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How Promote Giving, a New Investment Model, Will Raise Millions for Charities

Joel Holsinger, a partner at Ares Management Corp., on Wednesday launched Promote Giving, an initiative encouraging investment managers to donate a portion of their fees to charity

The first foreign trip Joel Holsinger took in 2019 after joining the board of directors at the global health nonprofit PATH convinced him that he needed to do more to raise money for charities.The investment manager, who is now also a partner and co-head of alternative credit at Ares Management Corp., saw firsthand how a tuberculosis prevention program was helping residents of Dharavi, India's largest slum. He also saw that the main hurdle to expanding the program’s success was simply a lack of funding.“I wanted to do something that has purpose,” Holsinger told The Associated Press. “I wanted a charitable tie-in to whatever I do.”Shortly after returning from India, Holsinger created a new line of investment funds where Ares Management would donate at least 5% of its performance fee, also known as the “promote,” to charities. The first two funds of the resulting Pathfinder family of funds alone have raised more than $10 billion in investments and, as of June, pledged more than $40 million to charity.Holsinger wanted to expand the model further. On Wednesday, he announced Promote Giving, a new initiative to encourage other investment managers to use the model, which launches with funds from nine firms, including Ares Management, Pantheon and Pretium. The funds that are now part of Promote Giving represent about $35 billion in assets and could result in charitable donations of up to $250 million over the next 10 years.Unlike broader models like ESG investing, where environmental, social and governance factors are taken into account when making business decisions, or impact investing, where investors seek a social return along with a financial one, Promote Giving seeks to maximize the return on investment, Holsinger said. The donation only comes after investors receive their promised return and only from the manager's fees. “We’re not doing anything that looks at lower returns,” Holsinger said. “It’s basically just a dual mandate: If we do good on returns for our institutional investors, we will also drive returns that go directly to charity.”Charities, especially those who do international work, are in the midst of a difficult funding landscape. The dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development and massive cuts to foreign aid this year have affected nearly all nonprofits in some way. Those nonprofits who don't normally receive funding from the U.S. government still face increased competition for grants from organizations who saw their funding cut.Kammerle Schneider, PATH’s chief global health programs officer, said this year has shown how fragile public health systems are and has reinforced the need for “agile catalytic capital” that Promote Giving could provide.“There is nothing that is going to replace U.S. government funding,” said Schneider, adding that the launch of Promote Giving offers hope that new private donors may step in to help offer solutions to specific public health problems. “I think it comes at a time where we really need to look at the overall architecture of how we’re doing this and how we could be doing it better with less.”Sal Khan, founder and CEO of Khan Academy, which offers free learning resources for teachers and students, says the structure of Promote Giving could provide nonprofits stable income over several years that would allow them to spend less time fundraising and more time on their charitable work. “It's actually been hard for us to raise the philanthropy needed for us to have the maximum impact globally,” said Khan. While Khan Academy has the knowledge base to expand rapidly around the world and numerous countries have shown interest, Khan said the nonprofit lacks enough resources to do the expensive work of software development, localization and building infrastructure in every country.Khan hopes Promote Giving can grow into a major funder that could help with those costs. "We would be able to build that infrastructure so that we can literally educate anyone in the world,” he said.Holsinger hopes for that kind of growth as well. He envisions investment managers signing on to Promote Giving the way billionaires pledge to give away half their wealth through the Giving Pledge and he hopes other industries will develop their own mechanisms to make charitable donations part of their business models. Kate Stobbe, director of corporate insights at Chief Executives for Corporate Purpose, a coalition that advises companies on sustainability and corporate responsibility issues, said their research shows that companies that establish mission statements that include reasons for existing beyond simply profit generation have higher revenue growth and provide a higher return on investment.Having a common purpose increases workers' engagement and productivity, while also helping companies with recruitment and retention, said Stobbe, who said CECP will release a report that documents those findings based on 20 years of data later this week. “Having initiatives around corporate purpose help employees feel a connection to something bigger,” she said. "It really does contribute to that bottom line.”That kind of win-win is what Holsinger hopes to create with Promote Giving. He said many of the world's problems don't lack solutions. They lack enough capital to pay for the solutions.“We just need to drive more capital to these nonprofits and to these charities that are doing amazing work every day,” he said. “We're trying to build that model that drives impact through charitable dollars.”Associated Press coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. For all of AP’s philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Photos You Should See – Oct. 2025

Business
Government
Health

Why Lung Cancer Is Increasing among Nonsmoking Women Under Age 65

Thoracic surgeon Jonathan Villena explains why early screening for lung cancer is critical—even for those without symptoms.

