Category Archives: Environment

‘This land feeds our souls’: the battle to save the Rockies from big coal

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Growing opposition to the lifting of mining protections in Alberta has forced the Canadian province to backtrack

To the east of the Bluebird Valley ranch, the grasslands of the Canadian prairies extend beyond the horizon. To the west, the fields rise, and then sharply erupt into the Rocky Mountains.

Cattle graze the 3,600 hectares (9,000 acres) of the Bluebird, an hour south-west of Calgary, and on hot summer days rancher Jolayne Gardner’s children jump into the chilly waters of a creek that threads the rolling hills.

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‘Invisible killer’: fossil fuels caused 8.7m deaths globally in 2018, research finds

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Pollution from power plants, vehicles and other sources accounted for one in five of all deaths that year, more detailed analysis reveals

Air pollution caused by the burning of fossil fuels such as coal and oil was responsible for 8.7m deaths globally in 2018, a staggering one in five of all people who died that year, new research has found.

Countries with the most prodigious consumption of fossil fuels to power factories, homes and vehicles are suffering the highest death tolls, with the study finding more than one in 10 deaths in both the US and Europe were caused by the resulting pollution, along with nearly a third of deaths in eastern Asia, which includes China. Death rates in South America and Africa were significantly lower.

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How Sweden is taking back parking spaces to improve urban living

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An experiment with the ‘one-minute city’ gives priority to pedestrians and cyclists

It was a couple of parking spaces a few days ago. But now the area outside Malin Henriksson Talcoth’s gourmet sausage shop in Gothenburg has a bench, a picnic table and racks for cycles and e-scooters. It also has people talking, eating and enjoying themselves, despite subzero temperatures.

The workmen had arrived the previous week and built the wooden unit with benches facing, importantly, towards the pavement. “When the sun was out on Friday and Saturday, it was absolutely full of people, just having a takeaway coffee and a sausage,” Talcoth said.

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Balloon test flight plan under fire over solar geoengineering fears

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Swedish environmental groups warn test flight could be first step towards the adoption of a potentially “dangerous, unpredictable, and unmanageable” technology

A proposed scientific balloon flight in northern Sweden has attracted opposition from environmental groups over fears it could lead to the use of solar geoengineering to cool the Earth and combat the climate crisis by mimicking the effect of a large volcanic eruption.

In June, a team of Harvard scientists is planning to launch a high-altitude balloon from Kiruna in Lapland to test whether it can carry equipment for a future small-scale experiment on radiation-reflecting particles in the Earth’s atmosphere.

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Michael McCormack says agriculture could be excluded from 2050 net zero emissions target

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Deputy PM says he’s focusing on now, not 2050, as Coalition’s climate skirmishes go on

The Coalition is facing an increasingly testy party room as it struggles to land on a climate policy, with the Nationals leader, Michael McCormack, declaring he is “not worried about what might happen in 30 years’ time”.

The deputy prime minister said excluding agriculture from Australia’s attempts to reach net zero emissions by 2050 may be one option.

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Plans for the plains: the fight over harvesting floodwater in NSW is about to get real

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The state is on the cusp of granting $2bn or more in licences, but has no way of measuring how much water will be returned to parched river systems

In the next week or two, the NSW government will reveal how many floodplain harvesting licences it intends to grant in the Gwydir valley, home to some of the biggest cotton producers in the country.

It’s the next chapter in a process that will grant between $2bn and $4bn in water entitlements to farmers as part of a plan to control and regularise a practice that captures billions of litres of water for irrigation during high-rainfall events.

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Seed-sized chameleon found in Madagascar may be world’s tiniest reptile

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Male nano-chameleon, named Brookesia nana, has body only 13.5mm long

Scientists say they have discovered a sunflower-seed-sized subspecies of chameleon that may well be the smallest reptile on Earth.

Two of the miniature lizards, one male and one female, were discovered by a German-Madagascan expedition team in northern Madagascar.

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Greta Thunberg effigies burned in Delhi after tweets on farmers’ protests

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Celebrity interventions inflame sentiments in India as police investigate pro-farmers toolkit

Counter-protesters in Delhi have burned effigies of the Swedish environmental campaigner Greta Thunberg after she tweeted support for India’s protesting farmers in posts that have prompted an investigation by Indian police.

Crowds gathered in Delhi to protest against several international celebrities including Thunberg and the pop singer Rihanna, who inflamed sentiments in India and angered the government after tweeting about the continuing farmer protests this week. Photos of Thunberg and Rihanna were set alight and banners were held aloft warning that “international interference” in Indian affairs would not be tolerated.

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Rich countries must update financial vows to tackle climate crisis, says UN

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Patricia Espinosa says fulfilling $100bn-a-year promise must be top priority to support developing world

Rich countries must step up with fresh financial commitments to help the developing world tackle the climate crisis, the UN’s climate chief has said.

Patricia Espinosa, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, said that fulfilling pledges of financial assistance made a decade ago must be the top priority before vital climate talks – Cop26 – later this year.

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Yak politics: Tibetans’ vegetarian dilemma amid China meat boom

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While China pushes for more industrialised farms, Buddhist monks urge now-sedentary nomads to embrace vegetarianism

Former free-roaming nomads now mostly resettled in rows of sun-baked block houses in Tibet are facing a struggle for their identity, their spiritual and cultural practices – and even their stomachs.

These yak-tending herders have always eaten meat. In addition to the milk, butter and cheese they derived from yaks, meat was a necessity in their harsh lives.

But a movement spurred by Tibetan Buddhist monks in the region over the past two decades has increasingly urged now sedentary nomads to practise vegetarianism, to pay a “life ransom” for the release of animals destined for the slaughterhouse, and to abandon the slaughter of their own animals because they have settled down.

