Image by Getty and Unsplash+.

China is leading the green energy transition for the world as the United States tries to force countries to buy US oil and gas. Last year China installed more renewable energy than the rest of the world combined. Meanwhile, the US committed $625 million in taxpayer funds to save and revive the coal industry. Yes, US taxpayers are subsidizing coal production. It should be noted that “clean coal” is so misleading that it reeks of malodorous sulfur.

China is upstaging the United States across the world by tackling climate change head on. According to a brilliant article in YaleEnvironment360 by Isabel Hilton, As U.S. and E.U. Retreat on Climate, China Takes the Leadership Role, November 10, 2025, “China today produces about 80 percent of all solar panels and more than 70 percent of all electric vehicles.” China has reduced the cost barrier for “the rest of the world” by bringing down costs of solar panels by 90% and reducing the overall expenses for renewables by 70%. Furthermore, as the world’s biggest clean energy juggernaut, it builds clean energy factories abroad investing in 54 countries over the past three years alone. This is tackling climate with gusto while the US reverts to the dark ages of grinding away drill bits and steam shovels blackening the atmosphere.

“If history is any guide, the country that dominates energy usually dominates economics and politics, which is why it is not just old war allies that are cozying up to Beijing. Narendra Modi, the president of longtime rival India, visited China for the biggest ever meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization along with dozens of other regional leaders.” (There is Only One Player: Why China is Becoming a World Leader in Green Energy, The Guardian, September 7,2025).

China’s renewable effort is well ahead of expectations. The country has installed capacity of 1,200GW six years ahead of schedule, which is enough to power approximately 1.2 million homes.

Yet, China is still heavily addicted to coal: “Scientists and campaigners say the climate will not be stabilized solely by selling more photovoltaic cells or windmill blades; it is also necessary to phase out fossil fuels. On this half of the balance sheet, China’s record remains ‘highly insufficient’ and its current policies would, if continued, push the planet towards 4C of heating, according to Climate Action Tracker, an independent initiative assessing countries’ compliance with the Paris agreement. It points out that China is off course from the commitments it previously made to ‘strictly limit’ coal use and to reduce energy and carbon intensity by 2025,” Ibid.

The pushback has been most evident in China’s coal sector, where there has been a surge of investment in the past two years to the highest level in a decade. Major domestic coal companies, such as CHN Energy, Jinneng and Shaanxi Coal and Chemical, have considerable political influence. Thus, China, similar to the US, is beholden to rightward leaning politics that override green technology policies, making it nearly impossible to meet nation/state emissions targets set at Paris 2015 to hold global warming to under 2C. This ridiculously dangerous course has, in fact, become a bad joke, not a laughing matter, as the world’s whipsaw climate system thrashes civilization at every turn. The 2020-decade ia the most expressive decade of a worldwide maniac climate system of all time with ocean heat content dangerously hitting all-time records. A major study claims an ocean regime change. This is a serious threat to the entire planetary climate system equivalent to an emergency.

Coal Kills Climate and People

“Despite claims of ‘clean coal’ made by the industry and administration officials, coal is the dirtiest and most polluting fuel on the planet. Every terawatt-hour of electricity from coal emits about 950,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide, the primary driver of climate change. Even fracked gas emits only about 57 percent as much CO2. Both the mining and burning of coal also create huge quantities of other pollutants: sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, particulates, heavy metals, and fly ash. A 2023 study in the journal Science found that coal particulates are more than twice as deadly as the same-size particulates from other sources and traced over 450,000 deaths to coal pollution since 1999.”(The Real Reason the Feds Want to Revive Coal, Sierra, October 15, 2025)

AI Greets Coal

The real push for coal is coming from another industry with close ties to the Trump administration. Technology companies investing heavily in AI are fostering a boom in data centers nationwide. Data centers took up about 2 percent of the nation’s electrical power pre-2020. By 2023, that share more than doubled to 176 terawatt-hours of power, more than the total power for the State of Illinois. By 2028, data centers are projected to use up to 12 percent of the entire US electrical grid. This spike in power requirements is impacting electrical bills for consumers, and along with Trump policies slowing down or shutting down new renewable power projects, it will require a ramp up in coal and gas. Trump is preying upon this sudden surge in power requirements to endorse coal. The EPA has proposed delays and gutting regulations for wastewater from coal-fired power plants and pledged to gut the Clean Air Act’s Regional Haze Rule as the DOI intends to open 13.1 million acres of federal land for coal mine leasing.

In the biggest step backwards in modern US history, the Trump administration is spoiling both the atmosphere and the nation’s waterways “Expanding mining and spending taxpayer money on burning coal, while rolling back vital health protections, will only exacerbate the deadly pollution and rising electricity bills that communities are facing across the country,” (Earthjustice Responds to Trump Administration Coal Industry Giveaways, Earthjustice, Sept. 26, 2025).

Red States suffer much more from these policies than any other states. They are double-clobbered (1) by loss of Biden Inflation Reduction Aet jobs, e.g. wind and solar, that Trump cancels, decimating climate mitigation policies, axing climate science, firing leading scientists (the “brain drain”) and (2) suffer the biggest impact of deadly pollution as their blackened coal operations revive. They elected Trump and got what he promised to do, destroy renewables and pollute the atmosphere. “Clean coal” is the biggest con in the history of the planet.

Headlines: “Republicans Sell Out Constituents, Vote to Cut Jobs and Raise Energy Costs Nationwide,” Climate Power, May 27, 2025. “About 80 percent of manufacturing investments spurred by a Biden-era climate law have flowed to Republican districts.” (The New York Times, Feb. 11, 2025) Anything with Biden’s name attached is destroyed.

Project 2025 hit the green economy like a tsunami of mass destruction but Red States take the biggest hits; beware of Midterms vomiting up a lame duck presidency.

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Image by Markus Spiske.

UN climate conferences are primarily announcement summits. For 30 years, industrialized countries, which are primarily responsible for the climate crisis, have been promising that they will reduce greenhouse gas emissions consistent with the climate science, promote the energy transition, and combat the effects of climate change. Additional promises have also been made regarding climate financing at the UN Conference of the Parties (COP) climate summits in Copenhagen (2009) and Paris (2015). At COP30 in Brazil, governments have once again declared their intention to support developing countries with climate funding, repeating their promise at the COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan, to increase climate financing to $300 billion annually from 2035. But promises are not yet actions.

