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UNESCO Designates 26 New Biosphere Reserves Amid Biodiversity Challenges and Climate Change

The U.N. cultural agency UNESCO has designated 26 new biosphere reserves

An Indonesian archipelago that's home to three-fourths of Earth's coral species, a stretch of Icelandic coast with 70% of the country's plant life and an area along Angola's Atlantic coast featuring savannahs, forests and estuaries are among 26 new UNESCO-designated biosphere reserves.The United Nations cultural agency says the reserves — 785 sites in 142 countries, designated since 1971 — are home to some of the planet’s richest and most fragile ecosystems. But biosphere reserves encompass more than strictly protected nature reserves; they're expanded to include areas where people live and work, and the designation requires that scientists, residents and government officials work together to balance conservation and research with local economic and cultural needs.“The concept of biosphere reserves is that biodiversity conservation is a pillar of socioeconomic development” and can contribute to the economy, said António Abreu, head of the program, adding that conflict and misunderstanding can result if local communities are left out of decision-making and planning. The new reserves, in 21 countries, were announced Saturday in Hangzhou, China, where the program adopted a 10-year strategic action plan that includes studying the effects of climate change, Abreu said. The new reserves include a 52,000-square-mile (135,000-square-kilometer) area in the Indonesian archipelago, Raja Ampat, home to over 75% of earth’s coral species as well as rainforests and rare endangered sea turtles. The economy depends on fishing, aquaculture, small-scale agriculture and tourism, UNESCO said.On Iceland's west coast, the Snæfellsnes Biosphere Reserve's landscape includes volcanic peaks, lava fields, wetlands, grasslands and the Snæfellsjökull glacier. The 1,460-square-kilometer (564 square-mile) reserve is an important sanctuary for seabirds, seals and over 70% of Iceland's plant life — including 330 species of wildflowers and ferns. Its population of more than 4,000 people relies on fishing, sheep farming and tourism.And in Angola, the new Quiçama Biosphere Reserve, along 206 kilometers (128 miles) of Atlantic coast is a “sanctuary for biodiversity” within its savannahs, forests, flood plains, estuaries and islands, according to UNESCO. It's home to elephants, manatees, sea turtles and more than 200 bird species. Residents' livelihoods include livestock herding, farming, fishing, honey production.Residents are important partners in protecting biodiversity within the reserves, and even have helped identify new species, said Abreu, the program's leader. Meanwhile, scientists also are helping to restore ecosystems to benefit the local economy, he said.For example, in the Philippines, the coral reefs around Pangatalan Island were severely damaged because local fishermen used dynamite to find depleted fish populations. Scientists helped design a structure to help coral reefs regrow and taught fishermen to raise fish through aquaculture so the reefs could recover.“They have food and they have also fish to sell in the markets,” said Abreu.In the African nation of São Tomé and Príncipe, a biosphere reserve on Príncipe Island led to restoration of mangroves, which help buffer against storm surges and provide important habitat, Abreu said.Ecotourism also has become an important industry, with biosphere trails and guided bird-watching tours. A new species of owl was identified there in recent years. This year, a biosphere reserve was added for the island of São Tomé, making the country the first entirely within a reserve. Climate and environmental concerns At least 60% of the UNESCO biosphere reserves have been affected by extreme weather tied to climate change, which is caused primarily by the burning of fossil fuels such as coal and gas, including extreme heat and drought and sea-level rise, Abreu said.The agency is using satellite imagery and computer modeling to monitor changes in coastal zones and other areas, and is digitizing its historical databases, Abreu said. The information will be used to help determine how best to preserve and manage the reserves.Some biosphere reserves also are under pressure from environmental degradation.In Nigeria, for example, habitat for a dwindling population of critically endangered African forest elephants is under threat as cocoa farmers expand into Omo Forest Reserve, a protected rainforest and one of Africa’s oldest and largest UNESCO Biosphere Reserves. The forest is also important to help combat climate change.The Trump administration in July announced that the U.S. would withdraw from UNESCO as of December 2026, just as it did during his first administration, saying U.S. involvement is not in the national interest. The U.S. has 47 biosphere reserves, most in federal protected areas.The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find the AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Photos You Should See – Sept. 2025

Climate
Agriculture
Food

A ‘coordinated campaign of deception’: Philly sues 2 companies over misleading recycling labels

The lawsuit targets SC Johnson, owner of Ziploc bags, and Bimbo Bakeries, the country's biggest bread and snack food manufacturer.

