G1. Progressive Green

This story was co-published with Rolling Stone.

In Ohio’s rural southeastern corner, Marietta College geology professor David Jeffrey was among the residents worried that industry activity in America’s booming natural gas region could be polluting their drinking water. That’s “the biggest fear,” he said at an August meeting with top Ohio officials.

When Jeffrey and residents from advocacy groups Buckeye Environmental Network and Washington County for Safe Drinking Water met with Ohio officials, those state officials repeatedly assured residents that despite the up to 1.4 billion gallons of oil and gas wastewater injected in underground wells in their county and across Ohio each year, the state was unaware of any resulting drinking water contamination there.

“We would have heard about it,” Mary Mertz, director of the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR), which oversees both aspects of Ohio’s environment and its oil and gas industry, told residents in the August 17 virtual meeting.

“No one has called us that I’m aware of,” said Eric Vendel, ODNR’s oil and gas division chief. “We have a water investigation form that can be filled out and we would have my team down there and investigate the water.”

What officials did not tell the group that day is that five years earlier, the state did receive a call and, on Vendel’s orders, investigated a drinking water well for oil and gas wastewater contaminants in eastern Ohio, roughly 80 miles away from Washington County. Independent experts say the results are consistent with fracking wastewater contamination. Despite that and the water well’s location near two oil and gas wastewater injection wells, ODNR concluded fracking wastewater was not to blame, according to documents DeSmog and Rolling Stone obtained via public records request.

Subscribe to Desmog

Get the weekly intelligence you need to hold polluters accountable

Email Address Sign Up Send me intelligence from: All US/Global team UK/Europe team Sign Up --> (function($){ $('.newsletter-container .ijkidr-us').click(function() { $('.js-cm-form').attr('data-id', '2BE4EF332AA2E32596E38B640E905619D07B21962C5AFE16D3A2145673C82A3CEE9D9F1ADDABE965ACB3CE39939D42AC9012C6272FD52BFCA0790F0FB77C6442'); $('.js-cm-email-input').attr('name', 'cm-vdrirr-vdrirr'); }); $('.newsletter-container .ijkidr-uk').click(function() { $('.js-cm-form').attr('data-id', '2BE4EF332AA2E32596E38B640E905619BD43AA6813AF1B0FFE26D8282EC254E3ED0237BA72BEFBE922037EE4F1B325C6DA4918F8E044E022C7D333A43FD72429'); $('.js-cm-email-input').attr('name', 'cm-ijkidr-ijkidr'); }); })(jQuery);

ODNR spokesperson Andy Chow told DeSmog and Rolling Stone: “When administrators were meeting with representatives in Washington County, they were discussing matters related to injection wells located in Washington County. ODNR stands by the comments made by its administrators.”

Concerns over polluted drinking water cross political and social divides, perhaps nowhere more so than rural Washington County. As intensely salty wastewater pushed below ground resurfaces, residents and officials have injected the issue into the already bitterly divided Ohio governor’s race. Susan Vessels, a Republican official in Washington County, recently appeared alongside Democratic gubernatorial candidate Dr. Amy Acton because of Acton’s pledge to pause new wastewater wells in this densely drilled area. “We have a chance to prevent the worst from happening, and we need to act now,” Acton told DeSmog and Rolling Stone.

“Drinking water is not political and it is my hope Ohioans will come together across party lines on this issue.”

Susan Vessels, Marietta City Council President

Ohio ranks in the top 10 nationally for both oil and gas production. Fracking can occur within 100 feet of a school or rural home, and operators have been able to tap the gas-rich Marcellus and Utica formations by drilling directly beneath water reservoirs and state parks. But in order to maintain that production, the industry has to offload the tidal wave of toxic wastewater — rich in salts, carcinogens, heavy metals, and radioactive elements — that surfaces in the weeks and years that follow drilling an oil or gas well.

That wastewater gets pumped into injection wells deep below ground, where impermeable geological layers are supposed to keep it from leaking into oil and gas wells or drinking water supplies. Washington County, whose 19 injection wells outnumber all of Pennsylvania, has received complaints of this wastewater, or brine, flooding nearby oil and gas wells, according to the New York Times.

Now, an hour and a half drive north, in the town of Coshocton, Ohio, records show evidence of a family’s drinking water polluted by high levels of the same types of salts found in fracking wastewater.

“This is different”

In early November 2021, Bill Burgan, an eastern Ohio water well driller, called ODNR to complain about water from a 360-foot well he had drilled in 2017 for the Fisher family in Coshocton, according to ODNR documents. At the beginning of 2021, their water had become salty and corrosive. Not only did it leave a salty taste in the mouth, but it caused their hot water tanks to rust out prematurely. The couple had replaced two tanks in four years. Within weeks, the newest one became coated in an unidentifiable white precipitate.

“Sometimes we drill through pockets of salt,” said Burgan, president of American Drilling and Pump Service, in an interview with DeSmog and Rolling Stone this summer outside his Stone Creek, Ohio, shop. “But this is different, it’s fracking waste.”

Burgan told DeSmog and Rolling Stone, and, separately, ODNR according to public records, that he expressed concern that the Fishers’ drinking water well became impacted by an oil and gas wastewater injection well located less than two miles from the family’s home and operated by a Texas-based company called Buckeye Brine. The local community vigorously opposed Buckeye Brine’s installment of the injection well, where since 2014 the company has injected over 400 million gallons of waste.  

After receiving Burgan’s complaint, ODNR swiftly launched an investigation that agency geologist Tamara Richards said “will focus solely on contaminants associated with oil and natural gas exploration and production,” according to public records. 

The state’s results indicate signatures of possible drinking water pollution from oil and gas wastewater, according to independent experts who reviewed the findings. Ohio’s final report on the incident, completed in January 2022, found two separate indicators of potential fracking wastewater contamination — total dissolved solids, and chloride —  in the Fisher family’s water. Both tested at more than five times the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) limits. ODNR also tested for sodium, which lacks a formal EPA limit but has a threshold, as high levels can cause unpleasant taste and health problems for diabetics. In the Fishers’ water, sodium was 17 times the EPA threshold.

According to Jeffrey, the Marietta College geologist, high levels of total dissolved solids, chloride, and sodium also are found in the sea of fracking wastewater pumped into injection wells like the one operated by Buckeye Brine.

However, ODNR concluded there was “no evidence of an oilfield related impact” and pinned the cause of the contamination on a sandstone layer called the “Big Injun” that the agency, without providing any data, stated “appears to be” naturally salty and surrounded part of the family’s water well.

But Jeffrey said testing done by the state did not look at enough parameters to determine that the contamination was natural and not from fracking wastewater. “It seems ODNR is either stonewalling, misdirecting, or just doesn’t know what they are doing,” he told DeSmog and Rolling Stone.

In a separate case that would unfold over a year after ODNR tested the Fishers’ water, the agency was considering whether leaking injection wells or else the “Big Injun” sandstone formation might be contaminating conventional oil and gas wells in Athens County, just west of Washington County. This time, ODNR concluded the impacts “cannot be plausibly explained” by the sandstone formation due to its unique brine signature, citing a “June 2, 2020 technical analysis prepared by ALL Consulting.” The agency added that impacts from this natural layer would have been consistent from the start, and “it is unlikely” they would have appeared only after the injection well operator began working. ODNR ultimately suspended the permit for a set of three injection wells that were eventually shut in for leaking fracking wastewater. ODNR has not yet replied to questions regarding this case.

When asked about the state’s findings in Coshocton and their scientific evidence, Burgan was dismissive. “They are covering it up,” he said, “because they are making too much money off of this.”

Oil and gas companies pay Ohio five cents a barrel to dispose of in-state wastewater, and 20 cents for wastewater imported from other states. Much of the waste injected comes from neighboring West Virginia and Pennsylvania. With at least a billion gallons of waste injected every year, that income translates to an average of $2.4 million annually for state coffers, according to state documents.

“The ODNR Division of Oil and Gas Resources Management uses evidence and facts, testing, and the latest technologies to evaluate complaints of brine migration” and “stands by the results of its investigation,” said ODNR spokesperson Chow.

The entrance to Buckeye Brine’s injection well facility in Coshocton, Ohio. Credit: Justin Nobel/DeSmog

But ODNR did not investigate the Buckeye Brine injection well, subject of the original complaint, or any other injection wells. It did investigate “producing oil and gas wells within a one-half mile radius” of the family’s home.

After Burgan’s company reached out, we “contacted ODNR and ODNR was not interested in any further efforts on the matter,” said Susie Patterson, the manager at Buckeye Brine, by email. Patterson said groundwater monitoring wells installed in 2019 and sampled quarterly showed “no indication of contamination by oilfield substances,” or that “the water was not fit for consumption due to contaminants,” and pinned issues with the Fishers’ well on the water well driller. 

“The wells were drilled much deeper than surrounding wells producing good drinking water,” said Patterson. “It is Buckeye’s opinion that the driller was trying to justify to the well owner the bad wells.”

The Fishers declined to participate in the story. 

The Oil and Gas Industry’s Trillion-Gallon Problem

Across America, over one trillion gallons of oil and gas wastewater are generated every year — enough to fill a line of waste barrels to the moon and back 28 times. Nearly all of this waste — 96 percent — will be injected deep into the earth at disposal injection wells.

Given the oil and gas industry’s reliance on injection wells as a critical means of disposal for a dangerous waste stream, analysts have referred to injection wells as a linchpin to the sound operation of the entire oil and gas industry. Disposal of oil and gas wastewater is the industry’s “Achilles’ heel,” said Ted Auch, a researcher at the oil and gas industry watchdog Fieldnotes. A 2021 Rice University Center for Energy Studies report stated that if the industry did not have injection wells to rely on for waste disposal, the “resulting economic impacts would be profound — and likely, existential.” 

The United States has more than 181,400 oil and gas wastewater injection wells, but as industry leaders testified at the Texas state capitol in August, lack of space to store this toxic brine already is threatening to curtain oil and gas production in Texas’ productive Permian Basin. Even where it has been stored, increasing evidence shows the wastewater is not always staying put.

Injection has proven particularly problematic in Ohio, where state regulators have halted operations at over half a dozen injection wells, citing concerns that fracking wastewater has leaked and has traveled up to five miles underground to contaminate conventional oil and gas wells. ODNR noted in a 2023 letter to DeepRock Disposal Solutions, a southeast Ohio company formerly run by the chair of the state senate’s energy committee, that such incidents pose a risk to public health and drinking water too.   

In Texas, wastewater shot down injection wells has burst back to the surface at old oil and gas wells, at times generating 100-foot geysers of brine in the desert, and Inside Climate News reported that oilfield waste has contaminated drinking water sources in the heart of West Texas oil country. Reporting by ProPublica revealed the situation is similar in neighboring Oklahoma, where regulators have clashed over how far to rein in the injection industry, despite state evidence showing drinking water sources polluted with contaminants consistent with oilfield waste. 

Independent scientists raise the question of whether other oil and gas states may be facing similar problems.

“We have always been concerned as environmental scientists and geologists in this area that there is no underground containment in these [injection] wells,” said Jen Bowman, a water chemistry expert and the director of environmental programs at Ohio University, in Athens. “What so many folks in this area don’t understand, our underground layers are just rock layers so there is no magic underground lake where you are getting water from, and there is no magic underground storage container where the waste is going.” Injecting millions of gallons of waste at high pressure means contamination miles from the site of injection is inevitable, she said.

“This is not a good plan or disposal mechanism for potentially dangerous materials,” Bowman told DeSmog and Rolling Stone, “especially given that people rely on groundwater in so much of rural Ohio.”

The concern about drinking water in Washington County is exactly what motivates Susan Vessels, the Republican president of the Marietta City Council. She has led the council in writing a resolution, passed last October, urging Ohio state legislators to introduce legislation imposing a three-year moratorium on new wastewater injection wells in Washington County. More recently she has crossed the political aisle when Amy Acton, the former state health director, came to Marietta last month as part of her gubernatorial campaign. Acton supports Vessels’ proposed moratorium and is facing an ugly, expensive race against billionaire Vivek Ramaswamy. 

Acton told DeSmog and Rolling Stone that the fight over injection wells and drinking water contamination comes down to ensuring a better future for Marietta and all of Ohio. 

“That is why I am committing to a three-year moratorium on wastewater injection wells in Washington County,” said Acton. “I’m fighting against the corruption in our Statehouse and the cost of that corruption that we pay for. We must act to protect our resources and our drinking water.” Ramaswamy’s campaign has not replied to questions. 

“Drinking water is not political,” said Vessels, “and it is my hope Ohioans will come together across party lines on this issue.”

In an op-ed, she took to task the GOP contender Ramaswamy, who called people “whiners” for raising concerns about clean water, energy use, and other issues as proposals for AI data centers arrive in Ohio.

“I think they are full of shit, and that is point-blank my opinion.”

Phillip Johnson, Washington County water well driller

Washington County water well driller Phillip Johnson said he has drilled hundreds of private water wells in the region. He disagreed with the state’s conclusion that brine from the sandstone formation caused the Fisher family well’s contamination.

“I think they are full of shit, and that is point-blank my opinion,” he said.  

Johnson said that if the sandstone formation was the cause of the salt contamination in the Fishers’ drinking water, then the salty taste should have been there from the beginning, and not strengthened over time as the couple reported, according to ODNR documents.

“Just because you drill 1,000 wells and everything works fine, it just takes one well to not work right for there to be a problem,” said Johnson. “It is nature, if you pump something down under pressure, the path of least resistance is up.”

“I am all for drilling oil and gas,” he added, “but fresh natural water is the most essential natural resource there is, in this country, the state, anywhere in the world, and if you contaminate it, you essentially ruin everything.”

Dominic DiGiulio, a retired EPA scientist with a doctorate in geoscience and decades of experience investigating the movement of underground fluids, provided another assessment of the state’s conclusions in the Coshocton case.

“The ODNR’s logic for stating that the domestic well is partially screened in the Big Injun formation is flawed,” said DiGiulio, who also previously consulted for government agencies and NGOs. “ODNR does not provide compelling evidence.”

The post Ohio Denies Evidence of Fracking Waste in Drinking Water. Its Own Records Show Otherwise.  appeared first on DeSmog.

At a Tuesday campaign rally for Republican Senate candidate Ken Paxton in Lubbock, Texas, President Trump announced the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) proposal to roll back a Biden-era methane rule, setting up a likely future showdown in how the agency oversees climate pollution under the Clean Air Act.

The proposal marks a break from the agency’s previous approaches to greenhouse gas regulation by maintaining that — for now — the EPA still has the authority to regulate climate pollution from the oil and gas industry, though it might revisit this decision later. With affordability top of mind for many midterm voters, however, the President framed the move in economic terms.   

