Renowned Scholar Zhang Weiwei Explains The ‘China Model’
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Bull trout lost approximately 60 percent of their historic range before they were even listed as ‘threatened’ on the Endangered Species List in 1998. Yet the Forest Service wants to bulldoze and clearcut some of Montana’s few remaining, most pristine, bull trout watersheds that flow out of the Great Burn of 1910 area. Given the bull trout’s struggle against extinction, we’re going to court to halt this highly destructive project.
The Alliance for the Wild Rockies filed a lawsuit on August 22 in federal district court in Missoula challenging the Redd Bull 2 logging project in the Superior Ranger District of the Lolo National Forest west of St. Regis, Montana.
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George Ochenski (left) and Bud Lilly (right) pictured here in 2007. Photo courtesy of George Ochenski.
A paean is “a fervent expression of joy or praise.” When it comes to the long and ongoing struggle to preserve the incredible legacy of Montana’s world-famous trout fishing rivers and streams, Bud Lilly, who was recently inducted into the National Fly Fishing Hall of Fame, deserves every bit of the praise — and the joy.
For thousands of young anglers the beautiful flies pictured in Bud Lilly’s catalog brought dreams of fishing the Holy Waters of Montana’s legendary trout streams. For those lucky enough to actually spend time in Bud’s West Yellowstone Trout Shop, the array of those concoctions of fur and feathers tied so artfully on tiny hooks was dizzying — although few of us had enough money to buy even a fraction of what we so fervently wanted to tie to our leaders.
But for Bud, it wasn’t all about commerce. He’d gladly take the time to help young and/or inexperienced fly anglers pick “the right flies for the right places” with a humility and kindness that belayed his national and world-wide fame.
His was not the false bravado so common these days, where anglers feel a need to hold their trout so they can post pictures online to brag of their catch. Quite the opposite.
He knew the rivers intimately — among them, the Gallatin, Madison, Jefferson, as well as the Firehole, Gibbon, and Madison headwaters in Yellowstone National Park. The depth of his knowledge was no surprise since he grew up fishing those rivers. Initially he did so to feed his family during the sparse days of the Great Depression when the primary goal was “catch and release in bacon grease” and the “end of the rainbow” was a black cast iron pan.
That would change as he realized that, like so many things, the wild trout of Montana and the rivers and streams upon which they relied were not infinite. He pioneered the ethic that catching these wild, leaping, beautiful fish was in itself the great pleasure — and that killing and eating every one would soon leave the rivers fished out and barren.
My personal friendship with Bud spanned nearly a half-century and went far beyond what flies to use in what rivers. For decades we wrestled in the policy arena to pass legislation that actually protected the aquatic ecosystems essential for Montana’s wild trout.
Make no mistake, the challenges to keep the great rivers continue to be many, varied, and increasing. Far too many irrigators still believe that water left instream to keep a river and its fish healthy is water wasted. In part, that attitude is fostered by the strictures of western water law that keeping a valid water right means “use it or lose it” — despite the riverine consequences.
Likewise, rivers that support healthy wild trout populations must have clean and cold water, which means minimizing sedimentation, nutrients, and the ever-increasing variety of pollutants from herbicides, pesticides, pharmaceuticals and fertilizers. Bud knew all this — and was a stalwart advocate and fierce comrade-in-arms to his final days.
While his induction in the National Fly Fishing Hall of Fame is indeed a great honor to his life and work, the fact is that work is now more important than ever as Montana’s legendary trout waters face the grim challenges of climate change, development, and chronic dewatering.
Although Bud is now casting in the clouds, I have a hunch he’s still saying “go get ’em and fight for the rivers and fish” — and the real honor to his incredible life and legacy is to do just that.
The post A Paean to Bud Lilly, a Trout’s Best Friend appeared first on CounterPunch.org.
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Bull trout swimming. Photo: US Fish and Wildlife Service.
Bull trout lost approximately 60 percent of their historic range before they were even listed as ‘threatened’ on the Endangered Species List in 1998. Yet the Forest Service wants to bulldoze and clearcut some of Montana’s few remaining, most pristine, bull trout watersheds that flow out of the Great Burn of 1910 area. Given the bull trout’s struggle against extinction, we’re going to court to halt this highly destructive project.
The Alliance for the Wild Rockies filed a lawsuit on August 22 in federal district court in Missoula challenging the Redd Bull 2 logging project in the Superior Ranger District of the Lolo National Forest west of St. Regis, Montana.
The challenged decision authorizes logging on 6,408 acres, including 4,903 acres of clearcutting with individual clearcuts up to 973 acres (more than 1.5 square miles) in size in Federally Designated Bull Trout Critical Habitat. Add to that the intentional burning and 1,404 acres of commercial thinning, and this is a recipe for more sedimentation, less shade, and hotter, dirtier streams — the exact opposite of what bull trout require for their very survival.
Bull trout’s precipitous decline is primarily due to a number of human-caused impacts. These include habitat degradation and fragmentation; blockage of migratory corridors by roads, culverts and/or dams; poor water quality from sediment and/or pollutants; competition and predation due to the introduction of non-native fish; impoundments and water diversions.
Global warming is increasingly heating the cold water that bull trout need to survive. Yet the Forest Service is doing the opposite of what it should be doing as required by the Endangered Species Act to maintain and restore bull trout since they were listed as ‘threatened’ 26 years ago.
The science is very clear and undisputed. To live and successfully reproduce, bull trout require very specific habitat parameters that are best summed up by the Five Cs.
• Clean water with very little fine sediment in the stream bottom. Fine sediment fills the spaces in the spawning gravel which restricts oxygen flow and smothers bull trout eggs.
• Cold water. Bull trout will only spawn in the fall when water temperatures fall to 48 degrees F. If water temperatures rise above 59 degrees F it restricts migration and use of available habitats since the trout will avoid those warmer waters.
• Complex streams with intact riparian vegetation to provide shade, woody debris, bank stability, clean gravel and cobble substrate, gentle stream slopes and deep pools.
• Connected watersheds that allow the fish to migrate to and from their small spawning streams and mature in lakes or rivers, traveling up to 150 miles. They return to the streams where they were spawned, but unlike salmon, bull trout do not die after spawning and make the return journey between stream and lake many times in their life.
• Comprehensive protection and restoration of bull trout habitat must be done throughout the range of this native fish.
The Forest Service’s Fisheries Effects Analysis document notes the Little Joe Watershed is considered one of the most important bull trout spawning reaches not only in the Redd Bull project area, but potentially even the entire Middle Clark Fork River bull trout core area.
The effects to bull trout will stem from the 23.5 miles of log haul roads that will dump sediment into occupied bull trout critical habitat (6 miles in Ward Creek, 8.5 miles in North Fork Little Joe, and 9 miles in Dry Creek). When heavy log trucks drive on dirt roads next to a stream they push a lot of sediment from the road into the stream.
The Forest Service’s own sediment modeling shows additional sediment would be caused by more logging roads, bulldozing open overgrown roads, building new roads, and increasing traffic. But the Forest Service also acknowledges that they have limited success at reducing sediment delivery into streams which destroys bull trout habitat.
We don’t like having to have to go to court over and over to force a recalcitrant government agency to follow the law and do its job under the Endangered Species Act. But the Forest Service plans to continue to destroy bull trout habitat through deforestation, road-building, and intentional burning over vast areas.
The result? The agency’s actions are causing bull trout populations in Montana, which is one of the last refuges for these native fish, to slide inexorably into extirpation and extinction—and we will not allow that to happen without a fight.
If you think clean water, bull trout and bull trout critical habitat are worth fighting for please consider helping us protect bull trout habitat.
The post Alliance for the Wild Rockies Files Lawsuit to Stop Massive Clearcutting Project in Bull Trout Critical Habitat Watershed appeared first on CounterPunch.org.
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This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with MLK50. Sign up for Dispatches to get our stories in your inbox every week.
Marilyn Gooch was already skeptical about one of her newest neighbors, xAI’s supercomputing facility, when her cousin walked across the street in June with a blue mailer from the Greater Memphis Chamber of Commerce.
Her cousin didn’t know what to make of the postcard featuring the logos of nine local, state and federal agencies and the chamber’s assurance that billionaire Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company operated “in full compliance with all applicable federal, state, and local regulations and oversight.” The facility — part of Musk’s bid to dominate the AI market — opened at a breakneck pace almost a year before, brought to Memphis, Tennessee, largely due to the efforts of the local Chamber of Commerce.
Across the country, communities are grappling with the boom of data centers and supercomputing facilities, which consume voracious amounts of electricity and water and can emit smog-producing pollutants. In places from Maricopa County, Arizona, to Prince William County, Virginia, residents have used zoning restrictions as a means to keep supercomputers at bay — an option not available to Memphians because the xAI building was already zoned for industrial use.
Since the opening of the xAI supercomputing facility, Gooch had joined residents and environmental justice advocates sounding off at meetings about potential health impacts of xAI. She learned about the area’s already high concentration of toxic emissions from nearby industrial plants, including an oil refinery, and the county’s high asthma rates.
Of greatest concern: the emissions from the dozens of methane gas turbines — each roughly the size of a semitrailer — that were initially used to power xAI’s new facility located less than 2 miles from her home in southwest Memphis. Based on its analysis of county health ordinances and federal regulations, the Southern Environmental Law Center has asserted in multiple official and legal documents that these turbines violated the Clean Air Act and should never have been allowed; the Shelby County Health Department disagrees.
Gooch saw the mailer as an attempt to quiet their concerns.
First image: Heat shimmers above gas turbines at the Memphis, Tennessee, xAI site in April. Second image: Marilyn Gooch. (First image: Ariel J. Cobbert for MLK50. Second image: Kevin Wurm/MLK50/CatchLight Local/Report for America.)In the face of intense public opposition, the chamber has gone to unusual lengths to promote xAI, whose $12 billion investment the chamber believes will transform the shrinking city into a global hub of technological innovation. The chamber wants Memphis to be known as part of the “Digital Delta,” expanding beyond its blue-collar identity as the distribution capital of the country and FedEx headquarters.
This all-out push includes a five-member special operations team to provide what it calls “round-the-clock concierge service” to ensure “seamless execution of the company’s rapid expansion plans.” The chamber also managed xAI’s PR efforts, and while it has not held open public meetings about xAI, it hosted at least 12 invitation-only meetings to tout the project’s benefits to Memphis. And the chamber sent its first mailer in recent memory, which spread incorrect information about the governmental oversight in place to monitor Musk’s new facility.
Former chamber president Beverly Robertson said she can’t recall another instance of the chamber doing such a full-court press for a company — but then again, she and others noted, Memphis has never attracted a company of xAI’s scale.
The public had no input into the opening of the facility in their community. As a private business, xAI had no obligation to seek community feedback, the chamber has said. And because xAI did not seek or receive tax incentives, it wasn’t subject to review from government bodies or elected officials, some of whom learned about xAI’s arrival from the news.
The community’s lone chance to hear from xAI in person came in April during a heated health department hearing about residents’ concerns over the gas turbines. Brent Mayo, an xAI executive, read a statement about the company’s plans to meet the highest emissions standards. He left before the public comment period began.
An xAI spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment about the chamber’s mailer or to questions about the number of gas turbines powering the supercomputer.
The Chamber of Commerce announced xAI’s arrival with a page on its website titled “xAI Marks Its Spot in Memphis” over a photo of Mayo, center, flanked by chamber employees. (Screenshot by MLK50)In this reliably Democratic and majority-Black city, some residents were upset by Musk’s alignment with President Donald Trump, his brief tenure as the chainsaw-wielding head of the Department of Government Efficiency, and the antisemitic and racist posts from xAI’s chatbot Grok, which is powered by the supercomputer known as Colossus. In response to this criticism, the chamber says it defends projects, not people.
But what dominated the civic discussion was potential damage to the region’s air from xAI’s temporary turbines, especially the nitrogen oxides and formaldehyde they can emit, which contribute to smog. Even with brief exposure, smog increases the risk of respiratory problems, asthma and heart diseases, according to the World Health Organization.
The mailers sent in mid-June to residents in at least two neighborhoods, including Gooch’s, appeared to be addressing those fears, asserting that the chamber “will continue to prioritize compliance with existing standards and policies.”
For seven generations, Gooch’s family has lived in Boxtown, a Black neighborhood in southwest Memphis. Environmental justice activists say Boxtown has been plagued for decades by pollution from nearby industrial plants. In Gooch’s ZIP code, the median household income is just shy of $37,000 and the poverty rate is twice that of the city as a whole.