Rachel Feltman: For Scientific American’s Science Quickly, I’m Rachel Feltman.Lung cancer is the deadliest cancer among women in the United States, surpassing the mortality numbers of breast and ovarian cancer combined. And surprisingly, younger women who have never smoked are increasingly being diagnosed with the disease.Here to explain what could be driving this trend—and why early screening can make all the difference—is Johnathan Villena, a thoracic surgeon at NewYork-Presbyterian and Weill Cornell.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.Thank you so much for joining us.Johnathan Villena: Thank you for having me.Feltman: So our viewers and listeners might be surprised to hear that lung cancer [deaths] in women now tops breast cancer, ovarian cancer combined. Can you tell us more about what’s going on there?Villena: Yeah, definitely. So in general lung cancer is the number-one cancer [killing]people in the U.S., both men and women. If you look at the American Cancer Society, around 226 new—226,000 new cases of lung cancer are projected to be diagnosed in 2025. Of those about 50 percent are cancer-related deaths, meaning [roughly] 120,000 people die every year from lung cancer. Now, what’s—the good news is that the incidence has actually been decreasing in the last few years.Feltman: Mm.Villena: If you look at the American Cancer Society’s statistics, in the last 10 years [ of data, which goes through 2021], the, the incidence of lung cancer has decreased in men around 3 percent per year. And it’s about half of that in women, meaning it’s decreasing [roughly] 1.5 percent per year. So one of the reasons that they think that this might be happening is that there was an uptick in smoking in women around the ’60s and ’70s, and that’s why we’re seeing a slight, you know, decrease in the incidence in men but not so much in the women.What’s more interesting and very surprising is the fact that when you look at younger people, meaning less than 65 years old—especially younger never-smoking people—there’s actually an increase of women in that subgroup. They’re overrepresented, and that’s something very surprising.Feltman: Does the research offer us any clues about what’s going on in this demographic of younger women?Villena: Yeah, so there’s been a lot of research. So, you know, in general—and something that people don’t know is that about 20 percent of lung cancers actually occur in people that have never smoked in their entire lives.Feltman: Mm.Villena: This is something that we don’t really understand why this happens to this one in five people, but there are some risk factors associated with it. Number one is exposure to radon, which is a natural gas that sometimes people are exposed to for a prolonged time. Number two is secondhand smoking ...Feltman: Mm.Villena: So they don’t smoke directly, but they live in a household where they smoke. And number three are kind of other environmental factors, things such as working in a specific, you know, manufacturing plant that deals with specific chemicals. And then lastly, the one that has had, actually, had a lot of research into it are genetic factors. There’s definitely a preponderance of certain mutations in somebody’s genes that can cause lung cancer, and that is overrepresented in women.Feltman: Do women face any unique challenges in getting diagnosed or treated when it comes to lung cancer?Villena: So, yes. First of all, you know, how do we treat or catch lung cancer? So the newest and, and latest way of catching this disease is actually through lung cancer screening.That’s something that’s relatively new; it’s only happened in the last 10 years. And that’s in certain demographics, meaning that if someone is over 50 years old and they have smoked more than one pack per day for 20 years, they meet the criteria for lung cancer screening, which is basically a radiograph or a CAT scan of their lungs. That’s the way that we pick up lung cancer.That’s the—almost the exact same thing that people have for breast cancer, such as mammography, or colonoscopy. So that’s before any symptoms come in. That’s really just to try to capture it when it’s in very nascent stages, right?Feltman: Mm-hmm.Villena: Where it’s very small or not symptomatic. And that’s the way we diagnose a, a lot of lung cancer.Now, that being said, there’s a couple of things. So first of all, [roughly] 60 to 70 percent of people, like, in general get mammographies.Feltman: Mm-hmm.Villena: [About] 60 to 70 percent of people get colonoscopies. Only 6 percent of people actually get lung cancer screening. So it’s dismally low.Feltman: Yeah.Villena: The reason being that sometimes people don’t know about it; it’s relatively new. Sometimes even doctors don’t know about it. There’s also a little bit of guilt involved, where people, you know, they think they did it to themselves by smoking ...Feltman: Hmm.Villena: So they don’t wanna go do it. The second thing is that, as you could imagine, this is only for high-risk individuals or people that have a history of smoking, all right? So it misses these never-smoking one in five patients. So that’s one of the things that we’re actively working on.Feltman: Yeah, how else does the, you know, the stigma associated with lung cancer because of its association with smoking, how does that impact people’s ability to get diagnosed and treated?Villena: I think there’s a lot of hesitancy between patients. There’s, you know, a recent study that showed that people are more—have more tendency to downplay their smoking history, meaning that if they quit, let’s say 10 years ago, you tell your doctor that you never smoked.Feltman: Mm.Villena: And that’s something very common. Or if you smoked, you know, one pack a day, maybe you say you smoked half a pack a day because you feel that guilt. So then you don’t give your doctor or your caretaker the full picture. And sometimes that prevents you from getting these tests, right? So there’s definitely that attitude.There’s also a bit of a fatalistic attitude, sort of like, “I did it to myself. I’d rather not know. You know, this is something that—you know, I made that choice, and if I get cancer, that’s my choice.” Right? So that’s, that’s also another attitude that we’re constantly trying to change in patients. You know, the treatment, once you capture it, is all the same, but really it’s about getting screening and it’s about finding the lung cancer.Feltman: So with smoking no longer necessarily being the driving factor, at least in this younger demographic, what kinds of risk factors should we be talking about more?Villena: So I think, you know—so smoking is always number one.Feltman: Sure.Villena: In the never-smoking people it’s either radon, secondhand smoking or environmental factors, and then a little bit of genetics plays, plays a part.Radon is something that people can test for in their homes. It’s something that people should read up on. So that’s number one: if you have exposure to that, to get rid of that.If you are in, in an environment, let’s say you work with chemicals that you think, you know, are astringent or have caused—causes you to have coughs or, you know, affects you in any sort of way, to kind of try to talk to your employer to work in a more ventilated setting.Really important with genetic factors is understanding your family history.Feltman: Mm.Villena: If you have a mother, a grandmother, a grandfather who died of cancer or you have a lot of cancer in your family, sometimes understanding that and knowing that from your, you know, from your family perspective will actually clue a doctor in to doing further tests, to looking into that further, ’cause that sometimes is passed down and you can have the same genes.Feltman: Are there any big research questions that scientists need to answer about lung cancer, specifically in young women?Villena: So, you know, there’s so much to look at, all right? So if we think about just the genetic aspect of it, there’s one specific gene called the EGFR gene—or it’s a mutation that’s found in lung cancer that in, if you look at all people with lung cancer, it’s found in about 15 percent ...Feltman: Mm-hmm.Villena: Of the population with lung cancer. Now, if you look at never-smoking Asian women that get lung cancer, it’s about 60 percent of them ...Feltman: Mm.Villena: Have that mutation. So the important thing about that EGFR mutation is there’s a specific drug for that mutation, all right?So there’s definitely a lot of genetic kind of information that we’re still actively researching. But the important thing about this genetic information is that there’s drugs targeted specifically for those mutations. So the more we know, the more we understand, the better.Feltman: So for folks who are hearing this and are surprised and, and maybe concerned what is your advice for how they should proceed, how they should look into their risk factors?Villena: You know, I think one of the, the, the major aspects of health in general is understanding your own health.Feltman: Mm.Villena: I think that younger people tend to delay care, tend to not see their doctors, and because, one, they’re busy, right, at their very busy moment in their lives. But second is that, you know, you don’t wanna deal with it, and you think that you will not get cancer, that you will not get this disease because you’re young and you’ve never smoked and you’ve never done anything bad.Feltman: Mm.Villena: But, you know, you have to be very aware of your body, so what are the kind of top four symptoms? So number one, let’s say you have a cough, and that cough lasts for longer than two weeks, right?Feltman: Mm-hmm.Villena: A normal cold, things like that will go away after a couple of weeks. But if it’s there for a couple of months, and I’ve definitely seen patients that tell me in retrospect, you know, “I’ve had this cough for three months,” right, and it should have been checked up sooner. So understanding yourself, understanding your body, not, you know, waiting for things, not procrastinating, which is very hard to do, but you should definitely see your doctor ...Feltman: Yeah.Villena: Regularly.Second is, like I said before, understanding your family, right, and what your genetic makeup is, right? Knowing your family history, understanding if your parents, grandparents had cancer, etcetera, or other chronic diseases.Feltman: Mm-hmm.Villena: And that’s, that’s basically the, the major aspects of it. It’s really being in tune with yourself.Feltman: So once a patient is actually diagnosed, what does treatment look like?Villena: So treatment for lung cancer, actually, is heavily dependent on the stage. There’s everything from stage 1, in which it’s localized to one portion of a lung, to stage 4, where it actually has gone to other parts of the body.Now, stage 1 disease, you basically need a simple surgery, where that lung nodule, or that lung cancer, is surgically removed, and typically you don’t need any other treatments. So stage 1 is what we look for. Stage 1 is the reason that lung cancer screening works because stage 1 doesn’t really have any symptoms ...Feltman: Mm.Villena: So when you find it that early patients do very well.Stage 4, once it’s left the lung, you are no longer a surgical candidate, unless in, you know, sometimes very specific cases, but for the most part you’re no longer a surgical candidate. And there you need systemic treatments.Feltman: And how long does the treatment tend to take for a stage 1 patient, if it’s just a surgical procedure?Villena: So if it’s just a surgical procedure, look, I do these surgeries all the time: the patient comes in; we do the surgery; the patients usually go home the next day.Feltman: Wow.Villena: And then we follow the patient and get CAT scans every six months for a long time to make sure nothing comes back or nothing new comes. So it’s pretty straightforward, and we do this all the time. We do these surgeries robotically now. Patients recover incredibly well, and they’re out, you know, doing—living their lives in a couple of weeks. So it’s really something very, very, very efficient.Feltman: Yeah, so huge incentive to get checked early.Villena: Mm-hmm.Feltman: Are there any advances in treatment, you know, any new treatments that doctors are excited about?Villena: Yeah, so there’s two major steps forward that have changed lung cancer treatment. Number one is something called targeted therapy.Feltman: Mm-hmm.Villena: So that means that there’s a drug that targets a specific mutation. So just how I was speaking about earlier about the EGFR mutation in young, never-smoking Asian women, there is a drug that targets that mutation that has really shown amazing results at all stages now.And the second one is actually immunotherapy, which won the Nobel Prize, which is this idea that you can use your own body’s immune system to kill the cancer cell. So cancer is very smart—what it does is it evades your immune system; it pretends that it’s part of your own body. And what this drug does is that it basically reawakens your immune system to recognize that cancer again and kill it. And we’ve seen amazing results, even in the stage 4 patients, where they are potentially cured of cancer, which, which we’ve never seen before.Feltman: What motivated you to get into this specialty?Villena: You know, I do have a family history of this in an uncle that passed away from lung cancer ...Feltman: Mm.Villena: And he was a heavy smoker. And, you know, I saw how, basically, decimated his, he was—[his] life [was], basically. He was a very vibrant guy, he was very active, and in six months he was gone, right?And I think, you know, once I started getting into, you know, medical school and understanding things, one of the major things that I really got into was research. And I see that if my uncle had been treated 20 years ago, he potentially could have been saved ...Feltman: Mm.Villena: Because of these advances in research. And right now we are right at the cusp where we are learning all these new things, and we actually have the tools to change how patients are treated, you know? And this—every year there’s a new treatment, which prior to that, there was no new treatment; i t was basically just chemo, and that’s it, all right? So I think that that really motivated me—something that I can actually take part in and actually change the course for a lot of people.Feltman: Well, thank you so much for coming on to chat with us today. This has been great.Villena: Thank you.Feltman: That’s all for today’s episode. We’ll be back on Friday to unpack the shocking story of a missing meteorite.Science Quickly is produced by me, Rachel Feltman, along with Fonda Mwangi and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was edited by Alex Sugiura and Kylie Murphy. Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck fact-check our show. Our theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Subscribe to Scientific American for more up-to-date and in-depth science news.For Scientific American, this is Rachel Feltman. See you next time.

