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It would likely be complicated, messy and involve big lawsuits, according to experts and former officials.
This story was originally published by KUNC.
The clock is ticking on the Colorado River. The seven states that use its water are nearing a 2026 deadline to come up with new rules for sharing its shrinking supplies. After more than a year of deadlock, there are rumblings of a new plan, but it’s far from final.
So what happens if the states can’t agree before that deadline?
There’s no roadmap for exactly what would happen next, but policy experts and former officials can give us some ideas. It would likely be complicated, messy and involve big lawsuits.
“I think people are looking for a concise answer here,” said Brenda Burman, former commissioner of the Bureau of Reclamation. “But there isn’t a concise answer.”
While the details of that hypothetical future are fuzzy, experts generally agree on one thing: the states should do everything they can to avoid missing that deadline and heading into uncharted territory.
“It’s our job to make sure that we are setting the path for the next 20 or 30 years of stability,” said Burman, who now manages the Central Arizona Project. “And if we fail in that job, shame on us.”
Former federal officials can give some of the best insight into what might happen without a state deal, because federal agencies would likely step in to make sure reservoirs and dams stay functional. The Bureau of Reclamation, which manages water infrastructure across the West, and its parent agency, the Department of the Interior, would become major power players.
Falling back to a ‘nightmare scenario’
For more than a century, the Colorado River has been governed by a legal agreement called the Colorado River Compact. It was signed in 1922, when the river — and the West — looked a lot different. Over the years, policymakers have added a patchwork of temporary rules to adapt to modern times.
In this century, climate change has driven the need to adapt. The river has been in a megadrought that goes back to 2000. With less water in the river, states have had to cut back on demand, even though the compact promises more water to users than the river itself could ever provide naturally. Drought conditions have become the new normal over the past two decades, and temporary rules that were implemented to rein in water demand aren’t keeping up with the pace of drying.
The current rules for managing water were first implemented in 2007. They were slightly modified in 2012 and then expanded in 2019. All of those rules are set to expire in 2026. That expiration is the reason states are in a pinch to draw up new rules right now.
The absolute last-chance deadline to implement new guidelines is October 1, 2026. If the states fail to submit a plan for managing water by then, the Colorado River would fall back to management rules from the 1970s.
Experts say those rules, known as the Long Range Operating Criteria, or LROC, are “woefully insufficient” to deal with today’s drier, smaller river.
“That’s a nightmare scenario,” said Anne Castle. “And I don’t think that the states or the federal government would allow that to happen.”
Castle, a longtime water lawyer who served as assistant secretary for water and science at the Interior Department, said releasing water in accordance with those 1970s rules would quickly drain the nation’s largest reservoirs, Lake Mead and Lake Powell. That would jeopardize hydropower generation at major dams and could make it impossible to pass water from one side of those dams to the people and businesses downstream.
Interior, which would presumably prefer to avoid failure at the dams it runs — Hoover Dam and Glen Canyon Dam — would likely get involved to stop reservoirs from losing their water. In the absence of guidance from the states, the Secretary of Interior could use his authority as the river’s “water master,” a role that gives him some legal power to make decisions about who gets how much water.
And this administration has already made it clear that the current chief — Doug Burgum — would take advantage of that position. Scott Cameron, one of the highest ranking Colorado River officials in the Trump Administration, said as much to a conference of water experts gathered in Colorado in early June.
“Secretary Burgum is prepared to exercise his responsibility as water master,” Cameron said. “He’s not looking forward to that, but in the absence of a seven state agreement, he will do it.”
Federal action and likely lawsuits
Say the Interior Secretary becomes water master and has to pull some levers on the Colorado River. The next big question is, which levers would he pull?
His first option is the path of least resistance — sticking with those 1970s rules. They would send a lot of water from the top half of the river to the bottom. So the Upper Basin states of Colorado, Utah, Wyoming and New Mexico might want to take Interior to court.
“No one could possibly come up with a set of rules that pleases everyone,” Castle said. “And [Interior will] do what they think they have the authority to do. But we all know that lawyers may disagree.”
His second option is a little more involved, but would also likely result in a lawsuit. There’s a catch with Interior’s power on the Colorado River. It is mostly able to make changes in the Lower Basin states of California, Arizona and Nevada.
If Interior wanted to act boldly and force cutbacks to water use, cuts would likely hit those states disproportionately.
“In either situation,” said Mike Connor, another former Reclamation commissioner. “Somebody is going to object and say, ‘You’re not acting consistent with the law’ and sue the Secretary to say ‘You made a bad decision.’”
Connor, who served from 2009 to 2014, said Interior’s authority has never been specifically defined, but it mostly comes from the 1928 Boulder Canyon Project Act. That legislation created Hoover Dam, which creates Lake Mead, and the All-American Canal, which supplies water to California’s Imperial Valley. That gives the federal government some control of the nation’s largest reservoir and the water supply for the Imperial Irrigation District, the river’s single largest water user.
There are a few other options besides Interior’s two paths, but they’re much harder to predict.
While states hold most of the planning power on the Colorado River, other big entities could try to go around them. For example, the water department in a major city, or a large farm group could use their big budgets and legal teams to influence lawmakers and get a form of Colorado River rules passed by the U.S. Congress.
States could also ask for an extension, kicking the can down the road by another year or two. The extended deadline could give them more time to coalesce around new rules, but policy experts say states should try to avoid that and agree on rules that are urgently needed to manage the shrinking river.
“That sort of takes the foot off the accelerator and we haven’t really done anything,” Castle said.
Will the states agree before the deadline?
There is at least some reason to believe the states will steer the Colorado River away from collapse or court. For all of their disagreements, state water negotiators do seem to be on the same page about one thing: keeping their situation out of the Supreme Court.
Amy Haas, executive director of the Colorado River Authority of Utah, told KUNC in February that it would be “folly” to take their negotiations to court.
“We are the ones who should really shape the outcome here,” she said. “We’re the experts. We’re the water managers. We understand the system. Why would we want to relinquish that control and that responsibility?”
States appear to be moving closer to implementing new Colorado River rules without any messy court battles. Early details of a proposal to distribute water cutbacks are emerging, and it appears that it could push states long mired in disagreement toward consensus.
Instead of those states leaning on old rules that don’t account for climate change, they’re proposing a new system that divides the river based on how much water is in it today.
State leaders were quick to emphasize that the plan is in its early stages, but cast it as a way to agree before the 2026 deadline.
“I was very pessimistic that we were on a path towards litigation,” said Tom Buschatzke, Arizona’s top water negotiator. “I’m more optimistic now that we can avoid that path if we can make this work.”
This story is part of ongoing coverage of the Colorado River, produced by KUNC and supported by the Walton Family Foundation.

A deadline looms for a new Colorado River plan. What happens if there isn’t one?