Boxtown residents gathered for a National Night Out event in the neighborhood in August. (Kevin Wurm/MLK50/CatchLight Local/Report for America)Gooch took the mailer from her cousin and scanned the alphabet soup of agency acronyms for the nine the chamber claims have “regulatory oversight and authority over xAI’s Supercomputing Facility.” Before retiring, she worked in human resources for 25 years and maintained workplace safety reports. “There’s no way they’re going to be monitoring and looking at all this,” she remembers thinking. “That’s so far beyond their reach.”
Only two agencies on that mailer have clear oversight over xAI’s impact on air quality and public health, the community’s primary concerns. The first is the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which under the Trump administration aims to make the United States the world’s AI capital. Local oversight falls to the Shelby County Health Department, which says it is installing a long-awaited air monitor in south Memphis. Both agencies help ensure compliance with the Clean Air Act, the enforcement of which the current administration is weakening as part of a pattern of broader environmental rollbacks.
Two other agencies represented on the card — Memphis Light, Gas and Water Division and the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation — told MLK50: Justice Through Journalism and ProPublica that they have no authority over xAI’s supercomputing facility. The other five agencies say they do oversee some aspects of the facility, such as fire safety, zoning or potential whistleblower complaints — none of which address the health concerns that most preoccupied the community.
The mailer sent by Greater Memphis Chamber of Commerce in June (MLK50)The “Chamber’s mailer stating MLGW has regulatory oversight and authority over the xAI facility is in error. MLGW does not have regulatory authority or oversight of xAI or any business,” Ursula Madden, Memphis Light, Gas and Water’s spokesperson, said in an email.
Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation spokesperson Jennifer Donnals said in an email that “TDEC does not have regulatory oversight over supercomputer facilities.” The agency issued a permit related to construction and stormwater management at the Colossus site, she said.
Bobby White, the chamber’s chief government affairs officer, who said he wrote the text featured in the mailer, told MLK50 and ProPublica that he’d used the word regulatory “loosely.” He said the chamber sent the mailers to show residents that xAI didn’t set up shop in Memphis without consulting with anyone.
”It has been my intent to make sure people have understood that the company has essentially abided by rules and law as they currently exist,” White said in a written statement. “I have also in public and private ways tried to advise activists and leaders that changing this company’s or any company’s behavior comes down to changing the policy that allows for it.”
One of xAI’s staunchest critics is State Rep. Justin J. Pearson, who represents a majority-Black district that includes Boxtown. Memphis Community Against Pollution, co-founded by Justin Pearson and now run by his brother KeShaun Pearson, was at the forefront of the fight to get the Shelby County Health Department to deny xAI’s permit for 15 permanent turbines. It was joined by other local groups including Young, Gifted & Green, the Chickasaw Group of the Sierra Club and Tigers Against Pollution.
State Rep. Justin J. Pearson, standing on the right, is one of xAI’s staunchest critics. (Andrea Morales/MLK50)Justin Pearson said the chamber’s mailer misled residents by including agencies that have no authority or only indirect authority over xAI.
“It’s the red handkerchief of the magician,” Pearson said. “The propaganda that they are putting out to try and convince people that there’s nothing to see here, there’s nothing to worry about, is only at the behest of a multibillion-dollar corporation.”
White said xAI did not ask the chamber to send the mailer and accused environmental activists of misleading residents with claims that “the turbines were somehow operating counter to existing policy and regulations.” He said he got involved after seeing his former sixth grade teacher, church members and community leaders he’s worked with for years at a “raucous town hall meeting on the subject of gas turbines, where people were being whipped into a frenzy and still leaving without good information.”
The chamber emphasized White’s message in a more nuanced way in a July webinar held less than a month after the mailers arrived in Gooch’s neighborhood: “XAl’s presence in Memphis has occurred with the oversight of, input from, and/or strategic alignment with the following agencies/organizations,” read a slide, with the logos of the same agencies.
Chambers of commerce exist to promote businesses and lobby for a pro-business climate, said Darrin Wilson, an associate professor at Northern Kentucky University who studies local economic development. But he said pro-business organizations should still be expected to provide accurate information.
“You want to make sure that the residents of Memphis and Shelby County have 100% accurate and full information around something that is going to impact their day-to-day lives,” he said, “so that they can make decisions for themselves and advocate on their own behalf.”
First and third images: Tigers Against Pollution, an environmental group, protest against xAI at the Shelby County Health Department in Memphis in July. Second image: Surveillance cameras monitor xAI’s Colossus site. (Kevin Wurm/MLK50/CatchLight Local/Report for America)The chamber maintains that xAI is an indisputable win for the city, expected to create an estimated 500 high-paying jobs and, in the first year alone, generate tens of millions of dollars in city and county property taxes, soaring to as much as $100 million next year. The city’s mayor plans to direct 25% of tax revenues from xAI’s first facility to the neighborhoods closest to the operation. xAI has recently committed to funding repairs and new athletic fields at four neighborhood public schools.
According to press reports, xAI’s presence is continuing to expand in the Memphis area. Its second supercomputer facility, Colossus 2, is expected to come online soon. Musk has announced he’s moving a power plant from overseas to power Colossus 2. And just across the state line in Mississippi, an xAI-affiliated firm purchased the site of a former Duke Energy power plant less than 2 miles from Colossus 2.
After months of weighing whether to approve xAI’s permit request to operate 15 permanent, cleaner turbines, the county health department granted the permit in July. The Southern Environmental Law Center has appealed the permit decision to the Shelby County Air Pollution Control board, an appointed body that hears such protests. The health department did not publicly explain its decision to grant the permit.
A gas turbine outside xAI in March, four months before the Shelby County Health Department approved a permit for 15 permanent turbines. (Andrea Morales/MLK50)The chamber says that xAI has taken a number of steps to address environmental concerns. It claims that emissions from the permanent turbines, which will be a backup power source, will be far less than the maximum the EPA allows. To protect the electrical grid in times of peak demand, xAI is also using Tesla Megapack batteries as another backup power source.
In addition, the company is building an $80 million wastewater facility that will allow xAI, plus the Tennessee Valley Authority and a nearby steel manufacturer, to use recycled water to cool their plants instead of relying on the aquifer the region depends on.
“What we’re really seeing is a company that, quite frankly, is doing as much as you could hope a company would do in terms of being environmentally conscious,” White said.
Still, people in Gooch’s neighborhood have reason to worry about air quality. Last year, the American Lung Association gave Shelby County an F grade for ozone, an air pollutant that contributes to smog. The county also has the state’s highest rate of ER visits for asthma, and the city has been named an asthma capital by the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America.
In southwest Memphis, the cumulative cancer risk associated with exposure to 13 carcinogens in the air was 4 times higher than the national average, according to a 2013 study by University of Memphis researchers.
Many of Marilyn Gooch’s relatives are buried at Boxtown’s New Park Memorial Gardens. (Kevin Wurm/MLK50/CatchLight Local/Report for America)“Every family member that I’ve had that lived in the Boxtown area has died of some form of cancer,” Gooch said, acknowledging that some were smokers.
Gooch, a member of the Boxtown Neighborhood Association, attended one of White’s xAI presentations at a nearby church this spring. She remembers White saying that Memphis needs more tax revenue and can’t afford to let xAI, or other companies, slide across the state line to Mississippi.
She’d planned to ask questions, but after listening to White focus on the finances, she decided not to.
“His whole spiel was about money, economics,” she recalled. “Not all money is good money.”
This post was originally published on ProPublica.
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From Sunday 24 August to the 24 September, Extinction Rebellion’s Dirty Water campaign is launching the World Water Wedding, with a range of actions for people to pledge their troth to protect rivers and water bodies across the country.
World Water Wedding: campaigners to pledge to protect UK rivers
Actions will range from hand-fastings and other commitment ceremonies on riverbanks, to direct action against water companies, other polluters, and authorities.
The campaign will build up into next year to a global day of action on World Water Day, 22 March 2026. People around the world will marry their local water sources in mass weddings and commit to their care for life.
Writer and campaigner Meg Avon from Bristol inspired the campaign. In 2023, she married the River Avon and took their name to raise awareness of the gruesome condition of the rivers. Like most water bodies in the UK, sewage, chemicals, and other pollution, is choking the Avon. This pollution is making water bodies unsafe for swimmers, watersports, and wildlife.
England has some of the filthiest rivers in Europe. Since Meg’s wedding, the state of the UK’s waterways has remained dire. Companies made an estimated 994,499 sewage discharges into rivers and other water bodies in 2024 – almost one discharge every 30 seconds. The amount of sewage entering the water has been increasing year after year. It rose to 60% in 2024, intensifying an ecological crisis that has been mounting for decades.
Water companies pumping out pollution and PR disinformation
The government and regulators legally allow water companies to discharge untreated wastewater through sewer overflows during periods of heavy rain. However, they have started to do so with alarming frequency and not only when raining. A 2025 study found that England’s major water and sewage companies have been misleading the public and government. Notably, the companies use duplicitous greenwashing and disinformation strategies which mirror those of the tobacco and fossil fuel industries.
Thousands of people fall sick in the UK each year after swimming, watersports, or other contact with polluted water. The broken water system has also resulted in contaminated drinking water. Moreover, polluted and ecologically barren water bodies are a significant cause of the biodiversity crisis, failing to provide a healthy habitat for plants, invertebrates, fish, birds, and mammals.
World water weddings symbolise peoples’ love for and lifelong commitment to protect their local water. They can be seen as part of the wider movement of campaigning for the rights of nature and shifting the dial towards a more equal partnership with and integration in our ecosystems.
Rights of the river
The River Ouse made history this year as the first river in the UK to be granted legal rights as a living entity with an intrinsic right to exist. In 2024, co-founder of Lawyers for Nature, Paul Powlesland, became the first juror to swear an oath on a vial of river water in court, declaring the river to be sacred.
On the first day of the World Water Weddings campaign, activists will get engaged to their chosen water, be it rain, river, lake, sea, or puddle. They will commit to marry it on World Water Day on the 22 March 2026. In Worthing, this will take the form of a water commitment ceremony on the beach. Campaigners will carry out similar events at waterside locations up and down the country.
At the end of August, the Red Rebel Brigade will gather on Westminster Bridge in London for a 21 metre banner drop over the Thames. The banner will carry the message “Stop polluting our rivers”. Bands will march from Tower Bridge to Thames Beach on the Southbank, drumming alongside a boat that will journey from Limehouse to parliament. On the beach, Sacred Earth will perform a ceremony of dedication to the river.
On World Rivers Day, the 28 September, campaigners will mark the end of the month of actions. They will come together for funerals, grieving, recommitment ceremonies, and non-violent direct actions.
Relationships with rivers: campaigners gear up for ‘unconventional wedding bliss’
Meg Avon, who married the River Avon in 2023, said:
As the UK’s first known river bride, I am so excited to no longer be alone in my role of unconventional wedding bliss! Having a wedding and becoming married to water is such a beautiful way of stepping forward as a guardian – it can be as public or personal as you want it to be. I believe that every ceremony is a story, and many ceremonies of similar intention have the power to change the law. We are becoming kin with our landscape and natural entities once again and the timing has never been more perfect.
61-year-old Denise Ashurst, from Cwmcarn in the Welsh Valleys, said:
I am regularly charmed by rain and dew, whenever walking with my dog in local woods. My face brushing dew from leaves, or listening to rain drumming my body as I walk below the trees make me feel open-hearted and full of love, so I’m committing to learning more about what makes this relationship work.
Ned Evans, a 60 year-old teacher from Holmfirth, said:
I have the most beautiful reservoirs near me in West Yorkshire which serve as vital water sources and are important for overwintering bird populations, including the protected red kite species. The reservoir levels are at a historic low for August, standing at 42.2% capacity, significantly below the usual range of 65% to 80% for this time of year, due to a prolonged drought and the driest spring and summer on record. As far as I know, this recent lack of rainfall is due to the climate emergency and increasing temperatures disrupting weather patterns, which likely means the levels will get lower each year and that leads to higher concentrations of impurities as the volume of water decreases. Water for me means life and I find it heartbreaking to see how much our pollution is damaging water and wildlife so I’ve decided to join the World Water Wedding campaign and commit to protect water. I’m going to hold a quiet personal ceremony by the edge of my nearest local reservoir, Winscar, on the 24th August and then send out my wedding invites to everyone I know to get dressed up and join me on World Water Day, Sunday 22nd March 2026, for a fun and joyous celebration of water.
