Category Archives: Environment

Senator Joe Manchin unveils bill that would speed fossil fuel projects

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The centrist Democrat believes he has votes to pass the measure, which would also power transmission for renewable energy

The US senator Joe Manchin released an energy permitting bill on Wednesday to speed fossil fuel projects and power transmission for renewable energy.

The bill is expected to be attached to a measure to temporarily fund the government that Congress must pass before 1 October. Manchin’s staff told reporters the senator believed he had the 60 votes needed to pass it.

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Murray-Darling Basin plan on the brink after NSW says it cannot meet water savings deadline

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Failure infuriates other states and may force Tanya Plibersek to impose highly controversial buybacks

New South Wales will seek an exemption from its obligations to deliver the final stage of the Murray-Darling Basin plan, a move that could leave the environment short-changed millions of litres of water.

NSW will not meet a June 2024 deadline to deliver the last 25% of water savings of the plan, to be achieved through water-saving projects.

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Rescuers rush to save hundreds of pilot whales stranded on Tasmanian beach

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Marine wildlife experts are assessing the scene near Strahan – the same location as Australia’s worst mass stranding exactly two years ago

Rescuers and marine conservationists have rushed to Tasmania’s west coast as efforts continue to save pilot whales after a mass stranding near the remote town of Strahan.

On Wednesday, a pod of about 230 pilot whales became stranded on Ocean beach, west of Strahan. Some were also stranded on a sand flat inside Macquarie harbour, south of the town. At least 100 of the animals are thought to have died.

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Denmark offers ‘loss and damage’ funding to poorer countries for climate breakdown

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Denmark ‘gets ball rolling’ at UN ahead of protests as poor nations call for greater collective commitment

Youth groups in Africa are preparing to embark on a series of climate demonstrations on Friday to highlight the problem of “loss and damage” to poor countries blighted by climate breakdown, as only one rich country has so far stepped up with funding for the problem.

Actions will take place on Friday in Ghana, Ivory Coast, Senegal, Togo and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, with more to follow in some other African nations over the weekend.

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Forbidden fruit trees: Canadian national park urges locals to remove bear-attracting bushes

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Black bears preparing to hibernate have been lured into Jasper townsite by residents’ non-native apple and cherry trees

The waning days of summer and a bounty of ripe fruit have pitted hungry black bears against park rangers in a fight over a Canadian mountain town’s fruit trees.

Residents living in the Jasper national park townsite have been warned that fruit trees on their properties are luring in black bears and need to be removed as soon as possible.

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Indigenous leaders urge businesses and banks to stop supporting deforestation

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Amazon ecosystem is on verge of collapse, leaders tell brands such as Apple and Tesla as UN gathers in New York

Indigenous leaders from the Amazon have implored major western brands and banks to stop supporting the ongoing destruction of the vital rainforest through mining, oil drilling and logging, warning that the ecosystem is on the brink of a disastrous collapse.

Representatives of Indigenous peoples from across the Amazon region have descended upon New York this week to press governments and businesses, gathered in the city for climate and United Nations gatherings, to stem the flow of finance to activities that are polluting and deforesting large areas of the rainforest.

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Tiwi Islanders win court battle with Santos over drilling in traditional waters

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Gas company’s approval set aside after Justice Mordecai Bromberg found the regulator did not consult properly with traditional owners

Tiwi Islanders have won a landmark case against drilling for gas by Santos in their traditional waters after complaining that the company failed to consult them about the impact of the project.

On Wednesday, judge Mordecai Bromberg set aside approval for the drilling, part of Santos’s $4.7bn Barossa project and gave Santos two weeks to shut down and remove its rig from the sea north of Melville Island.

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Gunnedah residents criticise flood response as region braces for more rain

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Families in NSW Liverpool Plains say authorities did not warn everyone before recent flooding

Residents of Gunnedah on the New South Wales Liverpool Plains are appalled by the lack of preparation, warnings and response from authorities to Sunday’s Namoi River flood, as they brace for another deluge.

Julie Shields, who lives on the north-west end of Bloomfield Street, started the Gunnedah Flood Information and Support Facebook group last December, after being disappointed in the response to Gunnedah’s November 2021 flood.

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‘Alien goldfish’ may have been unique mollusc, say scientists

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Researchers think they may have solved enduring mystery of where Typhloesus wellsi sits on tree of life

The mystery of a bizarre creature dubbed the “alien goldfish”, which has baffled fossil experts for decades, may have been solved, according to scientists who say the animal appears to have been some sort of mollusc.

Typhloesus wellsi lived about 330m years ago and was discovered in the Bear Gulch Limestone fossil site in Montana in the late 1960s, with the remains of other species subsequently identified.

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Children as young as nine say they are ill from work recycling plastic in Turkey

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Human Rights Watch says failure to enforce laws worsens health impact at centres, amid steep rise in EU and UK waste exports

Children as young as nine are working in plastic waste recycling centres in Turkey, putting them at risk of serious and lifelong health conditions, according to Human Rights Watch.

Workers including children, and people living in homes located “dangerously close” to the centres, told researchers they were suffering from respiratory problems, severe headaches and skin ailments.

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Will China’s plan for a ‘green silk road’ live up to environmental promises?

