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Toronto — KEVIN LOCKHART, director of the Buildings program at the Pembina Institute, and KARI HYDE, director of Customer Energy Solutions, made the following statement in response to the release of Power Smart 2.0, the largest conservation...

The U.S. power grid should have sufficient resources to meet typical summer demand, but risk is growing in the shoulder seasons, the North American Electric Reliability Corp. said Tuesday.

Earlier this year, I spent a week with researchers at the International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology (icipe) at their headquarters in Kenya. icipe is an Africa-based research institution that uses insect science to address challenges related to food security, public health, agriculture, and the environment.

I’ve known icipe’s Director General, Abdou Tenkouano, since 2009, when I met him in Tanzania at the World Vegetable Center, and later in the 2010s when he worked with the West and Central African Council for Agricultural Research and Development (CORAF) in Senegal. He is someone I deeply admire and respect, and it’s always an honor to learn from his work.

During my visit, I met dozens of researchers, farmers, and community members who are co-creating solutions to food insecurity, malaria, and poverty in Kenya and beyond. And I was lucky to document some of this work alongside Food Tank filmmaker Haven Worley. You can watch our icipe video here and stay tuned for more On the Ground with Dani Nierenberg articles.

Articles like the one you just read are made possible through the generosity of Food Tank members. Can we please count on you to be part of our growing movement? Become a member today by clicking here.

The post On the Ground with Dani Nierenberg: Learning from Researchers, Farmers, and Communities in Kenya appeared first on Food Tank.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Image: ©Anthropocene Magazine

This article is part of Food Tank’s primer series, “Food Tank Explains.” Each installment unpacks the ideas, innovations, and challenges shaping today’s food and agriculture systems, offering clear insights into complex topics. To explore more articles in the series, click here.

The farm bill is a package of legislation governing topics including U.S. agriculture, nutrition, and conservation policy. Renewed about every 5 years for the past century, the legislation provides lawmakers with periodic opportunities to address national food and farming issues.

Over time, the farm bill has steadily expanded to reflect shifting political, economic, and agricultural priorities. It has evolved from an act providing immediate economic relief into an omnibus compendium of laws shaping everything from food access and land management to rural economies and agricultural innovation.

The first farm bill, the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933, was prompted by a drop in crop prices following World War I and the Great Depression. The legislation was a part of the New Deal and sought to reduce surplus crops and raise farm income. Farmer support and agricultural price controls have been core functions of the 17 farm bills that followed.

After the 1933 farm bill, in an era that came to be known as the Dust Bowl, large areas of the U.S. faced severe, multi-year droughts that caused soil erosion, dust storms, and distress migration on scales not previously seen. To address the devastation, the 1938 farm bill included soil conservation measures, introducing programs that paid farmers to adopt practices aimed at reducing soil erosion and improving soil health.

Farm bills during the 1950s primarily focused on stabilizing the agricultural sector after years of war. World War II-era farm policy had offered farmers high-value fixed-rate loans to boost production levels and protect farmer income. After World War II and the Korean War, wartime demand fell and technological advances sharply increased agricultural output.

Despite rising supply levels, the government maintained many of its wartime loan policies. The result was massive agricultural surpluses. To stabilize supply and demand, the Agricultural Trade Development and Assistance Act of 1954 authorized the use of surplus crops for foreign aid, creating the program now known as Food for Peace.

In the 1960s, Great Society reforms leveraged U.S. agriculture to combat domestic hunger, linking food assistance programs with farmer subsidies. Mirroring this approach, the Agricultural and Consumer Protection Act of 1973 became the first farm bill to include a nutrition title and food assistance programs. Later legislation continued to modify farm bill nutrition programs, including changes to food stamp eligibility in the Food and Agriculture Act of 1977 and the program’s rebranding as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) in 2008. All farm bills since have reauthorized funding for food assistance.

By including a nutrition title, the 1973 bill became the first omnibus farm bill. The subsequent farm bills covered a wider set of topics and involved a broader range of stakeholders in the negotiation process. The 1985 bill incorporated new conservation laws, protecting highly erodible land and wetlands. The 1990 bill included the Global Climate Change Prevention Act and the first forestry title.

The first energy title was enacted in the 2002 farm bill, which created programs to support the research, development, and adoption of bioenergy and renewable energy systems. The 2008 bill enacted the first horticulture title, laying the foundation for federal support of local food systems and specialty crops.

