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Biden proposes protections for monarch butterfly

News Feed
Tuesday, December 10, 2024

The Biden administration is proposing protections for the monarch butterfly – though the protections face an uncertain future in the incoming Trump administration.  The Fish and Wildlife Service proposed to list the orange and black butterfly as threatened, citing steep drops in the insect’s populations.  It said that eastern migratory monarchs have declined by about 80 percent while western monarchs have declined by more than 95 percent – giving the western group a 99 percent chance of going extinct by 2080. Habitat loss, pesticides and climate change are contributing to the issue.  “The iconic monarch butterfly is cherished across North America, captivating children and adults throughout its fascinating lifecycle,” said U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director Martha Williams in a statement. “Working together, we can help make this extraordinary species a legacy for our children and generations to come.” In 2020, the Trump administration declined to provide the monarch with protections. It determined at that time that protections were “warranted” but that it was unable to protect the butterfly because it needed to devote its resources to higher-priority species.  At the time, it granted the monarch “warranted-but-precluded” status — meaning that every year it will consider adding the butterfly to the list. Environmental advocates were pleased with the proposed protections, and indicated they would fight to finalize them under President-elect Trump. "We’ve spent 10 years to get to this landmark decision today, and won’t be stopping until the job is done. Science and the law is on the side of the monarchs," George Kimbrell, co-executive director of the Center for Food Safety, told The Hill in an email.  — Updated at 5:59 p.m.

The Biden administration is proposing protections for the monarch butterfly – though the protections face an uncertain future in the incoming Trump administration. The Fish and Wildlife Service proposed to list the orange and black butterfly as threatened, citing steep drops in the insect’s populations. It said that eastern migratory monarchs have declined by about...

The Biden administration is proposing protections for the monarch butterfly – though the protections face an uncertain future in the incoming Trump administration. 

The Fish and Wildlife Service proposed to list the orange and black butterfly as threatened, citing steep drops in the insect’s populations. 

It said that eastern migratory monarchs have declined by about 80 percent while western monarchs have declined by more than 95 percent – giving the western group a 99 percent chance of going extinct by 2080.

Habitat loss, pesticides and climate change are contributing to the issue. 

“The iconic monarch butterfly is cherished across North America, captivating children and adults throughout its fascinating lifecycle,” said U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director Martha Williams in a statement. “Working together, we can help make this extraordinary species a legacy for our children and generations to come.”

In 2020, the Trump administration declined to provide the monarch with protections. It determined at that time that protections were “warranted” but that it was unable to protect the butterfly because it needed to devote its resources to higher-priority species. 

At the time, it granted the monarch “warranted-but-precluded” status — meaning that every year it will consider adding the butterfly to the list.

Environmental advocates were pleased with the proposed protections, and indicated they would fight to finalize them under President-elect Trump.

"We’ve spent 10 years to get to this landmark decision today, and won’t be stopping until the job is done. Science and the law is on the side of the monarchs," George Kimbrell, co-executive director of the Center for Food Safety, told The Hill in an email. 

— Updated at 5:59 p.m.

Read the full story here.
Photos courtesy of

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Climate change is rewriting polar bear DNA

This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Changes in polar bear DNA that could help the animals adapt to warmer climates have been detected by researchers in a study thought to be the first time a statistically significant link has been found between […]

