These giant machines break down manure and local food waste to produce biogas. This renewable natural gas, or RNG, is then typically transported for use as electricity, heating, and fuel. But at Lent Hill, the gas produced isn’t just heating homes or running tractors. It’s also powering an on-site cryptomine.

The operation, run by Pennsylvania-based Ag-Grid Energy, is the first of its kind in the country. The company claims the anaerobic digestion of manure and food waste could be a game-changer, not only in powering crypto, but data centers, which currently use 4.9 percent of the country’s electricity, a figure that could double by 2030.

“At the end of the day, our model is providing value to the rural area that we are in,” Rashi Akki, the founder and CEO of Ag-Grid Energy, told Sentient.

The project claims to recycle more than 45,000 gallons of food waste per day and the manure of 4,000 cows. “What we want to do is also provide, if possible through fiber optics, [the] value of the AI computing capacity to that same regional area,” Akki said.

While Ag-Grid Energy wants to work with midsize dairies to create on-site power generation for small-scale data centers, the world’s largest technology players have bigger visions. Tech giants are increasingly searching for fossil fuel alternative fuel sources to power hyperscale data centers that won’t put a strain on the grid.

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Biogas proponents — a broad coalition of industries, including agriculture, fossil fuels, utilities, and waste management — are pushing renewable natural gas, sourced in part by manure digesters, as a sustainable way forward.

In California, Microsoft has partnered with Enchanted Rock to use RNG for backup data center power. Vanguard Renewables, a waste management company and portfolio company of Black Rock, has touted RNG as “the fuel of the AI age.” Critics, however, fear the digester-to-data-center connection will give digesters an economic lifeline at a time when they’re struggling to stay online.

Renewable natural gas from digesters are touted as a drop-in energy solution, Sarah D’Onofrio, a scholar and advocate who works with digester-impacted communities across the country, told Sentient. This means the RNG can be used without changing existing fossil fuel based infrastructure, and can be added to other fuel sources like natural gas so companies could claim they are fueling data centers sustainably, according to D’Onofrio.

But researchers like D’Onofrio argue that to truly reduce emissions, we need to transition to clean energy fuels rather than rely on renewable substitutes for fossil fuels.

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“Why would you want to incorporate that [RNG] into our fuel system during the period of climate change?” she said.

D’Onofrio has helped communities in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Georgia, and North Carolina defeat proposals for large-scale co-digesters. She fears data centers are creating a new, massive market for the manure-to-energy industry, which could in turn incentivize the further proliferation of factory farms.

“It attaches these industrial food operations into our energy system and makes us really dependent on them over time, because the more it becomes intermingled with agriculture, the more it’s going to concentrate agriculture,” said D’Onofrio.

Animals raised on factory farms in the U.S. produce an estimated 941 billion pounds of manure each year, which pollutes air and water in communities all over the United States. In addition to problems with leakage, digesters do not make the manure disappear. The digested waste, or digestate, is meant to be recycled, potentially into a range of products, such as fertilizer and animal bedding. But there are a number of challenges with these downstream products, from economic to environmental. Digested manure can be more polluting than manure that hasn’t been digested, according to USDA research.

In 2023, Victoria Gehrke, a community organizer who owns recreational property in Lind, Wisconsin, learned that a leader in the waste-to-energy field had proposed a co-digester in the town, touting it as a way to manage manure and reduce waste.

Gehrke and her fellow organizer Laurie Knutzen quickly discovered the impacts a co-digester would have on the community: hazardous air emissions, trucks going in and out delivering industrial food waste — and few restrictions about where that waste would come from — and water pollution. The project intended to send about 41,000 gallons of waste per day into a tributary of Walla Walla Creek, which empties into Lake Michigan.

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“These are manure and industrial food-waste processing and biogas-producing facilities, they are not ag accessories,” Gehrke said of co-digesters. “They don’t belong on ag land,” she explained, “and what they’re really doing is having our small rural communities — because we’re so vulnerable — we become sacrificial dumping grounds for the industrial waste that other big places don’t want to put in their communities.”

After more than a year of relentless community opposition, the town of Lind denied Vanguard’s application in the spring of 2024. The organizers celebrated the decision as a win for Lind, but Vanguard is still “developing and operating” more than 50 co-digesters across the country. It aims to have more than 100 completed projects by the end of 2028.

Patrick Serfass, the executive director of the American Biogas Council, told Sentient that biogas is an “excellent fit” for data centers in search of a reliable and high-capacity fuel source.

“We’re really excited about the prospect of biogas systems being able to provide power to data centers, because they can provide that reliability,” Serfass says.

Data center demand could lead to the expansion of co-digester buildouts across the country, he said. Serfass estimates that the U.S. has only built about 10 percent to 15 percent of the biogas market’s capacity.

“The data centers are going to be so hungry for power that they could eat up pretty much all of the supply that the biogas industry could create,” Serfass says.

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Vanguard Renewables makes a similar pitch. “As energy demand from data centers continues to grow, there is increasing interest in solutions that are both reliable and lower carbon,” Vanguard Renewables told Sentient in an email statement.

The company is yet to partner with any data centers directly, but they have partnered with energy delivery companies like TotalEnergies and Enbridge, and both of these companies have relationships with hyperscalers and data center operators. In November 2025, TotalEnergies signed a 15-year deal with Google to provide solar energy to support the company’s data center operations in Ohio.

Anaerobic digesters are not new. They have long been hailed as a way to reduce emissions, capture methane and manage waste — a solution to agriculture’s methane problem with few tradeoffs.

The technology has received billions in subsidies at both the federal and state level. The California Low-Carbon Fuel Standard, a climate program implemented to incentivize the production of alternative fuels, funds nearly 200 digesters across 16 states; in 2023, Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act provided over $150 million in funding to biogas projects across the country; and the Michigan Strategic Fund has approved more than $100 million in private bonds for digesters.

Akki said tax credits are incredibly important in making Ag-Grid Energy’s projects a reality. While most of the subsidies given to digester projects have been to support electricity and fuel for transportation, she wants to see fiscal support specifically for co-digesters that power AI.

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“Tax credits — just like what we had with the Inflation Reduction Act — for electricity production for AI would really support our projects,” Akki says.

But using tax-payer dollars to support digesters has lost favor with the Trump administration’s Department of Agriculture. In May, the USDA extended a 90-day moratorium on loans for anaerobic digesters through the end of the year amid environmental concerns and delinquent loans. According to a review of USDA lender data by Inside Climate News, 11 percent of the 746 project lenders across the country were considered over 90 days delinquent.

On top of this, a growing body of research raises questions about whether digesters make economic or environmental sense.

Government subsidies for digesters create a “perverse incentive where the value of manure or animal waste starts to compete with the value of the milk,” Brent Kim, a researcher at the Johns Hopkins Center for a Liveable Future, told Sentient. In other words, farmers are incentivized to produce waste for profit, not to produce milk for human consumption.

Kim and his colleagues published a scientific review of the touted benefits and downsides to the controversial technology. “The reality is nuanced,” he said of digesters. While they can reduce methane emissions in the short term, they may also lead to an increase in ammonia emissions, toxic byproducts, and other pollutants released into the environment, a phenomena Kim calls “pollution swapping.”

“So sure, all else being equal, you do have a reduction in methane, but if they’re incentivizing growth in the industry, the larger herd size is going to release more methane,” Kim said.

Some research suggests digesters aren’t always effective at reducing methane either. As Sentient has previously reported, research from the World Resources Institute found that digesters offer limited climate benefit given their cost. Digesters reduce methane from manure storage by only about 25 percent, the WRI research finds.

A report from Friends of the Earth found that dairies with digesters increased herd sizes by 3.7 percent annually, or 24 times the growth rate of dairies without digesters. In Kewaunee County, Wisconsin, herd sizes grew by about 58 percent since they were installed.

The trend comes as no surprise to Lynn Henning, a soybean farmer in Michigan who lives near a Chevron-owned co-digester. When manure becomes “more valuable than the milk,” it creates incentive for growth, and changes what farming is all about, she told Sentient.

“The system is changing farming. They’re shifting from producing food for people instead to producing manure so they can be paid more by the government,” Henning said.

Kathy Morrison, a farmer in Fremont, Michigan, has similar concerns. She lived next to a co-digester for years, and it significantly impacted her quality of life. The smell was unbearable, sometimes so bad it woke her up in the middle of the night. She described it as being at a giant music festival and all the Porta Potties are overflowing. That smell was digestate, the liquid solid waste that’s left over and spread on fields after the digestion process.

Morrison is not against the technology of digesters themselves, particularly at the local level, but with so many private companies looking to make a profit, equitable implementation and scale is hard to control. Data centers (which come with their own environmental impacts) would likely expand those opportunities for profit.

“I would be all in favor of small, very controlled, community-size digesters, but when they’re large scale like this, and they’re operating for profit, corners get cut,” she said. But this is something else, she said. “All the different industries that have come together to turn this into something insanely profitable. …There’s just so many industries behind this. It’s wild.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Cow manure could be the next data center fuel on Jun 28, 2026.

At least 358 human rights defenders were killed last year, according to a report released last week by Front Line Defenders, a Dublin-based group that provides support for global human rights activists.

Nearly a quarter, 84, were targeted because of their often unpaid work protecting land and the environment. Those killings were documented in Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, France, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, India, Indonesia, Peru, Philippines, Turkey, Somalia, and Palestine.

Indigenous-rights defenders — often working on environmental issues but tracked separately from environmental defenders — accounted for another 17 percent of the killings documented by the group.

Beyond the killings, even more defenders faced threats and attacks ranging from surveillance and smear campaigns to arbitrary detention, enforced disappearances, torture, and killings. 

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There were nearly 4,000 nonlethal attacks on human rights defenders across 119 countries last year, a figure that includes multiple violations against the same individual in some cases, according to the report. That number is likely a vast undercount, the authors said, because many attacks go unreported — and their perpetrators are rarely held accountable. 

“The imposition of internet blackouts, suppression of media, targeting of documenters, self-censorship, or the total closure of civic space” makes some cases impossible to document, the report said, highlighting countries including China, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Iran that are politically restrictive, conflict-riven, or both.

Human rights defenders are people who act peacefully to promote and protect any or all of the rights enshrined in the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights. 

Environmental defenders are often on the front lines of conflicts over mining, oil and gas development, logging, and agribusiness, making them especially vulnerable to retaliation from governments, businesses, and other legal and illegal actors.

Efraín Fueres, an Ecuadorian environmental defender, was among those killed last year. The 46-year-old community leader had participated in nationwide protests last fall amid a wave of pro-extractive-industry and authoritarian moves by the government. 

Videos posted to social media show Fueres gunned down while marching. A military vehicle then approached Fueres, who was lying in the street with a companion kneeling over his body. Armed officers surrounded the men and repeatedly kicked the companion.

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Neither the Ecuadorian Consulate in Washington, D.C., nor the country’s public prosecutor’s office responded to requests for comment. 

Courts have recognized the legitimacy and importance of environmental defenders’ work, affirming that a healthy environment is a precondition for all other human rights, and that governments have legal obligations to address climate change and protect environmental defenders for that reason. 

“Respect for and guarantee of the rights of environmental human rights defenders is particularly important because they perform a task that is fundamental for strengthening democracy and the rule of law,” the Inter-American Court of Human Rights said in a landmark advisory opinion on climate change last year. 

That court noted that the role of environmental defenders is especially critical amid the ongoing climate crisis, given the scale of the challenge and the need for public involvement in decision-making.

Such court rulings build on a broader shift in the law: More than 165 countries have now recognized the human right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment, providing a stronger legal basis for communities to challenge environmental harm and the systems that facilitate it.

Even so, environmental defenders are increasingly encountering overlapping networks of government officials, corporations, criminal groups, and private security forces operating around extractive industries and land development — what the report called “economies of violence.”  

“Defenders who challenge land dispossession, extractive industries, or illicit economies often confronted the same networks of power, regardless of whether those activities were formally lawful or criminalised,” the authors wrote. 

In Ecuador, environmental defenders described to Inside Climate News remote regions where illegal miners often work inside areas designated for legal mining, creating tensions within communities divided over resource extraction. 

The country is also emblematic of a global trend highlighted in the report: governments and corporations increasingly relying on criminal charges, retaliatory lawsuits, and other forms of legal harassment to stifle opposition. 

The authors of the new report said that in Ecuador, the “majority of criminalisation cases occurred within the context of socio-environmental conflicts where mining projects are imposed on communities without their free, prior and informed consent.” 

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Environmental defenders remain among world’s most targeted activists on Jun 27, 2026.

The following year, the French government unveiled a national heat plan that included a four-tiered alert system. When temperatures rise and trigger the highest alert level, authorities establish a crisis center to coordinate a national response. Local officials are required to implement their heat plans, which include providing access to cool spaces, ensuring access to water, and checking in on heat-vulnerable residents. France’s meteorological and health agencies jointly monitor weather forecasts and health risks, alerting residents when dangerous conditions arise.

In the years since, France has taken additional measures to adapt to hotter summers: Cities have planted trees to reduce the urban heat island effect, built shaded walkways and biking paths, and converted public spaces into cooling centers that residents without air conditioning can use on the hottest days. (Only about 25 percent of French households have air conditioning.) In Paris, policymakers have conducted drills and tabletop exercises, rehearsing what it might be like to live in the future when temperatures are projected to hit 122 degrees Fahrenheit. 

Those strategies are now being put to one of their biggest tests. Over the past week, cities across Europe have experienced soaring temperatures, with many breaking all-time heat records. More than a dozen countries across Europe, including France, issued heat alerts over the past week, warning their residents to stay indoors during the hottest hours, keep homes cool by drawing shutters and curtains, and avoid strenuous physical activity. It’s the continent’s second heat wave in two months, both of which began even before the official start of summer. In Paris, temperatures topped 103 degrees Fahrenheit, and average temperatures across France were at their highest level ever last week.

The heat has already proven deadly. More than 40 people seeking respite from the heat drowned while swimming in France, many of them teenagers. Spanish officials also warned of heat-related deaths: A local monitoring agency estimated that more than 200 deaths in the past week could be attributed to high temperatures. The elderly, children, and the unhoused are among the most vulnerable populations.

Researchers have found that as climate change drives warming, cities will increasingly have to grapple with longer summers and hotter temperatures. Europe, the world’s fastest-warming continent, is in many ways at the forefront of this challenge. For much of 2024, temperatures were 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) higher than preindustrial averages. On the current trajectory, temperatures in Europe are expected to rise by 5.6 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century. 

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“Cities across the world — even the ones that are doing the best that they can — are still preparing for the heat that we’re experiencing today,” said Ladd Keith, an associate professor of planning and director of the Heat Resilience Initiative at the University of Arizona. “They’re not doing a great job of really aggressively planning for the heat that we’re going to experience tomorrow.”

For years, extreme heat received far less attention and resources than disasters such as hurricanes and wildfires. But as heat waves have become more extreme — and the consequences increasingly deadly — policymakers have begun to treat them with greater urgency. Early generations of heat plans primarily focused on protecting public health and emergency response. But recent heat plans have taken a broader approach, including urban greening efforts and reducing waste heat from vehicles and air conditioning.

