The Guardian
Thank you, Guardian, for your climate pledge | Letter
As a millennial, a university student and a human, I thank you, Guardian, for your 2019 environmental pledge (It’s time to act, 17 October). Yours is a news outlet that many of my generation are sharing all over social media. You speak the truths we speak and believe in. We young people sometimes feel unheard and brushed away or simply ignored when we speak our minds. So thank you for pledging to use language that recognises the severity of the crisis we’re in; it is something that is rarely done. With the current fires surging through our precious lands, it is a time of stress, loss and sadness, and one that we are not accustomed to. We are angry. Listen to our generation more, hear our voices and follow our movements. We are the future, after all; one day everyone will have to listen, so why not start now.
Courtney Lucas
Tarragindi, Queensland, Australia
Are the Tories' green commitments all talk and little action?
Conservative policies since 2010 have been characterised by confusion and mixed messages
- Scientists and climate advisers condemn Tory record
- How do the parties propose to tackle the climate crisis?
Just after calling the general election, Boris Johnson’s government made two almost simultaneous policy announcements that encapsulated the longstanding contradictions of environmental policy over the past decade.
His decision to announce a moratorium on fracking – which the Labour party pointed out was a temporary commitment rather than a ban – made headlines and was heralded as a signal of green intentions, but the go-ahead for a new deep coalmine in Cumbria was slipped out to little fanfare.
Continue reading...Scientists and climate advisers condemn Tory environmental record
Party under pressure on climate crisis as Corbyn says Johnson can not be trusted
The Conservative party’s record on tackling the climate crisis was condemned by leading scientists and former government advisers on Sunday, as Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn warned that the forthcoming election was the last chance to halt the escalating emergency.
Experts accused the Conservatives of copying rightwing politicians in the US by deliberately weakening environmental protections. Meanwhile, new analysis by Labour reveals that environmental policies put forward since 2017 and opposed by the Tories would have led to emissions reductions of over 70m tonnes a year by 2030 – more than the annual emissions of Portugal.
Continue reading...Flooding chaos in northern England to continue until Tuesday
70 warnings issued as rivers Severn and Avon burst banks, but drier weather forecast
Large parts of Britain remain flooded and experts are warning the chaos could continue until Tuesday.
The Environment Agency (EA) had issued 70 flood warnings as of 6.49am on Sunday, meaning flooding was expected and immediate action was required.
Continue reading...The Amazon: on the frontline of a global battle to tackle the climate crisis
A diverse band of river communities, activists and academics are meeting in the heart of the rainforest to fight for the planet’s future
On the six-hour boat ride down the Iriri river to Manolito, there is almost no other traffic and only a handful of small homes. At its widest and calmest, the vast expanse of water is a flawless mirror of blue sky and green canopy. At its narrowest and roughest, the water churns around boulders eroded into the shapes of battlements and breaching whales. Parrots fly above the treetops. Fish feast on fallen blossoms. Kingfishers perch on riverside branches while herons await their prey on midstream rocks with their wings outstretched. White and yellow butterflies stumble across the river at remarkable speeds.
It is in this idyllic setting, deep inside the Amazon rainforest, that a nascent alliance of traditional communities, climate activists and academics is re-imagining what the world’s greatest forest was, what it can be and who can best defend it.
Continue reading...Pacific seals at risk as Arctic ice melt lets deadly disease spread from Atlantic
A potentially deadly disease affecting marine mammals, including seals and sea otters, has been passed from the North Atlantic Ocean to the northern Pacific thanks to the melting of the Arctic sea ice.
Experts have long been concerned that sea ice melting in the northern oceans, caused by global climate heating, could allow previously geographically limited diseases to be transmitted between the two oceans.
Continue reading...Queensland Farmers' Federation boss's denial of science sparks call to suspend reef grants
Exclusive: Newly elected QFF head promoted tour by controversial scientist Peter Ridd and said reef regulation was based on ‘dodgy modelling’
The Queensland Farmers’ Federation’s newly elected president once called Great Barrier Reef science “unsubstantiated scaremongering”, which has prompted calls for the suspension of the organisation’s reef foundation grants.
The peak body for Queensland farmers, the QFF manages water quality improvement grants from the Great Barrier Reef Foundation totalling $4.6m – among the most awarded to a single organisation under a controversial $443m federal funding deal.
Continue reading...Reforesting the UK: 'Trees are the ultimate long-term project'
The UK needs 1.5bn new trees to tackle the climate crisis – a Northumberland project is showing one way forward
“This whole area wants to be a wood,” says Edward Milbank, sweeping his arm across the former hill farm in Northumberland. Small saplings of birch have invaded the cleared ground, but many more trees are being pushed into the soil by hand.
The bracken and rhododendron that had overrun the hillside took heavy machinery three months to rip out. “When you disturb the soil, it becomes a wood very quickly,” says Milbank.
Continue reading...Vanished at sea: the Ghanaian who was protecting the ‘people’s fish’
In his cramped living room in an Accra backstreet, Bernard Essien pulls out a sheet of paper – a statement signed by his elder brother Emmanuel and addressed to the Ghanaian police. Two weeks before 28-year-old Emmanuel vanished at sea, his handwritten account and accompanying video footage alleged illegal fishing by a trawler he had been working on. If the allegation was proved true, the ship’s captain faced a minimum fine of $1m.the case of a
Emmanuel Essien was a fishing observer, one of Ghana’s front line defenders against an overfishing crisis that is among the worst in west Africa. Illegal and destructive practices by foreign-owned trawlers are draining the Ghanaian economy of an estimated £50m a year. For those living along Ghana’s 350-mile coastline, overfishing has driven small pelagic species known as “people’s fish”, the staple diet, to the verge of collapse.
