Category Archives: Environment

Flights diverted in Delhi as toxic smog hits worst levels of 2019

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Car fumes, industrial emissions and smoke from farms have contributed to pollution crisis

Pollution in Delhi has reached its worst levels so far this year, at almost 400 times the amount deemed healthy, causing planes to be diverted away from the city.

A week on from Diwali, the thick brown smog that shrouded the city after the festival has shown no sign of shifting. On Friday a public health emergency was declared and Delhi’s chief minister Arvind Kejriwal said the city had turned into a “gas chamber”.

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Greta Thunberg asks for lift back across Atlantic as climate meeting shifts to Madrid

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Swedish teenager needs help getting back to Europe following the COP25 meeting’s move from Chile to Spain

As delegates to the COP25 climate summit scramble to adjust to a last-minute change of venue from Santiago to Madrid, one of the highest-profile attendees has stuck out a metaphorical thumb on social media to ask for a lift across the Atlantic.

Teenage Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, who was speaking in California during a stop on her low-emissions journey from Sweden to Chile, tweeted that she was now in need of a ride to Spain.

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Brazilian ‘forest guardian’ killed by illegal loggers in ambush

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Paulo Paulino Guajajara was killed by armed loggers in the Araribóia region in Maranhão

A Brazilian indigenous land defender has been killed in an ambush by illegal loggers in an Amazon frontier region.

According to a statement by the Brazilian Indigenous Peoples Association, Paulo Paulino Guajajara was shot and killed inside the Araribóia indigenous territory in Maranhão state. Another tribesman, Laércio Guajajara, was also shot and hospitalised and a logger has been reported missing. No body has yet been recovered.

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Leonardo DiCaprio calls Greta Thunberg ‘a leader of our time’

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Environmentalist actor says first meeting with teenage climate activist was ‘an honour’

Leonardo DiCaprio has praised teenage climate change activist Greta Thunberg as a “leader of our time” following their first meeting.

DiCaprio, a prominent environmental campaigner, said 16-year-old Thunberg’s message should be a “wake-up call to world leaders everywhere that the time for inaction is over”.

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Antarctic marine park: conservationists frustrated after protection bid fails for eighth time

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Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources unable to agree on plan backed by Australia, France and EU

Conservationists have expressed frustration that an international commission for protecting marine life in Antarctica has failed for the eighth consecutive time to create a marine park across 1 million sq km on the continent’s east.

Members of the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) could not agree on the proposal, backed by Australia, France and the EU, that would have protected habitat for penguins, seals, whales and seabirds.

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Fracking halted in England in major government U-turn

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Victory for green groups follows damning scientific study and criticism from spending watchdog

The government has halted fracking in England with immediate effect in a watershed moment for environmentalists and community activists.

Ministers also warned shale gas companies it would not support future fracking projects, in a crushing blow to companies that had been hoping to capitalise on one of the new frontiers of growth in the fossil fuel industry.

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Brazil blames devastating oil spill on Greek-flagged tanker

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  • Ship carrying Venezuelan crude was only vessel in area at time
  • Attorney general’s office calls damage to coasts ‘immeasurable’

A Greek-flagged ship carrying Venezuelan crude was the source of an oil spill which has tarred thousands of kilometers of coastline over the past two months, Brazilian investigators have announced.

Police said the tanker appears to have spilled the crude about 700km (420 miles) off Brazil’s coast between 28 and 29 July, bound for Singapore with oil loaded at Venezuela’s San José terminal.

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To the moon and back with the eastern curlew

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Ultra-endurance athlete, aerodynamic wonder … and facing extinction. Why the bird who flies 30,000km a year needs Australia’s mudflats

• Vote for your favourite in the 2019 bird of the year poll

The ascent is vertical. Up, up and into the jet stream. If the conditions are not right up there it will come back down and wait. But if there is a good tailwind in the right direction it will begin an epic journey that will take it around the curvature of the Earth; from the Arctic Circle to the southern hemisphere.

Using the sun and stars as a compass, and navigating by the Earth’s magnetic field, recognising landmarks, the far eastern curlew will fly nonstop to the Yellow Sea, where it fuels up on the mudflats of north-east China.

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Australian aluminium smelters ‘not sustainable’ due to high power costs, Rio Tinto says

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Warning comes a week after company flagged it may close its New Zealand smelter

Mining giant Rio Tinto says its Australian Aluminium smelters, which employ more than 2,600 workers, are not sustainable at current power prices.

The company runs three smelters in Australia, which are under financial pressure due to the high price of electricity, which makes up about a third of their costs, and the low price of aluminium due to a flood of cheap supply coming from Asian competitors.

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Quarter of world’s pig population ‘to die of African swine fever’

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World Organisation for Animal Health warns spread of disease has inflamed worldwide crisis

About a quarter of the global pig population is expected to die as a result of the African swine fever (ASF) epidemic, according to the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE).