Cities tend to be 5 to 10 degrees F hotter than surrounding areas due both to heat generated by cars and heavy industry as well as heat trapped by asphalt and other synthetic materials. Cities have been tackling this phenomenon, which is called the urban heat island effect, by planting trees, building parks, and investing in other greening initiatives. Such efforts require multiple departments across government — including urban planners, public health officials, and disaster response teams — to work together.

Some cities have even been hiring so-called chief heat officers to take ownership over managing the problem, or else explicitly tasking their climate resiliency officials with heat adaptation efforts. In 2021, Florida’s Miami-Dade County hired the world’s first-ever dedicated chief heat officer. According to Keith, who has been studying how governments are responding to rising heat, there are roughly 15 analogous officials worldwide. Similar roles exist in Los Angeles and Phoenix, as well as in Greece and Australia.

Keith said that Arizona, in particular, has been ahead of the curve in its response to extreme heat. About a thousand people died from heat-related illnesses in 2023, more than any other U.S. state. But in the following years, those numbers came down even as the state experienced more punishing heat. For one, the governor began declaring official heat emergencies during extreme heat waves. The state also appointed a chief heat officer and statewide cooling center coordinator. Cities like Tucson also adopted their own heat action plans. During the cooler months, officials now meet to discuss the lessons learned from the previous year’s summer. 

“A lot of efforts that have been building over the last decade came together that crisis year,” said Keith. “We’re addressing the summer’s heat in a much more coordinated way than we’ve ever addressed it before.”

Such efforts will only become more important as regions with historically temperate climates — like parts of Europe — experience hotter, more frequent heat waves. Climatologists have been forecasting that the summer of 2027 will likely be the hottest in recorded history, thanks in part to a “super El Niño,” the periodic shift in warm waters across the Pacific Ocean that exerts tremendous influence on global weather patterns. 

“This is just classically in line with what we are expecting with climate change,” said Keith. “Any lessons that we learn from this specific event, we need to rapidly turn around and put those into place.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Across Europe, heat adaptation plans are being put to a brutal test on Jun 26, 2026.

But persistent disagreements between lawmakers over these and other programs have stymied the process of passing a new farm bill. The federal government has instead resorted to stop-gap measures and one-year extensions of a small handful of programs.

If farmers were hoping to see a new farm bill this year, they may very well be disappointed — as a new schism between the two houses of Congress was made clear this week, when the Senate agricultural committee released a draft of its farm bill that excluded a law known as the Save Our Bacon Act. The measure was included in the House draft farm bill earlier this year with vocal support by Representative G.T. Thompson, who chairs the House agricultural committee. 

Save Our Bacon, or SOB, would override state and local laws like California’s Prop 12, which bans the sale of pork, chicken, and veal products that come from farms using the most extreme forms of animal confinement, such as gestation crates for hogs. Factory farming operations where animals have the least amount of space to move around result in a lot of manure, which is typically consolidated and stored in lagoons that can pollute the local air and waterways.

Advocacy groups argue laws like Prop 12 are common sense and popular among voters who want to know where their food comes from. There are currently 14 states with similar laws on the books, according to the American Meat Producers Association, or AMPA, an industry group that opposes SOB.

“It’s just disappointing that we’re even talking about this because the farm bill should be about supporting sustainable farming and healthy food and food security. It should not be a way for large industry groups to overturn the will of voters,” said Molly Armus, who works on animal agricultural policy at Friends of the Earth, an environmental nonprofit. 

Armus notes that transitioning away from extreme confinement of livestock can have positive environmental and climate impacts if producers move toward a pasture-raised system. (Prop 12 only establishes minimum space requirements for animals.) A recent analysis from the USDA found that 27 percent of hog farmers, or 1 in 4, are already Prop 12 compliant — suggesting that the transition away from extreme confinement is underway. 

“Most hog farmers do not support the Save Our Bacon Act,” said Holly Bice, president of AMPA, which was founded last year in response to an earlier attempt to skirt Prop 12 in a previous draft farm bill. For many hog farmers, Prop 12 has “been an important opportunity for them,” said Bice, because investing in crate-free operations allows producers to sell their products at a premium. “It’s helped them keep their heads above water at a time when consolidation has increasingly driven out farmers,” she said.

However, Brent Hershey, a hog farmer in Pennsylvania and member of AMPA, said the issue of extreme confinement has sparked a “civil war” among pork producers. “The industry is completely divided on this,” he added. Personally, Hershey said, he was reluctant to change the way his operation did things, but after years of receiving negative feedback, he began to see things differently. Today, Hershey’s farm has been crate-free for three years. Passing SOB, he said, would be “devastating” for producers like him who invested time and money into improving their operations. 

Experts also argue that passing a farm bill that allows industrial animal agriculture operations to skirt state laws sets a bad precedent for broader environmental and public health goals. 

“When you’re doing something that, in a more macro sense, erodes states’ abilities to rollback some of the more harmful aspects of massive commercial agricultural operations, how does that impact any law that could impact agriculture?” said J.W. Glass, senior policy specialist at the Center for Biological Diversity. For example, he added, “How does it impact state laws to restrict the use of pesticides?”

In the Senate, at least for now, it seems like a measure that allows animal agricultural producers to skirt Prop 12 is a nonstarter. “That is why [Boozman] did not put this in his bill. He knew it,” said Sara Amundson, president of the Humane World Action Fund (formerly the Humane Society). “And that’s why it’s critical to keep up the noise on it.”

Still, it’s unclear what happens next — whether the House will fold and exclude SOB from its draft farm bill, or whether, if the two chambers of Congress cannot reconcile their differences on extreme confinement, the gridlock lasts into next year. 

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline States want transparent laws around animal agriculture. A fight in Congress could derail that. on Jun 26, 2026.

Cardiovascular System

Extreme heat widens blood vessels, flushes fluid out of the bloodstream, and forces the heart to pump two to four times as much blood per minute to cool the body. The result is dehydration, heat’s unfailing sidekick, which thickens the blood and makes it harder to pump. 

In the short term, extreme temperatures can lead to heatstroke — when the body’s internal cooling systems can’t keep up and core body temperature rises above 103 degrees F — and heart failure.

Continued exposure to heat waves over the span of many seasons puts repeated strain on the heart, contributing to long-term cardiovascular disease and related deaths. Extreme heat is linked to between 600 and 700 extra deaths from cardiovascular disease in the U.S. every year. These effects are most pronounced in people who work outside and are socioeconomically disadvantaged — generally people who spend more time on average exposed to the elements — though anyone who endures recurring heat waves experiences some level of risk. 

Heat is commonly associated with the daytime sun, but studies show that hot nights are even more damaging to human health, robbing our bodies of a crucial window of opportunity to recover from the heat we experienced during the day.

Observational studies have found that nighttime temperatures are increasing at a faster rate than daytime temperatures in much of the world. In China, researchers estimated that hot nights accounted for roughly three times as many heat-related outpatient visits for cardiovascular disease.

A modeling study of countries in East Asia found that if greenhouse gas emissions continue along their current trajectory, hot nights alone could account for nearly 6 percent of all deaths in Japan, South Korea, and China by the end of this century.

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Respiratory System

Nearly half of the world’s population now lives in the wildland-urban interface, where fire-prone wild spaces meet or intermingle with towns and cities. In the U.S., the number of people living in these areas roughly doubled between 1990 and 2010.

At the same time, the atmosphere has become “thirstier” in response to rising temperatures, sucking up moisture and contributing to deep droughts across parts of the planet. As these dry landscapes inevitably ignite, more and more people are breathing in air polluted by wildfire smoke — creating massive sample sizes for researchers to study. 

Studies show that the ultrafine particulate matter produced by the trees and shrubs incinerated by wildfires penetrates deep into the lungs and infiltrates the bloodstream, triggering inflammation and reduced lung function and worsening asthma and other chronic respiratory conditions.

When wildfires burn through cities, they send a more unpredictable and potentially even more toxic mix of volatile organic compounds, microplastics, and other pollutants into the air. Recent research shows wildfire smoke can even make rashes like eczema and psoriasis worse by triggering inflammation and drying out the skin. 

Smoke isn’t the only respiratory irritant becoming more problematic as climate change accelerates. Extreme heat interacts with sunlight, nitrogen, and volatile organic compounds and speeds the formation of ground-level ozone, a pollutant that inflames the lungs. As higher average annual temperatures bring earlier springs, allergy season is getting longer and more intense in many parts of the world.

More humidity and intensifying extreme weather events also create new footholds for black mold to take root, bringing climate-driven health crises indoors.

Dive deeper

• Wildfire smoke is a national crisis, and it’s worse than you think
• Wildfire smoke is always toxic. LA’s is even worse.
• A hotter, wetter South is becoming a breeding ground for mold

Neurological System

Researchers are discovering that the health consequences of wildfire smoke reach beyond the respiratory system and into the brain, where exposure to particulate matter appears to contribute to neuroinflammation and processes linked to cognitive decline, dementia, and stroke.

Recent studies indicate that babies exposed to wildfire smoke in utero may have a higher risk of developing autism in childhood, though this area of research is still in the early stages. 

Extreme heat also impacts how the brain functions. Studies show that students score lower on exams, indoor and outdoor workers make more mistakes that lead to injury, and the elderly experience more confusion in higher temperatures.

These impacts are especially dangerous because they’re so hard to see, but heat has other effects on the brain that are more visible: An assessment of violent crimes in more than 400 U.S. counties found that for every 18-degree F deviation above normal daily temperatures, the rate of violent crime rose roughly 10 percent.

Research has also linked hotter days to higher rates of psychiatric emergency visits, suicide, and worsening symptoms among people with severe mental illnesses such as schizophrenia.

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• Growing evidence points to link between autism and wildfire smoke
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Reproductive System

Heat exposure during pregnancy increases the risk of preterm birth by as much as 26 percent, though the exact biological mechanism that causes this is still being investigated. Heat exacerbates underlying maternal health conditions such as hypertension and cardiovascular stress.

Extreme heat also affects male fertility: High ambient temperatures negatively impact sperm quality, volume, and movement. 

Pregnancy already opens the door to more severe illnesses — climate change is raising the risks even more. For example, pregnant women are three times more likely to develop severe malaria compared to nonpregnant women, a function of the immune system partially suppressing itself to avoid rejecting the fetus during pregnancy.

Hotter temperatures and more extensive flooding are shifting the ranges of disease-carrying mosquitoes, exposing more pregnant people to malaria. In coastal regions with patchy water infrastructure, rising seas are contaminating low-lying freshwater resources with salt and contributing to hypertension in pregnant women, raising the risks of preeclampsia, premature birth, and miscarriage. ​

Dive deeper

• Pregnant in a warming climate: A lethal ‘double risk’ for malaria
• Wildfire smoke engulfed their cities. Did it make their babies sick?
• ‘How did we miss this for so long?’: The link between extreme heat and preterm birth

Gastrointestinal System

The gastrointestinal system is especially sensitive to the ways climate change is reshaping water, food, and pathogenic organisms. Warmer temperatures allow many disease-causing bacteria to multiply more quickly in food and coastal waters, increasing the risk of foodborne illness.

At the same time, heavier rainfall and flooding can overwhelm sanitation systems, spreading pathogens that cause diarrheal disease and contaminating drinking water supplies.

In coastal regions, warming seas are enabling marine bacteria such as Vibrio vulnificus, commonly referred to as “flesh-eating bacteria,” to thrive in places they were once rare, raising the odds that raw shellfish or even contact with brackish water can lead to severe infections.

And when extreme drought or floods destroy crops and lead to food shortages, the consequences can affect the gut in another way: malnutrition, which weakens immune defenses and leaves children especially vulnerable to intestinal infections that can stunt growth and long-term health.​

Dive deeper

• A deadly bacteria is creeping up the Atlantic Coast. How worried should you be?
• Climate change may be fueling a global surge in cholera outbreaks
• One in 11 people went hungry last year. Climate change is a big reason why.

Renal System

Climate-driven health threats are often associated with short-term impacts like disease outbreaks and injuries due to flooding or dangerous winds. But the effect of extreme heat on the kidneys tells a story of chronic impacts that span years. Extended dehydration and heat stress injure these organs over time, triggering acute kidney damage that can progress into chronic kidney disease.

This pattern is already emerging among agricultural workers in some of the hottest parts of the world, where doctors have documented an unusual form of kidney disease affecting people with no typical risk factors like diabetes or hypertension.

It’s not just agricultural workers who are affected by chronic kidney disease. In Nepal, migrant construction workers returning home from months or years of hard outdoor labor in the United Arab Emirates and other extremely hot Gulf countries are bringing chronic kidney conditions back with them. ​

Dive deeper

• Rising heat, failing kidneys: Climate’s hidden toll on migrant workers
• From Samoa to the East Coast, doctors are diagnosing and treating climate change

Cardiovascular System

Extreme heat widens blood vessels, flushes fluid out of the bloodstream, and forces the heart to pump two to four times as much blood per minute to cool the body. The result is dehydration, heat’s unfailing sidekick, which thickens the blood and makes it harder to pump. 

In the short term, extreme temperatures can lead to heatstroke — when the body’s internal cooling systems can’t keep up and core body temperature rises above 103 degrees F — and heart failure.

Continued exposure to heat waves over the span of many seasons puts repeated strain on the heart, contributing to long-term cardiovascular disease and related deaths. Extreme heat is linked to between 600 and 700 extra deaths from cardiovascular disease in the U.S. every year. These effects are most pronounced in people who work outside and are socioeconomically disadvantaged — generally people who spend more time on average exposed to the elements — though anyone who endures recurring heat waves experiences some level of risk. 

Heat is commonly associated with the daytime sun, but studies show that hot nights are even more damaging to human health, robbing our bodies of a crucial window of opportunity to recover from the heat we experienced during the day.

Observational studies have found that nighttime temperatures are increasing at a faster rate than daytime temperatures in much of the world. In China, researchers estimated that hot nights accounted for roughly three times as many heat-related outpatient visits for cardiovascular disease.

A modeling study of countries in East Asia found that if greenhouse gas emissions continue along their current trajectory, hot nights alone could account for nearly 6 percent of all deaths in Japan, South Korea, and China by the end of this century.

Dive deeper

• Study: Warming temperatures are eroding our ability to sleep
• Why the United States undercounts climate-driven deaths
• Extreme heat is forcing farmers to work overnight, an adaptation that comes with a cost

Respiratory System

Nearly half of the world’s population now lives in the wildland-urban interface, where fire-prone wild spaces meet or intermingle with towns and cities. In the U.S., the number of people living in these areas roughly doubled between 1990 and 2010.

At the same time, the atmosphere has become “thirstier” in response to rising temperatures, sucking up moisture and contributing to deep droughts across parts of the planet. As these dry landscapes inevitably ignite, more and more people are breathing in air polluted by wildfire smoke — creating massive sample sizes for researchers to study. 

Studies show that the ultrafine particulate matter produced by the trees and shrubs incinerated by wildfires penetrates deep into the lungs and infiltrates the bloodstream, triggering inflammation and reduced lung function and worsening asthma and other chronic respiratory conditions.

