Yakutia leader declares ‘non-work’ day over health concerns as 22m acres burn in east Russia regionThe leader of a Siberian region has declared Friday a non-working day and urged residents to stay at home as smoke from raging forest fires raised health concerns.Aisen Nikolayev, the head of Yakutia, Russia’s largest and coldest region, which has been hard-hit by wildfires this year, said on Thursday that the day off would apply to the regional capital, Yakutsk, and several other districts. Continue reading...
Nature agency needs community-minded buyer to save Kinloch Castle, on Rum in the Inner HebridesWith red sandstone battlements, a sprung-floor ballroom, and a prized orchestrion organ said to have been made for Queen Victoria, Kinloch Castle on the Inner Hebridean island of Rum was one of the most luxurious private residences of its time upon completion in 1900.More than a century later, with collapsing chimneys and extensive rot, the “right owner” is now sought for the category A listed building and its extensive grounds – which included a Japanese garden and glasshouses filled with hummingbirds and, briefly, small alligators – after several stalled restoration attempts. Continue reading...
Campaigners criticise first minister for not demanding end to North Sea drilling in letter to Boris JohnsonNicola Sturgeon has been criticised by climate campaigners for failing to call for the new Cambo oilfield to be blocked because of the climate crisis.Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth Scotland accused the Scottish first minister of “hiding behind Boris Johnson” and not showing leadership after she resisted intense pressure to call for an end to new North Sea drilling. Continue reading...
If Joe Biden is serious about tackling the climate crisis he must use his country’s leverage to curb fossil fuels, not boost themThe UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report has driven home just how dangerous the climate crisis is. Faced with this unprecedented and unique challenge, the central question is: can we change course rapidly enough to contain the damage and preserve a halfway liveable planet? If the stark findings of the IPCC were not alarming enough, they are all the more so given the mounting evidence that the impetus for large-scale climate action may be ebbing.Given the onrushing disaster, we may be forgiven mood swings. Earlier this year, it seemed that the balance of political and economic forces might be swinging in favour of rapid decarbonisation. China, Japan and South Korea had all made net-zero pledges. Trump, the climate-denier-in-chief, had lost the White House. The new Biden administration was pushing what was billed as a major green infrastructure programme. The NextGenerationEU stimulus package was raising ambition. First the Bank of England and then the European Central Bank (ECB) took on the climate issue. The German Green party was riding high in the polls. Investors and financial markets were dumping dirty assets. Even a lobby like the International Energy Agency, once created to represent the interests of oil consumers, was charting a course to net zero. On 14 July, the EU announced its Fit for 55 plan, which implied, among other things, an end to the sale of new internal combustion engine cars by the early 2030s. Continue reading...
Landowners, councils and residents putting measure in place to discourage or ban general publicLandowners, councils and residents across the UK are increasingly putting measures in place to either discourage or ban the general public from accessing waterways.Swimming groups say the measures are creating further challenges to already complex rights to roam and increasing division between visitors and residents, who are often wealthier. Continue reading...
Infrastructure bill includes $8bn to develop ‘clean hydrogen’ but study finds large emissions from production of ‘blue’ hydrogenThe large infrastructure bill passed by the US Senate and hailed by Joe Biden as a key tool to tackle the climate crisis includes billions of dollars to support a supposedly clean fuel that is potentially even more polluting than coal, new research has found.The $1tn infrastructure package, which passed with bipartisan support on Tuesday, includes $8bn to develop “clean hydrogen” via the creation of four new regional hubs. The White House has said the bill advances Biden’s climate agenda and proponents of hydrogen have touted it as a low-emissions alternative to fuel shipping, trucking, aviation and even home heating. Continue reading...
Just when we must be rejecting new drilling, fracking and pipeline infrastructure, Biden isn’t just tolerating fossil fuels – he’s uplifting themThe latest report from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change paints a stark and sobering picture: a global future of extreme weather events that are guaranteed to become more frequent and more intense over coming decades. The horrific flooding that has recently shocked Europe will become more common. The unrelenting fires that have engulfed the western United States and Canada will intensify and widen. And some island nations, it seems, may already be doomed to eradication by inevitable sea level rise.The only glimmer of hope offered in the IPCC report is that immediate, aggressive action by world leaders could still prevent a future of assured climate chaos from being even worse. As devastating as a 1.5C global temperature increase will be, a 2.5C increase would be unfathomable. Continue reading...
