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environment/2009/sep/15/kitchen-caddy-recycle | 'Kitchen caddies' considered to cut down on compostable food waste | Householders who regularly waste food could be fined by their local council if the government goes ahead with new proposals designed to slash the amount of food that is sent to landfill. Environment secretary Hilary Benn is considering the introduction of "kitchen caddies" so that households recycle their food waste, or face a fine if they throw it away with the main rubbish. Food would then be sent to specialist recycling plants rather than be dumped in landfill. It is estimated that British households throw away 4.1m tonnes of food each year — the equivalent of £420 for every home. The bulk of food waste is currently not recycled but is part of the 18m tonnes of household waste sent to landfill each year. According to one estimate, 1bn people could be lifted out of hunger if food waste in the US and UK could be eliminated, because of the knock on effect that extra food has on global food prices. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) said that it had been studying the results of a study which looked at other countries that had banned certain items from landfill to boost recycling rates. It has launched a consultation to explore the next steps. The research on bans in other countries was carried out by Green Alliance and looked at how similar bans have worked in Austria, Flanders, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Massachusetts in the USA. It showed, for example, that the amount of waste sent to landfill in Germany reduced from 27% to 1% after a landfill ban was introduced for some materials, such as paper and card. This was alongside a range of other measures to boost recycling. A Defra spokesman said: "In light of this research a public consultation will be held in the next few months on banning certain materials from landfill in England. The timing of any bans will be an important part of this consultation and has not yet been decided." He said that it would be up to individual councils to determine the equipment needed and to supervise fines in their area. A spokesman for the Local Government Association, which represents local authorities, said: "Recycling food waste is not something that can be done on the cheap. Specialist equipment is required to collect and dispose of it, which can be very expensive." The Conservatives said the proposed new food waste scheme was being used by the government to justify the spread of less regular, fortnightly collections. Benn said in June: "Take food, glass, aluminium or wood – why would you put any of them into landfill when they can be recycled, or used to make energy? What sort of a society would throw away aluminium cans worth £550 a tonne when aluminium producers are crying out for the raw material?" | ['environment/ethical-living', 'environment/waste', 'tone/news', 'environment/environment', 'environment/recycling', 'environment/food', 'type/article', 'profile/rebeccasmithers', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/uknews'] | environment/recycling | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE | 2009-09-15T16:05:26Z | true | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE |
environment/2017/aug/29/how-did-climate-change-worsen-hurricane-harvey | Is tropical storm Harvey linked to climate change? | What is Harvey? A tropical storm that is on course to break the US record for the heaviest rainfall from a tropical system. Meteorologists say the 120cm-mark set in 1978 could be surpassed on Tuesday or Wednesday. What is the impact so far? At least 14 people have died, tens of thousands have been evacuated and more have been stranded as catastrophic flooding has paralysed the home of the US oil industry and the fourth most populous city in the US. Is there a link between the storm and climate change? Almost certainly, according to a statement issued by the World Meteorological Organization on Tuesday. “Climate change means that when we do have an event like Harvey, the rainfall amounts are likely to be higher than they would have been otherwise,” the UN organisation’s spokeswoman Clare Nullis told a conference. But hurricanes are nothing new in this part of the world … Correct. Nobody is arguing that climate change caused the storm, but it is likely to have made it much worse. How did it make it worse? Warmer seas evaporate more quickly. Warmer air holds more water vapour. So, as temperatures rise around the world, the skies store more moisture and dump it more intensely. Is this speculation or science? There is a proven link – known as the Clausius-Clapeyron equation – that shows that for every half a degree celsius in warming, there is about a 3% increase in atmospheric moisture content. Is that what happened in Texas? It was a factor. The surface temperature in the Gulf of Mexico is currently more than half a degree celsius higher than the recent late summer average, which is in turn more than half a degree higher than 30 years ago, according to Michael Mann of Penn State University. As a result there was more potential for a deluge. Was the amount of rain really that unusual? The US National Weather Service has had to introduce a new colour on its graphs to deal with the volume of precipitation. Harvey surpassed the previous US record for rainfall from a tropical system, as 49.2 inches was recorded at Mary’s Creek at Winding Road in Southeast Houston, at 9.20am on Tuesday. Are there other links between Harvey and climate change? Yes, the storm surge was greater because sea levels have risen 20cm as a result of more than 100 years of human-related global warming. This has melted glaciers and thermally expanded the volume of seawater. How do climatologists account for the unusually rapid intensification of Harvey ahead of landfall? The science here is more tentative, as is the possible link to global warming. Harvey’s wind speed rose by about 45mph in the 24 hours before it reached the coast, according to National Hurricane Center. Computer simulations at Massachusetts Institute of Technology have indicated that similarly rapid increases in storm speeds will be 10 to 20 times more likely to occur by the end of this century than they were during the 1900s as a result of rising greenhouse gas emissions. The damage has worsened as a result of the duration of the deluge. Harvey appears to have parked above Houston, pumping huge volumes of water from the sea to the sky to the city. Will stationary storms like this become more common in the future? This is the single most important question posed by Harvey, according to Tim Palmer, Royal Society Research Professor at the University of Oxford. There is not yet a clear link between this and climate change. But scientists have observed a general slowdown of atmospheric summer circulation in the mid-latitudes as a result of strong warming in the Arctic. “This can make weather systems move less and stay longer in a given location – which can significantly enhance the impacts of rainfall extremes, just like we’re sadly witnessing in Houston,” noted Stefan Rahmstorf, a co-chair at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. Can scientists quantify how responsible humans are for extreme weather like this? Attribution is a relatively nascent science, but increasingly sophisticated computer models use temperature records, emission figures and recent data to calculate how the rise in greenhouse gases has increased the risk of a hotter world. Last year, researchers with World Weather Attribution and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration estimated that man-made emissions nearly doubled the odds of last year’s heavy rains in Louisiana. This summer, they found the heatwave that struck Portugal and Spain was 10 times more likely to have occurred due to global warming. Once the deluge in Texas abates, they may be able to crunch the numbers for Harvey. Does the Trump administration acknowledge the link between extreme weather and manmade climate change? Not as yet. Trump previously called manmade climate change a myth invented by China. As president, he has announced the US will withdraw from the Paris agreement. On Twitter, his take on Harvey has been incredulity: “HISTORIC rainfall in Houston, and all over Texas. Floods are unprecedented, and more rain coming” and “Even experts have said they’ve never seen one like this!” | ['environment/climate-crisis', 'us-news/hurricane-harvey', 'world/natural-disasters', 'us-news/us-news', 'world/world', 'us-news/us-weather', 'environment/environment', 'science/scienceofclimatechange', 'science/science', 'type/article', 'tone/explainers', 'profile/jonathanwatts', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-environment'] | us-news/hurricane-harvey | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2017-08-29T20:08:11Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
lifeandstyle/2017/dec/23/open-fire-cooking-chez-panisse-berkeley-california-alice-waters-a-cooks-kitchen | My kitchen at home: Chez Panisse founder Alice Waters | A cook’s kitchen | I live in north Berkeley, California about a mile from Chez Panisse. I’ve been here for 34 years, just about the same age as my daughter Fanny. I remodelled it immediately – it had a small kitchen with a tiny back porch. The house was built in 1908 and it had such a great feel to it – I didn’t want to change the character of it but we took down the porch, opened up the kitchen and put the fireplace in, which you see here , and made a double door that goes out to the garden, windows across the back, and then I kept the same cabinets, with the glass doors so I could see everything easily. I put the stove in. I wanted it to be a bread oven and I had great fantasies of making bread every day, but in the end we get such good bread from the Acme bread company that I just never find the time. I do use the fireplace constantly though – every time I’m home and having dinner, the fire is lit and I’m cooking something on it, from toast to grilled chicken or fish. I even have a spit that goes in there so I can make a spit-roast turkey for Thanksgiving. Mostly we use oak, but I also have fig wood for special occasions – so perfumed and wonderful, so I’m always wanting the pruned branches from our farm in Sonoma. Paul Bertolli cooked lamb chops over fig wood – I’ve never forgotten the aroma in the dining room – it’s a very hard wood and burns for a long time. In a book about fireplace cooking I saw a picture of an egg fried on a spoon like this one with the crooked end. I thought: my word, I have to get one of those. Cooked this way the egg puffs up like magic and it really tastes of the wood. My friend Bob Cannard – our main farmer for Chez Panisse – is also a very clever craftsman. I love this spoon he made with the copper bowl. Feels very graceful when you’re serving something to the table. We make Chez Panisse glasses for special occasions and these are just a few of them. The one on the left is to celebrate the 100th birthday of the National Park Service – we had an event at the restaurant to celebrate that. We thought of doing something dramatic along the Mall in Washington last August – we were going to bring in every chef we knew – but the powers that be tried to contain it and I decided not to go ahead. But I wanted to celebrate John Muir and his love of the land, so we had an event at Chez Panisse instead. We got some fruit from his house in Vallejo and made a special apricot tart. I use these bowls for drinking my tea every morning, and for café au lait. They were given to me by various friends. The top from Martine in France, the bottom from my friend Doug Hamilton. I have a whole collection. I usually buy one every time I go to France. I always visit my friends at Domaine Tempier – this year the proprietress is going to be 100 years of age. So excited to see her. The salad bowl was made near Bolinas from recycled wood. My friends Susie and Mark gave it to me. I feel bonded with them every time I use it. And here is the beautiful new garlic of this year – I love it with long roots. The mortar and pestle is my most infamous kitchen implement – I have so many – I kind of do use them for everything. I love the aroma of whatever I’m pounding – it’s part of my inspiration. I have this granite one for very heavy pesto, and a marble one, and Japanese ones with grooves – suribachi – for vinaigrettes. I use a little one for mashing the garlic with salt. Finally, the wine ... a friend gave me a case of 1971 Bordeaux – every time I open one I keep the empty bottle. Alice Waters is a chef, author, food activist and the founder and owner of Chez Panisse restaurant in Berkeley, California. She has just released her memoir, Coming to My Senses: The Makings of a Counterculture (Hardie Grant) | ['lifeandstyle/series/a-cooks-kitchen', 'food/chefs', 'food/food', 'tone/features', 'technology/gadgets', 'type/article', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/cook', 'theguardian/cook/cook', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/cook'] | technology/gadgets | UNRELATED_TO_CLIMATE | 2017-12-23T13:00:22Z | true | UNRELATED_TO_CLIMATE |
lifeandstyle/2016/aug/20/great-british-bake-off-chetna-makan-kitchen-encounters | ‘If you think two things will taste good together, don’t think twice, just go for it’ | Kitchen encounters | My kitchen is … simple and open-plan. I love eating and cooking at the same time. When we moved, I wanted a nice, big kitchen, and I’m so thankful that we have one. I didn’t know then that I’d be cooking for a living six years on … It’s neutral in colour, the walls are cream, the work surfaces simple black granite. The kettle and toaster are always out, as is my stand mixer, but otherwise I like my surfaces clear. I can’t concentrate if there’s too much clutter. I do have a few plants dotted around – herbs and cacti. My favourite kitchen tool is … my electric whisk. It’s not fancy – I think I got it for £4 from Tesco – but I can’t do without it when I’m baking. When cooking, I like my rolling pin and my chapati board, which I use for any pastry. Your hands get so used to certain tools – I know exactly how the pin and the board work, so I can work quickly with them. My storecupboard staples are … my basic spices: turmeric, cumin seeds, mustard seeds and garam masala. I can’t remember ever running out. And for baking, I always have at least a dozen eggs, four packs of butter, flour, sugar – I never run out of these either. I might not have ground almonds, but I always have what I need to make a cake. When I’m starving I … love an egg sandwich. It takes two minutes to make – so easy, so quick. I make an omelette, with salt, chilli powder, and chopped onion if I have an extra minute. I toast the bread, add salad leaves if I have them, and that’s it! My culinary inspiration is … Indian cuisine, the food I grew up with. It is my strength and my home. My best-kept kitchen secret is … when cooking, to go with your instinct. If you think two things will taste good together, don’t think twice, just go for it. You can always add and improve. And when baking, be patient. You cannot make a cake in a rush. Also, you need to cook with love. If I cook when I’m not in the mood, it never works. It sounds cheesy, but it is so true! When I’m invited to dinner I always … ask if I can bring the dessert. I usually end up taking something baked. Even if we don’t end up eating it there and then, it’ll be for the kids or for later on. Everything tastes better with … the right amount of seasoning. What’s the point if there’s not enough salt? It’s what brings the flavours together. When I go shopping I … am quite organised. I always have a list going, pinned to the kitchen shelf or on the fridge. I never just go to pick up things, I always need to know what I’m going to get. And I don’t get swayed by offers. I have my list and I stick with it. Even if they’re giving something for free! For dinner tonight … I am making egg curry in a spicy, creamy, onion and tomato sauce, served with rice. Chetna Makan is a fashion designer and baker, and was a semi-finalist in The Great British Bake Off 2014. Her cookbook, The Cardamom Trail | ['lifeandstyle/lifeandstyle', 'food/food', 'lifeandstyle/series/kitchen-encounters', 'food/chefs', 'tone/features', 'technology/gadgets', 'type/article', 'profile/dale-berning-sawa', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/cook', 'theguardian/cook/cook', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/cook'] | technology/gadgets | UNRELATED_TO_CLIMATE | 2016-08-20T11:00:02Z | true | UNRELATED_TO_CLIMATE |
environment/2015/sep/10/edible-water-bottle-to-cause-a-splash-at-eu-sustainability-awards | Edible water bottle to cause a splash at EU sustainability awards | An edible alternative to plastic water bottles made from seaweed has topped the UK round of an EU competition for new, more sustainable products. The new spherical form of packaging, called Ooho and described by its makers as “water you can eat”, is biodegradeable, hygenic and costs 1p per unit to make. It is made chiefly from calcium chloride and a seaweed derivative called sodium alginate. Ooho won the joint award with Alchemie Technologie, who have created a digital way of dispensing dye for the textile industry. Clothes are dyed selectively using a product similar to an industrial inkjet printer, replacing the full immersion process used currently, which consumes vast quantities of chemicals, water and heat. Both companies take home €20,000 of investment from the competition run by Climate KIC, created by the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT), the EU body tasked with galvanising the transformation to a sustainable economy. They will go on to compete against entrepreneurs from across Europe. With global sales of packaged water hitting 223bn litres this year, Ian Ellerington, Director of Science and Innovation at the UK Department of Energy and Climate Change and one of the judges of the competition, told the Guardian: “[Ooho] is a good replacement packaging that would be really widely applicable across lots of different products. The potential for packaging reduction is really high for one of the petroleum products used across the world.” Ooho designer Pierre Paslier, described the product as like a “man-made fruit”, which uses a double membrane to contain water. To carry larger quantities of water, a number of the capsules can be packed into a larger and thicker skin: much like an orange. He told the Guardian: “At the end of the day you don’t have to eat it. But the edible part shows how natural it is. People are really enthusiastic about the fact that you can create a material for packaging matter that is so harmless that you can eat it.” He added: “So many things are wrong about plastic bottles: the time they take to decompose, the amount of energy that goes into making them and the fact we are using more and more.” Investors are showing an increasing interest in clean technologies, with the global market soaring to £205bn ($310bn) in 2014, a 16% increase. In June, the world’s richest man and Microsoft founder Bill Gates pledged to invest $2bn in breakthrough renewable technologies. Another finalist presented a cloud-based software system that enables the National Grid to pay people not to use energy at times of peak demand. It is designed to work with household water boilers, solar powered batteries, electric vehicles or the back-up power supplies used by many businesses for appliances from computers to traffic lights. They are using the technology to work with electric car company Tesla to help make their home power storage batteries more financially viable for consumers. Graham Oakes CEO and founder of Upside Energy said the solution is “a win for just about everybody except the coal miners.” The company believes the product will be on the market by 2017, with pilot schemes planned for next year. They are aiming to save 500MW of battery hours by 2025, equivalent to 1% of peak load in winter or creating a medium-sized power station. Oakes says the system works automatically and will “help people to do the right thing without having to change their behaviour”. Other finalists presented a water purifier that captures energy from solar panels, an index that allows investors to track their financial exposure to carbon and a process that uses bio tanks to create paper from waste straw instead of trees. Entries were showcased on Wednesday at the Science Museum in London. | ['environment/waste', 'environment/climate-crisis', 'environment/environment', 'world/europe-news', 'business/entrepreneurs', 'type/article', 'profile/emma-e-howard', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/uknews'] | environment/waste | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE | 2015-09-10T11:30:18Z | true | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE |
us-news/2015/jul/20/southern-california-rain-storm-bridge-collapse-wildfire-drought | Surprise storm in southern California collapses bridge and subdues wildfire | A rare and powerful rainstorm has drenched parched southern California, simultaneously wreaking havoc on major roadways and power lines while helping firefighters gain control of a wildfire that broke out on Friday. Heavy rains on Saturday and Sunday closed beaches and knocked out power for many southern California residents. The storm rained out a Los Angeles Angels home game for the first time in two decades. The San Diego Padres home game has also been postponed due to inclement weather. A bridge along Interstate 10, a major freeway connecting southern California and Arizona, washed out on Sunday amid the deluge in the desert. The collapse injured one driver and left hundreds of other cars stranded. It also cut off traffic in both directions, brining travel to a grinding halt. Terri Kasinga, a spokeswoman for the California Department of Transportation, told the Associated Press that the interstate is closed “completely and indefinitely” and provided no timeframe for when the corridor would be re-opened. She added that crews would begin assessing the damage on Monday. Motorists driving between California and Arizona will be forced to drive hundreds of miles out of their way to take an alternate route. Meanwhile, the storm helped firefighters contain nearly 60% of a wildfire that destroyed dozens of vehicles and a handful of homes after sweeping across a freeway and barreling into a nearby community. California is in the midst of a four-year drought, and wildfires are not uncommon. Summer rain in southern California, however, is. The rainfall set a number of records on Saturday. The 0.36 inch that fell in downtown Los Angeles on Saturday set a record for the most rainfall in July, surpassing the quarter-inch that fell in July 1886, the Los Angeles Times reported. | ['us-news/california', 'us-news/us-weather', 'us-news/california-drought', 'world/wildfires', 'world/natural-disasters', 'environment/drought', 'us-news/us-news', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/lauren-gambino'] | environment/drought | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2015-07-20T17:28:51Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
commentisfree/2011/dec/13/women-at-the-top-justice | The women at the top, working for justice | Anne Perkins | Some mornings it is possible to look at the news and believe that women are taking over the world. In the past few days, images from the final minutes of the Durban climate change conference have been dominated by women. Last Saturday's EU family snap revealed that Europe's most powerful politician, Angela Merkel, is only one among six of the 27 EU leaders who are women. And later that day, the Nobel prize ceremony celebrated the achievements of three women who shared the peace prize. OK, taking over the world is pushing it. But something's changing. Nobel laureates are a handy bench mark for attitudes to women in public life. Statistically this year's peace prize winners – the Liberian president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, her colleague Leymah Gbowee and the Yemeni campaigner Tawakkol Karman – are another point in the upward curve of women Nobel laureates. In the first 11 years of this century, four women have won the medicine prize against six in the whole of the previous hundred years. Three women have won the literature prize since 2000, out of 12 overall, and – including this year's three winners – five women have won the peace prize in the 21st century. A couple of years ago, the committee even broke its duck and awarded Elinor Ostrom the economics prize. Either this is a sign of a generation of women finally making it to the top – but remember Ostrom was 76 at the time of the award – or the world is beginning to have a different order of priorities that means what women do is valued differently. Take the literature laureates. Doris Lessing, of course, is pre-eminently known as a writer about the female experience. But like the Marxist feminist Elfriede Jelinek, who won in 2004, she always writes in the context of the wider political world. Herta Muller who won in 2009 chronicles – unsurprisingly for someone who has lived much of her life under a dictatorship – the tense interaction between the state and the individual. These are women who write on universal themes. And that's true, too, of the three women who shared the peace prize this year. All three are committed feminists, but they stand out not only for their women's rights campaigns but because they saw that nothing could be achieved for women without more fundamental change. The same was true in Durban. Climate change hits women hardest because in most of the world it is the women who do the farming, who fetch the water and who, however adverse the circumstances, carry on nurturing. Last week, the former Irish president, Mary Robinson, complained that while there were impressive numbers of women at the talks, the gender dimension had too low a priority. Maybe a new generation of women is doing things differently. By the middle of last week, it seemed the whole show might collapse. The history of these global summits is one of brinksmanship, last-minute arm twisting that would probably count as bullying in any normal work environment, and men in tears. Connie Hedegaard, the Danish EU climate change commissioner, scorched by the near disaster of the Copenhagen summit two years ago, had learned the importance of pre-summit alliances. Locked in a standoff with India's negotiator (who is also the only female congress MP from Tamil Nadu) Jayanthi Nataraja, the carefully wrought alliances stood her in good stead. So did the South African foreign minister, Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, who was prepared to close down debate and force votes to make sure a deal was done. Finally, overseen by another woman, the UN's Christiana Figueres, the key negotiators were, diplomatically speaking, held hostage. Imprisoned by a barrage of observers, it came down to a huddle in the middle of the conference hall. A deal was done. This is not an approach favoured by the Kyoto hero and one-time trade union negotiator John Prescott. But at a fragile moment, it worked. Women win glittering prizes because they are there to be contenders for them. And because other women are there, shaping the world in which they are judged. But, most of all, because they are working for justice – and not only for women. | ['commentisfree/commentisfree', 'lifeandstyle/women', 'politics/women', 'environment/durban-climate-change-conference-2011', 'lifeandstyle/lifeandstyle', 'world/gender', 'environment/climate-crisis', 'environment/global-climate-talks', 'politics/politics', 'environment/environment', 'world/world', 'tone/comment', 'environment/green-politics', 'type/article', 'profile/anneperkins'] | environment/green-politics | CLIMATE_POLICY | 2011-12-13T11:35:35Z | true | CLIMATE_POLICY |
world/2005/jan/10/tsunami2004.travelnews | Patong's ladyboys struggle to cope in badly damaged tourist industry | Even without the high heels and the giant blue plumes of her feathered headdress, Jana is a very tall girl. In fact, she normally towers over most of the customers at the Moulin Rose (sic) cabaret club, where she performs lip-synch renditions of The Power of Love. But tonight, she is slumped in a chair and feeling low. For Jana is one of the hundreds of "lady-boys" on the red-light strip of Patong beach who survived the tsunami but are struggling to cope with its economic aftermath: the devastation of a large chunk of Thailand's tourist industry. Like the prostitutes, masseurs, go-go dancers and kick-boxers who make a living in this hotbed of exoticism and sleaze, the transsexual population of Patong are struggling to make ends meet because the foreigners they rely on for business are being warned by their governments to stay away from the disaster zone. They are too much of an embarrassment to the authorities to merit much support from the government, particularly at a time when the world's attention is focused on the search for foreign victims of the disaster. But their plight - and the knock-on effect on their families - is as pitiful as the suffering of the thousands of diving instructors, tour guides and hotel operators who are also suddenly unable to make a living. Jana is most concerned about her parents. Although her father beat her during childhood to try to make her more masculine, Jana sends home two-thirds of the 9,000 baht (£130) that she earns each month from salary and tips. A personal worry is how she will pay for the 700 baht she says she needs each month to make her breasts bigger. "These past two days, I had to go to hospital, I was so upset. I've just been crying and crying," says Jana. "How can I keep going? How can I look after my family?" She estimates that Patong is second only to Bangkok as the transsexual capital of the world. But of the 500 ladyboys who used to work in the town, more than a fifth have already fled to other tourist destinations such as Ko Samui in search of work. The story is similar across the 500-metre-long strip. Two weeks ago, the three giant waves destroyed about a dozen bars, nightclubs and trinket shops closest to the beach, but it is only now that the survivors are starting to realise its economic impact. At the Tiger Bar, skimpily clad young women hang listlessly on the poles where they used to writhe. DJs at the cavernous Crocodile disco pump techno music out across an empty dancefloor. Masseurs chat idly on the street and grab desperately at the hands of the few remaining tourists they see walking by. "I haven't had a customer all week," says Phoy, a petite 25-year-old with a tiny, tight red miniskirt and pencilled eyebrows who works at the Tweety Bar. "Usually, I get Japanese customers, who pay good money - 2,000 to 5,000 baht to take me back to their rooms - but now, all the Japanese have gone. I worry how I will look after my five-year old daughter." As their business is on the edge of accepted social norms, this large community of thousands has received little international sympathy. As one foreign visitor noted: "If there really is a god, why did he allow Patong beach to remain standing while the tsunami destroyed so many other places?" But Patong's red-light strip exists because many foreign tourists enjoyed its exotic atmosphere, just as many other holidaymakers liked the golden beaches and azure waters of this area, which is one of the world's most popular tourist resorts. When he visited Thailand on Friday, the foreign secretary, Jack Straw, toured Patong's beach, but understandably did not wander through its red-light district. Impressed by the rebuilding work, he said he would review the UK government's warning to tourists to stay away from the area. That would be a giant step forward for the redevelopment of southern Thailand. Jana and Phoy are unlikely to ever be pin-ups for charity appeals, but they and tens of thousands of other tourist industry workers know that the best way to get this part of the world back on its feet is for foreigners to return here on holiday. | ['world/world', 'world/tsunami2004', 'travel/travel', 'tone/news', 'type/article', 'profile/jonathanwatts'] | world/tsunami2004 | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2005-01-10T10:12:20Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
commentisfree/2012/nov/02/hurricane-sandy-hit-caribbean-media | Hurricane Sandy: it hit the Caribbean too, you know | Garry Pierre-Pierre | Before making landfall on the shores of South New Jersey, Hurricane Sandy pounded Haiti, Jamaica and Cuba, leaving massive destruction in its wake. There were few boots on the ground from the western media to cover the effects on these Caribbean countries. But when it became clear that the New York region would bear the full force of Sandy, the news media deployed their own massive force to cover every movement of the story. The networks and local television stations battled to show which reporter was bravest as they fed us live feeds of journalists standing in the middle of the hurricane. The resilience and heroism of average people were the narrative the day after the storm. The dead were rightly given a face and their lives memorialised. But we seldom see these kinds of reportage out of places like Haiti, a country that has seen more natural disasters than the richest countries would be able to handle adequately, let alone one of the poorest nations on Earth. Hurricane Sandy drenched the country's south with more than 20 inches of rainfall. As the rivers receded, allowing officials to travel through the storm-drenched southern peninsula, the death toll rose to 52. In Cuba, 200,000 homes were damaged by the hurricane. In the Bahamas, the total cost of damage to private property and public infrastructure is expected to reach $300m, according to a report from the Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility. That total would be higher than last year's Hurricane Irene, which caused about $250m in damage to the island chain east of Florida. But where in all this week's media coverage are the human-interest stories out of the Caribbean? Do we hear about the resilience of the Bahamian people and how they will restore their economy? What about those dead? So far there hasn't been any and I don't expect to be reading about it from any western publication. Part of the definition of news is proximity and western media companies rarely go out of their way to bring thoughtful vivid human stories of places far away. The last time Haiti was covered under the bright lights of the western media was the fabled earthquake that hit the mountainous country on 12 January 2010. It was no surprise to me that the bulk of the stories filed from parachute journalists consisted of the heroics of the aid workers and rescue and mission teams that had flown in to help the survivors and victims of this tragedy. But in Haiti, like many other places, locals pulled together and helped each other. The first responders were indeed Haitians. It took the international cavalcade days to reach Haiti and by then most of the death and destruction had already occurred. The world simply didn't get a complete picture of the reality on the ground then, just as we didn't get the impact of Sandy on Haiti. That hurricane flooded Les Cayes, the third largest city in Haiti. Sandy has exacerbated a Cholera epidemic that has been difficult for the Haitian government to control and has put an added burden on a country that has experienced a string of natural disasters since 2004. "I am launching an appeal to international solidarity to come and help the population, to help support the completion of our efforts towards saving lives and property," Haiti's prime minister, Laurent Lamothe, said on Wednesday. Let's hope his pleas are heard across the world. | ['commentisfree/commentisfree', 'us-news/hurricane-sandy', 'world/haiti', 'world/jamaica', 'world/cuba', 'world/americas', 'us-news/us-news', 'world/natural-disasters', 'world/hurricanes', 'world/world', 'tone/comment', 'global-development/global-development', 'global-development/poverty-matters', 'type/article', 'profile/garry-pierre-pierre'] | us-news/hurricane-sandy | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2012-11-02T18:10:30Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
environment/2020/may/29/large-heath-butterflies-return-to-manchester-after-150-years | Large heath butterflies return to Manchester after 150 years | Large heath butterflies are returning to peatlands in greater Manchester 150 years after they went locally extinct. The acidic peat bogs and mosslands around Manchester and Liverpool were home to the country’s biggest colonies of large heath butterflies – known as the “Manchester argus” – but numbers plummeted as land was drained for agricultural land and peat extraction. Conservationists from Lancashire Wildlife Trust are now looking to reverse the fortunes of this rare butterfly by restoring a 37-hectare area of peatland between Wigan and Salford where they have recreated habitats of sphagnum moss, cross-leaved heath and hare’s-tail cottongrass on which the butterflies depend. Last summer, staff collected six female butterflies from a population at Winmarleigh moss near Garstang and took them to Chester zoo. The caterpillars spent winter feeding on cotton grass and 45 hand-reared pupae are now being released on to a secret site where they will be kept in protected tents while they emerge from their pupae. Conservationists are going into the tent to check them two or three times a day, releasing any butterflies as they emerge. Heather Prince, who is part of Chester zoo’s invertebrate team, said: “Breeding and rearing butterflies in an incredibly delicate process that requires a fine balance of conditions at each part of their life cycle. Countless hours have been spent inside our specialised breeding centre nurturing the tiny eggs, rearing the larvae and caring for their host plants as well as monitoring their final pupation period. “It will be incredibly rewarding to see large heath butterflies fluttering around in their new home – a place where they’ve been missing for more than 100 years – and know that we’ve contributed to preventing their extinction in this area.” The butterflies rarely fly more than 650m from where they are born so were unlikely to colonise the area alone. Alan Wright, communications manager at the Wildlife Trust for Lancashire, Manchester and North Merseyside, says he hopes there will be a good colony here in the next 10 years. He said: “In Victorian times there were literally thousands of these butterflies in the mossy areas around Manchester. This reintroduction part of a wider effort to get native wildlife back in the right areas … It just seemed right that if we could get Manchester’s butterfly back to the mosses that’s something we should do. Everyone here is absolutely over the moon about this.” Peat extraction means these boggy areas are up to 20 feet lower than they were a century ago and this reintroduction is part of a bigger project to restore greater Manchester’s heavily degraded wetlands. Other species set to be reintroduced include bog bush cricket, white-faced darter dragonfly and carnivorous sundew. The 2019 State of Nature report found 41% of UK butterfly species had declined with one in 10 at risk of extinction. Jo Kennedy, a project coordinator at Lancashire Wildlife Trust, said: “Across our region we have lost 98% of our lowland raised bogs, creating a huge hole in our biodiversity. To function as a healthy ecosystem, we need a tapestry of different and connected habitats each supporting a variety of plants and animals.” There are a few isolated populations of large heath butterflies remaining in England and Wales and larger populations in Scotland. This follows the successful reintroduction of large heath butterflies to Heysham Moss in Lancashire between 2014 and 2016, and conservationists are now planning to reintroduce the butterflies to Risley Moss in Cheshire. | ['environment/series/the-age-of-extinction', 'environment/butterflies', 'environment/biodiversity', 'uk/uk', 'uk/greater-manchester', 'environment/conservation', 'environment/environment', 'environment/insects', 'environment/wildlife', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/phoebe-weston', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-environment', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-age-of-extinction'] | environment/series/the-age-of-extinction | BIODIVERSITY | 2020-05-29T05:00:51Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
environment/article/2024/aug/21/sweden-to-kill-20-per-cent-of-its-brown-bears-in-annual-hunt-aoe | Sweden to kill 20% of its brown bears in annual hunt | Sweden has issued licences to kill 20% of its brown bear population in the country’s annual bear hunt, which begins today, despite concerns from conservationists. Officials have granted licences for just under 500 brown bears to be culled by hunters. That equates to about 20% of the total population, according to official figures, and would bring the number of bears in Sweden down to approximately 2,000 – a drop of almost 40% since 2008. The high number of licences issued has alarmed conservationists, who say large predator populations in Europe could face collapse in some countries without proper protection. “It is a pure trophy hunt,” said Magnus Orrebrant, chair of the Swedish Carnivore Association. “Wildlife management in Sweden is about killing animals instead of preserving them to the best of our ability.” Brown bears were hunted almost to extinction in Sweden in the 1920s, but thanks to careful management the population recovered to a peak of about 3,300 in 2008. Over the past five years, however, increasing numbers of bears have been hunted, culminating in a record 722 killed last year. This year, licences to shoot 486 bears have been issued, and a further indeterminate number could be shot where bears are assessed to be a threat to farm animals. In November 2022, a new law gave local hunting associations more power to oversee the management of large predators, including bears. In recent years, hundreds of wolves and lynx have also been culled, fuelling ecologists’ concerns. Magnus Rydholm, communications director for the Swedish Association for Hunting and Wildlife Management, said: “We are only following the directive of the Swedish government’s wildlife policy. It is all about a balance between humans and the large predators. That’s why the bear hunt starts tomorrow.” But some hunters have expressed concerns over the declining number of brown bears. Anders Nilsson, a hunter in Norrland, in north Sweden, said: “There are those within the hunting community that are concerned about too many bears being killed off.” If hunters continue to kill bears at a similar rate next year, the country will be only one annual hunt away from the minimum number of 1,400, considered necessary by the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency to maintain a viable population. Brown bears are a “strictly protected species” in Europe, and conservationists argue that the high hunting quotas are in breach of the EU habitat directive, which says “deliberate hunting or killing of strictly protected species is prohibited”. Under EU rules, this prohibition can be lifted as a “last resort” to protect public safety, crops or natural flora and fauna. Researchers are concerned that the brown bear is heading the same way as the moose population in Sweden, Orrebrant says, which has declined by 60% since the end of the last century. Conservationists argue that a larger bear population would make Sweden a more attractive destination for ecological tourism, which would bring in more revenue than selling hunting licences. Orrebrant said: “Because the hunters killed off too many moose, the bear is now suffering for it.” | ['environment/series/the-age-of-extinction', 'world/sweden', 'environment/wildlife', 'environment/mammals', 'environment/hunting', 'environment/environment', 'environment/conservation', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-age-of-extinction'] | environment/series/the-age-of-extinction | BIODIVERSITY | 2024-08-21T04:00:49Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
news/2016/oct/24/how-great-storm-brought-rare-delights-birders-weatherwatch | How the Great Storm brough rare delights for birders | It was dubbed “the greatest disaster since the Blitz”, and although that was a major overstatement, anyone who experienced the Great Storm of October 1987 will certainly never forget the events of that turbulent night. Britain’s birders also have good reason to recall the aftermath of the storm, which saw one of the most spectacular “wrecks” of seabirds ever recorded. Usually these occur when westerly gales blow in off the Atlantic, bringing with them a selection of the commoner seabird species such as gannets and guillemots, puffins and kittiwakes, fulmars and razorbills. These may turn up in the most unexpected places: a gannet once landed on a motorway and had to be fenced off with cones as a traffic hazard, while puffins have been picked up in the centre of London, many miles from the nearest open sea. But the strange thing about the Great Storm was that the species involved were not these common and widespread seabirds, but two much rarer ones: Sabine’s gulls and grey phalaropes. Named after the 19th century polar explorer Edward Sabine, his eponymous gull is both beautiful and distinctive; so delighted those birders brave enough to head out to their local reservoir the day after the storm. As a bonus, many birders also discovered grey phalaropes, which were bobbing around in the shallows like tiny bath toys. Both species had been blown in by 100mph winds from the Bay of Biscay, and after feeding to recoup their energy, soon headed back to the high seas for the rest of the winter. | ['news/series/weatherwatch', 'environment/birds', 'uk/weather', 'world/hurricanes', 'environment/birdwatching', 'environment/environment', 'type/article', 'tone/features', 'profile/stephenmoss1', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/weather2', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-weather'] | news/series/weatherwatch | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2016-10-24T20:30:03Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
environment/2022/apr/28/dirty-air-affects-97-of-uk-homes-data-shows | Dirty air affects 97% of UK homes, data shows | Virtually every home in the UK is subjected to air pollution above World Health Organization guidelines, according to the most detailed map of dirty air to date. More than 97% of addresses exceed WHO limits for at least one of three key pollutants, while 70% of addresses breach WHO limits for all three. The map, produced by the non-profit group the Central Office of Public Interest (Copi) and Imperial College London, combined 20,000 measurements with computer modelling to produce pollution estimates every 20 metres across the country. People can check their address at the website addresspollution.org for free. The website also ranks each address against national pollution levels. For example, Buckingham Palace in London is in the 98th percentile, with highly polluted air, while Balmoral Castle in Scotland is in the zero percentile, with the cleanest air. The towns and cities with the highest proportion of homes in the top 10% most polluted nationally are Slough in Berkshire, with 90%, followed by London, with 66%. Others in the worst 10 include Portsmouth, Leeds, Manchester and Reading. Copi is calling for a legal requirement for air pollution data to be disclosed to home buyers and renters, as is already the case with asbestos, for example. “Air pollution affects all of us. With this new accurate data now publicly available, it would be shameful for the property industry to not start acting transparently – lives depend on it,” said Humphrey Milles, the founder of Copi, which promotes public awareness campaigns on issues it says are being neglected by government. The WHO sharply reduced its guideline limits for air pollution in September, to reflect the increasing scientific evidence of the harm to health caused by toxic air. A 2019 review concluded that air pollution may be damaging every organ in the body, causing at least 7 million early deaths a year worldwide and about 40,000 in the UK. The WHO says air pollution is the biggest environmental threat to human health and is a public health emergency. The UK’s legal limit for nitrogen dioxide is four times higher than the new WHO limit, but is still not met in most urban areas. The country’s legal limit for tiny particles less than 2.5 microns in size (PM2.5) is five times higher than the WHO limit, while the UK limit for PM10 is 2.7 times higher. The air pollution campaigner Rosamund Kissi-Debrah said: “This new data shows yet again that the government is failing the British public. Now people can really see the filthy air they’re breathing at their home, school or work address. Everyone needs to know what they’re breathing, and now with this new public service they can.” Kissi-Debrah’s nine-year old daughter Ella died in 2013, and a landmark coroner’s ruling later cited air pollution as a cause of death. The coroner then issued an official “report to prevent future deaths” in April 2021, which said: “Greater awareness [of air pollution] would help individuals reduce their personal exposure to air pollution. Publicising this information is an issue that needs to be addressed by national as well as local government.” Prof Sir Stephen Holgate, a special adviser on air pollution to the Royal College of Physicians, said: “Air pollution is an invisible killer, and it’s easy for people to forget and ignore. It’s essential that the public are given air pollution data for where they are thinking of buying or renting. In many cases like that of little Ella, it can be a matter of life or death.” Rebecca Marsh, the UK’s property ombudsman, said: “Air pollution is information all consumers should be aware of before they make a decision on a specific property. Arguably, this is material information that all sellers or landlords should be providing.” The map shows annual average pollution levels for 2019, the last year that was unaffected by Covid-19 lockdowns and travel restrictions. Even using the previous higher WHO guidelines, 55% of UK addresses would still breach the limit for at least one of the three pollutants. Sean Beevers, a researcher at Imperial College, said: “It is not just a London problem, so people should be thinking about air pollution more. What had previously been seen as reasonable levels have now been thrown out the window.” Beevers said, however, that the models were not perfect and cautioned against seeing places with slightly higher estimates of air pollution as necessarily worse than nearby places with slightly lower pollution. | ['environment/air-pollution', 'environment/pollution', 'uk/uk', 'environment/environment', 'uk/london', 'uk-news/portsmouth', 'uk-news/reading', 'uk/salford', 'uk/leeds', 'uk/manchester', 'uk/stockport', 'uk-news/southampton', 'type/article', 'profile/damiancarrington', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/topstories', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-environment'] | environment/pollution | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE | 2022-04-28T19:00:19Z | true | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE |
environment/2008/jan/07/nuclearpower.alternativeenergy | Consumers may foot nuclear bill | Consumers may face higher electricity bills to cover the future decommissioning costs of a new generation of nuclear power stations to be announced this week, the Guardian has learned. Ministers have met several electricity firms known to be interested in building up to 10 new stations and they are understood to have demanded long term commitments to guarantee their investments - expected to be about £10bn a station. Energy secretary John Hutton is to announce the government's decision on the proposed nuclear programme this week. It is understood that plans have been agreed for the government to collect a fee from the companies for each unit of electricity used in British homes to build up a fund to meet decommissioning costs. It is expected this extra fee will be passed on to consumers in the form of higher bills. Despite government assurances that the public sector would not be asked to pay for the new reactors, this also raises the prospect that if the fund did not cover the full decommissioning costs, the shortfall - which could run into billions - would be paid by the taxpayer. Government sources also suggest that any firms offering to build new nuclear reactors will not be asked to pay the full cost of storing the hundreds of thousands of tonnes of highly radioactive waste they produce. Instead, they will be allowed to "rent" space in a giant nuclear waste vault to be built by the government, so avoiding massive construction costs. The companies have also demanded a government guarantee on a minimum price of carbon over the lifetime of the stations - possibly up to 50 years. With the cost of carbon high, nuclear energy has an edge over fossil fuels under the nascent EU emissions trading scheme, but were it to collapse the long term viability of nuclear would be threatened. Yesterday, a spokesman for EDF, the French state-owned company which has offered to build four reactors in Britain, said the company had been in talks with the UK government about guaranteeing a minimum carbon price on the EU emissions trading scheme. This was important, he said, because the price of carbon partly determined the cost of the electricity provided and the guarantee would make it easier to raise money. It is understood that the government would not be obliged to pay out any money unless the carbon price collapsed. "It's not a subsidy, or a long term guarantee, but the EU carbon trading scheme does not quite work yet . We can see how it works for the next five years but not after that. We have a 60 year operating life," the spokesman said. The taxpayer will also foot the bill of nearly £1bn to compensate the community eventually chosen to host the permanent nuclear waste repository, as well as the cost of security at potential sites, the transport of waste and the extra cost of any required increase in the size of transmission lines for the national grid. Ministers have consistently said that any new generation of nuclear power stations would be built by the private sector without public subsidies. Instead, nuclear opponents accuse the government of trying to smooth the financial path for prospective nuclear companies. No nuclear power stations have been built in Britain for nearly 20 years, largely because banks have been unprepared to risk money on an industry that has consistently needed to be rescued from near bankruptcy. The National Audit Office says the government has been left with liabilities of up to £5.1bn since the virtual collapse of nuclear company British Energy, as well as £70bn in existing waste. A spokesman for the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform said: "If we were to allow a new generation of nuclear stations ... the private sector would have to pay the cost of any clean up and waste during the lifetime of the reactors." | ['environment/nuclearpower', 'environment/renewableenergy', 'environment/climate-crisis', 'environment/environment', 'environment/energy', 'type/article', 'profile/johnvidal', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/topstories'] | environment/nuclearpower | ENERGY | 2008-01-07T14:57:37Z | true | ENERGY |
sustainable-business/2016/sep/26/africa-solar-mobile-revolution-stolen-mali-kenya-ghana | Africa's portable solar revolution is thwarting thieves | When South Africa’s government started giving laptops to off-grid schools, James van der Walt spotted an opportunity for a solar business. But his market research revealed a problem: of 12 schools he visited, 11 had previously lost solar panels to thieves. So he decided to pack his system into a reinforced shipping container, creating a secure, mobile power station that could be shut away at the end of each day. The prototype Solar Turtle has survived its first year powering a school in the Eastern Cape, despite civil unrest that forced the school to close for three months. Save for some scratches where someone tried to break in, the unit came through intact. “Nothing got broken, nothing got damaged,” says van der Walt. “It was like, ‘Yes, it’s actually working’.” Solar Turtle is just one example from a clutch of startups trying to navigate the challenges of Africa’s off-grid electricity sector with mobile, flexible solar technology. It’s part of a mosaic of businesses, social enterprises and philanthropic schemes fuelling talk of an African “solar revolution”. Other startups include Juabar and ARED, which supply portable solar kiosks for phone-charging businesses in Tanzania and Rwanda respectively, creating jobs while boosting access to clean, cheap energy. New ideas and declining costs are already leading to a dramatic uptake of solar technology across Africa, according to a report published this week by the International Renewable Energy Agency. Van der Walt is not alone in using shipping containers. German firm Africa GreenTec created a similar grid-in-a-box for villages in Mali to attract investors nervous about the vulnerability of conventional technology in unstable regions. “This way we can recover the whole thing if there is any crisis,” says founder Torsten Schreiber. “We only need a few hours to put it on a truck and leave.” It’s unsurprising that entrepreneurs are seeking routes into Africa’s off-grid solar sector. More than 630 million people lack electricity in sub-Saharan Africa, according to the International Energy Agency. The majority of additional investment required to achieve the UN target of universal energy access by 2030 needs to go into off-grid and mini-grid systems, it has said. One hope is that electrification won’t just bring light, TV and phone charging, but spawn new industries too. Africa GreenTec’s prototype, launched in south-west Mali’s Mourdiah village in 2015, offers a glimpse of what’s possible. Locals used to throw away 80% of their goats’ milk, says Schreiber, but thanks to energy for cooling from the solar container, they now use it to make cheese. Mango juice is also newly on sale. Despite the buzz around such ventures, most are very small and in need of funds. Commercial investors have shown some appetite for backing bigger players such as solar systems business M-Kopa Solar, which raised $19m in one investment round last November. But young, innovative startups still rely on money from donors and so-called impact investors, who look for social benefits as well as a financial return, says the Global Off-Grid Lighting Association’s executive director, Koen Peters. Schreiber’s experience at Africa GreenTec bears this out. Having crowdfunded the money for four containers (at around €150,000 a go) he is now looking to mainstream investors to back 50 more. This plan would make him the biggest decentralised energy provider in Mali, he says, but is too small for venture capitalists approached to date: “They told me ‘If you need $100m, come again’,” he says. Solar startups are also vulnerable to competition when they have proved their model and are ready to grow, says Itamar Orlandi, senior analyst at Bloomberg New Energy Finance. “Pioneers often work really hard to create consumer awareness just to see their margins and market share disappear once their success attracts competitors,” he adds. Research on a Zambian mini-grid by the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) reveals another, potentially knottier, challenge for electrification startups with big dreams. The 60 kilowatt pilot in Mpanta, a fishing village, lost customers when a six-month fishing ban kicked in, says Oliver Johnson, senior research fellow at SEI’s Africa Centre. Designing the right system, or payment plan, requires deep understanding of local conditions, he says. “The big question is how do you scale up things that need to be context-specific?” Answering that may get easier as domestic expertise and supply chains grow – something Gillian Davies, a renewable energy expert at UK-based international development consultancy IOD PARC, has been monitoring. She points to emergent solar panel manufacturers in Kenya and Ghana, and the fact you can now take a renewable energy degree in Malawi’s Mzuzu University. This shift to domestic capacity and expertise will ultimately help with finding solutions that better match local, or at least regional, conditions, says Davies. Products that directly boost income generation may also have an advantage over generic electrification when it comes to creating sustainable, scalable ventures, says Toby Hammond, whose Kenya-based company Futurepump sells solar-powered irrigation pumps to small-scale farmers. “Being able to irrigate a crop in dry season when you wouldn’t otherwise be able to grow anything translates directly into income for the farm,” he says. “It’s more bankable.” | ['sustainable-business/sustainable-business', 'sustainable-business/series/spotlight-on-africa', 'world/africa', 'global-development/global-development', 'world/world', 'environment/solarpower', 'environment/energy', 'environment/environment', 'environment/renewableenergy', 'world/mali', 'world/kenya', 'world/ghana', 'world/zambia', 'world/southafrica', 'type/article', 'tone/sponsoredfeatures', 'tone/features', 'profile/olivia-boyd', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-professional-networks'] | environment/renewableenergy | ENERGY | 2016-09-26T10:35:11Z | true | ENERGY |
news/2020/sep/25/weatherwatch-did-marco-set-the-scene-for-hurricane-sally | Weatherwatch: did Marco set the scene for Hurricane Sally? | Last week Hurricane Sally caused havoc along the US Gulf Coast. In what’s turning out to be an exceptional hurricane season (looking set to rival 2005’s record-breaking 28 named Atlantic storms), it turns out that Sally’s last minute ferocity may have been fuelled by Hurricane Marco three weeks previously. Back in October 2018 Hurricane Michael became the strongest storm on record to make landfall on the Florida Panhandle. This category 5 hurricane took everyone by surprise: intensifying rapidly and resulting in 16 fatalities and $25bn in damage. Brian Dzwonkowski, from the University of South Alabama, and colleagues, analysed the conditions that preceded Michael and found that the scene was set five weeks earlier, when tropical storm Gordon powered through, churning the water on the tropical shelf and removing the cool bottom layer. Their research, published in Nature Communications, shows that warm weather then reheated the upper ocean, creating the fuel to intensify Michael. And without the cool bottom layer there was nothing to slow Michael down. Coupled hurricanes and heatwaves like these are likely to become more frequent in a warming world, but understanding how they interact will help forecasters to improve predictions of storm intensity and decide when evacuation is necessary. | ['news/series/weatherwatch', 'environment/climate-crisis', 'world/extreme-weather', 'science/meteorology', 'us-news/hurricane-michael', 'us-news/us-weather', 'us-news/florida', 'type/article', 'tone/features', 'profile/kate-ravilious', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/weather2', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-weather'] | us-news/hurricane-michael | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2020-09-25T20:30:03Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
environment/2024/jan/31/eu-delays-biodiversity-rules-amid-rising-protests-from-farmers | EU to delay new green rule in bid to appease protesting farmers | Farmers protesting across Europe have won their first concession from Brussels, with the EU announcing a delay in rules that would have forced them to set aside land to encourage biodiversity and soil health. About 10,000 French farmers stepped up their protests on Wednesday, with at least 100 blockades on major roads across France, as 18 farmers were arrested for blocking traffic as they tried to reach the wholesale food market at Rungis, south-east of Paris and 79 others were detained after they managed to get inside. Belgian farmers joined protests at the French border and others blocked access roads to the Zeebrugge container port for a second day. Spanish and Italian farmers also demonstrated. The European Commission vice-president, Maroš Šefčovič, described Wednesday’s decision to delay rules on setting aside land, which is expected to be rubber-stamped by member states within 15 days, as “a helping hand” for the sector at a difficult time. Citing flooding, wildfires in Greece, heatwaves across southern Europe and drought in Spain which has left reservoirs in Andalucia at 20% normal levels, he said it was important to listen to farmers and “to avoid the polarisation which is making any good conversation and discussion more difficult. “We feel we are obliged to act under this pressure which the farming community [is feeling],” he said. “We have had a number of extreme meteorological events, droughts, flooding in various parts of Europe, and there was a clear negative effect on the output, on the revenue – and of course, decreased income – for the farmers.” Combined with higher energy prices, the weather-related risks to crops meant farmers were at a “persistent pain point” that was “driving up the cost of production and squeezing revenues”, Šefčovič said. Under the rules, farmers were expected to keep 4% of their arable land free from crop production in an effort to regenerate the health of the soil and increase biodiversity, which is also in crisis. Alternatively, farmers could have got an exemption from this “set-aside” rule if they had used 7% of their land for “catch crops” such as clover, which provide cover for the soil after the main crop is harvested. However, under the new proposals, farmers will not be obliged to set aside fallow land, or any portion of land for catch crops, until 2025. The change comes as farm protests have been intensifying, in the past 24 hours. On Wednesday, French farmers from the south-west of the country managed to get around police barriers south of Paris by taking back-roads or switching from tractors to trucks in order to reach the area near the Rungis food market. The French interior minister, Gérald Darmanin, had warned that while farmers’ protests on motorways would be tolerated, police would not allow them to block airports or Rungis, Europe’s largest fresh food market. The Créteil prosecutor’s office outside Paris said that 15 of the 18 farmers arrested near Rungis were in custody being questioned by police. French farmers also blocked roads around Lyon. At a farmers’ roadblock in Cavaillon in the south, foreign produce, including Italian kiwifruit and pears, was unloaded from lorries. Virgile, a farmer demonstrating, told BFMTV: “This is about the anger of country people being treated by fools. We work like dogs. Our message is: Buy French produce, make that effort.” After days spent calling for higher incomes, less red tape and protection from foreign competition, “there are huge expectations” among farmers, said Arnaud Rousseau, the head of France’s largest agricultural union, the FNSEA. He added that not all of the demands could be immediately answered “so I’m trying to call for calm and reason”. Until now, farmers have not been impressed with the quick fixes offered by politicians or officials in Brussels. They have concerns about the high cost of land, the pressure from supermarkets to sell crops at near-cost prices, and the plethora of new environment rules coming in the form of EU nature restoration laws. Their critics say EU farmers are among the most cosseted sectors in the industry, with more than €307bn (£260bn) – 30% of the overall EU budget – earmarked for them between 2023 and 2027. Asked if Wednesday’s concession would be enough to quell the protests, Šefčovič admitted that the EU had to “intensify” the dialogue with farmers to make sure they were listened to. “We have to make sure that Europe will become a continent which will be habitable, also, in the future,” he added. The European Commission will also set up measures to limit market disruption from Ukrainian products entering the EU, after tariffs were lifted in response to Russia’s invasion. France will oppose a trade deal between the European Union and the South American Mercosur bloc – a key grievance for protesters – being signed in its current state. The French economy minister, Bruno Le Maire, said there would be closer surveillance of European food trading platforms to ensure that “farmers’ income is not the first thing to be sacrificed in trade negotiations”. | ['environment/farming', 'environment/conservation', 'environment/biodiversity', 'environment/environment', 'science/agriculture', 'world/eu', 'world/europe-news', 'science/science', 'environment/wildlife', 'world/world', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/lisaocarroll', 'profile/angeliquechrisafis', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/international', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-foreign'] | environment/wildlife | BIODIVERSITY | 2024-01-31T15:57:24Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
environment/2012/may/11/water-rotterdam-climate-proof | Car parks and playgrounds to help make Rotterdam 'climate proof' | Windmills that feature in the landscapes painted by the Dutch old masters are a reminder that the low-landers of this nation are past masters at keeping the tide at bay. Along with dykes, the first of which were built about 1,000 years ago, drainage mills have been effective at keeping water out of a land where 60% of its inhabitants live below sea level. But new ways of dealing with water need to be found as climate change brings with it heavier rains and rising tides, said Arnoud Molenaar, manager of the Rotterdam climate-proof programme. Rotterdam is the Netherlands' second-biggest city, located in a delta of the Rhine and Meuse rivers. Around 90% of it is below sea level, making it particularly vulnerable. "We've always invested in prevention, wanting to keep the water out, but now we are trying to find solutions to live with the water. Keeping on with traditional techniques like raising the dykes is coming to an end because it's not possible to raise them higher and higher," said Molenaar, an adviser to mayor Ahmed Aboutaleb. Although rightwing Dutch politicians question the reality of climate change, Rotterdam is facing increasingly frequent small-scale flooding. The key to coming up with politically palatable solutions, said Molenaar, is to present them as "opportunities". That means devising double-purpose measures, including: • A parking garage built last year that incorporates a 10,000 cubic metre underground rainwater store. Expensive underground structures aren't generally favoured in the flood-prone city but several million euros were saved by combining the car park and water store; • "Water plazas" that under normal conditions are playgrounds but that temporarily hold water during heavy rain, then slowly release it to the drainage system; • An Olympic rowing course that doubles as a water store; • Rooftop gardens that absorb rain and CO2 and reduce the urban island temperature effect, being built at a rate of 40,000 square metres a year with a 50% subsidy; • Premium-priced floating communities on waterside sites vacated as facilities of Europe's biggest port are moved nearer the coast. The climate-proofing effort, that is costing about €100m, is mapped out in a long-term plan called Rotterdam Water City 2035, sometimes referred to as the city's "wet dream", said Molenaar. It's a dream that other river cities are able to share. Rotterdam-based Connecting Delta Cities (CDC), an offshoot of the C40 climate leadership group backed by a charity of former US president Bill Clinton, has been set up for cities such as London, New York and Tokyo to swap notes on water management and climate adaptation. Molenaar said they were also mindful of the economic spin-offs as the World Bank and Asian Development Bank begin to pour "billions of euros" into making vulnerable low-lying delta cities climate-proof. "Who is going to do this? The Dutch want to be involved." | ['environment/flooding', 'world/world', 'world/natural-disasters', 'environment/environment', 'environment/climate-crisis', 'environment/water', 'world/netherlands', 'world/europe-news', 'environment/sea-level', 'environment/oceans', 'tone/features', 'cities/cities', 'type/article'] | environment/sea-level | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2012-05-11T09:58:44Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
sport/2021/nov/18/english-cricket-nuclear-option-regulator-sports-minister-racism | Alex Hales pictured in blackface as English cricket handed a new blow | Cricket’s bruising week took yet another hit on Thursday night when the former England batsman Alex Hales admitted painting his face black for a New Year’s Eve party in 2009. Hales, who this week denied he had named his black dog Kevin after a racial slur allegedly used at Yorkshire by Gary Ballance, was forced to explain why he attended the party with a black face. Hales told the Sun: “In 2009, I attended a New Year’s Eve musical tribute fancy dress party. I dressed in tribute to my musical hero, Tupac Shakur, someone who I’ve admired from childhood and, at the time, did not realise the offensive nature of this. I echo my statement from earlier in the week and stress how much I deplore racism and discrimination in all its forms.” It was the latest development on a day where the Yorkshire whistleblower Azeem Rafiq had to himself apologise for sending antisemitic messages to a fellow cricketer more than a decade ago while the government warned of further action if the sport did not get its house in order. The sports minister, Nigel Huddleston, sent out the threat after finding Rafiq’s testimony to MPs on Tuesday “harrowing” and “alarming”. Speaking to the same digital, culture, media and sport select committee as Rafiq had earlier in the week, he revealed he had met the England and Wales Cricket Board’s chief executive, Tom Harrison, and had been given “assurances that he will do whatever it takes in order to correct the wrongs”. But Huddleston also put the sport on notice and said that if it did not start making demonstrable changes within weeks and months, the government was prepared to step in. “The secretary of state, Nadine Dorries, has been very clear to me that if we don’t see sufficient action being taken then we as a government will intervene in whatever way is necessary,” Huddleston said, before suggesting the “nuclear option” would be to establish an independent regulator and look into the financial flows of public money into the sport. Huddleston reminded cricket that the fan-led review in football, which is expected to recommend an independent regulator when it reports this month, had come about because of the sport’s failure to get its act together. “With cricket, I’d say the clock’s ticking on this, we might well go down that route as well.” However, he said the government needed to be very careful about cutting investment because a lot of Sport England’s funding of cricket supported schemes promoting diversity. “What we all want is for cricket to get its house in order and get its act together and sort this problem out,” he said. Huddleston also agreed with MPs that Yorkshire’s treatment of Rafiq demonstrated they were institutionally racist. “I think it is, to the extent that racist language was normalised and seen as acceptable and that some people didn’t seem to realise or recognise that what they were doing and saying was racist, and I think that’s probably the definition of institutional racism,” he said. But, as Huddleston made clear, it was not just Yorkshire where there was a problem. As far back as 2014, the academic Thomas Fletcher had conducted two reports, first for the ECB and then for Yorkshire a year later, that had studied how British Asians were being treated in the game. Yet both had been sat on. “The speed with which Yorkshire seems to have responded to Azeem Rafiq’s concerns seems to have been extraordinarily slow, and therefore that raises questions about how seriously the sport takes the issues that were raised,” Huddleston said. “The Fletcher report was 2014. Azeem Rafiq’s case began formally in 2017. So we’ve seen the fact that this has been clearly kicked into the long grass for years. That’s not appropriate. So I think we need a little bit of time for the ECB and Lord Patel [Yorkshire’s new chairman], who’s conducting his review, to think about what actions may be taken but I think we’re all impatient here, including myself.” Harrison, meanwhile, is likely to come under pressure from some quarters when the 41 ECB members, including all 18 first-class counties, the national counties and the MCC, meet on Friday afternoon. However, Huddleston appeared to suggest the sport’s governing body should be given time when asked whether he believed its executives had the talent and skills required to turn cricket around. “I would like to believe that they do,” said Huddleston. “And certainly we’re hearing positive noises. Tom has given his absolute sincere commitment that he understands the issues and he wants to fix them.” He added: “I’m not saying that I have absolute confidence at the moment. I’ve heard positive noises, but we will judge them by their deeds and their actions. The ECB does have quite significant and substantial resources. Cricket is not one of the poorer sports.” As the fallout from Rafiq’s testimony continues, Somerset have officially reprimanded Jack Brooks for past use of racist language. The seamer was investigated for offensive tweets dating back to 2012, the year he left Northamptonshire for Yorkshire, as well as his use of the name Steve for his former White Rose teammate Cheteshwar Pujara. Brooks’s habit of refusing to use Pujara’s given name against the India batter’s wishes was discussed by Rafiq at the select committee. A Somerset statement said: “The club has decided to reprimand Jack, remind him of his responsibilities and require him to participate in extensive training on equality, diversity and inclusivity. “The club have spoken with Jack at length about the nature and content of his comments. There is no doubt that these comments are unacceptable. Jack … is embarrassed and devastated that his comments offended people and he has acknowledged that, whilst they were made nearly a decade ago when he was less mature, the content of the posts was wrong. Jack has engaged honestly and openly throughout the investigation and unreservedly apologised for his past errors.” | ['sport/cricket', 'sport/ecb', 'world/race', 'sport/sport', 'sport/sport-politics', 'sport/azeem-rafiq', 'sport/yorkshire', 'sport/england-cricket-team', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/seaningle', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/sport', 'theguardian/sport/news', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-sport'] | sport/ecb | UNRELATED_TO_CLIMATE | 2021-11-19T00:18:44Z | true | UNRELATED_TO_CLIMATE |
sustainable-business/2016/aug/06/rios-waste-pickers-people-spat-at-us-but-now-were-at-the-olympics | Rio's waste pickers: 'People spat at us but now we're at the Olympics' #Rio2016 | Claudete Da Costa started working as a waste picker with her mother when she was 11 years old, collecting recyclable goods in Rio de Janeiro to sell to scrap merchants. “We were ashamed,” she says. “People saw us and spat at us, thought we were thieves.” Today, 36-year-old Da Costa’s outlook has changed. She is the Rio de Janeiro representative for Brazil’s National Movement of Waste Pickers, whose mission is to improve workers’ rights and increase recognition of the contribution made by one of Brazil’s most marginalised professions. This month, Da Costa and 240 other pickers from 33 of Rio’s waste collecting co-operatives – autonomous groups that collect the city’s rubbish throughout the year – are formally contracted to handle recyclable waste during the Olympic Games. The pickers will be spread across three of the four Olympic sites – Maracana, Olympic Park and Deodoro – where they will collect recyclable goods such as plastic bottles and aluminium cans, and take them to a depot to be sorted, stored and sold on by the co-ops to scrap merchants. The co-operatives will divide the profits from the sale of the recycled materials between workers and investment in new equipment. In addition, each waste picker will be paid a fixed daily salary of R$80 (£19) by the Olympic Committee. In contrast, at the Ecco Ponto co-operative, for example, where Da Costa is president, pickers normally take home around R$30 (£7) a day. “I’m excited for the money,” says 49-year-old Erineia Goncalves, a single mother of two who hopes to leave her rented accommodation and build her own house in the favela where she lives. According to Rio 2016’s head of sustainability, Tania Braga – who says the Olympics Committee predicts the pickers will be handling an estimated 3,500 tonnes of recyclables over the course of the Games – the cost of hiring the waste pickers is roughly the same as it would have been to hire a private cleaning business. Braga also says that the project is not an attempt to outsource responsibility since, if anything goes wrong, Rio 2016 will be jointly responsible because the waste pickers are working inside their venues. However, she adds that as the pickers have been hired under a professional contract, they will not receive their wages if they do not fulfil their obligations (for example, if they don’t turn up to work), although she thinks this unlikely. “It’s in their interest to perform, they want this opportunity,” says Braga. “They are very well prepared. We built logistics together with them and we were very impressed during the planning phase. So this gives us a lot of confidence.” Ricardo Alves de Oliveira, a policy coordinator at Rio’s environment office, and Braga say they are also confident in the co-operatives’ ability to handle the volume of waste as they were successful against private companies for the tender of the contract. The Rio Olympics waste pickers programme is a partnership between Rio 2016, Coca-Cola, Rio state government and Brazil’s federal government, which together have invested R$3m (£720,000) in the scheme. Rio’s waste pickers, made famous by the movie Waste Land, are not an uncommon phenomenon. The vast majority of Brazilian cities lack formal recycling programmes and separation is largely done by waste pickers, who search bins and scour pavements for recyclable goods such as aluminium cans. And, since mass collection gives better prices per weight, waste pickers in co-operatives can earn more money. “Brazil is only beginning to understand the advantages of recycling, of selective collection,” says Haroldo Mendonça, solidarity economy coordinator at the labour ministry. “But we can give an example to other countries to show how to combine environmental care with economic empowerment.” Rio de Janeiro authorities hope to capitalise on the Olympics recycling project by continuing to use the model for the city’s annual events, such as the Rio Carnival and New Year’s Eve on Copacabana beach. A similar, smaller scale version was used during Brazil’s football World Cup in 2014. “This model will be an example for the whole country to replicate,” says Ricardo Alves de Oliveira, a policy coordinator at Rio’s environment office. “We will leave a legacy for all big events in Rio.” | ['sustainable-business/series/circular-economy', 'sustainable-business/sustainable-business', 'environment/waste', 'environment/recycling', 'sport/rio-2016', 'environment/environment', 'business/cocacola', 'world/brazil', 'uk/olympic-legacy', 'sport/olympic-games', 'business/business', 'sport/sport', 'uk/uk', 'world/world', 'world/americas', 'type/article', 'tone/features', 'tone/sponsoredfeatures', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-professional-networks'] | environment/waste | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE | 2016-08-06T07:00:00Z | true | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE |
us-news/2015/may/30/swordfish-kills-fisherman-hawaii | Swordfish kills fisherman who speared it during struggle in Hawaii | A swordfish impaled a Hawaiian fisherman after having been speared by the fisherman itself, state officials said on Saturday. Police named the victim as 47-year-old Randy Llanes, saying he had grabbed his speargun and jumped into Honokohau harbor on Friday morning when he spotted a broadbill swordfish near his boat. Llanes speared the fish, but as it struggled to escape the spear’s line got tangled in a mooring anchor. Caught on the anchor, the fish swam back around toward Llanes at a high speed and struck him in the chest with its 3ft bill. Although Llanes was quickly pulled from the water and emergency personnel arrived minutes later, CPR attempts proved unable to revive him, according to the state Department of Land and Natural Resources. Shortly afterward Llanes was pronounced dead at the hospital, where a large crowd of people gathered to pay their condolences. A Hawaii native, Llanes had worked for more than 18 years as captain for a charter fishing business, and had more than 25 years of experience fishing in the archipelago’s waters. “Hawaii is one of those rare places where sea monsters still exist and world records can still be broken,” he wrote on his company’s website. “My greatest pleasure is being able to share the excitement and natural wonder of the Hawaiian offshore fishing experience with others.” He was described by family members as an intimidating but generous man. “He was a tough guy, he was such a tough guy that everyone’s scared of him, the whole harbor’s scared of him,” Kalina Llanes, the man’s sister-in-law, told KITV news. She added that those who knew him well were “not scared of him because he has such a big heart”. Llanes’ friend Dale Leverone told Khon the fiserhman was “just a great local boy. A good attitude, good person, a help-anybody kind of guy. He had a heck of a lot of friends.” Leverone described him as an “accomplished fisherman”, saying “he actually caught a 500-pound marlin yesterday out of his skiff.” State officials also pulled the 6ft, 40lb fish from the water. Largely an open-ocean species, swordfish rarely swim in shallow waters. County police and conservation officials said they are investigating the incident, and said that while such accidents are rare, swordfish and other large billfish are aggressive and fast animals who have injured and killed humans before. In 2004, a Malaysian man out fishing was killed by a swordfish when the animal leapt from the water and delivered a fatal blow to the chest. A year earlier, a researcher studying whales in the water survived a marlin’s lancing off the coast of Maui after the fish veered into him to escape its predators. | ['us-news/hawaii', 'us-news/us-news', 'environment/marine-life', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/alan-yuhas'] | environment/marine-life | BIODIVERSITY | 2015-05-30T21:21:53Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
environment/2018/mar/27/bottle-and-can-deposit-return-scheme-gets-green-light-in-england | Bottle and can deposit return scheme gets green light in England | All drinks containers in England, whether plastic, glass or metal, will be covered by a deposit return scheme, the government has announced. The forthcoming scheme is intended to cut the litter polluting the land and sea by returning a small cash sum to consumers who return their bottles and cans. Similar schemes operate in 38 countries, and campaigners have worked for a decade for its introduction in England. Fees vary depending on the size of the bottle or can and many use “reverse vending machines” to automate the return. Once returned, retailers are responsible for properly recycling the containers. Deposit return schemes (DRS) have increased recycling rates to more than 90% in other countries. At present just 43% of the 13bn plastic bottles sold each year in the UK are recycled, and 700,000 are littered every day. In Germany, a DRS was introduced in 2003 and 99% of plastic bottles are recycled. “We can be in no doubt that plastic is wreaking havoc on our marine environment,” said the environment secretary, Michael Gove. “It is absolutely vital we act now to tackle this threat and curb the millions of plastic bottles a day that go unrecycled. We have already banned harmful microbeads and cut plastic bag use, and now we want to take action on plastic bottles to help clean up our oceans.” The new DRS for England announced by Gove is subject to a consultation this year and it is not yet clear whether all retailers of single-use drinks will be required to participate. The government says it “will only take forward options from the consultation which demonstrate that they offer clear benefits and are resistant to fraud, and costs on businesses, consumers and the taxpayer are proportionate”. The Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) has lobbied for a DRS for a decade and its litter programme director, Samantha Harding, said: “I am thrilled that we will finally see the many benefits a deposit system will bring to England, not least the absence of ugly drinks containers in our beautiful countryside. “What’s significant is that producers will now pay the full costs of their packaging, reducing the burden on the taxpayer and setting a strong precedent for other schemes where the polluter pays,” she added. Bill Bryson, author and former CPRE president, said: “I wholeheartedly congratulate Michael Gove for his wisdom in finally accepting the case for a deposit return system in the UK.” The Green party’s co-leader Caroline Lucas, a member of the Environmental Audit Committee of MPs which backed a DRS in December, said: “After a long delay it is good to see the government moving forward on this issue. This scheme should have been introduced long ago – and it is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to reducing plastic waste.” “If ministers really are serious about tackling the scourge of plastic pollution they will implement this deposit return scheme as soon as possible, then revise their utterly unambitious target of eliminating unavoidable single-use plastics by 2042,” she said. Tanya Steele, WWF’s chief executive, said: “Plastic waste in the UK will rise by a fifth by 2030. We need to be tackling the problem on all fronts by reducing, reusing and recycling. That means introducing a standard approach to recycling and, ultimately, ending the use of avoidable single-use plastic by 2025.” Elena Polisano, oceans campaigner at Greenpeace UK, said: “It’s good to see the government listen to public opinion. If the system is UK-wide, applicable to drinks containers of all sizes, and available everywhere they are sold, it will make a huge difference to the plastic problem.” But she added: “The government must be careful to avoid a voluntary scheme that only applies to some retailers.” Scotland announced its plan for a DRS in September and the Westminster government said it would talk to the devolved administrations about working together on the issue. The Co-op and Aldi have backed a DRS, but the British Retail Consortium has opposed it. The number of single-use plastic bags used in England has fallen by 80% since a 5p charge was introduced, and the country has followed the US and others in banning plastic microbeads in personal hygiene products. However, another environmental scheme touted by ministers – a scrappage scheme for highly polluting diesel cars – appears to have been dropped. Last year a Guardian investigation revealed that a million plastic bottles are made around the globe every minute – and that figure is only likely to increase after it emerged that fossil fuel companies are investing billions of pounds in new plastic production facilities in the US. In the UK supermarkets are a major source of plastic pollution. This year the Guardian reported that the major chains create almost 1m tonnes of plastic packaging waste every year. | ['environment/plastic', 'environment/plastic-bags', 'environment/pollution', 'uk/uk', 'environment/recycling', 'environment/environment', 'environment/ethical-living', 'environment/waste', 'business/business', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/damiancarrington', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/topstories', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-environment'] | environment/waste | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE | 2018-03-27T21:05:17Z | true | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE |
environment/2010/nov/15/natural-history-museum-chaco-expedition-halted | Natural History Museum's grand expedition to arid Chaco halted | Paraguay has tonight formally suspended a Natural History Museum expedition, arranged to investigate part of the nation's virgin dry forest, to allow more time for consultation with the indigenous people. The museum had been criticised in South America and Europe for its plans to send up to 60 botanists, zoologists and other scientists to an area of the dry Chaco forest, the only place in Latin America outside the Amazon where tribes uncontacted by outsiders are known to live. Fears were raised by some settled Ayoreo Indians that the scientists and their large back-up teams could stumble upon groups of indigenous peoples living in voluntary isolation, and pass on dangerous and even fatal diseases. Last week other Ayoreo leaders signed a letter saying they were happy for the expedition to continue. The trip is one of the largest mounted by the museum in many years. Last night neither the museum, based in London, nor the Paraguayan government could say how long the talks might last. A spokeswoman in London said: "The ministry for the environment of Paraguay has decided to undertake further consultation with the Ayoreo people and there will be a suspension of activities while this takes place. The concerns of the uncontacted people are extremely important to us. We will continue to take advice on these matters from the Paraguayan authorities." The Paraguayan government has been deeply embarrassed that some Ayoreo leaders have claimed they knew nothing about the scientists' trip until learning about it in the press. The expedition has led to some indigenous rights groups threatening to take the Paraguayan state to court for violating its own laws on the rights of self-determination of its indigenous peoples. "All projects have to carry out a 'free, previous and informed' consultation. If an institution doesn't proceed in this way, they have violated the rights of indigenous people," said Carlos Picanerai, secretary general of the Co-ordination for the Self-Determination of Indigenous People, which represents 13 Paraguayan groups. The museum defended its trip, "expected to discover several hundred new species of plants and insects", saying that to "scientifically record the richness and diversity of the animals and plants in this remote region is extremely important for the future management of this fragile habitat". | ['environment/conservation', 'culture/natural-history-museum', 'world/paraguay', 'environment/biodiversity', 'environment/wildlife', 'environment/environment', 'uk/uk', 'world/world', 'tone/news', 'world/americas', 'type/article', 'profile/johnvidal', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/uknews'] | environment/biodiversity | BIODIVERSITY | 2010-11-15T20:17:26Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
global-development/2021/nov/08/hit-100bn-target-or-poor-countries-face-climate-disaster-the-gambia-tells-cop26 | Hit $100bn target or poor countries face climate disaster, the Gambia tells Cop26 | Rich countries must hit their $100bn climate finance target in the last week of Cop26 or it will be catastrophic for the poorest nations suffering the most from the climate crisis, the Gambian environment minister has warned. In an interview with the Guardian as he prepared to leave for Glasgow, Lamin B Dibba urged developed countries to finally honour the annual funding commitment that was made 12 years ago at the Copenhagen climate summit (Cop15) – but which has never been achieved. “We [the world’s least-developed countries] bear the biggest brunt of the impact of climate change and we would like to see the commitment that was taken by the developed countries be fulfilled,” he said. If the $100bn (£75bn) target was not reached, he added, the consequences for those nations would be grave. “It would be catastrophic because we need those resources,” Dibba said. The leaders of the wealthiest countries at Cop26 are reported to be scrambling to reach the $100bn figure, with Boris Johnson keen for positive announcements after criticism of the summit’s lack of progress. Poor countries were given about $80bn (£60bn) in climate finance in 2019, the latest year for which full data is available, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. The Gambia, Africa’s smallest mainland country, has been praised by some for its plans to tackle the climate crisis. A recent analysis found it to be the only “Paris-compatible” country in the world, with plans for keeping to the goal of limiting global heating to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels by 2100. But Dibba said that without a hefty injection of climate finance and other support it would be difficult for the west African nation to respond properly. He called on richer countries to increase their ambition, warning that unless they did, Gambian efforts would be in vain. “We have our long-term vision but we would also want to see [it] on the part of the developed nations, because without that all the efforts we are doing will be negated by the impact of their economic activities,” he said. Coastal and low-lying, the Gambia has been suffering the impact of climate change for years. Its farmers have seen crop yields decrease due to irregular rainfall; its tourist industry is grappling with beach erosion; and many residents, particularly the poorest, face regular flooding and other natural disasters. Dibba wants to see greater investment in resilience and adaptation programmes to build the capacity of vulnerable communities to withstand extreme climate events, “so that whatever happens they will be able to weather the shock.” He says developing countries do need to be inward-looking as well as focusing their demands on richer nations, and says the Gambia is building its own national climate fund with initial investment coming from the government. But without the financial and technical support of the big global powers, countries such as the Gambia, which is responsible for less than 0.01% of annual global emissions, fear they will continue to suffer disproportionately from a crisis they did very little to create. “It’s important we shift the paradigm from ‘business as usual’ to a more realistic plan for the entire globe,” said Dibba. “Because if they [the richer countries] don’t, what will happen? Yes, we will suffer, and the Gambia is emitting 0.01% of greenhouse gases. But the consequence, the economic damage, the cost to society … you quantify this.” Additional reporting by Omar Wally | ['global-development/global-development', 'environment/cop26-glasgow-climate-change-conference-2021', 'world/gambia', 'world/africa', 'environment/environment', 'world/world', 'environment/climate-crisis', 'global-development/climate-finance', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/lizzydavies', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/global-development'] | environment/cop26-glasgow-climate-change-conference-2021 | CLIMATE_POLICY | 2021-11-08T13:26:39Z | true | CLIMATE_POLICY |
