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Biden marks Earth Day with $7bn ‘solar for all’ investment amid week of climate action
Funds will be targeted at disadvantaged areas to create 200,000 jobs, after last week’s oil and gas lease restrictions in Alaska
Joe Biden will mark Monday’s Earth Day by announcing a $7bn investment in solar energy projects nationwide, focusing on disadvantaged communities, and unveiling a week-long series of what the White House say will be “historic climate actions”.
The president is traveling to Virginia’s Prince William Forest Park to deliver a speech touting his environmental record, including measures to tackle the climate crisis and increase access to, and lower costs of, clean energy.
Continue reading...Major investors leading push against Woodside’s climate plans ahead of AGM
Norway’s KLP and the UK’s LGIM among those who say they have concerns over energy giant’s carbon transition goals
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Woodside Energy is facing the prospect of an overwhelming protest vote against its climate plans when shareholders meet on Wednesday, as global investors pick apart the emissions strategy of Australia’s biggest oil and gas company.
Norway’s largest pension fund, KLP, and Britain’s biggest asset manager, LGIM, are the latest investors to disclose they will vote against Woodside’s climate report, citing concerns over its carbon transition plans.
Continue reading...Louisiana’s flagship university lets oil firms influence research – for a price
Louisiana State University allowed Shell to influence studies after a $25m donation and sought funds from other fossil fuel firms
- This story is co-published with the Lens, a non-profit newsroom in New Orleans
For $5m, Louisiana’s flagship university will let an oil company weigh in on faculty research activities. Or, for $100,000, a corporation can participate in a research study, with “robust” reviewing powers and access to all resulting intellectual property.
Those are the conditions outlined in a boilerplate document that Louisiana State University’s fundraising arm circulated to oil majors and chemical companies affiliated with the Louisiana Chemical Association, an industry lobbying group, according to emails disclosed in response to a public records request by the Lens.
Continue reading...Climate Doom Is Out. ‘Apocalyptic Optimism’ Is In.
The El Niño has ended. Will Australia get a La Niña next – and what weather could that bring?
Our climate is influenced not just by Pacific weather patterns but by the Indian and Southern oceans, as well as global heating trends
The Bureau of Meteorology has declared the end of the 2023-24 El Niño event.
Since 1910, there have been 29 El Niños, a phase that sees easterly equatorial winds in the Pacific slow or even reverse. These increase the odds in eastern Australia for a dry winter into spring.
Continue reading...Sunak has ‘set Britain back’ on net zero, says UK’s climate adviser
Chris Stark, head of the Climate Change Committee, says Tories’ decision to dilute key green policies has had huge diplomatic impact
Rishi Sunak has given up Britain’s reputation as a world leader in the fight against the climate crisis and has “set us back” by failing to prioritise the issue in the way his predecessors in No 10 did, the government’s green adviser has warned.
Chris Stark, the outgoing head of the Climate Change Committee (CCC), said that the prime minister had “clearly not” championed the issue following a high-profile speech last year in which he made a significant U-turn on the government’s climate commitments. The criticism comes after Sunak was accused of trying to avoid scrutiny of Britain’s climate policies by failing to appoint a new chair of the CCC.
Continue reading...A heedless dash for net zero will waste cash and, later, votes | Phillip Inman
Keir Starmer must learn from the Tories’ failures and ensure green projects are well planned and resourced
In the energetic pursuit of net zero, billions of pounds could be squandered needlessly. That’s the lesson from countries as diverse as Italy, the US and UK, where the rush to subsidise green projects suggests vast sums are at risk. Worse, they could be lining the pockets of multinational businesses and City financiers.
In the UK, 14 years of austerity has left the public sector struggling to make coherent, strategic decisions. When a decision is finally made, it is a panic measure that quickly unravels. The fallout could be that voters become disenchanted with green tech, especially if the dash for net zero leads to higher taxes and higher borrowing while early adopters unwittingly pay for costly mistakes.
Continue reading...Trump’s Re-Election Would Be Disastrous for the Climate
Scientists’ experiment is ‘beacon of hope’ for coral reefs on brink of global collapse
Recordings of healthy fish are being transmitted to attract heat-tolerant larvae back to degraded reefs in the Maldives
An underwater experiment to restore coral reefs using a combination of “coral IVF” and recordings of fish noises could offer a “beacon of hope” to scientists who fear the fragile ecosystem is on the brink of collapse.
