TriplePunditSolutions journalism for sustainability.2026-04-02T18:20:33Zhttps://triplepundit.com/feed/atom/https://triplepundit.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/cropped-3P-Icon-32x32.pngJohnny Sturgeon, Inside Climate News<![CDATA[Five Years Into a Fishing Ban, the Yangtze River Is Teeming With Life]]>https://triplepundit.com/?p=705912026-04-02T16:43:14Z2026-04-03T13:00:00ZA doubling of fish biomass along Asia’s longest river shows hope for large-scale conservation efforts and a lifeline for the endangered finless porpoise.
This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, non-partisan news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. Sign up for their newsletter here.
Flowing almost 4,000 miles from the Tibetan Plateau to the East China Sea, the Yangtze is China’s “Mother River.” From the emerald-green rice paddies of Hunan to the industrial hubs of Wuhan and Shanghai, the river basin generates 40 percent of the nation’s economic output. Yet, 70 years of rapid development had, until recently, wreaked havoc on its delicate marine ecosystem.
Fish biomass in the Yangtze has now more than doubled while endangered species are making a return, according to research released in February in Science. These early signs of recovery follow an unprecedented decade-long commercial fishing ban introduced in 2021. The findings suggest similar bold policies could catalyze ecological recovery in other large-scale rivers like the Mekong or the Amazon.
“I am always impressed by the resilience of nature when given space and time to recover,” said Steven Cooke, a fisheries professor at Carleton University and study co-author. “There have been other ‘restoration’ projects on rivers in the past but none have included a total fishing ban. That is unique.”
Assessing fish stocks before and after the ban, an international team of researchers compared biomass and diversity across 57 sections of the river. They found a 209 percent increase in overall fish biomass and a 13 percent increase in species richness.
Larger fish — those longer than 7.5 inches — appear to have benefited the most, with their numbers increasing at the highest rates. This included species like the valuable black Amur bream — well-stocked apex predators are a critical indicator of a healthy food web. Migratory species like the slender tongue sole also appeared to be rebounding, finally able to reach critical habitats without being intercepted by nets.
For endangered species like the Yangtze sturgeon and Chinese sucker, the ban brought immediate stock improvements. However, researchers were most excited by the Yangtze finless porpoise. The culturally significant marine mammal saw its population jump from 445 to 595.
“The improvements of conditions include both habitat and food for the iconic Yangtze finless porpoise,” said lead author and fisheries researcher Fangyuan Xiong. With more free space and prey, this mascot of environmental conservation and subject of ancient Chinese poetry appears to be benefiting most from the first-of-its-kind ban.
While the rise is primarily linked to reduced fishing mortality, other pressures have eased. Researchers highlighted improved water quality and a significant reduction in underwater noise from boat propellers.
However, despite the positive data, the report was clear that the long-term detrimental impacts of river fragmentation — caused by sizable dams like the Gezhouba and Three Gorges — will remain challenging for migratory species. Similarly, microplastics that flow freely into the river from highly populated areas present continued threats to biodiversity.
The success also came at a human cost. The ban required recalling 111,000 fishing boats and resettling 231,000 fishermen who had long depended upon the Yangtze for life.
“The biggest take home is let’s do a better job of managing our freshwater rivers so we never have to consider full fishing bans as the medicine,” said Cooke. “Although this seems to have been effective here, the collateral damage to fishing communities is immense.”
Now entering its sixth year, the ban is not a permanent fix nor a cure to all ecological issues. Yet the doubling of biomass is a historic milestone.
“This is not comparable to any other conservation measure because it is the first basin-wide initiative on a large river,” said Sébastien Brosse, from the Center for Research on Biodiversity and the Environment in Toulouse. “Strong political decisions in favor of the environment have a marked and rapid benefit for biodiversity and ecosystem health.”
Nineteen years since the first seasonal fishing ban was implemented to protect spawning fish in the Yangtze, the extension through 2030 remains a bold strategy to restore one of the Earth’s most significant waterways, the study’s authors concluded.
Tina Casey<![CDATA[What the Return of ACT UP Can Teach No Kings Protesters About Sustaining a Movement]]>https://triplepundit.com/?p=705982026-04-02T18:20:33Z2026-04-02T18:20:30ZNo Kings has organized millions, but protest marches are only part of a grassroots movement. The 1980s organization ACT UP New York offers a powerful example of how to follow marches with the sustained pressure and direct action needed to truly influence change.
The No Kings movement has organized millions of people across the United States to take to the streets in protest of federal government overreach under President Donald Trump. The question is what comes next. Protest marches are only part of a grassroots movement for change. Personal forms of direct action are also needed, and the 1980s organization ACT UP New York is applying those methods once again to focus attention on the hidden levers of power that control access to health care.
Government failure breeds grassroots action
The AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, or ACT UP, was formed in New York City in 1987 out of anger and desperation. AIDS (acquired immunodeficiency syndrome) was first observed in 1980, hitting New York City particularly hard. Previously healthy people suddenly fell ill and died of rare cancers and infections with no discernable cause. Over the following years, grassroots community groups formed in New York City to raise awareness, gather funds, and provide services to those affected.
But public health officials were slow to respond. AIDS was not named as a condition until 1982, and the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) was not identified as the cause until two years later. Then-U.S. President Ronald Reagan reinforced the moral stigma surrounding AIDS as a gay disease, undeserving of federal attention. He refused to acknowledge the AIDS crisis by name until 1985 when the cumulative death toll from AIDS had already surpassed 12,000 in the United States.
By 1987, New York City accounted for almost a third of all U.S. AIDS cases, registering thousands of deaths a year, a COVID-level crisis that still lacked an appropriate response. That year, ACT UP launched with a march on Wall Street to protest the high cost of AIDS treatment. At the time, the U.S. median individual income was around $18,000, but AZT, the only approved AIDS drug, cost $10,000 a year.
An ACT UP march in New York City in the late 1980s. (Image: Wikimedia Commons)
The group followed up with a series of personal actions, focusing on the role of financial institutions in blocking access to treatment. In 1988, an “ad hoc group” of more than a thousand ACT UP members occupied and shut down the Maryland headquarters of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to demand more investment in AIDS treatment research. A year later, just seven members created outsized attention by chaining themselves to the balcony of the New York Stock Exchange to protest the high price of AZT.
ACT UP takes on tech giants
Membership in ACT UP dwindled over the years as treatment and prevention improved, but HIV continues to circulate disproportionately among minority populations in the United States. In 2016, members of ACT UP joined with the organization Rise and Resist to protest Trump’s racist rhetoric and meetings with anti-LGBTQ hate groups during his first term. Now, the two groups are once again cooperating, this time targeting powerful leaders in the tech sector for their role in destroying federal healthcare resources.
At the start of last year, billionaire and high-profile Trump supporter Elon Musk was put in charge of the White House’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. Staffed by young tech workers with no public policy experience, the newly established agency (named after a memecoin backed by Musk) set about eliminating what they called “wasteful” government spending.
In response, last week ACT UP marked its 39th year with a rally at the New York City AIDS Memorial in Greenwich Village under the theme: “Money for AIDS and Healthcare, Not for ICE and Warfare.” Even as it guts life-saving programs, the Trump administration has pledged $40 billion to convert warehouses across the U.S. into industrial detention centers for immigrants and is requesting another $200 billion for the war in Iran. The loss of USAID alone, which had an annual budget of $40 billion, is projected to cause more than 9 million deaths worldwide by 2030.
Hundreds of rally-goers marched in protest from the AIDS Memorial to the New York offices of Palantir, a data mining company owned by another Trump-supporting tech mogul, Peter Thiel. Among other U.S. government contracts, last year Palantir won a $30 million deal to develop an AI-enabled surveillance program for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.
Dozens of ACT UP demonstrators laid themselves on the busy street for a “die-in” in front of Palantir’s office to focus attention on the company’s connection to ICE atrocities, including the denial of health care to detainees.
“The Trump administration is spending more money on war than they are on health care. They’re spending more money on ICE than they are on AIDS care …We think those priorities are way out of line with American priorities,” said event organizer and ACT UP founding member Eric Sawyer, as cited by Gay City News.
“Speakers emphasized the continued need for in-person activism, even as HIV treatment has improved,” noted GCN reporter Dashiell Allen. “Organizers said the protest is part of an ongoing effort to influence voters ahead of upcoming elections and push for policies supporting health care and social programs.”
Trump and his Republican allies are not listening to that message, and they probably never will. However, health care has already resonated among voters as Trump’s public approval continues its slide to historic lows. In a new Gallup poll, voters cited health care as their top concern, over the economy, crime, illegal immigration and other major issues.
Voters have also become sensitized to the disruptive influence of tech firms, including social media addiction and artificial intelligence. In particular, the AI boom — where both Musk and Thiel are stakeholders — has raised concerns over worker displacement and anxiety on the job. Data centers are also routinely blamed for pushing up the cost of electricity for ordinary ratepayers, and communities have begun organizing against new data center proposals.
The bloom has come off the tech rose in other ways, too. President Trump swept to victory in 2024 with the support of young men entranced by the online world of masculine aspiration, with Musk wielding his social media platform X (formerly Twitter) as a powerful megaphone while top podcaster Joe Rogan lent crucial online support through his mainly younger, male and Republican audience.
Now Rogan has publicly regretted his endorsement, and Musk has left the reputation of his Tesla brand in tatters.
The time is ripe for a new social movement that reclaims the normal workings of democratic governance for the benefit of ordinary people. No Kings has roused the numbers, and now direct action groups like ACT UP and Rise and Resist are adding a crucial example of personal action.
