How the Oil Barons Are Seeking a Get-Out-of-Jail-Free Card for Climate Change Damages

A recent move by the Supreme Court could actually make fossil-fuel companies more vulnerable to lawsuits, but the polluters are pushing for a workaround.

December 30, 2021, arrived as a quiet, normal day in the Superior, Colorado, household of Erica Solove — except for all the ways in which the weather soon turned freakish.

Solove and her family were enjoying the sleepy time between Christmas and New Year’s, and as they sat down to lunch, she noticed that things outside looked strange. Half of the sky was a crystal, clear blue, but the other half was choked dark — a dust storm, she figured, or a fire somewhere off in the mountains. That December had been uncannily warm, with temperatures regularly 10 degrees above normal, which had left the wild grasslands surrounding her neighborhood dry and brittle. The ground was bare of snow — a strange sight for winter in a place located nearly a mile above sea level. The winds were gusting something fierce.

“I just didn’t think anything of it,” Solove remembers. “And then very suddenly I realized, ‘Oh, this fire is not off in the mountains — it’s right here.’”

She and her husband decided to bolt. They gathered up their five-year-old and their two-year-old and raced out of the house without any coats or wallets; her husband was the only one wearing shoes. The winds had accelerated to hurricane force, so strong she could barely open the car door.

“It just went from a very normal time to, like, complete run-for-your-life chaos,” Solove said. “I naively assumed [the local authorities] would get it under control.”

But the fire, driven by the intense windstorm, quickly did spin out of control. By the end of the day, the Solove house had burned to the ground — one of the roughly 1,100 homes incinerated in the community a short drive from the college town of Boulder. Two people died, and more than 37,000 residents were forced to evacuate. The Marshall Fire would come to rank as the most destructive wildfire in Colorado history, with at least $500 million in recorded damages.

The Marshall Fire is one in a string of similar extreme weather disasters — Paradise, Altadena, Asheville — that would have been all but impossible without global climate change. According to a report from the Union of Concerned Scientists, warming temperatures and reduced precipitation have intensified fires across the western United States. The report concludes that there’s a clear culprit: the coal, oil, and gas companies that continue to use the atmosphere as a dumping ground for their products’ carbon pollution.

Employing what’s called “attribution science,” the UCS analysis found that 37% of the forest area that has burned in western North America since 1986 can be traced to carbon emissions from the world’s 88 largest fossil fuel companies. “Emissions from the products of fossil fuel companies and cement manufacturers have fundamentally reshaped the climate of western North America and left behind a scarred, charred landscape,” the group reports.

The way Erica Solove sees it, the fossil fuel giants hold a measure of responsibility for the fire that destroyed her community.

“You know, we’re already paying, right? We’re paying with insurance premiums … and dipping into our life savings,” said Solove, who used to work in corporate HR but who, since the fire, has joined the staff of a national support group called Extreme Weather Survivors. “I would certainly think that anyone who contributed to the disaster should be liable for it, and that that burden should not be only on families.”

Solove’s local elected officials have the same point of view. In 2018 Boulder County, the city of Boulder, and San Miguel County filed a lawsuit in Colorado state court against ExxonMobil and the U.S. subsidiary of the Canadian oil firm Suncor demanding that the companies help cover the local governments’ climate change-related expenditures. “The costs should be shared by Exxon and the Suncor Defendants because they knowingly caused and contributed to the alteration of the climate by producing, promoting, refining, marketing and selling fossil fuels at levels that have caused and continue to cause climate change, while concealing and/or misrepresenting the dangers associated with fossil fuels’ intended use,” the Colorado governments’ lawsuit declared.

After years of legal wrangling and repeated appeals, the Colorado Supreme Court last year ruled that the Boulder-area cases can move toward trial. In a 5 to 2 decision, the state justices dismissed the oil companies’ arguments that federal law preempts the case and ordered the case to be heard in Colorado district court.

Now, however, the Colorado communities’ attempts at redress are in doubt.

In late February the U.S. Supreme court agreed to hear a petition by Exxon and Suncor to toss out the Boulder case and the many others like it. Faced with the prospect of being tried in court — and, if found guilty, suffering massive reputational damage and severe financial penalties — the fossil fuel giants and their political allies are waging a campaign to dodge any legal responsibility for climate-related destruction.

“These companies do not want the evidence of their climate deception to go before a jury,” said Mike Meno, communications director at the Center for Climate Integrity, a group that assists communities in demanding corporate accountability for global warming. “They do not want these cases to go to trial, and they will take any steps they can to stop that.”

At stake is whether communities like Boulder County — and, by extension, people like Erica Solove — will ever have a chance to demand justice for what many people say is among the greatest crimes in human history.

***

The Colorado communities suing Exxon and Suncor are in good company. Since 2017, 11 states, the territory of Puerto Rico, and dozens of cities, counties, and Tribal governments have filed lawsuits against fossil fuel corporations that seek to recover climate-change costs.

The lawsuits take a variety of forms. A lawsuit brought by Hoboken, New Jersey, charges the fossil fuel giants with violating racketeering laws (essentially accusing them of acting like the mafia), while a recent suit in Michigan cites anti-trust laws (essentially accusing Big Oil of being a cartel).

But all the suits rest primarily on old-fashioned tort claims, arguing that the fossil fuel corporations deceived the public about the dangers of their products and therefore should pay some of the costs of those damages. At this point, according to the Center for Climate Integrity, 1 in 4 Americans lives in a jurisdiction that has sued the fossil fuel industry.

The scale of the alleged damages and the sweeping scope of the legal proceedings are often compared to the landmark litigation against Big Tobacco. In the 1990s dozens of state attorneys general sued cigarette makers for deception about the dangers of smoking, eventually securing a sweeping, $205 billion settlement. “This is very much like the tobacco litigation from 30 years ago, where each individual state said, ‘You cost our healthcare system a lot of money,’ and ultimately was so successful that every state signed on,” said Robert Percival, director of the environmental law program at the University of Maryland School of Law. “Those were straightforward tort claims under state law, and basically that’s what’s happening here.”

The comparison to Big Tobacco is unflattering to the fossil fuel giants and, unsurprisingly, they have fought a multiyear effort asking for the cases either to be dismissed or to be moved to federal courts, which they view as a more sympathetic venue.

Despite their vast army of lawyers, the oil companies have mostly suffered defeats. Multiple federal appellate courts have turned down their appeals. And on five separate occasions the U.S. Supreme Court has swatted away petitions to hear the matter, including as recently as January 2025, when the justices refused to review a decision by the Hawai‘i Supreme Court to let a Honolulu climate case to proceed in state court.

So why did the Supreme Court justices decide to hear the issue now?

Court watchers caution that reading Supreme Court tea leaves is tricky business, but they point to several possibilities for why the justices are taking the case. One is the growing effort by the fossil fuel industry’s political allies to short-circuit the litigation. Republican attorneys general from 19 states have asked the court to block the state and local suits. And in a highly unusual move, the Trump Department of Justice last year filed an unsolicited brief to the court in support of the oil companies’ position — very likely at the request of oil executives, who raised the issue with the president in an White House meeting in the spring of 2025, as The Wall Street Journal reported. The Trump administration’s brief marked a departure from the Biden administration’s position in support of the local climate lawsuits, perhaps giving the justices an opening to consider the issue.

Another possibility, which various reporters have raised, is that Justice Samuel Alito, an arch-conservative, provided a crucial swing vote. Four justices are required to hear a case, and Alito recused himself in the Hawai‘i decision, since he has significant investments in ConocoPhillips and the company was a primary defendant in the Honolulu case. Alito also recused himself in a 2023 appeal in the Boulder case that was virtually identical to the current case. But he did not recuse himself this time, and it likely made the difference.

Chief Justice Roberts “recently sent around a memo that gave the justices a little more leeway in deciding when to recuse themselves — it’s totally up to them,” Percival points out.

Significantly, Justice Amy Coney Barrett has never recused herself from a Supreme Court case, though when she was a circuit court judge she routinely stepped aside in cases involving Shell Oil, where her father worked as an attorney for 29 years; Shell is a defendant in many of the state and local climate lawsuits.

The justices will likely hear oral arguments sometime this coming fall. Given that four justices seem sympathetic to the fossil fuel industry’s arguments and that the industry now has the Department of Justice on its side, Big Oil would have good reason to be confident — except that the Trump administration just yanked away one of its most potent legal talking points.

Just one week before the Supreme Court agreed to consider the Colorado case, President Trump and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin announced that the federal government was rescinding what’s called the “endangerment finding,” the basis for the EPA’s authority to regulate carbon pollution under the Clean Air Act. The move was described as a “knockout punch” in conservative activists’ long crusade to halt federal climate action.

But when it comes to the legal wrangling over the tort cases, the repeal of the endangerment finding might turn out to more like the Trump administration shooting the oil and gas industry in the foot.

Oil and gas companies have long made the case that the state and local lawsuits are impermissible because they interfere with the federal government’s power to set climate policy and regulate air pollution. The plaintiffs say they have no intention of making climate policy; they simply want to recoup their costs from climate damages. Most courts have agreed. “The Energy Companies are arguing a case the Local Governments did not plead,” a Colorado circuit court ruled earlier in the appeals process. “The Local Governments are not attempting to litigate a policy solution to global climate change.” But the question of whether federal power preempts the state claims still dominates the legal back-and-forth. With the recission of the endangerment finding, the federal government is no longer in the business of climate regulation — and that has blown a hole in Big Oil’s legal reasoning.

“It’s a classic case of overreach by the Trump administration,” Percival said. “The defendants can’t make the case that the federal government is doing something on climate. They’ve made it almost impossible for the EPA to do that.”

Andres Restrepo, a senior attorney at the Sierra Club who is involved in the organization’s federal litigation, agrees that the recission of the endangerment finding has eroded the oil companies’ legal position. “I think the EPA has really put a lot of private industry in a bind with this said,” said Restrepo, who grew up in the Boulder area and who knows one childhood friend who lost a home in the Marshall Fire. “They have said we don’t believe we have authority under the Clean Air Act to do this, and I do not believe it’s possible to square that position with the idea that the tort lawsuits are preempted.”

There’s another reason why fossil fuel companies may not want to get too confident about winning the argument before the high court. In accepting the case, the justices explicitly asked the parties to address an additional question: whether the U.S. Supreme Court even has the jurisdiction to rule on these state cases, none of which have gone to trial, much less seen a verdict on their merits.

“The fact that [the justices] added this extra question on jurisdiction could very well suggest that they don’t actually think that this is the kind of thing that they can even pass judgment on,” Restrepo said.

***

In case things don’t go according to plan and the Supreme Court rules in favor of the Boulder plaintiffs, the oil and gas companies have another play in the works. The fossil fuel giants are working at both state and federal levels to convince elected officials to pass laws that would provide them with immunity from any lawsuits. There’s a precedent for such legal immunity and — warning — it’s not pretty.

In 2005 Congress passed a law that shields gun manufacturers from any civil suits arising from the criminal misuse of firearms. That blanket immunity is why there has never been a lawsuit against the gunmakers in response to horrors like the mass murders at Sandy Hook Elementary, Parkland High School, or in Uvalde, Texas. If the local communities demanding redress for climate change damages are trying to repeat the historic campaign against Big Tobacco, the fossil fuel industry is hoping to replicate the experience of the powerful firearms sector.