“Tonight I’m officially terminating Biden’s expensive and unnecessary methane regulations,” Trump announced to the crowd, located near the oil-rich Permian Basin. The new plan would loosen federal requirements for oil and gas operators to detect and repair leaks, ease restrictions on gas flaring, and eliminate the Super Emitter Program, a third-party monitoring and reporting system designed to identify major releases of methane, known as a climate super pollutant.

Trump said the proposal, which addressed a 2024 rule known as OOOOb/c, would “save consumers and energy producers $45 billion in costs, unlock vast quantities of Texas natural gas, and produce 210 million barrels of oil.” Under President Biden, the EPA estimated the rule would prevent the release of 58 million tons of methane and 16 million tons of volatile organic compounds (VOCs), leading to major public health and climate benefits. Climate change already is raising costs for American households by an estimated $400 to $900 annually, according to a 2025 Brookings report.  

Trump’s Lubbock announcement follows a series of sweeping deregulatory moves by the EPA in which the agency has stated it does not have the authority to regulate the greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change under the Clean Air Act. EPA’s most notable decision came in February when the agency rescinded the 2009 endangerment finding, the U.S. government’s scientific finding that greenhouse gases harm human health and the environment and the legal basis for its rules addressing climate change. More recently, the EPA stated in September that it would no longer limit climate pollution for power plants, a move which would likely extend the lifespan of coal-fired power plants. 

In the wake of these decisions, however, legal experts and environmental advocates say that the EPA is attempting to assert power unevenly. On the one hand, the agency says it lacks the legal authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from cars, trucks, power plants, and industrial sources under the Clean Air Act. On the other, the latest EPA proposal relies on, in some cases in the same section of, the Clean Air Act to regulate methane, a greenhouse gas, from the oil and gas industry.

In its latest proposed rule, the EPA addresses this tension, acknowledging that “stakeholders have also raised concerns” about the agency’s authority to regulate the oil and gas sector’s greenhouse gas emissions under the landmark air pollution law. Depending on the agency’s final handling of the issue with fossil fuel-fired power plants, the EPA states it could then use a “future rulemaking” to resolve the issue in the oil and gas sector. (The EPA is accepting public comments on its proposed repeal of its authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions for fossil fuel-fired power plants until Nov. 2.)

Subscribe to Desmog

Get the weekly intelligence you need to hold polluters accountable

Email Address Sign Up Send me intelligence from: All US/Global team UK/Europe team Sign Up --> (function($){ $('.newsletter-container .ijkidr-us').click(function() { $('.js-cm-form').attr('data-id', '2BE4EF332AA2E32596E38B640E905619D07B21962C5AFE16D3A2145673C82A3CEE9D9F1ADDABE965ACB3CE39939D42AC9012C6272FD52BFCA0790F0FB77C6442'); $('.js-cm-email-input').attr('name', 'cm-vdrirr-vdrirr'); }); $('.newsletter-container .ijkidr-uk').click(function() { $('.js-cm-form').attr('data-id', '2BE4EF332AA2E32596E38B640E905619BD43AA6813AF1B0FFE26D8282EC254E3ED0237BA72BEFBE922037EE4F1B325C6DA4918F8E044E022C7D333A43FD72429'); $('.js-cm-email-input').attr('name', 'cm-ijkidr-ijkidr'); }); })(jQuery);

Attacking EPA’s ‘flawed legal basis’

In 1999, the oil and gas industry’s largest trade group, the American Petroleum Institute (API), organized a meeting over whether it should “coordinate a multi-industry, trade group response” to the threat of what it called EPA’s “flawed legal basis” for regulating greenhouse gas pollution, including carbon dioxide and methane, under the Clean Air Act. In 2024, the API filed a legal challenge over the OOOOb/c rule, which was eventually consolidated into a lawsuit with states and other industry trade groups. That suit has been paused while the agency reconsiders the rule.

Parts of the oil and gas industry have flagged this distinction in how the Trump EPA is handling two different greenhouse gases under the same law. Shortly after the EPA repealed the endangerment finding, the Domestic Energy Producers Alliance (DEPA), an oil and gas trade association founded by fracking magnate and Trump donor Harold Hamm, wrote a letter to the EPA, thanking the agency for “restoring the rule of law.” The group called out “methane and other greenhouse gas emission requirements for the oil and gas sector” among its examples of “major regulations based on the Endangerment Finding.”

A flare burns over oilfield infrastructure in West Texas’ Permian Basin in 2020. Credit: Justin Hamel/DeSmog

A few months later, after the agency published an update on its proposed reconsideration of the OOOOb/c methane rule, DEPA wrote in an internal newsletter that EPA “does not explain its legal reasoning for continuing to regulate methane emissions when it has found that it does not have the authority to regulate carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from vehicles and has proposed it does not have the authority to regulate power plants’ CO2 emissions.”

On Tuesday in Corpus Christi, the president called out Hamm by name at another midterms rally shortly before the one announcing the methane rule rollback. “Harold Hamm is here, the great oilman,” said Trump, looking around the audience. “Hi, Harold.” 

‘The Very Definition of Arbitary’

Legal experts and environmental advocates say the EPA’s inconsistency leaves unresolved important legal questions about the federal government’s authority to regulate climate pollution, potentially keeping the door open to upend federal methane regulation entirely.

“Treating similar pollutants under the same statute differently, with no stated reason or evidence, is the very definition of arbitrary and capricious decision making,” said Alejandro Camacho, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Camacho argues that if the EPA adopts a broad theory limiting its authority over greenhouse gases, it must explain why that theory doesn’t also undermine its authority to regulate methane. “States have already sued over the power plant repeal, as have health and environmental groups, and they can and should attack this inconsistency too,” he added.

A lone pumpjack in Loving County, Texas, in the Permian Basin. Credit: Justin Hamel/DeSmog

The EPA’s proposal nods to the industry’s questioning of its authority and points to the agency’s history of handling the oil and gas sector separately, “but the agency hasn’t explained how it will navigate it,” said Rosalie Winn, senior director and lead counsel on methane and clean air policy for the Environmental Defense Fund.

Mary Sasso, an attorney for the Clean Air Task Force, said the agency’s decision to defer the question could leave the future of methane regulation uncertain. “I think that there’s very real concerns that we could see changes to EPA’s interpretation of its own authority finalized in some type of regulation that would be really damaging for public health and the environment,” she said.

Camacho agrees, and warned that the deferral could foreshadow future agency backtracking. “The deferral is less a reasoned distinction than a placeholder for the next rollback,” he said.

The administration also argues that the proposed changes will reduce regulatory costs, encourage domestic energy production, and help lower prices for consumers. “Since day one, President Trump has been putting real money back into the hands of American people by putting American energy back in the hands of the American workers, businesses, and communities,” said Interior Secretary Doug Burgum in a press statement about the proposal.

Consumer savings uncertain

Although the EPA estimates that the proposed rollback to the methane rule would save consumers tens of billions of dollars, the relationship between domestic production and consumer prices is more complicated, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. In an emailed response to DeSmog, the EPA said its estimate reflected the anticipated cost oil and gas operators would save by not having to comply with regulations, their excess profits, and consumer savings. The proposed rule reflects this calculation in its Regulatory Impact Analysis section, but does not provide further details on how the agency determined these figures. These figures are not independently established consumer savings.

“As much as it would be easy to paint oil executives as cartoonish villains hiking prices while families suffer, individuals have little to no control over benchmark oil prices,” said Kelly Mitchell, the executive director of the oil and gas watchdog Fieldnotes.

“The administration may claim that new rules will incentivize new production, bringing online supply to counter the barrels trapped behind the Strait of Hormuz,” Mitchell said. “However, these new rules are primarily designed to help operators of marginal wells — wells that produce fewer than 15 barrels per day.”

Flaring methane gas in the Permian Basin, Texas. Credit: Justin Hamel/DeSmog

Mitchell questioned whether the benefits of the rollback would reach consumers, arguing that changes would primarily reduce costs for oil and gas operators without guaranteeing lower prices at the pump. “We’re left with an outcome where oil companies get to war profiteer, avoid using any of those profits to clean up a major pollution source, and fail to reduce prices. Now they have the gall to look us in the eyes and tell us this is a gift to the American consumer.”

Since rescinding the endangerment finding, the EPA no longer accounts for the cost of harms from additional climate pollution — only the economic harms — which does not figure into the new rule’s estimated savings. Meanwhile, in a study recapping the last decade of climate-induced health harms, the Lancet reported a record high of 710,000 heat-related deaths in 2023 — and almost 72 percent of them caused by climate change.

The proposed rule places particular emphasis on a class of low-producing facilities known as marginal wells, which typically produce relatively small amounts of oil and gas. The Trump administration alleges that regulations established under the previous administration stymied these wells. “Under crooked Joe Biden, ‘Dumocrats’ crushed the small oil and gas operators,” Trump said during the rally Tuesday. “There are small operators, they’re great operators too, I know so many of them — with crippling regulations and methane that caused prices to skyrocket.”

The EPA says many of these wells are family-owned operations that struggle with the costs of complying with Biden-era standards, but an Environmental Defense analysis found that nearly half of all marginal wells are owned by just 93 corporations.

The proposed methane rule reconsideration is the latest development in a broader campaign to weaken federal methane protections under the purview of Aaron Szabo, a former registered lobbyist for a member of a major trade group pushing for these rollbacks. Earlier this month, Szabo stepped down as the head of the EPA Office of Air and Radiation. Last month, DeSmog reported that members of the oil and gas industry had simultaneously voiced public support for federal methane rules while covertly working to “eviscerate”them during the second Trump administration, according to an investigation published by Fieldnotes.

The proposed changes to the OOOOb/c methane rule are not yet final. The EPA says it will provide at least 45 days for public commentafter publication in the Federal Register, including a public hearing.

The post President Trump Unveils EPA’s New Contradictory Methane Proposal at Campaign Rally appeared first on DeSmog.

Two directors of GB News, which has loudly advocated for the new Rosebank and Jackdaw oil and gas fields, hold shares in the firms behind the projects.

Sir Paul Marshall, a millionaire hedge fund boss who also owns The Spectator magazine, and Lord (Theodore) Agnew of Oulton, a Conservative peer and donor, sit on the board of All Perspectives Ltd, the holding company of GB News.

Marshall is also one of its two principal funders, pumping money into the loss-making right-wing outlet.

GB News – which employs Reform UK leader Nigel Farage and former Tory Cabinet minister Jacob Rees-Mogg – has strongly supported new North Sea drilling, with presenters recently calling Rosebank “a no-brainer” that should be approved “instantly”.

The Labour government last week approved the development of the Jackdaw gas field near Aberdeen and is expected to make a decision on Rosebank soon.

Rosebank would create an estimated 250 million tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions over its 10-year lifetime, roughly 70 percent of the UK’s total annual emissions. The oil and gas field near the Shetland Islands is 80 percent owned by Adura, an “independent joint venture” by the fossil fuel giants Equinor and Shell that also owns the Jackdaw site.

At the end of June, Marshall’s hedge fund Marshall Wace held $16.3 million (around £12.3 million) of stock in Shell, according to its latest filings to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Meanwhile, Lord Agnew is a shareholder in Equinor, owning a stake in the company worth at least £100,000 according to his parliamentary register.

DeSmog first revealed Marshall Wace’s huge fossil fuel portfolio in 2023, which increased to $2.8 billion (£2.1 billion) in the first quarter of this year.

One of Marshall Wace’s biggest backers, U.S. private equity giant KKR, is itself a major investor in fossil fuels.

Subscribe to Desmog

Get the weekly intelligence you need to hold polluters accountable

Email Address Sign Up Send me intelligence from: All US/Global team UK/Europe team Sign Up --> (function($){ $('.newsletter-container .ijkidr-us').click(function() { $('.js-cm-form').attr('data-id', '2BE4EF332AA2E32596E38B640E905619D07B21962C5AFE16D3A2145673C82A3CEE9D9F1ADDABE965ACB3CE39939D42AC9012C6272FD52BFCA0790F0FB77C6442'); $('.js-cm-email-input').attr('name', 'cm-vdrirr-vdrirr'); }); $('.newsletter-container .ijkidr-uk').click(function() { $('.js-cm-form').attr('data-id', '2BE4EF332AA2E32596E38B640E905619BD43AA6813AF1B0FFE26D8282EC254E3ED0237BA72BEFBE922037EE4F1B325C6DA4918F8E044E022C7D333A43FD72429'); $('.js-cm-email-input').attr('name', 'cm-ijkidr-ijkidr'); }); })(jQuery);

“GB News has gone way beyond just covering the Rosebank decision. Presenters repeatedly attacked the energy secretary for considering rejecting it, and demanded that the government ‘drill baby drill’,” said Richard Wilson, director of the campaign group Stop Funding Heat.

“The public deserves to know when the people overseeing a TV station have a financial stake in the outcome it’s pushing for”.

Wilson also pointed out that media regulator Ofcom requires “due impartiality” from broadcasters on live policy decisions, potentially including the approval of specific oil fields.

“It’s time for Ofcom to take action,” he said. “In the meantime, it’s vital that advertisers continue to steer clear of GB News”.

Paul Marshall and Marshall Wace declined to comment. GB News and Lord Agnew were approached for comment.

GB News’s ‘Rosebank-tinted’ Coverage

Presenters and guests on GB News have vocally backed the Rosebank and Jackdaw projects.

On 26 October, Rees-Mogg, who lost his seat at the 2024 general election, was asked for his view on Rosebank, replying: “Oh, drill, baby drill. We should get on with it as fast as possible,” adding that the UK should also overturn its ban on fracking for shale gas.

On 19 August, GB News presenter Andrew Pierce interviewed Reform’s deputy leader Richard Tice about the two projects, saying: “If both of them were given the go-ahead, wouldn’t that instantly create some of the extra fuel security, energy security we need, apart from the revenue for the Exchequer?”

Tice replied, “Of course. Both should be given the go-ahead instantly,” adding that the government should grant new North Sea exploration licences, which would break its 2024 manifesto commitment.

On 22 October, Pierce himself called Jackdaw “brilliant” and said it was “madness” for Labour MPs to oppose Rosebank.

GB News political editor Christopher Hope has also made the case for Rosebank, remarking on 26 October: “We’re buying in the oil and gas we would take from Rosebank. Anyway, why not make it in [the UK] and get tax revenue from that asset?”

A few days earlier, on 16 October, he said: “It seems like a no-brainer to many, but not on the left of politics.”

GB News presenter and former Conservative MP Jacob Rees-Mogg.