Amy Brown<![CDATA[California Raised Wages for Incarcerated Firefighters, But Advocates Say There’s More to Be Done]]>https://triplepundit.com/?p=705532026-03-30T16:27:48Z2026-03-30T16:27:35ZCalifornia increased the hourly pay for incarcerated firefighters to $7.25 last year. It's a bittersweet victory for many, and the fight for fairness and more equitable conditions continues.
Incarcerated people in California have lived at fire camps in the forest since the 1910s, fighting fires side by side with the rest of the state’s force. In 2024, incarcerated fire crews were responsible for 42 percent of California’s total emergency response hours, the highest ever recorded by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. Yet until last year, California’s incarcerated wildland firefighters earned $5.80 to $10.24 per day — often less than a dollar an hour — while working and training, according to the department. When responding to active emergencies, they received just $1 per hour more.
The state has come to rely on the critical support of incarcerated firefighters, especially with the increasing frequency and severity of wildfires in California, but the program has long raised ethical concerns. Those advocating for higher wages for incarcerated firefighters had not made much progress until recently.
A California law (AB 247) enacted in October ensures that incarcerated people on firefighting crews are paid the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour when assigned to an active incident. Assembly member Isaac Bryan, a Democrat from Culver City who authored the bill, initially pushed for $19 per hour, as earned by entry-level firefighters with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CAL FIRE). Nonprofits like the Center for Employment Opportunities, labor unions and celebrities rallied behind him in the push to pay incarcerated firefighters fairly.
While negotiations ultimately landed on using the federal minimum wage, Bryan still called it a momentous achievement. “The governor signing the bill is an incredibly powerful reminder that all labor is dignified and anybody who is willing to put their lives on the line deserves our gratitude,” he told CalMatters.
It means the fight for fairness and more equitable conditions for incarcerated firefighters will go on, said Simone Price, director of organizing for the Center for Employment Opportunities, a nonprofit that provides services and advocates for people recently released from incarceration.
“This past year created a lot of very overdue attention and a need to demonstrate that this is a job that is dangerous and necessary, and that folks who are incarcerated working alongside other firefighters should be doing a little better than five dollars a day,” Price told TriplePundit.
The devastation of the 2025 wildfire season, including fires in Los Angeles among the worst in the state’s history, had the unexpected result of shining a light on the huge portion of firefighters who are incarcerated, Price said. “It made a big difference for a lot of folks who maybe weren’t aware of this situation or taking it as seriously as they should have,” she added.
The program has historically recruited volunteer inmates from state prisons. For many, firefighting is a source of pride and a career opportunity. “In our advocacy work, there’s a lot of respect for these firefighters,” said Price. “Sometimes it was their first job because of how young a lot of us are when we are first incarcerated. It took a lot of dignity to be able to provide that service, and it’s a skill they want to continue to provide on the outside.”
In 2021, AB 2147 went into effect to help make that possible. The California law enables people who participated in California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation firefighting efforts to have their records expunged, removing a barrier to seeking firefighting jobs in their communities.
The bill made a big difference to those in prison serving on the firefighting crews, Price said. But in practical implementation, formerly incarcerated firefighters continue to face barriers to employment in the field.
“It paved the way for a limited pool of people to potentially go through the course to have their records expunged and perhaps qualify for the necessary certification and EMT certification to become a firefighter,” Price said. “But that’s been very difficult. It’s not a seamless process.”
One of the limitations of AB 2147 is that it only applies to those who served in a firefighting role at the state level through CAL FIRE. “Unfortunately, most of these jobs are at the county level,” Price said. “But we’re hopeful that the legislative wins we are having now will create a bigger pathway for actual job opportunities for folks who want to continue to be firefighters.”
Alongside pay and opportunity barriers, incarcerated firefighters face daily risk of injury. As several studies have documented, including a 2025 investigation by Georgetown Law, incarcerated firefighters have no equivalent pension or health benefits yet are more likely to suffer injuries and to find conditions for medical treatment limited.
Sergio Maldonado, a formerly incarcerated firefighter who is now an advocate with the Center for Employment Opportunities, was injured while fighting fires. But he said he doesn’t regret firefighting.
“Standing shoulder to shoulder with my crew, facing walls of flame that seemed impossible to overcome, I found something I never expected in prison: pride in protecting communities and saving lives,” Maldonado said in a statement. “AB 247 recognizes what I learned on the fire line — that our humanity and contributions matter more than our mistakes. The teamwork, discipline, and sense of accomplishment fostered personal growth and rehabilitation that traditional incarceration rarely provides. This firsthand experience underscores why fair compensation matters.”
Like Price, Madonado works to help people translate their firefighting skills to civilian jobs. The reality, however, is that even those who do find jobs as firefighters after incarceration are often paid less and face limited advancement opportunities compared to colleagues without criminal records, despite having the same experience. Earning higher wages while incarcerated can help them make restitution payments, support their families, and build savings essential for successful reentry.
Like a fire that’s still smoldering, advocates like Price and Maldonado continue to push for the comprehensive reform that will address all the systemic barriers preventing formerly incarcerated firefighters from pursuing careers in the field where they’ve already proven their capabilities and commitment.
Tina Casey<![CDATA[At the Height of NCAA March Madness, Activists Pressure Charter Airlines on Deportation Flights]]>https://triplepundit.com/?p=705292026-03-25T22:08:54Z2026-03-25T20:51:34ZU.S. immigration authorities are using so many charter planes that university teams playing in March Madness are competing with the government for bookings. The surrounding discourse puts pressure on the companies profiting from escalated immigration activity.
Corporate America has remained mostly silent in the face of U.S. President Donald Trump’s cruel and largely illegal immigration crackdowns, but a growing segment of communities is pushing back. With protests emerging against federal deportation flights, the NCAA March Madness tournament creates a new opportunity to raise awareness and advocate for change.
March Madness puts a spotlight on charter airlines
The National Collegiate Athletic Association’s March Madness tournament is an annual rite of spring for millions of college basketball fans and sports bettors. This year’s tournament includes 136 teams competing in an elimination series televised from March 15 to April 6.
“The first two days of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament have become like national holidays in American culture,” Madison Williams of Sports Illustrated observed this week.
This year’s tournament already broke viewership records while registering 36 million brackets for fans to forecast the final outcome. “March Madness has become more than a tournament. It is a shared experience that pulls in casual fans, office pools and social conversations, making participation feel almost expected,” the editorial board of TribLive, a Pennsylvania sports publication, reported yesterday.
Given the public profile of March Madness, the potential for immigration enforcement to disrupt the games has become a matter of public concern.
Over the past year, Trump’s Department of Homeland Security deployed federal immigration agents in a series of violent extrajudicial campaigns in communities across the country, with international students among the high-profile targets. Around 25,000 international athletes competed in NCAA sports last year, where revenue-generating events could violate their visa rules, the higher education publication The EDU Ledger reported.
The NCAA also drew attention to a shortage of charter flights that could disrupt March Madness. The DHS bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) flew more than 13,000 flights in 2025, including over 8,500 flights shuffling detainees from state to state and more than 2,200 deportation flights, according to the watchdog organization Human Rights First. ICE is using so many charter planes that NCAA leadership said teams are competing with the agency for bookings.
“One of the things that I’ve heard is ICE is taking up a lot of charter planes,” Keith Gill, NCAA Division I men’s basketball committee chair, told reporters earlier this month, Front Office Sports reported.
“The NCAA is advising member schools to brace for potential travel issues with March Madness, especially during the first week of the men’s and women’s basketball tournaments, in part because of a shortage of charter aircraft,” The New York Times reported through its The Athletic digital sports branch.
The ICE Flight Monitor from Human Rights First tracks the agency’s flights over time. (Click and scroll to Page 4 to enlarge.)
A perfect storm hits airlines as deportation flights draw ire and TSA shortages cause chaos
The Athletic previously reported on the intersection of NCAA charters with ICE deportation flights last June, naming the Miami charter company GlobalX among others. The NCAA has a running $5 million contract with GlobalX, which also operates more than half of federal deportation flights, The Athletic reported.
“The airline regularly shuttles deportees to Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico and elsewhere, sometimes on the same planes that only hours or days earlier carried sports teams,” investigative reporters Nathan Fenno and Carson Kessler wrote. Last year, the relationship included four dedicated GlobalX aircraft for NCAA Tournament teams.
That story failed to resonate among the broader public at the time, but much has changed since June. Opinion polls show widespread disapproval of Trump’s immigration policy following the lethal violence in Minneapolis and elsewhere. His plan to spend more than $38 billion in taxpayer money to acquire warehouses and convert them into immigrant detention centers has garnered outrage in communities across the political spectrum.
Seattle education, tech and healthcare unions at a protest against U.S. immigration crackdowns in January. (Image: Michael Hanscom/Flickr)
Transportation Safety Administration (TSA) personnel are among those who remain unpaid, leading to staff shortages and long security lines at U.S. airports during the busy spring break travel season. Instead of agreeing to common-sense reform of ICE, Republicans continue to refuse funding for TSA staff, as well as those working in disaster response at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and other essential DHS functions.
Adding fuel to the fire, Trump ordered ICE agents to report to airports beginning on Monday. The move backfired spectacularly within hours, as millions of frustrated travelers were treated to the spectacle of elaborately equipped ICE officers meandering about with nothing to do, even as TSA agents continued to labor without pay.
Activists urge colleges and the NCAA to stop using charter companies that profit from deportation flights
Now that Trump himself has underscored the connection between ICE and air travel, the protests against charter airlines have more opportunities to break through the media clutter.
The “De-ICE These Flights” campaign organized by the Service Employees International Union calls on the NCAA to drop contracts with GlobalX and other charter companies that make money from ICE flights, such as Eastern Airlines based in Kansas City and Omni Air International out of Tulsa, Oklahoma.
