Category Archives: Environment

Barcelona port is worst in Europe for cruise ship air pollution

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City tops list of 50 European ports for both sulphur oxide and nitrogen oxide emissions

The port of Barcelona, a city already overwhelmed by mass tourism, has topped a list of 50 European ports for the amount of air pollution produced there by cruise ships, according to a report.

In 2017 cruise ships emitted 32.8 tonnes of sulphur oxide (SOx) in Barcelona, according to the research. Palma de Mallorca was the second most polluted, with 28 tonnes, followed by Venice with 27.5. Southampton, with 19.7 tonnes, was fifth on the list.

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Chernobyl now: ‘I was not afraid of radiation’ – a photo essay

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Photographer Tom Skipp visited Chernobyl and nearby Pripyat, its replacement town Slavutych, and the abandoned sites of the region – meeting the people behind the disaster: from the liquidators who worked at the fallout site, to the resettlers and the community who live and work in the area now

I arrived in Ukraine on the eve of the 32nd anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster. I had not intended for it to be the focus of my time in Kyiv, but leading up to my departure it became an obsession. My arrival in Kyiv on 25 April 2018 was maybe happenstance of planning but I was impelled to head straight from the airport to Slavutych. This was the town built to replace Pripyat and host the evacuated personnel of the Chernobyl power plant, after the decision was made to continue power production following the disaster. All of the Soviet republics were called upon to hurriedly help with the construction of what would eventually be the last atomic town.

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Pollution warnings keep us healthier – but only in the short term

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It is not fair to ask people to adapt their lives to dirty air. We need to solve the problem at source

Can telling people about air pollution lessen the impact? A new air quality index was launched in Hong Kong at the end of 2013. This included forecasts and information for vulnerable people; doctors were enlisted to advise their patients too. A new analysis of seven years of data showed that the start of the index was followed by a 16% reduction in the number of children treated in hospital with respiratory infections and pneumonia. This was attributed to parents following official advice to keep their children indoors during smogs. However, the benefit was short-lived and lasted for only about a year. Other studies have also found that people are willing to adapt their lives for short periods to protect themselves but not in the longer term. No effect was seen in elderly people. This was thought to be due to low literacy rates and difficulties in reaching them with information.

Others have criticised indices for focusing on smogs rather than the more harmful exposure to low levels of air pollution every day. Asking people to adapt to poor air pollution may help but we need to solve the problem at source. Our lives should not be further compromised by adapting what we do because of the quality of our air.

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Two million people at risk of starvation as drought returns to Somalia

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Agencies sound the alarm over ‘climate crisis’ after devastation of crops and livestock

More than 2 million people could face starvation by the end of the summer, unless there are urgent efforts to respond to the drought in Somalia.

Mark Lowcock, the UN’s humanitarian chief, said the country is facing one of the driest rainy seasons in more than three decades, and a “rapidly deteriorating humanitarian situation”.

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‘No way to stop it’: millions of pigs culled across Asia as swine fever spreads

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Experts say region is losing the battle to stop the biggest animal disease outbreak the planet has ever faced

South-east Asia is battling to contain the spread of highly contagious African swine fever, known as “pig Ebola”, which has already led to the culling of millions of pigs in China and Vietnam.

African swine fever, which is harmless to humans but fatal to pigs, was discovered in China in August, where it has caused havoc, leading to more than 1.2m pigs being culled. China is home to almost half of the world’s pigs and the news sent the global price of pork soaring.

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People eat at least 50,000 plastic particles a year, study finds

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Health effects of ingestion of microplastics via food, water and breathing still unknown

The average person eats at least 50,000 particles of microplastic a year and breathes in a similar quantity, according to the first study to estimate human ingestion of plastic pollution.

The true number is likely to be many times higher, as only a small number of foods and drinks have been analysed for plastic contamination. The scientists reported that drinking a lot of bottled water drastically increased the particles consumed.

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Athens’ buried rivers: stream favoured by Plato could see light of day

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The Greek capital entombed its major rivers in concrete during its car-centred postwar development. Now the most storied of them, Ilisos, could be set free

Photographs by Christian Sinibaldi

Walking through the densely built metropolis of Athens, few visitors or even locals realise the Greek capital was once crisscrossed by three major rivers, not to mention some 700 smaller streams that flowed into them.

The Kifisos, the Iridanos and the Ilisos were buried under concrete during the city’s postwar car-centred development, in what daily newspaper Kathimerini has labelled “a crime against the city”.

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Unwelcome guests: moped riders protest as Amsterdam drives them from bike lanes

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Dutch capital steps its pro-cycling reputation up a gear with new regulations – and not everyone is happy

Convoys of mopeds speed down Amsterdam’s bike lanes, beeping their horns and flouting their bare heads. This isn’t some strange Dutch festival, though. These were protests from some of the thousands of furious moped riders ahead of a new city regulation which came into force this week to force them out of bike lanes, on to main roads and into helmets.

The cycling city of Amsterdam is stepping up a gear – with plans to ban petrol and diesel vehicles from the centre by 2030, the removal of 10,000 car-parking spaces, a hike in parking charges and a wide range of measures to take from the car and give to pedestrians, cyclists, green space and children.

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Climate crisis seriously damaging human health, report finds

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National academies say effects include spread of diseases and worse mental health

A report by experts from 27 national science academies has set out the widespread damage global heating is already causing to people’s health and the increasingly serious impacts expected in future.

Scorching heatwaves and floods will claim more victims as extreme weather increases but there are serious indirect effects too, from spreading mosquito-borne diseases to worsening mental health.