When wildfires burn through cities, they send a more unpredictable and potentially even more toxic mix of volatile organic compounds, microplastics, and other pollutants into the air. Recent research shows wildfire smoke can even make rashes like eczema and psoriasis worse by triggering inflammation and drying out the skin. 

Smoke isn’t the only respiratory irritant becoming more problematic as climate change accelerates. Extreme heat interacts with sunlight, nitrogen, and volatile organic compounds and speeds the formation of ground-level ozone, a pollutant that inflames the lungs. As higher average annual temperatures bring earlier springs, allergy season is getting longer and more intense in many parts of the world.

More humidity and intensifying extreme weather events also create new footholds for black mold to take root, bringing climate-driven health crises indoors.

Dive deeper

• Wildfire smoke is a national crisis, and it’s worse than you think
• Wildfire smoke is always toxic. LA’s is even worse.
• A hotter, wetter South is becoming a breeding ground for mold

Neurological System

Researchers are discovering that the health consequences of wildfire smoke reach beyond the respiratory system and into the brain, where exposure to particulate matter appears to contribute to neuroinflammation and processes linked to cognitive decline, dementia, and stroke.

Recent studies indicate that babies exposed to wildfire smoke in utero may have a higher risk of developing autism in childhood, though this area of research is still in the early stages. 

Extreme heat also impacts how the brain functions. Studies show that students score lower on exams, indoor and outdoor workers make more mistakes that lead to injury, and the elderly experience more confusion in higher temperatures.

These impacts are especially dangerous because they’re so hard to see, but heat has other effects on the brain that are more visible: An assessment of violent crimes in more than 400 U.S. counties found that for every 18-degree F deviation above normal daily temperatures, the rate of violent crime rose roughly 10 percent.

Research has also linked hotter days to higher rates of psychiatric emergency visits, suicide, and worsening symptoms among people with severe mental illnesses such as schizophrenia.

Dive deeper

• Growing evidence points to link between autism and wildfire smoke
• How climate change is fueling alcohol-related hospitalizations
• Climate disasters can alter kids’ brains — before they’re even born

Reproductive System

Heat exposure during pregnancy increases the risk of preterm birth by as much as 26 percent, though the exact biological mechanism that causes this is still being investigated. Heat exacerbates underlying maternal health conditions such as hypertension and cardiovascular stress.

Extreme heat also affects male fertility: High ambient temperatures negatively impact sperm quality, volume, and movement. 

Pregnancy already opens the door to more severe illnesses — climate change is raising the risks even more. For example, pregnant women are three times more likely to develop severe malaria compared to nonpregnant women, a function of the immune system partially suppressing itself to avoid rejecting the fetus during pregnancy.

Hotter temperatures and more extensive flooding are shifting the ranges of disease-carrying mosquitoes, exposing more pregnant people to malaria. In coastal regions with patchy water infrastructure, rising seas are contaminating low-lying freshwater resources with salt and contributing to hypertension in pregnant women, raising the risks of preeclampsia, premature birth, and miscarriage. ​

Dive deeper

• Pregnant in a warming climate: A lethal ‘double risk’ for malaria
• Wildfire smoke engulfed their cities. Did it make their babies sick?
• ‘How did we miss this for so long?’: The link between extreme heat and preterm birth

Gastrointestinal System

The gastrointestinal system is especially sensitive to the ways climate change is reshaping water, food, and pathogenic organisms. Warmer temperatures allow many disease-causing bacteria to multiply more quickly in food and coastal waters, increasing the risk of foodborne illness.

At the same time, heavier rainfall and flooding can overwhelm sanitation systems, spreading pathogens that cause diarrheal disease and contaminating drinking water supplies.

In coastal regions, warming seas are enabling marine bacteria such as Vibrio vulnificus, commonly referred to as “flesh-eating bacteria,” to thrive in places they were once rare, raising the odds that raw shellfish or even contact with brackish water can lead to severe infections.

And when extreme drought or floods destroy crops and lead to food shortages, the consequences can affect the gut in another way: malnutrition, which weakens immune defenses and leaves children especially vulnerable to intestinal infections that can stunt growth and long-term health.​

Dive deeper

• A deadly bacteria is creeping up the Atlantic Coast. How worried should you be?
• Climate change may be fueling a global surge in cholera outbreaks
• One in 11 people went hungry last year. Climate change is a big reason why.

Renal System

Climate-driven health threats are often associated with short-term impacts like disease outbreaks and injuries due to flooding or dangerous winds. But the effect of extreme heat on the kidneys tells a story of chronic impacts that span years. Extended dehydration and heat stress injure these organs over time, triggering acute kidney damage that can progress into chronic kidney disease.

This pattern is already emerging among agricultural workers in some of the hottest parts of the world, where doctors have documented an unusual form of kidney disease affecting people with no typical risk factors like diabetes or hypertension.

It’s not just agricultural workers who are affected by chronic kidney disease. In Nepal, migrant construction workers returning home from months or years of hard outdoor labor in the United Arab Emirates and other extremely hot Gulf countries are bringing chronic kidney conditions back with them. ​

Dive deeper

• Rising heat, failing kidneys: Climate’s hidden toll on migrant workers
• From Samoa to the East Coast, doctors are diagnosing and treating climate change

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline How climate change gets under the skin on Jun 26, 2026.

I work as a civil engineer, and I want to change the way roadway projects are seen, from constant expansion to holistic community-led improvement — but I feel like I don’t have enough traction as an entry-level employee. I am scared I will get sucked into the system as it is now and never effect the change I envision. How do I make sure I don’t fall into this trap? 

— A Worried Engineer

Dear Worried Engineer,

While it might not feel like it, your concern is an asset: It signals that you’re aware of how systems suppress creativity and reward business as usual. You’re right that as an entry-level worker, you may need to take the long view and build credibility before you can shift your organization’s culture and policies. This approach is called strategic patience — an intentional practice you draw on while you’re working toward values-based change. (It’s completely different from capitulation, which involves rationalizing a particular story so you can feel OK about your workplace or industry as it is.) 

Think of this as a time for reconnaissance and field research on your part. Keep your eyes wide open to the specific challenges you think your organization needs to overcome in order to adopt the more holistic, community-based approach that you want to see in action — and write about it, to help keep yourself on track and hone your ideas about how to transform some of the established practices in your field. 

Ask a Climate Therapist tackles your questions about how to navigate the emotional side of climate change, with leading climate-aware therapist Leslie Davenport. Have a question? Ask it here!

The “trap” that you want to avoid also has a name: bureaucratic absorption, the gradual process by which people who enter systems intending to change them are instead changed by them. So, how can you avoid falling into that? 

Most climate psychology tools focus on increasing the resilience of our emotions, thoughts, and nervous system. That will always be foundational, but it’s not enough here. Because bureaucratic absorption works by dulling creativity, part of how you resist its pull is by intentionally cultivating creativity.  

For you as an engineer, this might look like reconnecting with the original impulse and innate skills that drew you to this work: your problem-solving imagination, your ability to plan forward, and your ideas about what a road can do for a community rather than to it. 

And keep your creativity growing by deliberately engaging with fields outside your own — art, history, fiction — to keep your imagination from narrowing into only what’s technically feasible under today’s constraints. 

You might also try building a “what if” habit: a small, regular practice of asking speculative questions with no immediate utility, almost like calisthenics for the creative mind.

Finding or creating a community of like-minded people inside or outside the workplace is also one of the most robust psychological strategies for keeping your values front and center. That could include joining climate-aware professional networks, seeking out mentors who’ve navigated similar frustrations, or forging a friendship with one or more trusted colleagues. This is exactly how social change has always occurred: by people who kept each other honest and imaginative.

Finally, don’t forget that your workplace exists within a changing world. Community-oriented approaches are gaining ground in urban planning, policy, and climate adaptation, which means that the window for this kind of creative thinking may be opening rather than closing. Keep an eye out for stories that inspire you — and ones you could share with leaders at your organization — that model the kind of work you want to do.

In this with you, 
Leslie

I’m Leslie Davenport, a licensed therapist, educator, speaker, consultant, and internationally recognized voice on the emotional and psychological dimensions of climate change. If you’ve got a question about climate and mental health, please consider submitting it for a future column.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Ask a Climate Therapist: How do I avoid getting trapped in the system I hope to change? on Jun 26, 2026.

Fixed to the pole above her was one of the city’s new solar-powered air quality monitors. The tracker, encased in a metallic silver shell about the size of a tissue box, is part of the nation’s largest community air quality monitoring network. Today, the network has 277 air monitors across Chicago collecting air pollution data from every ward and community area, with an increased concentration in already-overburdened neighborhoods.  

A bright green dot flashed on Erdal’s phone. She smiled. 

“Currently, the air quality index at this location is 31,” said Erdal, a professor of environment and occupational health sciences at the University of Illinois Chicago. The reading puts the air quality in the city’s public park in the Environmental Protection Agency’s safest category, meaning it poses little to no risk to public health. “Because we have a clear day and it’s breezy, concentrations across the city are quite uniform,” she added. 

On that day in June, almost all of the city’s monitors were green, except for one on the far South Side, where legacy industrial facilities and freight traffic pump emissions into nearby Black and Latino neighborhoods. In the coming years, the monitoring system is expected to elucidate the dramatically uneven air quality in different neighborhoods, even on clear and breezy days. 

The project, called Open Air Chicago, went live last fall and is part of a five-year project to collect hyperlocal air quality data and provide Chicagoans with real-time pollution information. The data is also intended to help officials develop guidance for permitting, urban planning, and air quality control. The network is about to face its first Chicago summer, when air pollution typically worsens. Pollution from cars, heavy vehicles, and industry reacts with sunlight and heat, forming ground-level ozone, a harmful pollutant and the key ingredient in smog, in the summer. As climate change makes summers longer and hotter, the conditions for smog formation are also becoming more common.  

The monitoring effort originated as a result of a fight over the city’s decision to relocate General Iron’s scrap-metal shredding operation from the mostly white Lincoln Park neighborhood to the predominantly Latino and Black Southeast Side. In 2021, local environmental activists filed a civil rights complaint with the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, arguing that the move discriminated against low-income communities of color and harmed their health. 

The city and the community groups reached a settlement in 2023, which included launching the community air monitoring network. Chicago officials partnered with the University of Illinois Chicago to launch it last fall at a combined cost of over $4 million to cover operations through the beginning of 2030.

“This air monitoring system is creating an ongoing record of what the air quality is in Chicago,” said Oscar Sanchez, the director of the Southeast Environmental Task Force, one of the groups that successfully filed the civil rights complaint. 

South and West Side residents have so far had limited ways to corroborate that their air is unsafe. Although they tend to have higher rates of respiratory issues, they lacked time-stamped data to establish connections between their poor health and the region’s air quality. Sanchez said the monitoring system changes that. 

“This is Chicago working in good faith,” he said. “We’re here to ensure that there’s publicly available information so people are not gaslit about their experience.”

Each air monitor is less than a mile from the next. The low-cost equipment measures ground concentrations of two airborne pollutants: nitrogen dioxide, typically formed by the combustion of fossil fuels, and PM2.5, which are small particles just one-twentieth the width of a single human hair and capable of passing through a person’s respiratory system and entering the bloodstream. Exposure to both pollutants is linked to childhood asthma and cardiovascular issues. PM2.5 is increasingly being singled out as the world’s leading environmental health-determining factor — associated with acute mortality and morbidity for respiratory and cardiovascular health outcomes.

Even as air quality has improved in recent decades, it can still reach unhealthy levels during the summer when sunlight and warm temperatures react with pollutants in the air to form ground-level ozone. That seasonal smog can further degrade air quality when it mixes with smoke from increasingly frequent wildfires. Climate change is exacerbating these conditions in the Midwest, according to Daniel Horton, an assistant professor of Earth and planetary sciences at Northwestern University. 

“We also have to deal with the consequences of increased frequency and intensity of wildfires,” Horton said. “That’s a problem that doesn’t necessarily occur in our backyards, but when the wind blows in the right direction, we suffer the consequences in the Midwest.”  

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Wildfire smoke engulfed their cities. Did it make their babies sick?

Zoya Teirstein & Jess Davis

Wildfire smoke now dependably turns Chicago’s summer skies into a hazy orange. In 2023, smoke from the record-setting Canadian wildfires reached the Windy City and raised ground-level ozone levels by nearly 10 percent of the federal pollution limit, according to a study published earlier this year. The study also found that central, western, and southeastern neighborhoods in Chicago were most impacted by ozone. 

So far, wildfires have already burned through 2.5 million acres nationwide. That’s nearly double the 10-year average for this time of year. The recent surge in wildfires, tied in part to climate change, is reversing the country’s steady progress toward improving air quality, according to a recent study published earlier this month in Science.

Between 2003 and 2015, the study found that stricter federal air quality rules successfully cut down on the toxic gases that form ozone, or smog, by approximately 11 percent. Since 2015, however, rising ozone levels have undone about a third of the nation’s headway toward cleaner air — translating to an increase of 318 premature deaths per year from wildfire-related ozone since 2013. 

As extreme heat reshapes air pollution in the Midwest and across the country, Horton said the Open Air Chicago network will be able to identify localized pollution hot spots, offering an “unprecedented look at the air quality landscape across the city.” 

The local network is expected to build on top of existing data collected by NASA satellites and the EPA’s limited number of regulatory-grade air monitoring sensors, which Horton called the “gold standard.” While the EPA’s more sophisticated monitoring devices provide precise measurements of pollutants like PM2.5 and nitrogen dioxide, they are also more expensive to maintain. Chicago’s low-cost sensors, although less precise, capture over 20,000 data points per day. The sheer volume of data is expected to yield major findings about how air quality changes across the city.  

Carl Malings, an assistant research scientist at Morgan State University and NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, said the local data is especially important because, in many cases, satellites are capturing an aerial view that combines the messy interplay of particles and gases throughout the atmosphere’s layers, making it difficult to untangle what’s in the air people breathe near the surface of the Earth.

“If you see a smoke plume from satellite data in the absence of other information, it could be hard to say, Is that smoke actually reaching down to the surface, where it’s impacting air quality and people’s health, or is it rising a little bit above the surface and passing overhead?” Malings said.

Back in downtown Chicago, Erdal said the program is expected to run through 2029. City officials hope to keep the network online even longer. Over the noisy downtown traffic, she said the network is the culmination of two decades of citizen-based research with communities across the city’s West Side and Southeast Side. Previously, she worked on a project to monitor vehicle emissions in several of the city’s majority-Latino neighborhoods, which included helping local environmental justice activists install low-cost PurpleAir sensors.     

Now her big goal is that the data collected over the next five years can help craft a roadmap for city officials and community leaders to cut down Chicagoans’ exposure to unsafe air.

“We hope we’ll strengthen the network in the future,” Erdal said. “Measuring more pollutants and providing more data to the public.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline After a civil rights complaint, Chicago built the nation’s largest air monitoring network on Jun 25, 2026.

Getting electricity to the island isn’t as easy. Power comes from mainland Michigan through cables that cross roughly 30 miles of lake bed. Outages are common during extreme weather, or when there are problems with the sensitive wires. The devastating ice storm that walloped the state last year knocked out power to the island for weeks.

