AFP UK

Campaigners fear government plans to scrap laws on pesticide use will have a deadly effect on Britain's rivers and bee populations

British wildlife groups and campaigners have hit out at government’s plans to ditch legislation covering pesticide use, as part of a drive to remove EU laws after Brexit.

The government in London said it will scratch 570 environmental laws from the statute book, after they were rolled over from Britain’s time in the European Union.

On Wednesday, popular wildlife television presenter Steve Backshall joined a chorus of opposition, warning that overturning laws on pesticides could have a deadly effect on bee populations and river pollution.

“In recent times increasing pesticide use has caused localised extinctions of bee populations and has make our rivers toxic, this is a time for our government to protect wildlife and people from pesticide harm,” he added.

“I would urge our new government to reconsider removing pesticide regulation,” added Backshall, who s also heads insect conservation group Buglife.

The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) called the plans from new Prime Minister Liz Truss’s government an “unprecedented attack on nature”.

“We will not stand by and let this happen,” it vowed.

More than 68,000 people have already signed up to an application on the RSPB website that automatically contacts their MP to demand that the protections be maintained.

Craig Bennett, the chief executive officer of the Wildlife Trusts of 46 independent conservation charities, said people were “furious at the new threats”.

“Vital legal protections for wildlife are at risk, fossil fuel extraction is being favoured over renewables, and the government is going back on plans to reward farmers for managing land in a nature-friendly way,” he said.

“The government wants de-regulation that will lead to yet more poo in rivers, less wildlife and land that’s unable to adapt to climate change,” he added.

The National Trust heritage body, which has 5.7 million members, also lashed out.

“Rather than ramp up action to support our environment, this government appears however to be heading in the opposite direction,” said director general Hilary McGrady.

“Environmental protections are dismissed as ‘burdens’, whilst investment and growth are pitted against nature and climate action,” she added.

Environment minister Ranil Jayawardena responded to the criticism on Twitter saying there have been claims that are “simply untrue”.

“We’re introducing new schemes that will support our farmers to produce high quality food and support them in enhancing our natural environment.

“Last year we passed our world-leading Environment Act. We are committed to halting the decline of nature by 2030 and will not undermine our obligations to the environment in pursuit of growth,” he added.

Astronomers have hailed the early footage of the first time humanity has deliberately smashed a spacecraft into an asteroid

The asteroid is flying through space in the grainy black and white video, when suddenly a massive cloud of debris sprays out in front of it, meaning only one thing: impact.

Astronomers have hailed this early footage of the first time humanity deliberately smashed a spacecraft into an asteroid, saying it looks like it did a “lot of damage”.

That would be good news, because NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) impactor struck the asteroid Dimorphos at 23,500 kilometres (14,500 miles) per hour on Monday night with the goal of deflecting its trajectory.

While Dimorphos is 11 million kilometres (6.8 million miles) away and poses no threat to Earth, it is being used as a historic test run so the world can be ready to defend itself if a future astroid heads Earth’s way.

After the impact, ground-based telescopes and the toaster-sized satellite LICIACube, which separated from DART a few weeks ago, revealed the first images of the collision.

“On the LICIACube images, the plume of what came off the surface was quite impressive,” Antonella Barucci of the Paris Observatory’s LESIA laboratory told AFP.

By examining the plume, “we can begin to estimate the density of the material on the surface,” she said.

– ‘Very, very big’ plume –

The Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) project on Tuesday tweeted a nine-second video of the impact taken by its telescope in South Africa.

Larry Denneau, the ATLAS co-principal investigator, said the telescope took one image every 40 seconds.

“So the whole sequence that you’ve seen on Twitter lasts about two hours in real time,” he told AFP.

He said the “very, very big” plume was made by dust shooting off the asteroid.

“A lot of the dust is released at a speed that’s greater than the gravity of the asteroid, and so it escapes,” Denneau said.

The plume expanded to around “several thousand miles in diameter,” he added.

