Better management of existing apex predators and compensation schemes for farmers and gamekeepers needed, broadcaster says
Lynx and wolves are likely to become feared and hated if they are reintroduced into Britain’s forests, the adventurer and broadcaster Ray Mears has warned.
Speaking at Cheltenham science festival, he said Britain was not ready for such rewilding schemes, despite the potential ecological benefits.
Continue reading...Sultan Al Jaber – Cop28 president and CEO of state oil firm – is ‘ally the climate movement needs’, posts say
An army of fake social media accounts on Twitter and the blogging site Medium have been promoting and defending the controversial hosting of a UN climate summit by the United Arab Emirates.
The president of the Cop28 climate talks is Sultan Al Jaber, who is also the chief executive of the state oil giant Adnoc, which has major net zero-busting expansion plans.
Continue reading...Falling water levels in Kakhovka reservoir could imperil canals that feed some vital crop regions
The destruction of the Nova Kakhovka dam has led to fears that a depleted reservoir will leave three critical regions in Ukraine’s bread basket without a key water supply.
This has led to warnings about the region and wider world’s food supply, with Ukraine accounting for 40% of global trade in sunflower meal, 35% of sunflower oil, and 5% of wheat, barley and corn exports.
Continue reading...Canada is on track to experience its most severe wildfire season on record, and it’s part of a trend experts say will intensify
Canada’s ongoing wildfire season is a harbinger of our climate future, experts and officials say.
The fires are a “really clear sign of climate change”, said Mohammadreza Alizadeh, a researcher at McGill University in Montreal, who is also a postdoctoral associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Continue reading...Eric Adams remarks come as city briefly ranked world’s worst for air pollution; more firefighters to be mobilised as over 200 blazes are out of control
Over 200 “out of control” fires are currently burning across Canada as experts warn that air quality will continue to deteriorate.
Leyland Cecco reports from Toronto:
Continue reading...Hundreds of thousands of mines and debris are flowing into towns downstream, while lack of water upstream will hit food production
The people living along Ukraine’s lower Dnipro River must contend with the immediate consequences of the collapse of the Nova Kakhovka dam and flee for safety with whatever they can salvage, but the wider impact could make itself felt for generations.
Downstream, the flood waters will subside somewhat as the surge reaches the Black Sea, but many of the villages and towns along the course of the Dnipro may not be habitable again unless and until a new dam is built. Thousands of homes and livelihoods have been swept away, along with countless domesticated and wild animals.
Continue reading...Majid Al Suwaidi says governments not in agreement yet over whether issue should be on agenda
UN climate talks this year might skirt the vital question of whether and how to phase out fossil fuels, as nations have not yet agreed to discuss the issue, one of the top officials hosting the talks has said.
Majid Al Suwaidi, director-general of the Cop28 climate talks for its host nation, the United Arab Emirates, said governments were not in agreement over whether the phaseout of fossil fuels should be on the agenda for the conference, which begins in November.
Continue reading...Hundreds of wildfires burn in country, with 238 ‘out of control’ as of Tuesday afternoon, blanketing cities in smoke
Hundreds of wildfires are burning across Canada, many of them out of control, have blanketed cities in a thick haze of smoke, amid warnings from experts the situation will continue to worsen.
Toronto has long been known as “the Big Smoke” for its history of heavy industry, but the nickname took on a different meaning on Wednesday when residents donned masks outside, following alerts from officials that the city’s air quality would continue to deteriorate. Outdoor school events were delayed and city officials warned vulnerable groups to remain inside when possible. In the nation’s capital of Ottawa, Environment Canada said the air quality was “very high risk”, alongside the nearby cities of Kingston, Cornwall and Belleville. In much of southern Ontario, the poor air quality is expected to persist into the weekend.
Continue reading...Exclusive: UN conference president Sultan Al Jaber is also head of oil firm, which was consulted on how to respond to a media inquiry
The United Arab Emirates’ state oil company has been able to read emails to and from the Cop28 climate summit office and was consulted on how to respond to a media inquiry, the Guardian can reveal.
The UAE is hosting the UN climate summit in November and the president of Cop28 is Sultan Al Jaber, who is also chief executive of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (Adnoc). The revelations have been called “explosive” and a “scandal” by lawmakers.
Continue reading...Treasurer points finger at inflation, adding ‘people are under pressure and the global economic conditions are not helping either’. Follow live
Parts of Victoria and South Australia are being warned to expect heavy rainfall today.
The heavy rain that’s already hit Western Australia is sweeping across the country, with South Australia’s Riverland and Murraylands warned to brace for heavy rainfall to last until Friday.
We want to see productivity get going. We have had the worst decade, I think, in productivity growth in the last 60 years in the previous decade so there’s a lot of work to do. We can’t turn that around in one year.
Continue reading...Advertising Standards Authority says ads do not make clear company’s business is mostly based on fossil fuels
An ad campaign by Shell promoting its green initiatives has been banned for not telling consumers that most of its business is based on environmentally damaging fossil fuels such as petrol.
