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New coral bleaching outbreak in NT a worrying sign of our warming oceans
London air pollution activists 'prepared to go to prison' to force action
Group of campaigners arrested after spray painting mayor’s offices as part of a series of direct action protests over of the capital’s illegal air pollution
Air pollution protesters say they are prepared to go to prison as they step up their campaign against the poisonous air that kills tens of thousands of people in the UK each year.
A group of campaigners including pensioners and young parents, were arrested on Monday after targeting the offices of London mayor Sadiq Khan, spraying slogans on the walls calling for tougher action on air pollution.
Continue reading...Regional forest agreement renewals spark fresh forest wars
RFAs were meant to protect forests and create a sustainable timber industry, but as renewals approach both sides are readying for battle
For more than 30 years Jill Redwood has fought to save the ancient old growth forests of East Gippsland in Victoria.
Living alone, isolated and self-sufficient on a small rural property in the Brodribb river valley alongside the Snowy river national park, Redwood, the coordinator of the East Gippsland Environment Centre, says there have been endless attempts to silence and frighten her. She’s undaunted.
Continue reading...Climate change soon to cause mass movement, World Bank warns
140m people in three regions expected to migrate before 2050 unless environment is improved
Climate change will result in a massive movement of people inside countries and across borders, creating “hotspots” where tens of millions pour into already crowded slums, according to the World Bank.
More than 140m people in just three regions of the developing world are likely to migrate within their native countries between now and 2050, the first report on the subject has found.
Continue reading...Macular degeneration: 'I've been given my sight back'
Rare poison
Toxic task
John Kelly shut down Pruitt’s climate denial ‘red team,’ but they have a Plan B | Dana Nuccitelli
Let fossil fuel-funded think tanks make their case, then ignore it
In 2007, the US Supreme Court ruled that carbon dioxide is an air pollutant, which means that if it poses a threat to public health or welfare, the EPA must regulate it under the Clean Air Act. In 2009, the EPA completed its review of the climate science literature and correctly concluded in its Endangerment Finding that carbon pollution poses such a threat via climate change. That document is the foundation for all government climate policies, including the Obama Administration’s Clean Power Plan. Climate deniers have thus long had their sights set on revoking the Endangerment Finding.
That’s a tall order, since the scientific literature is crystal clear on this question. House Republicans first tried to simply rewrite the Clean Air Act to state the greenhouse gases aren’t pollutants, but they failed to get nearly enough support to pass that legislation. Next they proposed setting up a ‘Red Team’ of climate deniers to debate the mainstream climate science ‘Blue Team.’ But Trump’s chief of staff John Kelly worried that having this prominent debate on the record would be a distraction and potentially expose the administration to litigation, so he killed the idea.
Water shortages could affect 5bn people by 2050, UN report warns
Conflict and civilisational threats likely unless action is taken to reduce the stress on rivers, lakes, aquifers, wetlands and reservoirs
More than 5 billion people could suffer water shortages by 2050 due to climate change, increased demand and polluted supplies, according to a UN report on the state of the world’s water.
The comprehensive annual study warns of conflict and civilisational threats unless actions are taken to reduce the stress on rivers, lakes, aquifers, wetlands and reservoirs.
Continue reading...Country diary: beavers adjust to the first proper Highland winter in years
Aigas, Beauly, Inverness-shire They had to hurry to cache enough food before the ice took over, an underwater stash of nutritious bark kept fresh for winter snacking
I think we’d almost forgotten about ice. A decade of mild winters had pressed delete in our recent memory banks, banished ice to the Winter Olympics or perhaps to nostalgia – something that happened back then. Well, this Highland winter was having none of it. It rampaged in with sharp teeth in November, bit hard and hasn’t let go. It shows no sign of doing so yet.
The beavers in the Aigas loch had to hurry to cache enough food before the ice took over, an underwater stash of birch and willow logs, the nutritious bark kept fresh for winter snacking. They don’t hibernate. They still emerge in the long dark to forage where they can, labouring away at their evenly spaced breathing holes in the ice, gnawing at the rims every night to keep them open.
Sailing to Japan
Wild quolls take bait of cane-toad sausages, offering hope for species
Wildlife managers hope taste aversion technique can help safeguard the endangered northern quoll
Scientists are a step closer to stopping the devastating march of toxic cane toads across northern Australia, as the introduced species continues to decimate what is left of the native quoll populations.
Field trials of a technique used to turn quolls off the taste of toads has yielded positive results, which were published in this month’s Austral Ecology journal.