The Guardian
'Everybody has something to lose': the exciting, depressing life of a climate writer
The Guardian’s global environment editor, Jonathan Watts, explains how he aims to make the climate emergency resonate with readers on an emotional level
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Some days, I am filled with dread. Some nights, I have trouble sleeping. But I would not swap my job for any other.
As global environment editor for the Guardian, I report from the Amazon to the Arctic on the disappearing wonders of a rapidly deteriorating world. Along with a growing number of colleagues, I investigate who is affected, who is to blame and who is fighting back.
Continue reading...Fortnightly green waste collection would cost Victoria $500m for four years
Greens say funding could come from sustainability fund, which they say is not being used on green projects
Fortnightly collections of food and garden waste in Victoria would cost the state more than half a billion dollars over the next four years, a parliamentary budget office costing for the Greens has revealed.
As the state searches for ways to tackle an ongoing waste and recycling crisis, the Greens party has called on the state Labor government to consider providing a fortnightly collection service for food and other green waste.
Continue reading...May the best bird win: how the 2019 voting system has changed
This year’s Australian bird of the year poll is going to a run-off. What does that mean for your favourite bird?
In the 2002 French presidential election, voters on the left were lumped with an unpalatable choice: vote for their longtime conservative enemy, Jacques Chirac, or abstain but risk handing the election to the far-right candidate, Jean-Marie Le Pen. Progressive voters did their duty and reluctantly lined up at ballot boxes to cast their vote for Chirac, who was re-elected with a record 82% of the vote.
This turn of events doesn’t on face value seem an endorsement of the runoff system, especially when Le Pen had just 17% of the primary vote and Chirac just 20% in the first round. Together the pair had less than 50% of the vote.
Continue reading...‘Everyone has a bird story’: which species will take the bird of the year crown?
The Guardian and Birdlife Australia spent weeks refining the list for the poll
• Cast your vote in bird of the year 2019 here
Fifty birds. Eighteen days. Only one winner.
Bird of the year is back. In partnership with Birdlife Australia, the Guardian is running a poll to determine which of our feathered friends is considered No 1 in the eyes of the Australian public.
Continue reading...Australian bird of the year 2019: vote for your favourite
The 2017 Guardian/Birdlife Australia poll was a fight to death between the ibis and magpie. In this year’s vote, will attention stay focused on the common urban birds or will it turn to one of the threatened species on the list: the western ground parrot, the eastern curlew, the black-throated finch or Carnaby’s black cockatoo? If your favourite is not included in the shortlist of 50, you can add it. The first round of voting is open until 8 November. The second round will be a runoff between the top 10 and final winner will be announced on 15 November
• Photographs and descriptions courtesy of Sean Dooley and Birdlife Australia
Continue reading...Toughen environmental laws to stem extinction crisis, scientists tell Morrison
More than 240 conservation scientists sign open letter warning PM that 17 Australian native species face extinction in next 20 years
More than 240 conservation scientists have called on Scott Morrison to drop his opposition to stronger environment laws and seize a “once-in-a-decade opportunity” to fix a system that is failing to stem a worsening extinction crisis.
With the federal government due to this week announce a 10-yearly legislated review of the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act, the scientists have signed an open letter to the prime minister urging him to increase spending and back laws to help protect the natural world from further destruction.
Continue reading...Oktoberfest 'produces 10 times as much methane as the city of Boston'
First analysis of the environmental impact of the Munich festival reveals emissions cost
For the millions of people who descend on Munich for the annual booze-drenched bash, Oktoberfest is a celebration of beer, bands and bratwurst.
But as the dust settles for another year on the world’s largest folk festival, and die Bierleichen return to the land of the living, environmental scientists have released the first analysis of methane emissions from the 16-day party.
Continue reading...Super-rich fuelling growing demand for private jets, report finds
Growth centred in US and China, with slowdown in Sweden attributed to Greta Thunberg
Almost 8,000 new private jets are expected to be bought by multinational companies and the super-rich over the next decade, each of which will burn 40 times as much carbon per passenger as regular commercial flights, according to a report by aviation firm Honeywell Aerospace.
About 690 new business jets are expected to take to the skies in 2019, a 9% increase on 2018, as businesses and the wealthy refresh their fleets with fancy new models released by three of the world’s biggest private jet manufacturers.
Continue reading...A lightbulb moment for nuclear fusion?
Boris Johnson’s gung-ho claims may be wide of the mark, but scientists pursuing the holy grail of energy generation are taking giant steps
“They are on the verge of creating commercially viable miniature fusion reactors for sale around the world,” Boris Johnson told the Conservative party conference earlier this month – “they” apparently being UK scientists. It was, at best, a rash promise for how nuclear fusion might make the UK carbon-neutral by the middle of the century – the target recommended by the Committee on Climate Change, which advises the government. “I know they have been on the verge for some time,” Johnson hedged. “It is a pretty spacious kind of verge.” But now, he assured his audience, “we are on the verge of the verge”.
It’s a familiar and bitter joke about nuclear fusion as an energy source that, ever since it was first mooted in the 1950s, it has been 30 years away. Johnson’s comments had the extra irony that Brexit could merely add to that distance.
Continue reading...'The most divisive thing': two small towns brace for a vote on nuclear waste
Whatever the result, the communities on SA’s Eyre peninsula are split over the issue – and will be for some time
After four years of speculation and three years of consultation, the small towns of Kimba and Hawker in South Australia have begun the final stage of a process that has divided neighbours and placed these otherwise forgotten communities on the national map.
