Breaking Waves: Ocean News

Despite popular support for a 25% levy on gas exports, Anthony Albanese opposes it and there is little discussion about how to reduce our usage We’re yet to see next month’s Australian federal budget, so mark this column with an asterisk. But barring a late change it is likely it will do a remarkable thing: give fossil fuel industries what they want. That’s worth noting this week, as representatives from 57 national governments including Australia meet in Colombia for the first international conference on transitioning away from fossil fuels. That gathering heard France aims to remove coal from its national grid by 2027, end oil dependency by 2045 and stop using fossil gas by 2050. Continue reading...

The ZSL has given us the word ‘zoo’, inspired artists and birthed a quarter of all Sumatran tigers. It has fascinated me since childhood – and the world since 1826 In the spring of 1826, two extraordinary things occurred in central London. The first was the death of Chunee the elephant. On 1 March at Cross’s Menagerie, upstairs in the Exeter ’Change on the Strand, Chunee was killed by a firing squad in the cramped enclosure where he’d been kept for the previous six years. By this point Chunee was more than three metres (10ft) tall and weighed at least five tonnes. Like all adult male elephants, he periodically went into musth, when his body was flooded with testosterone, making him aggressive and uncontrollable. After Chunee injured one keeper (apparently deliberately) and accidentally killed another, the proprietor, Edward Cross, decided to have him destroyed. Continue reading...

Pace of sea-level rise has turned Outer Banks coastal area into a ‘canary in the coalmine’ for other east coast communities Moving house has a more literal meaning on Hatteras Island, the slender hook of land that juts off the coast of North Carolina. After a slew of houses toppled spectacularly into the Atlantic Ocean recently, entire buildings are now being lifted on to wheels to flee the rapidly eroding coastline. Since September, 19 homes have been lost to waves that tore them from their pilings, sending them crashing into other structures like bumper cars before breaking up in the ocean. Spooked homeowners have turned to the unusual services of Barry Crum, a lifelong Hatteras resident who has become the island’s main house mover. Continue reading...

Colombia president Gustavo Petro tells 57-country talks on a green energy transition that fossil fuel interests could destroy humanity The world is threatened by a “suicidal” model of capitalism that is leading to war, fascism and the potential extinction of humanity, Colombia’s president has said, as he convened 57 governments to address the climate crisis. Gustavo Petro blamed fossil fuel interests for taking ever more desperate measures to prevent a transition to green energy. “There is inertia in the power and the economy of this archaic form of energy – fossil fuels – that lead to death. Undoubtedly, that form of capital can commit suicide, taking with it humanity and [other] life,” he said. “The question that needs to be asked is whether capitalism can truly adapt to a non-fossil energy model.” Continue reading...