GoGreenNation news

Trump’s Election Is a Disaster for the Climate—and an Opportunity

News Feed

Wednesday, November 13, 2024

It was 3 a.m. on Nov. 6. The baby growing inside me kicked hard as yet another set of electoral college votes flashed red on the TV screen for Trump. I couldn’t help but wonder if the kicking was her own act of protest in the waning hours of the 2024 election. After all, this child is the progeny of two environmental activists who have spent decades fighting the climate emergency, particularly federal fossil fuel production. It’s difficult to describe how grim that work looks right now. But this is also the moment to radically reimagine and rebuild our political system into one more responsive to people’s needs. That’s the potential of the next four years. It’s the transformation we need to meet the climate catastrophes ahead, far more powerful than Trump himself. Today’s reality is harsh: The U.S. is the world’s largest oil and gas producer and liquified natural gas exporter, and fossil fuels are the dominant cause of climate chaos. Both the Trump and Biden administrations reached record oil and gas production during their successive terms. The Biden administration had a complex relationship with the climate crisis, embracing both clean and dirty energy as part of an all-of-the-above approach that contradicts scientists’ recommendations to safeguard the planet. Biden passed historic clean energy investments with his signature climate law, the Inflation Reduction Act. But that act also included additional oil and gas leasing on our public lands and waters. The administration then approved ConocoPhillips’ devastating Willow Project in Alaska, the nation’s largest oil drilling operation. In response to pressure from environmental justice communities and climate advocates, Biden also imposed a moratorium on new federal oil and gas leases in 2021 and paused approvals for new liquified natural gas terminals in 2024—bold moves that were eventually blocked by federal judges. Now we face the unfettered Trump 2.0 era, led by a man who shamelessly cheered “drill, baby, drill” and called climate change a “hoax” at his political rallies and appointed an ExxonMobil CEO to his first cabinet. All signs suggest this administration will focus on gutting environmental protections and padding the bloated pockets of fossil fuel corporations and their billionaire executives and shareholders. For climate activists, Trump’s ascent means federal avenues to fight fossil fuels will be mostly blocked. Our three branches of government, designed to check one another and thwart abusive power, are now at risk of being monopolized by a climate-denying fascist. Trump has vowed to ditch virtually all Biden administration regulations intended to cut carbon emissions and move away from fossil fuels. He will seek to slash positions of federal employees who have spent their careers trying to protect our air, water and wildlife. While the House of Representatives election results aren’t yet final, it’s clear that a Republican Senate will block any climate-fighting legislation. And the Supreme Court is severely compromised by its radical right wing. Trump has promised to replace Justice Samuel Alito and Justice Clarence Thomas with younger judges who could secure a radical right majority at the highest court until my unborn daughter is in her 30s. Without material reform to expand the court, this doesn’t bode well for multiple generations of women, as well as the working class, communities of color, migrant families, transgender people and our imperiled ecosystems. As many in the environmental movement have said this past week, we will resist as we did the first time. Biden has committed to filling the nearly 50 open judicial vacancies before leaving office. This move, if he can accomplish it, will be a vital lifeline to ensuring integrity of the judiciary at district and appeals court levels. As a lawyer who was part of the record onslaught of lawsuits against Trump during his first term, I think it’s important to note that 90 percent of our lawsuits were successful. They acted as a crucial bulwark against Trump’s attacks on our climate, health and safety. But resistance alone, which maintains the status quo, is no longer enough. The election rebuked that notion and the world’s environmental chaos confirms it. Our current system has driven the planet to break 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming this year. The Paris Agreement set this threshold as a dangerous tipping point for the world’s poorest communities, who disproportionately bear the brunt of climate change’s horrific consequences while the wealthiest disproportionately pollute. We need to only look at the last year to see that when climate chaos tested the country, the current system failed. The cataclysmic Hurricane Helene, record heat waves, and relentless wildfires stole lives, demolished homes, wiped out jobs, and left survivors in profound social, economic, and emotional instability.To survive and thrive during the next four years and beyond, we have to build our political system anew. We need to reimagine how our politics can be genuinely responsive to what people need—not under the hateful rhetoric of the Republicans or the willful ignorance of the Democrats. Building a responsive political system starts on the ground, driving intersectional solutions to climate chaos that are both community-focused and deeply resourced. The climate movement has to fully break out of its silo and build real political power with youth, labor, working families, migrants, the LGBTQ+ community, and other rights-based groups to grow a broad-based movement that centers justice at every step. Climate activists within the movement have already made important inroads on this intersectional organizing—including last year when hundreds of thousands around the world marched in the first mass mobilization to end fossil fuels—and we have many miles to go.Faced with an intractable federal government, activists can also take their battle to the states, for example fighting the detonation of carbon bombs like the Permian Basin. My colleagues at the Center for Biological Diversity, together with Indigenous, frontline and youth groups, recently filed a landmark case challenging the state of New Mexico for failing to uphold its constitutional duty to control oil and gas pollution and protect the health of its residents. Responding to pressure from local groups, the state also has created health buffers aimed at preventing school children from being poisoned by the oil industry as they sit in their classes.The byzantine world of state public utility commissions is also ground zero for bucking the racist, fossil fuel-dependent electricity system and designing democratic and affordable energy systems that serve the public’s interest. These black-box commissions—long dominated by regulators captured by fossil utilities and drowned in technical jargon to confuse the public—are the frontline of deciding state energy policy.Mass organizing of communities harmed by predatory utility rates, shutoffs and fossil fuel pollution can force these commissions to respond to people, not monopoly utility providers that have stifled alternative distributed energy to protect their profits. State utility commissions can ramp up rooftop and community solar systems and other renewable energy sources that displace polluting fossil fuels, loosen the death grip of corporate utilities, and make electricity affordable, clean and democratic. This isn’t just a fight against the climate emergency—which can feel abstract to some people. It’s a fight against entrenched power that threatens people’s pocketbooks, their health and their livelihoods. While we are all trying to make sense of what happened and why, our next steps are clear. The status quo needs to change, and it’s up to us to organize a new, intersectional mass people’s movement that can create the momentum for and help design the systems that will get us there. It may be that my daughter’s strong kicks are her way of signaling that she’s rearing to go. Fighting for a safe climate means fighting on every front for a chance of something that looks like justice.

