In most of the world, May 1, May Day, is a grand holiday to celebrate the power and unity of the international working class. But in the United States, the leading capitalist power, that’s not typically the case.

May Day was actually founded here in the United States, first sanctified on May 1, 1889 as a part of the fight for the eight-hour day. It also commemorated the third anniversary of a US general strike that began on May 1, 1886. May Day was then exported globally as a way to remember the Haymarket martyrs: eight labor leaders wrongly convicted for throwing a bomb in Chicago’s Haymarket Square on May 4, 1886. Of the eight, four were executed, one took his own life in prison, and three were eventually pardoned. Before being hanged for conspiracy to commit murder, August Spies memorably said, “If you think that by hanging us, you can stamp out the labor movement—the movement from which the downtrodden millions, the millions who toil and live in want and misery—the wage slaves—expect salvation—if this is your opinion, then hang us! Here you will tread upon a spark, but there, and there, and behind you and in front of you, and everywhere, flames will blaze up. It is a subterranean fire. You cannot put it out.”

In other words, May Day is as American as apple pie. And yet, the unions, the media, and the government here either pay it little mind or have actively suppressed its history. This speaks to a country, as articulated so beautifully in Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States, that has an earthshaking history of class struggle but continues to suffer from the absence of a mass labor or social-democratic party as well as low union density. As a result, there is little public knowledge of the labor struggles that have periodically rocked this country.

In roughly seven months, tens of millions of Americans will vote in the midterm elections. This election will be a referendum on the future of our democracy. This isn’t hyperbole. It’s a demonstrable fact.

Of course, during every election cycle, pundits and candidates say: “This is the most important election in my lifetime.” Some mean it; others know it’s bluster.

Hell, I’ve been around long enough to have heard politicians tell me “This is the most important election in my lifetime” since at least the 2000 presidential elections, when “hanging chads” in Florida decided the fate of our country. Then, it was a contest between Al Gore and George W. Bush.

Sure, there were miles of differences between Gore and Bush, especially on the environment. But I’m not going to rehash what might have been or speculate about whether Gore’s response to 9/11 would have been drastically different than Bush’s. Who knows?

What I do know is this: Donald J. Trump—and the vile network of racist, sexist sycophants that make up his administration—are a creature of fundamentally different stripes. In a manner unmatched by any prior administration, they are actively working to undermine the very foundations of our (albeit limited) bourgeois democracy.

The NASA Authorization Act of 2026 has been approved, and alongside a directive for NASA to establish a permanent Moon base, the legislation includes language extending the International Space Station to 2032.

The ISS project was set to end in 2030. In 2024, NASA awarded a contract to Elon Musk's SpaceX to build a tug to de-orbit the outpost by 2030, assuming it lasts that long. By then the complex's first module will have been in orbit for more than 30 years, and cracks have plagued the structure alongside hardware failures as the laboratory ages. One space agency insider observed that "it's on its last legs."

Then again, in a 2024 interview with The Register, ESA astronaut Andreas Mogensen said of the ISS: "I wouldn't be surprised if we extended it a few years."

NASA is to begin soliciting proposals for two commercial space stations immediately (Axiom Space and Vast spring to mind), but, mindful of a potential gap, lawmakers have also directed the agency to keep the ISS running for a few more years – certainly until at least one commercial station is launched and capable of taking over ISS operations.

In the beginning, the Bible tells us,

God divided the light from the darkness.

And God called the light day, and the darkness He called night.

And so it has been ever since — until now.

Here in the 21st century, we humans are on the cusp of turning night into day — and bidding good night to the stars that have guided us home for thousands of years.

Two little-noted applications under review by the Federal Communications Commission would, if fully implemented, fundamentally remake the night sky. But the FCC, the satellite regulator, appears to have fast-tracked approval without much of a pause to weigh the benefits of these proposals against the harms they could cause to life on the planet.

A start-up called Reflect Orbital proposes to use large, mirrored satellites to redirect sunlight to Earth at night, with plans to bathe solar farms, industrial sites and even entire cities in light that could, if desired, reach the intensity of daylight. At the same time, Elon Musk’s SpaceX wants to launch as many as a million satellites to serve as orbiting data centers — 70 times the number of satellites now in orbit. We could have a million points of light streaking across our skies at night.

