Category: The Conversation – USA

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Wangda Zuo, Professor of Architectural Engineering, Penn State

The electricity needed to power new Pennsylvania data centers already in advanced stages of planning could power 11 million homes – nearly twice the total number of households in the state.

Companies that want to build data centers to expand their cloud and artificial intelligence computing are drawn to Pennsylvania due to its proximity to major East Coast cities, relatively affordable land and electricity, and legacy industrial infrastructure. For instance, there is a plan to turn an abandoned steel mill in Pittsburgh into a high-density data center that can leverage the existing infrastructure for electricity and water supply.

If all data centers in advanced planning are built, it could total about 13 gigawatts of electrical capacity.

As more data centers are proposed across the state, residents and policymakers are asking important questions: How much energy and water will these data centers use? And what can be done to manage their environmental footprint?

As a professor of architectural engineering at Penn State, my research focuses on optimal design and control of data center cooling systems. I know that a key part of the answer to minimizing the negative effects of data centers lies in cooling.

Data centers generate a lot of heat

Every bit of electricity that a data center consumes is converted into heat that must be removed and released into the environment. Cooling systems, including chillers and cooling towers, are mission-critical infrastructure.

Without effective cooling, temperatures in computing devices would quickly rise to damaging levels, forcing systems to shut down. In November 2025, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange experienced a major outage when a data center’s cooling system failed. It halted trading for hours.

Data centers currently account for about 4.4% of total U.S. electricity consumption and are projected to rise to 6.7% to 12.0% in 2028, according to Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

They also consumed nearly 211 billion gallons of water in 2023, most of it indirect and tied to electricity generation. Within individual facilities, cooling alone accounts for about 40% of total electricity use

How efficiently Pennsylvanians cool data centers has major implications for energy consumption, water demand and community impacts.

The challenges of cooling

AI workloads demand a lot of computing power and therefore generate more heat that must be removed.

Traditional air-cooled systems rely on powerful fans and mechanical chillers, both of which consume significant amounts of electricity.

During Pennsylvania’s hot and humid summers, cooling energy needs for data centers can rise sharply. This increased demand on electricity requires costly infrastructure upgrades, and the cost is often shared by all users including residents, which raises concerns of fairness.

Water is another concern. Many large facilities use evaporative cooling towers that consume millions of gallons of water per day. In regions facing periodic droughts or stressed water supplies, this can frustrate local communities.

Noise is a third, often overlooked issue. Most complaints from people who live near data centers are not about servers but about cooling systems. Large cooling tower fans, rooftop air-handling units and dry coolers generate continuous low-frequency noise. Chillers and compressors add vibration and tonal hum. In quiet rural or suburban settings – especially at night – this steady sound can travel surprisingly far.

Pennsylvania’s climate presents both challenges and opportunities when it comes to cooling data centers. Cold winters can support energy-efficient cooling for part of the year. However, hot and humid summers limit the effectiveness of those free cooling strategies.

At the same time, many proposed sites sit near legacy industrial infrastructure, including abandoned coal mines, that could enable innovative approaches.

Turning heat into opportunity

Improving cooling efficiency is a straightforward way to minimize the negative impact of data centers.

In a U.S. Department of Energy project my team worked on, we demonstrated a 74% cooling energy reduction in a Massachusetts data center. This was achieved by using a digital twin of the data center. A digital twin is a virtual representation of a real system. Using this digital twin, we were able to identify and fix different faults in the cooling system. We also used the digital twin to optimize the control set points based on the data center workload and weather conditions to meet the cooling needs with much less energy.

In addition, more saving can be achieved by integrating the digital twins with AI, which can perform the optimal cooling control with minimal human interventions. This concept – I call it “AI for sustainable AI” – aims to reduce the environmental footprint of the very systems powering the AI revolution. We are currently working with the Alerify data center in Harrisburg to reduce its cooling energy consumption using this technology.

Pennsylvania also has potential for geothermal cooling from its abandoned mines across the state. An example is Iron Mountain’s underground data center in western Pennsylvania, about an hour north of Pittsburgh. The data center is located 220 feet below ground in a former limestone mine. The stable and naturally cool subterranean environment – around 52 degrees Fahrenheit (11 degrees Celsius) – and underground lake reduce reliance on conventional mechanical cooling.

Beyond efficiency, reusing waste heat can transform how we think about data centers. In Idaho, a startup is using server waste heat to support hydroponic greenhouses for year-round food production. In Paris, excess data center heat has warmed swimming pools used during the 2024 Olympics, and one of Meta’s data centers in Denmark supplies heat to a district heating network serving roughly 11,000 local homes. In Colorado, the National Laboratory of the Rockies recovers heat from its high-performance computing systems to warm building spaces and melt snow.

There are also opportunities in food processing and aquaculture. In Norway, waste heat from a data center is used to warm water for land-based fish farming. Studies suggest that the waste heat from data centers could also support food-drying processes for coffee beans, fruits and vegetables.

To be economically viable, these solutions often require a constant heating demand located adjacent to the data center, which may not be readily available in some cases.

Data centers will likely play a growing role in Pennsylvania’s economy. The question is not whether they will use energy and generate heat – they inevitably will. The question is whether we design them to simply release that heat into the air and water, or design cooling systems to harness it for more sustainable uses.

Read more of our stories about Philadelphia and Pennsylvania, or sign up for our Philadelphia newsletter on Substack.

Wangda Zuo receives funding from National Science Foundation, U.S. Department of Energy, and Penn State.
He is a Fellow American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers.
Besides his academic position at Penn State University, he is CTO and Co-founder of Glacian Technologies Inc, which is a Pen State spin-off company. He also holds a joint appointment at the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Laboratory of the Rockies.

– ref. Abandoned Pennsylvania mines and waste-heat recycling could make the state’s massive new data centers far more sustainable – https://theconversation.com/abandoned-pennsylvania-mines-and-waste-heat-recycling-could-make-the-states-massive-new-data-centers-far-more-sustainable-273180

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Allie Mazurek, Engagement Climatologist and Researcher, Colorado Climate Center, Colorado State University

Curious Kids is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to CuriousKidsUS@theconversation.com.

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Why do we see snow on mountaintops that are closer to the Sun but not near the ground? – Ms. Drew’s third grade class, Beechview Elementary School, Farmington Hills, Michigan

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There’s not much better than a bluebird day in the mountains – a crisp, sunny day accompanied by a fresh blanket of snow. But why doesn’t the Sun quickly melt all that high altitude snow away?

