Martin Hughes-Games, of the BBC’s Spring, Autumn and Winterwatch, says series presents ‘a utopian world that bears no resemblance to the reality’Wildlife programmes have totally failed to have an impact on conservation, the presenter of some of the UK’s most popular natural history shows has said.Martin Hughes-Games, presenter of the BBC’s Springwatch, Autumnwatch and Winterwatch series, told the Guardian that they have instead created “a form of entertainment, a utopian world that bears no resemblance to the realityâ€. Continue reading...
by Isabella Kaminski for Ends Report, part of the Gua on (#S3CT)
Firm pleads guilty to two separate incidents, including five tonnes of oil entering the Manchester ship canal, reports the Ends ReportAn oil company has been fined nearly half a million pounds for two pollution incidents in Cheshire.Essar Oil (UK) Ltd, which is headquartered in India and operates Stanlow oil refinery in Ellesmere Port, pleading guilty to breaching the conditions of its environmental permit at Chester crown court. Continue reading...
Controversial €100m hydropower project likely to lose funding after Bern Convention warns of ‘decisive negative impact’ on the critically endangered lynxA controversial €100m (£71m) dam project in a Macedonian national park is expected to be scrapped after independent experts called for a halt to all funding and construction work because of risks to critically endangered species, including the Balkan lynx.A Bern Convention mission to the Mavrovo national park reported that the planned hydropower dam there was “not compatible†with protection of the park’s status, ecosystems or species. Continue reading...
Could those who theorize that climate change is a conspiracy actually have it right? The Guardian teamed up with CollegeHumor to bring you the real and frightening truth behind the conspiracy led by Al Gore, and its plans to use climate change fears to gain profit, power and world domination. Happy Halloween! Continue reading...
Chancellor, who has overseen 5.4% fall in infrastructure investment, to launch national commission for major projectsInfrastructure investment will be at the heart of November’s spending review, George Osborne is to say when he launches the national commission for major projects.Speaking at the National Railway Museum in York on Friday, the chancellor will announce that the commission’s panel will include the former Conservative deputy prime minister Michael Heseltine and Prof Tim Besley, a former member of the Bank of England’s rate-setting monetary policy committee. Continue reading...
The political will to act on climate has arrived. We will look back at Paris as a turning point of this century towards a brighter futureChange is created by turning points. Whether through evolution or revolution, turning points in history have changed the way we think, move, communicate, live.We are at a turning point now. A decisive hour when a historical event occurs, when a decision must be made, when we have understood that the consequences of the past need us to intentionally and decisively redefine the future. Continue reading...
Technology can help companies like VW manage and rebuild their reputation but it’s not a magic bullet and must be used ethicallyIt has been a good few weeks for anyone who likes to indulge in a bit of corporate schadenfreude: Volkswagen’s emissions scandal and the cyber-attack on TalkTalk have kept consumer and business news sites busy analysing what happened and how the companies involved should respond. Put either company’s name into a search engine and the results include plenty of links referring to these events.
Analysis of plans put forward by nearly 150 countries suggests temperatures will reach just under 3C by the end of the century rather than 2C targetPledges by most of the world’s countries on climate change are likely to lead to less than 3C of global warming over the century, analysis of the data by the United Nations suggests.
Dan Barber: ‘If you think not leaving your plate full of food is the way to deal with this issue, you’re letting yourself off too easy.’Waste is central to Dan Barber’s cooking, and yet, he’d rather you didn’t sense that when you eat it. In fact, if you’re experiencing anything other than sublime thoughts when you taste his food, he’ll consider it an unsuccessful dish. Barber is the executive chef at the famed Bluehill Restaurant in Manhattan and at Stone Barns in upstate New York, and author of The Third Plate, a book about sustainable cuisine that captures his core belief: instead of just telling people to cut food waste, we should also be using it to make irresistibly tasty dishes.To meet this goal, in March, Barber transformed his restaurant into a pop-up called wastED, where he served ‘fried skate-wing cartilage’, ‘pock-marked potatoes’ and ‘carrot top marmalade’, along with other almost-binned fare. Continuing the theme, in September, he and Sam Kass, former senior advisor for nutrition policy at the White House and now senior food analyst for NBC News, made headlines when they served ‘waste food’ to world leaders meeting at the United Nations. Barber and Kass—who first came up with the idea for the momentous lunch—created salads comprised of vegetable scraps, burgers formed from wasted beetroot juice pulp, and fries repurposed from corn intended to feed cows. The goal? To use taste to drive home the message of food waste—something that Barber says should be central to the waste debate. In conversation, he makes the case that chefs are key to accomplishing this goal—and explains why ‘waste meals’ really aren’t such a novel idea after all. Continue reading...
