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environment/2023/feb/25/calls-to-limit-boat-traffic-to-protect-wildlife-on-restored-welsh-canal | Calls to limit boat traffic to protect wildlife on restored Welsh canal | Conservationists are calling for only horse-drawn barges to journey along a section of the Montgomery canal when it is reopened, to protect rare aquatic plants and wildlife on the rewilded waterway. The naturalist and broadcaster Iolo Williams has joined the campaign to protect floating water-plantain as well as dragonflies, grass snakes, kingfishers and otters on the canal between Arddlin and Llanymynech, which has been unnavigable to canal boats for decades but is to be restored with £14m from the government’s levelling up fund. The 33-mile Montgomery canal runs from Newtown in Powys to Shropshire and originally carried limestone from Welsh quarries to fertilise farmland before it was abandoned in 1944. During decades of disuse, sections of the canal came to support the largest populations of floating water-plantain in Britain, and they have been designated a special area of conservation (SAC) and site of special scientific interest (SSSI). Seven miles of the canal have so far been restored and connected to the rest of the canal network. The levelling up funds will enable the Canal & River Trust-led project to build new road bridges and reopen to motorised barges a four-and-a-half-mile stretch between Arddlin and Llanymynech. Supporters say the restoration will boost tourist revenues and drive wider regeneration. But conservationists warn that boats with propellers stir up mud and sediment and could destroy the floating water-plantain, a protected and nationally scarce species. They say horse-drawn boats without propellers glide over the surface of the water and would leave the plant unharmed. The plant could even benefit from this kind of boat traffic, which would maintain the open water that it needs to thrive. Williams said the canal was a “fantastic asset” for wildlife in mid-Wales and called on the Canal & River Trust to work with campaigners. “We’ve lost so many of our pools and ponds and wetlands over the past 80 years – they’ve been drained and disappeared from when I was a kid growing up here,” he said. “The canal has become increasingly important for a lot of our wildlife, not just the floating water-plantain but brown hawker dragonflies, frogs, toads, newts, perch, pike and bream, and it’s the best area in mid-Wales for grass snakes. “I’m all for restoring the canal but if they can do the Montgomeryshire section as horse-drawn, that would be a huge help. It’s going to bring more money into the area – people will have to pull up for the night – and having horse-drawn boats makes it a much quieter, more leisurely pastime. It will make it more popular.” Simon Spencer, a local wildlife expert, said: “The canal is wonderful as it is. It doesn’t need wrecking. It is currently used by canoeists and the whole length of the towpath from Llanymynech to Newtown is enjoyed by cyclists, walkers, birdwatchers. If it’s full of boats and oil film across the water-surface, you won’t have as many people using it. Why spend millions on a few boat movements? “If the SAC is trashed – and the current project probably will trash it – it will be the first SAC to be seriously damaged in Britain. All we’re asking for is just leave out the motorised boats.” As part of the £14m restoration, the Canal & River Trust is proposing six hectares of open water nature reserve near the canal to compensate for the impact of motorised boats, with the floating water-plantain already being grown for translocation into the new reserves in 2024. “We’ll be looking at what biodiversity net gains we can do and how we can draw adjacent habitats together,” said Jason Leach, the head of external programme delivery at the trust. “We’re open and transparent and we want to talk to as many people as possible.” According to Leach, reintroducing horse-drawn boats is not practical because the towpath, at 1.5 metres wide, cannot be shared by horses as well as walkers and cyclists. He said the seasonal boat movements on the canal would not generate enough revenue to support building special horse-drawn boats, or stabling and feeding the horses throughout the year. On the Rochdale canal, which is also an SAC and SSSI and was restored and reopened in 2002, the floating water-plantain has increased in range since 2010 and is also thriving on a canal reservoir, Brun Clough, where it was reintroduced. The Canal & River Trust is proposing a cap on boat movements on the restored section of the Montgomery canal, with the rare plants monitored as boats are gradually increased to the 2,500 annual movements on the already reopened sections. Leach added: “Ultimately the plants need disturbance and the boats offer the best way to do that. This is sustainable restoration of the Montgomery canal for the environment and people.” Powys county council, a partner on the Montgomery canal restoration project, said it would “provide long-term economic, cultural, wellbeing and recreational benefits for local communities as well as enhancing the wildlife and ecology along the canal corridor”. A spokesperson said: “We are aware of the wildlife concerns that have been raised in recent weeks. These concerns are being taken seriously by the council and our partner, the Canal & River Trust, and [we] can reassure that any proposals will need to comply fully with the habitat regulations to achieve the necessary planning and regulatory consents.” | ['environment/conservation', 'uk/wales', 'environment/environment', 'uk/uk', 'environment/plants', 'environment/wildlife', 'world/water-transport', 'environment/biodiversity', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/patrickbarkham', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/environmentnews', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-environment'] | environment/wildlife | BIODIVERSITY | 2023-02-25T07:00:45Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
media/2017/aug/17/game-of-thrones-secrets-revealed-as-hbo-twitter-accounts-hacked | Game of Thrones secrets revealed as HBO Twitter accounts hacked | Several HBO Twitter accounts were hacked and taken over by the notorious OurMine hacking group, posting #HBOHacked messages and warnings about security. OurMine took control of the main HBO Twitter account on Wednesday, as well as those for TV shows including Game of Thrones and Girls, posting its usual statement: “Hi, OurMine are here, we are just testing your security, HBO team please contact us to upgrade the security.” The messages from OurMine were removed within an hour of their appearance, with HBO seemingly taking back control of its accounts. An HBO spokesperson said the TV network was “investigating” the hack. OurMine has a history of compromising sites and Twitter accounts, with high-profile victims including Google chief executive Sundar Pichai, Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg, former Twitter boss Dick Costolo, young adult novelist Hank Green, Mark Zuckerberg’s sister Randi Zuckerberg, and actor Channing Tatum, as well as websites TechCrunch and Buzzfeed. It is not known how OurMine infiltrated the Twitter accounts, but it could have found details in the systematic leaks of confidential information emerging from a hack that occurred in July, giving attackers access to 1.5TB of data, equivalent to several TV box sets or millions of documents. The hackers holding HBO to ransom after the July attack leaked further sensitive information Wednesday, including files from the second season of the hit show Westworld and the seventh season Game of Thrones, revealing shooting diaries, schedules and potential spoilers. The fresh dump of files was distributed by somebody calling themselves “Mr Smith” saying: “If history repeats itself HBO may never be the same again. Winter really is here.” HBO declined to comment on the fresh leaks. The hackers publicly demanded in excess of $6m (£4.6m) in ransom to prevent the release of unaired TV shows and confidential information in August. They dumped the personal contact details of Game of Thrones actors online alongside HBO network passwords and emails from the firm’s vice president for film programming. They also leaked unaired episodes of Game of Thrones, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Insecure, Ballers, Barry and The Deuce, leading to HBO stating it would not participate further with the hackers after first offering a $250,000 bug bounty, potentially as a stalling tactic. Separately, an error by its own Nordic and Spanish sites saw the sixth episode of HBO’s biggest hit, Game of Thrones, leak online ahead of its broadcast on Sunday. HBO blamed a third-party vendor for the error. Stolen nude photos and hacked defibrillators: is this the future of ransomware? | ['technology/hacking', 'media/hbo', 'technology/twitter', 'technology/data-computer-security', 'technology/technology', 'media/television', 'media/ustelevision', 'media/media', 'technology/internet', 'tv-and-radio/game-of-thrones', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/samuel-gibbs', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-technology'] | technology/hacking | UNRELATED_TO_CLIMATE | 2017-08-17T11:36:41Z | true | UNRELATED_TO_CLIMATE |
environment/2017/oct/03/campaign-urges-people-to-recycle-dead-batteries | Campaign urges people to recycle dead batteries | Major high street retailers have joined forces to encourage people to recycle their used household batteries as a new poll revealed that more than half of respondents admitted they throw them in the bin. Asda, B&Q, Currys PC World, Marks & Spencer and Morrisons are all backing the drive to make it easier for consumers to recycle dead batteries and avoid millions ending up in landfill every year and wreaking environmental havoc. Retailers who sell more than 32kg of batteries a year are already required to provide collection points, yet they are not always visible. Those backing the new campaign have committed to making sure these facilities are easy to spot in store. A poll of 3,055 UK adults by environmental charity Hubbub and compliance scheme Ecosurety revealed that less than half of those surveyed (47%) realised that batteries are made of valuable heavy metals which can be reused, including lead, mercury, cadmium, zinc, manganese and lithium. The toxic contents mean that they can be hazardous to the environment if not disposed of properly, yet half of respondents (52%) admitted throwing batteries away in the regular waste bin. This results in millions every year ending up in landfill, with the potential to leach into the ground and water supplies if not carefully managed. In addition the research found that six in 10 people in the UK hoard batteries in their homes, adding up to a whopping 178m batteries stashed, despite the dangers to children. Dead batteries are currently shipped to be recycled in Finland, Germany and France, although the first UK plant will open in Scotland in November. That will be able to process 20,000 tonnes of batteries a year – enough capacity to deal with all the UK’s current batteries. However there are concerns that the drive to replace petrol and diesel cars with a new breed of electric vehicles will raise a fresh environmental headache – the fate of half-tonne lithium-ion batteries when they wear out. | ['environment/recycling', 'environment/waste', 'uk/uk', 'business/retail', 'business/business', 'environment/environment', 'environment/ethical-living', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/rebeccasmithers', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-environment'] | environment/recycling | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE | 2017-10-03T05:45:19Z | true | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE |
science/political-science/2013/aug/01/environmentalists-redefine-progress-means | Environmentalists must redefine what 'progress' means | Adam Ramsay | "What's this?" I asked my nephew. He was soon to turn two, and I thought, perhaps, he would be able to identify the plastic toy in my hand as a "dinosaur". "Edmontosaurus", he told me. I checked the label on its foot. He was right. Just before his fifth birthday, he corrected me on a question of astronomy: "No, Venus is hotter than Mercury. Mercury is closer to the sun, but Venus has poisonous gases which keep the heat in". I used to know that, I remembered, before I grew up and got boring. It seems to me that humans are born with our eyes open, desperate to learn about the fascinating world we find ourselves in. We are then sandpapered by our society into dull cynics. I also think that this passion for understanding might provide an answer to one of the most profound dilemmas of environmentalism and for our civilisation. Ever since the neolithic revolution, humanity has had a question to answer. Once we've done the work to reproduce what we have, what else do we want? There are those who argue that the answer is simple: stop working so hard. John Maynard Keynes made this case in the 1920s. Britain at the time had, he argued, enough wealth. Were it more evenly distributed, everyone could live a comfortable life. As technology makes it possible for us to produce this same wealth with less work, why don't we all just work less? More recently, the New Economics Foundation has published a report arguing that we should all work only 21 hours a week. As a civilisation, we have cracked survival. Of course, many millions of people don't have what they need. But this is a result of astonishing inequalities: the world produces enough food, clothes, houses and medicine for us all. Why must we keep working so hard? We haven't heeded this advice. Since the main tool of an office job shifted from pen and paper to computer, thus saving hours every day, have we all worked fewer hours? No. Since we moved from hand nets to trawler nets, have fishing boats gone home once they have secured their former catch? I don't think so. Instead, we have used our time and new technology to expand the amount of stuff we extract and produce. Some of this work has genuinely been good for us. But much of the drive for ever more profit is a drive towards the edge of an ecological cliff, fuelled by stress at work and stress that we can't keep up with the Joneses. While Keynes's idea of more leisure time is a nice one, I think it's not enough of an answer. I for one get bored after sitting on the beach for five minutes. I don't know if it's because of the way our civilisation shapes us, or the way that we are innately, but we don't seem very good at not doing much. So, I think there is another way to ask this question. If we aren't going to be motivated by a desire, which is destroying the planet, for ever more trinkets, what else can drive us? There are of course, lots of answers to that. I hope we can all spend more time caring better for each other. I'd like all of us to be allowed to spend more time making art. But there's something else too. I am certain that our innate desire to explore and to understand is as strong as out innate desire to accumulate and consume. When, other than during a war, has humanity been as collectively captivated as we were during the moon landings? Is there anything more exiting than learning that genuine monsters really walked the earth? Or about the amazing conclusions of quantum mechanics? We can allow our society to be conned into believing that the primary aim we ought to have is the accumulation of endlessly more stuff by a wealthy few. But at its core, environmentalism teaches us that economics has to be about something else. It has to be about understanding what true progress is. It forces us to ask existential questions about civilisation. In his recent book, Feral, George Monbiot constructs an environmentalism around a desire to re-inspire people with a sense of wonder at the natural world. The book calls for us to allow land to re-wild, to return to its natural state, in order that we can all experience its raw power. "Everyone," he says "should have the Serengeti on their doorstep." It is a compelling case. I believe that this thesis must be broadened. Environmentalists must re-imagine what civilisation is for, what humanity is for. Yes, that should include being inspired once more by magnificent forests and quirky plants and incredible animals. These things are wonderful. But I think it also has to include a vast expansion in the amount of time and money we invest in advancing and disseminating all human knowledge. We ought also to care about exploring the makeup of the cosmos, and of atoms and of chemicals. Because we are humans, and asking questions is what we do best. This post is part of a series on science and the green movement. Adam Ramsay is activism and events manager at People & Planet. He also co-edits Bright Green and is an active member of the Green Party | ['science/science-policy', 'science/political-science', 'science/science', 'tone/blog', 'environment/green-politics', 'environment/environment', 'society/society', 'politics/green-party', 'politics/politics', 'science/series/science-blog-network', 'type/article', 'profile/adam-ramsay'] | environment/green-politics | CLIMATE_POLICY | 2013-08-01T11:25:14Z | true | CLIMATE_POLICY |
environment/2018/apr/17/more-than-95-of-worlds-population-breathe-dangerous-air-major-study-finds | More than 95% of world's population breathe dangerous air, major study finds | More than 95% of the world’s population breathe unsafe air and the burden is falling hardest on the poorest communities, with the gap between the most polluted and least polluted countries rising rapidly, a comprehensive study of global air pollution has found. Cities are home to an increasing majority of the world’s people, exposing billions to unsafe air, particularly in developing countries, but in rural areas the risk of indoor air pollution is often caused by burning solid fuels. One in three people worldwide faces the double whammy of unsafe air both indoors and out. The report by the Health Effects Institute used new findings such as satellite data and better monitoring to estimate the numbers of people exposed to air polluted above the levels deemed safe by the World Health Organisation. This exposure has made air pollution the fourth highest cause of death globally, after high blood pressure, diet and smoking, and the greatest environmental health risk. Experts estimate that exposure to air pollution contributed to more than 6m deaths worldwide last year, playing a role in increasing the risk of stroke, heart attack, lung cancer and chronic lung disease. China and India accounted for more than half of the death toll. Burning solid fuel such as coal or biomass in their homes for cooking or heating exposed 2.6 billion people to indoor air pollution in 2016, the report found. Indoor air pollution can also affect air quality in the surrounding area, with this effect contributing to one in four pollution deaths in India and nearly one in five in China. Bob O’Keefe, vice-president of the institute, said the gap between the most polluted air on the planet and the least polluted was striking. While developed countries have made moves to clean up, many developing countries have fallen further behind while seeking economic growth. He said there was now an 11-fold gap between the most polluted and least polluted areas, compared with a six-fold gap in 1990. “Air pollution control systems still lag behind economic development [in poorer nations],” he said. But he added: “There are reasons for optimism, though there is a long way to go. China seems to be now moving pretty aggressively, for instance in cutting coal and on stronger controls. India has really begun to step up on indoor air pollution, for instance through the provision of LPG [liquefied petroleum gas] as a cooking fuel, and through electrification.” The number of people exposed to indoor air pollution from burning solid fuels has fallen from an estimated 3.6 billion around the world in 1990 to about 2.4 billion today, despite a rising population. Emissions from transport are a growing concern, however, as road traffic increases. Diesel fuel is a leading cause of air pollution in some rich countries, including the UK, but in poorer countries the often decrepit state of many vehicles means petrol-driven engines can be just as bad in their outputs, especially of the fine particulate matter blamed for millions of deaths a year. O’Keefe said governments were under increasing pressure to deal with the problems through regulation and controls, and hailed internet access as having a significant impact. “Social media has been very important, as a growing number of people have access to it and to data and discussions [on air pollution]. People now have the ability to worry about not just the food they eat and a roof over the head, but they have the means to discuss [issues] in public,” he said. Tuesday’s report reinforces an increasing volume of data in recent years that has shown how air pollution is increasing and causing deaths. More data has become available in the past decade from satellites and on-the-ground monitoring, while large-scale studies have revealed more of the health risks arising from breathing dirty air, which rarely kills people directly but is now known to contribute to other causes of death. | ['environment/air-pollution', 'environment/pollution', 'environment/environment', 'world/world', 'society/health', 'society/society', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/fiona-harvey', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/uknews', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-environment'] | environment/pollution | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE | 2018-04-17T04:00:27Z | true | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE |
environment/2022/may/19/pharmacy-in-the-sea-dolphins-use-coral-as-medicine-for-skin-ailments | Pharmacy in the sea: Dolphins ‘use coral as medicine for skin ailments’ | Who doesn’t like a bath scrub? Dolphins definitely do: they are known for being clever, playful, tactile animals, and they like to rub against rough surfaces, nap in coral beds and soak on sponges like guests at an underwater spa. However, dolphins may be getting more from their bath scrubs than just relaxation and leisure. A study published today suggests that bottlenose dolphins may be self-medicating their skin ailments with the help of corals, adding to growing research on their previously unexplored medicinal properties. “It’s very intensive,” said Angela Ziltener, one of the study’s lead authors, of the behaviour of the dolphins with particular corals. “They don’t just go through [the coral] – they go up, they come back down again and they rub their belly, their ventral area and the back.” Dolphins have thick, smooth and resilient skin, but can be prone to skin conditions such as yeast and bacterial infections, scars or tattoo-like lesions caused by viral pox infections. These ailments seem to be exacerbated by global heating. Ziltener, a wildlife biologist at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, and her team have been surveying a community of 360 Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops aduncus) in the northern Red Sea since 2009. They observed that the dolphins often queued up nose-to-tail to rub themselves against corals as soon as they woke up and right before they went to sleep, as if they were showering for the day. As well as a mechanical rub, the dolphins also caused the corals to release a polyp mucus. The team also noticed that the dolphins returned to the same coral species, and appeared to be meticulous in choosing which parts of their body to rub. They ran lab tests on 48 samples of corals, sponges and coral mucus “chosen” by the dolphins, including the gorgonian coral Rumphella aggregata, the leather coral Sarcophyton sp. and the sponge Ircinia sp. The results, published in the journal iScience, revealed at least 17 different bioactive metabolites with antibacterial, antioxidative and oestrogen-like hormonal properties, all of which could be useful in skin treatments. The compounds are not commonly used in antibiotics for humans or animals, but an expanding body of research shows that some corals and sponges have medicinal properties, including antimicrobial. “Such metabolites are helpful if you have an infection,” said Gertrud Morlock, an analytical chemist at Justus Liebig University Giessen in Germany, and a lead author of the study. “If the dolphins have a skin infection, these compounds could have something like a healing property. “If you think about it, they have no other options. If they have a problem with the skin, what can they do?” The authors note that further research is needed to show which coral’s medicinal properties the dolphins need to treat given ailments, and whether these properties have a measurable, positive impact on the cetaceans’ health. Learning more about the dolphin’s social network and demographic could help with this. Tracking individual dolphins that display the behaviour, and seeing if they have fewer skin diseases or decreased mortality compared with the rest of the group, would make this argument stronger, according to Sarah Powell, a former marine biologist who studies how dolphins transmit their skin diseases but was not involved in the study. Past research has shown that dolphins like to use coral sponges as foraging tools. “I do not find it to be such a reach that dolphins would utilise corals and other plants in their environment for other purposes,” said Powell. Stephanie Venn-Watson, a marine biologist who studies health and longevity in dolphins and was also not involved in the research, said: “Since dolphins are inherently playful and tactile animals who love to rub, it is difficult to be sure that the dolphins are using the corals for medicinal purposes.” A next step in proving the link would be to show that corals ignored by dolphins lack the same medicinal properties, she said. “This is a nice science-driven itch to be scratched.” | ['environment/series/seascape-the-state-of-our-oceans', 'environment/dolphins', 'science/science', 'environment/cetaceans', 'environment/marine-life', 'environment/wildlife', 'environment/environment', 'environment/coral', 'science/zoology', 'science/biology', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'tone/features', 'profile/sofia-quaglia', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/global-development'] | environment/series/seascape-the-state-of-our-oceans | BIODIVERSITY | 2022-05-19T15:00:22Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
news/2011/oct/19/weatherwatch-tornado-london-britain | Weatherwatch: Britain's earliest recorded tornado | Say tornado, and many of us think of Dorothy and her dog Toto, being whirled off by a tornado in the Wizard of Oz. But "tornado alley" in the Great Plains of the US is not the only place to see a tornado: surprisingly the UK has the most tornadoes per unit area in the world, with around 30 tornadoes recorded every year. Most British tornadoes are not as dramatic as their US counterparts, usually doing no more than whipping a few tiles off a roof. But occasionally they pack a punch. The largest tornado known in the UK is also the earliest. On 17 October 1091 (23 October when adjusted to today's Gregorian calendar) London was hit by a vicious tornado. Historical records tell of the wooden London Bridge being demolished, along with 600 houses (mostly wooden). Furthermore, the church of St Mary-le-Bow, in the city of London, was smashed to pieces, with four rafters driven more than six metres into the ground. Two men are reported to have lost their lives. Judging by the accounts of the damage, meteorologists have assigned the 1091 tornado T8 (severely devastating) status on the tornado scale (which runs from T0 to T10). Wind speeds would have been up to 240mph (385km/h). If such a tornado were to hit London today we could expect to see cars hurled along the street, houses smashed and skyscrapers twisted. Luckily T8 tornadoes are rare in the UK – and let's hope it stays that way. | ['news/series/weatherwatch', 'uk/weather', 'uk/uk', 'tone/features', 'world/natural-disasters', 'world/tornadoes', 'type/article', 'profile/kate-ravilious', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/weather2'] | world/tornadoes | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2011-10-19T22:05:01Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
environment/damian-carrington-blog/2011/may/20/uk-cash-mountain-go-green | Why the UK's hidden cash mountain needs to go green | Damian Carrington | In these austere times, here's a startling fact: there's an enormous mountain of available cash in the UK, currently gathering dust but precious little interest. It amounted to £110bn in 2010, an all-time record (Fig 1 here). In the US, the same applies, but there the mountain is £2,650bn. Perhaps even more startling is who owns this glittering pile: you and me. Since the financial crash, households have been hoarding money, worried about spending in a recession. Nervous banks and businesses have done the same, seeing nothing worth the gamble of investing in. With little to invest in, our pension funds have sat on our money. But there is a market that would put all that money back to work, earning good returns for hard-pressed savers, creating jobs and boosting tax returns. Even better, it could be created at the stroke of a pen by a government with the political courage to fulfil its promises. It is the market for renewable energy and all the low-carbon goods and services that are needed for a successful and sustainable economy. The case is put with telling clarity in a recent paper by LSE and Cisco economist Dimitri Zenghelis, who spent a decade amongst the trolls of the Treasury who are currently busy blocking the road to green growth. Governments should not, of course, create new markets simply to stimulate growth. Mandating new kitchens for all, for example, interferes with our freedom and the efficiency of a free market. The exception is when there is a market failure: when the free actions of individuals do not collectively deliver a beneficial outcome for the group as a whole. The Stern review on the economics of climate change, of which Zenghelis was an author, called global warming "the greatest market failure the world has seen". And that is why correcting the failure is the greatest opportunity for putting that cash mountain to work. Fund managers and business owners repeatedly tell me the same. There is no shortage of money, only a dearth of projects to shovel the cash into. Why? Because, if the government doesn't appear to believe in its own commitment to a low-carbon future, why should the C-suite executives charged with investing the money? The green investment bank (GIB), a manifesto promise from both coalition partners, has a significance far beyond the few billions it will distribute. We will see the details of the GIB next week. Establishing it as a genuine borrowing bank, with seed capital from taxpayers and the implicit government guarantee that brings, would be the clearest signal possible that the government believes enough in its own green policies to put a little of its money where its mouth is. Do that and the private sector will do the rest, delivering steady revenues back to the government, savers and pension funds. The key things to watch out for are the GIB's legal status, borrowing powers, whether it is operationally independent and what it can invest in. However, putting its money where its mouth is is hard for a government that has pledged to cut the deficit as fast as possible. Any sliver of public debt added to the national accounts makes the political pledge to destroy the deficit in a single parliament look harder. Yet all that is needed to solve that problem is smarter accounting rules, as the debt is balanced by real-world assets. This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity. If the economy recovers, the current cash piles will find investments and future capital will be more expensive as interest rates climb off the floor. So, the UK is sitting on record levels of private cash which, given near zero interest rates and rising inflation, is withering away. The government, at near zero cost, can correct a huge market failure with no risk of crowding out private investment (there isn't any). That market will create jobs for those currently losing them and income for savers currently losing money. And, along the way, we'll move towards living on this crowded planet without costing the Earth. Zenghelis told me it is "positively criminal" for the government not to unlock the cash mountain by giving clear, long-term signals of its belief in the low-carbon future. I agree. So keep your eyes open next week, when the structure and remit of the Green Investment Bank are unveiled. We'll then have a much better idea of how much the government believes in its own slogan: "the greenest government ever". | ['environment/damian-carrington-blog', 'environment/green-economy', 'environment/green-politics', 'business/business', 'business/banking', 'business/economic-recovery', 'politics/economy', 'business/economicgrowth', 'business/economics', 'environment/environment', 'tone/blog', 'environment/green-investment-bank', 'type/article', 'profile/damiancarrington'] | environment/green-politics | CLIMATE_POLICY | 2011-05-20T09:50:00Z | true | CLIMATE_POLICY |
us-news/2023/aug/29/hurricane-idalia-florida-gulf-coast | Hurricane Idalia closes in on Florida with warnings of 125mph winds | A rapidly intensifying Hurricane Idalia was closing in on Florida’s Gulf coast on Tuesday as residents in more than a dozen counties rushed to evacuate amid warnings of a life-threatening storm surge and destructive 125mph winds. Landfall of the first major hurricane to strike the US this year was expected early on Wednesday, following Idalia’s north-easterly march through the Gulf of Mexico from Cuba. Forecasters predicted Idalia would crash ashore as a higher-end category 3 hurricane. Category 3 hurricanes have winds between 111 and 129mph. Anything above a category 2 – on a scale of up to 5 – is considered major. The storm became a category 1 hurricane overnight and was expected to beef up further in strength and size during Tuesday, officials at the National Hurricane Center (NHC) in Miami cautioned. “The stage is set for Idalia to rapidly intensify before landfall,” specialist Eric Blake wrote in a morning update. “Combined with extremely warm and deep waters the hurricane will be traversing … confidence is increasing in an extremely dangerous major hurricane making landfall Wednesday along the west coast or Big Bend region of Florida.” A shift in Idalia’s predicted path moved the core of the hurricane farther north from the heavily populated Tampa Bay area, but residents were warned not to focus solely on the storm’s wind field. “The number one killer in all of these storms is water, whether it’s the storm surge that’s going to happen at the coast, or the excessive rainfall that might happen inland that causes urban flash flooding,” Deanne Criswell, administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema), said on CNN on Tuesday morning. “I want to tell everybody in Florida – listen to your local officials. If they asked you to evacuate, please do so, and it doesn’t mean you have to go hundreds of miles. It could just be 10 or 20 miles inland to get out of that main area.” A storm surge of up to 15ft was expected between the Chassahowitzka national wildlife refuge and the Aucilla River, a swampy, low-lying coastal region of the state. A surge greater than three feet was predicted as far south as Tampa. After crossing northern Florida during Wednesday, the storm will head for Georgia and the Carolinas, where a stretch of the coast was placed under a tropical storm warning early on Tuesday. Evacuation orders, some mandatory, were issued in 20 coastal Florida counties, with officials ordering residents of the island city of Cedar Key off by Tuesday evening because storm surges would make bridges impassable. Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, urged affected residents to heed warnings. “We can rebuild someone’s home [but] you can’t unring the bell, though, if somebody stays in harm’s way and does battle with Mother Nature,” he said during a briefing on Monday afternoon. DeSantis on Monday placed 46 of Florida’s 67 counties under an emergency declaration, and President Joe Biden signed a federal order freeing up personnel and resources, including Fema search and rescue teams. The Florida national guard was “fully activated”, DeSantis said, with 5,500 guardsmen and women ready, and other state agencies and emergency response teams were poised to aid recovery efforts and restore power. Schools and colleges in Idalia’s path were closed until at least Thursday. Aircraft and personnel at MacDill air force base, on Tampa Bay, were evacuated on Monday. More evacuations were ordered in more than 20 counties in the state. DeSantis told Fox News that his state had issued evacuation orders for “pretty much the entire Gulf coast from Tampa Bay up until you get into northern Florida”. Further inland, the National Weather Service issued a tropical storm watch for Orange and Osceola counties, home to the Walt Disney World theme parks. However, Disney World remained open on Tuesday. The resort’s website said: “Walt Disney World is currently operating under normal conditions. We are closely monitoring the path of the projected weather as we continue to prioritize the safety of our guests and [employees].” “Idalia should move faster to the north or north-north-east through landfall on Wednesday,” Blake said, adding that flooding could be expected across Florida and southern Georgia beginning later on Tuesday, and spreading to areas of the eastern Carolinas in the coming two days. Idalia would be the first hurricane to strike Florida since Nicole in November 2022, and the first major cyclone of category 3 or greater since Hurricane Ian ravaged the south-west of the state and killed almost 150 people last September. The Associated Press contributed to this report | ['us-news/florida', 'us-news/us-news', 'us-news/us-weather', 'world/hurricanes', 'world/world', 'world/americas', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'us-news/hurricane-idalia', 'profile/richardluscombe', 'profile/erum-salam', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/us-news'] | world/hurricanes | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2023-08-29T16:48:45Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2016/nov/23/the-simple-cheap-instruments-measuring-global-warming-in-the-oceans | The simple, cheap instruments measuring global warming in the oceans | John Abraham | Earth is warming due to the release of heat-trapping greenhouse gases. Scientists are working hard to measure how fast the planet is warming, how much warming has occurred over the past few decades, and how this is affecting coastal areas, ecosystems, and fisheries. By understanding these factors, scientists can better project future climate impacts. A large component of Earth’s warming involves the oceans, which absorb excess heat. The difficulty of gathering measurements in the oceans is that they are vast, deep, and often hard to reach. It’s also costly. Think about it: if you wanted to take the ocean’s temperature, how would you do it? Centuries ago, ocean measurements were made with buckets dropped from the sides of ships. Over time, measurements have become more numerous and more accurate, partly thanks to technology advances. Today, a global array of floats that take continuous profiles of the upper ocean monitors ocean temperatures at more than 3000 locations to depths of 2000 meters. However, this array was put in place in 2005. Prior to that, the backbone of ocean measurements was a device or probe called the expendable bathythermograph (XBT for short). These small, torpedo-like probes, deployed from ships, gather temperature data to depths of 300 to 2000 meters as they descend through the water. XBTs were designed as a simple, inexpensive way to obtain temperature measurements from virtually any ship. These XBTs were originally used by navies to determine the depth of the sound channel, where sound waves can travel thousands of miles. They were first introduced in 1967 and immediately adopted by scientists worldwide. Since their debut, several million have been deployed, with some 20,000 launched annually in all ocean basins. A very important and critical component of their success has been the excellent relationship established by the scientific community with commercial shipping companies. Commercial vessels aid scientists by voluntarily deploying XBTs along routes that are continuously repeated, often in remote regions not sampled by other types of oceanographic equipment. With XBT use dating back to the 1960s, these measurements offer a unique historical perspective on temperature change in the oceans, which is often associated with global warming or even varying location and the intensity of ocean currents. XBT records, together with those of other observational tools later put in place, are crucial for determining how fast the ocean is warming - an essential factor for quantifying our effect on climate. XBT data are also used to measure how ocean currents change and how heat is transported across ocean basins, both of which are linked to extreme weather events worldwide. Background information and photos of XBT devices are provided at several sites, such as through the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Scripps Oceanographic Institution, and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. My own research has been partially focused on how to make XBT measurements more accurate. As part of this research, I recently attended an international meeting on XBTs hosted by the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC) in Tokyo. At the meeting, I met with colleagues from around the world to discuss how to refine and improve XBT data from the various models of this probe. Dr. Gustavo Goni, an oceanographer at NOAA and co-organizer of this meeting, reminded me that despite their basic technology, XBT probes are still relevant for scientific research—they are simple to use, cost-effective, and provide unique data that other, more technologically-advanced measurement systems still cannot retrieve. I asked Dr. Goni to summarize the role of XBTs in measuring the ocean. Obtaining ocean temperature measurements in a sustained manner is critical for assessing global changes and for studying how they may potentially impact climate, weather, and ecosystems. This is truly and international and multi-institutional effort, which for example, together with other types of ocean observations, satellite data and numerical models, has allowed us to estimate the heat transported in the South Atlantic Ocean and helped us to identify and assess connections with global extreme weather events. XBTs provide a unique tool that allows us to gain insight on how these changes are occurring, which very often provide managers and decision makers with information to evaluate and facilitate mitigation efforts. Research institutions make long-term decisions on the type of measurement equipment they develop and deploy, and decisions made now will impact ocean-observing efforts of the globe for decades to come. Collectively, we invest in satellites, floats, drifters, ships, moorings, marine weather instrumentation, and other measurement platforms. Yet, the XBT is a low-tech device that has already successfully measured our oceans for 50 years. Few, if any, other instruments have consistently delivered the quality, quantity, and type of information about our oceans as the simple XBT. In our current uncertain state about the future foci of organizations like NASA and NOAA, and with great uncertainty about what measurement tools will be funded, the XBT reminds us that cheap instruments have their benefits. | ['environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent', 'environment/climate-crisis', 'environment/oceans', 'environment/series/guardian-environment-blogs', 'environment/environment', 'science/scienceofclimatechange', 'science/science', 'type/article', 'tone/blog', 'profile/john-abraham'] | environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent | CLIMATE_POLICY | 2016-11-23T11:00:02Z | true | CLIMATE_POLICY |
tv-and-radio/2018/jan/29/chris-packham-in-search-of-lost-girl-review | Chris Packham: In Search of the Lost Girl review – the big picture via a small photograph | Twenty years ago, while filming in Sumatra, Chris Packham took a photograph of a young girl. She was a member of a tribe of hunter-gatherers called the Orang Rimba, who lived harmoniously with their jungle environment. For Chris it was an immensely significant encounter. Now, he’s going back to see if he can find her again. Not driven by sentimentality or nostalgia, though there might be a bit of that, but because he sees the girl as a sort of barometer, a way of measuring the condition of the planet. Indonesia – Sumatra particularly – has seen some of the world’s most devastating deforestation, millions of hectares of rainforest destroyed to make way for productive crops, mainly oil palm. “If she’s still out there, living harmoniously in that environment, then there’s hope for us all,” he says. “But if we’ve robbed her of her habitat, then we really have got something to fear.” Chris’s partner Charlotte offers a note of pragmatism before he goes, about the younger generation of people like the Orang Rimba maybe not wanting to stay in the forest. “Would they, if they had awareness of the outside world, would they want to gravitate towards that?” she asks. I like Charlotte, who we also met in Chris’s Asperger’s documentary. That was also an intense, personal, moving, important film, as this one is. He’s making a habit of it. Incidentally, he now wears his autism spectrum disorder with pride. “Only a nitwit with Asperger’s could do that,” he says when he recognises the exact spot where his encounter happened, 20 years ago, from the curve in the road and the lie of the land. The Orang Rimba have left the area, because their home has been cut down. More terrible news: there was a massacre. Several of the people Chris had met and photographed were killed, though probably not the girl. The trail goes cold: dead ends, more oil palm plantations, unanswered shout-outs on the radio ... then a breakthrough, someone recognises the people in the picture, and the girl is alive, yay! Not really yay. He finds her – Bunga, mother of three girls herself – living not in one of the last remnants of forest but under a blue plastic shelter on the edge of a palm plantation. Hell, he calls it: “They’re living amongst the very thing that has destroyed them.” Chris’s barometer shows little sign of hope, then. “If we don’t stop this nonsense, we’ve had it,” he says. There was a sliver – of hope – along the way, when he spent time with one of the few remaining Orang Rimba families still living in an area of protected forest (though there do seem to be a lot of mopeds buzzing about). Among them is a young boy, Njarang, who his father hopes will stay in the forest. Chris hopes the same, and photographs Njarang, one of the last humans living at one with nature. Perhaps Chris will come back in 20 years’ time to find him. I hope so. Though I’m less hopeful that Njarang will still be in the forest. It doesn’t matter if you think Chris is perhaps being over romantic. What does is that the issues here – the destruction of the planet, and of some of its inhabitants – are more than important: they are the stories. Always so hard to tell, though, in a way that’s human and engaging. And that’s what he’s done, got to the big picture via a small one, a photograph and a search. So Chris Packham, I will – we all should – drink your wee. Not literally; it’s Orang Rimba for thank you. Excellent, a new Saturday night talent contest! How does All Together Now (BBC One, Saturday) work, then? Well, someone comes on and sings a song, any style. If the judges like it, they stand up and join in. That’s it, really. Except the judges are called The Hundred, because that’s how many of them there are. They’ve all got something to do with singing, apart from their leader, Geri Horner … only joking, Geri. Rob Beckett hosts, with a raised eyebrow. It’s kind of like a pub singalong meets Celebrity Squares. First up then, Rosalie from Liverpool, who does One Night Only, which 61 of The Hundred stand up to, so Rosalie takes top spot, until she’s bumped off later. Should Rosalie have changed the lyrics – One Series Only? Actually, I quite enjoyed it. It doesn’t take itself too seriously. There are no promises of stardom; just a bit of a laugh, and 50 grand to the winner. And it’s nice to be able to easily work out how well someone’s done, as a percentage. | ['culture/television', 'tv-and-radio/series/tv-review', 'environment/deforestation', 'environment/environment', 'tone/reviews', 'culture/culture', 'type/article', 'profile/samwollaston', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/g2', 'theguardian/g2/tvandradio', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-g2-features'] | environment/deforestation | BIODIVERSITY | 2018-01-29T06:20:15Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
world/2011/sep/27/indonesia-waste-tip-scavengers | Living off the landfill: Indonesia's resident scavengers | They call it "the mountain": a sprawling, 110-hectare mound of Jakarta's rotting rubbish that stretches as far and nearly as high as the eye can see. Dark clouds of flies hover over decaying vegetables, cloth rags, mattresses, plastics, broken tables, medical x-rays and greasy car parts. Squelching among it all are the mountain's stray cats, goats, rats, cockroaches – and thousands of men and women, rifling through the rubbish to find their own personal treasure. "Woo hoo, a mobile!" cries one 20-something scavenger as he pockets the phone with a blackened hand and, with the other, flings a plastic bottle into the wicker basket on his back. All around him, scavengers are loading their baskets with aluminium tins, glass bottles and plastics of every variety. Some dance among the mountain's many bulldozers, their mechanical arms busy flinging rubbish skyward, while others scavenge the fresh loads of trucks that wind around the mountain's base and deposit the 6,250 tonnes of Jakarta's daily rubbish anywhere there is space. Scavenging at Bantar Gebang, Indonesia's largest trash dump, is a 24-hour business – and business is booming. "I came here because the work is good and I can be my own boss," says Umi, a 47-year-old former paddy farmer who, after living on-site for 20 years, proudly declares herself the mountain's resident trash lady. "When you farm rice you have to wait for the harvest and the work can be backbreaking. Now I work when I want to work. There's always something to find." Bantar Gebang, 20 miles east of Jakarta, is a peculiar case of Indonesian self-enterprise. Built in 1989 on rice paddy fields, the tip today is awash with former rice farmers who once dug the earth for their food and now dig the "mountain" for their earnings, with many of them living atop the tip in constructions made from the rubbish itself. Their one and two-bedroom huts, fashioned from scrap wood, cardboard, rugs, plastic advertisements for credit cards and nails rummaged from the tip, blend like ragtag camouflage into the mountain's hillside. Cafes furnished with abandoned tables and sofas offer tea and biscuits to scavengers, while fields of trash are levelled at dusk for ad-hoc volleyball games. A small outdoor cinema, boasting scavenged speakers, shows films once a week, and the call to prayer by resident imams often wafts over the mountains of rotting waste. Around 2,000 families are estimated to live and work at Bantar Gebang, but as Jakarta's waste increases, so does the tip's population. Most are unskilled workers from Java, some of whom have been scavenging in streets and rubbish bins their whole lives. But life here, says new resident Dadi, 25, can be a difficult adjustment. "I couldn't eat properly for weeks when I arrived, the smell was so bad," he says of the tip's stench of curdled milk. "I vomited every day." Despite a strong sense of community on the tip, many also find that they are stigmatised when they cross its borders. "For a long time, it was hard to go back home," says Sar Jok, 59, a "boss" who recruits new residents into teams of scavengers and sells their findings to independent recycling companies. "People would say, 'Why do you live on the dump? It smells bad, you smell bad'. But when they saw I made good money, their opinions changed." Scavengers, some of them children as young as five, make around 30,000 rupiah (£2.20) a day. Like the few paddy farmers who still till what's left of the neighbouring rice fields, many of Bantar Gebang's residents must do all they can to survive off the land. Nila, 31, a mother of three, regularly scavenges for her family's dinner. "I'll find vegetables, and fish or meat on the mountain," she says, cooking dinner over an open fire. "If it looks and smells OK, I take it. So far we've been lucky – nothing's happened to us." Local charities have lobbied for greater healthcare for scavengers, who are at risk of everything from minor skin irritations and vitamin deficiencies to tuberculosis and tapeworm. Landfill landslides can be deadly. But the municipal government already faces difficulties just dealing with Jakarta's waste. Recent initiatives to trap the tip's methane production and build on-site recycling facilities have eased Bantar Gebang's pollution. But the Indonesian Solid Waste Association recently admitted that the capital city of 10 million may need another decade until it can fully manage its own rubbish. Renie Elvina Tiurma, head of a Jakartan household and corporation-targeted recycling initiative called the Green Project, says that the unofficial reliance on scavengers to remedy the problem cannot continue. "Scavenging is not optimal because 40% of the 'recycling' is still not recyclable, it's too dirty to be processed," Tiurma says. "If Jakartans just sorted their own trash, we wouldn't have landfills like Bantar Gebang. Around 48% of a household's waste is recyclable and another 40% is compostable. But there's not much awareness or understanding here about recycling, as it's not yet government policy." While Jakarta is still years away from diminishing its rubbish to a level that would pitch the scavengers into other work, just the thought of a different future is too much for some. "I met my partner here, my life is here," says Nila. "I honestly don't know where else I would go." | ['environment/landfill', 'world/indonesia', 'world/world', 'environment/environment', 'environment/waste', 'environment/recycling', 'tone/news', 'world/asia-pacific', 'type/article', 'profile/kate-hodal', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/international'] | environment/waste | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE | 2011-09-27T16:02:14Z | true | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE |
