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TUESDAYS — YOUR INBOX — ASSUREDLY
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CURATED ECOLOGICAL NEWS
Drought stricken Colorado watershed suffers from infighting
“The crisis on the Colorado River is simple: The seven Western states that border the essential waterway use more water than it contains. The dream solution to this crisis is an agreement among all involved to use less water. Such a deal would decide who must reduce consumption.
“This has proven impossible. Talks have ended in frustration and name-calling. The main sticking point is between the Upper Basin states, led by Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, and New Mexico, and the Lower Basin states of Arizona, California, and Nevada.
“So far, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum has balked at resolving the quarrel. Instead, the administration is turning to a far less controversial plan: Throw money at the problem.
“The possibility of new funding marks a return to the policy of Joe Biden’s administration in 2022, when the Interior Department paid farmers billions to leave their fields fallow. The difference now is that the roster of proposals is far more ambitious, and some far less certain to bolster the basin’s water supply. They range from desalination plants and desert groundwater pipelines to forest ecosystem restoration.” [click the link for the full article]
Coast to coast uprisings against data centers
“I’m a Harvard researcher studying the relationship between data centers and energy. I’ve closely monitored how local governments respond to proposals or even just concerns about the potential for data centers in their communities.
“Data centers already power online communications, shopping, and banking systems. Now, expanding demand for artificial intelligence has led to over 1,000 pending data center proposals across the country. Technology companies claim that data centers bring jobs, economic revitalization, digital connectivity, and economic growth to local communities.
“However, data centers’ benefits are overshadowed by more visible harms. Nearby residents experience higher air pollution and excess noise. Data processing also uses a lot of water to cool the buildings and their equipment. Simultaneously, electricity prices continue to outpace inflation, burdening families across the country.
“Some counties and cities that don’t have specific zoning rules and regulations for data center development are using short-term moratoriums, giving communities time to consider how to define new laws and regulations. Other places want to block data centers altogether. Separately, towns have put questions related to data centers on their local ballots.
“Local and state officials don’t always see eye to eye. West Virginia passed a bill that reduces local governments’ zoning and regulatory powers. A similar bill in New Hampshire’s legislature was defeated in May 2026.
“As seen in objections to the internet’s expanding AI “slop,” backlash over AI-generated Super Bowl ads, worries about an AI-related financial bubble and complaints about Google’s pivot to AI-directed search, Americans are reckoning with AI’s role in society.” [click the links for the full articles]
AI, eminent domain, takings — challenged by lawsuits
“Last year, a high-voltage power line took out a quarter of Doug Fergus’ backyard. He reported ‘We found this place that we love. And then within a year, we’re told it’s going to be changed totally. And we just felt like a punch in the gut’.
“AI data centers are coming to Georgia, and they need a lot of electricity. New power lines are going up to feed them, sometimes in people’s backyards, whether they like it or not. Georgia Power, says it offers fair compensation to homeowners. But many residents say the offers they’ve receive don’t cover the property value they will lose from having a power line built in their backyard.
“The statewide power line expansion will deliver about 10 gigawatts of new energy. Eighty percent of it will go to data centers. Many more transmission lines are needed. In 2019, Georgia Power’s 10-year plan called for 24 miles of new power lines. Last year, that number ballooned to 1,065 miles.
“The proliferation of datacentres and AI is increasingly at the forefront of environmental litigation around the world. Of about 3,600 climate-related lawsuits filed since 2015, a growing number of cases challenge the energy sources, water consumption and air pollution of data centres.
“The LSE report identified Ireland as a hotspot for litigation against datacentres. In Georgia and Pennsylvania, there is ongoing litigation against state regulators for approving new fossil fuel infrastructure linked to data centres. Another case in Mississippi argues that Elon Musk’s xAI is breaching the Clean Air Act by running portable methane gas generators without the required permits.” [click the links for the full articles]
Plug in solar making inroads to the USA
“Germany is the global leader in plug-in solar with about 1 million systems in official counts, and probably many more that utilities and local governments haven’t counted. I think Germany’s experience provides some clues about what may work for U.S. consumers.
