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Page Updated:
Jan. 15, 2025

• • Two Courts Block Trump Administration’s
  Attempt to Halt Clean Energy Projects

  Two Judges In Separate Rulings Instructed the Trump Administration to Reinstate Clean Energy Grants and Allow an Offshore Wind Farm’s Construction to Resume
  
  {EARTH.ORG}
  
  

  Jan. 14, 2026 -On Monday, Judge Amit P. Mehta of the US District Court for the District of Columbia ruled that the administration’s decision to halt millions of dollars in clean energy grants was “unlawful” as it primarily targeted projects in Democratic-led states.

  “All the awardees (but one) were based in states whose majority of citizens casting votes did not support President Trump in the 2024 election,” Judge Mehta said. “The political identity of a terminated grantee’s state…played a preponderant role in the October 2025 grant termination decisions,” he added.

• • Supreme Court to Hear Case on Louisiana’s Eroding Coast

  Local Governments Are Suing Oil Companies Over Environmental Damage
  
  
  

  Jan. 11, 2026 -Who should pay for saving southern Louisiana’s endangered coastline?

  The Supreme Court is set to take up a sliver of that question on Monday, as the justices hear arguments in connection with more than 40 lawsuits filed by Louisiana officials seeking to hold energy companies liable for environmental damage linked to oil and gas production, some of it dating back to World War II.

• • The War Over a Weedkiller Might
  Be Headed to the Supreme Court

  Bayer Has Asked the Justices to Decide Whether Federal Law Shields Them From Lawsuits Over Its Roundup Herbicide and Cancer
  
  
  

  Jan. 9, 2026 -The Supreme Court is poised to decide whether to take up a case involving weedkillers and cancer that could effectively curtail one of the largest waves of tort litigation in American history.

  The case involves Bayer, the German conglomerate that acquired the pesticide manufacturer Monsanto in 2018. Bayer is petitioning the court for a definitive ruling on whether federal law shields the company from thousands of lawsuits claiming that its widely-used weedkiller Roundup causes cancer.

  Again.

• • In Ecuador’s Battle of Toad vs. Road, Toad Wins

  A Court Invoked Ecuador’s Rights of Nature Laws In Halting a Highway Project to Protect the Jambato Harlequin Toad, Requiring the Government to Prove Construction Won’t Drive The Species to Extinction
  
  
  

  Jan. 7, 2026 -An Ecuadorian court has blocked construction of a highway after ruling it poses an imminent and irreversible threat to the rights of a critically endangered toad, a decision that underscores the country’s unique constitutional protections for nature.

  The opinion, issued Sunday by Judge Milton Gustavo Hernández Andino of a provincial court in Pujilí, suspended all work on the planned highway, citing the risk it poses to the Jambato harlequin toad—a species found nowhere else on Earth but in the parish of Angamarca, in Cotopaxi province.

• • Louisiana Town Fights For Relief After a Billion-Dollar Oil Disaster

  Federal and State Officials Have Sued the Company Behind the Blast, But Roseland, Louisiana, Residents Say the Case Won’t Bring Relief to Their Town
  
  
  

  Jan. 3, 2026 -Four months have passed since a Louisiana oil facility burst apart, spewing a dense black sludge that drifted across homes, farms, and waterways as far as 50 miles away.

  Since then, the U.S. Department of Justice and Louisiana environmental regulators have filed a sweeping lawsuit against Smitty’s Supply, the company that ran the facility storing oil and vehicle lubricants. But residents in the majority-Black town are skeptical that they’ll benefit from the $1 billion federal lawsuit.

• • The Trump Administration Approved a Big Lithium Mine

  A Top Official’s Husband Profited
  
  
  

  Jan. 3, 2026 -A high-ranking official in the Interior Department is drawing scrutiny from ethics experts because she failed to disclose her family’s financial interest in the nation’s largest lithium mine that had been approved by her agency, according to state and federal records.

  In 2018 Frank Falen sold water from a family ranch in northern Nevada to Lithium Nevada Corp., a subsidiary of Lithium Americas, for $3.5 million. The company was planning a $2.2 billion lithium mine nearby called Thacker Pass, and lithium mining requires significant amounts of water.