That’s got some residents hoping to see a more reliable source of power that’s generated where they live. Turns out, there’s an abundant source nearby: the waves that surround the island.

Earlier this month, researchers from the University of Michigan gathered on the shoreline to deploy two devices that convert the kinetic energy of waves into electricity. The gadgets — prototypes that look like small boats framed with PVC pipes and are about the size of a yoga ball — demonstrated their potential by powering a light bulb and charging a cell phone.

The project is one of many efforts across the country to use alternative sources of energy to improve reliability in remote places. In this case, the researchers spent two years gathering input from residents, who said providing a dependable source power to the airport was a priority.

“We need to work with the community together to identify the need and design together with them,” said Lei Zuo, an engineering professor at the University of Michigan and the lead researcher on the project.

Several residents already power their homes and businesses with solar panels or geothermal energy, and the island has previously received federal funds to improve access to renewables. Similar programs and grid modernization plans face an uncertain future as the Trump administration cancels grants and programs, raising questions about how such projects will be funded in the years ahead. 

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Efforts to improve reliability are underway in remote communities across the country. The small Native village of Galena, Alaska, for example, is investing in solar and biomass to reduce reliance on diesel fuel and provide a stopgap against extreme weather. Beaver Island hopes to do the same.

“It’s a combination of looking at cost savings and also wanting to be independent and not dependent on the mainland for everything,” said Seamus Norgaard, who lives on the island during the summer. “And then also the environmental outlook.”

Beaver Island isn’t the only community looking for greater energy independence. Residents of Adjuntas, Puerto Rico, for instance, developed a community-owned solar microgrid after Hurricane Maria. The system, which can keep electricity running when the island’s rickety grid inevitably fails, has become a model for other places looking to improve reliability using locally generated power. 

Even so, wave power might not become anyone’s sole source of power, said Dan Hellin, director of PacWave, an offshore testing facility in Oregon. But “finding something that works within the region is critical,” he said. “It’s developing a whole suite of renewables and applying them based on local conditions.”

Despite the technology’s potential, it isn’t widely used because of how expensive it is and hard it can be to deploy. It also is still new, and there isn’t a standardized design yet, Hellin said. 

Funding is another challenge. Most wave energy projects in the U.S. are funded by the federal government. The Michigan experiment is backed by National Science Foundation grants awarded two years ago. But marine energy — which falls under hydropower — has escaped some of the Trump administration’s animosity toward renewables, Hellin said. “It’s not on the radar in the same way.” 

Early in his second term, President Donald Trump included hydropower among the domestic energy sources his administration would prioritize for regulatory fast-tracking and support. The Department of Energy’s rebranded Hydropower and Hydrokinetic Office said it will use $220 million appropriated by Congress to continue such research.

The University of Michigan wave project joins efforts in other parts of the country to push wave power technology toward commercialization. The team behind it has a similar project underway in North Carolina’s Outer Banks. Beyond PacWave’s work in Oregon, a company called CalWave has tested devices off the California coast, and Hawai‘i has hosted a testing site for more than a decade.

Although waves on the Great Lakes are smaller and more seasonal than those on oceans, Saeid Bayat with the University of Michigan said research on these inland seas could help improve this technology as a whole. I’s also an ideal experimental bathtub. “The Great Lakes provide real-world wave conditions while being much easier, safer, and less expensive to access than most ocean sites,” Bayat said.

Back on Beaver Island, the team will continue improving the prototype. It plans to install a final version in the coming years, and Norgaard is among those eager to see that happen. “There is that excitement about these new futures and cleaner sources, and more locally produced, dependable sources of energy.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline This island in the Great Lakes wants to tap waves for energy on Jun 25, 2026.

That has been the case for decades. But the problems do not stop there. New research shows that approach overlooks the key role that Indigenous knowledge and culture can play in mitigating climate change. It also reveals a dangerous misconception that has taken hold in global climate discussions: the idea that Indigenous lands are so rich because they are remote or sparsely populated.

Nothing could be further from the truth. The health of Indigenous lands and their ability to store vast quantities of carbon stem from the stewardship of the people who inhabit them.   

That’s the finding of research from Conservation International, which shows that traditional knowledge, community protocol, and Indigenous culture play a direct role in protecting forests, wildlife, and the environment. Sushma Shrestha, who is Indigenous Newar from Nepal and the study’s lead author, said the research comes at a critical time. 

“All of humanity relies on everything that Indigenous peoples have to contribute and offer in terms of their lands, in terms of carbon storage, in terms of biodiversity conservation,” she said. 

The study, released as a narrative report and a peer-reviewed study, explores how Indigenous knowledge and practices benefit the planet. It also found that all 43 of the surveyed communities are experiencing drought, extreme weather, and other adverse impacts from climate change. More than half are affected by extractive industries like mining and logging. 

Researchers interviewed 49 Indigenous leaders from six continents about how they steward their land, which ranged from the Amazon rainforest to East African savannas and Pacific Islands. They found that traditional management practices like avoiding overfishing, maintaining sacred spaces, watching for fires and other threats, and direct resistance against extraction contribute to the remarkable health of Indigenous territory. Ninety-six percent of respondents said they had land set aside for special uses, like spiritual practices, that also benefit the environment by protecting those spaces and ecosystems. Shrestha stressed that although each Indigenous community is distinct, there are shared lessons the entire world can learn from. 

“It’s a time where all hands need to be on deck,” Shrestha said. “And collectively, actions need to be taken, and indigenous peoples have been doing this on their own for a very long time.” 

The study builds on years of research that shows, among other things, that the world’s healthiest forests are on Indigenous lands and conservation efforts are more effective when they incorporate Indigenous autonomy and decision-making at every step. 

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Drought and extreme weather were the top climate impacts cited, but 61 percent of those interviewed also called mining, commercial agriculture, logging, and other incursions serious concerns. These issues threaten to disrupt land stewardship practices that have endured for millennia. To help mitigate these challenges, Indigenous peoples are asking for mitigation and resilience funding, legal advice for protecting their territories, and recognition of national and international land rights. 

“Indigenous Peoples’ Knowledge cannot exist without Indigenous Peoples or without the ecosystems where we live,” Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim, who is Indigenous Mbororo from Chad and a former chair of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, wrote in a forward to the report. “To protect our knowledge, there is an urgent need to recognize us, and our rights and lands must be secured.”

Respondents from a wide range of countries, including Bolivia, Mexico, and the Philippines, mentioned using community monitoring or patrols to protect their land from outsiders and violations of traditional protocol. Several also called for stronger legal protections to protect their lands from being sold or developed. 

Shrestha, Ibrahim, and other Indigenous experts said that as much as Indigenous peoples are asking for help, they are also urging the world to learn from them. The Kichwa people in Ecuador, for example, restrict hunting of female tapirs and other animals to help slow population decline. The Tacana people in Bolivia, among others, do not permit tree clearing along rivers, which helps maintain water quality and prevent erosion. The list goes on, and could help the rest of the world mitigate climate change and protect the environment.

“It is my hope the voices of the sisters and brothers from all over the world reflected in this report trigger the action we need for the planet we all want, the action we need for Indigenous Peoples Knowledge to flourish, and honor our grandparents and our children that are yet to come,” Ibrahim said.

Given the scale of the threats facing the world and the urgency with which they must be addressed, Shrestha said that policy changes and enforcement of Indigenous land rights is more important than ever. She also stressed that these actions will benefit the entire world. “One thing that everybody can do, whether that is at the national level, or at the global level, is to really secure indigenous peoples’ rights to lands,” she said.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Indigenous cultural practices are a climate solution, report finds on Jun 24, 2026.

The retired educator recalls the day that the reality of the effects set in. She had spent the afternoon talking to residents about their experiences living near the new wood pellet facility. By the time she got home, Bell says she was sniffling, her nose was running, and her eyes were burning. “I thought ‘what in the world is going on?’ Then it dawned on me: I sat outside for 20 minutes talking to a resident. There was all this dust and my pants were covered from sitting in a chair,” she recalls. “If it’s like this after 20 minutes, I can only imagine what it’s like for those people living there.”

Seeing experiences like Bell’s — ordinary residents pushed into the role of frontline advocates — helped draw Sherri White-Williamson deeper into environmental justice work, changing the course of her life. After decades working for federal agencies in Washington, D.C., White-Williamson wanted to return to North Carolina and confront industrial pollution. Believing she could make a bigger impact as a lawyer, she enrolled at Vermont Law School at the age of 63. After graduating, White-Williamson founded the Environmental Justice Community Action Network (EJCAN), a grassroots organization dedicated to empowering rural communities to defend their environment and health.

She says EJCAN’s role is to educate community members so that they can advocate for themselves. “This work is much more effective when it’s done by somebody who’s actually directly affected,” she says. 

The group initially focused on ground water contamination and air quality issues caused by North Carolina’s industrial hog farms and the state’s largest landfill, which had exposed nearby communities to toxic chemicals. But soon, White-Williamson began to organize against the growing wood pellet industry, too.

More than a decade after Enviva Biomass opened its facility, Bell’s initial skepticism has been justified. The company’s pledges of bringing hundreds of well-paying jobs went unfulfilled, while its operations increased noise, truck traffic, and worsened the region’s air quality. 

White-Williamson says the biomass rush began in Europe in the late 2000s, when the European Commission developed a new climate and energy policy. It mandated a 20% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, a 20% increase in renewable energy consumption and a 20% improvement in energy efficiency compared to 1990 levels. The American South’s abundant forests were to play a vital role in achieving those goals. Today, the non-profit Dogwood Alliance estimates that Enviva facilities in North Carolina alone consume about 50,000 acres of forest each year, leading to flooding and deforestation. 

After the trees are felled, they are hauled to a processing plant, where they are chipped, dried, and pressed into small pellets. Enviva claims that its impact on forestland is minimal because it only uses wood that is unsuitable for other purposes, such as tree limbs and leftover wood from timber harvests. Environmental groups like Dogwood Alliance and the Southern Environmental Law Center have documented evidence to the contrary, capturing images of clear-cut logging and mature downed trees bundled in neat rows along the perimeter of barren dirt fields to supply the pellet mills.

White-Williamson points out that none of this energy is produced for US consumption. “The pellets are going overseas, and the trees are getting cut down over here,” she says, pointing out that these forests would otherwise be storing carbon.

A growing body of research shows that burning wood pellets emit even more carbon than burning coal. Although trees are a renewable resource, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology calculated that in some instances, it would take more than a century for young trees to absorb as much excess CO₂ as the forests they replace.

The social and environmental consequences extend far beyond carbon. Recent data found that Enviva’s wood-pellet facilities are 50% more likely to be located in vulnerable communities already besieged by polluting industries and environmental injustices. Oversight has often failed to keep pace with these impacts. Although the facility had received several citations for emitting too many toxins, in 2019 the Department of Environmental Quality granted Enviva’s request to expand its production capacity over community objections. 

“The story is always the same,” says White-Williamson. “The community that doesn’t have the power or the access to power, or politicians or decision makers is always getting the short end of the stick.”

This raises considerable health risks for the people living nearby, says Danielle Purifoy, a professor of geography and environment at the UNC Gillings School of Public Health. The pellet manufacturing process releases a toxic combination of particulate matter, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxide, and volatile organic compounds (VOCs).

“We have seen the same kind of things happening in similar industries, like timber and wood pulp, where they grind trees to make paper,” says Purifoy. “We already know that those pollutants tend to have impacts on respiratory systems and sinuses that can be harmful for folks who have asthma and any other kind of respiratory illness. Anything that’s going to kick up a lot of dust is creating air pollution that has the same kind of impacts.” 

The Southern Environmental Law Center recently led a coalition of local and regional organizers to gather quantitative data on the experiences of nearby residents. Their report showed that air pollution, dust, noise, and traffic have a measurable impact on quality-of-life. 

“The results of this survey confirm what we have known for years: Biomass wood pellet plants do incredible amounts of harm to nearby communities, which are more often than not communities of color, or lower-wealth communities,” said SELC staff attorney Jasmine Washington. “When they were asked, they shared very openly about their frustrations at the daily impact from this pellet mill.” 

Eager to talk about their experiences after having their concerns ignored for years, respondents complained of the constant plant and traffic noise, needing to wash their cars almost daily, and no longer feeling comfortable sitting on their porches. Some said they were even forced to wear masks indoors. 

“Folks are speaking up more because they now understand that there is a direct link between what they or their family is experiencing, and what’s going on around them,” says White- Williamson. The survey findings underscore the importance of EJCAN’s work helping communities document harm, and building collective power to advocate for protections.

The Environmental Justice Community Action Network (EJCAN) is a North Carolina–based nonprofit that works to advance environmental justice in rural communities, particularly in Sampson County. The organization supports residents facing pollution and other environmental harms by providing scientific research, water and air monitoring, education, and advocacy. EJCAN also helps communities access legal and technical resources, empowering them to hold polluters accountable and push for cleaner air, water, and soil.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The hidden toll of wood pellet power on Jun 23, 2026.

The dream solution to this crisis is an agreement among all involved to use less water. Such a deal would decide who must reduce consumption, which means asking which cities would ban irrigating lawns and washing cars and which farmers would rip up their fields.

This has proven impossible. The states have been trying to work this out since the last dry spell, in 2022, but talks have ended in frustration and name-calling. The main sticking point is between the Upper Basin states, led by Colorado and Utah (along with Wyoming and New Mexico), and the Lower Basin states of Arizona, California, and Nevada. Each side believes the other has a legal and a moral responsibility to cut usage during dry years. The stalemate means the Trump administration must design a schedule of restrictions ahead of a crucial deadline in September. So far, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum has balked at resolving the quarrel.

Instead, the administration is turning to a far less controversial plan: Throw money at the problem. The Interior Department and Congress are pondering a slew of projects that could increase supply — a reversal of President Trump’s zeal for cutting federal grants. The seven state governors have sent Washington a “wish list” of over $50 billion, and several startups have their hands out as well.

Federal investment makes sense given the scale of the problem and the intractable impasse, said Jennifer Pitt, the Colorado River program director at the National Audubon Society and an expert on the governance of the river.

“It is something easier for people to agree on,” she said. “This is a slow moving crisis, but it is a crisis, and we do see the federal funding come in to address crises in other parts of the country. Just because this is a slow moving one doesn’t make it any less worthy.”

During a Senate committee hearing last week, the Interior Department’s top water official, Andrea Travnicek, said the agency has yet to vet the wish list. She didn’t offer a specific funding request, and urged lawmakers to be “thoughtful” about how they spend taxpayer money. But senators in both parties seemed to encourage new investments. “The basin should not be forced to choose between stabilizing the present and negotiating the future,” said Senator Martin Heinrich, a Democrat from New Mexico.

The possibility of new funding marks a return to the policy of Joe Biden’s administration. During the last extreme drought in 2022, the Interior Department paid farmers billions to leave their fields fallow, but that money, from the Inflation Reduction Act, has almost run dry. 

The difference now is that the roster of proposals is far more ambitious, and some far less certain to bolster the basin’s water supply. They range from desalination plants and desert groundwater pipelines to forest ecosystem restoration.

Here are a few of the major solutions state officials and companies are proposing.