Chemicals
Health
Science

The Blue-State Governors Who’ve Gone Weak on Climate Policy

If you scroll California Governor Gavin Newsom’s press releases, a portrait emerges of a undaunted climate fighter. One day he’s “paving [the] way for climate pollution-cutting technology”; another he’s launching “new international climate partnerships as Trump unleashes unhinged UN rant.” Last month, he announced the signing of a suite of measures “saving billions on electric bills, stabilizing [the] gas market and cutting pollution.” But look under the hood, and his heroic self-image dims somewhat. That big legislative package, for instance, also increases oil drilling and sets up a regional electricity market that “could tether California to fossil-fuel states at a time when the Trump administration is moving to roll back clean energy,” CalMatters reported.With Trump in death-drive mode on climate, canceling renewable energy projects left and right and even forbidding federal agencies to use language such as “climate change,” “green,”or “sustainable,” blue-state governors are well positioned to distinguish themselves and their party on the issue. They also have a responsibility: The states are our best hope for policy at a scale to match the problem. Yet a worrying trend is taking shape: Blue-state governors are making a big show of battling the Trump administration, but on climate issues they’ve been disappointing—and sometimes downright infuriating. Last month’s climate package wasn’t the California Democrats’ first flub this year. Over the summer, in what Politico dubbed the state’s “Great Climate Retreat,” they weakened limits on the carbon intensity of transportation fuels, rolled back environmental reviews for new housing, and lifted a cap on oil industry profits. “California was the vocal climate leader during the first Trump administration,” Chris Chavez, deputy policy director for the Coalition for Clean Air, told Politico. “It’s questionable whether or not that leadership is still there.” In Maryland, a climate advisory panel appointed by Governor Wes Moore has hit the brakes on a carbon trading measure, and late last month the state Department of the Environment, or MDE, appeared to cave to the Trump administration in abandoning some environmental justice metrics, which many fear means abandoning Black and brown communities to the whims of polluters. “It just appears to me that MDE blatantly does not want to be accountable in the massive pollution and the overburden of these heavy industrial industries,” Kamita Gray, a community leader in Brandywine—a majority-Black town that’s home to gas-fired power plants, a coal ash dump, and a Superfund site—told Maryland Matters.Governor Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania too is under fire from climate critics. As attorney general, he authored a solid road map for protecting Pennsylvanians from the harmful environmental and health effects of fracking, but in his two years as governor he has allowed companies to be secretive about the chemicals used in fracking, and has not pushed to pass any laws curbing the industry. The Environmental Health Project, a Pittsburgh-based nonprofit, said “residents are still waiting for meaningful action. Our assessment concludes that the Shapiro administration has not fulfilled the commitments the governor made to Pennsylvanians in general and to frontline communities in particular.”And then there’s New York. Governor Kathy Hochul has been failing to follow the decarbonization timeline that was outlined in the state’s 2019 climate law, prompting environmental justice groups to sue her. She has delayed plans for “cap and invest” and is dragging her feet on building public renewables (despite the state’s landmark Build Public Renewables Act, which passed in 2023). She has seemingly caved to Trump by going ahead with gas pipelines she previously rejected. And it’s unclear whether she will sign a repeal of the outdated “100 foot rule,” which requires utility ratepayers to subsize the cost of connecting new customers to the gas system, a reform that has long been a priority of the state’s climate movement.Part of what’s so self-destructive here is that energy affordability is a highly salient issue for voters, taking center stage, for example in the governor’s race in New Jersey, where electricity rates have risen 22 percent. Interviewed in Friday’s New York Times on this subject, David Springe of the National Association of State Utility Consumer Advocates described electricity as “the new eggs,” an indicator of how costly daily life is for most Americans. Republicans in New York have seized on the problem as an opportunity to blame Democrats and climate-friendly policies. Stephan Edel of New York Renews, a progressive coalition fighting for clean energy, told me the governor “has spoken really eloquently about the need to do something about affordability.” Indeed, she endorsed Zohran Mamdani, the democratic socialist, for New York City mayor, partly for this reason. She often uses “affordability” to justify rightward shifts or retreats from climate policy, he said, adding that, inexplicably, she also shies away from touting the affordability benefits of climate policies that she does support. For example, in the state budget last year, she agreed to invest over a billion dollars in funding for climate programs, including one that will help make homes for low-income New Yorkers more energy efficient and another that will save school districts money by shifting to electric school buses. Instead of touting those wins for affordability—or embracing the potential of publicly owned renewables to do the same—she’s embraced the Republican narrative that climate policy and affordability are at odds.By contrast, Mikie Sherill in New Jersey has been touting clean energy as a solution to energy affordability woes. If she gets elected and continues this path, more blue state governors should follow her lead. The Democratic base is desperate to see its leaders stand up to Trump on both climate and affordability. (And when Democratic governors do stand up to Trump on anything—Illinois’s JB Pritzker on the militarization of Chicago, Maine’s Janet Mills on health care—their poll numbers spike.)And the reverse is also true—failing to differentiate themselves from Trump has been political suicide for many Democrats. “Every time one of these elected officials says, ‘I’m going to stand up to Trump, I’m going to protect affordability, I’m going to address climate change,’ and then doesn’t do it,” that’s a win for the Republicans, Edel said, because it fuels low turnout for Democratic voters. Climate offers an obvious opportunity to isolate the Republicans on a matter of broad concern, renew Americans’ faith in government, and make real progress. The Democratic governors flailing so badly on this issue have not only a moral obligation to change course, but also a political one.

