Breaking Waves: Ocean News

Small changes are what I’m aiming for – 10-minute workouts, cleaning out my handbag. Then I’m less likely to have failed come October Are you a January resolutions or a September reset person? The latter has always felt more propitious to me, light of the exhaustion of Christmas and with the weather still on our side. Last week, when the Pavlovian response to buying new stationery (for my kids) kicked in, I found myself following a rote impulse to sort my life out by replacing the bag in the vacuum cleaner and committing to an unsustainable course of personal change. This is it! The beginning of a new way of life, driven by sharp pencils and the crispness of autumn. I mean, it won’t last. But while most of us have read enough advisories cautioning against new year resolutions as durable, somehow September still promises the earth. I can’t shake it. As soon as the breeze picks up and the leaves start to turn, I feel my pilot light ignite – and the urge to sign up to unaffordable personal training sets in. It feels like an ancient response. I’m not writing this while leaning on a dry stone wall or managing my sheepdogs, but still; the sensory changes brought in by autumn surely activate latent energies in all of us. If you can avoid pumpkin spice and survive the costume search for Halloween, September triggers good feelings of renewal via the psychic memory of our serf forebears bringing in the harvest. Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

Queensland open-cut Saraji mine will be able to keep digging until 2055 as Anthony Albanese denies tensions with Pacific leaders over fossil fuels Follow our Australia news live blog for latest updates Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast Australia’s new national agency for environmental protection has approved its first coal project, allowing a Queensland open-cut mine to keep digging until 2055 while clearing threatened woodland and koala habitat. The confirmation of the extension of the Saraji mine, which digs and exports coal for steel making, comes after the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, denied this week there was tension over Australia’s fossil fuel exports during talks with Pacific leaders. Continue reading...

President’s order strips nearly 3m acres of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante, sacred tribal sites, of safeguards Patagonia, the outdoor clothing and gear company, has joined a lawsuit challenging Donald Trump’s decision to significantly reduce the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments in Utah, removing protections from nearly 3m acres. In July, the president approved the reduction of the sites by 90%, clearing the way to open the land to oil and gas companies. He argued in his proclamations that doing so would allow lands to be “put to a higher-priority use” and that they contained critical minerals important to “resource independence …[and] national security”. Continue reading...

Climate experts warn that US Kalshi and Polymarket users are ‘gamifying disasters’ as they bet on events like heatwaves and daily temperatures Online prediction markets, saturated by money staked on sport, crypto and politics, have now set their sights on a promising new area of growth: betting on the future livability of the planet itself. The rise of gamified predictions on the unfolding climate crisis, and shorter-term weather forecasts, has been underscored by a new deal that allows Kalshi, a leading online financial exchange, to access data from the Weather Company, owner of the Weather Channel, to verify weather-related betting outcomes. Continue reading...