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environment/2011/apr/15/google-solar-mojave-ivanpah | Google invests $168m in world's largest solar power tower plant | Google's product portfolio has now expanded from search engine power to solar power. The company has invested $168 million in a Mojave Desert facility that will become the world's largest solar power tower plant. The site is located on 3,600 acres of land in the Mojave Desert in southeastern California. According to gizmag, "the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System (ISEGS) will boast 173,000 heliostats that will concentrate the sun's rays onto a solar tower standing approximately 450 feet (137 m) tall." Construction on this plant started in October 2010. When finished in 2013, the facility is expected to generate 392 MW of solar energy. Solar power tower development, while less advanced than the more common trough systems, may offer higher efficiency and better energy storage capabilities. Parabolic trough systems consist of parabolic mirrors that concentrate sunlight onto a Dewar tube running the length of the mirror through which a heat transfer fluid runs that is then used to heat steam in a standard turbine. Solar power tower systems such as the ISEGS on the other hand focus a large area of sunlight into a single solar receiver on top of a tower to produce steam at high pressure and temperatures of up to 550 ° C (over 1,000° F) to drive a standard turbine and generator. The ISEGS also uses a dry-cooling technology that reduces water consumption by 90 percent and uses 95 percent less water than competing solar thermal technologies. Water is also recirculated during energy before being reused to clean the plant's mirrors. According to BrightSource Energy, the plant developer, this will be the first large-scale solar power tower plant built in the U.S. in nearly two decades and will single-handedly almost double the amount of commercial solar thermal electricity produced in the U.S. today and nearly equal the amount of total solar installed in the U.S. in 2009 alone. The Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System • A 370-megawatt nominal (392 megawatt gross) solar complex using mirrors to focus the power of the sun on solar receivers atop power towers. • The electricity generated by all three plants is enough to serve more than 140,000 homes in California during the peak hours of the day. • The complex will reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by more than 400,000 tons per year. • Located in Ivanpah, approximately 50 miles northwest of Needles, California (about five miles from the California-Nevada border) on federal land managed by the Bureau of Land Management. • The complex is comprised of three separate plants to be built in phases between 2010 and 2013, and will use BrightSource Energy's LPT 550 technology. | ['environment/series/guardian-environment-network', 'environment/solarpower', 'environment/renewableenergy', 'environment/environment', 'technology/technology', 'technology/google', 'us-news/california', 'world/world', 'type/article'] | environment/solarpower | ENERGY | 2011-04-15T12:44:33Z | true | ENERGY |
environment/2022/jul/20/old-cars-forced-off-road-as-europes-clean-air-zones-nearly-double | Old cars forced off road as Europe’s clean air zones nearly double | The number of clean air zones across Europe has risen 40% since 2019, forcing older and more polluting vehicles off the road, according to new research based on EU data. Low-emission zones (LEZs) have now been introduced in 320 European city regions, and that figure is expected to rise by more than half again, to 507, by 2025. All of Europe’s top 10 most popular tourist cities now restrict petrol and diesel clunkers, with stricter rules expected in existing LEZs including London, Paris, Brussels and Berlin within three years. Oliver Lord, the UK head of the Clean Cities Campaign, which carried out the research, said the new analysis showed that cities embracing LEZs such as Bristol, Birmingham and London were on the right side of history. “Clean air zones are one of the most effective ways to tackle toxic air in our cities,” he said. “We should applaud city leaders who are taking tough decisions to deliver clean air zones so that we can transform the air we breathe and phase out polluting cars.” Air pollution is a “public health emergency” responsible for more than 300,000 premature deaths a year in the EU, according to the World Health Organization. Dirty air is thought to cut global life expectancy by an average of almost two years, making it the single greatest environmental threat to human health. But clean air zones have proved to be an effective countermeasure. In Madrid, a 32% fall in NO2 concentrations was observed after an LEZ was introduced in 2018. In the UK, a public consultation launched by the London mayor, Sadiq Khan, on expanding the city’s ultra-low emission zone (Ulez) to cover the entire capital next year is due to conclude at the end of July. Jemima Hartshorn, the founder of Mums for Lungs, told the Guardian: “We’ve just seen how effective the London Ulez has been at reducing air pollution. There has been a 20% drop in NO2 since the zone was expanded. It’s great to hear a growing number of other European cities are also taking air quality seriously.” Italy tops Europe’s clean air table, with 172 declared clean air zones, compared with 78 in Germany, 17 in the UK, 14 in the Netherlands and 8 in France. Few LEZs have been set up in central and eastern Europe, but Poland and Bulgaria are expected to unveil new zones in the months ahead. The new study argues that now is the time to step up the action, by moving to zero-emission zones (ZEZs) ahead of a planned phase-out of new fossil fuel vehicles in the EU by 2035 and the UK by 2030. Up to 35 ZEZ’s are planned in Europe by 2030, with 26 solely addressing delivery vehicles in the Netherlands. Smaller pollution-free zones are planned for the same year in parts of Paris, Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Berlin, Heidelberg, Milan, Oslo, Rome, Rotterdam, Warsaw, Birmingham, Liverpool and Greater Manchester. Two small-scale schemes are already up and running in Oxford and parts of central London. | ['environment/pollution', 'environment/environment', 'environment/air-pollution', 'society/health', 'society/society', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'environment/low-emission-zones', 'profile/arthurneslen', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/uknews', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-environment'] | environment/pollution | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE | 2022-07-20T06:00:12Z | true | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE |
news/2017/sep/24/world-weatherwatch-hurricanes-wildfires-and-early-snow | World weatherwatch: hurricanes, wildfires – and early snow | The 2017 Atlantic hurricane season is far from over but has already shattered many long-standing hurricane records. A total of 13 storms have been named since 1 June, seven of which achieved hurricane status. Of those seven four were classed as major with two attaining the highest category 5 of the Saffir-Simpson hurricane wind scale. This season marks one of only six to hold two category 5 storms (Irma and Maria). Total damage costs are expected to be above $160 billion (USD) and a total of 210 fatalities have been reported. Over 2,000 hectares (5,000 acres) of forest have recently been scorched by wildfires in the central mountainous area of Tejeda in Gran Canaria in the Canary Islands. The fire was first reported early last Wednesday afternoon and over 300 firefighters and soldiers have been tackling the blaze. Relief efforts were hampered by strong winds fanning the flames to heights of 20m. By Thursday, nearly 800 people had been evacuated from villages in the area. It has been unseasonably cold over central Europe lately with more than 50cm of fresh snow falling in less than 24 hours at the mid-station of Austria’s Hintertux glacier ski resort (2,660m) on Wednesday last week. With the ski season rapidly approaching, many enthusiasts may be looking for early indications regarding the coming winter. This early cold snap unfortunately does not hold any significance for the outcome of the main winter season. More normal autumnal conditions are to return over the coming days with any unusual low-lying snow accumulations expected to melt. | ['news/series/world-weatherwatch', 'news/series/weatherwatch', 'world/natural-disasters', 'world/wildfires', 'world/hurricanes', 'world/hurricane-maria', 'world/hurricane-irma', 'world/spain', 'world/austria', 'type/article', 'tone/features', 'world/caribbean', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/weather2', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-weather'] | world/wildfires | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2017-09-24T20:30:03Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
environment/2012/dec/29/single-men-rubbish-at-recycling | Single men found to be rubbish at putting out the recycling | Men who live alone are the least likely to recycle in the UK, according to a study. As many homes come to terms with a backlog of discarded wrapping paper and empty packaging after Christmas, women will take on the most responsibility for disposing of it in an environmentally friendly way, according to new research. Results showed that single people living alone are less likely to recycle – only 65% did so, compared with 79% of mixed-sex couples. Of those living alone, 69% of women recycled some of their waste or unwanted items, whereas 58% of men were found to do the same. The study forms part of Understanding Society – the UK's biggest panel survey – and was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council and conducted by Essex University. More than 2,000 single men and women and 3,000 couples were asked about their housework routines, including whether they separated their waste for recycling. Although households are doing much less housework in general than they were 20 years ago, on average women still take on the bulk of domestic chores – especially when they live with a male partner. "Women are probably doing more than their share," says Hazel Pettifor, who led the study. "In the same way that housework tasks are often split with the woman of the house taking on the daily, routine activities, it is likely that women are emptying and rinsing out containers, removing lids and labels and sorting waste, while their menfolk make the fortnightly trip to the bottle bank or put the bins out." Men who are active in sharing housework were found to be just as likely to share in recycling when in a mixed-sex couple. But sharing did not guarantee an equal workload: women are the most committed recyclers, and more willing than men to expend time and energy on recycling. As local councils offer better recycling facilities, people are increasingly viewing it as an essential part of their household routine, rather than a voluntary green act. The UK's governments have set ambitious targets to increase domestic recycling of all waste to 50% by 2020 – currently standing at 41.5% in England and Wales, 37.2% in Scotland and 39.7% in Northern Ireland. The study shows that making men the focus for green messages could be the best way forward. | ['environment/recycling', 'environment/environment', 'environment/waste', 'environment/ethical-living', 'uk/uk', 'tone/news', 'type/article', 'publication/theobserver', 'theobserver/news', 'theobserver/news/uknews'] | environment/waste | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE | 2012-12-29T23:24:11Z | true | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE |
business/2007/apr/15/hurricanekatrina.usnews | Katrina evacuees 'remain poor' | Hopes that evacuees who fled New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina would find a better life elsewhere have been dashed and many remain jobless and poor, new research shows. When thousands were driven out of the flooded city in the summer of 2005, many went to more affluent surrounding areas and there was speculation that they could eventually benefit from living in areas with lower unemployment. But a paper by economist Jacob Vigdor, of the US National Bureau of Economic Research, finds that the evacuees are much more likely to be unemployed and have maintained their income only through government handouts. 'Overall, these results do not paint a very promising picture,' Vigdor says. 'While it is easy to find examples of success stories among the Katrina evacuees, the more general portrait is of a societal problem that is not solving itself.' He tracked the income and working status of New Orleans residents from 2004, before the hurricane, to 2006, and found that long-term evacuees were almost 20 per cent less likely to be in work today. | ['business/business', 'us-news/hurricane-katrina', 'us-news/us-news', 'world/world', 'world/hurricanes', 'type/article', 'profile/heatherstewart', 'publication/theobserver', 'theobserver/businessandmedia', 'theobserver/businessandmedia/news'] | world/hurricanes | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2007-04-14T23:02:12Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
commentisfree/2019/sep/04/climate-crisis-hurricane-dorian-floods-bahamas | Global heating made Hurricane Dorian bigger, wetter – and more deadly | Michael Mann and Andrew Dessler | The Bahamas, for those who live there, is simply a place to call home. For many Americans, it’s a dream vacation spot. But Hurricane Dorian turned that dream into a nightmare. And the worst part is this is only the beginning. Because unless we confront the climate crisis, warming will turn more and more of our fantastic landscapes, cities we call paradise and other dream destinations into nightmarish hellscapes. While the science has yet to come in on the specifics of just how much worse climate change made Dorian, we already know enough to say that warming worsened the damage. Because it’s not a coincidence that Dorian was one of the strongest landfalling storms ever recorded in the Atlantic, with the strongest sustained peak winds east of Florida, and the strongest ever to hit the Bahamas. This comes less than a year after Florida withstood the first landfalling category 5 hurricane in decades, on 5 October – the latest ever in the season for a storm that strong. On a basic physics level, we know that warm waters fuel hurricanes, and Dorian was strengthened by waters well above average temperatures. The fact that climate change has heated up our oceans means Dorian was stronger than it would have been had we not spent the past 150 years dumping carbon pollution into the atmosphere. Sea surface temperatures were more than 1C warmer in the region where Dorian formed and strengthened than they were before we started burning fossil fuels. Empirically, there is a roughly 7% increase in maximum sustained wind speeds of the strongest storms for each 1C of warming. Since destructive potential is proportional to the third power of the wind speed, that corresponds to a 23% increase in potential wind damage. We saw that wind damage in the heartbreaking scenes of total devastation that have come in from the Bahamas. We know that the warmer air gets, the more moisture it can hold – and then turn into flooding rains in a storm like this. And we know that as climate change has melted glaciers and ice around the world, that water has gone into the oceans. The extra water, along with the expansion of water as it’s warmed, means that sea levels have been raised. That means when a storm like Dorian makes landfall, there’s more water for its storm surge, already bolstered by stronger winds, to push further inland. All that extra water makes hurricanes even more deadly, since it’s generally not the wind but the water that kills people. So although Dorian’s 220mph gusts were incredibly dangerous (and sped up thanks to climate change), it was the 20-plus feet of storm surge and torrential rains that were the most destructive elements. But there are two other ways that warming has probably worsened Dorian’s damage. One is that all that warm water allowed for the storm to ramp up quickly, undergoing what is known as rapid intensification as it exploded from a moderate category 2 to extreme category 5 over just two days. A recent study has shown that this is getting more common because of climate change, and indeed the past few years have seen many similar examples of this effect in action. Dorian was the fourth category 5 storm in just the last four years. So while climate change is making it so hurricanes can spin up quickly, it may also be slowing down how fast hurricanes move. Instead of moving across a coast and dissipating as normal, in recent years these storms are lingering longer in place, which means more flooding as the water piles up. For example, that’s exactly what we saw in Houston during Harvey, and in North Carolina during Florence. Had Dorian been moving at a regular pace of a few miles an hour, the devastation in the Bahamas would have been much less severe. But because it sat in place, basically stationary, the damage has been catastrophic. Again, Dorian is far from unique in moving slowly, as a study last year found a 10% decrease in speed for storms like this globally, while a similar study found a 17% decrease along the east coast of the US. While neither of these studies directly tie that slowdown to climate change, the theory that climate change is changing the jet stream in ways that would lead to stalling storms (a phenomenon one of us has researched) is growing increasingly convincing. When all these factors combine in one storm, as it has for Dorian, it is truly a nightmare scenario – and a preview of the climate crisis to come. The only question is whether we have the foresight to address it. Michael Mann is distinguished professor of atmospheric science at Pennsylvania State University. His most recent book, with Tom Toles, is The Madhouse Effect: How Climate Change Denial Is Threatening Our Planet, Destroying Our Politics, and Driving Us Crazy. Andrew Dessler is a professor of atmospheric sciences and holder of the Reta A Haynes chair of geosciences at Texas A&M University. His most recent book is the Science and Politics of Global Climate Change: A Guide to the Debate | ['commentisfree/commentisfree', 'environment/climate-crisis', 'world/hurricane-dorian', 'world/extreme-weather', 'world/natural-disasters', 'world/world', 'environment/environment', 'us-news/us-news', 'type/article', 'tone/comment', 'profile/michael-e-mann', 'profile/andrew-e-dessler', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/us-opinion'] | world/hurricane-dorian | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2019-09-04T06:00:13Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
music/2013/sep/17/glastonbury-2014-ticket-details-announced | Glastonbury festival 2014: ticket sale details announced | This year's festival mud may still be clinging to some of your belongings, but it's already time to start thinking about Glastonbury 2014. Tickets for next year's festival, which will take place on 25-29 June, will go on sale on Sunday 6 October at 9am, costing £210 plus a £5 booking fee – although a £50 deposit is all that's needed to secure a ticket before paying the bill in April. There's good news for those who want to travel by coach: this year, coach packages will be available three days before the main ticket sale, from 6pm on Thursday 3 October. The aim is to "reward green travellers", according to a festival spokesperson. Although no acts have been announced yet, organiser Michael Eavis has said the three headline acts are already lined up. Rumours of potential headliners include David Bowie, Fleetwood Mac, Daft Punk, Foo Fighters, Elbow, Kanye West, Oasis and Adele. The past summer's festival saw Arctic Monkeys, Rolling Stones and Mumford & Sons headline, with Eavis declaring the lineup "hard to beat". Festivalgoers will have to register on the Glastonbury website before buying tickets, with a maximum purchase limit of six each per transaction, both for standard and coach-plus-ticket packages. Those interested in buying Glastonbury tickets should head online to glastonbury.seetickets.com, or call 0844 412 4635 from a UK phone (for international callers +44 1159 934 183). For more information, visit the Glastonbury 2014 ticket information page here. The Guardian is the official media partner of Glastonbury festival. | ['music/glastonbury', 'music/music-festivals', 'culture/festivals', 'music/music', 'culture/culture', 'tone/news', 'music/popandrock', 'environment/green-politics', 'type/article', 'profile/timjonze'] | environment/green-politics | CLIMATE_POLICY | 2013-09-17T12:15:48Z | true | CLIMATE_POLICY |
business/2014/mar/07/chinese-company-default-bonds-shanghai-chaori-solar | No government rescue as first Chinese company defaults on domestic bonds | A solar-panel manufacturer has become the first Chinese company to default on domestic bonds, in a watershed moment for market forces in the world's second largest economy. There was no sign of a last-minute government rescue for Shanghai Chaori Solar, after the firm failed to repay the bulk of an interest repayment that was due on Friday. The loss-making firm warned earlier this week it would be only be able to repay 4m yuan (£389,000) out of the 89m yuan interest payment, due on 1bn yuan of bonds issued in 2012. Liu Tielong, Chaori's board secretary told the Wall Street Journal on Thursday that the Shanghai government "hasn't promised anything and is treating our debt crisis according to market rules". He said a bondholders' meeting to discuss the debt would be called in the coming days. "We will try our best to pay bondholders as soon as possible but the company also has other debts," said Liu. The default happened after a last-gasp refinancing plan fell at the final hurdle, according to local media. Analysts said the move was a step forward for market discipline, in contrast to the customary government interventions to prop up struggling companies. "The Chaori default goes to show the government will begin to let the market decide the fate of weak borrowers. This test case indicates the government is addressing the moral hazard issue," Christopher Lee, managing director of corporate ratings for Greater China at Standard & Poor's, told Reuters. "Incidence of defaults will likely be incremental but controlled," he said, naming metals and mining, shipbuilding and materials as key default risks. Ivan Chung at Moody's credit rating agency said: "Credit risk would play a more important role in pricing, thereby making the bond market more efficient in the allocation of capital." At least three companies have announced plans to postpone bond sales in the wake of the Chaori default. | ['business/energy-industry', 'business/business', 'world/china', 'world/asia-pacific', 'world/world', 'environment/solarpower', 'environment/environment', 'tone/news', 'type/article', 'profile/jennifer-rankin', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/financial3'] | environment/solarpower | ENERGY | 2014-03-07T10:45:17Z | true | ENERGY |
commentisfree/2019/jan/18/the-guardian-view-of-crank-arguments-such-talk-costs-lives | The Guardian view of crank arguments: such talk costs lives | Editorial | In this year’s gallery of human pestilence, the World Health Organization highlights familiar characters: influenza, an infectious disease with pandemic potential; the deadly and contagious Ebola; a HIV epidemic that claims nearly a million lives every year. Yet among the major threats were anti-vaxxers, who refuse to vaccinate even when vaccines are available, and air pollution, which kills 7 million people prematurely every year. These are man-made public health dangers, in the sense that they are products of the choices that we have made, often irrationally. In the case of anti-vaxxers, we see crank arguments driving out sober ones, the appalling upshot of which is a resurgence of measles in countries that were on the verge of eradicating it. A lack of trust in doctors, encouraged by our era’s anti-government politics, has not helped. Society needs to drain support from the counter-intelligentsia and stem the flow of cash into its front organisations. With air pollution, vested interests make dubious arguments to forestall radical action on tackling dirty air despite early deaths. This week the UK government claimed it would set demanding targets to clean up our atmosphere, but there’s little detail on how these will be enforced. We need new forms of political and economic development. The current yardstick, gross domestic product, is deficient. Maintaining a record prison population adds to GDP in the US. Prostitution boosts the UK’s GDP. In the pursuit of sustainable prosperity, governments should encourage and participate in activities that make a positive contribution to genuine progress, and discourage those that do not. | ['commentisfree/commentisfree', 'society/health', 'society/society', 'society/vaccines', 'society/nhs', 'environment/air-pollution', 'environment/environment', 'society/prisons-and-probation', 'society/sex-work', 'uk/uk', 'tone/editorials', 'tone/comment', 'type/article', 'profile/editorial', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/journal', 'theguardian/journal/opinion', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-letters-and-leader-writers'] | environment/air-pollution | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE | 2019-01-18T18:25:27Z | true | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE |
environment/ethicallivingblog/2009/aug/20/mobile-phones-air-miles | Hang up on air miles for old phones scheme | Ed Gillespie | Just when I thought the climate change penny was finally dropping for the marketing industry, the marketing gurus have excelled themselves once more. After Tesco's bizarre and now infamous 'Flights for lights' advert, which encouraged us to buy low-energy lightbulbs with the lure of free air miles, it's now the turn of the mobile phone recycling industry to be hitched to the free flights bandwagon. Yup. Recycle your old mobile phone and get up to 750 air miles in exchange. Of course, handing in your handset for recycling or reuse is clearly a good thing. But can we expect every piece of good environmental behaviour to be rewarded with the promise of more air miles? It's like rewarding an alcoholic for staying off the sauce by giving them a bucket of gin. Apart from the 'beyond ironic' section of the Air Miles website's 'With the world in mind' green pages, there seems to be a rash of increasingly odd ways to obtain that precious right to fly for free. There's the honeymooning couple who took somewhat extreme advantage of another ill-advised Tesco trial of giving air miles for recycling cans and bottles by collecting 60,000 items (often by apprehending other people's leftover recycling) to cover their business class flight home. Or how about 'LiamRugby' who bought £170 worth of shampoo to get enough air miles for a Club upgrade. "Clearly my friends all think I'm crazy," commented Liam. At least in perennially sensible Canada you can actually exchange air miles for environmental rewards, from a donation to WWF through to a folding solar panel or electric scooter. Maybe we should resist the tawdry temptation of some Transatlantic travelling courtesy of air miles? Here are some alternative suggestions as to what we might do with our old mobile handsets: 1. Get creative: Donate your phone to Rob Pettit, who creates his art work with recycled phones, or Joe McKay who makes high-tech sculptural pieces with old and damaged mobiles 2. Hold on to it. Keep it and share your retention joy with others at Kept 3. Donate your phone to charity via Greensource or the Woodland Trust who'll turn your phone into forest 4. Give it to someone who'll make use of it - see Lifeline for Africa If none of these appeal you could always enter this weekend's World Phone Throwing championships in Finland. But you'd probably have to fly to get there in time. Now where can I get some air miles again? | ['environment/environment', 'environment/ethical-living', 'tone/blog', 'technology/mobilephones', 'technology/technology', 'environment/waste', 'environment/recycling', 'business/theairlineindustry', 'business/business', 'travel/travel', 'environment/blog', 'environment/green-living-blog', 'type/article', 'profile/ed-gillespie'] | environment/recycling | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE | 2009-08-20T11:51:13Z | true | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE |
environment/2011/dec/01/norway-accused-hypocrisy-deforestation-funding | Norway accused of hypocrisy over Indonesian deforestation funding | Norway has been accused of climate hypocrisy in Indonesia, where it has won plaudits for financing forest protection even as its state pension fund allegedly secures even greater revenues from logging, plantations, mining and other environmentally destructive practices. Conservation groups say Norway's sovereign wealth fund – thought to be the largest in the world – should set a better example of ethical investment in a country that is experiencing some of the world's worst deforestation problems. In recent years Norway has won plaudits as the leading financier of forest conservation in tropical countries under the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (Redd) scheme. Its commitments include billion-dollar pledges to Indonesia and Brazil, and have played an important role in climate talks. But environmental groups have highlighted the apparent contradiction in Norway's approach, which appears to fund conservation from one budget, while investing heavily from another in companies that accelerate deforestation. The UK-based Environmental Investigation Agency wrote in October to the country's prime minister, Jens Stoltenberg to call for a new approach. The NGO said Norway's financial involvement in Indonesia was a net negative for the environment. It said that the $30m (£19m) that Norway provided for Redd projects in 2010 is just of the fifth of the profits and a third of the investment value in companies involved in "logging, plantations, and mining companies currently deforesting large areas of Indonesia." At the heart of the discussion is one of the world's most powerful investment bodies. The Norwegian Pension Fund Global – widely referred to as the "oil fund" due to its reliance on revenues from North Sea petroleum products – overtook a similar investment holding operation in Abu Dhabi this year to become the world's biggest sovereign wealth fund, with holdings calculated at $570bn. The fund, which is administered by Norges Bank and ultimately the ministry of finance, is committed to transparency and ethical investment. But management of the fund has grown more complex as it expands in size to hold shares in more than 8,000 companies. Earlier this year, Rainforest Foundation Norway named 13 companies associated with deforestation – either through logging, mines or forest clearing for palm oil plantations – that the pension fund had invested in. It said the value of the holdings increased 18% last year. "Norway is saving rainforest with one hand and destroying the rainforest with the other," Lars Løvold of the Rainforest Foundation Norway wrote recently. The Norwegian authorities appear willing to listen, but they are still weighing up a response. After similar revelations last year, the fund sold off its share of $1.4m in a Malaysian company, Samling Global, that was implicated in logging. In 2008, it announced that it would divest from Rio Tinto due to the "unacceptable risk that the fund, through continued ownership in the company, would contribute to ongoing and future severe environmental damage" through mining operations in Indonesia. The pressure is increasing. This year, Telepak – an Indonesian NGO – and the Environmental Investigation Agency released video purporting to show a Malaysian-owned company clearing thousands of hectares of forest in an area of Kalimantan in Indonesia that was supposed to be protected under the Redd pilot scheme. They said the Norwegian fund held shares worth more than $40m in the company responsible, Kuala Lumpur Kepong. Environmental groups have suggested improved management of the pension fund to avoid conflicts between government policy and investment objectives. Last month, the managers of the fund sent an ethics group to investigate the situation in Indonesia, but their report has still to be made public. The finance ministry and Norges Bank have not yet responded to the Guardian's requests for a comment. | ['environment/deforestation', 'environment/conservation', 'environment/forests', 'world/norway', 'world/europe-news', 'world/world', 'world/indonesia', 'world/asia-pacific', 'global-development/natural-resources-and-development', 'global-development/global-development', 'tone/news', 'environment/environment', 'type/article', 'profile/jonathanwatts'] | environment/deforestation | BIODIVERSITY | 2011-12-01T12:08:01Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
world/2010/jan/05/amazon-dorado-satellite-discovery | Amazon explorers uncover signs of a real El Dorado | It is the legend that drew legions of explorers and adventurers to their deaths: an ancient empire of citadels and treasure hidden deep in the Amazon jungle. Spanish conquistadores ventured into the rainforest seeking fortune, followed over the centuries by others convinced they would find a lost civilisation to rival the Aztecs and Incas. Some seekers called it El Dorado, others the City of Z. But the jungle swallowed them and nothing was found, prompting the rest of the world to call it a myth. The Amazon was too inhospitable, said 20th century scholars, to permit large human settlements. Now, however, the doomed dreamers have been proved right: there was a great civilisation. New satellite imagery and fly-overs have revealed more than 200 huge geometric earthworks carved in the upper Amazon basin near Brazil's border with Bolivia. Spanning 155 miles, the circles, squares and other geometric shapes form a network of avenues, ditches and enclosures built long before Christopher Columbus set foot in the new world. Some date to as early as 200 AD, others to 1283. Scientists who have mapped the earthworks believe there may be another 2,000 structures beneath the jungle canopy, vestiges of vanished societies. The structures, many of which have been revealed by the clearance of forest for agriculture, point to a "sophisticated pre-Columbian monument-building society", says the journal Antiquity, which has published the research. The article adds: "This hitherto unknown people constructed earthworks of precise geometric plan connected by straight orthogonal roads. The 'geoglyph culture' stretches over a region more than 250km across, and exploits both the floodplains and the uplands … we have so far seen no more than a tenth of it." The structures were created by a network of trenches about 36ft (nearly 11 metres) wide and several feet deep, lined by banks up to 3ft high. Some were ringed by low mounds containing ceramics, charcoal and stone tools. It is thought they were used for fortifications, homes and ceremonies, and could have maintained a population of 60,000 – more people than in many medieval European cities. The discoveries have demolished ideas that soils in the upper Amazon were too poor to support extensive agriculture, says Denise Schaan, a co-author of the study and anthropologist at the Federal University of Pará, in Belém, Brazil. She told National Geographic: "We found this picture is wrong. And there is a lot more to discover in these places, it's never-ending. Every week we find new structures." Many of the mounds were symmetrical and slanted to the north, prompting theories that they had astronomical significance. Researchers were especially surprised that earthworks in floodplains and uplands were of a similar style, suggesting they were all built by the same culture. "In Amazonian archaeology you always have this idea that you find different peoples in different ecosystems," said Schaan. "So it was odd to have a culture that would take advantage of different ecosystems and expand over such a large region." The first geometric shapes were spotted in 1999 but it is only now, as satellite imagery and felling reveal sites, that the scale of the settlements is becoming clear. Some anthropologists say the feat, requiring sophisticated engineering, canals and roads, rivals Egypt's pyramids. The findings follow separate discoveries further south, in the Xingu region, of interconnected villages known as "garden cities". Dating between 800 and 1600, they included houses, moats and palisades. "These revelations are exploding our perceptions of what the Americas really looked liked before the arrival of Christopher Columbus," said David Grann, author of The Lost City of Z, a book about an attempt in the 1920s to find signs of Amazonian civilizations. "The discoveries are challenging long-held assumptions about the Amazon as a Hobbesian place where only small primitive tribes could ever have existed, and about the limits the environment placed on the rise of early civilisations." They are also vindicating, said Grann, Percy Fawcett, the explorer who partly inspired Conan Doyle's book The Lost World. Fawcett led an expedition to find the City of Z but the party vanished, bequeathing a mystery. Many scientists saw the jungle as too harsh to sustain anything but small nomadic tribes. Now it seems the conquistadores who spoke of "cities that glistened in white" were telling the truth. They, however, probably also introduced the diseases that wiped out the native people, leaving the jungle to claim – and hide – all trace of their civilisation. • This article was amended on Wednesday 6 January 2010. Percy Fawcett's experiences in the Amazon were said to have partly inspired Arthur Conan Doyle's book The Lost World, but Fawcett's disappearance did not, contrary to a suggestion in the original article - he vanished after the book was published. This has been corrected. | ['world/brazil', 'science/archaeology', 'science/satellites', 'science/anthropology', 'culture/heritage', 'culture/culture', 'tone/news', 'travel/travel', 'travel/brazil', 'environment/amazon-rainforest', 'world/americas', 'type/article', 'profile/rorycarroll', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/international'] | environment/amazon-rainforest | BIODIVERSITY | 2010-01-05T19:08:06Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2016/jun/27/a-pint-of-the-unusual-the-search-for-a-zero-waste-beer | A pint of the unusual? The search for a zero-waste beer | Have you ever pondered how sustainable your favourite beer is? No, I hadn’t either – until I started brewing. In truth – and it pains me to say it – the act of transforming barley into fermented beer carries an environmental footprint of pretty epic proportions. To put it into perspective: average energy consumption is estimated to be about 0.2 kilowatt hours for each bottle of beer, enough energy to run a 40-inch TV for almost three-and-a-half hours. As for water, although it’s hard to quantify exactly how much is used to create beer – from the growing of hops and barley to the cleaning of brewing equipment – recent studies suggest it can take up to 300 litres of water to create just one litre of beer. Worse still, the majority of ingredients used to make beer are never actually consumed, with most leftover hops and malt earmarked for landfill. Craft beer fans with an eco-conscience may want to avert their eyes now because the high alcohol, hoppy beers associated with this scene can sometimes be even worse for the environment. Why? High aroma is generally achieved through a process known as dry hopping, meaning the addition of hops post-boil. On a commercial scale, this often requires an energy-rich process of recirculation, plus the movement of beer between tanks, ultimately requiring the use of electricity for pumps and water for cleaning. What’s more, hoppy, high-percentage beers generally demand more ingredients. It is not uncommon for some craft brewers to use twice as much malt as an industrial brewer and 25 times more hops. In Scotland alone, annual beer-related by-product waste is estimated to total 53,682 tonnes. The good news is that - thanks to their diminutive size – so-called craft brewers are far more likely to leave a smaller environmental footprint than their mega-brewery counterparts. However, all this could change as the latter begin to mimic craft beer’s ingredient-heavy styles. But do we really have to make a choice between good quality, flavoursome beer and sound environmental credentials? Perhaps not. The Leeds-based Northern Monk Brew Co has just released what could be the world’s first zero-waste beer – and it tastes incredible. The beer, Wasted, is a 6.7% golden farmhouse ale made in collaboration with the Real Junk Food Project, a charitable foundation that runs a series of “pay as you feel” cafes serving waste food sourced from supermarkets, allotments, restaurants and food photographers. The brew was created using 120kg of waste pears, croissants and brioche,. Not content with saving food, the beer’s creators have also packaged the beer in 100% recyclable glass and have donated all the hops and malt used in its production to a local farmer for use as feed and fertiliser. The beer’s champagne yeast, meanwhile, is being used in other brews. Northern Monk’s brew is an echo of a wider trend for sustainable brewing in the US. Last year, the Half Moon Bay Brewing Company, located south of San Francisco, created a version of its Mavericks Tunnel Vision IPA using recycled “grey water” – water that has been used in sinks, showers and for washing clothes. It was made with the help of the same technology found on the International Space Station, which transforms urine and sweat into drinkable water. Although it hasn’t yet been released commercially, a tasting panel of experts couldn’t detect any differences between the brewery’s original IPA and the waste-water version. Another Stateside pioneer of sustainable brewing is Sierra Nevada, which recovers 99.8% of its total solid waste through reuse, recycling or composting, and is powered almost entirely by solar energy and micro-turbines. The brewery also grows its own organic hops and barley, and has reduced its water intake by 25% with the help of rainwater catchment cisterns. It even boasts its own herd of cattle – reared on spent brewers’ grain – which supply the brewery’s onsite restaurant with beef. Closer to home, Hackney Brewery in east London has recently started producing an impressive amber beer for the food-waste charity Feedback. The beer, aptly named Toast, is made from surplus bread. Its creator, Tristram Stuart, estimates the beer will help to offset some of the 24m slices of bread thrown away each year by UK households. The beer’s creators have discovered that toasting the bread prior to brewing adds subtle caramel notes that balance the bitter hops. (This does prompt the question: how much energy does it take to toast industrial quantities of sliced bread?) The south-east London brewery Four Pure, has switched from bottles to cans, a form of packaging that is not only infinitely recyclable but also smaller and lighter than a glass bottle, making it more efficient to deliver. In Suffolk, meanwhile, Adnams is using the first “anaerobic biodigester” in the UK to transform waste liquid into methane gas, which it uses to power its brewery and distillery. Purity Brewing Co in Warwickshire has installed a series of ponds, ditches and reed beds around the brewery, which filter and clean its waste water. The effluent not only feeds willow and alder trees, but also provides food for insects and helps green algae and other aquatic plants to reoxidate. The dawn of sustainable craft beer, it seems, is upon us. But how will British drinkers respond? A pint of helles landfill lager, anyone? Or how about a glass of grey-water gueuze? | ['food/beer', 'environment/environment', 'environment/carbonfootprints', 'environment/ethical-living', 'food/food', 'lifeandstyle/wordofmouth', 'environment/carbon-emissions', 'environment/climate-crisis', 'lifeandstyle/lifeandstyle', 'type/article', 'tone/blog', 'tone/features', 'profile/danieltapper', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-g2-features'] | environment/carbonfootprints | EMISSIONS | 2016-06-27T10:42:01Z | true | EMISSIONS |
environment/blog/2012/apr/17/environmental-future-rio-earth-summit | Rio+20 summit asks young people: what environmental future do you want? | Adam Vaughan | It's not often 12-year-old girls address world leaders at international summits. But that was just what happened two decades ago when Severn Suzuki admonished delegates at the original Rio Earth summit for failing to address the world's environmental and social problems: We're a group of 12 and 13-year-olds trying to make a difference ... We've raised all the money to come here ourselves, to come 5,000 miles to tell you adults you must change your ways. Coming up here today, I have no hidden agenda. I am fighting for my future. Losing my future is not like losing an election or a few points on the stockmarket. I am here to speak for all generations to come. I am here to speak on behalf of the starving children around the world whose cries go unheard. I am here to speak for the countless animals dying across this planet, because they have nowhere left to go. I am afraid to go out in the sun now, because of the holes in the ozone ... Did you have to worry of these things when you were my age? All this is happening before our eyes, yet we act as if we have all the time we want and all the solutions. I am only a child and don't have all the solutions. I want you to realise, neither do you... If you don't know how to fix it, please, stop breaking it. Her finale sparked a standing ovation, which were not common according to my colleague John Vidal, who reported from the Earth summit in 1992. Here's how Severn ended her speech: My Dad always says you are what you do, not what you say. Well, what you do makes me cry at night. You grown ups say you love us, but I challenge you: please make your actions reflect your words. In two months' time, world leaders meet again – this time with Nick Clegg rather than John Major – in Rio to discuss what a sustainable future looks like. The search is on for 2012's Severn, with the A Date With History competition, in which young people create videos telling the world what future they want. So far, entries from as far afield as China, France and the US have been submitted, with entrants vying to have their video shown at the Rio+20 conference and one winner being flown out there. And this Tuesday, the judges for the competition were announced, including actor Leonardo DiCaprio, nu-metallers Linkin Park and UN climate chief Christiana Figueres among others. Kristin Casper, a Rio+10 youth spokeswoman and one of the judges, explains the focus on younger voices: "There are times when only the voice of youth can pierce the complacency of 'business-as-usual' diplomacy. Times when speaking truth to power needs to be simple, emotional and moral. Times when our leaders need to look into the eyes of their children and remember who we need the just and green future for. This is such a time." Figures adds: "We know that we are currently borrowing the planet from our children and grandchildren, so it is only fitting that their voice be the clarion call of Rio." The theme of "what future you want" comes from a UN report earlier this year, on 'a future worth choosing', which lays out what it thinks that future looks like: The long-term vision of the panel [that produced the report] is to eradicate poverty, reduce inequality and make growth inclusive, and production and consumption more sustainable, while combating climate change and respecting a range of other planetary boundaries. Add your voice over on the A Date With History site, or in the comment thread below. • The headline of this article was changed on 17 April from 'our children' to 'young people' | ['environment/blog', 'tone/blog', 'environment/environment', 'environment/rio-20-earth-summit', 'environment/sustainable-development', 'environment/climate-crisis', 'environment/green-politics', 'type/article', 'profile/adam-vaughan'] | environment/green-politics | CLIMATE_POLICY | 2012-04-17T05:00:00Z | true | CLIMATE_POLICY |
environment/2021/jul/02/study-suggests-bacteria-in-cows-stomach-can-break-down-plastic | Study suggests bacteria in cow’s stomach can break down plastic | Bacteria found in one of the compartments of a cow’s stomach can break down plastic, research suggests. Since the 1950s, more than 8bn tonnes of plastic have been produced – equivalent in weight to 1 billion elephants – driven predominantly by packaging, single-use containers, wrapping and bottles. As a result, plastic pollution is all-pervasive, in the water and in the air, with people unwittingly consuming and breathing microplastic particles. In recent years, researchers have been working on harnessing the ability of tiny microscopic bugs to break down the stubborn material. There are existing microbes that are able to degrade natural polyester, found for example in the peels of tomatoes or apples. Given that cow diets contain these natural polyesters, scientists suspected the bovine stomach would contain a cornucopia of microbes to degrade all the plant material. To test that theory, Dr Doris Ribitsch, of the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences in Vienna, and her colleagues procured liquid from the rumen, a compartment of a cow’s stomach, from a slaughterhouse in Austria. One cow typically produces a rumen volume of about 100 litres, noted Ribitsch. “You can imagine the huge amount of rumen liquid accumulating in slaughterhouses every day – and it’s only waste.” That liquid was incubated with the three types of polyesters – PET (a synthetic polymer commonly used in textiles and packaging); PBAT (biodegradable plastic often used in compostable plastic bags); and PEF (a biobased material made from renewable resources). Each plastic was tested in both film and powder form. The results showed all three plastics could be broken down by the micro-organisms from cow stomachs in the lab setting, with the plastic powders breaking down quicker than plastic film. The next steps, she said, were to identify those microbes crucial to plastic degradation from the thousands present in the rumen, and then the enzymes produced by them. Once the enzymes have been identified, they can be produced and applied in recycling plants. For now, plastic waste is mostly burned. To a lesser extent, it is melted for use in other products, but beyond a point it becomes damaged and can no longer be used again. Another method is chemical recycling – turning plastic waste back into base chemicals – but that is not an environmentally friendly process. Using enzymes is billed as a form of green chemical recycling. Other researchers are further along in their quest to developing and scaling such enzymes. In September a super-enzyme was engineered by linking two separate enzymes, both of which were found in the plastic-eating bug discovered at a Japanese waste site in 2016. The researchers revealed an engineered version of the first enzyme in 2018, which started breaking down the plastic in a few days. But the super-enzyme gets to work six times faster. Earlier in April, the French company Carbios revealed a different enzyme, originally discovered in a compost heap of leaves, that degrades 90% of plastic bottles within 10 hours. In the rumen liquid, it appears there is not just one type of enzyme present, but rather different enzymes working together to achieve degradation, the authors suggested in the journal Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology. Carbios was working on scaling up its technology, noted Ribitsch. “But of course, it’s always good to have even better enzymes that are maybe recycling other polymers, not only PET, for example … so it can be seen as a general recycling material.” | ['environment/plastic', 'environment/environment', 'science/science', 'environment/recycling', 'environment/pollution', 'environment/ethical-living', 'environment/waste', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/natalie-grover', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-environment'] | environment/pollution | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE | 2021-07-02T09:14:48Z | true | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE |
