The Guardian
Country diary: hand-chiselled headstones speak in rural accents
Hamsterley, Weardale, Durham As the centuries passed, the memorials in the village churchyard became more formal and decorative, less idiosyncratic
There has been a place of worship on this spot since 1180 but no one seems to know why St James’ church was founded on this hillside half a mile from the village. “Man fleeth as it were a passing shadow,” cautions the sundial above the porch. Perhaps the grandeur of the rising sun, as I watched it lifting deep shadows from the valley cut by the river Wear, moved its founders to build here.
I wandered around the churchyard, reading names on tombstones carved by stonemasons whose own identities have long since been forgotten.
Continue reading...Commonwealth Bank says its lending for coal will continue to decline
Analysts say a test of the bank’s withdrawal from coal will come when Adani’s Abbot Point terminal comes up for refinancing
The Commonwealth Bank has told its shareholders to expect its support of the coal industry to decline as it helps finance the transition to a low-carbon economy, indicating the bank is unlikely to lend to new large coal projects.
Ahead of its AGM on Thursday, the bank posted the speech of its chairwoman, Catherine Livingstone, to the ASX. In it she said climate change poses both a business risk and a responsibility for the bank.
Continue reading...Banning bee-killing neonicotinoid pesticides should be just the start | Letters
It’s great that Michael Gove has accepted the overwhelming scientific evidence that neonicotinoids are killing bees, other insects and birds, although it is a sad commentary on how safety decisions on pesticides have been taken up to now (Plan bee – Britain to reverse opposition to ban on colony-killing pesticide, says Gove, 9 November). The fact is that the political and economic power of the chemical industry have had far more influence than the results of independent scientific research.
Michael Gove says that there “may be a case for going further” than the current temporary ban on three neonicotinoid sprays and their use on only some crops (The evidence points in one direction – we must ban neonicotinoids, 9 November). He is right – all neonicotinoids should be banned because research shows they are getting into wild flowers, turning what should be safe havens for bees and butterflies into potential killing fields. Research led by Professor David Goulson of Sussex University, part funded by the Soil Association, found that some wild flowers in the margins of crops on the edge of fields actually contained more neonicotinoids than the sprayed crop.
Peter Melchett
Policy director, Soil Association
Climate change will determine humanity's destiny, says Angela Merkel
German chancellor, UN secretary general, Emmanuel Macron and others urge world’s leaders to succeed in their negotiations in Bonn
“Climate change is an issue determining our destiny as mankind – it will determine the wellbeing of all of us,” the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, has told the world’s nations gathered at a climate summit.
The delegates heard a series of strong political messages on Wednesday, urging them to use the final two days of the summit to complete important work on putting the landmark 2015 Paris deal into action. Without this, the world faces a devastating 3C or more of global warming.
Continue reading...Michael Proctor obituary
Michael Proctor, who has died aged 88, was a leading botanist and ecologist who specialised in the study of natural vegetation and the British flora. His studies of rock roses and his scientific portraits of Malham Tarn, the Burren in western Ireland, and the bogs and oakwoods on Dartmoor are regarded as classics of postwar ecological research. With his lifelong friend Peter Yeo, he wrote two important, semi-popular books on the pollination of plants, The Pollination of Flowers (1973) and The Natural History of Pollination (1996). He was also a renowned plant photographer.
Continue reading...Bananapocalypse: genetic modification may save $12bn industry
Researchers in Queensland modify Cavendish bananas to protect them from devastating Panama disease fungus
A multibillion-dollar banana industry at risk of a deadly disease could be saved by genetic modification that created a line of bananas resistant to Fusarium wilt tropical race 4, also known as Panama disease.
Researchers at Queensland University of Technology genetically modified Cavendish bananas using a gene found in a south-east Asian banana subspecies that naturally displayed resistance.
Continue reading...Indigenous groups win greater climate recognition at Bonn summit
World governments have acknowledged for the first time that ‘first peoples’ can play a leadership role in protecting forests and limiting global warming
Indigenous groups claimed a victory at the UN climate talks in Bonn on Wednesday as governments acknowledged for the first time that they can play a leadership role in protecting forests and keeping global temperatures at a safe level.
