Environment

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I think they misspelled "grift," but that's neither here nor there.

Last week, President Donald Trump signed what is likely the most regressive U.S. tax-and-spending bill in U.S. history, giving the top one percent of families more than $1 trillion in tax cuts while slashing Medicaid health coverage and food assistance for the poor. It is also one of the worst environmental bills in U.S. history.

Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” provides billions of dollars in giveaways to the fossil fuel industry and its wealthiest executives while taking a machete to our national effort to confront the climate crisis and build healthier, more sustainable, and more just communities.

“The Big Ugly Bill is a direct attack on our communities and our climate,” says Irene Burga of GreenLatinos. “This bill puts profit over people, and it will worsen the heat, pollution, and injustice we are already fighting to survive.”

The new law compounds the already $17 billion in direct federal subsidies U.S. taxpayers pay to oil, gas, and coal companies every year. It cuts hundreds of billions of dollars in tax incentives for renewable energy, despite it being cheaper, healthier, more efficient, and more reliable than fossil fuels. As a result, the law threatens nearly a million U.S. jobs and will result in higher electricity and transportation costs for people living in every state in the continental U.S.

• Air pollution — especially from transboundary dust and sulfate particles — is intensifying lightning activity in Bangladesh, particularly during the pre-monsoon season. Studies show that these pollutants, mostly coming in from northern and western India, alter cloud dynamics and increase lightning frequency.
• Bangladesh records the highest lightning-related death density in South Asia, with over 4,000 deaths since 2010. Vulnerable rural populations with limited infrastructure and outdoor labor during harvest seasons are victims of these fatalities.
• Experts urge Bangladesh to strengthen early warning systems, improve air quality monitoring, and reduce both domestic and cross-border pollution through coordinated policies targeting traffic emissions, industrial sources and open burning.

We're all aware of the microplastics problem. Here's the new hotness.

Marine plastic litter tends to grab headlines, with images of suffocating seabirds or bottles washing up along coastlines. Increasingly, researchers have been finding tiny microplastic fragments across all environments, from the most densely populated cities to pristine mountaintops, as well as in human tissue including the brain and placenta. A study published today reveals yet another hidden source of this deadly waste: nanometre-scale particles are literally everywhere, says co-author Dušan Materić, an environmental analytical chemist at the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research in Leipzig, Germany.

Materić and his colleagues sampled water at three depths representative of different environments in the North Atlantic Ocean. Throughout the water column, they found three types of nanoplastic: polyethylene terephthalate (PET), polystyrene (PS) and polyvinylchloride (PVC). These were present at average concentrations of 18 milligrams per metre cubed, which translates to 27 million tonnes of nanoplastics spread across just the top layer of the temperate to subtropical North Atlantic. “Nanoplastics make up the dominant fraction of marine plastic pollution,” Materić says. In the entire world’s oceans, it is estimated that there are around 3 million tonnes of floating plastic pollution — excluding nanoplastics.

Fifty-six residents of an Indigenous Oaxaca community face 200 trumped-up charges for resisting mining in their rivers.

In one of its many changes, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, enacted on July 4, 2025, eliminated civil penalties for noncompliance with federal fuel economy standards. Specifically, Section 40006 of the Act amends the language of the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) statute to reset the maximum civil penalty to $0.00. Although the statute and its implementing regulations otherwise remain in place, this amendment removes any civil penalties for producing passenger cars and light trucks that do not meet fuel economy requirements.

First established in 1975 in response to the gas crisis of the early 1970s, the CAFE statute empowers the Department of Transportation to set average fuel economy standards for vehicle fleets. Acting by delegation, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has periodically promulgated rules that set CAFE standards for vehicle model years. Recent rulemakings have attracted considerable attention, including debates over whether standards may account for the production of electric vehicles, based on those vehicles’ petroleum-equivalent fuel economy values calculated by the Department of Energy.

NHTSA finalized its most recent standard-setting rulemaking in 2024, covering passenger cars and certain types of trucks and vans for upcoming model years. The standard set in that rulemaking culminated in requiring model year 2031 passenger cars to achieve an average fuel economy of about 50.4 miles per gallon.

