Feed aggregator

For generations they have lived on the ocean, diving and fishing, and rarely setting foot on land. But now these marine nomads risk destroying the reefs that sustain them

• In pictures: the last Bajau sea nomads

Diana Botutihe was born at sea. Now in her 50s, she has spent her entire life on boats that are typically just 5m long and 1.5m wide. She visits land only to trade fish for staples such as rice and water, and her boat is filled with the accoutrements of everyday living – jerry cans, blackened stockpots, plastic utensils, a kerosene lamp and a pair of pot plants.

Diana is one of the world's last marine nomads; a member of the Bajau ethnic group, a Malay people who have lived at sea for centuries, plying a tract of ocean between the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia. The origins of the Bajau diaspora are recounted in the legend of a princess from Johor, Malaysia, who was washed away in a flash flood. Her grief-stricken father ordered his subjects to depart, returning only when they'd found his daughter.

Continue reading...

Omar Aziz was hooked on crack for 13 years and stole bikes to feed his habit. He explains how to protect your bike from thieves

• How to stop your bike being stolen
• Will anything stop the bike thieves?

Omar Aziz started stealing bikes when he was 17 and carried on until he finally weaned himself off crack cocaine at the age of 29. Now he wants to make amends. He is volunteering in his local area and he agreed to advise Guardian readers how not to get their bikes stolen.

Aziz stole a lot of bikes to feed his habit: "When I sell one thing I go and buy my drugs, smoke it, when it finishes, I have to go and get more. I nick another bike," he said.

Continue reading...

Proposed legislation would allow state-owned Scottish Water to use vast landbank and pipe network for renewable energy projects

The state-owned utility Scottish Water is to be given new powers to build windfarms, hydro schemes and "green" power stations in partnership and competition with established energy companies.

The company, one of the country's last remaining state-owned firms, could generate £300m or more in extra revenues by using its 80,000 acres of land and vast pipe network for renewable energy projects.

Continue reading...

The Guardian's head of environment, Damian Carrington, and energy editor Terry Macalister look at BP's report into the Deepwater Horizon explosion on 20 April, which killed 11 workers and began America's biggest ever oil spill Continue reading...

When Mark Diacono started cultivating a West Country smallholding, he decided to let his taste buds call the shots. So it was out with the potatoes… and in with the cardoons, medlars and olives

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a bit of garden will plant it with potatoes, onions and carrots. Faced with a world of possibilities, a special madness takes over and we fill our precious patch with the cheapest, most widely available food we can think of. I did exactly the same the first year I grew anything. Never again. All those summer hours spent watering and weeding for a few sackfuls of maincrop veg was a good way of finding out what other interesting things I'd rather be doing. I wanted to grow some of what I ate, but this wasn't it.

The following year, in 2004, on our way back from our wedding party, we came to Otter Farm for the first time. I had my own business advising local authorities and government agencies about managing the landscape, but I had the urge to keep animals and to grow some veg and plant some trees at the same time, but that was as detailed as my mind had it. I certainly wasn't thinking of a business – just growing some of what my wife and I wanted to eat.

Continue reading...

With his new book, Danish scientist Bjørn Lomborg has become an unlikely advocate for huge investment in fighting global warming. But his answers are unlikely to satisfy all climate change campaigners

Few statisticians can have inspired more passion than Bjørn Lomborg, the Danish academic who became famous as the author of the controversial (some would say contrarian) Skeptical Environmentalist, which set him up as perhaps the world's best-known critic of the dominant scientific view of global warming and the ensuing climate change.

Continue reading...

The number of coal trucks suggest strains on China's energy supply that are equal to those on its transport system

It is not easy to wake a coal truck driver at 2am, but I had to do it at least twenty times last night to get home from the massive traffic jam on the border between Hebei and Inner Mongolia.

Several miles ahead, the roads had been cleared but the drivers had spent so long motionless that most of them had long since switched off their engines, turned off their headlamps and curled up in their cabs to sleep. We were stuck behind their snores.

Continue reading...

Common sense would suggest you'd be mad to cycle without brakes, but it can be done by skilled riders – although not legally

The odd emergency stop is an inescapable fact of life for the cyclist, which is why it seems odd to me that there are thousands of riders in the UK merrily cruising along without brakes. And they are breaking the law.

There are BMXs, often fitted with a freewheel and stopped with a trainer to the tyre, the braver subsection of fixed-gear riders and those whose bike is badly maintained to the point where there are no working brakes to speak of.

Continue reading...

Scientists warn that temperature rise of between 2C and 7C would cause ice to melt, resulting in 23ft rise in sea level

The entire ice mass of Greenland will disappear from the world map if temperatures rise by as little as 2C, with severe consequences for the rest of the world, a panel of scientists told Congress today.

Greenland shed its largest chunk of ice in nearly half a century last week, and faces an even grimmer future, according to Richard Alley, a geosciences professor at Pennsylvania State University

Continue reading...

Research suggests a boom in cycling among affluent 'mid-life crisis' men and car owners

Much has been written about a war between cyclists and drivers, as if the two groups were such polar opposites that they could never cross in a Venn diagram. But according to new research, people who cycle the most are likely to own at least two cars.

Regular cyclists – those who cycle at least once a week – are also disproportionately likely to read broadsheet newspapers, be well educated, have a household income of at least £50,000 per year and shop at Waitrose, claims the latest Mintel report, Bicycles in the UK 2010. In addition, they are twice as likely to be men as women.

Continue reading...

Darwin's name for the bee was replaced in the 20th century

Whatever happened to the humblebee, the old name for the bumblebee, asked Angus Doulton of Oxfordshire in a letter to the Guardian last week.

