Delegates at UN treaty talks must not allow negotiations to be derailed again by fossil fuel interests
Plastic pollution has reached the most remote and inaccessible parts of our beleaguered planet. It has been found in Greenland’s ice cap, near the summit of Mount Everest, and in the deepest depths of the western Pacific Ocean. Nature programmes have sounded the alarm over a human-made crisis that has become an environmental scourge and a serious threat to our health. Yet global production of plastics is on course to triple to more than a billion tonnes a year by 2060, after increasing by more than 200 times over the past 75 years.
This gloomy backdrop should inject a sense of urgency into UN-convened talks in Switzerland this week, aimed at agreeing a binding global plastics treaty. In 2022, when 173 countries committed to work towards such an accord, there was widespread relief that at last a multilateral route was to be taken towards solving a quintessentially global problem. Sadly, as delegates gather in Geneva, there are reasons to be fearful.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
08/05/2025 - 13:00
08/05/2025 - 12:19
Large-scale search and rescue operation under way after at least four people killed in Himalayan region
A torrent of mud from a flash flood has smashed into a town in India’s Himalayan region, tearing down a mountain valley before demolishing buildings and killing at least four people, with about 100 others missing.
Videos broadcast on Indian media showed a terrifying surge of muddy water sweeping away blocks of flats in the tourist region of Dharali in Uttarakhand state.
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08/05/2025 - 10:00
Researchers warn reef may reach tipping point where coral cannot recover fast enough between major catastrophic events
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The Great Barrier Reef has suffered its biggest annual drop in live coral in two out of three areas monitored by scientists since 1986, a new report has revealed.
The Australian Institute of Marine Science (Aims) report is the first to comprehensively document the devastating impacts of the early 2024 mass coral bleaching event – the most widespread and severe on record for the Great Barrier Reef.
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08/05/2025 - 10:00
The Great Barrier Reef has seen the sharpest annual drop in the amount of live coral recorded by scientists in its northern and southern sections since monitoring started four decades ago, according to a report from the Australian Institute of Marine Science. The report is the first to comprehensively document the devastating impacts of the early 2024 mass coral bleaching event – the most widespread and severe event on record
A bellwether of change’: speed of glacier shrinking on remote Heard Island sounds alarm
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08/05/2025 - 10:00
Brazilian nightshade and climbing asparagus can be made into biomass pellets, presenting an opportunity for an alternative form of energy, scientists say
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Two invasive weed species could contribute to a creative solution to Australia’s energy transition – as ingredients for clean, renewable fuel.
Researchers at the University of Queensland found Brazilian nightshade and climbing asparagus – both aggressive vine species – can be converted into biomass pellets.
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08/05/2025 - 09:32
Settlement follows another one reached with Ohio in 2023 for similar claims related to ‘forever chemicals’
Chemours, DuPont and Corteva have agreed to pay $875m over 25 years to the state of New Jersey to settle environmental claims including pollution linked to Pfas, or “forever chemicals”, the companies said on Monday.
Lawsuits accusing major chemical companies of polluting US drinking water with toxic Pfas chemicals led to more than $11bn in settlements in 2023, with experts predicting that new federal regulations and a growing awareness of the breadth of the contamination will spur more litigation and settlements.
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08/05/2025 - 07:55
Bad weather hampers search for Alec Luhn after he set out for solo hike in remote Folgefonna national park
Rescuers in Norway have continued the search for an award-winning environmental journalist who has gone missing in bad weather during a solo hike in the remote Folgefonna national park, home to one of the country’s biggest glaciers.
Alec Luhn, a US-born reporter who has worked for the New York Times and the Atlantic, and was a regular Russia correspondent for the Guardian from 2013 to 2017, was reported missing on Monday after he failed to catch a flight to the UK from Bergen.
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08/05/2025 - 06:30
Coalition of non-profits, tribes and local governments sued EPA chief for halting climate justice grants
The Trump administration’s decision to abruptly terminate a $3bn program helping hundreds of communities prepare for climate disasters and environmental hazards is unconstitutional and should be overturned, a court will hear on Tuesday.
A coalition of non-profits, tribes and local governments is suing the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the agency’s administrator, Lee Zeldin, for terminating the entire Environmental and Climate Justice (ECJ) block grant program – despite a legally binding mandate from Congress to fund the Biden-era initiative.
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08/05/2025 - 02:00
The climate damage done by avoidable flying is huge, yet the government sees more planes as the answer to its economic woes
August is peak flying time, and airports are on many minds. The government has signalled its support for colossal expansions, whose extra flights would bust its carbon pledges. The excuse is that supertechnology will magic away the extra CO2 pumped into the atmosphere, though it must know that clean, green flying is still futurology. Here’s the pity of it: until now this government has rightly boasted of its green credentials, making massive investments in sustainable energy and retro-insulating cold homes. Expanding air travel is not on any green agenda.
Heathrow has just submitted proposals for a £50bn third runway, as approved by Labour in 2009 and the Tories who voted it through parliament in 2018. Covid applied the brakes but now Heathrow is back with gold-plated, “shovel-ready” plans. Its owners, including Qatar, Singapore and Saudi Arabia, expect the planning bill to prevent newts or judicial reviews blocking the runway. Their pitch to an investment-hungry government is that expanding Europe’s busiest airport would create 100,000 new jobs, propelling growth with 750 extra daily flights.
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08/05/2025 - 01:57
After 90% loss of global sunflower sea star population in 10 years, researchers hope decline can now be tackled
A decade after the onset of a sea star wasting disease (SSWD) epidemic considered the largest ever documented in the wild, researchers have identified the microbial culprit responsible: a strain of the bacterium Vibrio pectenicida.
In 10 years, the bacterium has ravaged sunflower sea stars (Pycnopodia helianthoides), a large sea star or starfish, along the western coast of North America, with a loss of 5.8 billion since 2013 – or 90% of the total global population. The sunflower sea star is on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s red list of critically endangered species.
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