One of Heather Welch's jobs — before she was fired via an email giving her just 90 minutes to pack up and leave — was to prevent collisions between the ships and whales navigating the water along the US West Coast.
Welch, who was an ecologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for nearly a decade, specialized in mapping the movement of marine animals. This information helped ships map their routes, and fisheries improve their catch, while avoiding accidentally scooping up and killing sea lions or turtles.
Welch is just one of more than 1,000 people who in the past few weeks have been laid off from NOAA, the nation's top weather and climate agency. It was already understaffed before President Donald Trump's cuts, and there are more to come.
NOAA's remit is wide, but one of its most critical roles is to observe the oceans. Multiple scientists told CNN the layoffs are taking expert eyes off the oceans at the worst possible time: as the oceans undergo extreme change — some of which remains largely unexplained — with deep impacts for humans, wildlife and economies.
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📸 : Michael Macor/The San Francisco Chronicle/Getty Images
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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