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technology/2023/aug/08/mps-fiddled-with-voter-id-as-electoral-data-security-burned-electoral-commission-hack | MPs fiddled with voter ID as electoral data security burned | It turns out that while Conservative ministers were spending hours of parliamentary time in 2021-22 introducing requirements for voters to produce ID at polling stations – to protect elections against a threat most experts believed was negligible – the Electoral Commission was being hacked by “hostile actors”. These hackers, who have not been identified and whose motivations are unclear, were able to access the data, such as home addresses, of millions of voters, many of whom choose not to make that information publicly available. It took the commission – the body charged with upholding the integrity of the election system – almost a year to announce the breach; a delay it explained by saying it needed to “remove the actors and their access to our system” and put extra security in place, before going public. The commission’s chief executive, Shaun McNally, is correct when he says accessing the electoral register is a long way from being able to directly influence a poll. In the UK, there are no electronic voting machines to hack – voting is still done with pencil and paper, and counting takes place in town halls under the beady eyes of party observers. As McNally put it: “The UK’s democratic process is significantly dispersed and key aspects of it remain based on paper documentation and counting. This means it would be very hard to use a cyber-attack to influence the process.” But there may be many forms of influence available short of directly tampering with voting outcomes. Before Donald Trump won the 2016 US presidential election, the idea that “hostile actors” might succeed in interfering in the democratic process in a mature liberal democracy might have seemed fanciful. But social media has made the public realm increasingly disparate and porous; and a series of painstaking investigations have exposed the role of Russian trolls and bots in boosting Trump and, to some extent, in promoting the cause of Brexit, a few months earlier. The contemporary historian Timothy Snyder suggested in his book The Road to Unfreedom that Russia’s aim in that presidential campaign was not just to propel a Kremlin-friendly candidate into the White House, but to undermine US democracy altogether. “Russia’s intervention in the 2016 US election was not just an attempt to get a certain person elected. It was also the application of pressure to the structure,” he wrote. It is unclear whether Russia or some other “hostile actor” was responsible for viewing UK electors’ data, but the news comes at a time when public confidence in democracy and the rule of law feels shakier than it has for many years. The wrangle over the meaning of the Brexit vote left many electors feeling their views had been sidelined, while pandemic lockdowns fed a growth of anti-authority conspiracy theories, online and beyond. Watching Boris Johnson flout one constitutional convention after another and ennobling his mates (including the son of a former KGB spy) before raking in millions in speaking fees, seems unlikely to have helped either. So the news of the hack on Tuesday was a salutary reminder of the importance of strengthening and protecting the democratic system, with the next general election likely to be little more than a year away. Yet the same Elections Act that introduced voter ID earlier this year also undermined the political independence of the Electoral Commission by creating a power for the government to introduce a “strategy and policy statement” to set its direction. The government’s ID rules, introduced to tackle the vanishingly rare crime of voter impersonation, resulted in 14,000 people being turned away from polling stations in May’s local elections, and potentially hundreds of thousands more staying at home. Tuesday’s news suggests more pressing threats to British democracy may lie elsewhere. | ['politics/electoral-commission', 'technology/hacking', 'technology/data-protection', 'technology/data-computer-security', 'technology/cybercrime', 'politics/politics', 'uk/uk', 'technology/technology', 'campaign/email/morning-briefing', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'tone/analysis', 'profile/heatherstewart', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/topstories', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-home-news'] | technology/hacking | UNRELATED_TO_CLIMATE | 2023-08-08T16:55:32Z | true | UNRELATED_TO_CLIMATE |
environment/2021/jun/04/pollutionwatch-time-to-rethink-londons-red-routes | Pollutionwatch: time to rethink London’s red routes | It is 30 years since the designation of London’s red routes, the 320-mile network that carries a third of the city’s traffic mainly through residential areas and alongside many schools. They include the South Circular, past the family home of Ella Kissi-Debrah, whose air-pollution-induced asthma led to her death in 2013. According to Oliver Lord, a policy lead at the Environmental Defense Fund, it is time to “review, rebuild and repurpose the red routes, with bold traffic-reduction targets and new approaches for freight”. The network includes some of the UK’s most polluted roads that are likely to be among the last to meet legal limits. Many of these, especially those in inner and outer suburbs, experienced a worsening in traffic pollution between 2005 and 2016. Major roads create noise and air pollution. Although some city centres will be restricting the most polluting vehicles from their central areas, less is being done in the suburbs. Walk into the city centres of Glasgow, Leeds and Birmingham and you encounter major roads that act like moats severing communities. A 1994 Department for Transport report on new trunk roads concluded they led to increased traffic, rather than improving congestion. Examples included London’s elevated Westway, which required the demolition of thousands of homes but failed to reduce the traffic below. Now 50 years old, the UK’s longest elevated road requires significant repairs. In the US, freeways were cut through poor black and minority ethnic communities in the 1950s and 60s. But new federal funding could open opportunities to redress this by removing rather than rebuilding the ageing infrastructure. Freeway removal began in the US in Portland in 1974 with the deconstruction of Harbour Drive to create a riverside park. Other cities have followed. The decision to reroute instead of rebuild the earthquake-damaged Cypress Freeway in West Oakland, California, eased the air pollution burden experienced by local communities and opened new areas for housing and the creation of parks. Other examples include the unbuilding of part of the Inner Loop in Rochester, New York, the removal of a 12-lane motorway in Utrecht, the Netherlands, to restore the canal that once surrounded the city centre, and the Cheonggyecheon River project in Seoul, South Korea; where a multi-lane expressway was removed to reveal a buried river, creating a green-transport corridor and a place to picnic and relax. These schemes could provide a blueprint for our major urban roads. | ['environment/series/pollutionwatch', 'environment/environment', 'world/road-safety', 'world/road-transport', 'world/world', 'uk/london', 'uk/uk', 'environment/air-pollution', 'type/article', 'tone/features', 'profile/gary-fuller', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/weather2', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-home-news'] | environment/air-pollution | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE | 2021-06-04T05:00:31Z | true | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE |
environment/2022/apr/06/major-misjudgement-how-the-tories-got-their-energy-strategy-so-wrong | ‘Major misjudgment’: how the Tories got their energy strategy so wrong | Government industrial strategies are often derided as attempts to pick winners. The UK’s Conservative government has taken a different approach with its new energy strategy. In terms of dealing with the energy bill and climate crises, it’s picking losers. It is crystal clear that transforming the energy efficiency of the nation’s draughty homes should be the No 1 priority. After all, the cheapest, cleanest energy is the energy you no longer use and nothing can be installed faster than insulation. There are huge opportunities – for example, just 40% of UK homes have sufficient loft insulation. But there is nothing new in the strategy beyond an advice website. Former Tory energy minister Charles Hendry calls this a “major misjudgment” that will “force large numbers of very vulnerable people to be cold next winter when they need not be”. The next priority should be renewable electricity, now six times cheaper than that from gas-fired power stations. There are 649 wind and solar projects that already have planning permission. These would save more gas than the UK imports from Russia. But the strategy promises nothing to cut the planning regulations that David Cameron used to strangle onshore wind development and large-scale solar farms. The vast majority of people, including Tory voters, back more wind power in their areas, polling consistently shows. But your future energy bills now will be even higher than they need to be because ministers are worried a tiny minority of people can’t cope with looking at turbines. There is a boost to offshore wind, a genuine British success story, but it is unavoidably more expensive than onshore wind. The “big bet” Boris Johnson has chosen to take is on nuclear power. Business secretary Kwasi Kwarteng said this week that “there is a world where we have six or seven sites in the UK” by 2050. That world is never-never land. Nuclear power is the only major energy technology that has increased in cost in the last decade and routinely suffers from massive time and budget overruns. Even Kwarteng acknowledges that France’s large nuclear fleet “cost a fortune”. The gamble Johnson is making, with taxpayers’ money, is that nuclear power is a more reliable wager to secure clean future power than renewables and fast-developing energy storage technologies. It’s a long shot. Renewables and storage will develop much faster and get much cheaper due to the rapid learning that comes with small-scale technologies, unlike colossal projects like nuclear. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) report on Monday, produced by scientists from across the globe and signed off by 195 governments, mentions renewables, wind, solar and efficiency 67 times in its summary. It cites nuclear once (in brackets), as an example of a technology with high upfront costs. The UK energy strategy also backs more drilling for oil and gas in the North Sea – which flies in the face of its own net-zero climate targets. Furthermore, the dwindling reserves that remain cannot lower the price of commodities, which is set by a global market. Don’t just take that from me; Kwarteng, energy minister Greg Hands and COP26 president Alok Sharma all agree. On Monday, after the IPCC report, the UN secretary general, António Guterres, said: “The truly dangerous radicals are the countries that are increasing the production of fossil fuels. Investing in new fossil fuel infrastructure is moral and economic madness.” That is the UK he is now talking about. The only good news is that shale gas has been sidelined, with a review of safety a sop to the small group of noisy frackheads on the Tory back benches. Another of Johnson’s “big bets” is on hydrogen, apparently in the hope that it can be used to heat a third of UK homes as an alternative to fossil gas by 2050. That is folly, not least as heat pumps will be much cheaper and less polluting. Using fossil fuels could produce lots of hydrogen, but also cement our dependence on oil and gas, while belching out CO2. Green hydrogen – produced from renewables – will be very expensive for years, and the limited supply should be reserved for sectors that are really hard to decarbonise. Why has the government got this so wrong? It’s partly short-term politics. An “ally” of the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, is reported to have defended the refusal to fund more energy efficiency by saying: “We have to be scrutinising every extra penny of taxpayer money that is proposed for spending because ultimately we want to do the Conservative thing and cut taxes for people.” That is, just before the next election. It is also partly the adherence to the dogma that the only solution to problems is “our treasured free-market economy”, as Kwarteng described it on Tuesday. That is despite the warning in 2011 from the government’s own climate adviser that “leaving [energy efficiency] to the market has never worked anywhere in the world”. He was right. The first of two big failed efficiency schemes saw loft insulations plunge by 93%. Most depressingly, the energy strategy’s failings seem also partly due to Johnson’s penchant for big, shiny projects, rather than the hard graft of thousands of smaller ones. But the six or seven nuclear power plants he dreams of are likely to follow the same fate as his island airport, garden bridge, and tunnel to Northern Ireland. Helen Clarkson, at the business-focused Climate Group, said: “We have tools and technologies already available which can radically reduce our energy needs and our carbon emissions now. Energy efficiency measures can deliver immediately in cutting people’s fuel bills and get us on the path to net zero in the longer term. There’s a huge opportunity for a win-win here which the government is passing up.” | ['environment/energy', 'environment/nuclearpower', 'environment/windpower', 'environment/renewableenergy', 'environment/energyefficiency', 'money/energy', 'politics/boris-johnson', 'politics/kwasi-kwarteng', 'environment/hydrogen-power', 'type/article', 'tone/analysis', 'tone/news', 'profile/damiancarrington', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/topstories', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-environment'] | environment/windpower | ENERGY | 2022-04-06T21:30:35Z | true | ENERGY |
australia-news/2017/feb/17/taxpayers-wont-be-left-with-mine-clean-up-costs-nsw-government-says | Taxpayers won't be left with mine clean-up costs, NSW government says | The New South Wales government has rejected criticisms of its handling of disused mine sites, saying rehabilitation bonds and strict regulations gave it a high degree of confidence that taxpayers would not be lumped with clean-up costs. The Australia Institute released a report on Wednesday on disused mine sites across the state. The report criticised a lack of NSW government information on the rehabilitation of mines and warned that taxpayers risked bearing the costs of remediating sites, particularly open-cut mines in the Hunter. But the NSW Department of Industry’s environmental sustainability director, David Blackmore, rejected the institute’s criticisms. Blackmore said the NSW government had a strict set of regulations that ensured mine operators paid for rehabilitation of their sites. At the centre of the regulations was a rehabilitation bond, paid to the government by operators to guarantee they would meet clean-up costs. “You can’t start mining until the rehab bond is put in place, in NSW you have 100% coverage, there’s no discounting in NSW,” Blackmore said. “And you can’t actually transfer a mine until the new owner has actually paid 100% to the government at that point. “So there’s always been a slight fear in the community that people can move in and buy these on the cheap and abrogate their responsibility – that component doesn’t exist.” The Australia Institute’s report acknowledged the existence of the rehabilitation bonds but said they may underestimate the full clean-up costs. Blackmore said the bonds had recently been increased and were the result of rigorous analysis. He expressed a high degree of confidence that taxpayers would never be lumped with rehabilitation costs. The institute’s report had criticised a lack of information from the government on the number of rehabilitated sites. But Blackmore said that was not a fair criticism. He said the rehabilitation of mines occurred at varying stages at each site and that mines were not put in a “full rehabilitation state” until a final decision was made by government. Partial rehabilitation could be occurring at one part of a site while mining continued on another, for example. That made the kind of categorisation attempted by the Australia Institute difficult, he said. “So just to draw a line through that and say ‘at this point, this is how many you’ve got’, would be basically not possible, because you’re drawing a line through a continuum that constantly changes,” Blackmore said. He said NSW inspectors were specifically trained to monitor the progress of rehabilitation. Blackmore said the government was investigating ways it could better show the public and industry how rehabilitation of disused mine sites was progressing. “One of the dilemmas I’ve got is how do you promote good rehab when you can’t see it?” he said. “Good rehab for us is that you can’t discern it from the surrounding landscape, so it’s saying to someone ‘something you can’t see is actually working’.” The Australia Institute’s report, titled Dark Side of the Boom, identified between 112 and 410 abandoned mine sites across the state, while between 85 and 109 mines remained active and 123 in suspended operations. | ['australia-news/new-south-wales', 'environment/mining', 'australia-news/australia-news', 'australia-news/new-south-wales-politics', 'environment/environment', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/christopher-knaus', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/australia-news'] | environment/mining | ENERGY | 2017-02-16T19:22:25Z | true | ENERGY |
world/2022/sep/06/reduce-the-reliance-on-cars-in-urban-areas | Reduce the reliance on cars in urban areas | Letter | By strange coincidence, in the late 1980s my family moved from Rougham, a village in Suffolk about five miles from Bury St Edmunds, to Harbottle, a small village in Northumberland around seven miles from the nearest bus stop. I therefore feel moved to respond to Mervyn Ellis and John Pelling (Letters, 4 September). Of course, electric scooters are not a viable transport solution for people living in such circumstances, though adequate public transport will help (my mother took the bus to the market in Bury as she did not drive). However, nearly half the population live in cities or large or medium towns, where it is eminently possible to eliminate car use or reduce it to the level where car club membership or the occasional use of taxis are cheaper than owning a rarely used car. As a doctor, by necessity I use a lot of single-use plastic. It is false to argue that because there will always be a need for sterile syringes, it is impossible to cut down on plastic use elsewhere. It is similarly false to argue that because some people will always need cars, no one should be encouraged to do without one. Dr Chris Howell Newcastle upon Tyne • Have an opinion on anything you’ve read in the Guardian today? Please email us your letter and it will be considered for publication. | ['world/road-transport', 'environment/climate-crisis', 'environment/environment', 'environment/pollution', 'money/motoring', 'politics/transport', 'type/article', 'tone/letters', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/journal', 'theguardian/journal/letters', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-letters-and-leader-writers'] | environment/pollution | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE | 2022-09-06T16:11:07Z | true | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE |
us-news/2021/jun/30/joe-biden-kamala-harris-west-coast-heatwave-governors | Heatwave: Biden and Harris meet western governors as region in emergency | Joe Biden and Kamala Harris met with governors from western states today, as a fierce wildfire raged in northern California and the region is battling a historic heatwave that has set record-high temperatures in many cities. “This is a personal issue for me as a daughter of California,” the vice-president said at the start of the meeting, which included Democratic and Republican governors. Harris, who previously served as one of California’s senators, recounted the pain of witnessing the devastation that wildfires like the Camp fire, which destroyed the town of Paradise, have had on her state. Harris also said one of the worst experiences after a wildfire is seeing cars still parked in driveways of homes because it means residents didn’t get out in time. According to the White House, the meeting was meant to focus on the “devastating intersection of drought, heat, and wildfires in the Western United States, and strengthening prevention, preparedness and response efforts for this wildfire season”. Experts have warned that the devastating heat wave is just a sign of things to come if the world does not curb greenhouse gas emissions. Meanwhile, the ramifications of the heatwave are hitting Americans in many ways. At least six people have died in the Pacific north-west since Friday. Cities across the west banned this weekend’s Fourth of July fireworks. At the virtual meeting with the president, Kate Brown, the Democratic governor of Oregon, expressed dismay about the “unprecedented” heatwave affecting her state and others. Brown noted that some streets in Oregon are literally buckling because of the high temperature, which hit 116F in Portland on Monday. Meanwhile, Gavin Newsom, the Democratic governor of California, also delivered some criticism of Donald Trump, saying it was a pleasure to work with a president who understands the severity of the climate crisis. He also delivered this message for those who deny the reality of climate change: “You’ve got to believe your own damn eyes.” A wildfire in northern California exploded in size on Tuesday, forcing evacuations in the communities of Lake Shastina, Juniper Valley and Mount Shasta Vista. The flames spanned nearly 21 sq miles (54 sq kilometers) on Tuesday. “All evacuation orders are still in place at this time. We do not know what structures have burned down and the status of many areas,” the Siskiyou sheriff’s office said on social media Tuesday. Ignited by lightning on 24 June, the Lava fire is burning brush and timber in the Shasta-Trinity national forest north of the town of Weed, about 250 miles (402km) north of San Francisco. Wildfires have already scorched more than 2,000 sq miles in western states this year, ahead of the pace in 2020, which saw a near-record 15,000 sq miles burned as well as more than 17,000 homes and other structures destroyed. Biden confirmed that his administration is taking steps to ensure federal firefighters are paid at least $15 an hour, with 10% bonuses available for those on the frontlines. The president said he was shocked to discover last week that some firefighters are paid as little as $13 an hour. “Come on, man. That’s unacceptable,” Biden said. Biden also noted that fighting wildfires is “no longer a seasonal job” because of the climate crisis, which has caused a longer and more dangerous wildfire season. States like California remain in emergency as the record temperatures continue. The Associated Press contributed to this report. | ['us-news/biden-administration', 'us-news/us-weather', 'us-news/kamala-harris', 'us-news/joebiden', 'world/extreme-weather', 'us-news/us-news', 'world/world', 'world/wildfires', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/joan-greve', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/us-news', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/west-coast-news'] | world/wildfires | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2021-06-30T17:24:27Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
environment/2023/oct/04/five-arrested-after-just-stop-oil-protest-disrupts-les-miserables-performance-in-london | Just Stop Oil protest disrupts Les Misérables performance in London | Five people have been arrested after Just Stop Oil protesters disrupted a performance of Les Misérables at the Sondheim Theatre in London’s West End. During a performance of the song Do You Hear the People Sing? members of the Just Stop Oil group stormed the stage with banners. In a video of the protest posted online, the performance came to a halt as one member shouted “just stop oil”, to boos from the audience. Technical staff quickly came on stage, the safety curtain came down followed by the main curtain. According to a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, the group of four protesters then locked themselves to the stage. In the post on X, the group wrote: “4 people are locked to the stage of the French-revolution-themed show. Valjean steals bread to feed a starving child. How long before we are all forced to steal?” Hannah Taylor, of Just Stop Oil, was quoted by Sky News as saying: “The show cannot go on. We are facing catastrophe. New oil and gas means crop failure, starvation and death. It is an act of war on the global south and an utter betrayal of young people.” William Village, chief executive of Delfont Mackintosh Theatres, confirmed to WhatsOnStage that the show was stopped and the theatre was evacuated following the protest. Tickets for the performance will be refunded. The Metropolitan police said: “At about 21.00hrs on Wednesday, 4 October, police were called to a protest inside a theatre on Shaftesbury Avenue, WC1. Local officers were quickly on scene and five people have been arrested.” | ['environment/just-stop-oil', 'environment/environment', 'environment/climate-crisis', 'uk/london', 'uk/uk', 'stage/theatre', 'stage/stage', 'culture/culture', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/jane-clinton', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/uknews', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-home-news'] | environment/just-stop-oil | CLIMATE_ACTIVISM | 2023-10-04T22:14:20Z | true | CLIMATE_ACTIVISM |
business/2010/sep/05/transocean-oil-rig-safety | US rig owner Transocean accused of compromising safety in North Sea | Transocean, the American rig owner at the centre of BP's Gulf of Mexico oil spill, has been accused of compromising safety in the North Sea by "bullying, harassment and intimidation" of its staff. The allegations, in a damning report by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) seen by the Guardian, will deeply embarrass Transocean, which on Tuesday appears before a House of Commons investigation into the lessons to be learnt from the Deepwater Horizon spill. The offshore and transport union, RMT, argues that abusive behaviour and racism towards an increasingly multinational workforce in the North Sea are widespread, and it wants a huge shake-up of the system in the light of a worsening safety record. The allegations came as Thad Allen, the US official leading the Deepwater Horizon cleanup, said an important milestone had been reached with the replacement of the blowout preventer that failed to stop the flow of oil in the original accident. He said the original device had been hauled to the surface for investigators to determine what went wrong. The HSE reported less than two weeks ago that the combined fatal and major injury rate had almost doubled, rising to 192 per 100,000 workers in 2009-10 from 106 12 months earlier. There was also a big increase in hydrocarbon releases, from 61 to 85 – raising the possibility of fires and explosions offshore, the kind of accident that triggered the Piper Alpha disaster, in which 167 UK workers died. Transocean has so far managed to avoid the kind of acute scrutiny given to BP over the Macondo well, but the British oil company is expected to criticise the rig operator when it publishes its own internal investigation into what went wrong. The HSE "specialist inspection report" resulted from a visit to four rigs operated by Transocean Offshore (North Sea) Ltd, including the John Shaw and Sedco 711, in the summer and autumn of last year. The HSE report says: "The company has not considered the human contribution to safety in a structured and systematic manner," and says the organisational culture is based on blame and intolerance. Most damagingly, the report says instances of unacceptable behaviour by offshore management were raised with HSE inspectors by Transocean staff on more than one rig visited. These included bullying, aggression, harassment, humiliation and intimidation, and were "causing some individuals to exhibit symptoms of work-related stress, with potential safety implications", the HSE says. Responding to the allegations in a statement, Transocean said: "The HSE report confirmed that Transocean has demonstrated a commitment to fostering an organisational culture based on trust and respect that improves our safety and performance records. Third-party assessments such as those conducted by HSE and Lloyd's Register are a key part of the company's philosophy of continuous review and improvement." Jake Molloy, regional organiser for the RMT's offshore branch in Aberdeen, said he was extremely alarmed by the report, but not surprised. "I have dealt with three cases where workers were unfairly dismissed by Transocean and in each one I have been able to win compensation for them," he said. But he feared that Transocean was far from unique, and said the increase in accidents reported by the HSE still almost certainly underestimated the true position. "I know from the phone calls I get in this office that other really serious incidents are not being reported because of widespread bullying and intimidation. I cannot follow up these cases because it would expose the guys to losing their jobs," he said. Molloy said he was aware of rigs with 19 different nationalities on board speaking a mixture of Portuguese, Spanish, Russian, Italian and French. He feared that some staff did not have the language skills either to communicate well with each other or to understand safety instructions properly. It was not unusual for Filipinos and others to be racially abused. The Guardian has spoken independently to foreign oil workers, who confirm they have faced bullying, intimidation and racism. One, who asked not to be named, said he recently witnessed offshore fires that he was told not to report as it could cause a fuss and endanger either his own job or those of his fellow crew members. The Norwegian safety authorities have just published their own figures and expressed grave concern that the number of hydrocarbon "releases" from their rigs and platforms has gone up from 14 to 15 over the past 12 months. The UK government announced in June it was increasing environmental inspections offshore but also boasted that "our safety and environmental regulatory regime is fit for purpose. It is already among the most robust in the world and the industry's record in the North Sea is strong." | ['business/oilandgascompanies', 'politics/tradeunions', 'politics/politics', 'business/business', 'uk/uk', 'tone/news', 'environment/oil', 'environment/environment', 'environment/oil-spills', 'sustainable-business/sustainable-business', 'type/article', 'profile/terrymacalister', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/topstories'] | environment/oil | ENERGY | 2010-09-05T21:21:20Z | true | ENERGY |
environment/2022/jun/01/specieswatch-how-sea-kale-thrives-in-hostile-conditions | Specieswatch: how sea kale thrives in hostile conditions | A line of large flowering plants along the shingle beach at Dunwich on the Suffolk coast, growing in what seemed to be extremely hostile conditions, turned out to be sea kale (Crambe maritima). A highly specialised and very tough native plant, this member of the brassica family has made a spectacular comeback along our shores. Sea kale is a classic example of a species that has adapted to thrive in conditions that would kill almost any other plant: deep salty shingle along a stormy shore line. It has tough leathery leaves but was just coming into flower and had a lovely scent. The key to its success, apart from its resistance to salt, is the deep tap root that allows it to sit on top of a shingle bank but draw water and nutrients from far below. Its seeds are so tough that the plant drops them into the sea and relies on the tide to distribute them to another suitable beach. Once called scurvy grass because it was pickled and taken to sea as a food to stave off scurvy, it then became a spring green for coastal dwellers and sometimes cattle food, finally becoming depleted. Now it is a protected species and is thriving. Let us hope fashionable chefs do not rediscover it. | ['environment/series/specieswatch', 'environment/marine-life', 'environment/plants', 'environment/environment', 'environment/conservation', 'type/article', 'tone/features', 'profile/paulbrown', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/weather2', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-weather'] | environment/marine-life | BIODIVERSITY | 2022-06-01T05:00:09Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
environment/2022/jan/16/scottish-auction-for-offshore-windfarm-permits-expected-to-raise-860m | Scottish auction for offshore windfarm permits expected to raise £860m | Scotland’s largest-ever auction of permits to construct offshore windfarms is expected to raise up to £860m when the results are announced on Monday. Crown Estate Scotland, which is running the auction, hopes that windfarms with as much as 10 gigawatts of new generating capacity will be built over the next decade, effectively doubling the amount of electricity generated in Scottish waters in a transition which has the potential to create tens of thousands of jobs. The programme, known as ScotWind, has attracted frenzied interest from domestic and international bidders, and could set new records for values placed on the plots of seabed being leased for turbines. In the first ScotWind leasing round, 8,600 sq km of Scottish seabed is on offer across 15 areas, enough to develop windfarms which could power every Scottish household and save more than 6m tonnes of carbon dioxide a year. The windfarms could more than double the capacity built or planned in the seabed around Scotland over the coming decade. At the moment, offshore windfarms in Scotland generate about 1GW. Projects that have received consent and those being built amount to less than 10GW. The Moray East windfarm has become Scotland’s biggest source of renewable energy, generating up to 950 megawatts from 100 turbines. It will be overtaken by Seagreen next year with 1GW of capacity. Located around 27km off the Angus coast, the £3bn windfarm is a joint venture between Perth-based SSE Renewables (49%) and France’s TotalEnergies (51%). The winning bids – and the prices paid – are expected to be announced at 10am on Monday. Crown Estate said in July that 74 offers had been submitted for ScotWind. Many come from consortiums. Among them is Denmark’s largest energy company Ørsted, which pioneered the first ever offshore windfarm in 1991 and has teamed up with Italy’s Falck Renewables and the floating wind expert BlueFloat Energy. Other bidders include renewable energy investment funds such as Australia’s Macquarie Bank Green Investment Group, which has partnered with the Scottish offshore wind developer Renewable Infrastructure Development Group; big utility companies involved in existing projects, such as SSE and Scottish Power; and large oil companies, including Shell, France’s Total, Italy’s ENI and Norway’s Equinor. Crown Estate Scotland lifted the cap for the auction bids from £10,000 to £100,000 per sq km last year. If every bid is submitted up to that maximum cap, the sale could raise £860m. Melanie Grimmitt, global head of energy at the law firm Pinsent Masons, said this leasing round had shown that there was significant appetite for investment from within the UK and abroad, which bodes well for a second ScotWind seabed leasing round later this year. “This is crown state Scotland’s first seabed leasing round and marks an important chapter for Scotland’s offshore market, but with proposed windfarms from the leasing round expected to save in excess of 6m tonnes of carbon emissions, it is also an important milestone for the UK’s overall net zero commitments,” she said. “Developers will be keeping an eye out to see if and how the application process and criteria for the next round might differ from this one given how popular and competitive it has been.” Crown Estate Scotland is a separate organisation to the crown estate, which manages the Queen’s assets in England and Wales, and its profit is passed to the Scottish government. Some of the proceeds are expected to be ploughed into preparing the workforce for the switch from North Sea oil and gas to wind power. The transition to renewable energy means that as fossil fuel jobs disappear, thousands of workers will need retraining. • This article was amended on 18 January 2022. The Norwegian oil firm mentioned is called Equinor, not Equinox. | ['environment/windpower', 'uk/scotland', 'environment/environment', 'environment/energy', 'environment/renewableenergy', 'uk/uk', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/juliakollewe', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/financial3', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-business'] | environment/energy | ENERGY | 2022-01-16T18:29:01Z | true | ENERGY |
politics/2018/nov/25/bath-residents-resent-congestion-charge-tackle-pollution-nitrogen-dioxide | Bath's drivers choke on plans for daily £9 pollution charge | The city of Bath may have a reputation for gentility but plans to charge many motorists £9 a day to drive into its Georgian streets are provoking anger and resentment. High levels of pollution, largely caused by topography – the city lies in a giant bowl – are forcing the council to act, but critics say the move will hit people struggling financially and force traffic out into areas just outside the zone. Traffic congestion has long been a problem in Bath, which has Unesco world heritage status. Suggested solutions have ranged from boring a road tunnel under the city centre to building a park-and-ride site on water meadows. There are a number of spots in Bath where nitrogen dioxide (NO2) levels exceed the legal limit of 40 µg/m3. According to Bath and North East Somerset council (Banes), a third of Bath’s NO2 is produced by diesel and petrol cars. It says 12,000 people in Banes suffer from asthma and risk attacks because of the high levels of NO2. Banes is proposing to set up a clean air zone (CAZ) by the end of 2020 that would mean drivers of “higher-emission vehicles” – including many reasonably new diesel cars and older petrol ones – would have to pay £9 a day to enter the designated area. It would not affect only residents. The geography of Bath and the lack of alternative routes around the city mean that many commuters and travellers who need to pass through to get elsewhere would also be caught by the charge. Thousands of people have taken part in a consultation, which ends on Monday (26 November), with many fiercely opposed. At a consultation event at a social club (which was watched over by two members of security staff), Cllr Bob Goodman, cabinet member for development and neighbourhoods, said the authority had been mandated to bring the levels down and believed charging was the best solution. “It may sound draconian but we have to take action,” he said. “The government has mandated us to reduce the NO2 levels. We have to do that.” Goodman said private and commercial drivers would be helped to change their vehicles for compliant, lower-emission ones. There would also be exemptions or concessions including for disabled people and registered carers. “There are many people who have non-compliant vehicles who are adamantly against it but we will help them,” he said. “I’m not going to let our kids suffer from pollution and asthma.” Few at the event seemed impressed. Andy Southern, who lives in a village west of the city and has to cross Bath every day to get to work, said: “I have a diesel car that will fall foul of this. It’s going to cost me £2,200 a year. I agree we need to improve air quality but this scheme will hit families like mine. We’d like to change the car [but] we can’t afford to at the moment.” Stephen Moss, a taxi driver who reckons he has driven 2m miles around Bath during his 35-year career, said the proposal was making him feel ill with anxiety. “These are stealth controlling tariffs and are out of reach of the average man or woman.” Melanie Hilton, who lives in Keynsham, within Banes but eight miles from the city centre, said it could stop her visiting. “I can’t afford £9 when I want to come in and pick my child up from the station or get my hair cut. We need more intelligent thought about how to design roads to get people in and out more effectively.” Emma Adams, a businesswoman and chair of the parish council in Batheaston, a village to the east of the city centre, said she feared the scheme would prompt drivers of non-compliant – and thus most polluting – vehicles into rural rat runs. “We’re already congested and we’re concerned that will increase.” A decision is due to be reached by the council in December. • This article’s headline was amended on 26 November 2018 to clarify that the planned charge would be introduced to tackle pollution, not traffic congestion. | ['politics/congestioncharging', 'environment/air-pollution', 'politics/transport', 'environment/pollution', 'uk/uk', 'world/road-transport', 'uk/transport', 'environment/environment', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/stevenmorris', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/uknews', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-home-news'] | environment/air-pollution | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE | 2018-11-26T16:26:46Z | true | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE |
culture/2017/nov/29/country-diary-gunnislake-tamar-valley-trees-mining-heritage | Country diary: green covers the mines that once scarred this landscape | Away from the traffic noise on the main road that crosses the Tamar at New Bridge (built in 1520), narrow ways wend through Dimson, on the edge of Hingston Down, dropping towards the river. Cottages, terraced houses and residents’ cars crowd lanes among little enclosures, once intensively cultivated by miners, quarrymen and brick-workers; a lower rough track, covered in fallen leaves, gives views of the expansive coniferous and oak woodland surrounding the remains of the Devon Great Consols mine opposite. By the river, horses graze paddocks in the Hawksmoor meander, site of the local cricket ground as well as a derelict mine now used by a furniture restorer. Beside a path edged in mossy blocks of stone, yellow leaves cling to hazel scrub among the greenery of bramble and ivy. Before the arrival of the East Cornwall mineral railway, linking local mines and quarries with the tidal reach at Calstock, this muddy track was a tramway for the transport of copper ore towards wharves at Gunnislake – then the head of navigation. Half a mile upriver from the bridge, the lower engine house of the Clitters mine was built in 1882 over an older waterwheel pit that pumped river water to ore-dressing floors and powered an air fan in the adit that extended for three-quarters of a mile into the hill. The new engine, from the Tavy Iron Works in Tavistock, pumped water even further uphill, to the mine’s mill and engine boilers. In the 19th century this steep north-facing land would have been almost denuded of vegetation, dominated by smoking chimneys, dust and expanding burrows or heaps of mine waste. Today, the consolidated ruins of buildings and stacks are barely visible among regenerated trees and trunks growing from older stumps. Water rushes through this gorge-like section of the valley, where drifts of leaves stranded on tops of boulders indicate yesterday’s higher level. Tumbled walls and quarry faces are clothed in vivid mosses; woodrush, spiky Hard fern, tall Buckler and Male ferns grow through the orange and yellow leaf litter of beech, chestnut and oak, and, on red-stained spoil tips, conifers and birch overgrow ling and gorse. Follow Country diary on Twitter: @gdncountrydiary | ['culture/heritage', 'environment/mining', 'environment/rivers', 'culture/culture', 'environment/autumn', 'environment/environment', 'environment/series/country-diary', 'uk/ruralaffairs', 'uk/uk', 'travel/heritage', 'travel/series/historic-walking-trails', 'travel/travel', 'type/article', 'tone/features', 'profile/virginiaspiers', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/weather2', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-weather'] | environment/mining | ENERGY | 2017-11-29T05:30:26Z | true | ENERGY |
environment/blog/2007/dec/14/hangingbyathread | Hanging by a thread | Today's report comes courtesy of Friends of the Earth, who came to the rescue last night when the standard issue Guardian field laptop turned on its toes and died. (You know you're in trouble when the IT helpdesk ask if you have a screwdriver handy). So, sincere thanks to Tony Juniper for letting me hack into all his personal files, er, borrow his computer for the day. The Guardian wasn't the only one in trouble last night. The entire UN climate process was hanging by a thread according to campaigners, when the US introduced a bombshell set of clauses into the draft Bali roadmap, which would effectively send the whole process back to square one. I'm no diplomat, but it smells like a negotiating tactic. If the US agrees to take them out, then what will it ask for in return? Those pesky numbers probably, the 25-40% cuts for developed nations that have been causing arguments all week. Few will say it officially, but most here seem to have settled for a Bali roadmap that commits all countries to a formal negotiation on a new treaty, but doesn't include the numbers. Even Greenpeace said as much this morning, joining the US, the UK (and so Europe) and the UN officials running the whole circus. So why are we still here? And why the continuing threats from both sides? Seasoned observers say this end game is all about how to sell the agreement when the countries go their separate ways tomorrow and have to explain to their citizens what they have signed up to. Each needs a success to trumpet, some good old fashioned political spin. Ours will be that the US has been dragged to the negotiating table. Mr Bush will point out that he is taking the issue seriously, without actually committing to anything. While the political dance continues, there is some genuine success to celebrate. There seems to be progress on protecting forests and funds to help poor countries develop clean technology. It's vague, but it's a start. The end is another matter. Things could still go wrong of course, remember all countries must agree to everything. And Europe may force the US to blink first and get those numbers included somehow. The one certainty seems to be that the talks will go on very late. The German delegation has had a sweepstake on the endpoint, and 3am was a popular choice. Let's hope Mr Juniper doesn't want his computer back any time soon. | ['environment/blog', 'environment/bali', 'environment/environment', 'tone/blog', 'environment/global-climate-talks', 'type/article', 'profile/davidadam'] | environment/global-climate-talks | CLIMATE_POLICY | 2007-12-14T09:49:11Z | true | CLIMATE_POLICY |
