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In mid-April, Indigenous leaders from British Columbia traveled to Ottawa to protest against the federal government’s aggressive support for fossil fuel expansion.

Mark Carney’s Liberal government is fast-tracking multiple LNG projects in British Columbia, including the recent approval of Enbridge’s $4 billion natural gas pipeline expansion.

Securing Indigenous support for fossil fuel projects has been a cornerstone strategy of Canada’s oil and gas sector in recent years, with companies promising considerable benefits on the one hand while highlighting Indigenous involvement as an aspect of corporate responsibility on the other.

Not everyone is on board however, and Indigenous communities have been some of the most vocal opponents of major Canadian energy projects, including Union of BC Indian Chiefs representative Kitisha Paul, who argued at the Ottawa protest that fossil fuel expansion is causing the “deterioration of our land, our water.” 

Kai Nagata, an energy campaigner with the B.C.-based environmental non-profit Dogwood, has spent years working with Indigenous communities on the front-lines of opposition to new oil and gas infrastructure, a role that’s included deep research into the benefit agreements offered by industry as well as the foreign investors set to cash-in from new gas pipelines and export terminals. In an extensive Q&A with DeSmog, Nagata illuminates some of the tensions around promises of Indigenous participation in new fossil fuel projects, and the ways in which these supposedly “nation building” projects are tied to the U.S. and the MAGA movement.

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This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

To what extent are Indigenous communities participating in the development of new fossil fuel infrastructure in British Columbia?

Coastal GasLink, a gas pipeline built across Northern BC, has zero percent Indigenous equity ownership. Sixty-five percent of the pipeline is owned by KKR, which is a New York private equity firm, and 35 percent remains with TC Energy Corporation.  

The LNG Canada terminal in Kitimat has zero percent Indigenous ownership, as it’s owned by Royal Dutch Shell and a consortium of Asian oil companies, some of which are state-owned.

The financing for these projects came from U.S., Canadian, Japanese and some Chinese banks. So the investors, the shareholders, the owners, and indeed many of the senior project staff and people involved in engineering and building the thing are not even Canadian, let alone Indigenous. 

The only LNG project that has Indigenous ownership right now in BC is Cedar LNG. So the Haisla Nation has a 50 percent stake in the terminal, but they’re buying the gas from Coastal GasLink, which is owned by KKR. And KKR also has a midstream infrastructure partnership with Pembina Pipelines, which is the Haisla’s partner on Cedar LNG. So they’re not outside the orbit of KKR by any means.

With Prince Rupert Gas Transmission pipeline (PRGT) or the Ksi Lisims project, which are being advanced by this Texas company [Western LNG] with Wall Street investors, they’ve really been at pains to make it seem like this is an Indigenous-owned project. That’s how it’s been pitched by the provincial government. And that’s just not true.
 
 (Author’s note: filings with the BC Environmental assessment office show Western LNG is the primary owner and operator of the Ksi Lisims project).

Companies are riding this wave of concern over the poor treatment of Indigenous people historically in Canada and the need to make that up to them.They’re calling this ‘economic reconciliation’: here’s an opportunity for a small number of your governing elite to cash in, with hopefully some long-term benefits for the broader population on your reserve or in your nation.

Can you speak more to the kinds of agreements companies have signed with Indigenous communities?

Every deal is different, and they’re all secret. So that’s the first sign they might not stand up to scrutiny.

During the initial negotiations around the PRGT, which was back in 2014, you had band councils and hereditary chiefs signing impact benefit agreements. That was the same era as Coastal GasLink. Prior to that era of projects, the older model involved people from industry coming into Indigenous communities and saying “you people need to get out of the way now, the bulldozers are coming.”

Recognizing that that approach carried material risk for projects, the energy companies started crafting impact benefit agreements. They follow a similar template, basically an Indigenous community gets some limited financial benefits upfront. They get a promise of ongoing financial benefits, often very modest, but in return, they have clauses that are pretty draconian, like you have to prevent any of the members of your Indigenous group from speaking out against this industry or this project, and that can include on social media.

How do you get people to agree to that?

If your chief and council signs a closed-door deal with a pipeline company, it may contain clauses like your band members can’t shit talk this project on Facebook. That came out of a leaked benefit agreement that was signed with Coastal GasLink.

The chief and council weren’t sure if it was a good idea. So they put it out to a plebiscite and the community voted against it. Then they said there were ‘problems with the process’, so they took it to an in-camera vote. The council was split down the middle, so the chief himself passed the tie-breaking vote.

It actually came down to one guy—the band chief—after a democratic majority of band members rejected the deal. And the deal contained disparagement clauses. If community members disparaged the industry, the community could be held financially liable. I would characterize that as coercive. That’s not a deal anyone should sign. But when you have no leverage and when you’ve been dealing with the effects of poverty for 150 years, there’s a lot of immediate needs that these projects promise to fulfill.

Like what?

Kitselas First Nation recently signed an impact benefit agreement with Western LNG, the company developing the PRGT pipeline. They’re going to find some spaces for child care on the reserve, so that more people can go to work.

But childcare is a provincial responsibility. Except for First Nations. So you have a situation where they’re being deprived of services the non-Indigenous population receive from the provincial government, and are then forced to sign very one-sided deals with industrial projects to fund those basic social services.
 
 You create a situation where it feels like a pretty good deal if the pipeline goes through and you get a little revenue and maybe some childcare too. Obviously you’re gonna take the deal where you get something instead of nothing.