environment/2018/mar/01/adani-asked-coalition-to-help-secure-funding-from-china-foi-shows | Adani asked Coalition to help secure funding from China, FoI shows | Adani asked the Australian government to help secure funding for its controversial Carmichael coalmine, documents obtained under Freedom of information reveal. Two government ministers subsequently wrote to a Chinese government agency vouching for the proposed coalmine. One email sent to Chinese and Indian embassy staff had a subject line reading “update on project financing request”, while another talked about how Adani needed support with financing talks in China. The revelation comes despite the secretary of the department of foreign affairs and trade telling parliament that: “It has not been Dfat’s role to seek finance for the project”. The attorney general, George Brandis, told parliament the purpose of the letter, co-authored by the then deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce, was simply to confirm the project had received all its environmental approvals. Questions over Dfat’s role in brokering loans for a foreign mining company is further complicated by the department revealing it met with the Korean Export-Import Bank in 2016, ostensibly “to clarify the status of federal environmental approvals granted for the Carmichael project” – the same reasons given for the approach made to the Chinese agency. The documents were so heavily redacted that it is not possible to know whether Dfat bureaucrats supported the letter being sent by the ministers. But they reveal the department was very clear about the purpose of such a letter being written about the Queensland coalmine project. “It seems strange that the government would say that both representations to China and to Korea merely outlined Adani’s environmental approvals, given that they knew, at least in the case of the Chinese letter, that they were helping secure Chinese financing,” said Tom Swann from the Australia Institute, who made the FOI request. “And it seems strange that the Dfat secretary says it was not their role to help secure financing from projects,” Swann said. “Here we have internal documents from Dfat showing that they knew the purpose of the letter was to secure Chinese financing.” The existence of the letter, written by Joyce and trade minister Steven Ciobo on 8 September, was revealed during questioning in Senate estimates in October 2017. Following up the revelation, the Greens leader, Richard Di Natale, asked: “Have any requests for financial assistance been made of any type?” Dfat’s secretary, Frances Adamson, responded “no”, and after further questioning said: “It has not been Dfat’s role to seek finance for the project.” But a string of emails reveal Adani approached Dfat with an explicit request to help it secure funding from Chinese agencies – a request that was then circulated to numerous posts around the world, and between senior diplomats. One email was sent from Canberra to Chinese and Indian embassy staff with the subject line “China: Adani’s Carmichael coal project – update on project financing request”. Another email, with recipients including first assistant secretary Kathy Klugman, , said Adani had “reiterated” that a letter of support was “needed to secure and cut through financing negotiations in China”. In line with the letter that was eventually sent, the email also says Adani “expects [a] letter of support to formalise already public affirmations by [the] Australian Government, highlight the national significance of Adani’s investment”. And in notes from a meeting with the chief executive of Adani Australia, Jeyakumar Janakaraj, Dfat notes that Adani had requested the letter “to help secure Chinese finance”. That note also says the requested recipient of the letter was China’s powerful national development and reform commission, to whom the eventual letter from Joyce and Ciobo was addressed. One of the email chains appears to have been initiated by Patrick Suckling, Australia’s ambassador for the environment. Suckling was formerly Australia’s high commissioner to India, where he championed the Carmichael project. George Brandis, attorney general at the time, did not deny during those Senate hearings that the letter was intended to help broker a loan, but instead characterised it as a letter outlining the government’s support for the project. “In the case of the Adani Group Carmichael mine project, the government has made representations to dispel the misinformation campaign of those from the radical left who want to stop the project,” he told the Senate. “The Australian government has written to the government of China to confirm that the project has received all necessary Queensland state government and Australian government environmental and mining approvals.” The revelations raise questions about whether similar approaches to Korean agencies may have been made by Dfat in the aid of brokering loans. In answers to a question on notice by Di Natale, Dfat revealed that Adani had requested Dfat meet with the Korea Export-Import Bank “to clarify the status of federal environmental approvals granted for the Carmichael project”. In response to a question by Senator Nick Xenophon, Dfat confirmed it had done what Adani requested, and had the meeting in October 2016. Dfat declined to answer a series of questions about the revelations, and instead provided the following statement: “DFAT has made no representations to secure financing for the Adani project.” Brandis’ office was approached by Guardian Australia for comment but has not responded. | ['environment/carmichael-coalmine', 'business/adani-group', 'australia-news/queensland', 'australia-news/coalition', 'australia-news/barnaby-joyce', 'australia-news/australian-politics', 'business/business', 'environment/environment', 'world/india', 'australia-news/australia-news', 'environment/coal', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/michael-slezak', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/australia-news'] | environment/coal | ENERGY | 2018-02-28T17:00:45Z | true | ENERGY |
commentisfree/2017/nov/09/climate-change-ravage-rich-poor-alike-hurricane-irma-maria | Don’t be complacent: climate change will ravage rich and poor alike | Patricia Scotland | In Pointe Michel, on the Caribbean island of Dominica, I met a woman sitting in the middle of a pile of rubble. On her right there was a fridge and on her left a ruined mattress – the only recognisable possessions among the jumble of concrete, wood, metal, glass, galvanised iron and everything else that just a few weeks ago used to be her home. She and her family had been spared but they had lost everything when the wrath of Hurricane Maria exploded there, another terrifying manifestation of climate change. Just down the road, MP Denise Charles, who was taking me round the island to assess the damage, pointed to a spot marked with debris, trees and boulders. At first I thought she was showing me a damaged road. Then she told me there used to be three houses on that spot. Fourteen people are thought to have perished when Maria smashed these homes into nonexistence. Everywhere I went these stories were repeated. Every corner of this precious island, decimated. Flying in, I did not recognise Dominica, the land of my birth. The once flourishing, green vegetation that rolled over every mountain and carpeted the valleys is gone. It has been replaced by sickly brown, bald patches of land and naked trees, stripped of their bark and lying on the ground like discarded matchsticks or sticking up in the air in stark defiance. Travelling around the country was difficult, with recently constructed roads caved in and barely accessible. I was shell-shocked when I visited Scotts Head, a beloved fishing village that holds many fond memories for me. It was virtually unrecognisable. Every house on the water’s edge is gone. In their place is now a beach, some rubble and a solitary boat, the only reminder of the once flourishing fishing trade. In Barbuda, another Caribbean island, there is a similar tale of utter devastation. Driving through the ghostly empty streets on the evacuated island it was hard to imagine that just two months ago this was a vibrant community. Our guides spoke about landmarks in the past tense. “This used to be a church, this was the police station,” pointing to a roofless blue building. I walked around a primary school that looked like it had been bombed, and a hospital that would have to be rebuilt almost from scratch. These pictures are seared into my memory. The stories of utter terror in the dead of night, of not knowing if you will survive, of people emerging the next morning like zombies, of funerals and memorials, will be in my mind every time I go into a meeting about my 52 member states. But now, the glare of the media spotlight is dimming and my fear is that this story will slide off the international agenda. We absolutely cannot allow that to happen, because what I witnessed in the last week are two countries in the Caribbean in deep humanitarian crisis. And what makes it even more worrying are the rules that the international community has set to help make aid distribution fair. There is a huge question mark over whether some of the countries affected by Irma and Maria will be able to get the help they need. Dominica is currently classed as upper middle income, which still makes it eligible for Overseas Development Assistance. But Antigua and Barbuda is a high-income country, which excludes it from receiving that assistance. Under criteria set by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, those islands will probably cease to be recipients of assistance this year. The fact is, it is not fair to exclude higher income but climate-vulnerable countries from that vital assistance when they are stuck by a cataclysmic disaster. Certainly not in this new epoch in which category 5 hurricanes, which used to come once in a lifetime, are coming within weeks of each other and with a new kind of ferocity. What Hurricanes Irma and Maria demonstrated, with vicious clarity, is that a high-income country could be made destitute in a matter of hours. It’s heartening that, after tireless advocacy from the Commonwealth and other organisations, and leadership by the UK, these rules are going to be reviewed. My worry is that change will not happen quickly enough to meet the mammoth challenges facing the Caribbean and other regions that have been so grievously damaged by a season of climatic upheaval. All those involved in making these rules, such as the World Bank and the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee, have to consider seriously our present reality and to create eligibility criteria that adequately respond to what countries, particularly those more prone to natural disasters, are actually experiencing. This is a concern for all of us; because just before the Caribbean hurricanes, hundreds died in mudslides in Sierra Leone and in floods in Asia, and thousands were displaced. This is not just about a woman, thousands of miles away, sitting amid the wreckage of her home. This is about a rapid, drastic change in climate that is wreaking havoc on our planet. Even in Ireland, Storm Ophelia claimed three lives last month. We need to accept the new reality of fast and furious natural disasters and have a plan to deal with it. We need a targeted global response that enables us to implement the Paris agreement on climate change and better coordinate a rapid reaction, with everything taken into account: search and rescue, regional coordination and legal impediments, such as the revision of aid rules. But it also needs to recognise that the human spirit demonstrated by the Commonwealth during this traumatic period is something upon which we can build. We need all hands on deck. If not us, who – and if not now, when? • Patricia Scotland is secretary general of the Commonwealth | ['commentisfree/commentisfree', 'environment/climate-crisis', 'global-development/humanitarian-response', 'global-development/aid', 'world/hurricane-maria', 'world/antigua-and-barbuda', 'world/dominica', 'world/americas', 'global-development/global-development', 'environment/environment', 'world/world', 'tone/comment', 'type/article', 'profile/patricia-scotland', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/editorialsandreply', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-opinion'] | world/hurricane-maria | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2017-11-09T06:00:06Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
artanddesign/shortcuts/2012/oct/31/new-york-art-damage-hurricane-sandy | New York's art world counts the damage done by Hurricane Sandy | Picasso believed that "art is the sum of all destructions". The majority of art damage results subtly from humidity, light and pollution, but a disaster such as Hurricane Sandy results in rapid and widespread damage. Elin Ewald, who heads O'Toole-Ewald Associates, America's top art damage appraisal company, hasn't ventured to her office on Madison Avenue for the past five days. "I haven't even stepped out of my house," she said on Wednesday morning, "but it's fair to say that this is the worst disaster affecting NYC – and its art – since 9/11. And the sheer increase in public art and art ownership in the past 10 years, which I think was largely a result of 9/11, means things may prove much worse. I especially recall dealing with the destruction by Hurricane Katrina of one whole collection of master art – these things can be truly heartbreaking." At the American Institute for Conservation, coordinator Beth Antoine says: "We're expecting a whole lot of damage to be reported for weeks ahead." Eric Pourchot, director of institutional advancement at the American Institute for Conservation, notes, "We came about as a result of Katrina and have put much effort into educating instututions to prepare for the worst in advance of destructive weather and many collections were moved inland, indoors or upstairs. Meanwhile our Collections Emergency Response Team has had a 24-hour helpline, but I understand people have been having trouble getting through." Outdoor art received special attention in the buildup to Sandy's arrival. The Museum of Modern Art removed statues, including Picasso's She-Goat and Katharina Fritsch's Group of Figures from the Abby Aldrich Rockerfeller Sculpture Garden and wrapped and secured others. The Public Art Fund closed and secured Tatzu Nishi's scaffolding installation around the sculpture of Columbus at Columbus Circle. The Metropolitan Museum of Art took extra precautions with its roof sculpture by Tomás Saraceno. Upstate, at the Storm King sculpture park, 15 works were removed or tethered. At the Socrates Sculpture Park in Long Island City there was until a few days ago an inflatable Buddha sculpture (Floating Echo by Chang-Jin Lee) on its lake, representing and inspiring tranquillity, but now it – and numerous other sculptures – have been removed safely. Galleries in the Chelsea district of the city have been particularly hard hit. Magda Sawon, owner of the Postmasters gallery, tweeted: "Chelsea is flooded up to tenth avenue... Pumping the basement." With water rising, paintings not removed from walls have been badly damaged. At Zach Feuer gallery, for instance, where water reached 5ft high indoors, the exhibition Kate Levant: Closure Of the Jaw has been "destroyed". On the pavement outside Churner and Churner gallery on Tenth Avenue, soiled paintings in bubble wrap are piled up. "I've probably lost $100,000 worth of art," says owner Rachel Churner. Gallery owners, when they are able to get to their premises, are still finding them inaccessible, with many metal doors buckled. In the Red Hook district of Brooklyn, home to many artists' studios, considerable numbers of artworks have been trashed. Sculptor and painter Z Behl lost all her work from the past two years. The cleanup has barely begun. Conservators will repair, salvage art will be sold at knock-down prices and insurance premiums will rise. Perhaps also, Hurricane Sandy will inspire new art. Wednesday was, by coincidence, the day that artist Michel De Broin's Majestic – a sculpture made from street lamps damaged in Hurricane Katrina – was to be unveiled. | ['artanddesign/artanddesign', 'artanddesign/art', 'us-news/hurricane-sandy', 'news/shortcuts', 'artanddesign/sculpture', 'tone/features', 'tone/blog', 'us-news/new-york', 'us-news/us-news', 'world/hurricanes', 'world/world', 'type/article', 'profile/johnhind', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/g2', 'theguardian/g2/features'] | world/hurricanes | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2012-10-31T19:30:01Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
environment/2022/mar/11/uk-farmers-warn-soaring-gas-costs-could-cut-food-production | UK farmers warn soaring gas costs could cut food production | The National Farmers’ Union has warned of a huge drop in UK-grown crops, including peppers, cucumbers and aubergines, as it becomes too expensive to produce them. The NFU said producers of crops who use glasshouses are looking at a drop of up to 50% in the amount they can afford to grow because of the crippling increase in the cost of the gas they use for heating. “The impact is being felt most in the protected crop sectors, that’s aubergines, peppers, cucumbers,” said Minette Batters, the president of the NFU, speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. “We are already seeing massive contraction, these costs are making it impossible to grow. The only thing is to keep these glasshouses empty.” She said producers are saying the number of cucumbers that will be grown annually could fall from 80m to 35m, while pepper production could halve from 100m. She also added that inflation was leading to dramatic rises in other areas, citing the example of the cost of raising a chicken increasing by 50% in a year for farmers. She said the NFU had asked the government to treat the situation as a “matter of urgency”, potentially intervening and prioritising gas demand. “We have really got to look at the gas requirements for the whole industry and where to look to intervene otherwise we are going to see less British production,” she said. Batters added that wider issues, such as the record price of wheat and the potential reduction in exports from the big producers Russia and Ukraine because of the war, were also serving to fuel inflation and supply issues. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has said it does not expect any significant impact on UK food supply. Batters said: “I think if you spoke to any producer they would be saying exactly the same as we are. This is a global market we all operate in. We have to act to make sure that everybody can have affordable food. But most importantly that we don’t contract production. That is the essential bit. “Otherwise we are going to see more situations like the glasshouses where growers are not planting. These are going into landfill, these plants, at the moment as they cannot afford to plant them. We have to intervene to make sure these businesses can stay operational and keep producing what the country wants.” | ['environment/farming', 'business/fooddrinks', 'business/business', 'uk/uk', 'business/energy-industry', 'business/gas', 'politics/tradeunions', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/marksweney', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-business'] | environment/farming | BIODIVERSITY | 2022-03-11T09:05:44Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
commentisfree/2018/nov/20/i-was-arrested-climate-change-protest-direct-action-extinction-rebellion | I was arrested at a climate change protest – it was worth it | Gavin Turk | On Saturday, at about 12.30pm, I was arrested for obstructing (thoughtfully sitting on) a public highway, namely Lambeth Bridge. I wasn’t alone. In fact, Lambeth wasn’t the only obstructed London bridge: thousands of people of diverse backgrounds and ages occupied five central London bridges for most of 17 November: Southwark, Blackfriars, Waterloo, Westminster and Lambeth. I believe that at least 80 other people were arrested. I am adding my support to Extinction Rebellion – a relatively new activist movement aimed at waking up the political system to the truth about the way that humans are responsible for a dramatic change in the world’s ecosystem. The IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) published its latest reports in October, which state that human activity is “likely” to push the average global surface temperature above 1.5C between the years 2030 and 2052. I’m planning on being around for both of these dates, but the problem seems to be that the warmer the planet gets, the faster the pace of climatic changes such as melting ice caps. This changes sea levels and currents, and results in less heat reflection from the lovely white caps – so the temperature goes up. This new heat releases the proverbial “methane dragon” currently partially trapped under the (melting) tundra ice. More frequent climate disasters are already happening across the globe, and these seem set to only increase. The international art world, to which I’m attached, requires the traffic of heavy art objects all over the globe – the cultural ebb and flow of images and ideas certainly has a huge carbon footprint. So I guess direct action is needed in this area too. And climate is increasingly becoming one of the key subjects for artists as they hold their mirrors up to society. We can get together to solve this, and every person has a moral imperative to be a part of the movement. Having myself arrested was like laying down a marker; an action that enables a quiet but resonant solidarity with those who want to see our government and the media wake up to the incontrovertible evidence that humans do have to deal with the issue of their effect on the climate … and can this start to happen ASAP, please? • Gavin Turk is an artist | ['commentisfree/commentisfree', 'environment/climate-crisis', 'tone/comment', 'environment/environment', 'media/media', 'politics/politics', 'uk/uk', 'type/article', 'environment/extinction-rebellion', 'profile/gavin-turk', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/journal', 'theguardian/journal/opinion', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-opinion'] | environment/extinction-rebellion | CLIMATE_ACTIVISM | 2018-11-20T17:00:36Z | true | CLIMATE_ACTIVISM |
environment/damian-carrington-blog/2011/aug/31/cairn-energy-arctic-oil-spill | Arctic oil spill response plans are triumphs of hope over expectation | Damian Carrington | An oil spill response plan is, all can agree, a critical document, particularly when drilling is breaking new ground in the Arctic. But Cairn Energy's plan, released despite their best efforts to keep it secret, has now been analysed and the verdict, say campaigners, is damning. Professor Richard Steiner, formerly at the University of Alaska and an authority on oil spills, said Cairn "dramatically understates the potential size and impacts of a blow out ... and dramatically overstates the potential effectiveness of any spill response." The analysis comes from Greenpeace and Steiner, who resigned from his university over his anti-oil views, so it is not likely to be impartial. But you can see Cairn's spill response plan for yourself, in which a series of issues stand out. And don't forget two things: the shameful inadequacy of the response plan to BP's Deepwater Horizon spill and the full-steam ahead for Arctic oil and gas exploration represented by yesterday's multi-billion dollar deal between ExxonMobil and Rosneft. So what have Greenpeace and Steiner found in the plan? • Useless booms and skimmers: Cairn admits on page 78 of its plans that these conventional approaches to capturing spilled oil will be of "little or no use" and "very inefficient" in Arctic conditions. • Arctic winter shut down of clean-up operations: The response to a spill during the Arctic winter "may be limited to monitoring the spill with recovery operations resuming once the thaw is complete", says Cairn on page 90. The problem there is that if a relief well is needed to stem a blow out, there would be a limited time to get it in before winter ice closed down operations. If unsuccessful, a blown out well would pump oil into the ocean unhindered for months. • Shorelines that can't be cleaned. Cairn admits "the coastal environment in Greenland does not facilitate containment, recovery or protection due to the uneven rocky substrate that prevails in the region" (page 89) and says "in some circumstances oiled shorelines are best left to recover naturally" (page 90). • Cleaning up ice, cube by cube: Cairn says that if ice and oil were mixed, it would cut out chunks of contaminated ice and melt them in a heated warehouse to recover the oil (page 70). To me, that doesn't sound like an operation that could work at scale and experts told Greenpeace there is no evidence that this technique is effective. • Working in the dark. Cairn admits the near perpetual darkness of an Arctic winter would "cause serious operational complications" (page 70) during a spill clean up. It says "limited portable lights" are available for shoreline operations. • Harm to wildlife: Cairn admits that significant long-terms impacts of a spill could be expected on narwhals, breeding colonies of Atlantic puffins and razorbill and other species (page 146). Steiner claims Cairn "dramatically understates the potential impacts". • Dispersants ineffective: Cairn states that "low oil temperature increases viscosity" (page 70). Steiner says this renders the chemical dispersants used to break up oil ineffective, aside from their potential harm to wildlife. Greenpeace are not happy. Campaigner Vicky Wyatt says: "It's no wonder Cairn Energy didn't want the public to see their secret spill plan. The company offers only giant assumptions and pie-in-the-sky solutions. This cowboy company are playing roulette with one of the most important and fragile environments on the planet, and must be stopped." Cairn disagree of course. A spokesperson told me the company now welcomes the release of its spill response plan by the government of Greenland. She added: "This plan has been reviewed and approved by third parties including Oil Spill Response Limited, the Danish National Environmental Research Institute and the Greenland government. All are satisfied that the plan is robust and appropriately designed to deal with an incident in this area." Ove Karl Berthelsen, Greenland's minister for industry and mineral resources, said: "All exploration is being carried out in accordance with the utmost focus on meeting the stringent requirements we have put in place focusing on safety and environmental protection. In addition, our supervision of these requirements is among the most stringent anywhere in the world". The problem for me is that cleaning up oil spills are like putting toothpaste back in the tube: there's just way to do it without making a big mess. As I have written before, the lure of the Arctic's sunken treasure is irresistible at present, despite the unique nature of the region and the extraordinary difficulty of operating there. These spill response plans are in essence triumphs of hope over expectation, so I'll leave you with one more nugget from Cairn's plan: "Adult salmon and cod have been observed to avoid oil" (page 145). So, if there's a spill, the fish will just swim around it. Feel safe now? | ['environment/damian-carrington-blog', 'tone/blog', 'environment/environment', 'business/cairnenergy', 'business/oil', 'environment/oil', 'business/oilandgascompanies', 'environment/oil-spills', 'world/arctic', 'type/article', 'profile/damiancarrington'] | environment/oil | ENERGY | 2011-08-31T13:05:00Z | true | ENERGY |
environment/2009/jul/02/uk-renewables-potential-carbon-trust | 250,000 jobs and £70bn revenue - the forecast for a thriving UK renewables sector | The UK could benefit from 250,000 jobs and up to £70bn in revenue from offshore wind and wave technologies by 2050, according to a study by the Carbon Trust. This potential will only be realised, however, if the government gives clear signals to industry, so that investors know where to put their money, rather than leaving new technologies to face the market alone. The Carbon Trust, a government-backed agency that studies ways to promote low-carbon technologies, carried out economic analyses in six areas of low-carbon industry including offshore wind, wave, solid-state lighting and micro combined heat and power. The studies, published today, looked at the current status and costs of the technology, how these would develop and what research and development costs there might be in the coming decades. The studies for offshore wind and wave power showed these technologies could provide at least 15% of the total carbon savings required to meet the UK's 2050 CO2 reduction targets. "The UK's greenhouse gas targets mean that by 2050 We must reduce our emissions to just one-10th of today's levels, per unit of output," said John Beddington, the government's chief scientific adviser. "This is a formidable challenge, requiring step changes in the rate at which we improve our energy efficiency and in low-carbon innovation.The Carbon Trust's proposals recognise the need for us to be smarter in focusing our investments, including to help businesses seize the economic opportunities of the transition." According to the new analysis, published just a few weeks ahead of the forthcoming government white paper on energy, the UK could attract 45% of the global offshore wind market by 2020, delivering £65bn of net economic value and 225,000 total jobs by 2050. This would only happen with an investment of up to £600m into research, the removal of regulatory barriers and incentives to increase the deployment of the turbines. In the UK this means installing around 29GW of wind by 2020 and upwards of 40GW by 2050. A large part of the economic benefit would come from exporting technology developed here. For wave, the outlook is more modest. Around a quarter of the world's wave technologies are being developed in the UK and the Carbon Trust said Britain should be the "natural owner" of the global market in this area. It could generate revenues worth £2bn per year by 2050 and up to 16,000 direct jobs. "These technologies are not green 'nice to haves' but are critical to the economic recovery of the UK," said Tom Delay, the chief executive of the Carbon Trust. "To reap the significant rewards from their successful development we must prioritise and comprehensively back the technologies that offer the best chance of securing long-term carbon savings, jobs and revenue for Britain. Rather than following in the footsteps of others, this new analysis shows it is an economic no-brainer to be leading from the front." In addition to the direct jobs in these in industries, there would be further benefits to the economy. "The UK's also very good at the secondary service industries - things like the financing of wind farms, the legal documents, environmental assessments," said Paul Arwas, a consultant who wrote the new Carbon Trust report. "Those jobs would be in addition - for offshore wind, it would be another 70,000 by 2050." None of this will happen, though, without government support. Arwas said that when encouraging new industries, authorities tended to swing between two poles - either direct state funding or allowing markets to decide. "Either the governments didn't intervene at all or, if they did they did it by market mechanisms which are totally undifferentiated by technology. There you end up with a situation where, to take a footballing analogy, you've got the under 21s playing the under 12s." Instead the Carbon Trust has proposed a new, semi-interventionist, model where the government chooses a family of technologies to invest in, for example wave power, and tells developers there will be subsidies or long-term help available to develop the sector as a whole but without backing individual technologies. John Sauven, Greenpeace's executive director, welcomed the Carbon Trust's proposed approach. "Every country now needs a decarbonisation plan to help solve three of our greatest challenges - climate stability, energy security and economic prosperity. The UK has an enormous untapped supply of clean, green renewable energy and a world class engineering industry well placed to develop it." Martin Rees, the president of the Royal Society, said the UK had little choice but to develop these new technologies, given the dwindling supplies of fossil fuels: "In the past we have let opportunities to capitalise on our scientific leadership slip through our fingers. The US and others are investing heavily in low carbon technologies; we must not fall behind and waste the scientific expertise that we have in the UK." | ['environment/renewableenergy', 'environment/energy', 'environment/environment', 'tone/news', 'business/business', 'environment/wave-tidal-hydropower', 'environment/windpower', 'uk/uk', 'politics/politics', 'careers/environment-careers', 'careers/forums', 'environment/green-jobs', 'type/article', 'profile/alokjha'] | environment/windpower | ENERGY | 2009-07-01T23:05:04Z | true | ENERGY |
lifeandstyle/2017/mar/08/kitchen-gadgets-review-silicone-bagel-moulds-holy-snack-heaven | Kitchen gadgets review: silicone bagel moulds – holy snack heaven! | What? Lekue silicone bagel moulds are conical moulds with perforated bases. They hold dough in ring shape through rising, boiling and baking. Why? Who could passover homemade bagels? (Note to self – bagels contain yeast, so are not eaten at Passover. Idiot.) Well? The stakes feel high as I stare at the rubbery buoys in front of me. For a start, they are silicone and conical, whereas I’m comical and cynical, so we’ll either get on famously or one of us will have to go. There’s also the fact that I adore Jewish food. Nothing brings on my reluctance to share like a stack of gefilte fish balls. One heady summer, my friend Mad and I made serious plans for a popup restaurant called something like Mind Over Matzo, or Make You Wanna Challa. Sadly, as neither of us were Jewish, the whole thing was itching for a lawsuit and plans were shelved. But for me, the flame still flickers. If this gadget promises the keys to good-looking homemade bagels, it had better deliver or there will be hell to pay. I can’t actually see a product name on the box, only the words “Bagels x6”, which is more of a light shopping list. Bagels feel intuitively complicated, but the method is joyously simple. I poke the silicone prongs through rolled-out dough balls, leaving them to rise. I drop the lightweight moulds with their doughy cargo in boiling water, where they bob around in a disturbing way (I think it’s because the cones resemble wide-brimmed pointy hats, and for a moment I feel like a 17th-century witchfinder general). Finally, I chuck them in the oven. It’s a bit like cremating mini traffic cones, therapeutic for anyone who has failed a scooter test. After a quarter of an hour, I pull out my brown, chewy pillows. They are a revelation. The rings are perfect, the texture even. They taste unbelievable when fresh. I don’t want to get schmaltzy, but faith has been rewarded. I might even call Mad, get the band back together with a new name. Chicken soup may suit the soul, but bagels have my heart. Holy snack heaven! Any downside? Everyone’s hole preference varies. If you prefer a blooming, closed bagel, look, the kit is unnecessary. But if you don’t like it, then you should put a ring in it. Counter, drawer, back of the cupboard? Israeli worth your time (sorry). 4/5 | ['food/bread', 'lifeandstyle/series/inspect-a-gadget', 'food/food', 'lifeandstyle/lifeandstyle', 'tone/features', 'technology/gadgets', 'technology/technology', 'type/article', 'profile/rhik-samadder', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/g2', 'theguardian/g2/features', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-g2-features'] | technology/gadgets | UNRELATED_TO_CLIMATE | 2017-03-08T13:04:42Z | true | UNRELATED_TO_CLIMATE |
sport/2021/sep/13/super-teens-raducanu-and-five-other-young-people-reaching-career-heights | Super teens: Raducanu and five other young people reaching career heights | Emma Raducanu’s remarkable victory in the US Open was, among other things, a victory for the fearlessness of youth. The Guardian has picked out six teenagers, including Raducanu, who despite their tender years have already had a huge impact. Emma Raducanu By now everyone knows the story of how Raducanu, aged just 18, became the first qualifier to win one of the four tennis grand slams. Just three months ago she was waiting for her A-level results. She is now tipped to be Britain’s first billion-dollar sport star after winning 10 straight matches without dropping a set, becoming the first British woman to win a grand slam since Virginia Wade at Wimbledon in 1977. It was just her second grand slam main draw appearance and no woman in the Open era had ever won in so few attempts. She is the youngest grand slam champion since Maria Sharapova in 2004 and remarkably, Raducanu has yet to win a match at a Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) tour event – the circuit that is the bread and butter of elite players but does not include the four slams. Greta Thunberg At just 15, Thunberg began a solo school strike in Sweden in 2018 to draw attention to the climate crisis. It snowballed into a global youth movement. The following year she gave an impassioned speech at the UN climate summit and was crowned Time magazine’s person of the year. “She has addressed heads of state at the UN, met the pope, sparred with the president of the US and inspired 4 million people to join the global climate strike on 20 September 2019: the largest climate demonstration in human history,” Time said. Still just 18, she is continuing to push world leaders to do more to address the climate crisis. After a pause in public demonstrations during the coronavirus pandemic a global climate strike is planned for 24 September. Gitanjali Rao Gitanjali, a scientist and inventor, was last year named as Time magazine’s first “kid of the year”. Rao, 15, from Denver, Colorado, has invented technologies across a range of fields, including a device that can identify lead in drinking water, and an app and Chrome extension that use artificial intelligence to detect cyberbullying. In an interview with the actor and humanitarian Angelina Jolie, Gitanjali said: “I don’t look like your typical scientist. Everything I see on TV is that it’s an older, usually white, man as a scientist. My goal has really shifted; not only from creating my own devices to solve the world’s problems but inspiring others to do the same as well. Because from personal experience it’s not easy when you don’t see anyone else like you.” Billie Eilish At 19, Eilish is already one of the world’s most successful pop stars, with seven Grammys under her belt. Her first album, When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?, released in 2019, went multiplatinum and last year the US singer-songwriter became the youngest artist in history to write and record a theme for the James Bond franchise. Her second studio album, Happier than Ever, was released this year and is in the top 10 selling albums of the year in the US, with more than 180,000 copies sold. Eilish inspires devotion among her fanbase – she has more than 90 million followers on Instagram – and has used her platform to speak out about her struggles with depression and unrealistic expectations relating to body image. Divina Maloum Maloum was the joint winner with Thunberg of the International Children’s Peace Prize in 2019 at the age of 14. The teenager from Cameroon set up an organisation called Children for Peace that tours schools, mosques and marketplaces in her homeland speaking to children who could fall prey to extremist groups such as Boko Haram. She draws pictures, including of a child refusing to wear a suicide-bomb vest, as a way of cutting through linguistic barriers to bring across her message. She said that she would use her half of the €100,000 (£85,000) fund linked to the award to help fund her group’s next project: a pan-African children’s parliament. Momiji Nishiya Nishiya, from Japan, is the third-youngest champion in summer Olympics history. She was 13 years and 330 days old when she won the inaugural women’s street skateboarding competition at the Tokyo Olympics in July. Nishya topped the youngest ever Olympic podium, holding off the challenge of two other teenagers, 13 and 16, who took the silver and bronze respectively. She previously won silver in the 2019 summer X games when she was just 11, as well as the 2021 street skateboarding world championships. Nishiya was ranked fifth in the world prior to the Olympics, with the eventual silver medallist, Rayssa Leal from Brazil, ranked second. | ['sport/emma-raducanu', 'environment/greta-thunberg', 'music/billie-eilish', 'sport/sport', 'environment/environment', 'music/music', 'type/article', 'tone/features', 'profile/haroonsiddique', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/uknews', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-home-news'] | environment/greta-thunberg | CLIMATE_ACTIVISM | 2021-09-13T13:55:29Z | true | CLIMATE_ACTIVISM |
commentisfree/2010/jul/26/wikileaks-end-churchills-bodyguard-of-lies | WikiLeaks: the end of Churchill's bodyguard of lies | Richard Kemp | "In wartime truth is so precious that she should be attended by a bodyguard of lies." Winston Churchill's words sum up the difference between WikiLeaks' exposure of military secrets and the website's previous revelations, such as the BNP's membership list. The latter is embarrassing to some, but it doesn't risk people's lives. The hubristic suggestion made by WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in his press conference yesterday that these leaked files will somehow change the course of the war is laughable. But military information security is no laughing matter, and it is certain that the Taliban will even now be analysing the contents of these reports in great detail. Assange claims that he has somehow sanitised his data dump so that documents that could be damaging are omitted. He could not be sure that this is the case, lacking as he does the detailed understanding of the situation on the ground, the extent of the Taliban's knowledge and the way in which some of the intelligence was collected. His suggestion that because all of this material is at least eight months out of date it is only of historic interest betrays a lack of understanding of the realities of war. The Taliban want to know everything they can about how Nato forces operate and the procedures they use. Even the smallest detail can be significant for a guerrilla army that seeks to identify patterns and weaknesses that can be exploited in its sophisticated and lethal campaign of attack using improvised explosive devices and sniper fire. Also crucially important for the Taliban is to know how much we know about their intentions and capabilities – and the limits of our knowledge. That enables them to exploit our intelligence gaps, and to better assess how effective their operations are. And like every other propaganda gift handed to the Taliban – sometimes indeed by our own actions – they will exploit much of the information in these files to garner support and to raise funds. That so few US military attempts at cover-up have been revealed and such a paucity of real horror stories exposed in so many thousands of documents must have been a grave disappointment to the folks at WikiLeaks. The near-universal reaction from commentators is that not much that is new has been revealed by these files. But knowledge of some key issues has been reinforced or illuminated. Although it should not be at a cost to operational security, it is a good thing for the British and American public to gain greater insight into the challenges and difficulties faced by the forces they send to fight overseas on their behalf. It seems that our forces have killed more civilians than have so far been reported. Of course it is right that when such tragedies occur we should admit them and take steps to prevent recurrence. Unfortunately when fighting an enemy that deliberately and routinely uses women and children as human shields, and attempts to lure our forces to kill innocent people, it is impossible to eliminate civilian deaths entirely. And while our troops have an active policy of minimising such deaths, the Taliban have no such qualms. Quite the opposite: these leaked reports indicate for the first time that more than 7,000 civilians have been killed by the Taliban's indiscriminate use of lethal improvised explosive devices between 2004 and 2009. Pakistan's double dealing in this conflict is also brought into the spotlight. I couldn't resist a smile when I read that Pakistani intelligence sent 1,000 motorbikes to insurgent Jalaluddin Haqqani for suicide attacks in Khost and Logar provinces in 2007. I have read hundreds of intelligence reports almost exactly like that – virtually all completely fictitious. Despite the questionable intelligence revealed in these files, the Pakistani Inter-Service Intelligence Directorate, who invented the Taliban, do indeed provide direction as well as significant levels of practical and technical support to the Afghan Taliban. Without it, they would be incapable of maintaining the insurgency at its current levels. It is good to see that Washington has seized the revelations in these leaked files as a weapon to confront Pakistan with a vigour that has been lacking hitherto. Whatever good and bad has come from WikiLeaks' publication of operational secrets, this episode provides further proof that in the age of the web, 24-hour news, the ubiquitous mobile phone and a digital camera in everyone's hands, Churchill's bodyguard of lies is no longer available in the 21st century. The eye-catching success of WikiLeaks will inspire further betrayal of privileged information by government officials, and will increase the dangers to our forces fighting what these reports graphically portray to be an already highly lethal and chaotic war. | ['commentisfree/commentisfree', 'world/afghanistan', 'politics/defence', 'media/wikileaks', 'world/taliban', 'uk/uk', 'world/middleeast', 'tone/comment', 'world/the-war-logs', 'world/war-logs', 'type/article', 'profile/richard-kemp', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/commentanddebate'] | world/the-war-logs | UNRELATED_TO_CLIMATE | 2010-07-26T21:30:14Z | true | UNRELATED_TO_CLIMATE |