Oregon’s Bootleg fire has offered new evidence that Indigenous techniques can change how megafires behaveThe Bootleg fire stampeded through southern Oregon so fiercely that it spit up thunderclouds. But when the flames approached the Sycan Marsh Preserve, a 30,000-acre wetland thick with ponderosa pines, something incredible happened.The flames weakened and the fire slowed down, allowing firefighters to move in and steer the blaze away from a critical research station. Continue reading...
California may legalize human composting, a process in which the body breaks down into soil over the course of about 30 daysIs there a greener way to honor those who have died?Humans have caused unprecedented and irreversible changes to the climate in our time on Earth – pollution that continues even in death. But, across the US, some are posing an alternative: human composting. Continue reading...
by Jillian Ambrose Energy correspondent on (#5N7WP)
Academics warn ‘fugitive’ emissions from producing hydrogen could be 20% worse for climate than using gasThe government’s plan to replace fossil gas with “blue” hydrogen to help meet its climate targets could backfire after US academics found that it may lead to more emissions than using gas.In some cases blue hydrogen, which is made from fossil gas, could be up to 20% worse for the climate than using gas in homes and heavy industry, owing to the emissions that escape when gas is extracted from the ground and split to produce hydrogen. Continue reading...
Just as inequality fuelled the pandemic, it could wreck plans to cut emissionsThe message from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change could hardly be clearer. Business as usual means global temperatures will rise by more than 1.5C above pre-industrial levels within two decades. Preventing that happening will require a massive and rapid drop in the amount of greenhouse gases being emitted.Diagnosis is the easy bit. The question is not whether human beings are on a collision course with nature but how to use the time left to bring about the far-reaching economic changes required to avoid catastrophe. Continue reading...
‘This pipeline is the key piece of infrastructure that would enable Australia’s most polluting fossil fuel project to proceed’ says climate campaignerThe Western Australian government has been criticised for approving the final stage of a controversial Woodside Energy-led gas export development in the state’s north, three days after the launch of a landmark climate science report.The government gave the green light to 32.7km of pipeline to be constructed through state waters on the Pilbara coast. It allows the installation of the full 430km pipeline, most of it in commonwealth waters, that Woodside has proposed to transport gas from the Scarborough offshore basin to the Pluto liquified natural gas (LNG) processing facility on the Burrup Peninsula. Continue reading...
by Fiona Harvey Environment correspondent on (#5N7T7)
Just £145m of budget went on environment with £40bn spent on emissions-increasing measures, says charityThe UK government is spending many times more on measures that will increase greenhouse gas emissions than on policies to tackle the climate crisis, according to an analysis of the spring budget.Only £145m in the March 2021 budget was devoted to environmental spending, most of it on the post-Brexit emissions trading scheme for industry, according to an analysis by the conservation charity WWF. But the cost of tax breaks to companies to encourage investment came to more than £34bn, while maintaining the fuel duty freeze – for an 11th consecutive year – is costing about £4.5bn in lost revenues. Continue reading...
Established in 2016, the Reteti sanctuary rescues and rehabilitates young elephants so that they can be reintroduced to the wild. It is the first to be owned and run by an indigenous community
Company maintains oil spills in 1970 were caused by third parties during civil warRoyal Dutch Shell has agreed to pay around €95m (£80.4m/$111.6m) to communities in southern Nigeria over crude oil spills in 1970, lawyers involved in the case have said.The decision is the latest involving Opec-member Nigeria’s oil-producing south where communities have long fought legal battles over oil spills and environmental damage. Continue reading...
Scores of fires blaze across 17 provinces as calls made for aid convoys and Morocco and France offer helpAlgeria’s president, Abdelmadjid Tebboune, has declared three days of national mourning amid the death toll from raging wildfires in the north of the country rising to 69.The state-run news agency APS said the rash of more than 50 fires which broke out on Tuesday had claimed four more lives, bringing the total to 69, including 28 soldiers deployed to help the emergency services. Continue reading...
