Cookies help us run our site more efficiently.

By clicking “Accept”, you agree to the storing of cookies on your device to enhance site navigation, analyze site usage, and assist in our marketing efforts. View our Privacy Policy for more information or to customize your cookie preferences.

Accept Deny

GoGreenNation News

Learn more about the issues presented in our films
Show Filters

Commission that regulates development in Columbia River Gorge faces uncertain future

The fate of the commission could have major implications for tourism and recreation in the gorge.

Washington state lawmakers are considering defunding a commission that regulates development in the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area, which spans 85 miles in Oregon and Washington between east Multnomah County and the Deschutes River.The fate of the commission could have major implications for tourism and recreation in the gorge, which attracts roughly 2 million visitors each year. But it’s unclear if Washington legislators can legally halt funding for the commission, which also receives state dollars from Oregon.The Columbia River Gorge Commission has long been responsible for protecting and enhancing the scenic area, which totals nearly 300,000 acres across Washington and Oregon. The commission helps enforce the area’s management plan, which details land use restrictions and building regulations that homebuilders and businesses must abide by.The commission’s oversight has prevented the construction of large commercial and housing developments aimed to accommodate tourists, which could disrupt the natural beauty of the area, according to Friends of the Columbia Gorge, a local conservation nonprofit.“People are coming out because this area is protected,” said Renee Tkach, conservation director for the nonprofit. “It has beautiful recreation and has public lands that are open to all. And it’s not just a local treasure or regional, it’s become an international destination too.”But the 13-member commissioner has long provoked the ire of some Washington residents who live in the scenic area. Those residents contend that the commission’s oversight makes it more difficult for local residents to modify their homes and often delays or nixes developments that require approval from the commission.“There’s been significant friction ... between the oversight that the gorge commission has provided and the needs of people who live in the community,” said Skamania County Commissioner Brian Nichols. “I think (the commission) has been potentially a little bit too aggressive in trying to protect the gorge at the expense of people in the community.”Supporters of the commission say it has enhanced the environmental health of the gorge while accommodating economic growth where necessary. Opponents say they aren’t necessarily supportive of large-scale developments, but instead aim to slash some regulatory red tape for low-income residents.This long-simmering battle came to a head in late March when the Washington House Appropriations Committee approved an amended bill that removed all state funding for the commission in the biennium that begins this July.The move quickly prompted immense pushback from conservation groups. More than 1,200 individuals have sent letters to Washington lawmakers in support of funding the commission, according to Tim Dobyns, communications and engagement director for Friends of the Columbia Gorge.Without the commission, its supporters say, developers would face an easier path building large-scale projects in rural lands, which could have detrimental effects on the surrounding environment and wildlife. Most of that development would likely occur on the Washington side of the river, which has fewer land use restrictions in the area than Oregon.Lawmakers in the Washington Senate and House have until April 27 to synthesize their proposed budgets into a final spending plan for the next biennium. The Senate, unlike the House, included funding for the commission in its version of the next state budget.Conservation groups say defunding the commission would be illegal.Per the agreement between Oregon and Washington that established the commission, each state must “adequately” fund the commission to fulfill its responsibilities. Furthermore, it requires both states to contribute the same amount of money to the commission, and Oregon lawmakers have not indicated any plans to change their normal contributions. Oregon and Washington have provided the commission around $2.2 million apiece in the current biennium.On April 4, the Washington State Office of Financial Management sent a lengthy list of budget concerns to the Legislature’s top budget writers. In it, the office recommended restoring funding for the gorge commission. If lawmakers want to defund the commission, they would have to end Washington’s participation in the bi-state agreement by repealing a state law, officials wrote.“Defunding is not an option,” said Tkach. “You cannot eradicate the funding completely, because then there would be no gorge commission staff to be able to regulate and enforce the ... management plan.”That would be a good thing, opponents of the commission say.“We don’t want the natural beauty to go away,” said Nichols. “We’re not trying to change it and add a lot of growth. ... But we do want to see processes that are streamlined to support people in our community.”— Carlos Fuentes covers state politics and government. Reach him at 503-221-5386 or cfuentes@oregonian.com.Our journalism needs your support. Subscribe today to OregonLive.com/subscribe.Latest local politics stories

Business
Conservation
Government

Yes, Climate Change Really is Making Your Hay Fever Worse

Seasonal allergies are being hit by climate change. As temperatures rise, pollen season grows longer and more severe.

