Environment

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Host David Roberts speaks with guest, environmental scientist Dr Sarah Kapnick. They discuss the overall status of the globe with regards to climate with a level of steadiness that is hard to find. Dr Kapnick is able to communicate effectively the complexities of the topic without downplaying the severity nor inducing overwhelming panic.

Host David Roberts speaks to Bruce Friedrich about how fake meat, plant based or lab grown, can reduce our land use substantially, reduce emissions substantially, and end or reduce the cruelty of animal agriculture. Notably, Friedrich contends that fake meats could end up on a learning curve to bring down the price of these meat alternatives to be cheaper than the real stuff. Much in the same way that we got better at making solar panels and flat screen TVs to the point where those items are magnitudes cheaper than they were just 10 years ago.

A Nobel laureate’s environmentally friendly invention that provides clean water if central supplies are knocked out by a hurricane or drought, could be a life saver for vulnerable islands, its founder says.

Plug-in hybrid electric cars (PHEVs) use much more fuel on the road than officially stated by their manufacturers, a large-scale analysis of about a million vehicles of this type has shown.

Like many of us who are mindful of our plastic consumption, Beth Gardiner would take her own bags to the supermarket and be annoyed whenever she forgot to do so. Out without her refillable bottle, she would avoid buying bottled water. “Here I am, in my own little life, worrying about that and trying to use less plastic,” she says. Then she read an article in this newspaper, just over eight years ago, and discovered that fossil fuel companies had ploughed more than $180bn (£130bn) into plastic plants in the US since 2010. “It was a kick in the teeth,” says Gardiner. “You’re telling me that while I am beating myself up because I forgot to bring my water bottle, all these huge oil companies are pouring billions …” She looks appalled. “It was just such a shock.”

Every year more than 12 million people visit the White River National Forest in central Colorado to ski, hike, bike, fish, camp and otherwise enjoy this iconic 2.3-million-acre landscape. As part of the public lands system, the forest is collectively owned by the American people and managed by the federal government on our behalf. Recently Senate Republicans tried to make half of it eligible for sale.

We’re still in a La Niña phase in the Pacific right now—the cooler part of the cycle that meant that 2025’s global temperature was “only” the second or third highest ever, trailing 2023, the last big El Niño year. But that hot phase seems to be returning, and somewhat faster than expected. In the last few weeks, big Kelvin waves have been moving eastward across the Pacific, driving warmer water before them; these can sometimes peter out, but strong westerly wind bursts across the region—counter to the usually dominant trade winds—seem to indicate this one is for real; the best guess of the various forecasters is that sometime between June and September the world will enter an El Niño cycle.

The future of the American west hangs in balance this week, as seven states remained at a stalemate over who should bear the brunt of the enormous water cuts needed to pull the imperiled Colorado River back from the brink. Time is running short to reach a deal before a critical deadline, set for Saturday.

This is admittedly from November, but it’s the first deep-dive I’ve seen.

Weather agencies and climate scientists have pointed to the possibility of an El Niño forming in the Pacific Ocean later this year – a phenomenon that could push global temperatures to all-time record highs in 2027.

Enforcement against polluters in the United States plunged in the first year of President Donald Trump’s second term, a far bigger drop than in the same period of his first term, according to a new report from a watchdog group.

“We have been occupying the U.S. company Cargill for 14 days, and now we have blocked access to Santarém’s airport, where many people come to take photos and swim in the river without knowing about the problems we are facing. The president signed a decree that privatizes three rivers – the Tapajós, Tocantins, and Madeira – and advanced a measure that opens the way for dredging the Tapajós. Our river is at risk. The government can no longer tell Europe and the United States that it preserves the environment while destroying it here,” said Goldman Prize winner Alessandra Korap Munduruku, a leader from the Middle Tapajós region.