uk/2012/jul/08/summer-unending-rain | Freak storms, flash floods, record rain – and there's more to come | Look through the window. It is likely to be raining. It has been raining, a lot, for the past two months. And the bad news is that it's not likely to stop soon. More flooding could be on its way, after forecasters warned that the miserable weather – which has seen record amounts of rain fall in April and June, parts of the UK hit by freak storms, and flash flooding that has forced the evacuation of homes – is set to continue at least until the Olympics. This week, an area of low pressure will move in from the west, bringing showers and longer spells of rain across the whole country, according to forecasters. "The summer so far has seen a colossal amount of rain and the last 24 hours have been no exception," said Brendan Jones, a forecaster with MeteoGroup. "The next couple of days aren't going to be as bad as the last couple of days. There will be sunshine and showers for just about the whole country. The showers will be heavy and there will be thunderstorms as well. "Not in the next 10 days is there anything resembling reasonable summer conditions." After a dry start to the week in the south, the rain across northern England will move south and turn to showers across England and Wales, according to the Met Office. But it will get worse – by midweek, northerly or north-westerly winds will make us feel chilly, and by Thursday and Friday there are likely to be widespread heavy and thundery showers. Plus ça change. The consistently bad forecasts have created concern at the highest level, with the environment secretary, Caroline Spelman, visiting the Met Office in Exeter on Sunday for a briefing. Although flood warnings have decreased – Monday and Tuesday were "very low risk", according to the Environment Agency – the forecast of more rain will cause concern in already sodden areas. What is going on? According to experts at the Met Office, the jet stream has a lot to answer for. The jet stream is a fast-flowing ribbon of air high in the atmosphere that pushes weather systems from west to east, across the Atlantic towards Europe. Disturbances to the jet stream have brought a succession of depressions across the country. Typically, the northern hemisphere jet stream lies to the north of Britain, placing those areas of rain-bringing low pressure over Scandinavia instead of the UK. Or, as Michael Lawrence at the Met Office put it: "These areas of low pressure are hitting the UK as a whole instead of giving us the glancing blows you would usually expect in summer." And what a summer. More than twice the average rainfall hit the UK in April. June was the wettest since records began, and the start of July has seen a month's rain fall in 24 hours in some parts of the south-west. The bad weather has stuck and shows little sign of shifting, according to Helen Chivers at the Met Office. "The jet stream can get bends in it, it can get distorted, which can move us into a blocked pattern, like the dry weather we saw in winter … and the wet weather we are seeing now." What is affecting these changes in the jet stream is the million-dollar question, said Chivers. Variations could be caused by temperature changes in the Pacific, but meteorologists are also studying how shifts in the Earth's temperature, caused by global warming, affect weather conditions. "A lot of work is being done into the decrease in Arctic sea ice," said Chivers. "Essentially, if you warm up a sea, you change the temperature differential between the poles and the tropics and that in turn influences the jet stream. Research has already shown the influence on north-west Europe winters, making them drier and colder, but what happens in the summer is still relatively unknown." Britain's geographical placement means variable weather is something we will have to get used to. With the Atlantic on one side and Europe on the other, where our wind comes from can make a dramatic difference. "That's why in May we were seeing fine, dry weather and people were talking about drought, and not long after the concern was flooding," said Chivers. So can we expect to see more wet summers in the (dreary) future? Peter Stott, head of climate monitoring and attribution at the Met Office, said the recent bad weather could be ascribed to the natural variability of the weather. "But climate change could be making things worse, because the globally warmer atmosphere now carries 4% more moisture over the oceans than in the 1970s and this could be leading to increased rainfall in weather systems." The only aspect of the impact of climate change on the weather that most academics would agree on is the need for more research. "One of the challenges for attribution science is to better diagnose such weather events and be able to attribute any changed risk of heatwaves, flooding, etc, more accurately," said Stott. Dr David Schultz, at the centre for atmospheric science at the University of Manchester, noted that a glance at the UKCIP (the UK Climate Impacts Programme) maps predicting long-term climate temperature and precipitation suggest warmer temperatures and slightly drier conditions on average. "There is a probability that it could be wetter, though. The climate model predictions allow that possibility," he said. "It's hard to extrapolate the past few summers to global warming as a whole. That is the message I would give, if you want to be fair about what the data is showing and our state of the science." • This article was amended on 10 July 2012 to clarify that the UKCIP (the UK Climate Impacts Programme) maps referred to by Dr David Schultz predict long-term climate temperature and precipitation. The original said the maps predict temperature and precipitation for the rest of the summer. | ['uk/weather', 'environment/flooding', 'science/meteorology', 'science/scienceofclimatechange', 'environment/climate-crisis', 'environment/environment', 'science/science', 'uk/uk', 'tone/news', 'type/article', 'profile/alexandratopping', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/uknews'] | environment/flooding | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2012-07-08T18:10:16Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
environment/2019/jan/09/shutdown-american-farmers-china-trade-war-trump | Shutdown hits American farmers already hurt by China trade war | Just as American farmers thought Donald Trump had rescued them from the economic consequences of his trade war with China, along came the government shutdown. The National Farmers Union said the closure of agriculture department offices could not have come at a worse time for members awaiting emergency federal aid principally to compensate for a sharp drop in soybean prices after sales to China plunged as a result of trade sanctions on Beijing. The shutdown has also created a new wave of uncertainty in planning for the planting season because crucial end of year agricultural data will now not be released on schedule. “This is a bigger than normal challenge because agriculture has been in a five year profit decline,” said Roger Johnson, the president of the National Farmers Union representing about 200,000 family farmers and ranchers. “Net farm income is half of what it was five years ago. Financial conditions are very difficult for a lot of farmers. There’s a lot of stress out there. It’s been exacerbated by what’s gone on in the trade arena as market prices have gone down. And now we have the shutdown.” The most immediate impact is on farmers waiting for payments as part of a $12bn government package to help offset the impact of the trade dispute with China. US soybean sales into the world’s largest market have plummeted since Beijing increased the tariff on American imports by 25% in July as part of the trade dispute with Trump. That hit American farmers hard because many of them have increasingly relied on soybeans as relatively profitable after years of decline in the price of most other crops. “Soybeans were holding their own until the summer,” said Aaron Heley Lehman, a fifth generation Iowa crop farmer. “When the trade situation went into the ditch, prices dropped 20%. So one thing that farmers were actually holding their own and making a little money on started disappearing. The entire situation is as serious as it’s been in many many years for famers. The collapse of the soybean trade and the government shutdown couldn’t have come at a worse time.” The Farm Service Agency office, which pays out the assistance from the Market Facilitation Program, is now closed. Johnson said that many of those farmers who have already registered for payments have yet to receive them even though the first tranche of money went out in November. In addition, the deadline for farmers to sign up for the aid is 15 January. Those that have not already done so are uncertain whether they will be able to if the government shutdown continues. “These payments in many cases are very much depended on in order for folks to get through the year and pay loans and so forth,” said Johnson. Lehman, who is president of the Iowa Farmers Union, said the timing of the shutdown creates an additional burden because it comes just as farmers are planning this year’s crop. “This is the time of year farmers work with their bankers or other lenders and they work with their suppliers. It’s very frustrating when farmers are under extreme financial stress. All decisions are being made under the situation where things are just on hold until USDA offices open again,” he said. If the shutdown drags on it may also threaten implementation of parts of the 2018 farm bill designed to help smaller dairy farms which have been battered by a sharp downturn in the dairy industry. The closure of agriculture department offices has put on hold the release of statistics and crop reports on which farmers and traders depend for planning and setting prices. Key among them is the world agricultural supply and demand estimates which was scheduled to be released this Friday. The report is a big driver of futures prices as traders look to it for crop forecasts not only in the US but other major producers such as the European Union, Russia and Brazil. Johnson said that will only add to the uncertainty already driven by the trade disputes and probably drive crop prices down further if the closure continues. | ['environment/farming', 'us-news/us-news', 'us-news/trump-administration', 'us-news/us-politics', 'environment/environment', 'business/useconomy', 'business/internationaltrade', 'business/business', 'business/economics', 'business/global-economy', 'world/world', 'type/article', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/us-news', 'tone/news', 'us-news/us-federal-government-shutdown-2019', 'profile/chrismcgreal', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/us-news'] | environment/farming | BIODIVERSITY | 2019-01-09T11:00:09Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
sustainable-business/blog/mandatory-reporting-greenhouse-gas-emissions-vital | Mandatory reporting of greenhouse gas emissions vital | This year, the Government faces a unique opportunity to turn environmental reporting from a niche activity within business and make it mainstream, delivering carbon and financial benefits to UK businesses. The 2008 Climate Change Act provides for the introduction of a mandatory requirement for businesses to regularly report on their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, if implemented this will need to be introduced by 6 April 2012. Over 80% of business professionals who were surveyed by the Institute of Environmental Management and Assessment (IEMA) say that mandatory reporting of GHG emissions should be introduced for companies as it can deliver significant benefits, with those reporting emission reductions achieving an average of 9% CO2 savings over the last two years. These professionals recognise first hand that GHG reporting is an essential enabling tool encouraging companies to cut their GHG emissions and reduce costs. In 2010 IEMA surveyed over 1,600 environmental professionals working in business, to gain a deeper understanding of their work and progress on energy and carbon reduction. These business practitioners clearly indicated that greenhouse gas (GHG) reporting by businesses is central to progress and plays a unique role in transforming companies towards low carbon leadership - up to 85% saying that they want to go beyond achieving legal compliance. Essential is the underlying principle of quantification and monitoring, often a pre-requisite in any business before implementing actions on energy and carbon reduction. Reporting highlights the subject of GHG management to organisations and helps drive the momentum for action on carbon reduction both inside the business at a senior level, and also externally to clients, customers and investors. A clear relationship has been identified between GHG reporting and companies achieving higher reductions in their CO2 emissions. Although IEMA has seen incremental growth in reporting over the past 10 years, there needs to be a significant step-change if the UK's carbon budgets are to be achieved. Reporting is an essential enabling tool, helping businesses to review and sustain progress in greening the business, helping to achieve financial savings and supporting related benefits in competitiveness and corporate reputation. IEMA members are in the front line working inside businesses and making the case for carbon and energy reduction. Of the business professionals IEMA surveyed 90% identified cost savings as a benefit of reporting, and around 80% said improving their reputation amongst stakeholders, customers and investors was also a benefit. The more businesses that report on their GHG emissions, the greater the financial and carbon benefits. Practicing professionals are clear that GHG reporting by businesses can make a unique contribution to overall energy and carbon reduction, to business competitiveness and in helping companies to adapt and prepare for the future green economy. Jan Chmiel is chief executive of the Institute of Environmental Management and Assessment This content is brought to you by Guardian Professional. Become a GSB member to get more stories like this direct to your inbox | ['sustainable-business/low-carbon', 'sustainable-business/sustainable-business', 'tone/blog', 'type/article'] | sustainable-business/low-carbon | EMISSIONS | 2011-02-08T14:10:00Z | true | EMISSIONS |
technology/2014/jun/17/coca-cola-will-i-am-ekocycle-3d-printer | Will.i.am aims to shake up 3D printing with Coca-Cola branded Ekocycle Cube | Will.i.am's iPhone camera accessory may not have taken the gadget world by storm, but his next technology product could make more of an impact: a 3D printer that sources its materials partly from recycled plastic bottles. The Ekocycle Cube printer is being made by 3D Systems, the US-based manufacturer that announced Will.i.am as its chief creative officer in January this year. Coca-Cola is also a partner in the project, which is an offshoot from its existing Ekocycle venture with the Black Eyed Peas star. 3D Systems will start selling the device in the second half of 2014 with a launch price of $1,199 (£706). Its cartridges will include filament – 3D printing's equivalent of ink for traditional printers – partly made from used plastic bottles. The company says each cartridge will contain 25% of "post-consumer recycled materials", using an average of three bottles. The Ekocycle Cube is very on-brand, printing objects of up to six inches cubed in red, black, white or "natural" colours. Will.i.am is designing 25 "fashion, music and tech minded accessories" for buyers of the device, which will also use the Cubify smartphone app to browse and print designs. "We will make it cool to recycle, and we will make it cool to make products using recycled materials," said Will.i.am in a statement. "This is the beginning of a more sustainable 3D-printed lifestyle. Waste is only waste if we waste it." It's the star's latest technology venture, following on from his "director of creative innovation" role with Intel, announced in January 2011. Will.i.am also had a minority stake in Beats Electronics, the headphones brand recently bought by Apple for $3bn. His other tech projects include building social media site Dipdive in 2008; launching apps developer Will.i.apps in 2011 to make a music video app for the Black Eyed Peas; and producing a range of i.am+ iPhone accessories in 2013. In April this year, he showed off a prototype smartwatch during an appearance on British comedian Alan Carr's chat show, telling the audience: "I started the company myself. I funded it, used my own money to develop it." In an appearance (via Skype) at music industry conference Midem in February, Will.i.am said that more musicians should be following the lead of Beats founders Jimmy Iovine and Dr Dre in getting into hardware. "It’s sad that as a collective industry, we don’t do our own hardware. It’s only three people: Jim, Dre and myself – that’s Beats – that have hardware," he said. "I surround myself with megasupergeeks, so we can make and market hardware and things like that. Maybe I’m chasing something I would probably never catch, but I’ve been here before when I was in the ghetto chasing the dream of starting a band." • 30 things being 3D-printed right now (that aren't guns) • Will.i.am: 'I want to write code!' | ['technology/3d-printing', 'music/will-i-am', 'business/cocacola', 'environment/recycling', 'technology/technology', 'environment/ethical-living', 'environment/waste', 'technology/startups', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/stuart-dredge'] | environment/recycling | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE | 2014-06-17T07:58:06Z | true | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE |
environment/2010/aug/08/pavlovsk-seed-bank-russia | Pavlovsk seed bank faces destruction | Twelve Russian scientists famously chose to starve to death rather than eat the unique collection of seeds and plants they were protecting for humanity during the 900-day siege of Leningrad in the second world war. But the world's first global seed bank now faces destruction once more, to make way for a private housing estate. The fate of the Pavlovsk agricultural station outside St Petersburg will be decided in the courts this week. If, as expected, the case goes against it then the collection of plants built up over 85 years could be destroyed within months. At stake, say Russian and British campaigners for the station, is not just scientific history but one of the world's largest collection of strawberries, blackcurrants, apples and cherries. Pavlovsk contains more than 5,000 varieties of seeds and berries from dozens of countries, including more than 100 varieties each of gooseberries and raspberries. More than 90% of the plants are found in no other research collection or seed bank. Its seeds and berries are thought to possess traits that could be crucial to maintaining productive fruit harvests in many parts of the world as climate change and a rising tide of disease, pests and drought weaken the varieties farmers now grow. As it is predominantly a field collection, Pavlovsk cannot be moved. Experts estimate that even if another site were available nearby, it would take many years to relocate the plants. In what appears Kafkaesque logic, the property developers argue that because the station contains a "priceless collection", no monetary value can be assigned to it and so it is worthless. In another nod to Kafka, the government's federal fund of residential real estate development has argued that the collection was never registered and thus does not officially exist. "It is a bitter irony that the single most deliberately destructive act against crop diversity could be about to happen in the country that invented the modern seed bank," said Cary Fowler, of the Global Crop Diversity Trust. "Russia taught the world about the importance of crop collections for the future of agriculture. A decision to destroy Pavlovsk would forever tarnish a cause that generations of Russian plant scientists have lived and, quite literally, died, to protect." The station was established in 1926 by Nikolai Vavilov, the man credited with creating the idea of seed banks as repositories of plant diversity that could be used to breed new varieties in response to threats to food production. During the siege of Leningrad, 12 scientists chose to starve while protecting the diversity amassed by Vavilov, even though the seeds of rice, peas, corn and wheat that they were protecting could have sustained them. Vavilov died of malnutrition in prison in 1943, having criticised the anti-genetic concepts of Trofim Lysenko. But Russia has since elevated him to hero status. | ['environment/conservation', 'environment/biodiversity', 'environment/plants', 'environment/environment', 'science/science', 'world/russia', 'world/world', 'tone/news', 'world/europe-news', 'type/article', 'profile/johnvidal', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/international'] | environment/biodiversity | BIODIVERSITY | 2010-08-08T17:44:39Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
environment/2009/feb/25/ecstasy-cambodia | Cambodian 'ecstasy oil' factories destroyed by international environmental agency | Illegal factories hidden in the Cambodian rainforest that were producing a raw ingredient for the drug ecstasy have been tracked down and destroyed by investigators from an international environmental agency, working with the Cambodian authorities. In a month-long investigation the team from Fauna and Flora International (FFI) uncovered the illegal distilleries deep in the forest of the Cardamom mountains in south-west Cambodia. The two new facilities were intended to make sassafras oil from the roots of the extremely rare Mreah Prew Phnom tree for export to neighbouring countries. Sassafras oil is used to make cosmetics, but it can also be used as a precursor chemical to make methylenedioxymethamphetamine, more commonly known as the recreational drug ecstasy. FFI was alarmed that the rate of the illegal production of the "ecstasy oil" could have wiped out the Mreah Prew Phnom tree within five years. The trees are felled and the excavated roots mechanically shredded and boiled in a cauldron during a process that takes about 12 hours to produce 30 litres of oil. Surrounding trees are also felled to fuel fires for the distillation, threatening one of the last great rainforests in south-east Asia. Rivers are polluted by the effluent from the oil production. The two factories were discovered last month during the investigation by FFI staff working with Cambodia's environment ministry, which called in the army. The factories run by Vietnamese syndicates in the Phnom Samkos Wildlife Sanctuary were destroyed and two people arrested. Sassafras oil production is illegal in Cambodia. Last year 33 tonnes of sassafras oil that FFI helped to seize was destroyed by the Cambodian government and the Australian police, who claimed it could have been used to produce 245m ecstasy tablets with a street value of £4.82bn. The environmental group first became involved in efforts to crack down on sassafras oil production in 2004 because of the alarming levels of deforestation. In the Phnom Samkos sanctuary FFI now supports 49 Cambodian environment ministry rangers who have closed dozens of factories. FFI staff estimate there were 75 sassafras oil distilleries operating in the sanctuary at the industry's height in 2006. The number has plummeted, but tight monitoring is vital to prevent a fresh upsurge. "The re-emergence of the sassafras factories in Phnom Samkos wildlife sanctuary is of enormous concern to us," said FFI field coordinator, Tim Wood. "Recent law enforcement operations clearly show that this threat still persists and that we must remain very vigilant in our effort to suppress this and other forest crimes. But the policing of the illegal trade is under threat from funding cuts and FFI is calling on the Cambodian government and international donors to support the work of the rangers in combating the production. | ['environment/deforestation', 'environment/environment', 'world/world', 'world/cambodia', 'society/society', 'environment/forests', 'environment/endangered-habitats', 'society/drugs', 'world/asia-pacific', 'type/article', 'profile/ianmackinnon'] | environment/endangered-habitats | BIODIVERSITY | 2009-02-25T15:57:00Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
commentisfree/2013/nov/12/iran-nuclear-deal-obama-kerry | How Obama can achieve a nuclear deal with Iran | Tom Rogan | In the cause of peace, the clock is ticking. Western Intelligence services have delayed a nuclear Iran. Still, the evidence on the ground is unmistakable. Iranian nuclear activities increasingly point to a weaponization agenda. Of most concern: Iran's soon-to-be plutonium production facility at Arak. As David Albright and Christina Walrond of the Institute for Science and International Security note (pdf), claims of an inherently peaceful nuclear program cannot easily co-exist with a heavy water reactor. Correspondingly, in last weekend's P5+1 negotiations, the French Foreign Minister suggested that allowing Arak to remain in operation would represent a "sucker's deal''. He's right. This isn't just about Iran's nuclear claims-capability disconnect. Once Arak reaches nuclear criticality (as things stand, probably at some point next year), any military strike on its reactor would release highly radioactive materials into the atmosphere. In this vein, any deal that fails to address Arak would force the Israeli timetable – making a near-term Israeli military strike much likelier (it would be a grave mistake to take Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's threats lightly). Yet there's cause for hope. Further talks are planned for the near future. In order to reach a deal, Obama must embrace a far more realistic negotiating position. First, the US must ensure that any proposal is serious. We can't have another agreement in the form of the Syria WMD deal (the absurdity of which is rapidly becoming evident). A serious deal would require more than astute eyes. It would need teeth. This means that alongside forthright declarations on their nuclear infrastructure, Iran would have to acquiesce to unannounced IAEA spot checks (unless inspectors have freedom of search, there's no meaningful way to guard against a covert nuclear program). At the same time, any serious deal would have to proscribe robust consequences for Iranian non-compliance – stronger sanctions as a first step and the (credible) threat of multilateral military force as a follow up. In order to persuade a skeptical Iran, US Secretary of State John Kerry should point to the looming prospect of tougher sanctions from Congress. Second, Obama would have to ensure that any deal is perceivably sustainable – offering long term durability. Here, it will be critical to provide deal-enforcement mechanisms that reach beyond Iranian territory. In practical terms, a deal would need the co-operation of P5+1 intelligence officers and law enforcement personnel. Absent the unified resolve of the international community, any deal would quickly wither in face of self-interested agendas. Iranian hardliners would almost certainly pursue a covert weaponization program and unscrupulous business interests would wager the gambit of lucrative black market opportunities. Without a bedrock of sustainability, a deal would only be a pretense. Third, Obama needs to realize that unless a deal is sellable to all parties, it's neither serious nor sustainable. This is perhaps the most important caveat. In order to bridge present gaps, Kerry will have to accept von Bismarck's adage – that ultimately, "politics is the art of the possible". This understanding will demand tough choices – a successful deal would be signaled by complaints from hardliners on all sides. In more specific terms, Kerry will have to balance a low percentage cap on enrichment with a closure of facilities like those at Arak. Herein lies the defining challenge. The US must match a respect for Iranian "prestige" with the suspension of suspected weaponization activities. Yes, allowing even minimal enrichment would lead to criticism from some quarters. Obama must be prepared to ignore the anger. In the end, recognition of Iran's "prestige" will be critical for success. Ultimately, the theocrats don't simply regard nuclear power as a prospective policy tool, but as a theological endorsement; as a vindication of their revolutionary project, as a minimum that cannot be surrendered. For Obama, the key is to bind that belief to a more measured nuclear identity. It's true, where parties lack trust, diplomacy is seldom easy. It's also fair to say that nuclear diplomacy raises these complexities to an unequaled level. Nevertheless, without a realistic deal, figuratively or literally, the Iranian nuclear crisis is heading for meltdown. Israel will launch an attack, or Iran will become an unrestrained nuclear power. Either way, the price for diplomatic inaction is too high. In order to preserve the intersection of peace and security, America must pursue a serious, sustainable and saleable deal with paramount urgency. | ['commentisfree/commentisfree', 'world/iran', 'environment/nuclearpower', 'world/nuclear-weapons', 'us-news/us-news', 'world/world', 'us-news/us-foreign-policy', 'us-news/john-kerry', 'us-news/barack-obama', 'tone/comment', 'type/article', 'profile/tom-rogan'] | environment/nuclearpower | ENERGY | 2013-11-12T13:15:00Z | true | ENERGY |
world/2020/aug/20/china-three-gorges-dam-highest-level-hydro-electric-floods | Anxiety grows as China’s Three Gorges dam hits highest level | Extreme floods have hit China’s Three Gorges dam, which recorded the largest inflow of water in its history, prompting officials to assure the public it would not be breached. Inflows to the world’s largest hydro-electric dam reached 75m litres of water a second, according to state media. By Thursday morning, 11 outlets of the dam had been opened to discharge 49.2m litres of water a second, the largest release since its construction. After two months of heavy floods across central and south-west China, officials have promised the dam can withstand the flows. A breach of the dam, a controversial and unprecedented feat of engineering along the Yangtze River, would be embarrassing for China, which took 12 years to build the megaproject, displacing millions and submerging swathes of land. The Three Gorges dam, which can handle inflows of about 98.8m litres a second, is already approaching its capacity. Officials expect water levels in the reservoir, whose dam was built to withstand a water level of 175 metres, to reach 165.5 metres on Saturday. The flooding is predicted to last about five days. This week the ministry of water resources said the standard of construction meant 111 large reservoirs upstream from the dam could help lessen pressure on the structure. “The standard of construction of the dam is high and it can resist large floods,” it said. Upstream from the dam, officials in the city of Chongqing, in Sichuan province, evacuated almost 300,000 residents before the flooding. On Thursday, levels along the Yangtze near Chongqing reached heights not seen since 1981, when the country experienced its worst floods in a century, leaving 1.5 million homeless. In Chongqing, roads, bridges, parks and a main highway in the commercial district were flooded, affecting 260,000 people and damaging at least 20,000 businesses, according to officials. Images showed flooding had submerged three-metre-high signs and buildings several storeys high. Firefighters were using boats to transport trapped residents. In Sichuan, emergency workers and volunteers were scrambling to protect a 1,200-year-old cultural relic, the Leshan Giant Buddha, as floodwaters reached the toes of the statue for the first time since 1949. The provinces of Hunan, Henan and Hubei, where the Three Gorges dam is located, were also braced for heavy rain on Thursday. The flooding threatens to derail the country’s fragile recovery from the Covid-19 crisis. The outbreak has caused an estimated 179bn yuan in losses and displaced more than 4 million people, according to officials. The floods have also raised concerns about food security. A report from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences said the supply gap was likely to be about 130m tons by the end of 2025. The Chinese leader toured Anhui province this week, another badly hit area where floods had eased slightly. Xi Jinping stood atop a floodgate and visited soldiers, declaring: “I have always been concerned about the people in flood-stricken areas. The Chinese nation has fought natural disasters for thousands of years … We will continue to fight.” | ['world/china', 'world/asia-pacific', 'environment/flooding', 'world/world', 'environment/environment', 'world/natural-disasters', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/lily-kuo', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/australia-foreign'] | environment/flooding | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2020-08-20T07:34:21Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
technology/2018/jul/03/hoverboards-why-they-havent-got-off-to-a-mcflying-start | Hoverboards: why they haven't got off to a McFlying start | We could start by saying “they” didn’t promise us hoverboards. People want hoverboards because they saw one in the disappointing sequel Back to the Future Part II . But that doesn’t mean people haven’t tried to make them. Like other colourful retrofuturist fantasies, hoverboards were a lustmotif that spoke to a whole generation in the way that flying cars and jetpacks did to baby boomers. Problem No 1: how would this thing hover? We have four choices: some type of thrust, a cushion of air, maglev or magic. If it sits on a cushion of air, it is probably a hovercraft, which have been around since the 1960s. One alarming effort by Airboard originally claimed to be a genuine hoverboard but turned out to be a personal hovercraft, looking more like an industrial floor scrubber you can ride. Essentially a floaty scooter, its noisy internal combustion engine allows it to bob about menacingly on a cushion of air, with a drive wheel on the ground to steer it. Looks fun but it doesn’t hover, isn’t a board, and people just don’t want to be seen on a giant lawnmower. If our hoverboard uses maglev – and we have a few examples of those – it inconveniently requires superconductors, cooled with liquid nitrogen to around -135C. Naturally, it also requires a magnetic surface. But they do look the part. First up, California-based company Arx Pax’s Hendo hoverboard. Watching the demo, it feels ostensibly close to that skateboard ideal – it looks a riot to ride, with whooping trialists gleefully floating about 15cm above the floor. But on closer inspection, it screeches like a defective train and is so hard to control even professional skateboarder Tony Hawk spins like a top until he is flung off. And unfortunately the battery lasts just a few minutes. And $10,000 (£7,500) a pop? Next! But what if this tech were extended to an entire skatepark, as carmaker Lexus has done with its Slide hoverboard? Perhaps the closest example yet to Marty’s machine, this gadget houses a liquid nitrogen-cooled superconductor to float above a hidden magnetic track. It keeps the board in place using “quantum locking” – a property of type 2 superconductors that overcomes the tendency of magnets to wobble off and repel each other, using a sort of magnetic, sticky “vortex”. Slide certainly brings us a mite closer to Marty – it looks the part, glides quietly – but there’s no getting away from the fact that, as with any maglev, it needs a special surface. It might be well hidden but there’s still a magnetic track under that skatepark. And that won’t satiate a public hungry for Marty McFly kicks. What about conventional thrust propulsion? The US company ArcaSpace comes admirably close to the ideal with its ArcaBoard. It’s capable of hovering a foot in the air, by dint of its 36 electric propellers generating 200kg of lift controlled by onboard balancing tech to help stabilise it. You can even control it using an app on your smartphone, which is neat. You might only be able to catch some sweet air on this for three minutes, but it’s surely a great start. The drawback – ah, there’s always a drawback – is that there’s no disguising the fact that it looks like a mattress with fans on it. It hardly radiates skateboard chic, and many may balk at forking out $15,000 for a flying carpet. And there doesn’t seem to be much evidence that the rider can control it. What’s the point of a skateboard you can’t do sick tricks on? Then you’ve got flyboards. These are not so much floaty skateboards as flying platforms. The best known example is perhaps Franky Zapata’s jet-propelled Flyboard Air, which evolved from an earlier invention, those funky-looking water-jetpack gizmos also called flyboards – you may have seen beautiful people enjoying them on YouTube. The Flyboard Air is a jet-powered “personal aerial vehicle” capable of vertical takeoff and landing, and can fly at a height of 150 metres at 87mph. While it has obvious emergency and military applications, it was designed to be flown safely, sans licence, by almost anyone who takes a shine to it. A flight lasts 12 minutes but Zapata anticipates longer trips in the future. Canadian inventor Alexander Duru’s Omni Hoverboard is a similar contrivance, which uses fans to create the requisite thrust. It’s essentially a large, rideable drone – think giant desk fan with bootstraps. Its first iteration wormed its way into the Guinness World Records book in the rather uncrowded category of longest hoverboard flight – 276 metres – and the firm is working on a consumer version. Both of these, like many of the drone-derived technologies arriving on the scene, look great fun – even practical – but the nagging problem is … they aren’t skateboards. Last but definitely least are those upright, dweeby, hands-free Segways marketed as hoverboards by Swegways, Airwheels and so on, readily available at any Argos. On any given day, one might see poseurs trundling along the pavement on them, upsetting dogs. These may be fun, but the main sticking points here are that: (a) they aren’t boards and (b) they don’t hover. And they have even been known to set your feet on fire. What a let-down. McFly would have spat out his cornflakes. Surely the real test of a genuine hoverboard is, can you do a sweet kickflip on it? If the answer is no, it won’t do. Back to the Future? More like back to the drawing board. | ['technology/series/they-promised-us--', 'technology/technology', 'technology/engineering', 'technology/gadgets', 'uk/transport', 'type/article', 'tone/features', 'profile/dave-hall', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-technology'] | technology/gadgets | UNRELATED_TO_CLIMATE | 2018-07-03T05:00:30Z | true | UNRELATED_TO_CLIMATE |
science/2024/oct/16/plantwatch-military-training-ground-offers-surprise-haven | Plantwatch: Military training ground offers surprise haven | A military training ground with tanks charging around, explosions and gunfire hardly seems a haven for wild plants, but the Ministry of Defence’s Salisbury Plain site is exceptional. The training ground is the largest remaining area of semi-natural chalk grassland left in north-west Europe, an area of 150 sq miles (380 sq km), the size of the Isle of Wight. It is home to rare plants unique to chalkland and one of the richest ecosystems for plant diversity in Europe. The military have been using Salisbury Plain for more than 100 years, so the land has escaped the ravages of intensive agriculture, including fertilisers, pesticides, herbicides and ploughing. Perhaps most surprising is how tanks churning up the ground helps to create diverse habitats, especially where bare chalk is exposed and becomes colonised by specialised plants, such as kidney vetch and small scabious. It is a hotspot for the critically endangered pink flowering red hemp nettle, which grows along the edges of the tank paths, and the viper’s bugloss which, with its deep blue flowers, thrives where the ground has been roughed up and the plant’s seeds dispersed by the vehicles. | ['science/series/plantwatch', 'uk-news/wiltshire', 'environment/plants', 'environment/conservation', 'environment/biodiversity', 'environment/environment', 'science/science', 'environment/wildlife', 'type/article', 'tone/features', 'profile/paulsimons', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/weather2', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-weather'] | environment/wildlife | BIODIVERSITY | 2024-10-16T05:00:11Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
environment/2020/jun/05/meat-giants-selling-to-uk-linked-to-brazil-farms-in-deforested-amazon-reserve | Meat giants selling to UK linked to Brazil farms in deforested Amazon reserve | Three international meat companies have indirectly sourced cattle from farms that deforested a unique, protected Amazon reserve, a new report from Greenpeace has found – and two of them later sold meat from the area to the UK. The revelations come as the Brazil-based companies involved, JBS, Marfrig and Minerva, are under increasing pressure to come clean about their Amazon supply chains. They are now known to have broken commitments made to Greenpeace and Brazilian federal prosecutors more than a decade ago. All three companies bought cattle from a farm outside the Sierra Ricardo Franco park that had sourced livestock from two farms inside it. One man is the owner or part owner of all three farms and was charged with environmental crimes inside the 159,000-hectare reserve on Brazil’s border with Bolivia, in the state of Mato Grosso. In 2017, JBS told the Observer it had suspended cattle purchases from the park after a request from prosecutors. “This is how meat packers continue contributing to the destruction of the Amazon,” said Cristiane Mazzetti, a Greenpeace campaigner who co-authored the report. Serra Ricardo Franco was created by the state of Mato Grosso in 1997. “This is a region with great riches in terms of biodiversity that should be protected,” Mazzetti said. But the state never properly implemented the park and has no management plan for it in place. “There was no effective protection and this allowed invasion and deforestation,” said Samuel Costa, a Mato Grosso state prosecutor. In 2015, prosecutors began legal actions to force the state to protect the park. The Greenpeace report cites three farms in Sierra Ricardo Franco – Paredão I, Paredão II and Cachoeira – that prosecutors say were cleared after the park was created. Thousands of hectares were illegally deforested. The Cachoeira and Paredão farms are co-owned by Marcos Tozzatti and a company he controls. Cachoeira and one of the Paredão farms are also part-owned by a company where Eliseu Padilha – a former cabinet minister – is a partner. Tozzatti has been charged with environmental crimes including clearing hundreds of hectares of forest on Paredão. After being ordered to cease agricultural activity, he more than doubled the size of his herd. He and other farmers inside the park have challenged its protected status and have won a court ruling allowing them to continue operations until a final decision is taken – but prosecutors are appealing the ruling. “In the prosecutors’ office view, any deforestation inside the area is illegal,” Costa said. The lawyer representing Tozzatti and Padilha did not respond to emailed questions. Greenpeace found that the Paredão farms sent 4,000 cattle to the Barra Mansa farm outside the park, which is also registered to Tozzatti, between April 2018 and June 2019. In 2018 and 2019, the JBS, Minerva and Marfrig plants near the park bought thousands of head of cattle from the Barra Mansa farm. The JBS and Minerva plants exported nearly 50,000 tons of beef products, some of which went to European countries including the UK, the report found. Marfrig exported around 5,000 tons to countries including Hong Kong and Egypt. Brazil’s meat giants say they struggle to monitor so-called “indirect suppliers” – farms that sell cattle to other farms which are then sold on to their slaughterhouses – despite promising to do so in agreements signed in 2009 with federal prosecutors and Greenpeace. Greenpeace abandoned its deal in 2017. The companies said they have invested heavily in independently audited monitoring systems and are working to control indirect suppliers. “JBS takes a zero-tolerance approach to deforestation in its supply chain,” JBS said. The company said Barra Mansa was JBS-compliant for the period cited in the report. From 1 July, JBS will bring in a new “theoretical index” which uses a farm’s productivity to calculate if it is suspected of cattle laundering, and now checks supplier farms against areas embargoed by Brazil’s federal environment agency, Ibama, using geomonitoring. “These innovations are expected to make a significant impact in reducing cases of cattle laundering across the beef industry,” it said. Marfrig said that the Barra Mansa farm was a registered supplier and that from July 2018 to July 2019 its plant had slaughtered 180 cattle Tozzatti supplied. “Marfrig is aware there is a challenge to be faced in obtaining information on these indirect suppliers,” it said in a statement, highlighting its RFI (request for information) system under which farmers supply information on their suppliers. Last year Marfrig said 53% of its Amazon cattle came from indirect suppliers. JBS has refused to reveal its share. Minerva said its Amazon cattle purchases were “100 percent made in monitored farms” but that it was not possible to fully track Amazon cattle movements without full access to government data which it does not have. A Minerva spokeswoman said the company did not know how much of its Amazon cattle came via indirect suppliers. The company said the Paredão farm has been blocked since 2018 but that Barra Mansa is a registered supplier. “We will investigate the facts with the legally available data,” it said. | ['environment/series/animals-farmed', 'world/brazil', 'environment/meat-industry', 'environment/amazon-rainforest', 'environment/deforestation', 'environment/environment', 'environment/farming', 'environment/food', 'environment/forests', 'world/americas', 'world/world', 'environment/conservation', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/dom-phillips', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/global-development'] | environment/farming | BIODIVERSITY | 2020-06-05T08:00:09Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/aug/29/hurricane-katrina-new-orleans-green | New Orleans's green dilemma | Anna Hartnell | Four years have now passed since Hurricane Katrina made landfall and devastated New Orleans, and the task of rebuilding is slowly gathering pace. Although we will never know whether climate change was a factor behind the severe weather that battered the city in 2005, it is clear that rising sea levels and warming waters will increase the frequency of Katrina-type storms in the future. So it's not surprising that the reconstruction is being driven by strong environmental considerations. But after numerous delays, and with many of the poor and predominantly African American population still homeless, one gets the troubling sense that those who lost most to the storm may now be becoming pawns in a green agenda. Global Green, an organization that teamed up with Brad Pitt, is piloting a "green community" in the Holy Cross area of the Lower Ninth Ward, home to some of the city's poorest inhabitants. They say that if 50,000 homes destroyed by Katrina were rebuilt to their standards, over half a million tonnes of CO2 would be eliminated from the atmosphere – the equivalent, they claim, of taking 100,000 cars off the road. New Orleans residents would save $38m to $56m every year. It's hard not to agree with this agenda in principle. A city built below sea level would be stupid not to be persuaded by the idea of carbon-neutral living, which its green homes will showcase to the rest of the US and the wider world. But the problem with these technologically sophisticated green homes is that in the short term they are very expensive: organisations like Global Green and its offshoot, Make It Right, have been able to subsidise those homes built with private money. But massive subsidies would be needed if the entire city were to be rebuilt on this model. And of even greater concern for residents, these homes also take time: Global Green were on the ground in New Orleans in September 2005, and their first model green home – now open to visitors – wasn't completed until April 2008. And time is not on the side of those who wish to reclaim their homes in New Orleans. This was made abundantly clear shortly after Katrina when Mayor Ray Nagin's Bring New Orleans Back Commission proposed converting large swaths of the city's flood-prone areas – including the Lower Ninth – into green spaces. The response of the city's scattered residents – evacuated to far-flung places all over the US – was to return to pitch tents on the sites of their former homes, and to make themselves human barriers to the bulldozers poised to tear down their neighbourhoods. The scenes of widespread homelessness that continued for years after Katrina have been largely "solved" not by rebuilding but by people migrating from the streets to the floors of family and friends. Many displaced residents have yet to return to the city. Rebuilding in the Lower Ninth is taking place in the midst of a sea of vacant lots, many of which have yet to be cleared of storm debris. The fact remains that the city has not yet recovered from its acute shortage of affordable housing, and the situation has been made worse - after Katrina - by the demolition of most of the city's public housing projects. Many of these projects were sitting on prime real estate long eyed up by the tourist industry, and were condemned partly on the grounds that they weren't green enough. This is typical of the way the green agenda, because it has been so widely accepted, has also been hijacked to promote much less worthy interests. The environmental justice movement's efforts to rebuild sustainable green communities for low-income residents are without doubt to be admired. They have engaged closely with the communities in which they work, ensuring that the new homes do go to former residents in moves designed to mitigate the inevitable gentrification that has shaped much of the city's reconstruction. They have stepped into the gaping breach left by inept governments at the city, state and federal levels, all of which allowed talk of a much reduced and in all likelihood much 'whiter' New Orleans to go on for far too long. But there needs to be a real conversation about who is responsible for sustainable rebuilding or else the call to build back green can become another excuse for not building back at all. Global Green's vision – which includes not just green homes but green schools, playgrounds and community centres – surely has to be the future. But it also presents a real dilemma. For it is a vision that sits uneasily in the context of impoverished communities who have been made to pay many times over for the consequences of the exploitation of the earth's natural resources, and which may well pay again for the privilege of becoming a national example of sustainable living. In this sense New Orleans can be seen as a microcosm of the global story about climate change, in which developing nations continue to carry the burden of western affluence. | ['commentisfree/commentisfree', 'us-news/hurricane-katrina', 'travel/neworleans', 'environment/environment', 'environment/flooding', 'environment/climate-crisis', 'world/natural-disasters', 'us-news/us-news', 'world/world', 'commentisfree/cif-green', 'tone/comment', 'world/hurricanes', 'cities/cities', 'type/article', 'profile/annahartnell'] | world/hurricanes | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2009-08-29T14:00:00Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