What are the risks of pursuing these projects for Indigenous partners?

There’s some really big risks around LNG right now, like what’s happening in global markets in Asia and Europe. Who carries those risks? Which investors are first in line to be paid? Which creditors are first to line if things go wrong? You might be the last in line to recoup your investment depending on the structure of the deal.

The trend is that the lawyers and the industry consultants—the people who jump from project to project around the world and arrange these big financing deals—they get paid right away. They don’t stick around to build the project. And I’m concerned by the fact that this current crop of LNG projects are all backed by Wall Street, because Wall Street doesn’t know anything about building pipelines or operating energy infrastructure.

But they do know how to ride a bubble.

They know to make money into other money, and they know how ruthlessly exploit a dying industry. Don’t forget, what we call ‘private equity’ today used to be called ‘leveraged buyouts’. And that may sound high-minded and complicated financial stuff, but really it’s just the same core business it was 40 years ago: either you turn around a troubled asset, or you fire all the workers and sell off the parts.

Vulture capitalism is a key component of private equity.

What happens when Indigenous communities resist projects, like in the case of Wet’suwet’en Hereditary chiefs and land defenders opposing the Coastal GasLink project

Pipelines in particular come with a whole playbook and a set of actors which are very practiced in operating in conflict zones and sites of recent political or environmental upheaval.

The companies that are building PRGT include Bechtel, which is a major U.S. military contractor, and one of the biggest privately-owned companies in the world. They manufacture weapons, build defense installations, and they do oil and gas work in shall we say the ‘imperial borderlands’, contested spaces. They’re deeply integrated with the U.S. security state and with U.S. foreign policy. And they have a playbook for dealing with the ‘restive local tribes’ or any other local community that might give the Americans a hard time over their globe-spanning infrastructure.

We saw an example of this with the Wetʼsuwetʼen when they contested Coastal GasLink. The company that bought the pipeline, KKR, has its own internal intelligence division, which is run by David Petraeus, who’s the former CIA director and was prior to that a top-ranking general who literally wrote the U.S. Armed Forces manual on counterinsurgency warfare.

And if you read his book, you see there’s a lot of familiar tactics that we saw adapted to Northern BC. We saw veterans of the War on Terror step in and take control of a physical space in a way that was new to people covering Canadian resource extraction projects.

You had American, British, Belgian, South African mercenaries essentially working as private security for the pipeline who were really directing the actions and collecting intelligence and evidence for the police who just got called in to do the hands-on stuff and make the arrests.

I would characterize what we witnessed there as a corporate counter-insurgency.

Do you view Indigenous participation in new fossil fuel projects part of the marketing scheme or a guarantee against another Wetʼsuwetʼen crisis?

Both the federal and provincial levels of government are doing all they can to de-risk these projects and entice these very small communities with limited fiscal capacity to invest in these multi-billion dollar projects which include loan guarantees and other kind of bespoke deals around transmission line access and that kind of thing. 

They’re bending over backwards to make these projects work because they know that [between the] combination of Indigenous ownership and the green branding around electrified LNG terminals, most people in Vancouver who see one news article will think “oh, a First Nation has decided to build a gas terminal in a place I’ve never visited. Sounds like they’re trying to protect the environment and it’s good to see native people get a stake in these projects after being on the sidelines for so long, good for them.”

In the case of the Haisla nation that has ownership over Cedar LNG, It’s up to them to determine whether these projects benefit their community, but we do need to consider how much information—and the quality of the information—the public, Indigenous or otherwise, has when making these decisions. In the small towns of Northern BC, there’s really no media scrutiny to speak of. The energy companies send their press releases to the local newspaper, the focus of which is how many jobs will be created, but there’s really no scrutiny of what the impact will be. And many of these decisions are happening behind closed doors anyways. We only find out the terms if they leak.

What was the calculus for investors in wanting to develop these projects?

Apollo Global Management invested in Western LNG and the development of the Ksi Lisims terminal back in 2018. They got in on the ground floor at a time when there were low LNG prices worldwide. There was a down cycle starting in about 2015, 2016, where we saw a huge wave of these projects get canceled because the markets weren’t there yet. The prices didn’t take off until Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, and that’s what kicked off the current gold rush.

Some of these people had the idea of using an emerging technology—modular floating LNG terminals—as a way to both lower the risk and lower the cost. The floating terminals are basically converted LNG bulk carriers, which can be moved around the world and hooked up wherever they’re needed. Instead of building a massive onshore terminal, the floating terminals are built in Korea and they can be hooked up in series to expand capacity.

Apollo saw the potential in that, not just the export terminals, but there are equivalent facilities that are built on ships for the import of LNG, which Apollo also invested in, in the same year. They really saw the opportunity for vertical integration in emerging markets where people need access to reliable electricity. And this is the cheap modular way to do it.

Leon Black is the former CEO who made that call and who got Apollo Global Management to be the first major Wall Street backer of the Ksi Lisims project, and it’s the only project that Western LNG has ever developed. The company was incorporated in Delaware and headquartered in Texas, but it’s only ever existed to develop this project in BC.

You have talked about how the backers of the Ksi Lisims project are tied to the MAGA movement, can you tell me more about this? 

Steve Schwartzman, who runs Blackstone, (the other major investor in this project) is a top-10 donor to Trump. He’s bankrolling the MAGA movement. He’s a major advisor and donor to Trump, who is steering and financing what I would characterize as like an authoritarian political movement that is taking over institutions in the U.S. and openly wants to annex Canada for its resources.

