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The fire retardant in the seafood chain

Rachel Glickhouse — Sat, 17 Oct 2026 13:00:00 GMT

In January 1966, a South African ship caught fire at sea. In port in Bristol, England, after firefighters pried open the smoking container, the conflagration spread and burned for five days. A little over a month later, a Liberian steamship caught fire near Rotterdam, ignited a storage area with barrels of petrol and sank. The month after that, a Danish ship caught fire off Long Beach, California, injuring three firefighters, killing a longshoreman and causing over a million dollars in estimated damages.

The culprit in each fire was fishmeal, a dark yellow powder made by drying and pulverizing fish that, if left untreated, is known for spontaneously combusting as it decays and oxidizes.

Tied to at least 90 ship and plant fires from the 1950s through the 1970s, fishmeal’s combustibility was a serious worry for seafarers, insurers and dock workers, according to a sweep of historical news coverage by The Outlaw Ocean Project, a news organization in Washington, D.C.

In 1967, American feed producer Cargill announced a solution: ethoxyquin.

A crew abandons ship as the SS South America burns in Rotterdam in 1966. Sepia Times, NY Daily News, Evers, Joost / Anefo

A fire retardant previously used to keep rubber tires from drying out and applied as a preservative on fruits and alfalfa, production of the antioxidant was soon ramped up.

“Antioxidant treatment has made bulk handling an easy matter,” the director of the Canadian Department of Fisheries told an industry publication in 1966, arguing it should be required for fishmeal shipments.

The chemical was highly effective. By the 1970s, press-reported fires dropped sharply—from a typical 16 ship fires a year, according to the Liverpool Underwriters Association, to five.

By 1976, the U.S. Coast Guard imposed mandatory ethoxyquin treatment on fishmeal shipments, and three years later, the United Nations body that oversees maritime activity recommended fishmeal be treated with it “to prevent spontaneous combustion.”

But there was a problem: Ethoxyquin is a carcinogen.

“Toxic effects had been observed in laboratory animals fed high concentrations of ethoxyquin,” said a 1969 paper by U.N. food and agriculture authorities.

87 fires in fishmeal cargoes, plants, and warehouses, 1950–1978. The Outlaw Ocean Project

As its use in animal feeds and aquaculture grew, a 1987 study by British researchers found the chemical “caused severe damage” and had a potentially “carcinogenic effect” in rats. In 2015, the European Food Safety Authority said an impurity within ethoxyquin, known as p-phenetidine, was capable of causing mutations in genetic material.

There is a lack of scientific consensus on whether it is safe to eat farmed seafood raised on feed treated with ethoxyquin, but some countries have considered the risk to be high enough to justify banning or limiting the use of the chemical. In 2017, the European Commission suspended authorization for its use in animal feed across the European Union.

Today, ethoxyquin has been banned in the U.K. and by members of the European Economic Area, including Norway, Iceland, and Liechtenstein. But ethoxyquin, within limits, is still permitted in animal feed in Australia, Japan, South Korea, and the U.S.

With more than half of the seafood eaten worldwide now coming from fish farms, and with the majority of such species fed fishmeal and fish oil, studying the chemicals added to feed is critical for understanding the possible contamination of our global food supply.

Although ethoxyquin is not banned in the U.S., it has been at the center of a half-dozen lawsuits, typically involving claims of false advertising. Some lawsuits targeted seafood companies for marketing their products as “sustainable” even though they contained ethoxyquin, while others highlighted the potential risks that the additive poses to the environment.

Fishmeal production at an Exalmar plant in Peru spans from unloading fresh catch through processing and bagging the final powdered product. Growing health concerns over substances like ethoxyquin are fueling debate about the future of additive use in the global fishmeal industry. Credit: Pesquera Exalmar

In 2022, a New York resident brought a class-action lawsuit against Aldi Inc., a German supermarket chain with stores in the U.S., alleging its Atlantic salmon products were falsely labeled as “sustainable” due to “environmentally destructive” practices. The complaint cited the EU’s ban on the chemical and a study linking ethoxyquin to mortality and deformations in fish and crustaceans, noting the chemical “poses a risk for aquatic life.” The case was settled out of court.

The same year, a New York and a California resident jointly sued Gorton’s Inc., a seafood company, for labeling its frozen tilapia as “sustainably sourced” despite containing ethoxyquin. This lawsuit also cited the “risk for aquatic life” and the European Union’s ban, and was settled out of court.

In Canada, the country’s Food Inspection Agency requires feeds containing ethoxyquin to carry a label declaring that it meets the legal limits, but the agency does not specify how it tests for the chemical in feeds. Inspectors also do not check whether ethoxyquin ends up in the seafood itself, according to the agency’s latest food inspection report from 2022.

And a 2024 audit of the Canadian agency by the EU found it completed only about 40 percent of its planned inspections, citing “systematic and significant under-delivery” in terms of testing seafood products.

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Cargill said in a statement that it has assessed alternative antioxidants since 2005 and no longer uses ethoxyquin in its global salmon feed business or in any market where ethoxyquin is not authorized for use in aquafeed. The company also noted that it did not develop ethoxyquin. Globally, producers and feed makers have also increasingly shifted to alternatives, including natural additives such as rosemary extract and vitamin E compounds.

“More and more destinations are not accepting ethoxyquin, starting with our local Peruvian market,” said James Frank, managing director of the Peruvian fishmeal company MSICeres, during a 2022 webinar. He added that 100 percent of Peru’s fishmeal exports to Europe, Canada, the U.S. and Australia are now ethoxyquin-free, a shift also seen among companies in the U.K. and Norway.

The most popular alternative to ethoxyquin is now butylated hydroxyanisole, or BHA, favored for its lower costs and strong antioxidant properties compared with fully natural additives. But like the chemical it aims to supplant, BHA has its own significant health risks, according to researchers.

The U.S. National Toxicology Program identified BHA as “reasonably anticipated to be a human carcinogen” as early as 1991, and Japanese researchers found it caused malignant tumors in laboratory rats in 2008.

In February, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced it was reassessing the safety of the substance as a food additive.

To address the world’s insatiable hunger for seafood, the aquaculture industry will continue to expand. Perhaps there’ll be a shift away from carnivorous fish, or a replacement will be found for fishmeal. But for now, the aquaculture and fishmeal industries find themselves in a perilous loop: pivoting from deadly ship fires to a carcinogenic fire retardant, and then to yet another one.

This story is part of an investigation conducted by an international team of journalists based at The Outlaw Ocean Project. Read the other stories here.

Congress has a plan to stop Trump’s attack on offshore wind. It may not be enough.

jbittle — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 18:37:59 GMT

The clean energy industry has learned the hard way that having the law on your side doesn’t always mean you win.

Since taking office for his second term, President Donald Trump has attempted to delay or cancel dozens of wind and solar projects. These projects all underwent extensive reviews to secure federal approval, but the Department of the Interior and other agencies have frozen their permits for vague “national security” reasons, or with no explanation at all. These attacks have all but tanked the offshore wind industry and have led many developers to take payouts from the administration rather than fight for permits.

This attack is one big reason why solar and wind companies have been supportive of efforts in Congress to negotiate a bipartisan “permitting reform” bill. A group of senators reached a compromise earlier this month on a bill they call the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act. Lawmakers won’t vote on it until after the midterm elections, but the renewable energy sector has hailed it as a win. The bill would speed up environmental reviews for all kinds of energy projects, from transmission wires to oil pipelines, and it also contains a number of provisions that are designed to deter current and future presidents from blocking clean energy. Trump reportedly told aides just before the compromise became public that he would ease up on wind projects in order to reach a deal.

Cracks are already emerging in the deal. While the renewable energy industry has remained steadfast in its support of the bill, a number of experts and key climate advocates are arguing that the “project certainty” provisions would do little to prevent Trump or another president from blocking solar farms and offshore wind turbines. The Trump administration itself threatened the compromise bill this week when it announced that it would review three permits for wind farms off the Atlantic Coast, including one that is already up and running.

“The administration’s action against [the wind projects] just further demonstrates the lengths they will go to to obstruct clean energy progress, especially offshore wind,” said Elizabeth Klein, who led the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, which oversees offshore wind permits, under former president Joe Biden.