This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Changes in polar bear DNA that could help the animals adapt to warmer climates have been detected by researchers in a study thought to be the first time a statistically significant link has been found between rising temperatures and changing DNA in a wild mammal species. Climate breakdown is threatening the survival of polar bears. Two-thirds of them are expected to disappear by 2050 as their icy habitat melts and the weather becomes hotter. Now, scientists at the University of East Anglia have found that some genes related to heat stress, aging, and metabolism are behaving differently in polar bears living in southeast Greenland, suggesting they may be adjusting to warmer conditions. The researchers analysed blood samples taken from polar bears in two regions of Greenland and compared “jumping genes” — small, mobile pieces of the genome that can influence how other genes work. Scientists looked at the genes in relation to temperatures in the two regions and at the associated changes in gene expression. “DNA is the instruction book inside every cell, guiding how an organism grows and develops,” said lead researcher Alice Godden. “By comparing these bears’ active genes to local climate data, we found that rising temperatures appear to be driving a dramatic increase in the activity of jumping genes within the southeast Greenland bears’ DNA.” As local climates and diets evolve as a result of changes in habitat and prey forced by global heating, the genetics of the bears appear to be adapting, with the group of bears in the warmest part of the country showing more changes than the communities farther north. The authors of the study have said these changes could help us understand how polar bears might survive in a warming world, inform understanding of which populations are most at risk, and guide future conservation efforts. This is because the findings, published on Friday in the journal Mobile DNA, suggest the genes that are changing play a crucial role in how different polar bear populations are evolving. “This finding is important because it shows, for the first time, that a unique group of polar bears in the warmest part of Greenland are using ‘jumping genes’ to rapidly rewrite their own DNA, which might be a desperate survival mechanism against melting sea ice,” Godden said. Temperatures in northeast Greenland are colder and less variable, while in the southeast, there is a much warmer and less icy environment, with steep temperature fluctuations. DNA sequences in animals change over time, but this process can be accelerated by environmental stress such as a rapidly heating climate. There were some interesting DNA changes, such as in areas linked to fat processing, that could help polar bears survive when food is scarce. Bears in warmer regions had more rough, plant-based diets compared with the fatty, seal-based diets of northern bears, and the DNA of south-eastern bears seemed to be adapting to this. Godden said, “We identified several genetic hotspots where these jumping genes were highly active, with some located in the protein-coding regions of the genome, suggesting that the bears are undergoing rapid, fundamental genetic changes as they adapt to their disappearing sea ice habitat.” The next step will be to look at other polar bear populations, of which there are 20 around the world, to see if similar changes are happening to their DNA. This research could help protect the bears from extinction. But the scientists said it was crucial to stop temperature rises accelerating by reducing the burning of fossil fuels. “We cannot be complacent; this offers some hope but does not mean that polar bears are at any less risk of extinction,” Godden said. “We still need to be doing everything we can to reduce global carbon emissions and slow temperature increases.”

Climate
Animals
Extinction

Supersized data centers are coming. See how they will transform America.

These AI campuses consume more power than major U.S. cities. Their footprints are measured in miles, not feet.