It puts the question of Indigenous ownership in perspective, given the players. I really don’t think that they have the best interests of local people in their minds as they’re structuring these deals. They’re not here on a charitable project. The reason why they would empower the companies that they’re invested in to strike these deals with local First Nations is to give them the kind of political cover they need to get permits and authorizations and the loans.

The post How Canada’s LNG Push is Benefiting Trump and Shortchanging Indigenous People appeared first on DeSmog.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Friday, May 1, 2026

The eight-hour workday. Voting rights. Desegregated buses and schools. Every hard-won right Californians depend on today came from people who organized, refused to accept the status quo, and fought back.

In 1884, the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions made a declaration: in five years, workers across the country would strike on May 1 for an eight-hour workday.  No guarantee of success—and no central command to make it happen. The idea spread anyway, city to city, carried by ordinary workers who organized locally and walked off of the job together. At Haymarket Square in Chicago, workers paid for that defiance with their lives. The movement grew anyway. They won, and May 1 became the international workers’ celebration, May Day.

That is the spirit that drives Public Advocates. For 55 years, we have combined civil rights litigation, policy advocacy, and deep partnership with grassroots communities to challenge the laws and power structures that lock low-income communities and communities of color out of good schools, stable housing, and reliable transit. We do this because rights declared on paper mean nothing without power behind them—and power is built through sustained organizing and coordinated struggle over time. That is how we win resourced schools, renter protections, and transit systems that serve the people who need these most.

That work has never been more urgent.

California is the fourth-largest economy in the world. The people who built it—teachers, nurses, farmworkers, transit workers, essential workers of every kind—are being pushed out of it. The Tenant Protection Act, the state’s primary shield against extreme rent hikes and unjust evictions, expires in 2030. Tens of thousands of affordable homes sit approved but unfinanced. Students in under-resourced school facilities are still denied what the law guarantees. This is not a series of policy failures. It is a system working exactly as it was designed—to concentrate wealth in the hands of a few rather than spreading it to include the people who make this state run.

We know it can be different today because we have seen it. In Minnesota years of cross-racial organizing produced the 2023“Minnesota Miracle,”— a single legislative session that delivered a billion dollars in affordable housing, free school meals for every child, expanded voting rights, paid family leave, and protections for workers and immigrant communities. This past January 23, that same coalition drove a massive ICE presence out of Minneapolis through peaceful community action. It didn’t happen by accident. It happened because people built power—across race, across issues, across years—together.

That is the work of May Day. That is the work of Public Advocates.

This May Day we recommit to the California that should exist—where the people who built this economy can afford to stay here, where every child has a school worthy of their potential, and where no community’s future depends on the goodwill of those in power.

Power isn’t given. It’s built. We’re building it.

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Public Advocates Inc. is a nonprofit law firm and advocacy organization that challenges the systemic causes of poverty and racial discrimination by strengthening community voices in public policy and achieving tangible legal victories advancing education, housing, transportation equity, and climate justice.

The post Statement: Public Advocates Stands with Workers and Communities Fighting For a Just California on May Day appeared first on Public Advocates.

Opinion by KAY MATTHEWS

Kudos to Rio Arriba County for passing Resolution 2026-057 opposing any uranium mining in the Carson National Forest and requesting a full environmental impact assessment by the Forest Service. A Canadian corporation, Gamma Resources, has filed for a permit to do exploratory drilling in the Canjilon area of the Carson. The New Mexico congressional delegation is on board with the county’s opposition: Senator Ben Ray Lujan is drafting legislation to withdraw the Chama watershed from mineral development with Senator Heinrich and Representative Leger Fernandez’s support.

Several administrative concerns give pause, however. The US Forest Service, which would ordinarily be the agency overseeing the request for a permit is currently being dismantled  by the Trump administration, with the Washington headquarters moved to Salt Lake City, home of the movement to privatize public lands, all regional offices shut down, and fifty research facilities closed. The administration had already eviserated the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) by allowing actions on federal lands to proceed with expedited or curtailed environmental review. Individual agencies are making the decision whether to allow public comment via scoping or draft environmental assessments (EA). Kit Carson Electric Coop released an EA on the proposed “green energy” solar array and hydrogen facility in Questa with no public input.

The other worry is that the administration will supplant the NEPA process with the FAST-41 program that allows the fast-tracking of environmental reviews for infrastructure projects, as established by Title 41 of the Fixing America’s Surface Transportation Act. Now Trump has directed that mineral production projects be accelerated under the FAST-41 program. We don’t know how this is going to proceed regarding the Canjilon mining permit request, but Luis Peña submitted a request to the county to inspect public records regarding anything related to Gamma Resources.

Mount Taylor is also under siege. After years in the works, Laramide Resources company submitted the La Jara Mesa Mining application to New Mexico Mining and Minerals Division for the proposed uranium mine north of Mount Taylor early this year. During the initial public comment period the state agency received over 200 letters opposing the mine; in light of this strong opposition it extended the comment period and committed to holding a public hearing, but not until it receives answers to questions that will be submitted to Laramide. Because the proposed plan is on the Cibola National Forest, that agency is also responsible for a NEPA analysis, as in the proposed Canjilon uranium exploration. Unfortunately, the La Jara Mesa mine has already been listed on the FAST-41 fast-track.  This is the rationale, as stated in the Federal Permitting Improvement Steering Council press release: “The Permitting Council is committed to working closely with the National Energy Dominance Council and other Federal partners to advance President Trump’s bold agenda to make America energy dominant again, and use all necessary resources to build critical infrastructure.”

