As the Climate Crisis Heats Our Ocean, Trump Is Tossing the Thermometer

At a time when ocean heat, the slowing of the Gulf Stream, and other major changes are sending shock waves through scientific and decision-making circles, we need greater understanding of what we’re facing, not self-imposed blind spots.



A National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration data collecting buoy is moored in the Indian Ocean.
(Photo by David Zimmerman/ NOAA)

Erika Spanger
Jun 06, 2026

Union of Concerned Scientists/Blog


It’s easy for us land dwellers to forget that we live on a water planet, more than 70% of it covered by a vast ocean. But we are entering an age—or more accurately, have created an age—when that fact will be impossible to ignore. With global climate change, the seas are rising, yes, but they are also warming, slowly but steadily, and that warmth is now reaching levels that can drive profound changes here on land. Many of those changes have begun, many are on display this year, and some will have seismic consequences going forward.

Almost as shocking as the scale of these changes are the Trump administration’s efforts to dismantle the very scientific instruments that enable us to understand them. We’ll get there. But first, a little immersion into our water planet to better understand what it means to overheat it and force the ocean to compensate.
Earth, Despite the Name, Is a Water Planet



‘Absolutely Crazy’: Horror as Trump Moves to Dismantle Crucial Ocean Monitoring System

A more representative, less terra-centric view of our 70% water planet.

 (Photo by NOAA/NASA GOES via Smithsonian)



A quick refresher on Earth’s ocean. I mean, where did it even come from, all this water?

After Earth’s molten formation 4.6 billion years ago, the planet gradually cooled below the boiling point of water and, fueled by steam released from volcanoes, it rained for thousands of years, filling the low-lying surface of the planet. An era of bombardment by icy asteroids provided a huge additional volume of water. And voila, a water planet was born, almost entirely covered by one massive ocean. Tectonic activity eventually produced large land masses and, over time, both plate movement and global temperature fluctuations have greatly changed the shape of the ocean—and the land, our default perspective—e.g., tying more or less water up in ice. But with the exception of a couple of global ice ages, the liquid ocean has always dominated Earth’s surface. We’ve almost always been a “blue planet,” and always a water planet.
Water Manages Heat—and Thus Life—on Earth

This water was the birthplace of life on Earth. Indeed, water is considered the birthplace of carbon-based life anywhere, which is why scientists search for it in other solar systems. It took at least 500 million years for the first life to form in the ocean (~4.1 billion years ago), and once it did, life remained simple and aquatic for the vast majority of Earth’s history. It took fungi, plants, and especially animals big evolutionary leaps to venture out of the ocean (and much of it did not; today, nearly 80% of Earth’s animal life, measured in biomass, lives in the oceans), first to the tidal zone, then the coasts, and even today, with terrestrial life spanning most dry land, the ocean continues to exert tremendous influence on that life. It does this through a range of mechanisms. Chief among them, our ocean plays the dominant role in managing the Earth’s heat and making large regions of the planet habitable.

The ocean has spared us land dwellers from the true ~36°C consequences of our fossil-fuel burning actions. And we can’t tackle 1.5°C?

A core way the ocean does this is by absorbing solar radiation at tropical latitudes and distributing that heat via vast ocean currents to cooler parts of the world. These currents then distribute water that has cooled at the poles back toward the equator. Without this mechanism, the heat that makes life possible even in the otherwise frigid latitudes would remain concentrated around an intolerably hot equator. In this sense, the oceans are a great regulator of the global climate, tamping down extremes and supporting Goldilocks-style just-right regional climates around the world.

The oceans are also the primary source of moisture and precipitation—basically, weather—to land. As the sun heats ocean surface water, it evaporates, creating humid air that is transported by forces like winds and the Earth’s rotation, delivering precipitation, the water that makes terrestrial life possible.

So, if the role of the ocean in managing Earth’s temperature is fundamental to life on Earth, what happens when we overheat it?
The Ocean: an Unfathomably Huge Heat Buffer

A depiction of how the Earth has dealt with the energy imbalance created mainly by burning fossil fuels and adding heat-trapping molecules to the atmosphere. The oceans have spared us the true brunt of global warming, storing 91% of excess heat, up from 89% when this visual was created three years ago.(Graphic by Copernicus)



The ocean is estimated to have absorbed 91% of the excess heat, caused mainly by the burning of fossil fuels, that has been trapped in the Earth’s atmosphere. This heat storage is possible because of the ocean’s specific heat capacity—i.e., water takes a lot more energy to warm than land or air. Direct absorption of sunlight, the main way the ocean absorbs heat, depends on the level of albedo present, where darker surfaces, like the ocean surface, absorb more of the sun’s energy than light surfaces, like polar ice caps, which reflect it back to space. But other mechanisms, like heat exchange with the atmosphere, warm the ocean, too.

Without that excess-heat absorption and storage in recent decades, life on land would have been thrown into chaos (at best) by skyrocketing temperatures by now. According to one study, the heat taken up by the upper layer of the ocean between 1955 and 2010 was enough to warm the atmosphere by a jaw-dropping 36°C. This massive, climate-mediating role of the ocean puts our thus-far unsuccessful human efforts to keep warming to 1.5 or 2°C in sharp relief. That is, the ocean has spared us land dwellers from the true ~36°C consequences of our fossil-fuel burning actions. And we can’t tackle 1.5°C?

The Buffer Is Getting Thin

The vastness of the ocean means it requires tremendous inputs to respond. But the excess heat that carbon emissions have trapped since the start of the Industrial Revolution is one such tremendous input. Major recent research captures the scale in this way, according to one of a new study’s 50 authors, John Abraham: the heat absorbed by the ocean in 2025 alone is “like 12 Hiroshima bombs being detonated each second, for every minute, hour, and day for the entire year.”

The absorption of that heat means that the average temperature of the oceans has been steadily rising, and now those temperatures are reaching levels that fuel impacts, including on land, that we will be unable to ignore.

Overall, the ocean has broken average temperature records every year for the past nine years. Temperatures have increased most at the surface, where sea surface temperatures have warmed roughly 0.8°C between 1901 and 2020, and recently broke new monthly high records for thirteen consecutive months, starting in mid-2023. But deeper layers are warming, too. The chart below shows ocean heat content at different depths. And while slow ocean circulation constrains the movement of heat to great depths, ~20% of total warming is occurring below 700 meters.

(Credit: ECCO https://ecco-group.org/ohc.htm)


So, Where Are We Today?

The NOAA sea surface temperature (SST) data in the chart below shows 2026 SSTs rising to rival the record-breaking levels of 2024. This is influenced by the formation of a Super El Niño. Outlooks point toward new record high ocean temperatures this year, potentially creating the new hottest year on record for Earth in 2027.

2026 sea surface temperatures are now rivaling those of 2024, the warmest year on record. (Graphic by Copernicus)


Climate change is the clear driver here. Thanks to tools like Climate Central’s Climate Shift Index (CSI), we can now see the role of climate change in daily sea surface temperatures, and thus in marine heatwaves and other anomalies. According to the CSI, this week, both the notable heat in the Indian Ocean and that in the Equatorial Pacific (where the El Niño is forming) are made substantially more likely due to climate change.

The role of climate change in driving warm ocean surface temperatures. 

(Graphic by Climate Central)

Symptoms of the Ocean’s Fever

These temperatures are now manifesting in impacts around the world and pointing toward accelerating change. In follow up blogs, we will unpack these symptoms in some detail, but to name significant ones:

Warmer water hastens the melting of “ocean-terminating” ice sheets (i.e., land-based ice connected to the ocean), contributing to sea-level rise; creates a warming feedback loop by shrinking sea ice and increasing the ocean-warming albedo affect; enhances ocean stratification, where warmer surface and cooler deep waters fail to mix and redistribute heat; this in turn can drive hypoxic conditions, starving deeper waters of oxygen; can slow major ocean currents (thermohaline circulation), which are driven by changes in density, in turn driven by water temperature and salinity; and can super-charge storm systems, from tropical cyclones to Nor’easters, causing stronger and more rapidly accelerating storms.