It all boils down to our atmosphere, which is what I research as a scientist in Colorado. Let’s dive in!

Our atmosphere: Earth’s armor

Earth’s atmosphere begins right at its surface and extends to outer space, and it is filled with a mixture of many different gases. Gases in the atmosphere include the oxygen we breathe and the water vapor that makes it rain and snow. They are essential to supporting life on Earth in several ways.

One of the most important jobs those gases have is to protect us from harmful things in space, including our closest star: the Sun.

The Sun’s radiation provides heat to our planet, but too much of it can be a problem. If you’ve ever gotten a sunburn, then you’re already familiar with this idea.

Some of our atmospheric gases limit the amount of radiation from the Sun that can reach the Earth’s surface by absorbing some of it, which prevents temperatures from being way too warm in the daytime. At night, certain atmospheric gases also trap some of the heat that the Earth’s surface releases as it cools down, protecting us from unsurvivable cold.

The way the atmosphere regulates Earth’s temperatures is known as the greenhouse effect. You’ll often hear this term used alongside climate change or global warming. That is because global warming is caused by enhancing the greenhouse effect: As people burn fossil fuels in cars and factories, the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere increases. These extra gases allow the Earth’s atmosphere to trap more heat, causing an increase in temperatures.

The atmosphere likes to stay grounded

If you were to compare the Earth’s atmosphere along a Caribbean beach to that surrounding the top of Mount Everest, it would look quite different.

That is because as you go higher up in the atmosphere, it gets “thinner,” meaning that there are less gases present at higher elevations and altitudes.

Why? Blame it on gravity.

In the same way that gravity keeps people and objects from flying away to outer space, Earth’s gravitational force pulls on the gases in our atmosphere, trying to keep them as close to Earth as possible.

As a result, there are fewer gas molecules in the atmosphere as you go higher up in altitude, making the air thinner, or less dense. Humans can sometimes experience altitude sickness at high elevations because there is less oxygen present in the air as a result of this phenomenon.

Closer to the Sun, but still cold and snowy?

Our high-elevation mountains protrude into higher altitudes of the atmosphere, where the air has fewer gas molecules. While this thinner air allows more of the Sun’s radiation to pass through compared with the atmosphere at sea level, thinner air tends to be colder for two reasons:

First, collisions between gas molecules generate heat, and if you have fewer molecules available to run into each other, that heat generation is lower.

Second, a thinner atmosphere is less effective at maintaining heat because there are fewer molecules available to trap and hold on to heat.

Colder temperatures can create more opportunities for precipitation to fall in the form of snow rather than rain, which is why some mountains can be so snowy.

And if the ground is habitually covered in snow, as is the case in many mountain ranges, it can be even easier to maintain cooler temperatures. That’s because snow-covered surfaces are very reflective, making them highly effective at causing the Sun’s incoming rays to bounce back toward space instead of getting absorbed by the ground.

So if you visit the mountains to have fun in the snow, be sure to pack your jacket, but don’t forget that sunscreen too.

Allie Mazurek does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Why do mountaintops stay snowy, even though they’re closer to the Sun? – https://theconversation.com/why-do-mountaintops-stay-snowy-even-though-theyre-closer-to-the-sun-277560

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Adetola F. Louis-Jacques, Associate Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology, University of Florida

Only three of the 14 counties in north-central Florida provide full access to obstetric care. Six have low access to care – meaning there are fewer than two hospitals offering obstetric care or birth centers per 10,000 births and fewer than 60 obstetric providers. The remaining five counties are maternity care deserts. Approximately 3,400 women of childbearing age live in those deserts.

In 2024, a report found that hospitals across Florida were discontinuing obstetric care due to lack of funding. Eighteen of the state’s 21 rural hospitals no longer provide obstetric care.

To address this gap in care, in February 2025 the University of Florida established the OB/GYN Mobile Outreach Clinic. The mobile clinic provides comprehensive maternal health services, including prenatal and postpartum care, breastfeeding support, family planning, annual gynecological exams and preventive health screenings. The only services not offered on-site are deliveries.

We are the director and assistant director of the clinic and a at the University of Florida. Outside of our work with the mobile clinic, we also research interventions to improve maternal health in low-resource settings.

We launched the clinic in February 2025. By the end of 2025, we had provided care to 194 women in 616 visits.

Based on our experience, we believe that mobile clinics focused on maternal health could be an effective way to reach more rural and low-income communities.

Maternity deserts across the US

Two and a half million American women of childbearing age – nearly 4% – live in a maternity care desert: a county without a single hospital, birthing center or obstetric health care professional.

Over the past decade, the closure of hundreds of obstetric units has exacerbated this problem, particularly in rural regions. Women in maternity care deserts travel an average of 35 miles to reach a birthing hospital, compared to an average of 9 miles for women in full-access counties.

The maternal mortality rate in the U.S., which peaked during COVID, remains higher than that of most other high-income nations. Access to timely prenatal and postpartum care is crucial to preventing pregnancy-related deaths. Studies have shown that traveling longer distances for obstetric care is associated with worse infant and maternal health outcomes.

Our mobile model

Mobile health clinics are vehicles, such as buses or vans, equipped with medical tools and supplies to deliver health care services.

The University of Florida OB/GYN Mobile Outreach Clinic is a retrofitted bus with two exam rooms, an ultrasound machine and supplies for serum and urine testing for prenatal labs. A small dispensary allows providers to give prenatal vitamins and medications for common conditions, such as vaginitis or urinary tract infections. This reduces the need for patients to make additional pharmacy or lab visits or pay for medication.

Care provided at the mobile clinic is free to the patient. If patients are eligible for Medicaid or other health insurance, our team assists them in applying for benefits. In 2023, about 1 in 7 women of childbearing age in Florida were uninsured.

Operating on a different model

The Mobile Outreach Clinic operates twice weekly in consistent, rotating locations, including northeast Gainesville in Alachua County, Lake City in Columbia County, Bronson in Levy County and Trenton in Gilchrist County. Of these locations, only Levy County is a maternity care desert, but all of these locations were selected to care for patients of low socioeconomic status and limited access to care.

We set up the clinic at sites that are already trusted or frequently visited by our target population. This includes family resource centers, churches and public libraries. Patients and families know they can expect us on a consistent day of the week. A core principle of our program is that we show up, no matter what. This ethos has helped us establish and maintain trust with our patients.

