The Guardian
2017 on course to be deadliest on record for land defenders
Deaths of environmental activists locked in conflict with mining, logging and agricultural companies across three continents has passed 150
• Interactive: recording the deaths of environmental activists around the world
The number of people killed this year while defending their community’s land, natural resources or wildlife has passed 150 – meaning 2017 is on course to be the deadliest year on record.
Environmental activists, wildlife rangers and indigenous leaders are locked in fierce conflicts with mining, logging and agricultural companies in hundreds of places around the world. The Guardian is working with watchdog Global Witness to record all the deaths in 2017, and this week that figure reached 153 with a spate of killings across three continents.
Continue reading...How can we stop jackdaws ruining our russet crop | Notes and queries
The long-running series in which readers answer other readers’ questions on subjects ranging from trivial flights of fancy to profound scientific concepts
This year we have had a big problem with jackdaws spoiling our apples: they have taken a peck from so much of our fruit that it has ruined a good crop of russets. We never used to have jackdaws round here, but they moved in a few years ago and are now a serious pest – they rival the magpies. Does anyone know why jackdaws arrived here, or if there’s anything we can do to prevent them ruining our apples in the future?
Jill Bennett, St Albans, Herts
Continue reading...Fukushima evacuee to tell UN that Japan violated human rights
Mitsuko Sonoda will say evacuees face financial hardship and are being forced to return to homes they believe are unsafe
A nuclear evacuee from Fukushima will claim Japan’s government has violated the human rights of people who fled their homes after the 2011 nuclear disaster, in testimony before the UN in Geneva this week.
Mitsuko Sonoda, who voluntarily left her village with her husband and their 10-year-old son days after three reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant went into meltdown, will tell the UN human rights council that evacuees face financial hardship and are being forced to return to neighbourhoods they believe are still unsafe almost seven years after the disaster.
Continue reading...Despite Trump, American companies are still investing in renewable energy | John Abraham
Surveyed corporations stated that Trump’s election had no impact on their decision to buy renewable energy
After the election of Donald Trump, many of us in the climate and energy fields were rightfully fearful. What would happen to international agreements to cut greenhouse gases? What would happen to funding for climate research? What would happen to the green energy revolution?
In most instances, Trump is worse than we could have imagined. But in one special area, Trump may not matter. That is in the growth of corporate purchasing of renewable energy. It turns out there are factors that even Trump cannot stop that make choosing renewable energy an easy decision for many companies.
Continue reading...Plastic bottle deposit return scheme could save England's councils £35m a year
Cash-strapped councils would save money thanks to reduced littering and landfill charges as well as having less recycling bins to collect, says report
Councils across England could save up to £35m every year if the government introduces a deposit return scheme [DRS] for plastic bottles and other drinks containers, according to a new report.
Earlier this month environment secretary Michael Gove told the Conservative party conference that he would work with the industry to see how the scheme might be implemented in England.
Continue reading...Country diary: bats hunt by the light of the silvery harvest moon
Wenlock Edge, Shropshire Seen through the shaggy boughs of an old larch, the full moon had the strange allure that moths and wanderers know
A streetlight in the lane enamelled hollies with a sodium glow and sucked the colour from the leaves of other trees. The church bell rang eight or maybe nine; there was a soughing through the limes.
Suddenly, I felt a tiny sonic boom and the draught of a bat’s wing close to my ear. It was like a tap on the shoulder, not a shock so much as a greeting but, all the same, a jolting from thoughts about one world into another, where unseen lives almost touch.
Continue reading...Sewage plants are leaking millions of tiny plastic beads into Britain's seas
The plastic beads used for filtering sewage are hard to spot and pose a risk to wildlife, according to a new report
Sewage plants are contributing to plastic pollution in the oceans with millions of tiny beads spilling into the seas around the UK, according to a new report.
Dozens of UK wastewater treatment plants use tiny plastic pellets, known as Bio-Beads, to filter chemical and organic contaminants from sewage, according to a study from the Cornish Plastic Pollution Coalition (CPPC).
Continue reading...World will need 'carbon sucking' technology by 2030s, scientists warn
New methods to capture and store emissions, such as planting more forests and pumping carbon underground, are currently costly and need testing
As efforts to cut planet-warming emissions fall short, large-scale projects to suck carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere will be needed by the 2030s to hold the line against climate change, scientists have said.
Many new technologies that aim to capture and store carbon emissions, thereby delivering “negative emissions”, are costly, controversial and in the early phase of testing.
Continue reading...'Climate change is real': energy minister hits out at Tony Abbott
Josh Frydenberg brings up former PM’s own record in response to Liberal colleague’s provocative speech to a group of climate-change sceptics
The energy minister, Josh Frydenberg, has slapped down Tony Abbott and other conservative rebels, declaring that climate change is real and that was why Abbott agreed to join the Paris international climate agreement when he was prime minister.
Asked about Abbott’s provocative speech to a group of climate-change sceptics in London questioning the science of climate change – an outing that has been characterised by Labor as “loopy” – Frydenberg brought up Abbott’s own record in the top job.