Steve Conlon, 70, a retired IT Manager from Twickenham, said:
I have lived in a boat on the tidal Thames for nearly thirty years now and I love it, but discovering sewage pollution locally was very distressing. Becoming aware of the real scale of what was happening was heart-breaking. I have learned that critical water issues, from conservation, ecology, pollution, flooding and drought as well as corrupt utilities and ideology-fixated politicians, are interlinked. We need to pay attention to all of them together. This interdependence was addressed by Mark Lloyd, the chief executive of the Rivers Trust, who was quoted in the Guardian this week about our current water shortages, ‘We need to build more resilience into our rivers and their catchment areas with nature-based solutions at scale, such as healthy soils that allow water to filter into the ground and not rush off taking the soil with it; riverside tree planting to provide shade and further slow the flow of water; wetlands to store and slowly release water, and rewiggling streams to raise the water table and purify pollutants.’ If we attend properly to water throughout our environment, that is a true collective act of love, and an affirmation of life.
Featured image supplied
By The Canary
This post was originally published on Canary.
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Commissioners in a Georgia county unanimously decided to delay a vote on contentious new rules governing massive data center projects, during a meeting that drew an unusual overflow crowd.
Dozens of local residents packed the Commissioner Chambers in Newnan, 40 miles southwest of Atlanta, with more standing outside. Many wore red to show their unified opposition to “Project Sail,” a $17 billion “hyperscale” data center proposed in the Coweta County community of Sargent.
“Folks, we’ve got a long night ahead of us,” said County Commission Chairman Bill McKenzie at the start of the August 19 evening meeting, according to a livestream.
The post Georgia County Puts Off Key Data Center Vote appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.
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The Department of the Interior, or DOI, has such a wide-ranging set of duties that it’s sometimes referred to in Washington, D.C., as “the department of everything else” — public lands, natural resources, wildlife regulations, and the Bureau of Indian Affairs all fall under its auspices. It is now also the tip of the spear in the Trump administration’s war on renewables. On July 17…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
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“Speak Up Kōrerotia” — a radio show centred on human rights issues — has featured a nuclear-free Pacific and other issues in this week’s show.
Encouraging discussion on human rights issues in both Canterbury and New Zealand, Speak Up Kōrerotia offers a forum to provide a voice for affected communities.
Engaging in conversations around human rights issues in the country, each show covers a different human rights issue with guests from or working with the communities.
Analysing and asking questions of the realities of life allows Speak Up Kōrerotia to cover the issues that often go untouched.
Discussing the hard-hitting topics, Speak Up Kōrerotia encourages listeners to reflect on the issues covered.
Hosted by Dr Sally Carlton, the show brings key issues to the fore and provides space for guests to “Speak Up” and share their thoughts and experiences.
The latest episode today highlights the July/August 2025 marking of two major anniversaries — 80 years since the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan, and 40 years since the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior here in Aotearoa.
What do these anniversaries mean in the context of 2025, with the ever-greater escalation of global tension and a new nuclear arms race occurring alongside the seeming impotence of the UN and other international bodies?
Anti-nuclear advocacy in 2025 Video/audio podcast: Speak Up Kōrerotia
Speak Up Kōrerotia . . . human rights at Plains FM Image: Screenshot Guests: Disarmament advocate Dr Kate Dewes, journalist and author Dr David Robie, critical nuclear studies academic Dr Karly Burch and Japanese gender literature professor Dr Susan Bouterey bring passion, a wealth of knowledge and decades of anti-nuclear advocacy to this discussion.
Dr Robie’s new book Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage and Legacy of the Rainbow Warrior was launched on the anniversary of the ship’s bombing. This revised edition has extensive new and updated material, images, and a prologue by former NZ prime minister Helen Clark.
The Speak Up Kōrerotia panel in today’s show, “Anti-Nuclear Advocacy in 2025”, Dr Kate Dewes (from left), Sally Carlton, Dr David Robie, Dr Karly Burch and Susan Bouterey. Image: Screenshot This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.
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County commissioners in Georgia may pave the way for a $17 billion “hyperscale” data center on Tuesday by adopting new planning laws shaped by industry lobbyists.
If passed, the latest draft of the laws will ease requirements for “Project Sail” — a proposed data center in a rural area of Coweta County, 40 miles southwest of Atlanta — relative to a more stringent version proposed last month.
One of the biggest planned complexes of its kind, Project Sail is a joint venture between San Francisco-based Prologis (NYSE:PLD), the world’s largest industrial real estate company, and Georgia-based developer Atlas Development.
A DeSmog review of public records suggests that industry lobbyists and company representatives prevailed upon Coweta County officials to dilute earlier versions of the proposed planning rules for data centers.
The post Data Center Lobbyists Clear The Way For Mega-Projects In Rural Georgia appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
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Lamar River, Yellowstone. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair.
Anyone who drives around the state of Montana right now can see one unassailable truth: our state’ renowned rivers and the prized fish which inhabit them are in big trouble. From east to west, north to south our great rivers have withered to tiny ribbons of water, un-floatable for most recreation and uninhabitable for our native and prized trout species.
When rivers shrink, algae explodes and temperatures soar, as sunlight penetrates the water from top to bottom. As the algae decays, it consumes oxygen, turning what was a perfectly oxygenated, cold-water fish habitat into a hypoxic dead zone, where nothing can survive.
Anyone who has lived in Montana for more than a few seasons can tell: these symptoms are no longer rare events, happening every so often. Now, it seems, this is the new normal. Like many things in nature, the reason for our declining surface water supplies is multifaceted. Climate change is inducing drought, year over year, while demand for water soars as every inch of Montana is bought up and groundwater is given away for new development. Simultaneously, the state is allowing unlimited nutrient pollution through categorical exclusions from water quality protections. Where these political realities meet is at a dead river. Where they began is with Governor Gianforte’s Red Tape Initiative.
So what can the state of Montana do about it? We could start by enforcing the states’ public water rights, which have the exact legal purpose of protecting in-stream flows. That’s right – the state owns water rights and they are a part of the public trust, like our right of stream access. That means the state must protect those interests, above all else, or they violate our constitutional rights. Yet, in pursuit of its political pro-business agenda, the Gianforte administration is refusing to exercise these rights on our behalf. Instead, the very water that is supposed to be left in our rivers, is exploding out of private center pivots everywhere you look.
Since fish can’t sue, the Alliance for the Wild Rockies, Upper Missouri Waterkeeper and Save the Bull Trout are suing for the fish and also for people who recreate on our world class rivers. In Montana, like much of the West, water is property and that property is extremely valuable in our arid climate. Without question, ranchers have a right to use water but so to do the fish and the people of Montana.
The most valuable right the public owns is located where the Blackfoot River joins the Clark Fork River at the site of the former Milltown Dam.
The Montana Power Company was granted 2000 cfs for its water right when the dam was built in 1904 as an instream hydropower right to generate electricity. In 2008, the State of Montana acquired this very senior water right through the Upper Clark Fork River Basin Superfund settlement with the intent that the water right would be used to restore the fishery and recreational uses. Yet, during the hottest and driest period on record, when the famed Blackfoot river has been in the 0% percentile of flows all summer, Montana Fish Wildlife and Parks and Governor Gianforte have not enforced our rights.
This is but one example of the tragedy that is unfolding.
Simply put, our lawsuit alleges that Montana Fish Wildlife and Parks has a duty to enforce and protect its water rights by making a call to support minimum flows designed to protect aquatic life because state held instream flow rights are part of the public trust and thus the agency is constitutionally mandated to utilize them to protect our right to a clean and healthy environment.
Afterall, there is nothing more antithetical to a clean and healthy environment than a dead, dry river.
Please consider joining us to protect our rivers that are world famous, not just for fishing but also for floating and swimming.
The post The State of Montana is Failing to Protect the Public’s Water and Fish appeared first on CounterPunch.org.
This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Mike Garrity.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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REVIEW: By Jenny Nicholls
Author David Robie left his cabin on the Rainbow Warrior three days before it was blown up by the Directorate General for External Security (DGSE), France’s foreign intelligence agency
The ship was destroyed at Marsden Wharf on 10 July 1985 by two limpet mines attached
below the waterline.As New Zealand soon learned to its shock, the second explosion killed crew member and photographer Fernando Pereira as he tried to retrieve his cameras.
“I had planned to spend the night of the bombing onboard with my two young sons, to give them a brief taste of shipboard life,” Dr Robie writes. “At the last moment I decided to leave it to another night.”
He left the ship after 11 weeks documenting what turned out to be the last of her humanitarian missions — a voyage which highlighted the exploitation of Pacific nations
by countries who used them to test nuclear weapons.Dr Robie was the only journalist on board to cover both the evacuation of the people
of Rongelap Atoll after their land, fishing grounds and bodies were ravaged by US nuclear fallout, and the continued voyage to nuclear-free Vanuatu and New Zealand.Eyes of Fire is not only the authoritative biography of the Rainbow Warrior and her
missions, but a gripping account of the infiltration of Greenpeace by a French spy, the bombing, its planning, the capture of the French agents, the political fallout, and ongoing
challenges for Pacific nations.Dr Robie corrects the widely held belief that the first explosion on the Rainbow Warrior
was intended as a warning, to avoid loss of life. No, it turns out, the French state really
did mean to kill people.“It was remarkable,” he writes, “that Fernando Pereira was the only person who
died.”The explosives were set to detonate shortly before midnight, when members of the
crew would be asleep. (One of them was the ship’s relief cook, Waihekean Margaret Mills. She awoke in the nick of time. The next explosion blew in the wall of her cabin).“Two cabins on the main deck had their floors ruptured by pieces of steel flying from
the [first] engine room blast,” writes Dr Robie.“By chance, the four crew who slept in those rooms were not on board. If they had been,
they almost certainly would have been killed.”
Eyes of Fire author David Robie with Rainbow Warrior III . . . not only an account of the Rongelap humanitarian voyage, but also a gripping account of the infiltration of Greenpeace and the bombing. Image: Asia Pacific Report Eyes of Fire was first published in 1986 — and also in the UK and USA, and has been reissued in 2005, 2015 and again this year to coincide with the 40th anniversary
of the bombing.If you are lucky enough to own the first edition, you will find plenty that is new here; updated text, an index, new photographs, a prologue by former NZ prime minister Helen Clark and a searing preface by Waihekean Bunny McDiarmid, former executive director
of Greenpeace International.As you would expect from the former head of journalism schools at the University
of Papua New Guinea and University of the South Pacific, and founder of AUT’s Pacific Media Centre, Eyes of Fire is not only a brilliant piece of research, it is an absolutely
fascinating read, filled with human detail.The bombing and its aftermath make up a couple of chapters in a book which covers an enormous amount of ground.
Professor David Robie is a photographer, journalist and teacher who was awarded an MNZM in 2024 for his services to journalism and Asia-Pacific media education. He is founding editor of the Pacific Journalism Review, also well worth seeking out.
Eyes of Fire is an updated classic and required reading for anyone interested in activism
or the contemporary history of the Pacific.- Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage and Legacy of the Rainbow Warrior, by David Robie; prologue by former NZ prime minister Helen Clark (Little Island Press). There is a linked microsite Eyes of Fire: 40 Years On. Reviewer Jenny Nicholls is subeditor of the Waiheke Weekender, where this review was first published.
- The Legends of the Pacific: Stories of a Nuclear-Free Moana exhibition curated by the Asia Pacific Media Network (APMN) is currently on at the Waiheke Library until September 11.
This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.
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Petro states and corporations have “held to ranson” the final stage of negotiations to create a global plastics treaty. The process has now ended in a utter failure – with countries unable to agree a treaty.
Now, discussions must go back to the drawing board – and it’s all thanks to the big polluter lobbyists that infiltrated the negotiations in record number.
Global plastics treaty negotiations: a total failure
Countries’ representatives have been meeting for the past fortnight in the UN headquarters in Geneva to finalise a treaty. The international agreement aimed to reduce plastic pollution to stop the harm it is doing to people’s health and the planet.
Over 100 countries, including the UK, agreed that to be meaningful, the treaty must include measures to reduce the amount of plastic companies are producing. They also determined that it must ban the most toxic chemicals in plastic products and create financial mechanisms to support countries dealing with huge volumes of plastic waste.
However, over the course of the three-year process, petro states, including Saudi Arabia and Russia, have failed to compromise on these issues. Instead, they chose to undermine and delay the international process. Corporate plastic lobbyists, who have infiltrated the talks in record numbers, backed them in this.
The meeting in Geneva has ended without resolution on the treaty text. Given this, the UN has extended the process in the hopes an agreement can be reached at a future date.
Petro-states in bed with the plastic lobbyists sabotage the treaty
Senior campaigner at Friends of the Earth Scotland Kim Pratt said:
This landmark treaty has been held to ransom by a handful of petro-states and corporations, set on making a profit whilst the rest of us suffer more and more from the explosion in plastic production. By sabotaging hopes of an agreement on a Global Plastics Treaty, their greed and lies have stopped the possibility of real progress.
