Oman is returning to the Venice Biennale with Zīnah, an immersive installation by artist and curator Haitham Al Busafi that transforms a traditional form of horse adornment into a large-scale sensory experience.
Professor Ji-Soo Jang, in collaboration with Professor Taekwang Yoon of Ajou University and Professor Hansel Kim of Chungbuk National University, has developed a novel energy device that generates electricity during the process of capturing greenhouse gases.
The impact is already being felt. California has broken its wind generation record multiple times in recent weeks as SunZia begins feeding electricity into the grid. It’s a glimpse of what a renewable-powered future could look like when large-scale infrastructure finally comes online. Can we start saying goodbye to Saudi Aramco and Arabian Gulf oil?
The Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS), governments agreed to extend protection to 40 more migratory species, from cheetahs and striped hyenas to snowy owls, giant otters, and great hammerhead sharks. Too many of them are slipping toward extinction .
Oman is returning to the Venice Biennale with Zīnah, an immersive installation by artist and curator Haitham Al Busafi that transforms a traditional form of horse adornment into a large-scale sensory experience.
Professor Ji-Soo Jang, in collaboration with Professor Taekwang Yoon of Ajou University and Professor Hansel Kim of Chungbuk National University, has developed a novel energy device that generates electricity during the process of capturing greenhouse gases.
The impact is already being felt. California has broken its wind generation record multiple times in recent weeks as SunZia begins feeding electricity into the grid. It’s a glimpse of what a renewable-powered future could look like when large-scale infrastructure finally comes online. Can we start saying goodbye to Saudi Aramco and Arabian Gulf oil?
The Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS), governments agreed to extend protection to 40 more migratory species, from cheetahs and striped hyenas to snowy owls, giant otters, and great hammerhead sharks. Too many of them are slipping toward extinction .
Oman is returning to the Venice Biennale with Zīnah, an immersive installation by artist and curator Haitham Al Busafi that transforms a traditional form of horse adornment into a large-scale sensory experience.
Professor Ji-Soo Jang, in collaboration with Professor Taekwang Yoon of Ajou University and Professor Hansel Kim of Chungbuk National University, has developed a novel energy device that generates electricity during the process of capturing greenhouse gases.
The impact is already being felt. California has broken its wind generation record multiple times in recent weeks as SunZia begins feeding electricity into the grid. It’s a glimpse of what a renewable-powered future could look like when large-scale infrastructure finally comes online. Can we start saying goodbye to Saudi Aramco and Arabian Gulf oil?
The Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS), governments agreed to extend protection to 40 more migratory species, from cheetahs and striped hyenas to snowy owls, giant otters, and great hammerhead sharks. Too many of them are slipping toward extinction .
Oman is returning to the Venice Biennale with Zīnah, an immersive installation by artist and curator Haitham Al Busafi that transforms a traditional form of horse adornment into a large-scale sensory experience.
Professor Ji-Soo Jang, in collaboration with Professor Taekwang Yoon of Ajou University and Professor Hansel Kim of Chungbuk National University, has developed a novel energy device that generates electricity during the process of capturing greenhouse gases.
The impact is already being felt. California has broken its wind generation record multiple times in recent weeks as SunZia begins feeding electricity into the grid. It’s a glimpse of what a renewable-powered future could look like when large-scale infrastructure finally comes online. Can we start saying goodbye to Saudi Aramco and Arabian Gulf oil?
The Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS), governments agreed to extend protection to 40 more migratory species, from cheetahs and striped hyenas to snowy owls, giant otters, and great hammerhead sharks. Too many of them are slipping toward extinction .
Oman is returning to the Venice Biennale with Zīnah, an immersive installation by artist and curator Haitham Al Busafi that transforms a traditional form of horse adornment into a large-scale sensory experience.
Professor Ji-Soo Jang, in collaboration with Professor Taekwang Yoon of Ajou University and Professor Hansel Kim of Chungbuk National University, has developed a novel energy device that generates electricity during the process of capturing greenhouse gases.
The impact is already being felt. California has broken its wind generation record multiple times in recent weeks as SunZia begins feeding electricity into the grid. It’s a glimpse of what a renewable-powered future could look like when large-scale infrastructure finally comes online. Can we start saying goodbye to Saudi Aramco and Arabian Gulf oil?
The Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS), governments agreed to extend protection to 40 more migratory species, from cheetahs and striped hyenas to snowy owls, giant otters, and great hammerhead sharks. Too many of them are slipping toward extinction .
Oman is returning to the Venice Biennale with Zīnah, an immersive installation by artist and curator Haitham Al Busafi that transforms a traditional form of horse adornment into a large-scale sensory experience.
Professor Ji-Soo Jang, in collaboration with Professor Taekwang Yoon of Ajou University and Professor Hansel Kim of Chungbuk National University, has developed a novel energy device that generates electricity during the process of capturing greenhouse gases.
The impact is already being felt. California has broken its wind generation record multiple times in recent weeks as SunZia begins feeding electricity into the grid. It’s a glimpse of what a renewable-powered future could look like when large-scale infrastructure finally comes online. Can we start saying goodbye to Saudi Aramco and Arabian Gulf oil?
The Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS), governments agreed to extend protection to 40 more migratory species, from cheetahs and striped hyenas to snowy owls, giant otters, and great hammerhead sharks. Too many of them are slipping toward extinction .
Oman is returning to the Venice Biennale with Zīnah, an immersive installation by artist and curator Haitham Al Busafi that transforms a traditional form of horse adornment into a large-scale sensory experience.
Professor Ji-Soo Jang, in collaboration with Professor Taekwang Yoon of Ajou University and Professor Hansel Kim of Chungbuk National University, has developed a novel energy device that generates electricity during the process of capturing greenhouse gases.
The impact is already being felt. California has broken its wind generation record multiple times in recent weeks as SunZia begins feeding electricity into the grid. It’s a glimpse of what a renewable-powered future could look like when large-scale infrastructure finally comes online. Can we start saying goodbye to Saudi Aramco and Arabian Gulf oil?
The Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS), governments agreed to extend protection to 40 more migratory species, from cheetahs and striped hyenas to snowy owls, giant otters, and great hammerhead sharks. Too many of them are slipping toward extinction .
Oman is returning to the Venice Biennale with Zīnah, an immersive installation by artist and curator Haitham Al Busafi that transforms a traditional form of horse adornment into a large-scale sensory experience.
Professor Ji-Soo Jang, in collaboration with Professor Taekwang Yoon of Ajou University and Professor Hansel Kim of Chungbuk National University, has developed a novel energy device that generates electricity during the process of capturing greenhouse gases.
The impact is already being felt. California has broken its wind generation record multiple times in recent weeks as SunZia begins feeding electricity into the grid. It’s a glimpse of what a renewable-powered future could look like when large-scale infrastructure finally comes online. Can we start saying goodbye to Saudi Aramco and Arabian Gulf oil?
The Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS), governments agreed to extend protection to 40 more migratory species, from cheetahs and striped hyenas to snowy owls, giant otters, and great hammerhead sharks. Too many of them are slipping toward extinction .
Photo credit: Oriya and Zana/Israel Nature and Parks Authority
Think of truffles, a gourmet wild food. The European tuber commands astronomical prices because of its inimitable flavor, rarity, and difficult harvesting. Oregano-like za’atar herb and thorny akub (Gundelia tournefortii) are desired in the Middle East in the same way. Read our post on the delicious truffles that grow in the desert.
Akoub and za’atar grow wild in the arid hills of Cyprus, Lebanon, Israel, the Sinai Peninsula (Egypt), Syria, and Turkey. In Israel both za’atar and akoub are protected species. Both can be cultivated. Both may be collected from the wild for personal use, in moderate amounts. We even have a recipe for za’atar pesto from chef Moshe Basson.
But traders illegally picking them for sale collect them by hundreds of kilos. Often they uproot the whole za’atar plant. With akoub, taking the edible flower head means no seed left for the next year. As a result, wild za’atar and akub are on the brink of extinction.
I myself grow za’atar in a container on my balcony; it’s a hardy Mediterranean herb that flourishes from year to year in the same spot. I bought the seedling from a plant nursery. I’ve also seen contraband sacks of the herb in Arab open-air markets.
Photo by Miriam Kresh for Green Prophet
But admittedly you need to be a farmer to grow akoub, because propagation is tricky, the season is short, and the sharp thorns surrounding the delicious leaves and flowers make harvesting hard.
Photo credit: : P. Gomez Barreiro, BG Kew
When living in northern Israel, I’d buy fresh akoub from a Beduin vendor in the local open-air market. It was expensive because of the labor involved in harvesting – I’ve seen robed Beduin slowly walking over the hills, stooping to pry the akoub away from the earth with a knife, then stripping the thorns off the edible stems.
I cooked both the flower and the stem. And yes, it was delicious, with its artichoke-like flavor. But now I wonder where that delicious akoub came from, and if I’d contributed to its overharvesting.
fPhoto credit: N. Hani, SBR via Springer Link
The Israel Nature and Parks Authority in the Golan have confiscated hundreds of kilos of za’atar and akoub. Some were meant to be sold in local markets, but much of this illegal produce makes its way across the border to Jordan.
Yaron Maderchi, head of the Investigations Department at the Israel Nature and Parks Authority, states that the fight against the illegal picking of wild plants is first and foremost a struggle to preserve them for future generations.
