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EU Market: EUAs claw back losses after weak auction, as weekly sale supply triples
Nova Scotia joins WCI to tap technical expertise
Millennials are making frozen food hot again, but can they stop killing everything else?
Frozen food is the latest industry millennials have been credited with saving. But it’s too late for gum, soap and thongs
Frozen food is super hot right now. According to David Palmer, an analyst at RBC Capital Markets, sales volumes have grown for the first time in five years. And millennials are largely responsible for this, spending 9% more per shopping trip for frozen foods last year than other groups, according to Reuters.
So why are millennials, a supposedly foodie generation, buying so many frozen meals? Well, largely because it’s convenient. “The average millennial doesn’t have time to make a full meal with fresh meat and produce, a Euromonitor analyst explained. “More and more they’re seeing these products as viable options.”
Continue reading...Almost half of Australian big business moving to renewables
Climate Council says capacity of firms to generate solar power has doubled in less than two years
Almost half of Australia’s large businesses are actively transitioning to cheaper renewable energy, including many going off the grid by building their own generators and battery storage, as power bills threaten their bottom line.
A new report by the Climate Council details the increased speed of a business-led transition to renewables as power bills have increased.
Continue reading...Investors urge fossil fuel firms to shun Trump's Arctic drilling plans
Oil extraction in Alaskan wilderness area would be an ‘irresponsible business decision’, trillion-dollar investors say
Investors managing more than $2.5tn have warned oil firms and banks to shun moves by the US president, Donald Trump, to open the Arctic national wildlife refuge (ANWR) to drilling.
Companies extracting oil and gas from the wilderness area in Alaska would face “enormous reputational risk and public backlash”, the investors say in a letter sent on Monday to 100 fossil fuel companies and the banks that finance them.
Continue reading...'Memory transplant' achieved in snails
'Memory transplant' achieved in snails
Portfolio Manager, South Pole – Amsterdam/London/Stockholm
Junior Portfolio Manager, South Pole – Amsterdam/London/Stockholm
Banning plastic bags can be a lifesaver | Brief letters
While “other East African nations are considering following suit” (Nairobi feels the force of world’s most draconian plastic bag ban, 26 April), Rwanda banned plastic bags in 2008. Plastic bags can trap pools of water which host mosquitos so their ban helps fight malaria.
Alex Morton
London
• In Saturday’s Feast Ottolenghi’s tamarind recipes all call for added sugar, honey or syrup. Meera Sodha adds two tablespoons of palm sugar to her aubergines. My old-fashioned Indian recipe books don’t add sugar at all. Even the Anna Jones lettuce recipes advise a method to make them “sweet”. Is this the way to address an obese nation?
Deborah van der Beek
Chippenham, Wiltshire
UK ups the ante on Galileo sat-nav project
First turbines from Silverton wind farm begin production
'My partner convinced me of the facts': readers on changing their opinion on climate change
We asked you to tell us about the time you crossed from one side of the debate to the other
I first thought it was fake as I used to watch Fox News with my family. In 2015 I met my partner Stephen who knew that the facts of climate change couldn’t be ignored. He took it upon himself to try to convince me. We started watching documentaries on the subject on Netflix. The first documentary that caught my attention was Cowspiracy directed by Kip Andersen and Keegan Kuhn. This documentary really hit home and I even wrote an essay on it. Then came What the Health by the same directors. After we watched the movie Stephen and I turned to an all plant-based diet. We have our ups and downs on staying true to our new lifestyle change, but we always keep in mind that for every burger we don’t eat that is 660 gallons of water that we are saving for others in need. I was lucky enough that Stephen took the time and saw that if I could see the issues I would see that the facts are true.
Interior official's meetings with Koch-linked ex-employer raise ethics queries
Douglas Domenech held meetings with Texas Public Policy Foundation, which was involved in suing the department
As allegations of ethics violations mount at the US Environmental Protection Agency, new evidence is raising ethics concerns about key Trump-administration appointees at the interior department.
Records reviewed by the Guardian and Pacific Standard show that a high-level interior official, Douglas Domenech, held meetings with a previous employer, the Koch-linked Texas Public Policy Foundation, while it was involved in legal action against the department.
Continue reading...Dipton opencast mine protesters dig in ahead of deadline
Local people and environmentalists have 16 working days left to stop the first spade going into the ground at a beauty spot in Co Durham
Four months after the UK government announced it was phasing out coal, campaigners are digging in to stop what they say will be the devastation of opencast mining at a beauty spot in the north-east of England.
Local people and environmentalists have 16 working days left to stop the first spade going into the ground on 71 hectares of grassland, fields and woods in the Pont valley, Co Durham.
Continue reading...California, battered by global warming’s weather whiplash, is fighting to stop it | Dana Nuccitelli
Hit by record droughts and rainfall and wildfires, California leads the way in tackling global warming
In 1988 – the same year Nasa’s James Hansen warned Congress about the threats posed by human-caused global warming – water expert Peter Gleick wrote about the wet and dry extremes that it would create for California:
California will get the worst of all possible worlds – more flooding in the winter, less available water in the summer.
Continue reading...Australia’s emissions rise for third straight year
If we can't recycle it, why not turn our waste plastic into fuel?
Almost too late to save ancient woodland - Country diary archive, 16 May 1968
16 May 1968 The planting of alien conifers and poplars is changing this superb example of primeval clay woodland out of all knowledge
Norfolk
I have just been revelling in the glories of one of Norfolk’s few remaining ancient woodlands, seated on glacial boulder clay almost exactly in the centre of the county. The Domesday record shows this wood to have been a notable one in 1088, when it afforded a pannage of acorns for a hundred pigs. Over the centuries its trees and plants of the undergrowth have transformed the stiff topsoil into a rich and friable mould and it is clear that the long-continued practice of coppicing hazels in association with standards of oak and ash has encouraged the development of an exceedingly rich and flourishing ground flora. Anemones, lilies of the valley, bluebells, wild strawberries and dog’s mercury dominate vast areas, with subsidiary colonies of yellow pimpernels, early purple orchids, woodruff, ramsons, primrose, wood spurge, bugle, enchanter’s nightshade, mountain speedwell, yellow archangel, wood sorrel, and the graceful wood millet grass. In a few places I came upon patches of Herb Paris where the ground was relatively moist in the valley of a little stream.
Queensland produces “how-to” guide for electric vehicle charging
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