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Category: Climate

  • Jumping to Blame Renewables for Iberian Outage

     

    The world doesn’t know yet what caused the dramatic power outage on the Iberian Peninsula (BBC, 4/28/25). Nevertheless, the right-wing press both in the US and Britain quickly exploited it to dubiously suggest that the blame rested with Spain’s push for more renewable energy sources. The insinuation that clean energy is at fault has even infected outlets like the New York Times and AP.

    NY Post: Devastating blackout in Spain raises questions about reliance on solar power, wind power

    New York Post (4/30/25): “Experts have previously warned that Europe’s increasing reliance on renewable energy…could lead to blackouts and other supply issues.”

    The right-wing New York Post (4/30/25), while admitting that a final determination on the cause of the outage in Spain hadn’t surfaced, ran with the headline “Devastating Blackout in Spain Raises Questions About Reliance on Solar Power, Wind Power.” As the Rupert Murdoch–owned tabloid criticized the Spanish government’s response, it reminded its readers that that government is “socialist.” It cited “experts” four times to pin blame on “renewables,” while naming only one. That expert noted that solar plants’ lack of inertia—which, the Post explained, is something produced by “gas and nuclear power plants,” means that “imbalances must be corrected more quickly.” (Inertia is not a characteristic unique to non-renewable energy, as the Post suggests; hydroelectric energy, another popular renewable, uses turbines and produces inertia.)

    An op-ed by anti-environmentalists Gabriel Calzada and Fernández Ordóñez in Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal (4/30/25) said that “Spain’s system was engineered politically, not rationally.” They blamed “energy-transitionist ideologues” on the continent for the blackout, because they “forced in” renewables.

    Again, while admitting that the cause of the outrage had yet to be determined, they echoed the Post’s suggestion that renewable sources are by their nature “unreliable,” focusing on their lack of “inertia”:

    The greater the share of renewables vis-à-vis conventional power plants with synchronous turbines, the less inertia there is to cushion instantaneous load fluctuations in the grid.

    This causes the whole system to become “increasingly fragile, with higher risk of failure.”

    The far-right journal Compact (4/29/25) said renewable “sources, especially photovoltaic solar, can’t supply the requisite inertia the grid needs.” Admitting that the cause of the outrage was still unknown, it hoped the affair would repopularize climate-ravaging forms of power generation against woke wind farms and soyboy solar plants:

    Whatever the cause, this blackout could have a salutary impact on European energy policy if it dissuades countries from pursuing aggressive renewable energy policies that make power less reliable.

    The importance of inertia

    Energy Central: Overcoming Grid Inertia Challenges in the Era of Renewable Energy

    Energy Central (8/14/24): “While transitioning to a renewable-based power grid presents challenges, the benefits significantly surpass the risks.”

    The loss of power for Spain and Portugal, a major crisis reminiscent of the great northeast American blackout of the summer of 2003 (WABC, 8/14/23), has taught the world an important lesson about centrality of inertia in the electricity systems built around traditional energy sources. Gas, nuclear and hydroelectric plants use giant spinning turbines that “store kinetic energy, which helps stabilize the grid by balancing supply and demand fluctuations,” explained Energy Central (8/14/24). “High inertia means the system can better withstand sudden disturbances, such as a generator tripping or a sudden surge in demand.”

    Solar and wind energy, which are in growing use in Iberia and seen as a clean alternative in an age of climate crisis, lack this feature, which means integrating them into energy grids requires alternative ways of addressing energy fluctuation problems. It’s something engineers have long understood, and have been addressing with a variety of technical solutions (Green Tech Media, 8/7/20; IET Renewable Power Generation, 11/10/20).

    In general, questions of inertia are an important concern of energy planners when it comes to balancing clean energy and the need to stabilize the grid. But they’re not the only way the grid is stabilized.

    A Spanish professor of electrical engineering explained in Wired (5/1/25) that both local “meshes,” which help distribute electrical flows, and interconnections with neighboring grids are crucial for preventing the kind of imbalance that apparently led to the Iberian blackout. But the latter has always been Spain’s “weak point,” because of the “geographical barrier of the Pyrenees” mountains. Rather than suggest a pullback from solar or wind, as right-wing media seem to pine for, experts told Wired the needed response was greater interconnection, and more storage mechanisms or stabilizers to account for the reduction in inertia.

    ‘Uniquely vulnerable to outages’

    NYT: How Spain’s Success in Renewable Energy May Have Left It Vulnerable

    New York Times (4/29/25): “The blackout could bolster the argument for retaining conventional generation sources.”

    But the anti-renewable drum beat from the right inspired similar reporting in more centrist corners. The New York Times (4/29/25) took a similar tone, under the headline, “How Spain’s Success in Renewable Energy May Have Left It Vulnerable.” The article itself seemed to have an identity crisis, trying to paint the peninsula’s success in ramping up renewables as a false victory while at the same time acknowledging that it wasn’t just the renewable energy itself that caused the vulnerability:

    The incident exposed how Spain and Portugal, promoted as success stories in Europe’s renewable energy transition, are also uniquely vulnerable to outages, given their relative isolation from the rest of the continent’s energy supply.

    The article did also explain Spain’s relative lack of investment in necessary grid infrastructure and storage. But those who didn’t get past the headline would have come away with the same false impression about renewables as readers of the New York Post.

    The Times (4/30/25) doubled down in a follow-up piece the next day, saying, “The incident has raised questions about whether Spain and Portugal’s rapid shift to renewable energy left them more vulnerable to outages.”

    An AP (4/30/25) explainer, which was also picked up by the Washington Post (4/30/25), used phrases like “renewed attention” and “questions remain” to cast a vague haze over the role of the peninsula’s renewable energy:

    On Tuesday, there was renewed attention on Spain’s renewable energy generation. The southern European nation is a leader in solar and wind power generation, with more than half of its energy last year having come from renewable sources. Portugal also generates a majority of its energy from renewable sources.

    Questions remain about whether Spain’s heavy renewable energy supply may have made its grid system more susceptible to the type of outage that took place Monday. The thinking goes that nonrenewable energy sources, such as coal and natural gas, can better weather the type of fluctuations observed Monday on Spain’s grid.

    After sowing doubt about renewables, the AP wrote that Eamonn Lannoye, managing director at the Electric Power Research Institute, said “it was too early to draw a straight line between Monday’s event and Spain’s solar power generation.”

    ‘You’ve got to get the engineering right’

    Euro News: Fact check: Did wind and solar really cause Portugal and Spain’s mass blackout?

    Euro News (4/29/25): “Far from being the cause of the peninsula’s woes…the large percentage of renewable energy in Spain and the flexibility of hydropower systems enabled the nation to react and recover more quickly.”

    Though none of the outlets above seemed able to find them, some experts suggested neither solar power nor inertia were likely at fault. Euronews (4/29/25) said:

    Some experts have previously voiced concern that Spain’s grid needs to be upgraded to cope with the rapid integration of solar and wind. But others stress the unlikelihood of the mass blackout being down to the intermittent renewables, which the Spanish and Portuguese operators are by now adept at handling.

    Spanish energy think tank Fundacion Renovables explains that renewable power plants with 2MW of power generation or more were disconnected because of a disturbance in the frequency of the power grid—as per national safety protocols.

    Essentially, the disturbance was “a consequence and not a cause,” it said in a statement. SolarPower Europe, UNEF and Global Solar Council also emphasise that photovoltaic power plants did not voluntarily disconnect; they were disconnected from the grid.

    The English edition of the Spanish daily El País (5/1/25) concurred, quoting Pedro Fresco, general director of the Valencia Energy Sector Association:

    The failure of a photovoltaic plant, however large, doesn’t seem likely to be the cause of the collapse of the entire electricity system…. Nor is it true that there weren’t enough synchronous sources at that time: There was nuclear, a lot of hydropower, some solar thermal and combined cycle power, and even cogeneration, coal and renewable waste… In fact, there was more synchronous power than at other times.

    Others pointed more to the grid itself. Reuters’ energy columnist Ron Bousso (4/30/25) said the “issue appears to be the management [emphasis added] of renewables in the modern grid.” The outage, he said,  “should be a stark warning to governments: Investments in power storage and grid upgrades must go hand in hand with the expansion of renewables generation.”

    The Guardian (4/29/25) also intervened, quoting a European energy analyst: “The nature and scale of the outage makes it unlikely that the volume of renewables was the cause.” Further, the paper quoted University of Strathclyde electrical engineer Keith Bell:

    Events of this scale have happened in many places around the world over the years, in power systems using fossil fuels, nuclear, hydro or variable renewables. It doesn’t matter where you are getting the energy from: You’ve got to get the engineering right in order to ensure resilient supplies of electricity.

    Experts say it could take months to determine the exact cause(s) of the outage (New York Times, 4/29/25).

    Exploiting the crisis

    Al Jazeera: Spain’s grid denies renewable energy to blame for massive blackout

    Spanish power company chief Beatriz Corredor (Al Jazeera, 4/30/25): ““These technologies are already stable, and they have systems that allow them to operate as a conventional generation system without any safety issues.”

    The quickness of not only right-wing but also centrist outlets to blame solar and wind power for the debacle is in part rooted in Spain’s right-wing political opposition’s exploitation of the crisis, using it to bash the left-leaning governing parties and Red Eléctrica de España (REE), the nation’s energy company. Al Jazeera (4/30/25) quoted a spokesperson for the right-wing People’s Party:

    Since REE has ruled out the possibility of a cyberattack, we can only point to the malfunctioning of REE, which has state investment and therefore its leaders are appointed by the government.

    It’s easy to see why the People’s Party would politicize this. Just last year, the party fell under heavy criticism in Valencia, where the party is in local power, for its failure to act in the face of dire weather reports that led to massive flooding, killing more than 200 people (AP, 11/9/24). The national blackout has allowed the right to attempt to shift the anger toward the ruling Socialist Workers Party.

    But it’s also par for the course for the right-wing media to defend the conservative alliance with the fossil fuel industry, which is threatened by any move to address the climate crisis. The media’s jump to blame Spain’s renewables for a massive blackout looks a whole lot like their eagerness to (falsely) blame wind power for Texas’s 2021 blackouts (Media Matters, 2/19/21; FAIR.org, 2/26/21).

    While we may eventually know exactly what happened—likely to be a complicated mechanical explanation that should inform us how to better guard against future problems—propagandists know that one should never let a good crisis go to waste.

    This post was originally published on FAIR.

  • Why are all of America’s biggest cities sinking?

    Cities sit unmoving on the landscape — a sprawling collection of roads, sidewalks, and buildings designed to last for generations. But across the United States, urban areas are silently shifting: The land beneath them is sinking, a process known as subsidence, largely because people are using too much groundwater and aquifers are collapsing. The sheer weight of a metropolis, too, compacts the underlying soil. 

    A new study published on Thursday in the journal Nature Cities mapped the scale of this slow-motion crisis across the country. Researchers used satellites to measure how the elevation has been changing in America’s 28 most populous cities — including New York, Dallas, and Seattle — and found that in every one of them, at least 20 percent of the urban area is sinking. In 25 cities, two-thirds or more of the area is subsiding, with rates up to 0.4 of an inch each year. (In the maps below, red indicates areas where subsidence is fastest.)

    Groundwater withdrawal was responsible for 80 percent of total subsidence in the cities. As urban areas grow — and as climate change exacerbates droughts, especially in the American West — their people and industries demand more water. Overall, the study found that across the 28 cities, nearly 7,000 square miles of land is subsiding, threatening 29,000 buildings and potentially affecting 34 million people. Hotspots include Los Angeles, Las Vegas, San Francisco, and Washington D.C. “Cities where we have denser population and buildings, we have faster rate of land subsidence, and higher risk of damage,” said Manoochehr Shirzaei, an environmental security expert at Virginia Tech and a coauthor of the paper.

    This map of Houston shows the fastest-subsiding areas in red. Ohenhen, et al., Nature Cities

    The country’s fastest-sinking metropolis, Houston, has 40 percent of its area dropping more than a fifth of an inch annually, with another 12 percent of its land subsiding at twice that rate. Parts of the city have already sunk by several feet, the result of decades of people pumping out too much groundwater and too much fossil fuel. Houston already struggles with flooding from hurricanes and rainstorms made worse by climate change, while subsidence creates depressions for all that water to accumulate.

    If an urban area sinks at a uniform rate, it might not be much of an issue, since all the infrastructure would be moving together. But the problem, the researchers find, is “differential subsidence,” where the rates differ on a small scale. If one end of a building sinks a quarter of an inch a year, and the other end sinks a third of an inch, the difference will destabilize the building’s foundation.

    This map shows New York City. Ohenhen, et al., Nature Cities

    While subsidence of a fraction of an inch each year might not seem like much, the years start to pile up: In just a decade, a city can end up with 6 inches of lost elevation. Parts of California’s water-stressed agricultural regions have dropped by nearly 30 feet, and some places in Mexico City are sinking 20 inches every year. “Subsidence is a silent problem,” said researcher Darío Solano-Rojas, who studies subsidence at the National Autonomous University of Mexico but wasn’t involved in the new paper. “Now that the situation with water scarcity is growing, then it’s like, OK, we need to do something about the water, and in parallel, we do something about subsidence.”

    Roads and airports, which stretch for long distances across the landscape, are also at major risk because there’s lots of room for differential subsidence: The study found that New York City’s LaGuardia Airport is sinking a fifth of an inch a year. More troubling still, Shirzaei’s previous research scrutinized other infrastructure on the East Coast and discovered that all 10 levees his team measured were sinking, leaving 46,000 people and $12 billion in property vulnerable. Shirzaei has also found that coastal cities such as Charleston, South Carolina, and areas around Chesapeake Bay are sinking a fifth of an inch a year while sea levels rise the same amount, effectively doubling the inundation. 

    And finally, Las Vegas Ohenhen, et al., Nature Cities

    Until recently, though, cities have lacked the fine-scale data they need to determine which areas are subsiding, and which buildings and roads might be at risk. “This study just really does the work needed to bring that home, by very systematically assessing this throughout the country and really showing how little we’ve done so far to do anything about this problem,” said Roland Burgmann, a geophysicist who studies subsidence at the University of California, Berkeley but wasn’t involved in the research.

    The solution to subsidence is to put water back in the ground, what scientists call managed aquifer recharge, which can reinflate the land. Farmers in California are doing this with excess water during the rainy season so they can pump it back up in times of need. “You’re inherently kind of drawing it down, knowing you can build it back up over time, either through rainfall that’s going to naturally infiltrate and recharge, or through managed aquifer recharge,” said Amanda Fencl, director of climate science for the climate and energy program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, who wasn’t involved in the research.

    So where subsidence is due to the mismanagement of groundwater supplies, it’s also a solvable problem. “With land subsidence, in most cases we have plenty of time,” Shirzaei said, “and we have inexpensive solutions.”

    This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Why are all of America’s biggest cities sinking? on May 8, 2025.

    This post was originally published on Grist.

  • How Trump’s latest rollback could raise your utility bills 

    The federal Energy Star program is among the most successful government initiatives in modern history. Its signature blue label is now nearly as recognizable as the Nike swoosh or a Coca-Cola can, and appliances bearing it save American consumers some $40 billion annually in energy costs — or about $350 for every taxpayer dollar that goes in. 

    This week, however, President Donald Trump’s administration moved to kill it, The Washington Post first reported. Grist reviewed an Environmental Protection Agency, or EPA, document obtained by the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee that shows the program is slated to be “eliminated.”

    “Energy Star has saved American families and businesses more than half a trillion dollars in energy costs,” said Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), the ranking member of the committee, in a statement to Grist. “By eliminating this program, [Trump] will force Americans to buy appliances that cost more to run and waste more energy.”

    Launched in 1992, during George H.W. Bush’s presidency, Energy Star sets efficiency specifications for products ranging from dishwashers to entire homes. Those standards are beyond government-mandated minimums, and Energy Star website says the goal is to provide “simple, credible, and unbiased information” people can use to make better decisions. 

    While Energy Star certification is voluntary, most major manufacturers participate. According to the government, around 9 out of 10 households recognize the Energy Star label. Depending on the year, as many as 80 percent say the label “very much” or “somewhat” influenced their purchases. Overall, consumers have bought more than 300 million appliances with the Energy Star label and the program has cumulatively helped avoid 4 billion metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions. 

    “Energy Star remains one of our most effective bipartisan tools for ensuring energy reliability, affordability, and American competitiveness,” said Paula Glover, president of the nonprofit coalition Alliance to Save Energy. She noted the broader economic impact of the program as well, including creating hundreds of thousands of jobs in the manufacturing, retail, real estate, and energy services industries. “Shutting it down is a risk to those jobs.”

    For years, though, President Trump has complained about efficiency benchmarks for appliances. Lower-flow shower heads, he said, make showers “five times longer.” LED lightbulbs make him look orange. People are flushing efficient toilets”10 times, 15 times” and, with dishwashers, “the electric bill is ten times more than the water.” These claims are, by and large, inaccurate. 

    Veracity aside, Trump’s efforts play into a larger culture war against appliance standards — one that The White House has continued to aggressively wage since his second term began. In February, the Department of Energy announced it was delaying efficiency regulation of appliances ranging from central air conditioners and freezers to washing machines and dryers. In March, it said it was withdrawing four efficiency standards that the Biden administration had proposed, and was pushing back the implementation date of others. Last month, Trump issued an executive order titled, in all caps, “MAINTAINING ACCEPTABLE WATER PRESSURE IN SHOWERHEADS.”

    The Energy Star rollback would likely be the most visible attack yet on appliance efficiency, and it even has manufacturers worried. Last month more than 1,000 companies, cities, and groups wrote a letter to EPA administrator Lee Zeldin urging him to support the program.

    “This would be a very big deal,” said the representative of one manufacturer, who asked not to be named given the sensitivity of the potential closure. Energy Star, they explained, helps companies market and move higher volumes of high-efficiency products. “It’s an odd thing that you would jettison a voluntary public-private partnership that costs a rounding error in EPA’s budget and affords consumers billions of dollars of value.” 

    Beyond eliminating staff, the EPA’s exact plans and timeline for any Energy Star rollback remain unclear. The agency did not respond directly to questions about the program’s future but, in an emailed statement, told Grist the “EPA is delivering organizational improvements to the personnel structure that will directly benefit the American people.”

    Losing Energy Star could have a range of ripple effects. In addition to making selecting products more confusing for consumers, it could hinder their ability to qualify for federal, state, or utility incentives that are tied to the certification. There is, for example, a federal tax incentive for building Energy Star homes. Appliance rebates are also often linked to the designation. 

    “How are those programs now going to know which kinds of appliances they want to give a rebate to or a tax incentive for?,” said Glover. States or utilities could conceivably fill that void with their own standards, creating a patchwork of regulation and incentives. “Having Energy Star that gives a federal standard makes far more sense. It’s certainly easier for consumers to understand what their options are.”

    These are among the many details that would have to be worked out if the Trump administration proceeds with its plan. 

    “I don’t think they expected this kind of pushback,” said Steve Nadel, executive director of the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, about the media attention that the latest change has garnered. “This is getting a lot of publicity.”

    The move could also face legal challenges, he said, pointing to the Energy Policy Act of 2005 as one possible road block for the administration. It directs the EPA and Department of Energy to, among other things, “promote Energy Star compliant technologies as the preferred technologies in the marketplace for” and “preserve the integrity of the Energy Star label.”

    Another possibility is that the Department of Energy takes over as Energy Star’s primary administrator. But as with other aspects of President Trump’s ambitious agenda, it could take time to sort out real world impact. 

    If Energy Star is ultimately eliminated, Nadel says the labels would eventually go away, as would potentially billions in consumer savings.

    But, he added: “Nothing is done yet.”

    This story was originally published by Grist with the headline How Trump’s latest rollback could raise your utility bills  on May 7, 2025.

    This post was originally published on Grist.

  • What is it like on the climate job market right now?

    Illustration of earth, megaphone, pencil, hard hat, and beaker

    The vision

    “The uncertainty of the situation is taking an emotional toll on our entire community. The job market is shifting so rapidly that it’s an uneasy time whether you’re employed at the moment or not.”

    — Trish Kenlon, founder of Sustainable Career Pathways

    The spotlight

    On Thursday, February 27, Tom Di Liberto lost his job as a public affairs specialist in the office of communications at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA. He was just two weeks away from the end of his two-year probationary period as a federal employee — despite having worked as a contractor at the agency for over a decade — when he and hundreds of his NOAA colleagues were fired as part of a downsizing led by the so-called Department of Government Efficiency. Like many of the thousands of federal workers who have found themselves unemployed or unsure of their employment status since the start of Donald Trump’s second administration, the climate scientist turned communications expert took to LinkedIn to share his feelings about being fired that day, and start the process of figuring out what happens next.