Uranium mining in the Mount Taylor area in the 1970s led to legacy waste from the open-pit Jackpile Mine on Laguna Pueblo, a Superfund site, and the mining and milling operations at Ambrosia Lake, Kerrmac, and Homestake north of Grants. The Navajo Nation suffered extensive uranium ore extraction and in 1979 the Church Rock spill unleashed 94 million gallons of radioactive waste into the Rio Puerco. As mining booms always do, it kept miners employed during the boom, then out-of-work and contaminated after the bust. The Trump administration is doing everything in its power to enhance nuclear energy production with already compromised accountability from the mining industrial complex and the federal government.

The Navajo Nature currently has a moratorium on uranium mining. Diné activist Leona Morgan and others were out on the streets in Bernalillo a week ago protesting the Nuclear in New Mexico conference where industry and its proponents were advocating for not only uranium mining but SMRs (small modular nuclear reactors), reprocessing, enrichment facilities, and more. They’re pushing nuclear reactors as “renewable energy” and, as NM State Representative Meredith Dixon stated, “I would really like to see New Mexico as a leader in all things nuclear.” Virginia McLemore of the New Mexico Bureau of Geology and Mineral Resources called New Mexico’s supposed one billion pounds of uranium “world class deposits . . . [that are]  going to keep going until we have exploited all of it.”

The idea of drilling rigs crisscrossing the forests of Canjilon is anathema to all of us. Carson National Forest, if it proves to be the decision maker via the NEPA process, has a huge responsibility, not only to the Chama Valley but to the state of New Mexico, to protect our forests and watersheds from an industry that enables nuclear bombs, desecration of the environment, and unhealthy people.

 

 

 

 

 

In a CalMatters piece published today, Rachel Becker outlines the major obstacles facing efforts to revive the Delta Tunnel project. Even as Governor Newsom claims the state is “closer than ever” to completing it, significant hurdles remain, including a massive price tag, unclear financing plans, pending critical water rights decisions, and a lack of commitments from water agencies to fund the project.

Becker highlights the project’s long history of controversy, dating back more than half a century, and voters rejecting an earlier version in the 1980s. She notes that Delta communities continue to denounce the plan, calling it a water grab that would devastate one of the country’s largest estuaries and harm towns, wildlife, and multigenerational farms.

The article also points out that with the Delta’s current state of decline due to algal blooms, degraded water quality, and struggling fish populations, diverting water through the tunnel would only further damage the already fragile ecosystem.  

“Nobody seems to care about the people out here on the ground,” Duane Martin Jr., a third-generation cattleman in the Delta, told CalMatters, describing what he sees as the project’s irreversible impacts on the region and its communities.

Read more from CalMatters here.

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Middleton Island is the first thing the wind hits between Hawaii and Alaska. Out here in the Gulf of Alaska, tens of thousands of seabirds gather each summer, turning a remote outpost into one of the...

The scene is a familiar one: A V-shaped flock of Canada Geese flies overhead, wings flapping languidly among the wisps of clouds as their discordant honks carry across the spring or fall air. The...

Location

The Gualala River enters the Pacific Ocean approximately 110 miles north of San Francisco, California. Just past the mouth of the river lies the town of Gualala on CA Highway 1, a three-hour drive from San Francisco over narrow, twisting roads and stunning ocean and mountain views. Tourism and logging are the primary local industries.

Land area

The Gualala River watershed covers 298 square miles, and spans the Sonoma / Mendocino County line. About three-quarters of the watershed is in Sonoma County, and constitutes 14% of that county. The other 25% of the watershed makes up 2% of the much larger Mendocino County.

Population

2000 Census results show 6,971 residents in the area between Jenner and Manchester (a range of approximately 50 miles, with the Gualala River just past its halfway point).

Census information also shows that 40% of the houses are vacant (mostly vacation houses and rentals), suggesting a weekend population of approximately 11,618 full and part-time residents. These numbers do not include hotel / motel / B&B guests.

About the River

The water flow is extremely variable from summer to winter months. Local annual rainfall averages are approximately 36 inches along the coast and 72 inches inland. A large sandbar usually blocks the mouth of the river from late spring until the heavy rain runoffs of late fall.

The river’s source lies in the high coastal range watershed, and its main forks rest directly on the San Andreas fault line. The river is approximately 32 miles long and works its way through 190,000 acres of rugged countryside.

The river is a breeding ground for the threatened coho salmon and steelhead trout as well as other local fish. Ospreys, great blue herons, egrets and river otters fish in the river and its estuary.

Although the river was once internationally known for fishing, more than 100 years of logging have so damaged the habitat that the coho are now nearly extinct. The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) includes the Gualala River on its Clean Water Act 303(d) list for excessive sediment and high temperatures. The EPA has published a report on Gualala River Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) for Sediment. Local volunteers and state and federal agencies are working to restore the river, but its health remains fragile.

There are currently three main threats to the river. Large scale logging operations contribute to sediment in the river and raise water temperature.

Developpment pressure for vineyard conversions would result in increased pollution from pesticides, and would have the same damaging effects as clear-cut logging, but would also clear all vegetation and would not replant trees.

A commercial plan to remove water from the river approximately one mile above the mouth was defeated in 2002 after a campaign by Friends of Gualala River would have further degraded the river, and could have been the last straw for this unique and beautiful river.