environment/2021/mar/18/will-a-british-bioelectric-hybrid-plane-really-take-off | Will a British bioelectric hybrid plane really take off? | In the shadows of the old Spitfires and Hurricanes that helped win the Battle of Britain, Faradair, a UK startup operating from the historic Duxford airfield, is hoping to help Britain fight the new war against climate change by developing a revolutionary 18-seat bioelectric hybrid plane which will eventually, hopes its designer, be carbon neutral. The plane, currently in development, will use electric motors to power take-off and landing, the part of any flight with the highest noise and carbon emissions. Once cruising, at a speed of about 230mph, the plane will switch to its turbogenerator, powered by biofuel, which will also recharge the motors with assistance from solar panels, ready for the aircraft’s descent. The short-hop bio electric hybrid aircraft (Beha), the first aircraft produced since the 1920s to have a three-winged box design, will be able to operate cargo, passenger and special operation flights. It will have a palletised interior, allowing it to be converted from passenger to cargo use in just 15 minutes. Working with a consortium of partners to deliver 300 of the planes by 2030, Faradair chief executive Neil Cloughley admits that it might not be “the sleekest, the sexiest, nor the fastest, the highest or the furthest flying aircraft”, but believes it will prove itself in other ways. The aircraft will sell itself based on its low emissions, minimal operating costs and versatility. With a ducted fan and a box wing design, the Beha will trade higher speed for lower noise emissions and greater lift. The company hopes its ultra-quiet plane will be able to operate from airports such as London City, which have noise related night-time flight bans. Its wing is designed to generate huge amounts of lift, which will allow it to operate from runways that are shorter than 1,000ft (300 metres), despite the heavy battery technology on board. The wing is also designed with future technologies in mind. Faradair says the space between each wing would be the perfect place to locate more efficient batteries of the future, with the additional benefit of natural cooling from the passing air. Boris Johnson recently declared: “Jet Zero, let’s do It! [Let’s] set ourselves the goal now of producing the world’s first zero-emission long-haul passenger plane.” But Cloughley says that, although he hopes the plane will eventually be carbon neutral, to begin with the Beha will fly on a turbogenerator during its cruising phase. “All electric wasn’t going to be possible straight off the bat,” he said. “The power density simply isn’t there for anything of any meaningful size. That means that we have to go hybrid; it means that sustainable aviation fuels [SAFs] will be the ideal.” SAFs can be made from a wide variety of materials such as waste oils, surplus food and feedstock. The main benefit is that they recycle existing carbon, rather than releasing new carbon. However, this is still a new industry and SAFs currently form just 6% of global jet fuel. In its Destination 2050 report, Europe’s aviation sector said this could rise to more than 80% by 2030, but that this would require “strong political support”. The UK government is investing in SAFs, most recently with its £15m Green Fuels, Green Skies competition. But greater levels of support will be needed if it wants to see the possible 83% of global jet fuels coming from SAFs by 2030. Neil Cloughley has criticised the lack of government support offered to new, smaller companies such as his. Speaking about the Beha he said: “The reason why the aircraft isn’t flying today is because we couldn’t attract the support we needed. We pitched the idea of hybrid-electric flight, sustainable flying, green flight, to those responsible for aerospace innovation funding back in December of 2015.” He has now raised private funding for the development stage. Powering the most carbon-intensive part of the flight with electric motors means the Beha will produce lower emissions than conventional like-for-like regional jets. These savings will also be boosted by the use of lightweight carbon composite materials. However, the degree to which emissions are cut will also rely on access to SAFs and will become clearer after prototype testing. Hybrid technology will also enable a wider rollout of the Beha, removing the need for airports to install expensive electrical or hydrogen recharge facilities. This is especially important for the regional market that Faradair is targeting, where many airports already struggle to operate at a profit. Another benefit of a hybrid approach is that while battery technology isn’t currently able to power the entire flight, it is constantly improving. So the proportion of the flight powered by electric motors can be increased without changing the aircraft design. Bernie Baldwin, an aviation specialist and former head of publications at the Royal Aeronautical Society, is optimistic about the technological challenge. He points out that using an electric engine has already been proven in a smaller plane, the Cessna 208B Caravan. “Given the partners it has gathered, there seems to be no reason the Beha should not succeed technologically.” He warned however, that other electric planes were also being worked on, and would create serious commercial competition for the prototype. Clare Jackson, a senior consultant at Gemserv, agrees that hybrid aircraft could prove useful, “but only as a transitional solution”. She adds that the “industry [is] working hard to scale up hydrogen cell solutions”. Faradair hopes to have the Beha flying passengers by 2026, in which case, you’ll have to keep your eyes peeled, as your ears won’t be of much use in locating this ultra-quiet plane. | ['environment/environment', 'business/theairlineindustry', 'environment/biofuels', 'environment/energy', 'environment/renewableenergy', 'business/business', 'uk/uk', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'business/aerospace-industry', 'profile/callum-tennant', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/topstories', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-environment'] | environment/renewableenergy | ENERGY | 2021-03-18T06:00:21Z | true | ENERGY |
environment/2010/oct/20/feed-in-tariffs-renewableenergy | Q&A: How does the spending review affect feed-in tariffs? | In April, the previous government launched feed-in tariffs (FITs) - also known as the clean energy cashback scheme - to pay people who generate green electricity using small-scale solar panels, wind turbines, hydropower and combined heat and power. What did the government say in the spending review about the tariffs? The Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc) said: Feed-in tariffs will be refocused on the most cost-effective technologies saving £40m in 2014-15. The changes will be implemented at the first scheduled review of tariffs [in 2012, to kick in 2013] unless higher than expected deployment requires an early review In other words, the feed-in tariff scheme and current rate paid to owners of solar panels remains the same. But there are two new elements here. Firstly, in the 2012 review, changes will be made to the tariff that cut it by £40m, or 10%, in 2014 and 2015. Those changes won't be announced until 2012, but could take the form of both a 'trigger point' where rates paid fall automatically if a certain number of solar panels and other forms of 'microgeneration' are installed, and a potential cut in rates paid to one or more of the four technologies covered by the scheme. Second, the government is now saying it reserves the right to bring forward that 2012 review if there's a rush of people and companies installing microgeneration between now and then. What would this trigger point look like? Decc isn't saying, and won't tell us until 2012. The cap could be on the total installed capacity (ie in megawatts) or the number of applications, or another criteria. When the government does tell us more, it will then need to consult on the proposals, because the legislation underpinning the feed-in tariffs doesn't include any mention of a cap on volume. When should I install? As soon as possible. The rate of 41.3p per unit of electricity for solar panel owners was always only going to be guaranteed until 31 March 2012 and then reviewed in 2013 before decreasing in the following years. However, what was new in today's announcement was an admission that "higher than expected deployment" - ie a rush of people fitting solar and wind - would lead to that 2013 review taking place earlier. So if thousands of people suddenly decided to install solar panels over the next year, the rate could be cut much earlier than 31 March 2012. Just how much "higher than expected" the rush would need to be to bring forward the review has not been revealed. How does this affect people who have already installed since April? It doesn't. Any householder who installed solar panels after 15 July 2009 will still be paid 41.3p per unit of electricity for 25 years, and those before that date will get just 9p per unit. What do green groups think? They're pleased the FITs have survived largely intact. Today's announcement was welcomed by the Renewable Energy Association, Good Energy, Friends of the Earth, and other groups. Dave Sowden, Chief Executive of the Micropower Council said: "Today marks the start of a Citizen's Energy Revolution. The Government has sent a clear signal to homes, businesses and investors that the UK Microgeneration sector is well and truly open for business." | ['environment/feed-in-tariffs', 'environment/environment', 'environment/renewableenergy', 'environment/energy', 'environment/windpower', 'environment/solarpower', 'environment/wave-tidal-hydropower', 'money/money', 'politics/spending-review', 'politics/politics', 'tone/resource', 'type/article', 'profile/adam-vaughan'] | environment/windpower | ENERGY | 2010-10-20T15:47:06Z | true | ENERGY |
sustainable-business/2014/jun/09/toolkit-food-producers-reduce-waste-landfills | Toolkit aims to help food producers reduce the waste sent to landfills | For many companies and activists working to increase food efficiency, the link between waste and hunger is clear: eradicating environmentally irresponsible food waste while helping feed those in need. Karen Hanner, director of manufacturing product sourcing at Feeding America, a nonprofit network of food banks, puts it succinctly: “While food is going to waste, 37 million Americans struggle to feed their families.” This month, Feeding America, along with the Food Waste Reduction Alliance (FWRA), a cross-sector industry initiative led by the Food Marketing Institute (FMI), the Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA) and the National Restaurant Association (NRA), launched a toolkit (pdf) to help food producers reduce the waste that they send to landfills. The free resource follows other efforts, including Massachusetts', which recently mandated that large institutions must recycle food waste at a composting site or animal feed operation. “Food waste is common across retailers, manufacturers and restaurants,” says Gail Tavill, vice-president of sustainable development for ConAgra Foods and one of the toolkit's authors. Current studies show that 80bn pounds of food wind up in landfills yearly. Most (47%) comes from residential waste, restaurants (22%), fast-food restaurants (15%) and institutions (11%). “Sharing best practices to make system-wide improvements to reduce this waste just makes sense,” Tavill says. How the toolkit works The toolkit offers numerous tips for finding and curbing food waste. Perhaps the most useful suggestion is designating workers to sort through the waste stream to determine when, where and why a business is most likely to discard food. For companies looking to decrease their waste, it advises creating a baseline from which to measure progress, and looking for areas to reuse or recycle. The resource also advises that companies looking to cut waste may benefit from collaborating with donation agencies and other diversion partners. Thanks to the growing green movement across the country, businesses now have many ways to donate or compost their food. In North Carolina, for example, Whole Foods Market stores have partnered with Brooks Contractor, a family-owned food waste program that collects and composts food residuals. And, for food that is still edible, workers and volunteers at the Inter-Faith Food Shuttle in Raleigh work with donors such as grocery stores and farmers markets, distributing leftovers to families, especially children and seniors. “This is a big industry,” says Rhonda Sherman, an expert on solid waste and vermiculture technology at North Carolina State University. Vermicomposting, whereby earthworms convert the food scraps to fertilizer, is growing increasingly popular. “Today a restaurant in Hawaii has vermicomposting bins within full view of their diners. Another Idaho restaurant has vermicomposting bins in their basement. People like knowing the food they leave behind won’t go to waste.” New technology is also making it easier to recycle food waste. This month, the Whole Foods Market in Bellevue, Washington, is deploying a harvester machine that turns food waste into fertilizer. The Harvester keeps bugs out and turns ground-up food into nutrient-rich liquid. The business case for food waste Experts hope that more businesses will realize that reducing food waste makes good environmental and business sense. “When we purchase ingredients to make, sell or serve food that doesn’t get eaten, those purchases return no value to the bottom line,” Tavill says. Business owners become complacent in the amount of food they waste and any resulting lost profit. It’s common for restaurant owners to build food waste into their growing standard costs. There’s also a clear business case for composting food waste, or using it to make animal feed. By donating food, businesses gain greater tax deductions to help offset the cost and effort required for donation. Additionally, there’s the social value of helping feed the hungry. “Ultimately, whether we reduce waste generation, donate or recycle, these strategies are all a better use of our resources than feeding landfills,” Tavill says. Yet changing social behavior is challenging. When polling businesses, the FWA found that 77% cited logistical barriers to donating food, including difficulties with safe transportation, liability concerns and inadequate food storage. Then there are social and emotional barriers, Sherman says. “Many business owners feel uncomfortable with donating food out of fear they hurt the recipient.” To help offset this fear, the tool kit cites the Bill Emerson Good Samaritan Act, a law (pdf) protecting food and grocery donors from liability. And a lack of food storage and transportation can also be overcome, the toolkit authors write, by positive partnerships. The effectiveness of the toolkit – particularly when compared to legislative solutions like in Massachusetts – remains to be seen. Jonathan Bloom, a consultant and author of American Wasteland, doubts that the toolkit will have much clout without external input. “I predict more legislation to steer businesses toward keeping food out of landfills, and, hopefully, reducing waste,” he says. “As food prices rise, there will be more of a natural incentive to reduce waste.” Sherman adds that, while legislation will most likely make more people comply, businesses mustn’t be saddled with any costs. Orange County, North Carolina, contracts with a commercial composting company to collect food waste from some businesses, such as restaurants and grocery stores, to recycle it into compost. “The case for reducing food waste has never been clearer,” she says. • This piece was amended on 9 June to correct an inaccuracy that the legislature in North Carolina is paying businesses to recycle food. Debbi McCullough is an independent writer, editor and owner of Hanging Rock Media in North Carolina. The circular economy hub is funded by Philips. All content is editorially independent except for pieces labelled advertisement feature. Find out more here. | ['sustainable-business/sustainable-business', 'environment/food', 'food/food', 'business/fooddrinks', 'environment/waste', 'society/poverty', 'type/article', 'tone/features'] | environment/waste | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE | 2014-06-09T16:37:50Z | true | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE |
environment/2019/jun/20/greenpeace-north-sea-oil-protest-ends-with-climate-injunctions-for-bp | Greenpeace serves BP 'climate injunctions' at end of oil rig protest | Greenpeace has ended its protest against BP drilling for oil in the North Sea by handing in “people’s climate injunctions” at the company’s headquarters. Greenpeace protesters spent nearly seven days occupying an oil rig rented by BP in the Cromarty Firth in northern Scotland last week, leading to the arrests of 14 activists, including three photographers hired by the pressure group. After the rig Paul B Loyd Jr set sail on Saturday night, Greenpeace tried to prevent it reaching the Vorlich oilfield 150 miles east of Aberdeen by blocking its route with its ship the Arctic Sunrise. The oil rig evaded the Arctic Sunrise by changing course several times before arriving at its drill site on Wednesday morning. Greenpeace said the rig cost BP £140,000 a day to hire from its operator Transocean, which had nearly 100 oil workers on board during the protests. In a final attempt to obstruct the rig, Greenpeace said one of its swimmers swam into its path. It took her out of the water when the rig came within a nautical mile of her without altering course. Claiming its protest had been a success because it had delayed drilling for 12 days, Greenpeace said it had handed in two “injunctions”, documents mimicking a court order, at BP’s headquarters in Aberdeen and London urging the firm to immediately stop drilling new wells and switch to renewables. Its activists also protested outside BP’s European headquarters in Germany, accusing it of ignoring the climate emergency and breaching its pledges to honour the Paris climate agreement, which requires climate heating to be limited to 1.5C. John Sauven, Greenpeace UK’s executive director, said: “For the past 12 days we’ve seen what one Greenpeace ship and a handful of dedicated activists can achieve in the face of a giant climate-wrecking company. But they weren’t alone. There’s a movement of millions calling on companies like BP to clean up their act and truly address the climate emergency.” Eleven activists have appeared in court charged with disorderly conduct. The three photographers have not been charged. Police Scotland confirmed it had reported Greenpeace to Scottish prosecutors for further direct action on Sunday while the rig was at sea. It is understood Greenpeace inflatable boats are suspected of illegally breaching a 500-metre safety exclusion zone around the rig on Sunday morning. BP said it was glad the protests were over. “Greenpeace’s irresponsible actions have put people and property unnecessarily at risk, and diverted valuable time and resources away from public services,” a spokesman said. “Progress to a lower carbon future will depend on coming together, understanding each other’s perspectives and working to find solutions.” | ['environment/activism', 'uk/scotland', 'environment/greenpeace', 'business/bp', 'business/oil', 'environment/environment', 'world/protest', 'uk/uk', 'business/oilandgascompanies', 'environment/paris-climate-agreement', 'environment/climate-crisis', 'business/energy-industry', 'type/article', 'profile/severincarrell', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-home-news'] | environment/activism | CLIMATE_ACTIVISM | 2019-06-20T14:16:54Z | true | CLIMATE_ACTIVISM |
education/2019/mar/14/youth-climate-strikes-to-take-place-in-almost-100-countries-greta-thunberg | Youth climate strikes to take place in more than 100 countries | Hundreds of thousands of children are expected to walk out of their classrooms on Friday for a global climate strike amid growing anger at the failure of politicians to tackle the escalating ecological crisis. Children at tens of thousands of schools in more than 100 countries are due to take part in the walkouts which began last year when one teenager – Greta Thunberg – held a solo protest outside the Swedish parliament. Since then the climate movement has snowballed with schoolchildren on every continent except Antarctica taking part. Friday’s strike is expected to be the biggest yet as evidence mounts of the climate emergency facing the planet. Amnesty International has warned that the failure of world governments to tackle the crisis could amount to “one of the greatest intergenerational human rights violations in history”. Kumi Naidoo, Amnesty International’s secretary general, said: “It’s unfortunate that children have to sacrifice days of learning in school to demand that adults do the right thing. However, they know the consequences of the current shameful inaction both for themselves and future generations. This should be a moment for stark self-reflection by our political class.” Young people are expected to take to the streets in cities across Europe, Australia, Asia, Africa and the US on Friday. In the UK more than 10,000 children walked out of class last month and organisers expect Friday’s event to be even bigger with about 100 events taking place involving thousands of schools across the country. Anna Taylor, 17, who co-founded the UK student climate network, said: “Young people in the UK have shown that we’re angry at the lack of government leadership on climate change. “Those in power are not only betraying us, and taking away our future, but are responsible for the climate crisis that’s unfolding in horrendous ways around the world.” Taylor said the UK had been relatively shielded from the effects of the crisis so far, adding that “those least responsible for contributing to climate change are already suffering the worst effects”. She added: “It is our duty to not only act for those in the UK and our futures, but for everyone. That’s what climate justice means.” In Scotland, the Guardian is aware of strikes planned in 19 different locations, from South Uist in the Outer Hebrides to St Andrews on the east coast, with large gatherings expected in Glasgow’s George Square and outside the Scottish parliament in Edinburgh. One of the UK’s most prominent school strikers, Holly Gillibrand, will be taking part, after staging a weekly action outside her school in Fort William, in the Scottish Highlands. “It’s going to be quite impressive,” said Gillibrand of the School Strike for Climate movement, “and it’s incredibly inspiring that it all started with Greta striking on her own”. Asked whether she feels optimistic about the potential of Friday’s protest, Gillibrand replied: “I wouldn’t say optimistic is quite the right word. It shows there are thousands of students out there who care very deeply about the environment and are willing to miss school to demand that politicians take this ecological crisis seriously.” World leaders may listen to the school pupils taking part in one of the largest global climate change protests ever, but the key test is whether they take action, said the 13-year-old. According to the Scottish Green party, nine councils – which cover 16 of the 21 Scottish locations understood to have schoolchildren involved in protests – have indicated in response to letters from their MSPs that they will not pursue punitive action against young people taking part. Méabh Mackenzie is organising a protest with about 30 fellow pupils from Daliburgh primary school on the island of South Uist, with the express purpose of standing in solidarity with other threatened island communities across the globe. The 11-year-old explained: “I just wanted to share what I believe in. Uist is really low lying and I really love the place and don’t want it to disappear.” Some friends are “not into it at all”, she suspects because they do not want to go out in the cold – the forecast is for hail on Friday. “I think all the striking around the world will let politicians and lawmakers know that they have to do something because it is falling down the list of priorities. They are arguing about things like Brexit but we need them to act now on climate change. because in 12 years we can’t turn anything back.” In Belgium, thousands of workers will be striking to join the school students’ protest in locations such as Antwerp, Bruges and Liège, before travelling to Brussels for a large demonstration. Blue- and white-collar workers are being mobilised across the Flemish-Francophone divide, after an appeal from the Youth For Climate campaign, which has organised weekly demonstrations of up to 35,000 youths since January. Gina Heyrman, a spokeswoman for the 1.6 million-strong socialist trades union ABVV-FGTB, noted “similarities” with the Paris protests of 1968. She said: “This is the first time we have had a political strike together with young people. Maybe we’re at the beginning of a new era. I hope so. Everyone talks about the climate now. Everyone is aware of it, thanks to the students.” The rival CSC Christian trade union is also planning a “massive mobilisation”, although some of its workers cannot strike because of a strike notification law. The CFDT union in France is also calling for every member to participate in Friday’s climate action. Earlier this year Thunberg, who started the movement, told a gathering of political leaders and billionaire entrepreneurs in Davos: “I don’t want you to be hopeful. I want you to panic. I want you to feel the fear I feel every day. And then I want you to act.” | ['environment/climate-crisis', 'world/protest', 'education/schools', 'education/students', 'world/world', 'environment/greta-thunberg', 'world/sweden', 'world/belgium', 'uk/scotland', 'uk/uk', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'environment/school-climate-strikes', 'profile/matthewtaylor', 'profile/arthurneslen', 'profile/libbybrooks', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-environment'] | environment/greta-thunberg | CLIMATE_ACTIVISM | 2019-03-14T14:00:42Z | true | CLIMATE_ACTIVISM |
environment/2022/mar/18/recycled-plastic-bottles-leach-more-chemicals-into-drinks-review-finds | Recycled plastic bottles leach more chemicals into drinks, review finds | A widely used kind of recycled plastic bottle passes more potentially harmful chemicals into their contents than newly manufactured bottles, researchers have warned. Researchers from Brunel University London found 150 chemicals that leached into drinks from plastic bottles, with 18 of those chemicals found in levels exceeding regulations. And they found that drinks bottled using recycled Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET) can contained higher concentrations of chemicals than those bottled using new PET, which suggests that problems with the recycling process may be causing contamination. They are calling for more careful recycling methods to remove the potentially harmful chemicals. The thermoplastic PET is the third most widely used type of plastic in food packaging, with one of its most popular end uses in single-use drinks bottles. Such bottles are also one of the most commonly found forms of plastic litter, leading to a number of initiatives to increase levels of PET recycling. A recent EU directive called for PET bottles to contain at least 30% recycled content by 2030. But PET is also known for being the source of a number of potential chemical contaminants, including endocrine disruptors such as Bisphenol A, which can cause reproductive disorders, cardiovascular problems and cancer, among other ill effects. The researchers reviewed 91 studies from around the world looking at chemical contamination from plastic bottles. Dr Eleni Iacovidou, a lecturer from Brunel’s centre for pollution research and policy, who led the study, said: “We found these chemicals can come from various sources, such as the catalysts and additives used during production and degradation during PET production, and degradation that can happen across a bottle’s lifecycle.” In recycled PET bottles, many of the contaminants found had arisen as a result of contamination of the feedstock, including labels, according to the paper, published in the Journal of Hazardous Materials. The researchers wrote: “This evidence implies that highly recyclable products, such as PET drink bottles, can be inapt for closed-loop recycling when poorly designed, indicating the need for greater adoption of design-for-recycling principles and improvements at the waste-management infrastructure level.” In particular, to reduce the number of chemicals found in bottled drinks, the study suggests that a technology known as the “super cleaning” process could be used, which uses a three-stage process to clean old plastics before recycling – a high-temperature wash, a gas wash, and a chemical wash. Iacovidou said: “Recycling processes already include the cleaning of the bottles before turning them into secondary raw material for use. By investing in new super-cleaning technologies, we can maximise the likelihood of decontaminating recycled PET to levels similar to virgin PET.” As ever though, the ultimate solution to the problem is for society to begin an end to the use of PET altogether, Iacovidou said. “We all have a responsibility to bear. We need to start thinking about how to prevent the use of PET bottles in our households by investing, for example, in water filters, or large water containers and learning how to dispose of our plastic waste properly,” she said. “If we reduce our consumption of PET then we will drive change further up the system. Less demand equals less production in the first place.” | ['environment/plastic', 'environment/recycling', 'uk/uk', 'food/softdrinks', 'education/bruneluniversity', 'environment/environment', 'environment/ethical-living', 'environment/waste', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/damien-gayle', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-environment'] | environment/plastic | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE | 2022-03-18T15:04:59Z | true | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE |
environment/2021/aug/06/close-to-point-of-no-return-climate-scientists-to-stress-urgent-need-to-act | Alok Sharma is trying to save the world. Should he be able to fly to do it? | The starkest warning yet on how close the global climate is to the point of no return will be delivered to the world on Monday morning, when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – made up of the world’s top climate scientists – publishes a landmark report. Details are still under wraps, but the Guardian has confirmed that the warning from the IPCC will reinforce how vital it is to try to prevent temperatures from reaching more than 1.5C above pre-industrial levels. Beyond that threshold, scientists will warn, the consequences of extreme weather will be devastating. The world must act urgently: if greenhouse gas emissions are not halved in this decade, 1.5C of heating will be inevitable and probably irreversible. The IPCC’s warning will set the scene for Cop26 – vital UN climate talks – in Glasgow this November, where countries will be given a last chance to put the 2015 Paris agreement on track and hold global heating to within 1.5C. So when it came to light on Friday that Alok Sharma, the UK minister in charge of the Cop26 talks, and his team – who are engaged in the urgent task of forging a global climate deal – had taken 30 flights as part of his diplomatic mission, it raised a critical question. Should Sharma be flying to these meetings, instead of conducting them virtually, at a time when we are increasingly aware of the impending disaster of climate change, and of the importance of reducing our carbon footprint? Sharma will act as president of Cop26, which means bringing together 196 countries that are signed up to the Paris accord and ensuring each of them comes up with a plan to cut emissions in the next decade, and agrees a long-term target of reaching net zero emissions around mid-century. That plan was always going to face serious obstacles: China, the world’s biggest emitter, is wedded to coal power and reluctant to make promises about phasing it out; India likewise is using coal to power its growing economy; Russia, Saudi Arabia and Australia are big fossil fuel exporters and have a history of trying to thwart agreement at UN climate meetings; Brazil under President Jair Bolsonaro is intent on allowing further exploitation of the Amazon rainforest, which is burning at near-record rates. On top of that, the Covid-19 pandemic has meant countries have been unable to meet as they usually would before a big climate conference. Key negotiations have been delayed and have had to take place virtually, but many countries have been concerned that virtual negotiations are unfair and will not produce the progress needed. Chris Venables, the policy director at the Green Alliance thinktank, said: “Alok Sharma is quite literally trying to save the world – and the idea that he shouldn’t use every tool at his disposal to try to do so is absurd. You can’t negotiate complex political planet-saving deals over Zoom and Covid has made it even more important for the Cop president to sit down with world leaders in person. This is a storm in a teacup – and for all our sakes, we should let him get on with job.” Leo Murray, a veteran campaigner on flying and co-founder of Plane Stupid, said: “The reason the Daily Mail has done this is to serve an agenda – they know it undermines the whole green agenda. He’s a diplomat – he needs to be flying. If there’s a limited budget for emissions from aeroplanes, this seems like a very good use of it.” Negotiations needed to take place in person if the progress required by November was to be made, pointed out Tom Burke, a government adviser and co-founder of the E3G environmental thinktank. He said: “The only way you can deal with climate change is if you can do successful diplomacy – and that can’t be done with Zoom, it has to be face-to-face. Alok Sharma has done a pretty good job. He has taken on this nightmare travel schedule because it’s the only way to do climate diplomacy.” Burke said the government’s rules allowed for exemptions from the need to self-isolate on return from overseas. “They allow for exemptions in an emergency – and boy, are we in an emergency!” | ['environment/climate-crisis', 'environment/environment', 'politics/alok-sharma', 'science/scienceofclimatechange', 'science/science', 'environment/cop26-glasgow-climate-change-conference-2021', 'politics/politics', 'uk/uk', 'type/article', 'tone/analysis', 'profile/fiona-harvey', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-environment'] | environment/cop26-glasgow-climate-change-conference-2021 | CLIMATE_POLICY | 2021-08-06T17:48:38Z | true | CLIMATE_POLICY |
books/2020/jan/23/forbidden-territory-the-best-books-about-land-and-power | Forbidden territory: the best books about land and power | Recent government proposals to criminalise aspects of trespass have forced the intertwined issues of land and power back into focus. But the question of who owns land in Britain has been bound up with wealth, inequality and exclusion for centuries. Traveller communities are likely to be worst affected by the government’s plans, so a good place to start is Damian Le Bas’s The Stopping Places, a lyrical memoir about life on the road. Le Bas’s journey is a quest to rediscover his Romany roots, and along the way explore the challenges and prejudices facing Travellers. Rightwing populism needs a marginalised group to blame for society’s ills, and we’ve been here before: in the 1990s, the Conservatives introduced the Criminal Justice Act to crack down on Gypsies, anti-roads protesters and raves. George McKay’s Senseless Acts of Beauty is a wonderful history of the forgotten counterculture that sparked this clampdown, from the free festivals of the 70s to the Dongas tribe who occupied Twyford Down to halt a bypass. Land, and who controls it, lay at the heart of this uprising. The 1,000-year history of that struggle between the landowners and the landless was first spelled out in Marion Shoard’s This Land Is Our Land, a seminal work that helped inspire efforts to give the public greater access to our countryside. It can be read alongside Fay Godwin’s Our Forbidden Land, a collection of extraordinary monochrome photographs of Britain’s closed-off landscapes, from MoD sites behind barbed wire fences to grouse moors defended by gamekeepers and “keep out” signs. Godwin was president of the Ramblers’ Association, and it was thanks to her organisation that we now have a partial right to roam across 10% of England and Wales. Much remains off-limits, however, and one of the reasons why is the prestige that comes with owning land – none more so than the sporting estate. Such pretensions are memorably skewered in Roald Dahl’s Danny the Champion of the World, in which a boy and his father poach pheasants from the local bigwig’s wood. After his father is caught in a mantrap – the epitome of the landowning gentry’s desire to exclude the great unwashed – Danny hatches a cunning plan to get his own back. Since devolution, Scottish politics has taken a very different path to England’s – on land as on so much else. Andy Wightman’s magnum opus The Poor Had No Lawyers is an essential guide to who owns Scotland and why land reform has flowered there in recent years. And for a bitingly witty history of the Highland clearances, take a look at John McGrath’s play The Cheviot, The Stag and the Black, Black Oil. Exclusion from the land can be viewed through the prism of race as well as class. Official surveys show that BME communities are much less likely to visit the countryside than white Britons. The Forestry Commission’s appointment of Zakiya Mckenzie as a writer-in-residence is one recent nod towards trying to decolonise the countryside. Mckenzie’s poem “Writer in the Forest” explores feelings of belonging in nature: “This land that I own as every part of myself / Yet know I have no ultimate claim to contend”. It’s a philosophy that we urgently need to embrace: that the Earth does not ultimately belong to us – rather, we belong to the Earth. • Who Owns England? by Guy Shrubsole is published by William Collins (RRP £20). To order a copy go to guardianbookshop.com. Free UK p&p over £15. | ['books/series/further-reading', 'books/politics', 'books/books', 'culture/culture', 'tone/features', 'environment/environment', 'environment/activism', 'world/protest', 'politics/politics', 'uk/uk', 'type/article', 'profile/guy-shrubsole', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/guardianreview', 'theguardian/guardianreview/saturdayreviewsfeatres', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/review'] | environment/activism | CLIMATE_ACTIVISM | 2020-01-23T09:58:51Z | true | CLIMATE_ACTIVISM |
environment/2021/jun/17/quarter-of-uk-pupils-attend-schools-where-air-pollution-is-over-who-limit | Quarter of UK pupils attend schools where air pollution is over WHO limit | Millions of British children attend schools where air pollution is worse than the World Health Organization limit, campaigners have said. An analysis found that more than a quarter of schools, from nurseries to sixth-form colleges, were in locations with high levels of small particle pollution. This means an estimated 3.4 million children are learning in an unhealthy environment, said Global Action Plan (Gap), the charity behind the research that was released on Clean Air Day on Thursday. Tiny pollution particles, called PM2.5, are particularly dangerous as they not only harm the lungs but can pass into the bloodstream and affect many other parts of the body. Developing bodies are especially vulnerable, and dirty air has already been linked to increased asthma, obesity and mental disorders in children. “Schools should be safe places of learning, not places where students are at risk of health hazards,” said Dr Maria Neira, director at the World Health Organization. “These figures are unequivocally too high and harming children’s health. There is no safe level of air pollution, and if we care about our children and their future, air pollution limits should reflect WHO guidelines.” A second report by experts at the University of Manchester also highlighted the danger to children’s health from air pollution, which it said has recently been linked to increasing cognitive impairments, including ADHD. Prof Martie Van Tongeren said urgent action was needed to cut pollution to prevent cognitive decline and neurodegenerative diseases in young people: “Children face a considerably higher risk of neurological impacts from air pollutants. These can transfer to the bloodstream in the lungs and travel to other parts of the body including the brain, or may travel directly to the brain through the olfactory nerve in the nose.” The highest number of polluted schools identified in the analysis by Gap are in the populous London and south-east regions. But there are polluted schools across the country, with nearly 300 in Manchester postcodes M1 to M9 and in Portsmouth postcodes PO1 to PO9. There are also more than 200 such schools in the first nine Leicester and Ipswich postcodes. The analysis combined 2019 data from the air quality company EarthSense with the locations of schools in England, Scotland and Wales. Air pollution fell during Covid-19 lockdowns but is expected to largely return to previous levels. The research found almost 8,000 schools are in locations above the WHO’s annual average limit for PM2.5 of 10 μg/m3 – the UK legal limit is 25 μg/m3. In April, the coroner who found that air pollution was a cause of the death of 9-year-old Ella Adoo-Kissi-Debrah in 2013 said the UK limit should be lowered to the WHO level. The WHO limit was set in 2005 but may be lowered further in new guidelines expected in September, New Scientist reported on Wednesday. PM2.5 particles are produced by traffic, wood-burning stoves and farm emissions. In its 2019 Clean Air Strategy, the government said: “We will reduce PM2.5 concentrations across the UK, so that the number of people living in locations above the WHO guideline level is reduced by 50% by 2025.” Gap said schools, parents and children could lobby local and national politicians to take action, as well as walking or cycling to school wherever possible. Sarah Hannafin, at the National Association for Head Teachers, said: “The impact of the pandemic on children has been huge; we need to do everything we can to make sure we safeguard their futures. One vital way of doing that is to ensure they return to a safe, clean and healthy environment where they can learn, play and thrive.” A spokesperson for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said: “Emissions of fine particulate matter have fallen by 11% [since 2010]. However, we know there is more to do. We are continuing to deliver a £3.8bn plan to clean up transport and tackle NO2 pollution.” A consultation on new targets for PM2.5 and other pollutants will launch early next year, he said, with the aim of setting new targets in legislation by October 2022. In September, research commissioned by Asthma UK and the British Lung Foundation said that many schools were in areas with dangerously high levels of particle pollution. The Guardian revealed in 2017 that thousands of schools in England and Wales were in locations with illegal levels of nitrogen dioxide, a pollutant produced by diesel vehicles. NO2 levels have been illegally high in most urban areas since 2010 and the government has lost three times in court over the adequacy of its plans to reduce pollution levels. | ['environment/air-pollution', 'environment/pollution', 'society/children', 'uk/uk', 'environment/environment', 'society/society', 'uk/london', 'education/schools', 'world/world-health-organization', 'education/education', 'society/health', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/damiancarrington', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/uknews', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-environment'] | environment/air-pollution | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE | 2021-06-17T05:01:25Z | true | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE |
environment/2023/apr/18/scientists-discover-pristine-deep-sea-galapagos-reef-teeming-with-life | Scientists discover pristine deep-sea Galápagos reef ‘teeming with life’ | Scientists operating a submersible have discovered deep-sea coral reefs in pristine condition in a previously unexplored part of the Galápagos marine reserve. Diving to depths of 600 metres (1,970ft), to the summit of a previously unmapped seamount in the central part of the archipelago, the scientists witnessed a breathtaking mix of deep marine life. This has raised hopes that healthy reefs can still thrive at a time when coral is in crisis due to record sea surface temperatures and ocean acidification. It also showed the effectiveness of conservation actions and effective management, they said. “They are pristine and teeming with life – pink octopus, batfish, squat lobsters and an array of deep-sea fish, sharks and rays,” said Dr Michelle Taylor, a marine biologist at Essex University and co-leader of the expedition in a human-occupied vehicle, HOV Alvin, a submersible able to take two scientists to depths of 6,500 metres. “This is encouraging news,” said José Antonio Dávalos, the environment minister for Ecuador, which owns the Galápagos. “It reaffirms our determination to establish new marine protected areas [MPAs] in Ecuador and to continue promoting the creation of a regional marine protected area in the eastern tropical Pacific.” The country is collaborating with its northern neighbours Panama, Costa Rica and Colombia on a regional marine corridor initiative, which aims to protect and responsibly manage the ocean. Operated by Taylor and Dr Stuart Banks, of the Charles Darwin Foundation in Ecuador, HOV Alvin explored unknown regions of the reserve using state-of-the-art sampling capabilities and visual upgrades that included improved high-quality still and ultra-high-definition 4K video-imaging systems. Prior to this discovery, Wellington Reef, off the coast of Darwin Island in the far north of the Galápagos archipelago, was thought to be among the few structural shallow coral reefs in the islands to have survived the destruction wreaked by an El Niño event in 1982-83. The find shows that sheltered deep-water coral communities have probably persisted for centuries in the depths of the Galápagos marine reserve, supporting rich, diverse and potentially unique marine communities. “These newly discovered reefs are potentially of global significance – a ‘canary in the mine’ for other reefs globally – sites which we can monitor over time to see how pristine habitats evolve with our current climate crisis,” Taylor said. Banks said the reef helped scientists “reconstruct past ocean environments to understand modern climate change”. It could also help understand the role of MPAs in the carbon cycle and fisheries. “It’s very likely there are more reef structures across different depths waiting to be explored,” he said. A newly established MPA, the Hermandad marine reserve, now connects a chain of seamounts in Ecuadorian waters to offshore marine environments such as Costa Rica’s Cocos Island national park. Scientists say the underwater mountains are migratory routes for marine life and require special measures to protect foraging grounds and sustain responsible fisheries. Dávalos said the discovery was another reason to achieve the commitments of the Global Ocean Alliance 30x30, which aims to protect at least 30% of the world’s oceans by 2030. HOV Alvin is owned by the US navy and operated by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), as part of the US National Science Foundation-funded National Deep Submergence Facility. It was also financed by the Natural Environmental Research Council in the UK. Taylor and Banks are also part of an international group of scientists onboard the US navy-owned and WHOI-operated research vessel RV Atlantis, which is undertaking the Galápagos Deep 2023 expedition. | ['environment/series/seascape-the-state-of-our-oceans', 'world/galapagos-islands', 'environment/coral', 'environment/marine-life', 'environment/wildlife', 'world/ecuador', 'world/americas', 'environment/environment', 'world/world', 'environment/climate-crisis', 'environment/elnino', 'environment/conservation', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/dan-collyns', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/international', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/global-development'] | environment/marine-life | BIODIVERSITY | 2023-04-18T11:54:51Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
environment/2024/dec/02/country-diary-the-myriad-sounds-of-a-cemetery-in-the-rain | Country diary: The myriad sounds of a cemetery in the rain | Kate Bradbury | In the cemetery everything is yellow: the carpet of leaves on the ground, mirrored by those still clinging to trees. Plastic flowers laid on gravestones, new graffiti on the wall. It’s raining, and there’s a serenity here that’s often hard to find in the city. Just outside, cars and buses rumble, children play football, a train rolls by. But in the cemetery everything is quiet: whether muted by rain, dead or dying, waiting out its chance for rebirth. I stand beneath trees so I may learn how they sound when rain hits their leaves. Under the sycamore the rain drums; under the elm it patters. Rain on beech leaves sounds somewhere in between, while the yew makes no noise at all. I am all alone in this gentle pursuit, and am grateful no one is watching. As I brush leaves off the gravestones to read their inscriptions, springtails propel themselves back into darkness. There are some recent stones here but, in a forgotten corner I stand among Edmunds and Marys, Johns and Elizabeths. The oldest inscription I can read dates back to 1875, but there are others that are impossible to make out, worn down by 150 years of weather. I spot a jay drinking water from a long-forgotten grave pot. I count a mischief of seven magpies, a volery of long-tailed tits. Among the gravestones are desire paths made by foxes, leading to passageways beneath fences – portals into unknown gardens. I wonder if there are badgers here. There are holes in trees to check in spring for nesting birds, piles of grass clippings and leaves where a hedgehog might make a nest. In the city proper, the starlings have begun to murmurate, the adults teaching the nervous chicks how to swoop into the bowels of Brighton Pier. Pied wagtails roost in two trees on the busiest road. If we looked up we might see the last of the migrating birds heading south for winter. If we listened at night we might hear the tseep tseep of redwings above the clatter of traffic. But I hunker down in the cemetery, where magpies, jays, foxes and springtails rub shoulders with the dead, where you can hear rain landing on trees, where the yellow of the graffiti matches the yellow of the leaves. • Under the Changing Skies: The Best of the Guardian’s Country Diary, 2018-2024 is published by Guardian Faber; order at guardianbookshop.com and get a 15% discount | ['environment/series/country-diary', 'environment/environment', 'uk/ruralaffairs', 'uk/uk', 'environment/forests', 'environment/birds', 'society/death-and-dying', 'type/article', 'tone/features', 'profile/kate-bradbury', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/journal', 'theguardian/journal/letters', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-letters-and-leader-writers'] | environment/forests | BIODIVERSITY | 2024-12-02T05:30:15Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
environment/2018/jan/25/country-diary-poplar-laid-low-by-age-and-wind-sandy-bedfordshire | Country diary: a mighty poplar brought down by old age and the revenge of the wind | When the last storm whipped through our valley it brought down the tallest tree on the river. An old Lombardy poplar, a spire without a church, it belonged to an age when planting poplars was popular. They were the leylandii of their day, for they shot up as fast as rockets and looked like them too. They were often grown in rows as windbreaks, though nobody much thought about old age and the wind’s revenge. For a day or so after, my eyes clawed at the air, looking for the absent shape of a tower that had been a crow’s nest for a magpie, a labyrinth for tits, a cricked neck. I saw only a wooded ridge, some houses, and sky – so much sky that it snuffed out the memory. For a day or so only, passersby stopped to inspect the toppled giant, as they might view the corpse of a beached whale. I paced its prostrate length – at 30 metres it was bigger than a blue whale. The impact of its fall had snapped off branches all the way along – arms, fingers and knuckles. I touched the tip of a topmost twig, probably the first human to do so in 75 years or more, and it came away. It had put on a spurt of 30cm growth in its final summer, its tight grey buds poised to open into another year. A moment later, it protruded from my coat pocket, destined to bud or not in a mantelpiece vase. At the tree’s base, an autopsy of its last seconds was written in splits, snaps, rips and a broken heart. Close to, the anchors of its roots had severed with yellowing tears that wept still, or lifted to leave a half-ring crater. Peeled back like the lid of a tin, its trunk revealed itself as hollow, the heartwood eaten out. An ivy-coated stem of trunk-like proportions had sheared off to the river, the overhang already amputated by a chainsaw. A blackbird played on the parallel bars, hopping from horizontal branch to horizontal branch, a surfeit of perches. Was the tree now dead, or would spring shoots begin new life at a different angle? | ['environment/series/country-diary', 'environment/forests', 'environment/winter', 'environment/environment', 'uk/ruralaffairs', 'uk/uk', 'type/article', 'tone/features', 'profile/derek-niemann', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/journal', 'theguardian/journal/letters', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-letters-and-leader-writers'] | environment/forests | BIODIVERSITY | 2018-01-25T05:30:07Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
