ModeShift

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, 2026May 9, 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. …

Executive Order Puts Oldest Polluting Coal Plants Back in Action

by Keith SchneiderApril 2, 2026April 2, 20260

Until May 2025, utility executives like those at Consumers Energy in Michigan operated in the world of orderly oversight of electricity generation. In coordination with MISO, the regional transmission agency, and the Michigan Public Service Commission (MPSC), Consumers Energy decided when to build new power plants to meet energy demand. When plants grew old and too costly to operate, as happened with the coal-fired J.H. Campbell Generating Station in western Michigan, Consumers collaborated with MISO …

Great Lakes Lawmakers Push Back Against Federal Environmental Rollbacks

by Keith SchneiderMarch 25, 2026March 25, 20260

With Donald Trump, there isn’t the thinnest layer of respect for America’s 60-year legacy of environmental protection. For crying out loud, Richard Nixon, of all the commanders in chief, established the Environmental Protection Agency. In the first hours of his second term Trump signed 40 executive orders. Six of those January 2025 actions were specifically intended to wreak industrial havoc on water, air, wild habitat, and oceans, and were largely directed at aiding fossil fuel producers …

Trump Pollution Exemption Means More Mercury Contamination

by Keith SchneiderMarch 25, 2026March 25, 20260

The practice of reporting on the environment starts with a working knowledge of a range of scientific disciplines. One of them is chemistry. To wit: since the 1960s, when Americans and visionary lawmakers voted to hold polluters accountable for their wastes, a specific chemical pollutant has emerged in each decade as the leading environmental and public health menace prompting legal and political action. The pollutants of primary interest in the 2020s, for instance, are PFAS, …

Great Lakes Nuclear Revival Fortified by Ample Water, $Billions In Public Financing

by Keith SchneiderMarch 4, 2026March 4, 20260

COVERT TOWNSHIP, MICH. – As a study in troubled operation, the Palisades Nuclear Plant once was ranked by the federal government as one of the four worst-performing nuclear plants in the country. The 51-year old plant closed in 2022, joining the Big Rock Point nuclear plant near Charlevoix and 11 others decommissioned outside Michigan in what appeared to represent the sunset of the era of splitting atoms to produce electricity. Not so fast. Sometime in …