1176
Green & indigenous News
124 readers
70 users here now
A community for Green & indigenous news!
founded 1 month ago
MODERATORS
1177
1178
1179
2
Partnering up to run a DRC reserve: Interview with Forgotten Parks’ Christine Lain
(news.mongabay.com)
1180
1181
1
WINTER OLYMPICS: Indigenous athletes compete not just for their country but for the world
(ictnews.org)
Dan Ninham
Special to ICT
Hundreds of athletes from throughout the world are descending on northern Italy for the 2026 Milan Cortina Olympics. Four years removed from the Covid-stricken edition of the Beijing Winter Olympics, thousands of fans will be in person cheering at the pinnacle of world-class athletic competition.
The Indigenous representation includes three Métis from Team Canada, including one alternate, and two Inuk siblings from Greenland who will be competing individually as biathletes for Team Denmark, wearing racing suits that include Inuit designs such as eagle talons, a raven and the Northern Lights.
Olympics officials for Team USA did not provide ICT with the names of any Indigenous athletes competing this year for the United States, and ICT was not able to identify any who might have been missed. Teams Australia and New Zealand, which usually have large contingents of Indigenous athletes in the Summer Olympics, likewise did not identify any for the 2026 Winter Games.
The Winter Olympics will kick off with opening ceremonies on Friday, Feb. 6, and run through Feb. 22. Here are the Indigenous athletes identified by ICT who are participating in the Olympic Games this year.
TEAM DENMARK (GREENLAND)
Ukaleq Slettemark, Inuk
Biathlon
Ukaleq Slettemark was born and raised in Nuuk, Greenland, and currently lives in Lillehammer, Norway. She is Inuk from Nunarput/Greenland and she’s competing in the biathlon for her second consecutive Winter Olympics.
Representing as an Indigenous Winter Olympian on the world stage encourages athletes to excel and thrive while maintaining their cultural identity. An expanding fan base will be watching from televised programming.
“I am incredibly proud of racing for Greenland at the world stage,” Ukaleq Slettemark told ICT. “I hope I also represent other Inuit and Indigenous people from the rest of the word a little bit, too.”
Ukaleq Slettemark, Inuk, of Greenland, is competing in the biathlon for Team Denmark in the 2026 Milano Cortina Olympics in northern Italy. Her brother, Sondre Slettemark, is competing in the men’s biathlon competition. Ukaleq is shown here competing in the Biathlon World Cup in Nove Mesto na Morave, Czech Republic, on Jan. 23, 2026. Credit: AP Photo/Petr David Josek
The biathlon merges cross-country skiing with rifle marksmanship. Athletes ski long distances and stop to shoot either in prone or standing positions at targets.
She comes from a family of biathletes. Inuk mother Uiloq and Norwegian father Øystein raced internationally for Greenland, and her mother founded the Greenland Biathlon. Her dad was the first biathlete from Greenland competing for Denmark to qualify for the Olympics. Her younger brother, Sondre, qualified for the Olympics biathlon this year and will compete individually.
Cultural ways of Indigenous athletes may bring a special connection to the environment.
“I think all indigenous people around the world share a special bond and an understanding of nature and the connection between all living things in a way that has been lost in the modern world,” Slettemark said. “I’m always happy to hear and learn from Indigenous people and I hope I in some way can share that knowledge with the world.”
Training is key, Slettemark said.
“I think, now, I train similar to other biathletes,” Slettemark said. “But I do feel like my upbringing close to nature definitely helped me get a good base shape. We always went hiking in the mountains and hunting in the summer, walking 5, 6, 7 hours a day.”
“When I started skiing more professionally, I didn’t have that many years of experience but I was still fast, and I think it has to with these many hours in nature,” Slettemark said. “Many people ask if my hunting background is the reason for why I shoot so well, and it is quite different but at the same time I think the interest for competition shooting came from that. Also I think the adrenaline mixed with precision focus can be comparable.”
She encourages Indigenous youth to follow their dreams.
“I hope Indigenous youth see that it’s possible to be a world-class athlete if you have the motivation to train a lot and train seriously,” said Slettemark. “There is nothing that beats the feeling of doing a great race that you have worked toward for years, but the motivation has to come from within.”
Resilience as an Indigenous biathlete brings together mental and physical toughness with cultural identity. Oftentimes the core values also come into play dealing with potential adversity before or during competition.
“I’ve gone through many ups and downs in my career,” said Slettemark. “When things are hard, I find that it helps to remind myself of how good it is when things are good, when I’m in the flow state and how it feels to perform well.”
“I love working toward my goals,” Slettemark said. “Having both bigger and smaller goals helps to see the big picture awhile at the same time having something concrete to work on and improve every day.”
She will compete in the individual competition on Feb. 11, the sprint on Feb. 14, and, if in the top 60 in the sprint, she will also race the pursuit on Feb. 15.
TEAM DENMARK (Greenland)
Sondre Slettemark, Inuk
Biathlon
Sondre Slettemark grew up in Nuuk, Greenland, and Norway. He and his big sister, fellow Olympian Ukaleq Slettemark, live together in Lillehammer, Norway, to have the best training opportunities.
Sondre Slettemark placed second at the Norwegian Championships as a 15-year-old. Last year, he won two races in the International Biathlon Union Junior Cup and was second in the Junior European Championships. He also won the Globe as the best Junior Mass Start Athlete in the World.