“American universities have the power to choose ethical partners,” a campaign petition page reads. “Tell university presidents and trustees to commit to not using ICE-contracted charter flights for March Madness or any event.” Service Employees International, which represents more than 2 million U.S. service and care workers, already gathered thousands of signatures from union members last year to pressure charter companies to stop working with ICE.
The organization Arsenal PAC, which develops digital tools and cybersecurity defenses for activists and journalists, launched a similar “Don’t Fly With ICE” petition urging the NCAA to drop its contract with GlobalX.
“A plane carries 157 people to a detention camp in chains. Hours later, a college basketball team boards the same plane, buckles into the same seats, and flies to March Madness,” the petition page reads. “When our universities use airlines that carry out ICE deportation flights, it tells us that the dignity and worth of those communities — our communities — is not a priority.”
More than 24,000 people signed the petition by Friday, triggering nearly a million emails to five NCAA leaders and 35 university athletic directors, The Houston Chronicle reported.
The campaigns also attracted interest among students, and some are putting the pressure on their schools to stop contracting with companies that operate ICE flights. “Some college students are urging the Houston Cougars and other March Madness teams not to fly with charter airline GlobalX,” the Chronicle reported this week.
In response to inquiry about GlobalX contracts, Tim Buckley, NCAA senior vice president of external affairs, told the Chronicle in a statement: “In order to move all teams to tournament sites safely and on time, the NCAA has to work with all available, FAA-approved carriers.”
The University of Colorado also faced criticism. “Immigrant rights advocates on Tuesday renewed their calls for the University of Colorado to end its relationship with Colorado-based Key Lime Air over its operation of detainee transport flights for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement,” The Daily Sentinel reported.
Immigration policy and the war in Iran were key focus areas for demonstrators at the March 4 Democracy in Washington, D.C., earlier this month. (Image: Hillel Steinberg/Flickr)
What happens next?
In widely reported news over the weekend, Trump rejected a bipartisan compromise to pay TSA agents, all but guaranteeing that chaos at the nation’s airports will continue into the near future.
The surrounding discourse calls attention to how the administration’s hardline immigration policies impact everyone and puts pressure on the companies profiting from escalated ICE activity. The next nationwide No Kings Day mass protest against federal government overreach under the Trump administration is scheduled for Saturday, March 28, where immigration is set to be a key issue for demonstrators.
Trump’s unforced error on ICE airport deployments is already having an impact as well. Instead of directing blame for the partial government shutdown toward Democrats in Congress, Trump only succeeded in focusing more attention on his own role in the debacle.
On Monday, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer took the floor with a reminder. “Every time a traveler walks to their gate, or stands in line at security, and sees an ICE agent lurking about, they are going to be reminded of Donald Trump’s chaos,” Schumer said. “They’re going to be reminded of Minneapolis. And they’re going to think ‘the chaos is now coming to my city too.’”
Now, if only corporate America would wake up from its stupor and exercise its voice as well. After all, corporations are people, too.
Emily Senkosky, High Country News<![CDATA[How Montana Tribes Are Using Sovereignty to Restore Their Waterways]]>https://triplepundit.com/?p=705182026-03-23T16:16:54Z2026-03-23T16:16:41Z‘We live at the backbone of the world, where the water begins.’
Under the subdued gray light of the winter sun, Germaine White, enrolled member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes (CSKT), reminisced about the Jocko River slowly meandering in the shadow of the Mission Mountains in Northwestern Montana. Once, the river — nisisutetkʷ ntx̣ʷe in the Séliš-Ql̓ispé language — was laden with bull trout, and its plentiful tributaries provided abundant fresh cold water every spring.
“We live at the backbone of the world, where the water begins,” said White. “Scientists call it a ‘resource,’ but we call it the source.”
The Jocko River is fundamental to CSKT life, but over the last century the watershed became disconnected from its floodplain, leveled and channelized when agriculture moved onto the Flathead Indian Reservation. After a decade of negotiations, however, one of the most significant tribal settlements in U.S. history created the 2015 Confederated Salish and Kootenai-Montana Compact Water Rights Compact. Effective in 2021, the compact reauthorizes tribal water rights promised in the 1855 Hellgate Treaty, while also protecting existing water users through a joint state-tribal water management system. The combination of Indigenous-led restoration, shared management structures and targeted funding may help the tribe recover the rivers and the lifeways inextricably intertwined with them.
The aboriginal territory of the Selis, Ksanka and Qlispe tribes covered 22 million acres of western Montana and extended into Canada, Idaho and Wyoming. The three tribes coexisted in a rich landscape, amid over 980 miles of rivers and streams — a natural abundance that explains why Salish elder Mitch Smallsalmon famously called the tribes “wealthy from the water.”
But the tribes lost some of that wealth when the 1855 Hellgate Treaty was signed. And in 1887, the Dawes Act, determined to assimilate Indigenous people into settler society, opened parcels of the CSKT reservation to homesteaders. Even though the reservation comprised only about one-twentieth of the tribe’s original homeland, the act further divided the landscape, creating a patchwork of private and tribal lands. Many of the place names around the Mission Valley were lost, replaced by the settlers’ versions.
“Place names are so profoundly important; they’re the oldest words in our language,” said White. “They came from our creation stories and the making of this place. In recent times, the land has been altered so dramatically that it no longer resembles the place names.”
The legal term “prior appropriation,” colloquially known as “first in time, first in right,” underlies water rights in the West. Prior appropriation hinges on the idea that whoever first claims water and puts it to “beneficial use” holds first rights to it among subsequent users. During Westward expansion, settlers believed that water was an infinite resource, and water rights were given away freely and gluttonously consumed. But the commodification of water severed tribes from their lifeways.
“We look at the waterways — the veins of our Mother Earth — as a way of life,” Sadie Peone-Stops, CSKT member and director of the Séliš-Ql̓ispé Culture Committee, said. “Water gives all life. If people can understand that, they can understand what wealth means to the tribe.”
Throughout the 20th century, tribal reservation rights, including fishing and hunting rights, often overlapped with the prior appropriation rights given to white settlers on the reservation, resulting in a quagmire of conflicting rights. Stakeholders raced to the courthouse to have their water rights solidified before their rivals set precedent.
Eventually, the Montana Legislature recognized the need for a system to determine all outstanding water rights, and the Montana Water Court was born. This specialized part of the judicial branch is tasked with untangling the more than 219,000 water rights claimed in Montana prior to 1973. Through a unitary system and the adjudication process, the court works to determine water rights across every river basin in the state. It is also charged with reviewing and ruling on objections to negotiated compacts with the state’s tribes and federal agencies. Colorado and Idaho are the only other Western states with water courts.
About three decades ago, a series of cases filed on behalf of the CSKT by the federal government sparked the tribes’ fight for quantifiable water rights and eventually led to what is now the Water Compact. The CSKT-MT Compact quantified the tribes’ reserved and aboriginal water rights, recognizing existing tribal cultural and religious uses and protecting other existing water rights, regardless of their basis in state or federal law.
But by the time the compact was settled, over 100 years of industrialism had left their mark on watersheds in and around the reservation. Montana’s history of mining and milling poisoned rivers, while development fragmented watersheds and drained aquifers.
The compact’s final decree is still being determined by Montana’s Water Court, but it recognizes the tribes’ reserved and aboriginal water rights and their existing tribal cultural and religious uses. The compact also protects tribal instream flows, existing uses and historic deliveries to irrigators. The compact’s co-management plan uses both Western science and tribal knowledge to recover waterways and manage them more strategically.
The compact’s implementation phase is led in part by CSKT’s Division of Engineering and Water Resources, which expanded in 2020 to meet the compact’s needs. Over a dozen activities were outlined to reauthorize tribal water rights while fulfilling the reservation water uses provided by the Flathead Indian Irrigation Project (FIIP).
The FIIP was constructed in 1908 as part of the Dawes Act to help move water across the reservation for agriculture. The project has more than 1,000 miles of canals, irrigates nearly 130,000 acres and has 14 major reservoirs that feed its web of crisscrossing channels.
“The FIIP was ostensibly for the benefit of the Indian,” said Casey Ryan, a tribal member and manager of the tribe’s Natural Resource Department’s Division of Engineering and Water Resources. “There were so many changes that our tribe was trying to navigate … and despite all that, we were highly successful at incorporating agriculture.”
Still, the project warped the Mission Valley watersheds, and its antiquated infrastructure showed its inefficiencies as it aged. So federal legislation stemming from the compact prioritized rehabilitating FIIP’s infrastructure and repairing the damage it caused.
The notion of “beneficial use” of water was so powerful in the 20th century that any water left in FIIP’s irrigation canals was regarded as “waste.” The Jocko River, the second-largest river on the reservation, was drastically disfigured — confined to a channel as straight as a bowling lane and severed from its natural meanders, floodplain and side channels, which once supported a flourishing ecosystem. According to Ryan, as early as the 1930s, water surveys showed that FIIP was a deficit irrigation project, meaning that in most years, the water supply was insufficient to meet potential crop needs.
“There are over 34 creeks that come out onto the valley floor, and of those, most die in the canal that runs along the base of the Mission Mountains,” said Ryan. “We even have staff that can remember when the Jocko would run dry during the irrigation season.”
Restoration on the Jocko started even before the compact was signed, thanks to funds the CSKT won in a pivotal case in the 1980s known as the ARCO lawsuit. Mining and milling on the Upper Clark Fork River Basin had left the river — formerly the tribes’ hunting and fishing grounds — so polluted that it became one of the nation’s largest Superfund sites.