Turnbull’s extended political honeymoon, Bill Shorten’s poor standing in the polls and Labor’s inability to easily change leaders means the PM can afford to take his time on the difficult decisionsLabor’s getting pretty pouty about Malcolm Turnbull’s protracted honeymoon. One senior figure reckons the press gallery thinks the new prime minister “farts rainbowsâ€.
Anglers in the Northern Territory should be aware of the risk of crocodiles attacking smaller vessels, inquest into death of man in Kakadu hearsThe death of a man who was snatched from his fishing boat by a crocodile in Kakadu is a warning for other anglers, according to an inquest.Bill Scott was grabbed by a saltwater crocodile as he tried to fill a bucket while fishing in Kakadu National Park in June last year. Continue reading...
South Uist The shrew makes a swift-footed bustling sprint of a metre or so and then comes to an abrupt haltWhen my husband calls me to the window, I can’t work out what it is about the motionless dark brown object on the lawn that has attracted his attention. It’s only partly visible among the blades of grass and seems to be about the size of an unshelled walnut.I’m about to ask when the shrew, for that is what it turns out to be, bursts into action. It makes a swift-footed bustling sprint of a metre or so and then comes to an abrupt halt, snout down in the short grass, posterior raised in the air, as it seizes whatever prey it has found. Continue reading...
RWE Innogy announces support of Siemens Financial Services, Macquarie Capital and UK’s Green Investment BankConstruction of a £1.5bn windfarm off the Suffolk coast is to go ahead in November with the creation of nearly 800 jobs, after three new partners were found to back the project.
Waters in the north-west Atlantic have warmed 99% faster than the rest of the world’s oceans in the past decade due to changes in the Gulf Stream and Pacific
Shadow resources spokesman Gary Gray says ‘states make decisions as to how mineral wealth is allocated’Labor resources spokesman Gary Gray has warned the Coalition not to “interrupt†the historic constitutional relationship between the commonwealth and the states by changing the land access rights between farmers and mining companies.
Fickle, unpredictable and not-quite-as-good-as-hoped for – it’s been a typical British summer and a typically topsy-turvy butterfly season.The year began brightly with large numbers of overwintering brimstones, but the next generation didn’t make its presence felt in midsummer. It is a bit of a mystery why so few peacocks emerged, because their caterpillars were plentiful on nettles: some may have gone straight into hibernation, but it’s likely that others fell victim to parasitic wasps and flies. Continue reading...
President Evo Morales reassured public that controversial project, which will use Russian technology and help from Argentina, will not harm environmentBolivia has announced plans to build a $300m nuclear complex, including a research reactor, with Russian technology and help from Argentina.President Evo Morales told reporters the center will include a cyclotron for radiopharmaeuticals, a multi-purpose gamma irradiation plant and a research reactor. Continue reading...
The Prince of Wales says forests are key to combating global warming as he confirms he will attend next month’s crucial summitThe Prince of Wales has said tackling deforestation will be central to combating global warming as he confirmed he will attend next month’s crucial climate change summit.
by Manuel Planelles for El PaÃs, part of the Climate on (#S0AJ)
Spanish NGOs, incensed at the controversial ‘sun tax’ that charges citizens for creating their own energy, have called for a new ‘vice-presidency’ on sustainability, reports El PaisThe five main green organisations operating in Spain have launched an environmental appeal to political parties in the run-up to December’s general elections.Friends of the Earth, Ecologists in Action, Greenpeace, SEO/BirdLife and WWF have stressed the urgent need for any new government to create a vice-presidency for sustainability, that would be able to coordinate and oversee cross-sector policy making. Continue reading...
You might think the discussion of cycling in an era before cars were on the roads would be less judgmental – history shows us that is not the case“The past is a foreign country: they cycle differently thereâ€. Such an assumption is often close to the surface in any complaint about the activities of cyclists in present-day Britain. Take, for instance, Angela Epstein’s recent article in the Telegraph, which told us to:Forget bucolic images of the village schoolboy poetically wheeling down country lanes. Or all those Call the Midwife-style dramas where baskets are a vital part of the kit and protest is launched with little more than a chirp of the bicycle bell. Today’s cycling fraternity are aggressive, unreconstructed and utterly immutable when it comes to criticism of their form of transport. Continue reading...