At the Paris conference, for example, $100 billion dollars a year were pledged from 2020 onwards. This target was reached for the first time in 2022 but only on paper. The industrialized nations reported contributions of $116 billion, but according to the aid organization Oxfam, the actual value of the aid amounts to only $28 to 35 billion. This is because almost 70 percent of the aid is loans and not payments. But loans will only increase the debt burden of the already over-indebted countries of the Global South. In the last two decades the external debt of developing countries has quadrupled to a record $11.4 trillion in 2023, equivalent to 99% of their export earnings, according to the UN development agency UNCTAD. In addition, $24 billion of the climate amounts registered by the OECD are private investments. However, as NGOs have pointed out, these commercial, profit-oriented investments are difficult to trace and assess; can‘t substitute public funds as they are not payments; and just artificially inflate the amount which has to be paid by the governments of the industrialized countries.

In addition, a large part of climate funds from Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries are itemized as official development assistance (ODA), a type of foreign aid that is provided to developing countries by the industrialized states and reported to the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) of the OECD. The formalized aid emerged in the wake of decolonization in the late 1960s, when the issue of reparations for the Global South was put on the agenda. A quarter of ODA aid is now funded by climate money, which marginalizes other tasks such as poverty reduction. In response to an inquiry by the Green Party in the German parliament in December 2016 asking whether climate financing was provided in addition to development assistance, the German government stated that “German climate financing (…) is almost entirely ODA-eligible. … Climate and development policy” are “intrinsically intertwined.” Such entanglement only makes sense, of course, if one is not willing to pay extra. However, this conflation of climate and development policy contradicts the promise to provide public funds for the climate crisis beyond development aid.

But even with the included climate funds, OECD countries are still far from meeting the 0.7 percent of GDP target for development aid — a sum that has been promised for decades primarily by the United States and European countries and was firstly set as a goal in a 1970 UN General Assembly Resolution. The bottom line is that climate finance is providing virtually no additional funds to the Global South, leaving those countries to deal with the climate crisis on their own, while loans and private investments must be refinanced by poor countries.

Climate Financing Is Not Charity

Climate financing is supposed to bring nations into alignment with their fair share of the global greenhouse gas budget. It is not a voluntary act of charity on the part of industrialized countries, but originates from historical debt. Climate funds are compensation for the permanent overuse of the atmosphere through the burning of coal, gas, and oil for energy production by industrialized countries, which has made them “carbon insolvent.” In other words, rich nations have long since exhausted their emission rights and are living off the emission credits from poor countries, as studies show.

The fact of historical climate debt was already expressed in the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) on the principle of “Common But Differentiated Responsibilities” (CBDR) for climate change. Subsequently, it was declared that industrialized countries would provide “new and additional financial resources” to the extent that developing countries need them “to meet the agreed full incremental costs” of emission reduction and adaptation to climate damage.

The amount needed is no secret. The latest studies, supported by the UN, estimate total annual costs for developing countries (excluding China) at US$1 trillion from 2025 onwards, $2.3-2.5 trillion from 2030, and $3.1-3.5 trillion from 2035. The authors of the studies assume that developing countries could cover half of the costs themselves — an optimistic presupposition and by no means in accordance with climate justice.

Even if all loans, ODA aid, and private investments are included, the gap between what has been offered so far and the financing needs is enormous. The current sum (on paper) would have to be immediately increased many times over in order to cover even half of the costs for poor countries, and then rise steadily to $1.75 trillion in 10 years — which would meet the minimum obligation. Also, as non-governmental organizations have long demanded, only genuine payments made in addition to development aid should be counted — no more loans, private investments, or ODA funds.

Headed in the Wrong Direction

However, the trend around the climate summit in Brazil is negative, despite the vague new promise by industrialized countries to mobilize $300 billion by 2035. Oxfam explains that climate funds have been declining parallel to development aid since 2022. In addition, the accounting practices by industrialized countries remain opaque, while private investments are increasingly being included in climate finance sums in a non-transparent manner.

Above all, very little money is being made available for adaptation measures, while climate finance is not reaching the countries that need it the most. The least developed countries and vulnerable island states receive less than a quarter of climate finance, with more than half of it in the form of loans. A recently published study by ActionAid on the COP30 climate summit also shows that less than three percent of international aid for CO2 emission reduction goes toward a “fair transition” for workers and communities away from polluting industries. The report warns that this will further exacerbate inequality and sabotage climate protection.

It is often large-scale projects in middle-income countries that attract climate funds from rich countries, although the investments are often not transformative in nature, which is supposed to be the case according to the Green Climate Fund (GCF). The GCF states that financed projects should stimulate a paradigm shift towards low-carbon, sustainable development for the whole economy, which includes covering different sectors, enforcing state ownership, and knowledge sharing. But this is seldom the case. For example, instead of diversifying energy sources, the expansion of a large dam in Tajikistan was supported with $50 million. Critics argue that this makes the country dependent on hydropower in a problematic way, as snow and ice that feed the dam’s turbines are likely to decrease significantly in the region due to climate change. Even the first director of the GCF, Héla Cheikhrouhou, notes that all in all the fund does not support “groundbreaking projects.” Joe Thwaites, former climate finance analyst at the World Resources Institute, presumes that political pressure is often too great to fund better alternatives.

Making Climate Finance Work

Climate finance today resembles a jumble of numbers that is sold to the public with glittering facades. This applies not only to the insufficient sums, the misguided crediting practices, and deceitful accounting methods, but also to the fact that donor countries and their institutions mostly control the flow of funds with assistance from Western banks like Deutsche Bank, which are still heavily financing fossil fuels. As with development aid, climate finance tends to be misused as export promotion for Western companies and geostrategic purposes. In the worst case, funds are wasted on individual projects instead of stimulating a self-sustaining energy transition. Additionally, the rights of Indigenous peoples and the needs of local populations are often disregarded.