Credit: GB News / YouTube

Last week, the GB News website ran an opinion article by Russell Borthwick, the chief executive of Aberdeen and Grampian Chamber of Commerce, headlined: “Jackdaw approval is a victory for common sense. Now it’s Rosebank’s turn.”

As DeSmog has documented, GB News has long backed new fossil fuels and attacked climate action. It has also given a platform to climate science deniers, including from the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), a pressure group that says more CO2 emissions would be a “benefit to the planet”.

Marshall has also personally criticised policies designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, claiming in a speech to the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC) conference in February 2025 that the world has been infected by a “climate derangement syndrome”. He said “our economic prosperity and our people’s livelihoods” are being sacrificed “all for the sake of making some fractional changes to the level of CO2 in the atmosphere”.

In reality, reaching net zero emissions is predicted to cost only a fraction of UK GDP, while the extreme weather events caused by climate change could have a dramatic impact on the global economy.

Marshall’s Spectator magazine, edited by former Conservative Cabinet minister Michael Gove, has also strongly supported new North Sea drilling.

A piece last week by anti-net zero columnist Ross Clark hailed Jackdaw as “a small victory for common sense” but lamented that Labour will not approve Rosebank so long as the UK keeps its net zero targets.

The Spectator’s “gossip columnist” Steerpike also last week accused Labour MPs of “throwing a tantrum over Jackdaw”, and concluded: “It has taken years, and so much time has been wasted, but at least the most obvious decision facing the country has finally been made. The question is whether Burnham will be brave enough to approve Rosebank as well.”

The Spectator was approached for comment.

The post Two GB News Directors Have Investments in Oil Companies Behind Rosebank and Jackdaw appeared first on DeSmog.

Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor’s End Times Fascism and the Fight for the Living World is critical reading for anyone seeking to understand and push back against the far-right coalitions wielding considerable state and corporate power around the world.

Klein and Taylor posit that today’s fascists believe that end times have arrived, and have made it their mission to profit from cascading global crises, while hunkering down and protecting themselves as the world burns around them.

The book details three factions of end times fascists, united by their shared apocalypticism. The religious fundamentalists believe end times are upon us, but they will be saved by their messiah. The Silicon Valley technologists are building technologies they say could be world-ending, that in the meantime are killing jobs, consuming vast resources, and polluting communities. The ethno-nationalists espouse conspiratorial ideas about cultural replacement and treat immigration as an existential threat.

DeSmog Canada editor/reporter Mary Stuart spoke with Astra Taylor about how climate change fits into end times fascism, the importance of AI data centre fights, and how we can understand Canadian Prime Minister Carney’s neoliberal moves in response to U.S. President Donald Trump.

Taylor is a writer, documentarian, and activist. She co-founded the Debt Collective, a membership-based union for debtors, and is the author of several books, including The Age of Insecurity and Democracy May Not Exist But We’ll Miss It When It is Gone.

This interview was conducted by phone and has been edited for length and clarity.

Mary Stuart: I want to start by asking how your book can help us understand some recent elections. Jair Bolsonaro’s son Flávio won the first round of voting in Brazil’s election and nearly became president. The far-right AfD recently won in Saxony-Anhalt. How do these wins fit into your analysis of end times fascism?

Astra Taylor: One phenomena we describe in End Times Fascism relevant here is the role of Pentecostal religious communities in turning out the vote. To paraphrase reporting from Brazil, a voter said “my heart’s with Lula, but my pastor told me to vote for Flávio”.

The incredibly difficult conditions that we’re living under created fertile terrain for prophecy and religion, for kinds of pentecostalism, a faith that is focused on prosperity, individual advancement and banking on the idea that life is suffering here on earth, but you will be rewarded in the afterlife.

There’s also interference from Tech oligarchs. We don’t know the half of it at this moment, but the way the platform [Meta] refused to run ads for Lula’s party and beyond is certainly a factor. And the Trump regime [is playing a role] as well.

AfD is a similar. Naomi and I wrote a piece in the Financial Times and we open with the images that went viral this summer of the Danube River drying, and Nazi warships emerging. Hundreds of Nazi warships sank during WWII, and as the river receded, this paraphernalia was coming out of the mud. We thought it was a powerful metaphor for today. What’s really striking is the riverbed— the fact that it’s drying because of climate change. Our point is that fascism always emerges from crises. And we cannot separate the ecological and economic crises people are facing.

People are really struggling with affordability. People are feeling that they don’t have a future. And actually quite strikingly, rates of immigration are quite low, right? So [Saxony-Anhalt is] one of the places with the least immigration, but [the AfD] step in and say “the problem is the immigrants, it’s not a larger economic system.” This is a classic fascist move that we describe throughout the book.

MS: What role do climate change and climate denial play in end times fascism?

AT: Naomi and I are insistent that the planet is a player in our politics. Fascism always surges in moments of crisis.

We are in a world that is being roiled by disasters and shocks. We’ve reached a point where the consequences [of climate change] are undeniable. You cannot deny a heat dome when you’re inside it. You cannot deny a hurricane when it’s blowing the roof off your house. Of course, you can still deny why the storm is coming. You can embrace a Marjorie Taylor Greene perspective and say that it’s due to space lasers or you can say “the climate has always changed, this is nothing new, we don’t know if it’s human causing it.”

The far-right is adapting to circumstances … where ecological catastrophes are the norm, people can’t pay their property insurance bills anymore because the rates have been jacked up or because the insurers have pulled out, or where people have to pay the cost of fixing their homes or moving because of disasters.

The far-right is having to acknowledge that there are fires, there are storms, that people are suffering. They’re responding by deflecting, by saying, “don’t blame the fossil fuel companies and the politicians who take their money, blame the globalists in the EU and their climate policies, or blame the immigrants”.

We saw this really vividly after Hurricane Helene, a tropical storm that hit Appalachia. Trump and Elon Musk were going around saying “FEMA has no money for you because the Democrats spent it on immigrants.” So they use the hurricane to advance the Great Replacement Conspiracy. It’s an amazing pivot to go from a storm destroying tens of thousands of houses to say, “the problem is the globalists are importing immigrants to replace you”. But it’s working.

People have been warning for many years about ecofascism being the consequence of climate change. Ecofascism is the consequence of decades of denial, not just from the far-right, but by liberals who insisted that we could address this crisis through market policies that were doomed to fail.

It’s absolutely criminally irresponsible to not talk about climate change right now because that will create a vacuum for this pivot from the real arsonists to the immigrant victims. And we need to insist on robust climate policies. Not just renewables. It’s investments in care work and in all sorts of low carbon important initiatives. It needs to be at the centre of our politics.

There was a time when liberals could think people will stop denying climate change when they experience it firsthand. We’re seeing that is not true. People in that state of vulnerability and shock are more susceptible to strongmen and scapegoating, and we need to be right there with a different plan and a different story.

MS: In the book you talk about a number of site fights and bright spots, one of them being the AI data centre backlash. What is the importance of AI data centre fights in defeating end times fascism? Can these fights be sites of expansion for movements to touch on other issues as well?

AT: The data centre fight is an amazing opportunity to weave together all of these issues that we know are interconnected. People aren’t fighting data centres in their backyard for just one reason. They are fighting them because they care about their air and water, because they don’t want a future where all the jobs are gone and every bit of economically valuable work, as OpenAI calls it, is performed by robots. It’s also a democracy fight. These data centres are coming in under the cover of non-disclosure agreements, often with little input from even the city council and no input from the community.

But it’s more than that. There’s such intensive capital expenditure, like borrowing on capital markets right now. That’s part of why interest rates are being jacked up around the world, which increases the cost of borrowing for ordinary people. Rates are going up, it’s making homes more unaffordable. The fact that the population is buried by debt is a huge part of what drove Flávio Bolsonaro’s surge in recent months.

All of these factors are compounding, and so it would be foolish for environmentalists not to intervene and try to connect those those dots. The data centre fight has to be connected to affordability.

MS: In Canada, our Prime Minister Mark Carney is a former investment banker who Naomi recently referred to as the ‘paragon of liberalism’. He’s privatizing key pieces of Canadian infrastructure, doubling down on fossil fuels, other extractive projects, and AI, while using the language of standing up to Trump. His approval ratings are incredibly high. How are we to understand this?

AT: Naomi might call him a paragon of liberalism. I call him Sir banks a lot. I don’t trust bankers, especially those who are committed to the kind of neoliberalism and financialization that he’s proposing.

It’s dangerous to say “peer into the window, asset managers of the world. Canada has lots of resources that you can purchase and we have a healthcare system that can still be privatized and higher education system that still has some public funding that we could siphon off to the private sector.”

These are the policies and conditions that created fertile terrain for the far-right. Carney does not seem to have learned that lesson. It was striking when he gave that speech at Davos, about there being a rupture. The world was so ready for Canada to lead, and to project onto that speech that he was actually standing up for true universalism and for international law.

Instead he’s doing this nostalgic hyper-nationalist neoliberalism that isn’t really nationalist, because it was reported by the the Toronto Star that the amount of money going to [the] American tech sector from the Department of National Defense has doubled in the last year. He’s spending Canadian money to enrich the very companies that are behind Trump. You cannot fight oligarchy with oligarchy. You definitely can’t fight fascism with oligarchy. You fight it with solidarity and with democratic socialism, with addressing the root crises.

People want to believe that this figure can protect them when the truth is protection is in building collective power and insisting on a deep economic and political transformation. What he’s doing is incredibly dangerous. And the fact that he’s rolling back already weak climate policies when Canada’s main export is wildfire smoke, is just incredibly insulting and incredibly dangerous. The world needs Canada to stand firm against fascism.

MS: You talk about the power of stories, and detail the stories that the end times fascists are telling. What’s a counter story that’s been missing?

AT: In the book we talk about how we need to tell stories not of end times but of better times. We are entering a period where there are going to be roiling crises. We need to figure out how to live together well under these conditions.

I think we need stories that just remind us of how critical this fight is and that ground us in a love of this world. Naomi and I want stories that connect people to that, that remind people that we do live in a planetary paradise. It’s worth defending.

Ultimately, the organizer in me says we need more than stories. I think it’s incumbent on all of us to try to find a political home, to face the fact that fascism is not something that we can fight alone, we can only fight it together. If there’s not something for you to join, where you live, then start something … It takes not just stories, but actions, however imperfect, however small, however inadequate, but when we all take them, it adds up.

End Times Fascism and the Fight for the Living World can be ordered in Canada, the U.S. And UK.

The post How the Far-Right Uses Climate Disasters to Build Political Power appeared first on DeSmog.

Hungary’s new government is considering replacing Russia’s state nuclear corporation Rosatom as the main contractor for the Paks II nuclear power plant, raising questions about whether Budapest is preparing to break with Moscow or simply seeking more favorable terms for a project already plagued by delays and rising costs.

According to an October 21 Reuters investigation, Prime Minister Péter Magyar’s government has begun exploring alternative suppliers as part of a comprehensive review of the €12.5 billion project, awarded to Rosatom by former Prime Minister Viktor Orbán in 2014.

The uncertainty has reached Rosatom’s leadership. Director General Alexei Likhachev acknowledged on October 23 that the project could either accelerate or be abandoned altogether, adding that the corporation had received no response to its requests for talks with the Hungarian government.

But Bellona nuclear expert Dmitry Gorchakov cautions against interpreting the reports as evidence that Hungary has decided to abandon Rosatom.

“I fear these rumors about a possible replacement, attributed to anonymous sources, are simply part of the debate now taking place indirectly between Hungary’s new government and Rosatom,” he said.

The high cost of breaking with Russia

Paks II involves two Russian-designed VVER-1200 reactors intended to expand Hungary’s nuclear generating capacity. Construction has suffered repeated delays, with the first concrete poured only in February 2026.

By then, Hungary had already spent more than €2 billion on the project, including approximately €1.1 billion paid to Rosatom. Gorchakov says the threat of cancellation may be a negotiating tactic rather than a settled policy.

“Refusing to work with Rosatom would be the most radical measure, one that apparently was not even discussed during the election campaign,” he said. “It may be useful as a bargaining position, but that does not mean it will actually happen.”

He estimates that replacing the Russian contractor could delay construction by another five to ten years—about how long it would take to approve an alternative design and begin building.

There is at least one European precedent for breaking with Rosatom on a major construction project—Finland’s Hanhikivi plant, which Helsinki cancelled in 2022 with the outbreak of the Ukraine war. But unlike Finland, Gorchakov notes, Hungary remains deeply dependent on Rosatom. Its four existing reactors operate on Russian nuclear fuel, while Rosatom is expected to participate in extending their operating lives.

“Breaking relations with Rosatom could involve much more than simply abandoning a new Russian nuclear power plant,” Gorchakov said.

Such a rupture, he added, could trigger litigation, diplomatic disputes—just as Finland’s divorce with Rosatom did.

Geopolitical calculations

Bellona nuclear expert Alexander Nikitin agrees that negotiations over the future of PAKS II may be underway but argues that economic considerations alone cannot determine the outcome.

“Geopolitics will enter into these economic negotiations,” he said. “And that could very well mean Rosatom loses.”

Nikitin believes Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has fundamentally changed how European governments assess long-term dependence on Russian technology.

Building a Russian nuclear power plant establishes relationships with Moscow lasting many decades, encompassing fuel supplies, maintenance, specialized equipment and technical expertise. For countries seeking to reduce Moscow’s influence, those commitments increasingly carry political risks.

“Experience from Ukraine and other countries previously dependent on Rosatom shows that it is possible to replace the corporation at any stage,” Nikitin said. “Of course, the question is how much it costs.”

But he argues that the price of replacing Rosatom must be weighed against the long-term political and strategic costs of maintaining dependence on Russia.

Is there a compromise to be had?

Hungary is already pursuing alternatives to Russian supplies. On October 29, Magyar’s government submitted legislation to formalize a nuclear cooperation agreement with the United States, covering civilian nuclear technology, including small modular reactors.

The agreement, originally signed under Orbán, encourages the use of American technology in future nuclear projects. It does not, however, resolve the question of Paks II.

Gorchakov believes Budapest may ultimately seek a broader compromise, using the project’s future to negotiate better terms with Rosatom while gradually diversifying fuel supplies and reducing Russian involvement in the existing plant.

Rosatom also has reasons to compromise. Paks II remains its only nuclear power plant construction project in the European Union, making its preservation commercially and politically important.

The dispute comes amid continuing uncertainty over the project’s regulatory and environmental future. A September 2025 European Court of Justice ruling annulled the European Commission’s approval of Hungarian state aid, while exceptionally low Danube water levels have raised questions about cooling arrangements for the expanded station.

Gorchakov argues that these concerns should form part of Hungary’s review, alongside the project’s finances.

