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Op-ed: Rethinking policing and parks

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Wednesday, October 30, 2024

“What would a world without police look like?” In 2017, when I was 23 years old, I found myself in a room full of other Black and Brown Buffalonians who were part of a collective discussing this question. We held political education meetings to develop a shared language and political vision so as a collective we could alter policing in Buffalo, NY, and beyond. While others found themselves able to imagine what the world would look and feel like, if policing, surveillance and militarization disappeared, I struggled. To read a version of this story in Spanish click here. Haz clic aquí para leer este reportaje en español. The knot in my stomach came from the fact that I come from a family of cops – my mom, my grandfather, my cousins, my uncles – all were or still are cops. As you can imagine, me, the grand-daughter and daughter of former New York City Police Department (NYPD) officers, found it difficult to answer this question. Growing up in a family connected to the NYPD, I wasn’t taught to question how policing came to be, let alone what a world without it would look like. For most of my life I took it as something that could not be changed; as well as something that was a public good. But in 2012, during my senior year of high school, Trayvon Martin was murdered. His murder challenged the idea that my neighborhood, the suburbs of Long Island, or even my class status would keep me safe. Then in college Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Eric Garner, Freddie Gray and Alton Sterling were murdered. Each time I learned about another Black person being killed by the police, their deaths chipped away at what I had been told about policing in the United States. While I learned more about the harms of policing after each of these murders, I had never considered what a world without police would look like until that day in 2017. Agents of Change in Environmental Justice · Greer Hamilton on arts-based environmental justice research Seven years later, I am still thinking about this question, especially in the way it connects to the relationship between policing and our surroundings, both natural and built. If you think about it, throughout history policing has shaped people’s relationships to different environments. From loitering laws to practices barring people from accessing certain establishments because of identities they hold, policing can be understood not just as an institution, but as a set of practices that reinforce inequalities. In this sense, there is a more subtle and nefarious form of policing that everyday people engage in: citizen-based policing. It relies on the use of emergency (9-1-1) and non-emergency (3-1-1) phone calls to try and reduce behaviors a group of people believe to be unfit, often in public spaces like parks and the outdoors. In New York City, researchers have found that wealthier, white residents moving into majority non-white neighborhoods are likely to call 3-1-1 to complain about loud music or noise. Media narratives and people choosing to physically occupy the space can reinforce it. These calls can result not only in citations, but also increase the presence of police in a neighborhood. The over policing of non-white communities can lead to fines or summons’, arrest, but also as we have vividly seen over the past 12 years or so, death. I’ve come to believe that to fully engage with the question of a world without police, we need to address the social ways we police and patrol our neighbors and greenspaces. While we all can engage in citizen-based policing, historically citizen-based policing has been used by white people to limit the access of Black and Brown people to public parks and other greenspaces, cutting them off from the mental, social and spiritual wellbeing green spaces provide. This way of policing perpetuates a history of exclusion of Black and Brown people from the outdoors. A brief history of citizen-based policing and public parksThere is a longstanding and well-documented history of citizen-based policing in and around urban public parks in the United States. For decades, urban public parks were built to materialize the ideals and needs of white, upper-class people. For example, the social elites behind the creation of Central Park wanted a greenspace that would not only increase the value of their properties near the park but would provide a dedicated recreation and leisure space for white, wealthy people in the area. Long before Central Park was even an idea, Dutch settlers had the Lenape people removed from the area in 1626. Then in 1857, to realize the goal of a large, urban public park, the City of New York used its power to take control of private property for the purposes of public use to dismantle the Black settlement Seneca Village, a neighborhood that offered Black residents a refuge from discrimination. Many parks in bustling industrial cities like Chicago or Baltimore followed the same process of removing people from an area to make way for parks that were meant to reinforce the white dominant class ideals. Often, these processes contributed to Black and other oppressed communities losing access to greenspaces, creating what researchers have called a “nature gap”, a term that describes how low income and communities of color lack access to nature-based spaces. This has health and civic engagement implications for people. Despite this unjust exclusion, parks such as Washington Square Park (New York City) have been a site for protest dating as far back as 1834. Similarly, the People's Park at UC Berkeley has been home to anti-war rallies and demonstrations since the 1960s. Unfortunately, the same process of denying low income and communities of color from these spaces continues today through citizen policing. In 2018, a news story broke about Jennifer Schulte, a white woman who became known as “BBQ Becky”, who called the police on Black men barbecuing at a park in Oakland, California, because she believed that they were doing something inappropriate. Two years later, Amy Cooper, a white woman falsely accused Christian Cooper (not related), a Black birdwatcher, of threatening her life when he asked her to leash her dog in an area of Central Park where dogs are required to be leashed. Researchers of Chicago’s efforts to “revitalize parks” have found that youth of color living near the 606, an urban greenway, were often monitored by white residents to control their behaviors. In all of these examples, citizen-based policing pretends to reinforce public parks as “white spaces”, which leads to non-white people having to prove that they are credible enough to use and enjoy the space.The case of La Salle ParkIn my own research, I have learned firsthand from residents of Buffalo, NY, how the redevelopment of an urban public park can lead to increased policing and citizen policing. The 77-acre park where I develop my research includes baseball fields, soccer fields and picnic areas, and was built in 1932 on a former industrial lot. While originally named Centennial Park to celebrate Buffalo’s Centennial Celebration in 1932, the park would later be renamed after René-Robert Cavalier de La Salle (a French settler) but to this day is lovingly known as the “People’s Park,” as it was a gathering place for all people in the city for decades. Cultural events held at the park like the Puerto Rican Day parade or World Refugee Day reinforced it as a place that brought many kinds of people together as it is surrounded by mixed income and migration status neighborhoods. Even after the City’s Master Plan to reconfigure the park to include sports fields in 1998, it remained used and loved by the community.This began to change in 2019. That year, the City of Buffalo received approximately $50 million dollars from Ralph Wilson Jr. Foundation to turn LaSalle Park into a “destination park”, or a park that usually has features such as playgrounds and trails that make someone want to travel to it.For my study, I talked to seven long-time residents of the West Side of Buffalo who often frequented LaSalle Park. They recounted how the redevelopment led to an increased presence of the Buffalo police department. One of my study participants told me that “as a Black man, I actually feel really uncomfortable with the amount of police that I see trafficking along that area,” he said. “I don't necessarily know the history of violence in LaSalle Park or what that looks like if that is a thing. But I know that I often feel just really uncomfortable, whenever me and my friends are down there. It feels like we're being watched.”The seven people I talked to for hours also believed that redevelopment led to the arrival of white, suburban residents who brought different ideals about public space. This led them to retreat from the park that they loved so much out of fear for their safety. As one of the residents said, “… it feels weird because I look at them looking at me like, ‘what am I doing here’?”These experiences are sadly not unique to the residents of Buffalo who participated in my study. Urban public parks being redeveloped or in changing neighborhoods have been found to become visible representations of gentrification, as they are made in the image of those they want to attract, rather than the current users. As a result, the new park users monitor the behaviors and leisure of people they deem to not be of the community or engage with the space in the way that they agree, like “BBQ Becky”.In recent years, much has been written about communities of color lacking access to public greenspaces. This work has highlighted how not having access to greenspaces such as parks can impact people’s health and well-being, linking access to parks is with improved mental health, reduced obesity, and lower blood pressure. But I think we need to transcend this research, and think about how greenspaces are related to citizenry, to a person’s right to be a participatory member of a community. Parks have been spaces for activism and spaces for social gatherings and celebrations, which means they’re places where political and cultural rights are realized. Even when people can access a park, if we are not attuned to the history of the place and the ways that parks are designed to reinforce oppressive ideals, potential social and political interactions are lost.I am still developing my understanding of what a world without policing would look and feel like. What I do know is that green spaces such as public parks are not void of power, but rather are one manifestation of it. While we challenge the institution of policing, we must also interrogate the ways that we – yes, you and even me– can contribute to the policing of others. As scary as it may be, considering what a world without police would look like would mean bringing about a world that not only removes the physical police forces we have, but the social ways we police and patrol.This essay was produced through the Agents of Change in Environmental Justice fellowship, a partnership between Environmental Health News and Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health. Agents of Change empowers emerging leaders from historically excluded backgrounds in science and academia to reimagine solutions for a just and healthy planet.