The chance at an unlikely but substantial monetary reward gets people more jazzed about recycling than a small but certain reward, according to a new study. The findings suggest that implementing “bottle lotteries” as part of deposit return schemes could increase recycling rates, at no extra cost to local governments.

Two trillion beverage containers are produced every year, but only 34% of glass bottles, 40% of plastic bottles, and 70% of aluminum cans get recycled. Fifteen countries, 11 U.S. states, and 12 Canadian provinces have bottle-deposit refund systems in which a small sum (about 5 to 45 cents) added to the price of each beverage sold is refunded when people return the empty container for recycling.

These schemes lead to recycling rates of 78.3% on average – much better, but still leaving millions of tons of recyclables moldering in landfills.

Enter the idea of a bottle lottery, which aims to bring to recycling the same thrill that attends buying a lottery ticket. Norway currently has the world’s only bottle-recycling lottery system, which was implemented in 1997. The country boasts impressive beverage container recycling rates of nearly 97%, but until now there have not been any causal studies to work out to what degree this is due to the lottery.

After spending so much time in Oregon, the idea of not having deposit is insane. The roads in Austin are littered with beverage containers.

In Oregon, a popular thing to do for the homeless was scavenge for bottles and cans. Really a win-win ... cleaning public spaces for admittedly a pittance.

I went back [to western Oregon] last fall, wanting to understand the same thing Christian did: what a changing climate means for mushrooms. What might we learn from the exuberant cindercap and all of their kin? How does one lie dormant for an eternity and then thrive amid what appears, to some, as disaster? Because it seemed to me that disaster was unfolding all around. Climate catastrophes were increasing exponentially, and American rancor was at an epic level, and an election was right around the bend. How could I use fungi, and all that we know—and don’t know—about them, as a lens through which I might find greater understanding? What lessons might they offer us about when to hide and when to burst forth? About how to recognize the tethers we have with the world around us and to nurture them so we might all grow stronger?

What might fungi have to say about waiting for devastation—transformation—to come and then knowing that the only response is to launch your body skyward, make more of yourselves, gather every friend and family member you can find and rise together? To be exuberant, even as the winds rekindle the fires burning in every direction, sparks flying.

When it comes to perceiving the extent of the fungal kingdom, our senses are wholly inadequate. Most fungi that humans tend to notice are the ephemeral sexual fruiting bodies we hunger for—for food, for medicine, for beauty, for blowing our minds. Homo sapiens’ sense of smell atrophied long ago; if we even want to find underground truffles, we need dogs and pigs. In the limited and delineated ways of human thinking—“animal, plant, or mineral?”—fungi defy categorization as we usually conceive of it. Long lumped in with plants, fungi were only recognized as their own kingdom in 1969.

They are neither plant nor animal, but a wild conglomeration of things, existing in ways that are so central to ecosystems that what we have learned about them forces the breakdown of traditional taxonomy. Large-scale DNA-sequencing datasets are expanding daily, but identifying a double helix doesn’t tell you how an organism exists in relationship with everything around it. And even with what we have learned, scientists from the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew estimate that as many as 95 percent of the planet’s fungal species have not yet been identified.

For the species we do know about, the vast majority are mycorrhizal, living in close relationship with a photosynthetic partner, exchanging resources so both can survive and thrive. Plants give their carbon-laced sugars to the fungi, and the fungi exponentially increase the plant’s uptake of nutrients and water in exchange. This partnership allows plants to better tolerate stresses, from droughts to pests to pathogens, and helps trees like Douglas firs and redwoods reach their towering heights. Author Merlin Sheldrake describes mycelium, which makes up the mycorrhizal network, as the “ecological connective tissue, the living seam by which much of the world is stitched into relation.”

No one offered me psychedelics while at the Yachats Mushroom Festival, but I was handed an eggnog spiked with whiskey infused with a sweet-tasting fungi known as candy cap mushroom—it was delicious. I also went on official and unofficial mushroom walks—“This place is fungally devoid!” exclaimed Joe at the dearth of mushrooms—and heard Christian Schwarz deliver the keynote talk as a crowd of hundreds nibbled on chanterelle pasta and puff pastries filled with spinach, artichoke, and chanterelles, also delicious.

