Green News

A relatively ambitious deal to reduce the shipping industry’s 3% of global emissions now looks more likely after four days of closed-door talks in London, observers say.

The International Maritime Organization (IMO), which oversees the negotiations, said there had been “constructive discussions” and “genuine willingness within the group to make concrete further progress”.

Em Fenton, senior director at the NGO Opportunity Green who attended the talks last week, said they “demonstrated a strong spirit of solidarity in the face of blatant attempts to undermine the credibility, ambition and equity of a hard-fought multilateral agreement”.

After several years of debate, governments provisionally agreed in April 2025 on a “Net-Zero Framework” (NZF) – a series of emissions reduction targets for shipowners aimed at incentivising them to use cleaner fuels, backed up with financial rewards for meeting the targets and fees for missing them.

But in October 2025, after a high-profile intervention by US President Donald Trump and threats of US sanctions and visa restrictions, the US convinced a majority of voting nations to postpone the adoption of the NZF for a year.

UCL analysis found that, of those who expressed a view at last week’s talks, 38 were in favour of an NZF-style solution while only 17 were against. Those opposed are “consistently composed of strongly fossil fuel-aligned governments”.

An observer of the talks, who did not want to be named, said the countries opposed include the US, Russia, India, Thailand, Argentina, Ecuador and Uruguay, as well as eight oil-rich Gulf nations and shipowner-reliant Liberia and Panama. Governments that support an NZF-style deal include China, Brazil, Mexico, Türkiye, Canada, Australia, Chile, nine African nations, most European countries and small islands.

A new framework to tackle shipping emissions could be adopted if two-thirds of countries that are present and signed up to a regulation called Marpol Annex VI – endorsed by just over 100 states – vote in favour of it, as they did in April 2025.

UCL’s analysis said it was “reassuring” that governments which had taken strong positions in the media against the NZF were being more compromising in the negotiations.

Tweaks are probable

While there is majority support for the NZF, UCL said adopting it would be difficult politically. “The process from here could therefore be as much about producing what appears to be a new package, but one that broadly ends up with similar outcomes in relation to objectives,” UCL argued.

But tweaking the NZF, which resulted from years of negotiations, comes with risks, it warned. For example, changes could reduce the new system’s planned support for low-income countries, turning them against it. Fenton said compromising should not mean “abandoning the principle of justice in the maritime transition”.

UCL said the speed at which shipowners must reduce their ships’ emissions or face fees is likely to be reduced in the short-term but raised in the long-term to meet a goal of net zero emissions by mid-century.

• Sep 4, 2026 Justice Palestine: Israel’s bombing has left Gaza vulnerable to climate change With homes, hospitals and water storage destroyed, Palestine’s government says that Gazans have little protection from climate impacts and sets conditional emissions targets Read more
• Sep 3, 2026 Energy More support needed to power Africa’s food systems with renewables, experts say Renewable energy could help African food businesses boost productivity and competitiveness, but the upfront cost, fragmented markets and limited financing stand in the way Read more
• Sep 2, 2026 Finance Loss and damage fund urged to hold crisis meeting on Nepal The new fund is coming under pressure from developing nations to respond quickly to climate disasters rather than just financing longer-term projects Read more

This was a compromise put forward by NZF-supporter Brazil. However, an analysis by the the Institute of Marine Engineering, Science and Technology (IMarEST) has found that this change would lead to more overall emissions than the original NZF trajectory.

UCL has warned it could incentivise liquefied natural gas as a shipping fuel over greener options, which include hydrogen-based methanol and ammonia.

Analysis by UCL and the Rocky Mountain Institute suggests that, while a slower start to the NZF would reduce transport costs in the short term, it would increase them later due to the costs involved in switching the industry over from more polluting fuel to cleaner fuel.

NZF won’t meet emissions goals

IMarEst’s analysis finds that even in its current form – the most ambitious deal on the table – the NZF will not be sufficient for shipping to meet its emissions reduction goals.

It says that only a Pacific proposal to place a levy on ships’ total emissions – rather than just those above a certain level – would meet the industry’s targets to reduce emissions 20% between 2008 and 2030, 70% by 2040 and then reach net zero “by or around, i.e. close to 2050”. This is highly unlikely to be adopted.

Additional talks will be held from November 23-27 and from November 30-December 3 before a potentially final round of official negotiations begins on December 4.

The post London talks raise hopes for green shipping deal appeared first on Climate Home News.

'We need to hold on to hope' Channel News brendan 7th September 2026 Teaser Media

At a key leaders’ summit in Palau, Pacific island nations burdened by worsening climate change impacts and costly fossil fuel imports called for November’s COP31 climate summit to deliver finance to help the region transition to renewable energy and build more resilient communities.

Heads of government from the 18-member Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) – which includes COP31 co-president Australia – met in Palau’s capital Koror for a week-long summit, where they demanded access to climate finance, ocean action and a regional boost for renewables at COP31.

Palau’s president Surangel Whipps Jr. said during a plenary session that the Pacific must focus on delivering climate and ocean commitments. “It will require greater regional leadership, stronger regional coordination and, above all, unity of purpose,” he said.

The meeting, which ended last Friday, was marked by the absence of some leaders – among them the heads of state of the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and Fiji, which will host a preparatory session for COP31 in October (referred to as the pre-COP31). There were also tensions over Taiwan’s participation, with China objecting to its presence as an observer.

The forum’s final declaration, published after it ended and signed by all its members, reaffirms that climate change is the “single greatest threat to the security, livelihoods and wellbeing of Pacific peoples”, and notes “the importance of a focused, high-level declaration” at the pre-COP31 to build “political momentum towards COP31”.

• Sep 4, 2026 Justice Palestine: Israel’s bombing has left Gaza vulnerable to climate change With homes, hospitals and water storage destroyed, Palestine’s government says that Gazans have little protection from climate impacts and sets conditional emissions targets Read more
• Sep 3, 2026 Energy More support needed to power Africa’s food systems with renewables, experts say Renewable energy could help African food businesses boost productivity and competitiveness, but the upfront cost, fragmented markets and limited financing stand in the way Read more
• Sep 2, 2026 Finance Loss and damage fund urged to hold crisis meeting on Nepal The new fund is coming under pressure from developing nations to respond quickly to climate disasters rather than just financing longer-term projects Read more

Australia and Pacific islands have invited world leaders to attend the pre-COP31 gathering, which will be held in Fiji and Tuvalu from October 5 to 8. While usually a technical meeting for negotiators, the island nations aim to issue a political declaration at the gathering calling for strong outcomes in Türkiye.

Chris Bowen, Australia’s climate minister and COP31 president of negotiations, said in a speech during the Pacific forum that his country is “determined to use COP31 to progress the agenda to make it easier for countries to access the climate finance they need”.

“We won’t miss the opportunity to ensure COP31 is a Pacific COP. Not just because of the location of pre-COP but because of the agenda we are shaping through the Action Agenda at COP31,” he said.

The Action Agenda is a large portfolio of climate initiatives and coalitions uniting governments, businesses and civil society outside of the formal negotiations on everything from health to methane emissions.

Renewable energy investment plan

Announced a year ago, the island nations launched a $14-billion investment plan for a “100% Renewable Blue Pacific” at the forum in Palau. The plan lists strategic projects that would reduce the region’s high dependence on fossil fuel imports, whose soaring costs have become a major burden since the Iran war.

The projects include a $52-million programme managed by Australia to develop off-grid renewables in remote communities across the Pacific, as well as a $100-million blended finance fund aimed at supporting private-sector investments in wind and solar, among others.

Currently, some countries in the Pacific are spending up to a quarter of their GDP importing diesel to power electricity generation, according to a new report by the University of New South Wales in Australia. The investment plan launched at the forum aims to reduce these costs by adding 2.2 gigawatts of renewable generation and around 9 gigawatt hours of electricity storage.

To channel funds into the region, the plan also highlights the role of the recently established Pacific Resilience Facility (PRF), a regional fund that seeks to swiftly disburse funds to climate-vulnerable communities at the local level. Bowen said he would promote the facility to world leaders attending COP31 and “ask for their support”.

Australian prime minister Anthony Albanese at the Pacific Islands Forum plenary in Palau. (Photo: PIF Secretariat) Call to transition away from fossil fuels

Separately, the forum endorsed the Belau Declaration which emphasises the need to keep the 1.5C Paris Agreement temperature goal alive. A UN report last week showed that overshooting this limit is now inevitable, but deep emissions cuts could still bring global temperatures back down by the end of the century.

Pacific nations expect to rally support for this declaration at the pre-COP, with Fiji’s climate minister Lynda Tabuya saying in a statement: “Palau is where we build the political mandate. Pre-COP is where we take it to the world.”

The political declaration also says that countries must accelerate the global transition away from fossil fuels “towards a renewable energy future”, and calls for greater recognition of the importance of ocean health in addressing climate change.

UN sets out narrow path back to 1.5C warming after inevitable overshoot

As part of the forum’s outcomes in Palau, countries also noted Tuvalu’s efforts to host the second global conference on transitioning away from fossil fuels, which will gather government representatives in April next year to follow up on this year’s inaugural conference in Santa Marta, Colombia.

Speaking to journalists at the forum, Vanuatu’s climate minister Ralph Regenvanu questioned Australia’s role in talks about phasing out fossil fuels at COP31, adding that “the very least a country like Australia should be doing is stopping future expansion, and it’s not doing that”. During the PIF, the country approved the extension of a major mine that digs and exports coal for steel-making, giving it permission to keep producing until 2055.

Rising seas trigger “development emergency”

As leaders met in one of the world’s regions most threatened by sea-level rise, UN Secretary-General António Guterres released a new report warning that rising seas are now “one of the most profound threats to populations around the world in developed and developing states alike”.

Presenting the report at UN headquarters in New York, Assistant Secretary-General for Economic Development Navid Hanif said rising sea levels are not a “future risk any more” but an accelerating “development emergency” that could hinder progress in vulnerable regions like the Pacific and least developed countries.

The report warns that seas are rising “faster than at any point in recorded history”, with 2024 setting a new record of 5.9 millimetres. This has been driven by human-induced climate change mainly through a process known as thermal expansion – where rising heat causes the ocean to expand – as well as the melting of ice sheets.

Pacific islands seek backing for new regional fund ahead of COP31

The report notes that about 1.2 billion people around the world are exposed to coastal flooding, and says some low-lying islands in Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands and Fiji are already facing forced relocations. Globally, rising seas could cost more than $1 trillion every year by 2050, it adds.

“We cannot stop sea level rise this century but we can determine how much worse it becomes. About half a metre of sea level rise is already locked in in this century because of warming that has already occurred, but beyond that our choices matter enormously,” Hanif told journalists.

Bill Hare, CEO of think-tank Climate Analytics, said the report was a “wake-up call” to the leaders of high-emitting countries that their failure to cut carbon emissions is “creating major risks for the future alongside the impacts we can already observe around us”.

Guterres is set to host a high-level meeting on addressing the threat of sea level rise this month during the UN General Assembly, where countries are expected to adopt a declaration that calls for stronger action, expanded access to finance and “ongoing dialogue” to tackle the issue.

The post At regional summit, Pacific islands ask for COP31 support for clean energy and finance appeared first on Climate Home News.

Money does grow instead of trees Channel News brendan 7th September 2026 Teaser Media

In April 2024, Tish Taylor and her father, Robert, stood behind President Joe Biden’s Environmental Protection Agency chief, Michael Regan, as he signed a regulation designed to dramatically reduce toxic pollution from petrochemical plants like those that cluster near the Taylors’ homes along the lower Mississippi River, in Louisiana. 

Taylor struggled not to cry through the signing ceremony, which followed years of demands from communities like hers — in the 85-mile corridor between New Orleans and Baton Rouge that has become known as Cancer Alley — for tighter limits on plants’ emissions. The new regulation, known as the HON rule, was “a wonderful gift to generations ahead of us,” Taylor said. “It’s hard for me to find the words to say how validated we felt.” 

For decades, regulations on emissions of hazardous chemicals such as toluene, ethylene oxide, and vinyl chloride have been weaker than restrictions on more common pollutants, such as those emitted by vehicles. 

The Biden administration took major steps to strengthen Clean Air Act rules on those hazardous air pollutants, and the HON rule was a centerpiece of that effort. Toughening requirements on six different pollutants at more than 200 petrochemical plants, it was one of a slate of regulations the Biden administration enacted on air toxics, each covering a specific industry, from steelmaking to tire manufacturing.

Gulf Coast petrochemical plants regulated by the 2024 HON rule. Source: Environmental Defense Fund. Yale E360

But shortly after President Donald Trump began his second term, his administration began unraveling those rules, including the one the Taylors had so recently celebrated. Last year, Trump granted two-year exemptions from the HON rule to more than 50 petrochemical facilities. This July, he issued 20 more temporary exemptions, and the EPA said it would propose a rewrite of the regulation this fall. The new version is all but certain to significantly scale back the rule’s protections. 

“Everything that the Biden administration did to help protect us was pretty much just thrown in the garbage,” Tish Taylor said in July, and replaced by “a death sentence.” St. John the Baptist Parish, where her family lives, has the country’s highest risk of cancer from air pollution — nearly 50 times the national average. A disproportionate percentage of those exposed to the highest levels of pollution in the region are Black.

A set of amendments to several existing regulations on toxic air pollutants, the HON rule — which stands for Hazardous Organic National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants — requires petrochemical plants to upgrade their pollution control equipment to reduce emissions of two hazardous chemicals: ethylene oxide and chloroprene. It also mandates air monitors at plants’ fencelines to measure concentrations of those chemicals and four more — benzene, ethylene dichloride, vinyl chloride, and 1,3-butadiene — and requires operators to carry out necessary repairs if emissions exceed limits. 

Tracey Woodruff, a Stanford University epidemiology and population health professor who formerly worked on toxic assessments at the EPA, said the pollutants covered by the HON rule are “the classic bad guys of toxic chemicals,” compounds that raise risks for breast cancer, liver cancer, leukemia, lymphoma, and reproductive problems. “We’ve known about their toxicity for decades,” she said, and “they should have been more highly regulated a long time ago.” 

Read Next Texas clears the way for petrochemical expansion as experts warn of health risks Shelby Jouppi, Jim Morris, & Savanna Strott, Public Health Watch

The HON rule also closed a long-standing loophole that freed plants from emissions requirements when they were shutting down and starting up — for example when carrying out maintenance, or ahead of a storm. With climate change fueling more extreme weather, that loophole has “a massive impact on what is actually getting released,” said Shiv Srivastava, policy director at Fenceline Watch, a Houston environmental justice group.

The HON rule was one of nine new air toxics rules issued by the Biden administration. The eight other rules targeted emissions from sectors including iron- and steelmaking, copper smelting, tire manufacturing, and coal-fired power plants. All nine have been or are now being rescinded, revised, or reconsidered.  

The HON rule was among the most wide-reaching of those hazardous pollutant regulations. “This is a big rule,” said Joe Goffman, who headed the EPA’s air office under Biden. Because air toxics rules typically address very specific types of industrial facilities, an individual regulation sometimes applies to only a handful of plants in a few locations, with pollution reductions often measured in just hundreds of pounds, he said. But the HON rule covered approximately 220 large petrochemical plants, so its footprint promised to be both bigger and more wide-reaching geographically. Nearly 60 percent of the facilities it covered are in Texas and Louisiana, home to the nation’s largest petrochemical production zones. The rest are scattered across the country, in states including Tennessee, Kentucky, West Virginia, Ohio, Illinois, and Alabama. 

The EPA estimated when the rule was finalized that it would prevent 6,200 tons of toxic air pollution annually, and slash emissions of ethylene oxide and chloroprene from the plants it regulates by almost 80 percent. In communities near HON plants, the agency said the regulation would reduce the risk of cancers related to air toxics by 96 percent. Facilities affected by the rule produce ingredients for common products such as plastics, paints, antifreeze, and cleaning and personal care items like detergent and shampoo. 

Weeks into Trump’s second term, the EPA invited companies to email the agency with requests for exemptions from the HON rule and Biden’s other hazardous pollutant regulations. In granting the postponements, Trump invoked a Clean Air Act provision that environmental lawyers say has never been used: allowing temporary exemptions to emissions rules if they are “in the country’s national security interests” and if the technology required to comply with a regulation is unavailable.

Read Next Trump quietly shutters the only federal agency that investigates industrial chemical explosions Tristan Baurick

“The HON Rule imposes substantial burdens on chemical manufacturers already operating under stringent regulations,” Trump’s exemption proclamations said. “Maintaining a robust domestic chemical industry is vital to safeguarding the supply chains that underpin our economy and to reducing the Nation’s dependence on foreign control over materials critical to national resilience.”

Trump’s orders provided no evidence for their assertions. “That’s not how this works,” said Annie Fox, a staff attorney at the Clean Air Council, in Philadelphia. The law requires a president to set out specifics supporting each claim made in justifying an exemption, “not just state it,” she said. “These are supposed to be rare exceptions that are well-grounded in research and facts.” 

Last October, a coalition of local and national advocacy groups, including the Taylors’ Concerned Citizens of St. John, sued Trump and his EPA in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia over the exemptions, arguing that Trump’s claims are false and amount to “a pretext to relieve polluters from working to comply” with the HON rule while the administration works to undo the regulation.

The American Chemistry Council, a trade group representing petrochemical producers, said the exemptions “offer a pathway for relief for some sources from some of the unrealistic timelines” in the HON rule. It called the regulation “overly stringent” and said it “exceeds the EPA’s statutory authority, disregards relevant scientific evidence, and imposes some requirements without technological availability.” 

The EPA said in an emailed statement that all its proposals on air toxics aimed to “protect American industry and supply chains, while still minimizing Americans’ unnecessary exposure to hazardous air pollutants.” 

Read Next Trump EPA moves to repeal regulation of cancer-linked chemical ethylene oxide Naveena Sadasivam

The HON rule’s roots lay in a 2016 reevaluation of ethylene oxide gas that revealed it was much more dangerous to those inhaling it than had been previously understood. That reevaluation also led, in 2024, to a regulation that tightened emissions limits on ethylene oxide at facilities that use it to sterilize medical equipment.

In March, the EPA proposed replacing the medical sterilizer rule with a weakened version, arguing that the Clean Air Act gives regulators very limited scope to update rules in accordance with new science on health dangers.

In backtracking on efforts to limit exposure to hazardous air pollutants, Woodruff said, the Trump administration has signaled that “whatever the industry wants to do, that’s what we want to do.” She noted that former fossil fuel and petrochemical industry representatives hold top jobs across the EPA. The policy changes “will lead to people getting sicker and dying,” she said. “This is exactly opposite of what this administration claimed they wanted to do in terms of ‘Make America Healthy Again.’”

Read Next The EPA’s data on cancer risk from air pollution has gone dark Sachi Kitajima Mulkey

HON rule exemptions are not the only change that will increase risks to Americans living near petrochemical facilities, advocates say. The EPA has also proposed undoing changes the Biden administration made to strengthen a safety rule called the Risk Management Program, which empowered workers dealing with hazardous substances to stop operations they believe to be dangerous, and required chemical facilities to prepare for natural disasters, undergo independent audits after accidents, and share information with the public. 

Nationally, there were 131 accidents resulting in reportable chemical releases last year. For those living near the Houston area’s nearly 700 chemical plants, “there are constant explosions, there are constant fires, there are constant black, dark plumes that linger over our communities,” Srivastava said.

The Biden-era update sought to address such dangers, but the Trump administration said the new rule was too costly and burdensome, and that it had made refineries and chemical facilities “less safe and less competitive.” Many of the plants it covered already had effective safety programs, the EPA said in a statement, and eliminating duplicative requirements would enable operators to focus on the most important changes. “Due to the varied, complex nature of chemical facilities, the facility operator is in the best position to assess risks and identify steps to mitigate these risks,” it said. 

Last year, the administration also removed an online data tool the Biden administration had created to give communities located near petrochemical plants information about their operations, including their accident history, emergency response plans, and the chemicals they handle. Srivastava said the tool’s loss cuts off neighbors’ access to even the most basic information about nearby plants — their names and locations, for example — making it hard for communities to even begin preparing for accidents. And easing safety mandates, he said, “makes us extremely, extremely vulnerable to having a massive, catastrophic disaster on the scale of something like what happened in Bhopal,” where a leak at a Union Carbide pesticide plant, in India, killed thousands of people in 1984.

Sharon Lavigne, founder of RISE St. James Louisiana, an advocacy group in “Cancer Alley,” still has the pen that the EPA’s Michael Regan gave her after he signed the HON rule, and her group is a plaintiff in the lawsuit challenging Trump’s exemptions. She said she believes the president’s disregard for the regulation reflects his belief that “we are nothing,” and she vowed to continue fighting to restore the HON rule’s original reach and strength. “When he gets out of office,” she said, “we’re gonna fix it back.”

toolTips('.classtoolTips6','The process of extracting metal from raw ore and rock by heating the ore until it melts.

 ');

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline A hard-won rule to cut chemical plant pollution is being unraveled on Sep 6, 2026.

A deadly flash flood in the Grand Canyon over the weekend was probably driven by a confluence of climate factors, including drought, wildfire scarring and warming temperatures in the Pacific Ocean that can supercharge storms.

At least two people have died, nearly 80 people were rescued and one remained unaccounted for after a surge of water and debris swept through the immensely popular tourist destination on Saturday, fueled by torrents of rain that hit the national park’s Bright Angel Creek area.

Flash floods are not uncommon in the region, especially during the monsoon season from June to September, when strong rains pummel the arid landscapes and can quickly fill narrow rock formations. Visiting the Grand Canyon — a crown jewel of the US national park system — can be particularly dangerous in the summer because of the risk of flash flooding, when clear days can give way quickly to thunderstorms and downpours.

