The Guardian
The new normal? How climate change is making droughts worse
In the first part of a new series, we take you through the current conditions, and then put them in context with other severe droughts in Australia’s history
Continue reading...Delays to energy efficient goods will cost EU consumers 'billions' in lost savings
New eco-designs for products such as TVs and fridges are also crucial to Europe meeting its climate targets, say experts
New energy efficient eco-designs for 15 products including fridges, TVs and dishwashers have been delayed, EU diplomats say, even though experts consider them “crucial” to meeting Europe’s Paris climate pledge. The delays are also expected to mean consumers will miss out on lower energy bills.
The design revamps would have saved 62m tonnes of CO2 emissions – as much as Sweden’s annual primary energy consumption – but now look set to be dealt with by the next commission, in which far right parties may be more influential.
Continue reading...Footage shows Indonesian earthquake causing soil liquefaction – video
Liquefaction has caused buildings to collapse in the city of Palu after last Friday's earthquake. This occurs when the earth takes on the characteristics of a liquid after an earthquake. The death toll from the quake and tsunami has passed 1,200
Continue reading...Ikea says goodbye to plastic straws with display at London's Design Museum
‘Last Straw’ installation aims to raise awareness of plastic waste as the firm bans single-use straws from UK and Irish stores
Ikea today symbolically unveiled its last single-use plastic straw in a display at London’s Design Museum, after it stopped serving or selling the items in any of its UK and Ireland stores, restaurants and bistros this week.
The so-called Last Straw installation will be on show to the public until Saturday and aims to inspire consumers to collectively take small steps that will have a positive environmental impact.
Continue reading...Save us the smugness over 2018's heatwaves, environmentalists
In this historically precarious moment, we need something more fundamental than climate strategies built on shame and castigation
There was a barely stifled schadenfreudian glee echoing across the liberal press through this burning hot summer. Environmentalists could scarcely disguise their we-told-you-so smirks as one suffocating heatwave after another rolled over the globe, wildfires savaged landscapes from Siberia to California and broken temperature records kept piling up.
But yearning for catastrophe is an ugly desire, and it is exactly the wrong way to think about global warming. Disasters always hit marginalised people first and worst, and as tempting as it might be to hope the calamities of 2018 bring new kinds of change, that desire only betrays how badly environmentalism needs to be overhauled.
Continue reading...Supreme court rejects California billionaire's 'private beach' case
Vinod Khosla bought $32.5m property south of San Francisco and cut off public access to popular surf spot
Beach lovers were celebrating on Monday after the US supreme court declined to hear a case brought by the billionaire Vinod Khosla that threatened the public’s right to access beaches across California.
Related: 'Privatizing the coast': are wealthy Californians seizing public beaches?
Continue reading...Grand Canyon uranium mining ban upheld as supreme court declines to hear challenge
Court says extraction ban is among cases it refuses to review, in victory for environmental groups and Native American communities
The ban on new uranium mining near the Grand Canyon implemented by the Obama administration was effectively upheld on Monday when the US supreme court declined to hear a challenge from the industry.
Environmental groups and Native American communities declared victory when, on the first day of its fall season, the bench announced that the uranium extraction ban was among cases it refuses to review.
Continue reading...Value of Australian coal exports tipped to decline sharply over next 18 months
Thermal coal prices forecast to drop 25% and metallurgical coal prices 23% as value of iron ore exports also falls
The value of Australia’s coal exports is forecast to decline sharply over the next 18 months as thermal coal prices drop 25% and metallurgical coal prices fall 23%.
The decline in the spot price of both products will see their combined export value fall from $60.8bn in 2018-19 to $49.9bn in 2019-20, a deterioration of 18%.
Continue reading...New study finds incredibly high carbon pollution costs – especially for the US and India | Dana Nuccitelli
As a wealthy, warm country, the US would benefit from implementing a carbon tax to slow global warming
The social cost of carbon is a measure of the economic damages caused (via climate change) by each ton of carbon pollution that we produce today. It’s difficult to estimate because of physical, economic, and ethical uncertainties. For example, it’s difficult to predict exactly when various climate tipping points will be triggered, how much their damages will cost, and there’s also a question about how much we value the welfare of future generations (which is incorporated in the choice of ‘discount rate’).
In 2013, the Obama administration set the federal social cost of carbon estimate at $37 per ton of carbon dioxide (up from the previous estimate of $22). That was a conservative estimate – in recent years, research has pegged the value closer to $200 because recent research has shown that global warming slows economic growth, which makes it quite expensive. A majority of economists in a 2015 survey believed the federal estimate was too low, but Republicans have recently been trying to dramatically lower it anyway.
Continue reading...Scott Morrison says $444m Great Barrier Reef grant 'right financial decision'
PM says he and Mathias Cormann were responsible for awarding the money to foundation in one year
Scott Morrison has said he and the finance minister, Mathias Cormann, were responsible for the government’s decision to give $444m to the Great Barrier Reef Foundation in one year.
At a doorstop in Perth on Monday the prime minister said that the pair, as the Coalition’s economic team before the 2018 budget, had worked out “the best way to do [the grant] financially”, and argued it was the right decision because it helped the reef without “blowing the budget”.
Continue reading...'We've bred them to their limit': death rates surge for female pigs in the US
With sows producing 23 piglets a year on average, intensive farming is called into question over rise in animals suffering prolapse
Death rates for female pigs in the US are rising fast, sending alarm bells ringing throughout the farming industry.
