The Guardian
Climate change soon to cause mass movement, World Bank warns
140m people in three regions expected to migrate before 2050 unless environment is improved
Climate change will result in a massive movement of people inside countries and across borders, creating “hotspots” where tens of millions pour into already crowded slums, according to the World Bank.
More than 140m people in just three regions of the developing world are likely to migrate within their native countries between now and 2050, the first report on the subject has found.
Continue reading...John Kelly shut down Pruitt’s climate denial ‘red team,’ but they have a Plan B | Dana Nuccitelli
Let fossil fuel-funded think tanks make their case, then ignore it
In 2007, the US Supreme Court ruled that carbon dioxide is an air pollutant, which means that if it poses a threat to public health or welfare, the EPA must regulate it under the Clean Air Act. In 2009, the EPA completed its review of the climate science literature and correctly concluded in its Endangerment Finding that carbon pollution poses such a threat via climate change. That document is the foundation for all government climate policies, including the Obama Administration’s Clean Power Plan. Climate deniers have thus long had their sights set on revoking the Endangerment Finding.
That’s a tall order, since the scientific literature is crystal clear on this question. House Republicans first tried to simply rewrite the Clean Air Act to state the greenhouse gases aren’t pollutants, but they failed to get nearly enough support to pass that legislation. Next they proposed setting up a ‘Red Team’ of climate deniers to debate the mainstream climate science ‘Blue Team.’ But Trump’s chief of staff John Kelly worried that having this prominent debate on the record would be a distraction and potentially expose the administration to litigation, so he killed the idea.
Water shortages could affect 5bn people by 2050, UN report warns
Conflict and civilisational threats likely unless action is taken to reduce the stress on rivers, lakes, aquifers, wetlands and reservoirs
More than 5 billion people could suffer water shortages by 2050 due to climate change, increased demand and polluted supplies, according to a UN report on the state of the world’s water.
The comprehensive annual study warns of conflict and civilisational threats unless actions are taken to reduce the stress on rivers, lakes, aquifers, wetlands and reservoirs.
Continue reading...Country diary: beavers adjust to the first proper Highland winter in years
Aigas, Beauly, Inverness-shire They had to hurry to cache enough food before the ice took over, an underwater stash of nutritious bark kept fresh for winter snacking
I think we’d almost forgotten about ice. A decade of mild winters had pressed delete in our recent memory banks, banished ice to the Winter Olympics or perhaps to nostalgia – something that happened back then. Well, this Highland winter was having none of it. It rampaged in with sharp teeth in November, bit hard and hasn’t let go. It shows no sign of doing so yet.
The beavers in the Aigas loch had to hurry to cache enough food before the ice took over, an underwater stash of birch and willow logs, the nutritious bark kept fresh for winter snacking. They don’t hibernate. They still emerge in the long dark to forage where they can, labouring away at their evenly spaced breathing holes in the ice, gnawing at the rims every night to keep them open.
Wild quolls take bait of cane-toad sausages, offering hope for species
Wildlife managers hope taste aversion technique can help safeguard the endangered northern quoll
Scientists are a step closer to stopping the devastating march of toxic cane toads across northern Australia, as the introduced species continues to decimate what is left of the native quoll populations.
Field trials of a technique used to turn quolls off the taste of toads has yielded positive results, which were published in this month’s Austral Ecology journal.
Charities' income gets stripped down as clothing recycling bins vanish
Clothing banks are disappearing from car parks at night, costing charities in lost revenue and bins
Clothing recycling bins are disappearing from supermarket and council car parks across the UK, costing the charities that should benefit from them hundreds of thousands of pounds, it is claimed.
According to the Textile Recycling Association, the UK’s trade association, 750 clothing banks have recently gone missing from all parts of the UK except Scotland. Some have been found, repainted with the logo of an organisation that is being investigated by the Charity Commission.
Continue reading...Big farming across Australia – in pictures
Alice Mabin is the photographer and author of the upcoming book The Grower. It tells the story of agriculture in Australia, a difficult industry with isolated landscapes as a backdrop. She spent more than a year visiting 400 properties, shooting enterprises including sheep, beef, dairy and truffles to show what conditions were like for families who live in rural environments and the challenges they face
Continue reading...Ban new petrol and diesel cars in 2030, not 2040, says thinktank
Green Alliance says ending UK sales earlier would close climate target gap and halve oil imports
Ministers have been urged to bring forward their 2040 ban on new diesel and petrol car sales by a decade, a move which an environmental thinktank said would almost halve oil imports and largely close the gap in the UK’s climate targets.
The Green Alliance said a more ambitious deadline of 2030 is also needed to avoid the UK squandering its leadership on electric cars.
Continue reading...Billion-dollar polar engineering ‘needed to slow melting glaciers’
Scientists have outlined plans to build a series of mammoth engineering projects in Greenland and Antarctica to help slow down the disintegration of the planet’s main glaciers. The controversial proposals include underwater walls, artificial islands and huge pumping stations that would channel cold water into the bases of glaciers to stop them from melting and sliding into the sea.
The researchers say the work – costing tens of billions of dollars a time – is urgently needed to prevent polar glaciers melting and raising sea levels. That would lead to major inundations of low-lying, densely populated areas, such as parts of Bangladesh, Japan and the Netherlands.
Continue reading...Drugs, plastics and flea killer: the unseen threats to UK's rivers
Waterways look cleaner but levels of new pollutants are not being monitored
Beer hasn’t been sold in steel cans for decades. The cans Keith Dopson found in Slough’s Salt Hill stream would be collectors’ items were they in good condition, but they had disintegrated into clumps of rust.
