Category Archives: Environment

‘There’s nothing left in Lytton’: the Canadian village destroyed by wildfire – picture essay

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The fire that devastated Lytton is still burning – and First Nation residents say the lack of help from the British Columbia government has been ‘sickening’

Vince Abbott had an afternoon of fishing planned – he was going angling for spring salmon in the nearby river – when he heard shouts of panic and felt a searing heat.

After three punishing days of record-breaking temperatures in the Canadian village of Lytton earlier this month, Abbott was accustomed to the discomfort of the dry, sometimes overpowering, summer heat. But this felt different.

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The insect apocalypse: ‘Our world will grind to a halt without them’

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Insects have declined by 75% in the past 50 years – and the consequences may soon be catastrophic. Biologist Dave Goulson reveals the vital services they perform

I have been fascinated by insects all my life. One of my earliest memories is of finding, at the age of five or six, some stripy yellow-and-black caterpillars feeding on weeds in the school playground. I put them in my empty lunchbox, and took them home. Eventually they transformed into handsome magenta and black moths. This seemed like magic to me – and still does. I was hooked.

In pursuit of insects I have travelled the world, from the deserts of Patagonia to the icy peaks of Fjordland in New Zealand and the forested mountains of Bhutan. I have watched clouds of birdwing butterflies sipping minerals from the banks of a river in Borneo, and thousands of fireflies flashing in synchrony at night in the swamps of Thailand. At home in my garden in Sussex I have spent countless hours watching grasshoppers court a mate and see off rivals, earwigs tend their young, ants milk honeydew from aphids, and leaf-cutter bees snip leaves to line their nests.

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Plans of four G20 states are threat to global climate pledge, warn scientists

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‘Disastrous’ energy policies of China, Russia, Brazil and Australia could stoke 5C rise in temperatures if adopted by the rest of the world

A key group of leading G20 nations is committed to climate targets that would lead to disastrous global warming, scientists have warned. They say China, Russia, Brazil and Australia all have energy policies associated with 5C rises in atmospheric temperatures, a heating hike that would bring devastation to much of the planet.

The analysis, by the peer-reviewed group Paris Equity Check, raises serious worries about the prospects of key climate agreements being achieved at the Cop26 summit in Glasgow in three months. The conference – rated as one of the most important climate summits ever staged – will attempt to hammer out policies to hold global heating to 1.5C by agreeing on a global policy for ending net emissions of greenhouse gases by 2050.

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Why the Marble Arch Mound is a slippery slope to nowhere

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The artificial hill in central London seems a great idea, but it would be better to have done something that genuinely helped the environment

The Torre Guinigi in Lucca, Italy, is a brick medieval tower – it’s handsome, but of a type common enough in historic Tuscan cities. What makes it special is a grove of holm oaks growing from its summit. Trees come with expectations, such that they are rooted in the ground, yet there they are, high in the air, apparently flourishing. The tower would be less interesting if it weren’t for the trees and the trees would be less interesting if it weren’t for the tower.

So there’s something compelling about trees in unexpected places. Hence at least part of the appeal of the High Line in New York, where gardens grow on an old elevated railway line, and of the ski slope on top of the Amager Bakke power plant in Copenhagen. There’s been a thing for wrapping towers in vegetation in recent years. Little Island, the micro-park recently created by Thomas Heatherwick over the Hudson, has a similar well-I-never, Instagram-able impact.

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India floods: rescuers search for survivors among mud and debris

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Death toll from heavy monsoon rains on western coast climbs to 76, with nearly 90,000 people evacuated

Rescuers in India combed through mud and debris on Saturday in a desperate search for survivors as the death toll from heavy monsoon rains climbed to 76, with nearly 90,000 people evacuated.

Torrential downpours have lashed India’s western coast in recent days, leaving dozens missing near the financial capital of Mumbai and causing the worst floods in decades in the resort state of Goa.