For those seeking further details on the watershed, the North Coast Watershed Assessment Program (NCWAP) has released a detailed report on the Gualala River watershed. NCWAP was a state funded effort working with local landowners, and defines its activities as gathering data “to improve watershed and fisheries conditions” on California’s north coast. [See: excerpt on vineyard conversions.]

The Institute for Fisheries Resources has also published a database of detailed information on the Gualala River watershed (called KRIS-Gualala), which includes extensive text, tables, maps and photographs.

Water Quality

Information on water quality for municipal water systems which draw from the Gualala River underflow is available from the Environmental Working Group:

• North Gualala Water Company
• The Sea Ranch Water Company

Water Quantity

Information on the quantity of water flowing in the Gualala River is available from the United States Geological Survey:

• North Fork Gualala River
• South Fork Gualala River

Local History

The original occupants of the Gualala Watershed were the Kashia Pomo Indians. They referred to the area as qhawálaoli, “water coming down place” or “where the sky (also river) meets the sea.” With the arrival of the first Russian settlers, timber harvesting became the area’s first industry.

Virgin old growth redwood was removed as early as 1862. As timber demands grew after the 1906 earthquake, more and more old growth was harvested. Logging activities slowed somewhat in the 1960s, but still continue today.

May 1 marks a momentous day for affordable, reliable, and clean energy in the Northwest and beyond. All of us rely upon a regional, even West-wide, electric grid to power our homes and businesses. Throughout our history utilities across the region have traded power between each other to balance out generation and demands. This system leverages the diverse resources across our region—e.g., wind in the eastern parts of the northwest states, solar in the arid areas, and hydroelectric power to balance it all.  

However, these resources have impacts on our lands, wildlife, fish and communities. As we grow both the scale of clean energy and our overall needs, we must modernize the trading system so we can minimize impacts, reduce overall costs, and increase reliability.

Today, a major new mechanism went live: the Extended Day-Ahead Market (EDAM). This new market mechanism enables utilities to plan for each successive day to ensure sufficient resources to meet expected needs. Planning ahead enables more clean energy options and helps control costs. By joining the EDAM, utilities can use an integrated and sophisticated system to match the expected output of wind and solar resources, river flows, and energy needs to find the least cost available resources. All credible studies show this modern approach to energy trading is likely to reduce power costs and maintain reliability.

After years of planning and processes, now the EDAM is operating—with Northwest utilities leading the way. As the first entity to go live, PacifiCorp builds upon decades of trading power with entities in California and is paving the way for other utilities to join. Portland General Electric is expected to be the next entity to go live in October. 

A number of utilities have also announced plans to join, covering a large portion of the West. For example, NV Energy recently announced they will join the EDAM, thus greatly expanding the market’s (and thereby the Northwest’s) access to solar power and a growing geothermal resource base. And we expect more utilities will join, realizing the benefits of a larger market footprint.

This progress builds on two foundations: 

• The Western Energy Imbalance Market has been operating since 2014 and delivered over $8.6 billion in energy cost savings to the region. The WEIM enables utilities to trade within each hour to balance resources and loads. The EDAM extends this proven mechanism to address each hour of the day, thereby increasing the potential benefits for power costs, reliability, and clean air.
• Improved governance that promotes the public interest, respects the differing policies of Western states, and provides independent oversight. Stakeholders across the West, including NWEC, were engaged in a multi-year effort to develop and secure these improvements through the Pathways Initiative. As the EDAM market grows, the Regional Organization for Western Energy, which continues to be shaped by stakeholders across the west, will take on this key independent governance role. 

NWEC has been and will continue to be an advocate for the largest West-wide market possible. With the launch of EDAM, the West has its chance. We have called on the largest supplier of electricity in the Northwest, Bonneville Power Administration, to reconsider its decision to join a competing day-ahead market in the West. Study after study, including BPA’s own economic analysis, demonstrate more benefits to the region if BPA chooses to join EDAM instead. In addition, with the development of an entity fully controlled by Western interests and independent of any single entity to govern EDAM, EDAM represents a stark and inclusive contrast to any other proposed market mechanism.

We continue to encourage every utility in the Northwest to join the EDAM. Through collaboration, growing our footprint, and modernizing our system, we can create a grid that accesses high-quality clean energy at the lowest possible costs while mitigating the risks of localized stress from weather conditions or outages. 

The post NWEC Celebrates the Launch of the Extended Day-Ahead Market  first appeared on NW Energy Coalition.

The city of Santa Monica will begin automated enforcement of vehicles parked illegally in bike lanes on May 1, marking a first-in-California effort to use camera technology mounted on parking enforcement vehicles to keep bike lanes clear.

The new Automated Bike Lane Enforcement program, operated in partnership with Hayden AI, builds on a pilot that identified nearly 1,700 violations in just six weeks—underscoring how frequently bike lanes are blocked and the risks that creates for cyclists.

Under ABLE, front-facing cameras installed on city vehicles will detect and record violations as they occur. For the first 60 days, vehicle owners will receive warning notices by mail, with $93 citations set to begin July 1. City officials say the goal is to change driver behavior and improve safety by preventing situations where cyclists are forced into traffic lanes.

“This initiative will bolster our growing network of bicycling infrastructure, enhance user comfort, and improve compliance with regulations intended to keep everyone safe on our roads,” said Santa Monica Senior Transportation Planner Trevor Thomas.

The effort expands on Santa Monica’s existing automated bus lane enforcement program, which has already reduced violations significantly. Officials report a 67% drop in bus lane violations and a 40% drop at bus stops since that program launched.

