There’s a joke you’ll hear while driving through Iowa in the late spring. When someone sniffs something pungent wafting up from the fields, they’ll turn to you with a grin on their face. Then comes the joke: Smells like money!
Heh, I used to say in response, but no more than that, for it’s not a very good joke. It’s just one of those things some Midwestern folks say out of habit, like aw damn it or just gonna sneak on by ya. But more and more, I’ve become uncomfortable entertaining the premise of the joke — that is, the tacit equation of hog manure with profit. So now: Smells like money! someone’ll say. Nah, I’ll respond, that’s just hog shit.
I’m not opposed to the smell of hog manure per se. After all, I grew up with that smell. When I was born, my family had been raising hogs in Washington County, Iowa for generations. They’d been farming corn for even longer, right on back to when the state government first decreed, illegally, that parcel of Meskwaki land open for white folks to claim as their own.
Generation after generation, right on down to me, came the wisdom derived from living intimately with animals.
From a very young age, I could sense where to stand among hogs to stay in their line of sight. I knew rudimentary veterinary medicine. I understood how to herd hogs back into the pen from the corn fields into which they would occasionally romp. I also learned — through ample practice — how to scoop hog shit from one spot to another. All of this taught me that although some folks think manure smells like money from afar, when it’s on your hands, it just smells like shit.
And so it went, until 2007, when the herd was sold off. At the time, my family explained to me that this was a good thing — one less responsibility, one less concern. But as I would later learn, the real reason was corn. The ethanol boom drove the price of corn skyward, raising all other costs except for the price of pork. It was no longer financially viable for a farm of my family’s size to use corn for hog feed. We did not have the herd size of other farmers, whose magnitude granted them a certain degree of protection.
My family was not the only ones to sell their hogs, though. Between 1992 and 2017, the number of farms raising pigs dwindled from 561 to 167. But this didn’t mean that there were fewer pigs in Washington County. Rather, during that same time, the pig population ballooned from 344,170 to 1,332,048 — 60 pigs for every human being in the county. Taken on average, that’s 8,000 pigs per farm, granting Washington County the third largest pig population of any county in the nation. The demographics of farm workers has also changed in the past three decades. Though actual statistics are difficult to gather, migrants, immigrants, and BIPOC workers make up an increasing share — if not majority — of actual Iowa farm labor.
There are other facts, too — ones that the state Pork Board isn’t as proud of. Iowans now experience the second highest rates of cancer in the nation, largely due to nitrates from manure runoff.
In 2018, 700 Iowa waterways were found to be polluted, largely owing to nitrates from manure runoff. Research has also directly linked the intensification of the livestock industry to increased reports of cyanobacteria content in drinking water near livestock operations. Humans and non-humans who live near CAFOs are more likely to experience a range of adverse health effects, too, including respiratory disease, hypertension, bacterial infection, and cognitive impairments — and in Iowa, these folks tend to be already marginalized. And what of all the money assumed in the hog shit smell? Into the hands of just a few individuals.
Rob Nixon calls this “slow violence” — the gradual accretion of ecological harm over time, which disproportionately impacts BIPOC, poor, and other historically marginalized communities. I’d also call it a quiet or hidden violence. Tucked back away from cities and interstates, the damage is hard to identify for those not actively living in it.
And this, now, includes me. I have been off the farm for more than ten years. That time has granted me a generative distance from the daily minutiae of living among the pigs. In that space between now and then, between me and the pigs, I have had time to reflect. I see that the systems and attitudes that drive the monstrous growth of the pork industry are those that drive the climate crisis: maximization, extraction, acceleration, consolidation, inequality, producerism, neoliberalism, capitalism, objectification of our nonhuman kin (and, for that matter, our human kin), and the pursuit of profit.
What to do? What to do in the face of pork propaganda? In the face of the state government’s blatant disregard for the living world? When Governor Kim Reynolds actively stymies local requests for already allocated federal funds to support greater environmental protections? When environmental scientists are gagged by politicians? When the MAGA movement has made meat a political issue — a key component of their concept of masculinity? Can we imagine, in the face of so much resistance, an Iowa without pigs?
I am still trying to find ways to respond to these questions. As an educator, I’ve been working to help students build their capacity to read critically, to learn to see what’s not immediately visible on the page, to look for the unpalatable ecological harm that writers cannot or will not depict. But identifying the harm is only one step in what I now know as a much larger endeavor: to empathize with those nonhumans and humans whom we’ve never met, to actively care for those whom we’ll never see, hear, or touch. The trick, as I see it, is to be able to imagine the smell of hog manure in the air but reject the compulsion to say it smells like money.
