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money/2023/aug/05/help-with-uk-energy-bills-unlikely-this-winter-suggests-grant-shapps | Help with UK energy bills unlikely this winter, suggests Grant Shapps | Grant Shapps has suggested it is unlikely the government will step in to protect households from rising energy bills this winter. The energy secretary said in an interview with the Times that once inflation had fallen the government would “absolutely” need to cut taxes. But he said it was unlikely the government would be able to shield people from steep energy bill rises with a price guarantee. The government introduced an energy price guarantee last year, which kept the average dual-fuel energy bill at £2,500 a year over the winter. The scheme came to an end in June, after the government postponed a cut in support that would have ended in April. A separate support scheme that paid about £400 a household from October last year, also came to an end last month. Shapps said: “We don’t want to be in a position … of having to constantly pay energy bills. “We’re having to tax people in order to pay it back to people … that money doesn’t come from nowhere.” Shapps’s remarks come after the Bank of England raised interest rates for the 14th consecutive time to 5.25% while warning businesses and households that the cost of borrowing would remain high for at least the next two years. Rishi Sunak, who has vowed to halve inflation by the year’s end, has come under increased pressure from Conservative MPs to boost the UK’s struggling economy and lower high inflation rates. Shapps said: “You need to sort out the macro picture, get growth into the economy, bring down inflation and deal with the longer-term debt. Once you’ve done that you can set your path to lower taxes. “We absolutely need to show that we understand the future for people in this country is to be a lower-taxed economy. Absolutely it’s in our DNA, in our heart, it’s in the prime minister’s heart as well.” Analysts and energy firms have said stubbornly high energy bills are here to stay for the coming winter. Earlier this week, the government announced 100-plus new drilling licences to extract as much oil and gas from the North Sea in a “maxing out policy”, a move which the prime minister described as being significantly more efficient than shipping gas and oil from other countries. The announcement prompted concern from industry experts that the plans would “send a wrecking ball” through the UK’s climate commitments and led 100 energy firms to voice worries about the country’s over-reliance on gas and diversion from the country’s green agenda. Labour has pledged to block all new domestic oil and gas developments and proposed heavy investments in renewable sources, such as wind and nuclear power, should the party win the next election. Shapps called the plans the “most absurd Just Stop Oil rent-a-policy I’ve ever heard”. | ['money/energy', 'environment/energy', 'politics/grant-shapps', 'politics/conservatives', 'business/gas', 'money/household-bills', 'politics/politics', 'uk/uk', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/geneva-abdul', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-home-news'] | environment/energy | ENERGY | 2023-08-05T12:38:38Z | true | ENERGY |
news/2019/nov/11/weatherwatch-uk-oldest-snow-patch-sphinx-scotland | Weatherwatch: UK's oldest snow patch clings on – but for how long? | It’s survived! The UK’s oldest and most permanent patch of snow is safely buried under a duvet of fresh snow and will live to see another spring. Known as the Sphinx, this icy pocket situated in an isolated corrie on Britain’s third highest mountain, Braeriach, in the Scottish Cairngorms range, is thought to have melted only seven times in the past 300 years. Counting and measuring the pockets of snow that persist year-round is a passion for Iain Cameron. For 15 years, he and his team of volunteers have been tramping the highlands of Scotland, England and Wales, keeping an eye on snow patches. Their records are providing a valuable indicator of the climate crisis. Having first melted completely in 1933, the Sphinx has become more vulnerable in recent years, failing to survive in both 2017 and 2018. But after a wild and gruelling walk, including a camp-out in a bothy, Cameron reports that about nine sq metres of Sphinx have made it through summer 2019. The story of the Sphinx is a highlight in an otherwise gloomy report, which shows accelerated disappearance of all snow patches and none surviving beyond 22 May in England and Wales this year. | ['news/series/weatherwatch', 'uk/scotland', 'world/snow', 'uk/uk', 'environment/climate-crisis', 'environment/environment', 'environment/mountains', 'type/article', 'tone/features', 'profile/kate-ravilious', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/journal', 'theguardian/journal/opinion', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-weather'] | news/series/weatherwatch | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2019-11-11T21:30:20Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
environment/2021/aug/10/days-of-wine-and-olives-how-the-old-farming-ways-are-paying-off-spain-aoe | Days of wine and olives: how the old farming ways are paying off in Spain | They call it the sea of olives, 70 million olive trees that stretch to the horizon in every direction in the province of Jaén in southern Spain. It’s a spectacular landscape and yet, olives aside, the land is virtually dead, with scarcely a flower, bird or butterfly to be seen. All this could be about to change following the remarkable success of a project that is raising new life from the dust of Andalucía. In 2016, with financial support from the EU’s Life programme, 20 olive farms in the region were selected to adopt a regenerative agriculture model, allowing grass and wild flowers to flourish between the trees. Various local species were planted, nest boxes installed, and ponds created to encourage insect and bird life. In the world’s largest study on olive grove biodiversity, researchers from the University of Jaén and the higher council for scientific research (CSIC), partners in the Olivares Vivos project, found that in three years, the bee population in the regenerative olive groves increased by 47%, birdlife by 10% and woody shrubs by 172%, compared with 20 control groves. As rabbits thrived on the grass, birds of prey have reappeared. It was also discovered that herbicides were killing those insects that eat the larvae of the olive fruit fly (Bactrocera oleae), one of the crop’s principal pests. “What we are doing is returning to more traditional ways,” says Paco Montabes, who farms 650 hectares (1,600 acres) of picual olives in Jaén’s Sierra Mágina. “Not ploughing between the trees makes for better water retention, less erosion and run-offs after heavy rain. The vegetal covering makes the ground sponge-like and absorbs the rain.” The initiative was motivated by both environmental and economic concerns, says José Eugenio Gutiérrez, of the conservation organisation SEO Birdlife, the project coordinator. Growers were worried about soil erosion and the lack of biodiversity, but were also suffering financially as a global glut of olive oil pushed prices to below the cost of production. Often the only people making a profit were at the bottling plant and the retailers. The Olivares Vivos approach is a win-win strategy: biodiversity thrives while the olive oil is certified as having been produced in conditions that increase biodiversity, rather than being certified simply as “ecological”, giving it added value. “You can grow under plastic and it’s still classed as ecological,” says Gutiérrez. “We needed to create labelling that guarantees the product is produced through regenerative agriculture.” As growers save money on herbicides and pesticides and can sell their oil at a premium, the scheme has not gone unnoticed in the region. Gutiérrez says that more than 600 growers have expressed an interest in adopting the regenerative model. The idea is one that has already taken off in the wine business. Some smaller vineyards have adopted regenerative practices, but now major winemakers are signing up, too. In the wine-growing region of Penedès, 450 miles (750km) north of Jaén, Torres, Spain’s biggest winemaker, is embracing the regenerative approach as it seeks ways to reduce its carbon footprint. “Although we were certified as organic viticulture in most of our vineyards, there was a feeling that we weren’t doing enough,” says Miguel Torres, the fifth generation at the head of the winery. Traditionally, the earth is ploughed between the vines to get rid of weeds and open the ground to the rain. However, as well as contributing to erosion, this leads to a lack of biodiversity and poor soil, which then needs nutrients to be replenished artificially. “The organic viticulture rules don’t even mention carbon footprint, so you can use a tractor as much as you want. We thought, ‘we have to reduce our emissions but we also have to capture CO2,’” says Torres. The producer has reduced its carbon footprint by 34% a bottle and is aiming for 60%, mostly through energy-efficiency measures introduced during the winemaking process. “Our objective is to stop ploughing,” he says. “When you plough you bring organic material to the surface and then it oxidises, so everything you had stored goes into the atmosphere. What we try to do is imitate nature as much as possible, which means we have to give life back to the soil.” While tree planting is at the forefront of the fight against the climate crisis, if the world’s 7.4m hectares of vineyards adopted the regenerative model the impact would be huge, Torres says. Nearby, at the Parés Baltà winery, the oenologist Marta Casas is going further. She believes regenerative viticulture is a major step towards the more holistic biodynamic approach, which views animals, soil and produce as part of a single, interrelated system. “The more you give to the soil, the more it gives back in return,” she says, standing beside an open-air oven from the 6th century BC that inspired her to make a wine in earthenware pots. Casas’ passion for her work is matched by her curiosity, which has led her to pursue many ancient ideas. For example, she discovered that by using a solution of the plant horsetail it is possible to significantly reduce the amount of copper sulphate sprayed on vines to treat mildew. If regenerative agriculture seems more like common sense than a revolutionary idea, for vine and olive growers alike it marks a rejection of two farming shibboleths: plough the earth and kill the competition. Montabes says they have had to break out of the mindset that regards any plant other than the desired crop as a competitor, a weed, or mala hierba in Spanish. “Now we know better,” he says. “Las malas hierbas son buenas.” Find more age of extinction coverage here, and follow biodiversity reporters Phoebe Weston and Patrick Greenfield on Twitter for all the latest news and features | ['environment/series/the-age-of-extinction', 'environment/environment', 'environment/farming', 'food/wine', 'food/food', 'world/spain', 'world/europe-news', 'environment/organics', 'environment/ethical-living', 'environment/biodiversity', 'type/article', 'tone/features', 'profile/stephen-burgen', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/international', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-age-of-extinction'] | environment/farming | BIODIVERSITY | 2021-08-10T05:30:11Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
us-news/2022/jun/18/greg-gianforte-italy-montana-floods-yellowstone | Gianforte was vacationing in Italy as Montana flooded, governor’s office says | Montana’s governor, Greg Gianforte, was vacationing in Italy during that state’s historic flooding, which caused Yellowstone national park to close, his office confirmed on Friday. As the state suffered record flooding and rockslides, Gianforte’s office had initially declined to say where he was or when he might return, citing “security concerns”, even as a statewide disaster was declared. In a statement to NBC Montana on Friday, the Republican governor’s office said: “The governor departed early [last] Saturday morning to Italy with his wife for a long-planned personal, private trip. “When severe flooding struck, the governor delegated his authority to respond to the disaster to Lt Gov Kristen Juras with whom he worked closely over the last four days to take swift, decisive action,” the statement added. Gianforte was now “grateful to be back in Montana” and planned “to survey damage [on Friday] and meet with residents and local officials about recovering and rebuilding,” his office said. Floodwater – a mix of heavy rain and snow melt in the south-western corner of the state – wiped out numerous bridges and washed out miles of roads and closed the park earlier this week. The damage is still being assessed, but repairs to damaged infrastructure in the 2.2m-acre park could run as a high as $1bn and could take years to perform given the short season between snowfall that allows for construction. “This is not going to be an easy rebuild,” Cam Sholly, park superintendent, said this week. “I don’t think it’s going to be smart to invest potentially, you know, tens of millions of dollars, or however much it is, into repairing a road that may be subject to seeing a similar flooding event in the future,” he added. The US Geological Survey said that flooding along the Yellowstone River was a one-in-500-year event, with the river reaching record stage between Sunday and Monday. By the time Gianforte made the disaster declaration he was already vacationing, leaving Montanans to wonder why the lieutenant governor, Juras, had signed off on a formal request for federal disaster relief “on behalf of” Gianforte. The Montana Free Press ran a headline that read, “Where is Greg Gianforte?”, while the state’s democrats knocked him for being on “a mysterious international vacation during an emergency flooding.” Gianforte’s office said only that he was out of the country and would be “returning early and as quickly as possible’”. Newsy reported it had obtained a photograph of the governor dining in a restaurant in Tuscany on Wednesday. Eric Austin, a professor who teaches government leadership and ethics at Montana State University told the Free Press: “His office has just been pretty recalcitrant about where he is and what’s going on.” Gianforte, however, portrayed himself on social media as engaged with the flood response without spelling out where he was. He did not surface, at least not in Montana, until Friday, when he joined Senator Steve Daines at a spot in Gardiner overlooking the Yellowstone River. “I understand the tragedy that has occurred. It’s wiped out businesses, and with them livelihoods here in the community,” Gianforte said, according to the Bozeman Daily Chronicle. “That’s why to get this park entrance open as quickly as possible, it’s so important.” | ['us-news/greg-gianforte', 'us-news/montana', 'environment/flooding', 'environment/environment', 'us-news/us-news', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/edwardhelmore', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/us-news'] | environment/flooding | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2022-06-18T19:50:21Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
