New legislation comes amid push from big oil, as critics warn polluters’ profits prioritized over Americans’ health
Utah has made it nearly impossible for residents to hold fossil fuel companies legally accountable for climate damages in a move one advocacy group described as putting “profits for the biggest polluters over communities”, with other states expected to follow suit.
The new state legislation comes as part of a push from big oil and its political allies – including groups tied to rightwing impresario Leonard Leo – for legal immunity in red statehouses and Congress, with a goal of winning state and federal legal immunity similar to the liability waiver granted to the firearms industry in 2005.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
04/06/2026 - 06:00
04/06/2026 - 04:22
Oliver Tokic-Bensley, 16, says he had been in the water mere minutes when a shark bit his foot
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A teenage surfer bitten by a shark at a South Australian beach has described how he “flicked it off” and “legged it back to shore”.
Oliver Tokic-Bensley, 16, was bitten on his foot while surfing on Good Friday near his family beach house at Middleton, 80km south of Adelaide.
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04/06/2026 - 04:00
As a child, Dominique Bikaba, was displaced by a new national park in the DRC. Now he is helping to secure land for wildlife and Indigenous groups against the backdrop of ongoing fighting
Mist hangs low over the forested slopes of Kahuzi-Biega national park, where the canopy still shelters one of the last strongholds of the eastern lowland, or Grauer’s, gorilla. It is a landscape of immense biological wealth and equally immense political fragility. For 54-year-old Dominique Bikaba, it was once home.
His family was among those displaced when their ancestral land was incorporated into the park in the 1970s. The protected area, in the lowlands of South Kivu in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), harbours elephants and a remarkable range of wildlife, but it is best known as the principal home of the Grauer’s gorilla, the largest subspecies of primates, known to grow up to 250kg (39st) in weight. It is one of five great ape species found in the DRC’s vast forests, including mountain gorillas, which are also found in other parts of the Great Lakes region, such as Rwanda and Uganda.
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04/06/2026 - 04:00
Making women more powerful in my farm business and closing the gender pay gap was not just the right thing to do – it has brought commercial benefits
On International Women’s Day this year, I found myself in Selfridges listening to my wife, Geetie, talk about her experiences as a childhood communard, mother, restaurateur, environmental campaigner and, of course, as a woman. I was one of two men in the audience. Some might ask what a 65-year-old male farmer was doing there at all. I would contend, first, that as many of the issues discussed on IWD relate to male behaviour, men should be paying as much attention as women; and second (and more practically) that too many blokes being blokey does not get the strawberries picked.
Success in farming depends on being able to build and maintain relationships. I’d say that’s true of most businesses. When we first measured our gender pay gap at Riverford in 2017, women earned an average of 91p an hour to their male colleagues’ £1. We made excuses and weak efforts at change, but most of the men at the top were unwilling to challenge their unspoken prejudice. My own farm, Baddaford, has been happier, more productive and more profitable since I, and my male head grower, put our best picker – a woman half our age – in charge of the picking and people.
Guy Singh-Watson is the founder of organic veg box company Riverford
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04/06/2026 - 03:14
While path and strength of storm remain uncertain, BoM warns Cape York could again take direct hit if cyclone makes landfall
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Another cyclone may hit the Queensland coast just over three weeks after the same area was smashed by Severe Tropical Cyclone Narelle, the Bureau of Meteorology says.
But a meteorologist warned forecasts predicting the path and strength of Severe Tropical Cyclone Maila remained uncertain, with the storm likely to make landfall over the weekend.
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04/05/2026 - 14:10
Rally met with bipartisan support after US border patrol revealed plans for steel wall across parts of beloved parks
The story is co-published with Public Domain, an investigative newsroom that covers public lands, wildlife and government
Thousands of people gathered at the steps of the Texas capitol on Saturday to protest against the construction of a border wall through Big Bend, in a show of bipartisan opposition to the White House’s plans.
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04/05/2026 - 08:20
The National Trust’s wetlands project officer has described the effect of four Eurasian beavers on the ecosystem as astonishing, a year after they were reintroduced into the wild in England for the first time in 400 years.
Beavers were hunted to extinction in England in the 16th century and remained absent until a year ago, when a landmark project announced by the National Trust, Defra and Natural England released two pairs relocated from Scotland into a freshwater lake in the Purbeck Heaths nature reserve in Dorset. Since their release, the beavers have constructed a 35-metre dam, improving local habitats for plants, insects, amphibians, birds and bats. Trail cameras even captured the beavers playing with an otter, while a barn owl, a protected species in the UK, was also seen flying nearby.
The project allows for the release of 10 to 25 adult beavers, with the next release expected to take place this autumn.
Beavers ‘breathe new life’ into Dorset as dams built and biodiversity returns
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04/05/2026 - 06:00
The US has invoked national security to remove protections for the endangered cetacean, of which only about 50 are left
Since before modern humans existed Rice’s whales have been diving to the depths of the ocean to gorge on fat-rich fish while growing to leviathan proportions, their bodies spanning the length of a bus and weighing as much as as six elephants.
Unfortunately for these grand creatures, their only home became a patch of the Gulf of Mexico that the oil and gas industry, much later, became highly interested in for drilling. Only about 50 of these baleen whales still exist on Earth, surrounded by clanging aquatic highways of boats and shifting drilling infrastructure.
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04/05/2026 - 06:00
The energy crisis sparked by the war is making some countries consider ramping up their use of dirty fuels
Not two months in office, as the price of west Texas crude approached $14 a barrel, Jimmy Carter, then president, donned a cardigan to speak candidly about his strategy to face the permanent energy shortage he saw in the nation’s future.
His “fireside chat” is mostly remembered for asking Americans to lower the thermostat to 65F(18C) in the daytime and 55F at night, an idea that didn’t go down too well in the bitter winter of 1977.
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04/05/2026 - 02:00
The Reform UK leader’s energy bill giveaway certainly grabs our attention – but it’s a distraction from the real winners and losers
You can already imagine the video.
A man stands in the middle of a suburban English street holding a wad of cash in his hands. Grinning at the camera he says: “I’m about to pay this entire street’s energy bills.” Cut to gliding drone footage of the neighbourhood. The man knocks on a front door and a bewildered looking woman answers in a fleecy dressing gown. “Congratulations, Carol. You’ve saved more than £1,000 this year!” High-energy electronic music swells to a climax as she gives him a hug. Then, a shot of the next neighbour receiving his prize, and another, and another, as a tally at the bottom right of the screen shows the total cash sum rising. Finally, the entire community is out on the street waving their hands with joy.
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