The Guardian
Canadian oil firm pulls out of national park in Peru's Amazon
Pacific abandons one million hectare concession including indigenous peoples’ territories along Brazil border
A Canadian-headquartered company, Pacific Exploration and Production, has pulled out of a huge oil and gas concession overlapping a new national park in the Peruvian Amazon. The concession, Lot 135, includes approximately 40% of the Sierra del Divisor national park established in 2015.
The concession has provoked opposition in Peru and just across the border in Brazil for many years, including regular statements since 2009 from indigenous Matsés people in both countries and a lawsuit recently filed by regional indigenous federation ORPIO. Both Lot 135 and the park overlap territory used by the Matsés and a proposed reserve for indigenous people living in “isolation.”
Hundreds of thousands join March for Science rallies across the world
More than 600 marches took place around the world in events that coincided with Earth Day, with organizers saying science is ‘under attack’ from Trump
Hundreds of thousands of climate researchers, oceanographers, bird watchers and other supporters of science rallied in marches around the world on Saturday, in an attempt to bolster scientists’ increasingly precarious status with politicians.
The main March for Science event was held in Washington DC, where organizers made plans for up to 150,000 people to flock to the national mall. Marchers held a range of signs, some of them attacking Donald Trump, depicting the president as an ostrich with his head in the sand or bearing the words “What do Trump and atoms have in common? They make up everything.”
Continue reading...Thousands rally around the world for ‘March for Science’ – video
Thousands of people gathered in demonstrations across the globe for the ‘March for Science’ on Saturday, in a rebuke of Donald Trump’s dismissal of climate science and his attempts to cut large areas of scientific research. People congregated in cities such as London, Sydney and Berlin, with more than 600 marches planned across the US, Europe, South America and Australia
Continue reading...Christian Earth Day lessons: worship by protectiong creation | Paul Douglas
Climate change is a global pro-life issue
Readers of this column know that I tend to focus on breaking science in the climate and energy areas. Sometimes, I stray into politics and other times, I venture further afield. Today, on Earth Day, I was reflecting on best ways to move real action forward and it is clear to me, and almost everyone in this industry, that building bridges between like-minded groups is key.
Frankly, it isn’t just scientists that are concerned about climate change. Our concerns are shared by business leaders, the insurance industry, defense industries, people who enjoy the outdoors, farmers, and many more. Recently, there has been a movement amongst persons of faith as well. In fact, for some people of faith, taking care of the Earth is a mandate from a higher authority. In this light, and to celebrate a very different voice form my own, the following is a guest post by a well-known meteorologist in the USA, Paul Douglas. It turns out he is also a man of faith as well as a business leader. Thanks Paul.
Continue reading...The ice stupas of Ladakh: solving water crisis in the high desert of Himalaya
An ingenious idea to build artificial glaciers at lower altitudes using pipes, gravity and night temperatures could transform an arid landscape into an oasis
The idea crystallised in his mind one morning as Sonam Wangchuk was crossing a bridge in the Indian Himalayas.
The engineer from Ladakh, in the Jammu region of north India, was already a famous problem solver: a Bollywood film loosely based on his life had grossed a billion rupees in its first four days.
Continue reading...Nearly 40 million people live in UK areas with illegal air pollution
Exclusive: analysis commissioned by Labour reveals 59% of Britons live in areas where diesel pollution threatens health
Nearly 40 million people in the UK are living in areas where illegal levels of air pollution from diesel vehicles risk damaging their health, according to analysis commissioned by the Labour party.
The extent of the air pollution crisis nationally is exposed in the data which shows 59% of the population are living in towns and cities where nitrogen dioxide (NO2) pollution breaches the lawful level of 40 microgrammes per cubic metre of air.
Continue reading...Earth Day 2017: ‘The experts are fighting back’
‘An exuberant rite of spring” is how the New York Times described 22 April, 1970. In Manhattan, and across America, “huge, light-hearted throngs ambled down autoless streets.” Earth Day had been born, an outburst of protest – and revelry – that involved everyone from save-the-whales activists to opponents of new freeways. Denis Hayes, now 72, was the man tasked with organising it. “What we did was pull together an event that told all of those people, ‘You know you’ve really got something in common and this should be one big movement where we’re supportive of one another’.”