Supersized data centers are coming. See how they will transform America.This coal plant in central Pennsylvania, once the largest in the state, was shuttered in 2023 after powering the region for over 50 years.Earlier this year, wrecking crews blasted the plant’s cooling towers and soaring chimneys.Rising from the dust in Homer City will be a colossal artificial intelligence data center campus that will include seven 30-acre gas generating stations on-site, fueled by Pennsylvania’s natural gas boom.December 15, 2025 at 6:00 a.m. EST6 minutes agoShawn Steffee of the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers is hopeful.“The closing of the coal plant had been really brutal,” he said. “But this project just took the entire chess board and flipped it.”The Homer City facility will generate and consume as much power as all the homes in the Philadelphia urban area. It is among a generation of new supersized data centers sprouting across the country, the footprints of which are measured in miles, not feet.They are part of an AI moon shot, driven by an escalating U.S.-China war over dominance in the field. The projects are starting to transform landscapes and communities, sparking debates about what our energy systems and environment can sustain. The price includes increasing power costs for everyone and worrying surges in emissions and pollutants, according to government, industry and academic analyses.By 2030, industry and government projections show data centers could gobble up more than 10 percent of the nation’s power usage.Estimates vary, but all show a dizzying rise of between 60 and 150 percent in energy consumption by 2030. On average, they project U.S. data centers will use about 430 trillion watt-hours by 2030. That is enough electricity to power nearly 16 Chicagos.Some forecasts project it will keep growing from there.“These things are industrial on a scale I have never seen in my life,” former Google CEO Eric Schmidt told a House committee earlier this year.Power use by U.S. data centers is growing exponentially, with large forecast uncertaintySource: Washington Post analysis of IEA, BNEF, LBNL and EPRI estimates. Past uncertainty stems from varying inventories of data centers and assumptions about their utilization.Tech companies that once pledged to use clean energy alone are fast reconsidering. They now need too much uninterrupted power, too fast. According to the International Energy Agency, the No. 1 power source to meet this need will be natural gas.“While we remain committed to our climate moonshots, it’s become clear that achieving them is now more complex and challenging across every level,” Google states in its 2025 environmental impact report. The company says meeting its goal of eliminating all emissions by 2030 has become “very difficult.”Data center firms have already approached the Homer City project’s natural gas provider, EQT, seeking enough fuel to power the equivalent of eight more Homer City projects around the country, EQT CEO Toby Rice said in an interview. And EQT is just one of dozens of U.S. natural gas suppliers.What’s at stakeData centers’ surging electricity needs are straining America’s aging power grid and undercutting tech companies’ climate goals.A single supersized “data campus” would draw as much power as millions of homes.The boom is riding on burning huge amounts of planet-warming natural gas, once cast as a transition fuel on the way to a cleaner grid.Not building the projects, however, risks ceding AI dominance to China.Some question if all these gas power plants will be necessary as AI technology rapidly becomes more efficient.“We’ll be shipping more gas than we ever thought,” said Arshad Mansoor, president and CEO of the nonprofit Electric Power Research Institute. “We are even unretiring coal.”Mansoor predicts it will all work out: He and others in the industry foresee the crushing demand leading to swift breakthroughs in clean energy innovation and deployment. That could include futuristic fusion power, they said, or more conventional technologies that capture natural gas emissions.But some are more skeptical. The independent monitor charged with keeping tabs on the PJM power grid — which serves 65 million customers in the eastern U.S. — is warning that it can’t handle more data centers. It urged federal regulators to indefinitely block more data centers on its grid to protect existing customers.Even in cities yearning to become the next data center hub — with unions welcoming the burst of construction jobs and elected officials offering lucrative tax packages — some apprehension remains.“It’s going to be new to everybody,” said Steffee, of the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers. “We all have to figure out how to start transitioning into this and what the ripple effects will be.”Homer City offers a glimpse of what is coming nationwide.In the Texas Panhandle, the company Fermi America broke ground this year on what it says will be a 5,800-acre complex of gas plants and giant nuclear reactors that would ultimately feed up to 18 million square feet of on-site data centers. It would dwarf Homer City in energy use.Tech companies are planning data ‘campuses’ that would dwarf existing centersIn Cheyenne, Wyoming, developers are aiming to generate 10 gigawatts of electricity for on-site data centers. That’s enough energy to power every house in Wyoming 20 times over. In rural Louisiana, Meta is building a $30 billion cluster of data center buildings that will stretch nearly the length and width of Manhattan.Such facilities will create a major climate challenge. By the mid 2030s, forecasts show the world’s data centers could drive as much carbon pollution as the New York, Chicago and Houston metro areas combined.Check our workDrone video of the Homer City power plant post-demolition courtesy of Homer City Redevelopment LLC. Photo of the power plant before demolition by Keith Srakocic/AP.The data centers map is based on extracts from datacentermap.com and CleanView. The map showing planned projects includes sites already under construction.The chart showing the aggregate power demand from U.S. data centers averages historical estimates and future projections from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, IEA, BloombergNEF and EPRI.To estimate the power consumption of a data center, The Post assumed a 67 percent utilization rate. For comparison, residential electricity use in various cities was estimated from household counts and state-level per-household averages from the EIA.

Climate
Energy
Government

Polar bear DNA changing in response to climate change

A new study has found that polar bear DNA might be evolving to help these creatures adapt to the stresses of our changing climate. The post Polar bear DNA changing in response to climate change first appeared on EarthSky.

