The Guardian
UN warns of 'unacceptable' greenhouse gas emissions gap
Report reveals large gap between government pledges and the reductions needed to prevent dangerous global warming
There is still a large gap between the pledges by governments to cut greenhouse gas emissions and the reductions scientists say are needed to avoid dangerous levels of climate change, the UN has said.
Current plans from national governments, and pledges made by private sector companies and local authorities across the world, would lead to temperature rises of as much as 3C or more by the end of this century, far outstripping the goal set under the 2015 Paris agreement to hold warming to 2C or less, which scientists say is the limit of safety.
Continue reading...Country diary: one spider to make a song and dance about
Río Almonte, Extremadura, Spain Camel-haired legs, gleaming black eyes and the largest pair of spider jaws you’ve seen in your life – a tarantula
There were all sorts of exciting birds overhead, including vultures in elegant spirals and clusters of crag martins spooked up by a hunting sparrowhawk. Yet the group’s attention had been called to an insignificant hole in the bare ground by the picnic table.
The hole was 4cm across and had an untidy circlet of dead grasses arranged in a silk-knotted perimeter. By sheer chance I had just read about the occupant and how it could be lured into view with a grass stem drooped into the burrow entrance like a fishing line. Sure enough, within seconds, book learning was turned into startling experience.
Continue reading...Climate change already damaging health of millions globally, report finds
Heatwaves, pollution and disease are the main health issues linked to global warming but action to halt emissions would deliver huge benefits
The health of hundreds of millions of people around the world is already being damaged by climate change, a major report has revealed.
Heatwaves are affecting many more vulnerable people and global warming is boosting the transmission of deadly diseases such as dengue fever, the world’s most rapidly spreading disease. Air pollution from fossil fuel burning is also causing millions of early deaths each year, while damage to crops from extreme weather threatens hunger for millions of children.
Continue reading...Cows are loving, intelligent and kind – so should we still eat them?
Rosamund Young, farmer and author of The Secret Life of Cows, says she is really a ‘ghostwriter’ for her herd, with a mission to explain how they play games, babysit and even judge us. But that doesn’t mean she’s a vegetarian …
‘I’ll see who is in the mood for talking,” says Rosamund Young, strolling across a steep field on the Cotswold escarpment. “Hello, are you busy? You’re very nice, yes you are. Don’t walk off.” Young pauses, empathising with Celandine’s shyness. “She doesn’t like being photographed any more than I do.”
“She won’t know she’s being photographed,” harrumphs Graeme Robertson, the photographer. Or will she?
Continue reading...Global atmospheric CO2 levels hit record high
UN warns that drastic action is needed to meet climate targets set in the Paris agreement
The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has hit a new high, the UN has said, warning that drastic action is needed to achieve targets set by the Paris climate agreement.
“Concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere surged at a record-breaking speed in 2016,” the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said.
Continue reading...New data gives hope for meeting the Paris climate targets | Dana Nuccitelli
Global carbon pollution appears to be close to peaking
Over the past half-century, growth in the global economy and carbon pollution have been tied together. When the global economy has been strong, we’ve consumed more energy, which has translated into burning more fossil fuels and releasing more carbon pollution. But over the past four years, economic growth and carbon dioxide emissions have been decoupled. The global economy has continued to grow, while data from the EU Joint Research Centre shows carbon pollution has held fairly steady.
