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Canada’s LNG deal with Germany has major climate, economic implications by Matt Simmons
Wednesday June 3rd, 2026 at 10:58 AM

The Narwhal | News on Climate Change, Environmental Issues in Canada
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A BC wildland firefighter stands in a smoking forest
Photo: Marty Clemens / The Narwhal

Summary

  • On May 27, Canada announced an agreement to supply Germany with one million tonnes of liquefied natural gas, or LNG, annually beginning in the early 2030s.
  • The federal government says the deal will help Canada reduce its dependence on the U.S. market as trade relations grow more uncertain under President Donald Trump.
  • Climate experts say the deal raises questions about the long-term costs of expanding fossil fuel exports.

Last week, the Canadian government celebrated a deal with Germany to supply the European country with one million tonnes of liquefied natural gas (LNG) per year, starting in the early 2030s. The agreement — essentially a handshake deal, yet to be finalized — is part of a broader federal scheme encouraging investment in major industrial developments across the country.

Natural gas is a fossil fuel mostly composed of methane, a potent greenhouse gas and major contributor to global climate change. Fossil fuels account for around 68 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions and nearly 90 per cent of all carbon dioxide emissions. The more greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere, the bigger the effect on global warming and the stronger the impacts felt on the ground. More frequent and intense extreme weather is one significant effect, and one that Canada is already experiencing.

In 2023, smoke from wildfires in Canada caused more than 80,000 premature deaths across the globe. Of those who died, more than 20,000 lived in Europe. That same year, nine-year-old Carter Vigh died in B.C. of an asthma attack aggravated by wildfire smoke.

The following year, fires burned through Jasper, Alta., killing a young firefighter named Morgan Kitchen and causing more than $880 million in insured damages. According to the Insurance Bureau of Canada, nationwide losses related to “severe weather” surpassed $9.4 billion in 2024, including $3 billion in a single hour during a hailstorm in Calgary.

Smoke from wildfires burning across Canada in 2023 led to more than 80,000 premature deaths worldwide. Photo: Matt Simmons / The Narwhal

In 2025, around 85 per cent of Canada experienced severe drought conditions. Meanwhile, a storm surge flooded the northern community of Tuktoyaktuk, N.W.T., with water levels rising to the highest ever recorded in the region at 2.62 metres.

Canada touts the new export agreement with Germany as a necessary move to diversify the economy by decreasing its reliance on trade with the United States, which has become increasingly volatile since the re-election of President Donald Trump.

“We must build projects that strengthen our economy, that diversify our supply chains and enhance our energy sovereignty as well as expand our exports beyond a single market,” Canada’s Minister of Energy and Natural Resources Tim Hodgson said on May 27.

When asked how Canada squares its stated climate commitments with support for expansion of fossil fuel production, a spokesperson with Natural Resources Canada said LNG produced in Canada is “widely recognized for its low emissions intensity compared to global averages.”

An ominous orange glow looms in the sky behind a nighttime scene in Kitimat, B.C.
Canada’s first major liquefied natural gas export facility in Kitimat, B.C., was one of the world’s largest sources of flaring emissions in 2025. Photo: Marty Clemens / The Narwhal

Canadian LNG is often positioned as a “transition fuel” helping countries reduce reliance on other energy sources, like coal. But many European countries, including Germany, have been importing LNG as a means to replace Russian gas since the Ukraine war began in 2022. The current U.S.-Israel war on Iran has put further pressure on countries with gas contracts in the Middle East.  

Environmental economist Dave Sawyer said the new agreement clearly shows how the narrative of Canadian LNG as a climate solution is “patently false.”

“This notion that LNG is reducing global emissions is blown out of the water by this German deal,” he told The Narwhal. “This LNG is not being used to displace coal. There’s no incremental emission benefit from Canadian LNG in this deal.”

‘Just be honest’

Increasing long-term reliance on fossil fuel exports is also a risky economic maneuver, according to Steven Haig, policy advisor with the International Institute for Sustainable Development.

“The costs of climate change are being felt now and we shouldn’t lose sight of that,” Haig told The Narwhal in an interview. “They will get worse as time goes on and emissions increase — but this is a problem today, not just a problem for the future.”