environment/2010/may/28/climate-change-royal-society | UK Royal Society revives confusion as US concludes climate change certainty | Two weeks ago, the United States National Academy of Sciences published its clearest ever report on the science of climate change. It concluded: "Climate change is occurring, is caused largely by human activities, and poses significant risks for a broad range of human and natural systems." Over recent years, particularly during the George W Bush administration, the academy has faced great challenges in presenting the science of climate change to domestic policymakers, many of whom have been in denial about the consequences of greenhouse gas emissions. But with Barack Obama in the White House, the academy has been more able to offer scientific advice that some politicians may find inconvenient. So it is ironic that just as the leading scientists in the US give their clearest warning about climate change, we now see suggestions that some fellows of UK's national academy of science, the Royal Society, might be disputing the evidence. Last December, ahead of the United Nations conference in Copenhagen, the society published a statement entitled Preventing dangerous climate change, which was unequivocal. It said: "It is certain that GHG [greenhouse gas] emissions from the burning of fossil fuels and from land use change lead to a warming of climate, and it is very likely that these GHGs are the dominant cause of the global warming that has been taking place over the last 50 years." But now, 43 of the society's 1,489 fellows have written to complain about some of its statements about climate change published over the last few years. It is not clear exactly what the 43 have concerns about. And because their identities have not been made public, we do not know whether any of them are climate researchers. There are certainly some fellows working outside climate science who dispute the findings of mainstream researchers. One such is Anthony Kelly, a member of the academic advisory council of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, a lobby group set up by Nigel Lawson last year to promote scepticism about climate change. Professor Kelly is an 81-year-old distinguished research fellow in materials science and metallurgy at Cambridge University. The other members of the GWPF's academic advisory council include Ian Plimer, the Australian geologist who has wrongly claimed that volcanoes produce more carbon dioxide than human activities. The news that 43 fellows apparently disagree with the society is likely to generate even further public confusion about the causes and consequences of climate change. A YouGov poll published earlier this week found that 40% of the public either do not believe climate change is happening, or think scientists are divided about its occurrence, compared with 32% last year. The Royal Society is carrying out a review of its statements on climate change in response to the fellows' letter. It will no doubt prefer to remain silent until the review is completed. But given the impact of the controversies over the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, it would be better if the 43 fellows made their concerns public, and the society clarified where it stands on the scientific evidence about climate change. • Bob Ward is policy and communications director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics and Political Science, and was head of media relations at the Royal Society until September 2006. | ['environment/climate-crisis', 'environment/climate-change-scepticism', 'environment/copenhagen', 'environment/environment', 'science/scienceofclimatechange', 'science/science', 'us-news/barack-obama', 'us-news/george-bush', 'us-news/us-politics', 'world/unitednations', 'world/world', 'education/cambridgeuniversity', 'education/universityofeastanglia', 'education/londonschoolofeconomics', 'education/education', 'tone/news', 'science/royal-society', 'type/article', 'profile/bob-ward'] | environment/climate-change-scepticism | CLIMATE_DENIAL | 2010-05-28T16:26:45Z | true | CLIMATE_DENIAL |
environment/planet-oz/2016/may/30/australias-censorship-of-unesco-climate-report-is-like-a-shakespearean-tragedy | Australia’s censorship of Unesco climate report is like a Shakespearean tragedy | Graham Readfearn | That quote from Shakespeare’s Hamlet comes to mind: “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.” The lady in question is the Australian government, which some time in early January saw a draft of a report from a United Nations organisation. The report, provisionally titled “Destinations at Risk: World Heritage and Tourism in a Changing Climate”, outlined how many world heritage sites around the world were being compromised by the impacts of climate change. One of the sites highlighted in the draft report was the Great Barrier Reef. The Australian government doth protest, and Unesco obliged. As Guardian Australia revealed last week, all mentions of Australia, the Great Barrier Reef, the Northern Territory’s glorious Kakadu national park and Tasmania’s forests were then removed from the report. All this, as the reef’s worst recorded case of mass coral bleaching makes headlines around the world So why the whitewash? In a statement to Guardian Australia, the Department of the Environment made two arguments to justify the request for censorship and neither of them makes any sense. Firstly, the government argued the title of the report “had the potential to cause considerable confusion”. The title Australia objected to was “Destinations at Risk: World Heritage and Tourism in a Changing Climate”. The report was finally published as World Heritage and Tourism in a Changing Climate. The department said the UN world heritage committee had only last year agreed not to place the reef on its list of sites “in danger”. If the reef then appeared as a case study in a UN report about world heritage sites “at risk” this might confuse people, the department claimed. But the reality is that the reef is both “at risk” and “in danger” from the impacts of climate change – the government’s own science agencies have warned them of this multiple times, not to mention scientists at leading universities around the world. The only confusing aspect is how a report about world heritage sites and climate change now omits one of the world’s most iconic natural wonders that has become a faded poster child for the impacts of global warming worldwide. Australia’s second argument was that having the reef featured in the Unesco report was further “negative commentary” that “impacted on tourism”. As commentary on The Project pointed out, most people around the world don’t choose their holiday destinations by consulting Unesco reports. The report was a collaboration of two UN bodies – Unesco and the United Nations Environment Program – as well as the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), a not-for-profit science advocacy group. Adam Markham, of UCS and lead author of the report, told me he was “not in any of those conversations” about Australia requesting the reef be removed, and that Unesco had the final say. He said he was “disappointed” that a Great Barrier Reef case study pegged for the reports was taken out. As soon as the report was published, Markham updated the case study and published it on the UCS blog, where you can now read the guts of the section the Australian government didn’t want published. Guardian Australia also published the censored text. So why did Unesco agree to Australia’s demands? I asked Unesco this, and also whether a note would be added to the report pointing out that mentions of Australia had been taken out. A spokesperson told me only that the following sentence had now been added to the press release: At the request of the government of Australia, references to Australian sites were removed from the Report (recent information about the state of conservation of the Great Barrier Reef is available on Unesco’s website here: http://whc.unesco.org/en/soc/3234). Unesco should not escape criticism here. The organisation’s willingness to censor one of its own reports in the interests of nothing more than a public relations exercise is troubling. You have to hope this instance is a one-off. Adding a line to a press release that has already been sent out is, in my view, a poor response to a serious misstep. In Unesco’s defence, both the spokesperson and Markham said the report was not supposed to be a comprehensive assessment of every world heritage site – of which there are more than 1,000. But leaving the Great Barrier Reef out of the report is like writing about the risks of oil drilling without mentioning the Deepwater Horizon, or perchance the tragedy of reviewing the works of Shakespeare without ever mentioning Hamlet. “This above all: to thine own self be true.” | ['environment/planet-oz', 'environment/climate-crisis', 'environment/environment', 'environment/great-barrier-reef', 'australia-news/australia-news', 'australia-news/australian-politics', 'australia-news/coalition', 'world/unesco', 'world/unitednations', 'environment/endangered-habitats', 'australia-news/queensland', 'australia-news/northern-territory', 'australia-news/tasmania', 'environment/coral', 'environment/oceans', 'environment/conservation', 'environment/marine-life', 'type/article', 'tone/analysis', 'profile/graham-readfearn', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-environment'] | environment/endangered-habitats | BIODIVERSITY | 2016-05-30T05:31:27Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
environment/2018/aug/08/california-wildfires-firefighters-politics | Firefighters battle to contain historic California blaze as political tensions rise | Haze from the largest fire in California history filled the air near the town of Clearlake on Tuesday as Jim Steele, a local supervisor, drove his pickup truck through a landscape of smoldering hillsides and charred trees to check on the homes of citizens in his district. On surrounding ridgelines, firefighters continue to battle a pair of blazes that had reached more than 450 sq miles (292,692 acres) with 33% containment as of Tuesday afternoon. The area is only about 110 miles from San Francisco. Elsewhere in the state, crews continue to battle 17 blazes fueled by heat, wind and low humidity levels. Much of Yosemite national park is closed, and a total of almost 1,000 sq miles (629,531 acres) has already burned in California during 2018, although the season is only just gearing up. Steele, a professional forester who formerly worked for the state, had obvious worries about the safety of his constituents, who have seen blazes run through their community repeatedly over the last four years and are concerned about their effect on the marijuana industry. Yet he echoed the hopes of other officials that this fire-prone region might use the current crisis, and local knowledge, to develop a model for making California communities less prone to costly conflagrations. An independent, he had strong words about Donald Trump’s recent tweet falsely claiming that fires were fueled by the state’s water use policies. “He is ignorant, totally ignorant,” Steele, a fifth-generation Californian and air force veteran, said of Trump. “It shows he doesn’t understand this situation and isn’t equipped to understand. It takes a lot of background before you’re able to come to a reasonable understanding.” Steve Kaufmann, a Cal Fire spokesperson, said one of the most aggressive areas of the fire complex was to the north and east of Clearlake, a community surrounded by wineries, farms and ranches, where personnel are battling the blaze in a mountainous area of steep terrain. Air crews, sometimes unable to fly as air inversion layers create dense areas of smoke, have managed to drop roughly 1m gallons of flame retardant on the blaze in an effort to keep it away from populated areas. Unlike in wealthier coastal enclaves such as San Francisco and Los Angeles, people in economically struggling communities like Clearlake have less money to strengthen their homes against fire risks and clear their properties of brush and other fire hazards. There is a conservative distrust in government locally. Adding to tensions, on ranches and throughout the national forests that cover large swaths of land throughout northern California’s interior, marijuana cultivation – accepted by the state of California yet still forbidden by federal authorities – is an important source of economic sustenance. The illegal status of that activity exacerbates tension between many local residents and bureaucracies such as the US Forest Service, which plays an important role in fire prevention. Often, Steele said, fire prevention via education failed as a result. At Twin Pine casino near Middletown, which had served as an evacuation center for 120 people as of Tuesday, one resident who fled the blaze offered a conspiracy theory – often repeated among Lake county residents – that government officials were allowing the fires to burn because they wanted to eliminate the marijuana industry. John Hall, 70, said he believed there was a plot to put unregulated cannabis farmers out of business. “They want to wipe out the competition,” said Hall, who once worked for forestry companies. Steele said: “Cannabis is their economy,” noting that many of his constituents made a living by growing marijuana outside the purview of the federal government. “Their education is the government coming and tearing up plants.” Kaufmann, of Cal Fire, said that conspiracy theories about fire were common during large blazes, and that it was irresponsible to validate them by responding to each one individually. While there’s a