Good Stories, International Court Climate Win, Avoiding AI Tips, and more!

Hey climate heroes! Welcome to The Climate Roundup, where we round up the change, er the news about climate and the environment. As part of the Gen E community, we thank you for making climate action part of everyday life. (Reading this newsletter counts!)

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Good Out There:

This week I want to start with something that really moved me. I was reading through my daily climate news, which is often enraging and heartbreaking. But then I got to this week’s New York Times ‘Climate Forward’ newsletter, where they shared some highlights from over 2,400 submissions from readers sharing environmental actions happening near them. And I was overwhelmed with emotion from reading back to back examples of people proactively doing good things for the environment, because they care. So I hope the Times is ok with me sharing these inspiring stories from across the country. Enjoy.

“Native plants were especially popular. We received more than 100 submissions from people who planted pollinator-friendly gardens in backyards, church lots, hillsides, medians and once-abandoned lots, creating habitat that supports beneficial insects, bats, birds and other wildlife.

We heard about the success of the green club at the Valley Ranch Association, a large homeowners’ association in Irving, Texas. Such associations often oppose native plantings, but Valley Ranch has earned certification as a National Wildlife Federation Community Wildlife Habitat, with pollinator gardens and parks and a prairie of native wildflower and grass.

Another reader, Kate Galer, wrote to us about the residents of Delmont Avenue in Ardmore, Pa., who worked with a local conservancy to green their street, unpaving driveways, creating rain gardens, removing turf grass and planting perennials, trees and shrubs.

We heard about how your children were making a difference. A reader from Macomb Township, Mich., told us about her high-school daughter who, in 2023, at age 14, began planting trees in their community to help fight climate change and started a grass-roots organization called Plant It Forward.

Another reader, Pat O’Connor, of Athens, Ga., told us about his son Aydan O’Connor’s lawn care company, Dead Silent Lawn Care, which uses all-electric equipment, a far cleaner alternative to two-stroke gas lawn mowers.

Others wrote to tell us about state programs, like Whole Home Repairs, in Pennsylvania, which helps low-income property owners improve energy efficiency, weatherize homes, add rooftop solar panels and make repairs. Or a water quality program in Ohio called H2Ohio that tackles algal blooms, reduces salt runoff from roads and lowers pollution from farms.

We heard about regenerative farming, solar panel installations, food forests, neighborhood compost sites and ecological grazing goats. We learned about a flood plain reconnection and restoration project that transformed a 12-acre former industrial lumber yard in Brattleboro, Vt. We heard about Steelton, Pa., a town named for its industrial past whose schools and school buses are now running on solar power.

Then there was the Socially Responsible Sweatshop of Kent, Ohio, whose members craft tote bags, pillows and other goods out of textiles otherwise bound for the landfill, and then donate the proceeds to anti-hunger groups. Its official mission is to sustain the earth and the hungry. Its motto? “Never underestimate a person with a sewing machine.”

Philanthropy At Work:

♲ The Ocean Conservancy just released a new report, rating all 50 states on their plastic pollution reduction efforts. Naturally, California ranks 1, with Mississippi ranking last partially because they have a law that limits the government’s ability to regulate single-use plastic. Overall, the finding is that no state is doing a good job at significantly reducing plastic pollution, and the US is the largest plastic polluter globally. This report will be a useful tool to help measure what we know, and also recommends how states can do better – but it requires state laws to regulate this unchecked industry consisting of chemical and fossil fuel companies, plus consumer goods manufacturers, who all must be forced to take responsibility for the crisis they’ve created.

News You Need To Know:

👩‍⚖️ Last week, the world got a theoretically positive win for enforcing climate policies, per the International Court of Justice, the UN’s judicial arm. The ruling states that countries have an obligation to protect the environment from greenhouse gases and adhere to international treaties, like the Paris Agreement to limit warming to 1.5°C, and if they fail, they should be legally responsible to pay reparations for damages. In addition to environmental obligations, the court cited human rights as well: “a clean, healthy and sustainable environment is a precondition for the enjoyment of many human rights.” The reason this is a theoretical win is because the ruling is a non-binding advisory opinion. Still, this is progress, and legal experts say these ICJ opinions can influence cases and policies around the world. Special thanks to the island nation of Vanuatu for leading this effort and opening up new possibilities for climate damage accountability.

🤝 Also in international news, the EU and China last week issued a joint statement reaffirming their commitment to the Paris Agreement, stating “it is crucial that all countries, notably the major economies maintain policy continuity and stability and step up efforts to address climate change.” It not so subtly signals to the US that the world is moving forward on decarbonization, and the US can eat their dust. Neither China nor the EU are without flaws or hypocrisy (China is still building out and burning coal while also installing the most renewable capacity globally by far), but this proactive statement of leadership and commitment to address the climate crisis sparks real hope that indeed, the world will progress.

☀️ Spain hit a clean energy milestone, where for one full weekday, all power demand across the country was met by 100% renewable energy. Now let’s get to one week!

🧴 Next month, the three-years-long negotiation for a global treaty on plastic pollution will resume – yet another environmental crisis that humanity is failing to address. If you want a deep dive into how industry lobbyists are outnumbering other attendees, using intimidation tactics on scientists, and spreading misinformation in order to stall and prevent a cap on plastic production, read this article to see how the plastics-fossil fuel industry is using their same climate denying playbook on plastics in order to keep their revenue flowing at the cost of planetary life.

🥫 One silver lining to the tariffs, in the case of aluminum anyway, is that they may grow the market for domestic recycled aluminum, according to CNBC. Obviously, it’s smarter to recycle versus create new so not to further extract materials from Earth, but also, recycling aluminum requires only 5% of the energy that it takes to create new aluminum. And if the industry grows, building new recycling facilities is much faster and costs 10% of what it takes to build new smelter facilities. Recycling aluminum is a no-brainer.

🚨 In Trump’s AI Action Plan announced last week, the administration states that AI procured for the federal government must “eliminate references to misinformation, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, and climate change.” New executive orders aim to streamline permitting for new data centers and energy infrastructure on federal land, prioritizing coal and gas, plus lessen or eliminate environmental review, including waiving an existing Clean Water Act rule requiring new construction developers to notify communities of the project’s impact to local water systems. And this is just a sampling of the reckless behavior driven by the interest groups positioned to profit off the manufactured AI-rush, at the expense of too many things to name here.

Pro Tip:

💡 The Washington Post has an article with tips to minimize our AI use, because just like micro-plastics and Amazon, it’s seemingly ubiquitous, hard to avoid, and being shoved down our throats at every turn. Google has been especially waterboardy with its AI-forcing, as it now accompanies every standard search, thereby using more energy and water without our consent. By the way, did you know that for every 100 words ChatGPT generates, it uses one water bottle’s worth of freshwater?! Grossly wasteful. Tip: to potentially avoid wasting resources on Google’s AI in search, you can select ‘Web’ as the search option in the menu underneath the search bar on your Google page. It may be buried in the ‘More’ dropdown, but if you click ‘Web’, you’ll see the AI-generated response disappear. Additionally, if you use Google Workspace for email, docc, etc, you may have noticed their latest attempt to invade our inbox by automatically summarizing emails. To turn this off, go to Settings > General and turn off ‘smart features’. They try to throw us off the scent by not mentioning “AI” or Gemini upfront in these setting options, but human intelligence can sniff out their tricks. Mission accomplished.