politics/2023/jul/06/row-over-hanging-baskets-a-political-stunt-says-salisbury-councillor | Row over hanging baskets a ‘political stunt’, says Salisbury councillor | Council leaders in Salisbury have hit back at “politically motivated” attacks on their decision to replace single-use hanging basket displays and planters provided by the council with environmentally friendly sustainable planting in the medieval city centre. As part of an effort to become carbon neutral by 2030 and encourage bees and butterflies into the city centre, the coalition-led council this week voted to pilot replacing hanging baskets with “living pillars” and “parklets”, which it hopes will provide pockets of nature in the heart of the city. The leader of the Conservative opposition, Eleanor Wills, called it “ideological nonsense as per from [a] leftwing cabal” and said it was “‘incredibly unfortunate for a city with medieval roots”. She said: “For a leftwing city council to outright ban hanging baskets and other floral displays for reasons of sustainability and biodiversity suggests […] a new and undesirable avenue for ideological silliness.” But the independent councillor Annie Riddle, one of the leadership group, said the move had been blown out of proportion as part of a “political stunt” by Wills and that there was no ban in place on hanging baskets, after some local business owners expressed concern that their own flowers would be outlawed. “You can’t really scrap hanging baskets, that’s a ridiculous exaggeration. Plenty of the shops and pubs have hanging baskets, and they can continue to do that – nobody’s banning them,” she said. “What we’re doing is trialling a different form of environmentally friendly council planting. To be honest with you, this is a politically motivated row that has been manufactured.” Riddle said the council had already stated that if the new displays were hated, there was “nothing to stop” the council reinstating baskets next year. “Salisbury’s history is one of its principal glories, but it can’t live in the past,” she said. “There are other ways that things can look nice, be more friendly to wildlife and provide more shade. We hope that that style of planting will attract more wildlife and be more bee-friendly.” In a review in 2019, the council committed to making the city as carbon neutral as possible by 2030 to help tackle the climate change emergency. New plans detailed in a five-page report include the construction of a “parklet” in Market Square, with a wheelchair-accessible seated area surrounded by plants, which the council says would provide natural shade and require less intensive watering. Proposals also include replacing traditional hanging baskets with “living pillars”, vertical plant installations that the council argues would “offer more benefits to wildlife and require less watering”. Marc Read, the council’s environmental services manager, said that while colourful displays were “an expression of civic pride”, they were “increasingly demanding in terms of costs and other resources as the summer becomes increasingly dryer and hotter, as the climate continues to change”. The budget for the 2023-24 floral displays, including watering, is £30,000. The row has also centred on a plant structure known as “Gilbert” – a floral display in the shape of a dragon that has been a longstanding feature of Salisbury centre, and which the council says requires 30,000 litres of water a year. The council report states that “Gilbert’s frame has reached the end of its lifespan, with much of the internal watering pipework now failing”. Riddle said a local group, Men’s Shed, had offered to try to repair the structure, while the council was exploring ways to replant or recreate Gilbert but with more environmentally friendly plants. “What’s been lost sight of in all this is the reality of climate change and the fact that we’re going to have to adapt,” she said. “All that the city council is trying to do is what the electorate indicated when we were voted in two years ago, which is to make our city more environmentally friendly and keep it as green and pleasant as it is now for future generations.” The Met Office said this week that last month was the UK’s hottest June on record. | ['politics/localgovernment', 'uk/uk', 'politics/politics', 'society/localgovernment', 'environment/green-politics', 'politics/conservatives', 'environment/environment', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/alexandratopping', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/uknews', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-home-news'] | environment/green-politics | CLIMATE_POLICY | 2023-07-06T11:58:41Z | true | CLIMATE_POLICY |
society/2003/nov/19/environment.guardiansocietysupplement | The hard cell | When Christian and Kerstin, two Swedes, came to live in London, they got a shock. One day, Kerstin took a handful of old batteries to the chemist, just as she always did back home. She asked the man behind the counter if he would take them. He did - and promptly dumped them in the bin. That was when they realised that Britain had some catching up to do. Scandinavians, Germans and others have long known that household batteries contain heavy metals such as zinc, cadmium, mercury and lead, and that if they're dumped in landfills those metals seep out and risk contaminating water courses and underground aquifers. These countries recycle up to 50% of their batteries, but in Britain, out of around 25,000 tonnes bought each year, just 200 tonnes are recycled - and these are sent abroad to be processed. Britain has no dedicated battery recycling plant. However, a year-long, central, local and industry-funded pilot project in Bristol has proved that recycling household batteries is possible, and that people are keen to support it. The lessons learned will be invaluable once new EU targets for battery recycling are introduced over the next few years. The Bristol project, which began in September 2002, was ambitious. The project consortium, which included Bristol city council, Sita environmental trust and the Department of Trade and Industry, set itself a target to collect 10 tonnes of batteries from 180,000 households in the city. It blasted the city with publicity, educating people and doing kerbside collections. The enthusiasm shown for the project was remarkable, perhaps because it was made easy for households - residents put the batteries out with their weekly collections. Instead of 10 tonnes, more than 12 tonnes were collected. "We've shown it can be done," says project manager Isobel Downey. "The British public wants to recycle batteries, but the bulk of people will only get involved if it's made easy for them." But the project, while successful, was costly and fraught with difficulties from the start. First came industrial action by staff working for Resource Saver, the company operating Bristol's kerbside recycling collection service when the scheme began. The "go slow" started just a few weeks after the scheme's high-profile launch, and a short strike by kerbside collectors took place later that autumn. It did not destroy the scheme, but it seriously affected collection rates - and not just for batteries. "It has had an effect on all of our recycling tonnages for this year," says Downey. In 2001/02, Bristol recycled about 14% of household waste, and the aim was to achieve 18% in 2002/03. Resource Saver's industrial dispute put paid to that plan, and the city has had to make do with maintaining its 2001/02 recycling rate. The next obstacle was an announcement in February that BritanniaZinc, the Avonmouth-based zinc-smelting firm that had been reprocessing the batteries, was to cease trading. Fortunately, G&P Batteries, based in Wolverhampton, stepped in, but costs increased dramatically. BritanniaZinc had been accepting the batteries unsorted in return for the zinc, lead and cadmium it could extract. But G&P had to manually separate them according to type and ship them to France for reprocessing. This put the price up to nearly £980 a tonne and the total cost of collecting, transport and recycling rose to roughly £7,000 a tonne - a figure guaranteed to make local authority recycling officers wince. Downey says the price is more than other councils would have to pay, because of the costs of the publicity and education scheme it needed to quickly hit its high targets. "You could easily knock a third or two-thirds off the cost," she says. "The purpose of the pilot was to experiment, and many of the pilot's expenses were one-offs." The costs of kerbside collection, too, can often be brought down. Greg Clementson, a director at G&P Batteries agrees that Bristol's costs are not a good indication of the true price local authorities will have to pay in the future, but he believes that the expense of reprocessing will remain high until mechanised battery sorting is available. "The UK needs one or two mechanised sorting plants, but the volume of household batteries being collected doesn't justify it yet." So far only a handful of councils, such as Cheshire and Lancashire, offer any sort of battery collection, and fewer, such as Barnet and Bristol, offer kerbside collections. Until there is legislation demanding recycling and setting targets, few authorities are likely to prioritise batteries. However, central and local government is aware that Europe is moving inexorably in that direction. After years of wrangling between battery manufacturers and Brussels, the EC is expected to publish a legislative proposal on battery recycling by the end of the month. This would force Britain to collect household - "single use" - batteries, although the targets haven't been decided. Local authorities would bear the brunt of the collection work, while battery manufacturers and importers would be responsible for the financial cost of reprocessing. The Bristol pilot scheme has ended, but the council, having found ways to cut the costs, is to continue its kerbside collections. What has been proved, it seems, is the recognition that the British are not so different from the Scandinavians, and that, given the opportunity, people are willing to act, and change habits quickly. | ['society/society', 'environment/environment', 'environment/recycling', 'environment/waste', 'type/article', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/societyguardian', 'theguardian/societyguardian/societyguardian'] | environment/recycling | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE | 2003-11-19T16:07:30Z | true | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE |
uk/the-northerner/2011/oct/12/litter-scaffold-mike-mccartney-cavern-club-kirstie-allsopp | Liverpool launches the UK's first singing litter bin | It's a momentous morning in Liverpool where the UK's first singing litter bin has just been launched to cheerful applause. The former Scaffold singer Mike McCartney, who belted out Lily the Pink in 1968 in a fashion none of us ancients will ever forget, had his hit song of the previous year Thank U Very Much played back to him by the otherwise modest-looking receptacle. It's one of two installed in Matthew Street, one of them opposite the legendary Cavern club, after research by city fathers in Scandinavia. Singing litter bins there attract three times more rubbish than mute ones; and so long as the local council keeps emptying them, this can only be a good thing. McCartney is specially pleased to be kicking off the pilot scheme because his father was a Liverpool binman. He says: I love Liverpool and I love the idea of the singing bin. I have a huge amount of respect for binmen, because of my dad, so I was delighted to do this re-recording. It's a fun approach to a serious issue and sometimes being quirky is what's needed to make people stop and think. The fact a bin is going to sing to you is a good incentive to drop litter and I'm sure the kids will love it. If it helps keep the city centre clean then I'll be happy. Promoters of the scheme will be on hand to check that McCartney's optimism is justified, hoping that the alternative scenario of people shrinking away and dropping their litter in disbelief will not materialise. Kirstie Allsopp, an 'ambassador' for Keep Britain Tidy, says: These bins will hopefully bring a smile to people's faces and encourage them to do the right thing. By taking small actions, like putting our rubbish in a bin, we can make a big difference and tackle the problem of litter that blights our beautiful country. Would you like to have a singing litter bin? If so, what would you like it to sing? I've Got to Get a Litter to you? It's Bin Too Long? Suggestions welcome, and all will be forwarded to Merseyside. | ['uk/the-northerner', 'tone/blog', 'society/society', 'environment/waste', 'environment/environment', 'uk/liverpool', 'society/localgovernment', 'education/tourismtransportandtravel', 'travel/travel', 'culture/heritage', 'travel/heritage', 'environment/blog', 'society/joepublic', 'type/article', 'profile/martinwainwright'] | environment/waste | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE | 2011-10-12T08:00:00Z | true | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE |
environment/2007/may/25/japan.climatechange | Tokyo unveils proposals for 50% cut in greenhouse gases by 2050 | Japan's prime minister, Shinzo Abe, yesterday unveiled an ambitious "vision" to cut global greenhouse gas emissions by 50% by 2050, a plan that would involve the world's biggest emitters, the US and China, and go beyond the Kyoto agreement. "There is only one earth, and there are no national boundaries for the air," said Mr Abe, who intends to present the proposals at the G8 summit in Germany. He added: "Even the most outstanding strategy would be meaningless unless all people on earth participated. If the framework required economic growth to be sacrificed, we could not expect many countries to participate. We must create a new framework ... in which the entire world will participate in emissions reduction." The 1997 Kyoto protocol commits industrialised nations to cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 5% from 1990 levels, between 2008 and 2012. The US withdrew from the agreement, and opposes proposals that could harm its economy. Discussion on a post-Kyoto agreement is expected to dominate talks at the G8 in June. Japan, which will host next year's summit, is concerned that an insistence on numerical targets will discourage the US from signing up to any agreement. Officials in Tokyo stressed that Mr Abe's "Cool Earth 50" proposals were a non-binding idea. "When we talk about 2050 ... we do not have sufficient scientific knowledge to be concrete and precise in identifying a goal," said Koji Tsuruoka, at the foreign ministry. Japan is likely to fail to meet its own Kyoto target of a 6% cut. Its greenhouse gas emissions as of March 2006 were 14% higher than in 1990. | ['environment/environment', 'world/japan', 'environment/climate-crisis', 'world/world', 'environment/kyoto-protocol', 'environment/global-climate-talks', 'world/asia-pacific', 'type/article', 'profile/justinmccurry', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/international'] | environment/global-climate-talks | CLIMATE_POLICY | 2007-05-24T23:03:10Z | true | CLIMATE_POLICY |
commentisfree/2008/sep/20/nuclear.nuclearpower | David Lowry: Brown goes nuclear | The problem with the Labour government is not the unpopularity of Gordon Brown, as measured by successive opinion polls, but the policies being pursued. Let me take one important example. Last Wednesday Gordon Brown held his monthly prime-ministerial press conference. The reports by the Guardian's current and former political editors ("Producers may pass on cost of energy package to consumers"; "Brown comes up with a cones hotline moment" and the supporting editorial, "Lofty ideals") overlooked the fact that in the press conference launching the energy support package, Brown chose on no less than three occasions to praise nuclear power. He said: "I think people may have forgotten that we made the right decision about nuclear power, I think very few people now doubt that". Actually, the prime minister might be surprised that many do still oppose an energy source that produces dangerous plutonium as an unavoidable byproduct, and sometimes uses it in new fuel too, requiring methods of transport that are vulnerable to terrorism. Some 105,000 kilograms of this stuff is stockpiled at Sellafield: it takes but 5 kilos to make a bomb of the size that devastated Nagasaki in 1945. As Dr Bennett Ramberg, security advisor to the state department in the 1980s, has argued, nuclear regulators are unfortunately not likely to implement appropriate protective insurance strategies "as long as they cling to the view that attacks are improbable and plants are well protected. The annual commemoration of the Chernobyl accident should serve as a useful reminder of what can happen if the presumptions prove wrong." Some think that Brown, hitherto sceptical about the benefits of nuclear power, may have been unduly influenced by the fact that his brother is public relations chief for EDF-UK, whose parent company in France – a company 78% dependent on nuclear power – is in the final throes of buying the majority share in Britain's main nuclear generator, British Energy. Brown added "I am encouraging other countries to go ahead with nuclear power, France and Britain are leaders in nuclear power ... " This is inconsistent with Brown's insistence on fighting international terrorism and the foreign secretary's oft-stated determination to curb nuclear proliferation. More, France has been a major industrial partner in the controversial Iranian nuclear industry. A little known report (pdf) prepared last year by Paris-based analyst, Mycle Schneider, for the Green group in the European parliament, revealed that in 1974 Iran took a 40% share in a special purpose nuclear company Sofidif, the other 60% owned by the French Government owned nuclear giant, Areva. The next year, Schneider reports, Sofidif took up a 25% share in the international Eurodif consortium that built a large uranium enrichment facility in Pierrelatte in the south of France. Sofidif still exists, still holds the same share in Eurodif and is still active. In a letter dated 13 February 2006 (reproduced by Schneider), addressed to the CEO of Sofidif, Reza Aghazadeh, vice-president of Iran and president of the Iranian atomic energy organisation, announced the changeover of the Iranian representatives on the board of Sofidif, demonstrating their contemporary involvement. Is this the kind of international nuclear partnership Brown wants to promote? And on broader geopolitical energy matters Brown asserted: "Russia must maintain the obligations and commitments it makes to the international community ... I do say there is another thing that has arisen from not only what has happened in Russia, but it is happening in other countries as well, we cannot allow a country like ours, given the need for energy security, to be wholly dependent on the supply of one resource. Instead of being wholly dependent on oil and gas, which of course is not going to be the best way of us proceeding as North Sea oil declines, we want a balanced energy policy, and so in my view does the rest of Europe. That will mean more nuclear building ... " Brown finds himself a curious political bedfellow with none other than the Conservative prospective parliamentary candidate for Copeland, the constituency containing Sellafield. In a letter to his local newspaper, the Whitehaven News, on September 11, Councillor Chris Whiteside wrote: "But if we don't support nuclear or coal, how are we to keep the lights on? Are we going to rely on buying gas from Vladimir Putin? I don't think that's a good idea". You can dress up nuclear power stations however you like: they are still inevitable generators of nuclear explosives and nuclear waste, alongside electricity. Ducking under the duvet won't change these facts, Brown. | ['commentisfree/commentisfree', 'environment/nuclearpower', 'environment/environment', 'politics/gordon-brown', 'environment/energy', 'technology/energy', 'type/article', 'tone/comment', 'profile/davidlowry'] | environment/nuclearpower | ENERGY | 2008-09-20T11:00:00Z | true | ENERGY |
world/2005/sep/24/hurricanes2005.weather2 | Patched levees breached | Water began pouring over a patched levee in New Orleans yesterday, heightening fears that a storm surge caused by Hurricane Rita could send floodwater back into wide sections of the city. The breach occurred in the ninth ward, one of the city's lowest lying neighbourhoods, which had been hardest hit by Hurricane Katrina and was largely deserted except for emergency workers. Army engineers were battling high winds, unable to get helicopters into the air to dump sandbags over the levees. They were trying to manoeuvre boats into the breached section last night. "Our worst fears came true," said Barry Guidry, who is with the Georgia national guard. "The levee will breach if we keep on the path we are on right now, which will fill the area that was flooded earlier. We have three significant breeches in the levee and the water is rising rapidly. At daybreak I found substantial breaks and they've grown larger." Steady rain and strong winds were buffeting the already devastated city last night, with more expected in the coming days. Dozens of blocks in the ninth ward were flooded as a waterfall at least nine metres (30ft) wide poured over a dike that had been used to patch breaks in the Industrial Canal. On a street that runs parallel to the canal, the water ran waist-deep and was rising fast. Sally Forman, an aide to New Orleans mayor, Ray Nagin, said officials knew the levees were compromised but that no one was at risk."I wouldn't imagine there's one person down there," Ms Forman said. Forecasters say there will be up to 13cm of rain in New Orleans as Rita passes at the weekend, dangerously close to the 15cm officials say the levees can withstand. Another concern is the storm surge accompanying Rita, which could send water rising more than a metre above high tide. Before the water began gushing in, an army corps of engineers added sandbags to shore up levees and installed 18-metre sections of metal across some of the city's canals. Yesterday morning a steady 20mph wind, with gusts to 35mph, was blowing along with steady rains. Because of the uncertain weather conditions, the recovery of bodies in the city has been suspended. Even so, the death toll from Katrina rose to 841 in Louisiana and at least 1,078 across the Gulf coast. Although an emotional blow to the residents in the city, any new flooding is likely to be confined to areas already made uninhabitable by flooding and storm damage caused by Katrina. Thousands of relief and workers who have been staying in tent cities in New Orleans parks were taken to the convention centre to ride out the storm yesterday. During Katrina, the centre was the site of horrific scenes as thousands of people who had fled there to escape the storm were terrorised by violent gangs and left for days without food and water by the authorities. | ['world/world', 'world/hurricanes', 'world/natural-disasters', 'environment/climate-crisis', 'environment/environment', 'type/article', 'profile/jamiewilson', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/topstories'] | world/hurricanes | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2005-09-23T23:02:45Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
environment/bike-blog/2011/apr/08/cycling-old-bike | What to do with a much-loved – but worn out - old bike | Peter Walker | I try not to be sentimental about possessions. It would be tough to lose certain photographs, or one or two items tied particularly closely with certain people or times in my life, but I never really get too misty-eyed about most things. There's one big exception – bicycles. I'm not alone in this. More or less everyone I know who's had a bike stolen (and perhaps uniquely as a long-term London cyclist I never have) describes the shock as almost physical, as if they've been separated from a limb. Of course, if you believe Flann O'Brien's wonderful theory from the The Third Policeman – that the repeated bashing of bicycle against rider encourages the exchange of atoms, eventually rendering each an amalgam of the two – then the feeling is all the more literal. Which brings me to my current problem: what do I do with a now-defunct bike for which I have a particularly fond, and strong, emotional attachment? The machine in question isn't much to look at these days; in fact a couple of friends seeing me arrive on it have made comments on the lines of: "I thought you, as a bike nut, would be on something flashier." It's actually better than it might appear: a rigid-framed Klein mountain bike dating from all the way back to 1992. The Klein name is little known these days in the UK – they're not even sold here now – but the bikes the pioneering US company made before it was engulfed by the giant Trek corporation in 1995 have a somewhat mystical status among fans. My example might be old and tatty, and now relegated to the lowly status of a wet weather/winter commuter, but it remains the most responsive (and bumpy) frame I've ever ridden. I'm digressing. The real reason I love – yes, I'll come clean, love – this bike is that we've shared so many memorable experiences, not least the first. Bought second-hand in Auckland in 1995, it was immediately laden with panniers for an eight-month ride that was a significant part of the way back home to the UK. Subsequently it was my main means of transport, but as the years passed and my bike-buying habits expanded, other machines edged into its territory. First came a modern mountain bike with suspension; last year I somewhat self-indulgently built up my dream commuting bike. Now the end is looming. One of the bike's arcane, own-branded and practically irreplaceable key components (the bottom bracket, if anyone's interested) has started to wobble. Plus, I have to face the fact that even a beautifully made aluminium frame is eventually going to crack (or worse, snap) after not far short of 20 years' regular use. If that makes the bike sound like a loyal but decrepit labrador then I'm afraid it's now facing that final trip to the vet. Last week a (much cheaper) replacement frame and forks arrived, onto which the Klein's components – almost all fourth or fifth generation; only the frame, forks, stem and handlebars are original – will be grafted. So what to do with the remains? Carrying on the canine analogy I could always bury the frame at the bottom of the garden, but that would be a bit odd. I couldn't bear to simply toss it into a giant skip at the recycling centre. I'd weep like a child. It's too battered (and potentially unsafe) to be given away. I'll probably just keep the stripped cadaver in a corner of the garage, at first glancing at it fondly then gradually forgetting it's even there. To end, two questions. Firstly – any better ideas for a dignified end for the bike? And also – do you get sentimentally attached to your bikes? | ['environment/bike-blog', 'lifeandstyle/lifeandstyle', 'environment/ethical-living', 'lifeandstyle/cycling', 'tone/blog', 'environment/waste', 'environment/recycling', 'type/article', 'profile/peterwalker'] | environment/recycling | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE | 2011-04-08T10:23:41Z | true | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE |
media-network/media-network-blog/2014/apr/14/climate-change-flooding-open-data | How open data is being used to hack climate change | In February the UK was hit by some of the worst storms in recent memory. Flood maps showed that huge areas of the Somerset Levels and the Thames valley were underwater, and whole communities were cut off for days at a time. But it wasn't just our flood defences that were lacking – one of the toughest challenges during the floods was providing people in affected areas with up-to-date information. "I've been studying the graphs on the Environment Agency website trying to work out what they mean," Jeremy Langford told the Guardian in February as he tried to make up his mind whether to evacuate his home in the village of Moorland in favour of higher ground. "I'm sure somebody knows what the water is doing but if they do they aren't getting the message over to us." The Environment Agency finally caved in to mounting pressure to release some of its flood data for free, and the UK's tech community cobbled together flood relief apps over a long weekend in mid February at Flood Hack, an impromptu hackathon hosted by Google's collaborative workspace in East London. "The Flood Hack release of data has given us some hints of what can be done with open flood data," said data consultant Owen Boswarva, who sits on Defra's transparency board. "However what I see in them is how much they could be improved by the release of more relevant flood data sets." The Environment Agency is facing a rising tide of pressure to open more of its flood data. The data sets it released in February included real-time river level data that updates every fifteen minutes. But the open licence on these data sets expires on 15 May, just three months after they were first issued, and they are just a fraction of the flood data that the Environment Agency holds. "Complex problems demand massive amounts of data to solve," said Conor Riffle, director of data product innovation at the Carbon Disclosure project, which has released climate change data on the world's 100 biggest cities. "We need to improve the free flow of climate change data so we can start to get a handle on protecting people and property from the coming impacts of a changing climate." These impacts include more extreme weather like the storms that caused the UK floods. Open data campaigners are hoping for an announcement from the Environment Agency in the coming weeks about opening its core flood data. But waiting for governments to open their data troves is not the only way to get your hands on it. In Philadelphia, in the US state of Pennsylvania, a group of 'civic hackers' going under the name Code for Philly have decided to take the collection of climate data into their own hands. Code for Philly plan to collect local air pollution and temperature data using sensors attached to city buses so that they can quantify the effect of planting new trees in the city, as part of their Open Climate Tracker project. Trees have a cooling effect in cities due to water evaporating from their leaves, as well as providing shade to streets and roofs which absorb heat, but this can be hard to measure accurately. Crucially, Code for Philly plan to release all the Open Climate Tracker data online so that people can develop useful applications with it. By connecting GPS location data with temperature and particle sensors they plan to build an interactive climate map of the city that can provide real-time updates. "You could have an app that tells you when to bring your kids inside if there's a high level of particulates in the air," said Joshua Meyer, lead developer on the project. "Or if you go for a run in the city, avoid this area because there's high pollution right now." In a few weeks they will launch a Kickstarter campaign to fund prototypes that will be strapped to bicycles to test the sensors. They plan to use the information they collect in combination with Open Tree Maps, a project that maps the location of trees in the city, to work out what effect a tree has on its surroundings. "We can actually show how the micro-climate changes over time," said Meyer. "If you say to someone your street gets warmer by this much every year, you can't refute that, it becomes personal." Meyer says that by showing people that planting trees can save them money on their air conditioning bill, Open Climate Tracker can help people make better decisions, as well as sway people who doubt that climate change is even happening. This is more difficult than it should be, given the data already available: in the UK, David Cameron had to backtrack after he said he suspected there was a link between the floods and climate change, despite the Met Office's lead scientist, Julia Slingo stating that "all the evidence suggests there is a link to climate change." And in the US, 41% of Tea Party Republicans think global warming is 'just not happening'. "Often government departments have difficulty recognising the untapped potential in reuse of the data they produce," said Boswarva. But maybe the tides are changing. In March the White House launched its Climate Data Initiative, which aims to make climate data more accessible through a government website, climate.data.gov. Meyer believes open climate data is the key to making climate change clear, and showing people how it affects them: with the right information, people can make better decisions in respect to the environment, as well as form strategies to protect themselves against changing weather conditions in a warming world. Jack Millner is a freelance science and technology journalist based in London To get weekly news analysis, job alerts and event notifications direct to your inbox, sign up free for Media Network membership. All Guardian Media Network content is editorially independent except for pieces labelled 'Advertisement feature'. Find out more here. | ['media-network/media-network', 'media-network/activate', 'media-network/media-network-blog', 'sustainable-business/sustainable-business', 'sustainability/blog', 'sustainable-business/climate-change', 'sustainable-business/technology', 'environment/flooding', 'environment/climate-crisis', 'technology/technology', 'tone/blog', 'tone/advertisement-features', 'type/article'] | environment/flooding | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2014-04-14T08:07:10Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
world/2005/sep/02/hurricanekatrina.usa5 | New Orleans counts the cost | The population The total dead is still unclear. Also unknown is how many of a population of just under half a million may decide not to return. Marc Morial, former New Orleans mayor, said yesterday: "So many of the people who did not evacuate could not evacuate. They are people who are African-American mostly but not completely, and people who were of little or limited economic means." Buildings The American Institute of Architecture is offering damage assessment and long term recovery advice. "The role of architects in disaster response typically begins in the relief stage, and this will not start for a couple of weeks," it said yesterday. Examinations of the condition of buildings, including "analysis of historic properties" could take up to six months. Changes to make buildings safe enough to withstand another hurricane could take up to three years. Sewage News agencies yesterday reported "a reddish-brown soup of sewage, gasoline and garbage". Giant pumps are being operated by the New Orleans Sewage and Water Board with their own emergency generators. Many of the main sewage systems are broken, creating a health hazard and one that will take months rather than weeks to repair. Communications BellSouth Corp, the main local telephone service provider, said that about 1.75 million customers along the Gulf coast may be without service. There has been heavy damage to wireless towers and fibre-optic lines. Electricity Entergy, the local power company, said technicians cannot get near equipment to determine its status. "We cannot and will not begin performing restoration ... until the flooding has gone down," said Randy Helmick, the vice president for customer service. The underground system is designed to survive submerging and may be unscathed, he said, but above-ground equipment has been damaged. Criminal records Looting continued yesterday and the perpetrators may believe that they are less easy to trace. While computerised records will survive, older police and criminal justice files that have not been scanned into computers may be lost. The court system has broken down and prisoners have been moved to jails outside the flooded area. The media The presses of the New Orleans Times-Picayune are still under water. | ['world/world', 'us-news/hurricane-katrina', 'us-news/us-news', 'type/article', 'world/natural-disasters'] | us-news/hurricane-katrina | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2005-09-02T01:50:12Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
australia-news/2023/dec/03/hecs-style-gas-to-electricity-scheme | Hecs for the home: households warm to the idea of a loan scheme to leap from gas to electricity | When Elsa Evers bought her home an hour’s drive south of Sydney, she and her partner began future-proofing it by adding solar panels and disconnecting the gas to get off fossil fuels and warm their leaky, chilly house. Four years on, though, Evers is facing mounting obstacles to that goal, not least higher interest rates and rising costs for her three children . “When you live in these beautiful cottages, you’re like, hang on, we may as well be outside,” she says of her home in the coastal town of Austinmer. Sign up for a weekly email featuring our best reads “We would love to have some more insulation, but again, we haven’t had the money for floor or wall insulation yet,” Evers says, adding that heat pumps for temperature control and hot water, an induction cooktop and other energy thrifty appliances were all on her wishlist. “The upfront costs of getting those appliances is quite a barrier.” On the other side of the continent, that problem is familiar to Perth resident Thomas Badman, even if domestic discomfort stems from excessive warmth. “We don’t really build houses here – we kind of build tents with how efficient they are,” Badman jokes. His double-brick house came with single-glazed windows and no insulation. “It would be colder outside in the evenings in summer than it was inside.” He, too, has solar panels and aimed to replace a gas hot water system with heat pumps but found the $3,500 bill too large to absorb just now. He calculates his 5kW solar panel would pay itself off in four years but the heat pump would take twice as long. A Senate inquiry launched by New South Wales Liberal Andrew Bragg aims to unlock the benefits – financial and for carbon emissions – of residential electrification. Many of the 230-plus submissions deal with the opportunities, including from improved energy efficiency, and how to fund the switch. The non-profit group Rewiring Australia, for instance, has called for a government-backed loan program modelled on the Higher Education Contribution Scheme (Hecs). They believe it could save average households up to $5,000 annually by the end of the decade. As with Hecs, borrowers would only repay loans while their incomes remain above pre-set levels. The low-risk debt could be scaled up to electrify 1m homes over a decade, cut energy demand at a time when investment in large-scale renewable energy plants is barely a trickle, and be extended to many low-income households. Dan Cass, a co-founder with prominent advocate Saul Griffith of Rewiring Australia, notes a Grattan Institute study found 4m households across NSW and Victoria had less than $15,000 in liquid assets, hindering full electrification. “Hecs-style loans for household electrification would be repaid through income tax ,” Cass says. “This would put more money in the pockets of people who really need it while simultaneously allowing the nation to put its foot on the clean-energy pedal.” Bruce Chapman, an emeritus professor at the Australian National University who designed the Hecs scheme in 1989, says the idea of so-called income-contingent loans had “got a lot of legs over the past six months”. Chapman, who was consulted by Rewiring Australia on their “Hecs for Households” plan, says it is “a bit unfair” poorer households often can’t afford solar panels. Commercial lending arrangements are also typically out of reach. Evers and Badman see merit in the scheme. “[I]f something like that was available, we would be the first to put up our hand to make use of it,” Evers says. “We’re not here for handouts [and a Hecs-type loan] would make our home more energy efficient a lot easier”. Badman says it “does sound like it would be practical and at least help everyone in the picture”. Western Australia lacks many of the incentives offered out east. Guardian Australian has sought comment from the Albanese government. Alan Pears, a senior industry fellow at the RMIT, says a Hecs-type scheme could have merit, particularly if it aids households to use less energy. Pears, who lodged his own submission to the inquiry, highlights the popular Facebook site, My efficient electric home. Its 100,000-plus followers underscores the interest not just in getting off gas but how to do in a smart way. He says too little attention is paid to reducing energy demand even though many investments would pay off in terms of savings within three years. Pears advocated making multiple changes – from LED lights to the installation of heat pumps and solar panels – in a “blitz” to save overall costs and maximise gains. Such a “one-stop shop” was the approach in Ireland, for instance, where home-retrofit programs are the most generous and effective anywhere, he says. Josephine Maguire, national coordinator of the Better Energy Homes program at the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland, says Ireland has set aside €8bn euros (A$13.2bn) to upgrade half a million homes by 2030. By 2025, the tally will reach 185,000 before the program is scaled up to 70,000 annually for the rest of the decade. Half of the funds will pay for full upgrades for households deemed to be in “fuel poverty”, with the rest helping to lower loan interest rates for those better placed to repay them. “Money is one of the significant barriers – not the only one – but a necessary barrier to remove,” she says. Those selling or renting out homes in Ireland also have to display their energy efficiency ratings – a standard agreed by Australian governments by 2009 but yet to be introduced apart from in the ACT, Pears says. Commercial buildings, by contrastmust make their ratings public. Evers says such a measure is long overdue. “You buy a washing machine and they give you a star rating of how water or energy efficient it is,” she says. “Why, when you buy a house, don’t they give you a star rating of how efficient the home [is] so you know what you’re buying into?” | ['australia-news/australia-news', 'australia-news/energy-australia', 'environment/renewableenergy', 'environment/environment', 'australia-news/tax-australia', 'campaign/email/five-great-reads', 'type/article', 'tone/features', 'profile/peter-hannam', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/australia-news'] | environment/renewableenergy | ENERGY | 2023-12-02T14:00:47Z | true | ENERGY |
environment/2009/jun/29/rising-sea-level-new-orleans | Climate change: Rising sea level to submerge Louisiana coastline by 2100, study warns | A vast swath of the coastal lands around New Orleans will be underwater by the dawn of the next century because the rate of sediment deposit in the Mississippi delta can not keep up with rising sea levels, according to a study published today. Between 10,000 and 13,500 square kilometres of coastal lands will drown due to rising sea levels and subsidence by 2100, a far greater loss than previous estimates. For New Orleans, and other low-lying areas of Louisiana whose vulnerability was exposed by hurricane Katrina, the findings could bring some hard choices about how to defend the coast against the future sea level rises that will be produced by climate change. They also revive the debate about the long-term sustainability of New Orleans and other low-lying areas. Scientists say New Orleans and the barrier islands to the south will be severely affected by climate change by the end of this century, with sea level rise and growing intensity of hurricanes. Much of the land mass of the barrier island chain sheltering New Orleans was lost in the 2005 storm. But the extent of the land that will be lost is far greater than earlier forecasts suggest, said Dr Michael Blum and Prof Harry Roberts, the authors of the study. "When you look at the numbers you come to the conclusion that the resources are just not there to restore all the coast, and that is one of the major points of this paper," said Roberts, a professor emeritus of marine geology at Louisiana State University. Blum, who was formerly at Louisiana State University, now works at Exxon. "I think every geologist that has worked on this problem realises the future does not look very bright unless we can come up with some innovative ways to get that sediment in the right spot," said Roberts. "For managers and people who are squarely in the restoration business, this is going to force them to make some very hard decisions about which areas to save and which areas you can't save." Efforts to keep pace with the accelerated rate of sea level rise due to global warming are compromised by the Mississippi's declining ability to bear sediments downstream into the delta. The authors used sediment data from the Mississippi flood plain to estimate the amount of sediment deposited on the river delta during the past 12,000 years. They then compared this with sediment deposition today. In paper published in Nature Geoscience they calculate that due to dam and levee building on the Mississippi the sediment carried by the river has been reduced significantly. There are now about 8,000 dams on the Mississippi river system. Roberts said such constructions and the system of levees in Louisiana had cut in half the sediment carried down to the delta, inhibiting the river's ability to compensate for the land lost to rising seas. Sustaining the existing delta size would require 18 to 24bn tonnes of sediment, which the authors say is significantly more than can be drawn from the river in its current state. "We conclude that significant drowning is inevitable," the authors wrote. "In the absence of sediment input, land surfaces that are now below 1m in elevation will be converted to open water or marsh." | ['environment/sea-level', 'environment/flooding', 'environment/oceans', 'us-news/us-news', 'environment/environment', 'tone/news', 'environment/climate-crisis', 'world/world', 'us-news/louisiana', 'type/article', 'profile/suzannegoldenberg'] | environment/sea-level | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2009-06-29T11:33:02Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
