Scottish first minister says scrapping power-sharing deal marks a new beginning for the SNP government'Humza Yousaf has put the Scottish National party on an election footing after unilaterally scrapping his party's landmark coalition with the Greens and signalling he will drop vote-losing policies.In a surprise move on Thursday morning, the first minister called in the Scottish Greens' two co-leaders, Patrick Harvie and Lorna Slater, to tell them they were being sacked as he axed a power-sharing deal first hailed as a new era in consensus politics. Continue reading...
World Weather Attribution group says intensified El Nino effects caused torrential rain, but rules out cloud seeding as causeFossil fuels and concrete combined to worsen the death trap" conditions during recent record flooding in the United Arab Emirates and Oman, a study has found.Scientists from the World Weather Attribution team said downpours in El Nino years such as this one had become 10-40% heavier in the region as a result of human-cased climate disruption, while a lack of natural drainage quickly turned roads into rivers. Continue reading...
Proposed global treaty to curb production represents challenge to producers of fossil fuels, from which most plastics are madeThe number of fossil fuel and petrochemical industry lobbyists at UN talks to agree the first global treaty to cut plastic pollution has increased by more than a third, according to an analysis.Most plastic is made from fossil fuels, via a chemical process known as cracking, and 196 lobbyists from both industries are at the UN talks in Ottawa, Canada, where countries are attempting to come to an agreement to curb plastic production as part of a treaty to cut global plastic waste, according to analysis by the Center for International Environmental Law (Ciel). Continue reading...
Scheme for plastic bottles and cans put back to 2027 while environment minister says glass recycling unduly' complexA UK deposit return scheme for recycling drinks bottles has been delayed to 2027, meaning it will not be in place until almost a decade after it was proposed.Campaigners say the delay is a huge disappointment", adding they are doubly dismayed that the plan will not include glass bottles. Continue reading...
New EPA directive will cut pollution equivalent to the emissions of 328m cars, but industry group decries it as a reckless plan'Coal-fired power plants would be forced to capture smokestack emissions or shut down under a rule issued on Thursday by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).New limits on greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel-fired electric plants are the Biden administration's most ambitious effort yet to roll back planet-warming pollution from the power sector, the nation's second-largest contributor to the climate crisis. The rules are a key part of Joe Biden's pledge to eliminate carbon pollution from the electricity sector by 2035 and economy-wide by 2050. Continue reading...
Energy watchdog warns pace must accelerate to hit targets after new batteries increased capacity by 130%The rollout of batteries across the global electricity industry more than doubled last year but will need to be six times faster if the world hopes to meet its renewable energy targets, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).A report from the global energy watchdog found that new batteries totalling 42 gigawatts (GW) were plugged into electricity systems around the world last year, increasing total capacity by more than 130% from the year before to 85GW. Continue reading...
Years after the emergency, the Michigan city is yet to replace all lead pipes and affected families are still awaiting justiceEarlier this month, Brittany Thomas received a call that her 11-year-old daughter Janiyah had experienced a seizure at school.She'd been seizure-free for about two years now," said Thomas, a resident of Flint, Michigan. And they just came back." Continue reading...
As the climate crisis has deepened, protesters have become more confrontational - and their ambitions have grownThe head of ExxonMobil told to eat shit" as he was about to receive an award. A US senator and coal boss called a sick fuck", almost sparking a brawl. Theatre shows interrupted. As the climate crisis has deepened, protests aimed at those deemed responsible are becoming starkly personal, and often confrontational.At the vanguard of this new style of in-your-face activism is Climate Defiance, a group of just a handful of core staffers now marking its first birthday following a year of disrupting, often crudely, the usually mundane procession of talks, speeches and panels that feature Joe Biden administration officials, oil company bosses and financiers. Continue reading...