Desalination

As the Colorado River crisis has deepened, some cities in the Southwest have eyed desalination, which extracts salt from sea water. A company called Poseidon Water opened such a plant in San Diego in 2015 and tried for decades to open another in Los Angeles. The wish list to the Interior Department requests as much as $6 billion to build one across the border in the Mexican state of Baja California to supplement Arizona’s vanishing Colorado River supplies.

The Interior Department also signed an agreement in early June with San Diego’s water agency that explains how that plant would help. Rather than sending treated seawater inland, states would pay the city to take less from the Colorado River. Arizona stands to lose the most water during drought years, and it would be the most likely to participate in that exchange.

But desalination is expensive, requires enormous amounts of electricity, and state-of-the-art industrial technology. The Poseidon facility cost $1 billion, but San Diego has diversified its water portfolio so much that it no longer needs all the water it must purchase from the plant. Trading water could help it offset some of that cost. 

Taming tech and power

Nevada uses less water than any state on the river and has cut usage in Las Vegas by replacing grass with artificial turf. It is now seeking money to slake some of its last thirsty industries: power plants and data centers. These facilities need a fraction of what agriculture requires, but they dominate usage in the Silver State.  

The state’s wish list includes $300 million to retrofit its largest natural gas plant and reduce water consumption by an amount equivalent to more than 3,000 average homes. It also seeks $650 million to install zero-water cooling systems in airports, schools, and industrial facilities. These closed-loop systems, which recirculate the same cooled water or, in the case of data centers, blast hot servers with cold air, have become more popular in Western states amid concerns about the tech boom’s growing thirst.

Squeezing rain from the clouds

Whereas Lower Basin states like Arizona and California can draw from the Colorado River’s big reservoirs on demand, northern states at its headwaters only receive the rain and snow that feed it. 

These Upper Basin states have been trying for decades to engineer more precipitation, with support from Washington, D.C. It sounds futuristic, but cloud seeding — spraying salt or silver iodide into clouds, forcing them to release water they might otherwise retain — has proven fairly effective on a small scale. Utah spends a few million dollars each year doing this, and officials say it could boost annual snowpack by as much as 10 percent. 

In addition, a few startups are pitching cheaper and more scalable versions of this technology. Rain Enhancement, a Florida-based outfit, says it has brought about 15,000 homes’ worth of rain to a river tributary in Utah this year; another, Rainmaker, says it can produce 1,000 times that much by 2031. That’s enough to close the supply gap on the river. That promise is fanciful, but these companies could secure federal funding from an administration that loves the tech industry.

Mining a hoard of desert groundwater

The West teems with companies that have promised miracles, from building a 300-mile pipeline to tapping a hoard of groundwater in Nevada. But perhaps no project has had a longer and more turbulent history than Cadiz, a proposal, almost 30 years old, to export groundwater from an aquifer in the Mojave Desert.

This has drawn vicious opposition from environmentalists and the late California Senator Dianne Feinstein, who called it a “grave threat” to the desert. Cadiz experienced several setbacks during the Biden administration: It lost a federal permit, California ended its pipeline lease, Arizona declined to support it, and its stock price fell to almost zero. But Susan Kennedy, its CEO, says Cadiz is flowing again with a funding agreement from the Interior Department to study exchanges between Cadiz and the Colorado River.

The company still needs to finish two pipelines, one to the Central Valley and another to the aqueduct that carries Colorado River water to California. It also must build a plant to remove contaminants in the water, but Kennedy believes she can have the tap running by 2028.

“This isn’t a competition; it’s an all-of-the-above situation,” she said of the situation on the river. That may be so, but the seven states did not include Cadiz on the wish list sent the Interior Department.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The Colorado River is vanishing — and the fixes are getting weird on Jun 23, 2026.

Then, last week, it put the brakes on that decision. The National Science Foundation said it would stop dismantling the sensors after a bipartisan group of senators pushed back and passed a measure blocking the agency from doing so. The federal agency also plans to put back the equipment it had already removed. 

The attempt to dismantle the system, known as the Ocean Observatories Initiative, or OOI, was “supreme stupidity,” said Senator Jeff Merkley, a Democrat from Oregon who sponsored the measure along with Senator Lisa Murkowski, a Republican representing Alaska, in a statement. “We’ll keep fighting to ensure scientists, fishermen, and coastal communities can continue to utilize the critical data the OOI provides.”

This is not the first time that outrage and bipartisan support have saved climate-related research from the sweeping cuts enacted by the Trump administration. Sometimes to little fanfare, lawmakers have moved to preserve funding for scientific research at a number of agencies, as well as some environmental programs like Energy Star, which provides consumer rebates for purchasing energy-efficient appliances. Given their success, it’s likely that the administration’s anti-science agenda will continue meeting more backlash. 

The Ocean Observatories Initiative had already been protected by lawmakers twice after the Trump administration proposed cutting the majority of its funding in 2025 and 2026 budgets. For now, the program, which began in 2016, is slated to continue operating for at least another decade.

But the initiative is not the only important ocean monitoring effort run by the United States. Researchers say other large cutting-edge ocean and climate research programs are facing a funding cliff with no plans in place to make sure they continue operating. 

“We are seriously looking at the possibility of going dark,” said Lynne Talley, a professor at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego. Talley has been one of the scientists helping lead the Argo program, an international effort that has deployed thousands of underwater floats that bob up and down throughout ocean depths equipped with a variety of data-collecting sensors.

Since the first floats were deployed more than 25 years ago, the Argo program has provided scientists with an unprecedented ability to track changes in temperature, salinity, and heat throughout the oceans. Even when scientists use data from other ocean projects, they often combine or check it against data from the Argo program’s floats. A recent addition to the program expanded the network with biogeochemical sensors that measure oxygen, acidity, chlorophyll, and other indicators of ocean health. 

This helps scientists piece together the carbon cycle of oceans and how climate change is influencing it. “Those measurements have become essential to understanding the ocean,”  Talley said.

The United States has deployed about half of the Argo program’s floats, which are battery powered and need to be replaced about every five years. But stagnant funding to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the agency leading the international initiative, means the pace of deployment has been too slow to maintain the program’s full coverage. The biogeochemical part of the network, backed by the National Science Foundation, ran out of funding last year, and will deploy its final floats this fall, with no plan in place to continue.

That means the Argo network could fail to remain fully operational in the future, even if other governments, such as the European Union’s, increase their contributions to it. “We have been the leaders in these ocean observations for many decades, and we are losing ground,” Talley said.

In the next few years, two other U.S.-led initiatives studying one of the most pressing, and uncertain, climate threats lurking in the ocean could run out of federal funding, too. That threat is known as AMOC, the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation: a massive conveyor belt in the Atlantic Ocean that brings hot water to the north and cold water to the south. The system of currents is responsible for the climate many Europeans know today and is one of the reasons that Quebec experiences far more freezing days a year than London, despite sitting at a similar latitude.

Scientists think that climate change could cause it to slow down or collapse, which would result in dramatic and deadly weather changes in Europe and faster sea level rise along the eastern coast of North America. It has happened in the past, such as during the end of the last Ice Age, 12,000 years ago. 

But for now, a scientific understanding of how likely that is to happen remains elusive. Strong year-to-year changes in ocean currents make it difficult to detect trends in how AMOC might be changing, and scientists remain divided on when and how soon the system might slow down. That makes studying it all the more important, said Susan Lozier, an oceanographer and the dean of the College of Sciences at Georgia Tech University. 

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Lozier co-leads OSNAP, one of two large research programs dedicated to studying the circulation system. These teams, which include researchers from the U.S. and six other countries, have placed dozens of moorings, outfitted with a variety of scientific instruments, across the North Atlantic, to capture changes in the water. OSNAP, in combination with the other program, RAPID, represent the best shot researchers currently have at getting to the bottom of the AMOC mystery, Lozier said. 

But funding for U.S. participation in the projects depends on federal grants, which are on course to run out after next year, Lozier said. “We’re on pins and needles, waiting for what happens after that,” she said. 

More than a year has passed since the program’s leaders submitted a proposal to the National Science Foundation for more funding. So far, Lozier said, they haven’t heard anything definitive. (The National Science Foundation did not respond to a request for comment.)

In the meantime, the Trump administration has slashed funding for science across the federal government, often targeting climate-focused research. Funding for geosciences like oceanography has fallen by more than half from last year. “We are really concerned about the possible continuation,” Lozier said. But it was heartening to hear about the reversal of the planned cuts to the OOI program, she said. 

The Ocean Observatories Initiative also faced cutbacks in 2018 during Trump’s first term. That time, the downsizing was handled through a deliberate process that involved extensive input from scientists, engineers, and the National Science Board, said Jaime Palter, an oceanographer at the University of Rhode Island, in an email. The savings, she said, were redirected to support other ocean science work.

Commenting before learning that the funding to OOI was restored, Palter said the Trump administration’s recent actions were “fundamentally different” from last time. The speed of the planned dismantling of the initiative wouldn’t have given the scientific community time to adapt, she said. 

Now that the decision has been reversed, it feels hopeful to know that people care about studying the ocean enough to push back on funding cuts, Palter said. But, she added, the uncertain future for programs like Argo make it “important not to let down our guard.”

“Destroying those capabilities can happen swiftly,” she said. “Rebuilding would be the work of a generation.”

Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated when the biogeochemical part of the Argo program ran out of funding.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Outrage rescued an important ocean research program. Crucial ones remain at risk. on Jun 23, 2026.

The nurses, pharmacists, and paramedics fielding the calls answer several questions: Is the snake in question venomous? Should they intubate the patient or simply dress the wound? Will it require an antivenom, and if so, where can they find it?

The center, which is one of two in Thailand, typically receives about a thousand snakebite-related calls a year. But over the past four years, that number has risen to about 1,500. More than half of them are about venomous species such as the king cobra, the Malayan krait, and the pit viper. Calls to the 24-hour hotline peak during the rainy season when floods force snakes from their habitats and into closer contact with humans.

“We have been established for 30 years, since 1996, and we have never closed our poison center,” said Dr. Satariya Trakulsrichai, a toxicologist, internist, and head of the poison center. Patients bitten by a venomous snake can suffer debilitating and long-lasting health consequences, including chronic nerve pain, kidney disease, and necrosis. The center runs an outpatient clinic for such patients every Friday.

Every year, millions of people are bitten by snakes. The most recent global count by the World Health Organization, or WHO, found that as many as 5.4 million people are bitten annually. Half develop envenoming — the medical condition that occurs when snake venom enters the body and triggers a toxic reaction. Approximately 500,000 are left with permanent disabilities, and 138,000 people die. Asia is the epicenter of snakebites, where up to 2 million people are envenomed each year. And even those figures are likely an underestimate because snakebites are vastly underreported. Many victims, often in rural and lower-income areas, never reach health facilities. 

Snakebites are less common in the United States. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that roughly 7,000 people are bitten by snakes each year. Of them, five die. But as the planet warms, the monsoon season becomes more erratic, and humans increasingly encroach into snake habitats, snakebites seem poised to rise. Research at Emory University found that the likelihood of being bitten increases with every degree Celsius rise in daily temperatures. Snakebites are also more common during extreme weather events. 

During droughts, for example, snakes may seek out water storage containers or cool, damp spots if their natural water sources have dried up, said Chloe Vasquez, executive director of the Global Snakebite Initiative USA Foundation, which works to reduce snakebite death and disability through community engagement programs and trainings for health workers. Droughts also force people to travel farther to collect water, increasing the likelihood of encountering snakes. And during storms or floods, snakes that typically hide underground are forced out. In cities, they might seek shelter in shops, homes, or sewage systems. Extreme climate events are also destroying agricultural livelihoods, pushing more rural workers to look for employment in cities. That urban expansion eats into snake habitats, driving the reptiles to nest in homes and gardens — putting them in closer contact with humans. 

A dearth of data makes it difficult to measure exactly how extreme weather events are affecting snakebite numbers, but as climate change alters “where, when, and how snakes share space with people,” it will only exacerbate the issue, a spokesperson for WHO said. The agency is spearheading the global effort to reduce the number of snakebites by 50 percent by 2030. It has issued guidance to help countries develop national action plans, improve access to quality antivenoms, and share data and insights through a dedicated platform.

The work is especially critical because several snake species are now being seen in locations where they previously weren’t, said Vasquez. The brown spotted pit viper, for instance, was historically only found in China, Taiwan, and India, but is now being seen in Thailand. The four main venomous biters in India — the Indian cobra, common Krait, Russell’s viper, and saw-scaled viper — are increasingly being spotted in much wider swaths of the country, including northern India and the Western Ghats. New hotspots are also emerging in Niger, Namibia, Nepal, and Myanmar, according to research in The Lancet. Vasquez said that it’s likely snakes are moving to higher elevations to escape warmer temperatures.

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The United States is no exception. In Arizona, unusually warm temperatures are rousing rattlesnakes from dormancy as early as March. That means snakes are increasingly being found on popular hiking trails. Local hotlines across the state have been reporting an increase in the number of bite-related calls for 2026 compared to the same time last year. In North Carolina, home to six snake species, a warmer April last year resulted in a higher number of snakebites than usual, and researchers found that in Georgia, hospital visits for snakebites are increasing as temperatures rise.

At the Queen Saovabha Memorial Institute snake farm in Bangkok, just a few miles away from the poison center, snake wranglers host a daily snake-handling demo for the public, draping Burmese pythons around the shoulders of tourists and staring down sunbeam snakes as their scales glisten in the afternoon rays. They tell the eager audience, camera phones in hand, which species are venomous and which ones are not, where you might find certain species, and why they need to be protected. They hope that increased education will promote snake conservation and decrease snakebites. Entrance fees to the snake farm also generate financial support for the institute’s ongoing work as a medical research center that produces antivenoms. 

The organization is a critical part of a national antidote program that was launched in 2011 with five other entities — including the Ramathibodi Poison Center — to ensure that snakebite victims across the country have access to the treatments they need. The institute has produced seven antivenoms so far and has been recognized by the WHO for “its crucial role in Thailand’s ongoing battle against snakebite envenomation.” 

When the Ramathibodi Poison Center receives a photo of a snake that has bitten someone, staff members send it to Taksa Vasaruchapong, a veterinarian and head of the Queen Saovabha Memorial Institute. Not all snakebites require an antivenom, but many do, and to determine the correct course of treatment, hotline staff verify the species with Vasaruchapong. He receives up to five photos a day from the poison center and is also contacted by the Bangkok fire department, which is called out to retrieve a snake every 15 minutes. Depending on whether the snake is venomous, it is either relocated somewhere safe or brought to the institute’s snake farm, which uses the reptiles for research and to create a steady supply of antivenom. 

Over the course of his career, Vasaruchapong has been bitten three times. During his first year at the institute 21 years ago, a monocled cobra dug into his right arm. He received antivenom immediately, which saved his life, but the fast-acting toxins had already done some damage. The incident left him with reduced functionality in one of his fingers and a scar that spans his forearm. He’s since been bitten two other times, but the risk doesn’t deter him from his mission to better understand a species he believes is among the world’s most neglected. 

“Most people are afraid of them and kill them first, even if it is nonvenomous,” he told Grist. 

