The Guardian
Poland faces €100,000-a-day fines over illegal logging in Białowieża forest
Poland is given two weeks to end its destruction of the Unesco-protected forest in a landmark ruling by the European court of justice
Poland has been given two weeks to stop illegal deforestation in the Unesco-protected Białowieża forest or face fines of at least €100,000 a day.
In a precedent-setting ruling that will echo across the EU, the European court of justice ordered Poland to show it was acting lawfully in the ancient woodland, or face a €36.5m (£32m) annual penalty.
Continue reading...Humpback dolphins offer gifts in rare courtship ritual – video
Humpback dolphins in Western Australia have been observed gifting sea sponges to potential mates in a courtship behaviour that researchers say is very rare. 'It highlights that there's another species out there that's quite socially complex, more than we previously recognised,' says Dr Simon Allen, lead researcher from the University of Western Australia. 'They are thinking animals'
Continue reading...Country diary: kingfisher inspires myth
Holme, Norfolk Myths and misconceptions surround this diminutive bird, which can hide in plain sight despite its dazzling plumage
It’s funny how kingfishers, the boldest-coloured birds in Britain, have inspired so much confusion. The commonest example concerns their size. Many people seeing one for the first time are flabbergasted at its smallness.
A recent encounter reminded me just how sparrow-like they are. For 20 minutes, I’d sat before a pool scanning the middle distance for harriers and winter geese, before noticing a kingfisher had been perched there all the time. It was only when it made its silvery piping notes that I fixed its location on a reed mace head.
Continue reading...Breakfast at Tiffany’s is off the menu for me because of its racial stereotyping | Letters
Despite what Elon Musk says (Keep on trucking: a swipe at rail as Tesla unveils electric lorry, 18 November), there is still a crucial role for rail freight in transporting long-distance consumer and bulk traffic in a safer low-carbon way that reduces road congestion and road damage. Also, 136 lorry platoons already exist and are called freight trains. So, during road safety week (20-26 November) we should remember that last year heavy goods vehicles were almost seven times more likely than cars to be involved in fatal crashes on local roads.
Philippa Edmunds
Freight on rail manager, Campaign for Better Transport
• One of my best-loved films, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, is now unwatchable by me for the stereotypical portrayal of Mr Yunioshi by Mickey Rooney (I like Apu from the Simpsons. But I can see the harm in stereotypes, 18 November). My father’s critical perspective was influenced by the heroine being a call girl, but then he’d been through a war against, among others, the Japanese.
Jenny Powell
Storrington, Sussex
Nebraska regulators approve Keystone XL pipeline route
Pipeline plan clears last major regulatory hurdle after vote in Nebraska, but legal challenges and protest likely to follow
A panel of Nebraska regulators have voted narrowly in favor of allowing the Keystone XL pipeline to follow its proposed path through the state, removing the last major regulatory hurdle for the controversial project.
The Nebraska Public Service Commission voted 3-2 to approve a permit for the pipeline, which will stretch for 1,200 miles and carry up to 830,000 barrels of oil a day. The vote saw one of the four Republicans on the commission, Mary Ridder, join with the Democrat, Crystal Rhoades, in opposing the permit.
Continue reading...E-bikes: time to saddle up with low-cost energy and no sweat?
E-bikes are well-established in some EU countries, but how about the UK? Old-school cyclist Peter Kimpton tries a new model to see if he’d be tempted to swap
“E-bikes are fantastic. I use them all the time. You can take the kids up mountains. You can arrive in your good clothes at a meeting. It’s so easy.” Who said this?
Surprisingly, it was none other than Fabian Cancellara, perhaps the greatest ever road time-trial rider. He made similar remarks during a Q&A at the recent Rouleur Classic, an event for road bike and race purists, causing good-humoured outrage. But if even the great Cancellara can ride an e-bike, so will I.
Continue reading...Battered by extreme weather, Americans are more worried about climate change | Dana Nuccitelli
After months of intense hurricanes, heat waves, and droughts, a survey finds a record number of Americans worried about climate change
The latest climate change survey from Yale and George Mason Universities is out, and it shows that Americans are still poorly-informed about the causes of global warming. Only 54% understand that it’s mostly human-caused, while 33% incorrectly believe global warming is due mainly to natural factors.
In fact, a new study published in Nature Scientific Reports developed a real-time global warming index. It shows that humans are responsible for 1°C global surface warming over the past 150 years – approximately 100% of the warming we’ve observed. Lead author Karsten Haustein explained their new index and study in a blog post.