In the coming days and weeks astronomers around the world will work to confirm whether the asteroid’s trajectory was definitively altered by the impact. 

Then the European Space Agency’s Hera mission will arrive at Dimorphos in 2026 to survey the surface and discover the extent of DART’s impact.

Hera mission principal investigator Patrick Michel said “we are all impressed by the magnitude of the event”.

“We have done a lot of damage to Dimorphos,” Michel said.

“We have a quantity of ejected matter that is quite incredible.”

The amount of matter ripped from the asteroid will help scientists work out exactly how much its trajectory has been affected — if at all.

“The more material is ejected, the more it deviates,” said Eric Lagadec, president of the French Astronomical Society. 

“So it’s a pretty good sign,” he added.

juc-la-pcl-dl/yad

Florida is expecting widespread flooding and "devastating" winds as Hurricane Ian draws near

Hurricane Ian strengthened to a Category 4 storm as it headed towards the US state of Florida on Wednesday, with forecasters warning of life-threatening storm surges and “devastating” winds after it reportedly killed two and left millions without power in Cuba.

As of 5 am (0900 GMT), mandatory evacuation orders had been issued in a dozen coastal Florida counties, with voluntary evacuation recommended in several others, according to the state’s emergency officials.

In an advisory issued around the same time, the US National Hurricane Center (NHC) said “Ian has strengthened into an extremely dangerous Category 4 hurricane.”

“Very recent data from an Air Force Reserve Hurricane Hunter aircraft indicate that the maximum sustained winds have increased to near 140 mph (220 km/h) with higher gusts,” the NHC said.

The storm was expected to make landfall later on Wednesday before moving across central Florida and emerging in the western Atlantic by late Thursday.

The NHC said earlier that a “life-threatening storm surge is expected along the Florida west coast and the Lower Florida Keys,” with “devastating wind damage” expected near Ian’s core.

“Catastrophic flooding is expected across portions of central Florida with considerable flooding in southern Florida, northern Florida, southeastern Georgia and coastal South Carolina,” it said.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said on Tuesday night that there had already been at least two “radar-indicated tornadoes” in the state, and warned those in areas projected to be hit hardest that their “time to evacuate is coming to an end.”

“You need to evacuate now. You’re going to start feeling major impacts of this storm relatively soon,” he said.

Calls to heed evacuation warnings were echoed by US President Joe Biden, who earlier said Ian “could be a very severe hurricane, life-threatening and devastating in its impact.”

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Biden had spoken with DeSantis — a potential 2024 election challenger — on Tuesday evening to discuss preparations for the storm.

– Widespread blackout –

Ian plunged all of Cuba into darkness on Tuesday after battering the country’s west as a Category 3 for more than five hours before moving back out over the Gulf of Mexico, the Insmet meteorological institute said.

The storm damaged Cuba’s power network and left the island “without electrical service,” state electricity company Union Electrica said.

Only the few people with gasoline-powered generators had access to electricity on the island of more than 11 million people. Others had to make do with flashlights or candles at home, and lit their way with cell phones as they walked the streets.

In the western city of Pinar del Rio, AFP footage showed downed power lines, flooded streets and a scattering of damaged rooftops.

“Desolation and destruction. These are terrifying hours. Nothing is left here,” a 70-year-old resident of the city was quoted as saying in a social media post by his journalist son, Lazaro Manuel Alonso.

About 40,000 people were evacuated across Pinar del Rio province, which bore the brunt of the storm, local authorities said.

– Two dead –

Cuban residents described “destruction” and posted images on social media of flooded streets and felled trees.

At the time of impact, the NHC reported Ian’s maximum wind speeds at 125 miles (205 kilometers) per hour. 

At least two people have been reported dead in Pinar del Rio province, according to Cuban state media.

In Consolacion del Sur, southwest of Havana, 65-year-old Caridad Fernandez said her roof was seriously damaged and water came through her front door.

“Everything we have is damaged,” she said. “But we’ll get through this, we’ll just keep moving forwards.”

