B5. Resilience, Third Nature, and Transition

What does a bat-killing fungus have to do with the municipal bond market?

More than you might think. And the link points to the possibility of harnessing investors’ pursuit of profits to help biodiversity.

“This isn’t about conserving bats for bats’ sake,” said Yale University economist Eli Fenichel. “It’s about conserving bats to help communities reduce the cost of borrowing money for all manner of things.”

Conservationists are constantly looking for ways to entice people to invest in protecting wildlife. While “it’s good for the planet” is a common argument, appeals to altruism often fail to unlock the money researchers say is needed. Proponents of biodiversity instead appeal to people’s self-interest, whether it’s touting the role biodiversity protections can play in preventing human diseases, capturing carbon, controlling pests or various other human-centered benefits.  

 But what if wildlife conservation efforts could tap directly into financial markets, without needing to create a novel investment tool like biodiversity credits? Bats’ appetite for crop-eating insects and the connection between local farm income and government bond prices illustrates how that might work, Fenichel and colleagues at Yale and the University of Tennessee argue in a recent paper in Science.

“This approach reframes biodiversity protection not just as the ‘right thing to do’ from the perspective of conserving nature, but as a strategic risk-management strategy with a positive return for local government and investors alike,” said lead author Anya Nakhmurina, a professor of accounting at Yale.

To understand how this might work, we need to take a brief (I promise) journey into the arcane world of municipal bonds. Buckle up. We’ll get back to saving bats in a few paragraphs.

When local governments in the U.S. need to pay for big projects such as new roads or a sewage treatment plant, they usually borrow money and promise to pay back the loans, with interest. Those loans come in the form of bonds, which governments such as counties sell to investors.

The government uses future tax revenues to repay the bonds along with whatever interest rate they promised in order to lure investors. The lower the interest rate, the cheaper it is for the government to take on debt. The higher it is, the more attractive it can be to investors.

A key variable driving the interest rate is how much risk investors see that the government might not have the money to pay off the bond and instead default on the loan. Think of it like the mortgage market for home buyers. If someone has shaky finances, a bank might only provide a loan with a higher interest rate.

 

.IRPP_ruby , .IRPP_ruby .postImageUrl , .IRPP_ruby .centered-text-area {height: auto;position: relative;}.IRPP_ruby , .IRPP_ruby:hover , .IRPP_ruby:visited , .IRPP_ruby:active {border:0!important;}.IRPP_ruby .clearfix:after {content: "";display: table;clear: both;}.IRPP_ruby {display: block;transition: background-color 250ms;webkit-transition: background-color 250ms;width: 100%;opacity: 1;transition: opacity 250ms;webkit-transition: opacity 250ms;background-color: #eaeaea;}.IRPP_ruby:active , .IRPP_ruby:hover {opacity: 1;transition: opacity 250ms;webkit-transition: opacity 250ms;background-color: inherit;}.IRPP_ruby .postImageUrl {background-position: center;background-size: cover;float: left;margin: 0;padding: 0;width: 31.59%;position: absolute;top: 0;bottom: 0;}.IRPP_ruby .centered-text-area {float: right;width: 65.65%;padding:0;margin:0;}.IRPP_ruby .centered-text {display: table;height: 130px;left: 0;top: 0;padding:0;margin:0;padding-top: 20px;padding-bottom: 20px;}.IRPP_ruby .IRPP_ruby-content {display: table-cell;margin: 0;padding: 0 74px 0 0px;position: relative;vertical-align: middle;width: 100%;}.IRPP_ruby .ctaText {border-bottom: 0 solid #fff;color: #0099cc;font-size: 14px;font-weight: bold;letter-spacing: normal;margin: 0;padding: 0;font-family:'Arial';}.IRPP_ruby .postTitle {color: #000000;font-size: 16px;font-weight: 600;letter-spacing: normal;margin: 0;padding: 0;font-family:'Arial';}.IRPP_ruby .ctaButton {background: url(https://www.anthropocenemagazine.org/wp-content/plugins/intelly-related-posts-pro/assets/images/next-arrow.png)no-repeat;background-color: #afb4b6;background-position: center;display: inline-block;height: 100%;width: 54px;margin-left: 10px;position: absolute;bottom:0;right: 0;top: 0;}.IRPP_ruby:after {content: "";display: block;clear: both;}Recommended Reading:What does the decline of insect-eating bats have to do with infant mortality? More than you think.

