Seattle Daily Star

  Chief executive distances company from comments by Stuart Kirk at London conference British financial company HSBC has distanced itself from comments by a senior banker in which he played down fears over climate change as “unsubstantiated, shrill, partisan, self-serving, apocalyptic warnings”. Stuart Kirk was suspended from HSBC pending an investigation , the Financial Times reported, after his remarks prompted a rebuke from the company’s chief executive, Noel Quinn. Mr Kirk had addressed a conference called Moral Money with a presentation entitled “Why investors need not worry about climate risk”, in which he told the audience there was “always some nut job telling me about the end of the world”. “Who cares if Miami is six metres underwater in 100 years? Amsterdam has been six metres underwater for ages and that’s a really nice place,” he told the London event. Mr Kirk was appointed as the head of HSBC’s responsible investing unit in July 2021, a role that involves looking at th...

  Biden administration reverses Trump-era decision saying cat population had sufficiently recovered US wildlife officials have agreed to craft a new habitat plan for the snow-loving Canada lynx that could include more land in Colorado and other western states where the rare animals would be protected. A legal agreement made public on Tuesday said that the US Fish and Wildlife Service faces a 2024 deadline to draft the new plan for the wild cats after settling a legal challenge from two environmental groups — Wild Earth Guardians and Wilderness Workshop. US District Judge Dana Christensen issued an order late on Monday approving the settlement. The groups sued to enforce a prior court ruling from Ms Christensen that said federal officials wrongly excluded areas of Colorado, Montana and Idaho when they designated almost 104,000 square kilometres in 2014 as critical for the lynx’s long-term survival. Lynx kittens explore their home in the Bear Wood exhibit at the Wild Place Project ...