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‘A horror movie’: sharks and octopuses among 200 species killed by toxic algae off South Australia
Karenia mikimotoi algae can suffocate fish, cause haemorrhaging and act as a neurotoxin, one expert says
More than 200 marine species, including deepwater sharks, leafy sea dragons and octopuses, have been killed by a toxic algal bloom that has been affecting South Australia’s coastline since March.
Nearly half (47%) of the dead species were ray-finned fish and a quarter (26%) were sharks and rays, according to OzFish analysis of 1,400 citizen scientist reports.
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Continue reading...To the new environment minister, Murray Watt: it’s time to get reforms right | Lyndon Schneiders
Long-term reform is not going to be easy, but we have wasted 15 years and everyone has lost, especially the natural world
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Long overdue reform of national environment laws is unfinished business for the 48th parliament and the re-elected Albanese government.
Senator Murray Watt, a Queenslander, is well respected within the government and has a reputation for taking hard decisions and bringing together diverse stakeholders. Both of these attributes will be at a premium if the minister is to succeed where others have not.
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Continue reading...UK windfall tax can fund switch to green jobs for North Sea oil workers – report
Exclusive: Campaigners call for energy profits levy to be made permanent to enable ‘just transition’ from fossil fuels
Making permanent the UK’s windfall tax on oil and gas producers would generate enough cash to enable North Sea workers to move to green jobs, research has found.
Cutting current subsidies to fossil fuel producers would free up yet more funds to spend on the shift to a low-carbon economy, according to the report.
Continue reading...Climate crisis threatens the banana, the world’s most popular fruit, research shows
Fourth most important food crop in peril as Latin America and Caribbean suffer from slow-onset climate disaster
The climate crisis is threatening the future of the world’s most popular fruit, as almost two-thirds of banana-growing areas in Latin America and the Caribbean may no longer be suitable for growing the fruit by 2080, new research has found.
Rising temperatures, extreme weather and climate-related pests are pummeling banana-growing countries such as Guatemala, Costa Rica and Colombia, reducing yields and devastating rural communities across the region, according to Christian Aid’s new report, Going Bananas: How Climate Change Threatens the World’s Favourite Fruit.
Continue reading...Want to know how the world really ends? Look to TV show Families Like Ours | John Harris
The Danish drama is piercing in its ordinariness. In the real world, the climate crisis worsens and authoritarians take charge as we calmly look away
The climate crisis has taken a new and frightening turn, and in the expectation of disastrous flooding, the entire landmass of Denmark is about to be evacuated. Effectively, the country will be shutting itself down and sending its 6 million people abroad, where they will have to cope as best they can. Huge numbers of northern Europeans are therefore being turned into refugees: a few might have the wealth and connections to ease their passage from one life to another, but most are about to face the kind of precarious, nightmarish future they always thought of as other people’s burden.
Don’t panic: this is not a news story – or not yet, anyway. It’s the premise of an addictive new drama series titled Families Like Ours, acquired by the BBC and available on iPlayer. I have seen two episodes so far, and been struck by the very incisive way it satirises European attitudes to the politics of asylum. But what has also hit me is its portrayal of something just as modern: how it shows disaster unfolding in the midst of everyday life. At first, watching it brings on a sense of impatience. Why are most of the characters so calm? Where are the apocalyptic floods, wildfires and mass social breakdown? At times, it verges on boring. But then you realise the very clever conceit that defines every moment: it is really a story about how we all live, and what might happen tomorrow, or the day after.
The writer and journalist Dorian Lynskey’s brilliant book Everything Must Go is about the various ways that human beings have imagined the end of the world. “Compared to nuclear war,” he writes, “the climate emergency deprives popular storytellers of their usual toolkit. Global warming may move too fast for the planet but it is too slow for catastrophe fiction.” Even when the worst finally happens, most of us may respond with the kind of quiet mental contortions that are probably better suited to literature than the screen. Making that point, Lynskey quotes a character in Margaret Atwood’s novel The Year of the Flood: “Nobody admitted to knowing. If other people began to discuss it, you tuned them out, because what they were saying was both so obvious and so unthinkable.”
John Harris is a Guardian columnist
Continue reading...After Blair’s bombshell, will Labour stick with or abandon net zero?
Under pressure from Reform and from the former PM, Keir Starmer is facing a series of tests of his resolve on green policy
Populist politicians are striking a chord with the public in their attack on “the green agenda” because they are right – climate policies are elitist. So says the man standing to be the next leader of the Green party in England and Wales.
“We should all be angry about net zero,” argues Zack Polanski, currently the Greens’ deputy leader. “The poorest people in our society are being expected to step up to tackle the climate crisis. But it’s the government’s fault, not the people’s fault.”
