The Guardian
Pollutionwatch: transport's true cost to the environment
Our polluting behaviours are subsidised by taxes and a lowering of quality of life
The “polluter pays” principle feels like natural justice. We would all agree factory owners should be responsible for the pollution they cause. But this idea is less supported when we are the polluters and have to pay more.
A European commission study found our polluting behaviours are being heavily subsidised through taxes and by those whose quality of life is most affected. Taxes and charges paid by transport users cover less than half the true cost, when infrastructure and the external costs of accidents, climate change, air pollution and noise are considered.
Continue reading...The government isn't quite ready to drop its obsession with nuclear | Nils Pratley
Greg Clark knows nuclear cannot compete with the likes of wind and solar – but he is not giving up
There was excellent news within Hitachi’s decision to shelve its plan to build a £16bn nuclear plant at Wylfa in Anglesey. Finally, a government minister may have grasped the basic problem with nuclear power. It is being “out-competed” by alternative technologies, especially wind and solar, the business secretary, Greg Clark, had to concede in the Commons. Exactly. So drop the obsession with nuclear, last century’s answer to our energy needs.
As Clark also said, the package offered to Hitachi was generous. The price of the power, at £75 per megawatt hour, was lower than in EDF’s Hinkley Point C contract, but on this occasion the government would have taken a one-third stake and committed to providing all the debt financing for construction. Adjust for the different financial structure and the package looked very Hinkley-like – in other words, hugely expensive for the poor old bill payer.
Continue reading...Nuclear power can be green – but at a price
As Hitachi and Toshiba abandon plans for new British nuclear reactors, Damian Carrington assesses the merits of the technology
All sources of electricity face the same trilemma in the 21st century: carbon emissions, continuity of supply and cost. The UK government has placed a big bet on nuclear power, but reactors meet only two of the three challenges. Nuclear power is low carbon and a secure source of electricity – but it is hugely expensive.
In the era of climate change, generating power without belching out carbon emissions is vital. While building nuclear plants and fuelling them requires concrete, transport and so on, the overall emissions are similar to wind and solar power. All produce far less carbon than coal or gas-powered stations.
Continue reading...Seeds, kale and red meat once a month – how to eat the diet that will save the world
The world faces many challenges over the coming decades, but one of the most significant will be how to feed its expanding global population. By 2050, there will be about 10 billion of us, and how to feed us all, healthily and from sustainable food sources, is something that is already being looked at. The Norway-based thinktank Eat and the British journal the Lancet have teamed up to commission an in-depth, worldwide study, which launches at 35 different locations around the world today, into what it would take to solve this problem – and the ambition is huge.
The commissioners lay out important caveats. Their solution is contingent on global efforts to stabilise population growth, the achievement of the goals laid out in the Paris Agreement on climate change and stemming worldwide changes in land use, among other things. But they are clear that it depends on far more than just these basic requirements. The initial report presents a flexible daily diet for all food groups based on the best health science, which also limits the impact of food production on the planet.
Continue reading...‘Stop treating seas as a sewer,’ MPs urge in bid for protection treaty
Paris agreement for the sea recommended as rates of plastic pollution to skyrocket
A new global agreement to protect the seas should be a priority for the government to stop our seas becoming a “sewer”, according to a cross-party group of MPs.
Plastic pollution is set to treble in the next decade, the environmental audit committee warned, while overfishing is denuding vital marine habitats of fish, and climate change is causing harmful warming of the oceans as well as deoxygenation and acidification.
Continue reading...New plant-focused diet would ‘transform’ planet’s future, say scientists
‘Planetary health diet’ would prevent millions of deaths a year and avoid climate change
The first science-based diet that tackles both the poor food eaten by billions of people and averts global environmental catastrophe has been devised. It requires huge cuts in red meat-eating in western countries and radical changes across the world.
The “planetary health diet” was created by an international commission seeking to draw up guidelines that provide nutritious food to the world’s fast-growing population. At the same time, the diet addresses the major role of farming – especially livestock – in driving climate change, the destruction of wildlife and the pollution of rivers and oceans.
Continue reading...Andrew Wheeler: Trump's EPA pick says climate change 'not the greatest crisis'
The former coal lobbyist took over the EPA when his predecessor Scott Pruitt resigned after months of controversy
A former coal lobbyist Donald Trump has nominated to run the Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday touted rolling back pollution standards and declined to identify climate change as a crisis requiring unprecedented action from the US.
Andrew Wheeler, the deputy administrator who took over when his predecessor Scott Pruitt resigned after months of controversy, said in his confirmation hearing that he is carrying out the president’s “regulatory reform agenda”. Wheeler called the US the “gold standard for environmental progress”.
Continue reading...Six in 10 wild coffee species endangered by habitat loss
Kew scientists’ analysis of 124 wild species shows 60% facing possible extinction, risking viability of commercial stock
Wild coffee species are under threat, with 60% of them facing possible extinction, including Arabica, the original of the world’s most popular form of coffee, researchers say.
Most coffee species are found in the forests of Africa and Madagascar. They are threatened by climate change and the loss of natural habitat, as well as by the spread of diseases and pests.
Continue reading...Industry alliance sets out $1bn to tackle oceans' plastic waste
Greenpeace sceptical about corporate polluters as alliance launched to reduce waste
The scourge of plastic waste in the world’s oceans is the target of a new global alliance of businesses which says it will try to reduce the amount of plastic waste produced and improve recycling.
The Alliance to End Plastic Waste, launched on Wednesday, includes companies producing consumer goods and plastic, as well as waste management and recycling firms. Among more than 25 companies joining the effort are household names such as Procter & Gamble, Shell, BASF and ExxonMobil.
