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Climate
Chris Wright Is Confirmed as Secretary of Energy
US Senate confirms fracking CEO Chris Wright to be Trump’s energy secretary
Liberty Energy executive, who has called climate change activists alarmist, confirmed in vote of 59-38
The US Senate on Monday confirmed Chris Wright, a fracking executive, to be Donald Trump’s energy secretary.
The vote was 59-38.
Continue reading...Over 1,000 EPA Workers on Climate Change and More Could Be Fired ‘Immediately’
Australian nature: if our laws don’t radically change, environmental degradation will continue | Adam Morton
This country has a long history of taking its unique wildlife and landscapes for granted – but what has happened in this term of parliament is remarkable
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There is something significant missing from most of the political and media discussion about the Australian government’s promised, and now abandoned, nature protection laws: the environment. Logically, it should be a focus of the debate. In practice, it barely gets a look-in.
This would be an extraordinary state of affairs were it not so familiar. Australia has a long history of taking its unique wildlife and landscapes for granted, stretching back to European colonisation. But what has happened in this term of parliament is a pretty remarkable extension of that.
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Continue reading...The New Evidence Climate Change Will Upend American Homeownership
Trump has brought much-needed attention to a site of great tragedy: the Gulf of Mexico | Greg Grandin
Environmental disasters have plagued the water body for decades. Now the region is thrust in the global spotlight
The enormous semi-enclosed bay, its waters flanked by the Florida and Yucatán peninsulas and partially blockaded by Cuba, has been called the Golfo de México for centuries, a name that first appeared on a world map in 1550. And for centuries the name bothered no one.
Thomas Jefferson used the name without shame, even as he, Donald Trump-like, imagined dominating nearby nations. If the US could take Cuba, Jefferson wrote in 1823, it would control the “Gulf of Mexico and the countries and isthmus bordering on it”. Country music stars, no less than founding fathers, liked the romance of the place. Tracy Lawrence dreams of a Gulf of Mexico filled with whiskey. Johnny Cash wanted to dump his blues down in the Gulf.
Continue reading...Greenland ice sheet cracking more rapidly than ever, study shows
Crevasses increasing in size and depth in response to climate breakdown, Durham University researchers find
The Greenland ice sheet – the second largest body of ice in the world – is cracking more rapidly than ever before as a response to climate breakdown, a study has found.
Researchers used 8,000 three-dimensional surface maps from high-resolution commercial satellite imagery to assess the evolution of cracks in the surface of the ice sheet between 2016 and 2021.
Continue reading...This firefighter survived the worst of black summer. His new exhibition hurls you right in
CJ Taylor was pushing back a fire front when a wind change almost killed him. A new exhibition aims to recreate a flashover – and disturb the public into action
The roar of an advancing bushfire, for those who have heard it, is often described as being as loud as an aircraft or an approaching freight train. “But my recollection was the opposite,” says volunteer firefighter and visual artist CJ Taylor, of the moment a fire burned over him. “Everything went quiet.”
It was November 2019, and Taylor and a group of fellow South Australian Country Fire Service volunteers had been deployed to north-eastern New South Wales, near the Guy Fawkes River national park. They were trying to push back a fire front but a sudden wind change meant it was gaining ground too quickly.
Continue reading...Environmental groups in UK ‘still very white – especially at the top’
Greenpeace co-director responds to report finding fewer than one in 20 working in sector identifies as non-white
Environmental organisations “are still very white, especially at the top”, the co-director of Greenpeace has said as research showed little to no improvement in the ethnic diversity of their workforces.
Areeba Hamid’s comments came as the third annual racial action on the climate emergency (Race) report into diversity among environmental charities found fewer than one in 20 of those working in the sector identified as people of colour or as other racial or ethnic minority groups.
Continue reading...Residents capture footage of severe floods in north Queensland – video
Authorities say there is 'more significant rain to come' in north Queensland, amid warnings to residents not to return to flooded homes. Dams and river catchments from Mackay to Cairns remain swollen from a week of heavy rain, which has dumped more than 1.2 metres at some locations. More than 400 people – mostly in Townsville, Ingham and Cardwell – are in evacuation shelters after being advised on Sunday to flee
North Queensland floods: hundreds evacuated, dozens rescued as 1.2m of rain dumped in some areas
Queensland floods: authorities ready for ‘likelihood of more flooding’ – video
Heatwave warning as ‘intensely hot’ weather continues in south-eastern Australia
What’s behind the deadly, record-breaking floods in north Queensland? | Steve Turton for the Conversation
Some tropical lows are stalling, dumping huge volumes of rain – and climate change is playing a role
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Record-breaking floods across north Queensland have turned deadly, with one woman drowning while being rescued on Sunday. And the flood waters were still rising, with rain set to continue.