The $187 million ARCO settlement was used by the tribes and state to finance cleanup efforts. But the lawsuit also demonstrated the weight of the rights outlined in the CSKT’s treaty, as well as the tribes’ prowess in wielding the law to enforce environmental reclamation. The tribes — determined to save the bull trout, a culturally significant fish — concentrated on restoring the South Fork of the Jocko because it had the same hydrological profile as the Clark Fork.
The bull trout was listed on the Endangered Species Act in 1998, and the Jocko is its final stronghold, home to its last remaining migratory population. According to White, the bull trout had been a vital tribal food source when reserves were low and game was scarce. The fish sustained the people in time of need, enabling the CSKT to avoid the starvation that plagued other tribes during long harsh winters.
“We always had that incredible gift of the water, and with it, the gift of the bull trout,” said White, who managed the education and information pieces for the Jocko River Restoration Project.
The Restoration Project worked to stem further damage by purchasing private land and removing houses from the floodplain while creating an interdisciplinary team to conduct environmental restoration. Today, the CSKT owns over 70 percent of its reservation, wielding tribal sovereignty to protect lands — including the first tribally designated wilderness area in the nation. The tribe also made the South Fork a primitive area available only to tribal members to preserve its cultural and recreational value. But funding from the ARCO case eventually ran out, leaving the lower reach of the Jocko still channelized and trapped against the Bison Range.
“When we got the Water Compact, the last block clicked into place,” said White.
The compact’s implementation phase has picked up where the Jocko River Restoration Project left off — with “adaptive management” underpinning the effort. By reconnecting the river to its floodplain and allowing water to slow, spread and seep back into the land, tribal crews are monitoring and evaluating how the river heals. Indigenous traditional ecological knowledge has also been integrated into its recovery. In low-lying areas, tribal crews have created natural filtration zones using cattails and other wetland plants — living buffers that capture agricultural runoff before it reaches the river.
The project’s overall goal is to find ways to align agriculture needs with ecological practices. More efficient water delivery can reduce losses and still leave water for instream flows — and, according to Ryan, has already resulted in more bull trout returning to their native streams. Healthier rivers, in turn, support soil, recharge groundwater and stabilize the broader watershed that farming requires.
“One of the beautiful things about the compact is it recognizes that water is a unitary resource, and that it needs to be managed as such,” said Ryan. “FIIP’s rehabilitation has been good for fish and farmers.”
The compact’s foundational measures — including the rehabilitation of FIIP’s infrastructure, restoration of environmental damage and improved water management — are essential, but cultural preservation is equally important.
“The restoration’s importance cannot be overstated,” said Peone-Stops. “It’s going to bring back life, and with plant and animal life, it could bring life back to the culture in new ways.”
The CSKT’s Séliš-Ql̓ispé Culture Committee, guided by the wisdom of a board of tribal elders, has been at the heart of the tribes’ efforts for 50 years, helping to guide the ground-floor application of every project. Besides restoring the landscape, the compact is bringing jobs and reconnecting members to tribal lifeways. According to Peone-Stops, this helps the tribe re-establish its belief that every natural resource is a cultural resource.
“The Water Compact is helping us to continue our mission: to preserve, protect and perpetuate the Selis and Qlispe culture, language and history,” said Peone-Stops. “It’s not a one-and-done thing. It will help us continue to serve our membership into the future.”
In 2021, the CSKT also established the Lower Flathead River as a cultural waterway through its “Cultural Waterway Ordinance,” which mirrors the provisions in the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act that protects a river’s free-flowing nature from development. According to Peone-Stops, the tribe also plans to preserve and protect other waterways in the future.
“When I think about this compact, it’s not about control or greediness. It’s so that the water — and everything connected to it — is protected,” said Peone-Stops. “We adapt with what we have to, but our tribal practices, caring for the land in the way we know how, has always been the same.”
Liz Dempsey contributed reporting to this story. Dempsey is a descendant of the Salish and Lakota Sioux. She currently works for Char-Koosta, the tribal newspaper located on the Flathead Indian Reservation.
Bekah Stolhandske McNeel<![CDATA[In Rural West Texas, Renewable Energy Brings a Windfall for Seniors]]>https://triplepundit.com/?p=704802026-03-20T18:25:57Z2026-03-20T18:07:55ZOfficials in Crockett County are using wind investments to help older residents age in place.
In the far corner of the Crockett County Senior Center, 75-year-old Cynthia Flores almost always has a puzzle going. She and her friends sort colors and look for edge pieces while they gossip — “faster than the telephone” — in the Tex-Mex blend of Spanish and English they grew up speaking in Ozona, a tiny ranching and oil outpost in far West Texas. A couple of days before Valentine’s Day, their puzzle surface was one of the few in the center not covered in red and pink hearts; preparations were underway for the big dance the following night.
“La comida esta ready,” another senior said, calling the puzzlers to lunch. Flores placed one last piece, then took her seat at a long community table. The plate in front of her would have delighted a nutritionist with its lean protein and mountain of steamed broccoli. She pulled a tiny plastic container of teriyaki sauce out of her bag and poured the contents over the meat. “They feed us what we need,” Flores said, “but I always fix it up.” Mostly, she said, she’s just thankful not to have to cook. Like many of her friends, Flores still lives at home, but comes into the center for lunch most days. After being married at 16 and preparing food for herself and her family for almost 60 years, she said she was ready for a break.
Ozona resident Alex Castañeda collects the nickel-per-game buy-in for bingo at the Crockett County Senior Center. (Image: Reid Bader/Grist)
Some might say Flores and her friends are living the retirement dream. The center is like a second home, with nutritious food and a full calendar of bingo, dominoes, and social events. Thanks to services like these, many of Crockett County’s aging residents have been able to stay in the familiar community where they, their parents, and sometimes even their grandparents grew up. Flores has been cutting hair locally for decades, working primarily out of her house. Many of her clients now are in their 90s. “I’ve been blessed to work in Ozona, where I can do my own thing,” she said.
Ozona is the only town in Crockett County’s 2,800 square miles, and technically, it’s not even that. “The Biggest Little Town in the World,” as it brands itself, is technically unincorporated, meaning that the county is the only municipal government for its 2,800 residents. One person per square mile means Crockett isn’t the most rural county in Texas, but it’s up there. Taxes and regulations are minimal. The nearest city, San Angelo (the locals just say “Angelo”), is 90 minutes away. The nearest metro area, San Antonio, is three hours.
Ozona, Texas, also known as “The Biggest Little Town in the World,” sits at the crossroads of ranching, oil, and wind energy. (Image: Reid Bader/Grist)
In her chic, clear-frame bifocals and flowy duster, Flores makes aging gracefully in place in one of the most rural places in the United States look easy. It’s not. In many rural communities, seniors may find it hard or impossible to get the resources they need to remain in their homes and hometowns. Older Americans are already at risk of isolation, and living in a remote area can make that worse. Not to mention, resources are thin, local hospitals and other services are folding, and groceries may be pricey, far away, or both. According to the Rural Health Information Hub’s summary of U.S. Department of Agriculture data, 10.2 percent of seniors in rural areas don’t have sufficient access to healthy and nutritious food, compared with 8.5 percent in metro areas.
But in Ozona, older adults like Flores are thriving. The Crockett County government has created a strong network of senior services, and ensures that they are supported — with the help of a wonky tax arrangement and some powerful new neighbors: wind companies.
A rural highway outside Ozona stretches past rows of wind turbines, part of the expanding renewable energy footprint across West Texas. (Image: Reid Bader/Grist)
About 15 miles north of the senior center on State Highway 163, the wind turbines start cropping up, fleets of towering structures owned and operated by a company called NextEra Energy. In Texas, wind generates 29 percent of the power distributed by the state’s notoriously independent power grid — second only to natural gas. According to the state comptroller, Texas wind generation surpassed nuclear power in 2014 and overtook coal-fired generation in 2020. As of 2023, the state led the nation with 239 wind-related projects and more than 15,300 wind turbines.
In Crockett County, the turbines generate more than just electricity. Money from NextEra supports the meals that Flores and her friends enjoy at the center and helps make events like the Valentine’s Day Dance possible.
It all comes down to clever utilization of a section of the Texas tax code. As a way of attracting large projects like wind farms, the state offers companies a temporary property tax break — up to 10 years — in exchange for local investment. This Texas Abatement Act (also known as Section 312) means less tax revenue in the short term, but more dollars immediately flowing to community projects and programs like the senior center in Crockett.
While some economists say the abatements are unnecessary to recruit the companies — there aren’t many places they can go where taxes would be lower — the opportunity to reduce start-up costs for wind turbines or data centers or other developments gives the county a bargaining tool.
Many counties and cities use funding generated from these deals to improve roads and other infrastructure that might be strained by the new development, or to fund other public projects that don’t have a place in the regular budget. In Medina County, for instance, officials negotiated with incoming data centers to improve roads where locals were concerned about increased traffic.
In Crockett County, like many places in West Texas, roads, jobs, and public projects have long been tied to oil and natural gas revenue, with its attendant booms and busts. According to Crockett County Judge Frank Tambunga, oil and gas have kept public coffers full in Ozona, even with the ups and downs of the industry — and the steadier (though usually lower) revenues from wind farms will likely add consistency to an already healthy budget.
Ozona’s services for seniors are usually funded by a mix of federal and local funds, as well as charitable donations. As NextEra expanded its wind farms and more turbines cropped up, Tambunga saw the opportunity to offer those aging support services a boost.
Outside Ozona, an oil pumpjack works beneath a line of wind turbines, a reminder that West Texas still runs on both the past and the future of energy. (Image: Reid Bader/Grist)
Tambunga is a native of Ozona. Now in his early 60s, he’s well acquainted with the sorts of choices his slightly older peers are making. He hears their concerns about health care, groceries and social isolation. When he considered what to ask for in the tax abatement negotiations with NextEra, those concerns were top of mind. But rather than push for a new public department or project, Tambunga looked to those already doing the work in the community.
