More than a week after torrential rain hit New South Wales, communities are working to clean up what is left behind
Continue reading...Category Archives: Environment
Trapped in gloves, tangled in masks: Covid PPE killing animals, report finds
Mask and gloves protect people but harm animals from penguins to dogs when discarded, researchers say
The masks and gloves protecting people from coronavirus are proving a deadly threat to wildlife when thrown away, a report has found.
A fish trapped in the finger of a rubber glove in the Netherlands, a penguin in Brazil with a mask in its stomach and a fox in the UK entangled in a mask were among the victims.
Continue reading...Fancy a deep red? The rise of underwater wineries
After bottles were recovered in top shape from a first world war shipwreck, winemakers have started to exploit the sea’s cool, dark environment
Slipping into the chilly waters of the Baltic sea, the divers descended more than 60 metres to where the masts of the Jönköping lay strewn across the seabed. They glided past the wounds left when the Swedish schooner was sunk by a German U-boat in 1916 to home in on the rare treasure they had come for: thousands of bottles of 1907 Heidsieck champagne.
Related: Champagne found at sea turns out to be world's oldest vintage
Continue reading...Global landmarks turn off the lights to mark annual Earth Hour
This year’s event focuses on the link between harming the natural world and disease outbreaks like Covid-19
Cities around the world were turning off their lights on Saturday for Earth Hour, with this year’s event highlighting the link between the destruction of nature and increasing outbreaks of diseases like Covid-19.
In London, the Houses of Parliament, London Eye, Shard skyscraper and neon signs of Piccadilly Circus were among the landmarks flicking the switches.
Continue reading...Climate talks will test Biden’s pledge to make global heating a priority
Summit is designed to revive a US-convened forum of the world’s major economies that previous administrations had allowed to lapse
President Joe Biden is doubling down on his reset of his predecessor’s environmental policies by inviting Russian president Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping of China to the first big climate talks of his administration next month aimed at increasing cooperation to fight global heating.
The Leaders Summit on Climate talks, scheduled to be held virtually on 22 and 23 April, are an opportunity for the US to shape, hasten and deepen global efforts to cut climate-wrecking fossil fuel pollution, administration officials told the Associated Press.
Continue reading...‘Reclaim These Streets’ and rubber duck rallies: human rights roundup – in pictures
Coverage on recent struggles for human rights and freedoms, from Cardiff Bay to Thailand
Continue reading...Protests at ‘inhumane’ export of live horses to Japan for food
Activists seek ban on flying horses to Japan with thousands sent every year from Canada and France
Tens of thousands of horses are being subjected to long-haul flights, confined in crates with no food or water, to meet demand for horsemeat in Japan.
Since 2013, about 40,000 live horses have been flown to Japan from airports in western Canada. Under Canadian regulations, the journey can stretch up to 28 hours, during which the animals are allowed to go without food, water or rest.
Continue reading...Joe Biden invites 40 world leaders to virtual summit on climate crisis
Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin among invitees as US heralds return to forefront of climate fight
Joe Biden has invited 40 world leaders to a virtual summit on the climate crisis, the White House said in a statement on Friday.
Heads of state, including Xi Jinping of China and Russia’s Vladimir Putin, have been asked to attend the two-day meeting meant to mark Washington’s return to the front lines of the fight against human-caused climate change, after Donald Trump disengaged from the process.
Continue reading...At least 20 livestock ships caught in Suez canal logjam
Concerns for animals’ welfare if Ever Given blockage crisis is protracted
At least 20 of the boats delayed due to a stricken container ship in the Suez canal are carrying livestock, according to marine tracking data, raising concerns about the welfare of the animals if the logjam becomes protracted.
The 220,000-ton Ever Given is causing the longest closure of the Suez canal in decades with more than 200 ships estimated to be unable to pass, and incoming vessels diverting around southern Africa’s Cape of Good Hope.
Continue reading...Russian conservationists hail rare sighting of Amur leopard with cubs
Sighting in Primorye region said to show success of fight against poachers and steps to boost species population
Russian conservationists have hailed a rare sighting of an Amur leopard mother with three cubs in the far-eastern region of Primorye as proof of the efficiency of the country’s efforts to boost the population of the endangered species.
Scientists in a Russian national park in Primorye on the border with China obtained the images using a remote camera trap. The video footage shows the feline family standing on top of a hill in the Land of the Leopard national park.
Continue reading...‘Bangladesh has come a long way’: people of Dhaka on half a century of independence
A rickshaw rider, a domestic worker, a student and a photographer on how their lives have changed
Habibur Rahman, 48, rickshaw rider
Continue reading...Diversify or risk unrest, oil producers warned in report
As world shifts to green energy, Iraq and Nigeria among those vulnerable to ‘wave of instability’
Oil-dependent countries that are not preparing to adapt to the global shift away from fossil fuels risk their own stability, warns a new report.
Algeria, Iraq and Nigeria are the most vulnerable to “a slow-motion wave of political instability”, according to the risk analysts Verisk Maplecroft.