Authorities are rushing to save more than 150 whales from a mass stranding at a beach in Western Australia's south-west. Four pods have spread across roughly 500 metres at Toby Inlet near Dunsborough and 26 of these have died, Parks and Wildlife Service Western Australia confirmed. Wildlife officers, marine scientists and veterinarians are on site assessing the conditions of the whales that have become strandedSubscribe to Guardian Australia on YouTube
Proliferation of hubs for online shopping disproportionately sited in low-income neighborhoods or communities of colorHundreds of mega-warehouses have been built in Illinois for online shopping in recent years and the rise in delivery trucks is polluting neighborhoods already burdened with poor air quality, a new study says.Two million people in Illinois live within a half-mile of large warehouses, which are disproportionately located in low-income neighborhoods and communities of color. Continue reading...
Study confirms Philip Morris International, Danone, Nestle, PepsiCo and Coca-Cola are worst offendersFewer than 60 multinationals are responsible for more than half of the world's plastic pollution, with five responsible for a quarter of that, based on the findings of a piece of research published on Wednesday.The researchers concluded that for every percentage increase in plastic produced, there was an equivalent increase in plastic pollution in the environment. Continue reading...
Sugarcane biodiversity disappeared as big plantations dominated the sugar trade in Hawaii, but now native varieties are making a comebackNoa Kekuewa Lincoln remembers when he first encountered native Hawaiian sugarcane in 2004. The fresh stalks, bursting with color, might have sprouted from Willy Wonka's imagination, not the soil.Lincoln, a kanaka maoli (Native Hawaiian) expert in Indigenous cropping systems and an assistant professor at the University of Hawaii, said: I grew up seeing grayish-green cane fields. But these canes are fluorescent pink, bright apple-green striped. They looked like huge cartoon candy canes. They almost don't look real!" Continue reading...
Campaigners fear growth duty will hamper water regulator's ability to crack down on companies in poor financial stateThe Conservatives have pushed through a duty on the water regulator to prioritise growth, which experts have said will incentivise water companies to value their bottom lines over reducing sewage pollution.Campaigners fear this move will weaken Ofwat's ability to crack down on water companies as it may force the regulator to consider a company's financial situation and the impact on its growth if the firm is heavily fined for polluting. Continue reading...
The divestment movement has a long history among US student activists, including in the overlapping movements of todayCameron Jones first learned about fossil fuel divestment as a 15-year-old climate organizer. When he enrolled at Columbia University in 2022, he joined the campus's chapter of the youth-led climate justice group the Sunrise Movement and began pushing the school in New York to sever financial ties with coal, oil and gas companies.The time for institutions like Columbia to be in the pocket of fossil fuel corporations has passed," Jones wrote in an October 2023 op-ed in the student newspaper directed toward the Columbia president, Minouche Shafik. Continue reading...
Newberry county sheriff's office reassures people siren-like roar is male cicadas singing to attract mates after a decade dormantEmerging cicadas are so loud in one South Carolina county that residents are calling the sheriff's office asking why they can hear sirens or a loud roar.The Newberry county sheriff's office sent out a message on Facebook on Tuesday letting people know that the whining sound is just the male cicadas singing to attract mates after more than a decade dormant. Continue reading...
by Jillian Ambrose Energy correspondent on (#6MACP)
Gas and coal accounted for just 2.4% of power generation for an hour last week, data shows, amid zero-carbon grid' plansThe share of Great Britain's electricity generated by burning fossil fuels plummeted to unprecedented lows this month, ahead of plans to begin running a zero-carbon grid" for short periods from next year.Electricity generated by burning gas and coal fell to a record low of just 2.4% for an hour at lunchtime on Monday 15 April, according to an analysis of data from National Grid's electricity system operator (ESO). Continue reading...