Antivenoms are developed by extracting venom from specific snake species and injecting small amounts into animals, such as horses, that can create large amounts of antibodies. These antibodies are then harvested from the animals’ blood, purified, and used to create antivenoms that neutralize the venom when injected into humans. 

Antivenoms are costly and complex to make, and few countries invest in them. Lower-income countries are typically the most exposed but don’t have sufficient domestic antivenom stocks, and importing them can be expensive. There are “critically short supplies in many of the worst-affected regions,” said the WHO spokesperson. Even in regions with sufficient stocks, the antivenom has to match the specific geographical variation of venomous species that it was created for. As a result, antivenom created for a cobra found in Thailand may not be effective in treating a bite by one in Tanzania. 

“Every region will have maybe one or a few products, and some regions have no products that are effective for their region, which is very disappointing,” said Vasquez.  

Compared to its neighbors, Thailand is ahead of the game. Tall fridges stacked with colorful antivenoms created by the institute sit at the entrance of the Ramathibodi Poison Center’s hotline room. The supply can combat the effects of the most common venomous species in the country. Funded by the Thai Red Cross, the snake farm’s work has made Thailand the only country in Southeast Asia with WHO-approved antivenoms that have undergone rigorous testing and laboratory analysis to ensure quality and efficacy. These antivenoms are stocked in all of Thailand’s major hospitals and are also distributed to neighboring countries. Aside from supplying them to clinics across the country at a subsidized price, the poison center also sells them to other countries with the same species, Vasaruchapong said. 

But few countries have matched Thailand’s investment in antivenoms in part because underreporting of snakebites has led health ministries and pharmaceutical companies, among others, to believe the need for antivenoms is smaller than it actually is. The most common method of antivenom production requires a steady stream of venom that is milked from live snakes, funding to prop up a serpentarium, and specialists to harvest antibodies and immunize animals. 

But there are only 46 such manufacturers globally, and pharmaceutical companies sometimes curtail antivenom production when it isn’t profitable. 

In 2015, for example, Sanofi Pasteur, the French vaccine manufacturer, ceased production of its polyvalent African snake antivenom, Fav-Afrique, because the product wasn’t generating enough revenue. 

When antivenoms do make it to a country, they can be expensive or stored miles away from the patients who need them most. “If you go out into the rural areas, people can die right in front of the hospital because there’s no antivenom there,” said Vasquez. “There are stock-outs, or maybe the hospital doesn’t even stock antivenom most days, and so then they have to travel to the next hospital and the next.”

Climate change is only going to exacerbate the global shortage of antivenoms, she said. The WHO has been calling for countries to “future-proof” their snakebite responses and anticipate crises. That includes bolstering antivenom stockpiles, creating conservation areas for snakes, training health care workers on treatment, and educating people on how to avoid getting bitten.

Both Vasaruchapong and Trakulsrichai said there hasn’t been enough research to know the extent to which a warming planet will drive up their workload in Bangkok. If snakebites do become more prevalent, Thailand has a stable production line of antivenoms for the most common snakes strategically stored across the country. The same can’t be said elsewhere.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline As the world warms, the risk of snakebites is rising on Jun 23, 2026.

Welcome to the weird world of data center politics, where the usual partisan scripts around energy and natural resources don’t apply — yet.

Facilities housing massive amounts of computing equipment are springing up across the U.S. to quench the tech industry’s unslakable thirst for artificial intelligence. These AI-ready data centers, which consume more energy than the traditional cloud-computing centers that already exist to host and store various aspects of modern digital life, have become a political flashpoint at lightning speed — reshaping local and state politics from coast to coast as Americans grapple with high energy costs, natural resource depletion, and the repercussions of megadevelopment. 

In an era when political polarization is near record highs, data center backlash represents a rare area of consensus on both sides of the political aisle. Some 70 percent of Americans oppose local construction of AI data centers — 75 percent of Democrats and 63 percent of Republicans, according to polling from Gallup. Dig a little deeper into additional survey data, and the politics of data centers gets even more surprising. There are more conservative Republicans (53 percent) who oppose data centers in their local area than moderate Republicans (44 percent) — meaning that staunch conservatives are actually nearer to Democrats in their opposition. 

“I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a chart where conservative Republicans are closer to liberal Democrats than liberal [and] moderate Republicans are,” said Anthony Leiserowitz, the director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication.

Bipartisan anti-data center activism has emerged as one of the only counterbalances to AI’s inexorable rise. At least 75 data center projects worth roughly $130 billion were stalled or blocked in the first three months of 2026 alone. Political scientists and organizers tracking the backlash say the opposition is not driven by a single ideology so much as a recurring set of local grievances: rising electricity bills, water scarcity, noise, land use, tax breaks, distrust of tech companies and the billionaires who own them, and the fear that communities are being asked to share their resources with an industry that will provide little in return.

Still, those same experts note it’s too soon to say whether anger over data centers represents a lasting break in America’s partisan machinery. The backlash could trigger a broader questioning of Big Tech’s power in American life, perhaps resulting in real guardrails for an industry where few currently exist. Or it might be in its pre-partisan phase, waiting to be absorbed by the political tribalism that has shaped fights over climate, energy, housing, and so many of the other issues that have fallen victim to the culture wars.

Part of what makes AI data centers different politically is that they are relatively new and unencumbered by the political baggage that weighs down other issues. Experts say the sheer scope of the AI buildout and related opposition is what gives the backlash its unusual scale and political force  — currently, there are more than more than 800 group working across 49 states to oppose some 1,500 planned data centers.

But what might look like a unified anti-data center movement from a distance is actually a series of distinct fights unfolding simultaneously. The concerns motivating a community in Virginia to oppose a data center might be different from those inspiring a municipality in California to take up the same fight. Even within local fights, people often have varied reasons for showing up: light pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, or existential fears about AI. 

Some research shows that Republicans and Democrats emphasize different risks when talking about data centers. “Republican officials often raise concerns about tax incentives and energy grid strain, while Democrats tend to focus on environmental impacts and resource consumption,” said a report from Data Center Watch, a project run by the AI firm 10a Labs that keeps tabs on local data center activity.

In Box Elder County, Utah, where Trump walked away with nearly 80 percent of the vote in 2024, a 40,000-acre data center project backed by celebrity investor Kevin O’Leary is facing intense backlash from rural conservative voters over its perceived impacts on the rapidly drying Great Salt Lake and the project’s electricity and property tax breaks. Earlier this month, voters in left-leaning Monterey Park, California, approved a ballot measure permanently banning data centers in order to “protect air quality, drinking water resources, and public health.”  

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While the local opposition is place-specific, there are overlapping national political undercurrents that may be buoying the backlash regardless of place or party. The executives driving the data center boom — Tesla and SpaceX’s Elon Musk (who last week became the world’s first trillionaire), Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, OpenAI’s Sam Altman, and others — are far more familiar to Americans than the leaders of most major industries. 

“No one can name the CEO of Exxon Mobil,” said Alex Beauchamp, northern regional director at Food and Water Watch, a nonprofit advocacy group that has been pushing for the New York data center moratorium. That’s not the case with tech CEOs. “These guys are real, actual villains to a lot of people,” he added. 

For years, tech moguls tried to position themselves as visionary leaders ushering in a more just future, hiring huge numbers of workers to companies they promised had altruistic intentions. But the tides of political opinion have shifted as tech firms have grown larger, more powerful, and more entwined with the federal government while also laying off tens of thousands of employees and spending billions on data centers (just four tech companies are projected to spend a total of $670 billion on AI-related infrastructure this year). 

Polling suggests Americans are growing increasingly mistrustful of Big Tech and its growing concentration of technological, economic, and political power: Just 7 percent of voters in a recent survey said they trust tech CEOs to make decisions that affect their lives.

Then there’s the broader context of the rising cost of living motivating so many American voters right now, making communities especially sensitive to the effects of data centers on electricity bills and public resources. 

“We have this war that is making all prices go up, energy prices go up, so people are super aware of the ways that building other infrastructure in their towns is potentially going to make their access to less expensive energy impossible,” said Dana R. Fisher, director of the Center for Environment, Community, and Equity at American University, referring to the Iran War. “I think that works really well across ideological lines.”

Still, experts warn that the ties that bind America’s broad political spectrum in opposition to the AI boom could fray as the 2026 midterm elections approach and politicians seek to use the issue to their advantage. “Issues that can unite people across partisan lines, once they attract that broad political attention, the forces of partisanship tend to overwhelm everything else,” said Megan Mullin, a professor of public policy at the University of California, Los Angeles.

It’s a lesson Beauchamp, at Food and Water Watch, remembers well from the campaign to ban hydraulic fracturing in New York. In 2014, New York became the first state with underground gas reserves to ban the practice of shooting water at high speeds horizontally through buried rock to unlock deposits of natural gas. In the years leading up to the ban, a broad political coalition of New Yorkers shared many of the same concerns that today’s data center activists hold. Fracking poses serious risks to local water supplies, contributes to air and noise pollution, and brings heavy industrial activity to rural areas unaccustomed to industry. 

After New York banned the practice, Beauchamp assumed other states would follow suit. But the issue quickly became deeply partisan, as fossil fuel lobbyists and Republican officials sought to position the anti-fracking movement as a green ploy to undermine energy production and hurt working-class communities. As of today, only five states have a fracking ban on the books. Politicians who were open to banning the practice have come to regret that position. Kamala Harris’ vow to ban fracking on the campaign trail in 2019 was one of Trump’s favorite offensive cudgels when the two candidates faced off for the presidency in 2024. 

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“This feels to me like the early days of the fracking fight,” Beauchamp said. “A lot of Republicans were really up in arms about it in the beginning, and then it slowly became a partisan issue.” 

Data centers could soon be swept into that same right-versus-left vortex — but some activists are holding room for the possibility that new coalitions could emerge out of it. “It’s a moment to re-scramble people’s brains and build new cross-partisan alliances,” said Evan Sutton, the founder of the communications consulting firm Firekit Campaigns, who has helped people opposing data centers across the U.S. connect with one another. “It’s a remarkable and probably very rare opportunity to create something different.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline America’s data center backlash is bipartisan — can it stay that way? on Jun 22, 2026.

The area, commonly called the New Orleans Land Bridge, separates Lake Pontchartrain from the Gulf of Mexico and stretches from the eastern section of New Orleans to St. Tammany Parish, a distance of roughly 20 miles. Like much of Louisiana’s coast, it’s disappearing at a rapid rate. 

The on-again, off-again effort to restore the land bridge could get a jump-start next year with a $101 million project aimed at reviving a large patch of marsh that protects the mouth of Lake Pontchartrain, a shallow estuary whose waters swelled with a storm surge during Hurricane Katrina in 2005, contributing to catastrophic flooding in New Orleans.

“This land bridge is one of the most critical natural barriers protecting the city of New Orleans,” said April Newman, a project manager for the Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority. “Without it, the New Orleans levee system would be much more vulnerable to overtopping or breaching.”

Around 1.5 million people who live around Lake Pontchartrain and the adjacent Lake Maurepas, including residents in Baton Rouge and other cities near the two lakes, receive protection from the land bridge. Failing to restore it could mean the loss of the land bridge within 50 years, said Kristi Trail, executive director of the Pontchartrain Conservancy.

“Maybe that’s not in my lifetime, but it’s definitely in my children’s lifetime,” she said. “That’s pretty wild to think about.”

The land bridge includes the Interstate 10 bridge between New Orleans and Slidell, several fishing camps, and the Bayou Sauvage Urban National Wildlife Refuge in New Orleans, the largest national wildlife refuge that’s completely within a city. The area hosts a variety of fish, crab, birds, and other wildlife. 

Louisiana is losing the equivalent of one football field’s worth of land every 100 minutes, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. It’s a complex problem, but key factors include erosion from storms and oil canals, sinking land, sea level rise, and levees, which cut wetlands off from land-restoring river sediments. 

The most recent New Orleans Land Bridge project, completed in 2025, restored about 275 acres of marsh south of Fort Pike, a crumbling, 200-year-old fortification that bears the scars of several hurricanes. The entire land bridge is about 57,000 acres, roughly four times the size of Manhattan. 

Earlier this month, a state and federal panel announced plans to restore 1,320 acres of the land bridge along the Rigolets, a narrow channel linking Lake Pontchartrain to the Gulf. The project, slated to start next summer, would rebuild land with about 5 million cubic yards of sediment dredged from a nearby lagoon. The restored area would be reinforced with plastic fabric “mattresses” filled with crushed limestone, an increasingly common tool in Louisiana coastal restoration projects that helps stabilize shorelines and blunt wave erosion while allowing water to pass through. 

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The final phase, set for completion in mid-2029, calls for planting native grasses and roseau cane, a plant with thick roots that anchor the soil and tall stalks that comb out river sediment, accumulating it to form new marshland. 

The project’s $101 million budget would come from a fund created with nearly $9 billion that BP paid in penalties and settlements after the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster in 2010. The fund is overseen by the Louisiana Trustee Implementation Group, a panel that includes a host of state and federal agencies.   

Louisiana’s coastal master plan calls for investing more than $1.1 billion in projects to restore the New Orleans Land Bridge. That amount of money would revive about 29,000 acres, according to the plan.

While the latest project doesn’t come close to what’s needed, it’s a step in the right direction, Trail said. “It’s happening in pieces, parts and phases, but it’s really important to do,” she said. 

The state plans to spend $1.54 billion on 143 coastal restoration projects during the 2027 fiscal year. Excluded from next year’s plans are two long-awaited Mississippi River sediment diversion projects. The diversions, which would have cost nearly $5 billion over several years, were canceled in October by Governor Jeff Landry, a Republican, over concerns about rising costs and the possibility the effort might threaten oyster and shrimp fisheries. 

Trail said the New Orleans Land Bridge project won’t be funded with money freed up by scrapping the diversions. But with billions of dollars now potentially available, the coastal authority plans to focus on similar land-bridge restoration projects and rebuilding barrier islands elsewhere along the coast.

“We’re losing land bridges just like we’re losing land all along our coast,” Trail said. “This one is particularly important because it does a daily job of protecting [New Orleans] from waves that can flood our lakefront. And when we get hurricanes, it’s one of our first lines of defense.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Nearly 1.5M people in Louisiana depend on this strip of marsh. But it needs saving. on Jun 22, 2026.

What he saw changed his life. “There’s no places left in Hawai‘i, or very few places, where the environment is so wild and intact that you have your ancestors who are embodied in the environment communicating with you every second: Birds hovering over you, monk seals swimming up to you, fish trying to bite you,” he told Grist. “It’s so raw, the experience up there.”

The trip, a monthlong research expedition with scientists and Native Hawaiians, sparked decades of advocacy within the Hawaiian community for the protection of the Papahānaumokuākea. “It ended up being this amazing journey of rediscovery for a lot of us. When we came back to the main Hawaiian islands, we started telling the community about how thereʻs a whole other side of our house that we didnʻt know about. We have to know about this place,” Kikiloi said. That support helped establish Papahānaumokuākea as both a marine sanctuary and a marine national monument. 