Climate change is bad news for a lot of reasons—the droughts, the floods, the heat, the hurricanes. And then, too, there’s all the sneezing. If you suffer from hay fever—or allergic rhinitis (AR)—and have found your symptoms growing worse in recent years, you’re not alone. Increasingly, health care professionals are concluding that as global heat increases so too do allergy symptoms.  In industrialized countries, hay fever diagnoses are rising by 2% to 3% per year, costing billions of dollars in health care and lost productivity. Spring pollen season, which typically begins in late February or early March and ends in early summer, is now arriving as much as 20 days early in North America. Now, a new study in the journal The Laryngoscope has taken a deep dive into the research surrounding the link and has found that not only is it a real phenomenon, it’s been going on at least since the turn of the millennium. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] The study is what’s known as a scoping review of the literature, one that takes the measure of the body of papers published on a particular topic in a particular time frame and seeks to come away with an idea of what the emerging consensus is on the science. To do this, the authors of the current work sought to survey all of the available studies that addressed the link between climate change and allergies. More specifically, they zoomed in to focus on studies published from 2000 to 2023 that explored the precise climatological mechanisms that would cause global warming to exacerbate hay fever symptoms and which also measured how a warming world affects the length and severity of hay fever season. Only 30 met these exacting standards. “We were very specific in our inclusion and exclusion criteria,” says Alisha Pershad, a third-year medical student at the George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences, and the corresponding author of the new study. “By minimizing variability in our included studies, we were able to improve the strength of our conclusions.” Those conclusions revealed a lot. Read more: Why You Suddenly Have Allergies A little over half of the studies Pershad and her colleagues looked at reported longer pollen seasons or higher pollen concentrations—or both—linked to climate change. One projected that pollen emissions in the U.S, would increase by 16% to 40% by the turn of the century and that the average length of pollen season would increase by 19 days beyond the already-observed 20-day increase. Five of the studies found that that lengthening will continue to occur at the beginning of the season. In Europe, projections showed a probable increase in Ambrosia—or ragweed pollen—also linked to rising temperatures.  Individual studies deepened the link between climate and hay fever. One 2021 paper out of Australia reported that daily maximum temperature, higher carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere, and the grass pollen index were all higher from 2016 to 2020 than they were from 1994 to 1999, pointing to a causal link running straight from CO2 to pollen. A European study from 2017 modeled projected increased growth in allergenic plants from 2041 to 2060 and predicted that the population of people allergic to ragweed would increase from 33 million to 77 million across the continent in that same time window, as plant coverage encroached into more and more communities. Meanwhile, a 2025 study from China found that pediatric outpatient visits for AR were on the rise, consistent with an increase in peak pollen concentrations. As one 2025 study not covered in the current paper pointed out, children are “particularly vulnerable to these airborne particles due to their higher ventilation per unit of body weight, more frequent mouth breathing, and outdoor activities.” Read more: Why Allergy Seasons Are Getting Worse The papers in the survey also looked at the mechanism that links climate change to increases in hay fever. A pair of studies both in the wild and in the lab showed that greater humidity and higher levels of carbon dioxide—which is a known growth and reproductive stimulator of plants—increase the dispersal of allergenic pollen, while an increase in precipitation effectively washes out the air, bringing pollen levels down. Another study focused specifically on the mold allergen Aspergillus and found that it thrives under present carbon dioxide concentrations compared to lower pre-industrial levels. Not everyone suffers equally from the current trends. As with so many other things, race, income, age, and zip code play a role in the severity and epidemiology of hay fever symptoms, with Black and Hispanic communities, seniors, and lower-income populations being hit worse. Cities, with lower concentrations of trees, weeds, and flowering plants, nonetheless are associated with worsening hay fever symptoms too, due to higher temperatures and the griddle effect of concrete and asphalt, producing the urban heat island phenomenon. “Communities historically impacted by environmental inequities such as red-lining tend to live in regions that experience warmer daytime temperatures,” says Pershad. Allergenic mold discriminates demographically too. “[Mold] is especially a concern for lower income communities that may not have the resources to address the water damage to their home as quickly as necessary to avoid mold growth,” Pershad adds. “Global warming is exacerbating weather extremes such as hurricanes and flooding, which increase the risk of mold growth, a common environmental allergen.” Health care providers are tracking these changes. One 2022 study out of Italy found that 56% of pulmonologists agree that pollen season appears to start earlier and last longer, 45% have observed an increase in their AR patient population, and 61% are seeing an increase in cases among children particularly. Fully 97% of doctors surveyed reported that they wanted to learn more about the impact of climate change on hay fever incidence. “Physicians are uniquely positioned to witness the impact of allergic rhinitis on patient outcomes and can adapt their practice as climate change intensifies,” said Pershad in a statement accompanying the release of the study. “As trusted voices in the community, they should leverage their frontline experience to advocate for meaningful change in addressing the climate crisis.”

Climate
CO2
Health

‘They’re killing you’: US poultry workers fear faster lines will lead to more injury

Workers say fast-paced conditions compound injury risks, while USDA will no longer require reports on safety data The Trump administration will speed up processing lines for poultry and pork meatpacking plants while halting reports on worker safety, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced recently, in a move that workers and advocates say will lead to more injuries.Some poultry and pork plants already receive waivers to speed up production lines, and the USDA plans to update its rules to make the changes permanent and applicable to all poultry and pork plants, the department said in a press release. Continue reading...

The Trump administration will speed up processing lines for poultry and pork meatpacking plants while halting reports on worker safety, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced recently, in a move that workers and advocates say will lead to more injuries.Some poultry and pork plants already receive waivers to speed up production lines, and the USDA plans to update its rules to make the changes permanent and applicable to all poultry and pork plants, the department said in a press release.At the same time, the USDA will no longer require reports on worker safety data, calling the information “redundant” and pointing to research that the agency says “confirmed no direct link between processing speeds and workplace injuries”.Four people working at different poultry processing plants described to the Guardian fast-paced working conditions that compound the risks for injury. They asked that their names and locations be withheld for fear the Trump administration would revoke their visas.One young man had only worked at the chicken processing plant for two weeks, and he was still scrambling to learn the job and keep up with his expected workload.After sustaining one workplace injury, he said, he kept working – until he fell from a 13ft ladder and broke his back.He hasn’t been able to return to work as the fracture slowly heals.“I could’ve been paralyzed for the rest of my life,” the man said. Now, he’s “living with remorse and regret”, he said, unable to work or pay bills on his own.A January study from the USDA found that faster line speeds were not the leading reason for injuries – but a higher “piece rate”, or a different way of measuring speed, did correlate with injuries.The report cautioned that the injury rate among poultry workers was already high at speeds of both 140 and 175 birds per minute, with 81% of workers at high risk for musculoskeletal disorders – “indicating that current risk mitigation efforts are insufficient”.The majority (70%) of workers first experienced “moderate to severe work-related pain” within their first three months on the job, the report said.“There’s injuries occurring on a regular basis, and it’s most definitely associated with the speeds that people are moving,” said Michael Payan, director of operations at the Sussex Health and Environmental Network (Shen), an organization based in Delaware and Maryland.Maria Payan, executive director of Shen, noted they were “putting more through input – that’s more injury”.“Why, at the same time you’re increasing line speeds, would you eliminate collecting worker safety data?” she asked. “If they don’t think it’s going to affect the workers, then why would they stop collecting the data?”One woman worked in poultry processing for 11 years before being fired after getting sick with Covid, she said. She would chop chicken carcasses hanging from a hook – the same motion, over and over again.Her hands and shoulders still swell regularly, and her hands cramp every night, despite not working the line for five years.“They’re killing you,” she said of the fast-paced work demands.Under the new rules, workers may process up to 175 birds a minute, a rise from the maximum speed of 140 before 2020. But unlike in 2020, when meatpacking workers were devastated by high rates of illness and death from Covid, there are no shortages of meat.The move will “reduce burdens on the US pork and poultry industries … ensuring they can meet demand without excessive government interference”, the USDA said in a statement.There are about 250,000 poultry workers in the US, and in some states, agricultural workers are exempt from federal labor laws.About 78% of poultry processors surveyed in Alabama said faster line speeds made their work more dangerous, according to a 2013 report from the Southern Poverty Law Center.Poultry workers suffer five times as many occupational illness cases compared with the average worker in the US. Their rates of carpal tunnel syndrome are seven times higher and repetitive strain injuries are 10 times higher than average workers.Workers also experience allergic rhinitis, or chronic cold-like symptoms, from the cold temperatures and exposure to chemicals. Peracetic acid, a substance used to battle pathogens like salmonella and E coli, was found in the air at rates that exceeded regulatory limits at one in five jobs in all locations, according to the January USDA report.A 2015 report from Oxfam pointed to increasing line speeds as one of the reasons for injuries.Reported injuries are probably lower than the actual rate, because many poultry processors offer care through on-site medical clinics, which means they may not need to refer workers to outside medical practitioners, the Oxfam report noted: “If companies can avoid doing more than this, they don’t have to record the incident, or report to the US government’s Occupational Health and Safety Administration (Osha).”One man worked on the processing line for 15 years. He spent “15 years doing the same thing five days a week, eight to 10 hours a day”, he said. He developed pain after eight years, but he kept working.In 2020, he had to undergo surgery for his repetitive stress injuries. He was fired while recovering, he said, with no benefits or severance. He still suffers from back pain, and his family now supports him financially.Recent arrivals are frequently in the lowest of the “pecking order”, as Payan calls it, “which means, basically, they’re put in the lines where you would do the repeated cuts consistently”.A lack of training and persistent language barriers also contribute to the high rate of injuries, as workers are pushed to move fast as soon as they begin work.“We have a lot of workers who are not being trained properly in their language,” Maria Payan said. New workers are frequently instructed to imitate the person next to them. “If you understand this industry – these are very, very, very dangerous jobs,” Payan said.A third man, on his first day working in the sanitation department of a processing plant, was dipping machine parts into caustic chemicals, and he started feeling an itch on his arms. Soon, the burning intensified. He pulled back his sleeves, and the skin of his forearms, from wrist to elbow, was blistered and peeling.His co-worker said he must have raised his hands above his elbows – which he hadn’t realized was forbidden – and the chemicals dripped from his gloves down his sleeves.“There was no proper training at all,” the man said.The on-site nurse told him to wash the chemicals off with soap, and she later referred him to occupational therapy – not the emergency room, the man said. He wasn’t able to work for three months.Back home in Haiti, the man was an accountant, but in the US, he will work any job he can. “It’s about survival,” he said.

