Breaking Waves: Ocean News

04/30/2024 - 07:00
National Park Service will reintroduce bears to Washington’s North Cascades and won’t remove horses from South Dakota park Wildlife advocates are celebrating “incredible” news for the preservation of threatened bears, and a herd of historically significant wild horses, in separate north-western and upper midwestern national parks. In North Dakota, the National Parks Service (NPS) has dropped a plan that would have seen about 200 wild horses, descended from those belonging to Native American tribes who fought the 1876 Great Sioux War, rounded up and removed from Theodore Roosevelt national park. Continue reading...
04/30/2024 - 06:42
The far right are on the march in Germany and the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany has become the most popular party in several states. Immigration and a sense of being economically left behind have been driving factors in the rise in popularity but the Green party and the federal government’s climate policies have also borne the brunt of public anger. The Guardian travelled to Görlitz, on the German border with Poland, to find out to what extent Germany’s green policies are fuelling the far right • How climate policies are becoming focus for far-right attacks in Germany Continue reading...
04/30/2024 - 06:00
The state’s last sugar processing mill closed because there’s just not enough water in the Rio Grande to share between the US and Mexico Tudor Uhlhorn has been too busy auctioning off agricultural equipment to grieve the “death” of Texas’s last sugar mill. “I’m as sad as anyone else,” said the chairman of the board of the Rio Grande Valley Sugar Growers cooperative, which owns the now-shuttered mill in Santa Rosa, a small town about 40 miles from Brownsville. “I just haven’t had a whole lot of time to mourn.” Continue reading...
04/30/2024 - 05:00
Nitrogen, phosphorus, chloride, oil and cyanide among the 371m lb of pollutants released by just 41 plants in five years Tyson Foods dumped millions of pounds of toxic pollutants directly into American rivers and lakes over the last five years, threatening critical ecosystems, endangering wildlife and human health, a new investigation reveals. Nitrogen, phosphorus, chloride, oil and cyanide were among the 371m lb of pollutants released into waterways by just 41 Tyson slaughterhouses and mega processing plants between 2018 and 2022. Continue reading...
04/30/2024 - 04:57
Campaigners say last-minute compromise plays into the hands of petrostates and industry influences Campaigners are blaming developed countries for capitulating at the last minute to pressure from fossil fuel and industry lobbyists, and slowing progress towards the first global treaty to cut plastic waste. Delegates concluded talks in Ottawa, Canada, late on Monday, with no agreement on a proposal for global reductions in the $712bn (£610bn) plastic production industry by 2040 to address twin issues of plastic waste and huge carbon emissions. Continue reading...
04/30/2024 - 04:41
Clean Water Alliance lays out three-part strategy for action ‘Further and faster action on pollution’ needed, says group Seven water-based sports, including British Rowing, British Triathlon and Swim England, have formed an alliance to demand the government go “further and faster” in tackling water pollution. It comes less than a month after the Boat Race was marred by Oxford men’s crew getting sick with E Coli amid high levels of sewage in the Thames, and with concerns mounting over huge levels of sewage in Britain’s rivers, lakes and coastal waters. Last month an Environment Agency report also found that raw sewage was discharged for more than 3.6m hours into rivers and seas last year, a 105% increase on the previous 12 months. Continue reading...
04/30/2024 - 03:16
Crossbench MPs and conservationists say clearing exemplifies failed environmental reform as endangered species like Gouldian finch face habitat destruction Get our morning and afternoon news emails, free app or daily news podcast The destruction of woodland habitat for hundreds of bird species, including the endangered Gouldian finch, has commenced at a popular Darwin site, prompting conservationists, crossbench MPs and residents to condemn the federal government’s failure to protect the area from a defence housing development. As bulldozers moved into Lee Point/Binybara, which has been the focus of a long community campaign, independent and Greens MPs said the clearing was an example of Australia’s failed environmental protections and the need for urgent reform. Continue reading...
04/29/2024 - 23:00
Guardian Seascapes reporter Karen McVeigh tells Madeleine Finlay about a recent trip to the Galápagos Islands, where mounds of plastic waste are washing up and causing problems for endemic species. Tackling this kind of waste and the overproduction of plastic were the topics on the table in Ottawa this week, as countries met to negotiate a global plastics treaty. But is progress too slow to address this pervasive problem? Read more about Karen McVeigh’s trip to the Galápagos Islands Follow all the reporting from the Guardian’s Seascapes team Continue reading...
04/29/2024 - 19:27
So long as oil and gas companies remain wedded to self-interest, the push against them isn’t going away Get our morning and afternoon news emails, free app or daily news podcast Australia’s south-west is suffering through a historic dry stretch. Perth had the lowest rainfall on record in the six months to March, and trees in eucalyptus forests and scrubland across a 1,000 kilometre stretch are dying in shocking and spectacular fashion, with spillover effects through the ecosystems that rely on them. The climate signal – the impact of rising atmospheric greenhouse gases, largely due to the burning of fossil fuels – in this part of the world has been clear for a while. Winter rainfall has fallen up to 20% since the 1970s in what scientists have for years described as one of the earliest examples of the climate crisis having a measurable influence. Continue reading...
04/29/2024 - 16:46
Year in, year out, there's a good chance someone in politics has suggested nuclear power as an answer to Australia's energy problems. Guardian Australia's Matilda Boseley explains why. Modern-day nuclear energy is climate friendly compared with coal and gas. But going nuclear isn't practical for Australia – and it's an idea that's more than likely coming directly from the Coalition's 'delaying action on climate change' handbook Dutton’s blast of radioactive rhetoric on nuclear power leaves facts in the dust Continue reading...