Shell, which has set goals to become a net zero carbon energy company by 2050 while also expanding its gas business by a fifth, ran a TV, poster and YouTube campaign pushing renewable electricity, wind and car charging point initiatives.
Continue reading...Populations of bees, spiders, ground beetles and hoverflies have declined twice as fast on land farmed for crops in the past 30 years, despite funding for more sustainable farming methods
Conservation measures over the past 30 years have failed to stop the decline of insects on British farmland, a new report shows. Populations of bees, spiders, ground beetles and hoverflies have disappeared twice as fast in areas intensely farmed for crops, according to the paper, which looked at citizen science data on more than 1,500 invertebrate species.
Although there was a push to intensify agriculture after the second world war, since the early 90s more sustainable and wildlife-friendly farming practices have emerged, with EU agri-environment funding made available for farmers to plant hedgerows and wild flowers, alongside better regulation of pesticides. However, these have not managed to stem biodiversity loss.
Continue reading...Thinktank says effective ban on planning permissions means country is way behind on much-needed renewable energy
It would take almost 4,700 years for England to build enough onshore windfarms to help meet the UK’s clean energy needs unless the government lifts an effective block on new turbines, according to the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR).
Only 17 small-scale onshore windfarms have been approved in England since 2015 when the government changed planning laws to create a de facto ban on onshore windfarms, according to the thinktank.
Continue reading...Conservationists say plan to increase bearded vulture numbers in north-east would be ‘severely compromised’
Conservationists in Spain are calling for a “profound debate” on how best to balance the protection of wildlife with renewable energy demands after efforts to reintroduce endangered bearded vultures to an eastern area of the country had to be paused because of the threat posed by a huge new windfarm.
The bearded vulture – known in Spanish as the quebrantahuesos, or bone-breaker, because of the way it drops bones from a great height so they shatter and yield their marrow – was common across the country until the 20th century, when it was poisoned and hunted to the brink of extinction.
Continue reading...But IAEA says damage to Nova Kakhovka dam raises long-term concerns for power station’s future
The collapse of the Nova Kakhovka dam and the draining of the reservoir behind it does not pose an immediate safety threat to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant further upstream, but will have long-term implications for its future, according to Ukrainian and UN experts.
The Ukrainian nuclear energy corporation, Energoatom, put out a statement on the Telegram social media platform saying the situation at the plant, the biggest nuclear power station in Europe, was “under control”.
Continue reading...Update warns there is a 70% chance of the climate system developing before the end of this year, raising the risk of heatwaves and bushfires
The Bureau of Meteorology has placed Australia on “El Niño alert”, warning there is now a 70% chance of the climate system developing before the end of this year.
El Niño tends to reduce rainfall and push up daytime temperatures in winter and spring, increasing the risk of bushfires, heatwaves and coral bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef.
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Continue reading...Barring public access to beaches and other sites is not a model for development. Transparency and engagement are needed
Walk along a Caribbean beach, which may stretch for miles, and your stroll is guaranteed to be cut short by an angry hotel security guard. In recent years, the Caribbean has seen a worrying trend of governments readily selling off assets to foreign corporations and political financiers.
Prime real estate, protected land and valuable resources are being relinquished without consideration for long-term consequences. It raises questions about whether remnants of the colonial mindset still prevail in political ideologies and decision-making.
Continue reading...Labour leader to address union’s conference after its leader attacks plan to ban new North Sea oil and gas extraction
Keir Starmer will pledge to put “good, union jobs” at the heart of Labour’s energy policy during a speech to one of its biggest donor unions after its general secretary criticised a proposed ban on oil and gas expansion.
He will speak at the GMB’s annual conference on Tuesday, a day after he tried to calm a growing rift with its leadership over Labour’s energy policy.
Continue reading...Silver perch fingerlings released in ceremony designed to address community’s collective trauma over ecological disaster that left millions of dead fish in river
Native fish bred from those rescued from the Darling-Baaka River during the 2019 fish kills were released back into the system at Menindee on Friday in a ceremony designed to address the collective trauma of the ecological disaster.
An estimated 1 million native fish died in the 2019 fish kills, including large numbers of endangered Murray cod. The Narrandera fisheries centre, run by the NSW Department of Primary Industries, helped rescue many fish stranded in the dwindling water supply and toxic blue green algae blooms. Twenty Murray cod, 24 silver perch and 17 golden perch were relocated from Menindee to Narrandera for breeding to help restock fish in the Darling-Baaka River.
Continue reading...Despite 24-hour sun, Lapland dips to -7.7C. Elsewhere, the Atlantic hurricane season begins
Thursday 1 June saw potentially the lowest June temperature on record in Finland. A weather station in Lapland, Enontekiö Kilpisjärvi Saana, reached -7.7C. This may not seem that cold for northern Finland, where winter temperatures reach as low as -51.5C, but the last time Lapland saw a minimum temperature of -7C in June was on 3 June 1962.
In addition, at this time of year Lapland experiences midnight sun where it is constantly light and the sun does not set. This unseasonal cold was possible in the first month of summer due to a large area of high pressure to the west of Finland, blocking the usual westerly/south-westerly flow of weather systems across the Atlantic and North Sea.
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