The most recent farm bill, the Agriculture Improvement Act of in December 2018, is structured across 12 titles including commodities, trade, nutrition, and energy. The law largely preserved the framework of the prior bill while expanding support for issues including conservation, organic agriculture, local and regional food systems, and new, socially disadvantaged, and veteran farmers and ranchers.

The 2018 farm bill expired in October 2023, but Congress has not finalized a replacement. “They typically are on an every five year timeline,” Kathleen Merrigan, Executive Director of the Swette Center for Sustainable Food Systems at Arizona State University, tells Food Tank. “We’re very much overdue at this point.”

Negotiations have repeatedly stalled over politically contentious issues including SNAP funding, conservation spending, and farm subsidies. Instead, lawmakers have enacted three consecutive one-year extensions to keep some farm bill programs operating. Other programs have lost funding or legal authorization to operate.

After the 2024 election, lawmakers shifted portions of farm policy into the budget reconciliation process through the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (H.R.1). The legislation included historically deep cuts to SNAP and conservation programs, and major changes to farmer support programs like disaster assistance, crop insurance, and access to land and farm credit.

The next farm bill is expected to cover issues including SNAP, the H-2A program, pesticides, animal welfare for livestock, and commodity subsidies. It will have substantial implications for food assistance recipients at a time when food insecurity is rising, and for farmers, who are facing falling commodity prices and high input costs compounded by tariffs and war.

Before it can become law, the bill needs to pass both the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate. The House recently passed the Farm, Food, and National Security Act of 2026, bringing the country one step closer to a new farm bill. The House’s bill removes a provision designed to shield pesticide manufacturers from health-related lawsuits tied to their products, which Merrigan describes as a victory.

But the organization Farm Aid, along with 300 other non-profit and farmers organizations, say the legislation fails to meet the moment or the needs of communities and farmers. Anti-hunger advocates had hoped the House would revisit changes to the SNAP seen in H.R.1, but those have remained in place. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that one in eight participants will lose access to some food relief as a result.

Veronica Mazariegos-Anastassiou, a young farmer at Brisa Ranch in California, tells Food Tank that she hopes the next farm bill will embrace approaches that connect environmental protections with agricultural policy. And according to Marion Nestle, author, nutritionist, and Professor Emerita at NYU, the current policy lacks an overarching framework centered on health and environmental protection, allowing the legislation to become a mess.

“There are voices missing from this farm bill,” Adrian Lipscombe, Founder of the 40 Acres Project, tells Food Tank. Lipscome explains that many of the people most affected by the bill, including immigrant workers and Black, Brown, and small-scale farmers, continue to be excluded from the conversation shaping the legislation.

The Senate expects to release its version of the bill in about a month.

Articles like the one you just read are made possible through the generosity of Food Tank members. Can we please count on you to be part of our growing movement? Become a member today by clicking here.

Photo courtesy of Scott Goodwill

The post Food Tank Explains: The Farm Bill appeared first on Food Tank.

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Headline News:

• ¶ “New US DOE Funding Opportunity To Strengthen Microgrids” • The NLR is launching a funding opportunity through the Community Microgrid Assistance Partnership, with funding from the US DOE Office of Electricity. It offers up to $2.5 million in direct project funding $1 million in technical assistance to help with remote microgrids. [CleanTechnica]

Hughes, Alaska (Tanana Chiefs Conference)

• ¶ “Solar To Dominate Power By 2032” • Solar will become the world’s largest source of electricity by 2032, according to BloombergNEF’s New Energy Outlook 2026. BloombergNEF said rising electricity demand driven by electrification, data centres, population growth and higher incomes is reshaping global energy systems. [reNews]
• ¶ “New “Atlas” Will Catalog Proteins That Bind to Rare Earth Elements” • Led by the NLR and supported by PNNL, the creation of the first-ever Microbial Rare Earth Element Atlas could help address the list of 60 critical minerals identified by the US Geological Survey as vital to the national economy but at risk of disrupted supply chains. [CleanTechnica]
• ¶ “Nabrawind Tests ‘Crane-Less’ Installation System” • Nabrawind installed its first wind turbine using its Skylift system at the InnoVent Diaz wind farm in Namibia. The Skylift lifting system integrates two technologies developed by Nabrawind: the Self-Erecting System, adapted to conventional tubular towers, and BladeRunner. [reNews]
• ¶ “Italy To Assign 10 GW Of PV In 2026-2027 Renewables Auctions” • Italian energy agency Gestore dei servizi energetici announced that the renewable energy FerX auctions planned for 2026 and 2027 will allocate 10 GW of PV capacity and 16 GW of wind power. “The goal is to hold one auction by the end of the year and the other two in 2027.” [pv magazine International]

For more news, please visit geoharvey – Daily News about Energy and Climate Change.