With reports of up to one metre of rainfall in parts of north-east Queensland, the heaviest rain has fallen between Lucinda to Townsville in northern Queensland as the Bureau of Meteorology warns the big wet will continue for days.
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This article originally appeared in the Conversation. Steve Turton is an adjunct professor of environmental geography at CQUniversity Australia
Continue reading...Fire chiefs warn UK is not prepared for climate crisis impacts
Exclusive: National Fire Chiefs Council says firefighters’ ability to respond is at risk as it calls for preventive action
The UK is not prepared for the impact of climate breakdown, fire chiefs have said, as they called on the government to take urgent action to protect communities.
The National Fire Chiefs Council (NFCC) said the ability of fire services to tackle weather-related emergencies was at risk, despite them often being the primary frontline response to major weather events including flooding, fires caused by heatwaves, and storm-related emergencies, all of which are becoming more common.
Continue reading...Marshall Islands’ vanishing kit for a team under threat from climate crisis
The isolated Pacific nation is trying to build its first football team amid a battle for survival against rising sea levels
The Marshall Islands, an isolated sprawl of atolls covering 750,000 square miles of the Pacific Ocean but home to barely 42,000 people, may be the final frontier for the world’s most popular sport. It claims to be the last country on Earth without a football team, and to this day, the islands have never hosted an 11-a-side game.
Until recently, football was an alien concept in a nation occupied by the US since the second world war, with baseball and basketball the traditional sports. As interest has grown in recent years, another barrier has emerged. Land has always been at a premium on these fragile shores, but never more than now with rising sea levels bringing fears of permanent flooding.
Continue reading...Reeves’s Heathrow expansion plans leave Labour’s green agenda grounded
The chancellor’s apparent volte-face in backing a third runway has left many in her party disillusioned and led them to label it as an act of desperation
In 2020, Rachel Reeves, the MP for Leeds West and Pudsey, was clear why she opposed expansion of nearby Leeds Bradford airport. It would, she said, “significantly increase air and noise pollution”, so on environmental grounds, it should not happen.
By the autumn of 2021, as shadow chancellor, Reeves was the senior Labour figure chosen to lead her party’s hugely ambitious plans for a green industrial revolution.
Continue reading...Reeves’s Heathrow third runway report was commissioned by London airport
The chancellor is under fire after a study cited as evidence for expanding the terminal to boost the UK’s economic growth was ordered by Heathrow itself
Rachel Reeves was facing criticism on Saturday night as it was confirmed that a report she cited as evidence that a third runway at Heathrow would boost the UK economy was commissioned by the airport itself.
Experts and green groups also challenged Reeves’s view that advances in the production of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) had been a “gamechanger” that would substantially limit the environmental damage of flying, saying the claims were overblown and did not stand up to scrutiny.
Continue reading...Chris Riddell on Rachel Reeves’ burnt offerings to the golden calf of growth – cartoon
A third Heathrow runway, planning law reform to build more houses and a windfall tax on oil and gas – but will it all make up for the cost of Brexit?
Continue reading...‘Humanure’: RHS plans rollout of first compost toilet to fertilise flowerbeds
The horticultural charity’s showpiece garden in Surrey is setting aside an space to test human waste fertiliser
For more than 200 years, gardeners at the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) have been reaping the benefits of using compost and manure in their flowerbeds.
But until now, they have never had the satisfaction of using compost created from their own human waste.
Continue reading...7 Steps L.A. Could Take to Gird Against Future Wildfires
‘It’s incredible, the place just swarms with birdlife’: inside England’s biggest bird sanctuary
The reserve in Geltsdale in the north Pennines has been expanded by a third after RSPB buys land
It covers more than 50 square kilometres of blanket bog, heath, meadows and woodland and rises from a valley floor to the 640m summit of Cold Fell in the north Pennines. This is RSPB Geltsdale, and it will now be the organisation’s largest English bird sanctuary when the society announces this week that it has bought land that expands the existing reserve by a third.
“This is going to be a reserve on a different scale from many of our other sites in England,” said Beccy Speight, the RSPB’s chief executive.
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