Police release video of attack on workers’ equipment at camp of Coastal GasLink, a 400-mile pipeline opposed by First Nation groups
Police in Canada have released footage of axe wielding attackers as they investigate a “calculated and organised” night-time raid on a remote work camp.
Up to 20 people are believed to have attacked Coastal GasLink’s pipeline construction camp last week on Marten Forest Service Road in British Columbia.
Continue reading...Pollution generated by burning fossil fuels causes snow to darken, absorb more solar energy and melt faster
Black carbon pollution from tourism and research activities in Antarctica is likely increasing snowmelt on the continent by an estimated 83 tonnes for each visitor, according to new research.
Scientists have estimated that the black carbon produced by vessels, planes and diesel generators results in 23mm of additional snowmelt each summer in the most frequently visited areas of the ice-covered landmass.
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Continue reading...Exclusive: Thousands of near-empty planes flown since March 2020, new figures reveal
Almost 15,000 “ghost flights” have departed from the UK, according to newly revealed official figures.
The ghost flights, defined as those with no passengers or less than 10% of passenger capacity, operated from all 32 airports listed in the data. Heathrow was top, with 4,910 ghost flights between March 2020 and September 2021. Manchester and Gatwick were the next highest. There were an average of 760 ghost flights a month over the period, although the data covered only international departure and not domestic flights.
Continue reading...Successful trials found growing crops beneath panels – known as agrivoltaics – reduced water loss and resulted in larger plants
Solar panels are not a new way of providing cheap power across much of the African continent, where there is rarely a shortage of sunshine. But growing crops underneath the panels is, and the process has had such promising trials in Kenya that it will be deployed this week in open-field farms.
Known as agrivoltaics, the technique harvests solar energy twice: where panels have traditionally been used to harness the sun’s rays to generate energy, they are also utilised to provide shade for growing crops, helping to retain moisture in the soil and boosting growth.
Continue reading...The UK has some of the cheapest food in the world, but thanks to spiralling costs and the effects of Brexit, farmers like Rachel Hallos are on the edge. She explains why she could soon lose the way of life she loves – and her family depends on
The stereotype is that farmers are up with the crowing cockerel, but that’s only really dairy farmers. Most days it is not until 7.45am that you’ll find Rachel Hallos swinging open the door of Beeston Hall Farm in Ripponden, Yorkshire. Beeston Hall is a hill farm overlooking Baitings reservoir, which lies in the valley of the River Ryburn. The 800-hectare (2,000-acre) farm consists of steep fields demarcated by dry stone walls that crumble in a squall. The hill is crested by heather-covered moorland that turns purple in summer and copper in autumn. Hallos lives in a traditional Pennines farmhouse made out of handsome slabs of grey Yorkshire gritstone. A Brontë house, for Brontë country. Inside, wan light streams through single-pane windows on to a well-trodden oak staircase that creaks.
Hallos steps outside, dressed in a padded waterproof coat and wellies. She is met by a cacophony of noise. Her terrier Jack yaps with shrill urgency. Jim, a border collie, barks incessantly. Hallos feeds the dogs and then the two scrawny black-and-white cats, which sleep in the outbuildings and yowl for treats at the kitchen window. She fills a sack with hay that is sweet-smelling and almost yeasty, from the fermentation process that takes place when it is stored in plastic for the winter months. She hoists the sack on to her shoulder like Father Christmas and takes it to feed Aiden and Danny, her dun geldings.
The farm overlooks West Yorkshire moorland.
Continue reading...Traditional defences may fail, and migration won’t be possible for everyone. But we may yet find more creative ways to live
We have passed the point of no return: rising seas will soon directly affect hundreds of millions of people around the planet. They will indirectly affect many millions more as transport connections, water supplies and factories in low-lying areas are lost or have to be relocated. What exactly are we facing? The latest research suggests we are likely to see a rise of a metre by the year 2100. Given how much carbon dioxide is already in the air and oceans, as much as three metres may be baked in over the 200 years or so that follow. And while that might seem like a long way off, coastal groundwater levels will rise much sooner, wrecking infrastructure and causing toxic pollution well before cities such as Miami, New York and San Francisco are permanently inundated.