Continue reading...Fatbergs: 90% of London restaurants are contributing to problem
Oil and food scraps are finding their way into pipes and drains as majority of eateries have no grease traps
The vast majority of London restaurants and takeaways are responsible for feeding the fatbergs that are choking the capital’s sewers, according to survey findings that Thames Water called “staggering”.
Ninety per cent of eateries in London are contributing to the problem by failing to install grease traps, the report found. As a result, grease, oil and food scraps washed off plates, utensils and saucepans are finding their way into pipes and drains.
Continue reading...The need to tackle London’s toxic air | Letters
It is of real concern to read that nearly 95% of London’s population live in areas exceeding WHO limits for particulate matter (Report, 5 October). Inner London’s location, its dense road network and high buildings mean that it suffers from poorer air quality than many parts of the country. We are assisting the mayor of London by developing a low emission neighbourhood, leading a London-wide clampdown on idling engines, and banning diesel from our own fleet. We have created a City Air App, which gives low pollution travel routes to over 20,000 Londoners and use our planning powers to ensure new buildings are energy efficient and low emission.
This is having a positive effect and we welcome the mayor’s decision that from 1 January 2018 all newly registered taxis are zero-emissions capable. But more needs to be done. We want to see existing diesel private hire vehicles removed from fleets as soon as possible to protect the public from exposure to toxic diesel emissions – with current licences phased out by 2020.
Jeremy Simons
Chairman of the environment committee, City of London Corporation
Fightback begins over Trump's 'illegal and irresponsible' clean power repeal
- NY attorney general to sue administration for scrapping Clean Power Plan
- Major companies including Apple and Google support Obama-era initiative
The US is set for a fresh battle over climate change after the Trump administration moved to tear up the country’s primary policy to lower emissions and stave off dangerous global warming.
Related: 'The war on coal is over': EPA boss to roll back Obama's clean power rules
Continue reading...Tony Abbott dares us to reject evidence on climate, but reveals a coward | Graham Readfearn
The former Australian prime minister’s misleading speech to a London thinktank was full of climate denial mythology
Tony Abbott titled his London speech on climate change “Daring to Doubt” – a challenge, if you will, to reject mountains of evidence and instead lick your fingers and shove them into the plug socket of denial.
Go on, I dare you.
Continue reading...Woman, 79, supplying tea to anti-fracking protesters forcibly removed by police
Jackie Brookes, who had been providing refreshments at Kirby Misperton camp for past month, accuses officers of bullying
A 79-year-old woman who set up a tea and cake stall at the site of an anti-fracking protest in North Yorkshire has been forcibly removed by police.
Related: Slinging mud: inside (and outside) the UK's biggest fracking site
Continue reading...Tony de Brum obituary
To live on one of the Pacific atolls is to come face to face with climate change on a daily basis. Few people in the world had such personal experience as Tony de Brum of the realities of sea level rises and storm surges, of warmer seas, receding beaches and abandoned land. Fewer still have been able to turn that experience into international action to save the islands, and the rest of the planet with them.
De Brum, who has died aged 72, acted as ambassador on climate change for the Marshall Islands, a sparsely populated group of more than 1,000 tiny islands spread out over nearly 30 coral atolls. In 2015, he was instrumental in securing the Paris agreement on climate change, by which the world’s governments collectively agreed, for the first time, to hold global warming to no more than 2C above pre-industrial levels, which scientists say is the limit of safety, and with an aspiration to ensure warming does not exceed 1.5C.
Continue reading...Coffee shops not doing enough to combat huge increase in wasted cups
Just 1% of the 2.5bn disposable cups thrown away each year in the UK are recycled, committee of MPs is told
Coffee shops are not doing enough to deal with the billions of disposable cups that are thrown away in the UK each year, an influential committee of MPs has been told.
Continue reading...Ineos compelled to disclose document it used to justify fracking protest injunction
Petrochemical company backs down after earlier refusal to the Guardian’s request to hand over the legal document
A multinational firm has backed down and disclosed a legal document that it used to justify a controversial sweeping injunction against anti-fracking protesters.
Ineos, which aspires to become one of the UK’s major frackers, had refused to disclose the document after it had been requested by the Guardian under open justice guidelines. However the petrochemical giant has reversed its stance and handed it over to the newspaper.
Continue reading...Fukushima residents win 500m yen payout over nuclear disaster
Court rules that Japanese government could have done more to prevent meltdown at plant caused by tsunami
A court in Japan has ordered the government and the operator of the wrecked Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant to pay 500m yen (£3.37m) in damages to residents affected by the March 2011 triple meltdown.
The ruling by the Fukushima district court follows an earlier decision that also found the government accountable for the disaster, in which large quantities of radiation was released and tens of thousands of people were forced to flee their homes.
Continue reading...Mine to maker: the journey of the world's first Fairtrade African gold – in pictures
Photographer Ian Berry takes us from Uganda’s makeshift goldmines to a London jeweller’s, documenting how a Fairtrade programme is helping to end the exploitation, mercury poisoning and treacherous conditions faced by Africa’s small-scale miners
Continue reading...Into the ice: humans get closer to nature – in pictures
From log trails to lava houses, from mud baths to melting glaciers, US photographer Lucas Foglia explores our relationship with the natural world. In his new book Human Nature, he has captured off-grid families, climate scientists at work, and a hotel over-run with greenery
Continue reading...