 

So how does this come back to nocturnal flying mammals? Because it turns out that the fate of bats in the U.S. is linked to the financial fortunes of farms, which in turn affects local property tax revenues collected from those farms, which can influence interest rates for municipal bonds. It’s like the kid’s song about the old woman who swallowed a fly, then swallows a spider to catch the fly, in a cascading set of interlinked actions that eventually lead to her swallowing a horse. Only in this case, it’s a story of bats swallowing a whole lot of flies.     

Insect-eating bats are remarkably effective pest-control machines. The paper’s authors calculated that a single colony of 150 big brown bats could eat 600,000 cucumber beetles in a single year, translating into demolishing as many as 33 million larvae the beetles might have produced. Those larvae, known as rootworms, are a major pest for corn growers.

More pests mean less productive crops or more spending on pesticides. That can dent local tax collections which, for farmland, are pegged to farm revenue.

“Not managing bat populations is like letting roads become full of potholes,” said co-author Dale Manning, an economist at the University of Tennessee. “They’re part of the agricultural infrastructure, and when that gets degraded, the effects are felt broadly.”

This isn’t just hypothetical. The spread of the devastating fungus that causes the lethal white-nose syndrome in U.S. bats provided a kind of gruesome experiment, enabling the researchers to see links between bat health and local government health as the infection spread across the country.

First discovered in 2006 among bats hibernating in caves in upstate New York, the illness, caused by the fungus Pseudogymnoascus destructans, has now been found in 47 states and has killed millions of bats. Depending on the species, it can virtually wipe out a colony.

The damage showed up not just in bat caves but in county government coffers. When researchers compared counties’ financial condition before and after white nose syndrome arrived, they found a clear sign that a county’s tax revenue fell the longer the disease was around. Property tax revenue in infected rural counties fell by 16% per capita, compared with the average performance among rural counties. The effect also turned up in the interest rates for bonds, with fungus-affected counties facing higher interest rates. The link was particularly evident in places with a bigger variety in species of bats, probably because that increased the likelihood that some bats would be vulnerable to the disease.

While the disease creates a headache for bats, farmers and government officials, it could also create an opportunity for investors. That’s because if the damaged caused by the disease is diminished by conservation measures, such as protecting bat habitat, a bond issued by the local government would become less risky.

A savvy investor could, in theory, buy municipal bonds, then announce plans to help boost the local bat population. If the market thinks those plans will help bats and local tax revenues, the bonds suddenly seem less risky and more valuable.

The investor should be able to resell those bonds at a higher price and pocket the difference. Based on a hypothetical scenario, an investor could potentially buy a $1 million bonds and resell it for $1,013,855, the researchers calculated based on how the disease has affected bond values in the past.

“No one is going to become a billionaire with this strategy,” said Fenichel. “But if we can build these broader portfolios in the bond market, we can empower local communities to do things like finance conservation and even adapt to climate change.”

A similar strategy could work for species besides bats as well, assuming there’s a strong link to investment tools such as bonds.

But this all hinges on investors being able to finance things that are proven to counter the damage of white-nose syndrome. So far, there is little good news in that regard. Scientists are working on a vaccine, and there is some evidence that modifying caves to make them colder can help ward off the disease. But all of these remain in the experimental phase. Until one of them goes mainstream, bond investors are unlikely to be aiding in the campaign to rescue bats.

Nakhmurina, et. al. “The fiscal impact of biodiversity loss and a pathway for conservation finance.” Science. March 12, 2026.

Image: ©Anthropocene Magazine

A new volume in the r3.0 “Seeds Series” brings together thinkers, activists and systems scholars exploring how societies might move through ecological and institutional breakdown toward more regenerative, place-based and cooperative forms of life.

Among a flurry of posts on social media last weekend, US president Donald Trump declared “good riddance” to a specific emissions scenario used in global climate projections.

Chris Smaje visits Crazy Town for some farmer-to-farmer straight talk. We cover Viking raids to agrarian populism, from societal collapse to the practicalities of making your way in a failed state. And they can’t get away from the shop talk of gardens, livestock, and home economics.

The first draft of America’s next major federal transportation law threatens big cuts to transit and a mixed bag for active modes — and some advocates say it doesn’t even have significant guardrails to prevent President Trump from trampling on the handful of positive provisions it does have.

