Category Archives: Environment

Humans causing shrinking of nature as larger animals die off

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Average size of wild animals predicted to fall by a quarter in 100 years through extinctions

Humanity’s ongoing destruction of wildlife will lead to a shrinking of nature, with the average body size of animals falling by a quarter, a study predicts.

The researchers estimate that more than 1,000 larger species of mammals and birds will go extinct in the next century, from rhinos to eagles. They say this could lead to the collapse of ecosystems that humans rely on for food and clean water.

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From no recycling to zero waste: how Ljubljana rethought its rubbish

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Fifteen years ago, all the Slovenian capital’s waste went to landfill, but by 2025, at least 75% of its rubbish will be recycled. How did the city turn itself around?

Words and photographs by Luka Dakskobler

From the lush green hill you can see Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia, in the distance. Populations of deer, rabbits and turtles live here. The air is clean and the only signs that we are standing above a 24-metre (79 feet) deep landfill are the methane gas pipes rising from the grass.

Ljubljana is the first European capital to commit to going zero-waste. But fifteen years ago, all of its refuse went straight to landfill. “And that is expensive,” says Nina Sankovič of Voka Snaga, the city’s waste management company. “It takes up space and you’re throwing away resources.”

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EU ignoring climate crisis with livestock farm subsidies, campaigners warn

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Billions of euros spent on supporting climate-intensive meat and dairy farms, which have shown no drop in emissions since 2010

The EU is disregarding the climate emergency by continuing to give out billions of euros in subsidies to climate-intensive livestock farms at the same time as promising to cut emissions, say campaigners.

Under the Paris climate agreement, the EU and its member states have committed to reduce emissions in the European Union by at least 40% by 2030. The EU’s farming sector has shown no decline in emissions since 2010, with meat and dairy estimated to be responsible for 12-17% of total greenhouse gas emissions.

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From lipstick to burgers: how our lives have become so chemical dependent

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The start of the suburban sprawl changed the US into a nation of voracious consumers, and the chemical industry responded by creating products to meet those demands

My students sometimes ask me why in the United States there are cancer-causing ingredients in their cosmetics, or neurotoxins in their mattresses. Or hormone disruptors, and prescription drugs, in their drinking water.

I always answer by chalking out a map of the country, and its grid of 48,000 miles of interstate highways that were constructed after the second world war. The roads were initially conceived as a defense against foreign invasion, I tell them. But the unintended consequences include a host of major environmental and health problems we are only now beginning to understand, from climate change and species extinction to cancer.

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Is John Bolton trying to drive Trump to war with Iran? – podcast

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Donald Trump’s national security adviser, John Bolton, was a key architect of the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. Now he is stoking tensions with Iran. Julian Borger describes how the standoff could get out of control. Also today: Katharine Viner on how the Guardian is updating its language when reporting on the climate crisis

John Bolton, who has been called “the most dangerous man in the world”, was not Donald Trump’s first pick for his national security adviser. But after a series of resignations, he was plucked from a life of Fox News appearances to reprise his career as the foremost military hawk in the US. Now he has his sights set on Iran and has pushed for a buildup of US military assets in the Gulf.

The Guardian’s world affairs editor, Julian Borger, tells Anushka Asthana that as tensions rise, so do the chances of an accidental – or deliberate – escalation towards war. The echoes of the drumbeat to war in Iraq in 2003 are all too apparent, and it was Bolton’s role in that crisis that prompted a Guardian columnist to attempt to make a citizen’s arrest of him in the tranquil surroundings of the Hay literary festival in 2008. George Monbiot describes how he came out second best from that encounter.

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Raw ivory sales: Zimbabwe, Botswana and Namibia call for end to ban

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Southern African countries to appeal to watchdog for permission to sell stockpiled ivory worth more than £230m

Zimbabwe, Botswana and Namibia are making a fresh appeal for a global watchdog to lift restrictive measures on the trade in raw ivory.

The watchdog, Cites, prohibits unregulated commercial trade in endangered species around the world.

