The Guardian
Regreening the planet could cut as much carbon as halting oil use – report
Natural solutions such as tree planting, protecting peatlands and better land management could account for 37% of all cuts needed by 2030, says study
Planting forests and other activities that harness the power of nature could play a major role in limiting global warming under the 2015 Paris agreement, an international study showed on Monday.
Natural climate solutions, also including protection of carbon-storing peatlands and better management of soils and grasslands, could account for 37% of all actions needed by 2030 under the 195-nation Paris plan, it said.
Continue reading...Country diary: sycamores create painterly clumps of colour and shade
Cressbrook Dale, Derbyshire These often despised trees took centuries to go native but today they are a welcome addition to the autumn atmosphere – especially in the rain
I find it strange to read in Oliver Rackham’s wonderful Trees and Woodland in the British Landscape that sycamores were probably introduced to the UK in the 16th century, but only went native in the 18th. It seems odd, because it is hard to imagine this restless beast of a tree settling for domestic imprisonment for 200 years.
My experience is that its whirling helicopter-like “keys”, aided only by the slightest breeze, can unpick any attempt to block their escape into the wild. In our Norfolk village I am also astonished how quickly those seeds put down roots and I’ve even taken to using mole grips to wrestle with the saplings’ iron-like purchase on our garden soil.
Continue reading...Frydenberg seeks review of four-wheel-drive tracks in Tasmania's Tarkine
Conservationists and Indigenous groups hail decision to examine plan to lay rubber matting over middens and heritage sites
The federal government has requested an independent assessment of an application to open four-wheel-drive tracks along Tasmania’s heritage-listed north-west coast, potentially delaying action until the state election.
Conservationists and Indigenous groups have been fighting the Hodgman government’s proposal to lay rubber matting over middens and other Aboriginal heritage sites along the Tarkine coast to allow four-wheel-drive access.
Continue reading...Remains found in crocodile believed to be missing Queensland woman
Anne Cameron’s remains and walking stick found at Craiglie Creek, south of Port Douglas, after 79-year-old went missing from her aged-care facility
Human remains have been found inside a large crocodile police believe killed an elderly woman in Queensland’s far north.
Remains believed to belong to Anne Cameron, her walking stick and other items were located at Craiglie Creek, south of Port Douglas, last week.
Continue reading...We can do without plastic packaging and supermarkets | Letters
The idea of increasing the use of aluminium and steel packaging, as proposed by Andy Clarke (Bring in plastic packaging ban, former Asda boss tells stores, 13 October), is not a sustainable solution. Both materials rely on finite substances and intensive energy to produce them, and there is no guarantee that they will be recycled and will avoid ending up in the sea as well. One possibility would be to increase the use of starch based “plastic”; it’s biodegradable and therefore matters less where it ends up. Obviously another solution is to avoid shopping in supermarkets as far as is possible and to instead shop in markets and smaller shops, which are less packaging obsessed and often use paper bags, as in the good old days.
Rachel Meredith
York
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Continue reading...Indigenous rights "serious obstacle" to Kinder Morgan pipeline, report says
Pipeline company downplaying major legal and financial risks of crossing unceded First Nations territory in British Columbia
The controversial expansion of a pipeline that would carry tar sands crude from Alberta to British Columbia’s coast will be doomed by the rising power of Indigenous land rights.
That’s the message that Kanahus Manuel, an Indigenous activist from the Secwepemc Nation in central BC, plans to deliver to banks financing the project as she travels through Europe this week.
Continue reading...Are flatulent shellfish really contributing to climate change?
Scientists investigating marine life in the Baltic Sea have found mussels, oysters and clams are emitting greenhouse gases – but cows still trump them
Swedish scientists have found that flatulent shellfish are creating vast amounts of greenhouse gases, leading to a predictable slew of comments about farting cockles and clams. But beneath the schoolboy humour, there is a serious point. The two gases in question – methane and nitrous oxide – are potent agents of climate change, with a warming potential 28 and 265 times greater than carbon dioxide respectively.
Scientists studying the Baltic Sea off the coast of Sweden have found that shellfish are producing one-tenth of all the greenhouses gases released there – the equivalent to the amount produced by 20,000 cattle. If the same situation is being replicated around the rest of the world’s seas and oceans, we have a serious problem.