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Unesco urged not to give heritage status to Thai park amid claims of Indigenous abuses

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UN human rights experts decry arrests and evictions of ethnic Karen from Kaeng Krachan national park

UN human rights experts have urged Unesco not to grant World Heritage Site status to a national park in Thailand, where they said Indigenous people are being arrested and evicted from their traditional lands.

The UN experts said in a statement: “This is an important precedent-setting case, and may influence policies on how Indigenous peoples’ rights are respected in protected areas across Asia.

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All that glitters: why lab-made gems might not be an ethical alternative

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Switching to synthetic gems may have environmental upsides but it could harm the very communities consumers worry about

Diamonds have long been in the debt of marketing genius. Until the 1940s they were not a popular choice for engagement rings. Then, in 1947, a stroke of brilliance: De Beers’ “A Diamond is Forever” campaign. The slogan was a hit. The market transformed. Today diamond engagement rings are ubiquitous, winking from the windows of upmarket jewellers.

Earlier this year came another glittering moment in diamond PR. Pandora, the world’s largest jewellery retailer, announced it would be switching entirely to lab-made diamonds. It generated positive headlines around the world, dubbed an “ethical stand against mined diamonds”.

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India monsoons: at least 112 dead in Maharashtra state

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Torrential rains cause landslides as military personnel assist with rescue operations in coastal regions

At least 112 people have died in the western Indian state of Maharashtra, authorities have said, after torrential monsoon rains caused landslides and flooded low-lying areas, cutting off hundreds of villages.

Parts of India’s west coast received up to 594mm (23 inches) of rainfall over 24 hours, forcing authorities to evacuate people from vulnerable areas as they released water from dams that were threatening to overflow.

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Hitting global climate target could create 8m energy jobs, study says

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Researchers suggest net increase would mostly occur in renewables sector, with decline in fossil fuels

If some politicians are to be believed, taking sweeping action to meet the goals of the Paris climate agreement would be calamitous for energy sector jobs. But a study suggests that honouring the global climate target would, in fact, increase net jobs by about 8 million by 2050.

The study – in which researchers created a global dataset of the footprint of energy jobs in 50 countries including major fossil fuel-producing economies – found that currently an estimated 18 million people work in the energy industries, which is likely to increase to 26 million if climate targets are met.

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World Heritage Committee agrees not to place Great Barrier Reef on ‘in danger’ list

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Unesco says ‘the facts are the facts and the science is the science’ after its recommendation is ignored

The Great Barrier Reef will not be placed on a list of world heritage sites “in danger” after a global lobbying effort from Australia against the proposed listing.

The 21-country World Heritage Committee on Friday ignored a scientific assessment from the UN’s science and culture organisation, Unesco, that the reef was clearly in danger from climate change and so should be placed on the list.

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Cockatoos in Sydney learning from each other to bin-dive for food, study finds

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Sulphur-crested cockatoos’ ability to pry open bins has spread across 44 suburbs in only two years

Sulphur-crested cockatoos are learning from each other to open wheelie bins in order to scavenge for food and the behaviour is rapidly catching on across Sydney, according to new research.

With help from the public, Australian and German ecologists have documented cockatoos learning the bin-diving behaviour through social interactions, with reported sightings of the behaviour growing across Sydney in recent years.

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‘Something’s not right’: Northern Irish townland has its 31.2C day in the sun

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Ballywatticock was country’s hottest ever spot last week – but its reign had ended within days

In the annals of climate change it will be remembered, if at all, as a diverting footnote: the brief reign of Ballywatticock.

Few people in Northern Ireland had heard of this townland on the shores of Strangford Lough in County Down until its weather station recorded the hottest temperature for the UK last Saturday: 31.2C (88.16F).

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China floods: aluminium alloy plant explodes in Henan province – video

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Dramatic footage shows the moment an aluminium plant exploded in China's central Henan province after a record-breaking rain storm. Local government officials said Dengfeng Power Group's plant exploded when flood waters from a nearby river breached a wall and entered it

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Deadly coral disease sweeping Caribbean linked to wastewater from ships

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Researchers find ‘significant relationship’ between stony coral tissue loss disease and nearby shipping

A virulent and fast-moving coral disease that has swept through the Caribbean could be linked to waste or ballast water from ships, according to research.