“What would a world without police look like?” In 2017, when I was 23 years old, I found myself in a room full of other Black and Brown Buffalonians who were part of a collective discussing this question. We held political education meetings to develop a shared language and political vision so as a collective we could alter policing in Buffalo, NY, and beyond. While others found themselves able to imagine what the world would look and feel like, if policing, surveillance and militarization disappeared, I struggled. To read a version of this story in Spanish click here. Haz clic aquí para leer este reportaje en español. The knot in my stomach came from the fact that I come from a family of cops – my mom, my grandfather, my cousins, my uncles – all were or still are cops. As you can imagine, me, the grand-daughter and daughter of former New York City Police Department (NYPD) officers, found it difficult to answer this question. Growing up in a family connected to the NYPD, I wasn’t taught to question how policing came to be, let alone what a world without it would look like. For most of my life I took it as something that could not be changed; as well as something that was a public good. But in 2012, during my senior year of high school, Trayvon Martin was murdered. His murder challenged the idea that my neighborhood, the suburbs of Long Island, or even my class status would keep me safe. Then in college Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Eric Garner, Freddie Gray and Alton Sterling were murdered. Each time I learned about another Black person being killed by the police, their deaths chipped away at what I had been told about policing in the United States. While I learned more about the harms of policing after each of these murders, I had never considered what a world without police would look like until that day in 2017. Agents of Change in Environmental Justice · Greer Hamilton on arts-based environmental justice research Seven years later, I am still thinking about this question, especially in the way it connects to the relationship between policing and our surroundings, both natural and built. If you think about it, throughout history policing has shaped people’s relationships to different environments. From loitering laws to practices barring people from accessing certain establishments because of identities they hold, policing can be understood not just as an institution, but as a set of practices that reinforce inequalities. In this sense, there is a more subtle and nefarious form of policing that everyday people engage in: citizen-based policing. It relies on the use of emergency (9-1-1) and non-emergency (3-1-1) phone calls to try and reduce behaviors a group of people believe to be unfit, often in public spaces like parks and the outdoors. In New York City, researchers have found that wealthier, white residents moving into majority non-white neighborhoods are likely to call 3-1-1 to complain about loud music or noise. Media narratives and people choosing to physically occupy the space can reinforce it. These calls can result not only in citations, but also increase the presence of police in a neighborhood. The over policing of non-white communities can lead to fines or summons’, arrest, but also as we have vividly seen over the past 12 years or so, death. I’ve come to believe that to fully engage with the question of a world without police, we need to address the social ways we police and patrol our neighbors and greenspaces. While we all can engage in citizen-based policing, historically citizen-based policing has been used by white people to limit the access of Black and Brown people to public parks and other greenspaces, cutting them off from the mental, social and spiritual wellbeing green spaces provide. This way of policing perpetuates a history of exclusion of Black and Brown people from the outdoors. A brief history of citizen-based policing and public parksThere is a longstanding and well-documented history of citizen-based policing in and around urban public parks in the United States. For decades, urban public parks were built to materialize the ideals and needs of white, upper-class people. For example, the social elites behind the creation of Central Park wanted a greenspace that would not only increase the value of their properties near the park but would provide a dedicated recreation and leisure space for white, wealthy people in the area. Long before Central Park was even an idea, Dutch settlers had the Lenape people removed from the area in 1626. Then in 1857, to realize the goal of a large, urban public park, the City of New York used its power to take control of private property for the purposes of public use to dismantle the Black settlement Seneca Village, a neighborhood that offered Black residents a refuge from discrimination. Many parks in bustling industrial cities like Chicago or Baltimore followed the same process of removing people from an area to make way for parks that were meant to reinforce the white dominant class ideals. Often, these processes contributed to Black and other oppressed communities losing access to greenspaces, creating what researchers have called a “nature gap”, a term that describes how low income and communities of color lack access to nature-based spaces. This has health and civic engagement implications for people. Despite this unjust exclusion, parks such as Washington Square Park (New York City) have been a site for protest dating as far back as 1834. Similarly, the People's Park at UC Berkeley has been home to anti-war rallies and demonstrations since the 1960s. Unfortunately, the same process of denying low income and communities of color from these spaces continues today through citizen policing. In 2018, a news story broke about Jennifer Schulte, a white woman who became known as “BBQ Becky”, who called the police on Black men barbecuing at a park in Oakland, California, because she believed that they were doing something inappropriate. Two years later, Amy Cooper, a white woman falsely accused Christian Cooper (not related), a Black birdwatcher, of threatening her life when he asked her to leash her dog in an area of Central Park where dogs are required to be leashed. Researchers of Chicago’s efforts to “revitalize parks” have found that youth of color living near the 606, an urban greenway, were often monitored by white residents to control their behaviors. In all of these examples, citizen-based policing pretends to reinforce public parks as “white spaces”, which leads to non-white people having to prove that they are credible enough to use and enjoy the space.The case of La Salle ParkIn my own research, I have learned firsthand from residents of Buffalo, NY, how the redevelopment of an urban public park can lead to increased policing and citizen policing. The 77-acre park where I develop my research includes baseball fields, soccer fields and picnic areas, and was built in 1932 on a former industrial lot. While originally named Centennial Park to celebrate Buffalo’s Centennial Celebration in 1932, the park would later be renamed after René-Robert Cavalier de La Salle (a French settler) but to this day is lovingly known as the “People’s Park,” as it was a gathering place for all people in the city for decades. Cultural events held at the park like the Puerto Rican Day parade or World Refugee Day reinforced it as a place that brought many kinds of people together as it is surrounded by mixed income and migration status neighborhoods. Even after the City’s Master Plan to reconfigure the park to include sports fields in 1998, it remained used and loved by the community.This began to change in 2019. That year, the City of Buffalo received approximately $50 million dollars from Ralph Wilson Jr. Foundation to turn LaSalle Park into a “destination park”, or a park that usually has features such as playgrounds and trails that make someone want to travel to it.For my study, I talked to seven long-time residents of the West Side of Buffalo who often frequented LaSalle Park. They recounted how the redevelopment led to an increased presence of the Buffalo police department. One of my study participants told me that “as a Black man, I actually feel really uncomfortable with the amount of police that I see trafficking along that area,” he said. “I don't necessarily know the history of violence in LaSalle Park or what that looks like if that is a thing. But I know that I often feel just really uncomfortable, whenever me and my friends are down there. It feels like we're being watched.”The seven people I talked to for hours also believed that redevelopment led to the arrival of white, suburban residents who brought different ideals about public space. This led them to retreat from the park that they loved so much out of fear for their safety. As one of the residents said, “… it feels weird because I look at them looking at me like, ‘what am I doing here’?”These experiences are sadly not unique to the residents of Buffalo who participated in my study. Urban public parks being redeveloped or in changing neighborhoods have been found to become visible representations of gentrification, as they are made in the image of those they want to attract, rather than the current users. As a result, the new park users monitor the behaviors and leisure of people they deem to not be of the community or engage with the space in the way that they agree, like “BBQ Becky”.In recent years, much has been written about communities of color lacking access to public greenspaces. This work has highlighted how not having access to greenspaces such as parks can impact people’s health and well-being, linking access to parks is with improved mental health, reduced obesity, and lower blood pressure. But I think we need to transcend this research, and think about how greenspaces are related to citizenry, to a person’s right to be a participatory member of a community. Parks have been spaces for activism and spaces for social gatherings and celebrations, which means they’re places where political and cultural rights are realized. Even when people can access a park, if we are not attuned to the history of the place and the ways that parks are designed to reinforce oppressive ideals, potential social and political interactions are lost.I am still developing my understanding of what a world without policing would look and feel like. What I do know is that green spaces such as public parks are not void of power, but rather are one manifestation of it. While we challenge the institution of policing, we must also interrogate the ways that we – yes, you and even me– can contribute to the policing of others. As scary as it may be, considering what a world without police would look like would mean bringing about a world that not only removes the physical police forces we have, but the social ways we police and patrol.This essay was produced through the Agents of Change in Environmental Justice fellowship, a partnership between Environmental Health News and Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health. Agents of Change empowers emerging leaders from historically excluded backgrounds in science and academia to reimagine solutions for a just and healthy planet.