Long marginalised and often criminalised in their home countries, the “first peoples” – as they often refer to themselves – also achieved breakthroughs in terms of official international recognition of their rights, autonomy and participation in negotiations.
Continue reading...Brazil's oil sale plans prompt fears of global fossil fuel extraction race
Government proposal to give tax relief for offshore oil would increase emissions and contradicts the nation’s progressive stance in Bonn
Brazil is planning a fire-sale of its oil resources before shrinking global carbon budgets push down demand and prices, environmental groups have warned.
The focus of concern is a government proposal for up to $300bn in tax relief to companies that develop offshore oilfields that opponents claim would use up 7% of humanity’s emission budget if global warming is to be kept below 2C.
Continue reading...Plastics found in stomachs of deepest sea creatures
‘Very worrying finding’ from nearly 11km deep confirms fears that synthetic fibres have contaminated the most remote places on Earth
Animals from the deepest places on Earth have been found with plastic in their stomachs, confirming fears that manmade fibres have contaminated the most remote places on the planet.
The study, led by academics at Newcastle University, found animals from trenches across the Pacific Ocean were contaminated with fibres that probably originated from plastic bottles, packaging and synthetic clothes.
Continue reading...'It has no protections': scientists fight for wildfire-burned land amid logging threat
The US cashes in on timber from ‘devastated’ areas – but the land is actually ‘the rarest and most biodiverse habitat in the Sierra Nevadas’, says an expert
Less than a mile from Yosemite national park, Chad Hanson is wading through a sea of knee-high conifers that have burst from the ashes of the vast 2013 Rim fire. The US Forest Service essentially says the baby trees don’t exist.
The agency says that “catastrophic” fires have “devastated” parts of the forest, painting an eerie picture of swaths of blackened tree trunks like something out of a Tim Burton film.
Continue reading...An Inconvenient Sequel – the science, history, and politics of climate change | John Abraham
Al Gore’s new film is worth watching
Al Gore’s new movie ‘An Inconvenient Sequel’ is, in some ways, similar to his groundbreaking Inconvenient Truth project, but different in other ways. Those key differences are why I recommend you watch it.
This movie successfully accomplishes a number of interweaving tasks. First, it gives some of the science of climate change. Gore gets his science right. I remember his first movie, which I thought was more steeped in science and data than this one, so based on my recollection this new picture is somewhat abbreviated. That’s a good thing because the science is settled on climate change. That is, the science is settled that humans are causing current climatic changes and the science is settled that we are observing these changes throughout the natural world.
Global climate action must be gender equal | Hilda Heine
Women bear the heaviest brunt of global warming, and are less empowered to contribute to solutions. A new action plan agreed at the Bonn climate talks aims to reverse this inequality, writes Hilda Heine, Marshall Islands president
The women of the Marshall Islands and the Pacific have been fighting colonialism and injustice for a long time. They bore the brunt of the long term effects of nuclear testing, and women leaders like Lijon Eknilang and Darlene Keju-Johnson brought these issues to the international stage.
Continue reading...Growing number of global insurance firms divesting from fossil fuels
Report shows around £15bn of assets worldwide have been shifted away from coal companies in the past two years as concern over climate risk rises
A growing number of insurance companies increasingly affected by the consequences of climate change are selling holdings in coal companies and refusing to underwrite their operations.
About £15bn has been divested in the past two years, according to a new report that rates the world’s leading insurers’ efforts to distance themselves from the fossil fuel industry that is most responsible for carbon emissions.
Continue reading...Country diary: drizzle only makes the bracken more vivid
North Devon and beyond Roaring deer and singing wrens, mossy scree and ferny oaks, the swish of the sea and other snapshots of a 100-mile walk
The sight and sound of sea accompanies half our 100-mile walk from Braunton Great Field almost to Taunton, south of the Quantocks. From the coastal path, distant views of Lundy give way to those of south Wales, sometimes catching light from the lowering sun, but more often masked in cloud. Low tide reveals shining sand at Saunton; a swimmer heads for flat water off Croyde to “bob around” on his afternoon off.