• • EU’s New ‘Green Tariff’ Rules On
  High-Carbon Goods Come Into Force

  The ‘Border Adjustment Mechanism’ Aims to Create a Level Playing Field While Also Encouraging Decarbonisation
  
  
  

  Jan. 1, 2026 -The biggest shake-up of green trade rules for decades comes into force today, as companies selling steel, cement and other high-carbon goods into the EU will have to prove they comply with low-carbon regulations or face fines.

  But a lack of clarity on how the rules will be applied, and the failure of the UK government to strike a deal with Brussels over the issue, could lead to confusion in the early stages, experts warned.

• • Stingless Bees From the Amazon
  Granted Legal Rights in a World First

  Planet’s Oldest Bee Species and Primary Pollinators Were Under Threat From Deforestation and Competition From ‘Killer Bees’
  
  
  

  Dec. 29, 2025 -Stingless bees from the Amazon have become the first insects to be granted legal rights anywhere in the world, in a breakthrough supporters hope will be a catalyst for similar moves to protect bees elsewhere.

  It means that across a broad swathe of the Peruvian Amazon, the rainforest’s long-overlooked native bees – which, unlike their cousins the European honeybees, have no sting – now have the right to exist and to flourish.

• • Indigenous Groups Fight to Save Rediscovered
  Settlement Site on an Industrial Waterfront in Texas

  Flanked By a Chemical Plant and An Oil Rig Construction Yard, the Site At Donnel Point May Be the Last of Its Kind On This Stretch of Coastline, Now Occupied By Petrochemical Industries
  
  
  

  Dec. 23, 2025 -The rediscovery of an ancient settlement site, sandwiched between industrial complexes on Corpus Christi Bay, has spurred a campaign for its preservation by Native American groups in South Texas.

  Hundreds of such sites were once documented around nearby bays but virtually all have been destroyed as cities, refineries and petrochemical plants spread along the waterfront at one of Texas’ commercial ports.

• • Environmental Racism

  A Global Overview
  
  {EARTH.ORG}
  
  

  Dec. 23, 2025 -The concept of environmental racism did not originate from a policy report or a government briefing – it came from the streets. In 1982, residents of Warren County, North Carolina lay down in front of trucks carrying toxic waste to a newly approved landfill. Among the protesters was Benjamin Chavis, who later put a name to what communities across the US had been experiencing for decades: the pattern of placing hazardous sites, polluting industries, and dangerous infrastructure in neighborhoods of colour, while keeping wealthier and whiter areas safe.

  Chavis called it “racial discrimination in environmental policy-making” – a system where toxic waste facilities are deliberately sited in minority communities and where people of color are excluded from decisions that directly affect their health. His words captured something that many already knew, but few in power were willing to say out loud.

• • Texas Sues Xcel Over Panhandle Fires

  Texas Has Accused Xcel Energy of “Blatant Negligence” For Causing the State’s Largest Wildfire in History
  
  {energy central}
  
  

  Dec. 22, 2025 -Attorney General Ken Paxton alleges that Xcel ignored a contractor’s urgent warning to replace a “decayed” utility pole just three weeks before it snapped, sparking the February 2024 Smokehouse Creek Fire (which killed three and scorched over 1M acres).

  Texas is seeking a court order to legally ban Xcell from raising rates to pay for the disaster and to prohibit the company from advertising its grid as “safe” or “reliable.”

• • Countries Want Debt Relief for Conservation

  Is China Ready to Play a Role?
  
  
  

  Dec. 21, 2025 -Long drifts of mist settle between the mountain peaks in this region, almost indistinguishable from clouds. Underneath, species found only here depend on the intricacies of this high-altitude rainforest, one of the most biodiverse places on the planet.

  Like many parts of the Amazon, this fragile and abundant wilderness is imperiled—and not only by the usual dangers of development and climate change. Mounting sovereign debt has become one of the Ecuadorian Amazon’s biggest threats, pushing the government to expand oil and mining to keep public finances afloat.

• • AI and Other High-Tech Tools Are
  Reshaping the Global Fight Against Wildlife Poaching

  New Tools Are Helping Park Rangers Detect and Respond to Poaching In Real Time
  
  
  

  Dec. 19, 2025 -As anti-poaching techniques have improved over the years, poachers have increasingly used technology to evade detection by patrols and park rangers. Now, conservationists are rising to the challenge of the resulting technological arms race with innovations of their own.

  Over the past few years, researchers and conservationists have worked to develop new technology to detect and track poaching, including mobile apps, sensors, and AI. In an effort to determine which devices, strategies, and technologies are most effective, researchers assessed a suite of new developments that have been deployed or hold promise, in a recent study published in Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution.