“What is happening on the Tapajós is not an isolated episode: it is the direct consequence of decisions that treat rivers as export corridors and push projects forward without real listening and without rights safeguards. During COP30, more than 500 Indigenous people warned the world about the risks of projects tied to the Ferrogrão export corridor and the dredging of the Tapajós – and still, their demands remain without an effective response. The international community, buyers, and financiers cannot keep normalizing a ‘progress’ that fuels conflict and threatens living territories,” said Vivi Borari, an Indigenous leader and activist in the Tapajós Vivo Movement, a member organization of the Enough Soy Alliance.

Who would have guessed?

In the dim flicker of a kerosene lantern on a fog-wreathed houseboat, I watched Nazia Qasim’s reed-scarred hands pierce threadbare fabric with her needle, weaving colored abayas as her eyes fixed on Dal Lake’s silt-choked horizon, diesel haze mingling with the sour tang of rotting lotus stems, where vibrant beds once bloomed.

For someone aiming to end the global livestock industry, Bruce Friedrich begins his new book – called Meat – in disarming fashion: “I’m not here to tell anyone what to eat. You won’t find vegetarian or vegan recipes in this book, and you won’t find a single sentence attempting to convince you to eat differently. This book isn’t about policing your plate.”

New investigation reveals vast global overlap between drilling permits and cherished sites crucial for nature

In 2022, the California Air Resources Board (CARB) committed to developing strategies to reduce emissions from aviation. That process is now well underway.

Nearly half a century ago, the US Department of Energy launched a clean energy experiment beneath the University of Minnesota with a simple goal: storing hot water for months at a time in an aquifer more than 100 metres below ground.

Europe’s supermarket shelves are packed with brands billing their plastic packaging as sustainable, but often only a fraction of the materials are truly recovered from waste, with the rest made from petroleum.

Half the world’s 100 largest cities are experiencing high levels of water stress, with 39 of these sitting in regions of “extremely high water stress”, new analysis and mapping has shown.

An airport made of bamboo? A tower reaching 20 metres high? For many years, bamboo has been mostly known as the favourite food of giant pandas, but a group of engineers say it’s time we took it seriously as a building material, too.

The Trump administration’s new dietary guidelines urging Americans to eat far more meat and dairy products will, if followed, come at a major cost to the planet via huge swathes of habitat razed for farmland and millions of tons of extra planet-heating emissions.

The global cost of greenhouse gas emissions are nearly double what scientists previously thought, according to a study published Thursday by researchers at the University of California San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

For Antarctic scientists, getting a handle on what’s happening under the ice shelves is urgent because the fate of the planet’s coastlines will depend on how fast they melt.

#FuelingEcocide, our latest investigation coordinated by EIF in partnership with European Investigative Collaborations (EIC), reveals that oil and gas licences overlap with 7,000 protected areas worldwide. A total overlap of 690,000 km², an area bigger than the size of France – despite existing regulations and ongoing efforts to safeguard key biodiversity zones.

Global temperatures in 2025 did not quite reach the heights of 2024, thanks to the cooling influence of the natural La Niña weather pattern in the Pacific, new data from the European Copernicus climate service and the Met Office shows.

Chinese energy giant Ming Yang Smart Energy has developed the “world’s first fully recyclable carbon fiber wind turbine blade.”

For almost 200 years, the Galapagos rail had been missing from Floreana. Thought to be extinct on this small, inhabited island in the Galapagos archipelago, the shy, near-flightless bird is still found on some of the other islands. But Charles Darwin was the last person to record a sighting of one on Floreana, when he famously visited the island in 1835.

Happy 2026! The Eco-Libre project published our 2025 Annual Report for last year.

It’s been a rollercoaster of a year for clean energy. There’s no better way to show those ups and downs than with a chart, and luckily, we made a lot of those this year.

On the banks of the Yukon River, after arriving by canoe only a few miles from the Canadian border, I shared some salmon with Karma Ulvi, the chief of the Native Village of Eagle in Alaska. But the fish we ate wasn’t caught locally: A plane had delivered the salmon from Bristol Bay, in the southwest corner of the state, over 1,000 miles away. For the Native tribes that have lived along the Yukon for millennia, importing is the only option. “We haven’t been able to fish for seven years,” said Ulvi.