For example, consider the Turkana wind farm in Kenya. The project was completed in 2018 and has a financing volume of almost $700 million. Backed by European banks, development funds, and private investors, the park with almost 400 wind turbines is the largest investment project since Kenya gained independence and can produce up to 300 megawatts of renewable energy for the national grid. But on closer inspection, things don’t look quite so rosy. The Kenyan government has had to keep the wind farm alive with financial guarantees, high fixed electricity prices, compensation payments, and infrastructure construction. The Indigenous people were displaced from their land for the project. The population was generally excluded from the planning process, while conflicts between local communities flared up in the course of construction activities.

Such grievances are not isolated cases when it comes to green investments. One study recorded over 200 allegations of adverse human rights impacts linked to renewable energy projects between 2010 and 2020. Indigenous people have been on the frontline of these abuses, from Latin America to African countries to Asia. The land they live on is repeatedly taken from them without proper consultation or consent, while green investors benefit from historically weak legislation protecting communal land in many developing countries. Ultimately, this leads to increased rejection of green, climate-related projects by local people in poor countries. Giving recipient countries control over climate funds is therefore not only a question of justice, but also of effectiveness.

Civil society groups worldwide have been calling for fundamental changes to climate finance for a long time. Above all, the sums made available as public payments must be increased rapidly. There is enough money in the Global North available among those who are primarily responsible for the climate crisis: the fossil fuel industries and high emitting social classes. Oil Change International notes that industrialized countries could fairly redirect around $270 billion annually in direct subsidies for fossil fuels into climate protection measures, and much more. OCI has calculated how various taxes on polluting corporate activities, extreme wealth, and emission-intensive consumption, as well as debt relief for developing countries, could mobilize around $5.3 trillion per year. There is also considerable public support for such climate financing.

What is lacking is not the money or the consent of citizens in rich countries, but the political will of governments to mobilize the financial resources for climate protection in the Global South. Whether the climate conference in Belém can make a difference depends on whether pressure is exerted on those in the industrialized world with the political power to change course.

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Clifty Coal Generating Plant, along the Ohio River, near Madison, Indiana. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair.

As world leaders and thousands of researchers, activists and lobbyists meet in Brazil at the 30th annual United Nations climate conference, there is plenty of frustration that the world isn’t making progress on climate change fast enough.

Globally, greenhouse gas emissions and global temperatures continue to rise. In the U.S., the Trump administration, which didn’t send an official delegation to the climate talks, is rolling back environmental and energy regulations and pressuring other countries to boost their use of fossil fuels – the leading driver of climate change.

Coal use is also rising, particularly in India and China. And debates rage about justice and the future for coal-dependent communities as coal burning and coal mining end.

But underneath the bad news is a set of complex, contradictory and sometimes hopeful developments.

The problem with coal

Coal is the dirtiest source of fossil fuel energy and a major contributor of greenhouse gas emissions, making it bad not just for the climate but also for human health. That makes coal a good target for cutting global emissions.

A swift drop in coal use is the main reason U.S. greenhouse gas emissions fell in recent years as natural gas and renewable energy became cheaper.

Today, nearly a third of all countries worldwide have pledged to phase out their unabated coal-burning power plants in the coming years, including several countries you might not expect. Germany, Spain, Malaysia, the Czech Republic – all have substantial coal reserves and coal use today, yet they are among the more than 60 countries that have joined the Powering Past Coal Alliance and set phase-out deadlines between 2025 and 2040.

Several governments in the European Union and Latin America are now coal phase-out leaders, and EU greenhouse gas emissions continue to fall.

Progress, and challenges ahead

So, where do things stand for phasing out coal burning globally? The picture is mixed. For example:

+ The accelerating deployment of renewable energy, energy storage, electric vehicles and energy efficiency globally offer hope that global emissions are on their way to peaking. More than 90% of the new electricity capacity installed worldwide in 2024 came from clean energy sources. However, energy demand is also growing quickly, so new renewable power does not always replace older fossil fuel plants or prevent new ones, including coal.

+ China now burns more coal than the rest of the world combined, and it continues to build new coal plants. But China is also a driving force in the dramatic growth in solar and wind energy investments and electricity generation inside China and around the world. As the industry leader in renewable energy technology, it has a strong economic interest in solar and wind power’s success around the world.

+ While climate policies that can reduce coal use are being subject to backlash politics and policy rollbacks in the U.S. and several European democracies, many other governments around the world continue to enact and implement cleaner energy and emissions reduction policies.

Phasing out coal isn’t easy, or happening as quickly as studies show is needed to slow climate change.

To meet the 2015 Paris Agreement’s goals of limiting global warming to well under 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) compared to pre-industrial times, and aiming to keep warming under 1.5 C (2.7 F), research shows that the world will need to rapidly reduce nearly all fossil fuel burning and associated emissions. It is not close to being on track.

Ensuring a just transition for coal communities

Many countries with coal mining operations worry about the transition for coal-dependent communities as mines shut down and jobs disappear.

No one wants a repeat of then-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s destruction of British coal communities in the 1980s in her effort to break the mineworkers union. Mines rapidly closed, and many coal communities and regions were left languishing in economic and social decline for decades.

But as more countries phase out coal, they offer examples of how to ensure coal-dependent workers, communities, regions and entire countries benefit from a just transition to a coal-free system.

At local and national levels, research shows that careful planning, grid updates and reliable financing schemes, worker retraining, small-business development and public funding of coal worker pensions and community and infrastructure investments can help set coal communities on a path for prosperity.

A fossil fuel nonproliferation treaty?

At the global climate talks, several groups, including the Powering Past Coal Alliance and an affiliated Coal Transition Commission, have been pushing for a fossil fuel nonproliferation treaty. It would legally bind governments to a ban on new fossil fuel expansion and eventually eliminate fossil fuel use.

The world has affordable renewable energy technologies with which to replace coal-fired electricity generation – solar and wind are cheaper than fossil fuels in most places. There are still challenges with the transition, but also clear ways forward. Removing political and regulatory obstacles to building renewable energy generation and transmission lines, boosting production of renewable energy equipment, and helping low-income countries manage the upfront cost with more affordable financing can help expand those technologies more widely around the world.

Shifting to renewable energy also has added benefits: It’s much less harmful to the health of those who live and work nearby than mining and burning coal is.

So can the world quit coal? Yes, I believe we can. Or, as Brazilians say, “Sim, nós podemos.”