world/2022/aug/17/new-zealand-leads-world-in-island-pest-eradication-study-finds | New Zealand leads world in island pest eradication, study finds | New Zealand’s unremitting war against pests has earned it the global top spot for island pest eradication but researchers warn the pace of eradication is slowing. An international study, published in Scientific Reports, found New Zealand leads the world in creating island sanctuaries and is responsible for nearly a quarter of the world’s island pest eradications. Australia is the second most successful with just over 12% of global eradications. “The reason New Zealand can lead the world is because we support [pest eradication] at all levels, from the grassroots to the government,” said Prof James Russell, a New Zealand co-author on the study from the University of Auckland. The country has a well-established history of driving out pests from islands. The fruits of those efforts have been many – from thriving native bird populations, to creating eco-tourism destinations that further generate community interest in protecting species. It has also committed to an ambitious national programme – Predator Free 2050 – that aims to clear stoats, rats and possums from 26m hectares (64m acres) of mainland, along with all offshore islands, by 2050. Islands are hotspots for biodiversity and extinction, representing just 5% of Earth’s land area but enduring 61% of extinctions since the 1500s and hosting 40% of today’s highly threatened vertebrates. The review of 1,550 eradications on nearly 1,000 islands since 1872 found an 88% success rate using methods such as hunting, trapping and targeted poisoning to help restore island biodiversity. Completely removing invasive species from islands has proven to be one of the most effective tools at halting and reversing this damage, the study found. Last month, New Zealand conservationists announced they would attempt the biggest ever eradication of invasive species on an inhabited island. The project aims to remove predators including possums, rats, feral cats and hedgehogs from Rakiura/Stewart Island – the country’s third largest Island – over the next four years. But Russell said it was heartening that efforts were also being helped by people setting traps in their own backyards. “Now the database shows that everyone doing things in their backyard makes a huge difference internationally,” he said. The country’s conservation technology and expertise has become something of an export industry for New Zealand, Russell said, and that was something to be proud of. “We don’t make a lot of money exporting it, but we do make the world a better place.” The research may have given New Zealand’s pest control efforts a gold star, but it also showed that its eradication efforts were slowing down. This is partly due to conservationists making headway on the smaller islands and leaving the islands with a larger land mass til last – meaning control efforts take longer to produce results. But that does not mean the country can become complacent, Russell said. “It’s not enough to just let nature be tucked away in some corner and feel good that we’ve created a few islands. We should be very proud of that … but we should have [native birds such as] saddlebacks, kākāpō and kōkako everywhere in New Zealand. “It seems manifestly unjust to me that they can’t be.” | ['world/newzealand', 'environment/wildlife', 'environment/invasive-species', 'environment/environment', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/eva-corlett', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/new-zealand'] | environment/wildlife | BIODIVERSITY | 2022-08-17T04:13:48Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
environment/2015/oct/14/country-diary-wenlock-evans-worm-hunters-buzzards-rooks-gulls-haws-badgers | Haws light way for the worm hunters | The stoplight red glass of the hawthorn berries shines with bright autumn days, morning rains and nights under the harvest moon. Now the haws are at their most dazzling though not yet edible, and the season is gold: gold-green, gold-yellow, gold-red, gold-brown. But the mornings begin in fog, watched by the rooks around the Roman ruins of Viroconium, who hunch under their coats, sitting 80 together on electricity wires above the ancient Wroxeter city that seems to sink back under fields as their breath lifts. Seen from a train north of Wem are buzzards in a ploughed field: not one or two but 40, 50 – they could not be called a flock as each one stood alone, staring into the earth, charming worms from the soil by the power of will. In the lane running beside the wood, a dead badger lies in the gutter. You can never know whether badgers seen like this have been hit by a vehicle or shot or poisoned somewhere else and their bodies dumped. Inside the wood, patrolling spotlit glades, speckled wood butterflies flash their colours, jockeying on eddies of air rising from the quarry face between trees. Before dusk along the Edge the gulls return, as white and as dense as a squall of snow. Hundreds come: common gulls, black-headed gulls, great black-backed gulls, in clans and mobs, singly, from the plough lands now the harvest is home. The gulls pour into Lea quarry pool, to float quietly in the safety of the water or to lounge like holidaymakers on the rocks, only raising to call when their compatriots arrive. Even as sunlight flares amber behind the trees, up the Dales and in from the violet hills of the west, the gulls still come. Even as the rooks are released from their watch to clamour back to their roosts, even as the tawny owls plane through the butterflies’ woods, still they come. This is the gathering of scarlet and gold. In the charactery of autumn its symbols make thoughts that glow in us but which are also sad, a homesickness through the glass of berries. | ['environment/series/country-diary', 'environment/birds', 'environment/autumn', 'environment/badgers', 'environment/butterflies', 'environment/farming', 'environment/wildlife', 'environment/forests', 'environment/environment', 'science/biology', 'uk/ruralaffairs', 'tone/features', 'type/article', 'profile/paulevans', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/weather2'] | environment/forests | BIODIVERSITY | 2015-10-14T04:29:00Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
world/2014/jun/13/tony-abbott-is-no-action-man-on-climate-change | Tony Abbott is no action man on climate change | Tony “conservationist” Abbott has been telling the Americans his government supports “strong action” on climate change. Sadly, every piece of available evidence says the opposite. First, his policy is a competitive government grants scheme in which participation by polluters is voluntary. As veteran US lawmaker Henry Waxman told the ABC this week: “That never worked anywhere.” Actually, we didn’t really need a US politician to tell us that. It was the advice of the 2007 Shergold report to the Howard government, which said carbon pricing was better because regulatory approaches would “impose a far heavier burden on economic activity" and in 2010, when the auditor general was scathing about a similar competitive grants scheme run by the Howard and Rudd governments. Second, Abbott’s contention that his $2.5bn “Direct Action” plan is equivalent to a $40bn program if it were scaled up to US economy proportions is actually not proof that Australia is doing a lot (we are still aiming only for the bare minimum target of a 5% reduction in emissions by 2020) but instead clear evidence that Direct Action is an extremely expensive way to (maybe) achieve this modest emissions reduction. After Obama’s cap and trade scheme failed to make it through the Congress he is also using non-market ways to reduce emissions, mainly new rules and regulations, but not direct government handouts. The Coalition has also been warned about the costs of voluntary grants schemes. For example the “blue book” prepared by the Treasury for a possible incoming Coalition government in 2010 said “a market mechanism can achieve the necessary abatement at a cost per tonne of emissions that is far lower than alternative direct-action policies”. And Malcolm Turnbull made the same point in his speech to parliament after he was deposed as leader because of his support for an emissions trading scheme, when he said direct-action style schemes were “a recipe for fiscal recklessness on a grand scale” and “schemes where bureaucrats and politicians pick technologies and winners, doling out billions of taxpayers’ dollars, neither are economically efficient nor will be environmentally effective”. Third, the actual measure of “strong action” on climate change is how deeply countries are willing to cut their emissions, not how they get there. Before the election, Abbott and the environment minister, Greg Hunt, regularly restated a Coalition commitment to increase Australia's 2020 emissions reduction target to up to 25% under a specific set of conditions for global action set down in 2009 and accepted by both major parties. After the election the independent Climate Change Authority advised the conditions for a target higher than 5% had already been met, and when compared with the actions of other countries, 5% no longer represented a "credible option". But Abbott insisted; “Australia will meet our 5% emissions reduction target, but this government has made no commitments to go further than that. We certainly are in no way looking to make further binding commitments in the absence of very serious like binding commitments from other countries, and there is no evidence of that.” The Coalition now intends to abolish the Climate Change Authority. It has not said how it will decide on a post-2020 emissions reduction target ahead of the next big international meeting in Paris next year. Fourth, available modeling says $2.5bn is not enough to meet even the minimum 5% target and doing anything beyond that, which Australia obviously eventually must, would be prohibitively expensive. This is not government modelling, because the government hasn’t done any. Modelling by Reputex climate analytics, commissioned by the environment group WWF-Australia, found that the money set aside by the Coalition to buy abatement was likely to fall short by $5.9bn a year between 2015 and 2020, or between $20bn and $35bn in total. Modeling by Sinclair Knight Merz/MMA and Monash University's Centre of Policy Studies, commissioned by the Climate Institute, which used assumptions more generous to the Coalition, found it would need at least another $4bn. Abbott has said if Direct Action falls short he will not allocate any more money. Fifth, the government is not only repealing the carbon price but also almost every other related government policy or program, including the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, the Australian Renewable Energy Agency and the Climate Commision, and has appointed a self-professed climate sceptic, businessman Dick Warburton, to review the renewable energy target, with a strong expectation the target will be wound back. Sixth, Abbott rejects the link between climate change and extreme weather events, rejects the idea that climate change may mean that all the coal in Australia cannot be sold and burned, and the government does not reference climate change in policies which climate science suggests would be impacted by it, for example the drought white paper. In 2009, Turnbull, still smarting at his demise, wrote: “The fact is that Tony and the people who put him in his job do not want to do anything about climate change. They do not believe in human-caused global warming. As Tony observed on one occasion 'climate change is crap' or if you consider his mentor, (then) senator (Nick) Minchin, the world is not warming, it’s cooling and the climate change issue is part of a vast leftwing conspiracy to de-industrialise the world.” Turnbull may have been wrong. Abbott may have revised his views since then. But on the basis of the available evidence, not by much. It may indeed be possible to meet credible greenhouse emission reduction targets in an affordable way using policies other than a carbon price. But on the basis of the available evidence, not by using this policy. | ['australia-news/tony-abbott', 'australia-news/australian-politics', 'environment/climate-crisis', 'australia-news/australia-news', 'australia-news/coalition', 'environment/environment', 'environment/carbon-tax', 'type/article', 'tone/blog', 'profile/lenore-taylor'] | environment/carbon-tax | CLIMATE_POLICY | 2014-06-13T10:05:47Z | true | CLIMATE_POLICY |
environment/2010/aug/25/carbon-offset-consultancy-fees | Poorer nations hit with high fees for carbon offset projects | The UN-certified scheme that allows developed nations to pay for carbon reductions abroad instead of making domestic cuts has come under fire for paying high fees to consultants from rich countries. A Norwegian company has so far charged €25,600 for two assessment visits to Nepal to validate and verfy a Nepali government greenhouse gas reduction programme. Such a sum would pay for 58 of the small-scale carbon cutting projects the Nepali government is trying to set up. The World Bank contracts the services of an Oslo-based company, Det Norske Veritas (DNV), which visits the projects and verfies that the projects are indeed producing reduced emissions. DNV's fees will be deducted from the money the World Bank pays to Nepal when the carbon credits are formally issued. Meanwhile, in a separate case not involving DNV, the conservation charity WWF pays €20,000 (£16,000) per verification visit for a smaller project using the same technology, but under a different scheme. Kyle Ash, a Greenpeace official in Washington DC said the UN-administered cap and trade system was the wrong way to cut emissions. "It doesn't seem like a good investment especially when there are other ways to reduce emissions," he said. "We need to restrict global warming pollution [in industrialised countries]," he said. "And we need to finance clean development in third world countries. But the two things aren't connected." Stein Jensen, a spokesman for DNV, said that there is such competition to provide verification services that the fees reflect the market rate. "It's a market with a lot of competition. We need to compete with them," he said, "I don't mind if there are others. This is a market that has developed very rapidly...I understand that for small projects the transaction costs are high." [An earlier version of this Guardian story said that DNV's verification fees amounted to €150,000 for three visits. The World Bank subsequently confirmed that it had paid Det Norske Veritas a total of €25,600 for two visits. DNV had been asked about the €150,000 figure for the original story but its spokesman said he could not comment. After publication of the story, DNV contacted the Guardian and said its World Bank agreement had precluded it from commenting on the fee. The original story also stated incorrectly that Nepal's payments were made directly to DNV; they are in fact made via the World Bank. DNV took issue with being described as a consultancy: "We only do validation and verification of, in this case, CDM (clean development mechanism) project activities," a spokesman said.] Under UN cap and trade rules, developing countries agree to reduce carbon emissions and sell carbon credits in international markets. Companies in the industrialised countries, which might otherwise have to reduce their own emissions, can buy the credits in lieu of such reductions. The UN says verification is necessary to ensure that schemes attracting carbon credits really do lead to reductions in CO2, but it has currently approved only 33 companies worldwide to evaluate carbon offset projects. Samir Thapa, an official with the Nepali government's Alternative Energy Promotion Centre, said the demand for evaluators outstrips the number of companies available. "You may have to wait to validate your project for six months or one year," he said. "Economically, that's not very viable for the project, especially in terms of smaller projects like ours." Jensen said his company tried to complete verification within 3 months but further delays were caused by the UN secretariat in Bonn. "Generally speaking it takes far too much time from start to issuance of CERs [Certified Emission Reductions]," he said. The Nepali government has been working since 2006 to receive UN certification to sell carbon offsets for two biogas projects. The government subsidises farmers to install equipment that turns animal and human waste into methane cooking fuel. Under the scheme, local people will use less firewood and other fuels, thereby reducing carbon emissions. Via the World Bank contract, DNV received €25,600 (£21,000) for initial site visits and related services. DNV or another company will make annual visits to Nepal to insure on-going compliance. Nepal hopes to complete the UN-administered certification process by the end of this year and ultimately wants to build 200,000 biogas installations. It expects to earn $400,000 (£259,000) per year in carbon credits. The biogas equipment currently costs $575 (£372) per household, a significant sum for farmers earning under $1,500 (£971) per year. The government offers partial subsidies, but farmers must spend some of their savings and take out microcredit loans to pay for the rest. Villager Sabitri Dairi said the scheme had brought environmental benefits. "It's harmful to the forest and the environment to cut firewood down. There could be landslides and floods." WWF helped finance the biogas for people in Badreni, a village in the south of the country near Chitwan national park. In a project separate from the Nepali government's, WWF hopes to raise $1m for a microcredit fund by participating in the voluntary carbon offset market. Voluntary credits are not recognised by the UN as meeting a country's carbon reduction goals under the Kyoto protocol. But participants such as WWF must go through a similar validation and verification process as those who do. WWF will get credit for each tonne of carbon not produced as a result of using biogas. It sells the credits to the Zurich-based NGO Myclimate, which in turn provides offsets to individuals, airlines and other European companies seeking to reduce their carbon footprints. Thomas Finsterwald, project manager with Myclimate, admitted that the high fees make "it difficult to do small projects." He said inspection fees might eat up 40% of income for some other projects. "This is really a problem." • This article was re-published online in corrected form on 2 September 2010. The original was published online on 25 August. A correction will also be appearing in the Guardian's corrections and clarifications column. | ['environment/carbon-offset-projects', 'environment/climate-crisis', 'environment/carbon-emissions', 'environment/environment', 'world/nepal', 'world/norway', 'world/world', 'tone/news', 'world/unitednations', 'world/europe-news', 'type/article', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/international'] | environment/carbon-offset-projects | EMISSIONS | 2010-08-25T14:14:27Z | true | EMISSIONS |
news/observerblog/2005/sep/01/justonemoret1 | 'Just one more thing before I go' | Photograph: AP From the last post on a New Orleans blog, dated 28 August: I'm scared. Scared to death. I can't stop crying. I have the shakes. My stomach is churning. Churning like the waters in the Gulf of Mexico. Hurricane Katrina is on her way and we're riding out the storm. Read also: Katrina Aftermath, Metro Blogging New Orleans, everything listed here, and especially The Interdictor. Humbling. | ['news/observerblog', 'tone/blog', 'us-news/hurricane-katrina', 'type/article', 'profile/rafaelbehr'] | us-news/hurricane-katrina | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2005-09-01T09:19:19Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
money/2018/apr/10/smart-meter-solar-power-income-fault | Our Green Star energy meter is anything but smart | We have a problem with our energy supplier, Green Star. In February it offered us the free installation of a smart meter, and it seemed like a good idea to go ahead. A young man changed both the electricity and gas meters. He was only here for a very short time, even though he initially expressed concern that it would be impossible to fit a new gas meter because of the lead piping attached to the old one. A week later, on a sunny day, I noticed that our wireless “Sunny Boy” meter was recording no energy generated by our eight solar panels. Further investigation revealed that the inverter, that processes the energy produced, had stopped working due to a “voltage error”. It happened at the exact time that the smart meter installation was going on, so I feel it is safe to assume that the two incidents are connected. Since then, I have been trying to get Green Star to come and rectify the problem. I keep getting told that the matter will be addressed in the next seven days but nothing happens. We are losing out on the income that the panels should be producing. NB, Leicester Green Star Energy – one of the challenger suppliers – told us that of the many smart meters the installation company has fitted, this is the first time it has seen such an issue. It confirmed that the inverter cut out as a safety feature. It has now sent a team member to visit your home to reset the safety device. This did not work, so it has arranged for an engineer to attend. It has also apologised for failing to respond quickly enough and said that it will make up any income lost as a result, although given that the sun has barely appeared in the last few months, that won’t be a huge amount. On a wider issue, I would strongly advise readers to be cautious of having a smart meter installed, unless you get a written guarantee that it will be a second generation, Smets2 version. It emerged in February that only 80 of these improved meters that allow easy switching, and better remote reading, had so far been installed in the UK. Over 9m of the Smets1 meters are in UK homes, but users have found that after they switched supplier, they lost the meter’s smart functions. The meter then had to be read manually. The whole thing is a giant, expensive mess. Last month, the National Audit Office, the public spending watchdog, opened an investigation into the smart meter programme, which has cost £11bn so far — scandalously paid for by all of us through higher electricity bills. We welcome letters but cannot answer individually. Email us at consumer.champions@theguardian.com or write to Consumer Champions, Money, the Guardian, 90 York Way, London N1 9GU. Please include a -daytime phone number. Submission and publication of all letters is subject to terms and conditions | ['money/energy', 'money/household-bills', 'environment/solarpower', 'money/money', 'money/series/bachelor-and-brignall-consumer-champions', 'tone/features', 'money/consumer-affairs', 'money/consumer-rights-money', 'environment/energy', 'environment/renewableenergy', 'environment/environment', 'type/article', 'profile/milesbrignall', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/money', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-money'] | environment/renewableenergy | ENERGY | 2018-04-10T06:00:21Z | true | ENERGY |
environment/2009/feb/18/letters-nuclear-safety | Letter: Nuclear safety | Your article (HSE disbands nuclear body that warned of risks, 17 February) implies that HSE's Nuclear Safety Advisory Committee was wound up because it raised inconvenient issues. In fact, NuSAC had reached the end of its term of office and the HSE board decided to defer any decision on future arrangements for providing independent technical advice on nuclear safety, pending various reviews. Any decision will need to take account of the arrangements, yet to be finalised, to implement the Stone review of nuclear regulation and to follow on from any resulting adjustments. In addition, the traditional advisory committee structure is not necessarily the only route to providing advice to HSE. Its nuclear directorate is staffed by experts and it calls on many external sources of advice on nuclear safety to supplement them. The "unpublicised" NuSAC report has, in fact, been published on the HSE website. Geoffrey Podger Chief executive, Health and Safety Executive | ['environment/nuclearpower', 'environment/energy', 'environment/environment', 'type/article', 'tone/letters', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/editorialsandreply'] | environment/nuclearpower | ENERGY | 2009-02-18T00:01:00Z | true | ENERGY |
commentisfree/2023/jul/31/rishi-sunak-carbon-capture-party-politics-climate-crisis-co2 | Sunak’s plan for carbon capture is good news: he shouldn't muddy it with party politics | Simon Jenkins | For as long as the United Kingdom needs to use oil and gas, we should be making an effort to capture any resulting CO2 and store it. That clearly makes sense. It also makes sense to produce our own oil and gas, so we are less beholden to exporters (though of course ours, too, would be sold on the international markets). So far, so good for Rishi Sunak’s twofold announcement today in Scotland. But it would be helpful if he did not muddy these waters by using them to score political points against Labour in the run-up to an election campaign. What we desperately need now, as we confront the climate crisis, is agreement on a way forward. Bringing party politics into it will only hinder progress. Of course, critics are right to say that where we buy our energy should not deflect attention from the urgent need to reduce demand for fossil fuels. But that issue is one of constraining overall demand, not arguing over the source of supply. Preferring to use only ship-borne oil to avoid the supposed taint of dirtying our hands in the North Sea would be hypocrisy. Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is a separate issue. Like power from nuclear fusion, it is one of those solutions to the climate crisis that has always been just over the horizon. But as academics such as Oxford’s Myles Allen and Edinburgh’s Stuart Haszeldine have long argued, unlike fusion, the issue is not one of science and technology. It is one of politics and money. Norway’s carbon capture operations in the North Sea have been running since 1996, and now store close to a million tonnes of CO2 every year. Denmark’s first full-scale carbon capture and storage project was launched this summer, also in the North Sea. There is nothing new in Sunak’s project other than it is British. This issue now is one of politics. Existing CCS currently reduces CO2 emissions by 0.1%. To meet net zero, it needs to rise to 10%. This requires a massive uplift of investment. At present, Sunak’s commitment to the current Acorn project appears to be minimal, particularly in comparison to the reportedly “unachievable” and energy-guzzling HS2. But CCS has one advantage: that it could be largely financed through the marketplace by imposing the cost not on taxpayers, but on polluters direct. According to Haszeldine, all emitters of CO2 should themselves fund the capture and storage of one tonne of the gas for every tonne they emit. He estimates this would add probably 15p a litre to the price of petrol. Everyone – producers and consumers – would play their part. It is known in the energy world that the big corporations are waiting to be ordered to embark on CCS by a government with the guts to do it. That is perhaps why they have been building up cash reserves to obscene levels. It has to be right that those who produce pollutants should also dispose of them. There is no pretending that this will be cheap. But efforts to reduce global emissions piecemeal are reportedly failing even to approach net zero. There are clearly limits to how far the rich world will transform its lifestyle. The next great battle has to be direct action against CO2. That this would cost money can hardly be an objection: this is a crisis, after all. Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist | ['commentisfree/commentisfree', 'environment/carbon-capture-and-storage', 'environment/climate-crisis', 'environment/fossil-fuels', 'environment/environment', 'politics/rishi-sunak', 'politics/politics', 'uk/uk', 'type/article', 'tone/comment', 'profile/simonjenkins', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-opinion'] | environment/carbon-capture-and-storage | EMISSIONS | 2023-07-31T13:43:58Z | true | EMISSIONS |
world/2022/mar/06/ukraine-zaporizhzhia-nuclear-plant-staff-under-russian-orders | ‘Grave concern’ as Ukraine Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant under Russian orders | Staff at Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant are being told what to do by the Russian military commander who seized the site last week, in violation of international safety protocols. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) expressed “grave concern” at the situation at the six-reactor plant, the largest in Europe. The agency was told by the Ukrainian nuclear regulator that “any action of plant management – including measures related to the technical operation of the six reactor units – requires prior approval by the Russian commander”. The IAEA director general, Rafael Mariano Grossi, said on Sunday that the Russian military command over the nuclear plant “contravenes one of the seven indispensable pillars of nuclear safety and security” which states that the operating staff must be able to carry out their safety and security duties and be able to make decisions “free of undue pressure”. Russian forces shelled the Zaporizhzhia plant in the early hours of Friday morning, damaging a walkway between two of the six reactors, and starting a fire in a nearby building used for training. As a result some of the reactors were shut down and others were put on low power. The reactors themselves are well protected by a thick concrete shell, but there is concern that more vulnerable spent fuel rods could be hit, or that the power and cooling systems could be affected, potentially triggering a meltdown. The IAEA also expressed concern that the Russian occupying force had reportedly shut down mobile phone networks and the internet connection “so that reliable information from the site cannot be obtained through the normal channels of communication”. It said communications between the plant and the Ukrainian nuclear regulator have been affected, which the IAEA said contravenes another of the nuclear safety pillars listed by Grossi, requiring “reliable communications with the regulator and others”. “In order to be able to operate the plant safely and securely, management and staff must be allowed to carry out their vital duties in stable conditions without undue external interference or pressure,” Grossi said. “The deteriorating situation regarding vital communications between the regulator and the Zaporizhzhia [nuclear plant] is also a source of deep concern, especially during an armed conflict that may jeopardize the country’s nuclear facilities at any time,” he added. “Reliable communications between the regulator and the operator are a critical part of overall nuclear safety and security.” The IAEA said that the operators at the plant were now being able to rotate between three shifts, relieving the operators who had been on duty at the time the plant was seized, but there were still “problems with availability and supply of food” which the Ukrainian regulator said was affecting morale on the plant. The IAEA also expressed alarm that communication had been lost with institutions and enterprises in the besieged port city of Mariupol where it said there were “category 1-3 radiation sources, a probable reference to medical or industrial isotopes. A category 1 source can be lethal after more than a few minutes exposure. “Such radioactive material can cause serious harm to people if not secured and managed properly,” the agency said in a statement. | ['world/ukraine', 'environment/nuclearpower', 'world/russia', 'world/europe-news', 'world/world', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/julianborger', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/uknews', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/us-foreign'] | environment/nuclearpower | ENERGY | 2022-03-06T19:04:24Z | true | ENERGY |
world/2012/jul/26/arctic-climate-change | Loss of Arctic sea ice '70% man-made' | The radical decline in sea ice around the Arctic is at least 70% due to human-induced climate change, according to a new study, and may even be up to 95% down to humans – rather higher than scientists had previously thought. The loss of ice around the Arctic has adverse effects on wildlife and also opens up new northern sea routes and opportunities to drill for oil and gas under the newly accessible sea bed. The reduction has been accelerating since the 1990s and many scientists believe the Arctic may become ice-free in the summers later this century, possibly as early as the late 2020s. "Since the 1970s, there's been a 40% decrease in the summer sea ice extent," said Jonny Day, a climate scientist at the National Centre for Atmospheric Science at the University of Reading, who led the latest study. "We were trying to determine how much of this was due to natural variability and therefore imply what aspect is due to man-made climate change as well." To test the ideas, Day carried out several computer-based simulations of how the climate around the Arctic might have fluctuated since 1979 without the input of greenhouse gases from human activity. He found that a climate system called the Atlantic multi-decadal oscillation (AMO) was a dominant source of variability in ice extent. The AMO is a cycle of warming and cooling in the North Atlantic that repeats every 65 to 80 years – it has been in a warming phase since the mid-1970s. Comparing the models with actual observations, Day was able to work out what contribution the natural systems had made to what researchers have observed from satellite data. "We could only attribute as much as 30% [of the Arctic ice loss] to the AMO," he said. "Which implies that the rest is due to something else, and this is most likely going to be man-made global change." Previous studies had indicated that around half of the loss was due to man-made climate change and that the other half was due to natural variability. Looking across all his simulations, Day found that the 30% figure was an upper limit – the AMO could have contributed as little as 5% to the overall loss of Arctic ice in recent decades. The research is published online in the journal Environmental Research Letters. Day said that there are a number of feedback effects that could see the Arctic ice loss continue in the coming years, as the Earth warms up. "[There is] something called the ice-albedo feedback, which means that when you have less ice, it means there's more open water and therefore the ocean absorbs more radiation and will continue to warm," he said. "It's unclear what will happen – it definitely seems like it's going in that direction." | ['environment/climate-crisis', 'world/arctic', 'world/world', 'environment/environment', 'environment/poles', 'environment/oceans', 'tone/news', 'science/scienceofclimatechange', 'science/science', 'environment/sea-ice', 'type/article', 'profile/alokjha', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/topstories'] | environment/poles | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2012-07-25T23:05:00Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
uk-news/2023/feb/09/uk-recruiter-debt-hit-indonesians-loses-seasonal-workers-licence | UK recruiter of debt-hit Indonesians loses seasonal workers licence | A British recruitment agency that brought Indonesian farmworkers to the UK who had debts of thousands of pounds to foreign brokers has lost its licence as a seasonal worker sponsor. More than 1,450 Indonesians were brought to Britain last year by AG Recruitment to pick berries and other fruits to supply British supermarkets. The Guardian revealed that some owed as much as £5,000 to unlicensed foreign brokers when they arrived in Britain, despite only having work for a single season. AG denied any wrongdoing and said it had known nothing about Indonesian brokers charging money. Douglas Amesz, its managing director, said he was “devastated” to receive notice from the Home Office of its licence being revoked on Wednesday and that the process had been “very unfair and unjust”. AG sought workers in Indonesia at short notice last year when war broke out in Ukraine, where the company had previously done most of its recruitment. Amesz said: “We’ve always had the absolute best intentions for everyone … I would never have been in Indonesia if it wasn’t for that stupid war. And a year on, my business has just gone down the toilet.” More than 200 Indonesian fruit pickers brought to the UK by AG asked for diplomatic help last year after facing difficulties working in Britain. Many arrived late in the season and found there was not enough work on farms to repay their substantial debts. About 100 are understood to have gone underground to stay in Britain and work on the black market rather than risk returning home with little or no money once their debts were paid. Some tried to claim asylum. It is understood this overstaying was the primary reason AG lost its licence, since the terms state that at least 97% of workers should return home on time. Andy Hall, an independent migrant rights specialist who investigates forced labour in supply chains in Asia, said: “Thousands of vulnerable workers have faced conditions akin to forced labour and debt bondage due to the negligence of seasonal worker scheme operators, including AG Recruitment, the broader framework of a failing seasonal worker scheme and sponsorship licence system, as well as the failures of the UK’s largest retailers and farms to protect this essential workforce from such abuses. “Conditions created by the seasonal worker scheme structure remain ripe and conducive to worker overstays as a means for these desperate workers to ensure a return on their considerable investments expended to come to the UK. Systemic reform of the scheme is therefore urgent and essential.” To bring seasonal workers into Britain, recruiters must be a licensed sponsor. The Home Office stressed that a condition of holding the licence was “prevent[ing] abuse of immigration laws and sponsorship arrangements, such as illegal working, including in breach of conditions and ineffective recruitment practices.” A Home Office spokesperson said: “All those who benefit directly from migration are responsible for ensuring the immigration system is not abused. We will always take decisive action if sponsors break the rules. We do not comment on individual cases.” Amesz said: “We’re not a police force … When workers overstay, we have absolutely no jurisdiction, no control, no influence whatsoever.” The Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority (GLAA) has been investigating AG’s Indonesian recruitment but this has not yet concluded. AG still holds a GLAA licence to recruit. | ['uk/immigration', 'world/indonesia', 'uk-news/kent', 'politics/home-office', 'environment/farming', 'world/migration', 'uk/uk', 'world/asia-pacific', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/emily-dugan', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/uknews', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-home-news'] | environment/farming | BIODIVERSITY | 2023-02-09T18:49:47Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
technology/2023/dec/05/23andme-hack-data-breach | Genetic testing firm 23andMe admits hackers accessed DNA data of 7m users | The genetic testing company 23andMe has said that nearly 7 million people have been affected by a security breach that put DNA ancestry information into the hands of hackers who broke into the site in early October. On Friday, the California-based company said in a regulatory filing that the personal data of 0.1% of customers – or about 14,000 individuals – had been accessed by “threat actors”. But the filing warned that hackers were also able to access “a significant number of files containing profile information about other users’ ancestry”. The company confirmed to TechCrunch on Saturday that because of an opt-in feature that allows DNA-related relatives to contact each other, the true number of people exposed was 6.9 million – or just less than half of 23andMe’s 14 million reported customers. Another group of about 1.4 million people who opted in to 23andMe’s DNA relatives feature also “had their family tree profile information accessed”, the company also acknowledged. That information includes names, relationship labels, birth year, self-reported location and other data. 23andMe said in a statement: “We were made aware that certain 23andMe customer profile information was compiled through access to individual 23andMe.com accounts. “We believe that the threat actor may have then, in violation of our terms of service, accessed 23andme.com accounts without authorization and obtained information from those accounts.” Two months ago, Wired reported that a sample of data points from 23andMe accounts were exposed on BreachForums, a black-hat hacking crime forum. The hackers claimed the sample contained 1m data points exclusively about Ashkenazi Jews. According to the outlet, there also seemed to be hundreds of thousands of users of Chinese heritage affected by the leak. Hackers then began selling 23andMe profiles for between $1 and $10 per account, with information revealed that included some details about genetic ancestry results, like “broadly European” or “broadly Arabian”. Later, hackers released 23andMe user information containing records of 4 million users. The hackers claimed the information included people from the UK with some of the “the wealthiest people living in the US and western Europe on this list”. TechCrunch said it had analysed the leaked data and determined that some records matched genetic data published online by hobbyists and genealogists. But the outlet also suggested the hacked data was at least in part from 23andMe. When the company first disclosed the breach, it said it was likely that it was caused by customers reusing passwords that have already appeared in other data breaches, allowing hackers to use a technique known as “credential stuffing”. “It just comes down to the fact that humans reuse their passwords – that’s what makes it possible,” Ronnie Tokazowski, a longtime digital scams researcher, told Wired. “And the fact that it’s claiming to target a Jewish population or celebrities – it’s not shocking. It reflects the underbelly of the internet.” | ['technology/hacking', 'us-news/us-news', 'technology/technology', 'world/world', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/edwardhelmore', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/us-news'] | technology/hacking | UNRELATED_TO_CLIMATE | 2023-12-05T14:18:29Z | true | UNRELATED_TO_CLIMATE |
technology/2019/nov/22/cybertruck-tesla-unveils-the-pickup-truck-we-have-to-have | Cybertruck: Tesla unveils new pickup truck but windows break during demo | Elon Musk’s glitzy unveiling of the first Tesla “cybertruck” descended into farce when a PR stunt testing the “bulletproof” body strength of the electric vehicle resulted in smashed windows. The Blade Runner-meets-cyberpunk themed launch of the $39,900 (£30,000) futuristic armoured vehicle was meant to take aim at the traditional Detroit carmakers, proving that Tesla could make a credible electric version of America’s favourite vehicle, the pickup truck. In a theatrical series of demonstrations hosted by Musk, black-clad Tesla staff attempted to demonstrate the vehicle’s durability with tests involving sledgehammers, a simulation of a 9mm bullet strike and hefty metal balls. “We created an exoskeleton,” Musk said to rapturous whoops from those attending the Los Angeles launch. “It is literally bulletproof to a 9mm handgun.” Franz von Holzhausen, Tesla’s chief designer, asked Musk if he could lob a metal ball at the window of the vehicle. “Really?” said Musk. The window smashed. “Oh my fucking God,” said Musk. “Maybe that was a little hard.” Showing confidence in the vehicle, Von Holzhausen then suggested he should lob it at a second window. “Try that one? Really?” asked Musk moments before the rear window was also smashed. “It didn’t go through, that’s the plus side,” a stunned Musk said. Musk, who has previously boasted of the vehicle as a “really futuristic-like cyberpunk, Blade Runner pickup truck”, tried to laugh off the incident with a joke: “Ah, not bad, room for improvement.” Earlier, attendees at the futuristic event were treated to electricity-themed entertainment, actors in cyberpunk costumes and stalls selling noodles, a theme from the Blade Runner film. The South African-born American entrepreneur, whose net worth is estimated at more than $20bn, has a penchant for eccentric and at times divisive behaviour. His decision to smoke marijuana on a live web show last year resulted in a 6% fall in Tesla’s share price, and the departure of two of its senior executives. Asked about the wisdom of smoking marijuana while he was under investigation by the SEC for tweeting that he had “secured” funding to take Tesla private, Musk told the Guardian by email: “Guardian is the most insufferable newspaper on planet Earth”. The 48-year old has also been involved in an extended feud with Vernon Unsworth, a diver who helped rescue a team of young soccer players stuck in an underwater cave in Thailand, after Unsworth criticised Musk’s plan to save them with a submarine. Musk called Unsworth a “pedo guy” on Twitter and referred to him as a “child rapist” in emails to a BuzzFeed reporter. Unsworth is suing Musk for defamation. Tesla says production on the cybertruck is expected to begin in late 2021. Musk earlier tweeted that the design was partly influenced by the Lotus Esprit sportscar that doubled as a submarine in the 1970s James Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me. Tesla’s Model 3 sedan is the world’s top-selling battery electric car and this is the carmaker’s first foray into pickup trucks, a market dominated by Ford’s F-150 and competitors from General and Fiat Chrysler. Tesla has so far sold mostly Model S and Model 3 sedans but also offers the Model X SUV and, starting next year, the Model Y compact SUV. The company has delivered 255,000 vehicles this year, more than it achieved in the whole of 2018, and the Model 3 has become the world’s best-selling battery-powered car. Ford and GM are gearing up to challenge Tesla more directly with new offerings like the Ford Mustang Mach E electric SUV as well as electric pickups. Electric pickups and SUVs could help Ford and GM generate the significant EV sales they will need to meet tougher emission standards and EV mandates in California and other states. | ['technology/tesla', 'environment/electric-cars', 'business/automotive-industry', 'business/business', 'technology/technology', 'environment/environment', 'environment/carbon-emissions', 'technology/motoring', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/marksweney', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/topstories', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-business'] | environment/carbon-emissions | EMISSIONS | 2019-11-22T09:38:18Z | true | EMISSIONS |