Agriculture
Chemicals
Health

Wildfire bills get mixed reviews as a key legislative deadline looms

Wildfire funding plans are moving forward - but a proposal to tweak the Bottle Bill is ruffling feathers.

Lawmakers in both parties signaled Tuesday that they want the state to increase funding to fight and prevent wildfires – but they don’t want to tax beverage containers to do it. The House Committee on Climate, Energy and Environment voted Tuesday to forward to the House Revenue Committee a bill that proposes several new ways to fund wildfire suppression. That keeps the bill alive for further discussion ahead of a Wednesday deadline. The lawmakers didn’t give the bill an official yes or no when they sent it to the Revenue Committee. But several spoke against a proposed funding stream that has drawn some ire: Adding a non-refundable 5 cent charge on sales of most beverages in bottles and cans. One part of the bill proposes that charge on the sale of beverage containers. A group of three dozen people – including environmentalists, firefighters and timber representatives – charged with brainstorming wildfire funding options before the legislative session estimated the beverage tax could raise $200 million in the 2025-27 budget cycle. But proponents of Oregon’s Bottle Bill mounted opposition to the bottle and can charge, arguing it would undermine public support for the signature recycling program. For more than half a century, Oregonians have gotten their full deposit back when they redeem bottles and cans. Adding a sales tax will cause “friction,” said Devin Morales of the Oregon Beverage Recycling Cooperative.Lawmakers in both parties had their own concerns. Mark Gamba, a Democrat from Milwaukie, questioned the relationship between the Bottle Bill and wildfire funding. He wants the bottle tax proposal removed. “We have to fund wildfire. Period. Somehow,” he said. “Breaking a system we have right now, which is working really well, in order to pay for another environmental problem we have is really bad policy.” Wilsonville Democrat Courtney Neron, Salem Democrat Tom Andersen, Republican bill author Bobby Levy of Echo and Roseburg Republican Virgle Osborne also spoke against the idea.“We really should not be touching the Bottle Bill,” Osborne said. “But I’m also afraid that if we let this die we’re going to have another wildfire season with no funding.” Whether the Bottle Bill gets included in the bill is now a question for the Revenue Committee.One controversial utility bill dies, another lives to see tomorrowMeanwhile two wildfire bills from Rep. Pam Marsh, an Ashland Democrat, met different fates.Her proposal to start a multimillion-dollar wildfire fund that fire victims could tap to cover their losses died this week. House Judiciary Committee Chair Jason Kropf, a Democrat from Bend, announced Monday that the bill would not get a hearing. Marsh said the bill generated questions about which entities should pay into the fund, how much of fire victims’ costs should be repaid and how insurance companies would factor in. The bill drew written opposition from fire victims, including those irked at the idea that utility ratepayers would be asked to contribute. House Judiciary Committee members sent a second Marsh bill, which would allow utility companies that demonstrate they meet state standards for wildfire prevention to earn state safety certification, to the House Rules Committee for additional discussion. The bill would also give the Public Utility Commission authority to audit and inspect a utility’s wildfire mitigation work when deciding whether to issue that certification. That bill sparked pushback early on when some attorneys argued it could give utilities a “get out of jail free” defense to deflect legal liability if they started a fire, which Marsh disputed. Kropf, who co-sponsored the bill, emphasized Monday that the intent was to create a high standard for how utility companies should mitigate against the risk of wildfires and to ensure the companies are held to those standards. Marsh said Tuesday: “I feel good about the work that we’ve done to this point, although it’s been hard work … We’ve started to help people realize that we’ve just got to hold the utilities to a very high level of performance, we’ve got to be prepared for the fires that are inevitably coming our way – and now we probably need to broaden the circle and bring more people into the conversation.”Wildfire maps one step closer to repealThe Senate Committee on Natural Resources also voted Tuesday to advance a bill that would repeal a highly controversial wildfire risk map. In 2021, the Legislature directed the Oregon Department of Forestry and Oregon State University to develop a map to show Oregonians how much of a wildfire risk each property in high probability wildfire zone faces. The latest iteration, released in January, was also intended be used to decide where to prioritize fire mitigation efforts and which property owners would be subject to home hardening requirements.But it prompted huge pushback from rural property owners and lawmakers who interact with them.Republicans argue it is “riddled with inaccuracies” given that no one surveyed individual properties. Homeowners fear that insurance companies have used the map to change their premiums or deny coverage. Under state law, insurance companies are prohibited from using the map for that purpose, and the state’s Division of Financial Regulation argues they never have. But rural property owners have insisted they felt punitive effects from what they say is a flawed map.The Senate committee on Monday unanimously approved an amendment to Senate Bill 83 which repeals the map and related requirements. Sen. Jeff Golden told the Statesman Journal on Tuesday that while the bill gets rid of fire-hardening building requirements for homes in high wildfire risk areas, local jurisdictions could still enforce stricter fire standards. It moves to the Senate floor for a vote next. “The wildfire hazard map caused fear and uncertainty, burdening families with costly and unfair one-size-fits-all mandates,” House Minority Leader Christine Drazan, a Canby Republican, said in a news release. “With this step forward, we’re delivering the change that rural Oregon has long deserved.”Sami Edge covers higher education and politics for The Oregonian. You can reach her at sedge@oregonian.com or (503) 260-3430.Latest local politics stories