When Yale E360 launched in 2008, it was a pioneer in online environmental journalism, filling a critical gap in coverage. As he prepares to step down, founding editor Roger Cohn reflects on his years at e360, his debt to the writers he’s worked with, and his hopes for the future.

Read more on E360 →

With the average price of gasoline in the United States above $4.50 a gallon — about a 40 percent rise since the Iran war began in late February — Americans have been climbing into their cars less often, and stepping onto trains and buses instead. It’s been declared the largest oil supply disruption in history, with U.S. drivers paying $45 billion more for gasoline and diesel compared to last year. Some 44 percent of U.S. adults say they’ve cut back on driving because of high gas prices, according to a survey in late April from ABC News, The Washington Post, and Ipsos.

Cities across the country have seen rising numbers of people riding public transit, from Cincinnati to Los Angeles. Sales of used electric vehicles and hybrid cars have grown substantially over the past couple of months. People are replacing car trips with bikes and scooters; railroads like Amtrak have reported more riders than usual. Much of America is built around highways and suburbs, however, making alternative transportation difficult. So, many people are cutting down on driving without ditching their vehicles, by carpooling, consolidating errands, or working remotely more often.

It could be the start of a green, global shift, according to some experts — even if most Americans eventually end up hopping back in their cars. That’s because the crisis is hitting the hardest in Asia, which was projected to account for nearly all the increase in oil and gas use over the coming decades, but is now rethinking its reliance on fossil fuels. 

“If Asia turns around and says, ‘No, we’re not going to grow with fossil fuels, we are going to grow with electrotech,’ that means fossil fuels will peak, and will peak sooner than we think,” said Daan Walter, who leads strategy research on the future of energy for the think tank Ember. “It’s very likely that if this crisis continues to be as bad as it is, and we see this conversion happening, that we’re currently living in the peak year of oil, and that demand will just never come back to the level that it was just before Hormuz closed.”

With roughly 20 percent of the world’s oil shipments choked off in the Strait of Hormuz, households and industries have found ways to use less of it. This can create what economists call “demand destruction” for oil — meaning that the world simply won’t need as much as it used to. The phenomenon is already happening across the globe, according to the International Energy Agency. Last week, the agency reiterated that demand for oil is being destroyed, forecasting a contraction of 420,000 barrels a day this year. It’s a silver lining in an otherwise grim situation: Price shocks driven by conflict in the Middle East are nudging people away from fossil fuels.

While people sometimes use “demand destruction” as a dramatic way to refer to a short-term drop in demand, the phrase more accurately describes a deeper economic shift. “To me, the term ‘demand destruction’ really only makes sense if you’re talking about it as a longer-term thing. Like, it’s truly destroyed the source of demand,” said Kenneth Gillingham, a professor of environmental and energy economics at Yale University.

The destruction in global oil demand has been concentrated in Asia rather than in the U.S., where the country’s overall wealth enables people to pay more for fuel relative to much of the world, even as it strains the budgets of low- and middle-income Americans. Factories in Japan are producing fewer petrochemical products — demand for naphtha, used to make plastics and chemicals, fell by a quarter year-over-year — amplifying the country’s “long-term declining trend” in oil demand, according to the International Energy Agency. Its report notes that gasoline demand in South Korea fell by about 5 percent as prices rose at the pump, suggesting that behavioral changes are also contributing to demand destruction. As the crisis in the Middle East deepened, South Korean President Lee Jae Myung called for a sharp shift to renewable energy, saying, “Our future will be at serious risk if we continue to rely on fossil fuels.” 

Countries and companies are also decreasing their oil use in response to the crisis. Pakistan, the Philippines, and Sri Lanka have all introduced four-day work weeks to encourage fewer commutes.

