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Year-end Gifting the Sustainability Action News Digest
For 18 years, we’ve covered climate science, energy transitions, food systems, democracy, public policy — always with local relevance. We highlight the inspiring — community resilience, regenerative practices, and real solutions.
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CURATED ECOLOGICAL NEWS
Canadian tar sands pipeline — scraping the bottom of the . .
“Lo and behold, Prime Minister Mark Carney, a global banker, and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, a petro-populist à la Donald Trump, have big energy plans for Canadians. The two now support an undefined bitumen pipeline project from Alberta to British Columbia’s northwest coast.
“While they have agreed on conditional approval for a [tar sands] pipeline, B.C. Premier David Eby said it doesn’t deal with the reasons he opposes the project. It has ‘no proponent, no route, no money, no First Nations support’, Eby said.
“The [Ottawa-Alberta] agreement includes commitments that the federal government scrap its plan to cap oil and gas emissions, and that Canada and Alberta work together on a new private sector pipeline through British Columbia that would be co-owned with Indigenous people.
“David Hughes worked for the Geological Survey of Canada for 32 years, and is neither an industry booster nor a green activist. Hughes works with numbers based on inconvenient biophysical realities, and doesn’t see any need for another pipeline.
“Twenty years ago, Hughes and lots of others in Canada concluded that the Northern Gateway pipeline was a bad idea. That abandoned project proposed to cross a thousand gleaming waterways and through some of the most mountainous and avalanche-prone terrain in Canada, to the port on a fiord that empties onto the Hecate Strait, the most dangerous body of water on the entire Canadian coast.
“Hughes sees an altogether different reality. He calls the [Ottawa-Alberta] proposal part of the Great Fossil Fuel Blowout. Humans consumed half of the world’s ultimately recoverable oil in a record 175-year binge – nearly 1.6 trillion barrels of oil. And 50% of that cheap oil in just the last 28 years. Another trillion barrels of oil will be burned by 2050. At that point civilization will have to make do with leftovers.”
Governments demonize environmental activists to justify repression
“A new study published this month in the journal Environmental Politics reveals that efforts to repress climate and environmental protest are growing worldwide. The authors say the effects of this repression are threefold.
“First, a risk of legal sanctions, incarceration, and violence diverts resources from movements and deters environmental action. Second, criminalization delegitimizes climate movements in the public eye by framing them as criminal. And third, that criminalization and enforcement diverts attention from climate change by focusing conversations on ‘extremists’ and ‘eco-terrorists’.
“Countries engage with repression by creating new laws designed to regulate protests, like in the United States and the United Kingdom, that create criminal penalties for protests that target ‘critical infrastructure’ like pipelines.
“The authors write that these efforts at ‘criminalization and repression are not aberrations of climate governance but a core governing strategy’. The study also highlights that climate and environmental protests have been steadily increasing each year since 2018.
“According to data from Global Witness, an international organization that investigates environmental and human rights abuses, more than 2,100 land and environmental defenders were killed between 2012 and 2023. Approximately 43% were Indigenous, and a majority of killings took place in Latin America.”
How to realize the future we long for
“As the creators of the ‘Outrage and Optimism’ podcast put it, we can reframe the polycrisis as also offering us a ‘poly-opportunity’. When we live in a time in which the future is being cancelled and colonised, the very act of reconnecting people to the future, helping them to fall in love with its possibilities, is one of the most important and radical things we can do.
“What might our activism look like if its primary objective was the cultivation of longing? It’s a very different approach from telling people about collapse and extinction. As novelist Don Delillo once put it, ‘longing, on a large scale, is what makes history’.
“Climate activists aren’t actually very good at cultivating longing. Nor are climate scientists. The people who are great at that are writers, poets, street artists, novelists, screenwriters, designers, creators of immersive digital experiences.
“I’ve been working with ambient music artist Mr Kit on a project called ‘Field Recordings from the Future’, from places that already sound like the future needs to sound like – car-free neighbourhoods, regenerative farms, landscapes being rewilded by beavers, bicycle rush hours, etc.
“It’s surprisingly moving and motivating. It’s a beautiful embodiment of Rilke’s statement that ‘the future must enter into you a long time before it happens’.”