According to new research, polar bear DNA might be changing to help these creatures adapt to a changing climate. Image via Hans-Jurgen Mager/ Unsplash. EarthSky’s 2026 lunar calendar is available now. Get yours today! Makes a great gift. By Alice Godden, University of East Anglia. Edits by EarthSky. The Arctic Ocean current is at its warmest in the last 125,000 years, and temperatures continue to rise. Due to these warming temperatures, more than 2/3 of polar bears are expected to be extinct by 2050. Total extinction is predicted by the end of this century. But in our new study, my colleagues and I found that the changing climate has been driving changes in polar bear DNA, potentially allowing them to more readily adapt to warmer habitats. Provided these polar bears can source enough food and breeding partners, this suggests they may potentially survive these new challenging climates. Polar bear DNA is changing We discovered a strong link between rising temperatures in southeast Greenland and changes in the polar bear genome, which is the entire set of DNA found in an organism. DNA is the instruction book inside every cell, guiding how an organism grows and develops. In processes called transcription and translation, DNA is copied to generate RNA. These are messenger molecules that transmit genetic information. This can lead to the production of proteins, and copies of transposons, also known as “jumping genes.” These are mobile pieces of the genome that can move around and influence how other genes work. Different regions, different genomes Our research revealed big differences in the temperatures in the northeast of Greenland compared with the southeast. We used publicly available polar bear genetic data from a research group at the University of Washington, U.S., to support our study. This dataset was generated from blood samples collected from polar bears in both northern and south-eastern Greenland. Our work built on a Washington University study which discovered that this southeastern population of Greenland polar bears was genetically different to the north-eastern population. Southeastern bears had migrated from the north and became isolated and separate approximately 200 years ago, it found. Researchers from Washington had extracted RNA – the genetic messenger molecules – from polar bear blood samples and sequenced it. We used this sequencing to look at RNA expression – essentially showing which genes are active – in relation to the climate. This gave us a detailed picture of gene activity, including the behavior of the “jumping genes,” or transposons. Temperatures in Greenland have been closely monitored and recorded by the Danish Meteorological Institute. So we linked this climate data with the RNA data to explore how environmental changes may be influencing polar bear biology. Polar bears face challenging conditions thanks to climate change. But they might be responding to this challenge at a genetic level. Image via Dick Val Beck/ Polar Bears International. Impacts of temperature change We found that temperatures in the southeast were significantly warmer and fluctuated more than in the northeast. This creates habitat changes and challenges for the polar bears living in these regions. In the southeast of Greenland, the edge of the ice sheet – which spans 80% of Greenland – is rapidly receding. That means vast ice and habitat loss. The loss of ice is a substantial problem for the polar bears. That’s because it reduces the availability of hunting platforms to catch seals, leading to isolation and food scarcity. EarthSky’s Will Triggs spoke to Alysa McCall of Polar Bears International on Arctic Sea Ice day – July 15, 2025 – to hear about how the decline in arctic sea ice is affecting polar bears and beluga whales. How climate is changing polar bear DNA Over time, it’s not unusual for an organism’s DNA sequence to slowly change and evolve. But environmental stress, such as a warmer climate, can accelerate this process. Transposons are like genetic puzzle pieces that can rearrange themselves, sometimes helping animals adapt to new environments. They come in many different families and have slightly different behaviors, but in essence are all mobile fragments that can reinsert randomly anywhere in the genome. Approximately 38.1% of the polar bear genome is made up of transposons. For humans that figure is 45%, and plant genomes can be over 70% transposons. There are small protective molecules called piwi-interacting RNAs (piRNAs) that can silence the activity of transposons. But when an environmental stress is too strong, these protective piRNAs cannot keep up with the invasive actions of transposons. We found that the warmer southeast climate led to a mass mobilization of these transposons across the polar bear genome, changing its sequence. We also found that these transposon sequences appeared younger and more abundant in the southeastern bears. And over 1,500 of these sequences were upregulated, meaning gene activity was increased. That points to recent genetic changes that may help bears adapt to rising temperatures. What exactly is changing in polar bear DNA? Some of these elements overlap with genes linked to stress responses and metabolism, hinting at a possible role in coping with climate change. By studying these jumping genes, we uncovered how the polar bear genome adapts and responds in the shorter term to environmental stress and warmer climates. Our research found that some genes linked to heat stress, aging and metabolism are behaving differently in the southeast population of polar bears. This suggests they might be adjusting to their warmer conditions. Additionally, we found active jumping genes in parts of the genome that are involved in areas tied to fat processing, which is important when food is scarce. Considering that northern populations eat mainly fatty seals, this could mean that polar bears in the southeast are slowly adapting to eating the rougher plant-based diets that can be found in the warmer regions. Overall, climate change is reshaping polar bear habitats, leading to genetic changes. Bears of southeastern Greenland are evolving to survive these new terrains and diets. Future research could include other polar bear populations living in challenging climates. Understanding these genetic changes helps researchers see how polar bears might survive in a warming world, and which populations are most at risk. Alice Godden, Senior Research Associate, School of Biological Sciences, University of East Anglia This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. Bottom line: A new study has found that polar bear DNA might be evolving to help these creatures adapt to our changing climate. Read more: Polar bears have unique ice-repelling furThe post Polar bear DNA changing in response to climate change first appeared on EarthSky.

