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From LNG to drilling in Alaska, here’s everything you need to know about Trump’s energy and climate executive orders
Through a flurry of executive orders, a newly inaugurated Donald Trump has made clear his support for the ascendancy of fossil fuels, the dismantling of support for cleaner energy and the United States’ exit from the fight to contain the escalating climate crisis.
“We will drill, baby, drill,” the president said in his inaugural address on Monday. “We have something that no other manufacturing nation will ever have – the largest amount of oil and gas of any country on Earth, and we are going to use it. We’re going to use it.”
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A decade ago, up to 1,000 of the apex predators lived in one South African bay. Now they have gone, fleeing from killer whales. But the gap they have left creates problems for other species
The first carcass of a great white, a small female, washed up in South Africa on 9 February 2017. The 2.6-metre-long body had no hook or net marks, ruling out human involvement. Whatever had killed her had vanished. So too had all the other great white sharks in Gansbaai on the Western Cape, Dr Alison Towner noticed.
“We had several sharks acoustically tagged, and later realised three had moved as far as Plettenberg Bay and Algoa Bay, more than 500km [300 miles] east,” says the Rhodes University marine biologist.
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The Marches, Shropshire: As the ice thins and the paths begin to stick, the ravens and owls are getting busy with their breeding season
Up on Cyrn y Bwch (Horns of the Buck), known as Old Racecourse Common, a plateau on the edge of the Oswestry Uplands, winter comes and goes in a week. There are still white punctuation marks fallen from the rich quiet of a snow spell that feels dreamlike now as the puddle ice thins to kitchen film and paths turn claggy.
The thaw is a kind of recall as the past returns. Mounds of heather, the grey, private memories of a heath, like an old tune muffled by bracken and birch. The racecourse grandstand ruins where 18th-century punters watched their fortunes gallop away like horses over the hills. West, the green folds of Powys. East, the sunlit plains of north Shropshire fading towards the Wrekin floating on the horizon. South, a track rolls down through conifers where a small stand of beech and oak are trapped, shadowy apparitions imprisoned in the vertical lines of the plantation.
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Representatives of Heartland Institute linking up with MEPs to campaign against environmental policies
Climate science deniers from a US-based thinktank have been working with rightwing politicians in Europe to campaign against environmental policies, the Guardian can reveal.
MEPs have been accused of “rolling out the red carpet for climate deniers” to give them a platform in the European parliament, amid warnings of a “revival of grotesque climate denialism”.
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Experts say UK should stop biomass burning as electricity sector decarbonisation by 2030 can be achieved without it
The UK should stop burning wood to generate power because it is not needed to meet the government’s target of decarbonising the electricity sector by 2030, according to analysis.
Ed Miliband, the energy security and net zero secretary, is expected to make a decision soon on whether to allow billions of pounds in new public subsidies for biomass burning, despite fierce opposition from green groups.
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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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Many palm species in the city are receptive to embers and hard to extinguish – and they likely helped spread the fires
When the Los Angeles wildfires broke out on the morning of 7 January, some of the most dramatic images were of palm trees set ablaze along Sunset Boulevard. In the days that followed, burning palms became a symbol to illustrate what may be the costliest wildfires in history, which left at least 25 dead and destroyed thousands of structures.
The trees are icons of the city. They also played a role in spreading the flames, researchers and fire officials say.
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Mark Avery to stand down from role with Wild Justice but won’t completely give up campaigning, he insists
If government ministers and civil servants are grey squirrels, they may think they can rest easy – the predatory pine marten in the Westminster jungle is leaving them in peace.
A campaigner who has “created a landscape of fear” over the authorities’ failure to protect nature is stepping back from Wild Justice to spend more time with the wildlife – and grandchildren – in his garden.
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As the captain of a royal research ship, I break ice to get to British stations in the Antarctic. It’s great fun - but getting stuck is always a risk
I have been working for the British Antarctic Survey since I was 19. I started icebreaking on my first trip to the Antarctic and got hooked. Now I am the captain of the royal research ship Sir David Attenborough and I find icebreaking addictive.
It’s unique in a maritime career to have the ability, even as a junior officer, to do quite intricate ship handling and manoeuvring at all stages. Ships break the ice continually, 24/7 – so the whole bridge team gets to do it.
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Fans of the flower – known as Putricia – say they are ‘obsessed’ with the plant, although they have ‘never smelt that before’
In Sydney, word is spreading: a rare endangered plant named after a deformed penis is beginning to unfurl.
Outside Sydney’s Royal Botanic Garden greenhouse on Thursday, a diverse crowd of hundreds has formed. International tourists wait expectantly by families and young, trendy couples. Babies are everywhere.
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