The steep, rocky nature of the canyon itself funnels water rapidly, transforming downpours into a charging wall of water.

Debris from the Bright Angel flash flood event, as seen the morning of August 30, 2026. National Park Service

But Saturday’s strong storm also hit part of the burn scar of the Dragon Bravo wildfire, a destructive and fast-moving blaze that swept across nearly 150,000 acres and consumed the historic Grand Canyon Lodge in July 2025.

Runoff tends to flow more quickly in the aftermath of a fire, especially in hotter burns where slopes are left barren of vegetation.

While it’s still unclear how directly long-term damage to the landscape from that fire played a role in last weekend’s disaster, federal models indicated a rise in the risks of debris flows in Bright Angel Creek.

Teams with the Department of Interior charged with assessing post-fire threats to “life, property, and critical natural and cultural resources” found runoff risks would be between two and eight times greater upstream of Phantom Creek. “Hikers on the trails within or downslope from the burned area will experience frequent stabilization issues, especially hazardous rockfall for at least the first year,” the team wrote in a report on conditions.

Park officials were reportedly concerned at the start of this summer that stronger storms could create dangerous conditions near the burned areas. Hikers who had to be evacuated by helicopter after the rushing waters swallowed bridges and other infrastructure told the Arizona Republic that the creek turned black as it filled with runoff.

Debris from the Bright Angel flash flood event, as seen the morning of August 30, 2026. National Park Service

Scientists have long warned that the climate crisis will create stronger extremes and destructive shifts between wet and dry conditions. As temperatures continue to climb, extreme events will not just increase – they are more likely to overlap, causing more calamity and testing the limits of the nation’s resilience and recovery.

So-called “compound extremes”, where a combination of contributing factors come together, are on the rise, according to researchers.

Along with the potential impact from a previous fire, a severe drought that continues to affect the Grand Canyon region — and the Colorado River basin that runs through it — could have contributed to the disaster. The deluge unleashed torrents of rain on hardened and sparsely vegetated steep terrain that is less able to absorb and contain abrupt increases in moisture.

The sudden and strong rainstorm that fueled this catastrophic flood may have been supercharged by the historic El Niño that has sharply increased sea surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean.

Read Next How rising temperatures likely contributed to Nepal’s deadly flood Molly Taft, WIRED

The climate phenomenon has the ability to affect weather systems around the world. But in the Southwest, the higher amount of water vapor in the atmosphere due to El Niño is wrung out in the form of rainfall, Park Williams, a hydroclimatologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, told the Associated Press.

El Niño is part of a natural cycle, but models show there is a strong likelihood this will become one of the strongest on record. It layers on top of spikes in temperature fueled by the climate crisis. Together, the possibility of severe and extreme weather is expected to dramatically increase.

The link to human-caused climate change and the heavy Arizona rain is moderately strong, said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the California Institute for Water Resources.

Swain and colleagues recently published a study in the journal Weather and Climate Extremes finding that during the summer, short-term intense downpours in the US West — akin to the one that hit the Grand Canyon — have become 10 percent stronger since 2000.

The Associated Press contributed reporting.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline How intense rains in the Grand Canyon turned into a deadly disaster on Sep 5, 2026.

Israel’s bombardment of Gaza during the conflict that broke out in October 2023 has wrecked progress towards adapting the enclave to climate change and left two million Gazans vulnerable to heatwaves, drought and disease, the Palestinian Authority (PA) said in a new climate plan submitted to the United Nations.

Palestine’s third nationally determined contribution (NDC), uploaded to the UN climate body’s website this week, says that while “the aggression on the Gaza Strip did not make the climate worse”, “it removed the housing, water and sanitation systems, health facilities, energy networks, roads and livelihoods through which people absorb a climate they were already struggling with.”

The 91-page document lists the types of infrastructure it says Israel has destroyed and notes how the destruction will worsen the impacts of climate change. It says the bombing of hospitals and rising hunger have make it harder for Gazans to cope with the health impacts of climate-driven heatwaves and waterborne diseases.

On beaches of Gaza and Tel Aviv, two tales of one heatwave

The destruction of water tanks, boreholes and desalination plants, meanwhile, have left Gazans struggling with the effects of water shortages and drought, while mass unemployment reduces people’s ability to afford climate-driven price rises. The erasure of most of the Strip’s homes makes it more difficult for people to avoid the sun’s increasing heat, the NDC said.

Many Gazans are now living in the ruins of collapsed buildings or in makeshift shelters and tents that offer little or no protection from high temperatures.

A displaced Palestinian child fills water containers on July 2, 2026 in Gaza City, Gaza. (Photo by Ahmad Hasaballah/Getty Images)

Palestine’s previous goals to cut emissions and adapt to climate change in Gaza, expressed in its last NDC five years ago, were based on a pre-war baseline that “no longer describes anything that exists”, the NDC says. Progress made since 2021 has now been destroyed, it adds.

Green reconstruction of Gaza

Instead of continuing to aim for these adaptation and emissions-reduction goals, the PA is now calling for the green reconstruction of Gaza. It says buildings should be constructed again in an energy-efficient manner with solar panels and served with modern water, waste and transport systems.

While the PA, controlled by the Fatah political party, continues to claim legitimate control of Gaza, the strip was effectively governed by Fatah’s rival Hamas between 2007 and the recent war. Control is now split between Israel and the political wing of Islamist militant group Hamas, after a US-backed ceasefire took effect in October 2025, although a UN-backed committee plans to take over. 

• Mar 4, 2024 Investigations Germany uses funding to pressure climate groups on Israel-Gaza war Many Global South climate groups are funded by the German government, a political ally of Israel, and feel unable to criticise Israel’s military action in Gaza Read more
• Sep 2, 2026 Finance Loss and damage fund urged to hold crisis meeting on Nepal The new fund is coming under pressure from developing nations to respond quickly to climate disasters rather than just financing longer-term projects Read more
• Sep 3, 2026 Energy More support needed to power Africa’s food systems with renewables, experts say Renewable energy could help African food businesses boost productivity and competitiveness, but the upfront cost, fragmented markets and limited financing stand in the way Read more

The United Nations, European Union and World Bank have jointly estimated that Gaza needs $71.4 billion of investment in the next two years to recover and build back. This process should be Palestinian-led, they said in April.

But US President Donald Trump has said the US should “take over” and “own” Gaza and redevelop it as the “Riviera of the Middle East”. Israel’s right-wing prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that Israel should control the territory with civil administration managed by Palestinians favourable to Israel.

With occupation, targets conditional

In the other part of Palestine, the West Bank, the Palestinian Authority carries out some government functions, but ultimate control rests with Israel, which has occupied the West Bank since 1967. 

Because Israel controls planning in most of the West Bank, the NDC argues that the PA cannot pursue all the climate projects it wants. In addition, Israel restricts the movement of PA officials, making data collection difficult, and controls the West Bank’s electricity supply meaning that the PA cannot control whether it comes from dirty or clean sources of energy.

Given this situation, the NDC says that all of Palestine’s new climate targets are conditional but it will aim to reduce emissions 12.8% below a business-as-usual baseline by 2035 and 17.1% by 2040. If the Israeli occupation ends and Palestine regains full sovereignty over its land and resources, it will aim for reductions of 15.1% and 19.1% by 2035 and 2040 respectively under an “independence pathway”.

That could allow, for example, for greater electrification and reducing emissions per unit of growth, the document said.

To achieve the 2035 emissions-reduction target and adapt to the impacts of climate change, the PA says it needs $8.6 billion in total. This funding would be spent on measures like encouraging solar farms and rooftop solar and scaling up solar water heating to cover four-fifths of households. To complement the planned increase in solar power, the authority wants to modernise the electricity grid and install battery storage.

In the transport sector, it aims to promote the uptake of electric vehicles, develop bus rapid transit corridors and scrap old polluting trucks and buses. In Gaza in particular, it wants to deploy 66 electric buses when the conflict ends.

A bus rapid transit system in Sao Paulo (Flickr/EMBARQ BRASIL)

To adapt to climate-driven drought, the NDC includes initiatives to reuse wastewater through treatment plants, build desalination plants in Gaza to remove salt from seawater, and promote irrigation for farmers.

The new climate plan was prepared by Palestine’s Environment Quality Authority, with support from the United Nations Development Programme and the governments of Britain and Spain.

The United Nations recognised Palestine’s statehood in 2012 and it joined the UN’s climate convention and signed the Paris climate agreement – which requires countries to submit more ambitious NDCs every five years – in 2016.

The Israeli foreign ministry did not respond to a request for comment. But in late 2024, then Israeli climate envoy Gideon Behar told Climate Home News that the war and the resulting environmental destruction in Gaza was the fault of Hamas.

The post Palestine: Israel’s bombing has left Gaza vulnerable to climate change appeared first on Climate Home News.

Penguin colonies are so large that their masses of excrement can be seen from space, offering scientists a useful means of studying the Antarctic birds. An analysis of 30 years of satellite images of penguin guano shows how the birds' diets are shifting in response to warming.

Read more on E360 →

It has been more than two months since President Donald Trump’s tentative ceasefire with Iran broke down, and gasoline prices are still high. With the midterm elections looming, the president seems to have turned his attention to the problem, rolling out a series of actions he says will secure more crude oil from Venezuela and exempt refineries from renewable fuel mandates. Most recently, he summoned refiners to the White House earlier this week to discuss ways to lower prices at the pump, although the refiners left without making any public statements and the White House didn’t publish a list of the attendees.

In the months since the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, the world has found ways to conserve oil and move Middle East crude around, but structural factors are still keeping prices high. The U.S. average gas price on Thursday was around $4.11 per gallon, up more than 90 percent from this time last year, and diesel was even higher.

The “crack spread,” which is the difference in price between crude oil and refined gasoline and diesel, soared to an historic high of more than $70 per barrel. This is a clear sign that the market for refined products is going haywire, and oil companies are raking in profits. The largest refineries in the United States have been operating at almost maximum capacity for several weeks now, longer than at any time in recent history, and they have deferred regular maintenance to take advantage of these soaring prices.

The president’s frustration with the high fuel cost has become clear over the course of the summer.

“Based on a shortage, they’re making too much money,” Trump said at an Oval Office briefing last month. “They ought to give some of that back to the public, and they better cut the retail price, the consumer price.”

The biggest reason prices have remained high is that there isn’t enough refining capacity to make gasoline from all the available oil. Many refineries in the Middle East have shut down during the conflict, and Russia’s diesel refineries are also offline thanks to Ukrainian drone attacks. The remaining refineries in North America and China are not large enough to fill that gap.

In its effort to lower prices at the pump, the Trump administration first turned to Venezuela, where it kidnapped leader Nicolas Maduro in January and announced a plan to revive the country’s moribund oil industry. Experts said after the Maduro raid that American companies would be hesitant to tap Venezuela’s oil reserves, but the Trump administration has tried to make the country more palatable by easing sanctions and pushing interim leader Delcy Rodriguez to rewrite the country’s oil laws. 

These efforts seem to be paying off. The Pentagon announced last week that it would take a stake in North American Blue Energy Partners, a private Venezuelan company that controls around 20 percent of the country’s reserves; the company plans to increase production in oil fields that had once been drilled by China and Russia. Alejandro Betancourt, the head of the company, has been described as Trump’s “viceroy” in Venezuela, and earlier this year, the Trump administration helped him avoid a Swiss arrest warrant. Chevron, the largest U.S. company that operates in Venezuela, also announced on Wednesday that it would double its production there, signing an agreement with the Rodriguez government at the Miraflores Palace in Caracas.

“In general, the read is positive,” said Ramón Andrade, a lawyer focused on the energy business and a partner at the law firm Ponte Andrade & Casanova in Caracas. He said that the business community in Venezuela is optimistic about a revival of the sector, but cautioned that on the Pentagon deal, “I think we need to look at what’s actually going to be signed.”

Even so, there is no chance that this will help reduce gasoline prices, even after the midterms. For one thing, only a small number of U.S. refineries can process the heavy crude from Venezuela, and they are already working overtime to take advantage of high fuel prices. 

“Everything that the Venezuelans could produce right now, I’m sure they’re squeezing out,” said Al Salazar, an analyst at the energy firm Enverus Intelligence who studies oil and gas markets. “You could get incremental production out of there in six to twelve months, but what really is causing the gasoline and diesel price spike is the lack of refining capacity.”

For another thing, scaling up production will take many years, if the legal agreement with the Pentagon even holds that long — the final details aren’t yet available, and some parties have alleged that conceding resource wealth to the United States would violate the Venezuelan constitution. The interim government has yet to face voters in an actual election.

“You need that long runway to be able to develop this resource,” said Salazar, who spent decades in the Canadian oil industry, which also produces heavy oil like Venezuela’s.

The administration’s other major move this week might do more to keep prices down at the margins, though likely not enough for most consumers to notice. The Environmental Protection Agency ended its summer ethanol blending requirements early. The rules mandate that refiners and fuel importers add ethanol to the nation’s fuel supply to reduce gasoline-caused smog. It also announced a series of waivers that would exempt a few dozen refineries around the country from having to integrate biofuel into their diesel and gasoline products. The purpose of this “renewable fuels standard” is to support farmers and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, since biofuels don’t warm the planet as oil does, but many oil industry parties argue that using ethanol drives up costs for refiners.

A number of major lobbies opposed these waivers. Midwestern politicians and biofuel associations argued that they will harm farmers by reducing demand for the corn that makes ethanol, and even the American Petroleum Institute warned that sudden exemptions would create an unpredictable business environment for refineries. The two sides of the biofuel debate argue that the exemptions either will or won’t reduce gasoline prices. Given that crude oil prices are still high, it’s possible ethanol is a cheaper ingredient than oil, and it’s unclear whether the exempt refiners like Marathon and Chevron will pass costs on to customers.

Even with the waivers, gasoline prices in many states are $1.50 above their pre-Iran highs. The early months of the conflict hinged on the question of the Strait of Hormuz, but even if the strait were to open tomorrow, the gasoline market will remain tight, and neither more oil from Venezuela nor cheaper inputs will free up refining capacity. 

“I think it’s going to have a tremendous impact; ultimately, prices are going to come down,” said Trump at the Oval Office on Monday. “Will it happen before the election? I can’t tell you that.” The stubborn high prices do not bode well for Republicans in the midterm elections. On average, the president’s party loses 25 more congressional seats in midterm elections after gas prices spike than in those after gas prices go down, according to a Politico analysis of elections since 1978.

Things could get even worse by then. Around half of U.S. refining capacity is located on the Gulf of Mexico, in the bullseye for Atlantic hurricanes. Forecasters are predicting a quiet season, but there’s still potential for a massive outage. Tropical Depression Edouard formed in the Gulf of Mexico and passed over a Texas refinery complex this week, but it fizzled out before it could become a major storm.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline With the midterms looming, Trump has no real way out of his gas price problem on Sep 4, 2026.

Long before ecology entered the political mainstream, Bernard Charbonneau was already diagnosing a central paradox of the modern age: that the more we master nature, the less we can experience freedom. Nothing illustrates this better than mass tourism: born from an authentic desire to escape the city, it ends up dragging the city’s crowds, concrete, and regulations wherever it goes.

“We cannot pursue infinite development in a finite world.”1 Bernard Charbonneau (1910–1996) undoubtedly had a way with words. Sadly, this did not secure him his rightful place in history as one of the most singular and appealing thinkers of the twentieth century. A few people do still mention him, often in the same breath as Jacques Ellul, but they often erroneously think the lives and ideas of these two Bordeaux thinkers are interchangeable.

Admittedly, from an early espousal of personalism to the fight to preserve the Aquitaine coast, they shared many dreams and fought for many of the same causes. There is more that unites them than divides them. But Charbonneau’s work was not only more literary, but also more philosophical, more applied, and most of all more directly engaged with ecological issues than Ellul’s. The latter said that his friend Charbonneau “taught me how to think and how to be a free spirit”.2

When, at the 2002 Johannesburg summit, Jacques Chirac spoke the now-famous words “our house is burning down and we’re blind to it”, readers of Charbonneau heard an echo of a remark made first in 1977 in the pages of Foi & Vie – “forced to think in a house that has caught on fire”, and again in 1980 in The Green Light: “Our paradox is that of having to hurry slowly, being commanded to reflect in a house that is on fire.”3

In terms of realising the urgency of ecological issues, Charbonneau was a pioneer. But to merely stress how early his warnings were, or the foresight of his analysis of how techno-industrial society destroys nature while also fuelling a need for it, is to overlook other important contributions. Even if we limit ourselves to the ecological aspects of his work, his singular approach meant he was not only a precursor to, but also an actor in and critical observer of a movement transformed by the pursuit of “changing politics”.

Bernard Charbonneau thought philosophically about his life and lived out his philosophy. Fully. Intensely. What made him such a major pioneer of degrowth and political ecology in twentieth-century France?

Bernard Charbonneau. Image by D.L.C. via Wikimedia Commons A pioneer

His awareness of these issues did not come from books. “I saw car culture arrive in my own street,” he explained in an interview.4 Growing up in Bordeaux, he was a rebel who was constantly trying to get out of the city by any means possible, on foot, at the height of the scouting movement, by train, or with small groups of friends as a sixth-former and student. He would pitch his tent in the middle of the countryside, in the forests and mountains on both sides of the Pyrenees, and fish with his bare hands in rivers and lakes.

From a young age, he was convinced that freedom could only be experienced in direct contact with nature. His understanding of freedom was an applied one, and his love of nature was physical. He felt he was watching what he called a “Great Metamorphosis”, a profound transformation in human beings caused by the acceleration of science and technology. He believed that the First World War, which he referred to as the first “total war” in history, played a significant role in this process.

At the start of the 1930s, he rejected both the liberal figure of the detached individual and the role of political soldier glorified by totalitarian countries. Instead, he sought an anti-capitalist, anti-fascist, anti-Stalinist movement. He travelled to Paris in 1933 to meet Emmanuel Mounier and to affiliate his small discussion group with the Esprit movement. It was in that personalist journal that his first feature article appeared, entitled “La publicité” (“Advertising”).5 He remarked that “advertising has swamped everything, our newspapers, our roads, no-one notices it anymore, but we need to deconstruct it.” It is “assisted by the invention of means of persuasion that can make lies more real than reality.” A creator of artificial needs, it goes unseen because it is ubiquitous: “Anyone who could clip the wings of advertising would make a hundred times as deep a change to our civilisation as any political initiative could achieve.”

In 1935, he and Jacques Ellul wrote the first Western proposal to voluntarily limit growth in the twentieth century: “Directives pour un manifeste personnaliste”.6 This text made the Bordeaux group the figurehead of the most libertarian, Girondist, regionalist, federalist strand of the personalist movement, and most significantly that which was most focused on ecology and degrowth (avant la lettre). “We are revolutionaries in spite of ourselves,” explained the authors. A searing indictment of the productivism of industrial civilisation and the power of money, the manifesto critiqued giantism, the way modern technology tends to concentrate capital, populations and the state. It railed against widespread proletarianisation: “Once man consents to no longer being the measure of his world, he relinquishes the very possibility of moderation.”

The manifesto advocated in favour of elective communities rather than large cities, small voluntary groupings that were rooted in a particular place, a city on a human scale, politics founded on direct, transparent communication between the governors and the governed, and countries divided into regions with a pared-back central state. It also argued for bottom-up federalism to coordinate these autonomous units, reorienting technology to fulfil the most arduous tasks, reducing working hours, providing a universal basic income, banning the charging of interest on loans, regulating advertising, and a property system focused on the effective enjoyment of goods. Both poverty and wealth needed to be tackled, as “people are dying of a desperate desire for the enjoyment of material things, and others of not having access to those things.” The themes of the dual society that blossomed forty years later with André Gorz and Serge Moscovici are already visible here, even if expressed in a different way.

In Le sentiment de la nature, force révolutionnaire (1937),7 Charbonneau expanded on the manifesto’s degrowth theme and systematised his thoughts on the relationship between humans and their environment. This text made him France’s foremost twentieth-century theoretician of political ecology. Following the anarchist geographer Élisée Reclus, with whose thought he was closely aligned, but whom he never quoted, he remarked that “we don’t need a Sunday in the countryside, we need a less artificial life.” His key message here was that modern technology makes us more comfortable, but removes the joy of simple pleasures, and that what we gain in safety and security we lose in liberty. “Feeling for nature” should be to personalism what class consciousness had been to socialism: reason made flesh.

Charbonneau made sacrifices in order to live ever further from urban centres. A teacher of history and geography in Bourges, Biarritz, Bordeaux and Pau, he successfully applied for a transfer to Lescar in 1945, and went to work in a small teacher training college. Living in almost complete mental and intellectual solitude, he threw himself into writing a manuscript of over a thousand closely written pages, entitled Par la force des choses, which contained the kernel of fifteen of his books.

The work analysed the contradictions of industrial civilisation, anticipating the risk of “social totalisation”, which would be worse than political totalitarianism, caused by the acceleration of technological progress. It showed how industrial society destroyed nature, while fuelling a feeling of desire for it. It criticised the “exponential development” of advertising and propaganda in daily life, and anticipated the liquidation of peasant agriculture, the destruction of the countryside and of landscapes, the increasing ugliness of cities and suburbs, and the bureaucratisation of existence, subject to an administrative apparatus that restricts the capacity to feel freedom.

In order to publish “the hulk”, as he nicknamed it, Charbonneau had to break it down into sections, which were then circulated among a very limited readership. In 1946, he resumed his nature discussion camps, where he used the ideas of Georges Bernanos and Aldous Huxley to think about the post-Hiroshima world. His ecologist, libertarian discourse still went unheard outside of his circle of admirers. He had to pay to publish his books, except for a few titles such as Dimanche et Lundi (1966) and L’Hommauto (1967).

