The Guardian
Snake found on bus rattles passengers in Paisley
Slippery customer, believed to be a corn snake, safely reunited with owner
A “fare-dodging” snake had to be removed from a bus after alarming passengers.
McGill’s Buses posted an image of the reptile slithering along a window ledge on its service in Paisley, Renfrewshire.
Continue reading...Anti-fracking activists hail resignation of shale gas tsar
Natascha Engel quit government role after six months over ‘ridiculous’ regulations
Anti-fracking campaigners have welcomed the resignation of the government’s shale gas commissioner, who quit in frustration at “ridiculous” regulations limiting drillers from causing earth tremors, which she claimed were hobbling the industry.
Natascha Engel stood down at the weekend after just six months in the post and accused ministers of being too heavily influenced by climate change campaigners such as the Swedish 16-year-old Greta Thunberg and anti-fracking protesters.
Continue reading...If we care about plastic waste, why won’t we stop drinking bottled water?
We have all seen the damage plastic waste is doing around the world – but sales of bottled water have continued to grow
For all the innovation and choice that define the food and drink industries, if you want to make money, you could do a lot worse than bung some water in a bottle and flog it. A litre of tap water, the stuff we have ingeniously piped into our homes, costs less than half a penny. A litre of bottled water can cost well over a pound, especially for something fancy that has been sucked through a mountain.
Yet the bottled water market is more buoyant than ever, defying the plastics backlash inspired by stricken albatrosses on the BBC’s Blue Planet, and a broader, growing sense that something has to change.
Continue reading...'Biosolar leaf' project targets air pollution on London campus
Scientists say technology can do the work of 100 trees using the surface area of one
The news on carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere is rarely good. Scientists and campaigners have warned repeatedly that governments are doing too little to bring us back from the brink and that, even if we are seeing reductions, they are nowhere near the levels required to reverse climate change.
But scientists have been working on what they say is the world’s first “biosolar leaf”, which they claim can mop up carbon dioxide and discharge oxygen into the atmosphere more efficiently than a typical tree.
Continue reading...Fracking tsar quits after six months and blames eco activists
Natascha Engel says developing the industry would be ‘an impossible task’
The government’s fracking tsar has quit the post after just six months, claiming policy relating to the controversial process means there is “no purpose” to her job.
Natascha Engel told the business secretary, Greg Clark, that developing the industry would be “an impossible task” despite its “enormous potential”. In her resignation letter, she said environmental activists had been “highly successful” in encouraging the government to curb fracking.
Continue reading...We must have a green industrial revolution. And Labour will lead it
Where I grew up, visits to Manchester’s Science and Industry Museum were a staple rainy-day activity. I remember the clanking of the huge, iron waterwheel and being amazed by its power. It was the plentiful rain, I was told, and the ingenuity of those behind the technology that powered the mills that ushered in the first industrial revolution, bringing Manchester and Salford into existence.
I remember thinking: if this is how far we’ve come in 200 years, what’s the future going to look like?
Continue reading...Corbyn launches bid to declare a national climate emergency
Labour will this week force a vote in parliament to declare a national environmental and climate change emergency as confidential documents show the government has spent only a fraction of a £100m fund allocated in 2015 to support clean air projects.
Jeremy Corbyn’s party will demand on Wednesday that the country wakes up to the threat and acts with urgency to avoid more than 1.5°C of warming, which will require global emissions to fall by about 45% from 2010 levels by 2030, reaching “net zero” before 2050.
Continue reading...Extinction Rebellion activists scale trees in anti-HS2 protest
Action by 12 protesters in Colne Valley highlights damage they say is being done by rail project
Twelve Extinction rebellion activists have scaled trees in the Colne Valley nature reserve in west London to prevent HS2 operatives from chopping them down.
The activists have joined forces with Stop HS2 and Green party campaigners, along with local residents, to raise concerns about the destruction they claim the HS2 development is causing to the environment.
Continue reading...US farmers count cost of catastrophic 'bomb cyclone' in midwest
With grain stores ruined and many fields still under water from last month’s extreme weather, producers are facing devastating losses
Five weeks after historic flooding in the midwest, waters still cover pasturelands, corn and soybean fields. Much of the water has receded, but rivers still run high and washed out roads force people to take long detours. Residents in Missouri are putting their ruined possessions on the street and corn stalks heaped by floodwaters look like snowdrifts in the fields.
In March, more than 450,000 hectares (1.1m acres) of cropland and 34,000 hectares of pastureland flooded, according to an analysis of government and satellite data, prompting governors from Nebraska, Iowa, Missouri, Wisconsin and Minnesota to declare states of emergency.
Continue reading...Uranium miner coaxed government to water down extinction safeguards
Cameco did not have to show if WA mine would lead to extinction of tiny fauna before its approval on 10 April
A multinational uranium miner persuaded the federal government to drop a requirement forcing it to show that a mine in outback Western Australia would not make any species extinct before it could go ahead.
Canadian-based Cameco argued in November 2017 the condition proposed by the government for the Yeelirrie uranium mine, in goldfields north of Kalgoorlie, would be too difficult to meet.