If at first you don't succeed, move, move the goalposts.

Nasa announced on Friday radical changes to its delayed Artemis III mission to land humans back on the moon, as the US space agency grapples with technical glitches and criticism that it is trying to do too much too soon.

The abrupt shift in strategy was laid out by the space agency’s recently confirmed administrator, Jared Isaacman. Announcing the changes on Friday, he said that Nasa would introduce at least one new moon flight before attempting to put humans back on the lunar surface for the first time in more than half a century, in 2028.

The new, more incremental approach would give the Nasa team a chance to test flight and refine its technology. As part of the changes, the Artemis II mission to fly humans around the moon this year, without landing, would also be pushed back from its latest scheduled launch on 6 March to 1 April at the earliest.

“Everybody agrees this is the only way forward,” Isaacman told reporters at a news conference. “I know this is how Nasa changed the world, and this is how Nasa is going to do it again.”

The US space agency has released a “pre-solicitation” for what is expected to be a hotly contested contract to develop a spacecraft to orbit Mars and relay communications from the red planet back to Earth.

Ars covered the intrigue surrounding the spacecraft in late January, which was initiated by US Senator Ted Cruz, R-Texas, as part of the “One Big Beautiful Bill” legislation in the summer of 2025. The bill provided $700 million for NASA to develop the orbiter and specified funding had to be awarded “not later than fiscal year 2026,” which ends September 30, 2026. This legislation was seemingly crafted by Cruz’s office to favor a single contractor, Rocket Lab. However, multiple sources have told Ars it was poorly written and therefore the competition is more open than intended.

The pre-solicitation released this week is not a request for proposals from industry—it states that a draft Request for Proposals is forthcoming. Rather, it seeks feedback from industry and interested stakeholders about an “objectives and requirements” document that outlines the goals of the Mars mission.

The hed isn't really answered to my satisfaction, but it's an interesting look into things.

Weather agencies and climate scientists have pointed to the possibility of an El Niño forming in the Pacific Ocean later this year – a phenomenon that could push global temperatures to all-time record highs in 2027.

Both the US government’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology have said some climate models are forecasting an El Niño but both cautioned those results came with uncertainties.

Experts told the Guardian it was too early to be confident, but there were signals in the spread of sea surface temperatures in the Pacific that suggested an El Niño could form in 2026.

The cycle of ocean temperatures in the Pacific – known as the El Niño southern oscillation (ENSO) – is linked with extreme climate events around the world.

When warmer-than-average waters gather in the east of the equatorial Pacific and extend to the coast of the American continent, this is known as an El Niño and tends to give global temperatures a boost and, in Australia, can be linked to drier and hotter conditions.

Enforcement against polluters in the United States plunged in the first year of President Donald Trump’s second term, a far bigger drop than in the same period of his first term, according to a new report from a watchdog group.

By analyzing a range of federal court and administrative data, the nonprofit Environmental Integrity Project found that civil lawsuits filed by the U.S. Department of Justice in cases referred by the Environmental Protection Agency dropped to just 16 in the first 12 months after Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20, 2025. That is 76 percent less than in the first year of the Biden administration.

Trump’s first administration filed 86 such cases in its first year, which was in turn a drop from the Obama administration’s 127 four years earlier.

“Our nation’s landmark environmental laws are meaningless when EPA does not enforce the rules,” Jen Duggan, executive director of the Environmental Integrity Project, said in a statement.

The findings echo two recent analyses from the nonprofits Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility and Earthjustice, which both documented dwindling environmental enforcement under Trump.

Who would have guessed?

Flawed economic models mean the accelerating impact of the climate crisis could lead to a global financial crash, experts warn.

Recovery would be far harder than after the 2008 financial crash, they said, as “we can’t bail out the Earth like we did the banks”.

As the world speeds towards 2C of global heating, the risks of extreme weather disasters and climate tipping points are increasing fast. But current economic models used by governments and financial institutions entirely miss such shocks, the researchers said, instead forecasting that steady economic growth will be slowed only by gradually rising average temperatures. This is because the models assume the future will behave like the past, despite the burning of fossil fuels pushing the climate system into uncharted territory.