In San Juan y Martinez, a hub for Cuba’s vital cigar industry, “it was apocalyptic, a real disaster,” said Hirochi Robaina from the Robaina tobacco plantation.

– ‘Life and death’ –

In Florida, 30-year-old Chelsea Thompson was helping her parents board up their home on Tuesday in a mandatory evacuation zone southwest of Tampa, saying that “the closer it gets, obviously with the unknown, your anxiety gets a little higher.” 

The Pentagon said 3,200 national guardsmen had been called up in Florida, with another 1,800 on the way.

Authorities in several municipalities were distributing free sandbags to help residents protect their homes from flooding.

Tampa International Airport suspended operations from Tuesday at 5 pm.

Biden has preemptively approved emergency aid in Florida through the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

NASA, on the state’s east coast, also took precautions, rolling back its massive Moon rocket into a storage hanger for protection.

Like DeSantis, FEMA administrator Deanne Criswell highlighted the danger of storm surge, saying it was the agency’s “biggest concern.”

“If people are told to evacuate by their local officials, please listen to them. The decision you choose to make may be the difference between life and death,” she said.

Forecasters had predicted the storm would be one of the biggest to ever hit Vietnam

Typhoon Noru tore roofs from homes and caused power outages across central Vietnam Wednesday, with hundreds of thousands of people taking refuge, after the storm claimed at least 10 lives in the Philippines.

In Danang, Vietnam’s third-largest city, high-rise buildings shook as the typhoon made landfall in the early hours of Wednesday, bringing winds of up to around 120 kilometres (75 miles) per hour, according to the national forecaster.

More than 300,000 people in Vietnam hunkered down in shelters overnight after experts predicted the storm would be one of the biggest to ever hit the country.

Wind speeds were lower than initially feared, but forecasters said heavy rain would continue and warned of landslides and serious flooding.

The defence ministry has mobilised around 40,000 soldiers and 200,000 militia members, equipped with armoured vehicles and boats in preparation for rescue and relief operations, state media said.

In the tourist city of Hoi An, the Hoai River was close to bursting its banks, while the ground was littered with metal roof sheeting and fallen trees that had damaged cars and blocked roads.

Several streets in the old town were under water.

“The typhoon was terrible last night. I could not sleep as the wind was so strong and loud,” resident Nguyen Thi Hien told AFP.

Around 300 houses in the coastal province of Quang Tri had their roofs blown off on Tuesday as the wind began picking up speed.

“I heard the sound of fallen trees and signboards outside. I was scared. But we were prepared so luckily the losses were not that bad.”

Residents rushed to clean up the debris early on Wednesday, with some shops already open and tourists walking the streets, taking pictures of the floodwater.

Reshma D’Souza, from India, spent a frightening night in her hotel room. At around 1 am, she said, she saw that the “wall was vibrating”.

“(It was) shaking, so I was just praying and I was so scared.”

Airports and offices across central provinces began to reopen on Wednesday afternoon.

But key sections of the highway linking Hanoi in the north with commercial hub Ho Chi Minh City in the south remained closed due to landslides and floods, according to state media.

– Deaths in Philippines –

Noru hit Vietnam after slamming into the Philippines earlier this week as a super typhoon with winds of up to 195 kph, leaving 10 dead and eight missing, the civil defence office said.

The typhoon was forecast to continue moving inland Wednesday, passing over Laos before hitting Thailand’s northeastern Ubon Ratchathani province on Thursday and gradually weakening into a tropical depression.

Thai authorities warned of heavy rain and possible flash flooding, saying people living in high-risk areas should prepare to evacuate their homes.

Vietnam is frequently lashed by heavy storms in the rainy season between June and November, with central coastal provinces the worst affected.

Scientists have warned the storms are becoming more powerful as the world gets warmer because of climate change.