Look at the packaging of any food or consumer item in the U.S., and there’s a good chance you’ll see a black-and-white decal: the iconic “chasing arrows” recycling symbol, along with the web address how2recycle.info. As you might guess, the labels are meant to tell consumers how they can recycle the boxes, wrappers, and cans that they buy. They’re designed by an organization called How2Recycle, which sells its labels to hundreds of companies across the U.S. It’s not clear, however, whether products featuring the How2Recycle labels are actually recyclable in practice. This problem is at the center of a new lawsuit. On Wednesday, the city of Philadelphia sued two major companies that use the How2Recycle label and other recycling symbols on their plastic bags: SC Johnson, which owns Ziploc, and Bimbo Bakeries USA, the country’s largest commercial baking company and the owner of brands such as Oroweat and Sara Lee. According to the 47-page complaint, SC Johnson and Bimbo have engaged in a “coordinated campaign of deception” to convince consumers that their plastic bags are recyclable. The companies’ practices “violate the law, deceive consumers, and contribute to environmental pollution and the disruption of recycling operations, costing the city thousands of dollars every year in remediation,” Philadelphia’s city solicitor, Renee Garcia, said in a statement. Oroweat bread, a brand owned by Bimbo Bakeries USA, and Ziploc bags, owned by SC Johnson. Geri Lavrov / Getty Images; Kevin Carter / Getty Images The complaint is part of a recent surge in state-, city-, and county-level litigation related to plastics recycling claims. Right now there are pending lawsuits from  Baltimore; California; Connecticut; L.A. County; and New York state. A lawsuit from Minnesota against Walmart and the manufacturer of Hefty trash bags was settled last year. But Philadelphia’s suit is the first to name-check How2Recycle, whose labels often instruct consumers to deposit used plastic bags at “store drop-off” locations, like at Walmart and Target stores. According to the complaint, most or all Ziploc and Bimbo products sold in Philadelphia featured these labels as of 2024, sometimes in addition to other recycling indicators and instructions.  The city says these labels mislead consumers into thinking they can buy plastic bags without creating waste, as long as they try to recycle them. This allegedly contravenes a consumer protection ordinance that Philadelphia enacted in 2024, which empowers the city to investigate deceptive business practices without waiting for the Pennsylvania attorney general or district attorney to do so. What’s the connection between plastics and climate change?Plastics are made from fossil fuels and cause greenhouse gas emissions at every stage of their lifespan, including during the extraction of oil and gas, during processing at petrochemical refineries, and upon disposal — especially if they’re incinerated. If the plastics industry were a country, it would have the world’s fourth-largest climate footprint, based on data published last year by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Research suggests that plastics are responsible for about 4 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. But this is likely an underestimate due to significant data gaps: Most countries lack greenhouse gas information on their plastics use and disposal, and the data that is available tends to focus on plastic production and specific disposal methods. Scientists are beginning to explore other ways plastics may contribute to climate change. Research suggests that plastics release greenhouse gases when exposed to UV radiation, which means there could be a large, underappreciated amount of climate pollution emanating from existing plastic products and litter. Marine microplastics may also be inhibiting the ocean’s ability to store carbon. And plastic particles in the air and on the Earth’s surface could be trapping heat or reflecting it — more research is needed.Holly Kaufman, a senior fellow at the nonprofit World Resources Institute, said it’s obvious that plastics are using up more than their fair share of the carbon budget, the amount of carbon dioxide the world can emit without surpassing 1.5 or 2 degrees Celsius (2.7 or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming. Plastics have “a major climate impact that has just not been incorporated anywhere,” she said — including the U.N.’s plastics treaty. In the context of plastics recycling lawsuits, “it’s the first time a city passed a law to give themselves the power to protect their citizens, protect their environment, from false claims,” said Jan Dell, who founded the nonprofit The Last Beach Cleanup and has launched many initiatives against misleading recycling labels. “They passed a law and now they’re enforcing the law.” Philadelphia’s lawsuit cites research showing that most Americans believe the chasing arrows label used in any context means that a product is recyclable, and that recyclable products can be placed in their curbside recycling bins. But this is not the case. Philadelphia’s curbside recycling program, like most cities’, does not accept plastic bags because it is not economically practical to separate them and process them using special machinery. According to a Department of Energy study published in 2022, only 2 percent of the U.S.’s low-density polyethylene, or LDPE — the type of filmy plastic used in bags — was recycled in 2019. The rate may be even lower for SC Johnson and Bimbo’s products: At an industry conference in 2018, an executive from SC Johnson said that only 0.2 percent of Ziploc bags are ever successfully turned into something new. There isn’t an end market for recycled plastic film because “it is perceived as inefficient and unprofitable,” the executive said. Instead, plastic film — a category that includes bags as well as other thin plastic wrappers — becomes a contaminant in recycling equipment. It can jam machinery multiple times per day, causing facility-wide shutdowns so that workers can cut the film out using machetes. Philadelphia says this problem has increased waste and operating costs for its recycling plants. The store drop-off labels provided by How2Recycle do not circumvent the shortcomings of curbside recycling, according to Philadelphia’s complaint. It says that drop-off boxes are “masquerading as recycling collection systems” but “actually function as trash cans in disguise.” Read Next Amazon says its plastic packaging can be recycled. An investigation finds it usually isn’t. Joseph Winters The complaint cites a 2023 investigation in which ABC News used tracking devices to follow bundles of plastic deposited in store drop-off bins across the U.S. The investigation found that only 4 of 46 trackers ended up at U.S. facilities that recycle plastic bags. Most of the rest went to landfills, incinerators, or transfer stations that don’t recycle plastic bags or send them to facilities that do. One of the trackers was dropped off at a Target location in Philadelphia. It went to a waste-management transfer station and was likely mixed with other trash to be burned or landfilled. Plastic in landfills breaks down into smaller and smaller pieces that leach chemicals and contaminate the environment. Other investigations from Bloomberg Green, Environment America, U.S. Public Interest Research Group, and The Last Beach Cleanup have shown similar results. In 2023, the CEO of a company that had compiled a directory of plastic film drop-off locations abruptly took it offline, citing a lack of “real commitment” from the plastics industry. “There’s more of an illusion of stuff getting recycled than there actually is,” she told ABC News. “I just couldn’t be a part of it anymore.” (Ziploc packaging continued to direct people to this “effectively abandoned domain,” according to the Philadelphia complaint.) Peter Blair, policy and advocacy director for the zero-waste nonprofit Just Zero, said Philadelphia’s lawsuit may be stronger than previous ones brought at the state or local level because it’s backed by the city’s consumer protection ordinance, and not just a set of green marketing guidelines from the Federal Trade Commission, or FTC. Claims made on the basis of the FTC guidelines usually require evidence of financial harm to consumers at the point of purchase — in other words, that they bought one product over another one explicitly because of its recycling labels. Philadelphia’s ordinance is broader, he said, and doesn’t rely on demonstrating that consumer connection.  Blair added that the Philadelphia lawsuit is the most direct challenge to the How2Recycle store drop-off label that he’s seen. “Let’s be clear,” he told Grist: “The How2Recycle label’s primary purpose is not to help consumers navigate recycling, but to protect the illusion that plastic recycling works.” How2Recycle did not respond to Grist’s request for comment. In a 2020 report, the organization said that store drop-off only had “limited” promise to deal with the waste produced by plastic film. It announced in July that it would soon roll out new designs for its store drop-off labels featuring a take-back receptacle instead of the chasing arrows, but the designs still include the web address how2recycle.info. The current version of How2Recycle’s store drop-off label, shown on the side of a box of Nature Valley granola bars. Courtesy of Jan Dell SC Johnson also did not respond to a request for comment. Bimbo said it had not yet been served the complaint but that the company is “committed to zero-waste across our operations, including consumer packaging, and to being a strong partner in every community we serve.”  Shortly before Philadelphia’s complaint was filed, Bimbo terminated a mail-in recycling program with a partner organization called TerraCycle, which was also named in the suit. TerraCycle said the lawsuit inaccurately described its program and that it “has always guaranteed that we recycle all the accepted waste sent to us.” The organization said its label, a stylized infinity sign, “was consciously designed to avoid confusion with the triangle recycling logo.”  Philadelphia’s lawsuit cites numerous other recycling claims made by SC Johnson and Bimbo, including web pages claiming that Ziploc bags are recyclable at “18,000-plus stores around the United States” and therefore “don’t need to end up in landfills,” and that recycling via a mail-in program would make “all” of Bimbo’s packaging “sustainable by 2025.” The city is requesting an injunction ordering Bimbo and SC Johnson to stop marketing their plastic film as recyclable, as well as civil penalties and other payments for harms that may have been caused by the companies’ recyclability claims. This could include, for example, cost increases to the municipal recycling program linked to contamination with plastic film. Dell said other government bodies should follow Philadelphia’s lead. She’s settled two plastics recycling-related lawsuits — one with TerraCycle and eight major consumer product brands, and another with a supermarket — but told Grist that “private litigation is hard” and “should not be relied upon to keep companies honest.”  The lawsuit will “hopefully motivate other cities to go, ‘We should do that too because it’s hurting our recycling systems,’” she added. This story was originally published by Grist with the headline A ‘coordinated campaign of deception’: Philly sues 2 companies over misleading recycling labels on Sep 26, 2025.

Food
Business
Climate

Scientists Find Brain Circuit That Locks Alcohol Users in Addiction Cycle

Researchers at Scripps Research have shown in an animal model that the brain learns to pursue alcohol as a way to find relief, rather than only for its rewarding effects. What drives a person to keep drinking alcohol despite the harm it causes to their health, relationships, and overall well-being? New research from Scripps Research [...]

