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UK’s ancient woodlands at risk from investment zones, say charities
Exclusive: Concern over government plans to relax environmental and planning rules to lure business
The government’s investment zones could put the UK’s ancient woodlands under threat, the head of the Woodland Trust has warned.
An ancient woodland is one that has existed continuously since at least 1600. They are a precious part of the country’s history, store large amounts of carbon and are important habitats for animals.
Continue reading...A cuckoo: in German, ‘Kuckuck’ is a euphemism for devil | Helen Sullivan
Its call has freaked people out for centuries
Is there a scene more horrifying than the baby cuckoo alone in a nest: the waxy skin, the eyeballs covered in the skull, the sunken back – evolved to help it scoop the other eggs over the edge and on to the ground. Nobody has taught the baby how to eliminate its adoptive siblings. The cuckoo hatches with this instinct driving it: a natural born “obligate brood parasite”.
When a common European cuckoo has successfully laid her egg in a red warbler’s nest, she “gives a chuckle call, as if in triumph”: the call sounds like a sparrowhawk, a predator, which distracts the host. “The female cuckoo enhances her success by manipulating a fundamental trade-off in host defences between clutch and self-protection,” the authors who discovered this wrote, in a paper titled Female cuckoo calls misdirect host defences towards the wrong enemy. In one summer, a female cuckoo can lay 25 malevolent eggs.
Continue reading...Global growth in CO2 emissions slows in 2022, IEA says
Switzerland tees up first auction of 2022 ETS allowances
Save energy by not turning clocks back in October, says expert
Prof Aoife Foley says it would remain light for part of energy peak between 5pm and 7pm, reducing household bills
Households could save more than £400 a year on energy bills if clocks are not put back at the end of October, according to an expert, who said it would help people with the cost of living crisis and reduce pressure on the National Grid this winter.
Evening energy demand peaks between 5pm and 7pm during winter, when the sun has already set after daylight savings time (DST). If clocks didn’t go back, it would remain light for at least part of this time, reducing carbon emissions and energy demand.
Continue reading...EPA sued over lack of plan to regulate water pollution from factory farms
Suit claims the agency has yet to respond to legal petition demanding tighter Clean Water Act enforcement for factory farms
Dozens of advocacy groups have filed a lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), claiming the federal department has failed to come up with a plan to regulate water pollution from factory farms.
The suit claims the agency has yet to respond to a 2017 legal petition from more than 30 environmental groups demanding that the EPA tighten its Clean Water Act enforcement for factory farms, also known as concentrated animal feeding operations (Cafos), where thousands of animals are sometimes confined.
Continue reading...Euro Markets: Midday Update
Climate change less important to developing world despite rising threat of ecological catastrophe -study
New and updated NDCs show only modest increase in climate policy ambition -report
Govt support could unlock A$4.4 bln in Queensland carbon farming projects, report says
Ministers may go ahead with nature-friendly scheme, farmers believe
Speculation had been rife that government would block Elms subsidies for creating wildlife habitats
Farmers in England say they are increasingly optimistic that the government may yet row back on its plans to cut funding for nature-friendly farming initiatives.
The farming minister, Mark Spencer, this week met the RSPB and the chair of the Nature Friendly Farming Network (NFFN), both organisations that had been critical of plans to remove subsidies for creating wildlife habitats.
Continue reading...Australian environment groups push to close loophole classifying native forest biomass as renewable
NZ submits bill to extend protection provisions for small ETS foresters
Digital travel booking firm partners with platform provider to boost lower carbon footprint trips
South Pole teams up with agtech firm to offer prepayment for agricultural offsets
UK government’s approach to waste crime ‘close to decriminalisation’
Commons report finds organised criminals view illegal dumping fines as business expense and there is no coherent plan
The government’s attitude to waste crime is “close to decriminalisation” as fines are so low, the chair of the Commons public accounts committee (Pac) has said.
Organised criminals view the relatively tiny fines as a business expense, MPs have warned, as illegal waste dumping becomes a lucrative income stream for gangs.
Continue reading...Only 3% of England under nature protection - report
Do we really care more about Van Gogh’s sunflowers than real ones? | George Monbiot
The Just Stop Oil activists are accused of using tactics that will backfire. But ‘respectable’ protest is roundly ignored
What does it take? How far must we go to alert other people to the scale of the crisis we face? Only one answer is clear: further than we have yet gone. We are hurtling towards planetary tipping points: the critical thresholds beyond which Earth systems collapse. The consequences are unimaginable. None of the horrors humanity has suffered, great as they are, even hints at the scale of what we now face.
Everywhere I see claims that the “extreme” tactics of environmental campaigners will prompt people to “stop listening”. But how could we listen any less to the warnings of scientists and campaigners and eminent committees? How could we pay any less attention to polite objections by “respectable” protesters to the destruction of the habitable planet? Something must shake us out of our stupor.
Continue reading...Fracking caused daily earthquakes at UK’s only active site
Exclusive: Lancashire site responsible for 192 earthquakes over course of 182 days in 2018-19, Lib Dem analysis has found
Fracking caused an earthquake every day at the UK’s only active site at Preston New Road in Lancashire, analysis has found.
Between 2018 and 2019, the site near Blackpool was responsible for 192 earthquakes over the course of 182 days , according to analysis of House of Commons Library data by the Liberal Democrats.
Continue reading...'Great Wall of Echuca': army of locals form sandbagging 'conga line' – video
Residents of the northern Victorian town spent hours constructing a wall of sandbags to fortify against incoming flood waters from the Murray River. The wall stretched the length of the town's NRMA Holiday Park. Echuca remains under an evacuation warning as the river peaks, and two rain fronts are forecast to hit the region over the next seven days
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