The project certainty portion of the Senate bill has two key parts. First, it declares that the federal government “shall not take any new action that would revoke, rescind, withdraw, terminate, suspend, amend, or alter” a project that has already received a permit. This is just a forceful restatement of the status quo, since permits that are issued aren’t supposed to be canceled for no reason. But the bill goes further by offering companies two main remedies if the government does take such prohibited actions.

One is the reinstatement of the permit — which is somewhat redundant. Judges have already shot down the Trump administration’s past attempts to stop wind projects, but the administration is still seeking to revoke those permits. If the bill passes, all the courts would be able to do is order it in stronger terms to restore them.

The other remedy is a cash payout. The courts would be able to order the government to refund a project developer between 25 and 50 percent of the costs of their project, which for a big offshore wind farm could reach well into the billions. The money would come from the Judgment Fund, a bank account the federal government uses to pay out legal settlements. This fund typically disburses around $2 billion in settlements per year, and successful claims under the permitting bill could lead to a big spike in payouts.

The other key part of project certainty in the bill is an anti-discrimination clause that would ban “disparate treatment” of any particular energy source, whether it’s solar panels or coal plants. If a wind developer found evidence that the government denied them permits as part of an anti-wind pattern, they could present that evidence to a judge. If persuaded, the judge would then order the government to restore the permit and pay the developer the entire construction cost of the wind farm — albeit only if the developer finished building it.

Supporters of the bill argue that the promise of financial relief would help lure investors back to the renewable energy industry, which has been in turmoil under Trump. This is most important for offshore wind. Big companies like Ørsted and Equinor spent billions of dollars to build wind farms in the Atlantic under the Biden administration, but their costs ballooned after the pandemic snarled their supply chains and Trump tried to destroy their existing projects. These companies now view the United States as uninvestable, but Northeastern states still need a lot more offshore wind in order to meet their climate goals.

The cash payout provision is supposed to help make the U.S. seem like a less risky place to invest. The American Clean Power Association, a trade group representing wind and solar developers, said in its analysis of the bill that “greater certainty lowers financing risk before construction and reduces the chance that years of development and investment will be stranded by a later policy reversal.”

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island, gives a press conference about the Trump administration’s connection to fossil fuels. Whitehouse is one of the lead negotiators behind a bipartisan energy permitting bill. Photo by Tasos Katopodis / Getty Images

While the promise of reimbursement from the federal government would be good news for investors, it’s not clear that it would actually lead to more clean energy getting built. Opponents of the permitting reform bill point out that Trump has already been paying to stop renewable power plants from being built, albeit on a smaller scale. The president has worked out several deals to buy back offshore wind leases from energy developers in exchange for those developers committing to build a fossil fuel project elsewhere. These arrangements are being challenged in court, but in the meantime they function as repayments for leases that Trump intended to block.

The project certainty “provisions are unlikely to deter the Trump Administration from continuing to mess with clean energy permits, since this administration has shown an eagerness to use the public’s money to advance its own policy goals,” said Matthew Littleton, a former attorney at the U.S. Department of Justice who worked on environmental law issues.

Littleton also points out that the anti-discrimination provision may not work as intended. The baseline for calculating “disparate treatment” is the average pace of project approvals over the most recent five years. By the time Trump leaves office, he will have spent four years permitting oil and gas projects while delaying almost all major solar and wind efforts. This baseline would prevent wind developers from making a discrimination claim — while also preventing a future president from walking back support for new oil and gas.

As if to highlight these risks, the White House has said in court filings over the past week that it is seeking to rescind permits for three offshore wind projects on the Atlantic Coast. One of these projects, the 700-megawatt Revolution Wind, is already complete and delivering power to Rhode Island, while the other two are still in the early stages. In each filing, the government has said only that it seeks to “reevaluate … compliance” with federal law.

Over the past year, Democratic negotiators in the Senate have said that this sort of behavior would jeopardize any bipartisan deal. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, one of the authors of the bill, said in the spring that he would not endorse a compromise bill unless the administration stopped blocking wind farms. This week he appeared to change tack, and described the move against Revolution Wind as another reason to pass the bill. “Frankly, we need to get permitting certainty in law, and this proves it,” he said in a statement.

The bill would in fact offer financial protection to a company like Ørsted, ensuring that a president could not wreck billions of dollars worth of investment with no justification at all. The question is whether it could end the government’s prejudicial assault against offshore wind. The answer could determine how millions of people in the Northeast keep their lights on and heat their homes, and right now, it’s up in the air.

Long after the Maui fires, toxic metals linger in residents’ bodies

Chuck Squatriglia — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 08:45:00 GMT

In August of 2023, a series of wildfires broke out across Maui, killing more than 100 people, destroying thousands of homes, and causing billions in damage. Noelani Ahia, who is Kanaka Maoli and co-founder of Maui Medic Healers Hui, helped mobilize nearly 600 volunteers in Lāhainā, including doctors, nurses, and therapists.

Three years later, the housing and health crises remain acute. Maui Medic Healers Hui runs a free clinic, but Ahia wishes it had 10 more to address the community’s needs. “The fire may be out, but the catastrophe is not over by any stretch of the imagination,” she said.

The devastation extended well beyond the lives lost and buildings destroyed. Research published last year by researchers with the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa’s Maui Wildfire Exposure Study, or MauiWES, found that more than 1 in 5 residents had reduced lung function.

Now, new research from the same project has found elevated levels of toxic metals in the island’s residents months after the fires, with higher exposure associated with impaired lung function. The findings offer further evidence that the health consequences of catastrophic wildfires can persist long after the flames are extinguished and the smoke clears.

“What we consider and sometimes look at as a one-time event isn’t really one-time anymore,” Alika Maunakea, who is Kanaka Maoli and co-director of MauiWES, told Grist.

Researchers don’t yet know how much of the contamination came from the fires and how much was already present in the environment. That distinction matters as wildfires increasingly race through towns like Lāhainā and cities like Los Angeles, where burning homes, cars and infrastructure can leave contaminants that people encounter for months or years afterward.

Community members hold hands in a prayer circle at a “Lāhainā Strong” gathering in October 2023. Mario Tama / Getty Images

“We have traditionally thought about wildfire exposure primarily through the lens of smoke,” Maunakea said in a press release. “But when an entire community burns, we are dealing with a much more complicated exposure environment.” Researchers must also understand what contaminants were already present, what the fire may have released, and what entered residents’ bodies, he said.

The research, which studied 1,400 adults across Maui six to 18 months after the fires, measured 24 metals in urine samples. It found that participants had higher concentrations of several metals than people in a nationwide health survey conducted before the fires. That included 2.2 times as much arsenic, 2.3 times as much barium, and 3.8 times as much manganese. Antimony, which is used in flame retardant materials and has been previously linked to lung irritation, stomach pain, and other symptoms, was found at levels nearly 40 times higher.

Because the researchers lack comparable data from before the fires, they could not determine how much of the metal exposure resulted from the disaster. Maunakea told Grist answering that question is the next step for the project, which has received a $3.6 million grant from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. That work will include investigating whether and to what degree past agricultural and industrial activity contributed to the contamination.

“It’s important to realize that these are all part of settler colonialism,” Ahia said. “So what we’re looking at is confounding factors that are to the detriment of the health of our local people.”

Anita Hofschneider

Decades of plantation agriculture altered water systems, introduced herbicides, and displaced native plants, leaving a legacy on the islands that is still felt today. Disasters like fires and storms can compound those ongoing environmental problems.

“If we begin the story when the fire starts, we miss the decisions that shaped the landscape and the community’s ability to respond,” said Katie Kamelamela, who is Kanaka Maoli and an assistant professor at Arizona State University based in Hawaiʻi. “Micro climate change acts on places already shaped by histories of land ownership, water diversion, development, and unequal access to resources.”

Kamelamela said true recovery must look beyond the fire. “I want recovery to be measured by whether people can remain in their communities, care for ʻāina, and pass on their knowledge and practices in place,” she said, using the Hawaiian word for land, which carries deeper meaning and relationship than property or mere place. “Rebuilding should not recreate the same conditions that left people at risk. Caring for ʻāina and caring for people need to be funded and planned together.”

