Around The Web

The Niskanen Center, a nonpartisan think tank and advocacy organization that works to promote an open society, is seeking an entry-level Policy Analyst to join our growing climate department.

We’re currently hiring for positions in multiple locations across the country. If you’re flexible, you can apply for multiple locations. We accept applications on a rolling basis. Positions start in August 2020.

Tasman Environmental Markets (TEM) and Qantas are looking for a highly motivated Corporate Partnerships Manager to manage the service delivery of the business sustainability program Qantas Future Planet Program in conjunction with the Qantas team.

TEM is looking for a highly motivated Head of Corporate Solutions who can lead the engagement with existing and new clients to help develop and implement their approaches to climate neutrality and carbon offsetting.

University student Courtney Lucas on facing up to the climate crisis and listening to young people

As a millennial, a university student and a human, I thank you, Guardian, for your 2019 environmental pledge (It’s time to act, 17 October). Yours is a news outlet that many of my generation are sharing all over social media. You speak the truths we speak and believe in. We young people sometimes feel unheard and brushed away or simply ignored when we speak our minds. So thank you for pledging to use language that recognises the severity of the crisis we’re in; it is something that is rarely done. With the current fires surging through our precious lands, it is a time of stress, loss and sadness, and one that we are not accustomed to. We are angry. Listen to our generation more, hear our voices and follow our movements. We are the future, after all; one day everyone will have to listen, so why not start now.
Courtney Lucas
Tarragindi, Queensland, Australia

Continue reading...

Conservative policies since 2010 have been characterised by confusion and mixed messages

• Scientists and climate advisers condemn Tory record
• How do the parties propose to tackle the climate crisis?

Just after calling the general election, Boris Johnson’s government made two almost simultaneous policy announcements that encapsulated the longstanding contradictions of environmental policy over the past decade.

His decision to announce a moratorium on fracking – which the Labour party pointed out was a temporary commitment rather than a ban – made headlines and was heralded as a signal of green intentions, but the go-ahead for a new deep coalmine in Cumbria was slipped out to little fanfare.

Continue reading...

Party under pressure on climate crisis as Corbyn says Johnson can not be trusted

• The Tories’ green commitments
• The parties’ climate proposals

The Conservative party’s record on tackling the climate crisis was condemned by leading scientists and former government advisers on Sunday, as Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn warned that the forthcoming election was the last chance to halt the escalating emergency.

Experts accused the Conservatives of copying rightwing politicians in the US by deliberately weakening environmental protections. Meanwhile, new analysis by Labour reveals that environmental policies put forward since 2017 and opposed by the Tories would have led to emissions reductions of over 70m tonnes a year by 2030 – more than the annual emissions of Portugal.

Continue reading...

70 warnings issued as rivers Severn and Avon burst banks, but drier weather forecast

Large parts of Britain remain flooded and experts are warning the chaos could continue until Tuesday.

The Environment Agency (EA) had issued 70 flood warnings as of 6.49am on Sunday, meaning flooding was expected and immediate action was required.

Continue reading...

A diverse band of river communities, activists and academics are meeting in the heart of the rainforest to fight for the planet’s future

On the six-hour boat ride down the Iriri river to Manolito, there is almost no other traffic and only a handful of small homes. At its widest and calmest, the vast expanse of water is a flawless mirror of blue sky and green canopy. At its narrowest and roughest, the water churns around boulders eroded into the shapes of battlements and breaching whales. Parrots fly above the treetops. Fish feast on fallen blossoms. Kingfishers perch on riverside branches while herons await their prey on midstream rocks with their wings outstretched. White and yellow butterflies stumble across the river at remarkable speeds.

It is in this idyllic setting, deep inside the Amazon rainforest, that a nascent alliance of traditional communities, climate activists and academics is re-imagining what the world’s greatest forest was, what it can be and who can best defend it.

Continue reading...

Study finds seal and sea otter populations in Alaska hit by killer infection that migrated from North Atlantic

A potentially deadly disease affecting marine mammals, including seals and sea otters, has been passed from the North Atlantic Ocean to the northern Pacific thanks to the melting of the Arctic sea ice.

Experts have long been concerned that sea ice melting in the northern oceans, caused by global climate heating, could allow previously geographically limited diseases to be transmitted between the two oceans.

Continue reading...

Exclusive: Newly elected QFF head promoted tour by controversial scientist Peter Ridd and said reef regulation was based on ‘dodgy modelling’

The Queensland Farmers’ Federation’s newly elected president once called Great Barrier Reef science “unsubstantiated scaremongering”, which has prompted calls for the suspension of the organisation’s reef foundation grants.

The peak body for Queensland farmers, the QFF manages water quality improvement grants from the Great Barrier Reef Foundation totalling $4.6m – among the most awarded to a single organisation under a controversial $443m federal funding deal.

Continue reading...

Trees are the latest green battleground in the election campaign, writes BBC Science editor David Shukman.

The British jet-powered car goes faster still during trials on a dried-out lakebed in South Africa.

The UK needs 1.5bn new trees to tackle the climate crisis – a Northumberland project is showing one way forward

“This whole area wants to be a wood,” says Edward Milbank, sweeping his arm across the former hill farm in Northumberland. Small saplings of birch have invaded the cleared ground, but many more trees are being pushed into the soil by hand.

The bracken and rhododendron that had overrun the hillside took heavy machinery three months to rip out. “When you disturb the soil, it becomes a wood very quickly,” says Milbank.

Continue reading...

Illegal fishing by Chinese-owned trawlers is costing the country millions – and one of the officials trying to stop it has now been missing for months

In his cramped living room in an Accra backstreet, Bernard Essien pulls out a sheet of paper – a statement signed by his elder brother Emmanuel and addressed to the Ghanaian police. Two weeks before 28-year-old Emmanuel vanished at sea, his handwritten account and accompanying video footage alleged illegal fishing by a trawler he had been working on. If the allegation was proved true, the ship’s captain faced a minimum fine of $1m.the case of a

Emmanuel Essien was a fishing observer, one of Ghana’s front line defenders against an overfishing crisis that is among the worst in west Africa. Illegal and destructive practices by foreign-owned trawlers are draining the Ghanaian economy of an estimated £50m a year. For those living along Ghana’s 350-mile coastline, overfishing has driven small pelagic species known as “people’s fish”, the staple diet, to the verge of collapse.

Continue reading...

A daily summary of our news plus bite-sized updates from around the world.

Experts are differing greatly on the potential supply of eligible carbon credits that could be available under ICAO’s global aviation offset scheme, and specifically on the amount of available CDM units, which are poised to play a key role.

Industry associations have suggested charging ships a $2/tonne fuel tax, in one of several measures discussed at the UN’s maritime body IMO this week as the sector strives to avoid regulation under the EU ETS.

This week we find out how people are coping in the aftermath of fire; and what's worrying farmers about water in the southern Murray-Darling basin?

Transport emissions should be falling with better technology, but policy inertia has left Australian motorists – and the environment – worse off

“An electric ute would be great,” Rhys Jones says from the driver’s seat of his ute while waiting out the front of the work site.

“I don’t know how much it would cost in terms of set up and all that, but I’ve been on jobs where I’ve seen electric cars. They sneak up on ya. There’s no motor in them, so the engines run silent.”

Continue reading...