Scientists have pinpointed a hidden brain circuit that may explain why withdrawal drives people back to alcohol. Credit: ShutterstockResearchers at Scripps Research have shown in an animal model that the brain learns to pursue alcohol as a way to find relief, rather than only for its rewarding effects. What drives a person to keep drinking alcohol despite the harm it causes to their health, relationships, and overall well-being? New research from Scripps Research points to a possible answer: a small midline brain region helps shape how animals learn to drink in order to relieve the stress and discomfort of withdrawal. In a study recently published in Biological Psychiatry: Global Open Science, the Scripps Research team examined brain activity in the paraventricular nucleus of the thalamus (PVT) in rats. They discovered that when rats linked environmental cues with alcohol’s ability to ease withdrawal symptoms, activity in this brain region increased, reinforcing relapse behaviors. By uncovering this pathway, the study highlights one of addiction’s most persistent aspects—using alcohol not for enjoyment but to avoid suffering—and may pave the way for new therapies for substance use disorders (SUDs) and related conditions such as anxiety. “What makes addiction so hard to break is that people aren’t simply chasing a high,” says Friedbert Weiss, professor of neuroscience at Scripps Research and senior author of the study. “They’re also trying to get rid of powerful negative states, like the stress and anxiety of withdrawal. This work shows us which brain systems are responsible for locking in that kind of learning, and why it can make relapse so persistent.” “This brain region just lit up in every rat that had gone through withdrawal-related learning,” says co-senior author Hermina Nedelescu of Scripps Research. “It shows us which circuits are recruited when the brain links alcohol with relief from stress—and that could be a game-changer in how we think about relapse.” From behavior to brain maps About 14.5 million people in the United States are estimated to have alcohol use disorder, a condition that includes a spectrum of harmful drinking behaviors. Similar to other forms of substance addiction, it is marked by recurring cycles of withdrawal, abstinence, and relapse. In 2022, researchers Weiss and Nedelescu investigated these processes in rats to better understand how learning shapes addiction in the brain. At the outset, the animals linked alcohol with pleasurable effects and were motivated to drink more. But as they went through repeated periods of withdrawal and relapse, the drive to drink became much stronger. Once the rats learned that alcohol could relieve the distress of withdrawal—an example of negative reinforcement, or the easing of a “negative hedonic state”—they pursued alcohol more intensely and continued seeking it even in challenging conditions. “When rats learn to associate environmental stimuli or contexts with the experience of relief, they end up with an incredibly powerful urge to seek alcohol in the presence of that stimuli –even if conditions are introduced that require great effort to engage in alcohol seeking,” says Weiss. “That is, these rats seek alcohol even if that behavior is punished.” In this study, the researchers set out to identify the specific networks of brain cells that drive the learning process in which environmental cues become linked to the relief of a negative hedonic state. Using advanced whole-brain imaging in rats, they analyzed cellular activity to determine which regions became more responsive to alcohol-associated cues. Four groups of rats were compared: one group that had experienced withdrawal and learned that alcohol reduced a negative hedonic state, and three separate control groups that had not developed this association. Although multiple brain regions showed heightened activity in the withdrawal-experienced group, one region in particular stood out: the paraventricular nucleus of the thalamus (PVT), a structure already recognized for its involvement in stress and anxiety. “In retrospect, this makes a lot of sense,” says Nedelescu. “The unpleasant effects of alcohol withdrawal are strongly associated with stress, and alcohol is providing relief from the agony of that stressful state.” The researchers hypothesize that this negative hedonic state, and the activation of the PVT in the brain as a response, is critical for how the brain learns and perpetuates addiction. A better understanding of addiction The implications of the new study extend well beyond alcohol, the researchers say. Environmental stimuli conditioned to negative reinforcement—the drive to act in order to escape pain or stress—is a universal feature of the brain, and can drive human behavior beyond substance use disorders such as anxiety disorders, fear-conditioning and traumatic avoidance learning. “This work has potential applications not only for alcohol addiction, but also other disorders where people get trapped in harmful cycles,” says Nedelescu. Future research will zoom in even further. Nedelescu and colleagues at Scripps Research want to expand the study to females and to study neurochemicals released in the PVT when subjects encounter environments associated with the experience of this relief from a negative hedonic state. If they can pinpoint molecules that are involved, it could open new avenues for drug development by targeting those molecules. For now, the new study underscores a key shift in how basic scientists think about addiction. “As psychologists, we’ve long known that addiction isn’t just about chasing pleasure—it’s about escaping those negative hedonic states,” says Weiss. “This study shows us where in the brain that learning takes root, which is a step forward.” Reference: “Recruitment of Neuronal Populations in the Paraventricular Thalamus of Alcohol-Seeking Rats With Withdrawal-Related Learning Experience” by Hermina Nedelescu, Elias Meamari, Nami Rajaei, Alexus Grey, Ryan Bullard, Nathan O’Connor, Nobuyoshi Suto and Friedbert Weiss, 5 August 2025, Biological Psychiatry Global Open Science.DOI: 10.1016/j.bpsgos.2025.100578 This work was supported by funding from the National Institutes of Health (Ruth L. Kirschstein Institutional National Research Service Award T32AA007456, K01 DA054449, R01 AA027555, and R01 AA023183). Never miss a breakthrough: Join the SciTechDaily newsletter.

