Events Anniversary for 2026-02-23

Shell has shelved plans for a major new tar sands mine in Canada, the largest project yet to fall victim to low oil prices. On 23 February 2015, Shell announced , it is withdrawing its regulatory application for the proposed Pierre River Mine north of Fort McMurray, Alberta to focus attention on its existing oil sands operations.

A expert committee vote on 23 February 2012, did not find the required majority in favour of a European Commission proposal to designate oil from tar sands as particularly damaging to the environment.

On 23 February 2012, Australian researchers revealed they had filmed a pod of extremely rare Shepherd's beaked whales for the first time ever.

A new comprehensive analysis finds that 75 percent of the world's coral reefs are currently threatened by local and global pressures. For the first time, the analysis includes threats from climate change, including warming seas and rising ocean acidification. "Reefs at Risk Revisited" is being released by the World Resources Institute, along with the Nature Conservancy, the WorldFish Center, the International Coral Reef Action Network, Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network, and the UNEP-World Conservation Monitoring Center, along with a network of more than 25 organizations. Local pressures - especially overfishing and destructive fishing - are causing many reefs to be degraded. Global pressures are leading to coral bleaching from rising sea temperatures and increasing ocean acidification from carbon dioxide pollution. According to the new analysis, if left unchecked, more than 90 percent of reefs will be threatened by 2030 and nearly all reefs will be at risk by 2050. For the first time, the report identifies the 27 nations most socially and economically vulnerable to coral reef degradation and loss. Among these, the nine most vulnerable countries are: Haiti, Grenada, Philippines, Comoros, Vanuatu, Tanzania, Kiribati, Fiji, and Indonesia. The report is an update of "Reefs at Risk," released by WRI in 1998.

Diesel fuel and heating oil spilled into the Lambro river near Milan from a storage facility owned by Lombarda Petroli SpA in Monza, Italy. Italian officials said the spill was caused by intentional sabotage at the oil depot.

Climatologists at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York City have found that 2008 was the ninth warmest year since continuous instrumental records were started in 1880. The ten warmest years on record have all occurred between 1997 and 2008. The GISS analysis found that the global average surface air temperature was 0.44°C above the global mean for 1951 to 1980, the baseline period for the study.

Budapest won the 2008 European Mobility Week Award. The Hungarian capital was judged by an independent panel of experts to have done the most to raise public awareness of air pollution from traffic and promote cleaner alternatives during European Mobility Week.

Stockholm and Hamburg were today named as the first winners of the new European Green Capital award. The Swedish capital will be European Green Capital in 2010 followed by Hamburg in 2011. The European Commission's new award scheme encourages cities to improve the quality of urban life by taking the environment systematically into account in urban planning.

The risks of severe climate impacts increase drastically with only small increases in global mean temperature. An international team of researchers has reinvestigated the five “reasons for concern” described first in the Third Assessment Report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2001, and revised a graphic depiction of their sensitivities to increases in global mean temperature. The diagram shows clearly how the borderline to dangerous climate change could be crossed much earlier than previously thought but also that ambitioned climate policy could minimize the associated risks.

After an explosion the Greek tanker “Irenes Serenade” catches fire and sinks in the bay of Navarino with 100.000 tons oils on board. The coasts of the bay are affected by oil pollution.