The Planet (on, and off)

Private equity firms are using US public sector workers’ retirement savings to fund fossil fuel projects pumping more than a billion tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere every year, according to an analysis. They have ploughed more than $1tn into the energy sector since 2010, often buying into Read more…

Switzerland and Italy have redrawn part of their border in the Alps due to melting glaciers, caused by climate change. Part of the area affected will be beneath the Matterhorn, one of Europe’s tallest mountains, and close to a number of popular ski resorts. Large sections of the Swiss-Italian border Read more…

In recent years — as longstanding efforts to recycle plastics have faltered — Exxon Mobil has touted advanced recycling as a groundbreaking technology that will turn the tide on the plastic crisis. But despite its seemingly eco-friendly name, the attorney general’s lawsuit denounced advanced recycling as a “public relations stunt” Read more…

Black hole jets, which spew near-light-speed particle beams, can trigger nearby white dwarf stars to explode by igniting hydrogen layers on their surfaces. In the recent work — set to publish in The Astrophysical Journal and is currently hosted on the preprint server arXiv — the team studied 135 novae Read more…

California Attorney General Rob Bonta filed a lawsuit against ExxonMobil on Monday alleging the company carried out a “decades-long campaign of deception” in which the oil and gas giant misled the public on the merits of plastic recycling. The complaint accuses the company of using slick marketing and misleading public Read more…