Breaking Waves: Ocean News

Premier Roger Cook has the prime minister’s implicit support but he’s making it harder for federal Labor to meet its much-vaunted climate targets Want to get this in your inbox when it publishes? Sign up for the Clear Air Australia newsletter here Western Australia has blazing sun, stunning Indian Ocean beaches, wide open roads and, for the first time in a while, a potentially successful AFL team. It also has an occasional separatist urge. That tendency may partly explain why its government thinks it shouldn’t be expected to act on the climate crisis in the same way as the population on the east coast. Anthony Albanese and members of his cabinet have given implicit support to its climate position. The prime minister has fallen in behind the WA Labor government as the premier, Roger Cook, has backed fossil fuel expansions and argued that an increase in the state’s emissions would be good for the climate because its gas exports reduce coal burning in Asia. Sign up to get climate and environment editor Adam Morton’s Clear Air column as a free newsletter Continue reading...

Facility would require more power than entire state uses and suck up vast amount of water in drought-stricken area A plan to create one of the world’s largest datacenters, a gargantuan project spanning an area more than twice the size of Manhattan, has provoked a furious public backlash in Utah amid concerns over its vast energy use and impact upon the state’s stressed water supplies. The Stratos artificial intelligence datacenter footprint will cover more than 40,000 acres (62 sq miles) over three sites in Box Elder county in north-western Utah. The facility will require about 9GW of power, which is more than the entire state of Utah currently consumes, and suck up a significant amount of water in an area that has been hit by severe drought in recent years. Continue reading...

The naturalist is venerated as a cuddly Paddington Bear, but he’s more than that. Don’t let the superficial backslaps obscure the political critique he makes The excesses the capitalist system has brought us have got to be curbed somehow. Ordinary people worldwide are beginning to realise that greed does not actually lead to joy. Our economic system has been based on the profit principle: you have to come out at the end of the year having made a profit, and the bigger profit you have made, the better it is. In the short term that works, but it ends with disaster. At this point, I should make a confession. The above sentiments are not mine at all. In fact, they were pilfered, purloined, shoplifted from a far more erudite radical thinker than myself. So, quiz time: which incendiary leftwing firebrand spoke these words? Zack Polanski? Antonio Gramsci? Ash Sarkar? At the very least, you would probably assume that, in the current climate, anyone daring to utter these dangerous fringe sentiments would be cast to the margins of our cultural life, only occasionally being let out for the purposes of getting shouted at on the Jeremy Vine show. Jonathan Liew is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

Party held out prospect of act while in opposition but plan did not make it into election manifesto Ministers should bring forward a new clean air act that would ban wood burning, clear diesel vehicles from the roads and force councils to cut pollution, a group of more than 60 charities have urged before the king’s speech on Wednesday. Labour held out the prospect of a clean air act while in opposition in 2023, but this was dropped from the final election manifesto, and the government has made no move to reinstate it. Continue reading...