“What would a world without police look like?”

In 2017, when I was 23 years old, I found myself in a room full of other Black and Brown Buffalonians who were part of a collective discussing this question. We held political education meetings to develop a shared language and political vision so as a collective we could alter policing in Buffalo, NY, and beyond. While others found themselves able to imagine what the world would look and feel like, if policing, surveillance and militarization disappeared, I struggled.

To read a version of this story in Spanish click here. Haz clic aquí para leer este reportaje en español.

The knot in my stomach came from the fact that I come from a family of cops – my mom, my grandfather, my cousins, my uncles – all were or still are cops. As you can imagine, me, the grand-daughter and daughter of former New York City Police Department (NYPD) officers, found it difficult to answer this question. Growing up in a family connected to the NYPD, I wasn’t taught to question how policing came to be, let alone what a world without it would look like. For most of my life I took it as something that could not be changed; as well as something that was a public good. But in 2012, during my senior year of high school, Trayvon Martin was murdered. His murder challenged the idea that my neighborhood, the suburbs of Long Island, or even my class status would keep me safe. Then in college Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Eric Garner, Freddie Gray and Alton Sterling were murdered. Each time I learned about another Black person being killed by the police, their deaths chipped away at what I had been told about policing in the United States. While I learned more about the harms of policing after each of these murders, I had never considered what a world without police would look like until that day in 2017.

Agents of Change in Environmental Justice · Greer Hamilton on arts-based environmental justice research

Seven years later, I am still thinking about this question, especially in the way it connects to the relationship between policing and our surroundings, both natural and built. If you think about it, throughout history policing has shaped people’s relationships to different environments. From loitering laws to practices barring people from accessing certain establishments because of identities they hold, policing can be understood not just as an institution, but as a set of practices that reinforce inequalities.

In this sense, there is a more subtle and nefarious form of policing that everyday people engage in: citizen-based policing. It relies on the use of emergency (9-1-1) and non-emergency (3-1-1) phone calls to try and reduce behaviors a group of people believe to be unfit, often in public spaces like parks and the outdoors. In New York City, researchers have found that wealthier, white residents moving into majority non-white neighborhoods are likely to call 3-1-1 to complain about loud music or noise. Media narratives and people choosing to physically occupy the space can reinforce it.

These calls can result not only in citations, but also increase the presence of police in a neighborhood. The over policing of non-white communities can lead to fines or summons’, arrest, but also as we have vividly seen over the past 12 years or so, death.

I’ve come to believe that to fully engage with the question of a world without police, we need to address the social ways we police and patrol our neighbors and greenspaces. While we all can engage in citizen-based policing, historically citizen-based policing has been used by white people to limit the access of Black and Brown people to public parks and other greenspaces, cutting them off from the mental, social and spiritual wellbeing green spaces provide. This way of policing perpetuates a history of exclusion of Black and Brown people from the outdoors.

A brief history of citizen-based policing and public parks


There is a longstanding and well-documented history of citizen-based policing in and around urban public parks in the United States. For decades, urban public parks were built to materialize the ideals and needs of white, upper-class people. For example, the social elites behind the creation of Central Park wanted a greenspace that would not only increase the value of their properties near the park but would provide a dedicated recreation and leisure space for white, wealthy people in the area. Long before Central Park was even an idea, Dutch settlers had the Lenape people removed from the area in 1626. Then in 1857, to realize the goal of a large, urban public park, the City of New York used its power to take control of private property for the purposes of public use to dismantle the Black settlement Seneca Village, a neighborhood that offered Black residents a refuge from discrimination.

Many parks in bustling industrial cities like Chicago or Baltimore followed the same process of removing people from an area to make way for parks that were meant to reinforce the white dominant class ideals.

Often, these processes contributed to Black and other oppressed communities losing access to greenspaces, creating what researchers have called a “nature gap”, a term that describes how low income and communities of color lack access to nature-based spaces. This has health and civic engagement implications for people. Despite this unjust exclusion, parks such as Washington Square Park (New York City) have been a site for protest dating as far back as 1834. Similarly, the People's Park at UC Berkeley has been home to anti-war rallies and demonstrations since the 1960s.

Unfortunately, the same process of denying low income and communities of color from these spaces continues today through citizen policing. In 2018, a news story broke about Jennifer Schulte, a white woman who became known as “BBQ Becky”, who called the police on Black men barbecuing at a park in Oakland, California, because she believed that they were doing something inappropriate. Two years later, Amy Cooper, a white woman falsely accused Christian Cooper (not related), a Black birdwatcher, of threatening her life when he asked her to leash her dog in an area of Central Park where dogs are required to be leashed. Researchers of Chicago’s efforts to “revitalize parks” have found that youth of color living near the 606, an urban greenway, were often monitored by white residents to control their behaviors. In all of these examples, citizen-based policing pretends to reinforce public parks as “white spaces”, which leads to non-white people having to prove that they are credible enough to use and enjoy the space.