Next morning at Woolacombe, surfers ride big waves before dawn. That day, drizzle enhances the vividness of green grass and orange bracken between the slippery jagged slate of Morte and Bull Points, above vertiginous cliffs and tiny coves scattered with lumps of quartz. The zigzag descent to Ilfracombe was engineered for Victorian tourists, as were the resort’s tunnels, bored through cliffs towards tidal bathing pools.
Continue reading...Switching to organic farming could cut greenhouse gas emissions, study shows
Study also finds that converting conventionally farmed land would not overly harm crop yields or require huge amounts of additional land to feed rising populations
Converting land from conventional agriculture to organic production could reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the run-off of excess nitrogen from fertilisers, and cut pesticide use. It would also, according to a new report, be feasible to convert large amounts of currently conventionally farmed land without catastrophic harm to crop yields and without needing huge amounts of new land.
The study, published in the journal Nature Communications, found that by combining organic production with an increasingly vegetarian diet, ways of cutting food waste, and a return to traditional methods of fixing nitrogen in the soil instead of using fertiliser, the world’s projected 2050 population of more than 9 billion could be fed without vastly increasing the current amount of land under agricultural production.
Continue reading...Global insurance plan aims to defuse potential climate damage 'bombshell'
A scheme unveiled at the UN climate summit aims to help protect 400 million poor people from extreme weather by 2020 - but not everyone is convinced
“I was wondering if it was a dream,” said Walter Edwin, who sells honey from more than 50 beehives in Dennery on the Caribbean island of St Lucia. He had just received a phone call telling him to go to the bank for an automatic insurance payout following the major hurricane that struck in 2014.
Continue reading...Lunching ranger discovers species lost for 40 years
In 1975 two conservationists discovered a gorgeous salamander in the rainforests of Guatemala. No one ever saw it again – and Jackson’s climbing salamander was feared extinct – until last month when local forest guard, Ramos León-Tomás, sat down in the forest for lunch.
The last time anyone saw Jackson’s climbing salamander – I didn’t yet exist. It was 1975: Margaret Thatcher took over leadership of the Tories, Saigon fell to Communist forces, the USSR was still a thing, and everyone was listening to Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody. And in Guatemala, reeling from over a decade of civil war, two American conservationists found a little treasure of black and gold: they named it Jackson’s climbing salamander. Then it vanished as if it had never been.
Forty-two years later a lot has changed. The world is hotter than it has been in over 100,000 years and species are vanishing at rates that portend mass extinction. Yet, miracles can still happen.
Miniature robots could cut pesticide use on farms in future
Robots could also reduce food waste and help harvest crops, but they may not be commercially available for some years to come, say experts
Miniature robot farmers may be the answer to concerns over chemical use on farms and cutting down on food waste, as well as easing labour shortages, academic farming experts have said.
The drawback is that the machines in question, while developed in laboratories to an advanced stage, are not yet commercially available in the UK. In an optimistic scenario, they could become available in as little as three years, but that would be likely to take large investment and a high degree of entrepreneurialism in the private sector, the experts said on Monday.
Continue reading...Norway sued over Arctic oil exploration plans
The case, led by Greenpeace, claims Norwegian government has violated constitutional right to a healthy environment and contravenes Paris agreement
The Norwegian government is being sued by climate activists over a decision to open up areas of the Arctic Ocean for oil exploration, a move they say endangers the lives of existing and future generations.
The plaintiffs, led by environmental organisations Greenpeace and Youth and Nature, will on Tuesday claim that the Norwegian government has violated a constitutional environmental law which guarantees citizens’ rights to a healthy environment.
Continue reading...The public want more funds for UK cycling – what are politicians waiting for?
A new assessment of cycling in UK cities shows people are far more supportive of bold plans than political decision makers often think
It may not be clear from the persistent bikelash in many sections of the media, but in fact there is huge public support for increased government investment in cycling and especially for building segregated bike routes.
Of 7,700 people surveyed in seven major UK cities for a new study published on Tuesday, 78% of people support the creation of more protected bike routes on roads, even when this could mean less space for other road traffic, with the majority of people saying this would encourage them to cycle more.
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