meanwhile, Homeland illustrates the threat of ‘being subsumed into a homogenised global mass’ with footage of deforestation, underscoring the deep association between white extinction and environmental destruction.

Homeland illustrates the threat of race mixing. Source: Homeland Party.

Ecobordering and the mainstream

Across Europe, far-right groups are exploiting ecological crisis to push for further border violence. In Britain, they justify this by arguing that (a) migration will increase pressure on resources such as land and water, as well as raising emissions; and (b) migrants are an invasive species simultaneously threatening nature and the ‘indigenous’ population of white people. However, overpopulation narratives in particular may be more strategic than heartfelt. For example, PA urges politicians to ‘reduce immigration to reduce CO2’ whilst also warning of the ‘Climate Con’. Meanwhile, Migration Watch UK is part of a network of right-wing think tanks located in Tufton Street, including Britain’s foremost climate misinformation organisation, the Global Warming Policy Foundation.

Although these ideas are most common on the far right, they are closer to the mainstream than people may realise. For example, blaming migrants for placing unsustainable pressure on nature reproduces neo-Malthusian overpopulation narratives. These have enjoyed centuries of popularity and continue to be upheld by policymakers, NGOs, and TV presenters. Indeed, the president of Migration Watch UK is a former British ambassador, now sitting in the House of Lords. Mark Collett’s theory of climate-induced racial difference is purely colonial-era scientific racism. Meanwhile, Conservative politicians and newspaper columnists repeatedly describe migrants using the invasive species imagery of a ‘swarm’, an ‘invasion’, or ‘cockroaches’. But more fundamentally, in many ways the far right is only making explicit what is already implicit in government policy: that certain racialised groups present a threat that must be met with violence. By placing ecology downstream of borders the far right is mirroring the state’s own priorities.

On one level, then, ecobordering narratives can be countered by drawing attention to the large inequalities in environmental impacts driven by economic inequality, as well as the endless expansion of production and consumption required by capitalism. However, without challenging borders themselves, this approach can at best maintain border violence at business-as-usual levels. As ecobordering discourse gears up to legitimise this increasingly repressive bordering regime, it falls to antifascist and other liberatory movements to address the root causes of racist violence and ecological crisis.

 

Acknowledgements

Thank you to Lise Benoist, Miranda Iossifidis, Heather Luna, and Rohan Montgomery for their generous feedback.

 

Cable Collective is an antifascist research collective monitoring how ecological crisis is used to justify oppressive politics in the UK.

The post “Sink the boats – Save the world”: Ecobordering narratives on the British far right appeared first on Undisciplined Environments.

The central claim of the Heritage Foundation’s special report that, because of New York’s ban on fracking, counties in the Marcellus region “lost out on around $11,000 per resident or $27,000 per household” is simply wrong. Why? Because . . . 

 

Very little of the money invested in or earned by fracking ever lands in local economies, leaving them as poor or nearly as poor as they were before fracking.

The report claims that growth in gross domestic product (GDP) is the most accurate indicator of economic prosperity. But the report doesn’t explain that little of the GDP growth that results from fracking lands in local economies. In fact, the bulk of the income generated by fracking goes instead to investors, bankers, service providers, and shareholders from outside the region. That’s why, as fracking increased from 1% of GDP in the Pennsylvania counties featured in the report to over 30%, the share of GDP that landed as income for residents plummeted from just over 100% of GDP to less than 70%, effectively wiping out any net increase.

This result is illustrated in the following chart in which you can see how, in 2002, before the fracking boom, the Mining sector (the blue line), which consists primarily of natural gas, contributed just over 1% of GDP in the relevant Pennsylvania counties [1]. At the same time, incomes in the region were actually greater than total GDP at nearly 103% [2]. But, as fracking grew, the share of GDP that landed as income for local residents plummeted to less than 68%.

Economists call this phenomenon “the resource curse” and the curse’s result is that nearly all of the incremental income generated by fracking gets exported to people in other places. That’s why residents in New York would have received almost none of the $27,000 per household the report says they “lost out on”.

 

The issue isn’t whether one side of the state line did slightly better or worse than the other, It’s how badly both sides are doing and how little difference fracking makes.

The report dismisses jobs as a measure of prosperity. That should be jarring to policymakers and the public, which has become accustomed to hearing job creation cited as the principal benefit of all economic development efforts. But the report’s dismissal of jobs as a measure of prosperity makes sense when it is revealed that communities on both sides of the state line were suffering from job loss before the fracking boom and the trend has only worsened since. With declines in jobs of 10% and 13% respectively, both the Pennsylvania and New York Counties are on long-term downward trajectories, which was only briefly interrupted between 2008 and 2012.

To put these losses in context, it’s helpful to consider that, during the period 2002 – 2023, the number of jobs in the US economy grew from 128 million to more than 153 million, an increase of nearly 20%. Jobs in Pennsylvania grew by 8%, which means that Pennsylvania’s natural gas counties, far from being contributors to job growth, actually dragged it down.

It’s also not clear that natural gas will help going forward. The number of natural gas jobs has fallen by 40% in the last five years. And statewide, Pennsylvania’s fracking industry provides fewer than 20,000 jobs out of more than 5 million in Pennsylvania’s economy.

 

The report purports to be an apples-to-apples comparison. It’s not.

Any differences found in the Heritage Foundation report between New York’s Marcellus counties and Pennsylvania’s northeast Marcellus counties are as likely to be explained by pre-existing differences in their economies as they are by the natural gas industry.

While the regions on either side of the state line are of similar size geographically, the New York counties are more than two and a half times as heavily populated as the Pennsylvania counties. They include cities, such as Binghamton and Elmira. Also the supposedly more prosperous Pennsylvania counties are depopulating faster than the New York Counties.

As a consequence, even if New York were to allow fracking, the industry’s already negligible economic impact would be diluted further in the much larger economies of the New York counties.  

