Vanshika Fotedar

Jane Goodall's final lesson Honoring Jane Goodall's life, Pope Leo's first climate address, and finding hope in action

This week, we lost one of the world’s greatest advocates for people and nature. Even in her final days, Dr. Jane Goodall was urging us not to give up, and now her legacy lives on through the countless voices she inspired.

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This surprisingly relaxing footage is from SIX MILES under the ocean – and it’s the deepest ecosystem yet discovered

Solar power for smarter, greener cities India’s solar journey is not just about energy generation, it’s about transforming how cities are built and lived in. A multidisciplinary approach involving policy, technology, and civic engagement wi...

Solar power for smarter, greener cities – pv magazine India www.pv-magazine-india.com/2025/07/29/s...

RIP Dr. Imre Gyuk- you will be forever remembered as the staunchest champion of energy storage, a diplomat for a brighter energy future, and the strongest bridge between its science and policy making. May your soul rest in peace.

HOT OFF THE PRESS: Industrial electrification is vital for net-zero, but lagging far behind.

While most of industrial process heat could be electrified with existing tech, progress has been minimal.

Our new paper investigates why and how it can be changed. authors.elsevier.com/sd/article/S...

4.6 Billion Years On, the Sun Is Having a Moment In the past two years, without much notice, solar power has begun to truly transform the world’s energy system.

An astonishing statistic: ‘Globally, roughly a third more power is being generated from the sun this spring than last.’ www.newyorker.com/news/annals-...

Really cannot stress how much of being an immigrant in this country is trying to decipher arbitrary rules which seemingly change every 6-12 months without much fanfare.

In today’s episode of What Are They Thinking: “If you don’t see a hurricane coming… does it really exist?”

🚨 The Dept of Defense is shutting down its weather satellite program. No more data. No more updates. Meteorologists are scrambling—and we’re heading into peak storm season.

Brilliant timing.

Extreme heat grips southern Europe as temperatures surpass 100 degrees Portugal is expected to see highs of up to 109 degrees Fahrenheit. Parts of Spain, France, Italy and Greece are also bracing for extreme heat.

Across Portugal, Spain and France, some areas could exceed 100 degrees Fahrenheit in the coming days, the result of a hot-air mass that recently brought record-breaking heat and humidity to the eastern United States, and another from Africa.

Reminder of that time when the word "orthogonal" impressed and caught off guard multiple members of the US Supreme Court.

www.abajournal.com/news/article...

Earth is likely to cross a key climate threshold in two years A new World Meteorological Organization report spells the end of the world’s most famous climate goal.

Irreversible tipping points in the climate system — like the melting of Arctic ice sheets or the wide-scale collapse of coral reefs — are closer than scientists previously believed.

Skilled immigration on the chopping block? Effects of eliminating "Optional Practical Training" in the US The White House has taken numerous steps to sharply reduce the number of immigrant workers, with or without legal status, in the US economy. These policies, so far, typically target immigrants with le...

They're terminating OPT.

Today the nominee to head USCIS stated directly: he will end Optional Practical Training, the single largest channel for high-skill immigrants to work in the US.

6 weeks ago I warned about this & summarized the research on impacts of this drastic action—> @piie.com

My main takeaway from the Intersolar / the smarter E Europe exhibition in Munich is that batteries are the new solar. 4 buzzing halls of products, trying to claim a differentiation that doesn't exist, in a rapidly growing market. 14GW of batteries built in Europe + Turkey last year.

THE FOUR STAGES OF PRO-FOSSIL EXPLOITATION OF MAJOR BLACKOUTS

[a thread with videos]

Stage 1: Guilt By Proximity - "any blackout that happens in a region with renewable energy must have been caused by renewable energy"

[we are in the later end of this stage -see, FT, Bloomberg (Blas), etc]

Spain and Portugal were hit by a huge power cut on Monday that paralysed transport networks and disrupted mobile communications, with authorities warning that obstacles remained before electricity could be fully restored. Hours after it began, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said experts were looking for the cause of the outage, which immobilised the rail system, delayed flights and made traffic lights go dark. Countries including Spain are at the forefront of efforts to rely more on electricity as part of the shift away from fossil fuels, but Monday’s crisis is likely to stoke concerns about power networks’ ability to meet the added demand. Data from the Spanish electricity operator showed that consumption dropped by more than 10GW when the blackout hit shortly after 12.30pm local time, suggesting that it was one of the biggest in recent European history. Weather data showed that temperatures in southern Spain increased sharply between midday and 1pm local time. Higher temperatures can limit how much electricity cables can carry.

