ND Climate Change Activists

08/16/2026

Driven by record-breaking temperatures and drought, wildfires have scorched a landmass the size of Spain, France and Germany combined so far this year. Climate experts tell Maira Butt that the fires seen this summer are faster-spreading and more devastating than anything seen before

08/16/2026

America's largest water reservoir is officially drying up.

Spanning approximately 174,000 square miles across eight states from South Dakota to Texas, the Ogallala Aquifer (High Plains Aquifer) is the lifeblood of American agriculture, providing roughly 30% of all groundwater used for U.S. irrigation.

However, the aquifer faces an existential crisis as massive agricultural extraction severely outpaces natural replenishment from rainfall. In some heavily farmed regions like the Texas High Plains, water levels have plunged by up to 80 meters (262 feet), leaving parts of the reservoir entirely depleted and threatening the long-term viability of the region's farming communities.

The consequences of this groundwater collapse extend far beyond localized dry wells. The Ogallala sustains a $35+ billion agricultural economy, and as the water table drops, farmers are hit with skyrocketing extraction costs and dwindling crop yields.

This critical situation is not isolated; California's Central Valley Aquifer, another vital agricultural engine, is suffering from similar severe, long-term depletion. Without aggressive water management and a shift toward sustainable farming practices, the depletion of these non-renewable resources risks destabilizing the nation's food supply and transforming once-fertile plains back into arid dust bowls.

Images are generated by AI and for demonstration purposes only.

Source: McGuire, V. L. (2017). Water-level and recoverable water in storage changes, High Plains aquifer, predevelopment to 2015 and 2013–15. U.S. Geological Survey, Scientific Investigations Report 2017-5040.

08/16/2026

The scene across the nation this summer have felt apocalyptic. Britain is on fire, homes are burning, infrastructure is crumbling - and this is just the beginning.

08/16/2026

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1LRNiWz1iV/?mibextid=wwXIfr

Lake Powell, the second-largest reservoir in the United States, provides water and electricity to millions in the West. It has now shrunk to its lowest level on record, in the latest sign of the alarming crisis unfolding on the drought-stricken Colorado River. https://cnn.it/4xIeW9a

08/16/2026

The radical right downplays the dangers of climate change - or flat-out lies about them. They are not in line with the British public. We need to take urgent action now.

08/15/2026

https://ndlegis.gov/contact-my-legislators

A Democratic lawmaker in North Dakota is calling for the Legislature to address data centers while legislators are gathered for a special session next month.

08/15/2026

Reno is warming faster than anywhere else. A lot faster.

Average summer temperatures there have jumped 11.3 degrees since 1970. The next city on the list is barely half that.

Climate Central analyzed 243 major US cities. Almost all of them are heating up. But the American West is cooking. Geography is part of it. Rapid development is the rest. Paving over desert landscapes turns hot cities into massive heat islands. Concrete absorbs the sun. Roads trap the heat.

The real danger is not the daytime peak. It is what happens after the sun goes down.

The nights stay hotter. The human body never gets a chance to cool off. Prolonged overnight heat is what turns a hot day into a lethal environment.

A jump of six to eleven degrees does not just make a city warmer. It completely rewires the local climate. These five cities are leading an extreme trend.

08/15/2026

Delay to rainy season in forest already damaged by human-driven heating could trigger powerful ‘Godzilla’ El Niño

08/15/2026

08/14/2026

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/189qRZL3DA/

Germany's solar industry is pioneering a new business model that did not exist five years ago — community energy sharing, where neighbours pool their solar generation and storage into cooperative microgrids that reduce everyone's bills while building local energy resilience that individual installations cannot achieve alone.

The Mieterstrom — tenant electricity — model in Germany allows solar panels on an apartment building's roof to supply electricity directly to residents in the same building at below-grid tariff rates, sharing the generation among tenants who have no roof of their own. Previously, German tenants — who represent over half the population — were entirely excluded from the solar economy. Mieterstrom has begun changing that, with over 200,000 households now receiving solar electricity from rooftop installations on their own buildings.

The next evolution — Gemeinschaftliche Gebäudeversorgung, or community building supply — extends the sharing concept to multiple buildings in a neighbourhood, allowing the solar surplus from a house with a south-facing roof to supply a neighbour's north-facing apartment building across the street. The technical enabler is the smart meter — real-time measurement of individual consumption and the neighbourhood solar surplus allows automated billing that fairly allocates costs and credits without a human intermediary.

The Freiamt community in Baden-Württemberg has become Germany's most celebrated energy community — 100% renewable electricity supplied to 1,400 households through a cooperative that owns wind turbines, solar farms, and the local distribution grid simultaneously. The cooperative pays its members annual dividends from energy revenues while charging below-market electricity prices. Freiamt's model — ownership, local benefit, and democratic governance of energy infrastructure — is being replicated in over 200 German communities. Germany's energy transition is becoming a civic movement as much as an industrial one.

Source: German Energy Agency (DENA) / German Cooperative and Raiffeisen Confederation (DGRV), 2024