But this is also the moment to radically reimagine and rebuild our political system into one more responsive to people’s needs. That’s the potential of the next four years. It’s the transformation we need to meet the climate catastrophes ahead, far more powerful than Trump himself.

Today’s reality is harsh: The U.S. is the world’s largest oil and gas producer and liquified natural gas exporter, and fossil fuels are the dominant cause of climate chaos. Both the Trump and Biden administrations reached record oil and gas production during their successive terms.

The Biden administration had a complex relationship with the climate crisis, embracing both clean and dirty energy as part of an all-of-the-above approach that contradicts scientists’ recommendations to safeguard the planet. Biden passed historic clean energy investments with his signature climate law, the Inflation Reduction Act. But that act also included additional oil and gas leasing on our public lands and waters. The administration then approved ConocoPhillips’ devastating Willow Project in Alaska, the nation’s largest oil drilling operation. In response to pressure from environmental justice communities and climate advocates, Biden also imposed a moratorium on new federal oil and gas leases in 2021 and paused approvals for new liquified natural gas terminals in 2024—bold moves that were eventually blocked by federal judges.

Now we face the unfettered Trump 2.0 era, led by a man who shamelessly cheered “drill, baby, drill” and called climate change a “hoax” at his political rallies and appointed an ExxonMobil CEO to his first cabinet. All signs suggest this administration will focus on gutting environmental protections and padding the bloated pockets of fossil fuel corporations and their billionaire executives and shareholders.

For climate activists, Trump’s ascent means federal avenues to fight fossil fuels will be mostly blocked. Our three branches of government, designed to check one another and thwart abusive power, are now at risk of being monopolized by a climate-denying fascist.

Trump has vowed to ditch virtually all Biden administration regulations intended to cut carbon emissions and move away from fossil fuels. He will seek to slash positions of federal employees who have spent their careers trying to protect our air, water and wildlife.

While the House of Representatives election results aren’t yet final, it’s clear that a Republican Senate will block any climate-fighting legislation. And the Supreme Court is severely compromised by its radical right wing. Trump has promised to replace Justice Samuel Alito and Justice Clarence Thomas with younger judges who could secure a radical right majority at the highest court until my unborn daughter is in her 30s. Without material reform to expand the court, this doesn’t bode well for multiple generations of women, as well as the working class, communities of color, migrant families, transgender people and our imperiled ecosystems.

As many in the environmental movement have said this past week, we will resist as we did the first time. Biden has committed to filling the nearly 50 open judicial vacancies before leaving office. This move, if he can accomplish it, will be a vital lifeline to ensuring integrity of the judiciary at district and appeals court levels.

As a lawyer who was part of the record onslaught of lawsuits against Trump during his first term, I think it’s important to note that 90 percent of our lawsuits were successful. They acted as a crucial bulwark against Trump’s attacks on our climate, health and safety.

But resistance alone, which maintains the status quo, is no longer enough. The election rebuked that notion and the world’s environmental chaos confirms it. Our current system has driven the planet to break 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming this year. The Paris Agreement set this threshold as a dangerous tipping point for the world’s poorest communities, who disproportionately bear the brunt of climate change’s horrific consequences while the wealthiest disproportionately pollute.

We need to only look at the last year to see that when climate chaos tested the country, the current system failed. The cataclysmic Hurricane Helene, record heat waves, and relentless wildfires stole lives, demolished homes, wiped out jobs, and left survivors in profound social, economic, and emotional instability.

To survive and thrive during the next four years and beyond, we have to build our political system anew. We need to reimagine how our politics can be genuinely responsive to what people need—not under the hateful rhetoric of the Republicans or the willful ignorance of the Democrats.

Building a responsive political system starts on the ground, driving intersectional solutions to climate chaos that are both community-focused and deeply resourced. The climate movement has to fully break out of its silo and build real political power with youth, labor, working families, migrants, the LGBTQ+ community, and other rights-based groups to grow a broad-based movement that centers justice at every step. Climate activists within the movement have already made important inroads on this intersectional organizing—including last year when hundreds of thousands around the world marched in the first mass mobilization to end fossil fuels—and we have many miles to go.

Faced with an intractable federal government, activists can also take their battle to the states, for example fighting the detonation of carbon bombs like the Permian Basin. My colleagues at the Center for Biological Diversity, together with Indigenous, frontline and youth groups, recently filed a landmark case challenging the state of New Mexico for failing to uphold its constitutional duty to control oil and gas pollution and protect the health of its residents. Responding to pressure from local groups, the state also has created health buffers aimed at preventing school children from being poisoned by the oil industry as they sit in their classes.

