Category News

2019 may go down in history as Year Zero of the climate apocalypse. The tsunami of extreme events has been so relentless that each is quickly forgotten in favour of its successor. So before the year ends we should pause, remember just how extraordinary it was, and reflect on what this might mean for our future. The year started with a record-breaking heatwave in southern Australia with temperatures in the mid-40s, in some areas for 40 days in a row. Then followed the immolation of vast areas of moist Tasmanian forests, forests that date back to the last ice age.

Approximately 3% of the state burned as a long-term trend of less rainfall and more evaporation was capped off by the driest January on record. On the mainland, who could forget those horrifying images of the Menindee fish kills?

The Ocean Cleanup has revealed plans to turn the plastic it has collected from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch into “beautiful, sustainable products”. The Ocean Cleanup’s founder and CEO Boyan Slat made the announcement last week that plastic collected by the project will be used to make useful products.

“We’re going to turn it into beautiful, sustainable products,” Slat said at the event on 12 December in Vancouver. “These are not going to be gimmicks. These are going to be products that you will actually want.”

Slat revealed the news standing alongside 60 large white bags filled with plastic the organisation has collected.

The ocean waste is the first material that the Dutch nonprofit has collectedfrom the so-called Great Pacific Garbage Patch – an area located between Hawaii and Califor...

Since winning the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) Young Champions of the Earth prize 12 months ago, Better Blue founder Miao Wang has taken China’s diving community by storm. Her Better Blue foundation is committed to enabling more people to learn to interact with the oceans scientifically through shaping a more responsible and stronger diving industry.

The four major fields of Better Blue include marine citizen science, marine public education, industry development support and endangered species and habitat protection.

Better blue builds capacity within diving communities by holding events to raise awareness about marine conservation and through education programmes for divers.

Now, Better Blue has fast-tracked its progress to become one of China’s top ranking marine non-governmental o...

1. Leadership is REALLY important

COP25 in Madrid only happened because the Chilean government, faced with mounting civil disorder, decided to cancel the meeting in Santiago. Spain stepped in and in three weeks organised a well-resourced and well-run event. However, the fact that it was being run by one government, while hosted by another, gave rise to severe difficulties.

Delegates were highly critical of the fact that when it came to the key text about ambition, the Chileans presented the lowest common denominator language first, resulting in a huge number of objections from countries eager to see more ambition on carbon cuts. Experienced COP watchers said they should have started with high ambition and negotiated down to a compromise.

Insiders say that agreement was only found becaus...

Three and a half years ago I woke up on holiday to discover my country had voted to leave the EU. It really saddened me. Whilst I got some of the arguments for leaving, I truly felt, that in an increasingly fragmented world, we should remain in Europe and work together.

I make no apologies for being a conservationist. I love this planet and if we are going to save it from the destructive practices of human beings, we need to unite and work together as a global population. This is not a time for nationalism, insular policies and the building of walls!

After Boris Johnson was replaced by a melting ice sculpture – when he refused to take part in Channel 4’s climate debate – I hoped voters would examine his environment-related promises...

Greenland is losing ice seven times faster than it was in the 1990s. The assessment comes from an international team of polar scientists who’ve reviewed all the satellite observations over a 26-year period. They say Greenland’s contribution to sea-level rise is currently tracking what had been regarded as a pessimistic projection of the future.

It means an additional 7cm of ocean rise could now be expected by the end of the century from Greenland alone.

This threatens to put many millions more people in low-lying coastal regions at risk of flooding.

It’s estimated roughly a billion live today less than 10m above current high-tide lines, including 250 million below 1m.

“Storms, if they happen against a baseline of higher seas – they will break flood defences,” said Prof Andy Shepherd, of ...

For decades, most of the news about coral reefs has been pretty gloomy. Now the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary is launching a new mission to bring back a few of those reefs. Reefs along the Keys once commonly had coral cover of 30 to 40 percent of its surfaces. Those healthy reefs protected the Keys from storms, nurtured fish and lobsters and helped create a thriving tourism industry that relies heavily on diving, snorkeling and fishing.

Now the coral cover is more like 2 percent on a lot of the reefs that still draw tourists.

“Frankly, we cannot afford to let these declines continue. We cannot afford not to act,” Sarah Fangman, the sanctuary superintendent. “These systems are in a state that without our active help, they cannot recover fast enough.”

The National Oceanic and Atmos...

What happened in week one?

The COP25 climate talks in Madrid may have officially opened on Monday 2 December, but they only really started on Friday evening. That was when Greta Thunberg arrived to join a 500,000-strong march through the centre of Madrid, demanding that world leaders listen.

The young activist said that she, and the millions who have marched and protested around the world in the last two years, had “achieved nothing” because greenhouse gas emissions have continued to rise...

On board Darryl Green’s small fishing boat, just off the island of Praslin in the Seychelles, the water is so clear we can see the seabed. Brightly coloured fish swim around the hull. “You know at my age I’ve seen the fish size decrease dramatically,” the fisherman reminisces. He’s on board his boat with his young grandson in tow.

“If as fishermen, we do not take responsibility for our fish stocks, who’s going to do it? If we don’t start somewhere then in the future we’re going to be very hard pushed to find fish to feed our children.”

Mr Green has been fishing his local bay for decades – but not any more. He’s set up a project with his fellow fishermen to voluntarily stop fishing here for six months of the year, hoping that this will allow fish stocks to replenish.

“This is our office,” ...

The world’s oceans are gasping for breath, a report issued Saturday at the annual global climate talks in Madrid has concluded. The report represents the combined efforts of 67 scientists from 17 countries and was released by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. It found that oxygen levels in the world’s oceans declined by roughly 2 percent between 1960 and 2010. The decline, called deoxygenation, is largely attributed to climate change, although other human activities are contributing to the problem. One example is so-called nutrient runoff, when too many nutrients from fertilizers used on farms and lawns wash into waterways.

The decline might not seem significant because, “we’re sort of sitting surrounded by plenty of oxygen and we don’t think small losses of oxygen a...