Appointments are walk-in or scheduled, with wait times significantly shorter than traditional clinics. Patients are scheduled within a week, generally through referrals from trusted partner agencies or from other patients.

Unlike traditional clinics, which schedule for 15- to 20-minute appointments, the mobile clinic allots 30-60 minutes for patient visits. This allows time to address social needs, transportation barriers, food insecurity or housing needs. The clinical care team is led by nurse midwives and includes a physician assistant, certified nurse-midwives, nurses, a nurse practitioner and lactation consultant, medical assistants and promotoras, community health workers who act as peer educators and patient liaisons in Hispanic communities. Maternal-fetal medicine physicians review ultrasound images remotely.

Operating outside a traditional clinical setting sometimes requires our staff to be flexible and creative to meet the needs of our patients. For instance, the week before Thanksgiving, our clinic was at capacity while parked in a church lot in Trenton. One of our patients needed a nonstress test, and with space limited, the nurse and health educator interpreter worked together to complete the test in a quiet area within the church. The patient received timely care despite the full schedule and space constraints.

Taking health care to the streets

Currently, there are approximately 3,600 mobile health clinics in the United States, with 1,319 tracked through the Mobile Health Map.

These clinics can provide a wide range of services, from disaster relief and mental health care to mammography and dental care, to primary and preventive care. They particularly target low-income and uninsured populations. A study of 811 mobile clinics found that among patients treated between 2007 and 2017, 36% were from rural areas, 38% were homeless, 55% were low income and 56% were uninsured.

Mobile health clinics have been shown to improve health by delivering regular care directly to populations that would not have access otherwise.

In a survey of mobile clinic users, patients reported receiving holistic care, feeling safer than they’d felt in other health care settings and interacting with staff who were mindful of health care costs.

Regardless of insurance status, patients said they were able to maintain continuity of care, meaning the mobile clinic managed their care consistently and was able to share their records with new providers to ensure they received appropriate care.

Expanding mobile health to pregnant patients

Unfortunately, only 128 of the 1,319 mobile clinics tracked in the mobile health map provide maternal and infant health services, and the services they offer pregnant, postpartum and newborn patients are generally quite limited. As maternity care deserts expand, mobile health clinics could offer a practical solution for meeting prenatal and postpartum care needs.

We believe our model could be replicated elsewhere, and other similar clinics are already up and running, such as the University of Arizona Mobile Health Program.

The primary challenge for mobile clinics is funding, as they are typically free to patients and supported through grants. With projected recent changes to Medicaid and ACA marketplace coverage, even more patients may face limited access to prenatal and postpartum health care.

Studies on mobile health clinics have identified several additional challenges associated with this model of care. Mobile clinics are not equipped to manage emergent complications, complex medical procedures or labor and delivery.

They also face staffing limitations, particularly in finding health care professionals who understand and enjoy the unique opportunities and challenges inherent in providing care on a mobile clinic, in addition to their scheduled clinic or hospital shifts.

But our hope is that as our clinic and others like it demonstrate an improvement in health care in maternal care deserts, increased awareness and support may help expand this model to more communities.

Read more stories from The Conversation about Florida.

Adetola F. Louis-Jacques receives funding from NIH, Direct Relief/CVS Foundation, Children’s Trust of Alachua County

The OBGYN Mobile Outreach Clinic receives funding from Direct Relief/CVS Foundation.

Arielle Ayotte does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Mobile clinics offer a practical way to improve health care access in maternity care deserts – https://theconversation.com/mobile-clinics-offer-a-practical-way-to-improve-health-care-access-in-maternity-care-deserts-274476

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Corey D. B. Walker, Dean and Wake Forest Professor of the Humanities, Wake Forest University

As the United States marks the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, debates about religious freedom continue to occupy the center of American public life.

Since taking office for a second time, the Trump administration has issued a number of executive orders on religion that raise new questions about religious freedom. On May 1, 2025, the administration established the Religious Liberty Commission. The commission will advise the White House on policies intended to protect the free exercise of religion and to prevent discrimination against people of faith by the federal government.

The administration has also issued executive orders to “eradicate anti-Christian bias” and to broaden protections against religious discrimination across federal agencies.

Some scholars argue that these actions signal a broad effort to reshape how religious freedom is interpreted and practiced, with a pronounced emphasis on favoring Christianity.

Debates over religion in public life are not new. As a scholar of religious freedom, I have long been interested in how the early debates about religious freedom at the nation’s founding can help people better understand the present moment.

The early correspondence of James Madison – who went on to become the fourth U.S president and played a key role in the drafting of the Constitution and Bill of Rights – wrestles with the tensions of religion and public life. It can be instructive for Americans today.

A society in flux

Long before the First Amendment enshrined the right of religious freedom, religion was a subject of intense conflict.

The Declaration of Independence invokes God in phrases such as “Nature’s God,” “Creator” and “divine Providence.” But these words did not settle hard questions about religion in public life. The disputes continued and shaped debates about religious freedom.

Madison spent much of his life engaging these important issues.

Colonial Virginia was a hotbed of conflict over the authority of the Church of England. In the decades before the American Revolution, dissenting religious groups were punished by Colonial authorities for practicing their faith. Baptist and Presbyterian preachers were fined and jailed by local authorities for preaching without licenses. Some were imprisoned near the Madison family plantation at Montpelier.

The religious intolerance in Virginia left a deep impression on Madison. It heightened his attention to the dangers of religious authority allied with state power.

He shared his concerns with his friend and future U.S. Attorney General William Bradford, whom he met during his years at the College of New Jersey, now Princeton University.

In a 1773 letter to his “Dear Billey,” Madison posed a critical question as Bradford began his legal studies. He asked, “Is an Ecclesiastical Establishment absolutely necessary to support civil society in a supream Government? & how far it is hurtful to a dependant State?” Simply put, Madison was asking whether government-authorized religion strengthens society or threatens it.

Madison also condemned the jailing of dissenting preachers by Colonial authorities. These actions, he wrote, reflected “that diabolical Hell conceived principle of persecution.” For Madison, such persecution was blatantly unjust. It damaged religion and civil society. Madison feared established religion because it threatened personal conscience and political liberty.

Near the end of his letter, Madison asked Bradford “to pity me and pray for Liberty of Conscience.” This line reflects his growing belief that faith should be guided by personal conviction, not political power.

The people and religious freedom

These experiences shaped Madison’s opposition to an official state religion and his defense of the free exercise of religion. For Madison, religion could flourish only under conditions of freedom, not compulsion.