A new approach is needed to create a better future for us and the next generation. Despite the collapse in the international agreement, Scotland can show leadership by taking the plastics crisis seriously and acting with urgency.
That means enforcing laws banning certain types of single use plastics and bringing in policies which force plastic producers to pay for the clean-up of the products they sell.
Without a plastics treaty, the world’s plastic crisis will continue to worsen. Production levels are expected to triple by 2060. Plastics, of which companies make 99% of from fossil fuels, contribute to climate breakdown and choke environmental systems.
There is increasing evidence that plastics also harm people’s health through exposure to toxic chemicals and microplastics. Scientists have linked these to an array of diseases, from cancer and neurological conditions, to hormonal and digestive problems.
In Scotland, civil society groups wrote to the First Minister to call for him to support the treaty. Alongside this, local plastic-free groups took action to send a message to representatives that they should support a strong agreement.
Featured image via the Canary
By The Canary
This post was originally published on Canary.
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It is crystal clear that millions of US Americans are prepared to organize and take action to fight the efforts of the Trump regime to impose a form of 21st Century fascism on the USA. From the first youth-led, #50501 actions in all 50 states on February 5 to the more than five million people who came out in over 2,200 localities on June 14, No Kings Day, and everything in between and since, it is unquestionable that there is a mass resistance movement that is not giving up.
History is calling upon us to step up, and we are doing so.
This resistance movement has been a multi-issue movement participated in by people with a wide diversity of radical to progressive to liberal to common sense sentiments but who are united in our fear, rage, and support for democracy and social and environmental justice.
One of the issues of this multi-issue movement has been the climate crisis, but it has not been a priority. This is the case even as the world’s scientists and accelerating extreme weather events worldwide are clearly saying that this existential crisis is getting worse, and time is running out to turn things around in enough time to prevent worldwide climate catastrophe.
Since the Trumpists have taken office it has become increasingly clear that, despite significant Republican voter support in many states for jobs-producing wind and solar energy and electric cars, the Trump Administration is doing everything it can to halt and reverse the growth of these critical industries. A few weeks ago the head of the EPA, Lee Zeldin, former NY Republican candidate for Governor, announced that he intends to try to overturn the “endangerment finding” upheld by the US Supreme Court 16 years ago. That finding determined that CO2, methane and four other greenhouse gases are pollutants that can be regulated and reduced.
But the climate movement in the US and elsewhere is fighting back. Finally, on the fall equinox weekend of September 20 and 21, the climate crisis will be a central issue in mass demonstrations around the US and beyond.
On the 20th world leaders will be gathering in NYC for the UN General Assembly and Climate Week. A major climate justice demonstration will be held that day in NYC, convened by international 350.org, DRUM, Climate Defenders and the Women’s March and endorsed by over 100 other groups so far. Simultaneous actions will happen on that day around the world as part of a Draw the Line campaign. The youth-led Fridays for Future is calling for actions around the world beginning on September 20. We are uniting across the world to demand a better future for our communities and for all living beings!
Then on Sunday, September 21, “Sun Day”, local actions around the country organized by national Third Act will “celebrate solar and wind power and the movement to leave fossil fuels behind. Solar energy is now the cheapest source of power on the planet—and gives us a chance to actually do something about the climate crisis. But fossil fuel billionaires are doing everything they can to shut it down. We will build, rally, sing and come together in the communities where we must work to get laws changed and work done.”
But this isn’t all that is happening five weeks from now. On the Thursday and Friday before this big weekend, September 18-19 in Washington, DC, actions are happening each day calling for: Hands Off Our Planet, No Fracking Petrostate
–Thursday morning: Action at the monthly meeting of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to demand that this agency do what the US DC Circuit Court of Appeals has said they must do: stop approving new methane gas projects unless they have done serious analyses of the greenhouse gas emissions and environmental justice impacts of proposed new methane gas pipelines and other infrastructure.
–Thursday afternoon: Action at the federal headquarters of the Environmental Protection Agency as the beginning of a sustained national campaign to demand its restoration and the removal of Administrator Lee Zeldin.
–Friday morning: A Petrostate Tour stopping at trade associations that have captured our government, compromised the environment, and violated private property rights, including the American Petroleum Institute (API), American Exploration and Production Council (AXPC), and the American Gas Association (AGA).
These DC actions are being organized by Beyond Extreme Energy, Elders Coalition for Climate Action, Third Act Actions Lab and the UnFrack FERC Campaign, supported by many others.
The peril our planet is in cannot be overstated. The popular democracy movement which has done so much over the last seven months to resist Trumpist tyranny must, really must, hit the streets next month.
The post Rise Up for Our Planet: September 18-21 first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
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A Georgia judge has dismissed a state domestic terrorism charge against Cop City protestor Jamie Marsicano, but they and dozens of others still face racketeering charges. Superior Court Judge Gregory A. Adams ruled that the prosecution’s delays violated Marsicano’s due process rights and their right to a speedy trial. In March 2023, law enforcement officers arrested close to two dozen…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
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ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for Dispatches, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every week.
The top Democrat on a House committee is demanding that Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins account for discrepancies between her public statements about wildland firefighter staffing and a ProPublica report showing there were thousands of vacancies in the Forest Service’s firefighting workforce as peak wildfire season approached.
In June, the Forest Service claimed it had reached 99% of its hiring goal for its wildland firefighting workforce. But ProPublica’s reporting indicated that the agency was selectively counting firefighters, presenting an optimistic assessment to the public. As many as 27% of jobs were vacant as of July 17, according to data obtained by ProPublica.
Rep. Robert Garcia, a Democrat from California and the ranking member of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, made the request to Rollins in a letter sent Thursday morning. “The Trump Administration’s staffing decisions are exacerbating an already dire situation: The Forest Service’s firefighting capacity has been dangerously hampered by Department of Government Efficiency and Trump Administration layoffs, deferred resignations, and other early retirements and resignations just as climate change is extending the fire season,” he wrote.
The Forest Service’s assertions about its readiness are contradicted not only by its own staff — a wildland firefighter in California quoted in the ProPublica report called the 99% figure “grossly inaccurate” — but by its own statistics. In July, ProPublica reported that, according to agency data, its fire and aviation management program contained more than 4,500 active vacancies, including for such crucial primary firefighting positions as hotshots, dispatchers and engine captains. At the time, a spokesperson for the Agriculture Department disputed that the Forest Service had that many vacancies within its fire and aviation management program but did not provide data showing otherwise. A spokesperson for the Forest Service later claimed that ProPublica’s figures were inaccurate, telling the High Country News, “Their numbers likely come from outdated org charts and unfunded positions.” However, ProPublica excluded all unfunded positions from its analysis, and its data came from active agency organizational charts.
When asked to support its claims that the agency’s fire service is fully staffed, a spokesperson wrote: “The Forest Service is fully prepared and operational to protect individuals and communities from wildfires. The Forest Service has over 19,000 workers, both in and out of the Fire and Aviation Management group, who hold incident response qualifications.”
According to experts, the agency has long resisted providing a comprehensive and transparent breakdown of its wildland firefighting force. “Unless Congress tells them to, they’re not going to do a report of that magnitude,” said Robert Kuhn, a former Forest Service official who between 2009 and 2011 co-authored such an assessment. Kuhn cited the cost and effort involved in analyzing a sprawling and complex agency. Earlier this year, Grassroots Wildland Firefighting, a labor advocacy organization, wrote, “None of the federal agencies have developed a modern formula for determining how many wildland firefighters and support personnel are truly needed to address 21st century issues.” Most federal wildland firefighters work for the Forest Service, within the Department of Agriculture. In addition, the federal government employs thousands of wildland firefighters at four agencies in the Department of the Interior. President Donald Trump has ordered all of them to consolidate their wildland fire programs. Details about that unification have not been released.
Every year, the Forest Service reports that it has filled its ranks with what are known as primary firefighters. But according to current and former Forest Service employees, that assessment — the basis of the claim that the agency reached 99% of its hiring goal — is misleading on a number of levels. The Forest Service simply counts “operational firefighters” working within a specified pay range. That figure includes both temporary seasonal firefighters who have just joined the agency and experienced year-round veterans — but it does not distinguish between the two and therefore elides a great loss of institutional knowledge. In recent years, the agency has suffered an exodus of experienced firefighters. The agency’s assessment also excludes both senior-level fire managers and crucial support staff. The public associates wildland firefighting with its most iconic figures: smokejumpers, hotshots and members of engine crews, who often are supported by aircraft dropping retardant. But the nation’s wildland fire apparatus also includes, for example, human-resource specialists, ecologists, wilderness rangers, meteorologists, trails workers and other employees who possess qualifications allowing them to work on a fire line. Those qualifications are listed in what’s known as a “red card.” An archaeologist could have a red card allowing them to, say, oversee the distribution of food at a fire camp.
A recently departed staffer received this email of Forest Service wildland firefighting job openings in August. (Obtained and redacted by ProPublica)According to internal data reviewed in July by ProPublica, approximately 1,600 red-carded staff left the government this winter and spring. The Forest Service has claimed that the actual figure is 1,400. Garcia asked for a full accounting of DOGE’s impact on the Forest Service, demanding “all documents and communications regarding staffing, hiring, reductions in force, the Deferred Resignation Program, or the ‘Fork in the Road,’ and firefighting resources and capacity at the Forest Service.”
The agency’s rosy public assessments of its own force have also been belied by its efforts to rehire the workers it forced out. In a July memo, the Forest Service’s chief, Tom Schultz, allowed that the agency did not have enough resources and was now recruiting red-carded staff who had separated from the agency. More recently, emails reviewed by ProPublica show that, since July 22, the Forest Service has sent multiple recruiting notices to departed staff. The emails advertise dozens of openings for essential firefighting positions — such as dispatcher, engine captain and hotshot superintendent — in at least seven states. When asked about the emails, an agency spokesperson wrote, “We do have active recruitments out for FY26.”
In his letter, Garcia requested that Rollins provide the oversight committee with “a detailed and comprehensive accounting of current staffing and staffing changes at the Forest Service, including firefighting jobs” since Jan. 20.
This post was originally published on ProPublica.
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Unbeknownst to much of the public, Big Tech exacts heavy tolls on public health, the environment, and democracy. The detrimental combination of an unregulated tech sector, pronounced rise in cyberattacks and data theft, and widespread digital and media illiteracy—as noted in my previous Dispatch on Big Data’s surveillance complex—is exacerbated by legacy media’s failure to inform the public of these risks. While establishment news outlets cover major security breaches in Big Tech’s troves of personal identifiable information (PII) and their costs to individuals, businesses, and national security, this coverage fails to address the negative impacts of Big Tech on the full health of our political system, civic engagement, and ecosystems.
Marietje Schaake, an AI Policy fellow at Stanford University’s Institute for Human-Centered AI Policy, argues that Big Tech’s unrestrained hand in all three branches of the government, the military, local and national elections, policing, workplace monitoring, and surveillance capitalism undermine American society in ways the public has failed to grasp. Indeed, little in the corporate press helps the public understand exactly how data centers—the facilities that process and store vast amounts of data—do more than endanger PII. Greenlit by the Trump administration, data centers accelerate ecosystem harms through their unmitigated appropriation of natural resources, including water, and the subsequent greenhouse gas emissions that increase ambient pollution and its attendant diseases.
Adding insult to the public’s right to be informed, corporate news rarely sheds light on how an ethical, independent press serves the public good and functions to balance power in a democracy. A 2023 civics poll by the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School found that only a quarter of respondents knew that press freedom is a constitutional right and a counterbalance to the powers of government and capitalism. The gutting of local news in favor of commercial interests has only accelerated this knowledge blackout.
The demand for AI by corporatists, military AI venture capitalists, and consumers—and resultant demand for data centers—is outpacing utilities infrastructure, traditional power grid capabilities, and the renewable energy sector. Big Tech companies, such as Amazon and Meta, strain municipal water systems and regional power grids, reducing the capacity to operate all things residential and local. In Newton County, Georgia, for example, Meta’s $750 million data center, which sucks up approximately 500,000 gallons of water a day, has contaminated local groundwater and caused taps in nearby homes to run dry. What’s more, the AI boom comes at a time when hot wars are flaring and global temperatures are soaring faster than scientists once predicted.
Constant connectivity, algorithms, and AI-generated content delude individual internet and device users into believing that they’re well informed. However, the decline of civics awareness in the United States—compounded by rampant digital and media illiteracy, ubiquitous state and corporate surveillance, and lax news reporting—makes for an easily manipulated citizenry, asserts attorney and privacy expert, Heidi Boghosian. This is especially disconcerting given the creeping spread of authoritarianism, smackdown on civil liberties, and surging demand for AI everything.