From Alaska to Arizona, tribes are confronting the possibility of stalled projects, energy outages, and economic disruption.
President Trump’s sweeping tax bill is on its way to his desk for a signature after House Republicans passed the legislation with a vote of 218-214 on Thursday. As the administration celebrates, many Americans are contemplating its effects closer to home. With deep cuts to Medicaid, food stamps, and renewable energy projects, the bill is likely to have a devastating effect on low-income and rural communities across the country.
But while Republican governors in states that rely on those programs have largely remained silent about the bill’s effects, tribal leaders across the country are not mincing words about the upcoming fallout for their communities.
“These bills are an affront to our sovereignty, our lands, and our way of life. They would gut essential health and food security programs, roll back climate resilience funding, and allow the exploitation of our sacred homelands without even basic tribal consultation,” said Chalyee Éesh Richard Peterson, president of the Tlingit and Haida in Alaska, in a statement. “This is not just bad policy—it is a betrayal of the federal trust responsibility to tribal nations.”
Tribes across the country are particularly worried about the megabill’s hit to clean energy, complicating the development of critical wind and solar projects. According to the Department of Energy, tribal households face 6.5 times more electrical outages per year and a 28 percent higher energy burden compared to the average U.S. household. An estimated 54,000 people living on tribal lands have no electricity.
Under the Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA, the Biden administration opened up new federal funding opportunities, increased the loan authority of theTribal Energy Loan Guarantee Program, and created new tax credits for wind energy, battery storage, large-scale solar farms, and programs to repurpose lands harmed by environmental degradation for related energy projects. When signed into law, Trump’s new bill will largely dismantle these programs.
Historically, tribes have had limited access to capital to fund clean energy projects. Through the IRA, new projects were driven by tribes to address community and infrastructure needs on their terms. According to tribes and energy advocacy groups, these projects not only help build energy infrastructure for each tribal nation but also create jobs, boost local economies, and affirm sovereignty.
Dr. Crystal Miller, a member of the Walker River Paiute Tribe, heads government affairs and policy at the Alliance for Tribal Clean Energy, underlines the existential outcomes for tribal communities. “It is extremely life or death if you’re talking about clean energy projects, in particular solar, which provide energy to homes, provide heat to homes that wouldn’t have it without because they don’t have lines run to their community,” she said.
Prior to the House vote, the Alliance for Tribal Clean Energy, was part of a broader group that sent letters to Congress warning of the bill’s consequences for tribes, treaties, and domestic energy priorities. These “are not only economic but also environmental and humanitarian,” they wrote after the Senate narrowly approved the bill 51-50 earlier this week, with Vice President JD Vance casting the tie-breaking vote.
Miller pointed out that tribes weren’t consulted on the terms of the bill headed to Trump’s desk, yet they will be forced to live with the consequences. Tribal leaders across the United States warned the legislation could jeopardize projects critical to their communities energy needs: A tribal village in Alaska’s attempt to curb high electricity costs by establishing a tribal utility; the Cheyenne River Sioux’s efforts to navigate long, harsh winters in South Dakota; and California tribes’ development of microgrids to offset power outages due to wildfires. The Hopi Tribe in Arizona said the sovereign nation’s microgrid would fail after a historic transition from coal.
Tribal leaders also warned there could be widespread job losses across the 574 federally recognized tribal nations, an outcome at odds with Trump’s economic promises. “When we talk about bringing jobs back to America and keeping them here domestically, that also includes tribal nations,” Miller said.
Dr. Kimberly Yazzie, a Diné professor at the University of British Columbia whose previous research focused on tribal clean energy development, called the legislation a big setback — though not entirely unexpected. “Tribes have been presented with challenges in the past hundred years and this is a challenge we’ll have to face,” she said. “It will come down to the tribal, entity, and individual level, and how they want to best move forward.”

Clean energy projects on tribal lands were booming. Then came Trump’s tax bill.

The freeze comes after six price hikes in three years.
This coverage is made possible through a partnership between Grist and WABE, Atlanta’s NPR station.
After six bill increases in the last three years, Georgia Power rates will now stay the same for the time being.
Under a deal approved Tuesday by the Georgia Public Service Commission, Georgia Power’s rates will stay the same for the next three years, though the deal does not include some costs, which could still cause bills to increase next year.
“The rate freeze resulting from this plan is a great result for customers,” Georgia Power CEO Kim Greene said in a statement, “balancing the mutual benefits of extraordinary economic growth among all stakeholders and helping to ensure that we remain equipped to continue supporting growth in this state.”
Energy bills vary widely by state and were higher in 2024 than in 2023, according to the federal Energy Information Administration. Georgia’s bills were just above the national average in 2024, ranging from $145 to $165 monthly, but those figures are averaged across all customers, not based on individual bills or utilities’ rates. Atlanta has some of the highest energy burdens in the country, according to Georgia Tech, especially among low-income and Black households — meaning those residents pay a higher percentage of their income for electricity.
Under the agreement reached by Georgia Power and the commission’s staff and later cosigned by the Georgia Association of Manufacturers and Utility Management Services, the base rates that help determine power bills will remain the same for three years — except for the cost of recovering from Hurricane Helene, the most damaging storm in Georgia Power’s history.
Georgia Power is also scheduled to review the cost of fuels such as coal and natural gas next year, which could also drive bills up — though company officials said lower fuel prices could lead to lower bills, or at least cancel out extra costs from Helene.
“Customers have seen unprecedented inflation in the energy sector across the U.S.,” said commission chair Jason Shaw in a statement. “My fellow commissioners and I urged staff and Georgia Power to come to some agreement where base rates would not increase. This is nothing but good news for Georgia Power ratepayers.”
Shaw is right about energy prices nationwide: Georgia Power’s recent rate hikes are part of a national trend that saw utilities request rate increases totaling $18.13 billion in 2023, though the actual increases approved were lower, according to S&P Global.
But some critics were less certain the rate freeze is good for customers. The deal bypasses the typically intensive, monthslong process of setting rates, during which interested parties — including energy and consumer advocates, municipalities, large power users like Atlanta’s transit authority and Walmart and even the federal government — comb through Georgia Power’s finances and proposals. Without those hearings, some have argued, it’s impossible to know if the rate freeze is the best possible deal for customers.
“Everyday Georgians cannot be on the hook for Georgia Power’s data center spending spree,” said Bob Sherrier, an attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center, in a statement. “The next three years are very consequential for the electric grid and deserve much more scrutiny than occurred here.”
Critics of the deal also worried that “rate freeze” is a misnomer because of the adjustment for storm costs that will happen next year. Others raised concerns that by deferring costs to keep rates the same now, the plan will result in an even larger rate hike in 2028.
Georgia Power officials denied both concerns in hearings last week. They argued that lower fuel costs could balance out the storm costs, leaving rates the same or even lower, and that savings from cost deferrals would extend beyond the next three years.
Commissioner Bubba McDonald objected to the current power rates — the rates now being extended — when they were approved in 2022 because he felt Georgia Power’s profits were set too high. The commission authorized a return on equity for Georgia Power investors of between 9.5 percent and 11.9 percent, which is above the national average that year of 9.54 percent. McDonald reiterated that objection Tuesday and proposed a motion to lower the utility’s profit cap, but no other commissioners seconded the proposal and it died without a vote.
In the end, McDonald joined his fellow commissioners in voting for the rate freeze, and it passed unanimously.

After years of increases, Georgia power rates to hold steady — for now

The freeze comes after six price hikes in three years.
This coverage is made possible through a partnership between Grist and WABE, Atlanta’s NPR station.
After six bill increases in the last three years, Georgia Power rates will now stay the same for the time being.
Under a deal approved Tuesday by the Georgia Public Service Commission, Georgia Power’s rates will stay the same for the next three years, though the deal does not include some costs, which could still cause bills to increase next year.
“The rate freeze resulting from this plan is a great result for customers,” Georgia Power CEO Kim Greene said in a statement, “balancing the mutual benefits of extraordinary economic growth among all stakeholders and helping to ensure that we remain equipped to continue supporting growth in this state.”
Energy bills vary widely by state and were higher in 2024 than in 2023, according to the federal Energy Information Administration. Georgia’s bills were just above the national average in 2024, ranging from $145-165 monthly, but those figures are averaged across all customers, not based on individual bills or utilities’ rates. Atlanta has some of the highest energy burdens in the country, according to Georgia Tech, especially among low-income and Black households — meaning those residents pay a higher percentage of their income for electricity.
Under the agreement reached by Georgia Power and the commission’s staff and later cosigned by the Georgia Association of Manufacturers and Utility Management Services, the base rates that help determine power bills will remain the same for three years — except for the cost of recovering from Hurricane Helene, the most damaging storm in Georgia Power’s history.
Georgia Power is also scheduled to review the cost of fuels such as coal and natural gas next year, which could also drive bills up — though company officials said lower fuel prices could lead to lower bills, or at least cancel out extra costs from Helene.
“Customers have seen unprecedented inflation in the energy sector across the U.S.,” said commission chair Jason Shaw in a statement. “My fellow Commissioners and I urged staff and Georgia Power to come to some agreement where base rates would not increase. This is nothing but good news for Georgia Power ratepayers.”
Shaw is right about energy prices nationwide: Georgia Power’s recent rate hikes are part of a national trend that saw utilities request rate increases totaling $18.13 billion in 2023, though the actual increases approved were lower, according to S&P Global.
But some critics were less certain the rate freeze is good for customers. The deal bypasses the typically intensive, months-long process of setting rates, during which interested parties – including energy and consumer advocates, municipalities, large power users like Atlanta’s transit authority and Walmart and even the federal government – comb through Georgia Power’s finances and proposals. Without those hearings, some have argued, it’s impossible to know if the rate freeze is the best possible deal for customers.
“Every day Georgians cannot be on the hook for Georgia Power’s data center spending spree,” said Bob Sherrier, an attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center, in a statement. “The next three years are very consequential for the electric grid and deserve much more scrutiny than occurred here.”
Critics of the deal also worried that “rate freeze” is a misnomer because of the adjustment for storm costs that will happen next year. Others raised concerns that by deferring costs to keep rates the same now, the plan will result in an even larger rate hike in 2028.
Georgia Power officials denied both concerns in hearings last week. They argued that lower fuel costs could balance out the storm costs, leaving rates the same or even lower, and that savings from cost deferrals would extend beyond the next three years.
Commissioner Bubba McDonald objected to the current power rates — the rates now being extended – when they were approved in 2022 because he felt Georgia Power’s profits were set too high. The commission authorized a return on equity for Georgia Power investors of between 9.5 percent and 11.9 percent, which is above the national average that year of 9.54 percent.. McDonald reiterated that objection Tuesday and proposed a motion to lower the utility’s profit cap, but no other commissioners seconded the proposal and it died without a vote.
In the end, McDonald joined his fellow commissioners in voting for the rate freeze, and it passed unanimously.

