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australia-news/2024/dec/02/south-australia-victoria-queensland-and-nsw-blackout-warnings-solar-power-aemo | South Australia, Victoria, Queensland and NSW could experience blackouts from too much solar power, Aemo warns | The power grid in eastern Australia could experience strains from too little power demand as soon as next spring unless states speed up actions to cope with surplus generation from solar panels on sunny days, the Australian Energy Market Operator (Aemo) has warned. In a report released on Monday, Aemo called for an “emergency backstop” mechanism to ensure grid stability when households and other solar photovoltaic (PV) owners export excess electricity. “South Australia, Victoria, Queensland and New South Wales may be exposed to regional shortfalls in the ability to deliver backstop capability required for management of severe emergency outage conditions” if transmission lines go down, it said. “This means that use of high customer impact mechanisms … may be required in some circumstances.” While Aemo’s recent issues have involved the risk of electricity demand exceeding generation capability in NSW, the need to cope with insufficient load in the grid has been gaining urgency. Australians may add 3 gigawatts of rooftop solar in 2024 alone, according to the Clean Energy Council. Michael Gatt, an Aemo executive, said the market operator had flagged the issue of so-called minimum system loads for several years and was aiming to work with state governments and network companies to develop solutions. Sign up for Guardian Australia’s breaking news email “Aemo does not want to directly control people’s rooftop solar,” Gatt said. That said, if actions to secure the grid weren’t enough, it may be necessary on “very rare occasions” to intervene to reduce output from solar systems or even to cut them off. While several states had some backstop capacity, the ongoing expansion of rooftop PV meant those measures would become inadequate, Aemo said. However, external interventions, including the use of high voltage levels to remotely control households’ solar inverters, was not without its costs, independent analysts such as Gabrielle Kuiper say. Kuiper, a director of the Superpower Institute, said there were better alternatives than reducing rooftop solar output on mild days of abundant sunshine when consumers don’t need much power for heating or cooling. These would become clearer if there was an effort to pass a change to the national electricity rules. This step would require cost-benefit analyses and greater evidence of the risks of grid instability, she said, noting Australia was one of the few nations in the world to move to a “really high proportion of variable renewable generation” in the grid. One step might be to create a market mirroring the one used to pay big users to cut demand during periods of scant supply. Instead, they could be rewarded for adding load to help soak up solar power. Batteries, too, could be nudged to charge up during low demand periods. Households’ batteries offer their owners opportunities to participate in so-called virtual power plants, sharing in the rewards of coordinated charging or discharging. Community batteries could also share the benefits. “You need to put in place everything else that you possibly can to ensure [turning off rooftop solar] is the last resort,” Kuiper said. “We haven’t seen that kind of analysis of the different options and how they all stack up together.” Electrical engineers say the use of “overvoltage” to turn off households’ inverters may also shorten the life of some appliances. | ['australia-news/energy-australia', 'environment/solarpower', 'environment/energy', 'environment/renewableenergy', 'environment/environment', 'australia-news/new-south-wales', 'australia-news/australia-news', 'campaign/email/breaking-news-australia', 'australia-news/south-australia', 'australia-news/victoria', 'australia-news/queensland', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/peter-hannam', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/australia-news'] | environment/energy | ENERGY | 2024-12-02T06:29:14Z | true | ENERGY |
australia-news/2019/oct/24/committee-led-by-coalition-rejects-facial-recognition-database-in-surprise-move | Committee led by Coalition rejects facial recognition database in surprise move | Parliament’s intelligence and security committee has ordered the government back to the drawing board for laws to establish a national facial recognition database, saying the legislation needs to be redrafted to ensure citizens’ rights are protected. Amid fears the proposed new laws could allow the mass surveillance of citizens, the government-controlled committee has taken the unusual step of recommending the laws be completely overhauled, with the new regime built around “privacy, transparency and subject to robust safeguards.” It is the first time since 2002 that parliament’s joint committee on intelligence and security has recommended legislation be withdrawn and redrafted and then resubmitted to the committee for scrutiny. A government spokeswoman said: “the Committee has made recommendations and we will work with the PJCIS to legislate these laws.” Tabling the report of the PJCIS in parliament on Thursday, the Liberal MP and chair, Andrew Hastie, outlined the shortcomings of the legislation, saying that while its objectives were supported, it lacked detail. He also said the committee had agreed with critics who submitted that the legislation lacked safeguards to ensure appropriate governance, accountability and protection of the individual’s right to privacy. “The committee acknowledges these concerns and believes that while the bill’s explanatory memorandum sets out governance arrangements such as existing and contemplated agreements and access policy, they are not adequately set out in the current bill,” Hastie said. “In the committee’s view, robust safeguards and appropriate oversight mechanisms should be explained clearly in the legislation.” Sign up to receive the top stories from Guardian Australia every morning Hastie said that while the committee fully supported the objectives of the legislation – which was designed as a way to protect against the problem of identity theft – substantial changes to the legislation were still needed. “Wanting to ensure the safety and security of all Australians is something we have in common but we also need to protect citizens’ rights whilst doing so,” Hastie said. Labor’s shadow attorney general, Mark Dreyfus, said Labor and Liberal members of the committee were united in recommending the bill be “completely redrafted” and then referred back to the intelligence and security committee for further inquiry when reintroduced. He said that while the bill provided for six different identity-matching services, the service that elicited the most concern from submitters to the committee’s inquiry was the facial identification service. “That service would enable authorities across Australia to use huge databases of facial images to determine the identity of an unknown person,” Dreyfus said. “The potential for such a service to be used for mass or blanket surveillance, such as CCTV being used to identify Australians going about their business in real time, was raised by numerous submitters to the inquiry.” Dreyfus referred to evidence provided by the Australian Human Rights Commission, which submitted that the bill contemplated “intrusive surveillance” of the community at large before any crime had been committed, and in cases where there was no reason to believe a crime would be committed. “I do not believe that the government is proposing to engage in or to facilitate the mass surveillance of Australians. But I do accept that, given the near complete absence of legislated safeguards in the identity matching services bill 2019, those concerns cannot simply be ignored,” Dreyfus said. The bill, which was first introduced in 2018, would establish a range of services to identify, recognise or verify a facial image. It would also allow the Department of Home Affairs to create and maintain facilities for the sharing of facial images and other identity information between government agencies, and in some cases, non-government entities. This would also allow access to driver’s licence databases and photographs held by the states and territories. A system for the collation, access, use, sharing and disclosure of this type of data is also outlined in the legislation, sparking concerns about privacy and data security. Four recommendations have been made by the PJCIS committee, chiefly that the regime be rebuilt subject to “parliamentary oversight and reasonable, proportionate and transparent functionality”. It also calls for the regime to be subject to annual reporting, and for the new laws to outline requirements of a participation agreement that sets out the obligations of all parties participating in the identity-matching services in detail. The committee also concurrently examined changes to the Australian Passports Act which would authorise the minister for foreign affairs to disclose personal Australian travel document data for the purpose of participating in the identity-matching services. The committee concluded that the legislation should only be amended to ensure that automated decision making can only be used for favourable or neutral outcomes for the subject, and that such decisions would not negatively affect a person’s legal rights or obligations. | ['australia-news/australian-security-and-counter-terrorism', 'australia-news/australian-politics', 'australia-news/australia-news', 'australia-news/mark-dreyfus', 'world/surveillance', 'technology/facial-recognition', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/sarah-martin', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/australia-news'] | technology/facial-recognition | UNRELATED_TO_CLIMATE | 2019-10-24T01:28:41Z | true | UNRELATED_TO_CLIMATE |
world/2005/jun/09/indonesia.tsunami2004 | Indonesia faces new mega-tsunami | Another catastrophic giant earthquake similar to the one that caused carnage across the Indian Ocean on Boxing Day last year is lurking off Indonesia, say scientists. Recent seismic activity in the region has piled dangerous levels of stress onto a section of the Sunda trench fault zone west of Sumatra. This makes a large earthquake there far more likely and could trigger another devastating tsunami. The warning comes from a team of seismologists at the University of Ulster in Coleraine. Professor John McCloskey, who led the research, said: "This is a very scary event we're concerned about. The potential for a devastating tsunami from it is significant and real. I hope it doesn't happen, but the indications are really strong that it will, maybe even soon." Giant earthquakes can raise stress in surrounding rocks, making other seismic slips more likely. In March the Ulster group looked at the effects of the Boxing Day event and predicted another giant earthquake would strike the region. Less than two weeks later, on March 28, an adjacent region of the fault gave way. The magnitude 8.7 earthquake killed an estimated 2,000 people, mainly on the island of Nias. The Ulster team has now used the same technique to assess the aftermath of that second quake. Their analysis shows stress in the region to the south of the March 28 rupture has increased by up to 8 bar, priming it for a massive megathrust quake where one tectonic plate slips beneath another. The scientists cannot predict exactly when the next earthquake might strike, but say local people ought to be prepared. There are plans to deploy sensors to detect tsunamis throughout the Indian Ocean, but no system is yet in place. The Mentawai islands face the greatest threat. Although stress increases are higher near the Batu islands, an earthquake last struck there in 1935. The Mentawai section of the fault has not slipped since 1833, when records show the resulting giant earthquake caused a large tsunami. Prof McCloskey said his calculations suggest the risk of another massive earthquake is now greater than it was before March 28. "There are several indications that this one looks like a stronger interaction than the last. The actual stresses we measure are more or less the same but the ripeness of the fault now is of real concern." The recent increase in the number of small and medium earthquakes in the area is also ringing alarm bells. A magnitude 6.3 earthquake struck off the Indonesian coast yesterday but there were no reports of damage or casualties. It sparked panic in Sinabang, the main town of Simeulue off Sumatra, but did not trigger a tsunami. Indonesia has been rocked by repeated tremors since the Boxing Day event that killed more than 176,000 people in 11 countries, and left about 50,000 missing and hundreds of thousands homeless. Tony Blair is to push for an international network of scientists to watch the world for potential natural disasters. It would also identify the gaps in the understanding of the natural world and look at new ways to help protect the most vulnerable populations. "The events of Boxing Day 2004 have demonstrated that we ignore extreme natural hazards at our peril," said Sir David King, chief scientific adviser to the cabinet, who set up the working group. "We must take up the challenge of identifying such threats, understanding the processes and mechanisms that underpin them, and developing effective systems to mitigate their impact." | ['world/world', 'world/indonesia', 'world/tsunami2004', 'world/natural-disasters', 'travel/travel', 'environment/climate-crisis', 'environment/environment', 'tone/news', 'environment/oceans', 'world/asia-pacific', 'world/earthquakes', 'type/article', 'profile/davidadam'] | world/tsunami2004 | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2005-06-09T09:21:58Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
business/2022/oct/20/national-grid-to-pay-households-more-to-use-off-peak-power | National Grid to pay households more to use off-peak power | National Grid has significantly increased its financial incentive for households that shift their power usage away from peak times as part of a renewed effort to prevent rolling power cuts. Its electricity system operator (ESO) has increased the incentive sixfold to £3 per kilowatt hour (kWh) to encourage households to use their washing machines and appliances late at night, which could mean typical savings of £100 this winter. National Grid warned this month that homes could face three-hour power cuts if Russia blocks gas supplies into Europe and Britain experiences sustained cold weather, increasing the amount that households use for heating. In response, it has beefed up plans for businesses and households to participate in its “demand flexibility service”, which launches next month. Writing exclusively for the Guardian, Fintan Slye, the director of National Grid ESO, said on Thursday: “Businesses and homes can become virtual power plants and, crucially, get paid like one too. “For a consumer that could mean a typical household could save approximately £100 and, for industrial and commercial businesses with larger energy usage, they could potentially save multiples of this.” The ESO had originally planned to pay households with smart meters about 52p per kilowatt hour in credit via their energy suppliers if they avoid using appliances at times when high demand puts strain on the system. However, the introduction of support for businesses and households announced by Liz Truss last month made the scheme less attractive, at the equivalent of 34p per kWh. As a result, the ESO said it expects to pay the equivalent of £3 per kWh, “as feedback indicates this will unlock the majority of the available volume”. This money will be paid to suppliers in the form of a £3,000 per megawatt hour (MWh) minimum price, and those payments could go higher. Slye said he was “confident” the scheme could free up about 2 gigawatts (GW) of power, enough for about 1m homes. As businesses consume far more energy than domestic customers, their savings could be much higher. Only Octopus Energy, which piloted the initiative earlier this year, has formally signed up. However, it is understood E.ON and Ovo are among those interested in signing up. Under a similar scheme also launching next month, Ovo customers who use less than 12.5% of the energy they consume in a day between the peak hours of 4pm and 7pm will receive £20 for each month they hit this target. The five-month trial from 1 November could save them £100 as a result. The more firms and homes that sign up to the ESO plan, the greater the reduction in the pressure on the energy network with consumers putting on their washing machine or appliances at night instead of busier periods. Octopus and E.ON had claimed the energy discount incentive was too low, arguing that fewer people would sign up as a result, the Times reported last month. Slye also detailed how National Grid would inform households if there were to be power cuts this winter. He said consumers would receive 24 hours notice and social media influencers could even be called on to spread the message. He wrote: “We are working with government and industry on planning for this so that the message can be spread across all communities as quickly and accurately as possible. This would include press conferences, social media campaigns, and working with influencers in different communities.” • This article was amended on 21 October 2022 because an earlier version referred to kWh units as kW/h. | ['business/nationalgrid', 'business/energy-industry', 'environment/energy-monitoring', 'environment/energy', 'environment/energyefficiency', 'business/utilities', 'business/business', 'campaign/email/business-today', 'environment/environment', 'business/eon', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/alex-lawson', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/financial3', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-business'] | environment/energy | ENERGY | 2022-10-20T14:00:01Z | true | ENERGY |
news/2011/jul/29/weatherwatch-summer-wordsworth-calais | Weatherwatch: Wordsworth's summer beach party in Calais | The poet's party arrived at Calais on 4am on Sunday 31 July, 1802. The weather was very hot. "I had a bad cold and at first could not bathe but William did. It was a pretty sight to see as we walked upon the sands when the tide was low perhaps a hundred people bathing about ¼ of a mile distant from us and we had delightful walks after the heat of the day was passed away," the poet's sister records in The Journals of Dorothy Wordsworth, edited by Marion Moorman (Oxford). "The Reflections in the water were more beautiful than the sky itself, purple waves brighter than precious stones for ever melting away upon the sands. The fort, a wooden Building, at the Entrance of the harbour of Calais, when the evening twilight was coming on, and we could not see anything of the building but its shape which was far more distinct than in perfect daylight, seemed to reared upon pillars of Ebony, between which pillars the sea was seen in the most beautiful colours that can be conceived. Nothing in Romance was ever half so beautiful. Now came in view as the Evening star sank down and the colours of the west faded away the two lights of England, lighted up by the Englishmen in our country, to warn vessels of rocks or sands." One hot, unforgettable night, William and Dorothy walked on the pier. "The sea was gloomy for there was a blackness over all the sky except where it was overspread with lightning which often revealed to us a distant vessel." | ['news/series/weatherwatch', 'uk/weather', 'uk/uk', 'tone/features', 'books/williamwordsworth', 'type/article', 'profile/timradford', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/weather2'] | news/series/weatherwatch | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2011-07-29T22:05:00Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
world/2008/apr/06/spain | Drought ignites Spain's 'water war' | There is a common saying in Spain that during a drought, the trees chase after the dogs. Now it is ringing true as the country struggles to deal with the worst drought since the Forties: reservoirs stand at 46 per cent of capacity and rainfall over the past 18 months has been 40 per cent below average. But months before the scorching summer sun threatens to reduce supplies to a trickle, a bitter political battle is raging over how to manage Spain's scarcest resource - water. Catalonia, in the parched north east, has been worst affected, with reservoirs standing at just a fifth of capacity. Faced with the prospect of having to cut supplies, authorities in Barcelona have brought in hitherto unheard of fines of €30 (£23.50) for watering gardens or €3,000 for filling swimming pools over 300 square metres. Municipal fountains, some lit up at night for tourists, are empty. Beach showers have been turned off. In an emergency measure, the Catalan regional government is planning to ship in water from one of Spain's driest regions, Almería in the south east, and from Marseille in France. It may bring in more water by train. The crisis has forced the fiercely nationalist Catalans, who like to see themselves as separate from Spaniards, into a humiliating plea to Madrid. Uttering a phrase which must have stuck in his throat, José Montilla, Socialist president of the Catalan regional government, reminded central government: 'Catalonia is also part of Spain.' Montilla had hoped that water would be transferred to Catalonia from the river Segre in neighbouring Aragon. But Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero refused, even taking time out from the Nato summit in Bucharest last week to deny there was a 'water war' with Catalonia. Zapatero prefers the costlier solution of shipping in water in tankers or trains to diverting it from other rivers to the Ebro, which supplies most of Catalonia. Experts say that, despite three years of drought, Spain should have enough water for everyone. But the latest row reveals that no one can agree how to share it. Zapatero's Socialist government believes the answer lies in a controversial series of desalination plants. Spain already has 950 desalination plants which produce 2 million cubic metres of water a day, enough to supply 10 million people. Another is due to open near Barcelona next year. The Socialists claim that the plants will end Spain's almost yearly scramble to stop its reserves drying up. But the Spanish Association for the Technological Treatment of Water says that each desalination plant indirectly produces one million tonnes of CO2 a year. Supporters of the plants say that, while they may be costly and produce high emissions, diverting rivers causes more damage to animal life by introducing new species like the zebra mussel, which has been blamed for damaging river eco-systems. But the right-wing opposition Popular Party supports diverting river courses, claiming it does less environmental damage. Mariano Rajoy, Popular Party leader, said: 'I would transfer water anywhere. The desalination plants emit CO2 and contribute to climate change.' Angel Cajigas, president of the Water Treatment Association, said: 'Despite their problems, (desalination plants) produce an unlimited amount of water, can adapt to demand and reduce concern about supplies.' But ecologists say that, in a country where water is cheap compared with how much it costs in its neighbours, Spaniards do not value the resource and much is lost due to outdated, leaking drainage systems. One faulty system in Barcelona is losing 800,000 litres of water a day. Alberto Fernández, head of water for WWF, the Worldwide Fund for Nature, said: 'We should raise the price of water, which is very cheap. We need better systems of storage and distribution and to create banks of water, so we could buy and sell the rights to it.' Other experts have grown tired of Spain's annual 'water war'. Edelmiro Rúa Álvarez, president of the College of Engineers, says: 'Spain has enough water for everyone. We shouldn't be at each others' throats every year. In five years, we shouldn't be wrangling over this again.' | ['world/spain', 'world/world', 'environment/drought', 'environment/water', 'environment/environment', 'world/europe-news', 'world/catalonia', 'type/article', 'profile/grahamkeeley', 'publication/theobserver', 'theobserver/news', 'theobserver/news/worldnews'] | environment/drought | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2008-04-06T08:57:02Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
environment/2022/dec/13/what-is-nuclear-fusion-what-have-scientists-achieved-ignition | What is nuclear fusion and what have scientists achieved? | Physicists are a-buzz over new results from nuclear fusion experiments. But what have they found, and how big a breakthrough is it? What is nuclear fusion? We experience nuclear fusion every day – it is the process that gives rise to the heat and light of the sun and other stars. In brief, it involves light atoms being smashed together to produce heavier ones, releasing vast amounts of energy in the process. To do this ourselves takes some serious engineering. At the National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, a weak laser beam is split and the energy amplified to give 192 laser beams. These are used to heat the walls of a small gold can, called a hohlraum, to more than 3m degrees Celsius, resulting in the emission of X-rays. These X-rays heat a millimetre-sized capsule within the hohlraum that contains two forms of hydrogen: deuterium and tritium. The heat causes the surface of the capsule to explode outwards, forcing its contents to implode – in other words, the deuterium and tritium are forced together rapidly at very high pressure and temperature. The upshot is that, in the hottest part of the fuel, fusion occurs, resulting in the formation of helium nuclei. As one helium nucleus has slightly less mass than the combination of one deuterium and one tritium nucleus, the difference in mass is released as a burst of energy. In the right conditions the helium nuclei produced in this process can transfer their kinetic energy to the remaining fuel, heating it up and triggering yet more fusion. Should this happen, it becomes possible to release more energy than was put into the experiment by the lasers, a condition known as ignition. What just happened? Researchers at the NIF have announced that, for the first time, they have managed to do just that. The team used 2.05MJ of energy to heat the fuel with lasers, releasing 3.15MJ of energy. Is that a lot of energy? No, not really. The difference – 1.1MJ – is about 0.3kWh. It takes about 0.2kWh to boil a full kettle of water. Why is everyone so excited? Nuclear fusion research has been going on for 70 years and this is the first time scientists have managed to demonstrate ignition – a positive energy gain. The results show that it is indeed possible to use laser fusion to generate energy – a crucial proof of principle that will spur on research to develop the technology. That matters because it is hoped nuclear fusion will eventually provide a near-limitless, safe and clean source of energy. How far away are we from powering our homes via nuclear fusion? Miles. And miles. Only a small amount of excess energy was generated in the latest experiments – and it took a lot of energy, around 500MJ, to power the lasers in the first place. Such reactions would also need to happen at a much greater frequency – about 10 times a second – and be far cheaper to run before nuclear fusion could actually be used to power even a kettle. Jeremy Chittenden, a professor of plasma physics at Imperial College London, told the Guardian: “Anyone working in fusion would be quick to point out that there is still a long way to go from demonstrating energy gain to getting to wall-plug efficiency where the energy coming from a fusion reactor exceeds its electrical energy input required to run the reactor. “The experiments on NIF demonstrate the scientific process of ignition and how this leads to high fusion energy gain, but to turn this into a power station we need to develop simpler methods to reach these conditions, which will need to be more efficient and above all cheaper in order for inertial fusion to be realised as a fusion power source.” | ['environment/nuclearpower', 'environment/energy', 'environment/environment', 'us-news/us-news', 'science/science', 'type/article', 'tone/explainers', 'profile/nicola-davis', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/topstories', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-home-news'] | environment/energy | ENERGY | 2022-12-13T15:36:32Z | true | ENERGY |
environment/2005/oct/26/hurricanes2005.business | BP profits surge to £5.3bn despite taking a battering from hurricanes | BP yesterday reported a sharp rise in third-quarter profits despite taking a battering from the hurricanes which have swept through the Gulf of Mexico. The group's chief executive, Lord Browne, warned that further disruption to refining capacity or an unusually cold winter could put pressure on fuel supplies. Underlying profit for the three months to September rose 27% to $5.33bn (£3.6bn), in the middle of City expectations, while shares were down 7.5p to 609p. Ahead of the results, BP announced that it had appointed former US secretary of state James Baker to head a panel to look at safety issues following the explosion at the company's Texas City refinery this year in which 15 people lost their lives. Yesterday BP said the trading environment had been stronger in the third quarter compared with the same period last year with oil prices about $20 a barrel higher and stronger refining margins. However, the impact of record oil prices was partly offset by the extreme weather, which has battered the Gulf of Mexico. BP said Hurricanes Katrina and Rita had reduced oil production and refining capacity in the Gulf. "Oil product stocks and anticipated recoveries in refining capacity generally are adequate to meet current demand but the situation remains finely balanced and vulnerable to further disruptions or a colder than normal winter," Lord Browne said. As well as the damage caused by the most recent hurricanes, BP said it had cost about $100m (£60m) to stabilise the $1bn Thunder Horse oil platform, damaged by Hurricane Dennis, and another $150m will be spent on repairs before it comes into operation in the second quarter of 2006. Rising costs also put pressure on the group's margins for products, including petrol, which were "significantly" lower as the group found it difficult to pass on the full effect of higher prices to customers. "A common theme throughout the sector has been increased pressure from governments and final customers to keep fuel prices at the pump low," investment bank Goldman Sachs said. Analysts had been concerned in the wake of BP's trading statement that oil company profitability may have peaked. Lord Browne said while signs of weaker consumption and the temporary loss of some refining capacity had caused prices to drift downwards ... "prices are expected to be well supported into the winter". | ['environment/environment', 'world/hurricanes', 'business/business', 'business/oil', 'world/world', 'environment/climate-crisis', 'business/bp', 'type/article', 'world/natural-disasters', 'profile/markmilner', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/financial3'] | world/hurricanes | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2005-10-26T09:29:54Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
environment/2006/may/02/water.uknews | Southern drought is northward bound | The drought in the south-east is spreading north, government experts warned today as new rainfall figures confirmed that that the dry spell continued last month. The Environment Agency said drought conditions were extending into Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Essex and Suffolk, and some parts of the south-east were already in the grip of one of the worst droughts since the 1920s. The warning raised the prospect that millions more households could be facing the hosepipe bans that already affect nearly 13 million customers in eight separate water regions in the south-east. More restrictions are likely to follow in these areas. Essex and Suffolk Water and Anglian Water both said they had no plans to impose hosepipe bans in their areas. A spokesman for Essex and Suffolk added that the company was urging its customers to use water wisely. The Environment Agency said it may ban farmers from extracting water from rivers and lakes to spray on their land in Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Essex and Suffolk, among other areas in the south-east. The agency is currently most concerned about water supplies in London, Kent and Sussex. "A hot, dry summer would cause problems with public water supply and widespread environmental impacts," an agency drought bulletin warned today. Three water companies, Southern Water, Mid Kent Water and Sutton and East Surrey Water, have applied for restrictions on so-called non-essential use. This would involve bans on the watering of sports grounds and parks and on the washing of cars and windows, and a further tightening of restrictions after a hosepipe ban. The government is expected to decide later this month on whether the restrictions can go ahead. The Met Office revealed today that rainfall in April was 25% lower than average. According to the Environment Agency, this means the current dry spell has lasted for 19 months. The agency also expressed alarm about the impact on the environment of low river levels. Its drought bulletin said: "All fish species are at high risk from drought this summer as levels in rivers and lakes will be low. "This will mean they are more susceptible to predators, low oxygen and barriers to movement. Spawning could also be affected." The flow of the Thames is at only 39% of its average for this time of year. Ground water levels are also particularly low in the Thames Valley around London, with several boreholes showing the lowest recorded levels. Water storage in the Thames Water region was hit last month after the collapse of tunnel that took water from the Thames to a reservoir in Dachet, in Berkshire. | ['environment/water', 'environment/environment', 'uk/uk', 'environment/drought', 'type/article'] | environment/drought | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2006-05-02T17:05:35Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
news/2011/dec/04/weatherwatch-cloudspotting-lincolnshire-tourists | Weatherwatch: The perfect spot for wondering about wispy clouds | The Anderby Creek Cloud Bar is grandly described as the world's first "official cloudspotting area", and ranks as Lincolnshire's 167th most popular tourist attraction. This is not bad considering there are more than 1,000 contenders in this well endowed county's table. The "bar" consists of a viewing platform on top of a large sand dune in one of the remotest parts of the Lincolnshire coast. The Cloud Appreciation Society, with a worldwide membership of 28,417, has provided special seats for viewing clouds and parabolic mirrors for scanning the sky. The society believes "clouds are unjustly maligned and that life would be immeasurably poorer without them" and it pledges to "fight blue sky thinking." On a visit a few days ago it was impossible to get a proper feel for the place since the fog was dense. A notice on the society's website notes that on the day the place was officially opened the weather was terrible: it was a peerless day without a cloud in the sky. Given normal conditions, however, the cloud bar is wonderfully placed. With the sea in one direction and the flat Lincolnshire fens on the other there is not a hill or tree to obscure the view of an enormous sky and any cloud that may appear. This facility replaced a derelict beach shelter and was largely paid for by the European Regional Fund. Should the weather turn too wet to look upwards, some seats have been thoughtfully provided underneath the construction. | ['news/series/weatherwatch', 'uk/weather', 'uk/uk', 'tone/features', 'type/article', 'profile/paulbrown', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/weather2'] | news/series/weatherwatch | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2011-12-04T22:30:01Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
environment/2009/dec/20/copenhagen-summit-pact-obama-verdict | A great step forward: Obama's verdict on climate change pact | Barack Obama returned to a snowbound Washington at the weekend clutching a deal that was cast as a step forward by his administration but decried as a waste of paper by critics on both sides of the climate change debate. At the end of another of his interventions on the world stage that are becoming a hallmark of his presidency, Obama said the Copenhagen talks amounted to an "important breakthrough" and they had laid the foundation for international action "in the years to come". But he also accepted it was a partial victory, saying the pact was "not enough", the road ahead would be hard and there was a long way still to go. David Axelrod, his chief adviser, took to the airwaves this morning to defend the outcome of the 31-hour negotiations in similar vein: it was not perfect but it was a start. "Nobody says that this is the end of the road," Axelrod told CNN. "The end of the road would have been the complete collapse of those talks. This is a great step forward." Politico, a Washington-based political news website, said the agreement was "more notable for what it doesn't accomplish than what it does, an inconvenient truth Obama ruefully acknowledged". The last time Obama imposed himself into a gathering of world leaders in Copenhagen in October, when he lent his weight to Chicago's bid for the 2016 Olympics, it ended in humiliation. This time the outcome was not so ignominious, and the administration could and did claim credit for some, albeit non-binding, results. Critics were quick to disparage Obama's achievement as a meaningless compromise. Friends of the Earth US dismissed the agreement as a sham. "This is not a strong deal or a just one – it isn't even a real one," said the group's president Erich Pica. He blamed the US for the absence of concrete results saying it was the main polluter behind the climate crisis yet it had failed to put enough money on the table to help poor countries cope with its consequences. On the other side of the debate, Club for Growth, a campaign for small government and low taxes, hailed the agreement as an ironic triumph. Its head, Chris Chocola, said a binding deal would have destroyed 30 million American jobs, but he was relieved when Obama described it as a meaningful pact. "When politicians call something 'meaningful', that means it isn't," Chocola said. The question for the White House now is how the Copenhagen agreement will affect its ambitions to present Congress with a wide ranging energy bill that would enshrine a cap-and-trade system for reducing emissions through bartering. Opponents of cap-and-trade, such as the Club for Growth, are likely to be emboldened in their efforts to frustrate the administration, pointing to the absence of a firm commitment internationally to set emissions reduction targets. Against that, the White House will argue there is enough of a global mandate to merit pressing ahead with its legislative plans. The New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman said it was time for America to move quickly to develop a unilateral strategy in which the Senate would pass an energy bill setting a long-term price on carbon "that will really stimulate America to become the world leader in clean-tech. If we lead by example, more people will follow us by emulation than by compulsion of some UN treaty." In an editorial, the Washington Post saw grounds for limited optimism that the Senate would act. It said that the Copenhagen agreement was weak and inadequate, but "this outcome, however imperfect, should prod the US Senate to take up climate-change legislation. Even if China hadn't moved, reducing America's dependence on foreign sources of energy and tacking domestic pollution are strong enough reasons to pass a bill." The Post also noted that Copenhagen had given a glimpse of a new world order in which the US and China would increasingly shape international diplomacy. This so-called G2 of the world's two biggest emitters of greenhouse gases had the fate of any climate change treaty in its hands. | ['environment/copenhagen', 'us-news/barack-obama', 'us-news/obama-administration', 'environment/climate-crisis', 'environment/environment', 'us-news/us-news', 'world/china', 'world/world', 'tone/news', 'environment/global-climate-talks', 'world/asia-pacific', 'type/article', 'profile/edpilkington', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/uknews'] | environment/global-climate-talks | CLIMATE_POLICY | 2009-12-20T20:49:12Z | true | CLIMATE_POLICY |
environment/2016/aug/20/renewables-serious-industrial-strategy-wind-power | If we’re serious about industrial strategy, renewables is a good place to start | Cancelling the planned new nuclear power station at Hinkley Point will be a huge victory for the offshore wind industry. The word from inside No 10 is not clear yet, but there are so many Tories, including the prime minister, unsettled by the prospect of the Chinese building a plant in Britain to an untested French design that the prospects of it going ahead appear slim. As if to emphasise the continuing success of Britain’s elegant turbines in the sea, the government cleared the way for a new array off the Yorkshire coast earlier this week. The multibillion-pound Hornsea Project Two would see 300 turbines – each taller than the Gherkin – span more than 480 sq km of the North Sea. This comes after Dong Energy, the biggest operator of offshore windfarms in Britain, said it was planning to spend a further £6bn in the UK by 2020, convinced that the government is serious about supporting wind power. Offshore wind has proved expensive, but is working hard to get its price per megawatt hour below Hinkley’s £92.50. Some schemes claim to generate electricity at £85. The question now, Hinkley or no Hinkley, must be whether May can overcome the neoliberal free-market tendencies of some cabinet colleagues and push through an industrial strategy worth the name – one that embraces renewable energy and extracts business and employment for the UK from the dominant overseas firms that currently make the majority of the renewables kit. It is not so long ago that the Guardian revealed the scandalous lack of UK involvement in the London Array wind farm off the north Kent coast. Norwegian, German and Gulf companies dominated. Some will say it’s too late to challenge the big players like Denmark’s Dong or Siemens, which has brought at least some manufacturing to the UK with a £310m hub in Hull that employs 1,000 people. But that misses the point. There are plenty of roles left in suppliers and service businesses that will ramp up investment if the commitment from the government to the industry is solid. As Dustin Benton of the Green Alliance says, Britain is in a good position to build a sophisticated renewables industry that supports the generation of green energy and does the clever stuff to connect up all the various parts of the network. The green lobby group has argued that the UK could replace Hinkley by encouraging initiatives to reduce consumption – not in terms of switching off heating and lighting, but rewarding users on the basis of the electricity consumption they avoid. “Our report on reducing electricity demand … shows how the UK could get two Hinkleys’ worth of demand reduction by 2030 and certainly a Hinkley’s worth by 2025,” he says. May has much to overcome. The previous administration’s withdrawal of financial support for the solar industry after a few years of lauding it as the next big thing has made many people in the renewables sector wary. Admittedly, the state cash on offer for building solar farms was extraordinarily generous and needed to be cut, but the sudden and deep reductions wiped out much of the industry, forcing many firms to wind themselves up. It means that outside the offshore wind sector, where government support appears to be strong, firms will remain cautious. As an answer to the problem, there’s no need to adopt a North Korean approach, pumping state cash into key sectors and picking winners. An industrial strategy just needs to be more coherent, offer subsidies to achieve longer-term goals and stick with the plan while modifying it along the way. | ['environment/windpower', 'environment/renewableenergy', 'environment/energy', 'environment/environment', 'tone/comment', 'type/article', 'profile/phillipinman', 'publication/theobserver', 'theobserver/news', 'theobserver/news/business', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/observer-main'] | environment/windpower | ENERGY | 2016-08-20T14:59:07Z | true | ENERGY |
australia-news/2015/apr/06/coalition-plan-to-save-great-barrier-reef-is-weak-new-report-says | Great Barrier Reef: new report slams government's 'weak' recovery plan | The federal government’s plan to reverse the decline of the Great Barrier Reef is “weak” and requires greater action in six key areas, including climate change, according to a new report. The set of recommendations, compiled by three of the reef’s most experienced scientists, warn that opening up huge new coalmines in Queensland is “too risky” for the Great Barrier Reef. They also say that it “will not be possible to develop and operate the largest coal ports in the world along the edge of the Great Barrier Reef world heritage area over the next 60 years without causing permanent damage to the region”. The report, published in Nature Climate Change, calls for a shift towards better conservation values, Australia playing a “more active role in transitioning away from fossil fuels” and advocates a bans on the dredging and dumping of seabed spoil within the world heritage area. It also recommends a revamp of the environmental assessment process for new developments, greater powers for the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority over fishing and ports and a 50-year plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and slash chemical run-off. The federal and Queensland governments have devised a long-term plan to arrest the decline of the reef, which is considered to be in poor and worsening health having lost half of its coral cover over the past 30 years. However, scientists have attacked the plan for failing to confront the issue of climate change, which is the leading long-term threat to the reef. The opening up of the Galilee Basin coalfields, to export resources via the reef, could result in the release of an additional 705m tonnes of greenhouse gases – more than Australia’s annual total. Unesco’s world heritage committee will decide in June whether to list the reef as “in danger.” The Nature Climate Change report notes that more than half of the 41 outstanding universal values ascribed to the reef by Unesco are in decline due to pollution, coastal development, dredging, overfishing and climate change. “We know what we need to do to help the reef, the problem is that the government’s plan is pretty weak,” said Jon Brodie, a marine scientist at James Cook University. Brodie authored the paper alongside Jon Day, a fellow former director at the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, and Terry Hughes, director of coral reef studies at James Cook University. “The plan doesn’t address climate change at all, the water quality improvement part is better but it isn’t funded properly and the plan doesn’t set out good governance around ports, which is something Unesco wants. “We can’t really stop exporting coking coal because we need to make steel. But we need to stop the expansion of thermal coal exports from the Galilee Basin.” Brodie said the expansion of the Abbot Point coal port near Bowen, which has seen a lengthy battle over where to dump seabed excavated for the development, has been “a farce.” “They had five options to expand the port and they picked the cheapest, dirtiest one,” he said. “And when enough people complained about dumping it at sea, they picked the next worst option, which was putting it in the wetlands. We are now on to another option.” Day said that while ports could continue to operate next to the reef, all development needed to occur at a more sustainable level. “If that means less dredging, less coalmining and more sustainable fishing, then that’s what Australia has to do,” he said. “Business as usual is not an option because the values for which the reef was listed as world heritage are already deteriorating, and will only get worse unless a change in policy occurs.” Between them, the Australian and Queensland governments have pledged to ban the dumping of dredged spoil within the world heritage area and have set targets to reduce the amount of nitrogen and other chemicals flowing on to the reef from farming. However, conservationists have said the funding for pollution reduction is insufficient and that even if the world keeps to an internationally agreed limit of a 2C increase in temperatures from pre-industrial times, ocean warming and acidification will further reduce coral cover to perilously low levels. | ['australia-news/australia-news', 'australia-news/australian-politics', 'environment/great-barrier-reef', 'environment/environment', 'environment/marine-life', 'environment/conservation', 'environment/coral', 'australia-news/queensland', 'australia-news/coalition', 'world/unesco', 'environment/climate-crisis', 'australia-news/queensland-politics', 'world/unitednations', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/oliver-milman'] | environment/marine-life | BIODIVERSITY | 2015-04-06T15:23:11Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
environment/2021/mar/11/natural-england-gives-proposed-london-resort-site-protected-status | Natural England gives proposed London Resort site protected status | Marshes, pasture and reedbeds beside the Thames where developers want to build a theme park have been listed as a site of special scientific interest (SSSI) in recognition of its rare and diverse insect life. The decision by Natural England to recognise the national importance of Swanscombe peninsula, which is home to 1,991 species of invertebrates, more than any known site in the country, was welcomed by campaigners hoping to save the partly brownfield site from the £3.5bn London Resort. Giving SSSI status to the wetlands and former concrete works, one of only two locations where the distinguished jumping spider is found, would normally protect the area from development. But the government has deemed the proposed theme park to be a “nationally significant infrastructure project” – a classification normally reserved for major roads or airports – which means environmental factors can be overridden during the planning process. Matt Shardlow, the chief executive of Buglife, thanked Natural England “for doing the right thing by protecting one of the country’s most important wildlife sites” but added: “The Swanscombe peninsula remains under threat and it is crucial that a precedent isn’t set by allowing a fun fair to be considered as more important than the wildlife that inspires wonder and sustains us.” Buglife, the RSPB and Kent Wildlife Trust called on Natural England “to do everything in its power” to ensure that the newly proposed SSSI is protected and the government is made fully aware of the “exceptional value” of Swanscombe peninsula and the wider ecology of the Thames estuary. James Seymour, the Sussex and Kent area manager for Natural England, said: “The designation of Swanscombe peninsula as an SSSI is great news for one of the richest known sites in England for invertebrates, ensuring essential refuge for many rare and threatened species that sadly are not able to thrive in the wider landscape. “Right on the doorstep of some of our most densely populated towns and cities, this new SSSI will also offer wonderful opportunities for people to connect with nature via the England coast path. This area is living proof that some of our most important species can thrive hand in hand with businesses and transport infrastructure. Special places like this will form the vital backbone of a national nature recovery network.” Natural England said it was aware of the “potential development opportunities” around Swanscombe and the SSSI designation for 250 hectares of the peninsula was an important step in ensuring its environmental value was “taken due account of” in any future planning decisions. PY Gerbeau, chief executive of London Resort Company Holdings, said: “The project will of course continue, and this is just another issue to address in the long history of this project.” He added: “Sustainability is a green thread throughout the London Resort proposals and we’re very proud of that. We have demonstrated, across thousands of pages within our application, our vision to deliver a net gain in biodiversity and our commitment to enhancing and managing habitats. An investment that runs into millions because we believe in sustainability and in our role as custodians of the environment. “We have shown how we plan to transform a contaminated, former industrial site, through this exceptional, once in a lifetime opportunity. An opportunity which will bring thousands of jobs, generate substantial economic growth and boost tourism with the UK’s first, world class theme park resort.” | ['environment/conservation', 'uk-news/kent', 'travel/theme-parks', 'uk/london', 'uk-news/england', 'environment/environment', 'uk/uk', 'environment/insects', 'environment/natural-england', 'environment/wildlife', 'environment/endangered-habitats', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/patrickbarkham', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/uknews', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-environment'] | environment/endangered-habitats | BIODIVERSITY | 2021-03-11T14:04:50Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