commentisfree/2016/sep/26/support-for-renewable-energy-up-trust-in-political-action-down | Support for renewable energy up, trust in political action down | John Connor | If we were to try to repair the lost public trust in our political system, you may think that climate change and energy seem the most unlikely place to start. How do we get past carbon price scare campaigns of “$100 lamb roasts”, city and industry “wipeouts”, that “broken” carbon tax promise and the constant government policy changes. Surely this is the last place to start? Yet, unbeknown to those still wanting to relive the scare campaign heydays of 2011-12, there is mounting evidence that Australian community has largely moved on. The Climate Institute has been conducting national attitudinal research on this issue since 2007, charting the views of Australians about matters relating to climate change and energy policy, through the ups and downs of changing weather patterns, related natural disasters and the waxing and waning of the political landscape. Indeed, our research shows support for political leadership on climate change has rebounded to be as strong as it has been since 2008 when, you might remember, there was bipartisan support for key policies like emissions trading. This year we began our research against an ominous backdrop – two weeks of often oversimplistic sloganeering about an electricity “crisis” in South Australia – in which the resultant price spike was being blamed on the state’s surging renewable energy and the closure of its coal-fired power stations. (Of course, this was neither the full nor the real story.) Yet our research has shown this “crisis” didn’t actually have a negative effect on the continued growth in enthusiasm for renewable energy. In fact, public support for renewable energy (wind and mainly solar) has continued to grow at the expense of coal and gas. While the real discovery is that so too has Australians’ frustration with our politicians for not supporting it more. This has translated into widespread disappointment with the performance of all levels of government, as well as with business. And after a turbulent 10 years in national policy, Australians strongly hold the view that government at the national level should hold the lead responsibility for climate action. This view is held quite consistently across the political spectrum of voting preference. Only a handful of people say governments – federal, state or local – should not take action. Through our research, and that of others, we have identified that mid-2012 marked the low point in support for climate action. Since that point – when it became clear the dire warnings that the carbon pricing mechanism, or “tax”, would deliver darkness and destruction didn’t eventuate – expectations have been rebounding. Even the repeal of the carbon laws, two years later, didn’t halt this trend. We can identify a number of elements that buttress this rebound. A growing realisation that we are already being hit by the impacts of climate change has been accompanied by growing trust in the science – from a minority in 2012 to a strong majority now. And the myth that Australia was somehow acting alone has now been demolished, most notably via the strong Chinese and US climate partnership, as well as the success of the Paris climate negotiations. Perhaps most powerfully, clean energy alternatives are now a very real part of our lives. This goes beyond the global investment reality where we have seen the level of investment in renewable energy double that in fossil fuels. Plunging costs for solar and wind technologies are being matched by the emergence of other more tangible technologies that people can directly interact with in their everyday lives – electric cars and household batteries. Australians can see the clean energy future and they want to be part of it. Of course, realising this future isn’t simple. We are going to need careful, fair and inclusive strategies to accompany policies that will unlock markets while encouraging the modernisation and decarbonisation of our electricity, transport, buildings and other sectors of the economy. It is now clear that years of policy and political turbulence has sapped a sense of urgency, as well as the confidence people place in politicians. And electricity prices still cause concern. Though the potential is clear, Australians think that continuing with inconsistency, half measures, partisan politics or backtracking will undermine efforts to seize this community potential. Next year the federal government will review our climate policies and will be considering post-2030 carbon pollution targets. It will do so, not only as other nations step up their action initiatives and commitments, but also as the global investor community becomes increasingly attentive to climate change risks and opportunities. I am starting to wonder if we are about to turn a corner – that a political rethink may be under way. Perhaps the relative quiet on climate issues in the 2016 election campaign, and this month’s political compromise to keep $800m in grant funding for the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (Arena), are indicators? There is a strong argument to say that the bipartisan Arena agreement largely marks the end of the repeal and reversal phase. Which means attention can now turn to how we build policies from here. Next year’s review will be the first national medium- to long-term climate change policy conversation for at least five years – since the carbon pricing mechanism was being negotiated. It will be an opportunity to connect a flailing political system with a growing and increasingly tenacious, if wary, resurgence in the Australian community’s desire for action. And that leaves us with a very big question – to which our evidence shows most Australians want a constructive, forward-looking and prosperity-building answer: how are our politicians going to respond? John Connor is CEO of The Climate Institute. | ['commentisfree/commentisfree', 'environment/climate-crisis', 'science/scienceofclimatechange', 'environment/environment', 'science/science', 'australia-news/australian-politics', 'australia-news/australia-news', 'environment/renewableenergy', 'environment/energy', 'australia-news/coalition', 'type/article', 'tone/comment', 'profile/john-connor', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/australia-opinion'] | environment/renewableenergy | ENERGY | 2016-09-26T00:46:17Z | true | ENERGY |
technology/2008/oct/04/internet.digitalvideo | Internet review: 4Mations | This is a video-sharing animation site that's offering cash rewards for the most popular content, and the chance to get seen by the big suits at Channel 4 and pitch for real TV work. With Lupus Films and Aardman Animations involved, there are also plenty of household names on the site - including Angry Kid and Spitting Image - as well as loads of archive shows, like Crapston Villas and the Oscar-winning short Bob's Birthday. Newcomers to animation can unleash their inner Modern Toss and create short films within seconds using the TH!NKS tool, while those looking for the idle pleasures of puzzle games featuring kittens and skulls are abundantly rewarded. | ['technology/internet', 'technology/digitalvideo', 'technology/technology', 'culture/culture', 'type/article', 'profile/johnnydee', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/theguide', 'theguardian/theguide/reviews'] | technology/digitalvideo | UNRELATED_TO_CLIMATE | 2008-10-03T23:01:00Z | true | UNRELATED_TO_CLIMATE |
business/2023/jul/19/tata-gigafactory-plan-fills-major-blank-for-future-uk-car-industry | Tata’s £4bn gigafactory plan fills in a major blank for UK car industry | For months Tata, the owner of Jaguar Land Rover, has left the UK automotive industry on edge. Would it build an electric vehicle battery “gigafactory” near its UK car plants, or would it be tempted by Spain, which offered an attractive deal? On Wednesday it finally offered a definitive answer: Tata will build a new factory in the UK. The plant will require £4bn in investment and will provide thousands of jobs in a region not known for its automotive industry if, as expected, a site in Somerset passes final due diligence checks. However, its importance will be measured in more than just jobs or pounds: it will show that the UK has a place in the next era of the automotive industry as electric technology replaces the combustion engine. The government had to pay handsomely for that privilege: the support is worth £500m in grants and upgrades to local infrastructure, according to an official. The relief in the car industry is clear, as executives confronted the prospect of a sector slowly withering as investments surged elsewhere in Europe and battery startups failed. “It’s about bloody time, too,” says one person closely involved with the process. “It’s justified because if we don’t do something then we’re going to lose the initiative.” China is by far the dominant player in global battery supply, with 78% of the market at the end of 2022, according to the data company Benchmark Minerals. Europe is racing to catch up, with more than 30 plants in construction or planning, including three in France and nine in Germany. Before Wednesday, the UK was looking exposed, with only one. Tata’s new plant will produce batteries with 40 gigawatt hours (GWh) of capacity a year, enough to power hundreds of thousands of electric cars. The government-backed Faraday Institution has said the UK car industry will require 100GWh of battery capacity by 2030. That figure includes other uses of batteries beyond cars – such as for households and industry. Nevertheless, combined with Envision’s 38GWh of planned capacity at a plant in Sunderland to supply Nissan’s factory next door, Tata’s £4bn commitment will bring the UK closer to that goal. The Nissan story provides an example of what the government hopes the backing for Tata will achieve. The Tory prime minister Margaret Thatcher drove the negotiations that brought the Japanese firm to Sunderland, presiding over its 1986 opening, in a first-of-its-kind partnership between the UK and a foreign manufacturer. More foreign carmakers followed, which needed to be served by smaller-scale manufacturers car parts and components. That allowed Britain to keep its place as a major automotive player, even as domestic companies took a back seat. UK car factories employ 182,000 people, according to the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, a lobby group. However, many of the jobs are tied directly to making internal combustion engines or petrol and diesel cars. Shifting to battery technology will help the industry to stay the same size – albeit probably a different geographical shape. It may not all be plain sailing for Tata’s Agratas unit, the new subsidiary that will build the gigafactory. Amid the battery subsidy war, few like to acknowledge that battery production is a low-margin business that requires enormous upfront investment. Unlike Envision, Tata does not have more than a decade of technological knowhow, even if it does have deep pockets and experience of building new businesses in areas such as consulting and IT. There also remain big strategic questions over the government’s approach to industry – particularly in the “hard-to-abate” sectors such as steelmaking, where upgrades to technologies capable of net zero carbon emissions are needed. Tata itself is the owner of Port Talbot steelworks in south Wales, where two of the UK’s four blastfurnaces constantly spew out carbon. Tata had initially tried to link talks on the gigafactory with those on aid for the steelworks. The government has offered £300m, but that must rise if it is to match European rivals’ support for steel. Yet for the UK car industry the Tata investment fills in a major blank. The UK’s largest automotive employer may be owned by an Indian company, but it will still rely on UK employees and technology. It is a victory for Britain – albeit one that many experts suggest the country could not have afforded to lose. | ['business/automotive-industry', 'environment/electric-cars', 'politics/industrial-policy', 'business/business', 'campaign/email/business-today', 'environment/carbon-emissions', 'environment/environment', 'technology/motoring', 'politics/politics', 'uk/uk', 'business/tata', 'type/article', 'tone/analysis', 'profile/jasper-jolly', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/financial3', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-business'] | environment/carbon-emissions | EMISSIONS | 2023-07-19T12:19:38Z | true | EMISSIONS |
commentisfree/2023/jul/30/europe-burns-while-the-tories-net-zero-plans-are-set-to-go-up-in-smoke | Europe burns while the Tories’ net zero plans are set to go up in smoke | Stewart Lee | It’s 2am on Thursday. Wildfires are burning in Greece, Italy, Tunisia, Portugal, Croatia and Algeria. British tourist climate refugees are, ironically, being rescued by friendly locals in small boats. Stop the boats! No! Not those boats! The other ones! The ones with brown people in them! But the main environmental news in the past few weeks has not been about the Giveaway Package Holiday Dante’s Inferno Supa-Deals. Instead, we learn that British political parties are rethinking their commitment to green policies. And all because Labour somehow lost Uxbridge, by a narrow margin, to a Conservative party so corrupt that it is considering setting up an amnesty bucket at the entrance to parliament, where those on the right of the house can vomit out their consciences before taking their seats. Apparently, it was the ultra low-emission zone (Ulez) expansion proposals wot lost it for Labour. But the Ulez was initially proposed by a proud Boris Johnson in 2015. This didn’t stop the lying opportunist from criticising Labour London mayor Sadiq Khan, in his £1m Daily Mail columnist capacity, for expanding a scheme the disgraced former prime minister himself had previously described as “an essential measure”. But those expecting consistency from Johnson on anything may as well expect a glob of Hippo High Performance Expanding Glue ™ ® to maintain a considered moral position on adhesives. Considering his party’s defeat, a spooked Keir Starmer said: “We are doing something very wrong if policies put forward by the Labour party end up on each and every Tory leaflet. We’ve got to face up to that and learn the lessons.” No. He isn’t. And he doesn’t have to face up to anything except the fact that the Tories will lie about him whatever he does. There’s no reasoning with a party so desperate and disgusting it has made Lee Anderson deputy chairman, a decision akin to putting a bear in charge of a golf club. And anyway, within days, the now spiritually bankrupt Rishi Sunak conflated the Labour party with criminal gangs in another desperate “stop the boats” missive. See, Keir? You cannot appease a ravenous tapeworm by just snivelling at it. You have, according to my late grandad, “to get the doctor from Worcester to come out and tempt it out of your throat with a bit of rotten meat and then, when it jumps out, stamp on its fucking head”. Starmer, a man given to rolling up his sleeves to show he means business, was shocked by Uxbridge. Things are so serious it is understood a Labour party focus group is suggesting that now, whenever he appears in public, Starmer rolls up his trousers as well as his sleeves, to show he means business twice as much as he meant business before. And if that still doesn’t convince the Uxbridge electorate, Sir Keir must strip to his pants, and roll them up tightly around his genitals, so he looks like Buffalo Bill in The Silence of the Lambs. Meanwhile, the Tories took the opportunity to prepare the ground for ditching their 2050 net zero commitment, obviously. Remember when David Cameron, the blancmange-faced bringer of Brexit, went from hugging a husky in the Arctic while “investigating climate change” in 2006 to wanting to “Get rid of all that green crap” in 2013? It’s that, again. If only Dave had been so flexible in regard to his nation-destroying EU referendum, the shepherd hut-coveting Peasemore fistula. Sunak now says ordinary people must not bear the cost of compulsory green initiatives, and that the path to net zero must be “proportional and pragmatic”. But the problem with climate change is it is neither. Some scientists are now saying the Gulf Stream could collapse within two years. I’m already booking live dates for 2025! Will the fenlands go under? Ah, well. I’ve always been looking for an excuse not to play Ipswich. What Sunak needs to understand – and what he probably does understand but is pretending not to in order to get angry and confused people to vote Tory – is that anything spent on green initiatives now will cost less than having to terraform Mars and fly all his billionaire hedge fund manager mates there in captured alien spacecraft while the rest of humanity dies in 10 years’ time, so he may as well swipe the card he doesn’t really know how to use on the green initiative card reader. In the meantime, we continue to convict the future heroes of Just Stop Oil with draconian laws Sunak himself admitted were inspired by suggestions put forward by “non-partisan educational charity” Policy Exchange, a thinktank belonging to the “Tufton Street” gang of organisations, a grouping awash with cash from American funders of climate change denial such as the John Templeton Foundation, the National Philanthropic Trust and the Sarah Scaife Foundation. It’s easy for rightwing talk radio hosts to sneer at the well-meaning middle-class youths of Just Stop Oil, all named after herbs and Farrow & Ball paints, crying on camera as they consider what is in store for us. But Sunak actually used oil-funded strategies to silence them, and if you knew what these kids know, you would be crying too. I just saw a photo of Europe from space, looking like a burning Breville toaster with inappropriate pikelets catching fire inside it, as all the smoke alarms go off, and I wet myself a bit. And that’s what you should be doing, weeping and pissing and shitting yourself, not getting out of your car to slap around a nice little girl in sustainable trousers, slow-walking in the high street on a Monday morning, because, let’s face it, your wife won’t have sex with you due to the fact that you’re obviously an arsehole. Basic Lee tour dates are here. A fun-size ™ ® version of the show is at the Stand’s New Town theatre, Edinburgh, from 11 to 20 August | ['commentisfree/commentisfree', 'environment/climate-crisis', 'environment/environment', 'environment/just-stop-oil', 'politics/labour', 'politics/keir-starmer', 'politics/sadiq-khan', 'politics/politics', 'politics/conservatives', 'politics/transport', 'uk/london', 'type/article', 'tone/comment', 'profile/stewart-lee', 'publication/theobserver', 'theobserver/new-review', 'theobserver/new-review/agenda', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/observer-new-review'] | environment/just-stop-oil | CLIMATE_ACTIVISM | 2023-07-30T09:00:03Z | true | CLIMATE_ACTIVISM |
money/2012/jun/12/guide-flooding-question-answer | Flooding: what should you do? | Heavy rainfall has already caused havoc across the UK, with homes in Wales, the south-east, Yorkshire and London suffering flooding, and there is more on the way. The Met Office has issued a severe weather warning for the west of England and Wales and is warning that further heavy rain falling on already saturated ground could lead to even worse flooding. We explain what should you do if your home is threatened by rising water There's been a flood alert for my area. What should I do? Tune in to the local radio station on a battery or wind-up radio so you can keep up with what is going on and to check the local weather forecast. Prepare a flood kit: home insurance documents, torch, warm waterproof clothing, first aid kit and prescription medicine, bottled water and non-perishable food, baby food and care items. Think about who will need help to get out of danger, including vulnerable neighbours and pets. The alert has changed to a warning – what now? Turn off your gas and electricity. Move family, pets, important (including insurance policy documents, birth certificates etc) and precious items to a safe position (the highest floor/attic). Put any flood protection products you have in place, including airbrick covers, floorboards (to fit around windows and doors), sandbags (stuff pillow cases or plastic bags with earth if you don't have sandbags) and sink and bath plugs (weighed down by heavy objects). If there is time, also move other items such as expensive furniture, electrical equipment, lightweight rugs and carpets to the top floor in the house. If there is time, move your car to higher ground. Plug water inlet pipes with towels or cloths, and disconnect any equipment that uses water. I'm already flooded – what now? The most important thing is to stay safe. Co-operate with the emergency services and evacuate your home if told to do so. Call 999 if you are in danger. If your home is actually underwater it's too late to worry about saving items, but you should think about what to do once the waters start to recede. Your first step should be to call your insurance company – most have 24-hour emergency helplines. What if I can't find my policy document? Don't panic – your insurer should be able to find you on its database. Look on its website or call a directory inquiries line to get its number. Remember that your building and contents cover may be with different companies so you may need to put in two calls. If you car is under water you will have to call your motor insurance company as well. Bear in mind you will only be able to make a claim if you have fully comprehensive cover. What should I do next? If you are able to stay in your property but need help to prevent further damage, speak to your insurer before arranging emergency repairs, and keep any receipts for work done so you can claim for the cost. Where possible, take photographs to record the damage as this could help with your insurance claim. Remember that water and electricity don't mix: if your electricity supply is not switched off, ask a qualified person to deal with this. Do not touch sources of electricity while standing in water. Don't throw damaged things away, even if you will need to replace them, without first checking with your insurer. It is likely to want a loss adjustor to assess the damage first and work out how much your payout should be. Use a permanent ink pen to mark how high water has risen in every room and make a list of what damage has occurred, including food touched by flood water and anything if your fridge and freezer. Keep a note of all phone calls with your insurance company, recording the date, time, name of the person you spoke to and what was agreed. Check whether the insurer will pay for the cleaning of your property, or if you are expected to do that. Local councils normally provide skips for items that your insurer has agreed you can throw away. Shovel mud away evenly from both sides of a wall to stop pressure building up on one side. What if I have had to leave my property? In the first instance, you may be moved to emergency shelter by the rescue services, but after that you may need to move somewhere else while work is done to make your home habitable again. Building and contents insurance will usually include provision for alternative accommodation if the damage is so great that you are unable to stay at home. If you have both types of policy, your building insurer will be expected to take care of your claim for somewhere to stay. Most insurers will ask you to approve with them the accommodation you are moving to before your stay begins. Sadly, they are unlikely to stretch to the Ritz – alternative accommodation is supposed to be in keeping with your normal lifestyle, so for most people that will mean a standard hotel or B&B, at least in the short term. | ['money/insurance', 'money/consumer-affairs', 'money/money', 'uk/wales', 'environment/flooding', 'environment/environment', 'uk/uk', 'type/article', 'profile/jillinsley'] | environment/flooding | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2012-06-12T12:33:29Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
world/2012/jun/12/colorado-wildfire-evacuations-government-response | Colorado wildfire forces evacuations as government is accused of slow response | Dozens of homeowners in northern Colorado have been issued with evacuation notices to escape wildfires fanned by winds and a severe drought, as fears grew that federal agencies were stretched. The White House was under growing pressure on Tuesday to approve new air tankers for the forest service, whose ageing air fleet has been falling into disrepair. The national interagency fire centre reported 19 active fires burning in nine states on Tuesday, including the Colorado fire which was burning about 15 miles from the town of Fort Collins. Evacuation notices were issued in Larimer County. New Mexico was fighting two active fires, including one that is already the largest in the state's recorded history. One woman was killed in Colorado when the fire consumed her cabin, and nearly 120 structures have been destroyed since the fire started on Saturday, with a lightning strike. In all, more than 2,600 households have been told to evacuate, and the fire covered more than 64 square miles by Monday evening. Even before the latest outbreaks, fire scientists warned of an increased risk of severe wildfires this year, across the south-west and west and into the mid-west, because of prolonged drought. The forecast has sharpened fears that budget cuts, ordered by Congress, have eaten into firefighting capabilities. Congress cut more than $500m from the wildfire budget this year. The federal government has been under attack from members of Congress for moving too slowly to upgrade its aerial firefighting capabilities. Western Senators have accused the forest service of moving too slowly to replace its old fleet of large-scale air tankers. The planes, some of Korean war vintage, have slowly been failing into disrepair over the last decade. "This fire is just one of several burning across the parched western states right now, including several others on northern and south-western Colorado," Colorado Senator Mark Udall said in a statement. "I will be keeping a close watch to make sure this fire continues to get the resources that it needs." The forest service chief, Tom Tidwell, insists the federal government has the resources to protect life and property at a time of increasing wildfires. "We have enough resources at this time to be able to deal with the fires we currently are dealing with and what we expect to have to deal with the rest of this fire season," Tidwell told the Associated Press last week. But wildfire experts say the forest service is dangerously exposed by its lack of big air tankers, which are crucial to putting out fires in the early stages. The fleet has dropped by 80% over the last decade. By last month, only nine aircraft remained usable. The forest service moved to bring in more air tankers on Monday and Tuesday, bumping up the fleet to 17 large air tankers. It said on Tuesday it had the capability to mobilise an additional 11 air tankers, if circumstances warrant. Jim Karels, a forest service officer from Florida who heads the National Association of State Foresters, said the squeeze on air tankers made it difficult for firefighters to confront a number of simultaneous fires – as they have been facing this year. "The fleet has dropped considerably over the years. Many of them are vintage military aircraft that are coming to the end of their life spans for this kind of work," he said. "If you get a large number of new starts you tend to get behind and as the fires do get bigger having enough air tankers to spread out between a large number of fires is very tough to co-ordinate," he said. "Where you really get behind with a smaller fleet like this is when you get a significant amount of lightning fires all starting at once, and then you run out of aircraft to keep those fires small." He added: "That hasn't happened yet. But it could happen." | ['world/wildfires', 'us-news/colorado', 'us-news/newmexico', 'us-news/obama-administration', 'us-news/us-politics', 'environment/environment', 'us-news/us-news', 'world/world', 'world/natural-disasters', 'us-news/colorado-wildfires', 'type/article', 'profile/suzannegoldenberg'] | world/wildfires | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2012-06-12T21:21:00Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
books/2021/jul/22/marcus-rashford-is-playing-politics-thats-great-hes-better-at-it-than-politicians | Marcus Rashford is ‘playing politics’? That’s great – he’s better at it than politicians | Jess Phillips | The accusation that someone is “playing politics” has become a regular slur among my political opponents. Most recently, Natalie Elphicke, who succeeded her husband as MP for Dover while he was under suspicion of sexual offences, accused Marcus Rashford of “playing politics”, suggesting that his desire to speak up about hungry schoolchildren had harmed his football skills and taken his eye off the ball. The suggestion here is, of course, that politics is solely the pursuit of politicians and that when other people get involved, they are merely acting out a childish game. In fact, Rashford plays politics considerably better than Elphicke, because unlike her, he has led campaigns that galvanised a million people and changed government policy, and has a direct line to the prime minister. I’ll wager he is also better at kicking a ball. Two nil to Rashford. However, the accusation is not only made against ordinary voters. If I, an elected representative, talk about the case of a murdered woman, I am told that I am “playing politics” with the tragedy. To some, I am not considered a professional on the political playing field. I am the wrong sort of politician. I have been accused of peddling student politics, in an attempt to patronise and sideline me. I have also been told that, unlike the very important ministers, I am led by my heart, whereas proper grownup politicians have to think with their heads. Playing politics is an accusation made in order to diminish your voice and make you feel stupid, as if you have made some sort of terrible political faux pas. You haven’t. Politics is for everyone and there is nothing good that ever happened in our country that was not conceived of, fought for and activated by ordinary citizens. Women having the vote, universal child benefit, the Race Relations Act, even the weekend was first conceived of in some draughty hall by ordinary people. Politicians like me don’t come up with our campaigns ourselves, they come from the stories we are told in our constituencies. If ordinary people didn’t dare to think that they could change things, politicians would have nothing to play with. It is often young change-makers, such as Rashford, Greta Thunberg and Malala Yousafzai who are accused of playing politics. “Its not personal, it’s just politics” is another well-trodden and ridiculous platitude. Everything about politics is deeply personal to all our lives. When we speak up we are not playing a game, we are asserting our liberty and our rights. The food we eat, the clothes on our backs and where they came from, who we can love and how we can love them: every single tiny thing in our lives will have been debated and decided in the Palace of Westminster. The womb I lug around this grand building – with its gargoyles and gilding – is regularly up for political debate. That feels pretty personal to me when I listen to a load of men debating what I can and can’t do with my internal organs. We disempower the public by making out that politics and all its funny terminology and tradition is for a special gang who are in the know. We make out as if only the very best can make it to parliament when in reality there are literally no qualifications required. We tell people who dare to campaign that they are “playing politics” and then when we are forced to listen to them because they are better at it than those paid to play the game, bad politicians take credit for enacting the resulting positive changes. It is hard at times to convince people that organising or attending meetings and events to push forward their ideas or campaigns is anything more than a slog that, at least at first, will probably be ignored. People are busy, they have bills to worry about, box sets to watch. When Rashford set out to feed the nation’s children, he could have been doing something else more fun, or at least more in his comfort zone. With a premiership footballer’s platform, he had an easier run at it than others, but I have absolutely no doubt that he had a crisis of confidence about using his voice, that he thought more than once that he didn’t understand politics enough to get involved. What Rashford knows now, though, is that all of the fears and self-doubt, the tedious meetings, the crushing abuse and misdirection pales into insignificance when your voice is heard. The feeling of taking part in politics and actually changing something is like fireworks in your chest, it’s like kicking the ball straight into the back of the net while your team leap on you in victory. If more people knew what a political win felt like, everyone would want one. So let’s play politics, because it’s personal to each and every one of us, and if we don’t, the same people will always win, while using your jobs, your education and your internal organs as the counters in their game. • Everything You Really Need to Know About Politics by Jess Phillips is published by Simon & Schuster (£16.99). To support the Guardian and the Observer buy a copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply. | ['books/politics', 'politics/politics', 'books/books', 'culture/culture', 'uk/uk', 'football/marcus-rashford', 'environment/greta-thunberg', 'world/malala-yousafzai', 'type/article', 'tone/comment', 'profile/jess-phillips', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/guardianreview', 'theguardian/guardianreview/saturdayreviewsfeatres', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/review'] | environment/greta-thunberg | CLIMATE_ACTIVISM | 2021-07-22T13:21:15Z | true | CLIMATE_ACTIVISM |
money/2016/jul/30/invest-renewable-energy-negative-interest-rates | Why not invest in your local chippy? It could be a source of renewable energy | Next Thursday the Bank of England is widely expected to make its first rate cut since March 2009, taking the base rate from 0.5% to just 0.25%, while NatWest has warned customers that negative interest rates could be on the horizon. For savers fed up with lousy returns, and willing to take much more risk with their money, are renewable energy schemes the answer? Recycled cooking oil from fish and chip shops hardly sounds like a feasible alternative to a savings account at the Halifax, but the promoters of Living Power reckon that investors can make an “effective” 8% return over the seven-year life of the scheme. Living Power takes the waste oil from restaurants and converts it into clean biofuel, which is then used to supply the National Grid with eco-friendly electricity at peak periods. The company claims that most of Britain’s waste cooking oil is used to make biodiesel, which it says is much less environmentally attractive than using it to generate electricity. The money the company raises will go into refinancing the four biofuel power stations it operates in Yorkshire, Suffolk and Norfolk. The investment is through a “debenture” which gradually repays the money you initially invest, plus an investment income from the revenue the power plants produce. The minimum investment is just £5, and the typical investor puts up £500, so its promoters, Abundance Generation, says it’s an option for almost everyone, and should be particularly attractive to ethical investors. Abundance says it has already had an investment in Living Power from CO2Sense, which manages an evergreen investment fund established by the Department for Business Innovation & Skills. A calculator on the Abundance site suggests that a £1,000 investment will pay out £1,338.53 after seven years, which compares to the £1,100 or so you would earn from the current best cash Isa. But you don’t need to be a maths expert to work out that’s not a return of 8% a year. That’s because this investment returns one-seventh of your capital every year, and the 8% return is the “effective” rate on your diminishing investment over the years. It also comes with significant risks. There is no financial services compensation scheme protection, so if Living Power goes bust you will simply be a creditor, and are likely to see little if any of your money back. Your investment is not secured against the assets of the power stations but the revenue stream of the power plants. Living Power says this can be very good, because the plants are largely used to supply electricity at peak times, when the Grid pays most for additional units of power. On top of that, they earn an income from “Rocs” – which are green energy certificates given to generators of renewable power. However, after 2017 it can’t be sure precisely what the Rocs payments will be. Unlike savings accounts, these sorts of schemes are problematic should you wish to get your money out before seven years – you have to rely on other investors wanting to buy your stake via a “bulletin board”. You are also charged fees of 4% initially and 1.5% annually, although Living Power says its 8% “internal rate of return” is calculated after these fees are taken into account. Green energy schemes do go bust; Guardian Money has previously highlighted the collapse of Secured Energy Bonds, which promised a secure income of 6.5% a year but the money was siphoned off to a company in Australia which subsequently went bust itself. Abundance says it has been operating as a crowdfunding site since 2012 without any investment failures, and that typically people invest £500 per project, with its average customer now invested in five different schemes each. Our conclusion? Deals such as this can spice up your investment returns, but no sane investor would put more than just a small part of their savings into schemes such as these. Other renewable energy schemes currently also open for investment include • Share Solar, which is promising a 6.5% return, also on the Abundance platform. • BHESCo, forecasting a 5% return from a range of energy efficiency and energy generation projects on four buildings in and around Brighton and Hove, available at Ethex.org.uk. • Low Carbon Hub 2016, again forecasting 5% returns from a community-owned renewable energy system for Oxfordshire, available at Ethex. • Plymouth Energy Community Renewables 2016, promising 6% interest “to keep their completed 4.1MW array as a long-term community-owned asset, by refinancing it, with a combination of a loan from Plymouth city council and community shares”. Available on Ethex. • Energise Barnsley is projecting a 5% interest rate on its solar bond, which will help finance solar rooftop installations. Again, at Ethex. | ['money/moneyinvestments', 'money/investmentfunds', 'money/money', 'environment/renewableenergy', 'environment/energy', 'environment/environment', 'business/interest-rates', 'business/economics', 'business/business', 'money/energy', 'money/household-bills', 'money/consumer-affairs', 'technology/energy', 'technology/technology', 'tone/features', 'type/article', 'profile/patrickcollinson', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/money', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-money'] | environment/renewableenergy | ENERGY | 2016-07-30T05:59:26Z | true | ENERGY |
business/2017/dec/21/nuclear-power-renewables-low-carbon-provide-record-share-uk-electricity | Nuclear and renewables provide record share of UK electricity, ONS says | More than half of the UK’s electricity came from nuclear power stations and renewables between July and September, official figures show. The record high share of 54.4% of power from low carbon sources was a result of the rapid growth in solar and wind power, according to the Office for National Statistics. During the same period in 2016 the share for low carbon electricity stood at 50%, and in 2015 it was 45%. The growth of green energy squeezed out fossil fuels, pushing the share of electricity generation from coal and gas plants to a record low of 42%. Including windfarms, solar panels, hydro schemes and biomass plants, renewables accounted for 30% of power in the third quarter. The all-time high was 30.7% in the second quarter of 2017. “This latest record is yet another nail in the coffin for the claim that renewables cannot be a sizeable part of the UK’s electricity mix,” said Dr Jonathan Marshall, an analyst at the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit. The three months were not as windy or sunny as the year before, but this was offset by new windfarm and solar installations. The share was also helped by the return to operation of a wood-burning unit at the Drax power plant in North Yorkshire, which was out of action the year before. The green energy records are the latest in a string of milestones this year that demonstrate how dramatically and quickly the UK’s energy mix is changing. Britain went without coal power for a day in April for the first time in more than 130 years. The country has since gone hundreds of hours without the polluting fuel in 2017, and coal generated just 2.9% of electricity between July and September. Solar has set several records and now provides a sizeable amount of power in the middle of the day. For one period on an afternoon in May, all the solar panels in fields and on buildings across the country were even generating more electricity than the UK’s eight nuclear power stations. Wind power capacity has increased, too, though one of the biggest moments for windfarms was not growth but falls in price. In September windfarm developers secured a record low subsidy price to build wind turbines off the coast in the early 2020s in what experts said marked a breakthrough for the technology. Put together, the National Grid has said that renewables were now a “significant part” of the UK’s energy mix. According to one analysis, generation of renewable power has increased by more than 1,000% over the last two decades. Bulb, an energy company that supplies renewable power to more than a quarter of a million customers, said that at the current rate 2017 would prove to be a record year for renewables. The company forecast 100 terawatt hours of power would be produced by renewables by the year’s end compared twith 208 for fossil fuels and nuclear based on an extrapolation of the official data so far this year. “Right now we are at a moment where those new technologies are becoming cheaper than existing technologies. It now just makes much more sense,” said the Bulb co-founder Hayden Wood. | ['business/energy-industry', 'environment/renewableenergy', 'business/business', 'environment/environment', 'uk/office-for-national-statistics', 'environment/solarpower', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/adam-vaughan', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/financial3', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-business'] | environment/renewableenergy | ENERGY | 2017-12-21T18:10:07Z | true | ENERGY |
news/2011/aug/04/cowes-weatherwatch-sailing-regatta | Cowes weatherwatch | Cowes Week, which starts tomorrow, is a highly prestigious sailing regatta in which the crews battle against not just each other but also the brute forces of wind and tides that can rip through the Solent. The mean spring tide range at Cowes harbour, for instance, is 3.6 metres (12ft) as the tides are squeezed between the mainland and Isle of Wight. There can also be a cat's cradle of winds swirling over the water, and the teams need to know how to read the weather. When northwesterlies blow off Salisbury Plain they squeeze through Southampton Water like water pouring down a funnel. The winds stream across the Solent and then crash into the hills of the Isle of Wight and pour down the river Medina at Cowes, often giving spectators a good buffeting. On the other hand, when the prevailing southwesterly winds sweep up the English Channel, the south side of the Isle of Wight can be pummelled while Cowes on the north side is sheltered. Winds can, though, spill around the headlands and cliffs, catching unwary sailing crews off guard with unexpected gusts of wind. And even if the wind dies altogether, a local sea breeze usually blows if there is warm sunshine. The breeze usually kicks in at about 11.30am as the mainland heats up under the sun and warm air rises up off the ground, sucks in air off the cool sea and creates wind speeds of up to around 20mph. | ['news/series/weatherwatch', 'uk/weather', 'uk/uk', 'tone/features', 'sport/sailing', 'travel/sailing-holidays', 'sport/olympicssailing', 'sport/olympic-games', 'type/article', 'profile/jeremy-plester', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/weather2'] | news/series/weatherwatch | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2011-08-04T22:05:01Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
environment/blog/2011/dec/14/british-public-support-renewable-energy | British public strongly support renewable energy, survey says | Leo Hickman | Does the UK have a "silent majority" in support of further investment in renewables? You wouldn't necessarily think so if you listen to the very vocal, media-driven opposition against, say, wind power, but a recent YouGov survey commissioned by the Sunday Times suggests the true picture might be a little different. The Sunday Times itself chose not to report the YouGov findings related to renewables (you can draw your own conclusions as to why), but if you look beyond the headline polling about the 1,696 respondents' political leanings you start to reach some rather intriguing environmentally themed results from page seven onwards (pdf). For example, asked (over the period 24-25 November) if they would support or oppose a high-speed rail link between London and Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds, the response was 54% in support and 27% in opposition. For a new airport in the Thames Estuary, 30% were supportive and 48% opposed. (The split among respondents in London was 50% / 34%, respectively.) But the real point of interest can be found on page nine, which asks: "Thinking about the country's future energy provision, do you think the government should be looking to use more or less of the following?" Solar power More than at present - 74% Less than at present - 6% Maintain current levels - 12% Not sure - 9% Wind farms More than at present - 56% Less than at present - 19% Maintain current levels - 15% Not sure - 9% Nuclear power stations More than at present - 35% Less than at present - 27% Maintain current levels - 23% Not sure - 15% Oil power stations More than at present - 10% Less than at present - 47% Maintain current levels - 27% Not sure - 17% Coal power stations More than at present - 16% Less than at present - 43% Maintain current levels - 25% Not sure - 17% It then asks: "Do you think the government is right or wrong to subsidise wind farms to encourage more use of wind power?" Right 60% Wrong 26% Don't know 15% Do you think increased use of wind power is or is not a realistic way of combating climate change? Realistic 47% Not realistic 36% Don't know 16% Do you think increased use of solar power is or is not a realistic way of combating climate change? Realistic 67% Not realistic 18% Don't know 15% Over at BusinessGreen, James Murray describes the survey results as "explosive", especially given that they "follow months during which the right-wing press has waged an increasingly virulent campaign against climate change, wind farms, renewable energy, and the green levies that pay for it". (See Duncan Clark's assessment of how "UK newspaper coverage is skewed against renewables".) As Murray correctly points out, it is worth the time drilling down into the various demographic, political and regional breakdowns of the results. For example, you see a clear age bias when it comes to wind farms. As the age of the respondent increases, their support for wind falls, but not to the point where the majority of the "60+" grouping are against it. The older respondents tend to be more supportive of nuclear energy, too. But support for solar energy is near equal across all age groups. It is worth noting the political differences, too. For example, 43% of Conservative voters say they want more wind farms than at present, compared to 62% of Labour voters and 70% of Liberal Democrat voters. Equally, Conservative voters are noticeably more supportive of nuclear energy than Labour or Lib Dem voters. But, somewhat counter-intuitively, support for wind farms is lowest among London-based respondents (49%) compared to areas that might consider themselves more at risk of being "blighted" by wind farms, say, Midland/Wales (57%) and Scotland (59%). Sadly, the survey doesn't distinguish between urban, suburban and rural residents, as those results might have provided extra illumination. When it comes to subsidising wind farms (it doesn't distinguish between off- and on-shore wind), 18-24 voters are far more supportive (70%) than 60+ voters (48%). YouGov didn't ask the same question of solar power (or nuclear, for that matter). James Murray describes the survey's findings as the "best kind of early Christmas present" for the "government's green agenda". I'm not sure I would go that far – it is only one snapshot survey, after all – but it does provide grist to the theory that there is a danger that the vocal minority (and their powerful media allies) who oppose investment in renewable energy shouldn't be allowed to drown out the views of the silent majority who seemingly favour such an approach. | ['environment/blog', 'environment/environment', 'environment/renewableenergy', 'environment/energy', 'money/energy', 'environment/windpower', 'environment/solarpower', 'environment/nuclearpower', 'environment/green-economy', 'environment/climate-crisis', 'politics/politics', 'tone/blog', 'type/article', 'profile/leohickman'] | environment/windpower | ENERGY | 2011-12-14T15:42:00Z | true | ENERGY |
tv-and-radio/2012/mar/01/children-of-the-tsunami-review | TV review: Children of the Tsunami; Make Bradford British | 'It crashes down on you with such force," explains 10-year-old Rikku at the start of Children of the Tsunami (BBC2), "then it pulls you back. And you die." On March 11 last year, the tsunami created by a force nine earthquake along Japan's Pacific coast pulled back over 19,000 people. Among them were 74 children and nine teachers at the Okawa primary school, one of the two locations where the documentary team have chosen to let the children tell their story of the disaster. The other is around the edges of the exclusion zone surrounding the Fukushima nuclear power plant where the reactors, damaged in the earthquake, sent clouds of radioactive dust into the air and contaminated everything for miles around. As with any documentary charting the unfolding of a tragedy through the eyes of its most innocent victims, Children of the Tsunami was intensely moving. The extremity of the situation rendered into simple, direct and artless speech ("It was how you'd imagine a big monster to be," says one. "I kept looking at the cars and wondering, 'Is Mum going to come?'") is impossibly affecting. A team must tread very carefully, permitting themselves no indulgences – all of which strictures were admirably cleaved to here – if it's not to feel in some way like a cheap trick. The children's suffering, their patience, bewilderment and worry – tempered with an almost miraculous and infinite capacity to accept and adapt, even to a world they now map out in microsieverts – was beautifully caught. But behind them lay a terrible wave of adult misery, unrelievable pain and unanswered questions: about practical issues such as compensation and information about the effects and lifespan of the contamination, on which the government remains silent; and about more intangible, intractable matters such as how you shore up your psyche against a tsunami of grief. By the end you were left thinking, if you could banish the thought of the unseen radioactive forces infiltrating their cells, that perhaps the children were the lucky ones. The bodies of six of the 74 children who died at Okawa were not recovered after the waters receded. Their parents dig with their bare hands and machinery when they can get it. Fishermen find the body of Naomi's daughter Koharu six months after the tsunami – in as unbearably corrupted a state as you would imagine, and there is no comfort anywhere. Bereaved parents confront the one surviving teacher, hoping at least for an explanation of why the children were not taken up the nearby hillside when the wave came, but – as we see in raw and awful footage filmed by a parent at the meeting with the school authorities – he can only explain how he saved himself and beg for forgiveness. It was a powerful, dignified and dignifying film that made you hope the team would return to look more closely at the other issues raised in the months and years to come. Make Bradford British (Channel 4) declared itself to be an attempt to discover what "Britishness" really is and whether multiculturalism can succeed in a country where, outside London, the different races and religions seem to segregate quite starkly and stubbornly. This tricky sociological question, decided diversity and community experts Laurie Trott and Taiba Yasseen (or possibly some idiot spark at the arse-end of a late night brainstorming session at Channel 4), could best be addressed by sticking eight people born and bred here (who had all failed the British citizenship test and therefore – I didn't quite follow the reasoning here – didn't know what Britishness was) in a house together for a week and, umm, watching what happened. Nothing really of note, it turned out. That is, nothing beyond what we have seen a thousand times on the thousand similar semi-freak shows there have been before this. Roll up and watch a few layers of someone's ignorance and fear stripped back to reveal the – gasp! – actually non-diabolic heart that beats within. Gasp! as most people are shown to be slightly better, at bottom, than their daily lives allow them to be. Hiss! at the one villain stubbornly refusing to be enlightened yet. Marvel! as you see that even people of the same race or religion can disagree. Add! to the teetering pile of "passing the time/pissing it away" programmes that towers over the schedules and Despair! | ['tv-and-radio/series/tv-review', 'culture/television', 'tv-and-radio/tv-and-radio', 'culture/culture', 'world/tsunamis', 'world/natural-disasters', 'world/world', 'world/race', 'society/society', 'type/article', 'profile/lucymangan', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/g2', 'theguardian/g2/tvandradio'] | world/tsunamis | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2012-03-01T22:00:00Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
