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TUESDAYS — YOUR INBOX — ASSUREDLY
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CURATED ECOLOGICAL NEWS
Time to face the music of modernism
“Mud everywhere. In central Italy we are getting the leftovers of England’s floods, a little later and a little less. But we are still underwater. Where there are no trees, the soil is eroding on hillsides. And even where there are trees, the roots are exposed more every day.
“The rain began in November… unseasonable rain. The rain jumped the banks of our streams and overflows the drainage ditches and pours over the road.
“It was in graduate school where I first encountered the theories of climate change. The physicists imagined a possible new ice age if the AMOC shut down. The AMOC — the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation. What? I couldn’t even pronounce it.
“Now when I see the amazing amount of mud in the duck yard, I know that it is raining polar icecaps. More fresh water (a lot more) is weakening the AMOC. It is likely the beginning of its partial collapse, predicted in many science journals for some time.
“The AMOC is part of the global thermohaline (thermo: temperature, haline: salinity/salt) circulation of the ocean currents. Surface currents are influenced by the winds. But the deeper, slower currents are the result of the amount of salt and the temperature of the water. In the normal cycling of our ocean currents, warm, less dense surface water moves northward, warming parts of the northern hemisphere.
“The rapidly melting polar icecaps are already contributing more fresh water into the Atlantic system, significantly decreasing the ocean salinity. The result being that there is less cold water-sinking going on and thus less movement of the current. As the AMOC continues to slow down there will be increasingly severe effects around the globe.
“There is a simple answer. We must say enough already. The answer is to stop supporting the polluters, to stop giving our money to the tech bros, stop supporting shipping — especially international but even from out-of-state.
“The simple answer is to stop growing the economy. This will not be without sacrifice and pain. But growing the economy will only guarantee that the richest 1% will have their air conditioners blasting away on their feast while the rest of us starve in the heat. The harder one, the underlying problem, is to stop growing the population.
“Now is time to leave apartment buildings and homes in the city; to consider alternative ways of living, simpler, more connected to the land and the immediate community.”
Shut down globalization — strengthen local/regional supply chains
“To demonstrate the possibilities of localised production, we need real life products that people can hold in their hands. These are items at the end of the supply chains. I call them bioregional demonstration products – tangible items grown and made in place – and they carry immense value beyond the financial. The following projects how what these can look like:
- The French organic linen and hemp association coordinated farmers, processors and makers to produce 200m of hemp cloth and 100 pairs of jeans, distributed to key figures such as the Mayor of Normandy.
- The Linen Project in the Netherlands, has created the first dutch linen cloth in years, woven into garments.
- House of Design in Groningen, the Netherlands, has produced multiple flax-based items, beginning with small souvenirs that seeded wider engagement and infrastructure.
- Mijuin in Normandy, France, uses only local organic linen to create products that directly embody farming and place.
“At Les Chanvres de l’Atlantique, in Saint-Geours-de-Maremne, Southwest France, they make demonstration products on a mid scale and utilise all aspects of hemp fibre from food to building materials and cloth. All require slightly different and carefully planned growing, harvesting and processing.
“Systems that encourage cooperation require more social input but have many long-term and wide-reaching benefits. Cooperatives provide an enterprise container that can embody agroecological values such as social and ecological care. The French in particular like to work in coops, with 22,000 cooperative enterprises.
“A producer collective, combined with distributed production could reimagine a whole system. For example, using the vehicle of a local CSA scheme (community supported agriculture), as exists with organic vegetables, people could commit to a linen ‘produce’ box over a year. This concept proposes that value, roles and process across the supply chain could be apportioned fairly in relation to time and monetary value in a distributive, commons-based system.”
How might we move from globalization to localism?
“For centuries, social life in Europe was organized at the local level. Language, food, work, belonging, and identity were closely tied to specific places: landscapes, villages, and markets. Relationships were manageable and resilient.
“With industrialization, production became detached from place, work from community, food from landscape. With globalization, place increasingly appeared interchangeable: supply chains stretched across continents, efficiency replaced relationships. For a long time, the the Mitmach-Region Vorarlberg was seen as a model past its prime — too small for global markets, too particular for modern societies.
