The Guardian
Qantas uses mustard seeds in first ever biofuel flight between Australia and US
Blended fuel powers 15-hour Boeing Dreamliner 787-9 flight between LA and Melbourne, reducing carbon emissions by 7%
A Qantas plane powered partly by mustard seeds has become the world’s first biofuel flight between Australia and the United States, after landing in Melbourne on Tuesday.
The 15-hour flight used a blended fuel that was 10% derived from the brassica carinata, an industrial type of mustard seed that functions as a fallow crop – meaning it can be grown by farmers in between regular crop cycles.
Continue reading...Pollution in London higher than during the Great Smog – archive, 30 January 1959
30 January 1959: Conditions described as “very grim” by the AA, with visibility in south-east London varying between nil and ten yards
Fog stretched last night from the Home Counties westwards into Devon and South Wales and northwards through the Midlands and East Anglia up to Yorkshire. It is expected to persist to-day.
Related: How the Guardian reported on London's Great Smog of 1952
Continue reading...Support our new series that shines the spotlight on Australia’s neglected environmental issues
Help us to move these issues up the public agenda and challenge governments to do more
Australia’s fragile environment is under attack. Environmental protections have been dramatically eroded and funding slashed. The threat to climate change so dominates debate that other pressing and immediate environmental dangers struggle for attention. Few Australians know that our country has one of the worst records for species loss, with even the koala threatened; that microplastic pollution is so prevalent it can be found in the sediments of our river estuaries and nearby ocean floors; or that land clearing rates are just as severe as the notorious deforestation of the Brazilian Amazon.
Continue reading...Chile creates five national parks over 10m acres in historic act of conservation
- Founder of Patagonia firm donates 1m acres of private land
- President Bachelet signs ‘unprecedented’ measure into law
Chile has created five sprawling national parks to preserve vast tracts of Patagonia – the culmination of more than two decades of land acquisition by the US philanthropists Doug Tompkins and Kristine McDivitt Tompkins and the largest donation of private land to government in South America.
The five parks, spanning 10.3m acres, were signed into law on Monday by Chile’s president Michelle Bachelet, launching a new 17-park route that stretches down the southern spine of Chile to Cape Horn.
Continue reading...Our wide brown land: 'We've hit rock bottom' – video
There has never been a more serious time to pay attention to Australia's environment, yet Bob Brown, Peter Garrett and other activists say protections have been slashed, funding cut and charities silenced
Continue reading...Away from the public gaze, serious threats to the environment keep rising | Lenore Taylor
Our new in-depth series focuses on the less-scrutinised threats to Australia’s natural places, and you can get involved
Threats to the Australian environment get reported in bursts – a contested development decision or a particular conservation campaign can thrust an issue into the headlines and on to the nightly news bulletins for weeks before a deal is crunched and a “solution” heralded.
Related: 'The Franklin would be dammed today': Australia's shrinking environmental protections
Continue reading...'The Franklin would be dammed today': Australia's shrinking environmental protections
The nation is losing the political will to protect our pristine places – and biodiversity is suffering
What if the Franklin river hadn’t been saved?
Stopping the Gordon-below-Franklin dam was one of the Australian environment movement’s great victories: in the late 1970s, the state-owned Hydro-Electric Commission wanted to flood one of three last temperate rainforests in the southern hemisphere to create a power station.
Continue reading...Simple steps to save the planet from plastic | Letters
I do so agree with Joleah Lamb (‘It’s like gangrene’: disease soars as plastic fouls reef, 26 January) about the need for people to take direct action against plastic. I would love to do so and so would thousands like me, but the question is how when manufacturers and supermarkets are calling the shots? I will buy only loose fruit and vegetables to avoid packaging, but all supermarkets and some market stalls offer only plastic bags to wrap them. A very simple and immediate change that could be made, long before the introduction of biodegradable packaging becomes available, would for all sellers of loose fruit and vegetables to supply only paper bags from now. I for one will be buying my greengrocery at the first supermarket and market stall that does that, and I expect many feel the same way.