The byzantine world of state public utility commissions is also ground zero for bucking the racist, fossil fuel-dependent electricity system and designing democratic and affordable energy systems that serve the public’s interest. These black-box commissions—long dominated by regulators captured by fossil utilities and drowned in technical jargon to confuse the public—are the frontline of deciding state energy policy.

Mass organizing of communities harmed by predatory utility rates, shutoffs and fossil fuel pollution can force these commissions to respond to people, not monopoly utility providers that have stifled alternative distributed energy to protect their profits. State utility commissions can ramp up rooftop and community solar systems and other renewable energy sources that displace polluting fossil fuels, loosen the death grip of corporate utilities, and make electricity affordable, clean and democratic. This isn’t just a fight against the climate emergency—which can feel abstract to some people. It’s a fight against entrenched power that threatens people’s pocketbooks, their health and their livelihoods.

While we are all trying to make sense of what happened and why, our next steps are clear. The status quo needs to change, and it’s up to us to organize a new, intersectional mass people’s movement that can create the momentum for and help design the systems that will get us there. It may be that my daughter’s strong kicks are her way of signaling that she’s rearing to go. Fighting for a safe climate means fighting on every front for a chance of something that looks like justice.

Read the full story here.

Photos courtesy of

Related News

Drought killer: California storms fill reservoirs, build up Sierra snowpack

It's been the wettest November on record for several Southern California cities. But experts say that despite the auspicious start, it's still too soon to say how the rest of California's traditional rainy season will shape up.

A string of early season storms that drenched Californians last week lifted much of the state out of drought and significantly reduced the risk of wildfires, experts say.It’s been the wettest November on record for Southland cities such as Van Nuys and San Luis Obispo. Santa Barbara has received an eye-popping 9.5 inches of rain since Oct. 1, marking the city’s wettest start to the water year on record. And overall the state is sitting at 186% of its average rain so far this water year, according to the Department of Water Resources.But experts say that despite the auspicious start, it’s still too soon to say how the rest of California’s traditional rainy season will shape up.“The overall impact on our water supply is TBD [to be determined] is the best way to put it,” said Jeff Mount, senior fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California’s Water Policy Center. “We haven’t even really gotten into the wet season yet.”California receives the vast bulk of its rain and snow between December and March, trapping the runoff in its reservoirs to mete out during the hot, dry seasons that follow. Lights from bumper-to-bumper traffic along Aliso Street reflect off the federal courthouse in Los Angeles on a rainy night. (Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times) Those major reservoirs are now filled to 100% to 145% of average for this date. That’s not just from the recent storms — early season rains tend to soak mostly into the parched ground — but also because California is building on three prior wet winters, state climatologist Michael Anderson said.A record-breaking wet 2022-23 winter ended the state’s driest three-year period on record. That was followed by two years that were wetter than average for Northern California but drier than average for the southern half, amounting to roughly average precipitation statewide.According to the latest U.S. Drought Monitor report, issued last week before the last of the recent storms had fully soaked the state, more than 70% of California was drought-free, compared with 49% a week before. Nearly 47% of Los Angeles County emerged from moderate drought, with the other portions improving to abnormally dry, the map shows. Abnormally dry conditions also ended in Ventura, Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo and much of Kern counties, along with portions of Central California, according to the map. In the far southern and southeastern reaches of the state, conditions improved but still range from abnormally dry to moderate drought, the map shows.The early season storms will play an important role in priming watersheds for the rest of the winter, experts said. By soaking soils, they’ll enable future rainstorms to more easily run off into reservoirs and snow to accumulate in the Sierra Nevada.“Building the snowpack on hydrated watersheds will help us avoid losing potential spring runoff to dry soils later in the season,” Anderson wrote in an email.Snowpack is crucial to sustaining California through its hot, dry seasons because it runs down into waterways as it melts, topping off the reservoirs and providing at least 30% of the state’s water supply, said Andrew Schwartz, director of UC Berkeley’s Central Sierra Snow Lab.The research station at Donner Pass has recorded 22 inches of snow. Although that’s about 89% of normal for this date, warmer temperatures mean that much of it has already melted, Schwartz said. The snow water equivalent, which measures how much water the snow would produce if it were to melt, now stands at 50%, he said.“That’s really something that tells the tale, so far, of this season,” he said. “We’ve had plenty of rain across the Sierra, but not as much snowfall as we would ordinarily hope for up to this point.”This dynamic has become increasingly common with climate change, Schwartz said. Snow is often developing later in the season and melting earlier, and more precipitation is falling as rain, he said. Because reservoirs need to leave some room in the winter for flood mitigation, they aren’t always able to capture all this ill-timed runoff, he said.And the earlier the snow melts, the more time plants and soils have to dry out in the summer heat, priming the landscape for large wildfires, Schwartz said. Although Northern California has been spared massive fires for the last few seasons, Schwartz fears that luck could run out if the region doesn’t receive at least an average amount snow this year.For now, long-range forecasts are calling for equal chances of wet and dry conditions this winter, Mount said. What happens in the next few months will be key. California depends on just a few strong atmospheric river storms to provide moisture; as little as five to seven can end up being responsible for more than half of the year’s water supply, he said.“We’re living on the edge all the time,” he said. “A handful of storms make up the difference of whether we have a dry year or a wet year.”Although the state’s drought picture has improved for the moment, scientists caution that conditions across the West are trending hotter and drier because of the burning of fossil fuels and resultant climate change. In addition to importing water from Northern California via the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, Southern California relies on water from the Colorado River. That waterway continues to be in shortage, with its largest reservoir only about one-third full.What’s more, research has shown that as the planet has warmed, the atmosphere has become thirstier, sucking more moisture from plants and soils and ensuring that dry years are drier. At the same time, there’s healthy debate over whether the same phenomenon is also making wet periods wetter, as warmer air can hold more moisture, potentially supercharging storms.As a result, swings between wet and dry on a year-to-year basis — and even within a year — seem to be getting bigger in California and elsewhere, Mount said. That increase in uncertainty has made managing water supplies more difficult overall, he said.Still, because of its climate, California has plenty of experience dealing with such extremes, said Jay Lund, professor emeritus of civil and environmental engineering at UC Davis.“We always have to be preparing for floods and preparing for drought, no matter how wet or dry it is.”Staff writer Ian James contributed to this report.