As pointed out above, the small differences in economic outcomes between the two regions are far less important than the fact that both regions are suffering mightily. And, although natural gas has grown from 1% of the Pennsylvania counties’ economy to 30%, it has done little or nothing to change their economic trajectory. There is no reason to imagine that the results of embracing fracking in New York would be different.

 

Look out for the upcoming “Frackalachia Update.”

The Ohio River Valley Institute’s upcoming “Frackalachia Update” will explore in greater detail the economic impacts of natural gas development for all 30 major gas-producing counties in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. The update will show that the job and population losses described in this report for Pennsylvania’s northeastern gas-producing counties are typical of the impact natural gas production has in the northeast United States. And, looking ahead, it will discuss the possible implications for the industry, the region, and the region’s economic development strategies of growing demand for energy.

[1] As defined by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Mining sector includes “Mining, Quarrying, and Oil & Gas Extraction.”

[2] The total income of an area can exceed total GDP as a result of government transfer payments, such as Social Security and AFDC benefits which add to the income generated by economic output.

The post Misleading and Just Plain Wrong appeared first on Ohio River Valley Institute.

Decision on all BIL/IRA Funds

U.S. Dist. Judge Mary McElroy, Federal Dist. Court of RI’s Order – applies nationwide to EPA, DOE, Interior, USDA, HHS & HUD (and OMB). The same theory could apply to Green Bank Funds (see third bullet below). A Green Bank litigation summary starts on page three.

Federal judge orders immediate thaw of climate, infrastructure funds – by Alex Guillén; April 15, 2025 – Politico – President Donald Trump does not have “unfettered power to hamstring in perpetuity” duly passed funding laws, the judge ruled. A federal judge ruled Tuesday that EPA, the Interior and Energy Departments and other agencies unlawfully froze funds under Democrats’ climate and infrastructure spending laws, ordering the agencies to immediately resume disbursing the money.

• The ruling from Judge Mary McElroy of the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island, who was named to the bench by President Donald Trump in 2019, comes on the eve of an expected decision from another judge in Washington on whether EPA lawfully terminated $20 billion in climate grants. That case and other litigation are part of a complex web of lawsuits over frozen funds and terminated grants playing out in multiple courts.
• Notably, McElroy also dismissed the Trump administration’s arguments that she lacks jurisdiction to issue this order because these are contract disputes that by law would have to be heard by another court. Similar arguments have been raised by EPA in litigation over its canceled climate grants.
• But McElroy wrote that the nonprofits’ rights don’t stem from any contract with the government – they come from the laws passed by Congress. The groups are seeking to halt the government’s funding freeze, not get “money damages” for past harm done, she said.

US judge blocks Trump’s freeze on climate, infrastructure grants – By Nate Raymond – April 15, 2025 8:40 PM EDT – Reuters – A U.S. judge blocked President Donald Trump‘s administration on Tuesday from freezing billions of dollars in grants Congress authorized under climate investment and infrastructure laws of his Democratic predecessor, former President Joe Biden. U.S. District Judge Mary McElroy in Providence, Rhode Island, issued an injunction at the behest of environmental groups who argued the Trump administration was unlawfully freezing already-awarded funding for projects to combat climate change, reduce pollution and modernize U.S. infrastructure.

Judge orders federal agencies to release billions of dollars from two Biden-era initiatives by MICHAEL CASEY – April 15, 2025 at 5:36 PM EDT – Associated Press – BOSTON –  A federal judge on Tuesday ordered the Trump administration to release billions of dollars meant to finance climate and infrastructure projects across the country.

• S. District Judge Mary McElroy, who was appointed by Donald Trump during his first term, sided with conservation and nonprofit groups and issued a preliminary injunction until she rules on the merits of the lawsuit. The injunction is nationwide.
• McElroy concluded that the seven nonprofits demonstrated that the freeze was “arbitrary and capricious” and that the powers asserted by the federal agencies, including the White House’s Office of Management and Budget, in halting the payouts were not found in federal law.

‘The government failed’: Trump-appointed judge rips his spending cuts in late-night ruling – On Tuesday night, President Donald Trump’s administration suffered a loss in court — this time, at the hands of one of his own appointed judges. Politico legal correspondent Kyle Cheney tweeted Tuesday that U.S. District Judge Mary S. McElroy, who Trump appointed to the District of Rhode Island in 2019, authored a ruling that overruled his funding freeze for multiple federal agencies. In her 63-page ruling, McElroy granted a preliminary injunction in favor of a coalition of nonprofit organizations suing the Trump administration allowing them to have their funding turned back on while litigation plays out.

Federal judge orders immediate thaw of climate, infrastructure funds By Alex Guillén – 04/15/2025 06:34 PM EDT – Politico – President Donald Trump does not have “unfettered power to hamstring in perpetuity” duly passed funding laws, the judge ruled. A federal judge ruled Tuesday that EPA, the Interior and Energy Departments and other agencies unlawfully froze funds under Democrats’ climate and infrastructure spending laws, ordering the agencies to immediately resume disbursing the money.

 U.S. District Judge Mary S. McElroy’s Opinion and Order is HERE.

Agencies do not have unlimited authority to further the President’s agenda, nor do they have unfettered power to hamstring in perpetuity two statutes passed by Congress during the previous administration. Chief Justice Roberts put it best:

Justice Holmes famously wrote that “men must turn square corners when they deal with the Government.” But it is also true, particularly when so much is at stake, that the Government should turn square corners in dealing with the people. Id. at 24.

Here, the Government failed to do so.

 

Green Bank Litigation Order

U.S. Dist. Judge Tanya Chutkan (Federal Dist. Court of DC) ordered EPA & Citibank to unfreeze funds – “Citibank must disburse any funds properly incurred before the mid-February suspension of Plaintiffs’ funds.” However, this Order has already been “stayed.”  Judge Chutkan’s Order follows (Opinion not yet released). The “stay” is described below.