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Sage grouse in southwestern Montana. Photo: Richard Prodgers.

Greater sage grouse occupied more than 460,000 square miles across 13 Western states, including Montana, and three Canadian provinces before European settlement in the 1800s. But since that time, sagebrush ecosystems have been destroyed, fragmented, and degraded. Now there are so few pristine and intact sagebrush ecosystems their population has been in a continuous and precipitous decline across their historic range as well as here in Montana, the population has plummeted by 31% — from 70,346 to 48,783 — in just the last three years, which is why the Alliance is going to court to stop this habitat-destroying project.

Proposed project located in prime sage grouse habitat

The project is located in the 367,665 acre Grasshopper Watershed west of Dillon, in southwest Montana. This watershed contains some of the best habitat for sage grouse in Montana, yet the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) wants to funnel existing springs on public land into new water tanks for cattle, which will promote even more widespread grazing and negatively impact this excellent remaining sage grouse habitat.

Why livestock are bad for sage grouse

Livestock grazing and grazing-related infrastructure are some of the most significant threats to sage grouse and sagebrush habitats. Cattle consume native plants upon which sage grouse rely, they trample and destroy fragile soils, and increase the spread of weeds such as cheetgrass that replace sagebrush and are highly flammable. Cattle also disrupt sage grouse shelter, breeding, nesting, and other phases of the species’ annual life cycles and migration patterns.

These effects are particularly pronounced around water infrastructure developments for livestock, including spring developments, as they draw livestock to congregate. Additionally, fences erected to manage livestock provide perches for predators and fences kill sage grouse when they fly into them.

Serious flaws in BLM’s analysis

The National Environmental Policy Act requires government agencies to take a “hard look” at any project’s potential and likely impacts to wildlife, including sage grouse and big game. The agency failed to do so, which is a violation of federal law.

Moreover, BLM also failed to disclose sufficient information to the public, which is also a violation of the Administrative Procedures Act. By failing to monitor both sage grouse populations and sage grouse habitat health — including but not limited to the number of active leks where they mate, population trends based on annual lek counts, and acres of available habitat — the agency failed to determine whether more in-depth analysis was necessary as required by the agency’s own sage grouse management plan.

The BLM did not disclose any monitoring data in the Grasshopper Watershed for the population trend data. There are two “triggers” that require further analysis, which the agency did not evaluate nor disclose whether those triggers have been met.

“Hard” and “soft” triggers that require further environmental analysis

The BLM’s 2015 sage grouse management plan contains provisions that require the agency to conduct further analysis. Soft triggers are indicators that management or specific activities may not be achieving the intended results of a conservation action, as demonstrated by population and habitat trends. Meeting a soft trigger requires BLM to enact immediate monitoring and surveillance to determine the cause and may require BLM to curtail certain management activities.

Hard triggers are indicators that management decisions are not achieving desired conservation results, meaning sage grouse are either not responding to conservation measures or are being negatively impacted by certain management decisions. Hard triggers are measured against the number of active leks, acres of available habitat, and population trends. The meeting of a hard trigger necessitates immediate action to stop a severe deviation from conservation objectives.

Because the BLM did not evaluate whether it needed to adjust its management actions due to hard or soft triggers being met, the agency is in violation of the BLM’s 2015 sage grouse management plan as well as the Federal Land Policy Management Act.

Failed to consider increasing climate impacts

The BLM also failed to take a “hard look” at the climate impacts of the project, which is a further violation of the National Environmental Policy Act. The BLM did not analyze how climate change has affected baseline conditions in the Grasshopper Watershed, including sage grouse, sage grouse habitat, and other identified resource issues.

We wish we didn’t have to take the federal government to court to force them to protect rather than destroy sage grouse habitat as required by federal law. But someone has to stand up for sage grouse. And that’s exactly why the Alliance for the Wild Rockies, Native Ecosystems Council, and Council for Wildlife and Fish are taking the federal government to court over this ill-conceived and illegal project.

Please consider helping us fight to keep sage grouse from going extinct and please consider helping CounterPunch to keep the public informed about what the federal government is doing.

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The Sturgeon Moon at Tillamook Head, north Oregon Coast. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair.

The personal care industry has mastered the art of marketing eco-consciousness— evolving beyond familiar labels like “green,” “clean,” and “natural”—into a new wave of sea-inspired branding that claims to champion ocean conservation.

Terms such as “reef-safe” and “ocean-friendly” evoke images of crystalline waters and thriving coral reefs, yet behind the glossy marketing lies a regulatory murk. With no federal standards or clear definitions, consumers are left to navigate a tide of misleading labels.

As “ocean-safe” products flood the market—wrapped in teal hues and marine motifs—the illusion of ecological responsibility is gaining momentum, but it’s worth asking whether these gestures represent genuine sustainability or merely performative eco-branding.

Lorraine Dallmeier, CEO of Formula Botanica, warns that when sustainability becomes a marketing function, images can eclipse impact. “[M]arketing tells stories, it connects us with people, it builds communities, it grows businesses,” she says during the episode, “When Sustainability Reports to Marketing—Beauty’s Uncomfortable Truth,” on her Green Beauty Conversations podcast. “But when sustainability reports to marketing, we start prioritizing optics over action.”

The Critical Role of Coral Reefs in Supporting Biodiversity

Coral reefs are among the most biologically diverse ecosystems on Earth—hosting more than 25 percent of all marine species despite occupying less than 1 percent of the ocean floor, according to the Coral Reef Alliance.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) categorizes coral reefs as essential habitats, acting as nurseries and spawning grounds for countless fish species, crustaceans, mollusks, and marine food webs. According to the MIT Science Policy Review, coral reefs deliver substantial economic and cultural benefits—through fisheries, tourism, recreation, and even pharmaceutical discoveries—worth trillions of dollars globally.

The initial swell in ocean-centric marketing followed Hawaii’s 2018 ban on sunscreens containing oxybenzone and octinoxate—chemicals that filter ultraviolet (UV) radiation, which are harmful to ocean ecosystems.