    “Being a federal employee at NOAA was a dream come true. Literally. I’ve wanted to work at NOAA since I was in elementary school,” he wrote. “To NOAA and all federal colleagues, stay strong and keep protecting this country and world.” He added that he would be looking for new employment opportunities and would appreciate any connections.

    Despite reaching a wide audience (“If there’s a viral equivalent on LinkedIn — I had over 100,000 impressions or something like that,” Di Liberto later told me) and sending out applications regularly, he’s still looking. So are many of the fellow fired federal workers whose own search for opportunities he’s helped amplify to his network.

    According to data gathered by The New York Times, the Trump administration has so far cut somewhere close to 60,000 federal jobs (some of which have been temporarily reinstated following court orders) — not counting the more than 70,000 employees who have taken resignation offers — and more than double that number are still planned.

    But now this influx of former federal talent is hitting up against pressures affecting the private and nonprofit sectors, leaving those newly out of a job questioning whether there are enough jobs for everyone, and how stable they may ultimately be.

    Here in Looking Forward, we’ve covered several resources that exist to connect job seekers with climate-related opportunities — and when I first started working on this story, I thought it might be useful to compile those into a resource guide for people impacted by federal job and funding cuts. But as I began talking with sources, I found that the reality is more complicated than just knowing where to look for new positions. For both job seekers and coaches, navigating this moment means grappling with anxiety, uncertainty, and some heavy emotions about how the landscape has shifted, even while staying open to where the next opportunity might emerge.

    You’ll still find those resources throughout today’s newsletter and listed below, and I hope they’re helpful. But the crux of today’s story is about the contradictions and dilemmas in what workers and jobs experts are seeing and experiencing right now, in the broad landscape of climate careers.

    . . .

    Highly qualified workers leaving the federal government are entering a competitive job market — and making it even more so. The job site Indeed saw a 50 percent increase in applications from federal workers between January and February of this year. Di Liberto said he has encountered a lot of interesting job prospects, and applied to many of them. “The issue is that, you know, you’re applying against 500 other highly capable people,” he said.

    Like many other former feds, his expertise is in a relatively narrow niche, making the search even more challenging. “The field of climate communication, it’s not that big. So I know who I’m competing against, and I like them. I think they’re great.” It has been an odd balance, he said, of rooting for others to land jobs while also hoping to rise to the top of a hiring pool and land one himself.

    Another complicating factor: While federal staffing cuts are bringing a glut of new workers onto the job market, federal funding cuts and freezes — and other pressures like tariffs and even the administration’s stance against climate and DEI language — are causing some organizations in the private and nonprofit sectors to hire more cautiously, or not at all.

    Kristy Drutman, who co-founded and leads the platform Green Jobs Board, a directory of climate and environmental job openings, said she has seen some companies pull back from job postings in recent months. “A lot of companies that were posting with us that are in the energy and renewable sector now have told us that they’ve had to pause their hiring process, because they don’t know for sure if they’re going to have remaining grant funding for the rest of this year,” she said.

    Programs that had been reliant on funding from the Inflation Reduction Act or bipartisan infrastructure law, two landmark pieces of climate legislation from the Biden administration, have faced funding freezes that have, in some cases, been reluctantly unlocked in response to court orders but still face uncertainty. One example, a $20 billion fund for green investment, remains frozen in a legal battle between the EPA, the grantees, and Citibank, the entity housing the fund. Other climate-related programs and funding sources have been killed altogether.

    Drutman has meanwhile ramped up her efforts to provide mentorship and a sense of hope to job seekers. This fall, her team will be launching a new platform called Pathways (currently in beta), meant to help job seekers track new positions as they arise and build up their applications through things like networking, course recommendations, and a cover letter tool. “We’re building the resource for people to be prepared when those jobs do come out, to be ready for it,” she said.

    She’s relatively confident those jobs will exist, but over the last few months, Drutman has struggled at times to make sense of the landscape of which industries appear to be still growing and which are facing an overabundance of job seekers and a short supply of open jobs. “I think there’s still a lot of expansion happening. But I would say the supply-and-demand issue is definitely there,” she said.

    Trish Kenlon, a professional coach for those seeking climate careers and the founder of Sustainable Career Pathways, told me in March that she was receiving more requests for coaching and support than she could physically accommodate. That influx even included some new clients who hadn’t previously worked in climate or sustainability but were considering it after losing their job in another field.

    “The uncertainty of the situation is taking an emotional toll on our entire community,” Kenlon said. “The job market is shifting so rapidly that it’s an uneasy time whether you’re employed at the moment or not.”

    Still, despite the overwhelm, she was optimistic that there are still job opportunities out there for those looking.

    “The overall supply of talent in the market has increased, but I don’t think job seekers should panic,” Kenlon said. Although many climate fields may be competitive, there is a broad spectrum of types of climate work — so, in many cases, the number of new candidates competing for specific roles isn’t likely to increase too much as a result of federal layoffs, which have also affected people across a wide range of sectors and experience levels, she said. “While there certainly is some increase in competition, I don’t think it’s at the overwhelming scale that many people are worried about.”

    . . .

    Some of the optimism comes down to the fact that, on a broad scale, green jobs are growing. The clean energy industry, for example, has expanded to the point where market forces will continue to drive its growth.

    “In the U.S., there are things where the momentum is just too fast already to move, because we’re part of bigger markets,” said Kate Gordon, another longtime expert in the green economy. For instance, she thinks people will continue to choose electric vehicles, even in spite of reduced incentives. Though there are also some more nascent technologies that have not yet reached that tipping point, and may not do so if the government fails to invest in them. “I am worried about hydrogen in particular,” she said.

    She also sees an inevitability in the growth of climate-focused positions outside industries that are typically considered part of the green transition. Gordon, who now helms an economic development organization called California Forward, has worked for the development of green jobs for two decades, including helping the Bureau of Labor Statistics define what green jobs are. But today, she rejects that phrase altogether.

    “To the extent people are thinking very narrowly about what a climate job is, there are not as many as there need to be,” she said. But in her view, climate intersects with so many other aspects of life that there are opportunities to work for a liveable future in just about every field. “I just think people should broaden their horizons a bit, and think about jobs in economic development, jobs in finance, any of these systems. Jobs in insurance are 100 percent climate jobs right now,” she said. “Jobs in the utility sector are climate jobs, jobs in the bond market are climate jobs, geology is increasingly a climate job.”

    She also emphasized that the country is facing a shortage of workers in the skilled trades — positions that will be necessary to actually facilitate the green energy transition. “I know someone who got laid off in the administration who’s in her 50s, is going back to school and becoming a welder,” she said. “Think about it — think about hands-on jobs that are building this stuff that needs to get built.”

    Daniel Hill, who started an initiative called #OpenDoorClimate to connect job seekers with professionals willing to share advice, also sees reason to believe that corporate sustainability efforts will continue, though perhaps more quietly. “There’s this kind of pull back publicly going on, even though companies are still doing the work,” he said. That public perception may lead job seekers to think that there aren’t opportunities for them when in fact there may well be — even if the positions don’t have “climate” or “sustainability” in the title. Companies still recognize the value of this work, he said. He even sees a potential positive in that restructuring, where environmental impacts and sustainability concerns could become more embedded across organizations, rather than siloed within one team or one role.

    Like Gordon, he also encourages job seekers to take an expansive view to what their next climate position might be — including talking with people in different fields, simply to learn. A conversation like that led him to begin his career in energy efficiency, he said, when he came out of school thinking he wanted to work in alternative fuel development.

    “Even if you think you know exactly where you’re trying to get, it’s still worth talking to some tangential folks to hear what they’re up to, too,” he said. “It’s such a quickly evolving field that what you learned two years ago might have changed, or there might be something even newer out now that needs work done that wasn’t on your radar.”

    . . .

    Still, for many of the federal workers and others now forced to look for new roles, the unceremonious loss of the work they were doing has left a mark — and broad optimism about the state of the industry and the breadth of jobs it may hold isn’t necessarily resonating right now.

    Another former federal worker, who asked to remain anonymous to avoid jeopardizing her administrative leave, emphasized the emotional side of losing the work that she had cared so much about, in such a violent fashion. As a probationary employee at the Department of Energy, she was fired in February — her supervisor relayed the news in tears. She and many others were later rehired, but seeing there was little chance for her community engagement-focused work to continue, she accepted a deferred resignation offer.

    “From the first day of the Trump administration, with the memo that he put out and the executive orders — pretty much in the first two weeks, he eliminated or paused all of the work I had done in two years,” she said. “And not just me, but the work of all of my colleagues who had worked on anything environmental justice-related or even community engagement-related.”

    She was lucky to land a new job relatively quickly, this time working for her state government on community engagement for a weatherization program. But, because the project is funded by the EPA, she’s anxious that the work and her position may yet be under threat. And beyond that, she’s still reeling from the past few months. “I had to ask for more time before my initial start date for this other job because emotionally I’m just not ready to be back in the workforce,” she said.

    Di Liberto also spoke about the toll of seeing his work go up in smoke. “It’s not so much about me losing a job,” he said. “It’s about this job not existing anymore.” Many communications positions were cut, he said, breaking an important link between critical climate and weather research and the people who could benefit from it.

    He’s wary of what may emerge to replace his old job, and whether he’d be willing to do it — part of a broader question about government services being privatized, and who then will be able to access the resources, information, and infrastructure created. “I don’t know how I feel about then going to a private sector company who’s replacing government work,” said Di Liberto. “And I’m sure that’s probably felt by a lot of people.”

    He often jokes that, with his math skills, he could easily have found his way into a career that would have made him a lot of money, if that’s all he wanted. “But I would’ve hated what I was doing and I would’ve felt like I had no purpose,” he said. “The reason why I worked at NOAA, the reason why I did the work I did, was because climate change is an issue. It’s happening, it’s here. It’s really, really bad. And I don’t want people getting hurt. The core sense of why I do what I do is I don’t want people to get hurt.”

    His colleagues shared that sense of dedication to their work, he said. And while many are still reeling from the loss of their jobs, he sees signs that the dramatic, emotional nature of the cuts may also lead to the rise of something new. Anecdotally, Di Liberto has noticed that former colleagues seem galvanized to speak out and advocate for climate issues in new ways, and he is curious to see if they might go on to form or join NGOs, nonprofits, and advocacy groups to channel that energy into new missions — and new jobs.

    “It all is going to come down to funding, though,” he added. “I think that’s the scariest part for all of us, is that we know the government funded so much of the science and so much of this work, you can’t just replace it overnight. It’s just going to come down to funders, and whether they’re opening their pockets to help us try and get through this time.”

    — Claire Elise Thompson

    More exposure

    Below, we’ve gathered up a selection of resources that may be useful for job seekers and those who have been affected by layoffs and funding cuts — from climate-centric jobs boards to stories of solidarity from others in the fray.

    For climate job listings:

    • Check out Kristy Drutman’s Green Jobs Board. You can also follow them on Instagram to see new listings when they get posted.
    • Green Jobs Network is another one, with a newsletter and a variety of specialized and searchable jobs boards
    • And here’s one more — Trellis Jobs, from the media and events company formerly known as GreenBiz

    For skill building and networking:

    For more info and stories — or to share your own:

    • Subscribe to the Laid Off newsletter, which has, since last August, shared personal stories about something that many people go through but few process publicly: what it’s like to lose a job
    • Listen to Environmental Defense Fund’s Degrees podcast, which Daniel Hill has co-hosted — billed as “your podcast community for green job mentors, insight into new and growing careers, advice to calm your climate anxiety, and actionable conversations to make a meaningful impact”
    • Check out the Federal Resource Directory, a crowdsourced information hub for current and former government workers, which includes things like workplace rights, unemployment resources, whistleblower protections, and career support
    • If you’d like to help preserve federal datasets, or figure out how to access them, check out the Data Liberation Project from MuckRock and subscribe to their newsletter
    • If you are a scientist or grant recipient who’s been affected by federal cuts, consider sharing your story with the Union of Concerned Scientists to help highlight the importance of science
    • Grist is also collecting stories to document the climate and environmental justice work that’s being lost through these cuts — we’d love to hear from you

    A parting shot

    One of Di Liberto’s projects at NOAA was launching the agency’s first animated series, “Teek and Tom Explore Planet Earth,” to help communicate climate and Earth science topics to kids. Check out the five-eposide series, with accompanying lesson plans, here.

    An illustration shows a scientist and an alien in a spaceship over planet Earth, with the text Teek and Tom Explore Planet Earth

    This story was originally published by Grist with the headline What is it like on the climate job market right now? on May 7, 2025.


    This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Claire Elise Thompson.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • ‘Under no illusions’ about France, says author of new Rainbow Warrior book

    Pacific Media Watch

    The author of the book Eyes of Fire, one of the countless publications on the Rainbow Warrior bombing almost 40 years ago but the only one by somebody actually on board the bombed ship, says he was under no illusions that France was behind the attack.

    Journalist David Robie was speaking last month at a Greenpeace Aotearoa workship at Mātauri Bay for environmental activists and revealed that he has a forthcoming new book to mark the anniversary of the bombing.

    “I don’t think I had any illusions at the time. For me, I knew it was the French immediately the bombing happened,” he said.

    Eyes of Fire
    Eyes of Fire . . . the earlier 30th anniversary edition in 2015. Image: Little Island Press/DR

    “You know with the horrible things they were doing at the time with their colonial policies in Kanaky New Caledonia, assassinating independence leaders and so on, and they had a heavy military presence.

    “A sort of clamp down in New Caledonia, so it just fitted in with the pattern — an absolute disregard for the Pacific.”

    He said it was ironic that four decades on, France had trashed the goodwill that had been evolving with the 1988 Matignon and 1998 Nouméa accords towards independence with harsh new policies that led to the riots in May last year.

    Dr Robie’s series of books on the Rainbow Warrior focus on the impact of nuclear testing by both the Americans and the French, in particular, on Pacific peoples and especially the humanitarian voyages to relocate the Rongelap Islanders in the Marshall Islands barely two months before the bombing at Marsden wharf in Auckland on 10 July 1985.

    Detained by French military
    He was detained by the French military while on assignment in New Caledonia a year after Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage of the Rainbow Warrior was first published in New Zealand.

    His reporting won the NZ Media Peace Prize in 1985.


    David Robie’s 2025 talk on the Rainbow Warrior.     Video: Greenpeace Aotearoa

    Dr Robie confirmed that Little island Press was publishing a new book this year with a focus on the legacy of the Rainbow Warrior.

    Plantu's cartoon on the Rainbow Warrior bombers
    Plantu’s cartoon on the Rainbow Warrior bombers from the slideshow. Image: David Robie/Plantu

    “This edition is the most comprehensive work on the sinking of the first Rainbow Warrior, but also speaks to the first humanitarian mission undertaken by Greenpeace,” said publisher Tony Murrow.

    “It’s an important work that shows us how we can act in the world and how we must continue to support all life on this unusual planet that is our only home.”

    Little Island Press produced an educational microsite as a resource to accompany Eyes of Fire with print, image and video resources.

    The book will be launched in association with a nuclear-free Pacific exhibition at Ellen Melville Centre in mid-July.

    Find out more at the Eyes of Fire microsite
    Find out more at the microsite: eyes-of-fire.littleisland.co.nz

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Coming this summer: Record-breaking heat and plenty of hurricanes

    With less than a month to go until summer, weather forecasters have been dropping some troubling news about what might be in store. AccuWeather had already predicted an especially active season — which begins June 1 — with up to 10 hurricanes out at sea, and its meteorologists are now forecasting a hotter-than-normal summer on land. Last week, the company warned that the three months could bring “sweltering heat, severe weather, intense wildfires and the start of a dynamic hurricane season” — an echo of last summer, which was the hottest on record. In some places, like coastal cities along the Gulf Coast, those hazards could combine into dangerous “compound disasters,” with heat waves and hurricanes arriving back to back. 

    The Trump administration’s cost-cutting crusade could make this summer’s weather all the more perilous. Mass layoffs at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have hurricane forecasters worried that they’ll lose access to the data they need to make accurate predictions of where storms will make landfall and at what intensity. And as electricity gets more expensive, and global warming forces households to run their air conditioning more, advocates worry that the loss of federal support for people struggling to pay their electric bills could leave a swath of the population especially vulnerable. 

    Trump’s proposed 2026 budget, unveiled last week, would cancel the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, which provides $4 billion a year to help people pay electricity bills, said Alison Coffey, senior policy analyst at the Boston-based nonprofit Initiative for Energy Justice. “We are about to experience one of the hottest summers on record,” Coffey said. “And this is happening at a time when U.S. households are really, really struggling to pay their utility bills.” 

    AccuWeather’s summer forecast isn’t the kind you get for your local weather, so they can’t tell you if it will be raining in your town on the Fourth of July. Instead, this seasonal forecast looks at weather trends in March and April, as well as larger phenomena like La Niña and El Niño, the two bands of warm or cold water in the Pacific Ocean that influence the atmosphere above the western U.S. AccuWeather compares all that to how those spring and summer months looked in previous years to get an idea of what might unfold this time around.

    AccuWeather says that temperatures could run higher than average across the vast majority of the country this summer. Its forecast also warns of warmer nights, especially in the Eastern U.S. These make heat waves all the more unbearable, as the human body can’t get the respite of a cool night to bring down the physiological stress. 

    The Eastern U.S. could also suffer through heat waves punctuated by thunderstorms that load the atmosphere with humidity. Those conditions make the human body less efficient at sweating, raising the risk of heat-related illnesses and deaths. Heat kills more people in the U.S. than any other natural disaster, in part because it can aggravate existing conditions like heart disease and asthma. 

    Out West, the Dakotas, Montana, Idaho, Washington, and Oregon could see temperatures 3 degrees Fahrenheit, or more, higher than average. “The daytime highs are a bigger issue, [records] that could be challenged or broken in parts of the Northern Rockies and in the Northwest coming up this summer,” said Paul Pastelok, a senior meteorologist at AccuWeather.

    High temperatures are going to increase wildfire risk, Pastelok added, because a dry, heat-baked landscape is a flammable landscape. Right now almost 40 percent of the U.S. is under drought conditions, double the area of last year. Some parts of the American West actually had a fairly wet winter, but that can also cause problems because strong growing plants and trees can turn into fuel in the extra-hot summer heat. And as the season wears on, the landscape gets drier, so it’s more liable to burn catastrophically. 

    Day after day of relentless heat, especially if it’s humid out too, forces people to run the AC more to stay healthy. For the rich, that’s no problem. But lower-income folks suffer a high “energy burden,” meaning a $200 monthly utility bill is a much larger proportion of their income. Americans are also wrestling with an escalating cost-of-living crisis as rent and inflation march higher. With one in six American households now behind on their utility bills, according to the Initiative for Energy Justice, and 3 million of them having their power shut off each year, the danger is losing power during a heat wave this summer.

    City-dwellers face added risk here because of the urban heat island effect, the way sidewalks, parking lots, and buildings trap heat and make cities much hotter than surrounding rural areas. Lower-income neighborhoods get 15 or 20 degrees hotter than richer neighborhoods because they have fewer trees, which provide shade and cooling, according to Vivek Shandas, a climate adaptation scientist at Portland State University. “Those neighborhoods, and the residents living in them, just bear the brunt of that heat wave a lot more acutely than someone living in a more highly invested neighborhood, where tree canopy is lush.”

    It will take a whole lot longer to fix the systemic issues that drive heat disparities in cities. But in the meantime, access to air conditioning will be increasingly crucial as the planet warms. “Having financial assistance for low-income households to make sure that they can keep their electricity and their cooling on during the sweltering summer is more crucial than ever,” Coffey said.

    This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Coming this summer: Record-breaking heat and plenty of hurricanes on May 7, 2025.

    This post was originally published on Grist.

  • In its soul-searching, Australia’s rightist coalition should examine its relationship with the media

    ANALYSIS: By Matthew Ricketson, Deakin University and Andrew Dodd, The University of Melbourne

    Among the many lessons to be learnt by Australia’s defeated Liberal-National coalition parties from the election is that they should stop getting into bed with News Corporation.

    Why would a political party outsource its policy platform and strategy to people with plenty of opinions, but no experience in actually running a government?