commentisfree/2021/nov/23/want-to-fight-for-climate-action-but-feel-daunted-or-powerless-try-this | Want to fight for climate action but feel daunted or powerless? Try this | Tayo Bero | For anyone hoping for some optimism about our dying planet, the recent Cop26 climate summit left much to be desired. Developing countries were severely underrepresented at the conference, and only a third of the usual number of delegates from those countries was able to attend, due to Covid restrictions, a lack of affordable accommodation and accessibility issues. As the race to save the planet continues, much of climate action rhetoric these days remains split between personal calls to action – such as recycling or cutting down on individual consumption – and calls for governments, corporations and international organizations to wind down fossil fuel production, switch to renewable energy on a mass scale and protect key ecosystems that can help mitigate the effects of the climate crisis. The scale of the crisis can make us feel powerless as individuals – and individual action may seem like a drop in the bucket where climate change is concerned. But there are ways to use the affiliations we already have to boost our collective voice for change. Here are a few ideas: If you’re employed by a big corporation: Major corporations have thousands of employees. Staff at these companies can plan walkouts or join strike actions to push their companies to make serious commitments to climate action such as reducing their consumption and switching to clean energy alternatives. When the staffs of tech companies like Google and Amazon took to the streets of Silicon Valley to join the global climate strike in September 2019, their employers responded swiftly: Amazon agreed to buy 100,000 electric delivery vans and committed to meeting the goals of the Paris climate agreement 10 years early, while Google made the largest purchase of renewable energy in corporate history. Employees can also push their employers to divest their pension and retirement savings plans from fossil fuel companies. Many of these companies are situated on vast corporate campuses and consume significant amounts of energy. Staff can lobby their employers to build green spaces and take up green initiatives. If you’re a member of a labor union: Labor unions are a great way to organize around climate action. Thanks to unions’ sheer size, members can make a difference by forming climate change campaigns or sub-groups within larger campaigns. Some unions have also successfully collaborated with academics and environmental groups on research to identify and develop effective strategies for climate action. Some of these collaborations have led to the passing of legislation that protects workers in light of the climate crisis. Unions can also draft environmental policies that call on the government and international organizations to take serious climate action, form workplace environment committees to help develop their environmental strategy, and make their own seat at the climate action table by having trade union delegates at the global climate change conferences. If you’re a student or member of faculty at a university: Universities are essential hubs of research and advocacy on climate change – and, like other large organizations, they produce significant emissions. Students can push for their universities to divest from fossil fuels, generate power on-campus, and commit to being carbon-neutral in other ways, like increasing bike parking across campus and retrofitting old buildings. These institutions can also join in collective action with other colleges and universities across the globe which are addressing climate change, and incorporate climate change education into their curricula. If you belong to a religious organization: In recent years, religious institutions have become leading voices against the climate crisis. Members of these organizations can push for community initiatives that help the environment, like building green infrastructure. Religious denominations also have a lot of sway with governments. Members can ask their religious leaders to support bills and other political actions that address climate change, or press Congress directly to take climate action. Members of religious organizations can also advocate for putting their money where their mouth is by divesting from high-emitting companies. The Church of England recently threatened to divest from fossil fuel companies that haven’t aligned their businesses with Paris agreement goals. Twelve companies made changes to ensure they weren’t dropped by the church. Tayo Bero is a freelance writer | ['commentisfree/commentisfree', 'tone/comment', 'environment/environment', 'environment/climate-crisis', 'environment/cop26-glasgow-climate-change-conference-2021', 'type/article', 'profile/tayo-bero', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/us-opinion'] | environment/cop26-glasgow-climate-change-conference-2021 | CLIMATE_POLICY | 2021-11-23T11:30:14Z | true | CLIMATE_POLICY |
lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2013/nov/11/byo-cutlery-carry-own-knife-fork-chopsticks | BYO cutlery: why we should all carry our own knives and forks | In medieval Europe, people used to carry their own personal knife – a sharp one – for every eating occasion. There was no expectation that cutlery would be provided, except perhaps for spoons. When the meal was done, the knife was wiped clean on a napkin and carefully returned to your person. The knife was worn so habitually that – as with a watch – you might start to regard it as a part of yourself and forget it was there. A sixth-century text reminded monks to detach their knives from their belts before they went to bed, so they didn't cut themselves. Like many aspects of medieval life, this knife-carrying now seems pretty weird. But was portable cutlery really such a bad idea? Earlier this year, the chair of a forestry group in China, Bo Guangxin, urged diners to "carry their own tableware" to avert the ecological disaster caused by disposable chopsticks. It is estimated that China throws away somewhere between 57 and 80bn pairs of chopsticks every year. Either way, it's a lot of forest. Japan has an even heavier disposable chopstick habit, thanks to Shinto ideas of purity. Traditionally, giving a fresh pair of chopsticks to each customer was the only way a restaurateur could assure his clientele that what they put in their mouth was not defiled. In both China and Japan, however, a "bring-your-own-chopsticks" (BYOC) movement has sprung up among the young. Manufacturers have cottoned on, marketing cute cloth bags or boxes for carrying reusable chopsticks. Greenpeace China has persuaded hundreds of Beijing restaurants not to provide disposable cutlery unless customers specifically ask for them. Back in the land of knives and forks, however, the movement for BYO cutlery has hardly begun. Much of the travel cutlery available in the west seems to be aimed at the camping market – foldable metal sets that often have vicious can openers and corkscrews attached – rather than everyday meals. It's hard to find anything much between bright plastic toddlerware and Swiss Army knives. There was a news story in September that highlighted our curious attitude to portable tableware. For a laugh, three teenagers visited a branch of McDonald's, bringing with them their own tablecloth, candles and metal cutlery. Staff initially told them to "leave or you're banned", though the manager eventually relented. McDonald's issued a statement saying: "We ask that any items brought in by customers, such as cups or plates, are used responsibly" – as if plastic forks were naturally more "responsible" than metal ones. When lunching in Pret- and EAT-style chains, there is still no social shame attached to taking a fresh plastic knife, fork and spoon every time. Pret says it can all be recycled. But why do we need to generate this level of cutlery wastage for something as modest as an avocado salad? It has been estimated that disposable cutlery in the UK is used for just three minutes before it is chucked. The real problem is that we don't even recognise disposable cutlery as a problem yet. We no longer expect to be given limitless plastic bags in shops. Likewise, public opinion has finally moved against bottled water, with sales declining across Europe and the US. At my gym, I hardly ever see anyone who isn't toting a reusable aluminium bottle of tap water. Yet the rest of our tableware hasn't caught up. In coffee shops, some people request paper cups even when they plan to drink in. I suspect that all those paparazzi shots of celebrities swigging grande lattes have given the paper cup itself a kind of cachet. When Starbucks launched a new reusable cup earlier this year, they modelled the design on their own paper cups, as if to say: don't worry, you won't look too strange drinking from this. Even so, they anticipate just 5% of their drinks being served from reusable cups by 2015. Hipsters in America have started swigging coffee from reusable glass canning jars with beaker-style lids, but this hasn't taken off here – maybe because it's hard to organize yourself to put a large glass jar in a work bag, especially in a pre-caffeinated state. Insulated travel mugs are handier and, while still a minority thing, they no longer seem eccentric. The same cannot be said of portable forks. Sadly, we are still at the point where it is considered weird to carry cutlery, rather than weird not to. I've lately started stashing bamboo sporks in my handbag and I get some odd looks when I produce them (in cafes, I hasten to add, rather than at other people's houses. I'm not that odd). But I don't care. Green issues aside, there's something satisfying about using a familiar and well-loved object rather than some impersonal plastic thing that doesn't even work properly. Those medieval knife-carriers were not so daft. | ['lifeandstyle/wordofmouth', 'food/food', 'lifeandstyle/lifeandstyle', 'environment/ethical-living', 'environment/waste', 'environment/environment', 'tone/blog', 'tone/features', 'type/article', 'profile/bee-wilson'] | environment/waste | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE | 2013-11-11T12:14:05Z | true | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE |
environment/2020/nov/30/plastic-paradise-goldman-prize-winner-fight-protect-bahamas-kristal-ambrose | Plastic in paradise: Goldman prize winner's fight to protect Bahamas | When the latest Goldman prize winner, Kristal Ambrose, began campaigning against plastic waste in the Bahamas, one of the first obstacles she had to overcome was prejudice about class and race. “You have been around white people too long. We always use plastic bags,” she recalls being told by neighbours in Eleuthera, one of the 30 inhabited islands in the ocean state. “I had to challenge the mindset that only a certain class of people get to care about this stuff. I told them it is not just for tourists. It’s my island and I want to protect it.” Still bigger challenges followed as Ambrose lobbied local politicians to ban single-use plastic and launched an education campaign to inform people about global overconsumption, particularly in rich nations, that contributed to the steady accumulation of rubbish on formerly pristine beaches, coral reefs and stretches of sea in the Caribbean. “In the Bahamas, it’s a really big deal because we receive the world’s waste as well as producing our own,” she said. “This is paradise, until you look closely. Then you see the plastic pollution that washes in with the Sargasso Sea.” The 30-year-old marine biologist first became concerned about the issue a decade ago when she had to extricate plastic that had been swallowed by a sea turtle. The traumatic operation took two days and left her with a conviction that she would never drop waste on the ground again. At the age of 22, she was invited on an expedition to study the Pacific Ocean, where she sailed through the vast mass of marine and household debris known as the western garbage patch. This brought home how individual consumer habits had global environmental consequences. A short while later she began the campaign that was to become the Bahamas Plastic Movement. The first task was raising awareness, first among her own community and then in the corridors of power in Nassau. For a young, working-class black woman from a distant island that was a challenge. The Bahamas did not gain independence from Britain until 1973 and was long governed by a white minority. Inequality and elitism remain a huge problem, which has affected perceptions of responsibility for nature stewardship. “Most environmentalists in the Bahamas have been from the elite class. They came from wealthy families that had the privilege of doing marine work because they had big yachts and went to boarding school. In the Bahamas most people are black, but the wealthy people are white, and most environmentalists have been white people,” said Eric Carey, executive director of the Bahamas National Trust. Ambrose refused to accept this. In recent years, campaigns for environmental justice increasingly go hand in hand with the struggle for economic and racial equality. While wealthy countries and older white individuals are often the main cause of waste, pollution and climate instability, the worst consequences tend to be concentrated among communities that are poor, young and black. Ambrose started her campaign close to home and among the young, before branching out to address the structural and political causes of the plastic problem. For local children she organised a Junior Plastic Warriors environmental education programme with music, dance, and art activities. For teenagers she focused on recycling and staged a “trashion fashion show”. Pre-dating the global upsurge in youth activism initiated by Greta Thunberg, she led a group to Nassau in early 2018 who banged desks and chanted demands for the environment minister to ban single-use plastics. Several nations in the Caribbean had already implemented similar restrictions. Ambrose was invited to help draft the law for the Bahamas, which came into place this year. Her achievement was recognised on Monday when she was awarded the prestigious Goldman environmental prize, which is given each year to activists in each of the world’s six inhabited continents. For the third year in a row, the majority of the winners are women – a strengthening trend in the prize’s 30-year history. Ambrose’s selection highlights the growing power of youth activism and increased fears about ocean plastic, while other choices reflected the increased prominence of campaigns against coal and oil and or in favour of indigenous rights. Anti-fossi fuel activists won three of the six awards. In Africa, the winner was Chibeze Ezekiel, whose four-year grassroots campaign in Ghana succeeded in blocking the country’s first coal power plant and prompted the government to commit to a renewable energy future. In Europe, the prize went to Lucie Pinson, who pressured three French banks and two insurance companies to end support for coal mines and related companies. In South America – long the most dangerous continent in the world for environmental and land activists – Nemonte Nenquimo from Ecuador was recognised for moves to protect Waorani territory in the Amazonian rainforest from oil extraction. The importance of indigenous rights was also recognised in the choices for Asia and North America: Paul Sein Twa, who led the successful struggle of the Karen people to establish a 1.35m-acre peace park and biodiversity zone in the Salween river basin of Myanmar, and Leydy Pech, an indigenous Mayan beekeeper, who led a successful legal challenge against Monsanto’s plans to plant genetically modified soya beans in southern Mexico. Ambrose said the award would help her campaign gain more exposure. She is now studying marine waste in Sweden and aims to use the results of her research to build stronger organisations and awareness in the Bahamas. “We need to bridge the gap between community and science. It is no good publishing research every year if the information is not going to the people,” she said. “Plastic is just a tool. “It’s about way more than that. It’s about helping young people to find their voice and recognise we are in this together.” | ['environment/plastic', 'environment/environment', 'world/bahamas', 'environment/plastic-bags', 'world/race', 'world/americas', 'world/world', 'type/article', 'tone/features', 'profile/jonathanwatts', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-environment'] | environment/plastic | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE | 2020-11-30T08:30:02Z | true | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE |
australia-news/2021/mar/26/contamination-fears-after-nsw-floods-prompt-beach-closures-and-water-restrictions | Contamination fears after NSW floods prompt beach closures and water restrictions | Some New South Wales beaches will close and towns put on tight water restrictions after this week’s wild weather saw flood water runoff containing sewage, chemicals and debris dumped into major waterways. Guardian Australia understands that all Central Coast beaches will be closed over the weekend. There will also be widespread closures on the mid- and lower-north coast, with water quality and debris posing safety concerns for beachgoers and surf lifesavers. Surf Life Saving NSW has advised the public to check beachsafe.org.au or local council websites before heading to the beach and said beachgoers should wash off after swimming. “There is a lot of unknown and potentially hazardous debris floating in the ocean and below the surface as well as pollutants, sewerage and chemical runoff that have now made their way to the beaches,” SLSNSW director of lifesaving Joel Wiseman said. “Even if the water looks clear, it may not be safe. “Many beaches will be closed this weekend, but if people are going to swim we’re advising them to swim between the flags as always and make sure they thoroughly wash off after getting out of the water.” The NSW Office of Environment and Heritage has warned against swimming at various sites in Sydney’s southern harbours, including Botany Bay, lower Georges River and Port Hacking. Pollution is also possible for most beaches in the Hunter, Central Coast, Sydney and Illawarra regions, according to Beachwatch. A spokesperson for the NSW Department of Planning, Industry and Environment said that “heavy rain and flood waters will have washed pollutants from our streets, including rubbish, bird and dog faeces, cigarette buts, leaf litter and oil into the stormwater systems”. “Heavy rainfall can also trigger discharges from wastewater systems,” the spokesperson added. “Swimming in waters affected by stormwater can expose swimmers to a number of dangers, including pathogens which can make you sick and hidden debris below the surface which you could collide with or become snagged on under water.” Flood waters have also sent ash, sediment and debris from recent NSW fires into a number of the state’s critical water supplies. The Bega Valley shire council has introduced level four water restrictions for residents in Quaama, Cobargo, Bermagui, Beauty Point, Fairhaven, Wallaga Lake, Wallaga Lake Heights, Akolele and Wallaga Lake Koori Village. It may seem counterintuitive that an area hit with some of the worst flooding in decades would need to restrict water usage but, as the water quality researcher and University of NSW professor Stuart Khan told the Guardian, flood waters carrying sediment and organic carbon wash into our waterways, slowing filtration systems and the supply of clean water. “When you have a lot of sediment like that, it gets caught on the filters and builds up, and you have to backwash them to keep them clean,” Khan said. “That creates a lot of problems for water supply because the longer you are backwashing filtration systems [to remove the sediment], the less time you are spending filtering water.” It’s the reason why Brisbane almost ran out of clean drinking water following the 2013 floods – muddy water flowing from the Lockyer Valley meant the water filtration system couldn’t keep up with demand, and taps very nearly ran dry. The impact of these flood waters on NSW waterways has only been made worse by recent fires. “These floods are coming off the back of last summer’s devastating bushfires, so a lot of the forest areas where a lot of drinking water catchments are have been damaged, including Sydney’s Warragamba Dam, which was severely burnt,” Khan said. “When you have damage to a catchment, you have lots of mud which carries more sediment and organic carbon into our waterways. And you can see it already in the Warragamba Dam – that water is a chocolate brown at the moment.” But a spokesperson for Water NSW, which manages the Warragamba Dam, provided reassurance that there “is no concern regarding the quality of water currently being supplied to Prospect Treatment Plant or other treatment plants in the greater Sydney area”. This is partly thanks to the fact that Warragamba Dam is so large that water can be extracted from various depths and different dams to avoid dirty flood water runoff being sent to the filtration stage. According to Khan, smaller dams and water sources, such as the Bega Valley shire council’s Brogo River catchment, don’t have that same level of “water resilience”. Khan said you shouldn’t go paddling at the beach within 24 hours of major rainfall, and recommends against swimming in closed environments, such as rivers or lakes, for least three days after these flood waters subside. | ['australia-news/australia-east-coast-floods-2021', 'australia-news/australia-weather', 'australia-news/new-south-wales', 'australia-news/south-coast', 'environment/water', 'environment/environment', 'australia-news/australia-news', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/justine-landis-hanley', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/australia-news'] | australia-news/australia-east-coast-floods-2021 | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2021-03-26T08:22:44Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
world/2013/mar/18/china-arctic-mineral-investment | China pours cash into melting Arctic in bid to win influence | At face value, it is not one of the world's most important relationships. When Norway and China fell out two years ago over a Nobel prize awarded to a Chinese dissident, the spat had little wider resonance. But diplomatic relations are thawing as quickly as Arctic ice – and the upshot could be significant for the frigid northern wastes of the planet, which are thought to sit on formidable quantities of mineral reserves. China has been cosying up to Arctic countries as part of its effort to secure "permanent observer" status on the Arctic Council, an eight-country political body that decides regional policy. Norway was initially sniffy at the approaches because of the Nobel row, but appears to have changed its tune before a formal decision in May. Last week, the Norwegian foreign minister, Espen Barth Eide, told reporters in Oslo that he strongly supported China's application. The "argument for opening up for more observers in the Arctic Council is that they will then be a member of our club," he said, according to Norwegian media. "Then the danger of them forming their own club will be smaller." "There are not many areas where Norway is important to China at all, but the Arctic is one of them," said Leiv Lunde, director of the Fridtjof Nansen Institute in Lysaker, Norway. China, he added, was beginning to realise that its diplomatic boycott "is not good PR in sort of bolstering the positive image that China wants to bolster as an Arctic player". Currently, 80% of China's imported energy passes through the Strait of Malacca – a crowded, heavily pirated waterway that squeezes past Singapore. Yet over the past few years, melting Arctic ice, a casualty of climate change, has turned the frigid north into a viable shipping route. The newly navigable northern sea route above Russia would cut the distance between Shanghai and northern Europe by 4,000 miles, saving medium-sized bulk carriers about two weeks and £260,000 on each journey. Three years ago, no ships made the voyage. Last year, there were 46. Last August, Chinese scientists aboard a Ukrainian-built icebreaker, the Xuelong, or Snow Dragon, completed the country's first trans-Arctic ship voyage from Shanghai to Iceland. The trip's leader, Huigen Yang, told Reuters this week that Chinese shipping companies, encouraged by the ship's success, may be planning a commercial voyage along the same route as soon as this summer. Scandinavian shipping companies – long an influential force in the region's politics – are also ebullient about the development. "For the producers up north, all of a sudden they have a two-tier market to play on," said Henrik Falck, a project manager at Norway's Tschudi Shipping Company. "They can either ship their cargo to China or the far east, or they can send it to the continent as they are doing today. And the transportation cost is no longer killing the deal." Although China has never announced an official Arctic policy, some fear that its regional economic interests could have military implications. Furthermore, the US Geological Survey estimates that 30% of the world's undiscovered natural gas reserves lie above the Arctic Circle, in addition to vast deposits of oil, coal, rare earths and uranium, and experts say that China wants to get in on the ground floor. "The way I see it, very minor investments for China now can warrant very big rewards in the future," said Malte Humpert, founder and executive director of the Arctic Institute in Washington DC. "It's a low risk and obvious choice." One indicator is China's recent interest in Greenland. The vast, self-governing country's parliament is considering approving a $2.3bn (£1.5bn) mining project north-east of the capital, Nuuk, which would be led by the UK-based London Mining plc but supply China with 15m tonnes of iron ore a year. The project, which may kick off this summer, would require a team of 3,000 Chinese workers, adding more than 4% to the country's population of 57,000. Some fear that it would affect Greenland's pristine natural environment, which locals rely on for hunting and fishing. Greenland's prime minister, Aleqa Hammond, who was elected last Tuesday, has promised to assuage these fears by limiting inflows of cheap labour from abroad. "What could the creation of a mine and the arrival of some 3,000 Chinese workers mean to me as an inhabitant of a hamlet? What will it mean to me and my hunting grounds?" she told the Associated Press. Tiny, 320,000-population Iceland may best represent the polarity of Europe's reactions to China's Arctic aspirations. Last year, Icelandic authorities rejected a Chinese billionaire's bid to turn land in the country's barren north into a holiday resort. Some said that the development's proximity to deepwater ports could pose security risks. Yet former Chinese premier Wen Jiabao made Iceland his first stop on his European tour last spring, signing Arctic co-operation agreements with the Icelandic prime minister. China's $250m embassy in Iceland's capital, Reykjavik, can accommodate 500 personnel; in contrast the US embassy has a staff of 70. When the Snow Dragon icebreaker docked at the port of Reykjavik last August, the country's president was standing there to welcome the ship. | ['world/arctic', 'world/china', 'world/norway', 'world/asia-pacific', 'world/world', 'world/europe-news', 'environment/sea-ice', 'environment/poles', 'environment/environment', 'tone/analysis', 'type/article', 'profile/jonathan-kaiman', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/international'] | environment/sea-ice | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2013-03-18T20:28:26Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
environment/2020/oct/06/air-pollution-particles-in-young-brains-linked-to-alzheimers-damage | Air pollution particles in young brains linked to Alzheimer's damage | Tiny air pollution particles have been revealed in the brain stems of young people and are intimately associated with molecular damage linked to Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease. If the groundbreaking discovery is confirmed by future research, it would have worldwide implications because 90% of the global population live with unsafe air. Medical experts are cautious about the findings and said that while the nanoparticles are a likely cause of the damage, whether this leads to disease later in life remains to be seen. There is already good statistical evidence that higher exposure to air pollution increases rates of neurodegenerative diseases, but the significance of the new study is that it shows a possible physical mechanism by which the damage is done. The researchers found abundant pollution nanoparticles in the brainstems of 186 young people from Mexico City who had died suddenly between the ages of 11 months and 27 years. They are likely to have reached the brain after being inhaled into the bloodstream, or via the nose or gut. The nanoparticles were closely associated with abnormal proteins that are hallmarks of Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and motor neurone disease. The aberrant proteins were not seen in the brains of age-matched people from less polluted areas, they said. “It is terrifying because, even in the infants, there is neuropathology in the brain stem,” said Prof Barbara Maher, at Lancaster University, UK, and part of the research team. “We can’t prove causality so far, but how could you expect these nanoparticles containing those metal species to sit inert and harmless inside critical cells of the brain? That’s the smoking gun – it seriously looks as if those nanoparticles are firing the bullets that are causing the observed neurodegenerative damage.” Maher said the work provides hypotheses that could now be tested. For example, brain stem damage would affect the movement control and gait of young people and this should correlate with pollution exposure if the nanoparticles are the cause. The causes of neurodegenerative disease are complex and not fully understood. “There’s definitely going to be genetic factors and there’s highly likely to be other neurotoxicants,” said Maher. “But the thing that’s special about air pollution is how pervasively people are exposed to it. I don’t think that human systems have developed any defence mechanisms to protect themselves from nanoparticles.” She said it was important to study children as they have not experienced other factors associated with dementia such as alcohol consumption: “So they become the canaries in the coalmine.” The research was led by Lilian Calderón-Garcidueña at the University of Montana, US, and is published in the journal Environmental Research. It found the metal-rich nanoparticles matched the shape and chemical composition of those produced by traffic, through combustion and braking friction, and which are abundant in the air of Mexico City and many other cities. Prof Louise Serpell, at the University of Sussex, UK, said the nanoparticles were a plausible cause of the brain damage, but that there was not enough evidence that nanoparticles could cause the neurodegenerative diseases: “There are many other likely causes for neurodegenerative diseases.” But she said: “Our environmental exposure to pollution and pathogens is probably very important in triggering disease.” Jordi Sunyer, doctor in medicine and surgery at the University of Barcelona, said animal experiments had shown that inhaled nanoparticles could reach the brain and cause damage, but he said inflammatory chemicals triggered by air pollution in the lung could also reach the brain. The research found the nanoparticles in the substantia nigra, a key brain area in Parkinson’s disease. David Dexter, associate director of research at Parkinson’s UK, said: “We still don’t fully understand what causes Parkinson’s, but this study builds on research that has linked poor air quality and neurodegeneration, as well as links with metal toxicity. Parkinson’s is the fastest growing neurological condition in the world, so [the role of the environment] is a really important area within global research.” But he said: “The pathology in this study is quite distinct and not something we have seen in our brain bank from typical Parkinson’s cases.” Maher said this might be because the levels of air pollution varies between cities. Dr Susan Kohlhaas, director of research at Alzheimer’s Research UK, said: “Air pollution is linked to many adverse health conditions and a growing body of evidence suggests this includes our risk of developing dementia. Proteins do build up in the brain years before we see visible dementia symptoms, but more research is needed before we can suggest air pollution drives brain changes associated with disease in children.” Previous work by Maher and her colleagues has shown the nanoparticles in the frontal cortex of brains and in the hearts of young people, while other researchers in China have revealed them in blood. She said it was critical that action is taken, in particular measuring the number of nanoparticles to which people are exposed. Usually only the overall weight of particles smaller than 2.5 microns is measured. “If you measure it, and you understand where the problem is greatest, then you can start to do something,” she said. “Policymakers must take account of these findings, and actually begin to work out how we can reduce as much of this exposure to air pollution as possible.” | ['environment/air-pollution', 'society/children', 'world/mexico', 'world/world', 'uk/uk', 'us-news/us-news', 'society/parkinsons-disease', 'society/alzheimers', 'environment/environment', 'society/health', 'society/society', 'cities/cities', 'environment/pollution', 'type/article', 'profile/damiancarrington', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/uknews', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-environment'] | environment/air-pollution | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE | 2020-10-06T12:00:25Z | true | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE |
uk-news/2020/jul/29/pandemic-has-exposed-britains-vulnerabilities-says-food-policy-review | Pandemic has exposed Britain's vulnerabilities says food policy review | It is a year since Michael Gove asked the businessman Henry Dimbleby to produce a national food strategy. In that time the coronavirus pandemic has brutally exposed the cracks in the British food system so the launch of part one of his review this Wednesday comes in a new and urgent context. After only a few weeks of lockdown three million people in Britain were in households where someone was forced to skip meals and go hungry. As supermarket shelves were emptied our sophisticated supermarket system of just-in-time deliveries suddenly looked very vulnerable to shocks. All this landed amid the EU exit process and as we lose the complex trade and subsidy arrangements that have shaped our food supply. Dimbleby, the entrepreneur who created Leon, the chain that tries to make takeaways healthier and less environmentally destructive, is a smart media performer, as you would expect given the family name. His review does not mince words. Diet is a key determinant of children’s life chances, the review says. The UK’s diet is a “slow-motion” disaster and a “medical emergency”. Covid-19 has not been a leveller but discriminatory. Dimbleby is also an adroit political operator. Within 12 months he has had to deal with three secretaries of state for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs – Gove, Theresa Villiers and George Eustice. He has consulted both sides of the debate. The vested interests of the food and farming industries who have lobbied to delay action have had their input. But so too have the progressives, the – land workers, food and poverty campaigners, Labour and the Greens. He has roped in the libertarian thinktanks that always oppose state intervention on food. He has bothered to ask questions widely by holding citizen’s assemblies. Dimbleby wisely begins by concentrating on children. That children are suffering from both obesity and hunger is incontrovertible; that it is not their personal responsibility is equally clear, and by doing this he sidesteps the argument favoured by the Tory right that a nanny state has no business here. Dimbleby in fact says he used to be against nannies but he’s come round to them. NGOs are broadly pleased with his focus on extending school meal provision and getting more healthy food to those who cannot afford it. He has been upstaged by the prime minister launching his own plan to tackle obesity, with restrictions on the marketing of junk foods and promotion of greater physical activity, in the same week, but happily so, he says, since he would have recommended the same state intervention. Part one of his review is a crisis overview. It leaves an analysis of the wider economic drivers of poor diet for part two, next year, to be followed by a white paper on policy changes. With the Brexit transition period nearing its end, in December, that looks like a timetable that may be too late. The three main pieces of legislation that will determine what sort of food system we have outside the EU – the agriculture bill, environment bill and trade bill – are all now being driven through parliament. The national food strategy calls for parliament to have scrutiny of any trade deals to ensure that standards are upheld. But the government has already blocked an amendment that would have enshrined that in law. The prize for the US from a trade deal with the UK is opening up our food markets to its agricultural produce, largely the raw materials of highly processed foods. The prime minister may have had an epiphany on diet and health, Dimbleby may say he is not in favour of “unfettered globalists”, but the Tory cabinet is still dominated by small statists who would prefer to thwart the sort of change called for here. | ['uk/uk', 'environment/food', 'politics/trade-policy', 'global-development/food-security', 'politics/eu-referendum', 'world/coronavirus-outbreak', 'food/food', 'environment/farming', 'uk/ruralaffairs', 'world/food-safety', 'business/business', 'politics/michaelgove', 'environment/environment', 'type/article', 'tone/analysis', 'tone/news', 'profile/felicitylawrence', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/uknews', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-home-news'] | environment/farming | BIODIVERSITY | 2020-07-28T23:01:15Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
environment/2023/nov/04/country-diary-a-different-winter-on-the-farm-for-us-and-the-cattle | Country diary: A different winter on the farm, for us and the cattle | Andrea Meanwell | As we move into winter on our upland farm, things will be different this year. Normally mornings and evenings are spent in the cow shed, forking up silage to the cows as they breathe their hot steamy breath over me. This year we have built up a herd of belted galloway cows, and the plan is that they will be outwintered in extensive allotments (something they’re suited to) without the need for additional feed. This morning I set off early to see how the cows were doing in Westmorland Borrowdale. The 2022-born heifers are grazing here to maintain and restore the ancient wood pasture. The grazing has to be carefully managed to protect the ancient trees, and rare mosses and lichens on them. There are just seven cows in 135 acres. The idea is that that the cows will knock back the bracken in the allotment so it does not dominate, while also allowing natural regeneration from the existing trees. Some new trees have also been planted in woodland exclosures and tree cages. The cows can be difficult to spot in such an extensive landscape, despite their distinctive wide belt. I’m pleased to see them standing on a hillside from a distance, and walk over to see how they are. We had them in small fields at home before they went up to these allotments, and thankfully they now know me and do not run away. After a few minutes they become bored by my conversation and move off to explore the allotment. They seem happy and well fed, but I will need to keep an eye on them over the winter to make sure there is enough for them to eat. The plan is to keep the herd without any additional inputs or medications as far as possible. This low-input way of working will hopefully benefit the farm financially, now we’re losing income as the basic payment scheme reduces. This way of working will also be better for the land, and better for the cows, who are free to exhibit their natural behaviour living in the woodland over winter. As we do not own this land, the estate that owns the wood pasture receives the environmental payments, so we will need to make money by breeding quality livestock, which is a very long-term plan. • Country diary is on Twitter at @gdncountrydiary | ['environment/series/country-diary', 'environment/farming', 'uk/ruralaffairs', 'uk/uk', 'business/cattles', 'environment/environment', 'uk/lake-district', 'type/article', 'tone/features', 'profile/andrea-meanwell', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/journal', 'theguardian/journal/letters', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-letters-and-leader-writers'] | environment/farming | BIODIVERSITY | 2023-11-04T05:30:30Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
environment/2016/apr/11/mass-coral-bleaching-now-affecting-half-of-australias-great-barrier-reef | Mass coral bleaching now affecting half of Australia's Great Barrier Reef | The mass coral bleaching event smashing the Great Barrier Reef has severely affected more than half its length and caused patches of bleaching in most areas, according to scientists conducting an extensive aerial survey of the damage. “The good news with my last flight is that I found 50 reefs that weren’t bleached, so that may be the southern boundary,” said Terry Hughes from James Cook University. Hughes is the head of the national coral bleaching task force, which has been conducting flights over the length of the reef, mapping bleached areas and recording the severity of the damage. Climate change and a strong El Niño have caused hundreds of kilometres of the reef to bleach, as the higher water temperatures stress the coral, and they expel their symbiotic algae. If the bleaching is bad enough, or the temperatures remain high for long enough, the corals die, putting the future of reefs at risk. The mass bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef is part of what the US National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration has called the third global bleaching event – the first occurred in 1998. Initial reports suggested only the most northern and remote areas of the Great Barrier Reef were bleaching, but as aerial surveys have continued, scientists have struggled to find a southern boundary. The latest find of a stretch of unaffected reefs around Mackay was a small piece of good news, Hughes said. But he said its significane would be unclear until reefs further south were examined. “It may be a false southern boundary,” Hughes said. The reefs around Mackay have unusually large tides, which might have pulled in cooler water and saved the coral there. So far, the surveys reveal there are severely bleached reefs almost as far south as Cairns, and patchy bleaching almost to Mackay. Morgan Pratchett from James Cook University said there was some bleaching even further south. “There is reasonable levels of bleaching as far south as the Keppels, which is even more than we suspected initially,” Pratchett said. Hughes planned to fly over another 150 reefs, creating a total of about 900 surveyed. Only then will the group have a complete picture of how bad the bleaching is. The next step will be to examine how much of that bleached coral has died. “If the corals are severely bleached, then a lot will die. If they are lightly bleached, which is the case with a lot of reefs south of Townsville, then they’ll regain their colour over the next couple of months and there won’t be much mortality,” Hughes said. Two weeks ago, the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority reported half the coral in the northern parts of the reef were dead. Hughes said that was consistent with reports from divers north of Port Douglas. Hughes said this was by far the worst bleaching event to have hit the Great Barrier Reef. He said it was three to four times worse than in 1998 or the second great bleaching in 2002. Last year, the Great Barrier Reef narrowly escaped being listed as “in danger” by Unesco, even though environmental groups said it clearly met the criteria. Hughes said the “outstanding universal value” of the reef was now “severely compromised”. Ariane Wilkinson, a lawyer at Environmental Justice Australia, said the bleaching might cause Unesco to reconsider its decision. “[Unesco] weren’t scheduled to examine the reef this year but in light of the terrible bleaching it is entirely possible that they may decide to look at the reef,” she said. “If the World Heritage system is to have any value, it must address the most serious threats to the most iconic examples of world heritage,” she said. “If any site falls into this category, it is the ... Great Barrier Reef.” | ['environment/great-barrier-reef', 'australia-news/australia-news', 'australia-news/queensland', 'environment/environment', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/michael-slezak', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/australia-news'] | environment/great-barrier-reef | BIODIVERSITY | 2016-04-11T02:00:53Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
world/2022/sep/23/hurricane-fiona-canada-post-tropical-storm | Post-tropical cyclone Fiona hits eastern Canada with hurricane-force winds | A powerful storm has hit eastern Canada with hurricane-force winds nearly a week after devastating parts of the Caribbean. The US National Hurricane Centre (NHC) said the centre of Fiona, which transformed from a hurricane into a post-tropical cyclone late on Friday was crossing eastern Nova Scotia, bringing high winds and heavy rains. Officials said houses were washed into the sea, roofs were torn off and power was knocked out to hundreds of thousands of customers in places such as Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. The storm had weakened as it travelled north, though it still packed maximum sustained winds of 90mph on Saturday. Experts predicted high winds, storm surges and heavy rainfall. Although a gradual weakening was forecast during the next couple of days, Fiona was expected to maintain hurricane-force winds until Saturday afternoon, the NHC said. The Canadian Hurricane Centre said: “Most regions will experience hurricane-force winds. These severe winds will begin impacting the region late Friday and will continue on Saturday. Similar cyclones of this nature have produced structural damage to buildings.” Heavy rains and flooding were expected, especially to the north and west of the storm, which left more than a million people without power in Puerto Rico. “It certainly has the potential to be one of the most severe systems to have hit eastern Canada,” said Ian Hubbard, a meteorologist for the Canadian Hurricane Centre. The Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau, delayed a planned trip to Japan, where he was to attend the funeral of the former prime minister Shinzo Abe, in order to receive briefings and support the government’s emergency response, his press secretary said on Twitter. “It’s going to a bad one,” Trudeau said. “We of course hope there won’t be much needed, but we feel there probably will be. And we will be there for that. “In the meantime, we encourage everyone to stay safe and to listen to the instructions of local authorities and hang in there for the next 24 hours.” On Friday, Fiona reached Bermuda, hitting the island with heavy rain and high winds. Authorities in the area opened shelters and closed schools, AP reported. “We are not out of the woods yet,” said Michael Weeks, the country’s security minister, adding that there were no major reports of damage, but that citizens should remain indoors and stay off the roads. In Canada, people have been preparing for the storm, reported CBC, and sharing a number of storm-prepping techniques on social media, such as keeping extra batteries on hand and using ice to keep food cold in case of a power outage. Meteorologists are especially concerned about the potential damage from storm surges in coastal areas. They fear impacts could be worse than those inflicted by Hurricane Juan when it devastated the Halifax area in 2003. “We’re looking at the potential for maybe near or even the highest water levels they’ve ever seen, so that could be quite, quite dangerous, quite damaging,” the Environment Canada meteorologist Rob Carroll told CBC. Officials on Prince Edward Island sent an emergency alert warning of severe flooding along the northern shore of the province. “Immediate efforts should be taken to protect belongings,” the alert said. “Avoid shorelines, waves are extremely dangerous. Residents in those regions should be prepared to move out if needed.” At Samson Enterprises boatyard in the small Acadian community of Petit-de-Grat on Nova Scotia’s Cape Breton Island, Jordan David was helping his friend Kyle Boudreau tie down Boudreau’s lobster boat Bad Influence in the hope it would not be lifted and broken by winds. “All we can do is hope for the best and prepare as best we can,” said David. “There’s something coming, and just how bad is yet to be determined.” Boudreau said he was worried. “This is our livelihood. Our boats get smashed, our traps get smashed – it’s stuff you don’t have to start your season next year,” he said. Hurricanes in Canada are rare, with storms usually losing their power as they reach colder waters. The storm had caused five deaths during its trek to Canada – two in Puerto Rico, two in the Dominican Republic and one on the French island of Guadeloupe. With the Associated Press | ['world/canada', 'us-news/us-news', 'world/hurricanes', 'world/americas', 'world/natural--disasters', 'world/extreme-weather', 'world/world', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/gloria-oladipo', 'publication/theobserver', 'theobserver/news', 'theobserver/news/worldnews', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/us-foreign'] | world/hurricanes | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2022-09-24T16:02:50Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
uk-news/2019/jun/10/flood-warning-month-rain-two-days-uk | Heavy rain prompts flood warnings for south-east England | The Flood Forecasting Centre is warning of a deluge in south-east England, where a month’s worth of rain is expected in the next two days. Four flood alerts have been issued across England, and the Met Office issued an amber “be prepared” warning for heavy rain in London and the south due to intense thundery downpours, with likely travel disruption and a potential risk to life and property. The Environment Agency’s executive director of flood risk management, John Curtin, warned there could be “issues all week” as the heaviest downpours were still to come. The overall flood risk has been set at “medium”. The Flood Forecasting Centre, run by the agency and the Met Office, said significant river floods were possible and the four alerts remained in place on Monday evening: by the River Cole and Dorcan Brook; in the Middle Exe area in the south-west; around the River Wandle in south London; and also across the London boroughs of Lewisham, Bromley, Greenwich and Croydon along the River Ravensbourne. On Tuesday, the heaviest rain is expected to be seen across the east of England, with 60mm of rain forecast in some places, though it will be “a wet day” for many parts of the UK, according to Alex Burkill, a meteorologist at the Met Office. “The rain will continue through Wednesday to Thursday, with up to 100mm in some high ground spots in eastern England and into northern Wales,” he said. “We’re in for a very wet spell. These sorts of spells are not unheard of, but it’ll be a very wet one, and it will last for a few days. That’s why we’re likely to see impacts such as flooding and travel disruption.” He added that June is usually the third driest month of the year, but the current weather stood in contrast to June 2018 where many stations saw less than 2mm in a month. The England average for June rainfall is about 62mm for the month. “It really is a very wet period that we’re entering. This is quite exceptional at this time of year.” The Met Office has also issued yellow “be aware” warnings for rain in south-east England, East Anglia and the east Midlands from 4pm on Monday, as well as three more warnings for rain from Tuesday to Thursday in the east Midlands, east Yorkshire and the north-east. Fast flowing flood water “causing danger to life”, power cuts and thunderstorms are also possible, forecasters added. “Homes and businesses are likely to be flooded, causing damage to some buildings,” the Met Office said. “Delays and some cancellations to train and bus services are likely with spray and flooding probably leading to difficult driving conditions and some road closures.” Forecasters said the northern home counties, the east Midlands, Lincolnshire and the Humber could have some of the heaviest and most persistent rain later in the week. | ['uk/weather', 'environment/flooding', 'uk/uk', 'uk/wales', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/matthewweaver', 'profile/mattha-busby', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/uknews', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-home-news'] | environment/flooding | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2019-06-10T16:59:53Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