The bill was informed by a 2015 study published in the Archives of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology, which examined how chemical sunscreens can damage coral larvae and cells, causing coral bleaching, making them vulnerable to infection, and preventing them from getting the nutrients needed for survival. The study found that “the chemicals cause bleaching, deformities, DNA damage, and ultimately death in coral when they’re washed off beachgoers or discharged into wastewater treatment plants and deposited into bodies of water,” states a CNN article.

The Hawaii legislation represented a watershed moment in environmental regulation, drawing global attention to the hidden ecological costs of UV chemical filters and inspiring other nations, such as the U.S. Virgin Islands, Palau, Aruba, and Thailand, to adopt similar restrictions to protect ocean life.

While the chemical impact of sunscreens on marine environments is well-documented, critics argue that the personal care product (PCP) industry doesn’t always honor the principles of the 2018 legislation passed by Hawaii.

How the Chemicals in Sunscreen Are Harming Ocean Life

According to a 2023 National Geographic article, “14,000 tons of sunscreen are thought to wash into the oceans each year,” and 82,000 chemicals from PCPs are found in the seas.

In a 2022 study, scientists from Stanford University revealed that animals process oxybenzone and UV radiation differently than humans; their metabolic systems alter the molecule in ways that make it reactive under sunlight, producing harmful reactive oxygen species that damage cells.

“The way sunscreens work is they chemically occlude the sun,” said oceanographer and educator David Hastings in an interview for this article. “And if you’re a coral trying to make a living by photosynthesizing, your symbiotic algae are sitting there, dying for the light.”

Even mineral sunscreens marketed as “reef-safe” can pose risks to ocean ecosystems under certain conditions. While they avoid chemical UV filters, many products contain zinc oxide or titanium dioxide, which are manufactured as nanoparticles. Due to their small size, these nanoparticles can bypass water treatment systems and bioaccumulate in marine organisms, according to a 2018 study published in Science of The Total Environment.

“Current research has only scratched the surface of understanding how these chemicals can affect marine life,” notes lead author of a 2025 report, Anneliese Hodge, PhD researcher at Plymouth Marine Laboratory and the University of Plymouth. “What’s particularly concerning is that these compounds are considered ‘pseudo-persistent pollutants’ due to their continuous introduction into marine environments as well as an overall lack of understanding of how they then interact with others in the sea.”

PCPs expose aquatic environments to various chemicals, including synthetic polymers, microplastics, siloxanes, and parabens.

Notably, microplastics—or microbeads—in facial scrubs and body washes have become one of the most visible examples of hidden plastic pollution; marine organisms—from plankton to fish—ingest the tiny plastic particles, which leads to oxidative stress, endocrine disruption, reduced growth, and altered behavior, according to a 2022 study published in Frontiers in Environmental Science.

Scientists warn that claims about “biodegradable” or “organic” microbeads made from plant starches, cellulose, or bioplastics such as polylactic acid can be misleading. Once released into the environment, these materials behave much like conventional plastics: They do not dissolve or readily break down in water and instead accumulate in rivers and oceans, according to the United Nations Environment Program.

The Business of ‘Bluewashing’

While sunscreens exposed the problem, chemical hazards extend across the spectrum of personal care products, and the industry’s growth only magnifies the stakes. Valued at $54.36 billion in 2024, the PCP market is projected to reach $90.40 billion by 2032, according to figures provided by Fortune Business Insights for 2025.

Although the overall personal care sector grew by a modest 2 percent in 2021, sales of “clean” beauty products jumped 8.1 percent, with items free of parabens, sulfates, and phthalates showing the most substantial gains at 13 percent, according to data from global marketing research firm NielsenIQ.

This shift in consumer behavior is reinforced by a 2020 McKinsey & Company survey, which found that between 60 percent and 70 percent of U.S. consumers are willing to pay more for products with sustainable packaging. Other research indicates that 68 percent will pay extra for items that specifically promote commitments to ocean conservation.

According to a CivicScience report, based on responses from April 2024, nearly 70 percent of beauty shoppers under the age of 35 are willing to spend more on sustainable personal care products, compared to 30-40 percent of older adults.

To reach this demographic, PCP brands are leveraging social media platforms—particularly Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube—where sustainability messaging, influencer collaborations, and user-generated content drive engagement. On Instagram, for instance, brands frequently pair ocean-inspired visuals with hashtags like #BlueBeauty, #SustainableSkincare, and #CleanBeauty, positioning their products within an aspirational lifestyle of environmental mindfulness.

Scrutinizing Sustainability Claims

“Brands often begin by crafting a beautiful narrative, claims about packaging, ingredients, and impact, and they do that long before they’ve necessarily built the internal infrastructure to measure or manage any of it,” notesFormula Botanica’s Dallmeier, adding, “It’s then treated as a message, not a methodology.”

This can be particularly problematic in the complex realm of sustainable sourcing, which encompasses not only the origins of raw materials but also the environmental, social, and ethical impacts embedded throughout the supply chain—from harvesting and processing to labor practices and traceability.

“[Some brands] mislead consumers with words that are a simplification of concepts that aren’t simple,” says Adrien Dissous, senior vice president of Babo Botanicals. Dissous notes that the science is evolving, and while terms like “reef-safe” may come from good intentions, they can give the false impression that a product has no impact on ocean environments.

“We hear claims about sustainable palm oil, sustainable mica, and sustainable plastic,” says Dallmeier in her podcast series on sustainable beauty. “These are terms that don’t necessarily mean anything unless the systems behind them are robust, third-party verified, and transparently communicated,” she adds, emphasizing that deeper issues—such as whole life cycle, impact, carbon footprint, and marine ecosystem effect—rarely break through to consumers.

“Sustainable plastics are really a misnomer,” says Steven White, VP of Quality and Technical Services at iLabs, a PCP contract manufacturer, in an interview for this article. “You can start with something that is a plant-based material—such as corn starch or sugarcane—but it is often manipulated with enzymes and other catalysts to achieve a desired texture, color, or efficacy—converting it into a polymer.”

“A polymer is a plastic. So your material base may have been a plant, but you’re converting it into a plastic, which is persistent in the environment,” he explains.

White emphasizes the problematic disconnect between research and development (R&D) teams, contract manufacturers, and marketing departments: “We get a brief from the R&D side of the brand, but if they don’t have a brief from their marketing organization, the final product may not meet the claims the company is making,” he says.

