The Guardian
Sexy beasts: why Brexit is giving zoo animals the horn
UK breeders are hastily shipping in potential suitors for their rare species in the hope that they get it on ahead of a no-deal scenario
Name: Brexit breeding.
Age: Very much of its time.
Continue reading...Germany to ban use of glyphosate weedkiller by end of 2023
Chemical is blamed for death of insects and suspected to cause cancer in humans
Germany has said it will phase out the controversial weedkiller glyphosate because it wipes out insect populations crucial for ecosystems and pollination of food crops.
The chemical, also suspected by some experts to cause cancer in humans, is to be banned by the end of 2023 when the EU’s approval period for it expires, ministers said.
Continue reading...Global food producers 'failing to face up to role' in climate crisis
Report urges meat, dairy and seafood companies to address impact of industry’s deforestation, use of antibiotics and emissions
The world’s biggest producers of meat, dairy and seafood are failing to tackle the enormous impact they are having on the planet through deforestation, the routine use of antibiotics and greenhouse gas emissions, a report warns.
The Coller Fairr index ranks 50 of the largest global meat, dairy and fish producers by looking at risk factors from use of antibiotics to deforestation and labour abuses. The producers are the “hidden” supply chain, providing meat and dairy to global brands including McDonald’s, Tesco, Nestlé and Walmart.
Continue reading...Humans, the environment and the global water crisis - in pictures
The American photographer Mustafah Abdulaziz has won the Leica Oskar Barnack photography award with his eight-year project exploring the global crisis around water, and how different cultures interact with this precious resource
Continue reading...Grow your own forest: how to plant trees to help save the planet
Forest restoration is the number-one strategy for stopping global warming, according to some scientists – but Britain is falling far short. Here’s a complete guide to what you should be planting, and where
‘Tree planting ‘has mind-blowing potential’ to tackle climate crisis.” That’s how the Guardian reported findings from the Crowther Lab in Switzerland two months ago. Billions more trees, scientists claimed, could remove two-thirds of all the carbon dioxide created by human activity. Forest restoration “isn’t just one of our climate change solutions, it is overwhelmingly the top one,” said the lead scientist, climate change ecologist Tom Crowther.
Such a programme might take 100 years to be fully effective, but along the way it would reduce the consequences of the climate crisis – protecting soil from erosion, reducing the risk of flooding and providing habitats for a vast range of animals and other plant species.
Continue reading...Benefits to farmers of global heating outweighed by losses, says report
Value of European agriculture could fall 16% in 30 years due to drought and higher rainfall
Any advantages to European agriculture from a warming world will be outweighed by the losses from extreme events and environmental stress, leading to a probable large economic loss for farming in the next 30 years, research on the impacts of the climate crisis has found.
While some have pointed to longer growing seasons and a wider range of crops becoming viable in northern Europe as benefits from temperature rises, the effects on rainfall and extreme conditions mean farming is already suffering.
Continue reading...Anti-fracking trio given suspended sentences for breaking protest ban
‘The fight goes on,’ say activists after ignoring injunction at Cuadrilla site in Lancashire
Three anti-fracking activists have been given suspended prison sentences after breaking a ban on demonstrations which their lawyers argued “severely curtails the right to protest”.
The trio were convicted after ignoring an injunction brought by the energy company Cuadrilla to protect its Preston New Road site near Blackpool, Lancashire.
Continue reading...Should one use a private jet to campaign over climate crisis?
Prince Harry has faced flak for his carbon footprint but others face similar dilemma
Their style could hardly be more different, though their aims are the same: as Greta Thunberg sailed into New York last week on a low-carbon high-tech yacht to highlight the climate crisis, Prince Harry faced flak for taking private jets for short-hop breaks while campaigning against global heating. But the contrast between the two reflects broader dilemmas in the environmental movement.
On Tuesday, the Duke of Sussex invited further ridicule as he flew into Amsterdam – a direct Eurostar train from London takes three hours and 41 minutes – to unveil a new initiative for the tourism industry, Travalyst, aiming to reduce the impact of holidaymakers – while encouraging travel.
Continue reading...Swooping magpie shot by Sydney council after 'particularly aggressive' attacks
Hills Shire council said it had received 40 complaints over three years about the magpie, and several people had been injured
A local council in Sydney’s north west has said a decision to shoot dead a “particularly aggressive magpie” that had allegedly swooped and injured people for years was “not taken lightly”.
The Hills Shire council had received 40 complaints over the past three years, with confirmed injuries, including people sent to hospital as a result of being swooped by the magpie on Old Windsor Road in Bella Vista.
Continue reading...Floods wreaking havoc on Great Lakes region fueled by climate crisis
Depths of lakes that hold about 90% of US’s freshwater spiking to record levels, from 14in to nearly 3ft above long-term averages
This summer, as rain relentlessly poured down on the Great Lakes region, Detroit declared a rare state of emergency. The swollen Detroit River had spilled into the low-lying Jefferson Chalmers neighborhood – an event not seen near this scale since 1986.
Volunteers sandbagged the area as the city’s overwhelmed sewer system spilled raw sewage into the river, which connects Lake Huron and Lake Erie. Across the channel from Jefferson Chalmers, water damaged the historic boathouse on Belle Isle, an iconic 982-acre island park that remains partly shut down because of flooding.
Continue reading...'They eat everything in their path': Spain's shellfish farmers turn on starfish | Stephen Burgen
Galicia has agreed to a cull of the creatures, which are turning up in unusually large numbers and feasting on the region’s key export
Galicia, in north-west Spain, has declared war on an apparently inoffensive creature that is putting livelihoods under threat.
