Breaking Waves: Ocean News

US speaker emerita criticizes Trump’s anti-climate stance and his remarks to the UN general assembly “President Trump is the biggest con job in American history,” said Nancy Pelosi, the US speaker emerita, to reporters on Thursday while criticizing his anti-climate agenda. Donald Trump told the UN general assembly in September that the climate crisis was “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world”. But he was “projecting”, Pelosi said at a press conference. The meeting was convened by Democrats on the Senate committee on environment and public works to comment on the US’s official absence from the United Nations Cop30 climate summit in Belém, Brazil, where 195 countries are represented. Continue reading...

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva says he is ready to fight for transition roadmap despite opposition from some states All the coverage from Cop30 The Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has told Cop30 delegates that he will take his fossil fuel transition roadmap to the G20 in Johannesburg this week to campaign for it, despite reports that petrostates have said they will not accept the plan. Before leaving Cop30 in Belém, the figurehead of the global south told civil society representatives he was ready to fight for the proposal to phase out oil, coal and gas in whatever forum was necessary. Continue reading...

Researchers have launched the first coordinated plan to protect microbial biodiversity, calling attention to the “invisible 99% of life” that drives essential Earth systems. The IUCN has formally recognized this effort through the creation of the Microbial Conservation Specialist Group. By developing new metrics, policies, and restoration tools, scientists aim to make microbial life a core part of global conservation action. The roadmap also outlines upcoming goals such as microbial hotspot maps and new microbe-based conservation solutions.

UN secretary-general António Guterres earlier used speech at Belem summit to urge countries to find compromises in final hours of negotiations Inside the halls of Cop30 you see people from all around the world, and it can be easy to forget that there are many people who remain unrepresented. On Thursday morning, Magne Tony was standing with compatriots from French Guiana outside the entrance to the conference centre, trying to push pieces of paper into the hands of arriving delegates and observers headed: “Our Amazon is dying”. The main problem is that France are in 9,000 kilometres from Amazonia, from South America, and they’re taking decisions. [But] they don’t really know what is the problem really. They’re taking the decisions from their own mind and the problem is that they’re far from reality. That’s why we decided to alert the people in the world about [our] problems: water coming up, getting enough to eat, more heat – in some parts of French Guiana, people don’t have water. These crises, a consequence of Western capitalist madness, primarily affect the most vulnerable: women and communities dependent on forests and rivers. But they also concern all of humanity: French Guiana is part of the Amazon, a regulator of the global climate and essential to planetary balance. We remind you that French Guiana is the last colony in South America without self-determination. We will not be able to protect our environment or guarantee our food and energy self-sufficiency, essential for our collective survival, as long as decisions are made in Paris without consulting the affected communities or taking into account local specificities. Continue reading...