If you scroll California Governor Gavin Newsom’s press releases, a portrait emerges of a undaunted climate fighter. One day he’s “paving [the] way for climate pollution-cutting technology”; another he’s launching “new international climate partnerships as Trump unleashes unhinged UN rant.” Last month, he announced the signing of a suite of measures “saving billions on electric bills, stabilizing [the] gas market and cutting pollution.” But look under the hood, and his heroic self-image dims somewhat. That big legislative package, for instance, also increases oil drilling and sets up a regional electricity market that “could tether California to fossil-fuel states at a time when the Trump administration is moving to roll back clean energy,” CalMatters reported.With Trump in death-drive mode on climate, canceling renewable energy projects left and right and even forbidding federal agencies to use language such as “climate change,” “green,”or “sustainable,” blue-state governors are well positioned to distinguish themselves and their party on the issue. They also have a responsibility: The states are our best hope for policy at a scale to match the problem. Yet a worrying trend is taking shape: Blue-state governors are making a big show of battling the Trump administration, but on climate issues they’ve been disappointing—and sometimes downright infuriating. Last month’s climate package wasn’t the California Democrats’ first flub this year. Over the summer, in what Politico dubbed the state’s “Great Climate Retreat,” they weakened limits on the carbon intensity of transportation fuels, rolled back environmental reviews for new housing, and lifted a cap on oil industry profits. “California was the vocal climate leader during the first Trump administration,” Chris Chavez, deputy policy director for the Coalition for Clean Air, told Politico. “It’s questionable whether or not that leadership is still there.” In Maryland, a climate advisory panel appointed by Governor Wes Moore has hit the brakes on a carbon trading measure, and late last month the state Department of the Environment, or MDE, appeared to cave to the Trump administration in abandoning some environmental justice metrics, which many fear means abandoning Black and brown communities to the whims of polluters. “It just appears to me that MDE blatantly does not want to be accountable in the massive pollution and the overburden of these heavy industrial industries,” Kamita Gray, a community leader in Brandywine—a majority-Black town that’s home to gas-fired power plants, a coal ash dump, and a Superfund site—told Maryland Matters.Governor Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania too is under fire from climate critics. As attorney general, he authored a solid road map for protecting Pennsylvanians from the harmful environmental and health effects of fracking, but in his two years as governor he has allowed companies to be secretive about the chemicals used in fracking, and has not pushed to pass any laws curbing the industry. The Environmental Health Project, a Pittsburgh-based nonprofit, said “residents are still waiting for meaningful action. Our assessment concludes that the Shapiro administration has not fulfilled the commitments the governor made to Pennsylvanians in general and to frontline communities in particular.”And then there’s New York. Governor Kathy Hochul has been failing to follow the decarbonization timeline that was outlined in the state’s 2019 climate law, prompting environmental justice groups to sue her. She has delayed plans for “cap and invest” and is dragging her feet on building public renewables (despite the state’s landmark Build Public Renewables Act, which passed in 2023). She has seemingly caved to Trump by going ahead with gas pipelines she previously rejected. And it’s unclear whether she will sign a repeal of the outdated “100 foot rule,” which requires utility ratepayers to subsize the cost of connecting new customers to the gas system, a reform that has long been a priority of the state’s climate movement.Part of what’s so self-destructive here is that energy affordability is a highly salient issue for voters, taking center stage, for example in the governor’s race in New Jersey, where electricity rates have risen 22 percent. Interviewed in Friday’s New York Times on this subject, David Springe of the National Association of State Utility Consumer Advocates described electricity as “the new eggs,” an indicator of how costly daily life is for most Americans. Republicans in New York have seized on the problem as an opportunity to blame Democrats and climate-friendly policies. Stephan Edel of New York Renews, a progressive coalition fighting for clean energy, told me the governor “has spoken really eloquently about the need to do something about affordability.” Indeed, she endorsed Zohran Mamdani, the democratic socialist, for New York City mayor, partly for this reason. She often uses “affordability” to justify rightward shifts or retreats from climate policy, he said, adding that, inexplicably, she also shies away from touting the affordability benefits of climate policies that she does support. For example, in the state budget last year, she agreed to invest over a billion dollars in funding for climate programs, including one that will help make homes for low-income New Yorkers more energy efficient and another that will save school districts money by shifting to electric school buses. Instead of touting those wins for affordability—or embracing the potential of publicly owned renewables to do the same—she’s embraced the Republican narrative that climate policy and affordability are at odds.By contrast, Mikie Sherill in New Jersey has been touting clean energy as a solution to energy affordability woes. If she gets elected and continues this path, more blue state governors should follow her lead. The Democratic base is desperate to see its leaders stand up to Trump on both climate and affordability. (And when Democratic governors do stand up to Trump on anything—Illinois’s JB Pritzker on the militarization of Chicago, Maine’s Janet Mills on health care—their poll numbers spike.)And the reverse is also true—failing to differentiate themselves from Trump has been political suicide for many Democrats. “Every time one of these elected officials says, ‘I’m going to stand up to Trump, I’m going to protect affordability, I’m going to address climate change,’ and then doesn’t do it,” that’s a win for the Republicans, Edel said, because it fuels low turnout for Democratic voters. Climate offers an obvious opportunity to isolate the Republicans on a matter of broad concern, renew Americans’ faith in government, and make real progress. The Democratic governors flailing so badly on this issue have not only a moral obligation to change course, but also a political one.

Climate
Chemicals
Government

Nature groups rebuke Reeves for ‘cynical’ 11th-hour planning bill changes

Chancellor accused of removing environmental protections to win short-term growth and save her budgetUK politics live – latest updatesLast-minute changes to the government’s landmark planning bill have sparked a furious backlash from nature groups who have mounted an attack on the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, over her plans to remove environmental protections.The changes to the legislation come as it enters its final stages before being signed into law. Continue reading...