Open [but not transparent] AI
While the companies that develop and deploy popular AI-powered tools lionize the wonders of their products and services, they keep hidden the unsustainable impacts on our world. To borrow from Cory Doctorow, the “enshittification” of the online economy traps consumers, vendors, and advertisers in “the organizing principle of US statecraft,” as well as by more mundane capitalist surveillance. Without government oversight or a Fourth Estate to compel these tech corporations to reveal their shadow side, much of the public is not only in the dark but in harm’s way.
At the most basic level, consumers should know that OpenAI, the company that owns ChatGPT, collects private data and chat inputs, regardless of whether users are logged in or not. Any time users visit or interact with ChatGPT, their log data (the Internet Protocol address, browser type and settings, date and time of the site visit, and interaction with the service), usage data (time zone, country, and type of device used), device details (device name and identifiers, operating system, and browser used), location information from the device’s GPS, and cookies, which store the user’s personal information, are saved. Most users have no idea that they can opt out.
OpenAI claims it saves data only for “fine-tuning,” a process of enhancing the performance and capabilities of AI models, and for human review “to identify biases or harmful outputs.” OpenAI also claims not to use data for marketing and advertising purposes or to sell information to third parties without prior consent. Most users, however, are as oblivious to the means of consent as to the means of opting out. This is by design.
In July, the US Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit vacated the Federal Trade Commission’s “click-to-cancel” rule, which would have made online unsubscribing easier. The ruling would have covered all forms of negative option marketing—programs that give sellers free rein to interpret customer inaction as “opting in,” consenting to subscriptions and unwittingly accruing charges. Director of litigation at the Electronic Privacy Information Center, John Davisson, commented that the court’s decision was poorly reasoned, and only those with financial or career advancement motives would argue in favor of subscription traps.
Even if OpenAI is actually protective of the private data it stores, it is not above disclosing user data to affiliates, law enforcement, and the government. Moreover, ChatGPT practices are noncompliant with the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the global gold standard of data privacy protection. Although OpenAI says it strips PII and anonymizes data, its practice of “indefinite retention” does not comply with the GDPR’s stipulation for data storage limitations, nor does OpenAI sufficiently guarantee irreversible data de-identification.
As science and tech reporter Will Knight wrote for Wired, “Once data is baked into an AI model today, extracting it from that model is a bit like trying to recover the eggs from a finished cake.” Whenever a tech company collects and keeps PII, there are security risks. The more data captured and stored by a company, the more likely it will be exposed to a system bug, hack, or breach, such as the ChatGPT breach in March 2023.
OpenAI has said it will comply with the EU’s AI Code of Practice for General-Purpose AI, which aims to foster transparency, information sharing, and best practices for model and risk assessment among tech companies. Microsoft has said that it will likely sign on to compliance, too; while Meta, on the other hand, flatly refuses to comply, much like it refuses to abide by environmental regulations.
To no one’s surprise, the EU code has already become politicized, and the White House has issued its own AI Action Plan to “remove red tape.” The plan also purports to remove “woke Marxist lunacy in the AI models,” eliminating such topics as diversity, equity, and inclusion and climate change. As Trump crusades against regulation and “bias,” the White House-allied Meta decries political concerns over compliance with the EU’s AI code. Meta’s claim is coincidental; British Courts, based on the United Kingdom’s GDPR obligations, ruled that anyone in a country covered by the GDPR has the right to request Meta to stop using their personal data for targeted advertising.
Big Tech’s open secrets
Information on the tech industry’s environmental and health impacts exists, attests artificial intelligence researcher Sasha Luccioni. The public is simply not being informed. This lack of transparency, warns Luccioni, portends significant environmental and health consequences. Too often, industry opaqueness is excused by insiders as “competition” to which they feel entitled, or blamed on the broad scope of artificial intelligence products and services—smart devices, recommender systems, internet searches, autonomous vehicles, machine learning, the list goes on. Allegedly, there’s too much variety to reasonably quantify consequences.
Those consequences are quantifiable, though. While numbers vary and are on the ascent, there are at least 3,900 data centers in the United States and 10,000 worldwide. An average data center houses complex networking equipment, servers, and systems for cooling systems, lighting, security, and storage, all requiring copious rare earth minerals, water, and electricity to operate.
The densest data center area exists in Northern Virginia, just outside the nation’s capital. “Data Center Alley,” also known as the “Data Center Capital of the World,” has the highest concentration of data centers not only in the United States but in the entire world, consuming millions of gallons of water every day. International hydrologist Newsha Ajami has documented how water shortages around the world are being worsened by Big Data. For tech companies, “water is an afterthought.”
Powered by fossil fuels, these data centers pose serious public health implications. According to research in 2024, training one large language model (LLM) with 213 million parameters produced 626,155 pounds of CO2 emissions, “equivalent to the lifetime emissions of five cars, including fuel.” Stated another way, such AI training “can produce air pollutants equivalent to more than 10,000 round trips by car between Los Angeles and New York City.”
Reasoning models generate more “thinking tokens” and use as much as 50 percent more energy than other AI models. Google and Microsoft search features purportedly use smaller models when possible, which, theoretically, can provide quick responses with less energy. It’s unclear when or if smaller models are actually invoked, and the bottom line, explained climate reporter Molly Taft, is that model providers are not informing consumers that speedier AI response times almost always equate to higher energy usage.
Profits over people
AI is rapidly becoming a public utility, profoundly shaping society, surmise Caltech’s Adam Wierman and Shaolei Ren of the University of California, Riverside. In the last few years, AI has outgrown its niche in the tech sector to become integral to digital economies, government, and security. AI has merged more closely with daily life, replacing human jobs and decision-making, and has thus created a reliance on services currently controlled by private corporations. Because other essential services such as water, electricity, and communications are treated as public utilities, there’s growing discussion about whether AI should be regulated under a similar public utility model.
That said, data centers need power grids, most of which depend on fossil fuel-generated electricity that stresses national and global energy stores. Data centers also need backup generators for brownout and blackout periods. With limited clean, reliable backup options, despite the known environmental and health consequences of burning diesel, diesel generators remain the industry’s go-to.
Whether the public realizes it or not, the environment and citizens are being polluted by the actions of private tech firms. Outputs from data centers inject dangerous fine particulate matter and nitrogen oxides (NOx) into the air, immediately worsening cardiovascular conditions, asthma, cancer, and even cognitive decline, caution Wierman and Ren. Contrary to popular belief, air pollutants are not localized to their emission sources. And, although chemically different, carbon (CO2) is not contained by location either.
Of great concern is that in “World Data Capital Virginia,” data centers are incentivized with tax breaks. Worse still, the (misleadingly named) Environmental Protection Agency plans to remove all limits on greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, according to documents obtained by the New York Times. Thus, treating AI and data centers as public utilities presents a double-edged sword. Can a government that slashes regulations to provide more profit to industry while destroying its citizens’ health along with the natural world be trusted to fairly price and equitably distribute access to all? Would said government suddenly start protecting citizens’ privacy and sensitive data?
The larger question, perhaps, asks if the US is truly a democracy. Or is it a technogarchy, or an AI-tocracy? The 2024 AI Global Surveillance (AIGS) Index ranked the United States first for its deployment of advanced AI surveillance tools that “monitor, track, and surveil citizens to accomplish a range of objectives— some lawful, others that violate human rights, and many of which fall into a murky middle ground,” the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace reported.
Surveillance has long been the purview of authoritarian regimes, but in so-called democracies such as the United States, the scale and intensity of AI use is leveraged both globally through military operations and domestically to target and surveil civilians. In cities such as Scarsdale, New York, and Norfolk, Virginia, citizens are beginning to speak out against the systems that are “immensely popular with politicians and law enforcement, even though they do real and palpable damage to the citizenry.”
Furthermore, tracking civilians to “deter civil disobedience” has never been easier, evidenced in June by the rapid mobilization of boots on the ground amid the peaceful protests of ICE raids in Los Angeles. AI-powered surveillance acts as the government’s “digital scarecrow,” chilling the American tradition and First Amendment right to protest and the Fourth Estate’s right to report.
The public is only just starting to become aware of algorithmic biases in AI training datasets and their prejudicial impact on predictive policing, or profiling, algorithms, and other analytic tools used by law enforcement. City street lights and traffic light cameras, facial recognition systems, video monitoring in and around business and government buildings, as well as smart speakers, smart toys, keyless entry locks, automobile intelligent dash displays, and insurance antitheft tracking systems are all embedded with algorithmic biases.
Checking Big Tech’s unchecked power
Given the level and surreptitiousness of surveillance, the media are doubly tasked with treading carefully to avoid being targeted and accurately informing the public’s perception of data collection and data centers. Reporting that glorifies techbros and AI is unscrupulous and antithetical to democracy: In an era where billionaire techbros and wanna-be-kings are wielding every available apparatus of government and capitalism to gatekeep information, the public needs an ethical press committed to seeking truth, reporting it, and critically covering how AI is shifting power.
If people comprehend what’s at stake—their personal privacy and health, the environment, and democracy itself—they may be more inclined to make different decisions about their AI engagement and media consumption. An independent press that prioritizes public enlightenment means that citizens and consumers still have choices, starting with basic data privacy self-controls that resist AI surveillance and stand up for democratic self-governance.
Just as a healthy environment, replete with clean air and water, has been declared a human right by the United Nations, privacy is enshrined in Article 12 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Although human rights are subject to national laws, water, air, and the internet know no national borders. It is, therefore, incumbent upon communities and the press to uphold these rights and to hold power to account.
This spring, residents of Pittsylvania County, Virginia, did just that. Thanks to independent journalism and civic participation, residents pushed back against the corporate advertising meant to convince the county that the fossil fuels powering the region’s data centers are “clean.” Propagandistic campaigns were similarly applied in Memphis, Tennessee, where proponents of Elon Musk’s data center—which has the footprint of thirteen football fields—circulated fliers to residents of nearby, historically Black neighborhoods, proclaiming the super-polluting xAI has low emissions. “Colossus,” Musk’s name for what’s slated to be the world’s biggest supercomputer, powers xAI’s Hitler-loving chatbot Grok.
The Southern Environmental Law Center exposed with satellite and thermal imagery how xAI, which neglected to obtain legally required air permits, brought in at least 35 portable methane gas turbines to help power Colossus. Tennessee reporter Ren Brabenec said that Memphis has become a sacrifice zone and expects the communities there to push back.
Meanwhile, in Pittsylvania, Virginia, residents succeeded in halting the proposed expansion of data centers that would damage the region’s environment and public health. Elizabeth Putfark, attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center, affirmed that communities, including local journalists, are a formidable force when acting in solidarity for the public welfare.
Best practices
Because AI surveillance is a threat to democracies everywhere, we must each take measures to counter “government use of AI for social control,” contends Abi Olvera, senior fellow with the Council on Strategic Risks. Harlo Holmes, director of digital security at the Freedom of the Press Foundation, told Wired that consumers must make technology choices under the premise that they’re our “last line of defense.” Steps to building that last line of defense include digital and media literacies and digital hygiene, and at least a cursory understanding of how data is stored and its far-reaching impacts.
Best defensive practices employed by media professionals can also serve as best practices for individuals. This means becoming familiar with laws and regulations, taking every precaution to protect personal information on the internet and during online communications, and engaging in responsible civic discourse. A free and democratic society is only as strong as its citizens’ abilities to make informed decisions, which, in turn, are only as strong as their media and digital literacy skills and the quality of information they consume.
This essay first published here: https://www.projectcensored.
The post The Hidden Costs of the Big Data Surveillance Complex first appeared on Dissident Voice.org/hidden-costs-big-data- surveillance-complex/ This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
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This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org.
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On August 5, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, known as FEMA, told approximately 100 staffers that they had been reassigned to Immigration and Customs Enforcement — and that if they refused to comply with their reassignment, they could be fired. The American Prospect published a copy of the email. “If you choose to decline this reassignment, or accept but fail to report for duty…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
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Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair.
It’s not exactly big news that the Trump administration – famous for slashing Biden era clean energy subsidies and cheering on fossil fuels to the tune of “Drill Baby, Drill” – is not interested in policies to address climate change. And lately they have been busy finding new ways to undermine the science that enhances our understanding of the threats posed by a warming planet.
Back in April, the administration announced that it was dismissing the academics and experts who compile the federal government’s National Climate Assessment, a Congressionally mandated report that is released every few years. The next edition had been planned for 2027, and was intended to address how warming would impact public health, agriculture, water, and the broader economy. The report is used widely by researchers and government officials.