“Against this backdrop, it becomes clear why system change rarely begins where systems appear largest. They become decisive in places where people meet. It is precisely in such places that the Mitmach-Region approach begins.
“In a process architecture for regional development, actors from civil society, business, agriculture, and the public sector are invited into a shared learning and co-creation process. The aim is to make existing initiatives visible, connect them, and address regional future questions together.
“Instead of a classic project logic, an open process emerged with workshops, learning journeys, and dialogue formats. The focus was less on working through individual topics than on the quality of encounter. People listened to one another, held differing perspectives, and initially refrained from premature solutions.
“The region is thus less the solution to global problems than the place where they become translatable — into concrete relationships, decisions, and shared practice. The region is a highly compelling and well-suited format for transformation, as people strongly identify with it and have an emotional connection to both their fellow human beings and the natural foundations of life in their region.”
Decoupling GDP from climate emissions uses selective data
“Over the course of a few weeks, The Guardian published several pieces on decoupling that may appear contradictory, arguing both that ‘economic growth [is] no longer linked to carbon emissions’ and that ‘economic growth is still heating up the planet’. I’ll argue that the green growth hypothesis is overblown.
“Take The Guardian’s piece on Romania, which is as bombastic as it gets. A ‘breakneck transformation’ that ‘shattered the link between economic growth and high emissions’. The article reports that greenhouse gas emissions plunged by 75 % between 1990 and 2023.
“A rapid look at the numbers is enough to realise that it is not a green growth heaven. First, most cuts in emissions occurred during periods of recession, which looks more like degrowth than green growth. Second, if we take away the effect of reforestation, which was massive in Romania, the -25% becomes -15%. Third, if we look at consumption-based emissions, the Romanian carbon footprint per capita has actually increased from 3.6 tonnes in 1999 to 4.1 tonnes in 2023.
“Another piece in The Guardian — ‘Economic growth is still heating the planet. Is there any way out?’ — shows the ugly proof: a graph showing the massive increase of global emissions, going from 10 Gt in 1960 to almost 50 Gt in 2024. These emissions have never gone down except during large recessions (most notably Covid).
“Going beyond carbon, Fanning and Raworth (2025) estimate that the median level of ecological overshoot for the six crossed planetary boundaries went from 75% in 2000 to 96% in 2022. This accelerating degradation of ecosystems should make us think twice before cracking open a bottle of champagne.”
Oil surges near $120 per barrel, financial markets plunge
“The U.S.-Israeli war on Iran is quickly spiraling into a worldwide energy crisis as the de facto closure of the Strait of Hormuz forces top oil producers to start slashing output. The seeds of the crisis go back to the late 1970s when Iranian oil workers went on strike and the revolution ushered in the Islamic Republic, Daniel Yergin wrote in a Financial Times op-ed.
“All this has been the nightmare scenario of the oil that flows through the Gulf being interdicted by an extended and destructive war. The fear? That this will result in skyrocketing energy prices that send the world economy plummeting into a deep recession.
“Indeed, crude prices soared 36% over the past week as Iran’s attacks on ships in the Strait of Hormuz, through which 20% of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas (LNG) flow, effectively shut down the narrow waterway. With top oil producers in the Persian Gulf unable to export their crude, they have started to pump less as storage capacity has already filled up.
“The Trump administration’s war on Iran is reckless and ill-planned, four government officials briefed on the attacks told The Intercept on the condition of anonymity to discuss classified matters. ‘The administration doesn’t have a clue. They do not have an actual, real rationale, endgame, or plan for the aftermath of this’, one of the officials told The Intercept.
“President Donald Trump teased that the war could go on ‘forever’ despite promising his administration would avoid Middle East ‘forever wars’.
“Here’s an important thing to understand: To believe that the United States and Israel will prevail with air power alone flies in the face of all historical precedent. The general belief is that the Americans will NOT deploy soldiers on the ground in Iran in large numbers.
“That expectation could be wrong. If it is, that force would have to land on the coastline of Iran and make its way through mountainous terrain that characterizes much of Iran. Logic suggests that this could quickly become a catastrophic invasion for the Americans. In a seriously bad outcome, the United States military could be bogged down for a decade or more.”
