Serendip is an independent site partnering with faculty at multiple colleges and universities around the world. Happy exploring!
You are here
Climate
E.P.A. Says It Will Tackle ‘Forever Chemicals.’ Details Are Sparse.
‘Exploitative’ contracts and hazardous conditions: life for some of the immigrants cleaning up wildfire-stricken LA
Advocates say workers risk their health and fear speaking out about conditions amid Trump’s immigration crackdown
On a sunny day in February three workers swept up the piles of ash left behind on an Altadena driveway from when the Eaton fire raged through the Los Angeles neighborhood the month before.
The flames of the blaze had consumed nearly every home on the street, leaving only brick chimneys and charred vehicles. Red signs at the entrances of properties warned in English: “Unsafe, do not enter or occupy … entry may result in death or injury.” Hazards such as lead paint, asbestos and batteries were strewn amongst the ashes, but few workers cleaning the neighborhood that day wore masks or other personal protective equipment (PPE).
Continue reading...Hello freedom fans! Ian the climate denialist potato is back – the REAL enemy is renewables! | First Dog on the Moon
These days they call him Ian the renewable energy is expensive potato
- 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
Monday briefing: As Just Stop Oil disbands, how will we remember the radical climate activist group?
In today’s newsletter: Notorious for its disruptive protests, the group’s radical tactics may be best known as a turning point in climate resistance
Good morning.
This weekend Just Stop Oil put down their soup cans, hung up their hi-vis and disbanded, saying that now the UK government had stopped extracting oil and gas from the North Sea, they had achieved what they set out to do back in 2022.
Ukraine | US President Donald Trump has said he thinks Volodymyr Zelenskyy is ready to give up Crimea, despite his Ukrainian counterpart’s previous assertions on the Black Sea peninsula annexed by Russia in 2014.
Canada | The suspect in a car-ramming attack that killed 11 people and injured dozens at a Filipino heritage festival in the Canadian city of Vancouver has been charged with eight counts of second degree murder, prosecutors have said.
UK economy | UK banks’ earnings reports will be studied this week for signs of turmoil linked to Donald Trump’s tariff drama, with uncertainty over global growth likely to weigh on lenders with heavy exposure to China, including HSBC.
Politics | The Liberal Democrats have publicly challenged Nigel Farage to give details of his party’s donations after calculating that Reform UK spent more than £2m on personalised letters to postal voters before the local elections.
Health | Consuming large amounts of ultra-processed food (UPF) increases the risk of an early death, according to a international study that has reignited calls for a crackdown on UPF.
Continue reading...The toxins around us threaten our fertility. Black families face an outsize risk
My fear growing up was gun violence. But a bigger threat to my body may have come from an invisible villain
Everyone experiences a moment that shapes who they are – a moment when childhood innocence is lost, and the burdens and traumas of the world become clearer.
For me, that moment occurred in elementary school when my friend discovered a gun in Englewood, New Jersey’s Denning Park. For days, I worried about what might be lurking behind the trees and in the shadows. This anxiety lingered through high school; I even wrote in my local newspaper that “I couldn’t remember anything more frightening for a young girl in elementary school”.
Continue reading...Trump order to loosen fishing regulations poses major risks, experts warn
Conservationists fear fallout from president’s proclamation on fishing in federally protected area of Pacific Ocean
Environmental conservation groups are expressing major concerns over Donald Trump’s recent proclamation to reverse fishing regulations across the Pacific Islands Heritage Marine national monument, a federally protected area in the central Pacific Ocean spanning nearly 500,000 sq miles.
As one of the most pristine tropical marine environments in the world, the monument is now at risk following Trump’s decision last week to unleash American commercial fishing in the area with far-reaching environmental consequences.
Continue reading...Why Australia’s most prominent climate change deniers have stopped talking about the climate
Global heating sceptics now argue it is more palatable with the electorate to pivot from climate denialism to anti-renewable energy scepticism
- Election 2025 live updates: Australia federal election campaign
- Polls tracker; election guide; full federal election coverage
- Anywhere but Canberra; interactive electorates guide
- Listen to the latest episode of our new narrative podcast series: Gina
- Get our afternoon election email, free app or daily news podcast
The only regular meeting of Australia’s Saltbush Club takes place most Thursday evenings at a golf club in Five Dock, in Sydney’s inner west. The group’s founding members – a collection of the country’s most prominent and avid global heating deniers – include Gina Rinehart, the former Queensland premier Campbell Newman, former Business Council of Australia head Hugh Morgan, and Coalition MP Colin Boyce.
At Five Dock, the crowd is mostly old and mostly white. They sometimes host contrarian speakers. But about six years ago, this gathering of climate sceptics decided to stop talking publicly about the climate.
Sign up for the Afternoon Update: Election 2025 email newsletter
Continue reading...‘Smart, green thinking’: four innovative London council carbon offset projects
Council housing microgrid and tube-powered heat network among schemes supported by Mayor of London fund
Carbon offset funding received from developers should be spent mostly on energy efficiency, renewable energy and district heating projects, according to guidance from the mayor of London. But some councils say the amount of funding they receive is often not enough to cover the cost of these kinds of projects.
However, others have found solutions to this by combining their offset cash with other sources of funding to pay for major projects. Perhaps the most innovative example of this is Islington council’s award-winning Bunhill heat and power network in north London, which has received more than £5m in offset funding.