Now Kikiloi is worried those protections are under threat. Earlier this month, President Donald Trump issued an executive proclamation to allow commercial fishing in parts of three national marine monuments in Hawai‘i, American Samoa, and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, or CNMI: the Mau and Ho‘omalu Zones of the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument, the Rose Atoll Marine National Monument, and the Islands Unit of the Mariana Trench Marine National Monument. Collectively, the areas under the proclamation span roughly half a million square miles in the Pacific Ocean and are home to thousands of plant and animal species in some of the planet’s most ecologically sensitive habitats.  

The proclamation is Trump’s latest attempt to dismantle conservation guardrails for industrial fishing. Last April, the president signed a proclamation to open over 400,000 square miles of the Pacific Islands Heritage Marine National Monument to commercial fishing. He also issued an executive order intended to boost domestic seafood production, and his administration has continued to increase several fishery quotas. Then, this February, Trump signed another proclamation removing commercial fishing from the prohibited activities in two national monuments in the Atlantic. 

“AMERICA FIRST FISHING POLICY,” the White House posted on Facebook after this month’s proclamation. “MASSIVE WIN FOR AMERICA’S FISHERMEN!” During the signing in the Oval Office, Trump himself promised the move would generate “millions and millions of dollars in new business for our great, really great fishermen” and lower seafood costs. 

Congresswoman Kimberlyn King-Hinds, the sole congressional representative from the CNMI, attended the signing and said in a press release that she hopes the federal government will work with local officials and communities to implement the directive and that it creates jobs. “For the CNMI, ocean policy is local policy,” she said. “If American fishing activity grows in these waters, our goal should be to connect that activity to local jobs, local businesses, port activity, seafood infrastructure, and long-term food security for the Commonwealth.”

Numerous commercial fishers and groups have also hailed the president’s move to roll back the restrictions in areas such as Papahānaumokuākea. “We need to eat fish caught by our fishermen who follow U.S. laws,” Kitty Simonds, executive director of the Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council, told Grist. Eric Kingma, executive director of the Hawai‘i Longliners Association, told Honolulu Civil Beat that he welcomed a review from the federal government “guided by sound science” on the scientific, economic, and cultural significance of the area, as well as management decisions that support “the long-term viability of Hawai‘i’s longline fleet.” After Trump signed the first commercial fishing proclamation last April, Kingma argued that ocean conservation and commercial fisheries can be compatible. “What we like about opening these up is the opportunity to fish there when the fish are there,” Kingma said at the time. 

But the administration’s strategy for boosting America’s $319 billion-dollar fishing sector has been riddled with unresolved legal questions.

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In spring of last year, just days after the president’s April 2025 proclamation, the National Marine Fisheries Service, known as NOAA Fisheries, announced in a letter to fishing permit holders it had reopened commercial fishing in the Pacific Islands Heritage Marine National Monument. That ban was lifted for nearly four months, until last August, when a federal district judge ruled, in a lawsuit filed by the nonprofit law firm Earthjustice, that the move violated the federal rulemaking process. 

Earthjustice attorney David Henkin believes that the lawsuit, which he led, may have prompted the administration to change its strategy for revising industrial fishing regulations. This shift became evident when, after the president’s Atlantic Ocean proclamation earlier this year, NOAA Fisheries went through the formal rulemaking process to change the regulation that previously banned commercial fishing in those monuments.

Still, there is another, more fundamental legal question that Henkin says remains open. Though Congress has absolute authority over the use and management of federal lands and waters, the Antiquities Act of 1906 also gave the president the authority to designate certain federal water and lands containing scientific, historic, or cultural resources as protected monuments. No federal court has yet ruled whether the Antiquities Act allows a president to undo a national monument or their protections, though several cases are pending. Earthjustice is again preparing to challenge the administration in court. “It’s anyone’s guess what these folks are going to do, other than play fast and loose with the law,” said Henkin. 

Opening these areas to commercial fishing has the additional effect of edging out traditional Indigenous fishers, who not only tend to practice smaller-scale, more sustainable fishing, but are also largely exempt from the commercial fishing bans in protected waters. Indigenous fishers, for instance, still retained the right to subsistence fish under the protections Trump just stripped back within the Mariana Trench Marine National Monument. “If anyone gains to benefit from this, it’s not going to be the traditional Indigenous communities,” said Steven Mana‘oakamai Johnson, Kanaka Maoli from the island of Saipan and assistant professor at Cornell University. “It’s going to be businesses, corporations, and those who have these larger vessels.” 

Even in American Samoa — where tuna is the biggest export and support for commercial fishing is widespread — some are questioning the expansiveness of Trump’s latest proclamation and its effect on Indigenous peoples. A year ago, congresswoman Uifa’atali Amata from American Samoa said of the Pacific marine monuments, “Neither presidents Bush, Obama, or Biden ever asked American Samoa what they wanted before they took away our Indigenous fishing rights without any science.” But now Amata is concerned about how fishing around Rose Atoll could also infringe on Indigenous rights. “Amata remains convinced that Rose Atoll should be off limits, her longstanding position, especially as she respects the cultural rights of the people of Manu‘a,” her office said in a press release. 

Camilo Mora, a scientist at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, challenges the administration’s argument that deregulation will create jobs and strengthen the fishing sector. Mora has long studied the relationship between biodiversity, fisheries, and the global food system, and argues any short-term economic benefits of the move will be offset by the long-term ecosystem losses. Most U.S. waters, in any case, are already open to commercial fishing — highly protected areas where all extractive activity is banned make up about 3 percent. 

Papahānaumokuākea, for one example, is one of the largest marine protected areas in the world and is a refuge for rare and ecologically significant species. The Hawaiian monk seal, humpback whales, and green sea turtles are among the more than 7,000 species found there, many of which are critically endangered. Opening up the Mau and Ho‘omalu zones of the area to commercial fishing, Mora warns, could trigger a trophic cascade — when a change in the top predator’s population or behavior ripples throughout the food chain — that will then drive “all of these populations to collapse.” 

“We are destroying the capacity of the oceans to make the food we need,” said Mora.

For Kikiloi in Hawai‘i, what’s at stake is not just food — it’s the ability for Indigenous people in Hawai‘i to stay connected to their ancestors. He’s not surprised that scientists like Mora have found some of the oldest living corals on Earth in Papahānaumokuākea, because Hawaiian oral histories describe it as the place where life began. “It’s the place where our souls return to after death,” he said. “It’s hard to exist as Hawaiians nowadays if every aspect of your environment is degraded.” 

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Trump wants to unleash ‘America First’ fishing. What’s he really doing? on Jun 22, 2026.

Kelp forests are biodiversity hot spots teeming with a colorful variety of seaweeds, sponges, crustaceans, and other small ocean animals, many of them found nowhere else. At one time, vast kelp beds grew in nutrient-rich shallow waters along roughly a third of the world’s coastlines, where they helped to reduce the strength of waves, minimized coastal erosion, and provided shelter to fish, invertebrates, and marine mammals. 

Today, however, many kelp forests are on life support, victims of water pollution from terrestrial agriculture and coastal development, bottom trawling for fish, and an explosion of kelp-devouring urchins, like those the Haida volunteers are collecting as part of an eradication program. But perhaps the most important driver of kelp decline is the rapid warming of the ocean. 

Healthy kelp forests need cool, nutrient-rich seawater to survive. As ocean waters warm, kelp can no longer inhabit parts of their former range. The crisis is escalating quickly. Kelp forests are vanishing twice as fast as coral reefs and four times faster than tropical rainforests. An estimated 40 percent to 60 percent of kelp forests worldwide have been lost or significantly degraded in the last 50 years. These precipitous declines typically received far less scientific scrutiny than higher-profile ecological crises. But kelp has gradually been getting more attention as scientists and the environmental community come to recognize the value of the carbon that coastal ecosystems, including kelp forests, can capture.

A 2023 literature review of more than 180 papers that examined the potential for kelp to store carbon suggested that the climate benefits of these underwater forests may have been “grossly underestimated,” says Albert Pessarrodana, a research fellow at the University of Western Australia and the review’s lead author. “Kelps are one of the fastest growing plants on the planet,” he said in an email interview, “uptaking as much carbon as tropical rainforests per unit of area.” 

Much of the carbon that kelp sequesters ends up being released back into the marine environment in the form of leaf litter (kelp, which is a macroalgae, has leaflike structures called blades that are its organs of photosynthesis.) This detritus is typically ingested by fish and other marine organisms and excreted in a matter of days. Still, a small percentage of it ends up in the deep ocean where it remains for centuries, or even millennia. Roughly 62 million tons of carbon is carried into the deep ocean by coastal currents each year, according to two studies published in 2024.

“Unfortunately,” Pessarrodana says, “excessive warming can either kill kelps or severely curtail their growth, reducing their ability to uptake carbon.”

To counter the decline, scientists around the world are breeding new kelp varieties that they transplant as saplings into kelp habitat. The Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the San Diego Zoo have begun using artificial intelligence to digitally replicate kelp ecosystems and assess their vulnerability to climate change. Their findings will help focus resources on areas that are most likely to be saved. The organizations have also established a biobank to preserve kelp varieties for potential use in kelp farming and restoration projects. Researchers at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution on Cape Cod are using selective breeding to develop kelp strains with a higher tolerance to warming waters. Similar efforts are underway in China and Australia.

The Nature Conservancy’s Scott Breschkin has been working for the past year to eliminate urchins and replant beds of golden kelp on Australia’s Great Southern Reef, an interconnected system of rocky kelp reefs spanning about 5,000 miles of coastline across southern Australia and the island of Tasmania. Though less famed than the Great Barrier Reef, it is equally biodiverse, boasting thousands of species, some of which are still unknown to science. 

As Australia’s coastal waters warm, long-spined urchins are expanding their ranges, leaving virtually lifeless urchin barrens in their wake. “Once the reef transitions to an urchin desert, it is very hard to flip it back to a productive kelp habitat,” Breschkin explained, adding that urchins can persist for decades in a zombie-like state, awakening only occasionally to mow down any kelp sprouts that may appear, which makes it virtually impossible for kelp forests to recover. Eradicating sea urchins, he says, is a critical first step for kelp restoration.

Jono Wilson, the director of ocean science for The Nature Conservancy’s California chapter, works with KelpWatch.org, a partnership of academic institutions and government agencies that is using satellite imagery and drones to monitor the distribution of canopy-forming kelps along California’s Pacific coast and assess where kelp restoration efforts have been successful. These undersea forests are often characterized by boom-and-bust cycles, flourishing and retreating as ecological conditions change, Wilson says. But recent climate-driven losses have been unprecedented. A 2013 to 2015 ocean warming event known as “the Blob” reduced kelp populations in Northern California by 95 percent. 

Since 2015, water temperatures in California’s kelp forests have not dropped below 57 degrees F, a rough threshold beyond which kelp cannot thrive. Higher temperatures disrupt the kelp reproductive cycle, affecting their ability to produce viable offspring. Like corals, kelp bleaches when stressed, losing the chlorophyll that allows it to photosynthesize. 

Kelp diebacks transform their ecosystems. “Kelp provide habitat and food for thousands of species,” says Wilson. “They are nurseries for abalone and economically important fish species like cod and rockfish. They are meccas for kayakers and recreational scuba divers.” The Nature Conservancy estimates that kelp forests contribute $250 million in economic value to California annually.

While kelp forests in Southern California are faring reasonably well — the dominant species, called giant kelp, grows quickly and can reach up to 200 feet tall — purple sea urchins are wiping out kelp beds dominated by bull kelp along the coasts of Central and Northern California. Wilson and his team are exploring ways to control those urchins. They are developing new kinds of more efficient urchin traps — round mesh devices baited with fish — and working with fertilizer companies to create a viable market for urchin shells, which contain calcium, nitrogen, and other plant nutrients. The Norwegian seafood firm Ava Ocean is currently using crushed urchin shells to produce a mineral-rich alternative to traditional bone-meal fertilizers. 

There have also been attempts to support the native sunflower sea star, a voracious consumer of sea urchins. Populations of this predatory starfish, which can grow as large as a car tire, have been reduced by 90 percent since the outbreak, in 2013, of sea star wasting disease. 

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Scientists recently isolated the bacterium responsible for the epidemic, giving them a better shot at helping sea stars recover. Aquariums in California and Oregon have successfully treated their affected sea stars with antibiotics, and scientists are hoping to learn how to breed disease-resistant sunflower starfish that can be released into the wild.

There have also been efforts since the late 1980s to breed and reintroduce sea otters, another urchin predator, to the coastal waters where they once flourished. Driven to the edge of extinction by the fur trade in the 19th and early 20th centuries, otters have now substantially recovered in parts of their former range. They now number well over 3,000 individuals in Northern California. Otters are also staging a comeback along the coast of Washington and British Columbia. Kelp forests where the otters have been released are faring noticeably better than kelp forests without otters.

So far, kelp restoration projects in the U.S. have been small scale, with most covering less than a hundred acres. Such projects are “very expensive and subject to zoning laws that make [them] hard to initiate,” says Kyle Cavanaugh, a coastal geographer at the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability. “These localized projects need to be scaled up if we hope to turn the tide on the loss of kelp habitat.”

Kelp restoration is happening on a far larger scale in East Asia. More than half of South Korea’s kelp forests have been lost or badly degraded over the past century. But thanks to the world’s largest kelp restoration projects, the nation now boasts 71,660 acres of kelp forest. Its goal is to eventually re-green 75 percent of its coastline. Farmers in South Korea harvest nearly a billion dollars worth of seaweed each year, cutting only the upper fronds and blades of the macroalgae. There are also more than 700 restoration projects in Japan where kelp, known as kombu, is a staple in Japanese cuisine, most commonly used in soups.

Kelp’s value as a food source, and to a lesser extent as an ingredient in cosmetics, skincare products, and biodegradable packaging, may be one key to its survival. But if we don’t find a way to slash emissions of greenhouse gases, experts say, the long-term prospects of kelp and other key ocean ecosystems may be bleak. “It’s likely that we’ll see more destructive marine heat waves and warmer waters overall,” says Cavanaugh. “Beds of far less-productive turf algae will replace giant kelp and prevent it from becoming reestablished.” 

In Maine and in other coastal regions around the world, carpet-like turf algae is already replacing kelp, according to a paper published last month by the Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences in Maine. This is “a radical ecological transformation,” says the University of Maine’s Shane Farrell, the study’s lead author. “The good news is we now understand what’s driving this shift, and this will help us predict when and where it will happen next and create different conservation strategies to combat it.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Efforts to save kelp forests from ocean warming are ramping up on Jun 21, 2026.

Energy flow into New England is up just marginally, and there have been roughly 27 days when no power at all traveled along the new line, commonly called NECEC. If current trends hold, New England will receive less hydropower this year over two transmission lines than it did over just one line in 2023 and previous years.

“What we’ve seen so far is not what some people expected to see,” said Joseph LaRusso, manager of the Clean Grid Program at climate nonprofit Acadia Center.

Potentially putting further strain on the supply of Canadian hydropower is the Champlain Hudson Power Express, a transmission line that started sending electricity from Quebec into New York City this month.

