The internet has monumentally changed our world in just 40 years. If we harness the vision and belief of those innovators a low-carbon revolution is possible tooDo you really believe? I’m not asking if you ‘believe’ in climate change – thankfully that question has been delegated to the world of trolls. I mean, do you believe we can build a low-carbon economy in which 9 billion people thrive? That’s a much harder question for many of us. But until we all answer with a resounding ‘yes!’ we won’t move far or fast enough.
New research predicts a doubling of surface melting of the ice shelves by 2050, risking their collapse by the end of the century, say scientistsAntarctic ice is melting so fast that the stability of the whole continent could be at risk by 2100, scientists have warned.
Do you live in a city and have a favourite skatepark, rooftop garden, or outdoor gym? Share your photos with us via GuardianWitnessCities have been linked with killer air pollution and increased stress levels. But surely life in the world’s concrete jungles can’t be all bad, or why would so many of us live in them? In among the mix of tower blocks and tarmac is someone’s favourite park, or hill with a view. We’d like to see yours.
Zimbabwean environment minister says Walter Palmer’s big-game hunting trip was legal and he could not be chargedZimbabwe will not charge American dentist Walter Palmer for killing a prized lion in July because he had obtained legal authority to conduct the hunt, a cabinet minister has said.“We approached the police and then the prosecutor general, and it turned out that Palmer came to Zimbabwe because all the papers were in order,†the environment minister, Oppah Muchinguri-Kashiri, told reporters, adding that the American could not be charged.
The UN’s sustainable development agenda for the next 15 years can be used as a model for businessesWhen the Syrian refugee crisis hit the news, global educational publisher Pearson wrote a check. But after sending £500,000 ($765,605) to aid relief efforts, the company began looking for more ways to make a more personal contribution.“In big humanitarian crises like this, our usual answer is to make a philanthropic contribution,†said Kate James, the company’s corporate affairs officer. “We’re a global learning company. “Conflict zones are not our area of expertise.†Continue reading...
Hoesung Lee says change of tack for UN climate science body is needed to galvanise global action on emissions reductionsThe new leader of the world’s most authoritative climate science body has declared it’s time researchers shifted away from tracking the impacts of climate change - and focused instead on finding solutions.
Join us on Thursday 29 October from 12.30 to 2pm GMT to discuss what cities and their partners can do to combat poor healthAir quality is deteriorating in many of the world’s cities. Nearly two-thirds of people with diabetes live in urban areas. Wealthier lifestyles, prioritising convenience and fast food, have led even formerly famine-stricken China to admit an obesity epidemic. Urban dwellers have far-higher stress levels than their rural counterparts.If that’s city living, who’d do it? Continue reading...
From solar powered irrigation to handheld crop sensors, climate-smart villages are springing up across Gujarat, Haryana, Punjab and other statesCamels pulling wooden carts loaded with coconuts plod down the main road amid speeding motorcycles, buses, rickshaws and cars. Farmers sit atop slow-moving oxcarts loaded with grasses and other cattle feed. In this region of central Gujarat, India, it appears that rural life has not changed for decades.
Members of the scheme would each be hundreds of pounds better off if funds had been divested from fossil fuels, say campaignersThe pension funds of millions of local government workers have lost hundreds of millions of pounds in the last 18 months, as the value of the world’s biggest coal mining companies has crashed, according to a new analysis.The Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS) provides pensions for 4.6m people, including social workers, school staff, bus drivers, librarians, park attendants and housing officers. The losses estimated by campaign group Platform are equivalent to hundreds of pounds per member. Continue reading...
Azure butterfly bounces back from cyclical decline caused by parasitic wasps with numbers increasing by 151% on last years’ annual Big Butterfly countA butterfly locked in a cyclical struggle with a parasitic wasp has bounced back this summer after years of scarcity, according to the world’s largest annual insect count.