Maunakea said the multitude of intersecting pressures is one reason why he wanted to pursue this research. As climate change continues to accelerate, longstanding issues facing Native Hawaiians like housing, the harms of tourism, and the legacy of plantations can amplify problems. “We worry that disasters like this that we experience on Maui, as well as the floods and other storms that we’re experiencing now, is just going to continue widening the gaps in health disparities that already exist in those populations,” he said.

Moving forward, the project will not just identify health risks but also help residents respond to them. Study participants receive their results, discuss them, and meet with health professionals. “People now know that there’s these types of potential hazards, and what to do about them is a big concern,” Maunakea said. “We still don’t have all the answers for sure, but we are taking the next steps to get a better picture and inform our community around it.”

Advice from a climate therapist: Touch grass. (No, really.)

Claire Thompson — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 08:30:00 GMT

In my years as a psychotherapist, I’ve worked with many people facing similar struggles. One such pattern is embodied by a client I’ll call Emma (whose real name and identifying details I’ve changed for privacy purposes). She came to see me because, despite pursuing a climate career aligned with her values, practicing good self-care, and having a close community of friends, she couldn’t shake a persistent feeling of being “low.” She didn’t know what was missing.

Emma was invited to an event at a scenic destination — let’s say, for your mind’s eye, that it was a wedding in Alta Lakes, high in Colorado’s San Juan Mountains. Imagine a scene something like this: The cool scent of spruce and fir drifted through the open windows, along with the thin, mineral clarity of mountain air. Now and then two owls traded low hoots through the dark, and something slapped in the water out on the lake.

Emma lay listening for a long time. For reasons she couldn’t name, tears began to slide down her face, and soon she was sobbing.

She wasn’t sad or upset. She described a welling up of joy, a sort of homecoming moment — a deep remembering that felt familiar yet beyond the reach of words. It was, she said, like “drinking clear, cool water when you didn’t know you were thirsty.”

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!

Emma spent most of her workday in an office building. She loved to run, but usually on city streets with a podcast playing in her ears, or on a gym treadmill. Like most of us, she lived by a daily routine whose steady stream of input kept her separate from the natural world. She cared for nature, but it was cognitive, not visceral.

Our work focused on integrating what had lifted her mood during that experience in Colorado and keeping that connection alive in her everyday life.

We don’t need to go to the mountains to touch the living world within and around us. For Emma, it started small. She left her earbuds at home on some runs and let the wind and birdsong keep her company. She began each morning with a moment at the window watching the sky before opening her laptop. At lunch she found a beautiful tree in a nearby park and made it her regular spot to pause and sit, watching it change through the seasons.

I was reminded of Emma, and the other clients I’ve seen who were similarly feeling the sorrow of this detachment, when I read a question that came through the Ask a Climate Therapist form: “Why is it that working with animals and tending to plants helps process the grief, anxiety, and depression?”

This question-asker found the answer that Emma and others were seeking, but wanted to understand the “why” behind it. I can point to some of the science that backs this up: Compounds released by trees can boost the activity of our immune cells. Stroking an animal lowers stress hormones and can raise oxytocin. But I would also say that we don’t need academic journals to know these things. We feel better working with plants and animals because we can sense directly how life flourishes as a complex, interwoven system that we’re part of. When you water a garden or care for an animal, you’re practicing a form of reciprocity that’s also a way of caring for the future.

And so for you, reader of this column — wherever you may be at in your journey of connecting with, caring for, and feeling a sense of belonging in the natural world — remember that engaging with nature brings more than just joy; that restoration of connection actually supports and sustains your ability to do the larger work.

Below, I offer just a few practices to begin to cultivate that more mindful relationship. I would love to know about your regular practices, too. How do you create moments of connection and kinship with nature in your daily life? Reply to this email or reach out to lookingforward@grist.org to share them with the Grist team, and with me.

Practice tips:

There are many ways to cultivate an awareness of our place in the living world.

Listen to the mp3 “We are Nature” — a free resource I created to accompany my book, Transforming Climate Anxiety — for a guided experience of connection.
Take a daily sensory pause. Once a day, stop for one minute and notice what’s alive around you: Take the temperature of the air on your skin, notice a bird call or the smell after a rain. As you breathe, remember that the Earth’s trees and plants created the oxygen you’re taking in, and that your exhale feeds them in return.
Tend something — and say thank you. Water a plant, fill a birdfeeder, or care for a patch of garden. Reciprocity is how we take our place in the web of life: We receive and we give back.
Leave the earbuds at home from time to time. Try a walk or run with the wind, neighborhood sounds, and your own breathing as the soundtrack.

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.

Submit a question for a future Ask a Climate Therapist column

Trump just effectively killed a popular solar energy program for rural America

fgarza — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 08:15:00 GMT

Earlier this month, after a series of stops and starts, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced changes to a long-running program that is supposed to help farmers and rural small businesses stand up renewable energy projects.

The new rules, set to go into effect today, October 16, effectively make any solar power development ineligible for funding through the Rural Energy for America Program, or REAP. It’s the latest of multiple rollbacks by the second Trump administration that advocates say are essentially making the program unusable.

Installing solar systems on farmland can cost tens of thousands of dollars upfront, which many agricultural producers may not have or may be reluctant to spend, given their low profit margins. REAP has long provided financial support to farmers to build out renewable energy systems on their land.

These projects often provide multiple benefits to participants. First, they can help lower utility bills for agricultural producers and rural businesses by providing their operations with additional power. But farmers and business owners are also able to sell excess energy back to the grid. By cutting costs or padding revenue, these systems can be a lifeline at a time when farmers are facing escalating costs for things like fertilizer, fuel, labor, and seeds, making it difficult to make ends meet.

Research shows investing in renewable energy can also be an economic driver in rural parts of the country. “All of these things lined up,” said Matt Russell, the executive director of the Iowa Farmers Union, an independent organization representing family farmers. So for the Trump administration to “shift away from those kinds of win-win-win investments is very disappointing,” he added.

The Iowa Farmers Union is one of the plaintiffs in a lawsuit filed last month against the USDA, alleging that previous changes to REAP were already harming rural communities by severely restricting solar development under the program. (The lawsuit was filed on September 28, just days before the agriculture department published its new rules.)

The lawsuit takes aim at changes made to REAP in August 2025, following an executive order by President Donald Trump the previous month stating that taxpayers would no longer “subsidize expensive and unreliable energy sources like wind and solar.” Although the executive order did not instruct the USDA to do anything in particular, the office within the agriculture department that administers REAP changed the criteria for applicants such that most solar projects would become ineligible for grants or loan guarantees.

Part of the plaintiffs’ argument is that such a move violates the REAP statute. Lawmakers created REAP in 2008 as part of that year’s farm bill by combining two existing programs that sought to develop renewable energy and increase energy efficiency. “Rather than complying” with this mandate, “the agency has decided to completely ignore what Congress told them to do,” said Michael Youhana, an attorney at Earthjustice, the nonprofit environmental law group representing the plaintiffs. “In fact,” he added, the USDA is doing “the opposite of what Congress told them to do” by promoting the use of fossil fuels over renewables.

The lawsuit also alleges that these anti-solar moves from the USDA violate the Administrative Procedure Act, which essentially requires agencies to show that regulatory decisions were made through careful consideration. The USDA says “that they’re taking this action to protect farmland from being gobbled up by solar systems,” said Youhana. “But farmers are voluntarily applying for REAP, and they’re doing it because solar gives them all kinds of really great financial benefits that the agency has completely ignored.”

The USDA told Grist it “will not comment on pending litigation.” In an email to energy news site Utility Dive, a representative for the USDA said that under the Biden administration, “fertile farmland that should be feeding America” was used instead to produce solar power. “Those days are over. USDA will not actively participate in repurposing farmland historically used to sustain this country’s abundant food supply.”