During a January speech, the CEO and president of the American Petroleum Institute declared that stopping state climate lawsuits is among the trade group’s top priority for 2026. In February Republican Rep. Harriet Hageman of Wyoming told Attorney General Pam Bondi that she is “working with my colleagues in both the House and the Senate to craft legislation tackling” these lawsuits, which, she warned, “are now advancing toward trial.” Senator Ted Cruz, the Texas Republican, has expressed support for the idea. In a June 2025 letter to Bondi, 16 Republican state attorneys general echoed the call for a “liability shield” and described the state lawsuits as “lawfare against the energy industry.”

Meanwhile some states are pursuing their own immunity laws to protect the fossil fuel corporations. Lawmakers in Oklahoma and Utah have introduced bills in their respective legislatures that would bar most civil suits against oil companies. Such immunity laws pose “a threat to democracy,” former Washington governor and well-known climate hawk Jay Inslee told The Guardian. “The ultimate foundation of democracy is the American jury system.”

Law professor Robert Percival expressed less concern about the state-level immunity laws, pointing out that there are no city or county climate lawsuits in either Utah or Oklahoma and that any other immunity efforts would pop up in in red states where climate cases are unlikely to be filed. But Percival agreed that if the fossil fuel companies were to succeed in securing federal immunity, it would represent a major blow to principles of accountability and would ripple through American society.

“It would be an outrageous giveaway,” Percival said. “If you’re big enough and important enough and rich enough that you’re able to get Congress to insulate you from liability, it will just encourage more reckless behavior. We’re letting you off the hook, no matter how much you lied and tried to deceive the public.”

***

The legal arcana and political machinations surrounding the climate change tort cases are so Byzantine that they sometimes cloud the fundamental question of justice at the heart of the lawsuits: Should coal, oil, and gas companies have to answer for their alleged crimes in a court of law?

For Erica Solove, the prospect of impunity boils down to a question of fairness.

“In very simple terms, I don’t think it’s fair,” she said. “If these companies knowingly created a product that contributed to the conditions that caused the [Marshall] fire, then it seems like at the very least they should not receive a get-out-of-jail-free card. We should have the opportunity to hear the evidence and have due process to understand what responsibility could or should be.”

She then asked, “And if the companies in question did nothing wrong, then why would they be aggressively fighting it?” Big Oil’s dogged campaign for immunity can seem like an implicit admission of guilt.

Justice delayed is, famously, justice denied. It’s been nearly a decade since the first climate change tort cases were filed. At this point it might well be another before the facts of the case are heard by a jury. American jurisprudence can be painfully slow. But it’s better than the alternative, which would be for the fossil fuel companies to walk away with impunity — either granted by Supreme Court fiat or greased by enablers in Congress. Such an outcome would be closer to justice decapitated.

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Previously in The Revelator:

Why We Need Environmental Regulations

Before Blue Carbon: Rethinking Carbon Dreams and Closed Forests in the Sundarbans

Planned investments in these mangrove forests — hailed for their carbon-sequestration potential — could further leave people behind and ecosystems at risk.

It’s the afternoon in Satkhira and the sun blazes down on the banks of Kholpetua River. The air hangs heavy, hot and damp, pressing down on the men gathered at Neel Dumur Ghat. They wait for the tide to rise, standing ankle deep in mud that clings to their feet like wet clay. Boats lie half afloat, half stranded, their wooden hulls patched and repatched, bearing the marks of years spent moving between river and forest.

I’ve been coming to this stretch of the Sundarbans — the world’s largest mangrove forest — for several years now, tracing how conservation rules and development policies shape everyday life along these riverbanks in Bangladesh. I return across seasons, when the forest is open, when it is closed, when livelihoods pause, and when they quietly continue anyway. Each visit reveals the same calculations being made along the riverbanks: who can afford to go into the forest, who cannot, and what risks are worth taking when alternatives have long since dried up.

The origins of that daily calculus stem from the arrival of an industry four decades ago that disrupted many people’s traditional links to the land and waters. More recently the arrival of essential conservation laws helped protect many endangered species in Bangladesh but further excluded people from systems that fed and supported them.

Now a new potential threat sits on the horizon: blue carbon.

Blue carbon, lauded in policy circles as an elegant solution to climate change, couples mangrove carbon sequestration with wealth generation. However, this idealized equation faces a harsh reality far from policy halls.

Forests That Feed

Beyond the ghat, where the mud banks dissolve into a web of canals, the Sundarbans begin. Not as a pristine wilderness, but as 2,300 square miles of living, breathing expanse of mangroves, tides, tigers, and people who have depended on it for generations. It’s a place governed by rules meant to protect it and by realities that often make those rules impossible to follow.

Among the men waiting for the tide is Manik Mia, 40 years old, his shoulders broad, his palms scarred from decades of pushing boats through tangled channels where saltwater laps at roots like restless fingers. For the past 24 years, he has followed in the footsteps of his father and grandfather, venturing into the mangroves to collect honey, fish fingerlings, and crabs.

Today, as the tide swells, Manik Mia readies for another journey, one that, like many others, is officially illegal. Like many others he earns income at certain times of the year as a mawali — a licensed honey collector who enters the forest during the short spring season, smoking wild hives from mangrove trees while on the lookout for tigers, hoping to haul a comb from the forest before the permits expire.

Since 2009 fishing, crab collection, honey gathering, and forest entry have been restricted at various times through much of the monsoon — seasonal bans intended to protect breeding cycles. Forest Department patrols maintain these rules with checkpoints and seizures if caught.

On paper these are conservation measures. But bans do not feed people. On the riverbank they also mean months when boats stay idle and pots stay empty. People like Manik Mia — along with an estimated 2.5 million others whose livelihoods are tied almost entirely to the Sundarbans — must decide whether survival is worth the risk of punishment.

As part of my fieldwork, I have listened to the same dilemma repeated across villages: The forest is closed, but hunger is not. Bans do not come with compensation or alternative work. Survival, instead, depends on defying the very regulations meant to protect the ecosystem.

Manik Mia tightens the rubber boots that he must wear to cross the treacherous mangrove forest floor, where every step can sink deep into the mud. He checks the pots that will be filled up with honey, the wooden stick he carries to beat the ground and startle any lurking tiger or wild pigs, and the handmade whistle used to warn companions if forest officers approach or danger arises. Around him his companions move with quiet precision, borrowing whatever gear they can: rubber boots, dried food, and firewood to smoke the bees.

Out here each tool is a lifeline; forgetting even one could mean difference between returning home safely or not at all.

“When your family is starving and you have no way to feed them except [foraging from] the Sundarbans,” Manik Mia says, pushing the boat into water that reflects the sky like liquid metal, “one does not really follow the rules. The need to feed your family is the priority.”

With the rising tides carrying them forward, the boat passes what locals call the “cemetery of boats” — a pile of wooden hulls stacked high behind the Munshiganj Forest Office. Each boat once belonged to a family whose source of livelihood was seized on charges of illegal entry or destructive fishing.

Confiscated and abandoned fishing boats lie rotting, half-sunk along a muddy bank of the Kholpetua River. Photograph by Tahura Farbin

“A fisher’s enemy is another fisher,” Manik Mia mutters, glancing at the abandoned boats. It’s not just the forest officers they fear. Often it’s other fishers who report them — sometimes out of rivalry, sometimes to protect canals poisoned by banned pesticides that kill everything in the water for weeks.

The snitching, born of desperation, reflects a cruel irony: Even as some fishers try to defend their shared forest and resources, they have no real authority or power to manage them. The state controls permits and bans yet offers no meaningful conversations or role for fishers and their communities in governance and management. As a result enforcement breeds fear, mistrust, and quiet resentment rather than cooperation.

This tension did not emerge by accident. It’s the outcome of decades of economic decisions that reshaped land, labor, and livelihoods along Bangladesh’s coast. Decisions that reduced farming, concentrated profits, and left forest as the last remaining safety net.

How We Got Here: The Shrimp Revolution

Manik Mia and his fellow fishers know this cycle well: the fear of losing the boat, the fines, the bribes, the humiliation — with the ever-present threat of life-changing injury or even death. Even in the face of these risks, the men vanish into a maze of canals, the air thick with heat, every ripple of water holding both promise and risk.

To understand why men like Manik Mia keep returning to the forest, we must travel back four decades.

Mohammad Ikram, now a farmer in his fifties, remembers the day the entrepreneurs first arrived with promises of wealth. Shrimp farming, they said, would transform the coast and the lives of the locals. Ponds would replace paddies; dollars would replace rice.

What Ikram couldn’t have known was that across the region, 220 square miles (57,000 hectares) of mangroves — nearly 10% of the Sundarbans — would vanish to make room for those “pink treasures” destined for distant plates in Europe and America.

The promises glittered — for a while. Big landowners and investors prospered as shrimp prices soared. But for small farmers and the landless, the costs piled up like the salt on their fields. Salinity rose, rice yields collapsed, and the work dried up.

Shrimp ponds dominate the landscape in Satkhira District, where rice fields were once common. Photograph by Tahura Farbin

“Having shrimp farms meant we were free, or at least had nothing much to do,” Ikram recalls. “In that free time, we went to the forest. Products from the Sundarbans were like profit without investment.” He explains that shrimp hatcheries, unlike rice paddies, need little labor once the ponds are prepared — no planting, weeding, or harvesting cycles that once kept families employed year-round. The shift from rice to shrimp left many without steady work, pushing them toward the forest to fill the gap.

He adds: The Sundarbans is business without capital; whatever you get is profit.

This is the paradox: An industry pitched as rural upliftment ended up deepening forest dependency. With farmland lost to salinity and with employment and incomes from farming lost, the forest became the only safety net.

“With paddy cultivation, we meet our needs for rice, fish, vegetables, even income from livestock,” he says. “We hardly have time, or need, to go to the forest anymore.”

His shift back to farming hints at a quiet truth: When secure livelihoods exist, the forest can breathe, too.

Revived rice fields glisten beside old shrimp ponds in coastal Bangladesh. Photograph by Tahura Farbin

The Bigger Picture: Blue Carbon Dreams, Fragile Realities

What is happening here is not a failure of conservation, but the success of a particular model of it, one now celebrated globally as “blue carbon.”

Globally Sundarbans is celebrated as a blue carbon powerhouse, a natural solution to climate change, storing vast amounts of carbon in its soils and mangroves. Policymakers and investors eye it as a jewel in the fight against global warming, a potential site for carbon credits and conservation dollars.

But on the ground Manik Mia’s reality collides with these ambitions. Conservation often means exclusion: bans enforced without alternatives, rules designed without communities, forests protected on paper while people are pushed into precarity.

It’s in this landscape that a fundamental challenge for blue carbon projects becomes visible. Conservation here cannot be only about carbon sequestration; it must also be about justice. Carbon credit frameworks that fail to confront the structural drivers of poverty, exclusion, and livelihood loss risk becoming global climate solutions at the expense of basic rights, denying local communities’ recognition, access, and meaningful voice in how the ecosystems they depend on are governed.

Without rights to access, use, and manage land or water, without secure incomes beyond the forbidden forest, the 2.5 million people that live locally may bear the cost of global climate goals.

Rethinking Conservation and Blue Carbon Governance

This paradox — where industries promoted for economic uplift, like shrimp aquaculture, deepen ecological degradation and forest dependency — demands more than well-intentioned conservation plans. The impacts of corporate shrimp aquaculture, large-scale conservation, and powerful blue carbon interests in the Sundarbans highlight the urgency of clarifying and protecting local peoples’ marine and forest tenure — including their rights to access, use, manage and determine the use of resources and space. There’s an opportunity, then, for the government- and forest-dependent communities to comanage — share power and responsibility in the sustainable use and conservation of the world’s largest mangrove forest.