sport/2023/sep/10/wales-and-fiji-collide-in-world-cup-clash-of-big-passion-and-little-resource | Wales and Fiji collide in World Cup clash of big passion and little resource | Michael Aylwin | In the ever-changing flux that is the rugby world’s balance of power, an intriguing point of reference will be established in Bordeaux on Sunday. We are nearly 30 years into rugby union’s professional era. There are teams rising and falling all over the place, as the new economic, political and cultural energies play out. In this context, Wales against Fiji feels particularly poignant. Two countries high on rugby passion, low on resource; one a part of the old order, the other always in the middle of the deep-blue sea watching on from afar. Both famed, at least in the easy stereotypes of legend, for playing the rugby of romance. If we are talking about talent, there is no question which is the better rugby-playing nation. That is no shame on Wales, who probably top that metric in the northern hemisphere, but Fiji, along with their confreres in the Pacific Ocean, Samoa and Tonga, produce far and away the best rugby players in the world. If you compare their ethnic populations (0.034% of the world’s) with the number of professional rugby players they supply to the global pool (nearly a fifth), it would be absurd to claim otherwise. The world has long known that if the playing field were level, the Pacific island nations would dominate. The general effect of the professional era, meanwhile, has been to loosen the grip in relative terms of those nations (New Zealand, South Africa, Australia) who used to dominate totally, in favour of those who enjoy greater economic heft (France, England, Japan) and those who have organised themselves effectively (Ireland, Argentina). All the while, we await anxiously the unwinding of the Pacific islanders’ fate. The most interesting development on the eve of this World Cup has been the rise of Fiji, despite all the above. To say this has been sudden may not be fair, given Fiji are responsible for one of the great upsets in World Cup history – 2007, in France, against Wales – but they have self-evidently, like most economically disadvantaged nations, been swimming against the tide. The size of their economies has long been cited as the great conundrum thwarting an ascension of the Pacific island nations to a playing field level with the those of the rest, but if one of them does have an economy of any note it is Fiji. It seems now they are making it tell. They have just beaten England for the first time. At Twickenham. They sit seventh in World Rugby’s rankings, the highest in Pool C, which includes Australia (ninth) and Wales (10th). England are eighth. Many may be the theories behind their rise, which feels more concerted now than it did in, say, 2007, but a good place to start is the Fijian Drua, the fully professional team (the first to be based in Fiji) now with two seasons in Super Rugby under their belt. The chief executive of the Drua is Mark Evans, who knows a fair bit about the challenges facing Welsh rugby as well. The former chief executive of Harlequins and the Melbourne Storm – who has advised the Welsh Rugby Union – is smitten with the place. “It’s the most rugby-crazy country I’ve ever seen or worked in,” says Evans, the born and bred Welshman. “There’s no comparison, there really isn’t. Just extraordinary.” According to Evans, the Drua’s live matches are watched by half of Fiji’s population of nearly a million. As a resource of rugby talent, Fiji – like Samoa and Tonga – has long been plundered by bigger nations, but the Drua supplies a new route through which talented players can develop without having to leave the islands. In other words, it is carving out and consolidating Fiji’s player pathways, groundwork that Wales might look on with interest. “For all the nations with relatively low participation numbers, having excellent pathways is critical,” says Evans. For the past 15 years or so, Wales, the national team, have thrived on the exploits of a golden generation, but the story below national level has been more complicated. It might be a misnomer to describe Wales as uniquely driven by rugby passions – if anything, Fiji is more so – but the culture of Welsh rugby, seeping up from the floor of the valleys, has hindered the development of those pathways at least as much as it has empowered them. Nowhere is this better illustrated than by the continuing struggles to incorporate the four regions into a coherent top-to-bottom system. Neither soulful local club, nor official branch of a national union, the regions remain an awkward construct. Wales cannot afford any misalignment in those pathways if they are to continue to hold their own among better-resourced peers. Sometimes local passions need to be transcended to service the greater good. How Wales must look on in envy at Fiji’s simple new feeder team of the Drua. Evans does not expect the full impact of their creation to work through before the 2027 World Cup, but working through it already is. The population of Wales is three million, a similar number to another country with a team in Pool C, Georgia (one rank below Wales in 11th). Fiji’s is one million. There is more in common between these two than might have seemed obvious until now. Sunday’s match will provide a fresh snapshot of where Wales and Fiji stand on rugby’s shifting sands. | ['sport/rugby-world-cup-2023', 'sport/rugby-world-cup', 'sport/wales-rugby-union-team', 'sport/fiji-rugby-union-team', 'sport/rugby-union', 'sport/sport', 'campaign/email/the-breakdown', 'type/article', 'tone/features', 'profile/michaelaylwin', 'publication/theobserver', 'theobserver/sport', 'theobserver/sport/news', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-sport'] | sport/wales-rugby-union-team | UNRELATED_TO_CLIMATE | 2023-09-10T07:32:26Z | true | UNRELATED_TO_CLIMATE |
culture/2020/jan/25/country-diary-channelling-past-lives-in-a-derelict-coalyard | Country diary: channelling past lives in a derelict coalyard | Nature is reinventing this wedge of land between the railway and the River Derwent, once a small coalyard. A half century of quiet work has created a skim of gritty black soil and in early summer the place is a riot of floral colour. In winter, though, it’s the buildings that draw me. There was once a row of cottages here, of which I can find no physical sign, and the idea of them flickering at the edge of living memory troubles me. Still present, however, is the little stone hut next to the pit where coal was weighed. The slate roof is giving way and sprouting with hart’s tongue fern. The door sags half open and inside is an odd assemblage, co-curated by forgotten intentions, mischief, nature and neglect. A rotting blanket at the window, the rusting ironwork of the old weighing apparatus, a half dozen empty plastic carboys, a scorched tennis racket. I glimpse bits of myself on the floor in shards of broken mirror. On one wall the name “Colin” is daubed in blue paint. Another has pencil scribblings: names, dates, a drawing labelled “Mr Vause”, and an odd little rant: “TRIPE TRIPE TRIPE TRIPE TR … Bad, bad”. Vause was the name of the owners of the coalyard business in the 1950s. The fireplace has an iron surround but no mantelshelf; still, it’s a hearth, and hearths tug on a part of my mind that is far older than I am. I crouch at the broken grate and someone long ago becomes present, strikes a match, and we wait together for the glow and flare, hold out our hands and flex them to dislodge the chill, thinking about a nice hot brew. It’s cosy, this little seance in my head, until I realise that there’s nothing in it for him other than a premonition of ruin. The thought of scrutiny from the future is an uneasy one and it’s still in my mind when I drop my gaze to the floor, and almost yelp because there are eyes there: blue, unblinking and furious. They are only the spots on the dismembered wings of a peacock butterfly, but I feel their glare long after I leave. | ['culture/heritage', 'uk/ruralaffairs', 'uk-news/yorkshire', 'environment/series/country-diary', 'environment/environment', 'type/article', 'uk/uk', 'culture/culture', 'environment/mining', 'tone/features', 'profile/amy-jane-beer', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/journal', 'theguardian/journal/letters', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-letters-and-leader-writers'] | environment/mining | ENERGY | 2020-01-25T05:30:45Z | true | ENERGY |
science/2007/mar/29/uk.biodiversity | Big sharks are disappearing - and world's fisheries are suffering as a result | The rapid decline of great sharks in the world's oceans is disrupting the entire marine ecosystem by allowing more lowly fish to thrive, scientists warn today. Overfishing of the ancient predators has lead to a sudden uprising of species they prey on, causing an abundance of skates, rays and smaller sharks, which are steadily devastating populations of shellfish, including scallops, oysters and clams, the researchers claim. The findings suggest that the demise of the great sharks, whose primitive ancestors cruised the seas long before the rise and fall of the dinosaurs, may have unforeseen knock-on effects on marine life lower down the foodchain. Records from fisheries and research vessels dating from the 1970s to 2005 have revealed a dramatic nosedive in great shark populations. Tiger sharks and scalloped hammerheads may have declined more than 97% since the mid-1980s, while numbers of smooth hammerheads and bullsharks are believed to have fallen by 99% off the east coast of the US. Writing in the journal Science, a team of marine biologists lead by Ran Myers at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, reveal an analysis of fish research surveys over the past 16 to 35 years. The records show that while the abundance of 11 great shark species fell dramatically over the past 35 years, 12 of the 14 fish species they prey on had increased sharply. In the waters along the US Atlantic coast, numbers of cownose rays, a staple of the great shark diet that can grow to four feet across, jumped 8% a year to an estimated population of around 40 million. The explosion of the cownose population coincides with an almost complete collapse of scallops in the waters, leaving only those protected behind marine fences for local fisheries to take. Without sharks to keep their numbers in check, researchers fear the migrating rays will drive down shellfish populations as they swim through, to the point where they are unable to recover. Julia Baum, a co-author of the paper, said: "With fewer sharks around, the species they prey upon, like cownose rays, have increased in numbers, and in turn, hordes of cownose rays dining on scallops, have wiped the scallops out." Sharks are targeted by fisheries for their fins and meat, but are also taken as by-catch by fleets fishing for tuna and swordfish. As many as 73 million sharks are killed each year around the globe for the finning trade. Ellen Pikitch, executive director of the Pew Institute for Ocean Science in Miami, said: "This is the first published field experiment to demonstrate that the loss of sharks is cascading through ocean ecosystems and inflicting collateral damage on food fisheries such as scallops. These unforeseen and devastating impacts underscore the need to take a more holistic ecosystem-based approach to fisheries management." Charles Peterson, a researcher on the paper and marine biologist at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, said the study highlighted the importance of maintaining populatios of the ocean's top predators. "Despite the vastness of the oceans, its organisms are interconnected, meaning that changes at one level have implications several steps removed. Through our work, the ocean is not so unfathomable, and we know better now why sharks matter," he added. In British waters, historic overfishing has seen the common ray decline to the point that surveys in the western channel have failed to spot any since the 1930s. More recently, numbers of blue and porbeagle sharks are believed to have fallen. The porbeagles are believed to be taken by Danish and French fleets, while Spanish long-line vessels take blue sharks migrating into British waters. Last year, a team lead by David Sims of the Marine Biological Association in Plymouth tagged six blue sharks off the coast of Portugal to investigate their fate. Two were landed by fisheries within three months. "The ones that get here may be the survivors," he said. Dr Sims said the lack of hard data makes it extremely difficult to produce reliable assessments of fish populations, adding that many predators have such varied diets that cascade effects through ecosystems are complex and often difficult to pinpoint. "There's no doubt the fisheries are having an impact on the big shark populations, but what we really don't know is what the ecosystem effects of that will be. There could be other factors involved that haven't been measured," he added. Ocean winners and losers Winners Cownose ray Smooth butterfly ray Little skate Chain catshark Atlantic sharpnose shark Losers Great white Blacktip Scalloped hammerhead Smooth hammerhead Tiger shark Bull Mako Dusky Sandbar | ['science/science', 'uk/uk', 'environment/biodiversity', 'tone/news', 'type/article', 'profile/iansample'] | environment/biodiversity | BIODIVERSITY | 2007-03-29T18:04:21Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
politics/2024/feb/21/uk-food-firms-exporting-eu-brexit-red-tape | Brexit has cost UK food companies exporting to EU an extra £170m | Food businesses sending products to the EU have had to fork out an extra £170m in export costs because of Brexit red tape, with the changes described as being “catastrophic” for some exporters. Data shared with the Guardian shows that in the three years since leaving the single market, exporters of foods of animal origin have had to pay the sums to secure sign-offs by vets before they can send their shipments. In the past 12 months alone, exporters have paid more than £58m. The extra costs have resulted in a sharp fall in exports, particularly among smaller producers, with the value of meat products sent to the EU down by 17% since 2019. After the UK officially left the single market in January 2021, the EU made it a requirement for exporters of foods of animal origin to have vets check consignments and sign export health certificates (EHCs) before they could be sent. The UK brought in reciprocal measures last month, raising fears that some EU exporters might abandon exporting to the UK owing to the extra costs and bureaucracy. Since December 2020, the month before the UK left the single market, more than 852,000 certificates have been requested by exporters, according to analysis by the Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) Certification Working Group, which brings together trade bodies such as the Fresh Produce Consortium, Dairy UK and the Road Haulage Association. These include certificates for fish and fish products, livestock, and meat and dairy products. The group calculated that these certificates – which cost about £200 to complete – have heaped more than £170m in added costs for exporters over the past three years. Peter Hardwick, the trade policy adviser at the British Meat Processors Association, said the extra costs had been “catastrophic” for some smaller companies. The rules had hurt small businesses most because it was now much harder to send small mixed consignments to the EU, as they did pre-Brexit, because they would require multiple certificates, resulting in far higher exporting costs, he added. The SPS working group calculated that food exporters, which generally operate on margins of about 2%, would have needed to raise £8.5bn more in revenue just to cover their extra costs. Karin Goodburn, the director general of the Chilled Food Association, said the certificates were just one element of the costs businesses faced and the true figure would be far higher when new IT systems, administration costs and extra staff were factored in. Goodburn, who is also the chair of the SPS group, said: “We’ve had companies employ extra staff to do the new bureaucracy, one of my members had to employ 30 new staff just to shift the paperwork.” The figure for the extra costs comes as data from the Office for National Statistics last week showed the amount of meat products exported to the EU from the UK in 2023 totalled £1.26bn, a 17% drop from the £1.53bn exported in 2019. This was the second-lowest figure in the past decade, with the lowest coming in 2021, the year after the rules came in, where £1.13bn of meat products was exported. That year’s figure would have also been affected by Covid-19 restrictions. Hardwick said many bigger companies had no option but to take the hit with these new costs, and this was resulting in smaller profits, or, in some cases, higher prices for consumers. He added: “For some [smaller] businesses that has been terminal. I say terminal, not that they have gone out of business, but that it is just not worth their while in exporting any more.” Last month, the UK brought in new export health certificate requirements for EU companies exporting products of animal origin into the UK as part of its Border Target Operating Model changes. The Guild of Fine Food, which represents 12,000 independent food businesses, said small European suppliers of cheeses and meats could give up on sending goods to the UK. However, British farmers welcomed the change as it gives them an advantage over foreign producers in the domestic market. Labour has said that if it gets into power, it will aim to strike a veterinary agreement with the EU, which would remove the need for some of these costs but could take years to finalise and would require the UK to agree with EU standards on these goods. Goodburn said the UK had led on food hygiene legislation across Europe for the three decades during which it was in the EU single market. “So, we helped create the laws, we led on packages of the hygiene law, and now it’s been deemed through the deal that we have to get certificates to prove that we comply with it.” The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has been contacted. • This article was amended on 21 February 2024. In an earlier version, a reference to calculations of the extra revenue needed for exporters to cover the administrative costs incurred due to Brexit was attributed to the BMPA rather than the SPS working group. | ['politics/eu-referendum', 'business/fooddrinks', 'business/business', 'world/eu', 'politics/politics', 'world/europe-news', 'uk/uk', 'environment/farming', 'environment/environment', 'campaign/email/business-today', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/jack-simpson', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/financial3', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-business'] | environment/farming | BIODIVERSITY | 2024-02-21T05:00:06Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
film/2014/jul/14/lego-lets-greenpeace-parody-video-back-on-youtube | Warner Bros allows Greenpeace parody Lego video back on YouTube | Warner Bros has reportedly dropped its opposition to a Greenpiece parody video in which characters from the hit Lego Movie are slowly drowned in oil. The video, made to highlight the Danish company's relationship with Shell, has reappeared on YouTube after being withdrawn last week following copyright complaints from the film-makers, according to The Wrap. Greenpeace reacted to the ban by moving the video, which had picked up more than 3m views, to a rival site and taunt on Twitter. "Did we offend someone? Banned from YouTube, back up on Vimeo," wrote the environmental group. Greenpeace's film is intended to highlight Lego's $116m (£68m) sponsorship deal with Shell. It shows a gloopy black substance slowly enveloping polar bears, owls, small children and even Santa Claus to the soundtrack of a downbeat cover version of the relentlessly upbeat song Everything is Awesome, from Warner Bros' hugely successful film. The Lego Movie is a pop culture-fuelled tale of an evil corporate behemoth named Lord Business who forces everyone in the Lego universe to "follow the instructions" and avoid non-conformity of all types. The villain even runs a fictional oil company named Octan, and the irony has clearly not been lost on Greenpeace. The short, titled Everything is NOT Awesome was created by London-based creative agency Don't Panic for Greenpeace, and used 120kg of Lego bricks. It is intended to pressure the world's largest toy-maker into dropping a partnership that sees its products distributed at Shell petrol stations. Greenpeace is also using the film to highlight its new campaign targeting Shell's ambitions to drill for oil in the Arctic. Lego said in a statement last week that it was "determined to leave a positive impact on society and the planet that children will inherit". The statement continued: "Our unique contribution is through inspiring and developing children by delivering creative play experiences all over the world. A co-promotion contract like the one with Shell is one of many ways we are able to bring Lego bricks into the hands of more children." • This article was amended on 15 JUly 2014 to reflect the fact that Lego Movie studio Warner Bros, rather than Lego, made the complaint over Greenpeace's parody film which caused it to be removed from YouTube. • News: Greenpeace urges Lego to end Shell partnership • Blog: Lego told 'everything is not awesome' in viral Greenpeace video | ['film/the-lego-movie', 'film/animation', 'film/film', 'business/royaldutchshell', 'business/oil', 'business/oilandgascompanies', 'environment/greenpeace', 'technology/youtube', 'lifeandstyle/lego', 'environment/environment', 'film/warner-bros', 'tone/news', 'culture/culture', 'type/article', 'profile/benchild'] | environment/greenpeace | CLIMATE_ACTIVISM | 2014-07-14T10:04:00Z | true | CLIMATE_ACTIVISM |
world/2005/dec/10/brazil.topstories3 | I was ordered to kill nun, court told | A man who admitted gunning down the American nun Dorothy Stang told a court in the Amazonian city of Belem yesterday he was ordered to "kill the old woman" by a local farmer. Sister Dorothy, 74, who had dedicated her life to defending the rural workers of Para in northern Brazil, was shot six times in February near the town of Anapu. About 1,000 rural workers crowded outside the court yesterday as two men accused of the murder went on trial. Rayfran das Neves Sales, accused of firing the shots that killed her, told a packed courtroom how Amair Feijoli da Cunha, a farmer also known as Tato, had pressured him into the execution. He later changed his story, saying he acted in self defence after confronting the nun on a muddy road deep in the Amazon rainforest. He said they had an argument about the ownership of the land and when she reached into her bag, he shot her. Prosecutors have ridiculed the change of story, saying Sales and Clodoaldo Carlos Batista were offered R$50,000 (£13,500) to assassinate the nun. They say local farmers, who opposed the nun's attempts to claim land for impoverished rural workers, were behind the murder. Three others are being held in connection with the murder, two of them local ranch owners, and their trial is due to start early next year. If found guilty by the seven jurors, Mr Sales and Mr Batista face up to 30 years in jail. The verdict is expected today. Colleagues say Sister Dorothy constantly denounced violence against rural workers and human rights activists. Two weeks before her death she told Nilmario Miranda, then Brazil's human rights minister, of death threats activists were receiving in Para. Jax Pinto, a coordinator from the Catholic church's pastoral land commission, (CPT) who had worked with Sister Dorothy for six years, said: "We need to prove in this trial that it was a contract killing and that there was money involved. If we don't do this we will never manage to convict the [crime's] real authors." He pointed out that over the past 30 years only six landowners have been brought to trial for similar crimes. The trial comes amid growing concern over levels of violence in the region. As the UN representative Hina Jilani arrived in Brazil this week to assess the situation of human rights activism in the country, a new report claimed 772 rural workers and human rights defenders were killed in Para over the past 30 years. The CPT study named 51 people on the hitlist of the region's landowners. Eighteen people have been killed in the region this year as a result of land disputes. "Unfortunately, nothing has changed [since Sister Dorothy's death]," said Mr Pinto. "There are others who are now being threatened and as long as the question of land is not resolved this will continue." He described parts of Para as a no-man's-land where "the law is still made by those with the most guns". Working for the CPT since 1982, Sister Dorothy placed herself on the frontline between rural workers and landowners. Margaret Stang said: "My sister was a good person and was always a big defender of conciliation." Sister Dorothy's supporters fear defence lawyers will try to discredit the woman they say gave her life for the rainforest, by arguing she in effect provoked her own death. "They are trying to criminalise Dorothy. The victim could actually be turned into the defendant here," said Mr Pinto. Sandra Carvalho, co-author of the CPT report, said it was unlikely all those responsible would be brought to justice. "Those behind these crimes are generally landowners, illegal loggers or big businesses that are installing themselves in the region. Few of them are ever convicted." | ['world/world', 'world/brazil', 'environment/amazon-rainforest', 'world/americas', 'type/article', 'profile/tomphillips', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/international1'] | environment/amazon-rainforest | BIODIVERSITY | 2005-12-10T01:39:18Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
australia-news/2023/nov/15/liberal-senate-hopeful-accused-of-putting-politics-above-facts-by-opposing-llawara-windfarm | Liberal Senate hopeful accused of putting politics above facts by opposing Illawarra windfarm | Liberal Senate hopeful Andrew Constance has been accused of putting his political ambitions ahead of “sound policy based on facts” after he backed opponents of a proposed offshore wind farm zone in New South Wales’ Illawarra region. Constance, a former NSW cabinet minister, told a public meeting on Monday that the federal government needed to put the brakes on plans to create an offshore wind zone between Wollongong and Gerringong. The zone is one of six offshore wind zone areas announced by the Albanese government. The debate over offshore wind energy in NSW has been mired in misinformation, with prominent claims that the turbines kill whales, following similar claims in the US. Scientists have said these claims were not backed by evidence. The event in the Illawarra was attended by about 80 people and featured speakers from the anti-windfarm coalition and a local lobster farmer. It was the last meeting before community submissions for the proposed windfarm zone close on Wednesday. Several speakers raised the potential impact on migratory birds and whales. Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup Constance told the audience he doubted the viability of offshore wind farms in the area due to inflation and supply constraints, and raised concerns about their impact on the environment and tourism. “We are right to expect our government to do its homework first,” he said. Constance, a moderate Liberal, is running for a vacant Senate spot following the resignation of the former foreign affairs minister Marise Payne. The spot is expected to be decided later this month. “If I’m successful, I can back you,” Constance told the audience, later urging them to vote Liberal. Constance told the Illawarra meeting people were entitled to ask “some pretty fundamental questions” about the environmental impact of the Illawarra proposal. “I understand the stress and concern about the whale migration,” he said. Peter Dutton and longtime renewable energy opponent Barnaby Joyce have also expressed opposition to offshore wind farms. Joyce told a rally in Port Stephens last month that support for renewable energy was a cult and urged the crowd to fight back. The independent MP Zali Steggall, who has been advocating for changes enforcing truth in political advertising, said Constance appeared to be motivated by winning a Senate seat. “Clearly, it shows this is about politics and political ambition to get elected rather than sound policy based on facts,” she said. Steggall said the environmental impact of offshore wind farms had “to be weighed against the overall benefits in our transition to renewable energy and to move away from fossil fuels”. “The environmental impact is far greater if we continue burning fossil fuel than if we have minimal environmental impact by localised projects, like offshore wind,” she said. In response to Steggall’s comments, Constance said: “I look forward to seeing Zali Steggall call for an additional zone off Manly in light of her confidence in Bowen’s so called open and transparent processes.” Constance echoed other speaker’s concerns during the meeting that the government had not provided enough information. “[Climate change and energy minister] Chris Bowen is making it up as he goes along, quite frankly,” Constance said. “Countries around the world are only starting to look at floating wind turbine technology and for Minister Bowen to do zones without any evidence base for the Illawarra and Hunter, in light of the unique features of our coast, is grossly irresponsible,” he later told Guardian Australia. Towards the end of the two-hour meeting, an audience member asked whether the speakers were equally concerned about the impact of climate change on marine life. The person asking the question was heckled, with one audience member shouting “you greenies are killing the environment”. Another said: “I’m not concerned about climate change.” Amanda De Lore, a speaker at the event and one of the founders of the anti-offshore wind coalition, said “we’re all very concerned about the environment and we know about climate change”, but suggested the offshore wind zone was a more immediate concern. “This is something that’s going to impact on us not in 30 years, it’s coming soon.” Constance acknowledged climate change was already happening, referring to his experience during the Black Summer bushfires, and said innovation was needed. “There is no doubt there is a change in the environment,” he said. “We should be looking at this whole issue differently, it shouldn’t be dividing us.” • This article was corrected on 15 November 2023 to clarify that the Liberal party organised the public meeting and the Coalition Against Offshore Wind was an invited guest. | ['australia-news/new-south-wales', 'environment/windpower', 'environment/environment', 'environment/renewableenergy', 'australia-news/australia-news', 'australia-news/new-south-wales-politics', 'australia-news/liberal-party', 'campaign/email/afternoon-update', 'environment/energy', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/jordyn-beazley', 'profile/sarah-basford-canales', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/australia-news'] | environment/renewableenergy | ENERGY | 2023-11-15T00:44:29Z | true | ENERGY |
australia-news/2023/feb/13/environment-groups-call-for-urgent-action-on-hazardous-waste-from-e-cigarettes | Environment groups call for urgent action on hazardous waste from e-cigarettes | Environment groups have called for urgent clarity and regulation to respond to an increase in hazardous waste from e-cigarettes as vaping becomes more popular. The number of people using e-cigarettes doubled between 2016 and 2019, according to the federal government, with a survey showing more than 30% of 14- to 17-year-olds have tried vaping. The head of Clean Up Australia, Pip Kiernan, said the sharp increase presented “a new and serious environmental issue” with volunteers discovering littered e-cigarettes “in increasing volumes”. The founder of advocacy group No More Butts, Shannon Mead, said he was aware of schools “that now have buckets of confiscated vaping devices and are unclear what to do with them”. Some local councils including the City of Sydney accept vapes in their e-waste collections, but many do not due to concerns about potential leaching of battery acid, lithium and nicotine. The devices have also been linked to explosions and fires. Many product stewardship schemes do not accept e-cigarettes or can only process the battery. Disposable vapes often have an encapsulated battery that cannot be removed. According to the New South Wales Environmental Protection Authority, many vaping stores do provide basic information on how to discard products but this is of limited use as regulations vary widely across the state. Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup Kiernan said there was an “urgent, overdue” need for standardised processes for the disposal of e-cigarette devices to reduce pollution. “We need to set clear standards on environmentally responsible e-cigarette waste disposal and hold the industry accountable for adhering to them,” Kiernan said. “They shouldn’t be disposed of in the general waste bin, or the recycling bin and absolutely not discarded in the environment where they can leach toxic metals, battery acid and nicotine and other chemicals into the soil.” Mead suggested the federal government play a bigger role in regulation and ensure all products can be safely disposed. “If affordability is a reason why so many people are taking up vaping, an increase in the sales price to cover the implementation of a refund scheme could also act as a deterrent,” Mead said. The federal environment minister, Tanya Plibersek, supports reform although any action would require cooperation from state, territory and local governments. “Every vape that goes into landfill dumps plastic, poisons, nicotine salts, heavy metals, lead, mercury, and flammable lithium-ion batteries into the environment that can take hundreds of years to degrade,” Plibersek said. “The batteries can start fires in landfill and they are next to impossible to recycle because the plastic contains poison.” The US-based hazardous waste firm PegEx has said proper disposal of an e-cigarette requires removing the filler material, rinsing it under running water until all nicotine residues are removed, and then wrapping it in a scrap of biodegradable material. In 2021 a mine worker sustained severe burns to his leg when an e-cigarette spontaneously ignited in his pocket. The state government subsequently warned a similar explosion in an underground mine or near explosives could be catastrophic. The Victorian smoking and health survey, conducted by the Cancer Council, found the number of adults vaping had nearly doubled from 154,895 in 2018-19 to 308,827 in 2022. On 1 January Plibersek encouraged Australians to give up vaping as a new year resolution, claiming tobacco companies were intentionally marketing vape flavours and packaging that would appeal to a younger market. “Obviously it’s bad for your health but it’s also terrible for the environment,” Plibersek said. | ['australia-news/health', 'society/e-cigarettes', 'environment/environment', 'environment/waste', 'australia-news/australia-news', 'campaign/email/afternoon-update', 'australia-news/australian-politics', 'australia-news/new-south-wales', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/henry-belot', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/australia-news'] | environment/waste | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE | 2023-02-12T14:00:25Z | true | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE |
environment/2015/oct/21/hinkley-point-reactor-costs-rise-by-2bn-as-deal-confirmed | Work to begin on Hinkley Point reactor within weeks after China deal signed | Work on the first new nuclear power plant in the UK for 20 years is set to begin within weeks after the French energy company EDF and China’s main nuclear operator agreed a deal on building the £18bn project. The agreement was hailed by David Cameron and the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, at a joint press conference in London, with Xi describing the Hinkley Point C plant in Somerset as the “flagship project of cooperation” in a new era for China and Britain. State-owned China General Nuclear Power (CGN) has taken a 33.5% stake in Hinkley, with EDF holding the remainder of the ownership in what critics claim to be the most expensive power plant ever built. The deal was signed off in front of Cameron and Xi. EDF said it expected to take a final investment decision and start mobilising engineers for the plant, by the middle of next month. The companies also announced preliminary agreements to work together on two more nuclear power stations: Sizewell C in Suffolk and Bradwell in Essex. The latter has attracted particular criticism because it will give primary ownership of the project to CGN – and use Chinese technology. The terms for the 3.2GW Hinkley plant have been agreed but the final contract, running to thousands of pages, would be signed in the next few weeks, EDF said. The plant was originally scheduled to open in 2017 but has been hit by a a series of delays. On Wednesday EDF said it would be constructed by 2025 although the subsidy agreement with the British government contains a clause allowing the plant to be completed no later than 2033. The deal, backed strongly by the chancellor, George Osborne, is contentious because it commits British energy users to potentially expensive payments to EDF and CGN to supply energy once the plant is built. Homeowners and businesses will need to pay £92.50 per MW hour for Hinkley electricity over 35 years, compared with a current wholesale price of £40. The arrangement has also raised questions about why Britain is relying on France and China, which has been accused of hacking into other countries’ IT systems, to build a nuclear power station. EDF, which is controlled by the French government, said national security agencies would be involved in checking that Hinkley’s systems were protected. EDF said the 12.5% increase in construction costs – from an initial estimate of £16bn to £18bn – reflected the impact of inflation since an earlier estimate two years ago. EDF added that the underlying costs had remained stable. Hinkley Point is scheduled for completion by 2025, eight years later than first suggested, and is intended to provide about 7% of the UK’s energy. EDF said it had turned down the offer of up to £16bn of UK government loan guarantees and had decided to fund its £12bn share of the project by borrowing in the market because it was likely to be cheaper. Jean-Bernard Lévy, EDF’s chairman, said: “We are funding it on the EDF group balance sheet for our part, which is two-thirds. We will use the money we borrow or that we generate from EDF operations.” EDF needs the Chinese investment because it is burdened with high levels of debt and is expected to sell about €10bn (£7.4bn) of assets in the next five years. Earlier in October, two of the world’s biggest ratings agencies warned the company it faced credit-rating downgrades if Hinkley Point went ahead. The nuclear push has many critics over its cost, the time it takes to build plants and the potential threat to the UK’s national security of having China in control of a plant on UK soil. Osborne’s father-in-law, former energy minister Lord Howell, has described the project as “one of the worst deals ever” for British consumers and industry. Asked if the government security agencies would be inspecting the site, Levy said: “Yes, of course. Do you imagine that the people in charge of national security just sit in their office and ask for paperwork?” Rivaz said that, once the contract was signed, there would be hundreds of workers at the site by the end of the year and that at the peak of construction about 5,6oo people would be employed there. Levy said there would be a small number of Chinese workers involved in planning, engineering and project management among thousands of British workers. He said the deal to build Hinkley was an important event because it was the first order for a nuclear power station in the western hemisphere since the Fukushima disaster in Japan in 2011. The agreement was welcomed by many in Britain’s business community and bytrade unions, but was derided by Greenpeace, which was angry that the deal is going ahead when solar and wind power face major subsidy cuts. “Britain’s nuclear future hung in the balance and China came to the rescue. Nevertheless, the deal is good news for investors, for chemical engineers and crucially, for our low-carbon future,” said Andrew Furlong, director of policy at the Institution of Chemical Engineers. But Doug Parr, chief scientist at Greenpeace, was scathing: “With this deal, George Osborne is not so much backing the wrong horse as betting billions of consumers’ money on a nag running backwards. There’s no end in sight for the nuclear industry’s dependence on billion-pound handouts, whilst the renewable sector is on the verge of going subsidy-free.” | ['environment/nuclearpower', 'business/energy-industry', 'environment/energy', 'business/business', 'uk/uk', 'world/china', 'business/edf', 'world/xi-jinping', 'politics/davidcameron', 'politics/politics', 'environment/environment', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/sean-farrell', 'profile/terrymacalister', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/uknews'] | environment/nuclearpower | ENERGY | 2015-10-21T17:01:00Z | true | ENERGY |
environment/2018/oct/05/most-australians-believe-household-recycling-sent-to-landfill-survey-finds | Most Australians believe household recycling sent to landfill, survey finds | Two-thirds of Australians believe their household recycling is sent to landfill and 72% said they would recycle more if they knew that their household waste was reliably recycled, a survey has found. But despite the desire for better recycling, the survey, released on Friday by the University of New South Wales, also found that only half of the respondents were prepared to pay more for better recycling services. Of those who said they would be prepared to pay more, four out of five said they would only pay up to an additional $10 per week. The survey of 2,116 people was conducted by polling company ReachTel in August, about 12 months after China announced that it would not accept imports of recyclables with contamination levels above 0.5% and left local governments in Australia scrambling to find an alternative way to manage recyclable waste. Asked how they would prefer Australia manage its recyclable waste in the wake of that decision, 69.7% of respondents said that it should “invest in new technology to reform waste into high-value materials for re-use”, while 16.6% supported it be incinerated for electricity generation. Only 2.7% supported finding another country to take up the export trade, and 5.7% supported dumping it in landfill. Four out of five respondents said they would support more government investment into waste management and recycling, and 77.4% said it was important for Australia to invest in “microfactories” to recycle and re-use the waste – an option that UNSW developed and is actively promoting. It has an onsite microfactory that recycles e-waste to retrieve metal alloys and make new materials including plastic filaments used in 3D printing. “We are quite different to Europe, they have huge population centres, they can afford to have large smelters in one central place and then everything goes to that one smelter,” Professor Veena Sahajwalla, director of the UNSW Centre for Sustainable Materials Research and Technology, said. “We know that if we are not going to be able to sustain mega-smelters then some of the smaller facilities or microfactories are a better option.” Sahajwalla said that dissatisfaction with Australian recycling systems rose sharply following China’s refusal to take contaminated waste. Prior to that, she said, many people just assumed that the contents of their yellow wheelie bins were recycled appropriately by their local council. A 2011 government report found that between 50-60% of the 50m tonnes of waste generated in Australia each year was recycled. Most of that was sent offshore. Accurate national figures for the percentage of recycled waste that is actually fully recycled are not readily available. “Now people are realising: even if I make the effort to sort my rubbish and put it in my yellow bin, it does not end up being recycled,” Sahajwalla said. “People still continue to do what they think is right … but they feel that a lot of their effort is being wasted.” | ['environment/recycling', 'australia-news/australia-news', 'environment/environment', 'environment/ethical-living', 'environment/waste', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/calla-wahlquist', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/australia-news'] | environment/recycling | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE | 2018-10-04T18:00:37Z | true | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE |
world/2010/nov/23/iran-uranium-halt-iaea-enrichment | Iran halted its 'top priority' uranium enrichment due to technical problems | Iran's uranium enrichment plant halted operations last week, the UN's nuclear watchdog said today, suggesting that the country was experiencing technical difficulties in its atomic programme. A report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on Iran's programme published today said in a footnote that on 16 November none of the centrifuges in the Iranian plant at Natanz was enriching uranium gas. The report did not say how exactly how long the stoppage lasted but noted that Iran had informed the agency yesterday that some of the centrifuges were back in operation. The IAEA inspectors did not speculate on the reason for the rare interruption in the enrichment programme, which Tehran has made a national priority in defiance of demands from the UN security council to shut it down. However, the halt follows a 20% drop in the number of centrifuges functioning at Natanz over the past year, leading several observers to suggest that Iranian operators were having problems with the technology. "They are clearly having troubles with their machines," said Olli Heinonen, formerly the IAEA's chief inspector, now at Harvard University. Heinonen would not speculate on whether the Stuxnet "worm" which hit computers and spread around the world over the summer – and which appeared to target the Iranian nuclear programme, in particular – might have been responsible for the apparent breakdown at Natanz. He pointed out that the rudimentary centrifuge model used in the main plant at Natanz, widely known as the P-1, had inherent design problems. Both the European Urenco consortium which developed the model, and Pakistan which used the technology, both discontinued its use early in their enrichment programmes, replacing it with more advanced machines. | ['world/iran', 'world/iaea', 'world/world', 'environment/nuclearpower', 'world/unitednations', 'science/energy', 'type/article', 'profile/julianborger', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/international'] | environment/nuclearpower | ENERGY | 2010-11-23T21:29:19Z | true | ENERGY |
money/2023/apr/11/early-finish-fridays-werent-universally-popular-in-the-1970s-office | Early-finish Fridays weren’t universally popular in the 1970s office | Brief letters | In the 70s, my workplace brought in Friday closing at 3.30pm (UK firms try to lure Gen Z workers with ‘early finish Fridays’, 6 April). Most office staff welcomed it, but the warehousemen huddled in a local pub: they feared that if they got home early, they’d have to go to the supermarket with their wives. One person complained that it was difficult to get back from lunch in time to go home. Gillian Goss Pershore, Worcestershire • Has Suella Braverman or Rishi Sunak made any observation about the ethnicity of the gang of Walsall offenders, who all appear to be white, judging by the photo you published (Twenty-one convicted in West Midlands child sexual abuse inquiry, 5 April)? Sanjay Batra London • Towns and cities are indeed too noisy (Opinion, 10 April). One simple law change would go a long way: require cars to be as quiet outside as inside. Car companies have made them almost silent for those inside, with no regard for those outside. Will Fry London • In 1971 the description of our new house (Letters, 10 April) said: “The estate agent takes no responsibility for a sabre-toothed tiger that may be lurking in the elephant grass in the garden.” It had obviously escaped by the time we moved in. Val Harrison Birmingham • There were not three but four emperors in AD69 – Galba, Otho, Vitellius and Vespasian (Letters, 9 April). God forbid we get a fourth stooge in charge in Britain. Simon Lacey Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, US • Have an opinion on anything you’ve read in the Guardian today? Please email us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our letters section. | ['money/work-life-balance', 'money/work-and-careers', 'type/article', 'tone/letters', 'commentisfree/series/brief-letters', 'lifeandstyle/pubs', 'world/race', 'politics/suella-braverman', 'politics/rishi-sunak', 'politics/conservatives', 'technology/motoring', 'environment/pollution', 'business/realestate', 'money/property', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/journal', 'theguardian/journal/letters', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-letters-and-leader-writers'] | environment/pollution | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE | 2023-04-11T17:01:02Z | true | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE |
global-development/2021/sep/07/cop26-will-be-rich-nations-stitch-up-if-poorer-countries-kept-away-by-covid | Cop26 will be ‘rich nations stitch-up’ if poorer countries kept away by Covid | The Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow should be postponed until the government can ensure that the talks won’t be a “rich nations stitch-up”, a diverse coalition of international organisations has said. With less than two months to go before the talks, the Climate Action Network (CAN), a global alliance of more than 1,500 civil society organisations, is warning that many delegates from the global south will be unable to attend due to vaccine inequity and prohibitive quarantine costs. “Our concern is that those countries most deeply affected by the climate crisis and the countries suffering from the artificial shortage created around vaccines will be conspicuous in Cop26 – by their absence,” said Tasneem Essop, executive director of CAN, in a statement. “There has always been an inherent power imbalance between rich and poor nations within the UN climate talks and this is now compounded by the health crisis. Looking at the current timeline for Cop26 and the logistical challenges, it is difficult to imagine fair participation from the global south under safe conditions and it should therefore be postponed.” Many of the countries most affected by the climate crisis are on the government’s Covid “red list”, meaning that even fully vaccinated delegates from those countries – some of the poorest in the world – fear having to pay hundreds of pounds in quarantine costs to attend. However, the UK government said on Tuesday it had offered to cover the hotel quarantine costs of delegates from red list countries. Ivonne Yánez, from Acción Ecológica, an environmental group in Ecuador, said the costs meant that many NGOs, like hers, would struggle to send delegates. She urged the UK government and United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to relax some restrictions, saying it was a “complete absurdity” that Ecuador, where more than 53% of the population has been fully vaccinated, remained on the red list. “How can a country that decided to have a Cop, knowing that Covid [meant] new conditions, maintain these extreme and hard requirements for the delegates?” said Yánez. In June, at the G7 summit, Boris Johnson announced the UK’s plans to provide Covid vaccines to Cop26 delegates who would be unable to get them otherwise. Delegates were asked to register their interest by 23 July and wait to be contacted. Many are still waiting. With the talks due to begin on 31 October, the opportunity has passed for people to be double jabbed in time. Maria Reyes, climate activist with Fridays for Future Mexico, said she had been told by the UNFCCC that, as the Mexican government was operating a functioning programme, she should be vaccinated through them. But Reyes, 19, has been told by local administrators she has to wait her turn. “It feels bad and so unfair, and it makes us angry, because they [the UK and UNFCC] have the resources to make this happen. They’re just choosing to put them somewhere else,” she said. Reyes said she had read the Queen would be attending: “But you’re preventing the attendance of the people affected by the climate crisis. That really has let us see how this is going to be the most imperialistic Cop ever.” Organisers have said delegates do not have to be vaccinated to take part in Cop26, though it is strongly encouraged. But Reyes said she could not participate unless she had been jabbed, because of the cost – mandatory for unvaccinated arrivals from red list countries – of quarantining. “This is going to be a rich people’s conversation, basically,” she said. “Rich people, from rich countries, they are not the most affected by the climate crisis. So the result of this is going to be that this Cop is going to be super-biased.” In response to the postponement call, Alok Sharma, president of Cop26, said it was clear that the talks had to go ahead, adding the government was willing to cover the hotel costs of delegates from red list countries who would otherwise be unable to attend. “Cop26 has already been postponed by one year, and we are all too aware climate change has not taken time off. The recent IPCC report underlines why Cop26 must go ahead this November to allow world leaders to come together and set out decisive commitments to tackle climate change,” he said. “Ensuring that the voices of those most affected by climate change are heard is a priority for the Cop26 presidency, and if we are to deliver for our planet, we need all countries and civil society to bring their ideas and ambition to Glasgow.” Dorothy Guerrero, head of policy at Global Justice Now, called on the British government to make good on that vision, and ensure that “those whose lives and livelihoods are at stake” be present. “They promised that this will be an inclusive Cop, despite the fact that they are hosting it in a global pandemic. I appreciate the challenge that it poses. But of course the least we expect is that they consider the challenges that delegates, participants and observers are also going through,” she said. Mohamed Adow, director of thinktank Power Shift Africa, said a summit dominated by rich nations would fly “in the face of the principles of the UN process and opens the door for a rich nations stitch-up of the talks. A climate summit without the voices of those most affected by climate change is not fit for purpose.” The UNFCCC was approached for comment. | ['global-development/global-development', 'environment/cop26-glasgow-climate-change-conference-2021', 'environment/environment', 'environment/climate-crisis', 'world/coronavirus-outbreak', 'world/world', 'uk/uk', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/lizzydavies', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/global-development'] | environment/cop26-glasgow-climate-change-conference-2021 | CLIMATE_POLICY | 2021-09-07T20:50:58Z | true | CLIMATE_POLICY |
