Breaking Waves: Ocean News

The International Whaling Commission has become a ‘zombie’ and should vote to disband itself, insists Peter Bridgewater Peter Bridgewater has a clear message for the International Whaling Commission (IWC) that he once led. The organisation – which played a critical role in ending whale hunting in the 1980s – has become a zombie institution that should vote to disband itself at its meeting next month. “The commission did great work, but that was last century,” Bridgewater told the Observer last week. “Today it has – like so many other international conventions or organisations – outlived its useful life and should be quietly disbanded.” Continue reading...

From Starbucks to local cafes, Petaluma’s reusable cup project aims to cut down on rampant plastic waste A line of purple, plastic cups grows longer on the counter at Avid Coffee as Sam Gearhard takes orders at the Petaluma, California, store on a recent weekday morning. The cups might seem unassuming, but they’re part of a groundbreaking new scheme that has the community buzzing. Instead of the single-use paper or plastic cups that Gearhard would usually line up for the barista slinging espresso, he’s passing over shiny new reusable cups that bear the slogan “Sip, Return, Repeat”. Customers who need their lattes to go can take the purple cups with them, then return them to one of 60 bins scattered across downtown Petaluma when they’ve finished. Each cup comes with a trackable QR code to help monitor results. Continue reading...

I see looming political and environmental threats – and too few willing to address them. Where is the urgency? The world is on fire. At no time since the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 has the world looked so dangerous, nor has an end to its 56 conflicts – the highest number since the second world war – seemed so distant and so difficult to achieve. Distracted by domestic election campaigns, preoccupied by internal divisions and blindsided by the seismic geopolitical shifts happening beneath our feet, the world is sleepwalking into a “one world, two systems”, “China v America” future. And the cooperation needed to firefight is proving so elusive that even now, an international agreement to prepare for and prevent global pandemics remains beyond our grasp. Nor, even up against the existential problem of climate change (the planet is on course for a temperature increase of 2.7C above pre-industrial levels), can many hold out hopes that Cop29 in Azerbaijan will be equal to the challenge. At a time when global problems urgently need global solutions, the gap between what we need to do and our capacity – or, more accurately, our willingness – to do so is widening by the minute. We are at a global turning point, not just because crises are multiplying far beyond the very public tragedies of the Ukraine and Israel-Gaza wars, but because in a year when nearly half the world has gone to the polls, few political candidates have been prepared to acknowledge the altered geopolitical landscape. For three seismic shifts that are bringing to an end the unipolar, neoliberal hyperglobalised world of the last 30 years make a total rethink essential. Gordon Brown is a former UK prime minister; he will give a keynote lecture at the Edinburgh international festival on Sunday 25 August Continue reading...

US specialist on invasive species says the densities of the destructive pest are approaching what he has seen in Texas Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast Parts of Queensland have as many fire ants as Texas – a hotbed of the uncontrolled infestation that costs the US billions of dollars each year, an expert has warned Dr Robert Puckett is an American specialist on invasive ant species and he’s followed Australia’s efforts to eradicate fire ants since they were discovered in Brisbane 23 years ago. Sign up for Guardian Australia’s breaking news email Continue reading...