We have created an era of ocean heat consequences and now we must figure out how to live in it, even as we work to correct it.

Then there is the acute heat that manifests in marine heatwaves, a condition that is now chronic and widespread in oceans around the world. In 2023, an estimated 96% of the ocean by area experienced a marine heatwave. The most significant heatwaves (all recent) have disrupted marine food webs and caused major ecological harm, resulting in widespread, prolonged coral reef bleaching, large-scale wildlife deaths, and damaged commercial fisheries.

Given the ocean’s significant role in driving or influencing vastly-consequential terrestrial climate patterns, like the Asian Monsoon, ocean overheating has implications for the human systems that are attuned to those patterns, from water supply, to agriculture and food security, energy production, and more. We’ll be tracking ocean temperatures, reporting on developments, and digging into these implications in subsequent blogs.
An Age of Consequence for Warming a Water Planet

The tremendous capacity of the ocean to store away heat meant that the consequences of warming our planet were slower to be made visible. It now means that an enormous amount of excess heat energy now exists in the oceans, to be gradually released to other Earth systems in forms like direct heat to the atmosphere (as we see in El Nino years), melting of ice, and the supply of sea-surface heat that fuels tropical cyclones, to name a few.

It also means that releasing of that heat, slowing ocean warming, and eventually cooling the ocean cannot be accomplished on practical human timescales, but rather in hundreds to thousands of years. We have created an era of ocean heat consequences and now we must figure out how to live in it, even as we work to correct it.
Our Need to Understand Our Changing Planet Meets the Trump Administration

An essential requirement for meeting the era of ocean heat is better understanding how our oceans and climate are changing, and for this, we have global ocean and climate monitoring infrastructure. Here in the US, the Trump administration is attempting—through staff cuts, budget cuts, eliminating data and information (e.g., datasets and websites taken down), and dismantling our monitoring infrastructure—to make ocean, land, and atmospheric change harder to see.

It’s hard to think of a more monumental failure than overheating an ocean planet and handing it off to younger generations.

Most recently, the administration ordered the “descoping” of the National Science Foundation’s Ocean Observing Infrastructure Project, a system of sensing and data gathering infrastructure distributed in the North Atlantic and Pacific. Information is still sparse about this dismantling; the process is not transparent. What’s clear is that, at a time when ocean heat, the slowing of the Gulf Stream, and other major changes are sending shock waves through scientific and decision-making circles, we need greater understanding of what we’re facing, not self-imposed blind spots. Sending taxpayer-funded ships on taxpayer-funded missions to essentially unplug functional taxpayer-funded ocean monitoring systems is baffling. Given the fossil fuel industry’s influence on the Trump agenda, it could look like a massive attempted cover up, except that the crime—warming the planet—is ongoing, and there’s really no covering up the changing climate, because we live here.

The ocean has become easy for the wealthier people of the world to ignore: a place to extract resources and dump waste. But this titan is now rumbling into a new kind of activation, more central character than backdrop. It’s hard to think of a more monumental failure than overheating an ocean planet and handing it off to younger generations. History won’t look kindly on the leaders of this time who ignore the science and the obvious signals. May it reflect that they were forced by their people, in time frames that made a difference, to phase out fossil fuels and invest in a safe and just climate future for all on this rare water planet.



© 2023 Union of Concerned Scientists


Erika Spanger
Erika Spanger, the director of strategic climate analytics in the Climate and Energy program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, researches, writes, and speaks about US climate change impacts and preparedness.
Full Bio >

 

Uncertainty and Diverse Approach Slow Orders for Alternative Fuel Vessels

CMA CGM took delivery of the largest LNG-powered containership, CMA CGM Notre (24,212 TEU) Dame, as the first of 10 in a new class (CMA CGM)

Published Jun 4, 2026 6:19 PM by The Maritime Executive

 

The pace of orders for alternative fuel vessels has slowed in 2026, reports DNV in its latest analysis of the orderbook from the DNV Alternative Fuels Insights platform. It reports that by the end of May 2026, the share of alternative-fueled vessels in total tonnage was “notably lower” than over the same period in 2025. 

“While the pace of alternative-fueled contracting has varied compared to 2025,” says Jason Stefanatos, Global Decarbonization Director at DNV Maritime, “what is also becoming clear is that fuel choice is no longer approached as a single bet. Owners are increasingly treating it as a portfolio decision, managing fuel optionality, timing of investment, and exposure to future regulation as they navigate long-life asset decisions.”

Owners have to weigh the balance between the investment in new technologies and the dangers of creating stranded assets that could become obsolete before their planned economic lives. Weighing on the industry is the continued uncertainty and diversity in the regulatory environment. Last October, the United States and others succeeded in scuttling the International Maritime Organization’s push for the Net Zero Framework, which was further compounded by the failure to show a clear path in the April 2026 meeting. Many have said this creates the possibility of divergent, regional regulatory regimes.

DNV calculates that so far in 2026, there have been a total of 119 orders for alternative-fuel vessels, but the orders are focused on the more established fuels. The majority are for LNG (50 percent), with LPG/ethane carriers running a close second (42 percent). The orders for methanol/ethanol lagged at just four in the first five months, reports DNV, the same as ammonia, and just one order for hydrogen.

This varies from the recent past, when methanol seemed to be gaining ground on LNG. At one point, they were nearly equal for new orders. With LNG showing new momentum, DNV calculates that there are now more than twice as many LNG orders (663) as methanol (313), which, however, remains in second place overall in the orderbook. LPG remains a niche with just 197 orders.

The pace of the orders also varies by sector. Containerships accounted for 42 of the 60 orders for LNG vessels, followed by 12 orders for car carriers. 

“As in previous years, ordering of alternative-fueled vessels has been led by the container segment, but dynamics are shifting,” explains Stefanatos. “While activity remains strong, the focus has moved towards smaller vessels, with fewer very large containerships, which are historically more likely to adopt alternative fuels, being ordered. At the same time, we are seeing increased activity in tanker and bulker segments.”

After packing the orderbook for ultra-large container vessels, and pushing the level to records, the focus shifted among many of the carriers to feeders that can be used to support their hub strategies. DNV highlights that most of the feeders and even mid-size container vessels still use conventional fuel, in part due to supply issues and smaller ports. This is being reflected in the orders.

Some segments, however, are focusing on LNG. For example, The Maritime Executive calculates that among large ocean-going cruise ships, half the orderbook is for LNG dual-fuel vessels (49 percent by number of vessels). By tonnage, it is even more dramatic, with 64 percent of the cruise ship orders incorporating LNG dual-fuel propulsion. Currently, about a third of the cruise ships in service are LNG, while the first methanol-ready cruise ships have also been delivered.

DNV’s data shows that conventional fuel continues to dominate the broader commercial shipping industry, where 95 percent of ships in operation (by tonnage) and 99 percent (by number of ships) operate on conventional fuel. Large ships are leading the take-up for alternative fuels, with 35 percent of the orderbook (by gross tonnage) incorporating alternative fuel capabilities, while overall just 15 percent of the orders are for alternative-fueled vessels.

The trends were continuing in May 2026. DNV reports a total of 36 orders for alternative-fueled vessels. However, 26 were for LPG/ethane carriers, just eight for LNG-fueled vessels, and two ethanol-fueled bulk carriers. Notably, there were no methanol-fueled orders while ammonia and hydrogen continue to wait for further developments in the technology and infrastructure.

While the pace has slowed for the adoption of alternative fuels, DNV believes owners are still advancing fuel and technology decisions against a backdrop of evolving regulatory and market conditions.