strong consensus among scientists that climate change is playing a role in the current catastrophic fire season, those who study ecology in the region say that parts of the local ecosystem have always been prone to periodic fires that take on a catastrophic scale. If wildfires were not suppressed by firefighters, as they are now, the region “would burn every 20 to 50 years at high severity”, said Lenya Quinn-Davidson, who studies human-fire interaction in the region for the University of California division of agriculture and natural resources. The prolonged droughts that experts attribute to climate change have only exacerbated that tendency. Quinn-Davidson and Steele both said that the area around the Mendocino complex might be a good place to engineer fire prevention strategies that take local sensibilities into account and offer assistance to those who can’t fortify their houses by, for example, replacing shake roofs or hiring timber companies to clear trees. “I think we really need to have programs and support for smaller landowners and homeowners,” Quinn-Davidson said. University of California scientists based in the region are monitoring ways in which preventive burning might play a key role in paring back the shrub vegetation that contributes heavily to fires. This is a strategy that might transcend political differences. “You can get a Trump supporter together with environmentalists and the timber industry, and everyone can collaborate on a prescribed burning program,” said Quinn-Davidson. Other potential solutions supported by local observers include thinning forests through carefully planned commercial timber harvests, and limiting future development in the fire-prone urban-wildland interface. Steve Hegedus, 69, of the small town of Clearlake Oaks, expressed hope that the fire could bring people together to develop neighborhood fire prevention strategies, helping them escape a fiercely independent mindset that often keeps them isolated. The region’s many retirees, he said, were also frequently unable to maintain their properties and act as bulwarks against advancing blazes. “A lot of us are really old,” Hegedus said. “The generations after us, I think they can do a lot better.” | ['environment/series/this-land-is-your-land', 'us-news/california', 'world/wildfires', 'environment/environment', 'us-news/us-news', 'world/natural-disasters', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/west-coast-news'] | world/wildfires | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2018-08-08T09:00:01Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
environment/2018/aug/27/air-pollution-causes-huge-reduction-in-intelligence-study-reveals | Air pollution causes ‘huge’ reduction in intelligence, study reveals | Air pollution causes a “huge” reduction in intelligence, according to new research, indicating that the damage to society of toxic air is far deeper than the well-known impacts on physical health. The research was conducted in China but is relevant across the world, with 95% of the global population breathing unsafe air. It found that high pollution levels led to significant drops in test scores in language and arithmetic, with the average impact equivalent to having lost a year of the person’s education. “Polluted air can cause everyone to reduce their level of education by one year, which is huge,” said Xi Chen at Yale School of Public Health in the US, a member of the research team. “But we know the effect is worse for the elderly, especially those over 64, and for men, and for those with low education. If we calculate [the loss] for those, it may be a few years of education.” Previous research has found that air pollution harms cognitive performance in students, but this is the first to examine people of all ages and the difference between men and women. The damage in intelligence was worst for those over 64 years old, with serious consequences, said Chen: “We usually make the most critical financial decisions in old age.” Rebecca Daniels, from the UK public health charity Medact, said: “This report’s findings are extremely worrying.” Air pollution causes seven million premature deaths a year but the harm to people’s mental abilities is less well known. A recent study found toxic air was linked to “extremely high mortality” in people with mental disorders and earlier work linked it to increased mental illness in children, while another analysis found those living near busy roads had an increased risk of dementia. The new work, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, analysed language and arithmetic tests conducted as part of the China Family Panel Studies on 20,000 people across the nation between 2010 and 2014. The scientists compared the test results with records of nitrogen dioxide and sulphur dioxide pollution. They found the longer people were exposed to dirty air, the bigger the damage to intelligence, with language ability more harmed than mathematical ability and men more harmed than women. The researchers said this may result from differences in how male and female brains work. Derrick Ho, at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, said the impact of air pollution on cognition was important and his group had similar preliminary findings in their work. “It is because high air pollution can potentially be associated with oxidative stress, neuroinflammation, and neurodegeneration of humans,” he said. Chen said air pollution was most likely to be the cause of the loss of intelligence, rather than simply being a correlation. The study followed the same individuals as air pollution varied from one year to the next, meaning that many other possible causal factors such as genetic differences are automatically accounted for. The scientists also accounted for the gradual decline in cognition seen as people age and ruled out people being more impatient or uncooperative during tests when pollution was high. Air pollution was seen to have a short-term impact on intelligence as well and Chen said this could have important consequences, for example for students who have to take crucial entrance exams on polluted days. “But there is no shortcut to solve this issue,” he said. “Governments really need to take concrete measures to reduce air pollution. That may benefit human capital, which is one of the most important driving forces of economic growth.” In China, air pollution is declining but remains three times above World Health Organisation (WHO) limits. According to the WHO, 20 of the world’s most polluted cities are in developing countries. China, home to several of those cities, has been engaged in a “war against pollution” for the past five years. The results would apply around the world, Chen added. The damage to intelligence was likely to be incremental, he said, with a 1mg rise in pollution over three years equivalent to losing more than a month of education. Small pollution particles are known to be especially damaging. “That is the same wherever you live. As human beings we have more in common than is different.” Aarash Saleh, a registrar in respiratory medicine in the UK and part of the Doctors Against Diesel campaign, said: “This study adds to the concerning bank of evidence showing that exposure to air pollution can worsen our cognitive function. Road traffic is the biggest contributor to air pollution in residential areas and the government needs to act urgently to remove heavily-polluting vehicles from our roads.” Daniels said: “The UK’s air is illegally polluted and is harming people’s health every day. Current policies are not up to the scale of the challenge: government must commit to bringing air pollution below legal limits as soon as possible.” | ['environment/air-pollution', 'environment/pollution', 'society/mental-health', 'environment/environment', 'society/health', 'cities/cities', 'world/china', 'world/asia-pacific', 'world/world', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/damiancarrington', 'profile/lily-kuo', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/topstories', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-environment'] | environment/pollution | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE | 2018-08-27T19:10:11Z | true | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE |
environment/2001/nov/03/weather.climatechange | Hurricane hits southern Cuba | Emergency measures were put into effect in Cuba last night as the fringe of Hurricane Michelle struck the southern coast and mountains with winds of 85mph. The National Hurricane Centre in Miami was watching to see if Michelle turns away north-eastwards before reaching the coast of Florida. Michelle, which killed at least 10 dead and left two dozen missing in Central America, also brought torrential rain to Jamaica. The authorities airlifted food and other supplies to flooded areas. In Cuba thousands of students working on the harvest were sent home from provincial camps as evacuation centres were prepared and cables, lampposts and drains were secured. Havana city and the western provinces of Pinar del Rio, La Habana, Matanzas and the Isle of Youth were put on alert. The British Cayman Island, south of Cuba, were also on alert. Max Mayfield, director of the National Hurricane Centre, said Michelle was likely to strengthen to category three - winds above 111mph capable of causing extensive damage - in the next 36 hours. In south Florida the authorities are preparing for the possibility of extensive flooding because the beaches have been badly eroded by strong winds. | ['environment/environment', 'environment/climate-crisis', 'world/world', 'world/natural-disasters', 'world/hurricanes', 'type/article'] | world/hurricanes | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2001-11-03T15:58:12Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
environment/2015/dec/20/eco-guide-to-green-universities-whaling | The eco guide to green universities | A festive message for prospective students this week. Firstly, most Ucas forms are due in January. And while I wouldn’t want anybody to spend the entire Christmas break fretting about the carbon emissions they’ll emit over the next three years, you deserve an establishment that reflects your values. I realise that few people choose a university on the basis of which is the most responsible. But sustainability is a special case, not least because research tells us that millennials and post-millennials expect green. Often they have to fight for it, however. Students at the University of California are engaged in a showdown with officials over land once used to teach and research agro-ecology (the science of green land management) being sold for development. They allege an “iron triangle” among industry, universities and the state, where the green curriculum is repressed. We can’t be complacent. If it is built into the campus, it will be harder to jettison it from the curriculum. Ecocampus.co.uk has a register of UK universities certified to international standards on everything from energy ratings to low-impact building materials. Some are seriously impressive: Nottingham University built its new bioscience block out of straw bales, and the building also features green roofs (to slow down rainwater and grow vegetation as an insulator), photovoltaics, passive ventilation and a student allotment. You can see the logic in this: the average British university has 15,000-18,000 students. The higher and further education sector spends a total of £116m annually just to power its ICT. But few people get excited about a library’s energy efficiency until it’s wrapped up in a competitive format. This explains the rise of awards for the greenest establishments. Winners at the recent Green Gown Awards included the universities of Bradford and Brighton, where students designed a house built from waste materials, and Fife College for opening a green hairdressing training salon. But it was Plymouth University that topped the People and Planet league table with its top-level sustainability teaching. Tradition dictates that these institutions prove their might with sports events – a certain boat race springs to mind – but I’d prefer them to do battle on the amount of solar panels or volume of recycling. The big picture As officials waved goodbye to the first Japanese whaling boat to go hunting after a one-year suspension, activist boat Sea Shepherd was preparing for battle. The International Court of Justice was probably raising an eyebrow, too. It ruled against Japan’s whaling programme last year on the grounds that it was a commercial operation masquerading as research. Japan plans to kill 300 whales over the next three months. Well dressed: recylced workwear From time to time a famous designer is enlisted to invest corporate uniforms with some style, but it rarely works. This time, however, it’s different. The duo behind Everything In Colour, a design house based in Hackney, east London, has already made a name for themselves by creating new contemporary pieces out of donated and repurposed fabrics. The staff of Britain’s offices, warehouses, shops and factories get through around 32.9m garments (16,290 tonnes) each year, of which 90% is incinerated or sent to landfill. Now Everything In Colour has got its hands on Ocado’s old uniforms and is redesigning them to make desirable, valuable pieces, including a repurposed apron and a tote bag (pictured – available in January), which are manufactured in HMP Northumberland’s textile factory. Email Lucy at lucy.siegle@observer.co.uk or follow her on Twitter @lucysiegle | ['environment/series/its-not-easy-being-green', 'environment/series/ask-leo-lucy', 'environment/energyefficiency', 'education/education', 'environment/sustainable-development', 'environment/whaling', 'environment/environment', 'lifeandstyle/lifeandstyle', 'tone/features', 'type/article', 'profile/lucysiegle', 'publication/theobserver', 'theobserver/magazine', 'theobserver/magazine/life-and-style'] | environment/sustainable-development | CLIMATE_POLICY | 2015-12-20T06:00:44Z | true | CLIMATE_POLICY |