Sondre Slettemark, Inuk, of Greenland, celebrates winning the Globe for the best Junior Mass Start Athlete at the International Biathlon Union Junior Cup in 2025. He is competing in the 2026 Milan Cortina Olympics in northern Italy for Team Denmark in the men’s biathlon competition. His sister, Ukaleq Slettemark, is competing in the women’s biathlon competition. Credit: Photo courtesy of Øystein Slettemark
“Training is going well now, but he struggled a lot with sickness these last seven months,” his dad and coach, Øystein Slettemark, who competed for Denmark in the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics, told ICT. “So his performance so far has not been the best.”
Sondre will be competing in the men’s biathlon while his sister Ukaleq competes in the women’s competition.
“Ukaleq and Sondre are not competing together in the Olympics,” Øystein Slettemark said. “But in the World Cup they competed together in the single mixed-relay, beating USA and Canada the last time, and took a 16th place of 24 teams.”
Sondre will compete in the individual men’s competition on Feb. 10, the sprint on Feb. 13, and, if in the top 60 in the sprint, will compete in the pursuit on Feb. 15.
TEAM CANADA
Trinity Ellis, Métis
Luge
Trinity Ellis, Métis, grew up in Pemberton, British Columbia, and now lives between Pemberton and Calgary, Alberta. She will be competing in the luge competition in her second Olympics — she also competed in the Beijing Winter Olympics in 2022.
Luge is a Winter Olympic sport where athletes race feet-first on small sleds down a frozen track while lying on their backs, sometimes exceeding speeds of 90 mph.
Trinity Ellis, Métis, is competing for Team Canada in the luge competition in the 2026 Milan Cortina Olympics in northern Italy. Here, she is shown in 2022 as she prepares to start the luge women’s singles at the Winter Olympics in Beijing. Credit: AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein
Representing indigenous people on the world stage also means representing families and communities.
“Representing the Métis community is an honour,” Trinity Ellis said in an email exchange with ICT. “To me, it means carrying stories, resilience, and generations of people who were told they didn’t belong.”
“Competing at the Olympics lets me show the world that we’re still here, still thriving, and still contributing in powerful ways. Every moment is a chance to honour where I come from and help shape where we’re going,” Ellis said.
Being in the winter climate allows Indigenous athletes to make a connection to their cultural ways.
“My cultural background has given me a lot of balance in my career,” Ellis said. “Taking time to connect with nature, my community and my family offers me such an important calmness, and acts as a reset when my life gets a bit crazy.”
She, too, has a message for young athletes.
“The message I hope to send to Indigenous youth is, always give yourself a chance to try,” Ellis said. “The fear of failure, or the uncertainty if you will be successful in something, can make you feel like you should quit before you even give yourself a shot. Always take a chance on yourself, it might turn out to be something you’re really good at, or something you really enjoy.”
“I also want young Métis kids watching to see that there’s space for them at the highest levels, that their culture and identity are strengths, not barriers,” Ellis said.
Resilience lessons happen daily in practice and competition, she said.
“Resiliency is one of the most important skills you can have as an athlete,” Ellis said. “When competing at major competitions our team motto is, be flexible, be patient and expect the unexpected … and have fun.”
“There is almost always a curveball that will come your way, and being able to go with the flow without letting it impact your energy is crucial,” Ellis said. “Resiliency also means getting up and trying again after you fail, and that is truly how you get better.”
She added, “In luge, that could mean crashing on a run, struggling to figure out a certain corner or start technique, and the ability to push through that, go back up to the top and try again and again, is how you become excellent.”
TEAM CANADA
Jocelyne Larocque, Métis
Hockey
Three-time Olympic medallist Jocelyne Larocque will be pursuing gold for Team Canada at the 2026 Milan Cortina Olympics. She competed in the 2014, 2018 and 2022 Olympics, earning two gold medals and one silver.
She is also the first Indigenous woman to play for Team Canada, and has competed in more than 10 world championships.
Jocelyne Larocque, Métis, a three-time Olympic medallist in 2014, 2018 and 2022, will take to the ice for Team Canada at the 2026 Milan Cortina Olympics. She was the first Indigenous woman to play for Team Canada. Credit: Photo by Heather Pollock via Hockey Canada Images
Larocque was not available for comment, but details of her success can be found on her Team Canada bio.
Larocque has four gold and four silver medals from the Four Nations Cup dating back to her first appearance with the senior team in 2008. She began competing internationally with the under-22 national team in 2007, winning three gold medals at the Nations Cup over several years with the development squad.
Larocque helped the University of Minnesota Duluth win NCAA Division 1 national championships in 2008 and 2010. She was a two-time NCAA First Team All-American and was named the Western Collegiate Hockey Association’s Defensive Player of the Year.
Larocque has been a member of Canada’s National Women’s Team since 2008. She made her debut with the International Ice Hockey Federation’s Women’s World Championship in 2011 and has since won 12 medals, including four gold, seven silver and one bronze.
She has played professionally in various leagues in the last 13 years.
Larocque is of Métis heritage, and she has garnered most of the Canadian-based Indigenous athlete honors. In 2021, she was named Manitoba’s Indigenous Female Athlete of the Decade and in 2018 the Tom Longboat Award winner, given to Indigenous athletes for their outstanding contributions to sport in Canada
TEAM CANADA
Eden Wilson, Métis
Bobsleigh/alternate
Eden Wilson is a Canadian bobsleigh athlete from mixed Black, European and Indigenous ancestry, and is an alternate for Team Canada in the 2026 Milan Cortina Olympics.
Bobsleigh involves teams racing specialized sleds down an icy, banked track at speeds up to 90 mph. Winners were determined by the fastest total time over four heats, typically held over two days.
