#climate news

[reasonsforhope]

There was record-breaking clean energy progress all around the world in 2024

"Last week, we shared the news that the U.S. government permanently closed most federal waters — more than 625 million acres — to offshore oil and gas drilling.

It’s a great way to kick off a year of more good climate action. And as the year-end data rolls in, there are even more stories of progress in fighting climate change via transitioning away from fossil fuels toward clean energy sources across the globe. In 2024...

📍 In Great Britain, wind power alone provided more electricity than ever before, and all renewables together generated around 56% of electricity.

📍 In Germany, renewables made up a record 59% of electricity generation and became the “backbone of the system” in the country.

📍 In Poland, a record 29% of its power came from renewable sources, showing great progress in a country that still heavily relies on coal.

📍 In India, the “transformative growth” of its renewable energy sector led to it surpassing 200 GW of installed capacity, making up 46% of the country’s total installed capacity.

→ Read more stories of progress for the planet"

-via GoodGoodGood, January 18, 2025, Source

[ecoamerica]

Watch the 2024 American Climate Leadership Awards for High School Students now: https://youtu.be/5C-bb9PoRLc

The recording is now available on ecoAmerica's YouTube channel for viewers to be inspired by student climate leaders! Join Aishah-Nyeta Brown & Jerome Foster II and be inspired by student climate leaders as we recognize the High School Student finalists. Watch now to find out which student received the $25,000 grand prize and top recognition!

[politijohn]

Source

Source

Same company, three years apart

[you-need-not-apply]

If you can, reblog.

Australia’s newest climate report has shown how bad the climate crisis has gotten. The information is both horrifying and not new.

We knew this would happen. They knew this would happen. There is no longer an excuse.

Australia’s climate has warmed by an average of 1.51 +_ 0.23 Celsius, its oceans have warmed by 1.08 Celsius since 1990.

There is less rain, less water flow, sea levels are rising and the risk of catastrophic fires grows every day.

If you have the means to change: change.

If you don’t: inspire others to.

Link to report

[directactionforhope]

"Starting this month [June 2024], thousands of young people will begin doing climate-related work around the West as part of a new service-based federal jobs program, the American Climate Corps, or ACC. The jobs they do will vary, from wildland firefighters and “lawn busters” to urban farm fellows and traditional ecological knowledge stewards. Some will work on food security or energy conservation in cities, while others will tackle invasive species and stream restoration on public land. 

The Climate Corps was modeled on Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Civilian Conservation Corps, with the goal of eventually creating tens of thousands of jobs while simultaneously addressing the impacts of climate change. 

Applications were released on Earth Day, and Maggie Thomas, President Joe Biden’s special assistant on climate, told High Country News that the program’s website has already had hundreds of thousands of views. Since its launch, nearly 250 jobs across the West have been posted, accounting for more than half of all the listed ACC positions. 

“Obviously, the West is facing tremendous impacts of climate change,” Thomas said. “It’s changing faster than many other parts of the country. If you look at wildfire, if you look at extreme heat, there are so many impacts. I think that there’s a huge role for the American Climate Corps to be tackling those crises.”  

Most of the current positions are staffed through state or nonprofit entities, such as the Montana Conservation Corps or Great Basin Institute, many of which work in partnership with federal agencies that manage public lands across the West. In New Mexico, for example, members of Conservation Legacy’s Ecological Monitoring Crew will help the Bureau of Land Management collect soil and vegetation data. In Oregon, young people will join the U.S. Department of Agriculture, working in firefighting, fuel reduction and timber management in national forests. 

New jobs are being added regularly. Deadlines for summer positions have largely passed, but new postings for hundreds more positions are due later this year or on a rolling basis, such as the Working Lands Program, which is focused on “climate-smart agriculture.”  ...

On the ACC website, applicants can sort jobs by state, work environment and focus area, such as “Indigenous knowledge reclamation” or “food waste reduction.” Job descriptions include an hourly pay equivalent — some corps jobs pay weekly or term-based stipends instead of an hourly wage — and benefits. The site is fairly user-friendly, in part owing to suggestions made by the young people who participated in the ACC listening sessions earlier this year...

The sessions helped determine other priorities as well, Thomas said, including creating good-paying jobs that could lead to long-term careers, as well as alignment with the president’s Justice40 initiative, which mandates that at least 40% of federal climate funds must go to marginalized communities that are disproportionately impacted by climate change and pollution. 

High Country News found that 30% of jobs listed across the West have explicit justice and equity language, from affordable housing in low-income communities to Indigenous knowledge and cultural reclamation for Native youth...

While the administration aims for all positions to pay at least $15 an hour, the lowest-paid position in the West is currently listed at $11 an hour. Benefits also vary widely, though most include an education benefit, and, in some cases, health care, child care and housing. 

All corps members will have access to pre-apprenticeship curriculum through the North America’s Building Trades Union. Matthew Mayers, director of the Green Workers Alliance, called this an important step for young people who want to pursue union jobs in renewable energy. Some members will also be eligible for the federal pathways program, which was recently expanded to increase opportunities for permanent positions in the federal government...

