Trying to make sense of calamities that have already caused more destruction to people’s livelihoods than the Great Recession

Announcement comes as new report from Statistics Canada shows almost two million more Canadians have lost their jobs

TD also said it will have about $600 million of set-asides tied to U.S. credit cards

Kevin Carmichael: There is little evidence that Canada’s version of Big Oil is ready for the medicine that was force-fed to GM and Chrysler a decade ago

Roughly three million jobs have been lost over the past two months, the steepest consecutive monthly declines in employment ever recorded

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf has a brewing rebellion on his hands as counties set out to defy his plans.

This will be my 23rd Mother’s Day without my mother and while it gets easier, it is never easy.

The UFC comeback event on Saturday will feature one less match up after middleweight fighter Jacaré Souza tested positive for coronavirus. 

There were fans in the stands for baseball in Taiwan on Friday, albeit spaced far apart as a safeguard against the spread of the coronavirus.

The graphic video of Ahmaud Arbery being shot on a residential Georgia street was fed to the media by a lawyer who was friends with the two men who were charged with the killing, according to a report.

Little Richard, the singer of hits "Tutti Frutti" and "Good Golly Miss Molly" has died, according to a report.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Friday signed an executive order that will send every registered voter in the state a mail-in ballot for November’s presidential election -- immediately raising concerns from Republicans that it would lead to fraud and abuse.

Maryland police released body camera footage of an officer shooting and killing a man who rushed towards him with a knife.

America can take its next steps toward reopening by placing an emphasis on emerging health data and closely examining how early states are performing, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Dr. Ben Carson asserted Saturday.

Russia proceeded with Victory Day celebrations despite a rapidly deteriorating situation in the face of the pandemic.

Environmental Working Group has launched EWG Verified, a label that will help consumers spot products that meet stringent ingredient and transparency requirements

It may soon be easier for shoppers to find beauty products without toxic chemicals. The Environmental Working Group nonprofit launched a new label this month called EWG Verified, which certifies personal care products as free from chemicals of concern.

The program is an extension of the group’s work with the Skin Deep database, which for more than a decade now has given tens of millions of visitors information on the chemical contents and relative safety of their favorite cosmetics and shampoos.

Though recreation on public lands creates $646bn in economic stimulus and 6.1m jobs, Republicans are setting in motion a giveaway of Americans’ birthright

• Update: Republicans back off bill to sell public land after outcry

In the midst of highly publicized steps to dismantle insurance coverage for 32 million people and defund women’s healthcare facilities, Republican lawmakers have quietly laid the foundation to give away Americans’ birthright: 640m acres of national land. In a single line of changes to the rules for the House of Representatives, Republicans have overwritten the value of federal lands, easing the path to disposing of federal property even if doing so loses money for the government and provides no demonstrable compensation to American citizens.

At stake are areas managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), National Forests and Federal Wildlife Refuges, which contribute to an estimated $646bn each year in economic stimulus from recreation on public lands and 6.1m jobs. Transferring these lands to the states, critics fear, could decimate those numbers by eliminating mixed-use requirements, limiting public access and turning over large portions for energy or property development.

Too many of America’s workplaces are not representative of our communities. In a divided country, we have a duty to advance diversity and inclusion

We’re living in a country of growing division and tension, and it’s having an impact at work. But it’s often the case that when we walk into the office – where we spend the majority of our time – we don’t address these issues.

And yet there’s so much to talk about – from growing societal inequality and America’s racial divide to single-digit minority representation in corporate America. (Just 1% of the nation’s Fortune 500 CEOs are black, only 4% are women, and even fewer are openly gay).

What ingredients are required to make an ultramarathon runner? In Boulder, Colorado, Scott Jurek has concocted quite the recipe that has kept him going the distance for the past two decades. He runs anywhere between 50 miles to over 150 miles, and in his lifetime has won over 20 ultramarathons, smashing records along the way. His passion for running kickstarted his morning regimen in 1997, when he cut out meat completely. In 1999, he transitioned to a plant-based diet, which has since fueled his long-distance running career. On an average day, Scott runs about 10 miles, and this is typically before the sun rises over the beautiful Boulder Flatirons.