Climate
Education
Energy

Ohio corruption scandal looms over FirstEnergy rate case

This article comes from Canary Media’s Ohio Utility Watch newsletter, a monthly update on Ohio’s HB6 power plant bailout scandal. Visit our newsletter page to sign up . Welcome to Ohio Utility Watch, a newsletter tracking Ohio’s ongoing public-corruption saga, often referred to as the House Bill 6 or HB 6 scandal.…

This article comes from Canary Media’s Ohio Utility Watch newsletter, a monthly update on Ohio’s HB6 power plant bailout scandal. Visit our newsletter page to sign up. Welcome to Ohio Utility Watch, a newsletter tracking Ohio’s ongoing public-corruption saga, often referred to as the House Bill 6 or HB 6 scandal. If you’re new to the story, it revolves around the use of dark money by utility companies and others to pass roughly $60 million in bribes to secure more than $1.5 billion in ratepayer subsidies for aging, uneconomical coal and nuclear power plants. Here are some developments from the last few weeks: The state’s consumer advocate wants regulators to reduce FirstEnergy’s rate of return to reflect poor management practices that enabled bribes and corruption.Environmental advocates say FirstEnergy’s ratemaking case should consider grid disparities in disadvantaged communities.Legislation that would remove HB 6’s coal plant subsidies is moving full-speed ahead, along with incentives for more in-state power plants. At a March 13 hearing, former FirstEnergy executives again declined to answer questions, citing their Fifth Amendment rights.Should ​‘abysmal’ management mean less profit from ratepayers? Ohio’s state consumer advocate and others say FirstEnergy should be penalized with a lower rate of return in its rate case due to the company’s ​“egregious violation of laws and norms” in connection with the HB 6 scandal. The Office of the Ohio Consumers’ Counsel filed testimony on March 24 arguing, among other things, that the Public Utilities Commission should cut the company’s requested rate of return on capital investments by at least half a percent. All told, the consumers’ counsel says Ohio customers should pay FirstEnergy roughly $132 million less for annual distribution charges. FirstEnergy responded on March 31, arguing the corruption scandal has no bearing on its first ratemaking case since 2007. Although the company expected five years ago that it would need to reduce rates when a new ratemaking process began, it now wants $183 million more per year from Ohio ratepayers. The company has proposed that it earn a 10.8% rate of return on equity. That income generally functions as a reward to the firm for capital investments. An auditor hired by the commission suggested 9.63% based on its market analysis. Ashley Brown, a former PUCO commissioner and past executive director of the Harvard Electricity Policy Group, said the company’s ​“abysmal” management should be a factor, regardless of whether it’s also addressed in other regulatory cases. “I’ve never seen a better case for arguing performance should play a huge role in determining the rate of return,” Brown said.  Read more: FirstEnergy asks regulators to raise rates by $183 million. Auditors say $8.5 million (Cleveland.com) FirstEnergy wants to raise prices following repeal of scandal-tainted legislation (Ohio Capital Journal) Should equity affect rates? Ohio environmental advocates say FirstEnergy’s ratemaking case needs to address grid disparities for disadvantaged communities compared to elsewhere in the company’s service area. The Ohio Environmental Council filed testimony last month criticizing the utility’s efforts to maintain and improve infrastructure for lower-income areas. The environmental group’s filings include testimony by Shay Banton, a regulatory program engineer and energy justice policy advocate for the Interstate Renewable Energy Council. “When utilities are requesting a return on investment, I think it’s prudent for customers to know why those investments are being made and to make sure those investments are being made in an equitable way,” Banton told Canary Media. FirstEnergy’s March 31 response argued that its ratemaking case is unrelated to the equity issues raised by the Ohio Environmental Council. However, company testimony filed on March 24 talks about various investments to maintain and improve reliability. Read more:

Energy

Adani names two dead Australian war veterans in documents alleging protest conspiracy against it

Exclusive: Judge says case appears to be making ‘no real progress towards trial’ as mining company files fourth statement of claim since 2020Election 2025 live updates: Australia federal election campaignGet our afternoon election email, free app or daily news podcastAdani has named two dead Australian war veterans in court documents alleging they were part of a conspiracy against the coalmining company.The fourth version of Adani Mining’s claim against environmental activist Ben Pennings – which has been afoot for more than four years – now names Kokoda veteran and climate activist Bill Ryan as an alleged co-conspirator. Ryan died in 2019, aged 97.Sign up for the Afternoon Update: Election 2025 email newsletter Continue reading...