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China has pledged to make its Belt and Road initiative greener, but critics say environmental guidelines ‘nonexistent’

In July 2019, China rolled out the red carpet for the Bangladeshi prime minister, Sheikh Hasina. Flown to Beijing by the Chinese government, she was greeted with an honour guard and banquet and received by the president, Xi Jinping, and the prime minister, Li Keqiang. Three days later, she returned to her capital, Dhaka, with nine agreements worth billions of dollars to build power plants and provide other development assistance.

Hasina’s short visit benefited both countries. Big new infrastructure projects would help lift living standards in Bangladesh, but also enable China to strengthen its influence on its fast-growing neighbour of more than 160 million people.

This article was originally published by Ensia

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Dead or alive: can bounty plan solve Miami Beach’s invasive iguana problem?

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City commissioner proposes paying per reptile to ramp up efforts to curb numbers of non-native species

A city commissioner in Miami Beach is proposing a novel solution to tackle an invasion of non-native iguanas overwhelming the popular tourist city: paying a bounty for the head of each reptile brought in dead or alive.

Commissioners have agreed to look into the iguana problem and the suggestion by council member Kristen Rosen Gonzalez to offer payments to hunters, which she says would offer an incentive for locals to take an active role.

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Vales Point coal-fired power station in NSW could be polluting in breach of clean air laws

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Environment groups question whether ageing station’s exemptions from some pollution standards are valid

Environment groups say an ageing coal-fired power station in New South Wales that sold for hundreds of millions of dollars may be operating in breach of the state’s clean air laws.

This week Delta Electricity announced it sold the 1,320-megawatt Vales Point power station, located in the state’s Hunter region, to Sev.en Global Investments, owned by Czech billionaire Pavel Tykač.

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Nigeria battling worst floods in a decade with more than 300 people killed in 2022

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Floods have affected half a million people, including 100,000 displaced, Nigeria’s National Emergency Management Agency says

Nigeria is battling its worst floods in a decade with more than 300 people killed in 2022 including at least 20 this week, as authorities said the situation is “beyond our control.”

The floods in 27 of Nigeria’s 36 states and capital city have affected half a million people, including 100,000 displaced and more than 500 injured, Nigeria’s National Emergency Management Agency said.

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Human composting: California clears the way for greener burial method

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The state is the fifth to legalize the environmentally-friendly process which allows for the natural reduction of human remains to soil

California lawmakers have approved a new way of returning those who have died to the earth, after Gavin Newsom signed into law a bill allowing human composting on Sunday.

Cremation, which accounts for more than half of burials, is an energy-intensive process that emits chemicals like CO2 into the air. Through human composting, or natural organic reduction (NOR), the body is naturally broken down into soil.

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Antarctic researchers gain insights from on high as they count seals from space

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Scientists used satellite images and more than 300,000 volunteers to count Weddell seals, a key Southern Ocean indicator species

Researchers believe they have accurately estimated Antarctica’s Weddell seal population for the first time – using images from space and the eyes of hundreds of thousands of citizen scientists.

Weddell seals are a key indicator species in the Southern Ocean, for both sea ice fluctuations and shifts in the food web. They can live up to 30 years in the harsh conditions of the coastal sea ice of Antarctica, but until recently, counting them has been risky and cost-prohibitive.

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Moves as smooth as silk: scientists uncover Australian ant-slayer spider’s hunting secrets

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With stealth followed by speedy acrobatics, Euryopis umbilicata can successfully catch banded sugar ants twice its size

A mid-air cartwheel, the judicious use of sticky silk and a quick rappel down a tree, all in the blink of an eye: researchers have identified how the Australian ant-slayer spider captures prey twice its size.

The acrobatic behaviour of the Australian ant-slayer spider, Euryopis umbilicata, as it hunts and eats banded sugar ants has been documented by scientists for the first time.

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Labor urged to axe $1.9bn in ‘zombie’ fossil fuel subsidies promised by the Coalition

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Exclusive: Morrison government announced support for coal and gas projects in ‘gas-fired recovery’ but didn’t formalise contracts, PBO analysis reveals

Labor is being urged to axe nearly $2bn in handouts to fossil fuel developments that the Parliamentary Budget Office found were promised under the Coalition but have not been contracted.

The PBO analysis, commissioned by the Greens, found the Morrison government announced $1.93bn in support for coal and gas developments that had not been formally committed.

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Weather tracker: Deadly floods batter Italy’s Adriatic coast

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Ten people confirmed dead with three missing; Typhoon Nanmadol forces millions to flee homes in Japan

European countries around the Adriatic Sea were experiencing extreme flooding towards the end of last week.

The Italian region of Marche was particularly badly affected after a thunderstorm on Thursday afternoon strengthened into the night. Some areas faced more than 400mm of rain, with much of the deluge falling in a couple of hours.

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Vulnerable countries demand global tax to pay for climate-led loss and damage

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Poor nations exhort UN to consider ‘climate-related and justice-based’ tax on big fossil fuel users and air travel

The world’s most vulnerable countries are preparing to take on the richest economies with a demand for urgent finance – potentially including new taxes on fossil fuels or flying – for the irrecoverable losses they are suffering from the climate crisis, leaked documents show.

Extreme weather is already hitting many developing countries hard and forecast to wreak further catastrophe. Loss and damage – the issue of how to help poor nations suffering from the most extreme impacts of climate breakdown, which countries cannot be protected against – is one of the most contentious problems in climate negotiations.

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