Climate

Health

Water

Indigenous People Reflect On What It Meant To Participate In COP30 Climate Talks

Many who attended the UN summit in the Amazon liked the solidarity and small wins, but some felt the talks fell short on representation and true climate action.

BELEM, Brazil (AP) — Indigenous people filled the streets, paddled the waterways and protested at the heart of the venue to make their voices heard during the United Nations climate talks that were supposed to give them a voice like never before at the annual conference.As the talks, called COP30, concluded Saturday in Belem, Brazil, Indigenous people reflected on what the conference meant to them and whether they were heard.Brazilian leaders had high hopes that the summit, taking place in the Amazon, would empower the people who inhabit the land and protect the biodiversity of the world’s largest rainforest, which helps stave off climate change as its trees absorb carbon pollution that heats the planet.Many Indigenous people who attended the talks felt strengthened by the solidarity with tribes from other countries and some appreciated small wins in the final outcome. But for many, the talks fell short on representation, ambition and true action on climate issues affecting Indigenous people.“This was a COP where we were visible but not empowered,” said Thalia Yarina Cachimuel, a Kichwa-Otavalo member of A Wisdom Keepers Delegation, a group of Indigenous people from around the world.Some language wins but nothing on fossil fuelsFrom left: Taily Terena, Gustavo Ulcue Campo, Bina Laprem and Sarah Olsvig attend an Indigenous peoples forum on climate change at the COP30 UN Climate Summit, on Nov. 21, 2025, in Belem, Brazil.Andre Penner via Associated PressThe first paragraph of the main political text acknowledges “the rights of Indigenous Peoples, as well as their land rights and traditional knowledge.”Taily Terena, an Indigenous woman from the Terena nation in Brazil, said she was happy because the text for the first time mentioned those rights explicitly.But Mindahi Bastida, an Otomí-Toltec member of A Wisdom Keepers Delegation, said countries should have pushed harder for agreements on how to phase out fuels like oil, gas and coal “and not to see nature as merchandise, but to see it as sacred.”Several nations pushed for a road map to curtail use of fossil fuels, which when burned release greenhouse gases that warm the planet. Saturday’s final decision left out any mention of fossil fuels, leaving many countries disappointed.Brazil also launched a financial mechanism that countries could donate to, which was supposed to help incentivize nations with lots of forest to keep those ecosystems intact.Although the initiative received monetary pledges from a few countries, the project and the idea of creating a market for carbon are false solutions that “don’t stop pollution, they just move it around,” said Jacob Johns, a Wisdom Keeper of the Akimel O’Otham and Hopi nations.“They hand corporations a license to keep drilling, keep burning, keep destroying, so long as they can point to an offset written on paper. It’s the same colonial logic dressed up as climate policy,” Johns said.Concerns over tokenismBrazil Indigenous Peoples Minister Sonia Guajajara (R) poses for a selfie while walking through the COP30 UN Climate Summit venue, on Nov. 17, 2025, in Belem, Brazil.Andre Penner via Associated PressFrom the beginning of the conference, some Indigenous attendees were concerned visibility isn’t the same as true power. At the end, that sentiment lingered.“What we have seen at this COP is a focus on symbolic presence rather than enabling the full and effective participation of Indigenous Peoples,” Sara Olsvig, chair of the Inuit Circumpolar Council, wrote in a message after the conference concluded.Edson Krenak, Brazil manager for Indigenous rights group Cultural Survival and member of the Krenak people, didn’t think negotiators did enough to visit forests or understand the communities living there. He also didn’t believe the 900 Indigenous people given access to the main venue was enough.Sônia Guajajara, Brazil’s minister of Indigenous peoples, who is Indigenous herself, framed the convention differently.“It is undeniable that this is the largest and best COP in terms of Indigenous participation and protagonism,” she said.Protests showed power of Indigenous solidarityIndigenous leader and climate activist Txai Surui (R) shouts slogans while leaving a plenary session during the COP30 UN Climate Change Conference in Belem, Brazil, on Nov. 21, 2025. Pablo Porciuncula/AFP via Getty ImagesWhile the decisions by delegates left some Indigenous attendees feeling dismissed, many said they felt empowered by participating in demonstrations outside the venue.When the summit began on Nov. 10, Paulo André Paz de Lima, an Amazonian Indigenous leader, thought his tribe and others didn’t have access to COP30. During the first week, he and a group of demonstrators broke through the barrier to get inside the venue. Authorities quickly intervened and stopped their advancement.De Lima said that act helped Indigenous people amplify their voices.“After breaking the barrier, we were able to enter COP, get into the Blue Zone and express our needs,” he said, referring to the official negotiation area. “We got closer (to the negotiations), got more visibility.”The meaning of protest at this COP wasn’t just to get the attention of non-Indigenous people, it also was intended as a way for Indigenous people to commune with each other.On the final night before an agreement was reached, a small group with banners walked inside the venue, protesting instances of violence and environmental destruction from the recent killing of a Guarani youth on his own territory to the proposed Prince Rupert Gas Transmission Project in Canada.“We have to come together to show up, you know? Because they need to hear us,” Leandro Karaí of the Guarani people of South America said of the solidarity among Indigenous groups. “When we’re together with others, we’re stronger.“They sang to the steady beat of a drum, locked arms in a line and marched down the long hall of the COP venue to the exit, breaking the silence in the corridors as negotiators remained deadlocked inside.Then they emerged, voices raised, under a yellow sky.

