Environment

Proposal would require two of every three new vehicles sold in US to be electric by 2032

The Biden administration on Wednesday proposed strict new automobile pollution limits that would require that all-electric vehicles account for as many as two of every three new vehicles sold in the US by 2032 in a plan that would transform the US auto industry.

Under the proposed regulation, released by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), greenhouse gas emissions for the 2027 through 2032 model years for passenger vehicles would be limited to even stricter levels than the auto industry agreed to in 2021.

New Mexico’s ancient water systems nurtured its rural farmlands through climate change. But after last year’s wildfires, there’s little time left to save them

Jimmy Sanchez knows that making things grow during a megadrought isn’t impossible – it just requires a bit of creativity.

In 1882, his ancestors constructed a 24-mile-long ditch to bring water from headwaters in the nearby mountains to the bone-dry foothills where they lived in Holman, New Mexico, allowing their village to sustain fruit, vegetables, and livestock.

The number of cows has nearly doubled in a generation, and the resulting fertiliser and irrigation needs are having a devastating impact

In tourism adverts and on movie screens, Aotearoa has sold its pristine landscapes, churning alpine waterfalls and bright jade-braided rivers to the world, under the tagline “100% pure New Zealand”.

A new report, however, reveals the dire state of many of the country’s fresh waterways: contaminated by thousands of sewage overflows, flooded with nutrient pollution, blooming with toxic algae, risking public health and rendered unswimmable to the communities that have lived by them for years.

Scientists attribute the ‘unprecedented’ visibility of the water body to a boom in the population of zooplankton

Lake Tahoe has attained a clarity that scientists haven’t seen in 40 years – and it’s all because of a microscopic animal acting as a “natural cleanup crew” to restore the clear blue waters.

On Monday, researchers from the UC Davis Tahoe Environmental Research Center (TERC) released their annual report showing that the lake’s average visibility in 2022 was at 71.7ft – compared with 61ft in 2021 – which was largely due to a spike in clarity in the last five months of the year.

Radical rise in spending on trains, trams and buses needed to cut car use, reports body representing unions in England and Wales

Ministers have been urged to ramp up spending on public transport in England and Wales to tackle the climate emergency, and to unlock a £50bn a year boost to the economy, in a report by the Trades Union Congress (TUC).

The report released by the TUC, a federation representing 48 unions, argues for a radical increase in investment – calling for £18bn more a year to be spent on operating trains, trams and buses to help cut car use by 20%, improve quality of life and boost the UK economy.

Climate researchers say magnitude of predicted weather event uncertain but if an extreme El Niño occurs ‘we’ll need to buckle up’

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Climate models around the globe continue to warn of a potential El Niño developing later this year – a pattern of ocean warming in the Pacific that can increase the risk of catastrophic weather events around the globe.

Some models are raising the possibility later this year of an extreme, or “super El Niño”, that is marked by very high temperatures in a central region of the Pacific around the equator.

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Agency sued after ProPublica and the Guardian revealed the EPA gave a Chevron refinery approval for a fuel that could leave people nearby with a one-in-four lifetime risk of cancer

• This article is co-published with ProPublica, a non-profit newsroom that investigates abuses of power

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is facing a lawsuit filed by a community group and questions from a US senator over the agency’s approval of fuels made from discarded plastic under a program it touted as “climate-friendly”.

The new scrutiny is in response to an earlier investigation by ProPublica and the Guardian that revealed the EPA approved the new chemicals even though its own scientists calculated that pollution from production of one of the plastic-based fuels was so toxic that one in four people exposed to it over their lifetime would be expected to develop cancer. That risk is 250,000 times greater than the level usually considered acceptable by the EPA division that approves new chemicals, and it’s higher than the lifetime risk of cancer for current smokers.

Exclusive: Satellite analysis shows toxic blackwater flowed into the Darling-Baaka River via the Wetherell outlet two days before the deaths

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The worst mass fish kill in living memory, which saw millions of animals floating dead on the Darling-Baaka river near Menindee, may have been contributed to by an alleged failed strategy to release a combination of “blackwater” and clean water by authorities, researchers have claimed.

The researchers, who host a water program on Broken Hill’s local community radio, also allege that a smaller fish kill in the same river in February was the result of a similar water release strategy by WaterNSW and should have set alarm bells ringing.

Exclusive: funding requests, uncertain responsibilities and a failure to secure long-term contracts has critics asking if the fossil fuel-based venture is still a good deal

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A multibillion-dollar Japanese plan to extract hydrogen from Victoria’s brown coal is at risk of failing due to demands for extra subsidies and a lack of willingness from Japanese customers to sign up for long-term deals.

People familiar with the Hydrogen Energy Supply Chain (HESC) project said only a portion of the ¥220bn (A$2.48bn) funding would actually be spent on developing a liquefaction plant in the Latrobe valley and export facilities at the nearby Hastings port.

Pools and well-watered gardens at least as damaging as climate emergency or population growth

The swimming pools, well-watered gardens and clean cars of the rich are driving water crises in cities at least as much as the climate emergency or population growth, according to an analysis.

The researchers said the vast difference in water use between rich and poor citizens had been largely overlooked in seeking solutions to water shortages, with the focus instead on attempts to increase supply and higher prices for water. They said the only way to protect water supplies was by redistributing water resources more equally.

