The Guardian
Offshore windfarm development: bigger, better, cheaper
Cost of offshore wind has fallen as turbines have improved, along with energy storage schemes
It is hard to keep up with how quickly offshore wind technology is developing. Turbines standing in shallow seas will soon cover hundreds of square miles of the UK’s coasts, providing one-third of Britain’s electricity.
Next it will be the turn of floating turbines. Admittedly, it took 15 years for Statoil to develop the first floating windfarm off Aberdeen, but its output has exceeded expectations. The Norwegian state oil company, renamed Equinor to make its image greener, has said more than half of the North Sea is suitable for deploying floating wind power. Electricity produced from these turbines anchored in deep water could provide all the EU’s electricity four times over.
Continue reading...'Too much time talking': calls for NSW waste levy to fund recycling reform
A year into the crisis, industry and campaigners are frustrated. What’s happened to the circular economy and container deposit schemes?
Ahead of the New South Wales election, the national Waste Management and Resource Recovery Association has called for more of the state’s waste levy to go towards funding a reboot of Australia’s recycling industry to help to end the year-long crisis.
Speaking at a waste summit earlier this month, organised by the peak body of NSW’s local councils, WMRR’s chief executive, Gayle Sloan, said 50% of the state’s waste levy should go back into funding recycling. The president of the Local Government Association of NSW, Linda Scott, said it should be 100%. Currently around 20% of the levy is reinvested into waste management nationally.
Continue reading...Flood warnings issued for England after heavy rain
Environment Agency says flooding expected early this week for rivers Dee and Severn
Flood warnings remain in place across parts of England after torrential rain over the weekend.
There were 20 flood warnings, meaning flooding is expected, and 28 flood alerts, meaning flooding is possible, in force on Monday morning, mostly in Yorkshire and the Midlands. None of the warnings are in the most severe category.
Continue reading...US and Saudi Arabia blocking regulation of geoengineering, sources say
Delegates at UN environment assembly say the oil producers are protecting their industries
The United States and Saudi Arabia have hamstrung global efforts to scrutinise climate geoengineering in order to benefit their fossil fuel industries, according to multiple sources at the United Nations environment assembly, taking place this week in Nairobi.
The world’s two biggest oil producers reportedly led opposition against plans to examine the risks of climate-manipulating technology such as sucking carbon out of the air, reflective mirrors in space, seeding the oceans and injecting particulates into the atmosphere.
Continue reading...Dead whale washed up in Philippines had 40kg of plastic bags in its stomach
Marine biologists horrified to find 16 rice sacks and multiple shopping bags inside curvier beaked whale
A young whale that washed up in the Philippines died from “gastric shock” after ingesting 40kg of plastic bags.
Marine biologists and volunteers from the D’Bone Collector Museum in Davao City, in the Philippine island of Mindanao, were shocked to discover the brutal cause of death for the young curvier beaked whale, which washed ashore on Saturday.
Continue reading...Energy analysts forecast 'the end of coal' in Asia as Japanese investors back renewables
Australia’s largest export customer for thermal coal is scrapping plans to build power plants
Major Japanese investors, including those most indebted to coal, are seeking to back large-scale renewables projects across Asia, marking a “monumental” shift that energy market analysts say is “the start of the end for thermal coal”.
At the same time, Japanese banks and trading houses are walking away from coal investments, selling out of Australian mines and scrapping plans to build coal-fired power.
Continue reading...Questions raised over how $1bn of emissions funding have been allocated
As the government announces fund top-up, changes to rules point to problems with how emissions calculated
Scott Morrison recently announced the Coalition would inject another $2bn into the emissions reduction fund – the Tony Abbott-era “direct action” policy that pays farmers and businesses from the budget to reduce greenhouse gas – but serious questions have emerged about $1bn already allocated.
Amendments to the fund rules, released for public consultation, indicate there have been problems with how emissions cuts from projects that involve managed regrowth of native forests and vegetation have been calculated.