That was just the start. In July, NPR reported that the website that hosts the most recent assessment had stopped working. It is hard to imagine a clearer sign of the administration’s disdain for science. But the next step came weeks later, when the Department of Energy published a new report titled “A Critical Review of Impacts of Greenhouse Gas Emissions on the US Climate.” It was authored by a small group of well-known climate ‘skeptics’ who argue that the overwhelming scientific consensus should not be considered ‘settled,’ and that there is generally too much alarmism about the impacts of climate change. As the New York Times noted, the report could be seen as Trump’s intention to “wage a battle against climate change research, a long-held goal of some conservative groups and fossil fuel companies.”
The hurried report did not sit well with some of the researchers cited in the document. Among the reactions: One said it “completely misrepresents my work,” another called it “a serious misuse of my research,” while one more said her work “was taken out of context.” One researcher found that a supplementary graph in one of his papers was cited, but noted that “the actual content of my paper went counter to the narrative they were trying to present, and thus was ignored.”
More broadly, scientists who were willing to speak said the DOE report “gives a terribly skewed view of the underlying climate science” that cherry-picks data to support specific conclusions (in one case, to support the contention that sea level rise is not actually accelerating). Michael Mann of the University of Pennsylvania sumed it up this way: “They constructed a deeply misleading antiscientific narrative, built on deceptive arguments, misrepresented datasets, and distortion of actual scientific understanding. Then they dressed it up with dubious graphics composed of selective, cherry-picked data.”
On the same day that this climate ‘review’ was released, the administration had more news: It was seeking to revoke the 2009 endangerment finding, which forms the legal basis for the rules crafted by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to limit climate pollution from sources like cars and power plants. It is, as Politico put it, “the most audacious attempt yet by President Donald Trump to undo federal restrictions on fossil fuels.” Indeed, their intentions could not be any clearer.
This first appeared on CEPR.
The post Trump White House Elevates Climate “Skepticism” appeared first on CounterPunch.org.
This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org.
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This is how misinformation gets accepted as fact.
A year after Oregon endures its most destructive fire season on record in 2020, state lawmakers order a map estimating the wildfire risk for every property in the state. It’s the kind of rating now available on real estate sites like Zillow. The state wants to use the results to decide where it will apply forthcoming codes for fire-resistant construction and protections around homes.
Around the same time, insurance companies start dropping Oregon homeowners’ policies and raising premiums to limit future losses, much as they have done in other disaster-prone states. Insurers have their own sophisticated risk maps to guide them, but some brokers instead tell homeowners the blame lies with the map the state produced. The belief gets treated as fact both on social media and in mainstream news — even though insurers and regulators say it’s not true.
The anger quickly spreads. Not only is Oregon’s map seen as at fault for higher insurance premiums, one conservative talk radio host calls it an attempt to “depopulate rural areas.” People in an anti-map Facebook group start musing about “Agenda 21,” a conspiracy theory implicating the United Nations in an effort to force people into cities so they can be more easily controlled.
By the time the state pulls back the map and starts over, the myths about it have gained so much momentum there’s no stopping them. Oregon’s hotter, drier climate isn’t the problem; the map is.
Christine Drazan, the Oregon House Republican leader, joins more than a dozen other Republicans in February 2025 behind a sign that says “REPEAL THE WILDFIRE HAZARD MAP.” She calls the state’s map “faulty, defective, harmful” and says it, along with related fire-safe building and landscaping rules that are in the works, is “a heavy-handed bureaucratic takeover” that’s kept rural residents from insuring or selling homes.
“This map is destroying their property values,” she says.
In the end, what’s most remarkable about the campaign against Oregon’s wildfire map isn’t that misinformation found an audience.
It’s that it worked.
A melted sign hangs from a fence in Lyons, Oregon, in 2020. (Nathan Howard/Getty Images)Chris Dunn, a wildfire risk scientist at Oregon State University and a former wildland firefighter, thought Oregon had a chance to be a national model for adapting to wildfire risks when he was asked to make the statewide map in 2021.
Oregon adopted a unique set of land use laws in the late 1960s and 1970s that helped curb urban sprawl. A coalition of farmers and conservationists formulated the legislation to preserve farmland and keep cities compact. To Dunn, protecting homes seemed within reach because the state had maintained agricultural buffers around cities, helping to serve as firebreaks.
At the time, Zillow hadn’t yet come out with risk ratings. By building its own map, Oregon could use local input and make adjustments as it went along.
The map results would help Oregon decide where to require a tool proven to save homes from wind-driven wildfires: “defensible space.” Owners would have to prune trees up and away from their houses; they would need to keep their roofs clear of leaves, needles and other dead vegetation. The idea was to deny wind-borne embers fuel that can burn down dwellings — a problem fresh on lawmakers’ minds after Oregon’s devastating 2020 fire season destroyed more than 2,000 homes.
Dunn knew public communication would be important. Before the map was released, a private property rights group had warned its members in a letter that the map and its rules were worrisome. Gov. Kate Brown’s wildfire council, advising state leaders about the map’s rollout, knew about the letter and the potential for pushback, according to emails Dunn provided to ProPublica.
Dunn said he was clear with Brown’s wildfire director, Doug Grafe, and others on the council that the map needed a significant, coordinated and effective communications campaign starting months before its release. Dunn said all the state developed was a one-page document on the roles of each government agency.
(Brown and Grafe did not respond to ProPublica’s questions. Grafe told Oregon Public Broadcasting in 2022 that “we are committed to ensuring people understand what they can do to increase the likelihood their homes and properties will survive wildfires.”)
Without state outreach, many homeowners learned their homes were in “extreme risk” zones from a July 2022 letter in the mail. It gave them 60 days to appeal the designation or face complying with new building and defensible-space codes the state was developing.
The wildfire hazard map and online user interface, created by Chris Dunn, a wildfire scientist at Oregon State University, shows high hazard areas in orange and those with moderate hazards in purple. (Screenshot by ProPublica of the Oregon Statewide Wildfire Hazard Map)Dunn could see that an uproar was building around his work. One community meeting where he was scheduled to present was canceled after state officials received threats of violence.
On Facebook, more than 6,000 people joined a private group, ODF Wildfire Risk Map Support, a base of opposition. ODF stands for the Oregon Department of Forestry, the state agency overseeing the map’s creation.
One member warned that state officials would snoop around their rural properties to tell owners what to do.
“Guys this is a agenda 21,” said the member, referencing the conspiracy theory promoted in part by former Fox News talk show host Glenn Beck.
Along with 31 thumbs-ups, eight angry faces and several other emojis, the post got 24 comments.
- This insane bill out of Salem is crazy! Every designation was decided by an algorithm by politicians in Salem who don’t a clue about our property, our house, our lifestyles! If you think it’s not their agenda to destroy rural property owners, think again. (10 likes)
- The UN Sustainable Development Goals are driving this push to eliminate rural living. Look into ICLEI and see how the UN infiltrates state and local governments and influences policy and legislation. https://iclei.org (6 likes)
- I learned about this when I first became involved in conservative politics. Back when globalist-backed Agenda 21 and now Agenda 2030 were still thought of as conspiracy theories. (6 likes, 1 sad reaction)
These Facebook comments have been excerpted to preserve anonymity.
Oregon can’t stop firestorms with regulations, conservative talk show host Bill Meyer told listeners, “unless you just get people off the land, and people wonder if that’s what the intent of all of this is ultimately.” Invoking a phrase associated with the Agenda 21 conspiracy, Meyer said rural residents would wind up having to move into “stack-and-pack” housing in Oregon’s cities. (Meyer did not respond to ProPublica’s emails.)
State officials’ lack of communication with the public “led to really significant challenges,” Dunn told ProPublica. “We don’t know if we could have well-communicated and sort of avoided those conspiracy theories and misinformation. But it was just so propagated in the media that it just took over.”
Jeff Golden, the Democratic state senator who helped draft the bill creating the map, said rural residents were understandably upset. The impacts of climate change were abstract to many people, Golden said, until they started getting those letters — at the same time insurance companies were dumping them.
“It’s a really hard adjustment,” said Golden, chairperson of the Senate’s Natural Resources and Wildfire Committee. “This is a very big chicken coming home to roost.”
Misinformation stoked people’s anger. “It makes a conversation that would have been difficult at best almost impossible,” Golden said.
State officials withdrew the map just over a month after its 2022 release, saying that while they had met the legislative deadline for delivering it, “there wasn’t enough time to allow for the type of local outreach and engagement that people wanted, needed and deserved.”
Oregon state Sen. Jeff Golden helped draft the bill creating the wildfire risk map. (Jenny Kane/AP Photo)After homeowners blamed the newly released risk map for insurance cancellations and premium increases, Oregon’s insurance regulator formally asked insurers: Did you use the state risk map?
Companies filed statements, required by law to be answered truthfully, saying they had not. Oregon’s then-insurance commissioner, Andrew Stolfi, announced the industry’s response publicly at the time.
“Insurance companies have been using their own risk maps and other robust risk management tools to assess wildfire risk for years in making rating and underwriting decisions,” Stolfi said in a news release.
Stolfi told consumers to submit any documentation they received from insurance companies showing that the state’s map had been used to influence underwriting or rating decisions. Jason Horton, a spokesperson for Oregon’s insurance regulator, told ProPublica the agency has not substantiated any complaints.
For good measure, lawmakers in 2023 passed a bill explicitly banning insurers from using the map to set rates.
But as Dunn reworked the map, the cloud of misinformation continued to swirl on social media.
After Zillow and other real estate sites began posting wildfire risk ratings on properties nationwide last year, participants in the anti-map Facebook group alleged the state was behind it.
“Who would decide to move out here after seeing that?” one asked.
Zillow uses data from the research firm First Street, a Zillow spokesperson told ProPublica. A First Street spokesperson also said the group doesn’t use Oregon’s map.
Andrew DeVigal, a University of Oregon journalism professor who has studied news ecosystems around the state, said places where news outlets have shrunk or closed down have grown particularly reliant on such Facebook groups. These community watercoolers help confirm participants’ biases. “You surround yourself with people who think like you, so you’re in your space,” he said.
A ProPublica reporter identified himself to the group’s participants, asking in June for evidence that they’d been harmed by the state’s map. None provided definitive proof. Some acknowledged that they couldn’t demonstrate that the map had affected them but said they suspected it lowered their homes’ values or their insurability.
Among the respondents was Chris Dalton, who lives in La Pine, south of Bend. Dalton described spending about $2,000 trimming trees and another $500 putting down gravel to create defensible space.
However, Dalton said, the house’s location had been designated as being at moderate risk. That means it was not subject to the state’s defensible-space requirements. And even if Dalton’s property had been designated as high enough risk to be governed by the new regulations, they had not been finalized at that point and were not being enforced.
“I guess you could say we used common sense to get ahead of future problems,” Dalton said.
The Darlene Fire burned more than 3,000 acres around La Pine, Oregon, in June 2024. (Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office)Oregon officials decided to give the map another try last year.
They re-released it, this time doing more outreach. Following California’s lead and aiming to make the map less confusing, Oregon also changed its nomenclature. Properties weren’t in risk classes, they were in hazard zones. The highest rating was no longer “extreme,” it was “high.” Dunn, the Oregon State scientist, said he thought the map had survived the effort to kill it.
But the backlash continued. Of the 106,000 properties found to face the highest hazard, more than 6,000 landowners filed appeals. At least one county appealed the designation on behalf of every high-hazard property in its borders — more than 20,000 of them.
In January, a new Oregon legislative session kicked off and wildfire preparedness was once again a top priority for the body’s Democratic leadership. Gov. Tina Kotek ordered a pause on decisions about homeowners’ appeals until the session ended, giving lawmakers a chance to decide what to do with the map.
Drazan, the House minority leader, led fellow Republicans in opposition.
She told ProPublica she “can’t know for sure” that the map caused homeowners to lose insurance or have trouble selling, as she’d asserted at February’s news conference. “I am reflecting what we were told,” she said.
Regardless, she said, the mandates on protecting properties went too far. “We’re not looking for the state to be the president of our homeowner’s association and tell us what color our paint can be,” Drazan said.
Even Golden, who’d helped shepherd the original bill mandating a map, began to waver.
Golden described conversations with homeowners who struggled to understand why work they’d done to protect their properties from fires didn’t lower their state risk rating. He said the map couldn’t account for the specific characteristics of each property, ultimately making it clear to him that it couldn’t work.
“I got tired of trying to convince people that the model was smarter than they were,” Golden said.
Dunn told ProPublica that the map was not intended to reflect all the changing conditions at a particular property, only the hazards that the surrounding topography, climate, weather and vegetation create. It wasn’t about whether homeowners had cleared defensible space — just whether they should. The work they do makes their individual homes less vulnerable, he said, but it doesn’t eliminate the broader threats around them.
