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Jaguar charges ahead with all-electric I-PACE
Labor proposes first renewable energy zone in north west Tasmania
Should Victoria adopt an electric vehicle target?
Country diary: walkers light up the hills to mend mountains
Great Ridge, Peak District: Momentum builds like a wave, and in a thrilling, spine-shivering moment, a glittering ribbon sparkles into being along the ridge
I reach the top of Mam Tor, out of breath, as the sun is dropping behind the bulk of Kinder Scout and dying in a great flare of scattered orange.
It is quarter past nine on a Tuesday night, but the top of the peak is a throng of activity; dozens of people are milling around the summit and marvelling at the sunset, unfazed by a biting wind. I squint into the east, and can faintly make out the dots of hundreds more people trailing into the distance.
Continue reading...Record year for solar and renewables, but still not fast enough
Tesla owners roll out Australia-wide charging network – for all EVs
Know your NEM: Why a business customer might buy a battery
Renewable Energy Market Report: Mission accomplished?
How to inspect a nuclear energy site
Margaret Atwood: 'If the ocean dies, so do we'
New Zealand's productivity commission charts course to low-emission future
Don't turn to the military to solve the climate-change crisis
Warning about conflicts, wars and mass migration is the wrong way to approach things
The Australian Senate’s declaration last month that climate change is a “current and existential national security risk” was clearly intended to inject much-needed urgency into the country’s climate policy stalemate. Bringing together the unusual bedfellows of military generals and environmentalists to warn about the dangers of climate change, it has the possibility to break though Australia’s culture wars on the issue. However, by framing climate change as a security matter, it also has significant consequences in shaping how we respond to a warming planet. As the climate crisis unfolds, is the military the institution we want to turn to for solutions?
Letters: Sir Richard Body had a strong sense of history
Giles Oakley writes: On the one occasion I met the Tory MP Sir Richard Body he made a great impression. In 1987 I was interviewing him for a BBC2 Open Space documentary entitled Aggro Chemicals presented by self-taught scientist and campaigning organic dairy farmer Mark Purdey.
Sir Richard supported Mark in his principled refusal to comply with a Ministry of Agriculture order to apply an organic phosphate-based compound on his cattle to prevent a hypothetical infestation of warble fly. Mark, preferring his own organic treatment, took the matter all the way to the high court, and won.
Continue reading...Farming and humanity versus the environment | Letters
One fundamental point has been overlooked by Kevin Rushby in his article about the plight of the countryside due to agriculture (The killing fields, G2, 31 May). There has been no intensification of agriculture in the UK for 25 years.
Government statistics show pesticide and fertiliser use has been significantly reduced. There are fewer crops grown and the numbers of pigs, sheep and cattle have fallen. So to point the finger at farming as the cause of environmental degradation through intensification makes no sense, especially when you consider the other changes that have taken place in that time – increased housebuilding, more roads, and more cars on those roads – and the impact they have had on the country’s landscape.
Continue reading...What was the fallout from Fukushima?
Shunichi Yamashita knows a lot of about the health effects of radiation. But he is a pariah in his home country of Japan, because he insists on telling those evacuated after the 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident that the hazards are much less than they suppose. Could he be right?
Yamashita was born in Nagasaki in 1952, seven years after the world’s second atomic weapon obliterated much of the city. “My mother was 16 years old when the bomb dropped and she was two miles away,” he told me at his office in the city, where he still lives with his mother, who is now 88.
Continue reading...Rewilding success stories
In May, Dutch and Romanian European bison reintroduction programmes were declared successful after several years of conservation efforts. The Dutch project began back in 2007; the wild cattle had been extinct in that region for two centuries. Now, though, both national parks in question are reaping great environmental benefits from the bisons’ grazing, with a consequent flourishing of flora and fauna.
Continue reading...Eerie silence falls on Shetland cliffs that once echoed to seabirds’ cries
Sumburgh Head lies at the southern tip of mainland Shetland. This dramatic 100-metre-high rocky spur, crowned with a lighthouse built by Robert Louis Stevenson’s grandfather, has a reputation for being one of the biggest and most accessible seabird colonies in Britain.
Thousands of puffins, guillemots, razorbills, kittiwakes and fulmars gather there every spring to breed, covering almost every square inch of rock or grass with teeming, screeching birds and their young.
Continue reading...When the sweet turns sour: Queensland split between sugar and solar
As solar farms spread across the central agricultural regions of the sunshine state, opponents are becoming increasingly vocal
Colin Ash has spent a working lifetime in the cane fields near the Pioneer River in central Queensland, out past Marian, where the mill has processed sugar for more than 130 years.
“You can’t get sentimental about things,” he says from the front seat of his truck as he drives slowly around the boundary of his property. “You’ve got to pay your bills.”
Continue reading...Whale dies from eating more than 80 plastic bags
Pilot whale was found barely alive in Thai canal and vomited up five bags during fruitless rescue attempts
A whale has died in southern Thailand after swallowing more than 80 plastic bags, with rescuers failing to nurse the mammal back to health.
The small male pilot whale was found barely alive in a canal near the border with Malaysia, the country’s department of marine and coastal resources said.
Continue reading...Bairnsdale's bat battle – photo essay
A 10-year fight between a group of residents and the East Gippsland shire council over grey-headed flying foxes is heating up again
The Australian town of Bairnsdale in Victoria – 300km east of Melbourne – is known as the gateway to east Gippsland’s natural wonders. It is also the scene of a 10-year battle between a group of residents and the East Gippsland shire council over a colony of grey-headed flying foxes that roost along the town’s Mitchell River.
In 2014, the council received federal government approval to clear critical habitat in a three-stage process, the first occurring in 2015. The debate is now heating up in the approach of stage-two clearing, which the council intends to complete by the end of 2018.
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