The province of Alberta, Canada’s main producer of fossil fuels, on Thursday paused approvals of new renewable electricity generation projects over one megawatt until Feb. 29, 2024.

Citing concerns about the rapid pace of development, the provincial government also said it would launch an inquiry to review policies and procedures for renewable electricity generation. The move is sure to increase tensions with the Liberal federal government.

Ottawa wants to cut national carbon emissions by 40-45% by 2030, but will only be able to achieve its climate plan with significant reductions from Alberta. Provincial premier Danielle Smith says this would cripple its economy.

Alberta said the pause was in part responding to concerns from municipalities and landowners about responsible land use and the rapid pace of renewables development.

It also noted what it called reliability concerns due to a rapid shift away from coal and the increase of renewables.

Northern Taiwan on Thursday shut businesses and schools while airlines cancelled dozens of flights as the slow-moving Typhoon Khanun skirted past the island’s northeast amid warnings of floods and high winds.

Typhoon Khanun, categorised by Taiwan’s weather bureau as the second-strongest typhoon level, slowly headed towards its northeastern coast with maximum winds of 198 kph (123 mph).

As of 1:15 p.m. Taipei time (0515 GMT), the eye of the typhoon was 340 km off Taipei in the East China Sea, heading in a westerly direction at around 3 kph.

The storm was expected to brush past Taiwan’s northern coast late on Thursday before making a sharp turn to the northeast on Friday, bringing total rainfall of up to 0.6 meter (2 feet) in mountainous central Taiwan and 0.3 meter of rain on the mountains near Taipei.

Northern cities including the capital Taipei shut businesses and schools. Taiwan’s stock and foreign exchange markets were also closed.

More than 110 international and domestic flights have been cancelled while all domestic ferry lines were suspended.

In Taipei, rain and wind have brought down dozens of street signs and trees, while subway services were reduced and food delivery services were suspended. Hundreds of soldiers were on standby in nearby cities for disaster response.

The storm had cut power to more than 16,000 households across Taiwan although the majority of them had been restored.

In Japan’s popular tourist destination Okinawa, Typhoon Khanun left two people dead, injured at least 62 people and knocked out power to more than 200,000 households over the past two days.

Typhoon Khanun comes just a week after Typhoon Doksuri brought heavy rains and strong winds to the Taiwan’s south.

Forest fires in Canada this year have released 290 million tonnes of carbon, doubling a previous annual record, and emissions are set to rise as hundreds of flames remain active across the country, according to the EU’s Copernicus Atmospheric Monitoring Service.

The estimated Canadian fires emissions account for over 25% of the global total for 2023 to date, and are well above the previous Canadian record of 138 million tonnes registered in 2014, Copernicus said on Thursday. Satellite monitoring of emissions began in 2003.

This year’s wildfire season is also the worst on record for area burned, with about 131,000 square kilometres (50,579 square miles) already scorched across eastern and western Canada.

That’s about the size of Greece, and greater than the combined area burned in 2016, 2019, 2020 and 2022, according to the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre.

Smoke from the Canadian wildfires blanketed several major cities this year, including New York City and Toronto, and prompted public health authorities to issued air quality alerts.

Wildfire smoke is linked to higher rates of heart attacks, strokes, and more visits to emergency rooms for respiratory conditions.

Nearly all of Canada’s 13 provinces and territories have been impacted by wildfires. On Thursday, there were more than 1,040 fires burning in Canada, with about 660 considered out of control.

Forests act as a critical sink for planet-warming carbon. It’s estimated that Canada’s northern boreal forest stores more than 200 billion tonnes of carbon — equivalent to several decades worth of global carbon emissions.

But when forests burn, they release some of that carbon into the atmosphere. This speeds up global warming and creates a dangerous feedback loop by creating the conditions where forests are more likely to burn.

Scientists are especially concerned about what Canada’s fires are putting into the atmosphere — and the air we breathe.

The carbon released is roughly equivalent to Indonesia’s annual carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of fossil fuels.

Deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon fell in July to its lowest level for the month since 2017, preliminary government figures showed on Thursday, boosting President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s stature on environmental policy ahead of a summit of rainforest nations.

Satellite data from Brazilian space research agency INPE indicated that 500 square km (193 square miles) of rainforest were cleared in the month, a 66% drop from the same period a year ago.

In the first seven months of the year, deforestation has fallen a cumulative 42.5% from the same period of 2022, INPE’s preliminary data showed.