Adani has named two dead Australian war veterans in court documents alleging they were part of a conspiracy against the coalmining company.The fourth version of Adani Mining’s claim against environmental activist Ben Pennings – which has been afoot for more than four years – now names Kokoda veteran and climate activist Bill Ryan as an alleged co-conspirator. Ryan died in 2019, aged 97.“Why the hell can’t Adani leave Dad to rest in peace rather than drag us through this bullshit?,” Ryan’s son, Colin, told Guardian Australia.The Queensland supreme court struck out substantial parts of Adani’s claim last year, describing some elements as “confused and embarrassing”.Adani’s allegations of a conspiracy – which accused Pennings of acting with “unknown conspirators” to disrupt the company’s contractors – were disallowed by Justice Susan Brown, who gave Adani leave to replead its case.In its new filing – the fourth version of Adani’s statement of claim since launching the case in 2020 – the company has now named four alleged co-conspirators it says were involved in an agreement with Pennings to participate in direct protest action against contractor Downer Group in 2017.Mike Fitzsimon (referred to in Adani’s claim as “Mike Fitzsimmons”), a Vietnam veteran who died in 2022, is listed as a co-conspirator alongside Pennings and Ryan.The other alleged co-conspirators named by Adani are elderly Vietnam veteran Maurice Tolley and “Donna Smits”, whose name also appears to be misspelled in the document. They were named in court documents, but only Pennings is being sued by Adani.“Dad had a tough life, served his country in war and tried to protect us all [with his climate activism],” said Colin Ryan.“He died a hero to thousands but now I have to tell the grandkids and great-grandkids he’s part of some Adani conspiracy theory in the supreme court.”skip past newsletter promotionSign up to Afternoon Update: Election 2025Our Australian afternoon update breaks down the key election campaign stories of the day, telling you what’s happening and why it mattersPrivacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.after newsletter promotionMike Fitzsimon, who died in 2022. Photograph: Ben PenningsPennings said Ryan and Fitzsimon were “heroes, dedicating their final years to protect us from climate breakdown”.“I’m not sure what’s happened that’s led Adani to pick them out now, years after they have passed away. It is just another twist and turn in this harrowing five-year saga.”The company said in a statement that its legal proceedings were “solely against Mr Pennings”, and that other alleged co-conspirators were “simply named in our evidence of Mr Pennings’ activities”.“Any attempt by Mr Pennings or Mr Ryan’s family to suggest otherwise is incorrect and speaks to the way Mr Pennings has conducted himself throughout this case,” the statement said.“We make no apologies for protecting our rights and the rights of hard-working Queenslanders to go about their legal and legitimate work.”Adani said its amended pleadings presented a “strong case” against Pennings, including that he sought to disrupt the operations of the Carmichael coalmine, its suppliers and contractors.Justice Paul Freeburn published an interlocutory judgment in the case in March, establishing a timeline for Pennings to file an amended defence. He said the case appeared to be “making no real progress towards a trial”.“And so, some four-and-a-half years into the litigation, the plaintiffs have recently filed and served their fourth version of the statement of claim and now expect, by their proposed directions, a further amended defence, a reply and a regime for particulars and disclosure. This is in respect of events that occurred between 2015 and 2020 – that is, between five and 10 years ago,” Freeburn said.“The proceeding has not languished through a lack of resources. The judgment of Brown J in December 2024 explains that a costs statement prepared by the plaintiffs, in respect of some costs orders in favour of the plaintiff, claimed $1.1m.“That was described by Her Honour as a ‘startling amount’ given the applications occupied less than two days [of] hearing time, albeit with some level of complexity.“On any view, the litigation has consumed large slabs of the parties’ resources and the court’s resources. It is hard to escape an overall impression that the parties are mired in the trenches of interlocutory warfare.”Adani claimed Pennings had “spent years trying to delay these civil legal proceedings from going to trial”.

Activism
Climate

Pet dogs have ‘extensive and multifarious’ impact on environment, new research finds

Scale of environmental damage attributed to huge number of dogs globally as well as ‘lax or uninformed behaviour of dog owners’Dogs have “extensive and multifarious” environmental impacts, disturbing wildlife, polluting waterways and contributing to carbon emissions, new research has found.An Australian review of existing studies has argued that “the environmental impact of owned dogs is far greater, more insidious, and more concerning than is generally recognised”. Continue reading...

Dogs have “extensive and multifarious” environmental impacts, disturbing wildlife, polluting waterways and contributing to carbon emissions, new research has found.An Australian review of existing studies has argued that “the environmental impact of owned dogs is far greater, more insidious, and more concerning than is generally recognised”.While the environmental impact of cats is well known, the comparative effect of pet dogs has been poorly acknowledged, the researchers said.The review, published in the journal Pacific Conservation Biology, highlighted the impacts of the world’s “commonest large carnivore” in killing and disturbing native wildlife, particularly shore birds.In Australia, attacks by unrestrained dogs on little penguins in Tasmania may contribute to colony collapse, modelling suggests, while a study of animals taken to the Australia Zoo wildlife hospital found that mortality was highest after dog attacks, which was the second most common reason for admission after car strikes.In the US, studies have found that deer, foxes and bobcats were less active in or avoid wilderness areas where dogs were allowed, while other research shows that insecticides from flea and tick medications kill aquatic invertebrates when they wash off into waterways. Dog faeces can also leave scent traces and affect soil chemistry and plant growth.The carbon footprint of pets is also significant. A 2020 study found the dry pet food industry had an environmental footprint of around twice the land area of the UK, with greenhouse gas emissions – 56 to 151 Mt CO2 – equivalent to the 60th highest-emitting country.The review’s lead author, Prof Bill Bateman of Curtin University, said the research did not intend to be “censorious” but aimed to raise awareness of the environmental impacts of man’s best friend, with whom humans’ domestic relationship dates back several millennia.“To a certain extent we give a free pass to dogs because they are so important to us … not just as working dogs but also as companions,” he said, pointing to the “huge benefits” dogs had on their owners’ mental and physical health. He also noted that dogs played vital roles in conservation work, such as in wildlife detection.“Although we’ve pointed out these issues with dogs in natural environments … there is that other balancing side, which is that people will probably go out and really enjoy the environment around them – and perhaps feel more protective about it – because they’re out there walking their dog in it.”Angelika von Sanden, a trauma therapist and the author of Sit Stay Grow: How Dogs Can Help You Worry Less and Walk into a Better Future, said she had observed that for many clients the companionship of a dog was often “literally the only reason to survive, to get up, to still keep going”.“It gives them a reason to get up, a reason to get out, a reason to move around and be in contact a little bit with the world outside,” she said.“Dog owners can get a bad name if they are not aware of the surroundings they are in and of other people around them,” she noted.In the review, the researchers attributed the extent of the environmental impacts to the sheer number of dogs globally, as well as “the lax or uninformed behaviour of dog owners”.A simple way to mitigate against the worst impacts was to keep dogs leashed in areas where restrictions apply and to maintain a buffer distance from nesting or roosting shorebirds, the paper suggested.“A lot of what we’re talking about can be ameliorated by owners’ behaviour,” Bateman said, pointing out that low compliance with leash laws was a problem.“Maybe, in some parts of the world, we actually need to consider some slightly more robust laws,” Bateman said, suggesting that dog exclusion zones may be more suitable in some areas.Bateman also raised sustainable dog food as an option to reduce a pet’s environmental paw print, noting however that “more sustainable dog food tends to cost more than the cheap dog food that we buy which has a higher carbon footprint”.“If nothing else, pick up your own dog shit,” he said.