In a country where only 40% of people have access to grid electricity, the government is looking to sunshine to power health centres and homesBefore solar panels were installed at Masaki village’s only health centre, doctors, nurses and midwives had to use dim flashlights or the glow from their cellphones to deliver babies and treat night-time emergencies.In one case in 2010, a man arrived late after a motorcycle accident and needed a wound stitching. As the nurse began the procedure by the light of her torch, she felt a cold slithering sensation against her legs. Continue reading...
A growing number of lawsuits in France have begun to expose the serious risk faced by those working on non-organic vineyardsWenny Tari knows a thing or two about wine. She and her husband Gabriel have been making it since 1982, when they inherited a vineyard in France’s picturesque Languedoc region in the south of the country.Their 40 hectare Chateau de Brau vineyard is home to more than 170,000 individual vines, including some of the world’s best known grape varieties such as merlot, cabernet sauvignon and chardonnay. They produce around 150,000 bottles of wine a year, 20,000 of which are exported to the UK. Continue reading...
by Words by Tom Levitt Design by James McLeman on (#RZKB)
Fish farms have divided critics. But problems around pollution and the use of wild fish as feed could be resolved by a new, self-contained approach to fish farming.
Cost for nuclear power station will be passed on to nearly 30 million customers, while critics warn it could rise to £45bnThe UK’s first new nuclear power station for a generation will cost electricity customers at least £4.4bn and the subsidy bill could reach £20bn, the government has revealed.The charges, which will be passed on to nearly 30 million customers, are a result of ministers’ decision to guarantee the new Hinkley Point C operators £92.50 for every unit of electricity – more than double the current market price. Continue reading...
Recall of affected cars by the end of 2016 would avoid more than 130 further early deaths, research showsNearly 60 people will die prematurely from the excess air pollution caused by Volkswagen cheating emissions tests in the US, according to a new study.The first peer-reviewed estimate of the public health impacts of VW’s rigging of tests for 482,000 diesel cars in the US found that if the company recalls all the affected cars by the end of 2016, more than 130 further early deaths could be avoided. Continue reading...
Watch the trailer for filmmakers Holly Morris and Anne Bogart’s documentary about the extraordinary survival story of the Ukrainian women who refused to leave their homes following the nuclear disaster in 1986. The film follows the community living and working within the exclusion zone, which also includes scientists, bureaucrats and illegal ‘stalkers’ Continue reading...
Farmers are concerned that the reintroduced predator will kill livestock, but research from other countries shows these fears are unfoundedDepending on who you ask, the Eurasian lynx is either a benign woodland wonder or a sheep-stalking terror. In reality, any lynx can be either or none of these things. But research from other European countries to which they have returned tells us that a mooted reintroduction to Britain is unlikely to trouble farmers.The campaign to restore the 30kg cat to the UK gathered steam this week as the proposal was opened to stakeholder consultation. There is no suggestion the lynx will attack humans, but the National Farmers Union (NFU) was quick to release a statement laying out its objections. Continue reading...
Carnivorous birds, which help stem spread of disease by eating carcasses that would otherwise rot, targeted by poachersAfrica’s vultures are vanishing, according to a new report, posing a potential health risk to humans and livestock, since populations of other scavengers such as rats and jackals could rise as a result.The assessment, carried out by the conservation group BirdLife International, found that six of Africa’s 11 vulture species were at risk of extinction. Deliberate targeting by poachers is one of the reasons, as the birds, which circle the sites where they feed, can alert authorities to the carcasses of illegally killed animals. Continue reading...
Months of uncontrolled forest fires catapult Indonesia above China and US as biggest global climate polluter, as president vows to tackle toxic smogIndonesia’s president, Joko Widodo, arrived in South Sumatra on Thursday, pledging to tackle the raging forest fires that have engulfed the country and its neighbours in thick smog for almost three months.Related: Indonesia burning: forest fires predicted to be worst on record Continue reading...
Italian photographer Bruno D’Amicis has won the 2015 Fritz Pölking prize with his photography story ‘Fennec, little ghost of the dunes’. The award, named in honour of wildlife photographer Fritz Pölking, who died in 2007, is run by the Society of German Nature Photographers. It is one of the categories in the GDT’s European wildlife photographer of the year awards Continue reading...