To what extent these fuel-saving adjustments stick around is an open question. President Donald Trump has promised that oil prices will “drop like a rock” once the war in Iran ends. But even after shipping through the Strait of Hormuz resumes, oil supplies could remain tight for months as facilities are repaired and wells get restarted. The Iran war is also the second oil shock in recent years, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and experts say that this pattern of oil crises is more likely to lead to a prolonged fall in demand. 

Passengers on the D-line subway train in New York City on May 15.
Charly Triballeau / AFP via Getty Images

“If prices are low for a very, very long time, and then you have a shock, it’s easy to write it off as not a big deal, not going to happen again. But if you continue getting shocks, then you’re like, ‘Maybe I should really start thinking about making some changes,'” Gillingham said. 

A report from Ember, co-written by Walter, makes the case that the “twin fossil shock” of the 2020s opens up new political possibilities, just as the double oil shocks in the 1970s prompted investments in energy efficiency and nuclear power. “The parallels with the 1970s oil shocks are striking. But so too is the difference,” the authors write. “For the first time, there are scalable, cost-competitive alternatives. Solar, wind, batteries, EVs, and other electrotech offer a permanent route out of fossil dependence.” 

The report predicts that Asia, affected the most by the current oil crisis, will fast-track electrification, switching to EVs and pushing liquefied natural gas out of power generation. The first sign that may already be happening: In March, after the bombing of Iran had started, China’s exports of solar, batteries, and electric vehicles surged.

“It really shakes countries and companies around the world out of this complacency of thinking that there is a path back to a normal stable fossil system,” Walter said. “Import dependency is just incredibly risky at the moment, and the second crisis kind of confirms that.”

And some of the new routines people adopt during the oil crisis could endure. “A shock like the big increase in gas prices, or an earthquake that closes a freeway, is really helpful in getting people to change behavior,” said Susan Handy, a professor of environmental science and policy at the University of California, Davis. “It is really hard to get people to change behavior without those kinds of shocks — not that we want these things to happen, but it is what pushes behavior change.” When a bridge that collapsed reopens, for instance, most people will go back to driving, but some of them will keep their new biking routine, she said.

So what determines whether a habit sticks? It comes down to what people grow to like, Handy said. People might realize they enjoy riding a bike around town or reading on the bus, as opposed to sitting behind the wheel in traffic, once they have reason to try it. “I think there are probably more alternatives out there than people realize, or the alternatives may be better than they realize,” Handy said. Rising prices can also prompt people to adopt more energy-efficient vehicles or appliances, locking them into lower fuel usage going forward.

Of course, Americans are still driving a lot — and will probably continue to do so. “We’ve seen oil prices go up and down many, many times in our history, even in recent history,” Gillingham said. “Generally, those shorter-term behaviors tend to bounce back to where they were before.” 

But in the global picture, it’s looking more and more likely that the second oil crisis in half a decade, at a moment when alternatives to fossil fuels are becoming cheaper and widespread, may lead to more lasting changes, accelerating the decline of oil — and the rise of cleaner replacements. As the author Rebecca Solnit wrote in a recent newsletter: “What if in a decade or a century people remember this as the point when the world really turned away from this filthy, corrupting, unreliable, destructive resource?”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The Iran war is destroying oil demand. Could it also spark a shift to clean energy? on May 20, 2026.

The Trump administration has announced what it is calling “a major step forward” in the fight against a class of toxic chemicals called PFAS, or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances. Extended exposure to PFAS, often referred to as “forever chemicals” because they can persist indefinitely in the environment, has been linked to various cancers, autoimmune diseases, and other harms.

On Monday, Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. lauded Donald Trump as the first president who is “completely committed” to removing forever chemicals, which are found at unsafe levels in tap water in some 80 percent of congressional districts and lurk in the blood of 97 percent of Americans. 

But what Kennedy considers a step forward looks like a big step back to most of those who have long kept an eye on the issue. That’s because the Trump administration is unraveling key parts of the PFAS limits approved by Joe Biden’s administration in 2024, which are the first and only regulations to put limits on PFAS in drinking water in the nation’s history. Restrictions on four substances in the PFAS class would be rescinded entirely, while water utilities would be given two additional years to comply with limits for two other substances. The Environmental Protection Agency first signaled its intention to make these changes last year, just a few months after Trump took office. The changes will be finalized after a 60-day public comment period expires. 