Eden Wilson, Métis, is an alternate for Team Canada in the bobsleigh competition at the 2026 Milan Cortina Olympics in northern Italy. She is being inducted into the athlete category of the 2026 North American Indigenous Athletics Hall of Fame in February. Credit: Courtesy photo
“Every time I get the privilege of standing at the start line it’s about something bigger than just competing,” Wilson told ICT. “I get the opportunity to attempt to inspire the next generation of Indigenous kids and let them know that they can do anything they set their mind to.”
She brings her Indigenous identity with her to the competition.
“It’s something I walk through life with everyday, so incorporating it into sport has been no different,” said Wilson.
She hopes to send messages to Indigenous youth and communities throughout the world as viewers watch the indigenous athletes compete.
“I hope to let every kid that watches me know that no matter your circumstances, there is a big wide world out there, and if you feel as though you don’t have a spot at the table in every room you walk into, roll up your sleeves up and build your own table, because you are important and deserve to be seen and heard.”
She knows she is representing all Indigenous people on the world stage.
“It feels like a big responsibility, (because) when I fail I feel as though I’m not just letting myself down, I’m letting an entire community down,” Wilson said. “And that weighs really heavy on me all the time.”
“If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again,” Wilson said. “Definitely rings true in sport.”
According to her National Team bio in the Bobsleigh Canada Skeleton, Wilson spent two decades in competitive show jumping and transitioned into bobsleigh five years ago. She won an overall award on the 2021 North American Cup circuit.
Wilson was recently notified she will be inducted into the athlete category of the 2026 North American Indigenous Athletics Hall of Fame. Although she is still climbing in her elite standing as a bobsleigh brakeman, her bio will be updated annually as she continues to climb in international standing.
The post WINTER OLYMPICS: Indigenous athletes compete not just for their country but for the world appeared first on ICT.
From ICT via This RSS Feed.
1182
Kathleen Watts’ flowers bloom much brighter now that the wind no longer blows black. Pulling weeds in the garden outside her redbrick house, she recalled when coal dust would sometimes drift through her quiet corner of northern England, a rolling patchwork of farms and villages under the shadow of what was once the United Kingdom’s largest coal-burning power station.
“When the dust came our way, we’d have to come out and clean our windows,” said Watts, who has lived in the North Yorkshire village of Barlow for more than 30 years. “And when we’d get snow in winter, there’d be a lot of black over it.”
Thankfully, she said, the wind usually blew northeast, pushing the station’s smoke and dust toward Scandinavia. Locals liked to joke that the air pollution was mostly Norway’s problem. There, it caused bouts of acid rain that damaged forests and poisoned lakes.
The U.K. has quit coal — a lengthy process culminating in the closure of the country’s last deep-pit coal mine in 2015 and the shutdown of the U.K’s last coal plant in 2024.
The giant station near Barlow, however, is busier than ever, fueled now by American forests rather than English coalfields. Trees felled, shredded, dried, and pressed into pellets in Louisiana and Mississippi are shipped across the Atlantic Ocean, loaded onto trains, and then fed into the station’s immense boilers. Operated by Drax Group, the station gradually stopped burning coal until it made a full switch to wood in 2023. It now burns enough pellets to generate about 6 percent of the country’s electricity.
Purple flowers crowd a field near the Drax power station in Drax, England. The former coal plant now runs entirely on wood pellets, which the company markets as “sustainable biomass.” Tristan Baurick / Verite News
The U.K. government, in a bid to meet its ambitious climate goals, is giving Drax the equivalent of $2.7 million a day in subsidies to keep burning pellets, which the company touts as “environmentally and socially sustainable woody biomass.”
But a growing number of Brits aren’t buying it. After years of celebrating the shift away from coal, U.K. residents are realizing that wood pellets aren’t the cleaner, greener alternative they were supposed to be.
“I still have difficulties in my little brain figuring out how you can grow wood at the other end of the Earth, chip it, ship it to here … and then burn it, and say, ‘Isn’t that nice and green?’” said Steve Shaw-Wright, a former coal miner who serves on the North Yorkshire Council.
Burning wood for power instead of one of the dirtiest fossil fuels offers the illusion of sustainability and robust climate action, said William Moomaw, an emeritus professor of international environmental policy at Tufts University. But in reality, it’s doing more harm to the environment than burning fossil fuels, he said. “England is off coal — isn’t that wonderful?” Moomaw said. “But there’s no mention of the fact that it’s because they’re now burning wood from North America, which emits more carbon dioxide per kilowatt of electricity than does coal.”
Sawdust piles up at Drax’s wood pellet mill near Urania, Louisiana. The mill presses sawdust into pellets that are burned in a former coal plant in Yorkshire, England. Eric J. Shelton / Mississippi Today
The Drax station in North Yorkshire emitted more than 14 million tons of carbon dioxide in 2024, making it the largest single source of CO2 in the U.K., according to a report last year from the climate research group Ember. That amount is more than the combined emissions from the country’s six largest gas plants and more than four times the level of the U.K.’s last coal plant.
A Drax spokesperson called Ember’s research “deeply flawed” and accused the group of choosing to “ignore the widely accepted and internationally recognized approach to carbon accounting,” which is used by the United Nations and other governments.
But several scientists say burning wood can’t help but produce more emissions. Wood has a lower density than coal and other fossil fuels, so it must be burned in higher volumes to produce the same amount of energy. Between 2014 and 2019 — a period when coal was in steep decline — the country’s CO2 emissions from U.S.-sourced pellets nearly doubled, according to a report by the Chatham House research institute in London. “Almost all of this U.K. increase was associated with biomass burnt at Drax,” the report’s authors wrote.
