The Guardian
Latest environmental news, opinion and analysis from the Guardian.
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Musk’s xAI wins permit for datacenter’s makeshift power plant despite backlash
Billionaire’s artificial intelligence company gets approval to run 41 methane gas turbines at its ‘Colossus 2’ in Mississippi
Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company xAI won approval on Tuesday to run 41 methane gas turbines at its “Colossus 2” datacenter in northern Mississippi. That’s nearly double the amount it has been operating.
The turbines will help power xAI’s massive datacenters, which house the company’s “AI supercomputers”, or giant arrays of advanced chips, which in turn power the controversial AI tool Grok, the company’s most recognizable product.
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Sex and the sea snail: how a plucky marine lab brought a mollusk back from the brink
Once abundant in California, the white abalone had all but vanished. Now, thanks to an innovative breeding program, it’s staged a remarkable comeback
On a sunny January afternoon in Bodega Bay, some 70 miles north of San Francisco, the White Abalone Culture Lab is humming with activity.
It’s spawning day. Alyssa Frederick, the lab’s program director, invites me into an industrial room full of troughs and tubs of bubbling seawater. The abalone program is tucked away in the UC Davis Bodega Marine Laboratory, a research facility devoted to studying ocean and coastal health. The goal is to bring the endangered sea snails, known for their iridescent shells and delicate meat, back from the brink.
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How Trump’s EPA rollbacks give US states new tools in climate suits
Vermont and New York face high stakes to protect climate superfund laws as it faces attacks from Trump’s DoJ
By rolling back a bedrock climate legal determination, the Trump administration has undercut its attacks on a groundbreaking state climate accountability law, green groups have argued in court.
Trump’s justice department has asked a judge to kill a first-of-its-kind 2024 Vermont “climate superfund” policy requiring major polluters to pay for damages caused by their past planet-heating pollution, partly on the grounds that that federal law, not state law, governs greenhouse gas emissions. But last month, Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) repealed the endangerment finding, the scientific determination giving federal officials the authority to control those very pollutants.
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Trump has launched an unprecedented assault on the environment. Where’s the pushback?
Climate deniers expected more resistance to the fossil fuel blitz. But Democrats, billionaires and activists have gone silent
This story is published in partnership with DeSmog, the climate investigations site
As Donald Trump assaults the legal foundation of America’s ability to regulate global warming emissions, climate deniers have been privately celebrating what they claim is the “silent” acquiescence of billionaires, Democrats, climate activists and even reporters to the president’s aggressive pro-fossil-fuel agenda.
“In my 26 years of being focused on climate, I’ve never seen anything like this. Trump is gutting everything they ever stood for,” Marc Morano, a longtime climate denier, said in January at the World Prosperity Forum, a five-day event in Zurich, Switzerland, billed as a rightwing alternative to the World Economic Forum in Davos.
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Syngenta says it will stop making pesticide linked to Parkinson’s disease
Company will halt production of controversial paraquat weed killer by end of June as it faces thousands of lawsuits
Syngenta, maker of a controversial pesticide linked to Parkinson’s disease, said on Tuesday that it would stop making its paraquat weed killer by the end of June.
The announcement comes as the company is facing several thousand lawsuits brought by people in the US who allege they developed Parkinson’s disease due to their exposure to Syngenta’s paraquat products.
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