When Céüze 2000 ski resort closed at the end of the season in 2018, the workers assumed they would be back the following winter. Maps of the pistes were left stacked beside a stapler; the staff rota pinned to the wall.

I have issues with this article, but the point about the environment is interesting.

More than a decade after regulators promised to improve reporting standards for this waste, an Inside Climate News investigation found huge discrepancies in state records.

geteilt von: https://lemmy.ca/post/56421451

The rewilded orchards at Lesesne might seem commonplace to an uninformed trekker. But if you know their backstory and telling characteristics, strolling through one of these groves feels like a real-life miracle.

Indigenous and other Ecuadorians have lived with millions of gallons of toxic pollution from Texaco’s operations for decades. Now, those victims’ tax dollars will go to Chevron, which acquired Texaco in 2001.

The international arbitration panel in the case of Chevron v. the State of Ecuador determined on November 17, 2025 that Ecuador should pay the company $220 million. The Office of the Attorney General of Ecuador (PGE) made this information public 21 days later.

My argument is simple: for the first time in history, we can improve human wellbeing while reducing our environmental impact.

For decades, corn has reigned over American agriculture. It sprawls across 90m acres – about the size of Montana – and goes into everything from livestock feed and processed foods to the ethanol blended into most of the nation’s gasoline.

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MOCOA, Colombia—This isn’t the first time foreigners have shown up here, where the Andes Mountains meet the Amazon rainforest, insisting they needed what was under the ground.

“People are just amazed and wowed at the optical blue that you see from pure water itself,” said Sudeep Chandra, a limnologist at the University of Nevada, Reno, who collaborates with Girdner. “That blueness is the reflection of the hydrogen and oxygen hanging out together without any material in it.”

Begun, the water wars have.

Regulations make it hard to introduce organisms that quash invasive species. Some experts see missed opportunities.

Climate scientists agree that tackling methane emissions is the fastest way to slow near-term climate change. That’s because methane is a potent greenhouse gas with a warming potential 84 times stronger than that of carbon dioxide over the 20-year span when humanity will be scrambling to get climate change under control.

Tásmam Koyóm, a high Sierra meadow in California, U.S. returned to the Mountain Maidu people in 2019, is once again wet where once it had been dry. Rivulets now snake through hip-high grasses and willow thickets, feeding a beaver pond where a family of beavers released in 2023 has built a chest-high lodge. This was California’s first beaver translocation in decades, part of a tribal effort to restore the health of the landscape, reports Mongabay’s John Cannon after a site visit.

In August, the world should have been celebrating the first global agreement to end plastics pollution. Instead, negotiators from more than 180 countries ended the latest round of talks in Geneva, Switzerland, amid acrimony.

In the northern suburbs of Sydney, Australia, Adam Bushell has saved about $10 a month in waste collection fees since his local council swapped flat fees for a “pay-as-you-throw” system four years ago. While recycling is collected free of charge, microchipped bins for general waste are weighed, and households receive a monthly statement listing how much they threw out and what they owe.

Nnimmo Bassey, a prominent figure in the decades-long environmental struggles in Africa’s largest oil-producing country, will next month attend yet another UN climate summit, this time in Brazil.

Set off the main road through San Isidro, El Salvador, an old gate sits locked by a chain. Across its rusted metal wire mesh are emblazoned the words: “Private property, entry forbidden.” A bus stop outside is covered with faded black and yellow posters. Though peeling with age, their message can still be read: “No to mining – yes to life.”

Nearly 40 percent of the waste produced in the EU comes from construction and demolition, making the sector one of Europe’s largest sources of emissions and environmental impact.

The US has demanded that the European Union roll back its climate and human rights rules in order to allow greater imports of liquefied natural gas (LNG), as the Trump administration approved a controversial gas export hub along the Gulf of Mexico coast.