The station’s cross-continental supply chain is also heavy on emissions. For every ton of pellets Drax burns, about 500 pounds of CO2 are released just from making and transporting the product, according to Chatham House. About half of Drax’s supply chain emissions are tied to production, while transportation via trucks, trains, and ships accounts for 44 percent, according to the company’s estimates.
The switch from coal to pellets created a new pollution problem in Louisiana and Mississippi, where most of the station’s fuel is produced. Drax’s pellet mills have repeatedly violated air quality rules at its two Louisiana mills, located near Bastrop and Urania, and its mill in Gloster, Mississippi. The mills emit large quantities of formaldehyde, methanol, and other toxic chemicals linked to cancers and other serious illnesses, according to regulatory findings and public health studies. Residents of these poor, mostly Black communities say the mills’ dust and pollution are making them sick. In October, several Gloster residents sued the company, alleging that Drax has “unlawfully released massive amounts of toxic pollutants” in their community for nearly a decade.
The Drax spokesperson said the company is improving its mills’ pollution controls in line with a longstanding dedication to “high standards of safety and environmental compliance.” On its website, Drax says the company is “committed to being a good neighbor in the communities where we operate,” offering funding for environmental education programs, ensuring its wood is sourced from “well-managed forests,” and supporting land conservation efforts, including the establishment of a 350-acre nature reserve near Watts’ home in Barlow.
Much of the timber that Drax harvests comes from private lands in the Southern United States that function more as tree farms than natural forests. But in recent years, Drax has sourced an increasing share of its wood from western Canada, including from British Columbia’s treasured old-growth forests.
In 2024, Drax agreed to pay a nearly $32 million penalty after U.K. energy regulators determined the company had been misreporting data on where it sources its wood and how much of it comes from environmentally important woodlands. The practice of pelletizing Canada’s mature trees appears ongoing, according to a recent report by the environmental group Stand.earth. Citing logging data from 2024 and 2025, the group claims Drax has been accepting truckloads of trees from British Columbia that were hundreds of years old. Drax downplayed the report, emphasizing that the logs were legally harvested and of insufficient quality to go to sawmills.
Drax sees itself as one of the most environmentally conscious companies on the planet. “Sustainability is the cornerstone of long-term success and the transformation of our business,” said Miguel Veiga-Pestana, Drax’s chief sustainability officer, in a statement.
While most pellets Drax makes in the U.S. are derived from logged trees, the company also uses sawdust and other leftovers from lumber mills. The company supports forest thinning, a practice it says can ease crowding in densely planted timberlands, improve the health of the remaining trees, and diversify habitat for wildlife.
“By ensuring that we source sustainable biomass, and that we embed sustainable practices into every facet of our operations, we can build lasting value,” Veiga-Pestana said.
Water vapor escapes a cooling tower at the Drax power station in Drax, England. The station is the largest wood pellet-burning facility in the U.K. and was originally developed to burn coal. Gary Calton / The Guardian
The value of the entire utility-scale wood pellet industry depends on what many scientists call an “accounting loophole” entrenched in some of the earliest international policies aimed at combating climate change.
During the 1990s, the United Nations’ Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol established land use and energy use as two separate categories for counting a country’s greenhouse gases. To avoid double counting wood burning across both land-use and energy-use categories, the U.N. assigned wood pellet emissions only to the land-use sector, believing that normal forest regrowth would keep pace with the modest harvests for pellet production. The wood pellet industry at the time was tiny, selling the bulk of its products to homeowners with small pellet-burning stoves. Any carbon released by burning would be balanced by new trees that work as natural CO2 absorbers, the thinking went.
The effect, though, was that regulators would count CO2 from burning oil and coal, but CO2 from burning timber could stay off the books.
“Drax and other bioenergy companies took that and said, ‘Look, we have no impact — we’re instantly carbon neutral,’” said Mary Booth, director of the environmental organization Partnership for Policy Integrity.
Read Next
Europe gets ‘green energy.’ These Southern towns get dirty air.
This exemption was incorporated into the Kyoto Protocol, the first international treaty that set legally binding greenhouse gas reduction targets. Experts were soon warning of troubling consequences. In a study published in the journal Science in 2009, scientists said the exemption was an “accounting error” that could spur deforestation and hinder attempts by governments to curb emissions.
“The error is serious, but fixable,” said Tim Searchinger, a Princeton University energy policy expert, in a statement at the time. “The solution is to count all the pollution that comes out of tailpipes and smokestacks whether from coal and oil or bioenergy, and to credit bioenergy only to the extent it really does reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”
Other scientists challenged the industry’s claim that planting trees would neutralize power station emissions. According to a study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, it can take 44 to 104 years for forest regrowth to pay back the carbon debt from pellet burning. While the planet waits decades for the trees to regrow, glaciers melt, seas rise, and weather from droughts to hurricanes grows more extreme.
Trucks haul lumber in and out of the Amite BioEnergy wood pellet production facility operated by the Drax group in Gloster, Mississippi, on September 24, 2025. Kathleen Flynn / The Guardian
Despite these warnings, the European Union latched on to wood burning as a relatively quick and cheap way to meet tighter climate mandates. Rather than blanket the landscape with wind turbines and solar panels, countries could dust off old coal plants and put them on a diet of “carbon-neutral” pellets.
