The Guardian
The sad inevitability of energy price rises | Letters
Privatising our vital energy services was a disaster waiting to happen, though the Tories daren’t admit it (Row over rise in energy bills for 1m households, 3 March). Every house has one set of cables carrying electricity and one set of pipes with gas; in addition, all the key energy market prices are set nationally, regionally or even globally, so there can be little or no competition in supply costs. You could argue that having more buyers actually increases competition, pushing prices higher.
We may not realise it, but it has been cold in all of Europe, so price rises are inevitable. As your report says, the 7.9% rise in prices in the last six months was “driven primarily by increases in wholesale gas and electricity costs”. How will the government’s much-vaunted price cap help with that? I have changed suppliers almost every year in the last five or more years, but my bills are higher than ever, for a very simple reason: replacing the government-controlled system by more than a dozen private companies, all with highly paid chief executives and shareholders to keep happy, made the costs of the delivery process soar. How could it not?
Continue reading...Australia has 1,800 threatened species but has not listed critical habitat in 10 years
Only five habitats put on critical habitat register since national environmental laws enacted
Australia has not listed any critical habitat for the protection of threatened species on the federal critical habitat register for more than a decade.
And only five places have been registered on the database since Australia’s national environmental laws – the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act – were enacted.
Mass die-off of sea creatures follows freezing UK weather
Starfish and crabs among animals piled ankle-deep along parts of the North Sea coast
Massive numbers of starfish, crab, mussels and lobsters have been washed up on the North Sea coast of the UK, following the recent freezing weather and storms.
Tens of thousands of creatures are piled up ankle-deep in places along the Holderness coast in Yorkshire and similar mass mortality has been reported in Kent and Norfolk.
Continue reading...Stop blaming ‘both sides’ for America’s climate failures | Dana Nuccitelli
The fault lies entirely with the GOP. Focus on fixing it, not laying blame where it doesn’t belong
Steven Pinker is a cognitive psychologist, linguist, and author of Bill Gates’ two favorite books. However, his latest – Enlightenment Now – has some serious shortcomings centering on Pinker’s misperceptions about climate change polarization. Pinker falls into the trap of ‘Both Siderism,’ acknowledging the Republican Party’s science denial, but also wrongly blaming liberals for the policy stalemate, telling Ezra Klein:
there is implacable opposition to nuclear energy in much of the environmental movement ... There are organizations like Greenpeace and NRDC who are just dead set opposed to nuclear. There are also people on the left like Naomi Klein who are dead set against carbon pricing because it doesn’t punish the polluters enough ... the people that you identify who believe in a) carbon pricing and b) expansion of nuclear power, I suspect they’re a tiny minority of the people concerned with climate … What we need are polling data on how many people really would support carbon pricing and an expansion of nuclear and other low carbon energy sources.
Continue reading...Why what we eat is crucial to the climate change question | Ruth Khasaya Oniang’o
Our food – from what we eat to how it is grown – accounts for more carbon emissions than transport and yet staple crops will be hit hard by global warming
Did you know that what’s on your plate plays a larger role in contributing to climate change than the car you drive? When most wealthy people think about their carbon footprint, or their contributions to climate change, they’ll think about where their electricity and heat come from or what they drive. They’ll think about fossil fuels and miles per gallon, about LED lights and mass transit – but not so much about combine harvesters or processed meals or food waste. Few consider the impacts of the food they eat, despite the fact that globally, food systems account for roughly one quarter of all manmade greenhouse gas emissions. That’s more than the entire transportation sector, more than all industrial practices, and roughly the same as the production of electricity and heat.
Continue reading...A fifth of Europe's wood beetles at risk of extinction as ancient trees decline
Demise of the beetles, that need rotting wood to survive, could have devastating knock-on effect for other species, say scientists in a new report
Almost a fifth of Europe’s wood beetles are at risk of extinction due to a widespread decline in ancient trees, according to a new report which suggests their demise could have devastating knock-on effects for other species.
The study says 18% of saproxylic beetles – which depend on dead and decaying wood for some of their lifecycle – now exist on a conservation plane between “vulnerable” and “critically endangered”.
Continue reading...Country diary 1968: whooper swans visit Sheffield steelworks
5 March 1968 The steelworks pool was largely frozen, and walking in line ahead across the ice were three big yellow-billed whooper swans
YORKSHIRE and NOTTINGHAMSHIRE
Over a desert of rubbish-strewn waste ground on the outskirts of Sheffield skylarks were singing, and a brace of partridges whirred up from a patch of tall dead weeds. The steelworks pool was largely frozen, and walking in line ahead across the ice were three big yellow-billed whooper swans, while six more were keeping open a small patch of water in the centre of the pool. For the most part these were motionless, only giving brief glimpses of their bill-patterns as they lifted their heads from their sleeping posture. The whooper breeds occasionally in Scotland, although there have been no published records of its doing so even there since 1939, but it is only a winter visitor to the rest of the British Isles.
Related: Legendary birds of the wildness
Continue reading...Country diary: sublime beauty sculptured from a Siberian blast
Helvellyn, Lake District The combination of deep, drifting snow and mountain wind creates absorbing patterns
A flare of sun, a rush of endorphins, and the cloud scatters like a flock of birds to reveal the Patterdale fells, snowbound and sublime. There was not a speck of snow in overcast Glenridding but as we climbed the snow cover had gradually spread, until this sudden sunburst at about the 700 metre contour marked the feeling we had crossed from the valleys below to the winter hills above, a world charged with adventurous promise.