His masterwork, Le Jardin de Babylone (Gallimard, 1969), was published at the moment that the environmental movement picked up pace, with the creation of France Nature Environnement in 1968 and Friends of the Earth in 1969. Ecology finally had the green light. Charbonneau was active on all its fronts, despite being in the early years of his retirement, which he would have preferred to spend indulging his passion for trout fishing. He was involved in the Soussouéou defence committee, which succeeded in preventing the construction of a high-altitude ski resort; he protested against the development of a tourist destination in a Basque Country forest; and he campaigned in Soule alongside the Association au service des agriculteurs montagnards (Mountain Farmers’ Association).

Image by Axlferrari via Wikimedia Commons

In 1971, he co-founded the Pyrénées-Atlantiques division of the Société pour l’étude, la protection et l’aménagement de la nature dans le Sud-Ouest (Society for the Study, Protection, and Planning of Nature in the South West), with one of its aims being to fight against the opening of new quarries and gravel pits, and plans for marinas on the Gave d’Ossau river. The same year, he began his “Chronique de l’an deux mille” column in Foi & Vie, which was largely devoted to ecology. In 1972, he was a close associate of Pierre Fournier (journalist at Hara-Kiri and later Charlie hebdo) when Fournier founded La Gueule ouverte – “the newspaper that heralds the end of the world” – a proudly “radical and global” publication. From the second edition onwards, Charbonneau wrote a “Chronique du terrain vague” column, in which he argued in favour of an alliance between ecologists and farmers against “industrial totalitarianism”.

In 1974, the editor of Combat nature, “the journal of ecology associations and environmental protection”, asked him to provide a philosophical foundation for the movement. He did so until his death. Simultaneously, he waged a battle against the government, which was attempting to hand over coastal land to developers looking to promote large-scale tourism in Gironde and Landes under the guise of town and country planning measures.

Charbonneau created the Comité de défense de la côte aquitaine (Aquitaine Coast Defence Committee, CDCA), which brought together citizens, Occitan activists, and “leftists” of various kinds to fight against the resortification of the coast, which would have involved the building of hotels, fast roads, ports, marinas, golf courses, etc. The CDCA organised media campaigns and demonstrations, and provided independent expertise to counter the government machine.

Charbonneau did not only take on local challenges. In 1976, he was among the founders of the federalist, anti-nuclear European Network for Ecological Reflection and Action (ECOROPA). He was seventy when he published The Green Light. In 1982, he and Jacques Ellul created the Groupe du Chêne, a small-scale working group that aimed to act as a kind of thinktank for the entire ecology movement. Because he always sought to place the question of humanity’s relationship to nature at the heart of politics, he disapproved of the creation of environmental parties, on the model of the German Greens.

His was an applied approach, in which his thought was the richer for his actions, and his actions the richer for his thought. Running the risk of oversimplification, we might summarise it in one sentence: Humans need nature as much as they need freedom, but techno-industrial society threatens the former as well as the latter.

An ecologist unlike any other

Charbonneau lambasted the standardisation of taste and the harmful effects of agroindustry, which eradicated not only the peasant way of life but landscapes and food with a genuine connection to the land from which it came. He highlighted the paradox of mass tourism, which came from an authentic desire to escape from city life, but which pillaged the spaces these fugitives discover and brought with it exactly what the city-dwelling tourist was trying to escape: overcrowding, concrete, and regulations.

“Nature is both the mother who has given birth to us, and the daughter we have conceived; should she disappear, humanity itself will regress into chaos.”8 Our bodies mean we belong to nature, but at the same time, we are called to go beyond it. Our duty, he argued, is to always keep these two considerations in mind. Humanity is part of nature, as nature is the origin of our aesthetic, physical, sensual and even spiritual joys. But when humanity comes out of nature, as a child comes out of its mother, it becomes something separate. Humanity must give life meaning, at each instant, through its quest for freedom; for nature, as a majestic entity, does not exist. Not only is a feeling for nature a modern invention, but it is also primarily found among civilised rather than “primitive” people, the bourgeois rather than peasants, city-dwellers rather than country folk.

Charbonneau thought that it was not so much nature that was threatened by the cult of progress as human freedom. The desire to seek infinite development in a finite world disrupts both nature and freedom, since humanity has a dialectic relationship with nature. Our freedom commands us to master nature, but if we destroy it, or even impose structure on it, we are simultaneously destroying our ability to experience our own freedom. What is the point of leaving behind the constraints of urban life at a set time each year, only to encounter them reproduced in miniature in another location?

To find nature again, we must first understand that we have lost it. For Charbonneau, nature was thus our own freedom by another name. Our feeling for nature is one and the same as our awareness of our own lives. Freedom is not one value among others, but the starting point from which all else follows. A common pitfall among intellectuals is to adopt an idealist, absolutist vision of freedom, rather than living it, in its prosaic, relative reality. When Charbonneau railed against “industrial totalitarianism”, he was unafraid of using a concept usually reserved for fascist and communist regimes to describe the trajectory of all modern societies.

To find nature again, we must first understand that we have lost it.

In his eyes, the process had entered its final stages: “You can get on a plane, but you can’t truly ever get off.”9 The last “natural” spaces were being slowly conquered by the tourism industry, and everyone and everywhere was becoming part of industrial society. Modern tourism is a social fact that presupposes a level of structure, which is the opposite of what we look for in our contact with nature: the feeling of freedom. The structure of tourism has become a keystone of techno-industrial society.

Charbonneau considered tourism to be the most destructive industry of all, because it is driven by the quest for and consumption of space. The less space there is, the higher the demand; the more nature disappears, the more city-dwellers feel a need for it. He summarised this phenomenon thus: “Because there are machines, people get into machines in order to flee from the machine … the crowd flees from the crowd, the civilised from civilisation. This is how nature is disappearing, destroyed by the very feeling that it arouses, as much as by the expansion of industry.”10 Under capitalism, tourism has become a form of heavy industry, mass-producing standardised products.

Charbonneau does not offer any neat solutions, but instead suggests a direction of travel: accepting limits, and recognising the finite nature of earthly space-time. In practice, this means ceilings on visitor numbers for islands, caves, historic sites, and monuments of various kinds. Tourism must be made to tread lighter and be more thinly spread. We should reject our current approach to building next to beaches and ski slopes, opting for campsites and wooden buildings rather than towers of glass and steel, existing small hotels rather than hotel complexes, and small roads rather than motorways.

This artisanal tourism would create jobs and most importantly be kinder to natural environments, as it would mean new motorways would not be built. Some spaces must be kept unstructured. This is why Charbonneau rejected the national park system, which results in an under-protected zone just outside the boundary, and an over-protected zone within it. Rather than letting land wither away all the better to hand it over to developers, he argued it was better to tend it in such a way that the inhabitants could welcome visitors.

Charbonneau believed that humans need to re-establish a normal relationship with space. As space is linked to time, speed crushes it, while a more leisurely pace allows it to unfold. This is why he was in favour of cycling and walking. Moving slowly reveals the richness of the land. When we visit somewhere in a way that “takes time”, we get knowledge and experience in return. Sedentary approaches must be prioritised over nomadic ones. Why is it supposed to be pleasurable to be shipped about like a parcel to “get an eyeful” of an increasingly superficial and stereotyped tourist attraction? It would be better to tend our own garden, if we have one, or decorate our flat, or to paint, sculpt, or play an instrument. We should focus on things that calm us, slow us down, and root us, anything that can turn us from a tourist into an “embedded inhabitant”.

Charbonneau wanted to combat speculation by banning property companies from buying farms and estates, but he thought that rather than lambasting second homes – a catch-all category – it would be better to help them to become primary residences. He suggested renovating small and medium-sized dwellings, which would either be physically and spiritually owned and dwelt in by their owners, or let out, which would have the advantage of restoring built rural heritage.

Against car culture

Above a certain level, progress does not make food any better or more nutritious, and likewise improvements in transport do not make journeys any better: “The spread of the battery farming of tourists, combined with the widespread use of agrochemicals, is in the process of destroying all dietary diversity.”11 We must avoid the market becoming split “between chemical chow and luxury natural food”. Organic produce should not become an island lost on an ocean of pollution. Especially as this pollution increases in tandem with urbanisation and the car traffic that comes along with it.

How can we live our lives in the middle of a perpetual building site? Growth has become a shared dogma, and so knows no borders.

People are born to be free (and to walk freely), but they live and die as slaves to their cars. “We think we are building cars, when in fact we are building a society,”12 Charbonneau wrote in L’Hommauto. “What good is a car if you never get out of it?” he asked, rhetorically. Drivers have made their cars into gods, to which they are ready to sacrifice everything. They may have started as a means, but now cars are seen as ends in themselves. Westerners invented motorised vehicles so that they could go wherever they wanted, but in the end, they only go where their cars take them, as these machines can only operate within a rigid structure. At a time when Taylorism and Fordism were king, Charbonneau thought it was entirely understandable that assembly line workers might want to step away from the grindstone. The car became a way of getting away from it all as much as a form of transport, allowing victims of the industrial system to satisfy a need to express themselves that their work could not satisfy. In the middle of the 1960s, he observed that a section of the population lived and died in their cars.

Allowing as many people as possible to buy a car, to move around more quickly and go wherever they want, is at first glance aligned with democratic ideals. But the inevitable consequence is that the globe is filled with traffic-clogged roads on the way in and out of cities, and further out, motorways that are often of little use. “Cars negate distance, but they negate the landscape at the same time,” noted the avid walker. “We get in the car to get out of the city, but city car life comes with us.” The herd of “nature-loving” drivers all head to the same places at the same time. Not only do city-dwellers sit in traffic jams on their way to and from holidays and weekends away, but they also spend time in gridlock on their way to work. “It is in machines that we go to serve the machines,” because we work to buy and feed the beast, towards which all our energies are directed. In the techno-industrial society, everyone has two jobs: their own, and that of chauffeur.

According to Charbonneau, the acceleration of scientific and technological progress means we never get far beyond the drawing board. When everything changes all the time, individuals tire themselves out in a perpetual effort to adapt. How can we live our lives in the middle of a perpetual building site? Growth has become a shared dogma, and so knows no borders. Nothing can stop it. Charbonneau does not argue with the necessity of change, but instead opposes the ways in which and the speed at which it occurs. His assessment in an unpublished 1990 text was that: “Change rules over our society more so than any other, both practically and morally, and so history now flows like an unchecked torrent.” The ideology of “progress” that drives industrial civilisation has made change both a reality and a value.

Re-establishing balance

Charbonneau always based his reasoning on personal experience, willing to bet it had universal resonance. He thus took Bordeaux as an example of the changes that occurred between 1950 and 1980. Among France’s largest urban centres, the Gironde city was no better preserved or more significantly altered than its counterparts. Before the Second World War, Charbonneau still used to see cats and dogs wandering freely in front of the central post office. Machines adapted to the rhythm of living creatures, not vice versa. You could cross the street without a second glance. If you had a hankering for the countryside, a quarter of an hour’s cycling would get you to a meadow or a wood.

“The major post-war change was the integration of the countryside into the industrial and urban system, with the effect of transforming it into an extension of the city.”13 Looking at the ravages of urban sprawl and land take, Charbonneau wondered whether the countryside might have changed faster than the cities. As he saw it, the trend towards architecturally bland detached homes was inexorably destroying local architecture and local landscapes. Everywhere, the countryside was being erased, not to turn it into the city, but to impose a feral form of urbanisation that led to “total suburbanisation”.

Looking at the ravages of urban sprawl and land take, Charbonneau wondered whether the countryside might have changed faster than the cities.

His 1980 “Internal critique of the ecologist movement” still feels current, as the following examples show. Moratoriums are needed to impose limits on development, as on the Côte d’Azur, where continued urban sprawl must be prevented. In terms of energy, we must not trade all-nuclear for all-solar, to avoid occupying finite, fragile land. The solution cannot be a miracle technology but must come from a combination of various sources of energy, and most importantly, a reduction in consumption. Since limiting economic growth also means limiting demographic growth, Charbonneau explicitly opposed natalist policies.

We must also resist the tyranny of the market, which drives the unbridled exploitation of the planet and its inhabitants. Having spread over the entire surface of the earth, productivist logic enforces itself just as strongly as does any totalitarian regime. Ecologists must “remove all goods previously considered free or “priceless” from the imperialism of the market and give them back to nature or to private life,” and so turn away from a world in which everything can be bought and sold.

Along the lines suggested by Ernst F. Schumacher in Small is Beautiful, which he cites, and the work of Leopold Kohr and Murray Bookchin, of which he seems to have been unaware, Charbonneau argues that ecologists must break up the capitalist economy into small, autarkic, self-managing units, which would mitigate one type of wound inflicted by the globalised economy: the accelerated destruction of nature caused by the transportation of merchandise from one end of the planet to the other.14

Conscious of the seriousness of the diagnosis, Charbonneau offered no miracle cure, but instead invited the patient to slow down, respect their limits, and get their bearings. We must learn to root ourselves in time and space. Shunted around by the job market, workers, employees, managers, teachers, and civil servants are all too weightless to put down roots. Nature moves slowly, and humans, too, need time to evolve gently. Happiness is found in savouring the present moment and not in an endless wait for the hope of a better world to come. Not only do we need to know how to take our time, in order to enjoy the moment, but we also need to work with what already exists and move forward from there, rather than trying to wipe the slate clean and start again from scratch.

This article was first published in French in Esprit, and in English by Eurozine, in collaboration with CAIRN International Edition. It is republished here with permission.

Translation by Cadenza Academic translations

1. Translator’s note: Unless otherwise stated, all translations of cited material are our own. ︎
2. Jacques Ellul and Patrick Chastenet, Jacques Ellul on Politics, Technology and Christianity: Conversations with Patrick Troude-Chastenet, trans. Joan Mendès France (Wipf & Stock, 2005), 56. ︎
3. Bernard Charbonneau, The Green Light: A Self-Critique of the Ecological Movement, trans. Christian Roy (Bloomsbury, 2018), 102. ︎
4. Patrick Troude-Chastenet, ‘Bernard Charbonneau: Génie méconnu ou faux prophète?’ Revue internationale de politique comparée 4, no. 1 (1997): 189–207. ︎
5. Bernard Charbonneau, ‘La révolution quotidienne: La publicité,’ Esprit, April 1935. ︎
6. Bernard Charbonneau and Jacques Ellul, ‘Directives pour un manifeste personnaliste,’ in ‘Nous sommes des révolutionnaires malgré nous’: Textes pionniers de l’écologie politique, ed. Bernard Charbonneau and Jacques Ellul (Seuil, 2014), 49–82. ︎
7. Bernard Charbonneau, ‘Le sentiment de la nature, force révolutionnaire,’ in ‘Nous sommes des révolutionnaires malgré nous’, ed. Charbonneau and Ellul, 121–192. ︎
8. Bernard Charbonneau, Le Jardin de Babylone (L’Encyclopédie des nuisances, 2002), 12. ︎
9. Bernard Charbonneau, Notre table rase: Essai (Denoël, 1974), 64. ︎
10.  Charbonneau, Le Jardin de Babylone,  10–11. ︎
11. Bernard Charbonneau, Un festin pour Tantale: Nourriture et société industrielle (Sang de la Terre, 1997), 156. ︎
12. Bernard Charbonneau, L’Hommauto (Denoël, 2003), 28. ︎
13. Bernard Charbonneau, Tristes campagnes (L’Échappée,  2023), 93. ︎
14. Ernst F. Schumacher, Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered (Blond & Briggs, 1973). See also Leopold Kohr, Small is Beautiful: Ausgewählte Schriften aus dem Gesamtwerk (Deuticke, 1995); and Murray Bookchin, The Murray Bookchin Reader, ed. Janet Biehl (Black Rose Books, 1999). ︎

John Boyer grew up on his family’s 131 acres of rolling fields of corn, oats, and wheat in a rural area near the tiny city of East Jordan in northern Michigan. The farm had changed ownership outside the family several times over the decades before Boyer rebought it in 2018. He felt an obligation to repurchase and farm the land to prevent development from encroaching on the area’s community of family farms.

“For any farmer, everything’s personal,” Boyer said. “Every piece of property, every stone you pick up, you spend countless hours out there.”

As millions of farmland acres around the country are expected to change hands in the next few decades, farmers are facing decisions about whether — and if so, how — to preserve farmland amid pressures from rising land values, a shifting climate, and a younger generation that doesn’t want to farm. The number of acres devoted to farming in Michigan has declined in recent decades, as it has in the rest of the country. And ownership of that land is changing. 

In 2022, an estimated 9.5 million acres, or about a quarter of the state, were devoted to farming, a roughly 3 percent dip from 2017, according to the most recent federal farm census. Farmland in Michigan where the majority of operations were family-owned decreased nearly 470,000 acres in those same five years. Conversely, land leased or rented for farming operations increased by nearly 30,000 acres.  

Despite shifts in farm ownership and acreage dedicated to agriculture, the number of farmland acres in Michigan protected by conservation programs has increased in recent years, reflecting a national trend. The state saw an additional 22,000 acres protected in easements between 2017 and 2022, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

“It’s a matter of trying to figure out what exactly is going to be the best fit for everybody’s situation. And there’s a lot of pressure. There’s a lot of money,” said Jon LaPorte, a farm business management educator for Michigan State University Extension.

According to the USDA, Michigan farmland was valued at about $6,800 per acre last year, up 7.8 percent from 2024 and outpacing the national average of 4.3 percent.

The pressure to preserve farmland could be especially strong in northern Michigan. Farmers there are already confronting the effects of climate change, including more extreme precipitation, crop disease, and temperature swings, but some local farmers said those impacts are relatively easier to deal with than elsewhere in the country.

“As the world climate changes, this area could become more and more important for food production and food security,” said Dave Skornia, a farmer in Boyne City, Michigan. “So, you got to have land.”

John Boyer on his farm outside East Jordan, Michigan.
Vivian La / Grist

For Boyer, the best way to protect his farmland was to restrict future development on it by entering into what’s called a conservation easement. He still owns the property, but he sold the future development rights of his 131 acres to the Little Traverse Conservancy, a nonprofit that acquires and protects land. The organization holds those rights even if Boyer transfers land to his kids or decides to sell to another owner down the line.

An easement can be a hard decision for farmers because land is typically their greatest asset, something that can pay for retirement or a college fund, said Joe Graham, chief financial and operating officer for the Little Traverse Conservancy.

“We’re offering them another alternative,” Graham said. “We’re offering a way to capture some of the equity and the value they have in that land without having to sell it and see it leave their ownership.”

Of the conservancy’s 30,000 acres protected in easements across five counties in northern Michigan and its Upper Peninsula, about 6,000 acres are farmland. Graham has seen interest in conservation easements growing among small farming communities.

Read Next Georgia is losing farmland fast. Is a state conservation fund enough to save it? Emily Jones

But easements still have their challenges, he said. Conservancies pay landowners for a portion of the overall land value, and selling the development rights earns the landowner less revenue than outright selling the land. As land values rise in rural northern Michigan, the conservancy doesn’t see many farmers purely motivated by financial return entering into such agreements. 

“There can be a question of timing: ‘Is this the right thing to do? What might we be foregoing later?’” Graham said.

Boyer wants to prevent his land from being divided up down the line and sold in smaller parcels “to make a quick buck.” Once an acre is converted for built developments like houses or commercial buildings, it typically doesn’t return to farmland.

“Then suddenly a productive farm field or ground is gone, and it’s gone for generations,” Boyer said. “It’s gone forever.”

Rebecca Carlson, a cherry and apple grower who runs Overlook Orchards in Northport, a village at the tip of Michigan’s Leelanau Peninsula on Lake Michigan, also sees land division as a future threat to the farmland in her county. Aging farmers might split up land among multiple kids, leaving a patchwork of ownership that “breaks up multigenerational farms,” Carlson said, especially as younger people in the area choose not to go into the business.

She’s a fourth-generation farmer who married into another multigenerational farming family. She and her husband have grown the original farm from about 200 acres to 1,300 acres over eight years. To expand, the couple bought nearby land, but they also lease some parcels, mostly from family farmers who don’t have a younger generation to take over. 

“In order to be successful in farming, in some cases, it’s one of those, ‘Go big or go home,’ with the climate of farming today,” Carlson said. 

In Michigan, about 39 percent of agricultural land is leased, according to the 2022 USDA census, a number that mirrors the national average.

Leases keep farmland in production for the duration of the contract — most of Carlson’s leases are for 30 years. She pays annual fees that vary based on factors like location or crop productivity. Those fees can be significantly cheaper than owning farmland outright, because Carlson isn’t responsible for property taxes or other costs like insurance for infrastructure.

“It’s a great way to maintain your … farm and grow your farm,” she said. “They don’t make land anymore.”

Leasing does have some limitations. A 2026 MSU survey of Michigan farmers found high lease rates and locating land that matches their needs were the top concerns for those looking to lease. Farmers either have a “crop in mind but no ground, or they had the ground, but in some cases they weren’t sure what they could raise on it,” LaPorte with MSU Extension said.

It’s not just about land, either. LaPorte said the relationship between landowner and farmer is just as important. 

“You might have a great relationship where you never worry a single day about whether or not you’re going to have the property a year from now,” LaPorte said. “Other cases, there’s some differences in terms of what each party’s goals are that kind of create that sense of anxiety about, ‘Is this going to last long-term?’”

Sheep graze among solar panels on the Turkey Creek Solar Ranch in Lancaster, Kentucky. The solar operator pays a local farmer to graze his sheep to keep grass and weeds at manageable levels, and to improve the soil while also producing pasture-raised meat.
Universal Images Group / Getty Images

In the Midwest, farmland values are holding steady or even increasing, even as farm incomes are down nationally. That’s because demand from industrial and residential development in the region is high, said Howard Halderman, president and CEO of Halderman Companies, a farm real estate and management agency working primarily in Indiana, Michigan, and Ohio.

