The Guardian
Race to exploit the world’s seabed set to wreak havoc on marine life
The scaly-foot snail is one of Earth’s strangest creatures. It lives more than 2,300 metres below the surface of the sea on a trio of deep-sea hydrothermal vents at the bottom of the Indian Ocean. Here it has evolved a remarkable form of protection against the crushing, grim conditions found at these Stygian depths. It grows a shell made of iron.
Discovered in 1999, the multi-layered iron sulphide armour of Chrysomallon squamiferum – which measures a few centimetres in diameter – has already attracted the interest of the US defence department, whose scientists are now studying its genes in a bid to discover how it grows its own metal armour.
Continue reading...Cacao not gold: ‘chocolate trees’ offer future to Amazon tribes
In Brazil’s largest indigenous reserve thousands of saplings have been planted as an alternative to profits from illegal gold mining
The villagers walk down the grassy landing strip, past the wooden hut housing the health post and into the thick forest, pointing out the seedlings they planted along the way. For these Ye’kwana indigenous men, the skinny saplings, less than a metre high, aren’t just baby cacao trees but green shoots of hope in a land scarred by the violence, pollution and destruction wrought by illegal gold prospecting. That hope is chocolate.
Continue reading...'Kids are taking the streets': climate activists plan avalanche of events as 2020 election looms
Young demonstrators aim to make the climate crisis a central issue of the presidential campaign
Organizers in the youth climate movement plan an avalanche of activities beginning next week, determined to make the future of the climate the major issue of the 2020 election.
Capitalizing on turnout in the September climate strikes, when 6 million people worldwide turned out to demand urgent action to address the escalating ecological emergency, young US organizers are making the leap from mobilization to demands. They’re planning widespread voter activation in the 2020 US presidential election as well as direct action targeting the fossil fuel industry and the banks and politicians that enable it.
Continue reading...Aerial footage reveals feral horse crisis in burnt-out Kosciuszko national park – video
New aerial footage from Kosciuszko national park reveals horrific fire damage to the landscape. There are also fears that the huge number of feral horses that remain are pushing bushfire-affected threatened species closer to extinction. 'The horses are destroying the refuges of the endangered plants and animals in the mountains', says Prof Jamie Pittock from the Australian National University. 'It's a crisis because the fire has burnt a lot of the habitats and we need to protect what remains'
Continue reading...Ministers doing little to achieve 2050 emissions target, say top scientists
Experts call for sweeping policy changes and warn against Heathrow expansion
Expanding Heathrow airport is unlikely to be compatible with the UK’s target of net zero carbon emissions by 2050, leading scientists have said, adding that government policies are lacking in many other key areas from home insulation and transport to carbon capturing.
Achieving the net zero goal will require sweeping policy changes, but scientists are concerned that little has so far been forthcoming from ministers.
Continue reading...The week in wildlife – in pictures
The pick of the best flora and fauna photos from around the world, including white-tailed eagles and a detained lion cub
Continue reading...Billions of locusts swarm through Kenya - in pictures
Huge locust swarms in east Africa are the result of extreme weather swings and could prove catastrophic for a region still reeling from drought and deadly floods. Dense clouds of the ravenous insects have spread from Ethiopia and Somalia into Kenya, in the region’s worse infestation in decades
Continue reading...‘Something is wrong’: MEPs say EU is failing on the regulation of live animal exports
Regulation breaches and fewer, larger slaughterhouses have led to growing numbers of animals travelling further to slaughter
The live animal export trade has ballooned in Europe while the commission fails to enforce its own regulations, MEPs have told the Guardian.
A second attempt to set up an inquiry committee to look into the handling of the problem is now underway, after an earlier proposal was dismissed in 2018.
Continue reading...High risk of injuries in Denmark's live piglet export trade, audit warns
Cheaper labour and welfare costs have driven animal exports from Denmark to Poland, but critics fear corners are being cut
The Danish government has been labelled “unsatisfactory” and “ineffective” in an audit of its ballooning piglet trade published today.
In 2008 3.2 million live pigs were exported from Denmark; by 2018 that number had risen to 9.6 million. But the government continued to carry out just 100 checks a year up until 2018, according to the audit, with just 0.4% of transports being checked.
Continue reading...Fracking protester's sentence reduced by court of appeal
Judges say greater leniency should be shown in cases of non-violent civil disobedience
A fracking protester’s sentence has been reduced by the court of appeal, which said greater leniency should be shown in convictions for non-violent civil disobedience.
Katrina Lawrie, 41, was found guilty of contempt of court in June last year for breaching an injunction that banned trespassers blocking access to the energy firm Cuadrilla’s site on Preston New Road in Lancashire.
Continue reading...Ants run secret farms on English oak trees, photographer discovers
Brown ants herd and milk giant pale aphids, building barns for them from beetle exoskeleton
Britain has a new farmed animal, which is kept in barns, milked and moved between high and low pastures – but not by humans.
The giant pale aphid, Stomaphis wojciechowskii, has lived undiscovered for thousands of years on English oak trees, where it has been looked after by brown ants.