Continue reading...Hamburg under water after storms batter Europe - video
German city is hit by widespread flooding after storms battered northern and central Europe. At least six people have died in Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic as a result of the weather, while fallen trees and damage to railway lines have left thousands of travellers stranded
Continue reading...Octopuses found crawling up Welsh beach – video
Dozens of octopuses have emerged from the sea at New Quay beach in west Wales. Some experts have said the strange behaviour by the cephalopods, who can’t survive on dry land for long, may be the result of injury or confusion caused by recent storms
Continue reading...Country diary 1917: passing companionship in the wood
Originally published in the Manchester Guardian on 3 November 1917
Surrey, November 1
Unlike the bare ground at the foot of the beech, grass spreads almost up to the root-trunk of our oaks, and fallen leaves lie thick among the bents. Underneath them are acorns, a full crop this year. It takes but a little time to collect a full sack. They are so plentiful that a litter of young pigs throw small showers upward as they nose about while they scutter along the edge of the wood. A sudden loud whirr of wings is heard. A cock pheasant, all brown and gold, goes one way just above the yet green nut-boughs; three hens fly the other. There is passing companionship, but not much more, among these birds. Rooks now chatter together in the upper branches of elms, going from one to another as though to test which will best stand the coming winter gales. The old hedger, slicing off faggot wood with his bill-hook, “reckons them as almost overwise. If they could but speak they would tell us a good deal more than we’d know.”
The air is warm, bees in something like small swarms are out on the remaining autumn flowers. St.John’s wort is here and there open on the hedge bank, and in a corner of the cornfield which has not been ploughed a few poppies bloom, but they are dull, not scarlet as in summer. The campion has not all gone, but it is foliage and fruit which to-day complete the picture of the hedgerow. This week the robins sing longer and oftener. While one pipes another will accompany you along the lane, flitting from side to side, but never far away.
Continue reading...The eco guide to sanitary products
Menstrual pads are hard to talk about, and also an eco disaster on our beaches – but we need to change our ways
This column nearly didn’t happen. When a manufacturer of eco friendly menstrual pads bounded up to me and asked me brightly in public: “Are you a flusher or a binner?” I stared at her in total horror. Menstrual products and their disposal represent one of the last great consumer taboos – odd in a society which cheerfully discusses the vajazzle. It’s a taboo that powers a huge environmental issue. In their 2016 beach clean-up, the Marine Conservation Society found 20 tampons and sanitary items per 100 metres of shoreline.
Why not embrace the rise of the reusables?
Continue reading...Battle for the mother land: indigenous people of Colombia fighting for their lands
The 50-year civil war is over but, in the Cauca Valley, indigenous communities are on frontline of fight against drug gangs, riot police and deforestation
A green-and-red flag flies over a cluster of bamboo and tarpaulin tents on the frontline of an increasingly deadly struggle for land and the environment in Colombia’s Cauca Valley.
It is the banner for what indigenous activists are calling the “liberation of Mother Earth”, a movement to reclaim ancestral land from sugar plantations, farms and tourist resorts that has gained momentum in the vacuum left by last year’s peace accord between the government and the paramilitaries who once dominated the region – ending, in turn, the world’s longest-running civil war.
Continue reading...Forget cod and salmon: Britons urged to rediscover the humble Cornish sardine
At close to midnight, the crew of the Rachel Anne are surprisingly cheerful, given they have spent seven hours fruitlessly searching the English Channel for sardines. Scanning the screens in the wheelhouse, Richard Chamberlain, the skipper, suddenly spots a red blob on the echo-sounder which indicates a sizeable shoal is close by. “It’s looking good,” he shouts, checking its location and satisfied that it is a “tight” (and therefore plentiful) shoal, and not too deep. “Let’s shoot.”
The nocturnal silence off Cornwall is shattered as a huge circular net is catapulted or “shot” overboard by a hydraulic winch and – engine revving – the boat lurches ahead in a giant curve, the net unfurling behind.
Continue reading...Growth strategies: illustrated houseplants – in pictures
While at university, self-taught gardener Emma Sibley often swapped houseplants and cuttings with friends. Now, her desire to combine nature with city life has led to Urban Botanics (Aurum Press £18), a book illustrated by Dutch artist Maaike Koster, guiding readers through 70 indoor plant varieties, their origins and upkeep. “Having plants in your home helps to purify the air. Living in a city, this is a welcome benefit,” says Sibley, who also runs the shop London Terrariums. While a houseplant isn’t a true substitute for being out in nature, she says, it can create a “calmer, greener environment that helps both productivity and relaxation”.
- To tie in with the book, Emma Sibley will demonstrate how to make a terrarium at Heals, London W1 on 2 November
Organic or starve: can Cuba's new farming model provide food security?
