Experts worry that injecting sulphur dioxide into the atmosphere could put some regions at risk
A new study contradicts fears that using solar geoengineering to fight climate change could dangerously alter rainfall and storm patterns in some parts of the world.
Related: Geoengineering may be used to combat global warming, experts say
Continue reading...Eight years after the disaster, not a single location will take the millions of cubic metres of radioactive soil that remain
Not even the icy wind blowing in from the coast seems to bother the men in protective masks, helmets and gloves, playing their part in the world’s biggest nuclear cleanup.
Related: Eight years after Fukushima, what has made evacuees come home?
Continue reading...The inhabitants of a remote village at the heart of India’s coal industry brave deadly sinkholes and toxic gases simply to survive
In the village of Liloripathra, in a remote corner of India’s eastern Jharkhand state, mother-of-three Sushila Devi grips the hands of two women sitting on either side of her. Coal fires spew clouds of smoke into the already heavy, polluted air.
At about 8pm, a policeman cradling a small body wrapped in black plastic bags emerges through the smoke and the crowds that have gathered around her home. He has come to deliver the body of her 13-year-old daughter Chanda, killed along with two others from the village when a coal mine caved in on top of them. They had been scavenging in a colliery operated by Bharat Coking Coal Limited (BCCL), a subsidiary of state-owned Coal India.
Continue reading...The two groups are affected the most by environmental degradation and pollution, but they often feel left out of the movement
Bernadette Demientieff, a representative for the indigenous Gwich’in nation, finds Washington DC anxiety-inducing, especially compared to the wide open spaces and tall mountains of Alaska.
She makes frequent trips to the US capital to fight oil drilling in what she considers sacred caribou calving grounds in the Arctic. But Demientieff is an outsider in the nation’s capital, where her concerns have fallen on deaf ears with the Trump administration. She’s also a bit of an outsider to the national environmental movement, too.
Continue reading...Joe Cunningham intervened in a House committee hearing on the environmental impact of seismic air-gun testing. The Democrat reached for the 120-decibel device after the official claimed the practice, used to locate underwater oil deposits, would have no effect on marine animals. Cunningham said seismic air guns were 16,000 times louder than his air-horn
Continue reading...Park in DRC was shut last year for more than eight months after series of attacks on staff
A forest ranger has been killed in Virunga national park in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, weeks after the reserve was reopened to tourists.
Virunga, home to critically endangered mountain gorillas as well as hundreds of other rare species, was shut for more than eight months for a review of security after a series of attacks on staff last year.
Continue reading...EPA chief says new regulations are needed to meet Paris targets, putting future LNG projects under threat
Western Australia’s environmental protection authority has announced tough new measures aimed at curbing greenhouse gas emissions from large projects.
The EPA, which works independently and makes recommendations to the WA government about whether new developments should be granted environmental approval, said on Thursday it was setting a “higher bar” for how it would assess the impact of major projects on the climate.
Continue reading...Contamination found across UK lakes and rivers, in US groundwater, along the Yantze river and Spanish coast, and harbouring dangerous bacteria in Singapore
Microplastic pollution spans the world, according to new studies showing contamination in the UK’s lake and rivers, in groundwater in the US and along the Yangtze river in China and the coast of Spain.
Related: Rivers of waste: Pakistan's recyclers go out on patrol – in pictures
Continue reading...Thousands of homes swept away as rains follow devastating drought, with UN ‘shocked’ by lack of crisis funding support
Afghanistan has been hit with the worst flooding in seven years, with 20 dead, thousands of homes swept away and many families, already displaced by drought, forced to leave their homes for the second time.
The latest climate shock, which affected eight provinces including Kandahar, came as the UN’s humanitarian coordinator in Afghanistan criticised the European Commission for its “wholly insufficient” response to hunger and suffering in a country already in the grip of what analysts describe as the world’s deadliest conflict.
Continue reading...Analysis of air pollution data finds that 64% of cities globally exceed WHO guidelines
Twenty-two of the world’s 30 worst cities for air pollution are in India, according to a new report, with Delhi again ranked the world’s most polluted capital.
The Greenpeace and AirVisual analysis of air pollution readings from 3,000 cities around the world found that 64% exceed the World Health Organization’s annual exposure guideline for PM2.5 fine particulate matter – tiny airborne particles, about a 40th of the width of a human hair, that are linked to a wide range of health problems.
Continue reading...Extreme temperatures destroy kelp, seagrass and corals – with alarming impacts for humanity
The number of heatwaves affecting the planet’s oceans has increased sharply, scientists have revealed, killing swathes of sea-life like “wildfires that take out huge areas of forest”.
The damage caused in these hotspots is also harmful for humanity, which relies on the oceans for oxygen, food, storm protection and the removal of climate-warming carbon dioxide the atmosphere, they say.
Continue reading...The Raposa Serra do Sol reserve in northern Brazil is home to 25,000 indigenous people, whose land has been targeted by the country’s rightwing president, Jair Bolsonaro
Continue reading...Residents of Raposa Serra do Sol are determined to face down the threat posed by mining
“A united people will never be defeated!” shouted Maria Betânia Mota, as the indigenous assembly in a partially burned-out agricultural college began. Hundreds of voices roared back in approval.
Betânia Mota is the women’s secretary of its organisers, the Indigenous Council of Roraima (CIR), which represents the majority of those living in the 1.7m hectares of savannah and scrub that make up the Raposa Serra do Sol reserve in Brazil’s northernmost state.
Continue reading...Beached hoodwinker sunfish, which is two metres long, baffles locals on California beach
A giant sunfish has washed up on a beach in California, the first time this particular species of the animal has been sighted in the northern hemisphere in 130 years.
The sunfish measuring 2.05 metres (6ft 8 in) and weighing several hundred kilograms, or more than 600lb, was found on the beach of the Coal Oil Point Reserve in California.
Continue reading...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...