Halderman said high farmland values come from tax-deferred exchanges, which allow landowners to defer capital gains taxes when they sell highly appreciated land and use those proceeds to buy other property.

“That’s where a lot of your farmland value gets support. Are there other buyers out there that keep a floor under it?” he said. “If you’re looking to buy farmland, that might be frustrating. However, if you’re a farmer that owns a lot of farmland and you like to keep your asset values on your balance sheet higher, it’s a good thing.”

As the state pushes for a cleaner grid to combat the effects of climate change, favorable policies are also attracting renewable energy developers to farming communities, where they’re eyeing land for wind turbines, battery storage facilities, and solar panels.

“From a landowner’s perspective, they’ve got bills to pay the same as a farmer, and they’re looking at situations of, ‘Where can I get the most value?’” LaPorte said. “And if they struggle to find an interested farm, they might be willing to go into some of these long-term agreements that you see into wind turbines, solar.”

In Michigan, solar takes up a small share — 0.09 percent — of USDA prime farmland. Like in the rest of the U.S., it’s less than the acreage that’s been converted to suburban development or recreational uses like golf courses, according to the trade group Solar Energy Industries Association. 

Still, local opposition remains fierce. Earlier this year in Wexford County, on the northern end of Michigan’s Lower Peninsula, early plans from a renewable energy developer to build solar panels on nearly 1,500 acres of farmland sparked concerns about encroaching development on productive fields and the long-term impact on the ground.

Michigan researchers are hoping to address those concerns by looking at ways that solar panels and farming can coexist, a practice known as agrivoltaics. Solar panels can shade livestock or crops, and leases with renewable energy developers can be a way for farmers to offset declining farm incomes, said Charles Gould, a bioenergy educator with MSU Extension.

It doesn’t necessarily have to be a choice between producing power or food, he said.

“If we can do both on the same acre of land, why wouldn’t we?” Gould said. “We want to preserve the family farm. This is a very powerful tool.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline As family farms decline and the climate heats up, farmers weigh what to do with their land on Sep 4, 2026.

A very fishy business Channel News brendan 4th September 2026 Teaser Media

About a decade ago, I traveled through the Rasuwa region of Nepal as a conservation and environmental protection worker. I remember looking at the Himalayas with a kind of pride that is difficult to explain to someone who has never stood beneath them. The mountains seemed eternal. The glaciers looked like frozen rivers from another age. The valleys seemed impossibly deep, the rivers impossibly powerful. I felt proud that these mountains were part of my country. I felt proud that Nepal, a small and economically poor nation, held a landscape so important to the world.

Today, when I look at the photos and videos coming out of Rasuwa after the region’s devastating and deadly floods, that pride is mixed with grief. The mountains I once saw as a symbol of Nepal’s strength are becoming a symbol of our vulnerability. People have died. Homes and livelihoods have been destroyed. Roads and bridges have disappeared. Communities have been cut off. Families are searching for loved ones.

And behind the immediate tragedy are questions that I cannot escape:

Did the people of Nepal do something to deserve this? Did a Nepali farmer cause the glaciers to melt? Did a Nepali child cause the atmosphere to warm? Did a family living in a remote Himalayan village build the coal-fired power plants that have powered the industrial world for generations? Did the people now mourning their dead choose the fossil-fuel economy that has transformed the planet?

If not, why are they being asked to pay the price?

This is where the story of Rasuwa becomes larger than Nepal. It becomes a story about climate justice. The Himalayas are warming rapidly. Glaciers are retreating. Snow and ice are changing. Permafrost and mountain slopes are becoming increasingly unstable. Warmer air can hold more moisture, while a warming cryosphere can create new hazards and amplify existing ones. Climate change is altering the conditions under which Himalayan disasters occur.

But that scientific reality should not result in political blindness. The immediate cause of the disaster must be investigated carefully. Scientists must determine the precise sequence of geological, hydrological, and climatic events that produced the destructive flood.  At the same time climate change should not be used to overlook other factors such as unchecked development or poor planning that may have contributed to this disaster.

The question, then, is not whether climate change alone caused Rasuwa. The more important question is this: What kind of world have we created when people who contributed least to climate change are increasingly exposed to its most dangerous consequences?

Nepal is one of the clearest examples of this injustice. Its contribution to global carbon dioxide emissions is tiny. Its per-person emissions are among the lowest in the world. Yet its geography places it directly in the path of a warming climate. Nepal has glaciers that are retreating, mountains that are becoming increasingly unstable, rivers that can turn violently destructive, and communities with limited financial resources forced to prepare for what is coming.

The average American produces more than 20 times as much carbon dioxide than the average Nepali. China’s per-capita emissions are many times higher than Nepal’s. India’s are also substantially higher. China is now the world’s largest annual emitter, while the United States remains one of the world’s largest emitters and carries an enormous share of historical responsibility for the carbon accumulated in the atmosphere since industrialization. Yet the atmosphere does not send the bill back to the country that emitted the carbon. It sends the bill everywhere. And in places like Nepal, the bill can arrive as a flood.

This is the great moral failure at the heart of the climate crisis.

The people who benefited most from fossil-fuel-driven economic growth generally have the greatest financial and technological capacity to protect themselves from climate impacts. Those who contributed little often have the least capacity to adapt. That is not merely an unfortunate coincidence. It is an injustice.

For decades, the global economy treated the atmosphere as if it were an unlimited dumping ground. Coal could be burned. Oil could be extracted. Gas could be consumed. Factories could grow. Cars could multiply. Cities could expand. The benefits were measured in economic growth. The costs were pushed into the future.

That future has arrived in the Himalayas. It has arrived in the Pacific islands. In drought-stricken Africa. In South Asian floodplains. And it is arriving in the homes of people who never had a meaningful share in creating the problem.

The Himalayas deserve particular attention because what happens there will not remain there.

The mountains are often described as the roof of the world. They are also one of Asia’s great water towers. Their glaciers, snow and rivers support hundreds of millions of people across Nepal, India, China, Bhutan and Bangladesh. They feed agriculture, drinking-water systems and hydropower. They sustain forests, wetlands, wildlife and entire human cultures.

When the Himalayas become unstable, the consequences travel downstream. A mountain disaster can become a water crisis. A glacier crisis can become an energy crisis. A flood can become an economic crisis. And repeated climate disasters can eventually become a migration and security crisis.

The world should therefore stop treating Himalayan climate risk as a remote Nepalese problem. It is a global problem with a Himalayan address.

This is also why China and India cannot be left out of the conversation. China is the world’s largest current annual emitter, but it is also a country that has lifted hundreds of millions of people from poverty and is investing heavily in renewable energy. India faces a different but equally difficult dilemma: It must expand energy access and economic opportunity for a huge population while trying to avoid locking itself into decades of high-carbon development.

The answer cannot be to tell developing countries that they are forbidden from pursuing the prosperity that wealthy countries achieved through fossil fuels. That would be hypocritical. But neither can the developing world repeat the same carbon-intensive development pathway and expect the poorest and most vulnerable countries to absorb the consequences.

Every country has a responsibility. But every country does not have the same responsibility.

That distinction is at the heart of climate justice. The United States, Europe and other historically high-emitting economies have an enormous obligation to reduce emissions rapidly and provide financial and technological support to vulnerable countries. China has a responsibility commensurate with its present influence on the climate system. India and other rapidly growing economies have a responsibility to pursue development without reproducing the most destructive elements of the old fossil-fuel model.

And Nepal has a responsibility too. We must protect our forests. We must build safer infrastructure. We must stop treating fragile mountain slopes as empty spaces for roads and construction. We must strengthen disaster preparedness. We must invest in science. We must listen to local communities. But Nepal cannot adapt its way out of a crisis created by a warming planet.

There is a limit to what a small country can do when the atmosphere continues to heat because of decisions made elsewhere. That is why climate finance must stop being treated as charity.

Nepal does not need pity. Nepal needs justice.

It needs predictable resources to monitor glaciers and glacial lakes. It needs early-warning systems capable of reaching remote communities before floodwaters arrive. It needs high-altitude scientific research. It needs resilient roads, bridges and hydropower systems. It needs access to satellite data and international scientific networks. It needs effective mechanisms for loss and damage when climate-driven disasters destroy lives and development gains.

Justice also includes recognition that the people standing beneath melting glaciers are not merely victims waiting for international assistance. They are citizens of a world whose climate system is shared by everyone. The international community should establish stronger Himalayan climate cooperation involving Nepal, India and China. Glaciers do not recognize political boundaries. Rivers do not stop at checkpoints. Atmospheric warming does not respect national sovereignty.

The countries that share the Himalayas therefore have a common interest in monitoring its transformation and protecting the people downstream. But this responsibility must extend beyond Asia. The countries that have historically emitted the most carbon cannot simply send condolences after every disaster. They must help prevent the next one. Every country should have measurable climate obligations. Every government should be accountable for meeting them. Every major emitter should be required to do more, not less. And the countries with the greatest historical responsibility should contribute proportionately.

Climate agreements should not become annual rituals in which leaders make promises, take photographs and return home to business as usual. The world needs climate protocols with consequences. It needs transparency. It needs accountability. It needs finance that actually reaches vulnerable communities.

Most of all, it needs recognition that climate responsibility is not simply about tons of carbon. It is about people. It is about the child in Rasuwa who no longer has a home. It is about the mother searching for a missing family member. It is about the farmer whose land disappeared in a flood. It is about the community whose road to the outside world vanished overnight. It is about the people who did almost nothing to heat the planet but are now being forced to live with a climate they did not choose.

When I think back to that journey through Rasuwa more than a decade ago, I remember how proud I felt standing beneath the Himalayas. I still feel that pride. But now it is accompanied by other emotions. Fear. Not only fear for the mountains, but fear for the people who live among them. And anger. Not anger at one country or one government, but at a global system that has allowed responsibility and vulnerability to become so badly separated.

The question I asked myself after seeing the destruction in Rasuwa was painfully simple: Why should Nepal pay for a crisis it did not create?

I do not think Nepal is asking the world to answer with sympathy. I think Nepal is asking the world to answer with responsibility. The Himalayas belong to Nepal, but they are not only Nepal’s. The water they store sustains Asia. The climate they are experiencing is the product of a global atmosphere. And the consequences of their destabilization will eventually cross every border that politics has drawn across the mountains.

For years, the world has described Nepal as a vulnerable country. Perhaps that language needs to change.

Nepal is not simply vulnerable. Nepal is exposed. Exposed to a crisis created by a global system in which it had almost no voice.

The people of Rasuwa did not choose the carbon economy. They did not burn the coal. They did not fill the atmosphere with greenhouse gases. They did not decide how fast the planet should warm. Yet they are the ones standing in the floodwater. That should trouble every government on Earth.

Because if climate justice means anything, it must mean this: No country should be left to bear alone the consequences of a crisis it did little to create. And if the world continues to ignore that principle, the Himalayas will not be the last place to send us the bill. They may simply be one of the first places where the bill has become impossible to ignore.

Republish this article for free! Read our reprint policy. Previously in The Revelator:

The Last Breath of the Himalayas: Can We Stop the Collapse?

 

The post The Himalayas Didn’t Cause the Climate Crisis. Why Are Nepalis Paying the Price? appeared first on The Revelator.

As efforts to expand energy access across Africa grow, experts and policymakers have called this week for greater coordination and investment to power food production with renewables, arguing the sector has been treated separately from energy policy and therefore faces barriers in going green.

Hailemariam Desalegn, former prime minister of Ethiopia, said energy is critical across the food value chain – from irrigation and processing to cold storage and transport – and should therefore be considered a key pillar of strengthening food systems for the future.

“Energy is not separate from the nutrition challenge. Irrigation needs energy. Cold storage, transport, processing, as well as markets – all need reliable energy,” Desalegn told a panel at the 20th session of the Africa Food Systems Forum in Kigali. He said investments in sustainable energy systems could help reduce post-harvest losses and make nutritious food more accessible and affordable.

Africa loses up to 30% of its food before it reaches markets annually, largely due to poor roads, weak storage and inadequate cold chains, according to a 2025 report by the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA).

• May 29, 2026 Justice Q&A: How can African electricity access power jobs not just lightbulbs? Carol Koech from the Global Energy Alliance says electricity connections in Africa should happen in a way that transforms communities and livelihoods Read more
• Jun 12, 2026 Sponsored Climate adaptation helps African nations tackle rising conflict over resources The growing overlap between insecurity and climate vulnerability is forcing governments and development agencies to rethink adaptation efforts Read more

Akinyi Walender, Africa director at development charity Practical Action, said poor energy supply in rural communities – where much of Africa’s food is produced – is also limiting productivity. Across the continent, about 600 million people currently live without access to electricity.

“The lack of energy access goes well beyond the inconvenience of not having lighting at home,” Walender said, adding that renewable energy has the potential to power local economies. “When people can access this sort of energy, it can raise rural incomes, improve food security, improve resilience, empower women and stimulate enterprise while creating jobs,” she added. 

Breaking down silos

Unlocking the potential of energy across food systems requires greater coordination, Walender argued, pointing to institutional fragmentation and isolated pilot projects as major barriers. 

“Organisations working on agriculture and energy often operate according to different modalities and the interdependence between agricultural and energy markets is often overlooked,” Walender said, adding that finance institutions also tend to work in silos.

High level dialogue on climate resilience at the Africa Food Systems Forum in Kigali, September, 2026.(Photo: AFS Forum)

Dana Rysankova, global lead for energy access at the World Bank, told a separate event at the forum that the bank is working to break down those barriers through its newly established Productive Use of Energy (PUE) Centre of Excellence based in Nairobi, which has a mandate to foster collaboration and help develop and design programmes across different sectors.

Can giant batteries unlock Africa’s green industrial future?

In June, the World Bank Group and the African Development Bank Group said that over 50 million people had been connected to electricity across 40 African countries under their Mission 300 initiative, which aims to provide electricity access to 300 million Africans by 2030.

Rysankova said the programme has shown that energy access is just the foundation for linking with other sectors to deliver real economic transformation by boosting productivity and local incomes. 

Mission 300 also aims to electrify schools and healthcare services, as well as bringing power to farmers so that they can use it for irrigation, cold storage and other agricultural activities, she added. 

Bridging the finance and infrastructure gap 

Experts said bigger investments are needed in infrastructure and finance to turn energy access into increased productivity and economic value. 

AGRA’s 2026 foresight report, launched at the forum, puts the annual agrifood financing gap at $180 billion, while estimating that closing Africa’s yearly $67 billion-$108 billion shortfall in infrastructure finance could halve post-harvest losses and increase farmer incomes by up to 40%.

However, the cost of transitioning to clean energy is still a major barrier for farmers and agribusinesses.

Delegates at the Africa Food Systems Forum, September, 2026 (Photo: AFS Forum) Delegates at the Africa Food Systems Forum, September, 2026 (Photo: AFS Forum)

Atinuke Lebile, CEO of Nigerian food processing company Cato Foods, told Climate Home News she would like to switch to using renewables but has been held back by the upfront cost of setting up the systems the firm needs.

Rwandan farmer Gezel also said she would like to invest in a solar irrigation pump, but “it is so expensive”.

Practical Action’s Walender said the challenge is no longer whether solutions exist, but how financial support can reach the communities and businesses where it could have the greatest impact.

“Customers are dispersed and have low incomes. Markets are fragmented, and there are high upfront costs for much energy equipment,” Walender said, adding that financial institutions also often perceive agriculture as a high-risk sector.

Egypt seeks to unlock renewable potential to power regional clean energy hub

For food processing, the business case for using cleaner energy more efficiently is particularly strong, said Vivian Maduekeh of Partners in Food Solutions, which has worked with more than 2,000 companies across Africa.

Maduekeh said food processing firms account for between 42 and 70% of energy use across food systems, while energy represents 15-22% of their total production costs. African food businesses also use roughly twice as much energy per kilogramme of product as their global competitors, putting them at a competitive disadvantage.

The problems they face in shifting to clean energy are “risk, perception of risk and the cost”, she explained, adding that financial mechanisms are needed to help businesses overcome those issues.

Maduekeh encouraged policymakers to consider measures like tax rebates on imported equipment and spending more on research and development to bring down the cost of productive-use technologies.

Making a range of affordable equipment available – such as smaller irrigation pumps – could also help make the transition more accessible, she said. The evidence in favour “is very clear”, she added. “We just need to package it and communicate it to the priorities of investors.”

The post More support needed to power Africa’s food systems with renewables, experts say appeared first on Climate Home News.

Miközben a fejlett mesterséges intelligencia-technológiák kifejlesztéséért folyó technokratikus-autoriter verseny teljes gőzzel folytatódik, a Szilícium-völgy szabályozási napirendekre gyakorolt befolyása már vetekszik – sőt, akár meg is haladja – számos államét. A globális szuperhatalmak és a MI-óriások ambíciói között azonban Európának lehetősége nyílik arra, hogy valami jobbat keressen. Interjú a díjnyertes újságírónővel és írónővel, Karen Haoval.

Alessio Giussani: Számos metaforát hoztak fel a mesterséges intelligencia fejlesztésének jelenlegi modelljének leírására – például egy papagáj vagy egy tükör. Miért választotta éppen a birodalom metaforáját?

Karen Hao: Úgy gondolom, ezek a metaforák mind rendkívül hasznosak. A „birodalomra” összpontosítok, mert nem csupán magát a technikai eszközt és azt vizsgálom, mi történik, amikor azt a társadalomban alkalmazzák, hanem a technológia előállítását is, valamint azokat a szereplőket, akik rendkívüli mértékű gazdasági és politikai hatalmat halmoznak fel annak előállításához.

Négy fő okból nevezem ezt a rendszert birodalomnak. Először is, ezek a vállalatok olyan erőforrásokra tartanak igényt, amelyek nem az övék: az egyének adataira, valamint az írók és alkotók munkájára. Másodszor, rendkívüli mértékben kizsákmányolják a munkaerőt, és ez vonatkozik mind azokra a munkavállalókra, akiket a gyártási folyamatban és a technológiák ellátási láncában kizsákmányolnak, mind pedig azokra, akiknek a munkajogait a technológia bevezetése során csorbítják.

A harmadik szempont az információellenőrzés. A birodalmak terjeszkedésének egyik fő jellemzője az a képesség, hogy minden tudástermelést és információt a birodalmi céljaik szűrőjén keresztül szűrjenek, és pontosan ezt teszik a mesterséges intelligencia vállalatok is. Ők ellenőrzik és cenzúrázzák a tudományt azáltal, hogy a legtöbb mesterséges intelligencia-kutató munkáját pénzügyileg támogatják, és olyan információs technológiát építenek ki, amelyet a központi portállá kívánnak tenni, amelyen keresztül mindenki más kapcsolódik a világhoz, beleértve az oktatást is.

Végül mindezt egy civilizációs küldetésbe burkolják. Azt állítják, hogy azért foglalkoznak ezzel a munkával, mert végső soron olyan technológiát akarnak az emberiség rendelkezésére bocsátani, amely egy utópikus állapotba emel minket, és ha a „rosszfiúk” – ami általában Kínát jelenti – előttünk fejlesztik ki, akkor inkább egy disztópikus állapotba süllyedünk. Ez egyfajta vallási narratíva, amely a régi birodalmak körében is gyakori volt.

Az MI-birodalom, ahogyan Ön leírja, nem korlátozódik egy vállalatra; ez egy rendszer, egy logika. Mi áll az OpenAI-ra és annak vezérigazgatója, Sam Altman személyére irányuló figyelme mögött?

Az egyik válasz az, hogy az embereknek szükségük van történetekre, amelyek segítenek konkrét formába önteni azt, ami egyébként elvont ötlet maradna. De az OpenAI azért is különösen érdekes, mert minden olyan fontos döntést hozott, amely megváltoztatta az iparági normákat, és a birodalomépítés irányába terelte azt. Az OpenAI volt az, amelyik úgy döntött, hogy minden áron bővül, nagy nyelvi modellekkel dolgozik, és chatbot-szerű felületet hoz létre számukra. Szinte minden, amit a közvélemény ma a mesterséges intelligenciával társít, először az OpenAI falai között dőlt el.

Ha elmeséljük ezt a történetet, sokkal nyilvánvalóbbá válik, hogy a mesterséges intelligencia nem elkerülhetetlen, mert rájövünk, hogy valódi emberek hozták meg azokat a döntéseket az értékeik, világnézetük, személyes bosszúvágyuk alapján – bármi is volt az, ami valójában meghatározta a mesterséges intelligencia fejlődésének pályáját. Sam Altman ideológiái nem csupán elvont értelemben áthatják a modellt. Gyakran hallani azt a közhelyet, hogy a modellek tükrözik alkotóikat, de én azt akartam megmutatni, hogy ez valójában hogyan történik. A vállalatokról, az emberekről, valamint a gazdasági és ideológiai környezetről van szó, amelynek részesei.

Ahogy ezek a technológiák egyre hatékonyabbá válnak, az alkalmazásuk feletti ellenőrzés megszerzése egzisztenciális kérdéssé válik. Láttuk, hogy a Big Tech meghajolt Trump előtt a második beiktatásán, de azt is látjuk, hogy a mesterséges intelligencia területén működő vállalatok vezérigazgatói egyre inkább szembefordulnak a kormánnyal. Kié lesz végül a végső szó – az államé vagy a magánvállalatoké?

