Dom Phillips’ posthumously published book is an urgent reminder of why this unique landscape matters so much
It doesn’t start for six months, but the build-up to the UN’s annual climate conference is already well under way in Brazil. Hosting the tens of thousands of delegates who make the trip is a big undertaking for any city. But the decision to host Cop30 in Belém, at the mouth of the Amazon river, has multiplied the complications.
After three consecutive Cops in autocratic nations, the stated aim of Cop30’s chair, André Aranha Corrêa do Lago, is to make this year’s event a showcase for civil society, including the Indigenous groups and forest defenders who play such a vital role in conservation. But the lack of affordable accommodation and other infrastructure, as well as the distance that must be travelled to reach the Amazon port, mean this commendable ideal will be hard to realise.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
05/20/2025 - 12:53
05/20/2025 - 11:11
A novel analysis suggests more than 3,500 animal species are threatened by climate change and also sheds light on huge gaps in fully understanding the risk to the animal kingdom.
05/20/2025 - 11:03
Study shows firms in Colorado, including Chevron, have pumped 30m lbs of chemicals in 18 months without meeting all disclosure rules
Colorado oil and gas companies have pumped at least 30m lbs of secret chemicals into the ground over the past 18 months without making legally required disclosures, according to a new analysis.
That’s in spite of first-in-the-nation rules requiring operators and their suppliers to list all chemicals used in drilling and extraction, while also banning any use of Pfas “forever chemicals” at oil and gas sites. Since the transparency law took effect in July 2023, operators have fracked 1,114 sites across the state, but as of 1 May chemical disclosures have not been filed for 675 of them – more than 60% of the total, the analysis says.
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05/20/2025 - 11:00
BP has funded Washington’s National Gallery of Art, UK’s Royal Shakespeare Company and National Portrait Gallery
Oil interests have funded cultural institutions such as museums, youth organizations and athletic groups in recent years, new research shows, in what appears to be a public relations effort to boost their image amid growing public awareness of the climate crisis.
Top US fossil fuel lobby group the American Petroleum Institute (API) sponsored a 2017 workshop for the Pennsylvania Girl Scouts, featuring “activities that mimicked work in the energy industry”. Energy giant BP in 2016 sponsored Washington DC’s National Gallery of Art and continues to fund the British Museum in London. And in 2019, Shell sponsored the golf event the Houston Open for the 26th time.
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05/20/2025 - 10:00
Simon Stiell says investors ‘ready to hit the go button’ if they have the right signals from governments
The climate crisis has raised the price of commodities and exacerbated famine – and only strong action on greenhouse gas emissions can restore economic stability, the UN’s climate chief has said.
Simon Stiell, the executive secretary of the UN framework convention on climate change, was speaking in Panama, where recent years of drought drove the water to perilous lows that disrupted international trade.
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05/20/2025 - 09:32
Governor lobbied Trump in a series of phone calls, and will now allow new gas pipeline capacity to move forward
US politics live – latest updates
The Trump administration has lifted a stop work order on a $5bn wind farm off the coast of New York after negotiations with the state to resume the major clean energy project, but cancelled plans for a gas pipeline could also be revived.
The month-long stop work order on the Empire Wind project came amid Donald Trump’s targeting of the wind industry in the first 100 days of his second term as the US president pushes a pro-fossil fuels agenda.
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Extinction Rebellion may have gone quiet, but climate protest will come roaring back | Oliver Haynes
05/20/2025 - 05:00
The pandemic and harsh laws suffocated climate movements as we knew them. Get ready for a new kind of action
On 21 April 2019, I was on Waterloo Bridge in London with my younger siblings. Around us were planters full of flowers where there were once cars, and people singing. This was the spring iteration of Extinction Rebellion, when four bridges in London were held by protesters. My siblings, then 14, had been going out on school strike inspired by Greta Thunberg, and wanted to see her speak.
We were there for less than a day, but the occupations of bridges and other blockades lasted for 11 days. Tens of thousands of people mobilised in the UK that spring. An estimated 500,000 people were affected by the shutdowns the movement imposed on central London’s road networks, and more than 1,000 protesters were arrested in what was then an official part of XR’s strategy.
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05/20/2025 - 04:00
Rising oceans will force millions away from coasts even if global temperature rise remains below 1.5C, analysis finds
Sea level rise will become unmanageable at just 1.5C of global heating and lead to “catastrophic inland migration”, the scientists behind a new study have warned. This scenario may unfold even if the average level of heating over the last decade of 1.2C continues into the future.
The loss of ice from the giant Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets has quadrupled since the 1990s due to the climate crisis and is now the principal driver of sea level rise.
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Researchers puzzled as baby whales spotted in unexpected places along Australia’s ‘humpback highway’
05/20/2025 - 03:34
Newborns seen in colder waters as far south as Tasmania, indicating breeding and migration more complex than thought
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Baby humpback whales are turning up in unexpected places.
In Australia, humpback mums were assumed to travel north to give birth in warmer, tropical waters – like the Great Barrier Reef – before migrating south with their calves along the “humpback highway” to feed in waters off Antarctica.
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05/19/2025 - 20:25
It remains unclear why the monkeys, filmed on a Panamanian island, were taking the babies from another species
Scientists have spotted surprising evidence of what they describe as monkey kidnappings while reviewing video footage from a small Panamanian island. Capuchin monkeys were seen carrying at least 11 howler babies between 2022 and 2023.
“This was very much a shocking finding,” said Zoë Goldsborough, a behavioural ecologist at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior in Germany. “We’ve not seen anything like this in the animal kingdom.”
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