The case of La Salle Park


parks and policing

In my own research, I have learned firsthand from residents of Buffalo, NY, how the redevelopment of an urban public park can lead to increased policing and citizen policing. The 77-acre park where I develop my research includes baseball fields, soccer fields and picnic areas, and was built in 1932 on a former industrial lot. While originally named Centennial Park to celebrate Buffalo’s Centennial Celebration in 1932, the park would later be renamed after René-Robert Cavalier de La Salle (a French settler) but to this day is lovingly known as the “People’s Park,” as it was a gathering place for all people in the city for decades. Cultural events held at the park like the Puerto Rican Day parade or World Refugee Day reinforced it as a place that brought many kinds of people together as it is surrounded by mixed income and migration status neighborhoods. Even after the City’s Master Plan to reconfigure the park to include sports fields in 1998, it remained used and loved by the community.

This began to change in 2019. That year, the City of Buffalo received approximately $50 million dollars from Ralph Wilson Jr. Foundation to turn LaSalle Park into a “destination park”, or a park that usually has features such as playgrounds and trails that make someone want to travel to it.

For my study, I talked to seven long-time residents of the West Side of Buffalo who often frequented LaSalle Park. They recounted how the redevelopment led to an increased presence of the Buffalo police department. One of my study participants told me that “as a Black man, I actually feel really uncomfortable with the amount of police that I see trafficking along that area,” he said. “I don't necessarily know the history of violence in LaSalle Park or what that looks like if that is a thing. But I know that I often feel just really uncomfortable, whenever me and my friends are down there. It feels like we're being watched.”


Buffalo NY park

The seven people I talked to for hours also believed that redevelopment led to the arrival of white, suburban residents who brought different ideals about public space. This led them to retreat from the park that they loved so much out of fear for their safety. As one of the residents said, “… it feels weird because I look at them looking at me like, ‘what am I doing here’?”

These experiences are sadly not unique to the residents of Buffalo who participated in my study. Urban public parks being redeveloped or in changing neighborhoods have been found to become visible representations of gentrification, as they are made in the image of those they want to attract, rather than the current users. As a result, the new park users monitor the behaviors and leisure of people they deem to not be of the community or engage with the space in the way that they agree, like “BBQ Becky”.

In recent years, much has been written about communities of color lacking access to public greenspaces. This work has highlighted how not having access to greenspaces such as parks can impact people’s health and well-being, linking access to parks is with improved mental health, reduced obesity, and lower blood pressure. But I think we need to transcend this research, and think about how greenspaces are related to citizenry, to a person’s right to be a participatory member of a community. Parks have been spaces for activism and spaces for social gatherings and celebrations, which means they’re places where political and cultural rights are realized. Even when people can access a park, if we are not attuned to the history of the place and the ways that parks are designed to reinforce oppressive ideals, potential social and political interactions are lost.

I am still developing my understanding of what a world without policing would look and feel like. What I do know is that green spaces such as public parks are not void of power, but rather are one manifestation of it. While we challenge the institution of policing, we must also interrogate the ways that we – yes, you and even me– can contribute to the policing of others. As scary as it may be, considering what a world without police would look like would mean bringing about a world that not only removes the physical police forces we have, but the social ways we police and patrol.


This essay was produced through the Agents of Change in Environmental Justice fellowship, a partnership between Environmental Health News and Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health. Agents of Change empowers emerging leaders from historically excluded backgrounds in science and academia to reimagine solutions for a just and healthy planet.