Wildfires, droughts and floods are among the many increasing climate impacts claiming lives and diverting government funds to emergency response and health services. These costs will need to be met by higher taxes, placing a heavier burden on lower-income households.

Counting up receipts: one of Canada’s worst wildfire seasons cost at least $500M

A recent New York University School of Law cost-benefit analysis of U.S. LNG exports found that “climate damages greatly exceed economic benefits.” The analysis showed that a conservative accounting of damages — described in the report as “likely underestimates” — are roughly double the economic benefits. In other words, LNG exports cost twice as much as the revenues they earn.

“These are costs that are expected to increase as temperatures continue to rise, meaning that reducing carbon pollution today is an economic imperative,” Haig said. “Good climate policy is good economic policy and the two shouldn’t be considered [in] opposition.”

In 2022, Sawyer worked on a Canadian Climate Institute report analyzing the macroeconomic effects of climate impacts. The report detailed how the federal and provincial governments are increasingly forced to allocate public funds to respond to climate disasters and how this impacts the cost of living for all Canadians.

“Replacing and repairing damaged infrastructure, back-stopping weather-related disaster costs and funding increased health care needs all place greater demands on government budgets,” the report noted. 

Sawyer said LNG exports are like an ATM.

“It is a profitable business — it generates a lot of money for some,” he said. “But it is climate damaging and there are costs associated with climate damages. Just be honest about it.”

Canada should not subsidize fossil fuel exports: experts 

The new agreement with Germany’s state-owned energy importer is the third supply deal secured by Ksi Lisims LNG, a provincially and federally approved floating export facility in British Columbia. 

Ksi Lisims aims to produce up to 12 million tonnes of LNG annually, sourcing its gas from northeast B.C. and transporting it through an 800-kilometre pipeline. Construction has not started on the facility and its owners have not reached a final investment decision, the crucial last step before companies decide to spend the vast sums required to build a major project.

“This deal with Germany … only covers around eight per cent of Ksi Lisims’ projected annual export capacity, so that’s not a lot of LNG that we’re talking about,” Haig noted. “The broader market trends still point to long-term risks for high-cost LNG exporters like Canada.”

There’s a place for B.C.’s gas in a net-zero future. But not for long

The deal also isn’t really a deal — yet. So far, the parties have signed a non-binding preliminary document known as a “heads of agreement.” An official purchase agreement would need to be finalized before Ksi Lisims could use it to attract investment.

Ksi Lisims is owned by Texas-based Western LNG, in partnership with the Nisga’a Lisims Government and a coalition of gas producers called Rockies LNG Partners. The owners have already signed deals with Shell and TotalEnergies to provide each with two million tonnes of LNG per year. 

Canada has long been a major producer of oil and gas, mainly exporting to the U.S. via a network of cross-border pipelines, but the country’s economy is not reliant on the sector like some petrostates. According to the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, the industry accounts for about 3.8 per cent of the country’s gross domestic product.

An aerial view of smoke emitting from smoke stacks in Alberta's oil fields on a sunny day.
Canada’s oil and gas sector accounts for around 3.8 per cent of the country’s gross domestic product. Photo: Amber Bracken / The Narwhal

Canada’s ambitions to become a global player in liquefied natural gas exports were first realized last year, when LNG Canada sent its initial shipments of the fossil fuel across the Pacific Ocean to Asia. Construction of LNG Canada was heavily subsidized by the B.C. and federal governments.

The federal government’s public investment agency, the Canada Infrastructure Bank, is considering providing new financial support for projects like Ksi Lisims LNG, according to recent reporting by the Globe and Mail.

“The government of Canada should not be subsidizing oil and gas development — they can bet their own money,” Sawyer said. “The government’s job is to put the safeguards in place, not spend money.”

Haig agreed.

“If Canada’s LNG projects can’t stand on their own two feet, then public dollars should not prop them up,” he said. “These are highly risky investments and public subsidies effectively shift that risk away from private corporations onto Canadian taxpayers.”

“[That], in turn, makes it more likely that projects go ahead even if they may lose money in the long run, becoming stranded assets that may need to be cleaned up with public funds.”

