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      U.S. Plan to Protect Oceans Has a Problem, Some Say: Too Much Fishing

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      An effort to protect 30 percent of land and waters would count some commercial fishing zones as conserved areas.New details of the Biden administration’s signature conservation effort, made public this month amid a burst of other environmental announcements, have alarmed some scientists who study marine protected areas because the plan would count certain commercial fishing zones as conserved.The decision could have ripple effects around the world as nations work toward fulfilling a broader global commitment to safeguard 30 percent of the entire planet’s land, inland waters and seas. That effort has been hailed as historic, but the critical question of what, exactly, counts as conserved is still being decided.This early answer from the Biden administration is worrying, researchers say, because high-impact commercial fishing is incompatible with the goals of the efforts.“Saying that these areas that are touted to be for biodiversity conservation should also do double duty for fishing as well, especially highly impactful gears that are for large-scale commercial take, there’s just a cognitive dissonance there,” said Kirsten Grorud-Colvert, a marine biologist at Oregon State University who led a group of scientists that in 2021 published a guide for evaluating marine protected areas.The debate is unfolding amid a global biodiversity crisis that is speeding extinctions and eroding ecosystems, according to a landmark intergovernmental assessment. As the natural world degrades, its ability to give humans essentials like food and clean water also diminishes. The primary driver of biodiversity declines in the ocean, the assessment found, is overfishing. Climate change is an additional and ever-worsening threat.Fish are an important source of nutrition for billions of people around the world. Research shows that effectively conserving key areas is an key tool to keep stocks healthy while also protecting other ocean life.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Honda Commits to E.V.s With Big Investment in Canada

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      The Japanese automaker, which has been slow to sell electric vehicles, said it would invest $11 billion to make batteries and cars in Ontario.Honda Motor on Thursday said it would invest $11 billion to build batteries and electric cars in Ontario, a significant commitment from a company that has been slow to embrace the technology.Like Toyota and other Japanese carmakers, Honda has emphasized hybrid vehicles, in which gasoline engines are augmented by electric motors, rather than cars powered solely by batteries. The Honda Prologue, a sport-utility vehicle made in Mexico, is the company’s only fully electric vehicle on sale in the United States.But the investment adjacent to the company’s factory in Alliston, Ontario, near Toronto, is a shift in direction, raising the possibility that Honda and other Japanese carmakers could use their manufacturing expertise to push down the cost of electric vehicles and make them affordable to more people.“This is a very big day for the region, for the province and for the country,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said at an announcement event in Alliston, where Honda manufactures the Civic sedan and CR-V S.U.V. The investment is the largest by an automaker in Canadian history, he said.The company also plans to retool its flagship factory in Marysville, Ohio, near Columbus, to produce electric vehicles in 2026. The investment in Canada is a sign that Honda expects the technology to grow in popularity, despite a recent slowdown in sales.Canadian leaders have been wooing carmakers with financial incentives as it tries to become a major player in the electric vehicle supply chain. Vehicles made in Canada can qualify for $7,500 U.S. federal tax credits, which are available only to cars made in North America.Volkswagen said last year it would invest up to $5 billion to construct a battery factory in Thomas, Ontario. Northvolt, a Swedish battery company, announced plans last year for a $5 billion battery factory near Montreal.Honda will benefit from up to $1.8 billion in tax credits available to companies that invest in electric vehicle projects, Chrystia Freeland, the Canadian finance minister, said Thursday at the event.Canada also has reserves of lithium and other materials needed to make batteries, and generates a lot of its electricity from nuclear and hydroelectric plants, which allows carmakers to advertise that their vehicles are made with energy that releases no greenhouse gas emissions.“As we aim to conduct our business with zero environmental impact, Canada is very attractive,” Toshihiro Mibe, the chief executive of Honda, said Thursday in Alliston. Honda will also work with partners to convert raw materials into battery components, he said.However, recent declines in the price of lithium have raised questions about whether mining the metal in Canada will be profitable. More

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      Scientists Predict Most Extensive Coral Bleaching Event on Record