BHP Tests Out Tallow-Based Biofuel Blend With GCMD's Assistance

Berge Lyngor (VesselFinder / Graeme Waller)

Published Jun 3, 2026 2:36 PM by The Maritime Executive

In a development that could increase availability of biofuels, Australian mining giant BHP and Singapore's Global Centre for Maritime Decarbonisation (GCMD) said they are piloting the use of an unusual kind of blended bio-based bunker fuel made partially from waste animal fat.

The impact of blending cooking oil and waste animal fat could be significant, considering that until now, biofuels for global shipping have relied heavily on used cooking oil, a feedstock whose availability is approaching its projected limits. For this reason, the production of biofuels from waste animal fats is seen as a promising option to expand the supply.

The BHP-chartered Newcastlemax bulk carrier Berge Lyngor (206,330 dwt), owned and operated by Berge Bulk and used to transport iron ore from Western Australia to China, is being used in the bio-blend pilot project. In early May, the 300-meter bulk carrier — which sails under the UK flag and was built in 2009 — bunkered in Singapore with a B100 bio-blend of 50 percent tallow-derived biodiesel and 50 percent used cooking oil.

The biodiesel was sourced and supplied by HAMR Energy, while the cooking oil was supplied by Mitsui & Co. Energy Trading Singapore. Mitsui also blended the fuel, while Dan-Bunkering coordinated and executed the bunkering operation.

By running on the bio-blend, Berge Lyngor had the potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by about 79 percent per voyage compared to sailing on VLSFO, according to the partners.

BHP and GCMD say the pilot project is needed to assess how biofuels from multiple feedstocks can be blended, handled, and used under real-world operating conditions. Challenges include fuel quality, handling, traceability, and onboard vessel performance.

Understanding onboard performance is key, since biofuels derived from different feedstocks have different properties that may impact operations. On the downside, these can include potential corrosion from oxidation and fuel system clogging caused by wax formation.

The outcomes are expected to shed light on the practical steps needed to integrate biofuel blends from different feedstocks into existing supply chains — a development that is expected to provide shipowners and operators with greater flexibility for fuel buying.

"As the world's largest bulk charterer, we want to continue to test and trial alternative fuels that will help increase supply and send industry demand signals for further investment," said Emma Roberts, BHP Vice President, Maritime & Supply Chain Excellence. "At a time when fuel security is vitally important to global trade, building opportunities for future biofuels is critical."

Top image: Berge Lyngor (VesselFinder / Graeme Waller)

It’s Time for a Progressive Policy to Protect Agricultural Supply Chains

Price floors and supply management programs seem common sense to policymakers when it comes to oil and minerals, but what about US farmers and our overall food system?


Glenn Morris, 83, harvests corn on October 11, 2021 in Princeton, Indiana.
(Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

George Naylor

Patti Naylor

Laurel Levin
Jun 03, 2026

Common Dreams

The race to obtain critical minerals and the war in Iran have not only exposed a dangerous dependence on fossil fuels and mining, but they have also uncovered something more surprising—Republicans in Congress actually understand progressive agriculture policy. They just don’t want to admit it.

In February, Vice President JD Vance announced at the State Department that the administration must institute a price floor to protect the US critical mineral market. “This morning, the Trump administration is proposing a concrete mechanism to return the global critical minerals market to a healthier, more competitive state: a preferential trade zone for critical minerals protected from external disruptions through enforceable price floors,” Vance explained. Meanwhile, the US—and other countries around the world—are deploying oil reserves to buffer price shocks caused by the Israel-US attacks on Iran. Price floors and supply management programs seem common sense to these policymakers when it comes to oil and minerals, but what about US farmers and our overall food system?

Like oil and critical minerals, food and agriculture supply chains, such as corn, soy, and dairy, are vulnerable to global shocks, including extreme weather events, wars, and other supply disruptions. The public also needs to understand that without inflation-adjusted price floors, agricultural commodity prices may sink to disastrously low levels, leaving farmers no choice but to increase production with more chemicals and GMO seeds at the expense of our land and water. Congress and the US Department of Agriculture can avoid low prices by creating reserves accumulated during large harvests and, just like the federal petroleum reserve, bringing them back on the market to stabilize prices in times of shortage. We can all agree that food shortages would be disastrous, so guaranteeing its citizens food security should be imperative for any democratic government.

So while Republicans can recognize the importance of price floors and supply management during this administration, Democrats should look at history to understand how the same instruments were developed for agriculture during the Great Depression under the Democratic Party’s New Deal. The twin crises of farm bankruptcies and the Dust Bowl spurred militant farm organizations to demand a response from the federal government. The response was parity farm bills that stopped farm bankruptcies and stabilized the farm economy so that conservation measures and preservation of diversified farming could lead to food security and a balanced economy. Federal leadership in the White House and Congress recognized that price and supply management benefited both farmers and society as a whole. The policy was simple and transparent: The farm bill would ensure that during years of good harvests, public grain reserves would purchase the surplus at the parity rate (price floor adjusted for inflation) and store it to protect consumers in future times of shortage.

A productive agricultural economy that conserves our resources, challenges agricultural consolidation, and offers economic opportunity in rural communities should be a top priority for all our citizens.

However, both parties abandoned this common-sense approach to farm policy in the early 1950s, so that costs of farming have totally outpaced commodity prices. Subsequently, headlines warning of a farm crisis in 2026, like during the Great Depression and the 1980s, are not uncommon. The prices paid to farmers for commodities such as corn, soybeans, wheat, and dairy have dropped to record lows in real dollars. Over the years, this imbalance has led to the loss of family farms, the consolidation of agribusiness and food processing monopolies, along with their profits benefiting handsomely. Stabilizing the ratio of farm prices to farm costs (the correct goal of any Farm Bill) is the key to a sustainable agriculture that avoids soil loss, water pollution, and the decline of rural communities.

A supply management program would not only help revive family operations and rural economies but would also be essential to combat the expansion of confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs) and lower costs for taxpayers. As reported by Food & Water Watch, CAFOs are a disaster for our climate, air, and water, especially for nearby communities. CAFOs are among the most egregious features of today’s low-price, commodity-based industrial agriculture. Thousands of livestock (owned or vertically integrated with large food processors) are confined in small facilities without fresh air or sunlight and fed cheap corn and soy.

CAFOs have been replacing conscientious family farmers who are stewards of the soil and their animals. When family farmers are forced out of livestock production, they face the dilemma of “get big or get out” and often have no farming alternatives other than to tear up their pastures to grow corn and soybeans that will end up feeding animals in CAFOs.

The Trump administration is applying often-forgotten policy instruments to sustain our fossil fuel dependence and our high-tech future, rather than prioritizing a resilient, sustainable economy. Managing a price floor and creating federal food reserves in the agriculture sector are necessary to combat the adverse effects of food processor monopolization, farm consolidation, soil and water degradation, and external shocks, such as wars.

A productive agricultural economy that conserves our resources, challenges agricultural consolidation, and offers economic opportunity in rural communities should be a top priority for all our citizens. “We love farmers” and “We put America’s farmers first” are just political slogans to get votes with no substance behind them. These slogans lead to the usual sleight of hand to send taxpayer dollars to get some farmers through the next planting season. This policy leaves the disastrous cheap commodity regime in place—encouraging CAFO production and exporting commodities at a loss.

The administration’s discovery of the logical policy of price floors and reserves for oil and minerals must open new doors to applying these logical and transparent mechanisms to agriculture to restore the security of family farmers and conservation of our precious resources—after all, we can’t eat petroleum or precious minerals.

Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.


