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Greenpeace blockades IOI palm oil refinery in Rotterdam port
Protest follows report linking company’s suppliers in Indonesia to deforestation, forest fires and human rights abuses
Greenpeace activists have blockaded a palm oil refinery owned by IOI in the port of Rotterdam after a report linked the company’s third-party suppliers in Indonesia to deforestation, forest fires and human rights abuses, including child labour.
For seven hours on Tuesday, a felled tree barricaded the entrance to the Croklaan refinery, which processes palm oil mostly sourced from Indonesia and Malaysia.
Continue reading...Wind trumps gas: shale tanker unable to dock in Scotland due to weather
After days expensively moored awaiting party in its honour, Ineos ship carrying shale gas from US fails to make entrance
There are some things even a billionaire petrochemicals baron can’t control.
Jim Ratcliffe, the founder-chairman of Anglo-Swiss firm Ineos, had carefully choreographed the arrival of the company’s first shipment of shale gas from the US. Its planned arrival in Scotland was the culmination of a $2bn (£1.5bn) investment designed to make its loss-making Grangemouth plant profitable again, not to mention a high-profile platform to lobby publicly for Britain to launch a fracking revolution.
Continue reading...Toxic emissions surged after AGL acquired Bayswater coal-fired power plant
Federal government figures show sulphur dioxide, hydrochloric acid, fine particle pollution and mercury output rose steeply in 2014-15
Toxic emissions from the power plant that made AGL Australia’s largest carbon polluter surged in the year the gas company acquired it, commonwealth figures reveal.
Bayswater power station in New South Wales recorded double-digit rises in sulphur dioxide, hydrochloric acid, fine particle pollution and mercury output in 2014-15, according to the National Pollutant Inventory.
Continue reading...Materials programmed to shape shift
Total ban on ivory sales would endanger art | Letters
A singularly distinguished roster of scientists, and others, with an interest in wildlife conservation have signed a petition calling for Theresa May to impose a “total UK ban on ivory sales” (Conservationists and MPs call for a total UK ban on ivory sales, theguardian.com, 22 September), claiming that Andrea Leadsom’s announcement of a ban on post-1947 ivory “falls short of what is needed”. I beg to differ.
The entire community of art historians, curators, connoisseurs and collectors unequivocally supports the preservation of endangered species. But by the same token it can be said with confidence that bona fide, pre-1947 works of art documented by Cites (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species) made of or incorporating ivory have no impact whatsoever on the thirst for modern tusks and trinkets: these are two utterly separate issues.
Continue reading...First 'three person baby' born using new method
Elon Musk outlines Mars colony vision
Do you live in an area where proposed fracking is condemned by your council?
If you live in an area where your council is opposed to fracking, we’d like to hear from you. Get in touch below
Within the next fortnight, the government will decide whether to accept shale company Cuadrilla’s appeal against Lancashire county council’s decision last year to turn down its application for two fracking sites.
Related: Bid to drill shale wells in Nottinghamshire 'should get green light'
Continue reading...Bid to drill shale wells in Nottinghamshire 'should get green light'
Officials say IGas application to drill two wells at Springs Road, former cold war missile launch site, should be approved
A planning application to drill two exploratory shale gas wells at a former cold war missile launch site in north Nottinghamshire should go ahead, officials have said.
In a report hundreds of pages long, planning officers for Nottinghamshire county council said the bid by shale company IGas to drill at Springs Road, Misson, should be granted.
Continue reading...Brexit ‘could trigger’ UK departure from nuclear energy treaty
The UK’s withdrawal from the EU could also force it to exit the Euratom treaty on nuclear energy, ENDS has learned
The UK’s withdrawal from the EU could also force it to exit the Euratom Treaty on nuclear energy, ENDS has learned.
The Euratom Treaty, which applies to all EU member states, seeks to promote nuclear safety standards, investment and research within the bloc. Although it is governed by EU institutions, it has retained a separate legal identity since its adoption in 1957.
Continue reading...Chester Zoo releases footage of rare giant jumping rat
Shale gas ban 'would cement decline of UK manufacturing'
As Ineos takes first shale gas shipment from US, its CEO Jim Ratcliffe says without fracking UK manufacturing’s future is ‘gloomy’
The billionaire hoping to become Britain’s biggest fracker has said banning shale gas would cement the decline of UK manufacturing, as he brushed off environmental concerns about the hotly disputed energy source.
Speaking as his petrochemicals firm Ineos took delivery of the first ever shipment of shale gas from the US, Jim Ratcliffe addressed Labour’s announcement that it would ban fracking, which he insists could create jobs in some of the party’s former industrial heartlands.
Continue reading...Why does the Europa water plume matter?
China accused of defying its own ban on breeding tigers to profit from body parts
Beijing faces pressure at global summit to close 200 farms where tigers are bred for luxury goods and end its obstructive tactics
China has been accused of deceiving the international community by allowing a network of farms to breed thousands of captive tigers for the sale of their body parts, in breach of their own longstanding ban on the trade.
The Chinese government has allowed about 200 specialist farms to hold an estimated 6,000 tigers for slaughter, before their skins are sold as decoration and their bones are marinated to produce tonics and lotions. Campaigners say this has increased demand for the products and provoked the poaching of thousands of wild tigers, whose global population is now down to just 3,500.
Revealed: how senior Laos officials cut deals with animal traffickers
Evidence obtained by the Guardian shows how treasury coffers swelled with 2% tax on trades worth up to $45m including tigers, rhinos and elephants
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Officials at the highest level of an Asian government have been helping wildlife criminals smuggle millions of dollars worth of endangered species through their territory, the Guardian can reveal.
In an apparent breach of current national and international law, for more than a decade the office of the prime minister of Laos has cut deals with three leading traffickers to move hundreds of tonnes of wildlife through selected border crossings.
Can the aviation industry finally clean up its emissions?
With biofuel potential limited and emissions rising, the need for industry to act is urgent. Hopes rest on a global UN carbon offset scheme to be negotiated at the ICAO summit this week - but critics remain unconvinced
When a South Africa Airways scheduled flight flew from Johannesburg to Cape Town last month, it carried nearly 300 passengers.
Neither the passengers or the pilots would have noticed any difference between that flight and any other.
Continue reading...CITES species body rejects process for ivory sales
Proteins from 'deep time' found in ostrich eggshell
Great Barrier Reef: Unesco pushes for tree-clearing controls
UN agency recognises ‘importance of strengthening our vegetation protection laws’, Queensland’s Jackie Trad says
Unesco has acknowledged the importance of stymied tree-clearing controls in Queensland to efforts to protect the Great Barrier Reef, according to the state’s deputy premier, Jackie Trad.
Trad has emerged from a meeting in Paris with a Unesco official, Fanny Douvere, to declare the state Labor government would restore clearing controls, one of its “key commitments” to the reef, if it won another term of office.
Continue reading...China tops WHO list for deadly outdoor air pollution
More than 1 million people died from dirty air in one year, according to World Health Organisation
China is the world’s deadliest country for outdoor air pollution, according to analysis by the World Health Organisation (WHO).
The UN agency has previously warned that tiny particulates from cars, power plants and other sources are killing 3 million people worldwide each year.
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