CLIMATE UNITED FUND, Plaintiff, v. CITIBANK, N.A., et al., Order – April 15, 2025 — “EPA Defendants, and others in active concert or participation therewith, including officials at the U.S. Department of the Treasury, are ENJOINED from directly or indirectly impeding Defendant Citibank or from causing Defendant Citibank to deny, obstruct, delay, or otherwise limit access to funds in accounts established in connection with Plaintiffs’ grants, including funds in accounts established by Plaintiffs’ subgrantees.” 

Release of E.P.A. Climate Grants Is Paused by New Court Ruling – By Claire Brown; April 17, 2025 – New York Times – Hours after a federal judge ordered Citibank to pay out as much as $625 million in federal climate grant money that had been frozen at the Trump administration’s request, an appeals court stayed the decision. The grant money was frozen again before any was sent to recipients.

• It amounted to at least a temporary setback for nonprofit recipients of $20 billion in funds that were appropriated by Congress through the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act.
• The grants, which were part of the EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund and are sometimes called “Green Bank” funds, were finalized before the November election, then frozen in mid-February at the request of the Trump administration.
• Brooke Durham, a spokeswoman for Climate United, a nonprofit that had been awarded almost $7 billion and has sued the administration for access to the funds, said the organization plans to oppose the stay, in hopes of avoiding laying off employees because they can’t pay them.

Judge blocks Trump EPA from clawing back billions in Biden-era climate grants – by Ella Lee and Rachel Frazin – The Hill – April 16, 2025 – A federal judge on Wednesday indefinitely blocked the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from clawing back billions of dollars in Biden-era climate grants. U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan said the EPA may not suspend or terminate the green grant awards nor limit access to those funds while a lawsuit challenging the effort to recoup the money moves forward.

• Judge Chutkan also ordered Citibank, which received the funds but refused to disburse them at the government’s request, to unfreeze the climate groups’ funds. However, Chutkan directed Citibank to refrain from releasing any funds until Thursday afternoon. After that, the groups will be able to use that money to finance climate-friendly projects. The administration has already appealed her decision, which she said would be explained in a forthcoming memorandum.  

The EPA can’t end grants from $20 billion Biden-era fund for climate-friendly projects, a judge says – by  MICHAEL PHILLIS – Associated Press – April 16, 2025 – A federal judge says some nonprofits awarded billions for a so-called green bank to finance clean energy and climate-friendly projects cannot have their contracts scrapped and must have access to some of the frozen money. The ruling is a defeat for President Donald Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency, which argues the program is rife with financial mismanagement.

Judge blocks Trump EPA from clawing back $14 billion in climate grants – by Maxine Joselow – Washington Post – April 16, 2025 – The judge’s decision is the latest twist in a high-stakes battle over Joe Biden’s signature climate law. A federal judge has temporarily blocked President Donald Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency from terminating at least $14 billion in climate grants approved under President Joe Biden. U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan of D.C. issued a preliminary injunction late Tuesday that prohibits the EPA from “unlawfully suspending or terminating” the grant awards. She also ordered Citibank, which was tasked with disbursing the funds, to release the money to the grant recipients.

2 Judges Order Federal Agencies to Unfreeze Climate Money – by Claire Brown and Karen Zraick – New York Times – April 16, 2025 – Two court rulings on Tuesday unfroze hundreds of millions of dollars in federal climate funds, a win for nonprofit groups that have been denied access to money they were promised under the Biden administration. Judge Tanya S. Chutkan of the federal court for the District of Columbia on Tuesday ordered the immediate release of up to $625 million in climate grants that have been frozen since mid-February under the $20 billion Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund. The fund is also known as the “green bank” program and has been a major target of Lee Zeldin, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.

 

PA DEP Brings Back Clean Energy Opportunity Spotlight (CEOS) Series

PA DEP is renewing its Spotlight Series – with need-to-know information funding and technical assistance programs designed to help PA’s homes, municipalities, and non-profits thrive in a diversified, affordable clean energy future. Upcoming Spotlights:

• April 24, 2025 @ 2:00PM — Greening Your Community with the Local Climate Action Plan (LCAP) and Shared Energy Manager (SEM) Programs – Register Here

• May 2025: TBD – Energy Audits and Upgrades with the Municipal Opportunities for Retrofits and Energy Efficiency (MORE) Program and Partners
• June 2025: TBD – Getting the Most Out of Your Home with a Residential Energy Assessment

 

PJM Report – Describes Pathway to Avoid Consumer Cost Increases

Tackling the PJM Electricity Cost Crisis An Analysis of the Benefits of PJM Interconnection Reform – Press Event with Evergreen Collaborative & Keystone Energy Efficiency Alliance – April 15, 2025. Highlights:

• Electricity customers in the PJM region (which spans all or parts of 13 Mid-Atlantic states and Washington, D.C.) are facing a looming cost crisis stemming from two major issues: (a) worsening barriers to building and connecting new generation resources needed to supply the electric grid, and (b) unprecedented increases in projected electricity demand.
• Accelerating new resource deployment will be necessary to reliably serve new and existing load without greatly increasing energy costs to electricity customers. Bringing online more clean energy resources will also be critical to reducing carbon dioxide emissions and meeting state climate goals.
• Power companies in the region are grappling with several barriers that impede their ability to connect new resources to the grid, including PJM’s interconnection queue delays, local permitting and siting processes, and global supply chain challenges.
• Synapse conducted power sector analysis, bill impact analysis, and job impact analysis to understand the benefits of resolving these queue constraints to customers and residents in the PJM states.
• The analysis shows that if PJM continues down its current path, residential electricity bills in the region are expected to increase by nearly 60 percent by the 2036–2040 period compared to historical levels.
• However, if PJM adequately implements interconnection reforms to enable the deployment of more cost-effective energy generation, largely comprised of clean energy sources, electricity bills are projected to decrease 7 percent by the same time period.

