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Lee Zeldin, E.P.A. Head, Shuts National Environmental Museum
A Quarter-Billion Dollars for Defamation: Inside Greenpeace’s Huge Loss
‘A pandemic-level shock to the system’: RFK Jr’s old environmental group weighs EPA cuts
Head of Riverkeeper, which helped clean up Hudson River, talks about challenges during the second Trump term
Donald Trump’s push to repurpose the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) amid funding cuts and staffing losses poses a huge threat to water safety and environmental advances in one of the big environmental success stories in the US in recent decades: the clean-up of the Hudson River.
Once a byword for environmental degradation, the Hudson River is now recovering, in part due to the work of Riverkeeper, a non-profit environmental organization that established a model of legal activism for water protection and inspired more than 300 programs globally. It is also where Robert F Kennedy Jr cut his teeth as an environmental lawyer, before becoming a senior member of Trump’s rightwing cabinet.
Continue reading...Clean energy spending boosts GOP districts. But lawmakers are keeping quiet as Trump targets incentives
We asked 18 Republicans whose districts benefit most from Biden’s IRA climate law if they back Trump’s demands
Billions of dollars in clean energy spending and jobs have overwhelmingly flowed to parts of the US represented by Republican lawmakers. But these members of Congress are still largely reticent to break with Donald Trump’s demands to kill off key incentives for renewables, even as their districts bask in the rewards.
The president has called for the dismantling of the Inflation Reduction Act – a sweeping bill passed by Democrats that has helped turbocharge investments in wind, solar, nuclear, batteries and electric vehicle manufacturing in the US – calling it a “giant scam”. Trump froze funding allocated under the act and has vowed to claw back grants aimed at reducing planet-heating pollution.
Continue reading...A New Dinosaur Museum Rises From a Hole in the Ground in New Jersey
Una antigua tradición japonesa se vuelve advertencia sobre el cambio climático
Rain records to fall in Queensland with Townsville to set new annual high – in April
Meanwhile, Adelaide records driest period in decades and Perth swelters through temperatures above 35C
- Outback deluge pushes Queensland towns to the brink: ‘Out here it’s drought or floods’
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Queensland cities and towns are dealing with the effects of flooding – including extensive stock losses and widespread damage – after a year’s worth of rain fell in a matter of days.
The north Queensland city of Townsville would “almost certainly” surpass its annual rainfall record this week, just three months into 2025, according to the Bureau of Meteorology’s senior meteorologist, Jonathan How.
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Continue reading...Work and money worry young people more than culture wars or climate, UK poll finds
Class, education and gender found to influence difference in views but anxiety about finances was a common theme
Young people are more worried about their finances, work pressures and job insecurity than social media, the climate crisis and culture war debates, research shows.
The polling also challenges the simplistic characterisation of generational conflict, revealing that differences within gen Z, whether around class, education or gender, are often more pronounced than the differences between generations.
Continue reading...The Guardian view on new forests: a vision born in the Midlands is worth imitating | Editorial
If a tree-planting scheme in western England can match the first national forest, people as well as wildlife will benefit
The benefits for bats were presumably not at the top of the government’s list of reasons for announcing the creation of the new western forest. The chancellor, Rachel Reeves, regards rules that protect these nocturnal mammals as a nuisance. Nevertheless, the rare Bechstein’s bat, as well as the pine marten and various fungi, are expected to be among species that benefit from the multiyear project, to which central government has so far committed £7.5m.
Like England’s only existing national forest, in the Midlands, this one will be broken up across a wide area, featuring grassland, farmland, towns and villages as well as densely planted, closed-canopy woodland. John Everitt, who heads the National Forest organisation (which is both a charity and a government arm’s length body), describes this type of landscape as “forest in the medieval sense with a mosaic of habitats”.
Continue reading...Bloom or bust? Superbloom spectacle eludes California after dry winter
Riot of native wildflowers that enthralled visitors in the past several years have failed to sprout due to too little rain
It’s one of the best known rites of spring in California: extraordinary displays known as “superblooms” that coat the hillsides in an abundance of color. Some years the blooms are massive enough to draw tourists from around the world to revel in the fields, such as in 2023 when more than 100,000 people showed up on a weekend to gawk at the poppies in Lake Elsinore, a small city about an hour outside Los Angeles.