Read the full story here.
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At this time of year investment banks, advertising agencies, and seemingly every other business on the planet share their predictions on what is likely to unfold in the next 12 months. Journalists’ inboxes sag under the weight of unsolicited predictions for the year ahead. But separating the wheat from the chaff when it comes to forecasts of the year ahead can be tricky. Use a technology that has come into its own in 2024—generative artificial intelligence—may help. NotebookLM, Google’s note-taking and research assistant, uses its Gemini large language model to synthesize information from a vast number of sources. More importantly for journalism, which tries to avoid errors, it also cites where it gets its information from. Fast Company fed 188 reports looking ahead to 2025 from a variety of industries into NotebookLM (because the tool has a limit of 50 sources per notebook, we were forced to divide it into four separate ones), then asked the chatbot to help pick out patterns in the information. What follows is a human-summarized version of AI’s analysis. AI will remain everywhere Artificial intelligence has changed the way we live and work in the last two years, and going into 2025, many of those 188 reports are in agreement that AI will continue to have a huge impact. The technology will be more actively integrated into business operations across sectors, a significant number agreed. “AI was the big story of 2023 and 2024, and that has not changed. In fact, AI adoption will likely begin to accelerate in 2025 as energy and commodities companies gain confidence in use cases that promote optimization and innovation,” wrote Publicis Sapient, a digital consultancy, in its 2025 outlook. But AI’s use will be deployed across industries. AI is predicted to shift from a “nice-to-have” to a “must-have” tool for B2B marketers, with adoption increasing for content creation, personalization, predictive analytics, and campaign optimization,” wrote EssenceMediacom, a GroupM marketing agency, in its look ahead. Banks like Barclays believe AI will play a significant role in financial markets, with investors deploying it to try to get ahead. CB Insights believes AI-powered weather prediction could transform the insurance industry in 2025. But others sound a note of caution: in its 2025 trends analysis, Zendesk highlights the risk of so-called “shadow AI” use by employees without their employers’ permission, noting in some industries such shadow use has grown 250%, causing security risks. S&P Global suggests that AI, particularly generative AI, is driving a shift towards focusing on product and service quality improvements and revenue growth—but others worry about the need to ethically develop AI, and to not assume that its training data is obtained officially. Sustainability challenges AI adoption Many reports said 2025 will see consumers and businesses prioritize sustainability—a challenge given the ubiquitous use of AI. Nearly two-thirds of organizations are concerned about the impact of AI and machine learning projects on their energy use and carbon footprint, according to S&P Global. Juniper Research highlights the rise of sustainable fintech as a differentiator for banks, with consumers seeking out financial institutions aligned with their values around climate change and social impact. Similar trends are seen in sectors like the travel industry, where it’s forecast that travelers will pay more for products and services that support biodiversity. Overall, business process management firm WNS Global Services points out that sustainability is no longer a niche concern, but an expectation from the mainstream. Consumers expect brands to lead in addressing environmental issues. Some 61% of US consumers believe that, according to Mintel, a market analyst. Some sectors are doing better than others: biotech ingredients are becoming more common in beauty products, with companies developing in the lab ingredients that replicate nature without depleting resources. Glycoproteins derived from lobsters are gaining traction, Mintel says, offering beauty benefits while supporting marine conservation. The world will remain weird One thing that many forecasts agree on is that they can’t agree on things. Everything from economic fluctuations, geopolitical shifts and the climate crisis are likely to vex us in 2025. The landscape will be volatile, with wildly divergent economic forecasts. UK bank NatWest anticipates market volatility stemming from shifts towards fiscal activism, terminal rates, and global protectionism. Nielsen, which predicts consumer behavior, believes normalized inflation levels and lower interest rates could improve consumer confidence and get us spending… but quickly adds: “However, as we have seen in frantic shifts of the recent past, these pockets of recovery can be fragile—and could evaporate as quickly as they sprout.” There’s also a split over interest rate trends worldwide. While multiple sources anticipate rate reductions, there’s uncertainty about the speed and extent of these cuts. AXA worries social tensions and movements could be a big risk to future growth, alongside climate change and geopolitical instability, while bank Allianz cautions readers about potential “disinflation hiccups” and raises concerns about the potential of geopolitical instability and cybersecurity problems in the year ahead. But consumers are more optimistic than pessimistic, says customer experience platform Disqo, with a particular Millennials, Black consumers, and “very liberal” individuals more eager for the year ahead than others. What will China do? Chinese influence will continue to rise, the reports agreed. Foresight Factory highlighted the growing popularity of Chinese brands such as Shein and Temu internationally continuing into 2025. Chinese culture could also become more influential, with trends like the celebration of Lunar New Year and the embrace of Chinese fashion and C-beauty becoming more common outside China. But China’s potential strength abroad is countered by worries of weakness at home. Geopolitical tensions, and the likelihood of tariff wars between the US and China, could impact global trade and integration, many worried. Multiple sources, from the IMF to Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan agree that China’s economic growth is slowing. Julius Bär suggested that China has entered a “balance sheet recession”, with a highly indebted private sector focused on saving rather than spending or investing. Chinese policymakers will take action to try and stimulate the economy, the forecasts believe. “There is a clear realization that exports can no longer be a reliable growth engine given the headwinds from trade tensions and tariff risks under the new US administration,” writes HSBC. Goldman Sachs estimates that US tariffs could subtract almost 0.7 percentage points from China’s growth in 2025. Invesco also highlights recent stimulus efforts, particularly in the housing market, where mortgage rate cuts aim to encourage borrowing and spending. Gen Z rules all—but is cautious “Gen Z are the ultimate entrepreneurs,” write financial consulting firm Mercer in their HR Trends for 2025 report. Youngsters cherish financial security and companies that have a demonstrated positive impact on society. Gen Z’s hope for financial security has been dubbed “muted desire” by Italian market researchers Nextatlas, and suggests a shift in consumption patterns towards more mindful spending habits. TikTok is Gen Z’s most used app, says DCDX, a Gen Z-specific research agency—which could spell trouble if it is banned in January in the United States. One tech tool they’re cautious about? ChatGPT and its ilk. Alongside other generations Gen Z is becoming more discerning about the limitations of generative AI, according to analysts Euromonitor International. Key among Gen Z’s concerns are cautions about the potential for AI-generated misinformation and its impact on job security. The oddest predictions More niche outlooks for 2025 include Bacardi’s prediction that loud nightclubs will be supplanted by more relaxed “listening bars”, where venues prioritize good music, high-quality sound systems and a laid-back experience. Futurist Jim Carroll believes cash will “have all but disappeared” by 2025, though whether “tofu tourists” (identified as an odd trend for 2025 by Lemongrass, a travel PR agency, and describing people who seek out vegan and plant-based travel experiences) will be able to pay for their egg- and dairy-free purchases using Apple Pay or Venmo in more remote areas of the world is yet to be known. They may well dig into their wallets and bring out physical cash for ugly cakes or pickle-flavored foods, both of which are pegged by social network Pinterest as key trends for next year.

