The Guardian
Adani rail line to Abbot Point not a priority, says Infrastructure Australia
Agency says it has not received a submission on the rail line from Queensland government and has not conducted any cost-benefit analysis
Infrastructure Australia has not identified a proposed rail line linking the controversial Adani coalmine with the Abbot Point port as a priority, and it has not consulted the body which is expected to stump up a concessional loan.
The chief executive of Infrastructure Australia, Philip Davies, told a Senate estimates hearing on Monday that the rail line – which has been pushed assiduously by the federal resources minister, Matt Canavan – was not “something we’ve currently identified” as a priority project.
Continue reading...Lancashire's poster-place for the access revolution
Clougha Pike, Forest of Bowland Once forbidding and forbidden, ringfenced for shooting, this is still a secret, silent place
Find a big map and you’ll see there’s a monstrous, heart-shaped blank in the middle of north-west England. You’ve passed it probably, but the big roads skirt it with such circuitous subtlety you don’t notice you’re orbiting something. For years, unless you paid to shoot things, it might well have remained more a brooding feeling than a sight, its extent out of view beyond this brow or that.
But then wildest Bowland became the poster-place for the second access revolution. The first was Kinder Scout, for its trespass in 1932,which legitimised the case for national parks. Bowland epitomised the unfinished business: the Countryside Rights of Way Act.
'Recycling in Australia is dead in the water': three companies tackling our plastic addiction
Only a small proportion of plastics consumed in Australia is collected for recycling, but it’s what happens after that that could make a difference
There’s no escaping plastic in modern life. In Australia, more than 1.5m tonnes of the crude oil derivative is consumed each year, not including plastics imported in finished products or their packaging. And most of this ends up on a centuries-long path to degradation in landfill or the world’s waterways and oceans. One recent sobering analysis has estimated that by 2050, the weight of plastics in the oceans will match that of fish.
Reducing consumption by avoiding the use of disposable plastic shopping bags, for instance, and reusing plastic containers are important waste-reduction measures. But what role does recycling play?
Continue reading...Cock-of-the-rock rules the roost in Peru's Manu cloud forest
We had come to see one of the greatest bird spectacles in the world: the courtship display of the Andean cock-of-the-rock
Our guide unlocked the wooden door. “Here” he announced to his still sleepy audience “are the keys to paradise.” José Antonio has probably used this line before, but none of us was complaining. For as dawn broke over the Manu cloud forest, in the heart of Peru, we were assembling on a wooden platform perched on the edge of the mountainside. We had come to see one of the greatest bird spectacles in the world: the courtship display of the Andean cock-of-the-rock (Rupicola peruvianus).
Cocks-of-the-rock (note the pedantic plural) are very striking birds indeed. About the size of a collared dove, though much plumper, they sport a prominent crest, which they use to intimidate their fellow males, and attract females, in the avian equivalent of the red deer rut.
Continue reading...Time for the oil industry to snuff out its flares
The World Bank reckons the 16,000 flares worldwide produce around 350m tonnes of CO2 each year, causing untold harm
The emission of air pollution from traffic in our cities is the last step for a fuel that produces air pollution at every stage of production, often starting with flaring at a distant oil well. The World Bank estimates that the 16,000 flares worldwide produce around 350m tonnes of CO2 each year.
Black carbon from sooty flames adds to the problems, especially across the northern hemisphere where it darkens arctic and mountain snow encouraging melting. The flared gas is also a wasted resource.
Continue reading...Privatisation, water poverty and leaks | Letters
Nils Pratley (Labour’s water renationalisation plan is a damp squib, 17 May) argues that there is no need to renationalise water because regulation is enough to tame the monopolistic behaviour of the private operators. This argument is not convincing when you look at the experience with water privatisation since 1989.
Related: 'Water poverty' to rise in the UK as scarcity pushes up bills
Continue reading...Video: California sea lion grabs girl from dock and pulls her underwater
Girl left traumatised but unharmed after large sea lion grabs her dress and pulls her into the water near Vancouver, Canada
A young girl and her family were left traumatised after a large sea lion grabbed her and pulled her underwater.
The girl was sitting on a dock in Richmond, near Vancouver in Canada, watching the seemingly playful sea lion in the water before it grabbed her dress and pulled her into the water.
Continue reading...New coalmines will worsen poverty and escalate climate change, report finds
Oxfam attacks Australia’s ‘climate policy paralysis’ and urges it to promise no new coalmines and end public subsidies
New coalmines will leave more people in poverty, Oxfam has said in a new report, calling on Australia to commit to no new coalmines and to end public subsidies for coalmining.
The report comes as the Queensland and federal governments continue to push for the controversial Adani coalmine in the Galilee basin, signalling potential infrastructure support and “royalty holidays”.
Continue reading...Charging ahead: Welsh battery scheme may aid growth of green energy
One of the UK’s largest battery storage schemes, built next to a windfarm, will offer vital services to the National Grid
Nestling alongside rows of conifers and wind turbines in a Welsh valley, a pioneering project will materialise this summer that could prove a blueprint for unlocking Britain’s renewable energy potential.
The Upper Afan Valley near Swansea is already home to the biggest windfarm in England and Wales, but in July work will begin there on one of the UK’s largest battery storage schemes.
