News: By Source
New research warns that ‘blue acceleration’ – a global goldrush to industrialize the ocean including fish farming, desalination plant construction, shipping, submarine cable laying, cruise tourism and the building of offshore wind farms – is already impacting on the environment.
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The “new global gold rush” over deep-sea mining holds the same potential pitfalls as previous resource scrambles, with environmental and social impacts ignored and the rights of Indigenous people marginalised, a paper in the Harvard Environmental Law Review has warned.
[ More ]A new gold rush is targeting rich ores on the ocean floor containing valuable metals needed for smartphones and green technologies, but also hosting exotic ecosystems, raising questions about whether deep seabed mining is really an ecologic alternative to land-based mining.D
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It was designed as an impregnable deep-freeze to protect the world’s most precious seeds from any global disaster and ensure humanity’s food supply forever. But the Global Seed Vault, buried in a mountain deep inside the Arctic circle, has been breached after global warming produced extraordinary temperatures over the winter, sending meltwater gushing into the entrance tunnel.
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Shell has abandoned its controversial drilling operations in the Alaskan Arctic in the face of mounting opposition in what jubilant environmentalists described as “an unmitigated defeat” for big oil.
[ More ]Shell is considering drilling for oil in the Arctic but it may not be worth the risk of public outrage due to the inevitability of catastrophic oil spills and the increasing realization that extracting Arctic oil would pose a grave risk to the global climate.
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The Chinese military is poised to send submarines armed with nuclear missiles into the Pacific Ocean for the first time, arguing that new US weapons systems have so undermined Beijing’s existing deterrent force that it has been left with no alternative.
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Vladimir Putin sends troops and jets to oil- and gas-rich Arctic region also coveted by Canada, United States, Norway and Denmark in an apparent show of military force.
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National security officials worried by rapid loss of Arctic summer sea ice overlook threat of permanent global food shortages. Senior US government officials are to be briefed at the White House this week on the danger of an ice-free Arctic in the summer within two years.
[ More ]China has been cosying up to Arctic countries as part of its effort to secure "permanent observer" status on the Arctic Council, an eight-country political body that decides regional policy. Norway was initially sniffy at the approaches because of the Nobel row, but appears to have changed its tune before a formal decision in May.
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