commentisfree/2008/jul/28/windpower.alternativeenergy | Michael Berkeley: Rush for green energy risks a blot of turbines on the landscape | Those of us who support the government's determination to lower CO2 emissions, yet care passionately about preserving our most beautiful landscapes, are in a serious quandary. Labour has turned to offshore wind farms as the most productive way of harvesting nature's own supply of energy. Sadly, we are not capable of realising anything like the goal of 7,000 offshore turbines in the near future. So pressure is being applied to nod through 4,000 onshore. Objectors to complex applications running to hundreds of pages are given a meagre 21 days to register dissent. At this rate we may sacrifice areas of rare beauty thanks to governmental panic and a landscape protection policy that predates 400ft turbines. Take the countryside where I live and work, the Welsh Marches near Knighton - the town that straddles Offa's Dyke - whose hills have been immortalised in lines by AE Houseman and Francis Kilvert. Ten years ago, an application to Powys and Herefordshire for 14 turbines right on the border was turned down by both councils because the visual damage to an important landscape could not be justified. Local feeling was intense and pretty well unanimous. Since then the landscape has not changed, so how could the decision? With the greater sense of urgency that climate change has fostered - not to mention the incomprehensibly vast subsidies available - the same farmer (Sir Simon Gourlay - an ex-NFU president) has put together a new application to Herefordshire for four turbines. Since he admits that this is "not an ideal site", they will need to be 105m high (dwarfing Nelson's Column at 55m). These massive industrial towers, counterbalanced by thousands of tons of concrete and complemented by a sub-station and overhead cabling, would reach further into the sky than any building in Wales. Writing in Country Living in 1991, Gourlay eloquently described the views from his farm as "a spectacular landscape". By the time he wrote his first environmental submission in 1994 this landscape had become "uninteresting, dull" and even "barren". We need a better and more objective way of defining areas that demand to be protected as part of our national heritage, not only because they themselves are ravishingly beautiful, peaceful and full of protected wildlife, but because they are overlooked by important and priceless countryside - in this case, the Black Mountains, the Brecon Beacons, Clee Hill, the Wrekin, Radnor Forest, the Malverns and, critically, the internationally important ancient monument, Offa's Dyke. Explaining his intention to speed up the planning process, John Hutton, the business and energy minister, said that it is essential that the voice of local people be heard, particularly in environmentally sensitive areas. But with its latest renewable "push", the government is clearly at odds with itself in trying to uphold democracy while simultaneously garnering more turbines, regardless of local opposition. Objecting to the application, novelist Ian McEwan wrote: "To industrialise an area of great and fragile beauty for a near negligible gain is entirely against the spirit of any environmental policy rooted in common sense and practical solutions. On a small and crowded island like ours, we count ourselves lucky that there remain still places of such tranquillity and loveliness as Reeves Hill. We owe it to our children's children to preserve such treasures and at the same time take rational steps to limit our greenhouse gas emissions." Several communities in the British Isles are fighting similarly, but without access to writers or the national media. For all of us, the Reeves Hill case is pivotal. · Michael Berkeley's latest composition Slow Dawn is at the Proms on August 10. Contact the campaign at www.shcg.co.uk | ['commentisfree/commentisfree', 'environment/windpower', 'environment/renewableenergy', 'environment/energy', 'environment/environment', 'society/communities', 'society/society', 'tone/comment', 'commentisfree/cif-green', 'type/article', 'profile/michaelberkeley', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/commentanddebate'] | environment/windpower | ENERGY | 2008-07-27T23:01:00Z | true | ENERGY |
commentisfree/2012/jan/18/east-africa-famine-warning | Why east Africa's famine warning was not heeded | Hugo Slim | Natural sciences can predict certain things quite well once they have established particular natural laws. But political and social sciences are notoriously bad at it. This is not surprising. Human events are deeply unpredictable, so we tend not to be too hard on ourselves when we miss things like the Arab spring. But should we be much harder on ourselves when we miss a famine? Surely, there is quite a lot of hard science in a famine – indicators of drought, rising food prices, distressed asset sales, malnutrition and migration flows. Presumably, by now, we can predict a famine, especially in the Horn of Africa that has been saturated by government, UN and NGO "famine early warning systems" since the horrendous famine of 1984. According to the Department for International Development, the current famine in east Africa may have killed up to 100,000 people. A new report by Save the Children and Oxfam says they saw this coming, but politicians did not take their warnings seriously enough and acted too late. The British government has made a quite exceptional commitment to foreign aid at a time of extreme cuts in public spending and in Andrew Mitchell, the Department for International Development has a minister with a deep personal commitment to humanitarian action. Why famine early warning is not heeded is a complex human problem, perhaps even a so-called "wicked problem". It is certainly not one that can be easily answered by that lazy refrain – "a lack of political will". Few governments have shown as much political will on aid as this one. So, why was international action late? Save the Children and Oxfam give a number of reasons; some of these are psychological and some are organisational. Psychologically, they suggest that government officials were reluctant to call a crisis until there was a crisis. This reluctance had three main drivers: a fear of getting it wrong; a fear of being too interventionist and undermining community coping; and "fatigue" and "resignation" in the face of so many droughts in such ecologically fragile parts of the world. I imagine these psychological reasons are pretty accurate. When I was a UN early-warning monitor in Ethiopia in 1987, I was always worried that I might call it wrong and look very stupid if food aid was piling up in the road as Ethiopians were bringing in a massive harvest. This report's suggestion of agreeing a "no-regrets" culture if you overreact seems psychologically sensible. There are budgeting and organisational problems, too. Corralling hundreds of NGOs and UN agencies to agree the scale of a problem and then to act in concert is always going to be difficult. More importantly, budgets are still divided too strictly between emergency and development funds. You can't start doing emergency work from a development budget and vice versa. Quite rightly, Save the Children and Oxfam are asking for more flexible funding that moves between the two on a basis of agreed "trigger" points. Only by treating famine and development within a single mindset will we end the damaging split thinking that requires aid either to be laidback and long term, or hyperactive and hectic. Britain is a thought leader in this area of global policy and needs to encourage others to follow suit, but international politics is only one part of the complex problem of famine prevention. The other is national politics. Millions of poor people who are vulnerable to famine live in fragile ecological areas that need peace, public investment, access to credit and governments that are focused on their needs. It is politicians in Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia who bear primary responsibility for preventing famine among their citizens. They need to be alert to early-warning systems, and make the most of international aid and economic growth for the poorest in their countries. But their hesitations, conflicts and power plays are just as much to blame for the late response to this famine. As warnings were raised about this crisis, the Kenyan political elite was obsessed with itself in its endless power-sharing wrangle. The Somali elites were at war. And, as usual in Ethiopia, everyone in the aid world was far too frightened to criticise prime minister Meles Zenawi's judgment of the crisis in case they got thrown out. Managing food crises will be a continuing global challenge as prices rise and environments change. In many ways, the international aid system is now functioning as a nascent global safety net. This is real progress and means that hungry people can now be reached and helped in any part of the globe. All of us should expect our politicians and civil servants to pay special attention to the early-warning systems that guide this safety net. And, as Save the Children and Oxfam point out, we need to make it clear that we would rather politicians acted too early than too late. | ['commentisfree/commentisfree', 'global-development/famine', 'global-development/aid', 'environment/drought', 'environment/environment', 'global-development/global-development', 'world/somalia', 'world/kenya', 'world/ethiopia', 'world/world', 'tone/comment', 'type/article', 'profile/hugo-slim'] | environment/drought | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2012-01-18T17:14:28Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
environment/2017/jun/28/how-san-francisco-is-leading-the-way-out-of-bottled-water-culture | How San Francisco is leading the way out of bottled water culture | Americans drink enough bottled water each week to circle the globe two times around. That was one of the many alarming facts that motivated politicians in San Francisco to pursue a progressive environmental regulation no other major US city had dared – a ban on bottled water. The liberal California city had previously led the way on banning plastic shopping bags, but the 2014 proposal to restrict bottled water was more modest. Although the board of supervisors voted unanimously to phase out the sale of single-use plastic water bottles, the rule only applied to city property. “Given America’s addiction to plastic water bottles, we knew we had to be smart,” said David Chiu, a state assemblyman who introduced the measure when he was a San Francisco supervisor. “There were members of the public who couldn’t imagine life without plastic water bottles.” So even though San Francisco is known as one of the most environmentally progressive cities in the country – the first in the US to pass a comprehensive mandatory recycling and composting law – officials limited the bottled water ban to city-owned land, leaving private businesses unaffected. The ordinance, which has expanded in recent years, also bars the sale of bottled water at large events on city properties and prohibits San Francisco government agencies from purchasing plastic bottled water. Legislators also called for increased investment in water fountains, filling stations and event water hook-ups. “San Francisco has wonderful, high-quality water,” said Tyrone Jue, senior advisor on the environment in the mayor’s office. “It’s more heavily regulated than the water you’re getting in bottles.” Even limited to city property, the rollout of the law hasn’t always been easy. Banned from selling bottled water at city events, some vendors switched to alternatives that are also ecologically harmful, such as water in cans, glass bottles or other single-use containers. “The packaging is as detrimental to the environment as the bottle in some ways,” said Suzanne Gautier, a manager with the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, which helps event organizers comply with the law. Earlier this year, the city expanded the law to restrict the sale or distribution of “packaged” water on city property, including sealed boxes, bags, cans and other containers with a capacity of one liter or less. The city does not have data on the law’s impacts on plastic waste reduction in the region. But given the fact that plastic bottles take centuries to decompose and that the vast majority of bottles end up in landfills, any decrease in consumption is a step in the right direction, environmental campaigners said. Chiu said he hoped the law could help shift the culture in California and beyond back to the habits that were common before bottled water exploded. He noted that people often forget how rapidly private corporations took over drinking water. In 1976, the average American drank 1.6 gallons of bottled water a year – a number that skyrocketed to 28.3 gallons three decades later. “The bottled water industry has spent millions of dollars to convince us that the only place you can get safe water is from a bottle, and that we need this product,” said Lauren DeRusha Florez, an associated campaign director with Corporate Accountability International, a nonprofit group that backed San Francisco’s measure. More than 100 American cities have adopted measures to restrict government spending on bottled water, and bans have also spread at national parks and universities. But Florez said San Francisco’s measure is particularly forward-thinking in the way it prioritizes increasing access to safe tap water, which is critical at a time when there are increasing concerns about contamination of water supplies in the US following the crisis in Flint, Michigan. “The city is reinforcing water as a public good rather than a commodity that can be bought and sold by corporations.” San Francisco is not currently exploring a broader citywide prohibition on bottled water, but following the success of major plastic bag bans across the country, environmental activists are increasingly turning their attention to bottles, Flores added. “There’s a growing movement of folks who are looking for the next project.” | ['environment/plastic', 'environment/water', 'environment/waste', 'environment/environment', 'environment/pollution', 'us-news/san-francisco', 'us-news/us-news', 'world/series/half-full-solutions-innovations-answers', 'environment/series/bottling-it', 'type/article', 'tone/features', 'profile/sam-levin', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/west-coast-news'] | environment/waste | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE | 2017-06-28T17:00:22Z | true | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE |
sustainable-business/lobbying-business-leaders-history | Lobbying for good will put business and its leaders on the right side of history | For many, corporate lobbyists are akin to Lord of the Rings' Grima Wormtongue – quietly corrupting the ear of government with self-interest and accommodation with wrongdoing. The tobacco sector's 50-year conspiracy (pdf) to resist regulation, the chemical industry's routine attempts to keep products of proven toxicity on the shelves and fossil fuel's wholesale corruption of politics across the globe attest to why such a negative perception is warranted. But there is another side to the story. There are examples of business and business leaders lobbying for good and making a substantive, positive difference to people and the planet. In the 19th century it was Cadbury, Lever, Owen and Rowntree. In the 21st century it is Aviva, Gates, Ikea, Khosla, Maersk Line, Midcounties Co-operative, Moore, Ramsay, Reid, Skoll and a host of others. The glass is nowhere near half-full: the likes of the US Chamber of Commerce and BusinessEurope still wield far too much negative influence. And it doesn't take a great effort to find inconsistencies in the approach of the aforementioned leaders – then again the same can be said of all of us. But, there is a small and growing group of companies and business leaders that believe that public policy intervention is an essential component of the transition to a more sustainable economy. This is not only a positive development, but an absolute requirement for the world to have a cat in hell's chance of reinvigorating serious progress on issues such as climate change mitigation and trade justice. Significantly, most NGOs have reached the same conclusion as well, although few dare to shout it too loudly. Past champions of corporate responsibility are often viewed through the crude lens of philanthropy and how much wealth they donated. Yet the truly great business leaders throughout history have always grasped that legislative intervention can be a force for good. In the 19th century, William Lever's creation of the Port Sunlight garden village to house his company's workers attracted attention the world over. Lever was also an MP and in his maiden speech called for the state to have a role in the provision of pensions, and later went on to introduce a private members' bill on the issue. John Cadbury brought chocolate to the masses, while in his spare time he campaigned against the use of young boys as chimney sweeps. Joseph Rowntree made sure that not all of the trusts he established were organised as charities (with all their attendant restrictions on politicking) as he wanted them to be able to "search out the underlying causes" of social ills and if necessary seek to "change the laws of the land." Today, an emerging group of pioneers has realised that the business case for corporate responsibility will never be strong enough to support an isolated business in its competition against the unscrupulous. Public policy intervention is required to change the rules and shift the bar for the allowable lowest common denominator. The likes of Ikea, Maersk Line and Aviva are rightly well known for their slick advocacy work – which works well in part because it recognises the need to progress change in unison with campaigning NGOs such as Forum for the Future and WWF. This year, Ikea and Unilever wrote to the UK secretary of state for business, innovation and skills urging the government not to water down pending EU legislation requiring mandatory sustainability reporting by large business. Both have also been lobbying hard for meaningful targets to be progressed in the EU's 2030 Framework for Climate and Energy policy. Maersk Line has been a key player in establishing the Sustainable Shipping initiative, which is seeking "sustainable governance of the oceans" and is in support of "progressive legislation aimed at significantly improving social, environmental and economic sustainability across the shipping industry". Perhaps more significantly, we are now seeing smaller players increasingly enter the arena, such as Co-operative Energy, which last month helped force a little reported government U-turn on community energy tax relief in the UK. Similarly, smaller businesses are taking on the big issues of tax avoidance, living wage and sustainable procurement via associations such as the US Main Street Alliance and the UK Social Economy Alliance. Stories of small businesses marching up to the headquarters of Microsoft demanding it pays its fair share of taxes could be a sign of things to come. Lobbying for good is increasingly overriding the cultural aversion that rails against it. Getting on board puts you not only in the company of some fantastic business leaders down the ages, but also on the right side of history. Paul Monaghan is director of Up The Ethics and co-author of Lobbying For Good. Guardian readers can save 15% when purchasing Lobbying For Good from the publisher. Use code GSB15 here. The social impact hub is funded by AngloAmerican. All content is editorially independent except for pieces labelled advertisement feature. Find out more here. | ['sustainable-business/sustainable-business', 'environment/corporatesocialresponsibility', 'politics/lobbying', 'business/ethicalbusiness', 'tone/comment', 'sustainable-business/series/social-impact', 'type/article'] | environment/corporatesocialresponsibility | CLIMATE_POLICY | 2014-06-10T13:00:00Z | true | CLIMATE_POLICY |
media/pda/2010/sep/06/bbc-iplayer | New BBC iPlayer live from today | The BBC's iPlayer is used by 5 million people every week, so any redesign needs to be pretty confident. The new version instated today has had extensive work done behind the scenes and has some social media and recommendation features added. This version is not new, exactly, as it has been running as a beta since June. It recently accounted for 10% of overall iPlayer use and with 18,000 people choosing to link iPlayer to their Facebook or Twitter profile. Around 700,000 programmes were 'favourited'... no surprise that Doctor Who, Eastenders and Top Gear were top, though Mock the Week and Sherlock were popular too. This new design will now take over from the previous incarnation, and as well as the social media features there's a simpler, slicker design. "Given that we'd be making some major changes to a popular product, we were very conscious of the need to be careful," iPlayer head James Hewines said in a post. "While some users are generally receptive to change (especially where it brings obvious benefits) others may be more cautious. The key design challenge was to add in these richer, more interactive capabilities without detracting from the overall simplicity of the experience. It's been possible to reconcile these competing goals (richer interactions, simpler experience) by making some basic design decisions that keep things simple - most notably separating TV from radio, and reducing the number of modules on the BBC iPlayer homepage." Technically, the service will be faster - at least in terms of page size and rendering. iPlayer technical architect Simon Frost recently explained that personalisation features require more processing power, because each user is, in effect, being served a different version of the site, as well as changing the development framework of the site. | ['media/bbc', 'media/iplayer', 'media/pda', 'tone/blog', 'media/media', 'media/digital-media', 'media/online-tv', 'technology/digitalvideo', 'type/article', 'profile/jemimakiss'] | technology/digitalvideo | UNRELATED_TO_CLIMATE | 2010-09-06T13:26:23Z | true | UNRELATED_TO_CLIMATE |
commentisfree/2021/nov/16/what-are-sacrifice-zones-and-why-do-some-americans-live-in-them | What are ‘sacrifice zones’ and why do some Americans live in them? | Adrienne Matei | How do you calculate the price of a human life? What about 256,000 human lives? Around a quarter of a million Americans are living in parts of the United States where rates of cancer caused by air pollution exceed the US government’s own limit of “acceptable risk.” Environmental experts have a chilling name for these sites: Sacrifice zones. Residents of these communities die of cancer and other illnesses more often, and earlier, than people sometimes just a couple miles away. Many of them may not know this. The Environmental Protection Agency does know – and allows it to happen. In other words, a government agency that is supposed to protect Americans has effectively condemned thousands of them to death. We know about this moral scandal in part thanks to research and reporting by ProPublica. Last week, the investigative news outlet published a detailed map of US sacrifice zones. Many are in the Texas and Louisiana petrochemical corridor sometimes called Cancer Alley. But others are in communities as far-flung as Pennsylvania, New Mexico, Illinois, Kentucky and Tennessee. Millions of Americans no doubt go about their daily lives under the belief that, if nothing else, their government should protect them – and is protecting them – from cancer-causing industrial pollutants. Unfortunately, they’re in for a disturbing wake-up call. The publication identified around 1,000 hotspots, typically in communities near factories, refineries, or military facilities which release hazardous gases such as ethylene oxide, benzene, dioxin, and chloroprene. ProPublica’s research suggests that around 256,000 Americans live in areas where incidences of cancer caused by air pollution exceed 1 in 10,000, which is the EPA’s current upper limit of acceptable risk. While companies do report their emission levels to the government, their estimates are chronically lowballed, and the EPA often fails to use the information it collects to clearly inform members of the public about how the air in their communities may be affecting their health. Even when the EPA does release reports about the risk levels in sacrifice zones, little seems to change. Take, for example, the primarily black, working-class town of Reserve, Louisiana: a 2015 EPA report found that the risk of cancer from air toxicity in Reserve is 50 times the national average. After learning that the factories in their area were definitively linked to their community’s high cancer rates, the people of Reserve felt “Like nobody cared,” as resident Mary Hampton told the Guardian in 2019. The prevailing attitude from the government, factories, and media was “It is what it is so you all just live with it,” she said. Polluting factories are disproportionately concentrated in poor or minority neighborhoods. According to Steve Lerner’s 2019 book Sacrifice Zones: The Front Lines of Toxic Chemical Exposure in the United States, the average fine imposed on polluters of white neighborhoods is 506% higher than the average fine imposed on polluters of minority communities. Every day, people are going about their lives in conditions nobody should have to endure, especially without their knowledge or consent. Is it really too much to ask that we don’t live in government-sanctioned “sacrifice zones”? Sadly, those in charge seem to think so. Adrienne Matei is a freelance journalist | ['commentisfree/commentisfree', 'tone/comment', 'environment/environment', 'science/science', 'environment/pollution', 'society/health', 'type/article', 'profile/adrienne-matei', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/us-opinion'] | environment/pollution | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE | 2021-11-16T11:18:06Z | true | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE |
uk/2011/jan/19/undercover-police-officer-mark-jacobs | Undercover police: Officer B identified as Mark Jacobs | The undercover police spy previously identified as Officer B was known to fellow activists as Mark Jacobs, a campaigner inside anti-globalisation and anarchist groups for four years, who had an affair with at least one woman. Jacobs, not thought to be his real name, claimed to be a 44-year-old landscape gardener and long-distance lorry driver. Former friends say he adopted a northern club comedian persona, complete with catchphrases and knowing winks. Occasionally, he would joke that he might actually be a policeman. He was first noticed in activists' gatherings in Brighton in March 2005 and became a regular face at meetings of Dissent!, the network mobilising protesters for the G8 summit at Gleneagles in July. At 6ft and 15 stone, he stood out from the crowd. One former friend said Jacobs made friends easily and remembered him for his sayings used to deflect questions or ease tensions. "Dear diary ..." he'd say when discussing the day's events or upcoming projects, or "And relax ..." at the end of stressful conversations. When others smoked cannabis he would refuse, repeating another favourite phrase: "Strong European lager is my drug of choice." Those close to him said he would drink heavily at most social occasions. In 2006, he moved to Cardiff where he monitored the activities of an anarchist group as well as the Rising Tide Network. Former friends said he travelled with UK activists to protest against the G8 in Heligendam, Germany, in 2007. Jacobs, like both the other male undercover officers exposed by the Guardian, has been accused of having an affair while infiltrating a group. A 29-year-old former girlfriend told the Guardian last week that she had an affair with Jacobs for three months in the summer of 2008. "I was doing nothing wrong. I was not breaking the law at all. For him to come along and lie to us and get that deep into our lives was a colossal, colossal betrayal," the woman said. "I am incredibly angry. Obviously to do that to anybody is pretty low, but to do that to somebody who trusted you and cared about you is just unspeakable." By 2009, friends had become suspicious of Jacobs and he was increasingly being left out of sensitive discussions. He left claiming he had got a job in Corfu as a gardener. His former friends never heard from him again. Rajeev Syal | ['uk/police', 'uk/uk', 'world/surveillance', 'environment/activism', 'environment/environment', 'tone/news', 'uk/undercover-police-and-policing', 'type/article', 'profile/rajeev-syal', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/topstories'] | environment/activism | CLIMATE_ACTIVISM | 2011-01-19T21:30:00Z | true | CLIMATE_ACTIVISM |
world/2023/may/31/nova-scotia-wildfires-canada | ‘Unprecedented’ Nova Scotia wildfires expected to worsen, officials warn | Officials in the province of Nova Scotia say unprecedented wildfires that have forced thousands from their homes will keep growing despite the “water, raw muscle power and air power” deployed by fire crews. As of Wednesday, more than 20,000 hectares of the Maritime province were burning from 13 wildfires, including three fires that considered out of control. More than 18,000 people remain under evacuation order outside Halifax, the region’s largest city. More than 200 structures, the majority of which are homes, have been destroyed by the fire. No fatalities have been recorded. Hot, dry and windy conditions have seen the fire near the community of Tantallon grow to 837 hectares. Temperatures are expected to hit more than 30C this week, giving little respite to fatigued crews. “Today could possibility be a very difficult day,” David Steeves of the Nova Scotia Department of Natural Resources told reporters. “Today could be a day that is very dangerous for the folks on the ground.” Dave Meldrum, deputy chief of Halifax regional fire and emergency, said exhausted crews have been using “water, raw muscle power and air power” to fight the blazes since Sunday, using three helicopters and fire fighters from the city, province and department of national defence. Even after four days, the fires remains out of control. For a province that typically measures the total amount of the region burned in hundreds of hectares, the record-breaking Barrington Lake blaze, stretching more than 20,000 hectares and still growing, has pushed Nova Scotia’s scarce resources to the brink. The largest ever fire recorded in Nova Scotia was in 1976 and measured 13,000 hectares. “We’ve got more fires than we have resources to support them,” Scott Tingley, manager of forest protection at Nova Scotia’s department of natural resources, said during a news conference, adding the province is prioritizing safety and human life ahead of infrastructure. The prime minister, Justin Trudeau, said images of people fleeing their homes are “heartbreaking” and pledged federal assistance. On Tuesday, the Nova Scotia premier, Tim Houston, announced a ban on all activity in the province’s forests, including hiking, camping, fishing, hunting, the use of off-highway vehicles and logging after six illegal burns were reported on Monday evening. “For God’s sake, stop burning. Stop flicking cigarette butts out of the car window. Just stop it. Our resources are stretched incredibly thin right now fighting existing fires,” Houston said. “This is absolutely ridiculous with what’s happening in this province … It’s mind-boggling.” On Wednesday, the province’s natural resources minister said the conditions Nova Scotia in are “unprecedented” and expected to worsen. “Everything lined up for a perfect storm, if you will,” Tory Rushton told the CBC. “The dry winter, dry spring, perfectly warm breeze and warm weather in the spring has certainly not helped our province at all with this fire season.” He said Barrington Lake fire had so far destroyed 40 structures, but added the size and speed of the fire made it difficult for officials to gauge the true scope of damage. Officials are hopeful that rains forecast for the weekend will slow the largest fires and give crews a better chance at controlling the blazes. | ['world/canada', 'world/wildfires', 'world/world', 'world/americas', 'environment/environment', 'world/canada-wildfires', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/leyland-cecco', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/us-foreign'] | world/canada-wildfires | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2023-05-31T16:05:06Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
environment/2007/aug/16/conservation.uknews | Holidaymakers warned off illegal wildlife goods as 163,000 imports confiscated | A leading wildlife charity yesterday warned holidaymakers to guard against bringing endangered species back from their travels after it emerged that British customs had confiscated more than 163,000 illegal wildlife trade items over the past year. The warning from WWF, which yesterday unveiled its annual league table of the plants and animals most commonly brought illegally into the UK, comes during one of the busiest weeks in the year for overseas travel. The items confiscated included snakeskin goods, elephant ivory carvings and, top of the list with the highest number of seizures, 605kg (more than half a ton) of traditional Chinese medicines. In total there were 429 seizures in 2006-07, up from the previous year's total of 302. Many of the seized items derived from species protected under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (Cites), the worldwide agreement that bans trade in 827 species and strictly controls the movement of more than 32,000 others. Traditional Chinese medicines, the subject of 97 seizures, can contain material from threatened species such as tigers, rhinos, leopards, bears and seahorses. There were also 44 seizures of snake and lizard products such as handbags and shoes, and 39 seizures of similar crocodile and alligator products. The authorities seized almost 1,000 live reptiles such as snakes, chameleons, tortoises and terrapins. "We aren't against wildlife trade as such. The trouble is that where that harvesting of species is unsustainable, it can cause some species to be on the brink of extinction," said Heather Sohl, wildlife trade officer at WWF. "People will look at wildlife as a resource and, if it's not managed in the appropriate way, that resource can be over-exploited." She cited the tiger as an example. Although habitat loss is a problem for the 1,500 individuals that reportedly still live wild in Asia, the main threat is trade. "There is a demand for tiger bones in traditional Chinese medicines [and] we do find tiger bone products coming into the UK. If we don't clamp down on this trade, we are going to see the extinction of one of our most majestic species." Much of the trade in illegal species is by traffickers, but Ms Sohl said tourists were unwittingly bringing plants and animals to the brink of extinction. "There is the incidental ignorance side of things - where tourists have gone on holiday and they've seen things on market stalls and thought 'that's a nice trinket' and they've brought it back. They might bring back something that's an alligator-strap watch or ivory carving or snakeskin purse, which they think is completely innocent." The official quotas on endangered species are also open to abuse. More than 26kg (57lb) of caviar was brought into the UK illegally last year despite recently introduced labelling systems for identifying sustainable sources. "It's perfectly legal to trade it as long as it's under permit and it's from an authorised quota," said Ms Sohl. "The trouble is that when there's a legal marker you can find people using that to launder illegal products." Customs confiscated more than 158,000 plants, including orchids and cycads. More than 1,270kg of coral was also stopped in a total of 23 seizures. This haul included jewellery as well as living coral intended for British aquariums. Ms Sohl said that tourists visiting countries such as Thailand and China, and in Africa, should be particularly vigilant and not buy handbags, belts or trinkets made from Cites species. WWF is urging the public to report their suspicions to the charity or to Traffic, a collaboration between the WWF and the World Conservation Union. · Gallery: the trade in illegal species | ['environment/conservation', 'environment/environment', 'science/science', 'uk/uk', 'environment/travel-and-transport', 'environment/biodiversity', 'tone/news', 'environment/coral', 'uk/transport', 'environment/wwf', 'environment/illegal-wildlife-trade', 'type/article', 'profile/alokjha', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/uknews4'] | environment/biodiversity | BIODIVERSITY | 2007-08-16T09:11:02Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
environment/2013/jul/15/acute-oak-decline-disease-research | Acute oak decline disease prompts £1.1m research effort | A mystery disease causing Britain's oak trees to "bleed to death" has prompted a £1.1m research effort to identify its cause. The government-funded project aims to understand the distribution and severity of acute oak decline (AOD), a fast-acting disease that can lead to the death of an oak tree within three to 10 years of infection. AOD, first observed in the 1980s, is affecting several thousand oak trees across East Anglia, the Midlands and south-east England, but scientists do not know what is causing it. Dr Sandra Denman, lead scientist on the project to identify its cause, said: "AOD is a serious problem for both of Britain's native oak trees. Oak is our most important native broad-leafed tree species and is iconic to Britain." Dr John Morgan, head of the Forestry Commission's plant health service, said: "We are determined to do everything possible to protect our trees. AOD is a complex condition, and this new Defra funding will enable us to better understand the condition and the number and distribution of trees affected." At a biosecurity summit last week, the environment secretary, Owen Paterson, called for a united front against tree diseases: "It is clear that it is only by working together that we can do our best to protect our plants and trees," he said. Denman said the causes of AOD were complex, and two of the bacteria that had been isolated were unique to the diseased trees. Her team also found AOD coincided with the oak jewel beetle, Agrilus biguttatus, being found within the trees. She said: "Thus a key research question is to determine the relationship between the beetle and the bacteria." Brian Muelaner, an ancient tree adviser at the National Trust, said: "The disease can be seen on affected trees as a black, tarry-like resin bleeding from the tree bark. The tar forms as the tree floods the infected area with sap to make anaerobic conditions to kill the infection." With a cure yet to be found, there is no plan for dealing with AOD so diseased trees must be left to die naturally over the five to 10 years it takes for AOD to take hold. If the cause can be identified, a plan can be put in place to prevent the disease spreading. In the meantime, it is hoped that the public can help by using the Forestry Commission's Tree Alert tool to report suspected cases. Brian Muelaner added: "Thankfully the disease is not affecting the ancient trees, those that are over 600 years old, but if we lose younger trees then we will have a generational gap in the future which affects biostability in the environment." The independent Tree Health and Plant Biosecurity Expert Taskforce, set up as a result of the discovery in the UK last year of Chalara fraxinea, which causes ash dieback, found AOD to be one of a number of pests and diseases that are an immediate threat to the UK or have the potential to have a severe impact. | ['environment/forests', 'environment/environment', 'environment/wildlife', 'tone/news', 'science/science', 'uk/uk', 'politics/owen-paterson', 'politics/politics', 'science/biology', 'environment/plants', 'type/article', 'profile/natalie-starkey', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/uknews'] | environment/forests | BIODIVERSITY | 2013-07-15T08:58:32Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
world/2019/sep/05/hurricane-dorian-latest-us-strength-path | 'Everything is destroyed': 30 dead in Bahamas as Dorian lashes North Carolina | After hammering the Bahamas and leaving at least 30 dead, Hurricane Dorian began raking the south-east US seaboard, with the thin line of barrier islands off North Carolina braced for the storm to pass through on Friday morning as a category 1 hurricane, while hundreds of thousands lost power in the region overnight. In the Bahamas the storm has left such terrible devastation that the authorities were still struggling to get aid to stricken areas and the death toll is expected to rise, perhaps steeply. In Abaco alone, the government has taken delivery of at least 200 body bags, according to local media late on Thursday. In the Carolinas on Friday morning, almost 370,000 homes and businesses were without power, as Dorian continued its march north-east along the Atlantic coast. The outer bands of Dorian drenched Charleston, in South Carolina, on Thursday, and local officials had feared the storm would make landfall in the Cape Fear area of North Carolina, which juts out into the Atlantic. Mandatory evacuation orders were in place on the popular tourist destinations of Carolina Beach and Kure Beach, while throughout the night flash flood warnings sent phones buzzing in the city of Wilmington, which was swamped by Hurricane Florence in 2018. But on Friday morning residents in the southern part of North Carolina were breathing a sigh of relief. In this part of the state at least, Dorian kept its distance. Downtown Wilmington appeared to have escaped major flooding, with a lusty wind the only remnant of the hurricane. In the Bahamas, however, the horror of the hurricane’s destruction was still unfolding to a shocked world. Dorian made landfall over Abaco and Grand Bahama on Sunday, then stayed where it was, the nation’s strongest hurricane on record. Category 5 winds of up to 185mph obliterated entire neighborhoods and triggered a humanitarian crisis. On Thursday, Luíz David Rodriguez, the programme manager for the NGO Direct Relief, spoke to the Guardian from Abaco, via satellite phone. He had witnessed disturbing scenes outside the island’s main health clinic, near Marsh Harbour. The clinic has the capacity to deal with about 20 people but Rodriguez estimated there were between 1,500 and 2,000 people waiting in the area around it. “Lots of people are just laying around,” he said, “waiting to get off the island. People are getting a little desperate.” It was too early to properly assess the most pressing health concerns, he said, suggesting many were simply exhausted. Aid groups have been struggling to deliver basic supplies due to the level of destruction. On Thursday, some planes were able to land. “Everything is destroyed,” Rodriguez said, adding that much of the flooding had begun to subside. At the Bahamas National Emergency Management Agency headquarters in the capital, Nassau, a delegation of Caribbean leaders set off for a flyover trip to see the destruction on the Abaco Islands. Mia Mottley, the prime minister of Barbados, spoke about her thoughts on Dorian’s links to the climate crisis. She did not pull her punches. “We are on the frontline of the consequences of climate change but we don’t cause it,” she said. “And the vulnerability that attaches therefore to us is a matter we’re trying to get the international community to deal with consistently.” She added: “People say the words and hear you, but they don’t follow through so that I have every confidence. Now that the last few years are beginning to show others that frontline states, whether it’s an island in the Caribbean or states in the US or cities, all of us who are continuously being affected, have to recognise that this doesn’t happen out of the blue. “The warmer waters do what? They fuel the growth and the strength of hurricanes.” Sarah St George, the chairman of the Grand Bahama Port Authority, said that the “force and size” of Dorian took everyone by surprise. “Grand Bahama is not in good shape at all because 70% of it was under water,” St George said. “On the north side of the island the water was coming up to the second floor of their houses. My assistant Tammy was on the roof of her house for 30 hours hanging on to a coconut tree with her eight-year-old daughter, Ariana. Her grandmother lost her grip and slipped off the roof and drowned. There was no way of getting to them. They’ve lost everything.” In Abaco, some dazed survivors struggled back towards shantytown homes on Thursday, but found them razed. The small community, known as the Mudd and built by Haitian migrants over decades was reduced to splinters. The people picked through debris, avoiding a body underneath a tree branch with its hands stretched toward the sky – one of at least nine bodies reported in the area. “Ain’t nobody come to get them,” said Cardot Ked, a carpenter, originally from Haiti, who had lived in Abaco for 25 years. In the US, Dorian swept past Florida at a relatively safe distance, grazed Georgia, then began hugging the South Carolina coastline with howling winds and sideways rain. At least four deaths in the south-eastern US so far have been blamed on the storm. Additional reporting by Edward Helmore and agencies. | ['world/hurricane-dorian', 'us-news/us-weather', 'us-news/south-carolina', 'us-news/state-of-georgia', 'us-news/florida', 'world/bahamas', 'world/natural-disasters', 'us-news/us-news', 'world/extreme-weather', 'world/world', 'world/americas', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/laughland-oliver', 'profile/adam-gabbatt', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/international', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/us-news'] | world/hurricane-dorian | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2019-09-06T12:20:52Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
science/2022/jun/02/amazon-rainforest-archaeology-settlements-bolivia-casarabe | Digital mapping reveals network of settlements thrived in pre-Columbian Amazon | Archaeologists have discovered the ruins of a vast network of settlements hidden beneath the undergrowth of the Bolivian Amazon, in what has been described as the clearest example yet of the complex societies that thrived in a region once held to be pristine wilderness. The system of monumental centres, towns and villages spans hundreds, if not thousands, of square kilometres of the Llanos de Mojos region, a tropical savannah in the Amazonian basin. Mysterious mounds were first noted in the region by archaeologists more than 100 years ago. Since then, excavations have unearthed evidence of the Casarabe culture, which developed in the area from AD500 to 1400. Remote sensing had revealed the possible presence of hundreds of settlements. But the difficulties of working in the tropics – and a thick cover of vegetation – obscured the true extent and pattern of the sites. In 2019, the archaeologist Heiko Prümers and his team began flying over the region by helicopter, mapping the land beneath them with a laser. They were then able to digitally strip away the vegetation, revealing the topography of the ground underneath. In a paper published in Nature, they have now documented a range of settlement sites in detail for the first time – and discovered numerous previously unknown ones. Within the largest sites, they found monumental platforms and pyramids, some 20 metres (65ft) high. Smaller settlements surrounded the larger ones, linked by causeways running for kilometres. Canals and reservoirs show how the Casarabe shaped the land for agriculture and aquaculture. The authors describe it as a new form of urbanism in Amazonia. Other complex societies have been found in the Venezuelan and Brazilian Amazon. “But this, in my opinion, is the clearest example of low-density urbanism in the Amazonia,” said Michael Heckenberger, an archaeologist who works in the Brazilian Amazon and did not participate in the project. “It is like an index fossil of what full-blown Amazonian urbanism might have looked like,” he added. “They really nailed not what caused these urban societies to appear, not what caused them to collapse – but what they were like at their peak.” For most of the 20th century, it was held that the Amazon was unsuitable for large permanent settlements. Some still resist the idea of urban societies in the Amazon. “There is a very entrenched position that the Amazon is supposed to be about nature, and that the human footprint is very, very slight, almost nonexistent,” said Heckenberger. Umberto Lombardo, another archaeologist who works in the Llanos de Mojos but was not involved in this project, said he saw the findings as definitive. “I think that old debate is settled. Now the discussion is the extent to which people changed the Amazon.” Much of what was assumed to be untouched wilderness might in fact have been shaped by the activities of cultures like the Casarabe. “Very little of that landscape was not directly influenced, if not constructed or managed, by pre-Columbian societies,” said Heckenberger. “These were not natural forests – they were a mix of the natural features of the tropical environment and cultural patterns of management.” Given the scale and complexity of Casarabe culture revealed by these findings, it prompts the question of why the archaeological record appears to stop at about AD1400. “They lived there for 1,000 years, then they disappeared,” said Lombardo. “And we don’t really know why. But it seems they disappeared before the arrival of Columbus.” More broadly, says Heckenberger, the Amazon is the last significant world region to reveal the archaeological secrets of its “deep past”. In some cases, archaeologists have only become aware of settlement sites because of deforestation. “It’s one of these tragic ironies,” said Heckenberger. “We know a lot more about the archaeology of these areas because of remote sensing of formerly forested areas.” “But the fact remains that the vast majority of the Amazon is terra incognita.” | ['science/archaeology', 'world/bolivia', 'environment/amazon-rainforest', 'world/americas', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/thomas-graham', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/international', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/us-foreign'] | environment/amazon-rainforest | BIODIVERSITY | 2022-06-02T09:15:34Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