business/2008/mar/18/britishenergygroupbusiness.oil | British Energy shares rise 20% after confirmation of tie-up talks with rivals | British Energy is in talks with a number of rivals, which could lead to a tie-up or a takeover offer that some say would value the country's main nuclear power generator at more than £7bn. Shares in the British company soared by nearly 20% after it confirmed the discussions but declined to identify any of the potential partners or predators. EDF of France, E.ON of Germany and Centrica, owner of British Gas, are among the key players known to have been holding partnership talks that have turned into something more substantial. British Energy is in demand because it generates about a sixth of Britain's electricity but, more importantly ,has the most attractive potential sites to build a new generation of nuclear plants. "The board announces that the company is in discussions with interested parties in the context of its future and its plans to take a pivotal role in any new nuclear programme," said a formal statement from British Energy, which continues to be 35% owned by the UK government. "There can be no certainty that any offer will be made," it added. The British company, which operates power stations such as Sizewell in Suffolk, Dungeness in Kent and Bradwell in Essex, said last year that it intended holding talks with potential partners about the use of its sites. The talks have hotted up this year after increasingly bullish statements from ministers about nuclear energy. John Hutton, the business secretary, said recently that he was looking not only at replacing existing nuclear power capacity in Britain but possibly increasing it in a bid to boost energy security and curb potential carbon emissions at a time of rising energy demand. The government has also made clear to key utilities that it wants to offload its 35% stake to one or more of them. "The talks on partnering that began last year were low key but the values put on the sites and skills of British Energy have changed since potential partners have heard the ambitious talk from government," said a source close to the talks. "A range of possibilities including co-investment, equity stakes and full offers are all possible but nothing is going to happen overnight," he added. "There will be no announcement next week; it is likely to take quite a long time." Neither EDF, E.ON nor Centrica was willing to make any comment on the situation, while Scottish & Southern Energy would only confirm that it remained "interested in new build". RWE also refused to talk about the UK company. Last month Citigroup equity analysts put out a research note saying that Centrica may bid for British Energy to lessen its dependence on gas-fired power stations. It has always said it was interested in making major commitments to buy electricity from atomic power stations but has been lukewarm about equity stakes in nuclear generators. British Energy was saved from financial collapse in 2002 by the government after being hit by weak power prices. Its shares were only relisted on the stock exchange in 2005 and ministers have hinted that they want to sell the government stake. Lakis Athanasiou, utility analyst at Evolution Securities, said it was most likely the government's stake would be split between British Energy's partners in new nuclear reactors. "It is difficult to see government wanting to face the political difficulties of placing the entire UK nuclear industry in the hands of a single foreign company," he said. The investment bank UBS has been appointed to advise on commercial and financial aspects of new nuclear power stations in Britain. Yesterday, a spokesman for the Department for Business, Enterprise & Regulatory Reform said: "The government is monitoring developments closely and will consider its position in relation to any proposal in the public interest, having regard to its objectives in relation to energy policy and its obligations to the taxpayer. BE is a company whose shares are listed ... and it would be inappropriate to comment further." | ['business/britishenergygroup', 'business/oil', 'business/business', 'environment/nuclearpower', 'environment/energy', 'environment/environment', 'business/energy-industry', 'type/article', 'profile/terrymacalister', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/financial3'] | environment/nuclearpower | ENERGY | 2008-03-18T00:50:53Z | true | ENERGY |
technology/2014/may/20/wearable-tech-brain-implants-wireless-charging-stanford | Wearable tech can be implanted in brains, thanks to new power technique | A breakthrough in wireless technology could allow a new wave of health tracking tools that can be embedded inside our bodies – in our livers, hearts and even in our brains. A new wireless charging technique known as “mid-field wireless transfer” can deliver power to tiny electronic devices such as sensors, pacemakers and nerve stimulators embedded deep within the body. They can be charged using a device the size of a credit card placed outside the body. "With this method, we can safely transmit power to tiny implants in organs like the heart or brain, well beyond the range of current near-field systems,” said Dr John Ho, co-author of the study that appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. ‘Make these devices as small as possible’ Sensors can be embedded deeper into the right areas of the body, without needing to be close to the skin for current near-field wireless charging technologies like those that charge electric toothbrushes. The embedded devices will also no longer need large, bulky batteries, which means it is possible for them to fit into tighter, more sensitive spaces. “We need to make these devices as small as possible to more easily implant them deep in the body and create new ways to treat illness and alleviate pain," explained Professor Ada Poon, lead researcher behind the new technique in a press release. Current implantable devices such as pacemakers use large, long-life batteries which often need replacing, requiring more surgery, while others use near-field wireless charging and therefore need to be placed close to the skin. Poon’s team developed a new type of near-field wave that propagates through skin and body tissue, rather than be reflected like longer wavelengths or absorbed by like typical near-field chargers. The wireless charging emits waves at roughly the same power levels of a mobile phone, and is therefore deemed safe for use. The researchers demonstrated the power delivery technology in a pig and a rabbit, which had a tiny pacemaker fitted solely powered by the wireless technique. ‘Paving the way for new innovation’ The discovery opens up greater possibilities for medical implants called “electroceutical" devices, which use electrical stimulation to treat illness or alleviate pain that would typically require longterm drug treatment. Diseases like Parkinson's are already treated with techniques like deep brain stimulation to control shaking symptoms. Beyond medical devices, one of the largest stumbling blocks to embedding computing devices and sensors in the body has been supplying them with power. With the ability to power them the possibility of embedding fitness trackers, biosensors such as heart rate, blood glucose and hormone monitors, or any other small electronic devices within the body has been opened up. “The Poon lab has solved a significant piece of the puzzle for safely powering implantable microdevices, paving the way for new innovation in this field,” said William Newsome, director of the Stanford Neurosciences Institute. Having proved that the technique works in animals, Poon and her team are currently preparing for human testing, which will require approval from safety regulators and will take several years before the technology will be certified for use in medical devices and beyond. • Headphone implants are the ultimate in discreet listening • A personal NFC chip in your hand could unlock your house with wave | ['technology/wearable-technology', 'technology/technology', 'science/science', 'science/medical-research', 'technology/gadgets', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/samuel-gibbs'] | technology/gadgets | UNRELATED_TO_CLIMATE | 2014-05-20T12:25:40Z | true | UNRELATED_TO_CLIMATE |
sustainable-business/2015/dec/01/hacking-apple-samsung-smartphones-ewaste-fix-tech | Hacking Apple: putting the power of tech back into our hands | Giant brands like Apple and Samsung dominate the technology we use in our day-to-day lives. Apple, for example, recently reported its most profitable year, while Samsung is the brand of choice for singer Rihanna as she launches her latest album, Anti. In an era of unbridled consumption, where big tech companies appear mightier than ever, it’s easy to feel disenfranchised. This is no accident, as companies use methods like the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to prevent us from unlocking smartphones and repairing laptops. The result is millions of tonnes of e-waste, with our devices generally difficult to upgrade, fix or repurpose. But this powerlessness and waste can and is being challenged. Amid the glitter, a different kind of movement is quietly coming of age – one led by shared machine shops driven not by financial gain, but by a love for learning, neighbours and community. Opening the door to the secretive tech world In the past decade, hundreds of spaces have been created around the world where anyone can go to learn new skills and crafts. There are 97 of these so-called makerspaces, fab labs, hackspaces, inspiration studios and repair cafes in the UK alone – only 10% of which existed in 2010 – kitted out with new tools such as laser cutters and 3D printers, and with traditional tools such as woodworking and fabrication equipment. Funded in multiple ways, including through grants or public funds, membership, training, space hire, donations, sponsorship and corporate income, these diverse projects are built on principles of tech openness. They are also united by their belief that a new world is possible – one where instead of becoming increasingly reliant on large companies to do everything for us, we are empowered to learn and build with the technologies that surround us. In October, more than 50 community leaders and researchers came together for the first time at Makerspaces and Sustainability, a two-day gathering in London to explore the potential for shared machine shops to help build resilient, sustainable local communities. “These sites constitute dynamic spaces for experimentation, and their emerging capabilities for new material cultures are what we see as most significant for aspirations to post-consumer societies,” says Adrian Smith, professor of technology and society at the University of Sussex’s Science Policy Research Unit and the event’s organiser. Democratising machine access One of the meeting’s most enthusiastic participants was James Wallbank. His Makers shop opened on a high street in Sheffield in September to bring craftspeople together by hosting workshops where participants can learn skills such as laser-cutting or marionette-making before selling their creations from the shop. “My wife and I ... wanted to find a sustainable model that widened participation in making – not just for the usual white male computer science and engineering crowd, but for everyone,” says Wallbank. Researchers such as Smith have traced the democratising tradition of these sites back to 1976, when Lucas Aerospace workers created a Nobel prize-nominated plan for “socially useful production”. The aim was to democratise manufacturing by uniting workers with activists, trade unionists and scientists at community technology networks across London to inspire innovation that prioritised social use over private profit. Many of today’s shared machine projects manifest this ethos. Things Manchester, for example, builds local infrastructures across the city that provide a free Internet of Things for anyone to use. In London, the Restart Project’s workshops help people repair electronics. “When we maintain and resell,” says co-founder Janet Gunter, “we create value locally in an otherwise throwaway economy where things are manufactured far away. We reduce environmental impacts while bringing people together who might never have met otherwise.” Co-opting the grassroots Despite such potential, UK shared machine shops have much to fear from the fate of similar movements across the pond. Writers Evgeny Morozov and Cory Doctorow, along with others, warn of the deterioration of making subcultures in the US. They argue that the grassroots nature of the maker movement is increasingly being co-opted and that the commercialisation of such projects detaches them from their community roots. Tim Bajarin, for example, points out in a Time article that the maker movement has “caught the attention of many major players in the tech and corporate worlds”, including Intel, Ford and Nvidia. At Makerspaces and Sustainability, examples of shared machine shop efforts that did not occur at the expense of communities took many forms, the majority of them local. In Bristol, for example, the low-cost DIY solar panel-building workshops of Demand Energy Equality provide neighbours with hands-on access to once-mysterious renewable technologies. The project’s co-director Max Wakefield says: “By helping people create tangible relationships with energy, we can enable an understanding of the need to reduce demand.” Despite the private tech industry’s seeming invincibility in many areas of consumer life, from copyright to privacy, there are cracks in the facade. If we are serious about building self-sustaining communities where people are empowered not only to consume but also to create, it is vital not to overlook the importance of our nation’s fledgling shared machine shops. | ['sustainable-business/series/rethinking-prosperity', 'sustainable-business/sustainable-business', 'technology/technology', 'business/technology', 'environment/renewableenergy', 'lifeandstyle/diy', 'lifeandstyle/lifeandstyle', 'environment/environment', 'environment/energy', 'business/business', 'society/communities', 'society/society', 'technology/apple', 'technology/computing', 'type/article', 'tone/sponsoredfeatures', 'tone/comment'] | environment/renewableenergy | ENERGY | 2015-12-01T12:59:36Z | true | ENERGY |
global-development-professionals-network/2014/apr/28/haiyan-prepare-future-fierce-weather | Typhoon Haiyan was just the start – prepare for an ever stormier future | In November 2013, typhoon Haiyan delivered destruction to the Philippines and a stark message that the world is underprepared for the violence of climate change. Dozens of typhoons hit the Philippines every season but this was not just another storm. Climate scientists have long predicted that as the Earth warms extreme weather events will become more extreme. Haiyan was a marker of how far we have gone down that road. Its unprecedented power and devastation gave us an insight into a dangerous future in which climate change fuels weather of hitherto-unimagined ferocity. But aid agencies say Haiyan is likely to just be the overture. The rising intensity of tropical storms, combined with their increasingly unseasonal timings, means rebuilding may be incomplete when the next super typhoon hits. This would compound the disaster into a catastrophe. Tariq Reibl, Oxfam's humanitarian response manager for the Philippines, says that climate change will mean destructive storms, disastrous enough in isolation, will increasingly occur in procession. "You're looking at about 20 typhoons per year for the Philippines and as a whole those 20 are going to be more powerful. And then, one or potentially two of those 20 in the future would be a super typhoon … that is something that we didn't see 10 years ago," he says. Oxfam's Haiyan recovery operation is currently costing £1m every week. And yet, six months after the event, the rebuild is only just beginning. Reibl says small but unseasonal storms have continually diverted resources away from the effort. Reibl says: "If there is another storm that is even close to Haiyan … there could be higher death tolls, there could be much worse impact because the resilience that existed previously is all down. Everything was destroyed in Haiyan, in terms of evacuation centres, in terms of livelihoods." The damage Haiyan caused outstripped any storm the typhoon-prone islands had experienced before. Reibl says typhoon Bopha in 2012 had already redefined ideas on how big a typhoon could get, and yet "just a year later, Haiyan made Bopha seem like just a little wind … When Bopha happened we didn't envisage a Haiyan. Can we envisage something more than Haiyan?" Reibl says that in the past the Philippines were considered the 7-11 of natural disasters – small but open all hours. Indonesia, with its large but infrequent disasters, was more like a mega mall. He says the scale of devastation wrought by Haiyan meant the Philippines had become "a mega mall that is now also open 24/7". At the Warsaw climate talks, which started just three days after Haiyan hit the coast, the Philippines' UN representative Yeb Sano captured the attention of the world as he pleaded with leaders to attend to the catastrophe in his homeland and act to "prevent a future where super typhoons become a way of life". But Chris Field, one of the authors of the UN's recent report on the impacts of climate change, says the intensity of storms is already increasing. "We are now in an era where climate change isn't some kind of future hypothetical." What was really scary about Haiyan, says Paul Jenkins, head of partnership development at the Red Cross, was that it happened in a country that was considered well prepared for this type of disaster. "You can imagine if that kind of event had struck a country with less good logistics, less structures, less government capacity it could have been absolutely catastrophic." Anthony Spalton, disaster risk reduction specialist at Unicef, says a major part of preparing for extreme weather events is community education. During Haiyan, many people died because they did not know what a storm surge was and stayed with their properties. Unicef has created region-specific curriculums for schools to teach children how to respond in disaster situations. Jenkins says that, while "mega-events" such as Haiyan receive the majority of interest and resources, the full impact of climate change will be subtler and much greater. "If you look at a global picture, the issue is that [climate change] is already there and it's not necessarily about mega-events, it's about increasing vulnerability due to climate change." He says the "collective impact over a year" of changing seasonality, crop impacts, drought and sea level rise "will vastly exceed the number of people affected by a Haiyan". Spalton says the effects of climate change will be felt worst in regions prone to floods, droughts or storms. As a result, Unicef has shifted the emphasis of many of its programmes towards preparing for climate-change-related disasters. "While there may not be new funding available, there's a recognition that the funding we do have needs to be orientated differently to these global trends." Spalton says the scale of the problem is such that existing funding is inadequate for providing protection to vulnerable communities. This will only get worse as the effects of climate change become more pronounced. Jenkins says climate change is now the biggest driver of change in the way aid funding is spent. Editor's note: What are the conferences, speeches, reports, partnerships or rifts that have defined the climate change movement? Email Holly Young to contribute to our new series on defining movements – holly.young@theguardian.com | ['working-in-development/working-in-development', 'world/typhoon-haiyan', 'environment/climate-crisis', 'global-development/aid', 'global-development-professionals-network/series/climate-change-defining-moments', 'world/oxfam', 'world/philippines', 'global-development-professionals-network/policy-advocacy', 'type/article', 'global-development-professionals-network/series/climate-change', 'profile/karl-mathiesen'] | global-development-professionals-network/series/climate-change-defining-moments | GLOBAL_CRISIS | 2014-04-28T10:00:00Z | true | GLOBAL_CRISIS |
commentisfree/2013/oct/17/china-britain-nuclear-industry | What does China want with Britain's nuclear industry? | Isabel Hilton | For a chancellor so keen on the defence of UK national sovereignty against democratic Europeans, George Osborne's unbridled enthusiasm for Chinese investment in the UK's critical infrastructure is striking. If all these memorandums of understanding come to fruition, Chinese entities will hold important stakes in water in the UK, airports, IT infrastructure and now nuclear power generation, all without a serious national debate on any potential risks such involvement might bring. Since the Chinese government does its homework, it knows that Osborne represents a country reduced to penury by the financial crisis, and with some tricky, big-ticket items on its wishlist. Since the Chinese appreciate deference from their visitors, they must have been delighted by the chancellor. Britain is open for business, as he likes to say. Just make me an offer. Neither China's sovereign wealth fund nor its state-owned enterprises are philanthropic. All have large war chests, and their search for profitable, secure investments around the world has stimulated competition among aspirant recipients. But good bargains are not always done in haste and a number of unanswered questions hang over China's proposed investment, future majority stake-holding and possible future operational involvement in Britain's nuclear power. Some are hardy perennials: the world has 270,000 tonnes of high-level waste in temporary storage, an unlovely heap that grows by 10,000 tonnes each year. In 50 years of nuclear power, nobody has come up with a workable plan for the million years that safety regulations demand. Are the costs of that, and of decommissioning, built into the deal and if so, who pays? Then there is public subsidy: nobody has ever built a nuclear power plant without it, but the mandatory opening up of European electricity systems to competition means consumers are no longer obliged to underwrite unlimited costs, or to pay for expensive nuclear energy. This transfers the financial risk to the owners and financiers – hence the difficulty of finding the cash. What is different here? French enthusiasm is explained by the attempt to save their industry after decades of nuclear chill: Japan's plants are currently shuttered, for obvious reasons; new licensing is suspended in the United States; many countries (Germany, Sweden, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Spain and Belgium) are phasing out nuclear power, or have never had it (Ireland, Austria, Norway, Greece, Portugal, Italy and Denmark). But what is in it for China? China has been the global nuclear industry's main hope of survival in recent years. It is a newcomer, starting to build its first commercial reactor only in 1985. It now has 16 in operation and a further 26 under construction, and more are planned. Now China hopes to become the world's next big nuclear exporter and sees involvement in a British plant as a key step to gaining credibility in the market. This is an ambitious programme, not least on the management side. Most nuclear accidents resulted from human error and today industry experts are worried by China's weak regulatory structure and its unproven capacity to build a safe management culture at such speed. Even in China, post Fukushima, public anxiety over the nuclear programme has begun to spill out on to the streets: earlier this year, public protests halted the construction of a waste processing plant in Guangdong that the authorities had insisted was perfectly safe. Surely we, too, should be asking more questions of a chancellor who appears to think that Chinese money buys him out of the intractable difficulties and uncertain costs of nuclear power? Will British consumers end up paying high energy prices to guarantee a Chinese investor a good return? What future leverage will Chinese investment in British infrastructure give to an emerging power that frequently says it does not accept established global rules? What degree of transparency and accountability can we, as supplicants, enforce on our new partner? What guarantee have we that in depending on Chinese finance, we haven't surrendered more than we bargained for? Perhaps it is not too late to ask. | ['commentisfree/commentisfree', 'world/china', 'world/asia-pacific', 'politics/foreignpolicy', 'environment/nuclearpower', 'environment/energy', 'tone/comment', 'world/world', 'environment/environment', 'politics/politics', 'politics/georgeosborne', 'uk/uk', 'type/article', 'profile/isabelhilton', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/commentanddebate'] | environment/nuclearpower | ENERGY | 2013-10-17T14:30:01Z | true | ENERGY |
environment/2012/dec/05/arctic-sea-ice-scientists-report | Arctic lost record snow and ice last year as data shows changing climate | The Arctic lost more snow and sea ice between October 2011 and August 2012 than any year other on record, a premier US science agency reported on Wednesday, delivering the fullest picture to date of a region in the throes of rapid, system-wide change. The Arctic lost record snow cover and sea ice last year – even though air temperatures were not unusually high. By the end of August, several weeks before the end of the summer melt season, Arctic sea ice had retreated to its smallest extent since satellite records began in 1979. In Greenland, virtually the entire ice sheet – 97% – sustained some degree of thawing during a period of a few days in July, including on some of the highest peaks. Meanwhile, blooms of algae sprouted beneath the permanent sea ice in the middle of the Arctic ocean, feeding off the sunlight filtering through melt pools. The report cites a massive bloom of phytoplankton beneath the Chukchi sea ice stretching for more than 60 miles, as well as algae blooms near melt holes in the central Arctic. On land, shrubs are spreading across the lower Arctic because of a longer growing season, but other tundra plant types – such as moss and lichen – are declining. The change in vegetation is also creating favourable conditions for wildfires, the report said. In northern Europe, the Arctic fox is heading towards extinction because of the advance of the red fox. The findings, prepared by a team of 140 scientists overseen by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa), suggest widespread changes in the Arctic, because of a warming climate. The changes are unlikely to be reversible. "What we have is a body of evidence that the Arctic is changing in significant ways and throughout the system," Martin Jeffries, a co-editor of the 2012 report and an Arctic science advisor to the Office of Naval Research, said. "It is system-wide and these changes feed on each other." It is also unlikely the Arctic will recover in the near future, he said. Those changes, in the form of retreating summer sea ice and snow cover, in turn make the region even more vulnerable, exposing more of it to the sun's rays, Jeffries warned. "As the sea ice and snow cover retreat, we're losing bright, highly reflective surfaces, and increasing the area of darker surfaces – both land and ocean - exposed to sunlight. This increases the capacity to store heat within the Arctic system, which enables more melting –a self-reinforcing cycle." The report, an annual exercise by Noaa since 2006, was presented at the meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco. It further consolidates the growing body of evidence that climate change has exacted significant effects on the Arctic. Some of those changes are already altering political calculations – with Russia, Canada and America trying to stake their claims to the vast oil and mineral potential of an Arctic that could be entirely free of summer sea-ice within a matter of years. The gloomiest scientists say that summer sea ice could be entirely gone within the decade, other predictions stretch to mid-century for an "ice-diminished" Arctic. "What it seems now is that even if we have a modest increase in greenhouse gases that that gets amplified in the Arctic," said James Overland, a Noaa oceanographer. "We are going to continue to see an increase in all of these changes at least for the next few decades." Jason Box, a polar researcher at Ohio State University who oversaw the Greenland portion of the report, told the meeting the widespread melting last summer could signal a climate tipping point. "In 2012 Greenland crossed a threshold where for the first time we saw complete surface melting at the highest elevations in what we used to call the dry snow zone," he told reporters at the AGU. "As Greenland crosses the threshold and starts really melting in the upper elevations it really won't recover from that unless the climate cools significantly for an extended period of time which doesn't seem very likely." | ['environment/sea-ice', 'world/arctic', 'environment/poles', 'environment/climate-crisis', 'environment/oceans', 'us-news/us-news', 'environment/water', 'world/world', 'tone/news', 'world/snow', 'type/article', 'profile/suzannegoldenberg'] | environment/poles | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2012-12-05T23:17:41Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
environment/2019/mar/18/flood-warnings-issued-for-england-after-heavy-rain | Flood warnings issued for England after heavy rain | Flood warnings have remained in place across parts of England after torrential rain over the weekend. On Monday there were 16 flood warnings in force, meaning flooding is expected, down from 20 earlier, and 25 flood alerts, meaning flooding is possible. Most were in Yorkshire and the Midlands. None were in the most severe category. The Met Office forecast further showers in north-west England, but conditions were expected to get warmer and drier later in the week. The Environment Agency said flooding was expected for parts of the River Dee in north Wales and Cheshire on Monday as well as parts of the River Severn into Tuesday. Land, roads and some properties were likely to be inundated and travel would be disrupted. Among the most severe warnings were areas along the River Ouse near York and along the Severn, in places including Hampton Loade and Highley, Ironbridge and Jackfield, Shrawardine, Montford Bridge and Mytton. Three warnings were issued for the River Swale, five for the Severn, and five for the Ouse. Further warnings were issued along the River Dee at Farndon and at Keswick in Cumbria. The Environment Agency said it had installed temporary flood barriers and was operating flood defences. The high river levels were attributed to severe downpours over the weekend. On Saturday alone, half a month’s rainfall was recorded for parts of Wales. The Met Office said north-west England could expect some light rain on Tuesday, but by Wednesday most areas would experience largely dry weather with warm sunny spells. On Thursday and Friday, it was expected to get wetter and windier again in the north-west. | ['environment/flooding', 'environment/environment', 'uk/weather', 'uk/uk', 'uk-news/north-of-england', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/jedidajah-otte', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-home-news'] | environment/flooding | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2019-03-18T17:12:05Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
travel/2000/nov/30/netjetters2000sam.netjetters3 | From: Nick Walker (30 Nov) | Vancouver. I am British and moved here in February. I love this city! You're right, it will be cold. And it is very wet. A rain jacket or umbrella are very useful. Firstly, stuff you MUST know about the transit here - it's breathtakingly efficient. The bus drivers don't give change, so you'll need 1.75 in loose change for each journey, or buy a book of 10 tickets in advance at a 7-11 store. When you pay on the bus, get a "transfer" from the driver and this entitles you to unlimited travel on the buses, seabus, and skytrain for two hours. The zonal system can be confusing (applies during weekdays). To get from the airport to downtown, take a number 100 to 70th Ave, then a number 8, which says 'Granville' on the front. Since this is a two zone journey, you'll need 2.50. Every coin has a nickname; 1c - a penny, 5c - a nickel, 10c - a dime, 25c - a quarter, $1 - a looney, $2 - a tooney. Beware that the prices displayed in stores are not what you actually pay. 14% Sales Tax is always added. The Jericho Beach Youth Hostel is great, and the view of the city from the beach is spectacular. You should see Lynn Canyon on the North Shore. Most people are desperate to get to the very hyped Capilano Suspension Bridge, but Lynn Canyon is better and free. The Harbour Centre Tower gives a good view and costs $9. Your ticket allows you unlimited access for the day, so you can go up after dark as well as daytime, or even watch the sunset there. Walk down Robson Street in the evening - it's full of light and colour and a great view of North American glamour shopping. If you feel culturally inclined, go to the impressive UBC museum of Anthropology. One of the best restaurants is Steppho's Greek Taverna on Davey Street (near the junction with Thurlow Street), where there's huge portions for $9. There are also queues around the block if you get there after 5.30, so be very early! Right now is the ice hockey season, and I definitely think you should see a game! Finally, if you have time, I recommend a trip to Victoria and/or Tofino. At Tofino you can watch whales or walk in the rainforest. | ['travel/netjetters2000sam', 'travel/netjetters', 'travel/travel', 'travel/netjettersblog', 'type/article'] | travel/netjetters2000sam | UNRELATED_TO_CLIMATE | 2000-11-30T18:36:46Z | true | UNRELATED_TO_CLIMATE |
environment/2019/dec/30/national-plastics-summit-to-tackle-australias-growing-rubbish-problem | National plastics summit to tackle Australia’s growing rubbish problem | Environment minister Sussan Ley has announced the nation’s first plastics summit to be held next year in an attempt to address the problem with Australia’s growing rubbish problem. With Australia no longer able to send its mixed plastic waste overseas from 2021, and plastic use predicted to double once again in the next two decades, Ley said the summit will bring together retailers, researchers, school children, and governments to work out how to tackle the crisis. Scientists are predicting that by 2050, there will be more plastic in the ocean, by weight, than fish. “It’s a scary prospect,” Ley said. “And other scientists who express concern about micro and nano plastics in the ocean – obviously people reflect on plastic as visible and ugly and the wrong place, but I don’t, I think of it as the micro and nano plastics and we can see it in our krill in the Southern Ocean, we can see it in our food chain, we can see [it] working its way into our larger mammals. “There are already scientists talking about how you can clean the ocean of plastic, but we obviously can’t wait for that to be done on a large scale. What we have to do is prevent any more plastic from going into the ocean. “And what we have to do is have far less of what is described as virgin plastic. I’d like to be able to pick up a plastic bottle and say ‘this has been plastic before’.” The waste industry has previously argued government procurement targets would be needed to ensure the recycling industry’s survival and boom in Australia, as it responds to moves from China, Indonesia and other south-east Asian countries to stop accepting shipments of Australian waste. Ley said that was something the government was “absolutely” examining, but would need more consultation with the states, and industry, before landing on a target. “Our standards setting agencies are working on nationally acceptable proportions, if I can put it that way, national acceptable standards for the amount and type of plastic that you could have, in for example, road base, pavements, outdoor furniture, outdoor decking and so on. “We know that plastic is incredibly strong and there are uses for it that make it a preferred proponent of our built environment and I think that is a pretty important prospective to have. We are not just solving a problem here, and doing something that will cost a lot of money to save us landfill. “This summit is about the innovative ideas that will make plastic sought after.” Ley said the government’s work was aided by changes in people’s attitudes towards plastics, and where it ends up, something she credits the younger generations with. “[People] actually want to know that what they put in their recycling bin doesn’t just get taken to the tip and put in a hole in the ground,” she said. “What that tells me is they are really concerned about it. They do care. You are not seeing a pushback in the supermarkets when you have to, for example, pay 15c for a plastic bag. “The best education I get from this subject is from primary schoolers. If I talk to grade five and sixers about this, they give me information and young people are going to be a big part of this summit – because they are leading the way.” The opposition from south-east Asian countries in continuing to accept Australia’s waste, which led to the 2021 mixed plastic waste export ban, has led to a crisis for the states and territories in dealing with growing landfill issues. The industry has pushed the federal government to become involved in creating a national framework for a new recycling industry it says could solve Australia’s waste issues, calling on finance for new domestic plants to kickstart a new recycling industry. The summit will be held early in March. | ['environment/waste', 'environment/plastic', 'environment/plastic-bags', 'australia-news/sussan-ley', 'australia-news/australian-politics', 'australia-news/australia-news', 'environment/environment', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/amy-remeikis', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/australia-news'] | environment/waste | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE | 2019-12-30T03:59:54Z | true | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE |
environment/2012/dec/11/china-illegal-logging-deforestation | China at the centre of 'illegal timber' trade | China is at the centre of a vast global traffic in illegally logged timber that is destroying entire swaths of forest around the world. Academic research and NGOs such as WWF and Global Witness have already revealed the existence of illegal trading networks in central Africa, Burma and Russia leading directly to Chinese ports or cities. Now for the first time fingers are pointing directly to Beijing and holding public enterprises and local government officials responsible for this highly lucrative illegal trade. The British NGO, Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), published a detailed report at the end of November called "China, appetite for destruction". It reveals just how China's appetite for wood has grown in the past decades as a result of consumption by the new middle classes, as well as an export-driven wood industry facing growing demand from major foreign furniture and construction companies. China has become the leading importer, consumer and exporter of the world's timber. Its own forests provide less than 40% of its needs. According to the report, "in response to severe flooding in 1998, China adopted a Natural Forest Conservation Programme […] and embarked on a massive programme of reforestation […] The government spent $31bn on tree planting between 1999 and 2009." But the gap between domestic supply and demand has continued to grow. In 2011 China imported 180m cubic metres of wood products, 28% more than in 2010 and 300% more than in 2000. According to the EIA, last year one-third of all the timber sold worldwide was bought by China, with little regard to its origin. Unlike the US, the EU and Australia, which, under pressure from public opinion, have adopted legislation banning illegal timber imports, China has made no such move. The government has only signed bilateral agreements with the US, Europe, Indonesia and Burma, the benefits of which have yet to be demonstrated. After analysing trade data for 36 supplier countries, the EIA has concluded that approximately 10% of the logs and sawed timber is illegal, representing "turnover" of $3.7bn. Public enterprises, often controlled by provincial governments, play a strategic role in this trade, says the EIA, citing illegal imports from Indonesia and Mozambique. The report describes corruption networks in countries with weak governments such as Burma, Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands. Rosewood trafficking is especially lucrative. Although rosewood is classified as an endangered species by the International Trade Convention, trade in that wood has risen dramatically, triggered by demand from well-off Chinese households for reproductions of Qing and Ming dynasty furniture. It is now sourced in Madagascar, Burma, Thailand, Vietnam and Belize, and rosewood imports to China rose from 66,000 cubic metres in 2005 to 565,000 cubic metres in 2011. This story appeared in Guardian Weekly, which incorporates material from Le Monde | ['environment/deforestation', 'environment/conservation', 'environment/forests', 'environment/environment', 'world/china', 'world/asia-pacific', 'world/world', 'tone/news', 'type/article', 'profile/laurence-caramel', 'profile/harold-thibault'] | environment/deforestation | BIODIVERSITY | 2012-12-11T10:13:35Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
australia-news/2022/oct/19/you-cant-help-but-help-year-12-students-forgo-vce-study-to-fortify-echucas-town-hall-against-floods | ‘You can’t help but help’: year 12 students forgo VCE study to fortify Echuca’s town hall against floods | Cleo Oberin was meant to spend Wednesday celebrating “muck-up day”, the final day of high school for her and her classmates. Instead, she was armed with a shovel on the main street of Echuca in Victoria with an army of teenagers, fortifying the historic town hall. “I tried studying the other day but your mind isn’t in it,” she says. The St Joseph’s college students still haven’t been told if their final VCE exams will start next week as scheduled. The school was shut on Monday, and on Tuesday students were advised it would remain closed until at least the end of the week in expectation of major flooding to hit the border towns of Echuca and Moama. The nearby New South Wales border township of Moama’s Anglican grammar school had already cancelled HSC exams due to start this week, because of the floods. “It’s a bit weird right now it’s all up in the air … nobody knows what’s going to happen … we’re just in a bit of limbo,” Cleo says. “Do we study? Help? You can’t help but help. Everyone’s here.” Cleo’s entire friendship group was stationed on the main street; some were shovelling sand, while others were operating mini forklifts and tying bags. After Covid lockdowns and remote learning, her cohort had been excited to celebrate their last day of school. “But we’re all here,” Cleo says resolutely. “It’s a very, very strange time … The last full year we had was year nine. We’ve had disturbance since then. “But I keep thinking everyone’s in the same boat. We’re all in this together, you can’t help but feel down, but when everyone comes out like this it’s heartwarming.” Sign up for our free morning newsletter and afternoon email to get your daily news roundup On Tuesday, Victoria’s premier, Daniel Andrews, said the Victorian Curriculum of Assessment Authority and the Department of Education and Training would automatically make derived exam scores available for students directly affected by flooding. The scores take into account extenuating circumstances as well as student work throughout the year in place of exam marks. A hotline was established for schools and VCE students affected by flooding events. But with the Murray River predicted to peak at levels higher than the 1993 flood from Friday, studying wasn’t at the forefront of the students’ minds. Year 12 student Sam Deola says plenty of his classmates could be at home readying themselves for a possible exam period but it was the “spirit of the town” for them to help out instead. “Obviously it’s quite a bummer our schooling is over and we don’t know what’s happening with exams,” he says. “But when you see houses half underwater, you see families suffering, every person in this community would give up their own time to come out and help out. “You can’t just sit back and watch people suffer and you can’t see people doing hard work by themselves. There was no chance I was sitting in my room studying. I think it’s pretty special, there’s hundreds of people out here, it brings out the best in people, tough times.” Hundreds of volunteers – mostly teenagers – worked all morning building a wall to protect the back of the former town hall ahead of expected major flooding on Wednesday. The hall, built in the 1800s, sits on one of the lowest points in Echuca, backing on to the Murray River. It’s had a long and varied life as a kindergarten, a library and a council office. Down the road, hundreds of volunteers worked tirelessly to build the “great wall of Echuca”, a levee wall stretching the length of the NRMA Holiday Park. Volunteer Miriam Marage says the sandbagging had been going on for nearly six days. “It’s simply incredible to be part of,” she says. “There were ants, sunburn, mozzies and a snake in the water, but we smiled and had a few laughs and soldiered on.” Year 12 student Macey Barber was also making the best of things, as she had been doing for the past three years. “I hope [exams] do go ahead but if not … I guess you can’t do much about it,” she says. “It has been sad … but what can you really do when this happens? The whole year level was ready for it. Nobody really made a big deal out of it, you just have to get over it.” | ['australia-news/victoria', 'australia-news/australia-weather', 'australia-news/australian-education', 'australia-news/australia-news', 'campaign/email/afternoon-update', 'environment/flooding', 'environment/environment', 'world/extreme-weather', 'australia-news/new-south-wales', 'world/daniel-andrews', 'type/article', 'tone/features', 'profile/caitlin-cassidy', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/australia-news'] | environment/flooding | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2022-10-19T02:05:55Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
environment/2019/oct/12/extinction-rebellion-activists-open-new-fronts-across-london-as-protests-escalate | Climate rebels open new fronts across capital as protests escalate | Climate protesters on Saturday intensified efforts to disrupt life in London, and targeted sites including Billingsgate fish market and Shell’s headquarters. They said police took at least 28 of their supporters into custody. That number means that more than 1,200 Extinction Rebellion activists have been arrested in London since their protests, over the government’s “failure” to act over climate change, were launched last Monday. And those detained include Belgian Princess Esméralda who was taken into a police van for questioning and held for about five hours after she joined a sit-in at Trafalgar Square on Thursday. “The more people from all sections of society protest, the greater the impact will be,” the 63-year-old said. Other protests launched on Saturday included one by more than 50 healthcare professionals – wearing scrubs and singing the Extinction Rebellion anthem – who gathered outside Shell’s headquarters before they marched to Parliament Square. “We are meeting outside Shell because they are one of the biggest companies involved in the oil and energy industry, and they have real power to decarbonise that industry,” said Alex Turner, 36, a paediatric and emergency doctor from Bristol. “We are protesting illegal levels of air pollution.” Julia Simons, 23, a final-year medical student at Cambridge University, said: “Our government has the responsibility to explain [climate science] to its citizens, to understand that if they don’t act radically, that future which I’ve been studying for won’t exist.” Hundreds of protesters remained camped in Trafalgar Square, where police were continuing efforts to remove them and the roadblock they had set up in Westminster. Similar protests took place in many other countries. Dutch police arrested 130 activists in Amsterdam after they blocked a bridge in the centre of the city. Some protesters slumped on hammocks hung from pillars supporting the bridge to prevent boats from passing underneath. In France, hundreds of activists blocked a route to the national assembly in Paris for several hours but were later dispersed by police. In Brussels, demonstrators occupied the gardens of the royal palace while in Melbourne protesters said they would hold a “spring rebellion” of civil disobedience this week including blocking traffic. At the same time, a petition calling for non-violent protest to be maintained to ensure action is taken to tackle climate change has been signed by more than 300 scientists and environmentalists. “We have an obligation that extends beyond merely describing and understanding the natural world to taking an active part in helping to protect it,” the petition states. “The scientific community has already tried all conventional methods to draw attention to the crisis. We believe continued governmental inaction over the climate and ecological crisis now justifies peaceful and non-violent protest and direct action, even if this goes beyond the bounds of the current law. We believe it is our moral duty to act now, and we urge other scientists to join us in helping to protect humanity’s only home.” A former Paralympic cyclist accused of climbing on to the top of a British Airways plane and gluing himself to it appeared in court on Saturday – and denied causing a public nuisance. James Brown, 55, who is visually impaired, is alleged to have climbed on the aircraft at London City airport on Thursday during the Extinction Rebellion protests. He appeared at Westminster magistrates court where a not-guilty plea was entered on his behalf by his solicitor Raj Chada. District judge John Zani granted Brown conditional bail, prohibiting him from going within one mile of any airport in the UK. Brown – who participated in five Paralympic Games and won two gold medals and a bronze – told reporters he was “relieved” to be out of custody. “I am not denying what I did, but I was compelled to do what I did because of my concerns for the future of my children,” he added. The protest at Billingsgate, the UK’s largest inland fish market, by Extinction Rebellion’s animal rebellion chapter began early on Saturday when protesters blocked the entrance. One demonstrator locked herself to the gate. Police initially tried to prevent the protesters from reaching the market but relented after negotiations, the group said. “At London’s Billingsgate market, thousands of fish, stolen daily from their ocean homes, lie dead or dying,” said Kerri Waters, a spokesperson for Animal Rebellion. “Many will have suffocated slowly when pulled aboard fishing vessels, while thousands of others remain alive as they’re transported by lorry to the market, where they’ll be gutted or boiled alive.” | ['environment/extinction-rebellion', 'world/protest', 'environment/environment', 'uk/uk', 'tone/news', 'environment/climate-crisis', 'science/scienceofclimatechange', 'science/science', 'environment/activism', 'type/article', 'profile/robinmckie', 'profile/damien-gayle', 'publication/theobserver', 'theobserver/news', 'theobserver/news/uknews', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/observer-main'] | environment/extinction-rebellion | CLIMATE_ACTIVISM | 2019-10-12T18:00:27Z | true | CLIMATE_ACTIVISM |
environment/2024/nov/19/im-obsessed-with-historic-shipwreck-the-london-oliver-cromwell | I’m obsessed with a historic shipwreck: it’s murky and dangerous but diving in the Thames, I feel like a detective | When I dive to the shipwreck of the London, a warship which was accidentally blown up in the murky waters of the Thames estuary in 1665, I dive in darkness. I can barely see six inches in front of me. And if I turn my torch off, I cannot see anything at all. But I love it. I’ve dived to the London about 500 times and I only have to feel certain timbers of the wreck, and I know where I am. The London is not just any old shipwreck. It’s a nationally important and legally protected historic wreck, built by Oliver Cromwell, which was part of the fleet that brought King Charles II back from the Netherlands to England for his restoration in 1660. Charles’s brother James – later King James II – was a passenger. The ship was mentioned in the diary of Samuel Pepys and is as important to the nation as the wreck of the Mary Rose. It was only rediscovered about 20 years ago, when they decided to dredge that part of the river to widen the main shipping channel. Hardly anyone is allowed to dive recreationally in the Thames, because it is so black and murky and dangerous. There is a sense that you don’t know what’s down there – it’s mysterious, almost magical. I started diving in the 1990s, when my wife bought me a scuba diving course as a present for my 33rd birthday. I discovered I loved it and so, in my spare time, became a licensed diver of the London. Most people dive wrecks because they want to find treasure. But I do it because I like learning about what was on the ship and how it sank. Diving the London, I feel like a detective. I regularly find artefacts in the silt that are being uncovered for the first time in centuries. All of my finds go to Southend Central Museum, my local museum. Some of the quirkiest artefacts I’ve found onboard include a sundial compass watch, a little bronze spoon and a multi-functional ring. Once, I thought I had found some pebbles in a row. Then I realised it was a human jaw bone with teeth. That was the first time I had found human remains and that night, I woke up in my sleep. It brought home to me how vulnerable we all are. The London was the flagship of the fleet that was going down the Thames to fight in the second Anglo-Dutch war. It was fully armed when it blew up and although 24 people survived, more than 300 died. It is the last surviving ship from the period in the mid-17th century when great British warships were built. And it is being washed away on nearly every tide, because when they dredged the shipping channel, they removed some of the silt that had protected it for years. Today, the world’s largest container ships go really close to the wreck – some even go over the top of it. This will expose absolutely immaculate timbers, looking as they did on the day the ship went down. But a couple of weeks after they are exposed, marine organisms start eating them away. That is why it is so important to me to record and try to save as much of the wreck as I can by diving there as often as I can. It’s like having an historic house on the edge of a motorway, which is being destroyed. I think it’s such a shame that this wreck – and an important part of our history – is being washed away. Preserving the London has become the legacy of my life. • As told to Donna Ferguson To donate to help cover the costs of diving to save the London, visit nauticalarchaeologysociety.org/Appeal/save-the-london • This article was amended on 19 November 2024 to clarify that Steve Ellis gives his finds to Southend Central Museum, part of the Southend Museums group. | ['environment/series/why-i-m-obsessed-with', 'environment/series/seascape-the-state-of-our-oceans', 'sport/diving', 'environment/environment', 'environment/rivers', 'environment/series/shipwrecked', 'culture/heritage', 'culture/culture', 'type/article', 'tone/features', 'profile/donna-ferguson', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/global-development'] | environment/series/seascape-the-state-of-our-oceans | BIODIVERSITY | 2024-11-19T06:00:28Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