Animals
Health
Science

How AI can help detect pests early and reduce pesticide use in cotton fields

Precision agriculture uses tools and technologies such as GPS and sensors to monitor, measure, and respond to changes within a farm field in real time. This includes using artificial intelligence technologies for tasks such as helping farmers apply pesticides only where and when they are needed. However, precision agriculture has not been widely implemented in many rural areas of the United States. We study smart communities, environmental health sciences, and health policy and community health, and we participated in a research project on AI and pesticide use in a rural Georgia agricultural community. Our team, led by Georgia Southern University and the City of Millen, with support from University of Georgia Cooperative Extension, local high schools and agriculture technology company FarmSense, is piloting AI-powered sensors to help cotton farmers optimize pesticide use. Georgia is one of the top cotton-producing states in the U.S., with cotton contributing nearly US$1 billion to the state’s economy in 2024. But only 13% of Georgia farmers use precision agriculture practices. Public-private-academic partnership Innovation drives economic growth, but access to it often stops at major city limits. Smaller and rural communities are frequently left out, lacking the funding, partnerships and technical resources that fuel progress elsewhere. At the same time, 75% of generative AI’s projected economic impact is concentrated in customer operations, marketing, software engineering and research and development, according to a 2023 McKinsey report. In contrast, applications of AI that improve infrastructure, food systems, safety and health remain underexplored. Yet smaller and rural communities are rich in potential—home to anchor institutions like small businesses, civic groups and schools that are deeply invested in their communities. And that potential could be tapped to develop AI applications that fall outside of traditional corporate domains. The Partnership for Innovation, a coalition of people and organizations from academia, government and industry, helps bridge that gap. Since its launch almost five years ago, the Partnership for Innovation has supported 220 projects across Georgia, South Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, Texas and Alabama, partnering with more than 300 communities on challenges from energy poverty to river safety. One Partnership for Innovation program provides seed funding and technical support for community research teams. This support enables local problem-solving that strengthens both research scholarship and community outcomes. The program has recently focused on the role of civic artificial intelligence – AI that supports communities and local governments. Our project on cotton field pesticide use is part of this program. Cotton pests and pesticides Our project in Jenkins County, Georgia, is testing that potential. Jenkins County, with a population of around 8,700, is among the top 25 cotton-growing counties in the state. In 2024, approximately 1.1 million acres of land in Georgia were planted with cotton, and based on the 2022 agricultural county profiles census, Jenkins County ranked 173rd out of the 765 counties producing cotton in the United States. The state benefits from fertile soils, a subtropical-to-temperate climate, and abundant natural resources, all of which support a thriving agricultural industry. But these same conditions also foster pests and diseases. Farmers in Jenkins County, like many farmers, face numerous insect infestations, including stink bugs, cotton bollworms, corn earworms, tarnished plant bugs and aphids. Farmers make heavy use of pesticides. Without precise data on the bugs, farmers end up using more pesticides than they likely need, risking residents’ health and adding costs. While there are some existing tools for integrated pest management, such as the Georgia Cotton Insect Advisor app, they are not widely adopted and are limited to certain bugs. Other methods, such as traditional manual scouting and using sticky traps, are labor-intensive and time-consuming, particularly in the hot summer climate. Our research team set out to combine AI-based early pest detection methods with existing integrated pest management practices and the insect advisor app. The goal was to significantly improve pest detection, decrease pesticide exposure levels and reduce insecticide use on cotton farms in Jenkins County. The work compares different insect monitoring methods and assesses pesticide levels in both the fields and nearby semi-urban areas. We selected eight large cotton fields operated by local farmers in Millen, four active and four control sites, to collect environmental samples before farmers began planting cotton and applying pesticides. The team was aided by a new AI-based insect monitoring system called the FlightSensor by FarmSense. The system uses a machine learning algorithm that was trained to recognize the unique wingbeats of each pest insect species. The specialized trap is equipped with infrared optical sensors that project an invisible infrared light beam – called a light curtain – across the entrance of a triangular tunnel. A sensor monitors the light curtain and uses the machine learning algorithm to identify each pest species as insects fly into the trap. FlightSensor provides information on the prevalence of targeted insects, giving farmers an alternative to traditional manual insect scouting. The information enables the farmers to adjust their pesticide-spraying frequency to match the need. What we’ve learned Here are three things we have learned so far: 1. Predictive pest control potential – AI tools can help farmers pinpoint exactly where pest outbreaks are likely—before they happen. That means they can treat only the areas that need it, saving time, labor and pesticide costs. It’s a shift from blanket spraying to precision farming – and it’s a skill farmers can use season after season. 2. Stronger decision-making for farmers – The preliminary results indicate that the proposed sensors can effectively monitor insect populations specific to cotton farms. Even after the sensors are gone, farmers who used them get better at spotting pests. That’s because the AI dashboards and mobile apps help them see how pest populations grow over time and respond to different field conditions. Researchers also have the ability to access this data remotely through satellite-based monitoring platforms on their computers, further enhancing the collaboration and learning. 3. Building local agtech talent – Training students and farmers on AI pest detection is doing more than protecting cotton crops. It’s building digital literacy, opening doors to agtech careers and preparing communities for future innovation. The same tools could help local governments manage mosquitoes and ticks and open up more agtech innovations. Blueprint for rural innovation By using AI to detect pests early and reduce pesticide use, the project aims to lower harmful residues in local soil and air while supporting more sustainable farming. This pilot project could be a blueprint for how rural communities use AI generally to boost agriculture, reduce public health risks, and build local expertise. Just as important, this work encourages more civic AI applications – grounded in real community needs – that others can adopt and adapt elsewhere. AI and innovation do not need to be urban or corporate to have a significant effect, nor do you need advanced technology degrees to be innovative. With the right partnerships, small towns, too, can harness innovations for economic and community growth. Debra Lam is a founding director of the Partnership for Inclusive Innovation and the Enterprise Innovation Institute at Georgia Institute of Technology. Atin Adhikari is a professor of biostatistics, epidemiology & environmental health sciences at Georgia Southern University. James E. Thomas is a senior lecturer in health policy & community health at Georgia Southern University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Precision agriculture uses tools and technologies such as GPS and sensors to monitor, measure, and respond to changes within a farm field in real time. This includes using artificial intelligence technologies for tasks such as helping farmers apply pesticides only where and when they are needed. However, precision agriculture has not been widely implemented in many rural areas of the United States. We study smart communities, environmental health sciences, and health policy and community health, and we participated in a research project on AI and pesticide use in a rural Georgia agricultural community. Our team, led by Georgia Southern University and the City of Millen, with support from University of Georgia Cooperative Extension, local high schools and agriculture technology company FarmSense, is piloting AI-powered sensors to help cotton farmers optimize pesticide use. Georgia is one of the top cotton-producing states in the U.S., with cotton contributing nearly US$1 billion to the state’s economy in 2024. But only 13% of Georgia farmers use precision agriculture practices. Public-private-academic partnership Innovation drives economic growth, but access to it often stops at major city limits. Smaller and rural communities are frequently left out, lacking the funding, partnerships and technical resources that fuel progress elsewhere. At the same time, 75% of generative AI’s projected economic impact is concentrated in customer operations, marketing, software engineering and research and development, according to a 2023 McKinsey report. In contrast, applications of AI that improve infrastructure, food systems, safety and health remain underexplored. Yet smaller and rural communities are rich in potential—home to anchor institutions like small businesses, civic groups and schools that are deeply invested in their communities. And that potential could be tapped to develop AI applications that fall outside of traditional corporate domains. The Partnership for Innovation, a coalition of people and organizations from academia, government and industry, helps bridge that gap. Since its launch almost five years ago, the Partnership for Innovation has supported 220 projects across Georgia, South Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, Texas and Alabama, partnering with more than 300 communities on challenges from energy poverty to river safety. One Partnership for Innovation program provides seed funding and technical support for community research teams. This support enables local problem-solving that strengthens both research scholarship and community outcomes. The program has recently focused on the role of civic artificial intelligence – AI that supports communities and local governments. Our project on cotton field pesticide use is part of this program. Cotton pests and pesticides Our project in Jenkins County, Georgia, is testing that potential. Jenkins County, with a population of around 8,700, is among the top 25 cotton-growing counties in the state. In 2024, approximately 1.1 million acres of land in Georgia were planted with cotton, and based on the 2022 agricultural county profiles census, Jenkins County ranked 173rd out of the 765 counties producing cotton in the United States. The state benefits from fertile soils, a subtropical-to-temperate climate, and abundant natural resources, all of which support a thriving agricultural industry. But these same conditions also foster pests and diseases. Farmers in Jenkins County, like many farmers, face numerous insect infestations, including stink bugs, cotton bollworms, corn earworms, tarnished plant bugs and aphids. Farmers make heavy use of pesticides. Without precise data on the bugs, farmers end up using more pesticides than they likely need, risking residents’ health and adding costs. While there are some existing tools for integrated pest management, such as the Georgia Cotton Insect Advisor app, they are not widely adopted and are limited to certain bugs. Other methods, such as traditional manual scouting and using sticky traps, are labor-intensive and time-consuming, particularly in the hot summer climate. Our research team set out to combine AI-based early pest detection methods with existing integrated pest management practices and the insect advisor app. The goal was to significantly improve pest detection, decrease pesticide exposure levels and reduce insecticide use on cotton farms in Jenkins County. The work compares different insect monitoring methods and assesses pesticide levels in both the fields and nearby semi-urban areas. We selected eight large cotton fields operated by local farmers in Millen, four active and four control sites, to collect environmental samples before farmers began planting cotton and applying pesticides. The team was aided by a new AI-based insect monitoring system called the FlightSensor by FarmSense. The system uses a machine learning algorithm that was trained to recognize the unique wingbeats of each pest insect species. The specialized trap is equipped with infrared optical sensors that project an invisible infrared light beam – called a light curtain – across the entrance of a triangular tunnel. A sensor monitors the light curtain and uses the machine learning algorithm to identify each pest species as insects fly into the trap. FlightSensor provides information on the prevalence of targeted insects, giving farmers an alternative to traditional manual insect scouting. The information enables the farmers to adjust their pesticide-spraying frequency to match the need. What we’ve learned Here are three things we have learned so far: 1. Predictive pest control potential – AI tools can help farmers pinpoint exactly where pest outbreaks are likely—before they happen. That means they can treat only the areas that need it, saving time, labor and pesticide costs. It’s a shift from blanket spraying to precision farming – and it’s a skill farmers can use season after season. 2. Stronger decision-making for farmers – The preliminary results indicate that the proposed sensors can effectively monitor insect populations specific to cotton farms. Even after the sensors are gone, farmers who used them get better at spotting pests. That’s because the AI dashboards and mobile apps help them see how pest populations grow over time and respond to different field conditions. Researchers also have the ability to access this data remotely through satellite-based monitoring platforms on their computers, further enhancing the collaboration and learning. 3. Building local agtech talent – Training students and farmers on AI pest detection is doing more than protecting cotton crops. It’s building digital literacy, opening doors to agtech careers and preparing communities for future innovation. The same tools could help local governments manage mosquitoes and ticks and open up more agtech innovations. Blueprint for rural innovation By using AI to detect pests early and reduce pesticide use, the project aims to lower harmful residues in local soil and air while supporting more sustainable farming. This pilot project could be a blueprint for how rural communities use AI generally to boost agriculture, reduce public health risks, and build local expertise. Just as important, this work encourages more civic AI applications – grounded in real community needs – that others can adopt and adapt elsewhere. AI and innovation do not need to be urban or corporate to have a significant effect, nor do you need advanced technology degrees to be innovative. With the right partnerships, small towns, too, can harness innovations for economic and community growth. Debra Lam is a founding director of the Partnership for Inclusive Innovation and the Enterprise Innovation Institute at Georgia Institute of Technology. Atin Adhikari is a professor of biostatistics, epidemiology & environmental health sciences at Georgia Southern University. James E. Thomas is a senior lecturer in health policy & community health at Georgia Southern University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Agriculture
Business
Climate

Trump Is Setting the National Parks Up to Fail

Workers say the real crisis is happening behind the scenes.