Florida is expecting widespread flooding and "devastating" winds as Hurricane Ian draws near

Hurricane Ian is expected to directly hit the US state of Florida on Wednesday, with forecasters warning of life-threatening storm surges and “devastating” winds after it reportedly killed two and left millions without power in Cuba.

As of 2 am (0500 GMT), mandatory evacuation orders had been issued in a dozen coastal Florida counties, with voluntary evacuation recommended in several others, according to the state’s emergency officials.

In an advisory issued around the same time, the US National Hurricane Center (NHC) said it expected the Category 3 storm to strengthen until making landfall.

“The center of Ian is forecast to move over central Florida Wednesday night and Thursday morning and emerge over the western Atlantic by late Thursday,” the NHC said, calling the storm “an extremely dangerous major hurricane.”

The NHC said earlier that a “life-threatening storm surge is expected along the Florida west coast and the Lower Florida Keys,” with “devastating wind damage” expected near Ian’s core.

“Catastrophic flooding is expected across portions of central Florida with considerable flooding in southern Florida, northern Florida, southeastern Georgia and coastal South Carolina,” it said.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said Tuesday that Ian would “likely make landfall as a Category 4 hurricane.”

He said there had already been at least two “radar-indicated tornadoes” in the state, and warned those in areas projected to be hit hardest that their “time to evacuate is coming to an end.”

“You need to evacuate now. You’re going to start feeling major impacts of this storm relatively soon,” he said.

Calls to heed evacuation warnings were echoed by US President Joe Biden, who earlier said Ian “could be a very severe hurricane, life-threatening and devastating in its impact.”

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Biden had spoken with DeSantis — a potential 2024 election challenger — on Tuesday evening to discuss preparations for the storm.

– Widespread blackout –

Ian plunged all of Cuba into darkness on Tuesday after battering the country’s west for more than five hours before moving back out over the Gulf of Mexico, the Insmet meteorological institute said.

The storm damaged Cuba’s power network and left the island “without electrical service,” state electricity company Union Electrica said.

Only the few people with gasoline-powered generators had access to electricity on the island of more than 11 million people. Others had to make do with flashlights or candles at home, and lit their way with cell phones as they walked the streets.

In the western city of Pinar del Rio, AFP footage showed downed power lines, flooded streets and a scattering of damaged rooftops.

“Desolation and destruction. These are terrifying hours. Nothing is left here,” a 70-year-old resident of the city was quoted as saying in a social media post by his journalist son, Lazaro Manuel Alonso.

About 40,000 people were evacuated across Pinar del Rio province, which bore the brunt of the storm, local authorities said.

– Two dead –

Cuban residents described “destruction” and posted images on social media of flooded streets and felled trees.

At the time of impact, the NHC reported Ian’s maximum wind speeds at 125 miles (205 kilometers) per hour. 

At least two people have been reported dead in Pinar del Rio province, according to Cuban state media.

In Consolacion del Sur, southwest of Havana, 65-year-old Caridad Fernandez said her roof was seriously damaged and water came through her front door.

“Everything we have is damaged,” she said. “But we’ll get through this, we’ll just keep moving forwards.”

In San Juan y Martinez, a hub for Cuba’s vital cigar industry, “it was apocalyptic, a real disaster,” said Hirochi Robaina from the Robaina tobacco plantation.

– ‘Life and death’ –

In Florida, 30-year-old Chelsea Thompson was helping her parents board up their home on Tuesday in a mandatory evacuation zone southwest of Tampa, saying that “the closer it gets, obviously with the unknown, your anxiety gets a little higher.” 

The Pentagon said 3,200 national guardsmen had been called up in Florida, with another 1,800 on the way.

Authorities in several municipalities were distributing free sandbags to help residents protect their homes from flooding.

Tampa International Airport suspended operations from Tuesday at 5 pm.

Biden has preemptively approved emergency aid in Florida through the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

NASA, on the state’s east coast, also took precautions, rolling back its massive Moon rocket into a storage hanger for protection.