“As we negotiate, we ask that, during the term of the abatement, that they make charitable contributions to nonprofit organizations to help the local groups,” said Tambunga. “It allows us to provide support for these organizations that help people within the community.”
Eligio Martinez remembers when the wind companies first arrived in Crockett County in the 2010s. He was a county commissioner back then (at times in Ozona, it feels like everyone has taken their turn in county office), and remembers talking to other counties to figure out the best terms for the tax abatement deal. Locally, he said, the wind turbines were an easy sell. “We welcomed them,” Martinez said. No one got caught up in the politics of green energy — something that Texas’ oil-funded politicians regularly debate — or even the aesthetic effect of adding turbines to the wide open vistas. They saw the chance to increase their tax base and gain funding for local services, Martinez said. “If it’s beneficial to the community, we’re going to stick together.”
For their part, the residents at the senior center didn’t understand exactly how the turbines worked — when the massive structures first arrived, they said, locals wondered if they could run electricity directly from the turbine and were skeptical when they learned that the electricity would be sent to Texas’ power grid to be used elsewhere. Energy-funded towns like theirs are used to asking: “How long will the royalties last?” They’re asking the same about the wind farms. They’ve lived long enough to watch booms and busts in nearly every industry — ranching, oil and gas, banking — but donations from the tax abatement deals and the increased tax revenue for the school district are welcome while they last.
There’s a pragmatism, Martinez said, that comes from being so remote. “We’re very vulnerable here,” he said. When his mom got cancer in 2013, he saw just how vulnerable. He was lucky enough to have a job that allowed him the flexibility to take her to her chemotherapy appointments in San Angelo, but if he hadn’t, he wondered how she would have made the trek over and over, being as sick as she was.
Even for more able-bodied seniors, transportation is a hurdle in Ozona. The Concho Valley Transit buses make daily runs to San Angelo, and many use them for errands, but some don’t want to be out all day until the scheduled return trip. Some may have to check in for dialysis and cancer treatments at hours when the buses don’t run. And for those with more complex medical conditions or advanced cancer, San Angelo doesn’t have what they need. They’d have to go to San Antonio, Dallas, or even Houston — all between three and seven hours away. Whoever provides that transportation — usually a family member — is taking on substantial costs.
Martinez started looking for ways to raise funds to help others in his community pay for these travel expenses. He was a radio DJ, so his first idea was a music festival. He organized a day-long festival, and posted some student volunteers by the door to collect entry fees. Almost no one came to hear the music, he said, but when he checked with the students at the door, they had raised $5,000. People had simply dropped off donations. Even if they didn’t want to spend the day listening to music, they wanted to help. Everyone knew this was a huge issue for rural Texans, and that most likely, at some point, they too would need to make long drives to access various forms of medical treatment.
Martinez hosted a few more music festivals, but eventually realized that he didn’t need to put on an event — locals were ready to donate. He created a nonprofit, In Care of Ozona (or “Coz 4 Oz”), that provides gas cards and hotel funds for folks who need to travel for medical care.
This year, Martinez became a beneficiary of the very programs he helped negotiate back on the commissioners court: He received two donations from NextEra, totaling $3,000 — Coz 4 Oz’s entire budget for the moment.
It’s not just medical emergencies that create transportation woes in Ozona. Ordinary errands can be just as burdensome. As in many small towns, the local grocery store prices are high. Prices are better in San Angelo, so seniors will often carpool for the 90-minute drive, or if someone is planning to make a trip, they’ll take a list of what their neighbors need. Much of the impromptu organizing runs through the senior center, said Director Emily Marsh. “It’s like a huge family.”
A family crosses Ozona’s quiet Main Street, where traffic is light enough that you rarely have to look both ways for long. (Image: Reid Bader/Grist)
Back at the Crockett County Senior Center, while Flores and her friends were working on their puzzles, 69-year-old Arletta Gandy loaded trays of hot meals into her small SUV. The former grocery store manager’s dangly, candy heart-inspired earrings bobbled as she heaved a box full of lunch sacks onto the back seat. She and two other volunteer drivers show up to the senior center every weekday to drive the three “Helping Hands” routes, delivering meals to 42 seniors around Ozona. It’s a good way to get out of the house in her retirement, said Gandy, who doesn’t consider herself “from Ozona” because, as she said, “I’ve only been here over 20 years.”
Arletta Gandy delivers lunch to a resident in Ozona, part of the network providing food and support to older Texans in rural communities. (Image: Reid Bader/Grist)
After eight years delivering meals in the community, she knows the routes by heart. She knows which recipients have dietary restrictions and which dogs will run out of the house if she opens the door too wide. At some houses she chats briefly. Others have their own rituals. One man does little more than reach out from behind his screen door, but every day, as Gandy walks back down the plywood ramp overpassing the porch stairs, he says, “See you later, alligator.”
“After a while, crocodile,” Gandy responds.
“Nacho nacho,” the man calls back.
“Nacho nacho,” Gandy replies.
The Helping Hands program has been operating in Ozona for as long as Director Stacy Mendez can remember. She’s been involved since childhood. “I remember helping my grandmother and aunt deliver meals,” Mendez said. The program began in a local Catholic church, and when the Crockett County Senior Center opened with its commercial kitchen over 20 years ago, Helping Hands moved in.
Arletta Gandy delivers a cooler of meals to a local senior. He meets her at the car, as he always does. (Image: Reid Bader/Grist)
In Texas alone, an estimated 100,000 seniors rely on meals funded through Meals on Wheels programs like this one. Across the board, federal funding for these programs has dwindled as pandemic-era appropriations expired and the Trump administration began canceling grants and slashing federal budgets. A government shutdown in the fall further disrupted an already unstable funding stream. Last September, a $20,000 donation from NextEra came just in time, Mendez said. It kept their lean operation afloat, replacing the lost federal dollars and allowing Helping Hands to continue operating through the shutdown, while other programs around the state had to cut back services.
Other Texas counties could also use the renewables boom to meet local needs. The number of Texans 65 and older is expected to more than double from 3.9 million in 2020 to 8.3 million by 2050, making it the state’s fastest growing population, according to AARP. That’s a concern for hunger advocates like Jeremy Everett, director of the Baylor Collaborative on Hunger and Poverty, because seniors are already one of the most food-insecure groups, after young children. But while kids can get food through their schools, such hubs don’t usually exist for seniors, especially in rural areas. In 2026, Meals on Wheels reported that nearly 14 million seniors worried about having enough food.
“Without the ability to safely and reliably access affordable food, senior adults may no longer be able to live in the rural communities they have called home,” Everett said. In Crockett County, money from the wind farms is helping to address that issue. The county is also working with the Baylor Collaborative on Hunger and Poverty to identify ongoing gaps. Especially in times of economic uncertainty, a coalition-based approach to senior hunger is vital, said Everett. No one sector can meet every need, so partnerships between local governments, industry, and nonprofits are key. “That’s how strong food systems are built from the ground up,” Everett said.
There’s another group of Crockett County seniors who benefit from the wind farms: ranchers. Steve Wilkins’ family has owned and operated the 6,000-acre Flying W Ranch for four generations, and he and his wife Belinda now breed Brahman beef cattle and lease part of their land to hunters. Belinda also sits on the board of the senior center.
Steve Wilkins stands beside a pen of Brahman cattle outside of Ozona, part of a livestock tradition that has shaped the family for generations. (Image: Reid Bader/Grist)
As of Valentine’s Day, Wilkins reckoned he was probably a month or so away from signing a deal to lease part of his family ranch to a wind company. Most of the ranches around them have already done so. “I’ve kind of been dragging my feet on it,” Wilkins said. He’s not sure how he feels about wind energy, but these days ranchers have to be pragmatic. Many also lease to oil and gas companies — one of the more lucrative ways to keep a ranch intact. But in “mature regions” like Crockett County, many oil wells have already been producing for decades, putting them near the end of their productivity. Natural gas can have a similar lifespan, but big profits tend to drop sharply after the first six months to two years.
Wind, of course, is not a finite resource. Theoretically, the region could keep producing wind and reaping the benefits indefinitely, or as long as demand for electricity continues apace. Still, there’s skepticism about how long it will last, Belinda said. If the wind boom comes and goes, they’ll just have to keep adapting, as they always have.
In any case, the wind farms are a longer-term investment. Wind money doesn’t start flowing to the ranchers immediately, Wilkins said. The companies told him that it could be seven or eight years before they start seeing royalties. At 70, Wilkins said, that’s of little use to him. But ranchers are also used to seeing land management in generational terms. “Maybe my kids can keep the ranch,” he said.
Cynthia Flores works on a client at her small Ozona salon, one of the everyday businesses that anchor the town’s economy and social life. (Image: Reid Bader/Grist)
In the hours leading up to the Valentine’s Day dance, Jerry and Willa Perry checked in for their weekly appointment at Flores’ in-home salon. Jerry removed a red MAGA-style cap that said “Make Texas A Country Again” and placed his hearing aids inside while Flores trimmed his white hair. Willa, his wife of 70 years, looked on smiling. “I can’t wait to get you home,” she joked, raising her eyebrows playfully. Jerry smirked — although he could not hear her, he got her meaning just fine.
Flores charges on a sliding scale from about $12 to $40 to make sure all her clients can afford to stay coiffed. She makes enough to stay in the house, which she rents. But at her age, she said, she knows that she’s just one medical emergency away from needing full-time care, which she’ll likely find at the county’s local public nursing home.
