Feed aggregator

One patient who lost movement in her hand can now use it to scroll on a smartphone.

Labor says it will phase out the practice by 2028 – 10 years after it first announced the policy. But farm advocates say the timeline is ‘radical’

• Sign up for the Rural Network email newsletter
• Join the Rural Network group on Facebook to be part of the community

One of the great contrasts that has struck me on city visits is the rise of dog culture.

Massive pet warehouses with owners and their dogs waiting outside to buy dog clothes, fancy food, treats, leads, collars, beds, blankets and booties. That is before they are taken to the doggy dentist on the way to doggy daycare or down to the doggy park for a doggy dalliance or perhaps a posh puppuccino.

Sign up to receive Guardian Australia’s fortnightly Rural Network email newsletter

Continue reading...

Scientists say discovery may be linked to decades-long decline in sperm counts in men around the world

Microplastics have been found in human testicles, with researchers saying the discovery might be linked to declining sperm counts in men.

The scientists tested 23 human testes, as well as 47 testes from pet dogs. They found microplastic pollution in every sample.

Continue reading...

Oil giant Saudi Aramco and a US-based direct air capture (DAC) developer unveiled a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) Friday intended to advance the nascent carbon removal (CDR) technology.

A London and New York-based carbon removal standard and registry has hired two carbon removal (CDR) experts to expand their science leadership team, the company announced on Monday.

Queensland maintains Australia’s best regulatory framework for carbon markets and project developers and the Northern Territory the worst, although all jurisdictions have room for improvement, according to an annual survey released Tuesday.

The market in use-of-proceeds and key performance (KPI)-linked sustainability bonds will play a massive role in global mitigation efforts, according to a senior researcher at a large financial ratings firm.

More than 216,000 fish died in 2022-2023, when England recorded a 54% increase in sewage spills

Mass deaths of fish in England’s rivers have increased almost tenfold since 2020, with fears sewage pollution is exterminating life in the country’s waterways.

Environment Agency (EA) data from the past four years shows an alarming rise in the number of fish deaths linked to sewage pollution, with figures escalating from 26,690 in 2020-2021 to 216,135 in 2023-2024.

Continue reading...

Verra has suspended the registry account of the troubled Rimba Raya voluntary carbon project in Indonesia, it announced Monday, plunging the future of the giant REDD activity into doubt.

The federal government of Nigeria has collaborated with an African carbon offset project developer to distribute 80 million clean cookstoves throughout the West African nation that have been fully financed by voluntary carbon credits.

An EU-commissioned survey on biodiversity credits has received less than a third of the expected responses, Carbon Pulse has learned, with the consulting group responsible for the study calling for increased participation to finalise it and present the findings at this year's COP16 UN biodiversity summit.

EU carbon prices soared on Monday morning, driven by a combination of rising demand for fossil power as onshore wind levels dropped sharply, and some speculative buying, while UKAs rose to a four-month high above a key psychological level as speculators and thermal generators also bought.

Japan has passed its carbon capture and storage (CCS), but the amounts planned by the nation for domestic storage are dwarfed by its larger emissions profile and lack of proper geological storage space, while a report Monday outlined benefits of a large-scale CCS industry in Australia potentially taking a far greater portion.

The European Union should step up its efforts to promote international carbon trading, with removal credits “an obvious candidate” to join a potential “positive list” of carbon projects that could be allowed in the EU ETS, a former top official has argued.

One of China's largest cities has given the green light to a methodology for seagrass bed restoration, as regional governments in the country are seeking to unlock the potential of blue carbon.

These spaces are crucial for our wellbeing, but cash-strapped councils are being forced to treat them as revenue earners

My local green space, Brockwell Park in Brixton and Herne Hill, south London, is an oasis of calm in the busy city. Friends catch up in the walled garden, where wisteria trails over pillars and roses and bluebells explode from the earth. In the community garden, local people work together to grow vegetables and run sessions to connect nature-deprived children to the land.

In the centre of the sometimes crushing metropolis, this park means everything to me – it keeps me sane, and it gives me hope. But this green lifeline is, every summer, taken away, as I await the arrival of the park’s music festival season with dread. As huge metal walls go up, dividing us from the green, and HGVs begin flattening the grass and soil, I feel a genuine sense of horror. A large part of the park is cut off for weeks, and our community’s heart is pulled out as people stream into events whose expensive tickets most people living round here could never afford. And the same is happening in shared green spaces all over the UK.

Rebecca Tamás is a writer of environmental nonfiction and a poet. Her most recent book is Strangers: Essays on the Human and Nonhuman

Continue reading...

The Clean Energy Regulator (CER) has pressed company executives with facilities covered under the Safeguard Mechanism to invest in research, development, and deployment of technology to cut emissions at source as soon as possible, warning that relying on carbon credits alone will not be sufficient.

Five years after her last companion died and the aquarium’s owner pledged to free her, Bella still languishes in a tiny tank amid shops

In the heart of Seoul, amid the luxury shops at the foot of the world’s sixth-tallest skyscraper, a lone beluga whale named Bella swims aimlessly in a tiny, lifeless tank, where she has been trapped for a decade.

Her plight is urgent, with campaigners racing to rescue her from the bare tank in a glitzy shopping centre in South Korea’s capital before it is too late.

Continue reading...

Native forest logging was meant to be over in Victoria. Why are the chainsaws still going? David Lindenmayer, Professor, Fenner School of Environment and Society, Australian National University Chris Taylor, Research Fellow, Fenner School of Environment and Society, Australian National University Kita Ashman, Visiting fellow, Australian National University Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

The price for NZUs sunk by around 15% on Monday as the market continued to react poorly to the government's consultation on the ETS released last week.