Continue reading...I just returned from Antarctica: climate change isn’t some far-off problem – it’s here and hitting hard | Jennifer Verduin
As an oceanographer, I study how the ocean shapes our world. For Australia and other nations, the lesson is urgent
Antarctica is often viewed as the last truly remote place on Earth – frozen, wild and untouched. But is it really as untouched as it seems?
This vast frozen continent is encircled by the Antarctic Circumpolar Current, the only current in the world that connects all the oceans, showing how closely linked our planet really is.
Continue reading...What’s the Cost to Society of Pollution? Trump Says Zero.
Aphids plaguing UK gardens in warm spring weather, says RHS
Sap-sucking insects top list of queries to gardening charity after causing significant harm to plants
Aphids are plaguing gardeners this spring due to the warm weather, with higher numbers of the rose-killing bugs expected to thrive in the UK as a result of climate breakdown.
The sap-sucking insects have topped the ranking of gardener queries to the Royal Horticultural Society, with many of its 600,000 members having complained of dozens of aphids on their acers, roses and honeysuckle plants.
Continue reading...There Is No ‘Energy Emergency,’ a New Lawsuit Claims
Lee Zeldin Places a Mezuza at His E.P.A. Office
The Shipping Industry Gets Serious About Emissions
Draft Executive Orders Aim to Speed Construction of Nuclear Plants
Plan for windfarm in German ‘fairytale forest’ stokes green energy culture war
Far right accused of misinformation over turbines at Reinhardswald, which has left local people divided
Deep in the woods that inspired the Brothers Grimm, past the tower from which Rapunzel threw down her hair and the castle in which Sleeping Beauty slumbered, lies a construction site that the far right has declared a crime against national soil and identity.
In this quiet corner of Germany’s “fairytale forest”, workers are clearing land and building access roads to erect 18 wind turbines.
Continue reading...Midsummer butterflies spotted early in Britain after sunny spring
Scientists fear early emerging insects may fall out of sync with pathogens, predators or availability of food
Midsummer butterflies are on the wing in early May after a sunny spring prompted one of the most advanced seasons for Britain’s Lepidoptera on record.
The Lulworth skipper – usually found in June and July – is flying at Lulworth Cove in Dorset, the chequered skipper emerged in April rather than mid-May in Scotland and the first swallowtail, which is most common in mid-June, was spotted in Norfolk on 1 May.
Continue reading...‘If I had to choose, I’d prefer the earthquake’: the 2015 disaster left Nepal in ruins, now record rains wreak fresh havoc
Despite attempts to build resilience by improving infrastructure and first response, extreme weather events and US aid cuts have left many feeling vulnerable
When the monsoon rains came last September, they swept away most of the village of Panauti, in the foothills of the Nepali Himalayas. The Roshi River overflowed after the unprecedented rainfall, triggering landslides and destroying most of the roads and bridges.
Peering through the thick blanket of relentless rain “felt like waiting for morning to arrive so we could see the world again”, says Bishnu Humagain. “We lost everything – our home, our agriculture, and all of our belongings.”
Continue reading...European and British soils seriously degraded by intensive farming
Experts found 60% of the EU’s agricultural soils had been degraded, with about 40% similarly damaged in the UK
More than 60% of the EU’s agricultural soils are degraded due to intensive agriculture, with similar damage to about 40% of British soils, a report has found.
Experts from the Save Soil initiative said nourishing and restoring agricultural soils could reduce the impact of the climate crisis and provide protection against the worsening extremes of weather, as well as the food shortages and price rises likely to accompany them.
Continue reading...Weatherwatch: How AI could offer faster, affordable weather forecasting
Researchers say AI could give every developing country a vital early warning system of extreme events
Weather forecasting has gradually been getting more and more sophisticated. It has also got far more important as the climate gets more unpredictable and extreme events threaten to cause massive economic damage and loss of life. So an early warning system is vital.
Ever larger computer systems making millions of calculations over many hours are now part of the daily forecasting in most developed countries. Sadly large parts of the world, many very vulnerable to dangerous climate events, do not have the money, personnel or computing power to develop the 10-day forecasting system they need.
Continue reading...U.S. Government to Stop Tracking the Costs of Extreme Weather
Noaa to stop tracking cost of climate crisis-fueled disasters: ‘Major loss’
US agency will no longer update major weather database in latest showing of Trump’s influence on climate resources
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) will no longer track the cost of climate crisis-fueled weather disasters, including floods, heatwaves, wildfires and more. It is the latest example of changes to the agency and the Trump administration limiting federal government resources on climate change.
Noaa falls under the US Department of Commerce and is tasked with daily weather forecasts, severe storm warnings and climate monitoring. It is also parent to the National Weather Service.
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