At this time of year investment banks, advertising agencies, and seemingly every other business on the planet share their predictions on what is likely to unfold in the next 12 months. Journalists’ inboxes sag under the weight of unsolicited predictions for the year ahead. But separating the wheat from the chaff when it comes to forecasts of the year ahead can be tricky. Use a technology that has come into its own in 2024—generative artificial intelligence—may help. NotebookLM, Google’s note-taking and research assistant, uses its Gemini large language model to synthesize information from a vast number of sources. More importantly for journalism, which tries to avoid errors, it also cites where it gets its information from. Fast Company fed 188 reports looking ahead to 2025 from a variety of industries into NotebookLM (because the tool has a limit of 50 sources per notebook, we were forced to divide it into four separate ones), then asked the chatbot to help pick out patterns in the information. What follows is a human-summarized version of AI’s analysis. AI will remain everywhere Artificial intelligence has changed the way we live and work in the last two years, and going into 2025, many of those 188 reports are in agreement that AI will continue to have a huge impact. The technology will be more actively integrated into business operations across sectors, a significant number agreed. “AI was the big story of 2023 and 2024, and that has not changed. In fact, AI adoption will likely begin to accelerate in 2025 as energy and commodities companies gain confidence in use cases that promote optimization and innovation,” wrote Publicis Sapient, a digital consultancy, in its 2025 outlook. But AI’s use will be deployed across industries. AI is predicted to shift from a “nice-to-have” to a “must-have” tool for B2B marketers, with adoption increasing for content creation, personalization, predictive analytics, and campaign optimization,” wrote EssenceMediacom, a GroupM marketing agency, in its look ahead. Banks like Barclays believe AI will play a significant role in financial markets, with investors deploying it to try to get ahead. CB Insights believes AI-powered weather prediction could transform the insurance industry in 2025. But others sound a note of caution: in its 2025 trends analysis, Zendesk highlights the risk of so-called “shadow AI” use by employees without their employers’ permission, noting in some industries such shadow use has grown 250%, causing security risks. S&P Global suggests that AI, particularly generative AI, is driving a shift towards focusing on product and service quality improvements and revenue growth—but others worry about the need to ethically develop AI, and to not assume that its training data is obtained officially. Sustainability challenges AI adoption Many reports said 2025 will see consumers and businesses prioritize sustainability—a challenge given the ubiquitous use of AI. Nearly two-thirds of organizations are concerned about the impact of AI and machine learning projects on their energy use and carbon footprint, according to S&P Global. Juniper Research highlights the rise of sustainable fintech as a differentiator for banks, with consumers seeking out financial institutions aligned with their values around climate change and social impact. Similar trends are seen in sectors like the travel industry, where it’s forecast that travelers will pay more for products and services that support biodiversity. Overall, business process management firm WNS Global Services points out that sustainability is no longer a niche concern, but an expectation from the mainstream. Consumers expect brands to lead in addressing environmental issues. Some 61% of US consumers believe that, according to Mintel, a market analyst. Some sectors are doing better than others: biotech ingredients are becoming more common in beauty products, with companies developing in the lab ingredients that replicate nature without depleting resources. Glycoproteins derived from lobsters are gaining traction, Mintel says, offering beauty benefits while supporting marine conservation. The world will remain weird One thing that many forecasts agree on is that they can’t agree on things. Everything from economic fluctuations, geopolitical shifts and the climate crisis are likely to vex us in 2025. The landscape will be volatile, with wildly divergent economic forecasts. UK bank NatWest anticipates market volatility stemming from shifts towards fiscal activism, terminal rates, and global protectionism. Nielsen, which predicts consumer behavior, believes normalized inflation levels and lower interest rates could improve consumer confidence and get us spending… but quickly adds: “However, as we have seen in frantic shifts of the recent past, these pockets of recovery can be fragile—and could evaporate as quickly as they sprout.” There’s also a split over interest rate trends worldwide. While multiple sources anticipate rate reductions, there’s uncertainty about the speed and extent of these cuts. AXA worries social tensions and movements could be a big risk to future growth, alongside climate change and geopolitical instability, while bank Allianz cautions readers about potential “disinflation hiccups” and raises concerns about the potential of geopolitical instability and cybersecurity problems in the year ahead. But consumers are more optimistic than pessimistic, says customer experience platform Disqo, with a particular Millennials, Black consumers, and “very liberal” individuals more eager for the year ahead than others. What will China do? Chinese influence will continue to rise, the reports agreed. Foresight Factory highlighted the growing popularity of Chinese brands such as Shein and Temu internationally continuing into 2025. Chinese culture could also become more influential, with trends like the celebration of Lunar New Year and the embrace of Chinese fashion and C-beauty becoming more common outside China. But China’s potential strength abroad is countered by worries of weakness at home. Geopolitical tensions, and the likelihood of tariff wars between the US and China, could impact global trade and integration, many worried. Multiple sources, from the IMF to Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan agree that China’s economic growth is slowing. Julius Bär suggested that China has entered a “balance sheet recession”, with a highly indebted private sector focused on saving rather than spending or investing. Chinese policymakers will take action to try and stimulate the economy, the forecasts believe. “There is a clear realization that exports can no longer be a reliable growth engine given the headwinds from trade tensions and tariff risks under the new US administration,” writes HSBC. Goldman Sachs estimates that US tariffs could subtract almost 0.7 percentage points from China’s growth in 2025. Invesco also highlights recent stimulus efforts, particularly in the housing market, where mortgage rate cuts aim to encourage borrowing and spending. Gen Z rules all—but is cautious “Gen Z are the ultimate entrepreneurs,” write financial consulting firm Mercer in their HR Trends for 2025 report. Youngsters cherish financial security and companies that have a demonstrated positive impact on society. Gen Z’s hope for financial security has been dubbed “muted desire” by Italian market researchers Nextatlas, and suggests a shift in consumption patterns towards more mindful spending habits. TikTok is Gen Z’s most used app, says DCDX, a Gen Z-specific research agency—which could spell trouble if it is banned in January in the United States. One tech tool they’re cautious about? ChatGPT and its ilk. Alongside other generations Gen Z is becoming more discerning about the limitations of generative AI, according to analysts Euromonitor International. Key among Gen Z’s concerns are cautions about the potential for AI-generated misinformation and its impact on job security. The oddest predictions More niche outlooks for 2025 include Bacardi’s prediction that loud nightclubs will be supplanted by more relaxed “listening bars”, where venues prioritize good music, high-quality sound systems and a laid-back experience. Futurist Jim Carroll believes cash will “have all but disappeared” by 2025, though whether “tofu tourists” (identified as an odd trend for 2025 by Lemongrass, a travel PR agency, and describing people who seek out vegan and plant-based travel experiences) will be able to pay for their egg- and dairy-free purchases using Apple Pay or Venmo in more remote areas of the world is yet to be known. They may well dig into their wallets and bring out physical cash for ugly cakes or pickle-flavored foods, both of which are pegged by social network Pinterest as key trends for next year.

Activism
Business
Climate

How a fantasy oil train may help the Supreme Court gut a major environmental law

Even if the railway promoters win, here's why the train won’t get built.