Although initially skeptical about adding a Bill of Rights to the Constitution, Madison eventually supported these amendments, including the First Amendment. It begins with prohibiting the federal government to sanction any official religion: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof …”

For Madison, prohibiting Congress from establishing religion and protecting the free exercise of religion were not abstract ideals. They were responses to the oppression of religious minorities he witnessed in Virginia.

But Madison realized that written guarantees were not enough. Such “parchment barriers,” as he referred to declarations like the Bill of Rights, were necessary but not sufficient to guard against political excess.

In “Federalist No. 10,” part of a series of essays written to support the Constitution, Madison warned about the dangers of factions and intolerance. A dominant religious group could marginalize others. A “religious sect may degenerate into a political faction,” he warned. In his view, a religious faction with political power can create a political tyranny, especially when it claims to act in God’s name.

Madison understood that religious freedom did not mean protecting one faith against others. Religious freedom is best secured in a nation that respects religious diversity in all of its variety, including the right to no religion at all. The point was not to privilege any tradition but to protect all traditions.

Madison and our moment

Madison’s vision is instructive in this moment when debates on religious freedom often center on Christianity, especially in disputes over education, rights and discrimination.

For Madison, religious freedom was not about political domination. It served as a constitutional ally for the foundational principle of liberty and a safeguard for democracy.

Returning to Madison is not an exercise in nostalgia. It is a civic responsibility.

His legacy reminds Americans that religious freedom is not about power or privilege. Religious freedom affirms a broader and deeper vision of American democracy where all beliefs, and none, can coexist in a diverse and evolving society.

Corey D. B. Walker does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. What James Madison can teach Americans about religious freedom today – https://theconversation.com/what-james-madison-can-teach-americans-about-religious-freedom-today-272909

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Phil Starks, Associate Professor of Biology, Tufts University

Most people know only two things about the appendix: You don’t need it – and if it bursts, you need surgery fast.

That basic story traces back at least to Charles Darwin, the English naturalist who developed the theory of natural selection. In “The Descent of Man,” he described the appendix as a vestige: a leftover from plant-eating ancestors with larger digestive organs. For more than a century, that interpretation shaped both textbook and casual medical wisdom.

But the evolutionary story of the appendix turns out to be much more complicated.

Along with our colleague Helene M. Hartman, a student preparing for a career in health care, we combined our expertise in behavioral ecology, biology and history to review the scientific literature on the appendix, expecting a simple answer.

Instead, we found an organ that evolution kept reinventing, more interesting than most people imagine.

How did the appendix evolve?

The appendix is a small pouch branching off the first section of the large intestine. Its shape and structure vary widely across species – a clue that evolution may have tinkered with it more than once.

Some species, including certain primates such as humans and great apes, have a long, cylindrical appendix. In others, including several marsupials such as wombats and koalas, the appendix appears shorter or more funnel-shaped. Still others, including some rodents and rabbits, have differently proportioned or branching structures. This structural diversity suggests that evolution has modified the organ under different ecological conditions.

That suspicion is supported by evolutionary analyses. Comparative studies show that an appendix-like structure evolved independently in at least three distinct lineages of mammals – marsupials, primates and glires, a group that includes rodents and rabbits. A broader evolutionary survey found that the appendix evolved separately at least 32 times across 361 mammalian species.

When a trait evolves repeatedly and independently, biologists call this convergent evolution. Convergence does not mean a structure is indispensable. But it does suggest that, under certain environmental conditions, having that structure provided a consistent enough advantage for evolution to favor it again and again.

In other words, the appendix is unlikely to be a useless evolutionary accident.

What does the appendix do?

The appendix supports the immune system. It contains gut-associated lymphoid tissue – immune cells embedded in the intestinal wall that help monitor microbial activity in the gut. In early life, this tissue exposes developing immune cells to intestinal microbes, helping the body learn to distinguish between harmless symbionts and harmful pathogens.

The appendix is particularly rich in structures called lymphoid follicles during childhood and adolescence, when the immune system is still maturing. These immune components participate in mucosal immunity, which helps regulate microbial populations along the intestinal lining and other mucosal surfaces. Lymphoid follicles produce antibodies, such as immunoglobulin A, to neutralize pathogens.

Researchers have also proposed that the appendix acts as a microbial refuge. Some have suggested that biofilms – thin, structured communities of bacteria – line the appendix. During severe gastrointestinal infections that flush much of the gut microbiome from the colon, beneficial bacteria sheltered within these biofilms may survive and help repopulate the intestine afterward. Those beneficial microbes assist with digestion, compete with pathogens and interact with the immune system in ways that reduce inflammation and promote recovery.

These hypotheses motivated a question our team explored: If the appendix helps preserve microbial stability, could removing it subtly affect reproductive fitness?

Older clinical concerns suggested that appendicitis or appendectomy might impair fertility by causing inflammation and scarring – known as tubal adhesions – in the fallopian tubes. Such scarring could physically obstruct the egg’s passage to the uterus. But several large studies have since found no decrease in fertility after appendectomy – in some cases, researchers found a small increase in pregnancy rates.

The appendix appears to have multiple functions, including immune and microbial ones. Affecting fertility, however, does not seem to be one of them.

Evolutionary importance and modern life

While the appendix has an interesting past, with evolution continually reinventing it, its modern importance is modest at best. Darwin underestimated the organ’s history, but his instinct wasn’t far off in the medical present: Some parts of human biology mattered more in the environments people evolved in than in the lives they lead today.

Early humans lived in environments with little sanitation and strong social contact – perfect conditions for outbreaks of pathogens that cause diarrhea. An appendix that quickly restored the microbiome after infection could significantly improve survival. But over the past century, clean water, improved sanitation and antibiotics have sharply reduced deaths from diarrheal diseases in high-income countries.

As a result, the evolutionary pressures that once favored the appendix have largely disappeared. Meanwhile, the medical risks of keeping the appendix – most notably appendicitis – remain. Modern surgery typically treats an infected appendix by removing it. A structure that was once a global evolutionary advantage is now more of a medical liability.

This mismatch between past adaptations and present environments illustrates a core principle in evolutionary medicine: Evolution optimizes for survival and reproduction in ancestral environments, not for health, comfort or longevity in modern ones.

Evolution operates at the level of populations over generations, favoring traits that increase average reproductive success, even if those traits sometimes harm individuals. Medicine works the other way around – helping individuals thrive in the present world rather than survive the past one.

