Breaking Waves: Ocean News

Saket Soni, founder of Resilience Force, says skilled restoration workers, with a range of legal statuses, are doing the arduous task of repairing US cities affected by disasters Trump’s immigration crackdown could cause chaos for communities trying to rebuild after devastating wildfires and floods, as the vast majority of skilled disaster-restoration workers are immigrants, a leading expert has warned. Republican and Democratic voters across the US are reeling from climate-fueled disasters, with thousands of homes and businesses destroyed and damaged by the ongoing fires in Los Angeles, as well as major hurricanes in Florida, Texas, North Carolina and Georgia last year. Continue reading...

If the courts let 16 climate activist’s draconian sentences stand this week, we are no better than an authoritarian state Caroline Lucas is an environmental activist and former Green MP Sixteen jailed Just Stop Oil activists will appear in court this week in an appeal against their sentences, which were believed to be the harshest ever for peaceful protest in Britain. For damaging picture frames, obstructing the road, or just talking about obstructing the road, they have received punishments that we would normally reserve for serious crimes. People trying to draw attention to the government failure to confront the cause of the climate crisis were imprisoned for up to five years. These sentences have been condemned as draconian by Amnesty International, as “a grave erosion of … freedoms” by Liberty, as “a profound injustice” by Global Witness, and as “not acceptable in a democracy” by a special rapporteur for the UN. They represent the terrifying decline of our nation, from a beacon of tolerance with a clear division between politics and policing, towards an oppressive state where that dividing line is becoming harder and harder to discern. Regardless of your politics and what you are standing for, the right of peaceful protest is a vital sign of a healthy democracy and an essential guardrail against authoritarian politicians and reckless companies. Caroline Lucas is an environmental activist and former Green MP Continue reading...

Labour is constantly torn between its self-image as a party of radical change and its fear of alienating voters with the wrong kind of radicalism When Keir Starmer became Labour leader he was unpractised in politics. For advice, he naturally turned to someone who had done his job before and with whom he had a good personal rapport: Ed Miliband. As Starmer grew in confidence he stayed friendly with Miliband, deferential to his status as a veteran of government and appreciative of his sincere enthusiasm for the energy and climate brief. But the new leader was also ruthlessly focused on winning power, and increasingly alert to toxicities in the Labour brand. He was persuaded that the journey to Downing Street could be completed only by jettisoning policy baggage and paying less heed to people associated with past failure. Continue reading...

Protesters will gather outside court of appeal in support of activists, who say judges defied decades of precedent Sixteen environmental activists jailed in the past year will appear at the high court on Wednesday to ask England’s most senior judge to quash their “unduly harsh” sentences. The appellants, from four separate cases, will appear before a bench of judges led by Lady Carr, the Lady Chief Justice, in a full session of the court of appeal in which they will argue that judges defied decades of precedent to hand them long jail terms for nonviolent protests. Continue reading...