technology/2020/sep/25/britain-has-offensive-cyberwar-capability-top-general-admits | Britain has offensive cyberwar capability, top general admits | Britain’s most senior cyber general has said the UK possesses the capacity to “degrade, disrupt and destroy” its enemies’ critical infrastructure in a future cyber conflict, in a rare acknowledgement of the military’s offensive hacking capability. Gen Sir Patrick Sanders, who heads the UK’s strategic command, said that he been told by Boris Johnson to ensure Britain is a “leading, full-spectrum cyber power” able both to defend against – and carry out – hacking attacks. But while the British military claims to have had an offensive cyber capability for a decade, it has rarely been publicly discussed. Sanders said the armed forces worked “in partnership with GCHQ” to deliver “offensive cyber capabilities”. These could, in theory, Sanders said, “degrade, disrupt and even destroy critical capabilities and infrastructure of those who would do us harm, ranging from strategic to tactical targets” both in isolation or alongside traditional military force. Dominic Cummings, Johnson’s chief aide, is an enthusiast for military technology and extra spending on cyber warfare, and is expected to be a key element of the forthcoming five-year integrated defence review, which is due to conclude in November. One possibility is that the prime minister will announce the formal creation of the long-awaited National Cyber Force, jointly run by the military and GCHQ, although this has been previously disrupted by turf wars between them. Publicly acknowledged examples of offensive cyber skirmishes are rare and the UK has been largely unwilling to spell out what it considers legitimate activity. Cyber hacking was conducted within “strict legal and ethical arrangements”, Sanders said, but he did not spell out any examples. Degrading or eliminating critical infrastructure could theoretically include targeting an enemy country’s communications, telephone or power networks in a situation of war, although what was deemed legitimate at other times is less clear. The UK is understood to have conducted a hacking operation against Isis around 2017 to gain information about an emerging, low-tech armed drone capability operated by the Islamist terror group in Mosul. The hack obtained details about how the drones and the attached missiles were bought and how and where the operators were trained, enabling anti-Isis coalition forces to destroy the capability. Cyber operations are in part run from a control room near Corsham, near Chippenham, the historical site of the secret nuclear bunker to which the British government could relocate in an emergency. Each day, Sanders said, the UK military was targeted by an average of 60 attacks that require human engagement or intervention. “If this was an air war, this would be the Blitz, and this [Corsham] is the fight and control centre at Bentley Priory.” Perpetrators range from youthful hackers to hostile states, including Russia, China, Iran and North Korea – four of an estimated 60 countries around the world now reckoned to have developing cyberwar capabilities. In the last few months, the UK has accused Russia of trying to steal coronavirus research from labs in Britain, the US and Canada, while concerns remain in intelligence circles that China is actively engaged in a wide range of industrial espionage. “The binary distinction between war and peace as we have approached it no longer applies,” Sanders said. “Our adversaries are applying all means to gain advantage below the threshold of war and are accruing advantage insidiously and inevitably.” | ['technology/cyberwar', 'politics/defence', 'uk/gchq', 'uk/military', 'politics/boris-johnson', 'uk/uk', 'politics/politics', 'technology/hacking', 'technology/technology', 'world/espionage', 'world/world', 'technology/internet', 'uk/uksecurity', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/dan-sabbagh', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-home-news'] | technology/hacking | UNRELATED_TO_CLIMATE | 2020-09-25T17:00:52Z | true | UNRELATED_TO_CLIMATE |
global/2023/apr/26/revealed-most-of-eu-delegation-to-crucial-fishing-talks-made-up-of-fishery-lobbyists | Revealed: most of EU delegation to crucial fishing talks made up of fishery lobbyists | More than half of the EU’s delegation to a crucial body of tuna stock regulators is made up of fishing industry lobbyists, the Guardian’s Seascape project can reveal, as Europe is accused of “neocolonial” overfishing in the Indian Ocean. The numbers could shed some light on why the EU recently objected to an agreement by African and Asian coastal nations to restrict harmful fish aggregating devices (FADs) that disproportionately harvest juvenile tuna. Stocks of yellowfin tuna are overfished in the Indian Ocean. FADs are large floating rafts that attract fish by casting a shadow, making it easy for vessels to catch massive numbers of tuna. They contribute to overfishing of yellowfin because they attract juveniles as well as endangered turtles, sharks and mammals that get caught up when the devices are encircled in purse seine nets. In February, a proposal by Indonesia and 10 other coastal states in the region – including India, Sri Lanka and Pakistan – for a 72-day ban on FADs used by purse seine vessels was adopted by the Indian Ocean Tuna Commission (IOTC), the main regulatory body. With a two-thirds majority vote, the measure was welcome by conservationists as a “huge win” for yellowfin and other marine life. Retailers including Tesco, Co-op and Princes have previously issued calls for tough action to preserve and rebuild the $4bn yellowfin industry, while this year Marks & Spencer warned EU officials that FADs are a major cause of yellowfin tuna overfishing, and that they cripple future stocks. The devices, typically made of plastic, also pollute the ocean and small island states when lost or discarded. But earlier this month the EU, which is the largest harvester of tropical tuna in the region, objected to the measure, effectively exempting it from the restrictions. Critics described the move as “neocolonialism”, pointing to the influence of industry lobbyists from France and Spain in ignoring the will of many coastal nations. At the last annual IOTC meeting, the EU’s 40-strong delegation was made up of at least 24 industry lobbyists listed as “advisers”, Guardian analysis shows. At the smaller special session on FADs this year, at least half of the 10 EU delegates were from the tuna industry. The percentage of lobbyists in the EU’s official delegation has been rising since 2015, when yellowfin tuna was declared overfished by IOTC scientists. A report in January by Bloom, a French NGO, calculated that the annual number of industrial lobbyists within the EU delegation has more than doubled in recent years, rising from an average of eight in 2015 to 18 in 2021. A European Commission official said, in a statement, that industry representatives have “no decision-making responsibility” at the IOTC, unlike commission officials. Policymaking at the IOTC relies on the European Green Deal objectives, the conservation of biodiversity and sustainability of stocks, and was more complex than the number or type of delegates, said the official. The EU tabled the largest number of proposals in 2022, including yellowfin management and FAD management, the statement said, adding that this was not what you might expect if “commercial interests dominated the EU position”. Concerns over the European industry’s influence over Indian Ocean coastal states deepened following two proposals by Seychelles to the IOTC containing changes that appear to have been made by Europêche and other industry groups. Jess Rattle, the head of investigations at the Blue Marine Foundation, said the EU’s actions flew in the face of commitments made at the historic high seas treaty, agreed last month to protect biodiversity. “The EU has entirely abandoned this sentiment in favour of plundering the Indian Ocean’s already overfished stocks, safe in the knowledge that, once all the fish are gone, its highly developed fleet can simply move to another ocean, unlike the many coastal states left behind with nothing.” More than two-thirds of countries accepted the ban. But Seychelles, which has 13 EU-owned tuna vessels flagged to its state, also objected to the FAD proposal, along with Comoros, Oman, Kenya and the Philippines. “Their objections can be seen as a form of neocolonialism by the EU,” said Rattle. “This measure was voted in at the IOTC, not just by a majority but a two-thirds majority. By objecting, and stirring up objections from their vassal states, the EU are making it clear they’re going to continue to fish the way they want to, regardless. That is disgraceful.” Referring to the changes to Seychelles’ proposals by Europêche, Rattle said: “The industry appears to be making changes to proposals submitted by Seychelles. They clearly have power over this coastal state.” Jeremy Raguain, a Seychellois conservationist and a negotiator for Seychelles in the high seas treaty talks, said his country is highly dependent on the EU, its largest trading partner, and on tuna exports. “We need a thriving tuna industry for economic survival, but it is environmentally unsustainable and only profitable through huge subsidies,” he said. “Seychelles is in a tight spot. Indonesia has taken the right stance, but Seychelles is not Indonesia. There is neocolonial pressure.” An official in the European Commission said the EU had already submitted a proposal “with a strong scientific basis” to reduce the number of FADs but that the IOTC “unfortunately” agreed to an alternative from Indonesia. The adopted proposal “lacks a scientific basis and would prove impossible to implement”, added the spokesperson, claiming it could have a “very substantial” negative impact on many fishers and communities. A spokesperson for Europêche , which represents fishers in the EU as well as tropical tuna producers organisations – including the Europêche Tuna Group (ETG) – confirmed that some of its boats fly Seychelles’ flag. “Seychelles consult ETG, as they also consult NGOs and other industries’ groups, on their proposal projects,” the spokesperson said. “It is then up to its government representatives to follow or not the different comments they receive.” The Guardian approached authorities in Seychelles for comment but did not receive a response by publication time. | ['tone/news', 'environment/series/seascape-the-state-of-our-oceans', 'world/eu', 'environment/environment', 'world/world', 'environment/fishing', 'environment/conservation', 'environment/food', 'environment/marine-life', 'environment/wildlife', 'world/africa', 'world/indonesia', 'world/asia-pacific', 'global-development/global-development', 'type/article', 'profile/karenmcveigh', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/global-development'] | environment/series/seascape-the-state-of-our-oceans | BIODIVERSITY | 2023-04-26T05:00:52Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
global-development-professionals-network/2014/may/22/green-travel-ngo-carboon-footprint | Green travel: how NGOs can reduce their carbon footprint | There is an irony that the organisations that are doing the most to tackle social justice and environmental issues have a large environmental footprint of their own. Travel can feel unavoidable and necessary to get the job done, yet there are ways organisations can minimise this that reduce their carbon footprint and have a positive impact on productivity. World Wildlife Fund (WWF) is one NGO that leads by example. In 2009 it launched the One in Five Challenge that works with businesses to reduce the number of flights they take by 20% over five years. WWF took on and met the challenge itself, alongside Lloyds TSB, BSkyB, Microsoft UK, and BT. Results from the programme show that over the past three years members have, on average, cut their flights by 38%, saving £2m and 3,000 tonnes of CO2. In addition to the travel challenge, WWF has designed their office space to be one of the greenest buildings in the UK, which includes impressive video conferencing (VC) equipment to communicate with colleagues in other offices around the world. They have built in this function to reduce the need to travel. But you don't need to build a brand new office to optimise the use of VC equipment. It can be a very good return on investment to any office as long as it is used. For small NGOs state-of-the-art VC equipment can seem like a too much of an outlay. Skype is a helpful alternative – and it is free. Smarphones, laptops, tablets all have video chat function. The first step to reducing travel is to question the necessity. Instilling this questioning culture is not automatic, it needs a strong internal champion and a senior sponsor who is prepared to lead by example. But reducing travel can have productivity benefits, as well as cost and environmental savings. We have worked with Telefonica O2 to increase flexi-working and reduce travel to the office. As a result of the programme, 96% of employees involved felt equally or more productive flexi-working and 100% of staff reported a better work/life balance. For every desk not required in an office, Telefónica O2 UK saves £7,000 each year. In certain circumstances travel is unavoidable. When it is, we encourage decision makers to consider the whole cost of a journey. For example, often it is only the flight ticket that gets compared to the train ticket, and the employee may forget to factor in the cost of the taxi or train to the airport, parking costs, and also the cost of their time and productivity. Sitting on a train for four hours can be more productive than time spent hanging around the airport waiting for a flight and then not being able to access the internet while in the air. A sleeper train can replace the cost of a hotel room, or alternatively replace an early morning flight and ensure the employee turns up to a meeting refreshed. Producing incentives for staff to choose the lowest carbon option of travel is also a good idea; as is setting a challenge to teams to see who can reduce their carbon footprint the most each month. Equally important is removing incentives to fly such as personal accumulation of air miles for business travel. We recognise it's highly unlikely that we can reduce all environmental impacts from travel. Ultimately for some NGOs flying or driving is necessary to get work done. If you do need to travel you may consider carbon offsetting. If you want to ensure that you're using an offset that is credible, check it's on the UK government's quality assurance scheme for offsets. You may wish to look for offsets that deliver carbon reductions in areas where you work. For example, if you are an NGO that is working to eradicate poverty in Malawi you can search out offsets that invest in community energy projects in the country. Every journey begins with a first step. In this case, the first step is to consider the wider impact of our footprint. Caroline Watson is a partner at Global Action Plan. Read more stories like this: • NGO travel booking: online or through an agent? • Shifting sands: the changing landscape for international NGOs • Climate change: has science finally won the debate? Join the community of global development professionals and experts. Become a GDPN member to get more stories like this direct to your inbox | ['global-development-professionals-network/travel-management', 'working-in-development/working-in-development', 'global-development/global-development', 'global-development-professionals-network/policy-advocacy', 'global-development-professionals-network/leadership', 'environment/travel-and-transport', 'environment/environment', 'environment/carbonfootprints', 'environment/carbon-offset-projects', 'environment/ethical-living', 'society/charities', 'tone/blog', 'world/air-transport', 'type/article'] | environment/carbonfootprints | EMISSIONS | 2014-05-22T15:21:40Z | true | EMISSIONS |
fashion/2018/nov/23/catwalk-brands-trawl-ocean-plastic-waste-for-sustainable-fashion | Trawling for trash: the brands turning plastic pollution into fashion | Fishing nets and discarded plastic are finding their way into wardrobes around the world thanks to a rise in the number of fashion designers using materials made from recycled ocean waste. Brands including Gucci, Stella McCartney and Adidas are increasingly partnering with organisations such as Parley for the Oceans – which raises awareness of the destructive effect of ocean plastics – and sourcing materials regenerated from companies such as Aquafil, the textile manufacturer that transforms ocean waste into sustainable materials such as Econyl. Last month, 4,000kg of discarded fishing nets were recovered from waters off the coast of Sicily by Healthy Seas, a joint-venture by non-governmental businesses, before being sent to a recycling plant in Slovenia. It is there that Aquafil spins it into sustainable material for use by the fashion industry. Richard Malone, a former Central Saint Martins fashion student and now rising star in the designer world, is a leading adopter of Aquafil’s materials. His most recent collection for London fashion week, available early next year, featured outfits made from Econyl and was praised by Vogue as “changing all the conversations about who buys and why”. “The fishing nets were extremely exciting,” Malone said. “Tonnes are discarded in our oceans every year and [Aquafil’s process] create an eco-nylon yarn that can be broken back to yarn again and again and reused, as well as create really beautiful, functional fabrics like sportswear and washable jerseys.” The growing trend for recycling ocean waste and turning it into fashion is, according to the Future Laboratory researcher Rachael Stott, “a definite Blue Planet effect”. “The series reached and impacted millions of people and highlighted how our everyday habits as consumers were causing horrific damage to wildlife and the ocean, and in particular our resilience of single-use plastics.” At Moshi Moshi Mind, the Danish fashion brand that opened its first UK store last month, the star of the season is a £255 winter coat that looks and feels like a traditional down padded coat yet is made entirely from plastic bottles retrieved from the sea. “The fabric is very fine and that has its own [design] challenges, but the idea is to learn and get better with time as we believe this is a long-term strategy,” said the label’s owner, Jenny Egsten-Ericson. The newly launched RiLEY Studio uses Econyl to create its exercise wear. “The idea that sustainable fashion must be of lower quality, made from less durable materials, or is generally less attractive is an outdated concept,” its founder, Riley Uggla, said. Previously a niche area of the fashion industry, advances in technology have enabled the production of recycled fashion at scale, said Eco-Age’s Harriet Vocking. “It now makes business sense to use the more sustainable option.” Despite these advances, Greenpeace warns that the plastic mountain problem is unlikely to be diminished in the near future. The Greenpeace campaigner Louise Edge said: “We’re grateful to anyone removing plastic waste from our oceans or beaches. However, it’s not possible for us to remove the truckload of plastic waste we’re currently adding to the ocean every minute, just as it is not possible for us to recycle the volume of plastic we are currently producing. “The only real way to prevent ocean plastic from becoming a massive ecological catastrophe is to massively reduce plastic production, which, unless we act, is set to quadruple over the next few decades.” While Stott also worries that some corporations “won’t act responsibly if they know their waste can be reused [making them] less inclined to work on developing plastic alternatives”, it is a big step in the right direction. “The demand for environmentally conscious clothing is there, with 72% of Generation Z women stating that it is imperative to buy brands that are environmentally friendly,” Stott said. “Brands need to recognise that by changing their supply chains to integrate recycling, they are future proofing their customer base.” | ['fashion/fashion', 'lifeandstyle/lifeandstyle', 'environment/plastic', 'environment/environment', 'environment/recycling', 'environment/ethical-living', 'environment/waste', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'fashion/sustainable-fashion', 'profile/scarlett-conlon', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/uknews', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-home-news'] | environment/waste | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE | 2018-11-23T12:04:43Z | true | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE |
sustainable-business/2015/sep/18/green-building-leed-green-business-council-epa | One third of US construction market could be green by 2018 - report | Green building construction is on track to make up a quarter of the US construction market this year, according to a new report from the US Green Building Council (USGBC) released this week. The report, prepared for the USGBC by Booz Allen Hamilton, found green construction in the US has generated $167.4bn in the last three years, supporting more than 2.1m jobs and yielding $147.7bn in earnings for construction workers. It forecasts the green building construction market will grow 15.1% annually – outpacing the 9% expected growth in overall construction starts this year – from $150.6bn in 2015 to $224.4bn in 2018. By 2018, more than one third of all construction will be green, the report predicts. “Estimates of the economic impact of green building construction for 2015-18 show a significant increase in impact on GDP, jobs and labor earnings as compared to 2011-14,” the report’s authors wrote. From 2015 to 2018, green building is expected to support 3.9m jobs, bring $268bn to industry workers and add $303bn to the GDP, according to the report. That could mean huge cuts in energy and water use, as well as a reduction in the use of toxic materials for construction. Or, it could mean business as usual. “It depends on how you define green,” said Henry Gifford, a cofounder of Architecture and Energy Limited and a vocal critic of The Green Business Council and its Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification programme. LEED is the most well known of a number of green building certifications, such as the Energy Star programme administered by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Gifford has argued that the LEED programme allows builders to create computer models showing energy savings by comparing a proposed project to an imagined similar project and noting an improvement between the two. In 2012, a New York federal judge dismissed a lawsuit brought by Gifford against the USGBC. Projects do not have caps on them, Gifford said, but only need to show various environmental factors have been considered. “There’s no limit to how much energy a building can use and still be LEED-rated,” he said. The new report defines green building as focusing on the categories of “energy efficiency, water efficiency, resource efficiency, responsible site management and improved indoor air quality”, to the exclusion of projects that only address one or only a few of these categories. Helene Gotthelf, a project manager at Colorado State University’s Institute for the Built Environment, teaches LEED classes and said although it has flaws, the programme does lead to more environmentally-friendly building practices by requiring consideration of multiple issues related to sustainability. “It brings together a diverse group of stakeholders, which is not necessarily the industry norm,” she said. The LEED requirements can also be used by some builders as a simple checklist they need to complete in exchange for a gold, silver or platinum plaque or certificate, leading to a “mechanistic view” of a project, instead of the intended “ecological or worldview”, Gotthelf said. A 2014 report by McGraw Hill Construction also forecasted large growth in green building. That reported predicted that by 2018, 84% of firms building new homes will be building 15% of them to be green. It defined green building as construction that is sensitive to site placement, resources use and indoor air quality, among other factors. The American Institute of Architects predicts an overall increase in construction in the remainder of 2015 and 2016. It forecasts nonresidential building spending to reach nearly $360bn in 2015 and $390bn in 2016, still 10% lower than it was in 2008. This article was amended on 2 October 2015. An earlier version of this story referred to the US Green Building Council as the US Green Business Council. It has been amended | ['sustainable-business/sustainable-business', 'environment/greenbuilding', 'environment/environment', 'environment/sustainable-development', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/leah-messinger'] | environment/sustainable-development | CLIMATE_POLICY | 2015-09-18T19:16:31Z | true | CLIMATE_POLICY |
environment/2023/feb/27/australian-startup-recharge-finalises-deal-to-take-over-uk-battery-maker-britishvolt | Australian startup Recharge finalises deal to take over UK battery maker Britishvolt | The Australia-based company Recharge Industries will take over collapsed battery maker Britishvolt after finalising a deal with administrators late on Sunday in the UK. The agreement revives hopes for the construction of a £3.8bn (A$6.7bn) “gigafactory” in northern England, the backbone of a plan to modernise the British automotive industry and supply the next generation of UK-built electric vehicles. The deal was finalised three weeks after Recharge, an Australian company that sits under New York-based investment firm Scale Facilitation, was nominated as preferred bidder, placing a huge opportunity, and burden, on a startup yet to construct a project. Scale Facilitation’s Australian-born founder and chief executive, David Collard, told the Guardian the factory and an associated supplier park, where components are manufactured, were still a focus. “We’re working closely with one of the leading UK fund managers looking to team [up] on the development,” Collard said. Recharge also plans to build a battery factory in Geelong, a former car manufacturing hub in Australia, free from Chinese and Russian materials. Britishvolt was planning to build its 30GWh factory in phases to take advantage of rising EV demand ahead of the UK’s 2030 ban of new petrol and diesel cars. The plant, located near Blyth in Northumberland, was expected to employ about 3,000 people when operating at full capacity. It had £100m in conditional financing from the British government, but failed to meet various hurdles. Britishvolt collapsed last month after running out of cash, with its demise partly blamed on the considerable sums it spent on battery technology and research. Part of Recharge’s pitch was focused on its existing relationship with American lithium-iron battery developer C4V, removing the need to develop new technology. The completion of the deal with administrators EY was first reported by the BBC. It means that the revived Britishvolt could make batteries using Australian minerals, including lithium, US technology and British manufacturing, representing the same three countries in the Aukus trilateral security pact. Collard said the company would initially focus on “developing a robust UK-specific business plan with global alignment”. Recharge has flagged interest in producing batteries for energy storage and the defence industry, which differs from Britishvolt’s original aim of making power batteries for 300,000 vehicles a year. Recharge’s bid won support from the British government’s trade envoy for Australia, the former England cricketer Ian Botham. It beat offers from existing Britishvolt investors, private equity firm Greybull Capital and the HSBC-backed Saudi British Bank. The UK will need 10 high-volume battery manufacturing facilities, or gigafactories, by 2040 according to British research body The Faraday Institution. It currently has one, a Chinese-owned battery plant next to the Nissan factory in Sunderland, and lags behind many European nations. The future of car manufacturing is tightly linked to battery production, as automotive brands look to bring the production facilities together. China is the world’s dominant EV battery maker. | ['environment/renewableenergy', 'australia-news/australia-news', 'environment/energy', 'uk/uk', 'environment/electric-cars', 'environment/electric-vehicles-australia', 'campaign/email/business-today', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/jonathan-barrett', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/australia-news'] | environment/energy | ENERGY | 2023-02-27T05:12:57Z | true | ENERGY |
business/2023/jan/30/global-carbon-emissions-ukraine-war-biden-bp | Global carbon emissions forecast cut due to Ukraine war and Biden, says BP | Global carbon emissions are expected to fall quicker than previously expected as a result of the war in Ukraine and Joe Biden’s efforts to encourage green investment, BP has said. The oil and gas company said carbon emissions would fall more rapidly than it forecast a year ago thanks to renewed efforts by countries to pursue greater energy security by supporting domestic, renewable energy supplies. In its annual energy outlook report, BP said it had reduced forecasts for global emissions in 2030 by 3.7% and by 9.3% in 2050. It expects oil demand to be 5% lower and gas demand to have fallen by 6% by 2035. The company said deployment of renewables projects would be 5% higher at current rates. Countries moved rapidly last year to wean themselves off Russian gas supplies after the invasion of Ukraine. In the short term this has resulted in other fossil fuels such as coal being ramped up or kept on standby to fill the gap. However, demand for renewable projects to provide a cheap long-term replacement has also improved. Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, which came into force in August, is credited with encouraging a new wave of investment in renewables in the US. Policymakers in the UK and EU have been encouraged to follow suit. BP’s new outlook forecasts that global emissions will peak during the 2020s and fall by 30% on 2019 levels by about 2050. However, that would still be short of the target of net zero by 2050 needed to avoid extremely damaging global heating. The UK has legally committed to this goal. The BP chief economist, Spencer Dale, wrote in the report: “From an energy perspective, the disruptions to Russian energy supplies and the resulting global energy shortages seem likely to have a material and lasting impact on the energy system. “Global energy policies and discussions in recent years have been focused on the importance of decarbonising the energy system and the transition to net zero. The events of the past year have served as a reminder to us all that this transition also needs to take account of the security and affordability of energy.” The BP chief executive, Bernard Looney, set a target of making the company net zero by “2050 or sooner” on taking charge in 2020. Looney has been attempting to revamp BP’s image and increase its focus on renewables. However, it faced criticism over plans to spend up to double the amount on oil and gas projects than on renewable investments this year. In its outlook report, BP expects oil demand to level out at about 100m barrels a day over the next 10 years or so before falling to about 75m barrels a day by 2050. To hit global net zero goals, this would need to be reduced by 20m barrels a day. BP’s profits have soared after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine sent already inflated gas prices even higher and led ministers to introduce a windfall tax on North Sea oil and gas operators. The company is expected to reveal fourth-quarter underlying profits of about $5bn next week. | ['business/bp', 'business/energy-industry', 'business/oil', 'business/oilandgascompanies', 'business/business', 'campaign/email/business-today', 'environment/carbon-emissions', 'environment/fossil-fuels', 'environment/environment', 'uk/uk', 'us-news/us-news', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/alex-lawson', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/financial3', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-business'] | environment/fossil-fuels | EMISSIONS | 2023-01-30T11:03:36Z | true | EMISSIONS |
environment/2008/nov/11/paper-recycling-price-collapse | Paper price collapse blows hole in Britain's recycling strategy | Britain's paper recycling strategy is under increasing strain after a collapse in waste prices in recent weeks, according to a leading industry organisation. Britain lacks the capacity to handle the rising amount of paper being recovered for recycling, and its dependence on exports has left it vulnerable to a rapid price collapse, the Confederation of Paper Industries said yesterday. Far Eastern buyers had been snapping up about three-quarters of Britain's exports of paper for recycling, but demand from the region has almost disappeared recently, the CPI said. "With no obvious signs of Far East buyers returning to the market soon there is a serious possibility that storage of recyclables may end up being a high-risk strategy with huge costs to those requiring storage, including the taxpayers through local authorities," the CPI said in a statement. "The worst-case scenario is that some material collected for recycling could go to incineration or landfill," CPI recovered paper sector manager, Peter Seggie, said. The UK collects about 8.6m tonnes of paper and board for recycling every year but UK paper makers can only handle 4m tonnes, resulting in dependence on export markets, primarily the Far East and Europe, to take the remainder. According to the CPI, far eastern buyers had been taking 3m tonnes but have backed away, triggering a price collapse in some paper grades. High prices have seen local authorities and commercial organisations such as supermarkets and printers generating cash by selling paper and packaging for recycling, but they face this income being reduced. The CPI said ministers and the government-funded Waste and Resources Action Plan (Wrap) should draw lessons from the price fall, not least over the "gold plating" of recycling targets. "Before introducing higher and higher recycling targets, UK governments must ask themselves if there are solid, sustainable markets to accommodate reaching them," it said. The government's advisory committee on packaging is due to report on the impact of the price slump today. A spokeswoman for the Environment Department, Defra, said: "Commodity prices go up as well as down and, while we will continue to monitor the situation closely, we remain committed to our recycling and landfill targets. Defra will support the Environment Agency in taking a sensible approach to the enforcement of maximum storage limits at permitted and exempt waste sites, where this does not compromise environmental protection." | ['environment/recycling', 'environment/waste', 'environment/environment', 'business/business', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/markmilner', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/financial3'] | environment/recycling | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE | 2008-11-11T00:01:00Z | true | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE |
sport/2024/feb/10/its-not-a-huge-leap-jamie-george-says-england-can-be-six-nations-contenders | ‘It’s not a huge leap’: Jamie George says England can be Six Nations contenders | England’s captain, Jamie George, says his unbeaten side can be genuine Six Nations title contenders despite the stiffer challenges still awaiting them. Having squeezed past Wales and Italy by two and three points respectively, England now have to go to Scotland and France, and face an in-form Ireland at Twickenham, but George believes his squad could yet rise to the challenge. “I don’t think it is a huge leap,” said George, whose squad had won only three of their previous 10 home games. “Obviously we have got three difficult games coming up but I don’t think we are in a place to say it needs to be a quantum leap to get a load better. We are two from two and we know we have got a huge amount of growth left in the squad so our focus is on making sure we optimise that. The fight and the character, to come out on the positive end of that result, is a huge step for us.” George did acknowledge, however, that England will have to improve to topple Scotland at Murrayfield on Saturday week, let alone Ireland, who they have not defeated since 2020. “We know we are going to need to get better going up to Murrayfield,” said George. “The foundations that we have laid has allowed us to have some belief. We need to utilise this fallow week to rest up, then focus on getting better.” It was the first time England have ever come back from a deficit of nine points or more at home to win a senior Test and the Wales coach, Warren Gatland, was left to lament his team’s failure to nail down a morale-boosting victory. “It’s pretty disappointing really,” said Gatland. “I’m proud of the performance and the effort of the players but we’re disappointed we didn’t come away with the win. I said to the players in the changing room that we have to be disappointed by that. We put ourselves in a position where we should have won that game.” Gatland also believes his side will learn important lessons from this near miss. “I said to the players we’re not there but we’re going to be a bloody good team going forward. Today was part of that process in terms of learning about game management. “When England are down to 13 men you don’t play in your own 22. You’re probably thinking there’s an opportunity to play territory, get the ball down there and squeeze them a little bit. I won’t be critical of any individuals because I’ve been through this before with other teams. It just takes a little bit of time. “They’ve made a massive amount of progress in a few weeks and put themselves in a position to win today. In fairness to England, they went to a kicking strategy in the second half and got some reward. We made some errors in the second half that allowed them some territory and position.” The England head coach, Steve Borthwick, also highlighted the contribution of England’s bench to the final outcome, with George Martin, Manu Tuilagi and Luke Cowan-Dickie all in the frame to boost the squad ahead of the Calcutta Cup clash. “I always sensed from the players there was a confidence to find the way to get the result. Last week and today we’ve seen the second half performance consistently improve. This is a team that stays in the fight and a team that finds a way. “At half-time we were very composed. We had belief we would go on and find a way.” | ['sport/england-rugby-union-team', 'sport/six-nations-2024', 'sport/wales-rugby-union-team', 'sport/rugby-union', 'sport/sixnations', 'sport/sport', 'campaign/email/the-breakdown', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/robertkitson', 'publication/theobserver', 'theobserver/sport', 'theobserver/sport/news', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-sport'] | sport/wales-rugby-union-team | UNRELATED_TO_CLIMATE | 2024-02-10T21:41:40Z | true | UNRELATED_TO_CLIMATE |
australia-news/2021/dec/14/farmers-industry-split-on-proposed-federal-veto-power-for-forest-regeneration-projects | Farmers and industry split on proposed federal veto power for forest regeneration projects | A proposed federal veto power over certain types of native forest regeneration has met with mixed reaction from farmers and industry, citing concerns it will stifle their opportunity to diversify their income in a changing climate. The Emissions Reduction Fund veto would apply to new or expanded human induced regeneration (HIR) and native forest managed regrowth (NFMR) projects that make up more than a third of the farm and are larger than 15 hectares. The changes would give the agriculture minister the right to reject carbon projects where there is evidence that the project would have an adverse impact on agricultural production or communities. The agriculture minister, David Littleproud, said the changes were designed to avoid “perverse” outcomes seen in north-west New South Wales and south-west Queensland where passive investors bought properties and “simply walked away” without managing the landscape. “I don’t want to see our prime agricultural regions turned into native vegetation behind locked gates,” Littleproud said. He said as a result, not only was the productive capacity of the land being taken away, but neighbours were left “footing the bill” of addressing pests and weeds emanating out of these properties. The minister for energy, Angus Taylor, announced that his department would open the last consultation period on these new ERF rules on Friday as part of his address at the Carbon Market Institute’s eighth Australasian Emissions Reduction Summit. However, Louisa Kiely, the director of Carbon Farmers of Australia, says carbon farming is not about shutting up the property, but rather about managing them for forest regrowth. Kiely said carbon farming was about changing the management of the land so the native forest would regrow, with opportunities to bring farm land back into productivity, particularly on land of more marginal productive activity where the soil was thinner and the rainfall lower. “HIR projects actually improve not only the productivity on the farm but also the resilience of the country to withstand drought and climate change,” Kiely said. She said when it came to issues such as fire management, the industry as a whole was highly regulated, while weeds were a successional plant that receded as forest cover improved. Kiely said the government’s announcement was part of previously unannounced concessions given to the Nationals to get the 2050 net zero emissions target through. James Jackson, the president of the NSW Farmers Association, believes there is merit in the proposed veto powers. “One of the big concerns is that carbon farms don’t require a workforce and don’t spend money in town,” Jackson said. Karin Stark, a farmer and director of Farm Renewables Consulting, believes NSW Farmers’ support for these changes to the ERF is inconsistent with the stance that the organisation has taken in their campaign to back the “Right to Farm”. That campaign supports the right of a farmer to decide what they do with their land, including hosting solar and wind projects, because it is a business opportunity. Stark said a local shop owner in her town of Narromine said the impact of the drought was far worse than the lockdown in Sydney, leading to less city tourism. “This brings home the importance of a secondary income for farmers and the benefits this provides to small regional towns, whether the income is from the ERF or from hosting solar and wind,” Stark said. James Schultz, the CEO of GreenCollar, Australia’s largest environmental markets investor and project developer, said the negative adjustment of the terms of trade was what was hurting rural communities. He said carbon, biodiversity and water projects are all about getting money through the farm gate and reversing that trend. “If I go to the Bourke and Cobar region, people will tell you the thing that has kept the community thriving through the drought over the last decade has been carbon projects. The reason we’ve got labour back on farm, increases in jobs, we’ve got activity in town you’ve haven’t seen for a generation, it’s because of the carbon projects,” Mr Schultz said. Sign up to receive Guardian Australia’s fortnightly Rural Network email newsletter He said his organisation is very supportive of wanting to manage perverse outcomes, but that there should be flexibility and options for landholders to make those decisions, particularly when most of these properties are family held farms. “What is very important to make sure is that wherever we do end up, we end up with a set of policies that doesn’t stifle development, because you do want to be incentivising these kind of activities. We need projects to hit our emissions reduction targets.” Peter Yench, a cattle, lamb and feral goat farmer south of Cobar in Western NSW, also uses 22,000 of his 122,000 acres for carbon farming. Yench said carbon farming is beneficial as it gives him the chance to make some of his rougher country productive, which he normally wouldn’t earn any income off. He values it especially as a continuous, guaranteed income – which also enables farmers to use the income to make the property more viable. Wes Lefroy, the senior agriculture analyst at Rabobank, said buying farmland for the purpose of carbon farming is still a very small segment of the market. “I’m only aware of a handful of examples, particularly in the lower rainfall pastoral lands,” Lefroy said. However, Kiely said there were new methods and business models being developed to allow more farmers to benefit from carbon farming, such as the development of a farmer led mutual, especially as a rising carbon price allows more properties to take part. Angus Taylor’s office was approached for comment. Sign up for the Rural Network email newsletter Join the Rural Network group on Facebook to be part of the community | ['australia-news/series/the-rural-network', 'science/agriculture', 'environment/carbonfootprints', 'environment/carbon-offset-projects', 'environment/carbon-emissions', 'australia-news/australia-news', 'type/article', 'australia-news/series/rural-network', 'profile/natasha-may', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/the-rural-network'] | environment/carbon-offset-projects | EMISSIONS | 2021-12-13T16:30:24Z | true | EMISSIONS |
world/2023/sep/13/libya-floods-the-outcome-of-the-climate-crisis-meeting-a-failed-state | Libya’s floods are result of climate crisis meeting a failed state | When the climate crisis meets a failed state, the outcome is the kind of disaster that Libya is witnessing in Derna. Any city would have struggled with the extraordinary level of precipitation that Storm Daniel visited upon Libya’s northern coast. In its earlier, milder form, the storm caused severe damage in Greece before it crossed the Mediterranean. Nevertheless, the extent of the devastation – a quarter of a city was swept into the sea in what is being described as Libya’s 9/11 – is also a function of the country’s failed politics. After the bloody western-backed ousting of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, the country has mainly been governed by two rival administrations, one in Tripoli and the other in Tobruk, each supported by an assembly of rival external actors including Turkey, the UAE, Qatar, Egypt and Russia’s Wagner group. Under Gaddafi’s pseudo-socialism in the late 1970s and 80s, the dictator dismantled oil-rich Libya’s private sector through the administration of state-owned companies, shattering the independent powerbase of the upper classes. “State enterprises became patronage networks,” explains Wolfram Lacher, the co-editor of a recently published collection of essays, Violence and Social Transformation in Libya. Post-Gaddafi, the two sides have been similarly centralised. Ministers in the government of national unity, based in the west of the country, were nominated by militia. In the east, a relentless centralisation drive by the authoritarian head of the Libyan National Army, Gen Khalifa Haftar, and his family similarly ended up with numerous executives nominated by Haftar or his associates. The two sides were at all-out war as recently as 2020. Hafter’s forces besieged Tripoli in a year-long failed military campaign to try to capture the capital in which thousands of people were killed. Then in 2022, the former leader of the eastern administration Fathi Bashagha tried to move his government into Tripoli before clashes between rival militias forced him to withdraw. This rumbling, mostly low-intensity conflict, requiring leaders to assuage their base with handouts, is the worst environment in which to make infrastructure investments that reap rewards only in the long term. Bringing this context to Derna, the city that has long suffered since Gaddafi’s demise, either by being in the hands of Islamic State or since its recapture by Haftar in 2016, and infrastructure investment has always been at a premium. Haftar, whose secondary education was in the city, has also tried to keep close control of the Derna’s politics. Municipal city council elections were scheduled to be held this month, with lists and voter registration compiled. In recent weeks, however, members of the Awliya al-Dam brigades loyal to Haftar burned campaign posters and threatened candidates with kidnapping and murder, demanding the cancellation of the elections and the installation of a military governor in the city. The head of the electoral commission reported he was being threatened. Aguila Saleh, the speaker of the House of Representatives in eastern-based parliament, proposed forming a temporary management council, a way of deferring the poll. The two large dams built in the narrow valley above Derna were an accident waiting to happen, especially because poorly constructed housing built close to the river had become increasingly dense and high-rise. Built in the 1970s by a Yugoslav company, the risk posed by the two dams and their state of decay was the subject of a lengthy academic article in 2022, calculating what weight of water would crush them and how it might run off given the topography. Money was set aside for work on the dams, but an audit circulating online shows little of it seems to have been spent. Once the flood waters overwhelmed the first dam they quickly accumulated behind the second, causing it, too, to burst. Nor were instructions given to mount an evacuation as the storm neared. Instead a curfew was imposed, the standard response of Libyan militias to any crisis. It is yet to be seen if the politicians who had a role in leaving Derna so exposed to nature will be washed away along with the buildings that collapsed into the swollen river. The lesson of the past few years is that in both the east and west they have an astonishing ability to survive. | ['world/libya-flood-2023', 'world/libya', 'environment/flooding', 'world/extreme-weather', 'world/africa', 'environment/environment', 'world/middleeast', 'world/world', 'type/article', 'tone/analysis', 'tone/news', 'profile/patrickwintour', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/international', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-foreign'] | environment/flooding | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2023-09-13T13:30:50Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
commentisfree/2011/aug/01/britain-resist-tea-party-thinking | Britain must resist Tea Party thinking | Polly Toynbee | Tea Party madness has brought the US to the brink of economic mayhem, risking taking much of the world with it. In the face of obdurate unreason, the president of hyper-reasonableness was forced to surrender. The economic credibility of the country that holds the global reserve currency has wobbled. The political credibility of the world's beacon of democracy has failed in the face of an insurgency of unreason. Facts, evidence, probability, possibility – none of that matters to a movement founded on ferocious fantasy. The founding fathers built a constitution of checks and balances believing reasonable men would agree; how could they foresee Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann or Glenn Beck? To the British eye, America was always dangerously prone to waves of populism and McCarthyite panics. The country has reached a deadlock that may set it on a faster road to decline as absolute intransigence creates a constitution that no longer functions. Why bother with the great show of presidential elections when presidents are denied the power to match their pomp? The politics of miasma, where words matter more than facts and actions, lets the Tea Party demand the impossible – debt reduction with tax cuts, spending cuts without touching the gargantuan defence budget. Obama believed against all the evidence that his opponents would see reason. That's not who they are. I worked in Washington during Watergate and the fall of Richard Nixon; even in that national trauma there was not this unbridgeable detestation between the red and the blue. What happened? The rise of the Tea Party owes a great deal to Rupert Murdoch's Fox TV, the foghorn of extremism that changed the nature of political discourse. Trouncing the competition, its propagandising for Tea Party views misinforms the electorate on just about everything: it is rivetingly frightening viewing. It makes our own politics look civil, our commentating measured, our right wing moderate. But there is little doubt that had News International not fallen so spectacularly from grace, the Murdochs would have intimidated British politicians into changing our laws to allow unbridled political bias in broadcasting. Fox-style television would have battered its way into our living rooms, bringing us Tea Party politics too. Whatever you think of the Tory party, it is not shot through with US craziness, not on stem cell research and gay marriage, or even really on abortion – though they will toughen its conditions. Steve Hilton's cunning plan to abolish all consumer, employment and maternity rights got a dusty answer, while his green passions are at least tolerated. Most Tories are driven by Thatcherism, with its shrink-the-state, on-your-bike thirst for deregulation. But although Oliver Letwin's parents were Ayn Rand disciples, the American right's call of the wild is no closer to Tory core sentiment than is Labour's ritualistic singing of the Red Flag once a year. Britain is more rightwing than mainstream Europe, our media more strident, but we haven't crossed the Atlantic – yet. But American intellectual fashions waft our way: a taste of the Tea Party arrives on these shores in the peculiar paranoia of the climate-change deniers. You may dismiss some as fruitcakes or oil company lobbyists, but when Andrew Turnbull, former head of the civil service, reveals that he is of their number, it should alarm us. Professor Steve Jones's report on BBC science coverage raised the difficult question of impartiality: should the BBC stand impartially between sense and nonsense, between flat- and round-earthers? On the MMR/autism dispute and GM crops the BBC gave a "false balance" between minority views and the consensus of most scientists. Jones suggests that the great weight of international scientific opinion agreeing that warming is caused by human agency means the BBC need no longer quote balancing deniers when only "the pretence of debate remains". Instead, move on to the real debates on how best to mitigate it. Mail and Telegraph commentators called this the "quasi-Stalinist thought police". For some reason they consider "the warmists" a leftwing conspiracy, though why is never clear. Lord Turnbull, writing in the Sunday Times, challenged Jones using every weary denier's argument: didn't Galileo and Darwin oppose the science of their day? I won't rehearse the paranoia of the deniers who think the world is against them: yes, it is. On matters of fact, those of us who are not scientists can only listen to what scientists say and trust such an overwhelming global consensus. As cabinet secretary, Turnbull would have had to appraise evidence on myriad subjects of which he could know little: relying on best expertise is the only rational approach. So in what part of his psyche resided the Tea Party idea that scientific facts don't matter? Our senior civil service prides itself on drawing on the finest Oxbridge minds because they should be trained in evidence-based thinking. Turnbull was in charge of the civil service at the start of the Iraq war: on his watch the evidence in the notorious dossier was used to dragoon public support. Reason should rule, but none of us is as rational as we pretend, each inhabiting our imaginations more than we do the real world, with opinions driven by beliefs, passions, convictions, hopes, fears and a hundred contradictory thoughts and impulses. But to make sense of the world, there is an obligation to seek out evidence and trust to expertise. Where it conflicts, we fight our political corners. But science is different. Chief scientist John Beddington said in a forthright speech this year that we should become "Grossly intolerant of pseudo-science, the cherry-picking of the facts and the failure to use scientific evidence and scientific method". Repudiating evidence is Tea Party thinking – and we would do well to challenge its every manifestation in this country, above all in the seats of power. | ['commentisfree/commentisfree', 'us-news/tea-party-movement', 'business/useconomy', 'us-news/barack-obama', 'us-news/usdomesticpolicy', 'science/scienceofclimatechange', 'environment/climate-change-scepticism', 'science/science', 'us-news/us-politics', 'politics/conservatives', 'us-news/us-news', 'uk/uk', 'world/world', 'tone/comment', 'science/science-scepticism', 'type/article', 'profile/pollytoynbee', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/commentanddebate'] | environment/climate-change-scepticism | CLIMATE_DENIAL | 2011-08-01T21:00:00Z | true | CLIMATE_DENIAL |