Hayden AI CEO Marty Beard emphasized the broader benefits: “Keeping bike lanes clear of illegally parked vehicles not only keeps cyclists safe, but it improves accessibility for people with disabilities who rely on powerchairs and motorized scooters. It also encourages more people to ride bikes – getting cars off the road as a result.”

In its “Take the Friendly Road” newsletter Santa Monica DOT stated that the program represents a major step toward safer, more reliable streets, reinforcing Santa Monica’s commitment to sustainable, multimodal transportation for residents and visitors alike.

Hayden AI and Santa Monica have already been partnering on the city’s Automated Bus Lane and Bus Stop Enforcement (ABLE) program, which uses camera systems mounted on Big Blue Bus vehicles to detect cars illegally blocking bus lanes and stops. Like the bike lane system, the technology automatically captures images of violations—such as vehicles parked in bus lanes or at bus stops—and generates evidence that is reviewed by city staff before citations are issued.

This system was rolled out following pilot programs that documented hundreds of violations, highlighting how frequently parked cars delay buses and create accessibility challenges for riders, especially seniors and people with disabilities.

For more on the ABLE program, see previous coverage at Santa Monica Next and for more on automated bus lane enforcement throughout the state, see earlier Streetsblog L.A. coverage. Beard was also a guest on the StreetSmart podcast.

Hayden AI is an advertiser with Streetsblog Los Angeles and Streetsblog California.

Your Voice Is Your Vote & Workers Over Billionaires, streetside lineup.Banner front view.

Workers Over Billionaires - Vote Yes On SQ 832.

Second Life screen clip of anti-MAGA museum. Full panorama here

More Nice Less ICE, & People Over Profits.

Organized Labor Cures Organized Greed.

• Global real worker pay fell 12 percent while real CEO pay surged 54 percent between 2019 and 2025.
• At least four CEOs of major corporations each pocketed over $100 million in pay and bonuses last year. Broadcom CEO Hock Tan led the pack at over $205 million.
• Billionaires were paid $2,500 per second in dividends in 2025.
• The International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) and Oxfam are calling for urgent action to rein in extreme wealth, including higher, fairer taxes on the richest and binding limits on CEO pay.

Chief executives of the world’s largest corporations enjoyed a 11 percent real-terms pay hike last year, while the average global worker saw real wages increase by just 0.5 percent, reveals new analysis by the ITUC and Oxfam ahead of International Workers’ Day (1 May).

The analysis covers the top-paying 1,500 corporations across 33 countries which have reported CEO pay for 2025. The average CEO pocketed $8.4 million in pay and bonuses last year, up from $7.6 million in 2024. It would take the average global worker 490 years to earn the same amount.

So far, four corporations, including Blackstone, Broadcom and Goldman Sachs, have reported paying their CEO more than $100 million in 2025. The top 10 highest-paid CEOs collectively made over $1 billion.

The gender pay gap for the workforce across these 1,500 corporations averages 16 percent, meaning that these women workers effectively work for free from 4 November each year.

The growing chasm between CEO compensation and average worker pay is part of a long-term trend in which executives and shareholders are capturing an ever-larger slice of the global economic pie.

Global real wages for workers have fallen by 12 percent since 2019. This means they have effectively worked 108 days for free between 2019 and 2025 (31 days for free last year alone). Meanwhile, CEO pay has skyrocketed ―from an average of $5.5 million in 2019 to $8.4 million in 2025, a 54 percent increase in real terms.

The ITUC and Oxfam’s analysis of shareholdings reveals that the super-rich are receiving significant payouts from the corporations they control. Nearly 1,000 billionaires whose investment portfolios were identified collectively received $79 billion in dividends in 2025 —equivalent to $2,500 per second. The average billionaire made more in dividends in less than two hours than the average worker earned in pay in an entire year.

Some of the largest payouts in 2025 went to Bernard Arnault, owner of luxury brand LVMH, who pocketed $3.8 billion and Amancio Ortega, owner of Inditex (Zara), who received $3.7 billion.

Payouts from corporations are often funneled into undermining workers’ rights and democracy.

• Larry Ellison, the founder of Oracle, has used his wealth to become a major stakeholder in Paramount, which was purchased by his son’s company and includes major broadcast networks CBS.
• In France, far-right billionaire Vincent Bolloré now controls CNews, and has rebranded it as the French equivalent of Fox News.
• In 2024, Oxfam filed a formal UN complaint against Amazon and Walmart’s systematic human rights violations. Amazon and Walmart’s outsized wealth and power in the economy have enabled them to clamp down on unionization efforts and collective organizing.

Billionaires are also leveraging their wealth to buy political influence. A global survey found that half of people believe “the rich often buy elections” in their countries. Oxfam estimates that billionaires are 4,000 times more likely to hold political office than ordinary people. Many super-rich politicians have sought to erode workers’ rights, cut public services, and deliver tax cuts to the richest.

“This analysis exposes the billionaire coup against democracy, and its costs for working people. Companies promise us a virtuous cycle, but what we see is a vicious cycle led by mega corporations —they undermine collective bargaining and social dialogue while billionaire CEOs capture the wealth created by productivity gains. The super-rich then use enormous resources to fund anti-democratic political projects,” said ITUC General Secretary Luc Triangle.

“These projects shift the blame for growing inequality onto marginalized groups, such as migrants, women and minorities in order to distract from the true culprits: their rich benefactors. They divide working people while dismantling and undermining democratic institutions and promoting policies that allow the super-rich to become even richer, at the expense of workers’ rights, safety and livelihoods. They attack democratic organizations like unions and block any avenues for popular reform, ensuring that the vicious anti-worker cycle continues.”

