Breaking Waves: Ocean News

Thanks to hydraulic fracturing, record amounts of oil and gas have been produced in the US in the past six years Kamala Harris and Donald Trump clashed over fracking during Tuesday’s presidential debate. Here’s an introduction to the gas and oil extraction process that has transformed the US fossil fuel industry. Continue reading...

Harris has a progressive record on climate but indicated a shift, probably to assuage voters in swing states US politics live – latest updates Kamala Harris stridently backed new fracking and expanded US gas production in comments that raised eyebrows among some environmentalists as, yet again, the unfolding climate crisis was largely overlooked during a set piece presidential debate. Harris, in a televised debate with Donald Trump on Tuesday night in Philadelphia, rebuffed the former president’s claim that she will end fracking “on day one” if elected by touting booming levels of drilling during her term as vice-president, in which US oil and gas production has hit record highs. Fact-checking the presidential debate Harris slams Trump for falsehoods in fiery debate Taylor Swift endorses Harris in post signed ‘childless cat lady’ ‘Maga mad libs’: How the debate played out on social media Presidential poll tracker Continue reading...

Exclusive: Environment Agency warned about ‘forever chemicals' 20 years before it started to regulate them The Environment Agency was warned about the “chronic threat” that firefighting foams containing PFAS “forever chemicals” pose to the environment in 2003, 20 years before it started the process of regulating the chemicals, it can be revealed. In a 200-page report obtained by the Ends Report via a freedom of information request and shared with the Guardian, consultants commissioned by the Environment Agency conducted an environmental review of firefighting foams with a “particular emphasis on their fluorosurfactant content”. Continue reading...

I do not think it is a leap to see our exploitive relationship with Earth as part of a centuries-long war against the environment Standing on the edge of Utah’s terminal Great Salt Lake is to witness the religion of over water-consumption in the desert. Our inland sea is disappearing in climate chaos evidenced by extreme heat and a megadrought not seen in 2,500 years. Ten million migrating birds depend on this water body for food, rest and breeding. Flocks of Wilson’s phalaropes, small and handsome shorebirds, spin in saline waters creating water columns alive with brine shrimp and flies and resulting in a feeding frenzy. American avocets and black-necked stilts stand stoically in the shallows. Thousands of ducks are sprinkled on the lake like pepper. Water and sky merge as one. There is no horizon. All appears well in this serene landscape of pastel blues animated by birds. It is not. The health of the Great Salt Lake is only as strong as the health of the human community that surrounds it. And vice versa. If the 2 million people living within the Great Salt Lake watershed with Salt Lake City at its center do not mobilize to put more water in the lake, the death of the Great Salt Lake will be their own. This will also be the demise of millions of migrating birds. Terry Tempest Williams is a writer, naturalist and activist Continue reading...