Folyamatban van a harc arról, ki fogja a döntéseket hozni. A Washington és a Szilícium-völgy közötti kapcsolatot kényelmi szövetségnek tekintem, de egy nagyon feszültnek. Két különböző birodalmi modellt képviselnek, mindkettő a saját birodalmi terveivel. Mindkettő terjeszkedni próbál, és szó szerint több területet akar átvenni más országoktól, de a Trump-kormányzat az MI-vállalatokat az állam birodalmi törekvéseinek eszközeiként tekinti. Eközben a Szilícium-völgy a Trump-kormányzatot saját birodalmi törekvéseinek eszközeként tekinti, de valójában nem járnak egy hullámhosszon, mert mindkettő azt akarja, hogy ő legyen a legfőbb hatóság, amely a csúcsra kerül.

Voltak olyan pillanatok, amikor az amerikai kormány bebizonyította, hogy még mindig ő az úr – amikor Trump és Musk összetűztek, Muskot kirúgták. Amikor azonban a Hadügyminisztérium összetűzésbe került az Anthropic-kal, a vállalat bebizonyította, hogy ebben az esetben ő az erősebb fél: Pete Hegseth védelmi miniszter a „nukleáris opciót” vetette fel, azzal fenyegetve, hogy a vállalatot ellátási lánc-kockázatnak nyilvánítja – mint végső eszközt, amellyel az Anthropic-ot engedelmeskedésre kényszerítheti –, de a vállalat még így sem hajlott engedésre. Elég kínos módon a Háborús Minisztérium mélyen függővé vált egy olyan magánszereplőtől, amely nem hajlandó a kormány feltételei szerint együttműködni, és a kormány semmit sem tehet ellene.

Mindkét birodalmi szereplőnek elszámoltathatónak kell lennie, és ez az elszámoltathatóság egyiküktől sem fog származni; a néptől kell származnia. Alulról felfelé építkező, alulról jövő szerveződésből, amelynek virágzását kezdjük látni szerte a világon, beleértve az Egyesült Államokat is. Bármennyire is áthatolhatatlannak tűnik ez a kényelmi szövetség, valójában rendkívül törékeny, és vannak lehetőségek arra, hogy felgyorsítsuk bukását azáltal, hogy nagyobb nyomást gyakorlunk a gyenge pontjaira.

Ahelyett, hogy a mesterséges intelligenciát a jók és a rosszak közötti globális versenynek tekintenénk, inkább azon kellene gondolkodnunk, hogy milyen jövőképünk van a társadalomról.

A mesterséges intelligencia fejlesztésének jelenlegi állása úgy tűnik, mint egy versengő verseny a mélypont felé a rivális vállalatok és a globális szuperhatalmak között. Milyen szerepet játszott a Kínával folytatott geopolitikai verseny abban, hogy a mesterséges intelligencia a jelenlegi nehéz helyzetbe került?

Kína egy olyan kártya, amelyet a Szilícium-völgy már egy évtizede kijátszik, gyakorlatilag azóta, hogy kiutasították Kínából. Ha azonban megvizsgáljuk ennek az érvelésnek a korábbi eredményeit, láthatjuk, hogy a valóságban mindig pont az történt, ami a Szilícium-völgy előrejelzéseivel ellentétes volt.

Azt állították, hogy a szilícium-völgyi vállalatok szabályozásának elmaradása – és Kína exportkorlátozásokon keresztüli szabályozása – révén az amerikai technológia világszerte dominálni fog. Mégis a TikTok a legnépszerűbb közösségi médiaplatform, és a kínai nyílt forráskódú mesterséges intelligencia-modellek egyre népszerűbbek világszerte, az Egyesült Államokban is. Azt is megígérték, hogy a Szilícium-völgy dominanciája liberalizáló hatással lesz a világra, de ez sem valósult meg; hatásuk éppen ellenkezőleg, mélyen illiberalizáló volt. A demokratikus intézmények rendkívüli mértékű eróziója és a demokrácia visszaesésének gyors felgyorsulása volt tapasztalható, amit a Szilícium-völgyi platformok és a mesterséges intelligencia-technológiák is elősegítettek.

Ahelyett, hogy a mesterséges intelligenciát a jók és a rosszak közötti globális versenynek tekintenénk, inkább azon kellene gondolkodnunk, hogy milyen jövőképünk van a társadalomról, milyen mesterséges intelligencia-technológiák támogatnák ezt a jövőképet, és milyen erőforrásokra van szükségünk annak megvalósításához. Nem a Szilícium-völgy által meghatározott versenyben kellene versenyeznünk, hanem azokban az elképzelésekben és értékekben, amelyeket fenn akarunk tartani. És úgy gondolom, Európának itt lehetősége nyílik arra, hogy a világnak egy harmadik utat mutasson, amely eltér az Egyesült Államokétól és Kínáétól, és amely új szabályokat állít fel.

Az Európai Bizottság nemrég elfogadott egy technológiai szuverenitási csomagot, amely része annak az erőfeszítésnek, hogy Európa saját technológiai útját járja. Hogyan fogalmazzuk meg ezt a jövőképet úgy, hogy ne egy megfigyelésen alapuló, oligarchikus üzleti modell európai változatát kapjuk?

Az a vezetőcsillag, amelyet Európának követnie kell, nem a szuverenitás a szuverenitás kedvéért, hanem az a cél, hogy ezt a szuverenitást elérjük. Európa – vagy legalábbis nagy része – a demokrácia egyik utolsó bástyája a világon. Támogatja az emberi jogokat és szabadságokat, és szüksége van a technológiai szuverenitásra, hogy előmozdítsa ezeket az értékeket. Amíg rendkívül függő marad az olyan rendszerektől, amelyeket nagyon autoriter módon fejlesztenek ki, és amelyek az európai társadalmak aláásására törekednek, addig nem tudja fenntartani értékeit.

A szuverenitás mint fogalom hajlamos elmosódni, ha pusztán öncélként kezdjük el értelmezni. Ennek egy cél eléréséhez vezető eszköznek kell lennie.

Milyen koalíciókból, érdekcsoportokból vagy konfliktusok színtereiből kellene kiindulnunk annak érdekében, hogy felépítsük ezt az alternatív jövőképet?

Először is, az MI-irányítást tágabb értelemben kell felfognunk. Például a munkavállalói jogok megerősítése és a civil társadalom védelme is az MI-irányítás részét képezi. A diákoknak, a tanároknak és az egészségügyi dolgozóknak is ott kell ülniük az asztalnál, hogy segítsenek alakítani és megkérdőjelezni, hogyan fejlesztik és alkalmazzák a mesterséges intelligenciát a társadalomban. Az oktatás kulcsfontosságú, mind szektorként és olyan koalícióként, amelyet be kell vonnunk, mind pedig a mesterséges intelligenciával kapcsolatos társadalmi felvilágosítás szempontjából.

Egy másik fontos szempont a mesterséges intelligencia kutatóinak és vállalkozóinak finanszírozása, hogy kiderítsék a fejlesztésük technikai részleteit és az alkalmazás módját. De nem adhatunk nekik egyszerűen pénzt anélkül, hogy a társadalom többi részének is szót adnánk; ellenkező esetben csak megismételjük azokat a problémákat, amelyekkel az Egyesült Államokban szembesülünk, ahol lényegében a technokraták vagy a technokonzervatívok hoznak döntéseket.

Nem a nulláról indulunk. Már rengeteg munkát végeztek annak érdekében, hogy meghatározzák azokat a közös célokat, amelyek felé a társadalomnak törekednie kell. Például a fenntartható fejlődési célokra gondolok. Ez kiindulópont lehet annak kitalálásához, hogyan finanszírozzuk a mesterséges intelligencia terén történő innovációt.

A jelenlegi mesterséges intelligencia-technológiákkal kapcsolatos narratívák rendkívül polarizáltak. Az egyik oldalon vannak azok, akik szerint ezekben a technológiákban nincs semmi különösebben új, és hogy a buborék hamarosan kipukkad. A másik oldalon pedig azok állnak, akik úgy vélik, hogy a mesterséges intelligencia átalakítja az életünket, forradalmasítja az ellátási láncokat, és mindannyiunkat feleslegessé tesz. Mit gondol ezekről a különböző álláspontokról?

Igaz, sokan hajlamosak túlzottan felnagyítani az előnyöket anélkül, hogy figyelembe vennék a technológiák költségeit, vagy éppen a költségeket emelik ki túlzottan, anélkül, hogy látnák az előnyöket. De szerintem elég nagy azok aránya, akik egyetértenek abban, hogy szeretnénk élvezni a mesterséges intelligencia előnyeit, de nem a méltóságteljes életvitelünk árán – amelyhez hozzátartozik a jó egészségügyi ellátás, a gazdasági lehetőségek, az egészséges környezet és a virágzó bolygó. Ez a legkiegyensúlyozottabb megközelítés.

A mesterséges intelligencia (MI) sokféle technológia gyűjtőneve, ezért alaposan át kell gondolnunk, melyekbe fektessünk be, és mely új technológiákat szeretnénk kifejleszteni, mert mindegyik más-más kompromisszumokkal jár; ezek közül néhány összhangban áll azzal a jövővel, amelyet építeni szeretnénk, mások viszont nem. Bölcsen kell választanunk.

A mesterséges intelligencia (MI) számos különböző technológiát jelöl, ezért alaposan át kell gondolnunk, melyekbe fektetünk be, és mely új technológiákat szeretnénk kifejleszteni.

Milyen a saját viszonya a meglévő MI-eszközökhöz?

Három fő okból nem használom őket. Először is az etikai álláspontom miatt. Másodszor a magánélet védelmével kapcsolatos álláspontom miatt: ezeket a vállalatokat vizsgálom, és ezek végső soron a valaha feltalált leghatékonyabb megfigyelési technológiák. Harmadszor, ezek az eszközök nem igazán hasznosak ahhoz a speciális készségkészlethez, amelyre a munkám elvégzéséhez szükségem van.

Nem azt mondom, hogy mindenkinek ugyanezt kellene tennie. Sok emberrel beszéltem, akik egyértelműen profitálnak ezekből az eszközökből, vagy akiknek a szakmai szerepük részeként kötelező azok használata. Inkább az a megoldás a jelenlegi problémára, ha ugyanazt tesszük, amit a múltban más iparágakkal, például a divatiparral is tettünk. Amikor rájöttünk, hogy ruháink nagy részét valóban szörnyű körülmények között gyártják, nem egyszerűen csak megszabadultunk a ruháktól. Számos fogyasztói és munkavállalói szerveződés, kormányzati szabályozás és általános közvélemény-visszhang kellett ahhoz, hogy az iparágot kordába szorítsák. Természetesen a divatipar még mindig messze nem tökéletes, de legalább ma már vannak alternatívák, és a fogyasztók a pénztárcájukkal szavazhatnak arról, hogy milyen ellátási láncot és vállalati gyakorlatokat támogatnak.

Ugyanezt kell tennünk a mesterséges intelligenciával is. Jelenleg nincs elég alternatíva a felhasználók számára, és ahhoz, hogy ez megváltozzon, több munkavállalói szerveződésre és nagyobb nyilvános ellenállásra van szükség. Akik tudnak tartózkodni ezeknek a technológiáknak a használatától, azoknak feltétlenül bojkottálniuk kell őket, a kormányoknak pedig be kell avatkozniuk, hogy segítsenek új piacokat teremteni az alternatívák számára.

A fogyasztóknak fontos befolyásuk van, de ez nem az egyetlen. Emberként, egyénként munkavállalói, oktatói és polgári szerepet is betöltünk, és el kell gondolkodnunk azon, hogyan használhatjuk fel ezeket a szerepeket a mesterséges intelligencia fejlesztésével kapcsolatban annak javítása érdekében.

Enquanto iniciativas democráticas lideradas por cidadãos, as comunidades de energia desempenham um papel importante nos esforços em acelerar a transição da Europa para as energias renováveis. No entanto, por detrás da sua imagem progressista, persistem desigualdades familiares: as mulheres e as FLINTA continuam amplamente ausentes da adesão e da tomada de decisões. Se estes projetos populares de base têm como objetivo reformular não só a forma como a energia é produzida, mas também quem detém o poder, a questão do género não pode ser tratada como secundária.

As comunidades de energia são frequentemente consideradas um dos desenvolvimentos mais promissores ligados à transição energética — e por boas razões. A REScoop.eu, a federação europeia de comunidades de energia, descreve-as como uma «forma de organizar cidadãos que pretendem cooperar juntos numa atividade relacionada com o setor energético, baseada numa participação e governança abertas e democráticas, de modo a que a atividade possa prestar serviços ou outros benefícios aos membros ou à comunidade local». Isto abrange uma vasta gama de organizações e iniciativas, com dimensões e formas de produzir energia muito diferentes, desde a solar e hídrica à eólica ou biomassa. Em comum têm a produção de energia descentralizada e autogerida, a aposta nas renováveis e — infelizmente — uma persistente sub-representação das mulheres. Estudos mostram que mais de 70 por cento dos membros de comunidades de energia elétrica e mais de 83 por cento dos seus conselhos de administração são do sexo masculino.

Pode parecer picuinhas discutir a dinâmica de género no contexto da transição energética em geral, e ainda mais no microcosmos das comunidades de energia, que estão ainda a estabelecer-se na maioria dos Estados-membros da UE. No entanto, o género continua a ser uma lente útil para descrever a experiência de mais de metade da população e para analisar fenómenos políticos, incluindo a política energética.

Nas comunidades de energia, há uma persistente sub-representação das mulheres. Estudos mostram que mais de 70% dos membros e mais de 83% dos conselhos de administração são do sexo masculino.

Além disso, as comunidades de energia são laboratórios interessantes, pois abordam a transição energética a partir das bases, em proximidade com a vida quotidiana das pessoas. As estruturas e dinâmicas presentes nestes contextos podem simultaneamente refletir e moldar a direção da mudança.

Uma transição política
Os nossos sistemas energéticos atuais têm um impacto mais negativo nas mulheres do que nos homens. Isso começa com a extração de combustíveis fósseis, que coloca as mulheres indígenas e as pessoas two-spirit num risco acrescido de violência (incluindo sexual). Estes grupos também sofrem mais com os efeitos imediatos do consumo de combustíveis fósseis, como na poluição derivada de cozinhar. Os efeitos a longo prazo das alterações climáticas também mostram ter um viés de género: as mulheres enfrentam mais riscos para a saúde, estão em maior risco durante as catástrofes climáticas, e por aí fora.

O setor energético emprega menos mulheres e paga-lhes menos, agravando também a sua pobreza (energética). Do mesmo modo, a governança energética tem sido dominada por homens no passado, tanto a nível nacional como europeu. No fundo, os sistemas energéticos atuais não funcionam para as mulheres em imensos aspetos e as comunidades de energia ainda não se libertaram desta dinâmica. Por isso, o género precisa de ser tido em conta para a justiça energética, a par das experiências interseccionais de desigualdade e opressão, que incluem também a classe, a sexualidade, a etnia e a idade. No entanto, como demonstrou a investigadora Barbara Nicoloso, a vertente política da transição energética não tem recebido a devida atenção.

Os sistemas energéticos atuais não funcionam para as mulheres em imensos aspetos e as comunidades de energia ainda não se libertaram desta dinâmica.

A política energética é sensível à política em geral e aos interesses políticos instalados. A reação contra o Pacto Ecológico Europeu (o Green Deal) visa abrandar a transição energética — mesmo quando os estudos refutam, uma e outra vez, a ideia de que os eleitores se opõem às medidas climáticas. Ao mesmo tempo, os riscos geopolíticos ligados à dependência dos combustíveis fósseis ficaram bem visíveis desde a invasão da Ucrânia, com os elevados preços da energia a agravar a pobreza energética na Europa. Nos anos que se seguiram à invasão, a UE conseguiu diversificar o seu fornecimento de energia (ainda que por vezes com contrapartidas dolorosas), mas as renováveis estão a ser difamadas pela extrema-direita. Na Alemanha, por exemplo, a Alternativa para a Alemanha (AfD) tem criticado frequentemente a energia eólica e defendido a retoma das importações baratas de combustíveis fósseis vindas da Rússia.

A política energética reflete as estruturas e as prioridades das sociedades em que é criada. Isto significa que a sub-representação das mulheres num nicho de prosumidores de energia ativos não é uma coincidência, mas um produto da política. É um sinal de alerta de que a transição energética, se for tratada como forma de sair de um sistema e entrar num novo, mesmo por defensores das renováveis, vai arrastar consigo pontos cegos contraproducentes e injustos.

Equilibrar o terreno

As comunidades de energia representam um microcosmos das questões mais amplas com que progressistas e Verdes se debatem em toda a Europa. Pode a transição energética ser verdadeiramente participativa? Como pode ser acelerada e o seu alcance alargado? As dinâmicas sociais e políticas são, pelo menos, tão importantes quanto as considerações técnicas.

A sub-representação das mulheres num nicho das comunidades de energia não é uma coincidência. É um produto da política.

Dado que as comunidades de energia são, na maioria das vezes, fundadas e mantidas vivas apenas por voluntários, ter mais membros significa maior envolvimento, mais recursos e, em última análise, mais dinamismo. Embora as comunidades de energia tenham surgido de um movimento ambicioso para a transição energética, atualmente, ficam tantas vezes limitadas a um grupo homogéneo de homens altamente qualificados e com rendimentos elevados.

Se as comunidades de energia conseguirem aumentar o número de mulheres entre os seus membros, a transição energética descentralizada ganha velocidade. O que pode ser feito para criar um ciclo positivo entre a participação das mulheres nas comunidades de energia, a igualdade de género e a transição energética?

O caso das comunidades de energia alemãs é particularmente interessante porque a Alemanha é o país com mais comunidades de energia na UE e tem uma longa história de ativismo de base e turbulência política relacionados com a transição energética.

Segundo Lara Track, gestora de projetos na Netzwerk Energiewende Jetzt e.V., uma organização de apoio às comunidades de energia, é impossível ignorar a ligação entre a luta pela igualdade de género e a transição energética, mesmo que esta tenha sido negligenciada durante demasiado tempo.

Se as comunidades de energia conseguirem aumentar o número de mulheres entre os seus membros, a transição energética descentralizada ganha velocidade.

As mulheres, lésbicas, pessoas intersexo, não-binárias, trans e agénero (por vezes designadas em alemão pelo acrónimo FLINTA) estão muito menos representadas nas comunidades de energia, mas também na transição energética como um todo. Lara Track, que trabalhou extensivamente sobre o papel das FLINTA na transição energética, afirma que é essencial aumentar a sua Teilhabe, o seu «ter um papel», que é mais do que apenas participação (Teilnahme).

Centrar apenas na participação como veículo para a igualdade de género e a representação tem-se revelado vulnerável ao tokenismo e à simplificação excessiva. Em contrapartida, ter um papel (através da liderança de um projeto, fazendo parte de uma administração ou simplesmente integrando uma comunidade) significa ter voz e, em última análise, poder. Este tipo de participação mais forte costuma ser mais acessível para pessoas abastadas, proprietários de habitação e homens cisgénero, pois têm mais oportunidades de participar, explica Track. Quem quiser colocar o género nas comunidades de energia tem de nadar contra a maré na sua luta por representação, inclusão e poder. Segundo Track, embora o género seja um tema importante, as comunidades de energia podem acabar por dar prioridade a outras áreas e não conseguir criar estruturas de participação.

Ter um papel significa ter voz e, em última análise, poder.

Kiara Groneweg, que trabalha na área da energia na Women Engage for a Common Future (uma rede sem fins lucrativos dedicada à ligação género-clima), concorda com Track que uma participação e representação meramente simbólicas arriscam reforçar o status quo em vez de trazerem uma mudança transformadora e maior igualdade.

A título de exemplo, Groneweg menciona Katherina Reiche, atual ministra da energia alemã e ex-CEO de uma subsidiária do gigante energético E.ON, como exemplo de mulheres que usam as suas posições de poder para impedir mudanças estruturais. Reiche propôs restrições à expansão das renováveis, como exigir que estas suportem os custos de extensão da rede e limitar a compensação pela injeção de eletricidade na rede. O ex-secretário de Estado Verde Sven Giegold criticou estas propostas como uma tentativa de travar a produção renovável descentralizada.

Quem quiser colocar o género nas comunidades de energia tem de nadar contra a maré na sua luta por representação, inclusão e poder.

Ainda assim, Groneweg reconhece que, no que diz respeito à representação nas comunidades de energia, «as mulheres atraem mulheres e as FLINTA atraem FLINTA». E acrescenta: «Se tivermos um conselho de administração masculino com um tempo de palavra muito elevado, algumas FLINTA simplesmente não vão querer entrar e participar nas discussões, porque a estrutura não se adequa logo à partida.» A atração que acompanha o aumento da representação é crucial para abrir as estruturas dominadas por homens. Como refere Track, «as pessoas gostam de trabalhar com pessoas com quem conseguem sentir uma ligação com relativa facilidade.»

No entanto, as desigualdades socioeconómicas constituem um obstáculo ao aumento da representação, afirma Groneweg. Para ela, o debate sobre uma transição energética socialmente justa precisa também de ser lúcido quanto ao acesso desigual ao capital, à habitação e à propriedade. Este acesso é limitado na Alemanha, onde mais de metade da população vive em habitações arrendadas e uma em cada cinco pessoas está em risco de pobreza ou exclusão social — valor que duplica nos agregados familiares monoparentais.

Estes números têm uma forte dimensão de género. As mulheres representam a grande maioria (85 por cento) dos agregados monoparentais, ganham 16 por cento menos e têm pensões em média muito mais baixas do que os homens.

Com 75 por cento do parque habitacional europeu classificado como energeticamente ineficiente, a transição no aquecimento é o ponto mais vulnerável da transição energética. Groneweg sublinhou que, no aquecimento, as soluções individuais são praticamente insuficientes, sobretudo para os 53 por cento de pessoas na Alemanha que alugam habitação. Uma vez que as renovações e a adaptação com bombas de calor têm sido politicamente inflamadas na Alemanha, estas grandes soluções estruturais ficam por resolver, deixando as populações a compensar sozinhas os elevados custos de energia.