Hungary’s decision, expected by late 2026 or early 2027, will therefore determine more than the future of two reactors. It will test how far a European country deeply embedded in Russia’s nuclear industry is prepared to go to reduce that dependence.

The post Hungary weighs breaking with Rosatom as nuclear plant build tests Russian influence appeared first on Bellona.org.

Would you trust a detox facility that offers a minibar in every room? How about a climate course sponsored by ExxonMobil? If not, you might direct the same incredulity towards Canada’s recently unveiled Responsible Data Centre Development Principles, endorsed by tech giants that are implicated in violating those same principles. 

Minister of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Innovation Evan Solomon announced the voluntary and non-binding principles in September in response to mounting public opposition to massive data centre developments. It is hardly encouraging that the same companies leading the disruptive build out of massive data centres, such as Amazon, Google, OpenAI, Meta, and Anthropic, quickly signed on to this toothless commitment. 

“Data centres must protect ratepayers, respect water and energy resources, and create lasting benefits for the communities that host them,” assured Solomon at the launch in September. “These principles set a clear national standard: If you build in Canada, you must build responsibly and transparently and you must build for Canadians.”

Really?

Barely three weeks after these companies pledged to Canadians to be “transparent about local impacts,” the U.S. House Judiciary Committee opened an investigation into Amazon, Google, and Meta for using non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) to gag state and local officials from telling their constituents about data centre impacts on local water supplies and electricity rates.

“Google’s own confidentiality agreements have been shown to contain language that explicitly prevents local officials from disclosing ‘the terms of any agreement,’” ranking member Democratic U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin wrote in a letter to Google’s parent company Alphabet.

For over a year, the company fought a local newspaper in Oregon in the courts to keep its Dalles data centre’s water consumption hidden, arguing the figure was a “trade secret.” When the courts finally forced the release of this essential information, it was revealed  that Google was using a quarter of the entire city’s water. A company that litigates to hide its water use from the residents of one small town is now asking Canadians to trust its promise of transparency here.

A Meta subsidiary in Louisiana likewise convinced Republican Gov. Jeff Landry to sign an NDA tied to a $50 billion data centre campus. Over 100 Louisiana state public officials signed similar gag orders that apparently silence them even if they leave government. Eric Holl, an adviser to former Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards, a Democrat, told the Gulf States Newsroom, “I don’t see this being used as anything other than a tool of intimidation and control.”

Citizens in Wisconsin were also forced to sue the local utility regulator to release documents detailing the projected energy demand of a proposed Meta data centre after this basic information was also deemed a trade secret.

Subscribe to Desmog

Get the weekly intelligence you need to hold polluters accountable

Email Address Sign Up Send me intelligence from: All US/Global team UK/Europe team Sign Up --> (function($){ $('.newsletter-container .ijkidr-us').click(function() { $('.js-cm-form').attr('data-id', '2BE4EF332AA2E32596E38B640E905619D07B21962C5AFE16D3A2145673C82A3CEE9D9F1ADDABE965ACB3CE39939D42AC9012C6272FD52BFCA0790F0FB77C6442'); $('.js-cm-email-input').attr('name', 'cm-vdrirr-vdrirr'); }); $('.newsletter-container .ijkidr-uk').click(function() { $('.js-cm-form').attr('data-id', '2BE4EF332AA2E32596E38B640E905619BD43AA6813AF1B0FFE26D8282EC254E3ED0237BA72BEFBE922037EE4F1B325C6DA4918F8E044E022C7D333A43FD72429'); $('.js-cm-email-input').attr('name', 'cm-ijkidr-ijkidr'); }); })(jQuery);

The impacts of enormous AI facilities on American communities are well known. The consequences being visited on Canadian towns and residents are concerning to say the least.

The principles say centres must reduce environmental impacts, and prioritize “low-emission energy sources.” Yet a contentious data centre development in Saskatchewan proposed by Bell Canada – also a signatory to Minister Solomon’s principles – would require as much generating capacity as the entire city of Regina. About 900 megawatts (MW) of its power will come from behind-the-fence gas generation. The Regina City Council recently debated the development for over seven hours and voted to demand more information on potential impacts on local water supplies and electricity costs. A total of 18,000 residents have signed a petition opposing the project.

Beacon Data Centers is another signatory, which stated it is “proud to stand with governments, municipalities, and industry in supporting them.” Yet the company is embroiled in a bitter dispute with residents of Lorneville, New Brunswick, who are understandably opposed to the company’s plans to fill in a local wetland to expand an industrial park with a data centre that will require more than 10 percent of provincial energy demand. The data centre would become one of New Brunswick’s biggest emitters, generating 6.6 percent of provincial emissions.

According to reporting from the Narwhal, “documents obtained through provincial access to information legislation … show provincial officials were in discussions to bring a data centre to the [industrial] park long before residents were told about the tenant — and that details of that data centre conflicted with the more low-impact vision for the industrial park advertised to residents.”

DeSmog has already documented the massive buildout of data centres in Alberta, almost entirely powered by burning natural gas. Almost 21 GW of potential new gas capacity is enthusiastically being embraced by provincial regulators, an amount described as “absurdly high” by Alex de Vries  at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.

Based on similar gas-fired installations around the world, de Vries estimated this amount of new data centres would require about 200 billion litres in cooling water each year. How is this not supposed to impact local electricity rates, heating costs, or water supplies?

This absurd increase in climate-killing gas consumption seems, in fact, to be the point. Internal Privy Council documents obtained by DeSmog from Greenpeace showed that increased gas demand was being touted by senior advisors to Prime Minister Mark Carney as one of the top “public policy benefits to Canada” of data centres.

Bringing “strategic value to Canada” is another vague goal of the newly announced data centre principles. If this is meant to allude to protecting Canadian data sovereignty, building facilities owned by Google, Meta, Amazon or other tech giants will accomplish very little. The U.S. government can compel an American company that controls data – regardless of location – to release it to American regulators under the CLOUD Act (2018). 

Regardless of the law, many of the enthusiastic corporate endorsers of Canada’s new data centre principles have repeatedly demonstrated their obedient political fealty to the Trump administration. Tech leaders attended his inauguration, donated vast sums of money to the Trump campaign, and indulged the president’s geographic fits of pique by rapidly renaming Lake Ontario “Lake America” on Google and Apple maps. 

With this cohort driving Canada’s tech build-out, what could possibly go wrong?

Canadians are justifiably concerned data centres will impact local water supplies and electricity costs. We need bold policies that will improve digital safety and address increasing democratic threats from AI-driven disinformation. Rather than bringing in meaningful and enforceable regulations, the federal government has instead trotted out vague platitudes endorsed by the same companies contributing to the problem. Ottawa, we have a credibility problem.

The post Canada’s ‘Responsible’ Data Centre Principles Have a Credibility Problem appeared first on DeSmog.

Campaigners backing attempts to sue Shell over a typhoon in the Philippines have launched an online archive showing that the British oil major knew that burning fossil fuels could harm the climate as early as the 1960s. 

ExposeShell.com features documents including a 1966 memo Shell commissioned from British scientist James Lovelock and the ‘Greenhouse Effect’, a confidential 1988 report predicting that human-caused warming could trigger “dramatic” changes in sea level, ocean currents, weather and precipitation — “larger than any that have occurred over the last 12,000 years.” [Read these and other documents in the DeSmog series #ShellKnew]

The interactive site went live as Shell announced the latest figures showing that oil majors are enjoying bumper profits as the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran pushes oil prices higher. Shell said its adjusted third-quarter earnings had doubled to £10.8 billion in comparison to the same period last year.

“We don’t need any more reports to us that this big oily industry has been creating disaster,” Robin Wells, director of Fossil Free London, one of the groups behind the website, said in a statement. “Shell researched the reality but tore up the truth and locked it in the dark. Now, we are all facing the disastrous consequences.”

Fossil Free London protesters took to the streets outside Shell’s head office in London on Thursday, dressed in 1960s-style suits and holding banners that read “Shell Knew.”

ExposeShell.com is also backed by The Odette Case, a campaign group supporting more than 100 survivors of Typhoon Rai — known in the Philippines as Typhoon Odette — who began seeking damages from Shell last December in a first-of-its-kind case in the UK courts. 

The typhoon tore through the Philippines in December, 2021, killing 400 people, injuring more than 1,000, and forcing almost 3.2 million people from their homes. 

The survivors argue that Shell should be held liable for its historic contribution to the greenhouse gas emissions fuelling extreme weather events and its support for climate science denial via its past membership of industry groups such as the Global Climate Coalition — despite its early knowledge of the risks posed by burning its products.  

Filed by UK law firm Hausfeld, the case draws on recent advances in attribution science that enable scientists to assess the degree to which climate change has contributed to an extreme weather event. Through Shell’s contribution of more than 2.5 percent of historical global greenhouse gas emissions, the suit alleges that Shell contributed to both the likelihood and severity of Typhoon Rai. It is the first civil claim to link the climate impacts of an oil and gas company’s activities with death, personal injury, and damage to property that has already occurred in the Global South.

Shell has dismissed the lawsuit as “baseless” and said that it had no “unique knowledge about climate change.”

(This story was updated at 12:44 GMT on October 29, 2026 to include Shell’s third-quarter earnings)

The post Interactive Archive Shares Secrets of Shell’s Early Climate Research appeared first on DeSmog.

Cutting ultra-processed foods may ease depression, new study finds Anthony Lacey October 28, 2026

• Diets with less ultra-processed food may help to relieve depression symptoms.
• A small new pilot study adds to a growing body of evidence linking UPF to mental health.
• EWG’s Food Scores flags ultra-processed foods to help you make simple, healthy swaps.

Cutting back on ultra-processed food, or UPF, may help improve symptoms of depression, according to a new study. 

UPF such as sugary drinks, salty snacks and frozen meals have already been shown to be strongly tied to chronic diseases like Type 2 diabetes and heart disease.

These findings add to the growing evidence that what we eat may also play a role in our mental health.

Get your free guide: EWG's Guide to Food Additives Study links eating less UPF to fewer depression symptoms

The study, published in JAMA Psychiatry in September, is among the first to examine whether cutting back on UPF can improve symptoms of depression and ease some symptoms of anxiety. 

It involved 20 participants with depression who regularly consumed large amounts of UPF. They were told to follow either their usual diet or a low-UPF diet for four weeks, then switched to the other diet for another four weeks. 

Researchers then measured changes in their self-reported depression and anxiety symptoms.

Study participants who cut their UPF intake by about 85% percent experienced moderate to large improvements on three measures of depression. Anxiety symptoms also improved modestly.

The findings may reveal some new insights about the way food affects our mood and mental health.

But this was a small pilot study, and improvements in depression and anxiety symptoms were self-reported. More research is needed to determine whether reducing UPF can directly improve depression symptoms. 

Why might ultra-processed foods affect mental health?

Researchers are still trying to understand why a diet high in UPF may be linked to depression. One possibility is that some UPF contain additives that may affect the gut microbiome. Because the gut and brain communicate with one another, researchers are investigating whether changes in the gut microbiome could influence mood. 

Another possibility is that diets high in UPF may displace minimally processed foods that provide fiber, vitamins and minerals important for overall health. 

States are taking action on ultra-processed foods

Scientific evidence has done little to persuade the federal government to protect us from harmful chemicals in our food. But action at the state level is forcing the issue and driving meaningful change. 

California’s Real Food, Healthy Kids Act last year created the nation’s first legal definition of UPF. The law also requires schools to phase the worst UPF out of meals. 

Gov. Gavin Newsom also recently signed AB 2244, an EWG co-sponsored law that creates the first state-backed “non-ultraprocessed certified” label. This voluntary seal is designed to help shoppers in California more easily identify foods that aren’t ultra-processed – a big step toward making healthier choices more accessible.

How to cut back on UPF

About 70% of packaged food in the U.S. is ultra-processed, which makes it difficult to avoid. It’s also designed to be craveable and hard to resist.

Cooking from scratch takes time and energy, which can be tough for those trying to balance nutrition, convenience and cost. And experts say that can be especially challenging for people with depression.

You don’t have to aim for perfection. Cutting back on ultra-processed foods in any amount is a good place to start. Begin by swapping some packaged snacks for fruit, nuts or other minimally processed options. And at the grocery store, make a point to check ingredient lists to find products with fewer additives.

EWG’s Food Scores can help take some of the guesswork out of grocery shopping. The database rates foods based on nutrition, ingredient concerns and degree of processing, making it easier to compare products and find healthier options. 

You can also use EWG’s Healthy Living™ app to check products while you’re at the store.

Nicole Pajer is a freelance journalist.

Areas of Focus Ultra-Processed Foods Guest Authors Nicole Pajer (for EWG) October 28, 2026

Dirty Dozen™ food chemicals: Artificial dyes Iris Myers October 27, 2026 EWG’s recommendation

Avoid or limit foods containing artificial dyes.

Human and animal studies suggest artificial food dyes may harm children’s behavior and brain development. Studies on laboratory animals and cells found certain dyes may cause cancer.

Seven petroleum-derived synthetic dyes – Blue Dye No. 1, Blue 2, Green Dye No. 3, Red Dye No. 3, Red 40, Yellow Dye No. 5 and Yellow 6 – are ingredients of concern. 

What are artificial dyes?

Artificial dyes are synthetic, petroleum-derived color additives added to processed foods to give them color, restore color lost during processing and make them more visually appealing. 

Six synthetic food dyes are authorized for general use in U.S. foods: Blue 1, Blue 2, Green 3, Red 40, Yellow 5 and Yellow 6. 

Red 3, another petroleum-derived dye, is being phased out, with food manufacturers required to reformulate products by January 15, 2027.

Which foods contain artificial dyes?

Artificial dyes are most commonly used in candy, but they’re also found in baked goods, breakfast cereals, soda, sports drinks and many snacks, among other products.

Look for artificial dyes in product ingredient lists, usually below or next to the Nutrition Facts panel, on the back of the package. They may appear by name (such as “Red 40” or “Yellow 5”) or by their technical names, such as Allura Red AC or Tartrazine. 

Red 40, Yellow 5 and Yellow 6 account for most of the dyes in U.S. food products.

How are artificial dyes regulated?

The Food and Drug Administration is responsible for overseeing food additives and other ingredients. In 2025 the FDA revoked the authorization for Red 3 in food and oral medication under the Delaney Clause, which prohibits approval of any additive found to cause cancer in humans or animals. 

That same year, the FDA asked manufacturers to voluntarily phase out the remaining six petroleum-based synthetic dyes by the end of 2026 – a nonbinding target that has since slipped to 2027.

In 2026, the FDA revoked authorization for Orange B and proposed doing the same for Citrus Red No. 2. Both are less common artificial dyes, with limited use.

