Build not bomb
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News of the world environment
NEWSLETTER | APRIL 10, 2026
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Future Charge
Earlier this week, Chinese EV maker BYD launched a premium electric vehicle that can charge in a matter of minutes. The Denza Z9GT ([link removed]) takes under 12 minutes to charge from 20 percent to 97 percent, even in below freezing temperatures, thanks to the “flash charging” capabilities of BYD’s new battery technology.
If you missed hearing about this breakthrough in battery tech — which brings EV charging closer to the time it takes to refuel a conventional gas guzzler — I’m right there with you.
My attention has been consumed by the cruel actions of a fossil-fuel loving, rogue president who treats war as a game and appears to have no qualms about playing with the lives of others. It’s hard to watch from the sidelines as this needless war spirals in scope and destruction. (As of April 8, US and Israeli strikes had killed more than 3,600 Iranians ([link removed]), including at least 1,665 civilians and 248 children. Some 2,000 more people have been killed in other Middle Eastern nations, mainly Lebanon, and the US has lost 13 service members.)
Amid these horrors, I’ve been holding on to author Barbara Kingsolver’s advice of “trying to go on with the only lives we’ve got, without ever, ever letting this feel normal.”
Yet, the war has made going on with our lives harder in other ways, too. The spike in oil and gas prices is hurting people everywhere. My family in Kolkata, India, speaks of how several roadside chai stand owners, who make only about $10 to $20 a day, have shut down their shops and can barely feed their families. Sri Lanka has imposed a four-day work week in order to stretch out fuel rations. And here in the US, many low-income households, already straining under rising inflation, have been plunged further into debt.
How countries will weather this crisis is going to depend in large part on how much they have built up their renewable capacity. (Needless to say, there’s an immense climate co-benefit to shifting to renewables as well). But the US — which scrapped about $35 billion ([link removed]) in solar, wind, and other clean energy projects in 2025 — is failing on that front, too.
These past few days, I’ve been sitting with two dissonant images in my mind — empty desks ([link removed]) in a bombed-out Iranian school and BYD’s new fast-charging EV — and thinking about how they represent the choice we are with faced with right now: investing in the future or destroying it.
Maureen Nandini Mitra
Editor-in-Chief, Earth Island Journal
Photo by Sander Weeteling ([link removed])
THE LATEST ()
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Bosnia’s Bee Hunters ([link removed])
Researchers in Bosnia and Herzegovina stopped collecting information on the country’s solitary pollinators more than a century ago. The task of filling this massive data gap now rests on one young couple.
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Tending Fire ([link removed])
During colonization of North America, settlers criminalized millennia-old Indigenous burning practices. A new generation of fire workers is working to bring them back.
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A Wild Idea ([link removed])
In the 1980s, Hugh Wilson had a wild vision: to restore New Zealand’s degraded Banks Peninsula by letting non-native gorse grow alongside native plants without human intervention. Years later, the “dreamer” is doing just that.
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Journalism is resistance.
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The world feels like it’s unraveling — and at times, it’s hard to know if our work matters.
But storytelling is resistance. And in the face of environmental rollbacks, rising authoritarianism, and assaults on free speech, independent journalism is more vital than ever.
Earth Island Journal exists to inform, to inspire, and to hold those in power accountable. And right now, we need your help to keep going.
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Latest Podcast
The idea of local and sustainable flowers has been catching on in recent years, in response to the environmental footprint of the global floral industry. On Terra Verde, co-host Zoe Loftus-Farren talks with two Bay Area business owners — Pilar Zuniga, of Gorgeous and Green and the Sustainable Flower School, and Joanna Letz, of Bluma Farm — about the state of the flower industry and the path forward.
▶️ Listen now ([link removed])
ICYMI
Making Waves
Off the coast of British Columbia, federal, provincial, and Indigenous governments are working together to manage a large new network of marine protected areas. Journal Associate Editor Serena Renner’s feature on the historic effort, originally published in bioGraphic, was just long-listed for the One World Media Award ([link removed]) in environmental reporting. Congratulations Serena! Read here ([link removed])
Space Jam
North American astronauts just circumnavigated the moon for the first time in more than 50 years. The journey took them some 250,000 miles from Earth — the farthest human spaceflight ever — but NASA made sure to provide a sweet musical reminder of home, waking the intrepid space travelers each day with some of their favorite tunes. Listen ([link removed])
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