Uma mentalidade competitiva

Quando Marina Braun — engenheira, fundadora e membro do conselho de administração de várias comunidades de energia — decidiu envolver-se no setor, pensou no facto de ser a primeira mulher a aderir a uma comunidade de energia inteiramente masculina. Conhecia até alguns dos homens na administração, o que facilitou. No entanto, acabou por dedicar os seus esforços a uma comunidade de energia mais jovem e diversa.

«Apercebi-me de que a motivação era, de alguma forma, completamente diferente», recorda. «Havia mulheres envolvidas também. Tive um pressentimento de que me sentiria mais confortável do que na outra comunidade de energia porque estavam ativamente à procura de mulheres. Pensei que talvez não houvesse aquela ‘mentalidade de cotoveladas’ — e bem, isso foi um fator decisivo para mim.»

A representação não é uma cura milagrosa para a igualdade de género.

Kerstin Lopau, engenheira e cofundadora da SoLocal Energy, teve uma experiência negativa em comunidades de energia dominadas por homens, onde se deparou com uma falta de generosidade conversacional e uma mentalidade competitiva — a tal mentalidade de cotoveladas também mencionada por Braun. Na sua experiência, uma cultura de comunicação mais agradável conduz também a uma maior produtividade e a uma abordagem cooperativa na resolução de problemas.

Tal como Track e Groneweg, Lopau acredita que a representação não é uma cura milagrosa para a igualdade de género. Por exemplo, fazer parte do conselho de administração de uma empresa — uma estrutura tantas vezes muito hierárquica e conformista — pode levar as mulheres a seguir ideais masculinos e a perder solidariedade com outras mulheres. Nas comunidades de energia, porém, o panorama é um pouco diferente, segundo Lopau: as direções tendem a ser mais democráticas, com vários mecanismos para garantir o controlo e a transparência, o que evita o afastamento e a perda de solidariedade.

Cultivar o terreno
As comunidades de energia alemãs são frequentemente Genossenschaften (cooperativas) que englobam uma ética, um estatuto jurídico e uma estrutura específicos. Estas organizações visam ajudar os seus membros a prosseguir os seus próprios objetivos económicos, sociais ou culturais através de operações conjuntas. Seguem tradicionalmente os princípios de entreajuda, autorresponsabilidade e autogestão.

No seu trabalho, Track observou que as comunidades de energia podem desencadear conversas em torno de novas formas sustentáveis de criar e reter valor. As comunidades de energia são alavancas para as pessoas beneficiarem localmente da transição energética, em especial as que não beneficiam atualmente, observa. No setor da energia, isto é crucial. Demonstrou-se que os projetos de energia comunitária geram entre duas a oito vezes mais receitas locais do que se o projeto fosse realizado por um agente externo. Na Alemanha, onde grande parte da eletricidade produzida no leste do país flui para oeste, agravando os desequilíbrios existentes, este aspeto local tem um potencial imenso.

O debate sobre uma transição energética socialmente justa precisa também de ser lúcido quanto ao acesso desigual ao capital, à habitação e à propriedade.

Track diz que é surpreendente que mais municípios não recorram às comunidades de energia para combater o fenómeno «not in my backyard» (NIMBY) e construir uma democracia energética local. Segundo Groneweg, porém, dado o tempo e o esforço voluntário necessários para criar comunidades de energia (sobretudo num país como a Alemanha, sobrecarregado por enormes obstáculos burocráticos), as comunidades de energia não devem ser as únicas responsáveis por eliminar barreiras estruturais e resolver problemas políticos mais amplos como a pobreza energética.

Em vez disso, o movimento das comunidades de energia poderia unir forças com outros movimentos sociais, como as comunidades feministas e climáticas. «Espero um movimento energético feminista que lute para crescer os sistemas de energia descentralizados. Teríamos então mais pessoas a envolver-se. Isso significaria que, numa comunidade de energia que talvez tenha agora cerca de 20 voluntários, de repente 200 estão envolvidos, e cresce de cidade em cidade, ou de aldeia em aldeia», diz Groneweg.

As comunidades de energia são alavancas para as pessoas beneficiarem localmente da transição energética, em especial as que não beneficiam atualmente.

Para Lopau, é um desenvolvimento positivo que os painéis solares se tenham tornado um produto de massa, retirando a geração de energia do domínio dos geeks da tecnologia e trazendo-a para o mundo familiar do supermercado local. Os pequenos módulos fotovoltaicos tornam muito acessível para os inquilinos criar o seu próprio sistema solar nas varandas. Para quem consome pouco ou está em situação de pobreza energética, as poupanças geradas por um módulo solar numa varanda são relativamente maiores do que para quem consome muito.

As renováveis permitem a produção local de energia e são a forma mais democrática e acessível de fornecer energia até à data. No entanto, estas fontes de energia ainda são fortemente influenciadas pelos sistemas energéticos anteriores e pelas suas dinâmicas de género, observa Lopau. Ela vê as renováveis como um terreno fértil que agora precisa de cultivo para alcançar o seu potencial, nomeadamente através da inclusão de pessoas FLINTA nas comunidades de energia. No entanto, persistem pequenos e grandes obstáculos que as comunidades de energia têm de superar para equilibrar a sua participação.

«As comunidades de energia não existem num vazio»

Os primeiros obstáculos que os potenciais novos membros de uma comunidade de energia enfrentam são os custos iniciais e recorrentes associados à adesão. As comunidades de energia podem antecipar-se a isso oferecendo modelos de preços solidários.

O movimento das comunidades de energia pode unir forças com outros movimentos sociais, como as comunidades feministas e climáticas.

Lopau, que tem estado ativa na democratização dos sistemas solares de varanda, reconhece que as renováveis muitas vezes não são uma prioridade para quem enfrenta a pobreza (energética) e o peso mental e o stress a ela associados. Afirma que as comunidades de energia devem depender menos das motivações internas das pessoas com consciência ambiental. Para que isto se torne uma realidade, os potenciais utilizadores devem ser procurados de forma proativa e apoiados.

Mas as barreiras financeiras não são o único obstáculo à participação. Uma vez que as comunidades de energia dependem da eficácia individual e coletiva, as pessoas que não tenham autoconfiança ou experiência na sociedade civil ou em iniciativas coletivas locais, como associações desportivas, podem enfrentar barreiras mentais e subestimar-se a si próprias e às suas capacidades. Para Braun, é importante lembrar às pessoas que as comunidades de energia são uma iniciativa coletiva. Os membros trabalharão sempre com outros; ninguém ficará para trás, e seguem sempre um princípio de trabalho a 4 ou 6 mãos, afirma.

Para antecipar os obstáculos financeiros à adesão, as comunidades de energia podem oferecer modelos de preços solidários.

Os estereótipos de género também contribuem para a sub-representação das mulheres. Braun, que estudou engenharia, sugere que a disparidade de género nas áreas STEM também tem que ver com os nomes dos programas de licenciatura e a ênfase nos aspetos técnicos. Termos como tecnologia energética ou tecnologia renovável tendem a colocar em primeiro plano os elementos técnicos tradicionalmente associados à masculinidade, ocultando as questões jurídicas, organizacionais e sociais ligadas às renováveis.

Braun sublinha que os estereótipos de género podem ser desafiados. «Este é um tema que qualquer pessoa pode aprender e compreender. Basta dedicar-lhe tempo, tal como é preciso tempo para aprender a tricotar, a pintar e qualquer outra competência que se queira desenvolver.»

A disparidade de género nas áreas STEM também tem que ver com os nomes dos programas de licenciatura e a ênfase nos aspetos técnicos.

No entanto, a escassez de tempo também afeta desproporcionalmente as mulheres. Na Alemanha, as mulheres passam 44,3 por cento mais tempo em trabalho de cuidados do que os homens, constituindo um segundo turno não remunerado de 30 horas por semana. Estima-se que este trabalho equivale a 826 mil milhões de euros por ano não remunerados, sendo a condição prévia de todo o trabalho remunerado. Sem dar e receber cuidados, como ensinar as crianças a falar, a resolver conflitos ou a construir relações sociais, outras atividades económicas simplesmente não seriam possíveis. Quando os governos pressionam para o alargamento da semana de trabalho a fim de aumentar a produção económica, arriscam reforçar a disparidade de cuidados entre géneros. Reduzem também o tempo disponível para o envolvimento e a participação democráticos.

Estas são questões mais amplas que inevitavelmente afetam as comunidades de energia, que dependem maioritariamente do trabalho voluntário. Como refere Track: «As comunidades de energia não existem num vazio. E tudo o que fazemos estruturalmente para promover a igualdade de género vai beneficiar a igualdade de género dentro das comunidades de energia.»

As competências que importam

Uma das estratégias que os organizadores das comunidades de energia seguem para atrair pessoas FLINTA é destacar que são necessárias competências diversas. As competências em comunicação, administração, direito ou finanças são essenciais para construir a organização antes de qualquer ventoinha eólica ou campo de painéis solares ser aprovado.

Braun explica que, especialmente no início, é essencial ter pessoas a bordo que saibam como construir uma organização — de forma prática e social. «As mulheres são simplesmente muito boas a construir organizações estruturalmente, em gestão de projetos, são muito ponderadas, muito empáticas — e é isso que é essencial para uma comunidade de energia.» Chegar às pessoas, convencê-las e integrá-las está ligado a um conjunto de competências emocionais e sociais (que são, de facto, competências, e não qualidades inatas) que as mulheres e as pessoas FLINTA frequentemente têm.

As competências em comunicação, administração, direito ou finanças são essenciais para construir a organização antes de qualquer ventoinha eólica ou campo de painéis solares ser aprovado.

Os investigadores demonstraram provas sólidas dos benefícios de trabalhar em equipas mais diversas. Um exemplo, mencionado por Braun, é a maior aversão ao risco. Na sua experiência, enquanto os homens tendem a assumir mais riscos e a adiar a abordagem de cenários pessimistas, uma maior interação entre géneros nas discussões equilibra estas tendências, conduzindo, por exemplo, a uma avaliação de risco mais sólida sobre no que investir.

Para Lopau, procurar ativamente uma adesão mais diversa pode também ter efeitos dominó importantes, como abrir novas perspetivas e oportunidades para fazer crescer a comunidade, e tornar o espaço mais acolhedor para todos — incluindo potenciais novos membros.

Track menciona o exemplo de uma comunidade de energia liderada por mulheres com que trabalhou: «Acho interessante que, quando há duas presidentes, se pense em programas de apoio à infância.» E acrescenta: «Não são as únicas, mas nem toda a gente o faz.»

Com vista à transição energética, que por vezes luta para ter o apoio das comunidades e fazer face ao fenómeno NIMBY, torna-se evidente que as competências sociais e organizacionais — tradicionalmente associadas a género e desvalorizadas — são as que determinam o impacto de uma comunidade de energia. Embora do exterior possa parecer que a falta de competências tecnológicas torna a participação nas comunidades de energia sem sentido, na verdade, são as competências sociais e organizacionais que podem fazer crescer e escalar o movimento.

«Não ouças os homens»

Kerstin Lopau quer combater a sub-representação das mulheres nas comunidades de energia pela raiz e fazer as coisas de forma radicalmente diferente. Em anos anteriores, organizou uma escola de verão para jovens aprenderem a instalar painéis solares. Depois de receber feedback de que algumas pessoas FLINTA não se inscreveram porque não se sentiam seguras, Lopau pôs mãos à obra. Desde então, ela e os seus colegas da SoLocal Energy têm organizado campos solares concebidos especificamente para FLINTA. A sua abordagem é estar atenta às lacunas, «tentar sempre olhar atentamente para o que as pessoas precisam. Sabemos pela nossa própria experiência no terreno o que parece estranho, por isso tentamos perceber o que poderia ser melhor.»

Estes campos solares pretendem também ser uma rampa de lançamento para o emprego futuro daqueles que gostariam de seguir este caminho profissionalmente. Lopau tem sido estratégica na construção de relações com o setor local de mão-de-obra especializada no Norte de Hesse. Contou com a sua experiência e conhecimento, mesmo quando tal não era estritamente necessário. Estas colaborações levaram a alguns contactos muito úteis. Ela recorda que os profissionais «viram no local, ‘ok, elas sabem mesmo o que estão a fazer, e são competentes — e não são tão más como pensávamos. Talvez possamos recrutar alguns estagiários e trabalhadores aqui.’ Por isso foi uma situação em que todos saíram a ganhar.»

Um pilar central deste campo de verão é o networking, já que a construção de relações entre estes futuros profissionais de energia durante o campo tem sido valiosa. Desenvolve a literacia energética e a confiança das participantes, permitindo-lhes aparecer de forma diferente, mais empoderada, nas suas comunidades de energia ou em futuros empregos. Lopau partilha que uma antiga participante do campo de verão lhe enviou um e-mail com uma questão técnica. «Disse que era assim que se tinha de fazer, mas os homens aqui dizem que não é preciso fazê-lo assim», escreveu a participante. Lopau respondeu: «Não, não ouças os homens. Lembraste-te corretamente.»

Este artigo foi inspirado pelo trabalho de Barbara Nicoloso, cujo ensaio “Gender Power: The energy transition through a gender lens” e o policy brief “Gender at the Heart of the EU Energy Transition: Key learnings from the French case” foram anteriormente publicados pela Green European Foundation.

O que distingue os humanos da inteligência artificial? A autora alemã Nina George vê a resposta na capacidade de criar aquilo que até então não existia. No entanto, à medida que o alcance da IA se expande para cantos cada vez mais distantes das nossas vidas – desde o conteúdo que consumimos até à forma como falamos –, arriscamo-nos a perder a nossa liberdade e criatividade.

Mais de três anos após o seu lançamento no mercado, em novembro de 2022, o ChatGPT, a robótica geradora de texto criada pela OpenAI na sagrada Silicon Valley, continua a ser adorado como se fosse o «Pancriador» (como o autor e filósofo da tecnologia Stanisław Lem chamou o «construtor racional do mundo» na sua obra de 1964, Summa Technologiae).

Segundo um estudo da própria OpenAI, 800 milhões de utilizadores, predominantemente jovens entre os 18 e os 25 anos, submetem uma média de 18 mil milhões de pedidos por semana ao seu chatbot. Recorrem ao ChatGPT para trabalhos de casa, candidaturas a emprego, slogans de marketing, e-mails, newsletters, excertos de propaganda para bots das redes sociais, para produtos que se assemelham a livros, críticas ou traduções; para cartas de amor à la Cyrano de Bergerac versão ciborgue, respostas automáticas ao cliente, resumos; e conselhos de relacionamento ou de vida. Claro que o ChatGPT é apenas um entre muitos chatbots – existem muito mais de 1000 grandes modelos de linguagem, e as suas aplicações estão disponíveis em todo o mundo.

O número de pedidos oscila no início e no fim do semestre e das férias escolares. Segundo um inquérito da HEPI e da Kortext no Reino Unido, a proporção de estudantes que usam ferramentas de IA generativa como o ChatGPT para trabalhos avaliados saltou de 53 por cento em 2024 para 88 por cento em 2025. Tal como a escrita, também a leitura está em declínio. Docentes universitários na Europa e do outro lado do Atlântico relatam que um número crescente de estudantes não está habituado a ler e considera mental, emocional e fisicamente exaustivo ler textos mais longos do que um poema.

Embora fosse fácil culpar estes desenvolvimentos na OpenAI, Meta, Anthropic e os restantes suspeitos do costume do colonialismo digital norte-americano, a IA apenas acelerou uma tendência que já era visível, inclusive na Europa. O poder computacional e a estatística baseada em dados, frequentemente apresentados como «inteligência artificial», são um espelho amplificador de condições pré-existentes desoladoras.

Tal como a escrita, também a leitura está em declínio. Docentes universitários na Europa e do outro lado do Atlântico relatam que um número crescente de estudantes não está habituado a ler e considera mental, emocional e fisicamente exaustivo ler textos mais longos do que um poema.

Um admirável mundo velho

As tentativas, desde os anos 1960, de replicar as vias neuronais do cérebro humano através de estatística baseada em dados produziram aquilo a que chamamos «IA fraca». A IA fraca só consegue concentrar-se numa única tarefa – ao contrário dos humanos, que conseguem processar 11 milhões de impressões sensoriais por segundo e filtrar as 40 mais importantes para reações imediatas. Ao conduzir um automóvel, nós pensamos, mudamos de mudança, viramos o volante, reagimos aos sinais vermelhos e mantemos o olhar na criança no banco de trás que está a enfiar um chocalho no nariz.

O ChatGPT, o Gemini, o LlaMA, o Microsoft Copilot e semelhantes só conseguem conduzir sempre em frente ou reconhecer o sinal vermelho. Além disso, não compreendem nem o significado nem o contexto daquilo que misturam, porque todas as letras, palavras, frases, contextos e informações são convertidos em fórmulas algorítmicas. A linguagem humana é convertida em matemática de máquina, e a matemática é cuspida de volta como comunicação simulada.

Numa era de policrises complexas, da ascensão da extrema-direita e de uma inundação de bots de propaganda nas redes sociais, a comunicação automatizada funciona como acelerador de futuras ditaduras linguísticas.

No entanto, este resultado é rigorosamente pré-censurado: os chatbots de IA estão programados para evitar uma lista crescente de termos proibidos e temas sensíveis, através de um «controlo de conteúdo» definido de fábrica. Esta lista inclui palavrões e termos sexualmente explícitos, mas também adjetivos incomuns e assuntos politicamente sensíveis (e, com o atual governo dos EUA, a lista é cada vez mais longa). O resultado é, na melhor das hipóteses, uma linguagem medíocre e conservadora, desprovida do elemento humano.

Os chatbots de IA estão programados para evitar uma lista crescente de termos proibidos e temas sensíveis, através de um «controlo de conteúdo» definido de fábrica. O resultado é, na melhor das hipóteses, uma linguagem medíocre e conservadora, desprovida do elemento humano.

Esta linguagem está a mudar não só a comunicação humana escrita, mas também a oral. Investigadores do Instituto Max Planck para o Desenvolvimento Humano analisaram mais de 770.000 podcasts e vídeos e concluíram que estamos a começar a falar no estilo do ChatGPT. Esta erosão da diversidade linguística e cultural aumenta consideravelmente o perigo de manipulação de opinião. Numa era de policrises complexas, da ascensão da extrema-direita e de uma inundação de bots de propaganda nas redes sociais, a comunicação automatizada funciona como acelerador de futuras ditaduras (linguísticas).

Uma análise a mais de 770.000 podcasts e vídeos conclui que estamos a começar a falar no estilo do ChatGPT. Esta erosão da diversidade linguística e cultural aumenta o perigo de manipulação de opinião.

Exploradores do tempo, da cultura e do conhecimento
Mas este não é o único problema com o entusiasmo em torno da IA. A base textual sobre a qual, por exemplo, o GPT-3 foi desenvolvido, consiste em 45 terabytes de material que a OpenAI muito provavelmente pilhou ilegalmente ao longo dos anos. Trezentos milhões de páginas de texto extraídas de sites privados, arquivos de meios de comunicação, fóruns do Reddit, avaliações da Amazon, redes sociais, entradas da Wikipédia. E também sete milhões de livros protegidos por direitos de autor e 81 milhões de textos científicos.

Equipas de investigação como a holandesa AI Safety Camp ou a dinamarquesa Rights Alliance provaram que as bases para grandes modelos de linguagem, como o Llama da Meta, foram construídas a partir de livros e coleções como a Books3, armazenadas ilegalmente em bibliotecas paralelas como a Library Genesis (LibGen), a Z-Library (Bok), a Sci-Hub e a Bibliotik – sites de pirataria.

O número de processos judiciais contra empresas de IA pela violação massiva de direitos de autor cresce todas as semanas nos EUA. Na Europa, as ações coletivas são difíceis de mover e financeiramente inviáveis para autores individuais.

O número de processos judiciais contra esta violação massiva de direitos de autor cresce todas as semanas. Em novembro de 2025, havia 75 processos contra a OpenAI, a Microsoft, a Meta e a Alphabet (empresa-mãe da Google). Os mais conhecidos são o do The New York Times contra a OpenAI e a Microsoft, e a ação coletiva movida pela Guilda dos Autores dos EUA (a maior organização profissional de escritores nos EUA) e 18 autores individuais (incluindo George R.R. Martin, Jonathan Franzen e John Grisham) contra a OpenAI. Outro processo, movido por três autores individuais, o caso Bartz v. Anthropic, resultou num acordo de 1,5 mil milhões de dólares. Na Europa, as ações coletivas são difíceis de mover e financeiramente inviáveis para autores individuais. Mesmo que os juízes norte-americanos decidam contra a pilhagem feita pela IA, isso não fará justiça aos autores europeus.

Danos de mercado pelo resultado da IA

O linguista Noam Chomsky chamou ao ChatGPT um «plagiador de alta tecnologia» que copia de livros amostrados ilegalmente para produzir texto que reflete o estilo dos autores originais. Apesar deste roubo, os resultados são considerados «domínio público» e podem ser reutilizados por qualquer pessoa. Mas isto é um problema colateral – o dano real é que produtos de IA semelhantes prejudiquem os mercados precisamente das pessoas cujas obras foram roubadas.

Noam Chomsky chamou ao ChatGPT um «plagiador de alta tecnologia» que copia de livros amostrados ilegalmente para produzir texto que reflete o estilo dos autores originais.

A Amazon, que sempre aplicou software de controlo de conteúdo em todos os e-books para filtrar pornografia infantil, discurso de ódio e negacionismo do Holocausto, adicionou um detetor de IA. No entanto, continua a permitir o carregamento de livros gerados por IA na plataforma (máximo de três por dia por utilizador), sem etiquetas ou avisos visíveis para os clientes. Entre 10.000 e 40.000 «fraudes literárias» produzidas por IA inundam a plataforma todos os meses, enganando os consumidores e chegando mesmo a colocá-los em perigo (por exemplo, quando «guias» não verificados prescrevem tratamentos sem sentido, conselhos de vida fatais, ou declaram que cogumelos venenosos são comestíveis).

