Workers face being targets in what could be Environmental Protection Agency’s biggest upheaval since its founding
After several years of recovery after the tumult of Donald Trump’s last administration, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is now bracing itself for even deeper cuts to staff numbers and to work protecting Americans from pollution and the climate crisis as Trump prepares to return to the White House.
When he was last president, Trump gutted more than 100 environmental rules and vowed to only leave a “little bit of the EPA” left “because you can’t destroy business”, prompting hundreds of agency staff to leave amid a firestorm of political interference and retaliation against civil servants. An even greater exodus is expected this time, with staff fearing they are frontline targets in what could be the biggest upheaval in the agency’s 50-year history.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
11/11/2024 - 06:00
11/11/2024 - 04:00
Voluntary standards proposed at Cop16 focus on local like-for-like habitat projects, while critics call the issue a ‘distraction’
International biodiversity offsetting “doesn’t work”, according to experts aiming to create a nature market that avoids the pitfalls of carbon offsets.
The biodiversity sector has been circling the idea of a credits market that would allow companies to finance restoration and preservation of biodiversity, deliver “net-positive” gains for nature, and help plug the $700bn (£540bn) funding gap.
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11/11/2024 - 03:00
UN’s top climate official warns ‘no country is immune’ from climate disaster as conference begins in Azerbaijan
Businesses in the private sector must stump up cash for the developing world to invest in a low-carbon economy or face the consequences of climate breakdown, the president of the UN climate summit has said.
Mukhtar Babayev, the environment minister of Azerbaijan, the host of this year’s climate conference, wrote in Monday’s Guardian: “The onus cannot fall entirely on government purses. Unleashing private finance for developing countries’ transition has long been an ambition of climate talks.
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11/11/2024 - 03:00
This emergency will cost trillions of dollars, and is beyond the reach of developing nations. Private investors have to step up
Mukhtar Babayev is president of the Cop29 UN climate change conference
To avert climate catastrophe, the world needs more climate finance. At Cop29, the UN climate summit in Baku that begins today, agreeing a new climate finance goal is the top priority of Azerbaijan’s Cop presidency.
Developing countries require assistance to tackle their emissions and build resilience against growing climate threats. The $100bn annual target, set in 2009, was intended to be fulfilled by 2020. It is now outdated and falls far short of what is needed for countries at the sharp end of the climate crisis.
Mukhtar Babayev is president of the Cop29 UN climate change conference
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11/11/2024 - 02:23
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UN climate chief Simon Stiell gave a moving speech at the Cop29 opening plenary on Monday, writes Dharna Noor, fossil fuels and climate reporter for Guardian US, who is reporting from Baku.
“In tough times, up against difficult tasks, I don’t go in for hopes and dreams,” he said. “What inspires me is human ingenuity and determination. Our ability to get knocked down and to get up again over and over again, until we accomplish our goals.”
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11/11/2024 - 02:00
The ‘theme’ chosen for Cop29 must be some kind of dark joke. This summit, like those before it, is a mere act of greenwashing
During rapidly escalating climate and humanitarian crises, another authoritarian petrostate with no respect for human rights is hosting Cop29 – the UN’s latest annual climate summit that starts today and is being held after the re-election of a climate-denier US president.
Cop meetings have proven to be greenwashing conferences that legitimise countries’ failures to ensure a livable world and future and have also allowed authoritarian regimes like Azerbaijan and the two previous hosts – the United Arab Emirates and Egypt – to continue violating human rights.
Greta Thunberg is a Swedish activist and international climate crisis campaigner
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11/11/2024 - 01:49
In today’s newsletter: As delegates gather for the world’s biggest climate conference, many are asking what the re-election of the man who thinks global heating is ‘a hoax’ will mean for the planet
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It is now “virtually certain” that 2024 will be the warmest year in recorded history. And just like 2023, the past 12 months have been characterised by extreme weather events – from cyclones in Australia to wildfires in Brazil to last month’s lethal floods in Spain – made more intense and more frequent by the climate crisis.
US election | Donald Trump has been declared the winner in Arizona, completing the Republicans’ clean sweep of the so-called swing states and rubbing salt in Democrats’ wounds as it was announced that the president-elect is scheduled to meet with Joe Biden at the White House on Wednesday to discuss the presidential handover. Trump reportedly spoke on the phone with Vladimir Putin on Thursday and discussed the war in Ukraine, telling the Russian ruler not to escalate the conflict and reminding him of “Washington’s sizeable military presence in Europe”.
House of Lords | The Liberal Democrats will try to hijack the government’s bill to ban Lords from inheriting their seats in parliament this week in an attempt to force a vote on an entirely elected upper chamber. MPs are expected to vote overwhelmingly in favour of the Labour legislation but the Lib Dems want to go drastically further.
Immigration and asylum| A Home Office artificial intelligence tool that proposes enforcement action against adult and child migrants could make it too easy for officials to rubberstamp automated life-changing decisions, campaigners have said.
Health | The government is likely to offer a financial lifeline to the hospice sector amid fears end-of-life care providers are at risk of closure due to the double blow of the employers’ national insurance rise and higher wage bills, the Guardian understands.
Nursing | Increasing numbers of UK-trained nurses are set to leave the profession in England within a decade of registering, in a trend that could jeopardise the government’s overhaul of healthcare, according to a union.
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11/11/2024 - 01:40
Producing something ‘living, fresh and green’ for astronauts to eat on the moon and Mars among ultimate aims but first test is whether plants can survive
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An Australian-led project to grow plants on the moon has secured a ride on a lunar mission scheduled for takeoff in 2025.
Plants and seeds ensconced in a carefully engineered capsule will make the 380,000km trip aboard an Intuitive Machines lunar lander.
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11/10/2024 - 22:31
Nationals senator Matt Canavan and MP Keith Pitt both spoke out about the party’s climate policy in the wake of Donald Trump’s win
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Nationals leader David Littleproud, shadow transport minister Bridget McKenzie and Senate Liberal leader Simon Birmingham have all rejected a backbench push to use Donald Trump’s election in the US to abandon support for net zero by 2050.
The opposition leader, Peter Dutton, has said he is completely committed to the target, attempting to fight the next election on the Coalition’s vague taxpayer-funded nuclear plan that will likely extend the use of coal and gas rather than the 2050 target.
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11/10/2024 - 19:01
US suffered greatest economic losses, report commissioned by International Chamber of Commerce finds, followed by China and India
Violent weather cost the world $2tn over the past decade, a report has found, as diplomats descend on the Cop29 climate summit for a tense fight over finance.
The analysis of 4,000 climate-related extreme weather events, from flash floods that wash away homes in an instant to slow-burning droughts that ruin farms over years, found economic damages hit $451bn across the past two years alone.
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