Continue reading...Keystone XL pipeline decision: what's at stake and what comes next?
Nebraska regulators will decide Monday on the last major regulatory hurdle facing the project. Here’s what you need to know
Nebraska regulators are expected to decide on Monday whether to approve or deny an in-state route for the proposed Keystone XL pipeline. It’s the last major regulatory hurdle facing project operator TransCanada Corp.
The Nebraska public service commission’s ruling is on the Nebraska route TransCanada has proposed to complete the $8bn,179-mile pipeline to deliver oil from Alberta, Canada, to Texas Gulf coast refineries. The proposed Keystone XL route would cross parts of Montana, South Dakota and most of Nebraska to Steele City, Nebraska.
Continue reading...Reduce, reuse, reboot: why electronic recycling must up its game
With global e-waste projected to hit 50m tonnes next year, consumers need to put pressure on technology firms to make their products more repairable
Tech powers many things, including cognitive dissonance. A few years ago I was travelling through Agbogbloshie, the commercial district in Accra, known as a graveyard for electronic waste, a hotspot for digital dumping. I tutted and shook my head in sorrow as I surveyed the charred keyboards and plumes of toxic computer smoke wafting across the landscape. My Ghanaian colleague looked with some amusement at the tech spilling out of my handbag. My laptop, phone, iPad – where did I think they might end up?
Despite my relatively puritanical approach to upgrades (I can remember ALL my phones), there’s a good chance that those items ended up back there or somewhere similar. According to 2011 figures from the B&FT (Business and Financial Times, Ghana’s biggest business newspaper), the country took in 17,765 tonnes of UK e-waste that year, nearly 50% of all of the waste electronics that were dumped there. For the UK’s discarded electronic goods, Ghana is still likely to be a major destination. Others include China, India and Nigeria. Out of all the electronic waste we send for recycling, 80% ends up being shipped (some legally, and some not) to emerging and developing countries. China is tightening up. A recent change in the law reclassified circuit boards as “hazardous” waste, putting some Chinese e-waste reprocessors out of business. It was a digital version of the butterfly effect: causing more e-waste to be dumped on developing countries to be processed illegally.
Continue reading...Guardian Australia wants you to vote for Australia’s most-loved native bird
In partnership with BirdLife Australia, Guardian Australia has launched its annual Australian bird of the year poll to ask readers to nominate their favourite bird and encourage others to do the same
This week Guardian Australia and BirdLife Australia are asking readers to cast their vote on their favourite native bird. From the gregarious sulphur-crested cockatoo to the ubiquitous bright lorikeet, it’s time to recognise our country’s wealth of amazing native birds.
The poll aims to celebrate the uniqueness of Australian birdlife and raise awareness of the threats facing many of the birds on the list, including climate change, habitat loss, land-clearing and feral animal predators.
Continue reading...We're so lucky to share Australia with a stunning array of birds | Sean Dooley
Australia has some of the most glorious birds on the planet. Our shortlist of 50 birds includes truly spectacular ones. Which one should be number one?
• Vote for your favourite Australian bird
The recently released The Australian Bird Guide (CSIRO Publishing) chronicles a whopping 927 species seen in Australia since 1940. About 160 are considered vagrants – birds that have accidentally arrived here, blown off course or, in the case of North American migratory shorebirds, literally taken a wrong turn at Albuquerque – and vast numbers of the rest are rare, difficult to see or only occur in remote areas, so that only the most dedicated of bird nerds ever gets to delight in their magnificence.
Related: Australian bird of the year 2017: vote for your favourite
Continue reading...What is Australia's favourite bird? Have your say in the Guardian's 2017 poll
In a new poll, run in conjunction with BirdLife Australia, we want you to tell us your best-loved native bird
• Vote here for Australia’s bird of the year 2017
Birds. From the glorious king parrot to the much-maligned white ibis, Australians are passionate about them.
But is there one bird that reigns supreme in the hearts and minds of the public?
Continue reading...Australian bird of the year 2017: vote for your favourite
From the promiscuous willy wagtail to the magnificent but slightly terrifying cassowary, Australia has an abundance of wonderful native birds. Vote here to determine the bird of the year 2017. A shortlist of 51 species has been selected – if your favourite is not included, you can add it. The poll is open until 9 December. You only get one vote – use it wisely.
• Photographs and descriptions courtesy Sean Dooley and BirdLife Australia.
