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When it comes to saving the planet, we need to play dirty
Dirt is good, environmentalists are telling us. Fine by me. Let’s start by not doing so much washing
Don’t rinse your plates before putting them in the dishwasher,” said Boris Johnson’s spokesperson, and then I sank to my knees. This wetness on my face, was it tears? I was shaking, and laughing, my hands reaching skywards in raw and screaming thanks, as I learned finally, how to save the world.
To my left, the city was flooding, cars wading through the dark water of drowned streets, and over there the path was littered with the corpses of bees, and in the distance fossil fuel companies were merrily going about their days responsible for over a third of all greenhouse gas emissions while billionaires popped to space for the afternoon. But here, on my kitchen floor, I was weeping with thanks. I can make a difference, I whispered, hoarse now, holding my ketchupped plate aloft. The future is mine!
Continue reading...Wind and solar to get taste of freedom as new syncons join the grid
Limits on output of wind and solar to be relaxed as the first of a fleet of spinning machines called synchronous condensers join the grid.
The post Wind and solar to get taste of freedom as new syncons join the grid appeared first on RenewEconomy.
Allegra Stratton leads by example in saving the world… she doesn’t fancy it just yet | Catherine Bennett
‘I don’t fancy it just yet,” said Allegra Stratton, the No 10 press secretary turned prime minister’s climate spokesperson, when she was asked about getting an electric car. She preferred her old diesel, thank you.
If this was merely the most memorable in a series of suboptimal comments from the person hired to communicate the urgency of Cop26, the climate summit, you couldn’t fault it as a summary of Boris Johnson’s position on decisive climate action. He doesn’t fancy it just yet.
Continue reading...In the darkness and dust: memorial recalls the hard history of British mining
The sculpture, to be unveiled next month, will celebrate the courageous contribution of pit workers to our industrial heritage
They toiled far underground in dark, cramped and dangerous conditions, emerging at the end of their shifts caked in coal dust and often gasping for air.
Towns grew up around the collieries; boys followed their fathers and grandfathers down the pit. In the 19th century, women and children were among the nation’s coal workers. But by the end of the 20th century, miners had mostly been consigned to the post-industrial scrap heap as pit after pit shut down.
Continue reading...Climate change: Time running out to stop catastrophe - Alok Sharma
Climate change: Low-income countries 'can't keep up' with impacts
Dixie fire: eight missing in largest single wildfire in California history
Judge demands information from PG&E utility as investigators seek cause of blaze spanning 698 sq miles
At least eight people were missing on Saturday as what has become the largest single wildfire in California’s recorded history continued to scorch through northern communities, forest and tinder-dry scrub in the Sierra Nevada mountains.
People in the scenic region were already facing a weekend of fear as the huge Dixie fire threatened to reduce thousands of homes to ashes.
Continue reading...Attorney general’s department advised Coalition Toondah Harbour development could breach wetlands convention
Josh Frydenberg’s office allowed proposed Queensland development to go to assessment despite legal advice it was ‘unacceptable’
The Coalition government decided a controversial apartment complex and marina proposed for Queensland’s Moreton Bay should proceed to the next stage of the assessment process, despite legal advice from the federal attorney general’s department warning it was unacceptable because of the risk it posed to internationally listed wetlands.
The government was advised that a development inside the Ramsar site could put Australia in breach of its international obligations before Josh Frydenberg, who was environment minister at the time, recommended his department proceed with an assessment of the Walker Corporation’s long-proposed Toondah Harbour.
Continue reading...‘We are going to lose these birds’: the quiet fight to save the golden-shouldered parrot
Nearly a century after the extinction of the paradise parrot, a tiny team is trying to protect its cousin – by using land clearing
In 1922, Cyril Jerrard captured the first and only photographs of the paradise parrot, the only Australian bird to be officially declared extinct since European colonisation. Jerrard was well aware he was looking at one of the last of its kind: “The one undisguisable fact [is] that the advent of the white man has spelled destruction to one of the loveliest of the native birds of this country,” he wrote in 1924.
The last accepted sighting of a paradise parrot – also by Jerrard – was in 1927, near Gayndah in the Burnett River district of southern Queensland.
Continue reading...Lockdown job losses are not as bad this year, but that’s cold comfort to Australians put to the test again | Greg Jericho
NSW is now the worst performing state for the first time in the pandemic, with nearly 210,000 jobs gone in just three weeks
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By all economic indicators the current lockdowns are nowhere near as damaging as those last year and yet that small comfort is small indeed, as this week millions of Australians are again put to the test.
Last week’s payroll job numbers showed a sharp drop in the first three weeks of July. Jobs fell 2.6% across the nation, with every state recording falls.
Continue reading...Get a grip: government censured for gaffe after gaffe in run-up to Cop26
Alok Sharma’s air miles made the headlines, but missteps by his colleagues may be more damaging to the crucial talks in Glasgow
Alok Sharma stepped off the plane from Brazil on Friday, the latest stop in a punishing travel schedule that has taken him to 30 countries in seven months, and into the eye of a media storm.
“The height of hypocrisy,” screamed the Daily Mail’s headline, slamming the UK president-designate of the Cop26 UN climate talks, to be hosted in Glasgow in October and November. Sharma’s crime? No quarantines, having taken advantage of the rare exemptions offered to ministers, and 200,000 air miles in the pursuit of climate diplomacy.
Continue reading...We’re on the brink of catastrophe, warns Tory climate chief
Cop26 meeting is last chance, says Alok Sharma as he backs UK’s plan for new oil and gas fields
The world will soon face “catastrophe” from climate breakdown if urgent action is not taken, the British president of vital UN climate talks has warned.
Alok Sharma, the UK minister in charge of the Cop26 talks to be held in Glasgow this November, told the Observer that the consequences of failure would be “catastrophic”: “I don’t think there’s any other word for it. You’re seeing on a daily basis what is happening across the world. Last year was the hottest on record, the last decade the hottest decade on record.”
Continue reading...‘Greece has burned’: thousands flee Athens suburb as wildfire spreads – video
Thousands of people were forced to flee Thrakomakedones, a suburb of the Greek capital, after strong winds spread wildfires that burned down homes.
More than 50 wildfires are burning across Greece as the worst heatwave in more than 30 years has hit the country.
Tens of thousands of acres of forestland, homes and buildings have been destroyed and the prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, has promised a radical shift in the country's approach to the climate emergency.
Continue reading...Study reveals effects of extreme heat on tens of millions of Americans
Research shows more than a quarter of US population suffered ill health last summer, and it’s likely to get worse
The summer of 2020 brought fear of Covid-19, social distancing – and heat-related health problems that affects tens of millions of Americans.
Related: Last month was worst July for wildfires on record, say scientists
Continue reading...Climate change: New report will highlight 'stark reality' of warming
Queensland crocodile attack: two army personnel mauled north of Lockhart River
Soldier in his 20s, who was swimming in croc-infested waters, and friend who went to help, suffer serious injuries
A soldier has head, chest and arm injuries after being mauled by a crocodile that also attacked an army colleague who went to his aid in far north Queensland.
The men, who were reportedly swimming in croc-infested waters north of the Lockhart River on Friday afternoon when the attack occurred, have been airlifted to Cairns with serious injuries.
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