Category Archives: Environment

Weather tracker: storms race through Balearics as colder air pushes east

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Extreme heat over Mediterranean begins to break down with cold front and low pressure creating strong winds

The extreme heat that had been affecting the Mediterranean began to break down over the weekend as colder air surged south-eastwards. A strong cold front, in conjunction with a rapidly deepening area of low pressure in the Mediterranean Sea led to an explosive show on Sunday, with severe thunderstorms racing through the Balearics towards Sardinia.

Palm trees were ripped out from the ground and boats toppled in harbours as strong winds raced through the archipelago, with a couple of official weather stations in Mallorca recording wind gusts of about 66mph (106kmph). Roads turned into rivers under the torrential downpours.

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Labour’s David Lammy visits Brazil to build ‘climate justice’ partnership

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Shadow foreign secretary says Starmer government would work with President Lula on radical climate action

The shadow foreign secretary, David Lammy, has taken his green diplomatic policy for a test spin in Brazil this month in the hope that “climate justice” can serve as an international rallying cry for a future Labour government.

In an interview with the Guardian, Lammy said a Labour victory at the next general election would allow Keir Starmer to build a partnership for radical climate action with Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, before the UN’s Cop30 climate summit in Belém in 2025.

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Put ‘pest’ animal species on the pill, don’t cull them, says scientist

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Humane alternatives to killing rampant creatures such as wild boar, deer and grey squirrels are being developed

Conflicts between humans and wildlife are triggering growing numbers of disease outbreaks, road accidents and crop damage. And the problem is likely to get worse unless new, humane measures to curtail animal numbers are developed in the near future, say scientists.

It is a critical environmental issue that will be debated this week at a major conference in Italy where experts will discuss how best to limit numbers of grey squirrels, wild boar, deer, feral goats, pigeons, parakeets and other creatures that are causing widespread ecological damage in many countries.

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Save our seaside – campaign to give UK beach towns the same status as castles and historic houses

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Votes invited for the public’s top 10 resorts and experiences, from beach huts and lidos to the Blackpool Tower

The British seaside may be derided by some for being as tacky as the candyfloss stuck to the side of your mouth. Yet tackiness is fundamental to its charm, according to campaigners who say that seaside heritage sites should be protected as fiercely as castles and stately homes.

The Seaside Heritage Network (SHN) says amusement parks, lidos and scenic railways are all part of the UK’s role in the creation of modern tourism and should be cherished.

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Europe hits roadblocks in the race to switch to electric cars

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Despite progress towards a 2045 zero-emission goal, the high price of EVs has created a headache for governments

European countries are struggling to persuade people to switch from combustion engine cars to electric ones, experts warn.

Europe sells 10 times more electric cars today than it did just six years ago, according to the International Energy Agency, but its fleet is cleaning up too slowly to meet its climate goals. Governments across the continent are struggling with the price-tag of electric vehicles, which can cost several thousand euros more upfront than comparable ones that burn fossil fuels.

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India birds report identifies 178 species as being of high conservation concern

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Large-scale study indicates population declines after collation of data from country’s conservation organisations and birdwatchers

A report on India’s bird population has painted a grim picture for many of the country’s species.

The State of India’s Birds (SoIB) report – published on Friday – showed worrisome declines, with 178 species of wild birds identified as needing immediate priority for conservation.

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Growing number of countries consider making ecocide a crime

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Mexico latest country where government is considering passing new laws to criminalise environmental destruction

A growing number of countries are considering introducing laws to make ecocide a crime.

Mexico is the latest country where politicians are seeking to deter environmental damage – and to get justice for its victims – by criminalising it. Karina Marlen Barrón Perales, congresswoman for Nuevo León, has submitted a bill to the Mexican congress introducing a new crime of “ecocide”.

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Drivers warned of copycat websites overcharging for Ulez fee

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Which? advises drivers paying London ultra-low emission zone fee to make sure they’re using official TfL website

Drivers are being ripped off by copycat websites that add extra fees to the ultra low emissions zone charges in London, consumer champion Which? has warned.

As Ulez expands across all boroughs in the capital from Tuesday, Which? has found a series of identical, unofficial websites targeting people trying to pay the charge. This has led to drivers paying more than the £12.50 daily fee.

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An arrow to the chest? This wild turkey is unruffled

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Residents of Carmel, California, have named the bird Cupid, and are monitoring its health, which seems unaffected by the injury

For months, a wild turkey has been spotted roaming the rolling hills of Carmel, California, with a 30in arrow sticking through her chest. It hasn’t seemed to faze her.

Local residents first began spotting the bird, who they’re calling Cupid, last winter. Since then, she has been photographed and filmed roosting in trees, foraging for grubs and evading predators and generally going about her business as if she hadn’t been impaled.

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Indonesia’s tropical Eternity Glaciers could vanish within years, experts say

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El Niño weather pattern could accelerate melting, leading to sea level rise

Two of the world’s few tropical glaciers, in Indonesia, are melting and their ice may vanish by 2026 or sooner as an El Niño weather pattern threatens to accelerate their demise, the country’s geophysics agency has said.

The agency, known as BMKG, has said the El Niño phenomenon could lead to the most severe dry season in Indonesia since 2019, increasing the risk of forest fires and threatening supplies of clean water.

