The Guardian
Trump environment nominee struggles to answer basic climate questions – video
Kathleen Hartnett White struggles to answer basic questions posed by the Senate committee on environment and public works on Thursday. Hartnett White, Trump’s nominee for the environmental quality council chair, had difficulty answering questions from Senators Ben Cardin and Sheldon Whitehouse on green house emissions and climate science
Continue reading...Emissions trading and refrigerated truck engines under scrutiny | Letters
While the EU is extolling its “climate leadership” at the UN climate talks in Bonn, in Brussels it has just agreed to prolong its emissions trading system – providing big polluters with billions of euros in subsidies.
Some EU member states could use a sizable chunk of these funds to carry on burning fossil fuels, with Poland, for instance, looking to prolong the lifespan of its ageing coal infrastructure. Using emissions trading revenues to extend the life of coal-fired power plants is extremely irresponsible and works directly against efforts to halt catastrophic climate change.
Continue reading...US switches focus of its Bonn event from clean energy to fossil fuels
One of US’s only public events, originally billed as promoting clean energy, has since been changed to favour coal and nuclear power
The US has changed the focus of one of its few public events at the Bonn climate talks to emphasise coal and nuclear power, in a sign of the Trump administration’s goals at the talks.
An event next Monday, opening the second week of the ongoing UN negotiations, was originally billed as promoting clean energy. However, it has since been changed to emphasise coal and nuclear power.
Continue reading...The latest from Bonn, Delhi smog and a small victory for bees – 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...The week in wildlife – in pictures
Pintail ducks, an elephant seal pup and an osprey in action are among this week’s pick of images from the natural world
Continue reading...Donald Trump cannot halt US climate progress, former Obama adviser says
Paul Bodnar believes US president has ability to hamper progress towards a lower carbon economy – but that market forces will ultimately stop him
Donald Trump could slow down US progress towards a lower carbon economy, but he will be unable to halt it because businesses and local governments have committed to a low-carbon path, a former climate negotiator for the US has said.
Through measures such as slapping import tariffs on solar products, scrapping incentives to renewable energy and promoting coal power, the US president could try to alter the economics of pursuing low-carbon energy.
Continue reading...Direct democracy can offer a third way in the climate fight | John Gibbons
With political agreement making slow progress and direct action becoming more dangerous, we must find alternatives
In the medieval legend made famous by the brothers Grimm, the German town of Hamelin is besieged by a plague of rats, until the mysterious pied piper appears and agrees, for a fee, to rid them of the infestation. The mayor then reneges on payment and the piper exacts a savage revenge on the town’s ingrates by luring away their children, who are never seen again.
The tale could also be an allegory for today’s grim intergenerational smash-and-grab – the global economy. As environmentalist Paul Hawken put it: “We have an economy where we steal the future, sell it in the present, and call it GDP.”
Continue reading...The stereo cycles of Sicily: Palermo teens pump up the velo – in pictures
Bici Palermo Tuning – a group of teenagers from the Sicilian capital – spend anything up to €1,300 customising their bikes with car batteries and multiple speakers to develop thunderous sound systems. The police are not impressed
Continue reading...How cargo bikes can help unclog London's congested roads
Waltham Forest’s new zero-emissions delivery service aims to replace polluting trucks for local deliveries of food, online purchases and more
Each morning Oscar Godoy unlocks a door in a railway arch in north London, organises the day’s deliveries, and assigns jobs to his cargo bike riders. They manoeuvre the hefty bikes from the narrow lane out on to the road, past assorted vehicles from the MOT garage, the car wash and vehicle repair outfits at either end.
In the afternoons Godoy does the deliveries himself. Two weeks after the scheme’s launch he heads out, on an electric trike with a large white metal box across its rear axle, filled with the day’s first consignment from a local organic vegetable box scheme.
Continue reading...Ribbiting stuff: museum app gives people chance to help in frog research
Australian Museum teams up with IBM to monitor the country’s native frog population by having their calls recorded
The Australian Museum has teamed up with IBM to count the country’s native frog population via a world-first app that records their calls and sends them to experts for identification.
App FrogID will give the public the chance to carry out Australia’s first such national count, which begins on Friday and is intended to support researchers’ efforts to save endangered native species. Australia has 240 named native species of frog, but the museum wants to identify what it believes are dozens more still ribbiting under the radar.
Continue reading...Fiji told it must spend billions to adapt to climate change
At COP 23 talks in Bonn, Fiji has called on developed nations to help the world’s most vulnerable build resilience to climate change
To prepare for the rising temperatures, strengthening storms and higher sea levels in the coming decades, Fiji must spend an amount equivalent to its entire yearly gross domestic product over the next 10 years, according to the first comprehensive assessment of the small island nation’s vulnerability to climate change, compiled by its government with the assistance of the World Bank.