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

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sarcozona
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This new OMB Rule Is Bigger Than Science. Much Bigger.
Wednesday June 3rd, 2026 at 10:38 AM

Elizabeth Ginexi
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This image was generated by Google AI (Gemini)

When I published my summary of OMB’s proposed Federal Financial Assistance rule last week, I was writing from my lane. I spent 22 years as an NIH Program Official overseeing federally funded science. I know firsthand how real and severe that damage to science funding would be, and it deserved to be named clearly.

I want to widen the lens now, because the more I have dug into this rule, the more I realize that scientists are not the only ones who should be alarmed. Not even close.

2 CFR Part 200, the regulation being rewritten here, is not the science grants regulation. It is the universal legal framework governing every federal grant to every recipient across every agency in the federal government. When OMB rewrites it, they are rewriting the rules for all of it.

According to the Congressional Research Service, in FY2024 the federal government sent $1.1 trillion in grants to state and local governments. That money is what funds:

  • Medicaid — more than $600 billion, with the federal government covering between 50 and 77 cents of every dollar states spend on health care for their most vulnerable residents

  • Transportation — $95 billion for highways, bridges, transit systems, airports, and ports

  • Education — $65 billion for Title I schools, special education, Head Start, and workforce training

  • Food assistance — $51 billion

  • and much more

Every single one of those programs operates under 2 CFR Part 200. Every one of them is now subject to the same provisions I described last week.

Consider what that means in practice. Political appointees who can override expert judgment and block science grants that don’t advance the President’s priorities would have that same power over transportation awards, and housing funds, not just NIH applications. Any active grant could be canceled mid-project because it no longer serves ‘the national interest.’ A highway already under construction. A tribal health program mid-delivery. A city still rebuilding from a flood. And every new grant program must align with administration priorities before a single application is even solicited. Entire categories of funding can be quietly discontinued without a public announcement or a vote.

Federal grants are not peripheral to how states and communities function. They represent, on average, 36 cents of every dollar a state spends. This rule puts that entire financial partnership between the federal government and the states under political control, without an act of Congress, effective October 1, 2026.

A scientist reading my last post understood immediately why they should be worried. These professionals should also be concerned:

  • The county engineer overseeing a federally funded bridge.

  • The housing authority director managing Section 8 vouchers.

  • The rural hospital administrator whose Medicaid reimbursements depend on stable federal grant terms.

  • The Head Start center manager operating preschools with teachers hired, children enrolled, and parents depending on them for the childcare that lets them go to work.

  • The school principal whose Title I funding supports her lowest-income students.

This rule touches all of them.

If you found my original post worth sharing, I hope you will share this one too, especially with people outside the scientific community who may not yet know this is coming. The comment period is open now and closes July 13, 2026.

Submit your comment in opposition here: https://www.regulations.gov/document/OMB-2026-0034-0001

You do not need to be an expert. You need to describe, in your own words, how your community, your program, your state, or your work depends on stable, merit-based federal grants and what it would mean to lose that. Cite the specific section that would hurt your community.

Below I have compiled the specific provisions that should concern people outside the scientific community, organized by who they affect most. Pick one or two that apply to your situation and cite them in your comment.

For State & Local Governments and Communities

§200.340 — Discretionary Termination is the one that should keep every state and local budget director awake at night. This is the provision that allows any active federal grant to be canceled mid-project because a political appointee decides it no longer serves the national interest.

§200.202 — Program Goals Must Align with Administration Priorities is the second most important for states, because it operates upstream of everything else. Before a state can even apply for a grant, the federal program must be designed to align with the President’s policy priorities.

§200.204 — Grant Competitions Can Be Hidden from Public View compounds the §200.202 problem. If agencies can exempt funding opportunities from public posting on Grants.gov under a broad national interest exception, states may not even know a competition exists until it is over.

§200.205 — Political Appointee Pre-Issuance Review is particularly alarming for local governments and community organizations because it inserts a political filter between a competitive application and an award decision. A local housing authority, a tribal nation, or a rural health clinic that wins on the merits can still be denied, with no appeal right and no requirement to explain why.