“We focus on strict enforcement against traders, not on picking for personal use,” said Maderchi. “There’s room for tradition and for responsible use of natural resources, but when picking is carried out on a commercial scale and without oversight, it leads to severe damage and even local extinction of species.”
The Israel Nature and Parks Authority noted that overpicking is driven mostly by financial incentives.
“Akoub is a highly sought-after product in the market, and illegal harvesting can generate profits of thousands of shekels per day,” said Oriya Vazana, a regional inspector in the central Golan for the Israel Nature and Parks Authority.
“Economic pressure leads people to enter these areas in large numbers,” said Vazana. “The entire market operates in cash, without oversight. Beyond the damage to the plant itself, we are also seeing collateral harm: cutting fences, opening gates, damage to grazing lands, and safety risks on roads. This is a complex issue that requires significant resources, manpower, and targeted enforcement throughout the short harvesting season.”
The plant has significant ecological importance, serving as a food source for pollinators and insects and contributing to biodiversity. Left unharvested, the flower head dries up and tumbles on the ground, dispersing seed.
About 240 kilos of akoub and 25 kilos of za’atar were seized by the Israel Nature and Parks Authority in the Golan, working with border police.
Za’atar growing wild in Israel. Photo credit: Miriam Kresh for Green Prophet
Jeanne Mortimer in her early days with tortoises and turtles in the Seychelles
It’s sea turtles which may in the end save islands in the Seychelles. They may also better help us understand climate change. Like rings on a tree, scientists have found a way to read sea turtle shells and how they are impacted by climate change tells a story.
Using radiocarbon methods from archaeology, researchers show that sea turtle shell plates are biological time capsules that record signs of major environmental disturbances in the ocean.
A new study published in the journalMarine Biology, shows that scutes, the hard plates that make up a turtle’s shell, grow continuously and preserve chemical signals that reflect environmental conditions over time. By analyzing these layers, scientists can determine where turtles have been foraging, what they were eating, and how marine environmental stress events affected them.
Strait of Hormuz sea turtles
The research was led byBethan Linscott, and Amy Wallace, in collaboration with researchers from the University of Florida.
Sea turtle scutes are made of keratin—the same material found in human hair and nails. Keratin grows in successive layers that capture chemical information about a turtle’s diet and environment when the tissue forms. Scientists have long used stable isotope analysis of scutes to study turtle ecology, but the timescale represented by these layers has remained uncertain.
Sea turtles don’t die from plastic straws. The bags get shredded at sea and the sea turtles get caught in them.
“Sea turtle shells grow continuously throughout their lives, and each layer preserves evidence of past environmental conditions,” said Linscott. “By analyzing these sequential layers, we can reconstruct foraging patterns, diet, and environmental changes over time.”
To determine how quickly the layers form, researchers analyzed shell samples from 24 stranded sea turtles—loggerheads (Caretta caretta) and green turtles (Chelonia mydas)—collected along the Florida coast between 2019 and 2022. The team removed small circular biopsies from the scutes and sliced them into ultra-thin sections approximately 50 microns thick.
Each layer was radiocarbon dated and compared with the mid-20th-century “bomb pulse,” a spike from nuclear weapons testing that serves as an environmental tracer in the marine environment.
The researchers then used Bayesian age-depth modeling, a statistical approach commonly used in archaeology to date sediment layers to estimate how quickly the shell tissue accumulated.
The results showed that scute growth rates vary among turtles, but on average each 50-micron layer represents about seven to nine months of growth.
By reconstructing these timelines, the scientists identified synchronized slowdowns in shell growth across multiple turtles. These slowdowns coincided with major environmental disturbances in Florida waters, includingharmful algal blooms known as “red tides”and large Sargassum seaweed events.
Red Tide in Oman
“These shells are effectively recording environmental stress in the ocean,” Linscott said. “It’s a bit like sea turtle forensics. We can use chemical fingerprints preserved in scutes to detect ecological shifts.”
Understanding where sea turtles forage, how their diets change, and how environmental stress affects their growth can help scientists better protect these threatened marine species. Because sea turtles are long-lived and spend much of their lives in the open ocean, directly observing their life histories is often difficult.
“Our findings can help scientists better understand how marine ecosystems are changing and how species respond to those changes.”
For centuries, the Sámi shaman drum was one of the most powerful sacred objects in northern Europe, and one of the most feared by church and state. If ISIS looks bad to us today for its religious fundamentalism, Christians were just as fervent.
In Denmark-Norway during the 17th and early 18th centuries, Sámi drums were confiscated as part of aggressive Christian missionary campaigns. In some witchcraft and idolatry prosecutions, drum owners faced severe punishment, including death sentences, although the legal reality varied case by case rather than through one simple blanket ban.
One of the most important records of these drums survives because of Knud Leem (1697–1774), a Norwegian priest and linguist who worked in Finnmark and became one of the earliest major documentarians of Sámi life, language, and belief. Leem began missionary work among the Sámi in 1725, learned Sámi language, and closely observed daily life, religion, and reindeer culture.
This ancient drawing depicts demons being consulted by the noaidi.
His landmark work, Beskrivelse over Finmarkens Lapper, was published in Copenhagen in 1767. The book included parallel Danish/Norwegian and Latin text and was illustrated with numerous copperplate engravings, making it one of the most significant 18th-century ethnographic works on the Sámi published in northern Europe. Some of the imagery was engraved by O.H. von Lode from drawings associated with Leem’s documentation.
How the Sámi drum worked
The Sámi drum, also called a runebomme or shaman drum, was used by a noaidi (Sámi ritual specialist or shaman) for divination and spiritual communication.
The drum membrane was often marked with symbolic figures, sometimes painted in red pigment, and these symbols could represent gods, humans, animals, sacred sites, hunting, illness, or the dead. On some North Sámi drums, the surface was structured into symbolic zones representing the upper world, human world, and underworld.
To use the drum, the noaidi placed a small metal pointer or ring, often referred to in sources as a vuorbi, on the skin and beat the drum. The movement of the ring was then interpreted as an answer to a question like a ouija board. Some questions they might ask include
Where a lost reindeer might be found
Whether a hunt would succeed
What kind of offering or ritual action was needed
The Sámi shaman who played his drum in court
An historical photo of a Sami family in Lapland. Date and source unknown.
One of the best-documented cases is that of Anders Poulsen, an elderly Sámi noaidi who was tried in Vadsø, northern Norway, in 1692 after his drum was confiscated.
Court records show that Poulsen was interrogated in detail about the symbols on his drum, making his testimony one of the most important surviving descriptions of Sámi cosmology and drum symbolism. Historians describe the case as part of the wider Finnmark witch trials, among the most intense witch persecutions in northern Europe.
Before any final conviction could be carried out, Poulsen was killed in custody with an axe by Willum (Villum) Gundersen, a servant later described in historical records as mentally unstable. Poulsen is often remembered as one of the last victims of the Finnmark witch trials.
Why did the Christians hunt sami drums?
Shamanism was seen as a type of devil worship. Shaman drumming, and ritual practices put them in league with the devil. Consequently, Christianity characterized Sámi noaidi as witches who consulted demons, and persecuted them mercilessly.
This drawing depicts demons being consulted by the noaidi.
Why so few Sámi drums survived
Many Sámi drums did not survive the missionary era. Missionary Thomas von Westen and his network collected large numbers of drums in the early 1700s as part of the Christianization campaign. Historical sources indicate that around 100 drums were taken, many of them sent to Copenhagen. A large portion of these were later destroyed in the Great Fire of Copenhagen in 1728, where about 70 drums were reportedly lost.
Today, only a small number of original Sámi drums survive in museum and institutional collections around the world. Scholars and museums generally place the number at roughly 70 to 75 known surviving drums, depending on classification and provenance.
The Sámi drum is not just an artifact. It is a surviving record of Indigenous cosmology, resistance, and memory. What church authorities once treated as evidence of “paganism” is now understood as part of a sophisticated spiritual and symbolic system tied to land, reindeer, ancestors, and survival in the Arctic.
And because missionaries, courts, and collectors tried so hard to destroy them, every surviving drum now carries two histories at once, the Sámi world it came from, and the violence used to erase it.
Who are the Sámi?
The Sámi people are an indigenous group of approximately 80,000–100,000 individuals living in Sápmi, a region stretching across the northern parts of Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia’s Kola Peninsula. While traditionally nomadic reindeer herders, most modern Sámi live in permanent homes in northern Scandinavia, with the largest population concentrated in Norway.
In a real emergency, romance takes a back seat to physics, panic, and how fast 150 people can squeeze through a narrow tube. The Federal Aviation Administration says every aircraft must be evacuated within 90 seconds. That’s the gold standard. But new research suggests that in the real world, especially as we age, that number might be more aspirational than achievable.
Researchers looked at what happens when things go very wrong: a dual-engine fire on an Airbus A320, one of the most common planes in the sky. Rare? Yes. Ask Captain Sullenberger.
Using simulation software (the same kind used to design safety systems), a team ran 27 different evacuation scenarios. They tested different cabin layouts, different passenger mixes, and crucially different distributions of older passengers.