Released half-way through the COP23 in Bonn, which Fiji is presiding over, the report highlights five major interventions and 125 further actions that it says are necessary to achieve Fiji’s development objectives, while facing the potentially devastating impacts of climate change. Combined those actions would cost about US$4.5bn over the next decade.
Continue reading...Buzzing for Gove: your photos of bees
The nation’s bees welcomed the news that Britain backing a Europe-wide ban on insect-harming pesticides
One nation, two tribes: opposing visions of US climate role on show in Bonn
Donald Trump has pulled the US out of the Paris accord – but other Americans are standing with the world to help fight the ‘existential crisis’ of global warming
Deep schisms in the US over climate change are on show at the UN climate talks in Bonn – where two sharply different visions of America’s role in addressing dangerous global warming have been put forward to the world.
Donald Trump’s decision to pull the US out of the Paris climate agreement has created a vacuum into which dozens of state, city and business leaders have leapt, with the aim of convincing other countries at the international summit that the administration is out of kilter with the American people.
Continue reading...UK's biggest solar farm planned for Kent coast
Subsidy-free plant would cover 900 acres of farmland near Great Expectations marshes at Faversham, dwarfing output of UK’s current largest solar site
An enormous solar power station is planned for the north Kent coast that would be the UK’s biggest and dwarf existing solar farms, providing a significant boost to an industry that has stalled since ministers halted subsidies 18 months ago.
Cleve Hill, a mile from the historic town of Faversham, would have five times the capacity of the UK’s current largest solar farm and provide enough power for around 110,000 households if it comes online in 2020 as proposed.
Continue reading...Share your photos of bees
Michael Gove, the environment secretary, has said the UK will ban insect-harming pesticides, so we want to see your photos of bees
It’s been a terrible time to be an bee. But there may be cause for optimism, with the announcement that the UK will back a total ban on insect-harming pesticides in fields across Europe.
Related: UK will back total ban on bee-harming pesticides, Michael Gove reveals
Continue reading...Killer and cure: Venom at London's Natural History Museum – in pictures
From snakes to spiders, wasps to scorpions, the Natural History Museum’s new Venom exhibition promises to unnerve and entice, as it explores one of nature’s deadliest forces and its power to both kill and cure
Continue reading...Michael Bloomberg’s ‘war on coal’ goes global with $50m fund
Exclusive: Billionaire’s campaign has seen half of US coal plants close in six years. Now he is targeting Europe and beyond to fight climate change and air pollution
The battle to end coal-burning, backed by billionaire Michael Bloomberg, is expanding out of the US and around the world in its bid to reduce the global warming threat posed by the most polluting fossil fuel.
Bloomberg, a UN special envoy on climate change and former mayor of New York city, has funded a $164m campaign in the US since 2010, during which time more than half the nation’s coal-fired power plants have been closed.
Continue reading...UK will back total ban on bee-harming pesticides, Michael Gove reveals
Exclusive: The latest research leads the environment secretary to overturn the government’s previous opposition, making a total EU ban much more likely
A total ban on insect-harming pesticides in fields across Europe will be backed by the UK, environment secretary Michael Gove has revealed.
The decision reverses the government’s previous position and is justified by recent new evidence showing neonicotinoids have contaminated the whole landscape and cause damage to colonies of bees. It also follows the revelation that 75% of all flying insects have disappeared in Germany and probably much further afield, a discovery Gove said had shocked him.
Continue reading...The evidence points in one direction – we must ban neonicotinoids | Michael Gove
With more and more evidence emerging that these pesticides harm bees and other insects, it would be irresponsible not to restrict their use
Two principles guide this government’s approach to the natural world. We want not just to protect but to enhance the environment. And we want our decisions to be informed at all times by rigorous scientific evidence.
Which is why when the science shows that our environment is in increasing danger we have to act. Like many others, I was deeply concerned by a recently published German study into the health of some insect populations. The Guardian covered the report in depth, not least because the statistics were so stark. Data gathered over 25 years appeared to indicate a 75% fall in the numbers of flying insects within those sites.
Continue reading...Great Barrier Reef ad campaign is LNP 'greenwashing' – Labor
LNP leader Tim Nicholls says the advertising plan is to ‘overcome misleading green activist scare campaigns’
A Liberal National party plan to spend $4m on a Great Barrier Reef marketing campaign if it takes power in Queensland has drawn fire as an attempt at “greenwashing” in a void of climate policy.
The LNP leader, Tim Nicholls, said the advertising was to “overcome the misleading green activist scare campaigns which have talked down our greatest natural wonder”.
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