Reading at monitoring station in Syracuse unverified but comes amid heatwave in last few daysThe highest temperature in European history appears to have been recorded in Italy during a heatwave sweeping the country, with early reports suggesting a high of 48.8C (119.85F).If this is accepted by the World Meteorological Organisation it will break the previous European record of 48C (118.4F) set in Athens in 1977. The temperature was measured at a monitoring station in Syracuse, Sicily, and confirmed soon after by the island’s meteorological authorities. Continue reading...
by Miranda Green for Floodlight and Sammy Roth for th on (#5N6N4)
Residents around the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach were paid to show support for natural gas trucks at community hearingsDiesel truck pollution from the busiest port complex in the United States has fouled the air in nearby neighbourhoods in southern California for decades. So when port officials asked for feedback on cleaning up that pollution, hundreds of people weighed in.Los Angeles and Long Beach officials hoped residents would help them decide whether to require zero-pollution electric trucks or instead promote vehicles powered by natural gas, a fossil fuel. Continue reading...
Communities on the frontline of the climate crisis say radical solutions must be on the table – before it’s too lateAyisha Siddiqa doesn’t want fossil fuel companies to determine her future anymore. The industry has promoted climate denial for longer than the 22-year-old has been alive. Rather than watch companies pad their profits as the world burns, Siddiqa has a radical solution in mind.“Abolish these oil companies, finish them, get rid of them, no more,” she said. Continue reading...
by Nina Lakhani in Springdale and Green Forest, Arkan on (#5N6JV)
Revealed: investigation shows how Tyson’s near monopoly in its home state of Arkansas gives it huge power, at a cost to farmers and the environmentThe tight grip that America’s largest meat processing company has on the chicken industry has generated dire consequences for its workers, farmers and the environment in one of the US’s leading poultry-producing states, an investigation has found.Tyson Foods is ranked 73rd on the Fortune 500 list, with a revenue of $43bn in the last fiscal year. Continue reading...
Calls for deposit return scheme now, with report tracing 65% of branded packaging pollution back to 12 firmsCoca-Cola bottles and cans were the most prevalent branded litter on beaches in the UK, a report has found, as campaigners call on the government to get on with introducing a deposit return scheme.Almost two-thirds (65%) of all branded packaging pollution across the UK coastline can be traced back to just 12 companies, according to the findings by the marine conservation charity Surfers Against Sewage (SAS). Continue reading...
Organic farming methods, which use fewer pesticides and store more carbon in soil, are becoming more popularThere is growing momentum behind a shift to ‘regenerative’ agriculture in the UK, which can help to mitigate the climate crisis, say leading experts in the sector.“More and more people are seeing other farmers doing it [regenerative farming] and are happier for it,” said John Cherry, who founded Groundswell, the UK’s flagship event for regenerative agriculture, on his farm in Hertfordshire. “People may be getting a higher yield with conventional approaches, but it is costing them more too with all the inputs, so they are not making more money.” Continue reading...
Prime minister says request made for help internationally as forest blazes erupt in Kabyle region and elsewhereMore than 40 people, including 25 soldiers, have died in wildfires that erupted east of the Algerian capital, the country’s prime minister, Ayman Benabderrahmane, said.Benabderrahmane also told state television that the government had asked for help from the international community and was in talks with partners to hire planes to extinguish fires. So far, 42 deaths have been reported. Continue reading...
Politicians around world continue to respond to report from Intergovernmental Panel on Climate ChangeFood production around the world will suffer as global heating reaches 1.5C, with serious effects on the food supply in the next two decades, scientists have warned, following the biggest scientific report yet on the climate crisis.Rising temperatures will mean there will be more times of year when temperatures exceed what crops can stand, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, in its sixth assessment report published on Monday. Continue reading...
NatureScot hails conservation success but draws criticism after revealing 115 animals were killed under licenceWild beavers have colonised lochs and rivers across the southern Highlands of Scotland after a sharp surge in their numbers.A survey by NatureScot, the government conservation agency, estimates 1,000 beavers now live in the wild, reaching rivers north of Dundee in the east, westwards to Crianlarich, north of Loch Lomond, and south to Stirling on the river Forth. Continue reading...