In my decade as an educator, I have been fortunate to work with young people who understand the precariousness of the moment we are in. Even the most privileged among them know that the climate crisis is not an abstraction. They know their futures hinge on our collective willingness to care — to dream beyond convention. These young people — their energy, their anger, their diligence, their concern, their care for one another — give me hope. Across generations and geographies, there are communities working together to reverse the slow violence status quo. How fortunate I am to have found myself among them.
Nick is a Climate Generation Window Into COP delegate for COP29. To learn more, we encourage you to meet the full delegation, support our delegates, and subscribe to the Window Into COP digest.
Nick Kleese is an Iowa farm kid turned literacy educator. Nick serves as the Associate Director of Community Engagement at the Center for Climate Literacy at the University of Minnesota, Managing Editor for Climate Literacy in Education, and Editor at Climate Lit. He is also Co-Founder of KidLitLab! He has taught middle school and high school English, undergraduate children’s literature courses, and outdoor immersion experiences for kindergarteners. His current research explores the role young people’s literature and media could play in advancing an interspecies democracy.
The post Out of Iowa appeared first on Climate Generation.
SYDNEY, Wednesday 26 August 2026 — New 2026 Sustainability Reports released by supermarket giants Coles and Woolworths this week demonstrate the retailers are failing on their commitments to end deforestation in their supply chains.
Adele Chasson, Nature Policy Lead at Greenpeace Australia Pacific said:
“These so-called sustainability reports are revealing. Despite their public commitments in 2024 and 2025, neither Coles nor Woolworths have taken deforestation-linked beef off their shelves. Meanwhile, bulldozers continue to tear up forests and bushland, pushing wildlife closer to extinction and causing mass toxic runoff to flow into the Great Barrier Reef. Millions of native animals like koalas are losing their homes to beef pastures each year, while the big supermarkets put off action.
“Australians would be shocked to know that beef on the shelves of our biggest supermarkets could be pushing threatened species to the brink of extinction. Collectively Coles and Woolworths have made more than $2 billion in profits in the last year, profiting from the destruction of wildlife and precious Australian nature. Coles and Woolworths owe it to shoppers to deliver on their promises and end deforestation in their supply chains now.
“As big beef buyers, Coles and Woolworths have an essential role to play in keeping Australia’s unique forests standing. They can help stop the Great Barrier Reef from being poisoned by runoff and protect iconic forest wildlife by taking deforestation off their shelves. It’s time these big companies put their money where their mouths are and follow through on their promise of sourcing and supplying deforestation-free beef.”
New Zealand’s parliament has adopted a controversial new law blocking a whole avenue of climate litigation and shutting down its most advanced corporate lawsuit, which has been blamed by the government for shaking business confidence and investment.
The Climate Change Response (Tort Liability) Amendment Bill, expected to take effect in the coming days after it is formally signed by the Governor-General, prevents all current and future civil claims for climate loss or harm under tort law.
Justice minister Paul Goldsmith said last week that the aim was to give businesses “certainty around their climate change obligations”, noting it would not alter the government’s responsibilities under the Climate Change Response Act 2002 nor business obligations under the Emissions Trading Scheme.
“Our response to climate change is best managed by the Government at a national level and not through piece-meal litigation in the courts,” he added in a statement.
Such litigation, he said, “risks developing a new regime that contradicts the framework Parliament has already enacted” to tackle climate change.
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Goldsmith singled out a key domestic climate lawsuit brought by Northland iwi leader and activist Mike Smith against six big companies: dairy firms Fonterra and Dairy Holdings, energy firms Genesis Energy and Z Energy, New Zealand Steel and coal mining firm BT Mining. A seventh original defendant, Channel Infrastructure, was dropped after it permanently decommissioned its Marsden Point oil refinery.
Smith argued that these companies had caused him harm under public nuisance and negligence law, as well as a third breach of a duty to cease contributing to climate change that has yet to be tested domestically. He did not seek financial compensation, instead asking for the companies to immediately stop emitting or contributing to net greenhouse gas emissions.
In one of the most advanced corporate climate accountability lawsuits in the world, a trial had been scheduled for April 2027 after the Supreme Court unanimously allowed the case to continue.