The appendix is not an IKEA spare part included “just in case,” but
neither is it essential today. Human biology has many traits that were once beneficial, now marginal – and understanding them allows medicine to make better modern decisions.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. What does the appendix do? Biologists explain the complicated evolution of this inconvenient organ – https://theconversation.com/what-does-the-appendix-do-biologists-explain-the-complicated-evolution-of-this-inconvenient-organ-277012

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Yaw Edu Essandoh, Ph.D. Student in Public and Environmental Affairs, Indiana University

Every morning, people fasten their watch, slip on a bracelet and head out the door without thinking much about what they might encounter along the way. The air they breathe, the dust on their hands and the surfaces they touch all feel ordinary. Yet many chemical exposures happen quietly, without smell, taste or warning.

What if something as simple as a silicone band around your wrist could help track those invisible exposures?

Environmental monitoring has traditionally relied on snapshots of exposure from a water sample collected on a single day, a blood sample drawn at one point in time, or soil tested from a specific location. But exposure unfolds gradually as people move through different environments and come into contact with air, dust and surfaces throughout the day.

New noninvasive monitoring tools aim to capture that longer-term picture.

As synthetic chemicals such as “forever chemicals,” known as perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), become more widespread in everyday environments, scientists are increasingly focused on understanding how exposure to these substances occurs in daily life.

Traditional monitoring misses everyday reality

Traditional monitoring methods are essential for identifying contamination, but they capture exposure as a moment rather than something that unfolds over time.

In studies involving people, measuring exposure often requires invasive procedures such as blood draws, which can be expensive, logistically challenging and, for some participants, uncomfortable enough to discourage involvement.

Early in my environmental chemistry research, I noticed something that didn’t quite add up. People living in the same agricultural community, or animals sharing the same landscape, often showed very different chemical profiles even when environmental measurements looked similar. The surroundings hadn’t changed much; daily behavior had.

Movement through different spaces, time spent indoors or outdoors, contact with treated surfaces and interactions with consumer products all shape exposure in ways a single sample can’t fully capture. That realization raised a larger question: If exposure unfolds gradually, how can scientists measure it using tools designed for specific moments? Answering that question requires a shift away from isolated measurements and toward approaches that reflect lived experience.

What noninvasive tools change

That question led me to work with passive, noninvasive monitoring tools, including silicone wristbands. Rather than actively collecting samples, these tools absorb chemicals from the surrounding environment over time, similar to how skin or fur interacts with air, dust and surfaces.

Silicone wristbands work because they are made of a silicone polymer called polydimethylsiloxane, or PDMS, that can absorb many organic chemicals from the surrounding environment. As the band is worn, compounds from air, dust and surfaces gradually diffuse into the silicone over time.

The material acts somewhat like a sponge, passively collecting traces of chemicals the wearer encounters during daily activities. After the wristband is worn for several days or weeks, researchers can extract those compounds in the laboratory and analyze them to better understand patterns of exposure.

Silicone wristbands are one example of a broader group of passive, noninvasive monitoring tools designed to observe how chemicals accumulate over time. Other approaches, including passive air samplers placed in homes or small wearable devices, follow similar principles by absorbing compounds from the surrounding environment.

Researchers have used noninvasive tools in community studies to track exposure without medical procedures, lowering barriers to participation and reducing the burden on volunteers. For example, scientists have applied these approaches to study exposure among adolescent girls in agricultural communities, firefighters and occupants in office buildings.

Researchers have also adapted similar ideas for animal and wildlife studies. Instead of drawing blood, scientists may use wearable tags, collars or passive samplers placed in an animal’s environment, such as nesting areas or habitats, to understand how chemicals accumulate over time. These approaches can offer insight into exposure across different ecosystems while minimizing stress on animals.

Like any method, passive monitoring has limitations. Some chemicals are more difficult to capture than others, and environmental conditions such as temperature, sunlight or airflow can influence how efficiently samplers absorb pollutants. Wearable devices also reflect exposure over a specific period, meaning they cannot provide a complete lifetime record.

These approaches do not replace traditional monitoring. Instead, they add context, showing how exposure accumulates across time and space rather than appearing suddenly at a single sampling point.

Why this matters now

In the United States, PFAS contamination has become a growing public concern, from drinking water advisories to product restrictions and cleanup efforts. Federal agencies, including the Environmental Protection Agency, have highlighted the persistence of these chemicals and their widespread presence in the environment.

Much of the public conversation focuses on where PFAS are found in water systems, soils or consumer products. Understanding exposure, however, also requires attention to how people and ecosystems encounter these chemicals in everyday settings.

Noninvasive monitoring tools may help fill that gap. They offer ways to better understand cumulative exposure, identify overlooked pathways and inform environmental health and conservation decisions. For wildlife, these methods may allow researchers to detect emerging risks earlier without adding pressure to species already facing habitat loss and climate stress.

Although these approaches are becoming more common in environmental health research, they are still emerging compared with traditional sampling methods. Costs, the need for standardized protocols and differences in how various chemicals interact with passive materials can slow wider adoption. As researchers continue refining these tools, they can complement rather than replace established monitoring strategies.

Yaw Edu Essandoh does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Silicone wristbands can help scientists track people’s exposure to pollutants like ‘forever chemicals’ – https://theconversation.com/silicone-wristbands-can-help-scientists-track-peoples-exposure-to-pollutants-like-forever-chemicals-275520

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Michael Klein, Professor of International Economic Affairs at The Fletcher School, Tufts University

bk: michael, reminder to please fill our your disclosure when you have a second. it’s the red button at right

The “fog of war” refers to confusion and uncertainty on the battlefield and the attendant possibility of fatal error. This principle has a parallel when it comes to the economic consequences of wars as well, especially when they occur in a region that is a chokepoint for the production and shipment of one-fifth of the world’s oil and a third of its natural gas.

Although no one really knows how deeply the ripple effects of the joint U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran will impair the global economy, the Gulf kingdom of Qatar issued a dire warning on March 6, 2026, that reflects those concerns: “This will bring down the economies of the world,” Qatar’s energy minister said.

As for the U.S. economy, it was already showing signs of weakness. Data released on March 6 showed an unexpected loss in jobs in February.

As an economist, I expect the biggest economic risks of this war to be inflationary pressures and slowing growth due to the rising price of oil. In addition, uncertainty from the “economic fog of war” could make consumers reticent to spend and businesses hesitant about hiring and investing. These conditions will make it challenging for policymakers to steer the economy.