Tipping points, such as the collapse of critical Atlantic currents or the Greenland ice sheet, would have global consequences for society. Some are thought to be at, or very close to, their tipping points but the timing is difficult to predict. Combined extreme weather disasters could wipe out national economies, the researchers, from the University of Exeter and financial thinktank Carbon Tracker Initiative, said.

For someone aiming to end the global livestock industry, Bruce Friedrich begins his new book – called Meat – in disarming fashion: “I’m not here to tell anyone what to eat. You won’t find vegetarian or vegan recipes in this book, and you won’t find a single sentence attempting to convince you to eat differently. This book isn’t about policing your plate.”

There’s more. Friedrich, a vegan for almost four decades, says meat is “humanity’s favourite food”.

“It appears to be biological,” he says. “Meat has dense calories, which come from a lot of fat, and it has an umami flavour that humans have evolved to crave. Plus, meat is deeply rooted in most cultures and is the centrepiece at many social gatherings.”

The global damage wreaked by industrial livestock, from climate-heating methane burps to water pollution to the destruction of forests, is well established. For at least 50 years, says Friedrich, environmentalists, health experts and animal advocates – including him – have been trying to convince people to eat less meat and some have done so.

Nearly half a century ago, the US Department of Energy launched a clean energy experiment beneath the University of Minnesota with a simple goal: storing hot water for months at a time in an aquifer more than 100 metres below ground.

The idea of the seasonal thermal energy storage was to tuck away excess heat produced in summer, then use it in the winter to warm buildings.

Now, 45 years after the first test wells were drilled under the university’s St Paul campus, one of the first large-scale aquifer thermal energy systems in the country is being built less than 10 miles from the original test site.

The Heights, a mixed-use development rising from a former golf course on the city’s Greater East Side, will tap thermal energy from an aquifer 100 to 150 metres below ground.

Groundwater from wells spread across the northern half of the 45-hectare development will be drawn by high-efficiency electric heat pumps, powered in part by solar panels, to provide low-cost heating and cooling with little greenhouse gas emissions for 850 homes and several light-industrial buildings.

Europe’s supermarket shelves are packed with brands billing their plastic packaging as sustainable, but often only a fraction of the materials are truly recovered from waste, with the rest made from petroleum.

Brands using plastic packaging – from Kraft’s Heinz Beanz to Mondelēz’s Philadelphia – use materials made by the plastic manufacturing arm of the oil company Saudi Aramco.

The Saudi state-owned holding opposes production cuts under the UN plastic treaty and is the world’s largest corporate greenhouse gas emitter (more than 70m tonnes up to 2023).

Aramco’s petrochemical subsidiary, Sabic, along with other big players, devised a successful way to rebrand their harmful business as “planet saver”. They label plastic as “circular” and climate-friendly, although in practice it remains almost entirely fossil-based, exacerbating global warming and the plastic crisis.

Under industry pressure, Europe is on track to legalise this practice, which independent experts have described as greenwashing, with lax EU rules set to take effect in 2026 and similar UK regulations to be enforced as of 2027.

Half the world’s 100 largest cities are experiencing high levels of water stress, with 39 of these sitting in regions of “extremely high water stress”, new analysis and mapping has shown.

Water stress means that water withdrawals for public water supply and industry are close to exceeding available supplies, often caused by poor management of water resources exacerbated by climate breakdown.

Watershed Investigations and the Guardian mapped cities on to stressed catchments revealing that Beijing, New York, Los Angeles, Rio de Janeiro and Delhi are among those facing extreme stress, while London, Bangkok and Jakarta are classed as being highly stressed.

Separate analysis of Nasa satellite data, compiled by scientists at University College London, shows which of the largest 100 cities have been drying or getting wetter over two decades with places such as Chennai, Tehran and Zhengzhou showing strong drying trends and Tokyo, Lagos and Kampala showing strong wetting trends. All 100 cities and their trends can be viewed on a new interactive water security atlas.

An airport made of bamboo? A tower reaching 20 metres high? For many years, bamboo has been mostly known as the favourite food of giant pandas, but a group of engineers say it’s time we took it seriously as a building material, too.

This week the Institution of Structural Engineers called for architects to be “bamboo-ready” as they published a manual for designing permanent buildings made of the material, in an effort to encourage low-carbon construction and position bamboo as a proper alternative to steel and concrete.