What we do when we wake up in the morning sets the tone for our days and ultimately shapes our lives. In this new series, we take a look at how the hyper-successful among us have leveraged rituals to create the trajectories they want.

It’s one of the only incubators focused on solar companies – but Powerhouse is part of a larger movement to nurture new companies in the low-carbon future

It started with a crowdfunding startup, an investment from Prince, and the idea to help new solar companies tackle business challenges that can be hard to overcome on their own.

Now, four years later, the idea has morphed into a group called Powerhouse, and notably, in a world flush with tech startups, it’s one of the only incubators out there focused on launching and growing solar companies.

Verdict against eight men accused in the murder of Honduran indigenous environmentalist will be handed down on Thursday

The verdict against eight men accused over the murder of Honduran indigenous environmentalist Berta Cáceres will be handed down on Thursday after a controversial five-week trial plagued by allegations of negligence and cover-ups.

Cáceres – who won the 2015 Goldman Environmental Prize – was shot dead in March 2016, after a long battle against the internationally financed Agua Zarca hydroelectric dam project on the Gualcarque river, territory sacred to the indigenous Lenca people.

Trial is notable for highlighting land and nature defender murders that ordinarily go unpunished

The sentencing on Thursday of seven men accused of murdering the Honduran environmentalist Berta Cáceres is only partial justice, but it should inspire anyone committed to ending the slaughter of land and nature defenders around the globe.

A court in Tegucigalpa handed down guilty verdicts on all but one of the eight accused, including two employees of the hydro-electric dam company that the indigenous Lenca woman had been campaigning against before her assassination on 2 March 2016.

Environmental campaigners against electric plant and pipeline say Samir Flores Soberanes’s murder is a ‘political crime’

A Mexican environmental activist has been murdered before a referendum on a controversial thermal-electric plant and pipeline that he opposed.

Samir Flores Soberanes, an indigenous Náhuatl, was killed in his home during the early hours of Wednesday in the town of Amilcingo in Morelos state, 80 miles south of Mexico City. He was a human rights activist, producer for a community radio station and long-time opponent of the Proyecto Integral Morelos (the integral project for Morelos) – which includes the plant and pipeline.

Nation replaces Brazil for first time in annual list of murders compiled by Global Witness

The Philippines has replaced Brazil as the most murderous country in the world for people defending their land and environment, according to research that puts a spotlight on the administration of President Rodrigo Duterte.

More than three defenders were killed across the world every week in 2018, according to the annual toll by the independent watchdog Global Witness, highlighting the continued dangers facing those who stand up to miners, loggers, farmers, poachers and other extractive industries.

The 50th annual call for environmental reform falls at a time when the health of people and nature has never been more urgent

Fifty years ago today, the first Earth Day was marked in the United States as a peaceful call for environmental reform, following a massive oil spill off the coast of California. Half a century later, this annual day unites millions across the globe, drawing attention to the huge challenges facing our planet.

Now more than ever, Earth Day offers an opportunity for us all to reflect upon our relationship with the planet, amid the most powerful possible message that nature can surprise us at any moment, with devastating consequences for pretty much every individual. It is a time when the health of the planet and its people has never been so important.

Taking down the fossil fuel industry requires taking on the institutions that finance it. Even during a pandemic, this movement is gaining steam

1970 was a simpler time. (February was a simpler time too, but for a moment let’s think outside the pandemic bubble.)

Simpler because our environmental troubles could be easily seen. The air above our cities was filthy, and the water in our lakes and streams was gross. There was nothing subtle about it. In New York City, the environmental lawyer Albert Butzel described a permanently yellow horizon: “I not only saw the pollution, I wiped it off my windowsills.” Or consider the testimony of a city medical examiner: “The person who spent his life in the Adirondacks has nice pink lungs. The city dweller’s are black as coal.” You’ve probably heard of Cleveland’s Cuyahoga River catching fire, but here’s how the former New York governor Nelson Rockefeller described the Hudson south of Albany: “One great septic tank that has been rendered nearly useless for water supply, for swimming, or to support the rich fish life that once abounded there.” Everything that people say about the air and water in China and India right now was said of America’s cities then.

