Category Archives: Environment

How do we feed the world without destroying it? | Bob Geldof

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An international summit next year will tackle the world’s most enduring crisis – hunger. Radical action is needed

Hunger is the most awful and profound expression of poverty. It exists in every country. It is something that most people can identify with on some perhaps primordial level. It is innate. The fear of hunger is etched into our DNA, passed down the generations from hungry, scared ancestors. It is in our bones. It is in my Irish bones.

First, the good news. For several decades global hunger has been decreasing. This is mostly thanks to the sweat and ingenuity of the 500 million smallholders who produce 80% of the food consumed in the developing world. It is also thanks to the work of exceptional NGOs, to economic growth and to the innovation of businesses all along the supply chain. It’s thanks, too, to the support of governments and international organisations. And it’s to increased political stability in some places.

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Police ban Extinction Rebellion protests from whole of London

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City-wide Met police operation begins to clear Trafalgar Square and other protest sites

Police have banned Extinction Rebellion protests from continuing anywhere in London, as they moved in almost without warning to clear protesters who remained at the movement’s camp in Trafalgar Square.

The Metropolitan police issued a revised section 14 order on Monday night that said “any assembly linked to the Extinction Rebellion ‘Autumn Uprising’ ... must now cease their protests within London (MPS and City of London Police Areas)” by 9pm.

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Labor MPs condemn suggestion they adopt Coalition climate change policy

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Joel Fitzgibbon’s climate change ‘settlement’ is rejected but Labor will allow the government’s ‘big stick’ energy policy to pass

Joel Fitzgibbon has copped a blast in the left and right caucus meetings for declaring Labor should adopt the Coalition’s Paris emissions reduction target rather than pursue ambitious cuts to carbon pollution.

The internal unrest came as the shadow cabinet was expected to sign off on Monday night on a shift in Labor’s attitude to the controversial “big stick” policy of the Morrison government.

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Inside Copenhagen’s race to be the first carbon-neutral city

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Green growth and ‘hedonistic sustainability’ have helped keep the public on board as the Danish capital seeks to reach its goal by 2025 – and so far it’s all going according to plan

“We call it hedonistic sustainability,” says Jacob Simonsen of the decision to put an artificial ski slope on the roof of the £485m Amager Resource Centre (Arc), Copenhagen’s cutting-edge new waste-to-energy power plant. “It’s not just good for the environment, it’s good for life.”

Skiing is just one of the activities that Simonsen, Arc’s chief executive, and Bjarke Ingels, its lead architect, hope will enhance the latest jewel in Copenhagen’s sustainability crown. The incinerator building also incorporates hiking and running trails, a street fitness gym and the world’s highest outdoor climbing wall, an 85-metre “natural mountain” complete with overhangs that rises the full height of the main structure.

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‘Ultimate gift to future generations’: plan to laser map all land on Earth

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Project to record cultural, geological and environmental treasures at risk from climate crisis

A project to produce detailed maps of all the land on Earth through laser scanning has been revealed by researchers who say action is needed now to preserve a record of the world’s cultural, environmental and geological treasures.

Prof Chris Fisher, an archaeologist from Colorado State University, said he founded the Earth Archive as a response to the climate crisis.

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Last wolves in Africa: the fragile wildlife of Ethiopia’s ravaged parks | Tom Gardner

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Wildfires and an encroaching population are threatening grasslands that host some of the world’s rarest species

Conservationist Getachew Assefa points across the valley. “It started close to the mist over there, by the most spectacular viewpoint,” he says. “Almost all the grassland was burnt. All of that plateau and the steep cliff over there.”

Six months after wildfires torched this part of Ethiopia’s Simien Mountains, the scars are healing: heather and grass have returned to carpet the hilltop, brightened by the yellow daisies which bloom after the long rains. On the near side of the valley lie barley fields, rippling in the wind.

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US mayors seek to bypass Trump with direct role at UN climate talks

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‘If cities are invited to be at the table, I believe they will help accelerate the work that needs to be done’ said LA mayor Eric Garcetti

US mayors are seeking to go over President Trump’s head and negotiate directly at next month’s UN climate change conference in Santiago, they said as they met in Copenhagen for the C40 World Mayors Summit.

Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti, who rallied US mayors to commit to the Paris climate agreement after Trump announced his intention to withdraw the country in 2017, said he would ask the UN secretary general, António Guterres, on Thursday to give American cities a new role in UN climate talks.

“I’m going to bring it up with the UN secretary general,” Garcetti said. “If cities are invited to be at the table, I believe they will help accelerate the work that needs to be done. Hopefully, we can do it in concert with our national governments, but [we can do it] even where there is conflict.”

Garcetti, who was announced on Wednesday as the next chair of the C40 group of global cities, said he would use his position to seek “a more formal role in the deliberations” at the conference.

“The United Nations works directly with cities all the time ... so they shouldn’t feel feel scared about jumping down to that local level,” he said.

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Two-thirds of bird species in North America could vanish in climate crisis

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Continent could lose 389 of 604 species studied to threats from rising temperatures, higher seas, heavy rains and urbanization

Two-thirds of bird species in North America are at risk of extinction because of the climate crisis, according to a new report from researchers at the Audubon Society, a leading US conservation group.

Related: Record numbers of Australia's wildlife species face 'imminent extinction'

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The climate crisis in 2050: what happens if cities act but nations don’t?

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It is cities, not national governments, that are most aggressively fighting the climate crisis – and in 30 years they could look radically different

She has barely ever been in a car, and never eaten meat or flown. Now 31, she lives on the 15th floor of a city centre tower from where she can just see the ocean 500 yards away on one side and the suburbs and informal settlements sprawling as far as the eye can see on the other.

