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Indonesian coal mine emissions vastly underreported, report says
The 'upside-down' sex life of a rare Indian frog revealed
Complex life on Earth may be much older than thought
Complex life on Earth may be much older than thought
Number of plastic bags found on UK beaches down 80% since charge introduced
Hailing the success of carrier bag laws, the Marine Conservation Society urges nations to push forward with plans for other single-use items
The number of plastic bags washed up on UK beaches has fallen by 80% over a decade, since a mandatory fee was imposed on shoppers who opt to pick up single-use carrier bags at the checkout.
According to the Marine Conservation Society’s (MCS) annual litter survey, volunteers found an average of one plastic bag every 100 metres of coastline surveyed last year, compared to an average of five carrier bags every 100 metres in 2014.
Continue reading...Want to buy an electric car but unsure you can justify it? Here’s how the arguments against EVs stack up
Some condom and lubricant brands contain alarming levels of PFAS – study
Toxic ‘forever chemicals’ linked to low birth weight, reduced sperm counts and infertility
Several brands of condoms and lubricants contain alarming levels of toxic PFAS “forever chemicals”, including styles of Trojan and K-Y Jelly, new research finds.
The testing conducted by the Mamavation consumer advocacy blog comes just as researchers found human skin absorbs the chemicals at much higher levels than previously thought.
Continue reading...World’s biggest renewable energy micro-grid suspended
The post World’s biggest renewable energy micro-grid suspended appeared first on RenewEconomy.
The end is nigh. For insects, bats, protest, the planet… | Stewart Lee
Our response to global heating and the decimation of animal species is to marginalise the Green party and lock up protesters
Signs and wonders. Omens of black portent. Part of an American looney’s ear has been shot off by another American looney. The proposed presidency of the earless looney had been endorsed by Atomic Kitten’s Kerry Katona. A computer went wrong and everything in the world stopped working everywhere. On Tuesday it was reported that Chris Packham regretted having once ridden an elephant. Last Sunday was the hottest day ever. A lioness hath whelped in the streets. Graves have yawn’d and yielded up their dead. Suella Braverman sat in for James O’Brien on LBC and the last surviving member of the Four Tops died. Surely we are living in The End Times. The optics, as they say, are not good.
But last week I sat outside at night alone on my Welsh mountain holiday, drinking draught Bwtty Bach beer from a plastic flask and reading an old Brigid Brophy paperback. For a moment I was happy beyond measure, forgot the world beyond, and stopped worrying. And then I saw something was awry in my idyll. I looked up at a security light, a stark halogen glow between the grey stone wall and the bright buck moon. Not long ago, in such a night as this, such a lamp as that would always have been hazed by a fuzzy penumbra of buzzy invertebrates. But tonight the air around it was hungry and dead, the entomological equivalent of an empty Republican convention room, where no one at all turns up to listen to Boris Johnson.
Stewart Lee’s Basic Lee is available to stream on Now TV. He is previewing 40 minutes of new material in Stewart Lee Introduces Legends of Indie at the Lexington, London, in August with Connie Planque (12), Swansea Sound (13) and David Lance Callahan (14)
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Continue reading...“You have to be creative:” Why Australia’s most successful grid-scale battery developer reinvents itself
The post “You have to be creative:” Why Australia’s most successful grid-scale battery developer reinvents itself appeared first on RenewEconomy.
Albanese names new assistant minister for climate and energy
The post Albanese names new assistant minister for climate and energy appeared first on RenewEconomy.
Bursting the bubble of Just Stop Oil
The group scored an own goal if their intention was to influence public opinion
Thank you, Sonia Sodha, for bursting the bubble (“Yes, five years in jail is too harsh, but the Just Stop Oil Five shouldn’t have done it”, Comment). Party A seeks something that Party B refuses to grant. Party A therefore – usually indiscriminately – targets Party C, who must be entirely innocent for this to work, and threatens to harm them unless given what they want.
It’s called hostage taking. In their latest indulgence of the practice, Just Stop Oil once again comes across as implacable yet patronising absolutists: “Yes, we’re hurting you, but we know that it’s for the best.” Their pretence of intellectual coherence is betrayed by the essential crudeness of their message: “Give us what we want, or the bunny gets it.” I cannot believe that their antics attract more people than they alienate.
Peter Millen
Huddersfield, West Yorkshire
I can’t think of anyone less “self-indulgent” than Louise Lancaster, one of the Just Stop Oil Five, imprisoned for four years last week.
Continue reading...Australia’s north-west reefs teem with life – but they are also at the centre of a massive fossil fuel expansion
Woodside’s designs on the country’s largest untapped gas basin around Scott Reef are, some say, just another example of fossil fuel companies getting their way in what has become a petrostate
Australia’s next wave of fossil fuel expansion is planned for environments far from where most people will ever see it. Places like Scott Reef.
Once part of an interconnected coral ecosystem that rivalled the Great Barrier Reef in scale, Scott Reef now sits in a remnant group of atolls near the edge of the Australian continental shelf, nearly 300km from its sparsely populated north-west coast.
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