Twin studies reveal that ‘acceleration’ of sea-level rise under way, leaving southern US cities in even greater peril

Coastal cities in the southern US, including Miami, Houston and New Orleans, are in even greater peril from sea-level rise than scientists already feared, according to new analysis.

What experts are calling a dramatic surge in ocean levels has taken place along the US south-eastern and Gulf of Mexico coastline since 2010, one study suggests, an increase of almost 5in (12.7cm).

They make up as much as 97% of the animal kingdom, yet wildlife film-makers routinely overlook bugs

While running a biodiversity workshop at a local primary school, Kate Howlett, a zoologist, encouraged children to turn over the bricks and logs at the edges of their playing field to see what was living underneath.

That’s when one child asked her if she had come to their school early that morning to plant the woodlice for them to find. Even after insisting that the bugs were living there all along, the suspicious pupils were reluctant to believe her.

At least two dozen activists in Indigenous and rural areas murdered, disappeared and jailed in wave of attacks

A wave of attacks against environmental defenders has left Indigenous and rural communities across Mexico and Central America reeling amid a lack of government protection and widespread impunity.

At least two dozen defenders have been murdered, disappeared and jailed across the region so far this year, according to research by the Guardian. On Wednesday, the Indigenous rights and anti-mining activist Eustacio Alcalá Díaz was found dead in Michoacán, Mexico, three days after he was abducted by armed men while traveling with Catholic missionaries.

Advocates warn plants like the latest addition to the Texas complex generate hazardous pollutants and provide cover for oil giants to produce new plastic products

ExxonMobil just launched one of the largest chemical recycling plants in North America – but environmental advocates say the technology is a dangerous distraction from the need to reduce plastic production.

On the surface, the latest addition to ExxonMobil’s giant petrochemical refinery complex in Baytown, Texas, sounds like it could be a good thing: An “advanced recycling” facility capable of breaking down 36,000 metric tons of hard-to-recycle plastic each year. But plastic waste advocates warn that plants like it do little actual recycling, and instead generate hazardous pollutants while providing cover for oil giants to keep producing millions of tons of new plastic products each year.

The 900 residents of the Manitoba town have learned to share their streets on the edge of the Arctic with the huge animals and the eager tourists who come to see them

Words and photographs by Zed Nelson

Perched on the southern edge of the Arctic on the shores of Hudson Bay, residents of the Canadian town of Churchill share their streets with the world’s largest land carnivore. Their regular encounters with polar bears have earned Churchill the nickname “Polar bear capital of the world”.

Sparring polar bears on the Hudson Bay shore near Churchill, Manitoba. The bears congregate here every year while waiting for the sea to freeze over so they can resume hunting seals. Photographs by Zed Nelson / Copyright © not to be reproduced without permission

Dozens of storage sites found across Australia but estimated amount of plastic reportedly falls from 12,350 tonnes to 11,000

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New stockpiles of soft plastics from the failed REDcycle recycling scheme have been uncovered as the work to develop an alternative program continues.

The program was wound up in November 2022 after it emerged that plastics consumers had returned to supermarkets to be recycled were instead put into storage.

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Bathing waters in Rutland, Devon and Suffolk will be monitored for water quality regularly

Wild swimming fans will be able to enjoy access to four new sites in the UK that are being designated as bathing waters ahead of summer, the government has announced.

The sites in Rutland, Devon and Suffolk will receive bathing water status from next month, meaning they will soon benefit from regular water-quality monitoring.

Large numbers of cetaceans are dying from lethal collisions with vessels, even in protected areas. Now science may provide the means to protect them

Janie Wray could tell there was something horribly wrong from the way her colleague gasped. They were on a research station off the coast of British Columbia and Wray’s colleague was watching live drone footage through a pair of goggles. “She just went, oh my God,” says Wray.

She had spotted a humpback whale on its migration south, swimming without the use of its tail. Wray and her colleagues at BC Whales crowded around a computer screen to watch the footage. “Immediately, we all knew that we had a whale that most likely had a broken back,” she says. It was almost certainly the result of a ship strike. Later, they discovered it was a whale they knew: Moon.

Exclusive: National Energy Action says progress on energy efficiency is too slow and not well targeted at fuel-poor households

The government’s home insulation scheme would take 190 years to upgrade the energy efficiency of the UK’s draughty housing stock, and 300 years to meet the government’s own targets to reduce fuel poverty, according to industry calculations.

Critics of the Great British Insulation Scheme, which aims to insulate 300,000 homes a year over the next three years, have raised concerns that the plan does not go far enough to reach the 19m UK homes that need better insulation.

Councillors and residents hope to limit the number of daytrippers arriving by boat to preserve the city’s streets and character

The ships, at times dwarfing the average apartment building, begin lumbering into Barcelona while much of the city is still asleep. Stretching as long as five buses, some come to embark or disembark passengers, while others disgorge thousands of daytrippers keen to glimpse the city’s modernist architecture and stroll the narrow streets of the gothic quarter.

It’s a scene that plays out daily in Barcelona – much to the chagrin of some local officials. Last Monday, five cruise ships were slated to arrive; this Friday, on 14 April, eight are expected.