George Naylor
George Naylor has been farming his family farm in west central Iowa for 50 years, the last 14 years as organic. He is a board member of Family Farm Defenders and Center for Food Safety, and past president of National Family Farm Coalition.
Full Bio >

Patti Naylor
Patti Naylor is an organic farmer in Iowa and president of Family Farm Defenders. She also participates as civil society in processes of the United Nations Committee on World Food Security.
Full Bio >

Laurel Levin
Laurel Levin is a research assistant with the Race, Climate, & Agrarian Justice Lab at American University and a junior fellow at Climate & Community Institute. In her work, she bridges her decade-long experience in the climate justice movement with her current work to help advance just food and farm policy.
Full Bio >

Billionaires Have Two Parties. Why Do the People of America’s Great Plains Have Only One?

Abandoned by the party they once considered their own, many Democrats across vast areas of the nation’s heartland turned to the Republicans to vent their anger at a system that was screwing them.

“Working-class voters and family farmers sensed that the party’s priorities were changing long before Chuck Schumer said the quiet part out loud,” writes Leopold.
(Photo by Shelley Pauls on Unsplash)

Les Leopold
Jun 03, 2026

Common Dreams

Not so long ago the Democrats wielded significant power in the Great Plains states. In 1990, 10 of the 18 Senators from Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, Missouri, Iowa, South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana, and Idaho were Democrats. Today, none are.

In much of this area, the Democrats are no longer functioning as a competitive second party. They lose by 25 percent or more in 21 of the 30 congressional districts in these states. By my rough count, the Democrats did not even run candidates in about 40 percent of the region’s 1,400 state legislative races. Clearly, something has gone profoundly wrong.

What happened?

During the Reagan era (from his election in 1980 and up through the early 1990s) Great Plains Democrats resurrected the populist traditions of the late 19th-century People’s Party, the progressives of the early 20th century, and the Nonpartisan league a few years later. The core ideology of this tradition focused on protecting family farmers and workers from the rapaciousness of big corporations and banks. The political opponents of the Reagan Revolution followed in their path and enough of them were in Congress in 1983 to form the Congressional Populist Caucus.

“It is political malpractice to abdicate so much of America’s heartland.”

These 14 congresspersons adopted the populist moniker and fought against corporatized free trade deals, the high Federal Reserve interest rates, plant closings, anti-union legislation, and farm foreclosures. And they did so in alliance with, and in support of, dozens of community groups including abortion and gay rights organizations.

But in 1990, a powerful segment of the Democratic establishment created the centrist Democratic Leadership Council and made a firm decision to embrace corporations, agribusiness, free trade, and Wall Street deregulation, while moving away from labor unions and family farmers. In the 1992 presidential primaries, Bill Clinton was the Democratic Leadership Council’s representative, while Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa represented the progressive populists. As we know, Clinton won.

In When the Democrats Lost the Heartland Corey Haala shows that this turn to neoliberalism was not the inevitable result of technological advances, nor was it predetermined by the iron laws of capitalism. Rather, it was a victory by one interest group within the Democratic Party over another, and the consequences were felt immediately.

After the centrists won, they starved the Great Plains Democrats of funds and legislative victories, leaving them with little to offer their constituents—the populist-oriented farmers and workers struggling to survive against corporate power.

Working-class voters and family farmers sensed that the party’s priorities were changing long before Chuck Schumer said the quiet part out loud:

“For every blue-collar Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania, we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs of Philadelphia, and you can repeat that in Ohio and Illinois and Wisconsin.”

The same logic could easily have been applied to the Great Plains.

Abandoned by the party they once considered their own, many Democrats turned to the Republicans to vent their anger at a system that was screwing them.

Rebuild the old or build something new?

Despite this fundamental ideological shift, it’s hard for progressives to move away from the Democratic Party, especially given the rise of MAGA. Don’t we have to do everything we can to support Democratic candidates in order to win back Congress and stop the fascist takeover of America?

Of course, defeating the MAGA Republicans is crucial. And the fortunes of the Democrats are a real concern in blue and marginal districts where new seats can be won and old seats can be held. Third-party candidates in those competitive districts would only serve as spoilers likely to help elect MAGA Republicans.

But that’s not the case in the ruby red states in which the Democrats have given up on 40 percent of the local races, and where they lose congressional seats by 25 percent or more.

In these areas there is nothing to spoil.

It is political malpractice to abdicate so much of America’s heartland. One strategy is for progressives to recapture the Democratic Party in the Great Plains and elsewhere, infuse it with new energy, change its neoliberal brand, and run new working-class candidates across the board.

But a new survey by the Center for Working Class Politics shows that many of those who have given up on Trump show little interest in voting for Democrats. And a recent New York Times/Siena survey reports 43 percent of registered voters nationally are dissatisfied with both parties. That’s a hell of a headwind to overcome, given how tarnished the Democratic Party brand has become.

Something new that isn’t blue?

Dan Osborn’s race for the US Senate in Nebraska points in another direction. This former local labor leader is running against both parties, what he calls “the two-party doom loop,” in an unabashed progressive populist campaign—the Nebraska Fairness Plan. As he says “It’s not a party’s platform or written by consultants. It’s written for the people who punch a clock and wonder why nobody in Washington is fighting for them.”

Osborn is appealing to independents, disaffected Democrats, and even disgruntled Republicans. So far, the race is a toss-up in a state where Republicans outnumber Democrats by nearly two to one. The Democratic nominee, Cindy Burbank, has said she will avoid playing the spoiler by dropping out before ballots are printed if she doesn’t see a path to victory.

Osborn’s effort (and the polling we report on in The Billionaires Have Two Parties, We Need a Party of Our Own) strongly suggests that the best path forward in the Great Plains districts largely abanoned by the Democrats is to create a new organization by and for working people to run independent candidates.

That requires a break from the Democrats. Osborn says he will not caucus with either major party, and attacks both billionaire parties that have left so many working people high and dry. Independent working-class candidates will need to take strong progressive populist positions that protect jobs, create new ones, and save what’s left of family farming—positions with strong support across the Great Plains.

Working people can build independent political power even in places where the Democratic Party has ceased to function as a competitive second party.

And progressive political activists will need to get comfortable with turning neoliberalism on its head—putting people instead of capital in the center of our economy. That means promoting real job creation, not public-private partnerships that enrich corporations and rarely produce new jobs.

We will need to promote strong policies like “the right to a job at a living wage, provided by the public sector if the private sector fails to do so.”

As radical as this policy seems, polling shows again and again that it is very popular. People want stable, secure jobs even if the government has to step in to provide them.

Rebuilding progressive populism in the Great Plains requires the kind of boldness that challenged corporate power from the 1880s onward. Those populists were able to grow their appeal nationally, and their efforts led to progressive reforms like the graduated income tax, anti-monopoly moves against the robber barons, the formation of public universities and colleges, and even a public bank in North Dakota, among other successes.

We must escape the corporatist framework that governs today’s Democratic Party, which appeals to wealthy donors, admires the billionaire class, and has given up on the working class it considers socially backward.

Can it be done? Not quickly. Not easily. But the Great Plains once produced some of the most powerful populist movements in American history that challenged concentrated wealth, built durable institutions, and won reforms that reshaped the country. We won’t know what is possible until we try again.

We need to leave our blue bubbles, talk face-to-face with alienated working people, and rebuild an independent politics rooted in work, community, and economic security.

And really, where better to spread populism than in America’s heartland, “where the wind comes sweeping down the plain.”

If we dare to act boldly, perhaps we can once again become the wind.

*****

The questions raised in this essay are explored in much greater depth in my new book, The Billionaires Have Two Parties, We Need One of Our Own: How Working People Can Build Independent Political Power.

The book examines why so many working people have abandoned the Democratic Party, why independents are now the largest political bloc in many states, what voters in the heartland actually want from politics, and whether a new working-class political organization can be built without acting as a spoiler.

Drawing on new polling and historical research, it argues that working people can build independent political power even in places where the Democratic Party has ceased to function as a competitive second party.

If these arguments resonate with you, I hope you’ll take a look at the book.