Last-minute changes to the government’s landmark planning bill have sparked a furious backlash from nature groups who have mounted an attack on the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, over her plans to remove environmental protections.The changes to the legislation come as it enters its final stages before being signed into law.Promoted by Reeves, they are designed to make it easier for developers to side-step environmental laws in order to build major projects such as AI datacentres.They include new powers for the government to overrule local democracy if councils refuse developments based on environmental grounds, or on issues such as water shortages.But in outspoken attacks on the chancellor, charities including household names such as the RSPB and Wildlife Trusts say Reeves is seeking to grab short-term growth headlines to save her budget, rather than well-thought-out reforms to planning.Reeves is pushing for the planning bill to be passed before her budget on 26 November so that she is able to factor it into forecasts by the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), which could give her about £3bn extra breathing room against her own debt rules.The charities have spent months working with ministers in an attempt to forge the best planning bill to ensure growth and nature recovery go hand in hand.Dr James Robinson, the RSPB’s chief operating officer, said: “Dropping 67 amendments to the planning bill at the 11th hour isn’t just poor process, it’s legislative chaos. There’s no time for proper scrutiny, no clarity on the cumulative impact, and no confidence this is about good planning rather than political optics.“It looks like a cynical attempt to game a better forecast from the OBR, rather than a serious effort to fix the planning system.”The intervention by Reeves into the landmark bill comes after she was filmed boasting about her closeness to a major developer after she intervened to lift legal blocks to their housing plans.The objections to 21,000 homes being built in Sussex concerned water shortages and concerns over the amount of water being taken from rivers and wetlands in the Arun Valley, which risked affecting protected wildlife and local water resources. The MP for Horsham, John Milne has criticised the chancellor’s intervention, stating that it was top-down government at its worst.“This decision rides roughshod over the work that Horsham district council has been carrying out to find a balanced solution.”One amendment promoted by Reeves would allow more central government intervention in local decision making. It allows the secretary of state to overrule councils that refuse permission for projects, even if they have legitimate concerns on environmental grounds, or there are issues relating to water shortages.The amendment is designed to ease the path of major infrastructure projects, for example AI datacentres, which create vast amounts of CO2 and put huge pressure on water resources.Alexa Culver, an environmental lawyer from RSK Wilding, said: “For the first time, the secretary of state will be able to make orders that prevent refusals of planning permission by planning authorities.“This could direct authorities to ignore real-world infastructure and environmental constraints – like water shortages – to allow harmful development through that leaves local communities stranded.”Joan Edwards, director of policy and public affairs at the Wildlife Trusts, said Reeves was trying to grab headlines about growth measures before her budget.“The chancellor continues to fail to understand that a healthy natural environment underpins a healthy economy. These performative amendments represent neither a win for development or the economy, and promise only delay and muddle in planning and marine policy.”Richard Benwell, CEO of Wildlife and Countryside Link, said the government’s race to speed up planning decisions would fall flat on its face if it did not include the environment at its core.“Last-minute changes to the bill are being made in a hurried and piecemeal approach,” he said. “This kind of scattergun policymaking doesn’t give businesses or investors the certainty they need to drive growth, and it puts the UK’s irreplaceable natural environment at risk.”Government officials have said the amendments were required in part because an earlier watering down of the bill in the summer damaged investor confidence. However, no data has been provided to back this claim.The government said if passed, each of these “pro-growth changes” would accelerate the government’s “plan for change” to build 1.5m homes, achieve clean power by 2030 and raise living standards across the country.Steve Reed, the housing secretary, said: “Britain’s potential has been shackled by governments unwilling to overhaul the stubborn planning system that has erected barriers to building at every turn. It is simply not true that nature has to lose for economic growth to succeed.“Sluggish planning has real-world consequences. Every new house blocked deprives a family of a home. Every infrastructure project that gets delayed blocks someone from a much-needed job. This will now end.”

Nature
Government
Health

Watchdog rules Red Tractor exaggerated its environmental standards

The Advertising Standards Authority agrees with River Action that the food safety body’s 2023 advert misled the publicThe UK’s advertising watchdog has upheld a complaint that Britain’s biggest farm assurance scheme misled the public in a TV ad about its environmental standards.The Red Tractor scheme, used by leading supermarkets including Tesco, Asda and Morrisons to assure customers their food meets high standards for welfare, environment, traceability and safety, is the biggest and perhaps best known assurance system in Britain. Continue reading...

The UK’s advertising watchdog has upheld a complaint that Britain’s biggest farm assurance scheme misled the public in a TV ad about its environmental standards.The Red Tractor scheme, used by leading supermarkets including Tesco, Asda and Morrisons to assure customers their food meets high standards for welfare, environment, traceability and safety, is the biggest and perhaps best known assurance system in Britain.About 45,000 of the UK’s farms are members of the scheme, and the advert promised that food carrying the logo had been “farmed with care”.But the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) upheld a complaint from the clean water campaign group River Action that the scheme’s environmental standards were exaggerated in the advert, last aired in 2023.In its judgment, the ASA said the ad must not be shown again in its current form. It said in future Red Tractor should make clear exactly what standards it is referring to when it uses the phrases “farmed with care” and “all our standards are met”.River Action said it made the complaint because it was concerned environmental standards relating to pollution were not being met on Red Tractor farms, including the claim “When the Red Tractor’s there, your food’s farmed with care … from field to store all our standards are met.”The ASA considered evidence from an Environment Agency report into Red Tractor farms, which found that 62% of the most critical pollution incidents occurred on Red Tractor farms between 2014 and 2019.Charles Watson, chair and founder of River Action, said large food retailers such as Tesco and Asda should lay out credible plans as to how they would move away from what he termed a “busted flush” of a certification scheme and instead support farmers whose working practices were genuinely sustainable.“Red Tractor farms are polluting the UK’s rivers, and consumers trying to make environmentally responsible choices have been misled,” said Watson.“This ASA ruling confirms what we’ve long argued: Red Tractor’s claims aren’t just misleading – they provide cover for farms breaking the law.”Red Tractor said its standards did not cover all environmental legislation. Therefore, data on compliance with environmental regulation should not be confused with farms’ compliance with Red Tractor’s requirements.Jim Moseley, CEO of Red Tractor, said: “We believe the ASA’s final decision is fundamentally flawed and misinterprets the content of our advert.“If the advert was clearly misleading, it wouldn’t have taken so long to reach this conclusion. Accordingly, the ASA’s actions are minimal. They’ve confirmed that we can continue to use ‘farmed with care’ but simply need to provide more information on the specific standards being referred to.“The advert … made no environmental claim, and we completely disagree with the assumption that it would have been misinterpreted by consumers.”

Food
Pollution
Water

Red Tractor ad banned for misleading environmental claims

The Advertising Standards Authority upheld a complaint by environment charity River Action.