Late on Sunday, the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee released its version of the bill that will replace the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law that expires on Sept. 30, sounding the starting bell on the marathon reauthorization process that many expect to stretch even past that loose deadline.

The $580-billion Building Unrivaled Infrastructure and Long-Term Development for America’s 250th Act — or BUILD America 250 for short — clocked in at 1,005 pages, a slim offering compared to its predecessor’s $1.2-trillion haul.

Many of those cuts came from formula transit programs, which the Union of Concerned Scientists noted would take a 20-percent ($43 billion) hit across the bill’s five years. Highway funding, meanwhile, would increase 8 percent ($28 billion) over the same period — a move which Kevin X. Shen compared to ” a highway contractor’s wishlist.”

Recommended Everything You Want to Know About the Next Surface Transportation Reauthorization But Were Afraid To Ask Kea Wilson July 22, 2025

As dire as that sounds, some advocates noted it’s better than the Trump administration’s proposal for the bill, which recommended zeroing out the mass transit account completely.

The damage to active transportation programs, meanwhile, was also less bad than some feared after committee Chairman Sam Graves (R–Mo.) warned in November that the bill was “not going to be spending money on … bike paths or walking paths.”

Still, some say that absent a more radical overhaul, even BUILD 250’s few bright spots could be too easily snuffed out — and the already-devastating impacts of mass car dependency could get even worse.

“We thank the committee for their work, but before any planned markup, we challenge them to dream bigger than re-upping an approach that has failed to move the needle on what matters to Americans,” Steve Davis of Transportation for America said in a statement. “[We need to be] giving them freedom from high gas prices by investing in transit and more efficient, affordable vehicles, taking decisive action to end the preventable crisis of traffic fatalities, and responding to the overwhelming popular support for prioritizing repair and maintenance ahead of costly road expansions.

“As written, this proposal fails to deliver on its promise of a transportation system that safely, affordably, and reliably connects Americans to where they need to go — and for that reason, we cannot support it,”  Davis continued.

Recommended Trump Is Holding Affordable Transportation Projects Hostage, and Congress Could Call His Bluff Kea Wilson May 7, 2026

Davis’s organization is among the dozens that signed onto a letter earlier this month urging Congress not to negotiate the next infrastructure bill until the Trump administration had fulfilled its legal obligations to execute the last one – something the White House has categorically not yet done, as billions in grants remain frozen.

He also says BUILD 250 doesn’t contain enough guardrails against the same thing happening all over again.

“Consider the dissonance of celebrating any positive changes in the program for building or expanding transit service at the same time that the Trump administration has failed to advance a single new transit project since taking office,” Davis wrote. “The House T&I Committee has failed to recognize that this administration is not implementing the current law as intended and seems poised to ignore whatever they pass.”

Even if they should take the bill with a veritable boulder of salt, though, advocates say it’s still critical for transportation reformers to engage with the reauthorization process and fight for their priorities as horse-trading over BUILD America 250 begins — and as their counterparts in the Senate gear up to write counterpart bills of their own.

Here are a few of the initial highlights catching their attention.

The good news … with asterisks

Active transportation advocates applauded House negotiators for not eliminating the Transportation Alternatives Program, the nation’s largest dedicated source of formula funding for biking, walking, and trail infrastructure, which has frequently fallen under threat. The bill even promises more funding to TAP, as it’s colloquially known, growing the total to about $1.66 billion a year by the end of the five-year bill.

That positive news, though, was undercut by a provision making it easier for states to “flex” money out of TAP to other programs — including those that fund highways.

“[This] could return us to the bad old days of the [twenty]-teens, when we were losing lots of Transportation Alternatives [dollars] to transfers by states … That could really put a put a hole in the program,” said Kevin Mills of the Rails to Trails Conservancy.

Recommended An Open Letter to the New U.S. Congress and the New Administration: It’s Time to Unite to Solve America’s Roadway Crisis November 15, 2024

Of course, forward-thinking states probably won’t flex their sustainable transportation dollars over to drivers — and BUILD America 250 gives them new opportunities to flex motorist-focused money back to people outside cars, too.

Happily, the bill contains some of the key provisions from the Sarah Debbink Langenkamp Active Transportation Act, which makes it easier for states and local governments to fund bicycling and walking out of their Highway Safety Improvement Program dollars, rather than having to pony up for onerous local matching requirements.