Corporate lobbying in the shadows
Smith described the passing of the bill as “deeply concerning”, particularly as it coincided with the Supreme Court hearing another of his climate lawsuits. In that case, Smith v Attorney-General, he argues that the government’s response to climate change and its impacts on Māori communities in particular breaches rights to life and culture.
“That timing raises profound questions about the separation of powers and the rule of law,” said Smith. “Whatever one’s view of the merits of these cases, it is deeply troubling when parliament intervenes to remove a legal pathway while the courts are actively considering fundamental questions about climate responsibility, rights and the crown’s obligations.”
The bill – which says that no person (including the government) can be found liable in tort for emissions-related climate change effects – followed major lobbying efforts by the companies defending themselves in Smith’s lawsuit. They outlined a proposed legal amendment in a briefing note to the government in 2024.
The centre-right government has been fiercely criticised over its lack of transparency in relation to this lobbying activity. The national ombudsman recently found that the Prime Minister’s Office effectively withheld information requested by the Environmental Law Initiative about meetings, discussions and conversations regarding Smith’s case.
Green groups fail to stop bill
The bill sparked huge concern among environmental campaigners in New Zealand and elsewhere. Greenpeace Aotearoa called it a “shocking abuse of executive power” and the vast majority of submissions to a parliamentary inquiry said it should be rejected.
But in the end, it was adopted with little resistance, moving relatively smoothly through parliament, passing its third reading by 67 votes to 53. Sam Bookman, climate law lecturer at Melbourne Law School, told Climate Home News he was not surprised by this, given that the coalition government has a secure majority.
A complaint has been made to the UN special rapporteur on climate change and human rights by Smith, the National Iwi Chairs Forum Pou Tikanga and youth coalition Climate Clinic Aotearoa over what they see as the government’s heavy-handed approach. Smith is also challenging the new law in yet another lawsuit.
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Bookman thinks it “very unlikely” that such a challenge will succeed, noting that New Zealand’s constitution is firmly anchored in parliamentary sovereignty.
But the expert in climate law does not see the bill as the end of legal action in the country, noting that New Zealand has a “sophisticated climate litigation landscape with a growing number of specialist and experienced lawyers and NGOs”.
The country is also approaching its next general election in November, and some opposition parties have pledged to restore access to the courts if elected.
Amanda Larsson, global project lead on agriculture for Greenpeace International, said: “This law deserves to be tested, and I strongly encourage the international climate litigation community to unite and help defend New Zealanders’ fundamental right to hold polluters accountable before this becomes a global blueprint.”
Copycat legislation on the rise
New Zealand’s move is part of a small but growing legislative effort to shut down climate litigation around the world.
In the US, Republican politicians introduced legislation in the House and Senate in April that would shield fossil fuel firms from climate liability lawsuits. Similar laws have already been passed at state level in Tennessee, Utah, Iowa and Louisiana.
The German state of Bavaria has put forward a similar proposal to the Federal Council, aiming to block private climate claims as well as the recognition and enforcement of foreign judgments imposing such liability. There are also proposals to limit available remedies and actions in the Netherlands and Belgium.
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Bookman said he expects more efforts to counter climate damages litigation and advised plaintiffs to think about how to respond, including drawing on broader support in opposing them.
“Even though it’s very hard for plaintiffs to win these types of cases, companies are very eager to avoid the expense, embarrassment and political accountability that come even with unsuccessful lawsuits,” he said.
The post New Zealand moves to protect business with law curtailing climate litigation appeared first on Climate Home News.
New Zealand moves to protect business with law curtailing climate litigation
Bhima Yudhistira Adhinegara is the Executive Director of the Center of Economic and Law Studies (CELIOS), an Indonesia-based economic think tank. Muhammad Zulfikar Rakhmat is the Director of the China-Indonesia desk at CELIOS.
Indonesia produces around 60% of the world’s nickel, a metal used to manufacture batteries for electric vehicles (EVs) – more than any other country in the world. But in 2026, the government sharply reduced how much of its nickel can be extracted from the ground.
Production quotas were reduced by around 40% this year compared to 2025. Weda Bay, the largest nickel mine on Earth, had its allowance cut by more than 70% and exhausted its full-year quota by the end of May, halting mining entirely; it cannot resume large-scale extraction until next year unless regulators grant an extension.