What they found is quietly unsettling. Even in the best-case scenario, a relatively light cabin with 152 passengers and older travelers evenly spaced, evacuation took 141 seconds. That’s over 50% longer than the FAA requirement.
“While a dual-engine fire scenario is statistically rare, it falls under the broader category of dual-engine failures and critical emergencies in aviation. History has shown that dual-engine failures and emergencies, such as the famous ‘Miracle on the Hudson’ involving Captain Sullenberger, can happen and lead to severe consequences,” says study head Chenyang (Luca) Zhang. “Our study focuses on these low-probability but high-impact events to ensure the highest safety standards.”
As we age, reaction times slow. Decision-making can lag under stress. Physical movement, opening seatbelts, standing, moving quickly – all of this becomes harder. And in an emergencies on board airplanes every second matters because jet-fuel is highly combustable.
It’s not just older passengers. More people are traveling with children, infants, emotional support dogs and all this adds complexity to how people move (or don’t move) in a crisis.
The takeaway is design.
Airlines might need to rethink how they seat passengers. Not for comfort or status, but for survival. Smarter distribution, better briefings, maybe even personalized safety protocols.
According to the computer models they ran based on average times it takes women and men on varying ages to get out of the plane, the shortest total evacuation time was observed in scenario A-I-P1 (top left), which corresponds to Layout A, with 20% elderly passengers, and elderly passengers evenly distributed near the exits.
This scenario required 141.0 s to evacuate all occupants. In contrast, they write, the longest evacuation time occurred in scenario C-III-P1, which involved Layout C, 80% elderly passengers, and the same near-exit elderly distribution pattern.
This scenario resulted in a total evacuation time of 218.5 s.
Layout of plane according to seniors and where they are sat. The study proposes the best way to seat seniors.
Because the future of flying isn’t just about greener fuels or quieter engines. Or upgrading you and your kids to more legroom near the emergency exit. It’s about whether we can all get out when it matters most.
Marine protected areas are supposed to be safe havens for coral reefs, seagrass, fish nurseries and coastal wildlife. But a new global study suggests that many of them are protected in name only.
Research from the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and the University of Queensland, published in Ocean & Coastal Management, found that nearly three out of four marine protected areas (MPAs) worldwide are exposed to sewage pollution. In the tropical ocean regions most vital for coral reefs and marine biodiversity, the situation is even worse: between 87 percent and 92 percent of protected areas are contaminated, often at pollution levels ten times higher than nearby unprotected waters.
The study evaluated more than 16,000 marine protected areas globally, and the findings land at an uncomfortable moment. Governments around the world have committed to protecting 30 percent of the ocean by 2030, under the international “30 by 30” biodiversity target.
But protecting lines on a map means little if polluted wastewater keeps pouring in from land.
Wastewater: used water from homes, businesses and sewage systems, carries nutrients, pathogens and chemicals into rivers and oceans. Those pollutants can fuel harmful algal blooms, weaken coral reefs, damage seagrass meadows and threaten marine wildlife. Scientists have already linked wastewater pollution to coral reef decline around the world and even Alzheimer’s-like brain disease in dolphins.
And this is not just a marine issue. Polluted water is also a human health crisis, contributing to diseases such as cholera and typhoid fever and causing an estimated 1.4 million deaths each year, alongside billions in economic losses.
“What we found was striking,” said lead author David E. Carrasco Rivera, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Queensland. “In region after region, the areas set aside for conservation were actually receiving more pollution than the areas with no protection at all.”
The researchers closely analyzed 1,855 coastal MPAs in six tropical regions, including East Africa, the Indian Ocean, the Coral Triangle, Mesoamerica and the Caribbean, Australasia and Melanesia, and the Middle East and North Africa.
Algal bloom in the Philipines.
“Even a perfectly managed marine protected area will fail if wastewater keeps flowing in from upstream,” said Dr. Amelia Wenger, WCS Global Water Pollution Lead.
The message is simple: ocean conservation cannot stop at the shoreline. If governments want marine protected areas to actually protect marine life, they need to invest in sewage treatment, land-based pollution control, and smarter coastal planning, before “protected” becomes another empty word.
The question begs to be answered: can private people protect land better than poorly-run government bodies? And ask yourself when you are staying at a tropical resort or visit a nature paradise? Where is all my plastic and poop going?
At a time when climate anxiety can feel abstract and overwhelming, and being Jewish something people may need to hide in big cities, Adamah Los Angeles is trying something different: turning Jewish values into local climate action with dirt-under-the-fingernails practicality.
This spring, the Los Angeles-based branch of Adamah is inviting the Jewish community to engage climate work not as a distant political slogan, but as a lived spiritual and communal responsibility. Its newly opened LA Sustainability Fund is one of the clearest examples. Jewish nonprofits in the greater Los Angeles area can apply for grants of up to $20,000 to support energy-saving and sustainability projects, provided they are part of the Jewish Climate Leadership Coalition.
That’s real money for real change – the kind of funds that can help schools, synagogues, camps, and community spaces lower emissions and utility bills while becoming more resilient in a warming California.
The initiative arrives alongside LA Climate Week (April 12–16), where Adamah LA is organizing and promoting events rooted in regenerative gardening, volunteering, faith, and climate resilience. Rather than framing environmentalism as gloom and doom, Adamah leans into repair, ritual, and relationship the Jewish way.
This is very much Adamah’s broader model: blending Jewish learning, land connection, food, farming, climate literacy and spiritual renewal into one ecosystem. Even its seasonal offerings reflect that approach. For Passover, which is still ongoing, Adamah has released a sustainability-focused haggadah supplement that brings ecological reflection into the seder through Torah (the Bible), meditation, and climate questions.
There’s also a professional side to the movement so Jewish communal workers can attend “ReTreat Yourself!”, a no-cost June retreat at Camp Ramah in California, designed to strengthen both leadership and spiritual resilience in these hard times.
In a city known for its urban sprawl, wildfires, and climate vulnerability, Adamah LA is building something close to the ground: a Jewish climate culture that is local, networked, and rooted in action.
In Hebrew Adamah is the connection between adam (human) and adamah, the earth.
While Adamah LA has emerged as a strong Jewish climate organizer during LA Climate Week, the broader week also opens space for Christian and Indigenous leadership, two groups whose environmental work often runs deeper than branding or institutional visibility.
For many Christian communities in Los Angeles, climate action is increasingly framed as a matter of stewardship, justice, and care for creation. Churches, faith-based nonprofits, and Catholic organizers often use Climate Week to host conversations around energy, food systems, environmental racism, and resilience in vulnerable neighborhoods. Their language may differ from activist circles, but the mission is often the same: protecting life, land, and future generations.
Indigenous voices, meanwhile, bring something even more foundational. Rather than treating climate as a policy issue alone, Indigenous leaders tend to center land relationship, ancestral responsibility, water protection, and sacred ecology. Their presence in climate events can shift the conversation from sustainability as a technical fix to sustainability as a way of living in right relationship with the earth.
Together, Christian and Indigenous participants help expand LA Climate Week beyond panels and policy. They remind the city that climate action is not only scientific or political, it is also moral, spiritual, and deeply rooted in place.
If you know of other faith-based events happening during the week, drop them in the comments below.
Astroturf on a soccer pitch not only releases chemicals, players don’t take risks on it for the burns
Artificial turf was sold as a low-maintenance dream for dry climate cities like Los Angeles, Dubai, and Tel Aviv: no mowing, no mud, no watering. But for many homeowners, it is starting to look more like a plastic trap. It is leaking microplastics which are a health and eco-hazard. Biohacker Bryan Johnson spoke about the need to get rid of his astroturf for health reasons, but how?
Synthetic grass can get dangerously hot in the sun, cause skin burns, trap chemical dust, and shed microplastics into your soil and drains and these also end up in our air and bodies. Many products also contain crumb rubber infill made from recycled tires, along with plastic fibers and backing materials that do not belong in a healthy backyard.
For families with kids, pets, or anyone trying to build a cleaner outdoor space, removing old astroturf is one of the simplest ways to reduce unnecessary exposure to plastics and heat. Some past studies suggest that if kids have played on these surfaces you need to wash their hands.
The good news is that you do not need to turn your yard into a construction zone, as getting rid of artificial turf is a sooner the better idea. You just need to remove it carefully, contain the mess, and dispose of it responsibly.
5 simple tips to safely remove astroturf from your yard
Is Astro Turf safe?
1. Pick a cool, dry day
Do not remove turf in extreme heat or on a windy day. Hot turf releases more dust and becomes harder to handle. Wind can spread loose fibers and crumb rubber around your yard and into drains.
2. Wear gloves, shoes, and a mask
Old turf can contain dust, rubber particles, sharp staples, sand, and degraded plastic fibers. Wear: work gloves, closed shoes or boots, long sleeves and wear an N95 or dust mask if the turf is old or crumbly. Keep the kids and pets away while you work.
3. Roll it up slowly, don’t rip it apart
Cut the turf into manageable strips with a sharp utility knife if it’s large. Roll each strip carefully instead of dragging it across the yard. This helps stop plastic fibers, infill, and backing crumbs from spreading into your soil. If there is black crumb rubber or sand infill, use a shovel and broom to gather it first before rolling.
