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Productivity Commission backs agriculture in NZ ETS, urges ramped-up carbon price
Space agencies intent on mission to return Mars rocks to Earth
Environmental Advisor, Ontario Power Generation – Oshawa
The missing maths: the human cost of fossil fuels | Ploy Achakulwisut
We should account for the costs of disease and death from fossil fuel pollution in climate change policies
While the climate policy world is littered with numbers, three of them have dominated recent discourse: 2, 1000, and 66.
At the 2015 U.N. climate summit in Paris, world leaders agreed to limit global warming below 2°C to avoid catastrophic impacts of human-caused climate change. The science consequently dictates that, for a 50% chance of staying below 2°C, around 1,000 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide (or 300 billion tonnes of carbon) can be emitted between now and 2050, and close to zero thereafter. We’re currently emitting 36 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide per year. However, the potential greenhouse gas emissions contained in known, extractable fossil fuel reserves are around three times higher than this carbon budget, meaning that 66% must be kept in the ground.
Continue reading...Democratic senators scrutinize Koch brothers' 'infiltration' of Trump team
Senators say Koch-linked figures are driving environmental policy, as résumés obtained by the Guardian and Documented show ties between staffers and network
Democratic senators are demanding information about what they call the Koch brothers’ “infiltration” of the Trump administration, charging that Koch-linked personnel have secured key federal jobs and are determining US environmental and public health policy.
The senators – including Sheldon Whitehouse, Edward Markey, Catherine Cortez Masto, Tom Udall, Ron Wyden and Elizabeth Warren – sent letters to eight government bodies and the White House requesting “information related to efforts by Charles and David Koch, Koch Industries, and the numerous groups they fund to influence decisions”.
Continue reading...Trump plan to tackle lead in drinking water criticized as 'empty exercise'
Sources within EPA tell Guardian that proposals are threadbare and muddled – ‘they’re are just making it up as they go along’
Donald Trump has overseen an onslaught against environmental regulations while insisting, in the wake of the Flint lead crisis, that he would ensure “crystal-clean water” for Americans.
The federal government says it is currently drawing up a new plan to tackle lead contamination, which the Environmental Protection Agency says will be unveiled in June.
Continue reading...EU Market: EUAs jump to 1-week high on massive auction premium
Whitley awards for nature conservation 2018 winners - in pictures
Six conservationists have been recognised for their work with local communities to protect threatened wildlife and habitat around the world. The prestigious awards, known as the ‘green Oscars’, are made annually by the Whitley Fund for Nature, and provide winners with funding to scale up their projects
Continue reading...Big Queensland business first to use Tesla Powerpack to go off-grid
'Guns, germs and trees' determine gorilla's fate
UK retailers 'will not suffer financial losses' from bottle deposit scheme
Analysis of a similar system in Norway shows no one will be out of pocket as long as bottles and cans are returned
Retailers will not suffer financial losses from the introduction of a plastic bottle deposit return scheme (DRS) in the UK, according to an analysis of a similar system in Norway.
The environment secretary, Michael Gove, has announced plans to launch a deposit system for bottles and cans in the UK, and MPs are due to debate the subject in parliament today.
Redflow seeks $18 million to scale up flow battery production
Who’s missing out on Australia’s rooftop solar boom?
Country diary: a predatory fish out of water
Sandy, Bedfordshire: There was something terrible about this pike, so strong and adept in open air, breaking loose from its watery domain to display a row of jagged teeth
The inflatable banana caught my eye again, drawing my attention from a stretch of riverside towpath that had been mined and undermined by rabbits, tunnelled by moles and pummelled into unevenness by the hooves of the Travellers’ horses that were long before left loose to run here.
It was on that same walk the day before that I’d first seen the metre-long, primrose-yellow plastic banana lodged in bankside vegetation, as clean and bright as the moment it had been laughed down a weir or launched on the water to see how fast this bent canoe would go. Did they wonder if their joke would carry to the sea, the open ocean? Did they think the river a sink that would wash it down the plug hole? Had they even heard of microplastics?
Continue reading...Changes to Horizon power board
Meet the latest event to achieve carbon neutral certification
'We're doomed': Mayer Hillman on the climate reality no one else will dare mention
The 86-year-old social scientist says accepting the impending end of most life on Earth might be the very thing needed to help us prolong it
“We’re doomed,” says Mayer Hillman with such a beaming smile that it takes a moment for the words to sink in. “The outcome is death, and it’s the end of most life on the planet because we’re so dependent on the burning of fossil fuels. There are no means of reversing the process which is melting the polar ice caps. And very few appear to be prepared to say so.”
Hillman, an 86-year-old social scientist and senior fellow emeritus of the Policy Studies Institute, does say so. His bleak forecast of the consequence of runaway climate change, he says without fanfare, is his “last will and testament”. His last intervention in public life. “I’m not going to write anymore because there’s nothing more that can be said,” he says when I first hear him speak to a stunned audience at the University of East Anglia late last year.
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