The shift toward bioenergy accelerated in 2009, when the European Union set a target of getting 20 percent of its energy from renewables by 2020. Pellet demand in Germany, Belgium, Italy, and other European countries immediately began to increase, but in the U.K., the growth was explosive. Between 2012 and 2018, the U.K.’s pellet consumption surged by 471 percent, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The U.K. left the European Union in 2020, and it remains the world’s biggest buyer of wood pellets. In 2024, the country imported nearly 10.3 million tons, a record high spurred partly by a dip in pellet prices.
Wood burning has helped the U.K. come within striking distance of its goal to eliminate oil and gas from its electrical generation by 2030. Nearly 74 percent of the national grid is powered by what the government calls “low carbon” energy sources. Wood pellets and other forms of bioenergy supply about 14 percent of the low-carbon mix, with wind, solar, and hydropower accounting for the rest.
Every workday, Ian Cunniff climbs into his orange overalls, pounds his helmet tightly on his head, and steps into a cage that drops 459 feet into a maze of dark tunnels littered with old machinery.
The stout Yorkshireman is one of the last miners still working in the coal pits, but now his job is to lead tours along the rich seams he once risked his life to dig out. Cunniff is a guide for the National Coal Mining Museum at Caphouse Colliery, a former West Yorkshire mine dating back to the 1790s. His last “real” mining job was at Kellingley Colliery, the U.K.’s last deep coal pit and a major feeder of Drax’s power station before it switched to wood.
In the depths of the Caphouse mine, Cunniff grew wistful over the coal still embedded in the walls. The seams once provided nearly everything a man and his family needed, he said. “It was your future; it was your retirement. So much of it has never been touched.”
Miners, union members, and the local community take part in a protest march in 2015 in Knottingley, England, marking the end of deep-pit coal mining in Britain.
Christopher Furlong / Getty Images
Wood pellets didn’t kill the U.K.’s coal industry. It began to wither as the country shifted from cheaper, imported coal in the 1980s to natural gas in the 1990s. Coal’s decline left gaping holes in Yorkshire’s economy and social fabric. The wood pellet industry has contributed some jobs and tax dollars, but it can’t replace what the region once had, said Shaw-Wright, the county council member.
“With coal, you didn’t really need to get an education much because you were going to get a job at the pit,” he said. “And if you had a job at the pit, you would have it for life.”
At its height between the two world wars, the industry employed 1.2 million people in the U.K. In some northern England counties, 1 in 3 residents was employed in coal mining. The Selby Complex, a group of deep-pit mines near the Drax power station, employed about 3,500 workers before it shut down in 2004. The industry also supported cooperative groups that funded social halls, community brass bands, libraries, sports clubs, and welfare programs for injured miners and their families.
In contrast, the Drax-dominated bioenergy industry employs about 7,400 people across the U.K., including about 1,000 people at the Drax station. The increasingly automated industry has seen its job numbers fall by more than a third since 2014, according to data from the U.K.’s Office of National Statistics.
A similar trend is playing out in Louisiana and Mississippi, where the three Drax wood pellet mills employ far fewer people than the older pulp and paper mills that once played a dominant role in the Deep South. The paper mill in Bastrop, for instance, once employed 1,100 people. Drax’s pellet mill near the town has just 71 workers on its payroll.
Read Next
The biomass industry promised these Southern towns prosperity. So why are they still dying?
Shaw-Wright appreciates the economic activity the wood pellet industry brings to Yorkshire but said most of the region’s recent job growth actually comes from a surge in distribution centers for online retailers — a trend that has turned Yorkshire into the country’s “capital of warehousing.” Many of these massive facilities now sit on former coal fields, including the old Kellingley Colliery, yet the work of unloading and sorting parcels doesn’t provide the pay, stability, or sheer number of jobs that mining once did.
After giving another tour, Cunniff rested in the colliery’s old locker room. He knows coal isn’t coming back, but he doesn’t believe cutting and burning trees to power the grid is any better — for Yorkshire or the planet.
“So you’re taking away what’s cleaning the atmosphere, and you’re burning it?” he said. “That’s the big picture, isn’t it?”
The Drax power station is the dominant feature across several miles of North Yorkshire countryside. Its 12 cooling towers are each big enough to hold the Statue of Liberty. Every day, about 17 trains full of pellets arrive to top off four storage domes with a combined 360 million-ton capacity. The pellets are pulverized as fine as flour and blown into several boilers. Stored in hangar-like structures in the station’s center, the boilers consume some 8 million tons of pellets each year with fires that reach 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit.
Just outside the station’s 3 miles of razor-wire fencing is a village, also called Drax, with one tiny pub. Inside, there was little love for the big neighbor.
“They’re taking wood from where they shouldn’t be taking it,” Tony Emmerson said as he sipped a beer at The Huntsman’s bar. “I think we should go back to coal, personally. We’ve got a hundred years of coal right here just waiting to be burned.”
Many of Drax’s post-coal era promises — lower energy bills, cleaner air, and a decarbonized grid — have proven hollow, Emmerson said.
“They get all this tax money but we don’t get cheaper power bills,” said Peter Rust, The Huntsman’s owner. “And they say they’re carbon neutral, but how’s that possible when you have to bring the pellets across an ocean?”
Trains unload wood pellets into giant storage domes each day at the Drax power station in Yorkshire, England. Gary Calton / The Guardian
The growing doubts about the wood pellet industry are seeping into public debate, leading the government to rethink its support for Drax. Last February, Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s government decided that the current subsidies for Drax would be cut in half in 2027. The subsidy renewal, which lasts until 2031, also requires Drax to increase the proportion of “sustainably sourced” biomass from 70 percent to 100 percent. Michael Shanks, the energy minister, told Parliament that the government made the move because Drax was making “unacceptably large profits” and “simply did not deliver a good enough deal for bill payers.”