Like DeSantis, FEMA administrator Deanne Criswell highlighted the danger of storm surge, saying it was the agency’s “biggest concern.”

“If people are told to evacuate by their local officials, please listen to them. The decision you choose to make may be the difference between life and death,” she said.

Nepal accident

A search team retrieved the body of top US ski mountaineer Hilaree Nelson from the Himalayas on Wednesday, two days after she disappeared on the slopes of Nepal’s Manaslu peak.

Nelson slipped and went missing while skiing down the world’s eighth-highest mountain, after a successful summit with her partner Jim Morrison on Monday. 

Morrison led the search operations and had left Wednesday morning on a helicopter to resume efforts to locate her. 

“The search team that left this morning on a helicopter spotted her body and is bringing her back,” Jiban Ghimire of Shangri-La Nepal Trek, which organised the expedition, told AFP.

Ghimire said that the body was brought to the peak’s base camp and will later be flown to Kathmandu. 

Nelson, 49, is described by her sponsor, The North Face, as “the most prolific ski mountaineer of her generation”.

A decade ago, she became the first woman to summit both the highest mountain in the world, Everest, and the adjacent Lhotse peak within the span of 24 hours.

In 2018, she returned to Lhotse and made the first ski descent of the mountain, which earned her the National Geographic Adventurer of the Year award.

In an Instagram post last week, Nelson said her latest climb had been deeply challenging because of “incessant rain” and dangerous conditions.

“I haven’t felt as sure-footed on Manaslu as I have on past adventure into the thin atmosphere of the high Himalaya,” Nelson wrote in a post on Thursday.

“These past weeks have tested my resilience in new ways.”

-‘Let’s pray for Hilaree’ –

Mountaineers and well-wishers had earlier shared messages of support on social media, hoping for Nelson’s safe return.

“Let’s pray for Hilaree,” fellow The North Face athlete Fernanda Maciel, currently at the Manaslu base camp, wrote on Instagram on Tuesday.

Constant rain and snow have been a challenge for the 404 paying climbers attempting to reach the summit of Manaslu this year.

On the same day as Nelson’s accident, an avalanche hit between Camps 3 and 4 on the 8,163-metre (26,781-foot) mountain, killing Nepali climber Anup Rai and injuring a dozen others who were later rescued.

The deaths of Nelson and Rai are the first confirmed casualties of the autumn climbing season in Nepal.

Nepal is home to eight of the world’s 14 highest peaks and foreign climbers who flock to its mountains are a major source of revenue for the country.

The industry was almost completely shut down due to the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, but the country reopened its peaks to mountaineers last year.

Forecasters had predicted the storm would be one of the biggest to ever hit Vietnam

Typhoon Noru tore roofs from homes and caused power outages across central Vietnam Wednesday, with hundreds of thousands of people taking refuge after the storm claimed at least 10 lives in the Philippines.

In Danang, Vietnam’s third-largest city, high-rise buildings shook as the typhoon made landfall in the early hours of Wednesday, bringing winds of up to around 120 kilometres (75 miles) per hour, according to the national forecaster.

More than 300,000 people in Vietnam hunkered down in shelters overnight, after forecasters predicted the storm would be one of the biggest to ever hit the country.

Wind speeds were lower than initially feared, but forecasters said heavy rain would continue into the day and warned of landslides and serious flooding.

The defence ministry has mobilised around 40,000 soldiers and 200,000 militia members, equipped with armoured vehicles and boats in preparation for rescue and relief operations, state media said.

In the popular tourist city of Hoi An, the Hoai River was close to bursting its banks, while the ground was littered with metal roof sheeting and fallen trees which had damaged cars and blocked roads.

“The typhoon was terrible last night. I could not sleep as the wind was so strong and loud,” resident Nguyen Thi Hien told AFP.

Around 300 houses in the coastal province of Quang Tri had their roofs blown off late Tuesday as the wind began picking up speed.

“I heard the sound of fallen trees and signboards outside. I was scared. But we were prepared so luckily the losses were not that bad.”