Red Tractor ad banned for misleading environmental claimsRed TractorThe Red Tractor advert was last shown in 2023 but will now be banned for future use unless it is updatedA TV advert by Red Tractor, the UK's biggest certifier of farm products on supermarket shelves, has been banned for exaggerating the scheme's environmental benefits and misleading the public.The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) ruled the organisation had provided "insufficient evidence" that its farms complied with basic environmental laws to substantiate the claims in its ad.Environmental group River Action, which brought the complaint in 2023, said the ruling showed the scheme was "greenwashing" and urged supermarkets to stop using it.But Red Tractor called the watchdog's decision "fundamentally flawed" and argued that the scheme's focus was animal welfare not environmental standards.In 2021, Red Tractor aired an advert in which it said: "From field to store all our standards are met. When the Red Tractor's there, your food's farmed with care."You can watch it below.Watch: the ad banned by the Advertising Standards AuthorityThe environmental charity River Action took issue with the ad, which ran for a further two years, and complained to the watchdog that it suggested to consumers that Red Tractor farms will "ensure a high degree of environmental protection".The charity pointed to a report by the Environment Agency, released in 2020, which looked at how many breaches of environmental law there were on Red Tractor farms in the previous five years. The report concluded that these farms were "not currently an indicator of good environmental performance".After more than two years of investigation - one of the longest running - the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) upheld the complaint.It said that Red Tractor had failed to provide "sufficient evidence" that its farms met "basic" environmental laws and had a good environmental outcome to substantiate the claims in the ad.It also ruled that as a result the advert was "misleading" and "exaggerated" the benefits of the scheme.River Action welcomed the decision by the ASA and called on supermarkets to act."What this shows is that for their environmental credentials Red Tractor has been misleading the public and their supplies," said Amy Fairman, head of campaigns at River Action. "So, we're looking for suppliers like supermarkets to really examine and take stock of what is on their shelves."She added that challenging such adverts was important because of the pollution risk to the environment from agricultural pollution.In 2022, the Environment Audit Committee concluded that agriculture was one of the most common factors preventing rivers from being in good health - affecting 40% of them. The risks to the environment include from slurry and pesticide runoff.BBC News/Tony JolliffeAmy Fairman represents environmental charity River Action which campaigns for clean and healthy riversBut Red Tractor, which assures 45,000 farms in the UK, have pushed back strongly, calling the finding by the ASA "fundamentally flawed".Jim Mosley, CEO of Red Tractor, told the BBC: "They believe that we have implied an environmental claim. Nowhere in the voiceover or the imagery is any environmental claim actually made."He argued that the ASA only found a minority of people would think the advert meant Red Tractor farms had good environmental standards, and in fact the scheme is focused on other issues."Red Tractor's core purpose is food safety, animal welfare, and traceability. Whilst we have some environmental standards, they are a small part. And as a consequence, we leave that entirely to the Environment Agency to enforce environmental legislation," said Mr Moseley.When asked if that meant Red Tractor does not know if its farms are complying with environmental law, he said: "Correct".But many supermarkets do refer to the environmental benefits of Red Tractor farms.Natalie Smith, Tesco's head of agriculture said last month, on the 25-year anniversary of Red Tractor: "Certification schemes play a key role in providing reassurance for customers, and over the past 25 years, Red Tractor has established itself as a mark of quality, standing for… environmental protection."On Morrisons' website it states: "100% of the fresh pork, beef, lamb, poultry, milk and cheddar cheese we sell in our stores comes from farms certified by Red Tractor, or an approved equivalent scheme, giving customers assurance… environmental protection."Both supermarkets were asked if they stood by the Red Tractor logo.Morrisons did not respond to comment and Tesco referred the BBC to their industry body the British Retail Consortium.The consortium said that "retailers remain committed to working with Red Tractor", but that the organisation themselves are owners of the scheme.

Agriculture
Animals
Food

Why some quantum materials stall while others scale

In a new study, MIT researchers evaluated quantum materials’ potential for scalable commercial success — and identified promising candidates.

People tend to think of quantum materials — whose properties arise from quantum mechanical effects — as exotic curiosities. But some quantum materials have become a ubiquitous part of our computer hard drives, TV screens, and medical devices. Still, the vast majority of quantum materials never accomplish much outside of the lab.What makes certain quantum materials commercial successes and others commercially irrelevant? If researchers knew, they could direct their efforts toward more promising materials — a big deal since they may spend years studying a single material.Now, MIT researchers have developed a system for evaluating the scale-up potential of quantum materials. Their framework combines a material’s quantum behavior with its cost, supply chain resilience, environmental footprint, and other factors. The researchers used their framework to evaluate over 16,000 materials, finding that the materials with the highest quantum fluctuation in the centers of their electrons also tend to be more expensive and environmentally damaging. The researchers also identified a set of materials that achieve a balance between quantum functionality and sustainability for further study.The team hopes their approach will help guide the development of more commercially viable quantum materials that could be used for next generation microelectronics, energy harvesting applications, medical diagnostics, and more.“People studying quantum materials are very focused on their properties and quantum mechanics,” says Mingda Li, associate professor of nuclear science and engineering and the senior author of the work. “For some reason, they have a natural resistance during fundamental materials research to thinking about the costs and other factors. Some told me they think those factors are too ‘soft’ or not related to science. But I think within 10 years, people will routinely be thinking about cost and environmental impact at every stage of development.”The paper appears in Materials Today. Joining Li on the paper are co-first authors and PhD students Artittaya Boonkird, Mouyang Cheng, and Abhijatmedhi Chotrattanapituk, along with PhD students Denisse Cordova Carrizales and Ryotaro Okabe; former graduate research assistants Thanh Nguyen and Nathan Drucker; postdoc Manasi Mandal; Instructor Ellan Spero of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering (DMSE); Professor Christine Ortiz of the Department of DMSE; Professor Liang Fu of the Department of Physics; Professor Tomas Palacios of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS); Associate Professor Farnaz Niroui of EECS; Assistant Professor Jingjie Yeo of Cornell University; and PhD student Vsevolod Belosevich and Assostant Professor Qiong Ma of Boston College.Materials with impactCheng and Boonkird say that materials science researchers often gravitate toward quantum materials with the most exotic quantum properties rather than the ones most likely to be used in products that change the world.“Researchers don’t always think about the costs or environmental impacts of the materials they study,” Cheng says. “But those factors can make them impossible to do anything with.”Li and his collaborators wanted to help researchers focus on quantum materials with more potential to be adopted by industry. For this study, they developed methods for evaluating factors like the materials’ price and environmental impact using their elements and common practices for mining and processing those elements. At the same time, they quantified the materials’ level of “quantumness” using an AI model created by the same group last year, based on a concept proposed by MIT professor of physics Liang Fu, termed quantum weight.“For a long time, it’s been unclear how to quantify the quantumness of a material,” Fu says. “Quantum weight is very useful for this purpose. Basically, the higher the quantum weight of a material, the more quantum it is.”The researchers focused on a class of quantum materials with exotic electronic properties known as topological materials, eventually assigning over 16,000 materials scores on environmental impact, price, import resilience, and more.For the first time, the researchers found a strong correlation between the material’s quantum weight and how expensive and environmentally damaging it is.“That’s useful information because the industry really wants something very low-cost,” Spero says. “We know what we should be looking for: high quantum weight, low-cost materials. Very few materials being developed meet that criteria, and that likely explains why they don’t scale to industry.”The researchers identified 200 environmentally sustainable materials and further refined the list down to 31 material candidates that achieved an optimal balance of quantum functionality and high-potential impact.The researchers also found that several widely studied materials exhibit high environmental impact scores, indicating they will be hard to scale sustainably. “Considering the scalability of manufacturing and environmental availability and impact is critical to ensuring practical adoption of these materials in emerging technologies,” says Niroui.Guiding researchMany of the topological materials evaluated in the paper have never been synthesized, which limited the accuracy of the study’s environmental and cost predictions. But the authors say the researchers are already working with companies to study some of the promising materials identified in the paper.“We talked with people at semiconductor companies that said some of these materials were really interesting to them, and our chemist collaborators also identified some materials they find really interesting through this work,” Palacios says. “Now we want to experimentally study these cheaper topological materials to understand their performance better.”“Solar cells have an efficiency limit of 34 percent, but many topological materials have a theoretical limit of 89 percent. Plus, you can harvest energy across all electromagnetic bands, including our body heat,” Fu says. “If we could reach those limits, you could easily charge your cell phone using body heat. These are performances that have been demonstrated in labs, but could never scale up. That’s the kind of thing we’re trying to push forward."This work was supported, in part, by the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy.

Energy
Science
Sustainable

Engineering next-generation fertilizers

MIT postdoc Giorgio Rizzo harnesses plant chemistry to design sustainable fertilizers that could reshape modern farming.

