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Deadliest plastics: bags and packaging biggest marine life killers, study finds
Wide-ranging review finds whales, dolphins, turtles and seabirds at mortal risk from marine debris
Plastic bags and flexible packaging are the deadliest plastic items in the ocean, killing wildlife including whales, dolphins, turtles and seabirds around the globe, according to a review of hundreds of scientific articles.
Discarded fishing line and nets as well as latex gloves and balloons were also found to be disproportionately lethal when compared with other ocean debris that animals mistakenly eat.
Continue reading...New generation of Good Lifers set out to grow their own Christmas
Homegrown veg and even turkeys are on the menu for people converted to self-sufficiency during lockdown
It’s hard to reuse a chocolate advent calendar, but for Maya Levy it’s one of the best parts of Christmas.
“It’s really cool – it’s in the shape of a gingerbread house. You melt the chocolate and wrap it in some foil,” she said. Each chocolate parcel goes into tiny wooden drawers in the advent calendar – one element of the 24-year-old marine biologist’s attempts to have an entirely sustainable Christmas.
Continue reading...Where's the beef with a greener future that also makes us happier and healthier?
The Committee on Climate Change has shown that decarbonising is not only affordable but highly desirable
Few crises come with a users’ manual. The government’s official climate advisers, the Committee on Climate Change, have come close, however, with a new 1,000-page tome setting out a blueprint for how Britain can decarbonise its economy and cut emissions to virtually zero by 2050.
The committee’s green manifesto, published last week, brings to heel the two most pervasive myths that climate deniers have set to stalk Britain’s climate ambitions. The first is a menacing right-wing imagining of economic hardship in which the “eye-watering costs” of green investment collide with a slowdown in productivity and growth. This is a fallacy easily disproved.
Continue reading...Having kids increases global warming. But don’t blame the parents…
When world leaders get serious about reducing carbon emissions, we can raise families determined to improve the planet’s future
When I had my daughter I felt like the first person to have a baby; now I’ve had my son, I feel like I might be the last. An academic study into how young people factor climate change into their reproductive choices makes for dark reading, with 96% “very or extremely” concerned about their potential children in a climate-changed world. For some the concern is so severe they’ve decided not to have children at all. “I can’t in good conscience bring a child into this world and force them to try to survive what may be apocalyptic conditions,” one 27-year-old woman said.
More shocking even, were the 6% of parents who confessed to feeling remorse about having children. One 42-year-old father painted a Goya-like picture of his children’s adult life, “a hot-house hell, with wars over limited resources, collapsing civilisation, failing agriculture, rising seas, melting glaciers, starvation, droughts, floods, mudslides and widespread devastation”. After reading this, I put the kettle on and had a small cup of tea and waited until my hands stopped shaking. Bloody hell. Literally, bloody hell. Man, I feel for that dad, singing his children to sleep before curling up on the landing and rocking, slowly. As well as pressing upon one of my archipelago of dready bruises, his quote made me consider the intellectual compromises required in order to have a baby.
Continue reading...Western Power seeks another 50MW of battery storage for WA’s main grid
Western Power seeks another 50MW of battery storage to avoid network costs and boost penetration of renewables in WA's main grid.
The post Western Power seeks another 50MW of battery storage for WA’s main grid appeared first on RenewEconomy.
World is in danger of missing Paris climate target, summit is warned
Minister tells more than 80 world leaders that not enough is being done
The world is still not on track to fulfil the 2015 Paris climate agreement, the UK’s business secretary Alok Sharma warned, after a summit of more than 70 world leaders on the climate crisis ended with few new commitments on greenhouse gas emissions.
Sharma said: “[People] will ask ‘Have we done enough to put the world on track to limit warming to 1.5C and protect people and nature from the effects of climate change?’ We must be honest with ourselves – the answer to that is currently no.”
Continue reading...The end of coal? Why investors aren't buying the myth of the industry's 'renaissance'
At the world’s biggest coal export port in Newcastle, no China-bound ships are waiting or scheduled to load before Christmas
Three years ago, pictures of bulk carriers queued off the coast of Mackay in central Queensland were framed as evidence of a “renaissance” in the coal industry.
