Around The Web

From buying an electric car to starting a secondhand clothes business, attendees talk of the unexpected delights of the first UK citizens’ assembly

At the start of 2020, Sue Peachey could never have predicted how her life would change over the next 12 months. She was one of 108 people to take part in the UK’s first climate assembly earlier in the year, spending four weekends learning about a range of environmental issues before producing a final report of recommendations.

“The first weekend changed me really. I thought, ‘Oh my God, [climate change] is really going to happen,’ she said. “It made me want to learn and to live my life greener.”

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The concerted global response to the pandemic could be replicated for the fight against the climate crisis

In a world rife with disputes and divisions, there will be one emotion likely to unite most people at the stroke of midnight on 31 December: sheer relief that 2020 is finally over.

There’s no risk of overstating it: this past year has pushed our world right to the edge. A single virus leaping from animals to humans was enough to kill 1.6 million people, bring major economies to their knees, and cause untold anguish and suffering all over the world.

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Blipfoto members, or ‘blippers’, record a single photo from their day. Between them they have built up a fascinating archive of dramatic weather images taken during the daily recording of their lives.

Here we look back at a selection of photos and snippets of day-to-day reflections from some of their 2020 journals. The gallery was put together at Blipfoto by Rebecca Cole and Richard Hunt-Smith

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South Korea will auction more than 18 million CO2 allowances in 2021, with monthly volumes rising in the second half of the year when the third phase of the emissions trading scheme with tighter regulations kicks in, the annual auctioning schedule shows.

South Korea wants the share of coal in the nation’s energy mix to fall by a quarter over the next 14 years, but an increase in LNG consumption means the power sector’s carbon reduction target by 2030 is lower than for the overall economy.

The Wildlife Trusts and Sir David Attenborough call on public to help protect marine life

Sir David Attenborough has called for a halt to activities that damage the UK’s seas, as the Wildlife Trusts revealed the highs and lows of marine life around the British Isles during 2020.

Highlights included thousands of Atlantic bluefin tuna in a rare run up the Channel from Cornwall to Kent, at some points accompanied by porpoises, minke whale and dolphins in a feeding frenzy, the trusts’ living seas marine review reported.

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The BBC's global science correspondent Rebecca Morelle looks at what's coming up in the next year.

Found with most of its organs intact, the rhino is thought to have lived more than 20,000 years ago.

Notable environmentalists and scientists are among those recognised in the New Year Honours.

Germany's federal regulator Bundesnetzagentur (BNetzA) on Wednesday published a list of 25 GW worth of hard coal and lignite plants that will serve as a final ranking of plants at risk of forced shutdown if upcoming closure tenders are undersubscribed.

China on Wednesday released the final allocation plan for participants in its national emissions trading scheme, clearing one of the last hurdles left before the market can open.

Research show flood victims in UK nine times more likely to experience long-term mental health issues

When Julie Blackburn was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder in 2016 she was told to avoid her triggers, scenarios which cause upsetting flashbacks. “But when your trigger is rain, there is no getting over it,” she said. “My husband and I don’t sleep when it’s raining, we take it in turns to stand at the window watching the rain – it’s just living in constant fear.”

Blackburn’s house in Old Coulsdon, Croydon, has been flooded several times, first in 2000 when heavy rain overwhelmed the Victorian sewer system and filled her home with toxic waste. Rapid development and poor infrastructure led the south London borough to be rated the fourth worst area in England and Wales for surface water flooding in 2011.

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A selection of the best science and environment features published this year.

Spectacular discovery of monkey in Myanmar among new species described this year by Natural History Museum scientists

Scarab beetles from New Guinea, seaweed from the Falklands and a new species of monkey found on an extinct volcano in Myanmar are among 503 species newly identified by scientists at the Natural History Museum.

The museum’s work in 2020 describing species previously unknown to science includes naming new lichens, wasps, barnacles, miniature tarantulas and a lungless worm salamander.

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Isolated and challenged by a harsh climate and battered by the financial crisis of 2008, Iceland has successfully moved away from fossil fuels and shifted to 100% electricity production from renewable sources. The island nation has developed high-tech greenhouses to grow organic vegetables and embraced sustainable fish farming, ecotourism, breakthrough processes for carbon capture and disposal, and efforts to restore the forests that were lost in earlier centuries

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Modules deployed by JinkoSolar for utility scale solar farms in Australia are currently generating almost 550 MW AC, more than one third of the combined capacity of solar PV installations in the Australian utility sector.

The post JinkoSolar modules power more than one third of the capacity generated by utility-scale PV projects in Australia appeared first on RenewEconomy.

FRV lands finance for new NSW solar farm.

The post FRV lands green loan finance for new 115MW solar farm in NSW appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Indigenous languages around the world are declining at a rapid rate, but linguists can help language revival by working with communities of native speakers. Julie Barbour, Senior Lecturer, Linguistics, University of Waikato Nicola Daly, Senior lecturer in children's literature and language teaching., University of Waikato Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

Once thought to occur only in birds and mammals in the Northern Hemisphere, due to the more pronounced winters, we now know torpor is widespread in small Australian mammals. Chris Wacker, Postdoctoral Research Fellow - School of Environmental and Rural Science, University of New England Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

• Félix Vásquez, 60, shot in own home in front of family
• Killing followed death threats linked to work on environment

Another indigenous environmentalist has been killed in Honduras, cementing the country’s inglorious ranking as the deadliest place in the world to defend land and natural resources from exploitation.

Félix Vásquez, 60, a veteran leader of the indigenous Lenca people, was shot dead at home in the Santiago de Puringla, a rural community in the department of La Paz, western Honduras on the night of 26 December – just weeks after reporting death threats linked to his work. His adult children were beaten and threatened by the four armed assailants in balaclavas, but survived the ordeal.

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