Milwaukee Brewers owner Mark Attanasio accused by fellow billionaire of using public beach as ‘personal sandbox’
In the posh city of Malibu, Barbie and Ken rollerblade, homes sell for up to $210m – and a billionaire is digging up the beach.
In a lawsuit filed last week, the local resident James Kohlberg alleges that his neighbor, the billionaire businessman and baseball team owner Mark Attanasio, has been using construction equipment to excavate Malibu’s Broad Beach and move sand on to his private property.
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08/16/2024 - 08:41
08/16/2024 - 07:00
Analysis of Inflation Reduction Act suggests working-class Americans missing out on renewable energy transition
The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), passed exactly two years ago, was pitched as a policy that puts the “middle class first”. But the spending bill’s residential tax credits have so far disproportionately benefited wealthy families, new data indicates.
That’s a major challenge for the efforts to decarbonize the US economy in time to avert the worst consequences of the climate crisis.
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08/16/2024 - 07:00
Friederike Otto of World Weather Attribution says poor people and outdoor workers are dying around the world
Heat inequality is causing thousands of unreported deaths in poor countries and communities across the world, a leading analyst of climate impacts has warned, following global temperature records that may not have been seen in 120,000 years.
Sweltering conditions act as a stealthy killer that preys on the most economically fragile, said Friederike Otto, co-founder of World Weather Attribution, in an appeal for the media and authorities to pay more attention to the dangers.
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08/16/2024 - 06:54
People say they are determined and that prevention will be key to mitigating the effects of the climate crisis
“I used to talk to them every day.” Dimitris Petrou takes in the creatures that were once his fluffy chicks but now look like coals. The buckled cage with its carbonised birds is part of the cataclysmic scenery left behind by the fire that bore down on Athens after raging across the Attica plains consuming everything in its path.
The 72-year-old retiree and his wife, Frosso, though red-eyed and fatigued, are “somehow still going” but are profoundly shocked.
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08/16/2024 - 06:00
Compound used in refrigeration and air conditioning accumulates at much higher levels that other chemicals
Rain and air samples collected in metro Detroit that researchers checked for toxic PFAS “forever chemicals” showed the highest levels of TFA, an alarming finding because the compound is a potent greenhouse gas and more toxic than previously thought, but not well-studied.
While PFAS are a chemical class known to be ubiquitous in the environment, the new research is part of growing evidence around the globe that points to TFA, commonly used in refrigeration, air conditioning and clean energy technology, accumulating at much higher levels than other well-studied compounds.
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08/16/2024 - 05:38
An oarfish, which resembles a serpent, was found floating dead on the ocean surface off the San Diego coast and was brought ashore for study. Scientists say it is only the 20th time since 1901 an oarfish is known to have washed up in California
Stonehenge megalith came from Scotland, not Wales, ‘jaw-dropping’ study finds
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08/16/2024 - 04:17
In issuing the protection order, environment minister Tanya Plibersek said ‘protecting cultural heritage and development are not mutually exclusive’
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The federal government has made a rare protection order under Indigenous heritage legislation to protect a sacred site near Blayney in western New South Wales from becoming the site of a tailings dam for a goldmine.
The environment minister, Tanya Plibersek, made a partial declaration under section 10 of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage Protection (ATSHIP) Act to protect part of the headwaters of the Belubula River on Kings Plains, which was the proposed site of a tailings dam for the McPhillamys goldmine.
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08/16/2024 - 04:09
Data shows continued surge in wind and solar power amid hopes Chinese greenhouse gas emissions may have peaked
China added as much new clean energy generation in the first half of this year as the UK produced from all sources in the same period last year, data shows, as wind and solar power generation continued to surge in the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases.
Electricity generation from coal and gas dropped by 5% in China in July, year on year, according to an update from the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) thinktank, basing its analysis on data released by the Chinese government on Thursday.
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08/16/2024 - 02:00
The best of this week’s wildlife photographs from around the world
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08/16/2024 - 02:00
I smugly assumed I was offering my children a crash course in wholesomeness. The reality was quite different
Earlier this week, I dropped my kids off at a day camp in a park in London and then congratulated myself all the way home. The summer holiday is long and camp programmes are expensive, and when you sign up for one, there is a hard-to-resist expectation that the kids will be not only entertained but improved – physically (swimming lessons), morally (team games – specifically rounders) and, in the case of the camp we signed up for, spiritually. By which, of course, I refer to two sacred words in the middle-class lexicon: forest school.
I should say I’m completely down with the broad mission of forest school. Adults and children are improved by spending time in nature; studies and experience show this. There is a difference, however, between forest school the movement, a laudable push to get kids learning outside based on ideas that stretch back to the 19th century and popularised in the 1950s by, of course, the Scandinavians, and forest school, the modern marketing and business initiative. It reminds me of the catnip status latterly occupied by Mandarin lessons in the New York state primary system, which, when my three-year-olds started pre-school in 2018 – one of them still wearing pull-ups – saw them slogging each week through a mandatory class. There is nothing wrong with learning Mandarin, but it is perhaps not a priority for people who can’t use the toilet yet.
Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist
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