Continue reading...‘Spiteful and petty’: Maine governor bans signs to Obama-designated monument
As Trump administration reviews 27 national monuments, conservationists fear a federally mandated effort to strip public lands of environmental protections
A decision by the Republican governor of Maine, Paul LePage, to ban signs to Katahdin Woods and Waters, a national monument designated by Barack Obama, has been described as “sophomoric and petty” by a member of the family that donated the 87,563-acre tract to the nation.
Related: 'This is our land': New Mexico's tribal groups gear up to fight for their home
Continue reading...Charities may face criminal sanctions as 'gagging law' backdated before election
Electoral Commission says charities must declare all campaign spending since June last year, despite them not knowing a snap election would be called
UK charities face a permanent “chilling effect” on their campaigns after the Electoral Commission said they must declare any work that could be deemed political over the past 12 months to ensure they are not in breach of the Lobbying Act.
At least one charity has been warned that if it does not, it may face “civil or criminal sanctions”.
Continue reading...How do the four main parties compare on the environment?
Environment experts weigh up the manifesto pledges on issues such as air pollution, climate change, energy and waste
Continue reading...The eco guide to unusual materials
Fabrics such as cotton come at a dear cost to the environment. Look for progressive alternatives made from pineapples, eucalyptus, even mushrooms
Future generations will shake their heads at our loyalty to a handful of fibres with terrible environmental profiles, such as cotton (thirsty for pesticides and water) and plastic (oil based). They’ll want to know why we didn’t display more imagination.
Many innovations in the fashion industry have a distinctly mushroomy flavour
Continue reading...Experts reject Bjørn Lomborg's view on 2C warming target
Lomborg’s Copenhagen Consensus Centre says investment in keeping temperature rises below 2C would return less than $1 for every $1 spent
Experts have challenged a claim by Bjørn Lomborg’s Copenhagen Consensus Centre that holding global temperature rises to 2C is a poor investment.
In 2015 the education department abandoned plans for Lomborg to set up an Australian Consensus Centre, but gave the Copenhagen centre $640,000 to support its Smarter UN Post-2015 Development Goals project.
Continue reading...Urban beasts: how wild animals have moved into cities
In Aesop’s fable, the town mouse turns his nose up at his country cousin’s simple fare, preferring the haute cuisine to be scavenged in the city. It appears that the wild boar of Italy have taken note, and are venturing ever more boldly into Rome.
But they are not alone: all around the world, city life seems to be increasingly conducive to wildlife. Urban nature is no longer unglamorous feral pigeons or urban foxes. Wolves have taken up residence in parts of suburban Germany as densely populated as Cambridge or Newcastle. The highest density of peregrine falcons anywhere in the world is New York; the second highest is London, and these spectacular birds of prey now breed in almost every major British city. And all kinds of wild deer are rampaging through London, while also taking up residence everywhere from Nara in Japan to the Twin Cities of the US.
Continue reading...Sap is rising on the shimmering heath
Mockbeggar, New Forest Tiny, parched, sorrels streak the ground with red but there is feverish activity in the ditch
From Moyles Court, a fine 17th-century house that is now a private school, we set off up the slope with paddocks on either side. Leaving the Avon Valley Path, we cut the corner of Newlands Plantation, and climb steadily uphill along the woodland edge. Rhododendron ponticum infests part of the margin, with the blooms of young plants announcing their colonisation of the adjacent open ground.
Related: For a beetle at risk, what better place to be?
Continue reading...'Doomsday' seed vault, new plants and a plague of plastic – green news roundup
The week’s top environment news stories and green events. If you are not already receiving this roundup, sign up here to get the briefing delivered to your inbox
Continue reading...Arctic stronghold of world’s seeds flooded after permafrost melts
No seeds were lost but the ability of the rock vault to provide failsafe protection against all disasters is now threatened by climate change
It was designed as an impregnable deep-freeze to protect the world’s most precious seeds from any global disaster and ensure humanity’s food supply forever. But the Global Seed Vault, buried in a mountain deep inside the Arctic circle, has been breached after global warming produced extraordinary temperatures over the winter, sending meltwater gushing into the entrance tunnel.
The vault is on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen and contains almost a million packets of seeds, each a variety of an important food crop. When it was opened in 2008, the deep permafrost through which the vault was sunk was expected to provide “failsafe” protection against “the challenge of natural or man-made disasters”.
Continue reading...Live Q&A: What impact is human development having on the world’s elephant populations?
The conflict between humans and elephants for space and resources is driving the rapid decline of elephant populations. Join us on Wednesday 24 May from 1-2.30pm BST to discuss how elephants and humans can live together
This week an elderly man was killed by a wild elephant in central India as he picked tendu leaves in the Surajpur forest. A few days earlier, a father and his son were injured after two elephants wandered into their house in Tamil Nadu. As human populations grow and communities live in closer proximity to elephants, one of the world’s most unique and beautiful animals can become the most dangerous.
But human development is also contributing to the severe decline in elephant populations. Across Asia and Africa, elephants’ natural habitats are being destroyed by rapid urbanisation and industrial and agricultural expansion.
Continue reading...The week in wildlife – in pictures
Tasmanian devils, a Saimaa ringed seal and a white wolf are among this week’s pick of images from the natural world
Continue reading...