 

Impacts From Potential Repeals of Tax Credits & BIL/IRA Funding Freezes

E2: $8 Billion and 16 New Clean Energy Projects Abandoned in First 3 Months of 2025, Triple 2022-2024 Cancelled Investments Combined– April 17, 2025 — Investors cancelled, closed, or downsized nearly $8 billion in investments and 16 new large-scale factories in the first three months of 2025 amid escalating market uncertainty, and as Congress begins debate on repealing the tax credits. The $8 billion in cancelled investments since January are more than three times the total investments cancelled over the previous 30 months, according to E2’s latest Clean Economy Works monthly update. A full map and list of announcements is available at e2.org/announcements/. 

Solar advocates lobby on strong fundamentals amid political uncertainty – By Diana DiGangi – Utility Dive – April 16, 2025 – As Congress weighs tax incentive cuts, and tariffs drive up materials prices, the solar industry is emphasizing the technology’s low cost and fast deployment speed.

• One of the things that’s resonating with lawmakers now is that you don’t want to strand investments that have been made by American businesses in local economies,” said Sean Gallagher, senior vice president of policy at the Solar Energy Industries Association. “You don’t want these factories that have opened up in the last couple years to go dark.”
• “Around 80% of the projects that are most advanced in interconnection queues across the country are solar and storage,” Gallagher said. He pointed to recent comments from NextEra Energy president and CEO John Ketchum, who said that “renewables are ready to go right now” while gas generation is facing deployment delays due to factors like high demand and labor shortages.

 

The Other Shoes Drop on EPA’s “Exemption By Email” Rule

Trump exempts nearly 70 coal plants from Biden-era rule on mercury and other toxic air pollution – By  MATTHEW DALY – Associated Press – April 15, 2025

• The Trump administration has granted nearly 70 coal-fired power plants a two-year exemption from federal requirements to reduce emissions of toxic chemicals such as mercury, arsenic and benzene.
• A list quietly posted as of Tuesday on the Environmental Protection Agency’s website lists 47 power providers which operate at least 66 coal-fired plants that are receiving exemptions from the Biden-era rules under the Clean Air Act, including a regulation limiting air pollution from mercury and other toxins.
• The actions follow an executive order last week by President Donald Trump aimed at boosting the struggling coal industry, a reliable but polluting energy source that’s long been in decline.
• The exempted plants are owned by some of the nation’s largest power companies, including Talen Energy, Dominion Energy, NRG Energy and Southern Co.

The post BIL/IRA Implementation Digest — April 18, 2025 appeared first on Ohio River Valley Institute.

Feeling the urge to get involved this week? You are in luck. Here is all the Backbone Campaign related bannering happenings and more:

In order to match the absurdity and audacity of the news headlines, it calls for the need to turn up some of the messaging for the weekly bannering. 

Legislators in Ohio seek to establish a regulatory framework for the long-term, geologic storage of carbon dioxide in order to provide the clarity needed to attract developers to the state.  But, HB170 and SB136 go far beyond this simple goal. If passed, these two bills would significantly erode landowner rights in Ohio and expose Ohio taxpayers and the communities that would be host to these storage projects to significant risk.

 

Background

CO2 storage involves injecting and storing CO2 deep underground for hundreds or thousands of years. This CO2 is stored below impermeable caprock in empty pockets known as pore space. Proponents claim that this process will help reduce emissions in a variety of industrial processes, including power generation and the production of hydrogen from natural gas. Regional proposals like the Appalachian hydrogen hub and the Tri-State CCS Hub both require massive amounts of CO2 storage capacity.

Many states have established regulatory frameworks to help court carbon storage developers. These frameworks typically address:

• the relationship between rights to pore space, surface rights, and mineral interests, i.e. oil, gas, and coal
• ownership of pore space (the underground voids and cavities targeted for CO2 injection) and whether the rights to pore space can be leased, or sold
• the state permitting process for injection wells
• and the creation of storage funds to support regulatory activities, including permitting  and long-term maintenance.

However, the legislative proposals in Ohio go much further than establishing these basic frameworks.

 

Statutory Consolidation

HB170 and SB136 would allow companies to dump CO2 underneath homes and private property without the owner’s approval. This practice, referred to in the bills as “statutory consolidation,” is intended to help companies aggregate different areas of pore space into a single project to streamline development. Concerningly, the Ohio proposal allows these storage projects to proceed without support from all pore space owners impacted by the proposal, meaning that some people will be forced into these projects and will have CO2 dumped under their property and homes without their permission.

To put this in practical terms, let’s say that a developer is developing a storage project involving 1,000 acres and they secure leases from two owners (A and B, depicted in yellow) whose pore space amounts to 700 acres. The developer can then petition the state to grant them access to the pore space owned by the remaining 300 acres (owners C through L, depicted in red) without their approval, even though they represent a numerical majority — in other words, the rights of ten owners that collectively own 300 acres are trumped by two owners who collectively own 700 acres of pore space.

The bill does require developers to attempt to notify all pore space owners included in a proposal but the fact that these storage projects can proceed under people’s homes and property without their consent or awareness is very worrying. This provision is a serious threat to the rights of surface owners and it would be made worse if Ohio allows CO2 storage under large tracts of state-owned land, as has been happening in West Virginia. Because the threshold for project development is determined by acreage, not the actual number of consenting owners, small landowners would be especially at risk if these measures are approved.

In 2020, the rupture of a CO2 pipeline hospitalized 45 residents in Satartia, MS and forced 200 others to evacuate from their homes. Ohio communities forced to live near CO2 storage projects could be at risk of similar incidents, including pipeline ruptures and well-head blowouts. Allowing companies to trample on local rights in this way eliminates the most important protection for communities concerned about these projects: the ability to opt out.