A sweeping reform to the California Environmental Quality Act has divided environmentalists and climate advocates.
Earlier this week, California lawmakers passed among the most sweeping reforms to the state’s environmental regulations in more than half a century. The measures were primarily intended to boost housing construction and urban density in the Golden State, which faces among the most severe housing shortages in the U.S.
Though the move was celebrated by Governor Gavin Newsom as he signed the bills into law, it has exposed tensions between the progressive priorities that motivate Democratic lawmakers. Housing affordability advocates have clashed with those promoting environmental justice, with the former boosting the bills and the latter remaining wary. More broadly, the move exposes divisions between those who want more tools to mitigate climate change and environmentalists who would rather maintain strict limits on what can be built and how.
The reforms target the California Environmental Quality Act, which then-Governor Ronald Reagan signed more than 50 years ago. Known as CEQA, the legislation requires public agencies and decision-makers to evaluate the environmental impact of any project requiring government approval, publicize any effects and mitigate them if feasible.
Supporters say the law has prevented or altered scores of projects that would have been detrimental to the environment or Californians’ quality of life. But CEQA has also become the basis for a regular stream of formal complaints and lawsuits that pile substantial costs and delays onto projects that are ultimately found to have minimal harmful effects — sometimes killing them entirely. In one infamous instance, opponents of student housing near the University of California Berkeley argued that the associated noise would constitute environmental pollution under CEQA, which led to a three-year legal battle that the university only won after it went to the state supreme court. Examples like this have led CEQA, which was once a national symbol of environmental protection, to become vilified as a cause of the state’s chronic housing shortage.
After this week’s reforms, most urban housing projects will now be exempt from the CEQA process. The new legislation also excepts many zoning changes from CEQA, as well as certain nonresidential projects including health clinics, childcare centers and advanced manufacturing facilities, like semiconductor and nanotech plants, if they are sited in areas already zoned for industrial uses. (A related bill also freezes most updates to building efficiency and clean energy standards until 2031, angering climate advocates who otherwise support the push for denser housing.) Governor Newsom used a budgetary process to push long-debated changes into law, with strong bipartisan support.
Some activists welcomed the changes, saying they will lead to denser “infill” housing on vacant or underutilized urban land, slower growth in rents and home prices, and shorter commutes — with the welcome byproduct of fewer planet-warming emissions.
“For those that view climate change as one of the key issues of our time, infill housing is a critical solution,” read one op-ed supporting the measures. Other environmentalists, however, lambasted the changes as environmentally destructive giveaways to developers. After Newsom signed the legislation, the Sierra Club California put out a statement calling the changes “half-baked” measures that “will have destructive consequences for environmental justice communities and endangered species across California.”
At a time when President Donald Trump’s assaults on climate policy and environmental protections have galvanized opposition from the left, what unfolded in California serves as a reminder that, even among Democrats, a divide remains on the extent to which regulation can help — or hurt — the planet. It’s the type of pickle that liberals across the country may increasingly face on issues ranging from zoning to permitting reform for renewable energy projects, which can face costly delays when they encounter procedural hurdles like CEQA. (Indeed, in California, CEQA has been an impediment to not just affordable housing but also solar farms and high-speed rail.)
“How do we make sure the regulations we pass to save the planet don’t harm the planet?” asked Matt Lewis, director of communications for California YIMBY, a housing advocacy organization and proponent of the CEQA reforms. Transportation accounts for the largest portion of California’s carbon footprint, and Lewis argues that denser housing will be key to keeping people closer to their jobs. But, he said, people with a “not in my backyard” attitude have abused CEQA to slow down those beneficial projects. (His organization’s name is a play on this so-called NIMBY disposition, with YIMBY standing for “yes in my backyard.”)
“One of the leading causes of climate pollution is the way we permit or do not permit housing to be built in urban areas,” Lewis said, adding that more urban development could reduce pressure to build on unused land in more sensitive areas. He pointed to other legal backstops, like state clean water and air laws, that can accomplish the environmental protection goals often cited by supporters of the CEQA process. “CEQA isn’t actually the most powerful law to make sure that manufacturing facilities and other industrial facilities protect the environment,” he said.
In short, Lewis believes that any downsides of the new reforms pale in comparison to their benefits for both people and the planet. “Did we fix it perfectly this time? I’m willing to admit, no,” he said, adding that any shortcomings that environmentalists are concerned about could be repaired in future legislative sessions.
But many environmentalists contend that the downsides in the new legislation are too large.
“We put one foot forward but we take another step back,” said Miguel Miguel, director of Sierra Club California, noting his opposition to the nonresidential exemptions. He said that CEQA often acts as a first line of defense that allows community input on development projects. Without it, he argues, community voices will be marginalized. Miguel speaks from personal experience: CEQA helped save the mobile home park where he grew up from being replaced by more expensive apartments.
Kim Delfino, an environmental attorney and consultant who followed the legislation, said that the scope of the reforms expanded from simple support for urban housing development to become “a potpourri of industry and developer desires.” She added that CEQA requires biological surveys that can be the first step to invoking other environmental protections.
“If you never look, you will never know if there are endangered species there,” she said. “We’ve decided to take a head in the sand approach.”
This impasse between environmentalists and housing-focused advocates like Lewis is now decades-old and among the reasons that CEQA reforms — or rollbacks, depending on who you ask — have taken so long to come about. As the fight has drawn out, skepticism has become entrenched.
“Maybe I’m wrong,” California YIMBY’s Lewis said of his optimism that the latest changes can thread the needle between the state’s housing needs and environmental priorities. But, he added, he’d rather defer to elected lawmakers than environmentalists, who have long opposed his housing advocacy. “The environmental movement in California has been fundamentally dishonest about housing,” he charged.
The Sierra Club’s Miguel, for his part, hopes for more cooperation between the competing parties, lest the disagreements poison future legislative efforts. At the end of the day, all parties involved share the same broad goals, if with different levels of emphasis.
“We have to do everything and anything all at once,” he said, referring to climate and environmental policy. “That is fine art.”

Can weaker environmental rules help fight climate change? California just bet yes.