The experiment – a global collaboration between two teams of scientists who developed their innovative coral-saving techniques independently – has the potential to significantly increase the likelihood that coral will repopulate degraded reefs, they claim.
Continue reading...Scottish Greens to vote on power-sharing deal with SNP after carbon goal ditched
Green members demand meeting after Scottish government abandons pledge to cut emissions 75% by 2030
Scottish Greens are to hold a vote to determine the future of the party’s power-sharing agreement with the Scottish National party, after the government abandoned its pledge to cut carbon emissions 75% by 2030.
Members will be able to vote on whether their party should continue to cooperate with the SNP after the announcement on Thursday that the Scottish government was scrapping its key climate pledge.
Continue reading...Carbon Dioxide Levels Have Passed a New Milestone
MP Caroline Lucas: ‘My biggest disappointment? Not to have been joined by more Green MPs … yet’
The Green party MP on her stint as a chambermaid, a brush with the law and the importance of hairspray
Born in Worcestershire, Caroline Lucas, 63, studied at the University of Exeter where she gained a PhD in English. She joined the Green party in 1986 and went on to become leader in England and Wales from 2008 to 2012, and co-leader from 2016 to 2018. Since 2010 she has been MP for Brighton Pavilion, the UK’s first and only Green party MP. At the next election she plans to retire from parliament. Her new book, Another England: How to Reclaim Our National Story, has just been published. She is married with two sons.
When were you happiest?
Picnicking on the Downs with my family and dog – birds singing, sea sparkling, and mobile switched very firmly off.
The week around the world in 20 pictures
War in Gaza, floods in Dubai, the knife attack in Sydney and the Grand National at Aintree: the last seven days as captured by the world’s leading photojournalists
Warning: this gallery contains images that some readers may find distressing
Continue reading...Scotland Made Big Climate Pledges. Now They’re ‘Out of Reach.’
Unilever to scale back environmental and social pledges
Environmental groups say bosses should ‘hang their heads in shame’ as firm bows to pressure from shareholders to cut costs
Unilever is to scale back its environmental and social aims, provoking critics to say its board should “hang their heads in shame”.
The consumer goods company behind brands ranging from Dove beauty products to Ben & Jerry’s ice-cream was seen as perhaps the foremost proponent of corporate ethics – particularly under the tenure of its Dutch former boss Paul Polman.
Continue reading...E.P.A. Will Make Polluters Pay to Clean Up Two PFAS Compounds
Bid to secure spot for glacier in Icelandic presidential race heats up
Idea Angela Rawlings had a decade ago for Snæfellsjökull has snowballed into a full-blown campaign with a team of 50 people
Standing in the shadow of Iceland’s Snæfellsjökull, – a 700,000-year-old glacier perched on a volcano and visible to half the country’s population on any given day – in 2010, Angela Rawlings was struck by an unconventional thought.
“It suddenly just came to me. What if the glacier was president?” said Rawlings. It was a seemingly unorthodox way to push forward a movement that was already swiftly advancing; Ecuador had enshrined legal rights for nature while Māori in New Zealand were working to secure legal personhood for the Whanganui River.
Continue reading...Biden administration moves to restrict oil and gas leases on 13m acres in Alaska
Environmentalists celebrate new rules but Alaska politicians call it an ‘illegal’ attack on state’s livelihood and predict lawsuits
The Biden administration said on Friday it will restrict new oil and gas leasing on 13m acres (5.3m hectares) of a federal petroleum reserve in Alaska to help protect wildlife such as caribou and polar bears as the Arctic continues to warm.
The decision – part of an ongoing, years-long fight over whether and how to develop the vast oil resources in the state – finalizes protections first proposed last year as the Biden administration prepared to approve the controversial Willow oil project.
Continue reading...R.F.K. Jr.’s Environmental Colleagues Urge Him to Drop Presidential Bid
UN livestock emissions report seriously distorted our work, say experts
Exclusive: Study released at Cop28 misused research to underestimate impact of cutting meat eating, say academics
A flagship UN report on livestock emissions is facing calls for retraction from two key experts it cited who say that the paper “seriously distorted” their work.
The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) misused their research to underestimate the potential of reduced meat intake to cut agricultural emissions, according to a letter sent to the FAO by the two academics, which the Guardian has seen.
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