Crisis networks report rise in number of farmers distressed by uncertainty over future
Charities have said British farmers are increasingly at risk of suicide owing in part to uncertainty over Brexit and the impact of bad weather.
Distressed farmers have made dozens of calls to crisis networks and some have been placed on “suicide watch”, according to the National Farmers’ Union (NFU).
Continue reading...Fabio Schvartsman and other executives resign after claims firm knew dam was unstable
The boss of the Brazilian iron ore mining firm Vale has resigned, following growing public and political anger over the collapse of a dam in which at least 186 people died.
Fabio Schvartsman and several other senior executives resigned on a “temporary” basis on Saturday after prosecutors recommended their dismissal. The move came after a leak of official documents suggested that Vale knew the dam was at a heightened risk of collapse.
Continue reading...There are somewhere between 4,000 and 8,000 people in the city who support themselves by picking up cans and bottles
On a Saturday afternoon in early November, about 30 people are watching a documentary inside a shack in the heart of Bushwick, a post-industrial neighborhood in Brooklyn. They are all canners – people who make a living redeeming empty cans and bottles, five cents a piece. Although they all got up before the sun and have worked in the cold for hours, no one looks like they’re about to fall asleep. All eyes on the screen. The short film, streamed from YouTube and projected on a white sheet, is about a workers cooperative in Argentina.
The screening was organized by Ana Martinez de Luco, a Catholic nun who says she prefers to work “under the sun, not the Vatican”, and calls herself a street nun.
Continue reading...Mining operations continue while more than 500 tonnes of fuel oil remain on board MV Solomon Trader, almost a month after it ran aground
The environmental damage from an oil spill in the Solomon Islands has been worsened by a bauxite mining company’s continued loading operations near the site where a $30m bulk carrier went aground last month.
The Solomon Islands government has sought urgent help from Australia to deal with the environmental disaster because of frustrations at the slow progress in dealing with the spill.
Continue reading...Music festival will no longer sell single-use plastic water bottles in bid to cut waste
With its sea of discarded tents and litter-strewn fields, Glastonbury has become almost as infamous for the mountain of rubbish left in its wake as it is renowned for its music.
But this year, organisers are hitting back – by banning plastic bottles in a bid to stem the tide of waste.
Continue reading...Concrete is everywhere, but it’s bad for the planet, generating large amounts of carbon dioxide. Creative alternatives are in the pipeline
They call them plyscrapers: the sudden emergence of tall buildings constructed almost entirely from timber. Vancouver, Vienna and Brumunddal in Norway have all claimed recently to have the tallest wooden building in the world, and now Tokyo has its own designs on the informal title.
Making buildings from wood may seem like a rather medieval idea. But there is a very modern issue that is driving cities and architects to turn to treated timber as a resource: climate change.
Continue reading...At least two dead and 14 injured in the incident in Sulawesi
Dozens of people have been buried by a landslide at an unlicensed goldmine in Indonesia’s North Sulawesi province, the national disaster agency has said, as emergency personnel used their bare hands and farm tools to reach victims calling for help from beneath the rubble.
The agency said two people were dead and 14 were injured, with at least 60 buried.
Continue reading...About half of the 20m tonnes of rubbish produced by Pakistan each year is burned or thrown into rivers, causing pollution, disease and flooding. A recycling hub in Islamabad is trying to tackle the problem
Photographs by Hazel Thompson/Tearfund
Continue reading...Scientists say it is likely no marine ecosystems are left that are not affected by pollution
The world’s deepest ocean trenches are becoming “the ultimate sink” for plastic waste, according to a study that reveals contamination of animals even in these dark, remote regions of the planet.
For the first time, scientists found microplastic ingestion by organisms in the Mariana trench and five other areas with a depth of more than 6,000 metres, prompting them to conclude “it is highly likely there are no marine ecosystems left that are not impacted by plastic pollution”.
Continue reading...Once a rapidly spreading rift intersects with another fissure, an iceberg of at least 660sq miles is set to be loosened, Nasa says
An iceberg roughly twice the size of New York City is set to break away from an Antarctic ice shelf as a result of a rapidly spreading rift that is being monitored by Nasa.
A crack along part of the Brunt ice shelf in Antarctica first appeared in October 2016, according to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa). The crack is spreading to the east. This rift, known as a Halloween crack, is set to intersect with another fissure that was apparently stable for the past 35 years but is now accelerating north at a rate of around 2.5 miles a year.
Continue reading...Most concrete from demolished buildings is simply dumped, much of it illegally. But there’s a better way – and it involves lightning
At the Shenzhen dump, huge shards of dusty concrete lie in imposing piles. Once the very foundation of this Chinese city, these blocks now seem grotesque in their magnitude, and unsettling in their utter uselessness. Jumbled up with the other relics of modern construction – bricks, wood and steel – and dotted with plastic bags and bottles, it could take centuries, even millennia, for Shenzhen’s discarded concrete to disintegrate back into sand.