business/2005/aug/31/hurricanekatrina.usnews | $26bn and counting: insurers face one of their biggest payouts | Insurance groups worldwide were yesterday facing the prospect of multibillion-dollar claims in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. The storm is expected to be one of the costliest ever for insurers, with first estimates of insured damage ranging up to $26bn (£14.5bn). If the insurers' most pessimistic estimates prove correct, the bill from Katrina will top that of Hurricane Andrew, which pounded Florida in 1992 and resulted in $22bn of damage, at 2004 prices. The four hurricanes that hit Florida last year resulted in insured losses of $28bn. The 9/11 attacks cost insurers $20bn. David Bresch, the head of insurance giant Swiss Re's Atmospheric Perils Group, told a conference in Copenhagen that Katrina could cost up to $26bn but that it would take another couple of days for an accurate picture to emerge as a result of the widespread flooding. None of the big American insurers, such as Allstate and St Paul Travelers, are likely to estimate their losses for a few days. Munich Re, the world's biggest reinsurance group, said it expected Katrina to cost $15bn-$20bn, and its own bill to be $500m before the amount it can pass on to other reinsurers. California-based risk modellers Eqecat, however, said the damage could be just $9bn. Thomas Larsen, its senior vice-president, said the storm's track, veering east of New Orleans, had "relieved some pressure". The Lloyd's of London insurance market said it expected "significant" claims, "predominantly in relation to offshore energy installations in the Gulf, property damage and business interruption". The market has asked all its insurers to supply details of the claims they are likely to face by September 12 so that it can more accurately assess the storm's financial impact. But in a statement, Lloyd's insisted that it was "well-equipped to manage the financial impact of a catastrophe on this scale" and shares in the quoted Lloyd's insurers held up well. Reinsurers are expected to pay a larger share of claims than for last year's hurricanes, as Katrina is a single event, so insurers pay only one deductible before their reinsurance kicks in. | ['business/business', 'us-news/hurricane-katrina', 'us-news/us-news', 'money/money', 'world/world', 'world/natural-disasters', 'world/hurricanes', 'type/article', 'profile/juliafinch'] | us-news/hurricane-katrina | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2005-08-31T12:15:13Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
politics/2024/nov/20/farming-rally-organisers-exclude-nigel-farage-from-speaker-line-up | Nigel Farage excluded from farmer rally speakers amid fears over Brexit role | Nigel Farage was left out of the line-up of political leaders who spoke at the farmers’ protest outside Downing Street, amid concerns over his divisive role in Brexit and fears he would overshadow the event. Representatives of all parties were originally invited to speak, according to organisers of a protest at which tens of thousands of farmers listened to Kemi Badenoch, Ed Davey and other speakers, including the journalist Jeremy Clarkson. However, the Guardian understands that while the Reform UK leader was initially considered, organisers omitted him from the line-up because they did not want the protest to become the “Nigel Farage show”. Farmers wanted the event to be as unpolitical as possible because they wanted to give the Labour government a chance to change its mind on the highly unpopular changes to inheritance tax that mean farmers with assets over £1m will be subject to a 20% levy. They were also concerned Farage’s presence would be divisive, after Brexit resulted in trade deals with Australia and New Zealand that undercut farmers, and cuts to subsidies. A source close to Farage claimed the organisers had been “bullied” by the Tories, whose leader brought her shadow environment, food and rural affairs team on stage to say they were the people who would “fight” for farmers. The source added: “Despite winning more votes at the election than the Liberal Democrats, and a long record of support for rural communities, the organisers excluded Nigel from speaking from the platform yesterday. “He supported the protest by streaming to his 2.1 million followers on X instead. What the organisers are really saying is they were bullied by the Conservative party.” When asked about Farage being invited to the event, Olly Harrison, a farmer and one of the organisers, had said: “The event is non-political. “We have invited representatives of all political parties to speak and we don’t want our event used for political point-scoring. We want it focused on the farmers and the troubles we are facing at the moment.” Farage was left off the line-up after discussion among organisers, some of whom were also concerned Labour might use his presence as a reason not to engage with farmers. “Nigel was not invited by event organisers who wanted Labour, Tory and Lib Dems to speak but not the Reform leader,” said a spokesperson for him. Instead, Farage, clad in a tweed flat cap and Barbour jacket moved around in the crowd, where he was cheered and clapped on the back by some. “Brexit is barely relevant, other than the fact that we are in charge of our own agricultural policy. It is tax that has brought them together today,” he told the Politics Joe platform. Farmers at the event included Jeremy Squirrell, a Suffolk arable and poultry farmer, who said he would have “frogmarched” Farage and others including the former Sun columnist Katie Hopkins “off the site”, adding: “They taint our just cause with conspiracy, lies, hateful comments and deceit.” The sheep farmer Sarah Shuffell said Farage’s presence was a “PR car crash for farming”. When asked about Farage being uninvited, a spokesperson for the organisers said: “The organisers had taken into consideration many offers of contributing. As an event, we wanted to offer an olive branch to government to open dialogue. The ministers from government were invited, but declined.” | ['politics/nigel-farage', 'politics/politics', 'politics/eu-referendum', 'politics/kemi-badenoch', 'politics/ed-davey', 'media/jeremyclarkson', 'environment/farming', 'uk/uk', 'politics/taxandspending', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/benquinn', 'profile/helena-horton', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/uknews', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-home-news'] | environment/farming | BIODIVERSITY | 2024-11-20T17:42:40Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
environment/2019/dec/04/extinction-rebellion-protester-glues-himself-lib-dem-battlebus | Extinction Rebellion bee protester glues himself to Lib Dem bus | An Extinction Rebellion protester dressed as a bee has glued himself to the Liberal Democrats’ battlebus, as the environmental group intervenes in the general election. The group said it was “buzzing around” political parties’ campaign battlebuses on Wednesday “demanding the climate and ecological emergency is top of the agenda this election”. The incident took place outside the Knights youth centre in Streatham, south London, after the electric-powered Lib Dem battlebus arrived. As activists waited for the Lib Dem leader, Jo Swinson, who was travelling separately, about half a dozen activists dressed in yellow-and-black bee outfits ran down the road towards the bus. One man glued his hand to the windscreen, and smeared ketchup on the glass. Others handed out flyers and debated with Lib Dem activists. One activist, Linda Doyle, said the Lib Dems’ plans to tackle the climate emergency were too weak. “The Lib Dem policy is 2045 for greenhouse gas neutral, which is really just disgraceful,” she said. “We’re here at a youth centre. I don’t see how they can help the youth whatsoever unless they provide them with a future.” Police blocked the road, establishing a cordon to keep people away from the bus. But when Swinson arrived she was allowed to speak to activists. She claimed her party’s plans were as ambitious as possible. Speaking to reporters at the youth centre, Swinson said there was “clearly a little bit of irony in glueing yourself to an electric bus”, but said she did not object to the protest. “I welcome that the climate emergency is a really important issue in this election,” she said. “We can have a discussion about how quickly we can get there – that’s a good discussion to be having, a genuine debate about how quickly we can deal with the climate crisis.” She defended her party’s climate targets as ambitious but realistic, saying they could be reviewed as technology improved. She said: “The most important thing is that we get as much carbon dioxide out of our emissions as quickly as we possibly can, and ramp up that programme of planting trees so we can take carbon out of the atmosphere.” XR is targeting all the parties in the election. In a statement, the group said: “The protest, going by the name ‘Bee-yond Politics’, is being carried out to remind politicians of the irreplaceable biodiversity loss that is a direct result of their poor, irresponsible policymaking. “Activists wanted to plant the plight of bees and other pollinators fully in the minds of the next prime minister, and to remind them that they hold the future of life in their hands. Our bee population is being threatened by extreme weather and habitat destruction, bringing with it crop instability and food vulnerability.” | ['environment/extinction-rebellion', 'politics/liberaldemocrats', 'politics/politics', 'uk/uk', 'environment/environment', 'uk/london', 'politics/general-election-2019', 'environment/climate-crisis', 'politics/jo-swinson', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/peterwalker', 'profile/damien-gayle', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-home-news'] | environment/extinction-rebellion | CLIMATE_ACTIVISM | 2019-12-04T11:31:11Z | true | CLIMATE_ACTIVISM |
environment/2023/nov/06/weather-tracker-unseasonal-cold-air-brings-widespread-snowfall-to-china | Weather Tracker: Unseasonal cold air brings widespread snowfall to China | Low pressure developed across eastern China on Sunday, tracking across the northern coast of the Sea of Japan on Monday. On the west side of this low, an unseasonably cold air mass was drawn south across north-eastern China, resulting in a broad area of significant snowfall. More than 30cm of snow is expected across higher parts of the Chinese provinces of Inner Mongolia, Jilin and Heilongjiang. Clear skies accompanying the widespread snow cover will lead to temperatures dropping significantly below normal on Tuesday. For example, Shenyang is expected to experience subzero daytime temperatures, with nighttime temperatures falling to -12C, 10C below normal for the time of year. After a little respite as southerly winds return on Wednesday, high pressure is forecast to build southwards from Siberia across much of eastern China and neighbouring areas during the latter part of the week. This will lead to abnormally cold temperatures across a broad area, with parts of north-eastern China close to 20C below normal at times. Central America felt the effects of Tropical Storm Pilar last week, which formed in the eastern Pacific south of Guatemala on 29 October. Pilar then drifted slowly eastwards, stalling close to the western coasts of Nicaragua, El Salvador and Honduras on 31 October. Heavy rain affected many parts of all three countries, with more than 100mm falling in some areas, leading to flash flooding and landslides, and reports of four deaths. A cold front moving in from the north blocked Pilar from making landfall, with the storm instead turning back on itself on Wednesday. Strong south-westerly winds resulted in Pilar decaying late on Sunday, well to the south-west of Mexico. Conditions remained unsettled across Central America during the weekend, as low pressure moved in from the east. There had been a small risk that this system could become organised enough to be classified as a tropical storm. However, the area of low pressure moved onshore before this could occur. Despite this, parts of Honduras, Belize, Guatemala and the eastern tip of Mexico experienced heavy rainfall and intense thunderstorms. Heavy rainfall is expected to continue into the early part of this week, with parts of western Guatemala potentially receiving more than 300mm of rain. | ['world/china', 'environment/environment', 'world/mexico', 'environment/series/weather-tracker', 'world/americas', 'environment/flooding', 'world/snow', 'world/honduras', 'world/belize', 'world/guatemala', 'type/article', 'tone/features', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/weather2', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-weather'] | environment/flooding | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2023-11-06T09:57:24Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
global-development/2023/nov/14/paying-in-lives-health-of-billions-at-risk-from-global-heating-warns-report | ‘Paying in lives’: health of billions at risk from global heating, warns report | The climate crisis will have a catastrophic effect on the health and survival of billions of people unless the world acts to reduce global heating, according to a leading report that warns that heat-related deaths are soaring, dangerous bacteria are spreading along coasts, and economies are being hit as people struggle to work and food production shrinks. The eighth annual report on health and climate change from the Lancet Countdown team shows that little account has been taken of past warnings. The world, it says, is “moving in the wrong direction”, and strongly criticises continuing investment in fossil fuels. The report comes as Cop28 prepares to hold its first Health Day, focused on the links between the climate crisis and human health. The report says that 127 million more people were experiencing moderate or severe food insecurity in 2021, compared with the previous three decades, putting them at risk of malnutrition and irreversible health harm. Life-threatening diseases are spreading, including dengue, malaria and West Nile virus. Warmer seas have led to the coastal spread of the water-borne vibrio bacteria at the rate of an extra 204 miles (329km) a year since 1982, putting 1.4 billion people at risk of diarrhoeal disease, severe wound infections and sepsis. Exposure to air pollution - which is worsened by heatwaves – is increasing the risk of respiratory and cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes, neurological disorders, and adverse pregnancy outcomes. Heat-related deaths among over-65s, who are more vulnerable, are up by 85% since the 1990s. Without the increase in global temperatures, such deaths would have increased as the population enlarges, but only by 38%. The highest global temperatures in more than 100,000 years were recorded in 2023, says the report. Even at the current 10-year mean heating of 1.14C above pre-industrial levels, there is a profound impact on the lives and health of people around the world. But, say the 114 experts from 52 research institutions and UN agencies, what we are seeing could just be early symptoms of the disaster to come. “Our health stocktake reveals that the growing hazards of climate change are costing lives and livelihoods worldwide today. Projections of a 2C hotter world reveal a dangerous future, and are a grim reminder that the pace and scale of mitigation efforts seen so far have been woefully inadequate to safeguard people’s health and safety,” said Dr Marina Romanello, executive director of the Lancet Countdown at University College London. “There is an enormous human cost to inaction, and we can’t afford this level of disengagement – we are paying in lives. Every moment we delay makes the path to a livable future more difficult and adaptation increasingly costly and challenging.” The value of economic losses resulting from extreme weather events was estimated at $264bn (£215bn) in 2022, 23% higher than in 2010-14. If temperatures rise by 2C, heat-related deaths will increase by 370% and the number of work hours lost will be up by 50% by mid-century, according to new projections from the Climate Vulnerable Forum of countries most at risk. By 2041-60, about 525 million people could be experiencing moderate to severe food insecurity, risking malnutrition. UN secretary-general António Guterres said there was no excuse for delay. “We are already seeing a human catastrophe unfolding, with the health and livelihoods of billions across the world endangered by record-breaking heat, crop-failing droughts, rising levels of hunger, growing infectious disease outbreaks and deadly storms and floods,” he said. Dr Georgiana Gordon-Strachan, director of the Lancet Countdown regional centre for Small Island Developing States criticised rich nations for breaking their pledge to deliver $100bn a year to help vulnerable countries cope with the climate crisis. “We’re facing a crisis on top of a crisis,” she said. “People living in poorer countries, who are often least responsible for greenhouse gas emissions, are bearing the brunt of the health impacts, but are least able to access funding and technical capacity to adapt to the deadly storms, rising seas and crop-withering droughts worsened by global heating.” Investment, lending and government incentives for fossil fuel expansion is increasing, says the report. There are, however, some signs of progress, says the report. Deaths from fossil fuel-derived air pollution have fallen 16% since 2005, with 80% of this decline owing to efforts to reduce pollution from coal burning. Global investment in clean energy grew 15% in 2022 to $1.6tn, exceeding fossil fuel investment by 61%. In 2022, 90% of the growth in electricity capacity was down to renewable energy. | ['global-development/series/health-and-climate', 'global-development/global-development', 'society/health', 'environment/climate-crisis', 'world/extreme-weather', 'environment/environment', 'campaign/email/global-dispatch', 'society/society', 'world/world', 'environment/carbon-emissions', 'environment/fossil-fuels', 'global-development/food-security', 'global-development/global-health', 'science/infectiousdiseases', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'world/dengue-fever', 'profile/sarahboseley', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/global-development'] | environment/fossil-fuels | EMISSIONS | 2023-11-14T23:30:50Z | true | EMISSIONS |
world/2012/dec/10/chinese-economy-america-tectonic-shift | China's economy to outgrow America's by 2030 as world faces 'tectonic shift' | A US intelligence portrait of the world in 2030 predicts that China will be the largest economic power, climate change will create instability by contributing to water and food shortages, and there will be a "tectonic shift" with the rise of a global middle class. The National Intelligence Council's Global Trends Report, published every five years, says the world is "at a critical juncture in human history". The report, which draws in the opinion of foreign experts, including meetings on the initial draft in nearly 20 countries, paints a future in which US power will greatly diminish but no other individual state rises to supplant it. "There will not be any hegemonic power. Power will shift to networks and coalitions in a multi-polar world," it says. The report offers a series of potential scenarios for 2030. It says the best outcome would be one in which "China and the US collaborate on a range of issues, leading to broader global co-operation". It says the worst is a world in which "the US draws inward and globalisation stalls." "A collapse or sudden retreat of US power probably would result in an extended period of global anarchy; no leading power would be likely to replace the United States as guarantor of the international order," it says, working on the assumption that the US is a force for stability – a premise open to challenge in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East and beyond. The NIC report draws a distinction between what it calls "megatrends" – things that are highly likely to occur – and "game-changers", which are far less certain. Among the megatrends is growing prosperity across the globe. "The growth of the global middle class constitutes a tectonic shift: for the first time, a majority of the world's population will not be impoverished, and the middle classes will be the most important social and economics sector in the vast majority of countries around the world," the report says. With prosperity spreading across the globe will come shifts in influence and power. "The diffusion of power among countries will have a dramatic impact by 2030. Asia will have surpassed North America and Europe combined in terms of global power, based upon GDP, population size, military spending, and technological investment. China alone will probably have the largest economy, surpassing that of the United States a few years before 2030," the report says. That change will mean that the economic fortunes of the US and European countries will have a diminishing impact on the global economy. "In a tectonic shift, the health of the global economy increasingly will be linked to how well the developing world does — more so than the traditional west. In addition to China, India, and Brazil, regional players such as Colombia, Indonesia, Nigeria, South Africa, and Turkey will become especially important to the global economy. "Meanwhile, the economies of Europe, Japan, and Russia are likely to continue their slow relative declines." The report also says that "individual empowerment" will accelerate with the growth of the global middle class and reduction in poverty combined with new types of communications. The NIC warns that also has a downside. "In a tectonic shift, individuals and small groups will have greater access to lethal and disruptive technologies (particularly precision-strike capabilities, cyber instruments, and bio terror weaponry), enabling them to perpetrate large-scale violence – a capability formerly the monopoly of states," it says. The megatrends also point to increased instability because of rising demand for water, food and energy compounded by climate change. "Demand for food, water, and energy will grow by approximately 35, 40, and 50% respectively owing to an increase in the global population and the consumption patterns of an expanding middle class. "Climate change will worsen the outlook for the availability of these critical resources. Analysis suggests that the severity of existing weather patterns will intensify, with wet areas getting wetter and dry and arid areas becoming more so. Much of the decline in precipitation will occur in the Middle East and northern Africa as well as western Central Asia, southern Europe, southern Africa, and the US south-west." The NIC says that a world of scarcities is not inevitable but "policymakers and their private sector partners will need to be proactive to avoid such a future". It says any solution will require more able countries to help more vulnerable states. Among the less predictable but possible "game changers" identified by the report are the collapse of the euro, a severe pandemic, or a nuclear attack by Pakistan or North Korea. It also says a democratic or collapsed China, or the emergence of a more liberal regime in Iran, could have a significant impact on global stability. The report warns that a number of countries are at high risk of becoming failed states by 2030, including Afghanistan, Pakistan, Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi. The risk of civil wars and internal conflicts remains high in Africa and the Middle East, but is declining in Latin America. The intelligence assessment will add to pressure on Barack Obama to address the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, because it backs the president's view that the issue feeds instability in the Middle East alongside Iran's alleged pursuit of nuclear weapons. But it says the Arab spring could prove a stabilising force. "On the one hand, if the Islamic Republic maintains power in Iran and is able to develop nuclear weapons, the Middle East will face a highly unstable future. On the other hand, the emergence of moderate, democratic governments or a breakthrough agreement to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict could have enormously positive consequences." | ['world/population', 'business/global-economy', 'us-news/us-news', 'world/china', 'us-news/us-foreign-policy', 'business/business', 'world/world', 'tone/news', 'environment/environment', 'environment/water', 'global-development/global-development', 'environment/climate-crisis', 'environment/food', 'environment/global-climate-talks', 'world/globalisation', 'world/asia-pacific', 'business/useconomicgrowth', 'type/article', 'profile/chrismcgreal'] | environment/global-climate-talks | CLIMATE_POLICY | 2012-12-10T20:38:00Z | true | CLIMATE_POLICY |
environment/2021/may/11/english-village-silverdale-walleys-quarry-landfill-stink | ‘It’s terrifying’: the English village overwhelmed by landfill stink | It may have been labelled the country’s smelliest village but it is much more than a bad stench from the local landfill making life miserable for the residents of Silverdale in Staffordshire, who have now started crowdfunding for potential legal action against the site. For miles around Walleys Quarry landfill near Newcastle-under-Lyme, people have reported waking up in the middle of the night struggling to breathe, with itchy eyes and sore throats. Those with asthma have had their medication increased, and some have reported nosebleeds. On the Facebook campaign group set up to “stop the stink” from the escaping hydrogen sulphide fumes, children pose for pictures next to air purifiers, many donated by local businesses to struggling families. On the worst days, teachers keep pupils indoors at lunchtime while parents are plagued with worry about the potential health effects. “I just don’t think people can take it much longer,” said Gill Shears, a supply teacher living in nearby Westlands. “My daughter woke up at four o’clock in the morning with a nosebleed, and that’s scary. You worry what you’re putting your children through. Should I take her away? What’s going to happen to us in years to come, are we going to be ill?” “It is a disgusting smell, but it’s far more than that. My asthma got a lot worse so I went on to regular inhalers and now I’m on an oral tablet as a direct result of the landfill fumes,” said Sian Rooney, who also lives in Westlands, more than a mile away. “I’m also extremely concerned about my three-year-old boy who’s developed a night-time cough. It’s terrifying.” They joined hundreds of residents protesting outside the landfill on Monday, as operations resumed at the site after work to “cap off” areas as requested by the Environment Agency (EA) when emissions breached safe limits. Residents say the capping has made no difference, with the smell last weekend worse than ever, and have now started looking into taking legal action. “It’s an environmental catastrophe, and it’s becoming a public health disaster as well. I can’t understand why the EA hasn’t acted more quickly on it,” said the local Conservative MP Aaron Bell. He welcomed a letter from Matt Hancock last week urging the regulator to use the full range of its powers to deal with the “woefully inadequate” site management. “It’s grinding people down, I think we all feel like we’re under siege because it’s completely casting a cloud over the town. It’s been horrific,” Bell said. Dr Paul Scott, a GP at Silverdale and Ryecroft practice, said hundreds of patients have come to the surgery reporting issues, from physical symptoms to mental distress. “It’s the sheer numbers of people affected by it and we are probably only getting the tip of the iceberg coming to us,” said Scott, adding the surgery was tagging issues on their system as “environmental pollution” to track the scale of the problem. “We’re connecting breathing trouble, particularly at night, with it. There’s also people getting bad hay fever-type symptoms: eyes streaming, nose irritated. And then there’s the stress if you live nearby and you’re getting the smell on and off for seven days a week. It’s relentlessly lowering the quality of people’s lives.” The landfill has been operating since 2005, despite objections to the original application in 1997 from the local councils that were overruled by the then environment secretary, John Prescott. The smell has always been a nuisance in such a heavily populated area, but since February the problem has escalated. Some of the hardest hit are residents of a Traveller site situated just metres away from the quarry, where people feel they are being ignored by authorities. “I think we’re the closest to it, it’s definitely affected our health since we’ve lived here. I’ve had to move on to inhalers, I could hardly breathe,” said Dorothy Price, 76, who has lived at Cemetery Road caravan park for close to a decade. A spokesperson for the EA said it had installed monitoring equipment at four locations in the area to collect emissions data and had increased inspections in recent months. It has identified five incidents of non-compliance since January and has “required the operator to take immediate action”. The spokesperson said: “We will continue to hold the site operators to account to improve its management of landfill gas from the site and do everything within our power to bring the site back into compliance with its permits as quickly as possible.” Red Industries, which bought the landfill in 2016, said it voluntarily curtailed operations at the quarry to speed up capping work, which was now complete. “We recognise that we are hosted by the local communities in which we operate and are acutely aware of their concerns regarding our landfill operations,” a spokesperson said. “Capping, gas management and other engineering works will continue throughout the operational life, as well as in the restoration phase of the landfill, at which point the area will be returned to greenfield.” | ['environment/landfill', 'environment/environment', 'environment/pollution', 'society/health', 'uk/uk', 'environment/waste', 'society/society', 'environment/air-pollution', 'type/article', 'tone/features', 'tone/news', 'profile/jessica-murray', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/topstories', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-home-news'] | environment/pollution | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE | 2021-05-11T14:09:00Z | true | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE |
business/2009/jan/27/erman-banger-bonus | Germans race to trade in old cars | For a nation that loves its cars and whose economy relies heavily on selling them, it seems the perfect match. An "old banger bonus" offered to those willing to trade in their old cars for new ones has proved an instant success. If Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats win September's general election, the Autowrack Prämie, introduced this week as part of a €50bn (£47bn) stimulus package, is almost certain to be given some of the credit. And if the car industry gets back on its feet within the next year the bonus will be seen to have been a contributing factor. The €2,500 bounty being offered to owners of cars of nine years or older willing to trade them in for new or nearly new models is meant to help the ailing auto industry at a time of need. Car sales have not been so bad for 20 years, largely because the credit used to buy them has dried up. Car workers are even being told not to turn up for work until the situation improves. The government has put aside €1.5bn to finance the scheme – enough to buy 600,000 cars. But if the busy hotlines and the rising interest dealers have reported are anything to go by, the government may be forced to extend it. All indications are that more than a million car owners want to take part in the deal – and even that may be a conservative estimate. After all almost 17m of the cars on German roads are nine years old or more. "We're hearing reports from the car industry that are sounding more than euphoric," Helmut Blümer of the Central Association of the German Motor Vehicle Trade (ZDK) told Die Welt. Matthias Wissmann, president of the Federation of the German Car Industry (VDA), told Der Tagesspiegel: "This is the right measure to help ensure that a vital German industry doesn't fall to its knees." According to a poll carried out by the accountancy firm Ernst and Young, the bonus is more than just a populist measure – it has the potential to crank up car sales. A third of those planning to buy new cars have said they will make use of the state subsidy. About 9% of 1,040 people polled in a recent survey said they would plan to buy because of the bonus, which is available until the end of the year. But some experts have issued a note of caution. Eighty per cent of the cars assembled in Germany by the main carmakers are exported abroad. It is the slump in exports that is hurting the likes of BMW, Opel, Porsche, VW, Audi and Daimler as well as the third of German electronic firms and the chemical and mechanical industry dependent on the car industry – in short, hundreds of thousands of jobs. The car industry has nevertheless welcomed the move. So have consumer groups and scrap dealers. But though it may be possible to argue that the air will become cleaner through the scheme, environmentalists are not enamoured. The government says the bonus will remove older, polluting models from the roads onto scrap heaps where they belong. But Green party figures have said it will dissuade some who considered ditching their cars from doing so. | ['business/automotive-industry', 'world/germany', 'environment/green-politics', 'business/globalrecession', 'tone/news', 'world/europe-news', 'business/business', 'type/article', 'profile/kateconnolly'] | environment/green-politics | CLIMATE_POLICY | 2009-01-27T16:13:41Z | true | CLIMATE_POLICY |
business/nils-pratley-on-finance/2022/feb/21/time-ofwat-hit-water-polluters-where-hurts-bonuses-raw-sewage-discharges | It’s time Ofwat hit the polluters where it hurts – in their bonuses | Nils Pratley | Ofwat, the water regulator, has noticed that the industry it oversees in England and Wales has been in the news recently. So it has been. Discharges of raw sewage into rivers and coastal waters are a scandal happening in plain sight, and each set of data feels more shocking than the last. A highly critical report from MPs on the environmental audit committee in January made a strong case that Ofwat itself, plus the Environment Agency, should be more assertive. And here comes a regulatory response of a sort to the “current high level of scrutiny” of the sector: a letter from David Black, Ofwat’s interim chief executive, to the chairs of remuneration committees of the water firms suggesting, in a roundabout way, that bosses’ bonuses should be cut if the pollution record is poor. The letter is the first of its kind and acts on one of the MPs’ suggestions, but one cannot call it strongly worded. Performance-related pay should show “a substantial link” to delivery for customers, including on “environmental commitments and obligations”, wrote Black, which is hardly laying down the law. There was a reminder to boards that they are allowed to recognise shortfalls “whatever the initial framework for [pay] incentives”, which is just a statement of something the directors should know already: bonuses are always discretionary. One could say, generously, that Ofwat is merely at the preliminary stage of issuing a high-level warning and that tougher tactics could follow. The problem with that interpretation, though, is that Black didn’t specify what penalties would be imposed if his appeal for good behaviour on pay and bonuses is ignored, which must be a possibility. In recent press interviews, he has hinted at fines or changes to licence conditions, but the letter itself only said Ofwat would be “assessing your company’s approach” and did not describe possible sanctions. Maybe the pay-setters will come cleanly, as it were. But Ofwat, which is under scrutiny as much as the companies, would help itself if it laid out specific examples of unacceptable pay practices. Curbing boardroom bonuses for polluters is a good idea. But the policy requires the regulator to be stronger than it currently sounds. Menzies takeover a shame Never trust a bidder’s claim that its offer is “full and fair”. Kuwait’s National Aviation Services uttered the supposedly significant words when it was pitching 510p a share for the Edinburgh-based aviation services group John Menzies. Now it’s offering 608p, a mighty 19% improvement that exposes last week’s boasts as so much guff. Barring the (unlikely) arrival of a new bidder, 608p, or £559m, will be enough to win. Indeed, the Kuwaitis had already bought almost 20% of Menzies in the market last week, which undermined the ability of the target’s board to put up a fight. If your big shareholders aren’t with you, resistance is futile. A “willing to recommend” statement duly followed. For a few reasons, it feels a shame. First, because Menzies’ chairman and chief executive, Philipp Joeinig, was making a decent case for continued independence, inviting investors to look beyond the pandemic’s effect on a share price that was 288p before the excitement started. Second, because Menzies is the larger company and has indeed fallen to an opportunistically timed bid, albeit one at a fat notional premium. Third, because we have learned, for the umpteenth time, that too many mid-tier companies look basically cheap when viewed from abroad; the UK takeover door continues to be wide open. At the top, the tide turns slowly for women A sea change has occurred in UK boardrooms, according to the Department for Business, and, up to a point, it is correct. Women hold 39% of board positions at FTSE 100 companies compared with just 12.5% in 2011, the year Lord Davies’ high-profile report voiced worries that the UK percentage seemed to have reached a plateau and urged a faster pace of progress. On a simple headcount measure of female presence in top boardrooms, the UK now ranks second to France in international tables and has overtaken quota-friendly Norway. Yet the seascape appears all too familiar in another way. While FTSE 100 companies have recruited many more women to their non-executive ranks, the executive picture is almost unchanged. There were five female FTSE 100 chief executives in 2011; now there are eight. At that rate of change, rough parity will be achieved sometime around the middle of the next century. | ['business/nils-pratley-on-finance', 'environment/water', 'business/regulators', 'environment/pollution', 'environment/environment-agency', 'business/business', 'business/services-sector', 'business/mergers-and-acquisitions', 'uk/scotland', 'world/kuwait', 'business/theairlineindustry', 'uk/uk', 'type/article', 'tone/comment', 'profile/nilspratley', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/financial3', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-business'] | environment/pollution | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE | 2022-02-21T19:56:46Z | true | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE |
environment/2024/oct/20/cop16-colombia-prepares-to-host-decisive-summit-on-biodiversity | Cop16: Colombia prepares to host ‘decisive’ summit on biodiversity | World leaders, environmental activists and prominent researchers have begun to arrive in Cali, Colombia, for a biodiversity summit that experts say will be decisive for the fate of the world’s rapidly declining wildlife populations. The host nation is also hoping that the summit, which formally opens on Sunday evening, will be the most inclusive in history. “One of Colombia’s objectives is that this is recognised globally as the Cop of the people, where citizens, afro-descendant and campesino communities, Indigenous peoples, scientists, social actors and all sectors are heard and have a broad participation in the discussions,” said Susana Muhamad, Colombia’s environment minister. “This means managing to mobilise the entire government and society in order to contribute to the care of biodiversity.” The Cop16 UN biodiversity summit is expected to welcome 190 countries and 15,000 people with the goal of protecting the world’s flora and fauna. Ecologists warn ecosystems are reaching an inflection point where the extinction of species could begin to accelerate. Gustavo Petro’s government is pushing for Indigenous people to have more of a role in protecting Colombia’s ecosystems and has said they will be at the centre of Cop16. The environment ministry announced earlier this week that it will create Indigenous-led environmental authorities with public powers that settle Colombia’s “historical debt” with native communities. Indigenous groups have praised the move to empower them to defend their ecosystems. Some, however, have less confidence in Cop16’s promises of inclusion, including the creation of an area known as the green zone, which civil society groups, the private sector and the general public are being encouraged to attend. The green zone will host 1,000 events, including panels, workshops and musical performances, from 21 October to 1 November. Harol Ipuchima, representative of Colombia’s Indigenous groups at Cop16 and the leader of the Maguta people in the Amazon, said the government’s narrative of inclusivity distracted from the fact that Indigenous peoples still have no significant involvement in the world’s decision-making process on the environment. “It sounds nice but it is all superficial, really,” he said. “Out of everyone in the entire world, we are the ones who are the most knowledgable about conservation and how to live in harmony with our ecosystems, yet we remain observers. We are still in the same position as we have been for decades where we have to shout at politicians to protect the environment but have no vote.” Making the Cop16 open to everyone could be a powerful way to engage those who are concerned about the global decline in biodiversity but do not know how to do something about it, said Ximena Barrera, director of government affairs and international relations at WWF Colombia. “Our surveys show that 46% of Colombians are worried about the state of natural resources and seven out of 10 would like to take action to reduce biodiversity loss. This is an incredible opportunity to educate and mobilise them to protect the environment,” she said. Cop16 is the first time countries will meet to discuss global biodiversity since the Kunming-Montreal agreement in 2022 when world leaders made a series of unprecedented pledges to protect the natural world. Ecologists say the number of the world’s animals, plants, fungi and microorganisms are collapsing under the pressures of deforestation, pollution and the climate crisis. Only 10% of the 196 parties who signed the 2022 agreement have since released the nature action plans they agreed to deliver in China, funding is well short of the $20bn a year needed to protect nature and only 2.8% of the world’s ocean is protected “effectively”. With WWF warning that collapsing wildlife populations are near the “point of no return”, environmental activists and researchers say Cop16 is a critical opportunity for politicians to get the world back on track. “The world agreed on an ambitious plan to safeguard our planet’s biodiversity. In Cali, countries now need to translate this ambition into concrete action,” said Loreley Picourt, executive director of the Ocean and Climate Platform, an NGO advocating the protection of the world’s seas. Representatives will try to thrash out global budgets for protection of nature and create a mechanism to ensure countries hold to their word on protecting the world’s forests, rivers and oceans. “Colombia is a perfect country to host a nature Cop. Not only is it home to incredible biodiversity and natural habitats, it is playing a leading role in demonstrating how conservation works for nature and people,” said Gavin Edwards, executive director of nature positive initiative secretariat, a coalition of conservation organisations. “However, in the midst of global elections, other key conferences and pressing issues of national and international security, this UN biodiversity conference is vying for attention on the global stage.” | ['environment/series/the-age-of-extinction', 'environment/cop-16', 'environment/environment', 'world/colombia', 'world/world', 'environment/wildlife', 'environment/climate-crisis', 'environment/biodiversity', 'world/indigenous-peoples', 'world/unitednations', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/luke-stephen-taylor', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-age-of-extinction'] | environment/series/the-age-of-extinction | BIODIVERSITY | 2024-10-20T07:00:41Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
australia-news/2016/sep/14/greens-push-to-outlaw-all-mining-in-great-australian-bight | Greens push to outlaw all mining in Great Australian Bight | All mining activity in the Great Australian Bight would be outlawed under legislation to be introduced to Parliament by the Greens. The proposed legislation, moved by the South Australian senator Sarah Hanson-Young, would put an abrupt end to BP’s controversial plans to drill for oil there, as well as that of the other companies with exploration licenses in the region: Santos and Chevron. “The parliament has to step in and make sure that this national treasure is protected for generations to come,” Hanson-Young said. “BP will put this spectacular marine park at risk and, if they’re given approval, there are several other companies lining up behind them. “Allowing the company responsible for the Gulf of Mexico spill to drill in the Great Australian Bight is a disaster waiting to happen.” The proposed legislation is unlikely gain the support of Labor or the Coalition but, if it did pass, would result in compensation being paid to companies who lose licences as a result of the law. The news comes just days after the Guardian revealed BP’s drilling in the treacherous waters could occur using faulty equipment that US regulators have said is likely to cause a spill as bad as BP’s 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. Since 2003, giant bolts used in offshore oil operations internationally have been failing, with investigations revealing that all the major manufacturers were producing faulty equipment. The US regulator described the issue as “systemic” and said it has only been down to luck that they haven’t caused a major disaster. BP said their operations in the Bight won’t be using a particular batch of faulty bolts. A spokesperson for BP said: “The US regulator issued guidance that some types of subsea bolts can be subject to hydrogen embrittlement and should be changed to other types that are not subject to the concern. Our drilling contractor has done this. BP has independently verified that it has done this.” But BP didn’t say anything about the broader issue identified as “systemic” in the industry. For more detailed questions, BP referred Guardian Australia to its contractor Diamond Offshore Drilling, which will conduct the drilling. Diamond Offshore Drilling did not respond to queries. Similarly, the only action the Australian regulator, the National Offshore Petroleum Safety and Environmental Management Authority (Nopsema), has taken has been to ask Australian operators if any of them were using the recalled batch of bolts that were recalled in 2013. They also couldn’t point to any action they have taken about the broader, systemic, problem. The news comes as the Senate environment and communications committee considers what to do with a lapsed inquiry into BP’s plans in the Great Australian Bight. The committee was scrutinising the proposal before the election, but has not examined the issue of faulty equipment or the newly released locations for two of BP’s four wells, and they haven’t yet produced a report. After the faulty equipment issue was revealed this week, Labor’s environment and water spokesman, Tony Burke, said the opposition was committed to continuing the inquiry into BP’s plans in the Bight. “Labor committed during the election to supporting a senate inquiry on BP’s Great Australian Bight project and we look forward to that getting underway as soon as feasible,” Burke said. The members of the committee are expected to decide by Thursday how much further to take the inquiry after it is re-established. | ['australia-news/australian-greens', 'australia-news/australia-news', 'australia-news/australian-politics', 'environment/environment', 'business/mining', 'australia-news/business-australia', 'environment/energy', 'business/oil', 'environment/oil', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'environment/great-australian-bight', 'profile/michael-slezak', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/australia-news'] | environment/oil | ENERGY | 2016-09-13T19:01:52Z | true | ENERGY |