Grist has previously reported on how the USDA’s abrupt freeze of REAP grants in the early days of Trump’s second term created confusion and chaos for small farmers who had already spent tens of thousands of dollars on energy upgrades. In March 2025, the agency released that grant money but asked participants to voluntarily revise and resubmit their applications without any mention of climate change. That summer, the USDA announced the anti-solar policy over which Earthjustice, along with the Environmental Law and Policy Center, are suing.

But the switch-ups didn’t stop there. A year later, in March 2026, the USDA effectively paused REAP as a whole, announcing it would suspend further grant awards until the program rules were rewritten to comply with Trump’s executive order from the year before.

This month, on October 1, the department published its final rule changes. They state that solar or wind projects on cropland involving “any component made in a country named as a foreign adversary” are no longer eligible for funding through REAP. Because so many parts of solar power systems are manufactured in China, this effectively means an end to any new solar development on farms through the once-popular USDA program.

Another change drags out the timeline for receiving funding; applicants must now have energy systems up and running for one year in order to be considered eligible for reimbursement.

These changes “more deeply entrench the anti-solar policy we’ve challenged in our lawsuit,” said Youhana. While “federal investments in renewable energy projects could help to offset rising energy costs, making life more affordable for farmers and the broader American public alike,” he added, the USDA seems to be moving in the opposite direction.

Russell argued that further restricting funding sources like REAP will only lead to the further consolidation of the agricultural industry, where only the biggest, wealthiest operations can survive, and the little guys suffer without adequate public support.

“It’s like stacking the deck against family farms, and entrepreneurial businesses in small towns that are trying to bootstrap themselves,” he said. “It’s picking winners and losers, and the losers are the very kinds of farms and businesses and communities that I think the vast majority of American taxpayers think that they’re investing in.”

This story has been updated with the USDA’s response to Grist’s request for comment.

Editor’s note: Earthjustice is an advertiser with Grist. Advertisers have no role in Grist’s editorial decisions.

Is coal really making a comeback?

kyodergrist — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 08:00:00 GMT

Coal was on the way out. That’s how it looked last year, anyway, when the International Energy Agency forecast that global demand for the dirtiest fossil fuel had plateaued and was poised to start declining. But this year hasn’t gone as expected. The agency recently projected that coal consumption will climb to a record high of 8.94 billion metric tons in 2026. Headlines have declared that coal is “back in fashion” and making a “comeback.”

So what changed? Blame it on the war in Iran, which choked off a chunk of the world’s oil and gas supply in the Strait of Hormuz and thrust the world into an energy crisis. Many countries turned to coal as a replacement. “The main thing is that coal is going up because gas is going down,” said Daan Walter, who leads strategy research on the future of energy for the think tank Ember.

As for the idea that there’s a revival of coal, energy experts aren’t convinced. “I think it’s important to distinguish between a small short-term bump in coal use and a genuine resurgence of the coal industry,” said Christine Shearer, a coal analyst at Global Energy Monitor, which tracks coal plants and other energy projects. According to some experts, there’s a more convincing case that the crisis will accelerate the adoption of renewables and clean technology.

Nearly every country around the world agreed to “phase down” coal at an international climate conference in Glasgow five years ago. Coal is the dirtiest source of electricity, releasing more carbon and more air pollutants, for every unit of energy generated, than oil or natural gas.

Mining companies and right-leaning politicians are using the energy crisis to argue for more coal. In June, the International Energy Agency said that investment in coal reached its highest level in 14 years. David Crisafulli, the premier of the Australian state of Queensland, recently said he’d welcome proposals for new coal-fired power stations to power Anthropic’s AI data centers. The mining company Northback is now working to reopen a former mine in Alberta, Canada, that closed almost 60 years ago, based on recent projections that the world will be in need of coal in the next decade as well as the prospect of profits.

“There’s a big sugar rush right now,” Walter said. But soon enough, the sugar crash may set in, perhaps in the years before these projects are completed. “They’re all rushing in, and they are all making, I think, reckless business plans,” he said.

The other half of the story is that the oil and gas crunch has also pushed countries toward renewables and clean technology, perhaps permanently destroying demand for oil. President Donald Trump and Israel’s attack on Iran in February sent oil and gas prices skyrocketing so high that some journalists compared it to putting a tax on carbon. It was the second oil shock in recent years, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and as a result of this unpredictability, countries are viewing wind and solar as a more secure option than fossil fuel imports.

Jake Bittle

The world is also seeing increased demand for electricity, for powering AI data centers as well as more AC units as temperatures rise. But much of this additional demand is being met by wind and solar. This growth in clean power has been one of many factors cushioning the economic effects of the oil shock so far, the International Monetary Fund said in a report on Monday, though it warned that the world was nearing the “limits of resilience” to withstand future shocks.

It almost creates a sense of whiplash to see headlines that the world is entering an “age of electricity” alongside others saying that coal is on the upswing. Yet both can be true. “The immediate response to an energy crisis can be more fossil fuel use, even as the longer-term response is to reduce dependence on those fuels altogether,” Shearer said.

Take India. This week, the head of its power sector said the country might be forced to add much more coal-fired power capacity than planned, driven by growing demand and lower hydroelectric output thanks to weaker monsoon rains. At the same time, India is aggressively building clean energy. The country has quadrupled its renewable capacity to about 300 gigawatts over the past decade, meaning that it’s well ahead of schedule for meeting its climate targets under the Paris Agreement.

Coal boosters might celebrate their industry’s growth over the next handful of years. But coal is simply taking up a larger share of the energy generated from fossil fuels, a slice that’s on track to shrink compared to other energy sources, Walter said. He likened it to being the most powerful man on the Titanic. “It’s a great party to have for a couple of hours, but then you’re going down with the ship.”

The Re-Rememberings of Bee Bishop

jstahl — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 13:00:00 GMT

These rememberings belong first and foremost to me, Bee Bishop. If you can read this and I am alive, you do not have my permission to consume this. If you can read this and I am dead/not born, please obtain permission from the living people in my immediate CareUnit before consuming. Unless it is an emergency, in which case, I consent.

(But if you are Momma, it’s gotta be a real emergency or it doesn’t count!)

Note: My great great great great grandmother wants me to remember her.
Source: her, herself.
Meeting: 8^th? 9^th? 22^nd? (She won’t confirm). 3^rd meeting post-remembering. (PR?)

Pretty sure the first time I met my great great great great grandmother was at the street corner that fell into the sea. She was probably sitting at the edge, asphalt and sand crumbling around her, hair slick with wet and salt, blackblackblack and fuzzy, the way hair used to be. Eyes too bright, red around the edges. (From swimming or tears? She never tells me.) Lips so dry I could see the cracks. The rest of her skin, soft, tootoo soft for all the wrinkles. OldYoung, like a painting of somebody dead. The way people look in dreams, which is how I know/feel it’s a dream.

I don’t remember the actual first time we met but that’s how she always looks and that’s where we always meet and that’s how I always know/feel.

And it’s hard, because I know now that we’ve met so many times BR (before remembering). And I think about that sometimes, how we might have gone my whole life, meeting, me forgetting, meeting, me forgetting (like a regular descendant) except now she’s asked me to remember.

So.

I’ve decided to start writing things down, just to be safe. I have water by my bedside, like quadruple greatgran told me to and I’m writing (with my hands!) notes earlyearlyearly before Momma gets me up for school. Upside, I’m prepared: Handwritten diaries have always been the only way to keep anything from Momma and Aunkie Jay and I honestly doubt those two would be able to read this on the off chance they found it somehow.

Which is good because, for now, I am not telling anyone. Quadruple greatgran isn’t very forthcoming on the “why me???” of it all, so there is no way to confirm why it’s happening. She could just be agitated by something random, reaching out to the first person who fell asleep in the family home.

There might not be a reason why it’s me. There probably isn’t a reason. Anyway.

Note: Quadruple greatgran did not want to have children.
Source: her, herself.
Meeting: 6^th meeting post-remembering. (PR?)

The Nation hasn’t issued a New Law in decades, maybe even a century, but they did today. I think that must be why quadruple greatgran and the rest of the deadfam are antsy. It makes the most sense.

But quadruple greatgran won’t confirm that that’s why. So, I still can’t tell anyone yet about these rememberings.

