Feed aggregator

Waltham Forest’s new zero-emissions delivery service aims to replace polluting trucks for local deliveries of food, online purchases and more

Each morning Oscar Godoy unlocks a door in a railway arch in north London, organises the day’s deliveries, and assigns jobs to his cargo bike riders. They manoeuvre the hefty bikes from the narrow lane out on to the road, past assorted vehicles from the MOT garage, the car wash and vehicle repair outfits at either end.

In the afternoons Godoy does the deliveries himself. Two weeks after the scheme’s launch he heads out, on an electric trike with a large white metal box across its rear axle, filled with the day’s first consignment from a local organic vegetable box scheme.

Continue reading...

Australian Museum teams up with IBM to monitor the country’s native frog population by having their calls recorded

The Australian Museum has teamed up with IBM to count the country’s native frog population via a world-first app that records their calls and sends them to experts for identification.

App FrogID will give the public the chance to carry out Australia’s first such national count, which begins on Friday and is intended to support researchers’ efforts to save endangered native species. Australia has 240 named native species of frog, but the museum wants to identify what it believes are dozens more still ribbiting under the radar.

Continue reading...

BHP has distanced itself from moves to strip environment groups of their tax deductibility status. Why does the Big Australian see value in defending them? Samantha Hepburn, Director of the Centre for Energy and Natural Resources Law, Deakin Law School, Deakin University Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

ESB chair Kerry Schott says it will be up to the states to act if they want higher emissions targets.

Schott says NEG modelling assumes "low end" of wind and solar costs, defying recent evidence. But ESB did admit there is much work to do on policy, dispatchability had yet to be defined, new coal unlikely to get a look in, and states free to pursue own targets.

A mock-up image of a new coal plant has been created, as part of the increasingly intense campaign to have one built – and funded by taxpayers – in north Queensland.

Boilers of old Northern coal fired generator brought down, bringing end of coal era in South Australia and paving way for huge investment in renewables and storage.

For decades, there was a ceiling not of glass but of ice, holding women back from doing research in Antarctica.

More than half of England's secondary schools did not offer the subject in 2015-16, a report has found.

Climate change remains the biggest global health threat of the 21st Century, yet Medibank has remained invested in coal, oil and gas companies that fuel the problem.

Energy debate in Australia seems overly focused on supply side of the market - it should look more closely at demand.

US car makers will suffer if President Trump eases emissions standards, California's governor says.

At COP 23 talks in Bonn, Fiji has called on developed nations to help the world’s most vulnerable build resilience to climate change

To prepare for the rising temperatures, strengthening storms and higher sea levels in the coming decades, Fiji must spend an amount equivalent to its entire yearly gross domestic product over the next 10 years, according to the first comprehensive assessment of the small island nation’s vulnerability to climate change, compiled by its government with the assistance of the World Bank.

Released half-way through the COP23 in Bonn, which Fiji is presiding over, the report highlights five major interventions and 125 further actions that it says are necessary to achieve Fiji’s development objectives, while facing the potentially devastating impacts of climate change. Combined those actions would cost about US$4.5bn over the next decade.

Continue reading...

Some remote Australian communities have access to drinking water for only nine hours a day but can use ten times the average of urban households. Cara Beal, Senior research fellow, Griffith University Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

September's Maria storm disrupts the international competition to find innovative ways to map the seafloor.

A giant otter that roamed China six million years ago had a surprisingly strong bite, say scientists.

The nation’s bees welcomed the news that Britain backing a Europe-wide ban on insect-harming pesticides

Continue reading...

Donald Trump has pulled the US out of the Paris accord – but other Americans are standing with the world to help fight the ‘existential crisis’ of global warming

Deep schisms in the US over climate change are on show at the UN climate talks in Bonn – where two sharply different visions of America’s role in addressing dangerous global warming have been put forward to the world.

Donald Trump’s decision to pull the US out of the Paris climate agreement has created a vacuum into which dozens of state, city and business leaders have leapt, with the aim of convincing other countries at the international summit that the administration is out of kilter with the American people.

Continue reading...

Subsidy-free plant would cover 900 acres of farmland near Great Expectations marshes at Faversham, dwarfing output of UK’s current largest solar site

An enormous solar power station is planned for the north Kent coast that would be the UK’s biggest and dwarf existing solar farms, providing a significant boost to an industry that has stalled since ministers halted subsidies 18 months ago.

Cleve Hill, a mile from the historic town of Faversham, would have five times the capacity of the UK’s current largest solar farm and provide enough power for around 110,000 households if it comes online in 2020 as proposed.

Continue reading...

An extended ban on controversial neonicotinoid pesticides will be supported by the UK, Michael Gove says.