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‘A drop in the ocean’: government’s $50m koala pledge won’t tackle root cause of decline
Campaigners say ‘money isn’t the issue’ when there’s no koala recovery plan, while other threatened species receive little funding
The announcement took place in a fashion Australians have come to expect in election years, with the prime minister, Scott Morrison, cuddling up to a furry marsupial while promising record investment.
This time it was a plan for the Australian government to spend $50m to improve the protection and recovery of one of the nation’s most-loved animals, the koala.
Continue reading...Australians ingest a credit card’s worth of plastic a week – so what’s it doing to us?
Citizen science project mapping microplastics menace in hope of halting spread
Head down to Sydney’s Manly Cove on a weekend, and you might see groups of people crouching diligently on the sand. They’re not searching for shells or bloodworms, but something just as visually striking, not least because it shouldn’t be there: coloured pieces of hard plastic, fragments of polystyrene foam and fibres from fishing line.
For the last three years, a group of volunteers has been surveying the beach each month for microplastics, as part of the Australian Microplastics Assessment Project.
Colloquially known as Ausmap, the citizen science project has collected more than 3.5m pieces of microplastic from more than 300 beaches around the country, ranging from Thursday Island in the north to Bruny Island, off Tasmania’s south-east coast.
‘Our raises have been pennies’: US cake-makers strike for fair deal as company makes billions
Workers at the Jon Donaire plant in California are struggling to cope – so why won’t the factory’s owner raise its offer?
More than 150 workers at the Jon Donaire Desserts plant in Santa Fe Springs, California, have been on strike since early November over wages, healthcare coverage and working conditions.
The dispute centers on food workers, hailed as heroes early in the pandemic, who are struggling to cope with spiraling costs of living as the company that employs them posts billion-dollar revenues.
Continue reading...Super trawler sheds 100,000 dead fish off coast of France – video
Dutch-owned trawler FV Margiris, the world’s second-biggest fishing vessel, has shed more than 100,000 dead fish into the Atlantic Ocean off France
Continue reading...Brands are moving from fast to ‘forever fashion’ – but are new clothes ever sustainable?
Well-designed, long-lasting clothes have become items only the elite can afford. Change needs to happen at every price point
Fashion has a new trend for spring. Well, of course it does – that’s how fashion works. Except this time round, the trend isn’t crimson or corduroy, or Peter Pan collars or platform shoes. The hot look for spring 2022 is the “forever wardrobe”. The key pieces of the season are clothes that come with the promise that they will never go out of style: think crisp white shirts and well-cut blazers; classic knitwear and timeless little black dresses. Throwaway fashion is so last season. This spring, chic comes with a lifetime guarantee.
The irony is that the forever wardrobe never went away, it just went out of style. The fast fashion industry, which exploded in the last 30 years, turbocharged the trend cycle, abandoning the principles of enduring elegance in favour of a rollercoaster of plot twists (woah, jumpsuits!), comebacks (Crocs) and about-turns (black is back, again) designed to keep an audience hooked. Bored of your jeans? Why not try leather trousers! Throw out your neutrals, it’s the season for neon!
Jess Cartner-Morley is the Guardian’s associate fashion editor
Continue reading...Shock in France after giant trawler sheds 100,000 dead fish off coast
Environmentalists spot floating carpet of blue whiting covering thousands of square metres after spill from the FV Margiris
Dutch-owned trawler FV Margiris, the world’s second-biggest fishing vessel, has shed more than 100,000 dead fish into the Atlantic Ocean off France.
France’s maritime minister, Annick Girardin, called the images of the dead fish – which formed a floating carpet of carcasses spotted by environmental campaigners – “shocking” and has asked the national fishing surveillance authority to launch an investigation.
Continue reading...Parrots for sale: The internet's role in illicit trade
Iceland whaling: Fisheries minister signals end from 2024
CP Daily: Friday February 4, 2022
WCI emitters increase CCA net short position, speculators build net long
UK seeks to branch out in latest effort to curb power and CO2 costs
US Carbon Pricing and LCFS Roundup for week ending February 4, 2022
Failure to prevent pandemics at source is ‘greatest folly’, say scientists
Protecting wildlife to stop viruses jumping to humans would save far more than it costs, analysis shows
Preventing future pandemics at source would cost a small fraction of the damage already caused by viruses that jump from wildlife to people, according to scientists.
Each year on average more than 3 million people die from zoonotic diseases, those that spillover from wildlife into humans, new analysis has calculated. Stopping the destruction of nature, which brings humans and wildlife into greater contact and results in spillover, would cost about $20bn a year, just 10% of the annual economic damage caused by zoonoses and 5% of the value of the lives lost.
Continue reading...Huge bank of dead fish spotted off French Atlantic coast
Mount Everest: Mountain's highest glacier melting rapidly, new study shows
Cutting green levies on energy bills is false economy, say analysts
UK needs to reduce gas addiction and ramp up clean energy investment to bring energy bills down permanently
Cutting green levies on energy bills, or watering down the UK’s commitment to net-zero carbon emissions, would fail to help households with high energy prices and store up problems for the near future, analysts have warned.
Ed Matthew, campaigns director at the E3G thinktank, said: “Cutting green levies to tackle the energy bills crisis would be utterly self-defeating. It would only keep the UK addicted to gas for longer. The only cure is to ramp up clean energy investment and eliminate energy waste. That is the permanent solution to bring down energy bills. Any politician working against that is directly undermining the interests of their constituents and likely to be in the pocket of the fossil fuel lobby.”
Continue reading...Farmer uses forklift tractor to push and flip car off his land – video
A farmer who used his forklift tractor to flip and push a car off his land after a row with the driver over blocking access has been cleared by a jury of dangerous driving and criminal damage.
Robert Hooper claimed he had been punched by a passenger in the car after he asked him and the driver to leave as they were blocking access during a busy day on the farm in Newbiggin-in-Teesdale, County Durham
Continue reading...ANALYSIS: Voter concerns to curb prospects for EU governmental carbon trade
Pennsylvania DEP sues legislative agency to publish RGGI regulation
Iceland to end whaling in 2024 as demand dwindles
Japan’s return to commercial whaling in 2019 has left few buyers for Iceland’s meat
Iceland, one of the only countries that still hunts whales commercially, along with Norway and Japan, plans to end whaling from 2024 as demand dwindles, the fisheries minister has said.
“There are few justifications to authorise the whale hunt beyond 2024,” when current quotas expire, Svandis Svavarsdóttir, a member of the Left Green party, wrote in Morgunblaðið newspaper.
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