The formula Recreational Trails Program was also included in the bill, though its funding remained stubbornly low at $84 million a year — despite the fact that motorized trail users like ATVs pay $281 million a year into the federal gas tax, and non-motorized trail users save their fellow taxpayers considerable money by picking a sustainable mode.

Recommended It’s Time For Congress to Connect America’s Active Transportation Networks Kevin Mills May 6, 2026

BUILD America 250 also continues many of the discretionary grant programs that advocates feared would be cut, including Safe Streets and Roads for All — though the level of funding has been slashed from $982 million in 2025 to an average of $750 million per year over the course of the new bill.

The BUILD Grant will continue as well, allowing communities to compete for $1.5 billion a year for locally impactful transportation projects. Not to be confused with the BUILD America 250 Act — or that program’s two previous names, RAISE and TIGER, because Congress is hellbent on making life harder for transportation journalists — that money could be a massive boon to local transit, biking, and walking efforts … or yet another highway-widening program, depending on who’s in the White House to pick the winners.

Recommended Study: How The Last Three Presidents Helped Shape Our Local Transportation Landscapes Kea Wilson October 9, 2024

While the new bill does eliminate many of the most-loved discretionary programs from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, it also creates at least one new one: the Surface Transportation Accelerator Grant, or STAG.

Essentially a counterpart to BUILD, the new effort will let states compete for $2.4 billion a year to build multimodal infrastructure, with the caveat that a quarter of the funding is set aside for rural areas, a quarter for urban areas, and half for projects “local and regional” significance.

However, Rails to Trails dinged the program for ambiguous eligibility requirements that made it unclear whether rural areas, specifically, can make the most of the STAG party and win money for active transportation projects — despite the fact that rural areas are among the most prolific applicants for federal bike/walk dollars.

Both formula and discretionary bridge programs, meanwhile, won more than $50 billion funding collectively, but it was also unclear whether adding bike and pedestrian infrastructure to these mega-projects would be an eligible use of the funds.

Considering all the other proposed cuts to programs aimed at making life easier for people outside cars, those ambiguities could prove a big deal.

The unequivocally bad news

Advocates have already found significant cuts to active and shared transportation priorities — with more possibly to come.

In what Mills of Rails to Trails called a “slap,” the BUILD America 250 Act totally repeals the Active Transportation Infrastructure Investment Program, whose preservation was among his organization’s biggest priorities.

“[Congress is] going out of their way to just entirely eliminate it, when that’s the only program that uniquely invests in filling the gaps in our active transportation networks,” he added. “When you build a road system, when you build a rail system, you’ve got to think in terms of connectivity. [But] when it comes to safe walking and biking routes, and they’re like ‘No; we don’t even want it to be mentioned.’ That’s a big concern.”

The Carbon Reduction Program, Neighborhood Access and Equity Grant Program, and Healthy Streets Program would all be repealed completely, too, slashing key funding sources for non-automotive modes.

Recommended Trust Fund Babies: Advocates Argue House-Proposed EV Fee Won’t Solve Highway Funding Woes Kea Wilson May 1, 2025

Some advocates, meanwhile, slammed the introduction of a new electric vehicle registration fee, which experts say would do little to close the gap in the winnowing Highway Trust Fund even after the annual fee increases from $130 to $150 over five years. (Hybrids would get slapped with a $35 per year fee, too, which would eventually scale to $50.) And once again, with highway funding set to increase and transit set to decrease, that gap will only get larger, despite big talk in Washington about cutting government waste and implementing the “user pays” principle.

Worse, experts say a new EV fee would decrease electric vehicle uptake, especially when taken together with sharp cuts to the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure program proposed under the bill. That would leave the most car-dependent communities in the country with virtually no alternatives to get around besides burning ever-more-expensive gas.

“Congress should be boosting investments in projects that cut costs, cut emissions, create jobs, and build a transportation system that works for all Americans,” said Shruti Vaidyanathan, director of federal and state transportation advocacy at the Natural Resources Defense Council.”This bill largely ignores the need to build cleaner, more affordable transportation options.”

And across the bill, many good programs will face significant funding insecurity, thanks to the elimination of many “advanced appropriations” across Build America 250 — with transit taking the brunt of the burden.

