Conservationists feared the 10cm threadsnake, as thin as a strand of spaghetti, had become extinct
The world’s smallest snake has been rediscovered in Barbados, 20 years after its last sighting.
The Barbados threadsnake, which had been feared extinct, was rediscovered under a rock in the centre of the island during an ecological survey in March by the nation’s environment ministry and the conservation organisation Re:wild.
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07/24/2025 - 07:40
07/24/2025 - 06:00
EPA said grant to provide clean water was a ‘wasteful DEI program’ as pesticide leaches into residents’ wells
For decades, thousands of residents in California’s agricultural heartland couldn’t use their wells because the water was too contaminated with pesticides. In December, the Biden administration stepped in with a long-awaited $20m grant to provide clean water, improve municipal sources and relieve the region’s financial and health burden.
The Trump administration just took the money away.
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07/24/2025 - 05:00
Electric carmaker struggles to emerge from sales rut on continent despite updating its bestselling Model Y
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Tesla sales in Europe have collapsed by one-third this year, data shows, after Elon Musk warned the electric carmaker faced “a few rough quarters” ahead.
According to the figures published on Thursday by the European Automobile Manufacturers Association (ACEA), sales of Tesla vehicles in Europe slumped by 33% to 110,000 in the first half of 2025, compared with 165,000 in the first half of 2024.
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07/24/2025 - 05:00
Throwing things away is bad. Buying them in the first place was probably bad, too. But the act of disposing of them at the rubbish tip is a glorious moment of relief and release
A friend of mine surprised me with the vehemence of his love for something. He’s about my age, a highly successful maker of important television and avid consumer of Radio 4 and the Guardian. A keen thinker about things, he likes books and podcasts that are a little too advanced for me. All in all, he didn’t seem the type to say what he said, over a pint in our local. Furthermore, there was even a slightly glazed, far-off look in his eye when he announced, with such great feeling rising from deep in his soul: “I really love going to the dump.” It was only then that I realised I was free to admit to sharing this love. It was a moving, bonding moment between us. One love. For the dump.
My dump visits had hitherto been shrouded in a mist of shame. Throwing things away is bad, not least because buying them in the first place was bad, or at least not entirely necessary, which may amount to the same thing. Also, isn’t it all an exercise in shifting the responsibility for your junk on to someone – everyone? – else? This notion that it is magically being recycled, repurposed, reused is surely a fantasy, not much more than a veneer of righteousness to help those of us who feel guilty about it to feel less guilty about it.
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07/24/2025 - 04:00
President’s opposition to offshore wind more than a decade ago now threatens a huge industry in the US and beyond
Donald Trump’s bitter dislike of renewable energy first erupted publicly 14 years ago in a seemingly trivial spat over wind turbines visible from his Scottish golf course. As Trump returns to Scotland this week, though, he is using the US presidency to squash clean power, with major ramifications for the climate crisis and America’s place in the world.
Trump will visit his Turnberry and Aberdeenshire golf courses during the Scottish trip, the latter venue being the stage of a lengthy battle by the president to halt 11 nearby offshore wind turbines. From 2011, Trump, then a reality TV star and property mogul, argued the “ugly” turbines visible from the Menie golf course were “monstrosities” that would help sink Scotland’s tourism industry.
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07/24/2025 - 04:00
As the Trump administration dismisses global heating, the coastal city is getting on with becoming one of the most climate resilient in the world. Here’s how
Patrick Devine, a captain for Boston Harbor City Cruises, shows me on his phone the scenes here in September 2024. The water was ankle-deep outside the door to his office on Long Wharf, one of the US city’s oldest piers, obscuring the pavements and walkways, surging into buildings and ruining vehicles in the car parks. “It just gets worse and worse each year,” says Devine, who has worked here, on and off, since 1995. “I’ve gotten used to it, so it’s just knowing your way around it.”
Much of Boston has got used to this. Devine has his own supply of sandbags now, for example. Next door to his office is the Chart House restaurant – when Long Wharf flooded last September, customers merrily sat at outside tables, holding their feet above the waterline, as servers with black bin bags for trousers waded over to bring them their lunches. The restaurant’s floor level is lower than that of the wharf, so the water came up to knee level in some areas. “It’s just part of business,” says one waiter, as he points out how the plug sockets are all at waist height. The place has flooded three times in the year he’s worked here. “We just clean it up, squeeze it out, open the doors, dry it out. It is what it is.”
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07/24/2025 - 01:10
Vanuatu climate change minister says ICJ opinion gives Pacific island nations ‘much greater leverage’ in dealing with partners such as Australia
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Australia could face international legal action over its fossil fuel production and failure to rapidly cut emissions, Vanuatu’s climate minister says, after a potentially watershed declaration by the world’s top court.
An International Court of Justice (ICJ) advisory opinion published in The Hague on Wednesday found countries had a legal obligation to take measures to prevent climate change and aim to limit global heating to 1.5C above preindustrial levels, and that high-emitting countries that failed to act could be liable to pay restitution to low-emitting countries.
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07/24/2025 - 00:00
In his new book, The Anthropocene Illusion, photographer Zed Nelson reflects on the surreal environments created as people destroy nature, yet crave connection to it
The Anthropocene is a new term used by scientists to describe our age. While scientific experts argue about the start date, many point to about 200 years ago, when the accelerated effects of human activity on the ecosphere were turbocharged by the Industrial Revolution. Our planet is said to have crossed into a new epoch: from the Holocene to the Anthropocene, the age of the human.
The strata of rock being created under our feet today will reveal the impact of human activity long after we are gone. Future geologists will find radioactive isotopes from nuclear-bomb tests, huge concentrations of plastics, the fallout from the burning of fossil fuels and vast deposits of cement used to build our cities. Meanwhile, a report by the World Wide Fund for Nature and the British Zoological Society shows an average decrease of 73% of wild animal populations on Earth over the past 50 years, as we push creatures and plants to extinction by removing their habitats.
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07/23/2025 - 23:01
Decision is a significant blow for MACH Energy’s Mount Pleasant coalmine expansion in Muswellbrook in the upper Hunter
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The New South Wales court of appeal has overturned the approval of the largest coalmine expansion in the state after a community environment group successfully argued the planning commission failed to consider the impact of all of the project’s greenhouse gas emissions.
The decision is a significant blow for MACH Energy’s Mount Pleasant coalmine expansion in Muswellbrook in the upper Hunter and one that climate advocates say could have wider implications for future fossil fuel project proposals in NSW.
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07/23/2025 - 19:00
Exclusive: Anthony Albanese sought ‘advice on strategy’ as federal and state governments prepared for ‘potential impacts of an adverse decision’
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The Albanese government was so worried a court case could halt native forest logging in northern New South Wales that it drew up plans to essentially sidestep federal environment laws in the event of a loss, documents released under freedom of information laws reveal.
The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, played a key role as the commonwealth and NSW governments worked to ensure some logging could continue in the face of any “adverse decision” and to manage a potentially volatile situation between loggers and environmentalists.
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