Because if I tell them they are going to assume I’m Transitioning.

And, I mean, I haven’t even gotten my first blood yet! I just got used to sharing a room with Baby Tash and ze are gonna miss me if I have to move to a new place and Sammie from down the street says Second Transition rituals for womb-bearers are way harder than everyone else’s Second Transition rituals, which isn’t fair and is maybe even sexist! (Sexist is an old word I learned back in history class last year. It’s a type of not fair from back when gender was less fun). And if I was Transitioning for realreals, I’d have to go to a whole new school and start a whole new chore schedule and I don’t want to do all of that if this is just a mistake!

And yeah, I know it’s dangerous. If I am Transitioning it’s practically suicidal not to tell anyone, especially with a Second Transition, especiallyespecially with a possi-Gift like deadspeaking. And if my calling is something big? If I’m, like, a TruthKeeper or something?

But also, also, also, it might be a one-off. It’s not abnormal for spirits to become more talkative when the world shifts.

So, for now, I’m just gonna write it all down and keep it all secret. Sammie from down the street used to make fun of me for taking handwriting because hir thought it was a stupid elective, but that’s because hir don’t got no imagination. Sure, singspeaking whale seems cooler than learning to write with your hands, but handwriting is way better code because almost everybody can speak a little bit of whale but almost nobody even wants to write with their hands anymore. Old stuff is super useful, especially when it comes to secrets.

And it makes sense to keep this secret or at least I think so. Quadruple greatgran doesn’t approve, but she promised not to warn Momma or Aunkie Jay that I’m lying to them. Just muttered “this is why I didn’t want children” and turned into sea foam before letting me wake up.

It was a supesdrama exit, but maybe deadfam are just like that, dramatic without even trying.

And yes, Momma will skin me alive if she finds out that I hid a Transition from her. But I really don’t think that’s what this is. And even if I’m wrong, then at least this will be a record, so if I die, Caretakers can still learn from me. And that’s the most important thing anyway.

So.

For now, it will stay a secret. For now.

Note: There are others who want to talk to me, but they don’t wanna overwhelm me.
Source: quadruple greatgran, but also the sea.
Time: 10^th meeting PR.

I don’t think quadruple greatgran is just quadruple greatgran. I think she might be a bit of the sea from way back when, and some earth too (groundearth, not bodyearth). She might be a bit of other deadfam members as well, cause I know they don’t always stay separateseparate on that side of the veil. But it’s weird, cause she looks weird you know? She looks pre-Unionification human, nothing of the earth visibly on/in her. No roots for toes, no seashells for fingernails. And her hair! It’s just so strange.

I once read that backback when, hair was made of dead human skin cells (ew) and that’s why humans in those days were so disconnected from everything, cause their heads could only grow dead them. That’s what quadruple greatgran’s hair looks like, like how hair looked when it was just dead bodystuff growing out of people’s head instead of a living reminder that we are only one tiny part of a larger organism.

And yeah, I guess my hair is weird too because gold is weird because technically it’s not of the earth, it’s like spacestuff that got trapped on Earth, but it’s part of Earth now and it was part of Earth when we Transformed so it’s part of me and like 2% of the population and sure that’s super rare but its way more normal than dead skin.

It’s much better our way, heads growing things from the earth, like flowers and leaves and granite andandand. Not, that we had much choice. If we had stayed the way we were, the Earth would have totally gotten rid of us. I mean it was already trying to and for good reason! We had to become more of it so we could survive all the ways it was constantly changing, adapt the way it adapted so it couldn’t out-adapt us altogether. Or at least, that’s what the Firster teachers say. It’s been forever since The Unionfication so the whys of it are all vague and legendy. But I think there must be some truth to the stories, because we don’t suffer through The Horribles like inverted seasons and unnatural storms anymore. After the Unionfication and the first laws of The Nation were passed, real healing started to happen, and we’ve been healing ever since. And you can see that healing, just by looking at your fellow human, watching how they are not one thing but lots of things.

Which is to say, quadruple greatgran looks weird, like back when humans had tricked themselves into thinking they were “individuals,” but she feels normal, like she’s lots of stuff all rolled into one. But it’s not normal stuff, it’s spirit stuff, so yeah, she feels more normal than she looks but not quitequite normal, you know?

My point is I don’t know what she’s made of. And I’m pretty sure when you deadspeak, it’s like a cardinal rule to know all of who you’re speaking to. But I don’t know how you figure that out and deadspeaking practicum books are practically forbidden to Firsters like me. Under normal circumstances, I would just trick Sammie from down the street to get me a book from hir school library, since what’s the point of them becoming a Seconder before me if they’re not gonna at least sneak me books, but ever since they Transitioned they’ve been kinda “I’m so mature” about everything, which means they could end up asking too many questions which means they could end up blabbing which means I could get caught.

So, I just have to trust quadruple greatgran is mostly who she says she is. And usually that’s fine but sometimes it’s less fine.

Like, before I left today, the sea crashed real conversationlike and she had to shush it. Only then did she admit that other deadfam want to tell me things, but they can’t because I’m too little and they can’t risk overwhelming me.

I wanted to say “I’m already kindabit overwhelmed” but I’m pretty sure she knows that.

No first blood, no boobs, no hair in new places, no MoodSwings, no zipzaps in my tummy, nothing that would serve as a clear sign that this is a Transition. My body is still firmly in Firster territory, and yet here she is, every night, with her weirdweird hair and dry lips, talking circles at me.

Is it silly to say I’m tired?

Note: Quadruple greatgran was not an enslaved person.
Source: her, herself.
Time: 18^th meeting PR.

Quadruple greatgran don’t often talk in sentences, just mostly in stories. (This is typical of ancestors, I know, but still weird to experience). Tonight, she told me about sirens. I knew a little already, how they are like mermaids but mean? But she told the story different from how our mythology books talk about them.

For one her sirens didn’t live in the oldold myth places like the seas in the Odyssey. They lived on the coast of one of the newold places, the ones from real history but pre Unionfication, back when the world had things like “countries” and “states” instead of RegionGroups and CareUnits. Quadruple greatgran’s sirens lived in the ocean next to a “continent” called “Africa.”

She said there were people, regular people, who were born, stolen from their homes in the bright of day and told they weren’t people anymore. They were locked away, first in cages, then on ships, and some of them got soso sadscared they jumped overboard. But the sharks took pity on them, ripping their throats open so they could relearn how to breathe underwater, since most humans didn’t have gills during that era. And so, the stolen/now unstolen people became the first to remember how to choose to become something different in the face of being forced to become something different. From then on, every time a ship would pass by, carrying the unstolen peoples’ relatives, the sirens would sing to them how to transform themselves, and the ones who could hear would jump, opening themselves to the sharks, the ocean, and a new way of being.

I asked quadruple greatgran if she was one of the unstolen people who became a siren and she laughed at me. Apparently, she isn’t that old.

Of course, first thing I did when I woke up was try to find a story that matched her story, just so I could understand it better, but the closest I could find on The Wide Web was an oldold book about something called The Transatlantic Slave Trade. I only read like a few pages and it was really depressing. Plus, according to the book, the people who jumped overboard didn’t become sirens. Of course, the book is oldold, from back when history was mostly made up and not in a good way.

So, I’d rather believe quadruple greatgran.

True or oppositetrue though, I know enough about ancestral cross-realm communication to know that all stories are important. But I still don’t know why she’s telling me. Like, I just keep thinking “why me?” over and over and over. While I’m at school, while I’m at the farm, while I’m re-purifying the homewater, during the pledge to the Earth ceremony, just constantly “why me why me why me.” Cause I’m like the worst age for this, for realreal. I’m not 2, like Tash, so I can’t just do any of this on instinct, and I’m not old, like gran, so I can’t rely on being an elder. I’m only 11. I should be getting pinpricks of possi-Gift, maybe some cramps to go with it, not full-out deadspeaking!

But there has to be a reason. Deadfam don’t reach out to anyone for no reason, specially not longdeads like quadruple greatgran.

So. Hypotheses!

1: The New Law.