“If sustainability is going to be meaningful, it has to be linked to R&D and operations,” says Dallmeier. “It has to be cross-functional, not preformative; otherwise, it’s just another campaign that gets treated as a content pillar, and then it lives in the slide deck, not in procurement systems or packaging briefs, and ultimately, it becomes just another way to convince people to buy more but feel better about it.”

‘Virtue Signaling’ and ‘Charity-Washing’

PCP brands increasingly tout partnerships that promote sustainable sourcing, marine restoration, corporate giving, and conservation events. While some of these initiatives may contribute to conservation efforts, critics caution that many amount to “virtue signaling” or “charity-washing,” where sustainability is treated as a seasonal campaign—timed for National Ocean Month or Earth Day or tied to a new product launch—rather than being fully integrated into a company’s operations.

“[Corporations]… may contribute some small (but very visible) amount of money toward the solution for a problem that they themselves have contributed to in the hunt for outsize profits,” writer Paul Constant observed in a 2019 Business Insider article about corporate philanthropic campaigns, adding, “The glow of philanthropic giving obscures the exponential wealth that the corporation draws from the situation they’re ostensibly trying to solve. It is, literally, throwing good money after bad.”

Leaders of the PCP industry have invested heavily in ocean conservation initiatives. For example, beauty brand L’Oréal partners with the Great Barrier Reef Foundation through the L’Oréal Fund for Nature Regeneration. Estée Lauder has established the La Mer Blue Heart Ocean Fund, and Shiseido stewards the Shiseido Blue Project in association with World Surf League (WSL) and WSL’s environmental initiative PURE.

Lack of Regulation in Marine-Safe Labeling in the U.S.

In the United States, there are no federal standards or certifications to ensure that “ocean-safe” claims are accurate or meaningful. At the federal level, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) provide some oversight. The FDA regulates the efficacy and safety of sunscreens for humans, while the EPA evaluates the environmental impacts of certain chemicals under broader statutes; it doesn’t enforce ocean-centric marketing language.

In recent years, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has signaled an increased scrutiny of environmental claims in the personal care sector through updates to its Green Guides, clarifying terms such as “biodegradable” and “non-toxic.” However, some academic law journals argue that the guides remain vague and non-binding, resulting in limited enforcement and accountability.

At the state level, there are regulatory actions that are more prescriptive. In 2020, California enacted the Toxic-Free Cosmetics Act, which bans 24 ingredients, including formaldehyde, parabens, and mercury. In 2024, New York adopted regulations to reduce the presence of 1,4-dioxane—a byproduct of ethoxylated surfactants used in shampoos, body washes, and cosmetics.

Nonetheless, allegations of misleading claims have made their way to the courtroom. Edgewell Personal Care, the parent company of Banana Boat and Hawaiian Tropic, faced legal action in Australia in 2025 for falsely labeling these products as “reef-friendly” when, in fact, they contained chemicals harmful to marine life. Target faced a class action suit for deceptively marketing its private label up&up sunscreens as safe for coral reefs in 2024, and the Santa Clara District Attorney’s Office secured settlements with Sun Bum and Supergoop in 2024 for misleading labeling as reef-safe.” In October 2020, Tropical Seas, Inc. agreed to a settlement after the Sonoma County DA’s office (alongside 21 other California district attorneys) found that the company’s “reef-safe” sunscreens could not substantiate that claim.

Ensuring Standards That Guarantee Sustainability

Private certifiers have become the de facto regulators of the PCP industry—issuing seals and logos that signal ethical sourcing, cruelty-free practices, and environmental responsibility. However, they also represent a commercial ecosystem of their own—brands must pay for audits, renewals, and logo-licensing fees that can range from a few hundred to several thousand dollars, depending on the company’s size and sales volume, according to the organization Truth and Advertising.

These certifications provide valuable shorthand for consumers seeking assurance in a crowded marketplace, but the payment structure underscores a built-in tension: Brands fund the very entities that verify them.

Among the most globally recognized standards ensuring that products meet strict requirements for ingredient sourcing, manufacturing processes, and environmental impact are COSMOS Organic and Ecocert. The Environmental Working Group’s EWG Verified mark similarly signals that a product is free from EWG’s chemicals of concern and meets stringent health and transparency standards. The Green Seal GS-50 standard certifies personal care products that are low in volatile organic compounds (VOCs), biodegradable, and free from carcinogens, mutagens, and reproductive toxins, protecting both human and environmental health.

“While conscious consumer behavior plays a vital role, corporate commitments and innovation investments will shape the future,” says Marc Desmarais, a product development activist at Origin by Ocean.

Dallmeier adds, “It’s no longer enough for sustainability to sound good. It has to be good, even when nobody’s looking.”

This article was produced by Earth | Food | Life, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

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Mt. Whitney group, eastern Sierra Nevada range, outside Lone Pine, California. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair.

The comment period has just closed on the Trump administration’s process to rescind the Conservation and Landscape Helath Rule, which has been framed as the signature conservation legacy of the Biden administration. In the ping-pong match of partisan reversals that happen every time a new party takes over the White House, its repeal was probably inevitable. But for all the pros and cons and debate swirling around the Conservation Rule (and it was far weaker than it should have been), the coming rescission gives us a clean slate to develop the Conservation Rule that our lands and wildlife really deserve, a gold standard against which past and future conservation actions can be measured.

To start with, a strong Conservation Rule can be built on the conservation achievements of Congresses past. Industry complained that Biden’s Conservation Rule improperly elevated conservation uses, but the Biden Rule did very little of that. We don’t need a Conservation Rule to put conservation on the same level as industrial exploitation, because federal law has done that for us already. A strong rule recognizes this, and directs the federal agencies to follow that law, for a change. In 1960, the Multiple Use Sustained Yield Act directed the Forest Service to manage our national forests for multiple uses, as follows: “the national forests are established and shall be administered for outdoor recreation, range, timber, watershed, and wildlife and fish purposes.” In 1976, the Federal Land Planning and Management Act (FLPMA) gave the Bureau of Land Management its own multiple-use legal requirement. It requires that “the public lands be managed in a manner that will protect the quality of scientific, scenic, historical, ecological, environmental, air and atmospheric, water resource, and archeological values; that, where appropriate, will preserve and protect certain public lands in their natural condition; that will provide food and habitat for fish and wildlife and domestic animals; and that will provide for outdoor recreation and human occupancy and use.”