Tools to address PFAS pollution are limited. Here's what researchers are learning about how these chemicals travel through the environment — and what farmers and landowners can do about it.
The vision
“I think a lot of people now are aware of PFAS, or concerned about it, or want to know whether it’s present in their water, their food. The whole purpose of what we’re trying to do is develop something that’s simple and cost effective to answer that question for them.”
— Bryan Berger, professor of chemical engineering at the University of Virginia
The spotlight
Last fall, we wrote a story about how a group of researchers, together with the Mi’kmaq Nation in Maine, have been working to address contamination from PFAS — per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, a group of pernicious, human-made chemical compounds sometimes known as “forever chemicals.” The substances, which have been increasingly linked to health issues, are a common problem for farmers and other landowners in the state of Maine. The group had seen some early success using hemp plants to draw PFAS out of the soil, on a parcel of land the tribe had acquired at a former Air Force base. But many questions remained — for them and others working on this issue — about how the chemicals travel and accumulate, what safe uses for contaminated land might be, and how to actually break down these forever chemicals.
“I think everybody is struggling with that question, trying to figure out, what does ‘forever’ mean? How long will it persist in soil? How will it transport through the environment?” Bryan Berger, one of the researchers, told me at the time. In addition to the work with the Mi’kmaq Nation’s hemp experiment, his lab has been looking at a range of ways that the plant kingdom might help us track and maybe even eliminate PFAS contamination.
I’ve been eager to follow up with Berger, a chemical engineer at the University of Virginia, about what he and his collaborators have learned so far in striving to answer those questions. At the time, the group had just received a four-year grant from the Environmental Protection Agency to continue studying the remediation potential of hemp plants, as well as other pursuits, like how to give farmers better testing tools to know when their land is contaminated. But over the past couple of months, as with so many research projects, the group has faced setbacks. Their grant (already approved by Congress) was unexpectedly terminated in May, along with a slate of other grants focused on PFAS research — previously considered a pretty nonpartisan issue.
The group appealed, and the EPA reinstated their grant in late June, with no further explanation.
“Because of this whole situation, I don’t feel as totally sure about [the funding] as I did when we first got the grant,” Chelli Stanley, co-founder of an environmental organization called Upland Grassroots and one of the key collaborators on the Maine project, told the Maine Morning Star. “But of course, we are just going to go forward and do all of our work, I’m sure maybe at an accelerated pace in some ways, just to do as much testing as we can.”
As Berger shared with me, that work is still in its early stages, but has yielded some exciting results for the team.
One of the first questions in the battle to try and contain PFAS is whether the chemicals are present in a given area — say, a farm or a field — and if so, where they might be coming from. The mounting evidence that PFAS may be hazardous to human health has led the chemicals to be banned in many places. “The expectation was that you should see a reduction in PFAS levels accumulating in soil and crops,” Berger said, “but that has not happened.” There are still unregulated sources causing the substances to spread.
Giving land and water managers better testing tools to track PFAS is something his lab had been working on for a long time. Testing for PFAS is currently done with a mass spectrometer, a sophisticated piece of lab equipment. This yields high-quality data, but it’s very expensive and time-consuming, Berger said — running around $400 per sample, with a one- to two-week turnaround time. “There’s just a huge shortage of infrastructure to do testing at the scale necessary,” he said. Land stewards need a simple test akin to a pH strip that can measure PFAS — and Berger and his team developed something close: a biosensor, in the form of a fluorescent microbe that glows when it’s exposed to PFAS.
Through the collaboration with the Mi’kmaq Nation, Berger and his collaborators tested the biosensors on water samples taken near the tribe’s land at the former Air Force base — and in a report published in October, they found that the sensors could effectively detect the high levels of the chemicals, even in samples that contained other contaminants.
“So we have a direct testing method that could be used, that’s kind of a cheap, fast point of detection,” Berger said. It won’t replace the more sophisticated lab testing, but offers an option for farmers who want to test, say, across hundreds of acres.
To build on this work, Berger hopes to develop a way to embed the same technology within a plant — which he calls “a new twist on an old idea.” The old idea refers to the concept of sentinel plants: traditionally, a plant susceptible to certain diseases or pests that farmers would monitor to see when those pests were present, and then tailor control measures accordingly. “What if we then go a step further and engineer the plant to indicate a signal to tell you that there’s PFAS present — you know, maybe you apply a pesticide and then it turns on,” Berger said. As with the microbes his team tested, that signal could be fluorescence — meaning the plants would literally glow when PFAS are present. A warning sign like this would mean farmers wouldn’t need to take an extra step of regular testing, even with simple microbe kits; they could just look at the sentinel plant to see when PFAS show up. “Then you’re getting real time data,” Berger said.
Another thing he and the team in Maine have been working on is understanding whether food grown in PFAS-contaminated soil or fed by PFAS-contaminated water is then contaminated as well, and therefore unsafe to eat. The obvious answer would seem to be yes — but it depends on how the substances travel, where they accumulate, and whether certain plants could be resistant to taking them up.
“If there are cultivars that are PFAS resistant, that could be another tool in the arsenal for growers,” Berger said. Similarly, if farmers understood that PFAS were only gathering in a part of the plant that was nonedible, they may still be able to safely grow certain crops while simultaneously working on remediation. Just recently, the team had a breakthrough finding on that front.
“We did a study where we looked at accumulation of PFAS in potatoes, which are kind of an important part of Maine’s agricultural heritage,” Berger said. “They’re very proud of their Maine potatoes.” That study, published by the Central Aroostook Soil and Water Conservation District in Maine, one of the grant partners, found that PFAS did not accumulate in the edible root of the potato — the chemicals were only stored in the green leafy portions.
“So you could grow potatoes even if there was PFAS present in the irrigation water, which is what they found,” Berger said. The team plans to continue testing other common crops like broccoli, brussels sprouts, and kale, as well as culturally significant plants for the Mi’kmaq Nation, like fiddleheads and ash trees.
While these are heartening findings from just the first few months of the grant, one of the biggest questions that remains for anybody working on PFAS is what, if anything, can be done to actually get rid of the chemicals. According to Berger and his collaborators, there is currently no scalable, cost-effective way to destroy PFAS. “It’s the million-dollar question,” Berger said.
But his lab has been testing one possible approach, essentially mimicking photosynthesis in a specially engineered microbe and using the energy from that process to break down PFAS that the microbe had absorbed. “So, kind of making plants or other microorganisms divert some of that energy or electrons into PFAS destruction,” Berger said. The initial, early-stage trials have shown promise, though there is still more research to be done before the approach could be attempted in a real-life application. “It’s not a perfect solution ready to go or anything, but those are promising things we’re doing that are different from what is currently out there,” Burger said. Actually breaking down PFAS within a contaminated plant or microbe would mean that the substances wouldn’t spread further — unlike other disposal methods, like incineration, which can release the chemicals into the air.
“If it works, it’s the most environmentally benign way we could do things because it’s almost all biological,” Berger said.
— Claire Elise Thompson
More exposure
Read: about the history of PFAS contamination on farms in Maine (The Maine Monitor)
Read: about how soybeans could help displace a common source of PFAS: firefighting foam (Grist)
Read: about another contaminant that has endangered the health of communities for centuries — lead — and what the city of Chicago is doing about its lead pipe problem. Chicago has the most lead service lines in the country, and a new project by Grist, Inside Climate News, and WBEZ exposes how far behind the city is in replacing them
A parting shot
In this photo from 2019, dairy farmer Fred Stone held a small press conference on his land in Arundel, Maine, calling on public officials to take action to avoid future PFAS contamination on farms. He shuttered his farm after discovering the levels of PFAS in his cows’ milk, and became a leading advocate for action. Many farms in the state, like Stone’s, were exposed to the chemicals through the application of sludge, or biosolids — a treated wastewater product that was long used as a fertilizer.
IMAGE CREDITS
Vision: Mia Torres / Grist
Parting shot: Gregory Rec/Portland Portland Press Herald via Getty Images

How plants could help us detect, and even destroy, dangerous ‘forever chemicals’

