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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...Prince says private sector needs to lead with green investments towards sustainable economy
Prince Charles has called on the City of London to help protect the environment by investing trillions of pounds into green investments which help create a sustainable economy.
In an interview with the Evening Standard the heir to the British throne said big businesses and City investors must drive a rapid decarbonisation of the economy before the environmental crisis becomes “a total catastrophe”.
Continue reading...‘Total surprise’ discovery overturns conventional understanding of rivers
In the turbid, frigid waters roaring from the glaciers of Canada’s high Arctic, researchers have made a surprising discovery: for decades, the northern rivers secretly pulled carbon dioxide from the atmosphere at a rate faster than the Amazon rainforest.
The findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, flip the conventional understanding of rivers, which are largely viewed as sources of carbon emissions.
Continue reading...Controversial energy scheme had been halted by European court
The UK’s largest fossil fuel generators may be back in line for almost £1bn in backup power subsidies this winter after the European commission approved the UK’s flagship energy scheme, which was ruled illegal last year.
A shock European court ruling brought the government’s “capacity market” to a standstill last November, triggering an in-depth investigation into whether the UK’s plan to pay power plants to stay open was compatible with EU state aid law.
Continue reading...A group of women in Noumea who swim and snorkel up to 3km five days a week have uncovered a large population of venomous sea snakes in the Baie des Citrons where scientists once believed they were rare. The citizen scientists, aged in their 60s and 70s, call themselves 'the fantastic grandmothers’. They swim with the 1.5-long lethal greater sea snakes, documenting the local population with cameras to take note of their breeding habits and share them with experts
Continue reading...There is a transcript of his conversation with US attorney, but officials say they do not intend to share it with estimates. All the day’s events, live
Mark Butler to Angus Taylor:
“I refer to the minister’s previous answer – where did the minister get the forged document?”
I absolutely reject the premise of the question and the bizarre assertions being peddled by those opposite.
Mark Butler to Angus Taylor:
My question is to the minister of emissions reduction. Section 253 of the New South Wales crimes act creates a serious offence for making a false document to influence the exercise of a public duty. I refer to his provision of a forged City of Sydney document in the Daily Telegraph in an attempt to influence the Lord Mayor of Sydney in exercise of her public duty. Will he administer to this house that this forgery was not made by him or his office?
Yes.
Continue reading...Farmers given until 2022 to make changes or pay higher taxes as party of net-zero emissions by 2050 policy
New Zealand farmers have five years to reduce their carbon emissions before the government introduces financial penalties, prime minister Jacinda Ardern has announced.
Ardern’s Labour coalition government has committed to making New Zealand carbon net-zero by 2050, with the PM likening the climate change battle to the previous generations’ struggle against the rise of nuclear power.
Continue reading...Women’s photography of greater sea snake, once believed to be an anomaly in the Baie des Citrons, help scientists understand the ecosystem
A group of snorkelling grandmothers who swim up to 3km five days a week have uncovered a large population of venomous sea snakes in a bay in Noumea where scientists once believed they were rare.
Claire Goiran from the University of New Caledonia and Professor Rick Shine from Australia’s Macquarie University were studying a small harmless species known as the turtle‐headed sea snake located in the Baie des Citrons, but would occasionally encounter the 1.5 metre-long venomous greater sea snake, also known as the olive-headed sea snake.
Continue reading...Enele Sopoaga says he was also ‘insulted and deeply angry’ at comments made by Australian deputy prime minister Michael McCormack
The former prime minister of Tuvalu has said he was “stunned” by Scott Morrison’s behaviour at the recent Pacific Islands Forum, which he though communicated the view that Pacific leaders should “take the money … then shut up about climate change”.
Enele Sopoaga, speaking at the national conference of the Australian Council for International Development (Acfid) in Sydney on Wednesday, said Morrison’s behaviour at the forum, which Tuvalu hosted in August, was “dismissive” of the concerns of the Pacific regarding the climate crisis.
Continue reading...Russian navy discovers yet-to-be-named islands previously hidden under glaciers
The Russian navy says it has discovered five new islands revealed by melting glaciers in the remote Arctic.
An expedition in August and September charted the islands, which have yet to be named and were previously hidden under glaciers, said the head of the northern fleet, Vice-Admiral Alexander Moiseyev.
Continue reading...In the shadow of South Africa’s car industry, making use of discarded parts is a way of life – so Port Elizabeth’s Kevin Kimwelle makes a virtue of it
Tell us: how have South African cities changed in the 25 years after apartheid?
“You’re lucky you arrived on a Monday,” says architect Kevin Kimwelle as we drive through the twisting back streets of Port Elizabeth. “The municipality collects rubbish on a Monday … but later in the week, it’ll be a terrible mess.”
In South Africa waste collection is just one of the services that government struggles to deliver. A little under half of the country (41% of households) is without basic waste collection services, let alone recycling: as a nation, only 10% of waste is recycled, while 90% ends up in landfills.
Continue reading...Our two-year study shows the lake has been stable since the 1990s. Costly ‘solutions’ shift focus from the complex causes of the region’s deadly crisis
Lake Chad is a hydrological miracle – a life-giving, freshwater lake in the Sahara desert. But the region around the lake has been engulfed in a violent crisis for more than a decade, which has left nearly 10 million people in urgent need of humanitarian assistance.
Military crackdowns on insurgent groups such as Boko Haram have failed to end the violence. Bringing durable peace to the region requires unpicking a Gordian knot of many interlinked factors: poverty, sectarian mistrust, political marginalisation and corruption. The risks posed by the climate crisis to the rainfall-dependent livelihoods of the people of Lake Chad are an important strand of this challenge.
Continue reading...Animals act as natural pest control in Malaysia’s vast palm oil plantations, reducing crop losses from rodents
Scientists in Malaysia have said they were “stunned” to discover monkeys regularly killing and eating rats on palm oil plantations, providing a natural anti-pest measure in the country, which is responsible for 30% of the world’s palm oil production.
A report released in Current Biology on Monday, showed that southern pig-tailed macaques, generally thought to eat mainly fruit plus occasionally lizards and birds, foraged for rats on plantations. The authors said that the monkeys’ appetite for rodents showed that rather than being pests, as is commonly believed, the primates’ presence reduced crop losses.
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