As I noted earlier in these rememberings, one of the most probable causes for all this deadspeaking is The New Law that was passed by The Nation a little while ago. Thing is, it’s a big thing but it’s not a big thing. It’s a big thing because The Nation hardly ever bothers to make new laws anymore, not since the early days of the Unionfication. Most governing is left to the RegionGroups, most everything else left to CareUnits. So, the fact that they bothered to make a law at all is a big thing.

But the law itself is not a big thing. All we gotta do is give a yearly tribute of bodyearth to The Nation for the global Unionfication ceremony, to show our dedication to the Earth and to a Unified Humanity. Worst case scenario, I have to cut my hair more often because my CareUnit is def gonna wanna include pure gold in the tribute. And yeah, life will probably be more annoying for a bit, like back when our RegionGroup re-allowed bodyearth to be used as trading materials and everyone was trying to steal my hair all the time. But this won’t really be like that at all because it will only be once a year. And it’s a ritual, which deadfam usually love. And quadruple greatgran hasn’t mentioned the law at all.

Still.

2: The deadfam have marked me as a TruthKeeper.

Which is unfair, to be honest. I’m not the only person who has ever been born in time to lead A Final Transition ceremony. I mean, I can’t deny that it’s pretty rare, especially in my CareUnit where natural birth is still a thing. Add to that that great greatgran was blessed with dementia before she passed, so she was not only a RealmCrosser but also a TimeCrosser at the point of her Final Transition, which means I was exposed to veil and time travel during the first few months of my life. Add to that my hair. So, I mean, yeah, it wouldn’t be the first time someone assumed I was a TruthKeeper. BUT. BUT. BUT. Until my Second Transition truly arrives, nothing is for certain. I could end up having a regular zegular degular gift like storm-sensing or deep empathy. And I mean honestly, what I would give to be a normal old empath instead of a TruthKeeper. Just the THOUGHT of the coursework I’ll have to endure if I end up training under Aunkie Zel? They’re the only Truthkeeper for miles and they’re LEGENDARY at the Seconder school for being supersuper scary and kindasorta harsh. I’ve only seen her once, afterduring my First Transition when I was like 3, but I still remember her eyes, all darkdarkdark and deepdeep. And when he deadspoke? His voice was all two-toned and vibratey in my guts. And would it be cool to be able to talk like that? I mean sure, but not cool enough for all the work I gotta do. And besides, even if deadspeaking ends up being one of my gifts and even if TruthKeeping ends up being my calling, none of that is known yet. Predetermined aptitude doesn’t make me qualified for this. I mean, my bones might remember those finalfirst days with great great grandma, but my mind doesn’t! I’m as unknowledgeable as anyone else and until I’m trained, no one should be marking me as anything, just to be safe.

3: I am Transitioning.

Except I’m not.
I’m not.
I’m not I’m not I’m not because I don’t want to. I like this body and this house and my school and place in life and I’m not ready for all that to change yet. I already lost Sammie from down the street to a stupid Transition, I’m not gonna lose everyone else.

Note: My great great great great grandmother survived one of the Major apocalypses!
Source: her, herself.
Meeting: 27^th meeting PR.

WHOA WHOA WHOA SO GUESS WHO KNOWS WHAT TIME PERIOD QUADRUPLE GREATGRAN IS FROM?

(It’s me.)

So, I don’t know if it even counts as a real win because it was kinda Oh Duh-ish. But STILL.

So, she was telling me about the sirens again (most of her stories are about sirens actually) but this time they weren’t in “Africa” they were in a place called “New Orleans.” Now I know about New Orleans because it being swallowed by the ocean was one of The Great Horribles that led to the Unionfication. (It was rebuilt later and is one of the more famous CareUnits now cause its rituals are oldold). But quadruple greatgran was talking about when it was a still old New Orleans. She said that it was a slipslider spot, somewhere where so many people lived and breathed and were with each other, nothing was too definite, nothing was one thing. And in this place, there were storms, reminders even their big strong buildings weren’t meant to be forever. But there was one storm, one badbad storm that destroyed soooo much. She came in hard and wreaked so much havoc. But she was a storm, nobody could blame her for doing what it was in her nature to do. What made it badbad was after. After, the people of New Orleans were surrounded by a Big Change and instead of their “government” helping them Transition, they abandoned them. Left them to suffer all alone.

So, the sirens came. Collected them from where they were drowning and sang them how to be different. Taught them how to live different when the people they trusted left them to die.

I asked her if she was one of those sirens, the ones who transformed during the storm and she said no, but she could have been. EasyEasy. She could have been.

Now, there are a lot of storms that hit New Orleans back when it was New Orleans, but the one that comes up most in the archives is the one named Katrina. So, I think quadruple greatgran must be from around then. Which means, she saw at least some of The Great Horribles.

Which means, if she’s scared of whatever’s coming … it’s gotta be bad.

Note: Why Tributes All of the Sudden?
Source: my brain.
Meeting: 28^th meeting.

I was sitting in class today when it hit me: The Nation hasn’t issued a law in so many years and when they finally decree something it’s not even a real law. It’s some weird decree demanding people’s bodyearth. Why? CareUnits usually are the ones dabbling in ritual. Why all of a sudden would there be a whole law for something that seems mostly for show? And bodyearth? Why not groundearth? Why not crafted pieces? Why not words or thoughts or prayers? Why our bodies?

The Unionfication Ceremony has never been drama. It’s always just been a day to not work and say the pledge to the Earth together. Now, it’s gonna be a whole thing. A realreal Ceremony. With bodyearth. The more I think about it, the weirder it is. Since when do they need people to give parts of their bodies for anything, much less a day most people just use as an excuse to over-eat?

I asked quadruple greatgran why she thinks they passed the New Law. The sea got wayway rocky, the sky dark, and her eyes scaryscaryscary. She answered me by telling a story, about a kingdom, that believed time would stop if they didn’t eat the hearts of their enemies. So, they killed all these people, terrified that if they didn’t, all they knew would cease to be anymore.

I don’t know what kinda answer that is. I woke up with my teeth grinding. And I’m a tinybit mad cause it took me forever to kick that habit the first time. If it starts up again, Momma’s gonna have a fit.

Note: The deadfam think a Change is coming.
Source: great great great great grandma and also my stomach.
Meeting: 33 meetings PR.

Tonight, quadruple greatgran asked me to tell her a story. She didn’t give me any time to prepare, which I think is mean, but she doesn’t super care what I think. So.

I told her about Tash being born. I was the youngest, so I co-led the First Transition/birthing process with the doula. I sang to the baby when it was coming into being in Momma’s uterus. I told them all about Momma and Aunkie Jay and Daddy (even though I knew the baby would never meet Daddy) and about our CareUnit and about how much they were gonna love it here. I would help make Momma weird food for her cravings and massage her feet and dance softly with the palms of my hands on her stomach, so the baby would learn dancing early. And sometimes I would just sit, head in Momma’s lap, whispering “It’s gonna be ok” over and over and over. Because I knew how scary Transitions were. How dangerous and hard. How you can’t do anything about them coming. But I knew if the baby, if Tash, could survive this? Their first Transition? I would be there for all the others. They would have me and a whole bunch of other people, waiting to support them. We would be like the sirens, guiding them to this new strange place filled with people who already loved them, who were excited to meet them, who were patient and caring and ready to teach them how to breathe different, how to become something they would have never imagined they could become.

And when Tash came into the world, they cried, loud wailing that only babies get away with. And I helped washed them off, and kissed their tiny face, and sang to them again. And they remembered my voice. They remembered.

Qudruple greatgran smiled after I finished. It’s the first time she’s ever smiled at me, I think.

I don’t know how I feel about it.

Note: I’m scared.
Source: me, myself.
Meeting: 43 meetings PR.

Whatever this is, it’s got to be more than just me Transitioning. It’s like, I can feel it, something big, something coming that can’t be stopped. Something where maybe everyone is gonna have to learn how to breathe different.

I’m scared. Scared I won’t be able to learn how to be different fast enough or good enough or or or.

So, I’ve decided to tell Momma and Aunkie Jay what’s been happening with me. Quadruple greatgran approves. Which is good, I guess. But I’m nervous about it. Momma can be … Momma.