Economic reconstruction is a chance to speed up decarbonisation, and the pandemic has shown a different kind of politics is possible

We’re already being swamped with ideas about “reforms” needed to recover from the pandemic crisis. But the word reform is like gift wrap – a handy cover for any offering, thought-through or otherwise.

Perhaps we should ditch the word entirely, and with it the forest of feelpinions about what governments “must” do to advance an author’s previously-held ideological positioning in the post-corona world.

Seed firms report huge rise in sales with people worldwide turning to gardening as hobby

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While the world may feel rather grey at times right now, lockdown has at least enabled some people to go green and inject colour into their gardens.

Britain is blooming – in one sense at least – with a record demand for seeds, and delphiniums, hollyhocks and hydrangeas are having their moment in the sun.

Welsh plan to reopen stores offers hope for UK-wide industry closed in prime sales season

Garden centres are preparing for a surge in plant and flower sales that could help salvage a catastrophic year for the horticulture industry.

The UK’s 2,000 garden centres and nurseries were forced to close in March because, unlike DIY chains such as B&Q and Homebase, they were not granted “essential” retailer status. The shutdown came at a critical time of year, with 70% of sales rung up in spring, forcing devastated growers to throw away millions of plants.

There are all sorts of ways the home cook can help conserve precious energy, this recipe for vegan coconutty ‘cheesecake’ being a case in point

Reducing waste in the kitchen isn’t just about saving food: the time and energy it takes to cook food are also important resources that are easily squandered.

The best way to save energy, besides loving your leftovers, is by cooking less: swap out a cooked element of your meal for a nutritious vegetable salad or raw dish (such as today’s coconut and lemon “cheesecake”); or make one-pot wonders that don’t use multiple cooker rings. And when you do need to cook more, make extra portions for the freezer.

Planet of the Humans film has had 5m views on YouTube and has enraged renewable energy experts who are demanding an apology

Planet of the Humans is an environmental documentary that has enraged renewable energy experts and environmentalists, with some calling for its high-profile executive producer, Michael Moore, to apologise.

It was released for free less than two weeks ago, and at the time of writing had had close to 5m views on YouTube.

Investment mandate of the Clean Energy Financing Corporation will be changed, but no guarantee hydrogen will be produced from renewables

The Morrison government will change the investment mandate of the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, directing it to make up to $300m available for a new Advancing Hydrogen Fund as part of the national hydrogen strategy.

The Coalition’s move to create a dedicated hydrogen financing fund will be confirmed on Monday, and comes ahead of other changes the government intends to make to the CEFC’s investment program, including requiring it to support new investments in grid reliability.

El confinamiento y la caída del precio del petróleo ponen en juego el futuro de un enorme yacimiento petrolífero argentino

• Read this article in English here

En las próximas semanas, se esclarecerá si el mundo vuelve a los combustibles fósiles tras la pandemia o si da un paso adelante hacia una economía limpia, mientras el FMI (Fondo Monetario Internacional) y Argentina deciden si van a continuar ofreciendo su apoyo a los inmensos yacimientos de petróleo y gas de Vaca Muerta, en Patagonia.

El objetivo del proyecto es explotar el segundo depósito más grande de esquisto del planeta (después de la Cuenca Pérmica, en Texas), pero su futuro es incierto debido al confinamiento forzoso provocado por COVID-19, que ha causado el descenso más drástico en el precio del crudo de los últimos treinta años.

Plan would help Trump administration advance projects held up over global heating concerns such as the Keystone XL oil pipeline

The Trump administration on Thursday unveiled a plan to speed permitting for major infrastructure projects like oil pipelines, road expansions and bridges.

Related: How the oil industry has spent billions to control the climate change conversation

The oil industry saw its opening and moved with breathtaking speed to take advantage of this moment

I’m going to tell you the single worst story I’ve heard in these past few horrid months, a story that combines naked greed, political influence peddling, a willingness to endanger innocent human beings, utter blindness to one of the greatest calamities in human history and a complete disregard for the next crisis aiming for our planet. I’m going to try to stay calm enough to tell it properly, but I confess it’s hard.

