"A bird said to have the aerodynamic build of a “jet fighter” has been tracked flying more than 12,000km (7,500 miles) from Alaska to New Zealand, setting a new world record for avian non-stop flight."
"Thirty of the world’s largest asset owners, with portfolios worth a combined $5tn (£3.8tn), have committed to cutting the carbon emissions linked to companies they invest in by up to 29% within the next four years."
"There has been a 'staggering' rise in natural disasters over the past 20 years and the climate crisis is to blame, the United Nations said Monday."
The narrative around the ocean should become a more hopeful one, argues former NOAA administrator Jane Lubchenco. As evidence at the Society of Environmental Journalists’ recent virtual conference, Lubchenco cites a top-level international analysis that suggests the ocean can play a positive role in everything from reducing climate change to securing the future of food. Find out more.
With the heart of a naturalist, the head of a scientist and the weary bones of someone watching the destruction of the natural world, a prize-winning writer shares insights into the environment … and into a mind shaped by autism. That writer, by the way, is just 16 years old. BookShelf’s Melody Kemp reviews “Diary of a Young Naturalist.”
"Mario Molina, who shared a Nobel Prize in chemistry for demonstrating the threat to the ozone layer posed by CFCs, chemical compounds often found in refrigerants and hair sprays and whose use was later curtailed by a landmark international accord, died Oct. 7 at his home in Mexico City. He was 77."
"Emissions of nitrous oxide, a climate super-pollutant hundreds of times more potent than carbon dioxide, are rising faster than previously thought—at a rate that not only threatens international targets to limit global warming, but is consistent with a worst-case trajectory for climate change, a new study suggests."
"The world's sea floor is littered with an estimated 14 million tonnes of microplastics, broken down from the masses of rubbish entering the oceans every year, according to Australia's national science agency."
"Clothes recycling is the pressure-release valve of fast fashion, and it’s breaking under COVID-19 curbs. The multi-billion-dollar trade in second-hand clothing helps prevent the global fashion industry’s growing pile of waste going straight to landfill, while keeping wardrobes clear for next season’s designs."
When it comes to climate change, coal’s carbon emissions mean trouble. But as Backgrounder explains, if the once-powerful coal industry is on the decline in the United States, the fuel’s still finding favor worldwide. And that’s bad news for the Paris climate accord’s hopes of gaining control of runaway warming. The story behind the “exaggerated death” of coal.
