Category Archives: Environment

Canada: police clear rail blockade by Indigenous anti-pipeline activists

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Several members of the Tyendinaga Mohawk nation arrested in growing political crisis for Justin Trudeau

Police in Canada have removed Indigenous activists from a railway line in Ontario, where a two-week protest against a contentious natural gas pipeline has blocked train traffic and fueled a growing political crisis for prime minister Justin Trudeau.

The Wet’suwet’en nation have lived on their territories in what is now British Columbia for thousands of years. They have never signed treaties or sold their land to Canada. 

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Coalition reignites climate war over Labor’s emissions policy – politics live

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Government MPs have lashed out at Labor over its emissions target, with arguments in parliament’s corridors. All the days events, live

Parliament starts at 10am.

Tellingly, Joel Fitzgibbon is on board with Labor’s plan. Here he is writing for his local paper, the Newcastle Herald over the weekend:

The aspiration of carbon neutrality by 2050 (zero net emissions) offers a conservative and low-risk path to satisfying the commitment Malcolm Turnbull made in Paris on our behalf back in 2015.

First, it provides plenty of time to think and act, including the time needed to embrace existing and future technologies.

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UK weather: flooded communities warned of more heavy rain

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75mph winds expected to bring more torrential downpours to one of wettest Februarys ever

A storm is expected to bring further bands of torrential rain to flood-hit communities as it sweeps across Britain.

Forecasters have issued a yellow weather warning as the 75mph storm brings a fresh deluge of rain, up to 50mm (2in) in some places.

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What’s the catch? British fishermen’s hopes and fears for Brexit deal

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Fishing was a powerful factor in the case for leaving the EU. On the eve of crucial trade talks, the Observer finds optimism tempered by caution on the quays of Devon and Cornwall

Neil Watson was eight or nine when his dad took him out to sea for the first time. Soon he was earning his first pocket money by washing fish boxes on the quay at Brixham in south Devon. Three years after he started crewing, he got his skipper’s ticket and eventually he bought his own boat. For 30 years, he regularly spent seven days at sea followed by one night off, only stopping when his boat sank two years ago.

“I fished through good times and bad times. Fishing’s like riding a wave – one minute you’re up the top, and the next you’re down in the trough,” he said. Now Watson works at Brixham’s fish market, one of the largest in England, where £40m of fish was sold last year across the UK and Europe. A fisherman’s life is brutal, he said, but he badly misses the camaraderie.

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Greta Thunberg’s mother reveals teenager’s troubled childhood

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Swedish opera singer Malena Ernman gives emotional account of daughter’s battles with autism and an eating disorder

Greta Thunberg’s extraordinary transformation from a near-mute 11-year-old into the world’s most powerful voice on the climate crisis is revealed today by her mother.

Related: Malena Ernman: ‘Greta was the child, we were the emperor. And we were all naked’

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California street shut down after 40,000 bees swarm from hotel

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Several people hospitalized in Pasadena after Africanized bees emerge from hotel’s eaves: ‘Something set them off’

A swarm of as many as 40,000 Africanized bees sent several people to hospital and closed a street in California, after swarming from the eaves of a Howard Johnson Inn.

Related: Ursus urbinus: 'elderly' 400lb bear spotted roaming Los Angeles suburb

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Minamata review – Johnny Depp attempts redemption in heartfelt look at disaster that struck Japanese town

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Depp plays real-life US photojournalist W Eugene Smith who travels to cover the story of mercury poisoning that caused horrendous disfigurements

Minamata is not a masterpiece and there are one or two cliches here about western saviours and boozy, difficult, passionate journalists who occupy the perennial Venn diagram overlap between integrity and alcoholism. This movie’s producer-star Johnny Depp has form on this score, with his starstruck impersonation of Hunter Thompson. And once again, he has chosen a role in which he wears a hat indoors. But Minamata is a forthright, heartfelt movie, an old-fashioned “issue picture” with a worthwhile story to tell about how communities can stand up to overweening corporations and how journalists dedicated to truthful news can help them.

Depp plays real-life US photojournalist W Eugene Smith whose glory days were in the second world war and the decades following, working for Life magazine in that now-forgotten era when analogue cameras were incapable of lying and magazines with compelling photos could command newsstand sales.

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JP Morgan economists warn climate crisis is threat to human race

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Leaked report for world’s major fossil fuel financier says Earth is on unsustainable trajectory

The world’s largest financier of fossil fuels has warned clients that the climate crisis threatens the survival of humanity and that the planet is on an unsustainable trajectory, according to a leaked document.

The JP Morgan report on the economic risks of human-caused global heating said climate policy had to change or else the world faced irreversible consequences.

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Paris launches emergency bed bugs hotline

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New campaign includes advice on how to prevent and treat an infestation, and a number to call for expert help

The French government launched a campaign Thursday, complete with an emergency number, to combat an influx of unwelcome visitors that have left Parisians in despair: bedbugs that have settled in homes and hotels to feed, uninvited, on human blood.

After disappearing from France in the 1950s, the insects have made a resurgence, according to the ministry of housing, which cited international travel and growing resistance to insecticide as the main causes.