A new report documents how cities around the world are becoming more liveable and sustainable in the face of climate change.
Your city is probably fighting climate change in more ways than you realize. Perhaps your mayor is on a mission to plant more trees, or they’ve set efficiency standards for buildings, requiring better windows and insulation. Maybe they’ve even electrified your public transportation, reducing both greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution.
Ten years after the Paris Agreement, nations are still nowhere near ambitious enough in their commitments to reduce emissions and avoid the worst consequences of climate change. More than that, they haven’t shown enough follow-through on the goals they did set. Instead, it’s been cities and other local governments that have taken the lead. According to a new report by the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy and C40 — a global network of nearly 100 mayors prioritizing climate action, collectively representing nearly 600 million people — three quarters of the cities in the latter group are slashing their per capita emissions faster than their national governments. As global greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise, per capita emissions across C40’s cities fell 7.5 percent on average between 2015 and 2024.
“The untold story is that cities and local leaders really mobilized in a big way in Paris, but also in the decade since,” said Asif Nawaz Shah, co-author of the report and the head of impact and global partnerships at C40 and the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy. “It’s where the action happens, and it’s also where people are suffering the impacts the most.”
Cities are adapting because they’re experiencing especially acute effects of climate change as their populations rapidly grow. They’re getting much hotter than surrounding rural areas due to the urban heat island effect, in which the built environment soaks up the sun’s energy during the day and slowly releases it at night. Because a warmer atmosphere holds more moisture, they’re suffering increasingly catastrophic flooding as rains overwhelm sewer systems designed for the climate of yesteryear. And coastal cities have to deal with sea-level rise, in addition to fiercer tropical storms.
Mayors can more quickly deploy fixes than national governments can, climate experts say. Cities are less politically divided, for instance, and officials are more in tune with the immediate needs of their residents than a faraway federal government is. “I think that’s part of what makes it easier for mayors to make the case for climate action, because they’re not just addressing a concept that can seem a little abstract,” Shah said. “They’re addressing it through the lens of what people’s lived realities and experiences are.”
By making their cities more liveable, mayors also make them more sustainable, especially when it comes to walkability, bikeability, and vehicle transportation. The report notes that Melbourne, Australia is on a quest to create “20-minute neighborhoods,” in which people can reach most of their daily needs — work, schools, grocery stores — within a 20-minute return walk from home. Over in Shenzhen, China, officials have electrified 16,000 buses, reducing annual CO2 emissions by over 200,000 tons.
And by literally greening their cities, mayors solve a bunch of their citizens’ problems at once. In Quezon City in the Philippines, the government turned unused land into 337 gardens and 10 model farms, while training more than 4,000 urban farmers. The report also notes that Freetown, Sierra Leone, planted more than 550,000 trees, creating more than 600 jobs. In addition to significantly reducing urban temperatures, these green spaces also mitigate flooding by soaking up rainwater. “It is becoming clear, I think, to a lot of municipalities that this type of action will be absolutely essential,” said Dan Jasper, senior policy advisor at the climate solutions group Project Drawdown, which wasn’t involved in the report. “It’s not just about being uncomfortable. This is about protecting people’s lives.”
Mayors are also improving access to clean energy and more efficient appliances. The report notes that Buenos Aires, Argentina installed solar panels on more than 100 schools, while Qab Elias, Lebanon went a step further by partnering with a private supplier to allow half of its homes to install solar.
It’s not as if all nations are leaving cities to their own devices, though. The Coalition for High Ambition Multilevel Partnerships, for instance, is an initiative signed by more than 70 national governments to help cities, states, and regions with planning and financing climate action. “I find it very heartening, to be honest, that cities really are taking the lead,” Jasper said. “I think they’re going above and beyond in some respects, about planning for the future, as well as actually implementing some of the things that the federal governments have signed on to.”
Still, not nearly enough funding is flowing to cities and other local governments to do all the climate action they need. Unlike national governments, they can’t print their own money, so they’re strictly limited by their budgets. Conservative governments like the Trump administration are also slashing funds for climate action. Last year, 611 cities disclosed 2,500 projects worth $179 billion, but urban climate finance has to rise to $4.5 trillion each year by 2030, the report says. These are not donations but investments with returns: Spending money now to adapt to climate change means spending less on disaster recovery and health care in the future. “It’s not a call for handouts or for freebies,” Shah said. “It’s a call for genuine long-term investment that will yield results to protect citizens and livelihoods.

As nations lag on climate action, their cities are stepping up. Here’s proof.

Critics are calling it "the most anti-environmental bill of all time."
After three days of nonstop negotiations on Capitol Hill, the Senate voted 51-50 on Tuesday to pass a domestic policy bill that accomplishes much of President Donald Trump’s first-year agenda. Vice President J.D. Vance cast the tie-breaking vote. Three Republicans — Rand Paul from Kentucky, Thom Tillis from North Carolina, and Susan Collins from Maine — voted against the package, while Democrats were united in opposition.
If approved by the House of Representatives and signed by Trump, the legislation will make the deepest cuts to America’s social safety net in decades and unravel the country’s only existing federal plan to diminish the greenhouse gas emissions driving climate change.
“This sweeping legislation is the most anti-environmental bill of all time and will do extreme harm to our communities, our families, our climate, and our public lands,” the League of Conservation Voters, an environmental advocacy group, said in a statement.
The estimated cost of the GOP’s top policy priority — extending tax cuts from 2017 — is more than $4 trillion over 10 years. In order to offset those tax cuts, Senate Republicans sought to slash spending on green energy approved by Democrats during former president Joe Biden’s term, among other programs such as food stamps and Medicaid. The clean energy subsidies formed the heart of the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA, the largest climate spending bill in American history.
The legislation now goes back to the House of Representatives, which passed a less expensive version of the megabill in May, before it goes to Trump’s desk for his signature. The House legislation would have sunsetted the IRA’s investment and production tax credits for wind and solar power within 60 days of the bill’s enactment, an aggressive timeline that renewable energy groups said would weaken their their industry and disincentivize new renewable projects. Fears over regulatory changes have already led to the cancellation of $15.5 billion in clean energy investments this year.
The Senate legislation is only marginally less punitive to the clean energy industry. Wind and solar projects that either start construction before July 2026 or are placed in service by 2027 would be able to take full advantage of existing tax credits. Under the IRA, those credits were set to continue in some form until the country achieved substantial emissions reductions.
An earlier version of the Senate bill also included an extra “excise” tax on wind and solar, which an analysis by the American Clean Power Association showed would increase consumer energy prices up to 10 percent and cost clean energy businesses as much as $7 billion by 2036. That tax was removed from the legislation before the final vote on Tuesday. Conservative lawmakers disclaimed responsibility for the tax’s initial inclusion in the text. “I don’t know where it came from,” Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican from South Carolina, told NBC.
The earlier House bill placed strict limits on using Chinese components in renewable energy projects. The Senate version eased that proposal to include fewer penalties for moderate use of China-linked hardware. But Senate Republicans sped up the House’s proposed phaseout for consumer tax credits for new and previously owned electric vehicles by two months, from the end of this year to September 30. Consumers previously had until 2032 to take advantage of them.
The bill does not include the massive and controversial sell-off of public lands championed by Senator Mike Lee, from Utah, who withdrew that amendment after facing backlash in his state and across the country.
The Senate-approved phaseout of tax credits for wind and solar comes at a time when demand for industrial power is skyrocketing in the U.S. as energy-hungry data centers and clean technology factories crop up across the country. “The intentional effort to undermine the fastest-growing sources of electric power will lead to increased energy bills, decreased grid reliability, and the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs,” the American Clean Power Association, a clean energy lobbying group, said in a statement. “We can’t afford to pick winners and losers when it comes to reliable, American-made energy.”
The changes made by the Senate during a 24-hour period of intense debate could set up many more hours of debate in the lower congressional chamber. The House squeaked through its version of the bill by striking a balance between moderate Republicans from blue states like California and New York who wanted higher caps on state and local income tax deductions and fiscal hawks from deep-red states who wanted deeper spending cuts. The Senate’s version is about $800 billion more expensive, an increase that could tee up a fight over clean energy tax credit timelines and more. Chip Roy, Republican lawmaker from Texas who wants deeper cuts to green spending, already called it “a deal-killer of an already bad deal.”
Some Republican senators think that’s a good thing.
Senator Lisa Murkowski, a Republican from Alaska who sent a letter to Senate Majority Leader John Thune this April asking him to preserve the clean energy tax credits, was the last holdout in the Senate after Paul, Tillis, and Collins made it clear they were going to vote against the Senate bill. Despite the bill’s consequences for clean energy, Murkowski agreed to support the bill after obtaining a set of carveouts for her state on food stamp work requirements and healthcare cuts.
After voting for the bill, Murkowski expressed misgivings about its contents. “My hope is that the House is going to look at this and recognize that we’re not there yet,” she told reporters.