When Darwin, or indeed any of his contemporaries, wrote of the animated bundles of fluff, he would have called them humblebees. But they weren't humble in the sense of lowly beings doing the drudge work of nectar and pollen collecting; rather they would have been celebrated for the powerful evolutionary interaction with the flowers they had visited for millions of years. Darwin would have called them humblebees because, as they fly, they hum. Simple.

Continue reading...

Alarms and safety mechanisms on gulf disaster oil rig were disabled, chief technician at Transocean reveals

Vital warning systems on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig were switched off at the time of the explosion in order to spare workers being woken by false alarms, a federal investigation has heard.

The revelation that alarm systems on the rig at the centre of the disaster were disabled – and that key safety mechanisms had also consciously been switched off – came in testimony by a chief technician working for Transocean, the drilling company that owned the rig.

Continue reading...

Our competition giving common names to 10 rare UK species means we now have a cultural connection that will help their conservation cause

• Queen's executioner beetle wins species naming competition
• See the full list of winners

It's the most successful exercise in crowd-sourcing I've ever seen. We asked our readers to solve a problem, and they've done far more than that: they have created something beautiful.

The problem is this: it is hard to persuade people to care about something they can't pronounce. English species are disappearing at the rate of two a year. But many are vanishing unnoticed and unmourned by almost everyone, partly because we have no cultural connection to them. Scientific names, which are given in Latin or ancient Greek, are essential to proper classification, but to most people they are cold, incomprehensible and offputting.

Continue reading...

British tea drinkers consume millions of teabags every day yet the vast majority are only 70-80% biodegradable, consumer body warns

UK consumers get through millions of teabags every day to make their favourite drink yet the vast majority are not fully biodegradable, a consumer organisation warns today.

A report published today by Which? Gardening reveals that teabags produced by top tea manufacturers such as Tetley, PG Tips, Twinnings, Clipper and Typhoo are only between 70-80% biodegradable. As a result, gardeners are finding the net part of teabags - caused by the inclusion of heat-resistant polypropylene - left on their compost heaps.

Continue reading...

The banana is a strong candidate for the ultimate low-carbon food.

• More carbon footprints: nuclear war, a cappuccino, more
• Understand more about carbon footprints

Bananas are a great food for anyone who cares about their carbon footprint. For just 80g of CO2e you get a whole lot of nutrition: 140 calories as well as stacks of vitamin C, vitamin B6, potassium and dietary fibre. All in all, a fantastic component of a low-carbon diet.

Continue reading...

Britain's worst-ever oil spill in 1967 was handled disastrously, is still killing wildlife today – and contains many lessons for those dealing with the Deepwater Horizon tragedy

Flop flop flop. The sound of a bird's wings batting futilely against the gloopy blanket of black oil echoes across the quarry. Then there is silence. A pigeon has crashed into this dark pool, 100 metres from the turquoise sea on the west coast of Guernsey. It sinks within seconds, resurfaces for a final flap, then joins the other small carcasses lying face down in the swirls of black slime. Since 1967, this deadly, oil-filled crater on the Chouet headland has acquired a new name: Torrey Canyon quarry.

On the morning of Saturday 18 March 1967, the Torrey Canyon ran aground on Pollard's Rock between Land's End and the Isles of Scilly. Over the following days, every drop of the 119,328 tonnes of crude oil borne by this 300m-long supertanker seeped into the Atlantic. Thousands of tonnes despoiled the beaches of Cornwall – and thousands more were propelled by winds and currents across the channel towards France.

Continue reading...

Actress relishes public role in campaigns for alternative energy and against overfishing

Greta Scacchi is urging fellow stars to step up and campaign for causes they believe in, regardless of any criticism they may receive. The actress, who last year promoted End of the Line, an influential documentary about over-fishing, by posing nude with a cod, says that she is delighted to have found a useful public role.

"It suits me in my older age. I am able to use muscles now that I was not able to use before, and it is very heartening to find I am not just asked what I wash my face with these days," she said.

Continue reading...

Wildlife conservationists in Guatemala use Obsession for Men to lure jaguars to cameras in order to film them

It's advertised as the "pure essence of masculinity", a fragrance with a musky, sensual aroma that, by implication, women are bound to find irresistible. But what's not mentioned in the marketing is that Calvin Klein's Obsession for Men has also proved a hit with jaguars in the Guatemalan jungle.

Scientists are using the cologne to lure the elusive big cats to hidden cameras in the Maya biosphere reserve, a protected tropical rainforest spanning 8,100 sq miles, to help them record, monitor and protect the animals.

Continue reading...

Lesser consumption of animal products is necessary to save the world from the worst impacts of climate change, UN report says

A global shift towards a vegan diet is vital to save the world from hunger, fuel poverty and the worst impacts of climate change, a UN report said today.

As the global population surges towards a predicted 9.1 billion people by 2050, western tastes for diets rich in meat and dairy products are unsustainable, says the report from United Nations Environment Programme’s (UNEP) international panel of sustainable resource management.

Continue reading...

As National Vegetarian Week gets underway, is it reasonable to expect our pets to forego meat too?

• Sustainable fishing move could help your cat reduce its eco pawprint
• Britain's problem with pets: they're bad for the planet

This week is National Vegetarian Week, the annual celebration of all things vegetarian. Taking the veggie option has never been easier for people, but what about vegetarian pets?

Jonathan Safran Foer's recent polemic Eating Animals makes much of the contrast between our love for our pets and our complacency at the horrors of the factory farm and the abattoir. That contradiction is no more keenly felt than by the vegetarian dog or cat owner, supporting the meat industry they abhor every time they stock up on pet food.

Continue reading...