Arnos Vale, Bristol Bats are very particular about their living conditions and every breath we exhale will gradually alter the humidity of their homeThere’s something about graveyards that makes me stare at my feet. It’s partly respect for other visitors but also a morbid fascination with what I’m walking across. I imagine layers of gothic decay: bones, beetles and things that go bump.So when I’m invited under the gatehouse of Bristol’s Arnos Vale Cemetery by a grave digger turned ecologist, my expectations are set to spooky. The screech of an electric drill sounds as the groundskeeper unscrews a protective wooden panel and I descend into the pitch-black basement. The tunnel here was once used by Victorian undertakers to travel between the entrance buildings without disturbing mourners: now it’s home to rare mammals. At the bottom of the stone steps I duck my head under an archway and immediately spot what we’re looking for: a black diamond shape suspended from the ceiling. Continue reading...
High in the Peruvian Andes a team of researchers from the University of Massachusetts have been maintaining a satellite-linked weather station on top of the Quelccaya ice cap since 2003. The goal of the station is to document the impact of a major El Niño weather system now affecting the world, specifically in the Pacific. It is expect to reach its peak by the end of 2015.Report: El Niño could leave 4 million people without food or drinking water Continue reading...
Linc Energy faces charges over alleged leaks of toxic gas into air and groundwater near its Chinchilla coal gasification plant that took place during period when donations were madeLinc Energy, a mining company being prosecuted over allegedly dangerous gas leaks, gave more than $350,000 to political parties between 2009 and 2014, it has been revealed.
Four and a half years after a tsunami triggered a triple meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, people have returned to live in the areaEntering the living room of Kohei and Tomoko Yamauchi’s house in Naraha is a disconcerting experience. Above the tatami-mat floor, the shelves are lined with rows of kokeshi dolls; to one side is a large display of daruma figures, a traditional harbinger of good fortune. Kohei’s ancestors look down from framed black-and-white photographs mounted on the wall.It is hard to imagine a more immaculate home. Yet for four and a half years, the Yamauchis’ house, along with every other home in the picturesque town in Fukushima prefecture, was deserted. Continue reading...
Papua New Guinea drought has already claimed two dozen lives and looming El Niño weather pattern could be as severe as in 1997-98, when 23,000 people diedTwo dozen people have already died from hunger and drinking contaminated water in drought-stricken Papua New Guinea, but the looming El Niño crisis could leave more than four million people across the Pacific without enough food or clean water.
Experts feared butterfly numbers would plummet in wet summer weather but nationwide count shows some improvements on 2014Butterflies did better than feared in the wet and miserable weather across much of the UK in July and August, experts have said.More than half of the 20 species recorded by the public in the Big Butterfly Count showed better numbers than they did last year, although people braving the soggy conditions saw fewer butterflies on average than in 2014, charity Butterfly Conservation said. Continue reading...
Originally published in the Manchester Guardian on 15 October 1915How do fish get up a mountain?A correspondent who has been fishing on the Eden asks a curious question; and I doubt if my answer will please him or other sportsmen. On the banks of the river and the land near rabbits were so plentiful as to be a veritable plague to the farmers. Whilst fishing he came across a young rabbit with its feet fast in a toothed trap; he released it, and it bounded away apparently joyfully. He asks: “Under all circumstances could that action of mine be called humane?†To relieve any creature’s pain is humane, but it does not follow that the action and method of relief were wise. The destruction of rabbits is necessary, and no cheap and quick “humane†method has yet been discovered; when I find a trapped rabbit I do not release it, but kill it as quickly as possible, and a rabbit is easily killed.What strikes me as curious is that a man who fishes for sport should ask such a question. I have fished and I have trapped, and shall probably do so again, though I do not now use toothed traps, which are certainly cruel; a skilled fisherman gives his victims very little real pain, but accidents do happen - gorged hooks, or hooks in the eye or other tender spots, - so that an accusation of inhumanity may be justly made against him. If the fisherman releases a trapped rabbit – a destructive animal which someone is striving to keep down in days when all economically destructive creatures must be kept in check, - why does he not release the hooked fish that he has caught for his own enjoyment and not to supply people with food? The question of the professional fisherman is quite another matter. Continue reading...
