The Guardian
The Greens would ditch Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant | Damian Carrington
Guardian experts give their view on the main parties’ public service manifesto pledges. Here, our environment editor looks at energy, pollution and recycling
• Denis Campbell on health
• David Brindle on social care
• Patrick Butler on social security
• Dawn Foster on housing
• Anna Bawden on local government
• Frances Ryan on disability
• Alan Travis on criminal justice and immigration
• Jane Dudman on the civil service
• Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland
New support for fracking to extract shale and coal seam gas is the most striking pledge from the Conservatives, with the easing of planning rules, a new dedicated regulator and more of any future tax revenues going directly to communities hosting shale gas sites. Wind power remains ruled out in England, but offshore wind farms are supported. The energy efficiency of all fuel-poor homes would be upgraded to meet energy performance certificate (EPC) band C criteria by 2030. There is no environment section in the manifesto and the UK’s air pollution crisis gets a single sentence: “We will take action against poor air quality in urban areas.” A free vote on repealing the ban on fox hunting with dogs is promised.
Continue reading...Crocodile captures soar in Darwin as wet season boosts waterways
66% spike in captures as bumper wet season connects major river systems in Northern Territory, allowed deadly reptiles to move around more freely
The number of crocodiles caught in the Top End has soared after Territorians endured the third wettest wet season on record.
There’s been a 66% spike in crocodile captures around Darwin and Katherine in the past year, the NT Parks and Wildlife Commission says.
The footballer hoverfly is a little fist of bling
Wenlock Edge, Shropshire The stripy sun fly joins the summer swarm of insects to the opening of the festival of flowers
The sun fly alights on a bramble leaf and alters its position as if by the clockwise clicks of an invisible dial. Gold on black, black on gold, it radiates. The sun fly is one of the syrphid flies, a hoverfly of rough flowery places such as this verge of a long-abandoned railway line through the woods.
It’s a chunky little fist of bling, folding up a cut-glass wingspan of 25mm. Its thorax is black with three vertical yellow stripes – which has earned it the nickname of the footballer or the common tiger hoverfly. It presents a regal, black-banded backside of an abdomen with crescentic yellow markings like the folded gold of Saxon hoards.
Continue reading...'Spectacular' drop in renewable energy costs leads to record global boost
Falling solar and wind prices have led to new power deals across the world despite investment in renewables falling
Renewable energy capacity around the world was boosted by a record amount in 2016 and delivered at a markedly lower cost, according to new global data – although the total financial investment in renewables actually fell.
The greater “bang-for-buck” resulted from plummeting prices for solar and wind power and led to new power deals in countries including Denmark, Egypt, India, Mexico and the United Arab Emirates all being priced well below fossil fuel or nuclear options.
Continue reading...Call of the wild? Proposal for cellphone service on Mount Rainier sparks debate
The famous national park has prepared an environmental assessment to allow Verizon, T-Mobile, and AT&T to extend coverage, but some aren’t happy about it
They already paved Paradise and put up a parking lot. Now the famous site on the south slope of Mount Rainier National Park’s 14,410ft-tall volcano could be wired for cellular service.
The park, which encompasses 230,000 acres of the Cascades mountain range in Washington state, has prepared an environmental assessment for a proposal to allow Verizon, T-Mobile and AT&T to affix a wireless antenna to the park’s Jackson visitor center.
UK must use its trade policy to tackle climate change | Letters
As the Trump administration prepares to withdraw the US from the Paris agreement, we believe the UK must use its trade policy to reaffirm and strengthen a globally coordinated response to climate change – one of the greatest challenges humanity has ever faced. As such, we call on the next UK government to:
• Require ratification of the Paris agreement and a commitment to its goal of avoiding more than 1.5 degrees of warming as a precondition for entering into trade and investment agreements with the UK.
Continue reading...European leaders urged to scale up efforts to tackle climate change
Campaigners in call to action as it emerges EU does not intend to make extra cuts to account for US withdrawal from Paris deal
European leaders have been urged to scale up their efforts to tackle climate change as it emerged the EU does not intend to make extra emissions’ cuts to fill the gap left by the withdrawal of the US from the Paris agreement.