Maggie Sutton
Wells, Somerset
• It is infuriating to find my local Waitrose wrapping more and more vegetables in plastic. Since the supermarket teamed up with Prince Charles’s Duchy brand, it has been almost impossible to buy less than six of most fruit, and every green vegetable is plastic-wrapped. Duchy is meant to be organic and interested in saving the planet; a pity Harry didn’t question Pa about that, but then of course, they don’t shop! I have emailed both Waitrose and Duchy, to no avail. Good for Iceland taking the lead: I now only buy fresh veg and fruit at my local greengrocer, who uses time-honoured brown paper bags.
Kate Lammin
Twickenham
America's public lands belong to all of us. We owe it to ourselves to save them | Theodore Roosevelt IV
We Americans can do better in the fight to protect our threatened heritage, writes Theodore Roosevelt IV, a descendant of the ‘conservation president’
A truly noble idea – one deeply democratic in its inspiration and one that honors the human need to be in relationship to awe and majesty.
America’s public lands.
Continue reading...Rotting cabins, closed trails: why we're shining a light on US national parks
Amid dangers from the Trump administration and climate change, sites including the Grand Canyon and Zion national park are facing yet another threat: ‘massive disrepair’
At Zion national park, a popular trail has been closed since 2010. At the Grand Canyon, a rusting pipeline that supplies drinking water to the busiest part of the park breaks at least a half-dozen times a year. At Voyageurs, a historic cabin collapsed.
The National Park Service is the protector of some of America’s greatest environmental and cultural treasures. Yet a huge funding shortfall means that the strain of America’s passion for its parks is showing. Trails are crumbling and buildings are rotting. In all there is an $11bn backlog of maintenance work that repair crews have been unable to perform, a number that has mostly increased every year in the past decade.
Continue reading...Natural gas killed coal – now renewables and batteries are taking over | Dana Nuccitelli
To avoid dangerous climate change, we can’t rely on natural gas replacing coal
Over the past decade, coal has been increasingly replaced by cheaper, cleaner energy sources. US coal power production has dropped by 44% (866 terawatt-hours [TWh]). It’s been replaced by natural gas (up 45%, or 400 TWh), renewables (up 260%, or 200 TWh), and increased efficiency (the US uses 9%, or 371 TWh less electricity than a decade ago).
Continue reading...The threat to America's public lands is increasing – and so is our coverage
This Land Is Your Land is our series on an American birthright at risk amid privatization, energy extraction and climate change
Public lands are an American birthright like no other. Managed by the government and held in trust for the people, they range from celebrated national parks such as Yosemite, Yellowstone and the Everglades to vast western forests and deserts, Pacific coral reefs and Atlantic seamounts. Yet now their future hangs in the balance.
This is why we are delighted to announce a major expansion of our series This Land is Your Land, which will provide coverage of these unique and threatened places.
Continue reading...Orange cave crocodiles may be mutating into new species
In 2008 an archaeologist discovered crocodiles living in remote caves in Gabon. Now, genetics hint that these weird cave crocodilians may be in the process of evolving into a new species.
It sounds like something out of a children’s book: it’s orange, it dwells in a cave and it lives on bats and crickets. But this isn’t some fairy story about a lonely troll – it’s the much weirder tale of a group of African dwarf crocodiles that are adapting to life in pitch-darkness.
“We could say that we have a mutating species, because [the cave crocodile] already has a different [genetic] haplotype,” said Richard Oslisly, who first discovered the cave crocs in 2008. “Its diet is different and it is a species that has adapted to the underground world.”
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America’s public lands are under threat. Sign up for monthly updates from our two-year series, This Land is Your Land, as we cover the challenges facing national parks, forests, deserts, coral reefs and seamounts. We’ll send you the latest stories from the Guardian and our partner publications.