“The benefits are clear. An entry-level plug-in system costs about $500 to $1,000 and can be installed in a backyard, on a balcony or on a roof. The electricity enters your home through a standard wall outlet.
“‘The distinctive thing about this technology is it’s so small that you don’t need an electrician to plug it in’ said Craig Morris, the CEO of Bundesverband Steckersolar, Germany’s plug-in solar trade association. He and his members are now working to convince the European Union to adopt rules that would allow plug-in solar across the bloc.
“I asked him if savings from plug-in solar may be too small to be worthwhile. The fastest payoff is 4.26 years in Berlin, the slowest payoff is 9.56 years in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Kansas City, Missouri, the only U.S. city listed, has the fourth-fastest payoff with 4.99 years.
“But my focus on the payoff periods may be missing the point. I contacted Steven Hegedus, who’s also an expert in plug-in solar. He thinks the benefits are that plug-in solar is widely accessible, creating an opportunity for many more people to generate clean energy, and assume greater responsibility for their energy use. ‘You’re doing this for reasons other than just to save money’, he said.” [click the link for the full article]
What is Post-Growth Derangement Syndrome?
“Economic growth generally delivers better living standards over time. But growth has two other virtues. Both will be a sore loss now that meaningful growth has ended.
“First, economic growth can rescue us from the consequences of our own mistakes or misfortunes. Businesses and individuals, governments, too, can grow their economies out of fiscal failures. The second great virtue of growth is that it can allow some to prosper without inflicting worsening hardship on others.
“Now that growth has ended, we face two fundamental shocks. The first is that we will have to own the consequences of our mistakes, and can no longer rely on economic expansion curing our ills. Second, minorities will only be able to maintain or expand their wealth at the expense of majorities. This in itself is a massive political shift.
“Should we be starting to think in terms of a post-growth derangement syndrome combining the destabilizing characteristics of grief and shock? Some of us have been noting that economic expansion has been in the process of reversing into contraction. Yet society seems to be in the early — the denial and anger — stages of grieving over the loss of economic growth.
“The broad conclusion, which seems underscored by observation, appears to be that the real costs of essentials are rising rapidly, and are out-growing any continuing expansion in economic means.
“The two denial characteristics of economic self-delusion are that a deteriorating material economy can be reinvigorated using monetary tools, and that we can overcome material finality using the ‘limitless’ capability of human innovation, enacted as technology.
“Money, having no intrinsic worth, commands value only as an exercisable ‘claim’ on those material products and services for which it can be exchanged. No amount of money has the slightest value to anyone isolated from exchange. Meanwhile, the very idea that technology has ‘limitless’ potential is illogical, since all technological possibility is bounded by the characteristics of materials and the laws of physics.
“Kenneth Boulding famously explained that only ‘a madman or an economist’ could believe in the promise of infinite, exponential economic growth on a finite planet.” [click the link for the full article]
Indigenous Wiyot finally get land back
“Before the arrival of settler-colonists, the Wiyot people have stewarded the land in and around Humboldt Bay (Wigi) in Northern California for thousands of years. As Wiyot tribal chair Ted Hernandez says, ‘We understood our role as caretakers. We didn’t ‘own’ the land or the water. We were part of it’.
“According to the Wiyot creation story, the people were created on Tuluwat Island in the middle of Humboldt Bay. Tuluwat Island is also the site of the annual World Renewal Ceremony, performed by members of the Wiyot, Hupa, Yurok, Karuk, and Chilula tribal nations. The ceremony lasts seven to 10 days and aims to bring the world into balance.
“On February 25, 1860, a group of local white men brutally slaughtered over 100 sleeping Wiyot women, children, and elders while the men were away gathering provisions for the Wiyot’s annual renewal ceremony.
“In the 1970s, during a time when the Wiyot nation had been de-recognized by federal policy, Wiyot people worked with other local de-recognized tribes using a nonprofit. Albert James, Wiyot tribal chair at the time, was the first to request the return of the portion of the island the city of Eureka owned. The request was not honored.
“The Wiyot have spent the last 15 years restoring the Island, removing tens of thousands of tons of toxins and hazardous waste, as well as removing invasive species such as spartina, and planting native plants. The ensuing restoration projects have resulted in cleaner water and habitat restoration all over the bay. Everyone benefited, especially commercial oyster farmers.