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Death of 1,000 crayfish in Blue Mountains under investigation by EPA

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Environment Protection Authority believes a pollution incident caused the event and are working with city council to identify the toxicant

The deaths of about 1,000 giant spiny crayfish are being investigated by the Environment Protection Authority in a likely pollution incident in the Blue Mountains this week.

Hundreds of dead crayfish were found in a tributary of Hazelbrook Creek, near Horseshoe Falls, on Wednesday by a tour guide.

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Fukushima: China accused of hypocrisy over its own release of wastewater from nuclear plants

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Plant in China releases water with higher amounts of tritium, scientist says, calling into question seafood ban imposed on Japan

As China bans all seafood from Japan after the discharge of 1m tonnes of radioactive water from the ruined Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant into the Pacific Ocean, Beijing has been accused of hypocrisy and of using the incident to whip up anti-Japanese sentiment.

Scientists have pointed out that China’s own nuclear power plants release wastewater with higher levels of tritium than that found in Fukushima’s discharge, and that the levels are all within boundaries not considered to be harmful to human health.

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Republicans ‘deserve to lose’ if they fail to address climate crisis, says activist

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Benji Backer, executive director of conservative climate group, calls question on crisis in debate ‘historic’ but laments answers

Republicans “deserve to lose” electorally if they can’t show they care about the climate crisis, according to the head of a conservative climate organization that put forward a rare question on the issue to GOP candidates in Wednesday’s televised debate.

The Republican presidential hopefuls, minus Donald Trump, were asked at the Fox News debate what they would do to improve the party’s standing on climate policy by Alexander Diaz, a young conservative who is part of the American Conservation Coalition (ACC), a youth conservative group that pushes for action on the climate crisis.

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Asylum seekers in Greece ‘facing two great injustices of our time’

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Amnesty links wildfires and lack of legal migration routes to deaths of 19 people believed to be asylum seekers

Refugees and migrants in Greece are facing off against the “two great injustices of our times”, Amnesty International has said, as it linked wildfires and scant access to legal migration routes to the deaths of 19 people believed to be asylum seekers.

As wildfires continue to rage across swathes of Greece, authorities in the country said they were working to identify the charred remains of 18 people found this week in the dense forests that straddle the country’s north-eastern border with Turkey.

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Public consultation ‘overwhelmingly’ supports fuel efficiency standard for cars, Labor says

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Chris Bowen says the standard is needed to improve access to cleaner, cheaper-to-run cars in Australia

The Albanese government’s promise to introduce a fuel efficiency standard for cars has been “overwhelmingly” supported by a public consultation process, Labor says.

Labor will now complete an impact analysis and release details of its preferred model for a standard “before the end of this year”.

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‘They won’t buy it’: fish traders anxious after Fukushima wastewater release

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The release of water from the Japanese nuclear plant has already caused the price of produce from surrounding coastal areas to drop

Awa-jinja is a place of pilgrimage for the more superstitious fishers of Shinchi-machi, a coastal town in Fukushima, who come here to lower their heads and ask the Shinto gods to look kindly on them as they prepare to steer their boats into the vast Pacific Ocean.

Today, though, the “safe waves” implicit in the shrine’s name are of little concern to the men and women coming to the end of the working day at the town’s fishing port.

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China bans Japanese seafood after Fukushima wastewater release

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Water containing radioactive tritium being pumped into Pacific via tunnel from Tepco plant, amid protests from China, South Korea and fishing communities

Japan has begun discharging more than 1m tonnes of tainted water into the Pacific Ocean from the wrecked Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in a move that has prompted China to announce an immediate blanket ban on all seafood imports from Japan and sparked anger in nearby fishing communities.

The plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco), pumped a small quantity of water from the plant on Thursday, two days after the plan was approved by Japan’s government.

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Amazon’s emissions ‘doubled’ under first half of Bolsonaro presidency

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New study published in Nature says period was as destructive as record 2016 El Niño drought and heatwave

The first half of Jair Bolsonaro’s presidency was so destructive for the Amazon that it was comparable to the record 2016 El Niño drought and heatwave in terms of carbon emissions, according to scientists.

Annual emissions from the world’s largest rainforest roughly doubled in 2019 and 2020, compared with the 2010 to 2018 average, according to a new study published in Nature, as swaths of forest were deliberately cleared and burned for cattle ranching and farming during the first two years of the far-right leader’s time in office.

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Massive economic pain for Australia if temperature rises exceed 2C, intergenerational report predicts

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Report says hundreds of billions of dollars and millions of work hours in productivity are at risk due to hotter conditions

Success in limiting global warming will spare Australia a sharp fall in economic activity but would see coal exports fall to a trickle by 2063 under a low-emissions scenario, according to the government’s intergenerational report.

The report, to be released in full on Thursday, will provide much greater detail on the range of impacts and their scale in a warming world than the five previous intergenerational reports.

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NSW government department ‘refusing’ to publish community feedback on shark nets

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Greens MP says it is ‘unacceptable’ that results not made public as Minns government faces calls to abandon nets

The New South Wales Department of Primary Industries has kept hidden the results of surveys it conducted to gauge community opinion on shark nets, as the government forges ahead with the controversial deterrence strategy.

The department has not published the surveys for the past two years and has not released the results to two upper house MPs, environmentalists and Sydney’s Randwick council despite their requests for them.

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