Environment news

• Canadian company in negotiations with Trump to mine seabed

  28-03-2025 17:10 via theguardian.com
  Environmentalists call bid to skirt UN treaty ‘reckless’ amid fears that mining will cause irreversible biodiversity lossA Canadian deep-sea mining firm has revealed it has been negotiating with the Trump administration to bypass a UN treaty and potentially gain authorisation from the US to mine in international waters.The revelation has stunned environmentalists, who condemned the move as “reckless” and a “slap in the face for multilateralism”. Continue readi
  
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• Dark Laboratory: groundbreaking book argues climate crisis was sparked by colonisation

  28-03-2025 15:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Tao Leigh Goffe argues climate breakdown is the mutant offspring of European scientific racism and colonialismWe all think we know what is causing the breakdown of the planet’s climate: burning fossil fuels that release carbon dioxide, change the chemistry of the air and trap more heat from the sun, leading to rising temperatures.But Tao Leigh Goffe, an associate professor of Africana, Puerto Rican and Latino Studies at the City University of New York, wants us to visualise a far more spec
  
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• Calvin Klein jeans for free! Branded clothes dumped in the desert snapped up on anti-fast fashion website

  28-03-2025 14:00 via theguardian.com
  Items taken from a mountain of discarded garments in the Atacama desertwere sold for the price of shipping in a fightback against the ‘racist and colonialist’ dumping of unwanted clothingEvery week, Bastián Barria ventures into the Atacama desert in northern Chile looking for items of discarded clothing in the sand. About half of the hundreds of garments he finds are in perfect condition. He collects what he can and adds them to the two-tonne pile of clothes he has stored at a
  
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• How to watch Saturday's partial solar eclipse

  28-03-2025 13:00 via bbc.com
  
  Parts of the UK with clear skies will see the Moon take a "bite" out of the Sun on Saturday morning.
  
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• Export of endangered eels to Russia ends after UK government ban

  28-03-2025 12:54 via theguardian.com
  
  British eel trader says move will destroy traditional elvering but campaigners welcome decisionEndangered eels caught in British estuaries will no longer be exported to Russia after the government banned the trade.In a decision that Britain’s last remaining eel trader said would end centuries of traditional elvering, a request to dispatch millions of glass eels – young eels that develop into elvers – to a restocking project in Kaliningrad was refused by the Department for Envir
  
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• ‘We live in both worlds’: how teachers of Gullah Geechee herbal medicine are cultivating tradition

  28-03-2025 12:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Classes on ‘hoodoo’ connect new generations eager to explore their roots with elders in the South Carolina communityWith their eyes downcast in reflection, dozens of people dressed in white crossed a bridge to pay respect to their ancestors last October. They carried flowers, herbs and photos of their loved ones to lay at the foot of an altar on a tiny strip of land in the middle of a pond. For the last few years, this ritual at the start of the annual Gullah Geechee herbal gathering
  
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• The controversial California city backed by tech elite has a new plan: boats

  28-03-2025 12:00 via theguardian.com
  
  California Forever is back with a proposal that has some on board: using the land it owns to create a shipbuilding hubIn 2023, a group called California Forever, funded by Silicon Valley billionaires, introduced a splashy proposal to build a new city on tens of thousands acres of farmland it had acquired north-east of San Francisco.Residents and officials of Solano county, where the city would sit, were frustrated by what they saw as a lack of local input and concerned about wealthy outsiders wi
  
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• I was an independent observer in the Greenpeace trial. What I saw was shocking | Steven Donziger

  28-03-2025 11:00 via theguardian.com
  Greenpeace lost – not because it did something wrong but because it was denied a fair trialThe stunning $667m verdict against Greenpeace last week is a direct attack on the climate movement, Indigenous peoples and the first amendment.The North Dakota case is so deeply flawed – at its core, the trial was really about crushing dissent – that I believe there is a good chance it will be reversed on appeal and ultimately backfire against the Energy Transfer pipeline company. Continu
  
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• Week in wildlife: relief for traumatised lions, a shy deer and a stork doing yoga

  28-03-2025 09:00 via theguardian.com
  
  The best of this week’s wildlife photographs from around the world Continue reading...
  
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• Weather tracker: Heavy rain alerts in Queensland as floods cut off towns

  28-03-2025 08:38 via theguardian.com
  
  Wettest March day for 15 years in some parts of northern Australian state, while storms and hail hit MediterraneanMore heavy rain has hit Queensland, Australia, just weeks after the devastation of Cyclone Alfred. Much of north and central Queensland was put under severe weather alert for heavy rainfall earlier this week, as six-hourly rainfall totals of 30-60mm were anticipated, with risk of seeing a total of up to 120mm locally in this time frame.In the north-west of the state, this rain allowe
  
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• Why the weasel testicles? Cambridge show explains medieval medicine

  28-03-2025 07:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Exhibition aims to help visitors get inside the minds that thought mercury and roasted apples would cure liceMedieval treatments might make you question the sanity of the doctors of the day, but a new exhibition is set to take visitors inside the minds of such medics and reveal the method behind what can seem like madness.Curious Cures, opening on Saturday at Cambridge University Library, is the culmination of a project to digitise and catalogue more than 180 manuscripts, mostly dating from the
  
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• Weatherwatch: warmer water drives higher-than-expected rise in sea level

  28-03-2025 07:00 via theguardian.com
  Nasa data for 2024 shows reversal of dynamic in which melting ice usually accounts for majority of increaseNormally, two-thirds of sea level rise is due to melting ice from mountain glaciers and Greenland and Antarctic ice caps, and one-third from the thermal expansion of the oceans.Last year, the hottest year on record, this was reversed, with warmer water accounting for two-thirds of the sea level rise of 0.59cm (0.23in) – considerably more than the 0.43cm scientists were expecting. Nasa
  
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• ‘The heat you need at a reasonable price’: how district heating can speed the switch to clean energy

  28-03-2025 06:00 via theguardian.com
  
  In Sweden, most residential heating and hot water comes from heating networks – helping to pool resources and innovationDistrict heating is sometimes talked about like some kind of unattainable utopia, but in the Swedish capital these low-carbon heating networks are not special.In fact, district heat is so run-of-the-mill that many Stockholmers do not know that they have it, said Fredrik Persson, as he showed the Guardian around Stockholm Exergi’s pioneering power station in Norra Dj
  
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