Climate

Indigenous

Forests

This Pig’s Bacon Was Delicious—and She’s Alive and Well

This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. I’m eating Dawn the Yorkshire pig and she’s quite tasty. But don’t worry. She’s doing perfectly fine, traipsing around a sanctuary in upstate New York. Word is that she appreciates belly rubs and sunshine. I’m in San Francisco, at an Italian joint just south of Golden Gate Park, enjoying meatballs and bacon not made of meat in the traditional sense but of plants mixed with “cultivated” pork fat. Dawn, you see, donated a small sample of fat, which a company called Mission Barns got to proliferate in devices called bioreactors by providing nutrients like carbohydrates, amino acids, and vitamins—essentially replicating the conditions in her body. Because so much of the flavor of pork and other meats comes from the animal’s fat, Mission Barns can create products like sausages and salami with plants but make them taste darn near like sausages and salami. I’ve been struggling to describe the experience, because cultivated meat short-circuits my brain—my mouth thinks I’m eating a real pork meatball, but my brain knows that it’s fundamentally different and that Dawn (pictured above) didn’t have to die for it. This is the best I’ve come up with: It’s Diet Meat. Just as Diet Coke is an approximation of the real thing, so too are cultivated meatballs. They simply taste a bit less meaty, at least to my tongue. Which is understandable, as the only animal product in this food is the bioreactor-grown fat. Cultivated pork is the newest entrant in the effort to rethink meat. For years, plant-based offerings have been mimicking burgers, chicken, and fish with ever-more convincing blends of proteins and fats. Mission Barns is one of a handful of startups taking the next step: growing real animal fat outside the animal, then marrying it with plants to create hybrids that look, cook, and taste more like what consumers have always eaten, easing the environmental and ethical costs of industrial livestock. The company says it’s starting with pork because it’s a large market and products like bacon are fat-rich, but its technology is “cell-agnostic,” meaning it could create beef and chicken, too. Lab-grown meat ballsMatt Simon Honestly, Mission Barns’ creations taste great, in part because they’re “unstructured,” in the parlance of the industry. A pork loin is a complicated tangle of fat, muscle cells, and connective tissues that is very difficult and expensive to replicate, but a meatball, salami, or sausage incorporates other ingredients. That allows Mission Barns to experiment with what plant to use as a base, and then add spices to accentuate the flavors. It’s a technology that they can iterate, basically, crafting ever-better meats by toying with ingredients in different ratios. So the bacon I ate, for instance, had a nice applewood smoke to it. The meatballs had the springiness you’d expect. During a later visit to Mission Barns’ headquarters across town, I got to try two prototypes of its salami as well—both were spiced like you’d expect but less elastic, so they chewed a bit more easily than what you’d find on a charcuterie board. (The sensation of food in the mouth is known in the industry as “mouthfeel,” and nailing it is essential to the success of alt meats.) The salami slices even left grease stains on the paper they were served on—Dawn’s own little mark on the world. I was one of the first people to purchase a cultivated pork product. While Mission Barns has so far only sold its products at that Italian restaurant and, for a limited time, at a grocery store in Berkeley—$13.99 for a pack of eight meatballs, similar to higher-end products from organic and regenerative farms—it is fixing to scale up production and sell the technology to other companies to produce more cultivated foods. (It is assessing how big the bioreactors will have to be to reach price parity with traditional meat products.) The idea is to provide an alternative to animal agriculture, which uses a whole lot of land, water, and energy to raise creatures and ship their flesh around the world. Livestock are responsible for between 10 and 20 percent of humanity’s greenhouse gas emissions—depending on who’s estimating it—and that’s to say nothing of the cruelty involved in keeping pigs and chickens and cows in unsavory, occasionally inhumane, conditions. “I also love the idea of taking their pork fat and putting it in a beef burger.” Getting animal cells to grow outside of an animal, though, ain’t easy. For one, if cells don’t have anything to attach to, they die. So Mission Barns’ cultivator uses a spongelike structure, full of nooks and crannies that provides lots of surface area for the cells to grow. “We have our media, which is just the nutrient solution that we give to these cells,” said Saam Shahrokhi, chief technology officer at Mission Barns. “We’re essentially recapitulating all of the environmental cues that make cells inside the body grow fat, [but] outside the body.” While Dawn’s fat is that of a Yorkshire pig, Shahrokhi said they could easily produce fat from other breeds like the Mangalitsa, known as the Kobe beef of pork. (In June, the company won approval from the US Department of Agriculture to bring its cultivated fat to market.) Fat in hand, Mission Barns can mix it with plant proteins. If you’re familiar with Impossible Foods, it uses soy to replicate the feel and look of ground beef and adds soy leghemoglobin, which is similar to the heme that gives meat its meaty flavor. Depending on the flavor and texture it’s trying to copy, Mission Bay uses pea protein for the meatballs and sausages, wheat for the bacon, and fava beans for the salami. “The plant-based meat industry has done pretty well with texture,” said Bianca Le, head of special projects at Mission Barns. “I think what they’re really missing is flavor and juiciness, which obviously is where the fat comes in.” But the fat is just the beginning. Mission Barns’ offerings not only have to taste good, but also can’t have an off-putting smell when they’re coming out of the package and when they’re cooking. The designers have to dial in the pH, which could degrade the proteins if not balanced. How the products behave on the stove or in the oven has to be familiar, too. “If someone has to relearn how to cook a piece of bacon or a meatball, then it’s never going to work,” said Zach Tyndall, the product development and culinary manager at Mission Barns. Lab-grown salamiMatt Simon When I pick up that piece of salami, it has to feel like the real thing, in more ways than one. Indeed, it’s greasy in the hand and has that tang of cured meat. It’s even been through a dry-aging process to reduce its moisture. “We treat this like we would a conventional piece of salami,” Tyndall said. Cultivated meat companies may also go more unconventional. “I also love the idea of taking their pork fat and putting it in a beef burger—what would happen if you did that?” said Barb Stuckey, chief new product strategy officer at Mattson, a food developer that has worked with many cultivated meat companies. “Mixing species, it’s not something we typically do. But with this technology, we can.” Of course, in this new frontier of food, the big question is: Who exactly is this for? Would a vegetarian or vegan eat cultured pork fat if it’s divorced from the cruelty of factory farming? Would meat-eaters be willing to give up the real thing for a facsimile? Mission Barns’ market research, Le said, found that its early adopters are actually flexitarians—people who eat mostly plant-based but partake in the occasional animal product. But Le adds that their first limited sale to the public in Berkeley included some people who called themselves vegetarians and vegans. There’s also the matter of quantifying how much of an environmental improvement cultivated fat might offer over industrial pork production. If scaled up, one benefit of cultivated food might be that companies can produce the stuff in more places—that is, instead of sprawling pig farms and slaughterhouses being relegated to rural areas, bioreactors could be run in cities, cutting down on the costs and emissions associated with shipping. Still, those factories would need energy to grow fat cells, though they could be run on renewable electricity. “We modeled our process at the large commercial scale, and then compared it to U.S. bacon production,” Le said. (The company would not offer specific details, saying it is in the process of patenting its technique.) “And we found that with renewable energy, we do significantly better in terms of greenhouse gas emissions.” Whether or not consumers bite, though, remains to be seen. The market for meat alternatives in the US has majorly softened of late: Beyond Meat, which makes plant-based products like burgers and sausages, has seen revenues drop significantly, in part because of consumers’ turn away from processed foods. But by licensing its technology elsewhere, Mission Barns’ strategy is to break into new markets beyond the United States. The challenges of cultivated meat go beyond the engineering once you get to the messaging and branding—telegraphing to consumers that they’re buying something that may in fact be partially meat. “When you buy chicken, you get 100 percent chicken,” Stuckey said. “I think a lot of people go into cultivated meat thinking what’s going to come onto the market is 100 percent cultivated chicken, and it’s not going to be that. It’s going to be something else.” Regardless of the trajectory of cultivated fat products, Dawn will continue mingling with llamas, soaking up the sunshine, and getting belly rubs in upstate New York—even as she makes plants taste more like pork.