All book proceeds support our Reversing Runaway Inequality educational programs for working people.


Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.


Les Leopold


Les Leopold is the executive director of the Labor Institute and author of the new book, “The Billionaires Have Two Parties, We Need a Party of Our Own” (2026). His previous books include: “Wall Street’s War on Workers: How Mass Layoffs and Greed Are Destroying the Working Class and What to Do About It" (2024); "Runaway Inequality: An Activist's Guide to Economic Justice" (2015); and “The Man Who Hated Work and Loved Labor: The Life and Times of Tony Mazzocchi” (2007). Read more of his work on his substack here.
Full Bio >

Big Oil is the New Big Tobacco; It’s Time They Paid for the Damage

Massachusetts must pass a Climate Superfund Act to hold big polluters accountable and keep our communities safe from climate harm.


Climate activists protest on the first day of the Exxon Mobil trial outside the New York State Supreme Court building on October 22, 2019 in New York City.
(Photo by Angela Weiss / AFP via Getty Images)

Susan Racine
May 29, 2026

Common Dreams


Early in my career as a primary care physician, I found myself steering my car through driving rain around downed power lines and fallen tree branches for a shift in urgent care. I was already nervous about my new role. Having a hurricane didn’t help. I remember feeling overwhelmed and inadequate when I had to refer a patient to the already overburdened ER. The deep wound a roof shingle had carved in their scalp was too much for me. Hurricane Bob was a Category 3 hurricane and it took 18 people’s lives and caused today’s equivalent of ~$3.5 billion in damages. The fear, the injuries, and the losses all fell on the local community.

That was decades ago. Nowadays—from Texas floods, to Western wildfires, to deadly heatwaves across the Midwest and Northeast—communities across the country are paying the price. Severe storms are more frequent because of climate change caused by burning fossil fuels. Extreme weather events are causing traumatic injuries, post-traumatic stress disorders, medication shortages, and death. Heatwaves are more frequent and more dangerous, causing heart attacks, asthma attacks, kidney failure, and death. Floods are ravaging our towns, roads, bridges, and farms, overwhelming local businesses and thinly stretched municipal budgets. Public health and infrastructure costs from these crises are mounting. And fossil fuel air pollution—accounting for ~95% of total air pollution in the state—currently kills over 2,700 residents each year in Massachusetts through heart disease, lung cancer, stroke, and chronic lung illness.




Meanwhile, the petrochemical corporations—who’ve knowingly fueled the climate crisis and spent tens of millions of dollars to sow disinformation—got off scot-free.

As a doctor, I can treat people for asthma from air pollution and dehydration from heatwaves, but if the root cause is not addressed, countless more will suffer. The enormity of this threat to public health led me to retire from primary care and join with those fighting for clean energy. We urgently need to stop burning fossil fuels, but we must also invest in resilience and adaptation projects, to safeguard Massachusetts communities against the climate harms they are already experiencing—from the flooding and erosion threatening residents and businesses in Boston and along the coast, to the droughts facing farmers in Western Mass, to the record-shattering heatwaves hitting the entire state this month.

In my medical practice, if I discovered a treatment I prescribed was harming my patients, I’d be ethically bound to speak out. It’s abundantly clear that the fossil fuel industry follows a different ethic.

Passing the state Climate Superfund Act is one step we must take, following in the footsteps of our Vermont and New York neighbors and coalition partners in the nationwide movement to hold big polluters accountable and keep our communities safe from climate harm. Passing a superfund in Massachusetts would allow us to build resiliency in our communities using funds from Big Oil’s checkbook. This act would require the biggest polluters to pay, based on their historical emissions, for projects across the Commonwealth—upgrading stormwater drains, protecting our coasts, installing energy-efficient cooling for seniors who swelter without AC, and offering preventive healthcare programs to treat those sickened by climate change. We desperately need these measures, and this gives us a fair way to pay for them. If you made a mess, you need to clean it up.

In my medical practice, if I discovered a treatment I prescribed was harming my patients, I’d be ethically bound to speak out. It’s abundantly clear that the fossil fuel industry follows a different ethic. Big Oil has known for more than 60 years about the harms their products were causing, but instead of putting people over profits, they have spent tens of millions to cover it up and lie to the public about the damage they were creating.

We can no longer afford to be complacent. It’s time for the Massachusetts legislature to stop “studying” this problem and start protecting its people with this legislation that the majority of its residents support. It’s financially and morally imperative that we pass the Climate Superfund Act. It’s time to make polluters pay for the health of our Commonwealth.


Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.


Susan Racine
Susan Racine, MD is a semi-retired primary care doctor in Boston, Massachusetts. She is co-chair for Greater Boston Physicians for Social Responsibility and dedicated to fighting climate change and other threats to the environment.
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From Gas to Groceries, Rural Americans Paying Heaviest Price for Trump’s Iran War

A Center for American Progress analysis found that the war is “forcing rural households to pay at least $26 more per week at the pump and threatening to push grocery prices even higher in the months ahead.”


A worker fuels a tractor on a farm in Rocky Hill, Connecticut on April 2, 2026.
(Photo by Mark Mirko/Connecticut Public via Getty Images)

Brett Wilkins
May 15, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

President Donald Trump won the 2024 election largely on a promise to alleviate the affordability crisis, but an analysis published Friday underscores how rural Americans—the bedrock of the MAGA base—are disproportionately paying the price for the US-Israeli war of choice on Iran.

“Rising gas and fertilizer prices tied to the Trump administration’s war in Iran are driving up costs for rural families, farmers, and consumers across the country,” notes the analysis from the Center for American Progress (CAP), a liberal think tank.

“Gas prices rose 52% between February 27, the day before the war with Iran began, and May 14, forcing rural households to pay at least $26 more per week at the pump and threatening to push grocery prices even higher in the months ahead,” the publication continues.

“The economic fallout from the conflict is disproportionately affecting rural America, where households already spend significantly more on gasoline and energy and where farm operations depend heavily on diesel fuel and fertilizer,” CAP added. “As oil prices rise and shipping through the Strait of Hormuz remains disrupted, farmers are facing mounting input costs during an already difficult economic period.”

CAP researchers also found that the gap between urban and rural fuel costs has increased from $46 to $70 per month since the start of the war.

With diesel fuel accounting for over 60% of their fuel expenditures, farmers are facing the prospect of paying at least $350 more per day to operate a single tractor.

“There are 453 farming-dependent counties across the country, and rising fuel and fertilizer costs could force more small and medium-sized farms out of business if disruptions continue,” the analysis warns.

As Common Dreams reported this week, Trump’s illegal war of choice and erratic tariff policies are hurting farmers and consumers while Big Ag profits from fast-rising fertilizer and food prices.

Likewise, while consumers feel the pain of skyrocketing pump prices, Big Oil is reaping prodigious profits fueled by scarcity and market uncertainty due to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz and other war-related causes.

A report published earlier this month by the office of Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) projects that US drivers could pay an additional $876 per year—or $1,753 for a family with two cars—on gasoline per year if pump prices remain at their current levels.

The CAP analysis comes on the heels of the latest consumer price index, released earlier this week, which revealed that inflation has risen to its highest level in three years largely due to rising fuel and food costs.

According to CAP, lower-income households—which spent a third of their pretax income on food in 2024—“will be hit hardest” by rising grocery prices, as the highest-income households spent just 6.4% of their before-tax earnings on food.

“Families in rural communities are already stretched thin, and this conflict is making everyday necessities even more expensive,” CAP senior fellow and analysis co-author Anne Knapke said Friday. “Higher gas prices, rising fertilizer costs, and more expensive groceries are all contributing to an affordability crisis that this president is making worse every day.”

Asked earlier this week if he thinks about the financial hardship his war is inflicting on Americans, Trump flippantly replied, “Not even a little bit.