environment/2009/oct/20/nuclear-police-run-covert-network | Secret files reveal covert network run by nuclear police | The nuclear industry funds the special armed police force which guards its installations across the UK, and secret documents, seen by the Guardian, show the 750-strong force is authorised to carry out covert intelligence operations against anti-nuclear protesters, one of its main targets. The nuclear industry will pay £57m this year to finance the Civil Nuclear Constabulary (CNC). The funding comes from the companies which run 17 nuclear plants, including Dounreay in Caithness, Sellafield in Cumbria and Dungeness in Kent. Around a third is paid by the private consortium managing Sellafield, which is largely owned by American and French firms. Nearly a fifth of the funding is provided by British Energy, the privatised company owned by French firm EDF. Private correspondence shows that in June, the EDF's head of security complained that the force had overspent its budget "without timely and satisfactory explanations to us". The industry acknowledges it is in regular contact with the CNC and the security services. Most of the nuclear force's officers are armed with high-powered guns and Tasers. The CNC has spent £1.4m on weapons and ammunition in the past three years. They patrol outside nuclear plants, with their jurisdiction stretching to three miles beyond the perimeter of the installations. They have the same powers as any other British police officer and can, for instance, arrest and stop and search people. The body that regulates the CNC is also funded by the nuclear industry. Four of the eight members of the Civil Nuclear Police Authority are nominated by the nuclear industry as its representatives. Those four are employed in the industry. The others – mainly former police officers – are deemed to be independent. The force is expected to expand as the government presses ahead with plans for a new generation of nuclear plants, which are likely to attract protests. Ben Ayliffe, head of Greenpeace's anti-nuclear campaign, said: "There are very obvious worries about an armed police force that is accountable to an industry desperate to build nuclear reactors in the UK. This industry will probably be very keen for their police force to use all the powers available to them to prevent peaceful protests against nuclear power." John Sampson, the CNC's deputy chief constable, said the force was by law operationally independent from the industry and safeguarded by its regulatory police authority. Its surveillance operations were only conducted if they had legal approval and were proportionate to the crime under investigation, he added. Sampson said it would be "ill-advised" of any nuclear company to put pressure on the force and surveillance was not conducted at the instigation of the companies. The government has provided a small amount of capital funding but does not pay any of the running costs. The job of the force is to protect civil nuclear plants and guard radioactive nuclear material when it is being transported by land, rail or sea to ensure it is not stolen or sabotaged. The industry also receives advice from the security services on how to protect itself from attack. The force is authorised to send informers to infiltrate organisations and to conduct undercover surveillance under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (RIPA). It is also permitted to obtain communications data such as phone numbers and email addresses. Reports by Sir Christopher Rose, the watchdog responsible for inspecting the use of these surveillance powers, have been obtained by the Guardian under freedom of information legislation. Rose, the chief surveillance commissioner, noted last year: "The strategic aims of the constabulary remain on the threat from terrorism and public disquiet over nuclear matters, including demonstrations/protests and criminal offences towards nuclear movements/installations." The force keeps secret the extent of its clandestine surveillance operations on protesters and others. It has been collecting more intelligence in recent years. Sampson said its surveillance was "relatively modest" and mainly concerned with stopping terrorism. In July, Rose said the CNC's "approach to covert activity is conspicuously professional". He found that the system for storing the intelligence gained from informers was "working well". He says he has been told during inspections that "senior officers regard covert surveillance as a long-term requirement". Since 2007, the CNC has also been headed by an ex-intelligence official, rather than a police officer. Richard Thompson is reported to have been a senior officer in MI6. Rose noted Thompson "has extensive experience in the intelligence world, but has no previous police background". | ['environment/nuclearpower', 'uk/police', 'environment/environment', 'uk/uk', 'tone/news', 'type/article', 'profile/robevans', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/uknews'] | environment/nuclearpower | ENERGY | 2009-10-20T18:17:36Z | true | ENERGY |
lifeandstyle/2011/sep/18/hurricane-irene-food-shops-nyc | After hurricane Irene, I now know what to eat when the apocalypse is on its way | Manhattan's West Village was buzzing with pre-hurricane activity in late August as people began stockpiling emergency provisions. There were long queues to get into the hardware store for flashlights, the pharmacy for first-aid kits and, of course, at Murray's Bagels. I ventured out in flip-flops to load up on supplies. Uncharacteristically, I'd never actually thought about what I'd eat if the world was ending. Who says I'm not an optimist? I showed up at Murray's just as it was closing. One woman was having a meltdown. "Please," she whined, as she tried to hold open the door, "I just want some sliced lox!" The guy gave her a look that said, "Are you kidding me?" I don't blame him. Of all the things to plead for, sliced lox is not a smart option. No one will keep a store open on the eve of a natural disaster so that they can slice some smoked salmon to tide you over. By late afternoon, all the upmarket shops were closed so the food snobs were forced to go to Food Emporium (the equivalent of Tesco) and that alone was torturous. "I'm not getting the radicchio here!" I heard one disgruntled shopper call out to his partner. What's a hurricane without fresh radicchio? I watched as he settled on a bag of wilted mixed greens – tossing it into his basket with a sigh of resignation. Hopefully he survived. I walked around, enjoying the pandemonium. Paper towels were running low. (Good to mop up with?) Canned foods were disappearing. I considered grabbing a can of sliced pineapple but I couldn't remember if I owned a can opener. There was no water or bread left on the shelves. One lady had a shopping cart piled high – she was young, in her 20s, and wearing her gym clothes. How many sandwiches can one person make? I figured she hadn't eaten carbs in five years; this was her last chance. Another woman was loading up on frozen pizzas. Even I, with my limited training in emergency food supply eating, knew that frozen pizzas would not be practical in a post-apocalyptic situation. I asked myself what would I be able to live on for weeks. Here is what I ended up with. A bag of pistachio nuts. They won't go bad, and should I find myself journeying across a desolate landscape, they're lightweight. I can fill my pockets with them. Two bottles of lime-flavoured Perrier. I reluctantly went with the lime because that's all that was left. And it's good to try new things. Dried roasted edamame beans. Protein. No cooking required. Finally, red grapes, one green apple, half a dozen wheat-free Odwalla bars and an enormous bag of popcorn. My friend Carrie's pre-hurricane food shopping was equally peculiar but stylish. She bought two packs of cigarettes, six cans of cat food, one litre of diet ginger ale, one loaf of raisin bread and one box of chocolate biscuits. "I figured that the worst thing that could happen to me was if my windows blew out, and in that case I would have hid in the bathroom with my BlackBerry, cigarettes, cookies and my diet ginger ale." I assumed the cat would be in there too. A few of my friends indulged in end-of-the-world eating, consuming vast quantities of food they'd never eat under normal circumstances. One had been eating only raw salads and juices but on Saturday afternoon she bought three slices of pizza as well as a spinach and cheese calzone. It was fun giving in to the cravings but now she's on a strict post-storm detox. All of which leads me to realise that if ever I needed to survive on what was in my cabinets – I'd end up losing a lot of weight. | ['lifeandstyle/series/the-fussy-eater', 'us-news/hurricane-irene', 'food/food', 'lifeandstyle/lifeandstyle', 'tone/features', 'us-news/new-york', 'us-news/us-news', 'world/natural-disasters', 'world/world', 'type/article', 'profile/ariel-leve', 'publication/theobserver', 'theobserver/foodmonthly', 'theobserver/foodmonthly/features'] | us-news/hurricane-irene | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2011-09-17T23:05:03Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
commentisfree/2015/nov/11/orcas-captive-seaworld-killer-whale-shows | Keeping orcas captive demeans us as humans | Philip Hoare | News that SeaWorld is to phase out its captive orca programme in San Diego sounds like a good thing, and so it is. Although its decision seems to be economic rather than ethical, the company’s latest announcement follows other damage limitation exercises such as the proclamation of new “environments” for its captive orca, and would also seem to be a clear response to the state of California having outlawed breeding of new animals, and their sale or transfer (although SeaWorld has announced that it will contest that). And yet the trade in capturing orca from the wild continues. Cathy Williamson, who observes captivity programmes for Whale and Dolphin Conservation as part of its ongoing campaign to stop the trade, notes that captures are continuing in the Sea of Okhotsk in Russia’s far east. “At least 15 orcas have been captured between 2012 and 2015,” she says. She believes that “at least three orcas are now in Moscow, and that Russia has exported at least seven to China”. The Russians claim to be undertaking “research” on these animals as to why they “aggressively steal fishermen’s catch”. Yuri Blinov, deputy director of Tinro, the research facility, explained: “There was a recent problem in that killer whales have become parasites. They remove catches from longlines. The main goal now is to … find humane ways to isolate the killer whales from the fishermen.” Our human instinct to extend dominion over the natural world knows no bounds, apparently. As of October 2015, there are a total of 58 orca held in captivity, of which 24 were wild captured, and 34 captive bred, in 14 marine parks around the world, from the US to Japan, Canada, France, Russia, Argentina and Spain. It is a situation that not only demeans the animals, but demeans us, too. How can we be human, when we extend such cruelty to species so close to us – culturally, as well as genetically? I saw my first living cetacean in the dolphinarium at Windsor Safari Park in the 1970s, when I was a boy. My sisters and I had pestered our parents to take us there. We sat so eagerly in our plastic seats, watching the show. After the dolphins went through their paces – jumping through hoops, balancing balls on their beaks, catching fish in their mouths – they were cleared from the pool. I was already feeling uneasy about the whole experience. Then Ramu – “our other performer” – emerged from a big black gate at the other end of the pool. An orca – the apex predator of the ocean, a wild, intelligent, highly social cetacean, like its dolphin cousins. An emperor among animals, with the tallest dorsal fin in the sea – rising two metres tall in a male. What happened next shocked me out of my childish complacency. Ramu jumped through a hoop, balanced a ball on his beak, and caught fish in his mouth. It was pathetic. And as sign of his captivity – his emasculation – his fin flopped over backwards, detumescently. That was a moment of apostasy for me. I couldn’t look at a dolphin or orca again with innocent eyes. I came away from that afternoon with a brochure depicting Ramu. Next to it was an advertisement for Embassy cigarettes. Looking at it now, the one seems as outdated as the other. In many ways, these animals are their own worst enemies. We love them because they are clearly intelligent, because they are sleek, hydrodynamic, fantasy versions of our selves, because we can put them in a tank and have them perform for our entertainment. The graphic beauty of an orca has a cartoon quality: it looks like an object as much as an animal. And so we objectify it. The closeness of the distance between our species and theirs is both intimate and unbridgeable. And so we punish them for the sin of being free. The notion that, 40 years after Ramu swam in an overgrown municipal pool, his peers should be imprisoned – not just in SeaWorld, but also in countless facilities around the world (including the EU), speaks to our wondrous disconnection from the natural world. In her new book, Voices in the Ocean, Susan Casey investigates captive orca and the conditions in which they are kept. Until recently, one oceanarium in Switzerland, Connyland, boasted an inbuilt underwater nightclub with flashing lights and amplified music reverberating directly into the animals’ pool. It was, as one scientist described it, “a perversion of the highest degree”. Orca, when not “on display” are often kept in holding tanks, out of sight of their audience. Animals used to the three-dimensional vastness of the ocean cannot put themselves in a vertical position. Little wonder that individual whales show the signs of what would be seen as psychosis in human beings. Meanwhile, SeaWorld is expanding – eastwards. Perhaps trading on what it may perceive as less acute sensibilities towards captive cetaceans, the company is planning a new facility in Saudi Arabia. Its CEO, Joel Manby, told investors last week that the new venture is going ahead, regardless. “We are making progress. I don’t want anyone to think they’ve stopped.” It seems like Ramu’s benighted heirs have some way to go yet: cetaceans will continue to be traded as long as we pay to see them. In her book, Archipelago, the Caribbean writer Monique Roffey saw that “animals fill the gap between man and God”. Whether you believe in a deity or not, surely it’s time for us to stop playing God to what we perceive, in our hubris, as dumb animals. | ['commentisfree/commentisfree', 'us-news/seaworld', 'us-news/us-news', 'environment/whales', 'environment/wildlife', 'environment/marine-life', 'environment/cetaceans', 'environment/environment', 'tone/comment', 'type/article', 'profile/philip-hoare'] | environment/cetaceans | BIODIVERSITY | 2015-11-11T09:34:30Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
news/2020/feb/03/weatherwatch-secrets-clouds-joanne-simpson-meteorologist-climate | Weatherwatch: the woman who unlocked the secrets of clouds | Dr Joanne Simpson was a trailblazer. In 1949 she became the first woman in the US to earn a PhD in meteorology, and she went on to make significant breakthroughs in understanding clouds. With her colleague Herbert Riehl, Simpson showed how clouds played a big role in the world’s climate. They realised that tropical cumulonimbus clouds could tower to 15km tall, so high they reached the top of the lower atmosphere. They called these gigantic clouds “hot towers” because they behaved like chimneys, pumping heat and moisture from the ocean’s surface high into the atmosphere. And in 1958 they came up with an even more revolutionary concept: that about 1,500 of these hot towers spread around the equatorial regions at any one time would get rid of so much heat they would pump hot air away from the tropics, and so play a key role in how the atmosphere circulates around the planet. It was a theory so far ahead of its time that it was verified 20 years later. Simpson also showed how hot towers around the eye of a hurricane drove the storm. Hurricanes feed on warm, humid air over tropical seas, and the hot towers are the heat engines that turn moist ocean air into furious winds and rains. | ['news/series/weatherwatch', 'world/hurricanes', 'science/nasa', 'environment/environment', 'type/article', 'tone/features', 'profile/jeremy-plester', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/weather2', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-weather'] | news/series/weatherwatch | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2020-02-03T21:30:22Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
australia-news/2022/nov/24/lamb-chopper-airlifts-flock-to-safety-as-inland-sea-surrounds-condobolin | Lamb chopper airlifts flock to safety as inland sea surrounds Condobolin | On a dirt road snaking south towards the swollen Lachlan River, just outside the small town of Condobolin, Peter Wiggins stands by his farm gate watching a surreal scene play out overhead. A trio of helicopters are, with military-like precision, airlifting his sheep from flood-stricken paddocks. The bewildered cargo bleats and sways, suspended mid-air in steel cages. Wiggins’ relief is palpable as each helicopter thunders in from the south, unloading 20-odd sheep and lambs at a time, before disappearing back beyond the horizon. “Normally speaking, we’d go along and we’d move them all to higher ground, but that part there has never gone under before,” Wiggins says, pointing southward. “Once in every hundred years, this is what happens.” Many farmers around Condobolin, about 100km downstream of Forbes, have suffered catastrophic damage. Dozens remain cut off by flood waters, relying on airdrops from emergency services. Wiggins himself lost 200 sheep. About 650 survived. Huge volumes of feed have been lost, and the cost of repairing roads, bridges, fences and equipment will run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars, he says. Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup He whips out his phone to show footage of what looks to be an inland sea. “That’s our farm, and I’m on a boat,” he says. “I can’t believe that it could go 1.5 metres underwater, and it’s just like a lake.” Fives minutes away, in Condobolin proper, residents were fighting their own battle to keep flood waters from inundating the township. Last week, when the warnings came that a huge glut of water was travelling downstream, the locals banded together to build a levee from dirt and sandbags. In two-and-a-half days, they created a protective barrier spanning roughly 3km around the town. The locals dubbed it the “great wall of Condo”. When the floods arrived much sooner than expected, the levee held. Some homes were flooded, but the local State Emergency Service unit commander, Susan Bennett, is under no illusions about what the levee achieved. Speaking from her unit’s base, just off Condobolin’s main street, Bennett says the wall of dirt and sandbags saved “a lot of the town from that higher water level”. The worst of the danger is thought to be over here. The predicted peak of 7.8m, thankfully, did not eventuate. The SES believes the floods peaked at about 7.6m. On the town’s southern edge, where homes sit precariously close to a bend in the Lachlan, local publican Fred Bella is standing at the famous levee, watching the flood waters recede back from the fence-line of a row of houses. Across the river, the local showground is almost completely submerged. By his feet, Bella points out a row of rocks he placed as a marker of the water’s edge during the worst of the floods on Sunday. The water level has receded several metres from where they lie. “It’s all over now,” Bella says. The levee, he says, saved a lot of angst, and a lot of damage. “They stick together,” he says of the locals. “They’re good people. Good people, mate.” The worst may have passed for the town, but for farmers and property owners around Condobolin, the crisis goes on. Many are still underwater or trapped completely. “It’s business as usual for probably 95% of the community,” Bennett says. “The people who I see affected the most are the outlying properties to the east, west and south of us, because their lives have been disrupted now for months, if not a year.” A steady stream of helicopters is also being sent from Condobolin to to help residents now trapped or cut off in Euabalong further west. The SES issued an evacuation order for Euabalong on Tuesday amid warnings that the Lachlan could peak at a record 8m on Thursday. Back on his property, Wiggins is adamant that risk could be mitigated by better water management. If property owners were able to store more rainwater in dams, it would help mitigate flood damage and set them up for times of drought. “They only let you harvest 10% of the rain,” he said. “We could make our farms drought-proof, and we could stop this, if they just gave us 30%.” | ['australia-news/new-south-wales', 'environment/flooding', 'australia-news/australia-news', 'australia-news/australia-weather', 'world/extreme-weather', 'environment/environment', 'campaign/email/afternoon-update', 'type/article', 'tone/features', 'profile/christopher-knaus', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/australia-news'] | environment/flooding | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2022-11-23T14:00:01Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
environment/2023/aug/30/country-diary-my-favourite-hedge-bar-none | Country diary: My favourite hedge bar none | Phil Gates | This magnificent sprawling old hedge, unmolested by axes or flails, weighed down with berries, seeds, hips and haws, is unequivocally my favourite, and deserves to be celebrated with a name. It borders a footpath leading to the site of the former Brancepeth colliery, and is marked on the earliest Ordnance Survey maps, trodden by countless feet over passing centuries. Someone, probably long dead, must have taken a particular interest in one section. Between two mature oaks, there are three apple trees, branches bending under the weight of ripening fruit, and hazels laden with a fine crop of unusually large nuts. Whoever planted them might have had future apple pie with hazelnut pastry in mind; we certainly have. But what made this place really special today was meeting an alder moth caterpillar. Hitherto, our only encounter with the larva of Acronicta alni, unmistakably clad in lurid black and yellow-hooped skin and strange, paddle-shaped hairs, was 50 years ago when we lived in the Midlands. We moved north, beyond its natural range, never expecting to see one in Durham. Now here it is, curled on a leaf, bold as brass, ready to drop to the ground and pupate – another species extending its range northwards in response to a heating climate. In our personal mental map of notable local wildlife encounters, this nameless spot on the landscape has become the alder moth hedge. Along the footpath ahead stands the purple hairstreak oak where we first found that butterfly three years ago, and beyond, barn owls bank where we’ve watched one quarter the grassland, almost within touching distance. A personal gazetteer of place names on a favourite walk, etched in memory, never destined to appear on a map. Even when cartographers capture local place names, they represent a snapshot in time: connotations can be lost. Nearby lies Lingy Close farm, a name that might hark back to days when this arable land was lowland heath, clad in ling, the old name for heather. When we first walked here, 40 years ago, one bank of the old railway cutting was still blanketed in its purple flowers in August; all gone now, lost under a dense canopy of naturally regenerating trees, in a landscape perpetually evolving. • Country diary is on Twitter at @gdncountrydiary | ['environment/series/country-diary', 'environment/forests', 'environment/environment', 'uk/ruralaffairs', 'uk/uk', 'food/fruit', 'environment/insects', 'type/article', 'tone/features', 'profile/philgates', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/journal', 'theguardian/journal/letters', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-letters-and-leader-writers'] | environment/forests | BIODIVERSITY | 2023-08-30T04:30:05Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
environment/2012/may/03/sea-level-rises-greenland-glaciers | Sea-level rises 'may not be as high as worst-case scenarios have predicted' | Sea-level rises are unlikely to be as high as worst-case scenarios have forecasted, suggests new research which shows that Greenland's glaciers are slipping into the sea more slowly than was previously thought. But the scientists warned that ice loss still sped up by 30% and is driving rises in sea levels that endanger low-lying coasts around the world. Along with Antarctica, the loss of ice from the huge Greenland ice cap is the biggest direct contributor to rising sea levels, pouring 250bn tonnes of water into the oceans each year. But the complexity of glacier dynamics has meant predictions of future losses as the global warming continues have been wide-ranging and controversial. The new work used for the first time satellite data to track the progress of over 200 individual Greenland glaciers between 2000 and 2010. "Previous studies only had a couple of observations from big glaciers," said Twila Moon, at the University of Washington in Seattle, who led the research. "We found we are certainly not on the worst-case scenario, but the glaciers are speeding up and we see no sign of that stopping." Half of the ice lost from Greenland is due to simple melting where meltwater flows directly into the sea as temperatures rise, while the other half is due to the increased flow of glaciers, which leads to more icebergs calving into the sea. The new study, published in the journal Science on Thursday, focused on the latter effect. Moon said: "We found, contrary to conventional wisdom, that glaciers have rapid and large changes in speed." Jonathan Bamber, a glaciologist at the University of Bristol, and not part of the research team, said: "The study provides a lot of rich detail about the variability in ice sheet dynamics, but does not dramatically change our overall understanding. The new work shows the situation is not as bad as the worst possible case, but it is still serious for future sea level rise and is certainly more complex than many of the models suggest." Other recent satellite science has revealed complexities in other parts of the world, with the world's greatest peaks in the Himalayan mountain chain revealed as having lost no ice in the last decade. Another study showed the Karakoram glaciers as having grown over the last decade. However, the contribution to sea level rise of these and other mountain chains such as the Andes and Alps are dwarfed by Greenland and Antarctica and, globally, 443-629bn tonnes of meltwater are added to the world's oceans each year. This is raising sea level by about 1.5mm a year, in addition to the 2mm a year caused by expansion of the warming ocean. Earlier analyses of Greenland's glaciers found their speed has doubled in 10 years and were accelerating. Extrapolation of that doubling implied glacier loss in Greenland would drive up sea level by 9cm by 2100, leading to an overall rise of 80cm. Another extrapolation imagined a tenfold rise in glacier speed, leading to 47cm of sea level rise from Greenland and 2m overall. The new research shows glacier acceleration remains "well below" even the lower scenario. "A doubling in all glacier speeds was never a prediction for Greenland, it was a thought experiment, a "what if" scenario," said Bamber. Moon noted: "Ten years is still a short time when studying glaciers. There is no reason to think we won't get to the 80cm level. And even small rises in sea level will have very big impact in some places, as storm surges hit coasts. If you raise the floor of a basketball court by just a few inches, you will see many more slam dunks." | ['environment/glaciers', 'environment/poles', 'environment/environment', 'environment/sea-level', 'environment/oceans', 'environment/climate-crisis', 'world/greenland', 'world/world', 'tone/news', 'science/scienceofclimatechange', 'science/science', 'type/article', 'profile/damiancarrington'] | environment/sea-level | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2012-05-03T18:01:00Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
environment/2021/nov/17/brazils-amazon-beef-plan-will-legalise-deforestation-say-critics | Brazil’s Amazon beef plan will ‘legalise deforestation’ say critics | For many, the overriding image of agriculture in the Amazon is one of environmental destruction. About 80% of deforestation in the region has been attributed to cattle ranching, tainting beef exports. Brazil’s beef industry hopes to tempt buyers back to the Amazon region, which covers about 40% of the country’s total area, with a new deforestation-free pledge. But critics are concerned it could effectively legalise deforestation in the region. In May, government officials began fleshing out the details of the so-called Amacro sustainable development zone, which it is hoped will lead to a massive intensification of agriculture in the Amazon. The Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro, is expected to greenlight the project later this year. The Amacro zone – an acronym taken from the states it covers: Amazonas, Acre and Rondônia – is a vast 465,800 sq km (180,000 sq mile) region in north-west Brazil. It encompasses the Mapinguari national park, Brazil’s fifth largest protected area, and the Kaxarari indigenous territory, where the tribe has struggled to defend its land against loggers. Greenpeace has identified the northern portion of the zone as an emerging deforestation hotspot. Previous agricultural development projects have led to the loss of vast tracts of native vegetation in other parts of Brazil, but Amacro’s proponents promise it is being designed to prevent illegal deforestation. Edivan Maciel, the former agriculture secretary in the state of Acre, says the aim is to produce more beef on land that has already been cleared. It is about “optimising what we already have without having to advance over the forest”, says Maciel, a Bolsonaro-allied appointee. But Humberto de Aguiar, a federal prosecutor in Acre who handles environmental crimes, told the Guardian that the effect of the plan is such as “to legalise the deforestation already being done”. Amacro is the brainchild of Assuero Doca Veronez, a powerful figure in Amazonian agribusiness, who told a Brazilian news site last year that “deforestation for us is synonymous with progress”. Veronez, a ranch owner and president of Acre’s Federation of Agriculture and Livestock, was fined for illegal deforestation in 2006. He denied any wrongdoing and said he sold the property in 2002. Veronez says more intensive cattle ranching will enable more beef to be produced on less land and protect against deforestation. He claims to produce about 2.5 times the state average for beef. “Amacro can contribute to the preservation of these areas,” he says. The idea that a shift to intensive ranching could cut deforestation in the Amazon is disputed by some researchers. It may be a flawed approach, concluded a University of California report in 2017, which noted, “the opposite could be true”. Judson Valentim, a researcher at Brazil’s agriculture research agency, says intensification is unlikely to change the system responsible for the breakneck pace of deforestation. Veronez, like most large ranchers, relies on a network of smaller producers, most of whom, according to Valentim, lack the technical and financial resources to invest in more efficient grazing practices. While ranchers like Veronez may avoid deforestation, their suppliers may not have the luxury to do so, says Valentim. Growing demand for Amazonian beef has tempted more local people to raise cattle as a viable livelihood for feeding their families, leading to a sharp increase in illegal deforestation. Gabriel Santos*, a small-time rancher from the Amacro zone, has been fined more than $130,000 (£96,000) for illegally clearing land in the reserve for grazing. But he says converting the forest to pasture is his only viable economic option. Because Santos’ farm has been blacklisted by regulators, he cannot sell cattle directly to slaughterhouses. So he sells to a middleman, who sells on to the big ranchers. If big ranchers become more productive, even if they do so without cutting the forest, it pressures the forest-razing cattle producers beneath them to grow their operations as well, says Valentim. Veronez says he has nothing to do with other people’s environmental issues: “I’m absolutely against this kind of control.” Although Brazilian law restricts most Amazonian landowners from clearing more than 20% of their property, lack of regulatory oversight helps to explain why 94% of deforestation may be undertaken illegally. “It is very difficult to stay legal,” says Santos, who has racked up half a dozen eviction orders because of unpaid fines. He says with an annual income of $10,000, he cannot pay. He hides when government agents come to his property and fears he will eventually be hauled to jail. He attributes a recent heart attack to the stress. “How am I going to support my family?” he pleads. “If I had another means of survival, I would leave. I only stay here because I have nowhere to go.” * Name changed This piece was produced in collaboration with the Food & Environment Reporting Network, a nonprofit news organisation Sign up for the Animals farmed monthly update to get a roundup of the biggest farming and food stories across the world and keep up with our investigations. You can send us your stories and thoughts at animalsfarmed@theguardian.com | ['environment/series/animals-farmed', 'environment/deforestation', 'environment/meat-industry', 'world/brazil', 'environment/farming', 'environment/environment', 'environment/forests', 'environment/conservation', 'type/article', 'world/americas', 'world/world', 'environment/food', 'tone/features', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/global-development'] | environment/farming | BIODIVERSITY | 2021-11-17T07:00:30Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
environment/2019/oct/17/london-tube-protest-divides-extinction-rebellion | 'It has been polarising': tube protest divides Extinction Rebellion | The climate protests during which one activist was dragged from the roof of a London Underground train by angry commuters had been discussed within Extinction Rebellion [XR] for weeks. But it was not until Wednesday morning, when a note was posted on the group’s website, that a decision appeared to have been taken. In the hours that followed there was a sometimes fractious debate among XR supporters. More than 3,700 people responded to an online poll circulated on the group’s social media networks with 72% saying they were opposed to the action “no matter how it is done”. Those findings were fed back to the decentralised groups planning the action on Wednesday afternoon and, according to one source, some backed down while others determined to press ahead. Those opposed feared the action, taken against what they said were the wishes of the overwhelming majority, would demoralise activists and raised questions about the group’s democratic decision-making processes. More fundamentally, they argued that the targeting of public transport – rather than roads, airports or financial institutions hit earlier in the week – confused their message. “Our fear was that targeting public transport, an environmentally friendly way to travel, would alienate the public and muddle what we were trying to say in the minds of the public,” said one of those opposed to the action who did not want to be named. There was also concern that by explicitly targeting working Londoners, they would undermine any public sympathy they had built up. One activist told the Guardian: “We were vehemently opposed to it. We feel that the actions of a handful of protesters have jeopardised our movement, turning public opinion against us and creating a potential schism within our ranks.” However, others saw the fallout from the action differently. They argued that the scale of the climate crisis requires disruption of “business as usual” to create “breakthrough moments that force people to engage with the reality of the climate crisis”. They point out that although there have been more than 1,400 arrests for nonviolent action over the past two weeks, it was Thursday morning’s protests that prompted XR spokespeople to be invited onto television and radio programmes in record numbers. “Our phones and inboxes have never been as busy,” said Ronan McNern from XR. “We have had people on radio and TV programmes this morning and have more lined up for this afternoon and this evening.” He said despite more than 10 days of protests at sites across the capital the sense of a “real climate emergency” had struggled to cut through. “This action has created a disruption. Now conversations will be going on about what we are doing – and hopefully why we are doing it – at dinner tables and in pubs up and down the country.” He added: “It has been polarising but it has created an emotional space for these ideas and that provides us with an opportunity for some real change.” In a statement released by XR on Thursday afternoon it said it was saddened at the way events had escalated. It added that the people who had taken the action – a grandfather, an ex-buddhist teacher, a vicar and a former GP – had not taken the action lightly. It added: “In light of today’s events, Extinction Rebellion will be looking at ways to bring people together rather than create an unnecessary division.” Ruth Jarman, 56, from Christian Climate Action, was one of those involved in the transport action joining the protest on the DLR line at Shadwell, although she was not arrested. She said she was “deeply sorry” for the ordinary working people caught up in the action but said the inconvenience caused “paled into insignificance compared with the chaos of climate breakdown” unless immediate systemic action was taken. “Our intention was to target the city – one of the economic powerhouses of the world – to cause economic disruption, because that is what those in power pay on to. “We have spent a lot of time blocking roads and are not being heard. People are dying now because of the climate crisis and it threatens all we love. “I am deeply sorry for disrupting the lives of ordinary people – it was not our intention – but we have to raise the alarm and are desperate and don’t know what else to do.” | ['environment/extinction-rebellion', 'environment/activism', 'world/protest', 'environment/environment', 'environment/climate-crisis', 'type/article', 'tone/analysis', 'profile/matthewtaylor', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/uknews', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-home-news'] | environment/activism | CLIMATE_ACTIVISM | 2019-10-17T15:10:41Z | true | CLIMATE_ACTIVISM |
environment/2006/jun/05/climatechange.climatechange | Desert cities are living on borrowed time, UN warns | The following correction was printed in the Guardian's Corrections and clarifications column, Tuesday June 6 2006 In the article below, we said that "a 310-square mile area of the Sahara could ... generate enough electricity for the whole world". Alas no. What the UN environment report said was that an area of the Sahara 800km x 800km (800km squared, not 800 sq km) could do that: 640,000 sq km, or in square miles 250,000 (not 310). The total area of the Sahara is more than 9,000,000 sq km. The 500 million people who live in the world's desert regions can expect to find life increasingly unbearable as already high temperatures soar and the available water is used up or turns salty, according to the United Nations. Desert cities in the US and Middle East, such as Phoenix and Riyadh, may be living on borrowed time as water tables drop and supplies become undrinkable, says a report coinciding with today's world environment day. Twentieth-century modernist dreams of greening deserts by diverting rivers and mining underground water are wholly unrealistic, it warns. But the report also proposes that deserts become the powerhouses of the next century, capturing the world's solar energy and potentially exporting electricity across continents. For instance, a 310-square mile area of the Sahara could, with today's technology, generate enough electricity for the whole world. The problem now facing many communities on the fringes of deserts, says the UN environment programme report, is not the physical growth of deserts but that rising water tables beneath irrigated soils are leading to more salinisation - a phenomenon already taking place across large tracts of China, India, Pakistan and Australia. The Tarm river basin in China, it says, has lost more than 5,000 square miles of farmland to salinisation in a period of 30 years. The report suggests that Middle Eastern countries such as Saudi Arabia have used water from the desert very unwisely. Rather than growing staple crops such as wheat or tomatoes, it suggests that precious water should be used only for high value crops such as dates and fish farming. The mining "fossil" water, laid down many millions of years ago, was once believed to have the potential to green deserts, but is now not thought to be a solution - except in Libya, where opinion is divided as to whether supplies may last 100 or 500 years. But the greatest threat to people and wildlife living anywhere near deserts is climate change, which is already having a greater impact on desert regions than elsewhere. The Dashti Kbir desert in Iran has seen a 16% drop in rainfall in the past 25 years, the Kalahari a 12% decline and Chile's Atacama desert an 8% drop. Most deserts, says the report, will see temperatures rise by 5-7C by the end of the century and rainfall drop 10-20%. This will greatly increase evaporation and dust storms, and will move deserts closer to communities living on their edges. The problems of more heat and lower rainfall are being compounded by the melting of glaciers in mountainous regions. These waters sustain life in deserts but would be perilously close to drying up if global warming continued as expected. The glaciers in the mountains of south Asia are expected to decline by 40% to 80% in the next century with profound effects on large populations in Bangladesh, Pakistan, India and China. Much of the water used for farming the south-west US, central Asia and around the Andes is drawn from rivers that originate in snow-covered mountains, says the report. Development in the next 100 years is largely contingent on what happens to the climate. However, the report envisages that deserts will become more popular tourist destinations and that some of the plants that grow there could be "crops of the future". "Deserts are threatened as never before by climate change, overexploitation of water and salinisation," said Professor Andrew Warren of University College London, one of the report's authors. "We risk losing not only astounding landscapes and ancient cultures but also wild species that may hold keys to our survival." | ['environment/environment', 'environment/climate-crisis', 'world/world', 'environment/energy', 'environment/solarpower', 'environment/renewableenergy', 'environment/desertification', 'environment/deserts', 'type/article', 'profile/johnvidal', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/international1'] | environment/solarpower | ENERGY | 2006-06-05T14:15:18Z | true | ENERGY |
commentisfree/2024/oct/16/books-street-fly-tipping-impromptu-car-boot-sale | Ikea shelves, books by politicians, even a whole celeriac: in defence of middle-class fly-tipping | Zoe Williams | One experiences politics through direct encounters with the state, and since the first wave of austerity that experience has diverged enormously across income brackets. Benefits claimants can expect constantly hostile interactions, their disabilities relentlessly interrogated, their work hours pored over, their child-rearing examined, their benefits rescinded on specious or cruel grounds – all on an act-first-ask-questions-later principle. As incomes increase, there is a sweet spot, particularly for those who are in fine health and have no children in state education. This demographic occupies a world where nobody can touch you but a traffic warden, or a guy from the council who disapproves of your rubbish disposal. The issue of traffic itself has now also entered into that world – whether it is 20mph limits, London’s ultra-low emission zone or the policy of low-traffic neighbourhooods – and has become a massive site of political activism. And then there’s fly-tipping – or, to give it its full name, middle-class fly-tipping. The local government ombudsman said last month that councils had become over-zealous in their fines, with two Bournemouth residents fined £500 each: one for leaving Ikea furniture on the street, free for anyone to take; another, a carpet-fitter, for leaving an off-cut that he thought, probably rightly, someone would find handy. However much we may like the idea of our tatty old belongings finding a new home, this kind of street trash is undoubtedly an assertion of middle-class entitlement, which is hard to justify – even if you personally would be delighted by a free Ikea bookcase and a piece of carpet. The rule is if it’s middle class, it doesn’t count as rubbish – it’s more of an impromptu car boot sale. So any book, even a mad one – 1980s facial yoga, recipes from the Hay diet – is allowable. Fair play, though, there’s an equal and opposite force, always ready to pounce: a middle-class person who will pick up literally any book. I tested this proposition to its very limits when (no offence, cabinet) I put out books by every single member of the government (I’d read them before the election). They were gone in an hour, even (no offence) Ian Murray’s history of the football club Hearts. Likewise, food cannot count as rubbish, so long as it’s “natural” – you couldn’t leave Pop-Tarts out, but you can leave as many maggot-pitted windfall apples as you like, or wild garlic. I’ve picked up a celeriac off a garden wall and eaten it, which I’m neither proud nor ashamed of. In this milieu, anything you could plausibly claim was recycling (furniture, clothes, electronics) you can leave out on environmental grounds. There are plenty of thrills, too. The audacious act of sticking a printer on the street, with a sign saying “in good working order”, when that definitely was not true even before it started raining, is matched only by the patrician nod you’ll get while you’re picking up that incredibly old and manky fleece, for a reason you couldn’t name, from its original owner. “Be my guest, fellow climate-lover,” it says. “Wrap yourself in my M&S bounty.” I can totally see why a small-beans utility corporation would want to fine us all within an inch of our lives, in other words. But I’m never going to stop doing it. As well as being indicative of the way class works in Britain, it is also a story about the monetisation of the civic relationship. Extravagant fines for the simple act of placing your old wares on the front doorstep tend to be handed out by private contractors, engaged by the council and given a guide on maximum fines which they find it commercially beneficial to push to their very limits. Alongside the two unlucky sods in Bournemouth, it’s a pattern also visible in recent airport parking-fine “scandals” (the scare quotes indicate that the rage is utterly understandable yet completely disproportionate). Not only do private contractors jack up fines to the max, but they give no quarter. There is, after all, no incentive for a company to see both sides or turn a blind eye, because their relationship is with the council or authority, not the individual. The council, which does, in fact, have a long-term relationship with its residents to protect, is not blameless in this. If there’s no sense of mutual sympathy and care between the finer and the fined, it’s because it wasn’t written into the contract. But how could it be? What would a “we all have to live here, we’re going to have to get along” clause even look like? The drum beat of discontent that, for instance, united my mother’s entire street in umbrage when her neighbour’s daughter got a £100 fine for putting her rubbish out not in the wrong place, not on the wrong day, but one hour too early (Wandsworth council, I’m looking at you) is the assertion of a community’s interests against the market’s. The issue feels bigger than a bag of rubbish, bigger even than £100. Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist | ['commentisfree/commentisfree', 'society/localgovernment', 'society/communities', 'society/society', 'uk/uk', 'environment/waste', 'environment/recycling', 'inequality/class-issues', 'inequality/inequality', 'politics/politics', 'type/article', 'tone/comment', 'profile/zoewilliams', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-opinion'] | environment/waste | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE | 2024-10-16T16:03:51Z | true | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE |
environment/2010/jan/08/anti-whaling-boat-sinks-antarctica | Anti-whaling boat Ady Gil sinks off Antarctica | The anti-whaling boat that was sliced in two on Wednesday in a collision with a Japanese whaling ship sank in the Antarctic today, ending a frantic effort to salvage the $1.8m (£1.1m) craft. The Ady Gil,a 24-metre (78ft) catamaran belonging to the Sea Shepherd marine conservation group, sank two days after it was battered by the fleet's security ship, the Shonan Maru No 2, in the most violent confrontation between whalers and activists for six years. The boat lost a large section of its bow in the collision, and one of its six crew sustained minor injuries. The whaling ship was not damaged. Each side has blamed the other for the collision, although video footage (below) appears to support Sea Shepherd's claims that the Ady Gil was struck deliberately. The partially submerged boat was being towed by another Sea Shepherd ship, the Bob Barker, to a French research base 185 miles (300km) to the south when its tow rope snapped early this morning. Reports said the boat sank about 180 miles north of Commonwealth Bay, off the coast of Antarctica. Sea Shepherd said it had removed environmental hazards from the boat and there was no risk of an oil slick. "We spent the greater part of yesterday transferring all of the fuel, oil and batteries and any other contaminates," Peter Hammarstedt, the Bob Barker's first officer, told the Associated Press. "We did the best we could with the situation we were given. The most responsible thing would have been if the illegal whaling vessel hadn't deliberately split the boat into two pieces." Sea Shepherd reported the last known position of the Ady Gil to Australian authorities, warning them that it could pose a navigation hazard for three hours after the sinking. The group's founder, Paul Watson, said the group would continue to pursue the Japanese fleet through freezing Antarctic waters while it attempted to catch 935 minke whales and 50 fin whales by the end of February. "We're not going to restrain ourselves from protecting these whales and we're not going to restrain ourselves from upholding international conservation law," he told Australian radio. A loophole in the 1986 ban on commercial whaling permits Japan to conduct "lethal research" into whales and sell their meat on the open market. Australia and New Zealand, where the Ady Gil is registered, have launched investigations into the incident and appealed to both sides to avoid further confrontation in some of the world's most inhospitable seas. Australia, a vocal opponent of whaling, today said it was using diplomatic channels to try to end to Japan's "scientific" whale hunts, which take place in Antarctic waters claimed by Australia but not recognised as such by Tokyo. "We want to see substantial progress on these negotiations, including a commitment on the part of whaling nations, irrespective of so-called scientific whaling," the environment minister, Peter Garrett, told reporters. Garrett said that if insufficient progress had been made by the time the International Whaling Commission met in June, the prime minister, Kevin Rudd, had made it "very clear that legal action is firmly in front of us". | ['environment/whaling', 'environment/marine-life', 'world/japan', 'australia-news/australia-news', 'environment/conservation', 'world/protest', 'environment/environment', 'world/world', 'tone/news', 'environment/whales', 'world/asia-pacific', 'environment/cetaceans', 'type/article', 'profile/justinmccurry'] | environment/cetaceans | BIODIVERSITY | 2010-01-08T10:23:27Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
environment/2019/jul/27/most-people-back-drinks-bottles-deposit-scheme-survey-finds | Most people back drinks bottles deposit scheme, survey finds | Almost three-quarters of Britons would support a nationwide deposit return system for plastic and glass drinks bottles and aluminium cans, a survey has found. The results follow the announcement last week during a speech at London’s Kew Gardens by Michael Gove, then environment secretary, in which he expressed support for a comprehensive deposit return system. In his speech, Gove suggested that “an ‘all-in’ model will give consumers the greatest possible incentive to recycle”. The all-in model would see a small charge added to the cost of drinks containers made from glass, PET plastic, aluminium and steel. When the empty container is returned to a collection point to be recycled, the charge would be refunded. In Scotland, the government has already committed to introduce a deposit system for glass, steel and aluminium drinks containers of all sizes. A third of people surveyed by YouGov for the Campaign to Protect Rural England believe that the UK-wide system should be just as comprehensive as Scottish system. The survey also found that 39% of people believe the UK-wide system should include more materials, such as drinks cartons and pouches. Maddy Haughton-Boakes, litter campaigner for CPRE, said: “With Michael Gove having thrown his weight behind a truly ‘all-in’ deposit return system, and with the Scottish government’s decision to introduce one earlier this year, this latest wave of public support is surely all the evidence needed for the government to get this over the line.” Norway has already established an effective deposit system that has led to the country achieving a recycling rate for this type of waste as high as 95%, while recycling rates in other countries have also risen after introducing similar schemes. In the UK, overall recycling has plateaued at around 45%. A deposit system could change this. This month, the CPRE reported that an “all-in” deposit return system could generate £2bn for the economy over 10 years, as detailed in the government’s own impact assessment. This economic boost would come from a reduction in the amount of waste sent to landfill, fewer littered drinks containers and associated cleanup costs, reduced air and water pollution, and less carbon emissions caused by the extraction and production of raw materials needed to produce new drinks containers. Haughton-Boakes said: “It’s absolutely fantastic that so many people have shown such high levels of support for the scheme before its even been introduced. “A deposit return system will transform the way we deal with waste, boost recycling and as a result, finally put a stop to the harm that drinks containers are causing our countryside, environment and wildlife.” | ['environment/recycling', 'environment/environment', 'environment/waste', 'environment/ethical-living', 'uk/uk', 'uk/scotland', 'environment/plastic', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/gregory-robinson', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-environment'] | environment/plastic | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE | 2019-07-27T06:00:43Z | true | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE |
environment/green-living-blog/2010/oct/21/carbon-footprint-email | What's the carbon footprint of ... email? | The carbon footprint of spam: 0.3g CO2e: A spam email 4g CO2e: A proper email 50g CO2e: An email with long and tiresome attachment Our recent piece on the carbon footprint of the internet generated plenty of coverage, so next up in our map of the world's carbon emissions is … email. Of course, sending and receiving electronic message is never going to constitute the largest part of our carbon footprints. But the energy required to support our increasingly heaving and numerous inboxes does add up. Very roughly speaking (remember that all complex carbon footprints are really best guesses), a typical year of incoming mail for a business user – including sending, filtering and reading – creates a carbon footprint of around 135kg. That's over 1% of of a relatively green 10-tonne lifestyle and equivalent to driving 200 miles in an average car. According to research by McAfee, a remarkable 78% of all incoming emails are spam. Around 62 trillion spam messages are sent every year, requiring the use of 33bn kilowatt hours (KWh) of electricity and causing around 20 million tonnes of CO2e per year. McAfee estimated that around 80% of this electricity is consumed by the reading and deleting of spam and the searching through spam folders to dig out genuine emails that ended up there by accident. Spam filters themselves account for 16%. The actual generation and sending of the spam is a very small proportion of the footprint. Although 78% of incoming emails sent are spam, these messages account for just 22% of the total footprint of a typical email account because, although they are a pain, you deal with them quickly. Most of them you never even see. A genuine email has a bigger carbon footprint, simply because it takes time to deal with. The average email has just one-sixtieth the footprint of a letter, according to a back-of-the-envelope comparison. That looks like a carbon saving unless you end up sending 60 times more emails than the number of letters you would have posted in days gone by. Lots of people do. This is a good example of the rebound effect – a low-carbon technology resulting in higher-carbon living simply because we use it more. If the great quest is for ways in which we can improve our lives while cutting carbon, surely spam and unnecessary email have to be very high on the hitlist along with old-fashioned junk paper post. But what can be done? Here's one radical idea: a tax of a penny or cent per message sent. Obviously this wouldn't be ideal from the perspective of digital access, and it might be impossible to implement. And no-one likes an extra tax. But it would surely kill all spam instantly. The funds could go to tackling world poverty, say, or to help unlock a global emissions deal by supporting adaptation and technology transfer payments. The world's carbon footprint would go down by a substantial 20 million tonnes even if genuine users didn't change their habits at all. The average user would be saved a couple of minutes of their time every day and an annual fund of up to £170bn would be made available. See more carbon footprints. • This article draws on text from How Bad Are Bananas? The Carbon Footprint of Everything by Mike Berners-Lee | ['environment/series/the-carbon-footprint-of-everything', 'environment/environment', 'environment/green-living-blog', 'environment/ethical-living', 'environment/carbon-emissions', 'environment/carbonfootprints', 'environment/climate-crisis', 'tone/blog', 'technology/internet', 'technology/technology', 'technology/email', 'sustainable-business/hubs-low-carbon-ict', 'tone/news', 'type/article', 'profile/mike-berners-lee', 'profile/duncanclark'] | environment/carbonfootprints | EMISSIONS | 2010-10-21T06:00:00Z | true | EMISSIONS |
environment/2011/may/14/david-cameron-breaking-green-pledge | David Cameron in danger of breaking green pledge, warn green groups | The prime minister is in danger of breaking his pledge to lead the "greenest government ever", a coalition of environmental charities and aid agencies has warned. In an open letter to David Cameron on the first anniversary of the speech in which he made the promise, the chief executives of 15 campaign groups including Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, Christian Aid, Oxfam and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds said he must set out the case that a green economy was central to UK prosperity and not "a cost to be endlessly debated and watered down". As a first step the prime minister must send a signal to investors and the public by accepting key recommendations by the government's climate advisors to sign up to a 50% cut in emissions on 1990 levels by 2025 and 60% cuts by 2030, they urged. The call comes after reports of a split within the cabinet over whether to accept the Committee on Climate Change's recommendations on the fourth five-year "carbon budget", which will govern emissions reductions to 2027, with some departments voicing concerns that meeting the goal could hamper economic growth. The government is likely to announce next week whether it accepts the recommendations. The 15 organisations state that the government "started with a strong sense of purpose on the environment but is now in danger of losing its way". As examples of a "promising start" the groups cite the cancellation of the third runway at Heathrow, the decision to set up a green investment bank and a commitment to a natural environment white paper. But they say that elsewhere the government's green record in the past 12 months has been "less impressive". The campaigners identify a range of "real setbacks", pointing to the proposed changes in the planning system, which they claim will not provide sufficient protection for wildlife and the countryside, the weakening of the zero carbon homes policy and delays in giving borrowing powers to the new green investment bank. They criticise the inclusion of all environmental protection law in the government's review of red tape. The campaigners write there is still scope for Cameron to fulfil his pledge but it would require urgency, resolve and strong leadership. "We urge you to set out the case that a green economy is central to the future prosperity of the UK," they write. The government must prioritise strong environmental protection in planning rules, commit resources to restoring the countryside and seas and put international funding to tackle climate change and secure natural resources at the forefront of foreign policy, they add. The letter is signed by the chief executives of Green Alliance, Christian Aid, Greenpeace, RSPB, WWF, the Campaign to Protect Rural England, the Campaign for Better Transport, Oxfam, Friends of the Earth, the Institute for European Environmental Policy, the Wildlife Trusts, Butterfly Conservation, Plantlife, the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust and the Woodland Trust. It follows a statement by the environment secretary, Caroline Spelman, that set out the government's "green successes since taking office" but did not reflect on policies that have been criticised by the green lobby such as the proposed forest sell-off and eventual U-turn, the huge cuts to flood and coastal defence spending, and the proposed badger cull. | ['politics/liberal-conservative-coalition', 'politics/davidcameron', 'environment/environment', 'politics/politics', 'uk/uk', 'tone/news', 'environment/greenpeace', 'environment/activism', 'environment/friends-of-the-earth', 'environment/rspb', 'environment/climate-crisis', 'type/article', 'profile/davidbatty'] | environment/activism | CLIMATE_ACTIVISM | 2011-05-14T11:51:00Z | true | CLIMATE_ACTIVISM |
environment/2018/jan/30/uk-given-days-to-show-it-will-comply-with-eu-air-quality-laws | UK given days to show it will comply with EU air quality laws | The EU has given Britain and eight other states until next Friday to show how they will comply with EU air pollution laws or face the European Court of Justice. The ultimatum came as London reached its legal air pollution limit for 2018 in just the year’s first month, and could lead to heavy fines being imposed on the UK even after Brexit. At a mini-summit in Brussels on Tuesday, the EU’s environment commissioner, Karmenu Vella, warned ministers from nine states that Brussels had lost patience and “drastic measures” would be needed to avoid court referrals next week. “Deadlines for meeting these obligations have long since elapsed and some say we’ve already waited too long,” he told journalists after the meeting. “But we can delay no more.” Pollutants such as nitrogen dioxide and particulates have been linked to an estimated 40,000 early deaths each year, according to the Royal College of Physicians. “We urge member states to address this life-threatening problem with the urgency it deserves,” Vella said. However, it could take as long as two years before any case is heard by the court, even though the UK has been in breach of the air quality directive since 2010. The commission has moved slowly, waiting for a year after sending a reasoned opinion to the UK last February. But after finally moving, any fines levied could now be significant. “If you take the seriousness and how long it’s been taking place for, it could be quite a big amount,” one EU source said. Post-Brexit, the UK would still be liable to pay court fines handed down for offences committed when it was a member, in Brussels’ view. “If the European commission takes the UK to court and the court takes a verdict on that, even if that verdict falls after the date of Brexit, logically speaking, the UK should still pay the fines for that,” an EU source told the Guardian. Environment secretary Michael Gove skipped Tuesday’s meeting, but Thérèse Coffey, the under-minister replacing him, took a “constructive” tone, according to sources present at the table. A spokesperson for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said: “We continue to actively engage at a European and international level to tackle air pollution.” But Seb Dance, Labour’s European environment spokesman said: “The situation is becoming embarrassing for a government supposedly committed to a so-called ‘green Brexit’.” The threat of legal action “goes to show that the British government cannot be trusted to tackle air pollution on its own,” he added. “Who is going to protect British citizens’ right to clean air if we leave the EU?” Germany, Spain, France, Italy, Hungary, Romania, Slovakia and the Czech Republic are the other states facing the ultimatum on illegal air pollution. | ['environment/air-pollution', 'environment/pollution', 'uk/uk', 'world/eu', 'environment/environment', 'world/europe-news', 'politics/conservatives', 'politics/politics', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/arthurneslen', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/uknews', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-environment'] | environment/air-pollution | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE | 2018-01-30T16:00:48Z | true | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE |
environment/2014/dec/11/australia-still-constructive-in-climate-talks-despite-julie-bishops-rhetoric | Australia still 'constructive' in climate talks, despite Julie Bishop's rhetoric | The Australian government’s rhetoric to its domestic audience about international climate talks is “harder line” than the positions it is taking in the actual negotiations, according to long-term observers of the process. “In many areas the actual negotiating position of the current government is much the same as the former government, the real difference is in their rhetoric and their posturing,” said the deputy director of the Climate Institute, Erwin Jackson. “Their rhetoric is definitely tougher at home.” Before leaving for the climate talks in Lima, foreign minister Julie Bishop insisted that any targets agreed at next year’s meeting in Paris had to be “legally binding” or else the deal would “amount to nothing more than aspirations”. This was labelled an impossible demand by many experts, because a treaty imposing hard legal obligations on the United States was unlikely to pass the US congress. By Thursday Bishop was telling a conference on the sidelines of the Lima talks that Australia’s priority was encouraging participation in the new treaty, rather than its legal form. And she told ABC radio: “The controversy is about whether or not it should be legally binding. There are some countries who will refuse to be involved if it is legally binding so we have to balance whether we would rather have those countries at the signing table or will we insist on the agreement being legally binding.” “So we’re working around the clock with other parties to secure an agreement that countries will not only sign up to in Paris but they will actually implement when they get home.” In her formal national statement in Lima, Bishop said a Paris agreement “must establish a common playing field, moving past the developed-developing country divide that puts a brake on real action” – a line previewed in an interview with the Australian as a demand that China and India do more, and cease insisting on less onerous obligations because they were classified as “developing” countries. One veteran negotiator told Guardian Australia these comments “must be directed to a domestic audience” because international climate talks in South Africa three years ago had already agreed that the new post-2020 agreement had to include commitments and obligations for all countries. “They’re still saying some strange things here in Lima, for example questioning the long-term goal to limit global warming to two degrees, but on the whole they are being reasonably constructive. It seems like a lot of their messaging is just designed for the audience at home.” And having initially derided the announcement of new emissions targets by China last month as nothing more than “business as usual”, Bishop told the ABC on Thursday “of course China recently, even though it is still defined as a developing country, China recently made a significant announcement with the United States about its post-2020 emission reduction plans and we’re looking forward to further information on these plans when contributions are formally communicated next year.” On Wednesday the Abbott government responded to intense international pressure by reversing its previously strong opposition to the Green Climate Fund, announcing that it would contribute $200m over four years from the foreign aid budget. The trade minister, Andrew Robb, reportedly sent along to the Lima talks to “chaperone” the foreign minister, is also talking tough from Lima. “We will make a particular effort to ensure that they are as ambitious as we will be,” he said in a recent interview. “If we are not convinced they are doing what they should, it will influence whether we sign up or not. Outcomes must be comparable. We are not going to get it in the neck and increase our costs for nothing.” The Greens leader, Christine Milne, who is also in Lima for the talks, said the government was right to resist the talks slipping back into the old fights between developed and developing nations. But she said there were many instances of the government taking a very hard line in the negotiations, including resisting a proposal by countries including Norway and Latin American countries to commit countries to reduce emissions to zero by 2050 and insisting that there would be no further contributions from Australia to the green climate fund beyond the $200m. “Australia is still being a spoiler,” she said. Australia, along with the US and the European Union, is pushing for a process to assess and review the targets national targets nominated by each country before they are enshrined in any treaty agreed in Paris next year, something China is resisting. | ['environment/climate-crisis', 'environment/cop-20-un-climate-change-conference-lima', 'environment/global-climate-talks', 'australia-news/australia-news', 'australia-news/australian-politics', 'australia-news/julie-bishop', 'australia-news/christine-milne', 'australia-news/coalition', 'australia-news/australian-greens', 'environment/environment', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/lenore-taylor'] | environment/cop-20-un-climate-change-conference-lima | CLIMATE_POLICY | 2014-12-11T01:59:48Z | true | CLIMATE_POLICY |
environment/2019/apr/30/corbyn-to-tell-mps-do-your-duty-and-declare-a-uk-climate-emergency | Corbyn to tell MPs: Do your duty, and declare a UK climate emergency | Jeremy Corbyn will urge MPs to take on their “historic duty” over climate change and back a Labour motion calling for the UK to declare a national environmental and climate-change emergency. Speaking in the wake of climate strikes by young people and the wave of protests by Extinction Rebellion, the Labour leader will open an opposition day debate on Wednesday by also seeking a so-called green industrial revolution to transform the economy. “Today this house must declare an environment and climate emergency,” he will say, according to extracts of the speech released in advance. “We have no time to waste. We are living in a climate crisis that will spiral dangerously out of control unless we take rapid and dramatic action now.” The Labour motion would officially declare an environment and climate emergency, and pledge a response of “commensurate urgency”, including more rapid action to reduce climate emissions, a boost for renewable and low-impact transport and energy, and wider efforts to create a greener economy. With the issue in the public consciousness following the protests, and last week’s visit to parliament by the teenage Swedish activist, Greta Thunberg, who Corbyn met, there will be pressure for Conservative MPs to support the motion, or at least outline alternative plans. The environment secretary Michael Gove, who also saw Thunberg and met an Extinction Rebellion delegation on Tuesday, will respond for the government. Corbyn will argue that urgent action is needed in response to the justified concerns of young activists. “I was deeply moved a few weeks ago to see the streets outside this parliament filled with colour and noise by children on strike from school chanting, ‘Our planet, our future’,” he will say. “For someone of my generation, it was inspiring but also humbling that children felt they had to leave school to teach the adults a lesson. The truth is, they are ahead of the politicians on this, the most important issue of our times.” Describing Extinction Rebellion, whose activists blocked streets and bridges around London for days, as “a massive and necessary wake-up call”, Corbyn said: “Today, we have the opportunity to say: ‘We hear you.’ “Parliament rarely leads change, it usually drags its feet. Think about the huge transformations to our society: workers’ rights, women’s rights, gay rights. “The impetus has always come from outside, from social movements and communities, while Westminster is often the last place to understand it. Let’s not repeat that pattern. Let’s respond to the younger generation, who are raising the alarm. “By declaring a climate emergency, we could set off a wave of action from parliaments and governments around the world. It’s a chance that won’t be available to succeeding generations. It is our historic duty to take it,” he will say. The Labour leader will also call for significant investment in new technologies and green industries: “The hidden hand of the market is not going to save us. Technological solutions are not going to magically appear out of nowhere. “An emergency of this magnitude requires large-scale government intervention to kickstart industries, to direct investment and to boost research and development in the green technologies of the future. “The solution to the crisis is reprogramming our whole economy so that it works in the interests of both people and the planet. This is not a time for despair. It is a time for action.” | ['environment/climate-crisis', 'politics/jeremy-corbyn', 'environment/extinction-rebellion', 'environment/greta-thunberg', 'environment/environment', 'politics/politics', 'uk/uk', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'environment/school-climate-strikes', 'profile/peterwalker', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-home-news'] | environment/school-climate-strikes | CLIMATE_ACTIVISM | 2019-04-30T21:30:29Z | true | CLIMATE_ACTIVISM |
food/2022/oct/04/what-can-i-cook-in-a-hot-oven-as-it-cools-kitchen-aide | What can I cook in a hot oven as it cools? | I don’t want to waste the residual heat from my cooling oven. What can I cook or bake in there? Kay, Sheffield “Kay could use her cooling oven to preserve many things,” says Mark Birchall, chef-patron of Moor Hall in Lancashire. Herbs that are past their best (“or those in need of cutting back, like rosemary, for instance”) can be dried on an oven rack, then stuffed into a roast chicken, say, while bread that’s on its way out can also be dried (cut the crusts off first) in a cooling oven and blitzed into breadcrumbs. Alternatively, turn tomatoes into future treasures, says Sam Grainger, chef-owner of Belzan in Liverpool. “Halve them, add salt and a little oil [so they don’t stick], and put in a cast-iron skillet or pan. Leave them in the hot oven until it’s cool, and they’ll get better and better the longer they’re in there.” He adds his oven-dried tomatoes to salads and ramen, or turns them into soup or sauce, though for the latter two, he recommends peeling them first: “The skin doesn’t blend, so everything will be bitty otherwise.” Toasting nuts or spices is another use for a cooling oven, says former Bake Off star Rahul Mandal, whose new book, Showstopping Cakes, is out in October. “Toasting oats, nuts and seeds for 10-15 minutes is a great way to increase their shelf-life,” says Mandal, who stores them in an airtight container, ready to eat as muesli. While ground spices are convenient, “whole spices have a longer life and are cheaper, too. Toasting them releases their essential oils and makes them fragrant.” Mandal spreads the likes of cumin, coriander, fennel, cloves or cardamom in a thin layer on a baking tray, and, once the oven’s been turned off, whacks them in for 10 to 15 minutes. “Grind to a powder, then use within a few weeks.” There are, of course, times when you just need a cookie, and that cooling oven delivers here, too. Grainger suggests following “pretty much any recipe” for the dough, then slicing and transferring it to a lined tray. “Always use a well-insulated pan – a little aluminium tray, for example, isn’t going to hold any heat.” Pop the cookies in the turned-off hot oven for half an hour, and you’ll end up with something “soft, gooey, warm – and perfect for after dinner”. If you’ve got Pyrex glassware or a metal sieve in need of drying, Mendal recommends doing that in the cooling oven, too; the same goes for plates or dishes that need warming. When cooking for friends, Adriann Ramirez, pastry chef at Finks in London, recommends “sticking in plates or, if I’m serving a sauce, a ceramic bowl once the oven is off, so they’re warmed gently”. All that said, it’s also worth considering how best to use the oven when it’s actually on, too. Don’t roast or bake a single item; instead, fill it up. “Put all your slow cooks in at the same time and get a week’s worth done at once,” Grainger suggests. Yes, that requires an element of forward-planning, but batch-cooking and freezing is a no-brainer. “Becoming best friends with your freezer is the game to play right now.” • Got a culinary dilemma? Email feast@theguardian.com | ['food/food', 'food/chefs', 'food/tomatoes', 'food/side-dishes', 'environment/environment', 'environment/energyefficiency', 'environment/energy', 'environment/ethical-living', 'food/series/kitchen-aide', 'type/article', 'tone/recipes', 'tone/features', 'profile/anna-berrill', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/feast', 'theguardian/feast/feast', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/feast'] | environment/energy | ENERGY | 2022-10-04T13:00:39Z | true | ENERGY |
australia-news/2014/dec/08/queensland-police-defend-use-of-vehicles-branded-with-santos-logo | Queensland police defend use of vehicles branded with Santos logo | The Queensland police commissioner has defended the use of vehicles in Queensland police service colours branded with the logo of coal-seam gas company Santos as part of a road safety campaign. Opponents of CSG circulated images at the weekend showing police vehicles bearing Santos’s name. The energy giant runs about a third of the gas wells across Queensland and is forecast to bring a further 6,100 online over the next two decades. Police have regularly attended sites run by Santos and other energy companies to deal with clashes between anti-CSG activists and security. But the state’s police commissioner, Ian Stewart, said Santos was one of 13 sponsors for the “Stay on Track Outback” campaign, which launched in 2012. “I can certainly understand the perspective of the people who have been battling this company through the anti-CSG lobby,” he said. “But from our point of view Santos is a publicly listed company. It’s in the mining game, but we regularly partner with private industry to achieve outcomes for the community which are beneficial.” Stewart said the QPS often took on private sponsors to help pay for “extra things where we identify problems outside of our normal duties”. “We have very clear guidelines about who we partner with and the types of sponsorships we undertake,” he said. Stewart said the two vehicles bearing the Santos logo were decked in police colours but were donated by other sponsors and had “no police fittings” – including lights and sirens. In 2008 Queensland police became the first in the country to carry private advertising, running the logo of the Brisbane Airport Corporation on the side of all police vehicles. More controversially, Queensland police have been permitted to to engage in “special duties”, where off-duty officers are paid by private companies to oversee protests or events, including demonstrations against CSG. Arrow Energy reportedly hired about 100 police to attend a tense protest at a gas well in Kerry, in the state’s south-east, in 2012. They made 15 arrests. Stewart said any officers hired by energy companies were not at their “beck and call” and subject to the same accountability procedures as on-duty police. Drew Hutton, the president of the Lock the Gate Alliance which campaigns against CSG extraction, said the use of the Santos logo on QPS-branded vehicles was “a bad look” and would be extremely controversial at protest sites. “The campaign Santos is sponsoring is a good campaign but the police are supposed to be imposing the law impartially,” he said. “And how can you enforce the law impartially against a company that’s sponsoring you?” | ['australia-news/police-policing-australia', 'australia-news/australia-news', 'australia-news/queensland', 'environment/gas', 'environment/environment', 'environment/activism', 'world/protest', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/michael-safi'] | environment/activism | CLIMATE_ACTIVISM | 2014-12-08T07:30:26Z | true | CLIMATE_ACTIVISM |
environment/2005/jun/03/brazil.conservationandendangeredspecies | Environmental officials arrested in Brazilian logging crackdown | Federal police in Brazil have arrested 48 environmental officials - the people who should be protecting the rainforest - in a crackdown on illegal logging, it was reported today. Hundreds of federal agents yesterday began to dismantle an alleged corruption ring in Ibama, the federal environmental protection agency. The officials are accused of allowing the illegal destruction of around 43,000 hectares (118,608 acres) of Amazon rainforest over the past two years, much of it in national parks and Indian reservations. Police alleged that corrupt officials were responsible for illegally logging 1.9m cubic metres (67.09m cubic feet) of wood worth an estimated $890m (£203m). The wood was sold in Brazil and exported abroad, officers said. "This is a very important moment because our government has broken up this high level of corruption," senator Serys Slhessarenko, of Mato Grosso state, western Brazil, said. The crackdown comes weeks after the government said the Amazon rainforest was disappearing at an alarming rate. It shrank by 10,088 square miles in the 12-month period to last August, figures revealed. Almost half the destruction occurred in Mato Grosso. Among those arrested in the crackdown was Hugo Jose Scheuer Werle, Ibama's top official in Mato Grosso. He allegedly accepted money from loggers in exchange for documents declaring that the wood had been legally removed from the rainforest, and stands accused of profiting by $426,000 during the two years he headed the agency. The state's governor, Blairo Maggi - one of the world's largest soybean producers - has aggressively defended agricultural development in the state. "The federal government has done its part, now it's up to Blairo Maggi to do his part on the state level," Ms Slhessarenko said. The senator said she believed the high deforestation rate in her state had been driven by market forces seeking to cut down the jungle. That pressure fostered the corruption within Ibama, she added. The crackdown followed a nine-month investigation into corruption at Ibama in Mato Grosso. Police also arrested 32 businessmen connected to logging companies, and said they were looking for 15 more. According to Brazilian law, landowners in the Amazon must retain 80% of the forest on their land. | ['environment/environment', 'world/brazil', 'environment/conservation', 'world/world', 'environment/endangered-habitats', 'environment/amazon-rainforest', 'world/americas', 'type/article'] | environment/endangered-habitats | BIODIVERSITY | 2005-06-03T11:52:34Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
commentisfree/2014/feb/14/climate-change-floods-government | The government has to act now on climate change | John Gummer | The harrowing pictures of flood victims, ruined property and stranded stock have brought home the damage the forces of nature can wreak even in our gentle and temperate climate. We must expect this extreme weather to become more frequent, made worse by the warming of the atmosphere. The UK's floods, Australia's record heat, the intense cold in the US, and the unparalleled force of Asian storms remind us that the real issue is intensity. We have to prepare, not just for too much water, but too little; not just for rain but for record tides and winds. The cost of adaptation to the effects of climate change is significant and so far hardly recognised. It's all too typical of our short-term perspectives that so many have concentrated on easy answers and facile blame. We won't solve our problems by indiscriminate dredging or sacking the chairman of the Environment Agency. Nor is it a simple matter of resources. We have to have a programme of long-term adaptation that enables the UK to cope with these fundamental and irreversible changes. Of course, some of that will involve increased spending on flood prevention and coastal defence. John Krebs, who chairs the adaptation sub-committee of the climate change committee, estimates a £500m shortfall in spending over the four years to 2015, if we are to avoid flood risk increasing over time. It would be utterly unacceptable to take foreign aid funds from the poorest people on Earth, as some have now suggested, instead of finding the proper resources for flood prevention. I entirely support the prime minister in saying that we are a nation rich enough to provide the funds to deal with flooding. However, beyond capital spending, we will need much more fundamental change. Both flooding and the effects of drought are made significantly worse by some modern farming practices. The compaction of the soil means less absorption of rainfall. When the rainfall is too little, the aquifers are not sufficiently replenished. When it's too much, the run-off swells the rivers and makes flooding worse. With so much more land being drained, the quantity of water driving down our watercourses is much increased and simply overwhelms their carrying capacity. The historic methods of flood alleviation – of wash meadows and other soft defences – have largely been abandoned and we are not encouraging the kind of cultivation higher up our rivers that can help to hold back the water. But the built environment too will be affected. All those front gardens concreted over and the fashion for hard landscaping mean the natural absorption of water in our towns is much reduced. The result is that sewerage systems are overwhelmed. Worse still is our arrogant insistence of building on flood plains so that the natural mechanisms of flood alleviation are inhibited. So, if we are properly to face up to the flooding threat, someone has to be in charge. At the moment, no one is ultimately responsible. Local authorities and the Environment Agency, Defra, the Department for Transport and the Department for Communities and Local Government all have a finger in the pie. The water companies, the Highways Agency, Network Rail and the internal drainage boards are also crucial to a solution. Before people try to make party political points, it's been like this for 20 years. Back in Margaret Thatcher's time, the Treasury resisted a single system for coastal defence and then the last government's reorganisation made a muddled system significantly worse. No party has been prepared properly to count the cost of adaptation to climate change. Nicholas Stern's warning should remind this government – and all future ones – that the old ways are no longer adequate. We have to act now to protect Britain against the effects of the changes – the flooding, storms and drought that will become more frequent and severe. We have to start anew. From my experience both as minister of agriculture and secretary of state for the environment, I have long believed we should have a single department of planning and land use. This would take in all of Defra and add planning from DCLG. The resultant department would directly take control of the coastal defence element in the Environment Agency and then use coastal local authorities as their agents, thus unifying the present fragmented jurisdiction. The Environment Agency would remain as present, but it would report to the new department as it now does to Defra. Such a department would be responsible for implementing the necessary long-term programme. The buck would stop there and we might finally get something effective done. | ['commentisfree/commentisfree', 'environment/climate-crisis', 'environment/environment-agency', 'environment/stern', 'science/scienceofclimatechange', 'environment/flooding', 'uk/uk', 'tone/comment', 'type/article', 'profile/john-gummer', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/commentanddebate'] | environment/flooding | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2014-02-14T15:02:05Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
business/nils-pratley-on-finance/2019/jun/10/too-soon-to-ditch-neil-woodford-but-patient-capitals-board-needs-a-shake0up | Too soon to ditch Neil Woodford but Patient Capital's board needs a shake-up | The five directors of Woodford Patient Capital Trust would like to remind the world that they exist. It’s been hard to tell the past week. The board of the investment trust employs Neil Woodford to manage £800m of assets but, as crisis engulfed their top man at his separate Equity Income fund, nothing was heard from Patient Capital, a FTSE 250 company in its own right. But then we get a four-paragraph update for shareholders. What an anticlimax. The first two paragraphs noted that Patient Capital’s share price has fallen with the Woodford drama. The third said the “operational performance” of the underlying companies is unaffected, which is a statement of the obvious. The fourth merely stated that the board is “engaging with its shareholders and advisers” – in other words, talking to people you’d expect it to talk to. It is, to be fair, a little early for Patient Capital’s board to consider ditching Woodford and hiring a replacement fund manager. Woodford constructed this sprawling portfolio of 90-odd stocks, about 60% of which are unquoted, and finding an alternative manager would not be easy. Sooner or later, though, the question of sacking Woodford will have to be addressed. But here’s the problem: the board looks too cosy with him. Susan Searle, the chair, also chairs Mercia Technologies, a company in the trust’s portfolio. Another director, Scott Brown, is chief executive of Nexeon, another investment. And Steven Harris is chief executive of Circassia Pharmaceuticals, a company that used to be the trust’s fourth largest holding but now seems confined to his gated Equity Income fund. Small-company investment is a small world so perhaps a single crossover between “independent director” and “director of a company backed by Woodford” would be excusable. But three on a five-strong board? That is not a formula for hard-hitting debate. They’re overseeing Woodford, and he’s investing in their companies. Nor is it clear who is supposed to be the senior independent director at Patient Capital, a critical role in current circumstances. Alan Hodson, a former UBS executive, had the title but stepped down last month after less than two years on the board in order to “spend more time on charitable endeavours”. The board’s brief statement on Monday also sidestepped one reason why Patient Capital’s share price, down another 6% at 59p, now trades at a mighty 30% discount to the stated value of the assets. It’s the fact that the trust bought £73m of illiquid assets from the Equity Income fund in March and issued shares in return. On day one, the terms looked better for the trust than the fund but it would be harder to make that case now. Equity Income is seen as a semi-forced seller of its quoted holdings and the 9% stake in Patient Capital could be thrown into the mix. In normal circumstances, the board of an investment trust might sanction a share buy-back to close the wide discount to asset value. But even that textbook strategy looks out of reach for Patient Capital. Financial gearing was 16% at the end of April, close to the 20% limit. The board seems to have walked into this storm without a raincoat. It’s hard to know what Searle and co hope to learn by “engaging” with shareholders. But the investors themselves ought to deliver a blunt message to the directors: move aside and get some demonstrably independent faces in the boardroom – and quickly. Scottish Power provides energy for the solar cause What happens when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine? This sceptical question has been thrown at the renewable energy sector many times to justify massive subsidies for nuclear. Even if the UK makes greater use of wind and solar, runs the argument, we’ll need more nuclear for the so-called “baseload” generation. Here – finally – comes the start of a credible response from the renewable end. Scottish Power will connect an industrial-scale battery, the size of half a football pitch, to its Whitelee onshore windfarm near Glasgow. “A significant step forward in the road to baseload for renewable energy,” says chief executive Keith Anderson. That’s a big boast, especially as the size of the Whitelee battery, at 50MW, is not huge – that’s only enough energy to fire up 800 electric cars. But, yes, it could still be a significant moment. First, because Scottish Power plans another half a dozen batteries in the next 18 months. Second, because the costs will probably fall after the initial £20m-ish spend at Whitelee. Third, because batteries, unlike nuclear, still have the potential to make major technological advances. This is an important investment for the UK. | ['business/nils-pratley-on-finance', 'business/business', 'money/investmentfunds', 'money/moneyinvestments', 'environment/solarpower', 'environment/energy', 'environment/renewableenergy', 'business/stock-markets', 'type/article', 'tone/comment', 'business/neil-woodford', 'profile/nilspratley', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/financial3', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-business'] | environment/solarpower | ENERGY | 2019-06-10T18:26:09Z | true | ENERGY |
sport/2023/jan/28/wales-warren-gatland-raises-worries-netflix-six-nations-documentary-rugby-union | Wales’ Warren Gatland raises worries about Netflix’s Six Nations documentary | Warren Gatland has raised concerns about Netflix’s new 2023 Six Nations documentary. The series promises “an insight into pulsating behind the scenes moments” during the championship but Gatland is uneasy with the lack of editorial control and worried about what might be revealed when emotions run hot. “I can tell you now that in a rugby environment, when you are talking about creating emotion, the language used isn’t always appropriate,” he warned. “Especially when you’re talking about nations playing each other.” Gatland has plenty of experience working with film crews, and there were behind-the-scenes documentaries about all four of his British & Irish Lions tours. But the management always had some control over the final cut. The Wales head coach is uncomfortable that there are not similar guarantees from the makers of the Netflix series. He explained: “In the past when we’ve had the crews that have been involved with Lions and Wales, what’s been really important is their ability to create a relationship with the players and the coaching team, so it’s almost like they become an invisible part of it. “Then you find yourself just carrying on with your normal routine, because of the trust that you build up with them. So that’s the challenge with Netflix. At the moment my understanding is that we don’t have any editorial rights and that is a little bit of a concern because you want to make sure you are able to protect yourself.” Gatland has been caught using some pretty ripe language on and off camera over the years. The 2009 Lions documentary, Living With the Pride, included his deathless team talk before the third Test in Johannesburg, On the 2017 tour to New Zealand, he even resolved not to swear during press conferences after he was caught cursing on a live microphone. “Sometimes you say something that is a little bit out of kilter when you’re trying to get the best out of players, or they’re trying to get the best out of each other,” Gatland said. “Some of the things that get said in the changing room might not be stuff that you actually always believe, but it’s part of getting the best out of your performance. And then afterwards you’re all friends and mates again. “So there’s a few things that we need to be conscious of, and iron out. The last thing we need is to be bland in the way it comes across but I’m also conscious that we need to protect ourselves, too. That’s pretty important.” However, Gatland’s Italy counterpart, Kieran Crowley, was more enthusiastic about the series which is being produced by the producers of F1: Drive to Survive. “It’s going to be great for Italian rugby. We’ve got a duty to promote rugby. I think Test match rugby has become boring in a lot of respects, it is all about the win, which it has to be. And rugby in general is going through some challenging times, with head injuries, so I think it is a great initiative to have Netflix on board. We’ve got no problem with it. We embrace it. We’ve just got to keep the lid on some of our boys and make sure they don’t try to be movie stars.” | ['sport/warren-gatland', 'sport/six-nations-2023', 'sport/wales-rugby-union-team', 'sport/sixnations', 'sport/rugby-union', 'sport/sport', 'campaign/email/the-breakdown', 'media/netflix', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/andybull', 'publication/theobserver', 'theobserver/sport', 'theobserver/sport/news', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-sport'] | sport/wales-rugby-union-team | UNRELATED_TO_CLIMATE | 2023-01-28T18:00:26Z | true | UNRELATED_TO_CLIMATE |
business/2011/apr/27/bp-profits-dip-deepwater-horizon-costs | BP profits dip as Deepwater Horizon costs continue to mount | BP has reported a dip in profits for the last three months as the bill for the Deepwater Horizon disaster continued to mount. The oil company posted profits of $5.481bn (£3.32bn) for the first quarter of 2011, down on the $5.598bn it made a year ago. The profits were hit by a new charge of $400m to cover additional clean-up costs in the Gulf of Mexico and come on top of the $40.9bn that BP has already set aside to pay for the environmental disaster. Although the high oil price continued to benefit BP, the company has been selling off billions of pounds worth of assets to pay for the Deepwater Horizon costs. This has had a significant impact on its capacity – the total amount of oil produced by BP fell by 11% to 3.578m barrels a day. BP also blamed the production fall on the temporary closure of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System in January, following a leak. Much of Wednesday's quarterly results statement was devoted to the situation in the Gulf of Mexico. BP said it agreed a $1bn programme for early restoration projects to address natural resource damage resulting from the spill. It also reported that the Gulf Coast Claims Facility has now received 267,960 claims from people seeking compensation – 107,955 had been paid, 4,343 had been denied, and the remaining 155,662 submissions are currently being processed. The Deepwater rig exploded on 20 April 2010. This triggered a massive oil leak – with nearly 5m barrels of oil entering the water before BP finally plugged the well. | ['business/bp', 'business/oil', 'business/oilandgascompanies', 'business/energy-industry', 'business/business', 'environment/bp-oil-spill', 'world/world', 'environment/oil-spills', 'environment/oil', 'environment/environment', 'tone/news', 'uk/uk', 'type/article', 'profile/graemewearden'] | environment/oil | ENERGY | 2011-04-27T07:22:38Z | true | ENERGY |