A new documentary follows the unlikely rebel grandmothers who returned to their radioactive homes after the nuclear disasterOn 26 April 1986 the Chernobyl nuclear power plant’s reactor No 4 blew up after a cooling test. The resulting nuclear fire lasted 10 days, spewing 400 times as much radiation as the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.Today Chernobyl’s soil, water, and air are among the most highly contaminated on Earth. The reactor is at the centre of a 1,000-square-mile “exclusion zoneâ€, a quarantined no-man’s land complete with border guards, passport control and radiation monitoring. Continue reading...
River Kent, Cumbria Sand flats bring on the birds, the curlews in their looping patrols, the squabbling black-headed gulls, the lapwings gossiping as they oar pastThe final meanderings of the River Kent cut jigsaw pieces out of the low-lying farmland at the northern perimeter of Morecambe Bay. The fields were created centuries ago from deposits of peat, silt and sand, and by ditching. Turfed flood banking extends from beyond Foulshaw Moss in the west and as far as the outfall of the river Bela to the east.On a recent walk sleek grey cloud defined the early morning views – the great limestone prow of Whitbarrow, Levens church steeple, the last of the Forestry Commission shelterbelt trees by Foulshaw Moss, a handful of farm buildings. The footpath along the two-metre high bank allowed an elevated view of the river and fields but alerted feeding birds to our presence. Continue reading...
Settlements understood to resolve outstanding claims from 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster that spewed 134m gallons of oil into the seaAll five Gulf of Mexico states have reached a settlement with the owner of the offshore drilling rig involved in the 2010 BP oil spill.A court filing from Transocean and attorneys for Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas said all of the states had entered a settlement agreement. Alabama’s governor announced that state’s settlement with Transocean last week. Continue reading...
Energy minister says federal government needs to ensure landholders’ rights are protected and he will put issue on Coag energy council meeting agendaEnergy minister Josh Frydenberg has supported farmers’ rights to reach agreement with mining companies on coal seam gas before resource development goes ahead, and will put the issue on the agenda for the Council of Australian Governments (Coag) energy council meeting.Frydenberg said the federal government needed to ensure landholders’ rights were protected, even though farmers’ rights of veto over mining companies was a matter for state governments, as states owned the resources. Continue reading...
Pit left by fallen tree, lined with cobbles, shows hunter-gatherers’ sophisticated understanding of landscapeEvidence that Mesolithic hunter-gatherers were environmentally aware home builders has emerged a mile from Stonehenge – together with a stone age version of the storage heater.Archaeologists have expressed astonishment at the 6,000-year-old discovery – the stone age equivalent of an eco home – in a heavily wooded spot 15 metres away from the busy A303 in Wiltshire. Continue reading...
As the northern hemisphere slides into winter the southern hemisphere is sliding into summer or, in the case of Australia, diving into summer. On 6 October, Melbourne hit 35°C, breaking records for the hottest start to this month, while Sydney and Adelaide have had a string of days over 30°C.But for Australians this record-breaking heat is starting to become familiar. A study, published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters , shows that since 2000 hot record-breaking events on average have outnumbered cold record-breaking events by 12 to one. Climate simulations show this imbalance would not occur under natural climate variability, and that human-caused warming is behind the plethora of hot records. Continue reading...
It’s becoming tiresome hearing government ministers justify their cuts to renewable energy subsidies on the basis that industries must “stand on their own two feet†(Energy minister ‘open-minded’ about UK solar subsidy cuts, 20 October). Energy minister Andrea Leadsom’s assertion that “I don’t think anyone here would advocate an industry that only survives because of a subsidy paid by the billpayer†may sound vaguely reasonable if a) we didn’t have the tricky little problem of climate change to contend with, and b) other energy industries weren’t also subsidised. Your article rightly highlights the enormous subsidies for nuclear, but doesn’t mention those also being given to the fossil fuel industry.According to the IMF, the UK will spend approximately £26bn on fossil fuel subsidies this year, factoring in new World Health Organisation estimates on harm to health from pollution exposure. By comparison, Department of Energy and Climate Change figures show the cost of supporting renewables in 2014-15 was £3.5bn, expected to rise to £4.3bn in 2015-16. Put another way, every UK citizen pays £412 in fossil fuel subsidies, and just £55 for renewables. How are we ever to wean ourselves off fossil fuels when government policy is so skewed in their favour?
Green MEPs describe newly minted test procedure, which will allow car manufactures to emit more than twice legal limit of NOx, as scandalousCarmakers have won delays to a more stringent “real driving emissions†test, which will allow them to belch out more than twice the legal limit of deadly nitrogen oxides (NOx) from 2019 and up to 50% more from 2021.The introduction of the tests has been delayed by a year by the European commission. Continue reading...
by Kate Lyons, Cath Levett, Glenn Swann and Pablo Gut on (#RWYQ)
There are widespread forest fires in Indonesia almost every year during the dry season, but this year’s are proving particularly devastating, destroying vast tracts of jungle and blanketing neighbouring countries in toxic smog Continue reading...
