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Australia’s biggest listed solar company to be wound up after selling US portfolio
The planned delisting and winding up of Australia's biggest solar farm owner removes one of the last opportunities for small investors to buy into the green energy transition.
The post Australia’s biggest listed solar company to be wound up after selling US portfolio appeared first on RenewEconomy.
South Africa’s nuclear sector has failed its first test
The mishandling of the Koeberg life extension project indicates that South Africa should drop any ambitions for new nuclear plants.
The post South Africa’s nuclear sector has failed its first test appeared first on RenewEconomy.
Plastic has made it to the bottom of Fiji’s rives; our environment is breaking down | Andrew Paris
In Pacific countries people lived in harmony with nature for centuries, now even river bed mussels are affected by the way we live
As a marine biologist in Fiji I am used to seeing plastics in our waterways.
I’ve written of plastics in the sand, sea and surf, and researched the presence of plastics in fish. But my latest piece of research had me shocked.
Continue reading...English beach sewage dumps not monitored properly, data shows
Tory leadership candidates failing on net zero policies, says thinktank
Research from Onward outlines ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and cut energy bills
The two Conservative leadership candidates are failing to promise the policies needed to achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions, a right-leaning thinktank has warned, despite a clear need for measures that would cut consumer bills as well as carbon.
Insulating Britain’s draughty homes would cost the government just over £1bn a year in grants plus a similar amount in subsidised loans, while a 50% cut in stamp duty could encourage people to install low-carbon heat pumps when they move house, according to the proposals from Onward.
Continue reading...'Tinnie army' leads to NSW flood inquiry call to train community members as first responders. How will that work?
Resurrecting the Tasmanian tiger may be a noble idea – but what about preserving existing species? | Adam Morton
While de-extinction research may benefit conservation efforts overall, we shouldn’t have to rely on it to give a wildlife a future
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There is a beautiful, heartbreaking scene near the end of the 2011 movie The Hunter. Shot in Tasmania, the film tells the story of a mercenary hired by a global biotech company to find, take DNA samples from, and destroy a thylacine that is rumoured to have survived deep in the state’s wilderness.
When the last Tasmanian tiger appears in CGI form at the movie’s climax, walking slowly and alone through the snow, the impact of seeing the lost species in its natural habitat is quietly devastating. The mercenary, played by Willem Dafoe, makes an equally devastating, and complicated, choice.
Continue reading...On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing: a reflection on nature – in pictures
A new exhibition by Rae Begley reflects on Earth as a living organism. The exhibition which is currently at the Woollahra Gallery at Redleaf in Sydneys eastern suburbs includes work from the Indigenous community of Coyo in the Atacama desert, Chile, the driest nonpolar desert in the world
Continue reading...The Guardian view on Earth-friendly diets: cooking animals is cooking the planet | Editorial
Eating less meat will help, but governments remain indispensable actors in solving the climate crisis
The Ministry for the Future is a sci-fi novel in which the climate crisis is an emergency so dire that it forces humankind to shift course. In the book, a catastrophic Indian heatwave in the near future causes the death of more than 20 million people. Climate activism turns to terrorism, and the author, Kim Stanley Robinson, writes about how panic induces behavioural change. To rid people of their addiction to beef – responsible for 8.5% of human-induced climate emissions in 2015 – mad cow disease is cultured by climate terrorists and injected by drones into millions of herds all over the world. Cows die off and beef, now too risky to eat, quickly comes off the menu.
Nothing so drastic has been advocated by the UK government’s food tsar, Henry Dimbleby. He sensibly favours public messaging based on persuasion rather than fear. The science is clear: animal-based foods account for 57% of agricultural greenhouse gases versus 29% for food from plants. By cooking meat, people are cooking themselves. That explains why Mr Dimbleby is in a hurry. Ministers, he told the Guardian, need to warn the public that they have to stop eating meat to save the planet.
Continue reading...Sizewell C nuclear plant funding approved despite Tory split
Boris Johnson gives financing go-ahead after warnings decision could limit incoming government
Boris Johnson has approved funding for a new nuclear power station at Sizewell in Suffolk in the final weeks of his premiership, but some of Liz Truss’s senior allies are split over the decision.