    The result of the federal election suggests that unlike the coalition, many Australians are ignoring the opinions of News Corp Australia’s leading journalists such as Andrew Bolt and Sharri Markson.

    Last Thursday, in her eponymous programme on Sky News Australia, Markson said:

    For the first time in my journalistic career I’m going to also offer a pre-election editorial, endorsing one side of politics […] A Dutton prime ministership would give our great nation the fresh start we deserve.

    After a vote count that sees the Labor government returned with an increased majority, Bolt wrote a piece for the Herald Sun admonishing voters:

    No, the voters aren’t always right. This time they were wrong, and this gutless and incoherent Coalition should be ashamed. Australians just voted for three more years of a Labor government that’s left this country poorer, weaker, more divided and deeper in debt, and which won only by telling astonishing lies.

    That’s staggering. If that’s what voters really like, then this country is going to get more of it, good and hard.

    The Australian and most of News’ tabloid newspapers endorsed the coalition in their election eve editorials.

    Repudiation of minor culture war
    The election result was a repudiation of the minor culture war Peter Dutton reprised during the campaign when he advised voters to steer clear of the ABC and “other hate media”. It may have felt good alluding to “leftie-woke” tropes about the ABC, but it was a tactical error.

    The message probably resonated only with rusted-on hardline coalition voters and supporters of right-wing minor parties.

    But they were either voting for the coalition, or sending them their preferences, anyway. Instead, attacking the ABC sent a signal to the people the coalition desperately needed to keep onside — the moderates who already felt disappointed by the coalition’s drift to the right and who were considering voting Teal or for another independent.

    Attacking just about the most trusted media outlet in the country simply gave those voters another reason to believe the coalition no longer represented their values.

    Reporting from the campaign bus is often derided as shallow form of election coverage. Reporters tend to be captive to a party’s agenda and don’t get to look much beyond a leader’s message.

    But there was real value in covering Dutton’s daily stunts and doorstops, often in the outer suburbs that his electoral strategy relied on winning over.

    What was revealed by having journalists on the bus was the paucity of policy substance. Details about housing affordability and petrol pricing — which voters desperately wanted to hear — were little more than sound bites.

    Steered clear of nuclear sites
    This was obvious by Dutton’s second visit to a petrol station, and yet there were another 15 to come. The fact that the campaign bus steered clear of the sites for proposed nuclear plants was also telling.

    The grind of daily coverage helped expose the lateness of policy releases, the paucity of detail and the lack of preparation for the campaign, let alone for government.

    On ABC TV’s Insiders, the Nine Newspapers’ political editor, David Crowe, wondered whether the media has been too soft on Dutton, rather than too hard as some coalition supporters might assume.

    He reckoned that if the media had asked more difficult questions months ago, Dutton might have been stress-tested and better prepared before the campaign began.

    Instead, the coalition went into the election believing it would be enough to attack Labor without presenting a fully considered alternative vision. Similarly, it would suffice to appear on friendly media outlets such as News Corp, and avoid more searching questions from the Canberra press gallery or on the ABC.

    Reporters and commentators across the media did a reasonable job of exposing this and holding the opposition to account. The scrutiny also exposed its increasingly desperate tactics late in the campaign, such as turning on Welcome to Country ceremonies.

    If many Australians appear more interested in what their prospective political leaders have to say about housing policy or climate change than the endless culture wars being waged by the coalition, that message did not appear to have been heard by Peta Credlin.

    The Sky News Australia presenter and former chief-of-staff to prime minister Tony Abbott said during Saturday night’s election coverage “I’d argue we didn’t do enough of a culture war”.The Conversation

    Dr Matthew Ricketson is professor of communication, Deakin University and Andrew Dodd  is professor of journalism and director of the Centre for Advancing Journalism, The University of Melbourne. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

  • Why hasn’t Trump taken down the government’s climate adaptation plans?

    Deep in the bowels of .gov web addresses sits a site that houses the climate adaptation plans for more than two dozen federal agencies. They outline everything from the Smithsonian protecting the National Museum of American History from flooding to the Department of Defense “incorporat[ing] climate considerations into wargames.”

    The fact that these documents remain available — including on the recently updated Environmental Protection Agency site — stands in stark contrast to President Donald Trump’s broader purge of climate-related programming from the federal government. Even the rest of the sustainability.gov website where they reside has largely been wiped clean since Trump’s inauguration.

    “I don’t know if leaving [them] up was intentional,” said Elizabeth Losos, an executive in residence at Duke University, who provided technical support for the plans. She said it could be an oversight and the plans will be taken down eventually. Or it could be a sign that some within the administration want to tackle issues related to natural disaster and climate preparedness.

    “There are folks there who know that if you screw this up too much it comes back and bites you,” Losos said. She also said she believes that “they aren’t nearly as hostile to climate adaptation and resiliency as they are climate mitigation.”

    The White House did not respond to multiple requests for comment, including one sent to the Council on Environmental Quality, which spearheaded the plans. Grist also reached out to all 30 government entities that produced the documents. Only a handful responded, though they avoided referencing “climate change.”

    “The [State] Department will continue to plan for and seek to mitigate disruptions to its critical operations from a range of possible disruptions, including natural hazards,” said one agency spokesperson in an email. Another wrote that the “EPA takes very seriously how natural hazards and disasters can affect human health and the environment.” Neither agency responded to follow up questions.

    The Tennessee Valley Authority, a federally owned electric utility, directly addressed the future of its plan, confirming that “no changes to the current plan have been identified.” Press secretary Charlotte Taylor dismissed questions about the Department of Interior’s plan by email, writing, “A leftist blog’s interpretation of the federal government’s actions is not a matter of concern.” 

    The Biden administration released the first comprehensive climate adaptation plans in 2021, and the latest versions came out in 2024. They run through 2027 and range from 15 (the National Archives and Records Administration) to 115 (State Department) pages long. 

    “Some of the plans were stronger than others,” said one person who worked on the plans and asked to remain anonymous to discuss them candidly. While the plans were largely unfunded, this person says they were important for setting departmental strategy and priorities. And, most importantly, the goal was to protect government assets and save taxpayers money. 

    “It falls into efficiency and smart government use of funds,” the person told Grist. “I think it’s a really good federal investment for the long run.”

    According to the Government Accountability Office, GAO, the federal government is the largest property owner in the United States and spends billions of dollars running and maintaining its assets. But a 2021 GAO report found no specific directives for incorporating natural disaster resilience into decisions for managing that vast portfolio. 

    “The federal government does not have a strategic federal approach for investing in the highest priority climate-resilience projects,” the report read. Disaster-resilient assets, it continued, “can reduce potential physical damages, and thus, may also reduce future needs for Congress to appropriate supplemental funds.”

    Saving money would fit with the Trump administration’s stated goals of slashing the cost of government. Climate-friendly policies wouldn’t. The Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, for example, recently shuttered its ‘Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities’ program. Thousands of people have been, or are slated to be, laid off at agencies that help address climate issues, such as the EPA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

    Rollbacks like these make the presence of the Climate Adaptation Plans particularly puzzling. 

    “It’s hard to reconcile with other actions,” said Hannah Persl, a senior staff attorney with the Harvard Environmental & Energy Law Program. She added that there likely isn’t anything requiring the administration to keep them online or in effect. 

    In response to the 2021 GAO report, Congress overwhelmingly passed the Disaster Resiliency Planning Act. That law, along with a Biden-era executive order on climate action, led the Office of Management and Budget, or OMB, to issue guidance to how agencies should plan for disaster resiliency. But that memo did not make climate action plans mandatory and, even if it had, OMB could update it at any time.

    Despite a lack of anything requiring the climate adaptation plan, they remain intact and a GAO report from last year found that all 13 agencies it looked at were incorporating climate vulnerabilities into their investment decisions. But most observers are skeptical of their continued utility under Trump.

    “They’re meaningful to the extent agency leadership are committed to implementing them,” said Perls. “If we collect the breadcrumbs and put them all in a row, it would suggest [this administration is] not really interested in meaningfully implementing these plans.”

    This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Why hasn’t Trump taken down the government’s climate adaptation plans? on May 2, 2025.

    This post was originally published on Grist.

  • The Trump administration just dismissed all 400 experts working on America’s official climate report

    Every several years for the past 25 years, the federal government has published a comprehensive look at the way climate change is affecting the country. States, local governments, businesses, farmers, and many others use this National Climate Assessment to prepare for rising temperatures, more bouts of extreme weather, and worsening disasters such as wildfires.

    On Monday, however, the Trump administration told all of the more than 400 volunteer scientists and experts working on the next assessment that it was releasing them from their roles. A brief memo said the scope of the report was being “reevaluated” within the context of the Congressional legislation that mandates it.

    The move throws the National Climate Assessment, whose sixth iteration is supposed to be released in late 2027 or early 2028, into even deeper uncertainty. Earlier this month, the Trump administration canceled funding for the U.S. Global Change Research Program, the White House office that produces the report and helps coordinate research across more than a dozen federal agencies.

    Rachel Cleetus, a senior policy director at the Union of Concerned Scientists, was among the authors who were dismissed on Monday. She and her colleagues had just submitted a draft outline for a chapter about coastlines, with information on how sea level rise could affect communities and urban infrastructure. 

    “It was an honor and I was looking forward to contributing,” Cleetus said. “This is the kind of actionable science that people need to help prepare for climate change and address the challenges that climate change is already bringing our way.”

    Cleetus said it was “irresponsible” that the administration would dismiss hundreds of experts working on the assessment, seemingly without a plan for creating an alternative. Although the memo says participants may still have “opportunities to contribute or engage,” it doesn’t elaborate and the White House did not respond to a list of questions from Grist. 

    The Trump administration is required by the Global Change Research Act of 1990 to, among other things, commission a scientific report every four years on “global change, both human-induced and natural.” The report is supposed to cover the latest science on a wide range of climate and environmental trends and how they might affect agriculture, energy production, human health, and other areas for the next 25 to 100 years.

    Since 2000, this report has taken the form of the National Climate Assessment. The last one, released in 2023, broke down climate impacts by topic and geography, with individual chapters on the Northeast, Midwest, Southwest, and so on. It also laid out the state of the science on mitigating and adapting to climate change, including examples of what many cities and states are already doing. The fourth assessment was published in 2018, during Trump’s first term in the White House.

    Smoke billows from a wildfire in the hills behind houses, while the sky is dark red.
    Smoke billows from the Airport Fire in Rancho Santa Margarita, California, in September 2024. Patrick T. Fallon / AFP via Getty Images

    All of the science that informs the national assessments must be peer-reviewed, and the reports themselves don’t endorse specific policies. “They’re not telling anyone what to do,” said Melissa Finucane, the Union of Concerned Scientists’ vice president of science and innovation and an author of the fifth assessment. “They’re just providing information on how to best address problems with effective solutions.”

    What’s next for the National Climate Assessment is unclear. Legally, only Congress can scrap it altogether, but experts say the Trump administration could decide to publish a dramatically scaled-back version or use it as a tool for misinformation — by, for instance, downplaying the link between global warming and the use of fossil fuels.

    “One might be concerned that the administration will replace it with something much less robust, replacing it potentially with junk science,” Finucane said. 

    The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, a list of policy recommendations that the Trump administration seems to have drawn from during its first 100 days, only mentions the National Climate Assessment in a short section about the U.S. Global Change Research Program. Russell Vought, now director of the Trump administration’s Office of Management and Budget, recommended that the program be scaled back to a limited advisory role. He wrote that the program typified “climate fanaticism” and “the woke agenda.”

    Another possibility is that the experts involved in the assessment will continue their work, even without federal support. That’s what happened earlier this year with what was supposed to be the country’s first National Nature Assessment. When the Trump administration canceled work on it in February, its authors vowed to carry on and publish their results anyway.

    Finucane said the Nature Assessment had been farther along than the sixth climate report, and that it wouldn’t be possible for a small group of volunteers to take on the massive amount of work and coordination required to put together the sixth assessment  “I absolutely hope that the work that has been done can continue in some way, but we have to have our eyes wide open,” Finucane said.

    Dave White, director of the Global Institute of Sustainability and Innovation at Arizona State University, said there are some international and state-level climate reports that could fill in the gaps left by a scaled-back or canceled National Climate Assessment. The U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, for example, synthesizes climate science on a global level every few years (although the Trump administration recently blocked federal scientists from participating in it). 

    “I’m disappointed, upset, frustrated on behalf of not only myself and my colleagues, but also on behalf of the American communities that benefit from the knowledge and tools developed by the assessment,” White said. “Those will be taken away from American communities now.”

    This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The Trump administration just dismissed all 400 experts working on America’s official climate report on Apr 29, 2025.


    This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Joseph Winters.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • World’s Top 111 Corporations Have Caused $28T in Climate Damages, Study Finds

    The world’s top corporations have caused $28 trillion in damages related to the climate crisis, a new study seeking to help attribute climate costs to individual polluters finds. In a peer-reviewed paper published in Nature last week, Dartmouth University researchers find that the global economy would be $28 trillion richer if extreme heat caused by climate emissions from the top 111 carbon…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • The Trump administration’s push to privatize US public lands

    America’s federal public lands are truly unique, part of our birthright as citizens. No other country in the world has such a system. 

    More than 640 million acres, including national parks, forests and wildlife refuges, as well as lands open to drilling, mining, logging and a variety of other uses, are managed by the federal government — but owned collectively by all American citizens. Together, these parcels make up more than a quarter of all land in the nation. 

    Congressman John Garamendi, a Democrat representing California, has called them “one of the greatest benefits of being an American.” 

    Canoers in White Mountain National Forest New Hampshire
    Canoers paddle out to fish on Broken Bridge Pond in the White Mountain National Forest in New Hampshire in 2021. Brianna Soukup / Portland Press Herald via Getty Images

    “Even if you don’t own a house or the latest computer on the market, you own Yosemite, Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon, Golden Gate National Recreation Area, and many other natural treasures,” he wrote in 2011.

    Despite broad, bipartisan public support for protecting public lands, these shared landscapes  have come under relentless attack during the first 100 days of President Donald Trump’s second term. The administration and its allies in Congress are working feverishly to tilt the scale away from natural resource protection and toward extraction, threatening a pillar of the nation’s identity and tradition of democratic governance. 

    “There’s no larger concentration of unappropriated wealth on this globe than exists in this country on our public lands,” said Jesse Duebel, executive director of the New Mexico Wildlife Federation, a conservation nonprofit. “The fact that there are interests that would like to monetize that, they’d like to liquidate it and turn it into cash money, is no surprise.”

    More on Trump’s first 100 days

    Landscape protections and bedrock conservation laws are on the chopping block, as Trump and his team look to boost and fast-track drilling, mining, and logging across the federal estate. The administration and the GOP-controlled Congress are eyeing selling off federal lands, both for housing development and to help offset Trump’s tax and spending cuts. And the newly formed Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, led by billionaire Elon Musk, is wreaking havoc within federal land management agencies, pushing out thousands of civil servants. That purge will leave America’s natural heritage more vulnerable to the myriad threats they already face, including growing visitor numbers, climate change, wildfires, and invasive species.

    The Republican campaign to undermine land management agencies and wrest control of public lands from the federal government is nothing new, dating back to the Sagebrush Rebellion movement of the 1970s and 80s, when support for privatizing or transferring federal lands to state control exploded across the West. But the speed and scope of the current attack, along with its disregard for the public’s support for safeguarding public lands, makes it more worrisome than previous iterations, several public land advocates and legal experts told Grist. 

    This is “probably the most significant moment since the Reagan administration in terms of privatization,” said Steven Davis, a political science professor at Edgewood College and the author of the 2018 book In Defense of Public Lands: The Case Against Privatization and Transfer. President Ronald Reagan was a self-proclaimed sagebrush rebel. 

    Park ranger in Everglade National Park Florida
    A National Park Service ranger wears a patch as she conducts a walking tour in Everglades National Park, Florida on April 17. The Trump administration’s DOGE program has fired hundreds of park rangers across the United States. Joe Raedle / Getty Images

    Duebel said the conservation community knew Trump’s return would trigger another drawn out fight for the future of public lands, but nothing could have prepared him for this level of chaos, particularly the effort to rid agencies of thousands of staffers.

    The country is “in a much more pro-public lands position than we’ve been before,” Duebel said. “But I think we’re at greater risk than we’ve ever been before — not because the time is right in the eyes of the American people, but because we have an administration who could give two shits about what the American people want. That’s what’s got me scared.” 

    The Interior Department and the White House did not respond to Grist’s requests for comment.

    In an article posted to the White House website on Earth Day, the Trump administration touted several “key actions” it has taken on the environment, including “protecting public lands” by opening more acres to energy development, “protecting wildlife” by pausing wind energy projects, and safeguarding forests by expanding logging. The accomplishment list received widespread condemnation from environmental, climate, and public land advocacy groups. 

    That same day, a leaked draft strategic plan revealed the Interior Department’s four-year vision for opening new federal lands to drilling and other extractive development, reducing the amount of federal land it manages by selling some for housing development and transferring other acres to state control, rolling back the boundaries of protected national monuments, and weakening bedrock environmental laws like the Endangered Species Act.

    Aerial view of gas and oil drilling pads near DeBeque, Colorado
    An aerial view of gas and oil drilling pads in the Plateau Creek Drainage, near DeBeque, Colorado, where Bureau of Land Management sold leases in 2016 and 2017. Helen H. Richardson / The Denver Post via Getty Images

    Meanwhile, Trump’s DOGE is in the process of cutting thousands of scientists and other staff from the various agencies that manage and protect public lands, including the National Park Service and the Bureau of Land Management, or BLM. Nearly every Republican senator recently went on the record this month in support of selling off federal lands to reduce the federal deficit, voting down a measure that would have blocked such sales. And Utah has promised to continue its legal fight aimed at stripping more than 18 million acres of BLM lands within the state’s border from the federal government. Utah’s lawsuit, which the Supreme Court declined to hear in January, had the support of numerous Republican-led states, including North Dakota while current Interior Secretary Doug Burgum was still governor. 

    To advance its agenda, the Trump administration is citing a series of “emergencies” that close observers say are at best exaggerated, and at worst manufactured. 

    A purported “energy emergency,” which Trump declared in an executive order just hours after being inaugurated, has been the impetus for the administration attempting to throw longstanding federal permitting processes, public comment periods, and environmental safeguards to the wind. The action aims to boost fossil fuel extraction across federal lands and waters — despite domestic oil and gas production being at record highs — while simultaneously working to thwart renewable energy projects. Trump relied on that same “emergency” earlier this month when he ordered federal agencies to prop up America’s dwindling, polluting coal industry, which the president and his cabinet have insisted is “beautiful” and “clean.” In reality, coal is among the most polluting forms of energy.

    “This whole idea of an emergency is ridiculous,” said Mark Squillace, a professor of natural resources law at the University of Colorado, Boulder. “And now this push to reinvigorate the coal industry seems absolutely crazy to me. Why would you try to reinvigorate a moribund industry that has been declining for the last decade or more? Makes no sense, it’s not going to happen.” 

    Coal consumption in the U.S. has declined more than 50 percent since peaking in 2005, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, largely due market forces, including the availability of cheaper natural gas and America’s growing renewable energy sector. Meanwhile, Trump’s tariff war threatens to undermine his own push to expand mining and fossil fuel drilling.

    Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, second from left, looks on as President Donald Trump signs executive orders about boosting coal production on April 8.
    Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, second from left, looks on as President Donald Trump signs executive orders about boosting coal production on April 8. Jabin Botsford / The Washington Post via Getty Images

    The threat of extreme wildfire — an actual crisis driven by a complex set of factors, including climate change, its role in intensifying droughts and pest outbreaks, and decades of fire suppression — is being cited to justify slashing environmental reviews to ramp up logging on public lands. Following up on a Trump executive order to increase domestic timber production, Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins signed a memo declaring a forest health “emergency” that would open nearly 60 percent of national forest lands, more than 110 million acres, to aggressive logging. 

    Then there’s America’s “housing affordability crisis,” which the Trump administration, dozens of Republicans, and even a handful of Democrats are pointing to in a growing push to open federal lands to housing development, either by selling land to private interests or transferring control to states. The Trump administration recently established a task force to identify what it calls “underutilized lands.” In an op-ed announcing that effort, Burgum and Scott Turner, secretary of Housing and Urban Development, wrote that “much of” the 500 million acres Interior oversees is “suitable for residential use.” Some of the most high-profile members of the anti-public lands movement, including William Perry Pendley, who served as acting director of the Bureau of Land Management during Trump’s first term, are championing the idea.