australia-news/article/2024/aug/23/humpback-whale-sydney-harbour-rescue-mission-nsw | Humpback whale in Sydney Harbour freed from rope entanglement in hours-long rescue | A humpback whale has been freed after being entangled in ropes in Sydney Harbour. Jessica Fox, the second vice-president of volunteer organisation Orrca, confirmed the rescue late on Friday morning. The young adult whale, between 10 to 15 metres long, was spotted about 1pm on Thursday by a tour group, who alerted Orrca. A GPS tracker was reportedly attached to the whale on Thursday before rescue efforts were paused overnight. However, the tracker detached and the whale had to be relocated on Friday morning. At 9.30am, according to a video posted to Orrca’s Facebook page, the mammal was between Middle Head and North Head. The group reported an “entanglement [of] ropes and buoys attached to [its] tail”. New South Wales National Parks and Wildlife Service and Maritime NSW had vessels on-site monitoring the whale and enforcing an exclusion zone, a spokesperson for the former said. The large whale disentanglement team was dispatched to assist in freeing the animal. Wildlife officers used specialised cutting equipment to free the whale from ropes that had wrapped around its tail. The equipment featured a long pole with blades that do not impact the whale while cutting through rope. “It’s obviously a very complicated operation,” the NSW National Parks and Wildlife service area manager, Ben Khan, said during a press conference. “We’ve got a live animal. It’s very, very large. “The entanglement was around its tail … it’s quite a simple entanglement, but it was a very active animal. So it had to be done very carefully this morning.” The rescue team worked from 6.30am to 11.15am. “It took a lot of attempts to get to the whale, to slow down to a safe speed to be able to get in close enough to make that safe cut,” Khan said. The humpback swam towards the Sydney Heads and open ocean after being cut free. With Australian Associated Press. | ['australia-news/sydney', 'environment/whales', 'australia-news/new-south-wales', 'australia-news/australia-news', 'environment/wildlife', 'environment/cetaceans', 'environment/environment', 'environment/marine-life', 'campaign/email/afternoon-update', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/rafqa-touma', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/international', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/australia-news'] | environment/marine-life | BIODIVERSITY | 2024-08-23T04:28:58Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
environment/2014/jun/26/what-does-clive-palmers-carbon-tax-decision-mean-for-australia | What does Clive Palmer's carbon tax decision mean for Australia? | Will the carbon tax be axed? It would seem so. The government has 33 votes in the new Senate. Crossbench senators David Leyonjhelm, Bob Day and John Madigan have already said they will vote for repeal. With the Palmer United party’s three Senate votes the government has 39 votes it needs. Independent senator Nick Xenophon is also inclined to vote for repeal, but he wants a delay while he negotiates changes to the government’s climate change policy. Has Palmer United party put any conditions on their repeal votes? Yes, one condition. They will move an amendment to require power companies to pass to households and business the full savings they get from the carbon price repeal. The government believes this will do little more than legislate what power companies are already required to do, but the details remain sketchy so it is difficult to be sure. What about the Coalition’s Direct Action scheme? Palmer has said his senators will also vote against legislation amending the former government’s carbon farming initiative to expand it into the Coalition’s proposed $2.5bn “emissions reduction fund” saying it is a “waste of money”. Labor and the greens have also said they will vote against Direct Action. This provides the 38 votes needed to block the legislation. The government has previously said it could partially implement Direct Action without legislation, simply by appropriating the money in the budget supply bills. Doesn’t this leave Australia without an overall policy to reduce emissions? Pretty much. Direct Action was voluntary and didn’t impose any cap of carbon pollution anyway. The government may be able to give some grants to companies and organisations willing to reduce emissions, but without legislation it will not be able to impose what it calls “safeguards” which are supposed to prevent emission increases in other parts of the economy. It remains unclear how Australia will reach a target to reduce emissions by 5% by 2020. So why did Al Gore stand up beside Clive Palmer? Palmer did promise to vote to retain the $10bn clean energy finance corporation which provides loans to renewable and energy efficiency projects and also to vote against changes to the renewable energy target (RET) during this term in government. The RET has provided incentives for around $18bn worth of investment in renewables and the government is undertaking a review which appears likely to end with the RET being closed to new investments. And when Gore got involved in the talks with Palmer, the mining millionaire was actually considering keeping an emissions trading scheme but temporarily setting the price at zero – an outcome that environmentally-minded people in the talks saw as “keeping the furniture”. Then Palmer’s senators insisted they had so clearly promised to back a repeal that they had to keep the pledge. This almost scuttled the Palmer-Gore duet, until Palmer promised he would support the re-introduction of the emissions trading scheme in the future, which put the joint press conference plan back on track. Will Palmer ever be able to re-introduce emissions trading? It would seem unlikely, now that Palmer has clarified this is not a condition for his senators supporting carbon tax repeal. Palmer’s press statement says he wants to insert the whole emissions trading scheme as an amendment in the climate change authority repeal bill. But he wants to keep the climate change authority, which would suggest he would vote against the repeal bill. Alternatively he could introduce separate legislation, but in any event the government isn’t likely to pass it through the lower house. | ['environment/carbon-tax', 'environment/environment', 'environment/emissionstrading', 'australia-news/australia-news', 'australia-news/australian-politics', 'business/business', 'environment/climate-crisis', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/lenore-taylor'] | environment/carbon-tax | CLIMATE_POLICY | 2014-06-26T05:38:53Z | true | CLIMATE_POLICY |
news/2018/dec/28/weatherwatch-freak-winds-tay-bridge | Weatherwatch: were freak winds really to blame for Tay Bridge tragedy? | Railways are usually considered to be the safest mode of transport. And yet when things go wrong, the devastation can be huge, as the Tay Bridge disaster of 1879 shows. On the night of Sunday 28 December, a train was passing over the bridge from Wormit, on the southern side of the Firth of Tay, to Dundee. As strong winds blew across its path, the bridge collapsed, killing all the passengers and railway employees on board – an estimated 75 people. At first, reaction focused on the death toll. It was tempting to blame freak weather, and indeed there had been very heavy gusts. But soon questions were asked about the bridge’s design. It turned out that cost-cutting measures during the bridge’s construction and its maintenance meant it was a disaster waiting to happen. All it took were high winds – hardly unknown in eastern Scotland in winter. Ironically the bridge’s designer, Thomas Bouch, had been knighted months before the disaster, after a train carrying Queen Victoria had passed safely across the bridge. To add insult to injury, the disaster was the subject of a commemorative verse by the man widely considered to be the worst poet ever: William McGonagall. | ['news/series/weatherwatch', 'uk/dundee', 'uk/scotland', 'uk/rail-transport', 'type/article', 'tone/features', 'profile/stephenmoss1', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/weather2', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-weather'] | news/series/weatherwatch | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2018-12-28T21:30:01Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
lifeandstyle/2014/may/20/how-to-mend-a-bike-puncture | How to mend a bike puncture | You will need: a basic patch repair kit, including: tyre levers fine sandpaper or emery board rubber solution patch bike pump 1. Take the wheel off the bike, and using the tyre levers take the tyre off one side of the rim so you can pull the inner tube out. You might be able to save time by leaving the valve of the tube in the wheel as shown below, but only if the hole is elsewhere on the tube. Blow the tube up. You can find a puncture by listening for the hiss of escaping air. The smallest, slowest punctures are hardest to find – you may have to immerse the tube in water and look for bubbles. In an emergency, a puddle will do. 2. Once you find a puncture it will lead you to the right section of tyre to look for a hole or a sharp object. Check the tyre for grit, glass, thorns or nails. Check for holes where they may have been. The flint, thorn or glass that caused the puncture may have been blown out by the escaping air, or dislodged in the last few metres when you were running on a flat tyre. Pick out whatever caused the puncture. Tweezers or a pin may be useful. 3. If you used water to locate the hole make sure the inner tube is dry. Use fine sandpaper or an emery board to clean the area around the hole. Clean an area larger than the patch you intend to apply. 4. Take your patch kit and smear a thin layer of rubber solution around the hole. Don't be tempted to add too much. Don’t apply the patch until all the solvent has evaporated. If you sniff the layer of solvent you must smell only the rubber of the inner tube, not the alcohol solvent. The length of time this takes depends on the weather conditions. It’s quicker in warm dry air, longer when it’s cold and wet. 5. Peel the protective layer off the patch. If the patch has paper on one side and foil on the other it’s the foil that comes off. If it has paper and cellophane, it’s the paper. Apply the patch to layer of glue so the hole is centred under the patch. 6. Place the inner tube on a firm smooth surface and push the patch on to the inner tube with a smooth implement – a tyre lever works well. This action encourages the patch to bond to the inner tube. 7. Fold the inner tube to crack the backing paper or cellophane and peel it off from the centre outwards. If you want to leave the backing on that’s no problem. The inner tube will work with it still on. 8. Dust the patch and surrounding area with fine dust or chalk. A patch kit often has a block of chalk to generate this dust but you can use any fine dust lying around. The dust neutralises the glue around the patch so that the inner tube won’t stick to the inside of the tyre. 9. Pump a small amount of air into the patched inner tube so that it holds a circular shape. Carefully remount the tube into the tyre and put the wheel back on your bike. Ensure you don't nick the inner tube with your tyre lever. Inflate the tyre and you are ready to go. Click here for a complete step-by-step video. For more advice on bike maintenance and repair, visit the MadeGood advice forum. Will Stewart is director of MadeGood.bikes, a website that provides free cycle maintenance advice. Have you got something that needs mending? We probably can't stretch to relationships, nuclear fusion or boilers, but tell us your problem (in the comments or by emailing livebetterchallenge@theguardian.com) and we'll try to find someone who can help mend it. This week we're looking at how to mend bike punctures, dripping taps, ripped seams and broken headphones. Tomorrow: dripping taps. Interested in finding out more about how you can live better? Take a look at this month's Live Better Challenge here. The Live Better Challenge is funded by Unilever; its focus is sustainable living. All content is editorially independent except for pieces labelled advertisement feature. Find out more here. | ['lifeandstyle/live-better', 'lifeandstyle/cycling', 'lifeandstyle/lifeandstyle', 'environment/waste', 'environment/environment', 'environment/recycling', 'lifeandstyle/series/live-better-how-to-mend', 'type/article', 'tone/blog'] | environment/recycling | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE | 2014-05-20T09:16:26Z | true | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE |
sport/2023/dec/03/rugby-v-its-players-shadow-of-brain-injury-case-looms-over-the-sport | Rugby v Its Players: shadow of brain injury case looms over the sport | Already there is a smack of Tier 1 versus Tier 2 in the contest we might call Rugby versus Its Players. Forget about talent, forget about justice; resources tend to hold sway. Which is not to say there is no hope for the 295 union players who applied for a group litigation order (GLO) on Friday, far from it. Apart from anything else, they are clearly in need of compensation for their conditions, which somebody is going to have to pay. The defendants in the dock – World Rugby, the Rugby Football Union and the Welsh Rugby Union – would appear the most obvious parties responsible. Where it will become more contentious is whether those conditions are a result of negligence on the part of those defendants – or, as some of the more strident theories contend, a tobacco-style cover-up. Over to the courts. If we ever get there. The preliminaries suggest that the GLO is likely to be granted, but not before the players’ legal team set their papers in order. Crushingly outnumbered by the rows of lawyers representing the three defendants, they suffered an early lecture from the ref. “It seems to me to be absolutely basic,” said Senior Master Cook of the medical records the players’ legal team were supposed to have supplied by now. Court adjourned for April. Out in time for lunch. Ouch. Meanwhile, the defendants’ lawyers are already posturing as if they are confident of a win. This should not be seen as good news for those of us who want nothing but for the game to survive. The best-case scenario is a settlement before this case goes to court, which would not be before 2025. But if the defendants feel as if they can win – and as if they cannot afford to fork out for a meaningful settlement anyway – we could indeed be faced with the grisly prospect of Rugby v Its Players coming to a courtroom near you. The sport’s image already feels as if it has been taking a hammering every bit as relentless as that meted out to its players in the normal course of a match, but wait until its governing bodies send in their lawyers to dismantle the evidence of its fallen heroes. In this case, the evidence is no more or less than their actual lives. Imagine a ruthless KC interrogating Player X over their alcohol consumption, Player Y over drug use or Player Z over repeated concealment of their brain injuries as they did whatever they could to stay on the field in their playing days. Imagine confused, burly players in the dock reduced to tears by the very governing bodies who are supposed to look after them, whose repeated mantras about player welfare and No 1 priorities have long clanged hollow. Such scenarios, however hypothetical at this stage, should make any right-thinking citizen seethe with anger just in the imagining of them, even if the almost-inconceivable possibility that the players’ conditions are unrelated to rugby turns out to be true. But the governing bodies would have no choice but to go hard in their pursuit of victory, which by definition means their pursuit of defeat and humiliation for the players. Rugby very definitely would not be the winner. Any victory in the courts – and victory for the governing bodies is a perfectly plausible outcome – would be pyrrhic, the damage to the sport’s reputation almost as devastating as the very concept of neuro-degenerative conditions arising is to its future viability. If nothing else, though, such proceedings should underscore the risks involved in playing a collision sport. If players know and understand those, so the defenders of the faith argue, they can decide for themselves if they want to play on. There may be something in that for the grown-ups – so long as best practices are observed in the recognition and treatment of brain injuries. But that line does not work with the kids. Adult rugby will soldier on, whatever the outcome of this case. It is in the schools where the sport’s future will be decided. Already it feels, certainly in the little corner of the rugby world where I reside, as if there has been a sea change in attitudes, both among those playing and their parents. School rugby bears no comparison to its equivalent in the last years of the amateur era. Professionalism may be restricted to the adult game, but its ethos pervades. Those not wholly committed must drop out sooner or later, for their own health as much as anything. In order to play school rugby to any level of proficiency these days, from around the age of 15, one needs to be well-acquainted with the inside of a gym. There are conditioning programmes to be observed by players at even the mid-ranking schools. Given some at that age are to all intents and purposes adults physically and others still very much children, the prospect for injury, whether to brain or bone, is already alarming. Sprinkle in the concerns of parents and, lest we forget, the demands of public exams, and it should not come as any real surprise the game will soon face a reckoning in the schools. If in a couple of years’ time we must also watch the guardians of the sport eviscerate its former players, their lives in ruins as it is, in a court of law, we might as well switch off rugby’s lights now. This case is incredibly important for the players concerned and those to come and incredibly dangerous for the sport. Let us hope the protagonists on both sides know what they are doing. | ['sport/concussion-in-sport', 'sport/sport', 'sport/rugby-union', 'campaign/email/the-breakdown', 'type/article', 'tone/comment', 'profile/michaelaylwin', 'publication/theobserver', 'theobserver/sport', 'theobserver/sport/news', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-sport'] | sport/concussion-in-sport | UNRELATED_TO_CLIMATE | 2023-12-03T08:00:10Z | true | UNRELATED_TO_CLIMATE |
environment/2016/jun/04/great-barrier-reef-authority-says-media-not-activists-distorting-the-facts | Great Barrier Reef authority says media, not activists, misinterpreting the data | The chairman of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, Russell Reichelt, has played down a report that said he accused activist scientists and lobby groups of distorting maps and data to misrepresent the extent of coral bleaching on the reef. The authority withdrew from a joint announcement from the national coral bleaching taskforce about the extent of coral bleaching earlier in the week because Reichelt believed maps accompanying the research did not depict the full picture. The taskforce said mass bleaching had killed 35% of corals on the northern and central Great Barrier Reef. “I don’t know whether it was a deliberate sleight of hand or lack of geographic knowledge but it certainly suits the purpose of the people who sent it out,” Reichelt told The Australian. “This is a frightening enough story with the facts, you don’t need to dress them up. We don’t want to be seen as saying there is no problem out there but we do want people to understand there is a lot of the reef that is unscathed.” But the taskforce’s data was broadly similar to data from in-water surveys from the authority and the Australian Institute of Marine Science released on Friday afternoon that found almost a quarter of the coral on the Great Barrier Reef was now dead. Reichelt told Guardian Australia on Saturday that he did not mean to imply in his comments to The Australian that activists and lobbyists were being misleading. Rather, it was the media that was misinterpreting the data it received from scientists, lobbyists and activists, he said. “I have no problem with environmental activists portraying the seriousness of the event,” he said. “These groups play a critically important role in raising public awareness and we communicate with them regularly. My concern is that the public receive clear understanding of the serious effects of this event on the Great Barrier Reef, including that it is caused by global warming. The media is reporting science in ways that are very misleading.” Reichelt said he had seen wrongful reports in the media stating that 93% of the of the reef was dead. In fact, 93% of the reef had been touched by coral bleaching, but was not necessarily dead or irreversibly damaged. “I can’t control how writers package up a story,” he said. “I accept there are people campaigning for environmental causes and they play an important role to emphasise the seriousness of the event. I’m friends with some of them. What I’m concerned about is misleading the public on what is actually happening through misinterpretation by the media. Such misinterpretation has been frequent in the past few months.” Asked whether the media was getting it wrong because scientists and activists were giving journalists incorrect data, or if journalists were deliberately distorting the data given to them, Reichelt said he did not know. “I don’t call them all and ask them, ‘Did you say x or y to this reporter?’.” Asked whether The Australian had misreported him by saying he had accused activist scientists and lobby groups of distorting surveys, maps and data, Reichelt said: “They gave a shorthand version of what I said, they missed parts out.” He acknowledged that there was “no discrepancy” between the scientific statements released this week by the authority, James Cook University, and the Australian Institute of Marine Science. “The map of the northern reef by James Cook University is very similar to the map of that section of the whole reef we produced on Friday,” he said, adding that coral bleaching of the reef was “a very serious event”. However, he told The Australian that a comment piece for Fairfax written by Tim Flannery, a former Australian of the Year and chief councillor at the Climate Council, which had described the damage to the reef, was “dramatic,” “theatrical” and “speculative”. | ['environment/great-barrier-reef', 'australia-news/queensland', 'environment/coral', 'australia-news/australia-news', 'environment/environment', 'environment/marine-life', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/melissa-davey', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/australia-news'] | environment/great-barrier-reef | BIODIVERSITY | 2016-06-04T05:36:53Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
australia-news/2023/jan/13/flood-hit-murray-river-caravan-parks-miss-out-on-vital-holiday-tourism-as-clean-up-continues | Flood-hit Murray River caravan parks miss out on vital holiday tourism as clean-up continues | Caravan parks and more than 100 national parks remain closed across New South Wales and Victoria after widespread flooding damaged infrastructure, filled waterholes with debris and made some areas unsafe for swimming. The summer holidays would usually be the busiest time of year for the McLean Beach holiday park in Deniliquin, in the NSW Riverina region. In November the holiday park, which sits on the state’s largest inland beach, was swallowed by the Edward River in the biggest flood to hit the town since 1956. Only six cabins, which sit on stilts, escaped damage. “It feels like quite a disaster zone, doesn’t it?” its co-owner Jacquie Mealing said. “It’s not something that we’re going to come back from quickly.” Piles of rubbish are scattered between the water-damaged caravans and cabins. The showers in the amenity blocks are gone. There is discarded furniture, mouldy mattresses, pushbikes, sheets of tin and old timber. The high-water mark from the flood is several metres up on trees and some of the taller buildings – smaller buildings were completely submerged. In a normal year, Mealing said the park would see thousands of people over the holiday season. This week there are just a handful, most of whom are permanent residents. The caravan park is still not open to casual holidaymakers. Mealing and her team spent the weeks after the flood cancelling holiday bookings. They had been completely booked out over Christmas. Sign up to receive Guardian Australia’s fortnightly Rural Network email newsletter The revenue loss is about $230,000, but once you add in the cost of rebuilding and broader business impacts, that loss has tripled. “So it’s a very big cost,” Mealing said. It’s a story repeated at riverside caravan parks all along the Murray River. Many of these parks rely on the sale of annual sites – year-long leases of powered caravan sites or cabins. But months of closures due to flooding has made those arrangements impossible. “It’s the death of annual parks in rural Australia,” Mealing said. “There are parks in Nagambie with 200 to 300 annual sites and they’re closing all of their annual sites. “We have another park at Lake Eildon that wasn’t impacted by the floods … but all around us, all the camping places, anything lower on the Goulburn we’re either closed or badly impacted because of the floods.” It’s not just caravan parks affected. As of Thursday, 86 national parks were closed across NSW. In Victoria 29 national parks remain closed and 48 have partial closures in place. “We are encouraging Victorians getting into nature this summer to plan ahead for significant weather forecasts and expect changed conditions at some of their favourite destinations – particularly along the Murray River,” the acting chief executive of Parks Victoria, Kylie Trott, said. Summer tourism sustains river and lakeside regional communities. Fiona Jeffress, who manages the McLean Beach holiday park, said she and her husband took advantage of the closure to go to the pub on New Year’s Eve for the first time in years, and found it deserted. “The whole of Deni is dead,” she said. Mealing said the thousands of people who normally visit their park over the Christmas holidays also support the town’s local economy. “Because they’re right here in town, they’re always spending money in town at the pubs and the cafes, and the shops,” she said. “That business has gone. So it’s impacted all of the tourism and that has a very, very big impact on the local economy.” Sign up for the Rural Network email newsletter Join the Rural Network group on Facebook to be part of the community | ['australia-news/series/the-rural-network', 'business/tourism-australia', 'environment/flooding', 'environment/environment', 'world/extreme-weather', 'australia-news/australia-news', 'australia-news/australia-weather', 'australia-news/rural-australia', 'campaign/email/the-rural-network', 'australia-news/business-australia', 'australia-news/new-south-wales', 'australia-news/victoria', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'australia-news/series/rural-network', 'profile/fleur-connick', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/the-rural-network'] | environment/flooding | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2023-01-12T14:00:13Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
commentisfree/2021/dec/12/the-guardian-view-on-ash-dieback-a-tiny-chink-of-hope | The Guardian view on ash dieback: a tiny chink of hope | Editorial | The ash is one of Britain’s most recognisable and common trees. Tall and elegantly canopied, it is also one of its most beautiful, with its pale, feathered leaves and its fruits – its “ash keys” – hanging from its branches like real bunches of keys dangling from a caretaker’s belt. The late emergence of the leaves of ash trees allows species such as dog violet and mercury to thrive beneath them. Woodpeckers, owls and nuthatches nest in them. Lichens, moss and liverworts grow happily on them. Friendly fungi – such as the marvellously named King Alfred’s cakes – flourish upon them. The National Trust reports that 30,000 ash trees on its land will have been felled this year owing to ash dieback. “Dieback” sounds like a gentle, seasonal withdrawal. In fact, ash dieback is a devastating disease caused by a fungus, Hymenoscyphus fraxineus, likely to have been carried into the UK on imported ash saplings in the early part of this century. A ban came on such imports in 2012 – too late to do much but slow the fungus’s spread. When affected by the gradually developing ailment, the leaves of the ash wither and blacken, and lesions develop on the branches; eventually the tree dies. The skeletal, bleached remains of ashes, denuded of their glorious foliage, is already an all-too common sight. The Woodland Trust predicts that ash dieback will eventually kill 80% of ash trees. The scale of this is hard to comprehend: the government estimates there are 125m ash trees in woodlands alone in the UK. English landscapes such as the Mendips and the White Peak, now ash-dominated, will be drastically transformed. And losing ashes means not only losing trees but the habitat they provide. The ash has an ineradicable place in European folklore. In Greek mythology, it was of ash felled from Mount Pelion that Achilles’s spear was made – the one he used to kill Hector in Homer’s Iliad. (Even now its hard timber is reckoned good for tough objects, such as hammers and walking sticks.) In Norse myths, a great ash, Yggdrasil, grew at the heart of the world. The Norns – the ancient female deities that allotted the fate of humankind – dwelt among its roots; the gods held their courts among its branches. The 18th-century English naturalist Gilbert White reported a folk remedy for children with weak or ruptured limbs, perhaps a late survival from British pagan beliefs. Climate change has helped the spread of arboreal diseases. A small percentage of ash trees appear to have immunity to the disease: it is here that hope lies for an eventual regeneration of the generously self-seeding ash, especially if the spread of the fungus is slowed as much as possible. Meanwhile, it is time to pay attention to, and make the most of, the noble ash, and perhaps do as Wordsworth once did, when he watched the moon “couched among the leaves / Of a tall ash, that near our cottage stood / Had watched her with fixed eyes, while to and from / In the dark summit of the moving tree / She rocked with every impulse of the wind.” | ['commentisfree/commentisfree', 'environment/ash-dieback', 'environment/forests', 'environment/environment', 'environment/birds', 'environment/climate-crisis', 'type/article', 'environment/wildlife', 'environment/conservation', 'tone/editorials', 'tone/comment', 'profile/editorial', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/journal', 'theguardian/journal/opinion', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-letters-and-leader-writers'] | environment/forests | BIODIVERSITY | 2021-12-12T18:25:45Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
environment/2020/jun/18/epa-wood-heaters-pollution-donation-program | Wood heaters too dirty to sell are clean enough to give to tribes, says EPA | Wood heaters that US regulators have deemed too dirty to sell can now be donated to tribal nations and Appalachian communities, under a program organized by a trade group and the Environmental Protection Agency. Public health experts warn the donations could force more pollution on already vulnerable populations amid the Covid-19 pandemic. Wood-burning devices emit pollutants known to make people sick, including fine particle pollution and chemicals like benzene, formaldehyde, acrolein and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. “What’s disappointing is there have been efforts to really find solutions that help these areas in need, understanding they are looking to reduce home-heating costs,” said Lisa Rector, policy director of a non-profit association of north-eastern air quality agencies. “It’s especially concerning that in this time when we’re dealing with a pandemic that attacks the respiratory system that we’re not really carefully thinking through this.” But the industry and the communities set to receive the heaters argue they will replace much worse alternatives that are in use. The divide highlights how environmental inequities persist in the US. Decisions about which Americans are best protected from pollution often come down to cost, with environmental racism dictating which communities get investments and which ones are subjected to more pollution and worse healthcare. Billie Toledo, an environmental technician who co-leads the National Tribal Air Association working group on wood smoke, praised the program while acknowledging the donated stoves don’t meet the more updated rigorous standards for pollution. “There might be an individual out there in a tribe within Indian country that is using a 55-gallon metal burn barrel,” Toledo said, and the replacement will be much safer despite the health risks. Some tribes and non-profits have been working to replace the dirtiest stoves and educate people about best practices, including only burning dry wood to create less smoke. Sufficient funds are often not available, though. Rachel Feinstein, government affairs manager at the industry trade group the Hearth, Patio and Barbecue Association, said the donations are going to communities in need where “the products that are in people’s homes are pretty much manufactured and installed before 1990 when the first EPA regulation for wood stoves came into effect.” The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said: “without this donation program, it is likely that these older, higher-emitting stoves would continue to operate and would not be changed out with [newer] appliances in the near future.” The EPA in 2015 began to phase in standards to require new wood heaters, also called stoves, to burn more efficiently and create less smoke and soot that people inhale as particle pollution. Breathing in those fine particles can worsen asthma and trigger heart attacks, stroke, irregular heart rhythms and heart failure, especially in people already at risk for these conditions, according to the EPA. Other pollutants from wood stoves are known carcinogens. For the first five years, retailers could sell wood heaters that emitted no more than 4.5 grams per hour of particulate matter (PM). After that, the heaters would need to be even cleaner, emitting no more than 2 grams per hour of PM. As a 15 May deadline to switch to cleaner heaters was approaching this year, businesses complained they hadn’t been able to sell all their older stoves, in part because of the coronavirus pandemic. The EPA declined to extend the deadline and instead agreed to a plan from the Hearth, Patio and Barbecue Association to set up the donation program. Companies donating the older stoves would be able to take tax deductions to offset their losses. Ahead of the deadline, 15 retailers donated 66 stoves. But then the EPA reversed its position. On 15 May, the agency proposed to let retailers sell the older stoves through November – leaving further donations in limbo. the EPA said it would temporarily relax enforcement of the standard. Environmental groups are opposing the extension, saying the industry has had plenty of time to sell its non-compliant stoves. They say the donation program could also be misguided, particularly because of the communities it targets. “Five years was a very generous amount of time to make this transition. The industry has moved on – the leading manufacturers got there a long time ago,” said Timothy Ballo, a staff attorney for Earthjustice. “There’s no reason to reward manufacturers and retailers who decided to bank on the prospect of getting the extension.” Ballo said it was not “a great option” to burden struggling communities with more pollution. Tribal communities and indigenous Alaskans have “long experienced lower health status when compared to other Americans”, according to the Indian Health Service. That includes a lower life expectancy and disproportionate disease burden. Appalachia also has higher mortality rates than the nation in seven leading causes of death, including heart disease, cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), injury, stroke, diabetes and suicide, according to the Appalachian Regional Commission. “I understand for a family that needs a source of heat, having that stove as an option through a donation program is probably better than nothing, but it is inflicting harm on their neighbors and that’s something you have to weigh as a countervailing concern,” Ballo said. | ['environment/epa', 'environment/pollution', 'environment/environment', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/emily-holden', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/us-news'] | environment/pollution | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE | 2020-06-18T10:00:46Z | true | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE |
world/2022/jul/26/uk-cities-need-to-prepare-for-future-wildfires-say-fire-chiefs | UK cities need to prepare for future wildfires, say fire chiefs | Fire chiefs have warned that cities in the UK need to prepare for wildfires after dozens of “unprecedented” blazes broke out during last week’s record-breaking temperatures. Temperatures reached 40C (104F) across England last Tuesday in a heatwave that dried out green spaces, triggering wildfires that destroyed more than 40 houses and shops. The National Fire Chiefs Council (NFCC) tactical adviser, David Swallow, told the BBC that “services need to recognise the risk they’ve now got”. “If they don’t, then they’re naive,” he said. “There are very urban services that think that wildfires are low down on the risk list. I understand the need to prioritise resources, but there needs to be a review.” According to the NFCC, this year alone England and Wales have had 442 wildfires – which compares with 247 last year. This is, in part, due to climate factors, so fire safety advice should be followed not only during the heatwave, but throughout the year, the NFCC said. The head of the London fire brigade, Andy Roe, said fires in the capital last week were unprecedented: “I saw stuff this week that I had not expected to see as a London firefighter.” The fire service saw its busiest day since the second world war as a result of the extreme temperatures, with crews attending 1,146 incidents in a single day. Asked about the experience of the capital’s fire services over the course of the week, Roe said: “I think the word I’d use is unprecedented. I’ve had a long operational career at some of the most significant incidents that London has seen in the past couple of decades but even with all that experience I saw stuff this week that I had not expected to see as a London firefighter.” Sixteen homes were lost in the large fire in Wennington, east London, and fire crews had to fight to save the fire station itself, located nearby, from the flames. | ['uk/weather', 'world/wildfires', 'uk/uk', 'uk/london', 'environment/climate-crisis', 'environment/environment', 'world/extreme-weather', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/jamie-grierson', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/uknews', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-home-news'] | world/wildfires | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2022-07-26T06:39:13Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
news/2014/dec/15/weatherwatch-ice-steel-appeal | Weatherwatch: Ice and steel appeal | Skating used to be a regular way of getting around in the fens of eastern England in winter. Skates made from the shinbones of cattle and sheep were the best way of moving about on the frozen dykes and marshes during the cold of the 18th and 19th centuries. These practical aids to travel were “fen runners” rather than skates. Skates need to be made of metal in order to cut into the ice and so provide the ability to turn and stop. But steel was expensive, and so just to own skates for pleasure was the preserve of the well off. Charles II is credited with bringing the first metal skates with him when he returned from exile on the continent, thereby making it a fashionable pastime, although the first skating club was founded in the 1740s in Edinburgh. The club “dedicated to the improvement of this elegant amusement” is mentioned in the 1783 edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and it seems it was figure skating rather than speed trials that attracted people to the club. To qualify for membership, entrants had to perform a figure of eight, each half on one foot, then jump over hats placed on the ice; first one, then two, then three, piled on top of one another. The main venue was Duddingston Loch near Edinburgh, where groups practised choreographed group skating. These days, refrigeration systems are needed to be sure of performing the art. The last speed skating competition in the fens was held in 2010 after a gap of some 13 years. Will the ice ever get thick enough again? | ['news/series/weatherwatch', 'tone/features', 'type/article', 'profile/paulbrown', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/weather2'] | news/series/weatherwatch | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2014-12-15T21:30:00Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
environment/2017/nov/22/country-diary-wenlock-edge-elusive-tower-trees | Country diary: a curious tower sends me over the edge | As the match-flare of a November afternoon dimmed in the trees, I caught a glimpse of a tower. Peering through hazel branches I could make out a tall structure that looked like the power-station chimney – except that was north and this was west. It could have been a stack of hay bales, but harvest was over long ago. Curious to discover what I had seen, I wandered down the wooded bank, losing the long view, crossed the road and went through the gate on to a green lane, now used only by dog-walkers, sheep and an occasional tractor, but once the thoroughfare over the Edge to a hamlet on common land below. Up the rise I had seen earlier was a hedge about seven feet (two metres) tall, but no tower. There was a tree: a sweet chestnut about 20 years old. All its leaves had fallen; its bark marked with smudges of grey lichen like a potter’s thumbprints; its branches scratchy dark against the sky – violet to the south, cold blue to the north, with a scud of grey clouds. I walked to the end of the hedge, where the downslope began, marked by a holly tree. It was about 10 feet tall, flail-sided and male, still holding a few small white flowers, but it was not a tower. I turned back around the other side of the hedge, once the boundary of the green lane. By five o’clock, the light had gone; the hedge held a faint orange illumination from bark lichens and a weft of bryony berries; its dark was full of the wing prrrrs and tzeeps of settling yellowhammers. Across the fields the woooo of a tawny owl eased from mobbing jay anxiety into night-time. Something in the wood let loose a treeful of wood pigeons, all clatter and whistle. A dog barked. There was no tower. I walked back the way I had come, down the fields, across the road and up through trees to the point where I had looked across to the rise. When I reached it, I peered through hazel branches and there against the skyglow was the silhouette of a tower. That can’t be right, can it? Follow Country diary on Twitter: @gdncountrydiary | ['environment/autumn', 'environment/forests', 'environment/series/country-diary', 'environment/environment', 'uk/ruralaffairs', 'uk/uk', 'environment/birds', 'environment/wildlife', 'type/article', 'tone/features', 'profile/paulevans', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/weather2', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-weather'] | environment/forests | BIODIVERSITY | 2017-11-22T05:30:11Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
sport/article/2024/may/11/rusty-wallaroos-walloped-by-canada-in-pacific-four-opener | Rusty Wallaroos suffer World Cup setback after walloping by Canada in Pacific Four series | The Test rugby season got off to a sad and soggy start for Australia’s women’s rugby side, defeated 33-14 by world No 4 Canada in the opening match of the new Pacific Four series at Allianz Stadium in Sydney. In her first Test as Australia’s coach after 70 caps as a player for England, Jo Yapp had the world No 5 Wallaroos primed for a bright start to the season after they closed out 2023 with historic wins over France and Wales. But Canada, having thumped the USA in April, proved far too strong, running in five-tries to one in wet conditions. With one coveted Women’s Rugby World Cup 2025 place available for the taking and only the top three teams qualifying for WXV 1, this was a key game for the Wallaroos. However, Canada’s cohesion won them an early ascendancy as superior kicking pinned the home side in their own half. The visitors converted pressure into points in the fifth minute, a devastating rolling maul sending hooker Sara Cline over the stripe. Five minutes later Canada scored in the same spot, another powerful maul allowing McKinley Hunt to peel off the pack and make it 12-0. Finally, a rattling tackle by Wallaroo Bridie O’Gorman coughed the ball loose and gave Australia a sniff. They didn’t waste it, Siokapesi Palu barging through two defenders to score in the corner. Unfortunately, a knock-on was detected by the TMO and the five points vanished as quickly as they’d been conjured. However, the home side would not be denied a second time, Tania Naden nailing the lineout throw five-minutes out from the line before burrowing over herself to peg the score back to 12-7 after 19 minutes. In the first meeting between the two sides in Australia, Canada’s relentless set piece was proving decisive, stealing huge metres on a tiring Wallaroos pack. Sure enough, Cline soon had her second try after another dominant maul put Canada out 19-7. Despite the return of veteran Piper Duck from injury after missing the entire 2023 season, Australia’s indecision with ball in hand was proving costly. Yet they created a golden opportunity in the shadows of half-time, fullback Lori Cramer launching a kick into space only to watch Waratahs winger Desiree Miller bobble the catch. Australia needed to score first in the second half. Instead, Canada struck as Gabrielle Senft’s strong carry set up Hunt’s second try. At 24-7, Yapp injected Eva Karpani and Atasi Lafai into the fray to replace Michaela Leonard and Bridie O’Gorman. The change-up had an instant effect, as Australia counter-attacked and created a two player overlap. With a Wallaroos try imminent, Canada’s Maddy Grant knocked the ball down deliberately, copping a yellow card and costing her side a penalty try. At 26-14, Australia were back in it. But three minutes later, the pendulum swung back to the visitors as Canada’s DaLeaka Menin punched a hole through the middle and kept charging to cross under the posts and extend the margin to 19-points. With Hera-Barb Malcolm Heke and Sally Fuesaina on for their Wallaroos debuts, Australia needed something special in the final quarter. And they delivered, repelling ferocious waves of Canadian attack in their own 22. Starved of possession and blighted by handling errors on a greasy Sydney surface sodden by week’s rain, the Wallaroos could only fight a rearguard action symbolised by Faitala Moleka’s late try-saving tackle on Julia Schnell who looked certain to score. “It was a good first match but obviously disappointed with the result,” Wallaroos captain Michaela Leonard said after the siren blew on a tough 33-14 loss. “I think we showed the attacking threats we do have when we execute well and we saw that in Maya Stewart and Desiree Miller on the edges. For us, I think it’s just about fixing the execution, focusing on detail and bringing a bit more physicality next week. “It’s been a whirlwind ten days with a lot of learnings, we saw some of it out there but we also saw a few areas that need fine tuning that we’ll fix up next week.” The Wallaroos next head to Melbourne to take on the USA at AAMI Park on May 17 (4:55pm AEST) before a final match in Auckland against New Zealand on May 25. | ['sport/womens-rugby-union', 'sport/rugby-australia', 'sport/rugby-union', 'sport/australia-sport', 'sport/sport', 'campaign/email/the-breakdown', 'sport/australia-women-s-rugby-union-team', 'sport/canada-women-s-rugby-union-team', 'type/article', 'profile/angus-fontaine', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/australia-sport'] | sport/australia-women-s-rugby-union-team | UNRELATED_TO_CLIMATE | 2024-05-11T09:16:18Z | true | UNRELATED_TO_CLIMATE |
business/2021/nov/08/rolls-royce-secures-450m-for-mini-nuclear-reactors-venture | Rolls-Royce secures £450m for mini nuclear reactors venture | Rolls-Royce will move ahead with a multibillion pound plan to roll out a new breed of mini nuclear reactors after securing more than £450m from the government and investors. The engineering firm will set up a venture focused on developing small modular nuclear reactors, or SMRs, in partnership with investors BNF Resources and the US generator Exelon Generation with a joint investment of £195m to fund the plans over the next three years. The government will match the consortium’s investment, which is set to receive a second phase top-up of £50m from Rolls-Royce, with £210m to help roll out the mini nuclear reactors as part of the government’s green 10 point plan to kickstart the green economy over the next decade. Ministers hope that the new generation of SMRs will be quicker and cheaper to roll out than traditional large-scale nuclear reactors – such as the 3,200 megawatt Hinkley Point C project – which face enormous construction risks, and are prone to spiralling costs and delays. Hinkley Point C reactor was initially expected to cost £18bn, but the figure has climbed to about £23bn at the Somerset site as EDF and ministers struggled to agree a new funding framework for a successor project at Sizewell C in Suffolk. Rolls-Royce has promised to “harness decades of British engineering, design and manufacturing knowhow” to roll out the first of its mini reactors which are based on a similar technology used to propel nuclear submarines. Each of the initial run of reactors is expected to have a generation capacity of 470MW, or enough to power the equivalent of 1.3m UK homes, and cost about £2bn on average, well below the price per MW sought by developers of large-scale nuclear reactors. About a fifth of UK electricity is generated by 13 nuclear reactors, but more than half of the country’s 7.8GW of nuclear capacity is due to retire by 2025, leaving a looming gap in the electricity supplies and the risk of a rising reliance on gas power stations. Tom Samson, the chief executive of the Rolls-Royce SMR consortium, said the venture was established to “deliver a low cost, deployable, scalable and investable programme of new nuclear power plants” to help the UK meet its net zero targets. Samson added that the approach would be based on “predictable factory-built components” and proven technology to create an “investable” nuclear option. Ultimately, the consortium hopes to build on an initial run of five SMRs, the first of which could go on line by 2031, to create a multibillion-pound stable of 16 SMRs around the country. Kwasi Kwarteng, the business secretary, described the shift to SMRs as “a once in a lifetime opportunity for the UK to deploy more low carbon energy than ever before and ensure greater energy independence”. He added that the SMR programme would “offer exciting opportunities to cut costs and build more quickly”, and would help to cut the UK’s reliance on fossil fuels while creating jobs and a new homegrown industry. “Not only can we maximise British content, create new intellectual property and reinvigorate supply chains, but also position our country as a global leader in innovative nuclear technologies we can potentially export elsewhere,” he said. | ['business/energy-industry', 'business/rollsroycegroup', 'environment/nuclearpower', 'business/business', 'environment/energy', 'environment/environment', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/jillian-ambrose', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/financial3', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-business'] | environment/energy | ENERGY | 2021-11-08T22:30:41Z | true | ENERGY |
