Schoolchildren go on strike across world over climate crisis

Hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren across the world have gone on strike in protest at the escalating climate crisis.

Teenage protesters in Warsaw, Poland, hold up placards
calling on politicians to address climate crisis. 

Students from 1,800 towns and cities in more than 110 countries stretching from India to Australia and the UK to South Africa, walked out of lessons on Friday, the organisers of the action said.

This is the latest school climate strike, inspired by teenager Greta Thunberg, who has become a global figurehead since protesting outside Sweden’s parliament in 2018. The young people are demanding politicians take urgent action to avoid catastrophic ecological breakdown.

In London, thousands gathered in the sunshine in Parliament Square chanting, “Where the fuck is the government”, and “This is what democracy looks like”, before staging a sit-down protest outside the department of education.

Read the story from The Guardian by Matthew Tayor - “Schoolchildren go on strike across world over climate crisis.”

From Apples to Popcorn, Climate Change Is Altering the Foods America Grows

The impact may not yet be obvious in grocery stores and greenmarkets, but behind the organic apples and bags of rice and cans of cherry pie filling are hundreds of thousands of farmers, plant breeders and others in agriculture who are scrambling to keep up with climate change.

Montmorency tart cherries waiting to be harvested
 in Leelanau County in northern Michigan.

Drop a pin anywhere on a map of the United States and you’ll find disruption in the fields. Warmer temperatures are extending growing seasons in some areas and sending a host of new pests into others. Some fields are parched with drought, others so flooded that they swallow tractors.

Decades-long patterns of frost, heat and rain — never entirely predictable but once reliable enough — have broken down. In regions where the term climate change still meets with skepticism, some simply call the weather extreme or erratic. But most agree that something unusual is happening.

Read the story from The New York Times by Kim Severson - “From Apples to Popcorn, Climate Change Is Altering the Foods America Grows.”

Hundreds of thousands of native fish dead in second Murray-Darling incident

Hundreds of thousands of fish have been killed along a stretch of the Lower Darling River in New South Wales in a second major incident which has led some experts to fear whole populations of local native fish have been wiped out.

 Photos posted on social media of the fish kill at Menindee on the Darling River. 

Residents near the Menindee Lakes are reporting what is the second major fish kill along a 20km stretch of water near Weir 32.

An incident before Christmas saw an estimated 10,000 fish die.

Locals have been posting photos of dying fish washed up along the shores of the lakes which are about 100km east of Broken Hill.

And local fish experts are saying that it could all but wipe out the populations of Murray cod and other native fish, raising serious questions about the way WaterNSW is managing the lakes system.

Read the story from The Guardian by Anne Davies - “Hundreds of thousands of native fish dead in second Murray-Darling incident.”