Mammal tangled in ropes and buoys was circling ‘erratically’ on Friday morning
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A humpback whale has been freed after being entangled in ropes in Sydney Harbour.
The whale was spotted about 1pm on Thursday by a tour group, who alerted the volunteer rescue group Orrca.
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08/22/2024 - 18:01
Oil firms, petrostates, airlines and carmakers ‘doubling down’ on sector that is popular with young people
Oil companies, petrostates, airlines and carmakers are among the big polluters bombarding the esports industry with adverts, a study has found.
Esports, short for electronic sports, are competitive video games watched by spectators, with multiplayer games such as League of Legends and Defense of the Ancients 2 attracting peak viewer figures in the millions.
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08/22/2024 - 12:49
Without regulatory reforms and proper funding, the country will lack a muscular enforcer to strike fear among polluters
The organisers of the March for Clean Water – that’s Feargal Sharkey and River Action, supported by organisations that range from Surfers Against Sewage to the RSPB to the Women’s Institute – make an excellent point: while it’s nice that the government will bring a water bill to parliament, the initiatives revealed so far “are not nearly extensive enough to address the scale of the UK’s water pollution crisis”.
You bet. None of the four “initial steps” announced by the environment secretary, Steve Reed, last month are likely to cause sleepless nights in any boardroom. The first, to ensure companies’ funding for infrastructure investment is ringfenced, read like a description of how the regulatory system in England and Wales was always supposed to work. One fears that the second, to add the protection of customers and the environment to companies’ articles of association, will be cosmetic; directors can always be fuzzy about how they interpret their fiduciary duties.
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08/22/2024 - 11:15
Environment minister says severe drought is ‘aggravating’ factor as smoke engulfs Porto Velho city
The Brazilian government has deployed almost 1,500 firefighters to the Amazon as the most severe drought in decades is turning the rainforest’s usually moist vegetation into kindling and flames.
Despite a sharp decrease in deforestation since the president, Lula da Silva, took power in January 2023, there have reportedly been 59,000 fires in the forest since the start of the year, the highest number since 2008, according to satellite data from the National Institute for Space Research.
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08/22/2024 - 10:00
Pilot scheme in Amazon communities of central Peru aims to help people choose a more sustainable way of living
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“At the beginning, there was a lot of fear and disbelief,” said Ketty Marcelo. “There was a perception from the communities that this was another scam, that it was only looking to steal information or our integrity.”
Indigenous communities in the Amazon have grown weary of people coming in from outside with plans that could mean them losing their land or way of life. When a team from Cool Earth, a climate action NGO, came to the Amazon communities of central Peru in October 2022, local people were hesitant. “These fears caused some families not to participate,” Marcelo said. “And we, as an organisation, were afraid this would be another project that would seek to impose activities without respecting the autonomy of the communities.”
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08/22/2024 - 10:00
August temperature records under threat as Oodnadatta in South Australia braces for 38C and BoM forecasts above 30C in Brisbane next week
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Australia is on track to face its hottest August on record as a global heating-fuelled “heat engine” brings spring and summer warmth to Australia’s winter, experts forecast.
A Weatherzone meteorologist, Ben Domensino, said the unseasonably warm weather was coming from a “heat engine” in Australia’s red centre, where clear skies in the coming week would drive maximum temperatures towards 40C, more than 10C above average, in northern South Australia, the southern Northern Territory and western New South Wales.
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08/22/2024 - 09:11
Green MP tells home secretary sending Just Stop Oil activist to prison is unjust and waste of resources
A 20-month prison sentence handed to a 77-year-old woman for a climate protest on the M25 is disproportionate, unjust and a waste of resources, the Green MP Carla Denyer has said.
In a letter to Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, Denyer called the jailing of Gaie Delap three weeks ago “an example of an ongoing and serious problem with disproportionate sentencing for climate activists”.
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08/22/2024 - 09:00
With the largest US fossil fuel lobby group at the Democratic convention, some urge VP to prioritize crisis in her speech
As Donald Trump accuses Kamala Harris of waging “war on American energy”, some advocates are pressing the vice-president to embrace a bold climate message at the Democratic national convention this week.
Harris will have a major opportunity to lay out her key platform as she accepts the Democratic party’s presidential nomination on Thursday evening. Some are hoping climate features heavily in her speech.
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08/22/2024 - 08:53
Just cutting carbon emissions will not prevent climate breakdown, says Susana Muhamad before Cop16 in Colombia
Humanity risks catastrophic global heating if it focuses only on decarbonisation at the expense of restoring the natural world, Colombia’s environment minister has said in the lead-up to the world’s key nature summit later this year.
Susana Muhamad, who will be president of the UN biodiversity Cop16 summit in Cali in October, said that a singular focus on cutting carbon emissions while failing to restore and protect natural ecosystems would be “dangerous for humanity” and risk societal collapse.
Find more age of extinction coverage here, and follow the biodiversity reporters Phoebe Weston and Patrick Greenfield on X for all the latest news and features
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08/22/2024 - 07:00
A quarter of all incidents, such as destruction of dams, pipelines and treatment plants, seen in Gaza Strip and West Bank
Israeli attacks on Palestinian water supplies in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip accounted for a quarter of all water-related violence in 2023, as armed conflicts over dwindling resources surged globally, according to new research.
Almost 350 water conflicts were documented worldwide in 2023, a 50% rise on 2022, which was also a record year, according to the Pacific Institute, a California-based non partisan thinktank tracking water violence. The violence included attacks on dams, pipelines, wells, treatment plants and workers, as well as public unrest and disputes over access to water, and the use of water as a weapon of war.
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