It sparked, he tells me, the most profound change in American society since the New Deal. “We now have different kinds of buildings, different kinds of automobiles, different planes, different lighting, different land use. People are choosing to have diets for environmental reasons, choosing to have one child for environmental reasons.” And all that, he says, “didn’t come from political leadership at the top, it came from a bunch of demands down at the grassroots”.
Continue reading...Chris Packham: ‘Sometimes the best way to make a change is to make trouble’
The TV presenter accused of assaulting hunters killing migratory birds in Malta says it’s time for committed environmental activism
We decided to go to Malta because we were fed up with the inactivity from NGOs about the endless trapping and killing of migratory birds there.
We first went four years ago, then started to go annually to liaise with the Committee Against Bird Slaughter. It is an incredible organisation that attracts volunteers from all over Europe. When we first went, we put a video report online every evening showing what was happening – a daily diary detailing the killing of birds – and we got an enormous amount of press for this.
Continue reading...Three glorious hours cut off by the tide
Foulney Island, Morecambe Bay This shingle spit provides winter quarters for thousands of eider ducks
The rising tide fetched with it slews of blue sky. As I walked the causeway jumble of rocks, the sea slopped gently below. I was about to be cut off for three glorious hours on Foulney Island.
Saltmarsh metamorphosed into momentary lagoons. Dozens of curlew settled, probed, then lifted at the water’s ingress. Due west could be seen Piel Island, its castle all turrets and crumbling towers like an old battleship, halfway to the flattened sliver of Walney Island. Beyond that, windfarms.
Continue reading...Tory failure to deliver pollution action plan angers environmentalists
Ministers submit court application to delay tackling illegal levels of toxic fumes, deemed by MPs to be a public health emergency
The government has made a last-minute application to the high court to delay the publication of its plan to tackle the air pollution crisis.
Ministers were under a court direction to produce tougher draft measures to tackle illegal levels of nitrogen dioxide pollution, which is largely caused by diesel traffic, by 4pm on Monday. The government’s original plans had been dismissed by judges as so poor as to be unlawful.
Continue reading...'Uber for bikes' comes to Cambridge – if you can find it
China’s popular dockless cycle share schemes allow riders to drop their bike wherever they want. Ofo is the first to launch in the UK - but what will our rider make of it?
Ofo, one of a host of Chinese start-ups hoping to do for bikes what Uber did for taxis, has chosen Cambridge for its first foray into Europe, a trial of which launched without fanfare this week.
Chinese cities have seen hundreds of thousands of these ‘dockless’ bikes hit its streets, that now have tens of millions of regular users.
Continue reading...The week in wildlife – in pictures
Sharks at night, a feeding vampire bat and California’s wildflower super bloom are among this week’s pick of images from the natural world
Continue reading...Environmental charities allowed to challenge changes to court cost rules
High court judge has agreed to limit RSPB, ClientEarth and FoE’s costs liabilities to £10,000 in their action against the Ministry of Justice’s changes to costs cap
Three environmental charities have been given permission to challenge court regulations which they say make it too financially risky to bring cases over air pollution standards or the expansion of Heathrow airport.
A high court judge has agreed to limit costs liabilities of the RSPB, ClientEarth and Friends of the Earth to £10,000 in their action against the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) which introduced the new rules earlier this year.
Continue reading...Britain set for first coal-free day since Industrial Revolution
National Grid expects the UK to reach coal energy ‘watershed’ on Friday in what will also be the country’s first 24-hour coal-free period
The UK is set to have its first ever working day without coal power generation since the Industrial Revolution, according to the National Grid.
The control room tweeted the predicted milestone on Friday, adding that it is also set to be the first 24-hour coal-free period in Britain.
Continue reading...David Attenborough’s ‘Guardian headline’ halts Borneo bridge
Conservationist denounced Sukau project as a threat to pygmy elephants and orangutans
Officials in Borneo have cancelled plans to build a bridge across the Kinabatangan river, after warnings from Sir David Attenborough and other conservationists that it would gravely endanger pygmy elephants, orangutans and many other jungle species. The news comes just weeks after the Guardian revealed Attenborough’s opposition to the project.