global-development/2012/jun/15/rio20-voice-karnataka-india | Rio+20: A voice from Karnataka, India | It's very easy for cynicism to creep in about Rio. We set development goal after goal and nothing seems to be working out. But the interesting thing is that the heads of states and civil society are generally concerned about these things, and that's an important part of having the conference in Rio. When we look at the main issues of Rio, they are issues that we want to squarely face. That's what is giving us hope. But with issues like energy and the environment, at government level they will talk about it, but at grassroots level, poverty is the real issue. Access to education and healthcare, these continue to be the issues. You have to tackle poverty as it adds to emissions, increases population and insecurity. Poverty makes people cut down the forests, so degradation occurs faster. Women in poor families use harmful fuels to cook, which is not good for the environment or their health. Two million women and children are killed a year because of respiratory illness, especially in poorer households. Using cattle dung in a different way to produce biogas for fuel reduces the amount of methane, and this means other harmful things, such as degrading forests, are averted. My country has a large number of cattle. We can have many more biogas plants, which can be used for green energy. My organisation offers affordable micro-loans to people for renewable energy initiatives, such as biogas plants. Our government spends millions subsidising fossil fuels. It must stop all subsidies for fossil fuels and increase subsidies for clean energy. The government makes it so difficult to get subsidies for solar energy in India. Loans by banks are subsidised, but not from microfinance [organisations]. And who do the banks lend to? Rich people. What I expect from Rio is more governments taking decisions, and having the willpower to make them count. I hope something concrete will come out of Rio. We're almost at the end of the road now. It's now or never. I don't think Rio is about targets, but about commitment to act. The millennium development goals created an awareness of issues. Hopefully, Rio will reinforce them. | ['global-development/environmental-sustainability', 'global-development/global-development', 'environment/rio-20-earth-summit', 'environment/global-climate-talks', 'environment/sustainable-development', 'environment/environment', 'tone/interview', 'global-development/series/global-development-voices', 'type/article'] | environment/sustainable-development | CLIMATE_POLICY | 2012-06-15T09:23:06Z | true | CLIMATE_POLICY |
sustainable-business/2015/apr/14/startups-innovation-greentown-labs-incubator-tech-cleantech-massachusetts | When startups collide: Greentown Labs hopes working elbow to elbow can create innovation | When clean technology incubator Greentown Labs moved from South Boston, Massachusetts, to the neighboring city of Somerville in 2013, the sprawling new facility was a little daunting, said chief executive Emily Reichert. With 18 member companies – all small startups – the organization filled less than half the 33,000 square feet in the building. “At that time, it seemed like an incredibly big space,” she said. Less than two years later, Greentown Labs has expanded into every corner of the former envelope factory. With 44 member companies employing 285 people, Greentown Labs has become the largest clean tech incubator in the US, Reichert said. Member startups are working on everything from data-collecting sailboats to floating wind turbines. “It’s become a cultural center of forward thinking entrepreneurial activity,” said Gabe Blanchet, co-founder of Grove Labs, a Greentown tenant that is developing residential-scale aquaponic systems that allow tenants to grow vegetables indoors. The Boston area has long been known as a hub of innovation and entrepreneurial activity, from the computer technology corridor that boomed along Route 128 in the 1980s to today’s flourishing biosciences sector. Greentown Labs aims to join this tradition, giving innovative sustainability-focused startups the traction they need to turn their bold ideas into game-changing realities. But until one of its growing startups makes it big – something that has not happened yet – its model of collaboration and resource sharing remains unproven. Greentown Labs began in late 2010, when four clean energy startups, all with ties to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, came together to split the rent on a rundown warehouse space in East Cambridge. There, they could tinker, tweak, and try out their intended products. When the warehouse was demolished in 2011, the four companies moved to a space in South Boston, expanding and bringing in more young enterprises. After just two years, the incubator had outgrown its new space and decided to move again. When Somerville mayor Joseph Curtatone heard Greentown was looking for a new home, he decided to woo the group to his city, offering $300,000 in tax incentives. “They bring us everything we hope for in the type of companies we need to build our locally-sustainable economy,” said Curtatone, who also ordered one of Grove Labs’ first home aquaponics system. Framed by lime green and teal blue walls, Greentown’s Somerville office is a tightly-packed collection of desks where employees study product designs, cluster together around laptops, and share ideas and advice over cups of coffee. Workshop space runs along the back and side of the building, where 3D printers whirr, plants grow under LED lights, and prototypes are assembled and honed. Neither traditional incubators nor shared work spaces are new ideas. Greentown Labs, however, is carving out a distinctive space for itself somewhere between the two models. Unlike most incubators, Greentown does not take equity in member companies, nor seats on their boards. Accepted companies pay $425 per month for each desk they need and $3.20 per month for each square foot of lab space. Greentown does, however, shape the workplace environment with a careful member selection process. Successful applicants intend to produce manufactured products rather than software or services, and generally have existing investments from outside sources, Reichert said. To nurture collaboration, Greentown Labs will not accept any companies that are direct competitors with existing members. Perhaps most importantly, all members must have an interest in cleantech and in building businesses that solve global problems, Reichert said. The result of these policies is a group of companies that easily and eagerly trade expertise and advice, according to those involved. “Whenever we have a question or a problem, the first thing we do is throw it out to the Greentown email list,” said Ben Glass, CEO of high altitude wind turbine producer Altaeros Energies, another Greentown founder. Someone is almost always able to help immediately, he said. Greentown also forms partnerships with corporate sponsors, including Shell, Chevron, American Airlines and Microsoft. These sponsorships, which provide about 20% of Greentown’s revenue, according to Reichert, also connect member startups with major companies that in search of new technology. In addition, the incubator hosts networking events and job fairs to help member companies make business connections and find new employees and interns. Greentown is also hiring a manager who will help the young businesses contact and communicate with manufacturing partners. Often, Reichert said, new entrepreneurs have big ideas, but little practical knowledge about how to make the leap from prototype to production. She hopes the new manager will help bridge that gap. With the current facility at 100% occupancy, Greentown’s directors are considering what comes next. They are looking at ways to expand within Somerville and exploring partnerships elsewhere in Massachusetts, Reichert said. The group has already started consulting with organizations looking to build their own technology incubators. Jeff Anthony, director of the Energy Innovation Center at the Mid-West Energy Research Consortium in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, said Greentown’s advice has been crucial in developing plans for an innovation center. He point specifically to the idea of “maximizing collisions”: creating a space that generates encounters between occupants and their ideas. “They’ve been a proven success and we’re hoping to learn even more from them,” Anthony said. Meanwhile, many will continue watching Greentown to see if a physical space that increases collisions will ultimately end up sparking big wins – or not. This series on bold bets is funded by The B Team. All content is editorially independent except for pieces labelled “brought to you by”. Find out more here. | ['sustainable-business/series/bold-bets', 'sustainable-business/sustainable-business', 'environment/environment', 'environment/climate-crisis', 'environment/sustainable-development', 'us-news/us-news', 'business/business', 'business/small-business', 'business/entrepreneurs', 'technology/technology', 'business/ethicalbusiness', 'type/article', 'tone/features'] | environment/sustainable-development | CLIMATE_POLICY | 2015-04-14T20:03:57Z | true | CLIMATE_POLICY |
world/2015/jul/07/winds-climate-change-blast-burkina-faso-farmers | Winds of climate change blast farmers’ hopes of sustaining a livelihood in Burkina Faso | One afternoon towards the end of May a violent wind howled through Bogandé, the main town in Gnagna province, in eastern Burkina Faso. Raising a storm of dust and sand, it plunged the streets into semi-darkness, driving roaming goats crazy. In villages across Gnagna people connect these extreme climate events with deteriorating living standards. They explain how these increasingly frequent “red” winds wreak havoc, burying their crops in sand, destroying their homes, and spreading disease among their flocks. In late May, on the great Gnagna plain, the earth is dry, with deep cracks. An occasional tree – usually red acacia (Vachellia seyal) – stands out as a patch of green. In the villages, most of the wells have dried up. It is the toughest part of the year, when reserves from the previous harvest run low and the next one is not yet ripe. And still there is no rain. In 2014, just 538mm of rain fell here. Over the past 30 years, average annual rainfall has dropped by 200mm. “The Sahel climate zone is steadily spreading further south. Bogandé used to enjoy a Sudanese-Sahelian climate, but it is now borderline,” says Claire Gaillardou, head of the risks and disasters department at the Action Against Hunger (ACF) mission in Burkina Faso. “Since 1975 the [average] temperature has risen by 0.8C.” Tnidano Tissa, 78, remembers how the village looked when he was a child. “There were great African mahogany, locust bean, fig and shi trees, all of which produced fruit. In the rainy season, long grass protected the ground. All year long there was a bit of plant cover. We’d see antelopes, big savannah monitors and hyenas,” he says, drawing a smile from the youngest members of his audience, who have never seen such creatures. The plant cover has vanished, and trees are now a rarity. With diminishing rainfall, the soil is blown away by winds that grow ever more violent. “There are no longer any trees to slow them down,” says Lankoandé Diagnogou, 38, a neighbour of Tissa’s. At Tindandou, 45km away, Diawari Barbibilé, 63, is equally desperate. “The loss of plant cover has speeded up soil degradation, and the rainy season is very short,” he says. The rain comes later and is interspersed with long periods of drought. Across the region, rainfall is increasingly erratic and increasingly intense. The rain cuts into the ground and washes away the little humus – which is essential to the fertility of the earth – it contains. “That, in turn, can cause flooding, because water has difficulty penetrating bone-dry earth. Some years the run-off rate can be as high as 40%,” Gaillardou explains. ACF is trying to help communities adapt to these extreme climate events, which seem to get steadily worse. Assistance involves learning farming techniques that keep the water in the soil and reduce the effects of erosion. This year Barbibilé prepared three one-hectare fields, digging semi-circular hollows along the contour lines to trap as much rain as possible and create better conditions for sowing. He hopes this technique will yield a bigger crop. Ten years ago, Barbibilé was still harvesting “five cartloads” of grain. “We could live very nicely on what I grew, and I could sell the surplus,” he says. “But in the last few years the soil has become so poor that I don’t have anything to sell. The two cartloads I bring home are barely enough to feed the family. The rest of the crop is only fit for cattle-feed.” His 34-year-old son works with him now, and in all there are 16 mouths to feed. “The rain stops before the millet has even had time to fully ripen. If there’s no rain what you grow is worthless,” Barbibilé says. Due to the unpredictable rainfall he has had to give up the traditional crop of sorghum, which takes longer to ripen. He prefers to use white sorghum and pearl millet, with a shorter crop cycle. In Burkina Faso in late May, as they waited anxiously for the next crop, more than 330,000 people faced food insecurity. In Gnagna province, with an average of seven people in each household, the situation is far worse than in the rest of the country. Farmers are producing less than half the food they need to survive. After four to six months their reserves run out. In the worst years, they have no option but to sell part or all of their livestock – if they have any – or run up debts. “When we run short of food, we have to turn to one of our neighbours in the village who has sufficient resources to lend us food,” says André Dori, 38, who lives in Kongaye, in Gnagna province. Dori, who has four children, says he too can no longer meet his family’s needs. “These loans are in kind. With a 100% interest rate: for one sack of grain borrowed, I must pay back two. I am deep in debt, because my crops don’t ripen properly, due to the climate.” He has been unable to pay off any of his debts in recent years. Dori hopes things will get better through the use of improved techniques. With more bountiful harvests, he says, he could feed his family and even buy livestock. This article appeared in Guardian Weekly, which incorporates material from Le Monde | ['world/burkina-faso', 'world/sahel', 'world/africa', 'world/world', 'environment/climate-crisis', 'environment/drought', 'environment/environment', 'global-development/food-security', 'global-development/hunger', 'global-development/global-development', 'tone/features', 'type/article', 'profile/laetitia-van-eeckhout'] | environment/drought | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2015-07-07T07:47:38Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