But … I don’t think this is something I can do alone. And I don’t think I’m meant to.

Quadruple greatgran with her dry lips and weird hair isn’t alone. I can tell, out on the sea, that she’s got people to be with. Sirens maybe?

So, I’m going to tell Momma. And she’s gonna tell everyone else. And whatever’s coming, we will become whatever we need to become to survive it.

We’ll have to.

AriDy Nox is a multi-disciplinary black femme storyteller with a variety of forward-thinking creative works under their belt, including the historical reimagining of the life of Sally Hemmings Black Girl in Paris (2020), the ancestral reckoning play A Walless Church (2019), the cross-generational magical realism Freshwater Play (2020) series and many others. Their tales are offerings intended to function as small parts of an ancient, expansive, awe-inspiring tradition of world-shaping created by black femmes and with black femmes at the center. They have been inordinately privileged to share the workings of their imagination in collaboration with a vast array of inspiring and supportive artists of various radical backgrounds throughout the country.

Taj Francis has blazed a trail within the contemporary visual art scene, distinguishing himself through his unmistakable visual style. His artistic endeavours have included murals, animation, illustrations, motion graphics, and providing artistic direction and graphic design for a diverse clientele such as HBO, Universal Studios, Netflix, Simon and Schuster Publishing, Samsung, and PURE Chocolate Jamaica. A resident of Kingston, Jamaica, Francis attended the Edna Manley College of the Visual & Performing Arts. His work has earned industry accolades and garnered features in various local and international publications, including ARC Magazine, AfroPunk, Vanity Fair, and Vice.

A new report just busted another myth about heat pumps

msimon — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 11:00:00 GMT

You may have heard by now that heat pumps — which transfer warmth from outdoor air to an indoor space, instead of generating it like a furnace — don’t work when it gets really cold out. That’s incorrect, as models designed for frigid climes can keep you toasty even in the dead of winter. Don’t believe me? Look no further than the Nordic countries, which have fully committed to them despite the region’s not-exactly-balmy winters.

OK, so heat pumps are more efficient than ever, which is why Americans seem to be warming up to the appliances. But surely, since they’re electric, switching to them en masse will push the grid to collapse? That’s also false. A new report from the energy thinktank RMI finds that thanks to “headroom” in the grid during the winter months, three-quarters of U.S. homes — some 109 million — could adopt the technology, no problem. That would significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions and slash electric bills by over 20 percent in some states.

“A substantial number of homes can upgrade to heat pumps within the headroom today,” said Ryan Shea, a manager in the organization’s buildings team. “We’d be better utilizing the grid capacity that’s already there, that essentially spreads those costs across more kilowatt-hours, and everyone benefits with a lower electricity rate.”

What is this headroom, exactly? It’s the difference between the grid’s generation capacity and demand in winter. Typically, the need for electricity is highest in the summer, when millions of air conditioners gobble tremendous amounts of power. In the winter, many folks instead heat their homes with gas furnaces, so they’re getting that energy elsewhere, relieving strain on the grid. This means that during colder months, there’s additional capacity to provide power.

“That’s where we see moving to heat pumps, adding that electrical load in the winter, where there is all that available grid capacity, is a way to add load to the grid without needing to build it out more,” Shea said. In other words, keeping 109 million heat pumps running through the winter wouldn’t require, say, heaps of new gas-fired power plants.

This buffer, though, isn’t the same state to state or region to region. For one, climates are different: In Phoenix, summers are way hotter than in Boston, requiring more AC, with much milder winters, requiring less heating. How local utilities generate electricity matters, too. Gas power plants can run year-round, but with more solar coming online, generation dips in the winter as the days grow shorter. To compensate for this, utilities are building sprawling battery farms to store energy, and experimenting with using electric vehicles as a vast network of backup power. (They’re even using Earth itself as a giant battery for longer-duration storage.) Either way, renewables and batteries are combining to make the grid more reliable than it is with fossil fuels, and much more flexible no matter the time of year, further reducing costs for ratepayers.

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The US may be hitting a tipping point for heat pumps

Matt Simon

The ultimate goal is for heat pumps to replace fossil fuels as the dominant way of warming and cooling our homes. (Yes, heat pumps can cool a space by transferring warmth from inside to outside.) But they also need to replace electric resistance heating, like space heaters. These appliances are especially common in the Pacific Northwest and the Southeast, which endure less punishing winters than the Northeast. These giant toasters are, of course, a better option than a gas furnace, as they’re inherently more efficient and don’t poison homes. But heat pumps are around three to four times more efficient, meaning they require less electricity and therefore demand less from the grid. This could theoretically save households switching from resistance heating an average of $1,530 a year, according to RMI’s previous research.

So how can the U.S. accelerate its shift to heat pumps? For one, AC units that go kaput should be replaced with heat pumps. States can provide rebates to encourage people to make the switch. When a state puts its collective mind to it, the transition can happen faster than you think: Maine (again, another place not known for comfortable winters) blew past its goal of installing 100,000 heat pumps two years ahead of schedule. Oddly enough, simply building more apartments — tackling the housing crisis is a rare bit of agreement between Democrats and Republicans — is a sneaky way to get more heat pumps into units.

Instead of crashing the grid, then, heat pumps working in all American climates (even Alaska) will reduce electricity costs for owners — and rates overall — while making the system as a whole more flexible. As affordability dominates the conversation in American politics, the heat pump could well emerge as a superstar, a rare feat for an appliance. “We really think there’s a reason to include heat pumps within those affordability plans,” Shea said, “and try to really establish some heat pump installation goals.”

Brazil’s election could determine the fate of the Amazon

calderngrist — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 08:45:00 GMT

Brazilians filling out presidential ballots earlier this month saw three-term incumbent Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva pitted against Senator Flávio Bolsonaro. Environmental observers saw something else: a referendum on the future of the Amazon rainforest.

“We are very serious about the risks for the Amazon if Flávio wins the election, because he is a climate denier,” said Carlos Nobre, a climate scientist currently at the University of São Paulo’s Institute for Advanced Studies. “If this candidate is elected, certainly deforestation in the Amazon will increase. We are in a very serious situation.”

Flávio Bolsonaro, son of imprisoned former president Jair Bolsonaro, is campaigning on an agribusiness-friendly, deregulatory agenda. In the first round of voting, he finished 2.2 million votes ahead of Lula. With neither candidate securing the requisite 50 percent needed to be declared the winner outright, the two will head to a runoff on October 25.

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, left, and Senator and presidential candidate Flávio Bolsonaro in October 2026. Pablo Porciuncula / Mauro Pimentel / AFP vai Getty Images

Taken at face value, Bolsonaro and Lula would appear to have similar rainforest policies. Lula promises net-zero deforestation by 2030; Bolsonaro promises zero illegal deforestation by 2029. Legal is the operative term. Bolsonaro’s platform argues for an “agile, modern” environmental licensing process that “will no longer serve as a way to block those seeking to invest and create jobs.”

Monica de Bolle, an economist at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, argues a Bolsonaro win would amount to a repeat of his father’s term, which saw an increase in clearing, a plummeting of environmental infraction notices, and a near doubling of carbon emissions in Amazonia in 2019 and 2020, compared to the average levels between 2010 and 2018.

Jair Bolsonaro “basically dismantled the enforcement structure,” de Bolle said. “Which is, I think, what would likely happen again.”

Each year runs August to July and is assigned to the president who was in office for most of it.

Omnipresent but non-voting in the coming election is the Amazon itself, which stands at the edge of farm country and stores something on the order of 175 billion metric tons of carbon, equivalent to roughly 15 years of global carbon dioxide emissions. The planet’s largest tropical rainforest, the Amazon is big enough to make its own weather: Water drawn up by its trees ultimately accounts for up to half of the region’s rainfall.

Affronting the forest is a menagerie of harms, from drought to fire and logging to clear-cuts. And while the Brazilian Forest Code permits landowners to cut up to 20 percent of their Amazon properties, the monitoring network MapBiomas recently estimated that 97 percent of Amazon land clearing in 2025 showed signs of illegality.