Continue reading...How diet became the latest front in the culture wars
The latest study warning us to eat less meat has brought angry sceptics out in droves. But who should we believe?
Sometimes, particularly when looking at the weekend newspapers, it can seem that our obsession with food and health has reached a pitch of pure hysteria. “Eat!” screams one headline. “Diet!” shouts another. Cut out carbohydrates, suggests one report. Carbs are good for you, says a different one. Lower your fat intake. No, fat’s healthy, sugar’s the problem. Coffee raises the risk of heart disease. But it lowers the risk of diabetes. And so on, until you just want to ditch the papers and watch The Great British Bake Off or MasterChef.
Food, how to cook it, what it does to you and what growing or rearing it does to the planet are issues that crowd the media. And yet, as the clamour grows, clarity recedes. An estimated 820 million people went hungry last year, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation. A third of all people were vitamin-deficient. Two billion were classified as overweight and 600 million as obese. It’s also estimated that 1bn tonnes of food are wasted every year – a third of the total produced. A plethora of academic reports concerning food consumption and production have been published in recent years. The latest and arguably the most far-reaching is Food in the Anthropocene: the Eat-Lancet Commission on healthy diets from sustainable food systems, which was conducted over three years by 37 senior scientists from around the world and published earlier this year.
Continue reading...Deadly air in our cities: the invisible killer
In the winter you can taste and smell the pollution,” says Kylie ap Garth, drinking coffee in a cafe in Hackney, east London. “My eldest is eight and he has asthma. Being outside, he would have a tight chest and cough. I just assumed it was the cold weather. I didn’t realise there was a link to the cars.”
She is not exaggerating. The main road from Bethnal Green tube station is clogged with traffic, the smell of diesel fumes mixing with smoke from barbecue grill restaurants and construction dust. Anyone trying to escape from the roadside to the canal towpath finds only that the fumes are swapped with coal smoke from the canal boats.
Continue reading...Have we hit ‘peak beef’?
Meat production is central to the debate on climate change and ethical food. But how much is too much – for people and the planet?
The meat on Richard Vines’s Wild Beef stall at Borough Market in London is purple. Puce, really; a cartoonish shade that old men sometimes go when they are really angry. Meat that is an unexpected hue would typically raise an eyebrow, but for Wild Beef’s devoted customers it’s the reason they come here. “The colour comes from the protein that’s been in the ground, the deep-rooted grasses, it gives that flavour of sweetness and that bit of fat taste as well,” explains Vines, who has 40 acres of wild pasture in Devon, on which he keeps Devon cattle and Welsh Blacks. “Dartmoor is mineral-rich country, God-given for cattle farming. Washed by the Gulf Stream, grass grows most of the year and there’s a lot of freedom for the cattle once they are up on the moor.”
For the carnivore, the chilled cabinet at Wild Beef is the promised land. There are all the familiar cuts (steaks, ribs), alongside parts of the cow you don’t see so often (cheeks and a giant, lolling tongue that is practically black). And, if you get there early and ask nicely, Vines will slip you a bag of bones from under the counter. “One thing that’s changed: people don’t sit down for Sunday lunch any more,” he says. “Just doesn’t happen, we don’t sell many joints. But I’m working out ways of making steaks all the time. Last year we did flat iron steaks; I didn’t know what they were but they sell. And 20 years ago, we used to waste buckets of liver and such like, which nobody wanted. Now the offal all goes before the meat.”
Continue reading...‘Boycott Iowa’: latest twist in legal tussle between animal campaigners and US farmers
Twenty-five states have attempted to introduce legislation to chill animal rights activism, and six have succeeded, as a string of ‘ag-gag’ laws are overturned in courts
A US governor has signed off legislation to prop up controversial “ag-gag” laws in Iowa, just months after a federal court declared them unconstitutional.
In retaliation, animal rights activists are calling on their supporters to boycott the state as a vacation destination.