In the European Union, food containing Red 40, Yellow 5 or Yellow 6 must carry a label warning the dye “may have an adverse effect on activity and attention in children.” Green 3 is not approved as a food additive in the EU at all.

Several U.S. states have banned Blue 1, Blue 3, Green 3, Red 40, Yellow 5 and Yellow 6 in food served in public schools. The states include Arizona, California, Utah and Virginia, and West Virginia has banned the dyes statewide. 

In 2025 EWG supported the Ban Harmful Food Dyes Act, federal legislation that would revoke approval for all six dyes.

Artificial dyes are prohibited in certified organic foods under USDA Organic standards, which bar synthetic substances.

What does the science say about artificial dyes?

Foods with artificial dyes are typically marketed to children, and the strongest, most consistent evidence about artificial dyes is about their effects on children’s behavior.

An assessment by the California Environmental Protection Agency links artificial food dyes to negative behavioral outcomes – including irritability, decreased attention span and sleeplessness – in children with and without preexisting behavioral disorders. 

The agency reviewed both human and animal studies and concluded the FDA’s current acceptable daily intake limits are not strict enough to protect children, because they are based on decades-old data not meant to assess behavioral effects.

Animal studies reinforce these concerns. A series of studies that exposed pregnant mice to a mixture of artificial dyes found lasting behavior and learning changes in their offspring into adulthood. 

Those changes included altered activity levels and anxiety-like behavior – in some cases at doses comparable to typical human exposure. 

Red 3 gives rise to carcinogenic concern: It has been shown to induce thyroid tumors in rats, which is what triggered the FDA’s 2025 ban. 

Separate research found Red 3 can interfere with hormone signaling and estrogen-related pathways in human breast cancer cells, raising questions about its potential to disrupt hormones. 

Yellow 5 has been linked to DNA damage in human cells and, even at levels established as safe, changes in gene regulation in mice linked to potential long-term cancer and neurological effects. Yellow 5 and Yellow 6 have also been linked to disruption of the gut microbiome, and Red 40 to colitis, or inflammation of the colon, in animal studies.

New research has also connected overall intake of food coloring additives – both natural and artificial – with Type 2 diabetes in humans, though the underlying reasons are not yet understood.

Find out more

Learn more about recommendations relating to artificial dyes – and the full EWG Dirty Dozen™ list of food chemicals – on EWG’s research page.

EWG’s Food Scores provides ratings for more than 150,000 foods and drinks based on nutrition, ingredients and processing concerns and flags unhealthy ultra-processed foods to help you identify alternatives.

EWG’s Skin Deep® cosmetic database helps to identify harmful chemicals in personal care and beauty products. EWG Verified® products meet the strictest criteria for transparency and health.

And EWG’s Healthy Living™ app lets you take these tools with you on the go.

Authors Sarah Reinhardt, MPH, RDN October 27, 2026

Russia’s state nuclear corporation Rosatom made progress on two of its international reactor projects in recent weeks, bringing new generating units closer to commercial operation in Bangladesh and China. Yet the contrasting experiences of those two countries illustrate the uneven fortunes of Russia’s nuclear exports.

Meanwhile, efforts by Germany and the United States to reduce their nuclear sectors’ exposure to Russia have been complicated by existing commercial dependencies and political decisions that leave important channels of cooperation intact.

And new reporting on a Rosatom-owned carbon fiber plant in Tatarstan has raised further questions about the corporation’s involvement in Russia’s war against Ukraine, including its access to Chinese industrial materials used in military drone production.

Together, these developments illustrate the competing pressures shaping Rosatom’s international business as it seeks to expand its overseas presence while facing sanctions, logistical obstacles and growing scrutiny of its military connections.

Two nuclear milestones, two very different experiences

On October 11, the first reactor at Bangladesh’s Russian-built Rooppur nuclear power plant reached minimum controlled power, a crucial step toward eventual electricity generation.

The milestone followed months of commissioning difficulties. During testing in July, engineers discovered that two of three pressure relief valves in the reactor’s primary cooling circuit were not functioning properly. Repeated tests failed to resolve the problem, forcing Rosatom to dispatch additional specialists. The malfunction delayed commissioning and affected work on the second reactor, after components originally intended for that unit were transferred to the first.

The project also encountered logistical problems in September when a shipment of Russian nuclear fuel was delayed because its aircraft lacked permission to cross Pakistani airspace. The shipment eventually reached Bangladesh in early October using an alternative route.

China, meanwhile, presented a markedly different picture. On October 8, Unit 7 of the Tianwan nuclear power plant, outfitted with a Russian-designed VVER-1200 reactor, was connected to China’s electricity grid. Construction there began in May 2021, making it the fastest Russian-designed VVER-1200 project to reach grid connection, including those built in Russia itself.

Bellona nuclear expert Dmitry Gorchakov attributes much of the difference to how the projects are organized.

“The key difference in Rosatom’s Chinese projects is the high degree of localization,” Gorchakov writes in the September Nuclear Digest. “The Chinese side takes responsibility for most of the construction, supplies, project management and financing, while Rosatom provides the main nuclear island equipment and technological support.”

In Bangladesh, by contrast, Rosatom bears responsibility for a far larger share of the project, making delays in equipment supplies, financing and logistics more difficult for the customer to overcome.

For Gorchakov, the contrast illustrates how the success of Russian nuclear exports increasingly depends on the capabilities of the countries purchasing them.

Western sanctions leave important gaps

Even as Rosatom advances its overseas projects, Western efforts to limit cooperation with the corporation remain inconsistent.

In Germany, environmental organizations have challenged a decision allowing Advanced Nuclear Fuels, a subsidiary of France’s Framatome, to expand its fuel fabrication plant in Lingen to manufacture fuel for Russian-designed VVER reactors using Rosatom technology.

The environmental organization BUND filed suit in September, citing concerns about security risks, Russian influence and shortcomings in the environmental review. Yet on October 5, authorities in Lower Saxony permitted the project to proceed immediately, despite the ongoing legal challenge.

Gorchakov sees the decision as evidence of a broader contradiction in European policy.

“The story of the nuclear fuel plant in Lingen shows the gap between political statements about the risks of cooperation with Russian companies and decisions that allow such cooperation to develop in practice,” he writes. The United States has displayed similar contradictions.

On September 18, President Donald Trump signed the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026, which includes measures targeting Rosatom’s leadership and reaffirms restrictions on Russian uranium imports. But sanctions against Rosatom executives will not take effect until January 2028, and the legislation allows presidential exemptions on national security grounds.

The final law is also considerably weaker than earlier proposals, which contemplated sanctions against foreign purchasers of Russian uranium and sweeping tariffs against countries trading in Russian energy products. Gorchakov questions whether the measures will meaningfully reduce Rosatom’s international business.

“The weakening of the original proposals during the legislative process, together with the Trump administration’s unwillingness to use the available instruments of pressure on the Kremlin, calls into question the effectiveness of the new sanctions against Rosatom,” he says.

Chinese materials and Rosatom’s wartime connections

The question of Rosatom’s place in Russia’s war economy has become increasingly difficult to separate from its civilian nuclear business.

In September, Politico published two investigations based on internal Russian documents obtained by the Ukrainian Center for Security and Cooperation concerning Alabuga-Volokno, a carbon fiber manufacturer in Tatarstan belonging to Rosatom’s UMATEX composites division.

According to the documents, China’s state-owned Jilin Chemical Fiber Group arranged shipments of up to 46 tonnes of polyacrylonitrile precursor, a raw material used to manufacture carbon fiber. Carbon fiber has numerous civilian applications, but it is also used in Russian attack drones.

The plant is already subject to Western sanctions and export restrictions. Rosatom has denied violating applicable laws.

A subsequent investigation revealed plans to expand Alabuga-Volokno’s production capacity by as much as 500 tonnes annually by 2029. According to Politico, internal project documents identified import substitution for dual-use products and supplying Russia’s aviation and defense industries among the reasons for the expansion.

The findings do not establish that every shipment of Chinese precursor is destined for military production. They do, however, highlight the difficulty of separating Rosatom’s civilian industrial operations from supply chains that support Russia’s armed forces.

Bellona expert Alexander Nikitin has argued that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has fundamentally altered the place of nuclear infrastructure in international security.

“Nuclear energy facilities have become a factor in war,” Nikitin writes in his commentary on the Ukrainian nuclear situation. “They have begun to influence military planning, political decision-making, the nature of the use of force and assessments of the limits of acceptable risk.”

The Alabuga disclosures extend that concern beyond nuclear facilities themselves to the wider industrial activities of Russia’s state nuclear corporation.

Taken together, Rosatom’s overseas construction milestones, the limitations of Western sanctions and its connections to military supply chains reveal a corporation operating as an international nuclear supplier, an instrument of Russian industrial policy and a participant in sectors supporting the country’s war effort—all at the same time.

For governments seeking to reduce dependence on Russian nuclear technology, the challenge is no longer simply finding alternative reactor designs or fuel suppliers. It is determining how far Rosatom’s commercial relationships extend into the broader economic and strategic interests of the Russian state.

The post Rosatom advances nuclear projects abroad as sanctions gaps and wartime ties draw scrutiny appeared first on Bellona.org.

Canada’s already battered reputation on curbing climate emissions has become drastically worse under the leadership of Prime Minister Mark Carney according to a recent report card from Climate Action Tracker, approaching levels of inaction comparable to the “drill baby drill” Trump Administration.

“Prime Minister Mark Carney has so far been unwilling to recommit to either the 2030 or 2035 targets and has conceded that, under his energy plan, Canada’s emissions will be higher in the near term than previously projected,” warned the report. “If Canada were to officially abandon its 2030 and 2035 targets, it would be the first country after the United States to do so.”

The emissions watchdog didn’t mince words about the pace and scale of Canada’s climate rollbacks.

“What is shocking to us is the true extent to which Prime Minister Carney has rolled back climate policies, largely in favour of the fossil fuel industry,” Bill Hare, CEO of Climate Analytics, a CAT partner, said in a release.

“This Carney climate carnage, while not quite as bad as Trump’s, is rapidly heading in the same direction, despite the country being hit by record wildfires and other devastating climate impacts,” he added. 

While Canada’s planned policies were expected to cut emissions by 30 percent below 2005 levels by 2030 two years ago, since Carney has come into office Climate Action Tracker estimates this planned reduction has been cut in half. Current policies are on track to only deliver a 14 percent decrease in emissions.

Carney’s oil-friendly government has swept aside a suite of climate regulations aimed at reducing the massive and growing emissions from the oil sands, which have ballooned by 178 percent since 2005 and now almost equal the entire passenger transport sector.

Subscribe to Desmog

Get the weekly intelligence you need to hold polluters accountable

Email Address Sign Up Send me intelligence from: All US/Global team UK/Europe team Sign Up --> (function($){ $('.newsletter-container .ijkidr-us').click(function() { $('.js-cm-form').attr('data-id', '2BE4EF332AA2E32596E38B640E905619D07B21962C5AFE16D3A2145673C82A3CEE9D9F1ADDABE965ACB3CE39939D42AC9012C6272FD52BFCA0790F0FB77C6442'); $('.js-cm-email-input').attr('name', 'cm-vdrirr-vdrirr'); }); $('.newsletter-container .ijkidr-uk').click(function() { $('.js-cm-form').attr('data-id', '2BE4EF332AA2E32596E38B640E905619BD43AA6813AF1B0FFE26D8282EC254E3ED0237BA72BEFBE922037EE4F1B325C6DA4918F8E044E022C7D333A43FD72429'); $('.js-cm-email-input').attr('name', 'cm-ijkidr-ijkidr'); }); })(jQuery);

Perhaps the single fig leaf remaining to cover this naked climate failure is the long-touted and still not-built Pathways carbon capture and storage (CCS) project.

But this project is nothing more than a boondoggle in waiting, with rapidly diminishing expectations of what Pathways would accomplish and growing estimates of what it would cost.

“These technologies are nowhere near the scale and commercial viability needed to deliver on the needed emission reductions,” Climate Action Tracker concluded.

Pathways was originally hyped by bitumen producers as the largest CCS project in the world that would eliminate 68 million tonnes (MT) of emissions a year, or three-quarters of the oil sands’ entire output. That dubious goal has since been quietly rolled back to 16 MT by 2050, a decline of 76 percent.

The first phase of the Pathways project was supposed to be completed by 2030 to store 22 MT per year, now revised down to 6 MT sometime after 2032. Dilling bravely characterized these massive decreases in sequestered emissions as “slightly smaller”.

Six years into this alleged climate saving megaproject, no design proposals have been made public and not a single shovel has been stuck in the ground. The only things that have tangibly changed are the steadily diminishing projections about what Pathways could achieve if it ever gets built, and the mounting costs of doing so.

Originally budgeted at $16.5 billion, the current costs of building a potentially dangerous 650 km CO2 pipeline to Cold Lake and injecting CO2 into an underground reservoir three times larger than Prince Edward Island have ballooned to as high as $30 billion. Guess what? The same companies that are on track to pocket $100 billion in war-related profits this year expect the Canadian taxpayer to foot most of the bill.

It is increasingly clear that the Pathways project is less about carbon sequestration and more about political leverage. The so-called grand bargain between Ottawa and Alberta explicitly links Pathways with a new pipeline approval to the west coast to further boost bitumen production that has already increased almost 40 percent since 2015, undoing any climate benefits.

“The Pathways project… will not come close to compensating for the new west coast oil pipeline, which could add up to 28 MTA of greenhouse gas emissions every year,” Aly Hyder Ali, Environmental Defence Canada’s senior program manager for oil and gas told DeSmog. “It will require tens of billions of dollars in public support, while capturing only a small portion of the emissions from oil sands production.”

Carbon capture and storage has long been held up as a way to slow down climate consequences while still burning fossil fuels. Despite much industry-funded hype and $40 billion so far spent around the world, CCS only sequesters a puny proportion of global greenhouse gases.

A recent peer-reviewed study of the technology warned, “continued reliance on CCS is a high-cost gamble that risks delaying the deployment of truly effective climate solutions… Despite decades of promotion and investment, [CCS] remains technologically constrained, economically inefficient, and strategically misapplied.”

Even if Pathways worked perfectly it would do nothing to mitigate the tailpipe emissions once bitumen is refined into transportation fuel, which are four times higher than production emissions.

The Pathways project is a diminishing technological fix for a problem that industry has refused to deal with. Alberta oil sands operators have repeatedly stalled taking action, demanded more taxpayer largess, and allowed their emissions to grow north of 92 MT per year – an increase of more than three percent over the previous year due to ballooning production.