This story was originally published by Mother Jones and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. The state of Utah has come up with its share of boondoggles over the years, but one of the more enduring is the Uinta Basin Railway. The proposed 88-mile rail line would link the oil fields of the remote Uinta Basin region of eastern Utah to national rail lines so that up to 350,000 barrels of waxy crude oil could be transported to refineries on the Gulf Coast. The railway would allow oil companies to quadruple production in the basin and would be the biggest rail infrastructure project the U.S. has seen since the 1970s. But in all likelihood, the Uinta Basin Railway will never get built. The Uinta Basin is hemmed in by the soaring peaks of the Wasatch Mountains to the west and the Uinta Mountains to the north. Running an oil train through the mountains would be both dangerous and exorbitantly expensive, especially as the world is trying to scale back the use of fossil fuels. That’s why the railway’s indefatigable promoters, including the state’s congressional delegation, will probably fail to get the train on the tracks. However, they have succeeded in one thing: providing an activist Supreme Court the opportunity to take a whack at the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, one of the nation’s oldest environmental laws. Enacted in 1970, NEPA requires federal agencies to consider the environmental and public health effects of such things as highway construction, oil drilling, and pipeline construction on public land. Big polluting industries, particularly oil and gas companies, hate NEPA for giving the public a vehicle to obstruct dirty development projects. They’ve been trying to undermine it for years, including during the last Trump administration. Last week, when the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle County, former Solicitor General Paul Clement channeled those corporate complaints when he told the justices that NEPA “is designed to inform government decision-making, not paralyze it.” The statute, he argued, had become a “roadblock,” obstructing the railway and other worthy infrastructure projects through excessive environmental analysis. “NEPA is adding a juicy litigation target for project opponents,” Clement told the court.   But NEPA has almost nothing to do with why the Uinta Basin Railway won’t get built. “The court is doing the dirty work for all of these industries that are interested in changing our environmental laws,” Sam Sankar, a senior vice president at Earthjustice, said in a press briefing on the case, noting that Congress already had streamlined the NEPA process last year. Earthjustice is representing environmental groups that are parties in the case. “The fact that the court took this case means that it’s just issuing policy decisions from the bench, not deciding cases.” The idea of building a railway from the Uinta Basin to refineries in Salt Lake City or elsewhere has been kicking around for more than 25 years. As I explained in 2022, the basin is home to Utah’s largest, though still modest, oil and gas fields: Locked inside the basin’s sandstone layers are anywhere between 50 and 321 billion barrels of conventional oil, plus an estimated 14 to 15 billion barrels of tar sands, the largest such reserves in the U.S. The basin also lies atop a massive geological marvel known as the Green River Formation that stretches into Colorado and Wyoming and contains an estimated 3 trillion barrels of oil shale. In 2012, the U.S. Government Accountability Office reported to Congress that if even half of the formation’s unconventional oil was recoverable, it would “be equal to the entire world’s proven oil reserves.” Wildcat speculators, big oil companies, and state officials alike have been salivating over the Uinta Basin’s rich oil deposits for years, yet they’ve never been able to fully exploit them. The oil in the basin is a waxy crude that must be heated to 115 degrees to remain liquid, a problem that ruled out an earlier attempt to build a pipeline. The Seven County Infrastructure Coalition, a quasi-governmental organization consisting of the major oil-, gas-, and coal-producing counties in Utah, has received $28 million in public funding to plan and promote the railway as a way around this obstacle. The coalition is one of the petitioners in the Supreme Court case. “We don’t have a freeway into the Uinta Basin,” Mike McKee, the coalition’s former executive director, told me back in 2022. “It’s just that we have high mountains around us, so it’s been challenging.” Of course, there is no major highway from the basin for the same reason that the railway has never been built: The current two-lane road from Salt Lake City crests a peak that’s almost 10,000 feet above sea level, which is too high for a train to go over. So the current railway plan calls for tunneling through the mountain. But going through it may be just as treacherous as going over it. Inside the unstable mountain rock are pockets of explosive methane and other gases, not all of which have been mapped. None of this deterred the Seven County coalition from notifying the federal Surface Transportation Board, or STB, in 2019 that it intended to apply for a permit for the railway. The following year, the board started the environmental review process, including taking comments from the public. In December 2021, the STB found that the railway’s transportation merits outweighed its significant environmental effects. It approved the railway, despite noting that the hazards from tunneling “could potentially cause injury or death,” both in the railway’s construction and operation. It recommended that the coalition conduct some geoengineering studies, which it had not done. Among the many issues the board failed to consider when it approved the project was the impact of the additional 18 miles of oil train cars that the railway would add to the Union Pacific line going through Colorado, including Eagle County, home to the ski town of Vail. Along with creating significant risks of wildfires, the additional trains would run within feet of the Colorado River, where the possibility of regular oil spills could threaten the drinking water for 40 million people. The deficiencies in the STB’s environmental impact statement prompted environmentalists to ask the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals to review the STB decision, as did Eagle County. Read Next Can you tell if a ‘bomb train’ is coming to your town? It’s complicated. John McCracken In August 2023, the appeals court invalidated the STB’s approval of the railway. Among the many problems it found was the STB’s failure to assess “serious concerns about financial viability in determining the transportation merits of a project.” A 2018 feasibility study commissioned by the coalition itself had estimated that the railway would cost at least $5 billion to construct, need 3,000 workers, take at least 10 years to complete, and require government bond funding because the private sector had little incentive to invest in the railway.   As Justin Mikulka, a research fellow who studies the finances of energy transition at the New Consensus think tank, told me in 2022, “If there were money to be made, someone would have built this railroad 20 years ago.” The appeals court was also skeptical that the railroad had a future: “Given the record evidence identified by petitioners — including the 2018 feasibility study — there is similar reason to doubt the financial viability of the railway.” Indeed, the plan approved by the STB claims the railway construction would cost a mere $2 billion, to be paid for by a private investor. So far, however, only public money has gone into the project. The private investor, which is also one of the petitioners in the Supreme Court case, is a firm called DHIP Group. When I wrote about the railway in 2022, DHIP’s website showed involvement in only two projects: the Uinta Basin Railway and the Louisiana Plaquemines oil export terminal, which had been canceled in 2021. Today, the long-dead Louisiana project is still listed on its website, but the firm has added a New York state self-storage facility to its portfolio — a concrete box that’s a far cry from a complex, multibillion-dollar infrastructure project. DHIP’s website also touts its sponsorship of the Integrated Rail and Resources Acquisition Corporation, a new company it took public in 2021 with a $230 million IPO. But in a March 2024 SEC filing, the company disclosed that the New York Stock Exchange had threatened to delist it, because in the three years since the IPO, it has done … nothing. (The company has managed to hang on.) Environmental concerns notwithstanding, DHIP seems unlikely to come up with $2 billion to build the railway. A spokesperson for DHIP did not respond to a request for comment. Even if environmentalists had never filed suit to block it, the railway probably would have died under the weight of its own unfeasibility. Instead, the Seven County coalition appealed the decision to the Supreme Court, arguing that the appeals court had erred when it required the STB to study the local effects of oil wells and refineries that it didn’t have the authority to regulate. In July, the Supreme Court agreed to take the case. Now the court stands poised to issue a decision with much broader threats to environmental regulation by considering only one question raised by the lower court: Does Supreme Court precedent limit a NEPA analysis strictly to environmental issues that an agency regulates, or does the law allow agencies to weigh the wider impacts of a project, such as air pollution or water contamination, that may be regulated by other agencies? During oral arguments in the case, liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor expressed frustration with Clement’s suggestion that the court prevent NEPA reviews from considering impacts that were “remote in time and geography.” She suggested that such an interpretation went against the heart of the law, noting, for instance, that if a federal agency allowed a car to go to market, “it could go a thousand miles and 40 states away and blow up. That’s a reasonably foreseeable consequence that is remote in geography and time.” A federal agency, she implied, should absolutely consider such dangers. “You want absolute rules that make no sense,” Sotomayor told Clement. Sotomayor seemed to be alone, however, in her defense of NEPA, and the majority of the other seven justices seemed inclined to require at least some limits to the statute. (Justice Neil Gorsuch recused himself from the case because his former patron, Denver-based billionaire Philip Anschutz, had a potential financial interest in the outcome of the case. His oil and gas company, Anschutz Exploration Corporation, has federal drilling leases in Utah and elsewhere and also filed an amicus brief in the case.) While the justices seemed inclined to hamstring NEPA, such a ruling would be a hollow victory for the Utah railway promoters that brought the case. When the appeals court voided the STB decision approving the railway, it cited at least six other reasons it was unlawful beyond the NEPA issue. None of those will be affected by a Supreme Court decision in the Seven County coalition case. The STB permit will still be void, and the oil train will not get out of the station. There will be winners in the case, however, most likely the big fossil fuel and other companies whose operations would benefit from less environmental scrutiny, should the court issue a decision reining in NEPA. For instance, the case could lead the court to strictly limit the extent of environmental harms that must be considered in future infrastructure projects, meaning that the public would have a much harder time forcing the government to consider the health and environmental effects of oil and gas wells and pipelines before approving them. “This case is bigger than the Uinta Basin Railway,” Earthjustice’s Sankar said. “The fossil fuel industry and its allies are making radical arguments that would blind the public to obvious health consequences of government decisions.” The court will issue a decision by June next year. This story was originally published by Grist with the headline How a fantasy oil train may help the Supreme Court gut a major environmental law on Dec 22, 2024.

Activism
Climate
Energy

Texas regulators shelve an electricity market reform proposal they say does too little to shore up grid

The Public Utility Commission found that the performance credit mechanism, a financial tool the Legislature capped at $1 billion, would only marginally improve reliability of the state power grid.