Continue reading...Oregon governor's husband cleans park bathroom – and sends Trump the bill
Dan Little, a retired forest service worker, took matters into his own hands when the shutdown left his local wilderness a mess
The longest ever government shutdown has left US national parks chronically understaffed, with grim consequences: messy toilets, broken Joshua trees, and unsupervised campers.
Related: Keeping US national parks open during the shutdown is a terrible mistake | Jonathan B Jarvis
Continue reading...Ministers to review Durham open-cast mine decision
Government admits process that allowed Pont Valley site to begin operating was flawed
The government is to review a decision to allow open-cast coal mining in a valley in County Durham.
Lawyers for the government have written to campaigners to say their decision-making was flawed and agreed to look again. The mine in the Pont Valley, known as Bradley, began operating last year after four decades of opposition.
Continue reading...Campaigners stop truck of ‘exhausted calves’ amid calls for live export reform
Charities and government officials intervene at Ramsgate port in Kent to prevent animals’ journey time exceeding legal limits
Animal welfare charities have backed calls by the RSPCA to substantially reduce journey times for live exports as the government considers a ban on the practice after Brexit.
The RSPCA has appealed to the EU Commission after a lorry was stopped at a UK port by the charity along with other campaigners and government officials on 10 January.
Continue reading...Our oceans broke heat records in 2018 and the consequences are catastrophic
Rising temperatures can be charted back to the late 1950s, and the last five years were the five hottest on record
Last year was the hottest ever measured, continuing an upward trend that is a direct result of manmade greenhouse gas emissions.
The key to the measurements is the oceans. Oceans absorb more than 90% of the heat that results from greenhouse gases, so if you want to measure global warming you really have to measure ocean warming.
Continue reading...Global tensions holding back climate change fight, says WEF
After extreme weather-related events, there is ‘need for international cooperation’
Growing tension between the world’s major powers is the most urgent global risk and makes it harder to mobilise collective action to tackle climate change, according to a report prepared for next week’s World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
Related: Deadly weather: the human cost of 2018's climate disasters – visual guide
Continue reading...Great Barrier Reef: audit finds $443m grant subject to 'insufficient scrutiny'
ANAO finds department decided Great Barrier Reef Foundation was the ‘obvious’ partner after just three days
An official audit has criticised the Australian government and the environment department for applying “insufficient scrutiny” to numerous aspects of a controversial proposal to award $443.3m to the Great Barrier Reef Foundation.
In a report tabled on Wednesday, the Australian National Audit Office said the department was given just 11 business days by the government to find a private organisation to deliver the record grant, announced in April last year.
Continue reading...Juliet and friends found for Romeo the lonely water frog
Five frogs found on Bolivian expedition funded through lonely hearts profile
For 10 years, Romeo, the last known Sehuencas water frog on the planet, led a solitary life in a conservation centre in Bolivia. Now scientists have found him a Juliet.
The adult female was among five frogs found on an expedition into Bolivia’s cloud forest. The $25,000 search was funded by donations gathered after Romeo’s keepers posted a lonely hearts profile on the dating website Match.com on Valentine’s Day last year.
Continue reading...The primacy of climate change | Letter
The Guardian is the only newspaper to recognise the seriousness of the threat we face from accelerating climate breakdown. Yet you, like Labour, still treat it as an “add-on” – as a separate subject, not something that, in Naomi Klein’s words, changes everything. Thus Jonathan Haidt and Pamela Paresky (Opinion, 10 January) write about the mental effects of childhood stress, never mentioning how terrifying it is for children to live in an environment of existential threat coupled with denial. Thus Owen Jones (Opinion, 10 January) discusses Labour’s Brexit choices and the need to reverse austerity, with no recognition that redistribution must now be within an economy focused on reducing emissions to net zero by 2030, not on “good” growth. All discussion of Brexit or any other policy issue should now be in the context of the need for central and local government to enter emergency mode.
Caro New
Green party of England and Wales campaigns coordinator (jobshare)
• Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com
Continue reading...EU glyphosate approval was based on plagiarised Monsanto text, report finds
Study for European parliament ‘explains why EU assessors brushed off warnings of pesticide’s dangers’, says MEP
EU regulators based a decision to relicense the controversial weedkiller glyphosate on an assessment plagiarised from industry reports, according to a report for the European parliament.
A crossparty group of MEPs commissioned an investigation into claims, revealed by the Guardian, that Germany’s Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR) copy-and-pasted tracts from Monsanto studies.
Continue reading...Immediate fossil fuel phaseout could arrest climate change – study
Scientists say it may still technically be possible to limit warming to 1.5C if drastic action is taken now
Climate change could be kept in check if a phaseout of all fossil fuel infrastructure were to begin immediately, according to research.
It shows that meeting the internationally agreed aspiration of keeping global warming to less than 1.5C above pre-industrial levels is still possible. The scientists say it is therefore the choices being made by global society, not physics, which is the obstacle to meeting the goal.
Continue reading...'One fish at a time': Indonesia lands remarkable victory
Tuna fishery gains first MSC gold standard after nation’s huge push to boost stocks, protect livelihoods and ban foreign vessels
Indonesia, the world’s largest tuna fishing nation, has pulled out all the stops in recent years to transform the health of an industry blighted by depleted stocks and illegal poaching.
Measures by the government – which have even included the bombing of foreign vessels fishing illegally in Indonesian waters – have helped fish stocks more than double in the last five years.
But now the industry has reached another important milestone: one of Indonesia’s tuna fisheries has become the first in the country – and second in south-east Asia – to achieve the gold standard for sustainable practices.
Continue reading...