world/2012/oct/30/sandy-stacked-up-storm-statistics | How Sandy stacked up: the storm in statistics | Harry J Enten | The worst of Sandy has passed for most of us in the northeastern United States. The storm lived up to expectations and lashed out a blow that will not soon be forgotten. But just how bad was Sandy, meteorologically speaking? It turns out that in some ways Sandy was unprecedented. For instance, we never see hurricane-like storms come up the coast and hook left at almost 90-degree angle like Sandy. They almost always go out to sea. Yet, in other ways, Sandy did fall short according to some meteorological precedent. Let's run down five weather statistics that puts the meteorological aspects of Sandy in perspective. 1. 940 millibars Sandy broke the all-time record for lowest pressure north of the Carolinas by 6 millibars previously held by the Long Island Express of 1938. The formula here is pretty simple: lower pressure = stronger storm. Thus you might say that Sandy is the strongest storm on record in north-east history. It's this low pressure that helped to create the massive rain, snow, tide, and wind seen throughout the storm. More amazingly, Sandy's lowest pressures occurred as it approached landfall. Often we see storms weaken as they come closer. That was not the case here. Sandy hit at 946 millibars. We saw the pressure drop to 948 millibars in Atlantic City, which was right about where Sandy made landfall. In fact, Atlantic City, Baltimore, Harrisburg, Philadelphia, Scranton, and Trenton all set their all time record low pressure. 2. 12.49 inches About a foot of rain was the highest amount I could find from Sandy. It occurred right near landfall in Talbot County, Maryland. Most rainfall amounts in the area were from the 8 to 10in mark. A wider area of 6in extended to Baltimore and southern New Jersey. The rainfall from Sandy did not come anywhere close to breaking records. You can take a look at a rainfall map from Hurricane Floyd in 1999 and see why spread 12+ inch rainfall amounts all over the place. New York City didn't even get an inch of rain from Sandy. Can you imagine the flooding issues in New York had the rainfall been heavier? 3. 96mph The wind from Sandy was quite impressive. The highest gust seemed to have occurred in Eatons Neck, New York. Wind gusts were measured 90mph at Islip, 89 in Surf City, New Jersey, 85 at Plum Island, New York, and 79 at JFK airport. The maximum sustained wind occurred at landfall around Atlantic City of about 80mph. None of these winds broke any sort of records for the north-east. Battery Park, for example, experienced 113mph wind gusts in 1954. Hurricane Donna nailed New England with sustained winds of nearly 100mph in 1960. There are other examples too. What Sandy illustrates is that you don't need record-breaking winds to knock out power to millions of people. Hurricane gusts are more than enough to bring down power lines and cause a lot of damage. 4. 13.88 feet The record high water level at Battery Park was set last evening. That crushed the record previously set by the aforementioned Donna in 1960 of about 11ft. The result was a tide that took water from New York harbor, the Hudson river, and the East river and put it right into New York City. The practical damages reflected this meteorological phenomenon. We saw the boardwalk in Atlantic City destroyed because of Sandy. We saw power cut off to places in New York City, where it's always on, because the underground generators had to be shut off. The underground power supply was not implemented with the idea that we could get a 14ft tide in Manhattan. That's why the surge is what we are going to remember about Sandy for a long time to come. 5. 2 feet We've already seen this much snow in West Virginia with more falling. By the time things are all said and done, we're going to be looking at 3ft of snow in some of the mountain elevations. The snow has been the under-reported story of this storm. Along with heavy winds, it has caused blizzard conditions in the Appalachian mountains. You can look at a map and see that the snow has not just been contained to West Virginia, but has also spread all the way to North Carolina. The 9in of snow that fell in Sugar Mountain, North Carolina has led the earliest opening of the Sugar Mountain ski resort on record. Combined with last year's snowfall closer to the coast, we have now had two consecutive years of back-breaking October snowfalls in the eastern United States. Overall, these statistics indicate that Sandy was in some ways meteorologically unprecedented and in others not nearly as historic. The damage received was, however, something many of us will never forget. | ['us-news/hurricane-sandy', 'world/hurricanes', 'us-news/us-weather', 'us-news/us-politics', 'us-news/us-news', 'world/world', 'tone/analysis', 'world/natural-disasters', 'us-news/new-york', 'us-news/new-jersey', 'type/article', 'profile/harry-j-enten'] | us-news/hurricane-sandy | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2012-10-30T22:13:27Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
business/2016/may/01/leaked-ttip-documents-cast-doubt-on-eu-us-trade-deal | Leaked TTIP documents cast doubt on EU-US trade deal | Talks for a free trade deal between Europe and the US face a serious impasse with “irreconcilable” differences in some areas, according to leaked negotiating texts. The two sides are also at odds over US demands that would require the EU to break promises it has made on environmental protection. President Obama said last week he was confident a deal could be reached. But the leaked negotiating drafts and internal positions, which were obtained by Greenpeace and seen by the Guardian, paint a very different picture. “Discussions on cosmetics remain very difficult and the scope of common objectives fairly limited,” says one internal note by EU trade negotiators. Because of a European ban on animal testing, “the EU and US approaches remain irreconcilable and EU market access problems will therefore remain,” the note says. Talks on engineering were also “characterised by continuous reluctance on the part of the US to engage in this sector,” the confidential briefing says. These problems are not mentioned in a separate report on the state of the talks, also leaked, which the European commission has prepared for scrutiny by the European parliament. These outline the positions exchanged between EU and US negotiators between the 12th and the 13th round of TTIP talks, which took place in New York last week. The public document offers a robust defence of the EU’s right to regulate and create a court-like system for disputes, unlike the internal note, which does not mention them. Jorgo Riss, the director of Greenpeace EU, said: “These leaked documents give us an unparalleled look at the scope of US demands to lower or circumvent EU protections for environment and public health as part of TTIP. The EU position is very bad, and the US position is terrible. The prospect of a TTIP compromising within that range is an awful one. The way is being cleared for a race to the bottom in environmental, consumer protection and public health standards.” US proposals include an obligation on the EU to inform its industries of any planned regulations in advance, and to allow them the same input into EU regulatory processes as European firms. American firms could influence the content of EU laws at several points along the regulatory line, including through a plethora of proposed technical working groups and committees. “Before the EU could even pass a regulation, it would have to go through a gruelling impact assessment process in which the bloc would have to show interested US parties that no voluntary measures, or less exacting regulatory ones, were possible,” Riss said. The US is also proposing new articles on “science and risk” to give firms greater regulatory say. Disputes over pesticides residues and food safety would be dealt with by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation’s Codex Alimentarius system. Environmentalists say the body has loose rules on corporate influence, allowing employees of companies such as BASF, Nestle and Coca Cola to sit on – and sometimes lead – national delegations. Some 44% of its decisions on pesticides residues have been less stringent than EU ones, with 40% of rough equivalence and 16% being more demanding, according to Greenpeace. GM foods could also find a widening window into Europe, with the US pushing for a working group to adopt a “low level presence initiative”. This would allow the import of cargo containing traces of unauthorised GM strains. The EU currently blocks these because of food safety and cross-pollination concerns. The EU has not yet accepted the US demands, but they are uncontested in the negotiators’ note, and no counter-proposals have been made in these areas. In January, the EU trade commissioner Cecilia Malmström said [pdf] the precautionary principle, obliging regulatory caution where there is scientific doubt, was a core and non-negotiable EU principle. She said: “We will defend the precautionary approach to regulation in Europe, in TTIP and in all our other agreements.” But the principle is not mentioned in the 248 pages of TTIP negotiating texts. The European commission has also promised to safeguard environmental laws, defend international standards and protect the EU’s right to set high green benchmarks in future. But the new leak will not placate critics of the deal, who have pointed to attempts by fossil fuel firms and others to influence its outcome, as a sign of things to come. The EU negotiators internal note says “the US expressed that it would have to consult with its chemical industry on how to position itself” on issues of market access for non-agricultural goods. Where industry lobbying in regulatory processes is concerned, the US also “insisted” that the EU be “required” to involve US experts in its development of electrotechnical standards. | ['business/ttip', 'business/business', 'business/global-economy', 'business/internationaltrade', 'environment/environment', 'world/european-commission', 'world/europe-news', 'world/world', 'world/eu', 'environment/greenpeace', 'us-news/obama-administration', 'us-news/us-news', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/arthurneslen', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/financial3', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-business'] | environment/greenpeace | CLIMATE_ACTIVISM | 2016-05-01T17:00:00Z | true | CLIMATE_ACTIVISM |
commentisfree/2023/aug/10/tory-voters-net-zero-environmental-action | The truth is Tory voters are onboard for net zero. What’s really worrying them is how we get there | Sam Hall | In less than three decades, the UK must reach net zero to avoid the worst impacts of climate crisis for our economy and national security. We’re already halfway there, having almost halved our emissions since 1990. But to achieve this momentous goal, we must now build support for the individual policies required, while preserving the cross-party consensus on the need to act. Conservatives want to protect our planet, but that doesn’t mean they’ll agree on every policy campaigners propose to get there. The public wants the debate to focus on how, not if, we reach carbon neutrality. There is a conservative route to net zero. It’s not a contradiction in terms. The UK has a long and rich history of conservative environmentalism. In 1989, Margaret Thatcher became the first world leader to raise the spectre of climate change in a global context. Another Conservative prime minister, Theresa May, fired the starting gun on the race to net zero by 2050, enshrining the target in law. Overwhelmingly, Conservative voters back environmental action. A recent poll revealed that 73% back the net zero target – a higher proportion than among voters overall. YouGov’s tracker poll consistently shows they rank the environment as the fourth most important issue facing the country. Nearly nine in 10 support solar power and offshore wind. Almost two-thirds think the ban on onshore wind in England must end. Some Conservatives sceptical of net zero and the severity of climate change view environmental action as an electoral liability. They’re far from the majority, but they are an increasingly loud group. They’ve drawn the wrong conclusions from the Uxbridge byelection, where the Conservatives won on an anti-ultra-low emission zone (Ulez), not anti-environment, ticket. They’ve misunderstood cases of local backlash to poorly implemented low-traffic neighbourhoods. And they’ve misread the public’s rejection of Just Stop Oil’s divisive stunts as a wider rebuff of climate action. Like all voters, Conservatives want fair, affordable environmental policies that maximise benefits while limiting direct costs. Two-thirds of Conservative voters support green policies that don’t put the costs on ordinary people, while only 17% back them if they do result in costs. But polling shows the same is true of other policy priorities, such as health and crime. Politicians should ignore the extremes of disruptive protesters and climate sceptics who often dominate the media debate, and instead respond to people’s concern about climate crisis in a way that minimises the costs. On the right, sceptics can’t undo the consensus around climate change so instead target specific policies where the public case still needs to be won, such as the rollout of electric cars and heat pumps. We’ll need these two technologies to reach net zero, but the prices of both have yet to fall sufficiently. The answer isn’t to ditch them, but to use the market to make them the cheapest and best options. Bold government targets, early support through funding for research and development, subsidies, tax breaks and light regulation can spur businesses to innovate and deploy clean technologies. Just as we’ve scaled up renewables to provide more than 40% of our electricity today while making it the cheapest new energy source available, we need to do the same for electric vehicles and heat pumps. That’s why the zero-emission vehicle mandate and government grants to support low-carbon heating are so important. Similarly, there needs to be a coherent Conservative approach to transport. Cars are the only realistic transport option in most parts of the country, which is why the electric vehicle transition is the essential policy for transport decarbonisation. Our cities and towns shouldn’t be anti-car, but also shouldn’t prioritise them above everything else, given the limits on road space and the impacts on communities and the environment. Instead, we need to focus on expanding people’s transport choices. Politicians should give people cheaper, greener travel methods, whether by improving public transport, carefully consulting on active travel infrastructure, or enabling innovative solutions like e-scooters. Most will choose them when provided, allowing those who need to drive to continue to do so. Conservative voters want to see environmental action. It needn’t be at odds with personal freedom or at great cost to the individual. There will be trade-offs, which will initially require a more active state than some are comfortable with. But they pale in comparison to the costs and demand for government intervention unchecked climate change would bring. Sam Hall is the director of the Conservative Environment Network | ['commentisfree/commentisfree', 'environment/climate-crisis', 'politics/conservatives', 'environment/low-emission-zones', 'uk-news/low-traffic-neighbourhoods', 'environment/windpower', 'environment/solarpower', 'politics/politics', 'environment/environment', 'uk/uk', 'type/article', 'tone/comment', 'profile/sam-hall', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-opinion'] | environment/windpower | ENERGY | 2023-08-10T10:00:51Z | true | ENERGY |
technology/2023/may/22/beats-studio-buds-review-apple-android-iphone-bluetooth-earbuds | Beats Studio Buds+ review: Apple’s latest for Android and iPhone | The latest Beats earbuds from Apple improve the noise-cancelling and sound of their predecessors – and make them easier to use across almost all phones while adding a fresh transparent option. The Studio Buds+ cost £179.99 ($169.99) and, as the name suggests, are enhanced versions of the already good Studio Buds from 2021. The size and shape remains identical to the older buds, which means they are just as compact and fit well, coming with four sizes of earbud tips. While they are sweat resistant, I wouldn’t rely on them for exercise as they lack stabilising wings to keep them in place. The top of the bud projects slightly from your ear making them easy to grip. The “b” button handles controls: press once for pause/play, twice and thrice for track skip, or press and hold to switch noise-cancelling modes or adjust the volume. The battery lasts about six hours for playback with noise-cancelling, which is an hour longer than their predecessors and is better than many competitors. The case is pocketable but slightly bigger than the best. It can fully charge the earbuds three additional times for a total playback time of about 24 hours. The case takes two hours to charge via USB-C, while a five-minute quick charge is enough for an hour’s playback when low. Apple and Android connectivity A big advantage of the Beats is the extensive cross-compatibility between Android and iOS. Made by Apple, they have greater integration with an iPhone than competitors, including hands-free Siri, access to controls through quick settings, instant pairing and iCloud syncing. You only need to pair with one Apple device to use them across iPhones, iPads, Macs and other gear. But they also support similar features on Android with instant pairing and syncing between Google devices, including auto-switching between Android and Chromebooks. Controls and other settings are accessible via the Beats app, which also includes battery widgets and other features. The earbuds integrate into Apple’s and Google’s Find My systems, so that you can locate them if you misplace them regardless of platform. Specifications Connectivity: Bluetooth 5.3, SBC, AAC Battery life: 6 hours ANC/9 hours off, up to 24 hours with case Water resistance: IPX4 (sweat) Earbud weight: 5g each Earbud dimensions: 15.6 x 21.6 x 19.8mm Charging case weight: 49g Charging case dimensions: 51.5 x 73 x 25.6mm Case charging: USB-C Upgraded sound and noise-cancelling The Buds+ sound a little fuller than their predecessors, producing good easy-listening audio across a range of genres. They are capable of hitting deep notes, but the bass is nicely controlled and accompanied by well-balanced treble and high tones. They can’t beat the best from Sennheiser or Sony, lacking a little energy at times, but they avoid sounding overly clinical with suitable rawness when required. Their predecessor’s problem of noise-cancelling affecting the sound has been much improved for the new buds. The earbuds support spatial audio on Android and for Apple Music on iOS but do not support head tracking or more advanced surround sound features for movies. Noise-cancelling reduces the nuisance sounds of a city better than the buds’ predecessors. They effectively suppress rumbles, thumps and other lower notes, and manage to dampen higher tones better than before, but voices, keyboard taps and similar still break though when not listening to music. The Buds+ can’t match the best from Bose or the AirPods Pro but they are decent for the money and size. The transparency mode is also improved, sounding more natural and open, easily good enough to hold a conversation or listen out for traffic. Call quality in quiet environments was crisp and clear if a little low in volume. My voice was clear on noisy streets with very little background noise audible on the call. Sustainability Apple does not provide an expected lifespan for the batteries but they should last in excess of 500 full-charge cycles with at least 80% of its original capacity. Apple offers a “battery service” for £85, while replacement buds and cases are available. The earbuds and case are made from recycled plastic, tin and rare earth elements but Apple does not publish environmental impact reports for accessories such as headphones. The company offers trade-in and free recycling schemes, including for non-Apple products. Price The Beats Studio Buds+ cost £179.99 ($169.99) and will be in store from 13 June. For comparison, the Beats Studio Buds cost £160, the Beats Fit Pro cost £220, the Apple AirPods Pro 2 cost £249, Samsung’s Galaxy Buds 2 cost £99, Google’s Pixel Buds Pro cost £179 and the Nothing Ear 2 cost £129. Verdict The Studio Buds+ are another great set of earbuds from Apple that court Android users as much as those with iPhones. They build on their predecessors with a compact fit, good sound, solid noise-cancelling and longer battery life. But it is their support of enhanced features on multiple platforms that makes them appealing. If you use an Android phone with an iPad or Mac or some other combination of devices, the Buds+ are one of the best options available. In their transparent colour option they are particularly good-looking. But the battery is not replaceable and the earbuds are not repairable, ultimately making them disposable and losing them a star. Pros: good sound and solid noise-cancelling, cross-platform compatibility with enhanced features for iPhone and Android, great battery life and case, compact and comfortable fit, good button controls. Cons: do not pause music on removal, no head-tracking spatial audio, onboard controls for either volume or noise-cancelling but not both, not repairable. | ['technology/apple', 'technology/headphones', 'technology/technology', 'technology/gadgets', 'technology/bluetooth', 'type/article', 'tone/reviews', 'profile/samuel-gibbs', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/consumer-tech--commissioning-'] | technology/gadgets | UNRELATED_TO_CLIMATE | 2023-05-22T06:00:48Z | true | UNRELATED_TO_CLIMATE |
global-development/poverty-matters/2010/oct/11/corporate-social-responsibility-africa-progress | The rhetoric of corporate social responsibility outweighs the reality | Marieme Jamme | Has the idea of corporate social responsibility (CSR) finally come of age? The concept has been vaguely defined, and still provides a source of confusion both in the corporate world and beyond, but most international corporations, particularly those with footholds in Africa or Asia, have either already implemented CSR strategies or are now drawing them up. It is welcome progress, but it has been painfully slow and there is still a long way to go. The majority of African countries have now celebrated 50 years of independence. Before CSR came into being, companies working on the continent felt entitled to behave as they pleased. By the 1980s, firms were promising to provide funding and to empower local communities by building health centres and schools, installing power lines and water supplies, and creating jobs. In reality, though, they were just paying lip service to the idea. Not until the late 1990s did slumbering corporate consciences begin to awaken and realise that it was time to start giving something back. By then the continent had suffered huge damage, with many countries ravaged by the effects of war, corruption and pollution, situations often exacerbated by the direct interference or connivance of powerful multinationals. It makes me angry to see what is happening in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), a country which has been in a state of war for decades and where horrific crimes against women are committed, but which also has abundant natural resources. These raw materials include significant deposits of tantalum, a vital component in computers and mobile phones, products from which companies like Nokia, IBM and Siemens have earned billions of dollars. Change is coming, with new US legislation requiring companies to disclose whether tantalum and other minerals are sourced from the DRC's "conflict mines". But it is a sad indictment of how African development has unfolded that valuable natural materials that should have brought prosperity have instead been exploited by unscrupulous multinationals to feed the appetite of western consumers for cheap electronic goods. Taking CSR seriously African companies are still waking up to the potential of CSR as a positive force in the shaping of the continent's economic future. The opportunity is there to give something back to the continent. But CSR initiatives worthy of the name need to be more than just marketing tools to increase the visibility of multinationals' brands in Africa. At the moment, CSR-driven schemes are simply not proportionate to the value these companies extract from Africa and Asia. As a UK-based Senegalese woman with one foot firmly on my continent, I hope the corporations that have been operating for decades in countries like Guinea, South Africa, Rwanda, the Ivory Coast and DRC will now sit down and take the whole concept of CSR more seriously. Encouragingly, a few companies are taking more positive steps. Google, for example, runs an active corporate philanthropy programme that has so far poured more than $7m (£4m) into projects targeting poverty, health, energy and the environment. Companies like IBM and PepsiCo are also working with NGOs and foundations to send their executives to mentor business people around the world. Rather than simply giving aid, they appear at last to be engaging at a grassroots level in Africa, working to implement CSR strategies alongside African companies. Global corporations working in Africa need to be more responsible and show a serious interest in making a difference. They can do this by using CSR to: • encourage access to education by building classrooms • invest in people and professional skills • promote good governance, transparency and leadership • sponsor or organise ICT, innovation and mobile technology events • invest in health systems and build health centres • invest in young entrepreneurs and businesswomen • employ locals and involve their communities • promote sustainable, environment-friendly policies • invest in agricultural educational programs Africa still faces huge challenges, as demonstrated by the millennium development goals, which increasingly look unattainable. A greater commitment to implementing meaningful CSR programmes by the hundreds of global corporations present on the continent would mark a significant step towards meeting these targets and help put Africa on the road to a prosperous future. | ['global-development/poverty-matters', 'global-development/global-development', 'tone/blog', 'environment/corporatesocialresponsibility', 'environment/ethical-living', 'sustainable-business/blog', 'type/article', 'profile/marieme-jamme'] | environment/corporatesocialresponsibility | CLIMATE_POLICY | 2010-10-11T15:06:40Z | true | CLIMATE_POLICY |
news/2016/jul/20/rain-swamps-china-regions-breaching-dykes-and-causing-landslides | Rain swamps China regions breaching dykes and causing landslides | China has often recently been plagued by heavy rain, and the past week has been no exception. Rainfall of between 100mm and 200mm was recorded last weekend, with Hunan province worst affected. The downpours triggered flooding and landslides, which destroyed houses and blocked rail lines and roads. As well as the seasonal heavy rain, the effects of Typhoon Nepartak had been felt in neighbouring provinces in the previous week. Several parts of the US have had stormy weather over the past few days. A large thunderstorm passed over Phoenix, Arizona, on Monday afternoon and produced a spectacular microburst. Microbursts are sudden, localised, downdraughts of cool air from the underneath of a storm; they can produce short-lived but powerful gusts of wind as the descending air reaches the ground and spreads out away from the storm. The gusts in this case were strong enough to knock down trees, and the accompanying heavy rain caused localised flooding. The Phoenix Sky Harbor airport was temporarily closed due to winds and lightning risk. At the other end of the country, microburst-producing thunderstorms were also reported to have caused damage at Oneida Lake, New York, and Madison, New Hampshire. On Tuesday, in South Dakota and further north, in Alberta, Canada, there were also active thunderstorms which produced hail stones up to the size of baseballs. Northern New Zealand has been battered by strong winds over the past couple of days, with winds gusting to 90mph in places on Tuesday. Gusts over 60mph were recorded on Auckland Harbour Bridge, and a tornado was reported in the Waikato region. | ['news/series/weatherwatch', 'news/series/world-weatherwatch', 'world/china', 'world/natural-disasters', 'weather/usa', 'weather/canada', 'weather/newzealand', 'type/article', 'tone/features', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/weather2', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-weather'] | news/series/weatherwatch | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2016-07-20T20:30:26Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
commentisfree/article/2024/may/08/british-farmer-food-climate-crisis-business | I’m a British farmer. Here’s the scary truth about what’s happening to our crops | Guy Singh-Watson | Farming has always been a risky business. To the chaos of Brexit and the relentless squeezing of the supermarkets, we can add the rapidly escalating threats associated with climate change. In most industries, at the point where risk is judged to outweigh the potential commercial reward, both capital and people tend to make a swift exit, following economist Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” of self-interest. The problem with farming is that most farmers are emotionally invested in their work. An exit is seldom considered – perhaps we should be more like the bankers, but they wouldn’t be much good at growing potatoes. Around the world, farming practice evolves in response to past success. Over 30 years, I’ve recorded planting and harvest dates, temperatures and yields, using data to guide my decisions, just like generations of farmers before me. But over the past decade, as the pace of change in weather patterns has accelerated, the value of that accumulated experience has become increasingly irrelevant. For most farmers, this last year has been about grabbing rare, good weather windows and trying to make the most of wet conditions as we repeatedly fail to get crops sown. As the risk of crop failure has grown, margins have shrunk, meaning there’s nothing in the bank to pay for the bad years. Farm-gate prices have been driven down to levels which, in a good year, just about cover costs, but leave nothing to cover crops lost to adverse weather. Much of the UK’s arable land was unpassable with machinery from mid-October to mid-April. Many farmers couldn’t sow an autumn crop of barley or wheat and the crops that were sown often failed or rotted in waterlogged seedbeds. By the time it was dry enough to sow, it was too late to establish an economically viable crop. For the worst affected, the loss is near 100%, with the UK’s wheat, barley, oats and oilseed rape production projected to drop 17.5% this year. In horticulture, the biggest problem has been delayed spring plantings, pushed back to late April. For lettuce, this six-to-eight-week delay in planting will shorten the season by up to three weeks as well as disrupting sales and work patterns (and annoying customers through failure to supply). Even assuming that the rest of the summer is favourable, this loss of time from a 20-week season is catastrophic for a grower operating on the tightest of margins: any chance of a profit gone before we sow the first seedling. I also read, with mounting frustration, suggestions by some academics that rising temperatures and levels of CO2 in the atmosphere increase the potential for photosynthesis and, therefore, crop yields. Farmers don’t work in a lab. It is not averages that determine our crop performance, it is the extremes that have to be managed in order to give the crop any chance of approaching its theoretical maximum yield. As a result of poor UK harvests, there is also mounting anxiety over rising beer and bread prices. Most farmers receive less than 1% of the profit made from the food they grow. About 5p of the price of your pint is accounted for by the cost of the malting barley used in its brewing, and for bread, it’s between 10p and 20p per loaf, for the wheat used to bake it. If farmers achieved a (very unlikely) 30% price rise to compensate for an anticipated 30% yield loss, it would add a few pennies to the price tag. I suspect much of the public would support these modest, justifiable increases if it meant keeping British farmers in business. Unfortunately, that’s not how our food system works. Of the 20% food inflation experienced by the public (supposedly attributable to picking labour, fertiliser and fuel price rises due to the Ukraine war) a minuscule proportion made its way back to the farmer. Tesco made a £2.3bn profit last year, while 49% of fruit and veg farmers fear they’ll be out of business before the end of this one. Money talks. To achieve resilience in the face of these challenges and changes, farmers also need to invest in a transition which removes some of the risks of extreme weather events. Perhaps a sign of things to come is the strawberry industry, where in the past 30 years things have moved from being 90% outdoors to 90% indoors. On a broader scale, farmers must also invest in their soils – particularly improvements in structure, achieved through careful cultivations and preservation of organic matter, which allows faster percolation of rainfall, resulting in reduced runoff and risk of soil loss. Change costs money, but where will it come from? Some might come from government funding or the “public money for public goods” advocated by Michael Gove and his successors, but the reality for most farmers is that green schemes and increasing environmental legislation – although wholly necessary – also demand costly modifications to farm practice, and (at best) just about cover the cost of implementing them in the first place. In many cases, the only thing sustaining the farming industry is the emotional commitment of the farmers. Most of us love what we do, but that is not enough to save an industry that has been on its knees for decades. According to my calculations, to have any chance of a robust green transition and consequent food security, farmers need an average 20% price rise, in addition to being paid for those all too often taken for granted “public goods”. Guy Singh-Watson is founder of organic veg box company Riverford | ['commentisfree/commentisfree', 'environment/farming', 'environment/environment', 'environment/climate-crisis', 'business/fooddrinks', 'food/food', 'world/food-safety', 'science/agriculture', 'type/article', 'tone/comment', 'profile/guy-watson', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-opinion'] | environment/farming | BIODIVERSITY | 2024-05-08T14:26:56Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
australia-news/article/2024/may/22/australia-nuclear-power-plants-csiro-peter-dutton-liberal-coalition-plan | CSIRO says nuclear plant would cost at least $8.6bn as Coalition stalls on policy details | Electricity from nuclear power in Australia would be at least 50% more expensive than solar and wind, according to a report from the CSIRO that has for the first time calculated costs for large-scale reactors. The federal Coalition, which has claimed nuclear would provide cheap electricity, is still to reveal any details on its nuclear policy after initially promising it would make an announcement in time for last week’s federal budget. This week the opposition leader, Peter Dutton, said more plans would be released “in due course” and he has yet to say where plants might be built or how large they would be. Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup The Coalition would first have to overturn a federal ban on nuclear power. Several state government bans also exist. According to CSIRO’s GenCost report, a theoretical 1,000MW nuclear plant built today would cost at least $8.6bn. The report said nuclear costs in that range “can only be achieved if Australia commits to a continuous building program and only after an initial higher cost unit is constructed”. The capital costs of a large nuclear plant could double in a country that has never built a large reactor before, the report said. Such a “first-of-a-kind” premium could also apply to other technologies not yet used in Australia, including offshore wind, fossil fuel plants with carbon capture and storage, and solar thermal. The report also advised that a “15+ year development time” should be expected for nuclear in Australia, meaning if a decision to pursue the technology was made next year then a plant would be deployed “no sooner than 2040”. A combination of solar and wind power remained the cheapest source of electricity, the GenCost report said, even allowing for the extra costs of integrating them into the grid. Those costs included building extra transmission lines and adding storage, such as batteries and pumped hydro, so that power from solar and wind can be released on demand. By 2030, the report said, electricity from a combination of solar and wind would cost between $73 and $128 a megawatt hour, depending on how much renewable energy was already in the system. This compared with large-scale nuclear at $141 to $233/MWh and $230 to $382/MWh for small modular reactors. Also cheaper than nuclear power, according to the report, was gas-fired electricity with carbon capture and storage and solar thermal electricity – a technology where mirrors concentrate the sun’s energy to create intense heat that can be stored. The CSIRO report said to achieve the lower end of cost estimates for coal, gas and nuclear technologies, plants would have to run at 89% of their capacity “when historically coal, which has been the main baseload energy source in Australia’s largest states, has only achieved an average of around 60%”. On Tuesday, the renewable industry’s Clean Energy Council released a report claiming nuclear energy was up to six times more expensive than solar and wind. The GenCost report has come under intense scrutiny, in particular from nuclear advocates. In March CSIRO’s chief executive, Douglas Hilton, staunchly defended the report from “unfounded criticism” after Dutton claimed it had been discredited. CSIRO received 45 submissions in response to a draft of the report – more than four times the usual amount – with the majority coming from private individuals. Most of those private submissions had requested CSIRO include the costs for nuclear. • The headline on this article was amended on 24 May 2024 to take account of the report’s finding that the cost of a nuclear plant might be much higher than $8.6bn. | ['environment/nuclearpower', 'australia-news/australia-news', 'environment/environment', 'campaign/email/afternoon-update', 'australia-news/csiro', 'australia-news/energy-australia', 'australia-news/coalition', 'australia-news/peter-dutton', 'australia-news/australian-politics', 'environment/energy', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/graham-readfearn', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/australia-news'] | environment/energy | ENERGY | 2024-05-21T15:00:36Z | true | ENERGY |
world/2022/jun/26/murdered-british-journalist-dom-phillips-laid-to-rest-in-brazil | Murdered British journalist Dom Phillips laid to rest in Brazil | The British journalist Dom Phillips has been laid to rest in Brazil, exactly three weeks after he was gunned down while journeying through the Amazon with the Indigenous expert Bruno Pereira. Pereira and Phillips, a longtime Guardian contributor, disappeared while travelling on the Itaquaí River on Sunday 5 June. Their killings have sparked international outrage and highlighted the historic assault on Indigenous communities and the environment that has unfolded under Brazil’s far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro. The men’s bodies were recovered from the rainforest on 15 June, after a local fisherman confessed to their murders, and returned to their families on Thursday. Scores of mourners gathered at a cemetery in Niterói, a city near Rio de Janeiro, on Sunday to pay their respects to Phillips, 57, who had spent the past 15 years reporting on his adoptive South American home. “He was killed because he tried to tell the world what was happening to the rainforest and its inhabitants,” his sister, Sian Phillips, told reporters and TV cameras gathered outside the chapel in which his coffin was laid, draped with the Brazilian and UK flags. “His mission clashed with the interests of individuals who are determined to exploit the Amazon rainforest regardless of the destructive impact of their illegal activities.” She said the family and friends of the murdered journalist were “committed to continue that work even in this time of tragedy”. “The story must be told,” she added, to applause. Phillips’ wife, Alessandra Sampaio, paid tribute to the Indigenous people who her husband had been writing about when he was killed, and who spearheaded the 10-day search for the two men. Sampaio urged mourners to celebrate Phillips’ “enormous heart” and his love of humanity. “We will redouble our struggle so that other families of other journalists and environmental defenders will not have to face our pain and that of Bruno Pereira’s family,” Sampaio said. Phillips’ sister and brother-in-law played two pieces of music on the accordion and Spanish bagpipes before friends and family shared memories of Dom with the crowded room. Phillips’ will stipulated the music to be played at his funeral and the final moments of the service saw dozens of mourners dancing joyously to Chic’s Good Times. A connoisseur to the last, he had insisted on the 12” mix. The Guardian’s editor-in-chief, Katharine Viner, said: “Dom Phillips was a brave, passionate journalist who died doing a thing he loved – seeking out and exposing wrongdoing. “His deep care for Brazil, its land and its people shone through powerfully in his insightful journalism for the Guardian and many other publications. His memory will live long, and the reporting he did will be continued by colleagues and friends.” | ['world/dom-phillips-and-bruno-pereira', 'uk/uk', 'world/brazil', 'world/world', 'environment/amazon-rainforest', 'world/jair-bolsonaro', 'environment/deforestation', 'world/americas', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/tomphillips', 'profile/andrew-downie', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/topstories', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-foreign'] | environment/deforestation | BIODIVERSITY | 2022-06-26T16:19:25Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
uk/2004/dec/29/tsunami2004.travelnews | Up to 50 Britons feared killed by tsunami | Up to 50 Britons were feared to have been killed by the Indian Ocean tsunami after Thai authorities today increased the number of UK nationals who died in the country's devastated tourist resorts to 43. A Foreign Office spokeswoman said she could only confirm a rise in the official death toll to 20 - 14 in Thailand, three in the Maldives and three in Sri Lanka - but added that the number was expected to rise. Thousands of British tourists were on holiday in coastal resorts around the Indian Ocean when a powerful earthquake off the coast of Sumatra triggered towering waves that killed almost 70,000 people on Sunday. Survivors returning home told of their harrowing experiences and desperate searches for the missing. Many had been staying in beachside bungalows that were razed by the tsunami. Among the dead was the 14-year-old granddaughter of the actor and film director Sir Richard Attenborough, who died in the Thai island resort of Phuket. Sir Richard's daughter and her mother-in-law were still missing, a family friend said. A British couple who had been celebrating their honeymoon in the area were also missing. The families of Christopher and Gaynor Mullen have not heard from them since Christmas Day, when they telephoned to say they were heading to south Thailand's beaches. "It has got to the point where we are looking at bodies floating in the sea and wondering which one is them," Nick Mullen, Christopher's father, told the Daily Express. The government has reinforced the number of people manning an emergency phone hotline, which was yesterday receiving around 17,000 calls an hour. Officials asked people searching for loved ones to be patient. The Foreign Office urged only those who were concerned about UK nationals to call the hotline on 0207 008 0000, asking all others seeking travel advice to refer to its website. Jack Straw, the foreign secretary, today held talks with his Thai counterpart, Surakiart Sathirathai. They discussed plans to send forensic experts out to the disaster zone to help identify British victims. A MyTravel spokeswoman said between 850 and 900 of their clients had been staying in the affected areas. Most had been accounted for, with the number still to be tracked down in single figures. Two empty MyTravel aircraft had flown to Male, in the Maldives, on Boxing Day and returned to Manchester and Gatwick airports yesterday. The tour operator was planning to fly another empty aircraft to the Maldives on January 2 to collect the last of their customers wishing to return to the UK. Kuoni Travel, one of the biggest tour operators in the region, has an estimated 1,870 customers in the area, spread across Phuket in Thailand, Langkawi and Penang in Malaysia, Sri Lanka and the Maldives. "We have now been able to contact most, but regrettably not yet all, of our guests," a spokeswoman said. Kuoni sent three charter flights to the area, two to the Maldives and one to Sri Lanka, with the flights returning late on December 27 and early yesterday morning. An Airbus was yesterday sent to Colombo and is due back in the UK tomorrow. Thomas Cook said it had still not been able to make contact with around 20 tourists in Thailand who had been travelling on the company's Signature holiday programme. However, the company added that it had managed to account for all of around 600 clients in Sri Lanka and the Maldives, and said all were fine. More than 200 Thomas Cook clients arrived back at Gatwick airport today on a special flight from Sri Lanka. Despite the devastation, British tourists could be travelling to the Maldives again by this weekend, with tour operators already considering flights there, according to the Association of British Travel Agents. "We have heard from hoteliers that some resorts in the Maldives are unaffected and thought is being given to having flights there this weekend," spokeswoman Frances Tuke said. She added that holiday companies were also considering switching clients who had been due to travel to the wrecked resort of Phuket to other resorts within the country. "Obviously, it's going to be some time before people are going to be able to travel again to the worst-hit areas, but people returning home have spoken of the kindness and sympathy shown them by local people, and one way they can repay them is to return when possible and boost tourism," she said. "At the moment, people's reaction to this disaster has been mixed. Some are keen to travel, but others are understandably wary of visiting these areas." Scandinavian tourists appear to have been worst hit by the tsunami. Of 3,500 foreigners unaccounted for, around 1,500 were from Sweden, 440 from Norway and 200 from Finland. The Scandanavian airline SAS today allocated 15 planes to fly stranded tourists home as quickly as possible. More than 3,000 people may have died at Khao Lak, a Thai beach resort north of Phuket island especially popular with Scandinavians and Germans. Around 1,200 bodies had been recovered there. · The following is a summary of the number of foreign tourists reported killed or missing, based on statistics provided by the countries listed. It does not incorporate figures provided by Thailand's Department of Disaster Prevention and Mitigation, showing 473 foreigners killed and 1,400 missing: Country: deaths/missing Austria: 5/16 Australia: 8/10 Belgium: 2/30 Brazil: 2 Britain: 20 Canada: 3 China: 7 Croatia: 1/35 Czech Republic: 0/250 Denmark: 4/220 Finland: 1/200 | ['uk/uk', 'world/tsunami2004', 'world/world', 'travel/travel', 'world/thailand', 'tone/news', 'world/asia-pacific', 'type/article'] | world/tsunami2004 | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2004-12-29T15:51:12Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
business/2019/feb/14/renewable-energy-world-power-source-bp | Renewable energy will be world's main power source by 2040, says BP | Renewable energy sources will be the world’s main source of power within two decades and are establishing a foothold in the global energy system faster than any fuel in history, according to BP. The UK-based oil company said wind, solar and other renewables will account for about 30% of the world’s electricity supplies by 2040, up from 25% in BP’s 2040 estimates last year, and about 10% today. In regions such as Europe, the figure will be as high as 50% by 2040. The speed of growth was without parallel, the company said in its annual energy outlook. While oil took almost 45 years to go from 1% of global energy to 10%, and gas took more than 50 years, renewables are expected to do so within 25 years in the report’s central scenario. In the event of a faster switch to a low carbon economy, that period comes down to just 15 years, which BP said would be “literally off the charts” relative to historical shifts. But the company, as in previous editions of its report, does not see oil going away any time soon. The outlook’s core scenario envisages that oil demand does not peak until the 2030s, though under its greener scenario that milestone could be reached between now and the early 2020s. Regardless, BP sees a “major role” for hydrocarbons until 2040, which it says will require substantial investment. It expects global demand for oil and gas to be 80-130 million barrels per day by then, up from around 100mb/d today. The company has ambitious plans to grow its oil and gas production 16% by 2025, according to figures compiled by the Norway-based consultants Rystad Energy. The report is gloomy on prospects for avoiding dangerous levels of global warming. The central scenario expects carbon emissions to grow 10% by 2040, as world energy demand grows by a third and fossil fuels continue to play a key role. Bob Dudley, BP’s chief executive, said meeting the challenge of providing more energy while cutting emissions would “undoubtedly require many forms of energy to play a role”. The company said it expected growth in renewables to be driven by government policies, technological change and the falling costs of wind and solar power. Renewables are expected to grow by 7.1% each year over the next two decades, eventually displacing coal as the world’s top source of power by 2040. Spencer Dale, chief economist at BP, said in terms of cutting carbon emissions, most of the “low-hanging fruit” was outside the transport sector, which makes up around a fifth of energy demand. The company expects more efficient vehicles to have more of an impact on emissions than electric cars. The group sees energy demand growth in China slowing as the country’s economy moves away from polluting industries to a more services-based one. That should lead India to overtake China for growth in energy by the mid-2020s. BP’s forecast for Chinese energy demand is down 7% on its outlook last year. The impact of trade disputes, such as the ongoing one between the US and China, were also examined. The oil company sees energy demand 4% lower in the next two decades if such disputes continue, as a result of lower global GDP and trade flows. Separately on Thursday, a thinktank said fossil fuel giants are still failing to incentivise their workforces to switch away from hydrocarbons. A report by CarbonTracker found that 92% of 40 oil and gas firms rewarded greater fossil fuel production with more pay. BP is mulling a link between carbon emission cuts and executive remuneration. | ['business/bp', 'business/oilandgascompanies', 'business/oil', 'business/commodities', 'business/business', 'business/energy-industry', 'environment/renewableenergy', 'environment/energy', 'environment/environment', 'environment/windpower', 'environment/solarpower', 'uk/uk', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/adam-vaughan', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/financial3', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-business'] | environment/renewableenergy | ENERGY | 2019-02-14T14:49:59Z | true | ENERGY |