That means that even if this bill gets passed exactly as written, future congresses could decline to provide many transit programs the money that this congress promised them, while most highway dollars will remain insulated from political horse-trading. And that’s before any future White House follows the Trump playbook of clawing back, rescinding, illegally impounding, and slow-walking programs they just don’t like.

The road ahead

With a mark-up scheduled for Thursday and months of drawn-out negotiations to come in both chambers of Congress, the House’s mega-bill is only a first draft.

Still, advocates say it’s troubling that the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee is starting the conversation by setting the bar so low – and urging their representatives to fight for better.

Recommended Advocates: Here’s What to Tell The Feds You Want From the Next Big Transportation Bill Kea Wilson August 18, 2025

“We are in an affordability crisis with transportation policies that tie us to the fuel pump,” said Mike McGinn, executive director of America Walks. “When given the chance to do something about it, we get a bipartisan proposal to increase highway expansion, cut transit, and eliminate programs designed to make neighborhoods more walkable.”

“Any federal candidate running on affordability should be ashamed to vote for this bill for that reason alone, not to mention the continued damage to health, safety and the environment,” McGinn continued. “Personally, I’m looking for the members of congress willing to stand up to the powerful lobbying interests and fight for a more forward looking approach than this.”

• Transit agencies still haven’t fully recovered from the pandemic. In 2024 ridership was just 78% of 2019 levels, and only six of 31 commuter rail systems had matched their pre-COVID numbers. (Eno Center for Transportation)
• Building more transit-oriented development is one way out of the death spiral. (Transportation for America)
• High gas prices are bringing people back to public transit — at least, the ones in places with good enough transit that not driving is an option. (Grist)
• Unlike a lot of cities overseas, it’s tough to kick the car habit in the U.S. (Common Edge)
• The Trump administration is putting parking for White House staff on a pedestrianized portion of Pennsylvania Avenue. (CNN)
• Speakers at a recent conference on high-speed rail emphasized that building a national network will require a national vision. (Railway Age)
• Charging fees on delivery robots could help cities pay for sidewalk repairs. (Next City)
• Amazon’s new e-cargo bikes, now being deployed in Washington, D.C., are almost the size of a van. (Electrek)
• A driver in Oakland who drove onto a sidewalk killed three people and injured three more (ABC 30). And in New York City, a suspected drunk driver set off a cascade of crashes that wound up killing two men sitting in front of a barber shop (NY Post).
• Kansas City’s streetcar is not just an economic development tool; it fills an actual transportation need, carrying a third of the city’s transit riders (Governing). Its latest extension opened on Monday (KCUR).
• Cleveland is converting vacant industrial land along a freight rail line into a mixed-use community and greenway. (Cleveland Magazine)
• The D.C. Metro’s CEO is trying to flatter President Trump into funding the Gold Line. (Axios)
• Milwaukee’s Bublr Bikes is expanding. (TMJ 4)
• Richmond temporarily stopped issuing tickets for parking in bike lanes due to driver backlash. (Axios)
• Portland, Maine selected a firm to develop a new long-range transportation plan. (Maine Wire)
• The World Naked Bike Ride may be coming to a city near you this summer. (Momentum)

The deadline for legislation to be passed through committee has come and gone in the State Senate. Among the legislation that failed to advance was Senate Bill 1035: Motor vehicle fuel tax: greenhouse gas reduction programs: suspension, by Senator Tony Strickland (R-Huntington Beach), which would have suspended the state’s gas tax. 

Yesterday, Strickland bemoaned the failure of his legislation in a partisan rant aimed at blaming gas prices on Democrats and the gas tax.

“At a time when affordability is the top concern for families, Senate Democrats said ‘Hell no’ to much-needed financial relief. This was a missed opportunity to take action,” he declared. “Here in California, despite all the talk about fighting for affordability and California being a leader on policy, Sacramento Democrats are falling in line with Governor Newsom and refusing even to discuss relief at the pump.”

But It’s Not That Simple

It’s true that California has both the highest gas tax in the country ($.79 per gallon) and the highest gas prices in the country ($6.15 on average, as of yesterday). The total gas tax paid by Californians is only $.25 higher than the national average, but the cost per gallon is $1.61 higher.