Continue reading...Greta Thunberg at Davos: 'Our demands have been completely ignored' – video
Greta Thunberg says the World Economic Forum has completely ignored the climate movement’s demands on fossil fuel divestment this week.
The 17-year-old activist also said that Steven Mnuchin’s comments that she should go to college and study economics had 'no effect' on her
Zero-carbon hydrogen injected into gas grid for first time in groundbreaking UK trial
Blend of hydrogen and natural gas is being used to heat homes and faculty buildings at Keele University
Zero-carbon hydrogen has been injected into a UK gas network for the first time in a groundbreaking trial that could help to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
The 20% hydrogen and natural gas blend is being used to heat 100 homes and 30 faculty buildings at Keele University in Staffordshire. Unlike natural gas, when hydrogen is burned it produces heat and water as opposed to carbon dioxide.
Continue reading...‘Hypocrisy’: 90% of UK-Africa summit’s energy deals were in fossil fuels
Exclusive: Almost £2bn went to oil and gas despite a UK pledge to support cleaner energy in African countries
More than 90% of the £2bn in energy deals struck at this week’s UK-Africa investment summit were for fossil fuels, despite a government commitment to “support African countries in their transition to cleaner energy”.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson opened the summit on Monday, citing the climate emergency: “We all breathe the same air, we live beneath the same sky, and we all suffer when carbon emissions rise and the planet warms.”
Continue reading...‘Blatant manipulation’: Trump administration exploited wildfire science to promote logging
Revealed: emails show Trump and appointees tried to craft a narrative that forest protection efforts are responsible for wildfires
Political appointees at the interior department have sought to play up climate pollution from California wildfires while downplaying emissions from fossil fuels as a way of promoting more logging in the nation’s forests, internal emails obtained by the Guardian reveal.
The messaging plan was crafted in support of Donald Trump’s pro-industry arguments for harvesting more timber in California, which he says would thin forests and prevent fires – a point experts refute.
Continue reading...David Attenborough to appear at citizens' climate assembly
People from across Britain will join TV host to discuss ways to cut emissions to zero by 2050
Sir David Attenborough will address members of the public who are taking part in the UK’s first climate assembly this weekend.
The TV presenter and naturalist will appear in Birmingham, where the 110 members are meeting to address how to reduce emissions to zero by 2050, to thank them for taking part.
Continue reading...Air-filtering bus to launch across six regions in the UK
Nitrogen oxide emissions from Bluestar bus, trialled in Southampton, are less than a diesel car
An air-filtering bus which removes pollutants from city streets while it operates is to be rolled out into six regions of the UK following a successful trial.
The bus, trialled since 2018 in Southampton, is fitted with fans on the roof that draw in air at a rate of one cubic metre per second and filter out ultra-fine particulate pollution.
Continue reading...UK households waste 4.5m tonnes of food each year
Report reveals total has fallen 7% in last three years, but says much more still needs to be done
Total food waste in the UK has fallen by the equivalent of 7% per person over the past three years, but individual households should still be doing more to reduce the 4.5m tonnes of food waste, the government’s waste advisory body has warned.
The volume of food waste generated in the retail supply chain, the hospitality sector, and in homes stood at 9.5m tonnes in 2018, down from 10m tonnes in 2015 and 11.2m in 2007, according to a detailed study from the Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP).
Continue reading...Country diary: could alder wood wasps be breathing new life into an old friend?
Abbeydale, South Yorkshire: A much-loved tree may have gone, but dozens of small holes drilled up its trunk make me think a new chapter is about to begin
When Jim died, we decided, having talked it through with the neighbours, to leave him where he was in the garden. Our friend had been good to us in life and there was no reason to assume that would change. Jim was a tree, a common alder, although given that alders are monoecious, or hermaphroditic, not the most appropriate moniker. He, or she, was named by our daughter Rosa, who often spent afternoons after school in Jim’s boughs, hugging the fissured grey trunk, as rough as an elephant. But despite being a similar age, with a similar lifespan, the alder didn’t long survive Rosa leaving home. Over several springs, its leaves became increasingly sparse and failed to unfurl properly. An orange stain appeared in cracks at the base of the trunk. Small branches began dying off, then larger ones. Last year Jim gave up the ghost altogether, a victim to alder dieback, the Phytophthora mould infection that is ravaging alders up and down the country.
Related: Country diary: a chainsaw massacre in the alder woods
Continue reading...Lyrebird may join threatened species, as scale of bird habitat lost to bushfires emerges
Exclusive: Almost 80 species across Australia have lost more than a third of their habitat in the catastrophic fires, preliminary data suggests
The superb lyrebird, famous for its ability to mimic almost any sound, may have plunged from being a common to a threatened species after its three varieties lost between a third and more than half of their known habitat in the bushfire crisis.
A preliminary analysis by Birdlife Australia found that both the central and northern superb lyrebirds, located in NSW and southern Queensland, were likely to have had more than 50% of their habitat affected by fire. The southern superb lyrebird, from Victoria and southern NSW, is estimated to have had 34% of where it lives burned.
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