The mortality rate rose from 5.8% to 10.2% on farms owning more than 125 sows between 2013-2016, according to one organisation that collects data across 800 companies.
Continue reading...Climate change and the true cost of economic growth | Letters
If George Monbiot really wants to get people talking about the connection between climate change and the economy, he’d do better to find a different question to “how do we stop growth?” (While growth continues we’ll never kick our fossil fuel habit, 26 September).
The elephant in the room is the assumption that nature’s resources and capabilities are so large that they can be considered infinite and so excluded from the economic cost of production. This has the unintended consequence of rewarding destruction. Hence the German situation in Hambacher: the lignite has value because it can be sold to be burned, the 12,000-year-old forest has none unless the trees are cut down for economic use. And, in an infinite world, there are always more 12,000-year-old forests.
Continue reading...Energy firms demand billions from UK taxpayer for mini reactors
Ministers under pressure to fund new generation of small-scale nuclear power stations
Backers of mini nuclear power stations have asked for billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money to build their first UK projects, according to an official document.
Advocates for small modular reactors (SMRs) argue they are more affordable and less risky than conventional large-scale nuclear plants, and therefore able to compete with the falling costs of windfarms and solar power.
Continue reading...Secret filming reveals hidden cruelty of licensed badger culls
‘Brutal slaughter’ will cost £1,000 per animal, claim campaigners, as government defends battle to beat bovine TB
Trapped in a cage and shot at close range, the badger takes almost a minute to die. Covert footage published online by the Observer, the first to be shared publicly, shows the main method of dispatching Britain’s largest indigenous carnivore as part of a controversial cull now being expanded by the environment secretary, Michael Gove, which farmers insist is vital to curb the spread of TB in cattle.
Taken in Cumbria by the Hunt Investigation Team, it has been released by animal rights groups for maximum political effect ahead of the Conservative party conference, as Gove considers a key report on the government’s TB eradication strategy. Animal rights activists said the footage raised questions about how the cull works.
Continue reading...London air pollution is poisoning my son, says campaigner
Father asks why politicians are not acting on child health crisis caused by illegal toxin levels
For David Smith, the final straw came as he was standing at the bus stop near his home in south London with his two-year-old son Ely.
He had become increasingly aware of the damage pollution was doing to young people’s health since the birth of his two youngest children. And when the gridlocked traffic edged forward and a lorry pulled up a metre from Ely, something snapped.
Continue reading...California shark attack: teen lobster diver injured
- 13-year-old bitten on first day of spiny lobster season
- Encinitas lifeguard says injuries traumatic but not fatal
A teenager was seriously injured in a shark attack off a beach in southern California on Saturday.
Continue reading...Butterflywatch: bug hunters – tread softly, for you tread on our home
It’s been a good summer for black hairstreaks, but the feet of too many enthusiasts can cause damage to the wildlife they come to see
The damage caused when hundreds of twitchers trample a fragile nature reserve to bag a photograph of a rare bird is relatively well-known. Butterfly watchers are considered a more genteel breed. Wading through a wildflower meadow in pursuit of butterflies is a supreme summertime pleasure. When one person does it, the flowers spring back within hours. Unfortunately, numerous people, no matter how well-intentioned, congregating in one spot can cause problems.
Related: Black hairstreaks found miles from their heartland
Continue reading...UK's children denied basic human right to clean air, says Unicef
Young people face a long term ‘health crisis’ unless the government acts to clean up pollution, says children’s charity
Children in the UK are being denied their basic human right to breathe clean air and facing a long term “health crisis” because of the toxic fumes they breathe on their way to and from school, according to leading children’s charity Unicef.
The organisation, which campaigns on children’s rights and wellbeing around the world, described the situation in the UK as “horrific” and has announced it is to make protecting youngsters from air pollution its priority across the country in the months ahead.
Continue reading...Beluga fever is tinged with sorrow for whale-watchers on Thames
The thrill of a once-in-a-lifetime sighting mingles with a fear that this story may not end well
Grant Hazlehurst, a civil servant from Bromley, Kent has seen many whales. “Fin, sperm, Cuvier’s beaked, True’s beaked, sei, long-fin pilot …” most of them from his regular jaunts on a car ferry in the Bay of Biscay. “But I never thought I would see a beluga, not in the Thames,” he said. “So, I’m hoping.”
So were the two dozen or so others who, on Friday morning, gathered on a windy shore near Gravesend, scanning foam-flecked waves in anticipation that, for a fourth day, the beluga whale that has somehow got lost in the Thames, would show itself.
Continue reading...Killer whales, fracking and climate migration – green news roundup
The week’s top environment news stories and green events. If you are not already receiving this roundup, sign up here to get the briefing delivered to your inbox
Orca ‘apocalypse’: half of killer whales doomed to die from pollution
Jailed anti-fracking activists release defiant video message
World ‘nowhere near on track’ to avoid warming beyond 1.5C target
UK government urged not to bury nuclear waste under national parks
Monsanto’s global weedkiller harms honeybees, research finds
Under-fire UN environment chief forced back to HQ
Seattle sea cucumber poachers reeled in $1.5m
Corbyn vows to end ‘greed-is-good’ capitalism in UK
Great Barrier Reef scientists told to focus on projects to make government look good
Fears grow for small tortoiseshell butterfly as decline continues
Continue reading...