This need and opportunity in the Sundarbans resonates with global calls for blue carbon projects, international donors, and investors to move beyond carbon accounting and genuinely embed social justice, tenure security, and rights-based safeguards into climate finance frameworks. International donors and carbon market investors should require rights-based safeguards and benefit sharing mechanisms so that revenues from carbon credits flow back to front line communities, rather than bypassing them for national coffers or private developers.

Furthermore, governments should ensure benefits flow to rightful communities and investment leads to communities that have both capacity and agency to navigate those markets. Intermediaries can work for communities and support project development, verification, certification, and sale of carbon credits in favor of communities.

Without these multi-scalar shifts, conservation in blue carbon ecosystems risks remaining well-intentioned but ineffective, overlooking the intertwined realities of livelihood governance and ecological survival.

The Sundarbans can indeed help mitigate climate change, but as Manik Mia reminds us, standing beside his boat and tangled mangrove roots: “Collecting honey and looking for tigers is the same thing. But we do it because we have no choice.”

Manik Mia moves cautiously through the dense mangrove forest of the Sundarbans. Photograph by Tahura Farbin

His words cut through the jargon of climate policy: Climate justice must begin at the margins, where survival, rights, and resilience are bound together.

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Using Art to Connect Us to the Microplastic Within

By using microplastic to create artistic collages, I’ve helped people relate to and understand the crisis of plastic pollution and its dangerous health risks.

It feels like everyone is talking about microplastics: web search trends, scientific papers, and news headlines have steadily increased over the past decade, with a huge spike in the last two years as evidence of plastic particles in the human body mounts.

In a world awash in plastic particles, have you ever stopped to really think how these discoveries make you feel? Ambivalent? Angry? Disgusted? Nervous?

As a science communicator, I know there are some things that facts alone can’t convey. To make the connection to plastic pollution personal, I’ve turned to art: creating collage to connect us to the microplastic within.

My Plastic-Filled Journey

When I began covering the story of plastic pollution more than a decade ago, the world’s collective awareness about this global manmade crisis was shifting. Up to that point, plastic pollution had been largely depicted as a “marine debris” problem resulting from litterbugs at the beach and a dearth of recycling. Reports of a Great Pacific Garbage Patch brought to mind an isolated floating pile of trash in the Pacific Ocean.

But then researchers and documentarians like me began drawing attention to the even more disturbing reality: Plastic items and the particles they shed are rapidly saturating the world’s oceans because plastic production is out of control. Plastic does not break down like natural materials. Instead it breaks into smaller pieces — microplastics, and even smaller nanoplastics — that are forever plastic.

As a freelance photojournalist, I’ve sailed more than 10,000 nautical miles with research crews to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, South Pacific, across the Atlantic Ocean, around the north and west coast of Iceland, and beyond, documenting scientists, volunteers, and sailors collecting plastic particles on and below the seas’ surface. Seeing researchers’ equipment full of colorful, confetti-like plastic pieces was shocking up close.

Yet, having spent so much time seeing plastic out at sea, I was left wondering: How could this crisis be isolated to the oceans if plastic items — bags, beverage bottles, building materials, children’s and pets’ toys, clothing, food packaging, furniture, shoes, vehicle interiors and tires, and more — surround us on land at all times, and if Earth’s ecosystems, oceans included, are connected to one another and to all of us?

These are questions I have worked to answer in my journalism and my first book, Thicker Than Water: The Quest for Solutions to the Plastic Crisis.

Sure enough, as the years passed, more evidence emerged of plastic particles’ impressive reach. Microplastics, and even smaller-sized nanoplastics, pollute the deepest ocean trenches, on the highest mountain peaks, in oceans and fresh waters, in soils, weather, indoor and outdoor air, household dust, plants and trees, food and drinking water, even in outer space.

In 2019 I visited scientists in Denmark who were using a “breathing” robot to study our potential inhalation of plastic particles. That’s when I realized there was a heretofore unexplored realm where plastic particles might be lurking: in our own bodies.

Looking Closer

Despite having all kinds of evidence of plastic particles in ecosystems, plants, and wild animals, people didn’t start looking inward for plastics until rather recently. Scientists have faced numerous hurdles in studying plastic and its effects on the human body. For one thing, it’s hard to avoid plastic even in laboratory experiments and environments, which can lead to contamination. In addition, scientists are still developing standardized practices for detecting plastic particles in the human body. There’s also the challenge of finding willing volunteers whose bodies can be examined — recent human study participants include cadaver brains, cancer tissue samples, excised tonsils, feces, and placentas.

Despite these and other challenges, research on plastics in our bodies has hurried forward as concerns over the health effects of micro- and nano-plastics grow. Scientists have determined at least some serious effects of plastic pollution on human bodies: Heart disease patients who had microplastics found in plaques in their carotid arteries also displayed inflammation elsewhere in their bodies, and had a markedly increased risk of heart attack, stroke, and death from any cause compared to patients lacking signs of microplastics moving through their bloodstreams.

Plastic particles may pose more than just a physical danger; there are also any mix of more than 16,000 different chemicals in any given piece of plastic. Plastic particles and chemicals harm the fertility and reproductive health of all people — women and men, adults and children alike. Human body cells exposed to microplastic particles undergo cell damage and death in lab experiments. Scientists are also looking at the links between microplastics and Alzheimer’s disease, dementia, Parkinson’s disease, and other neurodegenerative disorders.

While in the news there’s recently been some questioning about the number of particles found, researchers have without a doubt found plastic particles in people’s bloodstreams, bones, bone marrow, brains, breast milk, feces of adults and infants, hair, hearts, kidneys, livers, lungs, penises, placentas, saliva and sputum, semen, skin, spleens, stomachs, testes, throat and airways, urine, uteruses, and veins.

And plastic pollution doesn’t start and end with plastic; it encompasses all pollution to ecosystems and bodies from the moment plastic’s fossil fuel ingredients are extracted from the Earth through plastic’s production, storage, transportation, and eventual disposal in landfills, incinerators, and the environment.

Despite all of this, many people still haven’t heard of the risks or come fully to terms with the risks of plastic pollution. I was left wondering: How can we help this message to break through?

Artful Commentary

When communicating the story of plastic pollution, I have primarily worked in the mediums of writing and photography. But I’ve also tapped into my love of collage and the emotive power of art to inspire care, and action. In making a series of microplastic and watercolor collages focused on plastic particles in the human body, my goal is to juxtapose the beauty of the two mediums — the organic flow of watercolor and the artificiality of plastics.

I want people to be appropriately shocked, relating to the plastic they see as also a part of themselves.

Indeed, it is.

These pieces are made with microplastics collected by volunteers and staff at Hawai‘i Wildlife Fund, an organization that conducts cleanups at one of the most notoriously plastic polluted beaches in the United States: Kamilo Point.

Due to its location jutting out into the path of the oceanic gyre (ocean current) that carries so much plastic into what we call the Garbage Patch, its shores collect layer after layer of plastic. I remember visiting Kamilo Point in 2016 and feeling sadness and shock when I dipped my hand into ocean waves and pulled out a handful of plastic.

microplastics
Ocean microplastics. © 2018 Erica Cirino. All rights reserved.

I’ve shared my microplastic collages with people around the world. Reactions typically follow the same trajectory: First, enjoyment of the color and beauty of these mixed media pieces; then realization that the small colorful mosaic-like pieces are plastic particles; and then disgust at the recognition that these plastic particles are in our bodies and all around us.

“Wait…these things are in our bodies?” asked one recent viewer of my plastic collages as they pointed to the particles on the paper in front of them. It’s gratifying, albeit somewhat grim, to see people making the intended connection between the plastic particles in my art to their own bodies.

From Realization to Action

While all this can feel overwhelming, the good news is that we can take action to address plastic pollution.

The change won’t come overnight. But we do have the solutions we need today: We need our leaders to require corporations to stop making so much plastic — drastically less. And we can start with replacing single-use plastics with tried-and-true reusable, refillable alternatives like ceramic, glass, stainless steel, and wood. Another step is to demand that manufacturers and retailers reduce their wasteful packaging.

We can all make changes in our lives to use less plastic, embracing the culture of change we need, whenever we can. The wider systemic shifts we need inevitably will require communities to grow more resilient and self-reliant: We need to learn how to grow, repair, and share our ways to a less wasteful world, one that exists more like our Earth — which wastes nothing. And this is good for everyone.

The whole reason I left wildlife rehabilitation to go into photojournalism was to communicate issues that Earth, people, and wildlife face so that they can be addressed and prevented; rather than continue treating symptoms of human-made problems by healing sick and injured wildlife and returning them to the same dangers they initially faced. We now know that plastic pollution affects everyone, everywhere.

But now, the story is shifting again: We have the solutions we need. Will we face the microplastic within?

I believe that’s possible. And if it means I never get to create art with plastic again, well, that’s a change I can live with.

Republish this article for free! Read our reprint policy.

Previously in The Revelator:

Environmental Muralist Faunagraphic Brings an Urban Oasis to the Concrete Jungle

Green Crime: Inside the Minds of the People Destroying the Planet, and How to Stop Them

A new book by criminal psychologist Dr. Julia Shaw explains the motives of environmental criminals and the defenders who expose their EcoCrimes.

The book Green Crime does something new: It explores environmental crimes through a true-crime lens.

Author and criminal psychologist Dr. Julia Shaw forensically analyzes the motives of each group involved in crimes like wildlife trafficking, pollution, and the murder of environmental defenders using six psychological pillars: ease, impunity, greed, rationalization, conformity, and desperation.

Along the way, Shaw examines case studies like Deepwater Horizon and “Dieselgate,” in which she reveals the psychology that underpins the individuals and entities that commit large-scale environmental destruction, and the environmental defenders fighting them, offering insights on how to prevent future ecocides.

The Revelator spoke with Dr. Shaw about the origins of Green Crime, how it helps shed light on the worst (and best) of human nature, and how this can lead to psychologically proven protections for the planet.

Let’s start at the beginning of this journey for you. When was that “Aha!” moment, or the moment you connected your interest in the environment to your expertise in criminal psychology?

When we think about environmental issues, there’s a tendency to label all environmentalists as activists. I am definitely not an environmental activist. However, I am someone who cares deeply about social injustice and crime. So I spent a lot of time thinking about why people do bad things and how we can stop them from doing those bad things.

The “Aha!” moment started when I was standing in front of my recycling bins for the millionth time saying to myself, “which one of these bins does this piece of plastic go into? Can this item actually be recycled?” I couldn’t find the answer, I couldn’t figure it out. And I thought, if this is so hard for me as someone who’s highly motivated to follow these rules to protect the environment, then there’s something else going on here: That the existing system is psychologically and practically flawed.

That got me thinking about those who want to do the right thing, psychologically wanting to do the right thing, and not being able to. And the people who choose to do the worst possible things to destroy the environment. Those who know the consequences and do it anyway.

When we talk about environmental issues, there’s a tendency to think that we’re all environmental criminals. Culpable because of actions like not recycling, overconsumption, choosing to eat meat, or whatever it is that one wants to blame. But we aren’t.

It is important to make a clear distinction between people who commit environmental crimes, from everyday people who are environmentally well-meaning but whose actions result in harm.

From a criminal psychology standpoint, I think the realization that there were people committing actual crimes with intent while we focus disproportionately on the little things that probably make almost no difference on the grand scale was the “Aha!” moment. So, I set out to discover who the serious perpetrators of green crimes are, examine what’s going on through an investigative criminal psychology lens, and suggest what we can do to stop the most egregious violations of our environment.