“We filled seven bin bags with rubbish,” he says. “Just from the river, not the banks. Plastic bottles and cans, lots of cans. Those steel ones must have been there for ages.”
Continue reading...Country diary: life out of the freezer
Comins Coch, Aberystwyth, Ceredigion The thaw has set in, and starlings are busy amid the last of the melting snow
Being west of the mountains, we missed the worst of the recent bout of snow – but the gale force easterly wind had a significant impact. Our house, tucked under the shoulder of the hill, is well sheltered from the usual winter winds that roar out of the south-west but the wide, open view of the hills to the east comes at a price.
A sudden ice-laden squall had driven me briefly outside to salvage some tumbling plant pots, when the steel cowl was wrenched from the top of the chimney. It missed me by fewer feet than I would have liked, and bounded off down the frozen garden with a sound reminiscent of a galvanised bucket being dropped down a flight of stone stairs.
Continue reading...Offsets for emissions breaches prove Australia has a carbon market, Labor says
Industrial sites have spent millions on carbon credits under Direct Action’s ‘safeguard mechanism’
Sixteen Australian industrial sites have breached government-imposed greenhouse gas emissions limits and had to buy millions of dollars in carbon credits to offset the infringement.
The breaches came despite big emitters being granted generous carbon limits, in many cases above their highest previous pollution levels.
Continue reading...Inaction over clean air zones and bottled water cannot continue | Letters
The government needs to step up and provide clear messaging and leadership on charging clean air zones (Car industry should pay for UK’s toxic air, inquiry says, 15 March). About 40,000 premature deaths a year are attributable to air pollution; inaction simply cannot continue. The government’s own evidence identifies charging clean air zones as the most effective way to reduce levels of nitrogen dioxide in the shortest time possible. Despite this, they continue to be presented as a last resort, with little support given to the local authorities that are left to decide whether to implement them. The government should mandate charging clean air zones in areas where legal limits of air pollution are being broken.
Reducing all vehicular traffic in towns and cities is the best way to protect people’s health from the harmful effects of air pollution. Electric vehicles still release fine particulate matter, caused by the wear and tear of tyres and brake pads, which gets into our respiratory system and contributes to early death. Investing revenue from clean air zones in safe walking routes, cycling infrastructure and public transport is the best way to make the UK’s air breathable for us all.
Holly Smith
Policy coordinator, Living Streets
Shutting down EU ivory trade is a ‘personal priority’ for Boris Johnson
• An estimated 20-30,000 elephants are killed by poachers each year
• UK was world’s largest legal ivory exporter between 2010 and 2015
A government minister has promised that the UK will lead a fight to shut down the ivory trade in the EU, describing the issue as “a personal priority” for the foreign secretary Boris Johnson.
Speaking at a conservation summit in Botswana, the Africa minister, Harriet Baldwin, said: “The UK will lead by example. We will be shutting down our ivory trade. We will be working with the EU to do the same. That is something we can do irrespective of whether we are in the European Union or not.”
Continue reading...First polar bear cub born in Britain for 25 years – video
Footage from a documentary about the first polar bear cub to be born in the UK in the past 25 years has been released. The cub was born at the RZSS Highland Wildlife Park in Kincraig, Scotland. Before the first sighting this month, the birth – which took place a week before Christmas – had only been confirmed by high-pitched noises from the den
• Britain’s Polar Bear Cub airs Sunday at 7pm on Channel 4
Continue reading...Plan to cut Glasgow air pollution is a failure, say campaigners
Friends of the Earth criticises ‘unambitious’ blueprint for first Scottish low emissions zone
Campaigners have criticised plans for Scotland’s first low emissions zone to combat illegal levels of air pollution in Glasgow city centre.
Last October, World Health Organisation testing found that Glasgow was one of the most polluted areas in the UK, with poorer air quality than London, Manchester and Cardiff. Public Health England estimates the equivalent of 300 lives are lost in the city every year due to air pollution.
Continue reading...The week in wildlife – in pictures
Gentoo penguins, an albatross chick and spring crocuses are among this week’s pick of images from the natural world
Continue reading...Is Fukushima doomed to become a dumping ground for toxic waste?
Despite promises of revitalisation from Japan’s government, seven years on from the nuclear disaster the area is still desolate
This month, seven years after the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi reactor meltdowns and explosions that blanketed hundreds of square kilometres of northeastern Japan with radioactive debris, government officials and politicians spoke in hopeful terms about Fukushima’s prosperous future. Nevertheless, perhaps the single most important element of Fukushima’s future remains unspoken: the exclusion zone seems destined to host a repository for Japan’s most hazardous nuclear waste.
No Japanese government official will admit this, at least not publicly. A secure repository for nuclear waste has remained a long-elusive goal on the archipelago. But, given that Japan possesses approximately 17,000 tonnes of spent fuel from nuclear power operations, such a development is vital. Most spent fuel rods are still stored precariously above ground, in pools, in a highly earthquake-prone nation.
Continue reading...Microplastics, Antarctic wildlife and making polluters pay – 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
Continue reading...Earth is my witness: the photography of Art Wolfe – in pictures
The photography of Art Wolfe covers the globe, capturing landscapes, wildlife, and cultures from every continent. Here he talks us through a selection of his favourite images
- Wolfe will be at The Photography Show on 17-18 March in Birmingham, UK