The Guardian
Fast food giants still 'failing' on chicken welfare, says report
Pizza Hut, Burger King and Domino’s are among UK outlets rated ‘very poor’ in report from leading animal charity
Customers of some of the UK’s biggest fast-food chains including Pizza Hut and Burger King may be eating meat that comes from chickens reared in poor conditions, claims a new report from a leading animal charity.
Amid growing concerns about the intensive and large-scale production of meat – with some birds growing so fast that they routinely suffer from lameness and skin lesions – World Animal Protection (WAP) has ranked eight of the leading brands according to their commitment, ambition and transparency to improve chicken welfare globally.
Continue reading...Climate emergency: 2019 was second hottest year on record
Last decade was also hottest yet in 150 years of measurements, say scientists
The year 2019 was the second hottest on record for the planet’s surface, according to latest research. The analyses reveal the scale of the climate crisis: both the past five years and the past decade are the hottest in 150 years.
The succession of records being broken year after year is “the drumbeat of the Anthropocene”, said one scientist, and is bringing increasingly severe storms, floods, droughts and wildfires.
Continue reading...Activists cheer BlackRock's landmark climate move but call for vigilance
Divestment decision by the world’s biggest fund manager called a breakthrough – but only a first step
In recent decades, environmentalists have grown used to disappointment when big companies and Wall Street pay lip service to concern over the climate crisis. On Tuesday, it looked like something might have changed.
The decision by the private equity giant BlackRock – the world’s biggest fund manager – to exit investments that “present a high sustainability-related risk” has been welcomed by environmentalists as a significant moment in the battle to reshape the relationship between money and the climate crisis.
Continue reading...A 25C wash is greenest – but can it really clean filthy clothes?
Clothes washed at 25C on a 30-minute cycle shed fewer microfibres into waste water and keep their colour for longer, researchers at the University of Leeds have found. This makes sense. After all, consumers have long been advised by detergent manufacturers and environmental organisations to turn down the dial on the washing machine to 30C. Dropping to 25C is a small adjustment, but possibly a greater psychological one: will clothes really be clean at that temperature, and on such a short cycle?
Lucy Cotton, the report’s lead author, explains that 25C is usually the “inlet” temperature of water in a washing machine – the natural, unchilled and unheated temperature at which the water enters the drum. Her research tested the release of dye and of microfibres from a range of consumer clothing, such as Fruit of the Loom T-shirts. However, the clothes were not dirty when they went into the wash, and only the release of microfibres and desorption of dye were measured. “We weren’t testing for cleanliness,” she says. “One of the things that is useful about this study is that it puts the onus on detergent manufacturers to explore this area. Can they make the cleanliness happen in a cold, quick wash?”
Continue reading...New Cumbria coalmine 'incompatible' with climate crisis goals
Facility threatens UK’s aim to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, report says
Britain’s first new deep coalmine in 30 years is unnecessary and incompatible with UK climate ambitions, according to a report.
The £165m Woodhouse colliery in Cumbria was given cross party-backing in March 2019, leading to protests from climate campaigners who said the mine would harm the UK’s efforts to reduce CO2 emissions.
Continue reading...Warming oceans force leatherback turtles on longer journeys to feed
Migration routes after nesting in French Guiana found extended as far as Nova Scotia and France, research shows
Leatherback turtles are making exhausting journeys, in some cases nearly twice as long as usual, from nesting to feeding grounds, because of rising ocean temperatures and changing sea currents.
After nesting, turtles must move to cooler waters to feed, but higher temperatures mean some are having to swim further to reach suitable areas, according to research from Greenpeace and the French Institut Pluridisciplinaire Hubert Curien, part of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique.
Continue reading...Disinformation on Australian bushfires should not be spread by ministers | Letter
We write as scientists alarmed that a minister has ignored scientific evidence, relying instead on grossly misleading social media sources. In the House of Commons on 9 January, Foreign and Commonwealth Office minister Heather Wheeler answered a question about the Australian bushfires by stating: “Very regrettably, it is widely reported on social media that 75% of the fires were started by arsonists.”
The claim that arson is a primary cause of this season’s bushfires has been comprehensively debunked: fire officers report that the majority of blazes were started by dry lightning storms. Nevertheless, social media is awash with false claims about the role of arson, obscuring the link between climate change and bushfires (Disinformation and lies are spreading faster than Australia’s bushfires, 11 January).
Continue reading...Scott Morrison in danger of becoming a 'climate change casualty', says Steve Bracks
Former Victorian Labor premier says the prime minister must act on global heating and put a price on carbon
Scott Morrison needs to take action on global heating or he will become a “climate change casualty”, a former Victorian Labor premier, Steve Bracks, said.
Bracks, who is chair of the $55bn industry superannuation fund Cbus, said the fires that have raged Australia have galvanised community support for action and he called on the Morrison government to put a price on carbon.
Continue reading...Cutting air passenger duty to help Flybe could wreck UK carbon plan
Frequent flyer levy and cheaper trains would help with environmental pledges – but neither is planned
Travel from Exeter to Manchester next Wednesday, and a round trip with the airline Flybe returning the next day would cost you £68, of which air passenger duty amounts to £26. A train ticket for the same journey would cost £141.
This kind of price disparity between domestic flights and rail journeys has been the norm for years, the result of under-investment in railways and rail fares allowed to rise at rates much higher than inflation, while regional airports and airlines receive publicly funded incentives and tax breaks on fuel. It comes despite the government’s much-vaunted green policies, and its repeated goal to reach net zero emissions by 2050.
