Feed aggregator

Theresa May is being warned not to use scientists and academics as pawns in negotiations over Brexit.

The next head of the UN global climate talks calls on the US to save Pacific islands from global warming.

For more than three decades, this man has spent hundreds of hours each year with his forehead pressed to a plane window counting birds. It's one of the longest running and largest wildlife surveys on the planet.

The Obama administration bans offshore drilling in the Arctic but Donald Trump could rip up the ban.

It’s easy to get lost in the old Moroccan medina – just as disorientating as the UN climate process, where emission-cutting goals are being bartered too

Marrakech has an ancient heart — centuries old and unafraid to show it — and it has all the ingredients needed to disorientate an outsider. You get lost, often.

Lanes in the centuries-old medina are narrow and the walls are high, making it impossible to spot a landmark and get a fix on where you are.

Continue reading...

Should we only eat meat we kill ourselves?

Rising sea levels and upstream dams threaten the long term viability of the Mekong Delta, but there is a plan to save it.

Five years after the last rabbit was killed, endangered birds such as the black-browed albatross are growing in numbers

Eight species of threatened seabird have begun to recover on Macquarie Island, signalling a possible end to 130 years of death and destruction on the sub-Antarctic outpost.

The island has been formally declared pest-free, five years after the last rabbit was killed.

Continue reading...

US Department of the Interior says ‘fragile and unique’ Arctic ecosystem at risk if drilling allowed, possibly by pro-fossil fuels Trump administration

Barack Obama’s administration has ruled out drilling for oil and gas in the pristine Arctic Ocean, throwing up a last-ditch barrier to the pro-fossil fuels agenda of incoming president Donald Trump.

The US Department of the Interior said that the “fragile and unique” Arctic ecosystem would face “significant risks” if drilling were allowed in the Chukchi or Beaufort Seas, which lie off Alaska. It added that the high costs of exploration, combined with a low oil price, would probably deter fossil fuel companies anyway.

Continue reading...

Bangladesh and Ethiopia among 48 countries to pledge tougher carbon targets and a switch to 100% renewable energy

Some of the world’s poorest countries have pledged to dramatically cut their carbon emissions and rapidly move to 100% renewable power, as the UN climate summit in Marrakech drew to a close on Friday.

The announcement followed a final declaration by nearly 200 nations affirming their “highest political commitment” to combatting climate change, in a thinly-coded warning to the incoming US president, Donald Trump.

Continue reading...

The survival of elephants depends on what humans do now. Join us on Tuesday 22 November from 1-2.30pm to discuss how to save this threatened species

3.56pm GMT

We know that elephant populations are collapsing at a frightening rate and that the driving forces behind this collapse are a global appetite for ivory and, just as worryingly, human/elephant conflict for space and resources.

Earlier this year, the world’s governments agreed to recommend the closure of domestic ivory markets. This is a serious step towards the eventual complete shutting down of the ivory trade, but now new questions are arising:

Continue reading...

Representatives from 47 of the world's most disadvantaged nations have promised that they will generate all their future energy needs from renewables.

From tractor beams to warp drive, sci-fi has inspired serious real-life research.

Members of the critically endangered species are cared for and nursed back to health before their release at the Sumatran Orangutan Conservation Programme’s rehabilitation centre in Kuta Mbelin, North Sumatra, Indonesia

Continue reading...

A pheasant that sports Donald Trump’s hairdo, a line of baboons and a ‘teddy bear’ bee and among this week’s pick of images from the natural world

Continue reading...

Election of a climate sceptic as US president sparks outpouring of donations and a surge in planned protests and court challenges

The global green movement is preparing for the fight of its life against efforts by Donald Trump to rollback action on climate change, with a surge in fundraising, planned court challenges and a succession of protests.

Environmental activists said the election of a climate change denier as US president, along with the prospect of former vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin and various oil billionaires holding senior posts, has prompted an “outpouring” of donations.

Continue reading...

Policy Exchange paper argues government should stick with carbon price floor until coal is fully forced off the grid, reports BusinessGreen

Policy Exchange has become the latest organisation to call for the retention of the UK’s carbon price floor ahead of next week’s autumn statement, arguing changes to the policy would seriously undermine the government’s efforts to phase out coal power by 2025.

The influential thinktank joins the CBI and trade body Energy UK in arguing the levy should be kept in place, despite lobbying from some industry groups calling for it to be axed.

Continue reading...

Sometimes, a tune can say so much more than an image or words. Here, we turn almost 150 years of global temperatures into music. The higher the temperature, the higher the pitch of the note. And the louder the note, the more carbon there is in the atmosphere

Continue reading...

Oliver Duggan recounts the geographical, physical and mental rollercoaster of cycling 100 mountain passes in 10 days across southern France and Spain

The col de la Core is not a famous climb – in cycling, or any other sport. There are no champions’ names spray painted on the ground, no monuments at the top to riders past or present. It has no especially beautiful scenery or harsh gradients. It is a simple, two-lane road, and on a Saturday morning last month, it nearly killed me.

Continue reading...

Britain’s first ‘green gas mill’ will convert grass into biomethane to heat more than 4,000 homes and is set to come online in 2018

The grass is always greener than the gas on the other side, according to a British businessman who claims grasslands could provide enough gas to heat all of the UK’s homes.

Dale Vince, the chairman of renewable energy company Ecotricity, is investing £10m in the first of a generation of what he calls ‘green gas mills’ that he says could compete against gas from fracking.

Continue reading...