news/2019/jul/05/weatherwatch-why-swimmers-need-not-fear-a-cross-sea-square-waves | Weatherwatch: why swimmers need not fear a cross sea | There are warnings online about a peculiar square wave pattern. “If you swim in square waves your life is in danger,” says one video. “Get out of there immediately,” advises another. The pictures are real but the text is highly misleading. The chessboard pattern of waves can be seen off the Île de Ré near La Rochelle in France. It is something of a tourist attraction, and visitors climb the lighthouse for a better view. The pattern is known as a cross sea, and occurs wherever where waves from different weather systems meet each other at right angles. The waves come from far out at sea, travelling for some distance without the wind that raised them. Studies have found that a disproportionate number of accidents occur in cross seas. This appears to be because the combination of waves from two directions may produce severe rolling, causing a ship to take on water. However, the risk occurs with big cross waves out on the ocean. There is no suggestion that cross seas with small waves close to land are dangerous to small boats, surfers or swimmers. Rip currents – genuinely dangerous currents that drag swimmers out to sea – are often not visible on the surface. | ['news/series/weatherwatch', 'type/article', 'tone/features', 'profile/davidhambling', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/weather2', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-weather'] | news/series/weatherwatch | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2019-07-05T20:30:02Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
environment/2009/nov/05/copenhagen-deal-analysis | Analysis: What hope for Copenhagen now? | The dream President Obama's team takes a giant risk in Copenhagen and pledges ambitious US cuts in carbon emissions, in the hope that it can sell them to a sceptical domestic audience in the New Year. The move shocks China and India into pledges of action, with short-term targets morphing into longer-term commitments. Japan, Canada, Russia, Australia and others are carried away on the subsequent wave of optimism and join Europe in agreeing the kind of greenhouse gas reductions that scientists say could still limit temperature rise to 2C. As beaming world leaders jet in, Copenhagen delivers a deal to save the world. Plausibility: 1/10 The hopeful fudge Copenhagen sees warm words and positive rhetoric, with a sympathetic world granting Obama the time he will need to turn US opinion around. Progress is made on lesser elements of a scaled-back deal, such as ways to prevent forests being destroyed and long-term emissions targets to 2050. Countries agree to leave the thorny issues of carbon targets over the next decade and finance for developing nations until 2010, as the Copenhagen talks effectively head for extra time. Plausibility 7/10 The dangerous road Copenhagen is dominated by recriminations and accusations as age-old divides between rich and poor countries dominate. With no movement from the US, the talks stall as all players keep their cards close to their chests. The demand for unanimity on all decisions renders the talks impotent and the negotiations drift to a close with no agreement in sight. A last-minute compromise and some nimble legal footwork gives the chance to repeat the talks next year, but sets no timetable for a deal. Plausibility 4/10 Collapse Pressure on the US from Europe and the developing world backfires as a massive gulf opens between the US and the rest. The talks are dominated by infighting, ultimatums and walkouts as back-channel diplomacy spills into public acrimony. The final hours come and go with no agreement on anything. The UN is forced to declare the talks a failure, throwing two decades of negotiations into chaos and leaving the world unprotected against the ravages of global warming. Plausibility 2/10 | ['environment/copenhagen', 'environment/climate-crisis', 'environment/environment', 'world/world', 'world/unitednations', 'tone/analysis', 'environment/global-climate-talks', 'type/article', 'profile/davidadam'] | environment/global-climate-talks | CLIMATE_POLICY | 2009-11-05T17:13:49Z | true | CLIMATE_POLICY |
world/2020/mar/20/no-waste-japanese-village-is-a-peek-into-carbon-neutral-future | ‘No-waste’ Japanese village is a peek into carbon-neutral future | The residents of a remote village on the Japanese island of Shikoku have spent almost two decades reusing, recycling and reducing, united behind a mission to end their dependence on incinerators and landfill as the world struggles to tackle the climate emergency and the plastic waste crisis. Although Kamikatsu, an hour’s drive from the nearest city, Tokushima, and 370 miles from Tokyo, has not managed to banish waste altogether, its heroic efforts have inspired other communities in Japan and further afield to take up the zero-waste challenge. Household waste must be separated into no fewer than 45 categories, before being taken to a collection centre where volunteers ensure items go into the correct bin, occasionally issuing polite reminders to anyone who forgets to take the lid and label off a plastic bottle or remove nails from a plank of wood. Items still in good condition end up at the Kuru Kuru recycling store, where residents can drop off or take home merchandise – mostly clothes, crockery and ornaments – free of charge. Not even the coronavirus pandemic has hampered the community’s effort to bring waste generation down to nought (there are no orders to self-isolate in that part of Japan) but it was a quest with rather difficult beginnings. In 2000, the village was forced to change the way it managed its waste when a strict new law on dioxin emissions forced it to shut down its two small incinerators. The ageing, shrinking community did not have the money to build new incinerators or transport its waste to out-of-town facilities. The only option was to create less rubbish and to recycle as many items as possible. Three years later, Kamikatsu became the first place in Japan to pass a zero waste declaration – a statement of intent that met with initial opposition but which in the years since has created an unlikely community of ecowarriors. There were complaints that the regular cycle of sorting, washing and disposing of rubbish would prove too much for the village’s 1,500 residents, who found themselves having to sort rubbish into myriad types, to compost food waste and to wash plastic bags and bottles so they could be recycled. “You are always going to get people who are uncooperative in any community-level project,” said Akira Sakano, the head of Kamikatsu’s nonprofit Zero Waste Academy, formed in 2005. Instead, she added, the academy focused its energies on the 80% of residents who supported the venture and who would, in time, persuade sceptics to follow suit. She said the village had struggled to find a way to recycle certain items that didn’t fit into its waste categories, because manufacturers continued to use non-recyclable materials that inevitably found their way into Kamikatsu households. “Our goal was to achieve zero waste by 2020, but we have encountered obstacles that involve stakeholders and regulations outside of our scope,” said Sakano . “And certain products are designed for single use, such as sanitary products, which are difficult to segregate because of the nature of the waste product.” While reducing consumption has proved difficult, most villagers have embraced the recycling regime. As a result, the village has been able to keep the vast majority of its waste out of incinerators and landfill. Products that contain parts that fit into two or more categories have to be taken apart and their components placed in the correct bin. Milk cartons, cans, and even plastic food wrappers and shopping bags must be washed before being thrown out, and newspapers placed in neat bundles, secured with twine made from recycled milk cartons. Glass bottles are relieved of their caps and sorted by colour. Plastic bottles that once contained soy sauce or cooking oil are kept in a separate bin space with PET bottles used for drinks. In fiscal 2016, Kamikatsu recycled 81% of the waste it produced, compared to a national average of just 20%. The small number of items that have proved impossible to recycle, including leather shoes, nappies and other sanitary products, are sent to an incinerator outside the village. And it began addressing the growing problem of plastic, which makes up the majority of the residents’ waste, well before the rest of the country. Japan is the world’s second-biggest producer of plastic waste per capita after the US. Its consumers get through about 30bn plastic shopping bags a year, and it once shipped 1.5m tonnes of plastic waste to China every year until Beijing banned the imports in 2017. As word of its campaign spread, the village has hosted officials and campaigners from overseas and other parts of Japan hoping to emulate the scheme in their own communities. Not all residents are convinced that the project can be easily replicated elsewhere, however. “It works because we’re only 1,500 people here,” said Naoko Yokoyama, who moved to Kamikatsu from Kyoto about two years ago. “It would be difficult in a big town with a larger population,” because authorities would struggle to enforce it, Yokoyama told Agence France-Presse as the zero-waste deadline approached last year. To give the village a fighting chance of reaching its target at a later date, residents are encouraged not to buy or use products that may end up as waste, through a scheme that rewards them with points whenever they refuse single-use plastics. The points can then be used to buy other items. Sakano said the future of the zero-waste project would depend on businesses and local governments collaborating to make it easier for households to recycle, but added that individuals still had a duty to reuse and reduce. “As you can imagine, it’s a lot easier to simply refuse plastic bags than to have to build somewhere to recycle them.” Agencies contributed to this report | ['world/japan', 'environment/environment', 'environment/recycling', 'environment/waste', 'environment/ethical-living', 'world/asia-pacific', 'world/world', 'type/article', 'tone/features', 'profile/justinmccurry', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/international', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-foreign'] | environment/waste | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE | 2020-03-20T16:54:57Z | true | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE |
big-energy-debate/2014/sep/08/solar-power-policy-government-technology-battery-storage | Government energy policy too focused on redundant utility business models | When the iPod and iTunes were launched in 2001, they changed the music industry forever. Imagine sitting on the board of HMV in 2000, laying down plans for a major investment in new, high-street megastores which – unbeknown to you – will shortly have their revenue base pulled from under their feet. That boardroom is where we are with the UK government’s energy policy. The iTunes of the energy sector is solar power and batteries. The costs of solar panels are tumbling and solar-generated electricity is already the same price as electricity bought from the grid in most sunny countries in the world. Citibank has projected that solar will reach so-called grid parity in the UK as soon as 2020. The Wall Street analyst Sanford Bernstein predicts that within a decade solar will have fundamentally transformed the nature of energy markets across the globe as its costs continue to fall. Cost reductions in batteries support rapid advances in solar because batteries can store solar-generated electricity and enable it to be used when the sun isn’t shining. Barclays predicts that solar and battery combinations will reach grid parity for 20% of US consumers in four years. After the iPod came the iPhone. In the energy sector, we have smart technologies that integrate digital and communication tools into devices such as meters, thermostats, appliances and lights, enabling demand for electricity to be managed and reduced in real-time. These technologies can substantially increase the efficiency with which electricity is used and produce significant reductions in bills. The smart energy technology sector includes some of the world’s biggest technology companies including Google and, of course, Apple. The record stores in the metaphor are the utility companies; their centralised business models, based on large-scale fossil-fuel power stations, are being undercut by solar, batteries and smart technologies as well as by other new technologies such as onshore wind. The value of the largest 20 utilities in Europe has been cut in half over the past six years owing to the current and projected impacts of these new technologies. At the same time the credit ratings of utilities across the world are being downgraded. Our government should be seizing the opportunity from these new technologies. This requires major reforms to how the energy system operates and is regulated, so that they can compete on a level playing field. For example, the networks that are used to transport electricity were constructed to support large-scale forms of generation, and not to integrate small-scale solar and onshore wind or smart technologies that adjust when there is demand for power. Instead, as our new report shows, the government is focused on supporting large-scale generation technologies, on which the dying traditional utility model is based. The government plans to levy £7.6bn a year from energy bills by 2020 to fund investments in low carbon generation. But it is prioritising nuclear power and offshore wind farms while restricting investments in solar and smart technologies. We need nuclear and offshore wind power but not to the exclusion of the new distributed technologies. Developments in solar, onshore wind, batteries and smart technologies give us reason for great optimism. They hold the key to a cheaper, cleaner and more competitive energy system that works better for consumers. But they are being held back by policy that is proppoing up the large scale utility business model. It is time to break with the past and embrace the brighter future that these technologies offer. Reg Platt is a senior research fellow at the Institute for Public Policy Research More stories like this: • Why Middle East conflict is a bigger threat to UK energy security than Putin • How I launched a renewable energy startup • Why we need European state aid to support the energy market This article is part of the Guardian’s #bigenergydebate series. Click here to find out more about this project and our partners. | ['big-energy-debate/big-energy-debate', 'environment/energy', 'environment/energyefficiency', 'business/energy-industry', 'environment/solarpower', 'tone/blog', 'type/article'] | environment/solarpower | ENERGY | 2014-09-08T10:39:40Z | true | ENERGY |
world/2012/aug/30/isaac-inland-warnings-arkansas-missouri | Isaac moves inland and prompts warnings for Arkansas and Missouri | Tropical storm Isaac ploughed inland on Thursday, causing fresh flooding and power outages in Louisiana and Mississippi and prompting emergency evacuations and warnings, even as New Orleans began its post-hurricane clear-up. Authorities sent convoys of military Humvees, buses and specialised high-water vehicles around the shores of Lake Ponchartrain, north of New Orleans, to rescue stranded people and evacuate others deemed at risk. They ordered residents to leave low-lying, rural areas along the Tangipahoa river amid concern the 700-acre dam at Percy Quin state park may fail and add to the already swollen river. Flood waters rose waist-high in some areas, trapping people in cars and homes, and three tornadoes were reported overnight in Mississippi and Alabama, prompting warnings to Arkansas and Missouri to brace for Isaac on Friday even though it was now downgraded to a tropical depression. Rains around New Orleans eased enough to allow helicopter operations, including the rescue of a couple and their dogs from a flooded house. Pets have been a leitmotif of the emergency, with many people ignoring evacuation orders because they had nowhere to bring pets, or wading through waters with nothing but pets in their arms. President Barack Obama declared federal emergencies in Louisiana and Mississippi late on Wednesday, freeing federal aid for affected areas. The nightmare scenario – a devastating hit on New Orleans on the anniversary of hurricane Katrina – failed to materialise. Isaac skirted the city on Wednesday as a category 1 hurricane, dumping more than a feet of water in places and turning streets into wind tunnels, but no serious flooding was reported. Officials said the $14.5bn bolstering of the city's flood control system worked as it should, averting a repeat of the 2005 catastrophe when levees failed and 1,800 people died. There was at least one technical glitch: the US army corps of engineers could not start drainage pumps for the 17th St Canal remotely overnight, causing a delay as they had to be operated manually. It was not a significant problem as the canal was not full, said Sandy Rosenthal of levees.org, an advocacy group, but could potentially have been a "major disaster" had the storm been more powerful. Overall, she said, he preparation and response was "100 times better" than seven years ago. "We felt much safer." Even so, the 70mph winds knocked out power to 730,000 homes in Louisiana and Mississippi. Police, state troopers and national guard units enforced a dawn to dusk curfew to deter looters and keep people off streets littered with debris and broken power lines. "If you loot, you'll wear an orange suit," the mayor, Mitch Landrieu, told a news conference. Sixteen looting-related arrests were reported by Thursday. He tweeted an appeal for caution amid signs of returning normality. "I would ask everyone to work really really hard to be patient & to assist public officials by staying out of their way." Homeowners began to take down boards from windows and some stores opened. Just 20 miles south however in Plaquemines parish, a sparsely-populated rural area, there were still dramatic scenes of surging waters and rescues. The town of Braithwaite was drowned, with tops of buildings peeking from the water. Uniformed officials were checking homes for signs of people left behind. About 800 homes in the parish were damaged, said Bobby Jindal, Louisiana's governor. Officials considered intentionally breaching a levee this weekend to let some floodwater flow back out of the inundated area, he added. Major flooding was also reported in the town of Slidell, north-east of New Orleans. There were two reported casualties in and around New Orleans – a tow-truck driver felled by a tree, and another man who fell from a tree. Several highways and airports remained closed on Thursday. | ['us-news/hurricane-isaac', 'us-news/us-weather', 'us-news/alabama', 'us-news/arkansas', 'us-news/louisiana', 'us-news/mississippi', 'world/hurricanes', 'us-news/missouri', 'world/natural-disasters', 'us-news/us-news', 'world/world', 'environment/flooding', 'environment/environment', 'tone/news', 'type/article', 'profile/rorycarroll'] | world/hurricanes | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2012-08-30T17:50:00Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
environment/2021/nov/24/forget-flowers-poll-shows-third-of-people-prefer-to-say-i-love-you-with-a-tree | Forget flowers – poll shows third of people prefer to say I love you with a tree | For centuries people have said it with flowers but research suggests a new tradition is gaining popularity in the UK – expressing love, thanks, perhaps even regret with the gift of a tree. A third of people said they would consider saying it with a tree rather than a bouquet and more than one in 10 had already done so, according to the research commissioned by the National Trust. However, the conservation charity also said only 7% of people in the UK knew the best time of year to plant, and it was launching a drive to improve “tree literacy”. The research, carried out by YouGov in September as the leaves began to turn and released before the Tree Council’s national tree week, beginning on Saturday, found that 49% of UK adults would consider planting a tree to help the environment, while 35% would think about giving a gift of a tree rather than flowers, with 12% already having done so. Trees appear to have become more important to people since the Covid crisis, with more than a quarter of those polled saying they noticed trees more than before the pandemic. Almost 40% said they took “considerable notice” of how trees changed throughout the year. The question of when to plant was trickier, with 42% saying spring was the ideal time to plant rather than winter. Spring and summer are the worst time for planting, the trust says, as young trees need a lot of water. Also, broad leaf trees are dormant in winter so can be moved from nurseries and planted with minimal impact and stress to the tree. Celia Richardson, the trust’s director of communications and audience, said the charity was detecting a changing relationship between people and trees. “There’s a Greek proverb that says a society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they shall never sit. We’re delighted by the growing enthusiasm among donors and gift-givers for trees that will serve everyone long into the future,” she said. “We think it’s part of a changing relationship. We know people are noticing and talking about the trees around them more and social media is full of the joys of things like #treeoftheday. Trees were hugely important features of society and culture in the past, and it’s so good to see signs that we are returning to closer relationships with them.” Donations to the National Trust’s Plant a Tree appeal topped £1m this year and the charity is aiming to plant more than 600,000 trees this winter. One of the interesting projects is the Clough Woodland Restoration Project in Derbyshire, where at least 39,000 trees are being planted. Cloughs are steep valleys or ravines. Jonathan Collett, manager of the project, said: “Due to the sites being hard to access, we are having to heli-lift in the stakes to support the new trees being planted so this site is a bit more complicated – but we definitely think it will be worth the effort. We’re planting native broad leaf trees including holly, hawthorn, sessile oak, alder, rowan, bird cherry, downy and silver birch. Once established, the trees will make fantastic homes for birds such as siskins, treecreepers and spotted flycatcher.” | ['environment/forests', 'environment/environment', 'uk/national-trust', 'lifeandstyle/lifeandstyle', 'uk/uk', 'environment/plants', 'environment/conservation', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/stevenmorris', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/uknews', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-home-news'] | environment/forests | BIODIVERSITY | 2021-11-24T06:00:38Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
travel/2022/aug/04/readers-favourite-pick-your-own-farms-fruit-veg-flowers | ‘Delectable and ripe’: readers’ favourite pick-your-own farms | Winning tip: Punnet paradise, near Edinburgh On a cycling tour of Scotland last year, the alluring aroma of fragrant fields full of strawberries, drifting up a hill, caused me to pause my pedalling and follow my nose. It was an excellent decision. The well-signposted Craigie’s Farm, at South Queensferry near Edinburgh, beckoned me towards an array of fruits as sustenance for my cycling. I filled up on raspberries and cherries and took veg too for the camp later. There’s also a lovely farm shop and little cafe where I sat sipping tea, contemplating which of my picks to eat first – almost reluctant to get back on the saddle. Nigel Williams Greenhouse bash, West Sussex Oh, to Spring Gardens Nursery in Pulborough, West Sussex, you must go! Close to the South Downs, this gem of a place is small enough to enjoy with young children, but big enough to offer a fantastic checklist of seasonal fruits, vegetables and flowers to pick (free entry, pay for what you pick). The farm shop and cafe sell and serve delicious food and drinks, and the recently opened fairy-lit Gooseberry House hosts sellout supper clubs featuring still and sparkling Sussex wines. It’s one of my favourite places to go. Lucy McLaughlin Veg out, North Yorkshire Balloon Tree farm in Gate Helmsley, east of York, is the best place I know for PYO. It has a huge variety of fruit and veg, acres of strawberries, blueberries and raspberries, redcurrants, blackcurrants, gooseberries and peas. The highlight of the autumn is pumpkin picking, complete with wheelbarrows and scarecrows. The farm grows plenty of other produce that can be bought in the farm shop, and boasts a fabulous cafe serving home-cooked meals and cakes to tempt you further. Nicola Booth Sunflowers for Ukraine, Wiltshire Amid the beautiful Wiltshire Downs, The Farm at Avebury is selling its sunflowers with proceeds going to a combination of local schools, preschools and Ukraine Crisis Appeal. The children loved getting lost among the enormous stems and the parents snapped away making the most cheerful shots for the family album. The farm’s next charity pick your own Sunflower morning on 6 August. Alice Hues Play gooseberry, Shropshire Delightful family-run Woore Fruit Farm, at the nexus of Shropshire, Staffordshire and Cheshire, has fruit to be picked from gooseberries in spring to strawberries, loganberries, raspberries, blackcurrants, and later, pumpkins for Halloween. Rest for a cuppa at the cafe, which also has local Snugburys ice-cream. The shop sells delectable wildflowers picked from the farm along with eggs from its free-running chickens. Perfect for a summer’s day. Matthew Hoeksma Top crop, north London The Parkside Pick Your Own Farm near Enfield is great for harvesting mouthwatering strawberries, blackberries and raspberries. There’s also a good range of vegetables: sweetcorn, courgettes and french beans. Book online for £4 a head and redeem the price against your picked veg and fruit. Lotifa Begum Let them eat cake, Northamptonshire Grange Farm Harpole is a family-run business with a little cafe selling homemade cakes, ice-cream, tea and coffee. It also has an excellent maize maze and some very friendly pigs. The fruit is flavoursome and juicy, and the farm is in a beautiful location. Libby Billings Dahlia fantasia, Surrey At Garson’s farm in Esher, the bountiful and sumptuous strawberries and raspberries are favourites, but you can also pick sweetcorn, carrots, courgettes, beetroots, apples, cherries and plums. It also has pick-your-own flowers – sunflowers and dahlias aplenty. Tickets are £4 for farm entry, which is refunded against the price of your produce. If all that picking tires you out, there’s a lovely cafe and to rejuvenate in and a fantastic garden centre to browse. Emma Burke Strawberries forever, west Devon Just on the Devon-Cornwall border, just off the A30, you will find Strawberry Fields, Lifton. There is a lot here to keep families entertained year-round, with pick-your-own strawberries and sunflowers in summer to pumpkins in autumn and then Christmas trees. It has superb afternoon teas, cornish pasties, and a great shop and restaurant. You can also challenge the family to the maize maze on your way to Cornwall. Lucky for me I live close to it. Elaine Pluckrose Weigh to go, near Liverpool Claremont Farm on the Wirral, south of Birkenhead, is a special place, much more than a pick-your-own. As well as raspberries, strawberries and pumpkins at Halloween, there’s a funfair and bouncy castle to keep the little ones entertained while you weigh in your haul. There are also pigs and sheep to meet. Each year there is a mini-festival with music and food. There is a lovely cafe with organic produce, a seafood shack, and a forest school teaching bushcraft. On some evenings there are film showings. Rachel Maher | ['travel/series/readers-travel-tips', 'travel/travelfoodanddrink', 'travel/day-trips', 'travel/uk', 'travel/top10', 'food/fruit', 'travel/series/experts-readers-tips', 'environment/farming', 'environment/environment', 'travel/travel', 'type/article', 'tone/features', 'profile/guardian-readers', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-travel'] | environment/farming | BIODIVERSITY | 2022-08-04T10:00:05Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
theobserver/commentisfree/2023/feb/26/may-i-have-a-word-about-wonderful-wizard-of-waste | May I have a word about… the wonderful wizard of waste | Jonathan Bouquet | Who exactly comes up with job descriptions these days? I ask because to say that the bin collections in my area have been erratic of late is something of an understatement. So imagine my joy at the announcement in the local paper last week that the council has decided to act – it has appointed “the Waste Wizard”. (Notice the capital letters and definite article; not just any old waste wizard.) Alas, the identity of this force for positive change is top secret, but I’m reassured that they “will ensure the district’s waste services get back on track as soon as possible”. I await a magical transformation with bated breath. Colin Armstrong wrote to me recently: “Whenever a political party announces a leadership contest, the press start to speculate about ‘the runners and riders’. I get ‘runners’, but who on earth are the riders?” I fear that trying to shed light on this cliche would be a futile exercise but I’d gladly see the back of it. Not so this from John Hopkin: “Simon Tisdall’s column today on dynastic succession (‘George HW Bush unhappily begat George W Bush’) put me in mind of my sister-in-law, who discovered one long-dead but commendable West Country parish clerk had recorded her ancestor born out of wedlock as ‘lustily begat’. How delightful is that?” Alison McAuslane is worried about politicians (she’s not alone in that but her complaint in this is particularly heartfelt). She’s been in touch with her MP. “He writes in response to my concerns about the EU reform bill that ‘the bill will also include a sunset date by which all remaining retained EU law will be repealed or retained’. In the next paragraph he asserts that ‘there are no plans to change the sunset deadline for any government departments’.” Given this sort of nonsense and abuse of the language, I think she’s right to be concerned. Email jonathan.bouquet@observer.co.uk • Jonathan Bouquet is an Observer columnist | ['theobserver/series/shifting-patterns-of-english', 'environment/waste', 'commentisfree/commentisfree', 'tone/comment', 'type/article', 'profile/jonathanbouquet', 'publication/theobserver', 'theobserver/news', 'theobserver/news/comment', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/observer-comment'] | environment/waste | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE | 2023-02-26T10:00:18Z | true | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE |
sport/blog/2023/aug/13/owen-farrell-england-rugby-world-cup-steve-borthwick | Farrell’s recklessness leaves England searching for clarity and composure | Robert Kitson | So here we go again. Owen Farrell in high shoulder charge trouble? Tick. England flattering mostly only to deceive? Tick. Injuries and unavailability threatening to disrupt their World Cup? Tick. Tick. They may have finally won a match but, in truth, an air of weary Groundhog Day familiarity hangs over English rugby that extends well beyond the length of ban awaiting their national captain before next month’s global tournament. Farrell will certainly be experiencing a powerful sense of deja vu as he awaits the verdict on Tuesday, which is almost certain to sideline him from his team’s keynote opening pool game in France. As recently as January he was lucky not to miss the start of this year’s Six Nations championship after a longer suspension was reduced to three weeks because he agreed to attend World Rugby’s “tackle school”. Does that mean, as several wags have observed, that he is now eligible for a masters degree? It is almost beginning to resemble a Twickenham-based episode of the classic sitcom Porridge. There is no question that Norman Stanley Farrell – “You are a habitual offender, who accepts bans as an occupational hazard” – is now facing another period of playing confinement (as it happens “Slade Prison” could equally refer to England’s strait-jacketed attacking game) and mitigation is relatively thin on the ground. While the braced 63rd-minute shoulder to the head of Taine Basham was not the absolute worst of its type, that defence misses the point. In addition to the obvious player-welfare implications, it was reckless and unnecessary. Nor was this some helplessly overeager debutant flying in. It was England’s captain, who should have known better with his side reduced to 13 men, playing in his 107th Test. It should also have cost his side any chance of victory and would probably have done so had Wales’s pack not run out of battery life. So what next for Farrell and his team after another frequently uncomfortable and fretful 80 minutes? Removing him entirely from the equation, from the management’s perspective, is akin to losing the central pole of the whole red rose marquee. As captain, goalkicker, competitor-in-chief, tactical fulcrum and centre option, there is no more conspicuous absentee. There is a school of thought, though, that going Farrell-free – shortly to be listed above gluten-free on Twickenham’s corporate menus? – might not be completely unhealthy. After the former had disappeared on Saturday, George Ford helped deliver an improbable victory and, even with their depleted reserves, the home side held firm. It would also slightly simplify the starting midfield conundrum and allow a place on the bench for Marcus Smith, potentially enhancing England’s game‑breaking ability. In terms of leadership, furthermore, England are in need of calmer direction. While Steve Borthwick insisted the four yellow cards his side received were unrelated, they were all caused, to some degree, by slight panic or clouded thinking. Freddie Steward’s misjudged aerial hit on Josh Adams was a prime example and also came close, in the post‑game opinion of Warren Gatland, to meeting the threshold for a red card. Call it discipline, call it composure, call it clarity: whatever, England are still searching for it with only two warm-up games left until they meet Argentina in Marseille on 9 September in a fixture that might shape their whole tournament. While there were some little wins on Saturday – Ben Earl, Ford’s contribution, Maro Itoje’s late close-quarters try – there was also no huge sense of gathering momentum. Pace is among the bigger issues. Earl stood out because of his consistent ability to raise the tempo but few others could lift a largely pedestrian team effort, with the distinctly rapid Henry Arundell often a virtual spectator. If the cruelly injured Jack van Poortvliet is ruled out of the World Cup, the nippy Northampton scrum-half Alex Mitchell could easily emerge as a key man in terms of generating the holy grail of quicker ball. But given Mitchell was omitted from the squad only a week ago, that already invites other wider cultural and tactical questions. While attacking fluency is hard to conjure overnight, not enough English players have the innate game understanding or situational nous of, say, Wales’s Liam Williams who, under pressure in his own 22, sought to run the ball out knowing the opposition had only 13 players. It was while England were scrambling to readjust, significantly, that Farrell went high at Basham without engaging his brain first. Some will be spending the next day or so endlessly sifting the minutiae of Farrell’s prospects and musing on the appointment of an all-Australian disciplinary panel, including the former Wallabies John Langford and David Croft, to hear the case. But jokes about kangaroo courts are another distraction from the wider factors draining English rugby’s potential: short‑term decision making, flawed Rugby Football Union appointments, a lack of accountability, dislocated player pathways, blinkered player development and, too often, a bloated sense of self-regard and exceptionalism. Everyone in rugby knew Farrell’s tackle technique was an accident waiting to happen. It did not stop England reinstating him as captain and putting all their eggs in that one precarious basket, for which a heavy price is now about to be levied. Ironically the 31‑year‑old cuts a more relaxed figure off the field these days but, as with “Fletch”, some old habits die hard. And now England are heading to Dublin to play a strong Ireland side coached by – checks notes – Andy Farrell. A tricky August could soon become even tougher. | ['sport/england-rugby-union-team', 'sport/owen-farrell', 'sport/wales-rugby-union-team', 'sport/rugby-world-cup-2023', 'sport/rugby-world-cup', 'sport/rugby-union', 'campaign/email/the-breakdown', 'sport/sport', 'sport/blog', 'type/article', 'tone/analysis', 'profile/robertkitson', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/sport', 'theguardian/sport/news', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-sport'] | sport/wales-rugby-union-team | UNRELATED_TO_CLIMATE | 2023-08-13T20:00:55Z | true | UNRELATED_TO_CLIMATE |
environment/2013/mar/11/asda-canary-islands-bananas | Asda turns to Canary Islands bananas to cut carbon footprint | Supermarket chain Asda is to be the first to sell bananas from the Canary Islands, in an attempt to reduce the fruit's considerable carbon footprint. Transportation time will be more than 80% shorter than for bananas sourced from central America. The fruit will be shipped from the Canaries to mainland Spain and then by road to the UK ripening centre – a total journey of four days as opposed to 24 days for bananas from the Caribbean and Americas. The bananas, already familiar to the millions of Britons who travel on holiday to the Canary Islands each year, are sweeter and firmer than those grown in central America. Bananas are the best-selling fruit at Asda, with shoppers buying more than 100m bunches a year. Bananas have been grown in the Canary Islands since the 1880s, thanks to the hot and dry climate, but this is the first time they will have been exported other than to mainland Spain and Portugal. Asda has been working with produce importer IPL and Fyffes, a leading importer and distributor of bananas. While many supermarkets have switched to 100% Fairtrade bananas as standard, however, the new Canary bananas in Asda will not be Fairtrade. Jock Higgins, banana technical manager at IPL, said: "This is a really exciting project which we've been working on for over a year. Not only do we see the environmental benefit of the reduced transport time, but these bananas are pretty tasty too. We can't wait to see what our shoppers think." The bananas, which will be sold under the Fyffes brand, are priced at £1.50 for a bunch of six, and have gone on trial in over 230 stores, with a potential extension nationwide if they are successful. Despite the proximity of the Canary Islands to the UK, no leading supermarkets stock bananas from the region because of issues around quality and volume. A Marks & Spencer spokeswoman said: " It's something we have looked at in the past but the quality wasn't right, but it is ongoing and we are still considering it." | ['environment/carbonfootprints', 'environment/carbon-emissions', 'environment/ethical-living', 'environment/climate-crisis', 'environment/environment', 'business/asda', 'business/supermarkets', 'business/business', 'uk/uk', 'tone/news', 'type/article', 'profile/rebeccasmithers', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/uknews'] | environment/carbonfootprints | EMISSIONS | 2013-03-11T06:59:00Z | true | EMISSIONS |
environment/2023/mar/15/climate-activists-must-target-power-structures-not-the-public | Climate activists must target power structures, not the public | Letters | I am an environmental social scientist and climate activist. As Jack Shenker describes in his article (The existential question for climate activists: have disruption tactics stopped working?, 6 March), Extinction Rebellion’s recent decision to stop disrupting the public caused quite a fuss. Some people applauded the move as they thought it would favourably shift public opinion, while others insisted public disruption needs to remain a primary tactic to garner wider attention. Unfortunately, both camps are missing the point – once you have enough dedicated activists, the public is largely irrelevant to achieving political change. It is not the opinion, or even attention, of the public that matters, it is whether or not you are disrupting structures of power. Historical social movements have shown this repeatedly. Despite what we may like to believe in a democracy, public opinion is only one small influence on the government. It may theoretically give governments a mandate to act, but real change must first overcome powerful opposition from the structures that support governments, such as business and the legal and financial systems. The role of activists is to change the cost-benefit equation for these structures until it is more beneficial for them to accept change than to carry on with the status quo. For climate activists, the real question is not about the efficacy of disruptive tactics, it needs to be about targets. And the answer is power, not the public. Dr Laura Thomas-Walters Llandaff, Cardiff • What can we do about the climate crisis? What form should our protest take? Do the actions of Extinction Rebellion risk alienating those who they look to for support? Indigo Rumbelow, a supporter of Just Stop Oil and co-founder of Insulate Britain, takes the view that the debate “is not between those who want to take ‘moderate’ or ‘radical’ action. It’s between those who are standing by doing nothing at all, and those who are doing something. That’s where the line is drawn.” But it should never be like this. A democracy should allow voters to choose how their country is governed. There should be a constitutional requirement for those of us seriously concerned about the climate crisis to have our views expressed in government. This obviously doesn’t happen. Our government consists only of Tory MPs representing a minority of voters. Yes, we have offshore wind generation, but otherwise their response is desperately inadequate. As a result, we have to resort to any kind of protest we feel might make a difference. If our civilisation truly wants a route to survival, we need a representative democracy with proportional voting. Tim Williamson Bath • Jack Shenker asks if disruption tactics have stopped working in climate protests. I would ask: did they ever work? Starting with the suffragists and suffragettes (or possibly earlier), most radical and progressive movements have had extreme wings, driven by a sense of frustration that their voice is not being listened to. I would love to see some academic work try to quantify the effect of publicity-seeking “stunts” against patient political foot-slogging. Having spent most of my life doing the latter, I feel politics does work. I was born into a world where homosexuality and abortion were illegal and mixed‑race marriage regarded as immoral. That has changed. Conventional politicians such as Roy Jenkins and David Steel did their stuff – and succeeded. Paul Chandler Brighton • Have an opinion on anything you’ve read in the Guardian today? Please email us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our letters section. | ['environment/activism', 'environment/climate-crisis', 'world/protest', 'environment/environment', 'environment/extinction-rebellion', 'politics/politics', 'uk/uk', 'environment/just-stop-oil', 'environment/insulate-britain', 'type/article', 'tone/letters', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/journal', 'theguardian/journal/letters', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-letters-and-leader-writers'] | environment/just-stop-oil | CLIMATE_ACTIVISM | 2023-03-15T16:56:20Z | true | CLIMATE_ACTIVISM |
environment/2014/jun/03/st-dominic-tamar-valley-granite | Country diary: St Dominic, Tamar Valley: A striking place with granite at its heart | Above tree crowns the open summit of Kit Hill with its mine stack is visible from outside the blocked-up north door of the church. Three miles distant, this hill is the nearest outcrop of granite and may have been the source of monoliths dragged here centuries ago to form the pillars and arches of this ancient building. Before commercial quarrying and the use of explosives, weathered granite lying on the surface of the Cornish moors was excavated and used for building. Split with grooves and wedges and then later with jumpers, feathers and tares, it was also worked to make troughs, gateposts, staddle stones and supports for roundhouses, which housed farmyard mills worked by horsepower. Old troughs look like hollowed-out boulders and, by a farmstead on the northern side of the parish, set above steep fields which were described as oak coppice on the tithe map of the mid 19th century, pieces of a discarded and broken cider pound or mill have been unearthed from a hedge-bank. On Bodmin Moor the chance sighting of a roughly cut but spoilt base of a similar artefact, part buried in turf and moss, suggests that granite moorstone was worked and shaped before the labour of hauling it towards downhill customers. Whether granite in the parish of St Dominic was brought from nearby Kit Hill is unknown but there is no longer any quarrying up on that hill. On its southern flanks derelict mine works in Silver Valley are engulfed in the greenery of full-out trees, as are hedgerows around the little fields close to former mining villages such as Harrowbarrow. Shorn hedges surround an enclave of glistening plastic with emerging maize, but hawthorns, on the uncut banks around pastures, have been draped in spectacular may for weeks. The first cut of silage has been taken off some larger fields and, towards Kelly Bray, bullocks graze polleny grass with sorrel and buttercups. Nearby, Devon and Cornwall longwool sheep have been shorn of their heavy, curly fleeces and appear even whiter than the hawthorn blossom. | ['environment/series/country-diary', 'environment/environment', 'uk/ruralaffairs', 'uk/uk', 'tone/features', 'environment/mining', 'type/article', 'profile/virginiaspiers', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/editorialsandreply'] | environment/mining | ENERGY | 2014-06-03T20:00:01Z | true | ENERGY |
