Category Archives: Climate change

Cooking up a solution to Uganda’s deforestation crisis with mud stoves

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Badru Kyewalyanga’s home-produced cooking devices use less wood and mean villagers are breathing cleaner air

People are “constantly cutting down trees”, says Badru Kyewalyanga, as he squelches his bare feet into a thick paste of mud in Mukono, central Uganda. “But they have nowhere else to get firewood. The deforestation rate here is very high.”

With only 10% of Uganda’s rural population connected to the electrical grid, there is little option but to burn wood, leading to one of the worst deforestation rates in the world. Every year, 2.6% of the country’s forests are cut down for fuel, agriculture, and to make way for population growth. If things stay as they are, Uganda will lose all its forest cover in less than 25 years, the country’s National Environment Management Authority says.

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US to join summit on global green recovery from Covid-19 crisis

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Exclusive: IEA chief warns rebound in emissions would be missed economic opportunity

The US is to join with other major powers including China, India and the EU in formulating plans for a global green recovery from the coronavirus crisis, in the only major international summit on the climate emergency this year.

The idea of a green recovery to prevent a dangerous rebound in greenhouse gas emissions to above pre-Covid-19 levels has been gathering steam, but few governments have yet committed to plans.

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German far right infiltrates green groups with call to protect the land

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Extremists exploit rural nostalgia and farmers’ anger at globalisation to smuggle in ideology

The poster advertising the evening of debate and organic canapés in Halle’s university district looked familiar to environmentally conscious Germans: a rugged pair of hands, cupping fertile brown soil, underneath the slogan “Farms instead of agricultural factories”, written in a font mimicking that of a popular biodynamic food brand.

The only hint the event wasn’t organised by sandal-wearing good-lifers but a local group of far-right nationalists was in the subtitle: “Let’s chase the globalists off our acres!”

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Scottish villagers plan to buy out landowners for eco moorland project

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Despite funding challenges, community aims to increase biodiversity at Langholm Moor making it resistant to climate change

A small community in the rolling uplands of southern Scotland hopes to create a major new nature reserve, straddling more than 10,000 acres of heather moorland home to hen harriers, black grouse and curlew.

The 2,300 villagers of Langholm, a small settlement a few miles north of the English border, hope to buy one of the UK’s most famous grouse moors, owned by one of the UK’s most powerful hereditary landowners, the Duke of Buccleuch.

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Britain still failing on climate crisis, warn advisers

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Committee urges that companies must meet green standards to qualify for Covid-19 corporate bailouts

Ministers are bracing themselves for a powerful new rebuke from the government’s own advisers over the nation’s inadequate response to the climate crisis. In its annual progress report, to be published on Thursday, the Committee on Climate Change will lambast continuing failures by the government to tackle the issues of overheating homes, flash floods, loss of biodiversity and the other threats posed as our planet continues to overheat dangerously.

Last year, the committee complained that no areas of the UK’s response to the climate crisis were being tackled properly. “The whole thing is run by the government like a Dad’s Army,” said the committee’s chairman, Lord Deben.

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Italian team covers glacier with giant white sheets to slow melting

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Every summer, the Presena glacier in northern Italy is protected from the sun with huge reflective tarps

A vast tarpaulin unravels, gathering speed as it bounces down the glacier over glinting snow. Summer is here and the alpine ice is being protected from global warming.

In northern Italy, the Presena glacier has lost more than one third of its volume since 1993.

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‘Tipping point’: Greta Thunberg hails Black Lives Matter protests

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People are realising ‘we cannot keep looking away from these things’, says climate activist

Greta Thunberg has said the Black Lives Matter protests show society has reached a tipping point where injustice can no longer be ignored, but that she believes a “green recovery plan” from the coronavirus pandemic will not be enough to solve the climate crisis.

Reflecting on the protests that have swept the globe in recent weeks, the Swedish climate activist told the BBC: “It feels like we have passed some kind of social tipping point where people are starting to realise that we cannot keep looking away from these things. We cannot keep sweeping these things under the carpet, these injustices.

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Climate crisis threatens future of global sport, says report

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Study says heatwaves, fires and floods, and rising sea levels pose major threat over coming years

The rapidly accelerating climate crisis threatens the future of major sports events around the world, according to a report that also says the global sporting industry is failing to tackle its own emissions.

The study found that in the coming years nearly all sports – from cricket to American football, tennis to athletics, surfing to golf – will face serious disruption from heatwaves, fires, floods and rising sea levels.

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Climate crisis: alarm at record-breaking heatwave in Siberia

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Unusually high temperatures in region linked to wildfires, oil spill and moth swarms

A prolonged heatwave in Siberia is “undoubtedly alarming”, climate scientists have said. The freak temperatures have been linked to wildfires, a huge oil spill and a plague of tree-eating moths.

On a global scale, the Siberian heat is helping push the world towards its hottest year on record in 2020, despite a temporary dip in carbon emissions owing to the coronavirus pandemic.

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Deadly heat is killing Americans: climate death toll rises after a decade of federal inaction

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Heat now causes more deaths than hurricanes, tornadoes or floods in most years, creating a new public health threat. An investigation reveals why the CDC’s prevention efforts have faltered

This story is co-published with Columbia Journalism Investigations, the Center for Public Integrity and Covering Climate Now. Read the full investigation here.