sport/2023/jan/26/pressure-on-diamonds-for-world-cup-as-new-zealand-discover-a-gem-in-grace-nweke | Pressure on Diamonds for World Cup as New Zealand discover a gem in Grace Nweke | An increasingly self-assured Australia took out the Quad Series in Cape Town with victory over New Zealand in the final. But the tournament did more than re-confirm the Diamonds’ world No 1 status. Here’s what we learned with the 2023 World Cup in South Africa looming. It’s Grace Nweke’s world and we’re living in it Grace Nweke’s future biography will detail how she “arrived” at the 2023 Quad Series. The 20-year-old has been in the Silver Ferns set-up since 2021 and played a critical role in their Commonwealth bronze last year, but it was in Cape Town this week where she made the goal shooter bib her own. And it appears to be hers for as long as she wants it. Dame Noeline Taurua played the 193cm shooter in every minute of the four-game series and she shot a mammoth 166 from 180 at 92%, including 38/44 in the gold medal match. Nweke was MVP in the Ferns’ win over South Africa in the preliminary final round and was named player and shooter of the tournament. With a Jhaniele Fowler-esque physique and temperament, Nweke is dominant in a way that’s hard to combat. Strong, accurate in close and not afraid of the tough stuff, she’s a shooter a coach would design. Former Kiwi captain Anna Stanley says Nweke could become a legend, rivalling South African-born shooter Irene van Dyk, who played 72 Tests for the Proteas before moving to New Zealand and playing 145 more in black, making her one of the most capped international players ever. An old pressure returns for Diamonds As reigning Commonwealth Games, Constellation Cup and England series champions, Australia simply had to win the Quad Series. The prize for the Diamonds? The expectation and pressure of yet more success – more specifically, winning the World Cup in Cape Town later this year. If they didn’t already have it, Stacey Marinkovich’s team now carries the mantle of outright World Cup favouritism, given their dominance and growing consistency. The Diamonds, playing without arguably the best player in the world Gretel Bueta and injured defender Jo Weston, won from in front and came from behind, using fast ball-speed in attack, collective force in defence and patience and grind when required. When challenged they responded. Marinkovich, who inherited a team in 2020 with virtually no trophies in the cabinet, wanted to raise the bar in the series, acknowledging that 2022 form would not make the cut in 2023. And she was right, with New Zealand and South Africa stepping it up, while England has continued to slip. The performances of Liz Watson, Steph Wood, Cara Koenen, Courtney Bruce, Sarah Klau and Paige Hadley – who surely booked their places on the plane back to Cape Town in July – were stand-outs. Now the coach just has to work out the other six names. One-win Roses have thorny issues to address A slow-motion car crash. That was England’s Quad, as quiet pre-tournament worries about coach Jess Thirlby’s approach exploded into a public crisis for England Netball less than 190 days out from the World Cup … despite the side winning bronze. The Roses lost to Australia and New Zealand, by six and 10, and only managed a 46-all draw against South Africa in the preliminaries before this morning’s consolation final, which saw them hold off a brave Proteas outfit 49-42 in Jade Clarke’s 200th Test. Fans are calling for Thirlby to be sacked and the governing body to be more transparent about the team’s approach after the players seemingly lost faith in Thirlby in Cape Town, some unable to even look her in the eye post-match. There’s questions about why she took shooter Jo Harten, who has been carrying an injury since mid-2022, only to send her home just after it began and her selection strategy and in-game decision-making such as taking defender Funmi Fadoju off in the game against Australia when she was dominating. And many more besides. Thirlby, already under pressure given England didn’t medal at the Commonwealth Games last year, has struggled to blend the experience at her disposal with exciting emerging talent and to get her players to execute her game plan for 60 minutes. And now England Netball has a crash scene to clean up. ‘Plum’ and Pretorius have put Proteas back on track Two women who’ve come to define modern South African netball – coaching icon Norma Plummer and goal defender Karla Pretorius – returned for the Quad. And what a homecoming it was. The prodigal Proteas helped put the world #5 side back on track before the World Cup, after a period of underachievement which included a shock loss to Uganda at last year’s Commonwealth Games. The side put in a solid showing across the tournament, despite losing the bronze medal play-off to England. Pretorius, back after a year out to have a baby, and 78-year-old “Plum”, who late last year replaced Dorette Badenhorst, the coach who succeeded her after the 2019 World Cup, have injected much-needed professionalism and palpable confidence. Despite losing to New Zealand and Australia, a 46-all draw and a seven-goal loss to England in the medal play-off is a good return and will instill hope ahead of the Cup. As is her way, Plummer kept her expectations high and her coaching style pragmatic, asking live on-air earlier this week if anyone could find her “a 6’ 8” defender” to combat Grace Nweke, “that’d be great”. Pretorius delivered the Quad’s single-best moment of individual brilliance, when she somehow won possession while 2-on-1 in the Roses’ goal circle in the dying moments of their pool match, after her keeper Phumza Maweni was sent off. | ['sport/netball', 'sport/sport', 'sport/australia-sport', 'campaign/email/sports-au', 'sport/australia-netball-team--diamonds-', 'sport/new-zealand-netball-team', 'sport/england-netball-team', 'type/article', 'tone/features', 'profile/erin-delahunty', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/australia-sport'] | sport/england-netball-team | UNRELATED_TO_CLIMATE | 2023-01-26T04:44:49Z | true | UNRELATED_TO_CLIMATE |
world/2022/apr/01/russians-fled-chernobyl-with-radiation-sickness-says-ukraine-as-iaea-investigates | UN nuclear watchdog to head mission to Chernobyl as Russians withdraw from site | The head of the UN atomic watchdog has said he aims to lead a mission to Chernobyl as soon as possible, after Russian troops were reported to have largely withdrawn from the decommissioned nuclear power station. Rafael Grossi tweeted on Friday that he would head an International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) “assistance and support” mission to the highly contaminated site of the world’s worst nuclear accident in the first of a series of such visits to Ukrainian nuclear plants. The announcement came after Ukrainian officials said the Russian soldiers who had occupied the highly contaminated plant since 24 February – the first day of the invasion – had left taking several Ukrainian service personnel with them. Some Russians remained in the surrounding exclusion zone, they said. The Ukrainian state power company Energoatom alleged that the pullout followed a number of Russian soldiers receiving “significant doses” of radiation from digging trenches in the forest in the exclusion zone, a claim the IAEA said it could not independently confirm but would investigate. Energoatom said the troops had “panicked at the first sign of illness”, which “showed up very quickly”. Chernobyl’s No 4 reactor exploded on 26 April 1986, killing hundreds and spreading radioactive contamination west across Europe. The IAEA said earlier on Friday Kyiv had informed it that Russia had transferred control of the site back to the Ukrainians charged with overseeing the safe storage of spent fuel rods and maintaining the concrete-encased ruins of the reactor. But the UN agency said it could not independently confirm the claim that the Russian soldiers, whose capture of the plant raised fears around the world of increased radiological risks, had been exposed to radiation. Energoatom did not say how many soldiers were involved and gave no details of how they had been affected. The Ukrainian deputy prime minister Iryna Vereshchuk also said Russian troops were exposed to radiation after digging trenches in the forest. Some Ukrainian reports have suggested the soldiers were taken to a special medical facility in nearby Belarus after driving tanks through the exclusion zone, kicking up radioactive dust. The Kremlin has not commented on the claims. Edwin Lyman, a nuclear expert with the US-based Union of Concerned Scientists, told the Associated Press on Friday it seemed unlikely a large number of troops would develop severe radiation illness, but added that it was impossible to know for sure without more details. Citing plant workers, Energoatom said in a statement on Friday that the “Russian occupiers, as they ran away from the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, took members of the national guard, whom they had held hostage since 24 February, with them”. The Ukrainian government had repeatedly expressed safety concerns about Chernobyl and demanded the immediate withdrawal of the Russian troops, whose presence prevented the normal rotation of personnel for several weeks. Russian forces also retreated from the nearby town of Slavutych, where Chernobyl workers lived, Energoatom said, and the IAEA said it was preparing to send its first assistance and support mission to Chernobyl within the next few days. Grossi was due to hold talks with senior Russian officials in Kaliningrad on Friday after visiting a nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine on Wednesday on his first trip to the country since the invasion. The IAEA chief, who has repeatedly warned of the dangers of the conflict – Ukraine has 15 reactors at four active nuclear power plants, as well as stores of nuclear waste at Chernobyl and elsewhere – was expected to hold a press conference at the IAEA’s headquarters in Vienna later on Friday. | ['world/ukraine', 'environment/chernobyl-nuclear-disaster', 'world/russia', 'world/europe-news', 'environment/nuclearpower', 'environment/environment', 'world/world', 'environment/energy', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/jonhenley', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/uknews', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/australia-foreign', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-foreign'] | environment/nuclearpower | ENERGY | 2022-04-01T11:49:42Z | true | ENERGY |
commentisfree/2013/nov/26/kieron-bryan-arctic-30-bail | My son, Kieron Bryan, one of the Arctic 30, is out on bail. But it's not over yet | Andy Bryan | When our son, Kieron Bryan, was arrested by the Russian security forces on the Arctic Sunrise, we were stunned. Greenpeace called to say that the whole group were to be charged with piracy and it felt like I'd been struck. I felt sick and had to break the news to my wife. Tears followed and then attempts to assure ourselves there was no way Kieron could spend years in a Russian jail. When he first told us he had accepted the offer to film Greenpeace's planned action in the Arctic to protest against the drilling for oil, it was no surprise to us; he has never shied away from challenging assignments. He was aware that there was an element of risk involved and that Russian authorities would be keeping a close eye on their activities, although we all assumed that his role on the boat, not as an activist or even a member of Greenpeace, but as a documenter and videographer would ensure that the trip would land him nothing more than a good story. We heard from Kieron on Tuesday 17 September when he told us that the Russian coastguard had said hello. Kieron is a thoughtful and level-headed young man, so he may have underplayed events unfolding at sea to make sure we wouldn't worry. We then heard that the ship had been seized by Russian special forces and those on board were held at gunpoint while the ship was towed to Murmansk. When we saw the pictures of the dramatic boarding of the ship, we began to fear for his safety. Our next contact came almost a week later when he called to say that he was being taken to a detention centre, but expected to be there for no longer than 10 days. Life from that moment on changed dramatically – we had no way to contact Kieron, nor him us. We travelled to London where we attended a protest outside the Russian embassy, alongside hundreds of people rallying in support of the Arctic 30 and a mass of people wearing T-shirts in support. We had meetings with his MP, Harriet Harman, and the Foreign Office, as well as countless media interviews, as we tried desperately to keep Kieron's plight in the news. After 10 days or so he managed to get us a letter which said that he wanted us to tell everyone that he was not an activist, but a journalist simply "doing my job". Reports of awful conditions in Murmansk emerged, through Kieron and many of the others. He told us of spending 23 hours a day in his cell, a lot of it in isolation. It was cold and the food was awful. We were scared for their safety and health. Soon after, rumours emerged that they were to be moved to St Petersburg, to a more modern facility. Encouraging. Then the situation seemed to take a turn for the worse when the investigators announced that they would be looking for an extension of the detention period for another three months. My heart sank, I couldn't imagine what could possibly be taking them so long to investigate. That would mean almost half a year in prison before a trial. On top of that was the injustice we felt because we knew he was neither a pirate or a hooligan. We were desperate to get to Russia for the upcoming court dates and applied for an overnight visa, but it never came. So we watched on the TV, hoping and willing for something to change, someone to see sense. It is difficult to describe our feelings when bail was granted and we saw Kieron finally emerge on Friday morning from the detention centre smiling and looking up at the sky. Relief that he is no longer stuck in a cell, and has some of his freedom back. Joy to talk to him for the first time in two months. We wish it could have been in person. But this is just the first step, just bail. He is still stuck in St Petersburg and needs to clear his name – he has committed no crime and simply wants justice to be done. While I know that he enjoyed his first proper meal in some time this weekend, and a beer while watching his beloved Spurs, until he is home all of our lives remain in limbo. | ['commentisfree/commentisfree', 'environment/arctic-30-protesters', 'tone/comment', 'world/russia', 'world/world', 'world/protest', 'environment/activism', 'environment/greenpeace', 'environment/environment', 'type/article', 'profile/andy-bryan'] | environment/greenpeace | CLIMATE_ACTIVISM | 2013-11-26T09:02:19Z | true | CLIMATE_ACTIVISM |
