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President declares energy emergency, reiterates Paris withdrawal plan and overturns emissions standards
Donald Trump declared a national energy emergency on the first day of his new presidency, as part of a barrage of pro-fossil fuel actions and efforts to “unleash” already booming US energy production that included also rolling back restrictions in drilling in Alaska and undoing a pause on gas exports.
The emergency declaration, which made good on a campaign-trail promise but could be open to legal challenge, would allow his administration to fast-track permits for new fossil fuel infrastructure.
Trump sworn in as 47th president – follow live inauguration updates
Factchecking Trump’s speech
A who’s who of far-right leaders in Washington
Migrant groups at US-Mexico border await mass deportations
‘Doge’ violates federal transparency rules, lawsuit claims
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Critical CO2 stores held in permafrost are being released as the landscape changes with global heating, report shows
A third of the Arctic’s tundra, forests and wetlands have become a source of carbon emissions, a new study has found, as global heating ends thousands of years of carbon storage in parts of the frozen north.
For millennia, Arctic land ecosystems have acted as a deep-freeze for the planet’s carbon, holding vast amounts of potential emissions in the permafrost. But ecosystems in the region are increasingly becoming a contributor to global heating as they release more CO2 into the atmosphere with rising temperatures, a new study published in Nature Climate Change concluded.
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More than 40% of individual corals monitored around One Tree Island reef bleached by heat stress and damaged by flesh-eating disease
More than 40% of individual corals monitored around a Great Barrier Reef island were killed last year in the most widespread coral bleaching outbreak to hit the reef system, a study has found.
Scientists tracked 462 colonies of corals at One Tree Island in the southern part of the Great Barrier Reef after heat stress began to turn the corals white in early 2024. Researchers said they encountered “catastrophic” scenes at the reef.
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Artisanal shellfish farmers face ruinous losses but money meant to help is going to the powerful fishing industry, say critics
Early on a warm September morning in southern Italy, Giovanni Nicandro sets out from the port of Taranto in his small boat. Summoning his courage, the mussel farmer inspects his year’s work – only to find them all dead, a sight that almost brings him to tears.
“We have many problems,” he says. “The problems start as soon as we open our eyes in the morning.” The loss is total – not only for Nicandro but also for Taranto’s 400 other mussel farmers, after a combination of pollution and rising sea temperatures devastated their harvest.
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Move is part of £300m investment that includes deepwater quay and building of hundreds of homes near city centre
Belfast harbour is to invest £90m to upgrade its port to serve a wave of wind energy projects and cruise ships as part of a £300m investment plan.
A new deepwater quay capable of supporting wind projects will be the largest part of an investment plan that also includes the construction of hundreds of homes at a site near the city centre.
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Lightwood, Derbyshire: The spray had created such a stunning showcase of ice that it lured me down a steep bank – twice
For 10 days Buxton was buried by snow and further bound, night after night, in sub-zero conditions. At Lightwood there’s a steep-sided dell enfolded beneath old beech trees and held in almost permanent shadow, so that as I threaded a precarious route to the bottom, I could feel a further instant fall in temperature.
The goal was a water pipe. Its outflow cascades for barely a metre, but relentless spray has scoured as its catchment basin a gritstone arc 3 metres across. Those rocks are plastered by platyhypnidium moss, while the drier south side is adorned with frost-wilted remnants of broad buckler and hart’s-tongue ferns.
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Juan Guillermo Garcés had a brush with death while burning jungle for cattle pasture – now he runs a nature reserve in Colombia where more than 100 new species have been discovered
- Words and photographs by Anastasia Austin and Douwe den Held
Juan Guillermo Garcés remembers coming face to face with death at age 17. Smoke filled the air, choking his lungs. The temperature rose and Garcés struggled to see through the haze. Panic set in as he watched monkeys, snakes, lizards and birds desperately trying to escape the flames surrounding them.
Garcés and his brother started the fire that nearly killed them to clear a large stretch of land. But when the wind suddenly changed direction, they found themselves locked in. The brothers survived, but the fire destroyed the little remaining patch of virgin forest on the family’s 2,500-hectare (6,200-acre) ranch, nestled along Colombia’s Magdalena River. Experiencing firsthand what the animals and plants endured was a turning point for Garcés.
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First Quantum Minerals’ copper operation was shut down more than a year ago, but Indigenous people report restrictions on movement and unexplained illness and death
For the people of the nine Indigenous communities within the perimeter of the sprawling Cobre Panamácopper mine, travelling into and out of the concession is far from straightforward. An imposing metal gateway staffed by the mining company’s security guards blocks the road. People say the company severely restricts their movement in and out of the zone, letting them through only on certain days.
The mining concession, located 120km (75 miles) west of Panama City, is owned by Canada-based First Quantum Minerals, which operates through its local subsidiary, Minera Panamá. The company’s private security guards, not the national police, patrol the concession. Local residents, mostly subsistence farmers of modest means, say that First Quantum operates as a state within a state.
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Altadena’s Village Playgarden education center served diverse families with outdoor classrooms, small farm and animals – till it was destroyed by flames
In Altadena, it had become the hot ticket among the preschool set.
But when Geoff and Kikanza Ramsey-Ray first bought the two-acre property at the edge of town in 2008, it was a shambles. The home was a rental for over 30 years and the grounds were woefully neglected. Yet the couple saw promise. Nestled against Angeles Crest national forest, with a mountain view and on a road with few other homes, the place felt protected and perfect for their vision: an early education center called Village Playgarden.
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Bubbles of air trapped in ancient Antarctic ice, dating up to 2m years old, contain unknown information about Earth’s past climate
Traversing the world’s most unforgiving continent requires a generous measure of stoicism. “We took risks, we knew we took them,” wrote the Antarctic explorer Robert Falcon Scott in 1912, trapped by a fierce blizzard in the days before he died, on an ill-fated expedition to reach the south pole. “Things have come out against us, and therefore we have no cause for complaint.”
More than a century later, elemental extremes are still an unfortunate fact of life for scientists in Antarctica. Despite three seasons of bad luck which have delayed his team’s quest to find the world’s oldest ice, the paleoclimate scientist Dr Joel Pedro remains sanguine. He has good reason to be: this summer, after multiple setbacks and a relocation, a plan years in the making is finally coming to fruition.
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pub. Bowtie Press, UK, 2005
pub. Souvenir Press, London, 2002
First published by Henston Ltd, 1988, new edition 1994. Later edition published by Interpret Publishing, Dorking, Surrey UK.
pub. Henston, Guildford UK, 1985, revised 1987, 1988, 1994.
pub. Crossing Press CA 1994
