Advocacy groups are better prepared than the first term for legal challenges – but will the administration obey rulings?
Amid spending freezes and policy rollbacks from Donald Trump, environmental advocacy groups are gearing up for a long series of legal showdowns with the administration.
The experience of suing Trump during his first term has left the movement better prepared, but the court battles will still be daunting, with the administration appearing to test the nation’s legal boundaries in an effort to consolidate power under the executive branch.
Continue reading...
02/26/2025 - 06:00
02/26/2025 - 06:00
It’s time to rethink how climate action succeeds. The key is to acknowledge that it’s never the sole force driving political decisions
We are witnessing the most devastating climate disasters on record: wildfires ravaging Los Angeles, deadly floods in North Carolina, and global temperature records shattered month after month. We have officially surpassed 1.5C of warming, a critical threshold scientists have long warned against. At the same time, the US is scaling back policies, freezing critical programs and shifting priorities away from climate action.
But now isn’t the time to give up on climate action. Instead, it is high time to rethink how it succeeds.
Continue reading...
02/26/2025 - 05:27
Firm confirms plans to scale back green energy efforts and ‘fundamentally reset’ strategy
Business live – latest updates
BP will abandon its green ambitions by increasing its oil and gas investment to $10bn a year as part of a fundamental reset of the troubled company’s strategy.
The company has confirmed that it will scrap its plan to cut its fossil fuel production and will instead grow production to 2.3m–2.5m barrels of oil a day by the end of the decade.
Continue reading...
02/26/2025 - 01:00
Thousands of seafarers are left on board their vessels in foreign waters, unpaid, with scant supplies – and no way of getting home
When Vihaan* set off from his home in Tamil Nadu, south India, to work on a vessel crossing the Bay of Bengal into neighbouring Bangladesh, he told his family he would be gone a few months. After delivering his cargo of stone to Bangladesh’s Kutubdia Island, the marine engineer was due to head home in March 2024 to disembark at Thoothukudi port, India.
But that month, the rusting tug, the Navimar 3, which was being operated by Middle East Marine (MEM), was detained by the authorities in Bangladesh due to unpaid fees. For almost a year, Vihaan has become a virtual prisoner on board, he says, forced to work without pay to keep the vessel safe, amid strong currents where it is anchored off the island in the cyclone-prone bay. His passport and certification documents are being held by a local agent for the Dubai-based company. With no means of getting home, no visa to disembark and without supplies, he has to rely on food and water from charities and unions.
Continue reading...
02/25/2025 - 21:06
Boat tour captures video of Northern right whale dolphins, Pacific white-sided dolphins and light grey baby calves
More than 2,000 dolphins gathered off the California coast to form a “superpod”, gliding and breaching the clear, aquamarine waters off Monterey Bay.
The superpod included Northern right whale dolphins and Pacific white-sided dolphins, as well as light grey baby calves. Evan Brodsky, a captain and videographer with the private boat tour company Monterey Bay Whale Watch, captured a video of the dolphins, and his company shared it on Facebook, calling the spectacle “mind-blowing”.
Continue reading...
02/25/2025 - 19:01
Volklec aims to start making batteries at part-government-funded site near Coventry before building its own factory
A startup has said it has learned from Britain’s faltering attempts to manufacture batteries for electric vehicles, as it signed a deal to license technology from an established Chinese firm.
Coventry-based Volklec plans to manufacture batteries for cars, boats, construction vehicles and aircraft using technology from China’s Far East Battery (FEB), a maker of batteries mainly for electric bikes.
Continue reading...
02/25/2025 - 17:57
Beaches in southern California littered with timber, twisted metals, charred silt and urban runoff from Palisades fire
Los Angeles county beaches are contending with the aftermath of recent wildfires and winter storms as debris from the Palisades fire and urban runoff are carried to the shoreline.
After last week’s major rainstorm, beaches in southern California have been littered with timber, twisted metals, construction materials and charred silt and sediment originating from the Palisades fire, which started on 7 January and killed at least 29 people.
Continue reading...
02/25/2025 - 10:00
An educator, archaeologist and scientist were among the thousands of government workers culled by Musk’s agency
The Trump administration has fired at least 20,000 government employees in its first month, as Elon Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) dramatically overhauls work at federal agencies. Some economists have speculated that these terminations, which could affect nearly 300,000 workers, will be the biggest job cuts in US history.
Most of the workers cut were in probationary periods and lacked job protections that come with longer terms of employment. In social media spaces, especially the r/fednews subreddit, these workers described scenes of confusion and feelings of anger directed at Musk, an unelected billionaire dubbed a “special government employee” by the White House. Last week, unions for federal workers sued the Trump administration for unlawfully using probationary periods to cut staff.
Continue reading...
02/25/2025 - 10:00
Dry pattern seen among entire ‘lower basin’ of the Colorado River, including Arizona and desert cities such as Las Vegas
Dramatic rainstorms earlier this month brought more than 6in of rain to the California mountains – a full month’s worth of rain in little more than a day – but the deluge wasn’t enough to reverse a worsening drought trend that is set to intensify further in the coming weeks and months.
Along the iconic Pacific Coast highway in Malibu, where just weeks earlier flames leveled hundreds of oceanside homes, a Los Angeles firefighter was washed out to sea, and later rescued.
Continue reading...
02/25/2025 - 09:59
Union conference dominated by row over planned inheritance tax changes as farmers battle the bad weather and turbulent geopolitics
Farmers are warning of a “cashflow crisis” that has left many in the agricultural sector wondering how they will make it to the end of the year.
At the annual meeting of the National Farmers’ Union (NFU) of England and Wales, its president told members that “bad policy, geopolitics and unprecedented weather” had left some sectors of UK farming “in the worst cashflow crisis ever”.
Continue reading...