Continue reading...The war on coal is over. Coal lost | Dana Nuccitelli
Coal can’t compete with cheaper clean energy. The Trump administration can’t save expensive, dirty energy.
Last week, Trump’s EPA administrator Scott Pruitt announced, “the war on coal is over.” If there ever was a war on coal, the coal industry has lost. According to a new report from the Union of Concerned Scientists, many old American coal power plants are being retired or converted to natural gas, and new coal power plants aren’t being built because they’ve become more expensive than natural gas, wind, and solar energy:
The share of US electricity coming from coal fell from 51 percent in 2008 to 31 percent in 2016—an unprecedented change. New UCS analysis finds that, of the coal units that remain, roughly one in four plans to retire or convert to natural gas; another 17 percent are uneconomic and could face retirement soon.
Continue reading...Photographers against wildlife crime – in pictures
In a new project, an international group of photographers have joined forces to use their powerful images to raise awareness and funds to help stop the illegal wildlife trade
Continue reading...Raw sewage 'flowing into rivers across England and Wales'
WWF analysis reports that 40% of rivers are polluted with sewage that can harm wildlife and put human health at risk
Raw sewage is flowing into rivers at thousands of sites across England and Wales, a report has warned, harming wildlife and putting human health at risk.
The total amount of raw sewage intentionally being put into rivers is unknown, which is a “huge concern”, according to conservation group WWF, which produced the analysis. The available data suggests that more than half of overflow sites spill sewage into rivers at least once a month and 14% at least once a week.
Continue reading...Our cities need fewer cars, not cleaner cars
Electric cars won’t eradicate gridlocks and air pollution, but carbon footprints could be cut by favouring pedestrians, cyclists and mass transit
The spectre of our cities choking with unhealthy air has prompted numerous governments to mandate a transition to electric cars. Their concerns are well founded, even if their proposals fall short of what is needed.
Over the past four decades, cars have become far less polluting. Their fuel efficiency has practically doubled and their tailpipe emissions have been reduced by more than 95%. Yet cities such as London and Paris are still battling smog and pollution. California has for decades demanded the toughest emission standards in the US, and yet Los Angeles heads the list of US cities for bad air quality. Moving to all-electric car fleets will be a positive step, albeit an inadequate measure.
Continue reading...The Texas town where all the energy is green
Georgetown mayor Dale Ross is ‘a good little Republican’ – but ever since his city weaned itself off fossil fuels, he has become a hero to environmentalists
When the caller said he worked for Harry Reid and the former Senate majority leader wanted a word, Dale Ross assumed it was a joke. “OK, which of my buddies are messing with me today?” he wondered.
He shouldn’t have been so surprised. Ross is the mayor of Georgetown, population 65,000, and he has become a minor celebrity in environmental circles as a result of a pioneering decision in 2015 to get all the city’s electricity from renewable sources.
High-street outlets move to ditch plastic amid environmental concerns
Pret A Manger becomes the latest to act by offering free filtered water and selling empty glass bottles
A growing number of outlets selling food and drink in the UK are taking action to ditch plastic amid deepening concern about its effect on the environment, with drinking straws and bottles among items being phased out.
Pret A Manger has become the latest to take action, announcing that it has installed taps dispensing free filtered water and started selling empty glass bottles in its three vegetarian stores. The scheme is due to be rolled out to branches in Manchester from the end of October.
Continue reading...The world is going slow on coal, but misinformation is distorting the facts
A recent story on 621 plants being built globally was played up in various media – but the figure is way off the mark
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This is a story about how misinformation can take hold. It’s not always down to dishonesty. Sometimes it’s just a lack of time, a headline and the multiplying power of ideological certainty.
Last week, China announced it was stopping or postponing work on 151 coal plants that were either under, or earmarked for, construction.