Global pork prices are rising spurred by growing demand from China, where as many as 100 million pigs have died since ASF broke out there last year. In recent months, China has been granting export approval to foreign meat plants and signing deals around the world at a dizzying rate. US pork sales to China have doubled, while European pork prices have now reached a six-year high.

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Chilean president cancels Apec and climate summits amid wave of unrest

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Sebastián Piñera confirms he will not hold summits in November and December, as government struggles with massive protests

Chile’s embattled president has been forced to cancel two major international summits after government concessions failed to defuse weeks of violent protests that have seen thousands of arrests, left at least 20 dead and sent shock waves across Latin America.

Related: Chile protesters: 'We are subjugated by the rich. It's time for that to end'

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California wildfires: unprecedented ‘extreme red flag warning’ issued as blazes spread – video

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Firefighters in California have been battling wildfires across the state as winds are expected to pick up again. The Kincade fire in Sonoma county, in the north of the US state, had destroyed 124 homes and other structures by Tuesday morning and was threatening 90,000 structures. Crews were also working to control a fire near the Getty Museum in Los Angeles that had prompted evacuations on Monday

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Hundreds of koalas feared burned alive in out-of-control bushfire near Port Macquarie

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Blaze around Lake Innes and Lake Cathie in northern NSW has destroyed more than 2,000 hectares and spread smoke haze to Sydney

Hundreds of koalas are feared to have died in an out-of-control bushfire in northern New South Wales which has raged unchecked for days in the heartland of their prime habitat.

The blaze, reportedly caused by a lightning strike near Port Macquarie, has burned more than 2,000 hectares, including an important koala breeding ground.

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‘The climate doesn’t need awards’: Greta Thunberg declines environmental prize

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The teen activist implored politicians and people in power to ‘listen to the best available science’ in an Instagram post

The Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg has refused to accept an environmental award, saying the climate movement needed people in power to start to “listen” to “science” and not awards.

The young climate activist, who has rallied millions to her “Fridays for Future” movement, was honoured at a Stockholm ceremony held by the Nordic Council, a regional body for inter-parliamentary cooperation.

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Rising sea levels pose threat to homes of 300m people – study

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Figure based on new analysis of coastlines is more than three times previous estimate

More than three times more people are at risk from rising sea levels than previously believed, research suggests.

Land that is currently home to 300 million people will flood at least once a year by 2050 unless carbon emissions are cut significantly and coastal defences strengthened, says the study, published in Nature Communications. This is far above the previous estimate of 80 million.

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The fight to stop Nestlé from taking America’s water to sell in plastic bottles

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Creek beds are bone dry and once-gushing springs are reduced to trickles as fights play out around the nation over control of nation’s freshwater supply

The network of clear streams comprising California’s Strawberry Creek run down the side of a steep, rocky mountain in a national forest two hours east of Los Angeles. Last year Nestlé siphoned 45m gallons of pristine spring water from the creek and bottled it under the Arrowhead Water label.

Though it’s on federal land, the Swiss bottled water giant paid the US Forest Service and state practically nothing, and it profited handsomely: Nestlé Waters’ 2018 worldwide sales exceeded $7.8bn.

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Healthy diet means a healthy planet, study shows

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Healthier food choices almost always benefit environment as well, according to analysis

Eating healthy food is almost always also best for the environment, according to the most sophisticated analysis to date.

The researchers said poor diets threaten society by seriously harming people and the planet, but the latest research can inform better choices.

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California: thousands evacuated as wildfires spread – video

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Tens of thousands of people in California have been ordered to evacuate their homes as wildfires spread over the weekend. The Kincade fire in Sonoma County doubled in size on Sunday because of high winds, and wildfires broke out in Los Angeles near the J Paul Getty Museum. About 200,000 people are under evacuation orders across the state and millions are without power.

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Could cities profit from protecting themselves against rising seas?

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Some coastal cities are reclaiming land as a barrier against rising water – then selling it off. But critics argue that climate change defence should not be a business model

“The island is going to be placed where the British empire’s fleet once was,” says Anne Skovbro, looking out from her office in a 19th-century customs house over Copenhagen’s harbour.

She points out the mooring posts where tall ships once docked, the old masting crane that marked the harbour’s outer edge, and the patch of sea where Horatio Nelson is supposed to have held a telescope to his blind eye as his ships set the city’s medieval centre ablaze.

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Super-rich fuelling growing demand for private jets, report finds

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Growth centred in US and China, with slowdown in Sweden attributed to Greta Thunberg

Almost 8,000 new private jets are expected to be bought by multinational companies and the super-rich over the next decade, each of which will burn 40 times as much carbon per passenger as regular commercial flights, according to a report by aviation firm Honeywell Aerospace.

About 690 new business jets are expected to take to the skies in 2019, a 9% increase on 2018, as businesses and the wealthy refresh their fleets with fancy new models released by three of the world’s biggest private jet manufacturers.

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