4. Bag the loose plastic and vacuum the area if the turf is on a hard surface. If it’s on sand or earth sweep or rake visible plastic bits and use a shop vacuum for small fibers and rubber crumbs. Better to collect some sand with the plastic bits using a shop vac. Collect debris into heavy-duty contractor bags
Do not hose the area down aggressively. That can push microplastics deeper into soil or into storm drains or into your backyard to keep emerging years later. Wait for a week or too. Natural air flow should gather some of the plastic fragments at corners for you to sweep away and contain.
5. Don’t burn it or dump it illegally
It’s not asbestos so you don’t need to bring it to a biohazard site. A local dump will do, or ask your city what to do and how to mark it if they do collection. Never burn artificial turf. It can release toxic, plastic fumes. And do not cut it into tiny pieces and throw it loosely into regular trash if you can avoid it.
Instead:
Ask your municipal waste center if they accept artificial turf. Check for construction and demolition waste disposal sites near you. Ask local landscaping or junk-haul companies if they handle turf removal. If the turf is newer, ask the installer or manufacturer if they have a take-back or recycling option for what you’ve pulled up.
Some places treat artificial turf as bulky plastic or construction waste, not regular yard waste.
How to reduce microplastics left behind from astroturf
There are ways to sustainably care for your backyard, via Bakker.com
You probably will not remove every last plastic fiber, but you can reduce what remains. Try this simple cleanup plan:
Hand-rake gently to collect visible fragments
Shop-vac hard surfaces like patios, pavers, and edges
Remove the top layer of contaminated infill or dust if there’s a heavy buildup
Add fresh compost and mulch to help cover and stabilize remaining particles
Replant with groundcovers, native plants, clover, gravel, or permeable stone
If the turf sat there for years, replacing the top few centimeters of soil in high-use areas may also help, especially where children played barefoot.
What should replace astroturf?
Bakker.com solutions of native grasses, sand and wood
The best replacement depends on your climate, but healthier choices include:
native drought-tolerant plants
clover or low-water living groundcovers
mulch play areas
permeable pavers
gravel with shade trees
tiled or shaded courtyard spaces
The smartest yard is not the greenest-looking one. It is the one that stays cooler, drains properly, and supports life instead of shedding plastic.
Boys playing soccer in the back yard on fake, plastic grass. Artificial Turf Supply, Maryland
Is artificial turf bad for your health? Artificial turf, the green plastic surface designed to look like grass, has been sold to homeowners as a clever compromise: a green-looking yard without mowing. It survives heavy use and, in dry places like the Middle East, California, or Texas, it can replace thirsty lawns. Yeah it paints a nice verdant green cover in dry places or under trees where the grass won’t grow, but if you start using it, it’s function is just tricking your eyes.
But the evidence points to a more inconvenient truth we’ve known all along. Synthetic grass can bring real health and environmental trade-offs.
Some risks are immediate and obvious. Artificial turf can run dramatically hotter than natural grass in full sun, increasing the risk of heat stress, dehydration, blistering, and burns to your skin. Real grass respires and releases moisture throughout the day. Plastic grass does not. Field measurements and reviews have repeatedly found synthetic surfaces can become dangerously hot, especially in direct sunlight. A 2024 study in Frontiers in Sustainable Cities noted that artificial turf can reach very high surface temperatures and worsen urban heat island effects. They’ve even proposed ways for cooling it down in cities using water, the very thing that astroturf was designed to solve.
A 2025 evidence summary from Canada’s National Collaborating Centre for Environmental Health reached similar conclusions, highlighting heat, skin abrasions, and exposure concerns. “Human exposure to chemicals from artificial turf playing fields can be reduced by washing hands and avoiding infill and fibre ingestion by infants and children,” they write. Is that something we want kids playing on?
Biohacker Bryan Johnson, right, and his son. He recently understood that the toxic fake plastic grass in his backyard has to go.
Even Bryan Johnson, the longevity entrepreneur known for trying to optimize every aspect of his life so he can live forever, recently posted on X: “Guys, I’m an idiot. All this time I’ve spent trying not to die, I had toxic turf in my backyard.” He added that artificial turf contains crumb rubber infill made from recycled tires. His phrasing was dramatic, but the underlying point stands: you can spend heavily on health while surrounding yourself with industrial plastics.
He wrote:
“Artificial turf contains crumb rubber infill made from recycled tires, which leaches chemicals including PFAS, heavy metals, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. These compounds are linked to hormone disruption, carcinogenicity, and systemic inflammation. I don’t know how I missed it. It makes me question my basic competence in life. What gets me is that I try so hard to survey the world of potential idiocy. Then I find out there’s a monument to idiocy sitting right in front of my face that I was blind to. I’m removing the turf, yet I’m still stuck with this seemingly unsolvable problem of how to not be an idiot.”
Then there are injury patterns. Several reviews have found that some lower-extremity injuries, especially certain non-contact injuries, may be more common on artificial turf than on well-maintained natural grass, though results vary by sport, footwear, and field condition. Sliding on astroturf can cause turf burns, which are not only painful but can become infected if not treated properly. Children and athletes are particularly exposed, as they fall, slide, and breathe close to these surfaces.
The harder question is chemical exposure. Many synthetic fields use crumb rubber infill made from recycled tires. A growing body of research shows these materials can contain metals, volatile organic compounds, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), phthalates, PFAS, and other chemicals of concern. A 2024 systematic review in Environmental Health Insights and a study by the NIH found potentially hazardous concentrations of chemicals in turf infill and fibres, with exposure pathways raising concern, especially for children.
The NIH writes, “Cancer risks were identified for ingestion exposure to PAH in children with pica and heavy metal exposure via dermal, inhalation and ingestion pathways. Non-carcinogenic risks were identified for the ingestion of cobalt in a child spectator and the ingestion of arsenic, cobalt, thallium and zinc. Potentially hazardous concentrations of chemicals were found across both artificial turf infill and artificial turf fibre samples; bioaccessibility of these chemicals varied.”
A 2022 review in Environmental Pollution was more direct, concluding that chemicals identified in artificial turf include known carcinogens, mutagens, and endocrine disruptors, while noting that human evidence remains limited and under-studied.
Astroturf on a soccer pitch not only releases chemicals, players don’t take risks on it for the burns
It would be false to say science has definitively proven that artificial turf causes cancer in everyday users. It has not. Science is methodical and slow, and long-term effects take years to measure. But it would also be false to say the issue is settled or harmless. Even the US EPA’s crumb rubber research effort, updated in 2024, did not conclude there was no risk; it characterized exposures and acknowledged that a full risk assessment is still incomplete. In plain terms: chemicals are present, exposure happens, and long-term health impacts are not fully understood.
The ecological problem of astroturf
Artificial turf is essentially a plastic carpet. It sheds fibers and dust that can enter drains, soils, and waterways, contributing to microplastic pollution. It also seals the ground. Natural grass supports soil life, cools the air, and participates in ecological cycles. Plastic turf does not. It does not cool like vegetation, does not support biodiversity, and does not age well. When it wears out, disposal becomes another environmental problem.
In arid cities, synthetic turf is often marketed as a “green” alternative to water-hungry lawns. But replacing one ecological problem with a heat-trapping plastic surface is not real progress.
Alternatives include native planting, shaded courtyards, permeable surfaces, gravel, regional groundcovers, and climate-appropriate design.
Artificial turf is not automatically poisoning everyone who touches it, but it is not a neutral surface either. Plant local species, use permeable materials, and design for life—not plastic.
As missiles fly and oil traders panic, one thing is becoming brutally clear: a world powered by more renewables is a world less exposed to political violence, fuel blackmail by Iran and Saudi Aramco, and petro-instability that have long haunted the Middle East.
According to the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), a UN-like energy body based in Abu Dhabi, the world added a record 692 gigawatts (GW) of renewable power capacity in 2025, bringing the global total to 5,149 GW.
Renewables made up 85.6% of all new power capacity added worldwide, while fossil fuel and other non-renewable additions continued to shrink in relative importance. That matters far beyond climate, I believe.
When countries generate more of their own electricity from solar, wind, hydro and bioenergy, they become less vulnerable to oil and gas chokepoints, tanker wars, Red Sea Houthi pirates, Iranian mullahs, price spikes, and the geopolitics of regimes and armed movements that have historically benefited from fossil fuel dependence. Renewables do not solve extremism on their own, but they do weaken the leverage of fuel-dependent systems that have helped finance instability across the region.
“In the midst of uncertain time, renewable energy remains consistent and steadfast in its expansion,” said Francesco La Camera, IRENA’s Director-General. “A more decentralised energy system, with a growing share of renewables and more market players, is structurally more resilient.”
Saas is used in marine logistics
IRENA, headquartered in Abu Dhabi, is the world’s leading intergovernmental agency for the renewable energy transition. It has 171 members and additional countries in accession, and serves as a technical and policy hub for governments trying to decarbonize while improving energy security. Abu Dhabi is its permanent headquarters.
The biggest gains in 2025 came from solar power, which added 511 GW, followed by wind at 159 GW. Together, those two technologies accounted for 96.8% of all new renewable additions globally.
Asia dominated, contributing 74.2% of all new renewable capacity, with 513.3 GW added. China remained the giant, especially in solar, wind, and hydropower, according to IRENA. This doesn’t mean they are a green economy however, because as China grows so does its dependence on fossil fuels. They are not regulated in any way for carbon emissions and tend to do what they want while the rest of the world plants trees and trades carbon credits.