Continue reading...Trump plans to allow fracking near California's national parks
Environmental groups are preparing for a fight against the proposal that would end a five-year fracking moratorium in central California
The Trump administration has issued a plan to open more than a million acres in California to fracking, including areas close to Yosemite, Kings Canyon and Sequoia national parks.
In its proposal, the government made a case that the effects on a range of delicate issues – from degrading air quality to threats to cultural and Native American resources in the area – could be avoided or minimized on 1,011,470 acres across eight counties. The plan could end a five-year fracking moratorium in California enforced by a federal judge.
Continue reading...The week in wildlife – in pictures
Hungry bears, busy bees and disappearing penguins
Continue reading...Embracing revolution on climate change and neoliberalism | Letters
George Monbiot (Time to declare the system dead – before it takes us down with it, 25 April) says he has slowly and reluctantly rejected capitalism because the endless impulse for growth and wealth creation ineluctably drives climate change. Asad Rehman, executive director of War on Want, in his global justice seminar at the Extinction Rebellion protests, focused more on neoliberalism – the even more rapacious, ever-expanding incarnation of capitalist exploitation of people and planet over the last four decades – as the driver of global climate inequality and impending calamity. But left-of-centre ideologies also focus on growth in the bid to tackle inequality, with social and economic priorities overshadowing ecological imperatives.
This paper has had occasional discussions of the degrowth movement. In one such, Christiane Kliemann (Let’s face it: we have to choose between our economy and our future, 23 January 2015) posited that once we have accepted there are only radical options left, we have a choice between our economy and our future if we are to meet everybody’s needs more sustainably and equitably, using fewer resources. More focus on degrowth on the political left, and more analysis in these pages of its underpinnings and its potential, could contribute to movements for creating a global economy that can truly be described as “ours”, and a future not only for those of us in the global north, but also a present for those in the global south already experiencing the ravages of growth-driven climate change.
Sarah Cemlyn
Bristol
Extinction Rebellion protesters to stand in European elections
Nine candidates will stand under Climate Emergency Independents banner
Activists who took part in the Extinction Rebellion protests have announced they will stand in the European elections on a “climate emergency” ticket.
Under the name Climate Emergency Independents, nine candidates will stand in the 23 May polls – seven in London and two in south-west England region.
Continue reading...Greta Thunberg's train journey through Europe highlights no-fly movement
Success of Sweden’s flygskam campaign means rail-only travel agencies are getting a boost
When Greta Thunberg stepped on to the platform at Stockholm Central station on Thursday after completing her European tour to raise awareness of climate change, an unassuming 69-year-old who runs a tiny travel firm was there to greet her.
Ivar Karlsson has found his business in the spotlight as appetite grows for alternatives to flying. It was Karlsson, whose company specialises in rail-only holidays, that Greta and her father contacted to book their trip, which took in stops in Strasbourg, Rome, London before heading back to Sweden.
Continue reading...'Outrage is justified': David Attenborough backs school climate strikers
Exclusive: broadcaster says older generations have done terrible things and should listen to young
The outrage of the students striking from school over climate change inaction is “certainly justified”, according to Sir David Attenborough, who said older generations had done terrible damage to the planet.
In an interview with the former UN climate chief Christiana Figueres, the broadcaster and naturalist dismissed critics of the widely praised global movement of school strikes as cynics.
Continue reading...Siren song: can a charity single save Britain’s birds from extinction?
Let Nature Sing, two and a half minutes of birdsong, is being released by the RSPB to highlight the 44m birds lost since 1966 – and the many more at risk
Almost 40 years since The Birdie Song haunted the charts – and every children’s birthday party for a long time afterwards – the wildlife charity RSPB is releasing a single that, while far from novelty, may just match the Tweets’ infuriating oompah hit for sheer oddness.
Let Nature Sing is all chorus – and not in the same way as Blur’s Song 2, say, is all chorus. This is two and a half minutes of pure birdsong, featuring 25 of the UK’s best loved or most threatened birds among its guest vocalists, including the common blackbird and robin and the endangered nightingale and bittern.
Continue reading...If you build them, they will come: record year for cycle counters
New superhighways and better networks are helping cycle lane usage boom across the UK
Cycle lanes are one of the most efficient and healthiest ways of moving people. A single bike lane can transport five times as many people as a motor traffic lane, without the air and noise pollution. This is good news for everyone, whether you drive, walk or cycle – or breathe.
What’s clear from the data, though – despite occasional bizarre claims to the contrary, and attempts to have lanes removed – is that to reap cycling’s benefits you have to build proper infrastructure. But if you build it, they will come – and the cycle counters prove it.
Continue reading...A fortnight with Extinction Rebellion – in pictures
The Guardian photographer Sean Smith has spent every day with the climate change group Extinction Rebellion during their two weeks of protests in central London
Continue reading...Coalition under fire for approving uranium mine day before election called
WA mine approved on 10 April despite native species risk and not announced until 24 April
The Morrison government is under fire for quietly approving a giant uranium mine in outback Western Australia the day before the federal election was called, despite warnings it could lead to the extinction of native species.
Canadian company Cameco’s Yeelirrie uranium mine, 500 kilometres north of Kalgoorlie, was approved by the environment minister, Melissa Price, on 10 April. There was no public notification on the decision until 24 April, when documents were posted on the environment department website.
Continue reading...