Continue reading...Wrong turn: why Australia's vehicle emissions are rising
Transport emissions should be falling with better technology, but policy inertia has left Australian motorists – and the environment – worse off
“An electric ute would be great,” Rhys Jones says from the driver’s seat of his ute while waiting out the front of the work site.
“I don’t know how much it would cost in terms of set up and all that, but I’ve been on jobs where I’ve seen electric cars. They sneak up on ya. There’s no motor in them, so the engines run silent.”
Continue reading...The week in wildlife – in pictures
The pick of this week’s best flora and fauna photos from around the world, including a sleepy tiger and sea goldies
Continue reading...A journey to the centre of the Amazon in radical bid to solve climate crisis
Activists travel by canoe in risky mission to highlight threats to rainforest and learn from indigenous communities
The search for solutions to the climate crisis does not get any more radical, far-reaching or deeper into nature than the alternative climate conference currently taking place in the heart of the Amazon rainforest.
In the past few days, European climate strikers and Extinction Rebellion youth activists have travelled by motor canoe deep into a region known as Terra do Meio to share ideas with indigenous leaders, forest dwellers, environmental activists and Brazil’s leading climate scientists, anthropologists and archaeologists. The Russian punk anarchist Nadya Tolokonnikova, of Pussy Riot, was also set to join the gathering along with local artists and Catholic bishops.
Continue reading...European Investment Bank to phase out fossil fuels financing
EU’s lending arm to become first ‘climate bank’ by ending financing of oil, gas, and coal projects after 2021
The European Investment Bank has agreed to phase out its multibillion-euro financing for fossil fuels within the next two years to become the world’s first ‘“climate bank”.
The bank will end its financing of oil, gas, and coal projects after 2021, a policy that will make the EU’s lending arm the first multilateral lender to rule out financing for projects that contribute to the climate crisis.
Continue reading...Methane emissions from coalmines could stoke climate crisis – study
Millions of tonnes belched into atmosphere as policymakers overlook threat, researchers find
The methane emissions leaking from the world’s coalmines could be stoking the global climate crisis at the same rate as the shipping and aviation industries combined.
Coalmines are belching millions of tonnes of methane into the atmosphere unchecked, because policymakers have overlooked the rising climate threat, according to new research.
Continue reading...US recycling event is cover for enormous volume of plastic pollution, say critics
America Recycles Day promoted by EPA is brainchild of not-for-profit backed by companies that produce plastic products
America’s government-backed national recycling awareness day is being used as cover by large corporations that are churning out enormous volumes of plastic that end up strewn across landscapes, rivers and in the ocean, critics have said.
The second annual America Recycles Day event on Friday is being vigorously promoted by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as a way to encourage Americans to recycle more.
Continue reading...Sweden's central bank dumps Australian bonds over high emissions
Riksbank says Queensland and Western Australia, as well as Canada’s Alberta, ‘not known for good climate work’
Sweden’s central bank said on Wednesday it had sold off bonds from Western Australia and Queensland, and the oil-rich Canadian province of Alberta, because it felt that greenhouse gas emissions in both countries were too high.
The Riksbank deputy governor, Martin Floden, said the bank would no longer invest in assets from issuers with a large climate footprint, even if the yields were high.
Continue reading...Black-throated finch wins 2019 bird of the year with tawny frogmouth second
Highly endangered finch, which is under threat from the Adani Carmichael coalmine, harnessed support of conservationists
The black-throated finch has been voted Australian bird of the year for 2019, beating the tawny frogmouth in a landslide.
The highly endangered finch, which is under threat from the expansion of the Adani Carmichael coalmine, was backed by a highly organised online campaign linking it to deforestation, the climate emergency and opposition to the mine.
Continue reading...Bird of the year 2019: tense wait as Australia prepares to learn winner of poll – live
The final votes in the Guardian / Bird Life Australia poll have been counted and the results are in. Follow the latest updates and reaction as the result is announced
7.31pm GMT
Those top 10 of course, were winnowed down from an initial 50. A lot of beloved, big name birds did not make it through.
The preference flows from those excluded birds could decide today. There are tens of thousands of votes looking for a home. It’s enough to overhaul any frontrunner.
7.25pm GMT
Ben Raue is on hand to provide some psephological analysis of the first round of voting:
“Over 54,000 votes were cast in the first round, with the black-throated finch, a bird threatened by the proposed Adani coal mine, way out in front with 7,234 votes, over 13% of the total vote. The reigning champion magpie came in second with 3,569 votes, or 6.5%.
Continue reading...Council leaders demand huge funding rise after floods
Politicians in northern England warn of lasting damage, after 1,758 properties badly hit
Leaders of councils across northern England have called for “massive” increases in funding to deal with major incidents, as the Guardian learned that around 1,800 homes and businesses have been badly flooded in the region.
Dozens of weather warnings remain in place around the country, from Oxfordshire to Yorkshire and across the West Midlands, where more than 100 schools were forced to close on Thursday.
Continue reading...Giving children a taste of the outdoors | Brief letters
Our charity, The Garden Classroom, has responded to London teachers’ concerns about pupils’ mental health by offering urban forest schools in Islington parks (Letters, 11 November). Pupils in schools just north of King’s Cross station spend half a day a week in Caledonian Park exploring the wooded areas. Islington has the least open access green space of anywhere in the country. If we can do it, anyone can!
Rosey Lyall
Founder trustee, The Garden Classroom
• I am doing my best (Insect apocalypse’ poses risk to all life on Earth, conservationists warn, 13 November). On my allotment I provide brassicas for caterpillars and white flies, broad beans for aphids, carrots for carrot flies, and borage for bees. I also have homes for other invertebrates including slugs and snails. What else should I try?
Elizabeth Pearson
New Barnet, London