This is another trope that helps associate grid catastrophes with energy transition without evidence.

I call it the Object Proximity tactic: they drops (a) the blackout occurred and (b) there's a high share of renewables, and then just waggles their eyebrows meaningfully ->

archive.ph/aaxUT

Hopeful news from CA!

The Polluters Pay Climate Superfund Act (SB 684/AB 1243) has passed out of committee with a 9-4 vote.

This legislation, already passed in VT and NYS, would compel fossil fuel polluters to pay for climate damage.

Here’s more about it:

biologicaldiversity.org/w/news/press...

SDNY resignation letter from Celia V. Cohen, Andrew Rohrbach, and Derek Wikstrom

"There is no greater privilege than to work for an institution whose mandate is to do the right thing, the right way, for the right reasons. We will not abandon this principle to keep our jobs. We resign."

“We are pleased that Huntington Beach’s latest attempt to exempt itself from our state’s housing laws has failed. All along, Governor Newsom and I have asserted that the City’s federal lawsuit is meritless and a waste of the public’s money,” said Attorney General Bonta. “Like every other city in California, Huntington Beach has a legal obligation to build its fair share of housing. We will be closely monitoring what the City decides to do next. Our state lawsuit against Huntington Beach is also on appeal. We remain confident we will prevail there, too.”

👀 oag.ca.gov/news/press-r...

As villages across the Himalayan region battle water scarcity, communities are restoring and caring for age-old structures that protect their springs.

reasonstobecheerful.world/ancient-hima...

US Weather Analysis for 27 States Goes Dark in Funding Lapse Weather analysis tools used by a wide array of businesses and government entities across the US have gone dark after funding for long-running regional climate hubs lapsed.

Online NOAA climate data hubs serving 27 states — from Colorado and the Dakotas to Louisiana and Texas — have gone dark after a lapse in funding. The cause: expired contracts. This is becoming a pattern at NOAA 🧵 www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

More than 80 per cent of 55- to 64-year-olds said they regularly played out on the street and had freedom to explore when they were young, compared with only a quarter of children today, according to a 2022 survey.

Why are children not playing in the street? An FT piece analysing the - very concerning - decline in outdoor play manages to look at every possible cause: screens, spaces, school timetable changes. Apart from one.

Cars.

It is simply not safe for kids to play outside on streets.

Japan’s NEDO opens fiscal 2025 funding round for solar tech innovation Japan’s national energy R&D agency has launched a five-year R&D program to accelerate solar innovation. The fiscal 2025 call for proposals seeks advances in high-efficiency cells, site-specific system...

Japan’s NEDO opens fiscal 2025 funding round for solar tech innovation – pv magazine International www.pv-magazine.com/2025/04/15/j...

This great video also reminded me of an interesting facet of motonormativity: people can lose 100 hours a year in traffic and never notice; but they have one late train and it's all "Never again - you can't rely on them"

YouTube video by Global Cycling Network Everything You Thought You Knew About Roads Is A Lie

"Everything you thought you knew about roads is a lie" GCN go hard on induced demand and all the other follies linked to road building www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVq7...

A tricky thing about modern society is that no one has any idea when they don’t die.

Like, the number of lives saved by controlling air pollution in America is probably over 200,000 per year, but the number of people who think their life was saved by controlling air pollution is zero.

Teal ebike with yellow panniers parked in bike section of train car

Ebike+electric train is GOATed

For most people, the time they spend in their cars is the most dangerous part of their lives.

Nesta Scotland responds to Scottish Government Ministerial Statement on Heat in Buildings Bill Nesta Scotland has responded to the Ministerial Statement by the Scottish Government’s acting climate action minister on the Heat in Buildings Bill, announcing its intention to bring forward a revised...

The Scottish Government has announced changes to its Heat in Buildings Bill - @nestauk.bsky.social's Robin Parker says it "looks to be a big missed opportunity to improve Scotland’s energy security"

🏡 Nesta Scotland is calling for politicians to look again www.nesta.org.uk/press-releas...