This summer, many of Americans’ fears about their national parks—that budget cuts and staffing shortages would lead to unsafe, or at least unpleasant, vacations—did not come to pass. Gates and visitor centers were open (with reduced hours) and toilets were usable (mostly). Visitors to the Grand Canyon who developed heat exhaustion were still rescued. To the public, a trip to the national parks must have seemed normal enough, down to tourists getting way too close to bison at Yellowstone.But rangers say the real crisis is happening beyond the trails and campgrounds, where visitors can’t see it. Park employees’ experiences, which several people described to me and dozens more have shared publicly, suggest that the Department of the Interior sacrificed long-term stewardship of American lands to maintain a veneer of normalcy for this summer’s crowds. “We are really pulling out all the stops to make sure that the impacts are being hidden,” an emergency-services ranger in the western United States told me. (She and other park employees I spoke with for this story requested anonymity, out of fear of losing their job.)The National Park Service lost about a quarter of its permanent staff to mass firings, buyouts, early retirements, and resignations this winter and spring. In April, Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum made the department’s priorities for the remaining staff clear: In an order, he declared that parks had to stay “open and accessible” and “provide the best customer service experience for all visitors.” Any facility closures or reduced hours would need to be approved by NPS and Department of Interior leadership in Washington. The order alluded to the general importance of conservation but showed little interest in research, monitoring, or maintenance.This work has always happened at the periphery of the public’s experience of national parks, but it’s what keeps both their natural and human-made features from deteriorating. National Park Service researchers conducted 28,000 studies from 2000 to 2016, working at 412 parks, historical sites, memorials, and battlefields at any given time. The studies help workers protect what’s inside park boundaries by spotting early signs of trouble in time to help, and by contributing to general knowledge about climate change, ecological restoration, and wildfires.All of that research required an army of employees, many of whom are now out of a job. Ryan Valdez, the senior director of conservation science at the nonprofit National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA), told me that the Park Service’s science arm, which once employed hundreds of people in land, water, air, wildlife, and climate-change programs, is “pretty much dismantled.” (The Department of the Interior declined to confirm this account.) The ranger in the West told me that her park lost its only wildlife biologist. According to the NPCA, Olympic National Park no longer has permanent fisheries biologists to help assess damage resulting from a nearby gas-and-diesel spill, and layoffs have left only one employee to oversee archaeology and cultural-resource protection for Alaska’s 23 park sites. NPS staff members from across the country have reported to Resistance Rangers, a group of off-duty and former rangers documenting cuts and policy changes within the NPS, that they were forced to pause their monitoring of tree health, glacier size, and other measures of ecological well-being. North Cascades National Park has no lead wildlife biologist to monitor bear movements (and wrangle human-bear conflicts), according to Save Our Parks, another advocacy group. The scientists still working at the parks haven’t reliably been doing science, either: In April, for instance, biologists in Yosemite were cleaning toilets.Preserving the parks’ ecologies in the face of climate change and heavy visitor traffic requires active work. Without the copious, current data collected through research, parks workers may be caught off guard by environmental and ecological upheavals. Researchers help track and maintain the well-being of imperiled species in the parks: bats in Acadia, grizzly bears in Glacier, numerous native-plant species in Everglades. Stephanie Adams, the conservation-programs director at NPCA, told me that the cuts to science and conservation work threaten such species’ long-term health. Any one species’ loss could trigger collapse up and down an ecosystem’s food chain—a crisis that park workers will be poorly equipped to adapt to if they can’t see it coming.The Department of the Interior disputed its employees’ characterizations of this summer’s staffing levels. “Conservation and access are not mutually exclusive, they are the foundation of the NPS mission, and we are achieving both,” Elizabeth Peace, a spokesperson for the department, told me in an email. She also wrote that “science, monitoring and preservation efforts remain active across the National Park System,” and that staffing levels at the national parks this summer were “on par with previous years.” Independent accounts, though, have documented delays in seasonal hiring for the busy summer months, and a hiring freeze across most of the federal government is still in effect, keeping vacant positions at the National Park Service unfilled.[Read: The national-park tours of Trump’s dreams]Meanwhile, parks across the country are in need of crucial maintenance. Before this year, NPS already had a long-standing and growing maintenance backlog for roads, bridges, historic structures, campgrounds, and trails; last year, the agency estimated that needed repairs would cost nearly $23 billion. And the bill keeps mounting: Take this summer’s Dragon Bravo Fire, which burned more than 145,000 acres, destroying a historic lodge, a visitor center, and other park buildings in the Grand Canyon. Besides emergencies, the parks’ natural landscapes need care too. But NPS’s ability to provide it could be endangered by the rollback of the Inflation Reduction Act, which funded projects such as salt-marsh restoration on the East Coast and a hazardous-landfill cleanup in Yosemite. According to recent reporting by The New York Times, 30 parks reported cuts to maintenance this year.The more that projects pile up without being addressed, the greater the likelihood that NPS simply won’t have the money or workers to keep the parks in a safe condition. The Trump administration’s proposed budget for the 2026 fiscal year—which suggested $1.2 billion in cuts to NPS funding, the largest in the history of the agency—would only worsen the parks’ infrastructure problems. (Congress has yet to approve a final budget; the House Appropriations Committee proposed $176 million in cuts to NPS operations and $37 million in cuts to construction funding.) The parks risk remaining open with neglected landscapes, ragged trails, and disappearing biodiversity.The national parks, perhaps more than any other American project, represent a hopeful commitment to the future. The 1916 Organic Act, which established the NPS, states that parks must “provide for the enjoyment” of the scenery, wildlife, and natural and historic objects within them and also leave them “unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.” A fully functioning National Park Service doesn’t just serve a given summer’s visitors. It also ensures that the unique flora, fauna, and geologic wonders under its care survive in the decades to come, despite the stresses of climate change, invasive species, and the parks’ own popularity.[Read: A new danger at America’s national parks]But the rangers I spoke with fear that their mission is unraveling. “Part of what we do is making sure that our kids will be able to experience the same thing, that we’re protecting these places responsibly for the next generation,” one ranger, who was fired in February and reinstated in late March, told me. “We are losing the ability to do that.”