Bamboo has already been used for a number of boundary-pushing projects around the world. At Terminal 2 of Kempegowda international airport in Bengaluru, India, bamboo tubes make up the ceiling and pillars. The Ninghai bamboo tower in north-east China, which is more than 20 metres tall, is claimed to be the world’s first high-rise building made using engineered bamboo.

The Trump administration’s new dietary guidelines urging Americans to eat far more meat and dairy products will, if followed, come at a major cost to the planet via huge swathes of habitat razed for farmland and millions of tons of extra planet-heating emissions.

A new inverted food pyramid recently released by Donald Trump’s health department emphasizes pictures of steak, poultry, ground beef and whole milk, alongside fruits and vegetables, as the most important foods to eat.

The new guidelines are designed to nearly double the amount of protein currently consumed by Americans. “Protein and healthy fats are essential and were wrongly discouraged in prior dietary guidelines,” said Robert F Kennedy Jr, the US health secretary. “We are ending the war on saturated fats.”

But a surge in meat-eating by Americans would involve flattening vast tracts of ecosystems such as forests to make way for the hefty environmental hoofprint of raised livestock, emitting large quantities of greenhouse gases in the process, experts have warned.

The global cost of greenhouse gas emissions are nearly double what scientists previously thought, according to a study published Thursday by researchers at the University of California San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

It is the first time a social cost of carbon (SCC) assessment—a key measure of economic harm caused by climate change—has included damages to the ocean. Global coral loss, fisheries disruption and coastal infrastructure destruction are estimated to cost nearly $2 trillion annually, fundamentally changing how we measure climate finance.

“For decades, we’ve been estimating the economic cost of climate change while effectively assigning a value of zero to the ocean,” said Bernardo Bastien-Olvera, who led the study during his postdoctoral fellowship at Scripps. “Ocean loss is not just an environmental issue, but a central part of the economic story of climate change.”

Of note, the fisheries reporter behind this piece is Johnny Sturgeon.

For Antarctic scientists, getting a handle on what’s happening under the ice shelves is urgent because the fate of the planet’s coastlines will depend on how fast they melt.

Antarctica has more than 70 ice shelves that extend the continent’s vast ice sheet out over the ocean.

Covering about 1.5m sq km, ice shelves float on the water and don’t by themselves push up global sea levels if they melt.

But if global heating of the ocean melts them from underneath they could become unstable, allowing the ice sheet to slide faster into the ocean, pushing up global sea levels by several metres.

The continent’s most vulnerable regions alone have enough ice to push up sea levels by about 15 metres if they all melt.

Global temperatures in 2025 did not quite reach the heights of 2024, thanks to the cooling influence of the natural La Niña weather pattern in the Pacific, new data from the European Copernicus climate service and the Met Office shows.

But the last three years were the world's warmest ever recorded, bringing the planet closer to breaching international climate targets.

Despite natural cooling from La Niña, 2025 was still much warmer than temperatures even a decade ago, as humanity's carbon emissions continue to heat the planet.

That will inevitably lead to further temperature records – and worsening weather extremes – unless emissions are sharply reduced, scientists warn.

"If we go twenty years into the future and we look back at this period of the mid-2020s, we will see these years as relatively cool," said Dr Samantha Burgess, deputy director of Copernicus.

This is what happens when you have too many billionaires.

Everest has been turned into a run-of-the-mill tourist attraction. Space tourism is over now that any celebrity can blast off into orbit. Next up: a hotel on the Moon, now taking reservations for only about six years from now, if you're willing to make a small deposit.

For the low, low deposit cost of either $250,000 or $1 million, depending on the option selected, you can get in on the inflatable ground floor of GRU's definitely-going-to-happen inflatable Moon hotel, which it said it wants to have deployed by 2032.

Don't expect to foot the bill of a private five-day lunar expedition for you and up to three others for the meager deposit cost, though.

"Final pricing has not yet been determined will likely exceed $10 million," the company states on its reservation website. Yes, we know that sentence is missing either a coordinating conjunction or some critical punctuation. Cut GRU a break - it's too busy brainstorming Moon hotels to run its website copy through a grammar checker.