Residents rushed to clean up the debris early Wednesday, with some shops already open and tourists walking the streets.

Almost half of Vietnam’s airports have been closed since midday Tuesday, with schools and offices across several central provinces also shut, while Danang banned the public from going out on the streets.

The central section of the highway linking Hanoi in the north with commercial hub Ho Chi Minh City in the south was closed.

– Deaths in Philippines –

The Vietnam impact came after Noru slammed into the Philippines earlier this week as a super typhoon with winds of up to 195 kph, leaving 10 dead and eight missing, the civil defence office said.

Noru was forecast to continue moving inland Wednesday, passing over Laos before hitting Thailand’s northeastern Ubon Ratchathani province on Thursday and gradually weakening into a tropical depression.

The Thai authorities warned of heavy rain, and possible flash flooding, and said people living in high-risk areas should prepare to evacuate their homes.

Vietnam is frequently lashed by heavy storms in the rainy season between June and November, with central coastal provinces the worst affected, but scientists have warned they are becoming more powerful as the world gets warmer because of climate change.

Western allies initially feared a tsunami of cyberattacks against Ukraine's military command and critical infrastructure

Hackings, network sabotage and other cyber warfare campaigns are being intensely deployed by both sides as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine grinds on, though the covert operations have not proved decisive on the battlefield — at least so far.

Western allies initially feared a tsunami of cyberattacks against Ukraine’s military command and critical infrastructure, hindering its ability to resist the Russian forces pouring across its borders.

As of mid-September, the Cyber Peace Institute, an NGO based in Switzerland, counted nearly 450 attacks — roughly 12 a week — carried out by 57 different entities on either side since the invasion was launched in February.

Yet with European and US help, Kyiv has largely withstood the high-tech onslaught.

“Large-scale cyberattacks have indeed occurred, but it’s generally agreed that they have clearly failed to produce the ‘shock and awe’ effect some predicted,” according to Alexis Rapin, a researcher at the University of Quebec.

Writing for the strategic studies site Le Rubicon, he said the most devastating attacks often take months or even years to plan and execute, “making it very difficult to synchronise them with a conventional military campaign.”

Another factor may be the massive help Ukraine has had from its allies, including software and expertise to protect its systems as well as counterattacks that may be hampering Moscow’s cyber strategy.

“Russia has been under constant cyber assault over the last few months from an international coalition of volunteer, non-governmental hacking organisations, the most prominent being the ‘Anonymous’ movement,” said Arnault Barichella, a researcher at the Jacques Delors Institute in Paris.

While it remains unclear how effective these “spontaneous” attacks have been, “Russia simply underestimated Ukraine’s cyber resilience, in the same way that it underestimated the country’s armed forces,” he wrote in a recent report.

– Hybrid war –

Nonetheless, the war on Europe’s eastern flank offers on-the-ground proof that cyber assaults will be part and parcel of 21st century armed conflicts.

Even before the first Russian tank rolled into Ukraine, hackers in mid-January launched the WhisperGate malware against around 70 Ukrainian government sites, followed by a distributed denial of service (DDoS) campaign that disrupted banks, radio stations and websites.

Moscow was then suspected of being behind the Hermetic Wiper virus that knocked out some 300 IT systems in Ukraine, while hackers targeted the Viasat satellite operator to deactivated thousands of internet modems.

“Most people did not hear about the fact that almost every Russian attack came with a cyberattack before and during operations — cyber usually does not kill people,” said Eviatar Matania of the Israel National Cyber Bureau.

And in most cases, IT networks that come under attack can often be restored in a few days if not hours, limiting their use when hostilities have escalated to open warfare.

More likely, cyber campaigns will be ongoing between rival states, aiming to destabilise and demotivate as opposed to seeking a knockout blow on the battlefield.

“Currently cyber is more important in peacetime than in conventional war — in cyber we are all the time in conflict,” Matania told AFP.

