Breaking Waves: Ocean News

Advocates suing to reverse administration’s surcharge system that has led to passport checks and angry visitors A new $100 fee for foreign tourists entering US national parks has triggered chaos and frustrating waits, with staff reporting long entry lines as citizenship checks are made and irate visitors regularly ditching plans to patronize some of America’s most cherished landscapes. The new fee system, introduced by the Trump administration from 1 January, has caught many visitors and National Park Service (NPS) staff off-guard, with checks now having to be undertaken to assess nationality and tourists often turning away from entrances rather than pay the surcharge. The Guardian heard accounts of problems from several NPS staff, speaking anonymously, who work at different parks across the country. Continue reading...

We must not let geoengineering be shaped behind closed doors. Climate justice demands an inclusive approach As the world faces the challenges of the climate crisis and critical threshold levels or tipping points may be reached soon, a disputable idea is gaining momentum as a potential solution: solar geoengineering – the deliberate reflection of sunlight to cool the planet. Advocates argue it could buy us time. Critics warn of unknown risks. Some see it as a possible emergency break if temperatures spiral out of control. Others call it a dangerous distraction that undermines meaningful climate action. Research into solar geoengineering is advancing, including exploration of techniques such as stratospheric aerosol injection, which would involve spraying tiny reflective particles into the upper atmosphere to mimic the cooling effect of volcanic eruptions, and marine cloud brightening, which aims to enhance the reflectivity of low-lying marine clouds. While stratospheric aerosol injection is not being conducted, these technologies are being studied with increasing urgency in the global north. In the global south, however, they remain largely invisible to public discourse and policymaking. Continue reading...

South East Water says 6,500 households have no water due to burst mains, a month after drinking water outage Residents of Tunbridge Wells have been left without water again, just a month after a major outage. South East Water said 6,500 households have no water at all, while thousands more have “intermittent supplies”. Continue reading...

Vast swathes of the country’s trees have been killed off by droughts and infestations, in a trend sweeping across Europe. A shift towards more biodiverse cultivation could offer answers Even the intense green of late spring cannot mask the dead trees in the Harz mountains. Standing upright across the gentle peaks in northern Germany, thousands of skeletal trunks mark the remnants of a once great spruce forest. Since 2018, the region has been ravaged by a tree-killing bark beetle outbreak, made possible by successive droughts and heatwaves. It has transformed a landscape known for its verdant beauty into one dominated by a sickly grey. Continue reading...