Continue reading...Experts study first orca stranding in England and Wales since 2001
Discovery of dead juvenile killer whale is first confirmed stranding in nearly 20 years
Experts are investigating the first confirmed stranding of an orca in England and Wales for almost 20 years, the Zoological Society of London has said.
The juvenile male killer whale, approximately 15ft long, became stranded in salt marsh in the Wash on the east coast of England.
Continue reading...Colgate launches vegan-certified toothpaste in recyclable tube
Smile for Good brand on sale in Waitrose and Boots, at £5 for 75ml tube
Colgate has launched a new toothpaste which is being billed as the first of a kind because it comes in a recyclable tube.
Toothpaste tubes have traditionally been impossible to recycle because they are made from a mixture of plastic and aluminium. Consumers get through 20bn packs of toothpaste every year with discarded tubes contributing to the plastic pollution crisis.
Continue reading...Scott Morrison to focus on 'resilience and adaptation' to address climate change
The prime minister says he will work on ‘practical’ measures rather than bolstering emission reduction targets
The prime minister says he is focused on “practical” measures to address the effects of climate change in Australia rather than bolstering emission reduction targets.
As the government faces internal pressure to do more on climate change policy, Scott Morrison said Australia was already “carrying its weight” in terms of its global emission reduction efforts and transition to renewables but more needed to be done on “resilience and adaptation”.
Continue reading...Vanguard refuses to sign up to climate crisis commitment
US asset manager that built up fossil fuel portfolio fails to join rivals in engaging with climate
Vanguard, the world’s second largest asset manager, has refused to sign up to a group of major investors demanding that polluters respond to the climate crisis, despite its rival BlackRock relenting to pressure to do so.
The US investment manager’s decision leaves it increasingly isolated after BlackRock last week joined Climate Action 100+ (CA100+), a group of asset managers that pushes the largest fossil fuel producers to show how they will meet carbon dioxide reduction targets.
Continue reading...Oceans are as hot as humans have known them and we’re to blame
We must use energy more wisely going forward and trust in the actions of our youth
Each year, unfathomable amounts of energy are added to the oceans. Scientists measure heat in joules; the amount of heat in the oceans is so large that we report it in zettajoules. What is a zettajoule? It is 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 joules. The amount of heat we are putting into the oceans is equivalent to about five Hiroshima atom bombs of energy every second.
I am part of the team of researchers that published a paper on ocean warming that shows the total heat of Earth is increasing with global heating, as scientists have predicted for decades.
Continue reading...Climate activist turns down Siemens' offer of seat on energy board
Protest group leader Luisa Neubauer says she would lose right to criticise the company
The leader of Germany’s Friday for Future climate protests has said she turned down a seat on the board of Siemens’ new energy business amid growing anger over its role in a controversial coal mining project in Australia as she feared she would lose the right to criticise the company.
Luisa Neubauer, 23, the German face of the campaign group inspired by Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, who has campaigned alongside her, said on Monday the position would jeopardise her independence if she had taken up the offer from its chief executive, Joe Kaeser, made at a meeting in Berlin on Friday.
Continue reading...Why do record ocean temperatures matter?
Everything you need to know about the significance of the heat record set last year
The new record represents the most stark demonstration that global heating is unequivocally real and driving the climate crisis. With emissions still rising every year, more heat is being trapped by greenhouse gases, and the ocean data is crystal clear: an unrelenting and accelerating rise for at least the past half century. Lijing Cheng, at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said: “There are no reasonable alternatives aside from the human emissions of heat-trapping gases to explain this.”
Continue reading...Ocean temperatures hit record high as rate of heating accelerates
Oceans are clearest measure of climate crisis as they absorb 90% of heat trapped by greenhouse gases
The heat in the world’s oceans reached a new record level in 2019, showing “irrefutable and accelerating” heating of the planet.
The world’s oceans are the clearest measure of the climate emergency because they absorb more than 90% of the heat trapped by the greenhouse gases emitted by fossil fuel burning, forest destruction and other human activities.
Continue reading...The government has been forced to talk about climate change, so it’s taking a subtle – and sinister – approach
With its old ideology being treated with universal scorn, a new line is being embraced – and it could signal the death of the planet
The impact of climate-change over the past five months across Australia has caused climate-change deniers within the media and government to quickly update their tactics to a new sinister position.
Gone are the plans to just keep lying for the next decade that activists such as Greta Thunberg are predicting that the world is going to end in 2030, or to continue to flub and fudge the science – no real warming since 1998, 2005, 2010, 2016! Solar activity! Volcanoes! Greenland!
Continue reading...Climate crisis likely to increase violent deaths of young people – report
Rising temperatures will mean more deaths from crashes, assaults and suicide, says study
Rising temperatures caused by global heating are likely to increase deaths from road crashes, violence, suicides and drowning, according to new research, and will affect young people most.
Deaths from injuries have long been known to be seasonal and the new analysis uses data on nearly 6m deaths in the US to calculate the impacts of a 2C rise in temperature, the main target set by the world’s nations. The scientists calculated that this increase would result in about 2,100 more fatal injuries every year in the US alone.
Continue reading...Sex machine: prolific Galápagos tortoise saves his species
Only 15 giant Española tortoises were left in the wild before one male sired 800 offspring in a wildly successful breeding program
The Galápagos National Park has announced it is ending a captive breeding program for giant Española tortoises, after one tortoise produced more than 800 offspring, helping save the species.
Related: Giant tortoise believed extinct for 100 years found in Galápagos
Continue reading...