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Climate
No One Should Be Scoring Political Points Over a Fire
Oil Tycoon Harold Hamm Throwing an Inauguration Day Party
Are Smart Thermostats Worth the Money?
What is happening in Los Angeles is our future | Francine Prose
The news from California is clear, but we don’t want to see it. It’s too confounding, big, complex. But we can sense the danger
When I send anxious texts to friends in Los Angeles – friends who have been evacuated or who are waiting to leave , friends escaping a fire zone, wondering if their life’s work has been destroyed, worrying about the smoke’s effect on an asthmatic child – I always begin with the same three words:are you OK?
But a continent away, watching photos and videos of a city I love being incinerated, overcome by waves of terror, grief and mourning, I have other questions.
Continue reading...‘Have some guts’: Sarah Hanson-Young challenges Labor to keep its environmental promises
Greens senator sees climate crisis and environment as the ‘elephant in the room’ for 2025 election
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The Greens are demanding Labor put a moratorium on the destruction of koala habitat and overcome political opponents and mining interests to implement its full suite of promised environment protection laws, in an early attempt to position nature as a federal election issue.
“What we need is the government, the Labor party, to be tougher and to have some guts to stand up and stare them down,” says the party’s environment spokesperson, Sarah Hanson-Young.
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Continue reading...UK faces broccoli and cauliflower shortage this spring
Growers blame weather challenges in UK and Europe, which Met Office says will become more frequent with climate breakdown
Broccoli, cauliflower and other brassicas may be in short supply this spring as the mild autumn and winter has caused the crops to come up early, growers have said.
Any shortages will prolong the so-called “hungry gap”, which runs from April to early June, when very few crops grown in the UK are ready to eat.
Continue reading...New year, new anxious thoughts. How is your 2025 going? | Jess Harwood
Global events can feel bigger and more intractable than ever, but there’s still hope
Continue reading...LA wildfires: death toll rises to 24 as winds threaten further destruction
More than 1,800 structures destroyed as Eaton and Palisades fires still less than 30% contained
The death toll from the Eaton and Palisades fires that have consumed large swathes of Los Angeles county – and are still less than 30% contained – has risen to 24, according to medical examiners.
The county of Los Angeles medical examiner published a list of fatalities without giving details of any identities. Eight of the dead were found in the Palisades fire zone, and 16 in the Eaton fire zone, the document said.
Continue reading...As the world burns, young Australians are feeling disbelief – and looking for answers | Anjali Sharma
My generation feels trapped in a political system not built for us. Why wouldn’t we be disillusioned?
I’m scrolling on TikTok after work when I get a text that would have sent 12-year-old Anjali into a spiral, a frenzy of extreme climate anxiety. The text is from a friend letting me know that it’s official – 2024 is the hottest year on record. Not just that, it’s the first year to exceed 1.5C of warming over preindustrial levels.
The news comes as my entire feed is flooded with images of an inferno of flames ripping through neighbourhoods in LA, in winter.
Continue reading...LA fires could test Getty Center’s claim of being safest place to store artwork
Getty team says no current plans to move prominent pieces from center deemed ‘marvel of anti-fire engineering’
It houses some of the richest treasures of the art world, such as Vincent van Gogh’s Irises, a popular Rembrandt and a priceless collection of paintings, portraits and other works spanning more than seven centuries.
To protect them, the Getty Center in Los Angeles was built in 1997 as “a marvel of anti-fire engineering”, complete with fire-resistant stone and concrete, protected steel, and set in well-irrigated landscaping.
Continue reading...The Dream of California Is Up in Smoke
The Old World Is Breaking Down. A New One Is Breaking Through.
Chris Riddell on Donald Trump pouring oil on to the climate crisis as Los Angeles burns – cartoon
The president-elect is obsessed with drilling for fossil fuels, not to mention taking control of Canada and Greenland and renaming the Gulf of Mexico
Continue reading...Far From the Fires, the Deadly Risks of Smoke Are Intensifying
Los Angeles residents return to find homes reduced to ashes – video
"This is what's left of the home that I grew up in for 31 years," Pacific Palisades resident Greg Benton said as he remembered his recent Christmas celebration with his family in his house. Thousands of Angelenos are returning to their homes to assess the damaged left by five fires which raged through multiple areas of the city. More than 144,000 people are under evacuation orders, local authorities have said
Continue reading...In utterly unsurprising news, Maga blames diversity for the Los Angeles wildfires
Elon Musk, one of the brightest minds of his generation, is saying it, so it must be true
Women, eh? They’re simply not to be trusted. Eve ate that apple; Pandora opened that horrible little box; and now women are to blame for the devastating wildfires in California. I know that sounds like a ridiculous thing to say, but it’s what Elon Musk, one of the brightest minds of his generation – and one of the most powerful people on Earth – is saying, so it must be true.
Continue reading...How the climate crisis fuels devastating wildfires: ‘We have tweaked nature and pissed it off’
John Vaillant, the author of Fire Weather, explains why fires such as those in Los Angeles are different from those before
When writing about the hot, dry Santa Ana winds and how they affect the behavior and imaginations of southern Californians, Joan Didion once said: “The winds show us how close to the edge we are.”
I’ve lived here my entire life. I evacuated my family’s hillside home as a teenager. I’ve experienced the surrealism of watching ash rain down from the sky more times than I can count. But there is something different, supercharged, about the hurricane-force winds that fueled this week’s catastrophic wildfires in Los Angeles.
Continue reading...We built our world with fire. Now heat is destroying our lives | John Vaillant
We fell in love with the power and speed that fossil fuels brought us. But the price being paid in California, and around the world, has become too high
Zero per cent contained. In layperson’s terms, that means “out of control and burning at will”. It’s a common designation for a wildfire – in the wild. But when a fire like this enters an urban area such as Los Angeles County, the most highly populated metropolitan area in the US, it becomes an exploding bomb, and this one has been detonating since last Tuesday.
By now, the energy release from this wind-driven, drought-fuelled firestorm turned urban conflagration is into the megatons, and the nuclear-scale destruction is there for all to see: block after block and neighbourhood after neighbourhood levelled – roughly 12,000 structures destroyed or rendered uninhabitable, 55 sq miles of city and mountain burnt, nearly 200,000 residents evacuated – so far. There is more to come.
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