environment/2020/sep/30/world-plant-species-risk-extinction-fungi-earth | 40% of world’s plant species at risk of extinction | Two in five of the world’s plant species are at risk of extinction as a result of the destruction of the natural world, according to an international report. Plants and fungi underpin life on Earth, but the scientists said they were now in a race against time to find and identify species before they were lost. These unknown species, and many already recorded, were an untapped “treasure chest” of food, medicines and biofuels that could tackle many of humanity’s greatest challenges, they said, potentially including treatments for coronavirus and other pandemic microbes. More than 4,000 species of plants and fungi were discovered in 2019. These included six species of Allium in Europe and China, the same group as onions and garlic, 10 relatives of spinach in California and two wild relatives of cassava, which could help future-proof the staple crop eaten by 800 million people against the climate crisis. New medical plants included a sea holly species in Texas, whose relatives can treat inflammation, a species of antimalarial Artemisa in Tibet and three varieties of evening primrose. “We would not be able to survive without plants and fungi – all life depends on them – and it is really time to open the treasure chest,” said Prof Alexandre Antonelli, the director of science at the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew, in the UK. RBG Kew led the report, which involved 210 scientists from 42 countries. “Every time we lose a species, we lose an opportunity for humankind,” Antonelli said. “We are losing a race against time as we are probably losing species faster than we can find and name them.” The UN revealed last week that the world’s governments failed to meet a single target to stem biodiversity losses in the last decade. The researchers based their assessment of the proportion of species under threat of extinction on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List. But only a small fraction of the 350,000 known plant species have been assessed, so the scientists used statistical techniques to adjust for biases in the data, such as the lack of fieldwork in some regions. They also used artificial intelligence to assess little-known areas. “We now have AI approaches that are up to 90% accurate,” said Eimear Nic Lughadha, a senior research leader at RBG Kew. “These are good enough to say, ‘this area has a lot of species that haven’t been assessed but are almost certainly threatened’.” In 2019, Nic Lughadha reported that 571 species had been wiped out since 1750, although the true number was likely to be much higher. The 2016 State of Plants report found one in five were threatened, but the new analysis reveals the real risk to be much higher. The main cause of plant losses is the destruction of wild habitat to create farmland. Overharvesting of wild plants, building, invasive species, pollution and, increasingly, the climate crisis are also important causes of losses. Billions of people rely on herbal medicines as their primary source of healthcare, but the report found that 723 species used as treatments are threatened with extinction. These include a type of red angel’s trumpet in South America used for circulatory disorders that is now extinct in the wild and an Indian pitcher plant traditionally used for skin diseases. “Only 7% of [known] plants have documented uses as medicines and therefore the world’s plants and fungi remain largely untapped as potential sources of new medicines,” said Melanie-Jayne Howes, a research leader at RBG Kew. “So it is absolutely critical that we better protect biodiversity so we are better prepared for emerging challenges to our planet and our health.” Prof Monique Simmons, who researches the uses of plants and fungi at RBG Kew, said nature was a key place to look for treatments for coronaviruses and other diseases with pandemic potential: “I am absolutely sure going forward that some of the leads for the next generation of drugs in this area will come from plants and fungi.” The report also highlighted the very small number of plant species that humanity depends on for food. This makes supplies vulnerable to changes in climate and new diseases, especially with the world’s population expected to rise to 10 billion by 2050. Half the world’s people depend on rice, maize and wheat and just 15 plants provide 90% of all calories. “The good news is that we have over 7,000 edible plant species that we could use in the future to really secure our food system,” said Tiziana Ulian, a senior research leader at RBG Kew. These species are all nutritious, robust, at low risk of extinction, and have a history of being used as local foods, but just 6% are grown at significant scale. Potential future foods include the morama bean, a drought-tolerant South African legume that tastes like cashew nuts when roasted, and a species of pandan fruit that grows from Hawaii to the Philippines. Stefano Padulosi, a former senior scientist at the Alliance of Biodiversity International, said: “The thousands of neglected plant species are the lifeline to millions of people on Earth tormented by unprecedented climate change, pervasive food and nutrition insecurity, and [poverty]. “Harnessing this basket of untapped resources for making food production systems more diverse and resilient to change should be our moral duty.” The report also found the current levels of beekeeping in cities such as London was threatening wild bees, as there was insufficient nectar and pollen available to support beehive numbers and honeybees were outcompeting wild bees. | ['environment/plants', 'environment/biodiversity', 'environment/conservation', 'environment/environment', 'science/fungi', 'environment/wildlife', 'science/biology', 'science/science', 'global-development/food-security', 'environment/food', 'environment/farming', 'food/food', 'environment/climate-crisis', 'global-development/global-development', 'society/society', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/damiancarrington', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/uknews', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-environment'] | environment/farming | BIODIVERSITY | 2020-09-29T23:01:23Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
science/2024/nov/03/why-geography-lessons-are-the-key-to-climate-awareness | Why geography lessons are the key to climate awareness | Letters | The Guardian’s reporting on the Spanish floods highlights how “natural disasters” are now, rightly, seen as climate disasters (Editorial, 1 November). As Dr Ilan Kelman describes in Disaster by Choice, the uncomfortable truth is that the majority of “natural disasters” are created or exacerbated by human choices. In order to better prepare for such challenges, we need young people to become knowledgeable about, and positively engaged with, how the human and physical worlds interact – work that starts in the geography classroom. Indeed, to study flood risk many geography pupils might not need to go much further than their school’s gates. The Department for Education has identified 10,700 schools currently at risk of flooding, which will rise to over 13,000 by the 2050s. One debate that the curriculum and assessment review notes is whether the school curriculum is meeting young people’s needs in a world of rapid social, technological and environmental change. And, if we are to better prepare young people for their future, one of the review’s outcomes should be a strengthened geography curriculum. Steve Brace Chief executive, Geographical Association • Have an opinion on anything you’ve read in the Guardian today? Please email us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our letters section. | ['science/geography', 'education/geographyandenvironmentstudies', 'education/education', 'science/science', 'environment/climate-crisis', 'environment/flooding', 'environment/environment', 'world/extreme-weather', 'world/world', 'world/spain', 'type/article', 'tone/letters', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/journal', 'theguardian/journal/letters', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-letters-and-leader-writers'] | environment/flooding | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2024-11-03T16:51:04Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
business/2019/aug/19/leading-us-bosses-group-drops-principle-of-shareholder-first | Leading US bosses drop shareholder-first principle | The bosses of 181 of the US’s biggest companies have changed the official definition of “the purpose of a corporation” from making the most money possible for shareholders to “improving our society” by also looking out for employees, caring for the environment and dealing ethically. The radical change to the mantra of corporate America comes after decades of following Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman’s philosophy, which dates from 1970, that “the social responsibility of business is to increase its profits”. Big business bosses signing up to the change by the influential Business Roundtable (BRT) lobby group include Jeff Bezos, the founder and chief executive of Amazon (and the world’s richest person), the Apple boss, Tim Cook, and Jamie Dimon, chairman and CEO of Wall Street bank JPMorgan. The change follows mounting public and political anger at the yawning gap between rich and poor in the US and across the world. Many of the leading contenders for the 2020 Democratic party presidential nomination, including Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, have attacked the rocketing pay of business leaders and called for a rethink about the purpose of business together with better pay and protections for workers. Dimon, who is also chairman of the BRT group which includes companies that collectively generate $7tn (£5.7tn) in annual revenue, said: “These modernised principles reflect the business community’s unwavering commitment to continue to push for an economy that serves all Americans.” The bank boss, who got a $2m pay rise to $31m last year, added: “The American dream is alive, but fraying.” He said big companies recognised they had to invest in their workers and communities because “it is the only way to be successful over the long-term”. Instead of focusing solely on “shareholder primacy” (making as much money as possible for investors) the businesspeople have now pledged to “lead their companies for the benefit of all stakeholders – customers, employees, suppliers, communities and shareholders”. The wording of the BRT’s statement is similar to Senator Warren’s proposed accountable capitalism act, which would require corporations to be responsible to all “including employees, customers, shareholders and the communities in which the company operates”. “There’s a fundamental problem with our economy,” Warren said. “For decades, American workers have helped create record corporate profits but have seen their wages hardly budge. To fix this problem we need to end the harmful corporate obsession with maximising shareholder returns at all costs, which has sucked trillions of dollars away from workers and necessary long-term investments.” In the UK, the Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, has also called for a shake-up on boardroom pay and financial regulation to help address inequality and the “profoundly unbalanced economy”. “It could not be clearer, business as usual is not working,” Corbyn said last year. “And when the rules of the game are not working for the overwhelming majority, the rules of the game need to change.” Albert Bourla, chief executive of pharmaceutical company Pfizer, said he was proud to be among the signatories to “commit to lead their companies for the benefit of all stakeholders”. Bourla, who recently took over as CEO, is in line to collect total pay of $16.2m. Several of the world’s richest and most powerful business people have recently warned that capitalism is failing. The hedge fund billionaire Ray Dalio said income inequality poses an “existential threat” to the US as it could lead to conflict, populism and “revolution of one sort or another”. “I believe that all good things taken to an extreme can be self-destructive and that everything must evolve or die. This is now true for capitalism,” he said in a long post on LinkedIn. The former Starbucks chief executive Howard Schultz said the US faces a “crisis of capitalism” and has called for higher taxes on the wealthy. In his annual letter to shareholders this year, Dimon, said : “Forty per cent of American workers earn less than $15 an hour, and about 5% of full-time American workers earn the minimum wage or less, which is certainly not a living wage.” Carys Roberts, chief economist at the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) thinktank, said: “Shareholder primacy is a worn-out theory that does not serve the long-term interests of firms, the economy, and the people an economy should work for. “This is an important intervention from US business leaders in recognition of the failure of shareholder primacy: but the real test will be in deeds not words.” She added: “It’s notable that this intervention follows political debate about the state of modern capitalism On both sides of the Atlantic, business leaders are waking up to the fact that the public won’t stand for business as usual.” The BRT’s new statement of purpose reads: “Americans deserve an economy that allows each person to succeed through hard work and creativity and to lead a life of meaning and dignity. We believe the free-market system is the best means of generating good jobs, a strong and sustainable economy, innovation, a healthy environment and economic opportunity for all.” The bosses of eight of BRT’s member companies did not sign up to the new principles. The companies that declined are Alcoa, Blackstone, GE, Kaiser Permanente, NextEra, Parker Hannifin and State Farm. The five new principles at a glance: Delivering value to our customers Investing in our employees. This starts with compensating them fairly. We foster diversity and inclusion, dignity and respect Dealing fairly and ethically with our suppliers Protecting the environment by embracing sustainable practices Generating long-term value for shareholders | ['business/corporate-governance', 'business/business', 'environment/corporatesocialresponsibility', 'us-news/us-news', 'world/world', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/simongoodley', 'profile/rupertneate', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/financial3', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-business'] | environment/corporatesocialresponsibility | CLIMATE_POLICY | 2019-08-19T17:51:17Z | true | CLIMATE_POLICY |
