Category Archives: Climate change

No fly zone: I didn’t catch a plane for a year and saved 19 tonnes of Co2

Posted on by

A year without air travel taught me the path to carbon neutral won’t be easy, but I learned I could inspire others to act

What is the single thing that you could do that would most reduce your carbon footprint? Take your bike to work rather than your car? Dig up your lawn for a vegetable garden? For me, an academic scientist living and working in Auckland, New Zealand, I reasoned that the most significant thing I could do was to stop flying.

In 2017 I flew 84,000km. I made twenty day trips to Wellington, New Zealand’s capital city. I travelled to the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia to attend conferences and work on joint projects with other scientists. All of this made me accountable for around 19 tonnes of carbon dioxide that year, nearly three times that of the average Kiwi.

Continue reading...

Greta Thunberg asks for lift back across Atlantic as climate meeting shifts to Madrid

Posted on by

Swedish teenager needs help getting back to Europe following the COP25 meeting’s move from Chile to Spain

As delegates to the COP25 climate summit scramble to adjust to a last-minute change of venue from Santiago to Madrid, one of the highest-profile attendees has stuck out a metaphorical thumb on social media to ask for a lift across the Atlantic.

Teenage Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, who was speaking in California during a stop on her low-emissions journey from Sweden to Chile, tweeted that she was now in need of a ride to Spain.

Continue reading...

Leonardo DiCaprio calls Greta Thunberg ‘a leader of our time’

Posted on by

Environmentalist actor says first meeting with teenage climate activist was ‘an honour’

Leonardo DiCaprio has praised teenage climate change activist Greta Thunberg as a “leader of our time” following their first meeting.

DiCaprio, a prominent environmental campaigner, said 16-year-old Thunberg’s message should be a “wake-up call to world leaders everywhere that the time for inaction is over”.

Continue reading...

Fracking halted in England in major government U-turn

Posted on by

Victory for green groups follows damning scientific study and criticism from spending watchdog

The government has halted fracking in England with immediate effect in a watershed moment for environmentalists and community activists.

Ministers also warned shale gas companies it would not support future fracking projects, in a crushing blow to companies that had been hoping to capitalise on one of the new frontiers of growth in the fossil fuel industry.

Continue reading...

To the moon and back with the eastern curlew

Posted on by

Ultra-endurance athlete, aerodynamic wonder … and facing extinction. Why the bird who flies 30,000km a year needs Australia’s mudflats

• Vote for your favourite in the 2019 bird of the year poll

The ascent is vertical. Up, up and into the jet stream. If the conditions are not right up there it will come back down and wait. But if there is a good tailwind in the right direction it will begin an epic journey that will take it around the curvature of the Earth; from the Arctic Circle to the southern hemisphere.

Using the sun and stars as a compass, and navigating by the Earth’s magnetic field, recognising landmarks, the far eastern curlew will fly nonstop to the Yellow Sea, where it fuels up on the mudflats of north-east China.

Continue reading...

Australian aluminium smelters ‘not sustainable’ due to high power costs, Rio Tinto says

Posted on by

Warning comes a week after company flagged it may close its New Zealand smelter

Mining giant Rio Tinto says its Australian Aluminium smelters, which employ more than 2,600 workers, are not sustainable at current power prices.

The company runs three smelters in Australia, which are under financial pressure due to the high price of electricity, which makes up about a third of their costs, and the low price of aluminium due to a flood of cheap supply coming from Asian competitors.

Continue reading...

Chilean president cancels Apec and climate summits amid wave of unrest

Posted on by

Sebastián Piñera confirms he will not hold summits in November and December, as government struggles with massive protests

Chile’s embattled president has been forced to cancel two major international summits after government concessions failed to defuse weeks of violent protests that have seen thousands of arrests, left at least 20 dead and sent shock waves across Latin America.

Related: Chile protesters: 'We are subjugated by the rich. It's time for that to end'

Continue reading...

California wildfires: unprecedented ‘extreme red flag warning’ issued as blazes spread – video

Posted on by

Firefighters in California have been battling wildfires across the state as winds are expected to pick up again. The Kincade fire in Sonoma county, in the north of the US state, had destroyed 124 homes and other structures by Tuesday morning and was threatening 90,000 structures. Crews were also working to control a fire near the Getty Museum in Los Angeles that had prompted evacuations on Monday

Continue reading...

‘The climate doesn’t need awards’: Greta Thunberg declines environmental prize

Posted on by

The teen activist implored politicians and people in power to ‘listen to the best available science’ in an Instagram post

The Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg has refused to accept an environmental award, saying the climate movement needed people in power to start to “listen” to “science” and not awards.

The young climate activist, who has rallied millions to her “Fridays for Future” movement, was honoured at a Stockholm ceremony held by the Nordic Council, a regional body for inter-parliamentary cooperation.

Continue reading...

Rising sea levels pose threat to homes of 300m people – study

Posted on by

Figure based on new analysis of coastlines is more than three times previous estimate

More than three times more people are at risk from rising sea levels than previously believed, research suggests.

Land that is currently home to 300 million people will flood at least once a year by 2050 unless carbon emissions are cut significantly and coastal defences strengthened, says the study, published in Nature Communications. This is far above the previous estimate of 80 million.

Continue reading...