The fields, bought by the chemicals group from a Russian billionaire, provide 8% of the UK’s gasChemicals group Ineos has bought 12 North Sea gas fields in a $750m (£490m) deal that comes as the British oil and gas industry fights a severe downturn.Ineos, which owns the Grangemouth refinery in Scotland, has bought the fields from a company set up by Russian billionaire Mikhail Fridman. The British government forced Fridman’s L1 Energy business to sell the assets when it ruled it was not in the UK’s interests to have them at risk of international sanctions against Russian companies and individuals. Continue reading...
Supermarket aisles strewn with packets. A school blackboard covered with notes for an unfinished lesson. Cars tangled with weeds in an unending traffic jam.These are eerie pictures from inside the 20km exclusion zone around Fukushima nuclear plant, which went into meltdown after a tsunami and earthquake struck Japan in March 2011. Photographer Arkadiusz Podniesinski donned protective gear to visit the “terrifying†ghost towns of Futaba, Namie and Tomioka last month and this is what he found. Continue reading...
Move comes amid concern that overuse of drugs is contributing to rising numbers of life-threatening human infections from ‘superbugs’California has brought in the strictest government standards in the US for the use of antibiotics in livestock production.
Government cuts to solar-power subsidies are shortsighted and irresponsibleThe Conservative party has spent much time mocking Labour for being out of touch on business issues, particularly Jeremy Corbyn’s support for rail and possibly energy nationalisation.But George Osborne seems much more at home tickling the tummies of huge, state-owned companies in China and France, especially with regard to nuclear power, than tending his domestic, private-sector firms. While the chancellor was out wooing on a recent trip to Beijing, he seemed blissfully unaware that subsidy cuts to the UK’s growing army of small and medium-size “green†companies have been causing havoc. Continue reading...
Millions depend on the ‘rainforests of the seas’ and we abuse them at our perilWe need our oceans, and our oceans need corals. But it’s not going well for them. Last week, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration in the US announced that extremely hot oceans have triggered a global bleaching event spanning the tropical Pacific, Indian and Atlantic oceans. Corals around the world are under a lot of stress. And we should care.Corals are about much more than brightly coloured backdrops of tropical snorkelling holidays or the stage of films about cute little fish that need to be found (that’ll be Nemo, for those without children). Corals are vital to ocean ecosystems. Even though they cover only 0.1% of the ocean seabed, they are home to 25% of the species in the ocean. Coral reefs are often referred to as the rainforests of our seas and play as vital a role in this ecosystem. Continue reading...
Magnitude-4.4 temblor Saturday was among nearly 700 earthquakes of magnitude 3 or greater in state this year, compared to 20 throughout 2009A moderate, magnitude-4.4 earthquake has shaken northern Oklahoma.It was one of the stronger temblors the earthquake-prone state has had this year. Continue reading...
Shadow chancellor tells rally to oppose third runway at UK’s largest airport that aviation industry has ‘consistently lied to us’People are dying from air “poisoned†by the aviation industry, which has “consistently lied†about expanding Heathrow airport, the shadow chancellor has said.John McDonnell addressed hundreds of people gathered in London’s Parliament Square for a rally to oppose a third runway at the UK’s largest airport. Continue reading...
The intensifying violence in Jerusalem and the West Bank, Europe’s refugee crisis, fashion week in Paris, England crashing out of the Rugby World Cup – the best photography in news, culture and sport from around the world this week Continue reading...