Secretary Kennedy, who is known for his pledge to “Make America Healthy Again,” turned attention instead to the EPA’s recent announcement of $1 billion in grant funding for small and disadvantaged communities to detect and eliminate PFAS. “We have a president who has made a greater financial commitment than any president in U.S. history,” Kennedy said. But the commitment was not exactly Trump’s to make: The $1 billion comes from an appropriation made by Congress in 2021, when Joe Biden was president. 

PFAS has been used in a wide variety of products, including industrial firefighting foams, for decades. As evidence of health harms linked to these substances has mounted, many manufacturers have developed new types of PFAS that have comparatively shorter lifespans. But this new generation of chemicals, of which there are thousands of members, may also cause adverse health impacts.

“The Biden administration had at least set health protective limits for six of these chemicals out of the literally thousands that have been registered for use in the marketplace,” said John Rumpler, clean water director for the environmental advocacy nonprofit Environment America. “Now the EPA is walking back from even that small step toward protecting our drinking water.” 

On Monday, the administration tried to rationalize the proposed roll backs by saying that Biden-era PFAS limits were approved in a rush that would have made them vulnerable to ongoing legal challenges. Water utilities and chemical companies have sued the EPA over its PFAS rules, arguing that the regulations are procedurally flawed, financially onerous, and require compliance on timelines that are too tight. 

But the EPA has itself sought to undermine the limits since Trump took office last year, asking a federal appeals court to summarily vacate Biden-era restrictions on four types of PFAS last fall. The EPA has since stopped defending the standards in court. 

“This is about being realistic,” EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said at an event alongside Kennedy on Monday. “A deadline you cannot physically meet is not a public health protection.” He pointed to the fact that technology capable of removing the chemicals is improving and may eventually bring costs down for utilities burdened by the price of removing PFAS from tap water. 

In a statement provided to Grist, the EPA said that “the previous administration’s rule set deadlines many water systems simply could not meet — risking costly violations that punish communities without removing a single part per trillion from anyone’s tap.”

So far, the EPA has offered little in the way of a regulatory substitute for the limits it is removing. “I don’t think there’s anything new here,” said Jared Thompson, an attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental protection group that is one of several groups defending the Biden-era limits in ongoing litigation brought by chemical companies.

“It seems like they have largely adopted the positions of the chemical industry challengers and the water industry challengers who are saying that these standards are not appropriate,” he added. 

Zeldin asserted that the EPA is going to “do it right” this time, and the EPA’s statement to Grist said that “it is entirely possible the result will be more stringent requirements” once the four PFAS substances whose limits are being rescinded are reviewed a second time.

But some outside experts think Zeldin is already doing it wrong. The Safe Drinking Water Act, which Congress passed in 1974, has a provision that states that the EPA can’t weaken drinking water standards once they’ve been set.

“There are going to be legal challenges,” said Richard L. Revesz, dean emeritus at the New York University School of Law and former administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs under Biden. “They’ll have to give reasons and those reasons are very likely to be inadequate.” 

Editor’s note: The Natural Resources Defense Council is an advertiser with Grist. Advertisers have no role in Grist’s editorial decisions.

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This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Trump’s EPA vows to fight ‘forever chemicals’ by loosening regulations on May 20, 2026.

Before he became prime minister of Canada, Mark Carney was perhaps one of the world’s biggest supporters of the idea that climate action was good business. He led the clean energy investment fund for Brookfield, one of the world’s largest financial firms, and founded a global alliance of bankers and politicians who wanted to channel their resources toward green energy. When he took over from outgoing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, many expected that he would follow the previous Liberal leader’s ambitious climate agenda, which included taxing fossil fuels and subsidizing clean technology. 

But just like in Carney’s beloved sport of hockey, momentum in the climate world can change fast. In the year since he took over, Carney has unveiled a suite of new policies to gut Canada’s ambitious climate regulations and support the country’s powerful fossil fuel industry. This reversal reached a climax last week when he struck a deal with the province of Alberta to prop up its tar sands oil industry and vowed to expand the country’s power grid through the use of natural gas.

Carney is pitching the reversal as a political and economic necessity. Canada is facing the prospect of a severe economic downturn as a result of President Donald Trump’s disruptive trade agenda, and a group of conservatives in Alberta are waging a campaign to secede from Canada altogether. He has claimed that the country can achieve economic security by investing in oil and gas production while still making progress toward reducing its own carbon emissions.