§200.206 — Denial Based on Organizational Affiliations is one that community-based organizations need to flag urgently. The language is broad enough to disqualify civil rights groups, environmental advocacy organizations, public health nonprofits, and community organizing entities. Given how expansively the rule’s preamble defines “anti-American activity,” this provision threatens the civic infrastructure that delivers many federally funded community services.

For Healthcare and Social Service Providers

§200.300 — DEI and Related Prohibitions is the most urgent provision for healthcare and social service organizations. The prohibition on using federal funds to promote or facilitate “DEI practices,” “gender ideology,” or related activities is embedded as a mandatory grant condition across all agencies and all programs. For Medicaid-funded health systems, community health centers, and social service agencies, this creates an impossible conflict: the populations these organizations serve are, by definition, the ones equity-focused programs are designed to reach. And because the rule never defines what counts as a prohibited DEI practice, providers face open-ended liability for ordinary program activities.

§200.218 — Disparate Impact Research and Programming Banned is a completely new provision, with no current counterpart in the regulations. It prohibits federal grant funds from supporting disparate-impact studies, disparate-impact litigation, and any program design based on “the assumed risk of disparate-impact liability.” Disparate-impact analysis is a foundational tool of civil rights law, public health research, environmental justice, housing policy, and labor economics. Banning its use in federally funded work would gut decades of evidence-based policy research.

§200.340 — Discretionary Termination applies here too, with particular cruelty. A community health center mid-way through a three-year federally funded program serving patients with chronic disease, a behavioral health organization running a longitudinal treatment study, a food bank administering a multi-year USDA nutrition program—all are now exposed to termination with only a brief written rationale required and no meaningful appeal right.

For Education Providers

§200.300 — DEI Prohibitions applied to Title I, IDEA, Head Start, and workforce training grants creates a direct conflict with the statutory purpose of those programs. Title I exists to direct resources to high-poverty schools. IDEA exists to ensure children with disabilities receive appropriate services. Characterizing equity-focused programming as an unallowable DEI activity inverts the entire purpose of the statutes Congress passed to create those programs.

§200.205 — Political Appointee Review applied to education grants means that competitive federal education awards, including those for curriculum development, teacher training, and educational research, pass through a political screen that has nothing to do with educational quality or student outcomes.

§200.450 — Issue Advocacy Prohibition is particularly significant for education providers because it could restrict grantees from communicating findings, advocating for students before state agencies, or engaging in routine community education work.

How to write an effective Comment. Make it completely unique! Do not cut and paste.

1: Say who you are and why you are qualified to comment. You do not need credentials. Being affected is enough, and simply being a concerned citizen is perfectly fine.

2: List the exact provision #s [PICK ONE or TWO FROM LIST ABOVE] that concern you, and explain what they would do. You do not need to quote the rule directly. Just explain what you understand it to mean in plain terms.

3: Explain the concrete harm. What would happen to you, your community, or your state if this provision takes effect?

4: Closing: State clearly what you want OMB to do. This can be as simple as: “I urge OMB to withdraw these specific provisions: §200.340, §200.202, §200.205.” or “I urge OMB not to finalize this rule.”

Submit your comment in opposition here: https://www.regulations.gov/document/OMB-2026-0034-0001 The deadline is July 13, 2026.

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sarcozona
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Hypercritical: EV Stupidity Checklist
Friday May 29th, 2026 at 5:56 PM

Hypercritical
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Automobiles have been around for well over a century. During that time, we’ve gotten pretty good at designing and building their basic components and controls: seats, doors, pedals, steering wheels, mirrors, etc. But when today’s automakers decide to make an electric vehicle (EV), they seemingly forget much of what they once knew, creating new versions of features that are objectively, obviously worse than the time-tested designs they replace.

When Tesla ushered in the modern EV era in the early 2000s, some of these changes made sense, at least from a marketing perspective. To convince a cautious public to consider an EV, the vehicles had to appear “futuristic.” Flush door handles that automatically extend when you approach the car are definitely cool and fancy! But electronic door mechanisms like these have also proven to be unreliable, and possibly dangerous.

