Category Archives: Environment

What is cryptoart, how much does it cost and can you hang it on your wall?

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When is a meme worth $600,000? When technology has created a ‘unique’ version that can’t be owned by anyone else

Pat, I keep hearing references to cryptoart which are all very … cryptic. What is this thing?

Hey Lucy! So you might have heard of it in context of the $US600,000 Nyan Cat gif or the more recent Kings of Leon NFT Album, both of which are examples of cryptoart. Cryptoart is a way of making digital art unique, and therefore – according to some people – valuable. Normally, digital art is very easy to replicate due to the very nature of digital information. So cryptoart is a way of making digital files one-of-a-kind.

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‘A new world of discovery’: readers’ photos of their local wildlife

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We asked UK readers to send in photos of the natural world near them from the last few weeks

  • You can send in your recent wildlife photos here
  • You can see our previous selection of photos here

Living with the coronavirus pandemic has meant many people are having to stay closer to home, but one benefit is having more time to take notice of the natural world around us. From frogs in Cardiff to lichen in Brighton, UK readers have been sharing pictures and stories of their local flora and fauna.

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Farmers and rights groups boycott food summit over big business links

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Focus on agro-business rather than ecology has split groups invited to planned UN conference on hunger

An international food summit to address growing hunger and diet-related disease is in disarray as hundreds of farmers’ and human rights groups are planning a boycott.

Related: 'A shame for the world': Uganda's fragile forest ecosystem destroyed for sugar

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‘It’s radical’: the Ugandan city built on solar, shea butter and people power

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Ojok Okello is transforming his destroyed village into a green town where social enterprises responsibly harness the shea tree

The village of Okere Mom-Kok was in ruins by the end of more than a decade of war in northern Uganda.

Now, just outside Ojok Okello’s living-room door, final-year pupils at the early childhood centre are noisily breaking for recess and a market is clattering into life, as is the local craft brewery, as what has become Okere City begins a new day.

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Cancel all planned coal projects globally to end ‘deadly addiction’, says UN chief

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Call comes at event hosted by UK government, which is under pressure over planned coalmine in Cumbria

All planned coal projects around the world must be cancelled to end the “deadly addiction” to the most polluting fossil fuel, the UN secretary-general António Guterres said on Tuesday.

Phasing out coal from the electricity sector is the single most important step to tackle the climate crisis, he said. Guterres’s call came at the opening of a summit of the Powering Past Coal Alliance (PPCA), a group of governments and businesses committed to ending coal burning for power.

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Eating meat ‘raises risk of heart disease, diabetes and pneumonia’

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UK researchers find link between regular meat intake and nine non-cancerous illnesses

Eating meat regularly increases someone’s risk of developing heart disease, diabetes, pneumonia and other serious illnesses, research has found.

It is already known that intake of red and processed meat heightens the risk of being diagnosed with bowel cancer. But these findings are the first to assess whether meat consumption is linked to any of the 25 non-cancerous illnesses that most commonly lead to people being admitted to hospital in the UK.

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Huge iceberg breaks off from shelf in Antarctica – video

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Aerial video released on 26 February reveals a huge iceberg has separated from the Brunt Ice Shelf in Antarctica, almost 10 years after scientists first discovered cracks.

The berg has been compared in size to the English county of Bedfordshire, measuring 1,270 sq km, according to the British Antarctic Survey (BAS).

Scientists were expecting the calving of the iceberg to happen, after daily monitoring of the area with GPS instruments and satellite imagery, the BAS's director, Prof Dame Jane Francis, said

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Fossil fuel cars make ‘hundreds of times’ more waste than electric cars

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Analysis by transport group says battery electric vehicles are superior to their petrol and diesel counterparts

Fossil fuel cars waste hundreds of times more raw material than their battery electric equivalents, according to a study that adds to evidence that the move away from petrol and diesel cars will bring large net environmental benefits.

Only about 30kg of raw material will be lost over the lifecycle of a lithium ion battery used in electric cars once recycling is taken into account, compared with 17,000 litres of oil, according to analysis by Transport & Environment (T&E) seen by the Guardian. A calculation of the resources used to make cars relative to their weight shows it is at least 300 times greater for oil-fuelled cars.

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Denmark’s climate policies ‘insufficient’ to meet 2030 target

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Report says country set to cut carbon emissions by 54% compared with 1990 levels, not 70% as planned

The Danish government’s efforts towards meeting the country’s ambitious target of reducing emissions by 70% by 2030 have been judged “insufficient” by the body tasked with monitoring its progress, with measures so far announced only likely to take it a third of the way.

In its first annual status report, the Danish Council on Climate Change said new laws, inter-party agreements and initiatives announced since the country’s climate law came into effect last June would reduce emissions by the equivalent of 7.2m tonnes of CO2 by 2030, which is only enough to reduce Denmark’s emissions by 54% compared with 1990 levels.