Climate

Agriculture

Culture

Why is climate action stalling, not ramping up as Earth gets hotter?

As the impact of global warming becomes more obvious, you might expect countries to step up climate action and preparation, but we’re seeing the opposite happen

Climate campaigners march on the sidelines of the COP30 summit in Belém, BrazilPABLO PORCIUNCULA/AFP via Getty Images Ten years on from the Paris Agreement, we should be seeing a massive ratcheting up of climate action. Instead, the past four years have seen almost no progress – including at the latest COP summit, which failed to take any meaningful steps towards phasing out fossil fuels or ending deforestation. What’s going on? I don’t know the answer. But I’m starting to fear that rather than responding more rationally as the world heats up and the impacts get ever more serious, our responses are becoming more irrational. If that is the case, climate impacts are going to be much worse than they would otherwise be, and the prospect of a decline in our global civilisation seems more plausible than I have long thought. Let’s start by going back to the Paris Agreement of 2015. The whole idea of an international climate agreement under which every country sets its own targets for limiting greenhouse emissions seemed ludicrous to me. As did the idea of setting an “aspirational” target of 1.5°C that was wildly disconnected from what countries were planning to do. Supporters claimed this would be solved by a “ratchet mechanism”, under which countries would progressively increase their targets. I wasn’t convinced. I came away from Paris regarding it as a gigantic greenwashing exercise. My expectation was that it would have little immediate impact, but as the effects of warming became more obvious, action would start to ramp up. In other words, reason would eventually prevail. So far, the opposite has happened. In the lead-up to Paris, in October 2015, the Climate Action Tracker project estimated that the world was heading for warming of around 3.6°C by 2100, based on current policies and action. By 2021, that estimate had been revised down to around 2.6°C. That’s a massive improvement − it seemed Paris was working. But the latest Climate Action Tracker report ahead of the COP30 summit makes for grim reading. For the fourth year in a row there has been “little to no measurable progress”. “Global progress is stalling,” the report says. “While a handful of countries are making genuine progress, their efforts are counterbalanced by others delaying, or rolling back climate policies.” In fact, an astonishing 95 per cent of countries missed this year’s deadline for updating their targets under that ratchet mechanism. Yes, renewable energy generation is growing much faster than predicted. But this is being counterbalanced by the huge sums being poured into fossil fuels. Cheap solar alone isn’t going to save us. For one thing, negative feedback effects kick in: the more solar there is, the less profitable it is to install more. For another, generating green electricity is the easy part – we’re not making nearly enough progress on the hard things, such as farming, flying and steel-making. What’s more, the problem isn’t just the failure to slash emissions. We’re not preparing to cope with what’s coming, either. We’re still building cities on sinking land next to rising seas. “Adaptation progress is either too slow, has stalled, or is heading in the wrong direction,” said an April report by the UK’s Climate Change Committee – and the picture is similar elsewhere. The big question is why climate action is stalling instead of ramping up further. In some countries, it’s obviously due to the election of politicians who don’t see climate change as a priority or unashamedly deny it, as reflected by the US withdrawing from the Paris Agreement. Even governments that say climate is a priority are doing less, however, seemingly on the basis that there are more urgent issues to deal with such as the cost of living crisis. Yet the cost of living crisis is in part a climate crisis, with extreme weather helping drive up food prices. As warming continues, the impact on food and the wider economy is only going to become more serious. Are we going to get to the point where governments say they can’t act on climate change because of the costs of dealing with major cities being inundated by rising seas? Are people’s fears about the state of the world going to make them keep voting for climate deniers despite pollsters telling us that most people worldwide want more climate action? The idea that that growing evidence will persuade leaders to come to their senses is looking ever more naive. We are, after all, in a strange multiverse where the US Centers for Disease Control is promoting antivax nonsense even as the country is about to lose its measles-free status, and where some politicians promote the idea that hurricanes were due to weather manipulation. After year after year of record-smashing heat, it’s never been more obvious that climate change is real and really bad. But perhaps that’s the problem. The philosopher Martha Nussbaum has argued that fear is a tremendously negative force that makes people abandon rationality and focus on their immediate welfare rather than the long-term good. And there is some evidence that environmental stresses make people behave irrationally. People tend to leap straight from “things are bad” to “we’re all doomed”. No, we aren’t doomed. But the longer it takes for reason to prevail, the worse the outcome will be. Maybe what we’re seeing is just a blip related to the pandemic fallout and Russia’s war on Ukraine − or maybe there’s something more worrying happening.

Climate

Crisis

Food

How to make data centers less thirsty