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      Rising sea temperatures around the planet have caused a bleaching event that is expected to be the most extensive on record.The world’s coral reefs are in the throes of a global bleaching event caused by extraordinary ocean temperatures, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and international partners announced Monday.It is the fourth such global event on record and is expected to affect more reefs than any other. Bleaching occurs when corals become so stressed that they lose the symbiotic algae they need to survive. Bleached corals can recover, but if the water surrounding them is too hot for too long, they die.Coral reefs are vital ecosystems: limestone cradles of marine life that nurture an estimated quarter of ocean species at some point during their life cycles, support fish that provide protein for millions of people and protect coasts from storms. The economic value of the world’s coral reefs has been estimated at $2.7 trillion annually.For the last year, ocean temperatures have been off the charts.“This is scary, because coral reefs are so important,” said Derek Manzello, the coordinator of NOAA’s Coral Reef Watch program, which monitors and predicts bleaching events.The news is the latest example of climate scientists’ alarming predictions coming to pass as the planet heats. Despite decades of warnings from scientists and pledges from leaders, nations are burning more fossil fuels than ever and greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      PFAS ‘Forever Chemicals’ Are Pervasive in Water Worldwide, Study Finds

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      A global survey found harmful levels even in water samples taken far any obvious source of contamination.They’re in makeup, dental floss and menstrual products. They’re in nonstick pans and takeout food wrappers. Same with rain jackets and firefighting equipment, as well as pesticides and artificial turf on sports fields.They’re PFAS: a class of man-made chemicals called per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances. They are also called “forever chemicals” because the bonds in their chemical compounds are so strong they don’t break down for hundreds to thousands of years, if at all.They’re also in our water.A new study of more than 45,000 water samples around the world found that about 31 percent of groundwater samples tested that weren’t near any obvious source of contamination have PFAS levels considered harmful to human health by the Environmental Protection Agency. About 16 percent of surface water samples tested, which were also not near any known source, have similarly hazardous PFAS levels.This finding “sets off alarm bells,” said Denis O’Carroll, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of New South Wales and one of the authors of the study, which was published on Monday in Nature Geoscience. “Not just for PFAS, but also for all the other chemicals that we put out into the environment. We don’t necessarily know their long-term impacts to us or the ecosystem.”High levels of exposure to some PFAS chemicals have been linked to higher cholesterol, liver and immune system damage, hypertension and pre-eclampsia during pregnancy, as well as kidney and testicular cancer.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      They Came From Outer Space. Now, They’re Going Into Hiding.

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      Rising temperatures in Antarctica are making meteorites sink out of view before researchers can collect them.If you’re looking for meteorites, here’s a tip: Go south. All the way south. And do it soon.In some parts of Antarctica, there’s a good chance that what looks like a regular old rock could actually be a chunk of an asteroid, the moon, or even Mars. Roughly 60 percent of all known meteorites have been collected there.But scientific sleuthing for such extraterrestrial material, which can shed light on how the solar system formed billions of years ago, will probably get more difficult in Antarctica in the coming decades. That’s because, as temperatures rise, thousands of meteorites will sink into the continent’s ice and disappear from sight every year, according to a new study published on Monday.Antarctica’s meteorite largess isn’t because more extraterrestrial stuff is falling there, Cari Corrigan, a geologist at the Smithsonian Institution and a curator of the National Museum of Natural History’s meteorite collection, said.Rather, meteorites simply tend to be more visible on the Antarctic ice sheet than they would be, say, in your backyard. “Your eye can pick out a dark rock on a white surface super easily,” said Dr. Corrigan, who was not involved in the new research.The continent also has places known as blue-ice areas, that are particularly good for finding meteorites. These regions are often near geographic obstructions like mountains, where layers of ice tend to pile up and strong winds continuously erode the surface. Those conditions are ideal for concentrating, and revealing, meteorites that have fallen over millenniums.But warming temperatures could send many meteorites out of sight. In recent years, researchers have spotted specimens in Antarctica that have been partially encrusted in ice rather than sitting exposed on the surface.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Last Coal-Fired Power Plants in New England Are to Close