    Without guardrails, critics argue the sale of public lands to build housing will lead to sprawl in remote, sensitive landscapes and do little, if anything, to address home affordability, as the issue is driven by several factors, including migration trends, stagnant wages, and higher construction costs. Notably, Trump’s tariff policies are expected to raise the average price of a new home by nearly $11,000. 

    Chris Hill, CEO of the Conservation Lands Foundation, a Colorado-based nonprofit working to protect BLM-managed lands, said the lack of affordable housing is a serious issue, but “we shouldn’t be fooled that the idea to sell off public lands is a solution.” 

    “The vast majority of public lands are just not suitable for any sort of housing development due to their remote locations, lack of access, and necessary infrastructure,” she said.

    A slot canyon cuts through the western portion of one of the country's newest national monuments, Chuckwalla Mountains, near Chiriaco Summit, California. President Trump rescinded the area's monument status on March 15.
    A slot canyon cuts through the western portion of one of the country’s newest national monuments, Chuckwalla Mountains, near Chiriaco Summit, California. President Trump rescinded the area’s monument status on March 15. David McNew / Getty Images

    David Hayes, who served as deputy Interior secretary during the administrations of Barack Obama and Bill Clinton and as a senior climate adviser to President Joe Biden, told Grist that Trump’s broad use of executive power sets the current privatization push apart from previous efforts. 

    “Not only do you have the rhetoric and the intentionality around managing public lands in an aggressive way, but you have to couple that with what you’re seeing,” he said. “This administration is going farther than any other ever has to push the limits of executive power.” 

    Aaron Weiss, deputy director of the Center for Western Priorities, a Colorado-based conservation group, said Trump and his team are doing everything they can to circumvent normal environmental rules and safeguards in order to advance their agenda, with no regard for the law or public opinion. 

    “Everything is an imagined crisis,” Weiss said. 

    Oil, gas, and coal jobs. Mining jobs. Timber jobs. Farming and ranching. Gas-powered cars and kitchen appliances. Even the water pressure in your shower. Ask the White House and the Republican Party and they’ll tell you Biden waged a war against all of it, and that voters gave Trump a mandate to reverse course.

    During Trump’s first term in office, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke repeatedly boasted that the administration’s conservation legacy would rival that of his personal hero and America’s conservationist president, Theodore Roosevelt — only to have the late president’s great-grandson, Theodore Roosevelt IV, and the conservation community bemoan his record at the helm of the massive federal agency. 

    Like Zinke, Burgum invoked Roosevelt in pitching himself for the job.

    Interior Secretary Doug Burgum tours a fracking site in Washington County, Pennsylvania on April 3, where he discussed President Trump’s recent executive orders to boost domestic fossil fuel production.
    Interior Secretary Doug Burgum tours a fracking site in Washington County, Pennsylvania on April 3, where he discussed President Trump’s recent executive orders to boost domestic fossil fuel production. Department of the Interior

    “In our time, President Donald Trump’s energy dominance agenda can be America’s big stick that will be leveraged to achieve historic prosperity and world peace,” Burgum said during his confirmation hearing in January, referencing a 1990 letter in which the 26th president said to “speak softly and carry a big stick.”

    The Senate confirmed him to the post in January on a bipartisan 79-18 vote. Some public land advocates initially viewed Burgum, now the chief steward of the federal lands, waters, and wildlife we all own, as a palatable nominee in a sea of problematic potential picks. A billionaire software entrepreneur and former North Dakota governor, Burgum has talked at length about his fondness for Roosevelt’s conservation legacy and the outdoors.

    Whatever honeymoon there was didn’t last long. One-hundred days in, Burgum and the rest of Trump’s team have taken not a stick, but a wrecking ball to America’s public lands, waters, and wildlife. Earlier this month, the new CEO of REI said the outdoor retailer made “a mistake” in endorsing Burgum for the job and that the administration’s actions on public lands “are completely at odds with the longstanding values of REI.”

    At an April 9 all-hands meeting of Interior employees, Burgum showed off pictures of himself touring oil and gas facilities, celebrated “clean coal,” and condemned burdensome government regulation. Burgum has repeatedly described federal lands as “America’s balance sheet” — “assets” that he estimates could be worth $100 trillion but that he argues Americans are getting a “low return” on.

    “On the world’s largest balance sheet last year, the revenue that we pulled in was about $18 billion,” he said at the staffwide meeting, referring to money the government brings from lease fees and royalties from grazing, drilling, and logging on federal lands, as well as national park entrance fees. “Eighteen billion might seem like a big number. It’s not a big number if we’re managing $100 trillion in assets.”

    Boats dock at Antelope Point Marina on Lake Powell near Page, Arizona in 2022. Public lands are the foundation of a $1 trillion outdoor recreation economy in the U.S.
    Boats dock at Antelope Point Marina on Lake Powell near Page, Arizona in 2022. Public lands are the foundation of a $1 trillion outdoor recreation economy in the U.S. David McNew / Getty Images

    In focusing solely on revenues generated from energy and other resource extraction, Burgum disregards that public lands are the foundation of a $1 trillion outdoor recreation economy, nevermind the numerous climate, environmental, cultural, and public health benefits.

    Davis, the author of In Defense of Public Lands: The Case Against Privatization and Transfer, dismissed Burgum’s “balance sheet” argument as “shriveled” and “wrong.”

    “You have to willfully be ignorant and ignore everything of value about those lands except their marketable commodity value to come up with that conclusion,” he said. When you add all their myriad values together, public lands “are the biggest bargain you can possibly imagine.” 

    Davis likes to compare public lands to libraries, schools, or the Department of Defense. 

    “There are certain things we as a society decide are important and we pay for it,” he said. “We call that public goods.”

    The last time conservatives ventured down the public land privatization path, it didn’t go well. 

    Shortly after Trump’s first inauguration in 2017, then-Congressman Jason Chaffetz, a Republican representing Utah, introduced legislation to sell off 3.3 million acres of public land in 10 Western states that he said had “been deemed to serve no purpose for taxpayers.”

    Public backlash was fierce. Chaffetz pulled the bill just two weeks later, citing concerns from his constituents. The episode, while brief, largely forced the anti-federal land movement back into the shadows. The first Trump administration continued to weaken safeguards for 35 million acres of federal lands — more than any other administration in history — and offered up millions more for oil and gas development, but stopped short of trying sell off or transfer large areas of the public domain.

    Demonstrators protest federal workforce layoffs at Muir Woods National Monument in Marin County, California, on March 01.
    Demonstrators protest federal workforce layoffs at Muir Woods National Monument in Marin County, California, on March 1. Santiago Mejia / San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images

    Yet as the last few months have shown, the anti-public lands movement is alive and well. 

    Public land advocates are hopeful that the current push will flounder. They expect courts to strike down many of Trump’s environmental rollbacks, as they did during his first term. In recent weeks, crowds have rallied at numerous national parks and state capitol buildings to support keeping public lands in public hands. Democratic Senator Martin Heinrich of New Mexico, who voted to confirm Burgum to his post and serves as the ranking Democrat on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, has taken to social media to warn about the growing Republican effort to undermine, transfer and sell off public lands.

    “I continue to be encouraged that people are going to be loud. They already are,” Deubel said. “We’re mobilizing. We’ve got business and industries. We’ve got Republicans, we’ve got Democrats. We’ve got hunters and we’ve got non-hunters. We’ve got everybody speaking out about this.” 

    In a time of extreme polarization on seemingly every issue, public lands enjoy broad bipartisan support. The 15th annual “Conservation in the West” poll found that 72 percent of voters in eight Western states support public lands conservation over increased energy development — the highest level of support in the poll’s history; 65 percent oppose giving states control over federal public lands, up from 56 percent in 2017; and  89 percent oppose shrinking or removing protections for national monuments, up from 80 percent in 2017. Even in Utah, where leaders have spent millions of taxpayer dollars promoting the state’s anti-federal lands lawsuit, support for protecting public lands remains high. 

    Protesters rally outside Yosemite Valley Welcome Center on March 1 during a national day of action against Trump administration’s mass firing of National Park Service employees.
    Protesters rally outside Yosemite Valley Welcome Center on March 1 during a national day of action against Trump administration’s mass firing of National Park Service employees. Stephen Lam / San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images

    “Even in all these made up crises, the American public doesn’t want this,” Hill said. “The American people want and love their public lands.” 

    At his recent staffwide meeting, Burgum said Roosevelt’s legacy should guide Interior staff in its mission to manage and protect federal public lands. Those two things, management and protection, “must be held in balance,” Burgum stressed. 

    Yet in social media posts and friendly interviews with conservative media, Burgum has left little doubt about where his priorities lie, repeatedly rolling out what Breitbart dubbed the “four babies” of Trump’s energy dominance agenda: “Drill, Baby, Drill! Map, Baby, Map! Mine, Baby, Mine! Build, Baby, Build!” 

    “Protect, baby, protect,” “conserve, baby, conserve,” and “steward, baby, steward” have yet to make it into Burgum’s lexicon. 

    This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The Trump administration’s push to privatize US public lands on Apr 29, 2025.

    This post was originally published on Grist.

  • EDC Congratulates Prime Minister Mark Carney On His Election Win

    Canadian flag flies over forest

    Statement by Tim Gray, Executive Director, Environmental Defence

    Toronto | Traditional territories of the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishinaabeg, the Haudenosaunee, and the Wendat – I wish to express my congratulations to Prime Minister Carney for winning the election. Canadians have spoken up loudly in defence of Canadian values and sovereignty, and rebuked the anti-democratic and anti-environmental agenda now rolling out in the U.S. This is a win for science, a win for democracy and a win for Canada’s environment and Canadians’ ability to protect it.  

    Successfully addressing Canada’s housing supply and affordability, the cost of living, security and future prosperity is deeply dependent on adopting policy solutions that protect the environment. It will be critical to the future success of our country that our incoming federal government understands this reality and implements solutions that make change quickly. 

    These actions will take place within a context of Canada needing to catch up to other global leaders in the effort to make our energy systems non-polluting. We encourage the Prime Minister to move forward with his commitment to strengthen industrial carbon pricing, to support clean energy, to invest in clean transportation and more affordable and efficient homes, and to swiftly finalize the oil and gas pollution cap. We caution against spending public money on new oil and gas pipelines or on continued fossil fuel subsidies. We trust that Mr. Carney knows full well that Canada’s economic future will be best secured by focusing on where the global energy system is going, not where it has been.  

    Canada has played a constructive role in international efforts to combat climate change, protect biodiversity and stem the tide of plastic pollution. It is our expectation that Prime Minister Carney will carry this tradition forward, and it is our hope that he will position Canada as a leader in these efforts, just as he positioned himself as a progressive environmental leader in financial circles.  

    With a new mandate as Prime Minister, Mark Carney will now have the opportunity to take bold action on the ideas he has long advocated for. He can lead the implementation of a rapid shift to clean energy and a climate-solutions oriented financial system. He can lead Canada in a march forward with the rest of the world toward a prosperous new economy while the U.S. turns backward.

    ABOUT ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENCE (environmentaldefence.ca): Environmental Defence is a leading Canadian environmental advocacy organization that works with government, industry and individuals to defend clean water, a safe climate and healthy communities.

    – 30 –

    For more information or to request an interview, please contact:

    Brittany Harris, Environmental Defence, media@environmentaldefence.ca

     

    The post EDC Congratulates Prime Minister Mark Carney On His Election Win appeared first on Environmental Defence.

    This post was originally published on Environmental Defence.

  • Māori leaders urge UN to act stronger on NZ’s ‘regressive’ policies

    By Te Aniwaniwa Paterson in New York

    Claire Charters, an expert in indigenous rights in international and constitutional law, has told the United Nations the New Zealand government is pushing the most “regressive” policies she has ever seen.

    “New Zealand’s policy on the Declaration (on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples) sits alongside its legislative strategy to dismantle Māori rights in Aotearoa New Zealand, which has received global attention for its regressiveness,” said Charters.

    Charters (Ngāti Whakaue, Ngāti Tūwharetoa, Ngāpuhi and Tainui) made the comment during an address last week to the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII).

    While in New York, Charters organised meetings between senior UN officials, New Zealand diplomats, and Māori attending UNPFII.

    The officials included the UN Special Rapporteur on Indigenous Rights, Dr Albert Barume, Sheryl Lightfoot, the Vice-Chair of the Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (EMRIP), and EMRIP Chair Valmaine Toki (Ngāti Rehua, Ngātiwai, Ngāpuhi).

    Charters said the New Zealand government should be of exceptional concern to the UN, given that the country’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Winston Peters, had publicly expressed his rejection of the declaration.

    In 2023, Peters’ party NZ First announced it would withdraw New Zealand from UNDRIP, citing concerns over race-based preferences.

    In the same year, Peters claimed Māori were not indigenous peoples.

    “New Zealand’s current government, and the Minister of Foreign Affairs specifically, has expressly rejected the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. It has committed to not implementing the declaration,” said Charters.


    Indigenous people’s forum at the United Nations.    Video: UN News

    Charters invited the special rapporteur to visit New Zealand but also noted that the government ignored EMRIP’s request for a follow-up visit to support New Zealand’s implementation of UNDRIP.

    She also called on the Permanent Forum to take all measures to require New Zealand to implement the declaration.

    Republished from Te Ao Māori News with permission.

    Claire Charters presenting her intervention on the implementation of UNDRIP
    Claire Charters presenting her intervention on the implementation of UNDRIP – this year’s theme for the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigneous Issues. Image: Te Ao Māori News

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Lost your federal job or funding? Tell us how cuts are impacting the environment, health, and safety of your community.

    The Trump administration’s flurry of initial actions has had a devastating effect on climate, environmental, justice, agricultural, and health work vital to communities across the country. As federal employees and funding recipients face these ongoing cuts and uncertainties, we want to help tell the story — your story — of what is being lost. 

    Tell us: Why is your work important, and how can its legacy be preserved?

    Are you a scientist or researcher whose work has stalled? A farmer whose funding has been cut right before the growing season? Were you working on an infrastructure project in your town that now you may not be able to complete? Are you an organizer who relied on federal funding to support a community effort?

    If your job or program is being canceled, paused, or weakened by federal workforce or funding cuts, we want to hear from you. 

    Your stories and insights will help us tell the complete story of how climate, environment, and other related work is being hindered, and help Americans understand just how deep these cuts go into work and programs they rely on every day.

    How to reach out to us

    Message us on Signal: 206-876-3147

    Use the Signal app to send a secure message to Grist at 206-876-3147. Please share a little about the job or project you are or were working on, and what’s happening now.

    A Grist reporter may follow up with you to hear more. Grist will not publish any information you share without talking with you and receiving your consent.

    Signal is a messaging platform that uses end-to-end encryption. Learn more about Signal and how to install it here.

    Or share your story using this form:

    Don’t see the embedded form below? Click here to access it in a new window.

    Responses will be viewed only by Grist reporters, but if you have security concerns please use the Signal messaging option above. Learn more about Typeform’s security features here.

    Need to contact Grist about something else? Additional contact options can be found here.

    FAQ

    I’m nervous about having my name out there. Can we still talk?

    Of course! Please still reach out to us. While we always prefer to have someone speak on the record (that is, something said publicly) with your full name attached, we are open to using your first name only, your general location (instead of exact), or other measures to remove identifying information. 

    If you’d like to talk off the record first (which is in confidence and cannot be published), then decide what you’re comfortable with, we will do that. Or if you’d like to offer information to Grist on background (information we may use but won’t attribute to you), we can do that too. 

    How will you keep my information safe?

    Keeping our sources safe is a priority. Signal is an end-to-end encrypted messaging platform designed to keep personal information secure (you can find more info here on Signal’s security measures). Most importantly, your information or identity will never be published without your consent, and you can always withdraw consent before publication. We’ll communicate with you throughout the process to ensure you feel comfortable with being part of this project. 

    What happens after I message you?

    You may hear from a Grist editor or reporter to follow up on your message. In many cases, they will set up a time to talk with you further via phone or Zoom.

    What do you plan to do with the information?

    This is an ongoing project, which may shift as responses come in. We may want to feature some people’s full stories, or create a database tracking the projects that are being impacted by the administration’s decisions. You’ll be informed how your information is being used before it is published. 

    What stories have you done on this issue? 

    Here are some examples of Grist stories about federal funding cuts that impact organizations, residents, and workers all over the country.  

    If you’d like more details about Inflation Reduction Act and bipartisan infrastructure law grants that may be in jeopardy, put in your ZIP code here to search our map. 

    I need more information about support for my project. Where can I look? 

    If you’re a fired federal worker and need legal resources, the Federal Workers Legal Defense Network can help connect you with lawyers working pro bono. If you have questions about healthcare benefits, applying to new jobs, or unemployment benefits, check out Civil Service Strong and the Partnership for Public Service’s Fed Support resource library. 

    If you work at a nonprofit that was impacted by a funding freeze, or may be in the coming months, the Center for Nonprofit Excellence has a list of tips to stay prepared and informed. 

    If you’re looking to stay up to date on the administration’s actions related to climate and environment, and their outcomes, get Grist’s coverage by subscribing to our newsletters. We will be reporting more on how the firings and funding freezes affect communities and climate progress. 

    This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Lost your federal job or funding? Tell us how cuts are impacting the environment, health, and safety of your community. on Apr 29, 2025.

    This post was originally published on Grist.

  • Vanuatu communities growing climate resilience in wake of Cyclone Lola

    By Koroi Hawkins, RNZ Pacific editor, and Christina Persico, RNZ Pacific bulletin editor

    Communities in Vanuatu are learning to grow climate resilient crops, 18 months after Cyclone Lola devastated the country.

    The category 5 storm struck in October 2023, generating wind speeds of up to 215 kmph, which destroyed homes, schools, plantations, and left at least four people dead.

    It was all the worse for following twin cyclones Judy and Kevin earlier that year.

    Save the Children Vanuatu country director Polly Banks said they have been working alongside Vanuatu’s Ministry of Agriculture and local partners, supporting families through the Tropical Cyclone Lola Recovery Programme.

    “It really affected backyard gardening and the communities across the areas affected – their ability to pursue an income and also their own nutritional needs,” she said.

    She said the programme looked at the impact of the cyclone on backyard gardening and on people’s economic reliance on what they grow in their gardens, and developed a recovery plan to respond.

    “We trained community members and also provided them with the equipment to establish cyclone resilient nurseries.

    Ready for harsh weather
    “So for example, nurseries that can be put up and then pulled down when a harsh weather event – including cyclones but even heavy rainfall — is arriving.

    “There was a focus on these climate resilient nurseries, but also through that partnership with the Department of Agriculture, there was also a much stronger focus than we’ve had before on teaching community members climate smart agricultural techniques.”

    Banks said these techniques included open pollinating seed and learning skills such as grassing; and another part of the project was introducing more variety into people’s diets.

    She said out of the project has also come the first seed bank on Epi Island.

    “That seed bank now has a ready supply of seeds, and the community are adding to that regularly, and they’re taking those seeds from really climate-resilient crops, so that they have a cyclone secure storage facility,” she said.

    “The next time a cyclone happens — and we know that they’re going to become more ferocious and more frequent — the community are ready to replant the moment that the cyclone passes.

    Setting up seed bank
    “But in setting the seed bank up as well, the community have been taught how to select the most productive seeds, the seeds that show the most promise; how to dry them out; how to preserve them.”

    Banks said they were also working with the Department of Agriculture in the delivery of a community-based climate resilience project, which is funded by the Green Climate Fund.

    Rolled out across 282 communities across the country, a key focus of it is the creation of more climate-resilient backyard gardening, food preservation and climate resilient nurseries.

    “We’re also setting up early warning systems through the provision of internet to really remote communities so that they have better access to more knowledge about when a big storm or a cyclone is approaching and what steps to take.

    “But that particular project is still just a drop in the ocean in terms of the adaptation needs that communities have.”

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.


    This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • AI’s economic gains to outweigh its climate toll: IMF

    Artificial intelligence technologies will boost global output by 0.5 per cent a year to 2030, far outweighing the costs of rising carbon emissions from the power-hungry data centres running the models, the International Monetary Fund says. In a report released Tuesday, IMF researchers claim the AI boom will “cause manageable but varying increases in energy…

    The post AI’s economic gains to outweigh its climate toll: IMF appeared first on InnovationAus.com.

    This post was originally published on InnovationAus.com.

