An environmental group is calling for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to be investigated...

CNN Climate 2 years ago

An environmental group is calling for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to be investigated over a recently resurfaced incident described by his daughter in which he beheaded a whale carcass that had washed ashore near his home, the latest in a series of revealing anecdotes highlighting his bizarre personal life. The latest story, shared by Kennedy’s daughter Kathleen “Kick” Kennedy in a 2012 interview with Town & Country Magazine, details how Kennedy once used a chainsaw to cut off the head of a dead whale carcass that had washed up on the shores of their family’s home in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts. He then drove the whale’s head back to their home in New York on the roof of the family’s minivan. “Every time we accelerated on the highway, whale juice would pour into the windows of the car, and it was the rankest thing on the planet,” Kick Kennedy told the magazine. “We all had plastic bags over our heads with mouth holes cut out, and people on the highway were giving us the finger, but that was just normal day-to-day stuff for us.” The story appeared to resurface on social media following tabloid reports last week romantically linking Kick Kennedy with actor Ben Affleck. Read more at the link in @cnnpolitics’ bio. 📸: Rebecca Noble/Getty Images

layersDaily Sustainability Digest

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A £400m UK government loan to the Tropical Forests Forever Facility tightens the link between embodied carbon and real forest outcomes. Bio‑based and renewable building materials will now be judged on credible, deforestation‑free supply chains as much as on glossy lifecycle assessment or whole life carbon assessment outputs, driving wider use of environmental product declarations (EPDs), green building materials and green building products. Expect stronger traceability, circular construction strategies and end‑of‑life reuse in construction when specifying low embodied carbon materials and low carbon construction materials to cut the carbon footprint of construction and support the circular economy in construction.

Updated damp and mould guidance from the Chartered Institute of Building and the Chartered Institute of Housing reframes indoor environmental quality as a health obligation, pressing social landlords towards whole‑house ventilation, insulation upgrades and continuous monitoring. The shift embeds sustainable building design and energy‑efficient buildings as compliance issues, with implications for life cycle cost, building lifecycle performance and net zero whole life carbon pathways recognised by BREEAM and BREEAM v7.

A new retrofit procurement guide uses public spending to expand capacity, create local jobs and tackle skills shortages by baking training and labour targets into contracts. This gives sustainable construction and decarbonising the built environment delivery teeth, promoting life cycle thinking in construction, resource efficiency in construction and eco‑design for buildings, alongside sustainable material specification and low carbon building upgrades that support carbon neutral construction.

Escalating climate risks—from European wildfires to transboundary smoke and cascading Himalayan floods—are accelerating environmental sustainability in construction and sustainable urban development. Design for resilience is becoming core to net zero carbon buildings and green construction, with fire‑hardening, smoke filtration, heat‑safe interiors and green infrastructure specified to reduce the environmental impact of construction, deliver carbon footprint reduction over whole life carbon and strengthen eco‑friendly construction and sustainable architecture.

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