On the interior, Tesla settled on a minimal design dominated by a large touch screen. Touch screens provide a lot of flexibility. This is why our phones no longer have physical keyboards on them. Touch screens are also, perhaps surprisingly, less expensive than the array of physical buttons and switches that they replace in car interiors. This savings is especially important on EVs, where the cost of the vehicle is dominated by the battery (yes, to an even larger degree than an internal-combustion car’s cost is dominated by its engine). But despite their cost savings, the over-use of touch screens in cars has proven unpopular. They’re also not great for safety.

In 2026, we’re well past the time when EVs need to compromise safety and functionality in order to appear futuristic. As for the cost savings, well, that’ll be harder to shake. Once automakers got a taste for cheap touchscreens, they spread to all cars, not just EVs.

To help the industry get back on the right track, I’ve created a checklist for car designers. Make sure your new car—EV or otherwise—checks all these boxes to avoid making the same stupid mistakes that have plagued modern cars for years.

  • Accessible exterior door handles.1 When approaching a car, the door-opening mechanism should be obvious and immediately usable. You should not have to wait for a sensor to detect your presence and then activate some mechanism before the door is able to be opened.
  • Physical door opening mechanisms. The thing you pull to open the door should be physically connected to the door-opening mechanism. It’s fine to have the door handle activate an electronic door opener, but pulling that same handle farther and harder should activate the physical mechanism. This applies to both…
  • Door handle affordances. In design, “affordance” refers to the possible actions that can be readily perceived. When approaching a door, it should be readily apparent what you must do to open it. You should be able to see the door-opening mechanism, and it should be obvious how to use it. So many modern cars—and especially EVs—fail this test! There’s even a Saturday Night Live sketch about it. And, again, this applies to both…
  • Physical charge-port door mechanism. For decades, cars have had small doors covering the place where fuel is added. We’ve gotten pretty good at making cheap, reliable fuel-filler doors. When carmakers design EVs, they all-too-frequently decide that the door that covers the charge port should be entirely electronic, opening and closing under its own power in response to a touch-screen input or a finger-swipe somewhere on the exterior of the car. We are currently not very good at making these electronic charge-port doors work reliably. They add nothing to the car beyond extra cost and “pizazz.” This is a poor trade-off for even the tiniest decrease in reliability of such an important function.
  • Turn signal stalk. While there are arguments to be made for including various controls on the steering wheel itself, especially in sporty or race-inspired cars where removing your hands from the steering wheel for even a moment might be unwise, a stalk on the steering column is still the best overall choice for activating (and de-activating) turn signals. No experienced driver during normal driving has ever had to spend even a moment searching for the turn signal stalk to activate it, but this happens all too often when using turn-signal buttons on a steering wheel, especially when the wheel is rotated some arbitrary amount at the time the turn signal is needed. Stalks are great. Use them.
  • Physical buttons on the steering wheel. Speaking of controls on the steering wheel, when adding these, use physical buttons, not touch-sensitive controls. The driver’s hands are all over the steering wheel during normal use. There should be no possibility that merely brushing against a part of the wheel will inadvertently activate some feature of the car. Furthermore, the driver should be able to feel for controls on the steering wheel without looking at them. Use real, physical buttons and switches on the steering wheel.
  • Physical controls for temperature and fan speed. Climate controls are frequently used. These controls should be physical so their location never changes and so they can be used without looking at them. No, making the climate controls “fixed and always visible” on the touch screen is not the same thing.
  • Physical controls for air flow and direction. Grabbing a vent control and pointing it in the desired direction is much more obvious and efficient than navigating a touch-screen menu and then dragging your finger on a visualization of the car interior to try to direct the air flow. By all means, have electronically actuated vent controls to change the air flow for vents that are unreachable from the driver’s seat, but all vents should be physically controllable by the people who can reach them.
  • Physical glove box opening mechanism. One of the more astoundingly stupid features in many EVs is a glove box that can only be opened by using the touch screen. Truly, the mind boggles. One step up from that is a glove box that is opened via a button, but that button activates an electronic release. Someday, I expect electronic door releases to be as reliable as physical door mechanisms, but we’re not there yet. Glove boxes should have simple, obvious, physical opening mechanisms.
  • Rearview mirror. An actual, real rearview mirror should exist in any vehicle that has any sort of rear visibility. Rearview “mirrors” that are actually screens are popular in fancy cars these days, but they’re worse than real mirrors in multiple ways. Screen technology cannot yet match the dynamic range and contrast of the real world.