At a summit with China in Brussels last week, the EU responded to the decision by Donald Trump to pull out of the historic 2015 pact by vowing to take on a leadership role in the fight to halt global warming.
Continue reading...Food waste charity may be prosecuted over out-of-date produce
Real Junk Food Project co-founder summoned to formal hearing after trading standards inspection at Leeds premises
A charity that campaigns against food waste may face prosecution after trading standards found produce that was past its use-by date at one of its warehouses.
The Real Junk Food Project – which has 127 affiliated cafes worldwide – aims to combat food waste by collecting produce that would otherwise be thrown away and preparing it for the general public.
Continue reading...Ranching life on the high plains of Montana – in pictures
Elliott D Woods spent time in Phillips County in northern Montana, where public land is a source of life to which ranchers are intimately connected. If the plan to transfer lands to the states succeeds, it will mean a radical restructuring of the economy and the culture of the west
Continue reading...In Montana, land transfer threatens the American rancher's way of life
Ranchers in the west have been struggling for decades. Now a new threat looms: public land might be taken away from them
If you want to appreciate the prairie landscape that inspired President Theodore Roosevelt to set aside 230 million acres as national land, you have to pull off the interstate somewhere in the Dakotas, or in the eastern third of Montana, Wyoming, or Colorado. Follow a dirt road for a few miles, roll down your windows, and shut off your engine. Do this almost any time of day, preferably in springtime. Above and below ground, the prairies are humming with life: birds, rodents, snakes, pronghorn, badgers and coyotes, rioting amid a landscape of grass and sagebrush.
Continue reading...The great public land giveaway: five Republicans leading the charge
A small but vocal cohort is leading efforts to transfer federal land to the states. Is your congressional representative on the list?
The Trump administration has so far attempted to shrink the federal government’s role in healthcare, environmental protection – and even meals on wheels. Some Republicans now see another area ripe for giveaway: public lands.
During the Obama administration, Republicans made numerous attempts to open up federal lands for development or cede control of areas to the states. This push was largely made by representatives from a couple of western states, where the federal government manages roughly half of all land.
Continue reading...Two rangers shot dead in Kenya’s Laikipia conservation area
The rangers, who are police reservists, were killed while trying to recover cattle stolen by nomadic herders
Two game rangers have been shot dead in Kenya’s restive north while on a mission to recover stolen cattle.
For the last year, Laikipia, one of Kenya’s most important wildlife regions, has been the scene of vicious farm invasions and battles between private ranch owners and communities bordering them.
Continue reading...Climate change progress at Trump's EPA is grinding to a halt, workers reveal
Current and former staff say projects that mention climate change have been ‘de-emphasized and halted’ as EPA tears up key planks of emissions-lowering agenda
Current and former Environmental Protection Agency employees have described how work on climate change is grinding to a halt at the agency, with programs being scrapped and fears that staff may be reassigned away from climate-related tasks.
The Trump administration is tearing up key planks of Barack Obama’s emissions-lowering agenda, with the president withdrawing the US from the Paris climate agreement last week and tasking the EPA with rewriting the Clean Power Plan, which aims to curb greenhouse gases from coal-fired power plants.
Continue reading...Liberals have a responsibility too: make climate change a top issue
For too long, liberals have been treating climate change as a third or fourth tier issue. As the US exits the Paris Climate Accord, it’s time for liberals to re-evaluate an issue that subsumes all others.
On Thursday when the announcement hit that Trump was taking America out of the Paris Climate Accord, my social media feed predictably blew up. As an environmental journalist with a lot of left-leaning friends, you can imagine what it looked like: anger, frustration, shock, sadness, another outrage from the world’s most outrageous leader. All of a sudden every one I knew was talking about climate change; I’ll admit it was a nice change of pace, but after nearly ten years of covering climate change I also knew it would be fleeting.
Liberals have been the champions of climate action for decades, but they’ve largely championed it as an after thought, something that comes near the end of a long to-do list, like the brussels sprouts you conveniently forget to pick up at the grocery store (polling bears this out). When I bring up climate change during chats with left-leaning friends, I often get that pause – that suspended moment – when I can see someone in the group look askance. I can see what they’re thinking, “Again, Jeremy, with the climate change?”