books/2018/oct/14/the-fox-by-frederick-forsyth-digested-read | The Fox by Frederick Forsyth – digested read | Under the cover of darkness, a secret unit of the SAS, called the secret unit of the SAS and known only to two men in the entire United Kingdom, one of whom was Frederick Forsyth, raided a house in Luton, Bedfordshire, England. What they found there amazed even them. Three months earlier experts at Fort Meade, home to America’s top secret National Security Agency in Maryland, America, had noticed that their top secret computer defences had been breached. The discovery sent shockwaves through the American high command, who had believed their networks were unhackable. After the finest computer minds in America were put on the problem, the breach was located to an IP address in Luton, Bedfordshire, England. It was April 2019. The British prime minister, Marjory Graham, who bore a distinct resemblance to Theresa May – primarily because the author’s leaden prose style was unable to confer on her any semblance of personality – picked up the phone and called the baronet, Sir Adrian Weston, the former head of the British Intelligence Services. The phone rang at the London club of the baronet, Sir Adrian Weston, the former head of the British Intelligence Service and Sir Adrian Weston answered. “We have a problem, Sir Adrian,” said the prime minister. “It turns out that an 18-year old boy from Luton with Asperger’s called Luke Jennings is the best computer hacker in the world. And the Americans want him deported because he’s hacked into their systems.” “I have a plan,” said the baronet Sir Adrian. “I’m calling it Plan Troy. We’ll move the boy, codenamed The Fox after his cunning, to a safe house at Chandler’s Ford, so named because there is a ford nearby, and use him to hack into the systems of countries we don’t like.” “Why is it called Plan Troy?” the prime minister asked. “It’s after the Trojan horse,” the baronet Sir Adrian replied. Like Frederick Forsyth, he was never averse to unnecessary exposition to explain what he imagined was his brilliance. “In the Trojan war, the Greeks used the gift of a large horse as a ruse in which to get into the city.” Hours later the baronet Sir Adrian was on a top-secret private flight to Washington DC in America to persuade the US president to agree to the plan. “This is a big, big solving,” said the most powerful man in the western democratic world. Three weeks later a brand new Russian warship, the most powerful warship of the Russian fleet, had run aground in the English Channel. Unbeknownst to the Russians, the GPS codes on board had been hacked. In Moscow, the small dictator known as The Vozhd summoned Yevgeni Krilov, the head of the Russian Intelligence Services. “The codes on the Admiral Nakhimov have been hacked,” The Vozhd yelled. “This was supposed to be impossible.” “Don’t worry,” Krilov replied. “One of my agents tells me that an 18-year-old boy with Asperger’s is responsible and is being held by the British at Chandler’s Ford.” The Russian assassins never felt the bullets that killed them instantly. Sir Adrian smiled grimly. The Russians hadn’t known that their agent had in fact been turned and the British had been given warning of the assassination attempt. Sir Adrian turned his attention to Iran, one of the most brutal and unstable dictatorships on the planet that now had access to nuclear weapons. With three quick key strokes Luke Jennings disabled the entire Iranian nuclear programme. “Kill the boy,” The Vozhd snarled. Krilov sent off another hit squad whose mission ended in failure. Sir Adrian again smiled grimly. The Russians didn’t know that he had yet another double agent who had told him of the latest plot. Sir Adrian and Luke then set back both the North Korean missile programme and the Russian pipeline with a few lines of computer code that nobody else in the world was capable of doing. Within days, yet another Russian assassin with the very latest in sniper technology lay dead in a Scottish glen in Scotland, Britain. Victim to yet another of Sir Adrian’s double agents. “This is one of the most tedious books I have ever read,” said Sir Adrian. “The same thing keeps happening over and over again and the writing is completely devoid of tension.” Fortunately, at that point the 18-year-old boy with Asperger’s fell over and bumped his head. When he regained consciousness, he was cured of Asperger’s and was no longer able to operate a computer. “That’s very annoying,” said the British prime minister. Sir Adrian smiled grimly yet again. He had one last trick up his sleeve. Before the 18-year-old had recovered from Asperger’s, he had hacked the North Korean systems once more and now China was in control of the rogue state. The world was a safer place. Though not for readers. Digested read digested: For Fox Sake. | ['books/frederick-forsyth', 'books/thrillers', 'world/espionage', 'books/series/digestedread', 'books/books', 'culture/culture', 'technology/hacking', 'books/fiction', 'type/article', 'tone/features', 'profile/johncrace', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/g2', 'theguardian/g2/arts', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-culture'] | technology/hacking | UNRELATED_TO_CLIMATE | 2018-10-14T16:00:08Z | true | UNRELATED_TO_CLIMATE |
environment/2022/oct/18/international-whaling-commission-iwc-ban-resolutions-meeting-slovenia | Countries push to undermine ban on commercial whaling | A 40-year-old ban on commercial whaling is in danger after “misleading” resolutions were put forward at the International Whaling Commission (IWC) meeting in Portorož, Slovenia. The wildlife protection organisations OceanCare and Humane Society International said proposals by pro-whaling countries, including Antigua and Barbuda, could reverse progress made by the IWC. Antigua and Barbuda has submitted a resolution seeking to reopen a formal debate on commercial whaling. It also co-sponsored another resolution with Cambodia, Guinea and the Gambia arguing the fishing practice could contribute to food security and address poverty. Members are expected to vote on the resolutions on Tuesday. Nicolas Entrup, OceanCare’s director of international relations, dismissed the concept of sustainable whaling as “ridiculous”. If passed, he said, Antigua and Barbuda’s resolutions would “reverse” progress made in 2018 towards a more conservation-focused IWC. “Instead of losing precious time with decade-old debates about fabricated scenarios like ‘sustainable whaling’ and false solutions to food security, the IWC should urgently take up the real pressing issues: climate change and plastic pollution,” Entrup said. At the last meeting of its 88 member countries in Brazil in 2018, the IWC rejected a proposal by Japan to lift the ban on commercial whaling, which Tokyo said could be done sustainably. The IWC also reaffirmed its role as a conservation-focused organisation, acknowledging that threats to whales went beyond hunting, and included ship strikes, fishing bycatch and the climate crisis. Japan, which had tried for many years to lift the ban, left the commission the year after the 2018 meeting and is no longer bound by the restriction. Commercial whaling in the 19th and early 20th centuries brought the mammals to the brink of extinction. Wendy Higgins director of international media at Humane Society International said: “People assume the whaling ban, which has saved the lives of hundreds and thousands of cetaceans, is done and dusted. But the ban is in jeopardy as long as there are nations in the IWC who will vote to return to whaling.” Higgins described the resolution on “sustainable whaling” as misleading and said: “I hope whale-friendly nations will vote against the biggest threat to the conservation of cetaceans that we have seen for a long time.” Jiří Mach, the IWC commissioner for the Czech Republic, which is responsible for coordinating the position for the EU member states, said it was “absolutely clear” that the position of the EU and its member states was to “support the maintenance and full implementation of the moratorium on commercial whaling in the schedule and to oppose any proposal which could undermine the moratorium or potentially lead to threats to whale stocks”. The resolutions come as the IWC faces financial difficulties after the departure of Japan, the Covid pandemic and global economic problems. A quarter of the 88 countries that make up the commission have not paid annual dues that the IWC says are “critical” to its continued mandate. On Monday, the IWC agreed to alter existing rules that ban countries in arrears from voting, to reflect the disproportionate effects of the pandemic on developing countries. Willie Mackenzie, an oceans campaigner at Greenpeace International, said: “Greenpeace encourages all governments at the meeting to not only protect the commercial whaling ban, but to go much further in tackling all of the other threats to the world’s remaining whale, dolphin and porpoise populations – including climate change, industrial fishing, plastic pollution and habitat loss.” | ['environment/series/seascape-the-state-of-our-oceans', 'environment/whales', 'environment/fishing', 'environment/cetaceans', 'environment/marine-life', 'environment/wildlife', 'business/fishing-industry', 'environment/conservation', 'environment/environment', 'world/antigua-and-barbuda', 'world/world', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/karenmcveigh', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/global-development'] | environment/series/seascape-the-state-of-our-oceans | BIODIVERSITY | 2022-10-18T06:30:44Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
environment/2024/apr/07/shower-power-how-australian-bathrooms-are-wasting-energy-and-increasing-your-costs | Shower power: Australian bathrooms are wasting energy and increasing your costs | A long shower at the end of the day might be a relaxing escape from reality, but there is a reason to stay alert. Energy efficiency experts say the way Australian bathrooms are being built will drain your wallet – and the environment. Alan Pears, a senior industry fellow at RMIT who helped develop Australia’s appliance energy star ratings, describes showers as “almost perfectly designed to waste energy and make you feel uncomfortable”. He says bathrooms lack “basic design principles” and are often cold and poorly ventilated, which exacerbates hot water use. When cold air enters shower cubicles, hot air rises, he says, resulting in a “slightly hotter top half, making you feel even colder because your legs are freezing”. Under changes to the national construction code introduced in 2022, exhaust fans will be required to continue to run for 10 minutes after the lights are turned off, in order to ensure moisture and odours are removed after a person leaves the room. Though some states are yet to introduce the changes, they should all be in line by next year. The amendment was introduced to reduce condensation buildup and its associated risks, like mould, in bathrooms, affecting major renovations and new builds. But the requirement will make bathrooms colder and therefore increase hot water use, particularly if exhaust fans are located near the tops of shower cubicles, Pears says. Tim Forcey, an energy efficiency adviser and author, says “there’s nothing less comfortable than having to have a shower in a big open space on a cold winter morning”. The solution, he says, is to better contain heat in shower cubicles. Showerdomes, a New Zealand invention, are essentially a lid placed on top of a shower. They eliminate the need for additional heating or cooling of a bathroom by preventing warm air from being sucked up into the ceiling exhaust fan and into the roof. Forcey, who has one in his home in Melbourne’s Bayside, says with a dome “you’re warm in a split second”. They cost about $300, provided you install it yourself. Showerdome converts are effusive in their praise, but some users say the devices make their bathroom “feel like a sauna”. Though Forcey says a Showerdome – or something similar to it, made of Corflute – could negate the need for bathroom exhaust fans, Gary Rake, the CEO of the Australian Buildings Code Board, says it would not be enough to waive the requirements. Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup Instead, an assessment could be sought to determine whether or not the Showerdome satisfies ventilation requirements. According to Pears, problems relating to excess moisture, such as the growth of mould and mildew, have escalated over the last 20 years due to houses being less “leaky”. To cut energy use and save money, Forcey and Pears advise against heated towel rails, ducted heating and heated floors. They recommend using a more energy-efficient radiator to heat bathrooms when needed and for shower walls to be built with thinner insulating material (instead of glass) to ensure walls warm up faster. Pears attributes poor bathroom design to building codes which focus on water temperatures instead of preventing cool air from entering shower cubicles. He says this is due to an Australian culture of “regulations that cover the bare minimum”. For instance, there is no requirement that showers have a properly sealed door – or a door at all – which would prevent cold air from mixing with hot air and producing steam. In the process of attempting to solve problems, some solutions have created some of their own. Prompted by the need to reduce water use during droughts, the mandatory shift to energy-efficient shower heads has incidentally led people to increase their energy consumption. More energy-efficient shower heads release less hot water a minute, producing less heat, which Pears says prompts people to shower at higher temperatures. According to researchers from Monash University, those who used five-star rated shower heads increased their shower temperatures by one to two degrees. The authors wrote in the Conversation that “shower head manufacturers … aren’t promoting efficient shower heads because they don’t respond to demand”. “A lot of people in the building industry are opposed to making buildings work better … [seeing changes] as an extra cost on the homebuyer and more complications for the builder to have to meet,” Pears says. He also criticises the siloed nature of government, which he says is ineffective in improving housing, which requires a multifaceted effort. “Upgrading housing is about social justice, it’s about health care, it’s about saving carbon emissions,” he says. | ['environment/energyefficiency', 'environment/ethical-living', 'environment/environment', 'australia-news/australia-news', 'campaign/email/afternoon-update', 'environment/energy', 'type/article', 'tone/features', 'profile/sharlotte-thou', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/australia-news'] | environment/energy | ENERGY | 2024-04-06T20:00:10Z | true | ENERGY |
books/2023/jul/05/fevered-planet-how-diseases-emerge-when-we-harm-nature-by-john-vidal-review-a-frightening-diagnosis | Fevered Planet: How Diseases Emerge When We Harm Nature by John Vidal review – a frightening diagnosis | When Cyclone Yaku hit the northern coast of Peru in March 2023, it unleashed hurricane-force winds and torrents of rain, triggering landslides and flooding. Then came El Niño, a periodic warming of eastern Pacific Ocean surface waters, boosting rainfall and fomenting an explosion of pool-breeding Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, the main vector of dengue fever. The ensuing outbreak of dengue – a viral infection that causes high temperature, headaches, vomiting and joint pain – may also have been given added momentum by climate change. At higher temperatures, the mosquitoes bite more often, egg-hatching speeds up, and the dengue virus itself replicates faster. By late June, 2023, more than 160,000 people in Peru had been infected with dengue and 287 had died. Dengue, warns John Vidal in Fevered Planet, “is perfectly suited to spread fast in a warming, more humid, urbanised world”. And it is one of many such maladies that thrive in an era of climate crisis and environmental degradation. Travelling from Gabon to the Arctic Circle and many places in between, Vidal, a long-time environment editor at the Guardian, documents the rise and spread of infections that are thought to have leapt from animals to humans, including Covid-19, Ebola, HIV/Aids, mpox, Mers, and Sars. He argues, convincingly, that by exploiting the world’s resources and damaging natural habitats, we create the conditions for diseases like these to emerge. Even so, he says, there’s still time to reverse some of the harm. Take Ebola, for example. The virus that causes this often-fatal haemorrhagic fever first emerged in 1976 in a village near the Ebola River in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (then Zaire). Ebola’s most likely “host reservoir” is a bat. As Vidal notes, such jumps from animals to humans often occur at the degraded edges of the world’s tropical forests. As humans encroach, they increasingly come into contact with unfamiliar wildlife, and are prey to the diseases it carries. As a 2017 study showed, from 2004 to 2014, spillovers of Ebola from wildlife to humans in west and central Africa occurred mostly in “hotspots of forest fragmentation”. In vivid prose, Vidal describes the devastation that followed when a rare moabi tree in the Congolese rainforest – 60 metres tall and 200 years old – was felled for the timber trade. “For several minutes the stricken moabi seemed to rain birds, flies, seeds, spores, leaves, bees, flowers, wasps, nests, ants, beetles, moths, frogs, snails, and all the thousands of insects and small mammals that had lived together in that tree,” he writes. “Anything that could, flew. Everything else ran, crawled, burrowed, hid or took its chances. A complete ecosystem with thousands of interdependent organisms had been transformed in a few moments.” In 2022, about 4.1m hectares of tropical primary rainforests were destroyed, equivalent to a rate of 11 football pitches a minute, according to data compiled by the World Resources Institute. Transforming forest to farmland or flooding large areas to build dams increases the risk of zoonotic (animal-borne) diseases leaping to humans. Biting insects such as mosquitoes, ticks, flies and fleas all thrive in ecologically-disturbed areas, and are linked to at least 16 infectious diseases, including malaria, dengue, yellow fever and Lyme. Vidal quotes wildlife epidemiologist Christine Kreuder Johnson, director of the Institute for Pandemic Intelligence at the University of California, Davis. In a paper published in 2020, she and her colleagues found that threatened, exploited and hunted wildlife species shared more viruses with humans. Bats have been implicated as a source of Sars, Nipah virus, Marburg virus and ebolaviruses, as well as Covid-19, although the latter’s exact origin continues to be obscured by controversy. Vidal’s research is so comprehensive, and his lists of contagions so extensive, that after a while I began to wonder whether our cat, Pebbles, was about to give me roundworms or cat scratch disease. (“So far there have been no major epidemics or pandemics starting in the home,” he writes. Phew.) But petting zoos and ecotourism have been linked to outbreaks of salmonellosis and meningitis, and ostrich farms in South Africa to the emergence of avian flu. Fortunately there is some hope. Currently, the health of people, animals and the planet are treated as separate issues. But as Vidal shows, they are intimately linked. What is needed is not merely the “whack-a-mole” approach to pandemics – “identifying, quarantining and isolating infected people” and vaccination where possible – but a “radical new approach to ensuring global health”, including preparing for disease by surveying the places it is most likely to strike. The Global Virome Project, for example, is a $4bn plan to genetically record and build an atlas of all the viruses that might threaten humanity. Ultimately, we need to recognise that our own impact on the world – including wanton deforestation and erosion of biodiversity – drives many of these outbreaks. Our assault upon the planet plagues us in return. • Fevered Planet: How Diseases Emerge When We Harm Nature is published by Bloomsbury (£20). To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply. | ['books/scienceandnature', 'books/politics', 'global-development/global-health', 'books/books', 'global-development/global-development', 'culture/culture', 'environment/environment', 'science/infectiousdiseases', 'environment/deforestation', 'world/epidemics', 'type/article', 'tone/reviews', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/saturday-magazine-books'] | environment/deforestation | BIODIVERSITY | 2023-07-05T11:00:31Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
news/2014/jan/27/weatherwatch-how-bushfires-create-rain | Weatherwatch: how bushfires create their own rain | The bushfire season is well under way in Australia. Areas desiccated by a record-breaking heatwave are suffering badly, with more than 100 separate fires burning at one point. The largest fire this season covered more than 81 square miles (21,000 hectares) in the Grampians national park in Victoria, and was big enough to create its own weather. The rising plume of smoke above a fire is the visible sign of a larger updraught of hot air, carrying moisture from burning vegetation. As this updraught mixes with colder air at altitude, the water vapour condenses into fluffy white cloud called Pyrocumulus, from the Greek pyro for fire. As it grows, the cloud may develop into anvil-shaped Pyrocumulonimbus and produce a shower of rain. This might even extinguish the parent fire. But the updraught carries burning embers, known as firebrands, to a great height, and these can start new fires 20 miles downwind. If the fire slows, the updraught collapses and may reverse into a downdraught. This also causes problems: as the downdraught strikes the ground, it is directed outwards, fanning the flames and blowing firebrands beyond the leading edge of the fire. The Grampian fire was marked by thunderstorms. These are often seen with Pyrocumulus, and even the smoke plume can produce lightning. For reasons which are not well understood, Pyrocumulus tends to have the opposite charge structure to normal thunderclouds. This charge inversion is associated with unusually powerful cloud-to-ground lightning – which can start yet more fires. | ['news/series/weatherwatch', 'tone/features', 'australia-news/bushfires', 'type/article', 'profile/davidhambling', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/weather2'] | news/series/weatherwatch | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2014-01-27T21:30:00Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
sustainable-business/2017/apr/06/salt-silicon-or-graphite-energy-storage-goes-beyond-lithium-ion-batteries | Salt, silicon or graphite: energy storage goes beyond lithium ion batteries | Between the political bickering following a spate of blackouts in South Australia and the billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk tweeting that he had a fix, and then the South Australian government announcing that it will build a grid-connected battery storage facility, interest in renewable energy storage has never been higher. While lithium ion batteries sold by Tesla and others are perhaps the most widely known storage technology, several other energy storage options are either already on the market, or are fast making their way there. All are hoping to claim a slice of what, by all indications, will be a very large pie. The Australian Energy Market Operator forecasts that more than 1.1m new battery storage systems will be installed in Australian households by 2035. And, according to a 2015 report by the Climate Council, battery storage capacity is expected to grow 50-fold in under a decade. “The market for storage is huge,” says Kevin Moriarty, the executive chairman of 1414 Degrees, an Adelaide-based thermal storage company hoping to win South Australia’s 100MW storage system tender. The South Australian system will be the largest in Australia so far but Moriarty describes it as “a drop in the ocean” compared with what will be needed as Australia transitions away from carbon-dioxide emitting fossil fuels. The need for energy storage solutions is the natural consequence of an energy grid that has an increasing amount of renewable energy sources. Solar power plants don’t produce energy when the sun doesn’t shine and windfarms grind to a halt when the wind doesn’t blow. At the grid level, the resulting fluctuations in supply, combined with demand that can rapidly spike during hot weather, for example, can play havoc with the steady 50Hz electricity supply needed to power everything from microwaves to factory production lines. Traditionally, fossil fuel-powered turbines are used to rapidly respond to load changes. If switched on when needed, electricity output ramps up or down so that there is enough electricity, at the right frequency, to supply demand. Renewable energy storage systems, which include batteries and thermal storage systems, run from small household units to power plant and grid-scale technologies. What they aim to do is enable electricity to be released into the system when it is needed – so-called load shifting – rather than only when solar collectors or wind turbines are operating. “Storage allows you to spread out the load and, if you can do that, you no longer need the big so-called base-load generators,” Moriarty says. In thermal storage systems, renewable electricity or electricity purchased from the grid at off-peak rates is used to heat a material to a high temperature. 1414 Degrees uses molten silicon – an abundant and cheap element that is the main component of sand – that is heated to its melting point of 1414 degrees. The stored heat can then be used at a later time to generate electricity – using turbines – that is fed back into the grid. It can also release heat to be used in district heating systems for hot water or space heating. The company has developed 10MW or 200MW systems, which can store heat for up to two weeks, although they are designed to be able to constantly charge and discharge according to demand. Unlike batteries, which have a finite number of charge/discharge cycles, the molten silicon can be used indefinitely and can be recycled when the units reach the end of their 20-year service life. Other thermal storage systems take heat directly from the sun to heat storage materials. In these systems, concentrating solar collectors – rather than photovoltaic cells – are used to heat a liquid that can then heat a storage medium. Pilot scale facilities in Jemalong and Lake Cargelligo, both in central west NSW, use molten salt or graphite, respectively, to store heat. According to Prof Frank Bruno, leader of the Thermal Energy Storage Group at the University of South Australia, one of the advantages of thermal storage is the ability to operate at high temperatures, unlike batteries, whose components suffer once temperatures go above about 50 degrees. The other advantage is price. “Storing energy as thermal energy is much cheaper that battery storage,” says Bruno, although photovoltaic power plants currently out compete concentrated solar collectors. The Australian Solar Thermal Research Initiative, of which Bruno is a member, is trying to bring the cost of concentrated solar collectors down, which would make integrated solar thermal storage systems more price competitive overall. Battery makers are concentrating on trying to solve some of the key limitations of lithium ion batteries. One of those is the scant supply of raw materials required to make them, a supply that is unlikely to meet future energy storage demands, according to Prof Thomas Maschmeyer, co-founder of the University of Sydney spin-off company Gelion. Gelion batteries use zinc and bromide, elements with more stable and abundant supplies than the lithium and cobalt of lithium ion batteries. Unlike lithium ion batteries, which will become more costly as demand for raw materials outstrips supply, the price of Gelion’s batteries will only decrease with increased production scales. Gelion’s technology is based on a tweak of zinc/bromide chemistry – which is already used in Redflow batteries – that means the battery operates with a gel rather than a liquid. The resulting batteries look and work much like a lithium ion battery, but with greater heat tolerance. Gelion is currently raising funds to get their prototype into commercial production. While there’s currently no front-runner to replace lithium ion batteries, according to those working across the range of storage devices available, there will be plenty of options ranging from household electricity storage, to grid-level systems like that proposed for South Australia. “The market’s big enough and the needs are varied,” says Moriarty, so “there’s a place for all of them.” | ['sustainable-business/sustainable-business', 'sustainable-business/series/innovations-in-renewables', 'australia-news/energy-australia', 'environment/energy', 'environment/environment', 'technology/technology', 'australia-news/business-australia', 'australia-news/australia-news', 'environment/windpower', 'environment/solarpower', 'environment/renewableenergy', 'type/article', 'tone/features', 'profile/dyani-lewis', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/australia-gsb'] | environment/renewableenergy | ENERGY | 2017-04-05T23:47:41Z | true | ENERGY |
technology/2008/oct/23/baylis-eco-media-player-emp-revolution | Adam Vaughan on the wind-up MP3 player | When Stephen Fry played with Trevor Baylis' first wind-up MP3 player for this paper last November, he lavished it with praise. "I love this little thing," he gushed. "It is robust, clever without being pleased with itself, useful and appealing." I was fond of the Eco Media Player (EMP) too, so it was with some excitement that I received version 2.0. Baylis' new crank-powered pocket player bills itself as the EMP Revolution (£130). That's a little audacious. The man has grabbed the original, updated it to piano black, bumped the storage from 2GB to 4GB and spruced up the video playback. I'd call that an evolution, not a barricades-and-guillotines revolution. Still, in a world of Viewtys, Eee PCs and Vieras, it's hard to get too hung up about the Revolution monicker. Like the first EMP, this update takes the Swiss Army knife approach to the features it offers. It can play music, video, photos, charge phones and record via a line-in socket. It also has an FM radio, voice recorder and built-in speaker. Oh, and there's a torch too. Marvellous. The most obvious improvements over its predecessor are cosmetic. The piano-black case is nicer than the old black rubber, and the crank handle now has a cute brushed silver effect. The most obvious disappointment is the interface. It's almost identical to the old, awkward one. Like the first EMP, the Revolution is chunky. But while the depth will annoy some, it's essential so that you can grip the player firmly when winding it up. It's worth noting that cranking is loud enough that you wouldn't want to wind it on the 7.15 from Brighton. Video playback is vastly improved on the original. The resolution and screen quality is no match for, say, Apple's iPod nano, but it's OK for short videos. Sound quality is fine, so long as you upgrade from the duff earphones that come in the box. File transfer is via drag and drop. The music player supports just about everything: MP3, WMA (but not with DRM), AAC, OGG and WAV. (No FLAC though.) Video-wise, it'll play WMV and H.264, but not MOV files. One very welcome change is the move from a 2.5mm line-in socket to a standard 3.5mm one. That makes it a hell of a lot easier to record from vinyl and plug in microphones. Doubling the storage is a good thing, yet feels stingy. With the 4GB Revolution at £130, the 8GB iPod nano looks a steal at £110. And the rest? Well, everything else – like its ability to charge a mobile phone – is essentially the same as the original, so Fry's review is still worth a read. He's taken one with him to Africa for his latest filming trip. Ultimately, the Revolution is really an evolution. It's better-looking, has better video and a more user-friendly line-in socket than the first EMP. I think it's a good companion for campers, travellers and anyone who spends a long time away from mains sockets. Commuters, however, should just get a trouser-friendly iPod, which Greenpeace describes as "significantly less toxic than before". Phew. | ['technology/technology', 'technology/series/technophile', 'tone/reviews', 'technology/digital-music-and-audio', 'technology/digitalvideo', 'technology/gadgets', 'music/music', 'environment/environment', 'type/article', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/technologyguardian', 'theguardian/technologyguardian/technology'] | technology/digitalvideo | UNRELATED_TO_CLIMATE | 2008-10-22T23:01:00Z | true | UNRELATED_TO_CLIMATE |
commentisfree/2011/jun/03/amazon-tribe-kayapo-people-bel-monte-dam | The Brazilian tribe that played by our rules, and lost | Jacqueline Windh | The man pictured above is Raoni Txucarramãe, chief of the Kayapó people, who hail from Brazil's northern Pará province. The homeland of the Kayapó is the tropical rainforest surrounding the tributaries of the giant Xingu river, itself a nearly 2,000km long tributary of the Amazon. But the livelihood of the Kayapó people is under grave threat. Brazil's president, Dilma Vana Rousseff, has authorised the construction of a dam that will flood their homeland. The Belo Monte dam will be the world's third-largest hydroelectric dam (after China's Three Gorges dam, itself with numerous problems, and the Brazilian-Paraguayan Itaipu dam). It will flood 400,000 hectares of the world's largest rainforest, displacing 20,000 to 40,000 people – including the Kayapó. The ecological impact of the project is massive: the Xingu River basin has four times more biodiversity than all of Europe. Flooding of the rainforest will liberate massive amounts of methane, a greenhouse gas far more damaging than carbon dioxide. But the impact on Chief Raoni's people, on an entire society, is unimaginable. The Kayapó traditionally practised slash-and-burn agriculture on small farms cut into the jungle. The rich resources of their lands (minerals, timber, and potential hydroelectrical power) have brought pressures from outside. Although the Brazilian constitution explicitly prohibits the displacement of "Indians" from their traditional lands, it provides for one convenient exception: where the National Congress deems removal of the people to be "in the interest of the sovereignty of the country". Proponents of the dam argue that its construction is in the nation's interest. The Kayapó people's leadership has learned how to participate in the world economy. They were one of the first indigenous peoples to participate in international commerce, with the Body Shop, and they learned how to fight back against projects they did not support. A five-day media conference they organised to fight the Bel Monte dam in 1989 generated enough international attention that the World Bank refused the loan necessary for the project to proceed. Now, as the project raises its head again, the Kayapó have forged alliances with non-profits worldwide to continue their battle. In February, Chief Raoni delivered a petition with 600,000 signatures to the Brazilian government, and construction of the dam was temporarily blocked. But this week, the Brazilian government gave the project the green light. Chief Raoni and his people have, essentially, played by our rules. They learned the ways of a foreign society, and they waged their battle according to those foreign rules and with those foreign weapons, launching petitions and protests, and engaging media and lawyers. I am reminded of another photo that recently appeared on these pages: that of an "uncontacted" Amazonian tribe, their bows raised, their arrows aimed at the Brazilian Indian Affairs Department aircraft flying overhead. For all his efforts, Chief Raoni, too, might as well have been shooting arrows at the Brazilian National Congress building. This losing battle is not unique. Rather, it is the common story to the Americas. I recall my visits with Cristina Calderón, known in Chile as "the last Yaghan", the last survivor of her race and last speaker of her native tongue. Across the Beagle Channel from her home lies the large island of Tierra del Fuego, traditional homeland of the Selk'nam, but now devoid of any indigenous people. The demise of the Yaghan was due largely to diseases introduced and spread by displacement from their expansive territories to crowded mission schools. The Selk'nam, however, were actively hunted by European settlers. The new industry here was sheep-ranching. With their traditional hunting territories turned to grazing lands, and with no concept of animals as private property, the Selk'nam turned to hunting sheep. The settlers, in turn, issued a bounty for each pair of Selk'nam ears. The Kayapó and their partners have launched a last-ditch effort, including another petition, to have the Brazilian government listen to their concerns, and respect traditional land rights. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has urged the Brazilian government to consult "in good faith … and with the aim of arriving at an agreement with each of the affected indigenous communities". But I know, from experience here, where I live – also a land of pristine rainforest that is still populated by vibrant communities of original inhabitants – what industry's requirement to "consult" with indigenous people means: the parties will, at some point, show up in a room together and voice their opinions. The indigenous people will have every right to say no to the project. But no one is required to heed that. | ['commentisfree/commentisfree', 'world/brazil', 'environment/environment', 'environment/amazon-rainforest', 'world/world', 'environment/forests', 'tone/comment', 'global-development/global-development', 'world/indigenous-peoples', 'type/article', 'profile/windh-jacqueline'] | environment/amazon-rainforest | BIODIVERSITY | 2011-06-03T15:30:00Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
commentisfree/2009/may/04/climate-change-law | Wild side of the law | Begonia Filgueira and Ian Mason | If societies express their values through the laws they make, one single legal change would completely transform our understanding of the relationship between nature and humankind: giving nature rights. And that change would be our best weapon in fighting climate change because it would give nature a voice on how we regulate the earth. The idea of "wild law" has been around since the 1960s, when writers questioned whether trees should have standing. But now enacting those ideas is a matter of our survival on this planet. Laws that recognise the world as a legal person with rights and remedies that can be enforced nationally and internationally would create a duty of care towards the environment. It is strange that we have a duty of care towards our "neighbour", but that in law nature is not considered our neighbour. If we value the natural world we need for life, we can prove it by giving it and its components – rivers, forests, species, habitats, ecosystems – sufficient standing in law to enable proceedings to be brought on their behalf. Our legal system already does this for "non-persons" such as companies, charities, clubs and others. Give the sea rights, and overfishing would not be a matter of quotas set by governments but of balancing the rights of fish and humans. If the atmosphere could be a legal entity, its representative would have a say in carbon trading. A river with a right to flow continually being harmed by damming would require the courts to intervene in deciding whether the human need is greater than that of the river to subsist. This is not as far fetched as it sounds. It is entirely consistent with the 1982 UN World Charter for Nature, ratified by more than 150 UN members but lacking enforcement mechanisms to give it real teeth. It is the logical outcome of its 2002 successor, the Earth Charter. Practically, how do we do this? Our courts could expand the definition of who our neighbour is to include nature and thus create a legal duty of care toward the earth. At EU level we then pass a declaration of nature's rights, which would, like the declaration of human rights, be implemented by each of the member states in an Earth Rights Act like our Human Rights Act. This would be enforced by our national courts and influence the regulators' decision-making. Internationally, we need to refocus what is contained in the World Charter for Nature, which sets out "human duties towards the earth", and create "earth rights". Any declaration needs to be coupled with giving enforcement powers to our international institutions, otherwise the declaration will create positive debate but not be effective. Language is a powerful tool, and we want to stop talking about the planet as a "resource". There has to be a better understanding of how humans affect the planet – so teach people where their plastic water bottle ends up and where their food comes from. We can also redefine the "public interest" to include the interest of nature. Some would argue granting rights is only part of the solution, but it will cause the shift in thinking we require to decarbonise our society. As Wangari Maathai, winner of the 2004 Nobel peace prize, said: "The need to forge a new and healthier relationship between the human race and the planet that sustains us could not be more urgent." Let's not be known as the "age of stupid" but as the age that walked on the wild side of the law and brought radical change to the way we think about law and about nature to stave off the perfect storm. | ['commentisfree/commentisfree', 'tone/comment', 'environment/climate-crisis', 'law/law', 'environment/environment', 'world/world', 'commentisfree/cif-green', 'environment/conservation', 'environment/marine-life', 'environment/forests', 'environment/fishing', 'environment/endangered-habitats', 'environment/endangeredspecies', 'type/article', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/commentanddebate3'] | environment/endangered-habitats | BIODIVERSITY | 2009-05-03T23:00:00Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
environment/2019/jul/11/great-barrier-reef-hard-coral-cover-close-to-record-lows | Great Barrier Reef hard coral cover close to record lows | Hard coral cover on the Great Barrier Reef is near record lows in its northern stretch and in decline in the south, surveys by government scientists have found. A report card by the government’s Australian Institute of Marine Science says hard coral cover in the northern region above Cooktown is at just 14% – a slight increase on last year but close to the lowest since monitoring began in 1985. A series of “disturbances” – coral bleaching linked to rising water temperatures, crown-of-thorns starfish outbreaks and tropical cyclones – have caused hard coral cover to shrink across much of the world heritage landmark over the past five years. Depending on the location, coral coverage is between 10% and 30% Mike Emslie, the institute’s acting head of long-term monitoring, said the report included glimmers of hope: individual reefs, including those on the outer shelf in the Whitsunday Islands, were found to have lively communities and tiny juvenile corals were discovered across the 2,300km reef system. The density of juvenile coral suggested recovery was possible if there were not further disturbances. He said it indicated there was some resilience in the system but added: “The important thing is the absence of further disturbances. If we have more coral bleaching events all bets are off.” The northern and central sections of the reef were hit by back-to-back mass bleaching events as ocean heating increased in early 2016 and 2017, killing vast areas of coral. A study led by Terry Hughes, the director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, found 30% of coral died after the 2016 heatwave alone. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change scientists estimated 99% of corals across the globe are likely to be lost if the climate crisis is not addressed and global heating reaches 2C. The Institute of Marine Science report warns the extent of hard coral in the north may be even lower than the 14% estimated due to skewed surveying – the greatest bleaching damage was on inshore reefs and they were under-represented in surveys due to safety concerns. The highest level of coral reef cover recorded in the north was 30% in 1988. Emslie said the reef’s southern section had escaped the worst effects of coral bleaching and cyclones since 2009 but has been affected by a severe outbreak of crown-of-thorns starfish since 2017. Crown-of-thorns feed on coral and spawns so rapidly it is difficult to tackle once it takes hold. Its spread has been linked to nitrogen from fertiliser and pesticides in agricultural run-off. Sign up to receive the top stories from Guardian Australia every morning He said the starfish had a particularly devastating impact in the Swain Reefs national park, more than 100km off the coast between Rockhampton and Mackay. Across the south, hard coral cover is 24%, down from a high of 43% three decades ago. The central region, from Airlie Beach to north of Cairns, has been significantly damaged by Tropical Cyclone Debbie in 2017 and the crown-of-thorns’ southward spread. Hard coral cover fell from 14% to 12% last year. It was 22% just three years ago. The broadcaster and natural historian David Attenborough made headlines this week when he told a UK parliamentary committee that the change to the Great Barrier Reef was one of the clearest examples of the climate crisis he had witnessed. He said it was extraordinary that people in power in Australia remained in denial about the scale of the problem. Environment group the Australian Marine Conservation Society said the latest government data showed coral decline was happening on an unparalleled scale, mainly due to the climate crisis. The society’s spokeswoman, Shani Tager, said the reef remained a dynamic place that was home to thousands of animals and supported 64,000 tourism jobs but was in serious trouble. “We need our governments to act fast,” she said. The science record card coincided with the release of an annual work plan by the Great Barrier Reef Foundation, a formerly small organisation that was last year granted $443m in public funding despite not having applied for it. The foundation plans to spend $58m this financial year focusing on improving water quality, managing crown-of-thorns starfish and collaborating with the tourism industry to engage visitors in citizen science activities. Anna Marsden, the foundation’s managing director, said innovation would be at the heart of a reef restoration and adaptation program run in collaboration with leading marine science institutions. Richard Leck, from the World Wide Fund for Nature, said the report card showed Australia needed to urgently reduce its dependence on fossil fuels and accelerate a transition to a clean economy. • This story was amended on 12 July 2019 to correct the statement that hard coral cover had declined by between 10% and 30% in the past five years. It has declined to between 10% and 30%. | ['environment/great-barrier-reef', 'australia-news/australia-news', 'environment/environment', 'australia-news/cairns', 'australia-news/queensland', 'environment/climate-crisis', 'environment/marine-life', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/adam-morton', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/australia-news'] | environment/marine-life | BIODIVERSITY | 2019-07-11T04:15:14Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
world/2005/jan/27/tsunami2004.internationalaidanddevelopment15 | The grandmother (Thailand) | Boonchoo Langthong, 60, looking after her five orphaned grandchildren We are trying, as much as possible, to return to the old routines, so we all woke at 6am. I cooked some rice and vegetables, got the kids dressed and sent them off to school with 10 baht (12p) for lunch. Then, when they had all gone, I took up my spot on the roadside selling bottles of water to passers-by. I made about 200 baht. It is not a lot, but it helps because our work at the rubber plantation doesn't bring in much. My husband picked our grandchildren up from school and took them to the town hall to register as tsunami orphans, which means they will be under the care of the king. We don't know how much money we will get yet for the loss of their parents, who died while fishing, but it should be enough for us to keep them and pay for their education. With help from the neighbours and the school, we are getting by OK financially. The fishermen here are worse off. Even those who still have their boats cannot sell the fish they catch because everyone believes they have been feeding on dead bodies. We are trying to get back to normal. We are sad, but I am sleeping all right. The kids, too; they don't cry or have bad dreams. I think they are too young to worry. | ['world/tsunami2004', 'global-development/global-development', 'world/world', 'type/article', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/g2', 'theguardian/g2/features'] | world/tsunami2004 | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2005-01-27T10:57:56Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
business/2016/mar/03/energy-policy-u-turns-may-cost-households-120-a-year | Energy policy U-turns 'may cost households £120 a year' | Changes in government energy policy since the last election have chased off investors and may have added £120 a year to household bills, according to a parliamentary report. Thursday’s report, from the energy and climate change committee, argues future domestic and business power bills may be higher than necessary as a result of changes including U-turns on funding onshore windfarms and energy efficiency schemes. “Billions of pounds of investment is needed in order to replace ageing energy infrastructure, maintain secure energy supplies and meet our legally binding climate change targets,” said Angus MacNeil, a Scottish National party MP who chairs the energy and climate change committee. “Since coming to office in May, the government has made a number of sudden and unexpected changes to policy. This has spooked investors and left them wondering ‘what will be next?’” Ministers have slashed subsidies for onshore windfarms, reduced aid to solar power, ended the “green deal” energy efficiency programme and cancelled a longstanding competition to build a carbon capture and storage scheme. The report, Investor Confidence in the UK Energy Sector, contains statements from companies including wind turbine maker, Siemens, complaining about “apparently contradictory messages” from ministers. These include giving local people a say over onshore wind farm planning while excluding them from shale gas projects and claiming to favour low-cost decarbonisation while halting relatively cheap onshore wind farms. In the most damning part of the report Octopus Investments calculates that the UK may be paying an extra £3.14bn per annum in investment costs. Richard Black, director of the energy and climate intelligence unit, said: “It’s interesting that critical evidence given to the committee came from some of the biggest investment houses, such as Schroders, as well as from people in the renewables industry – and interesting too that the committee points its finger squarely at Treasury. “One investment firm puts the cost of policy tinkering at £3.14bn per year, which, if it were applied only to domestic consumers, would add as much as £120 per year to the average household bill.” The committee has called on the government to provide a detailed plan for when the next three rounds of contracts for difference subsidy auctions will be held, how much money will be available and which technologies will be eligible to take part. It also wants ministers to publish the assumptions and methodologies that underpin the calculations of how much money is being spent in the levy control framework and how much will be available after 2020. The Department of Energy and Climate Change defended its record saying its priority was to ensure families and businesses have access to reliable, secure, affordable and clean energy supplies. “We have been clear that low-carbon energy sources such as nuclear, offshore wind and shale gas will play a key role in our energy future,” a spokesman said. “At the same time we are rightly taking action to keep bills as low as possible to protect consumers and ensure they get value for money, including by being tough on subsidies so that technologies stand on their own two feet.” However, Alasdair Cameron, who campaigns on behalf of Friends of the Earth for renewable energy, said MPs were right to attack the “mess” that has been made of UK energy policy. “Constant ministerial attacks on renewable energy have confused and frustrated businesses and investors, and this will inevitably lead to more expensive electricity and more pollution. “The government must take a forward-looking approach to our energy needs. This means pulling the plug on climate-wrecking fossil fuels and getting behind energy efficiency and Britain’s huge wind, wave and solar potential.” The report is published just days after Amber Rudd, the energy and climate change secretary, announced a new subsidy scheme to try to head off a power supply crunch caused by lack of new investment. Earlier this week Energy-UK the power industry’s main lobbying group, threw its weight behind a long-term national energy plan like that moving Germany toward a low-carbon economy. Paul Dorfman, from the energy institute at University College London, said Energy-UK’s “belated conversion” to renewable power was welcome but needed to be supported by appropriate ministerial policies. “Germany, the strongest economy in Europe, which is using 20% of all EU electricity, has been conscientiously following this [low carbon] path for some time now. “Perhaps the difference lies in the way governments listen to or ignore practical energy policy research. Whereas German energy policy is evidence-based, that of the UK is evidence-light – largely based on short-term ideology.”Subsidy cuts and policy changes affecting low carbon energy May 2015 The Conservative party manifesto pledge to “halt the spread of onshore windfarms”. 18 June Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) announces early closure of the renewable obligation (RO) subsidy for onshore wind. 10 July Treasury announces the scrapping of Zero Carbon Homes programme. 22 July DECC announces cuts to RO for solar power, biomass and feed-in-tariff (FIT) accreditation. 23 July DECC ends funding for the Green Deal Finance Company, ending the green deal subsidy scheme for home energy efficiency. 19 August Consultation on changes to FIT accreditation closes. 27 August DECC publishes consultation on a review of the FIT scheme for solar. 18 November Amber Rudd, the energy and climate change secretary, says energy policy needs to be “reset”. 25 November Chancellor’s autumn statement reveals £1bn cut in competition for prototype carbon capture and storage project. 17 December Cuts to solar subsidies confirmed. | ['business/energy-industry', 'money/energy', 'environment/energy', 'business/business', 'money/consumer-affairs', 'environment/environment', 'money/household-bills', 'uk/uk', 'environment/green-economy', 'environment/windpower', 'environment/renewableenergy', 'money/money', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/terrymacalister', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/financial3'] | environment/windpower | ENERGY | 2016-03-03T00:01:48Z | true | ENERGY |
