The Guardian
Queensland government workers exposed to 'gene-altering' chemical
Medical experts say exposure to toxic fumigant EDB in fruit fly eradication program ‘likely’ to have caused illnesses
Queensland government biosecurity workers were exposed to a carcinogenic and gene-altering chemical for an extended period, including for six months after its use was banned amid health and safety concerns.
A leading occupational medical expert says that workers’ exposure to the highly toxic fumigant ethylene dibromide (EDB) in the mid-1990s was “more likely than not” the cause of debilitating and serious illnesses suffered over two decades.
Continue reading...Climate crisis seriously damaging human health, report finds
National academies say effects include spread of diseases and worse mental health
A report by experts from 27 national science academies has set out the widespread damage global heating is already causing to people’s health and the increasingly serious impacts expected in future.
Scorching heatwaves and floods will claim more victims as extreme weather increases but there are serious indirect effects too, from spreading mosquito-borne diseases to worsening mental health.
Continue reading...Farmer Sutra! Are gay rams really a problem in the sheep industry?
One in 12 sheep shows same-sex preferences, according to a Channel 4 documentary. Unfortunately, there are commercial ramifications
A breeding ram has only one job. What if he can’t perform? “Unfortunately, he’ll have to go into the food chain,” said Dewi Jones, the chief executive of the sheep-breeding company Innovis, speaking on a Channel 4 documentary, My Gay Dog and Other Animals, which will be broadcast on Thursday. The show reports that one in 12 sheep is gay. “There is ram-on-ram behaviour going on over there,” Jones says, watching his rams. Putting three of the male-oriented rams into a pen with a ewe to see which are interested in her, one uninterested ram is classed as a “shy breeder”. “Commercially, it’s a big issue for us as a breeding company or as a ram breeder because we need our rams to cover lots of ewes.”
Many species – including sheep, penguins, monkeys and dolphins – have been shown to display same-sex preferences. Perhaps the most famous example came to light in 2014, when Benji, a Charolais bull in County Mayo, Ireland, was due to be slaughtered after showing no interest in the heifers he was bought to breed with. Campaigners raised money to send him to a sanctuary instead (although it emerged the following year that he may not be “gay” after all, “judging by what he was trying to do the other day with one of the cows,” said his new owner).
Continue reading...We must mobilise for the climate emergency like we do in wartime. Where is the climate minister? | Ian Dunlop and David Spratt
Unfortunately, much scientific knowledge produced for climate policymaking is conservative and reticent
The second Morrison ministry contains no one with nominal responsibility for “climate” in any sense, despite the fact that it is the greatest threat facing the country. Angus Taylor, who spent much of his pre-parliamentary career fighting windfarms, claiming repeatedly that there is “too much wind and solar” in the system, is now minister for energy and emissions reduction. No mention of climate here, despite the fact that climate is what it is all about, or should be.
Sussan Ley has been made the environment minister, but more intriguing, David Littleproud is minister for water resources, drought, rural finance, natural disaster and emergency management. Let’s take another look at this: water (or lack thereof) … drought … disaster … emergency management.
Continue reading...Candidate to run global food body will 'not defend' EU stance on GM
Catherine Geslain-Lanéelle tells US she would be more open to its interests in UN role
Europe’s candidate to run the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), which guides policymakers around the world, has promised the US she will “not defend the EU position” in resisting the global spread of genetically modified organisms (GMOs).
In a bid for US support, Catherine Geslain-Lanéelle told senior US officials at a meeting in Washington on 15 May that under her leadership the FAO would be more open to American interests and accepting of GMOs and gene editing, according to a US official record of the meeting seen by the Guardian.
Continue reading...A 99, sprinkles and no diesel: here come the electric ice-cream vans…
Battery equipment that can make 600 cones an hour being trialled as concerns over diesel pollution rise
The Mr Whippys of Britain have not had the best start to the year. Ice-cream vans have been facing mounting criticism after campaign groups and parents complained they were delivering their vanilla cones and 99s with a topping of diesel fumes.