Senate Republicans just voted to dismantle America’s only climate plan

Experts say the most impactful decisions have enabled the Trump administration to gut the federal workforce and freeze funding.
The Supreme Court often releases one or two big, splashy environmental decisions each term. Last year it was overruling a decades-old legal precedent called the “Chevron deference,” which allowed courts to defer to the expertise of a federal agency when interpreting ambiguous statutes. The year before that, Sackett v. EPA limited the definition of bodies of water that are protected under the federal Clean Water Act.
This year’s term, which began in October and ended last week, was a bit different. The justices issued a number of decisions related to climate and the environment, but none of them was a “blockbuster,” according to University of Vermont Law and Graduate School emeritus professor Pat Parenteau.
Arguably, the decisions that will have the greatest potential consequences for climate and environmental policy came from cases that weren’t explicitly about the planet at all.
Rather, they were decisions that legitimized the executive branch’s actions to fire personnel and block funding already appropriated by Congress. These actions may have far-reaching effects on federal agencies that work on climate and environmental issues, such as the Environmental Protection Agency, the Energy Department, and the Department of Agriculture, which have already been affected by layoffs and funding cuts, as well as early retirement offers intended to get longtime staffers to voluntarily leave their posts.
“What’s being done is irredeemable,” Parenteau added. “The brain drain, the firing of people, the defunding — those are causing really, really long-term damage to the institutional capabilities of the federal government to implement and enforce environmental law.”
Three of the court’s decisions help illustrate what has happened.
Two of them — Trump v. Wilcox and Office of Personnel Management v. American Federation of Government Employees — which came earlier in the session, have made it possible for decisions by President Donald Trump to move forward while they are being litigated in lower courts, reversing orders from federal judges that had temporarily paused them. These decisions have effectively allowed firings without cause at the National Labor Relations Board and the Merit Systems Protection Board, and have stopped six federal agencies from bringing back probationary employees that the Trump administration had fired.
Then last week, on the last day of its term, the Supreme Court issued a sweeping decision in Trump v. CASA that limits the power of the country’s more than 1,000 district court judges to issue nationwide injunctions against presidential orders. Those judges’ injunctions are now supposed to target only the plaintiffs in a given case.
“Trump is the big winner in this decision,” Parenteau said.
One of the the decision’s most immediate consequences is that it will allow Trump’s unconstitutional limits to birthright citizenship to go into effect in July. In theory, it also means that Trump could issue an executive order illegally rolling back some environmental policy, and district courts would have less power to stop it while a legal challenge makes its way through the courts. District court judges can still issue nationwide injunctions against rules from federal agencies, and they can issue nationwide injunctions against executive orders that are challenged by a large number of plaintiffs, as in a class action lawsuit. Circuit court judges’ injunction powers remain unchanged.
Ann Carlson, an environmental law professor at UCLA Law, said the court’s decisions affecting funding and personnel have “giant implications.” They raise “huge questions about the balance between the executive branch and Congress, and the executive branch’s ability and authority to simply ignore what Congress has appropriated.”
Kirti Datla, director of strategic legal advocacy for the nonprofit Earthjustice, said this term’s Supreme Court decisions have been “enabling” the Trump administration in its attempts to shrink the size of the government and eliminate institutional expertise. “It’s hard to quantify, but it’s impossible to deny.”
Although the justices didn’t release any landmark environmental decisions this term, the court took up multiple “unusual cases” that showed its continued interest in environmental statutes and administrative actions, according to Datla. For example, in Ohio v. EPA the court decided not to temporarily block an EPA policy requiring power plants to lower their greenhouse gas emissions, and in Diamond Alternative Energy LLC v. EPA it decided to allow oil company plaintiffs to sue the EPA for having allowed California to set its own stricter auto emissions standards than the federal government’s.
The Ohio case was “just a regular decision,” Datla said — ”getting deep into the weeds of the record and ultimately disagreeing with what a lower court had done, which is not usually how the Supreme Court spends its time.” Neither case changed existing law or resulted in a big-picture pronouncement about how to apply or interpret the law. And the Diamond case may become irrelevant anyway, since the Senate recently voted — controversially — to use the Congressional Review Act to revoke California’s auto emissions waiver.
Other notable decisions from the Supreme Court’s term included Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle County, which limited the scope of environmental reviews required under the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA. The court essentially said that such reviews don’t have to look at upstream consequences of a given project — such as oil drilling and refining, for projects like railroads that are only directly associated with transporting these fuels — and that courts should defer to federal agencies when deciding what to include in environmental impact statements.
City and County of San Francisco v. EPA found that some of the EPA’s pollution permits under the Clean Water Act are unenforceable unless the EPA writes out specific steps that water management agencies should take to comply with them. But Datla said this was a “quite narrow case” whose national implications are unclear.
The justices have not yet added any explicitly climate- and environment-related cases to their docket for its next session. But Parenteau, the emeritus professor at the Vermont Law and Graduate School, said he’s nervous that the court will take up a challenge to Friends of the Earth v. Laidlaw Environmental Services, Inc. That decision from 2000 said residents of South Carolina had legal standing to sue an industrial polluter, even without proving they had been harmed in a particular way. They just had to show that the pollution had impacted the “aesthetic and recreational values” of the river they liked to swim in. Overturning the case could make it more difficult for environmental advocates to file similar lawsuits. “The Laidlaw case has me very worried,” Parenteau said.
For Carlson, the UCLA Law professor, a longer-term worry is that the court’s conservative supermajority will eventually overturn the “endangerment finding,” a precedent set in 2009 saying that carbon dioxide and several other greenhouse gases are pollutants that can be regulated by the EPA. “It’s going to get challenged, and it will get challenged up to the Supreme Court,” Carlson said.
Overall, the outlook isn’t good. The executive branch and the Supreme Court “are exhibiting extraordinary hostility to actions on climate change at a time when the planet is burning,” she said. “It’s a pretty depressing story overall.”
Editor’s note: Earthjustice is an advertiser with Grist. Advertisers have no role in Grist’s editorial decisions.

The Supreme Court just ended its term. Here are the decisions that will affect climate policy.