commentisfree/2017/dec/18/christmas-emojis-younger-people-wrapping-paper | Are the days of Christmas wrapping paper and cards over? | Phoebe-Jane Boyd | Since early life crawled out of the sludge and decided it would like to continue crawling, prising shiny shells open to get to their inner goodness (fruit/seeds/viscera) has been an unbreakable habit for the living – we can’t help it. We love opening things; banana peels, packets of biscuits, envelopes that look like they don’t have bills in them. And so comes Christmas with shiny boxes to be opened, full of promised goodness for our continuing survival; in many cases, instead of life-giving nutrients, it’s regifted candles from the neighbours. But even now, away from the primordial grime, the message of “this looks good, it might contain good things if I open it” whirrs away in our lizard brains. Psychologically, so the theory goes, the shine of the shell matters. Candle regift hastily handed over in an old plastic bag? It sucks. But if the candle comes to you in shiny wrapping, with ribbons, and a handwritten glittery card … those neighbours; they tried, they care. It’s worth something. Even if it’s the same candle you gave them last year. Yet fewer people are interested in buying wrapping paper and cards for the gifts they give at Christmas. A study from the retail analysts Mintel shows that the Shiny Shell of Worth idea isn’t holding up with 25- to 34-year-olds in particular – only 49% still send cards, with one in three believing social media to be just dandy for forwarding their Christmas wishes. Half of us in the UK would also choose to get our presents with no wrapping at all. Who needs a stamp for a card when you can text over two snowmen emoji and a Christmas tree, an additional snowflake if you fancy, an accompanying message with correct spelling, maybe. And a lot of us are happy with that, Sky Ocean Rescue finding that 46% would rather receive a digital greeting than a paper card. Things are changing, partly due to green gifting concerns. No to unrecyclable glitter cards and paper the council will leave behind, so less waste. Perhaps there’s also a move away from the superficiality that can come with Christmas, a feeling that the love you have for your giftee just isn’t possible to sum up with three-for-two rolls of mass-produced reindeer paper. But the more crotchety among us might call it laziness or a lack of care instead. Maybe millennials just don’t want to put in the effort previous generations did, and prefer to send their texts and unwrapped Amazon parcels because it’s easy and instant. Maybe it’s a symptom of 25- to 34-year-olds not understanding the value of giving; that Christmas, a time that used to be about goodwill etc, doesn’t mean that much any more. And maybe one of the other findings from the research – that 55% of those surveyed don’t like to bother with the hassle of going shopping for gifts in store – would back that up. But if you can remember growing up in a home stocked with cheap multipack boxes of generic Christmas cards for tit-for-tat posting, the growing preference for text messaging and online shopping doesn’t seem so lazy or meaningless in comparison. What’s more pointless and fake than a cardboard “Happy Christmas” delivered through a door just because the other person did it first? Or those awful annual missives smug families send to detail their successes over the last year – nobody really likes receiving those, because they’re terrible. Especially if there’s a picture of them wearing Santa hats on the front, especially if the card’s co-signed by the family pet. It’s not possible to create something that twee and asinine in a text or tweet format – and isn’t that something to be thankful for? The Mintel study also showed that as sales of those old multipacks of cards are going down, more is being spent on individual cards – those chosen with a specific recipient in mind and picked with genuine care. As senior retail analyst Samantha Dover said of the results: “In a digital world where the tangible is vanishing, consumers are increasingly elevating the value of physical goods and the emotional attachment to sending and receiving.” If you wrap it nicely, it’s because the person it’s for is worth it. And if you haven’t wrapped it, it’s the giving that’s meaningful. So, just as it’s always been, then: a shiny shell is just that, it’s what’s at its core that’s nourishing and good. • Phoebe-Jane Boyd is an online media company content editor | ['commentisfree/commentisfree', 'lifeandstyle/christmas', 'tone/comment', 'lifeandstyle/lifeandstyle', 'environment/recycling', 'environment/ethical-living', 'environment/waste', 'environment/environment', 'society/youngpeople', 'society/society', 'uk/uk', 'type/article', 'profile/phoebe-jane-boyd', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-opinion'] | environment/recycling | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE | 2017-12-18T16:23:00Z | true | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE |
environment/2022/aug/04/magnificent-jellyfish-found-off-coast-of-papua-new-guinea-sparks-interest-among-researchers | ‘Magnificent’ jellyfish found off coast of Papua New Guinea sparks interest among researchers | A diver has captured footage of an unusual-looking jellyfish off the coast of Papua New Guinea, sparking interest among researchers. The video was captured by Dorian Borcherds, who owns Scuba Ventures in Kavieng, in the New Ireland province of PNG. Borcherds, who has been diving in the area for more than two decades, said he saw about three or four of the jellyfish and was struck by their intricate detail and the way they seemed to move decisively through the water. “They don’t have brains, so I don’t know how they do that,” he said. Looking for answers, he sent the footage to his wife in South Africa, who uploaded it to the Jellyfish app, a project Dr Lisa-ann Gershwin, a jellyfish expert at Australian Marine Stinger Advisory Services, co-founded. In her words, the app’s purpose is to “answer the age-old question: what is that blob and should I pee on [its sting]?” “As soon as I saw this one, honestly, I could barely contain my excitement,” she said. “I almost fell out of my chair.” Gershwin initially thought the footage was the second sighting of a mysterious jellyfish – Chirodectes maculatus – found decades ago on the Great Barrier Reef, but she now believes the “magnificent” creature is a new species. While Gershwin is confident in her findings, her paper on the species classification is yet to undergo peer review. Prof Kylie Pitt, a marine ecologist who specialises in jellyfish from Griffith University, said it could be a new species, but doesn’t think it would be possible to know for sure based only on a video. She said she had certainly never seen it before, but said a researcher would “need to hold the animal in your hand” to be sure of its species. “It would be great if we got the specimen and could describe its morphology, coupled with genetic testing,” she said. Prof Jamie Seymour, a toxicologist from James Cook University who specialises in Australia’s venomous animals, says he prefers Gershwin’s earlier theory, believing the jellyfish is a Chirodectes maculatus. Sign up to receive an email with the top stories from Guardian Australia every morning Gershwin had helped reclassify Chirodectes maculatus – a jellyfish that has been sighted only once off the coast of far north Queensland, after a cyclone in 1997. She said it had remained a mystery where the invertebrate had come from ever since. At first glance, she thought the new video could provide the answer. She enlisted the help of Peter Davie, a now retired – but still active – curator from the Queensland museum, where the original jellyfish specimen was kept. The pair pored over the footage from PNG frame by frame, and noticed the jellyfish had different markings, it was much larger – about the size of a soccer ball compared with something that could fit in your hand – and various other technical differences. To their delight, they decided this was probably a new species of jellyfish, probably belonging to the same genus as the one seen in 1997. | ['environment/marine-life', 'environment/invertebrates', 'environment/wildlife', 'environment/environment', 'environment/oceans', 'world/papua-new-guinea', 'australia-news/australia-news', 'world/asia-pacific', 'science/science', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/lisa-favazzo', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/international', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/australia-news'] | environment/wildlife | BIODIVERSITY | 2022-08-04T06:26:54Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
news/2021/feb/09/weatherwatch-latest-sea-level-rise-forecast-alarms-scientists | Weatherwatch: latest sea level rise forecast alarms scientists | Rising sea levels seem one of the more distant threats of the climate emergency, unless you live in a house close to the high tide mark or on an eroding cliff. The annual rise of 3mm does not seem much but as storms become more intense and higher tides prevent rivers emptying flood water into the sea, problems are more frequent. Scientists looking at the pace of sea level rise are becoming increasingly alarmed. This is partly because ice is disappearing ever more rapidly from glaciers and the poles but another major factor, the warming of the oceans, also appears to have been underestimated. With most of the heat generated in the atmosphere by excess greenhouse gases being absorbed by the sea, warm water expansion is a major contributor to sea level rise. New European research demonstrates that this rise is expected to accelerate. The previously forecast maximum of a 1 metre rise by 2100 is very likely to be exceeded. This date may seem remote but French and Chinese government-owned companies are currently wanting to build nuclear power stations on low-lying coastlines in Suffolk and Essex. If permission is given, these stations will still be operating in 2100 on land that could by then be overwhelmed by North Sea storm surges. | ['news/series/weatherwatch', 'environment/sea-level', 'environment/climate-crisis', 'type/article', 'tone/features', 'profile/paulbrown', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/weather2', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-weather'] | environment/sea-level | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2021-02-09T06:00:05Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
global-development-professionals-network/2015/jul/08/what-energy-shortage | What energy shortage? | If we were able to capture and use the energy from just two minutes of sunlight falling on the earth, it would be enough to fuel our cars, light and heat our buildings, and provide for all of our other electricity needs for an entire year. Simply put, we humans are not facing a shortage of energy. We are facing a technical challenge in capturing it and delivering it to consumers; and one of the most efficient ways to meet that challenge is to invest in better ways to store it. Many of the world’s problems today can be traced to energy use, from conflicts over oil supplies and concerns about greenhouse-gas emissions to lost productivity and output stemming from shortages and blackouts. In many of the poorest parts of the world, the lack of energy stifles economic development. Globally, more than 1.3 billion people have no access to electricity; and some 2.6 billion have no access to modern cooking facilities. More than 95% of these people are in sub-Saharan Africa or developing Asia, and 84% live in rural areas. During the run-up to the recent presidential election in Nigeria, for example, a woman was asked what she wanted the candidates to deliver. She replied with a one-word answer: “Light.” Electricity, a basic commodity, would allow her to continue to work and her children to study. Unreliable or unavailable energy is a problem in much of Africa and the Indian sub-continent, as well as some other parts of Asia. According to a report by the International Energy Agency, improvements to the energy sector could provide the equivalent of a decade of growth in some of the poorest parts of the world. Our global energy crisis has been aggravated by a lack of innovation. According to a study by the United States government’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, more than 60% of the energy we use is lost between the time it is generated and the time it is consumed. This includes the inefficiency in converting fossil fuels to electricity, losses during transmission, wasteful consumer behavior, and the need to maintain a reserve to prevent blackouts. A new wave of innovation is required, one that can eliminate waste, reduce pollution, and broaden access to energy around the world. That means focusing on efficiency-boosting technologies such as wireless communication, machine-to-machine communication, smart metering, and better production management. Renewable energy sources, including solar and wind power, are well positioned to contribute to energy needs in both mature and emerging economies. But, because the sun does not always shine, and the wind does not always blow, energy from these sources is unstable and intermittent. And this will continue to be a problem unless, and until, we are able to store power from renewable sources efficiently. Studies by the US Western Electricity Coordinating Council have found that finding better ways to store energy could cut total waste by about 18% and boost the efficiency of electricity use by up to 11%. Better energy-storage methods would also make it easier to deliver electricity to hard-to-reach areas that are currently underserved, as well as help make the best use of often-scarce sources of power. One well-tested method for storing energy is to use excess capacity to pump water into reservoirs, so that it can be used later to power turbines when demand is high. But this approach is practical only in mountainous areas, making it unsuitable as a mass-market solution. Promising areas of research include grid-scale batteries with the ability to charge and discharge tens of thousands of times and data analytics to optimize the use of the batteries and make the grid as efficient as possible. It is not enough to generate energy. We must also use it efficiently, and the wide-scale adoption of state-of-the-art storage technology will be an essential part of the solution. Ensuring that the world’s energy supplies are stable, efficient, accessible, and affordable will take time. But breakthroughs are on the horizon. Our task is to keep our sights there. Jostein Eikeland is founder and CEO of Alevo. Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2015. Join our community of development professionals and humanitarians. Follow@GuardianGDP on Twitter. | ['global-development-professionals-network/series/energy-access', 'working-in-development/working-in-development', 'environment/energy', 'environment/energyefficiency', 'environment/solarpower', 'technology/technology', 'environment/windpower', 'environment/renewableenergy', 'environment/environment', 'type/article', 'tone/comment'] | environment/solarpower | ENERGY | 2015-07-08T13:43:43Z | true | ENERGY |
sport/2011/jun/30/england-wembley-rugby-league-australia | England set to face Australia in Wembley Four Nations Test | England will play at Wembley for the first time since the 1995 World Cup final as part of a double-header on 5 November during the Four Nations series, which will again be sponsored by Gillette. After months of speculation, the Rugby Football League has persuaded Australia and New Zealand of the benefits to the profile of the tournament of staging games at the stadium, despite the financial risk. As a result, Wales will play New Zealand before England face Australia in a repeat of that 1995 World Cup final, which attracted a crowd of 66,540. The two matches will be the first rugby league internationals played at the redeveloped stadium. Wembley was a regular and popular Test venue in the 1990s. Great Britain had memorable victories there over Australia in 1990 and 1994 and also beat New Zealand there in 1993, in a game that was notable for Jason Robinson scoring two tries on his debut. The stadium staged the first and last games of the 1995 World Cup, to mark the centenary of the Northern Union breakaway. England beat Australia in the opener but lost the final 16-8. There was one more international, in 1997, between Great Britain and an Australia team drawn from the rebel Super League competition that was funded by Rupert Murdoch, when the crowd dropped to 41,116. But since a disastrous game at Twickenham set the tone for the 2000 World Cup, the national side have played home Tests in the north of England. "Wembley Stadium is known around the world for staging some of the biggest and most important events in sport and we are delighted to be taking international rugby league back to one of the world's most iconic stadiums," said Nigel Wood, the RFL's chief executive. "With some of the world's best rugby players on show at Wembley we will undoubtedly raise the profile of the sport on the national and international stage. We hope that this fantastic event will help to bring the drama of the sport to a much wider audience, especially with the 2013 Rugby League World Cup only a few years away." The Four Nations will begin with Australia facing New Zealand in Warrington on Friday 28 October, a game that should sell out the 13,000-capacity Halliwell Jones Stadium. England will play Wales at the Leigh Sports Village the following day – a fixture that should represent a major financial boost to the host club, who have been plunged into crisis by the resignation of their chairman. After the Wembley double-header, England will play New Zealand at the KC Stadium in Hull on Saturday 12 November. Wales will play Australia in Wrexham the following night. The final will be at Elland Road on Saturday 19 November. Although television details have yet to be announced, the BBC is expected to show England's first two games. Sky will broadcast the New Zealand game and the final. Gillette Four Nations Schedule: Friday 28 Oct Australia v New Zealand, Halliwell Jones Stadium, Warrington (8pm) Saturday 29 Oct England v Wales, Leigh Sports Village (2.30pm) Saturday 5 Nov Wales v New Zealand, Wembley (1pm); England v Australia, Wembley (3.30pm) Saturday 12 Nov England v New Zealand, KC Stadium, Hull (6pm) Sunday 13 Nov Wales v Australia, Racecourse Ground, Wrexham (5.45pm) Saturday 19 Nov Four Nations Final Elland Road, Leeds (6pm) | ['sport/rugbyleague', 'sport/england-rugby-league-team', 'sport/australiarugbyleague', 'sport/new-zealand-rugby-league', 'sport/wales-rugby-league-team', 'football/wembley-stadium', 'sport/sport', 'tone/news', 'sport/australia-sport', 'type/article', 'profile/andywilson', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/sport', 'theguardian/sport/news'] | sport/wales-rugby-league-team | UNRELATED_TO_CLIMATE | 2011-06-30T20:38:38Z | true | UNRELATED_TO_CLIMATE |
world/2021/may/10/campaigners-say-uk-airport-expansion-plans-must-be-suspended-amid-new-climate-goals | Campaigners say UK airport expansion plans must be suspended amid new climate goals | The UK government must suspend all airport expansion plans until it sets out how they fit with its legally binding climate targets and the advice of its own experts, campaigners have warned. In a letter to ministers, groups opposing planned expansions at eight airports around the country say the government’s recent decision to include aviation in its binding climate targets mean the expansion plans must be halted. “Until the government has consulted on its preferred strategy for net zero aviation, and published its policy, it is impossible to see how local authorities or the government could justify any given airport expansion as conforming to binding carbon budgets and targets,” states the letter to Grant Shapps, the transport secretary, and Robert Jenrick, the communities and local government secretary. There are expansions planned at seven airports in England: Leeds Bradford, Luton, Bristol, Southampton, Heathrow, Stansted and Manston – all of which are at various stages in the process. Campaigners are also expecting Gatwick to imminently submit plans to increase capacity. In December, the government’s own advisers on the climate change committee said there should be no net expansion of UK airport capacity “unless the sector is on track to sufficiently outperform its net emissions”. Ministers have the power to “call in” decisions made at a local level – a process that would allow the national and international climate ramifications of granting permission for the airport to be considered. Campaigners say it is essential the proposals are halted until the government sets out a comprehensive aviation strategy – expected in the next couple of months. “Existing policy does not take account of the government’s increased climate ambition for aviation,” the letter states. “Until the government has consulted on its preferred strategy for net zero aviation, and published its policy, it is impossible to see how local authorities or the government could justify any given airport expansion as conforming to binding carbon budgets and targets.” A government spokesperson said planning decisions should be made at a local level wherever possible, adding: “The power to call in is used very selectively and when requests to call in an application are made ministers will consider the case individually, in line with our published policy.” | ['world/air-transport', 'environment/climate-crisis', 'uk/uk', 'environment/environment', 'politics/politics', 'environment/green-politics', 'world/world', 'uk-news/heathrow-airport', 'uk-news/gatwick-airport', 'uk-news/stansted-airport', 'uk/transport', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/matthewtaylor', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/uknews', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-home-news'] | environment/green-politics | CLIMATE_POLICY | 2021-05-10T10:42:34Z | true | CLIMATE_POLICY |
environment/2021/may/19/conservationists-urge-regulation-to-cut-plastic-pollution-as-voluntary-scheme-launches | Conservationists urge regulation to cut Australia’s plastic pollution as voluntary scheme launches | Australia will miss its 2025 targets to cut plastic pollution from packaging unless it shifts from voluntary programs to enforcement, an alliance of conservation groups and the Greens have said. On Tuesday major supermarkets and multinational food and consumer goods manufacturers launched a new voluntary program across Australia, New Zealand and Pacific Islands with a goal that plastic “never becomes waste or pollution”. But an alliance of more than 50 groups campaigning to cut plastic pollution said the new ANZPAC Plastics Pact launch was “not the major step” in tackling the plastic waste crisis that it seemed. Among the ANZPAC members announced during the launch at the Australian National Maritime Museum were supermarkets Coles, Aldi and Woolworths, alongside plastics producers, recyclers, environmental groups and the CSIRO. Manufacturers Nestle, Unilever, Pepsico, Coca-Cola and Arnott’s Biscuits are also among the members. A roadmap was being developed and members will report progress on four 2025 targets: Eliminate unnecessary and problematic plastic packaging through redesign, innovation and alternative (reuse) delivery models. 100% of plastic packaging to be reusable, recyclable or compostable packaging. Increase plastic packaging effectively recycled by 25% in each region. Average of 25% recycled content in plastic packaging. The pact is led by the Australian Packaging Covenant Organisation (Apco), which is also responsible for delivering Australia’s national 2025 targets on plastic packaging. Jeff Angel, the director of the Boomerang Alliance of 53 groups working on plastic pollution, said his alliance did not think voluntary arrangements were enough. “With only 13% of plastic packaging being actually recycled and just 4% with recycled content – there are some very big challenges ahead.” The group released a report outlining its concerns and pointing to policies in the European Union, where requirements for recycled content and recovery of beverage containers were mandated. “It is appropriate and sensible that Australia follows the EU lead and government and Apco focus on obtaining action by the entire packaging sector under an effective regulatory regime,” the report said. Angel said in Australia, if the voluntary scheme could not show by the middle of next year that national 2025 targets would be met, then all the targets should be enforced. He said states had introduced bans on single-use plastics, and if the same regulatory approach was taken nationally to recycling and recycled content targets “then we can guarantee substantial action”. “However, the packaging covenant has resisted such action for many years,” Angel added. Releasing the Oceania-wide plastic pact, Apco said the agreed average recycled content of plastic packaging should be 25% by 2025 across the region. But Angel and the Greens senator Peter Whish-Wilson said this undercut Australia’s national target of 50% of packaging coming from recycled materials. Whish-Wilson said: “The packaging industry fought hard to stop mandatory targets, even though they always said they were confident in meeting voluntary commitments. “Strong, mandated targets would give the waste and recycling industry the certainty to invest in building a circular economy and creating green new jobs.” In a statement the Apco chief executive, Brooke Donnelly, said Australia’s national target was for 50% of average recycled content included in packaging by 2025 and applied to all packaging made, used and sold in Australia. “Australian industry and government are committed to achieving it,” she said. The Oceania target applied specifically to plastic packaging, she said, and met the “the needs and capacity of all countries in the region”. She said the pact was “about taking action, not policy or legislation” and it was not feasible for a program to set mandatory targets across different countries. The assistant federal minister for waste reduction and environmental management, Trevor Evans, has previously told the Guardian that a review was looking at whether the covenant arrangements would be enough to achieve its environmental goals. Under the government’s approach, companies that produce and use packaging and have an annual turnover greater than $5m can either sign up to Apco or choose to be regulated by states and territories. But an independent review, commissioned by the Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment, found no reported compliance actions, investigations or complaints from states and territories in four years. | ['environment/plastic', 'environment/pollution', 'environment/environment', 'australia-news/australia-news', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/graham-readfearn', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/australia-news'] | environment/pollution | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE | 2021-05-18T17:30:05Z | true | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE |
sport/2023/apr/05/ecbs-richard-gould-calls-banter-a-swear-word-after-yorkshire-scandal | ECB’s Richard Gould calls banter ‘a swear word’ after Yorkshire scandal | Richard Gould, the new ECB chief executive, has said banter is “a swear word” and that the outcomes from the Yorkshire racism scandal mean dressing rooms are now in no doubt as to what is unacceptable language and behaviour. In his first media outing since taking the role in February, Gould described a proposed cut to the County Championship as “dead in the water”, shared his belief that the Hundred will live past the end of its current broadcast deal in 2028, and revealed England men’s players can now receive multi-year contracts. But as well as trying to navigate the sport’s structural challenges – and the existential threat resulting from the rise of franchise cricket – the ECB currently finds itself between last Friday’s verdicts in the Yorkshire disciplinary proceedings and the forthcoming report from the Independent Commission for Equity in Cricket. Prompted by Azeem Rafiq’s testimony, the former saw six former Yorkshire players found guilty of using racist language in the Headingley dressing room. The ICEC report, commissioned in March 2021 and due to be published soon, will offer a broader picture of the sport’s record on discrimination and inclusivity. Gould, confirming that a separate review into professional dressing room culture by consultants EY Lane 4 has now been completed, cited a recent column by Mark Ramprakash in the Guardian in which the former England batter said a line has been drawn on player behaviour and there is now “no excuse”. “I was taken by Mark Ramprakash [writing in the Observer] when he said nobody can be in any doubt as to the standards that are required,” said Gould, the former Surrey chief executive who has returned to cricket after a 16-month spell in charge at Bristol City. “Some of the difficult issues at Yorkshire went back 20 years and when you go back over 20 years, behaviours were different. As a society and sport we seek to improve year on year. [And] what we have seen at Yorkshire, I don’t believe they are wholly a Yorkshire issue or a wholly cricket issue either. “[But] we have seen within dressing rooms, banter used to be a word that you could use. But banter is a swear word now. Banter is not acceptable. It’s up to the teams to ensure they have their own correct levels of control and to determine their culture. But they know the base level of what is and isn’t acceptable.” Gould said the Yorkshire saga became “poisonous” over time and future cases would need a faster resolution, with the ECB itself needing to learn from its shortcomings in handling the affair. He drew satisfaction from Rafiq saying he felt vindicated by the result, however, calling it “an important moment”. The ICEC’s conclusions will also be welcomed, Gould insisting this will be vital to “rebuilding trust” with communities which feel currently excluded from the sport. “We want to become the most inclusive sport in the country, whether that’s a local village club or the England team,” he added. Mindful that broadcast revenues are plateauing, Gould also stated an aim that the projected three million attendees at cricket matches during this bumper Ashes summer rises to four million during his time in the role; the Hundred, something he was critical of while at Surrey, is clearly here to stay. Like Richard Thompson, the ECB chair, Gould has been converted by seeing “men and women playing on the same stage, same day”. “We have a broadcast deal until 2028 but I’m sure the Hundred will have a future beyond that,” he said, while adding his openness to private investment in the tournament down the line. There was an acceptance that this summer’s Hundred window – all August – was not ideal, however, and that international cricket will return to the school holidays in future seasons. But despite a recommendation from last year’s High Performance Review, the County Championship will not be shrunk. As well as pushback from the counties over the proposed drop from 14 to 10 games per season, this is also down to the upturn in fortunes of the England men’s Test team under Ben Stokes. Gould insisted that their run of 10 wins from 12 – plus two World Cup wins for the white-ball side – offers a different perspective to the mood that followed the 4-0 Ashes defeat in 2021/22. There was an acknowledgement that with the international game being squeezed by franchised Twenty20 leagues, remuneration for players must adapt. Gould suggested that increased match fees are coming, while stating that Rob Key, director of men’s cricket, will be allowed to offer multi-year central contracts. He said: “Rob knows it’s something he can use going forward. We don’t have a choice in this. If we don’t secure the best players the media rights will drop. The market changes but the one exception is the Indian Premier League .That’s gone in terms of a window. But we have to compete with the other [leagues].” | ['sport/ecb', 'sport/azeem-rafiq', 'sport/the-hundred', 'sport/cricket', 'sport/sport', 'sport/sport-politics', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/ali-martin', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/sport', 'theguardian/sport/news', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-sport'] | sport/ecb | UNRELATED_TO_CLIMATE | 2023-04-05T21:00:04Z | true | UNRELATED_TO_CLIMATE |
environment/2019/sep/19/australia-could-produce-200-of-energy-needs-from-renewables-by-2050-say-researchers | Australia could produce 200% of energy needs from renewables by 2050, researchers say | Australia could run entirely on renewable electricity and produce double what it needs to create a massive green export industry by 2050, leading experts say. A report from scientists working under the Australian-German Energy Transition Hub has examined the economic opportunities of decarbonisation over the coming decades. It finds that with the right policy support, Australia could become a global leader “both in climate mitigation and the export of zero-carbon energy” in the form of green hydrogen, green steel and other products such as aluminium produced from green electricity. The researchers examined six scenarios for the Australian economy ranging from the status quo – which considered only Australia’s existing climate and energy policies – to a “leadership + export” scenario, which assumed deep decarbonisation across sectors including electricity, transport and industry. Under the latter, renewables would produce 200% of Australia’s domestic electricity demand and supply a large export market. There would also be widespread electrification of transport, buildings, heat and industrial processes. But the researchers note that achieving this would require the world to move to a zero-carbon energy system. “A fundamental driver is the world essentially deciding to do something about climate change,” said Dylan McConnell, a researcher with the University of Melbourne and one of the report’s authors. “The demand for hydrogen is essentially predicated on deep decarbonisation around the world and in Australia.” But he said the research showed Australia could maintain its position as an energy “superpower” in a carbon-constrained world. “We’ve still got an energy competitive advantage, but instead of coal and gas, it’s wind and solar and lots of space,” McConnell said. Across the different models, the researchers found that the average system cost and electricity prices of a renewable-based system would be similar to or lower than those of today’s system. McConnell said they also found a renewable energy export industry would allow for greater scale of renewable energy projects and thereby lower average costs. Germany has said it expects to be importing green hydrogen as it moves to a net zero economy. It may also be a supplier of some of the technology required for producing those fuels, such as electrolysers for hydrogen. Green hydrogen is not yet cost-competitive with fossil fuel-intensive hydrogen and will require scaling up for that to change. But Falko Ueckerdt from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, another of the report’s authors, said this was possible. “If countries coordinate and agree that they want this and scale it up simultaneously, they can really create an industry around that that’s also competitive,” he said. | ['environment/renewableenergy', 'australia-news/energy-australia', 'australia-news/australia-news', 'environment/energy', 'environment/environment', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/lisa-cox', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/australia-news'] | environment/renewableenergy | ENERGY | 2019-09-19T04:29:50Z | true | ENERGY |
technology/askjack/2011/sep/08/cabling-house-broadband-tv-radio | Cabling a home for internet, TV and radio | Ask Jack | We're doing a load of work on the house and that gives me the opportunity to install an electronic infrastructure. The question is: should we install Ethernet and co-axial cabling, or just Ethernet? Inputs to the house will be FM, DAB, two satellite dishes, and broadband via BT landline. I'm installing Cat6 Ethernet network cable with a network switch in the cellar and sockets in every room where we could have TV and audio equipment. I'm installing the network (and the BT incoming cable) in 20mm flexible tubing so that the cabling can be upgraded at a later date (eg to fibre) if required. I'm also taking the co-ax feeds from the FM and DAB aerials, and from the two satellite dishes to the cellar, but I'm not sure what to do with these signals. Do I need to run co-ax to every place where I could have TV and audio equipment or will I be able to deliver the signals coming from co-ax sources to the TV and audio locations via the Ethernet network? Chris Wilson In the old days, you'd have installed a co-axial cable to distribute the audio and video signals to each room. At some time in the future, you might have an IP (Internet Protocol) network server that will distribute TV over Cat5e or Cat6 Ethernet cable to internet-capable smart TV sets. (Internet radio already offers far more choice and often better sound quality than the UK's antique DAB.) But at the moment, I think that either the future either doesn't work well enough, or costs too much, or both. I would therefore install at least two co-ax cables along with two Cat5e or Cat6 cables to each room where you want both TV and internet access (bearing in mind that, technically, FM/DAB should be should be 75 Ohm co-ax). As it happens, there is a relatively painless way to do multi-format wiring…. "Structured cabling" seems to be growing in popularity, particularly in the US. The basic idea is that you lay a single cable that contains multiple cables: typically two co-ax and two Cat5e cables. This makes the installation simpler and helps people not to worry about whether they have picked the right mix. Adding one or two of these "siamese cables" to your planned Cat6 cable would give you more capacity and more flexibility at (I hope) an affordable cost. There are a number of options available in the US, such as West Penn Wire HN5262. I had some trouble finding this kind of thing locally, but Ireland's Digital Plumbers offers MediaFlexcable (2 x Cat5e and 2 x CX100 Foam Filled Cable), and Cave Products offers what seems to be the same thing. Neither company quotes prices on the web. However, the best choice might be Structured Cable Products' HNC9, an American cable sold in the UK by Habitech. The market is confusing because the UK is different from the US, and because people don't always distinguish between the cable and the signal. Co-axial cables were installed in many US homes to carry cable TV and satellite signals, and both the Ethernet and Token-Ring business computer networks were originally designed to run over co-ax as well. That changed with the arrival of the 10BaseT standard, which enabled Ethernet to run over the much cheaper four-wire Cat cables that became ubiquitous in the 1990s. Most of us now call them "Ethernet cables". More recently, as the cost of copper has increased, good co-ax cables have become more expensive. However, some users (particularly in the CCTV industry) have found that they can use cheaper screened Cat5e cable to carry video instead, by soldering three RCA plugs to each end, and sometimes by adding Baluns. Meanwhile, Americans who had already installed co-ax cables found they could convert a TV port into an internet port by using a network bridge such as the Netgear MCAB1001 MoCA Coax-Ethernet Adapter Kit (contains "two MoCA Coax-Ethernet Adapters, two RG-6 Coax cables, two Ethernet cables, two power adapters, installation guide, and setup CD"). In sum, you can run Ethernet over co-axial cable and you can run video over Cat5e, but the signals are still different. People who are "running video over Ethernet" are usually running video over Cat5e cable, which isn't the same thing. If you decide to run video over Cat5e or Cat6, you can buy a distribution hub that looks like an Ethernet router. You will still have two separate networks, but they'll be using the same type of Cat5e cabling. This leads to the idea of installing lots of Cat5e (or Cat6) and deciding how to use it later. I don't really disagree with Vint Cerf's oft-quoted slogan for the internet: "Everything over IP, IP over everything." I also appreciate that there are plenty of point-to-point (or even multi-point) solutions that range from the old Windows Media Extenders and things like Slingbox through to network media servers. However, the simplest way to connect a video source to a TV set is to use a co-axial cable, and if they are in different rooms, to use a long cable. One day, this assertion may well be wrong, but I remain to be convinced that it's wrong today. | ['technology/askjack', 'technology/technology', 'tone/blog', 'technology/internet', 'technology/broadband', 'technology/television', 'technology/digital-music-and-audio', 'technology/digitalvideo', 'type/article', 'profile/jackschofield'] | technology/digitalvideo | UNRELATED_TO_CLIMATE | 2011-09-08T15:03:17Z | true | UNRELATED_TO_CLIMATE |
uk-news/2022/sep/17/i-was-told-i-was-a-complete-idiot-about-organic-farming-charles-said-in-last-speech-before-becoming-king | ‘I was told I was a complete idiot’ about organic farming, Charles said day before becoming king | King Charles III said he was thought of as a “complete idiot” for wanting to farm organically, but was proved right over his concerns about the impact of the use of antibiotics in conventional agriculture. At one of his last official engagements as Prince of Wales on the day before the Queen’s death, Charles talked about his longstanding concerns that the widespread use of antibiotics could lead to increased resistance in bugs and viruses. He said: “One of the reasons I went organic 40 years ago was because I felt there was an overuse of antibiotics. And I felt that if you overdo it, you end up with resistance. Anyway, that’s happened. I was told I was a complete idiot for even suggesting going organic.” The King farmed organically at Home Farm near his Highgrove residence in Gloucestershire, but in 2020 it was announced that he would not be renewing the lease as he prepared for greater royal responsibilities. He continues to farm organically at the Sandringham estate in Norfolk. Organic farming methods strictly limit the use of antibiotics. Speaking at a global allergy symposium at Dumfries House in Scotland, the King said he was concerned by expert evidence that western lifestyles may have contributed to the reported global increase in allergies. He said: “It seems to spread further and further as people take up a western lifestyle. And what’s so sad is that people are still are adopting this lifestyle when we’ve discovered what damage it has already been doing.” King Charles suggested he supported concerns that modern homes could be over-sanitised, potentially reducing exposure to microbes that can be beneficial to health. He said: “When I was small if I dropped my food on the floor I was encouraged to eat it. I was told ‘it was good clean dirt, it won’t harm you at all’. Now, it’s gone berserk, I think, the other way.” The meeting on 7 September is significant because it may have been the last occasion when Charles was willing to speak so candidly about his personal views. He said in an interview in 2018 that he would stop speaking out on topics he felt strongly about when he became king. Many environmentalists say the King has been vindicated on many of his warnings about the risk from plastic waste and “gasses pumped out by endless cars and aeroplanes”. Charles was just 21 when he made a landmark speech on the environment at a countryside conference in Cardiff in 1970. He warned presciently about the impact of pollution, gas emissions and overpopulation. He said: “When you think there are 55 million of us on this island using non-returnable bottles and indestructible plastic containers, it is not difficult to imagine the mountains of refuse that we shall have to deal with.” The allergy symposium was organised by the Natasha Allergy Research Foundation, which was set up by the parents of Natasha Ednan-Laperouse, who died in July 2016 after suffering an allergic reaction from a baguette containing sesame seeds. Charles said at the event that he would be keen for The Prince’s Foundation to develop a partnership with the allergy charity “because it fits with so many things I’ve tried to do and the messages I want to get across.” The charity described the offer of support as a “game-changer” for those who suffered from allergies. | ['uk/prince-charles', 'society/antibiotics', 'environment/organics', 'environment/farming', 'environment/environment', 'environment/ethical-living', 'uk/monarchy', 'uk/uk', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/jon-ungoed-thomas', 'publication/theobserver', 'theobserver/news', 'theobserver/news/uknews', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/observer-main'] | environment/farming | BIODIVERSITY | 2022-09-17T13:28:45Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
environment/2020/oct/08/earthshot-prize-prince-william-launches-50m-drive-to-repair-planet | Earthshot prize: Prince William launches £50m drive to repair planet | The Duke of Cambridge has announced that £50m will be awarded over 10 years through his Earthshot prize, billed as “the most prestigious global environment prize in history”, which aims to find solutions to repair the planet by 2030. Officially launching the prize, Prince William said he felt it was “my job and my responsibility” as the planet reached “tipping point” , and the next decade was “crucial”. Five £1m prizes will be awarded each year for the next 10 years, aiming to provide at least 50 solutions to some of the world’s environmental problems. William said he had been inspired by his father, Prince Charles, as well as the TV naturalist Sir David Attenborough, who is one of the judges of the prize. He admitted it was “certainly ambitious” and the prize had been 18 months in the making. “We felt that the one piece of the jigsaw that was maybe missing was positivity. “I felt very much that there’s a lot of people wanting to do many good things for the environment and what they need is a bit of a catalyst, a bit of hope, a bit of positivity that we can actually fix what’s being presented. “And I think that urgency with optimism really creates action. And so the Earthshot prize is really about harnessing that optimism and that urgency to find solutions to some of the world’s greatest environmental problems.” He added: “We believe this decade is one of the most crucial decades for the environment. And by 2030 we really hope to have made a huge stride in fixing some of the biggest problems on Earth.” “We must have some hope, we must have some optimism, because if we don’t it is all too much, it is very apocalyptic about things. These are grave times for the environment. But I do believe in human ingenuity, and I do believe in the younger generations speaking up as they are now, that they will not stand for this lack of hope.” Inspired by John F Kennedy’s ambitious “moonshot” lunar programme, the prize is centred on five “Earthshots” – simple but ambitious goals for the planet. These are: Protect and restore nature. Clean our air. Revive our oceans. Build a waste-free world. Fix our climate. Individuals, people-powered movements, businesses cities, and countries can be nominated for the prizes. The plan was to “harness our ingenuity and our ability to invent”, William said. Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, William said: “I feel right now, it’s my responsibility.” He added: “The key thing about the Earthshot prize is that positivity. It’s the idea we need to find solutions to be able to live our lives and enjoy our lives and not feel guilty and bad about some of the things we do. “That ultimately has to change, because I also worry from a mental health point of view, the anxiety and the worry that many of these younger generations are going to have. Hearing about what we’re talking about, it’s going to weigh on them. And they don’t to inherit a world that is full of doom and gloom.” He hopes the prize “reaches everyone around the world, from communities, schools, right up to banks, governments, corporations, anyone and everyone”. Attenborough told the Today programme: “There are simple things that can be done, which may sound crackpot, or a bit hole in the corner things, which really need impetus put behind them to get them done on a world scale. We want to know about those things. The prize will give them that strength, that financial impetus to spread and develop.” William has set up the prize through his Royal Foundation, taking advice from teams behind the Nobel prize and the Xprize. He believes it is unique, and he is bringing leading global figures and organisations onboard. Nominations for the first five £1m prizes will open on 1 November. More than 100 “nominators” have been selected from around the globe. The first five winners will be announced at a ceremony in London next year. The prize is supported by a global alliance of partnerships, including WWF and Greenpeace, and there are plans for it to have its own foundation by next year. Backers include the Aga Khan Development Network, Bloomberg Philanthropies, DP World in partnership with Dubai Expo 2020, and the Jack Ma Foundation. The prizes will be awarded by a council, a global team of high-profile leaders from the environmental, philanthropic, business, sporting and entertainment worlds. The 13 members include actor Cate Blanchett, singer Shakira, Queen Rania of Jordan, Japanese former astronaut Naoko Yamazaki, Brazilian footballer Dani Alves, basketball star Yao Ming and Attenborough. Blanchett said that “all around the world, science and community-based initiatives are leading to ground-breaking inventions and solutions”, and the prize aimed to “refocus the narrative on climate change to one of hope and action”. Shakira said: “Your children, my children – they have to find ways to reduce carbon emissions, to repair our oceans, to clean the air. So we need young minds to be informed and invested, which is why education is so important. But we can’t just stand still. We have to lead the way and we have to do it now.” Queen Rania said: “When our backs are against the wall, humanity has a knack for coming together to find innovative solutions.” Alves said: “It’s the most important power in the world – nature. If you give it good things then nature gives good things back to you. We’re going to make a good team.” To mark the launch, a series of five short films will be released bringing each Earthshot to life. Produced by world-leading wildlife filmmakers Silverback Films, the films are narrated by young climate activists including Bindi and Robert Irwin, the children of the late Steve Irwin, the Australian wildlife expert and TV personality. | ['environment/environment', 'uk/prince-william', 'uk/monarchy', 'uk/uk', 'world/world', 'environment/conservation', 'environment/air-pollution', 'environment/oceans', 'environment/waste', 'environment/climate-crisis', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'environment/earthshot-prize', 'profile/carolinedavies', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/topstories', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-environment'] | environment/waste | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE | 2020-10-08T09:49:26Z | true | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE |
environment/article/2024/aug/22/jail-term-for-climate-protester-77-is-disproportionate-says-carla-denyer | Jail term for climate protester, 77, is disproportionate, says Carla Denyer | A 20-month prison sentence handed to a 77-year-old woman for a climate protest on the M25 is disproportionate, unjust and a waste of resources, the Green MP Carla Denyer has said. In a letter to Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, Denyer called the jailing of Gaie Delap three weeks ago “an example of an ongoing and serious problem with disproportionate sentencing for climate activists”. Delap, from Bristol, was sent to prison three weeks ago for her part in a campaign of disruptive protests on the M25 in November 2022. Denyer, recently elected as the MP for Bristol Central, said she had “deep concern” over the “disproportionate sentence” given to her constituent, whose actions were “entirely peaceful and nonviolent and designed to draw attention to the threat posed by the climate emergency”. Pointing out that Delap’s protest was intended to force the government’s hand into a ban on new fossil fuel exploration in the North Sea, Denyer added: “As you will be aware, your government has rightly opted not to issue new licences, meaning that Gaie and her fellow protesters have been jailed for advocating for a position aligning with Labour’s own plans. “So whilst I am encouraged that your government has taken this step towards protecting the environment, Gaie’s disproportionate sentencing neither constitutes justice nor is necessary as a means of discouraging participation in further action to stop new oil and gas extraction.” Delap was among several dozen Just Stop Oil supporters who, during a four-day protest campaign, climbed gantries over the M25, which encircles London, forcing police to stop traffic and leaving an estimated 709,000 drivers stuck in tailbacks. Five campaigners identified as ringleaders were jailed last month for a total of 21 years over the protests. Trials of more alleged ringleaders and gantry climbers are scheduled for the coming months. Denyer said the “desperation” that drove Delap to take part in action over the climate was “shared by many, both in my own constituency and nationally” and was “completely understandable”. “I’d also argue that the substantial cost of Gaie’s custodial sentence is a waste of resources,” Denyer added. “At a time when government departments are facing further cuts and the prison estate is so overcrowded that some offenders are being released early, imprisoning a peaceful climate protester such as Gaie represents an unnecessary drain on public funds and ill-judged use of limited prison capacity.” The Home Office has been contacted for comment. | ['environment/just-stop-oil', 'uk/uk', 'environment/environment', 'politics/green-party', 'politics/politics', 'politics/carla-denyer', 'law/sentencing', 'law/criminal-justice', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/damien-gayle', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/uknews', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-environment'] | environment/just-stop-oil | CLIMATE_ACTIVISM | 2024-08-22T14:11:04Z | true | CLIMATE_ACTIVISM |