This weekend, however, they are savouring a double helping of good news: not only have temperatures been soaring, helping to boost custom up and down the country, but an all-new, non-polluting electric ice-cream van may be about to hit the roads.
Continue reading...Save the polar bears, of course … but it’s the solenodons we really need to worry about
Solenodons are some of Earth’s strangest creatures. Venomous, nocturnal and insectivorous, they secrete toxins through their front teeth – an unusual habit for a mammal. More to the point, the planet’s two remaining species – the Cuban and the Hispaniolan solenodon, both highly endangered – have endured, virtually unchanged, for the past 76 million years. Other related species have become extinct.
And that makes solenodons very important, according to Professor Sam Turvey, of the Zoological Society of London. “They are the last fruits on an entire branch of the tree of evolution,” said Turvey, who was last month awarded one of the most prestigious awards in zoology, the Linnean medal, for his work on evolution and human impacts on wildlife. “There are no close counterparts to solenodons left on Earth, yet they have been on the planet since the time of the dinosaurs.”
Continue reading...US scientists to investigate spike in deaths of gray whales
About 70 creatures found washed up on coast of North America but federal agency believes it is a small fraction of total fatalities
US government scientists have launched an investigation what has caused the deaths of an unusually high number of gray whales found washed up on the west coast of North America.
About 70 whales have been found dead so far this year on the coasts of California, Oregon, Washington and Alaska, the most since 2000. About five more have been discovered on British Columbia beaches.
Continue reading...Swim in the ocean, get a compost toilet. Readers share water saving tips
With water restrictions now in place across Australia, there are plenty of easy ways to save water – and a few creative solutions
For the first time in a decade, water restrictions come into force in Sydney on Saturday due to dwindling dam levels and the ongoing drought.
On Wednesday, the state government announced that everyone in Sydney, the Blue Mountains and the Illawarra must stick to the stage one restrictions, including using trigger nozzles, restricted times for watering lawns and gardens, and spot-cleaning hard surfaces only in the case of an emergency.
Continue reading...I Am Juliana: youth activists prepare nationwide climate protest
Young people across the country to hold day of action on Saturday highlighting lawsuit as youth-driven climate movement grows
Students in Austin, Texas, want you to veg out. Kids in Westport, Connecticut will screen a film. And in rural North Carolina, activists will draw on a toxic spill to commemorate the environmental justice movement.
All of these rallies will be part of an international campaign on Saturday to spotlight environmental issues. Their message: I Am Juliana.
Continue reading...The week in wildlife – in pictures
A frog, an albino panda and a ‘seabed garden’
Continue reading...Labour would force firms to fight climate crisis or lose contracts
Exclusive: Companies bidding for public sector contracts must ‘put people and planet before profit’
Companies bidding for public sector contracts will be forced to take radical steps to tackle the climate crisis under new regulations being proposed by the Labour party, addressing energy use, greenhouse gas emissions and waste.
If elected, the party would force suppliers to “put people and planet before profit”, with the threat of losing contracts if they do not, in a stark redrawing of priorities for contract bidders.
Continue reading...UK creates 'blue belt' of marine protected areas twice England's size
Conservationists say protection contributes to stop of marine damaging activities
An area nearly twice the size of England will become a “blue belt” of protected waters after the government created 41 new marine conservation zones.
The short-snouted seahorse, the ocean quahog, ross worm reefs and blue mussel beds are among the species and habitats that will benefit from the new protections, although dredging and other damaging activities can only be halted in zones that lie within inshore waters, up to 12 nautical miles from the coast.
Continue reading...Australia's nature reserves being opened up for business use, global study finds
Some 13,000 sq km removed from conservation areas since 1997, researchers say
Australian governments have slashed the legal protection of nature reserves in favour of business growth, a global study reveals.
The country is one of 73 dropping the ball on land protection, according to the study, which was published in the journal Science on Friday.