The policy has sparked a vivid debate in Indonesian policy circles: how can the country shift its strategy from a decade of mining vast quantities of cheap nickel to producing a high-value and low-carbon material that the rest of the world wants for EV batteries.
The cuts aren’t a silver bullet to clean up Indonesia’s nickel industry, whose smelters are powered by coal – the most polluting fossil fuels. But alongside stricter enforcement of environmental rules, it is one side of efforts to produce more sustainable nickel for a premium.
Restricting Indonesia’s nickel output
Production quotas were introduced to stop the collapse of nickel prices because of oversupply in the market. Prices had fallen more than 40% in 2023 alone and kept sliding as Indonesian supply kept growing, hitting a four-year low of around $13,900 a ton in late 2025.
Critics called the recent tightening of production quotas proof that Indonesia’s nickel strategy has failed, arguing that the industry shouldn’t need to throttle its own output to survive. But when assessed against what the policy was supposed to do – push up nickel prices – it has worked. Prices jumped to $20,000 a ton in May, the highest since 2024.
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Chinese industry groups representing companies that have invested billions to mine and refine the country’s nickel were furious, warning Indonesia’s president Prabowo Subianto that the cuts put $50 billion worth of investment at risk. But much of that Chinese capital is sunk into smelters and processing plants built specifically to run on Indonesian ore, and cannot simply be moved elsewhere. That gives Jakarta more room to hold its ground than the warning suggests.
Stronger environmental enforcement
Since the start of the year, Indonesia’s forestry task force has seized more than four million hectares of land from mines and plantations operating illegally in protected forests, collecting over two trillion rupiah ($113 million) in fines.
This included 148 hectares seized from Weda Bay for lacking a forestry permit. The share of nickel produced from illegal small-scale mining also fell from about a quarter in 2022 to roughly 10% by 2024.
The crackdown responds to serious environmental damages in the nickel industry. On Obi Island, a waste pond collapsed after heavy rain in June 2025, flooding three villages and killing a resident. Internal company tests found chromium-6 – a carcinogen – in the water, in quantities far above the legal limit. The footprint of another mine near Raja Ampat, which is home to some of the world’s richest coral reefs, grew 60-fold in just eight years.
The market is responding to early cleanup efforts. Low-carbon nickel now sells for a real premium, roughly $18,800 to $19,300 a ton compared with $17,900 to $18,300 otherwise, as carmakers seek to source cleaner materials to comply with the European Union’s new emissions rules for imports.
In turn, this is incentivising the industry to do more to green its operations. Vale Indonesia’s smelter in South Sulawesi now runs almost entirely on hydropower, for example.
None of this addresses coal use, however. Major Indonesian nickel producers still emitted an estimated 15 million metric tons of greenhouse gases in 2023. Indonesia may be cracking down on illegal mining and rewarding cleaner producers but it is still running its mines on the dirtiest fuel available.
Unequal benefits
For Indonesia to truly benefit from producing cleaner and high-value nickel, it needs to reap the economic benefits too. Although the industry has boosted the country’s economic growth, the reality on the ground tells a different story.
Konawe in Southeast Sulawesi is home to a major smelting complex. Growth in the district jumped from 6% to 22% between 2015 and 2023, driven almost entirely by the nickel industry, according to a study by the Lowy Institute study. At the same time, poverty levels increased slightly and unemployment remained unchanged.
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In Halmahera, another epicentre of the nickel industry, spending by the poorest fifth grew just 5% between 2019 and 2022, compared with 28% for the wealthiest fifth, according to a separate study.
Part of the reason for this inequality is the system for transferring mining royalties to district authorities where the mines are located. In theory, they are entitled to the largest share. But in practice, payments are delayed, companies routinely dispute what they owe and royalties are pooled and distributed across a larger area.
The Natural Resource Governance Institute has found that decentralisation handed local governments power to approve new mines faster than they could build their capacity to manage them. Higher output raises national income on paper, but local governments remain constrained by fiscal rules and infrastructure costs that scale with mining.
None of this makes the 2026 quota cuts a mistake. Indonesia has every right to defend its pricing power over a resource it controls. But limiting extraction isn’t going to fix underlying issues around environmental enforcement and revenue-sharing. That requires rules that are consistently enforced, royalties that reach communities living by the mines, and a plan to wean smelters off coal.
The post Indonesia’s nickel production cuts are not enough to create a sustainable industry appeared first on Climate Home News.
Indonesia’s nickel production cuts are not enough to create a sustainable industry
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