Tag: pollution

Noise pollution can harm birds even before they hatch

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The raucous din of modern life can seriously mess with animals (SN: 2/9/15). Traffic noise can drown out mating calls, spike stress hormones and even increase mortality. Now, new research suggests some critters can be harmed by this noise even before they can hear it.

Zebra finch eggs and nestlings exposed to everyday traffic noise experience significant, lifelong reductions in health and reproduction, researchers report in the April 26 Science. These harms stemmed from direct exposure to

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Hawaii school students sue transport department over pollution crisis and claim ‘rising tides are washing up ancestors’ BONES’ – months after Montana youths won landmark climate change trial

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Fourteen Hawaiian school students are suing the transport department for infringing on their right to grow up in a healthy environment by polluting it with greenhouse gases. 

Ranging in age from 10 to 19, the plaintiffs claim they have been ‘seriously injured’ due to the government violating constitutional pledges to decarbonize the transport sector by 2045. 

Their complaint says global warming is threatening age-old agricultural industries in Hawaii, while rising sea levels are projected to wipe out entire communities within

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What London’s mayor learned when he took on the cars – POLITICO

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It looked like group therapy. One late summer day, Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, sat with a group of faith leaders and clean-air campaigners in a small circle in the near-empty hall of a suburban church.

The moment was meant to be one of celebration, for Khan and for London. He was marking the creation of the largest clean air zone in the Western world through the expansion of restrictions on polluting cars to cover the entire British capital,

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Oil industry rides into climate summit bigger than ever – POLITICO

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This article is part of the Road to COP special report, presented by SQM.

WASHINGTON — Eight years after Paris, the oil business is bigger than ever.

Profits are soaring. Production is climbing — and marking a record year in the United States. The industry is even poised to gain from the crusade to rein in climate pollution, including the billions of dollars in incentives that U.S. President Joe Biden is offering for wind farms, battery minerals and carbon-carrying pipelines.

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Anti-green backlash hovers over COP climate talks – POLITICO

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This article is part of the Road to COP special report, presented by SQM.

LONDON — World leaders will touch down in Dubai next week for a climate change conference they’re billing yet again as the final off-ramp before catastrophe. But war, money squabbles and political headaches back home are already crowding the fate of the planet from the agenda.

The breakdown of the Earth’s climate has for decades been the most important yet somehow least urgent of global crises,

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They’re talking, but a climate divide between Beijing and Washington remains – POLITICO

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This article is part of the Road to COP special report, presented by SQM.

Last week’s surprise deal between China and the United States may provide a boost to the climate talks in Dubai — but the two powers remain at odds on tough questions such as how quickly to shut down coal and who should provide climate aid to developing nations.

The world’s top two drivers of climate change are also divided by a thicket of disagreements on trade,

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Who’s who at COP28 – POLITICO

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This article is part of the Road to COP special report, presented by SQM.

The annual U.N. climate summit that starts November 30 has become one of the biggest diplomatic setpieces in the global political calendar. 

Organizers are expecting more than 70,000 people to descend upon Dubai’s Expo City: activists, billionaires, presidents, Indigenous leaders, business executives, monarchs and diplomats from every corner of the world. A few will hold sway over the outcome of the talks. Some will make noise

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The state of the planet in 10 numbers – POLITICO

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This article is part of the Road to COP special report, presented by SQM.

The COP28 climate summit comes at a critical moment for the planet. 

A summer that toppled heat records left a trail of disasters around the globe. The world may be just six years away from breaching the Paris Agreement’s temperature target of 1.5 degrees Celsius, setting the stage for much worse calamities to come. And governments are cutting their greenhouse gas pollution far too slowly to

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A global call for policy action – POLITICO

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*Speak Up for COPD is supported by a coalition of partners across industry and the non-profit sector to raise awareness and understanding of COPD amongst policymakers and healthcare decision makers by amplifying the voices of patients, the COPD community and the public. All partners contribute time and expertise to the coalition actitivies. Our one critical goal is to establish COPD as a public health priority.

Coalition partners: Global Allergy & Airways Patient Platform (GAAPP), International Federation of Ageing (IFA),

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Gas cookers ‘should come with a health warning’: Report reveals the appliances pump out ‘unsafe’ levels of pollution – as experts call for Brits to move to electric hobs and ovens

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Gas cookers should be fitted with health warnings, according to a report that has found the appliances fill a kitchen with air pollution that breaks recommended safe levels.

Researchers rigged monitoring equipment in more than 280 homes — 40 in the UK — as well as France, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, Romania and Slovakia.

More than half of homes using gas hobs and gas ovens in the experiment breached the World Health Organization (WHO) recommended maximum level of nitrogen dioxide

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