    But more importantly, current screen technology requires the driver to focus on the surface of the screen itself, which is mere feet away from their eyes. This is a large change in focal distance from looking at the road ahead. Actual mirrors allow the driver’s eyes to focus on the road behind the vehicle, rather than the surface of the mirror. This is a much smaller change in focal distance, and is therefore easier, faster, and more comfortable.

    Until and unless screens can match all these beneficial attributes, real mirrors should remain a fixture in cars. (In the meantime, feel free to add cool night-vision camera views or other digitally enhanced screen views as an option on top of the actual mirror.)

  • Rear window. Vehicles that can have a rear window should have a rear window. Yes, I’m looking at you, Polestar 4. “Mirror screens” aren’t enough. (See previous item.)
  • Side-view mirrors. US law still mandates side-view mirrors, but other countries do not. Carmakers have pounced on this opportunity to make their most expensive cars worse by using side-view cameras instead of mirrors, with screens on the interior to show what the cameras see. Screens are poor replacements for actual mirrors, as discussed earlier.

I hope the auto industry’s EV-induced fever breaks soon, so every new car doesn’t have some previously working feature broken for no good reason. If you know a car designer, please print this checklist and send it to them. The world will thank you.

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acdha
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sarcozona
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wmorrell
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I’ll add another one, which baffled me with my ex’s Tesla. Physical steering column stalk for wiper blades control. Where this normally goes, the Tesla had a stalk for start/park/drive/neutral/reverse, rather than have these in the center console out of the way of hands operating the steering wheel. Tesla tries to claim that the car will automatically trigger when it rains. It doesn’t reliably do this. It also won’t trigger wash fluid if something splats on the windshield. The controls were buried under a settings menu, which took me about five to six seconds to navigate while parked, once I knew where it was hidden. Finding it in the settings menu in the first place easily took minutes. Finding it while driving and dealing with immediate reduced visibility is just asking for a collision. There’s apparently a way to override one of the steering wheel buttons to trigger the wiper blades, but this isn’t good enough. That on top of everything else on this list made that Tesla easily the worst car to operate that I ever drove, and it baffles me how so many people are fans even after Musk let his nazi flag fly openly, let alone before.

Google Family Link exploit that locks out victims permanently · Techwolf12
Friday May 29th, 2026 at 5:27 PM

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Imagine waking up to an alert that your Google Account password has been changed. You immediately head to Google’s account recovery page to reclaim your digital life, only to be met with a bizarre roadblock. The screen doesn’t ask for your recovery phone number or your backup email. Instead, it tells you that you must get permission from your “parent” to log in.

You haven’t been standard-hacked. You’ve been trapped in the Family Link Exploit, a severe security loophole that weaponizes Google’s child safety features against adult users, and currently leaves victims completely stranded.

When this happened to one of my friends, I originally never heard of this type of exploit and started to look into it.

Here is how this devastating attack works, why standard recovery fails, and what you can do if it happens to you.

How the Attack Works #

The exploit relies on a clever and malicious manipulation of Google’s Family Link ecosystem, a suite of tools designed for parents to manage their children’s devices and accounts.

When a hacker gains initial access to your password (usually through a data breach, phishing or malware infection stealing cookies), they immediately restructure your account’s legal metadata using these steps:

1. Changing Your Birth Year #

The hacker navigates to your personal info and changes your date of birth, making you legally a minor (under 13 in most jurisdictions).

2. Enforcing “Parental Supervision” #

Because Google’s policy dictates that accounts under 13 must be managed by an adult, the hacker instantly links your compromised account to a “Parent” Google account that they control.

Once your account is designated as a “Child” account under their family group, the hacker gains absolute administrative authority over your digital identity.

Why Standard Recovery is Useless #

This is where the attack becomes truly insidious. Google’s automated security systems are built to strictly protect minors from unauthorized changes. By law and policy, a “child” cannot change their own security settings, delete their account, or remove parental control without the parent’s explicit consent.

Because of this, the moment you try to use Google’s standard self-service recovery page, the system detects you as a minor and demands the hacker’s parental Gmail password to proceed.

