Exclusive: Power outages in major cities would help build opposition to climate policies, Colin Boyce tells podcast
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The Coalition MP Colin Boyce says he believes the way to turn voters against renewable energy is to “let Rome burn for a while” and allow power blackouts to occur in major cities.
Guardian Australia reported on Wednesday that Boyce had described blackouts as a “big political opportunity” at a meeting of climate science deniers in late 2023.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
04/16/2025 - 01:08
04/16/2025 - 01:01
Juliette Pavy’s photographs of eco expeditions bring an element of lyrical storytelling to the global impact of invisible pollutants, from the Mediterranean to the Arctic
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04/16/2025 - 01:00
In one Nepali village, the resident rhinos are a conservation success story and attract thousands of visitors, but attacks on humans are on the rise
“I can’t talk now, I’m in hospital,” Ram Kumar Aryal says when he picks up the phone. “Someone has been attacked by one of the rhinos.” Every few months, Aryal – who is one of the architects of Nepal’s celebrated rhino conservation programme – ends up in one of the hospitals around Chitwan national park to respond to a rhino attack. This time, three women had been injured earlier that afternoon by a female rhino outside Laukhani village in the park’s buffer zone.
The hospital had bandaged up their fractured legs and ribs and treated the bites on their hips and knees. “Normally rhinos are vegetarian, but they use their incisors for attacks,” says Aryal. Those incisors can grow to three inches long.
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04/16/2025 - 01:00
Exclusive: Absence of world’s biggest clean energy producer will be welcomed by US pushing oil and gas exports
China is to snub a major UK summit on energy security next week, the Guardian has learned, amid a growing row over the country’s involvement in UK infrastructure projects.
The US will send a senior White House official to the 60-country summit, to be co-hosted with the International Energy Agency. Leading oil and gas companies are also invited, along with big technology businesses, and petrostates including Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.
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04/16/2025 - 00:00
Seeds can germinate having been buried in sediments of ‘ghost ponds’ for thousands of years
Ghosts of the ice age are being resurrected in Norfolk. When the ice sheets retreated at the end of the last ice age, mounds of ice called pingos remained underground until they thawed and the soil slumped, leaving behind shallow hollows that filled with water.
These turned into swampy wetland habitats rich in plants and wildlife and Breckland, in Norfolk, became pocked with hundreds of these pingo pools, although many of them were later filled in for farmland and became lost.
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04/16/2025 - 00:00
Scientists call for urban areas to be tested for contaminants and potentially cleaned before wildflowers are planted
Wildflowers could be absorbing toxic metals from soil in urban areas and passing toxins on to pollinators, a study has found.
Researchers from the University of Cambridge found that common plants including white clover and bindweed, which are vital forage for pollinators in cities, can accumulate arsenic, cadmium, chromium and lead from contaminated soils.
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04/15/2025 - 23:00
The sector, which had been set a target to reduce spillages by 40%, needs ‘radical reform’, campaigners say
Water companies have missed their targets to reduce pollution with 2,487 incidents recorded in 2024 – twice the limit set by the Environment Agency.
Data revealed under freedom of information law shows the companies were collectively set an Environment Agency target of a 40% reduction in pollution incidents, but instead recorded a 30% increase.
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04/15/2025 - 12:47
Syngenta has been besieged by lawsuits from people claiming its product caused the neurological condition
Besieged by thousands of lawsuits alleging that its paraquat weedkiller causes Parkinson’s disease, its manufacturer, Syngenta, has entered into an agreement aimed at settling large swaths of those claims.
A court filing on Monday confirmed that a letter of agreement between the parties had been signed. In a court hearing on Tuesday, one of the lead plaintiff lawyers, Khaldoun Baghdadi, said the terms of the settlement should be completed within 30 days.
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04/15/2025 - 11:19
Whitewebbs Park oak cut down by contractors working for firm that runs nearby restaurant
The sudden felling of one of the oldest and largest oak trees in London has been carried out by the company that owns a nearby Toby Carvery, as campaigners renewed calls for better protection for such nationally significant trees.
The oak in Whitewebbs Park, Enfield, was up to 500 years old, with a trunk that was more than six metres in circumference. It was listed on the Woodland Trust inventory of ancient trees, but was not the subject of a tree preservation order.
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04/15/2025 - 10:00
Boyce tells Climate and Energy Realists Queensland that opposition to renewables is growing and fellow MPs should adopt a ‘do nothing strategy’
Election 2025 live updates: Australia federal election campaign
Polls tracker; election guide; full federal election coverage
Anywhere but Canberra; interactive electorates guide
Listen to the first episode of our new narrative podcast series: Gina
Get our afternoon election email, free app or daily news podcast
Coalition MP Colin Boyce told a group of climate science deniers that blackouts were “a big political opportunity” and that he had urged fellow MPs to adopt a “do nothing strategy” that would allow power outages and build opposition to net-zero policies.
A video of Boyce, posted on YouTube, speaking to the Climate and Energy Realists Queensland group, includes comments by the Flynn MP that net-zero climate policies “need a rethink”.
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