Ao mesmo tempo, os livros reais de autores humanos tornam-se menos visíveis, e as receitas da autopublicação estão a encolher. Por exemplo, a remuneração dos escritores através do modelo de partilha de receitas da Kindle Direct Publishing está a diminuir, à medida que mestres de bots e outros utilizadores sem escrúpulos embolsam uma grande parte do dinheiro. Os livros gerados por IA são frequentemente feitos para se assemelharem aos verdadeiros lançamentos de autores conhecidos (ou são apresentados como «resumos» e «material secundário»). Biografias de pessoas famosas, lançadas quase instantaneamente após a sua morte, são também uma forma fácil de ganhar dinheiro com IA.

Um fenómeno semelhante pode observar-se no setor da música: segundo um estudo da aplicação de streaming Deezer, 34 por cento das canções carregadas diariamente na plataforma são geradas por IA, o que, por sua vez, reduz a remuneração de compositores e músicos humanos através do modelo de receita partilhada das plataformas.

Tradutores, ilustradores e narradores de audiolivros são os grandes perdedores neste jogo. As aplicações geradoras de texto são amplamente usadas em todo o mundo, incluindo dentro do setor editorial. A Amazon acabou de lançar o seu «serviço de tradução» por IA para autopublicadores. No Reino Unido, um terço dos tradutores relatou ter perdido trabalho devido à IA, e 37 por cento dos ilustradores viram o seu rendimento diminuir pela mesma razão. Os tradutores estão a começar a mudar de profissão ou a trabalhar como pós-editores mal pagos, reparando textos e traduções gerados por máquina. Entretanto, vários narradores de audiolivros disseram-me, em confidencialidade, que se veem perante a escolha entre aceitar que as suas vozes sejam clonadas, ou serem «colocados na lista negra» pela indústria.

No Reino Unido, um terço dos tradutores relatou ter perdido trabalho devido à IA, e 37 por cento dos ilustradores viram o seu rendimento diminuir pela mesma razão. Os tradutores estão a começar a mudar de profissão ou a trabalhar como pós-editores mal pagos, reparando textos e traduções gerados por máquina.

Pagar aos escritores pela utilização passada ou futura do seu trabalho iria, segundo as gigantes tecnólogicas, prejudicar o desenvolvimento da IA. A administração Trump está do lado dos oligarcas tecnológicos: em maio, despediu Shira Perlmutter, chefe do Gabinete de Direitos de Autor dos EUA, depois de o seu gabinete ter divulgado um relatório que concluía que os usos não autorizados de obras protegidas por direitos de autor para treinar sistemas de inteligência artificial generativa poderiam ser ilegais. (O Supremo Tribunal suspendeu, por agora, a demissão de Perlmutter.)

A linha de defesa da Google é a de que as máquinas não são assim tão diferentes de um humano a ler um livro. No entanto, os humanos não conseguem memorizar livros inteiros, nem copiam o seu conteúdo como modelo de negócio. Nenhum autor que queira construir ou manter uma reputação se apropria do estilo de outro; em vez disso, dedica milhares de horas de trabalho a encontrar a sua voz única e original. O truque de equiparar máquinas a humanos e atribuir direitos humanos às máquinas é popular entre as GAFAM (Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft; a OpenAI deveria ser acrescentada a esta lista) para evitar pagar aos autores.

Isto não é surpreendente no setor cultural. As empresas tecnológicas têm uma longa tradição de pilhar ideias de escritores e poetas. Ciborgues, máquinas humanoides, a internet, as redes sociais, máquinas de escrever automáticas omniscientes, videochamadas, carros autónomos e robôs domésticos existiram todos na literatura muito antes de aparecerem no mundo real. Os verdadeiros inovadores não são Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Altman e Bill Gates, mas Stanisław Lem, E. M. Forster, Neal Stephenson, George Orwell, Mary Shelley, Karel Čapek e Isaac Asimov, entre outros. Termos como avatar, robô, mundos virtuais ou metaverso também têm origem nas mentes de autores.

Os humanos não conseguem memorizar livros inteiros, nem copiam o seu conteúdo como modelo de negócio. Nenhum autor que queira construir ou manter uma reputação se apropria do estilo de outro; em vez disso, dedica milhares de horas de trabalho a encontrar a sua voz única e original.

Deveríamos nós, escritores, deixar de conceber tais ideias, sabendo que muito provavelmente se tornarão realidade?

Perder a própria voz

Não devíamos. O poder dos seres humanos de imaginar utopias ou distopias nunca antes concebidas é o que os distingue das máquinas. Se as máquinas viessem a apoderar-se da narrativa da humanidade, a evolução primeiro estagnaria e depois regrediria. O óbvio desenraizaria por completo o extraordinário – nenhuma ideia nova, nenhuma nova proposta de coexistência, nenhum novo conceito para dar sentido a policrises em constante evolução.

Prevê-se que, até 2030, a infraestrutura física que alimenta as aplicações de IA venha a exceder as necessidades energéticas de toda a força de trabalho humana.

Os direitos de autor e os direitos morais, o direito à integridade e a não ser censurado, o direito dos autores de decidir como e por quem as suas obras e o seu trabalho são usados – estes não são direitos exclusivos de profissionais culturais e artistas. São o resultado de uma mudança de paradigma na autoperceção da humanidade: o reconhecimento da criatividade humana, do livre arbítrio, da individualidade, da autonomia e da capacidade de decisão. E também da responsabilidade individual: todo o autor, seja profissional ou amador, blogger ou comentador no Facebook, é responsável por aquilo que exprime; e, ao mesmo tempo, tem permissão para o fazer. Os direitos de autor dizem respeito à liberdade.

Escrever ou dedicar-se a atividades artísticas tem também um efeito multifacetado na identidade humana: quem consegue pensar consegue decidir; quem consegue decidir consegue agir. Quem consegue ler, compreender e escrever é menos suscetível à propaganda, à desinformação e à manipulação, venha ela das «promoções» da Black Friday ou de forças políticas antidemocráticas. Podem ser participantes ativos na democracia, em vez de meros consumidores ou eleitores. Em contrapartida, quem depende da linguagem automatizada já não consegue falar por si próprio; perde a sua voz.

Quem consegue pensar consegue decidir; quem consegue decidir consegue agir. Quem consegue ler, compreender e escrever é menos suscetível à propaganda, à desinformação e à manipulação, venha ela das «promoções» da Black Friday ou de forças políticas antidemocráticas.

Ter voz própria e saber usá-la é ainda mais necessário face às crises democráticas, sociais e ecológicas que enfrentamos. Do ponto de vista ecológico, a IA deveria ser encarada com a mesma atitude crítica que outrora se dirigiu aos clorofluorocarbonetos ou à poluição por partículas. Prevê-se que, até 2030, a infraestrutura física que alimenta as aplicações de IA venha a exceder as necessidades energéticas de toda a força de trabalho humana. É provável que numerosos empregos desapareçam, não só no setor cultural, aumentando o fardo sobre Estados que já se debatem com o desemprego e o envelhecimento das populações. Se isto acontecer, um punhado de monopólios de comunicação terá cimentado o seu domínio, determinando também a orientação política da Europa. Este seria o desfecho final da globalização digital, um sistema em que poucos decidem o destino de muitos – a menos que os muitos decidam usar a sua voz.

Quem depende da linguagem automatizada já não consegue falar por si próprio; perde a sua voz.

Adeus à liberdade?

O autor individual, enquanto ator liberal e responsável, está a ser apagado pela simulação de comunicação automatizada. A IA generativa é, na verdade, degenerativa: perturba as capacidades de quem a usa regularmente, e fá-lo à custa dos trabalhadores da palavra.

O anseio por uma máquina superior aos humanos, um golem, um deus ex machina, é o eterno defeito humano. É um desejo de criar uma entidade maior, mais permanente, melhor do que a humanidade, e de mergulhar com deleite numa passividade infinita e reconfortante, enquanto o piloto automático assume o controlo. Finalmente livre! Livre da responsabilidade e da necessidade de tomar decisões. Livre do fardo desta vida hedionda e confusa, com as suas muitas crises e humilhações.

Talvez essa seja a consequência mais lamentável da atual religião das máquinas: aqueles que não escrevem nem falam, mas deixam que as máquinas escrevam e falem por si, abraçam a supressão da sua própria liberdade de expressão.

Fueled by climate change and a strengthening El Niño, record-setting marine heat waves are gripping oceans worldwide and playing havoc with sea life. Mounting evidence from recent events suggests the damage could be severe and long-lasting, both onshore and off.

Read more on E360 →

The summer we love is slipping away From the Southwest to the Jersey shore, climate change is altering the traditions and norms that have defined summer for generations.

By Beth Gardiner

Sep 6, 2026

Topic

Climate + Regulation

Share/Republish

Copy Link Copy Link Email SMS X Facebook Reddit LinkedIn Bluesky

There was a time when summer felt easy to recognize. In childhood, summer was a time of freedom and adventure. Even into adulthood, it is a time many of us feel most free to enjoy each other and the natural world — from lazy afternoons at the beach to camping trips and swimming holes, from family cookouts and neighborhood block parties to the simple pleasure of biting into peaches and tomatoes so ripe the juice runs down your wrist. It’s when our time of dreaming through the cold comes to fruition. The time when the vegetables and fruits we planted in the spring are harvested, the time when we finally spend our precious accrued vacation time and hard-earned cash, when we treat our children to the best of what life has to offer.

But summer is changing. Over the past half-century, annual hot-season temperatures in parts of the United States have warmed by as much as 4 or 5 degrees Fahrenheit, driving heat waves, droughts, and downpours. This past July was the hottest month ever recorded for the contiguous U.S., according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. We are witnessing the slow erosion of our old summer normal. As climate change makes the season more extreme, our habits, traditions, and pastimes are also evolving, in ways both subtle and truly seismic. 

The swarm of flickering fireflies at dusk in Georgia, the cool afternoon monsoon rains in Arizona, and the mild mountain summers in the Rockies — none of these are as reliable as they once were. As the planet warms, our relationships with the places we love are evolving, and the summer we once knew is becoming harder to find. Here are some of the changes Grist staff have witnessed in the places they love most.

Southwest Rachel Glickhouse / Grist Arizona

In the Sonoran Desert, rain is a cause for celebration — especially the summer monsoons.

On stormy days, you’ll often see massive curtains of rain in the distance, and rainbows arching against pitch-black clouds in one direction as the sun beams brightly in the other. When a downpour starts, I run to tell my husband and usually head outside to the patio to watch. When it rains as infrequently as it does here in Arizona, it’s easy to revel in the sight of raindrops and inhale the heady scent of petrichor and the herby smell of creosote. I’ll often text my friends or family across town to see if it’s raining there, too, since the storms here are incredibly localized. In other places, the weather may be a source of small talk; in the desert, it is a legitimate conversation topic. 

If it rains a decent amount, I’ll go to a state or national park in search of running water, natural pools, or waterfalls. When there’s a lot of water in those ephemeral streams and pools, I’ll often encounter families with chairs and coolers, and see kids playing in the water like they’re at the beach. When I recently went out of town and my area got a huge downpour, I felt a pang of grief to have missed it.

Summer storms weren’t always such a novelty, though.

In Tucson, annual precipitation has declined by nearly 3 inches since 1970, according to the research nonprofit Climate Central. That’s a lot considering the average annual rainfall is roughly 11 inches. Most of it comes in the summer.

People who have lived here for more than a decade all say the same thing: The monsoon has become more erratic and unpredictable, which sometimes means less rain than normal. During the summer months, the monsoon used to arrive like clockwork nearly every afternoon. Now, it often feels like a happy surprise, and people often post photos and videos of the storms in local social media groups. Even in the five years I’ve been in Arizona, each year has been different: One year, the monsoon brought so much rain that it carved temporary rivers in our nearby state park and flooded the entry road; another year, the rains barely reached our house. 

But it’s not just less predictable precipitation; we’re getting more days of triple-digit temperatures, too. On those rainless, oppressive days, all one can do is stare longingly at the empty sky from the safety of air-conditioning.

— Rachel Glickhouse, director of partnerships

Frida Garza / Grist Texas

I live in New York City, but I grew up in Texas and Mexico, so I brag a lot about being from a warm place. When my peers threaten to wither like grapes on the vine as temperatures reach 88 degrees Fahrenheit, I like to say, Keep it coming. Dry heat, wet heat, I like it best when it’s 90 degrees or higher. I wait all year for the summer heat: I feel most myself with the sun on my bare arms and legs, or when I am reapplying sunscreen (do NOT sleep on sunscreen) and powerful bug spray to said bare arms and legs. These are smells I’ve grown deeply fond of, because they signal that something good could happen any moment now. That was how I felt about summer, at least, until this year. 

For me, trips back home to visit family in El Paso usually involve playing basketball with my brother, swimming in my parents’ backyard pool, counting down the days until my relatives come over for a night of grilling, and telling stories outside late into the night. This year, there was none of that. Even though summers in El Paso are hot (did you get that already?), and in that arid desert climate, triple-digit days are not uncommon, this year’s heat was particularly unrelenting. So far this summer, there have been 45 days where the temperature has been 100 degrees or higher — or roughly half of each month. 

This uptick of very hot days — which this year is expected to last into September — has been driven by climate change. Global warming pushes summer temperatures up, making heat waves in West Texas both more frequent and more intense. On top of the heat, poor air quality disrupted my El Paso summer plans. Dust is an ordinary part of living in the desert, but pollution from vehicle emissions, along with contamination from a local petroleum refinery around the time of my visit, exacerbated the poor air quality. Not wanting to admit the pesky air quality bothered my throat, I ventured into the backyard during my August visit to spend the afternoon with a good book. When my parents asked what I was doing, I remained steadfast: I was going to enjoy being outside! But despite my initial determination, I couldn’t hack it and soon retreated inside. The whole experiment only lasted about 10 minutes. 

I am not much of a hiker, but it is sad to think of how my advice for friends visiting El Paso has changed over the years. The city is home to stunning mountains and ancient caves that are perfect for hiking, and I always recommend them to out-of-towners. But now I caveat that recommendation with statements like, “It’s beautiful, just stay safe! Go early to beat the sun! Bring lots of water!” 

The city I call home is being remade in other ways, too. When my brother and I recently visited downtown, usually a bustling strip of shops, restaurants, and bars, I noticed much less foot traffic than usual — a sign he chalked up to increased fears of apprehensions by immigration officials. El Paso is an international city, bordered by the Franklin Mountains to the north and the U.S.-Mexico border to the south. One of the main strips downtown leads right to a port of entry to Ciudad Juarez, but it was mostly empty that day. A key feature of the city, its binational culture, seems at risk of being dampened by both extreme weather and a national mass deportation agenda, making people practice extreme caution in their day-to-day lives. We spotted very few other people on our walk, mostly office workers heading to or from lunch — as I saw them, I too longed for air-conditioning. 

— Frida Garza, staff writer

The Rockies Austin Corona / Grist Colorado

Every summer, thousands of Texans make an uphill journey to the Rockies, drawn by the mild mountain weather. Though you won’t find them in any botany books, Lone Star state license plates seem to bloom like an alpine wildflower from June to August.

Many Coloradans complain about the southerly visitors, but they also quietly acknowledge their importance to local economies. The high country’s biggest summer export is its cool, dry days; and Texans, along with fellow travelers from other sweaty states, are willing to pay big for it.

But drought, wildfire, and heat have whittled down the luxuries of high-mountain summers. Weather stations above 9,000 feet are recording near-90-degree days at an unprecedented rate. The peaks regularly lose their white winter veils earlier, and then shed their ragged definition entirely as oceans of wildfire smoke obscure the mountain air. Swimming in creeks and rivers often really means squatting on uneven stones beneath the water’s sinking surface. When the rivers are full to brimming, it usually means a federally managed reservoir has released emergency flows to quench the fields of desperate downstream farmers. Servers in mountain resort restaurants overhear harrumphing from tables of Texans: “And to think, we came here to get away from the heat!”

As temperatures climb, one would expect tourist numbers to fall. But even as Colorado saw its second hottest July on record in 2026, resort lodging occupancy at mountain towns is up from the previous summer. Perhaps even a hot, smoky alpine summer is still preferable to an infernal Texas one. Shrunken streams are still full of squatting bathers, and baking streets are still full of lily-white Texas license plates. The trend has left mountain summers feeling less blissful, and more crowded, than ever.

— Austin Corona, energy reporter

Ellis Juhlin / Grist Montana

In Montana, there are several peak events that define summer. For some with seasonal depression, it may be the solstice when we hit almost 16 hours of daylight. For anglers and tourists eager to enjoy blue ribbon trout streams, it’s the salmonfly hatch: Bugs the length of your finger swarm the skies as the trout feast indiscriminately on insects — and their foam replicas at the end of a fishing line. 

And just as the bugs seem to know how to emerge into the world during the right time of the summer, so too do the tubers. As the days grow longer and warmer, flotillas of inner tubes dot the surface of any moving river, along with hordes of paddleboards, inflatable rafts, and even the occasional blow-up shark. It’s a phenomenon known by many as the tube hatch.

But climate change means Montana is warming quickly. Snowpack averages have declined steadily since the 1980s, and snowmelt is happening earlier than ever before. That means rivers run lower, and levels start dropping well before peak floating season — sometimes, before the heat even fully hits. With more summer days over 90 degrees than ever before, traffic on the river is increasing as larger crowds seek a way to cool off while still enjoying the outdoors. Tubers, anglers, and wildlife reliant upon shady shorelines are competing for space across an ever smaller stretch of river. 

Montana isn’t a place that’s always been hot, which means when the heat hits, we’re a lot less prepared for it. We have one of the lowest average number of homes with air-conditioning out of any state in the country. Rivers and lakes can be one of the only effective ways to cool off when the mercury rises. 

That can make for a much less pleasant floating experience. Take this year, when for my birthday in mid-July I decided on a river float. My friends and I loaded up the cooler with ice and beer, blew up tubes ’til it felt like our cheeks would pop, and buckled my dog Zayda into her purple life jacket. We clipped our tubes together with an elaborate rigging of paracord and carabiners, while Zayda and I opted to ride on a paddleboard. 

The first few minutes as the cold water washed over us were a relief, until we rounded the corner to find possibly every other resident of Missoula County floating along, too. I let my pup jump off the boat and swim ashore, her favorite activity. But when it was time to hop back on before the next wave train, she couldn’t figure out which flotilla was ours. I watched in horror as my timid, anxious rescue dog panic-swam between clusters of floaters and for the first time wondered if there really was enough river for us all.

— Ellis Juhlin, regional reporter, Montana

The West Coast Teresa Chin / Grist California

California is big — a region unto itself, one might say — and summer can mean a lot of things to those lucky enough to call it home. In sun-baked SoCal, it might be playing in suburban sprinklers during the day and heading to the beach for sunset. Inland, there are county fairs and harvest festivals (don’t miss out on Gilroy’s garlic ice cream). Along the Central Coast, Highway 1 beckons road trippers with panoramic views of gnarled Monterey cypress and thrashing ocean waves. Farther north, summer is the upside-down of seasons, where cool temperatures can prompt locals to don parkas and unprepared tourists scramble for overpriced “I left my heart in San Francisco” sweatshirts.

But climate change is altering many of these quintessential experiences. Where I live in the Bay Area, cool (nay, cold) summers are part of our DNA. Mark Twain may not actually have said that the coldest winter he ever spent was a summer in San Francisco, but that doesn’t make it feel any less true. The combination of cold ocean and hot inland creates an enhanced marine layer, or as many here like to call it: Karl the Fog. Yes, our fog is so iconic, he has a name and a social media following. 

But climate change is making Karl less predictable due to factors like warming ocean temperatures. One study found that coastal California’s summertime fog hours declined by 33 percent over the last century. That’s bad news for both locals and coastal redwood trees, which rely on fog as a critical source of water. Even though I grew up in sun-loving Southern California — where summer mornings were so warm that I would often eat my breakfast while lying on a towel in my parents’ backyard — I’ve become attached to the cold and moody mornings here. There’s something so peaceful about watching the mist roll in over the hills with a steaming hot cup of coffee in hand.

Across the state, hotter, drier conditions are increasing wildfire risk. Emergency go-packs now live in closets alongside beach bags, and road trippers need to check for route closures and evacuation orders. While most of California is not currently in a drought, water shortages are expected to worsen over time, which in the past has led local regulators to restrict lawn watering and pool use. For kids on break from school (and harried parents trying to keep them engaged), those conditions can mean sprinklers and splash time often have to give way to screens. That’s a real loss, especially considering that the gorgeous California outdoors is how many of us justify living in such an expensive state.

— Teresa Chin, executive editor of data & design

Kate Yoder; Matthew Craft / Grist Pacific Northwest

According to an old adage, summer in the Pacific Northwest doesn’t actually start until after the 4th of July. The cool, temperate month before is instead known as “Juneuary.” Growing up, I remember donning a specific summer outfit suited to the weather: a light hoodie or fleece on top (for the typical 50-degree mornings) and shorts on the bottom (for the afternoons in the high 60s or low 70s). Few people had air-conditioning, because a breeze from open windows and fans were more than enough to stay comfortable. 

But in the last decade, these idyllic summer days have become rare. Today, Northwest summers are hotter, and the heat starts earlier in the year. This was best exemplified by the infamous heat dome in June 2021, when temperatures in Seattle reached a record-breaking 108 degrees Fahrenheit — roughly 38 degrees hotter than the typical Juneuary highs. According to an attribution study of that event, climate change made the heat dome 150 times more likely compared to preindustrial conditions. 