An aerial view of an illegal mining area at Tapajos Environmental Protection Area in the Amazon rainforest, in southwestern Para State, Brazil, in May 2026. Evaristo Sa / AFP via Getty Images

Under Lula’s current term, clearing rates in the Amazon have fallen every year. If Brazil returned to the elder Bolsonaro’s deforestation pace, the rainforest would lose about 17,600 square miles over the next four years, versus about 8,900 square miles at the 2025 rate: a difference in landmass approximately the size of Belize.

The first-round election results suggest agricultural interests likely played a role in Bolsonaro’s strong performance. Lula lost vote share in almost every municipality in the country relative to his 2022 results. But in municipalities where agriculture accounts for more than half of the local economy, his vote share fell by nearly 8 points: triple his loss in non-agricultural areas.

If Brazil’s next administration accelerates clearing, the effects could be devastating for the rainforest, the people who call it home, and the industries on which its continued health depends. For decades, forest and climate scientists have warned of a brutal tipping point: Cut enough of the forest down and the water cycle won’t be strong enough to sustain a rainforest ecosystem. Instead, the area would morph into savanna and degraded forest — causing a net release of planet-warming carbon and depriving nearby soybean farms of rain.

The actual tipping point in question is multi-causal and difficult to estimate, but the most frequently quoted deforestation threshold is 20 to 25 percent clearing across Amazonia, a range first suggested in 2018 by Nobre and U.S. conservation biologist Thomas Lovejoy. The duo argued that “negative synergies between deforestation, climate change, and widespread use of fire” would send the forest into a feedback loop once this threshold is passed. A Nature study published in May of this year estimated the tipping-point range to be closer to 22 to 28 percent clearing when paired with the 1.5 to 1.9 degrees Celsius (2.7 to 3.4 degrees Fahrenheit) of global warming the world is likely to experience by mid-century.

About 18 percent of the Amazon — which spans nine countries — and 22 percent of the Brazilian Amazon have already been cleared.

Nico Wunderling, a climate scientist at Goethe University Frankfurt who led May’s Nature study, estimated a return to Jair Bolsonaro-era practices would clear about 1 percent of the Amazon basin’s rainforest over the next presidential term. At this rate, “we would reach the danger zone by the middle or end of the 2030s,” he told Grist.

Conversely, if Lula delivered on his pledge of net-zero deforestation by the early 2030s, Wunderling argues runaway feedback might yet be avoided. While climate change is a global process requiring global coordination, deforestation is “the lever that can be pulled back more easily,” he said.

The late 2030s is beyond the term covered by this election cycle, and the exact science of the tipping point remains uncertain. But the result of this election could still set the Amazon rainforest on its ultimate path. Ronaldo Christofoletti, an oceanographer at the Federal University of São Paulo, likened the situation to insuring a vehicle. “Why do I pay the insurance? Because an accident can happen. When? I don’t know.”

For Christofoletti, the electoral stakes are all about managing this uncertainty. “Do not expect magic from scientists,” he said. “Do trust that the tipping point is getting closer.”

The Bolsonaro campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

In the meantime, organized agribusiness is pushing for Bolsonaro in the runoff election. The Parliamentary Agricultural Front, Brazil’s primary agribusiness lobby, recently endorsed Flávio Bolsonaro, who has promised that the caucus will choose his minister of agriculture.

Even if Bolsonaro doesn’t win the October 25 runoff, agribusiness may already have done so. On October 4, Bolsonaro’s party won 121 House seats, the most any party has held since the Brazilian Constitution was promulgated in 1988. An analysis by the Brazilian Amazon-based news platform Sumaúma suggests that half of the incoming House has voted to loosen environmental licensing and limit Indigenous land claims.

For agribusiness, that means the currently off-limits may soon be in play. “Even if Lula gets reelected,” said de Bolle, “he’s going to be very weak.”

Magic: The Gathering draws a bad hand with El Niño

jramirez — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 08:30:00 GMT

On a Saturday morning in September, the game shop Dice Dojo was packed. Players sat shoulder-to-shoulder at tables lining the far North Side Chicago shop with board games stacked from floor to ceiling and a giant yellow Pikachu on the wall. They were eagerly waiting to crack open boxes of the latest Magic: The Gathering trading cards and face off in a tournament.

Noel Camilotas spent most of the day pacing past rows of packed tables and helping players decipher the rules of the hotly anticipated new set. When he was done for the day, he walked out of the store with two boxes of cards.

Despite that haul, Camilotas had hoped for more.

“Some of the products I requested are not going to be available for me anytime soon,” he said. “One of the other products is not going to be available for purchase at all.”

Wizards of the Coast, a division of the toy giant Hasbro, announced in August that delivery of its new set of Magic cards would be delayed throughout North America. The company pointed to a drought-powered traffic jam at the Panama Canal through which nearly 6 percent of global maritime trade and about 40 percent of U.S. container traffic pass. The drought this year has been magnified by the El Niño climate pattern, which spikes air and surface water temperatures in parts of the Pacific Ocean and sets off extreme weather like floods and drought across the globe. The phenomenon has compounded the effects of rising global temperatures, adding to drought conditions in Central America and upending international maritime traffic.

A bottleneck in the Panama Canal has made it harder for fans of Magic: The Gathering to buy the game’s latest Reality Fracture expansion set. Pat Nabong / Chicago Sun-Times

The delay is an early warning sign for how susceptible one of the world’s most important shipping lanes is in the face of a warming planet and what experts warn could be the strongest El Niño in history.

“Supply will be tighter at launch than anticipated as those boosters make their way through the logjam,” according to the card game’s website.

Magic: The Gathering has amassed more than 50 million players worldwide since its introduction in 1993. The game has birthed an entire media ecosystem as well as a robust resale market for rare cards. The rapper Post Malone reportedly purchased a one-of-a-kind card based on the One Ring from a Lord of the Rings-themed set for $2 million.

To win the game, players take the role of powerful, spell-slinging wizards and compete to see who can draw the most cards, cast the biggest spells, and defeat opponents by reducing their life points to zero. Cards are spells, and each player has an endlessly customizable deck of cards that draw on a massive catalogue that grows several times a year. New sets are released every few months.

The model has been tremendously successful. The game has made its parent company Hasbro more than $1 billion in revenue in just the first half of this year. But the trading game now faces an unexpected real-world challenge: El Niño.

“Even in our little corner of the multiverse, the supply chain affects us.”

“The result of an El Niño for Central America is a very strong drought,” said Ross Griffith, the head of Americas freight pricing at Argus Media, a U.K.-based agency tracking commodity prices. Between May and August this year, parts of Panama received rainfall about a third below the long-term average, raising concerns about water levels at the freshwater reservoirs that supply drinking water to the region and provide the water needed to lift and lower ships through the canal’s system of locks.

People play Magic: The Gathering at Dice Dojo, a game shop in Chicago. Pat Nabong / Chicago Sun-Times

As a result, the Panama Canal Authority began restricting traffic, cutting daily vessel crossing slots by nearly 20 percent. That bottleneck drove up the fees shipping companies paid to cross the canal in September to as high as $5.3 million, topping the previous $4.6 million record set the previous month. Such restrictions are not new. During the last El Niño in 2023, daily crossings had dropped even lower.

El Niño is expected to last into early 2027 and could exacerbate Panama’s upcoming dry season, according to Ross, who added that the delayed Magic cards could be just the beginning of El Niño-induced knock-on effects.

“If you have drought conditions on top of a typically more dry period, even what little replenishment you were getting then is probably not coming,” he said. “That can be really dangerous.”

So, at least for now, card collectors in Chicago and beyond will likely be waiting longer than usual.

“Some products are now coming in waves,” Emma Hendren, the general manager at Dice Dojo, said on that Saturday in September. “We’re not going to have it available for sale today. We’re not certain when it’s going to arrive, unfortunately.”

Magic players are used to dealing with limited quantities or even delayed cards, but the current El Niño-powered disruption is new.

“Magic: The Gathering is all fantasy and all that stuff,” Joshua Wiltsie, who has been playing Magic for 30 years, said. “Even in our little corner of the multiverse, the supply chain affects us.”

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