Shanks, however, emphasized that wood pellets will still play a key role in powering the U.K.’s grid, and he welcomed Drax’s new efforts to bolster its green credentials. That includes a massive investment in carbon capture and storage technology. For years, Drax has been planning a pipeline that would divert about 8.8 million tons of the station’s CO2 emissions into storage under the North Sea. Reduced subsidies, though, are likely to slow these projects, the company has warned.
Many Yorkshire residents knew exactly — and proudly — where the Drax station’s coal came from. They’re much less sure about where the wood is sourced. Watts, the gardener in Barlow, assumed the trees were grown on English farms. Shaw-Wright was also far off the mark, thinking the pellets came from Australia. At The Huntsman, guesses were slightly closer, with people calling out South America and Eastern Europe — regions that together supply only 10 percent of the station’s fuel. The fact that the U.S. meets nearly 80 percent of the station’s demand was a surprise to many.
Environmental groups, meanwhile, have been campaigning for a broader understanding of the industry’s impacts. U.K.-based Reclaim the Power and Biofuel Watch have been highlighting the concerns about emissions as well as the pollution affecting mill towns in Mississippi and Louisiana.
Several groups had planned to stage a large protest outside the Drax station in August 2024. Drawing hundreds of activists from around the country, the “Drax Climate Camp” was to feature five days of “communal living and direct action.” But police preemptively arrested 25 protesters and halted a convoy of vehicles carrying tents, composting toilets, wheelchair-accessible matting, and other gear. Activists staged a much smaller protest outside the police station where their fellow campaigners were held, but the groups decided the camp couldn’t continue without the equipment.
Climate protesters hold signs outside a police station in York, England, in August 2024. Several of their fellow activists were arrested during preparations for a protest near the Drax power station in rural Yorkshire. Gary Calton / The Guardian
Police patrol outside the Drax power station in Yorkshire. Dozens of officers were called to the station in 2024 to prevent a planned protest encampment. Gary Calton / The Guardian
The aborted protest got Shaw-Wright thinking more about the connection between the pellet mills in the Deep South and the electricity that lights his home.
“Louisiana, that’s where they make the ‘gumba’ and they love cooking crocodiles, right?” Shaw-Wright said, half joking. “I think people will be surprised where the wood comes from and … know nothing of how it’s produced or what it entails. We need to be educated more about the communities that, in essence, benefit the Drax power station. And we all benefit from it. But if it’s at the expense of others, it gives you a different perspective.”
Rust, the pub owner, wasn’t so reflective, but he was deeply disappointed the camp was quashed. “I thought we were going to get loads more customers,” he said. “I bought loads more bottles when I heard about it. I thought finally Drax was going to do some good for me.”
This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The UK quit coal. But is burning Louisiana’s trees any better? on Feb 6, 2026.
From Grist via This RSS Feed.
1184
1185
Picture the bucolic little town of a fairy tale. At its core stand medieval buildings, a square where folks hawk their goods, and perhaps a well to provide water. Beyond the defensive wall radiate agricultural fields, where people toil to bring grains, fruits, and vegetables to market.
Invert that for modern times and you’ve got the idea behind “agrihoods,” communities designed around a central farm. Like a garden in a big city, agrihoods promise to boost food security, reduce temperatures, capture rainwater, and increase biodiversity. As climate change intensifies heat, flooding, and pressure on food systems, agrihoods could be a way to make urban living more resilient — not just more picturesque.
“Developers have a hard time offering open space, because they would like to build more housing,” said Vincent Mudd, a partner at the architectural firm Steinberg Hart, which designs agrihoods. “One of the few ways to kind of bridge that gap is to be able to use active open space that actually generates commerce.”
On paper, an agrihood is a simple concept: A working farm surrounded by single- or multi-family housing. Steinberg Hart recently finished two of them in California, one in Santa Clara and another, called Fox Point Farms, in Encinitas. The former, south of San Francisco, features townhouses, market-rate units and affordable housing, plus a community center and retail shops. The latter, north of San Diego, adds a farm-to-table restaurant, an event venue, and a grocery store, but its housing is primarily for sale instead of rent. “Two different housing programs for two different communities, but built around the sustainability of urban farming,” Mudd said.
A view of the Fox Point Farms agrihood.
Kyle Jeffers
While these projects are in relatively affluent areas, Mudd said agrihoods can be built nearly anywhere — though it might require tweaks to zoning rules. “Almost every city has the ability to make that zoning change,” Mudd said, “because it retains commerce, preserves jobs, generates sales tax income from retail, and provides mixed-income, attainable housing.”
(Last year, residents of the agrihood development in Santa Clara alleged that management failures have left them living in unsafe and unhealthy conditions, with delayed repairs, poor air quality, and other issues. The building’s manager, the John Stewart Co., and owner, Core Affordable, did not respond to a request for comment.)
Where it gets more complicated is the logistics of the farm. Water is the big one: Ideally a farm captures enough rainwater to keep crops hydrated. Because Northern California enjoys a Mediterranean climate of rainy winters and warm, dry summers, the Santa Clara agrihood gathers precipitation and stores it in a tower. “It auto-refills with city water once it gets to a certain point, but we can get two-thirds, or sometimes all the way through the summer without having to do that,” said Lara Hermanson, co-founder of Farmscape, which helped design, install, and maintain the community’s farm.