After finishing with her last clients, Flores changed into a billowy red pantsuit, pearls, and bedazzled sneakers. The dance didn’t start until 6 p.m., but she and several other regulars were there by 5 to get a good table. Emily Marsh and Belinda Wilkins enlisted their help setting out food on the long buffet. By the time the DJ fired up the first cumbia number, about 60 seniors were seated around the dance floor with plates of chips, cookies, and veggies with dip.
Locals dance during the Valentine’s Day dance at the senior center in Ozona, where the DJ, the decorations, and part of the budget are courtesy of the wind blowing across Crockett County. (Image: Reid Bader/Grist)
Things started slowly, but began to pick up when a country two-step song came on. Judge Tambunga and his wife got up to dance, and other couples immediately followed. At the next cumbia, Flores rustled up a group of single ladies to take the floor. A couple songs later, she led a conga line.
This story was supported by a grant from the Solutions Journalism Network.
This article originally appeared in Grist. Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org.
Tina Casey<![CDATA[Target Answers Boycotts and DEI Criticism With…Cleaner Stores?]]>https://triplepundit.com/?p=704602026-03-18T21:16:11Z2026-03-18T21:15:17ZLast year Target became an unwilling poster child for the cost of compliance with the Donald Trump administration's stance on corporate diversity. Will the retailer's renewed focus on store experience actually win back customers, or come across as tone deaf?
Newly assigned Target CEO Michael Fiddelke thinks 2026 will be the year his company recovers from a yearslong sales slump and puts the controversy over diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in the rear-view mirror. But his strategy focused on restoring Target’s commercial culture, including price cuts and a better in-store experience, is curious. It remains to be seen if the company can lure back shoppers without restoring its ethical culture, too.
Corporate cowardice and right-wing activism
After George Floyd was murdered by a Minneapolis police officer in 2020, Target joined many other leading U.S. brands in affirming their diversity, equity, and inclusion principles with outreach focused on the Black community. Executives made bold claims about being “anti-racist,” and companies committed to invest billions of dollars in Black-owned businesses and organizations that claimed to support racial equity.
The outcome of those investments is questionable. Analyses found many of the commitments to be light on details about how funds would be deployed, and billions in committed capital sat unspent years later. But the heightened interest in racial equity topics and talk of a long-awaited reckoning were enough to prompt backlash among right-wing activists.
With an eye toward the 2022 midterm and 2024 presidential elections, they took aim at corporate “wokeness” and loudly complained that DEI programs and policies had gone too far. Online commentators ramped up their hate-filled rhetoric toward the LGBTQ+ community in general and transgender people in particular — threatening brands like Target and Anheuser-Busch’s Bud Light for their perceived LGBTQ-friendly marketing — while their allies in the Republican party leveraged the machinery of government to pass anti-transgender legislation at the state level.
By the summer of 2024, emboldened right-wing activists had threatened John Deere and Tractor Supply with a boycott that prompted both companies to publicly withdraw their DEI policies. Other leading brands including McDonald’s, Target and Walmart followed suit in publicly disavowing their DEI programs soon after U.S. President Donald Trump was re-elected that November.
The switch was a particularly galling reversal for Target, which had pledged $2 billion in spending with Black-owned businesses in 2021 and regularly marketed specialty products for observances like Black History Month and Juneteenth. But Tractor Supply’s experience may have provided Target with some reassurance. Despite a counter-boycott announced by the Black Farmers Association, Tractor Supply reported a sales increase for 2024 after ending its DEI programs under pressure from conservatives.
When boycotts work
Researchers who follow consumer boycotts have noted that they rarely impact corporate revenue. When they do, the target of the boycott is typically a brand that’s already experiencing reputational decline, sometimes for unrelated reasons. Some industry observers say that describes Target to a tee.
“Target customers have soured on what they see as untended and messy stores with lackluster merchandise,” the Associated Press observed at the start of this month when the retailer released quarterly sales results for November to January. “Sales fell 1.5 percent to $30.45 billion during the latest period. For the full year, sales fell nearly 2 percent to $104.78 billion,” AP reported.
But the in-store experience was not the only factor at work last year. Reverend Jamal Harrison Bryant, the senior pastor of New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Georgia, launched a high-profile boycott of Target in March of 2025, calling on Black shoppers in particular to join him in staying away from the retailer in protest of their move to abandon DEI.
The boycott spread quickly. In an earnings call last May, then-CEO Brian Cornell cited the boycott among other factors behind weak sales, including a broader slump in consumer confidence resulting from President Trump’s tariffs. With the company’s stock price also falling through August, Cornell announced he would step back as of February 2026, retaining the position of executive chairman.
The change in leadership did not make the boycott go away. With the “No Kings” protests and other actions also playing a role, news organizations have persisted in mentioning the boycott among other factors turning consumers off from Target.
When DEI by any other name is not enough
Scrutiny of Target ramped up again in January when Trump’s Department of Homeland Security launched a lethal, unprecedented immigration “crackdown” in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where the retailer is headquartered. Local businesses acted to protect their employees and support their community, but Target merely signed onto a group letter pleading for “peace and focused cooperation” while reportedly allowing immigration agents to stage raids from their store parking lots.
Despite the blowback the company received for its response in Minneapolis, last week Rev. Bryant abruptly announced the end of his boycott campaign, telling USA Today he is satisfied that Target’s ongoing Belonging program is “the exact same thing” as DEI, even though it does not express DEI in so many words. That puts Target in league with other businesses that have altered the way they communicate about their diversity and inclusion efforts, a trend that became commonplace by last year.
But beyond the words it uses, Target’s tepid reaction to the violence in Minneapolis is of a different order. The purposeful authorization of mass violence by federal agents against people of color evokes the post-Civil War South. For decades, law enforcement stood aside as white mobs rampaged through Black communities at will, culminating in the total destruction of the Greenwood section of Tulsa, Oklahoma, (known as “Black Wall Street”) in 1921.
Bryant underscored the success of the boycott in holding Target to account, saying the company has invested 97 percent of its $2 billion commitment to Black-owned businesses and pledged to spend $100 million more. “Aside from the revenue lost by Target, the upsurge of emphasis on supporting Black businesses is awe-inspiring,” Bryant said at a press conference last week, as reported by The Root. “While unemployment is rising, entrepreneurship is surging. Collectively, our community represents the 12th wealthiest nation in the world, and now is the time for us to use it for development, not just consumption.”
But Bryant isn’t the only one boycotting the company. The Minnesota-based organization Racial Justice Network is among those saying it has no plans to let up. At a press conference last Wednesday, founder Nekima Levy Armstrong affirmed that her organization will not call off their boycott until Target publicly reverses its DEI decision and does “the right thing by the people of Minnesota and the people across this nation.”
Picking up the pieces
Boycott or not, Target seems determined to turn the page — and ignore the administration’s adoption of full-on, unapologetic white supremacy. Instead, Fiddelke has promised a renewed focus on budget-conscious shoppers seeking a pleasant in-store environment. Reinforcing the message is Target’s spring getaway-themed collaboration with the aspirational brand Roller Rabbit, known for its insistently upbeat and colorful palette.
Perhaps that approach will help Target, even if not immediately. Bud Light’s experience is instructive in that regard. The brand is recovering from its 2023 sales crash not by working to restore its once-popular position in the LGBTQ+ community, but by embracing an unrelated campaign tied to the extremely genderized world of college sports.
Regardless of how much they directly impact sales, the remaining Target boycotts could have all the more influence as the midterm election cycle heats up. The boycotts help engage voters with candidates that support DEI principles at a time when public opinion polls indicate that Trump’s political brand is sinking. Even his own hard-core voters are beginning to turn away from his disastrous policies, underscored by a $38 billion concentration camp plan, the war in Iran, and the persistent drip of the Jeffrey Epstein scandal. After all, boycotts are said to be most effective when a brand is already in decline…
Elyse Hauser<![CDATA[Urchins Are Ravaging Pacific Kelp Forests. Will Seafood Ranches Stop Their Path of Destruction?]]>https://triplepundit.com/?p=703692026-03-09T23:43:56Z2026-03-09T23:43:48ZUrchins are overwhelming Pacific coastlines, where they devour kelp and destabilize ecosystems. Aquaculture "ranches" are collecting them for human consumption to mitigate the damage.
A quiet ecological disaster struck along the West Coast of North America in 2013. The region’s iconic sunflower sea stars were hit with a bacterial disease that made them fall apart and die. Without these predators, populations of once-rare purple urchins exploded. The grazing invertebrates ate vast coastal kelp forests down to nothing, and other species that depended on the forests vanished, too. What was left behind are known as urchin barrens: masses of urchins, and not much else.
Since then, efforts emerged to bring the urchins under control. Some are simple, like diving down and smashing them with a hammer. Others are ambitious, like reintroducing urchin-eating otters to the ecosystem. But the most delicious method, surely, is urchin ranching, or gathering overpopulated urchins and raising them as seafood.
When purple or green urchins eat an entire forest of kelp, they push out other species, too. What’s left is an urchin barren. (Image: Brenda Konar)
Sea urchin, also known as uni, has long been served in sushi and, more recently, in trendy fine-dining fare. Inside each spiky shell are five delicate, edible sections of yellow-orange roe, which are actually reproductive organs called gonads.
Three types of urchin are typically eaten by humans. Red urchins are a large Pacific species highly sought after for use in sushi. Green urchins live in the North Pacific and Atlantic, and have been harvested off Maine since the 1980s. They also became overpopulated in parts of Alaska due to the loss of sea otters. And purple urchins, the ravenous culprits behind many Pacific urchin barrens, have a newfound popularity as seafood, largely thanks to the emerging urchin ranching industry.