Colorado speeds up transition from natural gas to electrification
“Colorado officials are making another major push toward electrification of home heating and deep cuts to carbon from natural gas. Utilities supplying natural gas [methane] for home and building heating must cut the carbon emissions from their systems by 41% in 10 years, and reach 100% decarbonization of building heating by 2050.
“The major natural gas suppliers in the state that will now have to comply with the cuts are Xcel, with 1 million customers, Black Hills Energy and Atmos Energy. Some of the emissions cuts can come from tightening up pipeline and home distribution to prevent leaks of methane.
“To meet the goals, utilities, regulators and policymakers must help hundreds of thousands of homeowners and landlords in Colorado switch from gas-fired heating systems to electric heat pumps and cooking appliances.
“About 10% of greenhouse gas emissions in Colorado come from natural gas burning home appliances and home and building furnaces. The Sierra Club estimates the new PUC-approved caps will avoid 44.5 million metric tons of greenhouse gases over time, and nearly 23,000 tons of nitrogen oxides, which also contribute to the Front Range’s major ozone problem.”
Extinctions more likely with gutting Endangered Species Act
“A polar bear — actually an environmentalist dressed in a costume — stood outside the Department of the Interior’s headquarters Thursday with a message: ‘Stop Trump’s Extinction Plan’. Around 35 people protested the Trump administration’s recently proposed changes to the Endangered Species Act.
“The proposals, four in total, represent the latest in a series of moves to systematically dismantle protections afforded by one of the country’s most central conservation laws. Experts say the proposed changes to the ESA may encourage agencies to consider economic impacts when deciding whether to list a species as endangered, despite the law explicitly prohibiting that.
“Research shows that habitat loss is a primary driver of extinction in the United States. The new proposal would restrict the designation of critical habitat and direct the agency to put more weight on whether the economic and national security benefits of excluding a certain area outweigh the benefits of including it.
“One of the main habitat protections afforded by the law is through its regulatory definition of harm, which encompasses ‘any activity that can modify a species’ habitat’. Several legal experts told Inside Climate News that rescinding the harm definition would likely have more profound implications for vulnerable species than the Trump administration’s newest proposed changes.
“Nonprofits including the Center for Biological Diversity have already committed to challenging the federal government if any of the administration’s changes to the ESA go through.”
Animal ag’s oversized climate impact mostly ignored in news
“Animal agriculture is responsible for 19% of global greenhouse gas emissions, yet it’s almost always left out of climate media coverage. A new analysis by the Center for Biological Diversity found that 99% of climate journalism fails to cover sustainable diets. In fact coverage would have to increase sixfold to accurately reflect the proportion of animal agriculture’s responsibility in the climate crisis.
“’Big Ag is following in the footsteps of Big Oil when it downplays its climate impact’, said Alexandra Tey who led the Center’s research effort. ‘Climate journalists have published excellent reporting on how the energy industry suppressed evidence of climate change, but we’re still missing out on compelling stories by overlooking food issues’.
”The Center for Biological Diversity and Brighter Green analyzed more than 10,000 articles published in 37 different U.S. media ranging from national to local news outlets over a three-year period. Meat or animal agriculture appear in just 343 out of 10,696 articles (3%) about climate change over the past three years.
“The quantitative analysis presented in this report expands on previous similar research. A 2025 Sentient Media analysis found animal agriculture mentioned in only 3.8% of 940 articles in 11 outlets reviewed. 2025 analysis by food systems organization Madre Brava of top English-language outlets found mentions of meat or livestock in decline, and averaging just 0.4% of climate articles.
“Journalism plays a crucial role in shaping public understanding and political will around climate issues. The food and agriculture sector continues to receive less media scrutiny than its impact warrants, and less coverage than any other major driver of the climate emergency.”
The commons: antidote to oligarchy
“In the U.S., the sense of having a stable, reliable political system seems gone. Trump has breached so many boundaries, and upset the balance of the three branches of government.
“In the economy in general, AI is driving what looks like an unsustainable investment bubble. Apopped bubble could set off a deep recession, or even worse. It’s not the only bubble. Several real estate sectors also look sketchy.
“But the greatest uncertainty is the increasing heating of the climate. German scientists recently made a terrifying statement lining out the possibility of an absolutely catastrophic 3 deg. C rise by 2050. Meanwhile, the Trump Administration is doing all it can to gut climate action.