Once it grew only sugar and was heavy handed with fertilizers and pesticides, now Cuba is in the grip of a small-scale organic farming revolution
In the town of Hershey, 40 miles east of Havana, you can see the past and the future of Cuban farming, side by side.
The abandoned hulk of the Camilo Cienfuegos sugar plant, shut along with 70 other cane refineries in 2002, towers over the town. But in the lush hills and grasslands around Hershey, fields of cassava, corn, beans, and vegetables are a sign that there is life after sugar.
Continue reading...Country diary: on the Severn Way with a heron and buzzard for company
Caersws, Powys Afon Hafren meanders to the flood plain, a broad, stately, river in comfortable middle age
Long before the Romans built their two forts at Caersws, the ridge to the west of the town was dominated by the ramparts of Cefn Carnedd. In the low afternoon sunshine the defensive banks that still rise above the hillside woodland were picked out by deep shadows.
The iron-age fortress stands above a kempt farmed landscape drained by the afon Hafren (river Severn) as it meanders across the valley floor. Only a few miles from where it rises, gathering volume from the tributary streams funnelling in from the many side valleys, it has already changed from a lively moorland torrent to a broad, stately, river in comfortable middle age.
Continue reading...'Way off the planet': regional businesses use renewables to slash costs
From solar to running generators, some have quit the energy grid and several others are showing interest in ‘defecting’
In the heart of Queensland’s mining belt, a businessman who has grown his enterprise mostly off the back of the coal industry sees the energy sector going only one way.
“I think renewable energy is where the market’s going – what we class as the energy revolution,” says Jason Sharam.
Continue reading...Trump to shrink two national monuments following Zinke's proposal
President will reverse protections established by two Democratic presidents on Bears Ears and Grand Staircase Escalante, sparking fury from environmentalists
Donald Trump is shrinking two national monuments in Utah, accepting the recommendation of interior secretary Ryan Zinke to reverse protections established by two Democratic presidents, a Republican senator said Friday.
Related: National Park Service wants to sharply raise entry fees at most popular parks
Continue reading...Eat less fish to help replenish our fish stocks | Letters
The WWF is absolutely right that our fish stocks are at risk from leaving the common fisheries policy (Call for Brexit monitoring of UK fishing fleet, 27 October). This is because in reality fish stocks all round Europe are precarious and all the (welcome) “recovery” in cod stock means is that there are now very few fish instead of very, very few.
My contribution to the future of fish stocks is to not eat fish until there are marine conservation zones all around the UK and fish stocks are allowed to increase massively.
Continue reading...Farming sector aims to cut antibiotics use to help tackle human resistance
Taskforce from UK’s pig, dairy and poultry farming sectors will aim to bring down use seen as major cause of increasing antibiotic resistance
Farming organisations have set new targets to reduce the use of antibiotics in raising animals for food, in an effort to cut the widespread overuse that has been blamed as a significant factor in increasing medicinal resistance among humans.
The chief medical officer for England, Dame Sally Davies, has repeatedly said that the rapidly increasing resistance to antibiotics and the rise of resistant “superbugs” is one of the greatest threats to human health, which could make even routine operations life-threatening in future.
Continue reading...The call of the foghorn mournful | Brief letters
I recently completed my tax return for 2016-17 and as I owe less than £3,000 HMRC is happy to let me start paying the bill on my tax code from April 2018. This generosity from the government for those of us fortunate enough to have taxable income seems in stark contrast to those being moved to universal credit (Rent arrears spiral in universal credit pilot, 24 October), where it is deemed better that vulnerable people live without any money for a few weeks because the money tree can’t afford it.
John Beer
Farnham, Surrey
• Pilgrim Tucker’s article (25 October) points out that, under universal credit, workers on low incomes will be forced to look for extra hours. Not only that, but if an unemployed person applies, their partner who has a part-time job which they love will also be forced to look for full-time work. This applies even if they have a young child. How cruel can this government get?
Diane Smethurst
Chester