Almost 900 firefighters fighting what the Greek prime minister called ‘a natural disaster of unprecedented dimensions’In scenes more resonant of war, trained firefighters backed by a ragtag army of local people waged a “superhuman” battle overnight to extinguish wind-whipped blazes raging for an eighth day on the Greek island of Evia.With yet another village ordered to be evacuated on Tuesday, a multinational force of nearly 900 firefighters were at the scene in a desperate bid to stop the conflagration enveloping the northern town of Istiaia. Continue reading...
Newcomer on dairy alternative scene is vegan, sequesters carbon and increases biodiversityI’m sitting in my kitchen, about to try my first sip of a milk that is vegan, sequesters carbon and increases biodiversity. Dairy milk has a high carbon footprint. Soy is linked to deforestation, almond to high water use. But how does the new kid on the scene – hemp seed milk – measure up for taste?An Innovative Farmers project coordinated by the Soil Association is investigating how industrial hemp production could aid the transition to a low-carbon economy. In collaboration with scientists at Cranfield University and the British Hemp Alliance, research will quantify the environmental benefits of growing hemp. In farm trials that launched last month, five farmers are helping to investigate this plant’s ability to sequester or store carbon, improve soil health and increase biodiversity. Continue reading...
Welcome to our monthly roundup of the biggest issues in farming and food production, with must-read reports from around the webMore than a million animals reportedly died in flash floods in the Henan province of China. A Reuters report from the village of Wangfan, where most of the 3,000 residents raise pigs or chickens or grow grain, found that at least 200,000 chickens and up to 6,000 pigs – half the village’s herd – had been lost in the floods, the worst in centuries. Continue reading...
Obama campaigned in climate poetry and then governed in fossil fuel prose. Joe Biden may well follow in his footstepsIf after Monday’s news you didn’t feel a pang of doom, you’re either a zen master, a recluse living in a news vacuum, or a nihilist. The new United Nations report on climate change predicts an actual, bona fide apocalypse unless our civilization discards our fetish for incrementalism, rejects nothing-will-fundamentally-change fatalism and instead finally takes the crisis seriously.The bad news is that we’ve been here before during the last era of Democratic supremacy, and if the Obama era we sleepwalked through now repeats itself, we’re done. It’s that simple. Continue reading...
Andrew Constance says the second-hand market for EVs could be driven by state and federal government adoption of the new technologyNew South Wales transport minister, Andrew Constance, has urged the Morrison government to accelerate the uptake of electric vehicles in Australia by using them for federal government fleets.Speaking at a Smart Energy Council summit, Constance said state and federal governments should “drive the second-hand market” by buying up electric vehicles in order to lower the price. Continue reading...
Project will pipe the ‘dirtiest fuel left on the planet’ across Minnesota’s pristine lakes and wetlandsMore than 600 people have now been arrested or received citations over protests amid growing opposition to the Line 3 oil sands pipeline currently under construction through Minnesota.Native American tribes including the Red Lake Band of Chippewa Indians, the White Earth Band of Ojibwe and indigenous-led environmental organisations such as Honor the Earth are leading opposition efforts in court and on the ground, mobilizing ‘water protectors’ to try to halt the project. Continue reading...
Two soldiers are recovering from ‘horrific injuries’ after 700km rescue mission from remote bay in state’s northWildlife officers have killed a crocodile that mauled two soldiers who went swimming in a remote Queensland bay where the reptiles were known to live.The officers had no trouble identifying their target, with the reptile becoming highly aggressive as they approached it in their vessel north of Lockhart River on Tuesday. Continue reading...
by Helena Smith in Athens, Jennifer Rankin in Brussel on (#5N42G)
Week of blazes forces evacuations and brings devastating scale of destruction to large areas of southern EuropeThe devastating scale of destruction from a week of wildfires in Greece and Italy was being assessed as the EU mounted one of its largest firefighting operations ever and smoke from forest fires in Siberia reached the north pole.As UN experts on Monday said global warming was advancing faster than feared and that humanity was “unequivocally” to blame, firefighters and local residents battled massive blazes on the island of Evia, east of Athens, for a seventh straight day. Continue reading...