Continue reading...Students around the world go on climate strike – video
School and university students in more than 100 countries have gone on strike to demand that politicians take urgent action on climate change. The coordinated protests were organised on social media under the 'Fridays For Future' banner and inspired by the 16-year-old Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, who is in her 30th week of striking on Fridays.
- It's our time to rise up': youth climate strikes held in 100 countries
- Think we should be at school? Today’s climate strike is the biggest lesson of all
US accused of blocking ambitious global action against plastic pollution
Commitments agreed at UN conference in Kenya do not go far enough, say green groups
Environmental groups involved in talks at a United Nations conference in Kenya have accused the US of blocking an ambitious global response to plastic pollution.
Representatives of countries at the UN environment conference in Nairobi this week agreed to significantly reduce single-use plastics over the next decade but the voluntary pledges fell far short of what was required, according to green groups.
Continue reading...Wildlife campaigners take legal action against 'pest' bird killings
Chris Packham among those challenging Natural England over licence to slaughter certain wild birds
The killing of thousands of “pest” birds each year including crows, rooks, jackdaws, magpies and woodpigeons is to be challenged in court by wildlife campaigners including Chris Packham.
Wild Justice, a group newly created by Packham and fellow conservationists Mark Avery and Ruth Tingay, is launching legal action against Natural England, the government’s conservation watchdog, for issuing a general licence that allows the unlimited slaughter of certain wild birds all year round.
Continue reading...'There is no planet B': best placards from the global climate strike
Young people, inspired by Greta Thunberg, have stepped out of lessons to press politicians to act on climate change
Continue reading...Week in wildlife – in pictures
A starry dwarf frog, blooming poppy fields and a black-winged kite
Continue reading...Peter Rutter obituary
Peter Rutter’s greatest gift was a profound faith in the goodness of life, which led him to trust others as he expected to be trusted. I knew Peter, who has died aged 95, as a friend and as a Friend (a Quaker) for 25 years and never heard him disparage anyone.
The son of Hester and Farley Rutter, Peter was born in Shaftesbury, Dorset, to a lineage of Quaker lawyers, and was to become a partner in the family firm, Rutter & Rutter where his father was also employed. But at 18 his legal studies were interrupted by the second world war.
Continue reading...The Guardian’s 11-minute climate strike: why we’re devoting our front page to climate change
As thousands of US students join a global strike to demand action on climate change, Guardian US will show its support for the students by devoting our entire site to climate coverage for 11 minutes at 11am
- Make a contribution to support The Guardian’s independent journalism and our unique commitment to climate reporting
Over the next few hours, American students from all 50 states will take part in what could be one of the largest environment protests in history: a global school strike to demand that adults take action on climate change.
In addition to a major rally at the US capitol and more than 70 events around the country, the actions will include an 11-minute school walkout at 11am ET to draw attention to a recent UN report warning that we have just 11 years to avoid a climate change catastrophe.
Continue reading...Super bloom: can this tiny California town avoid another 'flowergeddon'?
The last time Anza-Borrego park experienced a bloom about 200,000 visitors flocked to see the bonanza of spring flowers
It’s lunchtime at Kesling’s Kitchen in Borrego Springs, and the line is out the door and down the block. It takes about 20 minutes to get inside to order food. The rush isn’t surprising: Borrego Springs is a small town that swells in size when people flock to see wildflowers around Anza-Borrego, California’s largest state park.
Plentiful winter rain and precise conditions have led to a bonanza of spring wildflowers this season. And while that can be a great thing, it also raised fears that Borrego Springs could once again face what locals have dubbed “flowergeddon”, an apocalyptic situation caused by booming visitation.
Continue reading...The Age of Stupid revisited: what's changed on climate change? – video
Ten years after climate movie The Age of Stupid had its green-carpet, solar-powered premiere, we follow its director as she revisits people and places from the film and asks: are we still heading for the catastrophic future it depicted?
Continue reading...