Uncertainty and risks

There is currently, and likely to be for some time, great uncertainty about the length of the war in Iran, the range of countries involved and its costs. All of these factors will determine how much the war hurts economies in the U.S. and across the globe.

We do know there will be disruptions to the supply of oil and liquefied natural gas, which is difficult to ship through the Strait of Hormuz, and from the fiscal costs associated with this military action.

The price of crude oil has jumped by about 25% since the U.S. and Israel began bombing Iran on Feb. 28, which has driven up gasoline prices across the U.S. The majority of oil and liquefied natural gas produced in the Middle East travels through the Strait of Hormuz – but the threat of attack has made travel through this waterway uninsurable, which has brought shipping through this vital passage to a virtual halt.

This is also an expensive military campaign for the United States, which has already seen the loss of aircraft and a depletion of its stock of missiles. Early estimates of the cost of the war were nearly US$1 billion a day.

Challenges managing a supply shock

The 1979 Iranian Revolution also brought about a spike in the price of oil, which was an important contributing factor to the United States and Europe experiencing an economic phenomenon called “stagflation” – a portmanteau of stagnant growth and high inflation.

This is unlikely to be repeated to the same extent now. Economies are less dependent upon oil and natural gas than they were in the late 1970s and early ’80s. And the U.S. is not beginning the war with a previous decade of high inflation that made it more difficult to reduce price pressures, since expectations of inflation feed into actual inflation.

Still, supply shocks are challenging to address, as the world saw with the COVID-19 pandemic, and policymakers will likely have to make some difficult choices that involve hard trade-offs.

Trade-off between fighting inflation or recession

One of the questions arising from supply shocks is whether a central bank should raise interest rates to combat inflation or lower them to offset weakness in the economy and rising unemployment. Lifting rates brings down inflation by reducing demand for loans and curbing growth, while lowering rates has the opposite effect.

In both the late 1970s and during the onset of the pandemic, the Federal Reserve opted to keep rates low to help support the economy and the job market. In both cases, this led to a spike in inflation.

The inflation of the late 1970s and early ’80s was brought down by a strong reversal of monetary policy with high interest rates, causing a recession that was, at that time, the deepest since the 1930s. Notably, the reduction of inflation in the wake of COVID-19 did not require a similar economic downturn to achieve that goal. An important reason for that is the long history of low inflation in the decades before the 2020s and the “anchoring” of inflation expectations.

Risks on the horizon

But there are reasons to be concerned.

While the Fed now has a well-deserved anti-inflation reputation, its credibility with financial markets is at risk because of President Donald Trump’s attacks on Chairman Jerome Powell, the prosecution of Federal Reserve Board member Lisa Cook and the appointment of a new chair who many suspect will push for lower rates because that’s what the president wants.

Concerns that these actions could lead to higher inflation can become a self-fullfilling prophecy that brings about the very thing that people are worried about. Seeds of new inflation pressures may be falling on fertile soil.

Uncertainty triggered by the war is not the only negative economic signal. Tariff policy, cuts to government employment, rising federal debt and the possibility of financial vulnerabilities are all weighing on the U.S. economy. A spike in the price of oil could very well set off greater weakness, and even a recession, as consumers and businesses pull back from spending.

Michael Klein has received funding for EconoFact from the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and the Smith Richardson Foundation. He is a Research Associate in the National Bureau of Economic Research.

– ref. War in Middle East brings uncertainty and higher energy costs to already weakening US economy – https://theconversation.com/war-in-middle-east-brings-uncertainty-and-higher-energy-costs-to-already-weakening-us-economy-277809

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Max Crowley, Professor of Human Development, Family Studies and Public Policy, Penn State

Since early 2025, several large federal health grants to states have been suspended and then restored after legal challenges. On Feb. 13, 2026, for example, the federal government moved to suspend about US$600 million in public health grants to four states before a federal court temporarily blocked the action. Hundreds of millions of dollars that had already been allocated by Congress were briefly put on hold before the court intervened.

From the outside, these episodes may look like routine disputes between states and the federal government, as such cancellations do happen. But inside state agencies and in communities, they create something more consequential: uncertainty that interrupts crucial public health programs – even if states ultimately get the money.

As a scholar who studies how to build infrastructure for preventing human suffering, I’ve seen how instability – even when temporary – changes how agencies and the communities they serve plan, hire and invest.

Even when funding is eventually restored, repeated cycles in which funding is frozen and then temporarily reinstated, pending lawsuits, can disrupt how public health systems operate. This, in turn, erodes the public health infrastructure that federal funding helps build and maintain.

That infrastructure includes vaccination clinics, restaurant sanitation inspections, opioid response teams, school violence prevention, maternal health programs and disease surveillance systems, to name a few. Programs like this play a critical role in public health, but because they focus on preventing problems before they occur, many people aren’t away of the critical need for them until something goes wrong.

Most disruptions never make headlines, but they affect services communities rely on.

Public health depends on continuity

Despite the heavy media focus on emergency response during crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic, most public health work is long-term planning built around multiyear prevention strategies.

Federal grants support epidemiologists, prevention specialists, behavioral health providers and data analysts. They fund disease surveillance systems, maternal and child health initiatives, substance use prevention programs and partnerships with community organizations. These efforts operate on multiyear timelines. Each one requires hiring staff, bringing on outside contractors and service providers, and setting up systems to track outcomes.

When funding is suddenly paused or regulatory environments change, agencies cannot simply wait for clarity. Hiring slows. Leaders draft contingency plans in case the suspension becomes permanent. Many state and local employees begin exploring more stable employment opportunities.

National workforce surveys show that roughly 1 in 4 state public health employees report considering leaving their job within a year. In 2023, local health departments lost an average of 19% of their staff, reflecting how the COVID-19 pandemic strained the public health workforce. In a small county health department, where the entire staff may consist of only four to seven people, losing even a single nurse or disease investigator can significantly disrupt services.

If funding is later restored, as has occurred in several cases in 2025 and early 2026, agencies must reverse course. They reissue guidance, renegotiate contracts and reassure partners. But the disruption has already consumed time and public resources.

Some projects and communities may not fully recover. Volatility creates costs even when the money returns.

The financial and administrative cost of legal battles

Suing the federal government over funding suspensions is expensive. When states challenge federal decisions, state attorneys general devote staff time and legal resources. Health departments must coordinate with lawyers, compile documentation and model alternative budget scenarios. Senior leaders shift attention from program oversight to legal and fiscal risk management.