Ormat collects heat energy from the earth’s crust transforming it into electricity. You can buy shares in this company.
India also posted strong wind and hydro gains. In Africa, renewable capacity rose by 15.9%, its fastest jump yet, led by Ethiopia, South Africa, and Egypt. The Middle East recorded its highest annual growth too, rising 28.9%, led by Saudi Arabia. The House of Saud knows they cannot survive on oil alone in the future. They have also been investing in green hydrogen.
The map is wildly uneven. Europe now holds 934 GW in total renewable capacity, while Central America and the Caribbean remain stuck at just 21 GW. That imbalance is not just unfair; it is also dangerous. Countries with low renewable penetration remain more exposed to imported fuel shocks, debt, and fragile grids.
Tesla Powerpacks store energy for grid stability
The world’s next focus should be obvious: grid expansion, battery storage solutions, off-grid solar, and finance for poorer countries. It is not enough to install panels in China as its economy keeps building endless factories and call it a transition.
“This not only indicates market preference but also makes a strong case for renewable energy resilience with brutal clarity,” La Camera said. And in a world where oil routes can still trigger global panic overnight, resilience is no longer a climate luxury, it is national security.
People comparing their healthcare financing options often run into a question with a deceptively short answer: Is Liberty HealthShare insurance? No, it is not. But that single-word answer carries significant weight, and understanding what sits behind it matters far more than the answer itself.
Liberty HealthShare is a non-profit 501(c)(3) Christian medical cost-sharing ministry based in Canton, Ohio. Founded in 1995, the ministry facilitates voluntary sharing of eligible medical expenses among members who share Christian values and a commitment to mutual aid. That structure places it in an entirely different legal and operational category than insurance.
The Legal Difference Is Not Semantic
Health insurance is a regulated financial product. Insurers operate under binding contracts, overseen by state insurance commissioners, that legally obligate them to pay claims meeting policy terms. Policyholders who believe a covered claim was wrongfully denied have legal recourse through state regulatory channels.
Liberty HealthShare functions outside that framework entirely. Voluntary member contributions are assigned to other members with eligible medical expenses that are approved for sharing. Liberty HealthShare facilitates that sharing. No contractual guarantee of payment exists. The ministry states plainly that its sharing programs “do not guarantee or promise that a member’s medical bills will be paid or assigned to others for payment.”
Healthcare sharing ministries are exempt from state insurance regulations precisely because they operate as voluntary member-to-member sharing communities, not as financial products with legally enforceable payment obligations. That exemption reflects a structural difference in how these models are built and governed.
Federal Recognition Under the ACA
Despite not being insurance, Liberty HealthShare holds a meaningful federal designation. The ministry received recognition as an eligible healthcare sharing ministry under the Affordable Care Act in 2014, a status that exempts members from ACA insurance mandates.
That designation creates a third category in American healthcare financing — distinct from being insured and distinct from being uninsured. Members participate in a faith-based sharing community without facing penalties for not carrying insurance. The ACA’s recognition of this category reflects a congressional acknowledgment that healthcare sharing ministries operate according to principles and structures that fall outside the insurance regulatory model.
How the Facilitation Model Works in Practice
“We’re not trying to make a profit on this. Our focus is we facilitate, and that’s it. There’s no other objective on our part. We just want to help our members get the best care possible at the best value,” posts Liberty HealthShare Chief Executive Officer Dorsey Morrow.
That facilitation model shapes member interactions from the beginning. Liberty HealthShare’s Care Navigation team works directly with members to help them understand proposed treatments, question provider charges, and make informed decisions before bills are finalized. Members track their contributions and sharing activity through their personal ShareBox, a secure online portal that shows how monthly shares support others in the community. That degree of financial transparency is uncommon in insurance arrangements, where members rarely see how their premiums are distributed.
Morrow explains that one of the ministry’s core goals is encouraging members to engage actively with their healthcare decisions rather than approaching the system passively: “We want our members to take back that control.”
Six Programs, No Open Enrollment Window
Liberty HealthShare offers six medical cost-sharing programs designed to accommodate different household sizes and budgets, as well as supplemental dental and vision sharing programs. Suggested monthly share amounts for individuals range from $87 to $369, with family options starting at $319 per month. Members can switch between programs or leave without annual commitments.
Enrollment is available year-round, with no qualifying life event required. That open enrollment structure contrasts with insurance models governed by ACA open enrollment periods or employer plan windows, and it reflects the ministry’s status as a non-insurance sharing community rather than a regulated financial product.
What the Distinction Requires of Members
Understanding that Liberty HealthShare is not insurance is not a footnote — it is foundational to making an informed decision about membership. Sharing is voluntary. No guarantee of payment exists. Members who join do so within a community built on shared Christian values, mutual aid, and personal engagement with healthcare decisions.
For those whose values and circumstances fit that model, the ministry has operated for 30 years and facilitated nearly $5 billion in eligible, repriced medical expenses for its members since 2014. For those who need contractual payment guarantees, insurance is the appropriate path. Liberty HealthShare has never claimed otherwise.
More information is available at LibertyHealthShare.org or by calling 855-585-4237.
One worker callously said that instead of providing care for sick or struggling sheep, it was “easier” when they died “out of sight, out of mind.”
The problem with outsourcing ethically-farmed anything to third party companies. This news should shift how ethical fashion operates and considers liability for wrongful marketing.
The New Zealand Merino Company, now rebranded as Zentera, has quietly removed the phrase “world’s leading ethical wool brand” from its website, a notable change that comes after a disturbing investigation by PETA Asia-Pacific into the company’s ZQ-certified wool supply chain, PETA reports to Green Prophet. Zentara, according to its website, supplies wool for 30 leading fashion brands. They are a supplier that CSR VPs have come to rely on for annual and quarterly reports.
They have changed wording on their website and say that their wool is “grown with care.”
ZQ, which now stands for “Zentera Quality,” is Zentera’s official wool certification label, marketed as a standard for animal welfare, traceability, environmental stewardship and social responsibility. Big brands which feature their products as ethical and “kind” are sold by brands including Allbirds, icebreaker, Smartwool (I love their socks), Mons Royale who touts “we are going regenerative!”; and Untouched World, all of which publicly market items made with ZQ- or ZQRX-certified wool.
Zentera offers a “superior” unstressed wool
For years, wool has been sold to consumers as the natural, sustainable alternative to synthetic fibers. But when “ethical” becomes a marketing shield rather than a measurable reality, the industry has a serious credibility problem. (We buy sweaters from babaa in Spain).
If you go to some of the companies that use ZQ wool they are still celebrating the “eco credentials of their suppliers, like with SmartWool, this screen capture taken April 1. This is not April Fool’s.
SmartWool uses ZQ-certified wool
PETA Asia-Pacific says it went inside 11 farms and shearing sheds in New Zealand that produce ZQ-certified wool, which it describes as “a sham certification standard developed and owned by The New Zealand Merino Company.” According to the animal rights group, investigators found that “shearers kicked, beat, and stomped on sheep and threw them down chutes. One worker slammed a sheep’s head against a hard wooden board three times.”
Green Prophet reached out to Zentera 24 hours ago and there has since been no reply for our request to comment.
All Birds advertise ZQ wool on their website: April 1, 2026
The allegations do not stop at the shearing shed.
Despite PETA putting out an alarm about Zentera wool in December, 2026 companies like icebreaker still advertise their supplier’s eco-credentials. April 1, 2026
PETA says that sheep from ZQ-certified farms whose fleece production had declined were later sent to slaughter, including to a slaughterhouse owned by Silver Fern Farms. There, according to the organization, sheep were “forced onto conveyer belts, electroshocked in the head, and violently killed.” In its account of the footage, PETA says the stunning process was at times inadequate and that some sheep appeared to show signs of consciousness after their throats were cut. One worker laughed at dying sheep when blood was pouring from its eyes.
Mons Royale uses “regenerative” wool
The group says it has submitted evidence from the farms to New Zealand’s Ministry for Primary Industries, calling for investigation and charges over what it describes as apparent violations of animal cruelty laws. Green Prophet has not independently verified the footage or the full scope of the allegations, but the claims are serious enough to put pressure on every brand still using ZQ wool as a reassurance label. We have reached out to Zentera for a comment.
Untouched World touts using ZQ-certified cashmere from possums (Screengrab April 1)
Among the most shocking findings documented by PETA Asia-Pacific were claims that “workers whipped, tackled, and hit sheep with various objects, including a ski pole,” and that “sheep were left with gaping wounds that were stitched up without painkillers.”
“One worker laughed at a sheep as blood ran down their face from an eye injury,” PETA told Green Prophet.
The investigation also describes overcrowding so severe that one sheep was allegedly “smothered to death,” after which “her wool was still shorn to be prepared for sale.” In another alleged incident, “a farmer slit the throat of a conscious sheep after the animal spent days struggling and collapsing. Her body was dumped into a trash pit.”
These are not the kinds of images consumers picture when they buy a merino sweater labeled “ethical.”
And that may be the larger story here.
Fashion has become adept at swapping one moral language for another. “Natural.” “Regenerative.” “Ethical.” “Responsible.” These words can reassure shoppers who want to avoid petroleum-based fast fashion, but they can also obscure what is happening to animals in industrial supply chains. Wool may biodegrade but that does not automatically make it humane.