Billionaire wealth has reached record highs in 2026. In just 12 months, they have gained $4 trillion —bringing their wealth to $1.5 trillion more than that of the poorest 4.1 billion people combined. There are 400 more billionaires compared to last year, and 45 of these new billionaires have made their fortunes in artificial intelligence.

“We can’t continue to let a handful of super-rich people siphon off the rewards of work that belong to millions. Governments must cap CEO pay, fairly tax the super-rich and ensure minimum wages at the very least keep pace with inflation and ensure a dignified living. And workers must be able to exercise, without fear or obstruction, their rights to organize, to strike, and to bargain collectively. They are the ones who generate society’s wealth; they should be able to claim, as a matter of justice, what they are due,” said Oxfam International Executive Director Amitabh Behar.

"These measures can do far more than redistribute income; they can create economies that reward work, invest in communities, and hold powerful interests accountable. This is how we turn a system rigged for the few into one that works for everyone."

Today, more than 100,000 students across the country are walking out of their classrooms as part of the largest one-day student strike in over 80 years, joined by coordinated Sunrise Movement actions and community mobilizations nationwide, from Minneapolis to New York City.

Students are participating in school walkouts while community members organize alongside them in a coordinated effort to interrupt normal operations across schools and local economies. Over a dozen schools have already cancelled classes in anticipation of widespread absences.

Across the country, the school walkouts and actions reflect a broad coalition of students, educators, and local residents coming together on May Day.

The actions come amid increasing frustration among young people with rising costs of living, lack of climate action, and endless wars in a political system that is unresponsive to working people.

“The conditions young people are facing are not new, but the scale of their response is,” said Sunrise Movement Executive Director Aru Shiney-Ajay. “Young people are fed up with billionaire rule. We are refusing to accept war, poverty, and climate collapse as inevitable. Today isn’t a one day strike. It’s day one of a mass youth uprising.”

The scale of today’s mobilization reflects a broader escalation in youth organizing and a growing shift toward strategies of mass noncooperation. These historic May Day actions are not an isolated event, but part of a sustained and expanding movement to build long-term power.

Several studies show that biochar can benefit soil. Now, new research shows one crucial way it appears to do that: by supporting ants which were found to build stronger, more complex colonies in the presence of this soil improver. But as the new study shows, there’s also a trade-off: too much biochar, and ants go into a decline. 

This is the first study to examine the effects of biochar on “large soil fauna” like these, looking beyond just microbes and agricultural yields, the researchers say. They went in with a hunch that the enriching substance would influence ant behaviour in some way, and to test it out they designed a series of experiments. 

First, starting with biochar made of pyrolized rice straw, they mixed varying amounts—2.5%. 5% and 10%—into samples of soil. These they compared with a soil sample that didn’t contain any biochar. To each of the four soil experiments, they added 30 worker ants from a common local species. Then, they watched and waited. 

Of particular interest was how the ants nested, socialized, and foraged in each of the soil experiments. The first thing the researchers recorded was a sharp difference in survival rates: over 83% of the ants survived when they were exposed to no biochar, or to limited amounts ranging from 2.5% to 5%. Meanwhile at 10%, their survival declined precipitously, to about 55%. 

 

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The ants were also more productive with biochar, but at lower doses. At levels of 2.5%, they developed larger and more complex nest sites, in fact almost threefold more complex than in experiments containing 10%. Ants also foraged with double the efficiency in samples with 5% biochar compared to higher dosing, travelling more quickly through the soil, showing the most success at securing food, and also finding it more quickly. As well as this, at more moderate doses of biochar ants displayed stronger social cohesion, yet were more aggressive towards invasive species and protective of their colonies, compared to ants in soils containing no biochar. 

The researchers think these interesting behavioural differences come down to biochar’s variable effects on soil chemistry. At low doses biochar slightly raises pH, which improves moisture retention in the soil and might make conditions more appealing to nest-building ants. However in larger quantities the pH can rise to levels that threaten ants’ internal balance and so become toxic to them. And because ants use elements of the soil to communicate, even small shifts in its chemistry and microbial makeup brought about by biochar can change the way they interact with one another, sharpening or dimming their communication. 

The reason any of this matters is because ants are major architects of quality soil. Socially-bonded and efficient foragers that make large, complex nests will improve soil structure and function, distribute nutrients through the terrain, and improve drainage, among other things. 

The authors’ main takeaway? Biochar may be more important to the wider health of the ecosystem than we realized—and that means thinking more carefully through precisely how it’s used. “Too much can disrupt the very biological systems we aim to restore,” the authors say.

Liu et. al. “Biochar application enhances ant (Formica japonica) ecological functions as indicated by their social behaviors.” Biochar. 2026.

Image: ©Anthropocene Magazine

Vanuatu

1st May marks the boreal spring to be in full swing – our fisheries are open, Pacific tour is concluded, new honorary member accepted and restoration of habitats proceeds.

Captain Karoliina and the crew have begun their harvests on lake Onkamo and Särkijärvi, and pike, bream and perch fill the fyke traps. Also the delicacy – i.e. vendace cans have started to make their impact in Helsinki high street and in Europe, with more to come towards autumn. Early spring enabled the start of the open water fishery historically early.