When I asked people about the phrase “disaster mycology,” most hadn’t heard of it. Or they wanted to focus on the positive aspects of the fungi world. It was a festival, after all. It seems more popular to turn fungi into a kind of panacea. News articles keep popping up about researchers finding new ways to turn fungi into saviors to fix our broken world and bodies. Fungi to consume plastics. Fungi to replace plastics. Fungi to clean up oil spills. Psilocybins to fix undesirable thought patterns. Fungi inoculations to transform agricultural production. It is fungi that gave us penicillin and the drugs to allow organ transplant recipients to live. If we humans ingest them, they can nourish us, make us puke, or take us to the stars. Sometimes all at once. Can they fix everything?

Maybe that’s the wrong question.

As I read more, I was beginning to feel that the right question might be to ask them for a lesson on how to exist in the world in the first place. With water and air warming, considering the world from the vantage of fungi could be illuminating. They’ve had the ability to sustain and persevere for hundreds of millions of years, after all. I decided I needed to reach out to one of the authors of the disaster mycology paper, Johns Hopkins epidemiologist Arturo Casadevall. He, along with a colleague, had coined the term that was haunting me.

We’ve said it before, but it bears repeating: We won’t be able to meaningfully reduce climate pollution in the U.S. until we do something about trade associations.

Organized business groups aligned with the fossil fuel industry collectively spend hundreds of millions each year to stymie climate and environmental policy. From 2008 to 2018, trade groups allied with Big Oil and other major climate polluters outspent clean energy trade groups 27 to 1.

Two of the most climate obstructionist trade associations that work on behalf of major polluters are the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable. The Chamber is “the number one obstruction in the path of a just transition to clean energy,” according to a 2023 report on the group’s long history of anti-climate lobbying. The group was a major voice against President Joe Biden’s signature climate law; it opposed pollution limits for power plants and transportation; and it worked to dismantle climate transparency rules for public corporations. Currently, the group is suing Vermont to stop its game-changing climate law that would hold corporations accountable for damage they do to the planet.

And though the Business Roundtable insists it supports climate policy, the group has lobbied against many major efforts to reduce pollution. The association is currently calling on Congress to ban environment- and climate- focused shareholder proposals, which often seek to force companies to set more ambitious climate targets, such as Chevron shareholders’ successful 2021 proposal to reduce Scope 3 emissions. In 2021, the Business Roundtable also “spent millions of dollars to stop the Biden administration’s Build Back Better agenda, which included significant efforts to reduce carbon emissions and promote clean energy,” the Guardian reported.

These group’s anti-climate lobbying activities are only possible because of the millions they receive in annual membership payments from corporate members. And according to a new report, many of those corporate members claim to be climate champions themselves.

In Sheet’ká, Łingít fishers share herring harvests with a surprise influx of grey whales

An unprecedented surge of the massive marine mammals in ‘Alaskan’ waters has changed how humans interact with a vital yaaw fishery

https://indiginews.com/features/lingit-fishers-share-herring-surprise-influx-of-grey-whales/

@indigenouspeoples #indigenous #biodiversity @ExtinctionR
#environment #nature #climate #ClimateCrisis #ClimateAction #nature #firstnations #landback #earth @environment @enviromontreal

Abrupt Antarctic Ocean Regime Shift: Reversed SMOC - Southern Meridional Overturning Circulation

https://youtu.be/12Ch-NIYxvQ

@indigenouspeoples #indigenous #biodiversity @ExtinctionR
#environment #nature #climate #ClimateCrisis #ClimateAction #nature #firstnations #landback #earth @environment @enviromontreal #refugees @immigrantsrights #government #ottawa #health #science #weather #smoc

For decades, scientists believed the Arctic Ocean was sealed under a massive slab of ice during the coldest ice ages — but new research proves otherwise. Sediment samples from the seafloor, paired with cutting-edge climate simulations, show that the Arctic actually remained partially open, with seasonal sea ice allowing life to survive in the harshest climates. Traces of ancient algae, thriving only when light and water mix, reveal that the region was never a frozen tomb. This discovery not only reshapes our understanding of Earth’s past but offers vital clues about how the Arctic — and our planet — may respond to climate extremes ahead.

With a population of about 3 million people, Toronto is not only the biggest city in Canada, but also the fastest-growing urban centre in North America.