  • Pope Francis has died, aged 88. These were his greatest reforms – and controversies

    ANALYSIS: By Joel Hodge, Australian Catholic University and Antonia Pizzey, Australian Catholic University

    Pope Francis has died on Easter Monday, aged 88, the Vatican announced. The head of the Catholic Church had recently survived being hospitalised with double pneumonia.

    Cardinal Kevin Farrell’s announcement began:

    “Dear brothers and sisters, with deep sorrow I must announce the death of our Holy Father Francis. At 7:35 this morning, the Bishop of Rome, Francis, returned to the house of the Father.”

    There were many unusual aspects of Pope Francis’ papacy. He was the first Jesuit pope, the first from the Americas (and the southern hemisphere), the first to choose the name “Francis” and the first to give a TED talk.

    He was also the first pope in more than 600 years to be elected following the resignation, rather than death, of his predecessor.

    From the very start of his papacy, Francis seemed determined to do things differently and present the papacy in a new light. Even in thinking about his burial, he chose the unexpected: to be placed to rest not in the Vatican, but in the Basilica of St Mary Major in Rome – the first pope to be buried there in hundreds of years.

    Vatican News reported the late Pope Francis had requested his funeral rites be simplified.

    “The renewed rite,” said Archbishop Diego Ravelli, “seeks to emphasise even more that the funeral of the Roman Pontiff is that of a pastor and disciple of Christ and not of a powerful person of this world.”

    Straddling a line between “progressive” and “conservative”, Francis experienced tension with both sides. In doing so, his papacy shone a spotlight on what it means to be Catholic today.


    The Pope’s Easter Blessing    Video: AP

    The day before his death, Pope Francis made a brief appearance on Easter Sunday to bless the crowds at St Peter’s Square.

    Between a rock and a hard place
    Francis was deemed not progressive enough by some, yet far too progressive by others.

    His apostolic exhortation (an official papal teaching on a particular issue or action) Amoris Laetitia, ignited great controversy for seemingly being (more) open to the question of whether people who have divorced and remarried may receive Eucharist.

    He also disappointed progressive Catholics, many of whom hoped he would make stronger changes on issues such as the roles of women, married clergy, and the broader inclusion of LGBTQIA+ Catholics.

    The reception of his exhortation Querida Amazonia was one such example. In this document, Francis did not endorse marriage for priests, despite bishops’ requests for this. He also did not allow the possibility of women being ordained as deacons to address a shortage of ordained ministers. His discerning spirit saw there was too much division and no clear consensus for change.

    Francis was also openly critical of Germany’s controversial “Synodal Way” – a series of conferences with bishops and lay people — that advocated for positions contrary to Church teachings. Francis expressed concern on multiple occasions that this project was a threat to the unity of the Church.

    At the same time, Francis was no stranger to controversy from the conservative side of the Church, receiving “dubia” or “theological doubts” over his teaching from some of his Cardinals. In 2023, he took the unusual step of responding to some of these doubts.

    Impact on the Catholic Church
    In many ways, the most striking thing about Francis was not his words or theology, but his style. He was a modest man, even foregoing the Apostolic Palace’s grand papal apartments to live in the Vatican’s simpler guest house.

    He may well be remembered most for his simplicity of dress and habits, his welcoming and pastoral style and his wise spirit of discernment.

    He is recognised as giving a clear witness to the life, love and joy of Jesus in the spirit of the Second Vatican Council – a point of major reform in modern Church history. This witness has translated into two major developments in Church teachings and life.

    Pope Francis on respecting and protecting the environment
    Pope Francis on respecting and protecting the environment. Image: Tandag Diocese

    Love for our common home
    The first of these relates to environmental teachings. In 2015, Francis released his ground-breaking encyclical, Laudato si’: On Care for Our Common Home. It expanded Catholic social teaching by giving a comprehensive account of how the environment reflects our God-given “common home”.

    Consistent with recent popes such as Benedict XVI and John Paul II, Francis acknowledged climate change and its destructive impacts and causes. He summarised key scientific research to forcefully argue for an evidence-based approach to addressing humans’ impact on the environment.

    He also made a pivotal and innovative contribution to the climate change debate by identifying the ethical and spiritual causes of environmental destruction.

    Francis argued combating climate change relied on the “ecological conversion” of the human heart, so that people may recognise the God-given nature of our planet and the fundamental call to care for it. Without this conversion, pragmatic and political measures wouldn’t be able to counter the forces of consumerism, exploitation and selfishness.

    Francis argued a new ethic and spirituality was needed. Specifically, he said Jesus’ way of love – for other people and all creation – is the transformative force that could bring sustainable change for the environment and cultivate fraternity among people (and especially with the poor).

    Synodality: moving towards a Church that listens
    Francis’s second major contribution, and one of the most significant aspects of his papacy, was his commitment to “synodality”. While there’s still confusion over what synodality actually means, and its potential for political distortion, it is above all a way of listening and discerning through openness to the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

    It involves hierarchy and lay people transparently and honestly discerning together, in service of the mission of the church. Synodality is as much about the process as the goal. This makes sense as Pope Francis was a Jesuit, an order focused on spreading Catholicism through spiritual formation and discernment.

    Drawing on his rich Jesuit spirituality, Francis introduced a way of conversation centred on listening to the Holy Spirit and others, while seeking to cultivate friendship and wisdom.

    With the conclusion of the second session of the Synod on Synodality in October 2024, it is too soon to assess its results. However, those who have been involved in synodal processes have reported back on their transformative potential.

    Archbishop of Brisbane, Mark Coleridge, explained how participating in the 2015 Synod “was an extraordinary experience [and] in some ways an awakening”.

    Catholicism in the modern age
    Francis’ papacy inspired both great joy and aspirations, as well as boiling anger and rejection. He laid bare the agonising fault lines within the Catholic community and struck at key issues of Catholic identity, triggering debate over what it means to be Catholic in the world today.

    He leaves behind a Church that seems more divided than ever, with arguments, uncertainty and many questions rolling in his wake. But he has also provided a way for the Church to become more converted to Jesus’ way of love, through synodality and dialogue.

    Francis showed us that holding labels such as “progressive” or “conservative” won’t enable the Church to live out Jesus’ mission of love – a mission he emphasised from the very beginning of his papacy.The Conversation

    Dr Joel Hodge is senior lecturer, Faculty of Theology and Philosophy, Australian Catholic University and Dr Antonia Pizzey is postdoctoral researcher, Research Centre for Studies of the Second Vatican Council, Australian Catholic University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

  • Wildlife, not livestock: Why the Eastern Shoshone in Wyoming are reclassifying buffaloes

    Jason Baldes drove down a dusty, sagebrush highway earlier this month, pulling 11 young buffalo in a trailer up from Colorado to the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming. His blue truck has painted on the side a drawing of buffalo and a calf. As the executive director of the Wind River Buffalo Initiative and Eastern Shoshone tribal member, he’s helped grow the number of buffalo on the reservation for the last decade. The latest count: the Northern Arapaho tribe have 97 and the Eastern Shoshone have 118. 

    “Tribes have an important role in restoring buffalo for food sovereignty, culture and nutrition, but also for overall bison recovery,” he said. 

    The Eastern Shoshone this month voted to classify buffalo as wildlife instead of livestock as a way to treat them more like elk or deer rather than like cattle. Because the two tribes share the same landbase, the Northern Arapaho are expected to vote on the distinction as well. The vote indicates a growing interest to both restore buffalo on the landscape and challenge the relationship between animal and product. 

    three bison walk along a grassy golden field
    Three bulls rest in the the Eastern Shoshone Buffalo Enclosure on Friday, April 11, 2025, on the Wind River Reservation near Morton, Wyoming. Amber Baesler / AP Photo

    While climate change isn’t the main driver behind the push to restore buffalo wildlife status, the move could bring positive effects to the fight against global warming. Climate change is shrinking Wyoming’s glaciers, contributing to drought, and increasing wildfires. While buffalo might give off comparable emissions to cows, increasing biodiversity can promote drought resistance and some herds of buffalo have been shown to help the earth store more carbon. 

    Like cows, buffalo emit methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, by belching, though it’s not clear if buffalo give off the same levels.

    While buffalo can contribute to climate change, what they bring in increased biodiversity can promote drought resistance and some buffalo herds have been shown to help store carbon. 

    The scale of cattle on the landscape and how they are managed contributes to climate change. Baldes argues buffalo should be able to roam on the plains to bolster biodiversity and restore ecological health of the landscape — but that has to come with a change in relationship. 

    A bison faces a crowd of people and trucks on a flat field
    A new bull wanders during the buffalo release at the Eastern Shoshone Buffalo Enclosure on Friday, April 11, 2025, on the Wind River Reservation near Morton, Wyoming. Amber Baesler / AP Photo

    “Buffalo as wildlife allows the animals to exist on the landscape,” Baldes said. “Rather than livestock based on economic and Western paradigms.” 

    Wildlife is broadly defined as all living organisms, like plants and animals that exist outside the direct control of humans. When it comes to how different states define wildlife, the definition can vary. But a good rule of thumb is animals that are not domesticated — as in selectively bred for human consumption or companionship — are typically classified as wildlife. 

    “Bison have a complex history since their near extinction over 100 years ago,” said Lisa Shipley, a professor at Washington State University who studies management of wild ungulates which are large mammals with hooves that include buffalo.  Tribes and locals tend to say buffalo while scientists use bison to describe the animal. 

    A crouched woman and child wrapped in a blanket watch from behind a line of people standing facing the same direction
    Oakley Boycott, left, embraces Ori Downer, 8, during the buffalo release at the Eastern Shoshone Buffalo Enclosure on Friday, April 11, 2025, on the Wind River Reservation near Morton, Wyoming. Amber Baesler / AP Photo
    a beaded bison-shaped ornament hanging from a rear-view mirror of a vehicle
    Beadwork dangles from a rearview mirror in a vehicle used by the Wind River Tribal Buffalo Initiative during the buffalo release at the Eastern Shoshone Buffalo Enclosure on Friday, April 11, 2025, on the Wind River Reservation near Morton, Wyoming. Amber Baesler / AP Photo

    During the western expansion of settlers a combination of overhunting, habitat destruction, and government policy aimed at killing Indigenous peoples food supplies eradicated the animal from the landscape. 

    Around eight million buffalo were in the United States in 1870 and then in the span of 20 years there were less than 500. Today, in North America there are roughly 20,000 wild plains bison — like the ones Baldes works to put on the Wind River. But most buffalo reside in privately owned operations, where many buffalo are raised for the growing bison meat industry. In 2023, around 85,000 bison were processed for meat consumption in the United States, compared to the 36 million head of cattle. It’s not a lot compared to cattle but some producers see buffalo as an interesting new addition to the global meat market. 

    The numbers are similar for other kinds of wildlife — there are typically more livestock on the land than wildlife. According to one study, if all the livestock of the world were weighed, the livestock would be 30 times heavier than the weight of all the wildlife on the Earth.

    Reducing the world’s collective reliance on cows — a popular variety of livestock — has been a way many see as a path forward to combating climate change. Eating less beef and dairy products can be good for the planet; cows account for around 10 percent of green house gas emissions.  And having too many cows on a small patch of pasture can have negative effects on the environment by causing soil erosion and affecting the amount of carbon the land can absorb.

    Buffalo are good to have on a landscape because they tend to move around if given enough room. One study saw that cattle spent half their time grazing, while buffalo only around a quarter of the time — buffalo even moved faster and had an affinity for more varieties of grasses to munch on. But even buffalo can damage the landscape if they are managed like cattle. 

    A bison with a blue-tagged ear stands on a prairie
    A bull relocated from the Soapstone Prairie in Colorado wanders its new home at the Eastern Shoshone Buffalo Enclosure on Friday, April 11, 2025, on the Wind River Reservation near Morton, Wyoming. Amber Baesler / AP Photo

    “Too many animals on the landscape can lead to rangeland degradation and health concerns,” said Justin Binfet, wildlife management coordinator for Wyoming Game and Fish Department. The state has classified the buffalo as both livestock and wildlife, which means they can be privately owned or managed in conservation herds. However, different places in the state have different rules regarding the animal. Currently, Wyoming issues around 70 buffalo hunting tags a year. 

    The National Park Services manages the oldest untouched population of buffalo in Yellowstone National Park, which intersects with both Wyoming and Montana. Montana has sued the National Park over their buffalo management plan citing potential negative effects as the park grows the herd and an interest in letting the buffalo push the boundaries in the park like other wildlife do. The Montana Stockgrowers Association – a group that advocates for the sale of beef – said the management plan in the National Park for buffalo “did not adequately represent all management options that should be considered” like more population control and increased tribal hunting. 

    Ranchers in Wyoming and Montana, including tribal members who raise cattle, often cite the disease brucellosis as a reason to keep buffalo and cattle strictly away from each other. The management plan for buffalo in says that there has not been a recorded case of bison-to-cattle. 

    Wyoming has a history of contesting tribal hunting rights. In the 2019 United States Supreme Court Case Herrera vs. Wyoming, the court ruled in favor of treaty protected hunting rights within the state. But how this history will intersect with buffalo’s classification as wildlife remains to be seen. 

    On the Wind River Reservation, the tribes have control of wildlife management and hunting regulations. The choice to designate buffalo as wildlife is a matter of tribal sovereignty, tribes making decisions on their homelands. 

    A group of people hold drums and sing while standing on a plain
    Big Wind Singers Lyle Oldman, from left, Wayland Bonatsie and Jake Hill perform a Sun Dance song during the buffalo release at the Eastern Shoshone Buffalo Enclosure on Friday, April 11, 2025, on the Wind River Reservation near Morton, Wyoming. Amber Baesler / AP Photo

    For Baldes, he wants to eventually hunt buffalo like someone would any other wildlife. He’s in the process of buying property to allow buffalo to roam like they did before Western expansion. He doesn’t like when people call the Wind River Buffalo Initiative a ‘ranch’, because it has too much of an association with cows, and cattle – and he says buffalo should be treated like they were before settler contact. 

    “Bringing the buffalo back is about our relationship with them, not domination over them,” Baldes said.

    This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Wildlife, not livestock: Why the Eastern Shoshone in Wyoming are reclassifying buffaloes on Apr 21, 2025.

    This post was originally published on Grist.

  • New technologies are helping to regrow Arctic sea ice

    In the dim twilight of an Arctic winter’s day, with the low sun stretching its orange fingers across the frozen sea, a group of researchers drill a hole through the ice and insert a hydrogen-powered pump. It looks unremarkable — a piece of pipe protruding from a metal cylinder — but it holds many hopes for protecting this landscape. Soon, it is sucking up seawater from below and spewing it onto the surface, flooding the area with a thin layer of water. Overnight this water will freeze, thickening what’s already there. 

    The hope is that the more robust the ice, the less likely it will be to disappear in the warm summer months. 

    Since 1979, when satellite records began, Arctic temperatures have risen nearly four times faster than the global average. Sea ice extent has decreased by about 40 percent, and the oldest and thickest ice has declined by a worrying 95 percent. What’s more, scientists recently estimated that as temperatures continue to climb, the Arctic’s first ice-free day could occur before 2030, in just five years’ time. 

    NASA

    The researchers are from Real Ice, a United Kingdom-based nonprofit on a mission to preserve this dwindling landscape. Their initial work has shown that pumping just 10 inches of ocean water on top of the ice also boosts growth from the bottom, thickening it by another 20 inches. This is because the flooding process removes the insulating snow layer, enabling more water to freeze. When the process is done, the patch of ice measured up to 80 inches thick — equal to the lower range of older, multi-year ice in the Arctic. “If that is proved to be true on a larger scale, we will show that with relatively little energy we can actually make a big gain through the winter,” said Andrea Ceccolini, co-CEO of Real Ice. Ceccolini and Cian Sherwin, his partner CEO, ultimately hope to develop an underwater drone that could swim between locations, detecting the thickness of the ice, pumping up water as necessary, then refueling and moving on to the next spot. 

    This winter, they carried out their largest field test yet: comparing the impact of eight pumps across nearly half a square mile off the coast of Cambridge Bay, a small town in the Kitikmeot Region of Nunavut, part of the Canadian Arctic. They now wait until June for the results.

    During a January 2024 field test, a hydrogen-powered pump sucks water from Cambridge Bay, Canada and spews it onto the surface. The water will freeze and thicken the existing ice. Video courtesy of Real Ice

    Their work is at the heart of a debate about how we mitigate the damage caused by global warming, and whether climate interventions such as this will cause more harm than good. 

    Loss of sea ice has consequences far beyond the Arctic. Today, the vast white expanse of this ice reflects 80 percent of the sun’s energy back into space. Without it, the dark open ocean will absorb this heat, further warming the planet. According to the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, if our sea ice disappears entirely, it will add the equivalent warming of 25 years of carbon dioxide emissions. There are also huge implications for our weather patterns: Diminishing sea ice is already changing ocean currents, increasing storms, and sending warmer, drier air to California, causing increased wildfires. Within the Arctic, loss of ice means loss of habitat and food security for the animals, microorganisms, and Indigenous communities that depend on it.

    “Personally I’m terrified,” said Talia Maksagak, Executive Director of the Kitikmeot Chamber of Commerce, about the changing sea ice. It’s freezing later and thinner each year, affecting her community’s ability to travel between islands. “People go missing, people are travelling and they fall through the ice,” she continues. They also rely on the ice for hunting, fishing, and harvests of wild caribou or musk ox, who migrate across the frozen ocean twice a year — although they, too, are increasingly falling through the thin ice and drowning. 

    Maksagak has been instrumental in helping Real Ice to consult with the local community about their research, and she is supportive of their work. “If Real Ice comes up with this genius plan to continue the ice freeze longer, I think that would be very beneficial for future generations.”

    Researchers get ready to connect their pump system to the hydrogen battery that powers it. Real Ice

    There are still many questions around the feasibility of Real Ice’s plan, both for critics and the Real Ice researchers themselves. First, they need to establish if the principle works scientifically — that the ice they’ve thickened does last longer, counteracting the speed of global warming’s impact on the region. At worst, adding salty seawater could potentially cause the ice to melt more quickly in the summer. But results from last year’s research suggest not: When testing its pilot ice three months later, Real Ice found its salinity was within normal bounds.

    If all goes well with this year’s tests, the next step will be an independent environmental risk assessment. Noise is one concern. According to WWF, industrial underwater noise significantly alters the behaviour of marine mammals, especially whales. Similarly, blue cod lay their eggs under the ice, algae grows on it, and larger mammals and birds migrate across it. How will they be impacted by Real Ice’s water pumps? “These are all questions that we need to ask,” said Shaun Fitzgerald, Director of the Center for Climate Repair at Cambridge University, which has partnered with Real Ice, “and they all need to be addressed before we can start evaluating whether or not we think this is a good idea.” 

    Fitzgerald predicts four more years of research are needed before the nonprofit can properly recommend the technology. For now, the Nunavut Impact Review Board, Nunavut’s environmental assessment agency, has deemed Real Ice’s research sites to cause no significant impact. 

    New ice forms on the surface of Cambridge Bay, Canada. Real Ice

    But critics of the idea argue the process won’t scale. “The numbers just don’t stack up,” said Martin Siegert, a British glaciologist and former co-chair of the Grantham Institute for Climate Change. He pointed to the size of the Arctic — 3.9 million square miles of sea ice on average — and how many pumps would likely be needed to freeze even 10 percent of that. More importantly, who is going to pay for it?

    Ceccolini is undaunted by the first question. Their technology is not complicated — “it’s technology from 50 years ago, we just need to assemble it in a new way” — and would cost an estimated $5,000 per autonomous pump. Their models predict that 500,000 pumps could rethicken about 386,000 square miles of sea ice each year, or an area half the size of Alaska. Assuming the thicker ice lasts several years, and by targeting different areas annually, Ceccolini estimates the technology could maintain the current summer sea ice levels of around 1.63 million square miles. “We’ve done much bigger things in humanity, much more complex than this,” he said.  

    As for who pays, that’s less clear. One idea is a global fund similar to what’s been proposed for tropical rainforests, where if a resource is globally beneficial, like the Amazon or the Arctic, then an international community contributes to its protection. Another idea is ‘cooling credits’, where organizations can pay for a certain amount of ice to be frozen as an offset against global warming. These are a controversial idea started by the California-based, geoengineering start-up Make Sunsets, which believes that stratospheric aerosol injections — releasing reflective particles high into the earth’s atmosphere — is another way to cool the planet. However its research comes with many risks and unknowns that has the scientific community worried, and has even been banned in Mexico. Meanwhile faith in the credits system has been undermined in recent years, with several investigations revealing a lack of integrity in the carbon credits industry. 