 

Long-term liability

This legislation would also allow operators of CO2 storage projects to push almost all of their post-site closure liability onto the state, leaving the public on the hook for the ongoing maintenance and monitoring of these projects. Ohio is already facing nearly a billion dollars in abandoned mine land reclamation costs and tens of thousands of abandoned oil and gas wells. Assuming responsibility for large CO2 storage projects only adds to these immense legacy issues from the state’s industrial past. The long-term responsibility for projects as complex and dynamic as CO2 storage projects should stay with the companies that built and operated them.

Letting companies off the hook for these obligations invites them to cut corners in construction, record-keeping, and operations. If someone else is responsible for any problems that arise in the future, companies have less of an incentive to ensure the integrity of their projects.

Not all states with carbon storage regulations allow for the transfer of liability or forced unitization. By including these two provisions, state legislators are going out of their way to reward private companies at the expense of everyday Ohioans. The priorities of the legislators advancing these bills are made even clearer when considering the protections the bills provide to the oil and gas industry.

 

Protections for industry, not communities

While HB170 and SB136 are similar in many respects to legislation passed in neighboring West Virginia and Pennsylvania, these bills differ in one very important way: the degree to which the Ohio proposals protect fossil fuel development from CO2 storage projects, protections not provided to any other stakeholder group.

One example of this is a provision allowing subsurface owners concerned about impacts to mineral rights to object to the statutory consolidation of pore space. In contrast, pore space owners are unable to opt out of these storage projects if enough owners grant their approval, even if those consenting landowners represent a numerical minority. Additionally, a surface landowner that no longer owns or controls the rights to the pore space underneath their property would have no say in whether CO2 stored beneath their home or land.

The bill also requires pore space projects to be isolated from any existing or future oil and gas production and calls for setbacks establishing buffer areas to protect oil and gas interests from CO2 storage projects. No such protection is afforded to environmental justice communities, schools, churches, parks, or other sensitive areas.

Worse, the bills also grant the state “sole and exclusive authority” over CO2 storage projects, preempting any protective steps local communities may choose to take to ensure their safety as these projects move forward in the state.

In other words, this legislation disenfranchises other stakeholders, including people who object to CO2 storage under their properties and homes, and exposes the public to novel safety risks — all while protecting and empowering the oil and gas industry. 

The backers of these two legislative proposals may present these bills as mere clarifications of the regulatory environment but, if passed, these bills could place local communities in harm’s way and impact property owners, especially small ones.

The post Ohio House Bill 170 and Senate Bill 136: What You Should Know appeared first on Ohio River Valley Institute.

The post Call to Action: Join us for ‘Food In Our Hands’ to Demand a Right to Food appeared first on Landworkers Alliance.

Let’s talk about coal. Yes—coal, the black rock that powered much of America’s past. Lately, some leaders have been trying to bring it back in a big way. But here’s the truth: no matter what policies are put in place, the coal industry is on its way out—and trying to prop it up is only making things harder for regular folks like you and me.

Coal Can’t Compete Anymore

Even though the Trump administration recently rolled out a handful of orders to boost coal—including loosening environmental rules, offering loans for new coal plants, and opening up public lands for mining—the market is saying loud and clear: coal just doesn’t make sense anymore.

Why? It’s simple. Coal is expensive to use compared to other energy sources. Clean energy like wind and solar has gotten way cheaper, and natural gas is still pretty cheap too. Most coal plants can’t keep up. A recent report found that 99% of coal plants in the U.S. are more expensive to run than replacing them with local renewable energy like solar, wind, and battery storage.

So even if the government wants to save coal, the math just doesn’t work out. Energy companies are choosing cheaper, cleaner options—and for good reason.

We’re Paying the Price

Unfortunately, regular people are getting stuck with the bill. Because coal is becoming more expensive, utility companies are passing those higher costs on to customers.

Take West Virginia, for example. It still gets most of its electricity from coal. Between 2008 and 2019, the average electric bill there went up by more than $40 a month—almost four times more than the national average. That’s a lot of money for families who are already stretching every dollar.

Figure 1: West Virginia, which gets most of its electricity from coal, has the highest-rising electric bills in the nation. 

Share of coal in fuel mix vs. change in average monthly electricity bill, 2008-2019

Source: Ohio River Valley Institute, 2021

 

New Technologies Won’t Save It

Some people think new tech—like carbon capture, which is supposed to trap carbon pollution before it goes into the air—could make coal cleaner. But here’s the catch: these technologies are super expensive and don’t work all that well in practice.

Adding carbon capture would make coal-fired electricity cost three times more than it already does. So instead of making coal cheaper or cleaner, it could actually make your electric bill even higher. And that’s just not a smart investment when we have better, cheaper options on the table.

Coal Workers Deserve Better

It’s not just about the cost—it’s about the people, too. Coal miners have always done hard, dangerous work. And now, even their safety is being put at risk. Cuts to federal safety agencies under the Trump administration mean fewer inspections and less support for worker health.

Black lung disease, caused by breathing in coal dust, is back on the rise—especially in Central Appalachia. Nearly 1 in 5 miners there now has it. These workers deserve protection and a future beyond the mines.

A Better Path Forward

But here’s the good news: there is a way forward—one that doesn’t involve clinging to a dying industry.

Some communities are already leading the way. Centralia, Washington was once a coal town, but when its coal plant was set to close, leaders got smart. They invested in clean energy, energy efficiency programs, and education. The result? More jobs, higher incomes, and a growing population—faster than the national average.

We could see something similar in places like West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, and Ohio. Cleaning up polluted land and water left behind by coal could create over 13,000 good jobs in those states alone. And investments in renewable energy and energy efficiency could lower electricity costs and help coal communities thrive again.

The Bottom Line

Trying to save coal isn’t just a losing battle—it’s costing us big time. Higher electric bills, unsafe working conditions, and missed opportunities for job growth are just a few of the consequences.

But if we stop looking backward and start investing in the future—clean energy, safer jobs, and healthy communities—we all stand to win.

