Happy Moon-Watching!
Dear Reader,
Happy weekend (and Mid-Autumn Festival for those who celebrate)! Here are the top stories on the world’s most pressing health and environmental disparities.
Best regards,
Laasya Shekhar
Managing Editor
🍑 A SOUTHERN FLAIR
ROLAND, Ark. — Inside Arkansas’ first dark-sky neighborhood, where you can see the Milky Way (Elizebeth L. Cline, Arkansas Times)
“The idea is not to have no artificial lighting,” said Bruce McMath, the chair of the Arkansas Natural Sky Association, a nonprofit that advances responsible outdoor lighting. “Like every other human technology, it’s to have responsible use of it.”
ATLANTA — Zoox grounds Atlanta test fleet after workers report toxic gas exposure symptoms (Sean O’Kane, TechCrunch)
“They made us go right back in the field after we said we were throwing up,” Jay Davis, one of the contractors who got sick in mid-August, told TechCrunch in an interview. “I emailed HR, told her what’s going on, and I told her I feel like it’s messed up that y’all made us go [back out].”
CAMERON, La. — The Louisiana Fishermen Refusing To Go Down With the Ship (Words by Katie Hill & Visuals by Isabelle Zhao, Atmos)
“Then, come daylight, I knew something was definitely wrong,” says fisherman Eddie Lejuine. He recalls pulling in his trotlines to find dead fish smothered in the mud. “They suffocated, because all they were getting down there was mud. They weren’t getting any water and oxygen.”
ATLANTA — OpenAI’s massive Georgia data center project faces legal challenges (Adam Van Brimmer, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution)
AUSTIN, Texas — The Austin ICE shooting has raised questions about medical standards for detainees (Olivia Aldridge, KUT)
🟠 TRACKING TRUMP DURING CLIMATE WEEK AND THE UN
Never mind the sunglasses. Nepal’s Balen Shah gives the UN a powerful argument about climate justice (Faisal Mahmud, Scroll.in)
Shah, for all his political theatre, managed to describe the climate dilemma of poorer countries in unusually simple terms: they want to spend money building what they do not yet have, rather than repeatedly borrowing money to replace what has just been washed away.
Fossil-fuel firms in line for billions in benefits after answering Trump’s donation call (Maya Yang, The Guardian)
“In the second Trump administration, environmental enforcement has also weakened. The report found that the justice department has brought 76% fewer civil environmental enforcement cases than during Joe Biden’s first year in office, and 81% fewer than during Trump’s first term,” writes Yang.
EPA and HHS teaming up on expanded review of glyphosate weedkiller safety (Carey Gillam, The New Lede)
“We don’t need more process, we need action,” said [Nathan Donley, environmental health science director for the Center for Biological Diversity]. “The problem has never been that EPA’s pesticide office doesn’t compile all the relevant science or consult with outside researchers, it’s that it selectively ignores the science that doesn’t support the pesticide industry’s regulatory goals. This announcement does nothing to prevent that from happening, so as far as I’m concerned it’s a bunch of smoke and mirrors.”
120 Christian leaders urge Trump administration not to withhold $1B in global health funds (Jack Jenkins, Religion News Service)
Ranchers Criticize ICE Raids for Disrupting Livestock Operations (Tyler Spence, The Washington Sun)
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🗺️ WHAT ELSE WE'RE READING
Fuller Defenders 2026: Meet the women fighting for your water (Nita Bhalla & Rachel Ramirez, The Fuller Project)
“We the Indigenous islanders deserve to be at peace in our homeland… Some day we want to be able to return to the lands that were taken from us, but the land must be safe enough for us to do that,” says environmental activist Monaeka Flores.
Foreign Fishing Fleets Are Robbing West African Countries of Key Nutrients (Johnny Sturgeon, Inside Climate News)
“Bottom trawling is like hunting with bulldozers,” said Sarah Foster, a senior researcher at the University of British Columbia, in an email to Inside Climate News.
SAINTE-MARIE, Réunion — ‘We wanted to prove we didn’t need air conditioning’: the airport cooled by natural ventilation(Rachel Savage, The Guardian)
“I took on the responsibility to prove to my management that not using air conditioning was feasible,” said Marc Delanoë, now the airport’s sustainable development director. “So, from the start, we never thought of this building having air conditioning being an option. It was a risky bet, but the further we went with our studies, the more we realised that we were right.”
Jensen Huang talks about AI and climate change like a supervillain (Justine Calma, The Verge)
So when I hear Huang make the case now that there will need to be sacrifices in the name of AI progress, it reminds me that we’ve seen this playbook before. An industry that wants to grow at any cost. And nearby communities and their descendants are just supposed to live with the aftermath.
MANAUS, Brazil — A trip down the road that will determine the fate of the Amazon (Joaquim Salles, Grist & InfoAmazonia)
“The plan being drawn up needs to be translated into documents with feasible, credible targets,” said Suely Araújo, Public Policy Coordinator at Observatório do Clima, a coalition of Brazilian civil society organizations focused on climate. “You need structural measures that are actually implemented. Not just promised.
KAMPI, Cambodia — Mekong’s Irrawaddy dolphins find cautious hope amid a river in crisis (Eung Sea, Mongabay)
“Irrawaddy dolphins are very important for our community,” boat driver Heang Koeurn says, drifting his boat slowly on the water. “People here can make more income from tourists by driving them to see the beauty of Irrawaddy dolphins.”
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