Guardian Environment
‘God squad’ waives endangered species law to allow US drilling in Gulf of Mexico
The Endangered Species Committee, a rarely invoked federal panel, voted to exempt Gulf of Mexico oil and gas drilling from the Endangered Species Act for the first time in over 30 years. The decision puts the critically endangered Rice's whale — with fewer than 100 individuals remaining — at heightened risk from vessel strikes and industrial activity. Conservation groups argue the exemption exploits an artificially inflated energy crisis to gut foundational environmental protections.
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More drilling in North Sea ‘not the answer’ for UK energy security, say former military leaders
A coalition of former military leaders is pushing back against North Sea drilling as a path to energy security, arguing the strategy fails to address vulnerabilities in global fossil fuel supply chains. New analysis underscores the risk, finding that every nation reliant on imported fossil fuels faces exposure to critical chokepoints. The group is urging the government to accelerate a shift toward wind, solar, tidal, and nuclear energy instead.
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Oceans are absorbing the Earth’s excess energy. That’s bad news for food systems.
Rising ocean temperatures are disrupting the climate patterns that agriculture depends on, from rainfall distribution to growing seasons. As oceans absorb an increasing share of the planet's trapped heat, the cascading effects on fisheries, crop yields, and supply chains are becoming impossible to ignore. The global food system, already under pressure, faces a fundamental threat from a crisis unfolding largely out of sight beneath the surface.
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‘A national scandal’: trawlers scour seabeds of supposedly protected UK waters
Britain's marine protected areas are protected in name only, with trawlers hauling over 1.3 million tonnes of fish from supposedly safeguarded English waters in just four years. Despite nearly 40% of England's seas carrying protected status, bottom-trawling — one of the most destructive fishing methods known — has continued unchecked across these designated zones. Campaigners are calling it a national scandal, and the data suggests the government's conservation commitments amount to little more than cartography.
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Texas saw a $50B future in clean energy. Then the political winds shifted.
Texas had quietly become one of America's clean energy powerhouses, with wind and solar projects delivering steady income to rural ranchers and stabilizing county budgets long whipsawed by volatile oil markets. Now that progress faces a dual threat: federal policy reversals under the new Washington administration and growing skepticism from local communities. The $50 billion buildout that once seemed inevitable is suddenly anything but.
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