By Soutik Biswas and Raju Gusain Early in the morning of 2 January, Prakash Bhotiyal woke up to a “loud sound” in his house in Joshimath, a small Himalayan mountain town in the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand. The 52-year-old tailor switched on the lights and surveyed his newly-built, double-storey house to find gaping cracks… Read More Joshimath: The trauma of living in India’s sinking Himalayan town
German police warned they would not allow their officers to be targeted with violence amid growing tensions with climate protesters in the condemned village of Lützerath on Monday. The village is set to be swallowed up by the local coal mine, run by Germany’s energy giant RWE. But organizations such as the Last Generation and Fridays for Future… Read More Germany: Police, coal protesters face off in Lützerath
A United Nations-backed scientific panel has concluded that actions taken under the Montreal Protocol have successfully strengthened the Earth’s ozone layer, helping avoid global warming from 0.5 to 1 degrees Celsius by mid-century. The Montreal Protocol is an 1989 international treaty aimed at regulating the production and use of chemicals that contribute to the depletion… Read More Earth’s ozone layer on way to recovery, finds UN report, should mend by 2040
Max Porter As I lie down under a 2,000-year-old small-leaved lime coppice, I contemplate what is truly sacred This is me trying to have a sacred encounter with the 2,000-year-old small-leaved lime coppice at Westonbirt Arboretum. Because of my terrible hunched posture I’m always looking for an opportunity to lie down and alleviate the pain in my… Read More In an ancient forest, I look for peace, but instead I find Happy the puppy
Jonathan Watts For anyone who cares about the Amazon rainforest, there will be an extra reason to celebrate the new year countdown in Brazil on 31 December because the first stroke of midnight will mark the last moment in power of Jair Bolsonaro. The defeat of the ultra-right former army captain, who unleashed a wave of… Read More Seven reasons to be cheerful about the Amazon in 2023 – and three to be terrified
A summer of extreme heat and drought around the world has been a reminder that water scarcity is a pressing issue and one that will only get worse with climate change. Already, more than two billion people worldwide lack easy access to clean water, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). For some countries, desalination plants offer… Read More How sunlight could turn seawater into freshwater for coastal communities
Graeme Green Imagine the privilege of smelling a wonderful perfume that no one else alive on Earth has smelled before,” says the conservation photographer Eladio Fernandez. This year, Fernandez had that pleasure. After a challenging search in the cloud forests of northern Haiti, he located several Magnolia emarginata, a critically endangered tree with white flowers that hadn’t… Read More Lost and found: how a photographer sniffed out the magnolia species not seen for a century
Sushmitha Ramakrishnan The US Department of Energy will announce a major breakthrough in nuclear fusion technology this week, department spokespeople said Sunday. The milestone announcement is expected from Washington on Tuesday. The announcement was made shortly after the Financial Times reported scientists at the California-based Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) successfully generated a “net energy gain” using nuclear fusion in a lab… Read More Can nuclear fusion help fuel the world?
As part of his “Clean India” initiative, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has said efforts are being made to remove these mountains of garbage and convert them into green zones. That goal, if achieved, could relieve some of the suffering of those residents living in the shadows of these dump sites – and help the… Read More A trash heap 62 meters high shows the scale of India’s climate challenge
It’s not just indifference. It’s an active, and deadly, cavalier attitude towards the lives of others: an example other nations follow George Monbiot The question that assails those who strive for a kinder world is always the same but endlessly surprising: how do we persuade others to care? The lack of interest in resolving our existential… Read More The US is a rogue state leading the world towards ecological collapse