In each chapter of Green Crime, you carefully present true environmental crimes such as “Dieselgate” and the Deepwater Horizon disaster and apply criminal psychology science to explain the motivations of the criminal perpetrators. Tell us more about making the case that society should no longer consider these criminals “too big and powerful” to be legally prosecuted for their crimes.

I find it infuriating when people discuss environmental harm and blame either ‘the system’ or greedy CEOs who make piles of money as the world burns. These tropes are stereotypical, unhelpful characterizations of whom we’re fighting.

It’s much more useful to point out individuals within very specific roles: Yes, CEOs have a role, but who else in an organization is making these decisions? The CEO rarely directs staff to illegally dump waste or harm an environmental defender. But they can create the financial and social expectations that make these crimes happen, and fail to make sure their staff are complying with environmental laws.

But CEOs are not the people who build the tech or implement the systems. The question for me in the Volkswagen Dieselgate case is, who are the specific individuals that did this? Who was creating the defeat device software that cheated the regulatory emissions test and made it possible to sell millions of dirty diesel cars, polluting our environment with nitrous oxides (Nox) and harming human health? Who was lying? Why were they lying? Why did they do it? What are their motivations?

That is more useful than saying that it’s simply “the corporation.”

I want to understand why a specific person did it, because that person is relatable as an individual. In true crime, we don’t accept that “the system” is responsible for violent crime, we are more specific to contextualize crime. “The system” as a singular concept, or reason for crime, cannot explain it. We like true crime because it explores the motivations and narratives of individuals: Why did this person do it? Is it because that individual is a psychopath? Is it because this person uses the tropes of childhood trauma to excuse behavior? Is it because of the person’s unique situation? What is it?

We try to crawl into their minds. And what I do in this book is study and analyze the minds of the perpetrators, because that makes them graspable, real people whom we can hold accountable.

More importantly, it makes them relatable, because when we can understand what’s going on in their minds.

As a result, we can find ways to bring them to justice.

Let’s talk about the three groups of people who are critical to safeguarding our wildlife and environment in your book: The Watchers, the Investigators, and the Enforcers, who make the case that environmental crime is crime.

It is critically important to say over and over again: environmental crime is real crime.

We can tie ourselves in knots arguing about environmental harms, but we need to be careful that we don’t lose sight of the existing legal frameworks we can use to catch the serious perpetrators.

For example: We need to eat. So, what should we eat? What is least harmful? We also need to travel, to work, school, running errands. How much harm do we cause when we travel? How quickly should we be accelerating sustainable practices in food and travel? It’s easy to get tangled up in these philosophical, subjective, and abstract discussions about harm.

But there are already acts that are classified under environmental laws, and if we break them we can be held accountable. There are consequences for green crime, just like other crimes like violent crime, theft, and fraud.

In writing Green Crime, I started out with the common idea that we need a lot more laws to protect the earth. I also thought that we were way behind in regulations. But, actually ,we have many regulatory directives, and many laws already in place. In addition to purely environmental laws like the Clean Air Act, or laws protecting endangered species, there are other long-established laws that can be applied. Like laws around fraud. You can’t just lie about what you’re making and selling to people.

The best way to start tackling environmental offenders is not to add lots of new laws, but to implement and enforce those we already have. That way we catch the most egregious offenders, right now.

In the conclusion of Green Crime, you talk about “Capable Guardians”. Who are they?

I consider there to be three broad groups of people who are critical to safeguarding our environment: the Watchers, the Investigators, and the Enforcers.

Watchers report on illegal activities and measure the environmental destruction that is happening. In the book, I describe a journalist who boards ships track, and report on, illegal fishing vessels. Or the scientist who was involved in exposing the extent of the Deepwater Horizon case, tracking the oil flowing from the exploded rig.

Investigators include those who document and collect evidence of specific crimes. For example, in Green Crime I spoke with an Interpol agent who tracked down specific evidence that exposed international wildlife crime syndicates.

The Enforcers are those who make sure there are consequences. Including the police who make arrests, and judges who hand out appropriate sentences to those who break environmental laws.

 Will you continue to expand this direction of study to include these people and groups in order to make green crime a reality in law enforcement and prosecution?

We need to have environmental laws that protect ecosystems. And I’m on board with concepts like ecocide, which places the rights of nature alongside the rights of humans, but I don’t go as far as equating them. Often, there is an increasing and considerable overlap between human rights and the rights of nature. In order to protect humans, you have to protect nature.

That is sometimes immediate, like in cases when nature is being destroyed where people live. And then sometimes it’s a more long-term endeavor, preventing the overall demise of our earth.

I am hoping to work with the European Commission on how to use social science to help nations to implement the new Environmental Crime Directive. As of this year, I am also going to be a ‘future steward’ for the Environmental Investigation Agency. The EIA does incredible undercover work that exposes all kinds of environmental crimes, and I hope to help them spread the results of this work to a wider audience.

Tell us more about “Writing A Letter from Our Future Selves.”

Throughout the book, I kept returning to psychological research and the ways in which, as a scientist, I look at things that affect all of us. So, concepts like environmental grief [eco-grief] or how we react to injustices in nature [eco-anger], how we feel about animals in relation to ourselves, why we do or don’t eat meat, and issues like temporal discounting and psychological ownership.

I also keep returning to specific studies on behavior change. One I came across that different ways in which you can motivate people to care more and behave more proactively for the environment. The researchers found that writing a letter from your future self was one of the most effective ways to get you invested in nature. I like it because it involves projecting yourself into the future. From that standpoint, I imagine where I might be in the future. What will the world actually look like? And then going backwards in time to the now and thinking about what I wish I would have done today for the environment through the eyes of my future self.

I think people conceptualize the future in this very abstract way and it allows them to focus on it and make it personal. What would it feel like to be in that future? How and what do I want that future to look like? And then, in reverse, what does that mean I need to do now in order to make the future I actually want to live in more likely?

If you watch or read Cli-Fi [climate fiction], you might already be thinking about some of that when fictional characters are taking you through these thought experiments of what the future could look like for better and worse. This allows you to then think differently about the present because of those futures you have lived in in your imagination. That’s a powerful psychological catalyst for change and for your own understanding of the environment and your relationship with it.

Dr. Jukia Shaw head and shoulders photograph
Image by Boris Breuer

And what’s in your future, Dr. Shaw? Will we have Green Crime 2 book or perhaps an expansion of the ideas in this first book?

I always try in my work to write books as the foundational platform, and then from there, expand the work to a variety of platforms that reach different audiences across the world. I’d like to be able to put what I wrote in Green Crime into a podcast or TV series, something that reaches a wider audience.

Is there anything else you would like to add for our readers?

Research studies have found that humans tend to underestimate how much other people care about the environment. The most recent UN climate survey found that, around the world, most people think about climate change every week or every day.

But reaching people can still be difficult because these issues are seen as boring or depressing. It’s urgently time for us to rebrand environmental storytelling. It can be just as intriguing and exciting as other kinds of stories.

I hope that more people use true crime as a way of telling environmental stories. I have found that it is an incredible way of getting people engaged and inspired to act.

Incredible Journeys: Keeping Tabs on Migrating Whooping Cranes

Tracking this small population of big birds is revealing potentially significant changes in their habits.

Migration: Many animal species do it — from tiny zooplankton to enormous whales —   moving over every continent and through all oceans, from north to south, south to north, Europe to Asia, and Asia to Africa. This movement by individual animals in response to season or life stage typically involves substantial numbers and vast distances.

Recent studies give scientists a better understanding of migrations at the species and population levels and reveal implications for conservation. This series focuses on a few specific species, what we’re learning about their migrations, and how that knowledge may help us protect them.

This installment looks at whooping cranes, an endangered species with a population that migrates between Canada and Texas.

Endangered whooping cranes (Grus americana) are among North America’s rarest birds, but also one of its most well-known. This may be in part due to an impressive, continent-spanning migration by a population of the birds who breed during summer in Wood-Buffalo National Park, Canada, and spend winters on the Texas coast, some 2,500 miles away.

Since 2009 scientists have fitted dozens of the birds with tracking tags and placed leg bands on dozens more to monitor their movements between the two. This research has revealed some mysteries and new discoveries.

A December 2024 paper reports that tracking data began to show something surprising in 2011: Some cranes didn’t stay in their usual coastal bay and wetland habitats but moved inland for significant portions of the winter. During the winter of 2024-2025, at least 21 individuals made the move.

whooping crane in flight
John Noll/USDA

“These birds are not following the script,” says Carter Crouch, Ph.D., an author on the paper and director of Gulf Coast programs for the International Crane Foundation, which secures winter crane habitat and contributes to long-term monitoring of the population. “Until recently all conservation plans were coastal based. But now they are using habitat that we didn’t ever really consider. This affects how we work with these birds in the future.”

Whooper History

Snowy white birds standing five feet tall with seven-and-a-half foot wingspans, whooping cranes mate for life and may live for 30 years. Pairs typically have one chick each year, and families migrate south for the winter together.

More than 10,000 migratory whoopers (as they’re affectionately known) once spread across North America from the Rocky Mountains to the East Coast. The population began to decline drastically in the mid-1800s due to agricultural development, hunting, and egg collection.

The 1918 Migratory Bird Treaty Act made it illegal to hunt whooping cranes. They gained another key protection when Aransas National Wildlife Refuge about 70 miles north of Corpus Christi, Texas, was established in 1937, providing a refuge for these and other migratory birds. But in 1941 only about 15 cranes wintered there.

In 1946 National Audubon Society ornithologist Robert Porter Allen ran a campaign to raise awareness of whoopers and reduce poaching. Allen also led efforts that first located their northern breeding grounds.

The whooper population lingered below 30 through the 1950s, then climbed into the 40s in the 1960s. The species was listed as threatened in 1967 and endangered in 1970 under the predecessor to the U.S. Endangered Species Act, with various nesting areas and migratory corridors designated as critical habitat during the 1970s and ’80s. The number of birds slowly but surely kept increasing, topping 100 in the winter of 1986-87.

The 2024-2025 U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service survey estimated a record 557 whooping cranes wintering in Texas.

These migratory birds, the only self-sustaining wild population, are known as the Aransas-Wood Buffalo Population. But three other populations were established by introducing captive-reared birds. Birds released in Wisconsin starting in 2001 make up the Eastern Migratory Population, currently about 90 birds who move between that state and Florida on a route they learned by following ultralight aircraft between 2001 and 2015. An introduced, nonmigratory population in Louisiana currently numbers 70 birds and one in Florida about 14.

Whooping cranes ultralight
Heather Ray/Operation Migration. Via U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

The birds represent a real conservation success story. But they aren’t out of the woods yet; threats still include agricultural and infrastructure development, shrinking freshwater coastal inflows, shootings, and avian flu. Going forward, Crouch stresses, it will remain critical to know where the birds are, and what they’re doing, in order to protect them.

Protecting Coastal Habitat

As the crane population grows, so does its need for habitat.

Several significant additions in 2025 include 1,100 acres bought by the International Crane Foundation and 2,200 by The Conservation Fund that a local nonprofit, Coastal Bend Bays and Estuaries Project, will manage. The Texas Parks and Wildlife Foundation picked up 17,000 acres funded in part by criminal penalties paid by BP and Transocean after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill. The Foundation donated the land to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department for a 15,000-acre wildlife-management area and a 2,000-acre state park. Calhoun County purchased another 6,400 acres using funds awarded in a civil suit under the Clean Water Act brought by local shrimper Diane Wilson against Formosa Plastics Corp. for polluting this part of the coast with plastic pellets called nurdles.

These purchases bring the total protected habitat on the Texas coast to some 150,000 acres.