Crisis
Climate
Food

This Invasive Vampire Fish Is Helping Researchers Understand the Human Nervous System in Jaw-Dropping Ways

The sea lamprey looks like it’s from another planet, but this ancient creature has a surprising amount in common with humans

This Invasive Vampire Fish Is Helping Researchers Understand the Human Nervous System in Jaw-Dropping Ways The sea lamprey looks like it’s from another planet, but this ancient creature has a surprising amount in common with humans A sea lamprey shows off its nightmarish mouth. NOAA Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory via Wikimedia Commons under CC By-SA 2.0 Key takeaways: Sea lampreys and research Sea lampreys have large neurons and synapses, making them ideal for neuroscience research. Scientists study the creatures to learn more about how we might recover from spinal cord injuries. With a suction-cup mouth and over 100 teeth, the sea lamprey has earned the nickname "vampire fish" and comparisons to sea monsters. Sea lampreys are one of the world’s most ancient fish species, killing prey by latching their suction-cup mouth onto a fish's skin and rasping away the fish's flesh with a rough tongue to feed on blood and bodily fluids. Sea lampreys sound like something from a horror movie, but the creatures have been crucial to almost two centuries of neuroscience research. Neuroscientists study sea lamprey spinal cells, which the animals can regenerate if their spinal cord is damaged, as a model to understand the human nervous system, spinal cord injuries and neurological disease. The evolution of human brains and nervous systems is also closely tied to these alien-like creatures. Neurologists and zoologists began studying lampreys in the 1830s, examining their nerve cells to understand how the spinal cord works. Lamprey research took off after 1959, when biologists first described lampreys’ ability to regenerate spinal cord neurons and eventually swim after spinal damage. Sea lampreys are ideal for neuroscientists to work with because the animals have large nerve cells and synapses, making observation easier than in other species. “The synapses are so big that you can see them, and you can record from them and access them very easily,” says Jennifer Morgan, neuroscientist at the University of Chicago’s Marine Biological Laboratory. The creatures also have a similar molecular and genetic toolkit to humans, she says, which can make it simpler to translate research from lampreys to humans and find tools that work in both species. Lampreys thrive in different types of water, all over the globe. “[Lampreys] have been found on every continent except for Antarctica,” says Morgan, whose lab uses sea lampreys for research. “So, they’re very hearty animals and super easy to maintain.” The sea lamprey (Petromyzon marinus) filter feeds as a larva but becomes parasitic once it reaches adulthood, latching onto fish and feeding on their blood. They can feed on trout, salmon and other large, commercially important fish, and one sea lamprey can destroy up to 40 pounds of fish per year. Much of the supply of sea lampreys for research comes from the Great Lakes, where lampreys wreak havoc on the fishing industry. Although the species is native to the Atlantic Ocean, improvements in the late 1800s and early 1900s to canals connecting Lake Ontario and Lake Erie to the ocean enabled lampreys to bypass Niagara Falls, which had previously been a natural barrier. From there, lampreys invaded the lakes, where they have no natural predators. By the 1960s, lampreys had devastated trout fisheries in the region and a control program began to weed them out using pesticides. Sea lampreys’ invasion of the Great Lakes has actually boosted their use in research. Over the last century, the Great Lakes Fishery Commission has directed considerable amounts of research funding toward lampreys, to study their life cycle and how to eradicate them. This put more lampreys in labs, resulting in studies on other aspects of their anatomy and evolution. Collectors catch wild lampreys in the Great Lakes, says Morgan, and send them to the lab in coolers. “Great Lakes fisheries harvested these lampreys, and they wanted scientists to understand them more,” says Robb Krumlauf, developmental biologist and scientific director emeritus at the Stowers Institute for Medical Research, who also researches lampreys sent from the Great Lakes. “They had a natural supply that they could give to those who are interested in the research.” Although lampreys look like they’re from another planet, they have more in common with us than it might seem. Lampreys branched off from other vertebrates about 500 million years ago, so they have some of the oldest traits in the lineage: they’re at the base of the vertebrate branch of the evolutionary tree. Because of this, studying lampreys’ genomes can clarify important evolutionary steps in the lineage—like when vertebrates developed jaws, or arms and legs. Sea lampreys survived multiple mass extinction events, including the asteroid 66 million years ago that wiped out roughly 80 percent of life on Earth. “It’s a chance to have a glimpse of the past. It’s sort of like a living fossil,” says Krumlauf. Krumlauf studies how sea lamprey evolution and human evolution are related through how our faces and heads develop. The brain region that shapes facial and cranial features is similar across vertebrates, from lampreys to chickens to mice to zebrafish, even though all these animals’ heads look quite different. “There’s a common toolkit,” says Krumlauf. “If you have building materials, and they’re all the same, you can build a garden shed or you can build a mansion––what’s different is the way the blueprint is put together.” Studying lampreys shows how these blueprints evolved in the earliest vertebrates, says Krumlauf. His research links facial and head development in the animals to the development of craniofacial abnormalities in humans. The evolutionary history of lampreys and other vertebrates also helps scientists like Yi-Rong Peng, ophthalmologist and neurobiologist at UCLA, illuminate the evolution of vision. Peng’s research has found lamprey retinal cells are similar to those of other vertebrates, such as mice, chickens and zebrafish. Such a finding suggests retinal vision, like humans have, evolved early in the vertebrate lineage. Studying the overlaps between animal retinas gives a window into how vertebrates saw the world 500 million years ago. And understanding how the retina first formed in humans can help Peng’s research team study retinal cell degeneration that leads to blindness. Morgan’s lab studies how sea lampreys regenerate spinal cords, and its work could lead to advances that help humans recover from spinal damage. When researchers cut a sea lamprey’s spinal cord, it becomes paralyzed but can regenerate nerve connections. The process does not have to be perfect to work, adds Purdue University science historian Kathryn Maxson Jones. Lampreys’ original neuron connections don’t reform in the same way, but cells grow in flexible ways to compensate for damage––biology can take different routes to achieve the goal of a spinal cord that works again. And the large size of lampreys’ cells and synapses enable the research team to closely examine the whole process. A microscopic view of a sea lamprey’s reconnected spinal cord shows how it healed after being cut. Daniel Cojanu, Under Current Productions Sea lampreys are also crucial to Morgan’s research on Parkinson’s disease. A specific protein’s accumulation in the brain is linked to the progression of the disease, so injecting that protein into lamprey synapses allows the researchers to observe how it affects the nervous system. This gives insight into how the disease progresses in the human nervous system and how exactly neurons can recover. Scientists observe how damaged lamprey neurons regenerate and how many synaptic connections are restored, guiding how to target treatment in human brains. Morgan’s research team hopes to move from understanding nervous system damage in lampreys and humans to how to fix it. When you cut your finger and the area becomes numb, that’s because of damage to the nerve endings in the finger, which is part of your peripheral nervous system, explains Morgan. But you do eventually get feeling back, because humans can regenerate cells in the peripheral nervous system––just not in our central nervous system. But lampreys can. “When lampreys regenerate the spinal cord and recover function, they are using a lot of the same changes in gene expression that occur during regeneration of the peripheral nervous system in mammals,” says Morgan. “Why we can’t do that in our spinal cord is a big question. But I think learning from the adaptations of these animals, that can do these really neat feats of nature like regeneration, will tell you something about the recipe that needs to happen, the conditions that need to be met,” adds Morgan. And the parallels between lampreys’ brain features and ours make crucial research possible when studying human brains isn’t an option. “It often points us in the direction of things we would’ve never looked at in humans,” says Krumlauf. Get the latest Science stories in your inbox.

Animals
Extinction
Nature

Routine Community Screening Catches Undiagnosed Asthma

By Dennis Thompson HealthDay ReporterFRIDAY, Sept. 26, 2025 (HealthDay News) — Routine screening can help find kids who are suffering from...