Continue reading...The day after withdrawing from Paris, Trump declared a flooding disaster in Missouri | John Abraham
The state, hit hard by global warming-intensified flooding, has elected numerous climate-denying politicians
I was debating this article. Should I write about the news that just occurred, or the news that will occur soon? I chose the past event – flooding in Missouri, USA. I will save the soon-to-collapse Larsen C Ice Shelf in Antarctica for my next article.
It’s sad, but true, that there are mounting ironies around Trump’s scientific ignorance on climate change and his ditching of the Paris Accord to reduce global warming. Scientists know the Earth is warming and that humans are the cause. One consequence of the warming is that weather is becoming more extreme. This means we are getting more extreme storms, including rain and floods. As our nation and the world suffers from the extreme weather, we can reflect on how things could have been different had our politicians heeded the warnings.
Continue reading...Close encounters of the furred kind: alien butt spider and friends – in pictures
Funnel web, trapdoor and redback spiders: their names alone are enough to provoke a thigh-clenching chill in most of us. A new publication from the CSIRO, A Field Guide to Spiders of Australia, attempts to change this. ‘No one has actually died from a spider bite in Australia for more than 30 years, but plenty of people have been injured panicking at the sight of a huntsman.’
Authors Robert Whyte and Greg Anderson have produced a comprehensive guide, introducing the reader to fabulously named species like sparklemuffins, the alien butt spider, disco mirror ball spiders and dancing peacock spiders. Here are a small selection of the 1,350 photographs from the book.
Continue reading...Return of the avian master builders
Claxton, Norfolk Every year the house martins check properties for suitable nest sites, even examining our nonexistent eaves
As if minted out of the soil that morning, suddenly house martins were around our garden a fortnight ago. Every year the pairs in the village perform an almost ritualised house inspection, when they check properties for suitable nest sites.
Every time they tantalise me by swooping to examine even our nonexistent eaves. Then they fuss about the gable end to our neighbour’s. Were they ever to choose the last spot, which looks perfect to my unbirdlike eyes, it would bring their distillate of African sunshine to within metres of my office.
Continue reading...Adani gives 'green light' to $16bn Carmichael coal mine
Queensland premier Annastacia Palaszczuk and Adani officially announce the company’s intention to invest in the proposed Galilee basin mega-mine
Indian billionaire Gautam Adani has given the “green light” to the Carmichael mine and rail project, but it will still hinge on its Australian arm, Adani Mining, gaining bank backing for the contentious venture.
The Adani group chairman took a dig at “activists who sit in creature comfort and criticise us” while trumpeting the decision to invest in Australia’s largest proposed coalmine.
Continue reading...Medical experts say lending to Adani is the same as supporting big tobacco
High-profile doctors say Carmichael coalmine poses a ‘grave danger to public health’, including from air pollution and black lung disease
Lending money to Indian mining giant Adani to build a rail line for the Carmichael coal project is akin to supporting big tobacco to transport hundreds of tonnes of tobacco to market, an eminent former surgeon and the chair of Doctors for the Environment Australia, Prof Kingsley Faulkner, said.
Faulkner made the comment in a letter to the chair of the government’s Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility (Naif), Sharon Warburton, in which he urged her and other board members to rule out an investment loan to build the rail line from the mine at the Galilee basin in Queensland to the Abbot Point port.
Continue reading...Get in the sea – should we allow coastal heritage sites to fall to ruin?
Do all heritage sites deserve to be saved or should some be permitted to fall into natural ruin? According to Caitlin DeSilvey, a cultural geography professor at the University of Exeter, some historic landmarks should be permitted to decay gracefully through a policy of managed “continuous ruination”. In other words, thanks to a perfect storm of falling budgets, climate change, rising sea levels, and, well, loads more storms, is it time to stop viewing heritage loss as a failure but instead as a necessary, even natural process of change?
“Yes, but it’s not about abandoning stuff,” stresses Phil Dyke, coast and marine adviser at the National Trust, which owns 775 miles of coastline and cares for more than 500 coastal interests. “It’s a form of adaptation. There are 90 locations around England, Wales and Northern Ireland where we’ve got significant change that we’re going to have to deal with over time. It’s going to become increasingly difficult to hang on to structures in these locations.”
Continue reading...