world/2005/jan/27/tsunami2004.internationalaidanddevelopment25 | The social worker (Sweden) | Lotta Polfeldt, 55, is a clinical social worker with Save The Children in Stockholm I've worked with bereaved children since 1994. We know that more than 10 children in the Stockholm area have both parents missing, and more are missing one parent, or a sibling, or a parent and a sibling. In the case of one family - two boys and their father, the mother is missing. The father wanted me and the boys to meet. They don't need support now, but the father thinks they might need help later. The father said there was very little hope they would find their mother alive, but of course they're always clinging to what little hope there is. And you could see the boys' hope was much stronger than the father's, because they're children, and they said: "I'm sure they'll find her, they've got to find her." They're not grieving for a lost mother. They're hoping a lost mother will be found. When that time comes, or the mother will be found dead, or when the family decides all hope is gone - that's when they start grieving. The boys have also got the traumatic experience of witnessing the tsunami to deal with. It's very hard for them, when they start thinking about what happened, and how they were caught in the waves, and how they were injured, and how they were carried by Thai people who got them to safe areas, they get very emotional. I spent an afternoon working on our demand to the government that they organise regional bereavement services for children across the country. | ['world/tsunami2004', 'global-development/global-development', 'world/world', 'type/article', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/g2', 'theguardian/g2/features'] | world/tsunami2004 | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2005-01-27T10:15:34Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
environment/2021/sep/06/uk-urged-to-back-sale-of-artificial-meat-to-tackle-climate-crisis | UK urged to expand meat alternative sales to tackle climate crisis | The UK should back the development and sale of artificial meat to tackle the climate crisis, a thinktank report says, calling for the government to encourage the consumption of “alternative proteins” that do not come from animals. The report, from the Social Market Foundation, also points to a wide array of benefits to supporting alternative proteins, including opening up a green export opportunity for British businesses, reducing the risk of zoonotic diseases and improving animal welfare. Raising cows, sheep and chickens contributes significantly to carbon emissions, with animal agriculture accounting for 14.5% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. The official Committee on Climate Change has said the amount of meat people eat in the UK needs to be brought down by more than a third by 2050. While meat consumption has reduced in recent years, it is not falling quickly enough. The UK today consumes only 6% less meat per capita in the home than in 1974. Last year, a coalition of the UK’s health professions called for a climate tax to be imposed on food with a heavy environmental impact by 2025. “The rapid expansion of the alternative protein market offers a way to reduce meat consumption through consumer choice,” the report notes. “A thriving alternative protein sector is likely to be a condition for winning consent for any future interventions designed to reduce meat consumption. Without adequate alternative product offerings, the contested issue of a future ‘meat tax’ could be met with resentment.” The SMF warned that the UK’s needed to increase its commitment to support new alternative protein research, which is currently at £90m, or risk being left behind a global race to develop alternatives to meat. Linus Pardoe, an SMF research associate and the paper’s author, said: “A greener world will mean eating less meat, but politicians cannot expect consumers to easily stomach a tax which raises the price of meat. Early skirmishes suggest a so-called ‘meat tax’ could descend into an unconstructive cultural debate. “A better solution would be to help consumers transition to more sustainable dietary habits by expanding the range of alternative protein products on the market. We can only expect consumers to switch from eating meat if product offerings are high-quality, affordable and easily accessible. “The government can help deliver a thriving alternative protein market by providing funding for a new research cluster and strategic support for the industry. The global race for alternative proteins is on and the UK should be leading the charge.” | ['environment/meat-industry', 'environment/food', 'environment/farming', 'environment/climate-crisis', 'environment/environment', 'uk/uk', 'lifeandstyle/vegetarianism', 'lifeandstyle/veganism', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/aamna-mohdin', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-home-news'] | environment/farming | BIODIVERSITY | 2021-09-05T23:01:05Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
environment/2013/nov/29/arctic-30-prisoner-alex-harris-interview | Arctic 30 prisoners sent messages to each other on pipes, says Alex Harris | British Greenpeace activist Alex Harris has described how she and fellow Arctic 30 protesters held in a Russian prison managed to communicate with each other by tapping out messages on a pipe. Harris, from Exeter, said she was terrified during her time in the Murmansk jail. "I didn't know where my friends were, what was going on, no one could speak English and I couldn't communicate with anyone. I couldn't sleep, it was horrible," she said. But the 27-year-old said the group of 28 Greenpeace activists and two journalists devised coded messages that "kept her going" during the 23 hours a day she spent alone in her cell. She said: "There was a radiator pipe that ran all the way through the prison. So we got out a pen or a spoon and tapped on it. "One tap was A, two taps was B, and three taps was C. Sometimes it would take 10 minutes to say something and someone would go, 'Please repeat' and you'd go, 'Oh no!'." Harris was among 30 people onboard the Greenpeace ship Arctic Sunrise arrested in September when activists tried to scale an offshore oil rig in the Russian Arctic owned by the energy giant Gazprom. Russian authorities initially charged the group with piracy, which carries a maximum sentence of 15 years' imprisonment. Harris told the BBC: "The girls and I were chatting one day and saying we can't even have children any more." Harris said she experienced moments of panic, especially when the detainees were moved to a jail in St Petersburg because she was scared of "the unknown". All the protesters have been released on bail, but all face possible trial on charges of hooliganism, which has a maximum penalty of seven years. Harris said she did not regret her decision to join Arctic Sunrise. She did not blame Greenpeace because, she said, no one could have predicted what happened. She rejected the suggestion that the Greenpeace protesters should have taken greater care following the imprisonment of the Pussy Riot activists. She said: "I never compared myself to Pussy Riot because they were protesting against the Russian regime and we were protesting about oil." | ['environment/arctic-30-protesters', 'environment/greenpeace', 'environment/activism', 'environment/environment', 'world/russia', 'world/protest', 'world/world', 'tone/news', 'type/article', 'profile/davidbatty', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/uknews'] | environment/activism | CLIMATE_ACTIVISM | 2013-11-29T01:20:33Z | true | CLIMATE_ACTIVISM |
commentisfree/2020/dec/12/talk-is-cheap-when-it-comes-to-climate-action-now-the-government-must-deliver | Talk is cheap when it comes to climate action. Now the government must deliver | Matthew Pennycook | The coronavirus pandemic and the jobs crisis it has precipitated are rightly consuming our immediate attention. Meanwhile, the climate and environment emergency has not gone away. These intersecting crises demand urgent and coordinated action. When it comes to averting catastrophic global heating, the science is unequivocal: bold action is required, and it is required now. As the UN has warned, limiting warming to 1.5C requires “far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society” for which “the next few years are probably the most important in our history”. Viewed in that existential context, both the UK’s 2050 net zero emissions target and the government’s new 2030 target are the absolute minimum that we should aim for. Cognisant of the accelerating nature of the climate crisis, the Labour party seeks to go further and faster, and it remains our firm ambition to achieve the substantial majority of the UK’s emissions reductions by the end of this decisive decade. But while Labour will continue to make the case for the highest possible ambition, we must also hold the government to account on its existing targets. This week’s landmark report by the Climate Change Committee (CCC) highlights just how challenging those targets are. It set out in exhaustive detail both the scale of the task ahead and the sweeping changes necessary in every sector of the economy. According to the CCC, to reach net zero by 2050, not only will our power system have to be fully decarbonised within the next 15 years, but rapid progress will have to be made in sectors such as transport and housing, where the impact on people will be much more acute with “every new car and van, and every replacement boiler” required to be zero-carbon by the early 2030s. Yet the report also demonstrates that the transition to a low-carbon economy is both entirely feasible and, if managed correctly, hugely beneficial – not only opening up significant new industrial opportunities but also promising hundreds of thousands of decent jobs in every nation and region, cheaper bills, warmer homes, and a host of other health and environmental benefits. And with the estimated costs of decarbonisation continuing to fall, it makes a convincing case that there are net gains for our economy that will offset upfront investment over the long term. Of course, these benefits will only materialise if the government delivers on its promises. To judge solely on the basis of Boris Johnson’s rhetoric, one would be forgiven for thinking the government he leads is firmly on track to net zero. Yet as things stand, not only is it way off track to meet the legally binding target, but the government’s own projections indicate that it’s not even on track to meet the less ambitious one that preceded it. We need a step change in delivery. Achieving net zero is going to require a major nationwide investment programme, one that is government led and frontloaded. That’s precisely why Labour recently challenged the government to bring forward an ambitious stimulus package geared towards decarbonisation, in order to fight the twin crises of unemployment and climate breakdown by supporting the creation of up to 400,000 new low-carbon jobs in every region of the country over the next 18 months. Yet the government has shown little appetite for acting decisively to close the net-zero investment gap. The prime minister’s recent 10-point climate package contained just £3bn of new money – half the amount the Tories have funnelled into overseas fossil fuel projects in the last decade. With no new green investment whatsoever in the spending review, it is now clear the chancellor has broken his commitment to “a green recovery, with concern for our environment at its heart”. But as well as investment, delivering net zero also requires the government to urgently bring forward a clear, credible and comprehensive strategy. Given the necessary pace of change, the public will rightly demand to know how ministers are going to help millions of families move from gas boilers to clean heating systems or cover the upfront costs of electric vehicles. They are owed answers to those and many other questions as soon as possible. The public will also want to know that any strategy for net zero has fairness at its heart. It is imperative that decarbonisation in the decades ahead avoids the mistakes of deindustrialisation in the 1980s. That is why Labour is determined to fight for a green industrial revolution: one that properly supports people and places through the transition, that actively involves individuals and their communities in the process, that ensures that the benefits of green investment are realised here at home and shared across all nations and regions, and that tackles entrenched inequalities. Doing so is not only morally right; it’s the only way to sustain public support as we make the shift to a low-carbon economy. Announcing targets is easy; achieving them is the hard part. To date the government has been long on aspiration but short on tangible progress. As the host of the critical COP26 UN climate summit next year, the UK had a duty to raise its climate ambition, and at today’s climate ambition summit it needs to persuade others to do the same; but the government now needs to move beyond the talk and demonstrate to the world that it has the policies and the political will to deliver on that ambition. • Matthew Pennycook is shadow minister for climate change | ['commentisfree/commentisfree', 'environment/climate-crisis', 'environment/environment', 'science/scienceofclimatechange', 'science/science', 'politics/politics', 'uk/uk', 'environment/carbon-emissions', 'type/article', 'tone/comment', 'profile/matthew-pennycook', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-opinion'] | environment/carbon-emissions | EMISSIONS | 2020-12-12T10:00:34Z | true | EMISSIONS |
environment/2022/aug/12/weather-tracker-deadly-floods-in-south-korea-and-drought-in-china | Weather tracker: deadly floods in South Korea and drought in China | Extreme flooding in South Korea this week submerged streets, cars and buildings, as torrential downpours brought more than a month’s worth of rainfall in the space of a few days. Between Monday and Wednesday a cumulative total of 525mm – a little over 20 inches – was recorded in Seoul. At least nine people are confirmed to have died from the floods and many more are reported injured or missing. High rainfall rates and flooding during the monsoon season in South Korea is common, with average rainfall of up to 10mm a day and 250mm in the month of August. However, this week rainfall accumulations far exceeded these typical conditions. We can expect to see continued extreme flooding scenarios into the future as average temperatures across the Korean peninsula have increased by about 1.7C since 1912. The warmer air is able to hold more moisture and therefore there will be more frequent and intense rainfall events. East Asia has also been subject to extreme heat over the past week, particularly affecting China. The temperature at Shanghai’s Xujiahui station reached 40.1C on Thursday. Since records began in 1873 there have been 20 instances of temperatures surpassing 40C in Shanghai, six of which have occurred in 2022. In addition to the extreme heat across China, drought is becoming an increasing problem, in particular for the Yangtze River basin, which comprises a fifth of the total area of China and contains a third of China’s population. As of July, the basin had seen 40% only of the rainfall it had during the same period last year, with some places seeing 20 consecutive days without any measurable rainfall. Water levels in the main flow of the river are about 5 metres lower than this time last year. Drought is affecting 830,000 people, along with large areas of farmland. Throughout next week the basin is likely to see very little or any rain at all, with intense heat dominating and the drought worsening. | ['environment/series/weather-tracker', 'environment/flooding', 'world/south-korea', 'environment/drought', 'world/extreme-weather', 'world/china', 'environment/environment', 'world/asia-pacific', 'world/world', 'type/article', 'tone/analysis', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/weather2', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-weather'] | environment/flooding | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2022-08-12T07:00:06Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
politics/2020/sep/07/sadiq-khan-faces-calls-from-labour-to-scrap-silvertown-road-tunnel | Sadiq Khan faces calls from Labour to scrap Silvertown road tunnel | The shadow minister for climate change has called on the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, to abandon his plans for a new four-lane road tunnel under the Thames. Matthew Pennycook, who is also a local MP, said there was still time for the Labour mayor to reverse the plans for the £1.2bn Silvertown tunnel project, which is opposed by environmentalists, climate scientists and many local residents. “There is time to think again,” said Pennycook. “Serious works have not started and the financial situation at TfL [Transport for London] may lead to a reassessment of the project’s viability.” Opponents of the scheme say it will be environmentally destructive, undermining efforts to clean up the capital’s polluted air as well as the mayor’s wider green targets – with dire consequences for some of London’s most vulnerable citizens. Pennycook was appointed by Keir Starmer to the climate change role and is MP for Greenwich and Woolwich, the location of the tunnel’s southern entrance. Along with another local MP, Lyn Brown, he has written to Khan outlining their objections and urging the mayor to review the project. “Green transport must be the future for our city,” they state in the letter. “That means a focus not on road-building but on large-scale investment in adapted public transport, ensuring more frequent and reliable bus and rail services; and measures to significantly boost walking and cycling.” They add that the “perilous state” of Transport for London finances “is reason enough to review the case for embarking on a major capital project of this scale, particularly given that the future health and prosperity of our city is more and more dependent on us reducing our reliance on cars”. In June, a report from the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, backed by some of the UK’s leading climate scientists, found the Silvertown tunnel was incompatible with the Greater London Authority’s aim to become carbon-neutral by 2030. Campaigners insist the plans are fatally flawed and will be environmentally destructive, bringing no economic benefit. In a sign of the growing opposition to the scheme, Extinction Rebellion activists staged an anti-Silvertown tunnel protest last week, carrying posters demanding: “Community not cars,” and vowing to make the plans a key issue during next year’s mayoral elections. A spokesperson for Khan defended the scheme, saying it was essential to improve river crossings in east London. “A new tunnel at Silvertown is important because the existing infrastructure is both antiquated and worn out, and it will be funded by a toll, not TfL cash. “Crucially, the tunnel will provide a public-transport-focused river crossing with improved bus links across the Thames.” They added that the combination of introducing tolls on both the existing Blackwall tunnel and at Silvertown, as well as the extension of the ultra-low emission zone from 2021, would “play a crucial role in tackling congestion and improving air quality”. | ['politics/sadiq-khan', 'politics/politics', 'uk/uk', 'uk/london', 'environment/air-pollution', 'world/road-transport', 'environment/pollution', 'environment/environment', 'politics/labour', 'politics/london', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/matthewtaylor', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/uknews', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-home-news'] | environment/pollution | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE | 2020-09-07T06:00:46Z | true | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE |
business/2020/jan/20/greenpeace-hits-out-at-davos-banks-for-14tn-climate-hypocrisy | Greenpeace hits out at Davos banks for $1.4tn climate hypocrisy | The world’s leading financial institutions have been accused of hypocrisy over the climate emergency, after providing significant support for the fossil fuel industry over the last five years. A report by Greenpeace, the environmental group, highlights that 24 banks which regularly attend the World Economic Forum in Davos have provided $1.4tn (£1.1tn) of financial support for the hydrocarbon sector since the Paris agreement set new emissions reduction goals in 2015. The financial cooperation with fossil fuel firms includes loans, debt underwriting, equity issuances and direct investment. The report, called It’s the Finance Sector, Stupid, also shows how some major insurers and pension funds that flock to Davos each year are key supporters of polluting industries such as coal. The data was compiled from BankTrack, an organisation that monitors the financial sector. It shows that JP Morgan, the Wall Street investment bank, has provided $195bn of financial support to fossil fuel companies since 2015. JP Morgan declined to comment on the report. Jennifer Morgan, Greenpeace International’s executive director, said the WEF’s mission statement is to “improve the state of the world” but the banks cited in the campaign group’s report are falling short of this goal. “The banks, insurers and pension funds here at Davos are culpable for the climate emergency. Despite environmental and economic warnings, they’re fuelling another global financial crisis by propping up the fossil fuel industry,” said Morgan. “These money men at Davos are nothing short of hypocrites as they say they want to save the planet but are actually killing it for short-term profit.” Ten top banks provided around $1tn of the financial aid for fossil fuel firms, the report said. They are JP Morgan Chase, Citi, Bank of America, RBC Royal Bank, Barclays, MUFG, TD Bank, Scotiabank, Mizuho and Morgan Stanley. A Barclays spokesperson said: “We recognise that climate change is one of the greatest challenges facing the world today, and are determined to do all we can to support the transition to a low-carbon economy, while also ensuring that global energy needs continue to be met. In 2018 we facilitated £27.3bn in social and environmental financing across our business including green bonds and renewable financing.” Greenpeace is also concerned that three major pension funds — the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and PensionDanmark — hold investments worth at least $26bn in major fossil fuel companies. Some financial companies have made encouraging noises about addressing the climate emergency, after seeing rising public concern and an escalation in extreme weather events. They cite initiatives such as green bonds, and a UN-backed “principles of responsible banking” initiative. Last week, asset manager BlackRock announced it would put sustainability at the heart of its active investment model. The announcement represented a major shift for the world’s biggest fund manager, although BlackRock’s huge “passive” investment arm will continue to invest in fossil fuel firms through tracked funds, for example. Vincent Manier of ENGIE Impact, which advises companies on sustainability goals, said he believed investors will be forced to take the issue more seriously. “What we can take away from BlackRock’s move is that investors that don’t integrate climate risk assessments into their overall portfolio management processes are not capturing the full risk profile of their investments. The onus is on companies to demonstrate that they have a holistic understanding of all risks facing their business, disclose them and are developing plans to mitigate those risks,” Manier said. The climate emergency is a major issue at Davos this year. Klaus Schwabb, WEF’s founder, has written to attendees asking them to make their companies carbon neutral by 2050 at the latest. Climate activists are demanding faster progress. Greta Thunberg, who speaks at Davos on Tuesday, is pushing global leaders to end the “madness” of huge ongoing investments in fossil fuel exploration and enormous subsidies for coal, oil and gas use. | ['business/banking', 'business/davos-2020', 'business/davos', 'environment/greenpeace', 'environment/climate-crisis', 'world/world', 'environment/environment', 'business/business', 'environment/activism', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/graemewearden', 'profile/kalyeena-makortoff', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/financial3', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-business'] | environment/activism | CLIMATE_ACTIVISM | 2020-01-20T23:01:39Z | true | CLIMATE_ACTIVISM |
environment/southern-crossroads/2013/may/17/australia-carbon-price-labor-polling | Australia's 'unpopular' carbon price isn't to blame for Labor's poor polling | Alexander White | Since the disappointment of Copenhagen in 2009, Australia has witnessed a concerted scare campaign against action on global warming. The scare campaign has been led by senior commentators in (Murdoch owned) News Limited papers, by conservative radio shock-jocks on the airwaves, and in parliament by extremist opposition party leader Tony Abbott. From the moment Australia's carbon pricing legislation package, the Clean Energy Future Act, was announced Tony Abbott has barnstormed from one end of Australia to another, declaring a "blood oath" that repealing the carbon price would be his first priority if elected: "I am giving you the most definite commitment any politician can give that this tax will go. This is a pledge in blood." Behind this incendiary phrase is Abbott's own climate change policy, a mishmash of ineffective handouts to industry to "clean up" polluting power stations and industrial plants, a tree-planting program, investment in bio-char, and token efforts towards energy efficiency. Collectively, these programs are termed "direct action", which can be boiled down, in the words of shadow minister Malcolm Turnbull, to the Liberal Party's sop to the climate change deniers in their ranks: If the theory of climate change was proved to be nonsense, then obviously there would be no point in cutting emissions at all. If the rest of the world ultimately resolved to do nothing then we would very likely be better off spending the resources available on adaptation - moving to higher ground and so on. The fact remains that the direct action policy, which aims to reach the same 5% carbon emission reductions as Labor's carbon price, is mostly a mishmash of unanswered questions and wishful thinking. Viciousness and personal attacks have characterised the blood oath carbon price repeal campaign. Abbott and other senior conservative front-bench MPs have spoken at rallies where posters and banners have depicted Prime Minister Julia Gillard as a "witch" and a "bitch". Tony Abbott, for a time, defended conservative radio host Alan Jones for claiming at a Liberal Party fundraiser that Gillard's father "died of shame". Independent MP, Tony Windsor, who voted for the carbon price, received death threats. Unsurprisingly, over the past three years public support for the Gillard government has declined to record low levels. Many in the media, and some within the government, blame the introduction of the carbon price for the low polling numbers. Unfortunately, these claims don't stack up. The graph below shows the decline in the two-party polling for Labor, matched alongside the total support and oppose polling for the carbon price. The polling figures are from Essential Report, a fortnightly Australian poll. Prime Minister Gillard announced the carbon price in February 2011, after winning the election the previous August. By this stage, the fall in the government's polling numbers is already visible. The Clean Energy Bill passed through the lower house in October 2011 and the Senate in November. The carbon price came into effect the following year from 1 July 2012. In this time, support for the carbon price dropped to rock bottom and opposition sky-rocketed. Despite a massive pro-carbon price campaign run by Australia's environment movement, Tony Abbott's "blood oath" scare tactics won out through 2011 (although as is clear, his personal approval suffered). Something happened after 1 July 2012 however. The apocalyptic predictions made by Tony Abbott did not come to pass. The sky didn't fall. Mining and manufacturing towns weren't wiped off the map. Regional airlines didn't double their prices. The carbon price wrecking ball, python strike and cobra squeeze has not impacted Australia's interest rates, employment levels or inflation. Support for the carbon price, and opposition to it, narrowed and equalised. What didn't happen was an increase in Labor's vote. Throughout 2011 and 2012, while the carbon price's stocks fell, Labor's also remained low. From 1 July 2012, the two numbers decoupled. Labor's polling remained stuck, while opposition to the carbon price declined and support increased. This month, we passed an unprecedented milestone: global carbon levels exceeded levels not seen in over 3 million years. The carbon price in Australia has contributed to a 10-year low in carbon emissions. Few in Australia have noticed either turning point. Meanwhile, conservative state governments have quietly been dismantling carbon reduction policies established by the previous Labor governments, wilfully ignoring warnings by the scientific community of the risks. It is unlikely that the election will be fought on climate change, or that Tony Abbott will follow through on his threat to make the election a referendum on the carbon price. If Tony Abbott does win the Australian election on 14 September, he has announced he will do everything he can to abolish the carbon price, which would Australia the only nation in the world to remove carbon pricing laws. No doubt, an Abbott-led Australia will accelerate exports of fossil fuels, but it remains to be seen if he can dismantle the carbon price. | ['environment/southern-crossroads', 'environment/environment', 'tone/blog', 'environment/carbon-tax', 'environment/emissionstrading', 'australia-news/australia-news', 'world/world', 'australia-news/tony-abbott', 'world/julia-gillard', 'environment/series/guardian-environment-blogs', 'type/article', 'profile/alexander-white'] | environment/carbon-tax | CLIMATE_POLICY | 2013-05-17T04:00:00Z | true | CLIMATE_POLICY |
environment/2008/apr/24/recycling.waste | UK's first nappy recycling plant | Britain is to get its first disposable nappy recycling plant, which will convert the mountain of waste which goes into landfill every day into plastic, cladding and roof tiles. Knowaste, a Canadian company which recycles nappies and other products in the US, plans to invest more than £20m in the UK plant over five years. The facility, earmarked for Tyseley, Birmingham, will enable the recycling of around 30,000 tonnes of nappies, about 4% of Britain's nappy waste a year, and aims to eventually recycle up to 13%. A European directive has set targets to reduce the amount of waste sent to landfill by 2010 and local authorities face a spiralling landfill tax bill as the Treasury has agreed to increase the current rate of £32 a tonne each year until at least 2010/11. Knowaste, which has signed a contract with the Midlands collection company Alpha, will initially process nappies, bedliners and incontinence products from commercial sources such as hospitals and nurseries, but plans to eventually target the domestic market. About 750,000 tonnes of nappy waste is thought to be created in the UK each year, enough to fill eight Wembley stadiums. Environmental groups such as the Women's Environmental Network and the Real Nappy Campaign argue that recycling is not the solution to the landfill problem, and urge a change in consumer behaviour to reduce waste. | ['environment/recycling', 'environment/waste', 'environment/ethical-living', 'environment/pollution', 'environment/environment', 'uk/uk', 'type/article', 'profile/karenmcveigh', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/uknews'] | environment/recycling | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE | 2008-04-24T08:25:35Z | true | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE |
politics/2010/sep/10/caroline-lucas-job-sharing | Caroline Lucas to call for job sharing MPs | Caroline Lucas, the leader of the Green party, will today call for job shares for MPs as a measure to open up politics for women. Lucas, who made history this year by becoming the first Green candidate to be elected to parliament, will float the policy on the opening day of the party's annual conference in Birmingham. She will argue that job sharing will also allow MPs to retain stronger ties with their constituencies. In her first party conference speech since becoming MP for Brighton Pavilion, Lucas will seize on her electoral win to urge the party to seek to capture voters disillusioned by mainstream parties by developing cutting edge ideas. Lucas wrested the seat from Labour at the election by shaking off the Green's single-issue image and emphasising policies on social justice and the economy in an appeal to the left. She will tell delegates today that the deal struck by the Lib Dems with the Conservatives presents the party with a chance to attract disaffected Liberal Democrat voters. The party needs to stick to its traditional mix of radical and pragmatist policies to "influence" the political debate and build its membership base, currently 11,500 strong, she will say. "It needs discipline to get the balance right", she will say, arguing that the party should continue to battle for ideas that may attract the scorn of the rightwing press, such as the proposal to introduce job-sharing to the Commons to make parliament more accessible for women. "I'd like to see the law changed to allow candidates for parliament stand as job shares," she will say. "Nothing would do more to open up politics to women. Now I know the Daily Mail and the rest of them will pour scorn on the idea and say its ideas like that which make us unelectable." Speaking ahead of her conference speech, Lucas described the job sharing plan as "incredibly sensible". She told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "How many times have people talked about career politicians, about politicians being out of touch with reality. If you had job-sharing MPs what that would allow you to do is to keep MPs with a foot in their community, they could keep their caring responsibilities, they could keep voluntary work, they could continue part-time in their profession. It would enable far more women to get into politics." She said the context of draconian cuts pushed by the coalition government gave the Greens a "real opportunity" to attract those committed to fairness. "Anybody who had one scintilla of thought that the Lib Dems might be the party of fairness have now had that illusion completely shattered. And I think what we see now is a sense that there is a voice that is needed in politics that is standing up for genuine fairness. Lucas will tell delegates that the party's presence in parliament will require the Greens to improve its decision-making process to enable it to develop policy across the spectrum. "At Westminster, at the mother of parliaments, I discover, there are no mechanisms to abstain. So each vote forces us to take a position, and if we are honest, some of these are areas where conference may not have a fully developed position." | ['politics/caroline-lucas', 'politics/politics', 'politics/green-party', 'environment/green-politics', 'politics/women', 'uk/uk', 'tone/news', 'type/article', 'profile/helenemulholland'] | environment/green-politics | CLIMATE_POLICY | 2010-09-10T09:24:26Z | true | CLIMATE_POLICY |
technology/2015/oct/13/hoverboards-legalised-california | 'Hoverboards' made legal in California | California has passed legislation to allow use of electric skateboards and other motorised, wheeled devices such as “hoverboards” anywhere bicycles are allowed, reversing earlier legislation which banned the vehicles. The bill was signed into law on Sunday, the same day that London’s Metropolitan police service restated earlier guidance that hoverboards are banned from the British capital’s roads and pavements. The Californian law, which takes effect on 1 January 2016, undoes a previous ban on motorised skateboards dating from the 1970s, enacted when the motors were petrol-powered. The new law, named AB 604, defines “electrically motorised boards” as a new legal category (characterised by moving no faster than 20mph, carrying only one person, and being no bigger than 60 by 18 inches), and allows people to ride them on public streets. It also requires the rider to wear a helmet, and bans use of while under the influence of drink or drugs. The bill does leave it open for individual localities to decide to ban the use of the devices in their own area. The bill is specifically aimed at legalising electric skateboards, manufactured by a number of Californian companies including Boosted, ZBoard and Intuitive Motion. But it also legalises other devices which match the description, including the popular “hoverboards” (or “self-balancing scooters”). As in Britain, the lack of legal clarity hasn’t stopped the devices taking off. While some manufacturers had complained of lost sales (with the Wall Street Journal reporting that “some [Intuitive Motion] customers cancelled their orders when they learned it wasn’t legal to ride the boards”), the devices are increasingly common on city streets. The legislation does nothing for hoverboard owners who want to ride their gadgets on private land, however. Landowners still have the right to bar use of the devices, meaning that Wiz Khalifa – whose scuffle in LAX airport in August over his hoverboard is widely seen as ground zero of the current craze – would still have had trouble even under the new law. | ['technology/technology', 'technology/gadgets', 'politics/transport', 'us-news/california', 'travel/travel', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/alex-hern'] | technology/gadgets | UNRELATED_TO_CLIMATE | 2015-10-13T12:00:56Z | true | UNRELATED_TO_CLIMATE |
us-news/2022/aug/29/california-valley-fever-disease-climate-crisis | ‘It took everything’: the disease that can be contracted by breathing California’s air | The illness that would change Rob Purdie’s life started with a headache, a terrible pain that began around New Year’s 2012 and stayed for months. It was only after several trips to urgent care facilities, multiple doctors and incorrect diagnoses – everything from sinus infections to cluster headaches – he learned what was wrong with him. The Bakersfield, California, resident had meningitis caused by Valley fever, a disease that comes from Coccidioides, a fungus endemic to the soil of the US south-west. Years of debilitating illness, struggles finding effective treatments and other hardships followed. “It took everything – my health,” Purdie said. “It had a huge impact on my family. We lost everything, all our financial security, all our retirement.” The father of two is among the small percentage of people who develop serious forms of Valley fever – most people don’t get sick after exposure and very few have severe symptoms. But for those who develop the chronic form of the disease, it can be devastating. Valley fever is increasing in California’s Central Valley, as it has for years, and experts say that in the future cases could rise across the American west as the climate crisis renders the landscape drier and hotter. Kern county, located just north of Los Angeles at the end of the Central Valley, has reported a substantial increase over the last decade. The county, where Purdie lives, documented about 1,000 cases in 2014. In 2021, there were more than 3,000 cases, according to public health data. Feeding off the climate crisis Testing and awareness of Valley fever has improved in recent years, and at the same time the county has grown, leading to more cases. But there has also been a significant growth in the illness, said Dr Royce Johnson, the medical director of the Valley Fever Institute in Bakersfield. “There’s enormously more Valley fever now. I can tell that just from the work,” Johnson said. “We think most of that has to do with climate and weather.” The fungus that causes Valley fever needs hot and dry conditions to survive, which the US south-west provides, said Morgan Gorris, an earth system scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory who has studied the relationship between climate crisis and Valley fever, or coccidioidomycosis. “Much of the western US is very dry already. When we look at projections of climate change it’s expected that the western half of the US will continue to remain pretty dry and that’s going to continue to support Valley fever,” said Gorris. The fungus grows in the dirt as a filament, Johnson said, that segments and breaks off and becomes airborne when disturbed, traveling as far as 75 miles – it has even infected sea otters. People can become exposed to Valley fever by digging in undisturbed soil or simply by breathing. “Somebody that lives in Long Beach and drives to the Bay Area and has their window rolled down on the 5 can get Valley fever,” Johnson said. “If you’re doing an archaeological dig in the foothills west of [Bakersfield] you can … you’re basically standing on top of it.” People who work outdoors are thought to be at greater risk. Last summer, seven firefighters who responded to fires around the Tehachapi mountains, south-east of Bakersfield, experienced respiratory illness. Three were diagnosed with Valley fever, according to an article published by the CDC. About 40% of people develop a respiratory illness that can be very mild, according to Johnson, and 1% have more severe outcomes. Most people won’t become ill after exposure to the fungus, and of those who do, experts estimate very few actually receive a Valley fever diagnosis. In the US, primarily in Arizona and California, there were roughly 20,000 cases of Valley fever reported to the CDC in 2019 and an average of about 200 associated deaths each year from 1999 to 2019, according to the most recent data available. Research authored by Gorris and others has shown that the climate crisis could expand the areas in which Valley fever is found. In a high greenhouse gas emissions climate warming scenario, the area endemic to Valley fever expanded farther north, reaching the US-Canadian border by 2100, Gorris said of the research. Under a more moderate scenario with less warming and fewer emissions, there is less northward expansion of the disease, she said. “Mitigating climate change could mitigate the health effects of Valley fever,” she said. “It’s important to understand that it’s not just doom and gloom.” In California, as the climate shifts to more intense periods of rainfall and then subsequent dry seasons, conditions in which Valley fever thrives, there could be more cases, she added. Raising awareness Purdie became sick after such a period, a wet year followed by dry weather, he recalls. At the time, he lived on a few acres on the outskirts of Bakersfield where he frequently spent time outdoors. Valley fever threw his life into disarray. Purdie, who was then a financial planner, struggled to work and had to sell treasured family mementoes to support his family as he sought to get a hold on the illness. He was eventually able to find the right treatment, which requires four pills a day and medication administered directly into his brain every 16 weeks. It’s a difficult treatment that causes him severe vomiting, sometimes to the point of nearly passing out. Purdie sometimes struggles to interact with people and carry on conversations. But he’s become an advocate for Valley fever awareness and has been able to resume working again. He works for the Valley Fever Institute as a patient and program development coordinator. “I have a really severe form of Valley fever,” he said. “The disease can be very terrifying and very debilitating. But I don’t want people to be afraid of it. I want people to be aware of it.” | ['us-news/california', 'us-news/climate-crisis-in-the-american-west', 'society/health', 'environment/climate-crisis', 'us-news/us-news', 'type/article', 'tone/features', 'profile/dani-anguiano', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/west-coast-news'] | us-news/climate-crisis-in-the-american-west | GLOBAL_CRISIS | 2022-08-29T10:00:23Z | true | GLOBAL_CRISIS |
environment/2016/dec/11/windfarm-in-barnaby-joyces-nsw-electorate-gets-120m-cefc-loan | Windfarm in Barnaby Joyce's NSW electorate gets $120m CEFC loan | The Clean Energy Finance Corporation has made a multi-million dollar loan for a new windfarm in Barnaby Joyce’s electorate. It comes three months after Joyce slammed the South Australian government’s over-reliance on wind power, and linked SA’s damaging September blackout on the state’s lack of coal-fired baseload power. The new Sapphire windfarm will become the largest in NSW, powering 110,000 average homes and abating 600,000 tonnes of carbon emissions a year, with 75 wind turbines. The CEFC says its $120m loan will send an important signal to the industry that large-scale greenfield renewable energy assets can still get financing, despite the policy uncertainty emanating from Canberra. “In order to achieve Australia’s renewable energy target, we need to see the accelerated development of many more large-scale renewable energy projects in the near term,” CEFC wind sector lead, Andrew Gardner, said. Australia’s chief scientist, Dr Alan Finkel, warned last week that investment in the electricity sector had stalled because of “policy instability and uncertainty”. Over the weekend, the Australian Financial Review reported the pioneering Australian wave-power company Carnegie Wave Energy was planning to build its first commercial wave plant in Cornwall, England, because the climate policy chaos in Australia was too much. Carnegie is a former recipient of a $20m loan from the CEFC in 2014. The loan was the CEFC’s first wave-energy investment. The new Sapphire windfarm, worth $588m, will be located between Glen Innes and Inverell in the New England region of northern NSW, in Joyce’s electorate. It will produce a daily maximum 270 megawatts of electricity, 100 megawatts of which have been contracted to the ACT government to help the government meet its 100% renewable energy target by 2020. The windfarm developer is CWP Renewables, the same outfit behind the Boco Rock windfarm in southern NSW. In September, on the morning after damaging storms caused South Australia’s statewide blackout, Barnaby Joyce, during three separate interviews, argued the state had become too reliant on renewable energy, wind in particular. His comments were contradicted by the environment minister, Josh Frydenberg, who said repeatedly the blackout was caused by severe weather and was not linked to renewables. The storm had torn more than 2o separate transmission towers from the ground. In April, in the lead-up to the federal election campaign, Joyce had promoted a different windfarm in his electorate to send a pro-renewable message to voters to combat his political opponent, Tony Windsor. He said his electorate would be home to the largest windfarm in NSW, helping to broaden the local economy as part of a strategic plan. Besides the CEFC’s $120m direct loan, the balance of the windfarm’s $588m debt package has been provided through EKF, Denmark’s export credit agency, the Commonwealth Bank of Australia and Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation. ANZ Financial Advisory managed the debt raise and Norton Rose was the legal advisor to the project. | ['environment/windpower', 'environment/renewableenergy', 'australia-news/australia-news', 'australia-news/new-south-wales', 'australia-news/barnaby-joyce', 'australia-news/australian-politics', 'environment/energy', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'australia-news/energy-australia', 'profile/gareth-hutchens', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/australia-news'] | environment/windpower | ENERGY | 2016-12-11T17:00:32Z | true | ENERGY |
commentisfree/2019/nov/22/coldplay-if-any-band-can-do-a-tour-the-right-way-its-them | Coldplay: one vital step for sorting out their carbon footprint | Rebecca Nicholson | Coldplay fans are bereft at the prospect of being unable to see the band’s new double album Everyday Life performed out in the wild, after Chris Martin told the BBC that they would not be touring it. Instead, the band will spend the next year or two figuring out how best to put on a “sustainable” and “actively beneficial” live experience that places environmental concerns above scale and convenience, addressing the climate-ravaging issues of flying and single-use plastic, for example, in the live music industry. The future they imagine is a para-, para-, paradi... oh, never mind. In an era that sees celebrities criticised for speaking out about the climate emergency, then strung up again for flying to do so, of course it is Coldplay who are putting their money where their mouths are. I will not hear a word said against Coldplay. When actors use tear sticks to help them cry during emotional scenes, I wonder why they don’t just pipe in Fix You on a loop instead. Coldplay’s later career has pulled off the impressive feat of bringing the aesthetic of a decades-old semi-illegal world music festival in the Midlands to a global audience. Chris Martin is a superstar, a stadium frontman who clearly loves being on stage in front of thousands, even though he carries the vibe of a GCSE drama teacher who can’t stop talking about his Monday night reiki course. I love Coldplay. I don’t see how anyone can fail to love Coldplay. Coldplay’s vast money mountain should make the prospect of not touring an album a little easier on the financial front, even though playing shows is one of the only ways left for most musicians to make a living from music. As a result, it will be tougher for performers at a lower level to follow their example. However, Martin has already thought of that. “I think it is a question of just accepting that you have to do your best, not to be over-zealous in criticising others because everyone will catch up if you prove it is easy to do the right way,” he said. He’s the Elon Musk of carbon-neutral touring. Basically, trust him, he’s got this. One of the biggest issues, when it comes to live concerts, is the audience. We are a huge part of the problem, comprising a significant proportion of a tour’s carbon footprint by simply making our way to the show. I like watching live music and so I want Coldplay to fix this. Here’s an idea to get them started. If Chris Martin stopped making guest appearances during literally everyone’s sets at Glastonbury, it might just be enough of a cut to save us all. Dolly Parton: country queen unites the States Christmas has come early for Dolly Parton fans. Thanks to Netflix’s exuberant policy of commissioning absolutely loads of stuff, it has served up Dolly Parton’s Heartstrings, eight really long episodes of drama, each adapted from a Parton song, with the source material of course including Down From Dover and Jolene (but sadly not Baby, I’m Burning – maybe season two?). Parton introduces each one ,casing the entire endeavour in a retro jacket, and while it is predictably schmaltzy and spectacularly drawn out – these are stories taken from minutes-long songs, after all –it does offer the TV movie comfort of a Sunday afternoon under a blanket. Better, though, is Dolly Parton’s America, the podcast hosted by Radiolab’s Jad Abumrad, which has been exploring how Parton unites a divided country. Abumrad has spent time with Parton, a notoriously charming but ungiving interviewee, and has spun it into gold as bright as her smile by speaking to family, friends, colleagues and, crucially, those most affected by her music. The episode on her “Dollitics” expertly pulled apart the union anthem 9 to 5, while Jolene got an instalment of its own, and it is brilliant, informative and just about as entertaining as the legend herself. The Vivienne: no drag paying the licence fee for this show Congratulations to The Vivienne, the deserving winner of the inaugural RuPaul’s Drag Race UK, who walked away with the kind of underwhelming prizes that only the BBC could offer with a straight face: three badges and the promise of a “digital series” with the show’s producers. Given the budgetary restraints, you’d be forgiven for thinking that might end up being an Instagram story, perhaps, at a push, a YouTube video. But no. The production company has already announced two follow-up series: The Vivienne Takes Hollywood and Morning T&T, which pairs the winner with her fellow finalist Baga Chipz, and has them reprising their Trump and Thatcher impersonations for a spoof talkshow. The Vivienne was the perfect reality TV contestant and the inevitable winner. She started strong, coasted at the top, dipped to the bottom, learned her lesson, then got her game back right when it counted. She had a serious, sympathetic backstory and she went on that crucial journey. The only disappointment was the lack of surprise, because she’d been the clear frontrunner since episode one. As a longtime Drag Race viewer, the format had been flagging. It started to feel like there were more series than RuPaul has had birthdays and, as a result, it was in danger of becoming too meta, more about the show than the people on it, with contestants constantly referring to previous contestants, the cultural touchstones eating themselves. Drag Race UK has been a crude, smutty, utterly British defibrillator that has given it all a new lease of life. Its contestants were mucky, its drag more disruptive than one might have predicted and it provided one of the sweetest TV moments of the year, when Cheryl (formerly) Cole met her namesake Cheryl Hole. Now that’s the kind of wholesome family entertainment I want my licence fee to fund. • Rebecca Nicholson is an Observer columnist | ['commentisfree/series/names-in-the-news', 'music/coldplay', 'tone/comment', 'music/music', 'commentisfree/commentisfree', 'environment/ethical-living', 'business/musicindustry', 'environment/climate-crisis', 'environment/environment', 'environment/carbonfootprints', 'music/dolly-parton', 'tv-and-radio/rupaul', 'type/article', 'profile/rebeccanicholson', 'publication/theobserver', 'theobserver/news', 'theobserver/news/comment', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/observer-comment'] | environment/carbonfootprints | EMISSIONS | 2019-11-24T05:59:00Z | true | EMISSIONS |