British Medical Association says decision to take Dr Sarah Benn off medical register for five months sends worrying message'Doctors groups are calling for urgent consideration of the rules for medical professionals who take peaceful direct action on the climate crisis, which they say is the greatest threat to global health", after a GP was suspended from the register for non-violent protest.Dr Sarah Benn, a GP from Birmingham, was taken off the medical register for five months on Tuesday by the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service (MPTS), the disciplinary arm of the General Medical Council (GMC), over her climate protests. The tribunal said Benn's fitness to practise as a doctor had been impaired by reason of misconduct. Continue reading...
High winds, rains, winter storms and tropical cyclones accounted for 80% of power interruptions over the last 20 yearsPower outages in the US are rising, as climate-related extreme weather strain an already burdened energy grid.Over the last decade, severe storm outages increased by 74% compared with the previous 10 years. Continue reading...
2.2bn-worth of oil processed in China, India and Turkey - to whom Russia supplies crude - was imported in 2023, data showsThe UK has been accused of helping Russia pay for its war on Ukraine" by continuing to import record amounts of refined oil from countries processing Kremlin fossil fuels.Government data analysed by the environmental news site Desmog shows that imports of refined oil from India, China and Turkey amounted to 2.2bn in 2023, the same record value as the previous year, up from 434.2m in 2021. Continue reading...
A dawn chorus of flutes, whistles and chirps once flowed through my Cambridge window, but there has been a shocking collapse in birdlife. What can be done?Every year from February through to June, the early morning chorus of birdsong is one of the most evocative manifestations of spring. During late winter I open the bedroom window before going to sleep, to hear that incredible mix of flutes, whistles and chirps that begin before first light, when I wake. I listen for the layers of song that simultaneously come from close by and far away.This year though, the dawn chorus that once was the soundtrack for spring in central Cambridge has collapsed. It was noticeably quieter in 2023, and this year strikingly so. Blackbirds are depleted and song thrushes no longer heard at all. The dunnocks - once one of the most common garden songsters - have disappeared, as have the chaffinches, whose early February song was among the first audible confirmations of lengthening days. The cheery chatter of house sparrows is absent and the once familiar sound of coal tits has fallen silent. Long-tailed tits are now rare, and so far this year I've heard no blackcaps. Great and blue tits, robins and goldfinches, are still present, but down in number. Continue reading...
We don't have to reflexively use refined sugar to sweeten. Dates often do the trick - in a way that's healthier for us and the planetWhen I attended pastry school in Paris a couple of years ago, granulated sugar appeared in nearly every tart, cookie or mousse recipe we learned. Only a few desserts used honey or maple syrup in its place.That's no surprise. Granulated sugar is dessert's chief sweetener and also its secret pinch-hitter. It's worth being specific: granulated sugar is nearly pure sucrose, and its unique powers have made it the standard for sweetening. It makes baked goods moist. It makes cakes and cookies tender. It combines with butter to make frostings fluffy and whips up with egg whites like nobody's business (hence the cloud-like loft of meringue). Continue reading...
American Lung Association's State of the Air report states nearly 131 million people are exposed to ozone and particle pollutionNearly four in 10 people in the US are exposed to unhealthy levels of air pollution, a new report has found. Four of the five most polluted cities are in California, where wildfires, drought and extreme heat are driving the rise in hazardous air quality.More than 131 million people are exposed to harmful ozone and particle (PM 2.5) pollution, according to the American Lung Association's annual State of the Air report. That figure, which incorporates new, more stringent federal standards for particle pollution, represents an 11.7 million increase from the previous year. Continue reading...
by Agostino Petroni and Regin Winther Poulsen in Pugl on (#6MA12)
From ancient olive groves to root vegetables, foreign pests introduced via the bloc's open import system are causing damage worth billions - and outbreaks are on the riseThe plants slowly choke to death, wither and dry out. They die en masse, leaves dropping and bark turning grey, creating a sea of monochrome. Since scientists first discovered Xylella fastidiosa in 2013 in Puglia, Italy, it has killed a third of the region's 60 million olive trees - which once produced almost half of Italy's olive oil - many of which were centuries old. Farms stopped producing, olive mills went bankrupt and tourists avoided the area. With no known cure, the bacterium has already caused damage costing about 1bn.The greatest part of the territory was completely destroyed," says Donato Boscia, a plant virologist and head researcher on Xylella at the Institute for Sustainable Plant Protection in Bari. Continue reading...