Climate
Animals
Food

Park Service orders changes to staff ratings, a move experts call illegal

Lower performance ratings could be used as a factor in layoff decisions and will demoralize staff, advocates say.

A top National Park Service official has instructed park superintendents to limit the number of staff who get top marks in performance reviews, according to three people familiar with the matter, a move that experts say violates federal code and could make it easier to lay off staff.Parks leadership generally evaluate individual employees annually on a five-point scale, with a three rating given to those who are successful in achieving their goals, with those exceeding expectations receiving a four and outstanding employees earning a five.Frank Lands, the deputy director of operations for the National Park System, told dozens of park superintendents on a conference call Thursday that “the preponderance of ratings should be 3s,” according to the people familiar, who were not authorized to comment publicly about the internal call.Lands said that roughly one to five percent of people should receive an outstanding rating and confirmed several times that about 80 percent should receive 3s, the people familiar said.Follow Climate & environmentThe Interior Department, which oversees the National Park Service, said in a statement Friday that “there is no percentage cap” on certain performance ratings.“We are working to normalize ratings across the agency,” the statement said. “The goal of this effort is to ensure fair, consistent performance evaluations across all of our parks and programs.”Though many employers in corporate American often instruct managers to classify a majority of employee reviews in the middle tier, the Parks Service has commonly given higher ratings to a greater proportion of employees.Performance ratings are also taken into account when determining which employees are laid off first if the agency were to go ahead with “reduction in force” layoffs, as many other departments have done this year.The order appears to violate the Code of Federal Regulations, said Tim Whitehouse, a lawyer and executive director of the nonprofit advocacy group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility. The code states that the government cannot require a “forced distribution” of ratings for federal employees.“Employees are supposed to be evaluated based upon their performance, not upon a predetermined rating that doesn’t reflect how they actually performed,” he said.The Trump administration has reduced the number of parks staff this year by about 4,000 people, or roughly a quarter, according to an analysis by the National Parks Conservation Association, an advocacy group. Parks advocates say the administration is deliberately seeking to demoralize staff and failing to recognize the additional work they now have to do, given the exodus of employees through voluntary resignations and early retirements.Rep. Jared Huffman (D-California) said the move would artificially depress employee ratings:“You can’t square that with the legal requirements of the current regulations about how performance reviews are supposed to work.”Some details of the directive were first reported by E&E News.Park superintendents on the conference call objected to the order. Some questioned the fairness to employees whose work merited a better rating at a time when many staff are working harder to make up for the thousands of vacancies.“I need leaders who lead in adversity. And if you can’t do that, just let me know. I’ll do my best to find somebody that can,” Lands said in response, the people familiar with the call said.One superintendent who was on the call, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid retaliation, said in an interview that Lands’ statement “was meant to be a threat.”The superintendent said they were faced with disobeying the order and potentially being fired or illegally changing employees’ evaluations.“If we change these ratings to meet the quota and violated federal law, are we subject to removal because we violated federal law and the oath we took to protect the Constitution?” the superintendent said.Myron Ebell, a board member of the American Lands Council, an advocacy group supporting the transfer of federal lands to states and counties, defended the administration’s move.“It’s exactly the same thing as grade inflation at universities. Think about it. Not everybody can be smarter than average. If everyone is doing great, that’s average,” he said.Theresa Pierno, president and CEO of the National Parks Conservation Association, said in a statement that the policy could make it easier to lay off staff, after the administration already decimated the ranks of the parks service.“After the National Park Service was decimated by mass firings and pressured staff buyouts, park rangers have been working the equivalent of second, third, or even fourth jobs protecting parks,” Pierno said.“Guidance like this could very well be setting up their staff to be cannon fodder during the next round of mass firings. This would be an unconscionable move,” she added.