There’s a way to reduce both the climate and water harms of data centers: build them in places with lots of wind and solar energy.

Data centers are notoriously thirsty. Researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have found that, in 2023, the facilities consumed roughly 17 billion gallons of water for their operations in the U.S. alone. But that’s only a small part of the picture: A much, much larger share of data center water-intensity is indirect, a byproduct of the facilities’ enormous appetites for energy. That’s because most power plants themselves require huge amounts of water to operate. This off-site, indirect water consumption amounted to a whopping 211 billion gallons in the Berkeley lab’s 2023 tally — well over 10 times the direct on-site usage. As Silicon Valley continues to pour hundreds of billions of dollars into artificial intelligence and demand for data centers grows, these water needs are only going to grow in tandem. However, new research from Cornell University shows that there’s a way to mitigate both the climate and water footprints of these facilities: build them in places with lots of wind and solar energy. “Location really matters,” said Fengqi You, an energy systems engineering professor at Cornell and co-author of the new study. Where companies choose to locate their data centers could alter their combined environmental footprints by a factor of up to 100. In the course of their operations, data centers use water as a coolant. Energy-hungry servers generate substantial heat, and water circulates through cooling systems to prevent the equipment from overheating and breaking down. But substantial amounts of water are also used indirectly through the generation of electricity to run the facilities. Thermoelectric power plants, regardless of whether they use coal, gas, or nuclear material, use that fuel to generate heat that converts water into steam, which is then used to spin a turbine and generate electricity. And since hydroelectric plants typically store large volumes of water in reservoirs behind dams, there is water loss there as well, as water continually evaporates from the surface of reservoirs. All told, water use during power generation can be responsible for more than 70 percent of a data center’s total water consumption, according to the new Cornell research. “That’s why the electricity power grid mix is very critical,” said You. You and his co-authors examined the energy and water use of data centers across the country to project where future investments should be made to reduce environmental impacts. The study assumes that the data center boom, which is being fueled by staggering levels of investment in artificial intelligence, is unlikely to slow down anytime soon. Against that backdrop, the question the study then poses is: Where in the country is the most environmentally sustainable place to build a data center? The researchers considered both the direct and indirect uses of energy and water as a result of building a data center in a specific location. The most promising region they identified might turn heads: bone-dry West Texas. But because the region is sparsely populated, has groundwater that can be drawn on for use as a coolant, and produces ample wind energy, it scored highest on both energy and water stress metrics. In fact, the grid-related water footprint in West Texas is among the lowest in the country, thanks to the large amount of wind energy produced, according to the study. “From an energy and water efficiency perspective, the states that have enough dry renewables will be the best choice,” said You, adding that Montana, Nebraska, and South Dakota all appear to be prime locations for future AI servers, alongside the Lone Star State. Conversely, most parts of the Pacific Northwest didn’t score as well because of the region’s reliance on hydropower. Although the cost of electricity is low in the area, the associated loss of water through power generation means that building more data centers is likely to have a substantially larger water footprint than it would in other parts of the country. Another recent study from researchers at Purdue University came to a similar conclusion. They looked at the availability of water across the country and mapped out how that might change over time, particularly as climate change makes some regions hotter and drier. The researchers also examined the water impact of existing Google data centers and found that the majority were located in areas with low water stress. “Companies absolutely take the environment into consideration in their decisions — not just the economic factor,” said Yi Ding, one of the authors of the paper and an electrical and computer engineering professor at Purdue. “We infer that Google already somewhat considered water stress because they put most of the data centers in low-stress regions.” Texas already has more than 400 data centers located in the state, second only to Virginia. The state’s grid infrastructure, potential for renewables, and availability of cheap land has made it an attractive proposition for tech companies. But the other states identified by the Cornell study as having a small environmental footprint — Nebraska, South Dakota, and Montana — have just 70 or so data centers combined, out of more than at least 4,200 nationally. That’s because a number of other factors, such as the policy environment and infrastructure considerations, are deterring companies from building new facilities there. But if those states geared their policymaking toward attracting data centers, it could make a difference, You said. This story was originally published by Grist with the headline How to make data centers less thirsty on Nov 24, 2025.