world/2021/feb/25/unique-petrified-tree-up-to-20m-years-old-found-intact-in-lesbos | 'Unique' petrified tree up to 20m years old found intact in Lesbos | First came the tree, all 19.5 metres of it, with roots and branches and leaves. Then, weeks later, the discovery of 150 fossilised logs, one on top of the other, a short distance away. Nikolas Zouros, a professor of geology at the University of the Aegean, couldn’t believe his luck. In 25 years of excavating the petrified forest of Lesbos, he had unearthed nothing like it. “The tree is unique,” he said. “To discover it so complete and in such excellent condition is a first. To then discover a treasure trove of so many petrified trunks in a single pit was, well, unbelievable.” Stretching across almost all of the Greek island’s western peninsula, the petrified forest, a Unesco global geopark, is among the largest in the world. Produced by successive volcanic eruptions, its vividly coloured fossilised trunks are a witness to the explosions that buried much of Lesbos under lava and ash between 17 and 20 million years ago. Zouros, who heads the Museum of Natural History in Sigri, has spent decades studying the various forests that existed in the area at the time. “The more we discover the more we understand past ecosystems,” he said. “The first forests that we know of were subtropical, a far cry from the Mediterranean vegetation on Lesbos today.” Excavations by his 35-strong team along a 20km highway connecting Sigri with Kalloni, the region’s biggest town, since 2013 have yielded more than 15 significant fossil sites but the earlier finds have paled next to the most recent. The discovery of an entire tree lying on a bed of leaves was not only unprecedented but down to pure luck. “Constructors were about to asphalt that part of the highway when one of our technicians noticed a tiny branch. The road work stopped, we starting excavating and quite quickly realised we had chanced upon an incredible find,” said Zouros. “It will now form part of the open-air museum we intend to create.” Geologists around the world have described the find as a breakthrough. “We have a case of extraordinary fossilisation in which a tree was preserved with its various parts intact. In the history of paleontology, worldwide, it’s unique,” said the Portuguese palaeontologist Artur Abreu Sá. “That it was buried by sediments expelled during a destructive volcanic eruption, and then found in situ, makes it even more unusual.” The climate emergency has highlighted the need to understand ecosystems in a hotter future if global temperatures are not reduced and, as such, Lesbos’s petrified forest offers an invaluable window into the past, said Prof Iain Stewart, who directs the Sustainable Earth Institute at the University of Plymouth. “It’s a world-class place to look at the type of environment that existed 20m years ago,” he told the Guardian. “Finds like these are a window into a particular past, a greenhouse, hothouse world, that existed back then. They might be an indication of what is coming if we don’t get our act together in tackling the climate change emergency.” In more recent times, Lesbos has been better known for the thousands of refugees who have landed on its shores but the island’s unusually diverse landscape and vegetation also draws scientists interested in its geological past. “The petrified forest is the first stop on our fieldtrip,” said Chronis Tzedakis, a professor of physical geography at University College London, who has been running field classes on the Aegean isle for the past decade. “It never disappoints … These new finds are stunning. The tree with its branches still attached is a rarity, while 150 trunks recovered together will provide a snapshot of a forest community which will allow us to assess its biodiversity at one point in time.” It was in Lesbos that Aristotle worked on the zoological studies that would become the canon of biological thought for the next 2,000 years. Tzedakis has found himself pondering whether the philosopher who was invited to the island by his disciple, Theophrastus, was ultimately influenced by the geological wonder. The polymath, himself a student of Plato, spent two years there, much of it ensconced in the study of marine biology. “I often like to think that Aristotle, who established the foundation of scientific inquiry while on Lesbos must have seen the petrified trees of Sigri,” he said adding that the similarity of some of the fossils to their living relatives may have inspired his theory of species being fixed and well-defined. “Having grown up in nearby Eressos, Theophrastus, the ‘father of botany’, would have surely known about it and have taken the great man to see it.” | ['world/greece', 'science/geology', 'environment/forests', 'world/europe-news', 'science/science', 'world/world', 'environment/environment', 'type/article', 'tone/features', 'profile/helenasmith', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/international', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-foreign'] | environment/forests | BIODIVERSITY | 2021-02-25T05:00:18Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
environment/2015/dec/04/paris-diary-clean-energy-future-turn-right-blue-giraffe | Paris diary: for a clean energy future, turn right at the blue giraffe | At first glance they looked like weird decorations to brighten the cavernous Paris summit site – 140 colourful, semi-transparent animal shapes that line the avenue between the huge buildings. But like everything on Planet-COP they are imbued with climate-related meaning. It turns out they are a modern-day “Noah’s Ark” created by a French street artist, Gad Weil, after a meeting with French sustainable development minister Ségolène Royal. “In the biblical version of Noah’s Ark, it is the flood that men and animals of these ancient times had to face; with Arche de Noé Climat, it is global warming that our animals have to fight against,” Weil explains on the Noah’s Ark project website. They were created in “surreal size”, of course from recycled materials, and toured France before the summit, collecting messages and stories from French people, especially children, which are broadcast at an exhibition at the meeting. But even without knowing their story and meaning they come in handy when navigating around the 18 hectare site. I’ve been receiving directions to meetings along the lines of “turn right at the blue giraffe and then left at the red camel”. And on Planet Cop, it makes perfect sense. | ['environment/cop-21-un-climate-change-conference-paris', 'environment/climate-crisis', 'environment/global-climate-talks', 'type/article', 'tone/features', 'profile/lenore-taylor'] | environment/cop-21-un-climate-change-conference-paris | CLIMATE_POLICY | 2015-12-03T20:44:43Z | true | CLIMATE_POLICY |
environment/2011/jun/09/kerr-macgregor-obituary | Kerr MacGregor obituary | My friend Kerr MacGregor, who has died aged 70, was Britain's leading solar inventor. His most successful invention was Solartwin, a solar water-heating panel which is freezable, unlike most others. By putting water inside his panel, Kerr dispensed with antifreeze, a viscous and unstable chemical gloop. This meant water could circulate more easily, so that a miniature, highly efficient pump could be used, instead of a big clunker. The pump can be powered by just five watts via a small solar electric panel. More than 5,000 Solartwin installations are in place across the world. Kerr's diverse energy-saving inventions included: solar clip fins (used in DIY solar collectors worldwide); underground solar heat storage (for greenhouses); low-cost large solar collectors for swimming pools; and transpired fabric solar collectors for drying timber. His thermal slates are used in hundreds of hard-to-heat Scottish homes, where they dehumidify and heat air, at low cost. Kerr also invented jokes and whimsies, such as a solar-powered bagpipe. At international conferences, clad in his MacGregor kilt, he would thank his hosts with a broad smile, and pipe the Gay Gordons. At the Patent Office, a tedious technical description of his Thermoscreen – a folding screen heater – is accompanied by a colour photograph revealing that Kerr chose to clad his prototype in tartan. Kerr was born in Scotland and spent his early childhood in India, followed by boarding school in the UK. He was a polymath with strong interests in Scottish politics, music and travel. Thinking, sitting by the fire stroking his cat, energy, travel, whisky, politics, campaigning, technology, making music, friends and family love all sustained the man. He was immune to both high fashion and consumerism, with the exception of kilts, motorbikes and the latest green-energy gadgets. Kerr was generous with his talent of communicating technical complexities clearly, simply and widely, and inspired a generation of energy engineering students. He is survived by his wife, Anabel; their children, Kirsty, Eoghann, Ellen and Colin; and their grandchildren, Sorley and Alasdair. | ['environment/solarpower', 'technology/research', 'global-development/environmental-sustainability', 'environment/green-economy', 'theguardian/series/otherlives', 'tone/obituaries', 'type/article', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/obituaries'] | environment/solarpower | ENERGY | 2011-06-09T17:08:55Z | true | ENERGY |
environment/damian-carrington-blog/2011/sep/05/environment-news-summer-oil-nuclear-gore | Environment news: What you missed this summer | Damian Carrington | It's back to work, school and general normality after the holiday season, and I hope you had a good one. To help your comfortable re-entry here's a digest of the environment news you may have missed. Oil spills: Shell accepted full liability for two massive oil spills in 2008 that devastated a Nigerian community and faces a bill of faces a bill of hundreds of millions of dollars. A day later, a UN report blamed Shell and others for decades of pollution in the Niger delta, which it said would take $1bn and 30 years to clean up. Shell was also behind the worst spill in the North Sea for a decade. Energy: The Fukushima disaster claimed a victim in the UK, with the closure of the Mox nuclear fuel plant at Sellafield and the loss of 600 jobs and £1.4bn of taxpayer investment. In the US, it was revealed that farmers are growing the first corn plants genetically modified for the specific purpose of putting more ethanol in gas tanks rather than producing more food. But criticism of corn biofuel subsidies has left corn-belt farmers saying: "The country has turned on us". China and Wikileaks cables: China has "vastly increased" the risk of a nuclear accident by opting for cheap technology, according to diplomatic cables from the US embassy in Beijing. Other cables indicated China has not measured the most dangerous types of air pollution because it is afraid of the political consequences and that a US diplomat posed as a tourist to investigate a notorious tiger breeding centre, where he saw animals whipped and made to perform "marriage processions". Australia's carbon tax: The row rumbled on with hundreds of truckers - dubbed truckwits by opponents - circled Australia's parliament in a campaign aimed at forcing the government to withdraw the proposed tax and call a new election. Rows: Al Gore likened winning the argument with climate change sceptics to that of winning the argument with racists who opposed the US civil rights movement. The data at the heart of the so-called Climategate controversy was released by the University of East Anglia's Climatic Reseearch Unit. It comprises temperature records going back 150 years from 5113 weather stations around the world. An embarrassing row blighted an international meeting on wildlife conservation in Geneva, when NGOs were excluded from the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species gathering. Geoengineering: A giant pipe and balloon, simulating a volcano is to be tested, as a method of injecting particles into the stratosphere and cool the planet. George Monbiot dismissed the idea as atmospheric liposuction. Of course, I may very well have missed a story or two. If so, please add it in the comments below. | ['environment/damian-carrington-blog', 'environment/environment', 'tone/blog', 'environment/oil', 'environment/biofuels', 'environment/nuclearpower', 'us-news/algore', 'type/article', 'profile/damiancarrington'] | environment/nuclearpower | ENERGY | 2011-09-05T06:30:01Z | true | ENERGY |
environment/2021/mar/24/no-bottle-deposit-return-scheme-for-most-of-uk-until-2024-at-earliest | No bottle deposit return scheme for most of UK until 2024 at earliest | A promised deposit return scheme for plastic bottles to cut marine pollution will not be in place in England, Wales and Northern Ireland until late 2024 at the earliest – six years after it was announced by the government as a key environmental policy. Critics said the delay was “embarrassing” and not the sign of a government committed to tackling plastic pollution. The environment minister Rebecca Pow announced the publication of a second consultation on a deposit return scheme (DRS) on Wednesday. The document revealed no such scheme would be introduced until late 2024 – more than a year after the original deadline for the initiative and after the next general election in May of that year. The new consultation document said ministers were still committed to a deposit return scheme but Covid-19 “had disrupted the economy and society in unimaginable ways, with many people reassessing their values, decisions and priorities in both the immediate and longer term”. “On this basis, our second consultation will build on the first consultation, offering a chance to explore further what the continued appetite is for a deposit return scheme in a ‘post-Covid’ context,” it read. A DRS was first announced in 2018 by the then environment secretary, Michael Gove, to cut the litter polluting the land and sea by returning a small cash sum to consumers who return their bottles and cans. It came after years of campaigning and with a warning from Gove that it was “absolutely vital we act now to tackle this threat and curb the millions of plastic bottles a day that go unrecycled”. The government’s manifesto promise in 2019 was to introduce a deposit return scheme to incentivise people to recycle plastic and glass and the first consultation was met with a high level of support for the scheme. But after years of discussions and ministerial engagement the new consultation document published by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, showed no decision had yet been made on what kind of deposit scheme should be in place. Options include an all-in deposit return scheme for all plastic bottles, glass bottles and aluminium drinks cans and a scheme that just covers containers bought and used in takeaways. Across the UK, consumers go through an estimated 13bn plastic drinks bottles. Only 7.5bn are recycled. The remaining 5.5bn are landfilled, littered or incinerated. The scheme when introduced would cover PET plastic bottles, glass bottles and steel and aluminium cans. The Scottish government has plans to start its all in deposit return scheme in July next year. Pow told the environmental audit committee on Wednesday that the DRS was important to put in place a “fully circular economy … which we have talked about for so long. “One of the really important aspects of it is to reduce litter,” she said. The government defended the delays, saying: “We believe this revision presents a realistic yet equally ambitious timeline to implement a complex but incredibly important policy in the most effective way possible.” But Sam Chetan-Welsh, a political campaigner at Greenpeace, said: “Taking more than seven years to introduce a bottle return scheme, when other countries have had them for decades, is embarrassing. “This is not the action of a government that is serious about tackling plastic pollution, and is nowhere near world-leading. Further delay means billions more plastic and glass bottles and cans will be dumped or burned. This is asking our rivers, oceans and wildlife for an extension they can’t afford to give.” | ['environment/plastic', 'environment/recycling', 'uk/uk', 'environment/waste', 'environment/environment', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/sandralaville', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-environment'] | environment/recycling | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE | 2021-03-24T17:38:00Z | true | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE |
news/blog/2005/sep/01/onthesitetod61 | On the site today | We'll bring you the latest today on the rescue and relief operation on the Gulf coast of America after Hurricane Katrina. We're also looking at the phenomenon of looting - why people do it, and what response by the authorities is appropriate. We're hoping to receive an audio report from Julian Borger in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. His eyewitness report from New Orleans gives a flavour of the appalling conditions survivors face. In Beslan, relatives of the hundreds of people killed after Chechen militants stormed a school are today commemorating the first anniversary of the massacre, while in Iraq the first funerals of the nearly 1,000 people killed in yesterday's bridge tragedy are taking place. Below on Newsblog Simon Jeffery explains why South Korea is worried about Google Earth. In UK news, we examine plans to allow murder victims' relatives to have their say in court, and Conservative leadership candidate Kenneth Clarke's attack on Tony Blair over the Iraq war. And last but not least, for those of you who also enjoy our print product, the launch-date has been announced for the new-look, all-colour, smaller Guardian. | ['news/blog', 'tone/blog', 'us-news/hurricane-katrina', 'type/article', 'profile/sheilapulham'] | us-news/hurricane-katrina | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2005-09-01T11:09:43Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
business/2021/jun/01/bp-re-enters-us-market-buying-up-string-of-solar-farms-for-155m | BP buys string of US solar farms for £155m in clean energy drive | BP has bought a pipeline of US solar farms, capable of powering more than 1.7m homes, for more than $220m (£155m) as part of its plan to distance itself from the fossil fuel industry. The oil company has agreed to snap up a string of development projects, totalling 9GW, from the independent US solar developer 7X Energy in a “significant step” towards its goal of securing 20GW by 2025. The projects will be developed by the UK solar company Lightsource BP across 12 states in the US, which is one of the world’s fastest growing solar energy markets and is expected to double in the next five years and quadruple over the next decade. Lightsource BP, the British solar startup which formed a 50:50 joint venture with BP in 2017, broke into its second new market in a week on Tuesday after snapping up 40% of the capacity awarded in a Greek government renewables auction alongside the Greek energy firm Kiefer TEK. The award emerged days after it entered the Portugese solar energy market for the first time. Dev Sanyal, BP’s head of gas and low-carbon energy, said the US deal was “a significant step as we continue to deliver on our net zero ambition” by growing the renewable energy business “in a deliberate and disciplined way”. BP aims to establish a pipeline of renewable energy projects totalling 20GW by 2025 and 50GW by the end of the decade, while slowly reducing its production of fossil fuels to transform from an oil company into a clean energy business. The group also used the US market for its first significant step into the offshore wind market after agreeing last year to pay $1.1bn (£850m) for a stake in two US offshore wind projects being developed by the Norwegian state oil company, Equinor. Only a few months later BP and its partner, the Germany utility EnBW, struck a deal to pay the crown estate a record-breaking £462m-a-year to lease the seabed for two offshore windfarms in the Irish Sea capable of powering more than 3.4m UK households. “This is an integrated energy company in action,” Sanyal said. “This will bring together the best of BP to create value and provide customers with what they want – clean, affordable, energy.” The company has faced criticism from some investors who believe the company is paying too much to accelerate its move into clean energy. BP’s plans, under the chief executive, Bernard Looney, are some of the most ambitious put forward by a big oil company, and even won cautious praise from green groups including Greenpeace. | ['business/bp', 'environment/solarpower', 'business/oilandgascompanies', 'business/energy-industry', 'business/oil', 'environment/renewableenergy', 'environment/windpower', 'business/business', 'uk/uk', 'us-news/us-news', 'environment/environment', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/jillian-ambrose', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/financial3', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-business'] | environment/windpower | ENERGY | 2021-06-01T17:11:27Z | true | ENERGY |
global-development/2014/may/28/areva-niger-uranium-mining-deal | Areva's uranium mining deal with Niger receives cautious welcome | News that the French nuclear company Areva has finally signed a new operating contract with the Niger government for its northern uranium mines has received a cautious welcome from transparency campaigners. Negotiations over the renewal of the deal had been stalled for more than six months after Areva initially said the application of the terms of a new 2006 mining code – which demanded a royalty increase from 5% to between 12% and 15% – would make its operations in the town of Arlit unprofitable. A communique published by the government on Monday said the contract had been signed within the framework of the 2006 code but gave few details. A Reuters report suggested the company had agreed to give up a number of tax breaks and to increase royalties to "as high as 12% depending on profitability". Ali Idrissa, a member of the Publish What You Pay coalition and head of the Network of Organisations for Transparency and Budgetary Analysis, said: "The priority for us is to call on the Nigerien authorities to publish the contract in accordance with our country's constitution. We will then be able to look at the details of the clauses, the important role we have to play with be monitoring this deal." The publication of natural resource contracts is demanded by the country's 2010 constitution. The drawn-out negotiations with Areva had become something of a test case in Niger, with hundreds of people taking to the streets in a series of demonstrations over the past six months to call for the terms of the mining code to be respected. Oxfam France, which has been campaigning on the issue, has drawn attention to the fact that Areva's total turnover of about $9bn was more than four times Niger's annual budget, and that one in three French lightbulbs was powered by the country's uranium. "It's obviously a victory for strong civil-society mobilisation as much in Niger as in France, but it's also a bit rich. It should be absolutely normal that business conform to the laws of the countries in which they operate," said Oxfam's Anne-Sophie Simpere, calling the opacity around the deal scandalous. Early in 2014 the country's two mines, Somair and Cominak, which produce about 4,000 tonnes of uranium a year, were closed, causing a 10% drop in production. Areva has always insisted that shutdown was for planned maintenance. The new deal, however, signals bad news for the new Imouraren mine, which had been scheduled to open in 2015, doubling the country's production. The communique, signed by the minister of mines, Omar Hamidou Tchiana, and Areva's chief executive, Luc Oursel, who reportedly was in Niamey for the negotiations, says the opening of Imouraren will be delayed until there is an improvement in the world uranium price. It has dropped from more than $42 per pound in 2013 to $34 in the first quarter of 2014, and the company reported a 17.3% drop in revenue in the first three months of 2014. Areva also announced that it would: build a new headquarters in Niamey; employ Nigeriens to manage the Somair and Cominak mines; spend $123m to rebuild the road to its mines in Arlit and $17m on a local development project. | ['global-development/natural-resources-and-development', 'global-development/transparency-and-development', 'global-development/global-development', 'world/france', 'world/europe-news', 'world/world', 'world/niger', 'world/africa', 'environment/nuclearpower', 'environment/energy', 'environment/environment', 'business/mining', 'business/business', 'environment/mining', 'type/article', 'profile/celeste-hicks'] | environment/mining | ENERGY | 2014-05-28T10:44:58Z | true | ENERGY |
environment/2017/jun/29/the-bristol-refill-reuse-bottle-campaign-that-is-spreading-across-europe | The Bristol refill-reuse bottle campaign that is spreading across Europe | Scrambling down the muddy riverbank, Natalie Fee frowns as she looks out across the River Avon. Three weeks earlier she had spent a day with other volunteers collecting hundreds of plastic bottles that were littering the river as it made its way to the sea. Now a new tide of plastic has returned. “In a sense it is dispiriting,” says Fee as she starts to gather up the bottles strewn along the bank. “In another way, it just highlights how important it is we keep pushing ahead with the work we are doing.” Fee, 38, is the driving force behind a campaign which aims to cut the millions of plastic bottles that end up in the world’s oceans each year. The Refill campaign persuades businesses to sign up to a scheme allowing people to refill their water bottles on their premises rather than throw them away. Fee launched the project in 2015 and a couple of months later 200 businesses in Bristol had signed up. Now towns and cities across the UK and Europe are joining. “All we are doing is linking people who want water with businesses and organisations who have taps and are happy for them to be used, but it has really taken off,” Fee said. A Refill app shows which businesses nearby are happy to fill water bottles. The app offers reward points when people fill up their bottle, which can be redeemed to earn a stainless steel water bottle. The longer-term ambition is that users will be able to translate points into vouchers for ethically produced clothes and equipment – and even be informed about traders who avoid plastic waste. As well as about 200 cafes, businesses, pubs and shops in Bristol, the movement has spread to Dorset, Devon and Bath. Norwich and Brighton are close to launching, and Hull, Leeds and Manchester are among other UK cities that have expressed an interest. After Bristol was named European Green Capital in 2015, the Refill campaign was promoted as a “legacy project” and now sister schemes have launched in Hamburg, Bonn and other German cities. “Every time someone refills a bottle rather than throws a plastic one away, we are reducing the amount of plastic that reaches the ocean,” Fee said. Further afield, there is a similar acknowledgment that something has to be done to reduce the startling growth in use of plastic bottles. Almost half a trillion (500,000,000,000) will be used in 2017 alone. In Australia, the drive to stop bottles being thrown out after a single use has manifested in a growing number of water fountains in public spaces that encourage people to refill their bottles. Many councils, shopping malls, universities and other public space operators have contracted companies to install the water fountains with visible and convenient attachments made to refill bottles in areas of high pedestrian traffic, and some have produced websites and apps, showing people where they can find the fountains. The UK campaign calculates that if every Refill station in Bristol performed just one refill everyday, 73,000 fewer plastic bottles would be thrown away every year in Bristol alone. If every Bristolian refilled once a week instead of buying a single-use plastic bottle, the city would reduce its waste plastic bottle consumption by 22.3m a year. Fee, who worked in television before launching the campaign, was inspired to abandon her media career after seeing a video about the damage plastic was doing to albatross chicks. She launched the City to Sea campaign group in 2015 – which has already persuaded the major supermarkets to stop using plastic in their cotton buds – and now Fee has turned her attention to plastic bottles. In Bristol’s Canteen cafe, Gus Hoyt, the campaign’s programme manager, explains how the project now has the backing of several regional water companies and has just secured a grant from the outdoor clothing company Patagonia. “We want to see this scheme everywhere within the next three years,” Hoyt said. “It’s about local groups deciding they want to get involved and setting something up in their area on a grassroots level. We’ve got more people getting in touch every day.” Hoyt said a few residents from Hunstanton on the Norfolk coast got in touch recently after a sperm whale was stranded on a local beach. “It turned out the whale had huge amounts of plastic in its stomach and the local people wanted to do something about it so they got in touch and now there is a Refill Hunstanton project ready to launch this summer. People are doing it for themselves.” Back on the banks of the Avon, Fee has gathered a small mound of plastic bottles from the riverbank in a few minutes. “We’ve still got a long way to go to get people in the habit of refilling and refusing single-use. But it feels like things are changing, that there is an appetite to do things differently.” Michael Slezak contributed reporting to this article from Sydney | ['environment/series/bottling-it', 'world/series/half-full-solutions-innovations-answers', 'environment/plastic', 'uk/bristol', 'environment/environment', 'uk/uk', 'society/communities', 'technology/technology', 'world/europe-news', 'environment/pollution', 'type/article', 'tone/features', 'profile/matthewtaylor', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/uknews', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-special-projects'] | environment/pollution | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE | 2017-06-29T06:00:15Z | true | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE |
news/2017/mar/02/stormy-march-war-gods-month-weatherwatch | Stormy March is the war god's month | The name for the month of March derives from the Latin Martius – Mars, the god of war. That’s appropriate, given that March often sees some of the windiest weather of the year – which also explains why our Anglo-Saxon ancestors called March hlyd-monath or hraed-monath, which mean stormy month and rugged month respectively. The French Republicans, who after the 1789 Revolution created their own short-lived calendar, also referred to the weather in their name for this time of year. Ventôse – meaning windy – began towards the end of February, and followed hard on the heels of Nivôse (snowy) and Pluviôse (rainy), and before the more gentle and welcoming spring months Germinal, Floréal and Prairial. But March doesn’t always live up to its tempestuous reputation. Indeed January and December are usually windier, and the worst storms to hit the UK – the Burns Day Storm of January 1990, the Great Storm of October 1987 and the earlier, and even more devastating Great Storm of November 1703 – all occurred at other times of year. March is nevertheless often quite windy. This is partly because as temperatures warm up across the northern hemisphere at this time of year, so wind speeds increase. But it may also be down to a popular 1930s song, March Winds and April Showers, originally performed by Abe Lyman and his California Orchestra, which cemented the month’s blustery reputation in our consciousness. The song itself is of course based on a popular children’s rhyme: “March winds and April showers / Bring forth May flowers”. | ['news/series/weatherwatch', 'science/meteorology', 'environment/coastlines', 'uk/uk', 'type/article', 'tone/features', 'profile/stephenmoss1', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/weather2', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-weather'] | news/series/weatherwatch | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2017-03-02T21:30:28Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
weather/2009/jul/13/weatherwatch-wine | Weatherwatch | Paul Brown | Climate change sceptics have always seized on the fact that England had vineyards in Roman times and the medieval warm period to claim that the current global warming is merely natural variation in weather patterns. Others thought it would be no bad thing if the summers improved enough to produce excellent wine. This debate, back in the 1990s, gave the likely date of the UK becoming a wine producing state at around 2050. Forty years earlier than predicted the UK already has a number of successful commercial wine producers, showing how weather patterns are moving much faster that the scientists bargained for. This year there are 174 commercial vineyards in operation, some already winning international prizes for excellence. By comparison the Domesday Book of 1085 recorded 42 vineyards. Monks were frequently the most enthusiastic wine producers, the vineyard furthest north being in Yorkshire. Although the quality and quantity of wine everywhere varies each year it is clear that the climate in the UK is now good enough to make a commercial success of viniculture; and as well as the professionals there are lots of amateurs growing vines to produce their own wine. One surprise is that there are already four vineyards in Scotland, one as far north as Orkney. This may still be a little optimistic but it is clear that wine production is set to become a major part of British agriculture. | ['news/series/weatherwatch', 'uk/weather', 'food/wine', 'lifeandstyle/lifeandstyle', 'uk/uk', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/paulbrown', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/weather2'] | news/series/weatherwatch | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2009-07-12T23:01:00Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
science/2019/jul/24/scientific-consensus-on-humans-causing-global-warming-passes-99 | 'No doubt left' about scientific consensus on global warming, say experts | The scientific consensus that humans are causing global warming is likely to have passed 99%, according to the lead author of the most authoritative study on the subject, and could rise further after separate research that clears up some of the remaining doubts. Three studies published in Nature and Nature Geoscience use extensive historical data to show there has never been a period in the last 2,000 years when temperature changes have been as fast and extensive as in recent decades. It had previously been thought that similarly dramatic peaks and troughs might have occurred in the past, including in periods dubbed the Little Ice Age and the Medieval Climate Anomaly. But the three studies use reconstructions based on 700 proxy records of temperature change, such as trees, ice and sediment, from all continents that indicate none of these shifts took place in more than half the globe at any one time. The Little Ice Age, for example, reached its extreme point in the 15th century in the Pacific Ocean, the 17th century in Europe and the 19th century elsewhere, says one of the studies. This localisation is markedly different from the trend since the late 20th century when records are being broken year after year over almost the entire globe, including this summer’s European heatwave. Major temperature shifts in the distant past are also likely to have been primarily caused by volcanic eruptions, according to another of the studies, which helps to explain the strong global fluctuations in the first half of the 18th century as the world started to move from a volcanically cooled era to a climate warmed by human emissions. This has become particularly pronounced since the late 20th century, when temperature rises over two decades or longer have been the most rapid in the past two millennia, notes the third. The authors say this highlights how unusual warming has become in recent years as a result of industrial emissions. “There is no doubt left – as has been shown extensively in many other studies addressing many different aspects of the climate system using different methods and data sets,” said Stefan Brönnimann, from the University of Bern and the Pages 2K consortium of climate scientists. Commenting on the study, other scientists said it was an important breakthrough in the “fingerprinting” task of proving how human responsibility has changed the climate in ways not seen in the past. “This paper should finally stop climate change deniers claiming that the recent observed coherent global warming is part of a natural climate cycle. This paper shows the truly stark difference between regional and localised changes in climate of the past and the truly global effect of anthropogenic greenhouse emissions,” said Mark Maslin, professor of climatology at University College London. Previous studies have shown near unanimity among climate scientists that human factors – car exhausts, factory chimneys, forest clearance and other sources of greenhouse gases – are responsible for the exceptional level of global warming. A 2013 study in Environmental Research Letters found 97% of climate scientists agreed with this link in 12,000 academic papers that contained the words “global warming” or “global climate change” from 1991 to 2011. Last week, that paper hit 1m downloads, making it the most accessed paper ever among the 80+ journals published by the Institute of Physics, according to the authors. The pushback has been political rather than scientific. In the US, the rightwing thinktank the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) is reportedly putting pressure on Nasa to remove a reference to the 97% study from its webpage. The CEI has received event funding from the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers and Charles Koch Institute, which have much to lose from a transition to a low-carbon economy. But among academics who study the climate, the convergence of opinion is probably strengthening, according to John Cook, the lead author of the original consensus paper and a follow-up study on the “consensus about consensus” that looked at a range of similar estimates by other academics. He said that at the end of his 20-year study period there was more agreement than at the beginning: “There was 99% scientific consensus in 2011 that humans are causing global warming.” With ever stronger research since then and increasing heatwaves and extreme weather, Cook believes this is likely to have risen further and is now working on an update. “As expertise in climate science increases, so too does agreement with human-caused global warming,” Cook wrote on the Skeptical Science blog. “The good news is public understanding of the scientific consensus is increasing. The bad news is there is still a lot of work to do yet as climate deniers continue to persistently attack the scientific consensus.” • This article was amended on 26 July 2019. An earlier version abbreviated the name of the Competitive Enterprise Institute as CPI, rather than CEI. | ['science/scienceofclimatechange', 'environment/climate-crisis', 'environment/environment', 'science/science', 'environment/climate-change-scepticism', 'uk/uk', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/jonathanwatts', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-environment'] | environment/climate-change-scepticism | CLIMATE_DENIAL | 2019-07-24T17:00:19Z | true | CLIMATE_DENIAL |
news/2020/apr/29/weatherwatch-deadly-tornadoes-hit-us-while-cuba-has-hottest-day | Weatherwatch: deadly tornadoes hit US while Cuba has hottest day | In the space of a week in April, Mississippi, US, was hit by four separate tornadoes. Three of these occurred on Easter Sunday and brought damaging winds reaching 190mph. These left one person dead and another injured, as well as damaging many homes and mobile homes. A week later, on 19 April, another tornado brought winds of up to 170mph to southern Mississippi, creating a total of 227 miles of damage through the state in the course of a week. Records were broken last week when, on 25 April, a tropical depression formed in the eastern Pacific Ocean, almost three weeks before the official start of the eastern Pacific hurricane season. The depression occurred far out at sea, south-west of Mexico, and didn’t make landfall. However, this is the earliest ever recorded formation of a tropical depression in the ocean basin since records began in 1966. Another record was broken this month when Cuba recorded its highest temperature since records began. On 12 April temperatures reached 39.3C in the town of Veguitas. This was mainly due to a strong high pressure system and light winds allowing for heat to become trapped at the surface. The previous record had been 39.1 degrees, recorded last year on 30 June. | ['news/series/weatherwatch', 'world/tornadoes', 'us-news/mississippi', 'world/cuba', 'environment/climate-crisis', 'news/series/world-weatherwatch', 'type/article', 'tone/features', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/weather2', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-weather'] | world/tornadoes | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2020-04-29T20:30:01Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
lifeandstyle/2015/jul/22/kitchen-gadgets-review-peanut-butter-maker-a-blisteringly-antisocial-noise | Kitchen gadgets review: peanut butter maker – a blisteringly antisocial noise | What? Tabletop rotary mill. The Peanut Butter Maker (£49.99, Prezzybox.com) funnels shelled nuts on to grinding discs, while oil from a pipette is periodically administered; the resultant paste is collected below. Why? I am not going to explain to you why the ability to make your own peanut butter is awesome. Well? “Fill the bin with your nuts” is the booklet’s first instruction, which sounds like it was written on a stag do. It’s referring to the plastic basket positioned over the mechanism, but there must be a more appetising word for it than “bin”. I’m guessing they didn’t employ a subeditor, or if they did, they paid him peanuts. I doubt a designer was involved either – the thing looks like a child’s toy rather than a kitchen contender. Near the base, badly printed, are some other nuts that can be butterised: almond, cashew, hazelnut and, amusingly, acadamia (maybe it’s good for grinding up gone-to-seed professors). Let’s have a go at peanut butter. I – ahem – fill the bin with my nuts, position the flimsy oil dispenser and turn it on. I’m not exaggerating when I say this compact machine produces the loudest noise I have ever heard indoors. It’s an astonishing, blisteringly antisocial noise, a power drill on a Sunday morning. It’s like I’m pushing a lawnmower up a gravel drive. Meanwhile, at the front, the machine pumps out a slurry resembling cat sick, which drips feebly into a smaller plastic bin. Thankfully, there isn’t much of it. Without enthusiasm, I stir in some honey, smear on toast and have a nibble ... it’s delicious. Chunky, gum-smackingly thick, a touch of sweet and salt. This is weird. I try again, with pistachios. This effort looks even more like catsick – a beige shade of feline vomitus with bits of grass in – and, again, is delicious. The cognitive dissonance is giving me a headache, or would if the noise of the machine hadn’t given me tinnitus. So: bit of a curate’s egg, this one. The fact is it’s not doing anything a blender wouldn’t do more efficiently and quietly. If you must have it, I recommend you keep a couple of peanuts back to shove in your ears. Redeeming features? It’s slim and makes good nut butter, but so does Gwyneth Paltrow and I wouldn’t leave her in charge of breakfast either. Counter, drawer, back of the cupboard? Back of the cupboard. Or simply fill the bin. 1/5 | ['lifeandstyle/series/inspect-a-gadget', 'lifeandstyle/lifeandstyle', 'food/food', 'tone/features', 'technology/gadgets', 'technology/technology', 'type/article', 'profile/rhik-samadder', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/g2', 'theguardian/g2/features'] | technology/gadgets | UNRELATED_TO_CLIMATE | 2015-07-22T12:21:56Z | true | UNRELATED_TO_CLIMATE |
environment/2024/may/01/country-diary-i-am-it-turns-out-being-watched | Country diary: I am, it turns out, being watched | Phil Gates | Sounds of ringing picks and hammers, clattering rockfalls, squealing railway wagon wheels on iron tracks: a cacophony that, a century ago, carried on the wind into the centre of the town, a mile downhill. Then, Ashes quarry employed 200 men who sent 136,000 tonnes of limestone annually to the Consett iron and steelworks, 10 miles distant across bleak Pennine moorland. This morning, silence, broken only by metallic tchak-tchak calls of jackdaws, echoing from the vertical rock face. Nature has reclaimed this chasm in the fellside, transforming it into a shallow lake. Standing on a spoil heap near the water’s edge, sheltered by a towering cliff from an icy north-westerly wind, I can smell peaty fragrance from sun-warmed moss, wild thyme crushed underfoot and a lacustrine aroma of last autumn’s decaying reedmace leaves. At the water margin, its brown, felty, cylindrical seedheads – seemingly out of synchrony with spring’s new growth – are disintegrating, dispersing wisps of plumed seeds across the water. A blue tit arrives and begins pecking one apart. Searching for insects or collecting material for a comfy nest lining? The latter, it seems; it carries a beak-load away to a nest hole in the cliff, whereupon a mysterious dark shape – blunt-headed and broad-winged – detaches from a ledge, glides away and disappears among deep shadows along the rock wall. Following is difficult: too much haste over this jagged, slippery rock invites a broken ankle. Stepping carefully, looking down for footholds, risking brief upward glances, I thought I knew where it went, but can see no sign, so I stand, wait and watch. Nothing, no movement, no sound. Just as I’m about to leave, through the branches of a tree growing from a fissure in the cliff comes the revelation that I am being watched by the unblinking gaze of a tawny owl, eyes like polished jet. It’s perched inside a small cave created by fallen rock, lit by the rising sun. Disdainful of the clumsy animal down below, it decides that I’m no threat, and its heavy-lidded eyes close. We inhabit separate worlds: the snoozing owl belongs to the moon and stars; my day, with overnight frost still melting on the grass, is just beginning. • Country diary is on Twitter at @gdncountrydiary | ['environment/series/country-diary', 'environment/birds', 'environment/environment', 'uk/ruralaffairs', 'uk/uk', 'lifeandstyle/walking', 'environment/wildlife', 'type/article', 'tone/features', 'profile/philgates', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/journal', 'theguardian/journal/letters', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-letters-and-leader-writers'] | environment/wildlife | BIODIVERSITY | 2024-05-01T04:30:46Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
world/2024/nov/13/spain-flood-warnings-schools-closed-people-evacuated | Schools closed and people evacuated as torrential rain returns in Spain | Authorities in eastern and southern Spain have closed schools and begun evacuating some residents as the country is pounded by further torrential rains two weeks after the catastrophic floods that killed at least 215 people and unleashed a bitter political blame game. On Wednesday morning, the state meteorological agency, Aemet, put large parts of eastern and southern Spain on amber alert and issued the highest level of warning for the provinces Tarragona in Catalonia and Málaga in Andalucía. The Andalucían government closed schools in the provinces of Málaga and Granada, and 3,000 people were evacuated from neighbourhoods near the Guadalhorce river, which runs through Málaga province. High-speed rail services connecting Madrid to Málaga and Valencia were suspended on Wednesday afternoon until at least midday on Thursday. Málaga airport cancelled one flight and diverted five others, operator Aena wrote on X, while the local metro was shut. The authorities in Catalonia called on people to take “maximum care”, while Valencia’s regional government – which has been criticised for its handling of the disaster – advised councils in affected areas to close schools and to recommend that people worked from home. Early on Wednesday evening, Aemet raised the alert in Valencia province from orange to red. “The danger is extreme,” Aemet said in a post on X. “Avoid moving around as rivers could flood. Be very careful!” It warned that 180 litres of water a square metre could fall in the area over the course of four or five hours. While the current storm is not expected to be as powerful as the last one, the impact of the rains could be severe because of the huge quantities of mud already on the ground and the compromised condition of the sewage system. Almost 20,000 military personnel and police officers are still engaged in the clean-up operation in Valencia, which was the region hit hardest by the floods a fortnight ago. The town council of Chiva, one of the worst-hit sites, cancelled classes and sports activities, while in nearby Aldaia workers piled up sandbags to protect the town. “We are placing sandbags to replace the floodgates that the previous floods tore down,” Antonio Ojeda, a municipal worker, told Reuters. He said the idea was to prevent the Saleta ravine, which runs through the town, from overflowing again. The search continues for the bodies of the 23 people still missing after the October floods. On Wednesday morning, emergency workers recovered the bodies of two young brothers who were carried away by the waters in the Valencian town of Torrent. Rubén Matías Calatayud, who was three, and Izan Matías Calatayud, who was five, were swept out of their father’s arms. The floods, which are the worst natural disaster in Spain’s recent history, have led to confrontations between the regional and local authorities, as well as a huge protest over the weekend. Growing public anger over the authorities’ handling of the emergency brought 130,000 people on to the streets of the city of Valencia on Saturday evening to call for the resignation of the regional president, Carlos Mazón, who is overseeing the relief effort. Mazón, a member of the conservative People’s party (PP), is under mounting pressure after it emerged he had a three-hour lunch with a journalist on 29 October, the day the torrential rains hit the region, and did not arrive at the emergency command centre until 7.30pm that evening. Much of the anger also stems from the fact that Mazón’s administration waited almost 14 hours before sending emergency civil protection messages to people’s mobile phones on 29 October, despite the series of weather warnings issued by Aemet early that morning and the previous evening. Mazón himself has tried to blame Spain’s socialist-led government, and even the armed forces’ military emergencies unit (UME), whose personnel have been deployed to the region in huge numbers. The PP, meanwhile, is attempting to point the finger at Spain’s environment minister, Teresa Ribera, who has been designated as the European Commission’s executive vice-president for the clean, just and competitive transition. The party used her EU confirmation hearing in Brussels on Tuesday to accuse her of failing in her duties as a minister. “This test is totally unnecessary,” said Dolors Montserrat, the PP’s European parliament spokesperson. “Two weeks ago, you were subjected to the test of your life in Valencia … You are responsible for the prevention, preparation and response on climate disasters and that’s why I’m sure that history – and perhaps judges – will judge you for your inaction and your incompetence.” Ribera replied that the central government had fulfilled its responsibilities when it came to sounding the alert – Aemet falls under the control of her ministry – and had offered help in responding to the emergency, which remains under the control of Mazón’s administration. She also said that many local authorities in Valencia had heeded the Aemet warning and taken appropriate action such as closing schools on 29 October. “It might be good to think about how undermining the credibility of the meteorological agency, and not taking seriously the risk warnings that were sent, may have catastrophic consequences for the people,” she added. | ['world/spain', 'environment/flooding', 'world/extreme-weather', 'world/world', 'environment/environment', 'world/europe-news', 'campaign/email/this-is-europe', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/samjones', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/international', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-foreign'] | environment/flooding | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2024-11-13T18:24:34Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