“After four years of work, the City of Eureka agreed and returned the remaining 270 acres of the island to the Wiyot Tribe in November 2019. Eureka is the first municipality in US history to voluntarily return land to a tribe without any restrictions.” [click the link for the full article]
Trillionaire Musk — a flash in the pan?
“Remember when Musk became the world’s first trillionaire? No longer. SpaceX’s stock price is not even 10% over its initial public offering price. Which means Musk’s bag is down to around $900 billion.
“The SpaceX crash wiped out just about all of SpaceX’s gains from the last two weeks. SpaceX started to crash with a report out Monday that, notwithstanding all the hoopla surrounding its IPO’s raising $85 billion in its first trading days, SpaceX wasn’t really flying all that high. In fact, it was floating a $20 billion bond sale to refinance its debts (mostly from its acquisition of X, on which Musk had put a lofty valuation).
“Since Musk took over X in 2022, the platform has lost almost 80 percent of its market value. No surprise. I mean, who wants to read a bunch of right-wing rants?
“To make matters worse, xAI, on which Musk also put a sky-high valuation before merging it into SpaceX, has fallen way behind other American AI companies in the race to develop generative AI.
“Let me remind you that because of its size, a big chunk of Americans’ retirement savings and pensions (as well as university endowments) are now automatically tied to SpaceX’s market value.” [click the link for the full article]
Greenpeace’s counter lawsuit against pipeline company Energy Transfer
“A lawsuit filed in the Netherlands by Greenpeace International against the pipeline company Energy Transfer is moving forward, after a Dutch court recently rejected the company’s bid to toss out the case.
“The suit is connected to the ongoing litigation in the U.S. between Energy Transfer and Greenpeace over the 2016-2017 indigenous-led protests of the Dakota Access Pipeline, which resulted in a staggering jury verdict delivered against Greenpeace.
“A little over a year ago, on March 19, 2025, a North Dakota jury unanimously handed down a crushing damage award amounting to nearly $667 million against three Greenpeace entities over their alleged role in the Standing Rock protests against the controversial crude oil pipeline.
“While Energy Transfer alleged that Greenpeace had orchestrated the protest, Greenpeace argued that it played just a minor supporting role and only got involved at the request of the Standing Rock Sioux. Greenpeace and its allies slammed the verdict as an attack on free speech, and vowed to continue to fight back against the case that it characterized as ‘one of the largest Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPP) cases ever filed’.
“In February 2025, Greenpeace International sued Energy Transfer in the Netherlands, invoking a European Union directive intended to protect EU citizens from abusive lawsuits or SLAPPs.
“The Amsterdam court did side with Energy Transfer on the applicability of the 2024 EU anti-SLAPP directive, finding that it does not apply because the Netherlands has not yet implemented the directive through national legislation. The Dutch government had argued there was no need to do so since there are similar anti-SLAPP remedies under existing Dutch law.” [click the link for the full article]
Plastic trash exacerbating urban flooding
“Urban drainage systems are engineered with long-established assumptions: flow rates, capacity limits, and maintenance cycles. In practice, plastic waste that accumulates in waterways collects at choke points. When rainfall increases, water no longer flows cleanly through the system and instead carries debris. A system can appear to be functioning until it isn’t: small blockages turn into critical ones, and runoff water that should drain is redirected, often into the most vulnerable parts of a city.
“Most flood models still assume open channels and predictable flow. That assumption is becoming less reliable. Plastic changes how infrastructure behaves under stress. It increases the likelihood of failure and makes outcomes harder to anticipate for insurers and city planners, creating a blind spot.
“This is where plastic interception becomes risk management. Systems that capture waste before it moves downstream change the operating conditions of infrastructure. If plastic waste is now part of the system, managing it is no longer optional — it requires a broader view of resilience.
“Climate risk doesn’t begin at the coastline, or even at the floodplain. The implication is clear: upstream plastic waste management is essential for effective climate risk reduction and resilient urban infrastructure.” [click the link for the full article]
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