The deadly infection, known as stony coral tissue loss disease (SCTLD), was first identified in Florida in 2014, and has since moved through the region, causing great concern among scientists.

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Catastrophic floods could hit Europe far more often, study finds

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Slow-moving storms such as recent deluge in Germany could become 14 times more frequent by 2100

Catastrophic floods such as those that struck Europe recently could become much more frequent as a result of global heating, researchers say.

High-resolution computer models suggest that slow-moving storms could become 14 times more common over land by the end of the century in a worst-case scenario. The slower a storm moves, the more rain it dumps on a small area and the greater the risk of serious flooding.

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‘Everything is on fire’: Siberia hit by unprecedented burning

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Locals fear for their health and property as smoke from raging forest fires shrouds an entire region of eastern Russia

Every morning and evening for the last few days, shifts of young villagers have headed out into the taiga forest around Teryut with a seemingly impossible task: to quell the raging fires that have burned closer and closer for a month, shrouding this remote eastern Siberian village in an acrid haze.

So far, little has worked. Amid the worst wildfire season in memory, locals have vowed to defend their village to the last, sending away small children for their protection from the smog while they stay on to fight back the flames.

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Death toll rises and thousands flee homes as floods hit China

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Torrential rainfall and burst rivers swamp Henan cities, with commuters trapped on subway trains

Days of torrential rain and massive flooding have hit China’s Henan province, bursting the banks of rivers, overwhelming dams and the public transport system and forcing thousands of people to evacuate their homes.

At least 25 people have been killed and seven are missing in the provincial capital, Zhengzhou. The provincial authorities issued its highest level of weather warning. A year’s worth of rain – 640mm – fell in just three days. The city’s weather bureau said more than 552mm of rain had fallen between 7pm on Monday and 7pm on Tuesday, including 202mm between 4pm and 5pm on Tuesday.

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Offering aid without development is costing lives in the global south | Letter

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The west is acting like the empires of old and failing to help poor people stand on their own two feet, says Benny Dembitzer

The debate in the Guardian (Outrage aimed at No 10 as MPs back £4bn cut to foreign aid budget, 13 July; Letters, 15 July) over the past few days has only contributed to the continuation of a fundamental error that is literally costing millions of lives in the global south. None of the politicians or correspondents who have intervened in the discussions have emphasised the profound conflict between aid and development. The two are usually presented as synonymous – they are not.

Because we have nurtured very little development to enable poor people in poor countries to stand on their own two feet, we have had to give them more aid. We have not helped them develop their own agency. We have not enabled them to develop agriculture to meet their own needs, encouraged governments to undertake land reform, educated women farmers, facilitated local seed multiplication or created local agricultural colleges.

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Germany’s Greens cautious over linking floods to climate crisis

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Party leaders hope public will draw its own conclusions from last week’s catastrophic floods

It was a slogan that cut to the chase: “Everybody is talking about Germany. We talk about the weather.”

The provocative message – itself an inversion of the title of an essay by Red Army Faction terror group founder Ulrike Meinhof (“Everybody talks about the weather. We don’t”) – was at the heart of the West German Green party’s 1990 election campaign, but has rarely felt more relevant than today as catastrophic floods in western Germany have brought extreme weather events to the centre of the national debate little more than two months before federal elections.

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John Kerry: world leaders must step up to avoid worst impacts of climate crisis

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US envoy uses landmark speech in London to make impassioned plea for unified global effort

The world still has a chance of staving off the worst impacts of climate breakdown but only if governments step up in the next few months with stronger commitments on cutting greenhouse gas emissions, the US envoy for climate change has said.

John Kerry, appointed by Joe Biden to spearhead the US’s international efforts to tackle the crisis, urged all large economies to come forward with new plans to cut emissions before the Cop26 UN climate talks in Glasgow this November.

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