Climate

Energy

Water

Suggested Viewing

Beyond the Soil

Beyond the Soil is a short, poetic documentary which explores the emotional impact of climate change on farmers and ranchers who are on the frontlines of the megadrought in the Rocky Mountain West, and their innovation and resilience in the face of ecological crisis.

Climate

Food

A Whale's Worth

The Canary Islands are a whale Paradise. Their waters hold more than a third of the world’s species, making it the most important enclave in the European Union, and one of the most relevant globally.Today, this paradise is being threatened by different human pressures, such as boat collisions, plastic consumption and climate change. This struggle aggravates their mortality each year and makes us face ourselves as the ones responsible for their survival, forcing us to rethink how much we value these animals currently.How much is a whale worth? Can you put a price on the life of such a majestic animal? How can we estimate that value? How has the value that human beings give to whales changed throughout history? What are whales used and needed for?To answer all these questions, Natacha Aguilar, an eminent Canarian scientist and whale expert, backed up by a group of scientists and non-profit organizations, will guide us in a spectacular journey through time and space to discover the never-told stories of the lives of these animals.

Animals

Culture

Climate

The Invisible Mammal - The Bat Rescuer

Bats are struggling to survive, specifically in North America, where white nose syndrome is causing a sharp decline of certain species. Pertinent issues: climate change, habitat destruction, what can humans must do to prevent extinction.

Animals

Climate

Extinction

Living with Landslides

This film documents the devastating costs of landslides to both private property owners and taxpayers, and offers solutions. Climate change means landslides will only get worse.

Land Use

Education

Climate

Inside The Grand Canyon

This guerrilla style documentary film captures a Colorado River rafting expedition through the Grand Canyon. Exhilarating and sometimes dangerous expeditions like this are not often considered when discussing global climate change but could be helpful to enlighten more folks about the changes to our planet. This rafting trip will soon be a thing of the past with record draughts continuing due to ongoing global climate change caused largely by humans. This is just a tiny slice of natures many warning signs of things to come. We find ourselves in a world of ongoing disbelief and hesitation in lieu of planning for the clear and present dangers from climate change. The Colorado River has already reached devastating levels for communities that depend on the water and electrical power resource. Government study in 2022 showed that Lake Powell could reach ""dead pool"" by 2023. There is no plan to mitigate the catastrophe that will leave over a million and a half people with no electricity.

Water

Climate

Sustainable

Cookies help us run our site more efficiently.

GoGreenNation news

Trump’s Election Is a Disaster for the Climate—and an Opportunity

Related News

Drought killer: California storms fill reservoirs, build up Sierra snowpack

Indigenous People Reflect On What It Meant To Participate In COP30 Climate Talks

This Pig’s Bacon Was Delicious—and She’s Alive and Well

Why is climate action stalling, not ramping up as Earth gets hotter?

How to make data centers less thirsty

Suggested Viewing

Beyond the Soil

A Whale's Worth

The Invisible Mammal - The Bat Rescuer

Living with Landslides

Inside The Grand Canyon

Join us to forge
a sustainable future

sign up for our mailing list to stay informed on the latest films and environmental headlines.

Cookies help us run our site more efficiently.

Trump’s Election Is a Disaster for the Climate—and an Opportunity

Related News

Drought killer: California storms fill reservoirs, build up Sierra snowpack

Indigenous People Reflect On What It Meant To Participate In COP30 Climate Talks

This Pig’s Bacon Was Delicious—and She’s Alive and Well

Why is climate action stalling, not ramping up as Earth gets hotter?

How to make data centers less thirsty

Suggested Viewing

Beyond the Soil

A Whale's Worth

The Invisible Mammal - The Bat Rescuer

Living with Landslides

Inside The Grand Canyon

Join us to forgea sustainable future

sign up for our mailing list to stay informed on the latest films and environmental headlines.

Join us to forge
a sustainable future