Furthermore, under FLPMA, “The term ‘multiple use’ means the management of the public lands and their various resource values so that they are utilized in the combination that will best meet the present and future needs of the American people … the use of some land for less than all of the resources; a combination of balanced and diverse resource uses that takes into account the long-term needs of future generations for renewable and nonrenewable resources, including, but not limited to, recreation, range, timber, minerals, watershed, wildlife and fish, and natural scenic, scientific and historical values.”

By directing federal agencies to manage for watersheds, wildlife and fish, public recreation, and other conservation values as multiple uses alongside timber, range, and mineral extraction, Congress put conservation on the same level of extraction on public lands. It’s the law. A strong Conservation Rule gives the agencies marching orders to follow that law, which is a strong and decisive position.

In the endless debates about balancing extractive uses and wringing profits from lands with public recreation and land and wildlife conservation, there are any number of perspectives on the proper balancing of competing uses. How about making the ecological health of the land first among equals, by having a Conservation Rule that specifies that commercial activities, be they livestock grazing, mining, or drilling will be allowed only in cases and at levels where they are compatible with maintaining healthy native ecosystems? The industries themselves are constantly telling us that their activities don’t interfere with, and indeed even promote, abundant wildlife and healthy lands. Let’s put that rhetoric to the test by making it a prerequisite to doing business on public lands or extracting public minerals. These industries say they can do it, indeed they ask the public to believe it. A strong Conservation Rule requiring scientific verification, and consequences for failing to provide that, would place the burden of proof on their shoulders to show that they can live up to their talking points.

The contributions of Indigenous peoples, who had been successfully coexisting with the natural world in North America lands for eons, must be part of a new Conservation Rule. The Biden-era Conservation Rule supported the incorporation of Indigenous knowledge, a good thing. It promised meaningful consultation with Tribal governments, already required by the National Historic Preservation Act for culturally important sites, but expanded consultation to include all aspects of land management in which Tribes have an interest (including fish and wildlife protection). In addition, it allowed Tribal governments to become co-managers of federal lands.

A strong Conservation Rule would continue this co-management policy, but eliminate the special inside influence that state and local governments have exercised as “cooperating agencies.” This privilege has been abused in the past by anti-environmental and pro-extraction state and local governments, which have effectively become lobby groups for the oil, livestock, timber, and mining industries, giving these industries an undeserved inside influence to make their special interests dominant over conservation-oriented multiple uses like public recreation, watersheds, and fish and wildlife. The backroom influence of cooperating agency status has created a privileged role for state and local governments to determine proposed actions and plan alternatives that get adopted by federal agencies, and this needs to stop. Federal public lands are to be managed for all Americans, not just local interests and their economic interests. Let state and local governments comment during the environmental review process just like every other citizen and interest group.

Our land-use agencies designate Sensitive Species, which are plants and wildlife that are disappearing because they are sensitive to human disturbances. Until now, there has been precious little to compel conservation measures to recover these species once they’re listed. Biden’s Conservation Rule recognized that FLPMA requires the Bureau of Land Management to prevent “unnecessary or undue degradation of the lands,” but defined “unnecessary” and “undue” in such vague terms that no conservation gains ever resulted from this mandate. Let’s define “unnecessary” as any activity that could be feasibly accomplished through a lower-impact means or in a lower-impact location, and “undue” as any activity that causes a population decline for any Sensitive Species or a significant loss or degradation of its habitat. “Undue” should also be defined to include livestock grazing that results in anything less than full compliance with Land Health standards. Using rare wildlife and plants, and the ecological health of the land, as barometers for whether commercial activities are allowable gives industries the incentive to develop methods compatible with healthy ecosystems, and provides a yardstick to monitor ongoing uses.

The Biden team was on the right track when they decided to increase protections for Areas of Critical Environmental Concern (ACECs). FLPMA requires agencies to prioritize the designation of these areas whenever a new land-use plan is written, but for decades there was no consistency around whether drawing these lines on the map would create any conservation improvements on the ground. In practice, ACEC designation does not reliably provide more environmental protections. A Conservation Rule should add more enforceable safeguards. It should also retain the Biden Rule provision that lands nominated for ACEC status be protected from degradation while under consideration.

A Conservation Rule could call for the inventory and protection of Bureau of Land Management lands with the same roadless characteristics that the Forest Service already protects. Many species of wildlife, including elk and wolverines, avoid roads and would benefit from keeping wild and undeveloped lands in that state. If minerals were offered for development, there are ways to get at them without putting roads and facilities and mine pits on the surface. And for both agencies, let’s include a requirement to inventory the public lands every 20 years, and establish new Wilderness Study Areas for all lands that qualify.

A Conservation Rule could place a moratorium on federal agencies killing native species of wildlife, except in instances where human life was imminently and directly under threat. It would shut down the livestock industry’s death squad, USDA Wildlife Services, and stop agencies from authorizing commercial users of public lands to kill wildlife. It would shut down dangerous poisoning practices. It would result in naturally-balanced ecosystems and improved biodiversity. This is common sense: The public loves wildlife, and so agencies (and commercial entities who use public lands) should not be in the business of killing them. A moratorium on funding state and local entities to undertake the killing would be necessary to make the policy stick.

Wild horses have been subject of endless controversy, with the majority of the general public supporting them and a tiny minority engaged in the livestock industry opposing them, alongside some state agencies. How about a Conservation Rule that fully implements the Wild and Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act, managing for viable populations of wild horses on those lands where they existed when the law was enacted, and ensuring a thriving natural ecological balance and healthy wildlife populations where the lands have been designated for them? If there are lands designated for wild horses that also are leased for domestic livestock, then if there is a problem with maintaining a thriving natural ecological balance, then the Conservation Rule would require that livestock be eliminated to solve the problem, in accordance with federal regulations already in place (43 CFR § 4710.5). By driving this kind of balanced management and ecologically improved outcomes, the Conservation Rule would NOT for the first time require that conservation goals be achieved in wild horse management, but instead achieve these conservation goals by requiring that federal agencies for the first time follow the laws and regulations that are supposed to guide their actions.