Continue reading...Replacing Liddell coal plant with clean energy $1.3bn cheaper – analysis
A clean energy package will have a zero pollution outcome compared with 40m tonnes under Coalition’s plan to extend the NSW plant, UTS modelling reveals
• Renewables could reliably contribute 50% to power grid, Finkel report finds
Replacing the Liddell coal power station with clean energy technologies would slash pollution and be at least $1.3bn cheaper than the Turnbull government’s plan to extend the life of the New South Wales plant by five years, a new analysis has found.
A second report released on Monday also found Australia has the potential to lead the world in developing large and home-scale energy storage systems if public uncertainty can be overcome.
Continue reading...Country diary 1917: drizzle and the dripping, decaying wood
20 November 1917 The few leaves which still remain upon the branches hang like soiled and tattered rags
The wonderful colouring of a few weeks ago has vanished, and the few leaves which still remain upon the branches hang like soiled and tattered rags; the litter below the trees is full of moisture, blackening with decay. For once the wood is positively untidy. Windfall boughs and twigs, green and red with fungoid growths, lie everywhere, the larger branches holding the withered leaves; the healthy, living tree is the first to shed its foliage. A red campion here and there and a few thistles are the only visible flowers; the latter are bravely open, though their stalks, wilting slightly, are without a single living leaf. The osiers stand a foot deep in water, for the ditches have overflowed, converting the withy bed into a lake from which the willows rise, many islands.
Related: Why we should celebrate winter woodland – not just the Christmas tree
Continue reading...Destructive Arundel bypass route would be a national scandal
Thank you to Patrick Barkham for highlighting the destructive insanity of the Arundel bypass scheme (The road to rural oblivion, 14 November). He mentions ancient woodland and says it needs legal protection. Actually ancient woodland (ie, wooded since 1600) already has legal protection, and “compensation planting” is required – the ratio is decided by English Nature, but may be a multiple of seven or even up to 30 times the area taken.
The legislation to protect ancient woodland may have the perverse effect of causing the most damaging option to be chosen. Highways England has run a public consultation, which blatantly favours the route through Binsted woods, 100 hectares of superb quality semi-natural broadleaved woodland. The woods have been here since the Domesday Book – huge, mysterious, unmanaged, full of fallen trees that have regrown from horizontal, and an incredibly rich hotspot for rare wildlife. But some parts have had a cleared period in the last 400 years, so are not designated as ancient woodland.
Continue reading...UK trade minister lobbied Brazil on behalf of oil giants
A telegram obtained by Greenpeace shows that Greg Hands met a Brazilian minister to discuss relaxation of tax and environmental regulation
Britain successfully lobbied Brazil on behalf of BP and Shell to address the oil giants’ concerns over Brazilian taxation, environmental regulation and rules on using local firms, government documents reveal.
The UK’s trade minister travelled to Rio de Janeiro, Belo Horizonte and São Paulo in March for a visit with a “heavy focus” on hydrocarbons, to help British energy, mining and water companies win business in Brazil.
Continue reading...The eco guide to the cod bounceback
It was great news for fish and chips fans when North Sea cod was certified sustainable. Steady on though, there are still things to worry about at sea
Here’s a food truth: most Britons are happy to say “cod and chips, please” without even thinking about the sustainability impact of our favourite Friday night supper. Our love of white flaky fish has been a nightmare for fish campaigners. North Sea cod stocks plummeted from 270,000 tonnes in the 1970s to 44,000 tonnes in the early 2000s.
North Sea cod stocks plummeted from 270,000 tonnes in the 1970s to 44,000 tonnes in the early 2000s
Continue reading...Country diary: pines that went to Passchendaele
Milkham Inclosure, New Forest In the wartime effort of 1917 timber from this woodland fell to axes and became the battlefield planks trodden perhaps by the forest dwellers themselves
Today we wander through Milkham’s pines in an atmosphere of autumnal tranquillity. During the first world war the scene would have been very different. The ring of axes would have cut through the air as still more trees needed for the war effort were taken down. A few mother trees were spared to provide seedlings for regeneration.
One hundred years ago last week, after appalling cost, the Third Battle of Ypres, Passchendaele, ended. Pictures taken at the time show Australian gunners walking on duckboards across seas of mud, heading for the frontline through stick-like trees. They could have been treading on planks cut from pines that once grew in Milkham. A sombre thought.
Continue reading...'It's a delicate place': Nasa captures 20 years of Earth's seasonal changes – video
A Nasa oceanographer explains how the US space agency successfully captured 20 years of changing seasons to form a striking new global map. The projection of the Earth and its biosphere is derived from two decades of satellite data from September 1997 to September 2017
Continue reading...