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‘It’s a funeral march’: French artist JR’s powerful eulogy for Australia’s Murray-Darling

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Exclusive: The street artist’s latest work saw 60 people parade through Lake Cawndilla in NSW, holding aloft enormous portraits of local farmers and leaders as they fight to save Australia’s vital river system

The mood around Lake Cawndilla in western New South Wales on Saturday is funereal but defiant, as a procession of around 60 locals parade through scrub and sand around its banks.

They carry between them a series of 30m-long cloth figures: three local citrus farmers and prominent Baakandji artist William Badger Bates.

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Electricity needed to mine bitcoin is more than used by ‘entire countries’

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Bitcoin mining – the process in which a bitcoin is awarded to a computer that solves a complex series of algorithm – is a deeply energy intensive process

It’s not just the value of bitcoin that has soared in the last year – so has the huge amount of energy it consumes.

The cryptocurrency’s value has dipped recently after passing a high of $50,000 but the energy used to create it has continued to soar during its epic rise, climbing to the equivalent to the annual carbon footprint of Argentina, according to Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index, a tool from researchers at Cambridge University that measures the currency’s energy use.

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Australia accused of ‘shamefully’ holding back global action on climate change

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United Nations calls on all countries to have ‘concrete plans to phase out fossil fuels as fast as possible’

Australia has been accused of “shamefully doing nothing” and weighing down global action after a UN analysis found national pledges to cut greenhouses gas emissions over the next decade have barely begun to do what is necessary to tackle the climate crisis.

The assessment of emissions reduction plans submitted to the UN by the end of last year found if all were fulfilled they would cut global CO2 by only 1% by 2030, compared with 2010 levels.

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Thames Water hopes to harness human ‘poo power’ to heat homes

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Company says sewage plan would avoid 105,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions over 30 years

Thousands of homes in south-west London could soon be warmed by the waste from their local sewage works as part of England’s first poo-powered district heating scheme.

Thames Water hopes to harness the heat of human waste from its treatment plant in Kingston upon Thames to warm more than 2,000 new homes that form part of a regeneration plan for the borough’s Cambridge Road estate.

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‘A cause for worry’: Mexico’s monarch butterflies drop by 26% in year

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Butterflies had bad year after four times as many trees were lost to illegal logging and extreme climate conditions

The number of monarch butterflies that reached their winter resting grounds in central Mexico decreased by about 26% this year, and four times as many trees were lost to illegal logging, drought and other causes, making 2020 a bad year for the butterflies.

The butterflies’ population covered only 2.1 hectares (5.2 acres) in 2020, compared to 2.8 hectares (6.9 acres) the previous year and about one-third of the 6.05 hectares (14.95 acres) detected in 2018, according to government figures.

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Male lyrebirds resort to artful deception in the pursuit of procreation

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Males use vocal trickery to fool females into thinking a threat is lurking, giving them time to sow their genetic seeds

Male lyrebirds in the throes of sexual union will mimic the sound of a distressed mob of other birds to fool their mate and stop her from escaping, new research from Australia has found.

The remarkable discovery was made after analysing audio and video of superb lyrebirds – a species known for extravagant dance routines and an ability to imitate the calls of more than 20 other species.

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Atlantic Ocean circulation at weakest in a millennium, say scientists

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Decline in system underpinning Gulf Stream could lead to more extreme weather in Europe and higher sea levels on US east coast

The Atlantic Ocean circulation that underpins the Gulf Stream, the weather system that brings warm and mild weather to Europe, is at its weakest in more than a millennium, and climate breakdown is the probable cause, according to new data.

Further weakening of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) could result in more storms battering the UK, more intense winters and an increase in damaging heatwaves and droughts across Europe.

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‘Get the trees back’: NSW minister wanted ‘clearance zone’ around highways after bushfires

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Andrew Constance confirms he demanded the now-sacked transport department head to fell trees 40 metres either side of highways but was refused

The New South Wales transport minister, Andrew Constance, demanded the now-sacked head of his department create an 80-metre “clearance zone” around highways after the 2020 bushfires, an order Labor says could have resulted in countless trees being felled if followed.

During the state’s budget estimates hearings on Thursday, Constance confirmed he had issued the directive to the former department head, Rodd Staples, following last summer’s bushfire crisis.

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Biden urged to back water justice bill to reverse decades of underinvestment

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Water Act proposes injection of federal dollars to overhaul ageing infrastructure, create jobs and address inequalities

Democratic lawmakers and advocates are urging Joe Biden to back legislation proposing unprecedented investment in America’s ailing water infrastructure amid the country’s worst crisis in decades that has left millions of people without access to clean, safe, affordable water.

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