The biggest cities in the US are mourning animals who fostered a rare sense of connection. Art is preserving their legaciesWorking near Central Park, one New Yorker regularly witnessed one of its most beloved residents: Flaco the owl, who became a celebrity after escaping the nearby zoo. The woman took the bird's message to heart, re-evaluated her life and decided to quit her job. Now, she's one of dozens with a Flaco tattoo.They'll be walking around the rest of their lives, that name and owl on their arm," says Duke Riley, an environmental artist who spearheaded a special sale at his tattoo parlor this month. Customers flocked to East River Tattoo in Brooklyn, where, for $150, they could walk away with ink memorializing Flaco. The line stretched around the block, Riley says. Continue reading...
Sarah Benn is first of three GPs facing disciplinary tribunals this year over climate activismA doctor who went to jail after a series of climate protests has been taken off the medical register for five months - and still faces being permanently struck off.The Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service (MPTS) - the disciplinary arm of the General Medical Council (GMC) - suspended Dr Sarah Benn on Tuesday, having found last week that her fitness to practise as a doctor had been impaired by reason of misconduct. Continue reading...
Trudi Warner on a year being pursued by government lawyers determined to prosecute her over a jurors' rights protestTwo days before Trudi Warner faced court under threat of a contempt of court prosecution, she fell off her bike and ruptured the tendons in her hand.Now the hand is black and blue, tightly bandaged, and requires surgery. It is an indication that 69-year-old Warner, who spent her working life as a child social worker and has committed her retirement to climate action, is not as tough and unflappable as her demeanour suggests. Continue reading...
by Karen McVeigh in the Galápagos Islands on (#6M9A3)
As diplomats search for a deal to curb the world's growing problem of plastic, piles of bottles, buoys, nets and packaging keep building up in what should be a pristine environmentAs our small fishing boat slows to a halt in a shallow bay south-east of Puerto Ayora, Santa Cruz, in the Galapagos Islands, a green turtle surfaces next to us, followed by a second, then a third a few metres away. A spotted eagle ray glides underneath the vessel.The skipper, Don Nelson, steps on to the black volcanic reef, slippery with algae. We follow, past exposed mangrove roots and up on to higher ground. Pelicans swooping into the trees and small birds, perching on branches, ignore our approach. Continue reading...
by Sandra Laville, Environment correspondent on (#6M97Y)
Ecuadorian ambassador to the UK is hopeful impasse can be overcome at treaty negotiations in OttawaAs UN talks begin to agree the first global treaty to reduce soaring plastic waste, the chair of the meetings has said he is confident countries will come together to secure an agreement.Luis Vayas Valdivieso, the Ecuadorian ambassador to the UK, admitted it would be a challenge to overcome an impasse that has emerged between countries which produce plastic and others that have ambitions to tackle plastic pollution over its whole life. But Valdivieso, who will chair the UN intergovernmental negotiations on a future international legally binding instrument on plastic pollution in Ottawa, Canada, this week, said: We have to face those challenges and work with them. Compromise is an important word that we need to take into account. Continue reading...
Claire O'Neill, a former climate minister, says PM's move was to try and create political division and dividing lines'The UK government's decision to weaken some of its climate commitments was a retrograde step" that would set back vital cross-party action to cut carbon emissions, Claire O'Neill, a former Conservative climate minister, has said.O'Neill, who was known as Claire Perry when she served as a minister under David Cameron and Theresa May, said the rolling back of emission reduction efforts by Rishi Sunak appeared to be a ploy for political advantage. Continue reading...
