The Golden State’s clean energy use hit new highs in 2025. As the Trump administration abandons US climate initiatives, can California fill the void?
As officials from around the world met in Brazil for the Cop30 climate summit last month, the US president was nowhere to be found, nor were any members of his cabinet. Instead, the most prominent American voice in Belém was that of the California governor, Gavin Newsom.
During the five days he spent in Brazil, Newsom described Donald Trump as an “invasive species” and condemned his rollback of policies aimed at reducing emissions and expanding renewable energy. Newsom, long considered a presidential hopeful, argued that, as the US retreated, California would step up in its place as a “stable, reliable” climate leader and partner.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
‘The biggest transformation in a century’: how California remade itself as a clean energy powerhouse
12/20/2025 - 10:00
12/20/2025 - 05:00
Heating means pests breeding and spreading faster, warn scientists, with simplified current food system already vulnerable
How climate breakdown is putting the world’s food in peril – in maps and charts
The destruction of food supplies by crop pests is being supercharged by the climate crisis, with losses expected to surge, an analysis has concluded.
Researchers said the world was lucky to have so far avoided a major shock and was living on borrowed time, with action needed to diversify crops and boost natural predators of pests.
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12/20/2025 - 03:00
System operator Neso predicts lowest carbon intensity ever on Christmas Day after new wind and solar power come online
Britain’s energy system operator has predicted that this year’s Christmas Day could be the greenest yet.
If the weather remains mild and windy for the rest of December, the National Energy System Operator (Neso) has said it could record the lowest carbon intensity – the measure of how much carbon dioxide is released to produce electricity – recorded on the network for 25 December.
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12/20/2025 - 01:00
European legislators may ban plant-based products from using the name to prevent ‘confusion’. Just don’t mention beef tomatoes or buffalo wings
Most of what you eat is sausages. I mean, if we’re going to get literal about it. Sausage derives from the Latin salsicus, which means “seasoned with salt”. You might think of a sausage as a simple thing, but on this reading it is everything and nothing, a Borgesian meta-concept that retreats as you approach it.
From another perspective, a sausage is an offal-filled intestine, or the macerated parts of an electrocuted or asphyxiated pig or other animal – generally parts that you wouldn’t knowingly eat – mixed with other ingredients that, in isolation, you might consider inedible. For some reason, it is seldom marketed as such.
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12/19/2025 - 08:30
EPA proposed undoing Biden-era policy on exposure to carcinogenic toxin in latest push to weaken toxin standards
Donald Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is proposing to increase the levels of exposure to highly carcinogenic formaldehyde it considers safe. If successful, people would continue to be exposed to concerning amounts of the toxin in thousands of everyday products used across the economy, experts and advocates say.
Formaldehyde, a pungent colorless gas at room temperature, is found in a range of cosmetics, personal care products, home cleaners, craft supplies, leather goods, furniture, clothing, plastic, building materials and other everyday goods. During Joe Biden’s term, EPA scientists took a major step toward reining in the broad societal risk by issuing a finding that any level of exposure to formaldehyde can cause cancer, and very low levels cause non-cancer health harms.
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12/19/2025 - 08:00
Games such as Dragon Quest used to mobilize workers to back corporate goals including relaxing environmental rules
Toyota, the world’s biggest carmaker, is using retro-style video games to rally its US workforce behind its corporate goals, including lobbying to relax environmental rules, the Guardian can reveal.
Through an internal platform called Toyota Policy Drivers, employees can play games with names such as Star Quest, Adventure Quest and Dragon Quest, earning prizes by engaging with company messaging about policy and by contacting federal lawmakers using company-provided talking points.
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12/19/2025 - 05:00
Researchers noticed ‘dramatic’ changes in nutrients in crops, including drop in zinc and rise in lead
More carbon dioxide in the environment is making food more calorific but less nutritious – and also potentially more toxic, a study has found.
Sterre ter Haar, a lecturer at Leiden University in the Netherlands, and other researchers at the institution created a method to compare multiple studies on plants’ responses to increased CO2 levels. The results, she said, were a shock: although crop yields increase, they become less nutrient-dense. While zinc levels in particular drop, lead levels increase.
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40 priority questions to advance understanding of the risks and opportunities of UK marine heatwaves
12/17/2025 - 00:00
npj Ocean Sustainability, Published online: 17 December 2025; doi:10.1038/s44183-025-00171-0
40 priority questions to advance understanding of the risks and opportunities of UK marine heatwaves
World Ocean Explorer Wins Gold Medal Serious Simulation Award from Serious Play Annual International Competition
10/26/2023 - 14:35
For Immediate Release October 19, 2023
Sedgwick, Maine USA World Ocean Explorer, a 3D virtual aquarium and educational simulation, was recently cited for excellence, winning a Gold Medal Award in the 2023 International Serious Play Awards Program.
World Ocean Explorer is an innovative 3D virtual aquarium designed for educational exploration of the world’s oceans. With interactive exhibits and a lobby space, visitors can immerse themselves in realistic marine environments, including a DEEP SEA exhibit funded by Schmidt Ocean Institute, showcasing unprecedented deep-sea discoveries off Australia. Targeted at 3rd graders and beyond, this immersive experience offers a range of perspectives on the ocean environment and can be explored through guided tours or user-controlled interfaces. Visit DEEP SEA at worldoceanexplorer.org/deep-sea-aquarium.html.
Serious Play Conference brings together professionals who are exploring the use of game-based learning, sharing their experience, and working together to shape the future of training and education. For more information on Serious Play Award Program visit seriousplayconf.com/international-serious-play-award-programs.
World Ocean Explorer is a transformative virtual aquarium designed to deepen understanding of the world ocean and amplify connection for young people worldwide. Organized around the principles of Ocean Literacy and the Next Gen Science Standards, World Ocean Explorer brings the wonder and knowledge of ocean species and systems to students in formal and informal classrooms, absolutely free to anyone with a good Internet connection. As an advocate for the ocean through communications, World Ocean Observatory believes there is no better investment in the future of the sustainable ocean than through a new approach to educational engagement that excites, informs, and motivates students to explore the wonders of our marine world and to understand the pervasive connection and implication for our future, inherent in the protection and conservation of all aspects of our ocean world.
World Ocean Explorer presents an astonishing 3-dimensional simulated aquarium visit, organized to reveal the wonders of undersea life, with layers of detailed data and information to augment the emotional connection made to the astonishing beauty and complexity of the dynamic ocean. Within each of the virtual exhibits, students visit exemplary theme-based sites with myriad opportunities to understand the larger perspectives of scientific knowledge as organized and visualized to dramatize the impact and change on ocean life as a result of natural and human-generated events. Through immersion among displays, mixed media and 3D models, the experience of an aquarium visit will be brought into classrooms or home school environments as a free, accessible, always available opportunity for teaching and learning. All of this will be available to a world audience without physical limitation or cost. World Ocean Explorer, a project of the World Ocean Observatory, receives support from the Seth Sprague Educational and Charitable Foundation, Visual Solutions Lab, the Climate Change Institute, the Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation, and The Fram Museum Oslo. To learn more about the current and future exhibits of World Ocean Explorer, visit worldoceanexplorer.org.
media contact
Trisha Badger, Managing Director, World Ocean Observatory | director@thew2o.net +12077011069
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