The edible part of the spiky urchins are the delicate sections of yellow-orange roe inside the shell, which are actually gonads, or reproductive organs. (Image courtesy of The Cultured Abalone Farm.)
From sea to seafood
On the California coast, The Cultured Abalone Farm grows abalone, an edible sea snail, in onshore aquaculture tanks. About six years ago, the team added purple urchins to their operations. “Our farm decided to pursue [urchin] ranching because we wanted to do something that created a food product still, while having this positive impact,” said Andie Van Horn, Cultured Abalone farm-to-fork manager.
Ranching starts by harvesting urchins at the source, with a focus on the purple, and sometimes green, urchins that are overpopulating local waters. Red urchins aren’t a target for ranching since they’re still relatively rare.
When divers collect purple and green urchins from the kelpless barrens, they aren’t yet ready for consumption. When urchins run out of kelp to eat, the edible roe inside shrinks down to virtually nothing as they enter a zombie-like starvation state they can survive in for years.
Green urchins collected from an underwater barren in minnow traps. (Image: Brenda Konar)
Once onshore, the urchins are transferred to aquaculture tanks to be fattened up. Ironically, the ideal food for urchin growth is kelp — the very thing that ranchers are trying to protect. “We fed [them] a lot of different things, and we found kelp works the best,” said Brenda Konar, a marine biologist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks who studies green urchin ranching.
What urchins eat also affects their flavor, and even the color of the roe. “If you really want them to taste good, they have to eat something like high-quality cold water kelp,” said Aaron Huang, CEO of OoNee Sea Urchin Ranch, which raises purple urchins onshore in coastal Oregon.
Luckily, ranchers have tools to harvest wild kelp without harming it. At Cultured Abalone, a machine sustainably collects it from the sea. “It’s basically a boat with a lawnmower on it. It just trims the top layer off,” Van Horn said.
Ranched urchins are transferred to aquaculture tanks on land to feast on kelp before being harvested at The Cultured Abalone Farm. (Image courtesy of The Cultured Abalone Farm.)
After 10 weeks on a steady kelp diet, the urchins are ready for harvest. “It’s kind of one of the easiest things we do here,” Van Horn said. “It’s literally: Dump them in the tanks, dump kelp in the tank every week, and harvest them.”
The water in the tanks comes straight from the sea, too. “We don’t have to do any water quality maintenance, like pH or salinity, temperature. All of those things are maintained by the ocean, and we’re just on a flow-through system.”
OoNee’s team is also researching the best feed for their urchins. They found success with pellets made of sustainably-harvested kelp, but the urchins are messy eaters and leave crumbs behind. So Huang and his team keep the tanks clean with sea cucumbers. The sea cucumbers eat what the urchins leave, and the waste from the sea cucumbers can fertilize seaweed, which Huang plans to eventually sell, too.
“You want to create as many natural codependencies of the reef ecosystem as you can within a closed-loop system,” he said. Because its aquaculture operations mimic the natural environment, OoNee doesn’t spend much on things like cleaning. The system largely takes care of itself.
At OoNee Sea Urchin Ranch, purple urchins are raised alongside sea cucumbers, like this one, and seaweed to mimic the natural ocean environment. (Image courtesy of OoNee Sea Urchin Ranch.)
Measuring success
The trickier part of ranching is figuring out whether it makes a significant dent in wild urchin populations. Cultured Abalone is working with local seafood service Get Hooked to focus all of its urchin removal efforts on a specific area of the Santa Barbara Channel. “They’re working with students at University of California, Santa Barbara, and Santa Barbara City College to go out and do surveys and see if the kelp actually comes back or if there needs to be additional efforts,” Van Horn said.
OoNee’s urchin-gathering divers already noticed some kelp growing back in the barrens they collect from. The company also partners with volunteer divers from Reef Check, a citizen science organization, to measure urchin numbers. While the numbers are still far from ideal (healthy density would be just one urchin per square meter, according to Huang), collecting them in this way seems to be reducing their populations.
University of Alaska’s Konar also believes urchin ranching can be effective, but it’s a matter of scale. “If you had a big enough production and you could just go in and collect hundreds of these things, eventually you’re going to run out of urchins,” she said. “You’ve replaced the sea otter. You’ve replaced the sea star. You’re now the top predator. So you just keep going in, and eventually the system will go back to the norm.”
Green urchins live in the North Pacific and the Atlantic. They’re overpopulated in parts of Alaska due to the loss of sea otters. (Image: Brenda Konar)
Think globally, eat locally
Urchin ranching offers a potential environmental solution. But for Huang, it offers something more: a connection to nature. Raising urchins requires hands-on skills, like diving to the seafloor to get them. “I know this sounds super old-school, but not everyone wants to be a software developer,” Huang said. “There are people that actually want to be part of nature and doing things in traditional ways.”
He believes eating local food that’s hand-harvested from the wild has consumer appeal, too. “It’s the reason that people like eating chanterelles and truffles,” Huang said. “There’s this story behind it.”
A purple urchin dish. (Image courtesy of OoNee Sea Urchin Ranch.)
Uni’s popularity boomed in recent years. Still, consumers are most familiar with eating large red urchins, rather than the smaller purple and green ones. “We’ve had a couple events where we do taste tests between fished red urchin and our farmed purples,” Van Horn said. “Once people try them together, typically the feedback is that the purples are sweeter and more tender.”
Van Horn and Huang both compare urchins to oysters. Some people want the bigger, bolder options, while others prefer smaller ones with more delicate flavors. As eating different kinds of urchin becomes more popular, ranching could expand, adding to the efforts to control urchin populations. Even if the population problem isn’t fully addressed, urchin ranching offers a new source of sustainable seafood.
“It might take a while to revert the barrens back to kelp,” Konar said. “But in the meantime, you’re going to be feeding a lot of people.”
Elyse Hauser<![CDATA[AI Helps Protect Orcas from Noisy Ships in Washington’s Puget Sound]]>https://triplepundit.com/?p=703462026-03-11T19:15:01Z2026-03-06T18:34:29ZEndangered orcas are struggling to survive in the Puget Sound. Among other threats, noise from ships in the busy corridor can drown out the orcas’ communication and disrupt their use of echolocation to hunt. A new thermal imaging camera uses AI to spot whales and alert passing ships when they’re nearby.
Washington state’s Puget Sound is known for scenic views of blue-gray seas, evergreen trees and snow-tipped mountains. On certain days, if you’re lucky, that view includes orcas swimming at the surface or leaping playfully from the water. One group often spotted is the Southern Residents: An orca population that lives in coastal Pacific Northwest waters.
Despite fairly frequent sightings, the Southern Resident orcas are critically endangered. They haven’t recovered from the impacts of declining populations of Chinook salmon (their staple food), increasing pollution, and loud noise from ships in the bustling sound. The whales communicate through sounds like whistling and clicking and use echolocation to hunt. Ships passing too close by, or going too fast, can drown out the orcas’ communication and disrupt their ability to find food. In extreme cases, ships may cause temporary hearing loss or strike a whale.
With only 74 members of the Southern Residents left as of 2025, each whale is precious. Protecting them requires mariners to know where they are. Now, a new set of “eyes” is helping locate orcas, also known as killer whales, in Puget Sound.
An AI-equipped thermal imaging camera — affectionately nicknamed Whale-E — identifies orcas and other whales from a distance without needing to hear or see them, like most other whale-detection devices do. With this knowledge, mariners can slow their ships down to reduce engine noise, or safely change course, letting the whales live without interruptions.
A Coast Guard radar tower at the entrance to Puget Sound was the perfect location for a new whale-spotting camera. (Image: Elizabeth Becker)
Sights on the sound
The camera was installed by Quiet Sound, a collaborative program working to protect Southern Resident orcas from vessel noise. Quiet Sound has long used visual observations from humans and sounds picked up by hydrophones (underwater microphones) to detect whales. But human vision depends on light and weather, and sound detection requires the whales to vocalize without vessel sounds drowning them out. The thermal camera helps fill the gaps: detecting whales at night, in bad weather and when they’re completely silent.
A couple of companies make cameras with similar capabilities. WhaleSpotter, the company behind this one, was founded by scientists specifically for whale detection. While WhaleSpotter cameras have been sighting orcas across the border in British Columbia since 2019, this is the first one permanently installed on the United States side of the region.
The WhaleSpotter thermal imaging camera installed on a radar tower near Puget Sound. (Image courtesy of WhaleSpotter.)The whale-spotting camera’s view of Puget Sound. (Image courtesy of WhaleSpotter.)
A Coast Guard radar tower looking across the major shipping lane at the entrance to Puget Sound turned out to be the perfect spot to install it. “From the first day we had it — we finished installation around 5 o’clock, 6 o’clock that day — by 8 p.m. we already had our first recording of a whale in that area,” said Gonzalo Banda-Cruz, Quiet Sound program manager.
When they’re nearby, the camera captures “really beautiful footage of these ghostly killer whales,” Banda-Cruz said. But the AI software also detects whales from surprising distances, identifying the heat from their spout, or blow. That’s where it really makes an impact.
“The captain gets the information in 2 nautical miles and then can easily change the course by 1 degree and dodge the whales,” said Daniel Zitterbart, WhaleSpotter’s co-founder and chief scientist.
The camera’s range is about 4 nautical miles, and the blows are tiny, so a detected whale might show up as just a couple of pixels on the screen. “They don’t look impressive,” Zitterbart added. “The impressive part is actually to be able to use that kind of information to make a decision.”
The WhaleSpotter camera can detect Orcas as far as 4 nautical miles away with just a tiny heat signature. (Image courtesy of WhaleSpotter.)
How to spot a whale
Building the system began with over a decade of research at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution before WhaleSpotter became an independent company. The team filmed whales to learn what their thermal signatures looked like and paired the video with real-time human observation to confirm the accuracy.