Continue reading...Why cyclists should keep their cool in the face of dangerous driving
Anger is often the first response to a near miss on the road but there are better ways to hold drivers to account
Not long ago, while riding down Archway Road in north London, I confronted a truck driver who pulled out without warning. The road is a long steep hill where bikes and cars gather decent speed if traffic is minimal. I was riding at just over 20mph, but flowing with traffic in my lane and within the speed limit. When the truck pulled out only metres ahead, I only just had time to brake, narrowly avoiding a collision and fortunate that the cars behind had not piled into me.
Adrenaline and anger flooded my system. I asked the driver why he made this dangerous move. He contemptuously said he did not see me and that I was going too fast anyway. This suggested a rational discussion was unlikely, and my anger rose. I swore at the driver, who responded by challenging me to fight in the middle of the road. I turned down his invitation; the prospect of carefully placing my bike to one side and trading blows in the middle of the street while cars behind beeped wasn’t tempting.
Country diary: the Afon Leri reflects the reeds on a clear winter's day
Borth, Ceredigion: Arrow-straight as a result of canalisation in the early 19th century, the river once had a meandering path into the open sea
As soon as I reached the top of the sea wall, I realised that I had badly misjudged the state of the tide. Instead of miles of firm sand, recently exposed by the retreating sea, I was faced with a jumble of storm waves breaking against the bank of stone cobbles at the back of the beach. My objective, the dunes of Ynyslas a couple of miles to the north, was temptingly visible through a shroud of misty salt spray – but, stumbling across the shifting, irregular stones, I made only slow progress. Cursing my cursory examination of the tide tables, I realised I had read the time for high water, rather than low.
After I had walked for half an hour, the dunes looked as far away as ever and I began to consider alternatives. Looking east, beyond the ridge of stones and the Afon Leri, I could see the great flat expanse of Cors Fochno – a rare survival of raised peat bog, which forms a key part of the Unesco-recognised Dyfi biosphere. With a backdrop of steep, open hills, this diverse wild landscape is an important ecological resource, protected both by statute and its sheer inaccessibility.
Continue reading...Devon police under fire for proposal to suspend badger protection law
Devon and Cornwall force’s idea to ease the pressure of policing the cull was termed ‘appalling’
A police force has been strongly criticised by animal rights campaigners after proposing the suspension of the law that protects badgers in areas where the government’s controversial cull has been taking place.
Devon and Cornwall police suggested that decriminalising the taking of badgers in cull zones would ease pressure on resources, save the public money and could help stop the spread of bovine TB.
Continue reading...Flooding in Paris – in pictures
Paris remained on flood alert after the Seine burst its banks, leaving streets inundated and forcing part of the Louvre to close. Forecasters said the flooding should peak by the end of the day
Continue reading...An eco-friendly cuppa? Now teabags are set to go plastic-free
The war on plastic waste is extending to the UK’s favourite beverage, with a major retailer in the final stages of developing a fully biodegradable paper teabag that does not contain plastic.
The Co-op is to make its own-brand Fairtrade 99 teabags free of polypropylene, a sealant used industry wide to enable teabags to hold their shape, and the guilt-free brew is due to go on sale by the end of the year.
Continue reading...Country diary: the Trickle’s white witchcraft turns everything to stone
Welburn, North Yorkshire: A spring from the lime-rich bedrock calcifies all in its path, from pine cones to snail shells
January has wrapped itself so tight around the valley that there is no view today. Even the short sightlines in the woods are cloaked and murky. The mud on the main track is tedious, so I’m tempted by the firmer footing of a leafy badger path. It starts well but soon becomes steep and hostile, with bramble snares every few paces. The hulk of a dead birch gives way as I grasp it for support; muddied and disheartened, I try to cut back.
I emerge instead in the swamp landscape of a dinosaur picture book, thick with dead horsetails banded bone-white and brown like okapi legs. A few more squelching steps and I reach what must be the source of the small spring we call the Trickle. Here, its early course runs white over a petrified woodland floor. Bathed in water sprung from the lime-rich bedrock, twigs, leaves, pine cones and needles are turning to stone.
Continue reading...