Breaking Waves: Ocean News

Decision leaves in place Biden-era standard on pollution from coal-fired plants, factories and other industrial sources A federal appeals court on Friday rejected the Environmental Protection Agency’s attempt to abandon a Biden-era rule that sets tough standards for deadly soot pollution. The unanimous ruling by a three-judge panel is a setback for the Trump administration’s deregulatory agenda and its repeated efforts to boost coal, a reliable but polluting energy source. Continue reading...

Hotels report increase in last-minute bookings, including from families attempting to escape hot homes Europe heatwave: latest updates Families, including parents with newborn babies, are booking air-conditioned rooms in hotels to escape the UK heatwave, with companies reporting a surge in demand. Data from the accommodation reservation website Booking.com shows that since 1 June, the share of searches using the “air-conditioning” filter has tripled across Great Britain coinciding with the latest heatwave in northern Europe. Continue reading...

Environmentalists and immigrant-rights advocates seek accounting of damage done by notorious detention center While they welcome the recent closure of the controversial Alligator Alcatraz migrant detention center, leading environmental groups and their allies say they want an independent investigation into the environmental damage the facility inflicted on the surrounding wilderness during its 12 months of operations. Those groups made that demand alongside immigrant-rights advocates and members of Florida’s Miccosukee Tribe at a news conference on Friday outside the entrance to the shuttered detention center, where the Friends of the Everglades (FOE) executive director, Eve Samples, condemned the camp as a “failure, an obscene waste of taxpayer dollars and an abuse of the Everglades”. Continue reading...

Scientists say hot spell is worst ever, with nearly half of region’s 850 largest cities facing unprecedented heat stress The number of deaths in France linked to the heatwave has climbed to four toddlers and more than 55 drownings, as the brutally hot conditions sweeping Europe were forecast to shift east, choking 150 million people under 35C (95F) temperatures. Scientists said the heatwave was the most severe and widespread ever, leaving nearly half of the region’s 850 largest cities grappling with unprecedented heat stress. They said the extreme temperatures had been made possible by the climate crisis driven by fossil fuel burning. Continue reading...