Labour hits out at PM’s ‘recklessly expensive habits’ after latest flight to event in Lancashire
Rishi Sunak has been criticised for taking a domestic flight in an RAF jet for the third time in 10 days.
The prime minister flew on a 14-seat aircraft to an event in Lancashire to hold the first of what is due to be a series of events where he will take questions from the public.
Continue reading...The state’s EPA is unveiling what it calls Australia’s ‘most comprehensive plan’ to cut carbon emissions
New South Wales’s environmental watchdog has released what it calls Australia’s “most comprehensive plan” to regulate carbon emissions, requiring firms to show how they will hit net zero by 2050 and nudging them to improve resilience in a warming world.
The Climate Change Policy and Action Plan 2023-26, released on Friday by the Environment Protection Authority, will identify what progress is already under way by companies now covered by pollution licences and encourage them to improve.
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Continue reading...Travel without the combustion-engine fumes and noise is increasingly popular in the country with some of the world’s worst air pollution
Thailand’s iconic, gas-guzzling tuk-tuks are being replaced by a greener, more energy efficient model, offering travellers a more environmentally friendly way of getting around what is one of the world’s worst countries when it comes to air pollution.
“The benefits are quite clear in terms of the environment”, says Krisada Kritayakirana, co-founder and CEO of start-up Urban Mobility Tech. “When you use traditional tuk-tuks, you can smell the gas and it sometimes could be unpleasant. With the electric tuk-tuks, basically you don’t have any noise and you don’t have any emission from tailpipes.”
Continue reading...Miners to be required to set aside up to 10% of production for domestic users, state energy minister Matt Kean says
New South Wales will require thermal coalminers reserve as much as 10% of their output for domestic coal-fired power stations and other users in a bid to share the burden more fairly among producers.
The move, announced on Thursday, is the latest government intervention in energy markets in a bid to limit price increases and avoid a repeat of last June’s supply shortages that helped trigger a suspension of the national electricity market.
Continue reading...High court in Japan agreed defendants could not have predicted the massive tsunami that crippled the power plant and triggered a nuclear meltdown
Three former executives from the company that operates the wrecked Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant have had their not-guilty verdicts upheld by a court in Japan, dealing a blow to campaigners demanding the firm take legal responsibility for the disaster in March 2011.
The Tokyo high court on Wednesday cleared Tsunehisa Katsumata, the former chairman of Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco), along with former vice-presidents Ichiro Takekuro and Sakae Muto, of professional negligence resulting in death.
Continue reading...Study also says eating one serving of fish with PFAS could be equivalent to drinking contaminated water every day for a month
Wild caught, freshwater fish in the United States are far more contaminated with toxic PFAS “forever chemicals” than those commercially caught in oceans, and the highest levels are found in fish from the Great Lakes, a new analysis of federal data suggests.
The peer-reviewed study by public health advocate Environmental Working Group (EWG) also found eating one serving of US freshwater fish contaminated with median PFAS levels could be equivalent to drinking highly contaminated water every day for a month.
Continue reading...Ricardo Arturo Lagunes Gasca and Antonio Díaz Valencia’s bullet hole-riddled vehicle was found after an anti-mining meeting
Fears are mounting for the safety of two missing Mexican land rights activists after their vehicle was found ridden with bullet holes.
Ricardo Arturo Lagunes Gasca, a human rights lawyer and environmentalist and Antonio Díaz Valencia, leader of the Aquila Indigenous community in Michoacán, were last seen on Sunday evening travelling toward the neighbouring state of Colima after attending an anti-mining community meeting.
Continue reading...Britain’s car industry relies on petrol or diesel vehicles – and every failure to be part of the electric revolution makes it more exposed
The battery startup Britishvolt eyed a big opportunity. With the looming UK ban on sales of internal combustion engine cars after 2035, big demand for batteries was guaranteed. The problem was actually building the batteries.
The company’s efforts have now come to nothing. It collapsed into administration on Tuesday after funding talks failed, leaving a string of disappointed backers ranging from the FTSE 100 companies Glencore and Ashtead to the property investor Tritax, owned by investment group abrdn, which had committed to fund a battery “gigafactory” in Northumberland.
Continue reading...Almost two-thirds of sharks and rays living on world’s coral reefs at risk, with 14 of 134 species reviewed critically endangered
Almost two-thirds of sharks and rays that live around the world’s coral reefs are threatened with extinction with potentially dire knock-on effects for ecosystems and coastal communities, according to new research.
Overfishing was the main cause of the declines over the past half a century, with larger sharks and rays being particularly hard hit.
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Continue reading...Victoria, New South Wales and South Australia have increased kangaroo harvest quotas for 2023 but impact from floods yet to be assessed
Animal welfare advocates are calling for a moratorium on commercial and recreational shooting of wildlife affected by the devastating Murray-Darling floods.
Wildlife Victoria has called for the “immediate cessation” of the Victorian government’s kangaroo harvesting program and a moratorium on the annual duck hunting season, which usually begins in March.
Continue reading...Toxic pesticides used to eradicate grain-eating quelea may harm the country’s endangered raptors, say conservationists
A drive by the Kenyan government to kill up to 6 million red-billed quelea birds that have invaded farms will have unintended consequences for raptors and other wild species, experts have warned.