A rainwater capture system, though, comes with an upfront cost that a community garden in a lower-income neighborhood might not be able to afford. If one year the rains stop and drought takes hold, it will have to pay for more water. “Perhaps people with the biggest need for food or nutrition security are also sort of disproportionately facing greater water expenses,” said Lucy Diekmann, an urban agriculture and food systems advisor at University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources.
Even so, one of the many charms of any urban farm or garden is that greenery, and even bare dirt, breaks up the concrete landscape. Historically, cities have been designed to whisk water through gutters and sewers as quickly as possible, before it can pool and cause flooding. This strategy struggles to keep up as climate change supercharges rainstorms, making them dump more water. Green spaces let all that liquid soak into the ground, mitigating flooding even without deliberate catchment systems.
Still, an agrihood’s farm isn’t going to run itself. From the very beginning of planning, Hermanson said, a community must decide what it’s going to grow. The general idea is to get as much yield as possible because space is constrained compared to an industrial farm. So pumpkins probably aren’t a great idea, because those plants take up so much room. Instead, in Santa Clara, Hermanson grows Persian cucumbers, cherry tomatoes, and hot peppers because they’re small.
While an agrihood can’t feasibly provide all the calories residents need, it’s an especially powerful system because the produce that it does produce is highly nutritious. Scale that food production up across a city, and the impact could be huge: One study found that Los Angeles could meet a third of its need for vegetables by converting vacant lots into gardens. “It’s incredible what we could do with what we have, and what we could do even more with intentional planning,” said Catherine Brinkley, a social scientist who studies urban agriculture at the University of California, Davis.
Read Next
How urban farms can make cities more livable and help feed America
In Encinitas, Greg Reese, the farm manager at Fox Point Farms, is sending food to the agrihood’s grocery store, so in addition to size he also considers the value of his crops. A lot of that comes down to speed: Arugula grows faster than cantaloupe, meaning Reese can harvest it, send it to market, and grow some more in quick succession. (Given the pleasant climate of Southern California, the farm can grow for 11, maybe even 12 months of the year.) It can also produce foods that the chefs at the on-site restaurant want. “What is in high demand, and then what grows really fast as well?” Reese said. “I can plant a seed and they can harvest it in a month, or transplant it within two months, so it’s a higher turnover.”
These crops can even benefit from a quirk of city life: the urban heat island effect. As the sun beats down on all that concrete, asphalt, and brick, the landscape absorbs its thermal energy — raising the mercury well above surrounding rural areas — and slowly releases it at night. This is a growing problem for urbanites struggling with ever-higher temperatures. On the flip side, these green spaces help cool the neighborhood because their plants release water vapor, making summer more comfortable for the surrounding community.
An agrihood can also support local biodiversity. Planting native flowering species, for instance, simultaneously beautifies the landscape and attracts pollinating insects, hummingbirds, and bats (which eat mosquitoes, an added bonus). Even the flowers the crops produce provide food for these pollinators, which return the favor by helping the plants reproduce.
With the crop varieties decided, an agrihood can figure out how much refrigeration and storage capacity to build out. They’ll also have to decide whether to sell produce from a stand, or use it in an on-site restaurant. And they’ll need to project the costs of hiring outside help to keep the farm going.
It’s not so simple, then, as just erecting a few buildings around a green space and calling it a day. “All those things need to be figured out before you start putting things on paper and making commitments,” Hermanson said. “Successful farms are well-funded, well-staffed. Everyone does better with clear expectations, clear budgets, and then also the community knows what it is they’re getting.”
This story was originally published by Grist with the headline What happens when a neighborhood is built around a farm on Feb 6, 2026.
From Grist via This RSS Feed.
1186
1187
1189
1190
4
Critical shark and ray habitats in Western Indian Ocean largely unprotected: Study
(news.mongabay.com)
1191
This story was originally published by the Alaska Beacon.
Yereth Rosen
Alaska Beacon
The Trump administration announced Monday, Feb. 2, it is seeking suggestions for Arctic National Wildlife Refuge sites to auction off for oil development, a key step toward a new lease sale in a place that has been the subject of a decades-long environmental debate.
The U.S. Bureau of Land Management released the official call for nominations, which is scheduled to be published on Tuesday in the Federal Register. There is a 30-day public comment period.
The planned lease sale for the refuge’s coastal plain is the first of four sales mandated through 2035 under the sweeping tax and budget bill called the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” that President Donald Trump signed into law in July. Each sale must offer at least 400,000 acres, according to the bill.
It is also the third scheduled lease sale since 2020. At that time, in the final days of the first Trump administration, a sale was held as directed by the 2017 tax bill. That lease sale drew lackluster bidding, and a 2021 lease sale drew no bids at all.
Despite past sale results, the Trump administration is promoting ANWR oil leasing as a major resource development opportunity. The Department of the Interior in October reversed Biden administration environmental protections and announced that it would open the refuge’s entire 1.56-million-acre coastal plain to leasing.
“Since passage of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, the BLM has had a clear congressional mandate to administer a competitive oil and gas program for the Coastal Plain,” Kevin Pendergast, the BLM’s Alaska state director, said in a statement. “With the new decision in place, bolstered by Congress’ recent and emphatic direction in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, this lease sale process provides a clear path forward to finally unlock the Coastal Plain’s resource potential.”
Environmentalists and representatives of Gwich’in Athabascan tribes, which oppose oil drilling in the refuge because of possible impacts to the Porcupine Caribou Herd and other resources, condemned the move toward new leasing.