australia-news/2020/oct/14/fortescue-urged-to-front-mps-after-two-days-of-damning-evidence-to-juukan-gorge-inquiry | Fortescue urged to front MPs after two days of 'damning' evidence to Juukan Gorge inquiry | Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest’s Fortescue Metals Group should appear sooner rather than later before a parliamentary inquiry into the destruction of Juukan Gorge after two days of “quite damning” evidence from traditional owners regarding the company’s conduct in the Pilbara, the inquiry’s chairman has said. “In light of recent evidence over the past few days it is very much in their interest to present their side of the story,” the chairman, Warren Entsch, told Guardian Australia. Entsch said the federal joint standing committee on northern Australia had reached out on several occasions to Fortescue and was waiting for the company to respond. “We will continue to reach out to them because it is absolutely critical they have the opportunity to respond,” the Liberal National party MP said. The parliamentary inquiry was set up after Rio Tinto destroyed a 46,000-year-old Aboriginal sacred site in the Pilbara in May. The committee was tasked with examining how the destruction came about, the processes that failed to protect the site, and the legislative changes required to prevent such episodes from recurring. Over the past two days, Aboriginal traditional owner groups have made serious allegations about their dealings with Fortescue. Eastern Guruma Aboriginal traditional owners said the company was withholding $1.9m in royalties because they had asked “for information about their plans” for nine mining leases in areas with significant and sacred sites. “We have asked FMG to reconsider their position and they have advised us that they will only pay the royalties when we sign off on the mining leases,” the Wintawari Guruma Aboriginal Corporation’s Joselyn Hicks told the inquiry on Tuesday. In reply, Fortescue said it took its relationship with traditional custodians seriously. “We are committed to open and transparent engagement to facilitate the outstanding royalty payment, in accordance with the contractual agreement and the obligations of both parties,” said its chief executive, Elizabeth Gaines. On Monday the Puutu Kunti Kuurrama and Pinikura people, the traditional owners of Juukan Gorge, said they were “pretty upset” to discover Fortescue had applied for mining leases in the area after the PKKP had managed to secure a six-month moratorium from Rio Tinto on any further work in areas of high cultural sensitivity. “We weren’t told by anyone that there was potential for FMG to come in from the side and actually apply for a mining licence,” said the PKKP Aboriginal Corporation chief executive, Carol Meredith. Fortescue said it had held prospecting licences since 2012 over an area near Juukan Gorge. In the Australian, Gaines questioned the PKKP’s version of events, stating she had been “surprised and a little disappointed because we did advise them that we intended to convert that prospecting licence to a mining lease”. Entsch said Fortescue had already lodged a written submission to the parliamentary inquiry but the new evidence had raised questions for the company to answer. “As the Rio Tinto written evidence has shown, it was contested and proven to be less than accurate,” the chairman said. “The inquiry is trying to get to the facts. This is an opportunity for FMG to put forward their facts. It would be very useful for them to give us their side of things, sooner rather than later, because the evidence we have heard over the past few days is quite damning.” A spokesman for FMG said that from the outset Fortescue had intended to appear before the joint standing committee. “Fortescue had previously confirmed arrangements for the committee to visit two Fortescue sites as part of the inquiry and for Fortescue to appear as part of that trip,” the spokesman said. “This trip was unfortunately cancelled due to the closed West Australian border. Fortescue has been in regular contact with the committee secretary to find a suitable time to appear with appropriate notice. We look forward to the secretariat’s advice.” The inquiry is planning to visit the Pilbara in early November. | ['business/mining', 'australia-news/indigenous-australians', 'australia-news/australia-news', 'australia-news/business-australia', 'environment/mining', 'environment/environment', 'australia-news/australian-politics', 'australia-news/warren-entsch', 'australia-news/western-australia', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/lorena-allam', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/australia-news'] | environment/mining | ENERGY | 2020-10-14T09:06:57Z | true | ENERGY |
world/article/2024/jul/25/frankfurt-airport-temporarily-halts-flights-after-climate-activists-stage-demonstration | Flights hit at Frankfurt and Oslo airports as climate protests continue | Climate activists have disrupted flights at Frankfurt and Oslo airports on the second day of coordinated “oil kills” protests across Europe and North America. Demanding an end to fossil fuels by 2030, supporters of Letzte Generation (Last Generation) briefly suspended flights at Frankfurt airport on Thursday morning. The activists said they had cut a wire fence, entered on bicycles and skateboards and glued themselves to the tarmac. In Oslo, protesters from Folk Mot Fossilmakta and Scientist Rebellion Norway caused large queues by blocking a check-in lane with a banner that read: “Fast track to phase out.” “I would rather not be here today, but I can no longer stand and watch as our elected officials do too little, too slowly,” said Ina Nagler, a climate researcher who took part in the Oslo protest. “The science is clear: We must drastically reduce the use of fossil fuels during this decade.” The protests, which seek to pressure governments to speed the shift to a clean economy, have hit airports during the start of the busy summer season. On Wednesday morning, activists disrupted travel plans at airports from Helsinki to Barcelona. Further airport protests are expected in the US and Canada on Thursday. The protests drew criticism from authorities. The campaign group Oil Kills said police had arrested 37 of the 91 activists involved, with 14 still in custody. “These actions are stupid, criminal and dangerous,” said the German interior minister, Nancy Faeser, in a post on X. “Those who block runways risk not only their own lives, but also endanger others and harm all travellers.” Letzte Generation said in response that it was the government’s climate policy, which it says is too weak to meet its targets, that was “dangerous and criminal”. European governments have cracked down on disruptive climate protests with policing and sentencing that some human rights experts have described as “terrifying”. Last week, Roger Hallam, the co-founder of Extinction Rebellion, was sentenced to five years in jail for planning to block the M25 motorway that surrounds London. German police have used laws designed to fight organised crime to tap phones, raid homes, freeze bank accounts and place activists in preventive detention. Faeser said: “These acts must be punished more severely. We have proposed more severe prison sentences.” The activists are calling on governments of rich nations to work together to establish a legally binding treaty to stop extracting and burning oil, gas and coal by 2030, as well as supporting poorer countries in their transition. Leading scientists have long since backed calls for a fossil fuel phase-out, though the pace of change demanded by the activists is faster than that in pathways laid out by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and International Energy Agency. The World Health Organization, alarmed by the vast loss of life that climate breakdown entails, has endorsed a fossil fuel nonproliferation treaty. The activists have announced further airport protests for Saturday. “Flying is the fastest way to fry the planet so it’s key to start by cutting pointless and unfair flights like private jets or short-haul flights,” said Inês Teles from the campaign group Stay Grounded, which supports the protests. “The actions today and yesterday, disrupting airports, should be a shock to the system that is driving us towards climate catastrophe.” | ['environment/activism', 'world/germany', 'travel/travel', 'world/protest', 'world/norway', 'world/air-transport', 'environment/environment', 'us-news/us-news', 'world/canada', 'campaign/email/headlines-europe', 'world/europe-news', 'world/world', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/ajit-niranjan', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/international', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/australia-foreign'] | environment/activism | CLIMATE_ACTIVISM | 2024-07-25T13:09:06Z | true | CLIMATE_ACTIVISM |
environment/2020/dec/16/girls-death-contributed-to-by-air-pollution-coroner-rules-in-landmark-case | Air pollution a cause in girl's death, coroner rules in landmark case | A coroner has made legal history by ruling that air pollution was a cause of the death of a nine-year-old girl. Philip Barlow, the inner south London coroner, said Ella Kissi-Debrah’s death in February 2013 was caused by acute respiratory failure, severe asthma and air pollution exposure. He said she was exposed to nitrogen dioxide and particulate matter (PM) pollution in excess of World Health Organization guidelines, the principal source of which were traffic emissions. The coroner said the failure to reduce pollution levels to legal limits possibly contributed to her death, as did the failure to provide her mother with information about the potential for air pollution to exacerbate asthma. “Ella died of asthma contributed to by exposure to excessive air pollution,” said the coroner on Wednesday. He said that during Ella’s life, nitrogen dioxide emissions in Lewisham, where she lived, exceeded legal limits, both EU and national levels. Particulate matter levels were above the WHO guidelines, he said. “The whole of Ella’s life was lived in close proximity to highly polluting roads. I have no difficulty in concluding that her personal exposure to nitrogen dioxide and PM was very high.” The coroner said the health effects of air pollution had been known for many years, and children and those with asthma were particularly at risk. He found that air pollution both induced and exacerbated Ella’s particular form of severe asthma. The ruling is the first of its kind in the UK and is likely to increase pressure on the government to tackle illegal levels of air pollution across the country. Ella’s mother, Rosamund Kissi-Debrah, a former teacher, spent years fighting to have her daughter’s death examined by a second coroner. Her resilience was repaid on Wednesday when Barlow agreed with expert medical evidence provided by the family which said Ella’s particular form of acute asthma was exacerbated by air pollution. Kissi-Debrah’s lawyers submitted that air pollution was a public health emergency and there was a pressing need for it to be recorded as a cause of death to ensure public health programmes to tackle toxic air were prioritised. In evidence to the two-week inquest, Prof Stephen Holgate, an immunopharmacologist and consultant respiratory physician of the University of Southampton and Southampton general hospital, said a biological cause of Ella’s disease getting worse in the winter months was the seasonal worsening air pollution. He said it was the cumulative effect of the toxic air Ella was breathing in living within 30 metres of the South Circular road that caused her final acute asthma attack. Holgate said Ella was like a canary in a coalmine, signalling the risk to other Londoners from the toxic mix of pollutants such as nitrogen oxides in the air. Ella had had numerous seizures and been taken to hospital almost 30 times in the three years before her death. An inquest ruling from 2014, which found that she died of acute respiratory failure, was quashed by the high court following new evidence about the dangerous levels of air pollution close to her home. During the hearing, Holgate, who was a member of the royal commission for environmental pollution until it was closed in 2011, heavily criticised the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Department of Health and Social Care for failing to work together on toxic air. Ella’s family argued there was sufficient evidence to conclude there were failures by the state to take steps to protect the public from dangerous levels of air pollution, which amounted to a violation of article 2 of the Human Rights Act, concerning the right to life. The mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, said the coroner’s conclusion was a “landmark moment” and called pollution a “public health crisis”. “Today must be a turning point so that other families do not have to suffer the same heartbreak as Ella’s family. Toxic air pollution is a public health crisis, especially for our children, and the inquest underlined yet again the importance of pushing ahead with bold policies such as expanding the ultra low emission zone to inner London.” “Ministers and the previous mayor have acted too slowly in the past, but they must now learn the lessons from the coroner’s ruling and do much more to tackle the deadly scourge of air pollution in London and across the country.” A government spokesperson said: “Our thoughts remain with Ella’s family and friends. “We are delivering a £3.8bn plan to clean up transport and tackle NO2 pollution, and going further in protecting communities from air pollution, particularly PM2.5 pollution, which we know is particularly harmful to people’s health. Through our landmark environment bill, we are also setting ambitious new air-quality targets, with a primary focus on reducing public health impacts.” | ['uk/london', 'environment/air-pollution', 'uk/uk', 'environment/environment', 'environment/pollution', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/sandralaville', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-environment'] | environment/air-pollution | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE | 2020-12-16T13:23:38Z | true | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE |
business/2008/jul/08/microsoft.yahoo | Microsoft will talk to Yahoo 'if it replaces board' | Microsoft said yesterday it is willing to re-enter takeover talks with Yahoo, but only if the internet firm is under new management - providing a major boost to the campaign waged by American activist investor Carl Icahn to oust the board. Microsoft's assertion came after Icahn, who has proposed replacing Yahoo's directors with his own choice at next month's annual meeting, sent a letter to Yahoo investors outlining his negotiations with the software group's boss Steve Ballmer. "Steve made it abundantly clear that, due to his experiences with Yahoo during the past several months, he cannot negotiate any transaction with the current board," Icahn wrote. He said that Ballmer had expressed concern at the danger of Yahoo's team mismanaging the company during any takeover period. "However, Steve made it clear to me that if a new board were elected, he would be interested in discussing a major transaction with Yahoo. One thing is clear - Jerry Yang and the current board of Yahoo will not be able to 'botch up' a negotiation with Microsoft again, simply because they will not have the opportunity," Icahn added. Yahoo reacted with fury at this latest twist in the six-month saga. "If Microsoft and Mr Ballmer really want to purchase Yahoo, we again invite them to make a proposal immediately," it said last night. "If Mr Icahn has an actual plan for Yahoo beyond hoping that Microsoft might actually consummate a deal which they have repeatedly walked away from, we would be very interested in hearing it." Yahoo ended all talks with Microsoft last month when it clinched an advertising deal in the US market with Google that is now being investigated by the US department of justice. Officials want to know whether the revenue-sharing deal risks creating an effective monopoly for the two companies which, between them, account for almost three out of four of the world's online searches. Microsoft said yesterday that it would be interested in either a full takeover of Yahoo or a buyout of the company's online search business "with a new board". Neither Microsoft nor Icahn gave any details of the price at which any deal might be done. Yahoo shares plunged after talks with Microsoft were ended and were trading at below $24 each. Microsoft's initial approach was pitched at $31 a share, valuing the business at $44.6bn (£22.4bn). Over recent days Microsoft has held talks with media companies, including Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, which owns MySpace, and AOL owner Time Warner, about taking part in a full scale break-up of Yahoo. According to sources quoted by Reuters last night, News Corp talks ended after it demanded up to $15bn for its assets, while Time Warner said a deal was unlikely to be struck for a merger with AOL before Yahoo's all-important annual meeting on August 1. Yahoo's board is in a weakened state ahead of the meeting, which was moved back a month because of a spate of defections. In the last few weeks, executive vice-president Jeff Weiner and head of research Usama Fayyad have quit. In his letter to Yahoo investors, Icahn said the company is "witnessing a meaningful exodus of talent". He wants to remove the entire board, including chief executive Yang, who co-founded Yahoo on the campus of Stanford University. Icahn made his name with the hostile takeover of the airline TWA in 1986 and has since forced a major restructuring at Motorola. He has proposed himself and Mark Cuban, who made a fortune selling webcasting start-up Broadcast.com to Yahoo in 1999, as new directors. He also proposed former Viacom boss Frank Biondi, and the former head of the New Line Cinema film studios, Robert Shaye. "According to publicly available information, Google's income from operations grew 59% per year over the last two years while Yahoo's shrank 21% per year," Icahn said in his letter yesterday. "However, none of the above has caused the Yahoo board to hesitate in paying themselves $10,000 per week. It is time for a change." Web weaving Microsoft admitted in early February that it had approached Yahoo boss Jerry Yang with an offer which at the time valued Yahoo at $31 a share or $44.6bn. Yahoo's board rejected the deal and in early May Microsoft raised its bid to $33. Yang and company co-founder David Filo held out for at least $37. Carl Icahn started building a stake with a view to ousting the board. In late May, Microsoft suggested an online advertising tie-up with Yahoo but last month Yang called off all talks and signed a deal for the US market with bitter rival Google. | ['technology/yahoo', 'media/mediabusiness', 'media/digital-media', 'technology/yahoo-takeover', 'business/business', 'media/media', 'technology/technology', 'technology/microsoft', 'type/article', 'profile/richardwray', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/financial3'] | technology/yahoo-takeover | UNRELATED_TO_CLIMATE | 2008-07-07T23:01:00Z | true | UNRELATED_TO_CLIMATE |
environment/2019/sep/27/italian-minister-urges-pupils-to-skip-class-for-global-climate-strike | Italian minister urges pupils to skip class for global climate strike | Young environmental activists in Italy are planning to miss school as thousands join climate crisis protests in major cities on Friday. Some 475,000 people took part in the first global climate strike in Italy on 15 March and a similar number are expected to join the latest demonstrations in cities including Rome, Milan, Turin, Florence, Naples, Bologna and Bari. But only if they are allowed to skip school. Earlier this week the education minister, Lorenzo Fioramonti, urged schools to consider as “justified” the absence of children taking part in the mobilisation against the climate emergency. He said on Facebook the climate strike was “essential” for students’ future, which was “threatened by environmental devastation and an unsustainable economic growth model”. However, many schools are only obliging after receiving a letter requesting permission from parents and if the child has maintained good attendance throughout the year. David Wicker, a representative of the Turin branch of Fridays for Future Italia, is planning to miss school regardless. Despite the high expected turnout, he worries that environmental issues are not yet a major concern for children and adults alike. “I would urge adults to join the movement too,” he said. “Unfortunately, it is not recognised as an official strike by labour unions. One day off work won’t change your career but it will change your future.” It comes as world leaders wrap up the UN climate action summit in New York. The Italian prime minister, Giuseppe Conte, urged his counterparts against “indifference” as news emerged that a massive portion of a Mont Blanc glacier was in danger of collapse. “It must shake us all and force us to mobilise,” he said. Conte promised to make environmental action a priority in a speech before the new left-leaning government, a coalition of the Five Star Movement (M5S) and Democratic party, was voted into power earlier this month. Although M5S had long prioritised the environment in its campaigning, the subject appeared to take a backseat during the party’s 14-month coalition with the far-right League. Sergio Costa, an M5S politician who kept his role as environment minister in the new alliance, has been more proactive, saying in New York this week that “courageous and revolutionary” policies were needed. The ministry is drafting a range of measures, including giving shoppers a 20% discount on supermarket goods that are sold loose in an attempt to cut back on plastic waste. Some 2.2m tonnes of plastic wrapping is discarded in Italy each year and in 2016 less than half of that was recycled, according to WWF figures. Pollution is also a major issue, especially in Italy’s northern cities. And while Italy’s greenhouse gas emissions have been decreasing over the past decade, the country was criticised this year by the European Climate Foundation for failing to provide an adequate plan to further reduce emissions and dependency on fossil fuels. “We hope the new government recognises the climate emergency and declares it so at the summit,” said Wicker. “We want them to divest in fossil fuels and invest in green energy resources, while improving public transport and make it more affordable.” The biggest climate strike in history took place last Friday, with several million people across an estimated 185 countries taking part. More than 2,400 separate strikes are expected globally on Friday, according to the group Fridays For Future. As well as Italy, especially large turnouts are expected in India, New Zealand, Sweden and the US. | ['environment/school-climate-strikes', 'environment/activism', 'world/italy', 'environment/climate-crisis', 'environment/environment', 'world/europe-news', 'world/world', 'society/youngpeople', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/angela-giuffrida', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-foreign'] | environment/activism | CLIMATE_ACTIVISM | 2019-09-27T04:00:22Z | true | CLIMATE_ACTIVISM |
world/2008/oct/14/usa | Two reported dead in California wildfires | Wildfires continued to rage across southern California today, destroying dozens of homes, forcing thousands to flee and causing two deaths. Two fires in the San Fernando Valley, 20 miles north of Los Angeles, extended to 5,260 hectares (13,000 acres) after strong Santa Ana desert winds fanned the blazes overnight. A third fire broke out early today in Camp Pendleton, a US Marine base north of San Diego, burning 1,214 hectares (3,000 acres) and forcing the evacuation of 1,400 homes. Further south, near the Mexican border, another fire broke out, forcing the evacuation of 300 homes. Two thousand firefighters battled the flames, aiming to stop the fires jumping across motorways and reaching the Pacific Ocean, 18 miles away. "We could have had an army there and it would not have stopped it," Los Angeles fire department battalion chief, Mario Rueda, said. "Wind is king here - it's dictating everything we are doing." The 5,300 acre Marek fire, in the north-east corner of the San Fernando Valley, and the 5,000 acre Sesnon fire, in Porter Ranch, started early on Monday morning. Authorities confirmed that more than three dozen mobile homes burned in the Marek fire, and 19 structures, some of them homes, were destroyed by the Sesnon blaze. By this morning, the Marek fire was 70% contained. One man interviewed on the local NBC affiliate said that he had been prepared to evacuate. "We live in southern California," he said, speaking through a smoke mask. "Fire, flood, drought, earthquake - those are the four seasons, right?" The two fatalities came on Monday. One was a homeless man living with his dog in a shack alongside a motorway near the Angeles National Forest. The second death came when a tow truck crashed into the back of a car, killing the driver as traffic stopped on a motorway to allow fire engines to pass. The Santa Ana winds occur between October and February every year, picking up speed as they flow through Southern California's canyons. The winds spread acrid smoke through the area and hindered authorities' ability to use fixed-wing aircraft to drop fire retardant. However the winds did not reach the heights feared Monday night, peaking at 60mph, and allaying concerns that the fires could reach the coast. The winds were expected to ease on Tuesday, giving way to high temperatures. | ['us-news/us-news', 'world/natural-disasters', 'environment/conservation', 'world/world', 'tone/news', 'world/wildfires', 'type/article', 'profile/danglaister'] | world/wildfires | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2008-10-14T14:33:00Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
environment/2011/nov/25/meaningful-durban-treaty-weak-strong | A meaningful Durban treaty would be a triumph of weak over strong | With only days to go before the start of the next big round of climate change talks in Durban, South Africa, the stage is now set for a titanic clash between nations battling it out over the shape of any new UN global warming treaty. The stakes could not be higher. Scientists say that the window for keeping the world's temperature rise within a tolerable 2C limit is closing rapidly, yet despite the recession global carbon dioxide emissions rose by a record-breaking amount last year . For the climate negotiations to have any impact, countries must converge quickly on an agreement to peak and reduce global emissions – within the next few years at the latest. But to see this primarily as a battle between developed and developing countries, as many commentators seem to, is to miss the bigger picture of shifting geopolitical and environmental realities in today's world. This is not solely about rich versus poor. Instead, Durban will mostly be a confrontation between the strong and the weak – and without the protection of binding international environmental law, the weak know they will surely lose. This is why a new legally binding, ambitious treaty is a central demand of geographically vulnerable nations like Bangladesh, least developed African countries like Ethiopia, Tanzania and Rwanda, and small island states such as the Maldives, for whose president I act as climate advisor. These nations know that letting the biggest polluters decide the rules will compromise their fundamental right to survival – and they are therefore preparing for a showdown in Durban. When the UN climate system was first set up back in the late 1980s, the industrialised world contributed by far the most global greenhouse gases – and therefore the 1992 Climate Convention and 1997 Kyoto Protocol understandably envisaged emissions curbs for rich emitters only. Today, carbon emissions from OECD countries have declined by 6% since 1990, while the majority of greenhouse pollution now comes from the developing world – in particular China, India and Brazil. To point this out is not to criticise these countries, nor to undermine their legitimate rights to development. Nor are China, India and Brazil holding back in greening their economies. However, these countries are loath to make any meaningful commitments on the international stage that might constrain their energy options, and will be vociferously resisting the adoption of any legally binding targets of their own. Instead, China, India and the more powerful members of the developing world are still insisting that the only outcome from Durban that matters is another round of the Kyoto Protocol for industrialised countries only. Climate-wise this makes little sense, because with the US on the sidelines and the recent inauspicious exits of Japan, Russia and Canada, Kyoto covers a dwindling 15% of global emissions. The sad truth is that Kyoto is being used as a negotiating ploy to delay the eventual adoption of a truly worldwide treaty on carbon emissions – which is the only way to comprehensively tackle climate change. (That treaty could still be Kyoto – but only if the big guys all sign up.) So these are the real battle lines of Durban: on the one side stands an obstinate cabal of big emitters, developed and developing, who have little in common except an opposition to the prospect of any legally binding targets being inscribed in a new treaty. Step forward India, the United States, China, Japan and Canada. On the other side stands a growing informal alliance of vulnerable countries, small island states, the European Union, several Latin American nations like Colombia, Costa Rica and Chile, plus Norway, Australia, New Zealand and Switzerland, who have been meeting under the banner of the Cartagena Dialogue, and are all keeping the flame alive for meaningful progress. These are the countries pointing out that a treaty implemented after 2020 will be too late to save the world from the threat of global warming – instead they want a 2015 timeline, with ambitious action in the meantime. Whether this informal grouping of progressives can survive the strong-arm tactics of the powerful nations will be the real story of Durban. | ['environment/durban-climate-change-conference-2011', 'environment/climate-crisis', 'environment/global-climate-talks', 'environment/kyoto-protocol', 'environment/environment', 'environment/green-politics', 'politics/politics', 'tone/comment', 'type/article', 'profile/marklynas'] | environment/global-climate-talks | CLIMATE_POLICY | 2011-11-25T08:00:33Z | true | CLIMATE_POLICY |
environment/2015/aug/12/are-you-involved-in-preventing-food-wastage-share-your-projects | Are you involved in preventing food wastage? Share your projects | If the amount of food wasted around the world were reduced by just a quarter there would be enough food to feed everyone on the planet, according to the UN. Each year 1.3bn tonnes of food, about a third of all that is produced, is wasted, including about 45% of all fruit and vegetables, 35% of fish and seafood, 30% of cereals, 20% of dairy products and 20% of meat. Meanwhile, 795 million people suffer from severe hunger and malnutrition. In developing countries there are high levels of unintentional wastage, often due to poor equipment, transportation and infrastructure. In wealthy countries, on the other hand, there are low levels of unintentional losses but high levels of “food waste”, when food is thrown away by consumers because they have bought too much or by retailers because it doesn’t look right. Across the globe, initiatives such as food-sharing clubs and projects aimed at reducing post-harvest losses for poor farmers are making a difference. We’d like to hear from people from around the world who are involved in preventing food wastage. Are there food loss initiatives in your community? Do you take part in a project that tackles food waste? We’d also like to hear how you prevent food waste in your own home - and to find out about your solutions to combat the problem. You can share your photos, videos and experiences with GuardianWitness by clicking on the blue “Contribute buttons” on this article or with the new Guardian app – just search for GuardianWitness assignments. We’ll include the most interesting contributions in our reporting. GuardianWitness is the home of user-generated content on the Guardian. Contribute your video, pictures and stories, and browse news, reviews and creations submitted by others. Posts will be reviewed before publication on GuardianWitness, and the best pieces will feature on the Guardian site. | ['environment/food', 'environment/waste', 'community/series/guardianwitness-assignments', 'community/series/community', 'environment/environment', 'global-development/food-security', 'global-development/global-development', 'type/article', 'profile/guardian-readers'] | environment/waste | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE | 2015-08-12T06:00:16Z | true | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE |
world/2015/jul/12/european-bank-for-reconstruction-and-developments-business-model | European Bank for Reconstruction and Development’s business model | Letters from Anthony Williams of EBRD | Your article of 3 July (Lidl has received almost $1bn in public development funding) did not give an adequate explanation of the business model used by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development as it carries out its mandate to help countries in their transition to well-functioning and sustainable market economies. The reference to companies that “benefited … from public development money” conveyed the impression that the funding is in the form of grants or state handouts. This is not the case. The EBRD’s loans are commercial transactions conducted at commercial rates, and the returns from its investments are recycled into more projects in the regions where it works. The EBRD is largely self-funding in its operations. Since its creation in 1991, it has drawn down just over €5bn of its €30bn share capital and made investments in excess of €100bn. Anthony Williams Head of external relations, EBRD | ['world/europe-news', 'business/banking', 'tone/letters', 'business/europeanbanks', 'world/world', 'business/financial-sector', 'business/business', 'business/lidl', 'business/supermarkets', 'business/retail', 'global-development/global-development', 'environment/sustainable-development', 'global-development/sustainable-development-goals', 'type/article', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/editorialsandreply'] | environment/sustainable-development | CLIMATE_POLICY | 2015-07-12T18:38:21Z | true | CLIMATE_POLICY |
commentisfree/2024/nov/22/farmers-protest-tax-labour-reform | Look at the farmers’ protest, and then ask yourself: how will we ever make tax fairer amid such grumbling? | Polly Toynbee | That was a state-of-the-nation image, those thousands of farmers in Whitehall protesting about inheritance tax (IHT). Their little inheritors on toy tractors could hardly have offered a better portrait of a Britain where even modest reforms of wildly irrational tax reliefs are near-impossible. The country loves Old MacDonald and detests IHT. This is a symbol of the great malaise those same contrary voters feel about the profound unfairness in this most unequal of countries. Few think it’s OK for the top 1% to own almost a quarter of all wealth, or the top 0.1% to take about 60 times more income than their population share, while we are living through the greatest decline in living standards since records began. The biggest tax-raising budget in decades, designed to start rescuing moribund public services, was bound to attract a backlash. The last tax-raiser that came close was Norman Lamont’s in 1993, which caused far louder outrage by imposing VAT on domestic fuel, up from zero to 17.5% by 1995. He was forced out two months later and his successor was forced to keep the tax at a lower level of 8%. This time there must be no backtracking: the biggest slice of our public spending goes to the NHS. Public services are stretched beyond bearing; the latest deficit figures show the gap between tax collected and public spending is still rising. Paul Johnson, sage of the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), was explosive when we talked about the farmers’ protest: “Extraordinary! The amount of coverage for these extremely wealthy people is amazing!” Privileged inheritance status for farmers and businesses was on the very long list of nonsensical tax reliefs advocated for abolition by just about every tax or economic thinktank for years. Even after Rachel Reeves’s reform, farmers would pay half the standard rate, and with a higher cap before IHT kicks in. “Farmers’ land is worth so much because rich people buy it to escape IHT. It’s very hard to find a good reason to give them so much more than everyone else. No food? Someone will farm that land. Very few farmers will be affected,” Johnson fumes. The rich, he says, can always command the airwaves. He observed the farmers’ protest with a poverty expert who asked sadly why the one-third of children in the UK living below the poverty line couldn’t stage such a protest. But tractors make for good pictures. The exemptions for farmers are emblematic of tax reliefs that create a secret welfare state for the wealthy: pension tax relief at 40% for higher earners, but only 20% for the ordinary savers is just one entry in the yellowing archives of tax excrescences. Economic rationality would see the insanely unjust council tax system reformed: the average Westminster property pays 0.06% of its value, while Hartlepool pays 1.3%. Why didn’t “levelling up” start here? Tax expert Dan Neidle describes the VAT regime with its bizarre exemptions thus: “Any sufficiently detailed VAT rule is indistinguishable from satire.” How do city lawyers and accountants in partnerships get away with paying no NI as “self-employed”? And so on. But making rational changes to the tax system is near-impossible when any losers make such unreasonable protests, while any winners quietly pocket a gain without acknowledging it. However, economists and thinktankers aren’t the ones who have to sell these reforms: this is where politics shows itself as an art all of its own. How do you weave the way between urgent need, stubborn resistance of the rich and the unspeakable power of a largely hostile media, amid a sea of ignorance where most voters understand very little about their payslips or tax coding, nor of whether they themselves are relatively well- or badly off on a national scale? The budget deserves praise as “the first in nearly 15 years to mark a decisive shift from the planned cuts set out by the last government, with better-funded public services and greater public investment”, as the Resolution Foundation says. It begins to gnaw away at some unjustified tax reliefs, such as subsidies for private schools, to pay for state school teachers, when there has been “a massive widening in the private/state differential in education funding”, according to the IFS. For all the furore in the Tory press, that proposal was highly popular with voters. So was raising capital gains tax. But politically, there hasn’t been one simple story to tell about the purpose of this budget and the character of this government, a jigsaw of small parts not yet revealing the full picture. Reeves’s £70bn investment for growth will take time to yield results: until then, there is no escape from Britain’s record as a “stagnation nation” with the outlook for growth and living standards remaining weak, in the words of the Resolution Foundation. Bad news rains down daily on the Treasury – inflation up, deficit rising, growth minimal, the Bank of England likely slowing down rate cuts. Some opposition is mindless: protests from retailers that the rise in minimum wage rise and employers’ national insurance will cause job losses would carry more weight if they offered an alternative tax rise to pay for the NHS and everything else. Blaming “inflation-busting public pay deals” fails to acknowledge that public sector pay is still below 2010 real-terms levels: how else would those vacancies be filled? Naturally, Tory critics leave Brexit damage unmentioned. Budget grudges will calm down, but every day brings a reminder of how dire was Labour’s inheritance, how hard it is to repair desperate public services, and how small but powerful lobbies resist blindingly obvious reforms. As for those little farm inheritors on toy tractors, they are perfect exemplars of this week’s report from the Resolution Foundation on the rapidly rising impact inherited wealth has in accelerating wealth differences in the next generation. Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist | ['commentisfree/commentisfree', 'politics/rachel-reeves', 'environment/farming', 'money/inheritancetax', 'politics/politics', 'environment/environment', 'politics/labour', 'uk/uk', 'money/tax', 'money/money', 'type/article', 'tone/comment', 'profile/pollytoynbee', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-opinion'] | environment/farming | BIODIVERSITY | 2024-11-22T08:00:09Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
environment/article/2024/jul/18/five-just-stop-oil-supporters-jailed-over-protest-that-blocked-m25 | Five Just Stop Oil activists receive record sentences for planning to block M25 | Five supporters of the Just Stop Oil climate campaign who conspired to cause gridlock on London’s orbital motorway have been sentenced to lengthy jail terms by a judge who told them they had “crossed the line from concerned campaigner to fanatic”. Roger Hallam, Daniel Shaw, Louise Lancaster, Lucia Whittaker De Abreu and Cressida Gethin were found guilty last week of conspiracy to cause a public nuisance for coordinating direct action protests on the M25 over four days in November 2022. Hallam received a five-year sentence on Thursday, while the other four were each sentenced to four years. The sentences are thought to be the longest sentences ever given in the UK for non-violent protest, exceeding those given to the Just Stop Oil protesters Morgan Trowland (three years) and Marcus Decker (two years and seven months) for scaling the Dartford Crossing. All five had spoken on a Zoom call trying to recruit potential volunteers for the actions, which involved activists climbing gantries at strategic points on the London orbital motorway. On the call, Hallam said they intended to cause “the biggest disruption in British modern history” in an effort to force the government to meet Just Stop Oil’s core demand, an end to new oil and gas exploration in the North Sea. Passing sentence on each of the defendants at Southwark crown court, the judge Christopher Hehir said: “The offending of all five of you is very serious indeed and lengthy custodial sentences must follow.” Hehir admitted there was a scientific and social consensus that human-made climate breakdown was happening and action should be taken to avert it. “I acknowledge that at least some of the concerns motivating you are, at least to some extent, shared by many,” he said. “But the plain fact is that each of you has some time ago crossed the line from concerned campaigner to fanatic. You have appointed yourselves as the sole arbiters of what should be done about climate change, bound neither by the principles of democracy nor the rule of law. “And your fanaticism makes you entirely heedless of the rights of your fellow citizens. You have taken it upon yourselves to decide that your fellow citizens must suffer disruption and harm, and how much disruption and harm they must suffer, simply so that you may parade your views.” Although all of the defendants ended the trial representing themselves, three of them – Hallam, Shaw and Whittaker De Abreu – instructed counsel to speak on their behalf in mitigation. Each barrister sought unsuccessfully to persuade the judge that lengthy sentences could be avoided. Francesca Cociani, for Shaw, said the likelihood of his reoffending was lowered by the fact that the new Labour government had essentially met Just Stop Oil’s core demand by ending North Sea oil and gas exploration. Gethin, who offered her own comments in mitigation, said: “I want to remind the court once more that my reasons for taking action were not beliefs or opinions. Earth’s life-support systems are breaking down due to human activities, whether we believe it or not. “These are not beliefs or opinions and feeling strongly that this is wrong is greatly understandable, I would argue. I deeply regret that this action was necessary … I maintain that it was necessary and I stand by my actions as the most effective option available to me.” Supporters of the defendants expressed outrage at the sentences, which came after a two-week trial in which the judge denied them any of the defences in law for causing a public nuisance. Hehir ruled that the jury should not take into account evidence about climate breakdown, which the defendants wanted to point to as the key motivation behind their actions, and which they said provided them with a reasonable excuse for them. Michel Forst, the UN’s special rapporteur on environmental defenders, who attended part of the trial, issued a statement at its conclusion. “Today is a dark day for peaceful environmental protest” in the UK, he said. “This sentence should shock the conscience of any member of the public. It should also put all of us on high alert on the state of civic rights and freedoms in the United Kingdom. “Rulings like today’s set a very dangerous precedent, not just for environmental protest but any form of peaceful protest that may, at one point or another, not align with the interests of the government of the day.” Greenpeace UK’s programme director, Amy Cameron, said: “What sort of country locks people away for years for planning a peaceful demonstration, let alone for talking about it on a Zoom call? We’re giving a free hand to the polluting elite robbing us of a habitable planet while jailing those who’re trying to stop them – it makes no sense. “These sentences are not a one-off anomaly but the culmination of years of repressive legislation, overblown government rhetoric and a concerted assault on the right of juries to deliberate according to their conscience. It’s part of the mess the Labour government has inherited from its predecessor and they must fix it by giving back to people the right to protest that’s been slowly being taken away from them.” Separately on Thursday, three airports were granted high court injunctions against fossil fuel and environmental activists protesting at their sites. Leeds Bradford airport, London Luton airport and Newcastle international airport were given injunctions banning protesters from trespassing or causing a nuisance. | ['environment/just-stop-oil', 'environment/activism', 'world/protest', 'law/law', 'environment/environment', 'uk/uk', 'uk/ukcrime', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/damien-gayle', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/topstories', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-environment'] | environment/activism | CLIMATE_ACTIVISM | 2024-07-18T16:47:43Z | true | CLIMATE_ACTIVISM |
uk/2005/dec/07/world.tsunami2004 | Tsunami inquest records more British tragedies | The deaths of an internationally renowned fashion photographer, a man who had just won his battle against cancer, and a young couple holidaying with their parents in Thailand were among those recorded yesterday as the inquest into the 93 victims of the Boxing Day tsunami entered its second day at Olympia in west London. West London coroner Alison Thompson heard the list of fatalities, allotting an average of 15 minutes to each, before giving the cause of death as: "Engulfed by a wave - a victim of the tsunami." The parents of fashion photographer Simon Atlee, 31, said he had been "shining with happiness" at the prospect of his wedding the day before a wall of water crashed into the beach bungalow he was sharing with his fiancee, model Petra Nemcova, at Khao Lak, in Thailand. Ms Nemcova, 26, survived the wave, but Mr Atlee drowned. In a eulogy read out at the hearing, his family described him as a devoted son, brother, uncle and friend, whose "dazzling blue eyes brightened everybody's day". Another British victim, Stuart Shields, 37, was about to be given the all-clear after winning his battle with a chest tumour. He and his wife, Tania, had been snorkelling off the island of Velavaru when the wave hit. She survived but he was swept out to sea, despite the efforts of his friend Philip Benje to save him. "He was always afraid of deep water and it seems especially cruel that he should die in this way," said his wife in a eulogy written by a family friend, Robert Whittle. The inquest also heard from a holidaying British family severely affected by the tsunami. Valerie Awcock, 56, her husband, Andrew, daughter Claire Hickman, 31, and son-in-law David Hickman, 37, were holidaying on Khao Lak when the wave struck. The younger couple were having breakfast as the it arrived and were killed, along with Mrs Awcock, a retired tailor. Andrew Awcock was also engulfed by water, but survived. The coroner also heard that the employers of a sales executive who died in the disaster planned to fund a Thai orphanage in her memory. Colleen MacDonald, 35, a keen scuba diver from Croydon, Surrey, perished in the waters in the Khao Lak area. She was later identified by her dental records. A tribute read: "Colleen was fun-loving and she was full of life. Her mum Eileen Evora summed up her eldest daughter personally as a real character. You could hear Colleen before you could see her ... [Her employers] Trade Exhibitions are now funding an orphanage in Thailand in her memory." The mass inquest is considering the deaths of 93 victims whose bodies were repatriated from the Boxing Day tsunami, 91 of them British, one German and one Swiss. The total number of dead or missing stands at 270,000. On the first day of the hearing, some relatives criticised the way the authorities had handled the immediate aftermath of the disaster. They also criticised the absence of a proper warning of the approaching wave, which devastated coastlines throughout the Indian Ocean region. The hearing continues. | ['uk/uk', 'world/world', 'world/tsunami2004', 'type/article', 'profile/markhonigsbaum', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/uknews2'] | world/tsunami2004 | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2005-12-07T23:59:47Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
australia-news/2023/oct/06/bushfires-floods-australia-compound-events-gippsland | Bushfires one day, floods the next: why Australia can expect more ‘compound events’ | As unseasonably early bushfires tore through Gippsland in Victoria on Tuesday, residents of the same region were told to prepare for major flooding. “It’s the first time the Victorian emergency map showed flood warnings and fire warnings for the same area on the same day,” says the Wellington shire mayor, Ian Bye. The fires started on Sunday when a home was lost to a 17,500-hectare bushfire in Briagolong. By midweek, 130 properties in and around Tinamba, Newry and Maffra were issued evacuation orders due to flooding. “We’ve had floods upon floods in Sale, but to have a fire event that early in the season is extraordinary – and to have them back-to-back is just weird. It’s unheard of,” says Bye. As the local state MP, Danny O’Brien, puts it, the area had “fires literally one day, floods the next”. “We’re a bloody resilient bunch in Gippsland, but sometimes it feels like a bit too much to take.” As overwhelming as it is, the sequence of climatic events in the dairy and agricultural region slots neatly into a bigger picture of unsettling superlatives. Australia recorded its driest, and third-warmest, September on record. In Europe, Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Poland and Switzerland all experienced their warmest September on record. Global average temperatures in September were the hottest ever recorded. Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup In Australia we can expect to see more “compound events”, such as floods and fires together or a storm with a king tide, says Prof Lisa Alexander of the University of New South Wales’s ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes. “It’s very hard to project what will happen but this is something that we’re actually really worried about in the future. On their own, floods or fires are worrying, but together, as we are seeing in Gippsland, they are even more extreme.” Facing strong winds and fierce and unseasonal temperatures, Gippslanders had little choice but to be resilient. From Sunday to Tuesday, the community banded together, sharing bushfire warning notices, helping evacuations and providing shelter. Eugene Downing, the general manager of Maffra community sports club, says the club provided 190 meals to firefighters on Monday and Tuesday. Loch Sport’s pub gave out free meals. The manager of Sale racecourse offered 100 stalls to large animals that needed shelter, Bye says. Then came the rain, and flood evacuees began arriving at the emergency fire shelter that had been set up at the Gippsland regional sports complex in Sale. On Thursday, 20 people were still taking shelter at the complex. “It does feel crazy, but Gippslanders are used to bushfire plans. To have that backed up with a flood 24 hours later, it’s bizarre,” Downing says. “It’s probably mother nature telling us that we need to be prepared for anything.” Tegan Hector, who runs Eulinga Park Equine in Fulham, was evacuating horses on Tuesday afternoon from bushfire-threatened Fernbank. Less than 24 hours later, she evacuated horses from Maffra because of floods. “One of the girls that works with me was under evacuation orders for fires on Monday and then floods on Wednesday. It was just crazy,” she says. There were a lot of people caught off guard by the floods, she says, with one hayshed owner dousing the land to prepare for fire only to be inundated by flood waters 40 hours later. Alexander says compound events will test how different emergency services and agencies work together. “We’re going to have to rely a lot on the Bureau of Meteorology to make very good forecasts and it’s going to stretch emergency services,” she says. Mark Cattell, the agency commander of Victoria’s State Emergency Service, says volunteers had “been able to quickly transition to adapt to the dynamic situation”. Community fire service volunteers, who worked for three days to contain the bushfires, were assisting the SES in flood support efforts. The Country Fire Authority chief officer, Jason Heffernan, says “Victoria is one of the most bushfire-prone areas in the world and our crews have been protecting lives and property in this environment for decades”. “Our volunteers are highly trained, professional firefighters that have made every effort to prepare their communities ahead of this fire season, as they do every year.” At Lake Glenmaggie, attention is now turning to dam management. Inflows into Lake Glenmaggie had begun to ease by Thursday afternoon, with the release of water lowered from 58,000 to 40,000 megalitres a day. Questions are being asked about the timing of water releases, Hector says. “If they had spilled earlier, could the people downstream have avoided flooding?” With Maffra safe, Downing on Thursday afternoon helped his friends who manage the 150-year-old Tinamba hotel, which was sandbagged at 10pm on Wednesday. “I can’t predict the future,” Downing says. “But if the history of the last week is a precursor of what is to come this summer: if you’re in a flood zone, make sure you have a plan. If you’re in a fire-prone area, make sure you stand ready.” | ['australia-news/bushfires', 'environment/flooding', 'australia-news/victoria', 'australia-news/australia-news', 'environment/environment', 'campaign/email/afternoon-update', 'australia-news/australia-weather', 'type/article', 'tone/features', 'profile/daisy-dumas', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/australia-news'] | environment/flooding | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2023-10-05T22:00:24Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
