The bank is latest to be named by officials in the US state, which has law to protect oil and gas sector
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Texas officials have added NatWest Group to a growing list of financial firms considered to be taking part in a “boycott” of energy companies, in a move that could limit the UK bank’s business with the oil-rich US state.
The high street banking group is the latest company to be targeted by the Texas comptroller, Glenn Hegar, who has been naming companies that restrict their business dealings with climate-harming fossil fuel firms.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
08/15/2024 - 03:36
08/15/2024 - 00:49
Exclusive: Fish farms in Macquarie Harbour are the greatest threat to survival of ancient ray-like species, scientists advising Australian government find
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Scientists advising the Australian government on how to save the threatened Maugean skate from extinction have recommended the salmon industry be either scaled back dramatically or removed from Tasmania’s Macquarie Harbour after finding fish farms are the greatest threat to its survival.
The advice is included in a report by the government’s threatened species scientific committee that says the skate – an ancient ray-like species found only in the harbour in the state’s west – should be considered critically endangered.
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08/15/2024 - 00:00
Rentokil to use the wasps as a sustainable alternative to sprays in museums and homes
The newest recruits for the battle against moths will be the smallest pest control team in town.
Rentokil plans to release entosite parasitoid wasps into the nooks and crannies of museums, heritage sites and homes to stop moth infestations.
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08/14/2024 - 23:00
Butterfly numbers in the UK appear to be at the lowest on record after a wet spring and summer dampened their chances of mating. This comes on top of a long and worrying trend of decline. To find out what’s going on and what we can all do to help butterflies cope with extreme weather patterns, Phoebe Weston speaks to Dr Richard Fox, the head of science for the charity Butterfly Conservation, and to Matthew Hayes, who is part of the Banking on Butterflies project, a collaboration between the Insect Ecology Group at the zoology department in Cambridge University and the Wildlife Trust for Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Northamptonshire
‘Warning sign to us all’ as UK butterfly numbers hit record low
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08/14/2024 - 23:00
Surveys suggest that wet weather and habitat deterioration are among the causes of devastating population declines, but there are ways to help
When Christina Letanka moved to Chiddingly village in East Sussex 28 years ago, insects were everywhere. “Everything was prolific when we first arrived,” she says. The kitchen used to be full of flies during the day and moths at night, swarming under the light. “Now they’ve all gone.”
Fewer butterflies, wasps and hornets dance around in the garden. “Normally everything comes out with the buddleia, but this year has been surprisingly bad – it’s dead,” Letanka says. “Is it the wet? I don’t know what’s happened. It’s been truly shocking.”
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08/14/2024 - 23:00
After a series of mass mortality events, it is more common to find these huge Mediterranean clams dead. Which is why the species’ ‘biggest fangirl of all’, Susan Smillie, is thrilled to see a thriving population in Greece
I swim and I stare as my shadow causes panic on the seabed below. Shells snap shut, one, two, three. Alive, alive, alive. I am so happy to see them: noble pen shells, all improbably but indisputably alive. These giant Mediterranean clams are a species on the verge of extinction, with so few left that it is rare to find one living anywhere in Europe.
Often known as fan mussels, the moniker is a suitable one for this beautiful bivalve, its pearlescent point dug into the sand, fanning up to a rounded posterior. I’m in the Amvrakikos Gulf on the west coast of Greece, where I have the privilege of watching these creatures grow. Their presence is such good news that Spanish scientists have flown in to see the clams for themselves as part of an EU project focused on trying to rescue, and hopefully expand, what is left of the pen shell population.
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08/14/2024 - 18:01
District councils in low-lying areas say they have cut day-to-day services such as bin collections to fund pumping stations
The costs of preventing major floods caused by extreme weather and excessive rainfall have fuelled a growing financial crisis among district councils in low-lying areas of England, ministers have been warned.
Districts in the east of the country say they are having to cut day-to-day services such as bin collections to meet dramatic and unsustainable rises in payments levied to fund pumping stations used to protect communities from flooding.
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08/14/2024 - 14:14
LNG exports responsible for $957m in total annual US health costs, says new Greenpeace and Sierra Club report
The expansion of liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports is responsible for scores of premature deaths and nearly $1bn in annual health costs, according to a new report from the green groups Greenpeace and Sierra Club.
The report links air pollution from LNG export terminals to an estimated 60 premature deaths and $957m in total health costs each year, and found that if all planned and proposed terminals come online, those numbers would shoot up to 149 premature deaths and $2.33bn.
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08/14/2024 - 11:46
New analysis has shown that the UK's first large scale offshore mussel farm might in fact serve as a form of restoration rather than creating habitats never seen in the area before. A map dating from 1871 shows a large area of the seabed -- stretching from Torquay in the west and beyond Lyme Regis to the east -- as being home to 'rich shell beds'. The region has now been transformed from muddy sediment with limited biodiversity into reefs, which research has shown have the potential to benefit a number of commercial fish and crustacean species and the ecosystem more generally.
08/14/2024 - 11:42
The distribution of species around the globe is not a random process but an outcome resulting from several evolutionary mechanisms as well as past and current environmental limitations. As a result, since the mid-19th century, biologists have identified several main regions, called biogeographic realms, that depict these large ensembles of species around the world. These biogeographic realms represent one of the most fundamental descriptions of biodiversity on Earth and are commonly used in various fields of biology.