Neighbors walk through their destroyed neighborhood in Phoenix, Oregon, in 2020. Hundreds of homes in the area were destroyed. (Mason Trinca for The Washington Post via Getty Images) Fire retardant coats a playground in a neighborhood largely destroyed by a wildfire in Talent, Oregon, in 2020. Climate change has increased the risk of wildfires in the state. (David Ryder/Getty Images)By April, the map was on its way out.
The state Senate voted unanimously, Golden included, to repeal the state’s defensible-space and home-hardening requirements as well as the map that showed where they would apply.
Ahead of a 50-1 vote in the House to kill the map, familiar claims got repeated — including from a legislative leader’s office.
Virgle Osborne, the House Republican whip, lamented in a May press release: “These wildfire maps have cost people property values, insurance increases, and many heartaches.”
Osborne told ProPublica he stood behind his comment even though he had no evidence for it. Osborne said he believed Oregon’s maps helped insurance companies justify rate increases and policy cancellations.
“I can’t give you, you know, here’s the perfect example of somebody that, you know, did it, but no insurance company is that foolish,” Osborne said. “They’re not going to write a statement that would put them in jeopardy. But common sense is going to tell you, when the state is on your side, the insurance companies are going to bail out. And they have.”
With or without a map, former California insurance commissioner Dave Jones said, Oregon lawmakers could require insurers to provide incentives for homeowners to protect their properties. Colorado, for instance, ordered insurers this year to account for risk-reduction efforts in models used to decide who can obtain insurance and at what price.
Jones nonetheless called Oregon’s decision to kill the wildfire map “very unfortunate.”
“One of the biggest public health and safety challenges states are facing are climate-driven, severe-weather-related events,” Jones said. “Not giving people useful information to make decisions on that, to me, is not a path to public health and safety.”
During the June vote in the Oregon House, the lone person who voted to preserve Oregon’s wildfire map and its associated mandates was Dacia Grayber, a Democrat from the Portland area who’s a longtime firefighter and worked a brush rig during the 2020 wildfires.
She told ProPublica that by training, the first things she looks for while defending homes in wildland fires are the types of hazards the state intended to target: firewood under the deck, cedar shake siding, flammable juniper bushes growing close to homes.
Grayber said she was disturbed by the sentiment in the Capitol as the repeal vote neared. The decision to kill the map and eliminate home-hardening requirements, she said, had become a “feel-good, bipartisan vote.”
“We are walking away from a very clear decision to build safer, more resilient communities,” Grayber said.
The tragedy of it, she said, is “that it was 100% based in misinformation.”
Kotek, Oregon’s Democratic governor, signed the repeal on July 24.
Oregon Rep. Dacia Grayber is the sole legislator who voted to keep the wildfire hazard map alive. (Jenny Kane/AP Photo)This post was originally published on ProPublica.
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Gray wolf. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair.
In an amazing court victory for wild wolves and advocates who tirelessly speak on their behalf, the federal district court in Missoula, Montana ruled that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service violated the Endangered Species Act when it determined that gray wolves in the western United States do not warrant federal protections.
Western Watersheds Project, Alliance for the Wild Rockies, WildEarth Guardians, International Wildlife Coexistence Network, Predator Defense, Protect the Wolves, Trap Free Montana,Wilderness Watch, Friends of the Clearwater, and Nimiipuu Protecting the Environment filed a lawsuit in January challenging the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s denial of their petitions to list a western U.S. distinct population segment (DPS) of gray wolves under the ESA, or alternatively, to re-list the Northern Rocky Mountain DPS, which Congress “delisted” in 2011.
The ruling means that the Fish and Wildlife Service’s finding that gray wolves in the West do not qualify for listing is vacated and sent back to the agency for a new decision, consistent with the Endangered Species Act and best available science.
We hope this order will help blunt some of the lingering bigotry, senseless killing and fear mongering that nearly wiped wolves out before they were listed as endangered under the provisions of the federal Endangered Species Act in 1974.
The court order states that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service failed to consider the “best available science” on wolf populations and the impacts of hunting and trapping; the full extent of the species’ historical range; and the threat posed by inadequate state and federal regulations that often bow to political pressure.
The court ordered the Fish and Wildlife Service to re-analyze threats to the gray wolf population in the West in accordance with the requirements of the Endangered Species Act. These include the requirement to use the best available science.
Specifically, the court noted the agency failed to consider wolves’ lost historic range throughout the West in its assessment.
The court also ruled that the Fish and Wildlife Service failed to apply the best available science on population estimates and genetic threats from their small population size; incorrectly assumed connectivity among wolves in the West would continue despite high levels of mortality in the Northern Rockies.
To sum it up, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service didn’t follow the law to protect wolves from Montana’s, Idaho’s, and Wyoming’s wolf extermination policies. Wolves have yet to recover across the West, and allowing a few states to undertake aggressive wolf slaughters is inconsistent with the law.
The Alliance successfully sued to overturn the delisting of the gray wolf in 2012, but Montana’s Democratic Senator Jon Tester broke his campaign promise to not use riders to overturn court decisions and attached a rider to a must-pass Defense appropriation bill to remove wolves from Endangered Species list despite the court’s order. It is time to once again manage wolves in the Northern Rockies and throughout the west based on science, not politics, since Montana, Idaho and
Wyoming have demonstrated that they are not capable of doing so.
I would like to thank Matt Bishop, an attorney at Western Environmental Law Center for representing us and winning.
The post Wolves Can’t Go to Court, So We Went for Them…and Won! appeared first on CounterPunch.org.
This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org.
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By Emma Page
Greenpeace says moves to weaken ocean protection through dodgy fisheries “reforms” will be met with strong opposition, as Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones announces he wants to proceed with a raft of proposed changes to fisheries laws.
The controversial changes are some of the largest in decades, and would restrict public access to cameras on boats footage, remove the requirement for fishers to land all their catch, and stop legal challenges to catch limits that have been successful in protecting species in recent years.
The reforms will also give the minister the ability to set catch limits for five years.
Greenpeace oceans campaigner Ellie Hooper said these proposals would give the industry carte blanche on ocean destruction, weaken transparency and block the public from having input into fisheries decisions.
“These changes spell disaster for the already struggling ocean around us,” she said.
“Championed by the Minister for Oceans and Fisheries, the changes green light ocean destruction and remove the already minimal checks and balances designed to keep the fishing industry accountable.
“It is yet another example of how this government is pandering to the fishing industry while ignoring the overwhelming majority of New Zealanders who want more ocean protection, not less.
“New Zealanders want a healthy, thriving ocean where fish are plentiful and ecosystems are thriving.
‘More destruction’
“These reforms will mean more destruction, more decline in fish populations, and will allow the industry to go back to operating in the dark — hiding the impact they have.”One of the proposed reforms is to restrict access to footage from cameras on boats to industry and government only.
“This is not how it should work,” said Hooper.
“There are far more people in this country than just the commercial fishing industry who have a right to know how the ocean is being impacted, and have a say on what happens about protecting it.”
Hooper also warns that setting catch limits for five years could spell disaster for fish numbers, noting the recent collapse of the Chatham Rise Orange Roughy fishery, which has been so mismanaged it could now be at 8 percent of its original size.
“Greenpeace, backed by thousands of New Zealanders, stands for defending nature and ocean health. We are calling for an urgent end to destructive bottom trawling on seamounts and other vulnerable features, and for all footage from cameras on boats to be made accessible via the OIA (Offical Information Act),” she said.
“During a biodiversity and ocean crisis, we will strongly oppose moves to expedite destruction at the hands of the commercial fishing industry, as will the tens of thousands of New Zealanders who also back ocean protection.”
Republished from Greenpeace News.
This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.
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Before the clenching constipation of reluctant and cloddish policy makers, climate change advocates have found courts surprisingly amenable to their concerns. Bodies of environmental law in national courts and international tribunals are now burgeoning on the obligations of states to address ecological harms and the effects of greenhouse gas emissions. As is often the case, it’s the children at the vanguard, pointing scolding fingers at the adults in filing petitions and drawing attention to the dangers of tardiness.
2025 is proving to be something of a good year for climate change litigants and activists. On July 3, 2025, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, as requested by Chile and Colombia, issued an advisory opinion addressing the scope and extent of obligations with respect to respecting, protecting and fulfilling substantive rights regarding the climate emergency; procedural rights relevant to the same; and clarifying obligations towards vulnerable groups (children, environment activists, women, indigenous groups and so forth).
The advisory note is more onerous in not merely insisting that States observe a negative obligation – that is, to not violate rights directly – but that they also take positive steps through “reinforced due diligence” to deal with foreseeable harms arising from climate change. This entailed identifying a right to a safe climate. The prohibition against causing irreversible damage to the climate and the environment was also deemed a jus cogens norm, compellable under international customary law similarly to the prohibition against genocide, slavery and torture. Striking a novel note, the IACtHR also noted that Nature and its components should be acknowledged as subjects of rights, a move in what has been described as “ecological constitutionalism” in the Latin American context.
On July 23, the International Court of Justice also handed down an advisory opinion that promises to be momentous in its aggravations and irritations – at least to certain lawmakers and industries. For those countries still reaping the material, gluttonous rewards of fossil fuel exploration, production and consumption, this is bound to be of some concern. Begun daringly in 2019 as an action by a group of Pacific Island students from the University of the South Pacific, with able support from Vanuatu, the court unanimously found that producing and consuming fossil fuels “may constitute an internationally wrongful act attributable to that state”.
Vanuatu’s submission to the Court emphasised the grim consequences of not adequately addressing state obligations to address greenhouse gas emissions, including the shocks of internal displacement. “The forced displacement from ancestral lands and ecosystems leads to grave cultural losses. It impairs territorial sovereignty and inhibits the affected peoples from making a free choice about their futures.”
The decision is important in several respects. It opines that countries have a legal obligation to mitigate climate change and limit the rise in global temperature to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, a goal outlined in the Paris Agreement. States are accordingly obligated to advance climate plans that reflect their “highest possible ambition” in making “adequate contribution” in limiting temperature rises to that level. The discretion of countries to arrive at elastic “nationally determined contributions” was limited by the requirements of “due diligence”. Any such determined contributions had to be compliant with the obligations under the Paris Agreement and international environmental law.
The Court also reached the view that responsibility for breaches of climate change treaties “and in relation to the loss and damage associated with the adverse effects of climate change, is to be determined by applying the well-established rules on State responsibility under customary international law.”
Direction is also given on what a State wrong in not mitigating climate change might look like. A failure to take the appropriate steps to protect the climate system from greenhouse gas emissions, “including through fossil fuel production, fossil fuel consumptions, the granting of fossil fuel exploration licenses or the provision of fossil fuel subsidies” could be “an internationally wrongful act which is attributable to that State.” The wrong arises, not from the emissions as such, but from the failure to protect “the climate change system from significant harm resulting from anthropogenic emissions of such gases.”
The decision is crucial in considering historical responsibility and the thorny issue of reparations, the nature and quantum of the latter being dependent “on the circumstances”. Both nation states and “injured individuals” could seek reparations from historically heavy emitters, a point previously dealt with most unsatisfactorily via “loss and damage” finance discussions through UN climate negotiations. The impediment that such finance be only provided voluntarily is potentially overcome by the legal obligation to repair harm. This is particularly important for countries with economies at risk to climate change disruption (tourism, fishing, agriculture) and the enormous costs arising from dealing with environmental disasters.
The ICJ proved dismissive of arguments – often made by states with powerful fossil fuel lobbies – that attributing precise responsibility in the context of climate change was impossible. The Court observed “that while climate change is caused by cumulative GHG emissions, it is scientifically possible to determine each State’s total contribution to global emissions, taking into account both historical and current emissions.”
Vanuatu’s climate change minister, Ralph Regenvanum, is already filling his file with teasing blackmail for appropriate targets. Given its location in the Pacific, and prominence as a fossil fuel exporter, Australia is in his sights. “Australia,” he told Australia’s Radio National, “is committing internationally wrongful acts as it is sponsoring and subsidising fossil fuel production and excessive emissions.” Canberra needed “to align itself with the advisory opinion and cease this conduct that is contributing to emissions and start making reparations.”
From being a slow field of speculative pursuit and vague pronouncements, climate change litigation has become a branch of international customary law. Current developments in this field even include a petition to the African Court of Human and Peoples’ Rights from May 2025 seeking to do something along the lines pursued by the ICJ and the IACtHR, with a focus on African states. This development will be unwelcome among the fossil fuel lobby groups that still threaten and bribe political representatives – and it’s been a long time coming.
