Around The Web

Speaking at a climate change conference in London, author Margaret Atwood supported a ban on single use plastic.

New Zealand has set itself a goal of becoming carbon neutral by 2050, and a recent report by the Productivity Commission lays out how it could hit that target. Robert McLachlan, Professor in Applied Mathematics, Massey University Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

Warning about conflicts, wars and mass migration is the wrong way to approach things

The Australian Senate’s declaration last month that climate change is a “current and existential national security risk” was clearly intended to inject much-needed urgency into the country’s climate policy stalemate. Bringing together the unusual bedfellows of military generals and environmentalists to warn about the dangers of climate change, it has the possibility to break though Australia’s culture wars on the issue. However, by framing climate change as a security matter, it also has significant consequences in shaping how we respond to a warming planet. As the climate crisis unfolds, is the military the institution we want to turn to for solutions?

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Giles Oakley writes: On the one occasion I met the Tory MP Sir Richard Body he made a great impression. In 1987 I was interviewing him for a BBC2 Open Space documentary entitled Aggro Chemicals presented by self-taught scientist and campaigning organic dairy farmer Mark Purdey.

Sir Richard supported Mark in his principled refusal to comply with a Ministry of Agriculture order to apply an organic phosphate-based compound on his cattle to prevent a hypothetical infestation of warble fly. Mark, preferring his own organic treatment, took the matter all the way to the high court, and won.

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Guy Smith says it’s unfair to point the finger at farming as the cause of environmental damage, Iain Climie addresses food wastage and Dr Blake Alcott says the most effective way to reduce your carbon footprint is to not reproduce

One fundamental point has been overlooked by Kevin Rushby in his article about the plight of the countryside due to agriculture (The killing fields, G2, 31 May). There has been no intensification of agriculture in the UK for 25 years.

Government statistics show pesticide and fertiliser use has been significantly reduced. There are fewer crops grown and the numbers of pigs, sheep and cattle have fallen. So to point the finger at farming as the cause of environmental degradation through intensification makes no sense, especially when you consider the other changes that have taken place in that time – increased housebuilding, more roads, and more cars on those roads – and the impact they have had on the country’s landscape.

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When a tsunami hit the nuclear plant, thousands fled. Many never returned – but has the radiation risk been exaggerated?

Shunichi Yamashita knows a lot of about the health effects of radiation. But he is a pariah in his home country of Japan, because he insists on telling those evacuated after the 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident that the hazards are much less than they suppose. Could he be right?

Yamashita was born in Nagasaki in 1952, seven years after the world’s second atomic weapon obliterated much of the city. “My mother was 16 years old when the bomb dropped and she was two miles away,” he told me at his office in the city, where he still lives with his mother, who is now 88.

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Reintroduction programmes of animals driven from their once-natural habits are a cause for optimism

In May, Dutch and Romanian European bison reintroduction programmes were declared successful after several years of conservation efforts. The Dutch project began back in 2007; the wild cattle had been extinct in that region for two centuries. Now, though, both national parks in question are reaping great environmental benefits from the bisons’ grazing, with a consequent flourishing of flora and fauna.

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Climate change has caused a catastrophic drop in the numbers of terns, kittiwakes and puffins

Sumburgh Head lies at the southern tip of mainland Shetland. This dramatic 100-metre-high rocky spur, crowned with a lighthouse built by Robert Louis Stevenson’s grandfather, has a reputation for being one of the biggest and most accessible seabird colonies in Britain.

Thousands of puffins, guillemots, razorbills, kittiwakes and fulmars gather there every spring to breed, covering almost every square inch of rock or grass with teeming, screeching birds and their young.

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As solar farms spread across the central agricultural regions of the sunshine state, opponents are becoming increasingly vocal

Colin Ash has spent a working lifetime in the cane fields near the Pioneer River in central Queensland, out past Marian, where the mill has processed sugar for more than 130 years.

“You can’t get sentimental about things,” he says from the front seat of his truck as he drives slowly around the boundary of his property. “You’ve got to pay your bills.”

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Pilot whale was found barely alive in Thai canal and vomited up five bags during fruitless rescue attempts

A whale has died in southern Thailand after swallowing more than 80 plastic bags, with rescuers failing to nurse the mammal back to health.

The small male pilot whale was found barely alive in a canal near the border with Malaysia, the country’s department of marine and coastal resources said.

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A 10-year fight between a group of residents and the East Gippsland shire council over grey-headed flying foxes is heating up again

The Australian town of Bairnsdale in Victoria – 300km east of Melbourne – is known as the gateway to east Gippsland’s natural wonders. It is also the scene of a 10-year battle between a group of residents and the East Gippsland shire council over a colony of grey-headed flying foxes that roost along the town’s Mitchell River.

In 2014, the council received federal government approval to clear critical habitat in a three-stage process, the first occurring in 2015. The debate is now heating up in the approach of stage-two clearing, which the council intends to complete by the end of 2018.

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Before the latest auction figures, Adam Morton investigates the plan Turnbull once called ‘a recipe for fiscal recklessness’

At some point in June, the Australian government will announce it has spent up to $2.3bn over three years on a scheme that the prime minister believes is a reckless waste of public money.

Related: Land-clearing wipes out $1bn taxpayer-funded emissions gains

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If a clock ticks for 10,000 years will anybody be there to hear it? Long term thinking... come on... let's do this.  

Start Point, Devon: Spider crabs rub pieces of seaweed against the backs of their shells until they stick, creating remarkable camouflage

The combe above the beach echoes with the calls of chiffchaffs, and cock stonechats flick and churr on the wind-stunted hawthorns that line the footpath. Around the twin radio masts – a 20th-century riposte to Start Point’s whitewashed gothic lighthouse – a small flock of swallows cut and swerve.

Beneath the sea there are signs of spring too. Common spider crabs (Maja brachydactyla), which have been overwintering in the depths, start to appear close to shore, a sight that has become a feature of my first sea swims of the year.

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Jodie Rummer and Adam Downie are putting fish through their paces in their lab hoping to discover how reef fish develop their athletic abilities, so early in their lives.

The Australian government proposes to fund research into carbon capture and storage.

From Canberra to Wellington via Cambridge. Nathaniel Davis is taking his solar research to New Zealand.

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

Environment minister says up to 2,500 wild horses are causing ‘significant damage’ to plant and animal species

The Victorian government has signed off on a plan to remove more than 1,200 feral horses from the Alpine national park, saying the impact of the animals on sensitive ecosystems has reached critical levels.

Two weeks ago the New South Wales government announced a proposal to protect Kosciuszko national park brumbies, which conservation advocates have labelled a “disaster” for Australia’s environmental heritage.

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EU carbon prices bounced back above €15 on Friday to claw back much of the previous day’s heavy losses, combining with weaker German power to knock generator profit margins to their lowest in at least a decade.