The continuing drought in the Horn of Africa has reduced the amount of native grass, whose seeds are queleas’ main food source, causing the birds to increasingly invade grain fields, putting 2,000 acres (800 hectares) of rice under threat. About 300 acres of rice fields have been destroyed by the birds.
Continue reading...Rising flood waters have cut north Queensland’s main transport corridor, the Bruce Highway, with more rain on the way. Follow the day’s news live
Dreyfus opens discussion about judicial watchdog
Today the attorney-general, Mark Dreyfus, will open consultation for the creation of a federal judicial commission, to police what he described as the “relatively rare” instances of “problematic conduct by judges”.
The three diseases that we’re focusing on on this trip – malaria, HIV and tuberculosis – three diseases that Australia has a good control over or good management over.
HIV cases are on the rise for a range of different reasons. Tuberculosis is just devastating and any young child with tuberculosis is an extremely confronting and devastating thing to see it’s a horrible disease. And malaria is an ongoing killer.
Continue reading...‘Cease and desist’ letter signed by over 650,000 people sent to oil and gas CEOs follows removal of Greta Thunberg from coal protest
Hundreds of thousands of young climate activists have said they will continue “protesting in the streets in huge numbers” against fossil fuels, a day after Greta Thunberg was removed by German police from a condemned village atop a massive coal deposit.
In a cease-and-desist letter to the CEOs of fossil fuel companies, youth campaigners accuse them of a “direct violation of our human right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment, your duties of care, as well as the rights of Indigenous people”.
Continue reading...US climate envoy says pick is a ‘terrific choice’ but activists equate pick to asking ‘arms dealers to lead peace talks’
US climate envoy John Kerry backs the United Arab Emirates’ decision to appoint the CEO of a state-run oil company to preside over the upcoming UN climate negotiations in Dubai, citing his work on renewable energy projects.
In an interview Sunday with the Associated Press, the former US secretary of state acknowledged that the Emirates and other countries relying on fossil fuels to fund their state coffers face finding “some balance” ahead.
Continue reading...Thermometers forecast to fall to -2C in London, -1C in Cardiff and -3C in Edinburgh and Belfast
People across large parts of the UK have been told to watch out for ice as they make their way to work and school on Monday, after temperatures plunged overnight.
Thermometers were forecast to fall to -2C in London, -1C in Cardiff and -3C in Edinburgh and Belfast. Temperatures in Highland areas of Scotland could be as low as -10C.
Continue reading...Plans aimed at preventing tactics such as ‘slow marching’ are part of Rishi Sunak’s public order crackdown
Police are to be given powers to shut down protests before any disruption begins under Rishi Sunak’s plans for a public order crackdown, which aim to prevent tactics such as “slow marching”.
Sparking outrage from civil liberties campaigners, the government said it would be laying an amendment to the public order bill to toughen its crackdown on “guerilla” tactics used mainly by environmental protesters.
Continue reading...Erchana Murray-Bartlett reaches end of epic journey from ‘tip to toe’ of Australia – smashing women’s record for consecutive daily marathons
Months after starting out from the tip of Cape York, Erchana Murray-Bartlett is set to complete her 150th consecutive daily marathon in Melbourne on Monday, finishing a record-breaking journey through Australia’s eastern states.
Murray-Bartlett set out in August to run more than 6,200km, raising money for the Wilderness Society and awareness of Australia’s extinction crisis – just days before Ned Brockmann began his 4,000km run from the west to east coast.
Continue reading...The first proper World Economic Forum for three years will take place against a humbling backdrop of crisis and conflict
The war in Ukraine. A rapidly slowing economy, fragmentation and de-globalisation. The rising cost of living. Climate change. There is plenty for the global great and good to get their teeth into this week as Davos resumes after a three-year hiatus.
Strictly speaking, it not the first gathering of world leaders, businesspeople, academics and civil society since the start of the pandemic, but last May’s World Economic Forum event was a slimmed-down and not especially well-attended affair. As a dry run it was fine, but a real Davos traditionally happens in January, when the snow is thick on the ground in the Swiss village 1,500 metres up in the Alps. In the past, the mood at Davos has oscillated between extreme optimism and unbridled gloom, depending on the state of the world economy. This year it looks certain to be the latter. As Klaus Schwab, founder and executive chair of the WEF put it last week, “economic, environmental, social and geopolitical crises are converging and conflating”. The aim of this year’s Davos, he added, was to get rid of the “crisis mindset”.
Continue reading...December 2022 was third-busiest month on record for solar panel installation partly driven by spiking electricity prices
When record rainfall caused flooding in south-east Queensland last February, Steve McLean’s solar installers were kept off roofs, blowing a $60,000 hole in his firm’s budget and setting back what might have been another record year for his business.
“If we didn’t do a system for five weeks, you can imagine that no one else did … We got absolutely smashed in February and March,” McLean, the owner of Gold Coast Solar Systems, said. “If you take that number out of the marketplace, well, that was disastrous.”
Continue reading...The government wrote to the then Prince of Wales in 2019, seeking approval for legislation that had implications for his estates
The government asked King Charles for permission to pass its post-Brexit “world-leading” Environment Act because laws requiring landowners to enhance conservation could affect his business interests.
Environment minister Rebecca Pow wrote to the then Prince of Wales in 2019 to ask if he would accept section seven of the environment bill, which became law in November 2021.
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