The automated system essentially locks you in a room and hands the key directly to the intruder. Your recovery phone number, 2-step verification, and backup emails are completely overridden and rendered useless.

Total Surveillance and Control #

Once you are trapped in a Family Link group, the hacker doesn’t just read your emails. They have god-mode access to your physical and digital life. Through the Family Link dashboard, the attacker can:

  • Track your physical location in real-time via Google Maps.
  • Lock your physical Android devices remotely at any time.
  • See your screen time and intercept app downloads.
  • Read incoming emails and intercept password reset links for your bank accounts, social media, etc.

Prevention #

Two-factor authentication won’t protect you here cookie-stealing bypasses it entirely, and Google doesn’t require 2FA to change your age or enroll your account in Family Link.

If you have Advanced Protection enabled on your Google account, you cannot be added to a Family Link group. If you have no need for parental controls, enabling Advanced Protection is a simple and effective way to protect yourself from this exploit.

Is There a Way Around It? #

As of right now, there is no automated bypass for this exploit once the parental lock is fully engaged. If you click “Stop Supervision,” Google requires the hacker’s login credentials.

However, victims have found exactly two non-standard “backdoors” to force Google to intervene manually:

1. The YouTube Escalation Trick #

While standard Google/Gmail support is entirely automated by bots, Google maintains a dedicated, human security team for YouTube creators. If your hacked Google account has ever been used to comment on a video or watch YouTube, you technically have a YouTube profile.

Victims have had the highest success rate by taking to X (formerly Twitter) and publicly tagging @TeamYouTube, stating that their account was hijacked via the Family Link minor exploit. The YouTube team can manually bypass the automated system and send a secure, human-reviewed hijacking form to pull the account out of the family group and help recover your account.

2. The Google One Support Paid Route #

Google provides zero live phone or chat support for free accounts. However, if a victim creates a temporary, secondary Google account and pays a couple of dollars for a Google One storage subscription, they unlock access to live chat with “Google Experts.” While these experts cannot fix it directly, they can manually escalate the ticket to the specialized Account Safety team.

Google Needs a Fix #

The Family Link exploit is a terrifying reminder of how safety features can be inverted into tools of absolute control. Because Google’s automated systems are designed to trust the “Parent” account implicitly, they are currently blind to the fact that adult accounts are being forcibly converted into children against their will.

Until Google implements a manual verification system to prove adulthood during a security breach, the best defense is absolute prevention. Ensure your Google account has an un-phishable form of 2-Step Verification (like an Authenticator App or a physical security key) that is asked when changing age to stop hackers from getting through the front door in the first place.

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Miles Offit... 🇨🇦🇪🇺🇺🇦 (@dcdeejay@mastodon.online)
Friday May 29th, 2026 at 1:23 PM

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Here's why the failure of Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket is so catastrophic - Ars Technica
Friday May 29th, 2026 at 1:21 PM

Comments on: Here's why the failure of Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket is so catastrophic
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Thursday night’s detonation of Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket during a static-fire test produced a spectacular fireball over Florida, sending shards of the rocket flying far and wide, into the sea and across the coastal scrubland nearby.

With sunrise on Friday teams from Blue Origin, the US Space Force, and NASA will be able to begin more thoroughly assessing the damage to Blue Origin’s facilities and begin picking up pieces of the rocket.

Metaphorically, the effort to pick up pieces will extend far beyond Blue Origin. This launch failure will be devastating not just for Blue Origin but also NASA and broad segments of the US space industry. Here’s a look at some of the major issues that will stem from the explosion.

No launch pad

There’s a reason why, before the very first launch of the Falcon Heavy rocket in 2018, SpaceX founder Elon Musk defined success as the vehicle clearing the launch pad. “I hope that it makes it far enough away from the pad that it does not cause pad damage,” he said. “I would consider even that a win to be honest.” Musk had similar thoughts about the first Starship launch, saying he would consider anything that did not destroy the launch mount a “win.”

Big rockets produce big explosions. And ground infrastructure is a challenging and underrated component of a rocket launch.

Multiple sources have confirmed that there is significant damage to Blue Origin’s launch site in Florida, LC-36A. The company invested years and at least hundreds of millions of dollars in this facility. The scale of the massive lightning towers is difficult to comprehend unless one has climbed one of them.