 “To think that there will be young people in every community across the country working on climate solutions and really being equipped with the tools they need to succeed in the workforce of the future,” Thomas said, “to me, that is going to be an incredible thing to see.”"

-via High Country News, June 6, 2024

--

Note: You can browse Climate Corps job postings here, on the Climate Corps website. There are currently 314 jobs posted at time of writing!

Also, it says the goal is to pay at least $15 an hour for all jobs (not 100% meeting that goal rn), but lots of postings pay higher than that, including some over $20/hour!!

[wachinyeya]

Places I Get The Good News:

Good News Network (they have a app)

GOOD News ( they have a app)

Lapis News (their website seems to be down but their app works)

Yes! Magazine (website and physical subscriptions but they dont paywall)

Hakai Magazine (they’re mostly independent environmental news for our oceans/coasts so not always GOOD news but they do celebrate the wins)

Monga Bay (is similar in that its not always good news but they do celebrate good things when they happen)

Indian Country Today (again, not always good news but when it is its amazing! and theyre just a really awesome source)

Wild Hope PBS (youtube)

Mossy Earth (youtube)

And I just try to keep my eyes and ears open for good news when it comes along~

[sinister-yet-satisfying]

Anyone else ever feel like bludgeoning oil executives and politicians to death with a rusty pipe over what they’ve doomed us all to?

Capitalism is a death sentence for the human race

[ecopunktranny]

PLEASE SIGN! IT TAKES 20 SECONDS!

[reasonsforhope]

"In 2021, scientists in Guelph, Ontario set out to accomplish something that had never been done before: open a lab specifically designed for raising bumble bees in captivity. 

Now, three years later, the scientists at the Bumble Bee Conservation Lab are celebrating a huge milestone. Over the course of 2024, they successfully pulled off what was once deemed impossible and raised a generation of yellow-banded bumble bees. 

The Bumble Bee Conservation Lab, which operates under the nonprofit Wildlife Preservation Canada, is the culmination of a decade-long mission to save the bee species, which is listed as endangered under the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation...

Although the efforts have been in motion for over a decade, the lab itself is a recent development that has rapidly accelerated conservation efforts. 

For bee scientists, the urgency was necessary. 

“We could see the major declines happening rapidly in Canada’s native bumble bees and knew we had to act, not just talk about the problem, but do something practical and immediate,” Woolaver said. 

Yellow-banded bumble bees, which live in southern Canada and across a huge swatch of the United States, were once a common species.

However, like many other bee species, their populations declined sharply in the mid-1990s from a litany of threats, including pathogens, pesticides, and dramatic habitat loss. 

Since the turn of the century, scientists have plunged in to give bees a helping hand. But it was only in the last decade that Woolaver and his team “identified a major gap” in bumble bee conservation and set out to solve it. 

“No one knew how to breed threatened species in captivity,” he explained. “This is critically important if assurance populations are needed to keep a species from going extinct and to assist with future reintroductions.”

To start their experiment, scientists hand-selected wild queen bees throughout Ontario and brought them to the temperature-controlled lab, where they were “treated like queens” and fed tiny balls of nectar and pollen. 

Then, with the help of Ontario’s African Lion Safari theme park, the queens were brought out to small, outdoor enclosures and paired with other bees with the hope that mating would occur. 

For some pairs, they had to play around with different environments to “set the mood,” swapping out spacious flight cages for cozier colony boxes. 

And it worked. 

“The two biggest success stories of 2024 were that we successfully bred our focal species, yellow-banded bumble bees, through their entire lifecycle for the first time,” Woolaver said. 

“[And] the first successful overwintering of yellow-banded bumble bees last winter allowed us to establish our first lab generation, doubling our mating successes and significantly increasing the number of young queens for overwintering to wake early spring and start their own colonies for future generations and future reintroductions.”

Although the first-of-its-kind experiment required careful planning, consideration, resources, and a decade of research, Woolaver hopes that their efforts inspire others to help bees in backyards across North America. 

“Be aware that our native bumble bees really are in serious decline,” Woolaver noted, “so when cottagers see bumble bees pollinating plants in their gardens, they really are seeing something special.”"

-via GoodGoodGood, December 9, 2024

[ecoamerica]

Watch the American Climate Leadership Awards 2024 now: https://youtu.be/bWiW4Rp8vF0?feature=shared

The American Climate Leadership Awards 2024 broadcast recording is now available on ecoAmerica's YouTube channel for viewers to be inspired by active climate leaders. Watch to find out which finalist received the $50,000 grand prize! Hosted by Vanessa Hauc and featuring Bill McKibben and Katharine Hayhoe!

[politijohn]

Read the full report here

Source

[you-need-not-apply]

And I haven’t seen a single post about it

[iww-gnv]

Lots of people feel refreshed after a three-day weekend. How about having one every week? Almost 200 companies around the world have completed six-month trials of a four-day workweek, with no reductions in employee pay. So far, the results are promising.

[sparksinthenight]

1.9 million people hit, crops destroyed, homes and infrastructure destroyed. This is what the climate crisis looks like.

https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/river-flood-hit-chads-capital-surges-record-level-2024-10-09/

[anansislibrary]

The Green Scare, and How the FBI Killed Environmentalism