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Goldfish dumped in lakes grow to monstrous size, threatening ecosystems
Minnesota pet owners warned not to release fish into wild, where they wreak havoc on native species
Authorities in Minnesota have appealed to aquarium owners to stop releasing pet fish into waterways, after several huge goldfish were pulled from a local lake.
Officials in Burnsville, about 15 miles south of Minneapolis, said released goldfish can grow to several times their normal size and wreak havoc on indigenous species.
Continue reading...Festivals are out; so is the dream holiday. But for once I’m looking forward to summer | Emma Beddington
After 46 years, I’m lowering my expectations. Who needs more than ice-cream and a few salty snacks?
Summer is here: I can smell it (lighter-fuel-doused charcoal and the ammonia punch of After Bite dabbed on giant angry weals) and hear it (strimmers and mowers and the ice-cream van). I can feel it too: a slither of itchy unease at the core of my being, a tight-chested sense that everything is slipping out of my control when I see a few sun icons on my phone.
“Which summer tribe are you?” the magazine quizzes ask, but I’m not mermaidcore, Riviera chic or Amish prairie cowgirl: I’m “looking longingly at cardigans” – and not just because this season has got off to such a damp and chilly start.
Continue reading...‘Change is coming’: UN sets out Paris-style plan to cut extinction rate tenfold
Ambitious draft goals to halt biodiversity loss revealed, with proposed changes to food production expected to ‘raise eyebrows’
Eliminating plastic pollution, reducing pesticide use by two-thirds, halving the rate of invasive species introduction and eliminating $500bn (£360bn) of harmful environmental government subsidies a year are among the targets in a new draft of a Paris-style UN agreement for biodiversity loss.
The goals set out by the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) to help halt and reverse the ecological destruction of Earth by the end of the decade also include protecting at least 30% of the world’s oceans and land and providing a third of climate crisis mitigation through nature by 2030.
Continue reading...European Midday Market Brief
Our climate change turning point is right here, right now | Rebecca Solnit
People are dying. Aquatic animals are baking in their shells. Fruit is being cooked on the tree. It’s time to act
Human beings crave clarity, immediacy, landmark events. We seek turning points, because our minds are good at recognizing the specific – this time, this place, this sudden event, this tangible change. This is why we were never very good, most of us, at comprehending climate change in the first place. The climate was an overarching, underlying condition of our lives and planet, and the change was incremental and intricate and hard to recognize if you weren’t keeping track of this species or that temperature record. Climate catastrophe is a slow shattering of the stable patterns that governed the weather, the seasons, the species and migrations, all the beautifully orchestrated systems of the holocene era we exited when we manufactured the anthropocene through a couple of centuries of increasingly wanton greenhouse gas emissions and forest destruction.
This spring, when I saw the shockingly low water of Lake Powell, I thought that maybe this summer would be a turning point. At least for the engineering that turned the southwest’s Colorado River into a sort of plumbing system for human use, with two huge dams that turned stretches of a mighty river into vast pools of stagnant water dubbed Lake Powell, on the eastern Utah/Arizona border, and Lake Mead, in southernmost Nevada. It’s been clear for years that the overconfident planners of the 1950s failed to anticipate that, while they tinkered with the river, industrial civilization was also tinkering with the systems that fed it.
Continue reading...Shell, PetroChina sign 5-year deal on carbon neutral LNG
Major Chinese steel hub commits to peaking carbon emissions by 2025
Project Lead Coal Regions Just Transition, Agora Energiewende – Berlin/Bangkok
Project Manager Coal Regions Just Transition, Agora Energiewende – Berlin/Bangkok
Global Campaigns Director, Oil Change International – Remote
Regional Program Director, Oil Change International – Remote
Managing Director, Greenhouse Gas Management Institute – Remote (US Pacific)
Carbon Analyst, The Nature Conservancy – London
Florida breaks manatee death record in first six months of 2021
How years of Coalition interference left AGL with no option but to split in two
After years of Coalition interference - and attempts to depose its CEO - AGL has been forced to undertake emergency measures to save its business.
The post How years of Coalition interference left AGL with no option but to split in two appeared first on RenewEconomy.
“Last straw:” Community members slam AusNet grid plans, quit consultations
Community members quit AusNet consultation group, saying they had been misinformed by network operator over its major grid transmission plans.
The post “Last straw:” Community members slam AusNet grid plans, quit consultations appeared first on RenewEconomy.
Zooming versus flying: The net climate impacts of internet use
One hour spent on Zoom generates less CO2 than driving a car a kilometre. Going virtual is actually a good thing for emissions.
The post Zooming versus flying: The net climate impacts of internet use appeared first on RenewEconomy.
Winter energy price shock: Regulators and policy makers are to blame
The failure of policy makers and regulators is now being felt in the electricity market, and consumers are being sent the bill.
The post Winter energy price shock: Regulators and policy makers are to blame appeared first on RenewEconomy.
‘Environmental accounting’ could revolutionise nature conservation, but Australia has squandered its potential
Record number of manatees die in Florida as food source dries up
State officials report ‘unprecedented’ deaths due to starvation as pollution and algal blooms take toll
More manatees have died already this year than in any other year in Florida’s recorded history, primarily from starvation due to the loss of seagrass beds, state officials have said.
The Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission reported that 841 manatee deaths were recorded between 1 January and 2 July, breaking the previous record of 830 that died during the whole of 2013 because of an outbreak of toxic red tide.
Continue reading...