In short:

• Crude oil prices: the cost of oil on the global market is the single biggest factor affecting California gasoline prices.
• Refinery operations: outages, maintenance, or unexpected shutdowns at California refineries can quickly drive prices higher.
• California’s cleaner-burning fuel requirements: the state’s unique gasoline blend costs more to produce and limits where fuel can be sourced.
• Taxes and environmental fees: state and federal gas taxes, Cap-and-Trade, and Low Carbon Fuel Standard costs all add to pump prices.
• Supply and transportation constraints: California lacks interstate gasoline pipelines and relies heavily on in-state refining and marine imports, making the market more vulnerable to disruptions.

For more details, the state’s energy commission gives a pretty neutral look at the various influences and Streetsblog did its own breakdown a couple of weeks ago.

Of course, Strickland’s press statement excludes the reason for the massive global increase in crude oil costs in the past two and a half months because of President Donald Trump war against Iran. Iran responded to the initial attack from the United States by not allowing oil tankers and other trade through the Strait of Hormuz. 20% of the world’s oil supply comes through the strait in normal times, and the global oil market has been thrown into chaos. In the U.S., that means an average 50% increase in the cost of gasoline at the pump.

And of course, there’s a cost to Californians in reducing or suspending the gas tax. California’s gas taxes and fees fund transportation infrastructure and programs, including road and highway maintenance, public transit, bridge repairs, traffic safety improvements, and efforts to reduce pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. Other states that have suspended or reduced the tax in response to the price hikes from Trump’s war, including Utah, Indiana, and Georgia, have large surpluses in their general fund that have offset the reduced revenue from gas taxes.

Whither the Feds?

Trump himself is talking about suspending the federal gas tax of $.18, which would take a majority vote of both Houses of Congress. Given that prominent Democrats in the Senate have already signaled their support, it is likely that legislation for a “gas tax holiday” would have majority support, should it be brought to a vote.

The federal gas tax pays for the maintenance, repair, and construction of national infrastructure, including highways, bridges, and mass transit systems. Revenue from the tax goes directly into the Federal Highway Trust Fund.

Most discussions of plastic pollution say the problem is that plastic never breaks down. A new study turns that assumption on its head, arguing the problem is that it always does – at least to some degree.

In the study, researchers introduce the concept of the “plastic particle footprint,” the mass of plastic micro- and nanoparticles that will eventually enter the environment when a given item disintegrates. Mounting evidence indicates that these plastic particles pose a risk to human and environmental health, but until now there has been no way to incorporate those concerns into standard study methodologies.

Applying their concept to four everyday manufactured objects, the researchers demonstrate how the plastic particle footprint can radically change our understanding of the sustainability of different consumer choices. “The carbon footprint only tells part of the story,” says study team member Valérie Guillard, a researcher at the University of Montpellier in France.

The plastic particle footprint is the mass of virgin plastic required to produce a given item, minus the amount of plastic that will be molecularly destroyed (such as by incineration or in the rare case of truly biodegradable plastics, by microbes) at the end of the item’s lifetime.

No one has ever proven that macro-plastics won’t crumble into micro-plastics in the medium to long term, so we must assume that they will, the researchers argue. In the long run, in other words, all plastic becomes microplastics. “The irreversibility of this pollution requires a precautionary approach,” Guillard argues.

The researchers analyzed data from published life cycle analyses of four common objects: kettles (one made of 30% plastic and another made of 50% plastic), beverage containers (glass, plastic, or aluminum with plastic liner), crates (wood or plastic), and T-shirts (cotton or polyester—a form of plastic).

 

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When carbon footprints are comparable as in the case of the two kettles, different plastic footprints can help guide consumer choices, the researchers suggest.

The item with the smallest carbon footprint does not always have the smallest plastic footprint. A cotton T-shirt has a slightly larger carbon footprint than a polyester one—but virtually no plastic footprint. Plastic bottles and aluminum cans have smaller carbon footprints than glass bottles because they take less energy to manufacture. But glass bottles and aluminum cans have smaller plastic particle footprints. And the plastic lining inside aluminum cans can leach into beverages and be ingested by consumers – making glass bottles look better and better in the final reckoning.

Sometimes the tradeoffs are not so clear. A reusable plastic crate saves 280 grams of greenhouse gas emissions compared to a wooden one, but results in 21 additional grams of plastic particle pollution. Which is worse in the big picture? How many grams of carbon dioxide is a gram of plastic pollution worth?