business/2021/may/19/tobacco-firms-in-move-to-strike-out-malawi-exploitation-case | Tobacco firms in move to strike out Malawi exploitation case | Two of the world’s biggest tobacco companies are to ask the high court in London on Wednesday to strike out a case against them alleging the exploitation of Malawian farmers and their children as a result of their drive for profits. British American Tobacco and Imperial Brands, both based in the UK, deny the allegations. They are asking that the case be dismissed on the grounds that lawyers for the farming families cannot prove the tobacco they grew ended up in their cigarettes and other products. The watershed case was brought after investigations by the Guardian into child labour in the tobacco fields. Families are trafficked from southern Malawi, allege Leigh Day solicitors, their lawyers, to tobacco-growing regions in the north. Once there, they have to build their own homes from branches and leaves and work seven days a week in the fields. They receive a small portion of maize each day to feed their family and live largely by borrowing money until harvest time at the end of the season, when they are paid for the crop. Loans and the costs of farming supplies are deducted and some end up in debt. The lawyers argue their conditions of work breach the definition of forced labour, unlawful compulsory labour and exploitation under Malawian law. They also say that they breach the UK Modern Slavery Act, article 14 of the European convention on human rights and the International Labour Organization definition of forced labour. Several thousand of Malawi’s poorest tobacco tenant farmers have joined the claim. They sell all their crop to a leaf-buying company in Malawi, which they say supplies BAT and Imperial. Leigh Day, the London-based firm representing thousands of Malawian farming families, says BAT and Imperial want proof that the families’ tobacco ended up in their products. But the companies have refused to disclose documents they hold which will show whether their tobacco is sourced from the specific families bringing the claim. A spokesman for Imperial said: “It would be inappropriate to comment on this ongoing litigation, other than to reiterate that we will defend the claim.” A BAT spokesperson said: “BAT believes that there is no legal or factual basis to bring these claims, therefore BAT has made an application for the claims to be struck out or stayed. “We are unable to provide further comment ahead of the hearing.” Martyn Day, senior partner at Leigh Day, said: “The heart of the claim is that two of the largest tobacco companies in the world cynically exploited impoverished tobacco farmers from Malawi and their children. “Fortunately the two defendant companies are based here in Britain giving our courts jurisdiction to adjudicate these claims.” He said he was optimistic the judge would allow the claims to progress toward a full trial. | ['business/tobacco-industry', 'business/britishamericantobacco', 'business/imperialtobaccogroup', 'uk/uk', 'law/law', 'environment/farming', 'business/business', 'world/malawi', 'world/world', 'law/child-labour', 'type/article', 'profile/sarahboseley', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-home-news'] | environment/farming | BIODIVERSITY | 2021-05-19T05:00:19Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
environment/2023/oct/26/environmental-money-easy-to-stash-in-us-due-to-loopholes-report-finds | Environmental crime money easy to stash in US due to loopholes, report finds | Secrecy and lax oversight have made the US a hiding place for dirty money accrued by environmental criminals in the Amazon rainforest, a report says. Illegal loggers and miners are parking sums ranging from millions to billions of dollars in US real estate and other assets, says the report, which calls on Congress and the White House to close loopholes in financial regulations that it says are contributing to the destruction of the world’s biggest tropical forest. “We are trying to show that the US is the easiest place to hide dirty money, which is a major problem not just in terms of national security, drug trafficking and kleptocratic corruption but also environmental crime,” said Ian Gary, the executive director of the Financial Accountability and Corporate Transparency (Fact) Coalition, which produced the report. For the first time in 2021, the US came top in the world financial secrecy index released by the Tax Justice Networks, as a result of money laundering and gaps in its financial transparency laws. The study by Fact draws attention to the impact this has on environmental crime in the Amazon, a region of global importance due to its impact on the climate. The report lists six case studies of links between forest destruction and companies in the US. Florida, which has strong cultural and linguistic connections to South America, was found to be a hotspot. The report cites the case of Goldex, formerly the second biggest gold exporter in Colombia, which supplied more than 45 tonnes of gold, worth $1.4bn, to two US refineries, including Republic Metals Corp (RMC) in Miami. Colombian prosecutors later alleged that the gold was illegally mined, transferred through shell companies and ultimately used to launder money for organised crime groups. The company was hit with sanctions by the Colombia government and one of its suppliers was extradited to the US to face charges of drug trafficking and money laundering. After an investigation by the US attorney’s office, RMC agreed to tighten its internal money laundering guidelines. Goldex has since filed for bankruptcy. A still more lucrative case linking Miami with Amazon nations was that of NTR Metals, which pleaded guilty to charges that it failed to maintain an adequate anti-money-laundering programme after revelations that it dealt with $3.6bn (£3bn) of illegal gold and fake ingots from Peru. The problem was not isolated to Florida. In Maryland, the former Peruvian president Alejandro Toledo allegedly bought properties to hide and launder $1.2m he received in bribes from the Brazilian construction company Odebrecht for a contract to build the cross-Amazon interoceanic highway and other projects. Odebrecht has admitted paying bribes and a US court has ordered funds to be sent back to Peru. Toledo denies any wrongdoing. Other case studies linked a Nevada firm to purchases of illegal timber from the Loreto region of the Peruvian Amazon, and a Connecticut company to forest clearance for a palm oil plantation in indigenous land. Government regulators and watchdog groups in Peru said it was common for their investigations into environmental crime to run into a dead end with shell companies in the US. “We have had cases where we can directly trace the dirty money route to US company involvement,” Daniel Linares Ruesta, the director of Peru’s financial intelligence unit, was quoted as saying. The report identifies two principal flaws in the US regulation of financial flows from other countries: permissive rules on identification that allow the use of anonymous shell companies; and gaping holes in the anti-money-laundering framework that enable estate agents and refineries to accept payments without checking and disclosing the origin of funds. Earlier this year, the Igarapé Institute estimated that environmental crime in the Amazon generated annual profits of between $110bn and $281bn, though it has been a relatively low priority for financial authorities in Latin America. Investigations by the Insight Crime website suggest the problem may be growing as links build between environmental crime, narco-trafficking and money-laundering networks in Brazil, Colombia, Peru and Ecuador. The Fact report urges the US to take more responsibility because it is the primary destination for illegal funds, followed by the UK and its crown dependencies such as the Cayman Islands. Among its recommendations are for the US administration to establish anti-money-laundering obligations in the real estate market, to provide support for Amazon nations to improve financial oversight, and to implement the Corporate Transparency Act, which would establish a database of true “beneficial” owners of all companies. It also calls on the US Congress to pass the Forest Act, which would add illegal deforestation to the US money-laundering statute. Gary said he was encouraged that the Biden administration had called out the threat posed by corruption. Now, he said, it needed to act. “The US needs to step up,” Gary said. “Our report shows the importance of the US cleaning up its own financial secrecy house and the need to collaborate with law enforcement partners in the Amazon region to combat illegal financial flows … for the US to have such financial secrecy is a problem for the whole world.” | ['environment/amazon-rainforest', 'world/americas', 'us-news/us-news', 'environment/deforestation', 'environment/logging-and-land-clearing', 'environment/environment', 'world/world', 'us-news/florida', 'business/gold', 'world/organised-crime', 'world/colombia', 'world/peru', 'world/brazil', 'world/ecuador', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/jonathanwatts', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-environment'] | environment/amazon-rainforest | BIODIVERSITY | 2023-10-26T16:00:38Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
environment/2020/oct/05/the-guardians-climate-promise-we-will-keep-raising-the-alarm | The Guardian's climate promise: we will keep raising the alarm | The global climate crisis is the emergency of our times. Amid all the fear and sadness of 2020, it remains the overwhelming long-term threat to our planet and to everyone’s health and security. That is why we promise to keep reporting on it, raising the alarm and investigating the crisis and possible solutions, until we begin to see genuine systemic change. A year ago, the Guardian made a pledge to our readers. We promised to keep speaking out about the climate emergency, despite the formidable and well-funded forces who would much rather the subject remained buried. We adopted new language to emphasise the existential nature of the situation. We pledged to deepen our environmental reporting. Our commercial teams decided to reject all advertising from fossil fuel extractors – a first among major media companies. We committed to reaching carbon neutrality by 2030. And that was just the start. Thousands of readers from 130 countries joined us as a result, paying to support open, independent, authoritative environmental journalism that pulls no punches, exposes the depth of the crisis, and challenges us to rethink every aspect of our warming world – how it can be better, more sustainable, more just and more hopeful. That support has enabled us to maintain a relentless focus on the environment, with almost 3,000 articles over the last 12 months. We have published investigations, scientific analysis, reports on species extinction and air quality – and we have kept the voices of those affected by global heating at the heart of our reporting. In the past year, we’ve reported from the Arctic and Antarctic, as well as other climate frontlines: the Amazon, the Sahara, the wildfires of Australia and the American west. We reported from the Cop25 summit of governments (travelling there by train). We have closely covered the movements trying to bring about change, such as Extinction Rebellion and the school climate strikes. We dug deep into the loss of wildlife, the problems of air pollution and microplastics, and exposed the most polluting companies on the planet. We want our supporters to know: when you fund us, this is what you are paying for. But of course this environmental year has been unique for another reason. A succession of related crises, not least the global Covid-19 pandemic, has brought a new perspective. These crises have starkly demonstrated how so many of our global problems – public health, migration, food security, land conflict, equality, gender and race – intersect with our environmental catastrophe. For example, many researchers now see a correlation between species-jumping viruses such as Covid-19 and humanity’s deep, destructive incursion into the natural world. Links between high air pollution and increased coronavirus infection rates have also become apparent, thanks to persistent Guardian reporting. It’s becoming clearer than ever that people’s mass migration from the global south over the past decade has been principally caused by changing weather. And we are coming to understand, more deeply than ever, how global heating disproportionately affects communities of colour. Independent, expert journalism can make a difference. It generates awareness of the problems – as well as the solutions. It galvanises protest and resistance, putting pressure on government and industry to make positive changes. And it promotes and encourages best practice, human ingenuity and innovation that we can all learn from. As Christiana Figueres, the UN’s climate chief when the Paris deal was sealed in 2015, told our environment editor, Damian Carrington: “Without the work of the Guardian the delivery of the Paris agreement would have been far harder or perhaps even impossible … At a time when the darkness of fake news and doubt in science is everywhere, the Guardian is a point of light.” But words alone may not be enough. We feel the need to act, too. So the Guardian is also trying to set an example. Over the past year, we have renounced fossil fuel advertising. We have eliminated more than 95% of our investment exposure to fossil fuels. We have qualified as a B Corp, a certification that will hold us to high social and environmental standards. By 2030, we will have completely eliminated two-thirds of our emissions. For the remaining third, we will remove carbon from the atmosphere by supporting the highest-quality offsetting schemes. We don’t expect these changes to be easy, and we may make mistakes along the way, but we will be transparent about our progress and share everything we learn. Wars have been fought over natural resources for most of human history, and our efforts to coexist with the natural world have been written about for decades, if not centuries. But the crisis before us today is something quite different, for two main reasons. First, the stakes are higher, the planet hotter than it has been for tens of thousands of years. The risk we face is nothing less than the downfall of the civilised world, perhaps in the lifetime of today’s schoolchildren. Second, we can see a path forward that avoids the worst outcomes. The worldwide response to Covid-19 has demonstrated that there can be collective global action if the threat is big enough, and that humans are capable of changing our lives and lifestyles quickly, when the moment demands it. The threat presented by the climate crisis is big enough. Help us to galvanise the action required by supporting Guardian journalism. It’s not too late. | ['environment/series/guardian-climate-pledge-2020', 'environment/environment', 'environment/climate-crisis', 'environment/activism', 'type/article', 'tone/comment', 'profile/katharineviner', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/topstories', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-home-news'] | environment/activism | CLIMATE_ACTIVISM | 2020-10-05T06:00:12Z | true | CLIMATE_ACTIVISM |
commentisfree/2015/sep/07/niger-campaign-democracy-ali-idrissa | Despite the threats, I will not stop fighting for Niger | Ali Idrissa | It all started in 1990. I was fighting for democracy and better conditions for students. Despite our nation having gained independence from France in 1960, Niger had been prone to political instability and ruled by a one-party system. As a young man all I wanted was freedom and democracy. These were intense times of violent clashes between citizens and Niger’s armed forces. I lost a cousin and a close friend as three students were shot dead by armed forces during one of our demonstrations in the capital, Niamey. Fighting for democracy was dangerous and scary, but I decided to turn my grief and anger from those losses into a stronger engagement to change things. With other activists, I set up Croisade, a human rights organisation. This time defined my future as an activist. In the 90s I was calling for democracy, but the food crisis of 2005 made me realise that Niger had another big problem: corruption. Never officially declared a famine, the crisis was brought on by drought, sand locusts and decades of poverty. Looking for ways to raise funds quickly to address the crisis, the Nigerien government decided to impose a tax on basic foodstuffs such as wheat, milk and sugar. The proposed tax angered me (it would hit the poorest hardest) but also made me curious: as the world’s fourth largest producer of uranium, how could there be no money in the coffers? How can uranium represent 70% of our exports, but only contribute 5.8% to our GDP? To understand this lack of balance between uranium extraction and its revenues, I looked into the company that was extracting the uranium, Areva. Areva is a French company in which the French government has an 87% stake. Operating in Niger since 1971, Areva refused to comply with the 2006 mining code that increased mining royalties from 5% to 12%. In 2013, when the contracts between Areva and our government were due for renewal, I hoped that the government would be able to get a fairer deal. With fellow transparency activists we had founded Rotab, the Network of Organisations for Transparency and Budgetary Analysis, and joined the global transparency movement. I hoped that Rotab, as a watchdog, would have an impact on the negotiations. After 18 months of intense discussions, including a visit from the French president François Hollande, an agreement was finally reached: Areva agreed to the increased mining tax but was still exempt from paying VAT. However, no information about this deal has been published and the contracts haven’t been made public, which makes us concerned that Areva may have pressured the Nigerien government to allow it to continue its mining operations. Asking for answers from the government has cost me and my family a lot. I have missed time from my children’s education and important family moments. I have suffered intimidation and threats, which have at times affected my family. One morning last year, at around 4am, armed police broke through my gate and arrested me in front of my bewildered pregnant wife. My neighbours, on their way to the mosque for morning prayer, were alarmed to see armed plainclothes police around my home. This happened during Hollande’s visit, when we had organised a demonstration demanding the publication of the Areva contract. As the government wanted to hide dissent, they detained me for the duration of the visit. It has not been easy, and sometimes I have wondered if I could carry on. Much has changed since the coup of 1999, as we have democracy and laws protecting human rights, but we still have a long way to go. On paper there may be freedom of the press and of expression, but as an activist I still fear for my life. But the sacrifice has allowed me to bring the world’s attention to issues affecting Nigeriens. Knowing that I have the support of Niger’s citizens has pushed me to carry on. I’d like to see a Niger where we work together to keep our country stable and promote its development. But that won’t happen as long as there isn’t a fair distribution of natural resources, and as long as corruption prevails. But even if I am scared at times, fearing for my life, I won’t give up this battle for Niger, for my people, for my family. | ['commentisfree/series/a-week-in-africa', 'world/niger', 'commentisfree/commentisfree', 'tone/comment', 'world/africa', 'world/world', 'global-development/transparency-and-development', 'global-development/global-development', 'world/france', 'world/europe-news', 'business/mining', 'environment/mining', 'law/human-rights', 'law/law', 'type/article', 'profile/ali-idrissa'] | environment/mining | ENERGY | 2015-09-07T14:02:05Z | true | ENERGY |
world/2005/mar/02/tsunami2004.johnaglionby1 | 'At least we have something, unlike so many' | Mohammed Dahlan jokes that the tsunami did him a favour; it provided him with the house alterations he always wanted. "We used to have eight rooms in the house, now we have only three and two new verandas," he said. "Basically less than half of my house survived but at least we have something, unlike so many people. There are nine of us living here." He is also fortunate because, even though his well is unusable due to salt-water contamination, there is a water main standpipe less than 10 metre from his house. "For the moment the water is free because there is no meter but I'm sure that is not going to last long," he said as he watched his daughter Rohina fill up plastic tubs to do the laundry. Like most of the tsunami survivors, Mr Dahlan says he needs more aid. "The tsunami stuck just before we were about to harvest our rice," he said. "We lost the whole crop. None of it could be salvaged." As with most of the farmers in Nusa, he does have some other land, on higher ground, that was unaffected. "But I haven't been able to sell anything yet," he explained. "I can't really work yet, I'm still too traumatised. Hopefully I'll be able to work again soon but I don't know when that might be." In the meantime, he does what many of the older men in the village do, namely hang out at the village coffee shop. | ['world/tsunami2004', 'world/world', 'type/article', 'profile/johnaglionby'] | world/tsunami2004 | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2005-03-02T11:50:46Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
politics/2011/aug/30/planning-reform-undemocratic-green-groups | Planning reform will lead to development 'free-for-all' | A planning free-for-all leading to blighted landscapes, urban sprawl, more congestion and an undermining of local democracy is inevitable if the government insists on pushing ahead with proposals for new rules, say the UK's leading conservation, heritage and green groups. The National Trust, Campaign to Protect Rural England, Friends of the Earth, RSPB, Greenpeace and other countryside and environment organisations with a combined membership of more than 6 million people have told the Guardian that they fear communities will lose the ability to influence decision-making as planning is streamlined in favour of developers and as economic growth is prioritised over social and environmental concerns. In addition, one prominent Conservative council has said the proposed changes contained in the draft National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) will be "undemocratic" and "against the principle of localism". The fight against the proposed planning rules comes from groups at the heart of middle England and is shaping up to become a major political battleground for David Cameron. Many of the groups were part of the coalition that forced the government into a U-turn on selling off English forests this year. According to the groups, who are working individually and not as a coalition, the most radical reforms of the planning system in 50 years will allow developers to build what they like where they like in the 66% of England that is not formally protected by national park or other conservation status. The groups say the changes in the planning law may lead to: • Previously refused plans for major developments being resubmitted and automatically passed. • Plans for giant incinerators and factory farms becoming impossible to refuse. • Overcrowding as the space between communities is filled with housing. • Green belt protection around more than 20 English cities becoming weakened. • Airport expansions, new roads and giant business parks on motorways. • Polluting developments imposed on the poorest communities. Existing conservation areas will retain protection measures, but nearly two-thirds of England is not protected. In addition, planning approval will be assumed in the nearly 50% of local authorities that have no published local plans. A crucial clause in the draft bill provides a presumption in favour of "sustainable development" over all other considerations. The way it is worded is said by the groups to be so weak as to be legally meaningless. Fiona Reynolds, director of the 3.5-million-strong National Trust called for a fundamental rethink of the reforms. "We firmly believe that the government has got its proposals for planning reform wrong. "We are hearing the same from our supporters and local communities the length and breadth of the country. The government is disregarding the impact that these proposals will have on open space in and around our cities, towns and villages. There is a default 'yes' to development which means that local voices will not be heard". Shaun Spiers, director of the CPRE, said: "The risk is that there will be a development free-for-all in all unprotected areas in the mistaken belief that it will generate economic growth. The message for local authorities is build, build, build." Martin Harper, RSPB conservation director, said: "The planning system is there to represent the interests of the public in the face of complex decisions, and it will fail us all if one factor – economic growth – is set higher than any other." Joan Walley, the Labour MP who chairs parliament's environmental audit committee, which will question ministers over the changes next month, said: "Stripping the planning system of safeguards that protect the green spaces around our cities, towns and villages is not the answer. The government must be careful that in the rush for growth it doesn't end up vandalising the countryside." Greg Clark, planning minister, vigorously defended the proposed reforms, saying communities could draw up their own plans about where development should take place and would be strengthened rather than weakened by the changes. "The reaction of these groups has been unfocused and misconceived. Decisions on development will be made by local communities. Their plans will be sovereign. This puts more power into the hands of local people, not less," he said. "I believe we will see a different type of development. Rather than huge, banal [ones] imposed from above, you will have more sensitive location of homes designed to higher standards. We will move from types of mediocre development that have been resisted by communities to developments that are more accountable." But in a signal that Tory councils may react in a hostile way to the removal of many of their planning powers, Hammersmith and Fulham council said the planning proposals would damage local democracy. "To change planning law so that important decisions are not made at local level is anti-democratic, against the principles of localism," said deputy leader Nick Botterill. Fulham and other London councils say that they will have no power under the new laws to stop a major London sewer being built. "These proposals risk riding roughshod over local democracy. It could take decision-making away from councils. There is a real risk of developers being able to manipulate the [planning] system in their favour. It opens a barn door for them," said Kate Henderson, director of the Town and Country Planning Association. Not all groups oppose the new planning rules, though. Harry Cotterell, deputy president of the Country Land and Business Association, said that sustainable development was necessary for economic growth. "The planning system is currently failing to provide either the jobs or housing the countryside desperately needs for its survival. The draft NPPF provides a streamlined and less bureaucratic way of achieving economic and social success, while at the same time protecting the needs of the environment." Liz Peace, head of the British Property Federation, said: "The NPPF simply streamlines the old system, and gives democratically elected councils, rather than unelected regional quangos, the responsibility of deciding how much development is needed in their communities. What is needed is a sensible debate." | ['politics/planning', 'politics/politics', 'uk/ruralaffairs', 'uk/uk', 'environment/rspb', 'environment/environment', 'environment/greenpeace', 'environment/activism', 'society/localgovernment', 'society/society', 'tone/news', 'type/article', 'profile/johnvidal', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/uknews'] | environment/activism | CLIMATE_ACTIVISM | 2011-08-30T11:02:31Z | true | CLIMATE_ACTIVISM |
environment/2021/may/25/turkey-struck-by-sea-snot-because-of-global-heating | Turkey struck by ‘sea snot’ because of global heating | When seen from above, it looks like a brush of beige swirled across the dark blue waters of the Sea of Marmara. Up close, it resembles a creamy, gelatinous blanket of quicksand. Now scientists are warning that the substance, known as sea snot, is on the rise as a result of global heating. The gloopy, mucus-like substance had not been recorded in Turkish waters before 2007. It is created as a result of prolonged warm temperatures and calm weather and in areas with abundant nutrients in the water. The phytoplankton responsible grow out of control when nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus are widely available in seawater. These nutrients have long been plentiful in the Sea of Marmara, which receives the wastewater of nearly 20 million people and is fed directly from the nutrient-rich Black Sea. In ordinary amounts, these tiny, floating sea plants are responsible for breathing oxygen into the oceans, but their overpopulation creates the opposite effect. Under conditions of stress, they exude a mucus-like matter that can grow to cover many square miles of the sea in the right conditions. In most cases, the substance itself is not harmful. “What we see is basically a combination of protein, carbohydrates and fat,” said Dr Neslihan Özdelice, a marine biologist at Istanbul University. But the sticky substance attracts viruses and bacteria, including E coli, and can in effect turn into a blanket that suffocates the marine life below. This year’s event, the largest yet seen, began in deep waters in late December, and was initially only a nuisance to fishers, who have been unable to cast their nets since the sea snot appeared. Around this time, Dr Barış Özalp, a marine biologist at Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart University, had a chance encounter with the substance in the Çanakkale strait, the narrow passage that connects the Aegean and Marmara seas. Özalp was startled by the extent of the sea snot he encountered during his regular dive to monitor corals, his main research focus. It is particularly damaging to immobile organisms such as corals as it gets wrapped around them, inhibiting their ability to feed or breathe and often killing them. “The gravity of the situation set in when I dived for measurements in March and discovered severe mortality in corals,” Özalp said, naming gold coral (Savalia savaglia) and the violescent sea-whip (Paramuricea clavata) as the most affected species. He warned that if the sea snot were to persist, invertebrate life at the bottom of the Sea of Marmara would be under severe threat. When the mucus eventually reached the shoreline in the following months, it also started to threaten the breeding ground of fish. “Once the mucilage covers the coasts, it limits the interaction between water and the atmosphere,” said Dr Mustafa Sarı, the dean of Bandırma Onyedi Eylül University’s maritime faculty, who is leading a study into the economic effects of the sea snot. It further depleted oxygen during decomposition, essentially sucking air out of the area, Sarı explained. He also noted that thousands of fish started dying a few weeks ago in Bandırma, a coastal town on the southern banks of the Marmara. Scientists are calling for urgent action to reduce wastewater pressures on the Sea of Marmara in order to diminish nutrients. “The main trigger is warming related to climate change, as phytoplankton grow during higher temperatures,” said Özdelice, noting that the seawater had warmed by 2-3C since preindustrial times. But since countering climate change requires a global and concerted effort, she urged Turkey to focus on factors it could control: overfishing and waste water discharges. “This is also an outcome of overfishing because as filter feeders which consume phytoplankton are excessively hunted, it allows room for [phytoplankton and sea snot] to breed,” she said. Even before the added pressure of climate change, the semi-enclosed Sea of Marmara could barely shoulder the burden of the densely populated and industrialised Marmara basin, Sarı said. “But as temperatures rise, the sea reacts in a completely different manner. “We are experiencing the visible effects of climate change, and adaptation requires an overhaul of our habitual practices. We must initiate a full-scale effort to adapt.” | ['environment/series/seascape-the-state-of-our-oceans', 'environment/climate-crisis', 'environment/environment', 'world/turkey', 'world/world', 'environment/marine-life', 'environment/wildlife', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-environment'] | environment/series/seascape-the-state-of-our-oceans | BIODIVERSITY | 2021-05-25T09:36:21Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
environment/2022/mar/21/chemical-from-tyres-linked-to-mass-salmon-deaths-in-us-found-in-australia-for-first-time | Chemical from tyres linked to mass salmon deaths in US found in Australia for first time | A toxic chemical released from tyres as they wear down on roads and implicated in mass deaths of salmon in the United States has been found in an Australian waterway for the first time. Scientists detected the compound – known as 6PPD-quinone – among a cocktail of chemicals and hundreds of kilograms of tyre particles washed into a creek from a motorway during storms. Researchers around the world are scrambling to understand the effect of the chemicals and particles from tyres after solving a mystery of years of mass deaths of coho salmon in Seattle. The commonly used tyre additive 6PPD – which transforms into 6PPD-quinone – was turning streams toxic for salmon. Earlier this month, scientists in Canada found the chemical was also toxic to two trout species, but at much higher concentrations. Scientists told Guardian Australia the latest finding should prompt urgent investigations to find out if Australian aquatic species are being harmed by 6PPD-quinone. University of Queensland scientists took water samples from the middle of Cubberla Creek beside Brisbane’s M5 motorway after four storms in late 2020 and published their results in a journal. Levels of 6PPD-quinone in the creek, which feeds into the Brisbane River, peaked at concentrations comparable to those found to be killing Seattle’s salmon. As much as 700kg of tiny tyre particles, up to 0.2mm wide and some much smaller, were estimated to wash off the roads and into the catchment after each storm. Lead author of the study, Dr Cassandra Rauert, an environmental chemist at the Queensland Alliance for Environmental Health Sciences at the University of Queensland, said they found elevated levels of the chemical for two days after storms. “The aquatic species living there are going to be exposed [to the chemical] over this period. The amount of tyre wear we found was also very surprising. “We have no idea of the effect of these particles or if fish are ingesting them. There are so many unknowns in this field. We should be worried, but we need to know more.” Rauert and colleagues are planning to take samples at other sites throughout Queensland, including catchments flowing into the Great Barrier Reef. Dr Edward Kolodziej at the University of Washington in Seattle was part of the team that linked the deaths of coho salmon to the tyre additive. He told the Guardian 6PPD-quinone was “one of the most toxic compounds known to exist for aquatic organisms”. After reading the Australian findings, he said: “Finding it at potentially lethal concentrations implies a substantial new and unmanaged risk for ecosystem health and sensitive aquatic organisms in these waters.” He said more data collection was needed to show where and how tyre wear was entering sensitive habitats. Prof Frederic Leusch, who leads research on aquatic toxicology at the Australian Rivers Institute, based at Griffith University, said the concentrations of 6PPD-quinone found in Brisbane were “not insignificant” and were likely representative of other areas around the country. Leusch, who was not involved in the study, said “until we check and test we won’t really know” the effect on any Australian species but this work was now needed. He said the emergence of 6PPD-quinone illustrated a failure in how chemicals were developed for use in products. While 6PPD as an additive in tyres was well-known, there was no prior knowledge of how it could transform when in use. The tyre particles themselves could also be posing problems for fish. Leusch said: “A small fish might have an intestine choc-a-bloc with these tyre particles and they can come with baggage of toxic chemicals. “All of these other chemicals I would wager we have no idea what they will do to fish or invertebrates in our rivers.” Authorities in California are looking to regulate the additive, which is used to stop tyres degrading and cracking. Kolodziej said because tyres were used “nearly everywhere people are present”, there was “a clear societal need to understand these products much better than we currently do”. Tyre makers in the US say they have started several initiatives and research projects related to 6PPD-quinone in that country and globally. Silvio de Denaro, acting chairman of the Australian Tyre Industry Council, said tyre manufacturing had not taken place in Australia for a decade, but added: “Obviously it is important to seek an alternative to [6PPD] in manufacturing.” Many councils used either capture ponds or other methods for road run-off and these could catch some chemicals, he said. | ['environment/environment', 'environment/series/environmental-investigations', 'australia-news/australia-news', 'australia-news/queensland', 'environment/fish', 'environment/pollution', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/graham-readfearn', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/australia-news'] | environment/pollution | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE | 2022-03-20T16:30:00Z | true | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE |
environment/blog/2012/oct/30/hurricane-sandy-supersized-climate-change | Was Hurricane Sandy supersized by climate change? | As I write this, Hurricane Sandy's minimum central pressure has dropped to a stunning 940 millibars, meaning that air is rising in this storm in a way similar to a Category 4 hurricane. Sandy is strengthening as it approaches an East Coast landfall tonight—even as the storm also undergoes a much-discussed "extratropical" transition from a hurricane into a winter cyclone. In the next 48 hours, we are going to find out the difference between just bad and the worst-case scenario. One thing, though, seems likely: This will be perceived as a climate-change-related event by much of the public. Weird, extreme weather makes people worry, makes them think the world is changing. They aren't wrong about that. But how, precisely, can we say that Hurricane Sandy, and the extensive damage it will soon cause, are related to climate change? You have to be careful, given that a Category 1 hurricane in October is not itself unusual—and what's really unique about Sandy is its collision with another, extratropical or winter storm system. Still, there is much that can be said here, even though scientists are careful to emphasize the remaining uncertainties: 1. Precipitation: Scientists agree that global warming has added more moisture to the atmosphere, such that for any storm event, including Sandy, there will be more precipitation as a consequence. And excess rainfall is one of the top three sources of hurricane damage (the others being wind and storm surge). Explains meteorologist Greg Holland of the National Center for Atmospheric Research: "I have no equivocation in saying that all heavy rainfall events, including this one, have an element of climate change in them, and the level of that contribution will increase in the future." 2. Storm surge: Something similar can be said for Sandy's storm surge, which will cause damage across a large area of the northeastern US coast and threatens to flood the New York City subway system. There's no doubt that global warming has raised the sea level, meaning that every hurricane—including Sandy—surfs atop a higher ocean and can penetrate further inland. Indeed, this is true virtually by definition. 3. Ocean temperatures: As meteorologist Angela Fritz observes, sea surface temperatures off the Mid-Atlantic coast were near a record high in September, and 2.3 degrees Fahrenheit above the long term average. In fact, averaged across the globe, ocean temperatures in September were the second highest on record, surpassed only by 2003—and with much of the excess heat occurring in the Atlantic region. Warm oceans are jet fuel for hurricanes, so it's fair to say that these warmer temperatures are revving Sandy's engine. And while many factors shape sea surface temperatures in a given place, the overall trend—directly linked to climate change—is toward hotter oceans. Thus, while Sandy's particular path could be considered a matter of chance, the warm temperatures beneath it allows the storm to be stronger, for longer, than it might otherwise have been. And global warming is creating a world where, on average, those warm temperatures will be there more often than they were in the past. 4. Massive size: The most striking and destructive aspect of Sandy is its breadth—tropical-storm-force winds reached a radius of 520 nautical miles at one point yesterday.* Apparently only one storm in the Atlantic region has had a larger wind field, and of course, bigger storms drive bigger storm surges and damage larger areas when they make landfall. So is global warming involved in making storms bigger, overall? According to MIT hurricane expert Kerry Emanuel, it might be—but probably only a little. "For ordinary hurricanes, we actually expect a little increase in the size, based upon recent work we've done," Emanuel explains. "Not spectacular, but a little increase in size." 5. Hybrid storms and climate change: Sandy, continues Emanuel, is a "hybrid storm"—in other words, it has characteristics of tropical cyclones (hurricanes) that get their energy from the warm ocean surface, but also of winter cyclones that get their energy from temperature contrasts in the atmosphere. Such hybrids do occur around the world with some regularity, but how is global warming changing them? That's less clear, Emanuel remarks. Unlike for hurricanes, "nobody has bothered to compile a comprehensive climatology of hybrid storms," he says. "So there's nowhere to go to see the characteristics of these storms changing." Caveats notwithstanding, then, when people worry about climate change in relation to Sandy—and wonder why their presidential candidates aren't bringing the matter up—it's hard to say they're misguided in doing so. In a campaign season that has studiously avoided the "C" word, Sandy reminds us that eventually, the weather always forces the issue. • This article first appeared on Climate Desk, one of the Guardian's partners | ['environment/blog', 'environment/climate-crisis', 'us-news/hurricane-sandy', 'world/world', 'environment/environment', 'world/natural-disasters', 'tone/blog', 'type/article'] | us-news/hurricane-sandy | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2012-10-30T12:00:00Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
world/2005/sep/08/hurricanekatrina.usa4 | Flood water 10 times over toxic limit | US environmental experts warned last night that the putrid floodwaters swamping New Orleans were 10 times more toxic than safety levels, posing a serious danger not just to die-hard residents refusing to leave, but to rescuers as well. The disclosure from the first tests conducted by the US government into conditions in New Orleans added a growing urgency to an order for thou sands of inhabitants remaining in the wretched city to leave or face forced evacuation. The environmental protection agency said it had detected concentrated levels of bacteria in samples from the submerged city, as well as traces of lead. The mayor, Ray Nagin, added that natural gas leaks had been reported across the city, and beseeched some 10,000 still holding out to leave. "Everybody needs to leave except for crazy people like the press, the military and the city [employees]," he said yester day. "This is not a safe environment. It's OK to leave for a little while. Let us get this city cleaned up." At least three deaths from bacterial infections have been reported from the carnage wrought by Hurricane Katrina. The EPA warned that there was a risk not just from drinking water but from skin contact as well. "Human contact with the floodwater should be avoided as much as possible," said Stephen Johnson, an EPA administrator. The authorities want to carry out the evacuation peacefully by promising proper treatment in evacuation centres and a swift return as soon as the electricity is restored and running water can be provided. A further incentive came yesterday when the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) said it would issue debit cards worth $2,000 to every displaced adult. But the controversy surrounding the agency and its dilatory response to the crisis escalated after documents surfaced showing that its director, Michael Brown, had hesitated for five hours after the storm hit before acting. He then sent off a memo to his boss, Michael Chertoff, the head of the homeland security department, suggesting that 1,000 Fema workers should be sent in after another 48-hour wait, apparently for training purposes. One of their tasks, Mr Brown wrote, would be to "convey a positive image" about the government's response to the disaster. Last night in New Orleans national guardsmen were warning those who were still hanging out in the French Quarter that the mayor had told them that they would get no help if they decided to stay. Members of the public are very thin on the ground in what looks like a sacked city taken over by an occupying army. Now that 20,000 armed national guardsmen are encamped throughout the city the looters have been contained and the few remaining citizens will be under increasing pressure to go. The standoff is set to intensify at the weekend when the forced evacuations are due to start. The smell in the streets is highly unpleasant and many troops are wearing bandanas round their faces as flies fester and birds pick at the rubbish. | ['world/world', 'us-news/hurricane-katrina', 'us-news/us-news', 'type/article', 'profile/duncancampbell', 'profile/julianborger'] | us-news/hurricane-katrina | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2005-09-08T12:59:14Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
