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Yale Environment 360
In Australia, a Surge in Renewables Drives Down Power Prices
At one point in March, renewables briefly supplied two-thirds of Australia’s power, according to the grid operator, which says that the continued growth of wind and solar is driving down costs. In the first quarter of this year, wholesale electricity prices were zero or negative 12 percent of the...
Hippos Are in Trouble. Will an Endangered Listing Save Them?
Thanks to years of campaigning by wildlife conservation groups, it’s widely known that Africa’s elephants and rhinos are threatened by the trade in their valuable tusks and horns. Laws and regulations have been tightened, and in many countries it’s now difficult, if not impossible, to legally sell elephant and rhino products.
EVs to Capture One-Fifth of Market This Year Amid ‘Explosive Growth’
Electric vehicles are on track to capture nearly a fifth of the global market this year, according to a new report detailing the “explosive growth” of plug-in cars. Global sales of electric vehicles hit 10 million in 2022 and are set to reach 14 million this year, according to a report from the International Energy Agency. EVs, which had just 14 percent of the global market in 2022, will likely account for 18 percent of the market in 2023.
Long Reviled as ‘Ugly,’ Sea Lampreys Finally Get Some Respect
“Thousands of sea lamprey are passed upstream [on the Connecticut River] each year. This is a predator that wiped out the Great Lakes lake-trout fishery. [Lampreys] literally suck the life out of their host fish, namely small-scale fish such as trout and salmon. The fish ladders ought to be used to diminish the lamprey.” So editorialized the Lawrence (Massachusetts) Eagle-Tribune on December 15, 2002.
China Approved More Coal Power in First Three Months of 2023 Than in All of 2021
Provincial governments in China approved more new coal power in the first three months of this year than they did in all of 2021, according to a new analysis from Greenpeace. “The 2022 coal boom has clearly continued into this year,” Greenpeace campaigner Xie Wenwen said in statement. For the analysis, Greenpeace scanned project approvals, environmental reviews, and other documents, finding that provinces have authorized the construction of more than 20 gigawatts of coal power from January through March, after approving more than 90 gigawatts of coal power last year.
Poles Have Lost Enough Ice to Form an Ice Cube 12 Miles High, Study Finds
Over the last three decades, ice lost from Greenland and Antarctica could comprise an ice cube roughly 12 miles high, new research finds. For the study, scientists analyzed satellite surveys tracking the mass and volume of the polar ice sheets, finding that ice cover dropped every year from 1992 to 2020. The study found that the seven worst years for melting have all come in the last decade.
As Projects Decline, the Era of Building Big Dams Draws to a Close
The end of the big dam era is approaching. Numerous recently published reports reflect this planet-altering fact. One study, conducted by scholars at the United Nations University’s Institute for Water, Environment and Health, found that construction of large dams globally fell from a late-1970s peak of about 1,500 a year to around 50 a year in 2020. “There will not be another ‘dam revolution’ to match the scale of the high-intensity dam construction experienced in the early to middle 20th century,” the 2021 study concluded.
Pristine Deep-Sea Reef Discovered in the Galápagos
Scientists have discovered a sprawling deep-sea coral reef among Ecuador’s Galápagos Islands, where shallow-water corals have been decimated by warm ocean waters. “This newly discovered reef is potentially an area of global significance,” Michelle Taylor of the University of Essex, co-lead of the expedition, said in a statement. It is “a site we can monitor over time to see how a pristine habitat evolves with our current climate crisis.”
New Research Sparks Concerns That Ocean Circulation Will Collapse
It is being hailed as a sea change in scientific understanding of the global ocean circulation system and how it will respond as the world heats up. A doomsday scenario involving the collapse of the circulation — previously portrayed in both peer-reviewed research and the climate disaster movie The Day After Tomorrow — came a lot closer in the last month. But rather than playing out in the far North Atlantic, as previously assumed, it now seems much more likely at the opposite end of the planet.
Germany Shuts Down Its Last Remaining Nuclear Plants
Germany shut down its three remaining nuclear power plants Saturday night, shedding a source of low-carbon power that critics say is needed to meet the country’s climate goals. The plants, initially set to be shut off in December, were kept online through the winter to help cope with a...
Deforestation of the Brazilian Amazon Largely Occurring on Private Lands, Study Finds
Since 2012, more than half of forest loss in the Brazilian Amazon occurred on private lands, according to a new study highlighting the impact of Brazil’s landowner-friendly policies. For decades, Brazil’s 1965 Forest Code required landowners to grow native vegetation on up to 80 percent of their property, but...