Charlie Rhodes lived alone on a tree-sparse street with sunburned lawns just outside Phoenix, Arizona. At 61, the army veteran’s main connection to the world was Facebook; often, he posted several times a day. But as a heatwave blanketed the region in June 2016 – leading to temperatures among the highest ever recorded – his posts stopped. Three weeks later, a pile of unopened mail outside his door prompted a call to police.

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Emissions from 13 dairy firms match those of entire UK, says report

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Exclusive: Milk giants’ climate impact rising and production caps needed, say researchers

The biggest dairy companies in the world have the same combined greenhouse gas emissions as the UK, the sixth biggest economy in the world, according to a new report.

The analysis shows the impact of the 13 firms on the climate crisis is growing, with an 11% increase in emissions in the two years after the 2015 Paris climate change agreement, largely due to consolidation in the sector. Scientific reports have shown that consumption of dairy, as well as meat, must be reduced significantly in rich nations to tackle the climate emergency.

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Climate worst-case scenarios may not go far enough, cloud data shows

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Modelling suggests climate is considerably more sensitive to carbon emissions than thought

Worst-case global heating scenarios may need to be revised upwards in light of a better understanding of the role of clouds, scientists have said.

Recent modelling data suggests the climate is considerably more sensitive to carbon emissions than previously believed, and experts said the projections had the potential to be “incredibly alarming”, though they stressed further research would be needed to validate the new numbers.

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Fighting cyclones and coronavirus: how we evacuated millions during a pandemic

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Bangladesh has battled the twin perils of a super-cyclone and Covid-19. We can offer lessons for others facing similar dangers

There was no time to lose when Cyclone Amphan began forming over the Indian Ocean in May.

But shelters are not built with social distancing in mind in Bangladesh and the country faced a challenge: how to move 2.4 million people from the destructive path of the storm without delivering them into an even greater danger – Covid-19. 

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Water-bombing pilots ‘consistently tasked too late’ when fighting bushfires, royal commission hears

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Aircraft chief describes frustration at losing vital time while inquiry also told firefighter radios in different areas ‘largely incompatible’

Pilots flying water-bombing aircraft are “consistently tasked too late for fires” and sit idle on the tarmac until conditions worsen, the royal commission into national natural disaster arrangements has been told.

The inquiry also heard that the radio networks used by firefighting agencies in each jurisdiction are “largely incompatible” with each other and the lack of national coordination meant that resources were not always used effectively.

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‘The water will come back’: why Kenya’s struggle against flooding is far from over

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Record-breaking rainfall has devastated communities – and with thousands displaced and more rain predicted the picture is bleak

Using a short piece of nylon line with a hook at one end and a long thin stick on the other, a mechanic and a nightclub doorman have only caught one small fish all day.

“I’ve never been a fisherman before,” says Erick Ochieng on the edge of a flooded creek in the port city of Kisumu on the banks of Lake Victoria. “I used to work as a bouncer but nightclubs have closed. Sometimes my family sleeps without eating.”

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EU’s greenhouse gas emissions continue to fall as coal ditched

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New figures for 2018 show 2.1% drop on previous year in switch to renewables

Greenhouse gas emissions in the EU continued their fall in 2018, the latest year for which comprehensive data is available, according to a new report from Europe’s environment watchdog.

Emissions fell by 2.1% compared with 2017, to a level 23% lower than in 1990, the baseline for the bloc’s emission cuts under the UN’s climate agreements. If the UK is excluded, the decline since 1990 was smaller, standing at 20.7%.

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EU green recovery package sets a marker for the world

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The bloc is showing the way in rebuilding coronavirus-ravaged economies to fight the climate emergency

The European Commission has put down a marker for the world with its green recovery package. It sets a high standard for other nations, using the rebuilding of coronavirus-ravaged economies to tackle the even greater threat of the climate emergency, in principle at least.

With the world fast approaching the point when climate chaos becomes inevitable, how the trillions of recovery dollars – or euros – are spent is a use-it-or-lose-it moment, so what the EU does really matters. Climate change is a global crisis, meaning all nations must act and some must lead the way.

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EU pledges coronavirus recovery plan will not harm climate goals

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Commission argues it can raise €150bn to fund greener transport, cleaner industry and renovated homes

Senior officials have pledged that the European Union’s recovery plan will “do no harm” to the bloc’s landmark goals to tackle the climate crisis and threats to the natural world.

Following the unveiling of a €750bn (£671bn) recovery plan to pull EU economies out of the deep economic downturn caused by coronavirus, the European commission announced further details of green spending on Thursday.

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World’s largest all-electric aircraft set for first flight

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Nine-seater plane should take to skies on Thursday and produce no carbon emissions

The world’s largest all-electric aircraft is about to take to the skies for the first time.

The Cessna Caravan, retrofitted with an electric engine, is expected to fly for 20-30 minutes over Washington State in the US on Thursday.

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‘The human fingerprint is everywhere’: Met Office’s alarming warning on climate

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Exclusively compiled data from the Hadley Centre’s supercomputer shows alarming climate trajectory

The human fingerprint on the climate is now unmistakable and will become increasingly evident over the coming decades, the UK Met Office has confirmed after 30 years of pioneering study.

Since the 1990s, global temperatures have warmed by half a degree, Arctic sea ice has shrunk by almost 2 million km2, sea-levels have risen by about 10cm and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has increased by 60 parts per million (17%), according to figures exclusively compiled for the Guardian to mark the 30th anniversary of the Met Office’s Hadley Centre for climate science and services.

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