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Science institute that advised EU and UN ‘actually industry lobby group’

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International Life Sciences Institute used by corporate backers to counter public health policies, says study

An institute whose experts have occupied key positions on EU and UN regulatory panels is, in reality, an industry lobby group that masquerades as a scientific health charity, according to a peer-reviewed study.

The Washington-based International Life Sciences Institute (ILSI) describes its mission as “pursuing objectivity, clarity and reproducibility” to “benefit the public good”.

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Candidate to run global food body will ‘not defend’ EU stance on GM

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Catherine Geslain-Lanéelle tells US she would be more open to its interests in UN role

Europe’s candidate to run the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), which guides policymakers around the world, has promised the US she will “not defend the EU position” in resisting the global spread of genetically modified organisms (GMOs).

In a bid for US support, Catherine Geslain-Lanéelle told senior US officials at a meeting in Washington on 15 May that under her leadership the FAO would be more open to American interests and accepting of GMOs and gene editing, according to a US official record of the meeting seen by the Guardian.

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Rebecca Solnit: ‘Every protest shifts the world’s balance’

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Two hundred years after the Peterloo massacre, which led to the founding of the Manchester Guardian, protest is shaping our political moment. Where do we go from here?

Scale it up and it’s revolution; scale it down and it’s individual non-cooperation that may be seen as nothing more than obstinacy or malingering or not seen at all. What we call protest identifies one aspect of popular power and resistance, a force so woven into history and everyday life that you miss a lot of its impact if you focus only on groups of people taking stands in public places. But people taking such stands have changed the world over and over, toppled regimes, won rights, terrified tyrants, stopped pipelines and deforestation and dams. They go far further back than the Peterloo protests and massacre 200 years ago, to the great revolutions of France and then of Haiti against France and back before that to peasant uprisings and indigenous resistance in Africa and the Americas to colonisation and enslavement and to countless acts of resistance on all scales that were never recorded.

They will go far forward from this moment. And at this moment, with organisations addressing the climate crisis, reinvigorated feminism in many parts of the world, antiracist and human rights campaigns focused on specific groups and issues, protest is a force running through everything – and running against a lot of things, since this is also an age of authoritarianism and a consolidation of wealth among a global superelite.

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Fukushima diary, part one: ‘I’m finally home’

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The mayor of Okuma, home of the damaged nuclear power plant, has been in exile for eight years – here he writes about finally returning

The residents of Okuma were among more than 150,000 people who were forced to flee their homes after the March 2011 triple meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. As one of the wrecked plant’s two host towns, Okuma, was abandoned for eight years before authorities declared that radiation levels had fallen to safe levels, allowing residents to return. Even now, 60% of Okuma remains off-limits, and only a tiny fraction of the pre-disaster population of 11,500 has returned since their former neighbourhoods were given the all clear in April. A month later, Okuma’s mayor, Toshitsuna Watanabe, and his colleagues returned to work at a new town hall. In the first of a three-part diary for the Guardian, Watanabe describes his feelings when, after years of displacement, he and other residents ended their nuclear exile.

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Madrid could become first European city to scrap low-emissions zone

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Region’s likely new president Isabel Díaz Ayuso believes congestion is part of city’s cultural identity

Madrid may be about to become the first European city to scrap a major urban low-emissions zone after regional polls left a rightwing politician who views 3am traffic jams as part of the city’s cultural identity on the cusp of power.

Isabel Díaz Ayuso, who is expected to become the new Popular party (PP) president of the Madrid region, believes night-time congestion makes the city special and has pledged to reverse a project known as Madrid Central, which has dramatically cut urban pollution.

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Queensland signs off Adani’s plan for endangered black-throated finch

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Coordinator general releases decision to approve the coal mine’s management plan for bird

The Queensland government has signed off on Adani’s black-throated finch management plan, one of two state approvals the company needs to begin preparatory construction for its Adani coalmine.

Queensland’s coordinator general published the decision on Friday morning.

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How wildcats will be reared for release in England and Wales

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Swiss expert behind successful reintroduction in Bavaria is training UK conservationists

“If any beast has the devil’s strength in him it is the wildcat,” wrote a 15th-century hunting author – but historic persecution has brought the wildcat to the brink of extinction in Britain.

Now there is a new attempt to breed hundreds of wildcats in captivity and return the shy animal to England and Wales, where it has not roamed for 150 years.

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Malaysia cracks down on imported plastic – video

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The Malaysian government says the country has become a dumping ground for rich nations as it announces it will send as much as 3,000 tonnes of plastic waste back to the countries it came from. Malaysia became the world's main destination for plastic waste after China banned its import last year. 'We will fight back,' Malaysia’s environment minister, Yeo Bee Yin, said. 'We will fight back. Even though we are a small country, we cannot be bullied by developed countries'

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Cyprus begins lionfish cull to tackle threat to Mediterranean ecosystem

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Voracious fish are bleeding into ocean ‘like a cut artery’, says top marine biologist

Cyprus has held its first organised cull of lionfish after numbers of the invasive species have proliferated in recent years, threatening the Mediterranean ecosystem and posing a venomous danger to humans.

“They’re actually very placid,” said Prof Jason Hall-Spencer, a marine biologist, after spearing 16 of the exotic specimens in the space of 40 minutes in the inaugural “lionfish removal derby” off the island’s southern coast. He added: “The problem is they are not part of the natural ecosystem and we are seeing them in plague proportions.”

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Childish Gambino choreographer urges fans to step up for young rural Africans

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Sherrie Silver, who was behind acclaimed video This is America, launches virtual dance ‘petition’ to promote investment in farming

She made a name for herself as the choreographer behind one of the most controversial yet critically acclaimed music videos of last year.

Now Sherrie Silver, the creative force behind the dance moves in Childish Gambino’s This Is America, is using her success to drive a social media campaign promoting investment in young people in rural Africa.

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