Though utilities’ mission is to provide clean water, their trade groups for decades have often fiercely opposed initiatives to improve quality
Several unexpected plaintiffs are behind a legal challenge aiming to kill the Environmental Protection Agency’s groundbreaking new drinking water limits for highly toxic PFAS: the US’s water utilities, represented by their major trade groups.
But utility industry opposition to clean water regulations is nothing new. Though utilities’ mission is to provide the US with clean and safe water, their trade groups have for decades often fiercely opposed initiatives to improve quality.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
10/02/2024 - 05:00
10/02/2024 - 01:00
The Austrian capital has been spared the worst of recent flooding. Its experience could be a lesson in how to tackle the climate crisis
Floods are seemingly unavoidable these days. Florida, North Carolina, Nigeria, Tunisia, Mexico, India, Nepal, Vietnam, Poland and Austria are among the places that have experienced flooding in the last month. Those floods should no longer come as much of a surprise. Climate change leads to more frequent and intense rain almost everywhere on the planet, and most infrastructure, from roads and bridges to canals and hydroelectric dams, is simply not built to withstand such extremes.
That’s where Vienna stands out. The floods that have deluged central Europe over the past two weeks caused plenty of disruptions in Lower Austria, including to a newly built train station meant to connect the burgeoning suburbs to the city. But aside from some disruption to Vienna’s otherwise well-functioning subway system, Viennese homes were largely spared. Why? It’s not because Vienna sits on higher ground than the surrounding areas (by and large it does not). The reason the city escaped the worst of the floods is because of human engineering and political foresight dating back to the 1960s, which emerged in response to earlier floods that devastated parts of the city.
Gernot Wagner is a climate economist at Columbia Business School. He is a member of the scientific advisory board of the Wiener Klimarat, Vienna’s climate council
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10/01/2024 - 23:07
Tensions ramp up between authorities and property owners who don’t want chemical treatment spread on their land
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Property owners who refuse to comply with mandatory treatment for fire ants could face the full force of the law, as police are called in.
A lock-the-gate style campaign is under way by some Queensland landholders who don’t want baits spread on their properties.
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10/01/2024 - 23:00
npj Ocean Sustainability, Published online: 02 October 2024; doi:10.1038/s44183-024-00082-6
Strong versus weak sustainable development in the blue economy: a study of 15 EU coastal countries
10/01/2024 - 18:16
Excessive heat warnings bring elevated wildfire risk, potential for power outages and rising death toll
San Francisco recorded its hottest day of the year on Tuesday, and Phoenix set a record for the hottest 1 October on record, as the National Weather Service predicted record-high fall temperatures across the south-western US.
With temperatures hitting 100F (38C) or higher in many places, officials and local media outlets issued warnings that the heat posed “a significant threat to property or life”. Excessive heat warnings were in place across the region, bringing with it warnings about elevated wildfire risk, the potential for sweeping power outages in California and a rising toll of heat-related deaths, a particularly deadly risk for unhoused people and the elderly.
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10/01/2024 - 14:49
Ex-president refers to climate crisis as ‘one of the great scams’ and plans to attend two fundraisers in oil-rich Texas
As research finds that the deadly Hurricane Helene was greatly exacerbated by global warming, Donald Trump is continuing to deny the climate crisis and court donations from the industry most responsible for planetary heating. Environmentalists worry that he will also gut flood protections and climate policy if he wins November’s presidential election.
Hours before Helene made landfall in Florida’s Big Bend region Thursday night as a major category 4 hurricane, Trump baselessly said nuclear “warming”, not the climate crisis, is “the warming that you’re going to have to be very careful with”. The following day, he said the “little hurricane” was partially responsible for attendees leaving his rallies early.
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10/01/2024 - 11:39
US public sector workers’ retirement savings invested in projects that pump out a billion tonnes of emissions a year
Private equity firms are using US public sector workers’ retirement savings to fund fossil fuel projects pumping more than a billion tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere every year, according to an analysis.
They have ploughed more than $1tn (£750bn) into the energy sector since 2010, often buying into old and new fossil fuel projects and, thanks to exemptions from many financial disclosures, operating them outside the public eye, the researchers say.
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10/01/2024 - 11:00
Workers struggle with dehydration, fatigue dizziness and headaches – but state laws have stripped their protections
Every day, Raquel Atlahua begins her work as a roofer bracing for the blistering sun.
On the roof, there is no escape from the direct light and heat, and the temperatures in Florida quickly climb as the day progresses. The high humidity and lack of shade make it feel even hotter, and even more difficult to cool down.
This is the first of three stories about the US workers who are struggling to survive a summer of extreme heat that shattered records from coast to coast. Parts two and three coming soon.
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10/01/2024 - 10:53
Conservation scientists have highlighted substantial gaps in the compensation for lost or downgraded protected areas. These gaps risk undermining global efforts for the protection of biodiversity and threaten the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework targets, which aim to conserve 30% of the planet by 2030.
10/01/2024 - 10:31
Why do the mass killers of the fossil fuel industry walk free while the heroes trying to stop them are imprisoned?
The sentences were handed down just as Hurricane Helene hit North Carolina. As homes were smashed, trucks swept down roads that had turned into rivers and residents were killed, in the placid setting of Southwark crown court two young women from Just Stop Oil, Phoebe Plummer and Anna Holland, were sentenced to two years and 20 months, respectively, for throwing tomato soup at the glass protecting Van Gogh’s Sunflowers. No prison terms have been handed to the people whose companies deliver climate breakdown, causing the deaths of many thousands and destruction valued not at the £10,000 estimated by the court in damage to the painting’s frame but trillions.
Everywhere we see a farcical disproportion. The same judge, Christopher Hehir, presided over the trial of the two sons of one of the richest men in Britain, George and Costas Panayiotou. On a night out, they viciously beat up two off-duty police officers, apparently for the hell of it. One of the officers required major surgery, including the insertion of titanium plates in his cheek and eye socket. One of the brothers, Costas, already had three similar assault convictions. But Hehir gave them both suspended sentences. He also decided that a police officer who had sex in his car with a drunk woman he had “offered to take home” should receive only a suspended sentence. Hehir said he wanted “to bring this sad and sorry tale to its end with a final act of mercy”. The solicitor general referred the case to the court of appeal for being unduly lenient, and the sentence was raised to 11 months in jail.
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