The post Why Trying to Save Coal Is Costing Us More Than We Think appeared first on Ohio River Valley Institute.

In Ancestral Future, the Brazilian Indigenous leader and philosopher Ailton Krenak recounts the story of the Maxakali community, an Indigenous group from the eastern rivers of Brazil. He describes how, despite being dispossessed and forcibly removed from their land, the Maxakali retain a remarkable ability to recall and narrate the presence of the living beings—animals and plants—that once shared their territory even though they no longer share it with them. Krenak emphasizes that this act of remembrance is more than nostalgia; it is a way of remaining rooted, or sustaining the experience of place. Even as modernity expands, imposing an abstract, homogenized notion of space—a void to be filled with ‘development’—the Maxakali resist this erasure by preserving their connection to nature through storytelling and memory. Their ability to inhabit, even in displacement, serves as a powerful testament to how communities, sometimes against all odds, retain their dignity, their sense of belonging, and their past and future as living, continuous realities. I often find myself returning to this thought as a profound example of resilience in the face of development and its multiple faces of dispossession.

The development enterprise, now 76 years old, has been remarkably effective not in solving poverty, but in producing and perpetuating it. As Majid Rahnema argues in The Development Dictionary, the term had multiple meanings before January 20, 1949. Poverty could be a voluntary choice, a form of exclusion from the community, a public humiliation, or a lack of protection. It was only with the expansion of industrial and mercantile economies that poverty became redefined as the opposite of ‘rich’ or a measure of wealth —a condition of material deficiency requiring intervention. The proposed solution, of course, was development— understood as the systematic deployment of industrial production, a wage-based economy, and the positivist advancement of technology and scientific knowledge, concentrated in the hands of professionals and experts. This logic did not simply enclose the means of production or subsistence, as Marxist thinkers might have predicted; it went further, creating a system of dependencies that rendered people perpetually in need of development itself—an alienating force that reshaped entire ways of being into something incomplete, always lacking, and requiring external intervention. Despite this there are many grassroots, autonomous and alternative movements resisting and creating alternatives to the development enterprise.

For five days in February, I had the privilege of joining land defenders, grassroots movements, Indigenous Peoples, and communities from 20 countries across the Global South in Port Edward, along South Africa’s Wild Coast, to discuss radical democracy, autonomy, and self-determination. Hosted by the Global Tapestry of Alternatives, the Academy of Democratic Modernity, the Amadiba Crisis Committee, and the Pan African Ecofeminist Alliance WoMin, this gathering was more than an exchange of ideas—it was a convergence of struggles, lived experiences, and collective visions for autonomy. Despite the participants’ diverse backgrounds, languages, and contexts, a striking commonality emerged: a clear and resounding rejection of the development enterprise. Over the past 40 years, what began as a slow erosion of the means of subsistence has escalated into a full-scale war against it. Development, far from being a means of upliftment, has proven to be an economic and political project of alienation, dispossession, and enforced dependency—disrupting ways of life, dismantling communal autonomy, and deepening systemic inequalities. This gathering reinforced that resistance is not just about rejecting this imposed model, but about reclaiming the power to define and create our own futures.

Participants at the inauguration of the Global Confluence on Radical Democracy, Autonomy and Self- determination’, Port Edward, South Africa, 2-6 February 2025.

 

What is the crisis we are facing?

Communities and grassroots movements striving to maintain their autonomy and practice radical or direct democracy are facing unprecedented challenges in an era of extreme inequality, shaped by centuries of exploitation and dispossession. The intersecting crises of climate collapse, economic inequality, and rising authoritarianism are intensifying new forms of oppression and violence—particularly against the ‘poor’ and marginalized communities produced by decades of development policies. The state has become central to enforcing the disciplinary, counterinsurgency, and social engineering technologies necessary to sustain capitalist extraction. At the same time, the far right has weaponized capitalism’s crisis to push liberal democracy toward xenophobia, racism, and hatred which serve as tools to entrench elite and corporate-driven forms of extreme neoliberalism.

Meanwhile, leftist and progressive governments have largely resigned themselves to crisis management, acting as administrators of capitalism’s systemic failures rather than challengers of its logic. In countries like Mexico, the rapid expansion of militarization and state-deployed social engineering technologies reinforces what Leanne Betasamosake Simpson calls the extraction-assimilation system—a model in which people, their knowledges, nature, and the more-than-human world are treated as resources to be rendered extractable. As these dynamics unfold, grassroots resistance remains critical, not only to oppose these structures but to reclaim autonomy and sustain alternative ways of being and relating beyond the confines of capitalist and state control.

At the heart of these struggles is a demand for more than rights or state recognition— a framework that ultimately reproduces condescending forms of hospitality, tolerating otherness while reinforcing systems of alienation through participatory and democratic mechanisms. Instead, these movements are fighting for radical autonomy. Paraphrasing the rich debates and discussions held during the meeting, the prevailing sentiment was clear: “We cannot ask or wait for the state to act. If we did, we would be long dead before development arrived. Instead, we must build, reclaim, or maintain systems of self-governance to sustain our territorialities.”

The concept of territory was central to this understanding. Participants emphasized that land and place are not only essential for constructing autonomous systems of self-determination and radical democracy, but also embody deep historical, epistemic, and ontological relationships—connecting people to nature and to ways of being that precede and resist capitalist modernity.

The meeting reinforced what many have long argued: the race toward development is a race toward deeper dispossession. This is not just about the extraction of resources; it is an increasingly violent system that enforces total alienation from the means of subsistence. As Ivan Illich warned, development is a war on subsistence—where in the logic of capitalism, economy becomes synonymous with scarcity. The crisis we face today is not merely economic or political, it is existential.

Participants of the Global Confluence on Radical Democracy, Autonomy and Self- determination’ in a visit to the Xolobeni Community, hosted by the Amadiba Crisis Committee (AAC). Photo by Ashish Kothari.

