Breaking Waves: Ocean News

Shifting responsibility to consumers minimises the role of energy industry and policymakers, University of Sydney research suggests Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast It’s not unusual to see individuals championed as heroes of climate action, with their efforts to install rooftop solar and buy electric cars promoted as pivotal in the fight to save the planet. Hero figures can motivate others to follow suit, but a University of Sydney study suggests the way the energy sector shapes this narrative sets individuals up to fail. Sign up for Guardian Australia’s breaking news email Continue reading...

United Utilities has dropped legal fight to block access to data on the discharge of treated sewage in Lake District The water company United Utilities has conceded defeat in its legal battle to block public access to data on treated sewage it is discharging into Windermere in the Lake District. Company officials initially claimed that data from phosphorus monitors at a main sewage treatment works at the lake was not environmental information. The company also wanted to block access to data from Cunsey Beck, a site of special scientific interest, which flows into Windermere. Continue reading...

Environmentalists are braced for new construction on the president’s signature border wall – and the damage that would wreak During Donald Trump’s first presidential term, he began an ambitious and costly border militarization program, including the construction of over 450 miles of wall that severed wildlife corridors and fragmented ecosystems in some of the country’s most remote and biodiverse regions. With his second inauguration on Monday, environmentalists are bracing for any new phase of construction that could exacerbate the ecological toll of the border wall. “It’s an absolute travesty and a disaster for border wildlife,” said Margaret Wilder, a human-environment geographer and political ecologist at the University of Arizona, regarding the environmental impact of the existing border wall and the prospect of renewed construction. She said the wall harmed efforts “after many decades of binational cooperation between the US and Mexico to protect this fragile and biodiverse region. I don’t think Americans realize what is at stake.” Continue reading...

A combustible combination of factors laid the groundwork for disaster. Will LA learn the lessons from the fires as it moves forward? Dr Edith de Guzman watched the flames of the Palisades fire rolling through the Santa Monica mountains out of the windows of her University of California, Los Angeles, classroom last week. First, on Tuesday, flames surged toward the Pacific Palisades neighborhood, the affluent community overlooking the ocean from the canyons in west LA. Then overnight, they tore through parts of Altadena, a diverse town in the city’s east that had served as a refuge for Black Angelenos. Continue reading...