Our children suffer from plastic envy
“I found myself in a temple of excess last weekend, a massive toy store inside a shopping mall. I was there for a mundane reason - a relative’s son was turning six, and a gift was required. The store was a graveyard of recent festivities and a staging ground for the next. It made me realize that we have allowed the retail industry to colonize our calendar.
“Right now we are witnessing the final frontier of retail: the elimination of ’empty’ time. The industry can no longer afford the traditional gaps between the major peaks of December and April; it is now actively scouting the calendar for any remaining pockets.
“When a child receives a mid-tier toy set for Easter, the Christmas gift must be twice as large to elicit the same dopamine response. We are training a generation to equate affection with the acquisition of new stuff.
“The environmental cost of this ‘kick’ is staggering. These sound-effect-heavy, battery-dependent, plastic toys are not built to survive a generation. They are built for the bin. The energy required to extract the oil, refine it into plastic, manufacture these items in overseas factories, and ship them across oceans is spent for a few weeks - or even hours - of attention.”
NYC congestion pricing withstands Trump court challenge
“U.S. District Judge Lewis Liman, an appointee of President Donald Trump, ruled Tuesday that the Trump administration’s efforts to shut down New York’s congestion pricing program are unlawful. The congestion-pricing program charges drivers a fee to enter New York City’s central business zone — all of Manhattan at or below 60th Street. Since it began, air quality has improved across NYC and in nearby New Jersey, research has shown.
“During his 2024 presidential campaign, Trump vowed to end congestion pricing and has criticized it since he took office. A spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Transportation wrote in an email that they ‘disagree with the court’s ruling’.
“New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, called congestion pricing ‘a once-in-a-lifetime success story’, and vowed that the program was ‘here to stay’. The state recently celebrated one full year with the program and touted the benefits—like less traffic, faster buses and better air quality.’
“Congestion pricing reduces the number of cars entering downtown Manhattan, one of the city’s busiest areas, and redirects funds to the state-run agency that oversees mass transit, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.”
Elon Musk exceptionalism — whatever he can get away with
“Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company is continuing to fuel its data centers with unpermitted gas turbines, according to a Floodlight visual investigation. Thermal drone footage shows xAI is still burning gas at a facility in Southaven, Miss., despite a recent Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) ruling reiterating that doing so requires a state permit in advance.
“State regulators in Mississippi maintain that since the turbines are parked on tractor trailers, they don’t require permits. The turbines there help power Grok, the company’s controversial chat bot, and emit harmful pollutants linked to health problems such as asthma, lung cancer and heart attacks.
“However, the EPA has long required that such pollution sources be permitted under the Clean Air Act. ‘That is a violation of the law’, said Bruce Buckheit, a former EPA air enforcement chief, after reviewing Floodlight’s images and EPA regulations.
“The Trump administration has made AI a priority, but as data centers proliferate across the country, regulators are struggling to keep pace with the industry’s increasing reliance on custom-built power sources and their public health impacts on surrounding communities.
“The Southaven turbine cluster is part of xAi’s rapidly growing footprint along the Tennessee-Mississippi border. That expansion began in the spring of 2024 in South Memphis, next to historically Black neighborhoods, with the construction of Colossus 1, which the company touted as the world’s largest AI supercomputer.”
Irony: more renewables means more SF6 potent climate gas
“Sulphur hexafluoride, or SF6, is widely used in the electrical industry to prevent short circuits and accidents. It’s the most powerful greenhouse gas known to humanity, and emissions levels are rising as an unintended consequence of the green energy boom. Leaks of the little-known gas in the UK and the rest of the EU in 2017 were the equivalent of putting an extra 1.3 million cars on the road.
“Cheap and non-flammable, SF6 is a colourless, odourless, synthetic gas. It makes a hugely effective insulating material for medium and high-voltage electrical installations. It is widely used across the industry, from large power stations to wind turbines to electrical sub-stations.
“So why are we using more of this powerful warming gas? Where once large coal-fired power stations brought energy to millions, they are now being replaced by mixed sources of power including wind, solar and gas. This has resulted in many more connections to the electricity grid. Collectively, these safety devices are called switchgear.
“Why hasn’t this been banned? The electric sector was very strong in arguing that if you want an energy transition, and you want to shift more to electricity, you will need more electric devices. And then you also will need more SF6.”
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