Climate change is also reducing snowpack across the Pacific Northwest, and the dry, hot conditions have turned the region into a potential tinderbox. Wildfire smoke has become a regular feature of our summers. Checking the air quality index, or AQI, in August has become as routine as checking the weather, and many locals factor smoke levels into their summer activity plans. 

The combination of heat and smoke has made it harder to stay cool the old-fashioned way, with open windows and fans alone. During long periods of smoke, windows might stay shut all week, causing homes to heat up like greenhouses. As a result, Northwesterners are increasingly installing air-conditioning — so much so that Seattle recently lost its rank as the nation’s least air-conditioned big city. 

After enduring months of gray drizzle — known locally as the “big dark” — the promise of an extremely pleasant summer day always felt like the ultimate payoff. While extreme heat and smoke pollution are alarming and dangerous on their own, for many Northwesterners, losing our beloved summer weather is an additional sting.

— Jesse Nichols, senior visual producer

Midwest Juanpablo Ramirez-Franco; Mia Torres / Grist Illinois 

When I first moved to Chicago about a decade ago, it was in the middle of a still-warm September. My timing was terrible, I was told. I’d missed it — the completely singular experience of a Chicago summer. The golden season, they explained, is a hard-earned reward for a city under siege by long, bitter winters. The parties are outrageous, the beer cheap, and the big, blue lake free. 

At the time, I thought they were laying it on thick. But now I can attest to its truth. It’s hard to say exactly what makes a Chicago summer special — and why people here are convinced we have the best version of the season. My sense is that everyone who lives here knows you need to make it count: to be outside, to swim in the lake, to eat ice cream and hotdogs too, to stay up late, to dance, to kiss strangers, to go to the farmers market, to see your friends, to move in with your boyfriend, to wash away the failures and sorrows of the last year and start all over again. Whatever you want, Chicago summers can deliver. 

A lot of people talk like that around here; it’s a kind of boosterism that runs against my own sensibilities and can make us look desperate on the internet. But come to the Windy City in the summer, and you might find yourself drinking the same Malört-laced Kool-Aid. (Don’t actually mix those.) I don’t know if we’re all collectively redirecting 15 one-sided rivalries with other major American cities, but our summer really is something else. 

Which is why it was such a disappointment when this summer played out differently. For one, it was wetter than usual; the city’s emergency 11-billion-gallon reservoir and tunnel system very nearly hit capacity. Canadian wildfire smoke pushed local air quality readings to the unhealthiest levels the city has ever seen. More than 200 tornadoes made landfall in Illinois this year, a record-breaking figure for the state that’s very close to topping the national record. The same powerful winds also caused a terrible power outage in Gary, Indiana, just south of Chicago, where tens of thousands of people were without power for over two weeks. 

A less smoky, less humid, less rainy, less tornado-y do-over would be nice. But that’s not in the cards. Summer temperatures in Chicago are projected to keep climbing and are forecasted to coincide with increased variability between heavy rain and drought. 

The meteorologists tell us summer is technically over, but I’m wondering how much longer our summer will actually last.

— Juanpablo Ramirez-Franco, regional reporter, Illinois

Southeast Katie Myers / Grist Tennessee

Small farms and lush backyard gardens are a way of life in the Mountain South.  The growing season is long. But farmers and gardeners are faced with difficult decisions as the region’s humid summer extremes have grown more chaotic and intense.

This was a lesson that really hit home for me the last time I tried farmwork: a brutally hot summer day in 2020 in East Tennessee. I was working in a hundred-plus-degree greenhouse, up to my neck in spiny tomato plants as I strung them up and suckered them, itching, head pounding, blinded with sweat. Later, in the field, as I planted a bed of onions, the landscape seemed to undulate in front of me, and I dashed off to a nearby tree and vomited discreetly behind it. It wasn’t the first time this had happened. 

As I drove home, I thought, the $8 an hour just isn’t worth it.

In 2023, the U.S. Department of Agriculture updated its plant-hardiness zones, which guide gardeners and farmers based on the annual lowest temperature in their location. Much of the mid-South moved half a zone up — from 7a to 7b, or 7b to 8a — toward the humid subtropics. The USDA cautioned against understanding it as directly linked to climate change but acknowledged that the zones for most plants will shift northward as the planet warms. That’s in addition to the cyclical temperature swings gardeners deal with year to year.

Increasingly ferocious summer storms and flash flooding, interspersed with more extreme flash droughts, have also made growing food even more tenuous. Kelsey, a friend of mine who works as a flower farmer in nearby southeastern Kentucky, told me she had to switch to what she called an Andalusian daily schedule, getting up early and breaking for most of midday, sometimes only returning to the field with a headlamp after dusk. When the financial margins are thin, little costs like replanting, fungicides, and even electrolyte drinks add up. 

Even more than the heat, the uncertainty wears on people. Aside from the financial unpredictability, farmers and gardeners are also feeling the loss of tradition and ritual, like the old-timer’s practice of planting by moon phases and zodiac signs.

As the planet warms, many are focusing on the cool periods of seasonal transition, investing in plants that return annually, experimenting with tropical varieties like amaranth and malabar spinach, or trying to grow crops in the shade to keep them from withering. Kelsey is pinning her hope in seed saving, the ancient art of paying close attention to the plants that seem to survive most easily and preserving their genetics, in hopes of creating hardier varieties that can withstand the summers to come.

— Katie Myers, regional reporter, Appalachia

Jaime Buerger; Lyndsey Gilpin / Grist Kentucky

Going outside on a Kentucky summer day has always felt a bit like stepping into a rainforest. And if you live in mountainous eastern Kentucky, you actually are — the southern Appalachians are a lush temperate rainforest. It’s hot and sticky and beautiful. There are a thousand shades of green. The migratory tanagers and perulas chatter all day; the cicadas scream all night. Deep yellow goldenrod, coral honeysuckle, and purple coneflowers bloom. 

But the temperature and humidity are becoming unbearable: Multiple times a summer over the last three years, Kentucky has had prolonged extreme heat waves with heat index values up to 108 degrees, resulting in air quality alerts and heat advisories. These extreme temperatures usually break with huge thunderstorms that bring heavy rain and violent wind and sometimes lead to tornadoes and flash floods. 

Evenings aren’t the respite from the heat they once were. Last year, for instance, Waterfront Wednesday, Louisville’s free evening summer concert series, fell on heat advisory days two months in a row. It was still 94 degrees when a band took the stage at 7 p.m. (the crowd was large, regardless).

Kentucky’s summer average temperatures have risen by 2 degrees Fahrenheit since 1970. Louisville has seen temperatures rise by over 4 degrees; according to a 2016 study, the city had one of the fastest-growing urban heat islands in the country, and new research shows the problem has grown in the years since. Louisville is working on efforts to address the urban heat, but for the most part, event hours, amenities, and locations remain unchanged. As parents of young children, my friends and I find ourselves skipping out or cutting our day short unless there’s a water source — a playground splash pad, a pool, a decently clean creek — to cool off the kids in. 

In any city in the state in the summer, you’ll find festivals, church picnics, county fairs, and flea markets. But most are still taking place in the middle of the day, often on hot concrete, without fans or mist or free water or enough cooling centers. Of course, the bourbon is still flowing — but even with ice, it doesn’t go down quite as smoothly in 100-degree weather.

— Lyndsey Gilpin, senior manager of community engagement 

Anila Yoganathan / Grist Georgia

Summers have always been hot in Georgia. There’s the dread of getting in your car and burning yourself on the seats while smelling the acrid fumes from the pleather melting. The slick feeling of perpetual moisture on your skin as the humidity surrounds you most days. And there’s the knowledge that, when the sun is at its peak, you should only be outside for the minute it takes to go from your air-conditioned car to the air-conditioned building.

Having been raised in metro Atlanta, it’s something I grew up planning life around, like scheduling outings on days when the heat was tolerable or making plans after sunset. My favorite pastime during the season used to be sitting outside at twilight: the sky a burst of bright colors, the heat receded to the edge of pleasant, and the humidity just enough to feel a little cool moisture on your skin like dew. In those peaceful moments just before it got dark, I would quietly watch the fireflies create a magical scene in my parents’ yard. Now? The conditions of a Georgia summer just feel more intense.

For one thing, the heat from the day doesn’t drop as much as it used to at night. From June through July this year, the minimum temperature in Georgia was 2.5 degrees Fahrenheit above the average from 1901 to 2000.

If I’m not tired of the heat and can tolerate the humidity, I still have to prepare to be eaten alive. Rising nighttime temperatures can “enhance mosquito growth” during the summer, according to the University of Georgia. So I don’t go outside at dusk as often as I did growing up.

Things have also changed inside the house. In the summertime, my dad and brother often argue over the thermostat. My brother wants cooler temperatures so he can sleep better, and my dad worries about the rising electric bills, an issue that other Georgians are also grappling with. My parents’ late-1960s house, while beautiful, is energy-inefficient. The old attic fan that used to keep us pretty cool years ago kept breaking down, and we no longer use it. While we’ve debated upgrades, the costs are still high. So the inter-generational thermostat war continues.

These days when I visit Georgia, I still try to venture outside at dusk to see my favorite lightning bugs. And while I may see a few, I’m all too aware that they face growing threats from light pollution, pesticides, development, and yard management, which can impact larvae. Without them, summer in Georgia feels just a little less magical.

— Anila Yoganathan, regional reporter, Nebraska

Sachi Mulkey / Grist Florida

The pleasures of a summer in Florida were once simple: the sensation of hot concrete pushing through the soles of your recently air-conditioned feet. A cold gas station Slurpee in one hand and a bag of boiled peanuts in the other. The steam from an afternoon rainstorm, rising from the sun-baked roads. A frozen custard from Rita’s Italian Ice truck by the beach, where you spent the afternoon collecting sand dollars and bouncing in waves with your family.

But Florida’s subtropical climate, low elevation, and exposure to warm ocean waters on three sides leave it with little buffer against the changing climate. Scores of tourists are now passing out amid 100-degree heat at Disney World. In many neighborhoods, sidewalks become hot plates after 10 a.m., scalding dogs’ paws into pink blisters. It may not rain at all, for weeks at a time. And when it does, scientists say it’s raining harder. You can feel it — gripping your steering wheel during a sudden deluge that whiteouts the road and floods sidewalks. At night, the air is muggy and laden with mosquitoes while, somehow, still unbearably hot.

So if your family is like mine, you might hop in the car and head to the beach in the hopes of trading the pavement for sand, and reconnecting with the magic of summer.

But if that beach is near Miami or the Florida Keys, you might find yourself facing thousands of tons of sargassum, brown seaweed that can clog shorelines and prevent sea turtles from nesting. In recent years, the kelp has been growing relentlessly thanks to the right conditions: bathwater-like ocean temperatures and shifting climate patterns that boost ocean nutrients. The result is a rotting mass that releases hydrogen sulfide as it decomposes, making beachgoers’ eyes and lungs burn with noxious fumes.

Or if you drive toward Tampa, you might encounter a monthslong surge of red tide, shorthand for toxic algae blooms, also caused by warm waters and similar nutrient patterns. From Sarasota to Clearwater, locals know to stay away when piles of dead fish (and sometimes manatees, dolphins, or sea turtles) litter the beaches. In smaller beach towns like Sanibel and Cedar Key, rising sea levels and hurricane damage have crumpled the economy and closed the vintage shops I once loved to peruse. Whether your refuge is cooled by AC or whirring ceiling fans, summer in the Sunshine State has increasingly become a time to stay indoors.

— Sachi Mulkey, reporter

Northeast Katherine Bagley / Grist New Hampshire

After harsh winter temperatures and muddy spring months, summer in New England feels like a well-earned prize. The peaks and lakes of the Appalachian Mountain range, rocky coastlines, and cool waters of the Atlantic Ocean are a venerable playground after months of being largely stuck inside. There’s hiking and boating, lobster rolls and ice cream, and blueberry fields ripe for picking. We New Englanders don’t let a single moment during the precious months between Memorial Day and Labor Day go to waste.

But a warming planet has changed the conditions in which we are engaging in these activities. The region is heating up faster than any other place in the contiguous United States. The weather whiplashes between intense rain and flash droughts. And then there are the ticks. So. Many. Ticks.

Growing up in the 1980s and ‘90s, these blood-sucking insects were not a thing I worried much about. Their populations were isolated to small patches of coastal regions and stands of long grass. My friends and I played outside all day before crawling into our beds when the streetlights came on. Parents didn’t conduct nightly tick checks or spray their yards with pesticides. People didn’t keep tick-removal devices on their keychains or lint rollers in their cars to swipe down bodies after being in the woods. They didn’t capture embedded ticks in clear tape, waiting to submit them to a doctor if a bull’s-eye rash appeared at the bite site. 

Now, I do all these things. The ticks are everywhere. My son was just a year old when I found his first one on him, embedded in his upper thigh. We were at a lake where I spent my summers, and where I had never once gotten bitten growing up.

New Englanders still cherish their summers — our iconic stubbornness ensures that never goes away — but these months are a little less carefree, and the woods and lakes and coastlines a little less safe.

— Katherine Bagley, editor-in-chief

Jake Bittle / Grist New York

I’ve always thought of New York City as a summer town. There are a lot of people who disagree with me, as evidenced by the clogged outbound highways heading upstate and out to the Hamptons, but to me the best times to live here are when you can stroll a hot street with a Mister Softee cone and take the subway out to Rockaway Beach. The city has been getting hotter and muggier for some time now. The panel of scientists who ran the National Climate Assessment reclassified the city in 2020 from “humid continental” to “humid subtropical,” meaning it now has more in common with the lowlands of the Southeast than it does with the crisp pine forests of New England. 

I’m originally from Florida, so humidity and sudden afternoon thunderstorms don’t bother me. What does get to me, and the millions of other New Yorkers, is the smoke. This past summer, a curtain of smoke from wildfires in Ontario blanketed the city for days, elevating the air quality index so high that it was unsafe to step outside. I made the mistake of trying to attend a party in Lower Manhattan on what should have been a sultry Thursday night and found myself returning home through empty streets with a headache. I had planned to go to the beach the next day and the day following, but I canceled my plans. (A few weeks later, when I tried to go to the beach again, my friend Chris and I got caught in an apocalyptic thunderstorm.)

This year was nowhere near as bad as the smoke drift from Canada in 2023, which blocked out the sun and raised air quality to levels exceeding that of polluted cities like Mumbai, causing a jump in emergency room asthma visits. That time I went days without stepping outside, until I got a cold from prolonged exposure to my window AC unit. When I did go outside, I had to wear an N95 mask, as did the construction workers and delivery bikers who were still laboring for hours at a time in air that was toxic enough to make one faint. In both cases, scientists have found that climate change made the wildfires in Canada at least twice as likely.

Most of the Midwest and Northeast experienced at least some smoke this summer, but it felt acute in New York, where the line between inside and outside is always a little blurry in the summer. Most New Yorkers have at least one window air-conditioning unit, but around 1 in 5 residents of the poorest neighborhoods don’t. Even in homes that do have window units, they don’t cool down whole apartments, and many people leave other windows open to air out other rooms and save on power bills. When we leave the house, most of us can’t get anywhere without walking for 10 or 20 minutes to the subway. The whole premise of life here is freedom, the freedom to go wherever you want, to go nonstop day and night. In two different summers now, I’ve seen the impossible — climate change brought the city that never sleeps to a standstill.

— Jake Bittle, staff writer

Samantha Swinsburg New Jersey

The Jersey Shore is famous for a reason. It’s the quintessential summer destination for New Jersey and its neighboring states. The long series of barrier islands shielding the mainland boasts wide, white-sand beaches that have attracted summer visitors since the 18th century. Easy access from the nearby population centers of Philadelphia, North Jersey, and New York has guaranteed hordes of tourists enjoying the beaches and boardwalks from Memorial Day weekend through Labor Day for more than a century.

But for the people who actually live here, the day after Labor Day is the best of summer.

As if the atmosphere can read the calendar, the weather shifts from the brutal heat and humidity of August to the more temperate warmth of September. The ocean, cold enough to be uncomfortable throughout most of the summer, finally accumulates enough heat to be the perfect swimming temperature. Most of the crowds depart, leaving the usually-packed beaches open for those who live close enough to steal one more day of summer before the school year begins.

It’s a day for getting to the beach late because there’s no need to stake out territory, and staying until the sun sets because there’s no reason to leave. A day for long, lazy floats in the Atlantic, for finishing the last dregs of ice cream left in the freezer, for sneaking the dog onto the deserted beach even though dogs are technically still banned for a few more weeks.

At least it was. Now the warming air and water have made that crisp turn-of-the-page fuzzier. The warm September water is arriving sooner: In the third week of August this year, sea surface temperatures were already hitting the upper 70s, according to satellite data compiled by Rutgers. In the air, August’s dog days are bleeding into fall. Average temperatures from September through November in Atlantic City have already increased 3.4 degrees Fahrenheit since 1970, according to the research group Climate Central, with 14 more days of above-normal temperatures annually.

Or as my mom — a lifelong denizen of the shore — put it, “October is the new September.”

But October can’t be that first Tuesday in September, not with school in session and island businesses closed for the season. And the more summer temperatures bleed beyond their former season, the more that perfect, final, magic day of summer becomes just … another hot day at the beach.

— Emily Jones, regional reporter, Georgia

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The summer we love is slipping away on Sep 3, 2026.

One of the hottest, most fascinating new fields in science doesn’t sound particularly exciting: distributed acoustic sensing, aka DAS. It involves using fiber optic cables to spy on the environment, and is proving to be enormously powerful. By analyzing the way that vibrations scatter light through the wires, scientists can detect volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, and even footsteps above. Last year, researchers laid a cable on the seafloor near a Greenland glacier, providing unprecedented insight into how the ice is rapidly deteriorating.

Now a team working in the mountains of Switzerland has used DAS to expose another troubling trend in ice, known as hydrofracturing, in which meltwater seeps deep down and creates pressure. By studying the phenomenon, scientists can get a better idea of how ice the world over will decline, and therefore better predict consequent problems like sea level rise. 

“It’s hypothesized to be a mechanism that can cause mass disintegration of ice shelves and ice sheets in the Antarctic, Greenland, et cetera,” said Thomas Hudson, a seismologist at ETH­ Zurich in Switzerland and lead author of a recent paper describing the work. “But no one’s really observed the mechanism in any detail.”

For all its simplicity, DAS provides incredible amounts of data. On a Swiss alpine glacier, Hudson and his colleagues laid out fiber optic cables in a grid pattern. Then, using a device called an interrogator, they fired laser pulses through the cable. Even the tiniest of disturbances along the cable sent the tiniest bits of light back to the device, where they were logged. 

A zoomed-in view of the grid of fiber optic cables (right) and its positioning on the glacier. Courtesy of Thomas Hudson

Using calculations based on the speed of light, the researchers could pinpoint an “icequake” — a fracture that generates seismic activity, similar to an earthquake — at different distances along the cable, since farther ones take ever so slightly longer to travel back. With an extensive grid pattern of cable, they detected vibrations in extreme detail. Compare this to a traditional seismometer, which detects shaking at a single point. “We can break that fiber optic cable into thousands of strain sensors,” Hudson said. “So, effectively equivalent to thousands of seismometers.”

In addition, fiber optic cables are relatively cheap, so if something catastrophic happened to the glacier, the researchers wouldn’t take as big of a financial hit. With all these crevasses around, glaciers can be extremely dangerous places for scientists to work. With DAS, though, they can lay the cable, leave the site, and get a constant stream of real-time data beamed from the interrogator. 

“Whereas streaming data back from seismometers is not trivial, and then you have to process all the data back in your lab,” Hudson said. “DAS is actually more promising as a monitoring method, just purely from a data logistics point of view.”

Indeed, using DAS, the team found that this alpine glacier isn’t just threatened with melting from rising air temperatures. Because liquid water is denser than solid water, it flows deep down into cracks and forces the ice apart, creating crevasses that compromise the overall structural integrity. “How deep these cracks go, and how many cracks there are, really matter for the stability of the glacier,” Hudson said. “These glaciers overhang critical infrastructure like train lines or villages, and so it’s really important in the future to potentially apply this technology.” 

Theoretically, a long-term DAS deployment could provide early warning of changes in stability. In just a week of this fieldwork, Hudson and his team detected more than a thousand icequakes. Furthermore, the resulting fractures allow meltwater to get deep into the glacier, which likely holds true for others beyond Switzerland.

One goal would be to develop DAS into an early-warning system for the kinds of catastrophic glacial collapses like what recently happened in Nepal. “I would be 99.999 percent certain that there were signals that you could pick up,” Hudson said of the disaster, though there would still be several steps to getting that information out in a way that would help protect people. “It’s still challenging, right? Our research still doesn’t address the question of how you turn the signals into an accurate early-warning system.”

DAS could also help monitor the ice in Greenland and Antarctica that is already collapsing into the world’s oceans. The issue isn’t so simple as the sun beating down on these ice sheets. In Antarctica especially, warming waters are eating at the undersides of ice shelves (the bits that float on the ocean), as underwater “storms” add more destructive turbulence. That other recent DAS study in Greenland found another dynamic: As ice violently calves, it stirs the water and breaks up an insulating layer of cold water resting against the ice, leading to still more melting — a sort of self-perpetuating cycle.

With DAS, scientists get an unprecedented look inside the ice, as seismic waves propagate and betray the destabilizing cracks. “If we can use this technology to understand how deep those cracks go,” Hudson said, “and how many cracks there are in the subsurface, then we will get a better idea of how stable those bigger glaciers are. And obviously that has implications for how fast these glaciers might break up and cause sea level rise.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Fiber optic cables reveal ‘icequakes’ in endangered glaciers on Sep 3, 2026.