Born in Palermo, Sicily, Giorgio Rizzo spent his childhood curious about the natural world. “I have always been fascinated by nature and how plants and animals can adapt and survive in extreme environments,” he says. “Their highly tuned biochemistry, and their incredible ability to create ones of the most complex and beautiful structures in chemistry that we still can’t even achieve in our laboratories.”As an undergraduate student, he watched as a researcher mounted a towering chromatography column layered with colorful plant chemicals in a laboratory. When the researcher switched on a UV light, the colors turned into fluorescent shades of blue, green, red and pink. “I realized in that exact moment that I wanted to be the same person, separating new unknown compounds from a rare plant with potential pharmaceutical properties,” he recalls.These experiences set him on a path from a master’s degree in organic chemistry to his current work as a postdoc in the MIT Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, where he focuses on developing sustainable fertilizers and studying how rare earth elements can boost plant resilience, with the aim of reducing agriculture’s environmental impact.In the lab of MIT Professor Benedetto Marelli, Rizzo studies plant responses to environmental stressors, such as heat, drought, and prolonged UV irradiation. This includes developing new fertilizers that can be applied as seed coating to help plants grow stronger and enhance their resistance.“We are working on new formulations of fertilizers that aim to reduce the huge environmental impact of classical practices in agriculture based on NPK inorganic fertilizers,” Rizzo explains. Although they are fundamental to crop yields, their tendency to accumulate in soil is detrimental to the soil health and microbiome living in it. In addition, producing NPK (nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium) fertilizers is one of the most energy-consuming and polluting chemical processes in the world.“It is mandatory to reshape our conception of fertilizers and try to rely, at least in part, on alternative products that are safer, cheaper, and more sustainable,” he says.Recently, Rizzo was awarded a Kavanaugh Fellowship, a program that gives MIT graduate students and postdocs entrepreneurial training and resources to bring their research from the lab to the market. “This prestigious fellowship will help me build a concrete product for a company, adding more value to our research,” he says.Rizzo hopes their work will help farmers increase their crop yields without compromising soil quality or plant health. A major barrier to adopting new fertilizers is cost, as many farmers rely heavily on each growing season’s output and cannot risk investing in products that may underperform compared to traditional NPK fertilizers. The fertilizers being developed in the Marelli Lab address this challenge by using chitin and chitosan, abundant natural materials that make them far less expensive to produce, which Rizzo hopes will encourage farmers to try them.“Through the Kavanaugh Fellowship, I will spend this year trying to bring the technology outside the lab to impact the world and meet the need for farmers to support their prosperity,” he says.Mentorship has been a defining part of his postdoc experience. Rizzo describes Professor Benedetto Marelli as “an incredible mentor” who values his research interests and supports him through every stage of his work. The lab spans a wide range of projects — from plant growth enhancement and precision chemical delivery to wastewater treatment, vaccine development for fish, and advanced biochemical processes. “My colleagues created a stimulant environment with different research topics,” he notes. He is also grateful for the work he does with international institutions, which has helped him build a network of researchers and academics around the world.Rizzo enjoys the opportunity to mentor students in the lab and appreciates their curiosity and willingness to learn. “It is one of the greatest qualities you can have as a scientist because you must be driven by curiosity to discover the unexpected,” he says.He describes MIT as a “dynamic and stimulating experience,” but also acknowledges how overwhelming it can be. “You will feel like a small fish in a big ocean,” he says. “But that is exactly what MIT is: an ocean full of opportunities and challenges that are waiting to be solved.”Beyond his professional work, Rizzo enjoys nature and the arts. An avid reader, he balances his scientific work with literature and history. “I never read about science-related topics — I read about it a lot already for my job,” he says. “I like classic literature, novels, essays, history of nations, and biographies. Often you can find me wandering in museums’ art collections.” Classical art, Renaissance, and Pre-Raphaelites are his favorite artistic currents.Looking ahead, Rizzo hopes to shift his professional pathway toward startups or companies focused on agrotechnical improvement. His immediate goal is to contribute to initiatives where research has a direct, tangible impact on everyday life.“I want to pursue the option of being part of a spinout process that would enable my research to have a direct impact in everyday life and help solve agricultural issues,” he adds.

Sustainable
Agriculture
Chemicals

Nobel Prize in Economics Awarded for Research on Science, Technology and Growth

Joel Mokyr, Philippe Aghion and Peter Howitt share the Nobel economics prize for work that underlines the importance of investing in research and development

October 14, 20254 min readEconomics Nobel Honors Work Linking Scientific Research to ProsperityJoel Mokyr, Philippe Aghion and Peter Howitt share the Nobel economics prize for work that underlines the importance of investing in research and developmentBy Philip Ball & Nature magazine Joel Mokyr, Philippe Aghion and Peter Howitt, winners of the 2025 Economics Nobel prize. Northwestern University, Patrick Imbert/Collège de France, Ashley McCabe/Brown UniversityThe 2025 Sveriges Riksbank Prize for Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel has been awarded to three researchers who have shown how technological and scientific innovation, coupled to market competition, drive economic growth.One half of the prize goes to economic-historian Joel Mokyr of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, and the other half is split between the economic theorists Philippe Aghion of the Collège de France and the London School of Economics and Peter Howitt of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.“I can’t find the words to express what I feel,” Aghion said. He says he will use the money for research in his laboratory at the Collège de France.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.The award “underlies the importance in investing in science for innovation and long-term economic growth”, says economist Diane Coyle of the University of Cambridge. “It's great to see the Nobel prize recognize the importance of this topic,” adds innovation policy researcher Richard Jones of the University of Manchester, UK. “It's important that economists understand the conditions that lead to technological progress,” he adds. The winners, says Coyle, “have long been on people’s list of potential candidates”.Old isn’t goldEconomic growth at a rate of about 1-2 per cent annually is the norm for industrialized nations today. But such growth rates did not happen in earlier times, despite technological innovations, such as the windmill and the printing press.Mokyr showed that the key difference between now and then was what he calls “useful knowledge”, or innovations based on scientific understanding. One example is the advances made during the Industrial Revolution, beginning in the eighteenth century, when improvements in steam engines could be made systematic rather than by trial and error.Aghion and Howitt, for their part, clarified the market mechanisms behind sustained growth in recent times. In 1992 they presented a model showing how competition between companies selling new products allows innovations to enter the marketplace and displaces older products: a process they called creative destruction.Underlying growth, in other words, is a steady churn of businesses and products. The researchers showed how companies invest in research and development (R&D) to improve their chances of finding a new product, and predicted the optimal level of such investment.Entrepreneurial stateAccording to economist Ufuk Akcigit of the University of Chicago, Aghion and Howitt highlight an important aspect of economic growth, which is that spending on R&D does not by itself guarantee higher rates of growth: “Unless we replace inefficient firms from the economy, we cannot make space for newcomers with new ideas and better technologies.”“When a new entrepreneur emerges, they have every incentive to come up with a radical new technology,” Akcigit says. “As soon as they become an incumbent, their incentive vanishes” and they no longer invest in R&D to drive innovation.Thus, because companies cannot expect to remain at the forefront of innovation indefinitely, the incentive for investing in R&D coming from market forces alone declines as a company’s market share grows. To guarantee the societal benefits of constant innovation, the model suggests that it is in society’s interests for the state to subsidize R&D, so long as the return is not merely incremental improvements.The work of all three laureates also acknowledges the complex social consequences of growth. In the early days of the Industrial Revolution there were concerns about how mechanisation would cause unemployment of manual workers – a worry echoed today with the increasing use of AI in place of human labour. But Mokyr showed that in fact early mechanization led to the creation of new jobs.Creative destruction, meanwhile, leads to companies failing and jobs being lost. Aghion and Howitt emphasized that society needs safety nets and constructive negotiation of conflicts to navigate such problems.Their model “recognizes the messiness and complexity of how innovation happens in real economies”, says Coyle. “The idea that a country’s productivity level increases by companies going bust and new ones coming in is a difficult sell, but the evidence that that’s part of the mechanism is pretty strong.”Timely messageThis year’s award comes at a time when funding for scientific research is under threat in the United States and around the world. “It’s a very timely message when we’re seeing the United States undermining so much of its science base,” says Coyle. Aghion said, “I don’t welcome the protectionist wave in the US” and added that “openness is a driver of growth. I see dark clouds accumulating”. to translate high-tech innovations into market value.Economic historian Kerstin Enflo, a member of the Nobel prize awarding committee, denied that the award was intended as a comment on the direction of US policies. “It is only about celebrating the work [the laureates] have done”, she said at the press conference.Green growthMore recently, researchers are questioning the ‘growth-at-all-costs’ narrative not least because of the ways to pursue growth has led to environmental degradation, including global warming.“How can we make sure we innovate greener?” Aghion asked. “Firms don’t spontaneously do this. So how can we redirect growth towards green?” Mokyr’s work showed that growth can sometimes be self-correcting in the sense of producing innovations needed to solve such problems. But that is not a given and requires well-crafted policies to nurture innovation without promoting inequality and unsustainability. “We need to harness the productivity potential and minimize the negative effects”, said Aghion.This article is reproduced with permission and was first published on October 13, 2025.