The background: a decade ago, beginning with indigenous activists in Canada and farmers and ranchers in the American west and midwest, opposition began to something called the Keystone XL pipeline, designed to carry filthy tar sands oil from the Canadian province of Alberta to the Gulf of Mexico. It quickly became a flashpoint for the fast-growing climate movement, especially after Nasa scientist James Hansen explained that draining those tar sands deposits would be “game over” for the climate system. And so thousands went to jail and millions rallied and eventually Barack Obama bent to that pressure and blocked the pipeline. Donald Trump, days after taking office, reversed that decision, but the pipeline has never been built, both because its builder, TC Energy, has had trouble arranging the financing and permits, and because 30,000 people have trained to do nonviolent civil disobedience to block construction. It’s been widely assumed that, should a Democrat win the White House in November, the project would finally be gone for good.

Campaigners welcomed Wednesday’s ruling as a victory for tribal rights and environmental protection

The controversial Keystone XL tar sands pipeline has been dealt a major setback, after a judge revoked a key permit issued by the US army corps of engineers without properly assessing the impact on endangered species.

In a legal challenge brought by a coalition of environmental groups, a federal judge in Montana ordered the army corps to suspend all filling and dredging activities until it conducts formal consultations compliant with the Endangered Species Act.

Lawsuits are pending from groups who have challenged the constitutionality of shrinking Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante

Plans finalized on Thursday for two national monuments in Utah downsized by Donald Trump would ensure that lands previously off-limits to energy development will be open to mining and drilling.

The move comes despite pending lawsuits from conservation, tribal and paleontology groups, who have challenged the constitutionality of the president’s action. The Trump administration slashed the size of Bears Ears national monument by 85% and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monument by nearly half in December 2017, in what represented the largest elimination of public lands protections in US history.

Conservation groups criticized the Trump administration on Thursday for spending time on management plans they believe will become moot when the court sides with their assertion that Trump misused the Antiquities Act to reverse decisions by previous presidents.

Energy companies have leased 9.9m acres from the administration – and the fossil fuels extracted could equal half a year of emissions from China

The Trump administration has offered oil companies a chunk of the American west and the Gulf of Mexico that’s four times the size of California – an expansive drilling plan that threatens to entrench the industry at the expense of other outdoor jobs, while locking in enough emissions to undermine global climate policy.

Energy companies have leased 9.9m acres from the unprecedented 461m acres put up for rent by the Trump administration, according to a new analysis from the Wilderness Society.

Utah aims to reduce emissions over air quality concerns as other red states are also starting to tackle global heating

In a move to protect its ski slopes and growing economy, Utah – one of the reddest states in the nation – has just created a long-term plan to address the climate crisis.

Related: Washington state takes bold step to restrict companies from bottling local water

Conservation groups are fighting the creation of 3,500 gas wells in Wyoming that threaten a 170-mile path

The Path of the Pronghorn is a 170-mile migration route that the antelope-like creatures have traveled annually for 6,000 years. It is one of North America’s last remaining long-distance terrestrial migration corridors.

And it is at risk. This week conservation groups filed a legal petition challenging the Trump administration’s plan to allow 3,500 new gas wells in south-western Wyoming that would block the route.

Warming springs can cause plants to bloom earlier, alter hibernation times and locations for migrating animals, and increase insect populations

Across the south-eastern US, trees are unfurling their clouds of leaves after winter. Yet this picturesque and usually welcome development is this year cause for consternation.

New data from the USA National Phenology Network (USA-NPN) shows that in parts of North Carolina, South Carolina and northern Florida, spring has arrived more than three weeks earlier than average, and earlier than at any point in the last 39 years it has been tracked.

Parks have remained open amid the coronavirus and become a haven over the past week, prompting fears for staff and large crowds

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Even as Broadway shows were shuttered and Disneyland was closed due to the Covid-19, most US national parks were open for business on Tuesday, confounding public health officials and worrying park staff who did not want to be exposed to the virus.

National parks have become a haven over the past week as the public seeks places to go during spring break. One park employee reported on Facebook that a visitor center at Big Bend national park was full on Monday with hundreds of people. Another shared a photo of shoulder to shoulder crowds at Zion national park waiting to board shuttle buses. (The park closed its shuttle bus system later in the day.)