society/2014/feb/11/york-flooding-defences-government-investment | The fight against flooding in York | Kersten England | We have a long history of dealing with flooding in York. Built at the confluence of the rivers Ouse and Foss, and with much of the land in and around the city on flood plains, we are now, out of necessity, well drilled in the disciplines of flood management. York experiences a level of flooding that requires us to implement our first-line flood defences at least two or three times a year. We've had a strong partnership for over 20 years with the emergency services, Yorkshire Water and the Environment Agency. We've made investments, prepared and implemented flood management plans and learned some tough lessons. In 1982 and 2000, hundreds of properties were flooded and people evacuated, but, with similar water levels in 2012, only 53 properties were affected and no one evacuated. We used an inflatable to ferry social-care staff to one of our care homes and introduced the Fordlands Ferry – a council truck that ferried residents across a key section of flooded road connecting a community to the city. Huge effort and long shifts from staff, and action from residents, businesses and volunteers kept the city going. We've worked hard to implement a successful flood response plan and early warning system. We have built a network of incredible volunteers and experienced staff who are ready for action even before flooding occurs. We know those residents in homes likely to be affected and they know our guys on the ground and, critically, who to call for assistance. And we are increasingly using social media to provide instant updates from across the city to keep residents, visitors and ourselves informed. Last summer, we brought support agencies from across the city together with residents and business to share lessons learned from recent floods. This was a chance to reinforce the messages that there is support available to them before, during and after flooding occurs. We worked with partners to highlight some of the effective measures for protecting homes and businesses, some of which can be done as a community. These include those who supply and install products that offer protection for properties, community-based flood stores (sandbags and flood sacks) and personal flood protection measures such as flood barriers to front doors and air grates. We made available information on alert systems in place through the Environment Agency, Yorkshire Water and the council. We talked about the council's flood relief fund, and support and information on the city's clear-up works. The council has always offered a 100% council tax discount on homes that are uninhabitable and in need of repair due to river flooding. We would expect any properties eligible for council tax discount to be brought back into use within six months, and our inspectors monitor this closely. The fight against flooding for a city like York will not end. A multimillion pound scheme to help protect 300 residents' homes and businesses from the risk of flooding in an area called Water End is the latest effort under way, backed by council and Environment Agency funding. Central to the development of this scheme has been homeowners and businesses giving their much valued time, thoughts and support in helping us to find the best solution. On a much wider, national agenda, the council has been lobbying major insurers on issues that residents and businesses have highlighted to us – accessing insurance, ensuring claims are processed quickly and getting replacement items which will proof them against further instances of flooding. Local government faces the toughest year yet when it comes to questions being raised about whether to continue to deliver certain services and how we deliver them, given the scale of reduction to our funding from government. We work with our communities to keep York safe from flooding, but ultimately the cost of protecting our communities will continue to be more than we can afford. There will need to be a commitment for continued significant investment from government. Kersten England is chief executive of City of York council | ['society/series/publicmanager', 'society/localgovernment', 'society/communities', 'society/society', 'environment/flooding', 'world/natural-disasters', 'environment/environment', 'uk/uk', 'tone/features', 'society/emergencyplanning', 'type/article', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/society'] | environment/flooding | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2014-02-11T14:02:00Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
commentisfree/2014/apr/15/australiansforcoal-is-the-latest-sign-of-an-industry-in-values-freefall | #AustraliansForCoal is the latest sign of an industry in values freefall | David Ritter | During the second world war, my dad performed his war service down the coal mines in the UK. The work cost him his sense of smell, but gave him a profound sense of camaraderie and regard for the men he served with down in the coal pits. Until the end of his life, my dad was proud of his modest contribution to the peoples’ war against fascism. Seven decades later and, sadly, coal mining is no longer a noble endeavour. Once upon a time, coal miners justifiably believed they were building Australia’s prosperity. Today, such a belief is no longer credible. The problem for coal is that it is the single greatest driver of climate change. Professor James Hansen calls coal “the single greatest threat to civilisation and all life on our planet”. The IPCC’s latest report has simply underlined the overwhelming existing scientific and economic case for rapidly shifting away from coal and other fossil fuels. But like the tobacco industry before it, the coal industry refuses to face its responsibilities, and instead puts all its energies into hitting out. And those efforts are looking increasingly desperate. Yesterday’s bizarre emergence of the Mineral Council’s online "Australians for Coal" platform is just the latest sign of an industry in values freefall. The initiative has proven a lightning rod for social media ridicule: just check out #Australiansforcoal on Twitter. As 350.org put it in one tweet: “[w]e love a good corporate hashtag backfire & #australiansforcoal is awesome right now.” The coal industry is in a state of moral collapse, moving ever further away from public standards of good and responsible behaviour, even as the commercial prospects for the commodity are in steep decline. And, without a functioning moral compass, the coal industry has become mired in a sea of ridicule of its own making. Just last week, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, seen by so many as an icon of hope and moral integrity, called for an apartheid-era style campaign against the whole fossil fuel industry on the grounds of climate change. But it is not only famous figures who know the game is up for the coal industry. Dramatically, Australians from all walks of life, including war veterans, religious leaders and farmers, are now regularly engaging in civil disobedience against the coal industry because of their deeply held moral concerns. The collapse of the coal industry’s reputation has been cemented by any number of other unsavoury episodes, from being found out giving dodgy economic figures to government; open conflict with rural communities; the Morwell fire disaster; tipping money that was allocated for developing carbon capture and storage into a promotional slush fund; and of course obtaining permission to dredge and dump near the Great Barrier Reef in order to build new coal port infrastructure. The list of scandals and outrages associated with the coal industry seems to get longer by the day. Yet none of this is to have a go at the working people who show up to earn a fair day’s pay at their practical jobs in the coal mining industry. The fault lies at an investor and executive level. Perhaps the clearest indication of the coal industry’s ethical and moral collapse lies in how it is responding to its own crisis. Instead of facing up to its responsibilities, the coal industry has responded with calls for the draconian use of state force to quell protest. Yesterday Stephen Galilee, the chief executive of the NSW Minerals Council, called for “heavy fines” and “jail time” for coal protestors. Does he want such penalties applied, to, say Bill Ryan, the 92 year old legally blind Kokoda veteran who is so worried about the impacts of climate change on his grandchildren that he has now been arrested twice protesting at the Maules Creek coal mine? The coal industry also seems increasingly intent on claiming that the sector’s real concern is human poverty in developing countries. The most striking example of this corporate Orwellian exercise is Peabody Energy’s slick and expensive "advanced energy for life" campaign, dreamt up by PR giants Burson-Marsteller. The fact that the first and worst impacts of climate change will fall upon the poor and vulnerable within most societies render such claims particularly perverse. In reality, it's hard to imagine that many fossil fuel companies have any interest whatsoever beyond their bottom line. Which brings us back to the excruciating digital and social media fail of Australians for Coal. In social media, people tend to sniff a lack of authenticity a mile away. Yet the real embarrassment for the coal industry lies in the very establishment of Australians for Coal because any decent industry on a proper ethical footing does not need to try and confect the appearance of public support. #Australiansforcoal - because when the arrogant, powerful and greedy are challenged by morality, economics and science, they don’t like it. | ['commentisfree/commentisfree', 'australia-news/australia-news', 'australia-news/australian-politics', 'environment/environment', 'environment/coal', 'environment/mining', 'business/mining', 'type/article', 'tone/comment', 'profile/david-ritter'] | environment/mining | ENERGY | 2014-04-15T05:11:50Z | true | ENERGY |
global-development/2011/nov/09/talk-point-pakistan-floods-relief-donations | Talk point: Why have donations for Pakistan flood relief been so low? | Aid agencies warned on Wednesday that they may be forced to close Pakistan flood relief programmes because they have not raised enough money to continue the work. But why haven't people and governments been donating to help the millions of people affected by the floods that hit the country in August? The UN's $357m appeal has received only $96.5m so far; Oxfam has raised only $12.8m of the $36.1m it wanted; Save the Children is operating with a shortfall of around a third; and Care is facing a shortfall in funds of 91%. Aid agencies are urgently calling on the donor community to step up its response. What's causing this apathy? There was controversy over donations to Pakistan in May when we discussed the debate in the US over withholding aid to Pakistan in light of Osama bin Laden's death. There has also been huge coverage this year of the Horn of Africa food crisis and famine in Somalia, which came with its own donations controversy over whether oversimplifying aid messages to raise money was a legitimate action by aid agencies. Is it just that kind of oversimplified message about development that's causing donor fatigue? We debated whether NGOs should be fundraising for Japan in March, which raised questions about opportunistic donation appeals on weary publics. Rather than quick fixes, should aid agencies be seeking to tell the longer and more complicated story about resilience building? Aid agencies have levelled blame on a lack of media coverage. Should the media have done more to highlight this year's flooding, or has it been too preoccupied with the eurozone financial crisis and recession? Tell us what you think below, or email development@theguardian.com if you have trouble publishing or would rather remain anonymous. | ['global-development/series/development-talk-point', 'global-development/aid', 'global-development/global-development', 'world/pakistan', 'world/world', 'world/pakistan-flood', 'world/natural-disasters', 'world/tsunamis', 'type/article', 'profile/jaz-cummins'] | world/tsunamis | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2011-11-09T13:06:53Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
