UK lender has faced backlash for providing services to climate polluters and defence firms with alleged links to Gaza war
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The chief executive of Barclays has praised Wimbledon organisers for “rightly resisting pressures” to drop the bank’s sponsorship, suggesting that protests over issues including its climate policies are “ultimately misguided”.
The UK bank has been the subject of a wave of demonstrations by climate campaigners and anti-war activists. They claim Barclays has been sponsoring big sporting events and music festivals to “launder” its reputation, and “cover up” its role in funding climate polluters and providing financial services to defence companies, in particular those accused of supplying equipment to Israel as it continues its war in Gaza.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
08/01/2024 - 05:44
08/01/2024 - 05:00
Biden’s efforts to save mature trees are not getting enough Forest Service support, according to some conservationists
They are the ancient giants of America – towering trunks of sequoias or beech or ash that started to sprout in some cases before the age of the Roman empire, with the few survivors of a frenzy of settler logging now appreciated as crucial allies in an era of climate and biodiversity crises.
Joe Biden has vowed to protect these “cherished” remnants of old growth forest, as well as the next generation of mature forests, directing his government to draw up new plans to conserve the ecological powerhouses that enable US forests to soak up about 10% of the country’s carbon emissions, as well as provide a vital crucible for clean water and wildlife.
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08/01/2024 - 01:00
The annual coronation of a young girl symbolised a fishing community’s hopes. Now, as the industry declines, it has evolved to reflect the powerful role of women and the change they bring about
• Photographs by Christopher Thomond
The sun is battling the clouds, but the forecast rain holds off as the flotilla enters the harbour. Lining the quayside, hundreds of local people and tourists cheer each boat as it appears, and the sound of a pipe band skirls on the breeze as families crane their necks. They are looking for WaveDancer, the final, most important vessel. Today it is carrying an honoured passenger: the Eyemouth Herring Queen.
Fourteen-year-old Holly Blackie is the 80th Eyemouth Herring Queen (EHQ) and this year is particularly special as 50 former queens have travelled from all over the world to witness her coronation.
Holly Blackie is crowned by the outgoing Herring Queen, Sophie Crowe
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07/31/2024 - 23:00
Cornwall Wildlife Trust initiative aims to benefit creatures from upland marsh fritillaries to seahorses in St Austell Bay
A Cornish conservation charity has launched an ambitious rewilding project intended to benefit creatures from marsh fritillary butterflies living high on the moor to long-snouted seahorses in seagrass in a bay five miles away.
The Tor to Shore project will stretch from Helman Tor, a reserve topped with a granite boulder summit near Bodmin, to St Austell Bay via the tumbling River Par, its idea to improve a landscape at scale.
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07/31/2024 - 21:57
Japanese government confirms it will allow whalers to catch and kill up to 59 fin whales, a species conservationists consider vulnerable
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The Australian government is “deeply disappointed” by Japan’s decision to add the world’s second-largest whale species to the list of species its commercial whale hunters will target.
Tanya Plibersek, the environment minister, attacked Japan’s decision to hunt fin whales – the world’s second-longest whale and considered vulnerable.
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07/31/2024 - 19:00
Opposition leader’s argument is puzzling given Canadian provinces dominated by renewables pay less for electricity
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There’s a community in Ontario called Dutton which, right now, seems appropriate given the number of times Peter Dutton has name-checked the Canadian province over the last 12 months.
In dozens of media interviews and speeches, Dutton (the opposition leader, not the township) has said Ontarians are getting cheap electricity because of their 20 nuclear reactors.
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07/31/2024 - 13:12
New research led proposes a plan to safeguard Earth's imperiled biodiversity by cryogenically preserving biological material on the moon. The moon's permanently shadowed craters are cold enough for cryogenic preservation without the need for electricity or liquid nitrogen.
07/31/2024 - 13:04
Central General Staff militant group previously said Cop16 event scheduled for October in Cali ‘would fail’
A dissident rebel group has backed down from its threat to disrupt the UN biodiversity summit in Colombia later this year.
The Central General Staff (EMC), a guerrilla faction that rejected the country’s 2016 peace agreement, said on Wednesday it would order its militants not to target the Cop16 negotiations that are due to begin in Cali in October.
Find more age of extinction coverage here, and follow the biodiversity reporters Phoebe Weston and Patrick Greenfield on X for all the latest news and features.
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07/31/2024 - 10:55
Nearly 100 wildfires are burning, including massive blaze in California that has become fifth-largest in state history
A person has been killed in one of several wildfires threatening heavily populated areas of the Colorado foothills, authorities said on Wednesday.
A body was discovered in a home about 1 mile (1.6km) north of Lyons, Colorado, according to Curtis Johnson, the Boulder county sheriff. He said that detectives were assisting the investigation into the death, but declined to provide further details.
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07/31/2024 - 10:00
Charity wants to know how climate crisis is affecting plants and what UK gardeners are doing to mitigate effects
Most gardeners love nothing more than the chance to chat about what has worked and what hasn’t in their flowerbeds this year.
So the latest callout from the Royal Horticultural Society will be music to their ears; the RHS is asking for information about what flowered for ages, what loved being waterlogged and how plants did on the occasional hot day, so that they can draw up a plan for how to keep gardening alive during the climate crisis.
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