The Finnish restoration season has also kicked off, with peatland restoration work commencing in Koitajoki, and new boreal sites that have been added in Kemijärvi, Muonio and Pelkosenniemi. We look forwards to a busy season ahead especially in Eastern Finland and Lapland as well as Sámi forest restoration early in the year.

Visiting the Thao community

Pacific tour of 2026 has concluded. Teams visited Japan, Taiwan and Vanuatu with a large workshop over in Sun Moon Lake that gathered delegates from the Solomon Islands, Tasmania, and Maori as well as the Indigenous Taiwanese communities. We heard from across the ocean the results of last years restoration of wetlands, and plans for community-led mangrove and other initiatives. We met with the Thao people in solidarity and made plans also for the Festival of Fishing Traditions slated for Taiwan in 2027. Sutej Hugu, Indigenous philosopher and leader from Taiwan, summarized the gatherings and approaches in his keynote by saying:

“We would like to clarify with you about the fundamentals of Indigenous conservation and restoration in the perspective of Indigenous peoples’ self-strengthening process and self-determination for survival and revival. By the living traditions of Indigenous peoples, as human species we are embedded in inter-species habitats, and as human beings we are connected to all beings around us. The embeddedness and connectedness are the kernel and basis of our knowledge and institutions, and the deep origin of our strength and resilience.”

Cultural and linguistic connections over the Pacific and beyond

In other news, Snowchange has a new Honorary Member. Occasionally when an individual deserves the merit, Snowchange makes a decision to call a person to be an Honorary Member for Life in the Cooperative, i.e. they have shown extraordinary skills, devotion and dedication to the causes, ideological foundings and work of Snowchange Cooperative. It is the highest honor of the organisation. 

The new Honorary member is John Macdonald from Canada. Following an informative upbringing in Malawi, central Africa, John MacDonald spent most of his working life in the Canadian Arctic, including twenty-five productive years in Igloolik, as coordinator of Nunavut Science Institute’s Igloolik Research Centre.

John cleaning an Arctic Char

Beginning in 1985, he collaborated closely with Igloolik’s Inuit elders and community leaders (including Leah Otak, Louis Tapardjuk, and George Qulaut) to establish and develop a major program designed to record and document the rich oral history and traditional knowledge of the Amitturmiut.

Among many publications flowing from this collaboration, is his foundational study of Inuit astronomy, cosmology, and environmental understanding (The Arctic Sky: Exploring the InuitUniverse (2022). He is also co-editor of The Hands’ Measure: Essays Honouring Leah Aksaajuq Otak’s Contribution to Arctic Science (2018). Since his retirement in 2009, he continues his research on Inuit oral history and primary historical contact between Inuit and Europeans in the Canadian eastern Arctic.

Today, 1st May, 2026, Chair Tero Mustonen has made an executive decision to call researcher John Macdonald to be a lifelong Honorary Member of the Cooperative. This honour also includes the rights to use and benefit of all of Snowchange services, assets and operative bases. Mustonen states:

“We have been working with John and the Inuit people of Igloolik since 2002. John, through his devotion, brilliance and dedication to the questions of Inuit oral histories, in particular the star lore and celestial issues, has contributed to Snowchange in outstanding ways over the past 20 years. For example our Finnish oral history archives have benefitted in major ways from the work John and the Elders have carried out over in Igloolik. We thank John for his lifelong devotion and commitment to Inuit and Arctic cultures and work. It is a great honor to invite John to be our next lifelong Honorary Member of the Cooperative.” 

Previously Eero Murtomäki and his wife Rita Lukkarinen, as well as cartographer Johanna Roto have been called to be lifelong Honorary Members of the Cooperative – the highest honour of the organization.

John in fish camp, Igloolik.

Check back in May, as we head to June and we ll have SNOW25 and other celebrations awaiting once the summer gets here.

Headline News:

• “In Colombia, 57 Nations Chart A Path To A Future Without Fossil Fuels” • The Guardian, unlike most mainstream media, covered the climate talks in some detail and reported that the participating governments were asked to develop national “road maps” that set forth how they will end the production and use of fossil fuels. France was one that did that. [CleanTechnica]

Conference (Transition Away Conference image)

• “Grid Connection Requested For US Fusion Power Plant” • Commonwealth Fusion Systems, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology spinout company, has applied for grid connection. CFS said the application is the first request from a grid-scale fusion power plant developer to a major regional transmission organisation. [World Nuclear News]
• “House, Senate Negotiators Reach Deal On Next-Generation Nuclear, Solar Net Metering” • Lawmakers in Concord reached a deal to lay the groundwork for next-generation nuclear power in New Hampshire. If small, modular reactors are to be an energy source, New Hampshire lawmakers said they don’t want state laws or officials to get in the way. [WMUR]
• “Rice Is A Greenhouse Gas Emitter” • Rice farming has long been a major source of methane emissions, a potent greenhouse gas formed when organic matter decomposes in flooded soils deprived of oxygen. Traditional rice paddies create exactly these conditions, making the crop one of the largest global agricultural contributors of methane. [CleanTechnica]
• “CPUC Protects Ratepayers, Rejects SoCalGas’ Attempt To Charge Customers For Hydrogen Pipeline” • The California PUC, in a written decision, denied a SoCalGas application that would have charged customers $266 million to fund the Angeles Link Project pipeline. SoCalGas can either fund the controversial project itself or drop it entirely. [CleanTechnica]

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

This International Workers’ Day, Spring is excited to announce the launch of our 2026 Fund Drive! 2026 has already seen US President Donald Trump launch...

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