Where will all those people, warehouses, water treatment plants and rail lines move to, given that the interior of large land masses will have become drier? The forced migration of hundreds of millions of people will undoubtedly lead to serious international conflict over space and basic resources like fresh water. Conflict is another word for war.
Continue reading...As campaign launched to enshrine right to green space, Bolton woman describes how ‘tranquility walks’ helped her through lockdown
During Covid lockdowns, Sharon Powell felt alone. She was caring for her father, 90, who was deteriorating from Parkinson’s disease and dementia, and looking after him had become increasingly difficult.
Social life in her community in Johnson Fold, Bolton, had been Powell’s escape from the pressure at home, but when Covid restrictions were introduced “everything was just gone”. She was depressed, anxious and having panic attacks “like a washing machine on full spin”.
This article was amended on 21 February 2022, to correct the spelling of Trish Goodwin’s name.
Continue reading...Senator Angus King urges US trade representative to press Beijing to live up to promise to increase spending on tasty crustaceans
China has failed to live up to its promise to buy more Maine lobster under a deal that opened the door to an easing of a trade war under Donald Trump, Maine’s congressional leaders say.
Maine’s lobster industry was hurt by retaliatory Chinese tariffs in 2018 but failed to see substantial export gains after China committed to buying an additional $200bn in US goods, the delegation contends.
Continue reading...Talk at this week’s NFU conference will be alive with financial, labour and competition concerns
Swapping their pastures for the concrete jungle, hundreds of Britain’s farmers will take off their wellies this week and head to a conference centre in central Birmingham for the annual shindig of the National Farmers’ Union (NFU).
Nearly 1,500 food producers will meet to discuss the “blueprint for the future” of British farming, against the backdrop of the biggest upheaval in a generation in agriculture, following the UK’s departure from the EU and the pandemic, and amid discussions about future land use in the face of the climate crisis.
Continue reading...The author’s hand-picked panel share their ideas on music, mushrooms, zombies and more
What do you get when you bring together some of the most revered thinkers, most progressive-minded activists and one of the most celebrated novelists writing today to discuss the immense challenges we face? A debate about the Spice Girls, of course! For the Guardian’s Saturday magazine, Margaret Atwood wanted to gather some of her favourite experts from around the globe, to ask how they see the world we live in – and what they believe is key to creating the future they want to see.
The lineup included bestselling author Raj Patel, dubbed the “rock star of social justice writing”; Senator Yvonne Boyer, the first Indigenous person appointed to the Canadian senate from Ontario; Akala, a writer, musician and poet; the excellently named Merlin Sheldrake, an expert on fungi; Kate Fletcher, whose speciality is sustainable fashion; Jessie Housty, a young Indigenous activist with a focus on decolonisation and community; and Yasmeen Hassan of Equality Now, which works to combat gender discrimination. The panel, hand-picked by Atwood, reflects the many disparate subjects the author is passionate about, and she was as keen to hear from them as they were to understand her vision and ideas.
Continue reading...A roundup of the coverage of the struggle for human rights and freedoms, from Myanmar to Mexico
Continue reading...Exclusive: Investigation uncovers evidence of contaminated air and water from one of Indonesia’s largest nickel mines
A Guardian investigation into nickel mining and the electric vehicle industry has found evidence that a source of drinking water close to one of Indonesia’s largest nickel mines is contaminated with unsafe levels of hexavalent chromium (Cr6), the cancer-causing chemical more widely known for its role in the Erin Brockovich story and film.
The investigation also found evidence suggesting elevated levels of lung infections among people living close to the mine.
Continue reading...City won’t issue final permit necessary for potentially toxic plant in majority Latino neighborhood to open
A year after a hunger strike brought national attention to a potentially toxic metal shredder in a majority Latino neighborhood in Chicago, the city has announced it will not issue the final permit necessary for the plant to open, calling it an “unacceptable risk”.
