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Why Democrats Joined Republicans to Block a California Climate Policy
Trump Is Picking New Climate Fights With States. Here’s Why.
A Climate Warning From the Fertile Crescent
Aviation industry is ‘failing dramatically’ on climate, insiders say
Professionals call for a fundamental transition including controlling flight numbers
The aviation industry is “failing dramatically” in its efforts to tackle its role in the climate crisis, according to a newly formed group of aviation professionals.
They say they are torn between their passion for flying and their concern for the planet and are calling for a fundamental transition of the industry, including controlling flight numbers.
Continue reading...18 States Sue Over Trump’s Halting of Wind Power Projects
First-of-its-kind Hawaii bill raises tourist taxes to fund climate relief
Governor is expected to sign the ‘green fee’, which adds 0.75% levy to state’s existing tax on short-term lodging
Lawmakers in Hawaii have passed first-of-its-kind legislation that will increase the state’s lodging tax to raise money for environmental protection and strengthening defenses against natural disasters fueled by the climate crisis.
Hawaii’s governor, Josh Green, supports the creation of the so-called “green fee”, and is expected to sign it.
Continue reading...Australia has backed a rapid shift to renewable energy - and given Labor a chance on climate. How will it act? | Clear Air
After a landslide election win, there will never be a better chance to shake off old policy impasses and deliver a more ambitious plan for the environment
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Analysis of the election result has barely begun, but this much is clear: the country has backed a rapid acceleration towards renewable energy. Labor didn’t say much about the climate crisis during the campaign, announcing only one new policy. But Anthony Albanese and his climate change and energy minister, Chris Bowen, emerged with their ambitious goal of the country getting 82% of electricity from solar, wind and hydro by 2030 not just intact, but emphatically endorsed.
Labor’s position has been relentlessly attacked by the Coalition, rightwing organisations backed by fossil fuel interests and one of the country’s biggest news media companies. Australians rejected this comprehensively.
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Continue reading...India Sees a Future Making Solar Panels for Itself, and Maybe the World
Two Britons to challenge UK’s ‘weak’ response to climate crisis in Strasbourg court
Doug Paulley and Kevin Jordan say their lives being ruined, and lack of effective strategy infringes their human rights
Two men who say they are being failed by the UK’s flawed response to climate breakdown are taking their case to Europe’s top human rights court.
Doug Paulley and Kevin Jordan say their lives have been ruined by the rising temperatures and extreme weather caused by the climate crisis, and that the government’s response fails to respect their human rights.
Continue reading...How to Make Spring Safer for Wildlife
How ‘out of touch’ Tony Blair became a serious threat to climate action
Even before his call for a net zero ‘reset’, there had been criticism of ex-PM’s lucrative links with fossil fuel nations
From the lush gardens of the Four Seasons luxury hotel in Sharm el-Sheikh, amid banks of bougainvillaea and trailing jasmine, green lawns and air-conditioned courtyards, the surrounding desert is kept at bay by hidden sprinklers, and the chaotic poverty of the rest of Egypt by high walls and discreet security.
In late 2022, on the sidelines of the Cop27 UN climate conference, the former UK prime minister Tony Blair was holding high-level meetings with senior figures from politics and business. His role in the negotiations raised questions for some, who began to worry that, having been a respected elder statesman on the subject – one who as prime minister crafted the UK’s first real climate measures, and made it the priority for the UK presidency of the G8 group of countries in 2005 – he might now be becoming, in the words of one Whitehall insider, “a serious threat to sensible climate policy”.
Continue reading...Trump cuts will lead to more deaths in disasters, expert warns: ‘It is really scary’
Layoffs and funding cuts to Fema and Noaa will impact how they predict and respond to disasters, warns professor Samantha Montano
The Trump administration’s sweeping cuts to disaster management will cost lives in the US, with hollowed-out agencies unable to accurately predict, prepare for or respond to extreme weather events, earthquakes and pandemics, a leading expert has warned.
Samantha Montano, professor of emergency management at Massachusetts Maritime Academy and author of Disasterology: Dispatches from the Frontlines of the Climate Crisis, said the death toll from disasters including hurricanes, tornadoes and water pollution will rise in the US unless Trump backtracks on mass layoffs and funding cuts to key agencies. That includes the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema), whose work relies heavily on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa), which is also being dismantled.
Continue reading...How the climate crisis threatens Indigenous traditions in Canada: ‘It’s not the way it used to be’
Shorter winters and thinning ice are imperiling cultural activities in the north, including hockey, broomball and hunting
Janelle Oombash stands on the smooth ice of an outdoor rink, keeping score and watching the time as two teams of teenagers run across the ice, whacking a ball with sticks under the afternoon sun. Outside the rink, a bonfire crackles, keeping spectators warm as they watch the game.
Broomball has been played for more than a century in northern Ontario. The game is similar to hockey, but players use a ball instead of a puck and wear specialized shoes rather than skates. Now 31, Oombash started playing the game at age 11. Her dad is a coach and taught her to play. “It’s a big sport. Everybody plays broomball or hockey,” she said.
Continue reading...Labor must heed the warnings wrapped up in its election win. Young voters are crying out for action | Intifar Chowdhury
Gen Z want the government to address the big structural problems: housing supply, inequality and climate
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I often write about how younger Australians are carving out a different political identity from older generations. But the election result has reminded us of what cuts across age and sits in our national core. That deep-seated Aussie reaction: “yeah-nah, that’s a bit much” when things go too far. We’re allergic to imported bravado, anything too loud, too messianic. And, when pushed, we don’t shout – we shrug.
This election was one long shrug. A rejection of chaos and division, not through fury but through an assertive, ballot-powered recoil.
Dr Intifar Chowdhury is a youth researcher and a lecturer in government at Flinders University
Continue reading...Cost of emissions from five major Australian resource companies more than $900bn, study finds
US researchers link BHP, Rio Tinto, Santos, Whitehaven Coal and Woodside Energy to specific climate harms over three decades
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Five of Australia’s biggest fossil fuel producers could be on the hook for hundreds of billions of dollars in damages after a US research team developed a method to link individual companies to specific climate harms and put a dollar figure to the impact.
This is the result of a new peer-review study published in the journal Nature that sought to establish a method that would allow courts to quantify the economic loss caused by fossil fuel producers for one kind of climate impact – extreme heat.
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Continue reading...Democrats Have Been at War With Oil Barons for Far Too Long
Scientific societies to do climate assessment after Trump administration dismissed authors
Two groups join forces for peer-reviewed research after key contributors on Congress-mandated report dismissed
Two major US scientific societies have announced they will join forces to produce peer-reviewed research on the climate crisis’s impact days after Donald Trump’s administration dismissed contributors to a key Congress-mandated report on climate crisis preparedness.
On Friday, the American Meteorological Society (AMS) and the American Geophysical Union (AGU) said that they will work together to produce over 29 peer-reviewed journals that will cover all aspects of climate change including observations, projections, impacts, risks and solutions.
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