Sign up for The Brief, The Texas Tribune’s daily newsletter that keeps readers up to speed on the most essential Texas news. The Public Utility Commission on Thursday shelved the performance credit mechanism, a controversial idea that was designed to bring more power onto the state grid and increase its reliability. “I don’t believe that the PCM, as currently designed, will provide the reliability benefits needed in the ERCOT market,” PUC Chair Thomas Gleeson wrote in a Dec. 18 memo that the rest of the commission endorsed on Thursday. The performance credit mechanism represented a complex change to the way Texas’ electricity market works. The idea would have required electricity providers — the companies, co-ops and municipal utilities that sell power to people — to pay more to generators that committed to having electricity available when grid conditions get tight. Electricity providers then could have passed those extra costs onto consumers. The goal was to incentivize companies to build more of what are known as dispatchable power facilities. Dispatchable power sources, such as natural gas, nuclear and coal-fired plants, can turn on any time and fill in the gaps in supply when demand for power is high — unlike renewable sources that depend on sun and wind. Amid concerns that the tool would lead to skyrocketing electricity bills without guaranteeing greater reliability, the Legislature last year imposed a $1 billion cap on how much it could cost consumers. That cap, according to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which manages the state grid, was the parameter that “most significantly limits the effectiveness of the PCM.” ERCOT and an independent market monitor found this year that with the $1 billion limit, the proposal would have only minimally improved the grid’s reliability, estimating that it would lead to an extra 780 megawatts of generation — far short of the 10,000 megawatts needed to meet the state’s reliability standard. The most important Texas news,sent weekday mornings. A coalition of consumer advocates, oil and gas lobbyists and environmental activists had demanded the cost limit to protect consumers from higher electricity bills. Companies that operate gas-fueled power plants had opposed a cap, saying it would reduce or kill the effectiveness of the credits. The PUC on Thursday pointed to other mechanisms that commissioners said would do more to increase reliability. “While reconsideration of the PCM may be appropriate in the future,” Gleeson wrote in his memo, “at this point I believe our collective resources are best directed toward implementing other market design initiatives.” Those measures include tools to streamline how ERCOT procures power and a new ancillary services program that can offer power to smooth out uncertainty on the grid. In August, the PUC adopted a grid reliability standard that said a major power outage due to inadequate power supply could take place no more than once every decade on average; any outage must last less than 12 hours; and the amount of power lost during any hour of an outage could not exceed the level that could be safely rotated through rolling blackouts. Beginning in 2026, ERCOT must conduct an assessment every three years of whether the system is meeting the reliability standard — an opportunity, the PUC said, to evaluate the effects of changes implemented by the agency and the Legislature since Winter Storm Uri in 2021 and to consider any other measures that may be needed.

Activism

Montana Supreme Court upholds youth climate activists' victory

Montana’s Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld a 2023 ruling siding with young climate activists who asserted the state government violated their right to a healthy environment. In August 2023, Montana’s First Judicial District sided with the 16 plaintiffs, who cited a state constitutional provision guaranteeing “a clean and healthful environment” to argue the state violated...

Montana’s Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld a 2023 ruling siding with young climate activists who asserted the state government violated their right to a healthy environment. In August 2023, Montana’s First Judicial District sided with the 16 plaintiffs, who cited a state constitutional provision guaranteeing “a clean and healthful environment” to argue the state violated that right with a law that barred weighing climate impacts during the approval process for energy projects. The state supreme court upheld the finding in a 6-1 ruling Wednesday, writing, “Montana’s right to a clean and healthful environment and environmental life support system includes a stable climate system, which is clearly within the object and true principles of the Framers inclusion of the right to a clean and healthful environment.” Justice Jim Rice, who was appointed by former Gov. Judy Martz (R), was the only dissent. The court rejected an argument from Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen (R) that state-level efforts will have no effect without action from the rest of the world, comparing that argument to “the old ad populum fallacy: ‘If everyone else jumped off a bridge, would you do it too?’” The plaintiffs’ attorney, Melissa Hornbein of the Western Environmental Law Center, hailed the decision as “a monumental moment” for young people and the state. “This ruling clarifies that the Constitution sets a clear directive for Montana to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions, which are among the highest in the nation on a per capita basis, and to transition to a clean, renewable energy future,” she said. Knudsen’s office criticized the decision in a statement, with Montana Justice Department Press Secretary Chase Scheuer calling the ruling “disappointing, but not surprising.” “The majority of the state Supreme Court justices yet again ruled in favor of their ideologically aligned allies and ignored the fact that Montana has no power to impact the climate,” Scheuer said. Montana Supreme Court justices are directly elected to eight-year terms but midterm replacements are appointed by the governor. Two of Montana’s governor-appointed judges were named by Gov. Steve Bullock (D), while Rice is the only justice appointed by a Republican.

Activism
Climate
Health

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The Great Divide

Twenty minutes outside of Visalia, amidst the seemingly endless rows of citrus trees, Yolanda Cuevas packs enchiladas with shredded chicken for her husband Benjamin, their adult daughters and two teenaged grandchildren in her modest single-story home. Their house is the first one off the main drag, one of 83 lining the two crumbling roads that comprise the tiny town of Tooleville. Yolanda must wash the tomatoes for the salsa first in the sink and then again with a splash of clean water from a 5-gallon jug. The process is arduous, and though she’s resigned to do it, she’s not happy about it. Along with Tooleville’s several hundred other residents, Yolanda’s family has survived on bi-weekly delivery of water to their homes for the past 12 years. It’s an annoyance for the family, and it’s expensive for the State of California, which has been paying for the replacement water since the discovery of Chromium-6 (the same chemical featured in Erin Brokovich) in the water. The simpler solution would be to consolidate the town’s water system with that of its larger, affluent neighbor to the west, Exeter. And for this purpose, Yolanda has become a reluctant activist, attending community meetings in Tooleville and lobbying for consolidation at Exeter’s city council meetings under the expert guidance of Pedro Hernandez, an organizer with the Leadership Counsel. While Exeter has resisted the consolidation since it was first proposed, organizers like Pedro feel that this could be the year Exeter finally succumbs to the growing community pressure and brings Tooleville into the fold. The decision will echo around the Central Valley and across the state, as hundreds of similar community water systems find themselves in a nearly identical predicament.

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Between Clouds and Glass

A look at the monumental problem of bird collisions in Chicago, the deadliest city for birds, just ahead of Houston and Dallas. According to scientists, what happens in Chicago can affect bird populations across North America. As many as one billion birds die each year in the United States due to building collisions, but there are people who care and work hard to change this.

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Wake Up People!

Environmental activists have been camping in Sodros for more than four months with the purpose of stopping the trees from being cut down. In the past few days Chinese company CRBC workers have been showing up at the site accompanied by the police and gendarmerie forces. The activists have been requesting to see the permits and the documentation for the work they are planning to conduct from the CRBC workers. The CRBC workers haven’t shown any of the permits. Also, the work has begun without a construction board being clearly visible, which is mandatory by law.

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The Z-Nail Gang

When a corporate mining giant moves into a small coastal town looking for gold and talking about trickle down wealth some folks just aren't convinced.

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Fiction

Jetty Cats

Jetty Cats explores contemporary animal rights issues through a focus on a feral cat colony that has survived on a rocky, seaside jetty in Southern California for decades. There is an ongoing debate over feral cat colonies involving advocates who support the trap, neuter, and return -- or "TNR" -- model of management, and those who argue that trapping and euthanizing the cats is more humane. This documentary’s point-of-view supports the TNR model and the related “no-kill” animal shelter policy, and features an exclusive interview with Richard Avanzino, the "Father" of the no-kill movement.

Animals
Government
Activism

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