Feed aggregator

Decision will affect mostly low-income Alabama residents as DoJ dismisses agreement over untreated sewage as DEI

The Trump administration has killed a landmark civil rights settlement requiring Alabama to address raw sewage pollution in majority-Black, residential areas south-west of Montgomery, dismissing it as an “illegal” diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) agreement.

The decision could condemn low-income people in Lowndes county, about 40 miles south-west of Montgomery, to indefinitely continue living with no or failing sanitation infrastructure.

Continue reading...

Americans have often moved between states for opportunities. Now they’re being forced to uproot themselves to escape hostile forces under Trump

Continue reading...

The Trump administration plans to dramatically reduce environmental reviews before permitting drilling and mining projects on public lands and in federal waters.

Vermont was the first state to try to hold polluters accountable for climate disasters. New research aims to assign specific responsibility.

The state of the climate future, Part I.

Virtual meeting of leaders also hears UN’s António Guterres proclaim ‘no group or government’ can stop green revolution

China will continue to push forward on the climate crisis, Xi Jinping has said while appearing to criticise the “protectionism” of Donald Trump’s tariff policies.

The Chinese president was attending a closed-door virtual meeting with the UN secretary general, António Guterres, Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, and about a dozen other heads of state and government to discuss the climate crisis.

Continue reading...

Spokesperson for Tory leader says she agrees with colleague that ‘we need to bring centre-right voters together’

Rosie Duffield, the independent MP who left Labour after the election in part because she felt her gender critical views made her unwelcome in the party (although her resignation letter focused on welfare issues), has claimed that Keir Starmer no longer arguing a trans woman is a woman shows he is a “manager rather than a leader”.

Speaking on LBC, Duffield said:

It’s just another sign of the prime minister’s lack of leadership skills. I’m bound to say that, he’s a manager rather than a leader. He responds and reacts rather than leads from the front, and this is what we’re seeing again from him.

Nigel Farage is peddling a dangerous fantasy by claiming the UK can be self-sufficient in gas.

After sixty years of drilling, the truth is the UK has already burned most of its gas. That’s down to geology, not politics, and no amount of hot air from Farage will change that.

Continue reading...

Support for climate action is growing in the US, but partisan divides and fossil fuel interests hold sway

Over the last 12 months, the United States has endured a rash of disasters worsened by the climate crisis: devastating wildfires in southern California, a catastrophic hurricane in western North Carolina, and deadly heatwaves across the country.

Americans increasingly believe global heating is a serious threat that will affect them personally – and 74% want to see more climate action. Yet while that sounds high, it is still lower than most other countries around the world. What explains this disparity?

Continue reading...

Liberals hoped he’d ordain women or allow gay marriage. Conservatives thought he’d tear up Church doctrine. But his papacy favored debate over radical action.

American Lung Association’s study says almost 156 million people live in areas with unhealthy levels of soot or smog

Almost half of Americans are breathing in dangerous levels of air pollutants, a new report shows, a rise compared with a year ago and likely to further increase in coming years thanks to the climate crisis and the Trump administration’s sweeping environmental rollbacks.

Just over 156 million people live in neighborhoods with unhealthy levels of soot or smog – a 16% rise compared with last year and the highest number in a decade, according to the American Lung Association (ALA) annual state of the air report.

Continue reading...

About 89% of the public want their governments to do more to tackle the climate crisis – but don’t know they’re the majority

• The Guardian is joining forces with dozens of newsrooms around the world to launch the 89% Project – and highlight the fact that the vast majority of the world’s population wants climate action. Read more

A superpower in the fight against global heating is hiding in plain sight. It turns out that the overwhelming majority of people in the world – between 80% and 89%, according to a growing number of peer-reviewed scientific studies – want their governments to take stronger climate action.

As co-founders of a non-profit that studies news coverage of climate change, those findings surprised even us. And they are a sharp rebuttal to the Trump administration’s efforts to attack anyone who does care about the climate crisis.

Mark Hertsgaard and Kyle Pope are the co-founders of the global journalism collaboration Covering Climate Now

Continue reading...

Take that Antony Greem

• Sign up here to get an email whenever First Dog cartoons are published
• Get all your needs met at the First Dog shop if what you need is First Dog merchandise and prints

Continue reading...

Labour must deliver the green transition voters want, leaving Reform and the Tories on the side of economic decline and dictators

Which former British prime minister described the climate emergency as “a clock ticking to the furious rhythm of hundreds of billions of pistons and turbines and furnaces and engines … quilting the Earth in an invisible and suffocating blanket of CO2”?

The florid style gives it away. You’d guess Boris Johnson even if you’d forgotten that the master of Brexit bombast also had a sideline in net zero evangelism. It wasn’t the most memorable part of his repertoire and it didn’t catch on as a Conservative catechism.

Rafael Behr is a Guardian columnist

Continue reading...

Weakening or rolling back longstanding environmental regulations would worsen the problem, the American Lung Association assessment says.

An ashen pallor and an eerie stillness all that remains where there should be fluttering fish and vibrant colours in the reefscape, one conservationist says

The world’s coral reefs have been pushed into “uncharted territory” by the worst global bleaching event on record that has now hit more than 80% of the planet’s reefs, scientists have warned.

Reefs in at least 82 countries and territories have been exposed to enough heat to turn corals white since the global event started in January 2023, the latest data from the US government’s Coral Reef Watch shows.

Continue reading...

Protesters interrupted an all-Balanchine program on the company’s spring season opening night, which coincided this year with Earth Day.

Al Gore launched an attack on the Trump administration saying there were 'important lessons' to be learned from similarities with the early rise of Nazi Germany. In a speech at a climate week event in San Francisco, Gore said: 'We've already seen, by the way, how popular authoritarian leaders have used migrants as scapegoats and have fanned the fires of xenophobia to fuel their own rise to power, and power-seeking is what this is all about'

Continue reading...

Leaders from many religions — including, notably, Pope Francis — have long sought to tie their faith to environmental stewardship.

Flips between warm temperatures to cold and vice versa have become quicker, more frequent and more intense in recent decades, a new study shows.

Former VP said the administration was creating its ‘own preferred reality’ and slammed it for green energy U-turn

• US politics live – latest updates

Al Gore said there were “important lessons” to be learned from similarities between the early rise of Nazi Germany and the recent actions of the Trump administration, in scathing comments made Monday during remarks about climate change.

During a speech at an event to mark the beginning of San Francisco’s Climate Week, the former vice-president and established climate advocate, said that the Trump administration was “trying to create their own preferred version of reality”, akin to the Nazi party during the 1930s in Germany, Politico reported.

Continue reading...