In a booming sector where the biggest ships have doubled in size since 2000, pressure is growing to make cruising a greener, more sustainable way to travel
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Toxic, filthy and cheap, the sludge-like substance known as heavy fuel oil has powered the shipping industry since the 1960s. What is perhaps less well known is that this same substance is still used to power more than half of cruise ships today, making what many choose as an alternative to flying one of the most environmentally damaging ways to travel.
The good news is that the industry, under pressure from environmentalists and new regulations, is adopting new technologies, energy saving designs and studying alternative fuels.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
11/28/2024 - 02:00
11/28/2024 - 00:43
As Australia’s natural environment declines, Labor appears to cave to vested interests, writes Felicity Wade
On Thursday we were hoping to be celebrating the Australian parliament passing legislation to create a federal Environmental Protection Agency, an expert watchdog to oversee our country’s natural bounty. This was going to be a major moment for which my organisation, the Labor Environment Action Network (LEAN) and many others had worked for years. Promised on the eve of the 2022 election, it was the centre-piece of the Labor’s commitment to the environment. But late on Tuesday afternoon the legislation was moth-balled.
It is a sad and sorry tale.
Felicity Wade is national co-convener of the Labor Environment Action Network
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11/28/2024 - 00:40
The case, brought by the EDO on behalf of three Tiwi Island traditional owners, was dismissed in January in a scathing judgment
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The federal court has ordered the Environmental Defenders Office to pay $9m in costs to Santos after a failed legal challenge to the company’s Barossa offshore gas project.
The case, brought by the EDO on behalf of three Tiwi Island traditional owners, was dismissed in January when Justice Natalie Charlesworth delivered a scathing judgment that made adverse findings against the legal firm.
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11/28/2024 - 00:00
Devastated by quota changes post-Brexit, fishers are pinning all their hopes on Ireland’s politicians as they head into a general election
Words and pictures by Finbarr O’Reilly
Gale force winds gusting across the North Atlantic Ocean kicked up thick spumes of spray from the heaving swell soon after the Ocean Crest and Carmona trawlers left the main Irish fishing port of Killybegs in County Donegal. No other boats were fishing in the area when the storm swept over Ireland’s north-west coast. This was February, and the window for catching migrating mackerel was quickly closing but the two trawlers had yet to fill their quotas.
“This weather is about the limit of what we can fish in,” said skipper Gerard Sheehy as the nose of the Ocean Crest plunged into the trough of a swell, sending a wall of white water crashing over the hull and wheelhouse windows, momentarily obscuring the view before the vessel tilted back upwards into an oncoming wave.
Skipper Gerard Sheehy (centre) with his crew aboard the Ocean Crest in February
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11/28/2024 - 00:00
Across the globe, vast swathes of land are being left to be reclaimed by nature. To see what could be coming, look to Bulgaria
Abandonment, when it came, crept in from the outskirts. Homes at the edge of town were first to go, then the peripheral grocery stores. It moved inward, slow but inexorable. The petrol station closed, and creeper vines climbed the pumps, amassing on the roof until it buckled under the strain. It swallowed the outer bus shelters, the pharmacies, the cinema, the cafe. The school shut down.
Today, one of the last institutions sustaining human occupation in Tyurkmen, a village in central Bulgaria, is the post office. Dimitrinka Dimcheva, a 56-year-old post officer, still keeps it open two days a week, bringing in packages of goods that local shops no longer exist to sell. Once a thriving town of more than 1,200, Tyurkmen is now home to fewer than 200 people.
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11/27/2024 - 14:00
A groundbreaking international study shows how chemical fingerprints left by 'underappreciated' aquatic organisms could help scientists monitor global environmental change.
11/27/2024 - 13:08
Exclusive: Stellantis executive’s recent comments to investors undermine claim Luton closure was down to emission mandate
No need to mourn Just Eat’s exit from LSE
The owner of Vauxhall told investors that it was “confident” it would meet the UK’s rules on electric vehicle sales just two months before it blamed them for the decision to close a factory in Luton, the Guardian can reveal.
Stellantis cited the UK’s zero-emission vehicle (ZEV) mandate when it announced the closure of its van factory in Bedfordshire on Tuesday, putting 1,100 workers at risk of redundancy or relocation to its factory making smaller vans in Ellesmere Port.
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11/27/2024 - 10:34
Exclusive: National landscapes’ chiefs say environment secretary has given no budget assurances and they are to expect cuts
Proposed cuts to England’s most beautiful landscapes pose an “existential threat”, the managers of the National Landscapes Association have warned.
These 46 regions, including the Chilterns, the Cotswolds, the Wye Valley and the north Pennines, used to be known as areas of outstanding natural beauty but were renamed this year as “national landscapes”. They cover 15% of England, including 20% of the coastline.
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11/27/2024 - 10:07
Source of Philadelphia’s drinking water sees salt line pushed closer to city by drought and sea level rise
Salty ocean water is creeping up the Delaware River, the source for much of the drinking water for Philadelphia and millions of others, brought on by drought conditions and sea level rise, and prompting officials to tap reservoirs to push the un-potable tide back downstream.
Officials say drinking water is not imminently at risk, but they are monitoring the effects of the drought on the river and studying options for the future in case further droughts sap the area, amid the climate crisis.
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11/27/2024 - 08:14
Fossil fuel and chemical industry representatives outnumber those of the EU or host country South Korea
Record numbers of plastic industry lobbyists are attending global talks that are the last chance to hammer out a treaty to cut plastic pollution around the world.
The key issue at the conference will be whether caps on global plastic production will be included in the final UN treaty. Lobbyists and leading national producers are furiously arguing against any attempt to restrain the amount that can be produced, leaving the talks on a knife-edge.
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