China produces more construction waste than any other country - around 2 billion tonnes per year (pdf), or around 4kg per person per day. Two million tonnes of this is concrete. In Shenzhen, which has grown from a town with 30,000 residents to a megacity with 11 million in just 35 years, a full 84% of that construction waste is unceremoniously dumped. It doesn’t even all make its way to official landfills, which don’t have the capacity to handle it, so almost half is disposed in unlicensed sites, or illegally tipped.
Continue reading...When the 2004 tsunami struck, the Moken were saved by their knowledge of the sea. But a catastrophic blaze has exposed authorities’ errors in the rebuilding of their homes
Where stilted huts once stood on the white sand, now there are just charred remains. “This is worse than after the tsunami,” says Hook, a Moken sea nomad surveying the damage fire has wreaked on his former village home in Au Bon Yai bay, Surin island.
After the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami destroyed the previous Moken settlement here on Thailand’s Andaman sea, Hook says people were able to recover some belongings. This time, when fire broke out on 3 February this year, nothing was left. Now the community fears for the future as the authorities begin to reconstruct the village in its original design, an unsafe housing model consisting of highly flammable structures, densely packed together. And it has reignited a row about the Moken’s rights to their ancestral lands.
Continue reading...Expected announcement by ExxonMobil of discovery off island’s south coast seen as potential game changer
Tensions between Cyprus and Turkey over energy could soon come to a head, with ExxonMobil apparently poised to announce a significant natural gas find off the divided island’s southern coast.
After more than three months of deep-water exploration in the eastern Mediterranean, the US firm is expected to unveil findings this week in what is being described as a seminal moment in the race to tap potentially profitable underwater resources.
Continue reading...Holidaymaker shocked to see stowaway python in her slip-ons on return from Queensland
As souvenirs go, it is a unique one. A woman has returned to Scotland from a holiday in Australia to discover a stowaway snake hidden in one of her shoes.
In an incident that will confirm the worst fears of visitors to Australia, Moira Boxall unpacked her luggage after the more than 9,300-mile journey from Queensland to find the small and very much alive creature curled up in her slip-ons. It even shed its skin during its voyage in her footwear.
Continue reading...After water, concrete is the most widely used substance on the planet. But its benefits mask enormous dangers to the planet, to human health – and to culture itself
In the time it takes you to read this sentence, the global building industry will have poured more than 19,000 bathtubs of concrete. By the time you are halfway through this article, the volume would fill the Albert Hall and spill out into Hyde Park. In a day it would be almost the size of China’s Three Gorges Dam. In a single year, there is enough to patio over every hill, dale, nook and cranny in England.
After water, concrete is the most widely used substance on Earth. If the cement industry were a country, it would be the third largest carbon dioxide emitter in the world with up to 2.8bn tonnes, surpassed only by China and the US.
Continue reading...It is time to prove it is serious about phasing out use of fossil fuels worldwide
The United Kingdom is a critically important actor in the global fight against climate change.
As a permanent member of the UN security council, and a member of the G20 group of leading industrialised economies, it is well placed to further a progressive climate agenda and influence other states to fully implement commitments made under the Paris agreement.
Continue reading...New techniques will help customs officers identify and seize wood that came from endangered species
The wooden blinds that lie crumpled in Peter Gasson’s laboratory in Kew Gardens are chipped and forlorn-looking. Their manufacturers had claimed they were made of pine but customs officers were wary. And their suspicions were well-founded. Gasson, Kew’s research leader on wood and timber, found the blinds were not made of pine but ramin.
“All ramin trees, which grow in south-east Asia, are endangered and trade in their wood is illegal,” said Gasson. “On this occasion, we got lucky and stopped people profiting from this trade.”
Continue reading...Climate change and conflict have left the river Jordan a stagnant stream and the Sea of Galilee critically low
If Jesus were alive today, he might reconsider a baptism in the river Jordan; there’s a good chance he’d pick up an eye infection. Faecal bacteria in the pungent, murky waters have risen in recent years to up to six times the recommended levels.
Once a raging torrent, the lower Jordan has been starved of water to become a stagnant stream, filled with sewage and dirty run-off from farms. Around 95% of its historical flow has been diverted by agriculture during the past half-century. And the river’s primary source, the Sea of Galilee – where Christians believe the son of God walked on water – has for years been dammed to prevent its demise.
Continue reading...Children and teenagers from Sunrise Movement say Dianne Feinstein reacted with ‘smugness + disrespect’
The California senator Dianne Feinstein is facing criticism over a video of her response to a group of children and teenagers asking her to support the Green New Deal.
The video clip shows parts of a Friday morning meeting between the Democrat and young activists from the Sunrise Movement. Founded in 2017, the group organizes young people to fight climate change and support the Green New Deal.
Continue reading...Plants, insects and organisms crucial to food production in steep decline, says UN
The world’s capacity to produce food is being undermined by humanity’s failure to protect biodiversity, according to the first UN study of the plants, animals and micro-organisms that help to put meals on our plates.
The stark warning was issued by the Food and Agriculture Organisation after scientists found evidence the natural support systems that underpin the human diet are deteriorating around the world as farms, cities and factories gobble up land and pump out chemicals.
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