Water
Animals
Food

You Might Think of Shrimp as Bugs of the Sea. But a Remarkable Discovery Shows the Opposite: Bugs Are Actually Shrimp of the Land

A recent study suggests that insects branched out from crustaceans on the tree of life

You Might Think of Shrimp as Bugs of the Sea. But a Remarkable Discovery Shows the Opposite: Bugs Are Actually Shrimp of the Land A recent study suggests that insects branched out from crustaceans on the tree of life Riley Black - Science Correspondent April 9, 2025 8:00 a.m. A species of remipede known from the Caicos Islands. The photograph was taken by a member of a multinational team looking for rare species. Remipedes are crustaceans that are close relatives to insects. Jørgen Olesen / Natural History Museum of Denmark, Brett Gonzalez, Karen Osborn, GGI Shrimp look an awful lot like bugs. The exoskeletons, jointed legs and compound eyes of both groups of living things give them more than a passing resemblance to each other, so no wonder some people call shrimp-like crawfish “mudbugs,” and a tattoo reading “shrimps is bugs” became a viral meme for underscoring the resemblance. But the tattoo got the reality backwards. Shrimp are not bugs. Bugs—or, more properly, insects—are technically a form of crustacean. Biologists of many different subdisciplines categorize life in a field called systematics. Living things of all sorts, both extant and extinct, are constantly being compared and evaluated to build what we so commonly think of as the tree of life. The addition of new species and novel analyses are constantly reshaping that evolutionary tree, and sometimes the category changes shift more than just a few twigs but entire evolutionary branches. Birds are now known to be dinosaurs, for example, whales are technically hoofed mammals called artiodactyls, and, thanks to a 2023 study in Molecular Biology and Evolution, insects have been shifted into the same group as shrimp and crabs called pancrustacea. The realization that bugs were close relatives of crustaceans took almost a century of curiosity to uncover. Paleontologist Joanna Wolfe of Harvard University, one of the authors of the 2023 study, notes that researchers noticed some insects and crustaceans had the same structures in their eyes and nervous systems. The resemblance could have been the result of convergent evolution, when two groups independently evolve in the same way, and so the idea that insects are modified crustaceans didn’t catch. But the hypothesis didn’t fully go away, either. In 2013, Wolfe and colleagues found that insects were the sister group, or next closest evolutionary relatives, to crustaceans called remipedes—which live in undersea caves and are the only venomous crustaceans. Remipedes were supposed to be oddballs that were shaped in strange ways due to their lives in caves. Now they were coming out as the closest relatives to the flies, mantises, bees and other insects we see around us on land. “At that time, I was shocked and thought there was something wrong with our results,” Wolfe recalls, only to have additional evidence make the connection between insects and crustaceans stronger. The 2023 analysis, based on genetic data, found insects next to remipedes in the middle of the various crustacean subgroups. Specifically, insects fit within a wide group of crustaceans called allotriocarida that not only includes remipedes, but also other unusual groups such as shrimp-like branchiopods and worm-like cephalopods sometimes called “horseshoe shrimp.” To put it another way, insects are to crustaceans as bats are to mammals—a subset that belongs to a broader group despite seeming so different from their closest relatives. Systematic shifts do far more than simply rearrange who’s related to whom. “Systematics allow us to make sense of the complexity of life,” says Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History paleontologist Advait Jukar. “When we recategorize species into new groups we can look at patterns of how that group might be diversifying and the various environmental and ecological factors.” Insects, like those above, fit right in the middle of the broader crustacean family tree. Richard Ross, The Image Bank via Getty Images When birds were recognized as dinosaurs, the change did more than reshuffle their place on the evolutionary tree. “The change showed us how characteristics that we typically associate with birds today, such as feathers, hollow bones and air sacs, were widely found within Dinosauria,” Jukar says. Paleontologists began finding more feathered dinosaurs and dinosaurs with traits previously associated with birds, such as complex systems of air sacs as part of their respiratory systems, once the connection was made. The newly understood relationship between birds and other dinosaurs has allowed experts to better understand why only birds survived the mass extinction of 66 million years ago. Comparisons between birds and bird-like dinosaurs revealed that adaptations for eating seeds and nuts that some birds developed during the Cretaceous allowed them to survive while bird-like raptors perished. The recognition that whales are hoofed mammals occurred around the same time as birds were found to be dinosaurs. The shift had a deep effect on how paleontologists carried out their research as well as the identity of the blubbery mammals. Prior to the 1990s, the earliest whales were thought to have evolved from carnivorous mammals called mesonychids. The beasts, sometimes called “wolves with hooves” because they looked like canids with hoof-like toes, were some of Earth’s most prominent carnivores around 55 million years ago, the time when amphibious whales such as Pakicetus began swimming in the shallows. But genetic evidence kept grouping whales close to hippos and other mammals with hoofed toes, called artiodactyls. Experts debated the connection, but by 2001 paleontologists uncovered early whale ankle bones that possessed traits only seen among artiodactyls. The recognition shifted where whales fit in the mammalian evolutionary tree and recalibrated what sort of ancestral creatures paleontologists should be looking for, yielding the 2007 discovery that whales most likely evolved from small, deer-like creatures in ancient India. Without the recognition that whales are artiodactyls, the relevance of those ancient, hoofed creatures to the origin of whales would have been entirely missed and paleontologists would still be wondering where orcas and minke whales came from. In the case of the bugs, Wolfe notes, the recognition that insects shared a close common ancestor with remipedes helps narrow down where and how insects originated. “For me, the exciting part for insects is the recognition that they do not come from a terrestrial ancestor,” Wolfe says. Until recently, the ancestors of insects were thought to be more millipede-like and evolved once invertebrates began to live on land. Now, Wolfe notes, the closest relatives of insects are wiggly crustaceans that live in marine caves. The connection doesn’t mean that remipedes embody the exact ancestral form of the first insects, but rather that their close relationship will cause experts to rethink where insects came from and how they evolved. The effort will require tracing the ancestry of remipedes and other crustaceans, as well as searching for insects in the fossil record—both from new fossil sites and perhaps miscategorized fossils already in collections. “There’s a complicated history and still missing pieces,” she notes, but now biologists have a better sense of what to search for. Bugs are crustaceans, and now experts can begin to wonder how that came to be. Get the latest Science stories in your inbox.