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Revealed: 1.6m Americans live near the most polluting incinerators in the US

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Lower-income and minority communities are exposed to majority of the pollution coming from waste-burning plants, report finds

A total of 1.6 million Americans live next to the most polluting incinerators in the country, with lower-income and minority communities exposed to the vast majority of pollution coming from these waste-burning plants.

The burning of household and commercial waste can give off a stew of pollutants, including mercury, lead and small particles of soot. This pollution isn’t evenly distributed, however. Of the 73 incinerators across the US, 79% are located within three miles of low-income and minority neighbourhoods, according to research by the Tishman Environment and Design Center at New York City’s New School.

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Europe’s Greens ready to be kingmakers in EU elections

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Green candidates, on course for their best showing, could play a big role in a divided parliament

Europe’s Greens are on course for their strongest showing to date in next week’s European elections – and could find themselves kingmakers in a newly fragmented EU parliament.

“We’ll be at the table,” said Bas Eickhout, an MEP from the Netherlands and a co-candidate of Europe’s Green parties for European commission president. “We have a good chance to determine the new majorities. And we will have our demands, on green issues, social issues, and the rule of law.”

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‘That’s where the dream ends’: the surfers who took on a development company in Fiji

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Jona Ratu has lived on Malolo Island his entire life. One day he walked down to the beach of the land he owns with two Australian surfers to find that diggers had arrived and a Chinese development company was tearing up the reef. Ratu and his two friends started a battle that would cost tens of thousands of dollars in order to save their land.

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Reef wipeout: surfers fight China-linked mega resort in Fiji

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Jona Ratu and his friends wanted to build an eco-lodge in their corner of paradise – then the diggers arrived

It was one of the most surreal days of Jona Ratu’s life. On a May morning in 2018 he strolled down to the palm-fringed beach on a parcel of land he owns on idyllic Malolo island to find a digger parked on the coral reef.

“They just dug, they kept digging, digging, digging,” Ratu remembers.

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Japanese man prepares for landmark case against dolphin hunts

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Taiji resident will testify in attempt to ban activity as part of charity’s legal challenge

A man from Taiji, the Japanese fishing town whose annual slaughter of dolphins has drawn widespread condemnation, will appear in court on Friday in an unprecedented legal challenge to the hunts.

In an exclusive interview with the Guardian, the plaintiff, who has asked not to be named until the hearing has concluded, said he had been been ostracised in Taiji, where he was born and raised but decided to speak out against the hunts.

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414 million pieces of plastic found on remote island group in Indian Ocean

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Debris on Cocos (Keeling) Islands was mostly bottles, cutlery, bags and straws, but also included 977,000 shoes, study says

On the beaches of the tiny Cocos (Keeling) Islands, population 600, marine scientists found 977,000 shoes and 373,000 toothbrushes.

Related: ‘Monstrous’: Indigenous rangers’ struggle against the plastic ruining Arnhem Land beaches

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‘One day we’ll disappear’: Tuvalu’s sinking islands | Eleanor Ainge Roy

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Rising seas are on the verge of swallowing two of the tiny archipelago’s nine islands, and the encroaching waves haunt locals’ dreams

On the hottest days, Leitu Frank feels like she can’t breathe any more. The housewife and mother of five decamps from her airless concrete home to catch the breeze in a simple wooden shack by the water’s edge. She folds washing and stares out at the unsettled turquoise sea, its moods and rhythms increasingly unpredictable, as its rising proximity threatens to strangle her family.

“The sea is eating all the sand,” says Frank, 32, dressed in a pink stretchy T-shirt and faded sarong.

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‘Extraordinary thinning’ of ice sheets revealed deep inside Antarctica

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New research shows affected areas are losing ice five times faster than in the 1990s, with more than 100m of thickness gone in some places

Ice losses are rapidly spreading deep into the interior of the Antarctic, new analysis of satellite data shows.

The warming of the Southern Ocean is resulting in glaciers sliding into the sea increasingly rapidly, with ice now being lost five times faster than in the 1990s. The West Antarctic ice sheet was stable in 1992 but up to a quarter of its expanse is now thinning. More than 100 metres of ice thickness has been lost in the worst-hit places.