Sequential drops in June and July are especially promising, as monthly data on Amazon deforestation often spikes this time of year, when the weather turns drier.

“We are seeing the deforestation growth curve invert,” Environment Ministry secretary Joao Paulo Capobianco told reporters in Brasilia.

The fresh figures come as Lula gathers next week with leaders of Amazonian countries for a summit in northern Brazil to discuss ways to protect the world’s largest rainforest.

Lula said on Wednesday the summit would seek to draw up a common policy for the first time to protect the region, which will include dealing with security along the borders and asking private businesses to help with the reforestation of 30 million hectares (74 million acres) of degraded land.

The leftist leader took office in January promising to end deforestation by 2030 after destruction surged under his predecessor Jair Bolsonaro, who slashed environmental protection efforts.

Experts praised the reduction in deforestation in the early months of the Lula administration, while calling for continued vigilance in the coming months, when fires and clear-cutting often peak in the region.

“It’s a very significant drop for a drier month,” said WWF-Brasil manager Mariana Napolitano.

“That shows us that the emergency measures that were taken, especially command and control ones, have been working. But deforestation remains at high levels, and to zero it by 2030 more structural measures will be needed.”

Greenpeace protesters draped the private home of British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak in black fabric on Thursday, hanging huge sheets of it from the roof as they stepped up their campaign against his government’s policy on drilling for oil.

Four protesters used ladders to get onto the roof of the constituency home in Yorkshire, northern England, where they said they spent five hours in what a former senior police officer described as a “major breach of security”.

Sunak left Britain for a holiday in California on Wednesday. Five protesters in total were arrested.

Sunak’s record on environmental issues has come under scrutiny after he said he would take a “proportionate approach” to climate change that balances net zero ambitions with the need to keep consumers’ bills down.

That has drawn fury from climate protesters who have disrupted high-profile sporting events, classical music concerts and political speeches.

In response, Sunak’s ministers have introduced new laws to clamp down on “eco-mob” protester tactics including slow walking in busy roads and “locking-on” to buildings or infrastructure.

Caroline Island, also known as Caroline atoll, as well as the new given name Millennium Island, is an atoll which is the easternmost point of the uninhabited coral atolls that comprise the Line islands in the Pacific Ocean, however, part of the Republic of Kiribati.

As it is a long, slender atoll, with interesting shape, it has a small land area of about 1.45 square km (0.55 square mi), with a lagoon in between the 39 separate islets which measures at 6 square km (2.31 square mi).

The highest point of the entire islets area is some 6 meters (20 feet) above sea level, which is dangerously low with the rising oceans.

There are three large islets that make the bigger part of the atoll, which are Nake Islet, Long Islet and South Islet.

The first sighting of the gorgeous Caroline Atoll was in 1606 by the Europeans, where the United Kingdom claimed them in 1868.

When the island nation received their independence from the UK in 1979, the Caroline Island atoll became part of Kiribati, and as there were no inhabitants, until today remains relatively untouched and it is definitely considered one of the world’s most pristine tropical islands, despite guano mining, copra harvesting, and some human habitation in 19th and 20th centuries.

Designated as a wildlife sanctuary, in 2014 the Government of the Republic of Kiribati established a 12 nautical miles fishing exclusion zone around each of the islands among which is Caroline Island.

The new name for the island was given at the turn of 21st century, when a 1995 realignment of the International Date Line made the island one of the first point of the Earth’s land to reach the new year.

The heavily vegetated island is a paradise for the coconut crab which is has one of the world’s largest populations on the island, nonetheless, there are three ring-zones of vegetation.

The outermost herb mat is typically composed mainly of Heliotropium anomalum, which then continues with an inward zone of shrub, primarily Heliotropium foertherianum, ending up with a central forested region, typically dominated by groves of Pisonia grandis trees.

The alluring atoll, definitely is an important breeding ground for a number of species of seabirds, among which the most notable are the sooty tern. There is also the endangered, yet amazing, green turtle which nests on the beaches of the islets, visits the islands quite often.

Recently, there have been reports that poachers have ransacked the nesting places, which is making the biologists more concerned for the survival of this Pacific sea turtle.

As the island leads the Earth into tomorrow, there is hope that the pristine reefs, the rich flora and fauna from the untouched islets will continue to look like the thriving vibrant ocean from the past.