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High court gives ministers deadline for tougher air pollution plan
UK environment department must publish stronger air quality plan by April 2017, five months sooner than the deadline that government wanted
The government is being forced to deliver an effective plan to tackle the UK’s air pollution crisis within eight months, after a high court judge rejected a longer timetable as “far too leisurely”.
Environmental lawyers ClientEarth inflicted a humiliating legal defeat on ministers earlier in November – its second in 18 months – when the high court ruled that ministers’ plans to tackle illegal levels of air pollution in many UK cities and towns were so poor they were unlawful.
Continue reading...Meet Cronus, the tarantula whipping the Tory party into line
Name: Cronus, or sometimes Kronos.
Age: One year.
Continue reading...Cars under flood water in Bristol – video
Amateur footage shows cars under flood water in Bristol. Facebook user Bobbie Massiah posted the video on Monday morning saying it was of Whitchurch Lane in Hartcliffe. A large swath of south-west Britain is coping with flooding and high winds as another block of torrential rain swept into Britain on the heels of Storm Angus
Continue reading...Beijing bans highly polluting cars during smog alerts
From next year, restrictions will be placed on older cars whenever air-quality warnings have been issued, say officials
Next year, Beijing will ban highly polluting old cars from being driven whenever air-quality alerts are issued in the city or neighbouring regions, according to its environmental protection bureau.
China has adopted various measures over the years to reduce the smog shrouding many of the country’s northern cities in winter, causing hazardous traffic conditions and disrupting daily life.
Continue reading...Global energy futures: India under the spotlight
Groups working with Republicans on climate are discouraged, but see a glimmer of hope | Dana Nuccitelli
The 2016 US election was a bad sign for climate policy, but galvanized grassroots organizations
Because America is entirely governed by two political parties, passage of legislation usually requires bipartisan support in US Congress. However, the Republican Party is the only major political party in the world that denies the need to tackle climate change. Therefore, for several years any hope of passing climate legislation hinged upon breaking through the near-universal opposition among Republican legislators. A number of groups have focused on doing just that.
In the wake of the 2016 US election results, I contacted these groups to assess their feelings about the prospects of US government action on climate change in the near future. The general sentiment was understandably one of discouraged pessimism, but each group identified glimmers of hope.
Continue reading...Olive killer disease arrives on Mallorca
Theresa May wants post-Brexit UK at 'cutting edge'
Kuwait: A Desert on Fire, by Sebastião Salgado
As Iraq’s oilfields burn as retreating Isis forces set them on fire, Sebastião Salgado has published a book of his photographs taken in 1991 documenting a similar conflagration as Saddam Hussein’s forces set alight oil wells in Kuwait
Continue reading...No room for bikes: how one street shows the UK-wide failure over cycling
The fate of my small, south London road is a microcosm of the ways towns and cities are still planned around cars, not humans
This blog is sometimes criticised for focusing too much on events in London. At risk of seeming more parochial still, I’m about to write about my own London street. But stay with me: the failings in my part of SE5 contain lessons for the wider lack of safe cycling across the whole country.
Champion Hill, close to Camberwell in south-east London, is a classic rat run – a narrow and not-very-long residential street which has the misfortune to be on a shortcut between major routes, and is thus awash with traffic several times a day.
UK government not funding natural flood prevention methods
Despite government support for measures such as planting trees to stop floods, no funds have yet been been allocated
Natural ways of preventing flooding such as planting trees have no government funding despite ministers repeatedly backing the idea, according to a freedom of information request by Friends of the Earth.
Almost a year since devastating floods hits swathes of northern Britain, environment secretary, Andrea Leadsom, and floods minister, Thérèse Coffey, have both recently supported the approach, which aims to slow the flow of water off hills and reduce peak levels.
Continue reading...High on a Dorset heath, where wind rattles the heather
Hardown Hill, Dorset I skirt the old quarry workings, swamped in spring with bluebells and now swathed with rusty bracken
Old Bottom, as the Marshwood Vale was once called, has filled with autumn rain. Walking means slogging, ankle deep or more, through cold, claggy clay, navigating puddles of yellow water overhung with dripping trees. Time to escape the woods for higher, drier ground.
Hardown Hill is one of a circle of hills and forts ringing the vale. Steep sides of deciduous woodland and gaps of rough pasture run up to a flat top of heath where nightjars call in summer. The summit is open, unfenced common land, home to sand lizards and occasionally Dartford warblers. Villagers used to cut the heath for fuel. Gorse was particularly prized in bread ovens because it burned quick and hot before disintegrating into an insignificant pile of fine ash. In Dorset dialect, gorse was furze, pronounced “vurze”, just as fox was “varx”.
Continue reading...Drones will feed the world : Analyst
Delivering strong environmental outcomes through better practice regulation
Saving the pangolin: giant rats trained to sniff out world's most trafficked mammal
Rats’ agility and keen sense of smell will one day be used to reach parts of shipping containers that sniffer dogs cannot reach
The pangolin – the world’s most heavily trafficked mammal – might have a new champion: rats that will be trained to sniff out trafficked pangolin parts in shipments heading from Africa to Asia.
Ten to 15 African giant pouched rats are being reared in Tanzania to detect pungent pangolin remains as well as smuggled hardwood timber. They are just a few weeks old and most are still with their mothers.
Eco Energy secures planning consent for second solar farm in Australia
Know your NEM: Post-Trump rate spike making renewable projects more costly
Marrakech COP22: Climate deal emerges stronger from Trump shock, but plenty to do
CIT students head to France to study renewable energy
Trump as president will be little different to Abbott (or Turnbull) as PM
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