In 1957, the Tulsequah Chief Mine stopped production of gold, copper, lead and zinc after a short-lived six years of operations. Its legacy has since made it infamous: for the past seven decades, the Tulsequah Chief Mine has leaked a rust-red, mineral-laden runoff called acid mine drainage into the glacial waters of the Tulsequah River. Despite repeated calls from locals and environmentalists and government promises, the acid mine drainage has yet to be cleaned up. Amid this ongoing environmental contamination, the New Polaris Mine is entering the picture.

José Gualinga discusses his Kichwa People of Sarayaku’s visionary Living Forest Declaration and the importance of collaborating across cultures and areas of expertise.

As this is a visual story, trying to grab an excerpt is going to be without context.

Levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere soared by a record amount in 2024 to hit another high, UN data shows, deepening the climate crisis that is already taking lives and livelihoods across the world.

We’re happy to announce the release of the Eco-Libre Life-Line version 2025.10.

Other islands have emerged since the 1960s, but scientists say they have not been as ecologically stable. The last time something similar took place before Surtsey’s emergence was the birth of Anak Krakatau, Indonesia, in 1927, but it was quickly contaminated by humans. Icelandic researchers were adamant that this time would be different.

Not just “less than a penny” .. one-tenth of a penny, making it the only thing outside of gasoline and property taxes using mills.

The world’s wind and solar farms have generated more electricity than coal plants for the first time this year, marking a turning point for the global power system, according to research.

The Trump administration has said it will rescind Bill Clinton’s roadless rule, more than two decades after its introduction appeared to mark the end of the bitter battle between environmentalists and loggers over the future of America’s best remaining woodland.

The world’s largest airplane, when it’s built, will stretch more than a football field from tip to tail. Sixty percent longer than the biggest existing aircraft, with 12 times as much cargo space as a 747, the behemoth will look like an oil tanker that’s sprouted wings—aeronautical engineering at a preposterous scale.

[…]surveys show a majority of travelers—more than 70%—aspire to travel more responsibly. The push and pull have helped spark what’s increasingly being called “activist tourism,” with a new wave of hotels and tour operators inviting guests to take part in protecting fragile environments. Some activities focus on stewarding the land; others go further, encouraging travelers to take part in restoration projects or conservation work. Conservationists say these efforts matter: Small choices, multiplied, can help secure a healthier planet for future generations. And with more than 300 million people traveling abroad in the first three months of 2025 alone, even modest shifts in behavior can have an outsized effect.

Food and agriculture contribute one-third of global greenhouse gas emissions – second only to the burning of fossil fuels. And yet the vast majority of media coverage of the climate crisis overlooks this critical sector, according to a new data analysis from Sentient Media.

Bloc urged to end ‘unethical double standard’ of allowing sale of products deemed too dangerous for EU farms

For five years, Iran has been struggling with a drought that, experts agree, has been made far more severe by climate change. Steadily dropping levels of rainfall – a sweltering Tehran had only 158mm of rainfall last year, 42% less than the long term average – have combined with excessive consumption, particularly in agriculture, plus mass unauthorised extraction of groundwater and a fondness for prestigious but faulty engineering projects.

More than 100,000 people marched through Cuenca, a city in southern Ecuador, on Sept. 16, demanding that federal authorities revoke an environmental license for a gold mining project that may impact an important freshwater source.

New satellite analysis shows that wells and roads for a project in Uganda feeding Africa’s longest heated oil pipeline have progressed significantly within a protected area and near a critical wetland.

As government regulators focused on reigning in air pollution, companies were busy generating new sources of pollution, including plastics and PFAS, the so-called forever chemicals. PFAS, which stands for perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, are a large group of compounds used, among other things, to make fabric stain-resistant and pans nonstick.

At the northern tip of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, where rugged cliffs jut out toward Lake Superior, Keweenaw County is known for its rich biodiversity and opportunities for outdoor recreation. One of the region’s most remarkable qualities, though, is its darkness.