environment/2013/oct/09/great-barrier-reef-plan-qld | Competing visions for future of the Great Barrier Reef up for debate | Environmentalists and the mining industry have set out competing visions for the future of the Great Barrier Reef ahead of a summit that will aim to set Queensland’s priorities for the next 30 years. The Queensland Plan, an initiative of the state government, will be finalised at a two-day meeting in Brisbane starting on Wednesday. More than 600 delegates from a range of community and business groups are attending the gathering. The plan, which the government said would help “define a long-term vision” for the state, has received more than 78,000 submissions from members of the public and special interest groups. The government said the top five priorities identified from the consultation were: creating a stronger sense of community cohesion; strengthening Queensland’s economy; community health and wellbeing; balancing the economy with the environment; and strengthening regions. The environment is set to be a major issue of debate during the summit, with 69% of public respondents and 72% of group respondents referencing it. Conservation organisation WWF said in its submission that the government needed to do more to secure the long-term viability of the Great Barrier Reef, which may be listed as “in danger” by the UN next year due to the impact of coastal development and variable water quality. “Queenslanders want a healthy reef in 30 years and that goes beyond just enjoying corals, sea turtles and dolphins – it’s vital for the economy too,” Sean Hoobin, WWF spokesman, told Guardian Australia. “Half the reef has disappeared in the past 30 years and we’re keen for the government to focus on that. People are very concerned about the environment, it’s an issue everyone seems to agree on, we just differ on how to come up with a solution.” Hoobin said that the Queensland government’s repeated references to “balancing” the economy with the environment needed to end. “Balance is an ambiguous word that implies a trade-off where the environment is the loser,” he said. “We need to throw that word out and look for win-win solutions that can protect the environment and grow the economy.” Hoobin said that there could be common ground to work with the mining industry, adding: “We see the mining industry as a huge part of the solution. We want to see them manage the reef well but also invest in the health of the reef, so that when they are gone after the boom ends, we still have a healthy environment, as well as tourism and fishing industries.” In its submission, the Queensland Resources Council (QRC), the peak body for mining in the state, said that the industry could continue to drive economic activity as well as being “responsible” with the environment. The QRC also stated that it would like to see other industries – in the government-defined “four pillar” economy – take the weight off mining in the future. “If we can get government policy settings right, then by simply keeping pace with growing global demand for resource commodities we will see the real value of resource production in Queensland triple to more than $100bn by 2040,” said Michael Roche, chief executive of the QRC. “Our vision also means building a legacy for Queenslanders beyond our state's rich minerals and energy endowment, a legacy of sustainable, leading technologies and energy efficiency. “The QRC vision is also perfectly aligned with the community's aspirations for development that balances economic prosperity and protection of the natural environment. A case in point is the resources sector's commitment to a healthy co-existence with the world heritage values of the iconic Great Barrier Reef.” The Queensland Plan process will cost $4.6m and, according to the state premier, Campbell Newman, will be put to the Queensland parliament next year. | ['environment/great-barrier-reef', 'australia-news/australia-news', 'environment/environment', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/oliver-milman'] | environment/great-barrier-reef | BIODIVERSITY | 2013-10-09T03:57:05Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
world/2022/aug/06/strikes-at-ukrainian-nuclear-plant-alarming-says-un-watchdog-chief | Strikes at Ukrainian nuclear plant ‘alarming’, says UN watchdog chief | The UN nuclear watchdog has called for an immediate end to all military action near Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant after it was hit by shelling, causing one of the reactors to shut down and creating a “very real risk of a nuclear disaster”. Rafael Mariano Grossi, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said he was “extremely concerned” by reports of damage at the plant and called for IAEA experts to be allowed to inspect the damage. “I’m extremely concerned by the shelling yesterday at Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, which underlines the very real risk of a nuclear disaster that could threaten public health and the environment in Ukraine and beyond,” he said. The Ukrainian nuclear power company Energoatom said the attack had damaged a power cable and forced one of the reactors to stop working, and that “there are still risks of leaking hydrogen and radioactive substances, and the risk of fire is also high”. The shelling “has caused a serious risk for the safe operation of the plant”, Grossi said. “Military action jeopardising the safety and security of the nuclear power plant is completely unacceptable and must be avoided at all costs. Any military firepower directed at or from the facility would amount to playing with fire, with potentially catastrophic consequences.” Kyiv accuses Russian troops of storing heavy weapons at the plant, which they seized in March and continue to occupy. Moscow, in turn, has accused Ukrainian forces of targeting it. Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in his nightly address on Saturday, once again accused Moscow of terrorism, saying, “Russian terrorists became the first in the world to use the power plant... for terror”. The European Union’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell, condemned the attack “as a serious and irresponsible breach of nuclear safety rules and another example of Russia’s disregard for international norms”. Grossi called for an IAEA team of safety, security and safeguards experts, led by himself, to be allowed to visit the plant. The EU criticised Russia over “military activities” around the plant. “The EU condemns Russia’s military activities around Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant,” Borrell, the EU foreign affairs chief, said. “This is a serious and irresponsible breach of nuclear safety rules and another example of Russia’s disregard for international norms.” | ['world/ukraine', 'world/iaea', 'world/russia', 'environment/nuclearpower', 'environment/energy', 'world/europe-news', 'world/unitednations', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/davidconnett', 'publication/theobserver', 'theobserver/news', 'theobserver/news/uknews', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-foreign'] | environment/nuclearpower | ENERGY | 2022-08-06T18:18:42Z | true | ENERGY |
world/2019/aug/26/weatherwatch-2018-heatwave-europe-uk-people-praying-for-rain | Weatherwatch: 2018 heatwave left people praying for rain | Last year brought the summer of the heatwave. As Britain baked in sunshine, the England men’s football team even managed to reach a World Cup semi-final. But while temperatures in Britain remained just the right side of uncomfortably hot, much of Europe experienced serious extremes, in the continent’s warmest August on record. And far from being confined to the area around the Mediterranean, even Scandinavia had worryingly hot weather. The heatwave was part of a wider rise in temperatures across much of the northern hemisphere. Specifically, it was the result of the north Atlantic jet stream being weaker than usual, which meant the regular arrival of low-pressure systems from the west was blocked, so high-pressure systems with warm, sunny weather stayed in place for weeks on end. At first, Europeans mostly enjoyed the heat – especially in the north, where summers can be comparatively dismal. But as time went on, with no relief from the searing sunshine, the mood changed. For the first time in decades – perhaps since the drought of 1976 – people were praying for rain. The heatwave eventually broke in early September, with unsettled weather arriving from the west. For some, it was too late. In July, wildfires broke out along the coast south of Athens, killing more than 100 people. | ['world/extreme-weather', 'news/series/weatherwatch', 'uk/weather', 'world/europe-news', '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 | 2019-08-26T20:30:48Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
environment/2015/mar/19/arctic-sea-ice-extent-hits-record-low-for-winter-maximum | Arctic sea ice extent hits record low for winter maximum | Arctic sea ice has hit a record low for its maximum extent in winter, which scientists said was a result of climate change and abnormal weather patterns. The US National Snow and Ice Data Centre (NSIDC) said on Thursday that at its peak the ice covered just over 14.5m sq km of the northern seas. This was 130,000 sq km smaller than the previous lowest maximum in 2011. The peak occurred on 25 February, which the NSIDC’s senior research scientist Ted Scambos said was “very early but not unprecedented”. Climate change is driving declining ice coverage in the Arctic, with a recent study finding it has also become significantly thinner, down 65% since 1975. Scambos said northern oceans have progressively warmed because of climate change. This winter, the warmer seas combined with mild weather to create exceptionally poor conditions for the annual freeze. “[The record low extent] is significant, in that it shows that the Arctic is being seriously impacted by our warming climate,” said Scambos. “In general, sea ice retreat has proceeded faster than modelling expects in the Arctic, although models are catching up.” Bob Ward, at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at LSE, said: “This is further evidence that global warming and its impacts have not stopped despite the inaccurate and misleading claims of climate change ‘sceptics’. “Over the past few weeks, there has been an increase in the amount of misinformation from climate change ‘sceptics’ in the UK and elsewhere which is intended to mislead the public and policy-makers into believing that the effects of global warming on the polar regions are absent or negligible.” The most pronounced deviation from the 1981-2010 average cover was in the Bering and Okhotsk seas in the northern Pacific. There, the ice edge was 100-200km further north than in a normal year. After March the summer thaw will begin, with the ice retreating towards its summer minimum, which usually occurs in September. The summer ice cover in the Arctic is also on a long-term decline, although Scambos says a low winter maximum does not necessarily indicate a low minimum is on the way. The loss of ice from the Arctic has raised questions over when the region will experience its first ice-free summer. Scambos said he expects the summer minimum to dip below 1m sq km (386,100 sq miles) within the next 15 years. At this stage, he said, the Arctic will be profoundly changed. “A less than 1m sq km summer would mean that the north pole would be open water, that a broad seaway would exist north of Siberia and that major ecosystems and fauna would be severely impacted. My own guess is that we will reach this level around 2030.” The absence of sea ice and abnormally mild weather affects communities and wildlife in the Arctic circle, which are adapted to extreme conditions. In Svalbard, Kim Holmén, the international director of the Norwegian Polar Institute, said the fjords there remained unfrozen and instead of the normal snowfall the island experienced rain which froze when it hit the ground. “Much of Svalbard is covered with ice on land, which is a fatal state for the reindeer. When the landscape is covered by ice they can’t move around and they can’t eat.” Too much ice on the land and none in the sea has also made life difficult for the 2,600 people who live on Svalbard. “This iced landscape is miserable to travel across on your snowmobile and your skis,” said Holmén. “We can’t ride our snowmobiles across the fjord so there are places where people want to go that they can’t go. We have had tragic events with avalanches. Living in Svalbard we’ve always had avalanches but we’ve had one casualty this winter. Some of the risks are changing because we have more icing events.” He said this type of weather is expected to become normal under a changing climate. “This winter is an example of what we believe will become more common and has profound influence on the reindeer and the ptarmigan [a species of bird] and other creatures that roam the land,” he said. This week, on the opposite side of the Arctic Ocean, Alaska’s Iditarod sled race was forced to shift its start 362km (225 miles) further north due to a lack of snow. This has only happened once before in the race’s 43-year history, in 2003. Meanwhile, the NSIDC said ice floes surrounding Antarctica reached a relatively high summer minimum on 20 February. The extent of ice was 1.38m sq km, the fourth largest on record. Antarctic sea ice has confounded some scientific modelling by growing in recent years. There are several theories why the extent of the ice is growing despite a general warming trend across the southern continent. “This is a matter of considerable debate,” said Scambos. “The important thing to say is that the Antarctic is most definitely seeing the effects of warming and circulation changes – it is participating in ‘global warming’ in its own way. There are several effects in play. Primarily it seems that increased strength in low-pressure areas near the Ross and Weddell seas are pushing ice outward from the continent.” | ['environment/sea-ice', 'environment/poles', 'environment/environment', 'world/arctic', 'environment/climate-crisis', 'science/scienceofclimatechange', 'science/science', 'world/world', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/karl-mathiesen', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/uknews'] | environment/sea-ice | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2015-03-19T18:07:25Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
uk-news/2021/feb/10/eviction-of-euston-tunnel-hs2-protesters-can-continue-judge-rules | Eviction of Euston tunnel HS2 protesters can continue, judge rules | A high court judge has ruled against a call to halt the eviction of protesters from a tunnel beside Euston Square on grounds of safety. Seven people are currently occupying the tunnel, in order to raise awareness both of the climate emergency, and the damage they say is being done by HS2. Mrs Justice Steyn rejected the claim by Dr Larch Maxey, the protester who brought the case, that the eviction by HS2’s contractors High Court Enforcement was not being handled safely and in compliance with human rights obligations. It emerged during the hearing that the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) had twice asked HS2 contractors to stop evicting climate activists from a tunnel in central London because of its concerns about the way it was being carried out. The evictions had been halted at its request, and then restarted. In her judgment, Steyn described the tunnel as “poorly constructed and liable to collapse”. She rejected the protesters’ various concerns and accepted the responses and reassurances provided by HS2 in response to concerns raised by the protesters’ tunnel expert Peter Faulding that High Court Enforcement lacked specialist experience and equipment to carry out the eviction. She also rejected concerns about a lack of planning for the eviction and accepted HS2’s evidence that it had drawn up detailed risk assessments before embarking on the tunnel eviction. She rejected requests from the tunnellers that HS2 should provide them with sufficient food and water, saying in her judgment: “They are not detained or stuck in the tunnel; they are choosing to remain there as trespassers.” She also rejected a request for Faulding to be granted access to the tunnel site to conduct a safety assessment. HS2’s counsel Saira Sheikh QC told the court the HSE was satisfied, and that “they keep visiting the site and have raised no concerns whatsoever with our work”, but the HSE’s counsel Alistair Mills put forward different evidence. Mills said the HSE had insisted on improvements at the eviction site and was “prepared to take further action as necessary”. He added: “It [the HSE] has required work to stop on two occasions backed up by the threat of enforcement. Work did indeed stop.” Mills later clarified that quote and said: “The word ‘threat’ was not used.” Further explaining the HSE’s concerns, Mills said: “They felt they had not seen a risk assessment and method statements and a rescue plan regarding how they were going to undertake the works. The National Eviction Team [the team employed by High Court Enforcement to carry out the eviction] said they were planning to do work that night. HSE said it was necessary to have suitable emergency rescue arrangements. HSE requested that they stopped the work that had been planned for the night to break through from their shaft to the protesters’ shaft. HSE said you can either stop voluntarily or they would serve a prohibition notice. “High Court Enforcement then appointed a company called Mines Rescue to be on the eviction site the whole time the tunnel eviction work is under way.” After the high court ruling, an HS2 spokesperson said: “The decision of the court today is utterly unambiguous: that HS2 Ltd is carrying out the eviction correctly and that the illegal trespassers are breaking the law and should remove themselves from the tunnel immediately. We urge Dr Maxey to comply with the order as soon as possible – for his safety and the safety of the other activists and the HS2 and emergency personnel tasked with removing the illegal trespassers.” HS2 has been awarded full costs and Maxey has been ordered to pay them. A spokesperson for the tunnel protesters condemned HS2 for seeking costs against Maxey. They said: “They are attempting to financially ruin Dr Larch Maxey, a conscientious and altruistic man putting himself through enormous personal hardship in service to others.” The site of a second central London tunnel protest organised by environmental activists who were raising concerns about the felling of six mature trees for a development of council and private housing, has been cleared of protesters. One protester occupied a tunnel built on a site at Highbury Corner on Tuesday but was removed by police after several hours and arrested. A second protester was arrested after being removed from one of the trees on the site. Greens4HS2, a collection of members of the Green party who support the controversial HS2 rail project, has launched a new campaign website to challenge the party’s position on the scheme. The website, hs2.green, details the group’s positions and how it sees HS2 as a core part of a low-carbon future for British transport. Some of those protesting against the HS2 development are Green party members. | ['uk/hs2', 'uk/rail-transport', 'uk/transport', 'uk/uk', 'world/protest', 'environment/activism', 'environment/environment', 'uk/london', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/dianetaylor', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/uknews'] | environment/activism | CLIMATE_ACTIVISM | 2021-02-10T16:58:04Z | true | CLIMATE_ACTIVISM |
world/2020/jun/02/assam-oil-well-still-leaking-gas-one-week-after-blowout | Assam oil well still leaking gas one week after blowout | An oil well in the Indian state of Assam is still leaking gas “uncontrollably” after a blowout a week ago that it is feared has killed endangered river dolphins and birds and forced 2,500 people to evacuate their homes. For days authorities have failed to plug the leak from the well in the village of Baghjan after the incident on 27 May. The blowout – an uncontrolled release of oil and gas due to the failure of pressure control systems – sent a fountain of crude oil into the air, “unleashing a hell”, according to local accounts. A continuous spray of cold water is being used to cool the leaking natural gas to prevent it igniting and causing an explosion. As the impact spread, the National Disaster Response Force was called in and about 2,500 people have been taken to relief camps. According to Oil India Limited (OIL), which operates the well, gas was still flowing uncontrollably from the leak on Tuesday. The company has called in foreign experts in an attempt to get the leak under control, but locals and environmental activists say that untold damage has already been done to the rare biodiversity of the area, as well as to essential local agriculture. Baghjan village, where the rig is located, sits next to the protected Dibru Saikhowa national park and Maguri Beel wetlands, which is home to dozens of species of migratory birds, rare wildlife and aquatic species. However, the rivers running into the wetlands are said to have become contaminated from the explosion, with the residue from the oil spill sitting on the surface of the water, leading to the poisoning and suffocation of aquatic species. At least one critically endangered Gangetic river dolphin has been found dead in the nearby river, its outer skin scaly and peeling, and locals fear there are other carcasses in less accessible locations. Several endangered birds and fish have also been found dead, and a sticky layer of oil has formed on the leaves of the trees in the national park. “The company [OIL] has failed in every aspect,” said Niranta Gohain, an environmental activist from the area. Gohain accused the company of safety lapses and said the blowout had “erased a humbly balanced rural economy”. There has also been a high human cost. Locals have complained of headaches, burning eyes and nasal passages and respiratory problems since the rig blowout. Many families in the surrounding area also rely on fishing in the rivers, now feared contaminated, for their food and livelihoods, and livestock such as chickens have already been found dead. The Baghjan gas leak is the latest in a series of industrial disasters in India. Less than a month ago a factory in Andhra Pradesh state exploded, leaking toxic gas into the air and killing 12 people. India’s top environmental court this week blamed “gross human failure” and lack of basic safety norms for the incident. Environmentalists said the oil rig explosion also exposed the environmental risk posed by allowing rigs to operate so close to protected areas of biodiversity. Just last month, OIL were given permission to drill in seven locations in Dibru Saikhowa national park. Following an inspection of the blowout site on Sunday, OIL’s chairman and managing director Sushil Chandra Mishra told reporters: “Our focus is on providing relief to the people affected by the accident at the time of Covid-19 while trying to bring the operations back to normal.” A statement from OIL said the company was “awaiting the observations and findings of the district administration, forest department, pollution control board so that all necessary steps can be taken”. | ['world/india', 'environment/oil', 'environment/environment', 'world/world', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/hannah-ellis-petersen', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/australia-foreign'] | environment/oil | ENERGY | 2020-06-02T12:29:50Z | true | ENERGY |
australia-news/2017/jan/06/green-prawn-imports-suspended-amid-white-spot-diseas-outbreak | Green prawn imports suspended amid white spot disease outbreak | The importation of green prawns into Australia will be suspended after an outbreak of white spot disease in Queensland, the federal agriculture minister, Barnaby Joyce, has announced. The federal government had taken action against a major prawn importer on Friday after the disease was detected in Queensland, Joyce said. The virus is highly contagious and lethal, killing prawns quickly. It has the potential to devastate the industry but does not pose a risk to humans. In December it was revealed that wild prawns taken from the Logan river south of Brisbane in November, had tested positive to the disease, along with prawns from three of the region’s eight land-based farms. It was a blow to the industry before the Christmas sales period. Bans on prawn and crab fishing in the Logan river were put in place while eradication efforts occurred. On Friday Joyce said white spot disease had now been detected in imported green prawns being sold in shops for human consumption. “That, for me, is a huge concern,” he told ABC News 24. “People have a tendency to use them as bait. It means they get into the waterways, it means it can infect prawn farms.” The government had suspended the importation of green prawns into Australia to try to get on top of the outbreak, he said, and the rights of one major prawn business to import had been revoked. “We are also investigating a number of other prawn importers because there is the suspicion that they have not followed the proper protocols, which is the law of the land on how you import prawns into this country. “We are making sure all and sundry are aware of the process, and now we are doing everything in our power to make sure we deal with this and try and nip this in the bud.” Infected farms are being chlorinated. An outbreak of white spot disease in Darwin in 2000 was successfully overcome using similar measures. Dragging of rivers in Darwin during the current outbreak had revealed the virus there in four out of 6,000 prawns tested, Joyce said, but the numbers were too small for its spread to be viable there. “Nonetheless, it is a major concern,” he said. He urged those buying prawns not to put them in a waterway or use them as bait. Cooking the prawns killed the white spot, he said. Those farms affected in Queensland represented a significant, $25m chunk of Australia’s prawn industry. Joyce would not speculate how long those farms might be quarantined for. “It has the capacity to devastate the industry,” he said. “You can lose up to half your prawns. We don’t want that.” The president of the Queensland Seafood Industry Association, Kevin Reibel, said the importation of green prawns should have been banned long ago. The industry had been calling for a ban before the current white spot outbreak because of the risk the disease posed. While it was too early to say what had led to the outbreak in Queensland farms, he said – and he did not want to get involved in a “blame game” –Reibel questioned why a ban had not been placed on imports as a precaution from the moment the disease was detected locally. He said the virus was devastating for those farmers affected. “When you consider the money spent getting them to harvest size and stage and now they’ll have to destroy them,” he said. But Reibel stopped short of calling on the government to compensate farmers. “Commercial fishermen get no compensation due to floods and bad weather if they can’t go out, and so if there is compensation it should be applied across the board,” he said. “If there is an issue in cane, bananas or pineapples governments seem to look after them, but when it comes to fishing, there is a reluctance to compensate. I’m not saying they shouldn’t compensate prawn farmers, but what about others in the fishing sector when they are affected?” | ['australia-news/queensland', 'food/seafood', 'food/food', 'environment/farming', 'environment/environment', 'australia-news/barnaby-joyce', 'australia-news/australian-politics', 'australia-news/australia-news', 'environment/wildlife', 'environment/fishing', 'environment/food', 'environment/marine-life', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/melissa-davey', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/australia-news'] | environment/marine-life | BIODIVERSITY | 2017-01-06T02:30:44Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
environment/2022/oct/05/canada-dead-salmon-drought-british-columbia | Thousands of salmon found dead as Canada drought dries out river | Tens of thousands of dead wild salmon scattered along a creek bed are the latest casualty of a drought that has gripped the province of British Columbia for more than a month and left communities bracing for more devastation. In a video clip posted to social media, the carcasses of pink and chum salmon are seen piled near the community of Bella Bella. “It’s just devastating to see this happen. River levels [are] low everywhere right now – not just in Heiltsuk territory. This drought is coast-wide right now,” William Housty, conservation manager with the Heiltsuk Nation, told the Guardian. “We see pre-spawn mortality on [an] annual basis. But never to this degree.” The video was taken last week by German researcher Sarah Mund, who joined a crew on a stream walk to gauge the health and size of salmon populations returning to spawn. Wild salmon typically wait for rains as their signal to journey up creeks and rivers – an indicator that water levels will rise and provide easier passage to natal streams. Housty says a brief afternoon rain 10 days ago, coupled with a high tide, gave the salmon a false signal to start. No more rain came and the creek dried up, leaving the fish stranded. “We’ve had one afternoon of rain in more than a month,” he said. “Without the rain and tide, I suspect a many of those salmon would have likely been holding [in the ocean] and waiting. They haven’t had enough time adjust to the reality of this drought.” One biologist estimated there were 65,000 dead salmon in the creek bed – more than 70% of which failed to spawn. The life cycle of wild Pacific salmon means they inevitably die after travelling up winding creeks and streams. But their remains, consumed and redistributed by scavenging bears, wolves and birds, provide valuable nutrients for the forest. Housty says the deaths come at a time when the community had been optimistic about the recovery of both pink and chum populations. The coaster waters of the Heiltsuk have long home to healthy chum populations, but those numbers have declined in recent years, part of a broader collapse of wild salmon. “It’s heartbreaking to see this. It really felt like we were turning the corner on their recovery,” Housty says. British Columbia’s western coasts have seen little rain over the past five weeks and several regions are in drought level four, which the province says will probably lead to socioeconomic and ecosystem impacts. “It’s something we have to keep monitoring. I hope this is a rare event,” said Housty. “But we need to be prepared to help the salmon when possible, in any way we can, to avoid something like this again.” | ['environment/drought', 'environment/environment', 'environment/fish', 'world/canada', 'world/americas', 'world/world', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/leyland-cecco', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/us-foreign'] | environment/drought | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2022-10-05T18:09:29Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
sustainable-business/2014/oct/20/inspections-garment-factories-bangladesh-fashion-business-accord-alliance | Inspections are not enough to fix garment factories in Bangladesh | In his blog last week, Alan Roberts, executive director international operations at the Accord on Fire and Building Safety, outlined the progress made by the Accord so far. More than 175 primarily European brands and retailers joined the Accord, while 26 US and Canadian companies joined a second group, the Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety. Both initiatives are bringing companies together in an unprecedented collaboration to address common challenges of worker safety in the Bangladesh garment sector following the Rana Plaza factory collapse in Bangladesh last year. The Accord has invested considerable resources into inspecting factories that are the principal suppliers to its members. The Alliance has undertaken a parallel exercise and the two initiatives have now completed inspections of nearly 1,700 factories. The breadth, scope, and speed of these inspections represent a significant accomplishment. In the absence of effective government oversight, brands and retailers are taking greater responsibility for fire and building safety. Roberts highlights that the Accord’s inspections have identified more than 80,000 safety hazards. In 33 factories, safety issues are so serious that the Accord and the Alliance have recommended that production be suspended because of the risk to workers. This is a sobering reflection of the state of factory safety in Bangladesh. Inspections are an important first step in making factories and workers safe, but they are not enough. Eighteen months after Rana Plaza, there are two major unanswered questions pertaining to factory safety in Bangladesh: 1) how big is the total universe of factories and facilities producing for the export market, and 2) how will factories actually be fixed? There is no authoritative figure for the number of factories producing for the export market. Between them, the Accord and the Alliance have acknowledged responsibility for about 1,800 factories. But a study (pdf) published earlier this year by the NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights estimated that the total number is closer to 5,000 - 6,000 factories and facilities. The study also highlighted the essential role of indirect sourcing – subcontracting with limited control, visibility, or oversight – in meeting demand for high volumes of low cost garments. Indirect sourcing is not necessarily a bad practice, but keeping it in the shadows is and makes hundreds of thousands of workers less safe in Bangladesh. While the Accord and the Alliance both have textual commitments to inspect subcontracting facilities, there is little evidence that this is happening in practice. Factories that fall outside these two initiatives are the responsibility of the government, which lacks the capacity to inspect – much less fix – unsafe factories. The second unanswered question is how to fund factory upgrades or relocation. Accord and Alliance inspections have identified thousands of deficiencies in the factories that fall within their inspection programs. But to date, none of the major brands or retailers has made a public commitment to fund the upgrades and repairs that are needed. Yes, both initiatives are identifying necessary repairs through publicly available corrective actions plans and have agreed to provide some funding for workers who are displaced by repairs (when factories close as a result of safety deficiencies, workers rightfully demand compensation). But who will pay for repairs remains unclear. The Alliance estimates an average cost of $250,000 per factory. That’s more than $400m for Accord and Alliance factories alone. No company member of the Accord or the Alliance has made a public commitment to pay these costs. In addition, the International Finance Corporation (IFC) has approved a $10m Global Trade Supplier Finance programme to help factory owners pay for repairs. But the IFC demands loan guarantees by western brands and retailers, which only a single company, VF Corp, has yet agreed to meet. The accomplishments Roberts highlights in conducting inspections and identifying factory safety hazards are important. But workers and factory owners need to know next steps. Brands and retailers should work with Bangladeshi manufacturers, the government of Bangladesh, foreign governments, and development organisations to advance a comprehensive approach – underwritten by significant funding – to upgrade the entire export garment sector. This will require an objective assessment of the scope of the problem, especially by identifying all factories and facilities producing for the export market. Such an assessment will raise challenging policy questions, such as establishing minimum safety standards for all factories, not just those with direct relationships with foreign brands. Setting standards has been a contentious issue in Bangladesh in the last year, and this process will require much-needed local leadership. A task force with both local and international experts needs to be created, both to analyse the scope of the problem and to propose ambitious, practical next steps. The Accord and the Alliance should be part of this process, but it should be led by local stakeholders. Real progress on labour rights in Bangladesh will require a bigger vision, a more collaborative approach, and significant, consolidated funding. This article was amended on Tuesday 28 October to correct that VF Corp is the only company to sign up to the International Finance Corporation’s programme. It previously stated no company had signed up to the agreement. Sarah Labowitz is the co-director of the NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights and a fellow of the Truman National Security Project. Read more stories like this: The Bangladesh Accord factory audits finds more than 80,000 safety hazards The Bangladesh Accord is a red herring Advertisement feature: Fairtrade: making a real difference to farmers in Palestine The supply chain hub is sponsored by the Fairtrade Foundation. All content is editorially independent except for pieces labelled advertisement feature. Find out more here. Join the community of sustainability professionals and experts. Become a GSB member to get more stories like this direct to your inbox | ['sustainable-business/sustainable-business', 'sustainable-business/governance', 'tone/comment', 'business/business', 'world/rana-plaza', 'environment/corporatesocialresponsibility', 'fashion/fashion-industry', 'law/human-rights', 'world/bangladesh', 'type/article'] | environment/corporatesocialresponsibility | CLIMATE_POLICY | 2014-10-20T12:23:20Z | true | CLIMATE_POLICY |
environment/2010/mar/18/china-india-conservation | China and India called on by scientists to collaborate on conservation | China and India could together decide the future of the global environment, a team of senior scientists warn today in a call for closer collaboration on conservation by the world's two most populous nations. Writing in the journal Science, the eight coauthors — including zoologists from both nations — warn of the security and biodiversity threat posed by rising consumption, dam construction and industrial emissions. The ecological footprint of the two fast-emerging Asian economies has already spread beyond their borders and with future economic growth rates likely to continue at 8% for several years, the experts say the pressure on borders, resources and biodiversity could reach dangerous levels. "The degree to which China and India consume natural resources within their boundaries and beyond will largely determine future environmental, social and economic outcomes," say the co-authors headed by Peter Raven, director of the Missouri Botanical Garden. The report notes that the two countries import 9m of crude oil a year and 64% of all the roundwood pine produced in Asia, adding to the problems of global deforestation and warming. The impacts are becoming more obvious in the strategically sensitive Himalayan border area, where the authors say large numbers of troops are damaging the environment. Resources in the mountain region are so scarce, they note, that soldiers sometimes eat rare plants. Melting glaciers that supply meltwater for half the world's population and the constriction of rivers by hundreds of dams are also major problems, they say. With the demand for energy in both nations growing, they predict a further rise in construction of hydroelectric plants and exploitation of other Himalayan resources, with alarming implications for regional security. "The synergistic effects of decreasing water resources, loss of biodiversity, increased pollution and climate change may have negative social and economic consequences and, even worse, escalate conflicts within and between the two countries," they warn. Despite their growing global importance, China and India have conducted little joint research and engaged in only modest collaboration to mitigate the impact of their rapid development. There have been small signs of progress in recent years, including agreements to jointly monitor glaciers and study the interaction between the atmosphere and the ocean. But the authors say much more collaboration is necessary. "More earnest cooperation between the world's two most populous countries will be vital for mitigating biodiversity loss, global warming and deforestation," the authors say. They suggest turning disputed territory into trans-boundary protected areas, fostering scientific collaboration, working with the United Nations to manage natural resources and encouraging regional forums, such as Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean), to focus more on the environment. One of the authors — Zhang Yaping, the president of the Kunming Institute of Zoology — said it was rare for biodversity protection to span the two nations. "We should certainly strengthen cooperation in this field," he said. "China and India have done a lot of conservation work inside their own nations. What we need now is a joint effort. There should be no national boundaries in biodiversity protection." | ['environment/conservation', 'environment/biodiversity', 'science/science', 'world/china', 'world/india', 'environment/environment', 'environment/endangered-habitats', 'environment/endangeredspecies', 'environment/glaciers', 'world/asia-pacific', 'type/article', 'profile/jonathanwatts'] | environment/endangered-habitats | BIODIVERSITY | 2010-03-18T18:00:01Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
global-development/2019/jul/29/indias-strongman-pm-modi-to-appear-on-bear-grylls-man-vs-wild | India's strongman PM: Modi to appear on Bear Grylls' Man vs Wild | India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, will appear with Bear Grylls in a wilderness survival television programme, the latest in a series of Putin-style media appearances in which the 68-year-old leader projects himself as a man of action and a champion of the environment. A trailer for the programme, Man vs Wild, which will air in India on 12 August, shows the two men cutting through forests, sniffing animal dung and floating down a river on a makeshift raft. In one scene, Modi holds an improvised spear and tells Grylls: “I’ll hold this for you.” The programme is the latest of Modi’s choreographed media appearances where the strongman leader casts himself as the a symbol of masculinity, strength and robust health – a pitch that appeals to his party’s nationalist voter base. “He is the alpha-male. He will not lose even a single opportunity to project himself as the man with the 56-inch chest,” said Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay, author of a biography on Modi, referring to a claim Modi made on his campaign trail in 2014. In recent months, Modi has bolstered that superhuman image – appearing in images that show him meditating in a Himalayan cave and doing early morning yoga exercises. “He wants to be seen as the biggest and most popular globally-accepted political leader from India ever. He wants to have iconic status globally.” Promoting the trailer for the programme, Modi tweeted: “India – where you find lush green forests, diverse wildlife, beautiful mountains and mighty rivers. Watching this programme will make you want to visit different parts of India and add to discourse of environmental conservation.” The programme previously caused controversy in India after the Indian Express reported that Modi was likely to have been filming with Bear Grylls on the day of a terror attack in the disputed region of Kashmir, when extremists from neighbouring Pakistan killed dozens of Indian armed security personnel and almost prompted military conflict. Some reports suggest Modi delayed taking action after the attack because he was in the wilderness filming with Grylls, but this has not been confirmed. “We know how important it was to him to feature in this show,” Mukhopadhyay said. The appearance with Bear Grylls will also bolster Modi’s image as a protector of India’s environment. Bhavreen Kandhari, an Extinction Rebellion activist in India, said Modi’s pro-business, pro-development government contributes to India’s environmental destruction. She ridiculed the UN’s decision to award Modi the title of Champion of the Earth in 2018. “I am standing in the most polluted city in the world,” she said, speaking over the phone from New Delhi. “My children’s lungs are black. There is no day when I don’t get calls about trees being cut down. There is absolute devastation.” Modi’s government has made international commitments to increasing India’s solar power production, but has also given the green light to controversial mining and infrastructure projects that will result in deforestation and environmental issues. In June, images from a giant landfill site went viral after it was reported that a mountain of garbage was set to climb higher than the Taj Mahal. On Monday, as he announced the results of a tiger census, which showed the number of Bengal tigers in the wild had risen, Modi said: “I feel it is possible to strike a healthy balance between development and environment. Our country is one where for thousands of years there have been teachings of co-existence [with nature].” | ['global-development/global-development', 'global-development/environmental-sustainability', 'society/society', 'environment/sustainable-development', 'environment/environment', 'world/india', 'world/south-and-central-asia', 'world/world', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/vidhi-doshi', 'profile/rebecca-ratcliffe', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/international', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/global-development'] | environment/sustainable-development | CLIMATE_POLICY | 2019-07-29T14:58:24Z | true | CLIMATE_POLICY |
environment/2016/apr/19/great-barrier-reef-93-of-reefs-hit-by-coral-bleaching | Great Barrier Reef: 93% of reefs hit by coral bleaching | Almost 93% of reefs on the Great Barrier Reef have been hit by coral bleaching, according to a comprehensive survey revealing the full extent of the devastation caused by abnormally warm ocean temperatures sweeping the globe. There have only been three mass bleaching events recorded on the reef , and all of them have happened since 1998. Scientists say this episode is the worst they’ve ever seen. The world is in the midst of a global bleaching event, which is a result of a pulse of warm water flowing around the Pacific Ocean caused by El Niño, and the background global warming caused by man-made greenhouse gas emissions. Corals bleach when they experience temperatures above their normal summer maximum for a month or two. The situation is made worse if there are few clouds, and a high level of UV radiation blasts the coral. The Great Barrier Reef aerial survey began last month, and has now covered 911 individual reefs along the 2,300km structure from helicopters and planes. Prof Terry Hughes, from James Cook University and head of the National Coral Bleaching taskforce, said only 68 of those reefs escaped bleaching entirely. As Guardian Australia reported last week, more than half the surveyed reefs have been severely bleached, with as many as 81% of reefs north of Port Douglas experiencing severe bleaching. If coral remains bleached for an extended period, it is likely to die. Hughes said that the northern region is already seeing mortality as high as 50%, and he expected that at some reefs it will exceed 90%. In the central section between Port Douglas and Mackay, a third of the reefs are severely bleached and 57% have seen moderate or minor bleaching. South of Mackay, 1% of reefs are severely bleached, but even there, only a quarter of the reefs have escaped bleaching entirely. Hughes told Guardian Australia that in the previous two mass bleaching events – 1998 and 2002 – 40% of the reefs escaped bleaching. “By that metric, this event is five times stronger.” And in those two years, only 18% of reefs were severely bleached. “This time it’s 55%.” “We’ve never seen anything like this scale of bleaching before. In the northern Great Barrier Reef, it’s like 10 cyclones have come ashore all at once,” said Hughes. “Towards the southern end, most of the reefs have minor to moderate bleaching and should soon recover.” Hughes says the southern part of the reef was partially saved by weather conditions that brought clouds and cooler weather. “This time, the southern third of the Great Barrier Reef was fortunately cooled down late in summer by a period of cloudy weather caused by ex-cyclone Winston, after it passed over Fiji and came to us as a rain depression. The 2016 footprint could have been much worse.” The aerial work is being confirmed by teams of divers who are examining the coral up-close. Hughes said there have been 100 people underwater for the past month, and so far they’ve collected data from about 150 reefs. | ['environment/great-barrier-reef', 'environment/coral', 'environment/oceans', 'environment/elnino', 'environment/climate-crisis', 'environment/environment', 'environment/marine-life', 'environment/wildlife', 'australia-news/australia-news', 'world/world', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/michael-slezak', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-environment'] | environment/great-barrier-reef | BIODIVERSITY | 2016-04-19T20:00:01Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
environment/2015/nov/08/pear-tree-hs2-woodland-trust-cubbington | Ancient pear tree in path of HS2 rail route wins Woodland Trust prize | There is good news and bad news for the 250-year-old Cubbington pear tree, one of the oldest and largest wild pears in Britain. The good news is that it has scooped the Woodland Trust tree of the year title after attracting more than 10,000 votes from members of the public. The bad news is that its hilltop site in Warwickshire is in the proposed path of the HS2 train line. HS2 planners say that because the tree has a hollow trunk it would be impossible to move elsewhere, but promise that it will be propagated from cuttings. A local campaign group doggedly fighting the proposed route was elated at the honour for the tree, but acknowledged the scale of the struggle to save it. “That’s why we nominated it for the tree of the year, and I have no doubt that that is why so many people voted for it, to register a protest about HS2,” said Peter Delow, chair of the action group. “The tree is very precious to people here. There’s no one alive in the village who doesn’t know this tree, it’s been part of our lives for generations.” There was no hint of a reprieve from the proposers of the HS2 line, though a spokesman, Ben Ruse, said they recognised the tree’s importance and would do everything possible to ensure there are still wild pears growing in the area. “Because the hollow lower trunk makes it impractical to move the tree, we instead plan to propagate the cuttings, collect seeds and replant the young trees in the surrounding area,” Ruse said. “The felled tree will be moved to a newly created woodland next to South Cubbington Wood where it could provide a new home for all sorts of wildlife including bugs, beetles, fungi, mosses and lichens.” The Cubbington pear beat 200 other nominated trees, and now joins three oak trees – Glasgow’s Suffragette Tree, planted by campaigners a century ago in Kelvingrove Park, Belfast’s Peace Tree and a tree in Carmarthenshire – in competition for the European title. Beccy Speight, chief executive of the Woodland Trust, said: “Sadly many iconic trees do not have the level of protection they deserve, and this contest highlights the need to ensure they survive for future generations to enjoy and memories to endure.” The Cubbington villagers’ only solution for saving the tree, and the ancient woodland which would be next in the line of the track, is a tunnel – already rejected on cost grounds. “They say it would cost £46m on top of the existing costing, and that does sound like an awful lot of money, but in terms of the cost of this whole project that’s small change in your pocket,” Delow said. “We want to say to the government: ‘Look at all these people who voted for this tree, they don’t want you to destroy it – now, what are you going to do about it?’” | ['environment/forests', 'environment/conservation', 'uk/hs2', 'environment/environment', 'uk/uk', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/maevkennedy', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/uknews'] | environment/forests | BIODIVERSITY | 2015-11-08T22:46:25Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
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