Could High Fertilizer Prices Change the Face of Farming?

The development of agroecological and regenerative approaches would see a food system that is not only less vulnerable to the supply chain shocks being felt today, but would be better for the environment, human health, and animals.


Farmer Russell Hedrick prepares a blend of minerals, biologicals, and fertilizers to be sprayed onto his fields while they are being seeded in Hickory, North Carolina, on April 10, 2026.
(Photo by Grant Baldwin / AFP via Getty Images)

Frances Macguire
May 17, 2026

Common Dreams

The global disruptions caused by the war in Iran have brought renewed focus to the vulnerability of global fossil fuel supply chains. But what has received less attention is how the war also highlights the vulnerability of industrial agriculture supply chains reliant on massive amounts of chemical fertilizers and other inputs. Like oil and gas, these frequently travel long distances through turbulent waters.

A big advantage of renewable energy technologies like solar is that sunlight doesn’t have to pass through the Straits of Hormuz. The same can be said for many of the inputs required for agroecological and regenerative farming systems. The development of these approaches would see a food system that is not only less vulnerable to the supply chain shocks being felt today, but would be better for the environment, human health, and animals. It would be healthier, kinder, and more resilient.

A global economic recession and possible food shortages are looming as the war in Iran grinds on. While the devastating impact of the current conflict on people, their families, and communities must be foremost in our minds, the shock waves from the crisis are having system-wide impacts on energy supplies, cost of living, and food prices. As the seasons turn and farmers prepare to plant their crops, they are facing a new pressure: a sudden and critical rise in fertilizer and fuel costs.

As the price of petrol and diesel have skyrocketed since the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, so too have fertilizer costs due to shortages of urea and ammonia. A third of the world’s key fertilizer chemicals pass through the Strait, and prices have risen steeply since the outbreak of war, with predictions that prices for nitrogen-based fertilizers like urea could roughly double if the war drags on. Alongside a rise in red diesel prices, agricultural profit margins are highly volatile.

The current war is heinous, but inadvertently it has created an inflexion point, a moment to rethink global distribution of goods, and our broken food system.

Farmers taking the financial hit will likely pass on the costs to the consumer, but this isn’t sustainable and undermines the financial, social, and environmental health of the global food system. What if we flip it? Could the Middle East War not only accelerate a shift to renewable energy but also reduce our dependency on fertilizer-hungry crops? Legumes such as beans and peas, which fix nitrogen in soils, root vegetables, soybeans, and hardy grains such as rye could be viable alternatives.

Since the Second World War, a burgeoning (and hugely profitable for a few) chemical industry has created food systems dependent on inputs such as fossil fuel-based fertilizer, pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides. While delivering greater crop surplus, industrial farming has brought new problems: algal blooms, less wildlife and pollinators, monocultures, local air pollution, global climate change, and the loss of small-scale farming and farmers.

We’ve reached a tipping point; we overproduce food, a third of which is wasted, and too many people are eating too much of the wrong types of food. Noncommunicable diseases such as cardiovascular disease and diabetes are becoming a much bigger health burden than infectious diseases. Meanwhile, entrenched inequalities mean that, despite a global food surplus, millions of people go hungry every day, and 2.6 billion people can’t afford a healthy diet. An insatiable demand for meat now means that there are over 76 billion farmed chicken, pigs, and cattle in production around the planet, driving a largely invisible burden of animal suffering.

The current war is heinous, but inadvertently it has created an inflexion point, a moment to rethink global distribution of goods, and our broken food system. Growing crops that don’t need so many fossil fuel-derived chemicals but still provide enough food to feed our populations, and sustainable farming for current and future generations, is where we should be heading. We need to transition away from industrial agriculture, to food systems built on fairness—to people, animals, and the planet—not one geared toward feeding animals to feed ourselves. It’s a stark reality that over one-third of land used to grow arable crops is used to grow crops for animal feed.

Animal farming industry groups have been calling for public money to weather supply shocks, which begs the question of how resilient are the industrial systems we currently rely on. The US government provided $1 billion in response to avian flu, for example, while the European Union directed €46.7 million to Italian farmers, plus another €15 million for weather and animal-disease-related impacts in parts of Europe, and Canada extended livestock tax relief linked to bovine TB and extreme weather. The Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO) is also calling for urgent action in the form of government funds to protect the countries heavily exposed to import disruptions.

It’s clear that the current industrial animal farming model is not resilient. It depends heavily on unstable supply chains exposed to geopolitical shocks, climate change, extreme weather events, and disease outbreaks, and is a deeply inefficient use of plant resources to feed the world. Yet public money keeps being used to stabilize food systems that are structurally fragile, rather than directed toward sustainable and humane agriculture.

The current crisis in the Middle East has once again spotlighted our dependence on fossil fuels for energy and for food production. The growing success of renewable energy technologies—wind, solar, electric vehicles, and heat pumps—provides a roadmap to achieving energy independence at local and national levels. This has been achieved through several decades of policy and fiscal support, such as feed-in tariffs, technological advances, and growing public support.

Changing how we produce food could advance rapidly on the coat tails of our energy revolution. Calls for a just transition in farming and food production are growing from independent, small-scale farmers to development organizations, from Indigenous people’s groups to animal welfare charities. This transition would pivot away from destructive, insecure industrial agriculture toward more equitable, humane, and sustainable forms of agriculture, such as agroecology.

Rethinking food is not a nice to have, it’s essential if we are to strengthen the resilience of farmers, consumers, and nations, reducing exposure to geopolitical tensions, supply-chain disruptions, and future global shocks.


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Frances Macguire
Frances MacGuire is the director of research and animal welfare at World Animal Protection.
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OPINION

Trump's latest deal likely to spike electricity prices for decades

The Conversation
May 9, 2026 

By Christopher Niezrecki, Director of the Center for Energy Innovation, UMass Lowell;

 Ben Link, Deputy Director of the Ralph O’Connor Sustainable Energy Institute, Johns Hopkins University, 

Zoe Getman-Pickering, Program Director of the Academic Center for Reliability and Resilience of Offshore Wind, UMass Amherst

The U.S. is in a bizarre situation in 2026: It’s facing a looming energy shortage, yet the Trump administration is making deals to pay offshore wind developers nearly US $2 billion in taxpayer money to walk away from energy projects.

These politically motivated moves are costing Americans far more than just the buyouts.

Communities have been laying the groundwork for offshore energy projects for years. Offshore wind development brings jobs and economic development that reshape regional economies, with the scale of public and private investment reaching into the hundreds of billions of dollars over years. East Coast communities have built up ports to support the industry and launched job-training programs to prepare workers. Construction, maintenance and shipping businesses have sprung up, along with secondary businesses that support the industry.

Losing the projects, and the threat of losing other planned wind farms, will also likely mean higher energy prices. And while some offshore wind farms are moving ahead, developers must account for both lost momentum and increased uncertainty from the Trump administration.

As a result, Americans will bear the economic brunt of these decisions for decades ahead.
How America got to this point

To understand how the U.S. arrived in this predicament, let’s take a step back.

In March 2023, leaders from three U.S. federal agencies under the Biden administration met with the CEOs from American technology and manufacturing giants Microsoft, Amazon, Ford, GM, Dow Chemical and GE at the annual ARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit, under the banner of “Affordable, Reliable and Secure American-Made Energy”.

They agreed on a key point: The nation was staring down a severe shortage of electrons to drive American business forward.

Fortunately, solutions abounded. Enormous amounts of onshore wind and solar power had been deployed during the previous five years. More than 80% of all new power additions to the U.S. grid had come from these two sources.

Particularly exciting were plans to build large offshore wind farms up and down the Eastern Seaboard. Taken together, the wind farms would generate 30 gigawatts of new power by 2030, enough to power more than 10 million homes and reduce volatility in energy pricing thanks to long-term power purchase agreements.