Attenborough originally sent a private letter to the chief minister of the state of Sabah, Musa Aman, in September 2016. Last month, with signs pointing to the bridge still going ahead, the Guardian published excerpts from the letter. The authorities in Borneo have described Attenborough’s now-public opposition as the final blow to the project.
Continue reading...Plunged into a soundscape of rich noise
Stanage, Derbyshire Listening to moorland might illustrate its health just as well as looking at it does
The eastern horizon was a pale streak capped with pink, but it was still dark at Hollin Bank car park and I could barely make out Bill Gordon’s face as he waited. Bill is a volunteer for the Eastern Moors Partnership, monitoring ring ouzels, the mountain blackbird. To record their calls, he was carrying an impressive-looking microphone on a pole with a “dead-cat” windshield, rather cosy on a frosty April morning.
We had barely walked a few yards when, without a word, he pushed his headphones over my ears. It was a moment of complete transformation. From peering at the tenebrous moors, I was plunged suddenly into a soundscape at its zenith, its high noon, a matrix of rich, vital noise. To my right, I could hear a pair of snipe chipping away and, from all around, with a measure of distance between each, the looping voices of curlew. Just ahead of me, on steep scrubby ground, the wren that had sounded so thin and distant became gigantic, all lungs.
Green Investment Bank sell-off: only time will tell how green it is
The government has secured green ‘commitments’ after the £2.3bn sale. In reality it has secured only ‘good intentions’
The charge that Macquarie is a ruthless asset-stripper that, given half a chance, would dismember the Green Investment Bank clearly stung. As the government unveiled the inevitable sale, for £2.3bn, to a consortium led by the Australian finance house, all sides were anxious to emphasise the buyer’s long-term enthusiasm for its new purchase.
GIB will survive as a discrete entity in Edinburgh. Macquarie will throw a few of its own assets – a couple of windfarms and a waste and biomass plant – into the mix for it to manage. It will report on progress in honouring GIB’s green investment principles. It will aim to invest £1bn a year in green energy projects, more than the £700m-ish that GIB was achieving via taxpayer funding. “We look forward to seeing these commitments from Macquarie delivered, in full, in the months and years ahead,” said Lord Smith of Kelvin, GIB’s chair.
Continue reading...Chris Packham jostled by hunter on Gozo, Malta – video report
Chris Packham has released the video that shows his encounter with a Maltese hunter and police on the island of Gozo, after being cleared of charges of assault by a Maltese judge on Thursday. The video shows Packham filming with his crew before being accosted by the hunter and police, leading to the incident. The judge threw out the case and criticised the police for the charge. Packham has said he will not press charges
Continue reading...Green Investment Bank sell-off dubbed a disaster by critics
Greenpeace says £2.3bn sale to controversial Australian bank Maquarie risks climate targets while Lib Dems says bank was sold too fast and too cheap
The UK government’s decision to sell the Green Investment Bank to Australian bank Macquarie for £2.3bn has been attacked by critics including the Liberal Democrats and Greenpeace as “politically dubious” and a “disaster”.
A consortium led by Macquarie, which also includes the bank’s European Infrastructure Fund 5 and the Universities Superannuation Scheme, a UK pension scheme for university professors, agreed to buy the GIB, established in 2012 by the coalition government to fund green infrastructure projects.
Continue reading...It's good to hear cycling to work reduces your risk of dying. But that's not why I do it | Laura Laker
The latest study on the health benefits of cycling suggests it can cut the risk of cancer and heart disease. It’s also the most fun you can have on your daily commute
It may not be a surprise to see another study suggesting that cycling to work can drastically reduce your chances of getting cancer and heart disease – those who ride bikes for transport already know how good it makes them feel. However, it’s perhaps yet another motivation for those who don’t, to dust off their bikes – and remember some other reasons cycling to work is so great.
In a five-year study of 263,450 UK commuters, published in the BMJ, researchers at Glasgow University found regular cycling cut the risk of death from any cause by 41%, and the incidence of cancer and heart disease by 45% and 46% respectively.
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