In order to weigh up the choices quantitatively, future research will need to link a given mass of plastic particles to a given cost to society from health impacts and so on. The time scale of impact also requires careful thought. While the carbon footprint of items is often concentrated during the manufacture and use phases, for plastic bottles and polyester clothing more than 90% of the plastic particle footprint comes after an item is discarded. “We are building a reservoir of plastic, with a toxicity debt that future generations will inherit,” Guillard says.

Source: Guillard V. et al. “A pioneering plastic particle footprint concept for addressing the challenges posed by plastic pollution.” Science Advances 2026.

Image: © Anthropocene Magazine. AI-gnerated.

Conceptualizing Security in a Time of Deep Civilizational Crisis Date and time * Date: June 4th, 2026 * Time: 1pm GMT * Registration Link: Here * Speakers: Manuel Rozental (Colombia), Dipa Sinha (India) and (TBC) * Moderation: Introduction This is the first of a series of webinars that will open the series with a conceptual discussion on security in a time of deep civilizational crisis. It will examine how security has traditionally been framed through the international order, the n…

In this installment of an ongoing series, Tom and Dave Murphy explore what “sustainable” truly means and whether any disruption to natural ecosystems or energy flows by humanity is inherently unsustainable.

History offers a grim account of how structural change occurs. But concealed within that bleakness is a window of possibility that opens just when things fall apart.

Extreme heat is already a defining climate and health threat in southern Africa, yet public debate still treats it as ordinary bad weather. A new study shows that, as climate change drives more extreme events, governments and institutions can adopt practical steps to make communities more climate‑resilient.

05-22 * 13:00 - RD-TG meeting (Bea)

05-20 * 13:00 - Toolkit for Weaving (Bea)

Trees as lived memories serve us citizens and residents, a culinary or recreational experience of engaging with them at regular intervals in our lives. A mango or jackfruit tree may bring back past relationships with our forefathers, and their ritualistic pickling processes or preservation through frying of chips. A banyan or peepal tree of the […]

Computer models that use artificial intelligence (AI) cannot forecast record-breaking weather as well as traditional climate models, according to a new study.

Economic growth does not increase our well-being. It drives environmental damage and will inevitably slow as we hit resource limits. Yet many countries, companies, and individuals remain fiercely attached to growth. This article uses systemic analysis and System Dynamics diagrams to explore why we keep pursuing more, despite what we know.

America’s broken approaches to roadway safety and criminal justice are profoundly intertwined, a provocative new report argues — and until reformers in both fields reckon with how deeply their battles are connected, neither will notch any real progress.

Researchers at the American Civil Liberties Union and the Policing Project at the New York University School of Law closely examined how mass car dependency amplifies harm in the criminal legal system, like rampant traffic stops that disproportionately turn deadly for people of color or traffic fines that trap low-income earners in “inescapable, inequitable cycles of indebtedness, as ticketing practices stress profits over safety.”

The report encourages Vision Zero advocates to consider how an over-emphasis on enforcement-based safety strategies is hobbling the cause, by creating incentives for ineffective policing that distract and siphon resources from proven solutions, like increasing mobility alternatives, that are often forgotten or ignored.

“Police reform advocates and road safety advocates should be working together, just as departments of transportation and police departments should be working together,” said Scarlett Neath, senior adviser at the Policing Project and an author of the report. “Those two agencies and those two groups of advocates need to be swimming in the same direction.”

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The report authors say that, in many ways, America’s car-dependent transportation system and police-focused approach to safety evolved in tandem. They argue that “corporate interests, public investment decisions, and racial discrimination” collectively eroded public transit networks in favor of installing officers on roadsides across the nation.

Neath doesn’t deny that there should be consequences for deadly driving, but says the particulars of how our communities impose those punishments has devastated many communities — without significantly reducing the likelihood of future crashes fast enough. Indeed, the United States has twice the rate of fatal car crash deaths of other high-income countries, and more than triple the rate of police killings.

“We’re not saying there’s no deterrence effect [from policing],” she added. “But the deterrence it might cause often also comes with significant costs — and there other solutions that may have bigger deterrent effects without those costs.”

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One of the steepest costs of over-emphasizing policing in traffic safety, Neath says, is simply diverting attention and resources away from infrastructure and vehicle technology that make it difficult or impossible for motorists to drive in deadly ways— rather than reacting to bad behavior after the fact.