Its downtown core is a hub of activity but venture just a couple of kilometres northeast and you’ll find yourself in the Don Valley Brick Works, a former quarry that over the course of three decades has been transformed into a wetland. Fringed by houses and high rises, the marshlands and the valley that surrounds them are home to ducks, foxes, beavers and even the occasional deer.

The urban oasis is one of several spread across Toronto, which was recently recognized by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) as a model for other cities aiming to restore their natural spaces.

• The centuries-old Pada Yatra is a spiritual pilgrimage on foot that takes devotees through two major national parks in Sri Lanka, originally undertaken by Hindu devotees.
• Over time, it started to attract followers of other faiths, but many now join it as an adventure hike, raising concerns about the erosion of its spiritual essence and environment consciousness.
• Participation in the Pada Yatra has surged, with more than 31,000 pilgrims making the 20-day journey in 2024, and this year, this number was reached within the first seven days, raising serious concerns about increasing numbers and increasing environmental issues.
• Despite waste management efforts, the growing numbers of attendees are contributing to pollution and environmental degradation, like the impacts seen at Adam’s Peak in Sri Lanka’s Peak Wilderness, where people leave a trail of environmental destruction.

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This is a re-post from the Climate Brink

A leading UN expert is calling for criminal penalties against those peddling disinformation about the climate crisis and a total ban on fossil fuel industry lobbying and advertising, as part of a radical shake-up to safeguard human rights and curtail planetary catastrophe.

Elisa Morgera, the UN special rapporteur on human rights and climate change who presents her damning new report to the general assembly in Geneva on Monday, argues that the US, UK, Canada, Australia and other wealthy fossil fuel nations are legally obliged under international law to fully phase out oil, gas and coal by 2030 – and compensate communities for harms caused.

Fracking, oil sands and gas flaring should be banned, as should fossil fuel exploration, subsidies, investments and false tech solutions that will lock in future generations to polluting and increasingly costly oil, gas and coal.

“Despite overwhelming evidence of the interlinked, intergenerational, severe and widespread human rights impacts of the fossil fuel life cycle … these countries have and are still accruing enormous profits from fossil fuels, and are still not taking decisive action,” said Morgera, professor of global environmental law at the University of Strathclyde.

Yes, it's a pipe dream to expect any of this, let alone all of it, but allowing corporations an exclusive microphone moves the needle in the wrong direction.

On June 27, 2025, Friends of the Everglades and Center for Biological Diversity filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Florida Division of Emergency Management and Miami-Dade County regarding a reckless plan for a massive detention center in the heart of the Everglades, known as “Alligator Alcatraz.”

Friends of the Everglades is represented by Earthjustice and attorneys Scott Hiaasen and Paul Schwiep.

As the lawsuit points out, the plan has gone through no environmental review as required under federal law, and the public has had no opportunity to comment. Despite that, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has plowed ahead with developing the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport — a site that is more than 96% wetlands, surrounded by Big Cypress National Preserve, and critical habitat for the endangered Florida panther and other iconic species.

“This scheme is not only cruel, it threatens the Everglades ecosystem that state and federal taxpayers have spent billions to protect,” said Eve Samples, Executive Director of Friends of the Everglades. “Friends of the Everglades was founded by Marjory Stoneman Douglas in 1969 to stop harmful development at this very location. Fifty-six years later, the threat has returned — and it poses another existential threat to the Everglades.”

Full Press Release: https://www.everglades.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/FOE-Alligator-Alcatraz-Press-Release.pdf

Environmentalists are suing to stop the flow of 1,4-dioxane into the drinking water supply, which one local water utility found at concentrations 17 times higher than the EPA’s health advisory goal.

• Nepal’s Supreme Court struck down a 2024 law permitting infrastructure in protected areas in January 2025, but the government continues to approve such projects as the full ruling remains unpublished.
• Despite the ruling, the government approved the 57.6 billion rupee ($416 million), 81-kilometer (50.3-mile) Muktinath cable car touted as the world’s longest line, which will pass through the Annapurna Conservation Area, raising concerns about environmental and cultural impacts.
• The government has also signaled interest in opening up protected areas to private investment, including commercial extraction of timber, gravel and stones.

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