The U.S. had one small wind farm at the time, off Rhode Island, and two wind turbines off Virginia, but Europe had been operating large offshore wind projects for over two decades and was building more.

In the months following the 2023 meeting, leasing and permitting for the U.S. mega projects continued, and in some areas construction got underway.

A map of offshore wind lease areas shows how many companies have paid the U.S. to lease areas of ocean for offshore wind farms. A few wind farms off New England are already operating. The lease areas where the Trump administration used taxpayer money to persuade companies to drop their wind farm plans include two TotalEnergies leases – Attentive Energy, off New Jersey, and a lease area off South Carolina – and Bluepoint Wind, also off New Jersey.U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management

Then, the Trump administration arrived in 2025. As president, Donald Trump immediately issued an executive order to halt offshore wind lease sales and any approvals, permits or loans for wind farms. He had made his disdain for wind power clear ever since he lost a fight to stop construction of a small wind farm near his golf course in Scotland in the 2010s.

After a federal judge declared Trump’s executive order unconstitutional in December 2025, the administration shifted strategies.

In March 2026, news outlets began reporting on deals struck in which the federal government would pay three offshore wind project developers hundreds of millions of dollars to cease development of their permitted projects, agree not to build others and repurpose the funds toward fossil fuel projects.

According to reported discussions involving the French energy company TotalEnergies, the money would be paid out through the Department of Interior’s Judgment Fund, intended for payment of legal settlements, despite there not being any active litigation with TotalEnergies.

The other projects agreeing to Trump’s buyouts as of early May were Golden State Wind, in California, and Bluepoint Wind, off New Jersey and New York. Both are co-owned by Ocean Winds, a joint venture of the French energy company Engie and EDP Renewables, headquartered in Spain. The California Energy Commission and members of Congress are now investigating the moves.
Offshore wind means local investment

Regardless of whether these buyouts are even legal, the losing parties will be the American taxpayers and a U.S. economy that needs more electrons on the grid, not fewer.

One analysis projected that deploying 40 GW along the U.S. East Coast by 2035 would generate roughly $140 billion in investment, much of it concentrated in port infrastructure and supply chain development.

New York in early 2026 announced a $300 million state grant program to expand port infrastructure supporting offshore wind. And the New Jersey Wind Port represents an investment exceeding $600 million to enable manufacturing and assembly of turbines.

Workers in New London, Conn., prepare a generator and its blades for transport to South Fork Wind’s offshore wind farm in 2023. To build an offshore wind farm requires manufacturing jobs, parts suppliers, dockworkers, crane operators, ship crews, as well as the wind farm construction crews and maintenance teams and many more businesses and their employees.AP Photo/Seth Wenig

In 2025, California state lawmakers authorized $225.7 million in spending for offshore wind ports and related facilities.

For these projects to pay off for local communities, however, the regions will need to see the development of wind farms.
Killing jobs

The cancellations of the planned projects also take jobs away from hard-working, blue-collar Americans.

The construction and installation of offshore wind turbines requires the expertise of skilled electrical workers, pipe fitters, welders, pile drivers, iron workers, machinists and carpenters.

Future offshore wind costs depend on investments today. As infrastructure is established and expertise grows, each subsequent project becomes easier to build, less risky and less expensive.

This pattern is already evident globally: The levelized cost of electricity from offshore wind globally fell by 62% between 2010 and 2024.

Canceling projects or buying back leases eliminates the electricity those projects would have generated. It also slows the accumulation of experience, scale and supply chain maturity that drive costs down over time.

The result is higher costs for future projects and for electricity ratepayers.
An energy crisis

Developing a robust offshore wind industry provides resilience in the face of an unstable global energy market.

Future U.S. and global energy demand is projected to grow significantly, largely driven by the rapid expansion of AI data centers and electrification of vehicles, homes and businesses.

Limiting the supply of homegrown energy will increase energy costs for Americans, especially in the regions where the wind farms were supposed to be located – New York, New Jersey, North Carolina and California.

With the federal buyouts, the U.S. is losing 8 GW of planned electricity generation, enough to power more than 3 million homes. That generation needs to be replaced by other energy sources and expanding power transmission lines that can take seven to 10 years to get permits for and build out. The leased projects were on their way to providing new clean power generation fairly quickly. Eliminating them restarts the project clock.

Reliance on dirtier, conventional forms of power generation will increase along with foreign energy imports, such as electricity delivered from Canada to New York, leading to higher and more volatile electricity prices.

Evidence from Europe shows that offshore wind can also reduce electricity costs for consumers by lowering wholesale prices and reducing dependence on fossil fuels and their volatile prices.

Vineyard Wind I, an offshore wind farm completed in 2026, with 806 MW of generation – enough to power about 400,000 homes – is projected to save Massachusetts customers about $1.4 billion on electricity bills over the next 20 years. With a fixed-price, 20-year contract, the project also lowered prices during cold snaps and peak demand for gas, reducing volatility and cost.

From jobs to local economic development to power costs, we believe canceling these offshore wind projects is a bad deal for American taxpayers.

The War on Wind Power Is 190-Proof Trumpism

A policy that feeds both President Trump’s appetite for corruption and supplies his narcissistic hunger—well, that’s a twofer that can’t be missed.


The Delaware Mountain Wind Farm is located in Culberson County, Texas.
(Photo by Greg Smith/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images)

Bill Mckibben
May 13, 2026

The Crucial Years


Those of us who came up in a different age still occasionally harbor the belief that facts, truth, science matters; that it hasn’t all just vanished into a tweeting flash of nonsense. In service of this delusion, I’m dedicating this newsletter to the topic of wind, because I think it distills the corruption and irrationality of our sad moment into its purest essence—190-proof Trumpism, the stuff that blinds you if you guzzle it.

My rant is occasioned by the news that the administration has stopped all approvals on wind farms across the country. As Katherine Krawczyk explains, for 15 years wind farms have applied to the Department of Defense (DOD) where:
they’re supposed to undergo a “timely, transparent, and repeatable process to evaluate potential impacts” to national security and military operations. It’s a routine that has spanned presidencies, including the first Trump administration, and that typically revolves around making sure turbines don’t interfere with radars or federal airspace.




Trump ‘Extrajudicially’ Blocks All New US Wind Projects—Which Could Power 15M Homes Amid Energy Crisis



Amid Energy Crisis of His Own Making, Trump Slammed for Using Taxpayer Money to Cancel Wind Projects

This has always been routine, until last summer when it became… impossible. Pete Hegseth’s DOD simply stopped replying, and didn’t explain why till last month when it sent a letter to developers saying it was “reevaluating how it reviews wind projects national security impacts.” Somewhere between 165 and 250 big projects are in limbo, and that’s obviously the point: Not only does it screw up their financing, it means they may not get done in time to qualify for what tax credits are left from the Biden Inflation Reduction Act.

Though sunlight must travel 93 million miles to reach the Earth, none of those miles go through the Strait of Hormuz. Similarly, there is no drone on Earth that can shoot the breeze.

To say that the national security grounds are bogus is to give them too much credit. As those radicals at the Financial Times explained, the security review used to take a “few days” to complete. These installations are on private land, far away from military bases. The government has used the same argument to try and block offshore wind farms, and the courts have overruled their objections. I imagine that in time judges will find in favor of these blocked onshore projects too, but the damage will have been done: No one in their right mind would invest in new wind power now, not when the president has declared quite frankly that his “goal is to not let any windmill be built.”

That this is stupid goes without saying. Those blocked projects constitute, the FT says, about 30 gigawatts of cheap clean energy at a time when we desperately need it. But it also goes without saying that the blockage serves two purposes. One is to artificially increase demand for fossil fuel (and the other Trump-favored power sources, like the expensive array of nuclear reactors whose development the government is currently generously funding). The other is to serve his febrile rage at the wind farm built off his Scottish golf course all those years ago. A policy that feeds both his appetite for corruption and supplies his narcissistic hunger—well, that’s a twofer that can’t be missed. Hegseth may have no idea how to win the war in Iran, but he knows how to win favor from dear leader.