The US president may have only one chance to pass legislation to confront the crisis: ‘We can’t wait’A stark UN report on how humanity has caused unprecedented, and in some cases “irreversible”, changes to the world’s climate has heaped further pressure on Joe Biden to deliver upon what may be his sole chance to pass significant legislation to confront the climate crisis and break a decade of American political inertia.The US president said the release on Monday of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report showed that “we can’t wait to tackle the climate crisis. The signs are unmistakable. The science is undeniable. And the cost of inaction keeps mounting.” Continue reading...
by Stephen Burgen in Vilafranca del Penedès on (#5N4TN)
The ‘no-plough’ regenerative methods adopted in small vineyards have spread to olive groves and leading wine producers – boosting biodiversity and profitsThey call it the sea of olives, 70 million olive trees that stretch to the horizon in every direction in the province of Jaén in southern Spain. It’s a spectacular landscape and yet, olives aside, the land is virtually dead, with scarcely a flower, bird or butterfly to be seen.All this could be about to change following the remarkable success of a project that is raising new life from the dust of Andalucía. Continue reading...
Climate report says country will suffer rain and floods in the south and drought and fires in the northThe first major assessment of its kind in seven years from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has found the globe’s ocean, land and air temperatures are rising, and the human influence is “unequivocal”.But what does the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report say about changes in New Zealand, and what can we expect for the future? Continue reading...
The Morrison government’s ‘technology, not taxes’ mantra ignores the fact that taxes pay for technology, and affordable technology can make a difference
A new IPCC report makes clear what island nations have long warned. Their survival depends on urgent collective actionA new report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) finds that the world may warm by 1.5°C by the early 2030s, much earlier than previously estimated. It’s terrible news for the Pacific. With temperatures rising above 1.5°C, Pacific communities are likely to experience increasingly devastating climate change impacts.The key takeaway from the IPCC report is that the more we know, the worse it looks. The planet is now already between 0.8°C and 1.3°C warmer than in pre-industrial times – moving frighteningly close to the 1.5°C threshold. This warming has already worsened temperature extremes, such as marine heatwaves that cause coral bleaching and heatwaves on land, with dangerous consequences for human health. Temperature and other climate extremes will become more intense, frequent and appear in more locations with every fraction of a degree that the planet warms. Continue reading...
by Fiona Harvey Environment correspondent on (#5N45G)
Alok Sharma says chance to limit worst impacts of climate breakdown ‘still achievable, but retreating fast’The world’s biggest emitters of greenhouse gases must produce clear plans to cut their carbon output drastically, the president of vital UN climate talks has urged, after scientists warned there was only a small chance of escaping the worst ravages of climate breakdown.The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change set out the starkest warning yet on the widespread and “unprecedented” changes to the climate that are “unequivocally” the result of human actions. Extreme weather resulting from these changes was already seen around the world and growing worse, in the form of rising temperatures, more frequent and fiercer storms, heatwaves, droughts, floods and sea level rises, according to the biggest assessment of climate science in eight years. Continue reading...
by Jillian Ambrose Energy correspondent on (#5N438)
Australian investment bank left Thames Water saddled with debt when it sold up in 2017The Australian investment bank Macquarie has returned to the UK water industry – four and a half years after leaving Thames Water saddled with debt – buying a majority stake in Southern Water for more than £1bn.The infrastructure investor promised to put the utility firm “back on a stable footing” after it was fined a record £90m last month for dumping billions of litres of raw sewage off the north Kent and Hampshire coasts. Continue reading...
Occurrence is first since records began and comes as Russian weather officials warn blazes are worseningSmoke from raging forest fires in Siberia has reached the north pole for the first time in recorded history, as a Russian monitoring institute warned the blazes were worsening.Devastating wildfires have ripped across Siberia with increasing regularity over the past few years, which Russia’s weather officials and environmentalists have linked to climate change and an underfunded forest service. Continue reading...
A devastating wastewater dump may have contributed to a deadly algal bloom, residents sayHundreds of tons of dead marine life have washed ashore and wafted a putrid stench along Florida’s beaches in recent weeks amid a toxic red tide bloom spreading in its waters.Thomas Patarek lives just a half mile away from the waterway. Continue reading...