world/2022/mar/29/delhi-landfill-fire-toxic-fumes | Toxic fumes fill Delhi’s skies after vast landfill site catches fire | Parts of a fire that broke out on Monday at a gigantic landfill site on the outskirts of Delhi known as the “mountain of shame” were still smouldering 24 hours later, choking local residents who have complained of breathing in toxic fumes. Dozens of firefighters struggled to douse the flames at the landfill site in Ghazipur, due to its height and a lack of access roads. The precise cause of the fire has not been established but Monday was the hottest day in India’s capital so far this year and experts said the heat could have increased the amount of methane generated by decomposing waste. Once methane crosses a certain limit, a fire is ignited. “My son was the first to start itching his eyes and coughing,” said Shyam Biswas, who sells flowers in the local wholesale market. “Then my father began and when we went out on the balcony we saw the sky filled with black smoke.” As the landfill comes into view from the highway that passes through Ghazipur, it looks like an eerie mountain range with vultures circling above. Packed with the rubbish of Delhi’s 20 million residents, the site has grown since it was set up in 1994 to cover 80 acres and reach a height of 65 metres. It exceeded its capacity more than a decade ago but 2,500 tonnes of waste continue to be dumped on it every day. Like other Indian cities, Delhi has no system of waste disposal and treatment other than dumping it in landfills. A study in 2020 by the Centre for Science and Environment found more than 3,000 mountainous landfills across India containing 800m tonnes of rubbish. The country’s tallest mountain of rubbish – in Mumbai – is estimated to be 18 storeys high. The Ghazipur landfill is a constant health hazard. Last year, fires broke out four times. In 2017, a large part of it loosened and broke away, crashing on to the road and killing two people. For people living in the areas surrounding it, the air is always toxic. The decomposing waste releases noxious gases, exacerbating the already heavily polluted air. A World Air Quality report last week found that Delhi was the world’s most polluted capital city in 2021 for the fourth consecutive year. “The problem is that it is mixed waste that has not been segregated so the fire will have released all manner of toxins – sulphur dioxide, carbon soot, nitrogen, and particulate matter into the air, making the air far worse than usual,” said Richa Singh, from the Centre for Science and Environment. By noon on Tuesday, 24 hours later, the fire was still smouldering. The local government in Delhi is working on flattening the landfill, a sisyphean task given that rubbish continues to be dumped there every day. | ['world/india', 'world/world', 'world/south-and-central-asia', 'world/delhi', 'environment/waste', 'environment/pollution', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/amrit-dhillon', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/international', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/australia-foreign'] | environment/waste | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE | 2022-03-29T10:02:27Z | true | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE |
world/2018/sep/11/florence-trump-latest-government-prepared-storm | Hurricane Florence: Trump says government 'absolutely, totally prepared' | Donald Trump has declared that his government is “absolutely, totally prepared” for Hurricane Florence, as officials and forecasters warned that the “staggering” storm is shaping up to be catastrophic and unprecedented. The almost 500-mile wide hurricane, which is swirling towards the US east coast, “could be the most dangerous storm in the history of the Carolinas”, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) administrator, Brock Long, warned. The storm is expected to make landfall on Thursday night. Officials have called for the mandatory evacuation of more than 1.4 million coastal residents across the Carolinas and Virginia. Those states plus Maryland and Washington DC have all declared a state of emergency. The president said his administration was “ready” for Hurricane Florence, citing its response to Hurricane Maria a year ago, which decimated Puerto Rico, as an “unsung success”, despite the chorus of criticism at the time, accusing Trump of a slow and paltry response to the devastation that ultimately is estimated to have killed almost 3,000 people and caused $100bn in damage. Trump reiterated the claim on Wednesday morning, insisting his administration’s response to the devastation in Puerto Rico last year was an “under-appreciated great job”. The governor of Puerto Rico, Ricardo Rossello, seized on Trump’s use of the word “success” and said in a statement issued later Tuesday: “No relationship between a colony and the federal government can ever be called ‘successful’ because Puerto Ricans lack certain inalienable rights enjoyed by our fellow Americans in the states.” Rossello called Hurricane Maria “the worst natural disaster in our modern history” and said work still remained before they could move on to other stages of recovery. He also said he was still waiting for Trump to respond to a petition to help Puerto Rico complete work on emergency housing restoration programs and debris removal. Long, the Fema administrator, warned that coastal residents could see storm surges up to 12ft – “rapid rise of water that is overwhelming and deadly”. Forecasters said the hurricane is not expected to change course in such a way that it will avoid a direct hit on the east coast late Thursday into Friday, threatening ocean surges and flooding from torrential rain inland. Craig Fugate, a former Fema director, said: “I’m afraid, based on my experience at Fema, that the public is probably not as prepared as everybody would like.” Many parts of the Appalachians have been saturated with rain over recent weeks, adding to concerns for flash flooding and mudslides inland. “This one really scares me,” said the National Hurricane Center director, Ken Graham, who called the storm’s size “staggering”. The storm was around 400 miles south of Bermuda on Tuesday afternoon and is trudging towards the east coast at 16mph. At more than 470 miles across, Florence is 56% wider than the typical Atlantic hurricane. The eye of the storm is forecast to make landfall late on Thursday or early Friday along a coastline already saturated by rising seas, and then the system could meander over land for days. Seven-day rainfall totals are forecast to reach as much as 30in in some places. “You’re going to get heavy rain, catastrophic, life-threatening storm surge, and also the winds,” Graham said. Trump attempted on Tuesday to assure Americans that his government is “absolutely, totally prepared” for the storm, which he described as “tremendously big and tremendously wet”. Ever since the federal government’s inadequate preparation and relief efforts during Hurricane Katrina in 2005, under president George W Bush, storm response has become a scrutinized measure of an administration’s efficiency. Florence could hit the Carolinas harder than any hurricane since Hazel packed 130mph (209kph) winds in 1954 and killed 19 people in North Carolina. Since then, thousands of people have moved to the coast. Ahead of Florence’s arrival, barrier islands were already seeing dangerous rip currents and seawater flowed over a state highway, the harbinger of a storm surge that could wipe out dunes and submerge entire communities. “The water could overtake some of these barrier islands and keep on going. All you have to do is look up at your ceiling, and think about 12ft [of water]. That, folks, is extremely life-threatening,” said Graham. Florence’s projected path includes half a dozen nuclear power plants, pits holding industrial waste, and numerous hog farms storing animal waste in open-air lagoons. Chinese-owned Smithfield Foods announced it will shut down the world’s largest slaughterhouse for pigs, which can kill 35,000 animals a day, in Tar Heel, North Carolina, during the storm. Ryan Moser, a spokesman for the North Carolina-based electricity company Duke Energy, said operators would begin shutting down nuclear plants at least two hours before hurricane-force winds arrive. A warm ocean gives hurricanes their energy, and Florence is moving over an area with water temperatures nearing 85F (30C), hurricane specialist Eric Blake reported. Hurricane-strength winds have been expanding to a range of 40 miles from the eye of the storm.Information gathered on Tuesday by a hurricane-hunting aircraft suggests it will intensify again as it nears the coast, approaching the 157mph threshold for a worst-case category 5 scenario. | ['world/hurricane-florence', 'us-news/donaldtrump', 'world/hurricanes', 'world/natural-disasters', 'us-news/us-news', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/jamiles-lartey', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/us-news'] | world/hurricanes | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2018-09-12T11:58:51Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
environment/2024/nov/12/country-diary-a-little-miracle-lurking-in-a-bigger-one | Country diary: A little miracle lurking in a bigger one | Country diary | You don’t always know when the magic starts, but there is a moment when it enters your consciousness with a flourish. Trotting down from the headwaters of the River Derwent, we found ourselves entering a narrow valley of gold and bronze, but I was still thinking about the moors we’d just left. Their scale and grandeur are breathtaking, but intense grazing over millennia has left this landscape at the end of its natural tether, wearied and sombre. Here, though, suddenly all was light. The explanation was in the name for this spot: Oaken Bank. Unlike so many of the cloughs that feed the nascent river, this valley remains busy with oaks, as well as birch and rowan, their leaves fireworks, some of whose sparks had settled on the path in heaps we kicked through. Then something caught my eye. Squarely in the middle of a yellowing oak leaf on the ground was something that looked like an apple, a beeley pippin maybe, yellow but flushed red on one side, only smaller, like a scale model, just 2cm in diameter. When I stooped to gather it up, it came loose and dropped into my hand, and I realised it had been physically attached to the leaf. It was clearly an oak gall, and its apple impersonation made me think first of the gall wasp, Biorhiza pallida. This being late October, that wasn’t likely. It was instead the work of the cherry gall wasp, Cynips quercusfolii. Inside this little globe was a larva, part two of a complex reproductive cycle. In a few weeks, a wasp will emerge from this gall to lay eggs on the oak’s bark in a process of parthenogenesis. Wasps from those eggs will mate and the females then lay more eggs on the underside of next summer’s leaves. All that complexity in the palm of my hand, like the golden valley, also felt like magic. Sobering, then, to recall that plans to flood this scrap of paradise for a reservoir have only recently receded. • Country diary is on Twitter/X at @gdncountrydiary • Under the Changing Skies: The Best of the Guardian’s Country Diary, 2018-2024 is published by Guardian Faber; order at guardianbookshop.com and get a 15% discount | ['environment/series/country-diary', 'environment/forests', 'environment/insects', 'environment/environment', 'uk/ruralaffairs', 'uk/uk', 'travel/peakdistrict', 'uk-news/derbyshire', 'environment/autumn', 'type/article', 'tone/features', 'profile/eddouglas', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/journal', 'theguardian/journal/letters', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-letters-and-leader-writers'] | environment/forests | BIODIVERSITY | 2024-11-12T05:30:47Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
environment/2022/jun/06/island-in-the-energy-price-storm-renewables-help-act-cut-power-costs | Island in the energy price storm: renewables help ACT cut power costs | The ACT will cut electricity prices this year, bucking a trend of soaring power bills for the rest of Australia, as the territory benefits from long-term contracts that locked in low-cost renewable energy. Basic tariffs will fall by a minimum of at least 1.25% from 1 July, the ACT’s independent competition and regulatory commission said on Monday. “This is equivalent to a real decrease of 4.93% after excluding inflation,” it said. The reduction in the regulated tariff will shave $23 off the annual power bill for average households using 6500 kilowatt-hours of electricity annually, and $88 for average non-residential users. “ACT is the only jurisdiction in the national electricity market where regulated tariffs will decline in 2022-23,” senior commissioner, Joe Dimasi, said in a statement. Standing offers are now cheaper than those offered in New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland and South Australia, he said. “The price decrease is driven by a decline in the ACT government scheme costs this year, which more than offset the increase in wholesale electricity costs,” Dimasi said. Wholesale prices in the national electricity market more than doubled in the March quarter from a year earlier, and have risen more since. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine sent global energy costs higher while regular outages by Australia’s ageing coal-fired power stations have lately added to the local price spike. Electricity prices will rise by as much as 18% from July in parts of the national electricity market after wholesale prices increased 49% in Queensland and 41% in NSW, the Australian Energy Regulator said last month when it released default market prices for the 2022-23 year. Long-term contracts devised by the ACT government to enable it to reach 100% renewable energy have served to shield its energy users from the higher prices faced by other regions. The ACT’s deputy chief minister and energy minister, Shane Rattenbury, said average household bills for this coming financial year would be about $800 lower than those in neighbouring NSW. “It’s underlined how fossil fuels are subject to the vagaries of geopolitics, that are completely out of our control,” Rattenbury said. “Locally produced renewable energy is entirely within our control.” The territory’s wholesale price had averaged about $90 a megawatt-hour, well below the $200-$300MW/h other states would have been paying, he said. Simon Corbell, the architect of the ACT’s scheme when he served as the territory’s climate and energy minister, said “some form of contracting is beneficial to consumers, beneficial for renewable energy development and beneficial for emissions reductions. “ACT energy users will be protected during this period of very high prices because of the fixed prices they pay for their renewable energy,” said Corbell, who now heads the Clean Energy Investor Group. “They will be in a better position compared to consumers around the country, no doubt, and there’s the complete offset of the emissions profile of the electricity sector, a very important outcome,” he said. The ACT reached 100% renewables in 2020. The method of auctions in the ACT that fixed a price for renewable energy was a lifeline for the renewables industry in Australia after the arrival of the Abbott Coalition government in 2013 chilled investor confidence in the sector. Other states, including Victoria and NSW, have since taken up the approach to encourage more clean energy supplies. “The ACT is a renewable energy trailblazer, not just at home but abroad too,” said Richie Merzian, director of the Australia Institute’s climate and energy program. “It was the first major jurisdiction outside Europe to reach 100% renewable electricity status.” “Switching to renewables is not just good for the climate but good for wallet, with Canberran’s enjoying cleaner and cheaper power,” Merzian said. | ['environment/renewableenergy', 'environment/energy', 'australia-news/australian-capital-territory-act', 'australia-news/australia-news', 'australia-news/energy-australia', 'environment/environment', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/peter-hannam', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/australia-news'] | environment/energy | ENERGY | 2022-06-06T08:07:57Z | true | ENERGY |
environment/2024/mar/13/australian-renewable-sector-recorded-alarming-slowdown-in-2023-energy-body-finds | Australian renewable sector recorded ‘alarming’ slowdown in 2023, energy body finds | Investments in renewable energy plants showed an “alarming” slowdown in 2023, with financial approvals for new solar farms shrinking more than a third while no new windfarms won backing, the Clean Energy Council said in its annual report. The yearly results come as separate data revealed fossil fuel power stations expanded generation in the first two months of 2024 as heatwaves in the east of Australia sent demand soaring. The renewable sector was increasingly split between “particularly poor” investment in large-scale plants while rooftop solar continued to spread and investments in batteries large and small were “storming ahead”, the council’s report found. At the end of 2023, Australia had 56 renewable energy projects under construction, down from 72 a year earlier. These had a combined capacity of about 7.5 gigawatts, more than a fifth lower than the 9.5GW at the end of 2022, it said. New investment commitments provided an “alarming statistic”, though, as such sign-offs were “a good signifier” of how the sector will perform in the future. All up, $1.5bn was secured for new projects in 2023, less than a quarter of the $6.5bn tally for 2022. Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup “There were no new financial commitments to utility-scale wind projects in 2023 (compared to six in 2022) – a disheartening situation that needs to be addressed,” the council said. The seven new solar projects with 912 megawatts of capacity last year was down from the 1.5GW in 10 solar farms in 2022. On a rolling 12-month average, investment in the December quarter sank to the lowest level since the council began gathering data in 2017, dipping below $1bn. Industry hopes of a turnaround in large-scale projects hinge partly on the federal government’s capacity investment scheme. The plan, to run from 2024 to 2027, aims to drive an additional 32GW of renewables and storage into the grid by 2030. “It is crucial that the new policy provides increased certainty to investors and can bring in the enormous private sector capital that will be required,” the report said. Slow approvals, though, including in states such as New South Wales, mean the decade-end target of supplying 82% of electricity by renewables will be challenging, Green Energy Markets said in a recent report. Decarbonising the power grid was also intended to deliver much of the government’s legislated target cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 43% by 2030, compared with 2005 levels. Recent increases in electricity use driven by several heatwaves, though, suggest the industry will see a pickup in pollution in the first quarter of 2024 at least. Coal-fired power station output in January and February was up 4% from a year earlier in the national electricity market to 20.776 gigawatt hours, according to figures supplied by the Australian Energy Markets Operator (Aemo). Gas-fired generation was up 14% from a year earlier to 1.538GWh. By comparison, grid solar was 18% higher than in January-February 2023, while wind generation was up 5%. Rooftop solar output increased 10%. In New South Wales, Australia’s largest producer and consumer of electricity, the increase in black-coal generation was 10% and gas jumped 42%. Wind power was up 18%, grid solar 21% and rooftop solar 10%, Aemo said. In 2023, renewable energy supplied a record 39.4% of Australia’s electricity, led by wind’s 13.4% share, the council said. Rooftop solar cracked a 10% share for the first time, reaching 11.2% ahead of solar farms at 7% and hydro’s 6.5% share. About 3.7m households now have solar panels, with the 337,498 systems added in 2023 trailing only 2021’s record, the council said. Another positive story was in batteries. At the end of 2023, 27 large-scale battery projects were under construction with a combined capacity of 5GW or 11GWh. That tally was up from 19 being built at the end of 2022 for 1.4GW and 2GWh. New financial commitments for big batteries also rose from 2022’s $1.9bn to $4.9bn last year. About 56,000 households also had small-scale batteries at the end of 2023, up from 43,000 in 2022 and 37,000 in 2021, the report said, citing figures from SunWiz. | ['environment/renewableenergy', 'australia-news/australia-news', 'australia-news/energy-australia', 'campaign/email/afternoon-update', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/peter-hannam', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/australia-news'] | environment/renewableenergy | ENERGY | 2024-03-12T14:00:47Z | true | ENERGY |
technology/nils-pratley-on-finance/2018/aug/08/elon-musk-grumbles-at-short-sellers-but-is-private-ownership-right-for-tesla | Elon Musk grumbles at short-sellers, but is private ownership right for Tesla? | Nils Pratley | Tesla’s Elon Musk isn’t the first chief executive to be infuriated by short-sellers, or to grumble about swings in the share price, or to complain that the outside world is stupidly obsessed by quarterly earnings figures. Prod most bosses of quoted companies and you’ll hear similar grumbles. The stock market can be ridiculously short-termist. In Tesla’s case, the complaint sounds roughly fair. Musk declared in his email to staff that Tesla “is the most shorted stock in the history of the stock market”. Short positions have equated to 25% of the share capital, currently implying $10bn-plus of bets that the electric car company is over-valued or will fail. Nor does the hostility land only at Musk’s door. One of the biggest and most loyal investors is Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust, a FTSE 100 company these days, and its co-manager, James Anderson, addressed the question of why Tesla is so hated in a blogpost last year. “At one stage last year I was receiving at least 10 emails a week denouncing us for owning Tesla in savage words,” he wrote. “We were told, for instance, that we would be featured in ‘the mutual fund hall of shame’ as a consequence.” Such threats of reputational damnation are absurd. Musk can be irascible and irritating – and his “pedo” tweet to the British diver involved in Thailand cave rescue was disgraceful. But Tesla itself, if it succeeds, could be a genuinely interesting company for a lower-carbon economy. Its battery technology already seems more socially useful than anything that has emerged from, say, Facebook. Risk-taking investors who are prepared to fund such innovation should be applauded. The “negative propaganda”, as Musk calls it, seems wildly overdone, even if he provokes half the noise himself when he calls Wall Street analysts’ questions “bone-headed”. But there are two key questions about the take-private plan. Can it be achieved? Is it wise? A $70bn buy-out would be enormous and Musk has offered no evidence to support his “funding secured” boast, something regulators will surely investigate. But Tesla’s fan-club tends to be committed. Scottish Mortgage, T Rowe Price and Fidelity own about a quarter of the stock in aggregate and might be happy to climb aboard a private vehicle. Musk owns 20% itself. Then there could be a whip-round among big backers to replace some of the shareholders who wish to sell at the proposed $420-a-share buy-out price. Saudi Arabia’s sovereign fund is a recent arrival on the register. Other sovereign wealth funds might be attracted. Then there’s Google, Apple, and Japan’s Softbank. All are flush with cash and unafraid to throw a few billions at capital-intensive projects for the long-term. A buy-out still sounds a stretch, but perhaps it could be done. The harder question to answer is whether private ownership would be really the paradise Musk seems to imagine. If the goal is to avoid distractions, then arranging and executing a $70bn deal seems an odd road to take. Even if new shareholders can be rounded up, the process will be fiddly and time consuming. Fixing the hiccups on the production lines might be a better use of Musk’s time over the next year. And what if, to fill the financing gaps, Tesla has to borrow heavily to get the buy-out across the line? The bark of short-sellers can be irritating, but banks and bondholders have bite in the form of legally enforceable rights of repayment. Musk should perhaps reflect that the rough and tumble of public markets hasn’t been pure hell. Capital has still flowed and his core group of shareholders has been prepared to ignore the scepticism. Life could be worse. He should also consider how Amazon, and even little ol’ Ocado in the UK, rode out the short-selling brigade. Answer: management got on with the job, ignored the “dreamer” insults, and offered fewer performance targets that were hostages to fortune. It is still possible to succeed in the public markets. | ['technology/elon-musk', 'technology/tesla', 'business/automotive-industry', 'business/stock-markets', 'business/business', 'environment/carbonfootprints', 'technology/technology', 'business/nils-pratley-on-finance', 'type/article', 'tone/comment', 'profile/nilspratley', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/financial3', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-business'] | environment/carbonfootprints | EMISSIONS | 2018-08-08T18:00:48Z | true | EMISSIONS |
commentisfree/2016/may/09/brexit-europe-wildlife-eu | Could Brexit be the best thing for Europe’s wildlife? | Jules Howard | Nothing oozes status like a man with an endangered alligator lizard draped over his shoulder that he has bought illegally through a German reptile trade show. These are people not content with a pet bearded dragon or a pet corn snake. They want more. They want something no one else has, even if having it contributes to the extinction of these unusual lizards in the wild. Thank goodness, then, that the Guardian exposed this illegal market last year, and that the EU committed on Thursday to tightening the loopholes in the illegal trade of reptiles such as these beautiful endangered lizards. I’d like to say that Britain was a key part of this story, but our record on tackling wildlife crime isn’t brilliant. Although we talk the talk (remember this?) in three out of the past four years the government has attempted to close our National Wildlife Crime Unit, an important department for monitoring such things as illegal pet trade activity. Thankfully the EU forced us forward – on this issue at least. I have a soft spot for the EU. I know it has faults. I once had a job drafting press releases for an international wildlife charity that worked, in part, out of Brussels. Occasionally I had to read EU minutes and statements from meetings and turn them into seemingly spontaneous, upbeat environmental news stories, which is hard to achieve when even one-sentence quotations were often discussed and deliberated over for days on end. But there are things to like about the EU. Two big things especially. The habitats directive is one. The birds directive is another. Both of these key pieces of legislation are powerful tools that keep wild places wild, and many conservationists worked for decades to have designations like these that provided so strong a protection. I love these nameless people very much. But there are other things that the EU provides for wildlife. I like that it tries to provide safeguards to protect nature. Take neonicotinoids, the family of pesticides considered partly responsible for recent bee declines. This was an issue whose seriousness was considered quite rationally, it appears to me, by the EU. Should farmers be allowed to use them or not? The scientists had their say (that’s all they get, sadly) and then it was the UK’s turn to vote. Expectations were high, but ... expectations were dashed. Not only did the UK drag its heels on the issue, by actually abstaining on a key vote at crunch time, in 2015 we also managed to suspend the EU ban on using two neocotinoids on crops. This is a little embarrassing. In fact, I fear that we’re actually quite good at this trick – of holding everyone back on key environmental votes in Europe. In recent years, many NGOs raised concerns about the impact on deep sea habitats of trawling in EU waters. The scientists were deeply concerned. What part did the UK play in the investigation or in the later vote on the issue? Not much. We stalled for most of the time, saying that we were not convinced. It continued on like this. In 2015, many European countries expressed formally their concern that environmental legislation was being watered down within the European Commission, yet Britain couldn’t really be bothered to say anything at all. This one really surprised me. We couldn’t even think of anything mealy-mouthed to add? We’re normally quite good at being mealy-mouthed. But it couldn’t get any worse, surely? Yes it could. It spoke volumes when it was discovered, in September 2015, that British ministers attempted to actually block EU moves to clean up air quality. For wildlife lovers like me, it’s all a little embarrassing. And so I find myself considering the unthinkable. I find myself wondering if, perhaps, we’re a bad influence on the EU when it comes to wildlife and environmental protection. Are we, to ape that Mitchell and Webb sketch, the baddies here? What if the EU could get more done without us? What if Europe’s wildlife fared better without us at the table? Sure, our own natural habitats might suffer if we left Europe. Our wildlife, hardly any of it particularly novel or endemic, would undoubtedly decline and we might go back to being the “dirty man of Europe”. But maybe the EU would get more done without us and a whole continent of wildlife would thrive and the Earth would be the better for it. After years of frustration with this current government, I’m actually entertaining crazy ideas like these. A tiny part of me is considering Brexit, in order to help Europe do more for wildlife. I’m not decided yet, and there’s still a chance for our government to surprise. Will it tie its environmental credentials and environmental commitment to the mast before the EU referendum vote? Probably not, but we’ll see. You get what you vote for in life. Perhaps we in the UK might realise this too late. | ['commentisfree/commentisfree', 'tone/comment', 'environment/environment', 'politics/eu-referendum', 'uk/uk', 'world/eu', 'politics/foreignpolicy', 'world/animal-welfare', 'environment/endangered-habitats', 'environment/wildlife', 'environment/conservation', 'environment/endangeredspecies', 'type/article', 'profile/jules-howard', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-opinion'] | environment/endangered-habitats | BIODIVERSITY | 2016-05-09T07:30:08Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
commentisfree/2022/aug/08/the-guardian-view-on-ancient-trees-natural-monuments-need-protecting | The Guardian view on ancient trees: natural monuments need protecting | Editorial | Efforts to increase the level of protection available to ancient – or simply old – trees in the UK have been building for some time. In 2019, Janis Fry, an artist and yew expert living in Wales, launched a petition calling for new laws that would prevent the destruction of about 157 ancient yew trees at least 2,000 years old. Since then, the chorus of disapproval about current provision has grown steadily louder (if not exactly deafening: tree enthusiasts not generally being the noisiest protesters). The launch of the Woodland Trust’s Tree of the Year competition this week – in which five venerable oaks dominate a shortlist of 12 – offers another chance to focus minds. The wider problem goes beyond the lack of protection for individual trees, and includes issues relating to the conservation of nature more broadly. While tree cover in the UK is increasing, woodland wildlife is not, and more diverse planting, including a larger proportion of native species, is needed if that is to change. The consensus among experts and charities such as the trust is that government proposals recently sent out for consultation did not go far enough. Pressure must be applied to ensure that existing protections are not only maintained but strengthened as the risks from unchecked global heating and fossil fuel production continue to increase. How old a tree needs to be to qualify as “ancient” depends on the species. Along with yews, traditionally planted in churchyards, where many of the oldest and most famous survivors can be found, oaks make up most of the UK’s outstanding examples. Although an estimated 1,000 years old, Lincolnshire’s Bowthorpe Oak is less than half the age of the Fortingall Yew in Perthshire, which is thought to be between 2,000 and 3,000 years old. Old age is only one measure of a tree’s importance. But longevity is a characteristic that resonates with people – and can also entice them as visitors, making ancient trees attractive to tourist boards. The identity of the most ancient tree of all is disputed. The bristlecone pine, which grows in remote areas of the US west, was long thought to have the longest lifespan, of close to 5,000 years, but recently researchers have claimed that the Patagonian cypress could surpass it. Recent studies of forest ecology have also looked at the role played by underground networks of roots and fungi. Scientists now stress the ecological importance of what they call “large old trees” – a broader category than ancient ones. One of the challenges in the UK is making tree conservation a live domestic issue, when forest campaigning was for a long time associated with the tropics. Increasingly, what used to be described as “Atlantic woodland” is instead being called temperate rainforest – a name change that seems likely to help. With just 16% of ancient woodland in England currently designated as a site of special scientific interest, and a new study suggesting that there could be around 2m ancient or veteran trees, at least it is not hard to find room for improvement. Italy recently passed a law granting 20,000 trees legal protection as natural monuments. The UK should follow suit, by providing specific protections for the trees deemed most valuable due to their great age or other significance. Such recognition is long overdue, and would form part of the wider struggle to help the natural world recover. | ['commentisfree/commentisfree', 'environment/forests', 'environment/environment', 'environment/rewilding', 'environment/conservation', 'type/article', 'tone/editorials', 'tone/comment', 'profile/editorial', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/journal', 'theguardian/journal/opinion', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-letters-and-leader-writers'] | environment/forests | BIODIVERSITY | 2022-08-08T17:23:19Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
global-development/2019/feb/18/massive-deforestation-by-refugees-in-uganda-sparks-clashes-with-local-people | Massive deforestation by refugees in Uganda sparks clashes with local people | The cutting down of millions of trees has sparked angry clashes in parts of Uganda between local people and refugees who have been fleeing conflict in neighbouring South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The timber is being used for house construction, fuel and to make charcoal. In the north and west of the country, where an estimated 1.1 million refugees are living, massive deforestation is drawing protests by local communities. Joël Boutroue, representative for the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, said the settling of refugees was causing widespread environmental damage. “A refugee cuts [down] around 20 trees per year. [Locals] see their own environment being depleted increasingly,” he said. “We want to be able to decrease the tensions. We really need to roll that back and the sooner the better.” In October, a joint UN and World Bank report warned that “competition for available resources could become a source of tension between the refugees and host communities”. Thijs Van Laer, programme director at the International Refugee Rights Initiative, said deforestation was affecting both the environment and the co-existence of the two communities, often violently. The organisation has documented a number of clashes. “Refugees have complained that they have suffered abuses at the hands of Ugandans who oppose the sharing of these resources,” he said. “Sharing of natural resources is often one of the main concerns raised by both refugees and Ugandans living close to the refugee settlements. This is the case for firewood, as well as for grass [used for thatched roofs], and to a more limited extent, land and water ponds,” said Laer. “If nothing is being done, this will seriously put to the test the considerable hospitality that Ugandans living in refugee-hosting areas have been showing in recent years.” The average daily consumption of firewood by refugees in northern Uganda is 1.6 kg per person and among host communities, 2.1 kg. UNHCR now plans to plant 20 million trees or more this year, said Boutroue. “[Planting trees] is a sort of peacekeeping activity not in a military sense. But in the sense of maintaining harmony within communities.” Cathy Watson, chief of programme development at the World Agroforestry Centre, welcomed the news that trees would be planted, but added: “Our concern is – can these seedlings be raised in time for the long rains which are almost upon us? And what species will be promoted? “If it’s just one or two exotic species like pine and eucalyptus that could cause long-lasting ecological damage. We look forward to seeing a big range of exotics and native tree species.” The UNHCR said it continues to promote energy saving stoves and tree planting in areas hosting refugees to mitigate environmental degradation. But Laer said deforestation would continue because “refugees do not receive anything to use as fuel, and thus look for firewood to prepare their meals”. | ['world/refugees', 'global-development/global-development', 'world/uganda', 'environment/deforestation', 'world/africa', 'environment/conservation', 'environment/environment', 'environment/forests', 'world/world', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/samuel-okiror', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/global-development'] | environment/deforestation | BIODIVERSITY | 2019-02-18T11:46:15Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
environment/2010/jan/27/uea-hacked-climate-emails-foi | University in hacked climate change emails row broke FOI rules | The University of East Anglia flouted Freedom of Information regulations in its handling of requests for data from climate sceptics, according to the government body that administers the act. In a statement, the deputy information commissioner Graham Smith said emails between scientists at the university's Climatic Research Unit (CRU) that were hacked and placed on the internet in November revealed that FOI requests were "not dealt with as they should have been under the legislation". Some of the hacked emails reveal scientists encouraging their colleagues to delete emails, apparently to prevent them from being revealed to people making FOI requests. Such a breach of the act could carry an unlimited fine, but Smith said no action could be taken against the university because the specific request they had looked at happened in May 2008, well outside the six-month limit for such prosecutions under the act. The hacked emails have created an international argument that has fuelled climate scepticism and led to questions about the operation of the UN's climate science body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The circumstances surrounding the hacking and the actions of the scientists are the subject of an independent inquiry commissioned by the university and headed by Sir Muir Russell, formerly a civil servant and principal and vice chancellor of Glasgow University. The pronouncement by the Information Commissioner's Office is likely to carry significant weight with the inquiry. The illegal hack is separately also being investigated by Norfolk police. "I think that is an extremely serious charge," said Phil Willis, the Liberal Democrat MP who chairs the parliamentary science and technology select committee, which is conducting its own inquiry. He said that Smith's statement would be investigated by both the select committee and Russell's inquiry. "I don't think you can have the inquiry unless you have all the issues relating to it out in the open." Willis said it would be wrong if there could be no legal sanction had the FOI act been breached. "Given the seriousness of this issue, the fact that it has caused global consternation, and has given ammunition to the climate sceptics – to have such a serious breach and for there to be no recourse in law requires urgent attention by the government." He urged the university to be open with the data that was being requested. "If there has been a breach in this situation then the most honourable thing for the university to do would be to honour the request in its totality with all speed," said Willis. Smith's statement refers to an FOI request from a retired engineer and climate sceptic in Northampton called David Holland. The CRU had been bombarded with similar requests for data, and the hacked emails between scientists suggest they were extremely frustrated with having to deal with them. In response to the request, Dr Caspar Ammann, a scientist at the National Centre for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, wrote back to three scientists, including the CRU's director, Dr Phil Jones: "Oh MAN! Will this crap ever end??" In his statement, Smith said that Holland's request was not dealt with correctly by the university. "The emails which are now public reveal that Mr Holland's requests under the Freedom of Information Act were not dealt with as they should have been under the legislation. Section 77 of the Freedom of Information Act makes it an offence for public authorities to act so as to prevent intentionally the disclosure of requested information." But he added that it was now too late to take action because the legislation requires that sanctions are imposed within six months of the offence. "The ICO is gathering evidence from this and other time-barred cases to support the case for a change in the law. It is important to note that the ICO enforces the law as it stands – we do not make it." He said he would be advising UEA on its legal obligations. "We will also be studying the investigation reports [by Sir Muir Russell and Norfolk police], and we will then consider what regulatory action, if any, should then be taken under the Data Protection Act." Bob Ward, policy director at the Grantham research institute on climate Change and the environment at the London School of Economics, said: "I think that anybody reading the emails that have been posted online will have concluded that some of those showed an intention to avoid complying with the FOI. I always thought that those emails were the most damning. "I think this is quite damaging. It remains to be seen why these requests were not handled properly. I think regardless of any action by the information commissioner, the university should clearly take appropriate action in response to this." A spokesperson for the University of East Anglia said that it was not aware of Smith's statement. "The way Freedom of Information requests have been handled is one of the main areas being explored by Sir Muir Russell's independent review. We have already made clear that the findings of the review will be made public and that we will act as appropriate on its recommendations," she said. | ['environment/hacked-climate-science-emails', 'environment/climate-crisis', 'environment/climate-change-scepticism', 'environment/environment', 'science/scienceofclimatechange', 'science/science', 'education/universityofeastanglia', 'education/higher-education', 'education/education', 'uk/uk', 'tone/news', 'politics/freedomofinformation', 'politics/politics', 'type/article', 'profile/jamesranderson', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/uknews'] | environment/climate-change-scepticism | CLIMATE_DENIAL | 2010-01-27T22:26:54Z | true | CLIMATE_DENIAL |
environment/2024/dec/20/just-stop-oil-activist-jail-christmas | ‘You won’t find the real criminals here’: a Just Stop Oil activist in jail at Christmas | Anna Holland, 22, was one of two young people from Just Stop Oil who threw tomato soup over a sunflowers painting by Vincent van Gogh – one of the highest-profile climate protests of recent years. The painting was not damaged, although there was damage to the frame. Holland was sentenced to 20 months in prison. They sent this letter to the Guardian about their experience behind bars. It was a shock at first that the judge had gone to the extreme of our sentence. The first few days and nights in prison were hard but also such an education. So many of the women I have met here are in prison because they were not properly protected by the state, so they have taken me under their wing. I have been looked after, taught the ways of prison, not by the staff but by the other prisoners. It is like nothing I had expected and it is completely overwhelming – but also surprising how quickly I found myself falling into the daily routine. My family and friends were completely shocked by my sentence but have all been so supportive. It is such a privilege to be surrounded by such a strong community. Even those who didn’t agree with or support the action initially can’t ignore the injustice of this sentence and have gone above and beyond to make sure that I am doing OK in here. The shock of being in here has quickly been followed by an even stronger feeling of power. In sentencing two young, peaceful people to prison, the judge had made it abundantly clear how far the UK has fallen from the democratic state it claims to be. Our imprisonment is not a symptom of the broken system but a sign that the system, fuelled by dirty oil and arms money, is working exactly how it was intended. Our cells are unlocked at 8am on a weekday morning. Breakfast is always cereal. I have classes in the morning before lunch, our only hot meal of the day, which we take back to our cells, and work in the prison garden from 1pm until 4pm. We get one hour a day outside in the yard and some days we get to go to the gym. We are locked in our cells at 7pm every evening. During the weekends, the prison system moves much slower, so most of the time is spent in our cells. Christmas is going to be hard in here – it will be my first one away from my family. However, the other prisoners and I have decided to make the best of it and I’m sure there will be some good Christmas movies on the TV. I have plenty of time for reflection, and however difficult this is I do think that my action and the state’s response are exactly what is needed to fuel our fight for a better future. It has sparked so many conversations and now this overreach by the state is absolutely key to turn those conversations into action. I grew up reading about revolutionaries who did not let imprisonment break them and I feel proud to join that tradition. That said, there is no denying that prison is hard. It’s scary. But the idea of us giving up, of letting people all around the world suffer from floods, wildfires and droughts that our emissions created, is scarier. Prison is used as a deterrent but we must not allow it to deter us. We must not allow fear to win over hope. We must not lose the dream that we can create a better world together. Every day in prison is an uphill struggle and it is exhausting. But I have learned that I am so much stronger than I thought. To have made it this far and not lost myself or my sense of fight is my proudest achievement. Watching the outside world has been strange but one thing is very clear to me – we are too consumerist. I have found myself not missing any thing, but rather people and my freedom. The absolute failure of most of the mainstream media to do its job and report the news objectively and in proper detail has also hit me hard. It’s no wonder that people aren’t out on the streets when they aren’t being told all the facts. The sheer corruption of Cop29 glossed over, Palestine forgotten, Malibu wildfires ignored. It isn’t fair to us and it’s so shameful that the main news channels on TV value their income over the truth. This whole experience has taught me that our laws and our legal systems are no more based on morality than our climate policies are on science and the good of humanity. You won’t find the real criminals behind these walls, you will find them in the seats of parliament, running our country. | ['environment/activism', 'environment/just-stop-oil', 'world/protest', 'law/criminal-justice', 'society/prisons-and-probation', 'environment/environment', 'society/society', 'uk-news/england', 'uk/uk', 'environment/series/letters-from-prison', 'type/article', 'tone/features', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-environment'] | environment/activism | CLIMATE_ACTIVISM | 2024-12-20T12:00:50Z | true | CLIMATE_ACTIVISM |
