Breaking Waves: Ocean News

Though solar was initially incorrectly blamed for crisis, renewables have helped insulate Spain from gas price rises caused by war in Middle East One year ago today, all of Spain, and much of Portugal, suffered through a blackout of unprecedented scale and duration. In mere seconds, a cascading sequence of events burst through the grid and created Europe’s first “system black” event in recent memory. Traffic signals failed, mobile networks stopped working entirely, petrol stations could not pump fuel and supermarkets could not process payments. Madrid’s metro came to a halt and people had to be pulled out of carriages. “People were stunned because this had never happened in Spain,” Carlos Condori, a 19-year-old construction sector worker, told AFP at the time. “There’s no [phone] coverage, I can’t call my family, my parents, nothing: I can’t even go to work.” Continue reading...

Climate group calls for urgent windfall tax on excess fossil fuel profits, as delegates tell Colombia conference their nations are suffering The Middle East oil and gas crunch will impose as much as a trillion dollars of additional costs on the global economy while petroleum companies rake in spectacular profits from elevated fuel prices, analysis has revealed. The uneven distribution of risk and reward comes amid rising concern that the US-Israeli attack on Iran is worsening inequality, poverty and hunger across a world that has become dangerously dependent on fossil fuels. Continue reading...

Claim by environment minister opens new report into profound ecological damage allegedly done by IDF forces Lebanon’s minister for the environment has accused Israel’s military of committing “an act of ecocide” in the foreword to a report detailing the harm done to the country’s natural resources during the invasion of 2023 to 2024. Israeli military aggression “reshaped both the physical and ecological landscape” of southern Lebanon, according to the report, which does not consider the impacts of Israel’s latest barrage of attacks this spring. Damaged 5,000 hectares (12,350 acres) of forest cover, including broadleaf, pine and stone pine stands, destroying habitats, disregulating local climates and causing soil erosion. Destroyed $118m (£87m) of physical agriculture assets, including crops, livestock facilities, forestry resources, fisheries and aquaculture infrastructure. Caused further losses of $586m (£433m) in lost agricultural production as a result of disrupted harvests and reduced yields. Destroyed 2,154 hectares (5,320 acres) of orchards, including 814 hectares of olive groves and 637 hectares of citrus plantations, and caused extensive damage to banana plantations. Contaminated soils with phosphorus concentrations up to 1,858 parts a million, with particular contamination hotspots in south Lebanon and Bekaa valley in the east. Caused widespread air pollution episodes extending well beyond immediate strike zones and releasing particulates; sulphur and nitrogen oxides; and toxic compounds such as dioxins and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. Continue reading...

Case centers on glyphosate, pesticide used in Roundup and other products that has been linked to cancer in some studies Members of the US supreme court peppered lawyers for the former Monsanto Company with a barrage of questions over pesticide regulation on Monday, wrestling over whether federal law pre-empts state actions that permit consumers to sue companies for failing to warn of product risks such as cancer. The case, Monsanto v Durnell, centers on glyphosate – a weedkilling chemical used in the popular Roundup brand and numerous other herbicide products sold by the former Monsanto company, which is now owned by Germany’s Bayer. Continue reading...