France Found Guilty of Failing To Meet Its Paris Climate Accord Commitments

“Four environmental groups are crying victory after France was found guilty of failing to meet climate change goals it committed to in a historic accord signed in and named after its own capital city,” reports CBS News: The Administrative Tribunal in Paris ruled Wednesday that France had fallen short of its promise to reduce greenhouse gases under commitments made in the…

Remote Tasmanian Island To Be Powered By ‘Blowhole’ Energy That Harnesses Waves

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Technology that harnesses wave energy through a “blowhole” is being tested at a remote Tasmanian island in a project backed by federal grants and investors. When the mostly above-water unit is connected in about a month, King Island in Bass Strait will be powered by three renewables — wave, wind and solar….

New Study: A Zero-Emissions America is Now Pretty Cheap

“Until recently, it was unclear whether variable renewable energy, nuclear, or fossil fuel with carbon capture and storage would become the main form of generation in a decarbonized electricity system,” argues a recently-published analysis titled Carbon-Neutral Pathways for the United States. “The cost decline of variable renewable energy over the last few years, however, has definitively changed the situation.” Ars Technica…

Reddit’s Former CEO Is Now In the Forest-Planting Business

Terraformation, a startup led by Yishan Wong, former CEO of Reddit, is demonstrating an approach to reforest the planet quickly enough to fight climate change. Fast Company reports: Trees can play a key role in capturing carbon at scale — by one estimate, nearly a trillion hectares of land could feasibly be reforested, and those trees could potentially store more than…

Tropical rainforests may begin pumping out carbon dioxide by 2050

Rising temperatures over the next 30 years could cause Earth’s tropical and temperate forests to switch from being carbon sinks to carbon sources that release greenhouse gases Source: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2264787-tropical-rainforests-may-begin-pumping-out-carbon-dioxide-by-2050/?utm_campaign=RSS%7CNSNS&utm_source=NSNS&utm_medium=RSS&utm_content=home…

Among 2020’s Most Underreported Stories: Pharmaceutical Profiteering May Accelerate Superbugs

Since 1976 “Project Censored,” a U.S.-based nonprofit media watchdog organization, has been identifying “the news that didn’t make the news,” the most significant stories it believes are being systematically overlooked. Slashdot ran stories about its annual list of the year’s most censored news stories in 1999, 2003, 2004, and in 2007, when they’d presciently warned that the media was ignoring the…

Massachusetts To Ban Sale of New Gas-Powered Cars by 2035

While EVs are still in the single-digit area of overall vehicle sales, they continue to climb and have already surpassed the sales of vehicles with manual transmissions. Now it seems that the electrification investments made by automakers are getting a boost from another part of the country. From a report: Massachusetts is joining California with a plan to ban the sale…

Japan To Phase Out Gasoline-Powered Cars, Bucking Toyota Chief

Japan said it planned to stop the sale of new gasoline-powered cars by the mid-2030s, bucking criticism by Toyota’s chief that a hasty shift to electric vehicles could cripple the car industry. From a report: The plan released Friday followed similar moves by the state of California and major European nations, but it has faced resistance from car executives in a…

Nearly all land animal species could lose part of habitat by 2050

If current agriculture growth continues, nearly 90 per cent of land animal species could lose some habitat by 2050. However, steps such as changing our eating habits could prevent almost all of the projected loss Source: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2263544-nearly-all-land-animal-species-could-lose-part-of-habitat-by-2050/?utm_campaign=RSS%7CNSNS&utm_source=NSNS&utm_medium=RSS&utm_content=home…