“It will be an opportunity to accelerate the energy transition across Canada, and it’s also an opportunity for Canada to be a reliable supplier for partners across the globe, and to do so in a manner that makes Canada more prosperous and independent,” said Carney in announcing the strategy. 

The reversal reveals a stark truth about the direction of global climate action: Despite the rapid deployment of clean energy, even countries and politicians once seen as climate leaders are turning to fossil fuels to protect against the turmoil of Trump’s trade disputes and the war in Iran. 

But Carney’s new strategy doesn’t seem to have pleased anyone. Major oil producers and conservatives in Alberta are still pressuring Carney for further concessions, and a broad spectrum of left-wing politicians and civil society groups have condemned it as short-sighted. The critics argue that doubling down on fossil fuel exports is the wrong move at a time when the rest of the world may be shifting away from them.

“The problem is we’re defaulting back to what Canada’s known how to do in the past, rather than what the world’s going to need in the future,” said Simon Donner, a climate scientist at the University of British Columbia who served as chair of the federal government’s climate policy advisory board until he resigned late last year. 

Carney has already rolled back several of Trudeau’s climate initiatives. He scrapped Canada’s federal electric vehicle mandate and eliminated the country’s unpopular consumer carbon tax, which added a surcharge on gas stations and power bills. The one major policy he left alone was the “industrial carbon price,” which charges polluters a fee for every ton of carbon dioxide they emit. The nation’s biggest emitters are multinational oil and gas companies, which produce sticky crude from the massive tar sands fields in Alberta; the oil sector produces about 30 percent of Canada’s emissions, more than buildings or cars.

Canada and Alberta have a mutual dependence. Oil makes up more than 15 percent of Canada’s export volume, and Alberta’s oil wealth makes it a net contributor to the federal budget. Under the Canadian constitution, provinces have control over natural resources, and Alberta leaders have long viewed the industrial carbon tax as a threat to their sovereignty. But the oil industry in Alberta needs help from the Liberal government, too. The inland province is producing more oil than it can sell, and the industry’s future growth depends on building another pipeline to the Pacific Ocean, which needs federal support. (The existing pipeline to the Pacific is nearing capacity. Oil producers are also seeking to build new pipelines to the United States.)

Last week, Carney and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith unveiled a “grand bargain” meant to resolve this conflict: Carney removed a proposed hard cap on carbon emissions from the oil sector, and in exchange Alberta agreed to support a long-term increase in carbon prices. The federal government will also expedite permitting for a new Pacific Coast pipeline, while oil producers agreed to build a massive carbon capture system that would offset emissions from oil drilling.

Climate advocates in Canada say the final deal is toothless, and makes major concessions to the oil and gas industry. The deal will lower the headline price of the industrial carbon tax and slow down the rate of the price increase by three-quarters, whereas Carney had at first proposed to tighten the price. The proposed carbon capture project has also shrunk to a fraction of its original size, and the oil industry hasn’t agreed to it yet.

“It would have been a big enough motivator to find those emissions cuts, but it wouldn’t have jeopardized the possibility of oil and gas companies making money,” said Julia Levin, the associate director for national climate policy at the nonprofit Environmental Defence. She noted that under the previous framework, the per-barrel cost of the carbon tax comes out to the price of a Timbit, the Canadian equivalent of a Munchkin donut hole: about 50 cents. Now, she says, “the companies don’t have to do anything at all for 15 years.” 

A Syncrude oil sands mining facility near Fort McKay, Alberta. Prime Minister Mark Carney is relying on oil produced in Alberta to help Canada weather the economic turbulence of President Trump’s trade war. Ed Jones / AFP via Getty Images

Even early news of a potential deal triggered a revolt within Carney’s own party, leading to the resignation of his climate minister, Steven Guilbeault, as well as two members of the government’s independent climate advisory panel. But the industry isn’t satisfied, either. The chief executive of the Canadian oil company Cernovus said last week he doesn’t think the country should have a carbon price at all, saying it “doesn’t incent us to decarbonize,” and some producers have said they still worry about making money even under the loose regulations. A leader of the Alberta separatist campaign said the deal only made him more convinced the province needs to leave Canada.