    A researcher looks out from a field site tent onto Cambridge Bay, Canada, where Real Ice ran back-to-back tests in 2024 and 2025. Real Ice

    Panganga Pungowiyi, climate geoengineering organizer for the Indigenous Environmental Network, a nonprofit for environmental and economic justice issues, is vehemently against cooling and carbon credits in principle, explaining that they are “totally against our [Indigenous] value system.” She explained that, “it’s essentially helping the fossil fuel industry escape accountability and cause harm in other Indigenous communities — more pain, more lung disease, more cancer.” 

    This gets to the heart of the debate — not whether a solution like this can be done, but whether it should be done. Inuit opinion is divided. Whilst Maksagak is supportive of Real Ice, Pungowiyi says the technology doesn’t align with Indigenous values, and is concerned about the potential harms of scaling it. In addition to the environmental concerns, Pungowiyi notes that new infrastructure in the Arctic has historically also brought outsiders, often men, and an increase of physical and sexual assault on Indigenous women, many who end up missing or murdered. Ceccolini and Sherwin are aware of such risks and they are clear that any scaling of their technology would be done in partnership with the local community. They hope the project will eventually be Indigenous-run.

    Scientists use augers to drill through Arctic ice to install the pumps. They do this work in the winter, with the hope that the thickened ice lasts longer during summer months. Real Ice

    “We don’t want to repeat the kind of mistakes that have been made by Western researchers and organizations in the past,” said Sherwin. 

    Real Ice is not the only company that wants to protect the Arctic. Arctic Reflections, a Dutch company, is conducting similar ice thickening research in Svalbard; the Arctic Ice Project is assessing if glass beads spread over the ice can increase its reflectivity and protect it from melting; and engineer Hugh Hunt’s Marine Cloud Brightening initiative aims to increase the reflectivity of clouds through sprayed particles of sea salt as a way to protect the ice.

    “I think these ideas are getting far too much prominence in relation to their credibility and maturity,” said Seigert, referring to conversations about Arctic preservation at annual United Nations climate change meetings, known as COP, and the World Economic Forum. It is not only that these technologies are currently unproven, Seigert noted, but that people are already making policy decisions based on their success. It’s an argument known as ‘moral hazard’ — the idea that developing climate engineering technologies will reduce people’s desire to cut emissions. “This is like a gift to the fossil fuel companies,” he said, allowing them to continue using oil, gas, and coal without change. “We have the way forward, decarbonization, and we need every effort to make that happen. Any distraction away from that is a problem.” 

    Freshly pumped seawater freezes to form layers of new ice in Cambridge Bay. Real Ice

    “It’s a strong argument,” agreed Fitzgerald, of Cambridge University, when asked about moral hazard. “I am concerned about it. It’s the one thing that probably does cause me to have sleepless nights. However, we need to look at the lesser of two evils, the risk of not doing this research.” 

    Or as Sherwin said: “What is the cost of inaction?”

    Those in support of climate intervention strategies stress that although decarbonization is vital it’s moving too slowly, and there is a lack of political will. Technologies like those being developed by Real Ice could buy ourselves more time. Paul Beckwith, a climate system analyst from the University of Ottawa, espouts a three-pronged approach: eliminating fossil fuels, removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and protecting the Arctic. 

    “It should be less a conversation of one over the other and more how we run all three pillars at the same time,” said Sherwin. “Unfortunately we’re in a position now where if we don’t protect and restore ecosystems, we will face collapse.”

    This story was originally published by Grist with the headline New technologies are helping to regrow Arctic sea ice on Apr 14, 2025.


    This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Matilda Hay.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Fresh details emerge on Australia’s new climate migration visa for Tuvalu residents

    ANALYSIS: By Jane McAdam, UNSW Sydney

    The details of a new visa enabling Tuvaluan citizens to permanently migrate to Australia were released this week.

    The visa was created as part of a bilateral treaty Australia and Tuvalu signed in late 2023, which aims to protect the two countries’ shared interests in security, prosperity and stability, especially given the “existential threat posed by climate change”.

    The Australia–Tuvalu Falepili Union, as it is known, is the world’s first bilateral agreement to create a special visa like this in the context of climate change.

    Here’s what we know so far about why this special visa exists and how it will work.

    Why is this migration avenue important?
    The impacts of climate change are already contributing to displacement and migration around the world.

    As a low-lying atoll nation, Tuvalu is particularly exposed to rising sea levels, storm surges and coastal erosion.

    As Pacific leaders declared in a world-first regional framework on climate mobility in 2023, rights-based migration can “help people to move safely and on their own terms in the context of climate change.”

    And enhanced migration opportunities have clearly made a huge difference to development challenges in the Pacific, allowing people to access education and work and send money back home.

    As international development expert Professor Stephen Howes put it,

    Countries with greater migration opportunities in the Pacific generally do better.

    While Australia has a history of labour mobility schemes for Pacific peoples, this will not provide opportunities for everyone.

    Despite perennial calls for migration or relocation opportunities in the face of climate change, this is the first Australian visa to respond.

    How does the new visa work?
    The visa will enable up to 280 people from Tuvalu to move to Australia each year.

    On arrival in Australia, visa holders will receive, among other things, immediate access to:

    • education (at the same subsidisation as Australian citizens)
    • Medicare
    • the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS)
    • family tax benefit
    • childcare subsidy
    • youth allowance.

    They will also have “freedom for unlimited travel” to and from Australia.

    This is rare. Normally, unlimited travel is capped at five years.

    According to some experts, these arrangements now mean Tuvalu has the “second closest migration relationship with Australia after New Zealand”.

    Reading the fine print
    The technical name of the visa is Subclass 192 (Pacific Engagement).

    The details of the visa, released this week, reveal some curiosities.

    First, it has been incorporated into the existing Pacific Engagement Visa category (subclass 192) rather than designed as a standalone visa.

    Presumably, this was a pragmatic decision to expedite its creation and overcome the significant costs of establishing a wholly new visa category.

    But unlike the Pacific Engagement Visa — a different, earlier visa, which is contingent on applicants having a job offer in Australia — this new visa is not employment-dependent.

    Secondly, the new visa does not specifically mention Tuvalu.

    This would make it simpler to extend it to other Pacific countries in the future.

    Who can apply, and how?

    To apply, eligible people must first register their interest for the visa online. Then, they must be selected through a random computer ballot to apply.

    The primary applicant must:

    • be at least 18 years of age
    • hold a Tuvaluan passport, and
    • have been born in Tuvalu — or had a parent or a grandparent born there.

    People with New Zealand citizenship cannot apply. Nor can anyone whose Tuvaluan citizenship was obtained through investment in the country.

    This indicates the underlying humanitarian nature of the visa; people with comparable opportunities in New Zealand or elsewhere are ineligible to apply for it.

    Applicants must also satisfy certain health and character requirements.

    Strikingly, the visa is open to those “with disabilities, special needs and chronic health conditions”. This is often a bar to acquiring an Australian visa.

    And the new visa isn’t contingent on people showing they face risks from the adverse impacts of climate change and disasters, even though climate change formed the backdrop to the scheme’s creation.

    Settlement support is crucial
    With the first visa holders expected to arrive later this year, questions remain about how well supported they will be.

    The Explanatory Memorandum to the treaty says:

    Australia would provide support for applicants to find work and to the growing Tuvaluan diaspora in Australia to maintain connection to culture and improve settlement outcomes.

    That’s promising, but it’s not yet clear how this will be done.

    A heavy burden often falls on diaspora communities to assist newcomers.

    For this scheme to work, there must be government investment over the immediate and longer-term to give people the best prospects of thriving.

    Drawing on experiences from refugee settlement, and from comparative experiences in New Zealand with respect to Pacific communities, will be instructive.

    Extensive and ongoing community consultation is also needed with Tuvalu and with the Tuvalu diaspora in Australia. This includes involving these communities in reviewing the scheme over time.The Conversation

    Dr Jane McAdam is Scientia professor and ARC laureate fellow, Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law, UNSW Sydney. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

  • Pacific climate activists join 180+ groups calling on COP30 hosts Brazil to end fossil fuel dependence

    RNZ Pacific

    Pacific climate activists this week handed a letter from civil society to this year’s United Nations climate conference hosts, Brazil, emphasising their demands for the end of fossil fuels and transition to renewable energy.

    More than 180 indigenous, youth, and environmental organisations from across the world have signed the letter, coordinated by the campaign organisation, 350.org.

    A declaration of alliance between Indigenous peoples from the Amazon, the Pacific, and Australia ahead of COP30 has also been announced.

    The “strongly worded letter” was handed to COP30 President André Corrêa do Lago and Brazil’s Environment and Climate Change Minister Marina Silva who attended the Acampamento Terra Livre (ATL), or Free Land Camp, in Brasília.

    “We, climate and social justice organisations from around the world, urgently demand that COP30 renews the global commitment and supports implementation for the just, orderly, and equitable transition away from fossil fuels towards renewable energy,” the letter states.

    “This must ensure that solutions progressively meet the needs of Indigenous, Black, marginalised and vulnerable populations and accelerate the expansion of renewables in a way that ensures the world’s wealthiest and most polluting nations pay their fair share, does not harm nature, increase deforestation by burning biomass, while upholding economic, social, and gender justice.”

    ‘No room for new coal mines’
    It adds: “The science is unequivocal: there is no room for new coal mines or oil and gas fields if the world is to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius — especially in critical ecosystems like the Amazon, where COP30 will be hosted.

    “Tripling renewables by 2030 is essential, but without a managed and rapid phaseout of fossil fuels, it won’t be enough.”

    350.org’s Fiji community organiser, George Nacewa, said it was now up to the Brazil COP Presidency if they would act “or lock us into climate catastrophe”.

    “This is a critical time for our people — the age of deliberation is long past,” Nacewa said on behalf of the group that call themselves “Pacific Climate Warriors”.

    “We need this COP to be the one that spearheads the Just Energy Transition from words to action.”

    COP30 will take place in Belém, Brazil, from November 10-21.

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • The fix for parched Western states: recycled toilet water

    If you were to drink improperly recycled toilet water, it could really hurt you — but probably not in the way you’re thinking. Advanced purification technology so thoroughly cleans wastewater of feces and other contaminants that it also strips out natural minerals, which the treatment facility then has to add back in. If it didn’t, that purified water would imperil you by sucking those minerals out of your body as it moves through your internal plumbing. 

    So if it’s perfectly safe to consume recycled toilet water, why aren’t Americans living in parched Western states drinking more of it? A new report from researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles and the Natural Resources Defense Council finds that seven western states that rely on the Colorado River are on average recycling just a quarter of their water, even as they fight each other and Indigenous tribes for access to the river amid worsening droughts. Populations are also booming in the Southwest, meaning there’s less water for more people. 

    The report finds that states are recycling wildly different proportions of their water. On the high end, Nevada reuses 85 percent, followed by Arizona at 52 percent. But other states lag far behind, including California (22 percent) and New Mexico (18 percent), with Colorado and Wyoming at less than 4 percent and Utah recycling next to nothing. 

    “Overall, we are not doing nearly enough to develop wastewater recycling in the seven states that are part of the Colorado River Basin,” said Noah Garrison, a water researcher at UCLA and co-author of the report. “We’re going to have a 2 million to 4 million acre foot per year shortage in the amount of water that we’ve promised to be delivered from the Colorado River.” (An acre foot is what it would take to cover an acre of land in a foot of water, equal to 326,000 gallons.)

    The report found that if the states other than high-achieving Nevada and Arizona increased their wastewater reuse to 50 percent, they’d boost water availability by 1.3 million acre feet every year. Experts think that it’s not a question of whether states need to reuse more toilet water, but how quickly they can build the infrastructure as droughts worsen and populations swell.

    At the same time, states need to redouble efforts to reduce their demand for water, experts say. The Southern Nevada Water Authority, for example, provides cash rebates for homeowners to replace their water-demanding lawns with natural landscaping, stocking them with native plants that flourish without sprinklers. Between conserving water and recycling more of it, western states have to renegotiate their relationship with the increasingly precious resource.

    “It’s unbelievable to me that people don’t recognize that the answer is: You’re not going to get more water,” said John Helly, a researcher at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography who wasn’t involved in the report. “We’ve lulled ourselves into this sense of complacency about the criticality of water, and it’s just starting to dawn on people that this is a serious problem.”

    Yet the report notes that states vary significantly in their development and regulation of water recycling. For one, they treat wastewater to varying levels of purity. To get it ultra-pure for drinking, human waste and other solids are removed before the water is treated with ozone to kill bacteria and viruses. Next the water is forced through fine membranes to catch other particles. A facility then hits the liquid with UV light, killing off any microbes that might remain, and adds back those missing minerals. 

    That process is expensive, however, as building a wastewater treatment facility itself is costly, and it takes a lot of electricity to pump the water hard enough to get it through the filters. Alternatively, some water agencies will treat wastewater and pump the liquid underground into aquifers, where the earth filters it further. To use the water for golf courses and non-edible crops, they treat wastewater less extensively. 

    Absent guidance from the federal government, every state goes about this differently, with their own regulations for how clean water needs to be for potable or nonpotable use. Nevada, which receives an average of just 10 inches of rainfall a year, has an environmental division that issues permits for water reuse and oversees quality standards, along with a state fund that bankrolls projects. “It is a costly enterprise, and we really do need to see states and the federal government developing new funding streams or revenue streams in order to develop wastewater treatment,” Garrison said. “This is a readily available, permanent supply of water.” 

    Wastewater recycling can happen at a much smaller scale, too. A company called Epic Cleantec, based in San Francisco, makes a miniature treatment facility that fits inside high-rises. It pumps recycled water back into the units for non-potable use, like filling toilets. While it takes many years to build a large treatment facility, these smaller systems come online in a matter of months, and can reuse up to 95 percent of a building’s water. 

    Epic Cleantec says its systems and municipal plants can work in tandem as a sort of distributed network of wastewater recycling. “In the same way that we do with energy, where it’s not just on-site, rooftop solar and large energy plants, it’s both of them together creating a more resilient system,” said Aaron Tartakovsky, Epic Cleantec’s CEO and cofounder. “To use a water pun, I think there’s a lot of untapped potential here.”

    This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The fix for parched Western states: recycled toilet water on Apr 11, 2025.

    This post was originally published on Grist.

  • Why Trump’s executive order targeting state climate laws is probably illegal

    President Trump  continued dismantling U.S. climate policy this week when he directed the Justice Department to challenge state laws aimed at addressing the crisis — a campaign legal scholars called unconstitutional and climate activists said is sure to fail. 

    The president, who has called climate change a “hoax,” issued an executive order restricting state laws that he claimed have burdened fossil fuel companies and “threatened American energy dominance.” His directive, signed Tuesday night, is the latest in a series of moves that have included undermining federal climate and environmental justice programs, withdrawing from the Paris Agreement, and promising to expand oil and gas leases.

    It specifically mentions California, Vermont, and New York, three states that have been particularly assertive in pursuing climate action. The order directs Attorney General Pam Bondi to identify and report state laws that focus on climate change or promote environmental social governance, and to halt any that “the Attorney General determines to be illegal.” 

    That directive almost certainly includes the climate superfund laws that New York and Vermont recently passed. The statutes require fossil fuel companies to pay damages for their emissions, a move the executive order deems “extortion.” The president’s order also gives Bondi 60 days to prepare a report outlining state programs like carbon taxes and fees, along with those mentioning terms like “environmental justice” and “greenhouse gas emissions.”

    “These State laws and policies are fundamentally irreconcilable with my Administration’s objective to unleash American energy,” the executive order reads. “They should not stand.”

    Legal scholars, environmental advocates, and at least one governor have said Trump’s effort to roll back state legislation is unconstitutional, and court challenges are sure to follow. “The federal government cannot unilaterally strip states’ independent constitutional authority,” New York Governor Kathy Hochul said in a statement on behalf of the United States Climate Alliance, a coalition of 24 states working toward emissions reductions.

    Although critics of the move said Trump is on shaky legal ground, forcing state and local governments to litigate can have a chilling effect on climate action. Beyond signaling the administration’s allegiance to the fossil fuel interests that helped bankroll his campaign, Trump’s order is “seeking to intimidate,” said Kathy Mulvey, the accountability campaign director for the climate and energy program at the Union of Concerned Scientists. 

    “It seems pretty hypocritical for the party that claims to be about the rights of states to be taking on or seeking to prevent states from taking action,” she said.

    The American Petroleum Institute praised the order, saying it would “address this state overreach” and “help restore the rule of law.” 

    Trump’s order comes several weeks after fossil fuel executives gathered at the White House to warn the president about increasing pressure from state lawsuits, including moves to claim polluters are guilty of homicide. Trump told the executives he would take action, according to E&E News.

    “This executive order parrots some of the arguments that we’ve seen from companies like Exxon Mobil, as they’ve sought to have climate cases removed from federal court, and then dismissed in the state courts,” Mulvey says. 

    The President announced the move while standing in front of coal miners gathered for a White House ceremony during which he signed a separate executive order supporting what he called the “beautiful, clean coal” industry. That order removed air pollution limits and other regulations adopted by the Biden administration. “The ceremony as a whole was mainly about theatrics and bullying,” says Kit Kennedy, managing director of power, climate, and energy at National Resources Defense Council.

    Experts say economics makes a resurgence of coal unlikely. For the last two decades, the industry has steeply declined as utilities have embraced gas and renewables like wind and solar, all of which are far cheaper. In California, which banned utilities from buying power from coal-fired plants in other states in 2007 and established a cap and trade program where power plants have to buy credits to pay for their pollution, emissions have fallen while the economy has grown. Such programs may be targeted by the president’s recent executive orders. 

    “It should be clear by now that the only thing the Trump administration’s actions accomplish is chaos and uncertainty,” Liane Randolph, who chairs the California Air Resources Board, said in a statement.

    It remains unclear how the executive order will be implemented. “The executive branch doesn’t actually have authority to throw out state laws,” Mulvey said. States have a well-established primacy over environmental policies within their borders. The executive order would turn that on its head. “It’s hard to imagine a scenario in which the DOJ challenging the states on these policies would be successful,” Kennedy said. 

    That’s not to say the Trump administration can’t take steps to fulfill the objectives outlined in the order. Even if the executive order doesn’t overturn state laws directly, climate advocates worry the Trump administration will threaten to withhold federal funding for other programs, like highways, if they don’t comply.

    “The executive order itself has no legal impact, but the actions that government agencies will take in pursuit would, and many of those will be vigorously challenged in court,” said Michael Gerrard, faculty director of Columbia University’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law.

    It was immediately clear that at least some states aren’t going to back down. “This is the world the Trump Administration wants your kids to live in,” California Governor Gavin Newsom said in a statement. “California’s efforts to cut harmful pollution won’t be derailed by a glorified press release masquerading as an executive order.” 

    Republican states benefited the most from the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, a strategy some advocated could make the bipartisan legislation harder for future administrations to rescind. Ironically, Kennedy says, they aren’t necessarily labeled as climate policies, potentially sparing funding for things like battery manufacturing facilities in the South from the executive order. “They’re simply going about the business of creating the clean energy economy,” Kennedy said.

    That progress makes the executive order’s “lawless assault” galling, said Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI). “Not only does this latest Big Oil fever dream violate state sovereignty,” he wrote to Grist, “it tries to void decades of state-enacted policies that lower energy costs for families, protect clean air and water, reduce the carbon pollution responsible for climate change, and protect Americans from the price shocks of dependence on fossil fuels.”

    This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Why Trump’s executive order targeting state climate laws is probably illegal on Apr 9, 2025.

    This post was originally published on Grist.

  • The Rio Grande Valley was once covered in forest. One man is trying to bring it back.

    Jon Dale’s love affair with birds began when he was about 10 and traded his BB gun for a pair of binoculars. Within a year, he’d counted 150 species flitting through the trees that circled his family’s home in Harlingen, Texas. The town sits in the Rio Grande Valley, at the convergence of the Central and Mississippi flyways, and also hosts many native fliers, making it a birder’s paradise. Dale delighted in spotting green jays, merlins, and altamira orioles. But as he grew older and learned more about the region’s biodiversity, he knew he should be seeing so many more species.

