Around The Web

More than 3,000 people gathered in the shadow of the University of Iowa on Friday afternoon to hear Thunberg speak

Three days prior to Greta Thunberg’s surprise visit to Iowa City on Friday, the organizer and local climate activist, Massimo Biggers, a 14-year-old Iowa City high school student, was preparing to strike – as he has done every Friday, sometimes on his own, since the Global Climate Strike day Thunberg inspired on 15 March.

Out of the blue, a message arrived from the Swedish teen activist, with whom he had been in touch, asking him if he was planning to strike again this Friday. “Of course!” he replied, and for the last 48 hours, according to his father, Jeff, neither had slept. “This was truly a miracle to have the town pull this together,” he said.

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ICAO’s Assembly on Friday backed the progression of work on setting a long-term emissions target for aviation and to advance the UN body’s CORSIA global offsetting mechanism towards operationalisation, though a fifth of the countries in attendance voted against the two resolutions in a surprise secret ballot.

A fast-track EU climate bill will propose a net zero 2050 emission goal early next year but is expected to omit any ramping up of the 2030 goal, observers said Friday.

The WCI cap-and-trade programme’s allowance surplus rose further towards the 200 million mark during the third quarter of 2019, while California and Quebec regulated entities shifted additional units into compliance accounts ahead of the November deadline, according to the carbon market’s joint compliance report published Friday.

[RE-ISSUE] The phrase 'mate for life' might seem romantic, but the reality of such a relationship for the long-lived Australian Magpie involves turf wars, sex on the side and the possibility of a step-parent bringing up your kids if you get too aggro.

Most comprehensive study to date finds plastic in sediment collected from bay and tributaries and digestive tracts of fish

The most comprehensive study to date of microplastics in California has turned up a mind-boggling amount of plastic particles in the San Francisco bay.

An estimated 7tn pieces of microplastics flow into the San Francisco bay via stormwater drains alone, researchers discovered. Nearly half of the microscopic particles found in stormwater looked suspiciously like tiny fragments of car tires, which rainfall washes off the streets and into the ocean.

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The research vessel is spearheading the biggest ever scientific expedition at the North Pole.

President Donald Trump on Friday tasked two federal agencies with taking steps to elevate next year’s biofuel quotas under the US Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), also requesting that the departments continue to evaluate credit market reforms after previous proposals were shelved this year.

A crayfish crossing a road, fur seals living on a volcanic island and dissected seahorses

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European carbon prices consolidated near yesterday’s six-month lows on Friday, taking a breather after two days of heavy losses.

Critics say group is not doing enough to involve people of colour, or expose links between climate crisis and inequality

It was just a tweet, and whoever sent it probably didn’t think much about it. It was a sunny day in July and environmental activists had blocked the Strand with a big blue boat.

“Live from the royal courts of justice,” Extinction Rebellion London wrote. “It has been announced that all protesters arrested during the April rebellion will be prosecuted. We are asking the police and legal system to concentrate on issues such as knife crime, and not non-violent protesters who are trying to save our planet.”

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Norway has agreed to release the final $50 million of its forestry protection payments to Guyana after the South American nation agreed to increase its renewable energy use.

South Korea plans to reduce the number of allowances issued to participants in its emissions trading scheme over the 2020s as part of its strategy to meet Paris Agreement obligations, according to a draft government climate plan.

By being on the road, women seem to be transgressing a boundary that some men find intolerable

I commute in London by bike. Run-ins with aggressive drivers are as much a part of my daily routine as brushing my teeth. Recently though, I’ve started to wonder whether there is a distinctly gendered dimension to the frequency and intensity with which I am shouted, sworn and honked at.

When I talk to friends who cycle, I’m struck by the instant recognition of this phenomenon by fellow women, who are quick to share their stories. Sometimes the abuse is explicitly sexual, more often it’s simply aggressive and unpleasant, or merely patronising. Almost without exception, it’s perpetrated by men.

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Climatic change may be behind expanded range of very rare native mammal of British Isles

One of Britain’s and northern Europe’s rarest and most elusive mammals has been discovered living in the east of England for the first time in 115 years.

The return to Kent of the greater horseshoe bat has delighted and astounded conservationists, who are now examining whether climate change is shifting the species’ range. The bat is normally found only in Wales and the west of England.

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The Tesla Model 3 outsells combined total of all other new pure electric cars in New Zealand in the third quarter 2019.

The post Tesla Model 3 outsells total of all other new electric cars in New Zealand appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Wagga Wagga mayor plans business trip to Sydney set straight controversy over the city’s electric vehicle purchase.

The post Wagga mayor plans electric road trip to counter skeptical councillors, Murdoch media appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Tembe warriors in Brazil wear colourful headdresses of macaw and other feathers, and wield bow and arrows to hunt and protect their homeland, which is constantly under threat in the globally vital Amazon region. Like their ancestors, the Tembe plant trees to teach their children the value of preserving the world’s largest rainforest, which is a critical bulwark against global warming

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Police say media reports that trained marksmen would be brought in to control the town’s magpies were incorrect

Police in the northern New South Wales town of Casino have denied they planned to deploy specially trained officers to shoot and kill magpies, contrary to media reports.

On Friday the Northern Star reported that elite police officers would descend on the town to shoot local magpies which have been deemed too dangerous to live.

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Vision taken from a helicopter shows 400km of dead and badly damaged mangroves in the Gulf of Carpentaria. The mangroves have been hit by a combination of rising sea levels, heatwaves and back-to-back tropical cyclones. Prof Norman Duke, of James Cook University, spent 10 days monitoring 2,000km of coastline from a helicopter. For hundreds of kilometres, Duke says what would usually be a landscape of lush green mangroves has been replaced by struggling dull grey trees with stripped foliage.

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