Healthy diet means a healthy planet, study shows

Posted on by

Healthier food choices almost always benefit environment as well, according to analysis

Eating healthy food is almost always also best for the environment, according to the most sophisticated analysis to date.

The researchers said poor diets threaten society by seriously harming people and the planet, but the latest research can inform better choices.

Continue reading...

Super-rich fuelling growing demand for private jets, report finds

Posted on by

Growth centred in US and China, with slowdown in Sweden attributed to Greta Thunberg

Almost 8,000 new private jets are expected to be bought by multinational companies and the super-rich over the next decade, each of which will burn 40 times as much carbon per passenger as regular commercial flights, according to a report by aviation firm Honeywell Aerospace.

About 690 new business jets are expected to take to the skies in 2019, a 9% increase on 2018, as businesses and the wealthy refresh their fleets with fancy new models released by three of the world’s biggest private jet manufacturers.

Continue reading...

Richard Branson: ‘Aviation can be carbon neutral sooner than we realise’

Posted on by
The relentlessly upbeat entrepreneur believes efficiency and electricity could stop airlines worsening the climate crisis

Life has been quite a trip for Sir Richard Branson so far, and this weekend will be no exception as he flies to the US from Tel Aviv via London with space rockets on his mind.

He is heading to Wall Street to ring the opening bell on the New York Stock Exchange as his spaceflight company, Virgin Galactic, becomes a listed company tomorrow.

Continue reading...

Prince Charles calls on City finance to fight climate emergency

Posted on by

Prince says private sector needs to lead with green investments towards sustainable economy

Prince Charles has called on the City of London to help protect the environment by investing trillions of pounds into green investments which help create a sustainable economy.

In an interview with the Evening Standard the heir to the British throne said big businesses and City investors must drive a rapid decarbonisation of the economy before the environmental crisis becomes “a total catastrophe”.

Continue reading...

Glacial rivers absorb carbon faster than rainforests, scientists find

Posted on by

‘Total surprise’ discovery overturns conventional understanding of rivers

In the turbid, frigid waters roaring from the glaciers of Canada’s high Arctic, researchers have made a surprising discovery: for decades, the northern rivers secretly pulled carbon dioxide from the atmosphere at a rate faster than the Amazon rainforest.

The findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, flip the conventional understanding of rivers, which are largely viewed as sources of carbon emissions.

Continue reading...

Ardern tells New Zealand farmers to cut carbon emissions or face penalties

Posted on by

Farmers given until 2022 to make changes or pay higher taxes as party of net-zero emissions by 2050 policy

New Zealand farmers have five years to reduce their carbon emissions before the government introduces financial penalties, prime minister Jacinda Ardern has announced.

Ardern’s Labour coalition government has committed to making New Zealand carbon net-zero by 2050, with the PM likening the climate change battle to the previous generations’ struggle against the rise of nuclear power.

Continue reading...

Former Tuvalu PM says he was ‘stunned’ by Scott Morrison’s behaviour at Pacific Islands Forum

Posted on by

Enele Sopoaga says he was also ‘insulted and deeply angry’ at comments made by Australian deputy prime minister Michael McCormack

The former prime minister of Tuvalu has said he was “stunned” by Scott Morrison’s behaviour at the recent Pacific Islands Forum, which he though communicated the view that Pacific leaders should “take the money … then shut up about climate change”.

Enele Sopoaga, speaking at the national conference of the Australian Council for International Development (Acfid) in Sydney on Wednesday, said Morrison’s behaviour at the forum, which Tuvalu hosted in August, was “dismissive” of the concerns of the Pacific regarding the climate crisis.

Continue reading...

Melting glaciers reveal five new islands in the Arctic

Posted on by

Russian navy discovers yet-to-be-named islands previously hidden under glaciers

The Russian navy says it has discovered five new islands revealed by melting glaciers in the remote Arctic.

An expedition in August and September charted the islands, which have yet to be named and were previously hidden under glaciers, said the head of the northern fleet, Vice-Admiral Alexander Moiseyev.

Continue reading...

Lake Chad shrinking? It’s a story that masks serious failures of governance | Oli Brown and Janani Vivekananda

Posted on by

Our two-year study shows the lake has been stable since the 1990s. Costly ‘solutions’ shift focus from the complex causes of the region’s deadly crisis

Lake Chad is a hydrological miracle – a life-giving, freshwater lake in the Sahara desert. But the region around the lake has been engulfed in a violent crisis for more than a decade, which has left nearly 10 million people in urgent need of humanitarian assistance.

Military crackdowns on insurgent groups such as Boko Haram have failed to end the violence. Bringing durable peace to the region requires unpicking a Gordian knot of many interlinked factors: poverty, sectarian mistrust, political marginalisation and corruption. The risks posed by the climate crisis to the rainfall-dependent livelihoods of the people of Lake Chad are an important strand of this challenge.

Continue reading...

Ocean acidification can cause mass extinctions, fossils reveal

Posted on by

Carbon emissions make sea more acidic, which wiped out 75% of marine species 66m years ago

Ocean acidification can cause the mass extinction of marine life, fossil evidence from 66m years ago has revealed.

A key impact of today’s climate crisis is that seas are again getting more acidic, as they absorb carbon emissions from the burning of coal, oil and gas. Scientists said the latest research is a warning that humanity is risking potential “ecological collapse” in the oceans, which produce half the oxygen we breathe.

Continue reading...