By Dennis Thompson HealthDay ReporterFRIDAY, Sept. 26, 2025 (HealthDay News) — Routine screening can help find kids who are suffering from undiagnosed asthma in communities with high levels of the breathing disorder, a new study says.Asthma screening during well-child visits found that more than two-thirds (35%) of children with no previous diagnosis of asthma had at least one risk factor for the disease, researchers will report Monday at an American Academy of Pediatrics’ meeting in Denver.Further, about 24% of kids with risk factors were subsequently diagnosed with asthma, researchers said.Those diagnosed with asthma reported coughing or shortness of breath at night, previous use of an inhaler or difficulty exercising due to breathing problems, researchers said.“Asthma is often diagnosed late or not at all because parents may not think of certain symptoms such as night-time cough or needing to stop activity to catch your breath, as being related to asthma,” researcher Dr. Janine Rethy, division chief of community pediatrics at MedStar Health, a not-for-profit health care provider in the Baltimore-Washington D.C., metropolitan area, said in a news release.For the study, researchers screened 650 children ages 2 and older for asthma during well-child visits performed in a mobile medical clinic between 2021 and 2024. The mobile clinic performed these screens in urban areas with a known high prevalence of asthma.Overall, about 8% of children screened were found to have previously undiagnosed asthma, results showed. Another 18% of the kids had a previous diagnosis of asthma.The children’s home environment likely played a factor in their asthma, researchers found.About 52% of the undiagnosed kids who screened positive for asthma had poor housing conditions — mold, roaches, mice, rats, peeling paint or leaking water.About 38% of kids with a prior diagnosis of asthma also lived in such conditions, results showed.“There are also many environmental triggers in the home that may contribute to these symptoms and which a pediatrician should know about to help understand triggers and incorporate into a treatment plan,” Rethy said.The study shows that more kids with asthma can be helped if doctors and public health experts focus screening efforts on places known to have high rates of asthma, researchers said.“Asthma is highly treatable if diagnosed early and approached with a holistic lens that includes identifying and addressing environmental triggers,” researcher Dr. Karen Ganacias, a MedStar Health pediatrician, said in a news release.“In populations with high asthma prevalence, routine screening for asthma symptoms and modifiable home environmental triggers can be an important first step to improving outcomes and decreasing disparities,” Ganacias added.Findings presented at medical meetings should be considered preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed journal.SOURCE: American Academy of Pediatrics, news release, Sept. 26, 2025Copyright © 2025 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

Health
Water

Starmerism has almost destroyed the Labour party, but I still have hope for renewal | Clive Lewis

As our party conference gets under way this weekend in Liverpool, we must start to work out how we can inspire the countryClive Lewis is the Labour MP for Norwich SouthSo choppy are the waters of the UK’s permacrisis, and so flat-bottomed the life raft known as Starmerism, that ideas once thought impossible at the outset of Keir Starmer’s initial soft-left, “Corbyn-in-a-suit” journey have become the defining realities of Labour’s present course. As its conference begins in Liverpool this weekend, the party must ask itself whether the political culture it is building is one that can inspire a country, or merely discipline it into compliance. Without a shift towards democracy, discussion and pluralism, Labour risks forfeiting the very moral and political authority it needs to confront the authoritarian voices shouting so loudly beyond our own ranks, and increasingly within them.The Corbyn wave that swept Labour in 2015 was more than just a political surge. It was a redefinition of the possible, a moment when grassroots activism, radical ideas and the audacity of political hope took centre stage. It represented a demand for genuine democracy, pluralism and change. For many, it was the first time in living memory that Labour had felt like a movement rather than a machine. Today, Starmer’s absolute determination to distance Labour from that era speaks volumes.Clive Lewis is the Labour MP for Norwich South. This is an edited extract from Clive Lewis’s foreword to The Starmer Symptom, by Mark Perryman Continue reading...

So choppy are the waters of the UK’s permacrisis, and so flat-bottomed the life raft known as Starmerism, that ideas once thought impossible at the outset of Keir Starmer’s initial soft-left, “Corbyn-in-a-suit” journey have become the defining realities of Labour’s present course. As its conference begins in Liverpool this weekend, the party must ask itself whether the political culture it is building is one that can inspire a country, or merely discipline it into compliance. Without a shift towards democracy, discussion and pluralism, Labour risks forfeiting the very moral and political authority it needs to confront the authoritarian voices shouting so loudly beyond our own ranks, and increasingly within them.The Corbyn wave that swept Labour in 2015 was more than just a political surge. It was a redefinition of the possible, a moment when grassroots activism, radical ideas and the audacity of political hope took centre stage. It represented a demand for genuine democracy, pluralism and change. For many, it was the first time in living memory that Labour had felt like a movement rather than a machine. Today, Starmer’s absolute determination to distance Labour from that era speaks volumes.The current party leadership views unity not as something cultivated through respectful dialogue and diverse perspectives, but something enforced through control. The Corbyn moment threatened Labour precisely because it signalled a party potentially ungovernable by conventional managerial methods. This is a party unsure how to reconcile democratic participation with electoral success.Parliamentary candidate selections have been increasingly centralised, and grassroots members and leftwing voices within the party marginalised. A party once brimming with energy, ideas and volunteers has become a professionalised bureaucracy aimed at maintaining power rather than transforming society.Labour’s aversion to pluralism is most obvious in its rejection of coalition politics. It wants to be an electoral juggernaut capable of winning alone or not at all. Yet contemporary crises – climate breakdown, authoritarian populism, stark economic inequality – demand cooperation beyond narrow party lines. Collaboration between Labour, the Greens, the Liberal Democrats and other progressive forces is not a sign of weakness, but maturity. And the stakes are as high as the very future of our democracy, our planet. Such a refusal to share power becomes not just strategically foolish, but morally questionable.Nowhere is Labour’s aversion to transformative politics clearer than in its avoidance of public ownership. Consider water. Public opinion consistently favours renationalisation – not as nostalgia, but as a pragmatic response to corporate failures, ecological crises and profound erosion of trust in privatised utilities. Refusing public ownership signals abandonment of democratic control over our collective future, showing Labour’s alignment with a neoliberal orthodoxy that has repeatedly failed.This alignment finds its starkest symbol in the party’s embrace of corporate influence. This undermines democracy itself by nourishing popular cynicism. When voters see politicians cosying up to the same firms that profited from the 2008 crash, the social contract frays further.Labour’s timidity on the climate emergency underscores this problem further. This defining crisis of our times demands bold, courageous and imaginative responses. Yet Labour’s approach has been cautious and timid, perpetually afraid of alienating swing voters or corporate backers. Net zero is framed only in terms of competitiveness, not adaptation and survival. Green investment is promised, but always secondary to fiscal rules set by an economic consensus long past its sell-by date. While floods devastate communities and air quality worsens, Labour dithers.Part of the problem is that the party is paralysed by institutional pressures and geopolitical alignments. Of course, balancing these forces is what makes for great governments and leaders. But Starmer has shown no such inclination. As prime minister, he faces substantial constraints, particularly regarding established alliances such as those with the US. But his careful neutrality over the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and quiet acquiescence to harsh immigration policies reflect an inclination toward diplomatic continuity rather than ethical clarityor moral leadership.In this vacuum, the populist right seizes ground, offering nativist, nationalist solutions to problems that demand internationalist, ecological and equitable solidarity.skip past newsletter promotionSign up to Matters of OpinionGuardian columnists and writers on what they’ve been debating, thinking about, reading, and morePrivacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.after newsletter promotionAnd yet, despite these profound concerns, hope persists. Not because the current Labour leadership inspires it, but in spite of it. Hope survives in the growing networks of community organisers, cooperative movements, union branches, citizen assemblies and environmental campaigns. It flourishes in places ignored by Westminster – municipal projects reclaiming public land, local councils experimenting with participatory budgeting, workers organising in Amazon warehouses and Uber ranks. These spaces show that politics is not the property of party elites, but of people acting in concert to change their lives.Ultimately, Starmerism risks rendering Labour unfit for the purpose it was created for: to give a political voice to working people and deliver collective solutions to collective problems. Openly addressing this is essential for Labour – and British politics broadly.The crisis is real, yet so too is the potential for renewal. But that renewal cannot come from above. It must come from below – from a revitalised political culture that sees people not as voters to be harvested, but as citizens to be empowered. Recognising this is the first critical step toward a politics daring enough to imagine and urgently act upon the challenges we collectively face. And if this moment is indeed one of endings, then let it also be a moment of beginnings – a time to organise, to imagine and to build anew.

