Around The Web

Kristin Mink approached Scott Pruitt in Washington DC while holding her son and listed reasons why he should resign

“Hi! I just wanted to urge you to resign,” schoolteacher Kristin Mink said as she approached Scott Pruitt at a Washington DC restaurant on Monday, apparently unfazed by Pruitt’s lunch partner and two security guards.

“This is my son,” Mink told the head of the US Environmental Protection Agency while holding her two-year-old in her arms.

Continue reading...

China has officially withdrawn its intention to participate in the UN’s CORSIA aviation offsetting scheme, Carbon Pulse has learned, dealing a massive blow to efforts to rein in the sector’s rising emissions.

It’s time to clean up agriculture and adopt a non-chemical farming policy, says Georgina Downs

So the head of Syngenta, the world’s biggest pesticide maker, urges the continued use of pesticides in agriculture (Pesticide maker says curbs would lead to food crisis in 10 years, 18 June). This is hardly breaking news. Can anybody really be surprised at such a stance from any of the companies that produce these chemicals when their primary concern is to protect profits and to keep pesticides being used.

Considering sales of pesticides in the UK each year are worth about £627m and the world pesticides industry has been valued at $58bn, this is very big business with powerful, vested interests.

Continue reading...

Power sector emissions in California surpassed 2017 levels over the first four months of the year, though fuel consumption for both gasoline and diesel fell simultaneously to possibly counteract the overall impact on cap-and-trade emissions.

China outlined new air pollution targets in its extended anti-air-pollution action plan on Tuesday, according to a State Council statement that includes restrictions on industrial projects in heavily polluted cities that would also curb greenhouse gas emissions.

A US project developer has introduced a new bundled offset product designed for voluntary market buyers looking for offsets “a little more tangible” than current offerings.

Legal bid argues UK is discriminating against next generation by failing to cut CO2 emissions fast enough.

Parliament looking at whether Australia’s regulations allow poached ivory and horns to be passed off as antiques

Australia’s failure to regulate the sale of elephant ivory and rhino horns could be contributing to the demise of the animals, a parliamentary committee has heard.

The committee is looking into the country’s regulations and whether they allow newly-poached ivory and horns to be passed off as antiques.

Continue reading...

British consumers eat chicken twice a week. Are large farms the only way forward?

Britain will need to build more mega-farms to keep it supplied with chicken, according to the head of the UK’s influential poultry lobby.

But the biggest threat to UK consumers, he believes, comes from cheap imported meat – “chlorinated chicken” – produced to lower standards as a result of post-Brexit trade deals.

Continue reading...

From $US1 billion invested in EV production, to its first concept car, EV company goes from tentative toddle to surefooted stride.

Only 40% of waterways surveyed were in a good ecological state – with England one of the worst offenders

The vast majority of Europe’s rivers, lakes and estuaries have failed to meet minimum ecological standards for habitat degradation and pollution, according to a damning new report.

Only 40% of surface water bodies surveyed by the European Environmental Agency (EEA) were found to be in a good ecological state, despite EU laws and biodiversity protocols.

Continue reading...

Abbott finally kills off idea that the NEG can be a political compromise. The choice for Malcolm Turnbull is reduced to capitulation or denial.

juwi has launched a Request for Proposal seeking to acquire large-scale solar projects from developers and landowners in New South Wales and Victoria.

Fortum has come up with a rocking new idea to showcase the clean and quiet face of electric vehicles, by asking passengers to sing along to tunes in return for a free ride in a shuttle.

If the NEG had a jointly agreed emissions reduction target it would provide certainty. But it doesn’t.

Raveningham, Norfolk: Soon my yellow shirt is smothered in tiny black dots, and across the field there must be millions of pollen beetles

“Just passionate about life” is how Jake Fiennes, manager at this Yare valley estate, defines his approach to his job. It is also the phrase he uses to dodge my question about whether he’s a farmer or an environmentalist. For him the two are inextricably fused.

After haring across the valley on his tipoff, I find him combining both roles as he contemplates a field of rape. The 10-hectare plot looks commonplace until I log into the cloud of birds swirling overhead. Had I been here earlier I’d have seen 500 but, as it is, many scores of swifts and house martins swarm above the field. Together they cruise down and spire through the top of the crop, threading and rethreading it in an orgy of hunting.

Continue reading...

Challenged in court three times by Donald Trump, Vattenfall's 93.2MW offshore wind farm is now sending power to the Scottish grid.

ARENA backs "green hydrogen" project in W.A. that will combine solar and battery storage and an electrolyser for a micro-grid trial.

Australia's Tritium installs 12 of its world-leading high power EV chargers on German autobahn, offering recharge almost as fast as filling up with petrol.

The production of renewable energy in Germany dashes to a new record output, providing more than 40 percent of the country's power supply in the first half of 2018.