Life is OK in this megacity. She earns the exact median income and is as green as she feels she can be: she has no children yet, her carbon footprint is negligible, and her apartment, built in the early 2000s, has been retrofitted for climate change with deep insulation, its own solar air-con and heating systems.

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Oil contaminating Brazil’s beaches ‘very likely from Venezuela’, minister says

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Government says foreign ship appears to have caused the spill, in accusation likely to further strain Brazilian-Venezuelan relations

Thick crude oil that has stained hundreds of miles of pristine Brazilian beach in recent weeks probably originated in Venezuela, the Brazilian government has said, in an accusation likely to further strain relations between the two countries.

Related: 'Chaos, chaos, chaos': a journey through Bolsonaro's Amazon inferno

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Humpback whale found dead in Thames was hit by a ship

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Investigators say it is unclear whether wound happened before or after its death

A humpback whale that died after swimming into the Thames was hit by a ship, the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) has said.

However, it is not clear whether the wound on the juvenile female was inflicted before or after its death.

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‘Inspirational’: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez applauds mayors’ Global Green New Deal

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Mayors of more than 90 of the world’s biggest cities voice support for bold proposal to fight climate change as they lambast ‘failed’ UN climate summit

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said she was ‘inspired’ by the Global Green New Deal, a bold proposal to fight climate change announced today by the C40 group of global mayors.

To kick off their major summit this week the group, which represents more than 90 of the world’s biggest cities, voiced their backing for the plan and said it reaffirmed their “commitment to protecting the environment, strengthening our economy, and building a more equitable future by cutting emissions”.

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Escape to the country: India’s villagers open doors to city tourists | Anne Pinto-Rodrigues

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A scheme training people to host outsiders is creating alternative livelihoods that will help build resilience against climate crisis and stem migration for Indian families

Datta Kondar leads a group of tourists through his village in Maharashtra to view the firefly spectacle for which it is so famous. With the arrival of the monsoons in June, thousands of fireflies emerge at twilight and perform an elaborate courtship ritual, signalling to prospective mates with their glowing bodies in a mesmerising show.

Being a tour guide is not what Kondar, 36, had planned. In 2003, he took the typical route of many rural Indians, travelling to the city in search of work. But he found himself unable to cope with the gritty realities of life in Mumbai and returned to his village, Purushwadi, within a year.

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‘Right here, right now’: Fatboy Slim samples Greta Thunberg for live show

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The dance artist electrifies crowd after mixing the climate activist’s UN speech slogan with his club favourite

Fatboy Slim has paid tribute to Greta Thunberg in a performance in Gateshead over the weekend, mixing her speech to the United Nations into a performance of his club favourite Right Here, Right Now.

The mash-up opens with Thunberg’s voice, delivering her blistering speech to world leaders about the climate crisis over the synth melody.

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Eco-warrior Swampy on Extinction Rebellion: ‘It gives me hope’

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After being fined for blocking oil refinery traffic, Daniel Hooper, once the public face of green activism, applauds new generation

More than two decades after Britain saw its first widespread environmental protests, Extinction Rebellion is the latest in the vanguard.

But while campaign groups have come and gone, it’s business as usual for Daniel Hooper, the veteran eco-warrior known as Swampy who says the latest protests give him “hope”.

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Extinction Rebellion: Johnson calls climate crisis activists ‘uncooperative crusties’

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PM hits out at protesters for ‘littering’ London with ‘heaving hemp-smelling bivouacs’

The prime minister has attacked the Extinction Rebellion activists protesting in London over the climate crisis, dismissing them as “uncooperative crusties” who should stop blocking the streets of the capital with their “heaving hemp-smelling bivouacs”.

Boris Johnson made the remarks at the launch of the final volume of a biography of Margaret Thatcher written by his former boss at the Daily Telegraph, Charles Moore.

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Sight of people fighting over water sends plumbers on to India’s streets | Amrit Dhillon

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With the country’s major cities set to run out of groundwater in 2020, volunteers are helping to conserve precious supplies

Drenched in perspiration on a muggy Sunday afternoon in New Delhi, Ashia Saifi climbs up and down the stairs of apartment buildings, ringing on doorbells and asking if residents have any leaking taps they want fixed.

Sometimes, the door is slammed shut in her face. People are scared of intruders and strangers, even though Saifi sports a little white cap that’s the emblem of the Aam Aadmi party (Common Man), or AAP, which rules the Indian capital.

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‘Once they’re gone, they’re gone’: the fight to save the giant sequoia

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A conservation group plans to buy the largest privately owned sequoia grove as the climate crisis threatens the species’ future

Few living beings have experienced as much as the giant sequoias. With ancestors dating back to the Jurassic era, some of the trees that now grow along California’s Sierra Nevada Mountains been alive for thousands of years, bearing witness to most of human history – from the fall of the Roman empire to the rise of Beyoncé.

But a couple hundred years of human encroachment on to the sequoias’ habitat, combined with the climate crisis, increasingly intense wildfires, and drought have threatened the species’ future. The last of the world’s most massive trees now live on just 73 groves scattered across the Sierras. Most lie within protected national parks such as Sequoia national park, where visitors flock from around the world to marvel at General Sherman, the world’s most massive tree.

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Six wild elephants die trying to save each other in Thai waterfall

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Incident reportedly happened after baby elephant slipped over falls

Six wild elephants have died while trying to save each other after falling into a waterfall at the Khao Yai National Park in Thailand.

Two others were saved during the incident on Saturday at the Haew Narok waterfall in the north-eastern province of Nakhon Ratchasima, officials said.

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