Two thirds of Key Biodiversity Areas (KBAs) in tropical forests are experiencing new temperature conditions as our climate changes, research shows.
Breaking Waves: Ocean News
10/15/2024 - 13:10
Bonobos, endangered great apes that are among our closest relatives, might be more vulnerable than previously understood, finds a genetics study that reveals three distinct populations.
10/15/2024 - 13:01
These remarkable fish need clean rivers to breed in. Their decline highlights the collapse of environmental regulation
The collapse in the number of wild salmon in England and Wales is deeply dismaying. These fish are widely regarded as wonders of the natural world because of their extraordinary life cycle. This takes them thousands of miles out into the North Atlantic Ocean, before they return to our rivers – swimming and leaping upstream – to spawn.
Climate change and failures of marine conservation have contributed to the decline in numbers across their entire range, which extends from Russia to Portugal. But in Britain, the poor state of rivers is another obstacle to the species’ survival. As well as a warning of the global threat to biodiversity, their dwindling numbers are a reminder of the price paid for the repeated breaking of environmental law.
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10/15/2024 - 11:33
Spy says he accessed details of legal advice Starmer gave campaigners in McLibel case
An undercover police officer has admitted that he spied on Keir Starmer while he was a radical barrister, a public inquiry has heard.
The police spy has said that he accessed confidential details of the legal advice that Starmer was giving to two environmentalist campaigners in the well-known McLibel case in the early 1990s.
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10/15/2024 - 09:00
A spokesperson for the airline says it is doing ‘what we can with what’s available now’ after Environmental Defenders Office singles out ‘carbon neutral’ claim
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Climate campaigners have asked the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission to investigate whether “fly carbon neutral” and other sustainability claims by Qantas are misleading or deceptive.
The greenwashing complaint, filed by the Environmental Defenders Office on behalf of research and advocacy organisation Climate Integrity, urged the competition watchdog to investigate the airline’s marketing materials and the credibility of the company’s transition to net zero.
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10/15/2024 - 09:00
Investors say climate change poses biggest risk to their assets, and urge Albanese government to see the economic dangers of a slow path to net zero
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Institutional investors dealing with portfolios in the trillions of dollars aren’t typically the most vocal climate campaigners. You won’t find many superannuation fund staff, fund managers, asset consultants or brokers with a placard on the streets or on top of a Newcastle coal train.
But you may increasingly find them on a screen you’re watching. Or at least their message.
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10/15/2024 - 07:00
Conservative ‘wishlist’ of policies for a future Trump administration goes so far as transforming food and farming
When Project 2025 began making headlines this summer, it was largely for the ways the conservative “wish list” of policies for a future Trump administration would restructure the entire federal bureaucracy, deepen abortion restrictions and eliminate the Department of Education.
But the document – a proposed mandate for the next Republican president authored by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative thinktank – also outlines steps that would radically transform food and farming, curtailing recent progress to address the excess of ultra-processed foods in the United States. Among those: weakening the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap), ending policies that consider the effects of climate change – and eliminating the US dietary guidelines.
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10/15/2024 - 07:00
UC San Diego has added an innovative prerequisite to ‘prepare students for the future they really will encounter’
Melani Callicott, a human biology major at the University of California, San Diego, thinks about the climate crisis all the time. She discusses it with family and friends because of the intensity of hurricanes like Milton and Helene, which have ravaged the southern US, she says. “It just seems like it’s affecting more people every day.”
That’s one reason why she is glad that UC San Diego has implemented an innovative graduation requirement for students starting this autumn: a course in climate change. Courses must cover at least 30% climate-related content and address two of four areas, including scientific foundations, human impacts, mitigation strategies and project-based learning. About 7,000 students from the class of 2028 will be affected this year.
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10/15/2024 - 06:00
Exclusive: EA warns it lacks budget to tackle England’s rising number of potential ‘forever chemicals’ locations
The number of sites identified as potentially having been polluted with banned cancer-causing “forever chemicals” in England is on the rise, and the Environment Agency (EA) says it does not have the budget to deal with them.
A former RAF airfield in Cambridgeshire and a fire service college in the Cotswolds have joined a chemicals plant in Lancashire and a fire protection equipment supplier in North Yorkshire on the agency’s list of “problem sites” for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS).
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10/15/2024 - 04:54
Residents and marine scientists unable to identify pale masses, as myriad theories are blown out of the water
They are slimy on the outside, firm and spongy on the inside and surprisingly combustible. And in recent months, they have been washing up on the shores of Newfoundland.
The depths of the Atlantic have long held mysteries, but the riddle of the mysterious white “blobs” spotted on the beaches of the eastern Canadian province has baffled both residents and marine scientists.
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