The post Adjusting the Temperature: Climate Change and International Law first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
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Pipeline company Energy Transfer LP and its CEO, Kelcy Warren, were the fossil fuel industry’s top contributors to a super PAC supporting President Donald Trump during the first half of 2025, making a combined $25 million in contributions to that PAC alone. Best known as the company behind the Dakota Access Pipeline that sparked an Indigenous-led resistance movement at Standing Rock in 2016…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
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Three times this year the world has been close to nuclear catastrophe of one form or another — the India–Pakistan conflict, the ongoing Ukraine–Russia war and more recently the Israel/US–Iran “12 day war”. Here is one of the speeches at the 80th anniversary of Hiroshima Day in Sydney before the “March for Humanity” on Sydney Harbour Bridge.
COMMENTARY: By Peter Murphy
I acknowledge the Gadigal People of the Eora Nation as the Traditional Owners of the Land on which we are gathered and pay respect to their Elders past and present. I also acknowledge the Pitjantjatjara and other peoples of the APY lands who suffered the direct impact of nuclear weapons tests at Maralinga and nearby in the 1950s and early 1960s.
I am standing in here for Michael Wright, the national secretary of the Electrical Trades Union, who was unable to take up our invitation to be here today.
The Electrical Trades Union (ETU) has a very solid record for opposing the nuclear industry and nuclear weapons, and really campaigned hard on this issue against Peter Dutton and the Coalition in the May federal elections.
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The ETU campaigned in Dutton’s seat of Dickson and he lost his seat to Labor’s Ali France. You have to conclude that among the many reasons that Australian voters deserted the Coalition and Dutton, the Coalition’s nuclear energy policy was a big one.
Since the election, the Coalition has continued to entertain the idea of a nuclear-powered Australia, showing that they just refuse to listen to the Australian people. But they are only too happy to listen to and take the money of the fossil fuel corporations and the nuclear power companies like Westinghouse, who are the ones who benefit from government policies to foster nuclear power.
They are determined to delay the transition to renewable energy as long as possible, whatever the cost to all of us in runaway climate disasters.
The ETU’s official policy against the nuclear industry dates back to the 1950s, resulting from the shared experiences of ETU members who returned from Japan after the Second World War. In the decades since, the ETU has regularly revisited this policy to learn more about the nuclear fuel cycle, changes and advances to technologies, technical interaction with the network and economic viability.
Opposed nuclear industry
Let’s honour those long-gone ETU members who recognised the crimes that took place at Nagasaki and Hiroshima 80 years ago by vigorously opposing the nuclear industry and nuclear weapons today. And let’s remember some other Australians who were there then — Tom Uren saw the mushroom cloud over Nagasaki from the copper mine where he was working as a prisoner of war; and Wilfred Burchett, the journalist, who first told the world from Hiroshima about radiation sickness.Nuclear power stations generate radioactive waste such as spent reactor fuel, reprocessing effluents, and contaminated tools and work clothing. These materials can remain radioactive and hazardous to human health for tens of thousands of years.
And this is the kind of waste that comes from nuclear-powered submarines, during regular maintenance, and at the end of their life — 30 years we have been told for the AUKUS submarine nuclear reactors.
This waste will need to be trucked across the country on public roads to be disposed of in a nuclear waste facility.
But, Australia does not have a dedicated national radioactive waste facility. And the Albanese government is refusing to say where they plan to put that waste.
The people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and those at the nuclear tests sites in Nevada, the Marianas, French Polynesia, Algeria, Kazakhstan, and the Monte Bello Islands, Emu Fields, Maralinga in Australia have been living with these nuclear wastes in their environment for up to 80 years.
We don’t want this to go any further in Australia or anywhere else in the world.
Democratic failure over AUKUS
How dare the Albanese government commit future generations to somehow keep that deadly nuclear waste safe for tens of thousands of years.The ETU stood up at the August 2023 ALP National Conference and opposed the AUKUS project, spelling out these concerns and also the democratic failure of Labor to consult the public and the Parliament before committing to the AUKUS deal.
The Albanese leadership tried very hard to make sure that AUKUS was not debated at that ALP National Conference. So it was a victory first of all to have the debate and openly discuss the big problems with AUKUS.
The pro-AUKUS case was so weak that the Defence Industry Minister at the time, Pat Conroy, defended it by accusing the critics of being like the appeasers of the Nazis in the 1930s. In doing so he was saying that China is a fascist state and it is the enemy we have to fight with these hopeless submarines.
The grotesque comparison of us and of China to Nazis is ironically more appropriate for Trump and the USA, who are right now purging people of colour from the streets and workplaces of the United States and supporting a genocide in Gaza.
AUKUS is one building block in the US plan to wage war on China to remove its capacity to challenge US primacy in this region and world-wide. A conga line of US military commanders and cabinet secretaries have made this clear.
It is imperial madness writ large.
The deeper reason
And this is the deeper reason why we must oppose AUKUS, because we have to stop this deadly drive for a war between nuclear-armed superpowers. Such a war would almost certainly go nuclear, the world would go into nuclear winter, there would be no winners and huge huge casualties.Japan, the Philippines, and Australia would be very early targets in such a war.
We remember that 200,000 people, almost all civilians, men women and children of all ages, were killed by those two nuclear bombs 80 years ago, and endless suffering has continued down to this day.
So we recommit to opposing nuclear weapons and the nuclear industry which produces them. We commit to getting Australia’s signature on the Treaty to Prohibit Nuclear Weapons.
We commit to stopping AUKUS. We commit to stopping the active US and Australian plan for a war with China.
This is edited from Peter Murphy’s speech at the 80th anniversary Horoshima Day rally for the Sydney Peace and Justice Coalition and Sydney Anti-AUKUS Coalition on 3 August 2025.
This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.
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The Arctic island of Svalbard is so reliably frigid that humanity bet its future on the place. Since 2008, the Svalbard Global Seed Vault — set deep in frozen soil known as permafrost — has accepted nearly 1.4 million samples of more than 6,000 species of critical crops. But, the island is warming six to seven times faster than the rest of the planet, making even winters freakishly hot…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
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This figure shows changes in heat content of the top 700 meters of the world’s oceans between 1955 and 2023 (US EPA)A new study published in ScienceDaily claims severe ocean overheating may be causing a fundamental climate shift. Ocean heatwaves over the past couple of years have been massive and extensive and intensive on a scale never seen before at times covering 96% of the world’s oceans, which should be impossible. (The Oceans are Overheating – and Scientists Say a Climate Tipping Point May be Here, ScienceDaily d/d July 26, 2025)
Starting in 2022-23, massive ocean heatwaves persisted for more than 500 days covering nearly the entire globe. This shocking event, never witnessed before, puts the entire global warming scenario on a new level that’s predictably negative. The message is as clear as a bell: World leadership should focus on removal of fossil fuel emissions as soon as possible. Global warming, especially in the ocean, is on a rapid upswing and not waiting around, as such, fully 2/3rds of the planet is suffering a very dangerous heat stroke that’s separate and apart from extreme heatwaves on land.
After all, Earth is basically a liquid planet, according to NASA: “Covering more than 70% of Earth’s surface, our global ocean has a very high heat capacity. It has absorbed 90% of the warming that has occurred in recent decades due to increasing greenhouse gases, and the top few meters of the ocean store as much heat as Earth’s entire atmosphere.” (Ocean Warming/ Vital Signs, NASA)
Scientists fear system-wide climate change may be in the works, threatening ocean marine ecosystems such corals, fisheries, and aquaculture, as well as goosing up terrestrial temperatures way too fast too soon across the planet. Marine heatwaves this decade have lasted four times (4x) longer than the historical record. Hot oceans accelerate climate change. As water temperatures rise, oceans lose ability to absorb excessive heat and land temperatures rise accordingly.
“According to the study’s researchers, the 2023 MHWs may mark a fundamental shift in ocean-atmosphere dynamics, potentially serving as an early warning of an approaching tipping point in Earth’s climate system,” Ibid.
Given the duration of the heatwave, which began in earnest in 2023 and continues today in some regions, Zhenzhong Zeng, PhD, co-author of the study, Earth systems scientist China Southern University of Science and Technology believes it is the start of a “new normal for the world’s oceans.” Emerging data indicates the heat in the oceans is accumulating exponentially, a trend that defies climate model predictions. It’ll accelerate heat on land, leading to more severe and widespread droughts, heatwaves, wildfires and storms, which are already seriously severe in today’s world.
Zhenzhong Zeng claims to be “very scared” by the potential regime shift in the oceans: “I think almost all of the Earth system model projections are wrong… Record marine heatwaves may signal a permanent shift in the oceans.”
Some impacts of the shift are starting to appear: “When Ocean temperatures rise dramatically, they trigger a cascade of effects that lead to mass fish deaths. The primary mechanism involves oxygen depletion, as warmer water holds less dissolved oxygen while simultaneously increasing fish’s metabolic rates and oxygen requirements. This double impact can lead to widespread suffocation. Additionally, fish are ectothermic (cold-blooded), making them particularly vulnerable to temperature changes.” (Marine Heatwaves Trigger Mass Fish Deaths in Australian Waters, Aussie Animals, 2025)
Devastating results hit western Australia early in 2025. Temperatures 5°C above normal killed tens of thousands of fish. Scientists agree this represents a broader global challenge as research shows climate change has multiplied the event of marine heat zones by 20 times. Now, it’s coming home to roost as the world’s oceans turn away from decades of absorbing excessive global heat.
Ocean Payback
According to Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, the ocean won’t hold its heat forever. Eventually, it’ll feed back into the climate system, causing acceleration of global warming beyond all expectations, as “it’s too late” becomes reality.
It’s not just oceans that are overheating: “Water temperatures have surged above 85 degrees in the Mediterranean Sea, where records have been broken every day for weeks.” (The Mediterranean Sea is Experiencing a Record-Smashing Heat Wave, The Washington Post, July 4, 2025) Scientists have expressed concern over the potential for sizeable losses of marine life.
Ocean Heat Impact – Antarctica & Greenland
The Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheets represent the largest land store of freshwater, which, should they completely melt and flow into the ocean, would add a total of 7.5 and 58 m to global-mean sea level, respectively. Recent observations have shown the ice sheets melting at an accelerating rate. Now, ocean heat has become a bigger-than-expected threat to the stability of the major ice sheets much, much earlier than science expected.
The Greenland ice sheet is particularly vulnerable, as warm ocean currents undercut fjords and erode outlet glaciers, undercutting and destabilizing calving.
The leading cause of ice mass loss for the West Antarctica Ice Sheet is ocean heat. Only recently, under the auspices of the Australian Antarctic Program Partnership, 450 polar scientists held an emergency meeting to alert the world to clear evidence of instability of the ice sheet. They strongly suggest immediate halt to fossil fuels.
Statement of Polar scientists’ group: “The services of the Southern Ocean and Antarctica – oceanic carbon sink and planetary air-conditioner – have been taken for granted. Global warming-induced shifts observed in the region are immense. Recent research has shown record-low sea ice, extreme heatwaves exceeding 40°C [104°F] above average temperatures, and increased instability around key ice shelves. Shifting ecosystems on land and at sea underscore this sensitive region’s rapid and unprecedented transformations. Runaway ice loss causing rapid and catastrophic sea-level rise is possible within our lifetimes. Whether such irreversible tipping points have already passed is unknown.” (“Emergency” Warning for Antarctica Issued by Nearly 500 Polar Scientists, IFLScience, Nov. 22, 2024)
Unfortunately, climate change is not about to go away, rather, it is gaining momentum by the year as CO2 emissions from fossil fuels skyrocket into the atmosphere, as of June 2025 at 430 ppm, a new record high for atmospheric concentration. Moreover, the annual rate of CO2 increase in 2024 (also setting a new record) was 3.50 ppm, more than double the annual rate in 2000 at 1.24 ppm, when atmospheric CO2 concentration was at 37o ppm.
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, in 2015 an international group of scientists determined anything above 350 ppm atmospheric CO2 would be beyond the “safe zone.” Nobody has suggested the scientists have changed their minds. But that issue is now upstaged by the world’s property/casualty insurance industry as it screams, hollers, complains, rejects, doubles rates, drops coverage all because of climate change. Property insurers have brought to the fore in full public view a climate change monster that’s destroying the American dream of home ownership.
Based upon referenced sources herein, fossil fuel emissions must be stopped as soon as possible to hopefully mitigate a whacky climate system that is already threatening the very foundations of the current socio/economic system, unwittingly suggesting maybe ‘it should also go’ the way of fossil fuels.
As if out of the blue, within only a couple of years, climate change has become capitalism’s biggest nightmare. Maybe they should scramble to do whatever is scientifically necessary to try to mitigate whatever can be mitigated. Too bad CO2 capture and sequester is a decidedly weak, and inconsequential, solution. “It’s a fraud!” (Al Gore)
Robert Hunziker
Los Angeles
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This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org.