“Ultimately, it all came from humans looking at the ocean, and humans looking at the screen, and comparing what they saw to create the initial data set,” Zitterbart said.
That information was used to train the AI model to spot whales. “This is also a very exciting example of AI used for good,” Banda-Cruz said. “There is no way this camera could do what it’s doing right now without artificial intelligence or the software running behind it.”
But human involvement is still important. WhaleSpotter works with marine mammal observers, or people whose full-time job is recognizing animals like whales from a distance. Each whale detected by AI is sent to the human team for verification.
“We have a network of those experts where at least one person is online all the time,” Zitterbart said. “When their screen makes a beep, they decide within, on average, 34 seconds if it was a whale or if it was a false alert.”
When a whale is spotted by the camera and confirmed by the human team, it’s location is shared with private and public ship operators so they can adjust their course. (Image courtesy of WhaleSpotter.)
The alerts from the Point Wilson camera are used by both private and public ship operators, like the state ferry system, Banda-Cruz said. Though Quiet Sound focuses on the endangered Southern Residents, the camera also detects other whales and even pinnipeds, or seals and sea lions.
“I think people sometimes don’t really realize just how many whales are out here: the Southern Residents, the Transient [orcas], the humpbacks are making a big comeback, and the grays, and then the pinnipeds,” Banda-Cruz said. “These are really busy waters.”
The WhaleSpotter camera can distinguish between different species, but it can’t determine whether an orca is a Southern Resident or a Transient, a population of whales that travels farther and eats marine mammals instead of fish. “At this point, it’s just saying, ‘We have killer whale,’” Banda-Cruz said.
The thermal camera also doesn’t work in thick fog. “We can look through light fog. We can look through haze,” Zitterbart said. “Dense fog makes thermal imaging as blind as a human.”
That’s where other methods still come in handy. For example, a hydrophone can pick up orca vocalizations in any weather, and experts can use the sounds to determine which group they come from.
Southern Resident orcas call the waters of the Pacific Northwest home. Only about 74 of them remain. (Image: Marla Smith/Orca Network)
Vision for the future
Quiet Sound aims to install more WhaleSpotter cameras in the region, but finding funding is a challenge. “We’re looking out for partners to do it [with] so that it’s financially sustainable in the long term,” Banda-Cruz said.
While ships avoiding whales in one area is important, effective protection requires wider action. Because shipping is worldwide and whales often migrate across borders, their safety is a global issue. Building quieter ships, for example, can make Puget Sound and other shipping regions safer for whales.
For now, the thermal camera at Point Wilson helps inform local efforts, like the voluntary vessel slowdown Quiet Sound promotes each year when the whales arrive to rest and forage for salmon. While the camera won’t replace existing detection methods like human eyes and hydrophones, it adds a new dimension to understanding where the whales travel.
“We’re trying to be a piece of the puzzle that makes it possible for whales to coexist with human use of the ocean,” Zitterbart said.
Tina Casey<![CDATA[Iran War Casts a Shadow on U.S. Conservatives’ Push to Prop Up Coal]]>https://triplepundit.com/?p=703902026-03-11T14:47:00Z2026-03-11T14:46:28ZAttempts to defend an economically outdated and unwieldy source of power look even more misguided as war underscores the urgent need to invest in domestic energy resources that are buffered from global volatility.
Conservative U.S. lawmakers have taken aim at the use of environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors in investing over recent years. Investors say they use ESG criteria to manage financial risks tied to things like climate change and human rights. But conservatives claim these considerations dampen investor returns, wrongfully harm legacy industries like coal, and may even constitute illegal antitrust. Those are bold claims, but as a recent settlement with Vanguard shows, ESG critics have yet to prove their case in a court of law, and they may well lose in the court of public opinion.
By joining business coalitions like the Net Zero Asset Managers Initiative, which rallies investors to engage with portfolio companies about climate risk, the financial giants signaled their “mutual intent to reduce the output of thermal coal, which predictably increased the cost of electricity for Americans,” Paxton said in a statement about the lawsuit, which was joined by 10 other state AGs.
With U.S. President Donald Trump elected for a second term just weeks before, Paxton’s group could depend on the incoming administration to support them. Accordingly, last May the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice filed a “statement of interest” supporting Paxton’s suit.
While litigation against BlackRock and State Street continues, Vanguard recently agreed to a $29.5 million settlement without admitting wrongdoing. “The terms of the agreement to settle this litigation reaffirm our longstanding practices and standards and the passive nature of our index funds,” Vanguard stated, reflecting a cautious declaration of a victory for ESG investment screens in an anti-ESG environment.
Paxton, of course, also declared victory. “This landmark settlement represents one of the most significant enforcement actions ever taken against coordinated ESG-driven market manipulation,” his office declared at the end of February.
So, who won? In a recent analysis, partners at the prestigious U.S. law firm Ropes & Gray noted that while the AGs were quick to claim victory, “a closer look at the settlement terms tells a different story: the commitments to which Vanguard agreed largely reflect current industry norms and standard stewardship practices the asset management industry has long embraced as a matter of course.”
However, they say Paxton earned public relations points. Vanguard agreed to withdraw from the Principles for Responsible Investment and abstain from decarbonization networks including the Net Zero Asset Managers Initiative, Ceres and Climate Action 100+. “This appears to be the real target of the settlement — restricting membership in industry coalitions,” Ropes & Gray emphasized.
Similarly, Sarah Wilson, CEO and founder of the U.K. sustainable investing advisory group Minerva Analytics, noted that while a settlement is not a legal finding of fault, Vanguard’s could have a chilling effect on ESG investing by making it appear that “ESG” is synonymous with “unlawful coordination.”
These experts raise serious concerns regarding public perception. But their analyses were posted days before the U.S. and Israel launched a war in Iran, spiking the price of energy worldwide.
On Saturday night, oil refinery fires in Tehran, Iran, were visible from space following military strikes from the U.S. and Israel. (Image: CSU/CIRA & NOAA/NESDIS)
What’s really driving the cost of coal
Energy price shocks tied to the war underscore the foundational lie that supports Paxton’s lawsuit. Paxton argues that the “BlackRock-led cartel” of large asset managers aims to “drive up the price of coal under the guise of ‘green energy.’” However, the war demonstrates that energy prices can and do change for a host of reasons that have nothing to do with so-called “woke” investors.
For example, rising oil prices could soon ripple into the cost of U.S. coal power. Transportation fuels account for around 40 percent of the cost of coal delivered to power plants, the U.S. Energy Information Agency calculated in a 2022 analysis.
“Most coal is transported by train, barge, truck, or a combination of these modes,” EIA explains. “Increases in oil and diesel fuel prices can significantly affect the cost of transportation, which affects the final delivered price of coal.”
Competition from natural gas is another factor that was pushing coal aside for years before groups like the Net Zero Asset Managers Initiative even existed. More than 100 coal-fired power plants were replaced by or converted to natural gas between 2011 and 2020, according to the EIA. In Paxton’s home state of Texas, coal accounted for a respectable 35 percent share of power generation in 2014. Just 10 years later, that number was down to just 12 percent, while natural gas commanded over half of all power generated in the state.
Wind and solar are now the most accessible and economically beneficial power generation resources in the U.S., as reflected by the strong performance of renewable-friendly states like California and, ironically enough, Texas.
Red State rhetoric aside, Texas has long led U.S. states in wind power capacity, and its solar profile is rapidly increasing. Wind now accounts for 22 percent of power generation in Texas, compared to 12 percent for coal. The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas notes that solar accounted for the largest share of new power generating capacity in Texas last year, while coal failed to register at all.
In addition to external pressures tied to natural gas competition and fluctuating fuel prices, coal producers in Texas face a crippling structural limitation. The state’s coal mines only produce lignite, a type of low-heat coal that is particularly sensitive to transportation costs. For that reason, lignite is used almost exclusively by power plants located near lignite mines.
“Lignite coal is an especially dirty power source,” adds the Environmental Defense Fund. “It contains higher levels of mercury and other toxics than other types of coal, and more lignite coal must be burned to generate power compared to other types of coal, which then produces even more emissions.”
A crowd gathers near the White House on Saturday to protest the war in Iran. (Image: Victoria Pickering/Flickr)
Another energy crisis and the staying power of ESG principles
In sum, Paxton and his allies seek to defend an economically outdated and unwieldy source of power generation at a time when war has underscored the urgent need to invest in domestic energy resources that are buffered from global commodities volatility. That is exactly the point made by proponents of ESG principles — not as the sole deciding factor in investment decisions, but as a way to account for (and act on) a broader range of long-term financial risks and opportunities.
The roots of today’s ESG principles trace back to the 1970s when the U.S. economy was rocked by an oil embargo imposed by the Organization of Petroleum Producing Countries (OPEC) in the Middle East.
Now in 2026, another oil crisis looms. Paxton and his Republican allies in office can keep on lying to the American public about ESG investing, and they will. However, the latest oil price shock only demonstrates how far his party has drifted from the reality of today’s energy markets, and from its former identity as the champion of business.
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Urchins are overwhelming Pacific coastlines, where they devour kelp and destabilize ecosystems. Aquaculture "ranches" are collecting them for human consumption to mitigate the damage. 
Endangered orcas are struggling to survive in the Puget Sound. Among other threats, noise from ships in the busy corridor can drown out the orcas’ communication and disrupt their use of echolocation to hunt. A new thermal imaging camera uses AI to spot whales and alert passing ships when they’re nearby.
Attempts to defend an economically outdated and unwieldy source of power look even more misguided as war underscores the urgent need to invest in domestic energy resources that are buffered from global volatility. 