Whooping Crane

Buying the land is only the first step, though. That land needs to be managed, says Jake Herring, director of land conservation for CBBEP. For example, controlled burns are necessary to suppress growth of mesquite and live oak, a job once filled by natural wildfires on the coastal prairie.

It’s also important to respond to changes in crane habits. The birds that have recently wintered inland could represent an aberration or a return to their historic range, perhaps due in part to their increasing numbers. This would mean land in those areas needs protection as well.

The research shows that these inland birds move around more and use larger home ranges than their coastal brethren, which also has conservation implications. Some of the places the birds are using are managed for waterfowl hunting, says Crouch, and provide good crane habitat.

David Newstead, CBBEP Coastal Bird Program director, points out the presence of hunting can keep the birds moving, though, meaning they also need places that are not used for hunting so they can rest.

Ensuring Freshwater Inflows

Whooping cranes need adequate food, especially when it comes time to migrate.

“Migrations take a lot of energy, and the cranes need quality habitat and enough of it to get the calories they need,” Newstead says. “If a bird leaves with half a tank, it is not going to make it.”

Freshwater inflows into coastal marshes and bays keep them from becoming too salty for blue crabs, the cranes’ main food. This inflow also is critical for commercial and sport fisheries and recreation (including birding), major industries on the Texas coast.

The water comes from two roughly parallel rivers, the San Antonio and Guadalupe, which flow more than 200 miles from central Texas into San Antonio Bay near Aransas National Wildlife Refuge. Both waterways are subject to intense use upstream from San Antonio, the seventh largest U.S. city, and multiple communities along their routes.

In 2010, after 23 birds died during a drought, the Rockport-based nonprofit The Aransas Project sued the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and Guadalupe-Blanco River Authority for withholding freshwater from the San Antonio Bay estuary. The group won the suit, but the ruling was overturned in 2014, with the court saying state water managers could not have foreseen that restricting water would result in bird deaths.

A silver lining to the outcome was that the state could only use that excuse once. Instead of heading back to court, the river authority and the Project began working together on conservation efforts.

In addition, the nonprofit Texas Water Trade, Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, International Crane Foundation, and the river authority have crafted a multiyear agreement for delivering water to flood 100 acres of wetlands in a wildlife management area just north of the Aransas refuge. A program called Wells and Water for Whoopers provides financial assistance to landowners for freshwater wetland projects like solar wells in whooping crane habitat, Crouch says.

Protecting the Route

During their migrations cranes also need safe places to rest and refuel.

Tracking data show that the birds travel within a defined corridor through the center of the country but don’t have specific stopover sites, instead selecting those literally on the fly. Researchers suggest that conservation efforts therefore need to consider landscape conditions such as the presence of water, rather than geographic location or prior use.

Other factors are the length of daily migratory flights and time spent at a stopover. Currently only about 10% of the places they use during migration are protected.

Summering in Texas

Tracking also recently revealed another plot twist: Some whoopers stay in Texas all summer. Historical records show that birds have done this for at least a century, Crouch says, but it may be occurring more frequently now.

“This past summer was at least the fifth year in a row that we had birds spend the entire summer here,” he says, although the reasons aren’t completely clear. “Sometimes not migrating is related to disease or injury. A bird or its mate simply couldn’t make the trip.”

Or birds that stay put may be waiting until they are ready to breed. The researchers documented individuals that remained in Texas one summer later migrating and successfully breeding. Taking a gap year could increase a crane’s survival and chances of breeding successfully in future years.

“Migration is always a tradeoff,” Crouch says. “Northern days are longer and there is a lot of food, which generally is thought to be the reason so many birds breed in northern latitudes. But going there uses a lot of energy.”

Whooping cranes seem to be figuring out how to survive in the face of ongoing challenges. Scientists and conservationists are working to learn how to help them.

Republish this article for free! Read our reprint policy.

Previously in The Revelator:

Incredible Journeys: Filling in the Blanks of Sea Turtle Migrations

Doctor Green’s Emotional Rescue for Environmentalists

Our resident psychologist answers environmentalists’ questions about staying mentally resilient when eco-challenges get you down.

Editor’s note: Dr. Crary is a psychologist who brings her expertise to this new column, designed to help environmentalists navigate the emotional and mental-health challenges of working toward a greener, healthier planet.

The obstacles that environmentalists face create enormous stress and pressure. Burnout, depression, feelings of helplessness, isolation, disillusionment, anger and other negative mental health conditions are increasingly experienced by environmental warriors because of their good and noble dedication to green causes.

In response to this, The Revelator introduces a new column that addresses what we hear from climate and wildlife defenders, scientists, lawyers, activists, and other readers who are doing their part to keep our world clean, biodiverse, and livable.

This column is intended to be your emotional rescue by offering practical approaches and solutions that can keep your mind strong and healthy so you can be the best you in your eco-pursuits. We invite you to share your emotional challenges by sending your questions about how to handle them in a healthy way.

Welcome to Dr. Green’s Emotional Rescue!

All participants will remain anonymous. This column is not a substitute for psychological therapy or care. We are merely a place where peers can find advice on handling their inner conflicts and problems as a result of their environmental efforts. See below for additional resources.

Dear Dr. Green,

I am completely worn out after decades of trying to work for the betterment of our environment. Lately I’m super depressed, I can’t seem to move, it is hard to even get out of bed. The things I used to enjoy just don’t interest me anymore. Worse, I’m becoming convinced that my life’s work has amounted to nothing and that I should give it up.

What can I do to regain my lost passion for saving the planet?

D. V., United States

Dear D.V.,

I am so sorry you are experiencing this pain. Please know that I hear you, and I understand your feelings of discouragement, and I hope this advice will help.

It seems you have a rather intense case of eco-burnout, a specific type of burnout caused by the unique challenges faced by environmentalists. While people in any profession can develop burnout, the work of environmentalists has features that are specifically daunting: Battling the globalized capitalist for-profit system, and politicalized laws and practices that enrich polluters while confusing the public with inflammatory rhetoric that is often unscientific or just plain false. The “bottom line” has become more important than science-based facts about the air we breathe and water we drink, the cultural inclusion of sustainability practices, biological diversity, natural aesthetics, or the finite nature of natural resources.

That said, the first step toward recovery is to take a step back. Think about your journey in environmentalism. We start out with a great reservoir of passion, enthusiasm, energy and a sense of justice. But when we cross the line from enthusiastic passion to unhealthy workaholism, we begin to cease caring for our own health, psychological boundaries, creative interests, or friends and family, and we then become focused only on a fervent and singular pursuit. So, take a step back.

Second, what are your self-expectations? Are they practically sustainable or humanly impossible to meet? An example might be making a “to-do” list for the weekend that’s so long it would take a whole week to complete. You’ve set yourself up for failure.

Explore the practice of self-compassion, in which you turn your compassion inward. Dr. Kristen Neff of the Self-Compassion Institute suggests this includes three key components:

    • Self-Kindness is treating yourself kindly when you feel the pain of failure, rather than harshly self-criticizing.
    • Acknowledging Common Humanity, or accepting imperfection, is part of the shared human experience rather than focusing on isolating flaws.
    • Mindfulness, or objectively observing your negative emotions.

Putting these principles into practice, you’ll begin to view yourself with empathy and kindness. When you get upset, self-sooth by telling yourself, “It’s OK; this will pass.” Be vigilant when negative feelings start to grow and acknowledge them as temporary before they ramp up into the red zone. Accept imperfection as part of the human condition. You’re not alone in being imperfect. These simple practices will reduce pressure, stress, anxiety, and depression and help you develop the resilience to bounce back after a defeat and keep moving forward. Your relationships will also improve: When you accept yourself, you’re empowered to accept others.

Third, take a vacation away from all of it. (Don’t worry, those environmental problems will still be there when you get back.) Go somewhere you’ve never been before. Breathe. Care for yourself in mind and body. Without time away our exhaustion, frustrations and anger become malignant and isolating. Sustainability starts within you. Nourish yourself and then nourish our planet alongside those who share the same passion.

And if you’ve lost your sense of humor, get it back by any means necessary. The world is absurd; people are absurd. Learn to laugh at it now and then. Don’t become the bitter, angry person who steps on every joke about environmental challenges. Lighten up!

To renew your commitment to environmentalism, find community with other activists and celebrate the victories, no matter how small. Building on the wins will inoculate you from eco-burnout moving forward. According to Sadie Morris, editor of the Georgetown University environmental magazine Common Home, preventing future burnout requires cultivating the mindset of a Lifer (someone dedicated to pursuing climate justice for the rest of their life) and creating community.

“Small victories do matter: if you think it’s all or nothing, you get nothing.” 
— Dr. Michael Kazin

Burnout is serious, but don’t be crippled by it.

Reach out and let me know how it goes. We love a success story!

Dr. Green

Dear Dr. Green,

Twelve years ago, after living and working for years in urban and suburban settings, I moved to a place where my family and I could be surrounded by nature. But over the years, big development companies have moved in, destroying the amazing environment around us. My heart is broken, and we can’t afford to move because housing and rents have become too expensive. I don’t know what to do, feel helpless, depressed…and most of all trapped.

How can I cope with this current situation?

M.B., U.S.A.

Dear M.B.,

You are heard. I receive many messages about communities being environmentally degraded by big development projects. You are not alone.

You seem to be experiencing eco-grief, the emotional distress, sadness, or despair felt from witnessing or anticipating environmental destruction, climate change, and the loss of ecosystems, species, or familiar landscapes. This is intertwined with eco-anxiety (fear of future climate impacts) and solastalgia (distress from negative changes in one’s home environment). You are in deep mourning because of the destruction of the natural world around you.

Grief groups are extremely effective and positive for those who have lost a loved one. If the grieving process is, as Elisabeth Kübler-Ross famously suggested, a five-stage cycle of denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance, eco-grief is similar, but different because environmentalists can’t afford to engage in “acceptance” but collectively and constructively act to right the injustices of ecocide.

Maybe the following coping strategies can help you move forward:

Validate your feelings as normal and find ways to express them, perhaps through grief groups or therapy. If you can’t locate folks in your community who feel the same way, start an eco-grief group yourself. Taking action when grieving eco-injustice and ecocide empowers you to build consensus with your neighbors and confront your town council and state representatives about the destruction of nature in your town. Learn resilience through practicing self-compassion, yoga breathwork, exercise, building action groups, and setting psychological boundaries while grieving. A great resource for making these actions happen is The Good Grief Network, a nonprofit that specializes specifically in solutions and providing peer support for eco-grief and coping.

Don’t take green crime lying down. Take your frustration and anger energies and turn them into action. Fight for green justice in your locale.

Let me know how it goes! We always like a win for the green team.

Dr. Green

So what are you struggling with emotionally when it comes to your work in environmentalism? I want to know. Maybe together we can come up with solid mental strategies for what’s probably the toughest field to be in, at this moment in history.

Send Dr. Green your questions below:

All questions are considered intended for publication; published questions will be kept anonymous. Individual replies are not possible.

See you next time!

Disclaimer: This column is not a replacement for therapy, and the advice given is educational in nature, not a replacement for professional psychological or psychiatric therapy. This is a peer-driven support effort by The Revelator to inform and build community with environmental and wildlife defenders.

If you are feeling critically depressed and suicidal, it’s time to immediately find professional help. Go to your closest emergency room or call the following numbers to get immediate help in your area:

SUICIDE HOTLINES

1-800-273-TALK

REFERENCES:

Burned Out on a Burning Planet: Reflections from a disillusioned climate activist (Common Home, February 2, 2022). By Sadie Morris, SFS ’22 & Common Home Editor

Fierce Self-Compassion: How to Harness Kindness to Speak Up, Claim Your Power, and Thrive by Kristin Neff

Explainer: What Is Ecocide and How Is It Treated in International and Domestic Law?(Earth.org, July 3, 2025). By Austin Jenish

The Good Grief Network

Republish this article for free! Read our reprint policy.

