Keith Schneider | ModeShift

Jim Olson Led Michigan’s Embrace Of Public Trust Doctrine To Protect Great Lakes Waters

by Keith SchneiderAugust 5, 2026August 5, 20260

I met environmental attorney Jim Olson 35 years ago, just as he was developing uncommon expertise in Michigan law and exhibiting an appealing measure of courtroom flair, both of which make him a towering figure in Great Lakes resource protection. At the time he was defending the shoreline of the Crystal River in Leelanau County from being damaged by a golf course development proposed by Bob Kuras, owner of the Homestead Resort. I was a …

Despite Supreme Court Decision, Bayer Faces More Challenge Over Roundup

by Keith SchneiderAugust 2, 2026August 2, 20261

Top executives of Bayer, the German chemical maker, were understandably elated on June 25, the day the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in their favor in a product injury case involving the company’s Roundup herbicide. The high court reversed a state court decision and dismissed the legal theory that prompted a jury to award $1.25 million to a Missouri man who accused Roundup of causing his non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. “This decision is good for American farmers who …

At Last, A Jailbreak On Water And Cancer in Iowa

by Keith SchneiderJuly 28, 2026July 28, 20261

Real change occurs in America when civic pressures from outside the centers of influence force insiders to retreat. Arguably the most compelling example of systemic change in how a state could operate is now unfolding in Iowa. Severe water contamination from crop and livestock production linked to the nation’s second highest and fastest rising incidence of cancer developed into the election year issues of their time in Iowa, one of the country’s most important farm …

Ethanol Was Marketed to Help Agriculture. But It Fouled Our Water and Injured Our Health.

by Keith SchneiderJune 17, 2026June 17, 20260

Just like his presidential predecessors – George Bush, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden – Donald Trump has a thing for ethanol. But why? Inordinately expensive to taxpayers, monstrously polluting, and now linked to mounting cancer incidence in Midwest Corn Belt states, fermenting ethanol from a third of America’s corn crop would appear to sane people as an insane pursuit. Not to corn growers, ethanol refiners and their allies in farm industries, the White House, Congress, …

Cancer, Farm Pollution On Iowa’s Ballot

by Keith SchneiderJune 9, 2026June 9, 20260

Expect the unexpected. That’s the only certainty of planting season across the Corn Belt. Heat. Frost. Insects. Too much rain, or none at all. Now add the distress the Trump administration has cursed farmers with: Broken markets. Tariffs. Rising fuel costs. Never, though, has the unexpected included this spring’s surprise: serious consideration of the harm from industrial crop and animal production. Farming’s mammoth water pollution and its consequences for public health are on the ballot …

Solar, Wind, and E.V.s Rise from Shadow of Trump’s Iran War

by Keith SchneiderMay 21, 2026May 21, 20260

Here are two more reasons to be appalled by President Trump’s order to attack Iran. First, fuel shortages caused by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz exemplify why and how China took command of renewable energy and electric vehicle manufacturing, the primary water-saving, climate-conserving, fossil-energy-eliminating industries of this century. Second, battery-powered vehicles and solar photovoltaic cells, which convert sunlight to electricity, were developed in the United States and are now being industrialized more intelligently …

Northern Michigan’s Extreme Climate Disaster

by Keith SchneiderMay 14, 2026May 14, 20260

On April 7, 2026, a light drizzle began to fall from the dark clouds over the forests of Michigan’s lower peninsula. A spring rain, nothing especially unusual in a region of uncommonly clean lakes, the magnificent shorelines of two Great Lakes, over a dozen rivers supporting healthy fisheries, and so many places of solitude serenaded by flowing water. Oh, there was one more ecological feature that set northern Michigan apart. It rarely suffered the extreme …

Utah’s Big Nuclear Bet – Feasible or Fantasy?

by Keith SchneiderMay 14, 2026May 14, 20260

BRIGHAM CITY – The gala premiere for Utah’s audacious plan to build a “full scale nuclear energy ecosystem” occurred last November in this city famous for peaches, not atoms. Gov. Spencer Cox and Brigham City Mayor D.J. Bott, trading broad smiles and emphatic handshakes, unveiled a momentous plan to remake this city of 20,000 into the West’s epicenter of commercial nuclear energy development. Their vision, ambitious and expansive, includes a new training center for thousands …

I’m 70. Honestly, It’s Amazing.

by Keith SchneiderApril 15, 2026June 18, 202612

MADISON, WI – I turn 70 today. How old is that? Like a film festival of mid-century classics, I remember scenes from the 1950s. Not vaguely — vividly. Faces, voices, color, sound. I was only a few months past two, for instance, still in diapers, when I bolted straight out the front door of our home in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y., and into the middle of Shady Lane. Heading my way was a driver who saw …

States Challenge Right to Protest Damage to Water, Land, Environment

by Keith SchneiderApril 11, 2026April 11, 20260

Behold the “No Kings” protests last month. Millions of Americans in the streets opposing the Trump administration’s reckless governing principles. Thousands of communities expressing the solemn right to push back against a clear and present danger. At least for the time being. For real. As public attention is diverted by the daily diet of strategically outrageous presidential distractions, fossil fuel companies and their industrial allies have been quietly advancing a new form of corporate vigilantism. …