The design-focused solutions we do have, meanwhile, are inequitably distributed. A 2023 study found that roughly “60 percent of Black children live in neighborhoods that lack amenities associated with healthy development, including sidewalks or walking paths.” Black communities remain significantly more policed than white neighborhoods with similar homicide rates and income levels.

“If a lot of enforcement is happening at the same intersection that should be a sign that there are things we should do to stop enforcement from happening through structural, preventative measures,” she added. “If a ton of folks are blazing through a road and police aren’t able to control that behavior, the stop lights have to be retimed, the speed limit has to be lowered, and maybe, the road needs to be redesigned.” 

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Worse, Neath says many roadside stops aren’t motivated by traffic safety at all.

The report’s authors note that “pretextual” stops exploded in the 1970s, when War on Drugs-era politicians encouraged police departments to profile suspects based on their race and gender, and use broken tail lights, expired tags, and any other available pretext to stop and search their cars.

Today, explicit and implicit “stop quotas” still provide perverse incentives for cops to accelerate their rate of pretextual stops to write lots of tickets, rather than wait around to catch the most flagrantly dangerous drivers — especially as many municipalities have come to rely on fines and fees to pay for basic services.

“When people hear about traffic stops, there’s an assumption that they’re made for safety-related reasons,” Neath added. “But we know from data in jurisdictions across the country that it’s really a mixed bag. … Police resources are finite, and we’ve seen that when departments prioritize safety stops, they have better crash prevention outcomes — without negative outcomes for the kind of crime-fighting [efforts] that pretext stops are theoretically are used for, because [pretextual stops] are so infrequently discovering evidence of crimes.” 

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To truly make American streets safe, Neath says it won’t be enough just to end policies that incentivize or require ineffective policing in the transportation realm or to redesign streets to put safety first. It will require thinking about how those two goals interact — and looking to new models to enhance them both.

Across the report and a companion study written in partnership with the Vision Zero Network, the Policing Project outlined dozens of strategies that communities can consider, including under-discussed ones, like piloting civilian enforcement and equipment repair vouchers to remove a common pretext for police and motorist interaction.

Most of all, though, Neath says it’s time for advocates to think more holistically about what safety is — and how deeply intertwined the Vision Zero and police reform movements have always been.

“Preventable deaths and injuries in car crashes, unacceptable violent outcomes from the most common form of police community member contact — these are both public health crises,” she added. “It’s an opportune time to learn from the progress we’ve made on both fronts, and to double down on that progress.”

• Are conservatives coming around to walkability? The American Enterprise Institute thinks they should. And the Reason Foundation is in favor of transit-oriented development.
• Much of AEI’s argument has to do with how being able to roam around the neighborhood improves their mental health and takes pressure off parents to drive their kids everywhere. But not everyone on the right accepts Tim Carney’s thesis (Longer Forms). Carney’s critics on the right should talk to school crossing guards before claiming that car-centric streets don’t influence where kids can walk (The Guardian).
• In related news, Brandon Donnelly wrote about how more young families that can afford to do so are staying in cities rather than moving to the suburbs. And Angie Schmitt interviewed Lenore Skenazy, the author of “Free Range Kids.” (Love of Place)
• Uber is offering transit agencies $50,000 grants to test on-demand transit service. (Cities Today)
• CalTrans is looking into “bullet buses” that would travel 140 miles per hour on dedicated freeway lanes between Los Angeles and San Francisco. (Hoodline)
• L.A. Times columnist Steve Lopez returned to one of his favorite topics: how screwed up the city’s sidewalk repair program is.
• Debris from one of Amtrak’s new Acela cars is the likely cause of a recent fire at Penn Station. (New York Daily News)
• Albuquerque Mayor Tim Keller criticized the city council for cutting $5 million from pedestrian safety. (KOB 4)
• Nashville Mayor Freddie O’Connell defended himself against protesters who say the city is diverting funds for Vision Zero to road repaving. (News Channel 5)
• Kansas City will add east-west bus routes and step up frequency during the World Cup. (Star)
• Bike buses are catching on in Baltimore. (The Banner)
• Amtrak’s sleeper cars are getting upgraded (Business Insider).

Reflexiones sobre la seguridad en una época de profunda crisis civilizatoria Fecha y horario * Fecha: 4 de junio, 2026 * Horario: 1pm GMT * Enlace de Registro: Aquí * Participantes: Manuel Rozental (Colombia), Deepa Sinha (India) and (TBC) * Moderación