environment/2017/dec/05/air-pollution-harm-to-unborn-babies-may-be-global-health-catastrophe-warn-doctors | Air pollution harm to unborn babies may be global health catastrophe, warn doctors | Air pollution significantly increases the risk of low birth weight in babies, leading to lifelong damage to health, according to a large new study. The research was conducted in London, UK, but its implications for many millions of women in cities around the world with far worse air pollution are “something approaching a public health catastrophe”, the doctors involved said. Globally, two billion children – 90% of all children – are exposed to air pollution above World Health Organization guidelines. A Unicef study also published on Wednesday found that 17 million babies suffer air six times more toxic than the guidelines. The team said that there are no reliable ways for women in cities to avoid chronic exposure to air pollution during pregnancy and called for urgent action from governments to cut pollution from vehicles and other sources. “It is an unacceptable situation that there are factors a woman cannot control that adversely affect her unborn baby,” said Mireille Toledano, at Imperial College London, and who led the new research published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ). The study analysed all live births in Greater London over four years – over 540,000 in total – and determined the link between the air pollution experienced by the mother and low birth weight, defined as less than 2.5kg (5.5lbs). The scientists found a 15% increase in risk of low birth weight for every additional 5 micrograms per cubic metre (µg/m3) of fine particle pollution. The average exposure of pregnant women in London to fine particle pollution is 15µg/m3, well below UK legal limits but 5µg/m3 higher than the WHO guideline. Cutting pollution to that guideline would prevent 300-350 babies a year being born with low weight, the researchers estimated. “The UK legal limit is not safe and is not protecting our pregnant women and their babies,” said Toledano. “We know that low birthweight is absolutely crucial,” she said. “It not only increases the risk of the baby dying in infancy, but it predicts lifelong risk of diabetes, cardiovascular disease etc. You are setting in stone the whole trajectory of lifelong chronic illness.” The new research shows the impact of air pollution on babies in London is significant, but affects a relatively small number – only about 2.5% of all full-term babies are born with low weight. However, many cities around the world – such as Delhi in India – suffer far higher levels of toxic air, raising concerns of huge impacts on unborn babies. “Though the new results from the UK are concerning, a global perspective reveals something approaching a public health catastrophe,” said Sarah Stock and Tom Clemens, from the University of Edinburgh, in a BMJ editorial. “The pregnancy effects of extreme exposure environments like Delhi are unmeasured, and there is an urgent need to turn attention to such environments where large numbers are at considerable risk of harm.” Stock told the Guardian that outdoor air pollution is already causing millions of early deaths every year among adults and children: “And that is not taking into account deaths in utero or resulting from exposure in pregnancy, because we just don’t have the data yet.” Unicef executive director Anthony Lake said: “Not only do pollutants harm babies’ developing lungs – they can permanently damage their developing brains – and, thus, their futures. No society can afford to ignore air pollution.” The new BMJ study is based on observations and so cannot prove a causal link between air pollution and low birth weight, but the correlation is very strong, said Toledano: “The power of our study is incredible due to the sheer numbers.” The study is the largest to date in the UK and the link is strengthened by a series of previous studies from other regions that replicate the findings. There are some uncertainties in the estimates of air pollution exposure and the level of smoking among the pregnant women. But Toledano said: “Could it be that we are slightly off in how much the increased risk is? Yes. Is it going to completely disappear? No.” She said there are a number of serious public health problems around the world, such as the lack of clean water that kills over 500,000 infants every year, but said toxic air was one of them: “There is no question this is an extremely important public health risk. We have to do something and we can’t just say it is down to the individual mother. Every baby deserves to be born safely.” | ['environment/air-pollution', 'environment/pollution', 'environment/environment', 'society/health', 'lifeandstyle/pregnancy', 'global-development/maternal-health', 'society/society', 'lifeandstyle/lifeandstyle', 'lifeandstyle/women', 'world/world', 'uk/uk', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/damiancarrington', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/uknews', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-environment'] | environment/air-pollution | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE | 2017-12-05T23:30:01Z | true | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE |
commentisfree/2008/oct/28/westminster-nuclearpower-sellafield | David Hencke: The great nuclear bail-out | Poor overloaded taxpayers. Not content with being lumbered with enormous debts to bail out failing banks and huge bills for rising unemployment, the government has just landed us with the potential for an unlimited bill for any nuclear accident or leak from the decomissioning of Sellafield for years to come. In a deal that will thrill private investors, Malcolm Wicks, in one of his last acts as energy minister, caved in to a United States-led private consortium's demands that it will be freed from any liability should anything go wrong for the next 17 years whilst it decommissions Sellafield. The consortium – American company URS Washington, French firm Areva and the UK company Amec – who stand to make hundreds of millions of pounds of profit from the initial £6.5bn contract – insisted that the taxpayers pay the bill for any leak or accident, even if it is caused by errors and mismanagement by the firms themselves. The deal paralleled the arrangement with the banks, who were able to behave irresponsibly with their investments, leaving the government bailing them out by taking over their toxic debts. This is even more graphic – the government has privatised the decommissioning of Sellafield, allowing firms to make millions, and has taken responsibility for any toxic risk away from the companies. A win-win for the firms, a lose-lose for the taxpayer. Worse than that, you might have thought that such a potentially huge risk for the taxpayer would have been properly debated and assessed by parliament. You would have been wrong. There is a proper procedure to do it, but both the government and parliament failed lamentably to do the job. The minister used emergency procedures to rush through the indemnity (scrapping rules that would have made the firms responsible for the first £140m of liabilities) as parliament went into summer recess – shortening the time for consultation for commercial reasons to meet a timetable set by the companies. Only two people saw it, Edward Leigh, chairman of the Commons public accounts committee, and Peter Luff, chairman of the business and regulatory reform committee. Edward Leigh, who has honourable record of revealing huge waste of public money, agreed to waive any objection and rushed it through. Peter Luff did nothing. Worse than that, the minister and his officials broke the rules by not even putting the deal in the House of Commons library – so no MPs had a chance to object or call for a debate. The document (pdf) finally got there on October 1 – 75 days after the closing date for consulation and a week after ministers had signed the deal with the consortium. We wouldn't even know this if an eagle-eyed MP's researcher, David Lowry, hadn't spotted it. This has allowed Paul Flynn, Labour MP for Newport West, to demand a belated debate. Malcolm Wicks admits that he was wrong to tell Edward Leigh that he had put the document in the library when his officials failed to do so. But he defends the idemnity for the companies saying it would be "ridiculous" to expect them to shoulder the uninsurable costs of a nuclear accident. Edward Leigh is furious that the document was never put there. He says in a letter placed in the Commons library today that he passed the deal but thought that other MPs would have a chance to comment on it. He describes the failure to provide them with the opportunity as "unacceptable" and wants the department to go through the exercise again. It is often said that bad things flourish when good men are silent. Edward Leigh, Peter Luff and Malcolm Wicks are essentially decent human beings. But their collective failure to do the right thing at the time brings both government and parliament into disrepute. Edward Leigh has partly retrieved his position by taking a strong stance over the ministry's failings. But the MPs and the minister should hang their heads in shame for failing to safeguard the British public. | ['commentisfree/commentisfree', 'environment/nuclearpower', 'politics/politics', 'environment/energy', 'type/article', 'tone/comment', 'environment/environment', 'profile/davidhencke'] | environment/nuclearpower | ENERGY | 2008-10-28T16:40:00Z | true | ENERGY |
environment/2023/jun/22/country-diary-a-scarlet-shimmer-of-poppies-irresistible-to-bees | Country diary: A scarlet shimmer of poppies, irresistible to bees | Paul Evans | Scarlet flags unfurl and bees dance in revolutionary fervour. The flags are petals of an oriental poppy, Papaver orientale, in the Goliath group of species that may be called “Brilliant” or “Prince of Orange”. Depending on the intensity of light, it can flash through fiery red and sunset orange at the same time. The oriental species comes from the Caucasus, Iran and Turkey, and has appeared in gardens for centuries. These flowers are an explosion – dangerous, erotic, visionary. Oriental Poppies, painted by Georgia O’Keeffe in 1928, was groundbreaking, not just for its intense colour but for the textures of the flowers and their sense of movement. Maybe it also speaks of opium and sex magic, but it is a mesmerising image. It certainly has that effect on bees too. On this bright day in “flaming June”, after last night’s thunderstorm, the poppy flowers are full of garden bumblebees, Bombus hortorum, sometimes three or four in the same flower. Furry black-and-gold striped with white bums, the bees collide into the scarlet shimmer. Pulled by the visual lure of black patches inside the flower that give the illusion of dark, cavernous spaces, they crash into the rings of paddle-like stamens that carry a sable-purple pollen. These stamens skirt the curious seedhead structure with stigma of spidery, sticky-felt black arms, the diadem of the Mycenaean poppy goddess. The bumblebees have individual, high-pitched whines, like a kind of alarm or a magical note. Their wings vibrate the stamens at a certain frequency until the pollen baskets attached to their legs are full. The bees pull out of the flower to return to the nest. The pollen is potent enough and the bees do not receive nectar from the poppy. Like many bees, garden bumblebees have a cuckoo bee – an impostor species that steals the bee’s identity so that it can gain access to its nest to predate or exploit its colony. Bombus barbutellus looks very similar to Bombus hotorum, but has no pollen baskets on its legs; it steals from the labours of garden bumblebees. In the afternoon sun, the bees leave the poppies to their flames of riot and resurrection. • Country diary is on Twitter at @gdncountrydiary | ['environment/series/country-diary', 'environment/bees', 'environment/environment', 'uk/ruralaffairs', 'uk/uk', 'environment/insects', 'environment/wildlife', 'type/article', 'tone/features', 'profile/paulevans', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/journal', 'theguardian/journal/letters', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-letters-and-leader-writers'] | environment/wildlife | BIODIVERSITY | 2023-06-22T04:30:02Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
commentisfree/2008/sep/02/naturaldisasters.india | Randeep Ramesh: Eyes off the storm in India | The contrast between how the western world viewed the fizzling-out of Hurricane Gustav and the flooding of the Indian state of Bihar should remind everybody why the poor world needs no lectures from the rich. Whereas the media rushed to cover Gustav, which has killed less than hundred in the Carribean, the bursting of the banks of the river Kosi has been largely ignored – despite aid agencies saying millions have been affected and thousands have lost their lives. History is part of the reason for the disparity in interest. The mere threat that Gustav was headed for the Louisiana coast, rekindled memories of the destruction wrought by Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans – and the spectacle of the world's richest nation in 2005 knee-deep in tragedy, unable to get out. Then more than 1,500 people were killed. The bill for the damage done ran into billions. Politically, Katrina's disaster management revealed the Bush White House to be uncaring and incompetent - eliciting real anger from a press that had been hitherto on the run from the government. However Gustav was no Katrina. The coverage of the two events on different sides of the world exposes the hypocrisies, prejudices and interests of the western media. (Declaration: I work for it). The arguments for not writing much about this year's floods in south Asia can be easily countered. First is that Bihar is hard to get to. This is nonsense as Bihar's state capital, Patna, is just a few hours' flight from Delhi. Indian television has been reporting on the ground since last week. The second is that Gustav was tracked "hour by hour" – hinting perhaps at the superior technology and institutional structures of the west. The annual monsoon rains over the southern flanks of the Himalayas are watched just as carefully. Over the years the Kosi has become known as the "Sorrow of Bihar" as its waters have repeated inundated villages. The river's flow is continuously measured – which is why we know it burst its banks despite being only a tenth full. The west's most frequently-used defence about the non-reporting of the developing world's natural disasters is rooted in the assumption that the deaths of poor people are inevitable, that there is little we can do. Yet mismanagement, corruption and incompetence were as much a culprit in Bihar as in New Orleans. Should western newspapers not have some well-shaded outrage about the mismanagement and bribery that are part of natural disasters over here? No, appears to be the answer. For all the fine words about being interested in the globe, newspapers are driven by very local preoccupations. New Orleans is close to our imaginations where people like us live and work. Filthy, rural Bihar is definitely not. For western media, lives lost in recognisable places are much more newsworthy than those lost in the poor world. Where is our interest in a poor person's dignity and right to life in Bihar? Katrina became a problem that concerned the world. Bihar is just confined to being an Indian predicament. The western media is guilty of indulging in the kind of moral relativism it usually accuses the third world of. The next time fingers wag at poorer parts of the globe, it would be worth questioning whether the concern expressed is not genuine but merely cynicism dressed up as moral earnestness. | ['commentisfree/commentisfree', 'world/natural-disasters', 'world/india', 'us-news/hurricanegustav', 'environment/flooding', 'world/world', 'media/media', 'tone/comment', 'world/hurricanes', 'type/article', 'profile/randeepramesh'] | world/hurricanes | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2008-09-02T11:30:00Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
business/2021/may/11/us-pipeline-hack-gas-shortages | US urged to expand ‘tool kit’ against cybercrime amid pipeline hack fallout | The US must “rethink our approach to cybersecurity”, the acting chief of the agency charged with protecting federal networks told senators on Tuesday, as fallout from the Colonial pipeline ransomware attack saw panic-buying begin at some gas stations while the energy industry moved to shore up systems of supply. “As the pace and scale of cyber threats we face expands so must our response tool kit,” Brandon Wales, acting director of the Cybersecurity and Information Security Agency (Cisa), said in Senate testimony. “We need sustained investment to modernize and protect our most critical federal systems, as well as state and local governments, suffering under budget restraints and facing increasingly aggressive ransomware operators.” The Colonial pipeline network moves fuels including gasoline, diesel and jet fuel from the Gulf coast east. The ransomware attack against it was made public last week. On Friday, Colonial shut its 5,500-mile network in order to protect its systems. It has restarted some smaller lines. The FBI said DarkSide, a collective of cybercriminals, was responsible for the attack. A statement purporting to be from DarkSide said it aimed for financial rather than geopolitical gain. Wales said: “Threats and technology are advancing substantially. It’s not surprising that a criminal enterprise like this is going after increasingly important targets. We’ve seen this over the past two years.” DarkSide appears to have links to countries from the former Soviet Union. At the White House on Monday, Joe Biden said he would ask the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, to take action. “We have efforts under way with the FBI and DoJ to disrupt and prosecute ransomware criminals,” the US president added. On Tuesday, Moscow denied any involvement in the pipeline attack. “Russia has nothing to do with these hacker attacks, and had nothing to do with the previous hacker attacks,” Dmitry Peskov, a spokesman for Putin, told reporters. “We categorically do not accept any accusations against us.” US environmental regulators issued an emergency fuel waiver, to help alleviate any gasoline shortages in mid-atlantic states. Panic buying has caused gas stations from Virginia to Louisiana to begin to run dry. One Washington DC-area fuel distributor told Bloomberg shortages were imminent. “It’s going to be catastrophic,” said John Patrick, chief operating officer of Liberty Petroleum in Chester, Maryland. “Governors should declare a state of emergency and ask people chasing tanker trucks to gas stations to stay home. School buses stay put.” Average retail gasoline prices touched $3 a gallon, their highest since late 2014, exacerbating fears of broader inflationary pressures on the economy. The Environmental Protection Agency said its rule waiver, which relaxes some standards usually applied to fuel, would run through 18 May for fuel sold in Washington DC, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Virginia. On its website, the EPA says waivers “help ensure that an adequate supply of fuel is available, particularly for emergency vehicle needs”. Seeking to combat gasoline shortages, North Carolina has suspended restrictions on shipments. The attack has also forced Gulf coast refineries to scale back operations due to lack of storage space. Refiners had also booked at least five tankers to store gasoline, according to sources and shipping data. The tankers, booked by Marathon Petroleum, Valero Energy, Phillips 66 and PBF Energy, can hold around 350,000 tonnes of fuel. Two were booked for up to a month and three were provisional bookings that could be cancelled, according to data and shipbroking sources. Traders also booked several tankers to ship gasoline and diesel from Europe to the US east coast. French oil major Total SE and commodities trading houses Vitol and Trafigura each booked 90,000-tonne tankers to ship diesel on the transatlantic route, data showed, a relatively rare route as Europe consumes more diesel than it produces. Several Gulf coast refiners that rely on Colonial for shipments cut output. Total and Motiva Enterprises cut gasoline production at their refineries in Port Arthur, Texas, and Citgo Petroleum pared back at its plant in Lake Charles, Louisiana, sources said. | ['us-news/us-news', 'technology/hacking', 'technology/cybercrime', 'business/business', 'business/oil', 'business/commodities', 'technology/technology', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/edwardhelmore', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/international', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/us-news'] | technology/hacking | UNRELATED_TO_CLIMATE | 2021-05-11T17:31:38Z | true | UNRELATED_TO_CLIMATE |
technology/2008/nov/27/bbc-digital-video | Victor Keegan: BBC has a right to be in the local arena | It looks as though the BBC will be banned from introducing local online video services. An independent report commissioned by Ofcom, its regulator, says the service would have "a significant negative impact" on commercial providers. Well, that's that then. The BBC should not be allowed to do something that might have a "significant negative impact" on its rivals, should it? But what is the scale of this negative impact - 30% or 40% or more? No, the negative impact is reckoned to be 4%. Actually, it is "up to" 4% - so it could be as little as 3% or even 1%. Is the future of the BBC's local services to be decided by an amount so small it almost falls into the margin of statistical error? It is a principle that, if applied to the rest of the BBC, would mean it would never exist at all. Imagine if the BBC were just a website and suddenly announced plans to move into television. An independent assessment would probably find it could harm up to 25% of the commercial activities of incumbents. The same would be true if the BBC had been assessed before introducing its very successful web activities. They would simply not have happened and the synergetic competition between the BBC's website and others - including the Guardian's - would not have happened. For decades the economic model of a commercial sector selling advertisements and a publicly funded one that can't has worked very well and improved performance on all sides. There are times, such as now, when an economic downturn hits advertisements and gives the BBC a relative boost - and other times when the commercial sector is awash with advertising and cash. That is what should apply to local services. Video, through sites such YouTube, is becoming a critical conduit through which younger people learn about what is going on. For the BBC to be deprived of this at a local level is condemning it to compete with its hands tied behind its back and preventing it from doing what it ought to be doing to justify a national licence fee: providing a nationwide service. The argument that local BBC video will depress commercial activity could be turned on its head: the presence of the BBC in many areas covered by local newspaper monopolies may be just what they need to galvanise them out of complacency. I come into contact with local papers in London and Herefordshire. In London my local paper covering Paddington, Marylebone and Pimlico last had a video on its website more than three weeks ago. In the country example, there are two papers in neighbouring country towns owned by the same company. I can't find any videos at all. If I owned them, I would like to keep the BBC out too. We have been here before. Not long ago there were regional TV monopolies. One by one they were merged on the argument that only by doing this could they become a global force. Whatever happened to those ambitions? The only global media force - apart from the Murdoch empire, the Guardian and one or two smaller exceptions - is the BBC. The BBC is the most trusted media brand in the world. But instead of the government coming to the BBC and asking what it can do to help preserve this rare advantage, it chips away at its activities. This reached its barmiest when the usually highly respected Ofcom actually suggested that one way of dealing with criticism of the BBC's success in selling its programmes abroad (coming almost entirely from competitors) would be to hand much of the business over to a rival, Channel 4. At a time when the government is pouring billions of pounds into failed banks, it might be a good time to pay respect to a successful organisation. We don't have that many of them. This doesn't mean giving the BBC more money. It just means standing beside it rather than constantly wielding an axe. vic.keegan@theguardian.com | ['technology/digitalvideo', 'technology/internet', 'technology/technology', 'media/bbc', 'media/ofcom', 'media/digital-media', 'media/pressandpublishing', 'media/media', 'type/article', 'tone/comment', 'media/pda', 'profile/victorkeegan', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/technologyguardian', 'theguardian/technologyguardian/technology'] | technology/digitalvideo | UNRELATED_TO_CLIMATE | 2008-11-27T00:01:00Z | true | UNRELATED_TO_CLIMATE |
commentisfree/2017/sep/04/floods-drought-season-mumbai-india-extreme-weather | Floods in drought season: is this the future for parts of India? | Raghu Karnad | It is possible to be killed by floods in Mumbai, but not really to be surprised by them. On 29 August, the city was battered by a monsoon storm which left homes, highways and hospital floors submerged, and shut down the commuter railway which has to carry more people every day than live in Denmark. More than 20 people are dead: swept away or crushed as multi-storey buildings collapsed. Bodies are still washing ashore. Instead of feeling surprise, though, Mumbai treated the deluge like an unwelcome guest who keeps coming by and trashing the place. The most unnerving collective flashback was to 26 July 2005. Ferocious rainfall that day turned the city into a lethal aquatic obstacle course, which 700 people did not survive. That year’s flood, like this one, was followed by a flood of assurances from elected leaders, and civic pledges to protect waterways and mangroves, and renewed attention to how a metropolis built largely on tidal estuary and marine “reclamations” could so easily return to the water. As Mumbai wades through deja vu, provinces further east are struggling to keep their heads above water, as they have been for weeks. Hundreds of villages have been abandoned in Bihar, West Bengal and Assam. The direct death toll may exceed 800 (no one is likely to count the lives lost or stunted in the longer term – the result of crops, homes and public works swept away in some of India’s poorest states). Like Mumbai, though, these are places accustomed to flooding. Some of the world’s largest rivers flow through them, and spill their banks each monsoon. The mutability of land and water is an essential trait of parts of Bengal and Assam, and a theme in their literature. Amitav Ghosh, the bard of this theme in the English language, wrote of Bengal’s mangrove forests: “Here, in the tide country, transformation is the rule of life: rivers stray from week to week, and islands are made and unmade in days.” So are the plains, on occasion. Floods in eastern India are often woven into tradition, as part of the cycle that rejuvenates fields, fish stocks and wetland forest. This inclines Indians to acceptance. “Don’t try to fight nature,” the actor Amitabh Bachchan tweeted on the night of 29 August, as the storm abated in Mumbai. “Don’t put blame.” Well, we do put blame, and object to state incompetence, reckless urbanisation and failures of disaster response. Afterwards, though, especially when watching from indoors, we cherish the monsoon’s show of strength and surplus, and feel the familiarity of the flood. This is a deadly mistake. In Mumbai and Assam, recent floods have occurred where flooding is traditional, but no longer for traditional reasons. The storm in Mumbai deposited 15% of the city’s annual rainfall in a single day. The same occurred on 21 August in Chandigarh, northern India. Bengaluru, in the south, received 30% of its annual average on 15 August – the heaviest rainfall recorded in the past century. Mumbai’s storm is classed as an “extreme rain event”. Climate change models predict that they will become more frequent and proliferate into parts of India never thought of as monsoon hotspots, where the pumps are even less likely to be primed. This is the new, turbulent nature of our monsoon: that we are receiving more and more of our rainfall in extreme doses (which causes floods), and less in between the major deluges, which is when fields are fed and water tables recharged. For India, more flooding and more drought are not two possible futures. Both are here together, already. The submergence of so much of India by this monsoon is not an expression of timeless natural rhythms or even classic state failures. Extreme rain events mean that, as environmental scientist Sunita Narain put it, “floods in the time of drought are India’s new normal”. Recognising this is integral to creating homes, farms and infrastructure which can survive the changing monsoon. The government of Narendra Modi was elected, in part, on a promise of economic development, which it has struggled to deliver. One way to defend our gains, in real terms, is by moving fast to help cities and districts adapt: both to control flooding and save lives, and to harvest heavy rainfall and save water. • Raghu Karnad is journalist and editor-at-large at The Wire | ['commentisfree/commentisfree', 'world/natural-disasters', 'environment/flooding', 'tone/comment', 'world/india', 'environment/climate-crisis', 'environment/environment', 'world/world', 'type/article', 'profile/raghu-karnad', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-opinion'] | environment/flooding | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2017-09-04T08:00:07Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
environment/2016/jan/06/record-uk-rainfall-will-not-prevent-water-restrictions-experts-warn | Record UK rainfall will not prevent water restrictions, experts warn | Despite December’s record rainfall, which led to thousands of people being flooded and the highest river levels ever seen in England, water restrictions due to drought could still be imposed in some parts of the country by the summer, say Britain’s leading hydrologists. Because nearly all the rain, from a succession of storms, fell in the north of England where water supplies are largely drawn from rivers and reservoirs, and very little fell in the south where supplies come mainly from underground aquifers, it may only need three months of relatively dry weather to create supply problems for millions of people, said Allan Jenkins, deputy director of the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (CEH), Britain’s leading independent water analysts. That could mean hosepipe bans and other restrictions for the south-east and elsewhere. According to the centre, which holds the historical archive of floods in Britain and advises government, many aquifers were at below average level throughout November and have still not recovered. “All the rain fell in the north. In the south we depend on rainfall to recharge the aquifers and we haven’t had that. A dry next few months and we could be looking at some tension,” he said. The research centre confirmed new Met Office data showing that records had tumbled as rivers in the north of England grew to more than 30 times their normal volume after Storm Desmond hit. The river Eden, which flows off the north Pennines and normally averages 53 cubic metres per second, saw the greatest flow ever recorded in an English river when it reached 1,700 cu metres per second in the aftermath of the heaviest 24 hours of rainfall ever recorded in Britain in December. Similar flow levels were recorded on the Tyne. By comparison, the highest flow ever recorded on the Thames, England’s longest river, is around 800 cu metres a second. “Thirty cm of water fell over an area of hundreds of square kilometres. Cubic kilometres of water fell. That’s a hell of a lot. Storage capacities were overwhelmed. We have never seen bigger [river] flows,” said Jenkins. But he and other CEH hydrologists said more research was needed to say whether planting the uplands with millions of trees, restoring peat bogs and removing sheep would solve the problem of flooding in all lowland urban areas. Lord Krebs, head of the government’s climate change adaptation committee, has called for peat bogs to be restored and a rethink on how floods can be controlled. “I am not saying that Lord Krebs is wrong but we have not come across hard evidence that he is right. Restoring upland peat bogs is not necessarily going to protect [places such as Tewkesbury],” said Jenkins. “There is little evidence that changes in the way we maintain the uplands would have helped reduce the impact of the [rainfall of] the last few weeks. There is little documentation that shows that planting trees or blocking drains or removing sheep would or would not have reduced flooding. We are not saying that everyone everywhere should plant trees or block drains. We just do not have the evidence.” But Jenkins did not dismiss the idea. “It is probably true that there is an impact in the run-off. But rewilding is beneficial, [so] why not [do it]? But it needs to be done carefully and with evidence.” According to Nick Reynard, who leads hazard research at the centre, any attempts to slow the run-off of water from the British uplands would be overwhelmed when such vast volumes of water fell in a short time. “It depends on scale. What might work in small catchment areas might slow down water in some local areas and could work in less extreme events. The danger is to extrapolate this to catchment-scale areas. The moderation of smaller peaks [of river flow] may not make that much difference on a bigger scale.” | ['environment/water', 'environment/drought', 'environment/flooding', 'world/natural-disasters', 'uk/uk', 'environment/environment', 'environment/rivers', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/johnvidal'] | environment/flooding | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2016-01-06T15:12:38Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
uk-news/2020/jun/03/weatherwatch-wind-dominates-climate-falkland-islands-roaring-forties | Weatherwatch: wind dominates climate of the Falkland Islands | The Falkland Islands may lie at roughly the equivalent latitude as London – about 52 degrees from the equator – but the climate of this South Atlantic archipelago is more like Shetland than south-east England. That’s because the Falklands are in the southern hemisphere, and so do not enjoy the warming influence of the Gulf Stream, which hugely ameliorates the climate of our northernmost archipelago. Temperatures in the islands’ capital, Stanley, average around 9C in January, and just 2C in July. This very low variation is largely down to the influence of the surrounding ocean, which cools the land during the austral summer but warms it in winter. Snow can fall in almost every month, and rainfall is regular but fairly light, with a total of about 600mm (24 inches) a year. But the most noticeable aspect of the Falklands climate is the almost constant wind. The islands are just south of the area known as the Roaring Forties: an area dominated by a series of air currents flowing south from the equator towards the south pole, which are exacerbated by a lack of any large landmasses which might slow down the wind speed. The wind is also the reason why – apart from introduced conifers planted around the farms and other settlements as windbreaks – there are virtually no trees on the island. | ['uk/falklands', 'news/series/weatherwatch', 'uk/uk', 'world/americas', 'type/article', 'tone/features', 'profile/stephenmoss1', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/weather2', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-weather'] | news/series/weatherwatch | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2020-06-03T20:30:43Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
environment/2009/jul/01/knighthood-protest-tiong-hiew-king | Forest campaigners deplore knighthood for Asian logging magnate | Environment groups around the world have called for a billionaire businessman to be stripped of his knighthood after claiming that his fortune has been built on the systematic destruction of tropical rainforests. Tiong Hiew King, the founder of giant Asian logging conglomerate Rimbunan Hijau, was awarded an honorary knighthood "for services to commerce, the community and charitable organisations in Papua New Guinea" in the Queen's birthday honours list last month. Rimbunan Hijau, which has hundreds of subsidiaries, operates in south-east Asia and Africa, and is the biggest extractor of tropical timber from Papua New Guinea. The company has also been highly active in the Solomon Islands, which campaigners say has been stripped almost bare of its indigenous forests by a handful of Asian logging syndicates including King's companies. The award to Tiong, whose personal wealth is estimated at over $2.7bn, escaped notice until now - having not been published in any British newspaper. Honorary awards for foreign nationals are not published in Britain and are made public only at the discretion of foreign governments. Yesterday both the UK government and Buckingham palace distanced themselves from the appointment. "The palace would have decided on the award," said a spokesman for the Foreign Office. "The prime minister of Papua New Guinea, supported by the governor general, would have made the recommendation to the queen. It would then have been cleared by the Foreign Office and the Malaysian government," said a spokesman for the palace. Survival International and other groups today accused Tiong's timber companies of systematically stripping the "paradise" forests of Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands for over 30 years. "It's outrageous that Tiong Hiew King has been given an honorary knighthood. His company is responsible for the destruction of vast areas of forest belonging to the Penan tribe in Sarawak, Borneo, many of whom now have difficulty finding enough food as the animals they hunt have fled Tiong's bulldozers. Britain must stop honouring people who abuse tribal people's rights," said Stephen Cory, director of Survival International. "His global logging empire is responsible for the destruction of huge swathes of pristine rainforest in south-east Asia. If the Queen knew what he was responsible for she would have knighted him with a chainsaw, not a sword," said a spokesman for Greenpeace. "Tiong Hiew King is unfit for a knighthood. He is commonly known to be one of the chief people responsible for widespread logging in both Papua New Guinea and other countries," said Lukas Straumann of the Bruno Manser Foundation, which was set up following the death of the Swiss environmentalist. "We are shocked by the award and would like to write a formal letter of protest to Prince Charles and Queen Elizabeth to deprive him of this honour as it is a joke based on the record of his company's activities in our country," said a spokesman for the Papua New Guinea Eco-Forestry forum. Prince Charles, who visited south-east Asia last year to plead with government leaders to protect forests has led a global initiative to defend tropical rainforests which are being felled at an alarming rate. A spokesman for Clarence House, which represents Prince Charles, today declined to comment. The Rimbunan Hijau company website says the jobs it creates for local communities improves their quality of life and that welfare and environmental protection of societies is a major driving force for the company. Tiong declined to comment. | ['environment/forests', 'environment/deforestation', 'world/papua-new-guinea', 'world/world', 'environment/environment', 'uk/uk', 'uk/queens-birthday-honours-list', 'tone/news', 'business/business', 'type/article', 'profile/johnvidal'] | environment/deforestation | BIODIVERSITY | 2009-07-01T13:03:17Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
environment/2024/jan/11/tree-that-lives-underground-among-newly-named-plant-species | Tree that lives underground among newly named plant species | Two types of tree and a palm that live underground are among the new plant species named in 2023 and highlighted by scientists at the Royal Botanical Garden Kew in the UK. The palm is unique, as the only species known to flower and fruit almost exclusively underground, and was discovered in Borneo. The trees were discovered in the deep Kalahari sands of highland Angola, where the free-draining terrain has led a number of species evolving to live at least 90% underground. Other new species include an orchid found atop a volcano, fungi from the apparently barren wastes of Antarctica and a novel fungus found in food waste in South Korea. The most mysterious new species is a plant from Mozambique that appears to be carnivorous. There are 400,000 named plant species but scientists estimate there are another 100,000 yet to be identified. The botanists are in a race against time to discover many plants and fungi before the ongoing destruction of the natural world drives them to extinction. Lost species not only means their unique biology is gone for ever, but also potential human uses as medicines, food and even plastic recyclers. Every year, scientists around the world name about 2,500 new species of plant and the same number of fungi. In 2023, RGB Kew researchers named 74 plants and 15 fungi species. “It is imperative now, more so than ever, that we do everything in our power to go out into the field with our partners and work out which species of plants and fungi we haven’t given a scientific description yet,” said Dr Martin Cheek, part of RBG Kew’s Africa team. “Without doing so, we risk losing these species without ever even knowing they existed. As we make these wonderful new discoveries, we must remember that nature is under threat, and we have the power to do something about it.” About 40% of named plant species are threatened with extinction, as habitats are razed for farmland and other human development. But as many as 75% of the world’s undescribed plant species are thought to already be threatened with extinction. Dr Raquel Pino-Bodas, also at RBG Kew, said: “Although fungi are one of the three major groups of eukaryotes, along with plants and animals, most fungal diversity remains undiscovered. Only 5-10% percent of all existing species are known.” She said ramping up the search for new species was critical: “Among this incredible diversity of fungal species, we are bound to discover new sources of food, medicines and other active compounds that can help us find nature-based solutions to big challenges.” Kew mycologist Dr Paul Kirk found a new species of fungi in soya bean waste in South Korea. It is in the same genus as other fungi that thrive in elevated temperatures and can be pathogenic to humans, though this species is thought to be low risk. “New fungal species are not only found in remote, unexplored areas, they can be found in every environment on the planet,” said Pino-Bodas. Kew scientists Dr William Baker and Dr Benedikt Kuhnhäuser were tipped off about the underground palm by a Malaysian scientist and local communities that knew of the plant and its bright red fruit. Baker said the find showed that nature still has many surprises up its sleeve and that Indigenous knowledge is a valuable tool for the accelerated discovery of species. The new orchid species was found fortuitously on top of an extinct volcano on the Indonesian island of Waigeo. The botanists hoped to rediscover a blue orchid that had not been seen for 80 years, which they did. But they also found a new orchid on the summit of Mount Nok, with spectacular, bright red flowers. Antarctica is a poor place for plant hunting, with the icy continent virtually devoid of flowering plants, but it is home to many lichens. Lichens are a partnership between a fungus and algae and/or cyanobacteria. In 2023, Pino-Bodas and colleagues named three new species of fungi that grow on the lichen near the Spanish base on the Antarctic peninsula. Another curious find was discovered in Mozambique: a plant covered in insect-trapping glandular hairs, like sundews. However, the plant was revealed to be in the genus Crepidorhopalon and therefore unrelated to any known carnivorous plant. The plant has been seen to trap insects and research is now under way to determine if the plant digests them for nutrition. The other highlighted species named by Kew scientists are nine new species of tobacco from Australia, a Madagascan orchid, and a new violet relative from Thailand. The latter is only known from two sites, both of which are unprotected, and is therefore already considered threatened with extinction. Also threatened by farming and housing expansion is a new species of plant in South Africa that produces the dye indigo. | ['environment/plants', 'environment/wildlife', 'environment/conservation', 'science/fungi', 'environment/climate-crisis', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/damiancarrington', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/uknews', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-environment'] | environment/wildlife | BIODIVERSITY | 2024-01-11T00:01:26Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
uk-news/2018/apr/12/cash-for-ash-inquiry-arlene-foster-dup-rhi | 'Cash-for-ash' inquiry: Arlene Foster says she regrets spiralling costs | Northern Ireland’s former first minister Arlene Foster has told the inquiry into the green energy scheme that resulted in the collapse of the power-sharing government that she deeply regretted its spiralling costs. The renewable heat incentive (RHI) programme was championed by Foster when she was the devolved enterprise minister but its costs ran into hundreds of millions of pounds. Foster told the public inquiry into the scheme that she believed Sinn Féin protests over RHI costs were merely an excuse to bring down the power-sharing executive at the start of 2017. The late Martin McGuinness resigned from his post as deputy first minister after Foster refused to step aside temporarily as first minister to allow the inquiry to run its course. The Sinn Féin politician’s resignation triggered the collapse of the power-sharing government more than 14 months ago. Foster denied she was mainly responsible for RHI and told the inquiry that the scheme wasn’t a personal priority of hers. Foster said she was “personally and politically” sorry as to how the RHI scheme turned out. The inquiry, being held at Stormont, is seeking to establish exactly why there were no cost controls imposed on the scheme before its implementation. Foster said the power-sharing coalition in Belfast had been under pressure from 2010 onwards to create a cleaner, greener renewable energy scheme. “If we had decided as 3% of the population [of the UK] that we were not going to do anything on renewable energy I would have come under political attack from other parties,” the Democratic Unionist party leader told the inquiry. Foster said the power-sharing executive had to hit a target of having 4% of Northern Ireland’s energy renewable and green by 2020. She accepted, however, that the department she headed should have taken up a number of alternative renewable energy initiatives that were operating in Britain. “It is a regret that we didn’t buy into it and, looking back now, that’s what should’ve been done,” Foster said. During her cross-examination at the inquiry on Thursday, its chair, retired judge Sir Patrick Coghlin, questioned Foster over claims made by her one-time special adviser Andrew Crawford that he did not read all crucial reports on the scheme in detail. Given the complexity of RHI and its mounting costs, Coghlin told Foster: “That just seems to me to be perhaps not the highest standard of government practice.” He said this concerned him as there was therefore no proper record of what was discussed in the department and what decisions had been made. Crawford revealed earlier to the inquiry that he had established a system with Foster as enterprise minister where he would send her yellow Post-it notes that were later destroyed. He said these messages would not have been formally recorded in the system. Foster insisted at the inquiry that these notes were “innocuous”. The so-called “cash-for-ash” scandal has cost hundreds of millions of pounds. RHI offered huge financial incentives to farms, businesses and other non-domestic consumers to use biomass boilers that mostly burned wood pellets as well as solar and thermal energy and heat pumps. The scheme paid more to users of boilers than the cost of the fuel needed to run them, allowing applicants to profit from using the boilers. The whistleblower who exposed the scandal alleged that the RHI scheme was being abused and that one farmer had made £1m by renting an empty shed he had claimed was for the biomass boiler. | ['uk/northernireland', 'environment/renewableenergy', 'politics/arlene-foster', 'politics/dup', 'politics/sinn-fein', 'environment/energy', 'environment/environment', 'politics/politics', 'uk/uk', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/henrymcdonald', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-home-news'] | environment/renewableenergy | ENERGY | 2018-04-12T16:45:39Z | true | ENERGY |
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