Previously in The Revelator:

Who Heals the Earth’s Healers? Ways to Avert Burnout for Environmental Advocates

Intriguing New Environmental Books for the Young and the Young-at-Heart

These books offer guidance on maintaining forests, growing plants, building hope, and enjoying wildlife.

The new year is kicking off with some fantastic reads. Here are some great new environmental books to while away the rest of winter — and set yourself up for spring.

We’ve adapted the books’ official descriptions below, and the link in each title goes to the publisher’s page. You can also find any of these titles through your local bookseller and library.

When Trees Testify: Science, Wisdom, History, and America’s Black Botanical Legacy

by Beronda L. Montgomery

This stunning cultural and personal reclamation of Black history and Black botanical mastery offers up lessons from the natural world shared through the stories of long-lived trees. Award-winning plant biologist Beronda L. Montgomery explores the ways trees are intertwined with Black history and culture. She reveals how knowledge surrounding these trees has shaped the United States since the very beginning and how trees are material witnesses to the lives of enslaved Africans and their descendants.

Discover how pecan trees were domesticated by an enslaved African named Antoine; sycamore trees were both havens and signposts for people trying to escape enslavement; poplar trees are historically associated with lynching; and willow bark has offered the gift of medicine. These trees, and others, testify not only to the complexity of the Black American narrative but also to a heritage of Black botanical expertise that, like Native American traditions, predates the United States entirely. Combining the wisdom of science and history with stories from her own path to botany, Montgomery talks to majestic trees, and in this unique and compelling narrative, they answer.

Junglekeeper: What It Takes to Change the World

by Paul Rosolie

Deep in the Peruvian jungle, there exists a corner of the world that remains untouched — one teeming with giant anacondas, where the haunting cries of howler monkeys send brightly colored macaws shooting across the canopy. It’s an ecosystem of stupendous biodiversity, uncontacted tribes, and adventures most people don’t even dare to dream of.

When he first set foot in the jungle, Rosolie was a dyslexic kid from Brooklyn who struggled to graduate from high school but had an undeniable calling to the outdoors. He was lucky enough to meet the Indigenous naturalist Juan Julio Durand, and together, over two decades, they have created Junglekeepers, an organization that has found a way to halt deforestation and protect more than 110,000 acres — inspiring millions along the way by documenting their progress online. But this work takes grit, and years in, Rosolie and Durand are past their “barefoot machete days,” grappling with chain saws, massive fires, illegal miners, and the worst of humanity. Here Rosolie brings us up close and personal with one of the wildest places on the planet and tells the incredible story of “first contact” with one of the most mysterious uncontacted tribes on Earth: the Mashco Piro.

This book is about the profound power of saying yes: to one’s calling, to sticking with your dream when it comes at a high cost, and to taking a stand to save what might otherwise be gone in a generation. It’s a story of calling, connectedness, and hope.

Stuff Every Bird Lover Should Know

by Alice Sun

Bird-brained: It’s not just an insult anymore. These tiny dinosaurs have captured the human imagination since the dawn of time, and this illustrated, accessible guide covers everything from bird anatomy and behavior to migration patterns and bird-watching tips.

This pocket-sized guide is the perfect gift for bird-watchers, bird owners, and anyone fascinated by our feathered friends. With handy diagrams, helpful tips, and fun trivia, it’s the perfect companion for anyone looking to get a bird’s-eye view on our avian allies, whether in the great outdoors or at their window feeder.

Art Cure: The Science of How the Arts Save Lives

by Daisy Fancourt

A groundbreaking book showing how the arts — alongside diet, sleep, exercise, and nature — are the forgotten fifth pillar of health.

This is pure science: the results of decades of studies gathering data from neuroimaging, molecular biomarkers, wearable sensors, cognitive assessments, and electronic health records. From professor Daisy Fancourt, an award-winning scientist and science communicator and director of the World Health Organization’s Collaborating Centre for Arts and Health, this book will fundamentally change the way you value and engage with the arts in your daily life and give you the tools to optimize how, when, and what arts you engage in to achieve your health goals. The arts are not a luxury in our lives. They are essential.

Let’s Botanize! 101 Ways to Connect with Plants

by Ben Goulet-Scott and Jacob S. Suissa

Botanizing is the new birding, and this fascinating book of 101 botany prompts is about the joy of getting to know plants in much the same way we get to know birds, through observation and attention.

Let’s Botanize! is a guide to learning about and understanding the world of plants, a hobby that can ease stress, bring joy, and deepen your connection with the incredible diversity of life all around you. With easy entry points and lush photography, the 101 prompts inspire readers to engage with plant life meaningfully each day by observing the parts, patterns, and processes that make plants so amazing.

A World Appears: A Journey Into Consciousness

by Michael Pollan

When neuroscientists began studying consciousness in the early 1990s, they sought to explain how and why three pounds of spongy gray matter could generate a subjective point of view — assuming that the brain is the source of our perceived reality. Pollan takes us to the cutting edge of the field, where scientists are entertaining more radical (and less materialist) theories of consciousness. He introduces us to “plant neurobiologists” searching for the first flicker of consciousness in plants, scientists striving to engineer feelings into AI, and psychologists and novelists seeking to capture the felt experience of our slippery stream of consciousness.

In Pollan’s dazzling exploration of consciousness, he discovers a world far deeper and stranger than our everyday reality. Eye-opening and mind-expanding, A World Appears takes us into the laboratories of our minds, ultimately showing us how we might make better use of the gift of awareness to more meaningfully connect with the world and our deepest selves.

Tending Your Forest: A Guide to Ecological Forest Stewardship in the Eastern and Central United States

by Paul Catanzaro and Anthony D’Amato

How do you care for the health of your forest? This comprehensive guide empowers landowners with the knowledge of how to manage a family forest to capture more carbon, encourage wildlife and biodiversity, and build a more resilient future.

Tending Your Forest brings a fresh, ecological perspective to forest management, providing landowners with the information they need to understand their forests and their options for stewarding them in the face of new challenges, such as climate change and invasive species. With the help of key professionals, landowners from Maine to Maryland and Missouri to Minnesota can practice ecological forestry to achieve goals such as restoring old-growth characteristics, protecting wildlife and biodiversity, sequestering and storing carbon to mitigate climate change, preserving tree species at risk of extinction, and sustainably harvesting trees for local wood products. Finally, landowners will learn how to ensure their legacy by passing land on to their heirs and making use of conservation easements and other tools for protecting the land long into the future.

Great Reads for Our Young Folks:

Spider Monkeys

by Trudy Becker

This book explores the physical features and behaviors of spider monkeys. It also covers the primates’ diet, habitat, and life cycle. Short paragraphs of easy-to-read text are paired with colorful images to make reading engaging and accessible. The book also includes a table of contents, fun facts, sidebars, comprehension questions, a glossary, an index, and a list of resources for further reading. Part of the Primate Series from Apex Books. Apex books have low reading levels (grades 2–3) but are designed for older students, with interest levels of grades 3–7.

Zombie Spiders and Asteroid Blasters: 16 Incredible Ways That Scientists Are Changing the World

by Maynard Okereke

Have you ever heard of a spider being turned into a useful robot? Or a real-life planetary defense team protecting the Earth from asteroids? It sounds like science fiction — but it’s not. Take a wild ride with Maynard Okereke, the Hip Hop MD, into some of the most fascinating and strange corners of scientific research, from physics and engineering to ecology and neuroscience. These wacky wonders of nature and technology will wow all readers and inspire budding scientists to look at the world with fresh curiosity and consider how science can be used to help people, help nature, or enhance our understanding about the world. Interviews with real scientists highlight representation for diverse children and how scientists from a wide range of backgrounds are working to build a better future for our planet.

Planting Hope

by Frederick Joseph, Illustrated by Paul Kellam

Everyone in Henry’s family loves plants and gardening. So why can he never get his little plant to grow, no matter how hard he tries? His mom has been able to grow anything since she was young and even cultivated a whole orchard to help feed people who were hungry. Henry imagines his mother as a great tree, with branches wrapping around the whole community. “People and seeds have a lot in common,” his mom likes to say. “If you want them to grow strong, nourishment and sunlight aren’t enough — they also need hope.” When Henry’s mom becomes sick and it looks like she may not recover, this belief that she’s sown in her son becomes key to what happens next. Frederick Joseph, award-winning author of The Black Friend, offers a bighearted story about keeping hope alive in the face of grief — and a gentle allegory with an upbeat message about healing a fragile planet.

***

Make the first part of 2026 an inspiring time through these informative reads. You can find hundreds of additional environmental book recommendations in the “Revelator Reads” archives.

And let us know what you’re reading: Drop us a line at [email protected].

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Previously in The Revelator:

Wild Reads: 10 New Books that Celebrate Wildlife and Their Environments

The Nudibranch That Broke in Two

A meditation on observation, revision, and the quiet thrill of being wrong — and what all of that means for conservation.

On a good low tide, the ocean lets you borrow a secret. You step over slick rock and sea lettuce and the foam line left behind by the last wave. You squat. You lean in. And there — moving with the confident weirdness of something that has never once asked permission to be beautiful — is a nudibranch.

A sea slug. But also: a small, living argument against the idea that the world is fully cataloged.

It looks like a flame that learned to crawl. A handful of translucent, orange-white fingers (cerata) spilling off its back like a crown of underwater matchheads. Its rhinophores — those faintly ridiculous sensory “ears” — search the water for chemical stories you and I will never smell. It is, in every way, too much for something that small.

If you’ve spent any time around West Coast tide pools or cold-water kelp forests, you may have met it under its most famous name: Hermissenda crassicornis, the thick-horned nudibranch. A staple of field guides. A reliable “oh wow” moment. One of those species that feels like a dependable friend — the kind you can point to and say, with satisfying certainty, “I know what you are.”

Except… the ocean has a way of revealing that certainty is often just a placeholder.

Because this animal has lived a double life inside human language, and the story of its name is a story about how science actually works: not as a straight line, but as a series of increasingly careful second looks.

And if we follow that story all the way through — through old genus assignments, messy reclassifications, and the moment genetics arrived like a bright flashlight — we end up with something worth carrying back out of the tide pools: That observation is not the opposite of mystery. It’s the doorway into it.

The First Name Is Almost Never the Last

In the early 1800s, naturalists were describing the ocean the way astronomers once described the night sky: urgently, joyfully, and with limited tools. A new creature didn’t arrive with a barcode and a phylogenetic tree. It arrived as a specimen and a sketch and a best guess.

In 1831 this nudibranch was described as Eolis crassicornis. That first genus — Eolis — was, in hindsight, a kind of temporary holding pen (nudibranchs fall broadly into two camps: aeolids — slender, cerata-fringed; and dorids — their flatter, smoother, pancake-shaped cousins). A large, convenient bucket for aeolid nudibranchs that looked broadly similar: slender body, rows of cerata, a vibe of delicate menace. It made sense at the time. The world was being named faster than it could be sorted.

 

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But “temporary” is one of the most honest words in taxonomy.

As the field matured, the bucket cracked. Different researchers began splitting Eolis apart, not because they were bored, but because close observation kept forcing the issue. Anatomical details mattered: tooth shape on the radula, the arrangement and structure of cerata, the form of rhinophores, internal reproductive anatomy — traits that don’t show up in a casual glance, but that change everything once you learn to see them.