Of course, it means indulging in a huge number of lies, from President Donald Trump’s claim that wind power is the most expensive energy on Earth (actually, second-cheapest, right behind solar) to his claim that it causes cancer (1 death in 5 on this planet comes from breathing the combustion byproducts of fossil fuel) to his claim that though the Chinese build and sell wind turbines they don’t actually use them. If he glances out the window of Qatar Force One on this week’s trip to China he’ll be forced to recant that one: The Chinese actually lead the world in producing not just wind turbines but wind energy. As Keith Bradsher reported last week:
Across China, hilltops are dotted with wind turbines, and long rows of them span many miles in western deserts. Ultrahigh-voltage power lines carry electricity thousands of miles to the energy-hungry factories along China’s coast.

Last year, China installed three times as much wind power capacity as the rest of the world combined, even as its turbine exports jumped. The global industry’s center of gravity has shifted decisively: All of the world’s six largest wind turbine manufacturers are Chinese, displacing once-dominant European firms and companies like General Electric.


In fact, perhaps his Chinese hosts could arrange a field trip to their newest wind turbine, installed this week off the shore from Yangjiang. It’s, what do you know, the largest single-unit floating wind platform ever installed on planet earth, a single windmill that will supply enough power for 24,000 homes. As Adriana Buljan reports at that must-read site OffShoreWindBiz:
The project incorporates several new technologies, including a novel mooring system, an active ballast system, a smart monitoring system, and a 66 kV dynamic subsea cable, the developer said.

The floater is secured by nine suction anchors, using a combination of anchor chains and high-performance polyester mooring lines, marking the first application of such polyester cables in China’s offshore wind sector.


It’s not just China, of course. A few weeks ago, the world’s largest offshore wind farm, Hornsea 3 in the North Sea, sent its first power back to the UK. When it’s fully finished at the end of next year, reports Evelyn Hart, it will “generate enough power to meet the average daily needs of a population larger than Greater Manchester, Liverpool, and Leeds combined.” Earlier Tuesday the sovereign wealth fund of Abu Dhabi announced a big investment in the project, reflecting what the fund’s head called its “approach of investing alongside experienced partners in high-quality infrastructure assets that support energy transition and deliver long-term value.”

What might the Trump administration offer them as an alternative? Well, the administration has ordered the restart of fossil fuel drilling operations off Santa Barbara despite local and state opposition. On Monday an old platform in the area caught fire and burned—26 people were evacuated, and thankfully none were killed, though two were injured. Here’s what America’s technological prowess looks like today.






I think that sometimes wind gets shorter shrift than it should when we talk about renewable energy. It’s not quite as simple as a photovoltaic array—there’s still a moving part, that windmill blade. But of course this is just another form of solar energy (the wind rises when the sun heats the Earth more in some places than others) and it is a miracle. In fact, it’s a perfectly complementary miracle. Along a coast, for instance, because it takes a while for the sun to heat the air molecules that produce the breeze, wind tends to build in power later in the afternoon, as the photovoltaic effect begins to ebb. And the farther north you go, the stronger the wind gets, which is useful since Greece has more sunshine than Norway. And wind speeds tend to be higher in the winter than the summer, thanks to sharper temperature gradients.

If you want an in-depth technical explanation of this miracle, Mark Jacobson provides one in this 2021 study. Among many other things, he points out that:
In some locations, e.g. Europe, wind energy output follows heat load remarkably well on a diurnal basis. This is not only due to the day versus night wind speed peaks just discussed, but also due to the fact that low temperatures, which create heat loads, often occur behind cold fronts, where pressure gradients are strong, thus winds are fast. Low temperatures over land also often occur in the presence of strong temperature gradients, which produce strong pressure gradients and strong winds.


One irony of Trump’s anti-wind crusade is that this miracle was born here. Humans have long used wind, of course—to push boats, to grind grain. But we first put it to use to produce electricity on an industrial scale in the early 1940s at Grandpa’s Knob, about 50 miles south of my home in the Vermont mountains above the town of Castleton. An Massachusetts Institute of Technology grad named Palmer Putnam (and I was at MIT last week, and saw many impressive young people following in his wake) convinced the local utility to give him a shot at harnessing the Vermont winds (blowing 8 miles an hour in Castleton when I drove by this afternoon). Vannevar Bush—more irony here—was in charge of the nation’s scientific enterprises during World War II, and he thought it would be a good idea to see if we could produce power this way; Putnam’s design used two blades, each 66 feet long and weighing eight tons. It worked just fine from 1942 to 1943, when a shaft bearing failed, and wartime shortages meant no one could scrounge the part until 1945.

A study that year found that a block of six similar turbines similar to the prototype, producing nine megawatts, could be installed in Vermont for around US$190 per kilowatt. But in those days it was cheaper to get power other ways, and so the project was never replicated. In 2012 a new project was proposed for the area, but like all Vermont wind projects in recent years, local opposition doomed it, reminding us that Trump is not the only person who doesn’t like to look at windmills.

I do, though. I’ve always thought they were remarkably beautiful, Calder mobiles come to life. And they keep getting better. The first big American installation was on Altamont Pass, near Livermore California—6,700 small turbines lined either side of I-580. They produced lots of clean electrons, but because of their size and where they were sited, their fast-moving blades were a bit of a bird Cuisinart. To be clear, wind turbines never come within an order of magnitude of avian destruction compared with tall buildings and power lines, not to mention domestic cats, not to mention the effects of climate change now setting off a generalized extinction crisis on this Earth. But if bird mortality is not a reason to delay the move to clean energy, it’s also not something to be simply ignored. So here’s some good news: A recent “repowering project” on the pass replaced 569 of the old small turbines with just 23 newer and bigger ones, while still generating the same amount of electricity. Oh, and
Fewer turbines, spaced further apart, and equipped with modern bird-detection technology such as IndentiFlight, should reduce bird mortality in the Altamont Pass going forward.

“Brookfield Renewables has designed the [Mulqueeney Ranch] site and implemented state of the art technology to mitigate impacts to local and migratory avian species,” according to the MCE staff report.

“Turbines will be equipped with individual AI paired cameras to detect the presence of avian species which would trigger feathering/shut-off of specific turbines.”


And as Justin Gerdes reports, this kind of repowering could happen at every wind farm across the country:
“By replacing aging turbines with modern technology at existing sites, the United States could more than double its current onshore wind capacity and electricity generation without requiring new land,” write the authors of a Stanford University study published in March.

The study finds that repowering could increase the US’ onshore wind nameplate generating capacity from 153 gigawatts (GW) (as of 2024) to 314 GW at existing wind farms.

“Repowering is a key, yet overlooked, strategy to accelerate the transition to a sustainable energy future in the United States,” the authors conclude.

Data from the energy consultancy Wood Mackenzie confirms the near-term repowering opportunity in the US.

“The repowering market remains strong, as Wood Mackenzie projects that 18 projects will drive 2.5 GW of capacity additions in the next three years,” according to a December 2025 WoodMac press release.


I’ve been getting a lot of mileage out of my line that though sunlight must travel 93 million miles to reach the Earth, none of those miles go through the Strait of Hormuz. Similarly, there is no drone on Earth that can shoot the breeze. This is where the planet desperately wants to go. Our job is to change our nation’s politics so the wind can blow free.


© 2022 Bill McKibben


Bill Mckibben
Bill McKibben is the Schumann Distinguished Scholar at Middlebury College and co-founder of 350.org and ThirdAct.org. His most recent book is "Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out?." He also authored "The End of Nature," "Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet," and "Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future."
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