Those administrative hours are funded by taxpayers. They represent real expenditures, though they rarely appear in public debate. And while litigation proceeds – often for months – agencies must prepare for multiple possible outcomes.

The uncertainty itself shapes planning. Agencies may hesitate to launch new initiatives if funding could disappear midstream. They may shorten contracts, delay hiring or scale back expansion plans to reduce exposure. Over time, that caution can slow implementation and limit innovation.

Instability extends beyond grant dollars

Suspended funding is not the only source of instability. The federal government has also announced structural changes within some health agencies, starting with a major reorganization of the Department of Health and Human Services in March 2025. These changes, too, inject uncertainty into how public health systems operate.

For example, federal health officials recently indicated they plan to significantly scale back the Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation within the Administration for Children and Families.

Since 1995, that office has studied the impact of programs serving families and children, including Head Start, the foster care system and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. Independent research and policy organizations, including the Data Foundation and Results for America, warn that interrupting those studies could undermine states’ ability to assess and improve these programs.

Similarly, recent grant terminations and restructuring within the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, which administers major behavioral health grants to states, have introduced uncertainty. When staff supported by grants are cut or funding terms shift abruptly, payments can be delayed, reporting guidance becomes unclear, and local treatment providers may struggle to plan. For communities trying to prevent opioid overdoses or rising mental health needs, even short-term disruption can be a matter of life or death.

Pausing or reorganizing such studies midstream disrupts the ability to understand what works and what doesn’t. Experienced staff may leave. Rebuilding that expertise can take years.

Prevention is especially vulnerable

Almost by definition, people take prevention for granted. If programs focused on vaccination, substance use treatment and youth mental health are effective, many people never experience the crises that might have occurred without them.

But prevention depends on continuity: sustained staffing, stable partnerships and consistent data collection. The effects of disruption are difficult to measure in a single budget cycle, but they influence how confidently agencies invest in long-term strategies. In that sense, funding instability can become a public health issue of its own.

Policy priorities will always evolve. Courts review executive actions. Congress revisits allocations. Change is part of governance. But if policymakers want stronger, more resilient public health infrastructure, stability is not simply administrative convenience. It is part of the foundation that makes prevention and preparedness possible.

Max Crowley does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Public health needs steady budgets – and federal funding uncertainty causes real harms, even if the money is later restored – https://theconversation.com/public-health-needs-steady-budgets-and-federal-funding-uncertainty-causes-real-harms-even-if-the-money-is-later-restored-276500

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Kenneth Andrew Andres Leonardo, Postdoctoral Fellow and Visiting Assistant Professor of Government, Hamilton College

Today’s youth cherish “authenticity,” but is it a virtue? According to a report from Ernst & Young, more than 9 in 10 Gen Z respondents indicated that being authentic and true to yourself is extremely or very important. In fact, most of them claimed authenticity is more important than any other personal value.

This finding is not all that surprising: All of us live in an age where we’re bombarded by social media and artificial intelligence – when striving to be your authentic self becomes an increasingly difficult task.

Yet, even if it has somehow become a common goal, it is unclear how many of us can truly define the “authenticity” that we say we are pursuing. I think it’s also worth asking whether sincerity and authenticity are perennial human virtues or just obsessions of this technological age.

As a scholar in the history of political thought and American political development, I think two philosophers can help us understand this problem and how to deal with it: Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Martin Heidegger.

Sincerity: A counter to modernity

Rousseau, the 18th-century philosopher from Geneva, arrived in the wake of earlier Enlightenment philosophers, such as Hobbes, Locke and Montesquieu.

These thinkers laid many of the foundations for how people understand liberal democracy today, especially the emphasis on individual natural rights – to paraphrase Thomas Jefferson’s later formulation, all human beings are “endowed” with these rights at birth or by nature. In particular, Hobbes popularized the idea of generating a commonwealth in order to escape the uncertainty in a state of nature where self-preservation is fundamental. Locke also emphasized the right to property, while Montesquieu saw the importance of international commerce, among other aspects, including the separation of powers.

But Rousseau became famous for his criticisms of the individualistic civil society born out of their thought. In the modern commercial republic, the fixation turned to luxury rather than duty. “Ancient politicians spoke incessantly about morals and virtue,” he wrote; “those of our time talk only of business and money.”

For Rousseau, modern society was a conformist “herd” where everyone hides behind a “veil” of politeness. People wear masks to hide their selfishness, deceiving others in order to satisfy their own desires.

In this way, he argued, human beings are actually enslaved to each other: While each person pursues self-interest, success requires getting others to see some “profit” in helping each other. The rich need the “services” of the poor just as the poor need the “help” of the rich. Anyone who refuses to yield to this entire enterprise “will die in poverty and oblivion.”

Sincerity is the path to self-realization in Rousseau’s political philosophy, according to political science professor Arthur Melzer. As Melzer states, “We want, as fully as possible, to become what we are, to realize ourselves, to become as alive and actualized as possible, to really live.” For him, Rousseau considered sincerity to be what puts us on “the path” to true human excellence. It’s the “countercultural virtue” needed to oppose the hypocrisy found in modern society.

Authenticity: Uncovering the self

While Rousseau extolled sincerity, 20th-century German philosopher Martin Heidegger significantly influenced today’s understanding of a related idea: authenticity.

In his magnum opus, “Being and Time,” Heidegger considered how the self gets lost in the public world. In everyday life, individuals think and exist in terms of the other people they encounter – a way of being he called the “they-self.” He stated, “Everyone is the other, and no one is himself.”

Heidegger believed that people are inauthentic when they’re driven into “uninhibited hustle” within the world, tranquilizing themselves from anxiety about the true meaning of human life and its eventual end.

In his later work, Heidegger argued that everything and everyone in contemporary life had become technological, treated as raw material for “exploitation.” For example, in the technological age, the Rhine River is not a “river” but merely “something at our command,” a supplier of “water power.”

“Everywhere everything is ordered to stand by, to be immediately at hand,” he claimed, “indeed to stand there just so that it may be on call for a further ordering.” This extends even to human beings themselves, now referred to as “human resources.”

By contrast, the authentic human being is called to choose and be the self, rather than being for the sake of others. They don’t flee death, and in discovering the world in this way, it feels like clearing away “concealments and obscurities.”

Still, Heidegger did not explicitly say that authenticity is human excellence or the “highest good.” As political philosophy professor Mark Blitz articulates, Heidegger’s authenticity is the “true understanding of what human beings actually are.” From this perspective, authentic human beings are able to confront and grasp the responsibility they have for their own existence.