    Treks to Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge, which spans 2,088 acres near the border with Mexico, revealed an understory alive with even more birdsong, from the wo-woo-ooo of white-tipped doves to the CHA-CHA-LAC-A that gives that tropical chicken its common name. The preserve is one of the last remnants of the Tamaulipan thorn forest, a dense mosaic of at least 1,200 plants, from poky shrubs to trees like mesquite, acacia, hackberry, ebony, and brasil. They once covered more than 1 million acres on both sides of the Rio Grande, where ocelots, jaguars, and jaguarundis prowled amid 519 known varieties of birds and 316 kinds of butterflies. But the rich, alluvial soil that allowed such wonders to thrive drew developers, who arrived with the completion of a railroad in 1904. Before long, they began clearing land, building canals, and selling plots in the “Magic Valley” to farmers, including Dale’s great-great grandfather. His own father drove one of the bulldozers that cleared some of the last coastal tracts in the 1950s. 

    Today, less than 10 percent of the forest that once blanketed the region still stands. Learning what had been lost inspired Dale to try bringing some of it back. He was just 15 when, in a bid to attract more avians, he began planting several hundred native seedlings beside his house to create a 2-acre thorn forest — a term he prefers over the more common thornscrub, which sounds to him like something “to get rid of.” He collected seeds from around the neighborhood and sought advice from the state wildlife agency, which began replanting thorn forest tracts in the 1950s to create habitat for game birds, as well as the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which joined the cause after it listed ocelots as endangered in 1982. (The agency has since restored 16,000 acres.) The project kept dirt under his nails for the better part of a decade. “I’d go out and turn the lights on and do it in the middle of the night,” he said. “When I’m into something, that’s pretty much it.”

    Epiphytes dangle from trees at the Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge, one of the few surviving tracts of original thorn forest. “It was coming to places like this that got my wheels turning,” said Jon Dale, director at American Forests. The refuge contains a wetland that draws birders from around the country. Laura Mallonee / Grist

    Two decades later, he’s still into it. He is a director at American Forests, which has toiled for 150 years to restore ecosystems nationwide. The nonprofit started working in the Rio Grande Valley in 1997 and took over the federal restoration effort last year. It also leads the Thornforest Conservation Partnership, a coalition of agencies and organizations hoping to restore at least 81,444 acres, the amount needed for the ocelot population to rebound. Although conservation remains the core mission, everyone involved understands, and promotes, the thorn forest’s ability to boost community resilience to the ravages of a warming world.

    Climate change will only bring more bouts of extreme weather to Texas, and the Valley — one of the state’s poorest regions, but quickly urbanizing — is ill-equipped to deal with it. Dale, now 45, believes urban thorn forests, which can mature in just 10 years, provide climate benefits that will blossom for decades: providing shade, preserving water, reducing erosion, and soaking up stormwater. To prove it, American Forests is launching its first “community forest” in the flood-prone neighborhood of San Carlos, an effort it hopes to soon replicate across the Valley.

    “People need more tools in the tool kit to actually mitigate climate change impact,” Dale said. “It’s us saying, ‘This is going to be a tool.’ It’s been in front of us this whole time.”

    Despite its name, the Rio Grande Valley is a 43,000-square-mile delta that stretches across four counties in southernmost Texas, and it already grapples with climatic challenges. Each summer brings a growing number of triple-digit days. Sea level rise and beach erosion claim a bit more coastline every year. Chronic drought slowly depletes the river, an essential source of irrigation and drinking water for nearly 1.4 million people. Flooding, long a problem, worsens as stormwater infrastructure lags behind frenzied development. Three bouts of catastrophic rain between 2018 and 2020 caused more than $1.3 billion in damage, with one storm dumping 15 inches in six hours and destroying some 1,200 homes. Floods pose a particular threat to low-income communities, called colonias, that dot unincorporated areas and lack adequate drainage and sewage systems. 

    San Carlos, in northern Hidalgo County, is home to 3,000 residents, 21 percent of whom live in poverty. Eight years ago, a community center and park opened, providing a much-needed gathering place for locals. While driving by the facility, which sits in front of a drainage basin, Dale had a thought: Why not also plant a small thorn forest — a shady place that would provide respite from the sun and promote environmental literacy while managing storm runoff?

    Although the community lies beyond the acreage American Forests has eyed for restoration, Dale mentioned the idea to Ellie Torres, a county commissioner who represents the area. She deemed it “a no-brainer.” Since her election in 2018, Torres has worked to expand stormwater infrastructure. “We have to look for other creative ways [to address flooding] besides digging trenches and extending drainage systems,” she said.

    A thorn forest’s flood-fighting power lies in its roots, which loosen the soil so “it acts more like a sponge,” said Bradley Christoffersen, an ecologist at The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. Urban trees can reduce runoff by as much as 26 percent because their canopies intercept rainfall and their roots help absorb it, saving cities millions annually in stormwater mitigation and environmental impact costs. This effect varies from place to place, so American Forests hopes to enlist researchers to study the community forest’s impact in San Carlos, where Torres joined more than 100 volunteers on a sunny morning in December 2022. By afternoon, they’d nestled 800 ebony, crucillo, and other seedlings into tilled earth. “We need that vegetation,” she said. 

    That sentiment has grown as cities across the Valley embrace green infrastructure. Although many swales and basins remain verdant with Bermuda grass, which is easier to maintain, there’s a growing push to use native vegetation for runoff control. Brownsville, the region’s largest city, is planting a “pocket prairie” of thorn forest species like brasil, colima, and Tamaulipan fiddlewood inside one drainage area. McAllen, about an hour to the west, has enlisted the help of a local thorn forest refuge to add six miniature woodlands to school playgrounds, libraries, and other urban locations. The biggest challenge to greater adoption of this approach is “a lack of plant distributors that carry the really cool native thornscrub species,” said Brownsville City Forester Hunter Lohse. “We’re trying to get plant suppliers to move away from the high-maintenance tropical plants they’ve been selling for 50 years.” 

    American Forests doesn’t have that problem. Two dedicated employees roam public lands hauling buckets, stepladders, and telescopic tree pruners to collect seeds, some of which weigh less than a small feather. They typically gather more than 100 pounds of them each year, and stash them in refrigerators or freezers at Marinoff Nursery, a government-owned, 15,000-square-foot facility in Alamo that the nonprofit runs. 

    That may sound like a lot of seed, but it’s only sufficient to raise about 150,000 seedlings. Another 50,000 plants provided by contract growers allow them to reforest some 200 acres. At that rate, without additional funding and an expansion of its operations, it could take four centuries to achieve its goal of restoring nearly 82,000 acres throughout the Rio Grande Valley. “These fields are probably one generation, maximum, from turning into housing,” Dale said.

    Funding is a serious challenge, though. In 2024, American Forests began a $10 million contract with the Fish & Wildlife Service to reforest 800 acres (including 200 the agency’s job solicitation noted was lost to the construction of a section of border wall). That comes to $12,500 an acre, suggesting it could take more than $1 billion to restore just what the ocelots need.

    Diptych of two photos; one of plants in pots and one of a hand holding a bag of seed
    Ebony saplings reach toward the sun at Marinoff Nursery in Alamo, Texas, and seeds stored in vacuum-sealed plastic bags await planting. Laura Mallonee

    Despite this, Dale says any restoration, no matter how small, is “worth the investment.” The nursery is currently growing 4,000 seedlings for four more community plots, each an acre or two in size. Small, yes, but they could mark the start of something much larger. “We have a vision to expand these efforts in the future,” Torres said. 

    For now, nursery workers just have to keep the plants alive. During a visit on a sunny afternoon in February, 130,000 seedlings, representing 37 species, peeked out from black milk crates, ready for transplant. All of them are naturally drought-resistant and raised with an eye toward the lives they’ll lead. “We don’t baby them or coddle them,” senior reforestation manager Murisol Kuri said. “We want to make sure they are acclimated enough so when we plant they can withstand the heat and lack of water.” 

    Despite this, on average, 20 percent of plants die, partly due to drought. It underscores the complexity of American Forest’s undertaking: While thorn forest restoration can help mitigate climate change, it only works if the plants can stand up to the weather. The organization expects that in the future, species that require at least 20 inches of annual rainfall could perish (some, like the Montezuma cypress and cedar elm, are already dying). That doesn’t necessarily doom an ecosystem, but it does create opportunities for guinea grass and other nonnative fauna to push out endemic plants. Removing them is a hassle, so it is best to avoid letting them take root. “If you don’t do this right, it can blow up in your face,” Dale said. 

    Hoping to evade this fate with its restored thorn forests, American Forests has created a playbook of “climate-informed” planting. The six tips include shielding seedlings inside polycarbonate tubes, which ward against strong winds and hungry critters while mimicking the cooler conditions beneath tree canopies. They look a bit weird — a recent project at Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge features about 20,000 white cylinders lined up like tombstones — but seedling survival rates shot up as much as 90 percent once American Forests adopted the technique a decade ago.

    Another strategy seems abundantly obvious: Select species that can endure future droughts. “If we’re not [doing that], we’re kind of shooting ourselves in the foot,” Dale said. Christoffersen, the University of Texas ecologist, and his students have surveyed restoration sites dating to the 1980s to see which plants thrived. The winners? Trees like Texas ebony and mesquite that have thorns to protect them from munching animals and long roots to tap moisture deep within the earth. Guayacan and snake eye, two species abundant in surviving patches of the original Tamaulipan thorn forest, didn’t fare nearly as well when planted on degraded agricultural lands and would require careful management, as would wild lime and saffron plum. 

    Altering the thorn forest’s composition by picking and choosing the heartiest plants would decrease overall diversity, but increase the odds of it reaching maturity and bringing its conservation and climate benefits to the region. A 40-acre planting at Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge on the Gulf Coast reveals how quickly this can happen. Five years ago, a tractor wove through the site cultivating sorghum, which gave way to 40,000 seedlings. Today, the biggest trees stand 10 feet tall, with thorns high enough to snag clothing.

    Jon Dale peeks inside a plastic tube that shelters a native seedling at Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge. The refuge is one of the last places where ocelots breed, and restoration efforts aim to connect isolated thorn forests so the cats can travel between them.
    Laura Mallonee

    Dale named some of the 40 or so species now thriving in the south Texas sun: eupatorium, yucca, purple sage, colima, vasey’s adelia, load bush, catclaw acacias. The plants feed and shelter a staggering array of orioles, green jays, and other birds, whose whistles, caws, and tweets filled the air. “I’ve already heard 15 species since we walked in,” Dale said. He puckered his lips and, with the expertise born of a life spent birding, made a distinctive pish sound to draw them out. The brush was too thick to see them stir, but Dale seemed pleased as he surveyed it. “It’s gone from being this very homogenous use of land … to life again.” 

    An hour to the west, visitors to San Carlos’ community forest might struggle to imagine that transformation. The ebony, crucillo, and other species planted two and a half years ago still look scrappy, and a seesaw pattern of droughts and winter freezes helped claim more than 40 percent of the seedlings. Still, the humble thorn forest has garnered a lot of interest from young visitors. “I’ve been in the [community center] working with children and they ask, ‘What is that over there?’” said Mylen Arias, the director of community resilience at American Forests.

    This little patch of the past does more than preserve the region’s biological history or defend it from a warming world. It’s an attempt to reverse what naturalist Robert Pyle calls an “extinction of experience.” Most people have never even heard of a thorn forest, let alone witnessed its wild beauty at Santa Ana. Dale and those working alongside him to revive what’s been lost want others to know the value this ecosystem holds beyond saving ocelots or mitigating climate change. His grandfather was a preacher, and that influence is evident as he speaks of the “almost transcendental” feeling he gets simply being in nature. “I’ve talked to people, and it’s like, ‘Do you know how this is going to enrich your life?’” 

    He often shows people photos of the backyard thorn forest he started 30 years ago, hoping to convey what’s possible with just a bit of effort. Days after planting the first Turk’s cap and scarlet sage, hummingbirds fluttered in to sip their nectar. Within a few years, the canopies of Texas ebony and mesquite trees unfurled, providing shade and nesting locations for birds, including the white-tipped doves and chachalacas he’d hoped to see. It wasn’t easy to let go of it when his mother sold the house last year. “But you created it all,” she told Dale. “Mom,” he said, “I can do this somewhere else. That’s the point.”

    This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The Rio Grande Valley was once covered in forest. One man is trying to bring it back. on Apr 7, 2025.

    This post was originally published on Grist.

  • USDA Is Letting Grantees Nix DEI and Climate Language From Clean Energy Projects

    Jim Lively wants to install rooftop solar panels on his family’s local food market, just minutes from the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore in northern Michigan. Those panels could help power the RV campground they want to open next to the market and offset other electricity bills. But even though Lively was awarded a $39,696 grant for the project through a U.S.

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Did climate change supercharge the ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ storm pummeling the central U.S.?

    A major storm took hold across swaths of the central and southern United States on Wednesday unleashing extreme flooding and huge tornadoes from Arkansas up to Michigan. And conditions are expected to worsen on Friday as soils become saturated and water piles up: The National Weather Service is warning of a “life-threatening, catastrophic, and potentially historic flash flood event,” along with a risk of very large hail and more twisters. Eight people are so far confirmed dead, while 33 million are under flood watches across 11 states.

    While scientists will need to do proper research to suss out exactly how much climate change is contributing to these storms, what’s known as an attribution study, they can say generally how planetary warming might worsen an event like this. It’s not necessarily that climate change created this storm — it could have happened independent of all the extra carbon that humanity has pumped into the atmosphere — but there are some clear trends making rainfall worse.

    “In a world without the burning of fossil fuels, this event would happen once in a lifetime — that’s kind of what the National Weather Service is saying,” said Marc Alessi, a climate science fellow at the Massachusetts-based Union of Concerned Scientists. “But with the burning of fossil fuels, with more heat-trapping emissions, with a warming planet, this event will become more frequent.”

    Rainfall is changing because Earth sweats. When the sun evaporates water off Earth’s surface, that moisture rises into the atmosphere, condenses, and falls as rain. But greenhouse gases trap heat up there, so the planet sweats more in response. In other words, it strikes an energy balance.

    A warmer atmosphere also gets “thirstier”: For every 1 degree Celsius of warming, the air can hold 6 to 7 percent more water. That means more moisture is available to fall as rain: This weekend, the slow-moving storm is forecasted to dump as much as 15 inches of rainfall in some areas. “The sponge, which is the atmosphere in this case, will become bigger, which allows the sponge to hold more water and carry it from oceans farther inland,” Alessi said. “That could be tied into this event here.” 

    The body of water in question here is the Gulf of Mexico. An outbreak of tornadoes and heavy rain is typical for this time of year as warming waters send moisture into the southern and central United States. And at the moment, the Gulf of Mexico is exceptionally warm. “There’s a lot more fuel for these rain-producing storms to lead to more flooding,” Alessi said. (The influence of climate change on tornadoes in the U.S., though, isn’t as clear.)

    So a warmer Gulf of Mexico is not only producing more moisture, but the atmosphere is also able to soak up more of that moisture than it could before human-caused climate change. Indeed, the U.S. government’s own climate assessments warn that precipitation is already getting more extreme across the country, as are the economic damages from the resulting flooding. That’s projected to get worse with every bit of additional warming.

    The problem is that American cities aren’t built to withstand this new atmospheric reality. Urban planners designed them for a different climate of yesteryear, with gutters and sewers that whisk away rainwater as quickly as possible to prevent flooding. With ever more extreme rainfall, that infrastructure can’t keep up, so water builds up and floods. And with storms that last for days, like those tearing through Arkansas and Kentucky right now, soils get saturated until they can hold no more water, exacerbating flooding even more. On Thursday, rescue crews in Nashville, Tennessee were scrambling to save people trapped by surging water levels. 

    Now scientists will have to pick through the data to figure out, for instance, how much additional rain the storm dropped because of the sponge effect and warming of the Gulf of Mexico. But the overall trend is abundantly clear: As the planet warms, it doesn’t always get drier, but wetter, too.

    This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Did climate change supercharge the ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ storm pummeling the central U.S.? on Apr 4, 2025.

    This post was originally published on Grist.

  • From Rongelap to Mejatto – how Rainbow Warrior helped move nuclear refugees

    The second of a two-part series on the historic Rongelap evacuation of 300 Marshall islanders from their irradiated atoll with the help of the Greenpeace flagship Rainbow Warrior crew and the return of Rainbow Warrior III 40 years later on a nuclear justice research mission. Journalist and author David Robie, who was on board, recalls the 1985 voyage.

    SPECIAL REPORT: By David Robie

    Mejatto, previously uninhabited and handed over to the people of Rongelap by their close relatives on nearby Ebadon Island, was a lot different to their own island. It was beautiful, but it was only three kilometres long and a kilometre wide, with a dry side and a dense tropical side.

    A sandspit joined it to another small, uninhabited island. Although lush, Mejatto was uncultivated and already it was apparent there could be a food problem.Out on the shallow reef, fish were plentiful.

    Shortly after the Rainbow Warrior arrived on 21 May 1985, several of the men were out wading knee-deep on the coral spearing fish for lunch.

    Rongelap Islanders crowded into a small boat approach the Rainbow Warrior.
    Islanders with their belongings on a bum bum approach the Rainbow Warrior. © David Robie/Eyes of Fire

    But even the shallowness of the reef caused a problem. It made it dangerous to bring the Warrior any closer than about three kilometres offshore — as two shipwrecks on the reef reminded us.

    The cargo of building materials and belongings had to be laboriously unloaded onto a bum bum (small boat), which had also travelled overnight with no navigational aids apart from a Marshallese “wave map’, and the Zodiacs. It took two days to unload the ship with a swell making things difficult at times.

    An 18-year-old islander fell into the sea between the bum bum and the Warrior, almost being crushed but escaping with a jammed foot.

    Fishing success on the reef
    The delayed return to Rongelap for the next load didn’t trouble Davey Edward. In fact, he was celebrating his first fishing success on the reef after almost three months of catching nothing. He finally landed not only a red snapper, but a dozen fish, including a half-metre shark!

    Edward was also a good cook and he rustled up dinner — shark montfort, snapper fillets, tuna steaks and salmon pie (made from cans of dumped American aid food salmon the islanders didn’t want).

    Returning to Rongelap, the Rainbow Warrior was confronted with a load which seemed double that taken on the first trip. Altogether, about 100 tonnes of building materials and other supplies were shipped to Mejatto. The crew packed as much as they could on deck and left for Mejatto, this time with 114 people on board. It was a rough voyage with almost everybody being seasick.

    The journalists were roped in to clean up the ship before returning to Rongelap on the third journey.

    ‘Our people see no light, only darkness’
    Researcher Dr Glenn Alcalay (now an adjunct professor of anthropology at William Paterson University), who spoke Marshallese, was a great help to me interviewing some of the islanders.

    “It’s a hard time for us now because we don’t have a lot of food here on Mejatto — like breadfruit, taro and pandanus,” said Rose Keju, who wasn’t actually at Rongelap during the fallout.

    “Our people feel extremely depressed. They see no light, only darkness. They’ve been crying a lot.

    “We’ve moved because of the poison and the health problems we face. If we have honest scientists to check Rongelap we’ll know whether we can ever return, or we’ll have to stay on Mejatto.”

    Kiosang Kios, 46, was 15 years old at the time of Castle Bravo when she was evacuated to “Kwaj”.

    “My hair fell out — about half the people’s hair fell out,” she said. “My feet ached and burned. I lost my appetite, had diarrhoea and vomited.”

    In 1957, she had her first baby and it was born without bones – “Like this paper, it was flimsy.” A so-called ‘jellyfish baby’, it lived half a day. After that, Kios had several more miscarriages and stillbirths. In 1959, she had a daughter who had problems with her legs and feet and thyroid trouble.

    Out on the reef with the bum bums, the islanders had a welcome addition — an unusual hardwood dugout canoe being used for fishing and transport. It travelled 13,000 kilometres on board the Rainbow Warrior and bore the Sandinista legend FSLN on its black-and-red hull. A gift from Bunny McDiarmid and Henk Haazen, it had been bought for $30 from a Nicaraguan fisherman while they were crewing on the Fri. (Bunny and Henk are on board Rainbow Warrior III for the research mission).

    “It has come from a small people struggling for their sovereignty against the United States and it has gone to another small people doing the same,” said Haazen.

    Animals left behind
    Before the 10-day evacuation ended, Haazen was given an outrigger canoe by the islanders. Winched on to the deck of the Warrior, it didn’t quite make a sail-in protest at Moruroa, as Haazen planned, but it has since become a familiar sight on Auckland Harbour.