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Canadian police had ‘no authority’ to search pipeline activists, says watchdog

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Letter offers scathing criticism of police’s tactics against Wet’suwet’en people amid growing protest over gas pipeline

Canadian federal police had “no legal authority” to make ID checks and searches on activists seeking to block a pipeline project on Indigenous territory, according to newly released correspondence from the force’s oversight body.

The nine-page letter written by Michelaine Lahaie, chair of the Civilian Review and Complaints Commission for the RCMP, offers scathing criticism of the police’s continued use of tactics against Indigenous people which she had previously warned against.

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African killifish may hold key to stopping ageing in humans

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Turquoise killifish is able to suspend its development for longer than its average lifespan

The curious ability of the African turquoise killifish to press pause on its development could have intriguing implications for human ageing, say researchers.

Certain creatures, including the killifish, can put themselves into suspended animation as an embryo – a trait known as diapause. The phenomenon is thought to have evolved in response to pressures such as seasonal changes in the environment – for example ponds drying up – or sudden challenges that pose a risk to the creatures. In other words, diapause allows the animal to put its development or birth on ice until conditions improve.

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Firms making billions from ‘highly hazardous’ pesticides, analysis finds

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Use of harmful chemicals is higher in poorer nations, according to data analysed by Unearthed

The world’s biggest pesticide companies make billions of dollars a year from chemicals found by independent authorities to pose high hazards to human health or the environment, according to an analysis by campaigners.

The research also found a higher proportion of these highly hazardous pesticides (HHPs) in the companies’ sales in poorer nations than in rich ones. In India, 59% of sales were of HHPs in contrast to just 11% in the UK, according to the analysis.

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New train blockade piles pressure on Trudeau in Wet’suwet’en pipeline fight

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Group of about 20 blocked Canadian National Railway Co rail line near Edmonton, capital of the western province of Alberta

Demonstrators opposed to a Canadian gas pipelinehave blockaded another railway line in the west of the country, adding to pressure on Justin Trudeau to solve a two-week protest.

Freight traffic in eastern Canada has already been stopped for days after campaigners blockaded a main line in Ontario. Protesters across the country have taken up the cause of the Wet’suwet’en indigenous people who are seeking to stop the C$6.6bn (US$4.98bn) Coastal GasLink gas pipeline project in British Columbia.

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Ancient fish dinners chart Sahara’s shift from savannah to desert

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Bones of fish eaten by humans thousands of years ago offer clue to region’s ancient climate

The Sahara’s shift from savannah with abundant lakes to a largely arid expanse has been traced in the remains of fish eaten thousands of years ago.

Researchers analysing material found in a rock shelter in the Acacus mountains in south-west Libya say they have found more than 17,500 animal remains dating from between 10,200 and 4,650 years ago, 80% of which are fish. About two-thirds of the fish were catfish and the rest were tilapia. The team say telltale marks on the bones reveal the fish were eaten by humans who used the shelter.

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Oil and gas firms ‘have had far worse climate impact than thought’

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Study indicates human fossil methane emissions have been underestimated by up to 40%

The oil and gas industry has had a far worse impact on the climate than previously believed, according to a study indicating that human emissions of fossil methane have been underestimated by up to 40%.

Although the research will add to pressure on fossil fuel companies, scientists said there was cause for hope because it showed a big extra benefit could come from tighter regulation of the industry and a faster shift towards renewable energy.

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Victoria’s Secret under fire after store dumps hundreds of bras in bin

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Discovery draws criticism from those who say fashion industry generates too much waste

Hundreds of Victoria’s Secret bras have reportedly been found discarded in a bin close to a recently closed branch of the lingerie store in Colorado.

The discovery comes at a time when the fashion industry is under fire for generating significant levels of waste, while Victoria’s Secret continues to face criticism regarding recent controversies.

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Anthony Albanese backs Adani coalmine but criticises proposed Collinsville power plant

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The ALP leader says a feasibility study into a new coal-fired power station in Queensland is ‘hush money’ for climate sceptics

Anthony Albanese says he supports jobs and economic activity from the Adani coalmine, but he has blasted a feasibility study into a new coal-fired power plant in Collinsville as “hush money” for climate sceptics in the Coalition.

In Queensland on Wednesday for his fourth “vision statement” since taking the Labor leadership, Albanese told reporters the ALP needed to improve its electoral performance in the state given the poor showing in last year’s federal election. He said he was listening to voters in a number of regional centres.

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Storm Dennis: flood-hit communities brace for more heavy rain

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Rivers Severn, Teme and Wye will remain high as rain builds up again from Wednesday morning

Flood-hit UK communities are braced for further heavy rain as river levels continue to threaten to breach barriers.

Hundreds of properties have been flooded and at-risk areas evacuated across England and Wales after the downpours brought by Storm Dennis.

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The world is failing to ensure children have a ‘liveable planet’, report finds

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Children in biggest carbon-emitting nations are healthiest, while those with tiny environmental footprints suffer twofold from poor health and living at the sharp end of the climate crisis

Every country in the world is failing to shield children’s health and their futures from intensifying ecological degradation, climate change and exploitative marketing practices, says a new report.

The report says that despite dramatic improvements in survival, nutrition, and education over the past 20 years, “today’s children face an uncertain future”, with every child facing “existential threats”.

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