The prime minister and the chancellor, Nadhim Zahawi, approved financing for the construction of two new reactors known as Sizewell C, enabling private funding of about £20-30bn to be raised.
Continue reading...England’s highly paid water bosses rake it in from lucrative second jobs
As sewage is discharged into the UK’s seas and targets are missed, company chiefs use their time on other roles
Some of the highly paid bosses of England’s water companies are earning tens of thousands of pounds in second boardroom jobs, advising on the pay deals of other top executives.
Five of the chief executives of England’s nine water and sewerage companies are also working as non-executive directors in other firms, sitting on remuneration committees.
Continue reading...Water firms exist to sustain life. They should answer to citizens, not shareholders | Will Hutton
There is change in the air – vast change. Two years before the next general election it is obvious – just as it was in 1977 before Margaret Thatcher won in 1979 – that the existing policy framework has reached its sell-by date. Then it was the postwar settlement – including incomes policies and public ownership – whose weaknesses were becoming ever harder to defend, even among those of us who recognised its strengths. At the very least it needed a wholesale rethink and makeover, or, as Thatcher argued, be repudiated with a bracing new framework adopted in its place.
So, in 2022 we have the prospect of 13% inflation or even higher, swingeing energy bills that will topple millions into destitution. Add in the failures of privatisation dramatised by excessive water leakages and raw sewage blighting many beaches and rivers, an impossibly overstretched NHS, and workers being badged as irresponsible for merely trying to resist dramatic cuts in their real incomes. All this has crystallised how the whole Thatcherite edifice of economic and social policy, decaying for years, is suddenly and obviously redundant.
Continue reading...Stories draw us to the hero’s journey, but individual empathy doesn’t help us see the bigger picture | Bri Lee
Traditional western storytelling conventions aren’t up to the task of understanding the enormity of the climate crisis or the pandemic
People love to talk about the power of stories: the force of the right hero’s journey spurring an individual into action; the power of a compelling narrative to change minds; the way empathy can break down barriers and re-shape society … I’ve done it myself for this very publication.
We do it because various iterations of these arguments are real and true. National Geographic says storytelling “helps us to find order in things that have happened to us and make sense of the events of a random world”, and that studies suggest “the more compelling the story, the more empathetic people become in real life.” According to the BBC, “storytelling is a form of cognitive play that hones our minds, allowing us to simulate the world around us and imagine different strategies, particularly in social situations … brain scans have shown that reading or hearing stories activates various areas of the cortex that are known to be involved in social and emotional processing …”
Continue reading...UN seeks plan to beat plastic nurdles, the tiny scourges of the oceans
Billions of the pellets end up in the sea, killing turtles, whales and dolphins, and are washed up on beaches around the world
Maritime authorities are considering stricter controls on the ocean transport of billions of plastic pellets known as nurdles after a series of spillages around the world.
Campaigners warn that nurdles are one of the most common micro-plastic pollutants in the seas, washing up on beaches from New Zealand to Cornwall. The multicoloured pellets produced by petrochemical companies are used as building blocks for plastic products, from bags to bottles and piping.
Continue reading...Perchance to dream? Study suggests spiders experience dreams while asleep
Jumping spiders display rapid eye movements and limb twitching similar to what is seen in dreaming dogs and cats, researchers say
The question is not “do you have nightmares about spiders?” but, do spiders dream? About juicy flies, about humans, about anything at all?
A US-European research partnership suggests that thousands of species of jumping spiders might experience rapid eye movement stages of sleep. That is the state in which humans have their most vivid dreams, though the study in question stops well short of concluding that spiders have dreams.
Continue reading...UK drought: Why do the trees think it's autumn already?
Robot boat maps Pacific underwater volcano
*Technical Specialist, Social Equity & Rights, Climate & Nature Linkages, Fauna & Flora International – Cambridge
CP Daily: Friday August 19th, 2022
Speculators build CCA position before Q3 auction, emitters’ holdings inch lower
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