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Heavy metals and harmful chemicals ‘poison Europe’s seas’

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Three-quarters of areas tested show contamination, European Environment Agency says

Heavy metals and a cocktail of dangerous chemicals continue to poison Europe’s seas, with more than three-quarters of areas assessed showing contamination, according to a report.

The sea worst affected was the Baltic, where 96% of the assessed areas showed problematic levels of some harmful substances, according to the European Environment Agency. Similar problems were found in 91% of the Black Sea and 87% of the Mediterranean. In the north-east Atlantic, unsafe levels of chemicals or metals were found in 75% of assessed areas.

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‘It would destroy it’: new international airport for Machu Picchu sparks outrage

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Peruvian archaeologists decry new airport that would carry tourists directly to already fragile Inca citadel

Among the Inca archeological sites that abound in Peru, none draw nearly as many tourists as the famed citadel of Machu Picchu. There were more than 1.5 million visitors in 2017, almost double the limit recommended by Unesco, putting a huge strain on the fragile ruins and local ecology.

Now, in a move that has drawn a mixture of horror and outrage from archaeologists, historians and locals, work has begun on clearing ground for a multibillion-dollar international airport, intended to jet tourists much closer to Machu Picchu .

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Tax carbon, not people: UN chief issues climate plea from Pacific ‘frontline’

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Antonio Guterres hears from leaders at Fiji summit who warn region is facing ‘an unprecedented global catastrophe’

Governments around the world must introduce carbon taxes, halt plans for new coal plants and accelerate the closure of existing ones if damage to the Pacific from climate change is to be limited, the UN secretary general has told Pacific leaders on his first visit to the region.

Antonio Guterres met leaders of Pacific countries in Fiji, on a trip that will also see him visit Vanuatu, considered one of the countries most vulnerable to natural disasters due to climate change, and Tuvalu, which is at risk of sinking under rising waters.

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Australia’s biodiversity at breaking point – a picture essay

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Land clearing, deforestation, emissions, drought and warming oceans are all worsening the attack on Australia’s threatened species

Australia’s biodiversity is in trouble. The UN global assessment report painted a stark picture: the decline of the world’s natural support systems means that human society is in danger. According to the report, nature is being destroyed at a rate tens to hundreds of times higher than the average over the past 10 million years. More than a million species are at risk of extinction, natural ecosystems have declined by about 47% and the biomass of wild mammals has fallen by 82%. All of this is largely because of human activity. And the resulting impacts are likely to worsen unless we take action immediately.

As Guardian Australia has reported, Australia’s natural support systems are at breaking point. Increased land-clearing, warming oceans and a drought exacerbated by climate change are taking their toll on our biodiversity. The country is already experiencing rising oceans, marine heatwaves, longer fire seasons and extreme heat patterns. These are consistent with a changing climate.

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Germany’s AfD turns on Greta Thunberg as it embraces climate denial

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Rightwing populists to launch attack on climate science in vote drive before EU elections

Germany’s rightwing populists are embracing climate change denial as the latest topic with which to boost their electoral support, teaming up with scientists who claim hysteria is driving the global warming debate and ridiculing the Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg as “mentally challenged” and a fraud.

The Alternative für Deutschland party (AfD) is expected to launch its biggest attack yet on mainstream climate science at a symposium in parliament on Tuesday supported by a prominent climate change denial body linked by researchers to prominent conservative groups in the US.

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Man makes deepest-ever dive in Mariana Trench and discovers … trash

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A retired naval officer dove in a submarine nearly 36,000ft into the deepest place on Earth, only to find what appears to be plastic

On the deepest dive ever made by a human inside a submarine, a Texas investor found something he could have found in the gutter of nearly any street in the world: trash.

Victor Vescovo, a retired naval officer, made the unsettling discovery as he descended nearly 35,853ft (10,927 meters) to a point in the Pacific Ocean’s Mariana Trench that is the deepest place on Earth, his expedition said in a statement on Monday. His dive went 52ft (16 meters) lower than the previous deepest descent in the trench in 1960.

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