The region’s shellfish farmers say that an unusually large population of starfish has begun devouring their crop of mussels, cockles and clams. They recently obtained permission from the regional government to cull the starfish, and divers have been hauling up hundreds of kilos a day.
Continue reading...'It's scary': wildlife selfies harming animals, experts warn
Concern in New Zealand that trend of taking photographs with penguins and other creatures is having impact on feeding, breeding and birth rates
At the International Penguin Conference in New Zealand, the experts were worried. Among sobering discussions about the perils of the climate crisis and habitat loss, the unlikely issue of wildlife selfies photobombed the agenda, with increasing concern that the celebrity-fuelled search for that perfect shot is affecting animal behaviour.
Professor Philip Seddon, the director of Otago University’s wildlife management programme, said: ‘We’re losing respect for wildlife, we don’t understand the wild at all.”
Continue reading...Manchester Extinction Rebellion activists glue themselves to banks
Barclays and HSBC targeted on final day of protests against fossil fuel investments
Environmental protesters have glued themselves to banks in Manchester to protest against fossil fuel investments on the final day of Extinction Rebellion’s action in the city.
Nine activists stuck themselves to the pavement outside Barclays in Piccadilly Square, with a further two following suit at HSBC in St Ann’s Square on Monday.
Continue reading...Global heating: geese shift migration stop-off northwards
Barnacle geese have begun forsaking traditional feeding stop south of Arctic circle, study finds
Barnacle geese are shifting their migratory patterns northward in response to global heating, new research has found, in a stark indication of how wildlife is being affected by the changes in climate.
In their spring journey from the UK to their breeding grounds on Svalbard, one population of the geese has been forsaking a traditional feeding stop in Norway’s Helgeland, south of the Arctic circle, in favour of a stop further north in Vesterålen, far into the Arctic circle.
Continue reading...River Thames home to 138 baby seals, latest count finds
Scientists’ analysis reveals English river’s ecosystem is thriving
It has been a highway, a sewer and was declared biologically dead in the 1950s but the River Thames is now a nursery for 138 baby seals, according to the first comprehensive seal pup count.
Scientists from the Zoological Society of London analysed photographs taken from light aircraft to identify and count harbour seal pups, which rest on sandbanks and creeks in the Thames downstream from London during the summer, shortly after they are born.
Continue reading...Clever cockatoos learn to open Sydney wheelie bins and drink from bubblers
Sulphur-crested cockatoos’ ‘novel behaviour’ in Australia’s urban environments is being mapped by researchers
Sulphur-crested cockatoos that have learned to open wheelie bins and turn on taps are the focus of a group of researchers who have appealed to the public to help document the birds’ behaviour.
Ecologists from the University of Sydney and the Max Planck Institute of Ornithology have been observing the cockatoos across Sydney parks and gardens and are using an online survey to map the behaviours across the country.
Continue reading...Greta Thunberg responds to Asperger's critics: 'It's a superpower'
Teenage climate activist responds to criticism, saying ‘when haters go after your looks and differences ... you know you’re winning’
Greta Thunberg has spoken about her Asperger’s syndrome diagnosis after she was criticised over the condition, saying it makes her a “different”, but that she considers it a “superpower”.
Thunberg, the public face of the school climate strike movement said on Twitter that before she started her climate action campaign she had “no energy, no friends and I didn’t speak to anyone. I just sat alone at home, with an eating disorder.”
Continue reading...UK funding to tackle climate crisis 'must double', government warned
Charities write to Sajid Javid requesting increase of spending from £17bn to £42bn over next three years
Britain’s biggest environmental groups have warned the government that funding to tackle the climate emergency must be more than double next year to avoid an even greater cost from catastrophic ecological breakdown in the future.
Writing to the chancellor, Sajid Javid, as he prepares to announce on Wednesday his spending priorities for the year ahead, more than a dozen leading environment charities, including Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth as well as other leading organisations such as Oxfam and Christian Aid, said urgent action was required to raise spending.
Continue reading...AgForce backs calls for review of consensus science on Great Barrier Reef
Exclusive: top Queensland farmers’ group supports controversial scientist Peter Ridd’s questioning of climate science
Queensland’s most influential farm lobby group, AgForce, has backed calls for a review of consensus science on the Great Barrier Reef, as the state’s agricultural sector intensifies its campaign against proposed water quality regulations.
On Friday the release of two key reports painted an alarming picture of the state of the reef. The Queensland-led water quality report – which rated the water quality at inner reefs as “poor” – highlighted the impact of land management practices that contribute to the degradation of the reef due to sediment and nutrient run-off.
Continue reading...A chilling truth: our addiction to air conditioning must end | Letters
Kudos to Stephen Buranyi for drawing attention to the growth of air conditioning worldwide and the accompanying taste for cold in a time of global warming (Blowing cold and hot, The long read, 29 August). Having lived and worked in the American south, I can attest there are even more pernicious dimensions to this addiction to cold. Restaurants and bars are kept uncomfortably chilly, thus encouraging higher levels of consumption (heat dampens the desire to eat), fuelling not only profits but the obesity crisis.
Cold has become a mark of prestige: the fancier the establishment, be it office block or shopping mall, the colder it is likely to be. Anecdotally, moving between these absurd temperature extremes several times a day seems to increase the incidence of colds. When I requested that the AC in my workplace (a public university) be set to a warmer level, the response of the facilities staff was to provide a heater for my office. Here in New York, a hotel on my street keeps a roaring fire in the lobby – in August – while the ambient indoor temperature is freezing. All this amounts to what Richard Seymour has recently called “climate sadism” – a form of masochism outwardly and ostentatiously directed, consumptive and destructive madness. May we find ways not to get caught up in its drive.
Emanuela Bianchi
New York