Continue reading...Adani still needs further federal approval despite pre-election green light
Work related to groundwater research will need to be signed off as opponents say new government papers show mine is ‘not ready to go’
Adani will not be allowed to dig any coal from its Carmichael mine until it gets further federal government approval – despite the Coalition’s pre-election green light for parts of the project.
With Adani’s controversial project looming as a central issue in the federal election campaign, the Coalition made political capital in Queensland out of the decision in April by former environment minister Melissa Price to approve Adani’s groundwater management plans.
Continue reading...Walter Menzies obituary
My friend Walter Menzies, who has died of a brain tumour aged 69, made a profound contribution to the cause of sustainable development, driven by his fascination with people and places. He was a twinkly-eyed, mischievous, inspiring and determined doer. “Sustainable development is the only credible way of organising our environment, economy and society,” he stated uncompromisingly in a collection of 30 years of his writings.
He and I met when I was reporting for the Guardian in the north and he was chief executive of the Mersey Basin Campaign, a pioneering project set up by Michael Heseltine after the 1981 Toxteth riots. Heseltine wanted the river cleaned up. The campaign was so successful that fishermen caught cod across the river from Liverpool’s Pier Head and seals were seen lazing on sandbanks at Warrington.
Continue reading...Renewable energy jobs in UK plunge by a third
Exclusive: report reveals investment in the sector has halved in recent years
The number of jobs in renewable energy in the UK has plunged by nearly a third in recent years, and the amount of new green generating capacity by a similar amount, causing havoc among companies in the sector, a new report has found.
Prospect, the union which covers much of the sector, has found a 30% drop in renewable energy jobs between 2014 and 2017, as government cuts to incentives and support schemes started to bite. It also found investment in renewables in the UK more than halved between 2015 and 2017.
Continue reading...Humans and volcanoes caused nearly all of global heating in past 140 years
New study confirms natural cycles play little role in global temperature trends and tackles discrepancies in previous models
Emissions from fossil fuels and volcanoes can explain nearly all of the changes in Earth’s surface temperatures over the past 140 years, a new study has found.
The research refutes the popular climate denial myth that recent global warming is merely a result of natural cycles.
Continue reading...I’m the gutter gourmet: how I spent a month eating other people's leftovers
We don’t talk enough about the street food scandal – leftovers chucked away without a second thought
Every day for the past month complete strangers have bought me lunch. And breakfast. And dinner. And they don’t even know it.
I have been living high on the hog, and it hasn’t cost me a penny – because I have been dining out on the half-eaten fast food and takeaways thoughtfully abandoned by my fellow Britons on pavements and park benches and tube platforms all over the city. Sometimes they even leave them in bins.
Continue reading...The Anthropocene epoch: have we entered a new phase of planetary history?
Human activity has transformed the Earth – but scientists are divided about whether this is really a turning point in geological history. By Nicola Davison
It was February 2000 and the Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen was sitting in a meeting room in Cuernavaca, Mexico, stewing quietly. Five years earlier, Crutzen and two colleagues had been awarded the Nobel prize in chemistry for proving that the ozone layer, which shields the planet from ultraviolet light, was thinning at the poles because of rising concentrations of industrial gas. Now he was attending a meeting of scientists who studied the planet’s oceans, land surfaces and atmosphere. As the scientists presented their findings, most of which described dramatic planetary changes, Crutzen shifted in his seat. “You could see he was getting agitated. He wasn’t happy,” Will Steffen, a chemist who organised the meeting, told me recently.
What finally tipped Crutzen over the edge was a presentation by a group of scientists that focused on the Holocene, the geological epoch that began around 11,700 years ago and continues to the present day. After Crutzen heard the word Holocene for the umpteenth time, he lost it. “He stopped everybody and said: ‘Stop saying the Holocene! We’re not in the Holocene any more,’” Steffen recalled. But then Crutzen stalled. The outburst had not been premeditated, but now all eyes were on him. So he blurted out a name for a new epoch. A combination of anthropos, the Greek for “human”, and “-cene”, the suffix used in names of geological epochs, “Anthropocene” at least sounded academic. Steffen made a note.
Continue reading...