• • Nigeria Closes Factories Linked to
  U.S. Auto Industry Amid Poisoning Inquiry

  Carmakers Have Known For Decades That Battery Recycling Was Poisoning People Abroad
  
  
  

  Dec. 18, 2025 -The Nigerian government has begun cataloging the health and environmental damage caused by factories that shipped recycled lead to the United States for use in car batteries.

  A team of scientists arrived Tuesday in the industrial town of Ogijo, Nigeria, outside Lagos, to test the soil and air for lead. Officials have shut down recycling factories in the area and are making plans to conduct blood tests on about 500 people who live nearby.

• • China’s Clean Energy Investments Abroad
  Are a Boon for Climate, But...

  Human Rights and the Environment Are a Different Story
  
  
  

  Dec. 17, 2025 -The audience sat patiently through the presentations about the cluster of battery factories going up nearby. They listened to descriptions of the hazardous chemicals the plants will use, their huge water withdrawals and energy demands.

  When it came time for questions, people began shifting in their chairs and standing up, making the cramped room feel even smaller.

  What if the chemicals leak, one woman asked. What’s in it for the politicians in their “velvet chairs,” another demanded. A third warned it would be just like the Soviet era, when iron and steel plants left a polluted legacy.

• • Greenpeace’s Fight With Pipeline Giant Exposes a Legal Loophole

  A Court Filing By a Group With Deep Ties to the Pipeline Company Energy Transfer Raises Questions About the Growing Use of Amicus Briefs in Litigation
  
  
  

  Dec. 17, 2025 -As Greenpeace and the pipeline company Energy Transfer (ET) have fought a series of bruising court battles — including one that could bankrupt Greenpeace in the United States — a little-known organization filed what’s known as a “friend-of-the-court” brief with the North Dakota Supreme Court.

  The organization, Grow America’s Infrastructure Now, or GAIN, urged the court in its November brief to prevent Greenpeace from filing a lawsuit against ET in another country. GAIN argued that Greenpeace was trying to “relitigate” its case after suffering a startling defeat in a trial in Mandan, N.D., this year, when a jury held three Greenpeace entities liable for some $670 million in damages over their role in protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline nearly a decade ago.

• • How a Nation Famous for Marine
  Conservation Is Bankrolling Its Own Destruction

  Costa Rica’s Fuel Subsidies Are Funding Widespread Poaching and Overfishing in Supposedly Protected Waters
  
  
  

  Dec. 14, 2025 -In April 2022, a blue and white fishing boat sliced through the protected waters surrounding Costa Rica’s Isla San José at high speed. Its 75-horsepower engine churned the turquoise surface of the Guanacaste Conservation Area, a UNESCO World Heritage Site teeming with manta rays and bottlenose dolphins.

  Onboard, three fishermen were attempting to escape the law as a triple-engined Costa Rican Coast Guard speedboat closed in. Minutes later, balaclava-clad patrolmen boarded the panga and opened its coolers: 62 kilograms of red snapper, some still alive, gills gasping, was now evidence of a crime.

• • Lawsuit Seeks to Stop Oil Exploration
  in Remote Areas of the Arctic

  It Proposed Work By Conocophillips Could Threaten Delicate Ecosystems in the Largest Tract of Public Land in the U.S.g
  
  
  

  Dec. 11, 2025 -A federal lawsuit filed Thursday challenges an oil company’s new permit to explore for oil in a remote region of the Arctic in Alaska, arguing that such activity threatens the tundra’s ecosystem and the caribou herds that Native communities rely on for sustenance.

  Last month, the Bureau of Land Management approved the permit for ConocoPhillips to work in the National Petroleum Reserve, a vast expanse on Alaska’s North Slope. The lawsuit alleges that the agency fast-tracked its environmental assessment and failed to account for the harms the work could cause, such as disrupting the migration of the Teshekpuk Caribou Herd, which gives birth and raises calves in the area.

• • Philippines Typhoon Survivors Sue Shell
  Over Its Role in Climate Change

  Claimants Say the Oil Giant Has Known For Decades That Burning Fossil Fuel Contributes to Global Warming
  
  {THE WALL STREET JOURNAL}
  
  

  Dec. 11, 2025 -A group of more than 100 Filipinos are suing British oil-and-gas giant Shell, claiming that its historical contribution to climate change from fossil-fuel production was a significant factor in causing a supertyphoon that battered the country four years ago.