A Golden Spike Would Mark the Earth’s Next Epoch: But Where?
At first glance, these nine sites scattered across the globe seem unremarkable. A peat bog in Poland’s Sudeten Mountains. Searsville Lake, in California, and Crawford Lake, in Ontario. A stretch of sea floor in the Baltic Sea, a bay in Japan, a water-filled volcanic crater in China, an ice core drilled from the Antarctic Peninsula, and two coral reefs, in Australia and the Gulf of Mexico.
World Likely Hit Peak Fossil Power in 2022, Analysis Finds
Wind and solar accounted for a record 12 percent of global power generation last year, according to a new analysis which finds that the rapid buildout of clean energy heralds “a new era of falling fossil generation.”. Wind energy added globally last year could nearly meet the power needs...
Deep in the Heart of Texas, an Uphill Fight for Clean Air for All
Harris County, Texas is the hub of America’s fossil fuel and petrochemical industries. Hundreds of refineries and chemical plants cluster in the county, which includes Houston, and they are responsible for cancer-causing chemical pollution that disproportionately harms communities of color. At 35, Christian Menefee, a Democrat, is the youngest,...
Entries Invited for the Tenth Annual Yale Environment 360 Film Contest
The tenth annual Yale Environment 360 Film Contest is now accepting entries. The contest honors the year’s best environmental films from around the world, highlighting work that has not previously been widely seen. Submissions should focus on an environmental issue and be a maximum of 20 minutes in length. Films that are funded by an organization or company and are primarily about that organization or company are not eligible.
Pricing Nature: Can ‘Biodiversity Credits’ Propel Global Conservation?
In 2009, as global financial markets shuddered, David Dorr became interested in the possibility of putting a price on nature. Dorr is a Cayman Islands-based global macro trader, attuned to what he calls the “butterfly effect” of geopolitics and other international forces on financial markets. The economic crisis, Dorr had realized, paled beside the looming environmental one. “Nature, holy shit, is in severe crisis,” Dorr recalls thinking. The existential threat to humanity posed by environmental degradation was “something that’s gonna touch every asset class.”
Two Long-Drained California Lakes Refilled by Floodwaters, Satellite Images Show
Two California lakes, both drained a century ago, have been partially refilled by floodwaters from recent storms, satellite images from NASA show. Tulare Lake in California’s Central Valley was once fed by rain and snowmelt from the western Sierra Nevadas, but a system of dams and canals erected in the early 20th century diverted water away from the lake to supply regional farms. Once the largest freshwater lake in the West, Tulare withered, and farmers planted cotton, tomatoes, pistachios, almonds, and other crops in the dried lakebed.
For Uganda’s Vanishing Glaciers, Time Is Running Out
Enock Bwambale stopped at the lip of the dying glacier, its blunted nose arcing steeply down to scoured rocks, then shouted up to his fellow guide Uziah Kule that the ice was too sheer to descend on foot. Hacking his axe into the crusty surface, he twisted in an ice screw so I could rappel down the stubby face of the Stanley Glacier in Uganda’s Rwenzori Mountains National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site on the border with the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Scientists Find Fish at Lowest Depth Ever Recorded
Scientists have filmed a snailfish five miles underwater in the Izu-Ogasawara Trench south of Japan. It is the deepest a fish has ever been recorded. “We have spent over 15 years researching these deep snailfish,” Alan Jamieson, head of the Minderoo-UWA Deep-Sea Research Centre, said in a statement. “There is so much more to them than simply the depth, but the maximum depth they can survive is truly astonishing.”
Leading Climate Diplomat Expects “Loss and Damage” Fund Will Be in Place This Year
Countries will establish a fund to pay for “loss and damage” from climate disasters by the end of this year, a leading climate diplomat says. Nations agreed to create such a fund at November’s UN climate negotiations in Egypt, aiming to resolve a long-simmering dispute around who should pay for the fallout from increasingly costly weather disasters. The wealthiest countries, largely clustered in cooler latitudes, have done the most to fuel climate change, but it is the poorest who are feeling its effects most profoundly. The new fund will compensate vulnerable nations for “loss and damage” from extreme weather, but questions remain as to who will pay into the fund and who will benefit from it.
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Yale Environment 360 is an online magazine offering opinion, analysis, reporting, and debate on global environmental issues.
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