Halfway up the coast of Western Australia, American tourists Emily Wapman and Evan Risucci are riding a gentle current off Turquoise Bay, one of the country’s most remote and beautiful beaches.
It’s called drift snorkeling, and the water’s guiding them over Ningaloo, one of the world’s longest near-shore reefs, revealing coral that’s as white as the sand on the sea floor — drained of color by the stress of a severe and prolonged marine heatwave.
The Californians met in December on a dating app and are now touring Australia in an aging four-wheel drive they bought online and equipped for adventure.
Risucci, a filmmaker, admits he knows little about coral but is learning a lot from his travel companion. “I thought that the white coral was the live coral,” he said, squinting in the harsh Australian sun.
“It’d be good for tourists to know what’s actually happening,” he said. “Someone from the United States might come here and think, ‘wow, this is so pretty,’ and be completely oblivious to the fact that it’s all dead.”
It’s not all dead, molecular ecologist Kate Quigley told CNN from a boat bobbing above Tantabiddi Sanctuary Zone, a popular destination for local tour boats within Ningaloo Marine Park off the West Australian coast. Ningaloo Reef is sick, like many coral reefs around the world.
Read more at the link in @cnnclimate’s bio. #calltoearth
📸: Nush Freedman for CNN
The sustainable construction sector has demonstrated measured progress this week, with multiple projects advancing low carbon design principles and reinforcing a global shift toward environmental sustainability in construction. The UK finalist for the Earthshot Prize has attracted international attention with its “upcycled skyscraper” concept. The project exemplifies how sustainable building design can decarbonise cities by reusing existing structures rather than rebuilding, cutting embodied carbon in materials and reducing the overall carbon footprint of construction. It shows that net zero whole life carbon targets are achievable when adaptive reuse is supported by rigorous whole life carbon assessment. This approach represents a pivot away from demolition-led development and towards truly circular construction strategies.
G F Tomlinson’s completion of the Barnsley College University Centre modernisation delivers a tangible demonstration of sustainable building practices rooted in lifecycle assessment. The retrofit has safeguarded the building’s Art Deco heritage while integrating a low carbon building methodology that promotes energy-efficient buildings and greener infrastructure. By retaining the original structural frame, the project has cut the embodied carbon of construction, proving that low carbon construction materials and renewable building materials have comparable performance to conventional options when guided by life cycle thinking in construction. The work also highlights the significance of BREEAM and emerging standards such as BREEAM v7 in defining measurable sustainability benchmarks.
In Cambridgeshire, work is commencing on the £500 million Medworth Energy from Waste facility, a major investment designed to support a functioning circular economy in construction and energy supply. Through combined heat and power systems, the development will assist future net zero carbon buildings by providing renewable energy outputs while applying whole life carbon methodologies to reduce lifecycle emissions. Although energy-from-waste has detractors, its integration with eco-design for buildings reinforces its potential as part of wider carbon neutral construction strategies that prioritize resource efficiency in construction and whole life cost management.
At the global level, the announcement of the Earthshot Prize finalists underscores that sustainable design and green construction principles now define the benchmark for engineering relevance. With emphasis on embodied carbon reduction and net zero carbon pursuits, these initiatives promote sustainable urban development grounded in measurable environmental product declarations (EPDs) and transparent assessment of the environmental impact of construction. The shift signifies a maturing understanding that building lifecycle performance is fundamental to both commercial resilience and global climate commitments.
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