  The storm, which hit the Philippines in December 2021, caused the deaths of more than 400 people and nearly $1 billion in damage. Alongside the lives lost, hundreds of thousands were made homeless and lost their livelihoods.

• • Youth Activists Try to Protect a Climate Win in Montana

  The Young Plaintiffs, Who Won a Major Case Over Climate Change Policy In 2023, Argue That Legislators Are Illegally Ignoring the Effects of Fossil Fuels
  
  
  

  Dec. 10, 2025 -A group of young activists, who in 2023 won a landmark climate change case against their home state of Montana, are asking the state’s top court to prevent legislators from undermining their victory.

  The original case, Held v. Montana, took issue with a law that barred the state from considering the effects of climate change when approving fossil fuel projects. The plaintiffs argued the law violated the right to a stable environment guaranteed by the state’s constitution. A judge ruled in their favor after a trial in 2023, and the decision was upheld by the Montana Supreme Court the following year.

• • How China Silences Environmental Reporters Beyond Its Borders

  Journalists Who Report On the Harms Caused By China’s Overseas Infrastructure Buildout In Africa Face Intimidation, Surveillance and Police Pressure
  
  
  

  Nov, 23, 2025 -The strange number lighting up Tawanda Majoni’s phone again and again felt like a warning.

  Majoni, one of the Zimbabwe’s most respected journalists, soon learned where the calls were coming from: a federal police unit called Law and Order, notorious for abductions, torture and killings.

• • Environmental Groups Sue Trump
  Admin Over Gulf of Mexico Oil Leases

  The Lawsuit Claims the Government Failed to Conduct Required Environmental and Health Risk Reviews, Potentially Harming Coastal Communities and Endangered Whales
  
  {ET Energyworld}
  
  

  Nov. 19, 2025 -Environmental groups sued the Trump administration on Tuesday over a plan to sell oil and gas leases in the Gulf of Mexico. The groups say the sale violates a core environmental law and threatens coastal communities and endangered whales.

  The lawsuit, filed in the US District Court for the District of Columbia said the government failed to conduct reviews required by the National Environmental Policy Act, a bedrock law that has been in place for more than 50 years. The law, known as NEPA, requires the government to evaluate projects' environmental and health risks and to study alternatives.

• • Pope Leo Urges Stronger Action as UN
  Climate Summit Enters Final Week

  Pope Says World Failing to Do Enough to Fight Climate Change
  
  
  

  Nov. 18, 2025 -Pope Leo criticized world governments on Monday for failing so far to slow global warming and called for a stronger response to the threat, as countries at the U.N. climate summit in Brazil's Amazon city of Belem entered the second week of negotiations with a goal to resolve their thorniest issues ahead of schedule.

  The Pope's message reflected mounting concern about flagging international ambition and rising greenhouse gas emissions a full decade after the 2015 Paris Agreement, a landmark deal at which countries for the first time agreed to limit global warming to well within 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

• • Indigenous People, Long Sidelined
  at Climate Talks, Take the Stage in Brazil

  The Indigenous Presence is Palpable and Strong
  
  
  

  Nov. 14, 2025 -They came from the Andes in Ecuador and the Amazon rainforest in Peru. They were joined by activists from the Brazilian forests and savannas. Together, they numbered in the thousands, young and old, women and men.

  Indigenous people arrived at this year’s international climate summit in Belém, Brazil, in greater numbers than ever before. They had one unifying goal: to make sure their voices are no longer ignored when nations of the world gather to figure out how to curb rising global temperatures.

• • Fossil Fuel Projects Around the World
  Threaten the Health of 2bn People

  ‘Deep-Rooted Injustices’ Affect Billions of People Due to Location of Wells, Pipelines and Other Infrastructure
  
  
  

  Nov. 12, 2025 -A quarter of the world’s population lives within three miles (5km) of operational fossil fuel projects, potentially threatening the health of more than 2 billion people as well as critical ecosystems, according to first-of-its-kind research.

  A damning new report by Amnesty International, shared exclusively with the Guardian, found that more than 18,300 oil, gas and coal sites are currently distributed across 170 countries worldwide, occupying a vast area of the Earth’s surface.