australia-news/2022/may/06/mystery-box-jellyfish-spotted-in-sydney-waters-may-be-an-entirely-new-species-expert-says | Mystery box jellyfish spotted in Sydney waters may be an entirely new species, expert says | A mystery box jellyfish spotted in Sydney waters may belong to a new species entirely, an expert working to identify the marine animal has said. The sightings of the jellyfish outside of tropical waters have prompted warnings about correct first aid for marine stings. Two encounters with the jellyfish were caught on camera by Scott Belcher, a Sydney resident, who first spotted it a fortnight ago during a group ocean swim near Cronulla’s Shark Island. “We swam a little further down south to Shelly beach and ran into what I thought was a rather large jimble,” he said, “but filming it [we] realised that it’s a lot meaner.” The jimble, Carybdea rastoni, is a species of box jellyfish with only four tentacles which can deliver a painful but not dangerous sting. The new species had several tentacles around 30cm long and more closely resembled the deadly Australian box jelly, Chironex fleckeri, also known as the sea wasp. “The head of the jellyfish was about as big as your palm,” Belcher said. He filmed another encounter six days later of what is believed to be a second jellyfish of the same species. “It’s just unbelievable that I was in the right spot at the right time with my camera working.” Dr Lisa-ann Gershwin, a jellyfish expert in Hobart, said it was possible the Cronulla specimens belonged to a new species. “It is not Chironex fleckeri, the one we lovingly refer to as the box jellyfish,” Gershwin said. “But it is a box-shaped jellyfish which is closely related to Chironex. My very first reaction was … that does not belong in Sydney.” She is working with the Australian Museum to characterise the species, which she said resembled an unidentified specimen held in the museum’s collection since 1984. Another possibility was that the Cronulla sightings were larger specimens of Chiropsella saxoni, a 3cm pygmy box jellyfish, which was discovered in Queensland and which Gershwin identified as a new species in 2015. Gershwin said it was difficult to determine whether the new jellyfish was toxic because it had a mix of features of both non-dangerous jellyfish and also the Australian box jelly – the world’s most venomous marine animal. “In my experience studying the box-shaped jellies of the world … all of the ones with thick tentacles are dangerous, and all of the ones that are not dangerous tend to have thin tentacles,” she said. “The problem is the Cronulla ones have thick tentacles.” But other structural features of the new jellyfish resemble those of non-dangerous species, including the presence of round gastric saccules – “little gelatinous knobs on the inside of the body”. Gershwin said there had been scattered sightings of deadly Australian box jellies in New South Wales over the past few decades, but no footage or recovered specimens. “Any jellyfish that someone gets stung by outside the tropics is automatically assumed to be a bluebottle,” she said. “Most people don’t realise that there is an Irukandji [the species Morbakka fenneri, which Gershwin characterised in 2008] that is native to NSW, that has been stinging people … since 1905.” For jellyfish stings outside tropical areas, the Australian Resuscitation Council recommends rinsing the sting well with seawater and then using hot water or ice for the pain. It is “standard and appropriate treatment”, Gershwin said, emphasising the importance of washing the sting with seawater first. She advised against immediately using hot water on suspected box jellyfish stings. “Freshwater forces stinging cells to discharge, so it increases the venom load, and heat dilates the capillaries, basically opening the floodgates for the venom to circulate around.” A handy rule of thumb for jellyfish stings, Gershwin said, was that bluebottles were usually found in armadas. “If you get a sting, you come out of the water and there are no bluebottles up and down the beach, then the right assumption would not be that it’s a bluebottle.” | ['australia-news/sydney', 'australia-news/australia-news', 'australia-news/new-south-wales', 'environment/environment', 'environment/marine-life', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/donna-lu', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/environmentnews', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/australia-news'] | environment/marine-life | BIODIVERSITY | 2022-05-06T06:33:40Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
news/2011/jun/10/weatherwatch-twilight-sun-scotland | Weatherwatch: When twilight lingers on | This is the time of year when the days are so long that a hint of light lingers almost all night long, especially in Scotland. This is twilight, the "violet hour" of T S Eliot's The Wasteland, a special transition time when the sun is just hidden from view but still leaves a glow in the sky. As the sun sinks below the horizon, its last rays shine upwards like searchlights and illuminate the dust, gases, liquids and manmade particles floating around high in the atmosphere. This is what gives the glow and colours of the twilight skies, and some of the best colours come from volcanic dust floating high in the atmosphere after a major eruption. Twilight officially begins the moment when the upper edge of the Sun seems to coincide with the horizon, but there are actually three categories of twilight – civil, nautical and astronomical. Civil twilight ends when the centre of the Sun is 6 degrees below the horizon. This is when it is too dark to read outdoors, but just light enough to make out objects on the ground in good weather; artificial lights usually need to be switched on and the brightest stars become visible. "Nautical twilight" ends when the Sun's centre is 12 degrees below the horizon, when the stars can be distinguished and a distant horizon is no longer visible, except in moonlight. Finally, "astronomical twilight" ends when the Sun is below 18 degrees and marks the start of night. | ['news/series/weatherwatch', 'uk/weather', 'uk/uk', 'tone/features', 'travel/scotland', 'type/article', 'profile/jeremy-plester', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/weather2'] | news/series/weatherwatch | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2011-06-09T23:05:13Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
environment/2019/may/16/parts-of-western-australia-declared-water-deficient-as-emergency-supplies-trucked-in | Parts of Western Australia declared 'water deficient' as emergency supplies trucked in | Two areas of Western Australia have been declared “water deficient” and will have supplies trucked in by the state government to keep farm animals alive. Farmers around the area of Mallee Hill in the shire of Lake Grace and Mount Short in the Ravensthorpe shire have run out of water for their stock and had been driving more than 40km to cart water back to their farms. From Thursday, the state’s water and environmental regulation department will begin carrying 350 kilolitres a week to a centrally located tank near Mallee Hill in response to a petition by seven farmers for assistance. Water-carting to Mount Short began last week. It was the first time a water deficiency declaration had been made in eight years. The surrounding region, which stretches inland from the state’s south coast from Albany to Hopetown, had very low winter rainfall in 2018. Both areas have recorded about 30mm of rain so far this year, down from a January-May average of 70mm. Water minister Dave Kelly said the below-average rainfall in both regions was part of a long-term drying trend attributed to climate change. “Climate change has impacted rainfall across the south-west of WA,” Kelly said. “In particular, last winter there was very low rainfall and no follow-up summer rainfall in the mid-northern region of the shire of Lake Grace. “As a result, on-farm water supplies and strategic community water supplies are now depleted.” A water deficiency declaration can be made when five or more farmers within a 20km radius have to travel more than 40km to get water. Water provided by the government can be used only for animal welfare purposes. “This declaration will assist landholders to reduce the cost and stress of sourcing suitable water supplies for their animals,” the WA agriculture minister, Alannah MacTiernan, said. “We continue to work with landholders affected by below-average rainfall, providing information and support about how best to navigate the season ahead.” WA farmers president Rhys Turton said he expected more areas in the southern parts of the state would be placed on emergency water provisions before winter was over. “They have been through a pretty dry winter last year, very dry spring,” Turton said. “Most have not had a lot of summer rainfall so there has been very little run-off to fill water storage dams. They have been driving for some time to get water for stock.” Rainfall in WA has been drying up since the 1970s, but the trend is patchy. Some parts of the state, such as the wheatbelt, where Turton farms, experienced their best winter in living memory last year. He said that even if the drying trend was attributed to climate change, as it is by the Bureau of Meteorology, it did not mean that areas would become unviable for farming. “They are at no greater risk there than anywhere else in Australia,” he said. | ['environment/drought', 'environment/water', 'australia-news/australia-news', 'australia-news/western-australia', 'environment/climate-crisis', 'environment/environment', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/calla-wahlquist', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/australia-news'] | environment/drought | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2019-05-16T05:06:08Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
world/1999/sep/14/marktran | Florida braces itself for Atlantic's strongest-ever hurricane | Hurricane Floyd, one of the most powerful storms ever recorded in the Atlantic, is heading ominously towards Florida after pounding the central Bahamas early today. More than 1 million people were told to evacuate Florida's Atlantic coast as the hurricane charged toward the state with potentially catastrophic 155 mph winds. The US national hurricane centre issued a hurricane warning, signalling storm conditions within 24 hours, for the state's entire east coast except the far-south Florida Keys, extending up to just south of Brunswick, Georgia. Officials in seven counties, including the densely populated Miami area, ordered the evacuation of low-lying barrier islands, beach towns and mobile homes, sending more than 1million people - 272,000 in the Miami area alone - to shelters and higher ground inland. "This storm is simply too close for comfort," Miami-Dade County Mayor Alex Penelas said. Forecasters at the national hurricane centre expected Floyd to turn northwest toward Georgia and the Carolinas. But the storm was so big that the Miami area was expected to feel the first tropical storm force winds later today. Its relentless westward march yesterday increased the possibility that Floyd would sweep near the Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Palm Beach urban sprawl, home to nearly 5 million people, even if its powerful core stayed off the coast as expected. "Plan as if this hurricane is going to hit you," national hurricane centre deputy director Max Mayfield told people Florida. "The penalty for not preparing is too great." By late on Monday Floyd was three times as wide and already as strong as Hurricane Andrew, which killed more than 40 people, battered 160,000 homes and caused more than $25 billion in damage when it struck the Miami area in August 1992. "If it hits a populated area, then it's off the scale in terms of damage," national hurricane centre director Jerry Jarrell said of Floyd. Florida governor Jeb Bush declared a state of emergency. "I cannot emphasise enough how important it is for those who live on the east coast of our state to take this storm seriously," he said. Major airlines suspended flights into the southern stretch of the state. Schools closed, shops extended their hours, boats were taken inland and queues stretched out of petrol stations into roads already packed with traffic. "We're getting out. We're not taking chances," said Cocoa Beach retiree Sam Giles. "They're saying this is bigger than Andrew and that scares the hell out of me." Maximum sustained winds holding steady at 155 mph this morning made Floyd a strong category four hurricane on the Saffir Simpson scale, which runs from one to five. That means it is strong enough to rip roofs off small homes, damage doors and windows, tear down trees and signs, destroy mobile homes and cause severe flooding. "This is not your average hurricane. It's a very, very dangerous hurricane. If it were to make a direct hit on the Florida coastline, the damage would be extreme or even catastrophic," said meteorologist Max Mayfield. At Kennedy space centre, which is just 9 feet above sea level, almost all of the 12,500 workers were leaving. A decision will be made later whether a "ride out" team will stay behind. In the past, a crew has stayed during hurricanes, but officials said Floyd is so strong that the entire facility may be evacuated. That would be the first evacuation of the space centre. Three of Nasas space shuttles were in a hangar designed to withstand wind of only up to 105 mph. A fourth was in a building designed to stand winds of up to 125 mph. Four multimillion-dollar rockets were exposed on launch pads and could not be moved. "We're concerned, and we're starting to button things up," said Nasa spokesman George Diller. "We're putting sandbags in place, and we're starting to secure the flight hardware." Useful links: Florida Division of Emergency Management: Hurricane Floyd Nasa disaster finder Daily Updates on the State of the Planet Shockwave presentation on hurricanes from the Baltimore Sun Hurricane city | ['world/world', 'world/bahamas', 'world/americas', 'world/hurricanes', 'type/article', 'profile/marktran'] | world/hurricanes | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 1999-09-14T14:26:49Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
news/2019/may/29/why-tornadoes-can-erupt-from-supercell-thunderstorms | Why tornadoes can erupt from supercell thunderstorms | The northern hemisphere springtime marks the pinnacle of severe weather in the US as violent thunderstorms develop over the midwest and Great Plains. Most of this severe weather is spawned from a specific type of thunderstorm: the supercell. One of the first studies on supercells was conducted by the British meteorology professor Keith Browning in 1962, which described in detail a violent thunderstorm that struck Wokingham, England, in 1959. Unlike most kinds of thunderstorms, a supercell is required to have a mesocyclone at its heart. A mesocyclone is a deep, persistently rotating updraft that, in essence, suggests the rising motion within a thunderstorm is spiralling its way upwards into the atmosphere. These rotating updrafts allow supercell thunderstorms to hold their structure for long periods, generating copious amounts of lightning, large hailstones and violent downpours of rain. The spinning motion of the storm can, in some circumstances, become focused to ground-level with the formation of tornadoes. So far this spring, several severe weather outbreaks in the US Great Plains have spawned supercell thunderstorms, some of which have produced deadly tornadoes. Such storms are much rarer in the UK but they do happen. The most recent supercell outbreak was on 28 June 2012, when a series of storms across the Midlands generated large hailstones and even a tornado. | ['news/series/weatherwatch', 'world/extreme-weather', 'weather/usa', 'uk/weather', 'world/tornadoes', 'type/article', 'tone/features', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/weather2', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-weather'] | world/tornadoes | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2019-05-29T20:30:11Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
environment/2023/apr/13/country-diary-preening-in-the-hedges-peening-in-the-meadow | Country diary: Preening in the hedges, peening in the meadow | Anita Roy | After weeks of rain, the sun is finally out. The air is washed clean, sharpened by wren trill and robin song. Each chiff and chaff passes like a whetstone, honing the edges of hedges until every leaflet and catkin stands out, sharply etched in the fresh spring light. The meandering lanes that snake through the Blackdown Hills gurgle with runoff. The steep, mossy banks are spangled with yellows of varied intensity, from soft pastel primroses to brash celandine, and the new leaves of cleavers, nettles and dog’s mercury. We arrive at Mower Meadow, home to the Somerset Scythe School run by the champion scyther Andi Rickard. We are here to celebrate International Peening Day, and to learn how to peen our scythes, ready for the new season ahead. Peening is the traditional technique of hammering, thinning and tapering the blade such that it becomes both sharper and stronger. My friend and I have brought six of the community scythe blades belonging to our local environmental group, Transition Town Wellington. With meadows aplenty to maintain along our town’s new green corridor, we need them all in tiptop condition. This grass isn’t going to cut itself, you know. Andi has set up peening jigs on one side of her field, plus freehand anvils for more experienced peeners in the barn opposite. Peening using an anvil requires the person to steady the blade themselves, while using a jig is faster and takes out more of the risk. “Idiot-proof peening” is how Andi describes it (not a phrase to instil confidence in a peening virgin such as myself). However, undaunted and in the spirit of learning by doing, I set up my blade on a jig and begin. Each tink of the hammer on the jig draws the metal down, leaving a bright silver line in its wake. The blade moves along a millimetre at a time, and the blows take on an easy rhythm. High above us, a fork-tailed kite jinks and keens; woodpigeons coo; the chiffchaffs are still sawing away in the hedgerows. The four of us working together unconsciously syncopate and synchronise our hammering, becoming – just for a moment – the perfect percussion section for this lush springtime orchestra. • Country diary is on Twitter at @gdncountrydiary | ['environment/series/country-diary', 'environment/environment', 'environment/conservation', 'environment/farming', 'uk/ruralaffairs', 'uk/uk', 'type/article', 'tone/features', 'profile/anita-roy', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-letters-and-leader-writers'] | environment/farming | BIODIVERSITY | 2023-04-13T04:30:33Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
science/2022/feb/09/allan-hamilton-obituary | Allan Hamilton obituary | My friend and colleague Allan Hamilton, who has died of pneumonia aged 85, was a distinguished microbiologist at the University of Aberdeen. His work transformed the understanding of microbial corrosion in offshore oil installations and helped to solve it. He was born in Glasgow to Vernon Hamilton, an accountant with Glasgow Corporation Tramways, and Jean (nee Hood), who worked at Pettigrew’s store in the city. He attended Hutchesons’ grammar school and studied biochemistry at the University of Glasgow, graduating in 1958. He completed a PhD in 1961 and went to work for Unilever in Bedfordshire, investigating the safety of food and hygiene products. In 1969 Allan became a senior lecturer at the University of Aberdeen, where he researched energy transduction in bacteria. After uncovering new insights into how microbes corrode oil rigs, he and colleagues formed a company, Micran, providing mitigating services to the oil industry. In 1978 Allan established the department of microbiology at Aberdeen, becoming the first holder of its chair of microbiology. He selected and nurtured talented colleagues, taking pride in their attainments. Throughout his leadership the department was consistently one of the most highly ranked research units in the UK. Allan was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1980. Recognising the importance of bacteria to emerging biotechnologies, he orchestrated the rejuvenation of the National Collection for Industrial Bacteria, which had stored types of organisms for research and had been neglected and underfunded. He became its chairman in 1982 and steered its development until 1997. His vision not only ensured the survival of a national resource but saw it develop through the next generation of technologies to provide a range of important services. Allan married Evie Stewart in 1992. After his retirement in 1994, he and Evie moved to Ardrishaig, where he became a director of the Museum of Scottish Lighthouses (2004-09) and of the Kilmartin Museum (2015-17). Allan was also treasurer of the Microbiology Society. Allan had wide interests, including sailing, the arts, music, fine wine, whisky and fly fishing. He ably played the bagpipes at many a Burns night. He was great company and a wonderful host at home and on his boat. He is survived by Evie, and his stepdaughters, Marsali and Toto, and step-grandchildren Arty, Cora, Tala, Ruban and Hani. | ['science/microbiology', 'environment/energy', 'education/higher-education', 'theguardian/series/otherlives', 'business/oil', 'uk/scotland', 'type/article', 'tone/obituaries', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/journal', 'theguardian/journal/obituaries'] | environment/energy | ENERGY | 2022-02-09T17:38:10Z | true | ENERGY |
lifeandstyle/2020/aug/31/tree-of-the-week-the-hornbeam-that-inspired-one-mans-lifelong-obsession-and-his-tattoo | Tree of the week: the hornbeam that inspired one man’s lifelong obsession – and his tattoo | Tim Mosley loves his favourite hornbeam, in Brockwell park, London, so much that he had it tattooed on his arm during a trip to India three years ago. It’s not the tree of life – as many people assume – but it does have a special significance for him. “It’s something that reminds you to deal with the earth beneath your feet,” he says. “It makes me feel more stable and calm.” The film publicist, 41, who also works part-time as a yoga teacher, has been photographing the hornbeam for nine years. It has been the backdrop to many happy afternoons in the park, catching up with friends and family while listening to music. Mosley even brought his fiancee, Emma, to the tree for their first date. “We had to break out of the park because we stayed there too late and the gates had closed.” The 35-minute stroll from his home in Oval to the park has become like a “pilgrimage”. The hornbeam looks like “the perfect tree” to him. “It looks like a tree looks in children’s books,” he says. “It’s pretty symmetrical. It’s got a pleasing point, like the spades on playing cards.” He’s taken more than 100 pictures of it during the changing seasons. Photographing the tree has “gone from a fun hobby to an ongoing project, to potentially a lifelong obsession”. He shares the results on Instagram, with the hashtag #timstree2. A few months after he got the tattoo, he was shocked when the instructor on his yoga training course in Kerala pointed at his arm one day and told him: “I know that tree – it’s in Brixton.” “He went on to say that he used to teach yoga at Brockwell lido 15 years previously and would meditate under the tree after class,” says Mosley. “It was nuts.” Each time Mosley visits the hornbeam, he likes to take a moment to sit down and reflect. “It’s a landmark in the city, which feels like it’s purely mine,” he says. “The tree has been a place to go to in good times and bad. It’s been a marker of solidity in a world that seems to be ever more uncertain and frightening. Most importantly, the tree continues to be the place to hang out on a summer’s day with friends.” • Tell us about your favourite tree by filling in this form. | ['lifeandstyle/series/tree-of-the-week', 'lifeandstyle/lifeandstyle', 'uk/london', 'environment/forests', 'environment/environment', 'uk/uk', 'type/article', 'tone/features', 'profile/ann-lee', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/g2', 'theguardian/g2/features', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-g2-features'] | environment/forests | BIODIVERSITY | 2020-08-31T06:00:00Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
environment/2013/may/17/climate-change-refugees-dignity-migration | Climate refugees? Where's the dignity in that? | This week the Guardian has been running a major series on "climate refugees" about the village of Newtok in Alaska, which faces an imminent threat to its existence from erosion. The term is problematic for a number of reasons. The first being that people who are facing movement do not like the term. The word "refugee" brings to mind a number of (not always accurate) images: tented camps, long lines of people walking, dangerous boat crossings. People facing the prospect moving hope that they will have some choice in the timing and circumstances of their movement and that when they arrive they will find work and become active members of their new communities. Their hope is that they will move with dignity. President Anote Tong of Kiribati, an island nation in the Pacific, told Australia's ABC Radio that the people of Kiribati do not want to leave as refugees but as skilled migrants. Similarly, Ursula Rakova, a campaigner from the Carteret Islands is highly critical of the "climate refugee" narrative: "Our plan is one in which we remain as independent and self-sufficient as possible. We wish to maintain our cultural identity and live sustainably wherever we are." Apart from people's own rejection of the "climate refugee" term there are also several other problems. It's clear that there are connections between climate change and the movement of people, but the connections are not as clear as the "climate refugee" narrative suggests. The phrase conjures images of large numbers of people moving en masse over long distances and crossing international borders and possibly continents. It seems unlikely that climate change will produce this kind of human movement. What seems more likely is that climate change might reinforce existing trends in short-term, short distance migration. For example, as subsistence farmers find it increasingly difficult to make a living in rural areas they may move to nearby cities to find work. Whole towns or villages will not move together: in fact, families may not even move together. Far more likely is that one or two household members will move, find work elsewhere and send money home to their community. This statement collected by the EACH-FOR research project from a farmer in Hueyotlipan, Mexico gives a sense of this kind of movement: "Times have changed … the rain is coming later now, so we produce less. The only solution is to go away, at least for a while. Each year I'm working for three to five months in Wyoming. That's my main source of income." Another problem is that the phrase implies that it is easy to untangle the different causes of someone's movement – that we might be able to pick out a group of people who have moved solely because of climate change. This is very misleading. Even when climate change has contributed to someone's decision to move many other factors are often as, or more, important. This statement from a Somali farmer in a Ugandan refugee camp gives a clear sense of how multiple factors cause someone to move: "And since there was the war, we did not receive any support from the government. Therefore, there are combined factors that made us suffer: droughts and war. If war did not exist, then we might have been able to stay, but now that the land is looted, there is no way for us to claim it." The "climate refugee" narrative leads us away from other vital questions about the connection between climate change and migration: the first being how we protect growing cities. As climate change reinforces the factors pushing people out of the countryside, people will move into areas exposed to new climate-related risks in cities. This raises huge questions about urban planning, infrastructure and how cities plan to deal with the effects of climate change. There is also the possibility that climate change, rather than being a driver for new movement might actually prevent people from moving. Moving to find work is one of the key ways people are coping with falling incomes in rural areas. But moving requires resources, and as people become poorer, moving becomes harder. Climate change could in fact trap people in dangerous locations. We need a new narrative that helps us address these vital questions, and which the people who are actually moving feel positive about. We need a new narrative in which we frame migration as a way for people to adapt to climate. Rather than being seen as a negative consequence of climate change, we need to describe moving in dignity as a way for some people to survive. • Alex Randall is project manager of the UK Climate Change and Migration Coalition: a network of refugee, migration and environmental organisations. The network exists to protect and support people at risk of displacement linked to environmental change. | ['environment/climate-crisis', 'us-news/alaska', 'environment/environment', 'us-news/us-news', 'world/world', 'global-development/migration', 'global-development/global-development', 'environment/sea-level', 'environment/oceans', 'tone/comment', 'australia-news/australia-news', 'type/article'] | environment/sea-level | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2013-05-17T09:40:17Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
world/2020/sep/15/west-coast-wildfires-smoke-new-york-washington-dc | Smoke from west coast wildfires has drifted to New York and Washington DC | Smoke from wildfires in the western US has drifted as far east as New York and Washington DC, with residents there observing hazy skies and unusual sunrises. Skies above the US capital have taken on a hazy din. New York Metro Weather predicted that murky air seen in New York City this week would become more even pronounced throughout Tuesday. Smoke from the fires has spread across the country and around the world, with reports of haze as far away as Canada and Europe, while images captured by a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration showing smoke being pulled into a cyclone far out in the Pacific Ocean. The unprecedented wildfires, which have burned some 4.5m acres (1.8m hectares) as of Tuesday, have torn through towns in Oregon while also devouring forests in California, Washington and Idaho. The resulting blanket of ash and smoke has made the region’s hazardous air quality among the worst in the world. Hardest hit is Oregon, where tiny bits of smoke and ash known as particulates have reached the highest levels on record in Portland, Eugene, Bend, Medford and Klamath Falls, the state’s department of environmental quality said on Tuesday. Air quality in five major cities in Oregon was the worst on record as the state continues to be blanketed by thick smoke, state environmental officials said. Air this week in all five cities was rated “hazardous” according to air quality standards, and in Bend, the air quality index topped 500, exceeding the air quality scale altogether, the department said. In Seattle, a two-game series between the San Francisco Giants and Mariners in Seattle that was scheduled to start Tuesday was postponed due to air quality. The smoke prompted Alaska Airlines, along with its regional carrier Horizon Air, to suspend all flights in and out of Portland, Oregon, and Spokane, Washington, and several smaller airports until Tuesday afternoon. A growing body of research paints a bleak picture of the effects of wildfire smoke on the human body. “Wildfire smoke can affect the health almost immediately,” Dr Jiayun Angela Yao, an environmental health researcher in Canada, told the Guardian earlier this month. Yao co-authored a study for the University of British Columbia this summer showing that, within an hour of fire smoke descending upon the Vancouver area during recent wildfire seasons, the number of ambulance calls for asthma, chronic lung disease and cardiac events increased by 10%. However, smoke over the east coast may not necessarily be affecting air quality, said John Simko, a spokesman for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Generally, such particles are carried high on the wind and may not come close enough to earth to do so. | ['world/wildfires', 'us-news/new-york', 'us-news/washington-dc', 'environment/environment', 'us-news/california', 'us-news/washington-state', 'us-news/oregon', 'us-news/us-news', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'us-news/west-coast', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/west-coast-news'] | world/wildfires | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2020-09-15T23:26:34Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
environment/2022/may/27/one-of-uks-rarest-corals-set-to-expand-its-range-as-climate-change-warms-seas | One of UK’s rarest corals set to expand its range as climate change warms seas | It is one of Britain’s rarest and most threatened species, primarily due to bottom-trawling fishing, but researchers have found that the pink sea fan coral could expand its range in the climate crisis. A slow-growing coral found in shallow waters from the western Mediterranean to north-west Ireland and south-west England and Wales, the pink sea fan (Eunicella verrucosa) is classified as vulnerable by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. But a study by researchers from Exeter University found that the species is likely to spread northwards – including further around the British coast as far as Scotland – by 2100 as global temperatures rise. The results, published in the journal PeerJ, could be used to identify priority areas to protect the species from bottom trawling and other threats. Dr Tom Jenkins, from Exeter University, said: “We built models to predict the current and future habitat of pink sea fans across an area covering the Bay of Biscay, the British Isles and southern Norway.” Using a global heating model called RCP 8.5, the researchers predicted that by 2100 there would be suitable habitats for pink sea fans north of the current range. Successful colonisation, the study found, would depend on several factors, including dispersal and competition. Jenkins said: “The model predictions revealed current areas of suitable habitat beyond the current northern range limits of the pink sea fan, in areas where colonies have not yet been observed. “It’s not clear why pink sea fans have not yet colonised these areas,” he added. Possible barriers include competition for space and resources, and insufficient dispersal of coral larvae. Existing habitats, across south-west Britain, the Channel Islands and north-west France, were also predicted to remain suitable for sea fans over the next 60 to 80 years. Pink sea fans are ecologically important because they add complexity to reef systems and support marine biodiversity, especially when they form dense “forests”,which are found off Cornwall and Devon. They are an indicator of ecosystem health, and fragmented or diseased colonies may be linked to disturbance from bottom-towed fishing gear. The paper also examined another soft “octocoral” species called dead man’s fingers. Researchers found an overall decrease in suitable habitat in the southern part of the study area for this species and an increase in the northern part of its range. While they predicted the sea fan would be resilient to the climate crisis, the Exeter researchers also acknowledged uncertainty in how the corals might react over time. Dr Jamie Stevens, also from Exeter University, said: “This research highlights the complex effects of climate change on marine ecosystems, in which the ranges of some species respond to warming by shifting pole-wards. “In a rapidly changing mosaic of habitats, some species – typically those favouring warmer conditions – may come out as short-term ‘winners’. How long these species can continue to expand and benefit in the face of accelerated warming remains to be seen.” | ['environment/series/seascape-the-state-of-our-oceans', 'environment/coral', 'environment/oceans', 'environment/climate-crisis', 'type/article', 'environment/environment', 'environment/marine-life', 'environment/wildlife', 'uk/uk', 'environment/conservation', 'tone/news', 'profile/karenmcveigh', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/uknews', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/global-development'] | environment/marine-life | BIODIVERSITY | 2022-05-27T11:00:16Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
commentisfree/belief/2009/nov/17/katrina-double-effect-doctrine-catholic | Theology's unintended consequences | Peter Singer | Of all the arguments against voluntary euthanasia, the most influential is the "slippery slope": once we allow doctors to kill patients, we will not be able to limit the killing to those who want to die. There is no evidence for this claim, even after many years of legal physician-assisted suicide or voluntary euthanasia in the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Switzerland, and the American state of Oregon. But recent revelations about what took place in a New Orleans hospital after Hurricane Katrina point to a genuine danger from a different source. When New Orleans was flooded in August 2005, the rising water cut off Memorial Medical Centre, a community hospital that was holding more than 200 patients. Three days after the hurricane hit, the hospital had no electricity, the water supply had failed, and toilets could no longer be flushed. Some patients who were dependent on ventilators died. In stifling heat, doctors and nurses were hard-pressed to care for surviving patients lying on soiled beds. Adding to the anxiety were fears that law and order had broken down in the city, and that the hospital itself might be a target for armed bandits. Helicopters were called in to evacuate patients. Priority was given to those who were in better health, and could walk. State police arrived and told staff that because of the civil unrest, everybody had to be out of the hospital by 5pm. On the eighth floor, Jannie Burgess, a 79-year-old woman with advanced cancer, was on a morphine drip and close to death. To evacuate her, she would have to be carried down six flights of stairs, and would require the attention of nurses who were needed elsewhere. But if she were left unattended, she might come out of her sedation, and be in pain. Ewing Cook, one of the physicians present, instructed the nurse to increase the morphine, "giving her enough until she goes". It was, he later told Sheri Fink, who recently published an account of these events in the New York Times, a "no-brainer". According to Fink, Anna Pou, another physician, told nursing staff that several patients on the seventh floor were also too ill to survive. She injected them with morphine and another drug that slowed their breathing until they died. At least one of the patients injected with this lethal combination of drugs appears to have otherwise been in little danger of imminent death. Emmett Everett was a 61-year-old man who had been paralysed in an accident several years earlier, and was in the hospital for surgery to relieve a bowel obstruction. When others from his ward were evacuated, he asked not to be left behind. But he weighed 173kg (27 stone), and it would have been extremely difficult to carry him down the stairs and then up again to where the helicopters were landing. He was told the injection he was being given would help with the dizziness from which he suffered. In 1957, a group of doctors asked Pope Pius XII whether it is permissible to use narcotics to suppress pain and consciousness "if one foresees that the use of narcotics will shorten life". The pope said that it was, "if no other means exist, and if, in the given circumstances, this does not prevent the carrying out of other religious and moral duties". In its declaration on euthanasia, issued in 1980, the Vatican reaffirmed that view. The Vatican's position is an application of what is known as "the doctrine of double effect". An action that has two effects, one good and the other bad, may be permissible if the good effect is the one that is intended and the bad effect is merely an unwanted consequence of achieving the good effect. Significantly, neither the pope's remarks, nor the declaration on euthanasia, place any emphasis on the importance of obtaining the voluntary and informed consent of patients, where possible, before shortening their lives. According to the doctrine of double effect, two doctors may, to all outward appearances, do exactly the same thing: that is, they may give patients in identical conditions an identical dose of morphine, knowing that this dose will shorten the patient's life. Yet one doctor, who intends to relieve the patient's pain, acts in accordance with good medical practice, whereas the other, who intends to shorten the patient's life, commits murder. Dr Cook had little time for such subtleties. Only "a very naive doctor" would think that giving a person a lot of morphine was not "prematurely sending them to their grave", he told Fink, and then bluntly added: "We kill 'em." In Cook's opinion, the line between something ethical and something illegal is "so fine as to be imperceivable". At Memorial Medical Centre, physicians and nurses found themselves under great pressure. Exhausted after 72 hours with little sleep, and struggling to care for their patients, they were not in the best position to make difficult ethical decisions. The doctrine of double effect, properly understood, does not justify what the doctors did; but, by inuring them to the practice of shortening patients' lives without obtaining consent, it seems to have paved the way for intentional killing. Roman Catholic thinkers have been among the most vocal in invoking the "slippery slope" argument against the legalisation of voluntary euthanasia and physician-assisted dying. They would do well to examine the consequences of their own doctrines. Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2009. | ['commentisfree/belief', 'commentisfree/commentisfree', 'world/religion', 'us-news/hurricane-katrina', 'us-news/us-news', 'world/catholicism', 'world/ethics', 'society/assisted-suicide', 'society/doctors', 'society/health', 'society/society', 'tone/comment', 'type/article', 'profile/petersinger'] | us-news/hurricane-katrina | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2009-11-17T10:05:14Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
environment/2016/sep/21/enzymes-used-in-cleaning-products-and-food-are-potent-allergens-warns-study | Enzymes used in cleaning products and food 'are potent allergens', warns study | Genetically modified enzymes used in food, perfumes, medicine and cleaning products are “potent allergens” and should be tested like other potentially hazardous chemicals, experts have said. There has been an explosion in the use of enzymes to boost flavours and aromas, including in low-fat foods, helping to create a sector worth about $10bn (£7.7bn), according to a study published in Occupational & Environmental Medicine. Some techniques allow the products to be labelled as “natural” in Europe and the US but the researchers warn that genetically engineering the enzyme protein may change its allergenic properties. They measured specific antibodies to artificially created enzymes in blood samples from 813 workers, employed in the food, drinks, chemicals, detergents and pharmaceutical industries. The employees had worked in their respective industries for periods ranging from three months to 10 years and had been exposed to an average of two to four genetically modified enzymes in the workplace. As commercial tests are only available for naturally occurring enzymes, the research team created their own diagnostic test to discern whether antibodies to 12 different genetically modified enzymes were present in each blood sample. Analysis showed that 23% of the employees had specific antibodies to the genetically modified enzymes to which they were routinely exposed during working hours. The German and British authors admitted that their study was hampered by commercial secrecy, which prevented them from gaining access to the formulations used. Nevertheless, they concluded: “Genetically engineered enzymes are potent allergens eliciting immediate-type sensitisation ... The assessment of allergenicity should be mandatory for all new products ... Enzymes should be tested like any other potentially hazardous chemical.” The highest levels of sensitisation was produced by alpha amylase, with antibodies showing up in 44% of workers exposed to it, followed by stainzyme (41%) and pancreatinin (35%). These three genetically modified enzymes are all predominantly used in detergents, cleaning products and homecare products. In a subgroup of 134 people, who were tested for skin reactions and lung power and quizzed in detail about other potential risk factors, 36% said they had symptoms of rhinitis or asthma that were related to their job. As this subgroup was not randomly selected from all workers tested, possible selection bias could not be excluded. The authors stressed the need for independent future studies. The paper says that the growth of enzyme technology has been driven by a combination of new developments in industrial processing, consumer demand for low-fat foods and “natural” tastes. Flavours produced by the synthesis of aromatic compounds in microbial/fungal systems can be classified as natural under European and US law. As well as artificially created flavourings and fragrances, industrial applications for enzyme technology range from cheese ripening through speeding up the baking process to enhancing the power of detergents and medicines. | ['environment/corporatesocialresponsibility', 'science/science', 'world/world', 'environment/environment', 'business/business', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/haroonsiddique', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-home-news'] | environment/corporatesocialresponsibility | CLIMATE_POLICY | 2016-09-21T22:30:33Z | true | CLIMATE_POLICY |
commentisfree/2008/feb/22/filesharingisavirtue | Filesharing is a virtue | Filesharing is the favourite whipping-boy of an entertainment industry refusing to update its business models for the P2P generation. The latest result of its pressure on the UK government is a Green Paper on the creative industries, published today, recommending internet service providers be required to take action against users suspected of downloading copyrighted material without permission. Should they fail to mend their ways, such users face termination of their internet access. There's no mystery about how this will work. Bargain-basement host Tiscali have already been operating a similar scheme in co-operation with the British Phonographic Industry. The ISP has been monitoring filesharing "swarms" dedicated to a copyrighted work, and seeing how many in the swarm are their own customers. (Tiscali knows this because of the unique sets of IP numbers handed out to each ISP and passed on to all their users.) Embarrassingly for the government, the system is already in disarray over arguments about who should pay for sending written warnings and shutting down customers' access. British citizens should object strongly to these proposals. In Europe, any database of electronic information traceable to individuals is properly regarded as a threat to the fundamental right to private life. A recent European Court ruling requires specifically that member states deciding to make ISPs disclose personal information about suspected file sharers should do so with due respect for privacy. In addition, there are two Europe-wide sets of standards applying to the kind of activity proposed here: Article 8 of the European Convention of Human Rights on private life and the Council of Europe's Convention 108 on Personal Data Processing. They require that the purpose of the interference with privacy be "legitimate" and "proportional". "Proportional" means that a government wishing to force ISPs to take this kind of action has to be able to show it can achieve its stated purpose. These proposals are hopelessly inadequate in this respect, as any basic diligence should have shown. It is impossible to monitor even a small proportion of potentially infringing BitTorrent files available, and even then BitTorrent traffic is only one filesharing protocol among many. Moreover, those for whom downloading has become their primary way of consuming media will simply protect themselves by using other systems, or already available encryption. These proposals therefore represent, at best, a spectacularly expensive way of inflicting symbolic punishments on an unlucky few. Proportional they are not. Language like "national security" and "public safety" is often used to describe what counts as "legitimate". Incursions on our privacy are permitted under EU law, but only in cases that "satisfy a pressing social need" - not, as is the case here, merely to comply with the wishes of a powerful business lobby. ISPs will resist this because they know that acquiescing will be expensive and expose their businesses to massive liability. We citizens must resist it on the grounds that is unacceptable to sell our privacy to support an outmoded industry. Enough of our civil liberties have been eroded under the shibboleth of terror - let's not have them further eroded under that of piracy. Interestingly, ISPs complying with the proposed requirements might face an unexpected cost. The world's larger Bittorrent tracker, The Pirate Bay - on which almost all torrents are be hosted - has an acceptable use policy which is being violated by the kinds of things Tiscali is doing. "They are not legitimate users on our system," says The Bay's Peter Sunde, "and we do not accept their harvesting of IPs, since it's not productive. Breaking into our system when you're not invited is a violation of our terms of use. This means these ISPs have to pay a basic fee of five thousand Euros, plus bandwidth and other costs that may arise due to the violation." With the government's proposals looking technically and legally suspect and increasingly expensive for ISPs, perhaps it is time to investigate new business models for the entertainment industries? P2P distribution represents an unprecedented opportunity for creators to distribute their work cheaply and efficiently to people who want it. All we need now is a progressive business model that can again recognise sharing as a virtue, not a vice. | ['commentisfree/commentisfree', 'tone/comment', 'culture/culture', 'music/downloads', 'technology/technology', 'technology/internet', 'business/musicindustry', 'technology/piracy', 'technology/digital-music-and-audio', 'technology/digitalvideo', 'music/music', 'type/article'] | technology/digitalvideo | UNRELATED_TO_CLIMATE | 2008-02-22T17:30:00Z | true | UNRELATED_TO_CLIMATE |