So Eolis crassicornis migrated through the scientific literature, as species do, like a traveler changing trains.

At one stage you’ll find them wearing another name: Phidiana crassicornis. This was not a new species. Not a different animal. This was the same creature — same tide pools, same flash of orange-white, same little dragon energy — placed into a different genus because it seemed, by the best comparative anatomy of the time, to fit there.

And that “seemed” is doing heroic work. Because science is a system built to update itself. A species can be moved into a new genus when new information makes the old placement less defensible. The name changes because our understanding changes. And in that sense, the name is not just a label — it’s a hypothesis.

“Phidiana crassicornis” was a hypothesis. And later, it stopped being the best one.

Eventually consensus shifted. This species didn’t belong in Phidiana after all. It belonged in Hermissenda — a genus erected to separate these animals from similar-looking aeolids that were not, on closer inspection, their closest kin.

So now we meet it in modern references as Hermissenda crassicornis. A satisfying landing spot. A corrected placement. A name that sounds like it belongs to something elegant and slightly mischievous. The story, at that point, feels complete.

Except it wasn’t.

The Most Dangerous Word in Biology Is ‘Obviously’

Ask a room full of tide poolers what Hermissenda crassicornis looks like and you’ll get the same answer from all of them. It’ll be right, too — until it isn’t. Because the ocean loves lookalikes.

Sometimes evolution builds the same kind of body again and again, like a composer returning to a familiar chord progression. Sometimes different species wear the same outfit because it works. Sometimes they’re genuinely close relatives and sometimes they’re strangers who just happen to share a costume.

And sometimes — this is the part that gets under your skin — you can stare at an animal for years and still not know that you’re staring at more than one species.

For decades, “Hermissenda crassicornis” functioned as a single broad identity for an animal thought to span a huge stretch of the North Pacific. Researchers wrote papers about it. Students learned it. Divers logged it. Naturalists pointed to it with confidence.

And a quiet assumption grew roots: That this name referred to one species, wide-ranging and variable. Which is a perfectly reasonable assumption.

Right up until you test it.

 

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In 2016 researchers did what science does when it’s honest about uncertainty: They asked whether the story we were telling ourselves matched the story written in the animal’s DNA. And they found a surprise sitting in plain sight.

The “one species” was actually a species complex — multiple species that look similar enough to have been bundled under one name. The West Coast “H. crassicornis” that people thought they knew turned out to be, in part, something else entirely.

The familiar “crassicornis” split.

In the northeast Pacific, a key practical update emerged: The more southern form I was so familiar with in California tide pools was recognized as Hermissenda opalescens (the opalescent nudibranch), while Hermissenda crassicornis became, in effect, the more northern species in that pair.

The animal didn’t change. Our map of reality did. And that’s the moment this becomes more than a taxonomic anecdote. Because suddenly we’re forced to confront a humbling truth: We were looking right at it the whole time.

The tide pools were telling the truth.

We just hadn’t learned how to hear the full sentence.

Names Aren’t Pedantry; They’re How We Decide What We’re Seeing

This is the part where people who don’t love taxonomy roll their eyes. Sure, they say. Scientists changed a name. Again. So what?

But “so what” is where the whole ocean hides. Because names determine what counts as evidence. A scientific name isn’t just a tag. It’s the handle you grab when you try to measure, protect, and understand the living world. It’s how we group observations. It’s how we draw range maps. It’s how we decide whether a population is stable or declining, whether it’s local or widespread, whether it’s vulnerable or resilient.

If two species are hiding under one name, we might think a species is doing fine — when in reality one of its lineages is collapsing. We might miss local adaptations. We might overlook a restricted range. We might fail to notice a quiet disappearance because our category was too big and our confidence too loud.

A species complex is not merely an interesting genetic footnote. It’s a warning label on our certainty. And it’s also a kind of invitation: Look closer. Again. Which is, arguably, the central moral of science.

The Tide Pool Teaches the Method

Here is what I love about the Hermissenda story: It doesn’t make science look weak. It makes science look alive.

Science is not a fortress where knowledge sits unchanging behind stone walls. It’s a shoreline. It’s a place where the boundary between what we know and what we don’t know is constantly being rewritten by the tide.

At one time Eolis crassicornis was a reasonable starting point. Then Phidiana crassicornis was a reasonable correction. Then Hermissenda crassicornis became the best-supported placement. Then genetics arrived and said, politely but firmly: You’re still missing something. And just to complicate matters further, what had long been grouped under Hermissenda crassicornis in the eastern Pacific had a close, long-confused counterpart in the northwestern Pacific — now recognized as its own species, Hermissenda emurai.

This is not failure. This is the method working as designed. The world is complicated. Our categories are provisional. And reality keeps insisting we refine them. Sometimes that refinement comes from microscopes and dissections. Sometimes it comes from DNA sequencing and phylogenetic trees. Sometimes it comes from the quiet persistence of someone who refuses to accept “obviously” as an answer.

But it always starts the same way: Someone looks closely and admits they might be wrong.

And Now the Part Where You Get Involved

If you’ve never looked for nudibranchs in a tide pool, I’m going to make a pitch: Go.

Go on an ordinary day. Go with a friend. Go with a kid who will ask better questions than you. Go with no agenda except curiosity and some decent shoes you don’t mind ruining.

Because there is something profoundly human — maybe even profoundly necessary — about kneeling down at the edge of the sea and letting the small things reframe you.

A nudibranch is an organism so alien-looking that it breaks the part of your brain that thinks nature should be familiar. It forces a reset. It reminds you that the ocean is not scenery. It is an evolutionary engine that has been inventing forms longer than we’ve been inventing excuses.

And if you’re lucky, you’ll find one of these Hermissenda — or what you think is one — moving slowly through the miniature universe of a tide pool. You might even say its name out loud. Not as a way of closing the case, but as a way of opening it.

 

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Because now that you know the story, the name becomes a question again.

Is it H. crassicornis?
Is it H. opalescens?
What did this animal get called in older guides?
What did it get miscalled in old papers?
What else are we still missing, hiding in plain sight, inside our best-loved certainties?

That is not a cause for despair. That is a reason to pay attention.

The Profound Lesson: Accuracy Is a Kind of Humility

There’s a line people sometimes toss around when they talk about science: that it’s cold, clinical, detached.

The tide pool disagrees.

The truth is that science — real science — is intimate. It requires closeness. It requires care. It requires the willingness to have your mental model dismantled by a creature the size of your thumb.

And perhaps the deepest lesson in this whole naming saga is this: Our job is not to dominate nature with labels. Our job is to keep updating our labels in obedience to nature. That’s the relationship.

Observation first.
Then hypothesis.
Then revision.
Then better observation.
Then the next revision.

And if we’re lucky, we don’t just end up with a cleaner taxonomy. We end up with better humility. Better questions. Better protection.

Because conservation is not only about charisma and crisis. It’s also about precision. About knowing what, exactly, is alive on a given stretch of coast — and how many kinds of “the same thing” we’ve been overlooking because we didn’t look long enough.

This is what the ocean teaches, again and again: That the world is richer than our first draft of it.

So go to the tide pools. Bring your patience. Bring your curiosity. Bring your willingness to be wrong. And when you find something that looks like a flame learning to crawl, don’t rush past it. Kneel down. Take a closer look. The ocean might be trying to tell you a new name.

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Previously in The Revelator:

Species to Watch in 2026

Restoration Update: In the Wake of Klamath Dam Removal

Conservation crews have helped plant and seed thousands of native trees and other vegetation. Salmon have responded in kind.

Two years ago crews punched holes in three dams on the Klamath River in northern California and southern Oregon. Waters held back for decades rushed free. It wasn’t pretty: For weeks, a river of chocolate milk cut through a raw, monotone landscape of glistening, sticky mud. The dams were removed later in 2024, reconnecting the vast Klamath watershed and opening up hundreds of miles of prime habitat for salmon and other anadromous fish.

Resource Environmental Solutions, or RES, with help from Tribal partners, has taken on the challenge of revegetating the three reservoir footprints — 2,200 acres in all — with native seeds and plants.

Early that first spring, before the dams had even been completely removed, crews left cryptic tracks in the mud as they spread seed and planted acorns by hand. Helicopters rained seed from the sky and lofted entire trees, destined for tributary creeks, through the air.

Hands full of acorns
Photo: Juliet Grable

Soon the first hints of renewal appeared: the green fuzz of young vegetation; a fringe of willows along the riverbank. In summer poppies bloomed, a glorious sea of gold.

Two years after drawdown, the planting, seeding, and sculpting continue.

“This is certainly not a set-it-and-forget-it project,” says Dave Coffman, RES’ director of Northern California and Southern Oregon operations. “We’re going to steward this landscape for at least the next five years, because that’s what it takes to start to see a landscape recover.”

Dam removal on the Klamath was simply the first, albeit most dramatic, step.

Replanting an Ecosystem

How do you obtain 20 billion seeds, anyway?

Through a process called amplification. Tribal crews started collecting native seeds from near the reservoirs well before drawdown. Most were taken to nurseries and planted in pots or fields where they could grow to maturity and produce exponentially more seeds themselves.

Native seeds are typically tiny, measured by weight rather than numbers. Special seed mixes are tailored for each of the reservoir footprints; last fall alone, each footprint received between 6,000 and 8,000 pounds of seed.

Over the winter months, crews have been planting about 60,000 bare-root trees and shrubs in the ground by hand.

Coordinating this massive project in the sprawling, remote country is a feat in itself.

“There’s a lot of rolling tires,” says Will Bowers, restoration manager at RES and a Yurok Tribal member. “You want to get the plants in before the springtime so they’re set up and the roots are growing.”

Among many other species, the palette of native vegetation includes Oregon grape, rabbit brush, ponderosa pine, and several species of oaks. Crews are also planting tens of thousands of acorns directly in the ground.

“If we plant 10 acorns and five of them germinate and one of them makes it to maturity, the input cost of doing that is substantially lower than gathering, sowing, growing, transporting, and transplanting a potted plant,” says Coffman.

Before and After Photos of Former Copco Reservoir at Beaver Creek. Courtesy RES

There have been challenges, among them keeping nonnative, potentially invasive plant or fungi species at bay. (There’s no more depressing sight than a dust devil full of Medusahead seeds, says Coffman). Over the past two years, they’ve rejected thousands of nursery-grown plants because they tested positive for Phytophthora ramorum, the same fungal organism that causes sudden oak death.

At J.C. Boyle, the most upstream of the former reservoirs, young plants weren’t thriving because loads of decomposing algae had acidified the soil. Crews have applied limestone and reseeded this area.

Springtime is when you can see the seams of the ecosystem starting to stich back together, says Bowers.

“Everything’s in bloom, everything’s green, there’s water in the creeks and it just brings lightness to your heart,” he says.

Setting the Table for Fish

Bowers was 10 years old in 2002 when a devastating fish kill ravaged the fall Chinook run on the Lower Klamath River. He remembers dead fish washing up on the banks near his family’s fishing cabin.

Now, immersed in restoration work, he relishes signs of the river’s healing.

“I was driving to Jenny Creek and all of a sudden I saw this bald eagle fly up on top of this hill and it had a salmon in its mouth and it was picking away on it,” says Bowers. “It was kind of like, oh man, we’re there.”

Salmon in the creek. Photo: RES

Though the restoration of the Klamath watershed will benefit species from bees to beavers, a key aim is to save struggling salmon and steelhead runs.

Tributaries like Jenny Creek, which flows into the Klamath River a mile upstream of the old Iron Gate dam, are crucial habitat. For this reason RES has spearheaded work on Jenny Creek and several other tributaries where they join the main stem Klamath — confluences that for decades were submerged under the dam reservoirs.

