Investment will fund two CCS clusters – but environmental campaigners have criticised plans
What is carbon capture, usage and storage?
Rachel Reeves is paving the way for a multibillion-pound increase in public-sector investment at the budget after the government announced plans to commit almost £22bn over 25 years to fund carbon capture and storage projects.
In what is expected to be one of the biggest green spending promises of the parliament, the chancellor, prime minister and the energy secretary, Ed Miliband, will unveil the details on a visit to the Liverpool city region on Friday declaring a “new era” for clean energy jobs.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
10/03/2024 - 18:01
10/03/2024 - 13:54
The extinction of hundreds of bird species caused by humans over the last 130,000 years has led to substantial reductions in avian functional diversity -- a measure of the range of different roles and functions that birds undertake within the environment -- and resulted in the loss of approximately 3 billion years of unique evolutionary history, according to a new study.
10/03/2024 - 11:10
Harris reiterates she won’t ban fracking if elected as Trump runs ads stating the opposite in tight Pennsylvania race
Kamala Harris reiterated that she won’t ban fracking on Wednesday in an interview with KDKA-TV, the CBS affiliate in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Though the US vice-president once backed a ban on the fuel extraction process, she said on Wednesday that she changed her mind since joining Joe Biden’s presidential campaign in 2020 and has since remained firm.
The statement comes as she and Donald Trump compete for votes in Pennsylvania, a swing state with 20 seats in the electoral college and a major gas producer. The Trump campaign, meanwhile, has been running ads claiming that if elected, Harris would enshrine a ban on fracking, costing Pennsylvania over 300,000 jobs.
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10/03/2024 - 11:00
Laborers from the Caribbean nation pick berries and process Thanksgiving turkeys across rural America
On a foggy morning in June 2021, I left my Durham, North Carolina, home to travel two and a half hours to rural Whiteville, North Carolina, population 5,000-ish. I headed there to meet some of the town’s newest, albeit temporary, residents: 200 Haitian migrants employed as blueberry pickers.
These farm workers put food on our tables – and on family tables back in Haiti. But they’re a less visible work force in our food supply chain, toiling largely out of sight on farms in places like Columbus county, with its miles of fields. They are doubly invisible among US guest workers, who overwhelmingly hail from Mexico.
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10/03/2024 - 10:00
Sea levels along the US coastline could rise as much as 12in from 2020 to 2050 due to climate crisis, scientists warn
Floods affecting much of the south-east US show the destructive force of higher sea levels and warmer temperatures. Now, researchers at the non-profit Climate Central are using artificial intelligence to predict how climate-related flooding will affect US communities into the next 75 years if warming continues at its current pace.
Previous research has shown that by 2050, sea levels along the US coastline could rise as much as 12in (30cm) from 2020 levels. High-tide flooding, which can occur even in sunny weather, is projected to triple by 2050, and so-called 100-year floods may soon become annual occurrences in New England.
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10/03/2024 - 09:00
As the Line fire exploded, dense smoke made it difficult to breathe and heat became ‘intolerable’, but work carried on
Life as a roofer in Florida’s sweltering heat: ‘It feels like 120F’
Uncontrolled wildfires ripped across southern California amid a startling late summer heatwave this month, shrouding the region in thick, dark smoke as temperatures climbed past 110F (43.3C).
But Cynthia Ayala, a ramp agent at one of Amazon’s largest air freight hubs, had to report to work anyway.
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10/03/2024 - 07:23
Nature was the painter’s ultimate muse, and he would have admired those seeking to protect it
Nadya Tolokonnikova is the creator of the feminist art collective Pussy Riot and former political prisoner
I woke up to a call from Vincent van Gogh today. He told me he wants the Just Stop Oil protesters who threw soup on his Sunflowers to be released immediately. I nodded and promised to do everything I could to ensure Phoebe and Anna would be freed soon. Our conversation continued. “What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything?” Van Gogh remarked. “We must try and keep courage alive.”
He sounded upset about the sentence given the other day to Just Stop Oil activists – two years in jail for Phoebe Plummer, 23; 20 months for Anna Holland, 22. I sympathise with him. He seemed crestfallen that two young women were being thrown behind bars because a judge deified him and his painting, which, in Van Gogh’s mind, was not meant to be venerated, but instead inspire young artists and activists to do exactly what Phoebe and Anna had done – to push the boundaries of life and art even further, and raise uncomfortable questions.
Nadya Tolokonnikova is the creator of the feminist art collective Pussy Riot and former political prisoner
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10/03/2024 - 07:00
A row over sea life, lice and livelihoods is dividing communities as the government plans to end open-net pen farming in British Columbian waters
On a clear August morning, Skookum John manoeuvres his fishing boat, Sweet Marie, out of the Tofino harbour and into the deep blue waters of Clayoquot Sound on Canada’s west coast.
On shore, the late summer sun shines on visitors from all over the world who have flocked to the bustling fishing town on Vancouver Island, where they wander in and out of surf shops, art galleries and restaurants and pile into small boats in the hope of glimpsing orca, humpback and grey whales.
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10/03/2024 - 04:00
Study uncovers vivid and poignant accounts of reefs as high as houses off countries including UK, France and Ireland
Only a handful of natural oyster reefs measuring at most a few square metres cling on precariously along European coasts after being wiped out by overfishing, dredging and pollution.
A study led by British scientists has discovered how extensive they once were, with reefs as high as a house covering at least 1.7m hectares (4.2m acres) from Norway to the Mediterranean, an area larger than Northern Ireland.
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10/03/2024 - 04:00
Colombian environment minister Susana Muhamad once worked for Shell. Now, as the country gears up to host the biodiversity Cop16, she is calling for a just transition away from fossil fuels
She is one of the biggest opponents of fossil fuel on the world stage – but Susana Muhamad’s political career was sparked in the halls of an oil company. It began when she resigned as a sustainability consultant with Shell in 2009 and returned home to Colombia. She was 32 and disillusioned, a far cry from the heights she would later reach as the country’s environment minister, and one of the most high-profile progressive leaders in global environmental politics.
Muhamad joined Shell an idealistic 26-year-old. “I really thought that you could make a huge impact within an energy company on the climate issue, especially because all their publicity was saying that they were going to become an energy company, meaning they will not be only a fossil fuel company,” she says, when we meet in the Colombian embassy in London.
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