Continue reading...How space exploration can improve life on Earth | Leigh Phillips
There is a cynical, ‘anti-space’ ideology emerging, especially on some parts of the left. But this is misguided
John F Kennedy once called space-faring “the most hazardous and dangerous and greatest adventure on which Man has ever embarked”. We go to space because, he said – like George Mallory said of his reason to conquer Everest – “it is there.”
While it is truer to say that the race for space between Washington and Moscow was driven as much by cold war competition as by humanity’s pioneering spirit and the imperatives of scientific exploration, billions of ordinary people around the world recognized as much at the time and still were able to marvel at our species’ accomplishments in the heavens regardless of the flag under which they were achieved, from Sputnik to the moon landing.
Continue reading...Climate Change, Once a Big Issue, Fades From Canada’s Election
Pacific island states urge rich countries to expedite plans to cut emissions
Developed countries pressed to submit national plans well before Cop30 as time runs out to avoid 1.5C temperature rise
Rich countries are dragging their feet on producing new plans to combat the climate crisis, thereby putting the poor into greater danger, some of the world’s most vulnerable nations have warned.
All governments are supposed to publish new plans this year on cutting greenhouse gas emissions, but so far only a small majority have done so, and some of the plans submitted have been inadequate to the scale of action needed.
Continue reading...‘People can’t imagine something on that scale dying’: Anohni on mourning the Great Barrier Reef
The Anohni and the Johnsons singer is collaborating with marine scientists for two special shows at Sydney’s Vivid festival that will show the reef’s plight
Anohni Hegarty is about to go to the Great Barrier Reef for the first time. “I feel like I’m going to Auschwitz,” she says nervously. “On the one hand, I’m so excited to go because the landscape is so beautiful, and I know there’s going to be so much that’s gorgeous. And yet, I’m also scared.”
In a week, the British-born, New York-based avant garde singer of Anohni and the Johnsons is flying to Lizard Island, a paradise of powdery sands on the reef, 1,600km north-west of Brisbane. Its luxury villas and bluest of blue waters are a stark contrast to the grim nature of Anohni’s assignment: documenting the current state of the world’s biggest coral reef.
Continue reading...The Trump Administration Wants Seafloor Mining. What Does That Mean?
Will Cop30 in Belém help or harm the Amazon?
Trees are being cleared for rainforest mega-event – but state governor says a ‘new history’ is under way
Fake metal trees have been set into the concrete ground of the Amazonian host city of this year’s climate summit, prompting scandalised contrasts with the once-living vegetation that has been cleared in preparation for Cop30 in Brazil.
But in an unlikely convergence of views, both the centre-right state governor and leftwing social movements insist this is a storm in a plant pot compared with the darkening geopolitical threats to the world’s biggest diplomatic gathering, which will take place in November in Belém.
Continue reading...‘A sweeping catastrophe’: 20 years after Hurricane Katrina, a photo exhibit honors Mississippi victims
Hurricane Katrina: Mississippi Remembers captures the grief and resilience of survivors in the Magnolia state
Twenty years ago this August, the United States Gulf coast was irrevocably changed when Hurricane Katrina, one of the deadliest and costliest storms to ever hit the country, made landfall. Making landfall as a strong category 3, the storm, which was so vast it stretched the length of the Mississippi Gulf coast all the way into Alabama, hit the Mississippi-Louisiana coastal border before continuing northward.
Since then, superstorms fueled by the climate crisis have become relatively commonplace in the country, but the impact of Katrina endures to this day. Immediately following the storm, the country and world were enthralled by tragic stories out of New Orleans, where the levees failed to a catastrophic effect and the local, state and federal responses were disastrous. But Mississippi, which received the maximum impact from the storm surge, was largely left out of the national narrative around Katrina.
Continue reading...At the Bruce Museum, a Climate Change Exhibit Inspired by Alaska
Lifesize herd of puppet animals begins climate action journey from Africa to Arctic Circle
The Herds project from the team behind Little Amal will travel 20,000km taking its message on environmental crisis across the world
Hundreds of life-size animal puppets have begun a 20,000km (12,400 mile) journey from central Africa to the Arctic Circle as part of an ambitious project created by the team behind Little Amal, the giant puppet of a Syrian girl that travelled across the world.
The public art initiative called The Herds, which has already visited Kinshasa and Lagos, will travel to 20 cities over four months to raise awareness of the climate crisis.
Continue reading...Elon Musk’s xAI accused of pollution over Memphis supercomputer
Hearing scheduled for Friday as residents receive anonymous leaflets that downplay pollution dangers
Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company is stirring controversy in Memphis, Tennessee. That’s where he’s building a massive supercomputer to power his company xAI. Community residents and environmental activists say that since the supercomputer was fired up last summer it has become one of the biggest air polluters in the county. But some local officials have championed the billionaire, saying he’s investing in Memphis.
The first public hearing with the health department is scheduled for Friday, where county officials will hear from all sides of the debate. In the run-up to the hearing, secretive fliers claiming xAI has low emissions were sent to residents of historically Black neighborhoods; at the same time, environmental groups have been amassing data about how much pollution the AI company is likely generating.
Continue reading...Trump Takes a Major Step Toward Seabed Mining in International Waters
Trump denies aid for Arkansas after storms that killed more than 40 people
Latest denial of disaster funding comes as Trump has repeatedly stated he wants to eliminate Fema
Donald Trump has denied federal disaster relief funds to the people of Arkansas, which saw dozens of people die from a series of deadly tornadoes last month, as legislators plead for him to reconsider.
More than 40 people have been found dead after a series of tornadoes and severe storms hit Arkansas and neighboring states Mississippi and Missouri in March, according to CNN.
Continue reading...