Funds will be targeted at disadvantaged areas to create 200,000 jobs, after last week's oil and gas lease restrictions in AlaskaJoe Biden marked Monday's Earth Day by announcing a $7bn investment in solar energy projects nationwide, focusing on disadvantaged communities, and unveiling a week-long series of what the White House say will be historic climate actions".The president was speaking at Prince William Forest Park, in Triangle, Virginia, touting his environmental record and unveiling measures to tackle the climate crisis and increase access to, and lower costs of, clean energy. Continue reading...
Chris Stark says populist response and culture war around the term is inhibiting environmental progressThe concept of net zero" has become a political slogan used to start a dangerous" culture war over the climate, and may be better dropped, the outgoing head of the UK's climate watchdog has warned.Chris Stark, the chief executive of the Climate Change Committee (CCC), said sensible improvements to the economy and people's lives were being blocked by a populist response to the net zero label, and he would be intensely relaxed" about losing the term. Continue reading...
Organizers at Columbia, Tulane and the University of Virginia write to attorneys general arguing schools' investments are illegalCampus organizers at three universities filed legal complaints on Monday arguing that their schools' investments in planet-heating fossil fuels are illegal, the Guardian has learned.The students from Columbia University, Tulane University and the University of Virginia each wrote to the attorneys general of their respective states calling on them to scrutinize their universities' investments. They accuse their universities of breaching the Uniform Prudent Management of Institutional Funds Act, a law adopted by 49 states that requires non-profit institutions to consider their charitable purposes" when investing, and exercise prudence" and loyalty". Continue reading...
Historic hearing will receive submissions from people whose human rights have been affected by climate changeJulian Medina comes from a long line of fishers in the north of Colombia's Gulf of Morrosquillo who use small-scale and often traditional methods to catch species such as mackerel, tuna and cojinua.Medina went into business as a young man but was drawn back to his roots, and ended up leading a fishing organisation. For years he has campaigned against the encroachment of fossil fuel companies, pollution and overfishing, which are destroying the gulf's delicate ecosystem and people's livelihoods. Continue reading...
Trudi Warner was accused of contempt for holding placard reminding jurors of right to acquit based on conscienceA high court judge has thrown out an attempt by the government's most senior law officer to prosecute a woman for holding a placard on jury rights outside a climate trial.Mr Justice Saini said there was no basis for a prosecution of Trudi Warner, 69, for criminal contempt for holding a placard outside the trial of climate activists that informed jurors of their right to acquit a defendant based on their conscience. Continue reading...
Swallows, cuckoos, curlews - so many species have dwindled or disappeared completely, and people are mourning their lossRead more: World faces deathly silence' of nature as wildlife disappears, warn expertsThe sounds of our natural world are changing dramatically. Earth's wildlife populations have plunged by 69% in fewer than 50 years. Fading along with them are many of the distinctive soundscapes of nature: the night-time calls of mammals, morning chorus of birds and buzz of insects.This global story is stitched together by many local stories of loss. We spoke to readers about how natural sounds are changing where they live. Continue reading...
Scheme is part of effort to reduce staggering' quantities of textiles going to landfill or incineratorInstead of throwing stained, ripped and misshapen clothing in the bin, Britons are being asked to stick the dregs of their wardrobe in the post in a trial aimed at tackling the staggering" quantity of textiles sent to landfill or are incinerated each year.A third of consumers do not know what to do with tops, dresses and trousers that can no longer be worn, figures show, with a similar number admitting to putting such items in their household waste bin. Continue reading...
Europeans are dying from hot weather 30% more than they did two decades ago, report findsScorching weather has baked Europe in more days of extreme heat stress" than its scientists have ever seen.Heat-trapping pollutants that clog the atmosphere helped push temperatures in Europe last year to the highest or second-highest levels ever recorded, according to the EU's Earth-watching service Copernicus and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). Continue reading...
Environment | The Guardian