Climate
Conservation
Government

Coalmine expansions would breach climate targets, NSW government warned in ‘game-changer’ report

Environmental advocates welcome Net Zero Commission’s report which found the fossil fuel was ‘not consistent’ with emissions reductions commitments Sign up for climate and environment editor Adam Morton’s free Clear Air newsletter hereGet our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcastThe New South Wales government has been warned it can no longer approve coalmine developments after the state’s climate agency found new expansions would be inconsistent with its legislated emissions targets.In what climate advocates described as a significant turning point in campaigns against new fossil fuel programs, the NSW Net Zero Commission said coalmine expansions were “not consistent” with the state’s legal emissions reductions commitments of a 50% cut (compared with 2005 levels) by 2030, a 70% cut by 2035, and reaching net zero by 2050.Sign up to get climate and environment editor Adam Morton’s Clear Air column as a free newsletter Continue reading...

The New South Wales government has been warned it can no longer approve coalmine developments after the state’s climate agency found new expansions would be inconsistent with its legislated emissions targets.In what climate advocates described as a significant turning point in campaigns against new fossil fuel programs, the NSW Net Zero Commission said coalmine expansions were “not consistent” with the state’s legal emissions reductions commitments of a 50% cut (compared with 2005 levels) by 2030, a 70% cut by 2035, and reaching net zero by 2050.The commission’s Coal Mining Emissions Spotlight Report said the government should consider the climate impact – including from the “scope 3” emissions released into the atmosphere when most of the state’s coal is exported and burned overseas – in all coalmine planning decisions.Environmental lawyer Elaine Johnson said the report was a “game-changer” as it argued coalmining was the state’s biggest contribution to the climate crisis and that new coal proposals were inconsistent with the legislated targets.She said it also found demand for coal was declining – consistent with recent analyses by federal Treasury and the advisory firm Climate Resource – and the state government must support affected communities to transition to new industries.“What all this means is that it is no longer lawful to keep approving more coalmine expansions in NSW,” Johnson wrote on social media site LinkedIn. “Let’s hope the Department of Planning takes careful note when it’s looking at the next coalmine expansion proposal.”The Lock the Gate Alliance, a community organisation that campaigns against fossil fuel developments, said the report showed changes were required to the state’s planning framework to make authorities assess emissions and climate damage when considering mine applications.It said this should apply to 18 mine expansions that have been proposed but not yet approved, including two “mega-coalmine expansions” at the Hunter Valley Operations and Maules Creek mines. Eight coalmine expansions have been approved since the Minns Labor government was elected in 2023.Lock the Gate’s Nic Clyde said NSW already had 37 coalmines and “we can’t keep expanding them indefinitely”. He called for an immediate moratorium on approving coal expansions until the commission’s findings had been implemented.“This week, multiple NSW communities have been battling dangerous bushfires, which are becoming increasingly severe due to climate change fuelled by coalmining and burning. Our safety and our survival depends on how the NSW government responds to this report,” he said.Net zero emissions is a target that has been adopted by governments, companies and other organisations to eliminate their contribution to the climate crisis. It is sometimes called “carbon neutrality”.The climate crisis is caused by carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases being pumped into the atmosphere, where they trap heat. They have already caused a significant increase in average global temperatures above pre-industrial levels recorded since the mid-20th century. Countries and others that set net zero emissions targets are pledging to stop their role in worsening this by cutting their climate pollution and balancing out whatever emissions remain by sucking an equivalent amount of CO2 out of the