On 7 November, the Kimba district council will announce the result of a month-long vote on whether its residents support the construction of a nuclear waste facility at one of two proposed sites. On 11 November a similar vote will open for the Flinders Ranges council over a third proposed site at Wallerberdina.
Continue reading...Block on GM rice ‘has cost millions of lives and led to child blindness’
Stifling international regulations have been blamed for delaying the approval of a food that could have helped save millions of lives this century. The claim is made in a new investigation of the controversy surrounding the development of Golden Rice by a team of international scientists.
Golden Rice is a form of normal white rice that has been genetically modified to provide vitamin A to counter blindness and other diseases in children in the developing world. It was developed two decades ago but is still struggling to gain approval in most nations.
Continue reading...Tiny beetle named after climate activist Greta Thunberg
Scientists at Natural History Museum honour teenager’s ‘outstanding contribution’
A tiny species of beetle discovered more than 50 years ago has been named after environmental campaigner Greta Thunberg.
Scientists at the Natural History Museum in London have officially called the insect Nelloptodes gretae to honour the 16-year-old Swedish activist’s “outstanding contribution” in raising global awareness of climate change.
Continue reading...The week in wildlife – in pictures
Cuddling foxes, venomous sea snakes and a 1,000-year-old oak tree
Continue reading...Gull cull: should nuisance birds really be shot?
‘Seagulls kill dog then return to attack toddler two weeks later.” “‘Psycho’ seagull ‘pecked and clawed’ at student.” “British seagulls are turning cannibal and EATING each other.” If the newspaper headlines are anything to go by, gulls are a growing threat to the British population. No longer satisfied with stealing chips from tourists at seaside towns, the birds are attacking everyone from unsuspecting holidaymakers to small children. And who could forget the grizzly tale of Gizmo the chihuahua, cruelly snatched away by a gull in Devon never to be seen again – that is, until a furry leg turned up a few weeks later. It is no wonder public opinion has turned against them.
The situation has turned so sour in Worcester that the city council is now proposing a gull cull. The council is considering applying for a licence to shoot the birds, with one councillor saying it is the only way to stop residents from “needlessly suffering”.
Continue reading...SUVs second biggest cause of emissions rise, figures reveal
If SUV drivers were a nation, they would rank seventh in the world for carbon emissions
Growing demand for SUVs was the second-largest contributor to the increase in global CO2 emissions from 2010 to 2018, a new analysis has found.
In that period, SUVs doubled their global market share from 17% to 39% and their annual emissions rose to more than 700 megatonnes of CO2, more than the yearly total emissions of the UK and the Netherlands combined.
Continue reading...Glacial rivers absorb carbon faster than rainforests, scientists find
‘Total surprise’ discovery overturns conventional understanding of rivers
In the turbid, frigid waters roaring from the glaciers of Canada’s high Arctic, researchers have made a surprising discovery: for decades, the northern rivers secretly pulled carbon dioxide from the atmosphere at a rate faster than the Amazon rainforest.
The findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, flip the conventional understanding of rivers, which are largely viewed as sources of carbon emissions.
Continue reading...'Citizen army' needed to tackle invasive species, MPs suggest
Environmental committee says government funding ‘fails to match scale of threat’
A citizen army is needed to help tackle invasive species that threaten the natural environment and in some cases human health, MPs have said.
The cost to the economy of non-native species taking hold in the UK is estimated to be £1.8bn a year, a report from the environmental audit committee says.
Continue reading...World Lemur Day – a photo essay by Bristol Zoological Society
Friday is World Lemur Day. Lemurs are the earth’s most threatened larger group of mammals; there are more than 100 species and almost all are under threat of extinction. Bristol Zoological Society has been studying lemurs and working on their conservation in north-west Madagascar for over 10 years
Lemur species vary enormously in their size, appearance and behaviour, from the strange-looking nocturnal aye-aye to the sideways-leaping Coquerel’s sifaka. All species are endemic to the island of Madagascar, where they are under severe threat from fragmentation and loss of their forest habitat, due to logging, subsistence agriculture and forest fires, and are also at risk from hunting and the rapid recent increase in the human population.
Continue reading...Agriculture ministers back national plan to address impact of climate change
Federal, state and territory ministers agreed to meet twice a year and adopt Victorian plan to improve adaptations to agriculture
Agriculture ministers have agreed to a national framework to address the impact of climate change on the sector, as well as to develop plans to help the industry grow to $100bn by 2030.
At a meeting in Melbourne on Friday federal, state and territory agriculture ministers – and federal water resources minister David Littleproud – agreed to Victoria’s plan to improve adaptation of agriculture for climate change.
Continue reading...Sea urchin population soars 10,000% in five years, devastating US coastline
Voracious purple urchins in waters of California and Oregon pose threat to kelp forests and risk upending delicate ecosystems
Tens of millions of voracious purple sea urchins that have already chomped their way through towering underwater kelp forests in California are spreading north to Oregon, sending the delicate marine ecosystem off the shore into such disarray that other critical species are starving to death.
A recent count found 350m purple sea urchins on one Oregon reef alone – more than a 10,000% increase since 2014. And in northern California, 90% of the giant bull kelp forests have been devoured by the urchins, perhaps never to return.
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