environment/2018/mar/21/loopholes-in-queenslands-new-land-clearing-laws-would-allow-broadscale-razing | Loopholes in Queensland's new land-clearing laws 'would allow broadscale razing' | The Queensland Environmental Defenders Office says proposed new land-clearing laws in the state leave loopholes that would allow broadscale clearing of high-value conservation land to continue. The group will on Thursday lodge a submission supporting the Palaszczuk government’s vegetation management laws, but urging amendments. In particular, the office is concerned the new legislation would allow landholders to continue to clear high conservation value vegetation based on land maps that were “locked in” under the current regulations. Queensland is responsible for more land clearing than the rest of the country combined. Rates of clearing surged when the state’s former premier Campbell Newman promised to scrap restrictions, which his Liberal National party government did in December 2013. Those rates increased dramatically again, including heavy losses in Great Barrier Reef catchments, where the Palaszczuk government indicated it would attempt to restore protections during its first term. Laws were introduced to parliament in 2016 but were defeated at the time. Annastacia Palaszczuk has promised the new plan will “end broadscale clearing in Queensland”. But the Environmental Defenders Office, which supports the laws and says they are a “reasonable first step”, has warned that clearing would continue without measures to force landowners to amend maps that designated “category X” land – areas that were exempt from regulation. With new laws looming, agricultural groups have encouraged land owners to “lock in” their property maps designating “category X” land under the current framework. The proposed new laws will not compel farmers and other landholders to redraw those maps to reflect more stringent environmental requirements for clearing. The Environmental Defenders Office Queensland chief executive officer, Jo-Anne Bragg, said without measures to redraw property maps “these reforms will be ineffective”. “A lot of Queensland is covered by [locked-in property maps]. We don’t know how many hundreds and thousands of hectares in Queensland is classified as category X,” Bragg said. Bragg said voters expected the government would fully wind back the Newman era regulations, but the current proposal did not completely do that. The laws tighten the definition of “thinning”, which can involve clearing of up to 75% of vegetation, and require than any thinning must “maintain ecological processes and prevent loss of diversity”. But the Environmental Defenders Office says thinning has no scientific justification and should “no longer be an allowable activity by permit or code, particularly not for mature and high-value regrowth vegetation”. Bragg said many pastoralists had expressed concern about land-clearing rates and agreed the regulations needed to change. Committee hearings on the bill will be held on Friday, a day after submissions are due, with a report due back in parliament by 23 April. | ['environment/logging-and-land-clearing', 'australia-news/queensland', 'australia-news/australia-news', 'environment/conservation', 'environment/environment', 'australia-news/queensland-politics', 'australia-news/annastacia-palaszczuk', 'australia-news/rural-australia', 'australia-news/labor-party', 'australia-news/australian-politics', 'environment/deforestation', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/ben-smee', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/australia-news'] | environment/deforestation | BIODIVERSITY | 2018-03-21T07:01:47Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
commentisfree/2016/nov/08/austerity-pentonville-prison-riots-cuts-food-poverty | Austerity will unleash mayhem. Prison breakouts are just the start | Owen Jones
| “Austerity” is a term so abstract that, during the televised leaders debates at the last general election, the most commonly Googled phrase in Britain was “what is austerity?” That was after five years of it. Yes, workers suffered the longest squeeze in their wages since the 19th century, but the fall in living standards was somehow decoupled from the issue of cuts. Government cuts pursued the following strategy: to target people who were less likely to vote (such as young people) and who preferably were held in low esteem by wider society (such as benefit claimants); or where the consequences would not be felt for a long time. A case in point: the prison system. Over the last few days, the crisis enveloping Britain’s prison system stopped being a warning scribbled in press releases. It become an actuality. This weekend, up to 200 inmates rioted in Bedford prison. Yesterday, two prisoners escaped from Pentonville prison and are now on the run. And on the same day, there were reports of a riot in Exeter prison. Our Victorian prison system – which is more interested in locking up mentally ill poor people than rehabilitation and crime prevention – is overcrowded, under-staffed and underresourced. No one can say the warnings weren’t there. While our prison population doubled in the space of two decades, last week the Prison Officers’ Association warned that falling staff numbers and cuts mean a “bloodbath in prisons”, adding that “staff are absolutely on their knees, lost all morale, all motivation”. Opponents of cuts are frequently accused of alarmism: we are now seeing how prophetic they were. Some of the other consequences of austerity are becoming visible, too. A UN inquiry has condemned government cuts for “systematic violations” of the rights of disabled people, whether it be the bedroom tax or cuts to disability benefits. And today the Trussell Trust reports that – partly due to benefit sanctions and delays in social security payments – it is set to deliver the biggest number of emergency food parcels ever. After Britain was battered by floods over the festive period last year, it was revealed how cuts to flood defences had put households at risk. The danger is that – even as these cuts hit – they will remain abstractions, headlines to goggle at and then turn the page. Those most badly affected can all too easily be ignored. But the failure to invest in a country’s future means we will all increasingly suffer the consequences. We are beginning to see what some of them are. | ['commentisfree/series/first-thoughts', 'society/prisons-and-probation', 'law/criminal-justice', 'law/law', 'society/society', 'business/austerity', 'business/economics', 'world/disability', 'environment/flooding', 'world/natural-disasters', 'environment/environment', 'commentisfree/commentisfree', 'tone/comment', 'type/article', 'profile/owen-jones', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-opinion'] | environment/flooding | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2016-11-08T11:39:28Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
australia-news/2023/mar/12/queensland-windfarm-backed-by-apple-and-andrew-forrest-sparks-warning-over-impact-on-threatened-species | Queensland windfarm backed by Apple and Andrew Forrest sparks warning over impact on threatened species | A proposed $1bn windfarm in north Queensland – backed by Apple and majority-owned by billionaire Andrew Forrest – would have unavoidable and significant impacts on four threatened species, including koalas and greater gliders, according to the project developer’s own environment report. Developer, Windlab, wants to put 80 turbines and 150km of tracks on a site inland from Ingham to build the Upper Burdekin windfarm, 4.8km from the boundary of the Wet Tropics world heritage area. The government authority that manages the world heritage park said it was “very concerned” that the cumulative impact of five proposed windfarms in the area – including the Upper Burdekin project – were “poorly understood”. Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup Conservationists said they were “deeply concerned” about the impact on threatened species and that the state’s current planning rules were unable to deliver the dual challenge of a clean energy future and the protection of biodiversity. Queensland – the biggest greenhouse gas emitting state in Australia – announced last year a $62bn plan to decarbonise its electricity supply and build a renewable energy “super grid”: by 2040, more than a third of the state’s power is expected to come from wind. A public environment report published by Windlab says 769 hectares will need to be cleared, including the habitat of four nationally threatened species: 662ha of Sharman’s rock wallaby habitat 746ha of koala habitat 709ha of northern greater glider habitat 754ha of red goshawk habitat Koalas, greater gliders and the red goshawk – Australia’s rarest bird of prey – are all endangered, with the rock wallaby considered vulnerable. Windlab will use biodiversity offsets to lessen the impact on the species, which means buying and protecting suitable habitat nearby. It has identified four potential sites but has not yet finalised the offsets plan. The windfarm – about 65km south-west of Ingham – will mostly be built on relatively undisturbed forest and bush, with large tracts of well connected native vegetation, the report says. Scott Buchanan, executive director of the Wet Tropics Management Authority, said the authority would make a submission to the project before a consultation period closed on 3 April. Buchanan said: “The authority cannot comment on whether offsets for these species are acceptable prior to a thorough review of the [environment report]. However, as a general principle, the authority would always strongly advocate for avoidance of impacts on species of high conservation significance, rather than mitigation or offsetting.” In September last year, the authority issued a position statement saying it was “appropriately concerned about the cumulative scale of proposed [windfarm] developments” as it would “involve significant clearing across a large and relatively intact landscape”. Buchanan listed four windfarms being planned around the world heritage area – Chalumbin, Upper Burdekin, Mt Fox and High Road. A fifth, Kaban, is already under construction. He said: “The authority is very concerned that the cumulative impacts of all these proposed developments remains poorly understood.” Steven Nowakowski, a photographer and member of Rainforest Reserves Australia, a small environment group campaigning against windfarms in sensitive areas in the region, said, “This area harbours some very unique wildlife, like the red goshawk, koalas, rock wallabies and greater gliders. It’s one of the best sites in north Queensland for koalas. “This is about trying to hang on to the biodiversity that’s left in this state while moving to renewables.” He said the region risked being “industrialised” by a stream of new renewable energy projects. Dave Copeman, director of the Queensland Conservation Council, said: “We are deeply concerned about these impacts on the habitat of threatened species. We believe that we can have both a clean energy future and protect our biodiversity, but our current planning frameworks are not facilitating this.” The Queensland government has begun a review of its state planning guidelines to ensure “renewables are being built in the most appropriate locations” and to “consider and address potential cumulative impacts from renewable developments”. Copeman said: “The Queensland government needs to get a move on, and complete and release the planning needed to identify the right places for our renewable rollout. “Currently, projects are encouraged to develop close to the existing transmission line, and assessed under nature protection laws that are inadequate to ensure essential habitat is protected. This can’t solve either our climate crisis or the biodiversity crisis.” He said the broad use of offsets by developers had consistently failed and Windlab’s promise to buy offsets was “not an adequate response”. “We need many windfarms of the size Windlab is proposing as quickly as possible,” he said, adding the council’s greatest concern was the cumulative impact of several windfarm proposals. Apple announced last year that it had an agreement to buy power for 15 years from the windfarm. In a statement, Windlab said: “Following more than two years’ in-depth environmental studies and stakeholder consultation, we have delivered a revised project design that preserves more than 98% of native vegetation that exists within the boundary of the cattle property where the project is located, the majority of which is remnant vegetation.” The recently revised design would support “overall improved outcomes for regional ecology,” the statement said. “Our priority is to invest the time and resources to ensure a balanced, responsible project informed by rigorous science and the most up-to-date advice from regional ecology and environmental experts. “We recognise the value of the region’s ecology, as well as the importance of biodiversity in ensuring a healthy climate.” The company was committed to delivering a set of “robust management plans” that would protect native species and reduce weeds and predatory pests that also posed a threat. Windlab will submit its final report to the federal government for environmental approval later this year. The company has said it expects to start construction in 2024 and start sending power to the grid in 2026. The Guardian has approached Andrew Forrest for comment. | ['australia-news/australia-news', 'campaign/email/afternoon-update', 'environment/windpower', 'technology/apple', 'australia-news/andrew-forrest', 'australia-news/energy-australia', 'environment/environment', 'environment/energy', 'environment/renewableenergy', 'australia-news/queensland', 'type/article', 'profile/graham-readfearn', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/australia-news'] | environment/renewableenergy | ENERGY | 2023-03-11T19:00:28Z | true | ENERGY |
sustainable-business/2017/may/09/air-pollution-deforestation-drought-business-sustainability-renewables-circular-economy-open-thread | Are companies ready to rethink the way they do business? – open thread | With millions dying prematurely every year due to air pollution, species becoming critically endangered as a result of hunting and deforestation, and water shortages emerging across whole regions of the world, the question of how companies can integrate sustainability into business strategy and investment decisions is more urgent than ever. In our new rethinking business series, we will be exploring how organisations can embrace sustainable business models and what support they need to make their goals a reality. To do this we will focus on two key areas: renewables and the circular economy. How are companies adopting renewables and circular models, what challenges do they face, how are they collaborating and is this part of a long-term transition or just short-term idealism? Want to suggest ideas for topics you think we should investigate? Fill in the form below or email tess.riley@theguardian.com with “rethinking business series” in the subject line. Sign up to be a Guardian Sustainable Business member and get more stories like this direct to your inbox every week. You can also follow us on Twitter. | ['sustainable-business/series/rethinking-business', 'sustainable-business/sustainable-business', 'environment/renewableenergy', 'environment/energy', 'environment/environment', 'type/article', 'tone/blog', 'profile/tess-riley', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-professional-networks'] | environment/renewableenergy | ENERGY | 2017-05-09T13:20:56Z | true | ENERGY |
environment/damian-carrington-blog/2011/jul/01/nuclear-power-british-government-fukushima | Collusion over nuclear power mirrors the PR disaster of GM crops | Damian Carrington | For the British government to attempt to "maintain public confidence among the British public on the safety of nuclear power stations" by colluding in secret with the nuclear industry within just 48 hours of the Fukushima disaster would be laughable if it were not so serious. It was, at best, only a partial success. This opinion poll from Ipsos-Mori shows that one in five of those Britons now opposed to nuclear power had not been opposed prior to the catastrophe in Japan (see graph). Across the globe, the poll found two-thirds of the public opposed to nuclear power. (There's more on that in my previous post.) In countries where people are strongly opposed to nuclear power, such as Germany (79% against) and Italy (81%), politicians listened to their electorates and ended their nuclear ambitions. Germany says it will look to a future of renewable energy and with their record of economic success, who would bet against them? In the UK right now, the public is split 50-50 between supporting and opposing nuclear power, and a majority - 57% - think new reactors should not be built. The problem is that the machinery of government, and the ministers it serves, is 100% behind the plans of the nuclear industry, as the Guardian revealed today. In contrast, the poll showed huge public support across the world for solar power (97% in favour), wind power (93%) and hydroelectricity (91%). To my mind, it resembles the public relations fiasco of the first genetically modified crops in the UK, which doomed commercial use of the technology for two decades. As it happens, I have no objections to the technology, only grasping business models that can be used to deploy it. But by attempting to drive through a novel technology without regard to consumer attitudes, the GM industry scored a stunning own goal. So why is the British government so determined to drive through a technology, nuclear, that has far less support than wind and solar power, and is very likely to use up vast sums of money that would be far better spent on creating a world-beating renewables industry? The debate on nuclear power is a complex one and regulation and safety is just one of at least five major issues that need to be considered, as I have written before. The capture of the UK government by the nuclear industry, as has also happened in the US and in Japan, strengthens the case against nuclear power on one of those five issues. Balancing them all, I still think nuclear power cannot be the answer to the UK's search for low-carbon energy. | ['environment/damian-carrington-blog', 'environment/environment', 'tone/blog', 'environment/nuclearpower', 'environment/nuclear-waste', 'environment/energy', 'technology/technology', 'technology/blog', 'science/energy', 'science/science', 'science/blog', 'business/energy-industry', 'environment/fukushima', 'type/article', 'profile/damiancarrington'] | environment/nuclearpower | ENERGY | 2011-07-01T10:39:00Z | true | ENERGY |
commentisfree/2019/aug/08/man-straight-recycle-men-environmental-gay-homophobia | How can a man be too straight to recycle? | Owen Jones | So that’s how the world’s going to die, is it, because straight men are scared people might think they are gay? According to new research by Penn State University, men may be avoiding environmentally friendly activities because they fear that anyone who catches them recycling or carrying a reusable shopping bag may think they’re seeking romantic trysts with other guys. So when men are scrabbling around in the sun-scorched dirt for food, or swimming their way through Covent Garden, or sheltering their family from Mad Max-style societal breakdown, they can at least comfort themselves that their precious heterosexuality remains intact. Of course, climate emergency won’t be solved purely by more recycling or fewer plastic bags – but the study is revealing. Both men and women see caring about the environment as “feminine”; and men associate feminine behaviour by men with being gay. Here is a little-discussed feature of homophobia. We know that its principal victims are, of course, LGBTQ people: from the lifelong impact on mental health caused by abuse and rejection, to the constant menace of verbal and physical assault. But homophobia can harm straight men, too – driving them into destructive behaviour that impacts on the people around them. From a very young age, boys are taught that real men get into fights, say demeaning things about girls and women, show extraordinary athletic prowess, avoid looking studious, don’t do anything to display supposed emotional “weakness” and prioritise competition over cooperation. It is an invisible authoritarian regime, but one – like any dictatorship – enforced through intimidation and violence. Perceived dissidents – those who either inadvertently or intentionally diverge from these patterns of behaviour – are liable to suffer everything from being cussed in a school corridor to being thumped, and worse. The abuse will begin with calling the victim a “girl” or a “poof”, and the message is the same: you have deviated from true masculinity and you must be punished for it. This is gender policing: homophobia is the border guard of patriarchy. This isn’t to be self-righteous – as a gay adult I can, to my own shame, recall engaging in homophobic abuse as a child. As Jean-Paul Sartre put it: “Half victims, half accomplices, like everyone else.” What this formative experience does is install an internal policeman in the heads of men, whether they are straight or LGBTQ, which barks at them “don’t do this or you will look gay”. Among queer men, this internalised homophobia can mean failing to correct a stranger who asks about your girlfriend because you’re too embarrassed to say. But it also leads dispiriting numbers to reject camp men, often in hurtful and demeaning ways; to say they only fancy “real men”; to suggest that such displays of feminine behaviour attract homophobia, in depressing displays of victim blaming. Some put “straight-acting guys only” in their dating app profiles (sorry to break this to you, but no man looks “straight-acting” when having sex with another guy). It causes shame and self-loathing, which drive mental distress, and can lead to damaging self-medication in the form of drug and alcohol abuse. Among straight men, there’s a simple test for the internal policeman: even many men who avowedly back LGBTQ rights will show offence if someone mistakenly thinks they’re gay, and demand to know what behaviour of theirs led to such a conclusion. It can lead to grown men refusing to back down or walk away when an argument gets dangerously out of control. It can mean competing with male friends to say the most degrading things about women – normalising a culture that leads to women and girls being assaulted and raped. And it can also mean that men who suffer depression and anxiety feel it’s unmanly – or indeed gay – to talk about their feelings. Suicide is the biggest single cause of death for men aged under 45 in Britain: countless others suffer silently. Here are men caught up in the barbed wire lining the frontiers of unreconstructed masculinity. It’s clear that the success of the LGBTQ rights campaign would free straight men, too. Already, combined with feminism, it has changed what it is to be a man. Men talk more about their feelings than they once did, have more female or gay friends, and spend more time helping to raise children – albeit still not as much as they should. When patriarchy finally lands on history’s scrapheap, all – men, women, non-binary – will be free to be themselves, unpoliced. In defiance of the protesters outside school gates, affronted that children should be taught that some kids have two mums, our education should do even more to challenge oppressive norms. Who knows: one day men might even recycle rubbish without caring that someone may think they want to elope with another guy. • Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist | ['commentisfree/commentisfree', 'world/lgbt-rights', 'tone/comment', 'environment/recycling', 'environment/ethical-living', 'environment/waste', 'environment/environment', 'type/article', 'profile/owen-jones', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/journal', 'theguardian/journal/opinion', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-opinion'] | environment/recycling | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE | 2019-08-08T05:00:16Z | true | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE |
society/2005/feb/14/internationalaidanddevelopment.indianoceantsunamidecember2004 | Tsunami appeal to close | The record-breaking Asian tsunami appeal is to close at the end of the month after raising more than £250m, the group coordinating donations said today. The Indian Ocean earthquake appeal - the biggest ever fundraising campaign in UK history - will close on February 26, said the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC), an umbrella group for a dozen British charities. It predicts the total amount raised will exceed £300m. British charities have separately raised another £60m-70m. UK public contributions to the victims of the tsunami have easily eclipsed the £110m raised by Live Aid for famine relief in the 1980s - and total nearly five times the amount donated to the DEC's next largest fundraising campaign, the 1999 Kosovo crisis appeal, which raised around £54m. But the DEC and British aid agencies denied reports that they would struggle to spend the vast amount of money raised, pledging that none of the funds would be diverted to other causes, such as famine in Africa. A DEC spokesman said: "We've already allocated £100m for immediate emergency relief, such as food aid and shelter. The rest will go towards long-term relief efforts to rebuild people's lives and livelihoods, until they can get back to a decent standard of living." The spokesman said the scale and complexity of the tsunami disaster meant careful consideration had to be given to the allocation of the sum raised. He said: "Given the need for long-term rehabilitation and the situation on the ground it is going to be a challenge to spend the money wisely. Some of the spending plans have not been finalised because we're still discussing where funds are most needed with local aid agencies. But the money will not be diverted elsewhere - we can spend it." The DEC usually has 18 months in which to spend the money raised by an appeal, but this time limit has been extended to three years for the tsunami fund. The UK arm of Oxfam shut its tsunami appeal on January 28 after raising more than £12m. Donations to the charity worldwide exceed £100m. A spokeswoman said it had a five-year plan to spend the money on victims of the Indian Ocean earthquake and donations would not be wasted. Matthias Schmale, the international director at the British Red Cross, said: "Every penny donated to the British Red Cross will be spent in the region to help people rebuild their shattered lives. None of it will be diverted to other causes. "The scale and scope of the disaster was unprecedented, as are the resources available to us to help. In just five weeks we have already spent £13m on immediate relief items. However, rebuilding the region will take many years to come. It is likely that our work will go on for at least a decade as we help people become self-sufficient again." | ['global-development/global-development', 'world/tsunami2004', 'uk/uk', 'type/article', 'profile/davidbatty'] | world/tsunami2004 | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2005-02-14T15:16:10Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
technology/2013/oct/11/naomi-campbell-digital-fashion-week | Naomi Campbell to lead Digital Fashion Week | Supermodel Naomi Campbell has announced she is to make her south east Asian runway debut at Digital Fashion Week (DFW) in Singapore – further strengthening ties between the fashion and technology industries. DFW, now in its second year, has scooped the international supermodel for their opening show which will be her only stop in Asia for the spring/summer 2014 showcase. This is a significant development for the tech-friendly fashion event, which brought in an audience of more than 2.7m last year and which has partnered with big name tech companies such as Google, Youtube and Twitter for their latest event in early November. Following in the footsteps of brands such as Topshop, DFW will allow style fans from across the world to shop the looks straight off the catwalk – an invaluable source of data for designers wanting to see what will sell in the seasons to come. Fashion worth £21bn annually to the UK Technology is playing an increasingly sophisticated role in analysing the trends and picking out the insights for the fashion industry – a sector worth £21bn a year in the UK alone. Editd, a London-based big data analytics company for the fashion industry, whose range of global clients include buyers for the likes of Asos and Gap, have been quick to translate the online buzz from the ‘fashion influential’ into key trends for next year. Its spring/summer 2014 roundup, which aims to “cut through the hype” goes as far as informing clients and fashion devotees as to who the most talked about designers were in each of the four cities – New York, London, Milan and Paris – as well as what colours shoppers will be after come spring. “A lot of major industries have embraced data in decision making,” said Julia Fowler, co-founder of Editd. “ But it's been slower to come to the apparel industry, because it's fundamentally a difficult industry to turn into hard facts.” In a market that has come under scrutiny for being “scared of digital”, translating mountains of data into bite-size information is, Fowler said, the “secret” behind the company and is, she stresses, “critical to grow and maintain this important industry in the UK.” The verdict from 68m fashion-related tweets By combining a range of highlights from fashion week which would otherwise be lost in streams of data with the opinions of the very customers the clients of Editd are aiming at, the company is able to lend a unique voice to an industry that has long been the domain of fashion insiders. “Data means you can structure decisions, avoid waste, price products better, and build your business and your profits faster,” said Fowler. Using software that sifted through 68m tweets over fashion month, Editd were able to spot key trends for spring/summer 2014 ahead of the pack. According to their analysis, Gucci beat Chanel to become the most talked about designer across social media platforms, with the Italian brand’s “intoxicating blend of Eastern promise and sports luxe” bringing in 30% more online mentions than any other brand over the month. Red is the new black Red came out top as the most talked-about colour with electric and pale blue, orange and pink receiving substantial mentions also. Looking at the insights in finer detail by individual fashion week, style fans are able to discern that whilst pink was the talk of London, a riot of vibrant colours ruled the Milan catwalks with Dolce & Gabbana showcasing a palette ranging from lime to gold and red in a single show. The colour wheel created by Editd, pictured above, showcases every shade used by every designer during fashion month with the colours in the inner circle representing the key spring/summer 2014 palette. Sport luxe – 76% more mentions than any other trend And while the Olympic Games may be a distant memory, fashion’s affair with sports wear has lived on– sports luxe received 76% more online mentions than any other trend picked up on the catwalks, whilst checks came out top as the most mentioned print over the month. High-impact embellishments, metallic finishes, safari, floral prints and flat shoes were just some of the top ten insights that Editd highlighted in their spring/summer 2014 roundup. The data analysis which looked at the conversation around fashion week and the individual collections across Twitter and blogs of those considerd to be ‘fashion influential’ also pinpointed street style as a trend to watch, claiming that shoppers rapid consumption of blogger imagery is changing the way fashion fans purchase items. “The clothes seen off the runway during fashion weeks have become just as influential as the designer looks,” said Katie Smith, a retail analyst at Editd. “Shoppers consume blogger imagery at rapid pace, creating a demand that can't be met by the seasonal delay of catwalk clothing.” • How Editd is carving up the numbers for the fashion sector | ['technology/data-visualisation', 'technology/technology', 'fashion/fashion', 'technology/big-data', 'fashion/topshop', 'technology/google', 'technology/youtube', 'technology/twitter', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/ami-sedghi'] | technology/data-visualisation | UNRELATED_TO_CLIMATE | 2013-10-11T16:26:54Z | true | UNRELATED_TO_CLIMATE |
australia-news/2024/apr/13/back-on-the-rack-the-best-ways-to-sell-secondhand-clothes | Back on the rack: the best ways to sell secondhand clothes | Tegan Forder | It’s a Saturday morning and I’m pulling clothes out of my suitcase and hanging them on a rack. Around me are three others attending their own displays. We’re all here for the same purpose – to find a more sustainable way to part with the clothes we no longer need. Selling my secondhand clothes at rent-a-rack stores is just one approach I took over the past year in my quest to find alternatives to my local overflowing op shop. Most of us have seen the images of towering piles of clothes dumped overseas in places like Kantamanto, a market in Ghana’s capital, Accra. It definitely made me think twice about where my discarded items go, and encouragingly, there are now more ways to make room in your wardrobe. Having worked in the textile and education field for more than 30 years, Sandy Donlan, owner of Adelaide-based rent-a-rack boutique ReFab Circular Fashion, founded her business to reduce the amount of quality clothing going into landfill. “I wanted to provide an option where clothes could be preloved, rather than following a linear fashion model where the clothes are made, purchased, and often discarded,” she says. While money can be made selling secondhand clothes, in Donlan’s experience, many of her sellers are happy to just rid themselves of their unwanted items. “I found that people feel guilty about the fact that they’ve got clothes in their wardrobe. But we’re always evolving. So being able to let the clothes go is important for people.” Get someone else to do it Consignment stores and secondhand sellers offer a hands-off approach to decluttering. They select the pieces they think will sell and once sold, take a cut and give you the rest in cash or store credit. Be prepared for them to judge your clothes – it’s not personal, but they know what will hit the mark. One store with a slightly different model is Swop, which will purchase items directly from you. “We follow strict criteria around the brands, items and styles we buy to ensure that we can confidently resell those items,” says Swop’s Emma Regolini. “This means we don’t accept any fast-fashion brands, underwear, business attire, or anything that isn’t suitable to the local climate or season.” Items that sell well are those on-trend within the last 12 months, or items that were on-trend and are now considered relevant vintage. Vintage staples including boots, tees, denim and handbags are all in demand. Go DIY I enjoy the process of selling clothes in rent-a-rack stores, where you rent space in a storefront for one to four weeks. The rent prices vary, as does the cut the business will take on the sale of each item. Donlan says her business offers an option for people who think a piece in their wardrobe might be too good to donate. But she advises there is a window of saleability, with the fashion trend of a piece between three to five years (with a maximum of 10 for some pieces). “Versatility sells. People will go, ‘Well, I’ve got this at home – what will go with that?’ So people are actually starting to think about it as opposed to randomly buying something,” she says. Sellers should make sure clothes are contemporary, in season, softly worn, clean and without tears or missing buttons. Try selling on Instagram The platform has a thriving secondhand resale market. I bought a few pieces through individual sellers but didn’t have as much luck getting rid of my own. Again, shoppers have definite ideas about what they’re looking for with the market skewed toward branded casual attire and luxury items. Use the hashtags #prelovedvirtualmarket, #prelovedshop and #prelovedseller to find sellers and buyers. Donate your workwear Corporate clothing can be hard to shift secondhand, so a good option is to seek out local charities in need of items. Dress for Success, which has affiliates in each Australian state, aims to empower women by helping them to find a job and become financially independent. Providing free clothing styling to help women get ready for a job interview is one of their signature services. “First impressions are so important – unfortunately, if you don’t look the part, you can almost automatically get rejected on sight,” says Vicki Hartley, board director for Dress for Success Sydney. “We want our clients to feel really special and proud,” says Hartley. “It’s really about empowering them and watching them come through the door and seeing their shoulders go back and their heads go up … It’s a confidence boost.” Be patient While it may have taken me a year to find new homes for my clothes, I found the process enjoyable – almost becoming slightly obsessed. The items I was unable to sell or donate included dresses suitable to wear at a wedding (but sadly too small for me now), some older-style coats and jackets, active wear and basics like T-shirts. I reconsidered whether I needed to get rid of a few pieces and they’re now back in rotation, while I might try selling the dresses online (if I get the energy up). When it was time to drop off my half (small) bag of clothes at the local op shop after 12 months, it came with much less guilt. My wardrobe now makes more sense, and I’m more considered about what I buy, asking myself: Where will I wear it? What will it go with? How long will it last? | ['australia-news/series/change-by-degrees', 'lifeandstyle/australian-lifestyle', 'fashion/fashion-industry', 'fashion/fashion', 'environment/recycling', 'environment/environment', 'environment/ethical-living', 'type/article', 'tone/features', 'lifeandstyle/lifeandstyle', 'campaign/callout/callout-top-tips-on-how-to-recycle-clothes', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/australia-opinion'] | environment/recycling | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE | 2024-04-12T15:00:59Z | true | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE |
environment/2022/aug/04/magnificent-jellyfish-found-off-coast-of-papua-new-guinea-sparks-interest-among-researchers | ‘Magnificent’ jellyfish found off coast of Papua New Guinea sparks interest among researchers | A diver has captured footage of an unusual-looking jellyfish off the coast of Papua New Guinea, sparking interest among researchers. The video was captured by Dorian Borcherds, who owns Scuba Ventures in Kavieng, in the New Ireland province of PNG. Borcherds, who has been diving in the area for more than two decades, said he saw about three or four of the jellyfish and was struck by their intricate detail and the way they seemed to move decisively through the water. “They don’t have brains, so I don’t know how they do that,” he said. Looking for answers, he sent the footage to his wife in South Africa, who uploaded it to the Jellyfish app, a project Dr Lisa-ann Gershwin, a jellyfish expert at Australian Marine Stinger Advisory Services, co-founded. In her words, the app’s purpose is to “answer the age-old question: what is that blob and should I pee on [its sting]?” “As soon as I saw this one, honestly, I could barely contain my excitement,” she said. “I almost fell out of my chair.” Gershwin initially thought the footage was the second sighting of a mysterious jellyfish – Chirodectes maculatus – found decades ago on the Great Barrier Reef, but she now believes the “magnificent” creature is a new species. While Gershwin is confident in her findings, her paper on the species classification is yet to undergo peer review. Prof Kylie Pitt, a marine ecologist who specialises in jellyfish from Griffith University, said it could be a new species, but doesn’t think it would be possible to know for sure based only on a video. She said she had certainly never seen it before, but said a researcher would “need to hold the animal in your hand” to be sure of its species. “It would be great if we got the specimen and could describe its morphology, coupled with genetic testing,” she said. Prof Jamie Seymour, a toxicologist from James Cook University who specialises in Australia’s venomous animals, says he prefers Gershwin’s earlier theory, believing the jellyfish is a Chirodectes maculatus. Sign up to receive an email with the top stories from Guardian Australia every morning Gershwin had helped reclassify Chirodectes maculatus – a jellyfish that has been sighted only once off the coast of far north Queensland, after a cyclone in 1997. She said it had remained a mystery where the invertebrate had come from ever since. At first glance, she thought the new video could provide the answer. She enlisted the help of Peter Davie, a now retired – but still active – curator from the Queensland museum, where the original jellyfish specimen was kept. The pair pored over the footage from PNG frame by frame, and noticed the jellyfish had different markings, it was much larger – about the size of a soccer ball compared with something that could fit in your hand – and various other technical differences. To their delight, they decided this was probably a new species of jellyfish, probably belonging to the same genus as the one seen in 1997. | ['environment/marine-life', 'environment/invertebrates', 'environment/wildlife', 'environment/environment', 'environment/oceans', 'world/papua-new-guinea', 'australia-news/australia-news', 'world/asia-pacific', 'science/science', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/lisa-favazzo', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/international', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/australia-news'] | environment/marine-life | BIODIVERSITY | 2022-08-04T06:26:54Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
weather/2008/dec/30/weatherwatch-canada | Weatherwatch: 30 December 2008 | Days of heavy snowfall gave the whole of Canada and much of the northern US a very white Christmas. Vancouver, British Columbia, is usually a relatively mild corner of Canada, but just 2cm more snow before new year would give the city its snowiest December on record. Remarkably, there was not a flake of snow in the first fortnight of the month, and 88cm has fallen in just two weeks. However, temperatures rose above freezing in some areas during the weekend and now flooding is feared as the snow thaws. Meanwhile, winds gusting over 60mph knocked out power across Ontario and Quebec. Snow blanketed the Sierra Nevada mountains in the western US on Christmas Day, paralysing traffic between California and Nevada. Snow also fell in New Mexico, to a depth of over 12cm in San Juan County, which had its first white Christmas in 11 years. In the far north-west of Australia, tropical cyclone Billy brought torrential rain and strong winds to coastal areas from Cape Londonderry to Derby late Monday and Tuesday, while a secondary low gave heavy rain in the north of Northern Territory, giving up to 200mm of rain on Christmas Eve alone. Parts of South Africa, eastern Australia and north-east Spain were hit by severe storms on Friday and Saturday, causing several fatalities. Two people were swept away by high waves near Barcelona and Valencia, and two were caught in heavy snow in Catalonia. | ['news/series/weatherwatch', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/weather2'] | news/series/weatherwatch | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2008-12-30T00:01:00Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
business/2016/mar/30/edf-hinkley-point-nuclear-power-station-on-track-engineers-reportedly-request-delay | EDF says Hinkley Point is on track as engineers reportedly call for delay | EDF has insisted that its plans to complete the £18bn Hinkley Point C nuclear power station in Somerset by 2025 remain on track, despite reports that some of its engineers had called for a two-year delay and a redesign. It came as an EDF board member representing senior staff said in a letter to employees that he would vote against the controversial project. Christian Taxil, who represents the managers’ union CFE-CGC, is the first board member to go public with doubts about the project. The Financial Times reported that senior engineers at the French energy company had supported a wait of at least two years on the project because of its complexity and advocated a redesign of the reactor technology to make it smaller and cheaper to build. In an internal white paper sent to top executives and seen by the FT, the engineers argued that the “realistic service date was 2027”. But in a statement emailed to Reuters on Wednesday, EDF, which is the 85% owned by the French government, dismissed “unfounded rumours and fantasy information” in the media. “EDF denies these rumours [and] confirms that the start up date for the first reactor is fixed for 2025 and that no delay is envisaged,” the company said. Taxil said EDF should not launch the project now because of difficult power market conditions, technical problems with the two planned reactors and EDF’s weak financial position. He wrote in the letter to staff: “Today, conditions are not right for me to give a positive opinion if such a project were presented to me.” There are growing signs of opposition to the project within EDF, including the resignation of its finance director. The company’s chief executive, Jean-Bernard Lévy, has written to staff insisting that it needed more financial backing from the state and would not go ahead without this. The six union members on EDF’s 18-person board are expected to vote against Hinkley Point. They believe that it is too expensive and a risk to the company’s future; EDF is struggling with rising debts. While some non-union board members have voiced doubts about the project in private, all are expected to vote with the management when the board meets on 11 May to make a final decision on the project. A new nuclear reactor at Hinkley in Somerset has been heavily promoted by the chancellor, George Osborne, and other ministers as key to keeping the lights on in Britain. The last of the UK’s coal-fired power stations is due to close in 2025. | ['business/edf', 'uk-news/hinkley-point-c', 'business/energy-industry', 'environment/nuclearpower', 'business/business', 'uk/uk', 'environment/energy', 'environment/environment', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/juliakollewe'] | environment/nuclearpower | ENERGY | 2016-03-30T08:58:31Z | true | ENERGY |