Our aim is Helvellyn’s Striding Edge, but I find myself being absorbed by the sculptures resulting from the combination of deep, drifting snow and mountain wind. The sinuous patterns in a banked-up gully are mesmerising, interlocking and racing downhill like river currents; ripples radiate across a snowdrift like the surface of a windblown lake; miniature cornices shaped like cresting waves create the illusion of a rolling sea frozen in time. Water is flowing everywhere, but without motion.
Continue reading...Nature and culture must be balanced in our national parks | Letters
George Monbiot raises some legitimate concerns about the management of parts of our national parks (Here’s a novel idea: protecting wildlife in our national parks, 28 February) but to write off all 15 of them entirely is nonsense.
Monbiot says: “Much of the land in our national parks is systematically burned.” But they are more than just moorlands; they contain one-third of England’s public forest estate. Northumberland contains some of the cleanest rivers in England; the New Forest includes a special area of conservation, an EU designation, that encompasses almost 30,000 hectares; and the Pembrokeshire coast some of the most biodiverse coastal habitats.
Continue reading...No big freeze in electric vehicles | Letters
I had to laugh at John Richards’s worry about people freezing in stuck electric vehicles because their batteries would run down in “no time” while those in a petrol car could run their heater (Letters, 3 March). Running the heated seats and climate control for about seven hours costs about three miles of range for my Tesla and it’s probably something similar for a petrol or diesel car. The big difference is, the electric vehicle won’t be killing the occupants with carbon monoxide poisoning. Indeed, the advice has always been not to run the engine if stuck.
Teslas have a 12v battery for “domestic” uses and a 400v battery for motive power. The 400v kicks in to recharge the 12v when needed. Think of the 400v battery as the equivalent of running the engine to top up the battery.
Cat Burton
Barry, Vale of Glamorgan
'Deeply regret': Australia's apology to landholders suspected of planning unlawful clearing
Reversal came after political intervention by the Queensland government
Attempts by the federal government to stop potentially unlawful clearing in Queensland were reversed after political intervention, with a highly unusual apology letter sent to every landholder suspected of planning unlawful clearing at the direct request of the minister, documents obtained by the Guardian under FOI laws reveal.
In December 2015 and January 2016, the federal department of environment took the exceptional step of asking 51 landholders with approval from the Queensland government to clear their land, to explain why the clearing wasn’t unlawful under federal environmental law.
Continue reading...'Global deforestation hotspot': 3m hectares of Australian forest to be lost in 15 years
Threatened species, pressure on Great Barrier Reef and climate change all worsened by full-blown land-clearing crisis
Australia is in the midst of a full-blown land-clearing crisis. Projections suggest that in the two decades to 2030, 3 million hectares of untouched forest will have been bulldozed in eastern Australia.
The crisis is driven primarily by a booming livestock industry but is ushered in by governments that fail to introduce restrictions and refuse to apply existing restrictions.
Continue reading...Jaguars killed for fangs to supply growing Chinese medicine trade
Conservationists who have uncovered a growing illegal trade in jaguar fangs in South America are linking it to Chinese construction projects that could be threatening wildlife globally.
Experts say major Chinese power plant, road and rail works in developing nations are key stimulants of illicit trade in the skins, bones and horns of endangered animals.
Continue reading...Badger cull faces review as bovine TB goes on rising
The government is to review the controversial badger cull as part of an inquiry into its strategy to clamp down on bovine TB.
The review raises the possibility that experts conducting it will examine disputed evidence about the cull’s efficacy, potentially paving the way for a change in policy.
Continue reading...Green party says Tories' environment rhetoric is dangerous
Caroline Lucas derides ‘fluffy communications strategy’ and ‘inadequate’ action on plastics
The Conservative party’s rhetoric on the environment is a “fluffy communications strategy” when change on plastics could happen in half the time pledged, the co-leader of the Greens has said ahead of her party conference speech.
Caroline Lucas will use her speech on Saturday in Bournemouth to call for petrol and diesel-only new cars to be phased out by 2030 and a deposit return scheme on drinks containers to be launched by the end of the year.
Continue reading...Country diary: flat feet, long in the claw. A warlike creature
Inshriach, Aviemore Tracks revealed the badger and I had been cohabiting all this time. I just wasn’t looking hard enough
The bothy at Inshriach sits alone in a clearing, with a view through the trees across the Spey to the Monadhliath mountains. When I arrive, all this is under a foot of snow: juniper hunched over with the weight of it, silver birch cryptic against its white backdrop, the whole glade swathed in mist. The sunlit uplands to the north are glossy and white like Italian meringue, dolloped on with a spoon.
Continue reading...Republican-led committee says Dakota pipeline protesters had Russian backing
House lawmakers say Russia helped fund environmentalists and supported them on social media, but evidence is thin
A powerful US congressional committee has alleged that Russia financed major environmental organizations and used social media to support opponents of the Dakota Access pipeline, fracking and fossil fuels.
The Republican-controlled committee claimed in a new report that the Kremlin is attempting to make “‘useful idiots’ of unwitting environmental groups and activists” to further its global agenda.
Continue reading...Penguins, bee-harming pesticides and a lot of snow – 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...Arctic spring is starting 16 days earlier than a decade ago, study shows
Climate change is causing the season to start comparatively earlier the further north you go, say scientists
The Arctic spring is arriving 16 days earlier than it did a decade ago, according to a new study which shows climate change is shifting the season earlier more dramatically the further north you go.
The research, published on Friday in the journal Scientific Reports, comes amid growing concern about the warming of Greenland, Siberia, Alaska and other far northern regions, which have recently experienced unusually prolonged and frequent midwinter temperature spikes.
Continue reading...The week in wildlife – in pictures
Olive ridley sea turtles, a sparrowhawk and Europe’s highest sand dune are among this week’s pick of images from the natural world
Continue reading...