Wind turbines have become a financial lifeline in rural areas, but state legislators are now targeting them
As a Republican state lawmaker for 16 years, a Texas rancher and a staunch supporter of Donald Trump, John Davis’s conservative credentials are impeccable. But Davis has become horrified at his party’s assault upon an increasingly vital lifeline to many rural, conservative areas of the US – clean energy development.
Davis allowed seven wind turbines to be situated on his ranch, in the rolling hill country near Menard, west of Austin, and has seen the income provide opportunities not only for his family but also his local community in what is one of the poorest counties in Texas.
Continue reading...
Breaking Waves: Ocean News
05/27/2025 - 04:01
Band of water where marine life can survive has reduced in more than a fifth of global ocean between 2003 and 2022
Great swathes of the planet’s oceans have become darker in the past two decades, according to researchers who fear the trend will have a severe impact on marine life around the world.
Satellite data and numerical modelling revealed that more than a fifth of the global ocean darkened between 2003 and 2022, reducing the band of water that life reliant on sunlight and moonlight can thrive in.
Continue reading...
‘We carry on with the sadness’: new projects honor life and legacy of Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira
05/27/2025 - 02:00
Friends and colleagues of Phillips, killed in the Amazon in 2022, completed his book, which coincides with launch of investigative Guardian podcast
Three years after the British journalist Dom Phillips and the Brazilian activist Bruno Pereira were murdered in the Amazon, two major new projects will celebrate their lives and work – and the Indigenous communities and rainforests both men sought to protect.
Friends of Phillips have completed the book he was writing at the time of his death – How to Save the Amazon – which will be published in the UK, the US and Brazil on 27 May.
Continue reading...
05/26/2025 - 23:00
Experts are calling for stricter limits on numbers of those flocking to Baja California Sur to swim with the animals in the wild. But some local tour operators are not convinced
Just after sunrise in the small village of La Ventana in Baja California Sur, the beach is bustling with wetsuit-clad tourists. They climb into Mexican fishing boats and race out into the windy blue bay, cameras at the ready. The fishers turned tour guides follow a couple of ocean safari yachts, which follow directions from pilots sent up in spotter planes. The goal of this 40-boat cavalcade? To enable swimming with orcas in the wild.
Swimming with orcas in Mexico falls into a legal grey area as it exploits loopholes in two Mexican laws that protect endangered marine wildlife. This has become particularly problematic in the past five years since selfies with the whales on social media have led to an increase in the number of people wanting to try the activity.
Continue reading...
05/26/2025 - 21:56
Haze hits Sydney suburbs on Tuesday morning after crossing NSW from SA and Victoria
Australia news live: latest politics updates
Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast
Parts of Sydney faced “extremely poor” air quality warnings on Tuesday morning as a dust storm swept eastwards from inland Australia.
Sydney’s north-west and central west including Parramatta had the heaviest air pollution, with very poor air quality also observed across Sydney stretching as far south as Goulburn and as far north as Muswellbrook, according to official pollution monitoring stations.
Continue reading...
05/26/2025 - 20:22
Anthony Albanese visits mid-north coast as police warn of ‘un-Australian’ looting during clean-up
Australia news live: latest politics updates
Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast
Anthony Albanese has warned the recovery from floods on the New South Wales mid-north coast could take months but has promised less red tape and more money for impacted residents.
The prime minister on Tuesday visited Milton Johnson’s dairy farms at Taree – the epicentre of the latest NSW floods.
Continue reading...
05/26/2025 - 19:19
Governments must help households to make the switch to cleaner energy, and change the rules so that the benefits and costs are fairly shared
Sign up for climate and environment editor Adam Morton’s free Clear Air newsletter here
The great energy transition is happening before our eyes. You can see it on our roofs: more than one in three Australian homes now have solar. You can see it on our roads: nearly 10% of new cars sold in Australia last year were electric.
But the greening of Australia is creating losers as well as winners. While wealthier households are saving on their energy bills by installing solar panels and switching from gas to all-electric, many people have no choice but to stay with more expensive fossil fuels.
Sign up to get climate and environment editor Adam Morton’s Clear Air column as a free newsletter
Dominic Jones is an associate in the Energy and Climate Change Program at Grattan Institute
Continue reading...
05/26/2025 - 13:30
Braunschweig court gives two former executives prison sentences for roles in emissions test-cheating scandal
A German court has convicted four former Volkswagen managers of fraud and given two of them prison sentences for their part in the “dieselgate” emissions test-cheating scandal that erupted almost a decade ago.
The former head of development Heinz-Jakob Neusser received a suspended jail term of one year and three months from the court in the city of Braunschweig, according to the news agency Bloomberg.
Continue reading...
05/26/2025 - 11:00
Upemba lechwe considered one of world’s rarest large mammals with fewer than 100 thought to remain
A photograph of Africa’s “forgotten antelope” has been published for the first time as the elusive creature dives towards extinction.
Fewer than 100 Upemba lechwe are thought to remain, with an aerial survey in the Kamalondo depression of the southern Democratic Republic of the Congo having recorded 10 individuals.
Continue reading...
05/26/2025 - 10:00
Environment minister Murray Watt is due to make a decision on whether to extend the controversial North West Shelf development in coming days
Want to get this in your inbox when it publishes? Sign up for the Clear Air Australia newsletter here
Reliable energy or ‘carbon bomb’? What’s at stake in the battle over Australia’s North West Shelf
Unless something remarkable – the federal court, perhaps – intervenes, the Albanese government will this week make a decision that could have ramifications for greenhouse gas emissions and Indigenous heritage that last for decades – or longer. It relates to the future of the North West Shelf, one of the world’s largest liquified natural gas (LNG) projects.
Most discussion about it assumes that it is a done deal – that the environment minister, Murray Watt, will give the green light to an application by Woodside Energy to extend the life of the gas export processing facility on the Burrup peninsula in Western Australia’s Pilbara region.
Sign up to get climate and environment editor Adam Morton’s Clear Air column as a free newsletter
Continue reading...