For brands relying on ZQ-certified wool, the Zentera rebrand raises uncomfortable questions. Was the removal of the “ethical wool” claim a routine repositioning, or a quiet retreat from language that no longer withstands scrutiny?
Either way, the burden now falls on fashion labels, outdoor brands, and luxury houses using certified merino to explain what exactly they mean when they ask consumers to trust them.
Because if “ethical wool” can include animals who are, in PETA’s words, “kicked, punched, killed,” then the label may not mean much at all.
Big, gnarly fava bean pods are in season right now, just as winter gives way from cool nights to bright, warm days. Heaps of the greens loved in the Middle East appear in the shouks (Arabic word for market): peas, string beans, asparagus, and for a short while, these fresh fava beans.
Somehow vegetables with short seasons excite the imagination and appetite more sharply than produce that’s available all year around. Good Middle Eastern cooks have many recipes for delicate fava beans, and this turmeric-fragrant soup is one.
Fresh beans are peeled twice: once when when you slide them out of their pods, and again when you squish each bean out from its rubbery covering. True; a little extra work. But it’s a restful task, and the soup is wonderfully herby, and redolent of green Springtime.
Image via thehappylentil.com
The preparation time listed relates to fresh beans. Frozen beans won’t need the peeling.
You’ll notice that the recipe calls for a fair amount of cilantro, but you can easily swap parsley for it if you prefer.
Fava Bean Soup Recipe
Ingredients
2 cups fresh or frozen fava bean pods
1 large leek, well washed and sliced into thin rings (about 2 cups)
2 celery stalks sliced
2 carrots, sliced thinly
2 zucchini, diced
2 large potatoes, diced
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 teaspoon turmeric
1 teaspoon salt or more to taste
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
A bunch of coarsely chopped cilantro (about a cup)
8 cups/2 liters water or more as needed
Pull the strings off each pod and open it along the slit to expose the green beans. Use your thumbnail or a small knife. Push the beans out. Make a small cut in each bean, along the black stripe on its side, and squish it free of its sheath.
Image by amirmasoud via unsplash
If using frozen beans, skip this step.
Heat olive oil in a deep pot over medium heat. Add the leeks, celery, carrots, zucchini and potatoes. Add turmeric, salt and black pepper, stir and let the vegetables cook gently for about 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.
Add 8 cups of water, stir and bring to a boil. Cook, covered, for 45 minutes over medium heat until all the vegetables are tender.
Add the peeled fava beans, bring back to a boil and continue cooking for another 45 minutes. Check the soup once or twice: if necessary, add a little water.
Using a potato masher, mash the vegetables very coarsely.
Taste for seasoning and add a little more salt and pepper if needed.
Turn off the heat and add a bunch of finely chopped cilantro or parsley.
Serve right away, and enjoy.
For years the freight industry tried to force a false choice. Battery-electric or hydrogen. Back the right horse. Ignore the rest. Daimler Truck’s new Mercedes-Benz NextGenH2 Truck gives Tesla Semis a run for their money and suggests that the argument is already getting old.
Daimler says its new liquid-hydrogen fuel cell truck will enter small-series production from the end of 2026, with 100 trucks planned for customer operations. The truck is designed for ranges of well over 800 miles on a single fill and borrows major components from the battery-electric eActros 600, including the integrated e-axle, digital cockpit and latest safety systems. That matters because it points to something more realistic than a clean-tech cage match: the future of freight is likely to be electric and hydrogen, depending on route logic, geography, infrastructure and what is actually being hauled.
This is not a small distinction. It changes how ports, logistics firms, governments and even investors should think about decarbonizing freight. A battery-electric truck and a hydrogen truck are not moral rivals. They are tools for different jobs.
Battery-electric trucks are rapidly becoming the better answer for repeatable, corridor-based freight. Think port-to-warehouse routes, retail distribution loops, industrial zones and regional supply chains where trucks can charge during planned dwell times. They are quieter, simpler, mechanically cleaner and increasingly economical where charging can be controlled. That is why Daimler has already been pushing the eActros 600 hard into the market and why other manufacturers are racing to scale their own heavy-duty electric fleets. In those settings, batteries make obvious sense.
A Tesla Semi, an all-electric freight truck
Hydrogen comes into its own where the route gets longer, the payload gets heavier and the downtime becomes more expensive. That is exactly the space Daimler is targeting with the NextGenH2. Liquid hydrogen allows the truck to carry more energy on board than compressed gaseous hydrogen, and much more usable long-haul range than many battery systems can currently offer without weight and charging tradeoffs.
Daimler says the truck can be refueled in 10 to 15 minutes using its sLH2 liquid hydrogen standard and that the system is designed to make the vehicle more comparable to diesel in real operations. That is the real benchmark in freight. Not whether the truck is futuristic, but whether it can actually replace a diesel workhorse on the routes that matter.
That also explains why the truck shares so much DNA with the eActros 600. Daimler is not building two completely separate futures. It is building one freight architecture with two energy pathways. The e-axle, digital cockpit, battery buffer, assistance systems and even aerodynamic elements are converging. The truck may store energy differently, but the logic of the vehicle is becoming unified. That is important because the clean freight revolution will not happen if every technology lives in its own expensive silo. It has to become modular, scalable and familiar enough for fleet operators to trust.
Trust is not a small issue in trucking. Freight operators are not early adopters in the consumer-tech sense. They are skeptical for good reason. Their margins are thin and their routes are punishing. Their equipment, which requires a massive upfront investment, like the cost of a house, has to work in the rain, the heat, the cold and the dark, often on deadlines that leave little room for idealism or climate values. The promise of zero-emission trucking only becomes real when it fits the brutal rhythm of actual logistics.
That is why Daimler’s move matters beyond Germany. It arrives at a moment when the global shipping and trucking system looks increasingly exposed. Wars in and around the Middle East, Red Sea disruptions from Houthi pirates, bottlenecks at ports, and the continued vulnerability of the Strait of Hormuz all remind us that diesel is not just dirty. It is geopolitically fragile. A logistics system that can increasingly run on domestic electricity or locally produced hydrogen is not only cleaner. It is harder to destabilize. Saudi Aramco, the world’s richest company, and which controls endless oil reserves knows that the cost of oil can flatten in a minute once local hydrogen fuel production is figured out. That’s why they are investing in it too in Indonesia.
Sonol builds a hydrogen fuel station in Israel’s Haifa Bay
And yes, there is still a serious caveat. Hydrogen is only as green as the way it is made. If it comes from fossil gas without real carbon controls, the emissions story weakens quickly. The same is true of electric trucks charged from dirty grids. A zero-emission vehicle is only truly low-carbon if the energy behind it is also getting cleaner. But that does not make the transition less important. It makes the surrounding energy system more important too.
There is another reason the industry is moving this way, and it has less to do with climate than with safety. Daimler says the NextGenH2 will carry over the latest assistance systems from the eActros 600, including Active Brake Assist 6, Front Guard Assist and Active Sideguard Assist 2. These are not marketing flourishes. Heavy trucks remain among the most dangerous machines on public roads, and any serious upgrade in crash prevention matters. The more freight becomes software-defined, sensor-rich and digitally governed, the more it can move away from the old diesel model built around fatigue, blind spots and brute force.
Battery-electric trucks will likely dominate repeatable routes where charging is easy and economics are already starting to work. Hydrogen trucks will likely serve the heavier, longer and more demanding lanes where batteries still struggle in countries like Australia, Canada, and the US. In the future: Rail will matter more. Ports will become smarter. Road trains and platooning may return in digital form and freight itself will slowly become less about individual vehicles and more about coordinated systems like how airlines collaborate at airports around the world. Everyone has a space and a time for refueling, cleaning, loading, taxi-ing and take-off.
For now, Daimler’s NextGenH2 is not proof that hydrogen has won. It is proof that freight is finally getting more honest. The future was never going to be battery-only or hydrogen-only. The future is electric and hydrogen for shipping.
When wars in Iran threaten oil routes, and Saudi Aramco jacks up prices because it can, the weakness of global freight becomes impossible to ignore. The latest tensions tied to Iran and the Strait of Hormuz have exposed, again, how fragile it is to move food, medicine, fuel, industrial goods and consumer products through a logistics system still built around diesel.
A single chokepoint can raise prices across continents. A single delay or boat of Houthi pirates attempting to blow up an oil tanker ripples from port to warehouse to supermarket shelf. The lesson is no longer abstract. Freight needs to become more electric, more local, more automated, more resilient and, above all, safer. And all that needs to be linked to battery storage microgrids and renewable energy produced close to home. My goal is to see the share price of Saudi Aramco sink.
The symbol most people recognize is the Tesla Semi, Tesla’s battery-electric Class 8 truck which we wrote about more than 5 years ago. Tesla says the Semi can travel up to 500 miles on a charge, use about 1.7 kWh per mile, and recover up to 70% of range in 30 minutes with its 1 MW charging system. Those are no longer vague concept-car numbers. They are logistics numbers that matter because freight does not need novelty: it needs predictable routes, lower operating costs, better energy security and fewer people dying on the road.