The company does not have another launch site for New Glenn. It has begun preliminary work on a nearby pad, LC-36B, and has plans to develop another site at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. But these projects are just getting started.

Rebuilding the company’s pad, or finishing a new one, will likely take at least a year, even with a major effort by Blue Origin, and drawing upon Jeff Bezos’ nearly infinite resources. One source familiar with pad rebuilds estimated that 15 months was a “best case” scenario.

A maturing design

You might wonder what the big deal is. SpaceX has been blowing up Starship rockets left and right, and the space nerds seem to be cheering them on.

The reality is that Blue Origin took a more traditional design route with New Glenn, as opposed to SpaceX’s iterative design, which seeks to test, fly, fail, and fix hardware. The New Glenn first stage had performed nearly flawlessly during its first three flights. It is a mature design.

Because of this, Blue Origin had reached the point where it was poised to begin near-monthly launches of the vehicle during the second half of the year, serving a variety of customers, from NASA to Amazon, AST SpaceMobile, and its own internal payloads.

With the Vulcan rocket also currently offline due to an anomaly, it once again places all of the US medium- and heavy-lift launch capacity in SpaceX’s basket, with its Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets.

Speaking of Vulcan, if this is a problem with the BE-4 engine—and early indications are that the anomaly leading to Thursday night’s failure originated in the central engine of the booster—it would further compound United Launch Alliance’s difficulties in getting the large rocket back into service.

Blue Moon Mark 1

Blue Origin’s cargo lander has emerged as the supreme workhorse of the early stages of NASA’s Artemis program and Moon Base. It has a capacity to deliver up to 3 tons to the lunar surface and would serve as a pathfinder for a larger version of a lander to take humans to the Moon.

This week, NASA announced that its Moon Base I mission would fly on Blue Moon Mark 1, and it awarded Blue Origin $280.4 million to deliver two lunar rovers in 2028. Multiple other missions are planned on the lander, which was designed to be sent to the Moon on a single New Glenn vehicle.

Could Blue Moon Mark 1 launch on other rockets? SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy and United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan vehicles both likely have the lift capacity to push the vehicle to the Moon. But Vulcan is also sidelined at present and has a long line of Space Force payloads in the queue. So what of Falcon Heavy?

The Mark 1 lander is powered by the BE-7 engine, which runs on liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. There may be compatibility issues related to the Falcon rocket’s kerosene-powered upper stage, although this has not been confirmed. Also, it is unlikely that Blue Origin would partner with a direct rival, SpaceX, in this manner.

Artemis program

Due to the Mark 1 issues outlined above, there will either be significant delays to, or the need to restructure the early phases of, the Moon Base program. The lunar rovers under development by Astrolab and Lunar Outpost, for example, have a mass of about 1 ton. Only Mark 1 and SpaceX’s Starship have that kind of delivery capacity.

There are also major implications for the main Artemis crewed missions.

NASA recently changed Artemis III to become a mission that will see the Orion spacecraft rendezvous with one or both of the Human Landing Systems under development by Blue Origin (Blue Moon) and SpaceX (Starship) in low-Earth orbit. NASA appears determined to launch this mission in 2027 and plans to announce its four crew members in a couple of weeks.

But it’s now all but certain that a Blue Moon lander will not be ready for such a mission within the next 18 months. NASA will need to decide whether to wait on Blue Origin or press ahead solely with a Starship mission.

As for Artemis IV, the lunar landing mission, this failure further complicates that plan. It is difficult to imagine a scenario in which a crew-rated Blue Moon lander is ready at any point in 2028 now. Even if the hardware is far along, Blue Origin still needs to fly test missions with Blue Moon Mark 1, which are on hold indefinitely.

A number of senior NASA officials had come to view Blue Origin’s plan to use a slimmed down version of the Mark 2 lander, which would not require in-space refueling, as the prime option for Artemis IV. Now, like much of the US space industry, NASA finds itself highly dependent on SpaceX’s ability to deliver with Starship.

Note: This article has been edited to clarify interoperability issues between the Blue Moon Mark 1 lander and the Falcon Heavy rocket.

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