More than half the National Park Service’s unit remain open but local police and health officials are urging people to stay away

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As mild temperatures and spring blooms emerged in southern Utah this past weekend, so did the tourists. At Capitol Reef national park, the trailhead parking lot was full of cars bearing plates from states such as California, Washington, Colorado and Georgia, all Covid-19 hotspots. The hikers were either oblivious to or ignoring the plea from the local sheriff’s office that outsiders stay away.

“While we would normally welcome visitors to enjoy the beauty of Wayne county, we really don’t want visitors during the Covid-19 pandemic,” stated a 3 April post on the sheriff’s Facebook page. Wayne county, where Capitol Reef is located, has 2,600 residents and little in the way of healthcare services. “If you don’t live here, please don’t come here.”

Wildlife conservation efforts are essential to preventing outbreaks, scientists and advocates say

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For more than five years, wildlife conservationists in the US have been clamoring for the government to provide Endangered Species Act protections to pangolins, a group of imperiled ant-eating mammals that are widely, and often illicitly, trafficked for their scales and meat. The Trump administration, however, has refused to act and that refusal has suddenly taken on grave new implications.

Earlier this year, scientists in China identified pangolins, along with bats, as one of the possible animal hosts involved in the transmission of the deadly coronavirus from wildlife to humans.

Hundreds of workers pass through Ajo, Arizona, daily. Residents say they have been partying and visiting stores in large groups

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Unlike the rest of the US, the sleepy border community of Ajo, Arizona, is busier than ever these days, as hundreds of border wall construction workers pass through each day.

“The rest of us are staying at home just the way the governor has ordered,” said Susan Guinn-Lahm, an Ajo resident in her 60s. “We’re taking this seriously. They are not.”

Planned sale of land to fossil fuel, mining and and timber concerns mirrors rollback of Obama-era pollution regulations

The Trump administration has ratcheted up its efforts amid the coronavirus pandemic to overhaul and overturn Obama-era environmental regulations and increase industry access to public lands.

The secretary of the interior, David Bernhardt, has sped efforts to drill, mine and cut timber on fragile western landscapes. Meanwhile, the EPA, headed by the former coal lobbyist Andrew Wheeler, has weakened critical environmental laws and announced in March that it would cease oversight of the nation’s polluters during the Covid-19 crisis.

Bank of England governor warns of financial collapse linked to climate emergency

• Top asset managers oversee $300bn fossil fuel investments
• Why are asset managers investing in fossil fuel companies?

Companies and industries that are not moving towards zero-carbon emissions will be punished by investors and go bankrupt, the governor of the Bank of England has warned.

Mark Carney also told the Guardian it was possible that the global transition needed to tackle the climate crisis could result in an abrupt financial collapse. He said the longer action to reverse emissions was delayed, the more the risk of collapse would grow.

An oil fire burned for more than three weeks next to a freshwater lake in Vaca Muerta, Argentina, one of the world’s largest deposits of shale oil and gas and home to the indigenous Mapuche people. In collaboration with Forensic Architecture, this video looks at the local Mapuche community’s claim that the oil and gas industry has irreversibly damaged their ancestral homeland, and with it their traditional ways of life

• Indigenous Mapuche pay high price for Argentina's fracking dream
• with thanks toO11CE (Arena Documenta + m7red, Comunidad Mapuce Campo Maripe, Confederación Mapuce del Neuquén, Observatorio Petrolero Sur and Jorgelina Villarreal
  

Asian giant hornet, which became more active in the state in April, is the world’s largest and can kill humans with multiple stings

• Alarm over deaths of bees from rapidly spreading viral disease
  

Researchers and citizens in Washington state are on a careful hunt for invasive “murder hornets”, after the insect made its first appearance in the US.

The Asian giant hornet is the world’s largest and can kill humans. But it is most dangerous for the European honeybee, which is defenseless in the face of the hornet’s spiky mandibles, long stinger and potent venom.

Workers at ‘most toxic place in America’ are terrified to return to a site where there has been very little protection from the outbreak

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For more than a month, coronavirus has brought cleanup of a 586-square-mile decommissioned nuclear production complex in south-eastern Washington state to a near standstill.

Most of the more than 11,000 employees at the Hanford site were sent home in late March, with only essential workers remaining to make sure the “most toxic place in America” stays safe and secure.