But Tesla is only one part of the story. The more interesting shift is that long-haul trucking is now splitting into two serious zero-emission paths: battery-electric for predictable corridors and depot-based logistics, and hydrogen fuel cell for longer ranges, faster refueling and heavier-duty freight where batteries may still be too limiting.
Why electric trucks are finally becoming real
The Tesla Semi interior
Battery-electric trucks make the most sense where routes are repetitive and tightly managed: ports to warehouses, regional distribution centers, industrial parks, airport freight corridors and retail supply loops. These trucks can charge during planned dwell times, brake regeneratively in traffic and increasingly move as part of coordinated fleets rather than as isolated machines.
This is where Green Prophet’s old fascination with road trains starts to look less eccentric and more prescient. The old Australian road train was about linking trailers together for remote hauling. The new version is software-driven and possibly fueled by green hydrogen: platooned electric trucks traveling in synchronized formation to reduce aerodynamic drag, save energy and move freight more efficiently between hubs.
Research published in 2025 suggests electric truck platooning can reduce total operating costs when charging, routing and convoy formation are optimized together. That may sound technical, but it points to something simple: the next road train is not a dusty outback oddity. It is a digitally managed freight system.
Companies like Einride are already operating electric and autonomous freight systems in Europe and the United States. Volvo Trucks, Daimler Truck, PACCAR and others are all pushing battery-electric heavy-duty platforms into real-world operations. The market is still young, but it is no longer imaginary.
Where hydrogen enters the picture
If battery-electric trucks are best suited to fixed and repeatable corridors, hydrogen fuel cell trucks are being positioned for the stretches where battery weight, charging time and infrastructure become harder to manage. Think Canada, inner states in the US and Australia. Even wide parts of the Middle East desert where the price of oil costs less than water. This is where the argument gets serious.
Mercedes-Benz NextGenH2 Truck
Daimler Truck says its new Mercedes-Benz NextGenH2 Truck will enter small-series production from the end of 2026, with 100 trucks planned for customer operations. Daimler says the liquid hydrogen truck is designed for ranges well over 800 miles on a single fill and uses components shared with its battery-electric eActros 600, including safety systems and digital cockpit architecture. That matters because it suggests the future may not be electric or hydrogen, but electric and hydrogen depending on route logic.
That same dual-path logic is why truckmakers are hedging across both technologies. Nikola, despite its damaged reputation and corporate instability, has still pushed hydrogen fuel cell trucks into commercial trials. The technology itself should not be dismissed because one company handled it badly. Hydrogen trucks offer compelling advantages where time-sensitive freight, high utilization and diesel-like refueling rhythms still matter.
There is a catch, of course. Hydrogen is only as clean as the way it is made. If it comes from fossil gas without meaningful carbon capture, the climate case weakens. If it comes from renewable electrolysis, the case improves dramatically. The same critique applies to battery-electric trucks. They are only as green as the grid charging them. If fossil fuels are running the battery charging stations, the whole point becomes ridiculous. We need an all-systems effort here. But even when it’s not green, electric drivetrains and fuel cells shift freight away from combustion at the point of use, which is still a major health and air quality gain for the roads cities around them.
Why safety may be the strongest argument of all
This is not only a climate story. It is a safety story, and trucking badly needs one. According to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, there were about 503,000 police-reported crashes involving large trucks in the United States in 2022, including 5,279 fatal crashes. The agency also notes that 82% of fatalities in fatal large-truck crashes were not occupants of the large truck. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety has repeatedly shown that large trucks create disproportionate danger for people in smaller vehicles.
That is the context in which electric and hydrogen trucks need to be judged. Not against some fantasy of perfect roads, but against the current freight system, which still depends too heavily on fatigue, weak oversight, inconsistent training and vehicles operating under deadline pressure.
Advanced safety systems are already proving useful. IIHS has reported that forward collision warning and automatic emergency braking reduce rear-end crash rates for large trucks. These are not distant future gains. They are available gains. Battery-electric and hydrogen trucks are both well positioned to integrate these systems more deeply because they are increasingly software-first platforms. Their cameras, sensors, telemetry, braking logic and route controls can be managed at fleet level rather than left to the limits of human judgment alone.
That is where the promise lies. A truck that is digitally supervised from depot to destination is harder to fake, easier to monitor and easier to discipline. Its speed, route, braking behavior, maintenance events and charging or fueling cycles can all be tracked. It is not a moral solution to human failure, but it is a technical one, and freight needs more of that.
The dirty secret of freight is not just diesel
A road train in Australia. Long-distance hauling on flat surfaces can hook multiple loads together like a train.
There is another reason the trucking sector is ripe for change: too much of it is held together with bad labor conditions, training shortcuts and dangerous corner-cutting. Canada has become a cautionary example. Ontario authorities suspended truckers’ licences after uncovering dishonest testing and training practices, according to TruckNews. Alberta also shut down unsafe truck driver training schools and targeted carriers linked to poor safety practices, again reported by TruckNews. A few years ago, a trucker from India killed an entire hockey team when he was driving on a suspended license from infractions. He should not have been on the road. But lack of government oversight with unsustainable immigration goals have put Canadian roads at risk. Make it electric!
This is where the public conversation often goes off the rails. The issue is not “foreign drivers” as a lazy culture-war talking point. The issue is licensing integrity, labor exploitation, poor oversight and freight systems that reward cost-cutting until people die. If electric and hydrogen trucks are managed through better software, better route discipline and better oversight, they can help reduce those failure points. They will not erase human corruption, but they can make dangerous operations more visible and easier to regulate.
The next road train may move at night
One of the least discussed advantages of electric and hydrogen freight is when it can move. The future of long-haul logistics is not just about propulsion. It is about timing of the drive.
Night freight may become one of the biggest advantages of automated and electrified trucking. Roads are less congested at night. Temperatures are lower. Delivery windows are easier to manage. Noise is lower with electric drivetrains. Human fatigue has always made night trucking dangerous, but digitally managed freight corridors, better sensors, automatic braking and lane support change that equation. A future fleet of trucks moving quietly between depots after midnight may turn out to be one of the safest ways to keep cities and supply chains functioning.
Aurora tests self-driving trucks in Texas
This is also where autonomy enters the picture. Companies like Aurora are already running driverless freight routes in Texas and have expanded their network as confidence in the systems grows. That does not mean human drivers disappear tomorrow, and it certainly does not mean the technology is risk-free. But it does suggest that the future freight vehicle may be less like a cowboy truck and more like a rolling logistics node, with the human gradually shifting from driver to supervisor.
The Middle East should care more than most
For the Gulf and other regions exposed to oil-route instability, this transition is not just environmental. It is strategic. Green Prophet recently reported how Etihad Rail is using solar power at a freight terminal, a small but important signal that logistics is beginning to decouple from diesel. Rail, electric trucking, hydrogen corridors and distributed renewable energy can begin to work together as one freight architecture.
That is the real post-oil freight future. Not a single silver bullet, but a layered system: electric trucks on predictable routes, hydrogen trucks on heavier and longer hauls, autonomous convoying where it makes sense, rail where possible, and maybe even tunnels where cities become too congested to keep pretending surface freight is enough.
That last idea sounds absurd until you look at what Elon Musk’s Boring Company is trying to do. Green Prophet recently covered its proposed Dubai Loop. Most of the discussion focuses on passenger transport, but the freight implications may be more important. Underground logistics corridors for high-value goods, airport freight, port distribution and urban delivery are no longer science fiction. They are expensive, yes, but so are crashes, congestion, diesel pollution, road wear and lost time.
What could go wrong
There are real pitfalls and they should not be brushed aside.
Charging infrastructure is still thin for heavy trucks. Hydrogen refueling infrastructure is even thinner. Grid readiness is uneven. Green hydrogen is still expensive. Battery weight remains a payload issue. Autonomous regulation is inconsistent across jurisdictions. Public trust can collapse after a single bad crash.
And then there are jobs. Better electric and hydrogen logistics will almost certainly mean fewer traditional long-haul driving jobs over time, especially on repetitive corridor freight. Some of those jobs will shift into fleet management, charging and fueling infrastructure, maintenance, software operations and remote supervision. Some will not. Governments and unions should be preparing for that reality now, not pretending it will sort itself out.
The real promise
The real promise of electric and hydrogen long-haul trucks is not that they are trendy. It is that they make freight less stupid.
They offer a path away from a system built on diesel dependency, poor air quality, avoidable crashes, labor strain and geopolitical fragility. They will not replace every truck overnight. They do not need to. Freight changes corridor by corridor, depot by depot, terminal by terminal. That is how this transition will happen too.
The old diesel model gave us pollution, fatigue, noise, vulnerability and too many deaths on the road. The next freight era should be quieter, cleaner, more disciplined and harder to destabilize. Battery-electric and hydrogen trucks are not a fantasy anymore. They are beginning to look like the most practical answer we have.
When the US-Israel-Iran war rattles oil routes and sends stocks linked to oil prices in chaos, we remember how vulnerable freight really is. From Houthis blowing up shipping containers in the Red Sea to the IRGC regime stopping traffic in the Strait of Hormuz.
The latest instability tied to Iran and the Strait of Hormuz has again exposed a truth that should have been obvious years ago: moving fuel, food, medicine and industrial goods with diesel trucks from source points around the world is not only dirty and expensive, it is strategically brittle.