Treasury unexpectedly axes incentive for building new renewable energy sources, on top of previously announced subsidy cutsThe government plans to cut tax reliefs for community energy schemes to build new renewable power capacity such as solar and wind in a move that will deal a further blow to the UK’s embattled renewables sector, green campaigners have warned.The Treasury is to remove tax reliefs of 30% or more for community energy schemes that reduced the risk for investors and encouraged private capital to help build new energy capacity. Continue reading...
Nine countries warn European commission not to weaken birds and habitats directives in favour of cutting red tape for business - but UK is not among themAn alliance of nine European governments, led by Germany and including France, Spain, Italy and Poland, have written to the European commission to warn it not to dismantle nature protection laws.But conservationists have questioned why Britain is not part of the effort to publicly defend the habitats and birds directives ahead of a review by the commission aimed at cutting red tape for business. Continue reading...
Art installation accuses Britain’s largest tuna importer of broken sustainability promises and human rights abuses by parent companyGreenpeace and the TV presenter and environmental campaigner Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall have launched a protest targeting Britain’s largest tuna importer John West and its parent company Thai Union Frozen Products over the firm’s alleged backtracking on promises to source its fish more sustainably.A group of around 30 people erected a sculpture of a talking can of tuna fish outside John West’s headquarters in Liverpool early on Wednesday. Continue reading...
Breaking open a locked cabinet belonging to Maxwell Knight, naturalist and spy, yields not Top Secret documents but a passionate scientific plea ...As excitement over Spectre reaches fever-pitch, the last written works of the real-life M have been discovered in a filing cabinet. They too contain a haunting, terrible truth, not about a sinister organisation but the depredations of industry on the world of nature.The observations contained in a newly-discovered and unpublished manuscript, The Frightened Face of Nature, are the work of one of MI5’s most intriguing and talented employees, Major Charles Henry Maxwell Knight, generally considered to be the original for Ian Fleming’s M. Knight’s life as a second world war spycatcher saw him inter alia penetrate British fascist movements, foil a plot to stop the Americans from entering the war and debilitate Britain’s burgeoning “fifth column†Nazi sympathisers. Continue reading...
Conservationist whose work led to a ban on pesticides such as DDT, and so helped populations of birds of prey to recoverNorman Moore, who has died aged 92, was a gentle giant in the field of wildlife and conservation policies. He emerged into the public arena during the 1960s as leader of a team that highlighted the devastating effects that organochlorine pesticides were having on British wildlife. The revelation eventually led to a ban on pesticides such as DDT, followed by a slow but dramatic recovery in the populations of many animals at the top of the food chain, in particular birds such as peregrines, eagles, red kites and sparrowhawks.Moore’s team made its findings at the Nature Conservancy’s Monks Wood research laboratory near Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, where, from 1960, he was head of the toxic chemicals and wildlife division. The team found that dramatic declines in numbers among birds of prey were primarily a result of egg-shell thinning caused by pesticides, and that species were under threat of extermination because their eggs were structurally too weak to survive in the nest. Continue reading...
Pies, coffee, beer and ice cream – pretty much anything can be pumpkin-flavored at this time of year making the seasonal squash a multimillion-dollar businessWith Halloween just days away, pumpkins are out in full force – sitting on your neighbor’s stoop, decorating your co-worker’s desk or giving your local coffee shop that autumn-y feel.Orange really is the new black – and not just when it comes to decorations. Continue reading...
With the oil giant vouching for the science of climate change 25 years ago, there is no way we would have wasted decades in fruitless argumentLike all proper scandals, the #Exxonknew revelations have begun to spin off new dramas and lines of inquiry. Presidential candidates have begun to call for Department of Justice investigations, and company spokesmen have begun to dig themselves deeper into the inevitable holes as they try to excuse the inexcusable.(Worst idea: attack Pulitzer prize-winning reporters as “anti-oil and gas activistsâ€) Continue reading...
You could just boil less water in an ordinary kettle. But most of us don’t, because we’re awfulThe Wahl EcoLogyk kettle (£59.99, ethicalsuperstore.com) is a bicameral water heater with a plunger-controlled partition. Regulating fluid transfer between reservoirs ensures only the necessary volume is boiled. Continue reading...
