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All Tesla Supercharger stations to be solar powered, says Musk
Frydenberg’s coal call to right wing: Trust me, this won’t hurt at all (honk!)
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Finkel report falls short of Paris commitment: Di Natale
Across Dartmoor on horseback: Country diary 50 years ago
Originally published in the Guardian on 17 June 1967
DARTMOOR: The best way to see the country of the high moorland is, I am now convinced, from horseback. A docile eight-year-old mare carried me for three hours over Holne Moor and along the thickly wooded valley of the Dart and provided a morning of great delight. Early in the ride, descending from the moor to the river valley, we started a buzzard from the heather. The bird rose into the air and crossed the valley in gracious soaring and gliding. The silhouette of the buzzard is particularly appropriate to its function as a bird of prey – a menacing dark brown shape with broad wings upturned at the tips. Its loud mewing call which echoed in the confined valley was an eerie warning to small creatures on the ground.
Related: Dilemma on the moor: The truth about pony slaughter on Dartmoor
Continue reading...With particles, size really matters
Engineers call them nano-particles, and close to congested roads and busy airports, we inhale them in astonishing numbers
In 1996, the Scottish scientist Anthony Seaton put forward a new theory about the health problems from modern air pollution. Throughout our evolution, we have always lived with dusts, but Seaton suggested that the problems from modern air pollution were due to the sheer number of tiny pollution particles that we are now exposed to.
Related: Time for the oil industry to snuff out its flares
Continue reading...The eco guide to prison labour
The world’s biggest companies, from Starbucks to Victoria’s Secret, use prisoners to work on their products. Is it helpful work experience or sheer exploitation?
We are all, at heart, ethical consumers. I’ve never met anyone actively looking for a dose of slave labour with their teabags, window frames or underwear.
71% of companies surveyed in 2015 believed their supply chains might contain some form of slavery
Continue reading...Salmon farmers ‘put wild fish at risk’ in fight to kill off sea lice
Salmon farmers have been accused of playing dirty by using fish caught in the wild to clean lice from Scottish fish farms. Marine conservation experts say that shipping tonnes of English-caught wrasse a year – to tackle lice infestations in salmon pens north of the border – is endangering natural stocks. English anglers have also warned wrasse is becoming harder and harder to find in local waters.
However, salmon farmers have rejected the charge. They say the use of wrasse as a “cleaner” fish is part of a long-term plan to replace chemicals – which are currently administered to pens to control lice infestations – with sustainable, biological controls.
Continue reading...A goat's dream job?
All the colours of the machair
South Uist The dominant hue will change gradually, as first one then another wildflower species comes to the fore on land left to lie fallow
The continuation of traditional crofting methods ensures that the island’s machair is still celebrated for the spectacular profusion of wildflowers that occurs in the summer. Yellows, whites, purples and blues are all present, though the dominant hue will change gradually, as first one then another species comes to the fore on the land left to lie fallow. But where, after their period of rest, different areas are put back under cultivation, there are other changes in colour.
This spring the grassland down at the end of the track that reaches the sea came under the plough, its green replaced by an expanse of pale open ground. Stretches of machair ready for planting are nothing like prepared fields seen elsewhere in Britain.
Continue reading...Beached whale on New South Wales coast to be euthanised
Marine mammal experts make ‘really tough decision’ after rough sea conditions hinder rescue attempts
• Australian volunteers help keep animal breathing – video
A juvenile humpback whale that has been beached on the New South Wales mid-north coast for more than a day will be euthanised.
Rough sea conditions had put a hold on attempts to rescue the whale on Sataurday.
Finkel’s canny energy blueprint has a fundamental flaw
Ominous signs for Larson C ice shelf
Vagrant, immigrant, stopover, stay
Understory: a life with trees
The greening of Singapore
The greening of Singapore
A Big Country June 10, 2017
Renewable power boost, climate denial and spiders – green news roundup
The week’s top environment news stories and green events. If you are not already receiving this roundup, sign up here to get the briefing delivered to your inbox
Continue reading...The week in wildlife – in pictures
A stalking tiger, playful long-eared owl chicks and a rare dormouse are among this week’s pick of images from the natural world
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