Rapin agrees that cyber warfare is most suited to sabotage, espionage and information wars aimed at sapping morale — the sort of clandestine warfare waged before any shots are fired.

The tactics appear essential, however, when laying the groundwork for conventional military campaigns in which even just a few hours of having a communications or electricity network offline could offer a decisive advantage for ground and air forces. 

“Cyber operations aren’t some magical dust that gets sprinkled on at the end of an operation,” said Colin Clarke, director of research at the Soufan Center security think-tank.

“They are woven into, or closely integrated, with the full suite of US military capabilities and security cooperation activities,” not least pre-battlefield planning, he told AFP.

But the impacts of cyber assaults are often not revealed until months or years after they are deployed.

It took nearly two years before the public learned about the Stuxnet computer virus that allegedly destroyed around 1,000 of Iran’s nuclear centrifuges, used to refine uranium for use in atomic weapons — widely thought to be the result of a US and Israeli campaign.

And if Russian President Vladimir Putin determines that his Ukraine invasion is faltering, the retaliation in the cyber domain could prove more potent than seen up to now.

“You cannot underestimate the danger of a cyber escalation, especially if the Russian military operations on the ground flounder and the Kremlin feels as if its back is against the wall,” Barichella said.

Earth's climate is changing so quickly that humanity is running out of chances to fix it, primatologist Jane Goodall — pictured on January 22, 2020 — has warned in an interview

Earth’s climate is changing so quickly that humanity is running out of chances to fix it, primatologist Jane Goodall has warned in an interview.

Goodall, a grandee of environmentalism whose activism has spanned decades, said time was rapidly shortening to halt the worst effects of human-caused global warming.

“We are literally approaching a point of no return,” Goodall told AFP in Los Angeles.

“Look around the world at what’s happening with climate change. It’s terrifying.

“We are part of the natural world and we depend on healthy ecosystems.”

Goodall is best known for her pioneering six-decade study of chimpanzees in Tanzania, which found “human-like” behavior among the animals, including a propensity to wage war, as well as an ability to display emotions.

Now 88 years old, the Briton is a prolific writer and the subject of a number of films. She has also been immortalized as both a Lego figure and a Barbie doll.

Goodall said her own environmental awakening came in the 1980s while working in Mongolia, where she realized that hillsides had been denuded of tree cover.

“The reason the people were cutting down the trees was to make more land, to grow food as their families grew, and also to make money from charcoal or timber,” she said. 

“So if we don’t help these people find ways of making a living without destroying their environment, we can’t save chimpanzees, forests, or anything else.”

Goodall says she has seen some changes for the better over recent decades, but urged quicker action.

“We know what we should be doing. I mean, we have the tools. But we come up against the short-term thinking of economic gain versus long-term protection of the environment for the future,” she said. 

“I don’t pretend to be able to solve the problems that this creates because there are major problems. And yet, if we look at the alternative, which is continuing to destroy the environment, we’re doomed.”

Goodall was speaking Sunday on the sidelines of a celebration of her $1.3 million Templeton Prize.

The prize is an annual award for an individual whose work harnesses science to explore the questions facing humanity.

The cash went to the Jane Goodall Institute, a global wildlife and environment conservation organization, which runs youth programs in 66 countries.

“The program’s main message is that every single one of us makes an impact on the planet every day, and we get to choose what sort of impact we make,” Goodall said.

“It’s actually my greatest reason for hope.”

Cuban residents reported 'apocalyptic' damage after Hurricane Ian pummeled the island for more than five hours

Powerful Hurricane Ian left a trail of destruction and caused a widespread blackout in Cuba on Tuesday, while Florida residents braced for a direct hit from the “extremely dangerous” storm that is already pummeling the US state with high winds.

Ian hit Cuba’s western regions for more than five hours early Tuesday morning, before moving out over the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico, the Insmet meteorological institute said.

The storm damaged Cuba’s power network and plunged the island into darkness, leaving it “without electrical service,” state electricity company Union Electrica said on Twitter.