Richard Masson, a longtime oil sands executive who has worked for Shell and the government of Alberta, said that companies should see the carbon tax as the price of doing business in a country where most voters want some action on climate change.

“The producers will probably take a little bit less return, but in the world we’re in, there’s enough money to go around,” he said. “You’re saying, ‘I’m going to spend a premium on this to prevent having the world turn its back on me.’”

Masson also said that the ultimate climate impact of the deal depends on whether a pipeline to the Pacific actually comes together. Carney has already eased environmental permitting laws to make it easier, and last month he created a $25 billion development fund that could help pay for construction. But there is still no private company that has come forward to build it, and a number of First Nations tribes with treaty rights on the Pacific coast have rejected the idea. 

“No offer of equity or ownership will change our position, and no proponent is acceptable to us,” said Marilyn Slett, president of the Coastal First Nations, in response to the pipeline plan. First Nations have ironclad consultation rights under British Columbia provincial law, and securing a pipeline without tribal agreement will be impossible.

Even so, in what seemed to be a further embrace of fossil fuels for economic security, Carney also unveiled a “national electricity strategy” at the same time as the Alberta deal. This strategy seeks to double the size of Canada’s grid by 2050 through investments in renewable energy and a new network of transmission lines connecting the provinces. But it also calls for natural gas to have a major role on Canada’s future power grid, even though the country has made major investments in zero-carbon power and gets most of its electricity from hydropower dams and nuclear reactors. 

Here again, the Carney government framed the decision as a necessary step toward geopolitical resilience. The strategy claims that “Canada’s economic growth and long-term competitiveness will depend on its ability to attract and retain investment in high-growth, electricity-intensive sectors, including artificial intelligence … liquid natural gas export facilities, mining, and critical minerals.”

Underlying all these moves is the assumption that fossil fuels will provide protection against economic uncertainty. As long as Canada can extract and export natural resources, it will be able to balance its budgets and keep its citizens safe. But despite Carney’s reputation as a shrewd central banker, critics of his government view the prime minister’s new strategy as short-sighted — Carney is pinning his economic hopes on the sale of a commodity that the world is starting to abandon.

“This is the sort of decision that they’re probably happy about today, and we will look back in 10 years and think, ‘What the hell were we doing?’” said Donner, the former chair of the government’s climate advisory board.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Once a climate leader, Canada is now doubling down on oil on May 20, 2026.

The end of South Litchfield Beach is a sprawling spit of sand, where tides and waves combine to create a wide beach that is popular with people and nesting birds. So Robert...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The good news … with asterisks

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The unequivocally bad news

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The road ahead

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

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

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

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

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

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Date: May 19, 2026
Contact: Anja Semanco | anja@alaskawild.org | 724-967-2777 

Alaska Wilderness League Condemns Nomination of Steve Pearce to Lead Bureau of Land Management 

WASHINGTON, D.C. — In response to yesterday’s nomination of former Congressman Steve Pearce to serve as Director of the Bureau of Land Management Alex Cohen, director of government affairs at Alaska Wilderness League, issued the following statement: 

“Time and again, this administration has shown it will go to extremes to sell off Alaska’s iconic public lands to private interests, from buying stakes in foreign mining companies to opening up every acre possible for development,” said Alex Cohen, government affairs director at Alaska Wilderness League. “Public lands belong in public hands, and Steve Pearce’s tenure in Congress — where he repeatedly demonstrated his opposition to protecting our public lands — makes him the wrong man for the top job at the BLM. We urge the Senate to reject his nomination this week, and we’ll oppose every effort he would bring to give away our wildest places if he’s confirmed.” 

The Bureau of Land Management oversees roughly 245 million acres of public lands across the United States, including critical landscapes in Alaska that are central to subsistence traditions, wildlife habitat, recreation, and climate resilience. 

During his time in Congress, Pearce built a record closely aligned with extractive industry interests, repeatedly supporting expanded drilling and mining on public lands while opposing conservation protections and climate action. His nomination comes as the administration intensifies efforts to dismantle protections across Alaska, including renewed attempts to expand drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, weakening protections for the Western Arctic, and rolling back protections for the Tongass National Forest. 

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The Salt and Gila Rivers flow through central Arizona, providing water supplies to communities, Tribes, agriculture, and industry –and connecting people to nature. This river corridor also...

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