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      The company that owns the Merrimack and Schiller stations in New Hampshire plans to turn them into solar farms and battery storage for offshore wind.The last two coal-fired power plants in New England are set to close by 2025 and 2028, ending the use of a fossil fuel that supplied electricity to the region for more than 50 years.The decision to close the Merrimack and Schiller stations, both in New Hampshire, makes New England the second region in the country, after the Pacific Northwest, to stop burning coal.Environmentalists waged a five-year legal battle against the New Hampshire plants, saying that the owner had discharged warm water from steam turbines into a nearby river without cooling it first to match the natural temperature.In a settlement reached on Wednesday with the Sierra Club and the Conservative Law Foundation, Granite Shore Power, the owner of the plants, agreed that Schiller would not run after Dec. 31, 2025 and that Merrimack would cease operations no later than June 2028.“This announcement is the culmination of years of persistence and dedication from so many people across New England,” said Gina McCarthy, a former national climate adviser to President Biden and former administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency during the Obama administration who is now a senior adviser at Bloomberg Philanthropies, which supports efforts to phase out coal.“I’m wicked proud to live in New England today and be here,” Ms. McCarthy said. “Every day, we’re showing the rest of the country that we will secure our clean energy future without compromising.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      A New Law Would Remove Many Architectural Protections in Miami Beach

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      Lawmakers say preservationists held too much power over decisions on whether buildings should be demolished and what should be allowed to replace them.The oceanfront Eden Roc Hotel is an icon of Miami Modernist architecture, a style that epitomized the postwar glamour and grandeur of Miami Beach. Two turquoise panels wrap the white facade. The oval canister perched atop the building resembles a cruise ship’s funnel. Crooners like Frank Sinatra, Harry Belafonte, and Sammy Davis, Jr., stayed and played there.But a new Florida law could make it easier for hotels like the Eden Roc and other architectural icons along Miami Beach’s coastline to be demolished. The battle pits the pressures of development and climate change against the benefits of historical preservation, in a city that has long paved over its past and prizes the new, shiny, and glitzy.Supporters say the law addresses environmental and safety challenges of aging properties after the deadly 2021 collapse of the Champlain Towers South condo. But critics believe the legislation is a pretext to facilitate the demolition of historical buildings — ones that give Miami Beach its distinct look — to make way for high-rise luxury condos.The new law effectively strips Miami Beach Historic Preservation Board of its long-held power to say whether historic structures can be demolished and, if a structure is knocked down, to ensure that at least some elements of its design are preserved or replicated. “Let’s just bulldoze the past — that’s their idea,” said Daniel Ciraldo, the executive director of the nonprofit Miami Design Preservation League. “I don’t think we’ve seen such an attack on our local controls since the 1980s, back when the city first started to do historic preservation.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      How the New E.P.A. Rules Affect Toyota and Their Hybrid Cars

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      The auto giant lobbied hard against tougher pollution rules. This week, the E.P.A.’s new rules proved favorable to hybrid technology, an area that Toyota dominates.The breakfast at Toyota’s annual dealership gathering in Las Vegas last fall was an exclusive, invite-only affair, where attendees were told to cover their cellphone cameras with red stickers.Speaking was Stephen Ciccone, Toyota’s top lobbyist. He said the industry was facing an existential crisis — not because of the economy or fuel prices, but because of stronger tailpipe pollution limits being proposed in the United States. The rules were “bad for the country, bad for the consumer, and bad for the auto industry,” he said, according to a memo he later circulated among Toyota dealerships that was reviewed by The New York Times.“For more than two years, Toyota and our dealer partners have stood alone in the fight against unrealistic BEV mandates,” he wrote, using the acronym for battery-electric vehicles. “We have taken a lot of hits from environmental activists, the media, and some politicians. But we have not — and we will not — back down.”On Wednesday, the Environmental Protection Agency finalized tailpipe emissions rules that require car makers to meet tough new average emissions limits. The rules are some of the most significant aimed at fighting climate change in United States history.But the rules relaxed major elements of an earlier, more stringent proposal. In particular, the final regulations were favorable to hybrid cars, those that run both on gasoline and electricity — giving a bigger role to a market that Toyota dominates.Toyota, it appeared, had come out on top.Once a leader in clean cars, Toyota has cemented its role as the voice of caution against electrifying the auto industry too quickly, using its lobbying and public relations muscle to oppose a rapid shift that experts say is critical to fighting climate change.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More