There were more than 70 coal ships in the offshore gridlock in December 2017. This year there are just 12 waiting – equalling a record low mark set at the height of the coronavirus pandemic.
Continue reading...Senior Carbon Consultant, Mott MacDonald – London
China announces modest rise in near-term climate ambitions, saves real work for later
UN chief António Guterres urges countries to declare climate emergencies – video
Every country should declare a state of climate emergency until the world has reached net-zero carbon emissions, the UN secretary general told a virtual summit of world leaders on Saturday. António Guterres said countries had a responsibility to young people to reduce and eliminate high-carbon activities after borrowing trillions to cushion the economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic
Continue reading...UN secretary general urges all countries to declare climate emergencies
António Guterres tells Climate Ambition Summit more must be done to hit net zero emissions
Governments around the world should all declare a state of climate emergency until the world has reached net zero CO2 emissions, the UN secretary general, António Guterres, has told a summit of world leaders.
At least 38 countries have already declared such a state of emergency, often owing to their vulnerability to the impacts of climate breakdown, which are already being felt.
Continue reading...'Let's do it together': Boris Johnson says climate protection will create jobs – video
Boris Johnson has said the UK is committed to reducing carbon emissions by 68% on 1990 levels, and encouraged countries around the world to work together on the climate emergency during the UN's climate ambition summit, which is being held virtually because of the coronavirus pandemic. The prime minister said his motivation was to save the environment and create new jobs
Continue reading...Climate Ambition Summit: UN chief musters world leaders to raise climate ambition
Scientists cheered by bowhead whale recovery despite Arctic warming
Biologists hail ‘one of the great conservation successes’ but species’ fate uncertain as warming rapidly transforms Arctic
In some rare good news from the top of the world, bowhead whale populations have rebounded and are nearing pre-commercial whaling numbers in US waters.
Related: US plans to protect thousands of miles of coral reefs in Pacific and Caribbean
Continue reading...Talk is cheap when it comes to climate action. Now the government must deliver | Matthew Pennycook
Despite Boris Johnson’s pledges, the UK is way off course on its path to zero emissions. It’s Labour’s job to force the issue
• Matthew Pennycook is shadow minister for climate change
The coronavirus pandemic and the jobs crisis it has precipitated are rightly consuming our immediate attention. Meanwhile, the climate and environment emergency has not gone away. These intersecting crises demand urgent and coordinated action.
When it comes to averting catastrophic global heating, the science is unequivocal: bold action is required, and it is required now. As the UN has warned, limiting warming to 1.5C requires “far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society” for which “the next few years are probably the most important in our history”.
Continue reading...In a nutshell: how the macadamia became a 'vulnerable' species
Australia’s nut trees have been added to the IUCN’s red list of threatened species as numbers in the wild dwindle
When Ian McConachie was growing up in postwar Queensland, his aunt had macadamia nut trees in her back yard. She told him that one day the trees would be famous. More than 70 years later she has been proved right – the Australian nut is a delicacy prized in kitchens around the world.
But this week the macadamia came to the world’s attention for another reason: Macadamia integrifolia, or the Queensland nut tree, was listed as vulnerable on the IUCN red list of threatened species “on account of its population size, suspected at potentially fewer than 1,000 mature individuals”. Its endangered relative, Macadamia ternifolia, has previously been listed on the IUCN red list of threatened plants, as the four macadamia species indigenous to Australia come under significant environmental pressure.
Continue reading...The NEM has been badly wounded, and the federal government has blood on its hands
The Federal government's lack of policy has destroyed significant functionality of the National Electricity Market, and there is a growing risk of disorderly coal closures.
The post The NEM has been badly wounded, and the federal government has blood on its hands appeared first on RenewEconomy.
CP Daily: Friday December 11, 2020
Climate change: UK to end aid for fossil fuel projects abroad
Space tourism: Virgin space plane set for first crewed flight
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