Ex-president refers to climate crisis as ‘one of the great scams’ and plans to attend two fundraisers in oil-rich Texas
As research finds that the deadly Hurricane Helene was greatly exacerbated by global warming, Donald Trump is continuing to deny the climate crisis and court donations from the industry most responsible for planetary heating. Environmentalists worry that he will also gut flood protections and climate policy if he wins November’s presidential election.
Hours before Helene made landfall in Florida’s Big Bend region Thursday night as a major category 4 hurricane, Trump said, baselessly, nuclear “warming”, not the climate crisis, is “the warming that you’re going to have to be very careful with”. The following day, he said the “little hurricane” was partially responsible for attendees leaving his rallies early.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
10/01/2024 - 14:49
10/01/2024 - 11:39
US public sector workers’ retirement savings invested in projects that pump out a billion tonnes of emissions a year
Private equity firms are using US public sector workers’ retirement savings to fund fossil fuel projects pumping more than a billion tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere every year, according to an analysis.
They have ploughed more than $1tn (£750bn) into the energy sector since 2010, often buying into old and new fossil fuel projects and, thanks to exemptions from many financial disclosures, operating them outside the public eye, the researchers say.
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10/01/2024 - 11:00
Workers struggle with dehydration, fatigue dizziness and headaches – but state laws have stripped their protections
Every day, Raquel Atlahua begins her work as a roofer bracing for the blistering sun.
On the roof, there is no escape from the direct light and heat, and the temperatures in Florida quickly climb as the day progresses. The high humidity and lack of shade make it feel even hotter, and even more difficult to cool down.
This is the first of three stories about the US workers who are struggling to survive a summer of extreme heat that shattered records from coast to coast. Parts two and three coming soon.
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10/01/2024 - 10:31
Why do the mass killers of the fossil fuel industry walk free while the heroes trying to stop them are imprisoned?
The sentences were handed down just as Hurricane Helene hit North Carolina. As homes were smashed, trucks swept down roads that had turned into rivers and residents were killed, in the placid setting of Southwark crown court two young women from Just Stop Oil, Phoebe Plummer and Anna Holland, were sentenced to two years and 20 months, respectively, for throwing tomato soup at the glass protecting Van Gogh’s Sunflowers. No prison terms have been handed to the people whose companies deliver climate breakdown, causing the deaths of many thousands and destruction valued not at the £10,000 estimated by the court in damage to the painting’s frame but trillions.
Everywhere we see a farcical disproportion. The same judge, Christopher Hehir, presided over the trial of the two sons of one of the richest men in Britain, George and Costas Panayiotou. On a night out, they viciously beat up two off-duty police officers, apparently for the hell of it. One of the officers required major surgery, including the insertion of titanium plates in his cheek and eye socket. One of the brothers, Costas, already had three similar assault convictions. But Hehir gave them both suspended sentences. He also decided that a police officer who had sex in his car with a drunk woman he had “offered to take home” should receive only a suspended sentence. Hehir said he wanted “to bring this sad and sorry tale to its end with a final act of mercy”. The solicitor general referred the case to the court of appeal for being unduly lenient, and the sentence was raised to 11 months in jail.
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10/01/2024 - 10:00
At least 468 shot by government controllers last year out of an estimated population of as few as 2,640 in the state’s east, advocates say
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Traditional owners and dingo advocates say a Victorian government decision extending the right to kill dingoes on private and public land until 2028 could threaten local populations with extinction.
A government order, which took effect on Tuesday, declared dingoes were “unprotected wildlife” under the state’s Wildlife Act. The ruling means dingoes can be killed by trapping, poisoning or shooting across large parts of eastern Victoria, despite being listed as threatened under the state’s Flora and Fauna Guarantee Act.
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10/01/2024 - 10:00
RMIT-lead study recommends a national recycling scheme to reduce the 200,000 tonnes of textiles sent to landfill each year
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Most Australians are confused about what to do with their unwanted clothes, leading about a third to throw their closet clutter in the rubbish, according to the first national survey of clothing use and disposal habits.
The RMIT-led survey of 3,080 Australians found 84% of people owned garments they hadn’tworn in the past year, including a third who hadn’t touched more than half of their wardrobe.
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10/01/2024 - 06:36
Existing plant-based cheeses often fail to deliver the textures that dairy lovers prize
Stretchy dairy cheese could now be made without any cows, after the development of yeast strains that produce the crucial milk proteins.
The key to the development, by Israeli company DairyX, is producing casein proteins that are able to self-assemble into the tiny balls that give regular cheese and yoghurt their stretchiness and creaminess. Existing plant-based cheeses often fail to deliver the textures that dairy lovers prize, and the company believes it is the first to report this breakthrough.
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10/01/2024 - 05:00
The smell of chlorine pervades Conyers as residents say BioLab’s accident was a danger hiding in plain sight
For Vonnetta West the plume of smoke rising in the sky outside her home in the city of Conyers, Georgia, was a sign not just of immediate risk – but a danger that had been hiding in plain sight for years.
The plume was the result of an accident at the BioLab pool and spa chemical company in the city of nearly 20,000 residents about 25 miles east of Atlanta. Tens of thousands of people were impacted by an evacuation order for those immediately nearby or by the wider shelter-in-place order for those further away. The smell of chlorine drifted over much of the Atlanta area.
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10/01/2024 - 04:40
Government urged to use power to control companies such as Thames Water and reform the industry
Thames Water and other failing water companies should be placed into special administration to allow the government to tackle much-needed reforms to the industry, campaigners say.
Triggering special administration would put Thames and other failing companies in government control, removing company directors and ending the dividends paid to shareholders. The companies could then be transferred to new owners who could be publicly owned or controlled.
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10/01/2024 - 04:00
The historic North Carolina city was touted as a climate ‘haven’ – a reputation deadly Hurricane Helene left in ruins
Nestled in the bucolic Blue Ridge mountains of western North Carolina and far from any coast, Asheville was touted as a climate “haven” from extreme weather. Now the historic city has been devastated and cut off by Hurricane Helene’s catastrophic floodwaters, in a stunning display of the climate crisis’s unlimited reach in the United States.
Helene, which crunched into the western Florida coast as a category 4 hurricane on Thursday, brought darkly familiar carnage to a stretch of that state that has experienced three such storms in the past 13 months, flattening coastal homes and tossing boats inland.
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