This ‘modern’ state system, as Ailton Krenak argues, has become highly proficient in the production of poverty and perpetual precarity by alienating people from their lands—whether through direct displacement or the slow contamination and degradation of their territories— forcing them into urban peripheries where no connection to autonomous livelihoods remains. Even institutions like the World Bank have acknowledged this trend, which is particularly visible in countries like Mexico, where nearly two thirds of those classified as poor under modern definitions live near or in cities. The state, in its contemporary form, does not function as a protector but as a facilitator of dispossession, offering ‘solutions’ that ultimately serve corporate and elite interests at the expense of communities.

How are communities responding?

While the term radical democracy is not one that communities use to describe their own decision-making processes, participants in the meeting in South Africa emphasized that autonomy and self-determination are not about seeking state recognition, but about reclaiming the power to govern and sustain life on communities’ own terms. The ‘radical’ in the term points towards the multiple struggles at the grassroots where alternatives are actively breaking away from liberal institutions and the extractivism that manufactures dependence. The response to this crisis is not uniform, but it is clear: grassroots communities are rejecting  formal education, healthcare, housing, transport and other expert-led systems that produce “needy” individuals. Instead, they are building self-sufficient networks of mutual aid, reclaiming food sovereignty, energy autonomy, traditional healing, learning and collective (re) inhabitation among many other direct challenges to capitalism and development’s monopolization of basic needs.

Many movements are resisting so-called “green transitions,” which disguise new forms of extraction under the banner of sustainability and climate change ‘mitigation’ and ‘adaptation’. Others are directly challenging the legal frameworks that reduce collective rights to manageable, individual, co-optable categories, reliant on expert, state or market produced services. Paraphrasing what some of the  participants argued: “collective and Indigenous peoples rights cannot be limited to human rights. These rights are based on the rights of nature, on our relationships with territory and place, and on our capacity to determine how we relate to and in these places.”

This response, again is not homogenous, but entails a radical plurality of actions, struggles and movements reclaiming dignity: building radical alternatives that are rooted in creating a sense of place and communitarian entanglements that redefine a sense of value produced through a commonly defined good life.

A tapestry of alternatives and radical democracy, made by participants of the Global Confluence on Radical Democracy, Autonomy and Self- determination’. Photo by Ashish Kothari.

The gathering highlighted the vital role of grassroots struggles in advancing radical democracy and emphasized the urgent need for academia, NGOs, and civil society to reconsider how they engage with these movements. Too often, these institutions, even with good intentions, align with the development agenda by treating knowledge as extractable and transferable, reinforcing the same systems of power that communities resist. In contrast, the struggles represented assert that knowledge is not the exclusive domain of universities: communities possess their own theories and political visions, rooted in everyday resistance and collective traditions.

The central question is no longer whether radical democracy is possible, but how to sustain it in a world bent on its erasure. This calls for a fundamental shift: from supporting movements through hierarchical models to co-creating with them in ways that dismantle the extractive-assimilation system. The struggle for autonomy is not merely opposition to development but a process of rebuilding social fabric through mutual aid, reciprocity, and self-determination.

As the confluence in South Africa demonstrated, these struggles are not isolated—they are interconnected nodes in a global movement toward radical democracy. As several  of the participants expressed: “We should no longer seek recognition from the state, but from each other.” From Indigenous communities defending their lands against extractivist projects, to urban collectives reclaiming the capacity of decision making from the state, what emerges is a vision of autonomy built on global solidarity that moves beyond reform to the active construction of new worlds. Autonomy and radical democracy thus cease to be abstract concepts: they entail the lived experiences of those who refuse to be governed and ‘developed’.

The post Reclaiming radical democracy in times of a civilizatory crisis appeared first on Undisciplined Environments.

VANCOUVER — The ongoing tariff drama created by President Donald Trump has turned economic diversification into a national imperative for America’s northern neighbour.

Fortunately, Canada has trade agreements with 60% of the global economy, making it well positioned to lessen its reliance on U.S. markets. But as Canadian governments and companies look to make strategic and long-term investment decisions with these trading partners in mind, Canada must accurately assess where their economies are headed.

Accordingly, a new Clean Energy Canada analysis finds that among Canada’s 10 largest non-U.S. trade partners, all of them have net-zero commitments and carbon pricing systems, and roughly half apply carbon border adjustments on imports and have domestic EV requirements reshaping their car markets.

Taken together, these measures send a clear, unmistakable signal. Carbon border adjustments, for example, levy a charge based on the carbon intensity of a good’s production and therefore incentivize low-carbon products from importing nations like Canada.

Meanwhile, the existence of a carbon price and a requirement for more EVs means that a market is weaning itself off fossil fuels, and thus demand for oil and gas will see a decline, while interest in clean energy imports and low-carbon products will increase.

A number of think tanks and business groups have analyzed and identified opportunities in Canada’s clean economy, including but not limited to clean electricity generation and transmission, critical minerals, EVs and batteries, low-carbon heavy industry, and value-added agricultural and forest products, all of which are explored in the report.

To realize Canada’s potential, federal and provincial governments should take a number of important steps, including:

• accelerating regulatory and permitting processes for clean growth projects,
• recognizing green collar worker credentials across provinces,
• accelerating the build-out of critical trade, energy, and transportation infrastructure,
• prioritizing interprovincial electricity grid interties in strategic regions,
• supporting demand for clean goods that benefit Canadian suppliers,
• and promoting Canadian businesses abroad and Canada as a destination for investment under the banner of a “Clean Canada” brand.

As The World Next Door concludes, seizing the clean economic opportunity is not about starting over, but about leveraging pre-existing industries and advantages in a way that sets Canada up for a sustainable future.

RESOURCES

Report | The World Next Door

The post Canada’s 10 largest non-U.S. trade partners focused on building clean economies, and Canada can deliver: report appeared first on Clean Energy Canada.

Liberty is a muscle that must be exercised!