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Smuggler found with nearly 1,000 cacti and succulents strapped to her body

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Woman sentenced in New Zealand for biosecurity violations after hiding plant material inside stockings

A woman has been sentenced in New Zealand after being caught trying to smuggle nearly 1,000 cacti and succulents strapped to her body.

Wenqing Li, known as Wendy, pleaded guilty at the Manukau district court to charges under two separate violations of biosecurity laws, attempting to bring in plants from China.

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Court convicts French state for failure to address climate crisis

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State found guilty of ‘non-respect of its engagements’ aimed at fighting global warming

A Paris court has convicted the French state of failing to address the climate crisis and not keeping its promises to tackle greenhouse gas emissions.

In what has been hailed as a historic ruling, the court found the state guilty of “non-respect of its engagements” aimed at combating global warming.

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World needs to kick its coal habit to start green recovery, says IEA head

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Energy watchdog’s Fatih Birol says shift away from coal in key regions needs to be made a global priority

Dependency on coal in key parts of the world is preventing a global green recovery from taking off, and the shift away from coal needs to be made a global priority, the head of the world’s energy watchdog has said

Coal still forms a key part of China’s energy system, and plans are in train for further coal-fired power plants in the country. India is also heavily dependent on coal, and despite increasing its renewable energy generation has shown little sign of reducing its use of the fossil fuel.

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Blue whales threatened by ship collisions in busy Patagonia waters

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Endangered giants face potentially fatal encounters with the 1,000 daily fishing vessels moving through main feeding area off Chile, scientists warn

The largest mammal ever to live on the Earth, the blue whale, is under threat from boat collisions as one of its main feeding grounds in Chilean Patagonia is overrun with vessels, a new study has revealed.

The endangered whales must contend with up to 1,000 boats moving daily through an important feeding area in the eastern South Pacific, according to research published in the scientific journal Nature.

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Grubs up! Mealworms are on the menu – but are we ready for them?

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The mealworm market is expected to boom after the EU ruled them safe to eat. Insects are a popular food in most countries, so can Europeans get over the yuck factor?

It’s a bit … well, mealy. Dry (because it’s been dried), a little crunchy, not strongly flavoured, neither pleasant nor unpleasant. Salt would probably help, or chilli, lime – something, anything, to spice it up a bit. And definitely a beer, if I was going to consume much more, to help wash it down.

I’m eating mealworms. Dried yellow mealworms, the larvae of the beetle Tenebrio molitor. Why? Because they are nutritious, made up mainly of protein, fat and fibre. Because there are potentially environmental and economic benefits, as they require less feed and produce less waste and carbon dioxide than other sources of animal protein. And because Efsa, the EU food safety agency, has just declared them safe to eat.

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Estonia’s first female prime minister vows to tackle climate crisis

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Kaja Kallas, 43, took power on Tuesday after the previous coalition collapsed due to a corruption scandal

Estonia’s first female prime minister has promised to implement changes in both style and substance in the governance of the Baltic nation, as she takes charge after two years in which a far-right party was in the ruling coalition.

Kaja Kallas, a 43-year-old lawyer and head of Estonia’s Reform party, was sworn into office on Tuesday.

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‘I couldn’t be prouder’: 16-year-old joins father in HS2 protest tunnel

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Rory Hooper, Swampy’s son, joins environmental activists to protest against environmental destruction

Veteran environmental activist Dan Hooper, known as Swampy, who is one of nine protesters in a tunnel in central London to raise the alarm about the environmental destruction they believe the high speed rail project HS2 will cause, is in the tunnel with his 16-year-old son, it has emerged.

The activists have been in the tunnel close to Euston station since Tuesday to raise awareness of the climate emergency and to try to halt work on the HS2 project which is under way in the Euston area. They argue that many ancient woodlands will be destroyed by the project. HS2 says it is planting 7m new trees.

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Is it possible to change a chicken’s sex before it hatches?

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Billions of unwanted male chicks are slaughtered by the farming industry. Now a startup claims to have found a surprising solution to the problem

The eggs we eat have a hidden cost. About 7bn male chicks are killed worldwide every year to produce them. Farmers need to replenish their supply of egg-laying hens but, by nature, half the chicks that hatch are male and growing them for meat is uneconomic – that industry uses faster growing breeds. In many countries they are tossed into shredding machines, although in the UK they are gassed.

But what if those male chicks could instead hatch out as functional females, able to grow into egg-laying birds? That’s the vision of Israeli startup Soos Technology. Founded in 2017, the company, which has received $3.3m in investment and prize winnings, wants to make commercial hatcheries kinder and more economic by changing the effective sex of poultry embryos as they develop.

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New Zealand needs urgent action to cut emissions, says climate change commission

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More electric vehicles, renewable energy and forests are among the steps recommended to help meet Paris accords

New Zealand needs to urgently increase its efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions if it is to meet its obligations under the Paris climate accords.

The country’s climate change commission – an independent body – has delivered its draft advice to the prime minister, on the vital steps that must be taken if it wants to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions and tackle climate change.

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She survived in the wild against all odds. I took her class to learn how

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Woniya Thibeault, the runner up on Netflix’s Alone, is offering an eight-week survival course, teaching more than how to skin a deer and tie a knot

Left to fend for herself on Arctic land, with only 10 pieces of gear – among them a sleeping bag, a pot, and a bow and arrows – Woniya Thibeault didn’t just want to survive. She wanted to find joy in the process of surviving.

Scattered miles apart in the same rugged wilderness were nine other contestants looking to outlast one another and win big on the History Channel’s popular survival reality series Alone. In it, contestants compete to stick it out in the wilderness for the longest time with limited resources – all have the option to tap out if it gets too much. The prize money – $500,000 – would have changed Thibeault’s life, but winning wasn’t her top priority. She was there for the experience.

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