New research sheds light on how rising temperatures are squeezing farmers and raising prices for consumers.
New research spotlights the challenge of growing food on a warming planet.
Two recent studies — one historical and the other forward-looking — examine how rising temperatures have made and could continue to make agricultural production less efficient, fundamentally reshaping the global food system as producers try to adapt to hotter growing seasons.
The findings illuminate the bind that farmers and consumers find themselves in. Agricultural production is a driver of climate change; it’s estimated to be responsible for somewhere between a quarter and a third of global greenhouse gas emissions. But it is also hampered by the changes in weather patterns associated with climate change. While producers struggle to harvest the same amounts of food in the face of droughts, heat waves, and hurricanes, shoppers are more likely to face climbing food prices.
The forward-looking study, published June 18 in Nature, analyzes the impact of warming temperatures on the caloric output of agricultural production. Researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability found that for every additional degree Celsius of warming above the 2000-2010 average, the global food system will produce roughly 120 fewer calories per person per day.
In a scenario where the Earth experiences 3 degrees Celsius of warming by the end of the century, that’s the equivalent of everyone on the planet missing out on breakfast, said Andrew Hultgren, lead author of the study.
Hultgren and his colleagues compiled a massive dataset on the production of six staple crops in more than 12,000 regions spread out over 54 countries. They then modeled how different warming scenarios might impact crop production; they also factored in how farmers around the world are adapting to higher temperatures. What they found is that, even with adaptation, global warming is associated with “almost a linear decline in caloric output,” said Hultgren, who is also an assistant professor of agricultural and consumer economics at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
Measuring agricultural adaptation and its impact on output was important, said Hultgren, because research often assumes that farmers either adapt perfectly to global warming or not at all. The reality is that adapting to any growing season challenges comes at some cost, and farmers are constantly weighing the business benefits of implementing new techniques.
For example, one tool that corn farmers in the U.S. Midwest have to prevent hot days from thwarting their harvest is planting crop varietals that mature relatively quickly. “Corn is very sensitive to extreme heat,” said Hultgren, “so one very hot day can actually be bad for your entire growing season yield.”
But fast-maturing varietals also often produce lower yields overall, meaning these farmers likely can’t sell as much corn as they would have under cooler weather conditions, said Hultgren. “So there’s literally a cost of avoiding that extreme heat,” he said.
A drop in the global supply of crops will also lead to an uptick in food prices. But Hultgren noted that the impacts of reduced agricultural output won’t be evenly distributed. In wealthier countries such as the U.S., for example, those who can afford higher food prices will likely eat the cost. In poorer countries, these shifts could worsen food insecurity.
Additionally, rising temperatures will impact producers unevenly; the study estimated that in a high-warming climate scenario, corn farmers in the U.S. will experience 40 to 50 percent losses in yield by the end of the century. Based on these projections, “you wonder if the Corn Belt continues to be the Corn Belt,” said Hultgren. Meanwhile, other regional producers — like rice farmers in South Asia and Southeast Asia — will see yields grow in the same time frame. “There are absolutely regional winners and losers in this global aggregate,” he said.
The historical study, published June 20 in Nature Geosciences, looks at one of the ways agricultural production contributes to global warming: land clearing. When farmers want to cultivate new cropland, they often start by removing the plants that are already growing there, whether that’s grass, shrubs, or trees. When land clearing happens in carbon-rich regions in the Global South, like the Amazon rainforest, it increases deforestation and carbon emissions, said Jessica Till, the study’s co-lead author.
“Deforestation in tropical areas is one of the most urgent issues and biggest areas of concern,” said Till, a research scientist at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. (Till and Hultgren were not involved in each other’s studies.) “The more land you clear, the more forest you remove to create cropland, that’s going to have a negative effect on the climate.”
Till and the other study authors examined this feedback loop between agriculture and the environment: When crop production becomes less efficient due to extreme weather and heat, farmers must acquire and clear more land to boost production. That expansion in croplands then in turn results in higher greenhouse gas emissions, which exacerbates warming and makes crop production even less efficient.
They found that, even with improvements in agricultural productivity (due to technological improvements like new seed varieties and precision fertilizer application), climate change was responsible for 88 million hectares, or 217 million acres, in cropland expansion globally — an area roughly twice the size of California — between 1992 and 2020.
They also determined that this expansion was led by major agricultural producers, including the United States, India, China, Russia, and Brazil. Unsurprisingly, these countries were also the top five highest emitters of greenhouse gas emissions stemming from climate-driven expansions in cropland.
Both Till and Hultgren noted that these shifts can also influence global trade. When certain regions see a decline in agricultural productivity, said Till, other regions will gain a competitive advantage in the international market for agricultural commodities.
Erwan Monier, co-director of the Climate Adaptation Research Center at the University of California Davis, said he was not surprised by either studies’ findings, and said they contribute to the growing body of research on climate impacts on agriculture.
But he added that both come with caveats. Monier noted that the Nature study on caloric output fails to consider possible future advances in technologies like genetic editing that could make crops much more resilient to climate change. He said the paper demonstrates that “in order to really limit the impact of climate on our ability to grow food, we’re going to need a scale of innovation and adaptation that is really substantial, and that’s going to be a real challenge.”
Referring to the Nature Geosciences paper on the feedback loop between agriculture and climate, Monier said that it similarly does not take into account how farmer behavior might change in response to global warming.
“The fact is we have an ability to change what grows where,” said Monier. In the U.S., for example, where corn and soy production reign, farmers could choose to plant different crops if they see yields fall consistently. These growers will not “continue growing corn with very low yields and invest more capital and land with very, very low returns,” said Monier. “Farmers are going to move away to something that actually is more valuable and grows well” — and that, in turn, could reduce the need to clear more land.
Monier acknowledged that the latter study might come across as quite pessimistic. But, he said, it underscores the importance of having difficult conversations now about how to grow enough food to feed the world’s population as temperatures climb.
In order to avoid serious losses in agricultural production, he said, climate researchers and institutions must work hand in hand with farmers, helping them understand the risks of global warming and seek out new ways of adapting. This work should be “bottom up,” said Monier, rather than “top down.” “We need to engage the people who are going to be actually growing the food.”
He added that this will involve work that extends beyond the academic sphere. “I don’t know if publishing in Nature and Nature Geoscience is the way to really drive the bottom-up adaptation at the scale that is necessary.”

What does climate change mean for agriculture? Less food and more emissions.

New research sheds light on how rising temperatures are squeezing farmers and raising prices for consumers.
New research spotlights the challenge of growing food on a warming planet.
Two recent studies — one historical and the other forward-looking — examine how rising temperatures have made and could continue to make agricultural production less efficient, fundamentally reshaping the global food system as producers try to adapt to hotter growing seasons.
The findings illuminate the bind that farmers and consumers find themselves in. Agricultural production is a driver of climate change; it’s estimated to be responsible for somewhere between a quarter and a third of global greenhouse gas emissions. But it is also hampered by the changes in weather patterns associated with climate change. While producers struggle to harvest the same amounts of food in the face of droughts, heat waves, and hurricanes, shoppers are more likely to face climbing food prices.
The forward-looking study, published June 18 in Nature, analyzes the impact of warming temperatures on the caloric output of agricultural production. Researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability found that for every additional degree Celsius of warming above the 2000-2010 average, the global food system will produce roughly 120 fewer calories per person per day.
In a scenario where the Earth experiences 3 degrees Celsius of warming by the end of the century, that’s the equivalent of everyone on the planet missing out on breakfast, said Andrew Hultgren, lead author of the study.
Hultgren and his colleagues compiled a massive dataset on the production of six staple crops in more than 12,000 regions spread out over 54 countries. They then modeled how different warming scenarios might impact crop production; they also factored in how farmers around the world are adapting to higher temperatures. What they found is that, even with adaptation, global warming is associated with an “almost a linear decline in caloric output,” said Hultgren, who is also an assistant professor of agricultural and consumer economics at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
Measuring agricultural adaptation and its impact on output was important, said Hultgren, because research often assumes that farmers either adapt perfectly to global warming or not at all. The reality is that adapting to any growing season challenges comes at some cost, and farmers are constantly weighing the business benefits of implementing new techniques.
For example, one tool that corn farmers in the U.S. Midwest have to prevent hot days from thwarting their harvest is planting crop varietals that mature relatively quickly. “Corn is very sensitive to extreme heat,” said Hultgren, “so one very hot day can actually be bad for your entire growing season yield.”
But fast-maturing varietals also often produce lower yields overall, meaning these farmers likely can’t sell as much corn as they would have under cooler weather conditions, said Hultgren. “So there’s literally a cost of avoiding that extreme heat,” he said.
A drop in the global supply of crops will also lead to an uptick in food prices. But Hultgren noted that the impacts of reduced agricultural output won’t be evenly distributed. In wealthier countries such as the U.S., for example, those who can afford higher food prices will likely eat the cost. In poorer countries, these shifts could worsen food insecurity.
Additionally, rising temperatures will impact producers unevenly; the study estimated that in a high-warming climate scenario, corn farmers in the U.S. will experience 40 to 50 percent losses in yield by the end of the century. Based on these projections, “you wonder if the Corn Belt continues to be the Corn Belt,” said Hultgren. Meanwhile, other regional producers — like rice farmers in South and Southeast Asia — will see yields grow in the same time frame. “There are absolutely regional winners and losers in this global aggregate,” he said.
The historical study, published June 20 in Nature Geosciences, looks at one of the ways agricultural production contributes to global warming: land clearing. When farmers want to cultivate new cropland, they often start by removing the plants that are already growing there, whether that’s grass, shrubs, or trees. When land clearing happens in carbon-rich regions in the Global South, like the Amazon rainforest, it increases deforestation and carbon emissions, said Jessica Till, the study’s co-lead author.
“Deforestation in tropical areas is one of the most urgent issues and biggest areas of concern,” said Till, a research scientist at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. (Till and Hultgren were not involved in each other’s studies.) “The more land you clear, the more forest you remove to create cropland, that’s going to have a negative effect on the climate.”
Till and the other study authors examined this feedback loop between agriculture and the environment: When crop production becomes less efficient due to extreme weather and heat, farmers must acquire and clear more land to boost production. That expansion in croplands then in turn results in higher greenhouse gas emissions, which exacerbates warming and makes crop production even less efficient.
They found that, even with improvements in agricultural productivity (due to technological improvements like new seed varieties and precision fertilizer application), climate change was responsible for 88 million hectares, or 217 million acres, in cropland expansion globally — an area roughly twice the size of California — between 1992 and 2020.
They also determined that this expansion was led by major agricultural producers, including the United States, India, China, Russia, and Brazil. Unsurprisingly, these countries were also the top five highest emitters of greenhouse gas emissions stemming from climate-driven expansions in cropland.
Both Till and Hultgren noted that these shifts can also influence global trade. When certain regions see a decline in agricultural productivity, said Till, other regions will gain a competitive advantage in the international market for agricultural commodities.
Erwan Monier, co-director of the Climate Adaptation Research Center at the University of California Davis, said he was not surprised by either studies’ findings, and said they contribute to the growing body of research on climate impacts on agriculture.
But he added that both come with caveats. Monier noted that the Nature study on caloric output fails to consider possible future advances in technologies like genetic editing that could make crops much more resilient to climate change. He said the paper demonstrates that “in order to really limit the impact of climate on our ability to grow food, we’re going to need a scale of innovation and adaptation that is really substantial, and that’s going to be a real challenge.”
Referring to the Nature Geosciences paper on the feedback loop between agriculture and climate, Monier said that it similarly does not take into account how farmer behavior might change in response to global warming.
“The fact is we have an ability to change what grows where,” said Monier. In the U.S., for example, where corn and soy production reign, farmers could choose to plant different crops if they see yields fall consistently. These growers will not “continue growing corn with very low yields and invest more capital and land with very, very low returns,” said Monier. “Farmers are going to move away to something that actually is more valuable and grows well” — and that, in turn, could reduce the need to clear more land.
Monier acknowledged that the latter study might come across as quite pessimistic. But, he said, it underscores the importance of having difficult conversations now about how to grow enough food to feed the world’s population as temperatures climb.
In order to avoid serious losses in agricultural production, he said, climate researchers and institutions must work hand-in-hand with farmers, helping them understand the risks of global warming and seek out new ways of adapting. This work should be “bottom up,” said Monier, rather than “top down.” “We need to engage the people who are going to be actually growing the food.”
He added that this will involve work that extends beyond the academic sphere. “I don’t know if publishing in Nature and Nature Geoscience is the way to really drive the bottom-up adaptation at the scale that is necessary.”