Wooden stakes marking the natural gas line’s path to Mexico symbolize a disruption of idyllic beauty the region is cherished for, as wary locals prepare to fight against environmental damage and new economic realitiesThorny mesquite branches scratched the sides of James Spriggs’ battered old Chevrolet truck as he drove the rutted pathway from his house towards other, less natural, spiky objects.On his 4,400-acre ranch there are deer, quail, jackrabbits, roadrunners, dragonflies and even the occasional eagle or mountain lion. And there are wooden stakes indicating the route of a natural gas pipeline that will slice through his property against his wishes. Continue reading...
Groningen has been one of Europe’s richest gas fields for 30 years, and thousands of people say their homes have been damaged by the tremors that drilling sets off. Now a class action may finally bring them compensation – and force a rethink of European energy securityFive years ago, Annemarie Heite and her husband, Albert, bought their dream home; a traditional 19th-century farmhouse in Groningen province in the northern Netherlands. The couple planned to raise their two young daughters in this charming corner of the Dutch countryside. “Then, the living was still easy, and affordable,†Annemarie says, her tone bittersweet and nostalgic. Today, their house is scheduled for demolition.Hundreds of earthquakes have wrecked the foundations of the Heites’ home and made it unsafe to live in. Annemarie’s biggest fear is the safety of her daughters. She points to a room. “This is where my children sleep,†she says, “and everyday I’m just picking up pieces of bricks and stuff from the ceiling.†Continue reading...
Sports giant Puma has pulled the plugs on R&D for its InCycle range but other companies say they are having more success with sustainable fashionAfter launching with a blaze of celebration, sports brand Puma’s new eco-friendly range of gear was meant to be the moment ethical fashion went mainstream. A shoe, jacket and backpack made of biodegradable and recyclable materials, put on sale in 2013, were part of the company’s effort to minimise the environmental impact of its manufacturing process.But two years on and the InCycle line as it was called has failed. In a statement released by Puma in November 2014, the company had warned that its retailers had not ordered the product and so it was only on sale in Puma stores, “where we had poor demand as wellâ€.
Jim Yong Kim, president of the World Bank Group, said it could boost funding by a third in response to client demandThe World Bank has pledged to boost by up to $29bn the financial assistance pledged to poorer nations to cope with climate change, bringing closer the possibility of reaching a target of $100bn a year by 2020.
Hugely popular elsewhere in Europe, briquettes are beginning to take off in the UK – and they’re good for your fireplace or stove, your pocket and the environmentThey burn hotter and cleaner, are cheaper to buy, and much easier to store and handle – so why do so few people with open fires and wood-burning stoves use recycled wood briquettes to heat their home?Big in Europe, but still largely untried by many fire users in the UK – particularly in the south – those selling them claim that once you have tried briquettes, you’ll never go back to hauling piles of logs off your drive. Continue reading...
Edale, Derbyshire I could only stand and marvel: at the badger, but also at the dedication of those working on her behalfDespite the whispering, our excitement was palpable. “There’s a white one,†one of the volunteers from the Derbyshire Wildlife Trust said. Not white, as it turned out, although in the half-light of a misty pre-dawn it seemed that way.Standing closer, the badger appeared more gingery brown, the head’s usual contrast of humbug stripes almost absent. The eyes were a marmalade colour, pretty and rather gentle. This wasn’t an albino but an erythristic badger, lacking black pigment in its fur through a genetic mutation. Their distribution in Britain is patchy; there are more in north Shropshire, for example, but very few in Derbyshire; this was the first badger experts in the county had heard about. Continue reading...
Norwegian camera operator Harald Albrigtsen captures the moment when humpback whales swim beneath the northern lights. Also known as the aurora borealis, the phenomenon is caused by electrically charged particles from the sun colliding with the Earth’s atmosphere Continue reading...
Prospects for fracking boom in Poland look remote as companies including state-owned gas firm ditch shale gas concessions in face of challenging geologyPoland’s shale gas industry appears to be collapsing, just four years after the US government predicted that its reserves were abundant enough to fuel the country for the next three centuries.Concessions for exploratory shale drilling have nearly halved in the last year from 58 to just 32, according to a new Polish government manifest published to little fanfare on the environment ministry’s website this week. Continue reading...