world/2011/jul/10/italy-beaches-erosion-climate-change | Italy's elite are dismayed by vanishing beaches | The high cost and exclusive nature of Italy's best beaches cause regular disputes, but accelerating coastal erosion means some of them are now disappearing altogether. Italian actors, intellectuals and the titled rich setting off for the beach this summer have been shocked to find that one of their favourite spots has all but vanished, thanks to encroaching development and violent winter storms linked to climate change. Traditionally, the cultural and political elites have soaked up the summer sun at Capocotta beach near Rome, which has a reputation for bohemian flamboyance and boasts Italy's only official nudist shoreline. But the golden dunes and beach huts have been swept away, leaving the literati fighting over a few inches of sand and how to rebuild. "I realised something was happening three years ago when a beach kiosk from further down the sands floated past us in a storm," said Paolo Moscia, a lifeguard at the nudist section at Capocotta, which has drawn a mixture of gay bathers, ministers, musicians and hip film directors since Allen Ginsberg hung out there in the 1950s, and wild high-society drug parties gave birth to la dolce vita. This year regulars arrived to find that their section was reduced to a trickle of sand and storms had engulfed 30 metres of beach, leaving the wooden restaurant renowned for its oysters and grilled squid close to toppling off the dunes into the waves. Moscia pointed at swimmers beyond the breakers. "This time last year people were strolling on the sand out there," he says. "If nothing is done, we won't be here in two years." Experts blame development along Italy's rivers and the building of hydro-electric dams, which have slowed down the erosion of river banks and the flow out to sea of the tonnes of sediment and sand needed to replenish beaches after storms. "The Tiber sent 400,000 cubic metres of sand a year into the Mediterranean 25 years ago. Now it's down to 80,000 cubic metres," said Angelo Bonelli, head of the Italian Green party. Francesco Lalli, a senior researcher at Italy's environmental research centre, Ispra, said Italy's beaches lost five million cubic metres of sand between 1950 and 2000. The losses caused by overbuilding are levelling out, he said, adding that there is now a suspicion that the storms chewing away at the beaches are more violent because of climate change. "Plus, we are seeing the initial effects of rising sea levels," he warned. North of Rome, L'Ultima Spiaggia beach has fared no better than Capocotta. A long-time favourite of Italy's leftwing cultural elite, including the former prime minister Romano Prodi, the beach is tucked into the lower reaches of Tuscany. It is a retreat for philosophers, aristocrats and anti-Berlusconi politicians who convene every summer to eat wild boar and attend cultural conferences in nearby Capalbio, a medieval hilltown nicknamed "Little Athens". After storms left just a shallow layer of sand this spring, 15 metres have now been restored, thanks only to four truckloads of sand dumped by the local authority. But, according to the environmental centre Ispra, more than 1,000km of coastline is now eroding steadily. Since the economic boom of the 1950s, working-class bathers from nearby Rome have flocked to the beach clubs of Ostia, near Rome. But they, too, are now watching their beaches slip away, prompting the regional authority to pump in sand scooped up from the seabed, part of a ¤26m scheme to bring 350,000 cubic metres of sand ashore to fill the gaps on almost 400km of coastline. For patrons of the Sporting Beach Club in Ostia, where forlorn lines of changing rooms that once stood 150 metres back from the sea are now buffeted by waves, the new sand cannot arrive soon enough. "My parents came here before me and I am sticking it out," said Ivana Paolini, 55, "but it's tough when you have to swim out to sea past concrete pillars holding up the changing rooms." An expert at the environmental group Legambiente said beach clubs were partly to blame for losing the sand on which they charge sunbathers for the privilege of stretching out. "The dunes which advanced to replace lost sand are being concreted over by the clubs," said Giorgio Zampetti. "By building beach clubs to profit from the sand, people are ensuring that sand will vanish." | ['world/italy', 'world/europe-news', 'environment/climate-crisis', 'environment/environment', 'environment/sea-level', 'environment/oceans', 'world/world', 'tone/news', 'travel/beach', 'travel/travel', 'type/article', 'profile/tomkington', 'publication/theobserver', 'theobserver/news', 'theobserver/news/uknews'] | environment/sea-level | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2011-07-09T23:06:37Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
australia-news/2015/dec/03/australia-acting-as-a-broker-between-blocs-at-paris-climate-talks-greg-hunt | Australia acting as a 'broker' between blocs at Paris climate talks – Greg Hunt | Greg Hunt says Australia is acting as a “broker” between competing country blocs on one of the most contentious issues in the Paris climate talks but has also clarified remarks that had the potential to damage the delicate negotiations. Hunt predicted there was no chance developing countries would achieve their aim of amending the purpose of the agreement from keeping global warming under 2 degrees to keeping it under 1.5 degrees. One hundred and eight countries are demanding the lower goal on the basis of the latest climate science, including the low-lying island nations that met with the US president, Barack Obama, on Tuesday. Hunt said Australia was acting as a “shuttle” or “broker” on that issue, saying the concerns of those countries might be “referenced” in the final agreement but that inscribing it as a goal would be a “red line” for other nations and jeopardise the deal. “We are acting as a broker in that space because you have some of the large developed economies and larger developing economies … we are acting as a broker in the middle of that triangle,” he said. He said Australia was flexible on the issue. “We know that some of the larger countries under no circumstances would accept 1.5 degrees as a goal so in a sense it is not Australia’s battle or fight, so we are trying to be constructive by providing a pathway but it clearly won’t end up as a formal goal of the text because then it will be vetoed by others,” he said. Asked about the issue of climate refugees from island states that could no longer support their populations under a 2 degrees warming scenario, Hunt said: “I think that is something we will deal with as a country when and if it arises.” He also moved quickly to clarify statements about the progress of the talks, which have got off to an “uneven” start, according to the Climate Institute’s Erwin Jackson. Previous climate talks, including the disastrous Copenhagen summit in 2009 and negotiations in the leadup to this conference in Paris, have suffered serious setbacks when the host country attempted to force acceptance of a cut-through negotiating text with imposed resolutions to some of the myriad disputed items. At a press conference, Hunt appeared to suggest this was exactly what the French government was proposing to do when it formally takes over running the talks from the professional negotiators. “There are of course numerous options the way the current text is constructed, in a sense the current text is somewhat diverting from where it is likely to be when the French produce a text as the basis for the final negotiations, most probably on Saturday, that text I understand does significantly narrow down the options,” he said. When asked whether the French text could produce the same kind of backlash seen at previous meetings Hunt agreed that had happened but said the negotiations over the coming week would “attempt … to resolve as many issues as possible, or to bring them down to the finest points of detail” adding “it has long been discussed, understood and embraced that the co-chairs text will evolve into a French text, which is being discussed with all parties as we speak”. The French presidency flatly denies it is working on any separate document, and Hunt said later he had only meant to refer to the efforts the French were making to help countries resolve their many points of difference within the current talks. “The key phrase I used was evolved … the French are helping parties outside the room knock out options, but there is no secret or separate French text,” he told Guardian Australia later. Hunt also released Australia’s plan to cope with already-locked-in climate change at the Paris summit – a compilation of existing efforts and policies including mapping Australia’s coastline to help state governments plan for future flooding, planning guidelines and CSIRO research for housing in areas subject to more intensive cyclones. The Abbott government defunded the Howard government’s $50m national climate change adaptation research facility before restoring $9m over three years. The lion’s share of that funding will go to the coastal mapping database. Jackson said there would not be “a good sense of progress this week for a day or so but it is fair to say that progress is uneven”. “This is being driven by certain regressive countries in the Like Minded Developing Country group (which includes China, India, Indonesia and Malaysia) attempting to suck energy out of the process and weaken the effectiveness of a possible agreement,” he said. “Saudi Arabia, a wealthy and diplomatically effective oil state, is the focus of much frustration.” | ['australia-news/australia-cop-21-climate-conference-paris', 'australia-news/greg-hunt', 'environment/climate-crisis', 'environment/environment', 'australia-news/australia-news', 'world/france', 'environment/cop-21-un-climate-change-conference-paris', 'type/article', 'profile/lenore-taylor'] | australia-news/australia-cop-21-climate-conference-paris | CLIMATE_POLICY | 2015-12-02T21:15:26Z | true | CLIMATE_POLICY |
environment/2009/apr/16/solarpower-spacetechnology | Pacific Gas and Electric Company to tap solar energy in space | It sounds like an idea drawn from the wilder shores of science fiction: a set of solar panels in outer space that would beam enough clean energy back to Earth to power half a million homes and could one day potentially help save the planet. But a leading American power company is hoping to turn the stuff of speculative fiction into reality by supporting a project that would put solar panels into orbit. Pacific Gas and Electric Company, which serves San Francisco and northern California, has agreed to buy electricity from a startup company claiming to have found a way to unlock the potential power supply in space. The initial plan is for the firm Solaren Corp to provide some 200MW of electricity. Solaren, which is based in Manhattan Beach, California, says it will launch a satellite with an array of solar panels around 22,000 miles above the earth's equator using existing rocket technology, and then convert the power generated into radio-frequency transmissions. The radio waves would be beamed back down to antennae in Fresno, California and then converted into electricity and fed into the regular power grid, PG&E said. Although spacecraft and satellites routinely use solar panels, the project marks the first serious attempt to take advantage of the powerful and near-constant supply of sunshine in space. Though solar power advocates of solar power regularly extol its potential on land as solar panels become more efficient, it is a fraction of the energy resources thought to be available in space. Orbiting solar farms are not new a new concept: Nasa and the Pentagon have been studying the technology since the 1960s. Critics argue that the major barrier is cost, because sending rockets carrying solar panels into space is so expensive. The idea has also captured the imagination of screen writers, with Blofeld, the evil villain of James Bond movies, plotting to launch a giant death ray-emitting satellite into space that could hold the world to ransom. But Solaren Corp, founded by a former spacecraft engineer, says it has developed a technology that would make it commercially viable within the next seven years. The company had been in discussion with PG&E for 18 months before the company announced this week that it had agreed to buy 200 megawatts of electricity from Solaren starting in 2016. The deal has yet to be approved by California state government regulators and PG&E has not put any money into Solaren, but the promise alone has turned the notion of space based solar power from fantasy to reality. Because sunshine in space is practically constant, apart from a few days around the spring and autumn equinoxes, the space-based solar panels could potentially produce a steady supply of electricity. The sunlight hitting the solar panels in space would be 10 times as powerful as the light coming to Earth via the atmosphere. Solaren's founder, Gary Spirnak, did not give details of how the technology would work but said it was based on what is currently used by communications satellites, describing it as "very mature". And there most definitely won't be any death rays, Spirnak joked, while not stroking a sinister white cat. He said the radio beam would pose no danger to people on the ground or even aircraft that fly through it. The satellites would project a large oval footprint on earth at the receiving point. They would also shut down automatically if the signal goes astray. Daniel Kammen, professor in energy and resources at the University of California, Berkeley, said: "The ground rules are looking kind of promising ... it is doable. Whether it is doable at a reasonable cost, we just don't know." Others have paved the way. In 2008, John Mankins, a former Nasa expert on space solar power, proved it was possible to transmit solar power as radio waves when he beamed a signal between two Hawaiian islands 90 miles apart. But Spirnak will face a challenge raising funds for his project during a recession. He said he was seeking in the low billions of dollars in investment, under $5bn. But that is still much higher than the usual $100m (£67m) to $200m costs for projects in renewable energy. | ['environment/solarpower', 'tone/news', 'environment/environment', 'science/space', 'environment/energy', 'environment/energyefficiency', 'science/energy', 'environment/renewableenergy', 'us-news/us-news', 'type/article', 'profile/suzannegoldenberg'] | environment/solarpower | ENERGY | 2009-04-16T20:00:54Z | true | ENERGY |
business/2020/jan/24/tesco-to-stop-sale-of-plastic-wrapped-multipacks-in-stores | Tesco to stop sale of plastic-wrapped multipacks in stores | Tesco is banishing shrink-wrapped multipacks of baked beans, soup and tuna from its aisles as part of a drive to slash its use of plastic packaging. The store-cupboard staples are among the biggest selling groceries in UK supermarkets. Tesco said shoppers would not end up paying more because the packs would be replaced with permanent multi-buy deals on individual tins. The packaging is being removed from Tesco’s own label products as well as from major brands such as Heinz, Green Giant, John West and Princes. Shoppers will begin to see the changes in store from March when Tesco will cease to order products that are in plastic-wrapped multipacks. For the time being, Heinz, part of the US food giant Kraft Heinz, will continue to supply other supermarkets with wrapped multipacks. It would need to invest in reconfiguring its manufacturing lines if the initiative was going to be scaled up, the company said. “Heinz is committed to reducing packaging wherever possible whilst continuing to offer great value,” said a spokesman. “We see this as a positive and important step to help reduce our impact on the planet.” Tesco has begun the huge task of removing non-recyclable and excess packaging from its business. Where packaging cannot be removed, for example where it prevents food waste, Tesco says it is working with its suppliers to reduce it to an absolute minimum. Last summer Tesco said it would not carry brands that used excessive packaging, with the decision to call time on multipacks saving 350 tonnes of plastic a year. Tesco chief executive Dave Lewis said: “We are removing all unnecessary and non-recyclable plastic from Tesco. Removing plastic-wrapped multipacks from every Tesco store in the UK will cut 350 tonnes of plastic from the environment every year. This is part of our plan to remove 1bn pieces of plastic in 2020.” Paula Chin, sustainable materials specialist at WWF, said companies needed to remove unnecessary single-use plastic wherever possible. “If we want to protect nature we need more businesses to follow Tesco’s lead, before we run out of time,” she said. | ['business/tesco', 'business/packaging', 'environment/plastic', 'business/supermarkets', 'uk/uk', 'environment/waste', 'business/business', 'environment/environment', 'business/retail', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/zoewood', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/uknews', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-business'] | environment/waste | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE | 2020-01-24T00:01:09Z | true | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE |
weather/1999/feb/18/weatherwatch.paulsimons | Weatherwatch | This is the time of year for warnings about ice on the roads. Well, it's obvious. Icy roads make dangerous driving. But how often do you hear about the dangers of icicles? It's about time we took icicles more seriously. This winter, several unfortunate souls have been badly injured by falling icicles in Romania. And in March 1978, following a freak ice-storm over Chicago, huge chunks of ice weighing up to 20lb fell hundreds of feet into the streets below. Police had to seal off roads around the city's tallest buildings to prevent deaths by falling icicles. Fortunately no one was reported injured, although parked cars below were battered. We've had our own icicle hazards in Britain. In 1776 the son of the parish clerk of Bampton in Devon was killed by an icicle which fell off the church tower and the tragedy is marked by a memorial in the church: "Bless my eyes, Here he lies, In a sad pickle, Kill'd by an icicle'. Ice can also fall from the sky for no apparent reason. One family in Virginia were watching television one evening when there was a loud crash and a block of ice the size of a basketball smashed clean through the house into the living room. There were no aircraft in the area at the time, so where the iceball came from is a mystery. People in Arkansas had an even weirder experience. They were pelted by frozen ducks falling out of the sky! The birds may have become iced-over during a thunderstorm. So next time the forecast warns about icy conditions, be warned. | ['news/series/weatherwatch', 'tone/comment', 'type/article', 'profile/paulsimons'] | news/series/weatherwatch | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 1999-02-18T04:24:00Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
business/2015/aug/07/royal-dutch-shell-alec-climate-change-denial | Royal Dutch Shell cuts ties with Alec over rightwing group's climate denial | Royal Dutch Shell have announced they will end their membership of the far-right American Legislative Exchange Council (Alec) because of its continuing denial of the science of climate change. In a statement released on Friday, a Shell spokesman said: “Alec advocates for specific economic growth initiatives, but its stance on climate change is clearly inconsistent with our own.” Shell joins fellow oil major BP in a corporate exodus from the conservative, free-market lobby group. Shell’s decision comes after sustained pressure from campaign groups, in particular the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), for Shell to stop funding Alec. The group’s position statement on climate change calls it an “historical phenomenon”. “The debate will continue on the significance of natural and anthropogenic contributions,” it reads. Alec has lead an assault on renewable energy that observers are concerned could significantly hamper the industry. The move was flagged by Shell CEO Ben van Beurden in an interview with the Guardian in May when he was confronted over the company’s continued funding of climate denial. He defended Shell’s membership on the grounds that Alec worked on a broad range of policy issues, but “watch this space”, he said. Shell’s spokesman said: “We have long recognised both the importance of the climate challenge and the critical role energy has in determining quality of life for people across the world. As part of an ongoing review of memberships and affiliations, we will be letting our association with Alec lapse when the current contracted term ends early next year.” Shell’s departure from the controversial lobbying network comes at a time when several major companies linked to fossil fuels have been quietly severing ties. The Guardian has learned that the Canadian National Railway has similarly pulled its membership, albeit without making any public announcement about it. The railway company is a major carrier of coal in Canada as well as in the US. A spokesman for the firm confirmed the break in relations with Alec but declined to comment. Environmentalists were quick to point out that leaving Alec was not synonymous with positively contributing to the challenge of climate change. Last week Shell recommenced drilling in the Arctic, a programme the company hopes will open up ten of billions of barrels of new oil reserves but the International Energy Agency says is unnecessary to secure global energy supply. Charlie Kronick, a Greenpeace senior programme adviser, said: “Shell is being dragged kicking and screaming out of Alec due to investor and public pressure. But they have a long way to go to bridge the massive gap between the reality of their business plans, most notably their catastrophic plan to drill in the Arctic, their other anti-climate lobbying, and their claimed leadership on climate change.” Nick Surgey, director of research at the Center for Media and Democracy, said: “It’s obviously a positive step for Shell to stop funding Alec and its climate change denial. Other oil companies should join them. Unfortunately this is another occasion when Shell’s positive language about climate change doesn’t match their actions. Drilling for oil in the Arctic might turn a profit for Shell, but it must be stopped if we want to avoid catastrophic climate change.” Alec is reportedly facing a funding crisis after losing many of the world’s biggest corporations from its stable in recent years. Amazon, Coca-Cola, General Electric, Kraft, McDonald’s, Walmart, Google, Yahoo, Facebook, eBay and Yelp all left the group after its stand-your-ground campaign on gun control after the 2012 killing of teenager Trayvon Martin. Angela Anderson, director of UCS’s climate and energy programme, said Shell’s public position on climate change and advocacy for a carbon price had been undermined by its membership of Alec. Shell maintains its membership of the American Petroleum Institute, an organisation that has funded the production of doubt about climate science. US oil giants Chevron and ExxonMobil remain members of Alec. “It’s simply untenable for companies to ask policymakers to adopt a carbon price while supporting groups that fight climate and clean energy policies and spread misinformation about climate science,” she said. News of the Shell move comes four days after Barack Obama announced his “clean power plan” that would impose sweeping curbs to emissions from power plants. The job of implementing the target of reducing overall carbon emissions by 32% below 2005 levels by 2030 will fall to the federal agency the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Alec is a leading antagonist of the EPA, and as such is at the forefront of lobbying efforts to undermine Obama’s ambition to combat climate change. In October, Alec’s energy, environment and agriculture sub-committee discussed a proposal to lobby Congress to eliminate the EPA altogether and delegate its powers to individual states. At its most recent summit in San Diego last July, Alec launched a new initiative that encourages the creation of litigation funds by state attorneys general. The funds, which could be injected with capital from corporations, would be used by state officials to issue legal challenges to Obama’s new climate change, thus clogging them up in the courts. | ['business/royaldutchshell', 'business/business', 'business/oilandgascompanies', 'business/oil', 'us-news/alec-american-legislative-exchange-council', 'us-news/us-news', 'environment/climate-change-scepticism', 'environment/climate-crisis', 'environment/environment', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/karl-mathiesen', 'profile/edpilkington'] | environment/climate-change-scepticism | CLIMATE_DENIAL | 2015-08-07T17:59:21Z | true | CLIMATE_DENIAL |
environment/2019/dec/14/indigenous-boy-15-murdered-on-brazils-amazon-border | Indigenous boy, 15, murdered on Brazil's Amazon border | A 15-year-old indigenous boy has been murdered in Brazil on the edge of a heavily deforested indigenous reserve in the state of Maranhão, on the fringes of the Amazon. The murder, the fourth from the Guajajara tribe in recent weeks, came as a wave of racist abuse against indigenous people swept social media in the state. The Indigenous Missionary Council(CIMI), a non-profit group reported that Erisvan Soares Guajajara’s body was found with knife wounds on Friday in Amarante do Maranhão. The group said he had travelled to the town, on the edge of the Araribóia indigenous reserve, with his father. The G1 news site reported that a non-indigenous man called Roberto Silva, 31, was also killed with Erisvan and that both died in the early hours of Friday at a party in an area called Vila Industrial. “Another brutal crime against the Guajajara people,” tweeted Sonia Guajajara, a leader from the same tribe and reserve who is executive coordinator of Brazilian indigenous association ABIP. “Everyone who doesn’t like us feels allowed to kill because they know impunity rules. It’s time to say ENOUGH.” Murders of indigenous people soared 23% in 2018, according to CIMI figures, and land invasions have risen since far-right president Jair Bolsonaro took office in January. He has compared indigenous people living on reserves to “prehistoric men” and said their lands should be developed. In a statement, the state government of Maranhão said preliminary investigations indicated “the crime was not motivated by hate, land disputes or deforestation in indigenous reserves”. Brazil’s indigenous agency Funai said it was following the case. Erisvan lived in the Araribóia indigenous reserve, which has been decimated by loggers. A group of Guajajara forest guardians expelled loggers from the reserve but have faced threats and violent attacks. In November, the guardian Paulo Paulino Guajajara was killed by loggers in an ambush and another, Laércio Guajajara, was shot and injured. Loggers in illegal vehicles operate openly around Amarante yet police rarely intervene. “There is a lot of racism against indigenous in Amarante,” said Gilderlan Rodrigues, CIMI’s Maranhão coordinator. The group said Erisvan’s family refuted comments by local police linking the killings to the drug trade. Last Saturday, two Guajajara leaders – Firmino Silvino Guajajara and Raimundo Bernice Guajajara – were shot and killed in a drive-by shooting on a highway in the nearby Cana Brava indigenous reserve in the same state. Two others were injured. The men were returning from a meeting when a group of men in a white car opened fire. A Funai official said the killing could have been related to frequent robberies on the highway which crosses the reserve but Maranhão’s human rights society blamed rising prejudice. Since then a wave of racist abuse has swept social media in the region. “Those who fired should have killed at least 50,” said one local on a WhatsApp group. “The government should throw a bomb and exterminate these disgraceful indigenous,” said another. “These are common people … inciting crimes against indigenous people,” said Érika Nogueira, the director of the Ascalwa indigenous association. “That is what is most worrying, it is civil society.” | ['environment/amazon-rainforest', 'world/brazil', 'world/indigenous-peoples', 'world/world', 'world/americas', 'environment/deforestation', 'environment/forests', 'environment/conservation', 'environment/environment', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/dom-phillips', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-foreign'] | environment/amazon-rainforest | BIODIVERSITY | 2019-12-14T00:25:01Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
environment/2014/nov/24/antarctic-ice-thicker-survey-finds | Antarctic ice thicker than previously thought, study finds | Groundbreaking 3D mapping of previously inaccessible areas of the Antarctic has found that the sea ice fringing the vast continent is thicker than previous thought. Two expeditions to Antarctica by scientists from the UK, USA and Australia analysed an area of ice spanning 500,000 metres squared, using a robot known as SeaBed. The survey discovered ice thickness average between 1.4m and 5.5m, with a maximum ice thickness of 16m. Scientists also discovered that 76% of the mapped ice was ‘deformed’ – meaning that huge slabs of ice have crashed into each other to create larger, denser bodies of ice. The team behind the research, published in Nature Geoscience, have hailed it as an important breakthrough in better understanding the vast icy wilderness. The findings will provide a starting point to further work to discover how ice thickness, as well as extent, is changing. Previously, measurements of Antarctic ice thickness were hindered by technological constraints. Ice breaking ships could only go so far into ice to measure depth, while no-one had drilled much more than 5.5m down into the ice to extract a core for analysis. SeaBed, an autonomous underwater vehicle (or AUV), was used by the research team to analyse ice thickness at an underwater depth of 20 to 30 metres. Driven in a “lawnmower” pattern, the two-metre long robot used upward-looking sonar to measure and map the underside of sea ice floes. Oceanography robots are usually focused on the sea floor. The mapping took place during two expeditions, in 2010 and 2012, that took researchers to the coastal areas of the Weddell, Bellingshausen, and Wilkes Land regions of Antarctica. The teams came from the British Antarctic Survey, the Institute of Marine and Antarctic Studies in Tasmania and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in the US. Dr Guy Williams, from IMAS, said the research is an important step in gauging changes to Antarctic ice. “Sea ice is an important indicator of the polar climate but measuring its thickness has been tricky,” said Williams, the report’s co-author. “Along with the satellite data, it was a bit like taking an X-ray of the ice, although we haven’t X-rayed much of it, just a postage stamp. “The key thing is that this is a game changer because it was previously very challenging to measure ice depth. We were limited to visual observation from the decks of ships or ice cores and take measures. “It was a lot of hard work and quite crude, which means we were biased towards thinner ice. It was a bit like a doctor diagnosing a condition by prodding the skin.” Williams said researchers will now make routine surveys of ice thickness to determine changes over a long period of time. As well as tracking alterations due to climate change, the research will be of interest to marine biologists due to the creatures, such as krill, that inhabit the region. “This is a big step forward in our knowledge but we’ll need to have longer missions in larger areas,” he said. “What we ultimately want is a team of autonomous robots that self deploy all across the Antarctic, like the spokes in a wheel.” Hanumant Singh, an engineering scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution whose lab designed, built and operated the AUV, said: “Putting an AUV together to map the underside of sea ice is challenging from a software, navigation and acoustic communications standpoint. “SeaBed’s manoeuvrability and stability made it ideal for this application where we were doing detailed floe-scale mapping and deploying, as well as recovering in close-packed ice conditions. “It would have been tough to do many of the missions we did, especially under the conditions we encountered, with some of the larger vehicles.” | ['environment/sea-ice', 'environment/poles', 'environment/environment', 'environment/sea-level', 'environment/oceans', 'world/antarctica', 'world/world', 'science/science', 'environment/climate-crisis', 'science/scienceofclimatechange', 'tone/news', 'world/austria', 'us-news/us-news', 'uk/uk', 'world/europe-news', 'type/article', 'profile/oliver-milman', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/uknews'] | environment/sea-ice | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2014-11-24T16:00:11Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
environment/ethicallivingblog/2009/jan/07/carbonfootprints-carbonemissions | Leo Hickman on the carbon cost of armed conflict | I recently stumbled upon a request sent to the Ministry of Defence last May asking what volume of greenhouse gas emissions the UK forces are responsible for each year. After struggling to find the response published online, I emailed the MoD to ask it to send over the figures. It duly did, and the figures were not wholly surprising: "For 2005-06, the latest year for which we have collated the total figures, it is estimated that MoD emitted nearly 5.5m tonnes of CO2, which amounts approximately to 1% of the UK's total emissions … The figures above do not include emissions directly resulting from UK operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Based upon the available data for quantities of aviation and ground fuel supplied in these operational theatres, it is estimated that the average annual CO2 emissions directly attributable to the deployment of British military forces in Afghanistan and Iraq currently total approximately 250,000 tonnes and 200,000 tonnes respectively." A week or so later I was then sent another email alerting me to the fact that the MoD had just published its "Sustainable Development Report and Action Plan" in addition to its "Climate Change Strategy". I know that everyone now feels the need to publish a climate change strategy, but it hadn't really occurred to me that the nation's military machine would be too concerned about such things beyond the need to adapt their operations as changes to the climate occur. I suppose we should welcome the fact that it says it is trying to reduce its emissions, but it provokes a wider question about just how much pollution the world's numerous military forces emit. We primarily concentrate, rightly so, on the human cost of conflict and war – this week more than ever – but it is certainly sobering to dwell on the environmental cost, too. For example, Amory Lovins, the director of the Rocky Mountain Institute and world-renowned energy consultant, estimates that the Pentagon is the "world's biggest single buyer of oil". What price peace, indeed. | ['environment/carbonfootprints', 'environment/carbon-emissions', 'environment/climate-crisis', 'politics/defence', 'politics/politics', 'uk/uk', 'tone/blog', 'environment/blog', 'environment/green-living-blog', 'type/article', 'profile/leohickman'] | environment/carbonfootprints | EMISSIONS | 2009-01-07T10:21:36Z | true | EMISSIONS |
sustainable-business/natural-england-halved-emissions-three-years | Natural England - halving emissions within three years | It has taken Natural England, the government's adviser on the environment, just three years to meet a radical carbon-cutting goal to halve emissions from its business travel and estate. The carbon reduction programme began in 2007 and reached its goal in the early days of 2011 – proving major cuts could be made by changing behaviour and finding more sustainable ways of working. The office estate's carbon footprint was cut by 60% and travel footprint by 40%. Together they have contributed £2m in savings, plus increased productivity and a better work-life balance for staff. Three factors were critical to this success. Firstly, a travel carbon footprinting tool – based on expenses claims, credit card bills and other records – was used to work out carbon emissions for each mode of travel along with a monthly report. Secondly, energy efficiency in offices was improved by moving to more sustainable locations, encouraging homeworking and the use of touchdown centres, running an energy saving campaign in offices and giving home workers a home electricity meter. And finally, staff were consulted on a green travel policy in which they agreed to cut carbon by reducing business journeys. This was helped, in part, by fitting rail ticket machines in offices. Natural England has taken some innovative steps to help staff make a contribution to cutting carbon. Alongside the carbon footprinting tool, it has also introduced a meeting planning tool and a carbon calculator, which it is now sharing and may market commercially. The use of folding bikes, office ticket machines and tele-video conferencing has saved significant amounts of money while monthly reports have generated a collective sense of ownership – staff can see what contribution they have made in meeting targets, Natural England says. Estate and travel carbon were Natural England's priority because they had the biggest environmental impact. The organisation is also working to cut water consumption; minimise, recycle and reuse waste in offices; source sustainable timber and buy local food and drink for events and catering. Simon Beavis is part of the wordworks network This content is brought to you by Guardian Professional. Become a GSB member to get more stories like this direct to your inbox | ['sustainable-business/sustainable-business', 'tone/resource', 'sustainable-business/best-practice-exchange/series/gsba-2011', 'sustainable-business/best-practice-exchange/series/gsba-carbon', 'sustainable-business/series/awards-2011-carbon', 'environment/natural-england', 'type/article'] | sustainable-business/series/awards-2011-carbon | EMISSIONS | 2011-05-26T10:00:00Z | true | EMISSIONS |
environment/2014/mar/28/great-barrier-reef-indigenous-heritage-one-stop-shop-threat | Great Barrier Reef and Indigenous heritage laws face 'one-stop shop' threat | The government may delegate oversight for the dumping of material in the Great Barrier Reef marine park and potentially bypass Indigenous heritage laws in order to speed up environmental approvals. In a submission to a parliamentary inquiry into “green tape”, the Department of the Environment said it was looking at current legislation that may complicate plans to create “one-stop shops” for approvals. The government is in the process of delegating environmental approvals to the states and territories under the one-stop shops plan. Dr Kimberley Dripps, deputy secretary at the Department of the Environment, told the committee of MPs that the government was “actively analysing” the Sea Dumping Act’s impact on the new regime. This could mean decision-making for the dumping of materials into the Great Barrier Reef marine park being stripped from the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority (GBRMPA) and handed to the Queensland government. In January, the GBRMPA approved the dumping of 5m tonnes of sediment into the marine park, despite internal documents showing it had reservations over the plan. Dripps said the government was working with the GBRMPA over “whether any changes ought to be made to make sure that people are not having a one-stop shop for the [Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation] EPBC Act and then running into the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Act”. “I would expect as we progress with the negotiations that there may be others that we encounter. As we encounter them we are looking at whether it is necessary for them to exist.” Dripps added that legislation protecting Indigenous heritage was also being scrutinised because it could potentially hold up activities such as mining. “The only [heritage act] with the potential to interfere with government’s objectives of the one-stop shop is the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage Protection Act which does allow people to appeal to the minister for long periods of time,” Dripps said. The one-stop shops are designed to streamline the environmental process, which currently involves approvals from states and, in some cases, the federal government. The government has said the new system will deliver greater certainty to businesses. Labor, the Greens and environmental groups are against the devolvement of powers, however, claiming that the states cannot be trusted to safeguard the environment. “This is an incredibly concerning prospect,” said Greens senator Larissa Waters. “It would mean that [Queensland premier] Campbell ‘we’re in the coal business’ Newman would have the final say over whether dredge spoil can be dumped in the Reef for the five new or expanded coal ports proposed for the reef. “Tony Abbott is intent on handing over federal environmental approval responsibilities to his state cronies, which would wind back environment protection in Australia by 30 years. “Now the Abbott government has the department looking into whether even the responsibilities of a federal statutory body, in place to protect the Great Barrier Reef, could be handed to the Queensland government.” David Morris, principal solicitor at the Northern Territory Environmental Defenders Office, said any change to Indigenous heritage laws would be concerning. “I can’t see any review mechanisms in the legislation that would create lengthy delays,” he told Guardian Australia. “We shouldn’t be amending an act on the basis of its ability to create delays. We shouldn’t be streamlining this. “This is a safeguard for Aboriginal people, who have a special connection to land and country. They should have the right to have their say on anything that would impact that. “States and territories collect mining royalties, so there’s in an inherent conflict in allowing them to run the environmental approvals as well.” The office of environment minister Greg Hunt and the GBRMPA were both contacted for comment, but did not respond. | ['environment/great-barrier-reef', 'australia-news/australian-politics', 'australia-news/australia-news', 'australia-news/coalition', 'environment/conservation', 'environment/marine-life', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/oliver-milman'] | environment/great-barrier-reef | BIODIVERSITY | 2014-03-28T08:26:31Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
technology/2015/nov/13/fossil-watches-fitness-tracker-maker-misfit | Fossil watches snaps up fitness-tracker maker Misfit | Traditional watch manufacturer Fossil Group has acquired US fitness-tracker and connected device maker Misfit for $260m (£171m), illustrating just how keen watchmakers are to get into the wearable technology market. The move will see Misfit’s technology, which includes accelerometer-based fitness tracking, connected lights and bed-based sleep trackers, integrated into Fossil’s watches across its 16 brands, including Fossil and Skagen. Kosta Kartsotis, chief executive of Fossil Group said: “We have a significant opportunity to add technology and connectivity across our platform of watches and accessories.” For Misfit, a California-based startup that initially took to crowdfunding to get off the ground, but has struggled to keep ahead with a relatively unknown brand, the company inherits brand power and scale. Misfit’s chief executive Sonny Vu will become the head of Fossil’s connected devices group. The acquisition illustrates just how important the connected wearable technology space appears to be to traditional watchmakers, who have felt threatened by the rise of smartwatches and fitness bands while facing a decline in watch sales. Kartsotis said that he wants Fossil to become the “fashion gateway to the high-growth wearable technology and connected-device markets”. The company recently launched an Android Wear smartwatch, and three other traditional watches with fitness tracking and smartphone-alert functions. Premium Swiss watchmaker Tag Heuer also launched an Android Wear smartwatch this week, while Mont Blanc, Swatch and a few others have already created connected watches. Each of them are eyeing up a slice of the smart wearables market, which includes fitness trackers and smartwatches and is expected to be worth $25bn by 2019, according to data from analyst firm CCS Insight. While smartwatches have yet find their killer feature to persuade consumers to adopt them on mass, the rise of quantified self, activity, calorie and sleep tracking has seen companies such as Fitbit sell just under 5m devices a quarter, which would be a welcome boost to any watchmaker’s sales. Tag Heuer Connected: a potential turning point in smartwatches | ['technology/wearable-technology', 'technology/smartwatches', 'technology/technology', 'lifeandstyle/watches', 'lifeandstyle/fitness', 'lifeandstyle/lifeandstyle', 'technology/gadgets', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/samuel-gibbs'] | technology/gadgets | UNRELATED_TO_CLIMATE | 2015-11-13T11:18:32Z | true | UNRELATED_TO_CLIMATE |
australia-news/2016/may/05/no-new-money-for-great-barrier-reef-in-budget | Money trumpeted in budget for Great Barrier Reef previously announced | All the $171m in funding announced in the budget for the Great Barrier Reef has come from other environmental programs, which already had significant amounts directed at conserving the reef, it emerged on Thursday. It was also revealed that a large portion of the reallocated money will not be available for the reef until 2019, coinciding with when Unesco is scheduled to reconsider whether to categorise the reef as “in danger”. Under questioning from the Greens senator Larissa Waters, the recycled nature of the money was confirmed by the cabinet minister Simon Birmingham and government officials in Senate estimates on Thursday. In a press release from Tuesday’s budget, the environment minister, Greg Hunt, said: “The Turnbull government is doing more than ever before to protect the Great Barrier Reef and the 2016 budget strengthens this commitment with a $171.0 million boost.” But $101m of that money is being taken from the National Landcare Program. For the first three years, that will only amount to $8.9m a year, jumping to $32.7m from the financial year 2020-21. That money comes from a pool that has not yet been allocated in the National Landcare Program. But within the National Landcare Program, hundreds of millions of dollars have previously been spent on improving water quality on the Great Barrier Reef, and whether money from that program was going to be spent on the reef from 2019 onwards had not yet been determined. The other $70m for the reef has been taken from a capping of programs within the Green Army. Again, Green Army programs have already been contributing significantly towards Great Barrier Reef conservation. In 2015, for example, almost 10% of announced Green Army Programs were directed at the reef’s conservation. Of that $70m, none of it will be available to the reef until 2019, when $40m will be allocated to water quality programs, followed by two years of $15m funding. With the old and new announcements combined, in the 2016-17 period, the federal government will be spending $58.8m on the Reef 2050 Plan, which intends to improve water quality. In response to questions about the recycling of the money, Birmingham said the $171m was new money “for the reef”, since it had not yet been allocated for the reef or for anything else. “In a budget that keeps more than $20bn in subsidies to fossil fuels and gives $100m in new money to mining exploration, it’s an indictment on the government that there is no new money for the reef that doesn’t come at the expense of other environment programs,” Waters said in a statement. “We are in an extinction and climate crisis – now is not the time for more environment funding cuts.” Meanwhile, the Queensland government is investing $57.5m in 2016-17 period. “That means that the commonwealth is only investing $1.3m more than the Queensland government,” said Imogen Zethoven, from the Australian Marine Conservation Society. “If the commonwealth was serious about fixing the water quality problems in the reef, it would provide twice, three times or even four times the amount that the Queensland government is providing,” she said. The lack of new money for the environment or the Great Barrier Reef comes despite new money being announced that will assist miners. Some $100m of brand new money was given to Geoscience Australia to assist miners in exploration for minerals and groundwater, a move which was applauded by the Minerals Council of Australia, which described the budget as a “blueprint for growth”. “A key driver for the next phase of Australia’s exploration effort is the fact that 80% of the continent, covered by rocks and sediment, remains largely unexplored,” the council said in a press release. “This will propel a step-change in knowledge and technology, which will facilitate exploration by private companies in areas that have historically been difficult to explore.” All of the money announced for the reef was focusing on water quality on the reef, with the budget remaining silent on climate change, which the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority has said is the most serious risk facing the reef and which is causing the current bleaching crisis. Responding to the budget, the Greens leader, Senator Richard Di Natale, said there was no new money for renewable energy, and the government had already announced more than $1bn would be removed from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency. “The government doesn’t see the jobs of the 21st century in building wind turbines and public transport – they see them in building military hardware,” Di Natale said. “While subsidies continue to flow to the fossil fuel industry, more than a billion dollars is being ripped out of clean energy.” | ['australia-news/australian-budget-2016', 'environment/great-barrier-reef', 'australia-news/australia-news', 'environment/environment', 'australia-news/australian-politics', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/michael-slezak', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/australia-news'] | environment/great-barrier-reef | BIODIVERSITY | 2016-05-05T01:24:24Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