“Long efforts by the oligarchic elite to divide and rule have set people and regions against each other. We have no way of knowing how these uncertainties will work out. But one path stands as the way through whatever we must face. It is to rebuild community by reclaiming the common good, to reclaim the commons themselves.
“Election candidates promising to address the affordable crisis through city action are a prominent example. So are efforts to create public banking, to institute single-payer health plans in states, to build social housing, and to drive forward clean energy and climate action at local and state levels.”
Mutualistic tools for building the commons
“The 19th century saw a major flowering of new institutional structures that formalised mutualist principles. Over time, however, many of these institutions were weakened. But today, communities around the world are again building systems of mutual provisioning. And this time, they are supported by practical tools that can help them avoid the fate of many of the organisations that came before them.
“These tools span economics and finance, legal architecture and governance design, social frameworks and cultural resilience, technology, and more. Some have deep roots in indigenous and cooperative traditions. “What follows is a modest attempt at introducing some of the most powerful tools from the kit.
“For cooperatives and mutuals to flourish, they need to find ways to fund infrastructure, circulate value, and invest in shared needs without turning to bank loans, private equity, or perpetual grant cycles. Credit — the ability to make a trusted promise of future payment — can thus be a commons. But for generations, it has been enclosed by private banks. But communities can build alternative credit and currency systems.
- Credit clearing enables groups or businesses to pool outstanding invoices, and cancel out reciprocal obligations.
- Mutual credit systems enable members to extend interest-free credit lines to each other.
- Community currencies are local media of exchange that support trade among residents and community members.
“Many commons projects need capital-intensive land, buildings, or equipment, that’s difficult to obtain without taking on debt. Fortunately, again, communities have other options.
- Use-credit obligations (UCOs) are pre-paid vouchers for future goods and services.
- High street vouchers are a more short-term variant of UCOs, typically sold to local residents, thereby strengthening ties with the community.
- Rotating savings and credit associations are ancient forms of peer-to-peer savings clubs.
“Theft of public intellectual property is one of the most pervasive appropriations of shared wealth. Copyleft licenses ensure that any modifications or derivatives must remain open and shareable.
“Legal structures for mutualisation, such as 501(c)(3) nonprofit organisations in the US, offer purpose-built frameworks for holding and managing assets in the collective interest.
“Some Commons thinkers advocate a different approach to ownership based not on holding title to a thing, but on mutual agreements that define the rights and responsibilities of all involved. Nondominium is a new ‘collective-property’ concept in which a resource is owned by no one, but accessible to all who have agreed to the terms of its governance.
“There are four key roles, or ‘stakeholder classes’, in a nondominium.
- Users: those who benefit from the goods or services provided.
- Providers: those who contribute capital, effort, or resources.
- Stewards: those responsible for day-to-day operations and maintaining service quality. Custodians: the guardians of the community’s mission and values.”
The speculative fusion future
“With the supposed need for vast new electricity generation to fuel the artificial intelligence (AI) boom, AI companies are pushing nuclear power as one solution. AI boosters usually talk about fission reactors that run on uranium and (more dangerously) on plutonium.
“But it is well to keep in mind that there are two kinds of nuclear power: fission and fusion. With current fusion technology it takes far more than the equivalent of a kilowatt of energy to produce a kilowatt of electricity. This is because it takes a lot of energy just to get a fusion reaction going.
“The Massachusetts Institute of Technology claims that by 2027 it will achieve the feat of producing more energy from a fusion device than is consumed. It will be important to read the fine print. Eleven years ago, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California was able to produce more energy output in a fusion experiment than was used to produce the fuel.
“That feat, however, didn’t take into account the amount of energy needed by the entire system which was 118 times more than the energy output.
“The Chinese government said it expects to have a pilot fusion plant operating by the 2030s or 2040s. The realization of commercial fusion power is much further away. A pilot plant is only the second stage of the development. First, comes the prototype. Then comes the pilot plant. Then comes a demonstration plant which is a full-size test of the economic and commercial viability of the technology.
“At this stage, utility managers want hard evidence that such plants are reliable and profitable. Demonstration plants could be as far off as the 2050s or 2060s.”
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