environment/2015/jun/01/rapid-arctic-ice-loss-linked-to-extreme-weather-changes-in-europe-and-us | Rapid Arctic ice loss linked to extreme weather changes in Europe and US | The string of massive snowstorms and bone-chilling cold on the US east coast, as well as flooding in Britain and record temperatures in Europe, are linked to rapid ice loss in the Arctic, new research appears to confirm. While the rapidly-thawing Arctic cannot be held responsible for specific weather events like the “snowmageddon” in 2009, Hurricane Sandy, or European heatwaves, researchers at Rutgers university said it appears to be a prime reason why the polar jet stream – a ribbon of winds that encircles the globe – gets ‘stuck’ with increasing frequency. Western Europe and large parts of North America will experience more extreme weather because of “Arctic amplification” - the enhanced sensitivity of high latitudes to global warming, the team suggested in a paper published in the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A. “We are seeing these extremes because the Arctic is warming faster than elsewhere. The whole lower atmosphere is heating up but the sea ice is the most observable. This is having this effect on the jet stream, making it extend further south and stay longer,” said co-author Jennifer Francis. “The jet stream creates weather of all sorts and where you are in relation to it dictates wether it is hot or cold. When we have a ridge, or a big bulge, in the the jet stream, it makes it extend further and stay longer. When that ridge is stronger it tends to be more persistent,” she said. Deep troughs in the jet stream have been seen regularly in the past few years affecting the east coast of the US, western Europe and central Asia. These have brought prolonged, unusually hot weather to some places, and extended cold or record snowfall to others. “We are seeing extended periods of extreme weather because when the temperature difference between polar and mid northern latitudes gets smaller [because of global warming] this has the effect of weakening the jet stream , allowing it to be deflects more easily and to meander more. It’s a combination of natural conditions being intensified and global warming,” said Professor Francis. The authors expect that eventually it will be possible to predict accurately which types of extreme events will be more likely to occur in certain areas but because Arctic amplification has emerged only in the past 20 years it is a challenge to pin down exactly how it affects weather patterns. But the impacts could be substantial, they warn. “This new manifestation of of global warming ... may have substantial societal impact as more frequent extreme weather events in mid latitudes will affect billions of people directly through damage to property and infrastructure andindirectly through farming and water supplies,” the authors wrote. The study builds on other research which shows how the changing Arctic may be affecting weather in mid latitudes. According to some, a slower jet stream takes a more meandering path as it encircles the northern hemisphere. Other studies have linked ice loss in the Barents and Kara seas to the north of Russia with extremely cold winters in central Asia. According to the US Snow and Ice data centre, Arctic sea ice extent last month averaged 5.4 million square miles), the second lowest April ice extent in the satellite record. It is 313,000 sq m) below the 1981 to 2010 long-term average of 6m sq m) and 31,000 sq m) above the previous record low for the month observed in 2007. | ['environment/sea-ice', 'environment/poles', 'world/arctic', 'environment/environment', 'world/world', 'world/natural-disasters', 'us-news/us-news', 'world/europe-news', 'environment/climate-crisis', 'science/scienceofclimatechange', 'science/science', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/johnvidal'] | environment/sea-ice | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2015-06-01T12:51:07Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
world/2023/may/29/nova-scotia-wildfires-state-of-emergency | Nova Scotia officials declare emergency over rare and ‘very aggressive’ wildfires | Rare and “very aggressive” spring wildfires in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia have destroyed many buildings and forced thousands from their homes and prompting officials to declare a local state of emergency. Over the weekend, residents of the Maritime province posted video of thick smoke encroaching over Halifax as a nearby blaze rapidly swept through a suburb. “Our firefighters worked very hard in very dangerous conditions,” the Halifax fire deputy chief, David Meldrum, told reporters over the weekend. On Monday, he said the blaze in the community of Tantallon was “ongoing and still not under control” and 14,000 people had been asked to leave their homes. The “really hot, really fast” fire quickly morphed into a five-alarm blaze, “which is the first use of a fifth alarm that many of us can remember”, said Meldrum, adding it was unclear how many structures had been destroyed. Late Sunday night, Halifax city declared a local state of emergency in the affected areas that was set to last for at least a week. With no rain expected to fall in the coming days, officials are hopeful that winds will push the fire backwards, but warned there could still be “significant fire” with unburned fuels in the area igniting. Over the weekend, another blaze near the community of Yarmouth “escaped containment”, doubling in size and growing to 6,270 hectares, buffeted by strong winds and dry conditions. Officials said two helicopters, six air tankers and heavy equipment from neighbouring New Brunswick are being used to contain the fires. While western Canada experiences arid summers, dry forests and frequent wildfires, large and destructive blazes in Nova Scotia are relatively rare. The largest fire to ever hit the province was in 1976, when a blaze 10 miles wide destroyed nearly 13,000 hectares. In Alberta, a province far larger in size, more than 1m hectares have burned so far this year. Meldrum said on Monday the main goal of fire crews was to preserve as many structures as possible. No injuries to been reported and the cause of the fire is still unknown. “We have a lot of work to do today, this week, for many days,” Meldrum said. of the Halifax region fire. “This is difficult, and residents must be prepared to remain out of their homes for several days, at least.” | ['world/canada', 'world/wildfires', 'world/americas', 'world/world', 'world/canada-wildfires', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/leyland-cecco', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/us-foreign'] | world/canada-wildfires | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2023-05-29T15:53:04Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
news/2013/aug/02/weatherwatch-heatwave-temperature-emergency | Weatherwatch: Heatwave? That depends... | After last summer's washout, the warmth of this summer is a welcome relief. But hot weather can be dangerous too. In August 2003 a three week long heatwave caused 15,000 extra deaths in France. So how hot is too hot? It all depends on where you live. In the UK there are more deaths once temperatures rise above 25C. For those living in north-east England, the Met Office declares a heatwave when temperatures reach the heady heights of 28C for two consecutive days and a 15C minimum in the intervening night. But if you live in London, temperatures have to climb to 32C for two consecutive days before a heatwave is declared. These variations in threshold reflect people's acclimatisation to the heat – those living in the south of the UK are better adapted to higher temperatures than people in the north. The United States and Australia also have different regional thresholds, which often reflect an even greater acclimatisation to heat. In Adelaide for example, a heatwave is defined as five consecutive days at or above 35C, or three consecutive days over 40C – temperatures which would create a state of emergency in the UK. Wherever you live, a heatwave earlier in the year is more dangerous than a late season burst of sun. As well as adapting to temperature over our lifetime, we all adapt to increasing warmth over the course of the summer, so a spring heatwave is a bigger shock to the system than an Indian summer. | ['news/series/weatherwatch', 'tone/features', 'type/article', 'profile/kate-ravilious', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/weather2'] | news/series/weatherwatch | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2013-08-02T20:31:00Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
us-news/2015/may/30/california-texas-oklahoma-floods-drought-el-nino | Deadly Texas floods could herald wet winter in parched California | It is hard to imagine, but the flash floods and thunderstorms that took more than two dozen lives over the last week in Texas and Oklahoma, and washed away hundreds of homes, could provide good news for drought-stricken California. A developing El Niño weather event in the Pacific Ocean that can be linked to the deadly downpours in Oklahoma and Texas may be getting stronger, meteorologists say. A strong El Niño in the late fall and early winter tends to be associated with wetter winters in California. “There is evidence, if you look back at past El Niño events,” said Tim DiLiberto, a meteorologist with the NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center, “that if you have a strong El Niño, it is usually associated with rainfall in California.” California entered its fourth year of drought this year, with Governor Jerry Brown announcing unprecedented state-imposed water reductions. Texas and Oklahoma, meanwhile, saw a five-year drought come to an end this month with the arrival of thunderstorms, tornadoes and disastrous floods. DiLiberto warned that “seasonal predictions in general are very difficult”, and described the chances of a stronger El Niño and a wet California winter as “uncertain”, if still “above average”. Californians, though, are eager for good news. The Los Angeles Times invited its readers to look east this week, towards the disaster-stricken areas of Texas and Oklahoma, precisely because of what a strong El Niño might mean for them. “What this exemplifies is something that applies to climate variation in the short and long term,” said Anthony Broccoli, a professor in the department of environmental sciences at Rutgers University. “That one particular pattern may produce weather conditions viewed favorably in one place and less favorably somewhere else.” Broccoli called this a seesaw effect that has long occurred in the US, with mild and dry winters on the west coast sometimes meaning cold and stormy winters on the east coast. But as the effects of global warming kick in, Broccoli said, evidence shows that already dry areas of the world – like California – will become drier. The warming of the planet was also expected to make rain events heavier, he said, with locations getting greater fractions of their total ratio of rainfall during those heavy precipitations, meaning light or moderate rain events would become rarer. As such events become more usual, the solution to ending extreme weather patterns may not lie in opposite extremes. “The ideal to end a drought are rains that cumulatively amount to a lot and are not quite as intense,” Broccoli said. Heavy and intense rainfall is precisely the kind of phenomenon that caused flash floods in Oklahoma and Texas. Last week, the Weather Channel reported that a river in Blanco, Texas had risen as fast as 17ft in half an hour between Friday and Saturday, with water crushing and stripping the insides of nearby homes. A possible rainier winter in California may carry its own extreme weather events like landslides, Broccoli said. DiLiberto cautioned against perceiving El Niño as the answer to California’s drought problem. “Any rain will help, but we are starting from a very low point. It will take a pretty substantial amount of rain to remove multiple drought years in just one year,” he said, adding that the volume of rain needed to end the drought would likely have knock-on landslide effects. Besides, El Niño-enhanced rain would still not help resolve the depleted snowpack in northern California, DiLiberto said. “El Niños don’t mean bad things all the time, but sometimes it’s too much of a good thing,” he said. | ['us-news/california', 'environment/environment', 'us-news/texas', 'us-news/oklahoma', 'us-news/us-news', 'environment/drought', 'environment/water', 'environment/flooding', 'world/natural-disasters', 'environment/climate-crisis', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/rose-hackman'] | environment/drought | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2015-05-30T12:00:10Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
world/2023/sep/05/brazil-launches-biggest-operation-illegal-cattle-farms-amazon | Brazil launches biggest operation against illegal cattle farms in indigenous Amazon | The Brazilian government has launched its biggest ever operation to remove thousands of cows owned by illegal land grabbers from Indigenous territory in the Amazon rainforest. Three helicopters, a dozen vehicles and a heavily armed corps of police and environment rangers are carrying out the cattle drive, which criminal gangs attempted to block by setting fires on the route, destroying bridges and intimidating drivers. Operation Eraha Tapiro (“Ox Removal” in the language of the Assurini Indigenous people) aims to restore state control over the Ituna-Itatá Indigenous Territory, which suffered some of the worst deforestation and invasions in the Amazon during the previous presidency of the nationalist Jair Bolsonaro. Since a change of power at the start of this year, the leftwing president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has promised to curb environmental crime, halt the expansion of the agricultural frontier and aim for zero deforestation by 2030. The environment minister, Marina Silva, has launched a series of operations to drive illegal miners and ranchers out of Indigenous territory and other public lands that are under the protection of the state. The operation commander, Givanildo Lima, who is an agent for the government’s main environmental protection agency, Ibama, said this was a politically symbolic operation on the frontline of environmental crime in the Amazonian state of Pará. “The deforestation of Ituna-Itatá was planned and executed by a gang that had great political power. Making this operation successful demonstrates our ability to fight crime in the Amazon, which is increasingly organised,” he said A coalition of federal agencies were involved, including Ibama, federal police, traffic police, the Indigenous affairs agency and the Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity Conservation. A government study in 2011 took a step to formally demarcate the Ituna-Itatá Indigenous Territory, an area of 142,000 hectares, approximately the size of Greater London, that was the home of an isolated community, the Igarapé Ipiaçava. Once this process begins, the state prohibits non-Indigenous people from entering the area. To defy this and weaken the application, local land grabbers – known as grileiros – started invading the area, burning the forest and filling the land with cows. This accelerated so much during the Bolsonaro presidency that Ituna-Itatá was the most deforested Indigenous area in the entire Amazon in 2019. Ibama officials said the Rocha farm, where the operation began, is owned by a man named Danilo José Barros Rocha, who has houses in Marabá and Altamira, the two largest cities in the region. According to Adepará records, Rocha owns only 70 animals. However, inspectors found 400 cattle in the area of 800 hectares (330 hectares of which are deforested) that he illegally took over and registered in the Rural Environmental Registry. He was told his claim was illegal and ordered to remove the cattle last year. As he failed to comply, his herd will be removed and he will be fined 500,000 Brazilian real (£80,000). Similar penalties are being applied to other land grabbers in the area, whose lucrative illegal farms cover vast expanses of the Indigenous territory. As soon as the Ibama operation started last week, word rapidly spread on grileiro WhatsApp groups in the village of Vila Mocotó, part of Coronel José Porfírio municipality. The village, which is just 18 miles (30km) from Ituna-Itatá, is a handful of streets of bare earth with a few dozen houses, most of them very simple and built in wood. These are the homes of the people who look after the cattle on behalf of wealthy land grabbers, who control local politics and have strong influence in the national congress. Among their most avid supporters is senator Zequinha Marinho, who is a Bolsonaro ally and a pastor of the evangelical church Assembly of God, who sent a letter last year to the government describing environmental agents in the Ituna-Itatá area as “bandits and scoundrels” and denying there were any isolated Indigenous peoples in the area despite evidence to the contrary from anthropologists, settlers and other Indigenous groups. In a statement to the Guardian, his office reasserted that Ituna-Itatá was not an Indigenous land and said: “Senator Zequinha Marinho defends and will continue to defend the rights of farming families who have lived for decades in the area known as Ituna-Itatá and adjacent areas.” The operation commander said the confiscation of the cattle would weaken the land grabbers’ economic power, which would, in turn, deplete their political influence. “The main cause of deforestation in this region has always been cattle. So, just apprehending the herds, causing financial loss to the invaders, can solve the problem,” Lima said. However, compliance is weak, and many land grabbers go unpunished if they ignore environmental fines. As the operation’s convoy of cars and trucks drove past, residents of Vila Mocotó gathered in doorways to stare at the federal agents who threatened their livelihoods. There was no armed resistance, but they attempted other ways to impede the removal of the herds. Fires were started at several points alongside the route to scare the cows. One wooden bridge was destroyed by arson. Another was cut into pieces with chainsaws. Most of the drivers of the cattle trucks were scared off. The federal agents rebuilt the bridges and managed to ensure the first cows were transported at midnight across the Xingu River for slaughter in Altamira. Their meat will be donated to social programmes. Ibama estimates it will take weeks for the remaining 5,000 cows to be taken from the Indigenous land. • The headline of this article was amended on 11 September 2023 to clarify that the operation is the biggest to remove cattle from Indigenous land in the Amazon, rather than the biggest ever such operation in the Amazon as an earlier version suggested | ['world/brazil', 'world/americas', 'world/world', 'environment/amazon-rainforest', 'environment/environment', 'environment/deforestation', 'environment/conservation', 'environment/farming', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-environment'] | environment/deforestation | BIODIVERSITY | 2023-09-05T11:23:11Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
news/2022/dec/01/weatherwatch-the-man-who-classified-the-clouds | Weatherwatch: the man who classified the clouds | Do you know a cirrus cloud when you see one? Can you differentiate your cumulus from your stratus, and are you up to speed on what a nimbostratus looks like? The names we use to classify clouds were developed in 1802 by a man called Luke Howard. Prior to Howard’s cloud classification scheme, clouds were thought to be too changeable to be classified, and they tended to be described according to their colour or shape, with names often reflecting the way that farmers or sailors viewed them. Some of those descriptors, such as woolly clouds and mackerel skies, have become embedded in common language. Inspired by Linnaeus and his classification scheme for plants and animals, Howard – who was a keen amateur meteorologist – came up with three categories of cloud based on their appearance and the way in which they formed. Using Latin, the language of science, Howard called his cloud types cirrus (lock of hair), cumulus (an accumulation or heap) and stratus (to spread or flatten out). He further classified them according to their altitude, and he later added nimbus (dark rain cloud) to describe the deep black clouds that are pretty much guaranteed to produce a downpour. Howard’s fresh perspective influenced many Romantic poets, philosophers and painters, with JMW Turner becoming the master of expressive skies. | ['news/series/weatherwatch', 'environment/environment', 'type/article', 'tone/features', 'profile/kate-ravilious', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/weather2', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-weather'] | news/series/weatherwatch | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2022-12-01T06:00:39Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
environment/2022/may/22/sizewell-c-may-cost-double-government-estimates-and-take-five-years-longer-to-build | Sizewell C ‘may cost double government estimates and take five years longer to build’ | The proposed Sizewell C nuclear power station could cost UK taxpayers more than double government estimates and take an extra five years to build, according to research. Ministers will decide in July whether to approve the development of the Suffolk power station proposed by the French developer EDF. The business department has estimated that the government-backed scheme will add an extra £1 a month to household bills to aid construction costs. But research by the University of Greenwich Business School seen by the Guardian shows the average monthly cost could reach £2.12, or £25.40 a year. At its costliest point, the build could cost taxpayers nearly £4 a month. That represents the study’s gloomiest forecast, which predicts construction would take 17 years and cost £43.8bn. The project had been expected to cost £20bn and take 10-12 years to build. Stephen Thomas, a professor at Greenwich Business School, said the average forecast put the cost at £35bn over 15 years, or £2.3bn a year. The figures could further inflame the debate over the cost and time of building power stations after Boris Johnson last month set a target of building a new nuclear station every year. EDF admitted last week that Hinkley Point C, the power station it is developing in Somerset, would cost an extra £3bn, taking it to up to £26bn. The already delayed project will take an extra year, and is expected to begin generating electricity in June 2027. EDF had originally planned for it be operational by Christmas 2017. The French firm said consumers would not be hit by the extra costs at Hinkley Point C, which will be taken on by EDF and China’s CGN, its junior partner in the project. However, at Sizewell C the government has already committed £100m to the project and plans to use a regulated asset base (RAB) funding model. RAB funding gives investors a set return during the construction phase of a project, reducing their risk and making an asset more attractive to outside investors. However, it shifts the risk of delays and extra costs on to taxpayers. The government argues that the RAB model could reduce the project cost of a nuclear power station by more than £30bn over its 60-year lifespan. The model was used in the construction of Heathrow Terminal 5 and the Thames Tideway super-sewer. A final decision on plans for Sizewell C was recently pushed back from 25 May to 8 July. The site is located north of EDF’s existing Sizewell B plant. Campaigners argue that the development would be costly and threatens the local environment. The prospect of extra costs comes as consumers face soaring bills amid the energy crisis. The government has been urged to intervene with annual bills forecast to balloon to nearly £3,000 from October. Johnson has thrown his weight behind nuclear power as a green option to boost Britain’s energy security in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and as he targets net zero emissions by 2050. Thomas said: “It may not seem a huge amount extra on bills but several of these projects will overlap, meaning consumers paying even more for a long time. If costs are even higher than expected, it could become a real burden.” A spokesperson for Sizewell C said: “The RAB model is a tried and tested financing arrangement, which has already been used to raise funds for more than £160bn of UK infrastructure. Applied to Sizewell C, it will bring the cost of finance down and deliver significant savings to consumers.” A government spokesperson said: “We firmly stand by our assessment that a large-scale project funded under our Nuclear Act would add at most a few pounds a year to typical household energy bills during the early stages of construction, and on average about £1 a month during the full construction phase of the project.” | ['politics/politics', 'environment/nuclearpower', 'environment/energy', 'environment/environment', 'uk/uk', 'business/edf', 'money/energy', 'business/energy-industry', 'business/business', 'money/money', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'business/sizewell-c', 'profile/alex-lawson', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/financial3', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-business'] | environment/nuclearpower | ENERGY | 2022-05-22T09:56:46Z | true | ENERGY |
environment/2018/jun/05/australias-largest-windfarm-wins-planning-approval | Australia's largest windfarm wins planning approval | The Queensland government has approved the country’s largest windfarm, a $1bn project to build almost 200 turbines in the shadow of the Bowen basin’s coalmines. The 800-megawatt Clarke Creek project, in cattle country north-west of Rockhampton, received planning approval on Tuesday morning. The company behind the project, Lacour Energy, says it will create about 350 jobs during three years of construction and has the capacity to provide 3% of the generation required to power the entire state. It also includes a solar component. The announcement today comes amid increasing land-use conflicts, as agricultural land is repurposed by the state’s fast-expanding renewables industry. The Clarke Creek wind and solar farm extends across the land of eight local families, with the turbines to be built on higher ground. It’s understood that the project did not require an impact assessment because of the relatively small population in the surrounding area, and was instead code assessed. Sign up to receive the top stories in Australia every day at noon A local reference group has no objection to the project in its completed state, but Guardian Australia understands locals do have concerns about the construction phase, in particular the disruption that will be caused as massive turbines are brought from the port at Gladstone through winding country backroads. During construction, there will be more workers at the project than residents of the Valkyrie area, which encompasses Clarke Creek. Lacour Energy says construction should begin next year. “It is a unique renewable energy project which combines excellent wind and solar resources at a location directly adjacent to the backbone of the ... transmission network,” said its director, Mark Rayner. “The windfarm development approval is a significant milestone for the project.” The Queensland government plans to reach 50% renewable energy generation by 2030. The energy minister, Anthony Lynham, said $20bn in energy projects were in the pipeline, with projects worth $4.5bn already under way or with finance committed. “Lacour Energy has worked closely with the department to assess acoustic impacts of the windfarm as well as impacts on fauna and vegetation,” Lynham said. | ['environment/windpower', 'australia-news/queensland', 'environment/renewableenergy', 'environment/energy', 'australia-news/australia-news', 'environment/environment', 'australia-news/queensland-politics', 'environment/solarpower', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/ben-smee', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/australia-news'] | environment/windpower | ENERGY | 2018-06-05T02:07:38Z | true | ENERGY |
world/2017/oct/07/hurricane-nate-us-cleanup-costs | Nate heralds latest US destruction as 2017 poised for record clean-up bill | As Hurricane Nate crossed the Gulf of Mexico on Saturday, it brought with it the prospect of yet more destruction in a storm-battered year that is shaping up to be the most costly on US record. Nate was set to be the fourth major hurricane to hit in quick succession, after Harvey, Irma and Maria devastated southern Texas, Florida, Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands. According to statistics issued by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) on Friday, the clean-up bill could be without precedent. The US government can also expect more unwelcome news about how climate change is intensifying such natural disasters. By the end of September, Noaa said, there had been 15 “weather and climate disaster events” in the US in which total financial losses exceeded $1bn each. That tied 2017 with the same point in 2011, by the end of which year there had been 16 $1bn weather disasters, the most for one year in Noaa records dating back to 1980. Before the arrival of Nate, 2017 had seen two incidences of inland flooding; one drought; one episode of unseasonably freezing temperatures that decimated crops; seven severe storm events, including tornadoes; three tropical cyclones; and one wildfire. In each instance, Noaa has calculated that costs will exceed $1bn. Nate has a “reasonable” chance of turning into a $1bn-plus weather event, Noaa climatologist Adam Smith told the Guardian via email. If that turns out to be the case, 2017 will tie 2011 before October is even halfway through. The full financial impact of Harvey, Irma and Maria has not yet been estimated but early forecasts lead experts to fear that Harvey alone could prove more expensive than the catastrophic Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Katrina is the single most expensive and deadly weather event in Noaa’s 1980-2016 statistics, claiming 1,833 lives after it hit New Orleans and costing $161.3bn, adjusted for inflation. That helped make 2005 the most expensive year on Noaa’s list, with a total cost of $214.8bn. “There is a good chance that 2017 will tie or surpass 2011 in terms of number of $1bn-plus events and either closely match or exceed 2005 in terms of total cost,” said Smith, a Noaa applied climatologist and the primary researcher for the analysis of $1bn disasters. This year’s hurricanes and Katrina had “incredible” impacts, he said, putting them “in a class of their own” in terms of cost. The frequency of hugely expensive weather disasters is increasing. From 1980 to 2016, according to Noaa, the US experienced an average of five and a half $1bn-plus “weather and climate disasters” each year. From 2012 to 2016, that reached 10.6 such events a year. There were 15 $1bn-plus events in 2016. The rise in cost is chiefly due to a combination of climate change and people spreading into vulnerable areas, especially coasts and floodplains, Noaa has reported. “Perhaps most concerning is that climate change is playing a role – amplifying the frequency and intensity – of some types of extreme weather that lead to billion-dollar disasters,” said Smith. Expecting a hefty budget cut from the Trump administration, according to recent reports Noaa is feeling the pinch in its field-leading aerial monitoring of severe storms, using specialized drones and hurricane-hunting manned flights. According to a report by Popular Mechanics, the pioneering Coyote program, which flies drones through the heart of hurricanes, has run out of money. According to a report in the Washington Post, Noaa has also had technical problems with its special hurricane-monitoring manned flights during the “most energetic month for hurricanes ever recorded in the Atlantic”. The federal government can expect to pick up the vast majority of the cost of this year’s hurricanes, Noaa has said, citing analysis from Erwann Michel-Kerjan, a risk management expert, partner at McKinsey and former adviser to the World Bank. The taxpayer shouldered less than 10% of the cost of Hurricane Diane in 1955 and a quarter of the cost of Hurricane Hugo in 1989, according to Michel-Kerjan. That rose to 50% of the cost of Katrina in 2005 and 80% of the cost of superstorm Sandy in 2012. | ['world/hurricanes', 'us-news/us-weather', 'world/natural-disasters', 'us-news/us-news', 'world/world', 'us-news/louisiana', 'us-news/mississippi', 'us-news/alabama', 'us-news/florida', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'tone/analysis', 'profile/joannawalters', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/us-news'] | world/hurricanes | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2017-10-07T19:30:37Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
commentisfree/2015/dec/07/london-forest-i-tree-study | London is a forest – who knew? | Patrick Barkham | I strolled through a wood last week and didn’t even realise it. According to a UN definition, London can be classified as a forest, its 8.4 million trees – almost one for every person – adorning and detoxifying this great city. I was on my way to a wood-panelled room in the House of Lords for the launch of a study calculating the value of London’s trees using open-source software developed in America. The i-Tree study, undertaken by volunteers, charities and government agencies including the Forestry Commission and Natural England, shines vivid light into the urban jungle. London may be renowned for the handsome plane trees that dominate its centre, but the capital’s most common tree is actually the sycamore, followed by English oak and silver birch. We appreciate the aesthetic qualities of trees – trees on leafy streets have been shown to boost house prices by as much as 15% – but i-Tree reveals their practical value. Trees remove 2,261 tonnes of pollution from London’s air each year. Nearly 40% of London’s surface area is impermeable concrete, and so canopy cover plays a crucial role in storing and slowing rainfall: trees prevent 10 times the volume of water in the Serpentine from entering – or flooding – drains each year. Trees also store carbon and cool buildings, reducing energy use in summer and winter. All these “ecosystem services” mean that it would cost £6.1bn to replace London’s trees, according to i-Tree, and that’s not calculating their contribution to public health and general joy. We’re on shaky ground if we reduce our trees to one price tag. Where individual urban trees have been given a specific value, developers have offered to pay local authorities so they can chop them down. But i-Tree could transform all cities by confirming trees’ status as green infrastructure that is as important as buildings and broadband. The i-Tree study reveals wonder – London has a diverse 126 species – but also danger. The capital’s grand planes are menaced by plane wilt, a destructive disease moving northwards through France at a much faster rate than previous decades. We need a minister for urban trees (Rory Stewart, the smart environment minister who could pass for a forest elf, would be perfect) who can help us plan, and plant, for the future. Core values Perfection. Excelsior. Sleeping Beauty. Hunter’s Majestic. Maclean’s Favourite. Horsford Prolific. These fine boasts are old varieties of apple tree, once in danger of disappearing because of our appetite for Braeburn and Granny Smith. Unusual old varieties have not been lost, however, thanks to charities such as the East of England Apples and Orchards Project, from whom I’ve just ordered some trees for my garden. We are a nation of apple lovers – another i-Tree revelation is that apple is inner London’s third most common species – and developers are belatedly cottoning on. I visited an estate in Bicester last week where each new home is offered with a fruit tree of choice. Warm glow all round, and for less than £15. I can’t wait for the arrival of my new friends: Caroline, Captain Palmer and Jordan’s Weeping. Phoney hog wars Two cheers for the Times making the British Hedgehog Preservation Society one of its Christmas charity beneficiaries. With hedgehogs’ rural population halving since 2000 and urban population falling by a third, hedgehogs need all the help they can get. What they got from the Times, unfortunately, was an ill-informed editorial declaring “more hedgehogs means fewer badgers”. Hedgehogs and badgers have lived alongside each other for millennia. The real cause of hedgehog decline? Intensive farming – and intensive gardening. Far better to ban toxic slug pellets and make gardens less impenetrably fenced than cull badgers. | ['commentisfree/series/notebook', 'environment/forests', 'environment/environment', 'cities/cities', 'food/fruit', 'tone/comment', 'type/article', 'profile/patrickbarkham', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/commentanddebate'] | environment/forests | BIODIVERSITY | 2015-12-07T17:18:32Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
environment/2023/nov/03/five-kitchen-hacks-to-lower-your-vegetable-waste | Pineapple leaf tea and potato peel soup: five ways to cut food waste | With their spiky crowns of leaves, pineapples are about as close as you can get to a tropical paradise while doing the weekly shop – but now Sainsbury’s has begun selling the fruit shorn of its exotic plumage, all in the name of cutting food waste. With the fruit’s hardy leaves usually ending up in the bin or a food waste caddy, the move shines a spotlight on waste in the home. So could the leaves, stems and skins of the fruit and vegetables we routinely throw away be put to better use in the kitchen? Pineapple crowns Sainsbury’s says the crowns will be replanted or shredded for animal feed, eliminating a huge 700 tonnes of waste a year. So if you regularly buy the fruit elsewhere, it is worth considering what you could do with the leftovers. If you are green fingered you could replant the crown and nurture a pineapple houseplant. But don’t expect fruit salad any time soon, as growing a pineapple will take two to three years, according to Chestnut Hill Farms. The grower’s list of “unexpected ways to use a pineapple crown” offers other ideas with a quicker payback, such as using the leaves to make tea. The Irish chef Conor Spacey, whose book Wasted is full of recipes that use commonly thrown away foods, suggests using the peel and core to make the Mexican drink Tepache. The potion (peel, plus brown sugar, water and cinnamon) self-carbonates into a refreshing fizzy drink that can also be used as a cocktail mixer. Banana skins There is a lot more to banana skins than pranks, with an abundance of recipes for this afterthought thanks to the Nigella Lawson effect. In 2020 the TV cook caused a stir with her banana skin and cauliflower curry, telling viewers that people “assume it’s aubergine”. Another twist is Nadiya Hussain’s banana peel burgers, which she says taste like pulled pork. You can store peels in your freezer until inspiration strikes. Bakers say cooking and pureeing skins to add into the batter results in a superior banana cake, while Spacey advocates turning them into chutney. Vegetable peelings “Could anything be more zero-waste than a salty sauce made of vegetable peelings that would otherwise be bound for the compost bin full of vegetable scraps?” asks the chef Tom Hunt in his Waste not column. With the help of koji (fermented rice or soya bean mix) and salt, veg peelings including onion skins and spent coffee grounds can be transformed into garum, an ancient Roman sauce likened to Worcestershire or fish sauce. Another tactic is to avoid peeling veg in the first place. “Many root vegetables don’t need to be peeled; just give them a good scrub clean before using,” suggests Sam Hubble, a specialist in behaviour change at the climate action NGO Wrap. When Hubble does end up with a mound of veg peelings he has a couple of tricks up his sleeve including vegetable peel soup, which he insists is “tastier than it sounds”. There is a recipe for potato peel soup on the Love Food Hate Waste website. “It’s fun to experiment with different concoctions; my favourite is to also throw in some sweet potato peelings.” His other go-to recipe is vegetable peel crisps. “I’ve used potato, carrot and parsnip peels to make really moreish, crispy snacks.” Carrot tops (and other leaves and stems) “Think of a vegetable the same way you would if it was a piece of meat: butcher it into parts and ensure you use everything,” Spacey tells home cooks trying to cut food waste. Today more supermarkets sell whole carrots, with the tops good in salads, pasta or turned into a pesto, he says. Take a similar approach with brussels sprouts; if you buy whole plants, eat the stem and tops too, with cooks advised to roast them. You can do the same with the fibrous stems of other veg such as broccoli, chard and kale. And don’t jettison tough cabbage leaves. Borrow from the eastern European tradition and use them up along with leftover rice in a layered pie. Citrus peel A shrivelled mound of citrus skins might look like a dead end, but they can be used in a myriad of ways including to inject zing into cocktails and desserts. For starters there’s the bartender’s secret ingredient, the easy-to-make oleo saccharum (citrus peel syrup by its less fancy name). It can be used in cocktails, mixed into salads or used as a glaze for meat. You can also use other fruit peelings, such as pineapple, banana, mango or apple to make syrups. Alternatively, use lemon rinds to make your own limoncello or, with Christmas in mind, use old citrus peel to make mulled wine spice pouches. | ['environment/food-waste', 'money/consumer-affairs', 'food/food', 'money/money', 'environment/environment', 'uk/uk', 'environment/carbon-emissions', 'business/cost-of-living-crisis', 'business/fooddrinks', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'tone/features', 'profile/zoewood', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-home-news'] | environment/carbon-emissions | EMISSIONS | 2023-11-03T13:07:57Z | true | EMISSIONS |
world/2007/aug/20/weather.naturaldisasters | Cayman Islands escape worst of hurricane | The Cayman Islands today looked to have escaped the worst of Hurricane Dean as the storm made its way towards the Yucatan peninsula in Mexico. The category four storm, which has already killed eight people across the Caribbean, passed 100 miles south of the British territory. It brought winds of 57mph - low compared to the 150mph gusts at its centre. Government officials announced that the islands had "been spared the brunt of Hurricane Dean". However, storms were expected to continue to batter the island, with flooding expected and a curfew in place until tonight. At 8am (1300 BST) the centre of Hurricane Dean was located around 440 miles east of Belize City, according to the US National Hurricane Centre. The centre said the storm could reach the highest level, category five - with maximum winds greater than 155 mph - and hit Mexico's Yucatan peninsula, including the tourist resort of Cancun, late today or early tomorrow. Holidaymakers have been streaming out of Yucatan resorts, with long queues building up at the airport, while locals have been stocking up on supplies. Twelve empty planes arrived on Sunday to move tourists out, the airport's spokesman, Eduardo Rivadeneira, said. The state government has set up 530 shelters, which can accommodate a total of 73,000 people. Officials in Texas, which is still drying out from a tropical storm that killed one person, have begun preparations in case Hurricane Dean is heading their way. Emergency operations centres have been opened, sandbags placed along part of the coastline and prisoners moved to jails further inland. The US space shuttle Endeavour was travelling back to earth from the International Space Station so it could land a day early in case the storm forced Nasa to evacuate its Houston centre. A hurricane warning is also in effect on the coast of Belize. The storm had passed south of Jamaica last night. No deaths were reported but the hurricane uprooted trees, flooded streets and tore the roofs off many homes. Reuters reported that at least one man was missing after trees fell on to his house. The Jamaican prime minister, Portia Simpson Miller, declared a month-long state of emergency and called a cabinet meeting to discuss the potential impact on Jamaican general elections, scheduled for August 27. More than 125,000 people were without power after authorities cut electricity on the island to prevent damage to its network. Police said they shot and wounded two men caught trying to break into a business in the capital, Kingston, during the storm. Local media said 17 fishermen and women had been stranded on the Pedro Cays, a small island chain directly in the path of the hurricane. | ['world/world', 'world/natural-disasters', 'us-news/caymanislands', 'world/americas', 'world/hurricanes', 'type/article', 'profile/haroonsiddique'] | world/hurricanes | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2007-08-20T15:04:31Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
environment/2020/sep/03/demand-whale-meat-norway-rising-conservationists-regulations-minke-welfare | Demand for whale meat in Norway rising after years of decline | Demand for whale meat in Norway is rising after years of decline, although activists have warned the loosening of regulations could damage the welfare of the animals. Norway remains one of only three countries to publicly allow commercial whaling, along with Japan and Iceland. Much of the catch is sent to Japan, where demand is high, but for the first time in years businesses have reported increased interest in eating whale meat domestically. Four hundred and eighty-four minke whales have been killed so far this year, which is fewer than half the annual quota of 1,278. Last year’s total of 429 whales caught was the lowest in decades. The fleet has also been in decline, with only 12 vessels participating in this year’s hunt, down from 34 in 2004. However, in an attempt to expand the whaling fleet, the Norwegian government eased the requirements for participation in the hunt for minke whales this year. Odd Emil Ingebrigtsen, Norway’s fishing minister, said: “It is very positive that we are witnessing an increase in both catches and demand for products this year. “The amendments are part of a general effort to have timely and effective regulations in the Norwegian fisheries regulations. Unnecessary barriers to the participation in whaling activity were thus removed.” Conservationists have long been critical of Norway’s whaling tradition. Kate O’Connell, a marine animal consultant at the Animal Welfare Institute, said the looser regulations raised concerns for the wellbeing of the whales being killed. “Requiring that only one person on board a whaling vessel have whaling experience, and even then only in one of the previous six years, is woefully insufficient to ensure an instantaneous death for whales,” she said. Ingebrigtsen said “the changes have been made without compromising the strict focus on animal welfare and sustainability in whaling”. While whale meat is not a significant part of the Norwegian diet, it remains a popular source of meat in some regions. Hopen Fisk, a company based in the northern Lofoten region, has reported increased interest in whale meat and sold out of its yearly stock by July. Roy Størkersen, the office manager at Hopen Fisk, said he believed the recent rise could be linked to an increased interest in local cuisine and consumers growing tired of industrially produced meat such as beef and pork. Rising interest for Norwegian whale meat has also occurred internationally. Last year 200 metric tonnes of whale meat was exported to Japan, worth about 13m kroner (£1.1m) A spokesperson from Japan’s Fisheries Agency said: “Although Japan resumed commercial whaling in July 2019, it seems that the interest in whale meat imported from Norway has not decreased. Rather we consider that import from Norway and Iceland will continue to meet increasing demands at its domestic market in Japan.” Commercial whaling was banned worldwide more than 30 years ago. However, Norway formally objected to the International Whaling Commission’s (IWC) moratorium in 1986, meaning it is not formally bound by it. There are more than 100,000 minke whales in the wild, and they are not considered an endangered species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. However, activists have urged the remaining whaling countries to halt the practice. O’Connell said: “Rather than seeking to loosen regulations in order to expand the whaling fleet, we believe that Norway should acknowledge that whaling is no longer a necessary industry, and refrain from issuing quotas in defiance of the IWC commercial whaling moratorium.” | ['environment/whales', 'world/norway', 'world/japan', 'food/meat', 'world/asia-pacific', 'environment/cetaceans', 'environment/environment', 'world/europe-news', 'food/food', 'environment/marine-life', 'environment/wildlife', 'world/world', 'environment/series/seascape-the-state-of-our-oceans', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-environment'] | environment/marine-life | BIODIVERSITY | 2020-09-03T10:11:51Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