The oil patch is Canada’s biggest climate laggard while banking massive profits. Alberta’s bitumen producers raked in $13.3 billion in the first three months of 2026. Yet such wealthy companies still expect the beleaguered Canadian taxpayer to foot most of the bill for another pipeline to the Pacific and the expensive CCS project that makes the pipeline politically possible. Perhaps oil patch lobbyists deserve a raise. To gaslight a country into shelling out billions in subsidies to a wildly profitable sector that is also fuelling an accelerating climate crisis is no small feat. Pathways’ diminishing targets and mounting costs make this outlandish accomplishment even more outrageous.

The post Carney Almost as Bad as Trump on Climate, Emissions Watchdog Warns appeared first on DeSmog.

By Valentina Figuera Martínez, GFC Gender Justice and Forests Campaign Coordinator

The original version of this article was published in Mongabay

As global leaders convene in Armenia this week for the U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) conference of the parties (COP17), it is difficult to ignore how women’s oppression is deeply intertwined with the exploitation of ecosystems. After almost two decades of pledges, biodiversity action remains underfunded, forest loss continues to be a growing threat, socio-ecological transitions are a low priority, and ecosystems are spiraling toward collapse.

The impacts of resulting climate disasters and biodiversity destruction are not felt equally, yet gender justice issues also remain unresolved within these international talks.

In Yerevan, Armenia, countries will consider the first global review of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (KMGBF), which was the first formal assessment to measure progress since its adoption in 2022. COP17 is also poised to advance efforts on biodiversity finance under the umbrella of common but differentiated responsibilities.

But progress cannot be measured only in targets, financial commitments and international mechanisms. We should also ask a more basic question: What can we learn from the people who are already protecting biodiversity in their territories?

Women leading agroecology and community conservation initiatives in Zambia. Image courtesy of Kapyanga Women Association & Zamsof.

While hundreds of policymakers spend long hours negotiating decisions to promote false solutions and powerful corporate actors lobby to continue profiting from biodiversity destruction and obstruct environmental regulations, women from the Global South continue working without big cameras or fancy social media presences to protect what is left of their territories. They are ensuring the continuation of life on Earth for you, me, and future generations.

The reality in the negotiation corridors will be very different from the violence, extortion, and environmental destruction in the mining areas surrounding El Callao, in Bolívar state, Venezuela, for example, which is one of the epicenters of the gold rush promoted after the U.S. military invasion of the country earlier this year. Being born and raised in Bolívar, it will be difficult for me to agree in Yerevan that governments are “taking action for nature.”

And after hearing over the last several months from friends and colleagues from the Global South about human rights violations and ecosystem destruction they confront, it is important to remind everyone of an incontrovertible fact: As long as governments fail to address the systemic drivers of biodiversity destruction — especially in the Global South — and continue using domestic policies to expand extractivist sectors while broadening status quo dependency, these failures will persist.

One of the most contentious topics is biodiversity finance. Biodiversity offsets and credits, debt-for-nature swaps, and nature-based solutions are just some of the flawed market-based instruments presented to mobilize finance toward Global South countries. Despite all the widely known controversies, poor performance and human rights abuses, they are increasingly dominating attention while urgent priorities — including allocation of direct resources for community-led conservation actions and giving communities full decision-making power in finance institutional structures — remain unaddressed.

Market-based schemes should be ruled out. They instrumentalize greenwashing and allow brokers, developers, intermediaries and large NGOs to extract funding that should be benefiting communities.

Indigenous women of the Ticuna community of San Francisco de Yahuma in Loreto, Peru, are breaking gender barriers and taking on leadership roles on conservation in their communities. Image courtesy of Joseph Zegarra/Rainforest Foundation US.

Women and youth making a difference

Over the last few months, I have been working with friends and colleagues from Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Southeast Asia to understand what real solutions to the climate and biodiversity crises look like. We all have in common a deep reverence for life, respect for traditional wisdom, a great deal of technical forest knowledge, advocacy experience, and a strong commitment to defending territories. And, of course, a tireless stubbornness to fight for systemic changes to the current model of development.

Real solutions might look like an agroecological farming system rooted in traditional knowledge, or a community defending its territory from extractivist industries. They might be women organizing to protect forests, strengthen food sovereignty, or build more equitable forms of community autonomy. I’ve also seen women from Brazil, Colombia, Chile, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Nepal plus researchers from Morocco and Zambia, a peasant from Uruguay, an Indigenous leader from Panama and legal activists from Bangladesh all showing resilience and concrete community-led conservation actions.

All of them remind us that the value of ancestral knowledge, community autonomy, and access to decision-making power cannot be replaced by money or “innovative schemes.” Their real community-led solutions cannot be separated from the political dimensions of life and stay only on the technical side, focusing on reformist approaches to delay urgent systemic changes. They cannot be “scaled up” like the top-down generic schemes presented in international talks.

Real women-led solutions are unique, as every complex ecosystem is, and demand putting power in the hands of environmental defenders. The ancestral ‘nainu’ agroforestry system in the Gunayala autonomous territory of Panama is a hopeful example capable of teaching us what biodiversity action actually looks like, as the Gunadule people create a shield of resistance with a concrete community-led solution centered on traditional knowledge and women’s leadership. The strong understanding of these Global South women about the interconnections between oppression and the exploitation of ecosystems is just as inspiring as the sophisticated strategies they have built to confront mining, agribusiness, colonial legal frameworks, and patriarchal policies.

Working with the women behind these initiatives has also shown me that documenting their solutions is only part of the task. The point is not to turn these communities into inspirational examples for an international audience, nor is it to extract their knowledge and package it into another global model. It is to recognize that these communities have their own knowledge, priorities and political agency, and that biodiversity policy needs to create the conditions for those solutions to flourish.

That means secure rights to land and territory. It also means direct, public and accessible finance. And, it means protecting communities from destructive extractive projects, recognizing traditional knowledge and women’s leadership, and giving communities meaningful power over the decisions and financial structures that affect them.

Working with this group of women and men on a Gender-Just Real Solutions Map for Territories and Communities is a learning path to find answers to a complex crisis. One thing is clear: We must support localized actions which are genuinely community-led solutions that uphold rights, autonomy, socio-ecological transitions and create conditions to fight social inequalities.

The question for COP17 is not whether these solutions exist. They do.

The question is whether governments are prepared to recognize them, resource them, and most importantly, listen to the people who are already putting them into practice.

Valentina Figuera Martínez is a feminist researcher and campaign coordinator at the Global Forest Coalition, where she works with communities and civil society organizations to advance gender justice, biodiversity protection and the rights of women and Indigenous and local communities.

Countries should be willing to overlook “mild amounts of corruption” in government if it serves the larger goal of political stability, according to a U.S. lawyer and political activist closely aligned with U.S. President Donald Trump’s MAGA movement.

“This may be the most provocative thing I say,” explained Will Chamberlain during a speech earlier this month at the National Conservatism Conference (NatCon) in Jerusalem, an event that brought together far-right figures from Europe and Israel along with MAGA leaders closely linked to the Trump administration.

Chamberlain is vice president for external affairs at the Edmund Burke Foundation, which organizes NatCon, a conference that in previous years has been hosted in cities across the U.S. and Europe.

He is also senior counsel with the Article III Project, a MAGA group set up to fight against “lawfare,” which it describes as efforts by “Marxist” Democrats to weaponize the justice system against Trump and his political allies. The group has recently targeted what it calls “climate lawfare,” which refers to lawsuits that aim to hold oil and gas companies accountable for misleading the public about climate change

“Corruption is bad,” Chamberlain said during his Oct. 8 speech at NatCon. “But I think in general, countries should be willing to tolerate mild amounts of corruption in order to avoid lawfare.”

Chamberlain, through the Article III Project, works with the conservative political strategist and lawyer Mike Davis, who claims credit for helping win the nomination fights of conservative U.S. Supreme Court justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh. Chamberlain’s comments come as the U.S. approaches midterm elections on Nov. 3 where voters have identified government corruption as a defining issue.

He argued that efforts to impeach and prosecute politicians for corruption have driven up the stakes of elections to the point where candidates either win or risk going to jail, citing the example of Jair Bolsonaro, the former Brazilian president serving a jail sentence for planning a coup following his 2022 election loss.

He also cited Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is on trial for corruption charges including fraud and accepting bribes. Earlier this year, Trump said Netanyahu should be pardoned. Chamberlain defended that position, arguing that pardons are a useful tool for reducing political tensions.

“People shouldn’t be afraid of them,” he said. “I think too many people are so obsessed with the idea that no one can ever be above the law that they’ll let their country tear itself apart.”

He added, “There’s another old maxim, ‘let justice be done though the heavens fall.’ I think that’s a bad impulse.”

Chamberlain didn’t respond to questions from DeSmog.

‘Climate Lawfare’

This year’s National Conservatism Conference in Israel featured speeches from senior White House official Sebastian Gorka, as well as Kevin Roberts, head of the Heritage Foundation, which authored the Trump policy blueprint Project 2025.  

It took place as Chamberlain’s legal group, the Article III Project, turned its attention to the dozens of lawsuits filed by cities, counties and states across the U.S. against Big Oil.

In early October it co-hosted a Washington, D.C., event where conservative legal experts argued that efforts to hold oil and gas companies legally liable for misleading the public about climate change is a form of “climate lawfare,” which one participant defined as “trying to basically drag these fossil fuel companies into court to get access to their documents and, of course, their pockets.”

The occasion for the event was the U.S. Supreme Court agreeing to hear oral arguments from the oil companies Suncor and Exxon, which are trying to get the court to invalidate a lawsuit against them currently proceeding in Colorado state court.

That Colorado lawsuit alleges, based on extensive historical documentation, that these and other oil companies engaged in multi-decade campaigns to stave off climate regulation by running disinformation campaigns around their key role in global temperature rise.

Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse has framed this history of climate denial as large-scale deception meriting federal investigations and lawsuits. In 2024, Whitehouse described the Trump administration’s reported offering of political favors to the oil industry in exchange for $1 billion in campaign contributions as “the definition of corruption as the founding fathers would have used the term.”

From the perspective of MAGA legal activists such as Chamberlain, “lawfare is worse than corruption.”

“I mean, corruption’s bad. I kind of imagine it is like a slow-growing cancer that can undermine ultimately and eventually really hurt your country,” he said.

“But lawfare — and reciprocal, brutal lawfare against heads of state, especially — is kind of like having a gushing, gaping bullet wound in your chest,” he added.

‘Openly Corrupt’

That position appears out of step with many U.S. voters. A recent Fox News poll suggested that 88 percent of voters are “extremely/very concerned” about “corruption in government,” making it the top issue ahead of cost of living, healthcare, and the Iran war.

That poll came out following reporting in the Wall Street Journal that Kimberly Guilfoyle, then U.S. ambassador to Greece, had asked a Trump donor for $100,000 to pay off her credit card bill in exchange for favorable access to the administration.

That seemed to cross a line even for Chamberlain and his colleagues.

After Guilfoyle resigned on Oct. 13, Chamberlain questioned on X whether her resignation message was written by AI, while another senior counsel at the Article III Project described her as “an absolutely stupid pick for U.S. Ambassador to Greece in the first place.”

Yet, Chamberlain argued at NatCon that civil and criminal efforts in recent years to hold Trump legally accountable for alleged financial fraud, defamation, his role in the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol insurrection, and other legal violations have been “an enormous strain on the president’s time and resources, as well as everybody else.”

Chamberlain claimed that without unique features of the U.S. legal system, including the lack of an attorney general independent from the White House, “I think Trump would be in jail,” adding that “the Western world would be worse for it.”

Meanwhile Trump has reaped $2.2 billion in 2025 revenues alone from his cryptocurrency holdings and other personal business interests. This has led former general counsel at the Federal Election Commission Larry Noble to describe Trump’s second term as potentially “the most openly corrupt administration in our history.”

The post As Midterms Loom, MAGA Lawyer Defends ‘Mild Amounts of Corruption’ in Governments appeared first on DeSmog.

The Western Environmental Law Center holds more than 30 years of deep and expansive expertise regarding public lands and health protection, energy development, watershed and wildlife protection, and climate action in the West. We are acutely cognizant of the imperative to build green infrastructure in a way that respects people and place. Yet we are alarmed at the depth of harm the newly proposed “Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act” (BAAJA) would inflict on bedrock public health and environmental laws and, by extension, to the people and places of the West. This bill, if passed into law, would recklessly transform the legal and policy landscape, taking power away from the public and giving new and enhanced powers to technology, energy, finance, and other development interests.

Our experts prepared a short policy analysis on the concerning provisions in BAAJA (S. 5653). This sprawling bill would stack the deck for fossil fuels, strip states’ and Tribes’ rights, reduce the National Environmental Policy Act to a mere box-checking exercise without force, and diminish the Clean Water Act and Endangered Species Act in ways that would cause widespread harm.

Read our policy analysis here, and please reach out if you have any questions.

“This permitting deal is a betrayal of public lands, water and wildlife, and environmental justice values that Westerners depend on for clean air and water, places to hike, hunt, and fish, and the inestimable sense of freedom the West provides us all,” said Erik Schlenker-Goodrich, executive director of the Western Environmental Law Center. “The permitting deal concedes to fossil fuel and data center interests while falsely pitting the imperative to build green infrastructure against people and place. It is a surrender to President Trump’s noxious agenda and pathology of ‘energy dominance’ that emerged from Project 2025. We will fight this terrible deal tooth and nail.”

Contacts:

Erik Schlenker-Goodrich, Western Environmental Law Center, eriksg@westernlaw.org

Marlyn Twitchell, 541-485-2471, ext. 144, twitchell@westernlaw.org

The post Media advisory: “Permitting reform” bill analysis available to reporters appeared first on Western Environmental Law Center.

Asheville, NC — Energy company Drax planned to build a huge data center in England. The center would have run on power from burning wood. That plan has stalled. The Times reports that the project did not win government funding. The North Yorkshire Council has also pulled its support.

Earlier this year, advocates from the US South traveled to York to fight the project. The delegation included Kathy Egland, Dr. Krystal Martin, and Michél Legendre. They joined University of York students. The students opposed the project because of its environmental and public health harms.

Kathy Egland co-founded EECHO in Gulfport, Mississippi. She is its program director. Since 2010, she has also chaired the NAACP National Board’s Environmental and Climate Justice Committee. Dr. Krystal Martin leads Greater Greener Gloster. The group wants to close the Drax plant in Gloster, Mississippi. Michél Legendre is Campaigns Director at Dogwood Alliance. Dogwood is a nonprofit that protects Southern forests and communities from industrial logging.

The data center could have burned wood pellets made at Drax plants in the South. These plants cut down forests. They also release pollution linked to:

• cancer
• heart disease
• respiratory problems
• other serious illnesses

Legendre praised the UK government and the North Yorkshire Council. He applauded them for refusing to back the project.