Extinction
Science

How one woman is doggedly transforming a trash patch into a fragrant habitat garden

Marie Massa has spent more than three years working mostly alone to transform a weedy strip of public land into a fragrant habitat garden in Lincoln Heights.

Some people see trash and weeds and walk on by. Others rail against the slobs of the world, or agencies that don’t do their jobs. And some, like environmental scientist Marie Massa, roll up their sleeves and get to work.In Massa’s case, that’s meant spending six to nine hours a week since early 2023 working mostly alone to transform a long, trash-filled strip of no-man’s land between Avenue 20 and Interstate 5 in Lincoln Heights into a fragrant, colorful habitat of California native plants. Tall stems of rosy clarkia, a native wildflower, add to the riot of spring color in the Lincoln Heights California Native Plants Corridor on Avenue 20, south of Broadway. (Christina House / Los Angeles Times) She’s named the garden the Lincoln Heights California Native Plants Corridor and features it on her Instagram page, ave20nativeplants, exulting every time she spots a native bee, caterpillar or some other creature visiting the space for food or shelter. “You see all these horrible things happening in the world,” she said, “the loss of rainforests, of plants and animals and insects. ... It’s so much and sometimes I can’t handle all this bad news,” Massa said. “That’s why I feel compelled, because I can make a difference here.” With little fanfare, Southern Californians are quietly changing urban landscapes for the better with native plants. These are their stories. Massa is slender and just 5 feet tall in her work boots, with strands of gray lightening her dark hair. Years ago, she helped build the Nature Gardens at the Los Angeles County Natural History Museum. She wrote about wildflower blooms for the Theodore Payne Foundation’s Wild Flower Hotline and volunteered to help renovate UCLA’s extraordinary Mathias Botanical Garden, a project that was completed in 2024.These days Massa is a stay-at-home mom to Caleb, age 8. Her husband, Joseph Prichard, one-time lead singer for the L.A. punk band One Man Show Live, now runs his own graphic design company, Kilter. Most weekdays, Massa walks her son to and from school, makes her husband’s lunch and tends her own private garden. Marie Massa purchased 200 feet of hose so she could hook it up to a spigot at the neighboring Alliance Susan & Eric Smidt Technology High School, which has given her permission to use the water to keep her native plant garden project alive. (Christina House / Los Angeles Times) But Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays between 8:30 and 11:30 a.m., Massa becomes a determined eco-warrior. With her garden gloves, buckets, hand tools and a spongy cushion to protect her knees as she weeds, Massa is doggedly transforming a strip of public land roughly 8 feet wide and around 380 feet long — longer than a football field. She fills bags of trash from around her planting strip and calls 311 to have them hauled away. She drags 200 feet of hose to water her new plantings a few times a month, from a spigot made available by Alliance Susan & Eric Smidt Technology High School next door. She’s spent days digging up garbage buried three feet deep in the garden and even muscled an old oven from the planting area to the curb after someone dumped it during the night. When graffiti appears on the retaining wall below the freeway, she takes a photo and uploads it to MyLA311 to get it painted over. She’s lobbied for plant donations, potted up excess seedlings for people to carry home and recruited work parties for really big jobs, such as sheet mulching the parkway between the sidewalk and the street to keep weed seeds from blowing into the habitat corridor on the other side of the sidewalk. The project started slowly in the fall of 2022. As she walked Caleb to school, less than a mile from their Lincoln Heights home, Massa noticed this long strip of neglected land between the freeway’s retaining wall and the sidewalk. Passerby Eimy Valle, 20, walks amid the abundant spring color of the Lincoln Heights California Native Plants Corridor on Avenue 20. (Christina House / Los Angeles Times) “It was full of weedy dried grasses, all kind of brown, and lots of trash,” Massa said. “There were also four planter beds in the parkway [the strip of land between the sidewalk and street] with a few buckwheat and encelias (brittlebush), but every time the L.A. Conservation Corps came to mow the weeds down, they gave a huge horrible buzz cut to the native plants.” When the buckwheats in the parkway got mowed down, she said, they blew seeds into the wider planting strip on the other side of the sidewalk, and Massa said she noticed some buckwheat seedlings coming up, trying to make space for themselves among the weeds. “I thought, ‘Native plants could do really well here,’ and I started developing this idea that the strip would be cool as a native plant garden.” That November, she bought some wildflower seeds and sprinkled them along the corridor, to see whether the soil would support their growth. After the heavy rains that winter, she was delighted to find them sprouting in the spring, fighting through the weeds along with buckwheat seedlings. Clusters of deep blue California bluebells are among the many vibrant flowers blooming at the Lincoln Heights California Native Plants Corridor on Avenue 20. (Christina House / Los Angeles Times) Native sticky monkey-flowers come in two colors at the Lincoln Heights California Native Plants Corridor: in red and here, in pale yellow with white edges. (Christina House / Los Angeles Times) She wrote a letter to people who lived near the untended land, outlining her idea to create a native plant garden to beautify the area and support pollinators. She invited neighbors to help her and included her email address. “I didn’t get any responses,” she said, “but when I went out to weed, people would come up to me and say, ‘We got your letter and this is a cool idea.’” In the spring of 2023, as her wildflowers were sprouting, Massa called the office of Los Angeles Council District 1 and told them about her project. She asked them to stop the Conservation Corps from mowing down the emerging plants and requested help from the Conservation Corps to suppress the weeds along the long strip of parkway between the sidewalk and street.The council agreed, so between May and October of 2023, Massa organized six work sessions to sheet mulch the parkway between the sidewalk and street, laying down cardboard and city-provided mulch with help from members of the L.A. Conservation Corps, Plant Community and Aubudon Society. The goal