Bound by justice

Despite the current obsession with sincerity and authenticity, I believe it’s important to put these concepts in perspective: They might be added to a list of classical virtues, including courage, moderation, justice and prudence, rather than completely replacing them.

There may be nothing intrinsically dangerous about pursuing authenticity. In many cases, it’s clear that people ought to be left to be who they want to be. But there are still a few obvious limits.

At the very least, authenticity must be bound by justice. What if someone being their “authentic self” harms the environment or others? Some people are “sincere” or “authentic” while committing all kinds of harmful actions.

While each of us may pursue authenticity, we should also remember that just and peaceful relations require the celebration of both difference and mutual respect.

Kenneth Andrew Andres Leonardo does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Today’s obsession with authenticity isn’t new – being true to yourself has troubled philosophers for centuries – https://theconversation.com/todays-obsession-with-authenticity-isnt-new-being-true-to-yourself-has-troubled-philosophers-for-centuries-262004

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Antonio Machado Allison, Professor of Environment and Latin American Studies, Wesleyan University

Venezuela’s Orinoco River Basin is a wild land of lush forests, grasslands and a vast delta of jungle wetlands teeming with wildlife. River dolphins and endangered Orinoco crocodiles ply its waterways, and over 1,000 freshwater fish and bird species can be found there.

During the rainy season, the Orinoco is the world’s third-largest river by discharge. But this region – which Venezuelans rely on for water and hydropower – is facing a growing environmental disaster.

Over millions of years, organic and geological processes left the fragile region rich in both biodiversity and mineral resources, including the world’s largest proven oil reserve and valuable metals such as gold, iron and coltan, a source of niobium and tantalum for the tech industry.

Illegal mining that accelerated under former President Nicolás Maduro over the past decade is tearing up one of the most biodiverse regions of the world, with little sign of stopping. Now, the Trump administration is pushing to ramp up critical minerals mining and oil drilling in Venezuela, where the industry has a long history of oil spills and neglected equipment, with little discussion of protecting the environment.

Mining is expanding in the forests

Mineral exploitation in Venezuela is as old as the country. Historically, a few big mines were run by international companies and mining was controlled. But in the early 2010s, the government of former President Hugo Chávez nationalized the gold industry and hinted that the government would open small-scale mining to the public.

In 2016, Maduro, facing falling oil production and scrambling for revenue, followed through, declaring a large part of the Orinoco River Basin to be the Orinoco Mining Arc, where mining would be prioritized. The region encompasses about 12% of Venezuela, including national monuments, national parks and Indigenous communities.

Today, tens of thousands of people mine in the jungle, living in often squalid, violent and contaminated conditions.

Criminal gangs known as “colectivos” or “sindicatos” control many of the mining operations with little government intervention. Guerrilla groups from Colombia have also spilled over the border into the region.

The mining operations cut down forests and remove soil. Toxic materials, including mercury used to extract gold from ore, pour into rivers, contaminating the water and harming the workers, wildlife and surrounding communities that rely on local fish and wildfire.

The mines also promote the spread of tropical infectious diseases and disrupt indigenous and rural communities. Evidence of environmental disasters and human rights violations, including human trafficking, child labor and sexual assault, have been documented by several public and private organizations.

Oil and the law

The same Orinoco River Basin holds part of the world’s largest proven crude oil reserves. After the Trump administration seized Maduro on Jan. 3, 2026, and arrested him on drug trafficking charges, it said the U.S would control that oil. But what exactly that will mean and how the oil industry will respond remains to be seen.

By law, oil and other natural and mineral resources belong to the state in Venezuela. Oil exploration, extraction and commercialization are carried out through a system called “concessions” – contracts between the government and national or foreign private companies. In exchange for access to resources, the country receives an income, or tribute, from the profits generated.

However, the Constitution of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, approved in 1999, also clearly states that “the State shall protect the environment, biological and genetic diversity, ecological processes, national parks and natural monuments, and other areas of particular ecological importance.”

Analysts estimate that rebuilding the industry, which has been plagued by poorly maintained infrastructure and leaks and spills, would take years to decades. It would likely mean more roads in a region already losing pristine forest and put more of the environment and water at risk. The region’s heavy oil production has also led to water pollution.

In the 1920s, oil drilling helped lift the economy of Venezuela, previously a very poor, largely agrarian country. The country had been plagued with malaria and other tropical diseases, the population was poorly educated, and there were continuous fights among military strongmen, known as “caudillos.” Oil brought in foreign investment, making Venezuela the second-largest oil producer in the world by 1928 and its largest exporter.

In 1976, with the country’s economy heavily dependent on oil, Venezuela nationalized the oil industry. Foreign industries could partner with the state oil company, but only if the government held the controlling share of the joint ventures. Boom times led to inflation, and oil price drops became disastrous for the economy.

The U.S. began imposing sanctions on Venezuela in 2015 over drug trafficking and human rights abuses, and those sanctions increased during the Trump administrations. Between the sanctions and mismanagement, Venezuela’s oil production collapsed, and with it, the national economy.

Venezuelans’ future

With the removal of Maduro, former Vice President Delcy Rodríguez is in charge of the government.

In January, she signed legislation that eases state control over oil drilling but keeps ownership of the hydrocarbon reserves with the nation. She also met with U.S. officials in March and pledged to accelerate mining reforms that would give foreign companies access to Venezuelan minerals.

The shift in leadership does not guarantee other changes from Maduro’s regime, however. In her past roles, including as minister of foreign affairs and economy and as vice president, Rodriguez was involved in overseeing the Orinoco Mining Arc at a time when criminal activity and illegal mining were rapidly expanding there, environmental groups point out.

Studies of satellite data tracking deforestation suggest that Venezuela lost roughly 185 square miles (480 square kilometers) to gold mining alone from 2018 to 2025. Mining has moved into national parks, including Canaima, home to Angel Falls.

Venezuela, meanwhile, is still deep in an economic crisis that led to millions of people leaving the country.

The majority of the population lives in poverty, and inflation continued to skyrocket in early 2026. As the U.S. eases sanctions, that is likely to help, but the country has many problems to overcome.

Antonio Machado Allison does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Venezuela’s fragile environment faces rising risks as US pushes for oil and critical minerals and illegal gold mining spreads – https://theconversation.com/venezuelas-fragile-environment-faces-rising-risks-as-us-pushes-for-oil-and-critical-minerals-and-illegal-gold-mining-spreads-276859