• • Two Caribbean Islands Seek Justice
  From France for Pesticide Poisoning

  In Guadeloupe and Martinique, Where More Than 90 Percent of the Population Has Chlordecone in Their Blood, Residents Continue to Demand Financial Compensation
  
  
  

  Nov. 11, 2025 -As a kid in the French Caribbean island of Guadeloupe, Georgina Lambert spent her days playing beneath banana trees and swimming in rivers that shimmered with sunlight. She had no idea that the soil beneath her feet, the water she swam in and the air she breathed were laced with chlordecone, an extremely toxic pesticide.

  Lambert was born in 1980 near the banana plantations in southern Basse-Terre, on Guadeloupe’s fertile volcanic soil. Her father, from Haiti, had moved to the island to answer the call for plantation labor.

• • The Harsh Reality of Meat Production

  How Slaughterhouses Work
  
  
  

  Nov. 11, 2025 -It’s not exactly revelatory to say that slaughterhouses cause pain; they’re killing factories, after all. But the scope of this pain, and the number of animals and people it impacts, isn’t immediately apparent. Thanks to the specific ways slaughterhouses are run, the animals in them suffer far more than, say, wild animals who are shot and killed for food by a hunter. The negative impacts on slaughterhouse workers, too, are both extensive and largely unknown to those outside of the industry. Here is the harsh reality of how meat is made.

  Click now for the rest of the story.

• • CDFW Investigators Seize Suspected Rhino Horns

  And Thousands of Pieces of Elephant Ivory in Los Angeles County
  
  {Cal Dept of Fish and Wildlife}
  
  

  Oct. 23, 2025 -California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) law enforcement from the Special Operations Unit (SOU) uncovered extensive evidence linking a business in Los Angeles County to suspected trafficking of animal parts, including rhino horn and elephant ivory.

  CDFW investigators discovered what appears to be at least nine rhino horns, thousands of pieces of elephant ivory, several large, intricately carved tusks and a sea turtle shell. All samples will be tested and identified at CDFW’s Wildlife Forensics Lab.

• • Mining Activists Targeted as South Africa Delays Energy Transition

  ‘We Are Just Waiting to Die’
  
  
  

  Oct. 23, 2024 -Environmental justice activists have spoken out against coal and iron mining in South Africa, telling a recent human rights hearing that the industry violently undermines the country’s promised energy transition. They also pointed to the continued threats, displacement and killings faced by community organizers resisting land grabs by mining companies.

  The fifth Human Rights Defenders People’s Hearings, held at Constitution Hill in Johannesburg on Oct. 22, was convened by Life After Coal, a joint campaign by local NGOs Earthlife Africa, groundWork, and the Centre for Environmental Rights.

• • Paris Verdict Due in TotalEnergies 'Greenwashing' Case

  Lawsuit Filed By Three Environmental Groups Accuses TotalEnergies of "Misleading Commercial Practices" For Ads Saying it Could Reach Carbon Neutrality While Continuing Oil and Gas Production.
  
  {ET Energy World}
  
  

  Oct. 22, 2025 -A Paris court is due to hand down a ruling Thursday whether French oil and gas giant TotalEnergies misled consumers with claims overstating its climate pledges, a case that could help shape greenwashing jurisprudence in Europe and beyond.

  It is the first such case in France targeting a major energy company and could set a legal precedent for corporate environmental advertising, which is starting to face tighter regulations in the European Union.

• • In Georgia, Trump’s Cuts to Solar Projects Hit Some of His Voters

  The Administration Canceled a $7 Billion Program Intended to Help Low- And Moderate-Income Families Install Rooftop Solar Panels
  
  
  

  Oct. 11, 2025 -When Jennifer McCoy entered a drawing for the free installation of solar panels on her home, she was desperate for help with electric bills that have soared to more than $500 a month.

  So Ms. McCoy, 39, was disappointed when the drawing was abruptly canceled. And as a supporter of President Trump, she was shocked by the reason: His administration had revoked $7 billion in federal grants intended to help low- and moderate-income families get access to solar energy.

• • Shuttered Canadian Marine Park Warns
  It May Euthanize 30 Beluga Whales

  Prompting a Global Outcry
  
  
  

  Oct. 9, 2025 -The uncertain future of 30 beluga whales still living in tanks at Marineland—a shuttered aquarium and amusement park in Niagara Falls, Ontario—has drawn global outcry from animal rights activists this week after park officials warned they may euthanize the animals without immediate financial aid from the government.