“This is a good day for forest protection and environmental justice. It appears that more stakeholders are waking up to Drax’s dirty energy scam. Wood pellet energy is anything but clean and green. As the UK cuts Drax’s subsidies, its move to power AI data centers with biomass is a desperate attempt to save itself. Now, we need US policymakers and power companies to follow the UK’s example. We call on them to prevent any concessions to Drax in the form of subsidies. We call on them to dismiss Drax’s proposals to power AI data centers here in the South.”

The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) works with Dogwood Alliance. Together they are stopping the growth of the wood pellet industry. Matt Williams is a senior forest protection advocate at NRDC. He said:

“Burning forests to run server farms was never a serious plan. North Yorkshire Council saw that. Drax’s pellet mills sit in communities across the US South, where families are already breathing the pollution. As tech companies go looking for power here, utilities and lawmakers need to shut the door on biomass. Trees are not a fuel source for the AI boom.”

Tech companies want to build many AI data centers across the South. What could happen if those centers ran on burned wood? Dogwood’s report found harm to Southern forests and to communities that already face heavy pollution.

Read the report: Fueling Destruction: How AI Data Centers May Drive a Renewed Biomass Crisis

The post UK Rejects Drax Plan to Power AI Data Center by Burning Trees appeared first on Dogwood Alliance.

EWG evaluation of food chemicals: Titanium dioxide rcoleman October 23, 2026 Dayna de Montagnac, MPH Sydney Evans, MPH Tasha Stoiber, Ph.D. Jump to: What is titanium dioxide and why is it added to food? Where is titanium dioxide found in food? What is the regulatory status of titanium dioxide? Are foods containing titanium dioxide ultra-processed? Is titanium dioxide allowed in organic foods? What are the potential health harms associated with titanium dioxide? Uncertainties and where more research is needed More details about titanium dioxide Cited resources October 23, 2026 EWG’s recommendation

Titanium dioxide, or TiO₂, is an ingredient of concern in food, and EWG suggests limiting consumption of food containing this ingredient. 

Food-grade synthetic titanium dioxide contains a substantial fraction of nanoscale particles, and although systemic absorption after ingestion is low, absorbed titanium dioxide can distribute to tissues, and studies indicate that tissue elimination may be slow. 

In its 2021 assessment of TiO₂, the European Food Safety Authority, or EFSA, expressed concern about immunotoxicity and inflammation, gastrointestinal effects and neurotoxicity. The EFSA concluded that a concern for genotoxicity could not be ruled out on the basis of evidence that TiO₂ particles can induce DNA strand breaks and chromosomal damage. 

Because of these findings and the remaining uncertainties, the EFSA concluded that TiO₂ could no longer be considered safe for use as a food additive (EFSA, 2021). Since TiO₂ is a food color additive, consumers can easily choose products without it. 

Science analysis

What is titanium dioxide and why is it added to food?

Titanium dioxide is a synthetically produced white color additive used in some kinds of food to brighten its appearance, create a smooth finish, enhance whiteness and provide opacity for other food colors.

Where is titanium dioxide found in food?

Most commonly used in candy, titanium dioxide can also be found in salad dressing, chewing gum, ice cream, drink mixes and many other food categories.

It is used in 15,483 of the 172,081 foods added to EWG’s Food Scores between 2023 and 2025.

The 15 food categories with the most products containing titanium dioxide (by supermarket shelf)

Image

Source: EWG’s Food Scores. Label created between January 2023 and October 2025.

What is the regulatory status of titanium dioxide?

In 1973, the Food and Drug Administration authorized titanium dioxide as a food color additive in certain types of food, as long as it does not exceed 1% of the food by weight. But particle size is not limited.

Because of recent safety reviews, in 2023 EWG and other NGOs petitioned the FDA to roll back approval of titanium dioxide.

Titanium dioxide was removed from the EU’s list of approved food additives in 2022 after a 2021 EFSA re-evaluation raised concerns about its potential genotoxicity. 

A 2025 Arizona ban on the use of TiO₂ in food sold in schools took effect at the beginning of the 2026-2027 school year. 

Are foods containing titanium dioxide ultra-processed?

TiO₂ and other color additives are common ingredients in ultra-processed food, or UPF. As an ingredient synthesized in a laboratory, it falls into the Nova framework as a UPF ingredient. (Monteiro et al 2019). 

Under a recent California law defining UPF, food containing TiO₂ qualifies as UPF because of its property as a color and coloring adjunct (Real Food, Healthy Kids Act, 2025). 

Is titanium dioxide allowed in organic foods?

Under Agriculture Department organic standards, synthetic substances are prohibited in certified organic foods. 

What are the potential health harms associated with titanium dioxide?

Food-grade titanium dioxide contains a nanoscale fraction, and although systemic absorption after ingestion is low, absorbed particles may persist in tissues. EFSA found that TiO₂ particles can accumulate in the body and noted that nanoscale particles showed particularly long half-lives in animal studies (EFSA, 2021). 

A study using the food additive TiO₂ in mice found accumulation of TiO₂ in the intestine and liver and evidence of an inflammatory response (Talamini et al., 2019). TiO₂ particles have also been detected in human placenta and meconium, and an ex vivo study using food-grade TiO₂ nanoparticles provided evidence of maternal-fetal transfer (Guillard et al., 2020). 

Experimental studies have reported the potential effects of TiO₂, particularly nanoscale forms, on the gastrointestinal, immune, neurological, reproductive and developmental systems. The EFSA identified potential immunotoxicity and inflammation, neurotoxicity, and gastrointestinal effects, including indications that TiO₂ may induce aberrant crypt foci, or ACF, in the colon, a potential marker of preneoplastic change (EFSA, 2021; Bettini et al., 2017). Studies of food-grade TiO₂ nanoparticles have also reported alterations in intestinal microbial populations, brush border membrane functionality, and intestinal morphology (Cheng et al., 2023). But these findings have not been consistently reproduced, and the EFSA found no reproductive or developmental toxicity in its TiO₂ study (EFSA, 2021).

Evidence of the genotoxicity of TiO₂ remains mixed. The EFSA concluded that TiO₂ particles have the potential to cause DNA strand breaks and chromosomal damage and that a concern for genotoxicity could not be ruled out (EFSA, 2021). A 2023 meta-analysis of 26 studies found that TiO₂ nanoparticles were associated with DNA and chromosomal damage in both in vivo and in vitro studies (Cao et al., 2023). In human intestinal cell models, exposure to digested TiO₂ nanomaterials also produced DNA damage, with some effects more pronounced after simulated digestion (Vieira et al., 2022). 

In contrast, the World Health Organization’s Joint Expert Committee on Food Additives, or WHO/JECFA, concluded that the available data did not provide convincing evidence of genotoxicity, while noting limitations in current testing methods for poorly soluble particulate materials and nanoparticles (JECFA, 2023).

Uncertainties and where more research is needed

The genotoxicity of titanium dioxide remains uncertain. While the EFSA’s conclusions regarding the possible genotoxicity of TiO₂ leading to its EU ban raise concern, the WHO/JECFA could not make the same conclusions due to study limitations.

Since these assessments, studies have produced mixed findings, with some reporting DNA or chromosomal damage and others finding no evidence of genotoxicity. 

Uncertainties remain regarding the mechanisms of potential genotoxic effects, the relevance of experimental findings to human exposure, and the potential genotoxic effects of nanoscale TiO₂ particles. 

Human epidemiological evidence is also limited. The JECFA cautioned that available studies do not allow conclusions about associations between dietary TiO₂ exposure and human health effects. 

Evidence for carcinogenicity from dietary exposure also remains uncertain. EFSA found no appropriately designed studies evaluating the carcinogenicity of TiO₂ nanoparticles. It observed that TiO₂ may induce ACF in the colon, but did not conclude TiO₂ causes cancer (EFSA, 2021). 

The JECFA subsequently concluded that TiO₂ was not carcinogenic in adequately conducted two-year studies in mice and rats and also considered studies investigating the potential initiation or promotion of colon cancer (JECFA, 2023).

More details about titanium dioxide

An exposure analysis found titanium dioxide was most common in candy, chewing gum and other sweets, so children were more likely to consume more titanium dioxide than adults (Weir et al 2012). 

In 2015, Dunkin’ announced it was phasing out titanium dioxide from the powdered sugar used on its doughnuts. In 2024 Mars removed titanium dioxide from Skittles sold in the U.S.   

TiO₂ is also added to personal care products such as toothpaste and cosmetics and is used as an ultraviolet, or UV, filter in sunscreen products. 

It is one of three active UV filters in the U.S. designed as generally recognized as safe and effective. Sunscreen products formulated with titanium dioxide have long appeared on EWG’s best lists. EWG recommends avoiding spray or powder products that contain titanium dioxide because of concerns about risks from inhaling nanoparticles and subsequent health effects. 

Cited resources

Global health and regulatory agencies

• EFSA FAF Panel (EFSA Panel on Food Additives and Flavourings), 2021. Scientific Opinion on the safety assessment of titanium dioxide (E171) as a food additive. EFSA Journal 2021;19(5):6585, 130 pp. https://doi.org/10.2903/j.efsa.2021.6585 
• Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives (JECFA). (2023). Evaluation of certain food additives: Ninety-seventh report of the Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives (WHO Technical Report Series No. 1051). World Health Organization.  https://www.who.int/publications/m/item/jecfa-risk-assessment-of-titanium-dioxide-risk-released-background-information 
• Food and Drug Administration. (2024). Titanium dioxide as a color additive in foods. https://www.fda.gov/industry/color-additives/titanium-dioxide-color-additive-foods 

Comprehensive reviews and frameworks

• Cao, Y., Chen, J., Bian, Q., Ning, J., Yong, L., Ou, T., Song, Y., and Wei, S. (2023). Genotoxicity Evaluation of Titanium Dioxide Nanoparticles In Vivo and In Vitro: A Meta-Analysis. Toxics, 11(11), 882. https://doi.org/10.3390/toxics11110882 
• Monteiro, C.A., Cannon, G., Levy, R.B., Moubarac, J., Louzada, M.L., Rauber, F., Khandpur, N., Cediel, G., Neri, D., Martinez-Steele, E., Baraldi, L.G., and Jaime, P.C. (2019). Ultra-processed foods: what they are and how to identify them. Public Health Nutrition, 22(5), 936–941. https://doi.org/10.1017/s1368980018003762 
• Weir, A., Westerhoff, P., Fabricius, L., Hristovski, K., and Von Goetz, N. (2012). Titanium dioxide nanoparticles in food and personal care products. Environmental Science & Technology, 46(4), 2242–2250. https://doi.org/10.1021/es204168d 

Legislation

• Arizona Healthy Schools Act, H.B. 2164, 57th Leg., 1st Reg. Sess. (2025). https://legiscan.com/AZ/text/HB2164/2025 
• Real Food, Healthy Kids Act, A.B. 1264, Chapter 467, Cal. Stat. (2025). https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202520260AB1264. 

Specific health impact studies

• Bettini, S., Boutet-Robinet, E., Cartier, C., Coméra, C., Gaultier, E., Dupuy, J., Naud, N., Taché, S., Grysan, P., Reguer, S., Thieriet, N., Réfrégiers, M., Thiaudière, D., Cravedi, J.-P., Carrière, M., Audinot, J.-N., Pierre, F.H., Guzylack-Piriou, L., and Houdeau, E. (2017). Food-grade TiO₂ impairs intestinal and systemic immune homeostasis, initiates preneoplastic lesions and promotes aberrant crypt development in the rat colon. Scientific Reports, 7, 40373. https://doi.org/10.1038/srep40373  
• Cheng, J., Kolba, N., García-Rodríguez, A., Marques, C.N.H., Mahler, G. J., and Tako, E. (2023). Food-grade metal oxide nanoparticles exposure alters intestinal microbial populations, brush border membrane functionality and morphology, in vivo (Gallus gallus). Antioxidants, 12(2), 431. https://doi.org/10.3390/antiox12020431 
• Guillard, A., Gaultier, E., Cartier, C., Devoille, L., Noireaux, J., Chevalier, L., Morin, M., Grandin, F., Lacroix, M. Z., Coméra, C., Cazanave, A., de Place, A., Gayrard, V., Bach, V., Chardon, K., Bekhti, N., Adel-Patient, K., Vayssière, C., Fisicaro, P., Feltin, N., de la Farge, F., Picard-Hagen, N., Lamas, B., and Houdeau, E. (2020). Basal Ti level in the human placenta and meconium and evidence of a materno-foetal transfer of food-grade TiO₂ nanoparticles in an ex vivo placental perfusion model. Particle and Fibre Toxicology, 17, 51. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12989-020-00381-z   
• Talamini, L., Gimondi, S., Violatto, M.B., Fiordaliso, F., Pedica, F., Tran, N.L., Sitia, G., Aureli, F., Raggi, A., Nelissen, I., Cubadda, F., Bigini, P., and Diomede, L. (2019). Repeated administration of the food additive E171 to mice results in accumulation in intestine and liver and promotes an inflammatory status. Nanotoxicology, 13(8), 1087–1101. https://doi.org/10.1080/17435390.2019.1640910 
• Vieira, A., Vital, N., Rolo, D., Roque, R., Gonçalves, L.M., Bettencourt, A., Silva, M.J., and Louro, H. (2022). Investigation of the genotoxicity of digested titanium dioxide nanomaterials in human intestinal cells. Food and Chemical Toxicology, 161, 112841. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fct.2022.112841   

At the start of October activists staged an action at Schiphol Airport, demanding an end to KLM’s frequent flyer programme. It was the latest in a series of actions at the airport, demanding the airline take the climate crisis seriously and stop it’s attempts to incentivise people to fly more. Below, an activist explains what took place on the day and why ending frequent flyer programmes is so…

Source

Global Campaign to Demand Climate Justice (DCJ) welcomes provisional allocation, raises concerns over delays in disbursing funds and inadequate levels of support for Nepal’s flood recovery efforts

23 October 2026 – In its first-ever Extraordinary Board Meeting, the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage (FRLD) approved a decision to set aside $21.6 million for Nepal’s recovery efforts.

Nepal will, however, not get the funding immediately. The Board has invited Nepal to submit a new funding request under the Barbados Implementation Modalities (BIM), the start-up phase of the FRLD. Before Nepal can access the funds, it must prepare a proposal and navigate existing approval processes for support to reach the affected communities.

While civil society members from the Global Campaign to Demand Climate Justice (DCJ) welcomed the convening of the Board meeting, they expressed concerns over the lack of concrete and urgent action, including the lack of advancement of a rapid response or disbursement modality. DCJ warned this would hinder Nepal’s emergency response, adding that the delay raised questions on the Fund’s ability to respond rapidly, if at all.