Continue reading...‘Dimming the sun’: $100m geoengineering research programme proposed
All options to fight climate crisis must be explored, says national academy, but critics fear side-effects
The US should establish a multimillion-dollar research programme on solar geoengineering, according to the country’s national science academy.
In a report it recommends funding of $100m (£73m) to $200m over five years to better understand the feasibility of interventions to dim the sun, the risk of harmful unintended consequences and how such technology could be governed in an ethical way.
Continue reading...Traffic wars: who will win the battle for city streets?
Radical new plans to reduce traffic and limit our dependence on cars have sparked bitter conflict. As legal challenges escalate, will Britain’s great traffic experiment be shut down before we have time to see the benefits?
On an overcast Saturday afternoon in December, a convoy of 30 cars, led by a red Chevrolet pickup truck, set off from the car park of an east-London Asda with hazard lights flashing. The motorists, who formed a “festive motorcade”, wore Santa hats as they made their way slowly through the borough of Hackney before coming to a halt outside the town hall a couple of hours later.
They had gathered to register their outrage at being the victims, as they saw it, of a grand experiment that has been taking place on England’s roads since the start of the pandemic. As the national lockdown eased last summer, swathes of Hackney, stretching from Hoxton’s dense council estates at the borough’s western border with Islington to the edge of the River Lea marshland near Stratford in the east, had been closed to through traffic (with exceptions made for delivery vans, residents’ cars and emergency vehicles).
Continue reading...Australians could be charged for exporting energy from rooftop solar panels to the grid
Proposed changes to the national energy market rules aims to prevent ‘traffic jams’ of electricity on sunny days
Australian households with rooftop solar panels could be charged for exporting electricity into the power grid at times when it is not needed under proposed changes to the national electricity market.
The recommendation is included in a draft deliberation by the Australian Energy Market Commission that is designed to prevent “traffic jams” of electricity at sunny times that could destabilise the network.
Continue reading...The beluga whale who became famous: Aleksander Nordahl’s best photograph
‘He was called Hvaldimir and he would play in front of crowds at Hammerfest harbour in Norway. One woman dropped her phone and he fetched it for her’
In April 2019, a beluga whale appeared alongside fishing boats off the coast of Norway. He was wearing a harness. A fisherman called Joar Hesten freed him, and saw the harness had stamped on it “equipment of St Petersburg”. The media went crazy, with talk of a “spy whale”, and the creature was named Hvaldimir, a combination of hval, the Norwegian word for whale, and Vladimir, a nod to Russia’s President Putin.
The whale became famous. There were Instagram videos of him playing in Hammerfest harbour in front of crowds. One woman dropped her phone in the water and the whale fetched it for her. He would bring up bones from the depths to show people, almost like little gifts. It became this huge moment on social media: everyone in the country fell in love with the whale. Even the hardcore fishing villages melted for Hvaldimir.
Continue reading...One of Earth’s giant carbon sinks may have been overestimated – study
The potential of soils to slow climate change by soaking up carbon may be less than previously thought
The storage potential of one of the Earth’s biggest carbon sinks – soils – may have been overestimated, research shows. This could mean ecosystems on land soaking up less of humanity’s emissions than expected, and more rapid global heating.
Soils and the plants that grow in them absorb about a third of the carbon emissions that drive the climate crisis, partly limiting the impact of fossil-fuel burning. Rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere can increase plant growth and, until now, it was assumed carbon storage in soils would increase too.
Continue reading...Big banks’ trillion-dollar finance for fossil fuels ‘shocking’, says report
Coal, oil and gas firms have received $3.8tn in finance since the Paris climate deal in 2015
The world’s biggest 60 banks have provided $3.8tn of financing for fossil fuel companies since the Paris climate deal in 2015, according to a report by a coalition of NGOs.
Despite the Covid-19 pandemic cutting energy use, overall funding remains on an upward trend and the finance provided in 2020 was higher than in 2016 or 2017, a fact the report’s authors and others described as “shocking”.
Continue reading...Chariots of steel: Barcelona’s hidden army of scrap recyclers
Thousands of migrants play a key role in collecting Catalonia’s waste but must live on the margins
They are everywhere and yet they are almost invisible, living below the social radar as they crisscross the city pushing supermarket trolleys piled with metal tubing, old microwaves and empty beer cans.
The chatarreros are Barcelona’s itinerant scrap-metal collectors, and there are thousands of them. Most are undocumented migrants and so there is no official census, but Federico Demaria, a social scientist at the University of Barcelona who is conducting a study of the informal recyclers in Catalonia, believes there are between 50,000 and 100,000 in the region. About half are from sub-Saharan Africa; the rest are from eastern Europe, elsewhere in Africa and Spain.
Continue reading...Open season in Sudan as trophy hunters flock to shoot rare ibex
Conservationists fear for endangered Nubian ibex in Sudan as westerners sold permits to hunt
Sudanese conservationists have accused trophy hunters of exploiting the country’s political transition to hunt the country’s unprotected rare animals.
Photographs posted online of westerners posing with the body of a rare Nubian ibex angered Sudanese wildlife campaigners this week. They called for Facebook to remove the pages of tour groups promoting such hunts.
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