Science
Technology
Nature

New York to appeal after judge OKs radioactive Indian Point water in the Hudson

Governor Kathy Hochul has confirmed that the Indian Point nuclear plant will not be reopened, despite a federal judge's ruling that the state's Save the Hudson Act, which aimed to prevent the dumping of radioactive wastewater into the Hudson River, was invalid.

ALBANY, N.Y. (NEXSTAR) — A federal judge in New York last month struck down the state's Save the Hudson Act, a law that aimed to prevent Holtec International, the owner of the decommissioned Indian Point nuclear plant, from dumping over a million gallons of radioactive wastewater into the Hudson River. Still, despite the ruling and her openness to expand nuclear power in the state, Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) maintains that the site will not reopen. "Let me say this plainly: No," Hochul wrote in a letter to Westchester County Executive Ken Jenkins on Friday, which can be read at the bottom of this story. Entergy, the previous owners of the Indian Point Energy Center, shut down its final reactor, Unit 3, in April 2021. Holtec bought the three-unit nuclear power plant located in the northwestern corner of Westchester County on the eastern bank of the Hudson River in May 2021. Use it or lose it: Summer EBT food benefits expiring Friday The plant is undergoing a decommissioning process that includes removing equipment and structures, reducing residual radioactivity, and dismantling the facility. Holtec projects that process to finish by 2033. The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York sided with Holtec in a lawsuit they filed in April 2024, agreeing that state law can't block the discharge of radioactive wastewater from nuclear sites being decommissioned. The court found that only the federal government has that authority, because federal law like the Atomic Energy Act overrules the state under the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution. Hochul launches $1B clean climate plan as state, federal energy agendas diverge The judge determined that S6893/A7208 wasn't meant to protect the radiological safety of the public or the environment, which falls under federal jurisdiction. Gov. Kathy Hochul and Attorney General Letitia James announced their intent to appeal the decision, arguing that the law represents vital protections for the iconic river and the economic health of the region through tourism and real estate values. Jenkins applauded the decision to appeal, saying, "The Hudson River is the lifeblood of our region—a source of recreation, natural beauty, and economic vitality—and we must do everything in our power to protect it." And in the letter to Jenkins, Hochul directly addressed the concern that the state government may plan to reopen Indian Point or build small modular reactors on the site. NYC storm cancels Columbus Day parade amid Indigenous Peoples Day debate "There have been no discussions or plans," the governor wrote. "I would not support efforts to do so." Riverkeeper, an environmental advocacy group, called the ruling a blow to the progress made in restoring the Hudson River. They worked with local officials to pass the Save the Hudson Act in 2023 after Holtec announced plan to release the wastewater. New York’s 2040 energy grid: Nuclear power, public renewables, and fracked gas pipelines The wastewater in question is contaminated with tritium, a radioactive isotope of hydrogen created during the nuclear fission process. Tritium—whose half-life is 12 years—bonds with oxygen, meaning the wastewater cannot be filtered. S6893/A7208, signed by Hochul in August 2023, lets the attorney general enforce the ban with civil penalties of $37,500 for the first day of violation, $75,000 for the second, and $150,000 per violation thereafter. It came in response to Holtec's initial plan to put between 1.3 and 1.5 million gallons of tritiated water from the spent fuel pools, reactor cavity, and other holding tanks into the Hudson. The company maintained that discharge would be the safest option for the tritiated water, that the planned release represented just 5% of what the plant discharged historically, and that the plan followed federal guidelines. Data challenges tax flight claims in New York The company wanted to start dewatering with three 18,000-gallon batches—45,000 gallons in total—in May 2023. Holtec paused their initial plan so the state could perform independent sampling and analysis of the water. Federal water standards set the maximum contaminant level for tritium at 20,000 picocuries per liter, though California, for example, aims to say below 400 picocuries of tritium per liter. Regulations on radioactive releases from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the federal body managing decommissions, are based on the dose to the public, regardless of the volume of the discharge. NRC has an internal goal to keep the dose from liquid releases below three millirem per year at the release point, and a legal limit of 25 millirem per year. Power struggle: New York lawmakers, environmentalists clash over electricity The calculated dose to the public from Indian Point in 2021 was about 0.011966 millirem—about one-thousandth of the federal cap. Plus, NRC allows several disposal methods, including transferring the waste, storing it for decay, or releasing it into the environment. Still, critics said the discharge would undermine local economies, erode public trust, and doom the Hudson even as more New Yorkers swim, boat, fish, and work on and in the river. Riverkeeper said there are alternatives, like storing the water for its 12-year half-life. They want the contaminated water to be held at Indian Point for at least 12 years, when its radioactivity will be reduced by half, before exploring any alternative disposal. Gas pipelines eye return to New York But delaying the discharge process could force lay offs of specialized Holtec workers. The company already extended decommissioning timelines at two other sites—Pilgrim and Oyster Creek—from eight to 12 years because of inflated costs and poor market performance. In the letter to Jenkins, Hochul confirmed her support for nuclear as part of the state's energy strategy, but that any new plant would be upstate, and only in communities that want it. Hochul said that downstate New York needs to rely on energy sources like the Champlain Hudson Power Express transmission line, set to bring hydroelectricity from Canada. New York Republican Senators propose scaling back climate laws She characterized the decision to close Indian Point as a hasty failure that caused emissions to rise. It happened before her administration, Hochul argued, and the state "lost 25% of the power that was going to New York City without having a Plan B." Take a look at the letter below: Hochul Indian point letter to JenkinsDownload Arizona AG threatens legal action if Johnson doesn't seat recently elected Democrat FDA expands cinnamon recall to 16 brands with elevated lead levels New York to appeal after judge OKs radioactive Indian Point water in the Hudson Bondi says Facebook has removed page targeting ICE agents after DOJ outreach Live updates: Trump to honor Kirk with Medal of Freedom; Senate to vote as shutdown hits Day 14

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