atmosphere.This could happen through nature projects – tree planting, for example – or using carbon dioxide removal technology.CO2 removal from the atmosphere is the “net” part in net zero. Scientists say some emissions will be hard to stop and will need to be offset. But they also say net zero targets will be effective only if carbon removal is limited to offset “hard to abate” emissions. Fossil use will still need to be dramatically reduced.After signing the 2015 Paris agreement, the global community asked the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to assess what would be necessary to give the world a chance of limiting global heating to 1.5C.The IPCC found it would require deep cuts in global CO2 emissions: to about 45% below 2010 levels by 2030, and to net zero by about 2050.The Climate Action Tracker has found more than 145 countries have set or are considering setting net zero emissions targets. Photograph: Ashley Cooper pics/www.alamy.comThe alliance’s national coordinator, Carmel Flint, added: “It’s not just history that will judge the government harshly if they continue approving such projects following this report. Our courts are likely to as well.”The NSW Minerals Council criticised the commission’s report. Its chief executive, Stephen Galilee, said it was a “flawed and superficial analysis” that put thousands of coalmining jobs at risk. He said some coalmines would close in the years ahead but was “no reason” not to approve outstanding applications to extend the operating life of about 10 mines.Galilee said emissions from coal in NSW were falling faster than the average rate of emission reduction across the state and were “almost fully covered” by the federal government’s safeguard mechanism policy, which required mine owners to either make annual direct emissions cuts or buy offsets.He said the NSW government should “reflect on why it provides nearly $7m annually” for the commission to “campaign against thousands of NSW mining jobs”.But the state’s main environment organisation, the Nature Conservation Council of NSW, said the commission report showed coalmining was “incompatible with a safe climate future”.“The Net Zero Commission has shone a spotlight. Now the free ride for coalmine pollution has to end,” the council’s chief executive, Jacqui Mumford, said.The state climate change and energy minister, Penny Sharpe, said the commission was established to monitor, report and provide independent advice on how the state was meeting its legislated emissions targets, and the government would consider its advice “along with advice from other groups and agencies”.

Climate
Government
Conservation

Suggested Viewing

Heimat - Requiem For The World As We Know It

Four theater-makers from Belgium travel to the melting glaciers on Greenland. Their goal: to play a new composed requiem and say goodbye to the world as we know it.

Music
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Climate

THE SPRAYER

In the land occupied with the sprayers army, no one has the right to grow any kind of plants either in public or private. So many of the people and soldiers do not even know how a plant grows or looks like, until one day one of the soldiers finds a seed buried deep down in the dust and his curiosity is just the beginning of something extraordinary, something big, something revolutionary.

Plants
CO2
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Beyond the Soil

Beyond the Soil is a short, poetic documentary which explores the emotional impact of climate change on farmers and ranchers who are on the frontlines of the megadrought in the Rocky Mountain West, and their innovation and resilience in the face of ecological crisis.

Climate
Food

Total Disaster

Armed with realistic bird puppets, trickster environmental activists pretend to be oil company Total—staging a satirical press conference to introduce "RéHabitat," a program to rescue animals from the East African Oil Pipeline by relocating them to “more sustainable” habitats. Using humor and mischief, they expose a deadly ecological disaster in a zany effort to help #StopEACOP.

Activism
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Living with Landslides

This film documents the devastating costs of landslides to both private property owners and taxpayers, and offers solutions. Climate change means landslides will only get worse.

Land Use
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