was to suppress the weeds on the parkway so they didn’t add more seeds to the habitat she was trying to create on the other side of the sidewalk. “The sheet mulching took a looong time,” she said, “but I wanted the parkway to look nice, with cleaned up planters, so people could park along the street, easily get out of their cars and see the corridor.” But she still needed plants. She went to her former boss at the Natural History Museum’s Nature Gardens, native plant guru Carol Bornstein, with her design, and Bornstein helped her choose colorful, fragrant and resilient native shrubs, perennials and annuals that could provide habitat for insects, birds and other wildlife. The response to her plant quest was heartening. The Los Angeles-Santa Monica Mountains Chapter of the California Native Plant Society gave her a $500 grant, and several nonprofit and for-profit nurseries donated plants, including the Audubon Center at Debs Park, Theodore Payne Foundation, Santa Monica Mountains Fund native plant nursery, TreePeople, Descanso Gardens, Plant Material, Hardy Californians, Artemisia Nursery and Growing Works Nursery, which even delivered the large cache of plants from its nursery in Camarillo to Lincoln Heights. By November she had more than 400 plants, and the help of a friend, Lowell Abellon, who wanted to learn more about native plants. Working about six hours a week, they slowly began adding plants to the 380-foot strip, weeding around each addition as they went. By March they had added about half the plants, but they had to stop before it got too warm. “If you plant them too late, they don’t have time to get good roots down into the ground [before it gets too hot],” she said. “I tried to be on top of the watering, but during the summer about half of them died, so I had to do a lot of replacement planting in the fall.”During the summer, Massa mostly worked alone keeping the newly planted sections of the corridor weeded and watered. Because school was out, she brought her young son to help her each week. Sometimes neighbors with children would join them, she said, giving her son someone to play with, but once or twice, she resorted to offering him $5 for his weeding work. When school resumed in the fall, Massa was ready to start planting again, this time working mostly alone because her friend Abellon had a family emergency that took him out of state. She began in October, planting and weeding the rest of the corridor, including adding 100 plants to replace the ones that died. The native plant corridor on Avenue 20 has many clumps of showy penstemon, native perennnials that live up to their name with their deep-throated, vibrantly colored flowers in electric purple and pink. (Christina House / Los Angeles Times) Now, in the garden’s third spring, the plants are filling out. There are large mounds of California buckwheat, tall spires of sweet hummingbird sage and incandescently purple clusters of showy penstemon. Monkey flowers in orange and red, scarlet bugler, purple and white sages and coffeeberry shrubs are coming into their own. And there’s so much California buckwheat Massa has had to thin out some of the plants and put them in pots for others to take home. She hopes her work will inspire others to create their own native plant gardens and even tackle a project like hers, beautifying a neglected public space. But she says it’s important that people understand such work is more than a passion; it’s a long-term commitment. Guerrilla gardeners have great intentions, she said, but it usually takes at least three years for a garden of native plants to get established, and those young plants will need water, whether it’s a nearby water spigot or jerricans of water lugged to the site.“If you just plant and go, you might as well throw the plants in a trash can, because it’s not going to work,” Massa said. “If you don’t water them, if you don’t weed and pick up trash, people aren’t going to respect the space, especially if you don’t put in the effort to keep it looking good. For a garden to be successful, you have to commit to putting in the work.”Massa’s son goes to another school these days, but she figures she’ll keep up her three-mornings-a-week schedule at the garden for at least another year, until she’s confident the plants are established enough to thrive on their own. For instance, she wants to make sure the narrow leaf milkweed she planted gets big enough to attract endangered monarch butterflies and provide a place for them to lay their eggs and plenty of food for their caterpillars every year.“My hope is that this will become a habitat that’s self-sustaining,” she said, “so I can step away and be OK just picking up trash every once in a while.” Marie Massa is nearly dwarfed by the tallest plants in her Lincoln Heights California Native Plants Corridor. (Christina House / Los Angeles Times) Will she start another project somewhere else? Massa rolled her eyes. “My husband says I can’t take on another project until this one is done, and this one has been a lot of work,” she said, laughing, “buuuut I do actually have my eye on another spot.” And then suddenly she’s serious, talking about this weedy strip on Main Street, not far from where she’s working now. She’s a little embarrassed, struggling to explain why she would want to tackle another lonely, thankless project, but defiant too, because, clearly, this is a mission.“People in this neighborhood don’t seem to know about native plants,” she said, “so maybe I can show them their value, the value of having habitat and space around you that’s beautiful. Maybe it could be a way of educating a new audience about the value of appreciating the environment.”Maybe so. Better watch your back, Johnny Appleseed.

Animals
Conservation
Food

Drawing (on) a decade of climate change in the North

Artist Alison McCreesh’s latest book documents her travels around the Arctic during her 20s. In retrospect, she sees an environmental narrative that followed her

Artist Alison McCreesh’s latest book documents her travels around the Arctic during her 20s. In retrospect, she sees an environmental narrative that followed her

Climate

No Results today.

Our news is updated constantly with the latest environmental stories from around the world. Reset or change your filters to find the most active current topics.

Join us to forge
a sustainable future

Our team is always growing.
Become a partner, volunteer, sponsor, or intern today.
Let us know how you would like to get involved!

CONTACT US

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

Subscribers receive a free day pass for streaming Cinema Verde.
Thank you! Your submission has been received!
Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form.