“Two previous lease sales have already been economic failures, proving that the absurd Arctic Refuge leasing program should be eliminated and permanent protection must be provided for the calving grounds of the Porcupine Caribou Herd,” Meda DeWitt, Alaska senior manager for The Wilderness Society, said in a statement.
“Though this call for nominations is required by law, any nominations put forward would be an affront to our sustained call that any development on this land would have irreversible, adverse effects on the land and, in turn, the wellbeing of our community,” Raeann Garnett, chief of the Native Village of Venetie Tribal Government, said in a separate statement. “We will continue to fight, as we have for generations, to protect the Coastal Plain from oil and gas development and we stand steadfast that any nominations to lease this land are a direct attack on our way of life.”
But an organization representing the Iñupiat people of the North Slope, who have generally favored oil development in the refuge and elsewhere, welcomed the call for nominations from the Department of the Interior and the Bureau of Land Management.
“We’re excited to see DOI and BLM continue to move forward with plans for responsible onshore development in ANWR,” Nagruk Harcharek, president of Voice of the Arctic Iñupiat, said in a statement. “The North Slope Iñupiat — including the people of Kaktovik, the only community in ANWR — have fought for our right to self-determination on our lands for generations. This process now represents an important opportunity for the federal government to continue meaningful engagement with the North Slope Iñupiat.”
The post Federal government takes step toward new oil lease sale in Alaska’s Arctic refuge appeared first on ICT.
From ICT via This RSS Feed.
1192
1193
1194
4
From Kigali to the Congo Basin: Aimable Twahirwa’s path in environmental journalism
(news.mongabay.com)
1195
1196
1197
1198
1199
1
Flag football, Bad Bunny and Brandon Pili — Indigenous representation at the Super Bowl
(ictnews.org)
Kolby KickingWoman
ICT
The biggest game in American sports is nearly upon us, with the Seattle Seahawks facing off against the New England Patriots in Super Bowl LX in Santa Clara, California, on Feb. 8.
Along with all the hoopla that comes with Super Bowl Week, there is also Indigenous representation both in and out of the game.
On Monday, prior to the Super Bowl, a trio of Native organizations partnered to put on the second annual Indigenous Girls Celebrity Flag Football Game.
Twenty-nine Indigenous girls from California, South Dakota and Arizona were set to participate against celebrities of Indian Country. The celebrity team roster included: Janee Kassanavoid, Comanche, a professional track and field athlete; muralist Lucinda La Morena Hinojos who is Apache and Yaqui and the first Chicana and Indigenous artist to collaborate with the NFL for the Super Bowl, according to the Native Youth Foundation; Chef Stephanie Pyet who is Prairie Band Potawatomi; and more.
Former NFL players Ahman Green who played for the Green Bay Packers and Cam Lynch, Haliwa-Saponi Nation, as former linebacker for the Los Angeles Rams and Tampa Bay Buccaneers, coached the teams along with Adrienne Smith, Cherokee, a gold medalist for the U.S. Women’s National American Football team.
Mike Stopp, executive director of the Native American Athletic Foundation, told ICT the organization has hosted four flag football clinics for Indigenous girls in the sixth to 12th grade and that the best senior athletes from those events were invited to participate in the exhibition.
The foundation has a partnership with the NFL and were asked in part to help develop women’s sports, specifically in flag football.
“This is the concept that we have developed, and we’ve been working with these other organizations who are already doing it well, came out, and his partners continuing to do these clinics, and these girls have a great time,” Stopp told ICT. “They get to go to the Super Bowl week. They get to participate in a number of different things, including media events and seeing what’s going on behind the scenes during Super Bowl week. So it’s an exciting time for them”
Another partner for this big event is the Los Angeles Chargers, who will be providing jerseys for the game.
“So we have big names and big leagues that are participating and helping these girls get better at the sport, but at the same time, show that they actually belong in the sport and they belong on the big stage,” Stopp said. “And so that is great, not just for the girls themselves, but for their little brothers and sisters, for their cousins, for their people back home. They see them. They see them on the big screen.”
The organization has also put on an all-star football showcase for Indigenous boys who are seniors in high school.
One of the things Stopp says they have learned over the years is that these events allow Indigenous youth to play in professional stadiums and rub shoulders with professional athletes. It shows them that they belong, that they have a seat at the table and that they can achieve their dreams at the highest levels.
“It gives the hope, and it gives the inspiration for young people to say, yes, as an Indigenous person, as a young Native, I can participate at this level and thrive.”
In the game itself, Seahawks defensive tackle Brandon Pili, Iñupiat and Samoan, will be vying for a Super Bowl ring. Brandon is brother to Alissa Pili who played in the WNBA for the Minnesota Lynx and Los Angeles Sparks.
While Brandon plays sparingly, he has the opportunity to join James Winchester, Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, and Creed Humphrey, Citizen Potawatomi Nation, as recent Indigenous athletes to hoist the Lombardi Trophy.
And if the Super Bowl is the biggest game, the halftime show is America’s biggest concert.
Taking the stage this year is Bad Bunny, the Puerto Rican rapper, singer, and producer who recently made GRAMMYs history by winning Album of the Year with Debí Tirar Más Fotos.
Bad Bunny, whose name is Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, has ancestral Taino roots. He often speaks proudly of the island’s culture and occasionally incorporates Taíno-inspired fashion or symbolism into his performances.
Coming off a Grammy win for Album of the Year, Bad Bunny is sure to show out on the biggest stage.
The post Flag football, Bad Bunny and Brandon Pili — Indigenous representation at the Super Bowl appeared first on ICT.
From ICT via This RSS Feed.