global-development/2022/nov/03/aid-organisations-ethiopia-horn-of-africa-cash-money-drought | ‘More dignity’: aid organisations switch to cash in drought-hit Ethiopia | Outside a village in the Dasenech district of southern Ethiopia, a queue has formed in front of a narrow bench beneath a tree, where clerks are checking documents and handing out packets of banknotes, each worth about 4,500 Ethiopian birr (£76). The distribution is being overseen by the International Rescue Committee (IRC), a humanitarian organisation based in the US. Kulo Arikulo, like others in the queue, says the support has come just in time. Her family owned 50 head of cattle and 80 goats, but four consecutive failed rainy seasons have dried up rivers and the pastureland has turned to dust. Most of the herd died from thirst, and the few surviving animals were sold to buy food. When that money ran out, she collected leaves, roots and seeds to feed her six children, but she says these are becoming harder to find. “The last four years we couldn’t harvest anything, so this money is helping our family to survive,” Arikulo says. The people in this little queue are among the 36 million people left facing hunger by the drought gripping the Horn of Africa, where more than 8.9 million livestock across the region have died in one of the region’s worst climate-related emergencies of the past 40 years. In addition, it has happened at a time when aid funding is also drying up: according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Ethiopia, just $850m (£750m) has been pledged of the $1.66bn the UN says is needed to respond to drought in the country. Heaping yet more pressure on communities are soaring food prices and the Covid pandemic. Oxfam predicts hunger will kill one person every 36 seconds in east Africa between now and the end of the year “as the worst-hit areas hurtle towards famine”. Francesco Rocca, the president of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, has labelled the failure of donors to release funds as “morally unacceptable”. “People have been going through one shock after another,” says Frank McManus, the IRC’s country director for Ethiopia. “We’ve already had four rainy seasons fail and there’s a real possibility the next season and the one after that could fail too.” Governments and humanitarian organisations in east Africa are increasingly using the relatively new aid concept of giving cash, so that people can buy what they need, rather than in-kind aid, such as sacks of rice and bottles of oil, which brings its own problems of distribution and impacts local markets. Sometimes cash is provided in the form of vouchers that can only be spent on certain items. Cash transfers became more frequent during the Covid pandemic. In 2020, as countries locked down, the number of people receiving money or voucher-based assistance increased by 240%, to about 1.1 billion people – 14% of the global population – according to the World Bank. That year cash and vouchers worth $6bn accounted for about 19% of global humanitarian aid, up from less than 1% in 2004. Last year Kenya introduced a cash-transfer scheme to help people affected by the dry conditions, and Niger is piloting a similar programme. McManus says cash is faster and more efficient than distributing food and medicine to beneficiaries. “If you do traditional in-kind aid, you have to buy the materials, truck them to where they are needed and hire warehouses to store them,” he says. “Whereas with cash, there’s a lot less supply chain costs.” Michel Saad, the head OCHA Ethiopia, says it means people can buy from local traders, helping money circulate, but crucially also provides “more dignity” for those in need, compared with the traditional sack of grain. “Communities know what they need better than humanitarian actors,” Saad says. “So when we give cash, it’s allowing them to be in charge of their own personal lives and say, ‘We believe we need to address this problem or that problem.’ Basically, it’s putting people at the centre.” The 1,320 beneficiaries of the IRC’s programme in Dasenech, close to Ethiopia’s borders with South Sudan and Kenya, are due to receive a total of 13,500 Ethiopian birr over three monthly instalments. Those in the queue say they have just received their second tranche of cash. They spent most of the first on food and medicine, paying back loans from neighbours, and helping other members of their community. “Before, we were surviving by eating leaves that we collected far from our village. It was a desperate situation,” says Godi Arimere, who spent part of her first instalment taking one of her children to a clinic when they became sick. Others says the support has simply helped them feed their families at a time when their children have been going hungry. But Arimere is worried about what awaits her family when the programme finishes. “After that, what is our fate?” she asks. “Ideally, we would be doing cash-transfer programmes that last much longer than three months,” says McManus. “But we have limited resources. The humanitarian response to the drought in Ethiopia is hugely underfunded.” | ['global-development/global-development', 'world/ethiopia', 'global-development/aid', 'world/africa', 'campaign/email/global-dispatch', 'environment/climate-crisis', 'environment/drought', 'global-development/hunger', 'world/world', 'environment/water', 'environment/environment', 'type/article', 'tone/features', 'profile/fred-harter', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/global-development'] | environment/drought | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2022-11-03T06:30:07Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
commentisfree/2016/may/03/golfers-wild-spaces-aberdeenshire-jack-nicklaus | Golfers are slicing through our wild spaces | Patrick Barkham | “If there is any larceny in a man,” said the American sportswriter Paul Gallico, “golf will bring it out.” James Bond ruthlessly exposed this when he took on Goldfinger (and Oddjob the caddy) in the most gripping round of fictional golf ever played and discovered the greedy chrysophilist was also a cheat. I’ve got nothing against golf, but our passion for it is cheating future generations out of irreplaceable riches. Such as ancient woodland. Councillors in Aberdeenshire have just approved a Jack Nicklaus-designed golf course in Stonehaven, but the developers could only afford to build it if there were also 90 five-bedroom homes on the site, 44 of which will be built in an ancient woodland called Slicewells Wood. Nicklaus is “delighted” at the decision and has said how the game “provides us an opportunity to connect with nature and enjoy it”. It is unfortunate that this will be at the expense of the red squirrels, pine martens, bats and birds living in the 25.5 hectares of Slicewells that will be lost. Never mind that Aberdeenshire already boasts 47 golf courses or that the 90 houses contradicts the council’s local plan to build no more than three homes per development in rural locations. What’s astounding about this decision is that Aberdeenhire has been here before with celebrity-dazzled Scottish ministers doffing their caps to Donald Trump’s disastrous destruction of sand dunes with a golf course. I was struck by our veneration for golf last summer when I walked through Kenilworth golf course on the route of HS2 in Warwickshire. The high-speed railway has been shifted to save the course, but HS2 is deaf to appeals to tunnel under South Cubbington, an ancient woodland a couple of miles south. If bluebell walks were obsessions pursued by wealthy men, these outcomes would be very different. Monarch of the soul Butterflies are symbols of our souls, freed from the shackles of life on earth. This enduring belief is explored in a superb documentary I saw this weekend. Muerte es Vida (Death is Life) begins with rural Mexicans celebrating the Day of the Dead, when souls of loved ones return at the same time as the monarch butterfly, on its epic migration from North America. We meet fantastic swarms of monarchs that turn conifers into shimmering statues of silver and orange, and people, from a butterfly breeder in Dorset to a detective at Ground Zero in New York, for whom butterflies have appeared in moments of grief. Any film about death and monarch migration (in long-term decline because of agricultural pesticides) will be a tear-jerker, but Muerte es Vida is also an uplifting and humane look at bereavement. A more intimate relationship with the natural world can enrich us all. Postcard from my hedge I’ve spent spring waiting, like an anxious parent, for bright-green shoots to burst from recently planted saplings. I replaced a leylandii hedge that housed two species (collared doves and nettles) with a native hedge including hawthorn, blackthorn and field maple, which are now dazzling green twiglets. I’ve just counted 29 species in my baby hedge, but lack the skills to detect the numerous beetles, wasps and parasitoids taking up residence. Even so, I’m still well short of the 2,070 species found in a typical Devon hedge, as revealed by John Wright’s A Natural History of the Hedgerow, which also reminds us that Britain’s 700,000km of hedgerows were once an instrument of oppressive enclosure. Is this a hopeful sign? Perhaps golf courses will one day be havens for wild things again. | ['commentisfree/series/notebook', 'sport/golf', 'us-news/donaldtrump', 'environment/forests', 'environment/environment', 'environment/butterflies', 'environment/wildlife', 'commentisfree/commentisfree', 'environment/insects', 'uk/scotland', 'us-news/us-news', 'uk/uk', 'tone/comment', 'type/article', 'profile/patrickbarkham', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/commentanddebate', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-opinion'] | environment/forests | BIODIVERSITY | 2016-05-03T05:00:46Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
commentisfree/2011/mar/24/fukushima-nuclear-plant-selfish-gene | The very human heroes of Fukushima | Johnjoe McFadden | Like all disasters, the Japanese earthquake and tsunami brings forth its toll of both tragedy and heroism. Among the latter is the daily trek of 180 workers to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, who continue to work 50-hour shifts in their efforts to cool the wrecked reactors. The men are voluntarily exposing themselves to extreme levels of radiation knowing that it is likely to seriously damage their health. But why? Why don't they run away? A recent study by a group of US researchers provides new clues to the origin of human kindness. Altruism – helping others at our own expense – puzzled Charles Darwin, whose theory predicted that individuals should act selfishly to serve their own interests. Why should wolves share their kill, or sparrows draw attention to themselves by issuing a warning call when they spot a hawk? The problem was solved, to the satisfaction of at least most sociobiologists, in the 1970s with kin selection theory. Robert Trivers, EO Wilson, Richard Dawkins and others pointed out that most of our genes are also in the bodies of our close relatives. Being kind to our relatives makes biological sense so long as it boosts the chances of our selfish genes, carried in our relatives' bodies, making it through to the next generation. The theory fitted well with observations of altruism in animals whose kindness was mostly restricted towards kin. The notion that kindness was, deep down, a form of (genetic) selfishness appealed to many of the entrepreneurs who drove the economic powerhouses of the late 20th century. The former Enron boss, Jeffrey Skilling, claimed that he was inspired by Dawkins's book, The Selfish Gene, to implement his infamous "rank and yank" system that either rewarded or fired employees on the basis of their perceived rank order in the company. But although kin selection works well in the animal kingdom it seems an unlikely mechanism to account for human altruism and co-operation. A Japanese nuclear plant worker who wanted to benefit his genes would serve them better by buying train tickets to take himself and all his relatives far from Fukushima. Sociobiologists usually argue that such unselfish human acts are misdirected kin selection. It was reckoned that our earliest ancestors lived in tightly knit groups where everyone was closely related. An indiscriminate form of altruism that benefited all your neighbours was all that was needed to ensure the survival of selfish genes. That same indiscriminate altruism leads to misdirected acts of kindness towards strangers today. But a key component of the theory is that early human groups were closely related. A recent study published in the journal Science undermines this claim. The research, led by Kim Hill and colleagues at Arizona State University, examined social structures of surviving hunter-gatherer groups from around the globe. In diverse peoples from the Inuits in Labrador to the Ache in Paraguay or the Wanindiljaugwa in Australia, they discovered the same collection of uniquely human characteristics, including a predominance of monogamous pair-bonding and a tendency for both male and female children to leave home. This pattern of dispersal ensures that most individuals in modern hunter-gatherer groups are unrelated. They are friends, rather than family. Of course we don't know if our ancient ancestors lived in the same way as contemporary hunter-gatherers. But the predominance of this pattern amongst so many diverse groups suggests that it is ancestral and possibly key to what makes us human. The researchers argue that this more dispersed pattern of human relationships allowed early humans to make loose though extensive alliances with friends and neighbours in nearby groups. A key component of these alliances was likely to be the emergence of kindness towards strangers, not through genes, but a product of culture. Rather than a misdirected selfishness, the heroism displayed by Japanese nuclear plant workers may be our most ancient and valuable human asset. | ['commentisfree/commentisfree', 'world/japan-earthquake-and-tsunami', 'world/japan', 'environment/nuclearpower', 'world/world', 'environment/energy', 'environment/environment', 'tone/comment', 'world/asia-pacific', 'environment/fukushima', 'type/article', 'profile/johnjoemcfadden'] | environment/nuclearpower | ENERGY | 2011-03-24T14:29:41Z | true | ENERGY |
weather/2008/oct/27/1 | Paul Brown: Weatherwatch | Autumn was a time of difficult decisions for the medieval peasant because it was impossible to keep all the farm animals over the winter due to of lack of fodder. November was known to the Anglo Saxons as blood month because of the number of animals which were slaughtered and salted down for the hard winter ahead. Pigs were a particularly popular animal because they were easiest to fatten up, lived on scraps most of the time, and could live happily on free food such as acorns and beech masts during the autumn, so surviving longer. However, their demise was eagerly looked forward to by fans of ball games, particularly hockey and football. The medieval poet Alexander Barclay said of boy's games "each time and season has its joys." Autumn was the start of the football and hockey seasons because the first blown up pig's bladders of various sizes were available to provide balls for both sports. Handballs were also made for other games using dried beans or peas to make them rattle. The length of the football season must have been dictated by the availability of bladders, so the fate of village pigs must have been closely watched by fans. According to books on the husbandry of the period there was enough food available for some pigs to live until February before the need to feed them from scarce stored resources. A cue for another round of new footballs. | ['news/series/weatherwatch', 'type/article', 'profile/paulbrown', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/weather2'] | news/series/weatherwatch | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2008-10-27T00:01:00Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
environment/2015/jan/26/why-london-is-rubbish-at-solar | Why London is rubbish at solar | In the end, it was a bit of an anticlimax. After years of wanting to stick solar panels on the roof of my London home, all I had to show for their installation earlier this month was a garden-full of scaffolding and a new box next to our fuse box. Many people will understandably have written off solar power at home as the government incentives paid for them have been massively cut, sometimes so drastically that it prompted successful legal action against the coalition. But what’s less frequently noted is how the £14,000 cost of a typical home installation when those incentives started in 2010 has fallen to £6,000-7,000, or even less. With a payback period of around seven years for the system I had installed, solar looks pretty attractive compared to ISAs paying around 1.5% interest, even in the capital. Yet Londoners have not taken to solar with anything like the gusto of other parts of the country. Even with some of the most affluent areas in the UK and a relatively sun-friendly latitude by UK standards, the city has the lowest amount of installed solar of any English region. The low uptake is not confined to households. Out of 65 schools across the UK that have decided to install panels under the Solar Schools initiative, only five are in London. Just 7% of the city’s 3,080 schools have installed solar, according to figures released on Friday by Jenny Jones, the Green Party London Assembly member. So why is London lagging behind more northerly and ostensibly less solar-friendly regions such as Yorkshire and Humber? The answer, if you believe the industry and some politicians, is a combination of a lack of political leadership and a cityscape and population that means solar installers focus their marketing efforts elsewhere, creating a vicious circle. The few solar installs that do take place in London are overwhelmingly on new builds, according to Ray Noble, solar adviser at the Renewable Energy Association. He says the city’s transient and flighty population is one reason for the low take-up – people don’t hang around long enough for the payback to kick in – and London’s rich are simply too wealthy to care about reducing their energy bills. “Many houses in London are rented or purchased on the basis of moving on in the future. Many are blocks of flats rented or with multiple owners so too complicated to add solar. Likewise the owners generally have high cost mortgages and rarely spend additional money on the property. Those with the bigger houses tend to have too much money to care about their energy bills,” he said. Howard Johns, the MD of Southern Solar, the company that installed my panels, says transience plays a part but the city’s housing stock is more significant. “There is not much solar in London simply because of the buildings. Many of them have small roof spaces, which means you can’t get much up there,” he said. “Many of the buildings are also tall which means that scaffold costs are high, and have converted lofts and roof windows, dormers, aerials and chimneys reducing the space available further and increasing shading. There are of course some suburban houses with larger roof spaces, but so much of London is terraces with these complex and cramped roof spaces.” Like others in the industry, they also point to the fact that London is simply a more expensive place to get things done – scaffolding costs more to put up than in other regions, parking can be expensive. In short, it’s more of a hassle for installers. But Leonie Greene, a spokeswoman for the Solar Trade Association, rejects the idea that London isn’t suitable for solar. “There are always reasons why you can’t do things, but London is ideal for solar. You have a well-educated, politically aware population motivated by this sort of stuff [green issues], and a mayor who could make political leadership on it. If Yorkshire and Humber can do it, I have no doubt London can if it put its weight behind it,” said Greene. She credits a proactive approach at a council level for the take-up in Yorkshire and Humber. Jones, who was the Greens’ mayoral candidate in 2012, has asked mayor Boris Johnson to set up a solar delivery unit and argues that a lack of political clout is to blame. “If he pushed it harder from the start, there would have been more opportunities now. To a large extent it has lacked leadership, and the mayor could have provided that. He hasn’t really got a legacy. He has Boris bikes but that was Ken’s idea. He’s got the cable car but that’s an appalling piece of frippery. This [backing solar on the GLA estate and on schools] would be a brilliant legacy.” However, Matthew Pencharz, the mayor’s environment adviser, says Johnson has shown leadership on low carbon energy, particularly on community energy schemes. Moreover, he echoes the views of installers, arguing London’s low solar uptake is more to do with social and historical reasons, such as thin, tall buildings with little roof space. “PV [solar photovoltaic] is more difficult to deploy because of the large conservation areas in the capital, the relatively low number of owner occupiers and we also have a huge number of flatted properties which obviously makes ownership of the roof perhaps more complex than it is elsewhere. We also have tall buildings and the shadowing effect. “Having said all that, the mayor is very keen to encourage community energy schemes, which is where we can see communities coming together, solving that roof space problem.” | ['environment/solarpower', 'environment/environment', 'environment/renewableenergy', 'environment/energy', 'uk/london', 'uk/uk', 'type/article', 'tone/features', 'profile/adam-vaughan'] | environment/solarpower | ENERGY | 2015-01-26T11:25:43Z | true | ENERGY |
environment/2011/apr/05/arctic-ocean-freshwater-climate | Arctic Ocean freshwater will cause 'unpredictable changes on climate' | A vast expanse of freshwater in the midst of the Arctic Ocean is set to wreak unpredictable changes on the climate in Europe and North America, new scientific analysis has shown. The water – comprising meltwater from the ice cap and run off from rivers – is at least twice the volume of Lake Victoria in Africa, and is continuing to grow. At some point huge quantities of this water are likely to flush out of the Arctic Ocean and into the Atlantic, which could have significant impacts on the climate. Scientists say they cannot predict when this will happen though. "This could have an influence on ocean circulation," said Benjamin Rabe of the Alfred Wengener Institute. "It could have an influence on the Gulf Stream." At present, the freshwater acts as a "lid", preventing the warmer salty water below from meeting the ice, which would melt if the two mixed, according to Rabe. But while it is currently stable, this situation is likely to change as atmospheric circulation patterns shift, and as greater quantities of meltwater spill into the "lake". There were signs of an atmospheric change in 2009 that could have precipitated such an outflow, but that episode did not last. Laura de Steur, an oceanographer at the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research, said: "The volume of water discharged into the Arctic Ocean, largely from Canadian and Siberian rivers, is higher than usual due to warmer temperatures in the north causing ice to melt. Sea ice is also melting quickly – another new record low for ocean area covered was recently documented by the National Snow and Ice Data Centre, adding even more freshwater to the relatively calm Arctic Ocean." She added: "Sea ice that is thinner is more mobile and could exit the Arctic faster. In the worst case, these Arctic outflow surges can significantly change the densities of marine surface waters in the extreme North Atlantic. What happens then is hard to predict." Such an outflow would probably have a measurable impact on the "conveyor belt" or thermohaline circulation, a system of deep ocean and wind-driven currents, including the Gulf Stream, which carries heat from the tropics, said Rabe. An influx of dense, cold freshwater could slow the conveyor belt. If the effect were marked, it would be felt in the form of a change of weather in Europe and America, he said. Europe could find itself cooling, particularly around the Western edges, as the circulations tend to bring warmer air to the continent. But, he said, it was impossible yet to say whether any such effect would be dramatic or slight. Some climate models predict a 20% weakening of the current by the century's end. Detlef Quadfasel, of Hamburg University's climate centre, warned that there was a chance changes in the system could be abrupt, occurring over a decade or two, but that more gradual change would be expected. The findings are part of Project Clamer, a collaboration of 17 institutes in 10 European countries that is synthesising research from nearly 300 EU-funded projects over the past 13 years that concern climate change and Europe's waters, and the Baltic and Black Seas. Freshwater inflow from rivers could also affect the Baltic Sea, one of the biggest brackish-water ecosystems in the world, according to Thomas Neumann, of Germany's Leibnitz-Institute for Baltic Sea Research. Its salinity is controlled by the amount of freshwater flowing off the surrounding land, as well as how much water is exchanged with the North Sea. If the salinity lowers further, this could have a harmful effect on the species that live there. | ['environment/climate-crisis', 'environment/environment', 'science/scienceofclimatechange', 'science/science', 'world/arctic', 'world/world', 'environment/poles', 'environment/oceans', 'environment/sea-level', 'tone/news', 'uk/uk', 'us-news/us-news', 'environment/rivers', 'type/article', 'profile/fiona-harvey'] | environment/sea-level | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2011-04-05T17:12:27Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
technology/2023/dec/15/christmas-tech-gifts-mobile-phone-cases-popsockets-refurbished-headphones | Christmas tech: small gifts that can be a big festive hit | If you are looking for last-minute Christmas gifts and don’t know what to buy, gadgets and accessories mean you don’t need to know someone’s clothes size or availability for a night at the theatre. There’s no need to buy the latest shiny new phone or smartwatch – there are some smaller things that will be welcome presents and help extend the life of your loved ones’ existing electronics. Phone cases The most sustainable tech is what you already have, so cases and accessories to keep it in good nick are a good buy. As long as you know the model of the phone, finding a case is easy, with hundreds of options costing from about £10 from longstanding third-party accessory brands such as OtterBox, Speck and Spigen. Apple, Google, Samsung and others make their own cases. If you want something more sustainable, a couple of brands make cases from biodegradable materials, costing from about £25, including the Canadian company Pela and the British outfit Wave. Wave will even accept old cases back for industrial composting – send one and you will get 20% off another case. Phone cases can also replace the traditional Christmas wallet purchase, with models featuring slots for credit cards, either in a flap over the screen or in sleeves on the back. There are many options, starting from about £10. Luxury versions such as Bellroy’s leather phone case cost £39 and up. Most cases don’t cover the screen directly, which is where screen protectors come in. They are available in a variety of different materials, including cheap plastic ones, hardened glass ones and even liquid ones. They can be bought from phone shops, manufacturers or from big case makers, and cost from about £10-£15 each. Wave has a recycled glass version for £15. PopSockets and grips A phone grip could be the cheap gamechanging accessory to help prevent smashed screens. There are many different types to choose from. Phone rings, such as the popular Spigen Style Ring (about £13), stick on to the back of a phone and have a flip-out ring to put a finger through. Phone loops come in a variety of types, including straps and fabric bands. The most simple act like a rubber band that fits under a phone case and over fingers; others stick to the back of the phone. They cost from about £5. One of the most popular grips is the PopSocket, which is like a pop-out handle you stick on the back of your phone. Original PopSockets cost about £11, or you can pay more for one of a wide range of designs, including ones for fans of Pokémon, Harry Potter and Star Wars. Watch bands Smartwatches haven’t changed much in the last few years, so instead of buying a whole new one, choose a replacement strap to give an existing one a fresh new look. Each of the watch manufacturers sell a plethora of their own straps and bands, including Apple, Garmin, Google and Samsung. They cost from about £45. Many third-party accessory makers also sell cheaper straps for the most popular watches that use special connectors, such as the Apple Watch and Pixel Watch. Other smartwatches including Garmins and Samsungs can usually accept standard straps with pins. Straps are available online and from most high street jewellers; just make sure you buy the right width of strap for the lugs of the watch. Batteries and chargers One of the things to wear out first on modern gadgets is the battery. A replacement battery may be the best option but backup power packs can help keep phones and other USB devices running through the day. They come in a variety of different colours, shapes, sizes and capabilities, with some powerful enough to charge laptops alongside phones, tablets and other smaller gadgets. Good small ones with enough power for an 80% phone charge cost about £16 and are the size of a chocolate bar. More innovative ones, such as the Anker MagGo range (£26 and up) can wirelessly charge your phone on the go, sticking to the back of MagSafe compatible devices, including iPhones or Android with adaptors. Refurbished headphones Wireless earbuds and headphones are some of the best gadgets out there but they aren’t the most sustainable products as they often have unrepairable designs or difficult-to-replace batteries. Buying refurbished models helps the cost and the planet. Excellent options such as Sony’s WF-C500 earbuds are available for about £50 from places such as Back Market. Apple’s popular AirPods 3 cost £149 refurbished straight from the manufacturer, while the excellent QuietComfort Earbuds II cost £190 refurbished direct from Bose. Both come with all the accessories you would get if buying new. Refurbished noise-cancelling headphones also make great gifts for those who want a bit of piece and quiet. Sennheiser’s tremendous Momentum 4 headphones cost £194 refurbished by the manufacturer, while Bose offers its commuter favourite QuietComfort 45s refurbished for £189.95. Third-party retailers such as Back Market have other options available from brands such as Apple’s Beats and Sony. | ['technology/gadgets', 'money/consumer-affairs', 'money/money', 'money/shopping', 'lifeandstyle/christmas', 'technology/technology', 'uk/uk', 'money/mobile-phones', 'technology/smartwatches', 'technology/headphones', 'type/article', 'tone/features', 'profile/samuel-gibbs', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/money', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-money'] | technology/gadgets | UNRELATED_TO_CLIMATE | 2023-12-15T07:00:21Z | true | UNRELATED_TO_CLIMATE |
food/2018/nov/17/vegan-aquafaba-recipe-bean-water-recipe-food-waste-tom-hunt | Aquafaba: the miracle ingredient you’ve been throwing away | Waste Not with Tom Hunt | The discovery of aquafaba was a revelation for vegans: suddenly mayonnaise, marshmallows, even macaroons were on the table. But aquafaba isn’t just for plant-based eaters; it’s easier to whip than egg whites and makes the silkiest mayo, the fluffiest meringues and a puffy Yorkshire pud fit for a carnivore. It’s also great shaken up in a whisky sour. Aquafaba, or bean water, is the cooking liquid from chickpeas and other legumes. Because it is naturally full of protein and saponin, it can be whipped up just like egg whites into a delicious, virtually cost-free stand-in for egg whites, and a thrifty way to use up a byproduct that would otherwise go down the drain. So save the liquid the next time you drain a can of pulses; or, if you cook dried beans, the cooking water. To make a protein-rich aquafaba from scratch, soak the legumes in plenty of water overnight. Drain, cover with a litre of fresh water per 200g pulses (pre-soaked weight) and bring to a boil. Reduce to a simmer, skim off any froth, then cover and cook for one to two hours, until the beans are soft. Leave to cool down, then refrigerate. Bean water ‘aquafaba’ mayonnaise Bean water mayo is easy to make and a delicious way to use up a byproduct that would otherwise be wasted. The quality of the oil is important, because it will be the main flavour of the mayonnaise. 50ml bean water 1 tbsp mustard Salt and black pepper About 200ml oil – organic rapeseed, sunflower or olive, ideally 1 tbsp vinegar – cider, white-wine or other Put the bean water, mustard and a pinch of salt and pepper in a clean, grease-free bowl. Blend with a hand-mixer (or put everything in a blender) until combined and frothy, then pour in the oil in a very slow, steady stream, blending as you go. Once the consistency is as you like, stop adding the oil and blend in the vinegar and garlic, if using. | ['food/series/waste-not', 'food/food', 'tone/recipes', 'tone/features', 'environment/food-waste', 'environment/environment', 'food/vegetables', 'lifeandstyle/lifeandstyle', 'environment/waste', 'food/vegan', 'food/vegetarian', 'food/side-dishes', 'type/article', 'profile/tom-hunt', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/feast', 'theguardian/feast/feast', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/feast'] | environment/waste | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE | 2018-11-17T07:00:27Z | true | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE |
environment/2019/feb/26/humpback-whale-found-washed-ashore-in-brazil | Humpback whale found washed ashore in Brazil | A young humpback whale has been found dead after being washed ashore on a remote swamp in the Amazon River. The humpback whale should have migrated thousands of miles to Antarctica by this time of year, but members of the conservation group Bicho D’Água said they found it at Marajó Island in Brazil’s north-east. They spotted the dead whale last Friday a short distance from the shore after they followed scavenging birds that were circling overhead. The lifeless humpback, which was about eight metres (26ft) long, was found in thick shrubs and brush. “We imagine it was floating and the tide took it into the mangrove,” Renata Emin, the president of Bicho D’Água, told local media. “The question is, what was a humpback whale doing in the month of February on the northern coast of Brazil? It’s unusual.” A group of biologists examined the carcass over the weekend to figure out how the whale died. The group is expecting a postmortem report within 10 days. “We are collecting information, identifying marks on the body, to determine if it was trapped in a net or hit by a boat,” Emin said. Conservationists from the Bicho d’Água Institute suggest the whale could have been separated from its mother before being forced ashore by high tides during a storm. Other researchers have speculated that the humpback may have swum towards the beach looking for food and suffocated after consuming large amounts of plastic. Government officials told reporters the whale had been dead for several days. Though the whale was half the size of a full-grown adult humpback, it was still too large and in too remote an area to be entirely removed. Peter Evans, the director of the Sea Watch Foundation, which monitors whales and dolphins off Britain’s coasts, said incidents like these were rare. He said humpback whales were often found in coastal waters and were known to migrate great distances. South American humpbacks breed around the equator and then migrate towards the Antarctic to feed. “This calf probably got separated from its mother, maybe its mother had died, in the southern summer, and then wandered about trying to find food. The idea that it was killed by ingesting plastic would need some evidence first to support it. It seems to me more likely that it simply starved to death. If they do a postmortem examination, we will have a clearer idea,” Evans said. | ['environment/whales', 'world/brazil', 'environment/cetaceans', 'environment/environment', 'environment/marine-life', 'environment/wildlife', 'world/americas', 'world/world', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/aamna-mohdin', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-foreign'] | environment/cetaceans | BIODIVERSITY | 2019-02-26T14:00:11Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
environment/2020/jan/28/crabs-shells-dissolve-acidity-pacific-ocean | Pacific Ocean’s rising acidity causes Dungeness crabs’ shells to dissolve | The Pacific Ocean is becoming so acidic it is starting to dissolve the shells of a key species of crab, according to a new US study. Scientists found that the Dungeness crab, one of the most valuable species for recreational and commercial fisheries, is starting to weaken as its larvae are affected by rising ocean acidity. The study was published in the Science of the Total Environment academic journal and funded by the federal National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. It found that acidity is affecting the shells of crab larvae, making them more vulnerable to predators and limiting shell effectiveness in supporting the growth of muscles. Lower pH levels have also helped destabilize the larvae’s mechanoreceptors, increasing the possibility of loss of important sensory and behavioral functions. The effect of acidity on adult Dungeness crabs is still unknown. The researchers hypothesized that “aberrant behavioral patterns found across various crustacean species … such as slower movement, less tactile, prolonged searching time, as well as impaired swimming” could be due to increased acidity. Ocean acidity is a byproduct of burning fossil fuels. As carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere, the gas dissolves into ocean water, producing weak carbonic acid. Since the industrial revolution, the average pH of the ocean has fallen from 8.2 to 8.1, which corresponds to an increase in acidity of about 26%. Scientists and activists have long warned about ocean acidity and its harm to marine life. Given that crustaceans play an important role in the marine ecosystem, the weakening of crustacean species could be devastating. Another study published this month found that microplastics are affecting the reproduction of sand crabs, which eat by filtering small particles from sand. Sand crabs are themselves prey for seabirds, fish and marine mammals. | ['environment/oceans', 'environment/marine-life', 'environment/wildlife', 'environment/environment', 'us-news/us-news', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/lauren-aratani', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/us-news'] | environment/marine-life | BIODIVERSITY | 2020-01-28T16:50:27Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
travel/2001/jan/20/netjetters2000sam.netjetters | From: Michael (20 Jan) | Hi Milly, how's it going? I was flicking through the travel section of the Guardian this morning dreaming of places faraway and a damn site warmer than here, where the lake is frozen over, when I saw an extract of your adventures. I'm in my first year at York University and had a year out with 10 months travelling around Australia last year. I spent four months in Sydney, travelled anti-clockwise around the coast and came back again for two weeks before flying out on the day the Olympics started. The last place I stopped was in Byron Bay for 10 days to attempt to learn to surf while staying at the local campsite at Clarke's beach. I'd needed to get to Sydney pretty fast and so was chuffed when some guy called Shaun had placed an advertisement up saying he needed a driving/petrol share for a straight 10 hour drive through the night to the Blue Mountains. Shaun had been visiting his son for the weekend and had to be back at work on Monday morning. After I'd done a three hour shift at the wheel stuggling not to nod off we got to his house at 5am where he said we could stay for a couple of days for $15. When we got there he just showed us the three bed 'dorm' and when we got up the next day the house was deserted. The cooking gas had run out, we had no food and outside there was just a bunch of smashed up cars and two big dogs. Nice. We spent the day smoking out the house trying to start a fire and drinking Milo. Then Scott got back from an early morning trek. Is this the same guy? He was about 40, American, and never stopped talking. I can't believe Shaun has let him stay there this long as he annoyed the hell out of him and us. 'So, is Scotland an Island?', 'Do you guys get American movies in England?', ' What's the difference between the UK and Great Britain?', 'Is John Major still the prime minister', and on and on. Shaun was a nice guy but he seemed overworked. He cooked us food on the fire when he got home and advised us to spend the night sleeping on the floor in the living room as it was so cold. We decided to head to Katoomba the next day as it rained constantly and was freezing at that time. Shaun didn't have a car then and when he slept in and missed his lift to work the next day we too had to trek down the train line. Sorry to talk at you about something you've already done but your account of Katoomba and Shaun's house really made my day. I hope all goes well for you, and it'd be great to know if we've got the same Scott. See you later, Michael. | ['travel/netjetters2000sam', 'travel/netjetters', 'travel/travel', 'travel/netjettersblog', 'type/article'] | travel/netjetters2000sam | UNRELATED_TO_CLIMATE | 2001-01-20T19:47:57Z | true | UNRELATED_TO_CLIMATE |
business/2008/may/05/yahoo.microsoft | Yahoo braves shareholders' ire in refusing Microsoft's $47bn offer | Yahoo is in danger of a furious backlash from shareholders after the collapse of takeover talks with Microsoft. On a frantic weekend of brinkmanship, Microsoft raised its original offer of $42bn (£21.3bn) for Yahoo, tabled in January, by $5bn to $33 a share in an effort to create a technological powerhouse capable of challenging Google. But in a meeting with top Microsoft executives on Saturday at Seattle airport, Yahoo's founders, Jerry Yang and David Filo, held out for at least $37 a share - which would have raised the price by a further $5bn to $53bn. Microsoft flatly refused to pay any more, ending a three-month pursuit that gripped the industry and was intended to reshape competition for email, internet searches and advertising on some of the web's most popular sites. Microsoft's chief executive, Steve Ballmer, said: "Despite our best efforts, including raising our bid by roughly $5bn, Yahoo has not moved toward accepting our offer. After careful consideration, we believe the economics demanded by Yahoo do not make sense for us." In a letter to Yang, he suggested that Yahoo would live to regret its defiance, insisting that the firm had "left significant value on the table". Created 13 years ago by two graduate students in a caravan at California's Stanford University, Yahoo was the internet's hottest property in the late 1990s as the most popular entry point and search engine for online users around the world. But in recent years, it has been overshadowed by Google and has frustrated investors with its drifting strategy and its failure to carve out a distinctive path for itself. Yang and Filo have been reluctant from the start to sell to Microsoft, partly through protectiveness of their company's culture - Yang styles himself as "chief Yahoo" and the firm is renowned for its quirky innovation. Analysts believe their refusal to strike a deal could send Yahoo's shares plummeting from Friday's closing price of $28.67 to between $20 and $25. Before the approach, Yahoo's shares had been changing hands for as little as $19. "Yang had better be in a situation to shortly come forth with some sort of strategic alternative to explain why $31 a share wasn't good enough," said David Garrity, an analyst at Dinosaur Research, who said investors would be "itching" to file lawsuits on Monday. Jordan Rohan, founder of the digital advisory firm Clearmeadow Partners, said: "Yahoo's management and board overplayed its hand. Shareholders were cheated out of victory." Robert Breza, an analyst at RBC Capital Markets, told Bloomberg News: "The shareholders will wake up tomorrow morning or tonight and say, 'Jerry, what are you doing?' "They weren't doing the best job, and Microsoft put a fair offer on the table. And for them to up the bid and for these guys to not want to engage - I think Microsoft's being smart here." Among Microsoft's reasons for declining to offer any more money were potentially expensive severance benefits installed in the contracts of Yahoo's key employees to compensate them in the event of a takeover. Microsoft was also wary of a experiment by Yahoo in outsourcing certain search advertising to its arch-rival Google. Ballmer said this undermined Yahoo's key Panama technology and risked causing an exodus of disillusioned engineers. In a statement, Yang said he was "incredibly proud" of his team's unity since Microsoft's approach: "With the distraction of Microsoft's unsolicited proposal now behind us, we will be able to focus all of our energies on executing the most important transition in our history so that we can maximise our potential to the benefit of our shareholders, employees, partners and users." In the run-up to the breakdown, discussions had taken place up and down the west coast with a secret meeting held in Portland, Oregon, in mid-April followed by a get-together near Yahoo's Palo Alto office on Wednesday and Saturday's final gathering in Seattle. Microsoft insiders briefed that the firm's decision to end talks was a formal decision rather than a mere negotiating ploy. But industry experts said that the software company could try again at a lower price in a few months or years if Yahoo failed to revive its faltering performance. | ['business/business', 'technology/yahoo-takeover', 'technology/yahoo', 'technology/microsoft', 'business/mergers-and-acquisitions', 'technology/technology', 'media/media', 'technology/mergers-acquisitions', 'type/article', 'profile/andrewclark', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/financial3'] | technology/yahoo-takeover | UNRELATED_TO_CLIMATE | 2008-05-05T06:35:39Z | true | UNRELATED_TO_CLIMATE |
environment/2019/dec/13/green-groups-urge-boris-johnson-to-act-on-climate | Green groups urge Boris Johnson to act on climate | The new Conservative government must urgently bring forward plans to fulfil its pledge to cut greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050 or risk losing the fight against climate breakdown, green campaigners have urged. Rebecca Newsom, the head of politics at Greenpeace UK, said the Tory manifesto was “full of holes” on the environment and had been judged inadequate by green groups, and people would expect swift action. “The weight of responsibility and growing public concern now rests on Boris Johnson’s shoulders to ensure the UK rises to the challenge, fights for climate justice and shows real leadership,” she said. “The next five years are make or break for the climate and nature emergencies, so we expect the new government to immediately roll out bold commitments to tackle the challenge. This should start with a climate emergency budget to pledge at least 5% government spending per year to deliver a fairer and greener economy for all.” Climate breakdown was one of the top concerns of younger voters during the election campaign, and Labour made it the centrepiece of its “green industrial revolution” pledge to voters. Environmental issues did not figure highly in the Tory manifesto, and Boris Johnson refused to attend a televised debate on the climate crisis, but the party remains committed to the 2050 target set as one of the last acts of Theresa May’s administration. In a Brexit-dominated election, climate concerns appear not to have been decisive in the crucial battlegrounds of the north of England and the Midlands. The Green party enjoyed an unexpected surge, with about 850,000 votes across the country compared with 300,000 in 2017, though it was still left with only one MP, Caroline Lucas, who increased her majority in Brighton Pavilion. In some key marginals, Green voters made a clear difference to the result. Theresa Villiers, the environment secretary, held on to her Chipping Barnet seat against a Labour challenge by a margin smaller than the number of votes cast for the Green party candidate. Siân Berry, one of the Greens’ co-leaders, said: “The Green party piled on votes because this was a climate election – we set the agenda and we won the argument on massive investment in a green new deal. If Boris Johnson wants to unlock Britain’s potential, he must flood every region of this country with investment to kickstart a renewables revolution, retrofit millions of homes and build up decent local transport. We haven’t got five more years to waste.” Nick Molho, the chief executive of the Aldersgate Group of green companies, said businesses were eager for the government to quickly come up with detailed plans for the environment. “Businesses want the government to hit the ground running in 2020, with urgent policy decisions needed on the environmental and climate agenda,” he said. “Key priorities should include putting together credible plans to deliver and fund the net zero transition, and introducing an ambitious environment bill to safeguard the proper enforcement of environmental law and introduce legally binding environmental improvement targets.” Among the few green pledges in the Tory manifesto was a promise to spend more than £9bn on insulating and retrofitting homes and buildings to high environmental standards, and to encourage take-up of electric vehicles. Analysis before the election found that the record of the last three Tory and Tory-led governments since 2010 was patchy, with reversals on key policies such as renewable energy, support for electric cars and insulation. For international observers at the final day of the UN climate talks in Madrid, Johnson’s landslide victory cleared the way for the UK’s presidency of the COP26 talks scheduled for next November in Glasgow. There, the world will decide on the future of the Paris agreement and countries will be expected to come up with strengthened targets on cutting greenhouse gas emissions in line with scientific warnings. As host, the UK government will play a key role in the success or failure of the talks, and experts said behind-the-scenes diplomacy must begin in earnest now. “We saw in Paris that the degree of success depends very much on the presidency [of the host nation],” Nat Keohane, a senior vice-president at the US-based Environmental Defense Fund, told the Guardian. “The UK needs to being doing a full-court press on diplomacy right now to make this a success.” Tom Burke, the chair of the UK-based E3G environmental group, said: “Having just reaffirmed Britain’s commitment to climate change, the prime minister is now going to have to make a global success of COP26, and that will make for an interesting conversation with President Trump [who is withdrawing the US from the Paris agreement]. “This means he will need to put a minister with real political weight in charge of the preparations. Given the size of his majority, he will have no excuses if his government fails to deliver on its environmental promises.” | ['environment/green-politics', 'politics/general-election-2019', 'politics/conservatives', 'politics/green-party', 'environment/climate-crisis', 'uk/uk', 'environment/environment', 'politics/politics', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/fiona-harvey', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/uknews', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-environment'] | environment/green-politics | CLIMATE_POLICY | 2019-12-13T16:15:50Z | true | CLIMATE_POLICY |
us-news/2019/sep/09/schwarzenegger-trump-california-clean-air-emissions-climate-crisis | Angry Schwarzenegger condemns Trump for wrecking clean-air standards | Arnold Schwarznegger has condemned Donald Trump over his unprecedented rollback of environmental protections, particularly his move against California’s regulation of automobile emissions. “It’s wrong,” the Terminator star and two-term governor wrote in an opinion column for the Washington Post that was pointedly headlined: “Trump can’t erase a decade of clean-air progress with a Sharpie.” That was a reference to the furore over Trump’s display in the Oval Office last week of a hurricane map apparently altered with a Sharpie, or marker pen, to make a forecast for Hurricane Dorian show it potentially hitting Alabama. “It’s un-American,” Schwarzenegger said. “And it’s an affront to longstanding conservative principles.” Schwarzenegger said the Trump administration was “hellbent on reversing decades of history and progress”. “Whether it is [motivated by] political pettiness, shortsightedness or just plain jealousy, I couldn’t tell you,” he said. Describing his anger at moves against California over automobile emissions, Schwarzenegger said his state had been a leader in establishing clean-air standards since 1967, when his “hero”, Ronald Reagan, was governor. Schwarzenegger wrote: “We set our standards, and the federal government didn’t just respect our authority, it generally made our rules the standard for the entire nation.” The same pattern applied to efforts to curb greenhouse gases, he said. “The Trump administration’s threat to revoke our waiver to clean our air is more extreme,” Schwarzenegger wrote. “And coming from a Republican White House, it’s downright hypocritical.” The former governor also pointed to a contradiction between the conservative principle of states’ rights and the behaviour of the Trump administration. “How many times have you heard conservatives beat the drum of states’ rights?” he asked. “But suddenly, when a state wants to pollute less and protect its citizens from deadly pollution, conservatives throw states’ rights straight out the window.” California’s economic success, he said, was built on long-term planning. In contrast, the administration’s “knee-jerk reactionary policies such as the move to revoke our clean-air waiver create uncertainty”. “They didn’t ask for the Trump administration’s backward thinking, and they know it won’t help them,” he said of four big car companies that have worked with California on limiting emissions. He added: “California will fight this decision. And I promise you, we will win.” | ['us-news/california', 'environment/air-pollution', 'environment/environment', 'us-news/us-news', 'film/arnold-schwarzenegger', 'us-news/donaldtrump', 'environment/climate-crisis', 'world/world', 'film/film', 'us-news/republicans', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/edwardhelmore', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/us-news'] | environment/air-pollution | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE | 2019-09-09T12:42:31Z | true | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE |
environment/2022/jul/21/time-for-the-government-to-tell-the-truth-about-nuclear-power | Time for the government to tell the truth about nuclear power | Letter | The UK is sadly becoming habituated to an officially sponsored attrition of truth about nuclear power. Despite intensifying propaganda, even government data shows this military-backed technology to be, in reality, an expensive, slow, unreliable, risky and unpopular way to deliver affordable, secure, zero-carbon energy. The gap in efficacy and competitiveness between nuclear and other options is continually growing. Supporting nuclear, rather than energy efficiency, wind and solar, slows down climate action, bleeds taxpayers, forgoes jobs and forces unnecessarily large and regressive burdens on consumers. Yet firehosing scarce public resources at ailing nuclear initiatives proceeds unabated. The nuclear fuel fund announced by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy on Tuesday is yet another among uncounted nozzles pointed variously at research, liability, insurance, training, finance, regulation, planning, non-proliferation, security, waste management, grid codes, etc. One notable feature of this most recent example of a worsening syndrome is that in the opening lines introducing this initiative, the BEIS says: “Nuclear is the only form of reliable, low-carbon generation which has been deployed at scale to date.” Whatever side is taken amid the complexities, the manifest falsity of this starkly unqualified statement is extraordinary. As the government’s own data also shows, the costs of managing variable supply are rapidly diminishing and are already far smaller than the competitiveness gap between nuclear and renewables. Current renewable contributions to UK electricity far surpass the peak achieved by nuclear. When did it become acceptable in British public life that a supposedly democratic government should so seriously misrepresent reality in a formal policy document? In a period when stakes are unprecedentedly high for climate, economy, energy security and hard-pressed households, it is time to renew reasoned scientific and democratic debate in this field and prevent this national self-harm by unaccountable special interests. Prof Andy Stirling University of Sussex | ['environment/nuclearpower', 'environment/energy', 'business/energy-industry', 'type/article', 'tone/letters', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-letters-and-leader-writers'] | environment/energy | ENERGY | 2022-07-21T17:00:13Z | true | ENERGY |
technology/2023/sep/05/tissupath-hack-patient-data-breach-cyber-attack-melbourne-pathology-clinic | TissuPath hack: patient data possibly exposed in cyber-attack on Melbourne pathology clinic | Ten years worth of pathology referral letters may have been exposed in a cybersecurity incident affecting the Victorian pathology clinic TissuPath. The government is aware of the data breach as well as potential incidents affecting real estate firm Barry Plant and owners corporation management company Strata Plan, national cybersecurity coordinator Darren Goldie said in a statement. TissuPath apologised to affected patients and said it was investigating the potential exposure of data that included scanned pathology request forms with information such as patient names, dates of birth, contact details, Medicare numbers and private health insurance details. “Importantly, TissuPath’s main database and reporting system that stores patient diagnoses was not compromised,” the company said. “Further, we do not store patient financial details and other personal information documents, such as drivers licence numbers.” The three incidents were linked on a dark web site to the notorious ransomware gang ALPHV, but Goldie declined to attribute the attack. “Given the sensitivities of the incident, the National Cyber Security Coordinator is overseeing a whole-of-government response to the Tissupath incident,” he said. TissuPath said the data obtained potentially included referrals for suspected cancer patients between 2011 and 2020. The company indicated this kind of data is kept for 20 years under National Pathology Accreditation Advisory Council (NPAAC) guidance. Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup The company said it has sent a notification letter to all primary referring doctors about the incident, and is in the process of contacting all affected individuals. The Australian Signals Directorate’s Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC) has been in contact with TissuPath, and the company also notified the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner. “ACSC continues to monitor the situation, providing technical advice and assistance to organisations as required,” an Australian Signals Directorate spokesperson said. The breach was first reported by Cyber Security Connect, while TissuPath also confirmed the timeline on its website. The incident, reportedly discovered on 24 August, was caused by an attack on a third party supplier that led to a storage drive being accessed. Barry Plant’s chief executive Lisa Pennell said one of the company’s offices in Blackburn in Melbourne’s east had been the victim of a cyber incident linked to the compromise of an external service provider, but that the Barry Plant Group’s systems had not been impacted. “We have become aware that a third party supplier to a small part of the property management business of one of our franchised offices has had a cyber incident,” she said in a statement. “We are supporting our franchisee and have engaged market leading experts to help us assess the situation.” A Strata Plan spokesperson said: “We are aware of a cyber attack against a third party service provider of Strata Plan and an allegation that it has impacted some of our data. “This is being investigated with the assistance of cybersecurity experts. As the investigation is ongoing, we are unable to provide any further comments at this stage.” The ALPHV group is linked to the hack of Australian law firm HWL Ebsworth in April. The company, which provided advice to dozens of government departments and agencies, successfully applied for an injunction against the use of its stolen data. Do you know more? Please email abogle@protonmail.com | ['technology/cybercrime', 'australia-news/australia-news', 'technology/data-computer-security', 'technology/hacking', 'australia-news/victoria', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/ariel-bogle', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/australia-news'] | technology/hacking | UNRELATED_TO_CLIMATE | 2023-09-05T06:30:36Z | true | UNRELATED_TO_CLIMATE |
environment/damian-carrington-blog/2013/jan/30/nuclear-waste-cumbria-copeland-allerdale | Cumbria's nuclear dump can't bury the waste problem | Damian Carrington | Nuclear waste is long-lived and extremely dangerous and consequently poses near interminable and politically toxic questions. Wednesday's vote, by councils in Cumbria on whether to move forward with plans for deep underground storage of waste in the area, is the perfect illustration. But let's start at the beginning. Is burying nuclear waste deep within bedrock necessary? Yes is the answer of most experts, though only because it is the least worst option. Over 25 countries with significant waste piles have opted for deep disposal as the ultimate solution. The perils of floods, terrorist attacks and earthquakes mean long-term surface storage poses even greater risks than entombing the waste in a rock sarcophagus. As for blasting it into space, as some have suggested, does placing tonnes of radioactive waste on top of hundreds of tonnes of high explosive sound smart? So is deep disposal safe? The answer is no-one knows, because despite 60 years having passed since the nuclear age began, no-one has ever done it. Sweden has the most advanced plans, with an experimental deep disposal facility, but no nuclear waste has yet been consigned to its depths. In the US, vast amounts of money was spent over many years but ended up with plans for deep disposal at Yukka Mountain in Nevada being abandoned in 2010. The situation is uncomfortably similar in the UK. In the 1980s a nationwide search for a suitable burial site was undertaken. In a process described by Prof Stuart Haszeldine, a geologist at the University of Edinburgh, as "mysterious and which no-one understood", the site selected was conveniently very close to the epicentre of the UK nuclear industry at Sellafield in Cumbria. The government then spent £400m on 22 boreholes investigating the Longlands Farm site but a 65-day public planning enquiry ultimately rejected it because the site was technically unsuitable, as well the proposed project having severe impacts on the surface. They key problem that has to be solved with deep disposal is ensuring, for millennia, that radioactive waste does not leak out into groundwater which is then brought to the surface. The UK is fortunate not to suffer serious earthquakes but the site chosen had extremely complex geology, riven with fractures, meaning there was an unacceptable risk of radioactive waste being washed back to the surface. Extraordinarily, after all that time and money was spent in ruling out that site, it is back in the running under the plans the councils are voting on. Prof Haszeldine is scathing about how this has happened: "This is a very short-sighted policy, run by driving local councils into volunteering for the wrong reasons: financial inducements. Many of the statements being made by the authorities [about the site] are misleading to wrong." In fact the situation now is even worse than in the 1980s. The proposal now would see spent fuel and high-level waste buried, rather than only intermediate level waste. The former is much hotter than the latter, which would hugely accelerate the circulation of groundwater, according to Prof Haszeldine. "The waste exists and deep geological disposal is by far the best solution," said Prof Haszeldine. "But we should have a genuine national search for technically qualified sites. Ultimately, do we believe in evidence-based policy or political opportunism to exploit communities with limited economic opportunities?" A number of worrying conclusions can be drawn from all this. First, the process of choosing a deep disposal site appears more concerned with burying political problems than finding the right geological site. Asking local communities for their assent is of course essential, but getting that assent by burying geological problems under layers of cash will only see those problems rise, zombie-like, from the grave in future. Second, after half a century of nuclear power and its ever-growing waste pile, isn't it astonishing that no-one anywhere on the planet has demonstrated a permanent way to deal with it? All the while, the costs to the public of keeping this toxic legacy safe on the surface continue to spiral out of control. Yet, despite only having sticking plaster solutions to the waste problem to hand, the UK government and others are dead set on building a new fleet of reactors. Perhaps most worrying of all is that whatever the result of the votes in Cumbria, ministers will undoubtedly keep digging themselves deeper into the nuclear hole. Dealing with legacy waste is unavoidable but adding to this apparently unsolvable problem is not. Phasing out nuclear power is challenging in terms of energy policy, but a breeze compared to the long-term waste problem. The backing of new reactors once again shows the triumph of the short-term political fix over the genuine long-term solution. | ['environment/damian-carrington-blog', 'tone/blog', 'environment/environment', 'environment/nuclear-waste', 'environment/nuclearpower', 'environment/energy', 'business/energy-industry', 'type/article', 'profile/damiancarrington'] | environment/nuclearpower | ENERGY | 2013-01-30T13:02:34Z | true | ENERGY |
environment/2018/jan/21/gloucestershire-waste-incinerator-m5-recycling-javelin-park | Gloucestershire is building a big bonfire of waste. To last for eternity | Marooned on the flatlands between the Severn river and the Cotswolds escarpment, Stonehouse in Gloucestershire isn’t the sort of place to make the news. But, of late, outrage has been the dominant emotion here as construction traffic has brought what was a country village to a standstill. Blue plastic barriers proliferate, mobile traffic lights are set down apparently at random and workers clad in hi-vis saunter about with the swagger of the new sheriff in town. While the slow crawl of traffic to and from the M5 is frustrating, it is the cause of the blockage that is more troubling. Stonehouse is being dug up to lay a cable to service the giant waste monster being built next to junction 12 of the M5, an edifice that its opponents warned would grow to four times the size of nearby Gloucester cathedral, a glorious testament to the grand folly of another age. This new monster will soar 70 metres into the air and, say the unbelievers, spew out enough fumes to poison all the hearty recyclers and sinning trash humpers of Gloucestershire. For this is the antichrist of recycling, a beast with sufficient fire in its belly to turn all it is offered to smoke. While the rest of Europe (yes, yes, including Iceland) agonises over the intractable evil of plastic packaging, Gloucestershire is building a very big bonfire. For eternity. A continual blaze of the unconvertible, Salem without the trial, the Inferno without Purgatory. The Javelin Park incinerator, or to give it the official name, the Gloucestershire Energy from Waste plant, gained planning approval in 2015 amid much controversy. After first rejecting it, the Conservative-led county council approved the bid by Urbaser Balfour Beatty to build a waste incinerator converting waste bound for landfill to electricity bound for the national grid. To equal parts dismay and delight, there were a few hiccups on the way: groups opposed to the scheme argued that the science didn’t really add up, nor did the environmental benefits – what with the likelihood that most of the 190,000 tonnes of stuff being burnt each year could actually be recycled – or the health benefits, what with the inconvenient plume of shame lingering over the models and maps of the surrounding countryside. Or how about the scenario where Gloucestershire discovers its recycling mojo and fails to produce enough black bag landfill to feed the monster, leading to the spectre of imported rubbish to make up the operating shortfall? But forget the morals: what about the politics or, better still, the money! Conservatives + huge construction company = well, go figure, or go Google, whichever comes more naturally. Javelin Park’s opponents did that and came to the conclusion that something funny had gone on. Why else, they argued, would a council give the go-ahead to a £500m scheme in these austere times? Five hundred million pounds is the polite way of saying half a billion pounds. The Competition and Markets Authority called it in and found there was nothing to the claims of skullduggery, the planning inspector called it in, by which time there was a glimmer of sympathy for the fire-spitting beast, for what had it done to deserve this uncommissioned state of limbo? But hold, a greater force was at work in the form of an intervention by the then secretary of state Eric Pickles, Lord Protector of our Communities, and a proclamation was issued and the protestors did abate and Javelin Park did issue forth. It’s all history now, battles past, and the beast rears its head, the cranes drawing it up from the ground sinister in their stillness, serene against the rush and clamour of the motorway. Soon, when the cable is laid, and the workers in their high-vis, with their parked vans and roadside apologies have trundled on, the traffic jam will end and there will be new signs: bring forth your unrecyclables, they shall proclaim, your black bags, your landfill and lo, it shall be smitten, dust to dust, ashes to ashes. Ashes, of course, might be a problem. Anyone have a solution for disposing of up to 9,000 tonnes of ash each year? Landfill? Black bags in a skip? Maybe the time-honoured country custom of fly-tipping will do. | ['environment/waste', 'environment/environment', 'uk/uk', 'tone/news', 'tone/features', 'environment/recycling', 'environment/ethical-living', 'type/article', 'profile/danglaister', 'publication/theobserver', 'theobserver/news', 'theobserver/news/uknews', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/observer-main'] | environment/waste | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE | 2018-01-21T00:04:06Z | true | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE |
environment/2017/apr/29/recycle-nespresso-coffee-pods-london | Nespresso bid to recycle coffee pods | The coffee company Nespresso – part of the Swiss multinational Nestlé – is to trial a scheme to make it easier for consumers to recycle their used aluminium capsules in the UK, in the face of a growing environmental backlash against increasingly popular single-serve pods, many of which end up in landfill. A six-month pilot, starting this week in the London borough of Kensington and Chelsea, will allow Nespresso Club members to recycle their used capsules through their council household recycling service, using special purple bags provided by the company. The borough’s 190,000 residents will only be able to put out capsules made by Nespresso. Most other capsules on the market are not made of aluminium, usually consisting of mixed plastic and sometimes foil, which require different recycling processes. The dregs of leftover coffee remaining in the pod also make them difficult to process in standard municipal recycling plants. Nespresso has defended its use of aluminium, saying it helps keep the coffee fresh. The company said it was responding to its users, who have requested more convenient recycling through their local council-run scheme. The trial is part of a project to give customers more convenient recycling options. “We launched our own dedicated recycling services seven years ago,” said Francisco Nogueira, managing director of Nespresso UK and Ireland. “Every week we are seeing an increase in the volume of capsules being sent in by customers through our system. But we know there is still much to be done and recycling through the municipal system is something our members have asked for.” The bags of aluminium capsules will be sent to Nespresso’s recycling facility in Congleton, while the waste coffee grounds will be extracted and turned into compost. Nespresso capsules are included in other national recycling schemes such as the Green Dot programme in Germany as well as in a number of other countries, including France and Canada. But in the German city of Hamburg, coffee capsules have been banned from state-run buildings as part of a drive to cut waste. Nespresso introduced the first single-serve coffee machine in 1986, initially using only its own-brand pods. But after Nespresso’s patents began to expire in 2012, competitors started to offer capsules and machines compatible with the Nespresso system. Nestlé would not say what proportion of its capsules are recycled, instead focusing on its recycling “capacity” – which it says is 100%. Market research company Mintel estimated the UK coffee pods market to be worth £182m in 2016 in its most recent study, up from £158m in 2015, and forecast to reach £206m this year. According to their research, 29% of Britons own a coffee pod machine. The move was welcomed by Trewin Restorick, chief executive of environmental charity Hubbub, who said: “Nespresso pods are mainly aluminium and can be recycled whereas many of their competitors’ pods are mixed plastic which currently can’t be recycled. But using aluminium only makes sense from a resource point of view if the discarded aluminium is recycled, otherwise it is a very carbon intensive way for consumers to get their coffee. Nespresso needs to scale up the recycling process quickly.” The company’s long-term ambition, a Nespresso spokeswoman said, was to enable more recycling of used capsules via council collection services. This article was amended on 2 May 2017. Because of an editing error, an earlier version said the Nespresso trial scheme would allow consumers to recycle their used aluminium capsules for the first time in the UK. Consumers could previously recycle the capsules, but this is the first time they can do so through a local council. | ['environment/recycling', 'uk/london', 'food/coffee', 'business/nestle', 'environment/environment', 'uk/uk', 'tone/news', 'type/article', 'profile/rebeccasmithers', 'publication/theobserver', 'theobserver/news', 'theobserver/news/uknews', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/observer-main'] | environment/recycling | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE | 2017-05-02T11:14:24Z | true | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE |
lifeandstyle/the-northerner/2013/feb/20/yorkshire-business-self-sufficiency | 'Money is like blood – it needs to circulate for local economies to survive' | With the spectre of a triple-dip recession looming menacingly on the horizon, proud businesspeople from Yorkshire are working together, harnessing each other's talents and local produce, to ensure they all make it through to the other side. Ross Halliday, co-founder of the Holbeck-based coffee chain Out of the Woods, has built her business around the quality of her local suppliers. "We need to support each other to maintain the local economy," she said. "There are many amazing small producers in Yorkshire and supporting each other's businesses helps maintain longevity." Out of the Woods is part of a burgeoning Leeds scene intent on utilising the best products and talent the region has to offer in a variety of ways. Far from sticking to the usual Yorkshire staples, many local suppliers are now branching out and producing their own takes on exotic produce. For example, Three Little Pigs – based at Kiplingcotes Farm in Beverley – produces Yorkshire chorizo from their own breed of pigs, while the Shepherd's Purse in Thirsk invented their own take on feta cheese known as Yorkshire Fettle. Piers Chead, CEO of start-up specialists The Formations Company, is a firm believer in small businesses seizing the initiative and teaming up to fight the downturn. He explains: "Choosing to support local businesses can make a profound economic impact on the fate of many communities." The businesses are not looking local just to reduce costs, but boost the surrounding community too. As well as increased consumer choice and employment of local people, which come hand-in-hand with micro-economic methods, Chead says the alliance also "strengthens a community's resolve to create a better environment for families and business in their local area". Research carried out by the New Economics Foundation (NEF) found that more than twice as much money stayed in the local community when people shopped at a farmer's market as opposed to a supermarket chain. NEF spokesman David Boyle says "money works like blood – it needs to circulate around the local economy if it is going to keep it alive". Money spent in large supermarkets instead of local businesses "pours straight out again," according to Boyle. So, where local economies are suffering, it's not due to low cash flow – it is a result of how and where that money is spent. Laura Wellington, a co-founder of Duke Studios, a creative and co-working space based in Munro House, Leeds, believes that skills nurtured locally are a key pillar of both their business and the local economy: "Leeds has suffered massively due to talented people thinking places like Manchester or London have better career options." Along with business partner James Abbott, Wellington thinks that simply retaining the talent of those trained and educated in Leeds will give the city a significant economic boost. This sentiment is echoed by Boyle, although he noted that local areas shouldn't aim to become totally self-sufficient – after all, outside parties can still bring a lot to a community, "That is why the key to local economic recovery may not always be specialisation, as often it is going to be import replacement." His advice for those looking for success on a smaller scale around the country is simple: "You can produce more locally if you make better use of what you've got. People, money and land." | ['food/food', 'uk/leeds', 'uk/uk', 'environment/sustainable-development', 'environment/environment', 'business/economics', 'business/business', 'business/economicgrowth', 'tone/blog', 'uk/the-northerner', 'environment/food', 'lifeandstyle/lifeandstyle', 'uk-news/yorkshire', 'type/article'] | environment/sustainable-development | CLIMATE_POLICY | 2013-02-20T14:29:00Z | true | CLIMATE_POLICY |
australia-news/2015/oct/12/mining-company-being-sued-over-gas-leaks-gave-money-to-lnp-and-labor | Mining company being sued over gas leaks gave money to LNP and Labor | Linc Energy, a mining company being prosecuted over allegedly dangerous gas leaks, gave more than $350,000 to political parties between 2009 and 2014, it has been revealed. The Queensland government recently filed a number of charges against Linc Energy over pollution from its underground coal gasification plant near Chinchilla. According to court documents, there were persistent leaks of toxic gas into the air and groundwater between 2008 and 2011, with the company accused of attempting to hide the plant’s problems from government officials in 2012. Most seriously, it is alleged that four Queensland government workers ended up in hospital with suspected gas poisoning from the Hopeland site. The alleged gas leaks occurred during a period where Linc Energy made donations worth $352,799 to political parties between 2009 to 2014, according to declarations lodged with the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC). Of this, $203,000 has gone to the federal Liberal party, $124,999 to the Queensland Liberal National party, and $24,000 to the Queensland Labor party. Linc Energy has also given $264,000 to the journalists’ union, the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance, for the purpose of sponsoring the Walkley Foundation and awards. The company is listed as a partner on the Walkley Foundation site. While the AEC calls any sum of money given to a political party a donation, parties are able to classify amounts as “donation” or “other receipt” at their own discretion, where other receipt may refer to anything from financial returns from investments, or payment for membership fees or event tickets in lieu of donations. Linc Energy were also previously clients of Coalition-aligned political lobbyists Barton Deakin. Linc Energy has said there is no evidence that the workers’ sickness was related to environmental pollution. It launched its own investigation after the incident. Queensland’s environment department deployed around 100 officers to measure pollution in the area after an investigation kicked off in 2014. Steven Miles, the state environment minister, visited Chinchilla in June to talk to 50 families who live near the plant. Five charges lodged against Linc Energy could see the company fined up to $32.5m for causing serious environmental harm. Landholders in the region say they complained for several years about the smell of gas coming from Linc’s facility. Underground coal gasification involves igniting a coal seam, producing synthesis gas. “We used to get a terrible stink from it,” George Bender, a local farmer, told Guardian Australia. Bender lives approximately 10km from the mine site. “The smell would make you sick, your eyes would start to burn, it would affect your breathing. The department followed up our complaints but then they didn’t take any action. “When the [Campbell] Newman government took over, virtually everything came to a standstill, they didn’t look at the issue after that. If the gas keeps coming up closer to the surface I’m sure crops won’t grow if their roots get into it. “If it does cause problems for us I suppose we have to shut up and put up with it. The mining industry can get away with bloody blue murder but when a farmer does something they come down on you like a bloody ton of bricks.” Bender said that Linc Energy blamed his farm equipment for the smell and then offered him an air conditioning system. Linc Energy confirmed that it spent $1m on “odour suppression” and offered air conditioning to neighbouring properties. Drew Hutton, of the Lock the Gate alliance, said farmers were concerned about the impact of gas upon nearby soil and water supplies. “Farmers over 300km away can’t dig a hole more than two metres deep without permissions because there are flammable, toxic substances there,” he said. “This is a serious issue. “There is nothing illegal about the donations, but that’s the problem with our donation laws. If your party is dependent on huge amounts of money coming in, there’s always a suspicion there’s an inordinate amount of influence. People have been complaining non-stop to the department for years about this. You’ve got to ask why it took until 2014 before a serious investigation was done.” A spokesman for Linc Energy said: “Linc Energy has been a longstanding corporate supporter of both political parties in the past at a state and federal level, as is common practice in the corporate sector. “Linc Energy strongly rejects all the allegations of causing serious environmental harm that the department accuses the company with and believes the evidence the department has in relation to this will be found wanting.” The spokesman added that Linc Energy’s investigation found there was no presence of carbon monoxide in the area where the Queensland government workers were before falling ill, so it was “highly unlikely” the workers were poisoned on site. The Liberal party did not return a call on the issue and the Queensland government failed to answer questions on why it waited until 2014 to launch an investigation into Linc Energy. This article was amended on 13 October 2015 to clarify that while the MEAA did receive donations from Linc Energy, they were solely for the purpose of sponsorship of the Walkley awards. | ['australia-news/queensland', 'australia-news/australia-news', 'environment/mining', 'business/mining', 'environment/environment', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/oliver-milman', 'profile/nick-evershed'] | environment/mining | ENERGY | 2015-10-12T03:50:08Z | true | ENERGY |
environment/2015/jul/28/poll-finds-60-believe-carbon-tax-had-little-or-no-effect-on-electricity-bills | Poll finds 60% believe carbon tax had little or no effect on electricity bills | More than 60% of voters think the former Labor government’s carbon price had no effect, or only a small effect, on electricity bills – as the Abbott government tries to rerun its cost of living argument against Labor’s pledge to reintroduce an emissions trading scheme. Only 21% of voters (30% of Liberal/National voters and 15% of Labor and Green voters) believe the carbon price had a big impact on electricity prices, according to the latest poll by Essential Media. The poll comes as prime minister Tony Abbott ramps up his attack on Bill Shorten’s pledge to reintroduce an emissions trading scheme, calling it an “electricity tax scam” that would massively increase household costs. The poll found that 51% of voters thought their electricity bill had gone up over the past 12 months and only 9% thought it had gone down, despite evidence the carbon price repeal had pushed electricity and gas prices down. The final report from the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission on its monitoring of the carbon price repeal, released Tuesday, confirmed the carbon tax repeal had flowed on to reductions in household electricity and gas bills. The ACCC said the carbon-related reductions ranged between $153 a year and $269 a year, or $2.90 and $5.10 a week. It “confirmed” the government’s claim, based on Treasury modelling, that overall household savings would have been about $550 a year, because of flow-on cost reductions in rates and council charges, transport and food. The ACCC chairman, Rod Sims, told Guardian Australia consumers may not have felt the price reductions because “in some states prices did still go up, but by less than they otherwise would have, because extra network costs were still flowing through”. Sims said it had been his decision to include confirmation of an overall $550 benefit to households. “Everything we saw told us the original Treasury modelling was about right,” he said. Consistent with other recent polls, the Essential poll put Labor ahead on two-party-preferred terms by 53% to 47%. The small business minister, Bruce Billson, said the ACCC report “confirms that a tax on carbon is harmful for businesses and households. Combined with a proposed increase in the renewable energy target, Bill Shorten’s plan to bring back the carbon tax would massively increase power bills for households and business, destroy jobs and damage industries.” Coalition frontbencher and communications minister, Malcolm Turnbull, pointed out this week that every policy to push low-emissions generation came at a cost – which might in generic terms be called a tax – even the renewable energy target which the government itself supports. “There has been a distinction drawn in the debate ... between a fixed-price cost on carbon which people particularly called a carbon tax and one that is floating because it is related to the purchase of permits and that, of course, the price of the permits depends on supply and demand and that’s an ETS. And so in a lot of the literature and discussion you’ve talked about the virtues of a tax versus the virtues of an ETS,” he said. “But either way they are both a cost. So, yes, you can call them both generically a tax but equally the renewable energy target is a cost. So all of these measures, there is no such thing as a cost-free way of reducing carbon emissions. That is to say, as long as emissions-intensive forms of generating energy are cheaper than the low-emission forms and, of course, that is starting to change, the technological developments with solar in particular. | ['environment/carbon-tax', 'australia-news/tony-abbott', 'australia-news/bill-shorten', 'environment/emissionstrading', 'environment/environment', 'environment/climate-crisis', 'australia-news/coalition', 'australia-news/australian-politics', 'australia-news/labor-party', 'australia-news/australia-news', 'australia-news/malcolm-turnbull', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'australia-news/essential-poll', 'profile/lenore-taylor'] | environment/carbon-tax | CLIMATE_POLICY | 2015-07-28T07:30:47Z | true | CLIMATE_POLICY |
sustainable-business/2016/jul/02/cardboard-bioplastic-tents-pitching-up-at-festivals-glastonbury-waste | Living in a box: the cardboard and bioplastic tents pitching up at festivals | By the end of the summer, hundreds of thousands of people will have made their way to muddy fields up and down the country, partied for several days straight, and inevitably left a trail of rubbish in their wake. As litter pickers descend on Glastonbury to deal with the weekend’s aftermath, we’re reminded that last year they had to clean up an estimated 5,000 abandoned tents, 6,500 sleeping bags, 3,500 airbeds, and 950 rolled mats. The problem is that cheap tents made from cheap materials – costing as little as £15 at some supermarkets – are easy to come by, says Amanda Campbell, founder of what she claims is the world’s first compostable tent, Comp-a-Tent. Campbell, a recent University College London graduate in architectural studies, thought up the compostable tent for her final year design project. During the research stage, she realised that a bio-based material such as corn starch bioplastic could biodegrade within 120 days when composted. On its own the bioplastic material couldn’t endure wear and tear, but by putting natural fibres from bamboo or silk between sheets of the bioplastic the tent could be made durable and waterproof. Campbell’s target market is the average festival-goer who considers their tent to be a throw-away purchase. An estimated one in five tents are abandoned at music festivals and Campbell wants to be able to offer them one they can dispose of with minimal impact on the environment and a good conscience. A good conscience however doesn’t come as cheap and the use of greener materials will cost around £50. Comp-a-Tent is due to be fully available in the summer of 2018, with limited edition tents on sale at certain festivals in 2017. Efforts to raise investment through crowdfunding are due to begin the middle of next year. The coming months will be spent gathering feedback and refining the product; focus is already on switching from an A-frame structure to a teepee to reduce the costs of manufacturing. As for how the tents would be sold, the company intends that they’ll be bought with festival tickets and then picked up on-site. One eco-tent that’s already on the market and purchased with festival tickets is KarTent, billed as the world’s first cardboard tent. KarTent partners with festivals to pre-pitch their tents and brands pay to advertise on the sides of them which helps reduce the price of the product for the consumer. The price of a tent can range from €55 (£42) to nothing when brands subsidise the whole cost through advertising. A 100% cardboard tent may conjure up images of a soggy structure collapsing in a downpour, but founder of the Netherlands-based company, Jan Portheine, says that the product has undergone rigorous testing – with experiments concluding it could withstand a few days of constant rain. As for whether festival-goers will buy into the idea, Portheine says it has the advantage of being pre-pitched which means consumers don’t have to spend time and effort erecting it. “It’s been extremely well received. We sold 600 at 10 festivals last year and are now into the thousands,” he says. At the end of a festival, KarTent takes the majority of the tents to a local recycling facility, but it is also considering options to extend the life cycle. “At the moment, we give good tents – the ones people haven’t abused – to scout groups and schools. We’re also investigating whether we can make festival furniture out of them and use them as compost for mushroom farmers.” Comp-a-Tent has already appeared at this year’s Green Futures at Glastonbury, while KarTents were pitched at European festivals over the summer including HellFest and Pinkpop. Portheine and Campbell realise that their products won’t solve the tent waste issue altogether – continued awareness is also needed. “This summer is about engaging with consumers and getting a wider conversation going,” says Campbell. “Our aim is to keep the parties of festivals going, without costing the earth.” | ['sustainable-business/series/circular-economy', 'sustainable-business/sustainable-business', 'travel/camping', 'music/music-festivals', 'culture/festivals', 'artanddesign/design', 'environment/waste', 'environment/environment', 'music/glastonbury-2016', 'type/article', 'tone/features', 'tone/sponsoredfeatures', 'profile/rich-mceachran', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-professional-networks'] | environment/waste | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE | 2016-07-02T07:00:02Z | true | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE |
world/2012/may/14/arizona-wildfires-early-start-season | Arizona wildfires: early start to season stokes fears across south-western US | Authorities across the south-western United States were braced for a summer season of wildfire destruction on Monday after an outbreak of five serious blazes in Arizona. In the first serious wildfires of the 2012 season, hundreds of firefighters, backed up by air support, struggled to contain five separate blazes in northern Arizona. The authorities ordered 300 homes evacuated in the historic mining town of Crown King, said Cliff Pearlberg, a spokesman for the state's forestry division. By late Sunday night, the fires had devoured about nine square miles of terrain, and the billowing smoke from the fires threatening Crown King could be seen in Phoenix, about 50 miles away. It was unusually early for such a serious outbreak and experts said the timing as well as prevailing dry conditions in Arizona and other parts of the south-west suggested a season of serious fire destruction was ahead. The state was considering restrictions on campfires and even on allowing visitors into wilderness areas, Pearlberg said. "We had a pitiful winter when it comes to moisture, and as a result the vegetation is very, very dry and without the snow pack in the high country that vegetation is also very, very dry," Pearlberg said. "It's also unseasonably warm for this kind of year and of course the relative humidity is very, very low which does not bode well for fire activity." Tom Spencer, who heads the predictive service for the Texas forest service, agreed – and warned that similarly dangerous conditions were in place across the south-west. "It's not looking very good for Arizona right now," he said. "But all of the west right now has the potential to have an active fire season." Last year was a devastating year for wildfires in Texas as in Arizona, and the conditions so far are pointing to another season of destruction. Much of the region has been in a prolonged drought. In Arizona's case, about two-thirds of the state is in extreme drought, with little prospect of rain throughout the summer. "If that were Texas I would say that that is a sign the fire season would continue into early summer anyway," said Spencer. "When you cut off the moisture that just keeps that vegetation parched and available as a fuel." Mountain fires, such as those now burning in the Tonto national forest in Arizona, are especially difficult to contain, because the areas are remote, and heavy timber can burn for days or weeks. The early start to fire season, with the first fires discovered in Tonto forest on Saturday, sharpened fears of a repeat of last year's historic fires. Texas suffered its most destructive season of wildfires in 2011, with nearly 30,000 fires consuming nearly 4m acres of land and destroying more than 2,800 homes. Arizona experienced its own ecological disaster last year, with the Wallow Fire, which was sparked by a neglected campfire. The fire consumed more than 500,000 acres in eastern Arizona, and took more than six weeks to contain. The national fire centre in Boise, Idaho, earlier this month predicted a higher than average risk of wildfires across a great expanse of the south-west, from the foothills of southern California to parts of Nevada, Utaha, New Mexico and much of Arizona. The centre also warned of a more active fire season on the east coast, in Florida, as well as parts of Georgia and South Carolina, and in the upper mid-west. | ['us-news/arizona', 'world/wildfires', 'environment/environment', 'us-news/us-news', 'world/natural-disasters', 'tone/news', 'type/article', 'profile/suzannegoldenberg'] | world/wildfires | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2012-05-14T17:54:46Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
environment/2019/nov/14/council-leaders-demand-huge-funding-rise-after-floods | Council leaders demand huge funding rise after floods | Leaders of councils across northern England have called for “massive” increases in funding to deal with major incidents, as the Guardian learned that around 1,800 homes and businesses have been badly flooded in the region. Dozens of weather warnings remain in place around the country, from Oxfordshire to Yorkshire and across the West Midlands, where more than 100 schools were forced to close on Thursday. The mayor of the Sheffield city region, Dan Jarvis, described the flood-stricken village of Fishlake, near Doncaster, as having “the feel of a disaster movie”. As flood-affected families braced for further downpours, the leaders of six councils demanded immediate and long-term financial support to recover from the devastation. The leaders of councils in Doncaster, Rotherham, Sheffield, Barnsley, Bassetlaw and Kirklees warned of “considerable and lasting damage on a wide scale”, including to power plants and transport infrastructure, and called for funding increases to help them cope with future floods. In the absence of detailed official figures, the Guardian contacted local authorities in all flood-affected areas and found that at least 1,758 properties had been flooded across Yorkshire, Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire. The figure is more than double the official Environment Agency estimate of 830 properties flooded. The worst effects of the floods were felt in Doncaster, where 970 properties were affected and more than 1,200 people were evacuated after the River Don burst its banks nearly a week ago. There were a further 450 properties flooded in Nottinghamshire – 200 in the centre of Worksop, 30 in Retford and 50 in the pit village of Shireoaks, with Mansfield and Newark also badly hit — and more than 40 in Lincolnshire. In Sheffield, 30 residential properties and five commercial premises were flooded, while 158 properties were hit in neighbouring Rotherham. Boris Johnson has faced criticism for his response to the floods, which began a week ago, and for refusing to classify them as a national emergency last Friday. He ordered 200 soldiers to help the recovery effort in Doncaster but was accosted by angry residents when he visited the flooded village of Stainforth, near Doncaster, on Wednesday. Nearly 70 flood warnings were in place across England on Thursday night, meaning urgent action was required, along with a further 140 weather alerts warning that flooding was possible. The Met Office warned there was a danger to life in large swathes of the Midlands, South Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire going into Thursday evening, with fast-flowing or deep flood water possible. More homes and businesses could be flooded, meteorologists said. As the rainfall spread south, firefighters were called to rescue a number of people from vehicles stuck in flood water in Oxfordshire while rail services were suspended on Chiltern Railways between Stratford-upon-Avon and Hatton in Warwickshire because of flooding. Lines were also blocked between Hereford and Great Malvern and Worcester and Birmingham at Bromsgrove. Jarvis said after visiting Fishlake: “People are in a pretty difficult situation. I worry about what’s going to happen in the coming days and weeks. “There is quite a bit of developing anger ... My concern is that, whilst we have got the media focus over the next few days or perhaps even weeks, there is a danger we will be completely forgotten about, so I am asking Boris Johnson to make some meaningful commitments.” Jarvis has written to the prime minister asking him to help those “without insurance or whose policies have been deemed invalid”. He also asked for the Environment Agency to lead a review into the type and scale of flood defences required for the River Don. He said that 4,220 properties had been affected in South Yorkshire alone, including those hit by power cuts and evacuation warnings. Though the government reimburses local authorities for costs incurred as part of their immediate response under the so-called Bellwin scheme, the council leaders demanded help to pay for long-term recovery. In a letter to the communities secretary, Robert Jenrick, they wrote: “There is likely to be considerable and lasting damage on a wide scale, including, but certainly not limited to, vital infrastructure including power plants, roads and bridges which is likely to have long-term impacts, such as disruptions to supplies of clean water, wastewater treatment, electricity, transport, communication, education, and health and social care. Previous floods have also resulted in a reduction in economic activity which can leave communities vulnerable.” Core funding for councils has fallen by almost £16bn in the last decade, and a further £1.3bn was cut from the revenue support grant to councils this year alone, they noted, warning: “Five more years of cuts to council budgets will make dealing with major incidents like this increasingly difficult. Councils need massive increases in day-to-day funding rather than just one-off funding commitments. It is vital that you commit to reversing these cuts as Labour has, and provide the funding we will need to help our communities recover in the long term.” The leaders also asked the government to extend the two-month deadline by which each local authority has to complete all works paid for by the Bellwin scheme, on the grounds that they are all busy preparing for an “unexpected general election at an unusual time of year”. According to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, 4,321 properties have been advised to evacuate across South Yorkshire, Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire, with more than 800 flooded. The Environment Agency said since flooding began last Thursday, around 14,400 properties had been protected by flood defences, including 5,000 in South Yorkshire. In Matlock, where the prime minister was filmed helping to mop up flood water in a Specsavers on Friday, around 50 businesses suffered flood damage but there were no evacuations, according to Derbyshire Dales district council. | ['environment/flooding', 'society/localgovernment', 'world/natural-disasters', 'environment/environment', 'politics/politics', 'society/society', 'uk/uk', 'uk-news/yorkshire', 'uk/doncaster', 'politics/dan-jarvis', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/josh-halliday', 'profile/helenpidd', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/topstories'] | environment/flooding | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2019-11-14T19:19:30Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
environment/2019/oct/21/scores-more-heart-attacks-and-strokes-on-high-pollution-days-figures-show | Scores more heart attacks and strokes on high pollution days, figures show | Scores of children and adults are being rushed to hospital for emergency treatment on days of high pollution in cities across England, figures show. Each year emergency services see more than 120 additional cardiac arrests, more than 230 additional strokes and nearly 200 more people with asthma requiring hospital treatment on days of high pollution compared with the average on days of lower pollution. The data, to be published in full next month, shows the extra strain that poor air quality is putting on already stretched NHS emergency resources. Simon Stevens, the chief executive of NHS England, said: “These new figures show air pollution is now causing thousands of strokes, cardiac arrests and asthma attacks, so it’s clear that the climate emergency is in fact also a health emergency. Since these avoidable deaths are happening now, not in 2025 or 2050, together we need to act now.” Previous studies have found spikes in hospital admissions and GP visits on days of high pollution, but the new data gives precise numbers for nine English cities and shows a clear relationship between heart attacks, strokes and respiratory illnesses and dirty air. The researchers defined high pollution days by dividing the year in two based on levels of pollution and comparing the number of cases of the relevant illness in the higher pollution half of the year with the number of similar cases on each day in the lower half. The data, collated by King’s College London (KCL), covers London, where there are 338 more emergencies a year on higher pollution days compared with low pollution days, Birmingham (65 a year), Bristol (22), Derby (16), Liverpool (28), Manchester (34), Nottingham (19), Oxford (10) and Southampton (16). Much of the recent research on air pollution has focused on the lifelong effects of chronic exposure, including cognitive decline, stunted growth in children and premature death. However, it can also bring on serious illness more immediately. Jenny Bates, an air pollution campaigner at Friends of the Earth, said: “Many people may not realise how dangerous air pollution at high levels can be, and that it can trigger heart attacks, strokes and asthma attacks as well as having long-term health effects. These figures will be a wake-up call for city leaders to take the strongest possible action.” The government has pledged to tackle air pollution in its environment bill, proposals for which were laid out after the Queen’s speech. Campaigners are concerned that the measures proposed are too vague and too weak. Polly Billington, the director of UK100, a network of local government leaders across England that have pledged to shift wholly to clean energy by 2050, said: “We would like to see World Health Organization air pollution standards included in the bill, as they are widely seen as gold standard, with a legally binding timetable to meet them, as that creates certainty and enables long-term planning. The absence of significantly increased powers for local leaders, together with a lack of reference to the need for adequate funding, are the big holes in the bill that will hold action back.” On Wednesday the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, and UK100 will hold an international clean air summit with the World Health Organization (WHO) director general, Tedros Adhanom. Heather Walton, a health expert with the environmental research group at KCL, said the study was intended to provide more detail than others that have tended to concentrate on the effects of air pollution on life expectancy, such as estimates that pollution contributes to 36,000 deaths a year in the UK. By homing in on hospital admissions for cardiac arrests, strokes and asthma, the researchers were able to provide a clearer picture of the acute impacts on people and how emergency services are affected. “This provides additional evidence of the important need for further action to reduce air pollution,” Walton said. Bates said clean air zones were needed, but also measures to cut all traffic “because all vehicles produce deadly fine particle air pollution from brake and tyre wear. This way the air pollution health crisis and the climate emergency can be addressed together, helping to make our cities and towns healthier and more attractive.” The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said: “We are taking urgent action to improve air quality and tackle pollution so people can live longer healthier lives. Our landmark environment bill will set ambitious, legally binding targets to reduce fine particulate matter and increase local powers to address key sources of air pollution. “We are already working hard to reduce transport emissions and are investing £3.5bn to clean up our air, while our clean air strategy has been praised by the WHO as an example for the rest of the world to follow.” Last week Europe’s environmental watchdog found that little or no progress had been made across Europe on cutting levels of fine particulate matter, known as PM2.5, which is one of the most dangerous forms of pollution because it can lodge deep in the lungs and penetrate the bloodstream. | ['environment/air-pollution', 'environment/pollution', 'society/heart-attack', 'society/stroke', 'society/asthma', 'society/health', 'environment/environment', 'society/society', 'uk/uk', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/fiona-harvey', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/topstories', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-home-news', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-science'] | environment/pollution | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE | 2019-10-20T23:01:09Z | true | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE |
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