Continue reading...Country diary 1917: bungled wasps' nest theft leads to discovery
Originally published in the Manchester Guardian on 19 October 1917
Someone had taken a wasps’ nest. Perhaps as he carried it home some of the inmates objected, or he discovered that most of the cells were empty; at any rate it had been dropped, and lay broken by the path. Over the grubless cakes a few weary workers, chilled by the night exposure, crawled feebly, and three young queens refused to leave the ruins of what had once been their home. They seemed puzzled by the tragedy which had overtaken the busy colony, but they were too weak or too stupid to fly in search of shelter. Two of them died quietly in my killing bottle, but it was not until I pinned the bodies on a setting-board that I discovered that one was abnormal. Either through accident in her youth or from birth she was a cripple; the second and third legs on the right side were missing. Imperfectly developed insects are not rare; but the interesting point about this wasp was that she had made the best of a bad business. When she was alive I did not notice anything peculiar about her gait, but when I attempted to set her limbs I found that the third leg refused to remain on the left side. It was only then that I found that the right legs were missing, and that, in order to avoid the bias of three legs against one, the third left leg was bent under so as to work on the right side. I was sorry that I had not kept her alive to watch her manner of walking.
Related: Conservationists slam 'hateful' survey promoting wasp killing
Continue reading...Birdwatch: On the trail of the elusive buff-breasted sandpiper
It never occurred to me, peering through rain-soaked binoculars, that I would have to wait 43 years to see another one
It was late September 1974. Manchester United led the old Second Division, Kung Fu Fighting was top of the pop charts, and the BBC had just launched its Ceefax service. Meanwhile, I was birdwatching on the Isles of Scilly, thanks to my mother’s far-sighted decision to take me out of school for a fortnight, slap-bang in the middle of the migration season.
We saw some good birds, including Iceland gull, scarlet rosefinch and a sharp-tailed sandpiper from Siberia. But nearly 50 years later, those I remember best were three buff-breasted sandpipers, plump little waders that had flown all the way across the Atlantic, driven off course by the tail end of a hurricane.
Continue reading...California wildfires: moment family's dog is found alive in ruins of home – video
Jack Weaver and his brother-in-law Patrick Widen walked around police barricades, through a creek and up treacherous hilly roads to film the devastation caused by the wildfires in Santa Rosa, California. Weaver’s mother, Katherine, was convinced the family’s dog, Izzy, had died in the fire that destroyed their neighbourhood. When the men reached the end of the narrow road, they saw their house was completely ruined. But then Izzy came bounding out of the rubble for a joyous reunion. Weaver captured the scene on his phone
Continue reading...Wild is the wind: the resource that could power the world
Wind isn’t just mysterious, destructive and exhilarating – capturing just 2% of it would solve the planet’s energy needs at a stroke. And as the windiest country in Europe, Britain is at the forefront of this green revolution
The wind rips along the Humber estuary in Hull. It’s the kind that presses your coat to your back and pushes you on to your toes. “A bit too windy,” shouts Andy Sykes, before his words are swept away. He is the head of operational excellence at the Siemens factory, which supplies blades – the bits that turn – to windfarms in the North Sea. At 75 metres long, they are hard to manoeuvre when it’s gusting.
Inside the vast factory hall, the blades lie in various states of undress. Several hundred layers of fibreglass and balsa wood are being tucked into giant moulds by hand. There are “naked” blades that require paint and whose bodies have the patina of polished tortoiseshell. Look through the hollow blades from the broadest part, and a pale green path, the tinge of fibreglass, snakes down the long tunnel, tapering to a small burst of daylight at its tip.
Continue reading...David Attenborough urges action on plastics after filming Blue Planet II
Naturalist says experience making second series of BBC show revealed devastating threat posed to oceans by plastic
Sir David Attenborough has called for the world to cut back on its use of plastic in order to protect oceans. His new BBC TV series, Blue Planet II, is to demonstrate the damage the material is causing to marine life.
Speaking at the launch of Blue Planet II, which will be broadcast 16 years after the original series, the broadcaster and naturalist said action on plastics should be taken immediately and that humanity held the future of the planet “in the palm of its hands”.
Continue reading...'This is the future': solar-powered family car hailed by experts
As the annual solar race across Australia wraps up, a Dutch entry averaged 69kmh from Darwin to Adelaide and resupplied the grid
A futuristic family car that not only uses the sun as power but supplies energy back to the grid has been hailed as “the future” as the annual World Solar Challenge wrapped up in Australia.
Related: How green is Britain’s record on renewable energy supply?
Continue reading...