But this year, not so much. Thanks to a brutally dry winter, the hills around the usual southern California superbloom hotspots have been conspicuously bare. Callista Turner, a state park ranger, could count the number of blooms on two hands as she surveyed the 8 miles (13km) of rolling hills at the Antelope Valley California Poppy Reserve in the final week of March, which is typically when superbloom season peaks. “We’re still waiting to see what kind of season we have,” she says. “It’s a very slow start.”
Continue reading...How hurricanes Otis and John exposed Acapulco’s big divide and left residents ‘scared for our lives’
The last two big storms to hit Mexico have left the city vulnerable to organised crime and in fear of the next climate shock
Flora Montejo always dreamed of buying her own home. After almost three decades working as a nurse, the 68-year-old invested her retirement savings in a two-storey house in San Agustín, a working-class suburb of the Mexican resort town of Acapulco.
Montejo’s retirement dream was shortlived. Not long after moving into her newly remodelled home, Hurricane John dumped record levels of rainfall on Acapulco, triggering landslides and flash floods after calm creeks turned into roaring rivers.
Continue reading...‘God knows what’s in the water’: Los Angeles surfers in limbo as wildfire toxins linger
In a city where surfing is a way of life, the wait to get back in the water has been agonizing. But new research offers a glimmer of hope
Alex Sinunu was used to surfing three or four times a week in Santa Monica Bay – after all, the beach was just a mile from his home and he could ride his bike there with his board. But ever since the megafires that swept through neighboring Pacific Palisades in early January, the ocean has been filled with ash, debris – and endless questions.
The massive blaze consumed thousands of homes and other structures, many of them on the edge of the Pacific coastline. Subsequent rainstorms sent tons of debris washing into the ocean, turned the water brown and raised fears about the toxins that could be coming from all the charred remains of buildings and cars – including asbestos, lithium-ion batteries and plastics.
Continue reading...Pension Funds Push Forward on Climate Goals Despite Backlash
How U.S. Airports Like Pittsburgh’s Generate Electricity On Site to Avoid Heathrow-Like Outages
How Lee Zeldin Went From Environmental Moderate to Dismantling the E.P.A.
Dutton refuses to release energy price cut modelling as protesters target his campaign
Opposition leader says he will ‘leave it to other experts to talk about’ while simultaneously criticising Labor’s ‘secret’ climate targets
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Peter Dutton is, for now at least, keeping in the shadows the modelling that he claims shows his gas policy will reduce electricity prices, while simultaneously criticising Anthony Albanese for not releasing Labor modelling on climate targets.
On day one of the election campaign, the opposition leader said the Liberals had commissioned modelling on his plan to increase gas supply in Australia, but he repeatedly declined to say what the model found about price impacts.
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Continue reading...Dark Laboratory: groundbreaking book argues climate crisis was sparked by colonisation
Tao Leigh Goffe argues climate breakdown is the mutant offspring of European scientific racism and colonialism
We all think we know what is causing the breakdown of the planet’s climate: burning fossil fuels that release carbon dioxide, change the chemistry of the air and trap more heat from the sun, leading to rising temperatures.
But Tao Leigh Goffe, an associate professor of Africana, Puerto Rican and Latino Studies at the City University of New York, wants us to visualise a far more specific cause: the shunting of a ship’s prow on to the sandbank of a paradise island in 1492.
Continue reading...How to Plan a Garden With Climate Change in Mind
I was an independent observer in the Greenpeace trial. What I saw was shocking | Steven Donziger
Greenpeace lost – not because it did something wrong but because it was denied a fair trial
The stunning $667m verdict against Greenpeace last week is a direct attack on the climate movement, Indigenous peoples and the first amendment.
The North Dakota case is so deeply flawed – at its core, the trial was really about crushing dissent – that I believe there is a good chance it will be reversed on appeal and ultimately backfire against the Energy Transfer pipeline company.
Continue reading...Weatherwatch: warmer water drives higher-than-expected rise in sea level
Nasa data for 2024 shows reversal of dynamic in which melting ice usually accounts for majority of increase
Normally, two-thirds of sea level rise is due to melting ice from mountain glaciers and Greenland and Antarctic ice caps, and one-third from the thermal expansion of the oceans.
Last year, the hottest year on record, this was reversed, with warmer water accounting for two-thirds of the sea level rise of 0.59cm (0.23in) – considerably more than the 0.43cm scientists were expecting. Nasa, the US agency that produces the figures from its satellite data, believes that the mixing of hotter surface waters with cooler sea at depth during an El Niño year may have caused this unexpected blip, although more violent winds could also have been a contributing factor.
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