Activism
Culture
Crisis

Whales are getting tangled in lines and ropes off the California coast in record numbers

A NOAA report shows that more whales were killed in US waters this year by entanglements than any prior year.

The number of whales getting tangled up in fishing nets, line, buoys and other miscellaneous rope off the coasts of the United States hit a record high in 2024, with California taking the ignominious lead.According to the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, there were 95 confirmed entangled whales in U.S. waters last year. Eighty-seven were live animals, while reports for eight came in after the animals had died.On average, 71 whales are reported entangled each year. There were 64 in 2023.More than 70% of the reports were from the coastal waters off California, Alaska, Hawaii and Massachusetts. California accounted for 25% in 2024, most in the San Francisco and Monterey bay areas.Humpback whales were hardest hit, accounting for 77 of the cases. Other whale species include North Pacific gray whales, the North Atlantic right whale, minke, sperm, fin and bowhead whales.Entanglements are just one of many threats facing whales worldwide. Earlier this year, 21 gray whales died in Bay Area waters, mostly after getting struck by ships. The animals are increasingly stressed from changes in food availability, shipping traffic, noise pollution, waste discharge, disease and plastic debris, and their ability to avoid and survive these impediments is diminishing. Since 2007, more than 920 humpback whales have been maimed or killed by long line ropes that commercial crabbers use to haul up cages from the sea floor. The report notes that about half the incidents are directly tied to commercial and recreational fishing lines. The remaining 49 also involved line and buoys but in circumstances that could not be traced back to a specific fishery. The report comes after years of government and conservation group efforts with the commercial fishing industry to increase awareness and encourage different fishing technologies — such as pop-up fishing gear, which uses a remote controlled pop-up balloon device to bring cages to the surface, rather than relying on lines.It also comes as funding for NOAA is threatened and Congress is considering draft legislation that would weaken the Marine Mammal Protection Act, one of the country’s foundational environmental laws, signed by President Nixon in 1972.“This report paints a clear picture: our current safeguards are not enough,” said Gib Brogan, campaign director for Oceana, an ocean advocacy group, in a statement. He said things are likely to get worse if NOAA’s funding is cut and the Marine Mammal Protection Act is eroded. “These findings underscore an urgent need for coordinated action,” said Kathi George, the Sausalito-based Marine Mammal Center’s director of cetacean conservation in a statement. “Together, we can apply the best available science to reduce the risk of entanglement, through strategies like supporting fisher-led initiatives, improving detection and response efforts, and enhancing reporting and data sharing.”

Water
Animals
Food

Cleanup of toxic forever chemicals at Portland base delayed by feds

An Air Force base near Spokane also is among those that will have a longer timeline for cleanup of PFAS.

The U.S. Department of Defense quietly changed its timeline for cleaning up toxic forever chemicals contaminating groundwater at two military bases in Oregon and Washington, delaying the process by six years without public announcement.The Air National Guard base in Portland and the Fairchild Air Force base near Spokane are among nearly 140 military sites nationwide with delayed investigations and remediation for a group of chemicals known as PFAS. The delays come as congressional Republicans are proposing cutting by nearly $200 million the defense agency’s budget for environmental cleanup, including PFAS, an abbreviation for perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, and rolling back a 2024 ban on the agency’s use of firefighting foam containing PFAS.Exposure to the human-made chemicals found in flame retardants, nonstick cookware and waterproof clothing can lead to increased risks for cancers, heart damage, high cholesterol and birth defects, among other adverse health effects.Washington was the first state to ban the sale and use of firefighting foam containing PFAS in 2018, and Oregon lawmakers this year voted to phase out the use of PFAS-laden firefighting foam. Such foam was heavily used at military bases for decades, and the Department of Defense has identified at least 600 military sites where PFAS are known to have been released.The delays to PFAS cleanup at military bases were first reported Tuesday by The New York Times. The Times cross-referenced a March list of potentially contaminated military sites — a list not publicly posted on the Defense Department’s website until recently — with a list that had been posted in December by the agency, when it was under the Biden administration.The Capital Chronicle’s own analysis of a Sept. 30, 2024. list found that the Air National Guard site in Portland, then slated to have its PFAS investigation and cleanup planning completed by the end of September 2025, is now slated instead to have that done by September 2031. The remedial investigation and planning for PFAS cleanup previously slated to be complete at Fairchild Air Force base by July 2026 is now expected to be done by June 2032.Michael Loch, a spokesperson for the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality, said in an email that the Air National Guard told Oregon officials at an Aug. 26 meeting that the timeline for cleaning up the base in Portland would be delayed so that money could be directed to other potentially contaminated sites that had not yet undergone investigation. Loch was not able to confirm whether Guard officials told Oregon officials that it would be a full five-year delay.“We are concerned that this shift could mean several years of delay, especially given the high PFAS concentrations already found at the site and its proximity to sensitive water resources like the Columbia Slough,” Loch wrote.The Department of Defense was unable to answer questions from the Capital Chronicle by Tuesday evening about how much information the agency shared with Oregon and Washington state leaders, agencies or impacted communities about the changes.“It will likely take up to a week for our response to be reviewed by general council,” an unidentified Pentagon spokesperson from the Office of the Secretary of Defense said in an email.Stephanie May, a spokesperson for Washington’s Department of Ecology, said in an email she could not confirm by Tuesday whether the Department of Defense told any ecology officials about changes to the clean-up schedule at Fairchild Air Force base, but that they are looking into it.“Our focus in working with the base has been to urge immediate actions that can help nearby residents get safe drinking water and protect their families,” she said.The Environmental Protection Agency officially declared the Fairchild Air Force base a Superfund Site in 1995 for a litany of other contamination issues, and identified in 2017 severe PFAS contamination through well testing. About 100 people who live near the base filed a class action lawsuit in 2018 against 3M — the manufacturer of the firefighting foam used on the base — alleging it has caused them serious health problems.About one-quarter of all military sites with known PFAS releases that are trying to investigate and address contamination now face an average delay of five years, according to the Times’ reporting.In 2024, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency added several PFAS to the federal list of regulated hazardous substances and mandated states begin testing for them in drinking water systems. In May, the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality added six common PFAS substances to the state’s list of regulated contaminants.Suspected sources of past or ongoing PFAS pollution in Oregon include eight commercial airports that are or were required to maintain PFAS-containing firefighting foam on site, as well as 18 municipal fire training facilities near 20 of the most populous cities in the state, according to rulemaking documents from DEQ.Officials at Portland International Airport began testing for PFAS in 2017 in and around a firefighter training ground there, and found impaired fish and aquatic species in the nearby waters of the Columbia Slough. They have since switched to using PFAS-free firefighting foam and begun initial stages of cleanup.-- Alex Baumhardt, Oregon Capital ChronicleThe Oregon Capital Chronicle, founded in 2021, is a nonprofit news organization that focuses on Oregon state government, politics and policy.If you purchase a product or register for an account through a link on our site, we may receive compensation. By using this site, you consent to our User Agreement and agree that your clicks, interactions, and personal information may be collected, recorded, and/or stored by us and social media and other third-party partners in accordance with our Privacy Policy.

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