  “The idea that one would consider euthanizing them is just not morally acceptable, and it’s certainly something the government and the public should not accept,” said Charles Vinick, chief executive officer of The Whale Sanctuary Project, a Nova Scotia-based nonprofit that seeks to end the exploitation of whales and dolphins.

• • UK Plastic Waste Exports to
  Developing Countries Rose 84% in a Year

  Campaigners Say Increase in Exports Mostly to Malaysia and Indonesia is ‘Unethical and Irresponsible Waste Imperialism’
  
  
  

  Oct. 8, 2025 -Britain’s exports of plastic waste to developing countries have soared by 84% in the first half of this year compared with last year, according to an analysis of trade data carried out for the Guardian.

  Campaigners described the rise in exports, mostly to Malaysia and Indonesia, as “unethical and irresponsible waste imperialism”.

• • Solar for All Beneficiaries Sue EPA for Terminating Program

  Arguing the Agency Had No Right to Pull the plug on the Solar for All Program
  
  
  

  Oct. 7, 2025 -The lawsuit, filed Monday in federal court by the Southern Environmental Law Center and Lawyers for Good Government, says the EPA wrongly ended the $7B program after Congress passed its recent budget bill.

  Plaintiffs—including the Rhode Island AFL-CIO, several solar companies, and a Georgia homeowner—say the money was already committed and legally protected.

• • Maryland Judges Weigh Whether
  Cities Can Sue Over Climate Change

  Communities Including Baltimore and Annapolis are Asking the State’s Top Court to Revive a Case Accusing Oil Companies of Spreading Disinformation
  
  
  

  Oct. 6, 2025 -The Maryland Supreme Court heard arguments Monday on an issue facing judges nationwide: Whether or not local communities can sue oil companies over their role in climate change.

  The leaders of Baltimore, Annapolis and Anne Arundel County sued some of the world’s biggest oil and gas companies in 2018 and 2021, alleging a decades-long disinformation campaign to mislead the public about what causes global warming. The companies’ deception, they argued, encouraged the burning of oil and gas, which unleashed more of the greenhouse gases that are dangerously warming the world and causing damage in Maryland including storms, extreme heat and sea-level rise.

• • New Report Examines Fossil Fuel
  Ties of Dozens of Trump Administration Hires

  The Trump administration has Stocked Key Energy and Environmental Agencies With Fossil Fuel Insiders—43 of Them, to Be Exact
  
  
  

  Oct. 6, 2025 -The Trump administration wasted no time in tapping individuals with ties to fossil fuel industries and right-wing think tanks funded by oil tycoons for key environmental and energy policy positions, according to a new report.

  Public Citizen and the Revolving Door Project, two nonprofit organizations that monitor corporate influence in government, analyzed the backgrounds of 111 nominees and appointees to executive branch positions in agencies including the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Department of the Interior (DOI) that chart environment and energy policy. They found 43 people with ties to the fossil fuel industry and 12 people tied to right-wing think tanks, many of which receive funding from oilmen, including Texan Tim Dunn.

• • The Scientists Making the Case for Nature’s Rights

  A Group of Wetlands Scientists Wants the Critical Ecosystems They Study to Be Next
  
  
  

  Oct. 5, 2025 -VICTORIA FALLS, Zimbabwe—On a bright and clear day, Gillian T. Davies reached the end of a winding dirt track where armed guards waited.

  The ecologist from Massachusetts was attending an international conference on wetlands that would influence the future of the world’s fastest-disappearing ecosystems. The sessions were not going well.

• • Powering the Grassroots Movement We
  Need to Meet This Moment of Climate Action

  Get Involved!
  
  {Jane Fonda Climate Pac}
  
  

  Oct. 3, 2025 -Everyone has a role to play in combating the climate crisis. When you volunteer with JanePAC, you’re taking a stand for environmental justice, holding polluters accountable, and electing leaders who will fight for a livable future for all of our communities. Whether you’re knocking on doors, making phone calls, circulating petitions, or helping amplify our message, you can help power the grassroots movement we need to meet this moment.

  Sign up to receive updates.

• • Indigenous Land Defender Killed in Ecuador as Government
  Cracks Down on Environmental and Human Rights Activists

  He Was Gunned Down While Marching in Protest Against High Costs of Living and Government Crackdowns That Include Freezing the Bank Accounts of Activists
  
  
  

  Sept. 29, 2025 -An Indigenous land defender was shot and killed on Sunday in Cotacachi, Ecuador, where he was marching in protest of high costs of living and government crackdowns on Indigenous and environmental activists.