Representatives of DCJ and its member organisations reacted to the decision:

*Note to editors: This page will be updated with additional quotes from DCJ members and allied organisations as they become available.

[Prayash Adhikari, Peoples Movement for Climate Justice (PMCJ) Nepal]

“We welcome the historic decision but let’s be clear this is not enough and we have to scale up the Fund. Nepal receiving the support from FRLD marks a historic milestone, but the reality is that $21.6 million only covers just 0.45% of Nepal’s Bhotekoshi loss and damage, without accounting Non-economic Loss and Damage (NELD). To see a multilateral fund support climate impacted countries is a step in the right direction, but now it is time to scale up the Fund. The Fund must receive $1 trillion per year. Without increasing the capacity of the Fund, communities and countries will continue to suffer.”

[Arnab Chaudhary, All In Foundation/ Aalawya Foundation, Nepal]

“The Nepal disaster is fundamentally inequitable in that a country with only 0.1% of global emissions is bearing immense and tragic costs of climate crises.​ We not only lose our lives and livelihoods but also face irreparable loss of socio-cultural heritage with disproportionate impact on Indigenous Peoples, people with disabilities, and marginalised communities, particularly Dalits, who are at the frontline of the crisis. ​

Nepal is investing its scarce resources in climate adaptation, mitigation, and resilience, yet climate finance often deepens its debt burden. For every US$1 received as a grant, Nepal receives US$6 in loans. Countries that contributed least to this crisis should not have to borrow to survive it. These loans divert resources from health, education, and livelihoods, burdening future generations. Meanwhile, the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage remains terribly underfunded. We demand that developed countries urgently scale up new and additional grant-based climate finance, fulfill their commitments to the FRLD, and establish predictable, accessible funding commensurate with the real needs of affected communities. Climate justice must mean resources reaching frontline people, not debt passed to future generations.”

[Jinghann Hong, Third World Network]

“Setting money aside is not the same as getting money out the door. Disappointingly, the Board missed an opportunity to be more ambitious. It could have commissioned a loss and damage needs assessment to determine the true scale of support required. It could also have explored coordination with existing delivery channels like the Green Climate Fund-supported glacial lake outburst flood project in Nepal. That could have helped get resources flowing much faster to the affected communities.

It is inequitable to request a country in the midst of a climate crisis to prove its needs through yet another proposal before funds can be released. We hope the Board treats the Nepal case as an opportunity to build the access modalities that all developing countries and communities deserve – and turn expressions of solidarity into real support that reaches people when it is actually needed.”

[Brandon Wu, ActionAid USA]

“Handcuffed by a lack of resources, today’s extraordinary FRLD Board meeting ultimately did very little for communities in Nepal affected by the devastating floods in August. Three years after being established, the FRLD has yet to send any money to countries hit by climate impacts. Today’s meeting did not change this, nor did it provide a concrete timeline for disbursing money to Nepal.

The current delays are caused in part by genuine concerns about the fairness and procedural integrity of the FRLD. But these concerns stem primarily from the fact that rich countries have refused to provide money for the FRLD at any kind of reasonable scale. If the Fund were adequately resourced, an immediate disbursement to Nepal would be an absolute no-brainer. But it seems rich countries are terrified that the Fund – which has received a paltry $500 million to date – will run dry, thus putting more pressure on them to provide the money they owe.”

[Laurie van der Burg, Global Public Finance Campaign Manager, Oil Change International]

“This is an important step towards the first ever release of funding from the FRLD, but it’s far too little, far too late. The $21.6 million does not even come close to the $4.7 billion needed for Nepal’s recovery. Meanwhile, G7 countries continue to spend five times that amount – $25.7 billion – every year propping up fossil fuels with public money, worsening the very climate disasters, like Nepal’s glacial floods, that are already causing death and destruction. Developed countries must end fossil fuel subsidies, make polluters pay and support reforms to unfair debt, trade, tax and financial rules to free up trillions. This allows them to avoid cutting public spending at home, while at the same time delivering the climate finance they owe to the Global South.”

[Rachitaa Gupta, Global Coordinator, Demand Climate Justice]

“The board’s decision is only the first step in a critical journey to helping vulnerable countries tackle the impacts of a crisis they did not cause. Nepal estimates it needs over $4 billion to get back on its feet, and with the Fund woefully underfunded the country risks being pushed deeper into debt. Yet the very countries responsible for the climate crisis continue to fund wars and hand out fossil fuel subsidies instead of paying what they owe in climate finance. Nepal, like many other Global South countries, cannot continue to pay for the climate crisis with lives and livelihoods as the Global North shirks its responsibilities.”

For media enquiries, contact:

Juliah Kibochi

juliah.dcj@gmail.com 

dcj.comms@demandclimatejustice.org 

The post Civil Society reacts to Loss and Damage Fund’s board decision on Nepal appeared first on Global Campaign to Demand Climate Justice.

Dirty Dozen™ food chemicals: Titanium dioxide Iris Myers October 22, 2026 EWG’s recommendation

Avoid or limit foods containing titanium dioxide.

Titanium dioxide is a color additive used to brighten packaged foods. Food-grade titanium dioxide contains a large amount of nanoscale particles that can accumulate in the body. 

In 2021, the European Food Safety Authority, or EFSA, concluded titanium dioxide could no longer be considered safe as a food additive due to concerns about genotoxicity, inflammation and effects on the immune system and gut.

What is titanium dioxide?

Titanium dioxide is a synthetically produced white color additive. It’s used in some foods to brighten their appearance, enhance whiteness and provide opacity.

Which foods contain titanium dioxide?

Titanium dioxide is most commonly found in candy. It is also used in salad dressings, chewing gum, ice cream, drink mixes and other food. 

Look for titanium dioxide in product ingredient lists, usually below or next to the Nutrition Facts panel, on the back of the package. 

How is titanium dioxide regulated?

The Food and Drug Administration is responsible for overseeing food additives and other ingredients. Titanium dioxide is allowed as a food color additive in the U.S. at up to 1% by weight of the food. 

The European Union removed titanium dioxide from its approved food additives list in 2021, determining the chemical could no longer be considered safe for use in food. An Arizona law bans titanium dioxide in food sold in schools, beginning with the 2026-2027 school year.

Titanium dioxide is prohibited in certified organic foods under Department of Agriculture organic standards, which bar synthetic substances.

What does the science say about titanium dioxide?

The health risks of titanium dioxide are closely tied to particle size. Nanoparticles – those smaller than 100 nanometers – are generally more toxic than larger particles. Although food-grade titanium dioxide is not entirely nanoscale, a significant fraction of its particles fall within that range. These nanoparticles can accumulate in tissues, causing oxidative stress and cell damage.

A 2023 meta-analysis found titanium dioxide nanoparticles can cause significant DNA damage in both in vivo and in vitro models. The 2021 EFSA review reached the same conclusion, finding it could not rule out DNA or chromosomal damage.

By contrast, the World Health Organization’s Joint Expert Committee on Food Additives maintains that as of 2023, the available evidence does not prove titanium dioxide is genotoxic. It isn’t completely clear how titanium dioxide nanoparticles cause genotoxicity, and evidence from studies conducted on humans is limited.

When titanium dioxide nanoparticles accumulate in the digestive tract of animals, they cause gut inflammation and damage to the intestinal lining. They can also cross the placental barrier, with animal studies linking prenatal exposure to developmental and neurological effects in offspring. Animal studies have also reported reproductive harm, including impaired sperm function and disrupted ovarian hormones.

Find out more

Learn more about recommendations relating to titanium dioxide – and the full EWG Dirty Dozen™ list of food chemicals – on EWG’s research page.

EWG’s Food Scores provides ratings for more than 150,000 foods and drinks based on nutrition, ingredients and processing concerns, and flags unhealthy ultra-processed foods to help you identify alternatives.

Titanium dioxide is also added to personal care products, including  sunscreens, as a whitener and UV filter. EWG’s Skin Deep® database helps to identify harmful chemicals in personal care and beauty products. Those bearing the EWG Verified® mark meet the strictest criteria for transparency and health. 

Titanium dioxide is safe when used on the skin as an ingredient in personal care products. It is classified as potentially hazardous if inhaled from sprays or loose powders, which permit titanium dioxide to reach deep into the lungs. EWG recommends avoiding titanium dioxide products that can be inhaled, such as spray sunscreens and loose powders. 

EWG’s Healthy Living™ app lets you take these tools with you on the go.

Areas of Focus Food Ultra-Processed Foods Food Chemicals Authors Sarah Reinhardt, MPH, RDN October 22, 2026

Atrazine taints tap water for millions – California says it causes cancer. EPA’s plan won’t fix it. Anthony Lacey October 22, 2026

Three recent developments underscore the health threat posed by atrazine, one of the most widely used herbicides in the U.S. 

Earlier this month, California’s environmental health agency said it planned to list atrazine as a carcinogen. 

A new analysis found roughly one-quarter of the miles of rivers and streams in the U.S. are contaminated by it at levels harmful to aquatic life. 

And a separate study said the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed approach to curbing atrazine runoff would do little to resolve the contamination problem. 

EWG's Guide to Safer Drinking Water

Reduce your exposures to common drinking water pollutants with EWG's handy tipsheet!

Prevalence and exposure 

Agrochemical giant Syngenta’s atrazine is one of the most widely used herbicides in the U.S., with roughly 70 million pounds applied annually, primarily to cornfields across the Midwest. 

Rain washes the chemical off farm fields and into nearby rivers, streams, lakes and groundwater. About 860,000 miles of rivers in the U.S. are contaminated with the weedkiller at levels that can harm aquatic life, according to a new analysis by the Center for Biological Diversity. 

The problem isn’t limited to the Midwest. Atrazine is especially prevalent in five hot spots, including the Chesapeake Bay, Lake Okeechobee and Texas’ Gulf Coast. In the Chesapeake Bay, atrazine contaminates more than 5.5 million acres of the watershed at levels higher than those known to harm aquatic ecosystems. 

The runoff also pollutes sources of drinking water for millions of Americans. Atrazine is consistently the most frequently detected crop chemical in tap water, according to EWG’s Tap Water Database, which shows that 2,055 water utilities in 36 states detected atrazine, affecting drinking water for about 40 million people.

Of those utilities, 479 in 18 states serving roughly 3 million people reported atrazine levels above EWG’s health guideline of 0.1 parts per billion, or ppb.

The EPA’s own monitoring data repeatedly show atrazine in Midwestern drinking water sources at levels that spike above EPA’s woefully inadequate legal atrazine tap water limit of 3 ppb. 

What exposure can do to your health

A growing body of scientific research links atrazine exposure to serious health concerns, including reproductive and developmental harm, such as premature birth and low birth weight, as well as endocrine disruption, which can interfere with the body’s hormone systems. 

More recent research has also raised concerns about the connection between atrazine exposure and an increased risk of cancer.

In 2025, the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer, or IARC, classified atrazine as “probably carcinogenic to humans,” underscoring the urgent need for the EPA to reassess the chemical’s safety. 

But the agency, parroting Syngenta’s talking points, dismissed IARC’s findings. It claimed the science shows exposure does not increase cancer risk. 

Federal and state regulation

Set in 1991, the EPA’s outdated atrazine tap water standard fails to reflect the full body of scientific evidence accumulated over the past three decades. 

EWG’s health guideline is 0.1 ppb to protect from harm to the developing fetus, harm to the reproductive system and hormone disruption. 

A second recent peer-reviewed study by researchers with CBD, published in the Journal of Environmental Quality, concluded that the EPA’s proposed measures to curb atrazine runoff would do little to protect U.S. waterways from the herbicide. The agency in 2024 proposed a contamination-relief plan but is yet to finalize it.

The researchers estimated that just 1% of the 11,248 watersheds contaminated with atrazine would fall below the EPA’s threshold for concentrations that can harm aquatic ecosystems if the plan were implemented. 

The CBD, the Center for Environmental Health and the Pesticide Action & Agroecology Network this month sued the Trump EPA for failing to establish Clean Water Act-required water quality criteria for the weedkiller. 

The lawsuit comes just as EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin considers whether to renew approval of atrazine for another 20 years.

The suit doesn’t seek a ban, but its outcome could eventually shape how states regulate herbicide runoff from farmland. 

Recent California action may force the issue. 

Earlier this month, the state’s EPA announced its intent to list atrazine as a carcinogen under the state’s Proposition 65 law. 

Prop. 65 requires businesses to warn state residents about the health risks of exposure to certain chemicals. A conclusion by the state EPA’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment carries weight among environment and safety advocacy experts.

Government action and inaction

Today more than 60 countries prohibit the use of atrazine. Yet it remains legal in the U.S. and widely applied to agricultural fields, despite widespread water contamination and mounting evidence of its potential harm to human health.

And given the Trump administration’s increasingly industry-friendly approach to pesticides, there is little reason for confidence that the review will result in meaningful restrictions.

The initial report from Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Make America Healthy Again Commission explicitly acknowledged that atrazine “can cause hormone disruption and birth defects” in babies. 

But even that limited recognition of the weedkiller’s health risks provoked an intense backlash from the pesticide industry. All references to atrazine and other crop chemicals were subsequently stripped from the final report.

Over the past year, the Trump EPA has approved more than five new pesticides containing “forever chemicals” known as PFAS, while President Donald Trump signed an executive order invoking the Defense Production Act to boost domestic production of glyphosate, the nation’s most widely used weedkiller. 

Against this backdrop, the prospect of the EPA taking decisive action to curb atrazine’s use and protect public health remains uncertain.

The bottom line

The growing evidence of atrazine’s potential health risks, its widespread presence in drinking water and waterways, and its classification as probably carcinogenic to humans demand a serious response from federal regulators. 

Rather than dismiss independent scientific findings and yield to pesticide-industry pressure, the Trump EPA should thoroughly reassess atrazine, establish more protective water-quality standards and put the health of families over the narrow financial interests of chemical corporations. 

Americans should not have to wonder whether the water flowing from their taps contains a pesticide that likely causes cancer and developmental harm to children and that dozens of countries have banned.

What can consumers do to protect themselves?

While stronger federal safeguards are needed to protect everyone from atrazine and other drinking water contaminants, consumers can take steps to learn more about what is in their drinking water. 

EWG’s Tap Water Database helps fill critical information gaps by allowing people to search by ZIP code for reports on contaminants detected in their local water supply, the levels found for each and the potential health risks in their drinking water.

The database also offers guidance on water filters that may help reduce contaminants detected in a user’s water supply, helping consumers identify options tailored to their local water-quality concerns.

Areas of Focus Water Farming & Agriculture Guest Authors Aspen Rosner (EWG communications intern) October 22, 2026