What does climate change mean for agriculture? Less food, and more emissions

We're losing vital agricultural land. But is solar the main culprit?
This coverage is made possible through a partnership between Grist and WABE, Atlanta’s NPR station.
On a vast property in Lee County, in the heart of southwest Georgia, Tyler Huber raises sheep.
As the flock grazes, the sheep need somewhere to take a break from the Georgia sun.
“It is incredibly hot, the sun is just unavoidable, and the fact that they’ve got shade every 15 feet out here — it’s just the ideal environment, to have shade so close,” he said on a recent hot day.
The shade comes from solar panels, using that same relentless sunshine to generate energy.
The sheep, in turn, cut down on mowing costs for the solar farm. The flock loves chowing down on the vegetation under and around the panels, Huber said.
“If we’re able to grow this, which is just a buffet of everything they could ever want, they’re going to happily eat that down,” he explained.
Before solar developer Silicon Ranch bought this land, it used to have row crops — mostly corn and cotton — and beehives. Farmers can’t grow corn and cotton under solar panels, but this is still farmland for sheep and bees.
Scenes like this are increasingly common as power companies add more and more solar energy to keep up with rising demand for renewable electricity. Many of those solar panels are being built on farmland. The American Farmland Trust, or AFT, which tracks the conversion of farmland to other uses, projects that 80 percent of the acreage needed to scale up solar energy could be agricultural land. The trend has given rise to a wave of opposition from local activists to state legislatures and the White House.
But supporters say that often, farming and solar energy can coexist.
Lisa Davis with the Lee County Chamber of Commerce said the Silicon Ranch project, with its ongoing sheep and beehive operations, is different from what many expect when farmland gets sold or leased to solar companies.
“They envision in their head that you’ve got these big excavators and you just move everything out,” she said. “That is so not the case.”
The county actually paused solar development a few years ago over these concerns, and asked Valdosta State University to look into the issue. The resulting study found that the financial benefits to taxpayers outweigh the downsides because farmland gets a tax break in Georgia. Farmers pay property taxes on just 40 percent of the value of their land, but the county can collect full property taxes on land used for solar.
Davis said that can make a huge difference for rural communities.
“They’re never going to get big manufacturers or a lot of big commercial,” she said. “So the opportunity for having a solar project can mean a lot.”
Still, there’s been pushback to solar on farmland. A bill in Georgia’s legislature this year would have removed the farmland tax break for an entire farm if it adds solar — even when the solar is only on part of the land. That measure passed the Georgia House but not the Senate and could still return next year. Other states, including Ohio and Missouri, have also pursued limits on solar farm development.
The Trump administration, too, has said it wants to “disincentivize” solar development on farmland.
Loss of farmland is a major concern according to the AFT, which estimates that 2,000 acres of farmland are lost to non-agricultural uses every day. But in Georgia at least, the group said solar isn’t the main culprit.
“A lot of what we see in terms of farmland conversion pressure in Georgia is actually due to low density residential development,” said Mallory O’Steen, southeast senior program manager for AFT.
There are real concerns about solar, she said.
It can drive up the price of land. Silicon Ranch recently reached a settlement with farmers who claimed another one of its Georgia installations, this one in Stewart County, was causing runoff on their land. Last year, citing concerns about effects on wildlife, the Houston County board of commissioners voted against allowing a large solar farm.
But, O’Steen said, there are also benefits. Using part of their land for solar can guarantee farmers critical income even when weather or disease wipes out crops, for instance.
The key, O’Steen said, is for policymakers to guide solar development in a way that balances energy needs with farmers’ interests.

In Georgia, sheep on a solar farm is not a baaad idea

We're losing vital agricultural land. But is solar the main culprit?
This coverage is made possible through a partnership between Grist and WABE, Atlanta’s NPR station.
On a vast property in Lee County, in the heart of southwest Georgia, Tyler Huber raises sheep.
As the flock grazes, the sheep need somewhere to take a break from the Georgia sun.
“It is incredibly hot, the sun is just unavoidable, and the fact that they’ve got shade every fifteen feet out here — it’s just the ideal environment, to have shade so close,” he said on a recent hot day.
The shade comes from solar panels, using that same relentless sunshine to generate energy.
The sheep, in turn, cut down on mowing costs for the solar farm. The flock loves chowing down on the vegetation under and around the panels, Huber said.
“If we’re able to grow this, which is just a buffet of everything they could ever want, they’re going to happily eat that down,” he explained.
Before solar developer Silicon Ranch bought this land, it used to have row crops — mostly corn and cotton — and beehives. Farmers can’t grow corn and cotton under solar panels, but this is still farmland for sheep and bees.
Scenes like this are increasingly common as power companies add more and more solar energy to keep up with rising demand for renewable electricity. Many of those solar panels are being built on farmland. The American Farmland Trust, which tracks the conversion of farmland to other uses, projects that 80 percent of the acreage needed to scale up solar energy could be agricultural land. The trend has given rise to a wave of opposition from local activists to state legislatures and the White House.
But supporters say, often, farming and solar energy can coexist.
Lisa Davis with the Lee County Chamber of Commerce said the Silicon Ranch project, with its ongoing sheep and beehive operations, is different from what many expect when farmland gets sold or leased to solar companies.
“They envision in their head that you’ve got these big excavators and you just move everything out,” she said. “That is so not the case.”
The county actually paused solar development a few years ago over these concerns, and asked Valdosta State University to look into the issue. The resulting study found that the financial benefits to taxpayers outweigh the downsides because farmland gets a tax break in Georgia. Farmers pay property taxes on just 40 percent of the value of their land, but the county can collect full property taxes on land used for solar.
Davis said that can make a huge difference for rural communities.
“They’re never going to get big manufacturers or a lot of big commercial,” she said. “So the opportunity for having a solar project can mean a lot.”
Still, there’s been pushback to solar on farmland. A bill in Georgia’s legislature this year would have removed the farmland tax break for an entire farm if it adds solar — even when the solar is only on part of the land. That measure passed the Georgia House but not the Senate and could still return next year. Other states, including Ohio and Missouri, have also pursued limits on solar farm development.
The Trump administration, too, has said it wants to “disincentivize” solar development on farmland.
Loss of farmland is a major concern according to the AFT, which estimates that 2,000 acres of farmland are lost to non-agricultural uses every day. But in Georgia at least, the group said solar isn’t the main culprit.
“A lot of what we see in terms of farmland conversion pressure in Georgia is actually due to low density residential development,” said Mallory O’Steen, southeast senior program manager for AFT.
There are real concerns about solar, she said.
It can drive up the price of land. Silicon Ranch recently reached a settlement with farmers who claimed another one of its Georgia installations, this one in Stewart County, was causing runoff on their land. Last year, citing concerns about effects on wildlife, the Houston County board of commissioners voted against allowing a large solar farm.
But, O’Steen said, there are also benefits. Using part of their land for solar can guarantee farmers critical income even when weather or disease wipes out crops, for instance.
The key, O’Steen said, is for policymakers to guide solar development in a way that balances energy needs with farmers’ interests.

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