Yurok Tribe Construction Corporation and the Yurok Tribe Fisheries Department Technical Service Program have been taken on the bulk of the on-the-ground work.

To enhance habitat, crews have placed “large wood” — entire trees, flown in by helicopter — in the newly unbound creeks. The logs help create pools and riffles that salmon prefer; the shady spots underneath also make good hiding places.

Another aim is to sculpt the banks and connect them to the floodplain, which allows for “resource trading,” says Coffman.

“You get fish food washed off the floodplain and into the stream, and during high flows sediment is deposited in the floodplain.”

The table-setting on these creeks was still in progress when fish crashed the party. In October of 2024, mere weeks after the completion of dam removal, fall Chinook salmon stunned biologists, immediately exploring tributaries they hadn’t accessed in over 100 years.

This past fall pioneering fish ventured even farther into the watershed. Chinook were “everywhere,” according to agency biologists.

“The speed at which salmon are repopulating every nook and cranny of suitable habitat upstream of the dams in the Klamath Basin is both remarkable and thrilling,” said Michael Harris, environmental program manager of California Department of Fish and Wildlife, in a press release.

Last fall biologists counted over 10,000 adult fish, mostly Chinook, passing by the former Iron Gate dam site — 30% more than the year before. Fish also returned earlier in the season.

Every bit of reclaimed habitat gives spawning salmon more options. For this reason, Trout Unlimited and a slew of partners demolished a small concrete dam about a mile up Jenny Creek, opening up another mile of stream habitat.

Rearing habitat is just as critical as creating places where fish can spawn. Lower down on Jenny Creek, they’ve dug a new pond right next to the flowing stream — a place where young fish can hang out and chill, especially when the region turns frying-pan hot in summer.

Fish in these ponds regularly grow 1-2 inches (3-5 centimeters) bigger than juveniles who don’t have access to them, says Bowers.

Work will continue for years, removing small barriers, enhancing habitat, and monitoring the work that has been done.

Before Bowers took the job with RES, he led planting crews along tributary creeks for the Yurok Tribe Construction Corporation. During spawning season, he would urge his planters to take a break and walk down to the water’s edge.

“When we did that, we would see 15 to 20 salmon in the creek swimming,” says Bowers. “That was the one point I always wanted to make. This is why we do it right here.”

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Previously in The Revelator:

This Is What Community-Powered Restoration Looks Like

Busting Through the Hype and Politics of Forest Thinning

Forest managers conduct hundreds of thousands of acres of forest “thinning” projects annually in the U.S., Canada, Australia, and elsewhere, resulting in substantial ecological and financial costs.

The phrase “All politics is local” was coined by former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Tip O’Neill as a strategy for winning elections through the art and sometimes deception of message framing. Notably, in the trench warfare of political campaigns, framing separates the winners from the losers.

When it comes to forest ecosystems under unprecedented “active management” and climate stressors, proponents often dumb-down the treatments using the language of politics, optics, and euphemisms.

Applying O’Neill’s local politics framing in the context of “forest health” euphemisms can read this way: All wildfires and insect outbreaks are local politics; thus, active management is the solution to these forest-health problems otherwise exacerbated by lack of management. Further, if only foresters can get into all those “unhealthy” forests and perform active management (supposedly “benign thinning” in this case), the unhealthy forests will be healed. The unhealthiest forests are those where active management has been held back by forest protections, regulations, and so-called “analysis paralysis.” Protections and regulations are summarily gutted, and the public and scientists shut out of forest planning, so that managers can do whatever is best. End of story.

Proponents of such framing seem to take a page right out of George Orwell’s classic novel 1984 that introduced the concept of doublespeak, which is still relevant more than seven decades later. Orwell stated: “In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible.” Orwell further waxed eloquently with “political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness.”

Framing around thinning has Orwellian leanings, as for example, “tending the forest garden” (euphemism) as messaged by forestry groups, and a “healthy” forest is a thinned forest as messaged by the U.S. Forest Service.

Politicians also call for “fixing” the “broken forest” by legislating some of the same approaches that caused the damages in the first place. A most recent example is the so-called Fix Our Forest Act in the U.S. Senate that proposes massive logging increases on federal lands and restricts public involvement in forest-planning decisions in response to so-called “forest-health emergencies.” Such ill-informed proposals have the backing of even some conservation organizations (such as The Nature Conservancy and Environmental Defense Fund) and climate groups (Citizens’ Climate Lobby) that endorse calls for expansive thinning as risk-reduction to “catastrophic” wildfire without acknowledging the costs.

Thinning as the antidote to “unhealthy forests” is further exemplified by the proverbial question (as paraphrased from activist Steve Pedery): Thinning is the answer, so what is the question? Consequently, any side effects of treating substantial portions of a sick forest (the “patient” in this case) or “sick/unhealthy’” landscape (multiple sick patients) are seen as negligible.

The Ecological Story Is Much More Complicated

Based on our latest peer-reviewed paper on thinning in the journal Biological Conservation, we argue that much of the vagueness and hype surrounding forest thinning is based on deceptive framing, politics, and euphemisms that border on doublespeak. In pulling back the veil on thinning, there is much more to the story than claimed.

We take a hard look at the cost vs. benefits of thinning and show that costs often exceed benefits depending on intensity and type of removals (large vs. small trees), frequency of treatments (once and done vs. repeat treatments), scale of operations (single forest, across landscapes), and context (e.g., plantations and degraded areas vs. roadless areas and mature forests).

When Do the Benefits of Thinning Exceed the Costs (Thinning Works)?

There are a lot of reasons given by forest managers for thinning, including its traditional use in silviculture, and, more recently, in response to drought, wildfires, and increased water yield for reservoirs (covered in our paper). Under certain conditions, thinning can have ecological benefits such as treating small trees in recently logged stands to speed up (“leapfrog”) forest succession in ecological restoration efforts (e.g., as in the Northwest Forest Plan). However, the cost-benefit ratio has a tipping point (costs exceed benefits) as stands age and it’s simply not worth doing:

Assisted restoration using thin-from-below as a tool can yield benefits in recently logged stands lacking structure (logged early successional). Costs overtake benefits as stands age toward mid and late-successional conditions overtime.

Thinning can sometimes reduce fire intensity, with a big “if” involved in its efficacy and costs that scale up depending on what’s removed.  For instance, thinning works best under low-to-moderate fire weather and needs to be followed by prescribed burning, which is not the same as slash pile burning (see below). Prescribed fire and cultural burning practices alone may also have this reduced fire intensity benefits under certain conditions (i.e., it’s limited during extreme fire weather).

There is also a very low probability that a specific site treated will even encounter a fire in the short period when flammable vegetation has been reduced (after all, vegetation grows back).  In response, managers scale up the extent of thinning to increase the odds of fire intersecting thinned sites but that will only accumulate impacts across larger areas (scale matters). For instance, thinning at large scales emits most of the carbon stored in forests overtime, contributing to global emissions that then feedback on more climate-change related insect outbreaks and wildfires. Thus, while some thinning operations can be ecologically beneficial, costs can often override the benefits.

When Do Thinning Costs Exceed Benefits (Thinning Doesn’t Work and Is Counterproductive)?

While some proponents of widespread thinning call for retention of “large trees” in thinning operations, the definition of large is seldom agreed and in practice can include old trees up to 150 years old, as in the dry forests of the eastern Cascades of Oregon and Washington.

Commercial thinning proposed for wildfire, drought, and insect resistance often removes large trees (“thin-from-above”) to pay for the overall treatment costs. In doing so, thinning has the most impact when it: (1) includes overstory removals including co-lateral damages to nearby trees from large-tree felling; (2) damages and dries out soils from solar exposure, heavy machinery (compaction), and burning of “slash” piles that concentrate intense heat on below-ground processes like mycorrhizae networks; (3) enables the establishment of invasive species (some of which are flammable) in disturbed soils; (4) degrades habitat for closed-canopy species and imperiled ones such as spotted owls; and (5) over-ventilates forests by leaving a few scattered “whip-trees” that act as “wind sails” easily uprooted by high winds — over-ventilated forests also lack wind buffering, leading to fast-moving fires.

In fact these impacts are not trivial as often claimed, since, according to research cited in our published article, thinning impacts when combined with natural disturbances on the same site often result in more trees killed than if that area were untreated and naturally disturbed leading to cumulative mortality losses.

In dry regions where droughts are increasing, there have been calls to heavily thin forests to increase water stored in reservoirs. But this comes at a steep price to water quality (sediment from runoff, especially roads) and the increase in water yield is temporary (less than10 years) as trees grow back, resulting in high costs.

And then there’s the issue of road impacts. To access sites for thinning, foresters need roads — lots of them. But roads are chronic disturbances that bring water-quality problems (sediment runoff that kills salmon egg-laying sites known as “redds,” for example) and wildlife mortality (vehicle collisions, poaching). Roads also serve as conduits for the spread of invasive species, chemical pollutants (spills), and human-caused wildfire ignitions. Such impacts can extend to over a half mile on either side of the road prism. As an example of severity of impacts, there are enough roads (~380,000 miles) on the U.S. national forest estate alone to circumnavigate the equatorial globe some 16 times.

Last but not least, to put this in financial context, thinning (not including road creation and maintenance) conservatively costs up to $840 per acre. The U.S. Forest Service in 2022 claimed it needed to treat 20 million acres on national forest system lands, with an additional 30 million acres of treatment on other landownerships (note that some treatment estimates are as high as 80 million acres combined). Using the 2022 estimate applied at this scale a single thinning entry would cost from ~$16.8 billion to $25.2 billion. Proposals also call for multiple thinning entries overtime, accumulating even greater costs.

It’s no wonder that thinning treatments are often paid for by logging large trees to make the projects supposedly financially viable.

Punching Through the Thinning Hype Involves Comprehensive Cost-Benefit Analyses

We are not “anti-thinning,” as our research shows there are benefits of thinning under certain conditions. However, those conditions are few and far between, with costs (ecological and financial) a function of treatment intensity, type of removals, scale, and context.

Additionally, we argue, large areas need to be set aside as off-limits (“no-go” zones) to thinning. Off-limit areas, for example, should include older (mature/old growth) forests, roadless areas, critical wildlife habitat areas, riparian areas, and other high-conservation value forests (costs greatly exceed benefits). On top of their conservation value, these areas can act as “controls” in thinning experiments designed as a tool for restoring degraded areas (plantations, heavily logged sites) in addition to rewilding measures like road ripping.

We also note that extreme fire weather will increasingly override thinning efficacy, creating even more pressure to treat larger areas aggressively (scaled impacts) for so-called “desired future conditions.” This is a kind of Sisyphus response as managers throw unprecedented resources at the effects of “forest-health emergencies” (wildfire and insect increases) rather than the root causes (logging, roads, climate change).

Our latest research includes 125 references, is comprehensive and balanced, and can help foresters assess cost-benefit ratios to determine when to thin (costs < benefits) and when not to thin (costs > benefits). It can also aid forest activists and decision makers in cutting through the euphemisms and the politics of forest thinning.

It’s clear to us that thinning has been overhyped by overzealous proponents who need to step back and examine the evidence of cumulative impacts regarding doing more of the same yet expecting a different outcome. Conservation groups endorsing thinning without comprehensive cost-benefit assessments should think twice about the consequences. Forest thinning is not an all-purpose cure-all. Despite examples where it can work, its commercial application is often counterproductive and costly.

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Previously in The Revelator:

Logging to ‘Save’ Northern Spotted Owls From Wildfires Will Not End Well