    With the third load of 87 people shipped to Mejatto and one more to go, another problem emerged. What should be done about the scores of pigs and chickens on Rongelap? Pens could be built on the main deck to transport them to Mejatto but was there any fodder left for them?

    The islanders decided they weren’t going to run a risk, no matter how slight, of having contaminated animals with them. They were abandoned on Rongelap — along with three of the five outriggers.

    Building materials from Rongelap Island dumped on the beach at Mejatto Island.
    Building materials from the demolished homes on Rongelap dumped on the beach at arrival on Mejatto. Image: © David Robie/Eyes of Fire

    “When you get to New Zealand you’ll be asked have you been on a farm,” warned French journalist Phillipe Chatenay, who had gone there a few weeks before to prepare a Le Point article about the “Land of the Long White Cloud and Nuclear-Free Nuts”.

    “Yes, and you’ll be asked to remove your shoes. And if you don’t have shoes, you’ll be asked to remove your feet,” added first mate Martini Gotjé, who was usually barefooted.

    The last voyage on May 28 was the most fun. A smaller group of about 40 islanders was transported and there was plenty of time to get to know each other.

    Four young men questioned cook Nathalie Mestre: where did she live? Where was Switzerland? Out came an atlas. Then Mestre produced a scrapbook of Fernando Pereira’s photographs of the voyage. The questions were endless.

    They asked for a scrap of paper and a pen and wrote in English:

    “We, the people of Rongelap, love our homeland. But how can our people live in a place which is dangerous and poisonous. I mean, why didn’t those American people test Bravo in a state capital? Why? Rainbow Warrior, thank you for being so nice to us. Keep up your good work.”

    Each one wrote down their name: Balleain Anjain, Ralet Anitak, Kiash Tima and Issac Edmond. They handed the paper to Mestre and she added her name. Anitak grabbed it and wrote as well: “Nathalie Anitak”. They laughed.

    Greenpeace photographer Fernando Pereira and Rongelap islander Bonemej Namwe on board a bum bum boat in May 1985
    Greenpeace photographer Fernando Pereira and Rongelap islander Bonemej Namwe on board a bum bum boat in May 1985. Fernando was killed by French secret agents in the Rainbow Warrior bombing on 10 July 1985. Image: © David Robie/Eyes of Fire

    Fernando Pereira’s birthday
    Thursday, May 30, was Fernando Pereira’s 35th birthday. The evacuation was over and a one-day holiday was declared as we lay anchored off Mejato.

    Pereira was on the Pacific voyage almost by chance. Project coordinator Steve Sawyer had been seeking a wire machine for transmitting pictures of the campaign. He phoned Fiona Davies, then heading the Greenpeace photo office in Paris. But he wanted a machine and photographer separately.

    “No, no … I’ll get you a wire machine,” replied Davies. ‘But you’ll have to take my photographer with it.” Agreed. The deal would make a saving for the campaign budget.

    Sawyer wondered who this guy was, although Gotjé and some of the others knew him. Pereira had fled Portugal about 15 years before while he was serving as a pilot in the armed forces at a time when the country was fighting to retain colonies in Angola and Mozambique. He settled in The Netherlands, the only country which would grant him citizenship.

    After first working as a photographer for Anefo press agency, he became concerned with environmental and social issues. Eventually he joined the Amsterdam communist daily De Waarheid and was assigned to cover the activities of Greenpeace. Later he joined Greenpeace.

    Although he adopted Dutch ways, his charming Latin temperament and looks betrayed his Portuguese origins. He liked tight Italian-style clothes and fast sports cars. Pereira was always wide-eyed, happy and smiling.

    In Hawai`i, he and Sawyer hiked up to the crater at the top of Diamond Head one day. Sawyer took a snapshot of Pereira laughing — a photo later used on the front page of the New Zealand Times after his death with the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior by French secret agents.

    While most of the crew were taking things quietly and the “press gang” caught up on stories, Sawyer led a mini-expedition in a Zodiac to one of the shipwrecks, the Palauan Trader. With him were Davey Edward, Henk Haazen, Paul Brown and Bunny McDiarmid.

    Clambering on board the hulk, Sawyer grabbed hold of a rust-caked railing which collapsed. He plunged 10 metres into a hold. While he lay in pain with a dislocated shoulder and severely lacerated abdomen, his crewmates smashed a hole through the side of the ship. They dragged him through pounding surf into the Zodiac and headed back to the Warrior, three kilometres away.

    “Doc” Andy Biedermann, assisted by “nurse” Chatenay, who had received basic medical training during national service in France, treated Sawyer. He took almost two weeks to recover.

    But the accident failed to completely dampen celebrations for Pereira, who was presented with a hand-painted t-shirt labelled “Rainbow Warrior Removals Inc”.

    Pereira’s birthday was the first of three which strangely coincided with events casting a tragic shadow over the Rainbow Warrior’s last voyage.

    Dr David Robie is an environmental and political journalist and author, and editor of Asia Pacific Report. He travelled on board the Rainbow Warrior for almost 11 weeks. This article is adapted from his 1986 book, Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage of the Rainbow Warrior. A new edition is being published in July to mark the 40th anniversary of the bombing. 

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • ‘We’re not just welcoming you as allies, but as family’ – Rainbow Warrior in Marshall Islands 40 years on

    The first of a two-part series on the historic Rongelap evacuation of 300 Marshall islanders from their irradiated atoll with the help of the Greenpeace flagship Rainbow Warrior crew and the return of Rainbow Warrior III 40 years later on a nuclear justice research mission.

    SPECIAL REPORT: By Shiva Gounden in Majuro

    Family isn’t just about blood—it’s about standing together through the toughest of times.

    This is the relationship between Greenpeace and the Marshall Islands — a vast ocean nation, stretching across nearly two million square kilometers of the Pacific. Beneath the waves, coral reefs are bustling with life, while coconut trees stand tall.

    For centuries, the Marshallese people have thrived here, mastering the waves, reading the winds, and navigating the open sea with their canoe-building knowledge passed down through generations. Life here is shaped by the rhythm of the tides, the taste of fresh coconut and roasted breadfruit, and an unbreakable bond between people and the sea.

    From the bustling heart of its capital, Majuro to the quiet, far-reaching atolls, their islands are not just land; they are home, history, and identity.

    Still, Marshallese communities were forced into one of the most devastating chapters of modern history — turned into a nuclear testing ground by the United States without consent, and their lives and lands poisoned by radiation.

    Operation Exodus: A legacy of solidarity
    Between 1946 and 1958, the US conducted 67 nuclear tests in the Marshall Islands — its total yield roughly equal to one Hiroshima-sized bomb every day for 12 years.

    During this Cold War period, the US government planned to conduct its largest nuclear test ever. On the island of Bikini, United States Commodore Ben H. Wyatt manipulated the 167 Marshallese people who called Bikini home asking them to leave so that the US could carry out atomic bomb testing, stating that it was for “the good of mankind and to end all world wars”.

    Exploiting their deep faith, he misled Bikinians into believing they were acting in God’s will, and trusting this, they agreed to move—never knowing the true cost of their decision

    Bikini Islanders board a landing craft vehicle personnel (LCVP) as they depart from Bikini Atoll in March 1946.
    Bikini Islanders board a landing craft vehicle personnel (LCVP) as they depart from Bikini Atoll in March 1946. Image: © United States Navy

    On March 1, 1954, the Castle Bravo test was launched — its yield 1000 times stronger than Hiroshima. Radioactive fallout spread across Rongelap Island about 150 kilometers away, due to what the US government claimed was a “shift in wind direction”.

    In reality, the US ignored weather reports that indicated the wind would carry the fallout eastward towards Rongelap and Utirik Atolls, exposing the islands to radioactive contamination. Children played in what they thought was snow, and almost immediately the impacts of radiation began — skin burning, hair fallout, vomiting.

    The Rongelap people were immediately relocated, and just three years later were told by the US government their island was deemed safe and asked to return.

    For the next 28 years, the Rongelap people lived through a period of intense “gaslighting” by the US government. *

    Image of the nuclear weapon test, Castle Bravo (yield 15 Mt) on Bikini Atoll, Marshall Islands, 1 March 1954.
    Nuclear weapon test Castle Bravo (yield 15 Mt) on Bikini Atoll, 1 March 1954. © United States Department of Energy

    Forced to live on contaminated land, with women enduring miscarriages and cancer rates increasing, in 1985, the people of Rongelap made the difficult decision to leave their homeland. Despite repeated requests to the US government to help evacuate, an SOS was sent, and Greenpeace responded: the Rainbow Warrior arrived in Rongelap, helping to move communities to Mejatto Island.

    This was the last journey of the first Rainbow Warrior. The powerful images of their evacuation were captured by photographer Fernando Pereira, who, just months later, was killed in the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior as it sailed to protest nuclear testing in the Pacific.

    Evacuation of Rongelap Islanders to Mejato
    Evacuation of Rongelap Islanders to Mejatto by the Rainbow Warrior crew in the Pacific 1985. Rongelap suffered nuclear fallout from US nuclear tests done from 1946-1958, making it a hazardous place to live. Image: © Greenpeace/Fernando Pereira

    From nuclear to climate: The injustice repeats
    The fight for justice did not end with the nuclear tests—the same forces that perpetuated nuclear colonialism continue to endanger the Marshall Islands today with new threats: climate change and deep-sea mining.

    The Marshall Islands, a nation of over 1,000 islands, is particularly vulnerable to climate impacts. Entire communities could disappear within a generation due to rising sea levels. Additionally, greedy international corporations are pushing to mine the deep sea of the Pacific Ocean for profit. Deep sea mining threatens fragile marine ecosystems and could destroy Pacific ways of life, livelihoods and fish populations. The ocean connects us all, and a threat anywhere in the Pacific is a threat to the world.

    Action ahead of the Climate Vulnerable Forum in the Marshall Islands.
    Marshallese activists with traditional outriggers on the coast of the nation’s capital Majuro to demand that leaders of developed nations dramatically upscale their plans to limit global warming during the online meeting of the Climate Vulnerable Forum in 2018. Image: © Martin Romain/Greenpeace

    But if there could be one symbol to encapsulate past nuclear injustices and current climate harms it would be the Runit Dome. This concrete structure was built by the US to contain radioactive waste from years of nuclear tests, but climate change now poses a direct threat.

    Rising sea levels and increasing storm surges are eroding the dome’s integrity, raising fears of radioactive material leaking into the ocean, potentially causing a nuclear disaster.

    Aerial view of Runit Dome, Runit Island, Enewetak Atoll, Marshall Islands
    Aerial view of Runit Dome, Runit Island, Enewetak Atoll, Marshall Islands . . . symbolic of past nuclear injustices and current climate harms in the Pacific. Image: © US Defense Special Weapons Agency

    Science, storytelling, and resistance: The Rainbow Warrior’s epic mission and 40 year celebration

    At the invitation of the Marshallese community and government, the Rainbow Warrior is in the Pacific nation to celebrate 40 years since 1985’s Operation Exodus, and stand in support of their ongoing fight for nuclear justice, climate action, and self-determination.

    This journey brings together science, storytelling, and activism to support the Marshallese movement for justice and recognition. Independent radiation experts and Greenpeace scientists will conduct crucial research across the atolls, providing much-needed data on remaining nuclear contamination.

    For decades, research on radiation levels has been controlled by the same government that conducted the nuclear tests, leaving many unanswered questions. This independent study will help support the Marshallese people in their ongoing legal battles for recognition, reparations, and justice.

    Ariana Tibon Kilma from the National Nuclear Commission, greets the Rainbow Warrior into the Marshall Islands. © Bianca Vitale / Greenpeace
    Marshallese women greet the Rainbow Warrior as it arrives in the capital Majuro earlier this month. Image: © Bianca Vitale/Greenpeace

    The path of the ship tour: A journey led by the Marshallese
    From March to April, the Rainbow Warrior is sailing across the Marshall Islands, stopping in Majuro, Mejatto, Enewetak, Bikini, Rongelap, and Wotje. Like visiting old family, each of these locations carries a story — of nuclear fallout, forced displacement, resistance, and hope for a just future.

    But just like old family, there’s something new to learn. At every stop, local leaders, activists, and a younger generation are shaping the narrative.

    Their testimonies are the foundation of this journey, ensuring the world cannot turn away. Their stories of displacement, resilience, and hope will be shared far beyond the Pacific, calling for justice on a global scale.

    Bunny McDiarmid and Henk Haazen reunited with the local Marshallese community at Majuro Welcome Ceremony. © Bianca Vitale / Greenpeace
    Bunny McDiarmid and Henk Haazen greet locals at the welcoming ceremony in Majuro, Marshall Islands, earlier this month. Bunny and Henk were part of the Greenpeace crew in 1985 to help evacuate the people of Rongelap. Image: © Bianca Vitale/Greenpeace

    A defining moment for climate justice
    The Marshallese are not just survivors of past injustices; they are champions of a just future. Their leadership reminds us that those most affected by climate change are not only calling for action — they are showing the way forward. They are leaders of finding solutions to avert these crises.

    Local Marshallese Women's group dance and perform cultural songs at the Rainbow Warrior welcome ceremony in Majuro. © Bianca Vitale / Greenpeace
    Local Marshallese women’s group dance and perform cultural songs at the Rainbow Warrior welcome ceremony in Majuro, Marshall islands, earlier this month. Image: © Bianca Vitale/Greenpeace

    Since they have joined the global fight for climate justice, their leadership in the climate battle has been evident.

    In 2011, they established a shark sanctuary to protect vital marine life.

    In 2024, they created their first ocean sanctuary, expanding efforts to conserve critical ecosystems. The Marshall Islands is also on the verge of signing the High Seas Treaty, showing their commitment to global marine conservation, and has taken a firm stance against deep-sea mining.

    They are not only protecting their lands but are also at the forefront of the global fight for climate justice, pushing for reparations, recognition, and climate action.

    This voyage is a message: the world must listen, and it must act. The Marshallese people are standing their ground, and we stand in solidarity with them — just like family.

    Learn their story. Support their call for justice. Amplify their voices. Because when those on the frontlines lead, justice is within reach.

    Shiva Gounden is the head of Pacific at Greenpeace Australia Pacific. This article series is republished with the permission of Greenpeace.

    * This refers to the period from 1957 — when the US Atomic Energy Commission declared Rongelap Atoll safe for habitation despite known contamination — to 1985, when Greenpeace assisted the Rongelap community in relocating due to ongoing radiation concerns. The Compact of Free Association, signed in 1986, finally started acknowledging damages caused by nuclear testing to the populations of Rongelap.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • The world’s biggest youth climate lawsuit lost in court, but it ‘changed the world’

    Ten years ago, 21 young people filed a long shot lawsuit against the federal government, arguing that it wasn’t doing enough to protect them from climate change. Their campaign came to an end this week without a court victory, but having made a different kind of impact: They brought an innovative legal approach to the climate fight that has inspired similar cases, at least two of which have been successful.

    The case, Juliana v. United States, has “forever changed the legal paradigm,” said Julia Olson, chief legal counsel for Our Children’s Trust, which represented the youth. It “ignited the global youth climate movement,” she said, “and forced a reexamination of children’s rights in the context of climate change.”

    The plaintiffs argued that, by supporting the production and burning of fossil fuels, the federal government violated their constitutional right to “life, liberty, personal security, dignity, bodily integrity, and their cultural and religious practices.” The case endured fierce pushback from the Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations, and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ordered its dismissal twice — once in 2020 and again in May 2024.

    On Monday, the United States Supreme Court declined to reinstate the complaint, ruling that the youth had not shown that they have standing to sue the government. That dashed the last remaining hope that the suit could move forward.

    Although Juliana wasn’t the first youth-led climate lawsuit — six were filed worldwide between 2011 and 2015 — it precipitated a rapid increase in such cases. By one count from the nonprofit ClimaTalk, young people filed 18 cases between 2016 and 2020 and at least another half dozen since then. Like Juliana, many argued that governments have an obligation to address climate change to defend individual freedoms, such as the right to life or to a healthy environment. 

    Michael Gerrard, founder and faculty director of Columbia University’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, said Juliana made clear that U.S. “federal courts are not going to embrace a constitutional right to a stable climate system” — a point Judge Andrew Hurwitz of the Ninth Circuit made when he noted in a 2020 opinion that “the plaintiffs’ impressive case for redress must be presented to the political branches of government.” For that reason, Gerrard said, such cases may fare better in states that have written environmental rights into their constitutions.

    Those states include Montana and Hawaiʻi, where Our Children’s Trust has won landmark victories. The first came in Montana when a judge ruled that the 16 youth who sued the state over its support of the fossil fuel industry have a constitutional right to a “clean and healthful environment.” The state Supreme Court affirmed the ruling in December when it ruled that the state must consider climate impacts when reviewing fossil fuel projects.

    Last June, Our Children’s Trust reached a historic settlement with the Hawaiʻi Department of Transportation that requires it to decarbonize transportation by 2045. The unprecedented agreement also mandates that the agency work to mitigate climate change, align its investments and clean energy goals, and plant at least 1,000 trees annually. Mesina D., one of the 13 plaintiffs in the case, attributed that victory to “the blueprint laid by the Juliana youth plaintiffs.”

    “Thanks to these 21 Americans, young people everywhere now know they can raise their voices and demand the protection of their constitutional rights to life and liberty,” she said in a statement.

    A young man wearing a suit sits at a table with a name tag reading "Mr. Piper" in front of him
    Aji Piper, one of the plaintiffs in Juliana v. United States, speaks at a hearing of the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis in 2019. Mark Wilson / Getty Images

    Many of them are doing just that. Olson said she’s helping Our Children’s Trust litigate or develop eight more state-level climate cases. She’s also working with the Juliana plaintiffs to decide whether to bring their case before an international venue like the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, which could issue a nonbinding, but nevertheless symbolic, decision. That would mirror a strategy 16 children attempted in 2019 when they brought a climate change petition against five countries under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. (The U.N. told them in 2021 to begin by suing their native countries and return if they lost.)

    That’s not to say anyone’s given up on federal action. Because the Ninth Circuit dismissed the case without prejudice, the plaintiffs are free to try again. “These claims are not closed by any means,” Olson said. Our Children’s Trust is already working on a federal case that she hopes to launch soon.

    James May, an emeritus law professor and founder of the Global Environmental Rights Institute at Widener University Delaware Law School, agreed that another lawsuit is worth a shot so that constitutional rights claims can be heard on their merits.

    He also believes the Juliana case was a “huge missed opportunity” for the Biden administration, which talked a lot about the need to address climate change but whose Justice Department repeatedly asked judges to dismiss the case. The administration “didn’t have to agree that there was a constitutional right that had been violated,” May said, but it could have settled the case by agreeing to take concrete steps to address greenhouse gas emissions.

    “The Obama, Trump, Biden, and [second] Trump administrations fought this case harder than any case in American history,” May said. “It sounds so dramatic, but it’s true. Never before has the federal government sought interlocutory relief to the extent it did in this case.”

    In a statement, the Department of Justice welcomed the Supreme Court’s decision as the end of what it called a “long saga” that “has tied up the United States in litigation.” Adam Gustafson, the acting assistant attorney general of the department’s environment and natural resources division, also said in the statement that “the Justice Department is enforcing our nation’s environmental laws and safeguarding America’s air, water, and natural resources. Cases like Juliana distract from those enforcement efforts.”

    Despite the setback, the work of those 21 youth and the pioneering case they brought radically reshaped the climate fight by engaging young people and more broadly mobilizing the environmental movement. Since 2015, more than 80 members of Congress, including senators Jeff Merkley, Cory Booker, and Bernie Sanders, have endorsed legislation affirming the climate- and environment-related rights of children and filed amicus briefs in Juliana. More than 400 organizations supported the lawsuit, and 350,000 people signed petitions calling for courts to hear it. The case is being taught in law schools, and it has inspired books and the Netflix documentary Youth v. Gov.

    “Hats off to the litigants,” May said. “They literally changed the world.”

    This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The world’s biggest youth climate lawsuit lost in court, but it ‘changed the world’ on Mar 27, 2025.


    This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Joseph Winters.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • AOC, Bernie Sanders hold Fighting Oligarchy rallies; UN warns of glacier melting as climate threat – March 21, 2025

    Comprehensive coverage of the day’s news with a focus on war and peace; social, environmental and economic justice.

    The post AOC, Bernie Sanders hold Fighting Oligarchy rallies; UN warns of glacier melting as climate threat – March 21, 2025 appeared first on KPFA.


    This content originally appeared on KPFA – The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays and was authored by KPFA.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.