The spread of invasive weeds like cheatgrass, medusahead wildrye, buffelgrass, and ventenata are one of the biggest crises facing western public lands. They destroy wildlife habitat and increase fire risk. A Conservation Rule should address the causes of these invasions – chiefly the destruction or loss of native vegetation and biological soil crusts – by making the maintenance of natives one of the baseline requirements for any authorized activity. And while we’re at it, let’s require agencies to stop planting non-native, invasive plants like crested wheatgrass and forage kochia on public lands, to stave off the next invasive weed problem. A priority should be placed on restoration of native vegetation, which is the best way to give our landscapes the resilience necessary to meet the challenges of climate change and provide for wildlife, plants, and humans into the future.

If we want to tinker with leases on public lands, the idea of creating a new “conservation lease” seems a lesser idea compared to simply letting the public compete for commercial leases alongside commercial exploiters, and then letting them exercise those leases for conservation purposes. Members of the public ought to be able to bid against oil and gas corporations for mineral leases, like Bidder 70 only legally, and then choose not to dig out the minerals and fuel the changing climate. Why not? And for livestock leases, conservation-minded people should be able to buy them and then retire them permanently, letting them go back to nature. Cattle and sheep compete with native wildlife, after all, and often convert native vegetation to unpalatable and fire-prone weed infestations. Letting the public acquire grazing leases – anywhere, at any time – and retire them permanently supports every other multiple use. And as long as livestock grazing occurs somewhere on public lands, the multiple-use requirements of federal law are satisfied. Where that happens, let’s limit forage removal to 25% to leave plenty of forage for the native species.

If we’re going to bother putting together a Conservation Rule, let’s make it a landmark achievement that makes a real difference on the ground. Our public lands are stressed by new challenges – a changing climate with more frequent drought and fire, along with a biodiversity crisis as human-caused disturbances cause native species to wink out across broader and broader geographies. Congress hasn’t produced an environmental law that moved the needle for almost 50 years, since the veritable spate of legislation that gave us the Wilderness Act, the Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act, and so many more. The Roadless Rule was the last Executive Branch initiative that meaningfully improved conservation, and that was 25 years ago. It’s high time for our elected leaders, and their underlings, to put forward an environmental initiative that actually means something. A Conservation Rule to match our mountains, as we suggest here, might just fit the bill.

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Northern Goshawk. Photo: Fish and Wildlife.

The Alliance for the Wild Rockies, Wildlands Defense, Native Ecosystems Council, and Council for Wildlife and Fish sued the U.S. Forest Service in federal district court in Utah for approving logging and burning throughout the Dixie National Forest’s Pine Valley Ranger District in southeast Utah.  Kevin Wright, Supervisor for the Dixie National Forest, authorized the project’s implementation by signing a Decision Notice in May 2025.

The Project will log, masticate, roller mulch, and burn 127,667 acres, which is a substantial portion of the 209,731 acres of the Pine Valley Ranger District.

It’s scientifically proven that logging and burning may actually increase the severity of wildfires by opening up the forest floor to more solar radiation and wind. But we are challenging the Forest Service in court because it’s violating the Dixie National Forest Plan, which has specific requirements for northern goshawk, big game winter range, and old growth habitat.

Plan would destroy old growth forests that are critical to Northern Goshawk and Pinyon Jay habitat

The Dixie Forest Plan requires the agency to maintain at least the minimum level of goshawk habitat needed to ensure a viable population.  Yet the Forest Service failed to even estimate how much habitat is required for goshawks according to the best available science, or how much habitat will be destroyed by the project.

The Dixie National Forest Plan requires the agency to manage each drainage in the Forest to ensure that 7-10% are old growth forests. The agency’s own data shows that the forest currently has less mature and old growth than required.  In spite of this, the Pine Valley project calls for logging and burning even more of what’s left of the old growth forest.

The sad fact is that goshawk numbers have plummeted. Given that goshawks are very specifically dependent on mature and old growth forests, which are already severely lacking in the Dixie National Forest, the project would only result in even more destruction of critical goshawk habitat.

Moreover, Pinyon Jay populations have nose-dived — plummeting by over 85 percent in the last 50 years — mainly due to habitat loss caused by Forest Service and BLM deforestation projects. Yet this project will add to that decline by destroying the very pinyon pine and juniper trees that pinyon jays rely on to survive.

Big game will suffer

Much to the disappointment of hunters, the Dixie National Forest’s deer population was at 57,000 in 2023.  That’s 10,000 deer below their objective. The Forest Plan requirement for big game habitat requires the agency to maintain at least 30 percent of shrub plants in a mature age, and at least 10 percent in a young stage in big game winter range.

Yet the agency’s knee-jerk reaction to this population decline is to burn even more of the juniper and other forage plants that deer need to survive the winter.  Last summer, a lightning-caused fire already burned through the roadless areas in Pine Valley last summer. Hunters surely can’t be happy that the federal government wants to spend their tax dollars destroying even more big game habitat.

Plan won’t reduce wildfires, but will harm public health

The Forest Service claims they are doing this to protect homes from wildfire.  But the agency’s top wildfire scientist found the only way to effectively protect homes from wildfires is by having nonflammable roofs and decks and trimming shrubs and trees up to 100 feet out from a house.  Anything beyond that is a waste of money and destroys wildlife habitat.

The Forest Service estimates it will take ten years to complete the project, which means people in southeast Utah will have to suffer through ten springs and falls of smoke-filled air. According to Dr. Brian Moench of Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment: “Prescribed burns have never been shown to reduce the public’s overall exposure to forest fire smoke.  In fact, a recent study found that as many people die from prescribed burn smoke as from wildfire smoke. It’s unfortunate that the only way to protect public health from ten years of Forest Service malpractice is to take them to court.”

Forest Service already lost on these same issues in 2006

The Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled for the Alliance and against the Dixie National Forest on these same issues in 2006.  Yet the Forest Service is routinely operating outside the law by destroying wildlife and their habitat.  By doing so, the federal government is forcing grassroots forest activists to exercise our First Amendment rights and the citizen enforcement provisions in the law to challenge their decision in court. That’s exactly what we’re doing.

Please consider helping up in our efforts.

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