NECEC has its origins in a 2016 Massachusetts law that required the state to procure 1.6 gigawatts of offshore wind power and another 1.2 gigawatts of additional renewable energy. The plan was to contract with state-owned Canadian power supplier Hydro-Québec to tap into the region’s abundant hydropower resources and build a new transmission line to carry the electricity south.

The first proposal — a 192-mile project through New Hampshire — was abandoned in 2019 after public outcry about the impact on the state’s forests. The transmission line through Maine faced similar controversy. In 2021, a statewide referendum vote put the project on hold until 2023, when a jury ruled that the development could be restarted.

Two and a half years later, NECEC came online and started carrying the first electrons into New England. It’s certainly a notable achievement in a time when the Trump administration has been doing all it can to stop progress on clean energy, including offshore wind — the cornerstone of the Northeast’s decarbonization plans. And although the results so far have been mixed, some see potential for the line to make a sizable impact on New England’s clean energy future.

How much hydropower is coming from Quebec?

When NECEC came online earlier this year, Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey, a Democrat, and climate advocates touted it as a major win for the state’s renewable energy goals and a way to save residents money on their utility bills. Massachusetts contracted with Hydro-Québec for 9.55 terawatt-hours of hydropower per year, roughly 20 percent of the state’s annual electricity demand.

The operations have not had the smoothest start. NECEC was completely inactive for several spans — from a half day on April 28 to nearly two weeks at the end of May and beginning of June. The most recent outage was due to ​“technical difficulties,” Hydro-Québec spokesperson Lynn St-Laurent said in a written statement.

“Once repairs were completed, deliveries resumed,” she said. ​“With any new transmission infrastructure, a period of optimization and fine-tuning is to be expected.”

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Still, most of the time, hydropower has flowed steadily on the new infrastructure. Through the end of April, Hydro-Québec exported about 2.4 terawatt-hours of power on the transmission line.

If the power is (mostly) moving as planned, why are some people still skeptical that the project will deliver the promised benefits? Because so far, it hasn’t done much to add to the total supply of renewable energy in New England.

Before NECEC, New England already imported significant amounts of hydropower on a transmission line known as Phase 2, which runs from Quebec into central Massachusetts. In 2019, the year the Massachusetts regulators approved the contracts between utilities and Hydro-Québec, more than 12 terawatt-hours traveled onto the New England grid over the line.

But starting in 2023, Hydro-Québec started selling less and less energy to New England over Phase 2. For nearly three weeks in early 2025, exports ceased entirely. Through the end of April this year, just over half a terawatt-hour has come south over that line. On paper, it can look a lot like NECEC isn’t allowing more energy into New England but is instead just giving it a new road to travel along.

“We’re not seeing much net new flows coming from our neighbors,” said Dan Dolan, president of the New England Power Generators Association. ​“We are running pretty close to the net energy flows we had in 2025, which were the lowest amount of imports that New England has ever gotten from Quebec.”

At the same time, Quebec has started importing power over the Phase 2 line, a rare occurrence before 2025. In the first four months of this year, more than 500 gigawatt-hours traveled into Canada on the line. Because New England’s electricity supply relies heavily on natural gas generation, the region is still burning fossil fuels to ship energy north even though it is receiving hydropower for its own use.

“We’re seeing a heavier natural gas burn on the rest of the generation fleet than I think many of those states had assumed going into this year,” Dolan said.

Power imports and exports

The main driver behind slowing exports seems to be the drought conditions that have lingered in Quebec for the past few years. During wetter periods, the hydropower industry uses large reservoirs to store water to help it ride out these drier times, said Gilbert Bennett, a senior adviser for WaterPower Canada, a hydropower trade group.

As generators wait for rainier days, their first obligation is to supply domestic customers, he said. That means there will likely be times when Hydro-Québec needs to import electricity over the Phase 2 line to offset some of the hydropower it is contractually obliged to send to Massachusetts over NECEC.

“Electricity flows between Québec and New England are dynamic and vary continuously based on market conditions and system needs on both sides of the border,” St-Laurent said.

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Financially, New England customers should not be at risk from these ongoing shifts, LaRusso said. Massachusetts’ contract with Hydro-Québec includes provisions that require the Canadian company to pay financial penalties if it fails to deliver according to its contract.

“To the extent that imports are curtailed, Hydro-Québec is liable to make the electric utilities whole for the cost of replacement power,” LaRusso said. 

It is less clear whether NECEC will boost Massachusetts’ renewable energy supply in the long run.

Still, the new transmission line has at times demonstrated its potential to help New England achieve a cleaner energy supply, LaRusso said. He pointed to May 16, a sunny day when solar power reduced demand on the grid and NECEC was going full tilt. Natural gas plants were running at low levels, and most of the power was heading to New York. For a short time, all the region’s power needs could be met by nonfossil fuel resources.

“Hypothetically, [grid operator] ISO New England could’ve turned off its gas generators,” LaRusso said. ​“It really gets you thinking of the resources available and how they could be managed and shared in the future.”

Bennett is also confident in the long-term outlook. In general, he said, climate change is forecast to create wetter conditions in Quebec. And the region is investing heavily in additional hydropower facilities as well as onshore wind. The years to come, he said, will bring plenty of renewable resources to share with Canada’s southern neighbors.

“Over the long term, we see a bright future,” Bennett said.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Is New England’s new hydropower transmission line paying off? on Jun 20, 2026.

Introduced in the name of player safety, these mandatory three-minute breaks are a surprise controversy that has shoved climate change into the spotlight. “Water-gate,” blared a headline in The Independent, a U.K. newspaper. The chief sportswriter at the Daily Mail called the breaks a “momentum killer” and a “money-grabbing disgrace.” 

Fans were equally outraged. Spectators at the match between England and Croatia booed when the referee blew the whistle, and comments poured in on Reddit. “I’m booing from home,” read one. Another said, “FIFA ruined the beautiful game.”

FIFA, the sport’s governing body and organizer of the tournament, declined to comment and referred Grist to its announcement of the policy in December. “The use of hydration breaks is part of a focused attempt to ensure the best possible conditions for players,” the statement read. Before this World Cup, cooling breaks only occurred when the wet bulb temperature — essentially a measure of air temperature and humidity combined — reached 32 degrees Celsius, or about 90 Fahrenheit. Now the rule applies to all games, regardless of temperature, humidity, or other factors. It even applies to matches played indoors with air conditioning.

The move came after criticism of a tournament in the United States last summer, when the organization representing players, FIFPRO, said extreme heat should have canceled matches. “It has never been more important,” the organization said in a press release before the World Cup, “to give space to scientific knowledge and find mitigation strategies that protect the health and wellbeing of our players.”

There is no doubt that rest and water can help protect players in a world where extreme heat is becoming more common and increasingly dangerous. But many fans, and even athletes, think FIFA has gone too far. “If it’s really hot, obviously it will be good to put them in. But I think you have ⁠to look at it in every game separately, in my opinion,” said Virgil van Dijk, captain of the Netherlands’ squad. One Reddit user complained, “We’re inundated with commercials.”

That’s been a frequent complaint, and it has led to speculation that FIFA implemented the breaks to boost the number of ads that are shown. Broadcasters aren’t required to go to full-screen commercials during hydration breaks — Telemundo and the BBC, for instance, don’t. FIFA also dictates that ads must start 20 seconds into the pause and end 30 seconds before play resumes. But that still creates 2 minutes and 10 seconds of extra ad time available per half, which can be extremely lucrative. The Wall Street Journal reports that a 30-second spot during early games sells for roughly $200,000 and rises to around $750,000 when the U.S. national team plays. 

“They’ve essentially divided the game into quarters,” John Kosner, a former ESPN executive, told The Journal, “and made enormously valuable breaks.”

About 67 minutes into the opening game of the World Cup, the referee signaled for a mandatory hydration break. The American broadcaster, Fox, cut to commercials. But they ran longer than the respite, so players were left stalling and many viewers missed the restart entirely. Fox said it didn’t see the referee signal the start of the break because it came during a replay. FIFA doesn’t plan to punish the network. But the incident did little to quell people’s fears about commercialization — in part because the temperature at kickoff was a relatively balmy 74 degrees F.

FIFA has required the breaks in all matches as an effort to be fair across a tournament that sees teams playing in 16 stadiums and three countries. That argument, though, has again done little to ease criticism. “That doesn’t ring true to me,” said Chris Taylor, the head coach of the Vermont Green FC’s men’s team, explaining that every soccer game has different stoppages and different lengths. 

The Green are a climate-focused organization, so the dangers of extreme heat are particularly front of mind. Taylor sees hydration breaks as critical when the conditions warrant them, which they have numerous times during his decades-long career as a player and coach. Still, he questions FIFA’s motives at this World Cup. 

“I don’t think the health of the players is their primary concern,” he said. “This World Cup has felt that every angle has been monetized.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline How FIFA’s climate solution has turned into ‘water-gate’ on Jun 19, 2026.

A project unveiled this week in California’s Central Valley suggests a potential answer. California Resources Corporation, the state’s largest oil company, wants to build a 600,000-square-foot data center campus in the Elk Hills oil field about two hours north of Los Angeles. It hopes to avoid the nationwide backlash from communities that have watched the outfits developing these sprawling operations swallow up farmland or install diesel generators near residential neighborhoods. 

It’s part of a new trend in the AI boom. More developers are proposing to build data centers in or near active oil and gas fields, which tend to sit far from densely populated areas and boast ready access to power. Projects are being planned in Texas, where the prolific Permian Basin oil patch has an abundance of natural gas, which can be used to generate electricity, and in Pennsylvania, which is already a leading producer of natural gas from shale. These projects are seen as a way of juicing revenues for legacy producers, even as the California project is unfolding in a state that has been trying to phase out fossil fuels.

California Resources Corporation executives have framed the deal, announced Monday, as a “responsible development” approach to the AI buildout—a claim that environmental activists in the state disputed.

“By repurposing an existing industrial site, creating jobs and tax revenue in Kern County, utilizing dedicated on-site power, and employing one of the industry’s most water-efficient cooling systems, the project is designed to support California’s growing digital infrastructure needs while minimizing impacts on local communities,” said Chris Gould, the company’s chief sustainability officer and the head of its carbon capture venture, in a statement to Grist.

The Elk Hills location has an obvious strategic benefit for CRC and Beacon, the data center developer collaborating on the project. The proposed Golden Valley Technology Hub will sit on 100 acres within an oil field that stretches across tens of thousands of acres, and will sit more than a mile from the nearest homes. The project will also face strict environmental review, which could take about a year. CRC has already held a number of community meetings with residents of nearby Taft and Buttonwillow and has promised to provide financial support for community groups and public infrastructure like roads.

Building in a century-old oil zone could sidestep the common furor over the impacts of data centers, which can require massive amounts of electricity and water and can also emit a lot of noise, said Gabriel Collins, an expert on energy and water issues who serves as a research fellow at Rice University’s Center for Energy Studies.

“Where you stand on these things depends on where you sit,” said Collins, who has studied the potential of Texas’ enormous Permian Basin to support data centers. “If you’re already out in the middle of an area that’s seen heavy industrial activity for a long time, there’s already a precedent, and folks there will probably find it easier to deal with.” In its permit application for the project, CRC included around 150 signatures from nearby residents who support the data center. At least five names on the list are affiliated with the local oil industry.

Ready access to electricity is the most important asset for these operations, something CRC’s oil field already has. It runs on a 550-megawatt natural gas power plant that has long been used to generate steam for drilling operations. Elk Hills no longer produces as much crude as it once did, so the power plant is running below capacity. The proposed data center will be able to run almost exclusively on that excess energy. (As for water, the company says the data center will use a closed-loop cooling system that will consume enough to fill an Olympic swimming pool over the course of 10 years. It also plans to erect noise barriers around the site.)

While the Kern County data center will rely on fossil fuels when many others draw power from the wind or sun, CRC is expanding its business to focus on carbon capture. Just this year it launched a first-of-its-kind system that captures CO2 emitted by another oilfield gas plant and stores it in depleted wells, and plans to build such a system for the plant that will supply the data center. Although the existing system absorbs about 7 percent of the plant’s total emissions, CRC has the storage space to capture several hundred times as much carbon underground. 

For oil producers in the Permian, data centers represent a market for natural gas that might otherwise be burned or vented to the atmosphere as a byproduct of drilling. Chevron signed a deal to supply methane to a Microsoft data center in west Texas, and oil service companies Schlumberger and Halliburton assist data center developers with energy and construction. Collins said the model makes even more sense for a declining field like Elk Hills, where production has fallen and CRC no longer needs as much electricity.

“In the Permian Basin, it’s a different dynamic, because the oil field and the data centers are gonna compete with each other for power,” said Collins. “If you have a declining oil field and you had that big captive asset there, then plugging it in to run digital infrastructure instead makes a lot of sense.”

California has seen gasoline demand fall about 15 percent over the last decade, and crude production has fallen by more than half during that time, due in part to strict regulations rolled out by Governor Gavin Newsom. State lawmakers struck a deal last year to stabilize in-state production as part of an effort to avoid gasoline price spikes, but few experts expect production to reach previous levels. 

As a result, CRC is looking beyond oil for its future. It has invested billions in carbon capture projects across the state, and executives have said that they expect revenue from such efforts to become essential as oil demand declines in California. The company acquired two of its largest competitors, Aera and Berry, over the past two years, and now accounts for nearly two-thirds of the state’s production. A senior executive last year likened the company to Equinor, the Norwegian state oil company that produces both oil and wind power.

The data center could advance this transition. CRC says the project would create at least 1,500 union construction jobs, as many as 250 permanent jobs, and ample tax revenues. The number of oil and gas jobs in Kern County has declined from around 12,000 to around 6,000 since 2015, and oil assets account for around 10 percent of its property tax income, compared to 30 percent a decade ago. CRC’s previous carbon capture project earned a stamp of approval from Newsom, long an opponent of oil, who called it “proof that innovation and ambition are the California way.” (His office said decisions about the data center should be left to Kern County.)

Climate groups disputed CRC’s claims about “responsible development.” The data center will cause an increase in gas power production, which will release more carbon dioxide and other pollutants in an area that already has poor air quality, said Nina Robertson, a deputy managing attorney at the environmental law firm Earthjustice who works on data centers.

“It’s a disservice to the people who are breathing that unhealthy air,” She also argued that California developers have no excuse to power data centers with fossil fuels when the state has made rapid progress on deploying solar and grid-scale batteries. “You should be powering any data centers in California with zero-emission energy…We are building the clean energy future, and this is pulling us back. You can’t paper it over with the fact that you’re building it on top of an oil field.

Earthjustice has previously said CRC’s carbon storage project would “open the door to a range of new polluting facilities that could be built from scratch.” It also said carbon capture could increase emissions by prolonging the life of the Elk Hills field or leading to more natural gas power production. Earthjustice, the Center for Biological Diversity, and a number of other groups sued the county over its approval of the carbon capture project, and litigation is ongoing.

But CRC seems to see tech and oil as natural partners. It signed an agreement last year to capture carbon from a nearby gas power plant owned by a Canadian company. That power plant, which can produce twice as much electricity as the one at Elk Hills, could in theory support another data center.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline A solution to data center backlash? Put them in oil fields. on Jun 18, 2026.