  Efraín Fueres, 46, a community leader, was one of thousands of Ecuadorians who have taken to the streets over the past two weeks amid a wave of authoritarian moves by the government, including freezing activists’ bank accounts and suspending a media organization. The Indigenous Kichwa federation Chijallta FICI, which Fueres belonged to, released a statement condemning his killing and attributing blame to “military bullets.”

• • Workers Keep Dying From Heat

  Data From Inside Their Bodies Shows Why
  
  
  

  Sept. 30, 2025 -Six hours before she collapsed from the heat in the South Florida tropical plant nursery where she works, Irma wasn’t feeling well.

  By 10 a.m., two hours into her shift weeding long rows of plants on a hot August day, her head hurt and she felt nauseous. By 2 p.m. she had full body cramps and chills. At her boss’s urging, she pushed through the pain without a break until her body gave out at 4 p.m. Her vision went black and she fell to the ground.

  Irma spoke on the condition that she be identified only by her first name for fear of retaliation from her employer. Her boss still won’t let her or her co-workers pause to rest on hot workdays, she said, aside from a half-hour break for lunch at noon.

• • Danger For Environmental Defenders

  Over 2,250 Have Been Killed or Disappeared in the Last 12 Years
  
  
  

  Sept. 18, 2025 -The latest tally from Global Witness is a grim ledger. In 2024, at least 146 people were killed or disappeared while defending land, water and forests. That brings the total to at least 2,253 deaths and disappearances since 2012, a steady toll that turns local acts of stewardship into mortal hazards. The organization’s report reads less like an activist’s briefing than a casualty list from a slow-moving war.

  Latin America remains the deadliest region. Of the 117 killings documented there last year, 48 took place in Colombia, which has led the world in such murders for three years running. Guatemala recorded 20 deaths...

• • Dominion’s Proposed Peaker
  Plant Flouts Environmental Justice

  The Utility’s Environmental Justice Analysis Lacks Community Health Data
  
  
  

  Sept. 18, 2025 -For the first 60 years Duane Brankley lived here, about a mile and a half from a coal plant owned by Dominion Energy, coal ash coated the shingles on his roof and the insides of his lungs.

  The coal plant finally closed in 2023, but soon Brankley could be facing an even more insidious air pollutant: fine particulate matter, or PM 2.5, from a new natural gas plant, the Chesterfield Energy Reliability Center, that Dominion wants to build on the site of the old coal facility.

• • Young Activists Say 3 Trump
  Orders Violate Constitutional Rights

  A Group of Young People Argued That a Judge Should Halt Three of Trump’s Sweeping Executive Orders On Climate and Energy Policy
  
  
  

  Sept. 18, 2025 -A group of young climate activists attempted to put the Trump administration’s energy agenda on trial in Montana this week.

  In two days of hearings in a packed federal courtroom in Missoula, the plaintiffs and a slew of expert witnesses testified that three of President Trump’s executive orders aimed at “unleashing” American energy violated their Constitutional rights to life and liberty.

• • EPA Seeks $140 Million Penalty Against
  DTE Energy in Zug Island Pollution Trial

  Freeze-Thaw Recycling
  
  {energy central}
  
  

  Sept. 17, 2025 -The EPA is asking a federal judge to impose a $140M penalty on DTE and subsidiaries over sulfur dioxide emissions from its ES Coke Battery on Michigan’s Zug Island.

  A federal judge has already ruled DTE qualifies as an operator of the facility under the Clean Air Act, making the parent company liable for violations.An expert witness testified that DTE could afford to pay the fine without financial hardship, estimating the utility gained $185M–$226M in economic benefit during years of noncompliance.

• • Labor, Environmental Abuses
  Detailed in China’s Vast Squid Harvests

  A New Environmental Justice Foundation Report Exposes Violations in the Vast Chinese Squid-Fishing Industry...
  
  
  

  Sept. 16, 2025 -China’s vast, uncontrolled squid-fishing effort in the unregulated waters off South America is putting marine ecosystems at risk of depletion and leaving crew members vulnerable to physical abuse, overwork and even death, according to a new report by the Environmental Justice Foundation.

  The investigation by the London-based nonprofit sheds light on the working conditions of largely Southeast Asian crews and murky fishing supply chains that link to more than 80 U.S. importers and buyers.