“In an already vulnerable community, the findings from the [city’s health impact assessment] combined with the inherent risks of recycling operations and concerns about the company’s past and potential noncompliance are too significant to ignore,” said the Chicago department of public health commissioner, Allison Arwady, in a press release.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Dens being installed on east coast and A9 after predator’s return was found to reduce numbers of greys
Pine martens are to be deployed as wildlife bouncers along the east coast of Scotland and the A9 corridor to halt the northward march of grey squirrels.
More than 35 artificial pine marten dens are being installed by Forestry and Land Scotland (FLS) at strategic locations on the grey squirrels’ path of northward migration in an attempt to save the Highland red squirrel populations.
Continue reading...UN warns of looming catastrophe as hundreds of thousands more arrive at settlements that do not have enough food or water
Somalia’s displacement camps are coming under intense pressure with more than 300,000 people leaving their homes in search of food and water so far this year as the country experiences its worst drought in decades.
People have been walking miles to camps, already home to those escaping the country’s protracted violence, after three consecutive failed rainy seasons since October 2020 that have decimated crops and livestock. Somalia has more than 2,400 such settlements, which already lack resources.
Continue reading...Pharmaceutical pollution poses ‘global threat to human and environmental health’, major study finds
Humanity’s drugs have polluted rivers across the entire world and pose “a global threat to environmental and human health”, according to the most comprehensive study to date.
Pharmaceuticals and other biologically active compounds used by humans are known to harm wildlife and antibiotics in the environment drive up the risk of resistance to the drugs, one of the greatest threats to humanity.
Continue reading...Dramatic spread of native plants over past decade is evidence of accelerating shifts in fragile polar ecosystem, study finds
Antarctica’s two native flowering plants are spreading rapidly as temperatures warm, according to the first study to show changes in fragile polar ecosystems have accelerated in the past decade.
The increase in plants since 2009 has been greater than the previous 50 years combined, coinciding with rapidly rising air temperatures and a reduction in the number of fur seals, according to researchers working on Signy Island in the South Orkney Islands.
Continue reading...Rewilding has become a mantra in one Cairngorms glen – but some see initiatives to restore its forestland as a threat
Glen Feshie is one of the magnificent valleys on the north-west side of the Cairngorm massif where the forest has been released from the tyranny of grouse and deer. During the deer-stalking centuries of the 1800s and 1900s, there were 50 deer per square kilometre. Now there are one or two, and the critically endangered capercaillie are coming back. This is the place, I’ve heard, to look for the natural treeline in Scotland.
I arrive in the evening, the day before midsummer, and pitch my tent by the river. Scotland’s right to roam allows wild camping to an extent those south of the border can only dream of. The brown water is dark in the depths under the bridge, and cold. In the still-bright sunlight I walk up the valley and come to a spot where the path widens and a vista of sheer grey hills opens out. This was the setting for The Monarch of the Glen, a famous painting by Landseer of a princely 12-point stag framed by the crags above the valley.
Continue reading...Female was receiving intensive care for multiple health issues but died early Friday morning, and a male beluga died in August
The second of five whales brought from Canada to Connecticut’s Mystic aquarium last year for research purposes has died.
The aquarium announced on its website that the female had been receiving intensive care for the past several months for multiple health issues but died early Friday morning. A necropsy was to be performed to determine the cause of death.
Continue reading...Griffith Park’s famous feline – who evades sightings better than any movie star – has inspired murals, songs and even an exhibit on his life
The mountain lion known as P22 has become something of a celebrity in the city of Los Angeles. The big cat resides in Griffith Park, a 4,000-acre park tucked in the Hollywood hills, and has inspired murals, songs and even an exhibit about his life.
This February marks 10 years since scientists first found P22 while setting up camera traps in the area. His discovery was considered jaw-dropping, and scientists say that P22 has come to symbolize something uniquely LA, a city where wild landscapes rub shoulders with dense urbanism.
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