Since January 20, 2025, Backbone Campaign and our volunteers and allies have:    

• Deployed 45 freeway banners in 5 locations over 13 consecutive weeks, 
• Shipped banner toolkits to 31 cities in 10 states, 
• Trained more than 200 people in bannering and light projection in our virtual workshops, and 
• Projected images focused on workers' rights, immigration, and illegal detention in Seattle, Portland, Kansas City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Minneapolis and Boston. 
  

For more than 20 years, Backbone has been preparing for this moment. Our high visibility activism tools speak to the moment and amplify our collective voices. Today, our work is more important than ever before. But, we cannot do this at the scale and scope that is necessary without growing support from people like you. 

Pitch in with a donation to keep growing Backbone's capacity to tool up and skill up people around the country. 

CHARLESTON, W. Va. — In response to the final passage of West Virginia Senate Bill 627, Ohio River Valley Institute Hydrogen Program Director Tom Torres issued the following statement:

 

The West Virginia legislature made a bad bet in 2023 when it opened up state forests, natural and scenic areas, wildlife management areas, and other state-owned lands for speculative CO2 storage development. Now, legislators are doubling down by allowing developers to lease pore space underneath state parks, further committing more of West Virginia’s magnificent natural resources to private profit.

These storage projects are unlikely to bring the economic benefits promised by their supporters but what they will do is expose even more people to the invisible but very real threat posed by catastrophic releases of CO2. Legislative efforts to remove this development from the view of park users only hides the threat of potential leaks or blowouts caused by unintended communication between storage projects and the likely hundreds of thousands of orphaned and abandoned gas wells in the state. Rather than protecting the interests of park users, this bill would make them ignorant to these dangers and less equipped to deal with them.

###

The post Statement on West Virginia Senate Bill 627 appeared first on Ohio River Valley Institute.

On Saturday, April 12, one of our super volunteers made the journey with 2 Backbone Campaign banners to the Peace Arch on the border of US (Washington State) and Canada. 

 

Join The Strategy Center for a Launch of our Statewide Organizing Work with the CA Black Power Network Help us build the collective power to advance statewide policy priorities as part of the California Black Power Network Thursday April 17 2025

Meeting 6:30-8PM

Refreshments 6-6:30PM

The Strategy and Soul

3546 W. Martin Luther King Blvd

Los Angeles, CA 90008

• Gain an understanding of our collective goals and policy priorities at both local and statewide levels.
• Commit to staying engaged in the fight to improve the lived conditions of Black Californians.
• Learn what it takes to win on critical policy and issue areas.

RSVP by Tuesday April 15th, 2025 RSVP

The post Join The Strategy Center for a Launch of our Statewide Organizing Work with the CA Black Power Network first appeared on The Labor Community Strategy Center.

The current administration continues with antics that cause millions to continue to wonder what is going on. But that doesn't stop our drive for our current bannering campaign.

Through our numerous online bannering workshops and resources from our website, we have shared our bannering materials and build process with 100s across the country.

By Simon Pirani. First published on Monday in the London Evening Standard The Silvertown tunnel, which opened to traffic on Monday, drives London backwards. The extra HGVs and cars it brings to east and south-east London will exacerbate air pollution, and undermine efforts to deal with climate change. The tunnel reinforces London’s motor-traffic-centred transport system, when […]

TORONTO — As Canada moves forward with plans to build millions of new homes, the carbon emissions associated with the materials that make up houses and other major infrastructure are substantial. But a new Clean Energy Canada report released today finds that building with lower-carbon materials and methods doesn’t need to make housing more expensive—and even has the added benefit of supporting Canadian industries at a time of high tariffs and trade tension.

Manufacturing the construction materials that make up our buildings, from the concrete foundations to the drywall, creates significant carbon pollution. Meeting the previous federal government’s housing plan (which would support nearly four million houses by 2030) was expected to generate the equivalent of more than a year’s worth of Canada’s total emissions by 2030.

Thankfully there are a number of cleaner material options, many of which are made in Canada, from steel produced in Electric Arc Furnaces to low-carbon concrete mixes. This report looks at the price of using these cleaner products, finding that lower-carbon equivalents are available in Canada at the same cost or for a negligible cost premium across almost all building materials and case studies explored. 

In a world where the U.S. is an increasingly unreliable trading partner, choosing these lower-carbon materials can help scale up domestic industries, enabling them to become more competitive exporters to other global jurisdictions, like the EU, that are seeking low-carbon products. 

There is one key way to help set up these industries for success, the report argues: “Buy Clean” policies, where governments require that cleaner materials are used in public construction projects. By using this approach in public procurement policy, Canada could avoid up to 4 million tonnes of emissions by 2030 (the equivalent of 850,000 cars). Such a policy can offer a trade-compliant route to supporting Canadian industries at a time of tariffs and uncertainty. 

Head to the report for more on why building clean homes and infrastructure doesn’t need to cost the earth.

KEY FACTS

• Material emissions savings of up to 32% for concrete, 100% for structural steel, 53% for rebar, 55% for drywall, and 98% for insulation were identified at no or negligible cost increases in the case study analysis.
• More efficient design of buildings can already reduce both cost and carbon by reducing the quantity of construction materials needed. Simplifying or streamlining building designs can also speed up construction. 
• The federal government has adopted policies requiring concrete and steel used in federally procured projects to be lower-carbon. Major construction projects funded by the federal government also require emissions reduction of 30% across the whole project. 
• With building operations such as heating and cooling getting electrified, the emissions from construction will make up a larger share. The embodied emissions of an efficient electrically heated building can make up as much as 93% of the building’s cumulative emissions impact by 2050.

RESOURCES

Report | Building Toward Low Cost and Carbon

Report | Building Success: Implementing Effective Buy Clean Policies

Report | Money Talks

The post As Canada builds more homes, cleaner materials won’t cost more—and would benefit domestic industries: report appeared first on Clean Energy Canada.