Exclusive: Climate action blockers including Saudi Arabia, Russia and major fossil fuel firms set to make extra $234bn by end of 2026
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The world’s top 100 oil and gas companies banked more than $30m every hour in unearned profit in the first month of the US-Israeli war in Iran, according to exclusive analysis for the Guardian. Saudi Aramco, Gazprom and ExxonMobil are among the biggest beneficiaries of the bonanza, meaning key opponents of climate action continue to prosper.
The conflict pushed the price of oil to an average of $100 (£74) a barrel in March, leading to estimated windfall war profits for the month of $23bn for the companies. Oil and gas supplies will take months to return to pre-war levels and the companies will make $234bn by the end of the year if the oil price continues to average $100. The analysis uses data from leading intelligence provider Rystad Energy, analysed by Global Witness.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
04/15/2026 - 06:02
04/15/2026 - 06:00
Migrant labor fuels much of Vermont’s dairy industry, but workers are exempt from minimum wage rules, overtime protections and the right to unionize
Hilario’s work shift on a Vermont dairy farm began at 10.30pm when he lifted a red fleece blanket and rose from a makeshift bed next to the kitchen sink.
The 65-year-old pushed aside a lace curtain that covered his apartment door, dividing his room from the dairy’s sour-smelling milking parlor. In the barn, a horseshoe-shaped milking platform hummed awake. Super-producer black-and-white Holstein cows, twice Hilario’s size, peered out from vinyl curtains.
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04/15/2026 - 05:00
Analysis shows whales’ coda vocalizations are ‘highly complex’ and remarkably similar to our own
We may appear to have little in common with sperm whales – enormous, ocean-dwelling animals that last shared a common ancestor with humans more than 90 million years ago. But the whales’ vocalized communications are remarkably similar to our own, researchers have discovered.
Not only do sperm whale have a form of “alphabet” and form vowels within their vocalizations but the structure of these vowels behaves in the same way as human speech, the new study has found.
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04/15/2026 - 02:00
Warmer weather has benefited some species in Britain, but others that rely on specific plants or habitats have struggled
“Insectageddon” has not occurred, but there has been a loss of butterfly diversity over the past half a century, according to the world’s largest insect monitoring scheme.
More than 44m butterfly sightings scientifically collected in Britain since 1976 show that of the 58 native species recorded, 33 species have declined and 25 have increased in number.
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04/14/2026 - 18:01
Air pollution caused by wildfires is another blow to northern Thailand’s tourism industry as businesses suffer amid war in Iran
The Doi Suthep temple in northern Thailand is known for its spectacular views of Chiang Mai and the lush forested mountains that surround it. Over recent weeks, though, visitors can see little of the city beyond a thick cloud of grey haze.
Persistent wildfires have caused intense air pollution across the north of Thailand, forcing three provinces to declare emergencies and triggering spikes in pollution-related illnesses.
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04/14/2026 - 15:54
Suit alleges the billionaire’s AI company is illegally spewing toxic pollutants from its datacenter in the Memphis area
A new lawsuit accuses Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company of illegally spewing toxic pollutants into the Black neighborhoods on the border of Tennessee and Mississippi.
The suit, filed on Tuesday in Mississippi federal court, alleges xAI is violating the Clean Air Act due to emissions from its makeshift power plant in Southaven, Mississippi, which powers its datacenters in south Memphis. The NAACP, represented by environmental groups Southern Environmental Law Center and Earthjustice, says xAI has been polluting the surrounding historically Black communities by using dozens of methane gas generators without permits. The organization is seeking to force the company to stop operating its unpermitted turbines in Southaven.
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04/14/2026 - 10:00
Australia is well behind other countries in embracing clean cars – it’s past time we kicked into gear on going electric
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It is tempting to think about what could have been. In 2020, a time many people would prefer to forget, there was a significant push to set an end date for the sale of new petrol and diesel cars.
The UK had announced a ban from 2030. India – the world’s most populous country and which, like Australia and the UK, uses right-hand-side drive cars – had a target to do the same. In Norway, about 60% of new cars were already electric.
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04/14/2026 - 08:00
Trump’s EPA chief Lee Zeldin’s presence shows how much influence climate deniers now have, experts say
As scientists confirmed that March was the United States’ most abnormally hot month in recorded history, dozens of climate deniers gathered to promote misinformation and tout their newfound influence on federal policy.
At a conference hosted by the prominent science-denying thinktank the Heartland Institute last week, a crowd of mostly middle-aged men in suits claimed the world is finally waking up to the idea that the climate crisis does not exist.
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04/14/2026 - 07:00
From peak-bagging to thru-hiking, Americans have turned traversing land into personal milestones. This wilderness ranger and Indigenous writer has witnessed it firsthand
Këmituxwe Éhènta Wehikiyànkw
You are walking in our old homeland
After spending 12 years backpacking some of America’s wildest trails as a wilderness ranger for the US Forest Service – and then losing that job to politics – last spring I set out for the Appalachian Trail (AT), the longest hiking-only footpath in the world.
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04/14/2026 - 06:00
Rising temperatures and extreme drought are driving more destructive spring fires across the Great Plains. This year, forces aligned to create the perfect storm in Nebraska
In a normal year, the vast grasslands that roll across the American Great Plains would be starting to green. But at the center of the US, where most of the nation’s beef producers graze their herds, this spring brought fire instead of moisture, leaving more than a million acres black and barren.
Multiple blazes raged across Nebraska, where the records for the annual acreage burned were obliterated in a single month. The state logged the largest blaze ever recorded when the Morrill fire cascaded across more than 642,000 acres (260,000 hectares) before it was contained in March.
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