A single chokepoint can raise costs across continents. A single delay can ripple through ports, warehouses and supermarket shelves. If there is a serious transportation lesson from this latest era of conflict, but also from the COVID era and the beginning of the Ukraine-Russia war, it is that freight has to become more electric, more automated, more distributed and much safer.
The most visible symbol of that future is the Tesla Semi, but it is only one part of a wider shift that includes platooning, electric road trains, tunnel logistics (the Boring Company) and autonomous overnight freight. Tesla says their new Semi can travel up to 500 miles on a single charge, potentially charge itself, use just 1.7 kWh per mile, and recover up to 60% of range in 30 minutes using Tesla’s dedicated Semi chargers. These are no longer vague promises from a concept vehicle. They are operational logistics numbers, and they matter because freight does not need novelty. It needs reliability, lower costs, cleaner energy and fewer funerals on the road.
DHL tests a Tesla Semi on the road
The real story is not just battery range. It is what electric trucks can do to the geometry of freight itself. Electric heavy vehicles are better suited to repeatable, software-managed routes than diesel trucks, especially on corridors between ports, warehouses, data centers, industrial parks and distribution hubs. They can charge during planned dwell time, brake regeneratively in traffic, and eventually move in synchronized convoys. That is where an old Green Prophet idea suddenly feels new again.
A road train in Australia. Long-distance hauling on flat surfaces can hook multiple loads together like a train.
Years ago Green Prophet wrote about road trains as a way to reduce energy use and pollution on major corridors. Back then it sounded slightly utopian. Today it looks practical. Road trains are already used in places like Australia for long-haul freight, where multiple trailers are linked in controlled formation. The next version is more sophisticated: platooned electric trucks using software, automation and vehicle-to-vehicle coordination to move with less drag, better braking and tighter control. If war has reminded us how fragile fuel supply can be, then electrified road trains offer a direct answer. They move goods using power that can increasingly come from domestic grids rather than imported oil.
“Well said,” says Mark Russell, from Eco Trilogy, “Unfortunately, every new idea introduced in the West right now seems to be met with “that’ll never work” instead of “we can make this happen.” Somewhere along the way we’ve shifted from practical, solutions-focused thinking to a culture that resists improvement.
“Healthy debate is one thing—I can respect that. What’s harder to accept is the deliberate misinformation and outright falsehoods that cloud real progress. Take electric motors for example—they’re vastly more efficient than diesel, and that’s only the beginning of what’s possible when we choose to move forward instead of hold back.”
The Tesla Semi interior
This is not just a climate story. It is also a safety story, and trucking badly needs one. According to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, 6,050 large trucks and buses were involved in fatal crashes in 2022. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety notes that most deaths in large truck crashes are not truck occupants but people in smaller vehicles. Canadians have experienced this too well. A recent high-profile case is about an Indian truck driver with dozens of traffic offenses who wiped out an entire hockey team. Truckers themselves, though happy for the jobs that require unskilled labor, lead to back problems, opiode use and addiction. My brother-in-law got addicted to crack on this path. But in society, the danger comes from mass, height, visibility problems and human error. Trucks are essential to modern life, but the diesel freight system we tolerate is still one of the most physically unforgiving machines in daily public use. If you live in rural areas in Canada for instance, it’s fairly common to hear stories of people who have been hit by logging trucks out on old lonely logging roads.
That context matters when people dismiss autonomous or semi-autonomous freight as “experimental.” The current system is experimental too. It is just old enough that we stopped calling it that. Human fatigue, poor training, distracted driving, mechanical neglect and congested road conditions are still doing terrible work every day. The case for electric freight is not that software is magic. It is that electric and digitally managed fleets can reduce some of the oldest failure points in trucking if they are deployed honestly and regulated properly.
Mercedes-Benz NextGenH2 (coming 2026) and Nikola Tre FCEV, feature dedicated sleeper cabins designed for driver comfort and safety with advanced hydrogen monitoring systems. They aren’t electric, but run on green hydrogen fuel. Remember electric cars are ony as “green” as the power stations charging them.
There is strong evidence that advanced safety systems already help. A study highlighted by the IIHS found that forward collision warning and automatic emergency braking greatly reduce crash risk for large trucks. Another transportation safety summary reported that forward collision warning reduced rear-end crash rates for large trucks by 44% and automatic emergency braking cut them by 41%. These are not futuristic gains. They are available gains, and electric trucks are especially well positioned to integrate them deeply because they are software-first vehicles from the start.
This is where the Tesla Semi has real promise beyond the brand mythology. A truck that is built around sensors, cameras, digital controls, active safety systems and fleet-level telemetry is not just a cleaner truck. It is a more governable truck. That matters because freight safety is often less about one great driver and more about whether the entire system is designed to reduce bad decisions. Electric fleets can be routed to avoid dangerous congestion, scheduled for lower-risk windows and monitored continuously for maintenance, speed, route adherence and braking behavior.
Canada has already shown what happens when freight systems become too loose and too dependent on low-cost labor with weak oversight. Ontario authorities suspended truckers’ licences after uncovering dishonest testing and training practices in the commercial driving pipeline, mainly through Indian and Pakistani new immigrants, a scandal that has raised concerns about how unqualified drivers can end up operating very large vehicles on public roads. The report in TruckNews made clear that the issue was not theoretical.
There have also been wider crackdowns in western Canada. In Alberta, regulators shut down unsafe truck driver training schools and targeted carriers linked to poor safety practices, according to another TruckNews report. This is where the so-called Indian trucker scam story belongs: not in xenophobic shorthand, but in a larger, documented failure of training quality, licensing integrity and freight oversight. The public safety issue is real and the solution is better standards, better enforcement and eventually fewer opportunities for dangerous human error in the first place.
Electric and autonomous freight systems can help close that gap. A truck that is digitally supervised from depot to destination is much harder to fake than a paper credential. Its route, braking profile, charging pattern, maintenance logs and safety events are all visible. Its blind spots can be monitored more effectively. Its lane keeping can be assisted. Its speed can be constrained. Its night operation can be managed more intelligently than traditional diesel trucking, where too much depends on exhausted people trying to survive punishing schedules.
Night freight, in particular, deserves more attention. Most people think of night driving as inherently more dangerous, and for tired human drivers that is often true. But electric freight paired with high-grade sensors, automatic braking, lane support and controlled corridors changes that equation. Roads are less congested at night. Temperatures are lower and delivery windows are easier to manage. A future fleet of electric trucks moving through dedicated logistics lanes or semi-autonomous convoy corridors after midnight may actually be one of the safest ways to move goods through and between cities of Boston and New York. As my design prof friend Tom Klinkowstein said while driving through Soho on his electric BMW, “wheeeeee.”
That is especially important in hot countries and regions vulnerable to fuel disruption. In the Gulf, for instance, the logic is already visible. Green Prophet recently covered how Etihad Rail is using solar power at a freight terminal, which points to a larger truth: logistics is beginning to decouple from diesel. Rail, electric trucking and distributed renewable power can work together to make freight less exposed to global oil shocks. If you can move a growing share of cargo using electricity generated at home, then conflict in a shipping chokepoint matters a little less.
And then there is the tunnel idea. Elon Musk’s Boring Company is usually treated as either a curiosity or a vanity project, but its freight implications are worth taking seriously. The company explicitly positions itself around transportation, utility and freight tunnels, and Green Prophet recently looked at its proposed Dubai Loop. Most public discussion focuses on moving people, but the more consequential long game may be underground logistics around ports, airports, industrial districts and city delivery corridors.
Imagine what that means in practical terms. Instead of forcing every container, parcel or pallet through surface congestion, cities could build dedicated electric freight arteries below grade. Not for everything, but for enough high-frequency, high-value freight to change the economics of last-mile logistics. Tunnels are expensive, but so are collisions, delays, diesel pollution, road wear and lost time. If electrified trucking is the first phase of cleaner freight, then freight tunneling may become the second.
There is also a strategic military and civil defense logic to all this. When surface infrastructure is exposed, tunnel logistics and electrified transport corridors become more than just sustainability projects. They become resilience infrastructure. A society that can move food, medicine, construction materials and even emergency fuel with less dependence on imported diesel is not only cleaner: it is harder to destabilize.
There will be labor consequences and they should not be brushed aside. Better electric logistics will almost certainly mean fewer traditional long-haul driving jobs over time, especially on repetitive corridor freight. Some of those jobs will be replaced by fleet management, remote operations, charging infrastructure, maintenance, software supervision and tunnel logistics, but not all of them. That is a real social cost and governments should be planning for it now. But it should not be used as an excuse to defend a freight model that is dangerous, polluting and geopolitically fragile.
The bigger truth is simple. If the world wants safer freight after the Iran war, it should stop talking only about oil supply and start talking about transport design around renewable energy nodes and battery storage stations. Electric trucks like the Tesla Semi, road-train logic, managed night freight, autonomous convoying and freight tunnels are not fringe ideas anymore. They are pieces of a practical, lower-risk logistics future.
The old diesel model gave us pollution, dependency, fatigue and too many deaths on the road. The next freight era should be quieter, cleaner and much less lethal. That would be a technological upgrade worth taking seriously.
The big question I have is if the first versions will include sleeper cabins. Can a trucker just put the vehicle on automatic mode and write poetry from his cabin behind the wheel?
