Svetina, a small settlement in Slovenia’s eastern Styria region just south of Štore, is known regionally for two things: its parish church which dates back to at least the early 15th century, and as the final resting place for Alma Karlin, Slovenia’s most renowned female traveler of the early years of the 20th century.
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In case you missed it when when it was featured on NYT Docs and PBS POV in 2023, this is ‘Freshwater’ by dream hampton, an evocative short taking on memory, loss and displacement in Detroit communities after devastating floods in 2021. And likely the most beautifully poignant nine minutes you’ll experience today.
One of the the most thoughtful capsule reviews I read was by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, who writes:
‘Freshwater’ is “a meditative, intimate, quietly devastating piece that uses the language of memory, water, and place to make climate change feel personal. dream narrates, talking us through flooded basements of homes in her home city of Detroit, Michigan.”
And in the film notes, hampton explains:
“Freshwater is a portrait of remembrance, of flooded Midwestern basements and maintaining connection in the wake of ongoing displacement, abandonment and climate catastrophe. This film was meant to be small in every way–lingering shots that seem like photographs until the wind blows a leaf or a raindrop disturbs a puddle. Similarly the intentionally small production was meant to be healing. It was a retreat into a cadre of like-minded community of Detroit artists after doing work on three projects that were at major studios. I made Freshwater to remind myself I’m an artist, but also to reinforce the organizing principle about the power of small, local organizing.”
From a report released on the eve of the first global conference on ‘Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels‘, which takes place in Santa Marta, Colombia:
Six of the biggest fossil fuel companies are projected to earn $2,967 a second in profits in 2026, new Oxfam research finds, ahead of the first global conference this week on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels in Santa Marta, Colombia. This marks an increase of almost $37 million a day compared to the 2025 profits of these six corporations – Chevron, Shell, BP, ConocoPhillips, Exxon and TotalEnergies. Their total projected fossil fuel profits of 2026 are $94 billion: enough to provide solar power for the energy needs of almost 50 million people in Africa.
Link.
Booking multi-country connecting flights is a snap. But booking rail connections on the same journeys is not. Research released today from the Brussels-based advocacy organization Transport & Environment (T&E) illustrates.
Europe’s rail renaissance will never reach its full potential unless passengers are able to book connecting and international trains in a few clicks. That’s the conclusion of new research by T&E which finds that on almost half of the EU’s busiest international air routes, booking the same journey by train is difficult or impossible.
T&E looked at the 30 busiest international air routes within the EU to see if the rail alternative was easy to book. On 20% of these routes, none of the rail operators allowed passengers to buy tickets for the whole journey. On a further 27% of the routes, passengers could only obtain such tickets from one of the train operators involved. Similar trends were found on a broader set of 50 international routes.
This finding is concerning as rail passengers tend to primarily buy tickets on the booking engine of their national incumbent operator. The convoluted booking experience is deterring all but the most committed. A recent YouGov poll for T&E found that 61% of long distance rail travellers have at least once avoided journeys because the booking process is a hassle.
And, according to a research team at the University of Applied Sciences St. Pölten in Austria, on average it takes people 70% longer to book a train ticket than a flight.
And the fix:
The EU now has an opportunity to address these shortcomings. T&E calls on the European Commission’s forthcoming Single Ticketing Package to require major rail operators to display and sell other willing operators’ tickets under fair conditions and to share their own tickets with other operators and independent platforms. Independent platforms must also be required to sell willing operators’ tickets under fair conditions.
The proposal for the new Single Ticketing Package is due to be published by the European Commission on 13 May.
Link.
Snow cover in the Southern French Alps on 20 April 2026.
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A pair of hummingbirds in Mindo.
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If you guessed that the Owl butterfly got its name because its massive eyespots resemble an owl’s eyes, you’d be right.
Continue readingI spent more than 25 years living within a 15-minute drive from a southern shore of Lake Erie, so this caught my attention.
Walking along the shoreline of Erie Shore Drive, a narrow stretch of road along Lake Erie in Chatham-Kent, Ontario, the signs of climate change are hard to miss. Aging breakwaters, patchwork protection barriers, and empty lots where homes once stood, all point to its growing impacts. The area has become a visible example of what happens when climate impacts outpace planning, infrastructure, and policy responses, and when responsibility for those impacts remains unclear.
While this community is far from alone, Erie Shore Drive offers a stark view of how climate risk is reshaping communities and raising a more difficult question: who is responsible for the costs when changing environments put infrastructure and human lives at risk?
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A market similar to many elsewhere in the world, where women do most of the work and men count the money.
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A brief consideration of the anonymous who push the wheels that make the world go ’round.
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About 320,000 passengers pass through the Milano Centrale station each day. Even with that kind of traffic, it’s not impossible to find your own quiet spot.
Continue readingThis is bad. As others have already pointed out, likely the biggest climate-related story at the moment.
The critical Atlantic current system appears significantly more likely to collapse than previously thought after new research found that climate models predicting the biggest slowdown are the most realistic. Scientists called the new finding “very concerning” as a collapse would have catastrophic consequences for Europe, Africa and the Americas.
The Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (Amoc) is a major part of the global climate system and was already known to be at its weakest for 1,600 years as a result of the climate crisis. Scientists spotted warning signs of a tipping point in 2021 and know that the Amoc has collapsed in the Earth’s past.
How catastrophic?
The Amoc is a major part of the global climate system and brings sun-warmed tropical water to Europe and the Arctic, where it cools and sinks to form a deep return current. A collapse would shift the tropical rainfall belt on which many millions of people rely to grow their food, plunge western Europe into extreme cold winters and summer droughts, and add 50-100cm to already rising sea levels around the Atlantic.
Link.
A one-of-a-kind Ibis-like creature with a hammerhead.
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Eighteen images snapped on and near Table Mountain, the iconic flat-topped landmark that towers over Cape Town, not far from the Africa’s southernmost tip.
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Park Miejski in the central Polish city of Toruń has two claims to fame: it is one of the oldest public city parks in Poland and was, prior to the First World War, the largest recreational area in West Prussia. It now has a third: the sight where I spotted my first Mandarin Duck.
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From a brief visit earlier this week.
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In Genoa, Ventimiglia and Rome.
Continue readingCarbonBrief factchecks claims made in the UK by opposition politicians, newspapers and other public figures who are using the fossil fuel energy crisis triggered by the US-Israel war on Iran to argue in favour of opening the North Sea to more oil and gas drilling.
Link.
A fisherman’s throne near Torun, Poland, 20-March-2026.
It’s a simple equation: more renewables, less shocks. Reporting for the AP, Aniruddha Ghosal, Anton L. Delgado and Allan Olingo write:
The war in Iran is exposing the world’s reliance on fragile fossil fuel routes, lending urgency to calls for hastening the shift to renewable energy.
And
Unlike during previous oil shocks, renewable power is now competitive with fossil fuels in many places. More than 90% of new renewable power projects worldwide in 2024 were cheaper than fossil-fuel alternatives, according to the International Renewable Energy Agency.
It’s obvious, but bears repeating: countries that have built out or invested in renewables have also invested in a cushion from oil shocks, which are a trait of the fossil fuel-based energy system. These include China and India, and other Asian countries, too, including:
Pakistan’s solar boom has preempted more than $12 billion in fossil fuel imports since 2020
And
Vietnam’s current solar generation will help the country save hundreds of millions of dollars in potential coal and gas imports in the coming year, based on current high prices.