Only the few people with gasoline-powered generators had access to electricity on the island of more than 11 million people. Others had to make do with flashlights or candles at home, and lit their way with cell phones as they walked the streets.

In the western city of Pinar del Rio, AFP footage showed downed power lines, flooded streets and a scattering of damaged rooftops.

“Desolation and destruction. These are terrifying hours. Nothing is left here,” a 70-year-old resident of the city was quoted as saying in a social media post by his journalist son, Lazaro Manuel Alonso.

About 40,000 people were evacuated across Pinar del Rio province, which bore the brunt of the storm, local authorities said.

The US National Hurricane Center (NHC) said it expects Ian to gain strength before hitting the west coast of Florida on Wednesday as an “extremely dangerous” major hurricane.

Calls to heed evacuation warnings were echoed from local Florida officials on up to US President Joe Biden, who said Ian “could be a very severe hurricane, life-threatening and devastating in its impact.”

In its latest bulletin, the NHC said to be prepared for “life-threatening storm surge, catastrophic winds and flooding” in the Florida peninsula.

Tropical-storm-force winds are already battering the Florida Keys, the chain of islands off the southern tip of the state’s mainland, the NHC said.

– ‘Apocalyptic’ –

In Cuba, authorities are just beginning to assess the damage, but residents described “destruction” and posted images on social media of flooded streets and felled trees.

At the time of impact, the NHC reported Ian’s maximum wind speeds at 125 miles (205 kilometers) per hour, making it a Category 3 storm on the Saffir-Simpson scale. Wind speeds have since dropped slightly to 120 miles per hour.

No deaths or injuries have yet been reported.

In Consolacion del Sur, southwest of Havana, Caridad Fernandez, 65, said her roof was seriously damaged and water came through her front door.

“Everything we have is damaged,” she said. “But we’ll get through this, we’ll just keep moving forwards.”

In San Juan y Martinez, a growing hub for Cuba’s vital cigar industry, “it was apocalyptic, a real disaster,” Hirochi Robaina, from the Robaina tobacco plantation, said on Facebook.

– ‘Life and death’ –

In Florida, Governor Ron DeSantis said 2.5 million people were under evacuation orders as officials scrambled to prepare for the storm’s landfall.

DeSantis warned that although Ian’s exact path was still uncertain “the impacts will be far far broader.”

“When you have five to ten feet (1.5 to 3 meters) of storm surge that is not something that you want to be a part of. Mother Nature is a very fearsome adversary,” DeSantis said.

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Biden spoke with DeSantis — a potential 2024 election challenger — on Tuesday evening to discuss preparations for the storm.

The NHC warned that “widespread catastrophic flash, urban, and river flooding is expected across central and west Florida beginning midweek.”

Thirty-year-old Chelsea Thompson, who was helping her parents board up their home in a mandatory evacuation zone southwest of Tampa, said that “the closer it gets, obviously with the unknown, your anxiety gets a little higher.” 

The Pentagon said 3,200 national guardsmen had been called up in Florida, with an additional 1,800 coming later.

Authorities in several municipalities, including Miami, Fort Lauderdale and Tampa, were distributing free sandbags to help residents protect their homes from flooding.

And Tampa International Airport suspended operations from Tuesday at 5:00 pm (2100 GMT).

Biden has preemptively approved emergency aid in Florida through the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), while even NASA on the state’s east coast took precautions, rolling back its massive Moon rocket into a storage hanger for protection.

Like DeSantis, FEMA administrator Deanne Criswell highlighted the danger of storm surge, saying it was the agency’s “biggest concern.”

“If people are told to evacuate by their local officials, please listen to them. The decision you choose to make may be the difference between life and death,” she said.

The Caribbean and parts of eastern Canada are still counting the cost of powerful storm Fiona, which tore through last week, claiming several lives.

Half a million residents in the US territory of Puerto Rico were still without power, according to a tracking website.