environment/2022/jul/07/uk-dairy-farmers-warn-of-price-rises-amid-chronic-staff-shortages | UK dairy farmers warn of price rises amid chronic staff shortages | Dairy farmers are warning that a chronic shortage of workers is hitting milk production and further fuelling food price inflation, and are calling for urgent action to stop the situation getting worse. Eight in 10 farm owners looking for workers said they had received very few or zero applications from people with the right experience or qualifications, in response to a survey by Arla Foods, the UK’s largest dairy co-operative. Farmers are blaming Brexit and Covid for their recruitment problems, saying that the combination of the end of free movement for EU workers and the aftermath of the pandemic, along with other economic factors, is making it harder to find suitable staff. Food producers have been warning for some time that huge labour shortages in agriculture have led to unharvested crops being left to rot in fields, and the killing of healthy pigs on farms because of a lack of workers at meat processing plants, and leading to disruption of the food supply chain. In April, MPs on parliament’s environment, food and rural affairs committee reported that the sector had half a million vacancies last August, representing an eighth of all roles. Almost two-thirds (61%) of dairy farmers reported it was more difficult to recruit workers than in 2019, as part of a survey of about a quarter of the co-operative’s members. In total, Arla’s 2,100 farmer owners represent about 30% of all dairy farmers. UK milk production has already been hit by the labour shortage, the survey found, and milk volumes are currently about 3% lower than last year. A small but significant number of farmers said they had responded to staff shortages by reducing output through cutting back on the number of milkings (4.3%), while some had reduced the size of their herd (6%), and greater numbers of farmers are weighing up taking these steps. Nearly 12% of dairy farmers are considering leaving farming altogether in the next year if nothing changes. The industry is calling on government to add specialist roles such as herd manager to the UK’s shortage occupation list – which is an official record of skilled occupations where there are not enough UK resident workers to fill vacancies – in order to increase the size of the pool of workers. “Addressing the labour shortage and the implications this could have for food security is vitally important,” said Arla’s UK managing director, Ash Amirahmadi. “If we don’t act now the current shortages of people will only get worse, jeopardising production on farms, undermining our food security and further fuelling higher prices for consumers.” Amirahmadi is calling on government and industry to work together to shift attitudes, and increase farming’s appeal among a new group of people. He has written to the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs calling for an acceleration in the labour market review promised in the food strategy white paper. | ['environment/farming', 'politics/eu-referendum', 'uk/uk', 'business/fooddrinks', 'food/milk--drink-', 'business/cost-of-living-crisis', 'business/business', 'politics/politics', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/joanna-partridge', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/financial3', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-business'] | environment/farming | BIODIVERSITY | 2022-07-07T12:15:50Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
commentisfree/2021/apr/05/the-guardian-view-on-jair-bolsonaro-a-danger-to-brazil-and-the-world | The Guardian view on Jair Bolsonaro: a danger to Brazil, and the world | Editorial | The prospect of the rightwing extremist Jair Bolsonaro becoming Brazil’s president was always frightening. This was a man with a history of denigrating women, gay people and minorities, who praised authoritarianism and torture. The nightmare has proved even worse in reality. Not only has he used a dictatorship-era national security law to pursue critics, and overseen a surge in deforestation of the Amazon to a 12-year high, he has allowed coronavirus to rampage unchecked, attacking movement restrictions, masks and vaccines. More than 60,000 Brazilians died in March alone. “Bolsonaro has managed to turn Brazil into a gigantic hellhole,” Colombia’s former president, Ernesto Samper, tweeted recently. The spread of the more contagious P1 variant is imperilling other countries. With a poll last week showing 59% of voters rejecting him, Mr Bolsonaro appears to be preparing for an unfavourable outcome in next year’s elections. Last week he sacked the defence minister, a retired general and longstanding friend who nevertheless appears to have taken exception to Bolsonaro’s attempts to use the armed forces as a personal political tool. The commanders of the army, navy and air force were also fired – reportedly as they were poised to resign. The immediate trigger for the sackings was last month’s bombshell return of the leftist former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva after a judge quashed his criminal convictions – opening the door for him to run again next year. Lula’s excoriating attacks on the president are widely seen as heralding a fresh bid for power from a charismatic politician who remains hugely popular in some quarters. Is it possible that, inspired by Donald Trump, Mr Bolsonaro contemplates hanging on to power through the use of might? No. It is probable. The armed forces have overridden the people’s will before: Brazil was a military dictatorship from 1964 to 1985. When the mob stormed the US Capitol on 6 January, his son took exception not to their assault, but their inefficiency: “It was a disorganised movement. Pitiful,” said Eduardo Bolsonaro. “If they had been organised the invaders would have seized the Capitol and made pre-established demands. They would have had enough firepower to ensure that none of them died and to be able to kill all of the police officers inside or the congresspeople they so despise.” While the departure of the armed forces chiefs may suggest resistance to a coup plot, it also allows the president to install those he judges more compliant; younger officers were always more enthusiastic about Mr Bolsonaro. Opposition politicians are pressing for impeachment, with one warning: “There is an attempt here by the president to arrange a coup – it is under way already.” There is some cause for hope. Vicious attacks by the president and his cronies have failed to curb a vibrant media environment, cow the courts or silence critics in civil society. His disastrous handling of Covid-19 appears to be prompting second thoughts among the economic elite that previously embraced him. Some parts of the military apparently share that unease. The possibility of Lula’s return is enough to concentrate rightwing minds on finding an alternative, less extremist candidate than Mr Bolsonaro. It might be galling to see those who assisted his rise position themselves as the guardians of democracy, rather than of their own interests. But his departure would nonetheless be welcome, for Brazil’s sake and the rest of the planet’s. | ['commentisfree/commentisfree', 'world/jair-bolsonaro', 'world/brazil', 'world/luiz-inacio-lula-da-silva', 'us-news/donaldtrump', 'world/coronavirus-outbreak', 'environment/amazon-rainforest', 'environment/deforestation', 'environment/environment', 'environment/forests', 'type/article', 'tone/editorials', 'tone/comment', 'profile/editorial', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/journal', 'theguardian/journal/opinion', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-letters-and-leader-writers'] | environment/deforestation | BIODIVERSITY | 2021-04-05T17:30:42Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
environment/article/2024/aug/12/eating-insects-is-not-going-to-save-the-planet | Eating insects is not going to save the planet | Letter | Re your article on eating crickets to save the world (The rise of ‘ento-veganism’: how eating crickets could help save the world, 7 August), it is true that crickets have a lower environmental impact than conventional meat. However, nearly all foods have a lower environmental impact than conventional meat. The trick is not finding something more environmentally friendly than meat, but rather finding something consumers will eat instead of meat. Most consumers do not want to eat farmed insects, and when they are sold as food, they often come in the form of products like baked goods, pasta or flour, which compete not with meat but with foods possessing comparatively low environmental impacts. A Rabobank report described the share of farmed insects consumed by humans as “negligible”. Most farmed insects are instead fed to other animals. Recent peer-reviewed research, which I co-authored and which is published in the journal Sustainable Production and Consumption, shows that companies rearing insects at scale generally rely on materials that could be fed directly to other animals or used by other sectors, and, due to practical challenges, this is not likely to change in the future. Instead of saving the world, insect farming mostly adds an inefficient and expensive layer to the food system we already have. Rather than forcing insects on a wary public, resources would be better devoted to alternative proteins such as plant-based or cultivated meats that have the potential to transform our food system while avoiding the consumer acceptance and animal welfare concerns mentioned in the article. Dustin Crummett Executive director, the Insect Institute • Have an opinion on anything you’ve read in the Guardian today? Please email us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our letters section. | ['environment/insects', 'environment/food', 'environment/environment', 'lifeandstyle/vegetarianism', 'food/meat', 'environment/meat-industry', 'environment/farming', 'food/food', 'type/article', 'tone/letters', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/journal', 'theguardian/journal/letters', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-letters-and-leader-writers'] | environment/farming | BIODIVERSITY | 2024-08-12T16:35:39Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
books/2022/mar/02/a-blue-new-deal-by-chris-armstrong-review | A Blue New Deal by Chris Armstrong review – a manifesto for the oceans | Governments talk of green jobs, green industrial revolutions and creating green new deals. The aim of these efforts is to tackle runaway climate change, biodiversity loss and inequality by remoulding our political and economic systems. But where is the blue in all of this? As Chris Armstrong writes, there can be no green transformation without a blue one alongside it. For most of us, ocean ecosystems are out of sight, out of mind. We refer to tropical rainforests as the “lungs of the Earth” but tiny organisms called phytoplankton release 70% of the planet’s oxygen – much more than trees. In total, the oceans store 50 times more carbon than our atmosphere. The Gulf Stream alone transports 550tn calories of heat across the North Atlantic every second. Without this, the tropics would be unbearably hot and more temperate regions extremely cold. It helps make Earth the Goldilocks planet, perfect for life to thrive. Unfortunately, the way our ocean economies work at the moment is driving widespread environmental destruction. The familiar problem of floating plastic pollution is just a tiny part of the story. Under the surface, the ocean is being emptied of wild marine life and filled with a few species of farmed fish. Marine dead zones are growing as ocean acidification and warming gets worse. People don’t know the extent of it because we can’t see it. Armstrong takes us through humanity’s changing relationship with the ocean, starting with how it enriched sailors, whalers and early explorers. “Exploitation and abuse at sea are probably as old as sailing itself,” he writes. During the 17th century, people believed that the sea was inexhaustible, but this changed as whalers had to move to more dangerous hunting waters in polar regions as catches became more scarce. By the mid 20th century, many whale species were on the verge of extinction. For every 100 blue whales that swam in our oceans before the advent of commercial whaling, just one exists now. “An ocean that once resounded with their calls has become a place of ghostly silence,” Armstrong writes. The exciting thing about ocean restoration is that marine ecosystems recover much faster than terrestrial ones, so marine life could rebound significantly in a single human generation. Whale populations are starting to increase following catastrophic declines from commercial whaling, and this small success needs to be repeated across the board. To do this, Armstrong suggests putting 80% of the ocean under protection as marine reserves, which would lead to surprisingly rapid regeneration. Other priorities for a successful blue new deal include promoting seaweed farming, shellfish aquaculture, greening ports and planting mangroves. We must also outlaw harmful fishing subsidies and destructive fishing practices such as using cyanide and dynamite, and create better legal protections for whales and dolphins. The book provides a persuasive guide to recovery, and is an inspiring and invigorating read. There needs to be more blue amid all this talk of green recoveries, because if the oceans fail – and with the slowing of the Gulf Stream there are early indications tipping points might not be far off – then the whole planet will. • A Blue New Deal: Why We Need a New Politics for the Ocean by Chris Armstrong is published by Yale (£20). To support the Guardian and the Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply. Find age of extinction coverage here, and follow biodiversity reporters Phoebe Weston and Patrick Greenfield on Twitter for all the latest news and feature | ['books/scienceandnature', 'books/books', 'environment/marine-life', 'environment/oceans', 'environment/fish', 'environment/whales', 'environment/environment', 'culture/culture', 'type/article', 'tone/reviews', 'profile/phoebe-weston', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/saturday', 'theguardian/saturday/culture', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/saturday-magazine'] | environment/marine-life | BIODIVERSITY | 2022-03-02T09:00:36Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
environment/2024/dec/11/country-diary-these-cliffs-are-more-unstable-than-ever | Country Diary: These cliffs are more unstable than ever | Sara Hudston | Sunlit air sparkles and fizzes, atoms dancing after the storm. A black-pepper scatter of jackdaws hangs in the wind, swaying like a shoal of fish opposing the tide. Herring gulls glide and scream, underwings white with reflected light. The sea is graphite-grey, heavy waves exploding and casting sheets of whipped egg-white foam across the sand. I stand back from the racing, hissing water, keeping well clear of the sandstone cliff that rises so abruptly from the shore. Made famous by a certain TV drama series, this rampart of golden stone is one of the most unstable in the UK. Its base is lined with fallen boulders chunked into rough cubes the size of fridge‑freezers. Large slips are common, with whole sections breaking away without warning, sometimes with fatal consequences. Wetter weather has increased the size and frequency of rock falls. Heavy, prolonged downpours seep into the stone, causing large sections to suddenly flake off without warning. In October, thousands of tonnes came down. No one would want to go near the cliff, yet in 1944, soldiers of the US Rangers and British commandos practised for D-day by scaling it with rope ladders. One fell to his death. This autumn’s storms have been minor compared with the Great Gale that hit 200 years ago, in November 1824. For 30 hours, hurricane-force winds of nearly 100mph and a sea surge of over 6 metres overwhelmed the Dorset coastline, sweeping aside buildings and killing about 100 people. Victims included a father and two children in West Bay (then called Bridport Harbour), whose house had flooded. According to an eyewitness report, the father, “was seen about break of day with his two children, one on his back, the other under his arm, endeavouring to get through the water; but he had not proceeded far, when one of the children fell, and in stooping to take her up, a tremendous wave came and washed them away.” I think of them as I walk the beach, high water marked with a wavering line of twigs, straw, broken feathers and cuttlefish bone. Caught among it are dozens of small green apples, sea‑bruised and browning. • Under the Changing Skies: The Best of the Guardian’s Country Diary, 2018-2024 is published by Guardian Faber; order at guardianbookshop.com and get a 15% discount | ['environment/series/country-diary', 'environment/coastlines', 'environment/environment', 'uk/ruralaffairs', 'uk/uk', 'uk-news/dorset', 'environment/wildlife', 'science/geology', 'type/article', 'tone/features', 'profile/sara-hudston', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/journal', 'theguardian/journal/letters', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-letters-and-leader-writers'] | environment/wildlife | BIODIVERSITY | 2024-12-11T05:30:37Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
business/2015/dec/06/forestry-sales-notch-up-scottish-record | Forestry sales notch up Scottish record | Forestry sales have reached a record £151m in Scotland, smashing the previous record by 50%. A report by the chartered surveyors and forestry agents John Clegg & Co said the current level of activity was 13 times the size of the market at the beginning of the millennium. There has been a smooth rise in the market since 2010 with a dip in 2014 caused by the uncertainty from the referendum on Scottish independence. The vote led to delays in the conclusion of a number of significant deals, many of which slipped into 2015, boosting the most recent figure. Scotland accounts for 77% of all UK commercial forestry transactions, with 2015 characterised by the number of high valudeals, with as many in the £2m-£5m range as in £100,001-£250,000. At the top end there were five transactions of more than £5m and two of more than £10m. There are several demand drivers for forest land, the report said, aside from the current timber price where there have been signs of weakness due to the strength of sterling. The value of logs is expected to rise considerably in the medium to long term and there is the potential for woodland as an investment. “As we seem to be in an era of low interest rates, possibly for some time to come, forestry looks to be a promising option for investment,” said Fenning Welstead, a partner at John Clegg. “With physical growth in a tangible asset forestry has much to commend it.” Jason Sinden, head of investment and and property at Tilhill Forestry, a forest management company, said the UK market was beginning to interest institutional investors , with timber seen as a versatile renewable material and a convenient source of energy. The world’s largest timber consumer is the UK’s Drax power station. Sinden said: “If you want a long-term, green investment, then UK forestry is hard to beat.” | ['business/commodities', 'environment/forests', 'uk/scotland', 'environment/environment', 'uk/uk', 'business/business', 'business/realestate', 'environment/green-economy', 'type/article', 'profile/david-hellier', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/financial3'] | environment/forests | BIODIVERSITY | 2015-12-06T14:07:50Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
uk-news/2021/oct/05/uk-weather-heavy-rain-northern-england-met-office-flood-alerts-wales-scotland | UK weather: heavy rain expected to lash northern England | Heavy rain has been forecast to hit northern England after flash flooding in the south. Dozens of flood alerts were in place across the UK on Tuesday, after commuters captured images of London buses ploughing through flood water on Monday night. The Met Office issued a yellow weather warning for rain in northern areas of England until 10pm. The meteorologist Grahame Madge said north-eastern England could experience up to 50mm of rain throughout the day – even higher levels than recorded in the south overnight. An HGV was captured making huge ripples through flood water on the A4 between Hyde Park Corner and Knightsbridge underground stations in central London on Monday night. Nearby St James’s Park was hit by 35mm of rain in just six hours after midnight, the Met Office said. About 26mm of this rainfall was recorded in just one hour. Storrington in West Sussex also experienced 30mm between midnight and 6am, while Market Bosworth in Leicestershire had 29mm. Madge said north-eastern England could experience up to 50mm of rain on Tuesday, while cars were seen ploughing through deep flood water in Whitley Bay, Tyneside. He said: “The rainfall is subsiding for much of the country now but the low-pressure system is going out into north-east England and south-east Scotland. It will still be a bit showery elsewhere but the main downpours are converging over the north-east. “The forecast for the next few days in England shows high pressure moving in, leading to more settled weather.” Strong winds were also predicted to compound the rain on the east coast, while western areas were likely to experience sunny spells and scattered showers. The Environment Agency issued 54 flood alerts for areas where flooding was possible, and four flood warnings across England. Parts of London, Birmingham and Cumbria were covered by the flood warnings, with disruption to homes, travel and power likely. The Scottish Environment Protection Agency issued flood alerts for Edinburgh and the Lothians and the Scottish Borders; Natural Resources Wales had one in place along the country’s northern coast. | ['uk/weather', 'uk/uk', 'environment/flooding', 'environment/environment', 'uk/scotland', 'uk/london', 'uk-news/england', 'uk/wales', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/tom-ambrose', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-home-news'] | environment/flooding | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2021-10-05T11:26:28Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
commentisfree/2011/mar/10/china-development-environment | In China, to get rich is not always glorious | Isabel Hilton | Two years ago a book called Unhappy China became a bestseller in the People's Republic. It was a collective effort by a group of nationalists who complained that their government was giving in to western bullying. It carried an unpleasant political message, but it did raise the question of why – given that China had prospered for 30 years and its people were better off than they had been for 50 years – should unhappiness be an issue at all. Regardless of their motive, the authors of Unhappy China were on to something. Earlier this week, as China Digital Times reported, China's censors in the State Council Information Office issued an order: "All websites are requested to immediately remove the story 'In China 94% Are Unhappy; Top-Heavy Concentration of Wealth' and related information. Forums, blogs, microblogs, and other interactive spaces are not to discuss the matter." The figures came from a global Gallup Poll in which Denmark scored an impressive 82% of respondents who described themselves as happy. In China only 6% said they were, ranking the country 125th. China's least happy respondents lived in the first-tier cities, where people are relatively better off. Results like this are not very good news for a government whose legitimacy for the past 30 years has rested on rising living standards. Since Deng Xiaoping announced that "to get rich is glorious", a minority – most of them in the Communist party – have grown very rich indeed. Millions more are better off. However, for the last decade, average household incomes have flatlined as a percentage of GDP and the wealth gap has yawned. Across China, people have rediscovered the well-rehearsed truth that material satisfaction is relative. The party is worried. For the last two Sundays some areas of Beijing and other cities have been swamped with police to forestall any possible imitation of demonstrations in the Middle East. In China there has been little public response but nothing seems to calm the jagged nerves of a government that now spends more on internal security than on external defence. As the National People's Congress meets in Beijing this week, happiness is much on its collective mind. Before the 3,000 delegates is China's 12th five-year plan, an economic blueprint that aims to spread the wealth a little more evenly. From this year, China will attempt to chart a course that will transform the economy from its current export-led, low-wage, low added-value model into a greener and more equitable mode of development. If it succeeds, it will be a shift in China's economic direction that will have global importance. The fear of popular discontent is only part of it. The real imperative is that China has exhausted all the elements that made the old economic model work: energy, resources, cheap labour, water and markets. It has the world's most rapidly ageing population, and the most developed parts of China are facing labour shortages that make wage levels uncompetitive. Industrial pollution of air and water have brought soaring cancer levels and irreversible land degradation, and the value added by churning out cheap goods for richer countries is not enough to pay for the damage. China has to change or implode. Like Japan, Taiwan and South Korea before it, China must now attempt to move up the value chain, inventing its own technologies, not assembling those of others. There will be huge investment in seven strategic emerging industries including electric cars, biotechnology, nuclear and renewable energy, and IT. Government investment in research and development is aimed at ensuring that the next generation of key technology patents are Chinese. More people will move from the countryside to cities, which will aim to be more habitable as China shifts its climate narrative from the defensive truculence of "the west caused it; the west must fix it" to a story of economic opportunity and promise. If the plan works, the west will have to look at its assumptions of technological dominance, and the country that has been emblematic of the world's environmental problems could become the key to solving them. Whether it will succeed in cheering up 94% of Chinese who are presently unhappy is another question. | ['commentisfree/commentisfree', 'world/china', 'world/world', 'environment/climate-crisis', 'environment/nuclearpower', 'environment/energy', 'environment/environment', 'politics/politics', 'tone/comment', 'global-development/global-development', 'world/asia-pacific', 'type/article', 'profile/isabelhilton', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/commentanddebate'] | environment/nuclearpower | ENERGY | 2011-03-10T22:00:02Z | true | ENERGY |
commentisfree/2006/oct/31/nucleardivide | The north-south nuclear divide | The unspoken subtext to the prime minister's call to arms over climate change, following the Stern report, is that we are going to have a lot more nuclear power stations. The prime minister has long believed that nuclear is the only viable replacement for fossil fuels, since things like wind and wave energy cannot maintain baseload electricity generation. But what to do about the waste? The nuclear debate seems to have gone underground in England, but it is a very live issue in Scotland, where the opposition parties are determined to oppose nuclear power. There is a real north-south divide on energy generation. Scotland is sitting on 25% of Europe's wind and tide energy. The Pentland Firth has been called the Saudi Arabia of world tidal energy. The first commercially viable carbon-capture project, at Peterhead, is waiting for the go-ahead. Given the disastrous history of plants such as Dounreay, which continues to pollute the far north of Scotland, and the huge cost of decommissioning the other plants, the Scottish opposition parties see no reason why Scotland should mortgage the future to the atom. At least not until there is a viable solution to the problem of what to do with nuclear waste. The Committee on Radiactive Waste Management, Corwm, proposed that it should be disposed of permanently in a deep repository in an area of with appropriate geology and a supportive local population. Last week, the first minister, Jack McConnell, waded incautiously into the nuclear minefield by declaring that, if Scotland became independent, England would not take Scottish waste into the proposed new deep waste repository, which everyone expects to be sited at Sellafield in Cumbria. This is a kind of "waste Lothian question". Scotland should stick with the Union to ensure that we continue to enjoy the protection of the UK's system of nuclear management, he says. It's part of what McConnell calls the "union dividend". But the SNP floored McConnell by announcing that it didn't want England to take Scottish nuclear waste in the first place. "It's Scotland's waste", said the SNP's parliamentary leader Nicola Sturgeon, echoing the famous nationalist oil slogan of the Seventies. Scotland should take the responsibility of looking after it above ground, rather than dumping it in a hole in the ground in England. The SNP say that deep disposal is inherently dangerous because of leakage and only hands the problem over to succeeding generations. Spent fuel rods and contaminated material will remain radioactive for 24,000 years. Ten thousand years ago, Scotland was under half a mile of ice. Moreover, transporting all the nuclear residues from Scotland's five reactors is itself highly dangerous. Only last year, the atomic energy firm AEA Technology was fined £250,000 for transporting a flask of waste 130 miles across northern England without its plug in place. Sturgeon asked McConnell, in turn, to rule out any prospect of there being a new generation of nuclear plants in Scotland - which he couldn't. The first minister is privately a nuclear sceptic, and believes that Scotland could probably do without any new nuclear power stations by extending the lives of the existing ones and developing a renewables industry in Scotland. However, because Gordon Brown has signed up to the nuclear future, McConnell cannot join the anti-nuclear consensus in Scotland. Of course, many Scottish voters may agree with government scientists that it is safer to put nuclear waste deep underground (even if that isn't a final solution) than to have it lying around on the surface in rusting temporary containment. The risk of leakage is greater, and it presents an easier terrorist target than a deep disposal site. But the idea of developing a new generation of nuclear plants is profoundly unpopular in Scotland. The Scottish Labour party is itself deeply divided. As on so many issues, England and Scotland are going their separate ways on nuclear power. And the nuclear waste is in danger of getting lost in the gap. | ['commentisfree/commentisfree', 'tone/comment', 'uk/scotland', 'environment/nuclearpower', 'environment/climate-crisis', 'environment/renewableenergy', 'society/north-south-divide', 'type/article', 'profile/iainmacwhirter'] | environment/nuclearpower | ENERGY | 2006-10-31T17:30:36Z | true | ENERGY |
environment/2022/nov/18/country-diary-canada-geese-are-on-the-move-with-a-melancholic-honk-but-why | Country diary: Canada geese are on the move with a melancholic honk – but why? | Low-angled sunlight had turned the leaves of birch and beech golden, but hauntingly so, the richness elegiac. The message seemed to be: enjoy this because it’s at an end. Except it felt preternaturally warm for this time of year, prompting a familiar discussion about different responses to the state of the natural world. Just then we heard the melancholy honking of some Canada geese overhead, the birds concealed by the canopy of trees. I moved to where I could see them: two V-formations comprising perhaps three dozen birds heading north. They were low enough to see the slight inflexion of their necks as their shoulders strained at each wingbeat and close enough to hear each bird’s call, the females answering the lower-pitched males. Many birders are dismissive of these longstanding incomers. The academic literature on Canada geese in Britain often focuses on the problems they cause – to pasture and crops, municipal ponds and even aircraft. If they get too troublesome, the law allows their killing. But the soft way in which the different birds called to each other as they heaved themselves through the air seemed like consolation in a threatening world. As a young man, spending a year in Quebec, I would stand on my porch in the early dawn and watch transfixed as thousands of Canada geese flew north for the summer. Their British cousins have no need to migrate. These ones were simply going somewhere new to feed. But watching them overhead, I wondered what might be happening in their brains. Was there something atavistic at work? Some almost lost instinct for setting out on epic journeys stirring in them? In North America, some Canada geese have also been settling permanently in their wintering grounds, a lack of predators and an abundance of food among the reasons. We seem to be giving them an easier option. Perhaps that’s where the antipathy comes from; perhaps we don’t want our geese to put their feet up in the local park. Maybe we need them setting out for new horizons, to show us the way. • Country Diary is on Twitter at @gdncountrydiary | ['environment/series/country-diary', 'environment/birds', 'environment/environment', 'uk/ruralaffairs', 'environment/wildlife', 'type/article', 'tone/features', 'profile/eddouglas', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/journal', 'theguardian/journal/letters', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-letters-and-leader-writers'] | environment/wildlife | BIODIVERSITY | 2022-11-18T05:30:55Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
global-development/2015/jan/04/rice-waste-green-wood-low-cost-homes-india | Rice waste makes ‘green wood’ to build low-cost homes in India | Carla Kweifio-Okai | When Bisman Deu saw her family burning mounds of rice waste at their farm in southern India, she was convinced the material could be put to better use. The Delhi student, 16, came up with the idea of recycling the unwanted rice husks and straw into an alternative building material. “I’d go to my family’s farm, where my dad grew up, for the holidays, and see them burning piles and piles of it. The harvesting months are the worst and the black smoke gets quite harmful, causing people to have problems breathing, as well as polluting the environment,” Deu said. More than half of the world’s people eat rice as a staple food and, for every five tons of rice harvested, one ton of husk is produced. The cereal residue has little commercial value for farmers, but Deu hopes to change that. “I want to provide cheap and affordable housing material to people, because many live in homes made of mud, which can’t always withstand the weather. This would mean farmers also have a new source of income,” she said. After asking farmers how they would like to use the recycled product, Deu took to her mother’s kitchen to create a prototype, with support from the Social Innovation Relay initiative. Mixing the waste with a resin and pressing the mixture into particleboards, she came up with what she calls “green wood”. She says the product is fungi- and mould-proof, making it a viable option for building houses. Deu also plans to use the material to build low-cost school furniture. “I think it could be a local, sustainable solution to some of the problems we see here,” she said. Deu is still perfecting her prototype but has received interest from Indian businesses. “I’ve made a few designs now and I’m still improving it. Since I’m in a crucial grade of studying, I’m working on both the green wood and school right now, but I’m hoping to have it available to as many people as soon as possible.” Deu’s innovation was featured in Unicef’s 2015 state of the world’s children report alongside offerings by other young inventors, including four Nigerian students who created a urine-powered generator and a Colombian student who invented a vibrating device to help hearing-impaired people negotiate traffic. Deu, who plans to study economics at university, said she was inspired after meeting other young innovators. “It was the best experience, and I discovered that there are many young people like me trying to find solutions to our problems. It showed that we, the youth, can think outside of the box.” | ['global-development/series/12-days-of-innovation', 'global-development/global-development', 'world/india', 'environment/recycling', 'type/article', 'tone/blog', 'profile/carla-kweifio-okai'] | environment/recycling | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE | 2015-01-04T07:00:15Z | true | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE |
environment/2024/oct/29/climate-crisis-caused-half-of-european-heat-deaths-in-2022-says-study | Climate crisis caused half of European heat deaths in 2022, says study | Climate breakdown caused more than half of the 68,000 heat deaths during the scorching European summer of 2022, a study has found. Researchers from the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal) found 38,000 fewer people would have died from heat if humans had not clogged the atmosphere with pollutants that act like a greenhouse and bake the planet. The death toll is about 10 times greater than the number of people murdered in Europe that year. “Many see climate change as a future concern,” said the lead author, Thessa Beck. “Yet our findings underscore that it is already a pressing issue.” The warm weather killed more women than men, more southern Europeans than northern Europeans, and more older people than younger people. Scientists already knew carbon pollution had made the heatwaves hotter but did not know how much it had driven up the death toll. They found 56% of the heat-related deaths could have been avoided if the world had not been warmed by burning fossil fuels and the destruction of nature. The share varied between 44% and 54% in the six years prior. Even small increases in temperatures can have devastating impacts on public health, said Emily Theokritoff, a researcher at Imperial College London who was not involved in the study. “This result makes sense – heat-related death increases rapidly as temperatures push past the limits people are acclimatised to.” Europe is warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet but doctors warn its hospitals are not prepared to deal with the consequences. The rise in temperatures forces more people to endure searing summer heat that pushes their bodies into overdrive even as it cuts exposure to chilling winter cold that leaves them too weak to fight off illness. Scientists project the lives lost to hotter summers in Europe will outstrip those saved by cooler winters if the planet heats more than 2C above preindustrial levels. Last week, the UN environment programme warned the world is on track to heat by 3C by the end of the century. The dangers of extreme heat are even greater in Africa, Asia, and South America, but a lack of data had limited studies on how it affects human health, said Beck. “A common misconception is that only extreme temperatures pose a serious risk,” she said. “However, our study, along with previous research, shows that even moderate heat can lead to heat-related deaths, particularly among more vulnerable populations.” Scientists had previously used heat and health data for 35 European countries to estimate how many more people die as a result of hot weather. In the new study, they ran the model with temperatures for a hypothetical world in which humans had not heated the planet. They found climate change was behind 22,501 heat deaths in women and 14,026 heat deaths in men. Garyfallos Konstantinoudis, a researcher at Imperial College London, who was not involved in the study, said the authors may have overestimated the effect of heat on mortality because they did not account for how people had adapted. He said: “Previous studies have reported a decrease in heat-mortality impact over time, due to factors including infrastructural changes and improved health care.” To stay safe in the heat, doctors recommend drinking water, staying indoors during the hottest parts of the day and looking after older neighbours and relatives who live alone. Governments can save lives by creating action plans for hot weather, designing cities with more green space and less concrete, and cutting pollution. “Heat can be very dangerous for the heart, especially for older people,” said Beck. | ['environment/climate-crisis', 'environment/extreme-heat', 'society/health', 'world/europe-news', 'environment/environment', 'world/world', 'society/society', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/ajit-niranjan', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-environment'] | environment/extreme-heat | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2024-10-29T10:00:05Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
science/2017/apr/24/plastic-munching-worms-could-help-wage-war-on-waste-galleria-mellonella | Plastic-eating worms could help wage war on waste | For caterpillars that are bred as premium fish bait, it must rank as a better life. Rather than dangling on the end of a hook and wondering what comes next, the grubs are set to join the war on plastic waste. The larvae of wax moths are sold as delicious snacks for chub, carp and catfish, but in the wild the worms live on beeswax, making them the scourge of beekeepers across Europe. But in a chance discovery, a scientist and amateur beekeeper has found that waxworms have a taste for more than wax. When Federica Bertocchini removed an infestation from one of her hives and put them in a plastic bag, the worms simply ate their way out. “I went back to the room where I had left the worms and I found that they were everywhere,” she said. “The bag was full of holes.” The breakout led Bertocchini, a researcher at the Spanish National Research Council, and scientists at Cambridge University, to investigate the feeding habits of the centimetre-long Galleria mellonella grubs. In lab tests, they discovered that 100 worms can devour 92 milligrams of polyethylene in as little as 12 hours. With such a voracious appetite for plastic, the worms could be put to good use, the scientists reasoned. Each year, the average person uses more than 200 plastic bags which can take between 100 and 400 years to degrade in landfill sites. The grubs appear to breakdown polyethylene with the same enzymes they use for eating beeswax. To confirm that the worms were not simply chewing the plastic into smaller pieces, the scientists mashed some of them up and smeared the grub paste on plastic bags. Again, according to the study in Current Biology, holes appeared. Paolo Bombelli, a biochemist at Cambridge who took part in the study, said the finding could lead to a solution to the plastic waste mounting up in waterways, oceans and landfills. With further research, the scientists hope to identify the enzymes that the waxworms produce when they go to work on a bag. The genes for these might then be put into bacteria, such as E coli, or into marine organisms called phytoplankton, and used to degrade plastics in the wild. “We should be very happy that we have plastic for millions of items, but we need to be careful about plastic waste, and what we are studying might help for minimising that,” Bombelli said. Because there are strict regulations around the release of genetically modified organisms into the environment, another way to reduce plastic waste could be to breed large numbers of the waxworms and let them loose on waste. But that might only be viable if the worms have an endless appetite for plastic shopping bags. “We want to know if they’re munching the plastic to use as a food, or just because they want to escape,” said Bombelli. “If they just want to escape, they are going to get fed up very soon. But if they’re munching it to use as an energy source it’s a completely different ball game. We are not yet able to answer this, but we’re working on it.” | ['science/biology', 'environment/plastic-bags', 'environment/plastic', 'science/science', 'environment/environment', 'science/zoology', 'science/animalbehaviour', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/iansample', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/uknews', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-science'] | environment/plastic | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE | 2017-04-25T00:09:07Z | true | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE |
environment/2007/oct/24/endangeredhabitats | Sale of the sanctuary | How do you save the Amazon rainforest? Easy. All you need is a bit of cash and a computer. Then go to the site of Cool Earth and, with a click of the mouse, you can "Add to cart" half an acre of endangered rainforest for just £35. Cool Earth claims this will keep locked up 130 tonnes of CO2 - "the same as the annual carbon footprints of 10 British families" - and protect 400 unique species. So far, the site says, more than 31,000 acres have been saved. One of Cool Earth's main supporters is Johan Eliasch, the Swedish-born businessman and Tory funder chosen by Gordon Brown to be his forest adviser, with the task of looking at mechanisms that stimulate "deforestation avoidance". Besides selling the odd half-acre on the website, Eliasch says he is persuading fellow millionaires to follow his example by buying chunks of rainforest. He claims to have bought 400,000 acres, and it is this land that is being offered for sale on the site. But is this really the best way to save the rainforest? Brazilians, especially the military, have always been touchy about foreign designs on the Amazon. And news that foreigners are buying up large swaths of their rainforest, for whatever reason, has infuriated Amazonians. In Manaus, the capital of Amazonas state, the director of one NGO involved with small-scale sustainable development projects says: "Johan Eliasch is not welcome here." The problem with Eliasch's "green colonialism" is the implication that Brazilians are not capable of saving the rainforest from destruction, and ignoring the many organisations already in the field, particularly those of the original inhabitants of the rainforest. Yanomami Indian leader Davi Kopenawa, on a visit to the UK to raise support for indigenous health needs, says: "The forest cannot be bought. It is our life; we have always protected it." He is not alone. The Alliance of Forest Peoples, which represents indigenous groups and the many communities that live sustainably from the forest, says the way to save the forest is to protect the indigenous and extractive reserves, where satellite data shows deforestation has largely been held at bay so far. Indigenous reserves alone cover a fifth of the Brazilian Amazon. For the many environmental organisations with years of experience in Amazon campaigning, the only answer is to stop all deforestation. Nine of the biggest green NGOs - including Greenpeace, WWF, Friends of the Earth and the Nature Conservancy - and leading Brazilian organisations such as ISA, for indigenous peoples, and the Amazon Institute for Environmental Research have put forward a seven-year plan to reduce deforestation to zero by 2015. An area the size of France - almost a fifth of Brazil's Amazon region - has been deforested, mostly in the last 40 years. Zero deforestation would bring a huge reduction in the greenhouse gas emissions that make Brazil one of the top five climate polluters in the world, and stop the loss of biodiversity. The NGOs believe the key is economic, so that standing forest has more value than what replaces it. They want the government's generous financial incentives, historically channelled into destructive practices such as cattle ranching and crops, to be redirected to "environmental services" - a plan that is supported by three of the nine state governors of the Amazon region. Of course, the key player is the Brazilian government, and the problem is that it speaks with many voices. Its powerful works minister, Dilma Roussef, leads the "developmentalist" sector demanding infrastructure, roads and dams. Environment minister Marina Silva advocates a mosaic of giant conservation units and environmental safeguards before the infrastructure. Yet her ministry is behind a controversial new "forests for hire" scheme to allow selected Brazilian logging companies into areas of previously out-of-bounds national forests. The idea is that it will be easier to control such logging, but the voracity and ruthlessness of Amazon loggers make critics liken it to putting the fox in charge of the chicken coop. Domino effect The proposal by agriculture minister Reinhold Stephanes that deforested Amazon land should be used for sugar cane production has caused another uproar. President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva had promised that Brazil's booming ethanol production would not threaten the rainforest, but the influential biofuel lobby will plant sugar cane wherever it can, and experience with other boom crops, such as soya, suggests the problem will be the domino effect - high sugar cane prices will push less profitable crops on to cheaper land. A new factor is about to be introduced into the equation: climate change. Rainfall in Brazil's major agricultural regions is influenced by the rainforest. Destroying the Amazon could trigger drought in other regions and seriously affect crops. That vital connection is about to be made clear - with discreet but vital support from the UK government - in a report called the Economics of Climate Change. "It will be a sort of Brazilian version of the Stern report," says an informed insider. Almost 20% of the Amazon rainforest has already been cleared, and scientists believe that 40% is the tipping point. The race against time to find ways of stopping deforestation has begun. · coolearth.org · Email your comments to society@theguardian.com. If you are writing a comment for publication, please mark clearly "for publication" | ['environment/environment', 'environment/endangered-habitats', 'environment/forests', 'environment/deforestation', 'environment/amazon-rainforest', 'type/article', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/societyguardian', 'theguardian/societyguardian/societyguardian'] | environment/deforestation | BIODIVERSITY | 2007-10-24T09:51:00Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
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