John McDonnell adds support to letter sent to Crown Prosecution Service, while all five mayoral candidates plan third runway protest outside ParliamentThe shadow chancellor John McDonnell, lawyers and environmentalists campaigning to prevent a new runway at Heathrow have written to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), asking them to drop charges of aggravated trespass against 13 activists for a protest at the airport.The actions of the protesters, which prevented a number of planes taking off, were “reasonable, justifiable and honourableâ€, according to the letter. “We should be congratulating them for defending the planet, not prosecuting them,†it says. Continue reading...
The week’s top environment news stories and green events. If you are not already receiving this roundup, sign up here to get the briefing delivered to your inbox Continue reading...
The ocean is being depleted of critical fish stocks, choked with discarded plastic and made increasingly acidic, and it’s our fault – but we can find the solutionFrom the sea’s shore, it can be hard to believe that something as vast and deep as the ocean can be harmed by a human being. But individuals are parts of communities, and our global community has exploded to over 7 billion people. The multiplier effect of growing populations, increasing demand for food and 200 years of carbon-intensive industrial production have put a tremendous burden on the ocean.The ocean is being depleted of critical fish stocks, choked with discarded plastic and made increasingly acidic from increased carbon emissions absorbed from the air. If things continue as they are, experts estimate that by 2025 there will be a ton of plastic in the ocean for every three tons of fish. Continue reading...
In Los Angeles, even sketch comedy groups are trying to save water. While the members of Dehydrated Comedy have some pretty extreme ideas, here are a few more practical ways you can save water, too. Continue reading...
Not just a food bank … An M&S-filled food bank. Upmarket grocer plans to use social app to supply local charities with its surplus food and help cut wasteMarks & Spencer is to distribute thousands of tonnes of surplus food under a scheme that will use a social networking app to link all 500 of its UK stores to local charities, including food banks.The retailer, which has committed to cutting food waste from stores by a fifth by 2020, has been testing different ways of running the scheme at 45 outlets and opted to work in partnership with the Neighbourly app. Continue reading...
This year’s Tour of Britain was packed with top cyclists such as Bradley Wiggins, but Peter Kimpton found an alternative way of joining the race – from the passenger seat of a support carThe whir and hum of hundreds of wheels through each town brought a wind-tunnel tornado of excitement. The cheering crowds were deafening, the speed on the road brutal. I’ve taken part in various sponsored amateur rides and extreme sportives, but for a change of pace, I had the chance to get inside a world-class professional race - this summer’s Tour of Britain, and it’s a ride I’ll never forget. Continue reading...
Scandals such as the BP oil spill, horsemeat and the recent revelations about VW raise serious questions about how to ensure companies don’t repeat wrongdoing
by Richard Luscombe in Columbia, South Carolina on (#PZ57)
State insurance director says calculations are still being made but ‘it is bleak’ as residents learn their insurance might not cover devastation to their homesSouth Carolina’s state insurance director has warned of “horrendous losses†as he prepares to release the first official estimate of damage from this week’s deadly flooding that claimed at least 17 lives. And many residents are learning that their insurance may not even cover damage to their homes.Ray Farmer said he expected the preliminary assessment, set to be released as early as Friday afternoon, to be more than $1bn. Continue reading...
Ryedale district council calls for five-year fracking ban in reponse to a consultation on Third Energy’s application to drill for gas in the areaCouncillors in North Yorkshire are facing fresh pressure to reject a fracking bid after a district council called for a five-year moratorium on Thursday.Ryedale district council (RDC) does not have the power to rule on the planning application made by gas firm Third Energy, which wants to frack a well near the village of Kirby Misperton to test if it is commercially viable. Continue reading...