sport/2023/dec/01/diverse-player-list-makes-scale-of-damage-clear-in-lawsuit-against-world-rugby | Diverse player list makes scale of damage clear in lawsuit against World Rugby | Andy Bull | It isn’t a secret any more. The identities of 207 more of the players involved in legal action against World Rugby, and the English and Welsh national unions, have been revealed, and, for the first time, the size and scale of the damage done is becoming clear to the public. It is a diverse list, a mix of men and women, amateurs and professionals, from a range of eras, with various conditions. But they have three things in common: they have all been diagnosed with neurological damage, they all allege it was caused by rugby, and they are all seeking damages from the authorities, accusing them of negligence. Some played for the British & Irish Lions, some for England, some for Wales. Phil Vickery is one, Gavin Henson another, Mark Regan a third, Colin Charvis a fourth, Ian Gough a fifth, Harry Ellis a sixth. Some, like Duncan Bell, Paul Volley and Paul Sampson, were stalwarts of club rugby, and will be known, and loved, by many who follow the domestic game. Others were recreational players, people you won’t have heard of but who you might well have lined up with, or against, if you were ever a weekend player yourself. There are 42 more who are still protected by an anonymity order, because of the concerns about the effect disclosure would have on their mental health. That tells you what a hard moment this must be for many of the men and women whose names have just been made public. The revelation came about, in part, because the defendants chose not to object to it. It was better, they reckoned, to have all the names come out at once instead of allowing them to be released one by one in the media, which is what has been happening for the past three years. The defendants seem to be tired of fighting the case on TV or in the papers; they want to do it in court instead. Court 75 of the Royal Courts of Justice, to be specific, a low-ceilinged, strip-lit room, with a stopped clock on the wall. Susan Rodway KC, representing the claimants, turned to check it, at one point, when trying to decide how much time she had to work in, and found it was useless to her. The proceedings themselves have stalled too. The claimants have provided more than 5,000 pages of documents. Senior master Jeremy David Cook seemed, when he first took his seat, a little bewildered by the walls of ringbinders piled up around him. “We should begin with a little housekeeping,” began Rodway. “You should have four binders …” but even this point, the very first of the day, seemed to be open to debate. “I have rather a lot,” Cook replied, casting about at the teetering piles of files. “A huge number, actually.” After five minutes of back-and-forth it turned out that the four binders had, by some kind of binary fission, multiplied into 12 because they were so voluminous. Unfortunately the medical records required (and previously requested) by the defence during disclosure weren’t among them. This, Cook said, meant “a fundamental and conventional feature was missing” from the submissions. Cook said that there was no doubt in his mind that the case was suitable for some form of group litigation, but that its exact structure still needed to be agreed, and that couldn’t happen until everyone had access to the medical records. As it was, the defence hadn’t yet been able to come up with its own ideas about which cases among the hundreds ought to be put forward as best representative of the rest. He set a date for the next hearing in late April. Cook spoke in hot spurts punctuated with exasperated sighs. He had the general air of a hungry man enduring a waiter’s long explanation about the menu when all he really wanted to know was whether he could please have a cheese sandwich. He had, he explained, expected all this to be settled already. “It seems to me,” Cook continued at one point, “to be absolutely basic.” Across the back rows, the defendants’ legal team all nodded their heads in synchronised agreement. World Rugby, the RFU and WRU, are fielding first and second and third XVs of suited and booted lawyers and assistants, and they all wanted to mark the claimants’ homework. They are bullish. But you wonder if they are really listening to their own press statement, which said, “We must not forget about the people and players at the heart of this case. The legal action prevents us reaching out to support the players involved, but we want them to know that we care deeply about their struggles, that we are listening and that they are members of the rugby family.” Kind words. But they will sound awfully hollow to some of the suffering players unless they are followed by caring actions. World Rugby, the RFU and WRU may think they have a case to fight, but in doing so they can’t lose sight of the fact that they have a game, and a lot of wounded men and women, to look after too. | ['sport/rugby-union', 'sport/concussion-in-sport', 'sport/rugby-football-union', 'sport/world-rugby', 'sport/welsh-rugby-union', 'sport/sport', 'campaign/email/the-breakdown', 'type/article', 'tone/comment', 'profile/andybull', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/sport', 'theguardian/sport/news', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-sport'] | sport/concussion-in-sport | UNRELATED_TO_CLIMATE | 2023-12-01T20:00:24Z | true | UNRELATED_TO_CLIMATE |
sport/article/2024/may/27/major-league-cricket-expansion-english-threat | Major League Cricket’s expansion plan poses a threat to English competitions | Major League Cricket has announced ambitious new expansion plans for the sport in the US. In a move that will have significant implications for the landscape of the professional sport in England, MLC, which began with a 19-game season, has confirmed it will expand to 34 games by 2025. The US league now has six franchises but plans to launch two more in the near future, and two more soon after that. The announcement comes just after MLC has been fully legitimised by the news that its matches have been awarded List A status by the International Cricket Council. “It was always intended to be a 10‑team league,” the MLC chief executive, Vijay Srinivasan, told the Guardian. “Studies show that we are a big enough country, with a big enough demographic to support 10 teams, so that’s our plan. We had 19 games in our first season, will have 25 in our second. I think we want to get to 34 next year, and just gradually keep expanding.” The second season, which starts at the end of the men’s T20 World Cup, runs for 23 days and overlaps with the Hundred. The US tournament next year will be significantly longer and start earlier. Srinivasan said MLC is keen to play in June. “Ultimately for us our ideal calendar is to start much earlier, in the late spring or early summer,” Srinivasan said. The tournament was pushed back this year because of the T20 World Cup, which is using the MLC’s stadium in Grand Prairie, Texas. “With the Indian Premier League ending in late May, I think our sweet spot would be to start in early June, which is when we have the school holidays in the US, and go into July. That’s how we would like to establish our window.” That would clash with the T20 Blast season but leave the Hundred to run from late July through August. English cricket has already had to adapt to sharing its summer with a competing league. Last year Jason Roy gave up his England contract so he could take a job with LA Knight Riders, while Surrey’s Sunil Narine skipped the county side’s appearance on Blast finals day because he was also playing for LA. Alec Stewart, Surrey’s director of cricket, said at the time it was “disappointing and frustrating” to “lose a player of Narine’s quality at late notice”. Narine’s decision was a sobering reminder of the status of English domestic cricket. MLC’s expansion plans will also increase pressure on the English game to decide whether or not to bring private investment into the Hundred. The England and Wales Cricket Board, the 18 counties and Marylebone Cricket Club agreed that it was the “direction of travel” for the game on 10 May, but there is frustration about slow progress. MLC boasts a formidable array of investors, including four IPL sides – Kolkata Knight Riders, Mumbai Indians, Chennai Super Kings and Delhi Capitals – as well as significant business figures such as Microsoft’s CEO, Satya Nadella. “All of these people who came on board with us when we started five years ago have been immensely successful in other walks of life,” Srinivasan said. “You know they understand that this is not one of those things where you can just turn a switch. The expectation was never that this would be an overnight transition. They’ve been immensely patient and they’ve backed us all the way through.” MLC has already established a series of academies and a minor league system to develop local players. It is now working on developing more List A venues. “We’re not here to play a league and go away every year,” Srinivasan said. “We feel like it is our role is to build the infrastructure for cricket in the US. MLC is the means to an end, if you will. I think 10 years from now, I think you’ll see a very different landscape for cricket in the US. We’ll have a very robust set of venues around the country, we’ll have a home-and-away sort of format for MLC, and we’ll have a much larger pool of players as a result in the system. Hopefully that means we will also have a very strong sort of USA team. Those are all our ambitions.” | ['sport/twenty20', 'sport/natwest-t20-blast', 'sport/us-sport', 'sport/cricket', 'sport/sport', 'campaign/email/the-spin', 'sport/ecb', 'sport/sport-politics', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/andybull', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/sport', 'theguardian/sport/news', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-sport'] | sport/ecb | UNRELATED_TO_CLIMATE | 2024-05-27T12:49:30Z | true | UNRELATED_TO_CLIMATE |
environment/ethicallivingblog/2008/may/30/treadlightlydraughtproofthe | Tread lightly: Draught-proof the home | Sealing windows can stop heat from escaping and cut down on CO2 waste. Photograph: Peter DeJong/AP The strong winds that battered southern England last weekend highlighted the importance of banishing draughts. This is a relatively easy DIY job that probably won't cost more than a couple of hundred pounds, but which could prevent a fifth of your home's heat from escaping. In an average house, this equates to around 145kg of CO2 per year. To draught-proof your home you need to examine each room for gaps or cracks that let in cold air, and then work out the best means of filling them. A starting point for advice is the Draught Proofing Advisory Association. However, there are plentiful easy-to-use products available from DIY stores. Doors and windows are obvious places to start. Screw-on door-seal kits made from rubber and aluminium will help keep draughts at bay around external doors. You can also buy self-adhesive rubber or foam-sealant strips, which can be used around doors, windows and loft hatches. Attach brushes to the back of letter-boxes and along the bottom of doors, and fix a cover over mortice lock key-holes. If you have a cat-flap, make sure it has an effective closing mechanism. If your windows are single-glazed, think about replacing them with double-glazed units. This can halve heat-loss through windows. Prioritise windows in rooms that cost the most to heat. You can get quotes from a range of British suppliers here. If this is too expensive, secondary glazing offers a cheaper alternative. For example, you can have sliding windows fitted inside your existing ones or attach rigid sheets of plastic over your windows. Cheaper still is glazing film that you attach with double-sided sticky tape and shrink to fit with a hairdryer. You can fill gaps between the floor and skirting boards with a silicon sealant. This comes in a tube and is applied using a "skeleton gun" that lets you squeeze out the required amount relatively easily. You can also use it to eradicate gaps between wooden floorboards. Or, cover the gaps with rugs or carpets. Make sure you leave sufficient ventilation in place, so that stale air can pass out of your home and clean air can enter. That way you should have a draught-free, healthy home. | ['environment/series/tread-lightly', 'environment/carbon-emissions', 'environment/carbonfootprints', 'environment/ethical-living', 'environment/environment', 'lifeandstyle/diy', 'lifeandstyle/lifeandstyle', 'environment/green-living-blog', 'type/article', 'profile/carolynfry'] | environment/carbonfootprints | EMISSIONS | 2008-05-29T23:03:56Z | true | EMISSIONS |
environment/2023/dec/22/weather-tracker-nor-easter-drenches-us-south-east-coast-florida-georgia-south-carolina | Weather tracker: Nor’easter drenches US south-east coast | Last weekend, a low-pressure system that had developed over the Gulf of Mexico tracked north-east across the Florida peninsula. Lashings of heavy rain and strong winds were brought to Florida during the early hours of Sunday morning, dumping up to 127mm (5in) of rain on the state in its passing. The low-pressure system, termed a “nor’easter”, continued to track north-east, strengthening and bringing gusty winds and flash flooding to the coastal parts of the south-east US, including Georgia and South Carolina. Rainfall totals of 75-150mm were recorded widely across coastal parts of the two states, including the cities of Savannah and Charleston. Higher amounts of rain were recorded to the north-east of Charleston, which in combination with high tide destroyed a bridge road in a small rural fishing town called McClellanville; the bridge road was the only way in and out of a neighbourhood and nearly 100 people were stranded. In South Korea, a cold snap has been in force over the past few days. The temperatures on Thursday morning were the coldest so far, plummeting to -14.4C (6F), and feeling like -22C, making this the most intense cold snap of the winter so far. However, Seoul was considerably milder than other regions; Daegwallyeong Pass had temperatures of -18.4 C and it fell as low as -24.7C in the northern county of Cheorwon. The island of Jeju also experienced significant snowfall, at rates as high as 5cm an hour, allowing close to 60cm of snow to accumulate in mountainous regions. Further snowfall is forecast on Saturday but temperatures should start to return closer to average next week. This contrasts with the unusually warm conditions earlier in the month, with Seoul recording its second warmest December day at 16.8Con the 8th. Moscow also received heavy snowfall, with one of the worst snowstorms of the past six decades last Friday. The blizzard, named Vanya, left more than 20cm of accumulated snow in just 24 hours, which is more than one-fifth of the average December snowfall for the city. Under strong winds the snow started to drift, accumulating up to 49cm in parts of the city, causing widespread travel disruption. | ['environment/series/weather-tracker', 'environment/environment', 'us-news/us-news', 'us-news/florida', 'us-news/south-carolina', 'us-news/state-of-georgia', 'environment/flooding', 'world/south-korea', 'world/snow', 'world/russia', 'world/europe-news', 'world/asia-pacific', 'world/world', 'type/article', 'tone/analysis', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/weather2', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-weather'] | environment/flooding | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2023-12-22T09:44:10Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
world/2020/nov/11/hurricane-eta-leaves-trail-destruction-central-america-nicaragua-honduras | Hurricane Eta leaves trail of destruction in Central America | The active north Atlantic hurricane season continued through last week with Hurricane Eta making landfall as a category 4 storm to the south of Puerto Cabezas in Nicaragua. The storm weakened as it moved slowly inland towards Honduras through the week. Some areas saw as much as 550mm of rain (22 inches), leading to landslides and flooding. At least 100 people have died as a result. Spain and Portugal also had some anomalously high rainfall totals last week as low pressure lingered nearby. Eastern Spain was particularly wet with Valencia getting 100mm on 5 November, compared with the November monthly average of just 37mm. Flash flooding followed, leading to the suspension of schools and road closures. Wind and hail also damaged and estimated €8m (£7m) worth of crops. Across large parts of the US, it was notably warm for the time of year last week with cities such as Denver, Boston, Minneapolis and Chicago surpassing 20C on numerous days. Temperatures of 26C and 25C in Denver on 3 and 4 November respectively broke daily records for the city, which extend back to 1872. The heat was even more notable in Phoenix, which recorded 37C on 5 November, its hottest November day since records began in 1895. | ['world/hurricanes', 'news/series/weatherwatch', 'world/americas', 'world/extreme-weather', 'world/honduras', 'world/nicaragua', 'news/series/world-weatherwatch', 'type/article', 'tone/features', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/weather2', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-weather'] | news/series/weatherwatch | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2020-11-11T21:30:50Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
environment/2020/sep/28/how-our-warmer-oceans-are-contributing-to-climate-breakdown | How our warmer oceans are contributing to climate breakdown | Humans have made the oceans more stable, and the result will be more extreme weather and the acceleration of climate change. You may have heard the phrase “hot air rises”. And it is true: when you heat up air, the warmed air wants to rise, like a hot-air balloon. The rising motion is caused by the changing density of the air, a process scientists refer to as buoyancy. The same thing is true in the oceans. Warm water is less dense than cold waters. In oceans, water tends to stratify, with warmer, less dense water sitting atop colder, more dense water. We refer to this as a “stable” configuration. Sometimes the waters are not stable. For example, the upper waters of the ocean can suddenly become heavier. This causes the water to fall from the surface towards the ocean floor. Waters near the ocean floor are then brought up to the surface where mixing occurs. Not only does water move up and down in the ocean, but currents flow around the world horizontally as well. The upward and downward motions are common in the North Atlantic, the north Pacific, and in the Indian and Southern oceans. It turns out these water currents have major effects on the entire ocean, as well as the weather. How would ocean water near the surface suddenly become more heavy? It is to do with the saltiness of the water. The saltier the water is, the more dense it is. Fresher waters are less dense. When warm water forms the top level of the ocean, evaporation of liquid water into the air removes water molecules and increases the saltiness of the water, which then causes the water to fall and mixing to occur. So mixing is affected by both temperature and saltiness. A new study published in the journal Nature Climate Change, of which I was one of the authors, used new techniques to analyse ocean waters using a large collection of data from around the world. The paper shows that the stratification of the oceans – less dense waters sitting above more dense water – is increasing. In other words, the oceans are become more stable, with less “up-and-down” motion. The team has shown that the ocean stability has increased by 5.36% in the upper 6,310 metres (20,700ft) of the oceans over the past 50 to 60 years. Our paper shows some of the increased stability of the oceans is due to a warmer ocean surface because of greenhouse gases and human-caused global heating. But why should we care? This is the big question. Does a more stable ocean matter for humans? It does, and we will feel the effects. First, when warm waters sit at the ocean surface, they affect weather, particularly typhoons and hurricanes. In fact, warm ocean surface water provides the fuel for these large storms. A warmer ocean, then, is less able to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Consequently, more of the carbon dioxide we emit will remain in the atmosphere, which will lead to more warming. In addition, a more stable ocean is less efficient at moving nutrients through its waters. This means animals that require the flow of nutrient-rich waters could be at risk. There is a final risk – one related to more severe implications in the future. The more stable oceans mean we expect the Earth to warm faster in future because of the weakening mixing that penetrates down to deep oceans, and the lower capability of the ocean to absorb carbon dioxide. In a terrible twist of fate, the warming we have caused in the past has resulted in a more stable ocean, and that will increase future warming – a feedback loop that keeps getting stronger. It is not all doom and gloom. The good news is we know why the climate is changing and we know how the oceans are responding. We can do something about this problem – we have the ability to slow down climate change. We just lack the will and leadership. But if 2020 has shown us anything, it has revealed that humans can change and adapt quickly to situations. There is hope that we can navigate the challenges resulting from a more stable ocean – but we must start immediately. | ['environment/series/climate-consensus-the-97-percent', 'environment/oceans', 'environment/environment', 'environment/climate-crisis', 'science/scienceofclimatechange', 'type/article', 'tone/analysis', 'profile/john-abraham', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-environment'] | environment/series/climate-consensus-the-97-percent | CLIMATE_DENIAL | 2020-09-28T15:00:05Z | true | CLIMATE_DENIAL |
commentisfree/2023/jul/18/british-seaside-town-revolutionise-green-energy | Locals in this British seaside town could revolutionise green energy – if the government lets them | Rebecca Willis | The seaside town of Whitehaven, in the north-west of England, found itself at the centre of a political storm in May, when the levelling up, housing and communities secretary, Michael Gove, gave his approval for the UK’s first new deep coalmine in more than 40 years just outside the town. But Whitehaven may soon be known for more than climate-wrecking coal. That is the ambition of Project Collette, a £3bn proposal for a windfarm off the Cumbrian coast to be part-owned by the local community – instigated by the Green Finance Community Hub in collaboration with the engineering firm Arup and community energy specialists Energy4All – and with the potential to power nearby industry. If Cumbrians could stand on the sandstone cliffs and look out at wind turbines they owned, and that had provided jobs for local people, that might just build the political support and engagement that is so vital to reaching our climate targets? People worry about the climate crisis. It regularly features in opinion polls covering respondents’ top concerns. But in more in-depth discussions with people, my research team at Lancaster University have discovered a vicious circle at play. The more people learn about the scale and urgency of the climate crisis, the more they look to the government for leadership. Yet they tell us they don’t have confidence that the government will provide that leadership. There is a danger that people fall into a fatalism trap: it’s too big for me alone, they say, and yet I don’t believe politicians will step up. There is a route out of this trap. Politicians need to put forward bold policies for the climate that link to people’s aspirations and provide tangible benefits, such as local jobs. If they did that, our research suggests that people would both reward them and step up to the mark themselves to work toward local solutions. That’s where ventures such as Project Collette come in. Imagine increasing the supply of zero-carbon electricity through solar farms and wind turbines that are part-owned by local people or local councils. Green jobs would no longer be something dreamed up by Westminster thinktanks, but tangible, visible schemes employing you or your neighbour. The locally owned profits could be invested in local priorities, like insulation schemes for all homes and improved green spaces. Locally controlled renewables would also help ease people’s concerns about nearby developments. A strong majority of the population supports wind power and other renewables. But research indicates that people’s support does not only depend on whether they like the look of the technology, but on whether they have a say in planning local schemes, and who they think is benefiting from the project. This vision is a stark contrast to how the energy sector is run at the moment, dominated as it is by commercial energy companies with distant headquarters. Under our hyper-liberalised market, community involvement is just about possible – if you are very determined. The UK’s first community-owned windfarm, Baywind, was built more than 25 years ago in 1997, just down the coast from Whitehaven. More recently, Bristol city council backed a successful proposal to build another community-led wind project in deprived Lawrence Weston. But it’s unbelievably difficult for non-profits to navigate the treacherous route through the planning system, financing and complex regulatory requirements. As a result, examples such as the above are the exception, not the rule. They make up a tiny fraction of total output. Under the current system, Project Collette may never be more than a pipe dream. It’s hardly surprising, then, that the Labour party has seized on the need for reform. When Keir Starmer launched his climate plans in June, buried beneath the headline policies was an intriguing “local power plan” that would make initiatives like Project Collette mainstream. Under its proposals, the publicly owned GB Energy would partner with communities and private developers to finance local energy projects, with communities owning a share and the profits ploughed back. This should have broad cross-party support. Back in 2014, at the request of Ed Davey, then a minister in the coalition government, I co-chaired a taskforce looking into how the government could encourage, or require, commercial companies to offer a share in ownership to local people. We developed a good plan that the government accepted as part of a wider package of support for community energy. But events, not least the 2015 election, the backbench Conservative rebellion against windfarms and then the Brexit wranglings, overtook us, and the opportunity was lost. Since then, such community projects have stalled. What better way for any government to demonstrate that it is putting its trust in people than giving them a direct say in decision-making? In 2020, the UK parliament’s own climate assembly proved the value of involving citizens in developing plans for net zero. Brussels and Milan now have their own permanent citizens’ assemblies to help take decisions on climate. The UK could be the first country to create a permanent assembly to advise on net zero, as part of wider plans for constitutional reform. To the people of Whitehaven, net zero, not to mention green jobs, seem like distant, abstract concepts, compared with the very tangible, if controversial, offer of jobs in coal mining. If we are to maintain and build political and public support for climate action, we need to focus on interventions that benefit people and place. I look forward to standing on those Cumbrian cliffs and seeing the turbines of Project Collette turning in the steady sea breeze. Rebecca Willis is professor of energy and climate governance at Lancaster University, and leads the climate citizens research group. | ['commentisfree/commentisfree', 'environment/renewableenergy', 'environment/energy', 'environment/environment', 'environment/windpower', 'uk-news/cumbria', 'uk/uk', 'politics/politics', 'politics/conservatives', 'type/article', 'tone/comment', 'profile/rebecca-willis', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/journal', 'theguardian/journal/opinion', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-opinion'] | environment/energy | ENERGY | 2023-07-18T05:00:46Z | true | ENERGY |
books/2017/jun/21/major-publishers-move-to-defend-greenpeace-in-dispute-with-logging-firm | Major publishers move to defend Greenpeace in dispute with logging firm | The world’s biggest book publishers have been dragged into a bitter dispute between a US logging company and environmental campaigners Greenpeace. It follows legal action taken by the logging company, Resolute Forest Products, which campaigners and publishers fear has implications for freedom of speech. The dispute centres on claims by Greenpeace about the company’s logging practices in sections of Canada’s boreal forest, which are home to indigenous peoples as well as endangered wildlife. Greenpeace alleges that Resolute: “Is responsible for the destruction of vast areas of Canada’s magnificent boreal forest, damaging critical woodland caribou habitat and logging without the consent of impacted First Nations.” Resolute strongly disputes the claims. Last year, it followed up a 2013 defamation and economic interference lawsuit launched in Canada with a $226m (£178m) US claim under the Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organisations Act (Rico). Passed in 1970 to counter organised crime, the use of the act has been criticised as an attempt to silence both Resolute’s critics and for setting a “dangerous” precedent for whistleblowers and NGOs. Publishers, including Penguin Random House and Murdoch-owned HarperCollins, became involved after a petition signed by more than 100 authors in support of Greenpeace was handed in at US publishing trade show BookExpo. The petition called for publishers using Resolute products to use their clout to pressurise the company into dropping the lawsuit and addressing alleged logging practices. Hachette Livre, whose UK subsidiaries publish among others Ian Rankin, JK Rowling and Cressida Cowell, expresseds concern that the Rico action poses a threat to free speech and could be used to silence environmental organisations at a time when the US government has stated its intention to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement on climate change. Emphasising that Hachette had “no intention of taking sides”, but was “reaffirming our commitment to free speech”, Ronald Blunden, senior vice-president of corporate communications said: “It is the [scale] of the damages being sought in the suit. We are concerned that it is about muzzling Greenpeace at a time when the US government is pulling out of the Paris accord on climate change.” He added: “You need these NGOs to be able to do their work and be whistleblowers, because if they disappear, and if the US pulls out of the Paris accord, who will be left to speak up and defend the environment?” In a letter to Resolute, HL chairman Arnaud Nourry described the use of racketeering law in the US as excessive and asked if there was another way in which the company could respond to the accusations. The logging company’s CEO Richard Garneau responded by providing a detailed rebuttal of the activists’ claims and responding to the gagging charge: “Freedom of speech is not the same as libel and slander.” Other publishers have expressed frustration with the way the dispute has escalated, with several describing it, off the record, as a mess. In a statement from Simon & Schuster US, senior vice president and director of corporate communications Adam Rothberg noted the claims, counterclaims and arguments made by both parties about “complicated issues, that, as publishers, we have little ability to judge or verify”. He added: “We do, however, recognise the urgency of current environmental issues, the unalloyed right to free and responsible free speech in advocating for environmental and other causes and the right to defend one’s reputation.” Publishers on both sides of the Atlantic said pulp from the disputed forests is not used in their books and emphasised the use of “vigorous” oversight by the Forest Stewardship Council. In a statement sent to the Guardian, Penguin Random House said that it “strives to procure paper from suppliers who source responsibly”. HarperCollins issued a similar statement. It is unlikely that the case will come to a swift conclusion. The next hearing will be held in California. But publishers may be forced to take economic action to end the row. Blunden said although Hachette remained a customer of Resolute, should the publisher’s authors demand its wood pulp is not used in their books, the company may rethink its buying policy. However, he added, no such protests had yet been made. | ['books/publishing', 'books/books', 'culture/culture', 'world/canada', 'environment/environment', 'world/americas', 'environment/greenpeace', 'environment/activism', 'law/law', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/danutakean', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-culture'] | environment/activism | CLIMATE_ACTIVISM | 2017-06-21T05:30:22Z | true | CLIMATE_ACTIVISM |
politics/2021/sep/06/boris-johnsons-inbox-the-commons-clashes-on-the-cards | Boris Johnson’s inbox: the Commons clashes on the cards | Boris Johnson has a significant inbox of spending, parliamentary rows and a likely reshuffle coming this autumn. As parliament returns and Whitehall prepares to take a tentative step towards “politics as usual”, we take a look at the biggest coming clashes of the session. Social care and national insurance rises If Boris Johnson does decide to go ahead with an increase in national insurance to fund health and social care, some backbenchers say privately they would struggle to support it. Some object to tax rises in themselves, others are concerned about the fairness argument, that young, low-income workers should not be paying to allow wealthy retired people hit by social care costs to pass on more to their children – national insurance contributions are not levied on pensioners. Jeremy Hunt and many other senior Tories have made this argument publicly. Ultimately many MPs are keen enough to fix the social care crisis and reduce waiting lists that they may approve the plan; but perhaps only after considerable persuasion. Triple lock on pensions It will be two manifesto commitments jettisoned by the end of this week, with Boris Johnson also expected to break the “triple lock” commitment and limit a rise in the state pension. The lock commits the government to increasing the state pension in line with inflation or wages or 2.5%, whichever is highest. But an artificial increase in wages fuelled by the end of the furlough scheme has seen wages rise by almost 9% – costing the government up to £5bn more in pension payouts. Tory MPs are feeling less mutinous on this point than on NICs, but it will still be a worrying sign for some that manifesto pledges are not worth the paper they are printed on. Vaccine passports Details of which venues will be covered by new rules making it compulsory for customers to show they are double-jabbed have not yet been published but many Conservative MPs, including the former chief whip Mark Harper of the Covid Recovery Group, have already made clear they object vehemently. With the regime due to come into force at the end of September, time is short for the government to win them round. Labour’s stance will also be crucial, but with more than 40 MPs signing a statement opposing domestic Covid passports, it is hard to see how the government will have a majority. Vaccines for teenagers The Joint Committee on Vaccinations and Immunisations gave ministers a headache last week by not approving the rollout of vaccines for 12- to 15-year-olds. Johnson and others had been hoping to stem any significant outbreaks from schools returning with a programme of jabs for younger teenagers, and the chief medical officers of the UK are expected to make that recommendation on the basis of other, non-medical factors, such as disruption to learning. Planning One of the most significant backbench rebellions this session could be on planning – though the government is already expected to significantly water down proposals that have angered more than 100 Tory MPs. Ministers are considering dropping mandatory housebuilding targets but the changes would still see residents no longer being able to object to planning applications and designated “growth sites” where homes will be automatically approved. Cop26 Johnson needs a successful summit in Glasgow but is feeling the heat at home from rightwing backbenchers and his chancellor over the commitment to go net zero by 2050. Climate campaigners say the plans are not ambitious enough but the Treasury is said to have balked at some of the costs of decarbonisation. There is also mounting internal opposition from the Net Zero Scrutiny Group of Tory backbenchers, led by Craig Mackinlay, to raising energy and travel costs for consumers. | ['politics/boris-johnson', 'politics/politics', 'society/social-care', 'environment/green-politics', 'environment/environment', 'society/society', 'uk/uk', 'money/pensions', 'money/money', 'politics/health', 'world/coronavirus-outbreak', 'type/article', 'tone/analysis', 'tone/news', 'profile/jessica-elgot', 'profile/heatherstewart', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/topstories', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-home-news'] | environment/green-politics | CLIMATE_POLICY | 2021-09-06T05:00:12Z | true | CLIMATE_POLICY |
world/2005/jan/01/tsunami2004.guardianletters1 | Letters: Gods and monsters | It is true that science cannot offer the consolations that your correspondents attribute to prayer, and I am sorry if I seemed a callous ayatollah or a doorstepping bogeyman (Letters, December 31). It is psychologically possible to derive comfort from sincere belief in a nonexistent illusion, but - silly me - I thought believers might be disillusioned with an omnipotent being who had just drowned 125,000 innocent people (or an omniscient one who failed to warn them). Of course, if you can derive comfort from such a monster, I would not wish to deprive you. My naive guess was that believers might be feeling more inclined to curse their god than pray to him, and maybe there's some dark comfort in that. But I was trying, however insensitively, to offer a gentler and more constructive alternative. You don't have to be a believer. Maybe there's nobody there to curse. Maybe we are on our own, in a world where plate tectonic and other natural forces occasionally cause appalling catastrophes. Science cannot (yet) prevent earthquakes, but science could have provided just enough warning of the Boxing Day tsunami to save most of the victims and spare the bereaved. Even worse lowland floodings of the future are threatened by global warming, which is preventable by human action, guided by science. And if the comforts afforded by outstretched human arms, warm human words and heartbroken human generosity seem puny against the agony, they at least have the advantage of existing in the real world. Richard Dawkins Oxford I think that John Horsley throws most light on the subject (Letters, December 31). Pure science and religion are in different categories in that the former deals with phenomena and the latter with faith. A comparison might be made between religion and philosophy, where the latter in Kantian argument states that the existence or non-existence of God cannot be proved by human reason, and that a positive view of noumena cannot be sustained. That did not prevent Kant from stating the basis of a highly moral code of conduct for mankind's autonomous role, and extolling kindness based on principle. Eric Jones Cricklade, Wilts As an atheist who fully subscribes to Christian values and has no need for prayer to try and live up to some of them, the letter from Dr Welch is difficult to describe. Outrageous is the best and most polite term that comes to mind. Bill Enstone Clanfield, Hants | ['world/tsunami2004', 'world/world', 'tone/letters', 'type/article'] | world/tsunami2004 | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2005-01-01T00:07:41Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
world/2017/sep/20/puerto-rico-potentially-catastrophic-direct-hit-hurricane-maria | Puerto Rico forecast to take 'potentially catastrophic' direct hit from Hurricane Maria | At least six people have reportedly been killed and 90% of buildings destroyed after Hurricane Maria lashed the Caribbean island of Dominica, as Puerto Rico braced for its turn in the eye of a “potentially catastrophic” category five storm. Puerto Rican officials urged residents to evacuate to government-run shelters on the island, which is expected to take a direct hit from a storm that currently has sustained wind speeds of 165mph (270km/h). Thousands of people have already fled to safety. US president Donald Trump described the storm as a “monster hurricane” and promised support in the aftermath, saying: “Be careful, our hearts are with you.” Much of the Caribbean is still recovering from Hurricane Irma, which hit two weeks ago and devastated large swaths of the region. “You have to evacuate. Otherwise, you’re going to die,” said Hector Pesquera, the island’s public safety commissioner. “I don’t know how to make this any clearer.” The storm is forecast to hit the eastern half of the island, home to the capital San Juan and more densely populated, on Wednesday morning. There are about 500 shelters open on the island and the hurricane could be the most powerful to make landfall on the US territory since 1928. “We’re going to lose a lot of infrastructure in Puerto Rico,” Ricardo Rosselló, the territory’s governor, said. “We’re going to have to rebuild.” An island-wide power outage and communication blackouts are likely and could last for days, he added, saying the hurricane could hit “with a force and violence that we haven’t seen for several generations”. Even when the storm was still 95 miles (155km) from San Juan, the island’s power authority said 184,658 homes – or 12.9% of the total – were without power. Weather conditions on Puerto Rico were equivalent to those of a weak tropical storm in the early hours of Wednesday. Peak rainfall is expected to reach 8 to 12 inches (20 to 30cm), according to the US National Weather Service. Supermarkets shelves were devoid of bottled water with signs asking customers to limit buying only two cases per person. After passing over Puerto Rico, the storm is expected to pass north-east of the Dominican Republic, according to the US Hurricane Center. The hurricane first hit Dominica, where aerial footage showed hundreds of flattened buildings and debris strewn across the landscape after wind gusts of up to 160mph (260km/h), while the nation’s prime minister, Roosevelt Skerrit, described the destruction as “mind boggling”. “The winds are merciless! We shall survive by the grace of God,” Skerrit wrote in a series of Facebook posts from his home, where he said he lost his roof. St Lucia, Martinique and Trinidad and Tobago are mobilising to help Dominica assess the scale of the damage and plan to begin emergency relief efforts on Wednesday. At least one person has died in the French island of Guadeloupe, considered the first official fatality attributed to the storm, and about 40% of homes are without power. St Croix, the southernmost of the US Virgin Islands, was spared the eye of the storm but still faced heavy rain and strong winds as Hurricane Maria skirted past. “You lose your life the moment you start thinking about how to save a few bucks to stop something from crashing or burning or falling apart,” Governor Kenneth Mapp warned residents. “The only thing that matters is the safety of your family, and your children, and yourself. The rest of the stuff, forget it.” The British Virgin Islands are also under a hurricane warning and Governor Gus Jaspert said that with up to 90% of houses destroyed or damaged by Irma barely two weeks ago, “shelter is a real issue”. | ['world/hurricane-maria', 'world/americas', 'us-news/puerto-rico', 'world/natural-disasters', 'world/world', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'world/caribbean', 'profile/benjamin-haas', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/australia-foreign'] | world/hurricane-maria | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2017-09-20T06:47:59Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
environment/2014/nov/20/country-diary-hamsterley-conifer-planation-lichens-moss | Lichens thrive in conifer plantation | Weak winter sunlight broke through as we climbed out of the grey lake of mist that filled the valley carved by Spurleswood beck. A breeze sprung up, driving will-o’-the-wisps of vapour out from between the closely spaced conifer trees. This place is at its most mysterious on winter mornings, when it takes on the character of cloud forest. The switchback path took us along the northern edge of the conifers, Sitka spruces on our left, larches on our right, with scattered birches on either side. Seen from a distance a conifer forest might appear to be uniform monoculture, but in here, among the trees, paths, ditches and clearings, the subtle interactions between tree species and microclimate are soon apparent. When the path dipped into a humid hollow sheltered from wind and where winter sunlight filtered through larches that had shed most of their golden needles, we came upon a magnificent display of lichens. They festooned the lower branches of three larches on the edge of the path where an optimum combination of light, shelter and moisture perfectly satisfied their needs. I counted five lichen species on just one branch, including fine specimens of the exquisite Usnea subfloridana. Its fragile pendant beards gave the trees a venerable air that belied their age, for this plantation was only 20 years old. There were few lichens on the next rank of trees within the block and none on the third, where shade starved these strange epiphytes – each an amalgam of fungus and photosynthetic algae – of their energy source. We have walked in this forest over 40 years, long enough to watch cycles of planting, growth and felling completed and started again. It is a constantly shifting patchwork, where transient populations of inhabitants that are often thought of as lesser life forms – the mosses, the liverworts and lichens – find niches by virtue of invisible windborne spores that, by chance, land in conditions which suit them, as they have done since they first colonised the land half a billion years ago. Phil Gates @seymourdaily | ['environment/series/country-diary', 'environment/forests', 'environment/wildlife', 'environment/environment', 'science/biology', 'tone/features', 'type/article', 'profile/philgates', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/weather2'] | environment/forests | BIODIVERSITY | 2014-11-20T05:30:06Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
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