politics/2019/jun/21/mark-field-suspended-as-minister-after-grabbing-climate-protester-by-neck | Mark Field suspended as minister after grabbing climate protester by neck | Mark Field has been suspended as a Foreign Office minister after a video showed him pushing a female Greenpeace activist against a pillar and grabbing her neck while she protested at the chancellor’s Mansion House speech. Police are investigating third-party reports of assault made against Field, who has since apologised to the protester. The MP for the Cities of London and Westminster said he had felt threatened when the protester walked past him and was worried she might have been armed. Downing Street said Theresa May had viewed the footage of the incident on Thursday night and decided to suspend him. The activist, Janet Barker, said on Friday that she was incredulous at his reaction and welcomed the suspension but would not press criminal charges. “I think it is something best dealt with in the court of opinion,” she said. Barker said Field had pushed her so hard as they reached the door that she had almost fallen. She said he should take anger management classes. “I want him to think about what he did, why he did it and address his behaviour.” She said she had made no sudden movements or behaved in any way that could have been construed as physically threatening. “I had a phone and a tiny handbag, which was open and full of leaflets,” she said. “The only thing I was armed with was peer-reviewed science.” Labour challenged the Conservatives to suspend Field from the party and the whip pending the outcome of the investigation into his behaviour. The prime minister’s spokeswoman said: “She found it very concerning. The police have said they are looking into reports over this matter. “He will be suspended as a minister while this investigation takes place. Mansion House are looking into the breach of security that took place and we believe it is right they are now reviewing their security arrangements.” May is understood to have spoken to her chief whip, Julian Smith, after viewing the footage, and Smith told Field he had been suspended mid-morning on Friday. Asked whether Conservative MPs including Peter Bottomley and Johnny Mercer should have been defending Field in the media while he was being investigated, the spokeswoman repeated that the prime minister had found the footage to be a cause for concern. Field was a minister in Jeremy Hunt’s team at the Foreign Office and was supporting him in the Tory leadership contest. Hunt told the BBC: “Mark has issued a full and unreserved apology. He recognises that what happened was an over-reaction.” Philip Hammond was preparing to deliver his set-piece address in the City of London when dozens of Greenpeace activists interrupted him to give an alternative speech about the climate crisis, video footage shows. In a statement released in the early hours of Friday before his suspension, Field said he had reacted “instinctively”. He said he “grasped the intruder firmly in order to remove her from the room as swiftly as possible. “I deeply regret this episode and unreservedly apologise to the lady concerned for grabbing her but in the current climate I felt I needed to act decisively to close down the threat to the safety of those present.” Field said he had referred himself to the Cabinet Office to “examine if there has been a breach of the ministerial code” and that he would cooperate fully with its investigation. Guests at the event raised concerns about security because the protesters appeared to have evaded airport-style checks. “It seemed to be very difficult to get the security at the venue to do their job once it became clear that something was happening,” one person who was present complained. Attendees said they feared a terrorist attack was taking place in the seconds after the activists burst in, but quickly realised they were climate protesters. The incident involving Field is understood to have taken place on the opposite side of the hall from where the majority of protesters were stopped trying to give Hammond and the Bank of England governor, Mark Carney, their alternative speech and distribute leaflets. One guest said Field’s actions had “raised eyebrows” and left those who saw the incident shocked. Asked what happened when the protesters entered the hall, a financier said: “People stopped talking and listened politely. A lady kept reading the same sentences over and over again, but she was very polite. We listened for three to four minutes, said thank you very much and clapped. Then they were asked to leave and security took them out. “They came straight in. I don’t know how they managed to do it. I brought my passport with me for an ID check when I arrived but it did not happen, but there were security scanners,” he said. Some of the male protesters – who were wearing black tie – appear to have sat down at the dining tables, before getting up as a group and leaving to join the female protesters who were wearing distinctive red dresses with a sash saying “Climate emergency.” Questions were being asked in political circles about whether the chancellor would return to Mansion House given the lack of security. “You’ve had protests when George Osborne has appeared and now this. Liz Truss was there, but if she becomes chancellor it’s not a certainty she’ll be back to give a speech this time next year,” a guest said. The City of London Corporation, which organises the dinner, said it was investigating the security breach. Greenpeace did not provide details of how the activists gained entry to Mansion House. Field’s situation is complicated by the fact that he has been responsible for the UK government’s response to the crisis in Hong Kong, where he called this week for allegations of “inappropriate use of force by the Hong Kong police” to be properly investigated. Questions about his own conduct could make it harder for him to press for restraint in Hong Kong. | ['politics/conservatives', 'environment/greenpeace', 'environment/activism', 'politics/politics', 'environment/environment', 'world/protest', 'uk/uk', 'world/world', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/patrick-greenfield', 'profile/carolinedavies', 'profile/dan-sabbagh', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/uknews', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-home-news'] | environment/greenpeace | CLIMATE_ACTIVISM | 2019-06-21T16:02:04Z | true | CLIMATE_ACTIVISM |
australia-news/2020/nov/09/nsw-unveils-32bn-renewable-energy-plan-with-focus-on-pumped-hydro | NSW unveils $32bn renewable energy plan with focus on pumped hydro | The New South Wales government is promising a $32bn private investment boom in renewable energy in regional areas under a plan to transform the state’s electricity infrastructure. The state Coalition says an electricity infrastructure roadmap would support 12 gigawatts of renewable energy and 2 gigawatts of energy storage, with a focus on pumped hydro, over the next decade. Initial analysis of the plan, which is backed by the Labor party, suggests it could increase the share of renewable energy in the state from about 16% today to more than 60% by 2030. Government ministers said it would replace most of the state’s increasingly unreliable coal power plants, lower power prices, create more than 6,000 construction and 2,800 ongoing jobs and develop a new revenue stream for landholders hosting electricity infrastructure. They said the plan would “cut red tape” to speed up approvals for transmission infrastructure in renewable energy zones in the central west, New England and near Wagga Wagga, and create a long-term investment signal for new investment in renewable energy. The environment and energy minister, Matt Kean, described the renewable energy zones as being the modern equivalent of the ageing coal-power power stations that they will replace. At least four of the state’s five coal plants are expected to shut over the next 15 years, starting with the Liddell generator in early 2023. The government plans to attract investment in the zones by holding reverse auctions to award 20-year contracts that will give energy companies a guaranteed minimum floor price for the electricity they generate. The auctions will be run by a new office known as the consumer trustee. Kean said the roadmap would position NSW as an energy superpower. “Our priority is to keep the lights on and get power prices down, with the roadmap forecast to save NSW households an average of $130 and small businesses an average of $430 on their electricity bills each year,” he said. The deputy premier and Nationals leader, John Barilaro, said the plan would make sure renewable projects were built “where local communities want them” in ways that are compatible with farming. He suggested landowners could earn $1.5bn in lease payments by 2042. The commitment also includes $50m in grants for pumped hydro projects. The state push contrasts with the Morrison government’s emphasis on a gas-led recovery from the Covid-19 crisis and refusal to introduce an overarching policy to encourage private investment in renewable energy after the national renewable energy target was filled last year. The federal Coalition is instead promising to underwrite new investments in pumped hydro, gas and, in one case, coal to provide the “firm” generation needed to support the rapid increase in variable wind and solar power. It has also set “stretch goals” to lower the cost of some “clean” technologies as part of its technology investment roadmap. These goals are not tied to a timeframe or emissions reduction trajectory. Farmers welcome energy plan Conservationists and farming groups welcomed the NSW announcement. Charlie Prell, a sheep farmer and the chair of Farmers for Climate Action, said it would create a more resilient and prosperous agriculture sector. He said large-scale renewables could help drought-proof farmers “by providing a reliable, off-farm income stream, while also reducing emissions”. “Hosting wind turbines on my own farm has given me and my family a lifeline as we battle the droughts and floods that are being exacerbated by climate change,” he said. The Australian Conservation Foundation said it was great to see bipartisan support for an energy transition plan. “The federal government could learn from this roadmap – the future is in clean energy, not dirty, polluting fuels like gas,” Gavan McFadzean, the foundation’s climate change program manager, said. The Morrison government has resisted the global push to cut emissions to net zero by 2050, which has gained pace with the election of US president-elect Joe Biden. It has a 2030 emissions target of a 26%-28% cut below 2005 levels, having rejected a science-based recommendation by the Climate Change Authority of a reduction of between 45% and 60% over that timeframe. Prior to Covid-19, national emissions had reduced just 2.2% since the Coalition was elected in 2013 and official data released last December suggested Australia would miss its 2030 target unless it used a contentious carbon accounting measure rejected by other countries. | ['australia-news/new-south-wales', 'australia-news/new-south-wales-politics', 'australia-news/energy-australia', 'environment/environment', 'environment/renewableenergy', 'australia-news/australia-news', 'environment/energy', 'australia-news/rural-australia', 'australia-news/liberal-party', 'environment/climate-crisis', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/adam-morton', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/australia-news'] | environment/renewableenergy | ENERGY | 2020-11-08T23:02:01Z | true | ENERGY |
uk/2011/nov/10/greenpeace-launches-rainbow-warrior-glastonbury | Greenpeace launches Rainbow Warrior III with help of Glastonbury founder | Michael Eavis first went to sea in 1951, when he was a 15-year-old farmer's son from an undistinguished village near Glastonbury. The death of his father four years later brought an end to his career as a sailor, however, and he returned to manage the dairy herd and, almost by accident years later, to found Europe's biggest music festival. He has never lost his sea legs, however, and on Thursday the 76-year-old fulfilled a six-decade aspiration to take his place again behind the bridge of a ship. That the vessel was the brand new Rainbow Warrior, the flagship of Greenpeace which Eavis has long supported, was all the more fitting. There was no call for his training to take sextant measurements, but a stint behind the wheel had him giggling like a schoolboy. The ship, freshly launched from its German shipyard, is undergoing sea trials and so the first, Eavis-directed voyage (though the actual navigation was in the hands of the captain and a Thames river pilot) was a brief one, from West India Dock in London's east end to a mooring alongside the Design Museum on the South Bank. "I'd love to take her under there," said the American captain Joel Stewart gesturing at Tower Bridge, "but that's a battle we would not win." Even with the bridge open, the ship's enormous 55m mast is more than 10m too tall to journey any further up the Thames. This is the third Rainbow Warrior to sail under Greenpeace's livery – the first, notoriously, was sunk in New Zealand in 1985 by French commandos to prevent it hampering nuclear tests in a Polynesian atoll. The second has just been retired to Bangladesh, where it serves as a hospital ship. Rainbow Warrior III is bigger, greener and, for the first time, purpose built, which the organisation says will showcase green shipbuilding technologies. The huge A-frame mast system can carry considerably more sails than a conventional mast on a vessel of this size, meaning that the ship will travel, as far as possible, under wind power. Systems to recycle the engine's heat and waste "grey" water, and a hull designed to minimise friction in the water, add to its green credentials. "The emissions from shipping are going up and are of increasing concern, so we have really got to think about how we can end our dependency on oil in this area," said John Sauven, Greenpeace's executive director. "This lets us provide a fantastic example. "There are so many features of this boat that are state of the art. I like finding technological solutions to environmental problems." Perhaps the most striking feature is a helipad worthy of the flashiest private yacht, though the organisation does not have a helicopter of its own. "If you're going up the Amazon to investigate deforestation, there are very few roads, so you need to have something like a helicopter to take aerial photos," said Sauven. Not that much of the pad could be seen under a tangle of wires, amps and microphones, as a crew set up for a free on-deck performance by the band the Good, the Bad and the Queen, featuring Greenpeace supporters Damon Albarn and Paul Simonon, formerly of the Clash. There was a brief ceremony in which Eavis unveiled a plaque in his honour, adorned with a quote of his own: "Live fast and live long" ("I don't remember saying that, but I'm sure I probably did. It's a good motto anyway"). Greenpeace has particular cause to honour Eavis, who was joined on board by Emily, his daughter and festival co-organiser, and her baby son George, as he donates £400,000 of the festival's income to the organisation. Not all the crew had been fully briefed, however. "I run a festival, called Glastonbury," Eavis was later overheard telling Seychelle Colland, a 26-year-old Canadian volunteer. "I don't know what that is," she said. "Is it famous here?" Twenty-six years after the original Rainbow Warrior was bombed, Greenpeace is still seen as a threat. In 2006 the French energy company EDF hired private detectives to hack into its computers to find out more about its campaigns against nuclear power in the UK. As the ship pulled out of the dock mobile phones started ringing, to be answered by whoops – a French court had fined the company €1.5m (£1.3m) and jailed two executives for three years for their part in the spying operation. Thirty minutes later the ship was docking by Tower Bridge when a river cruise boat sponsored by EDF energy passed, to good-natured cheers. It was followed by a French navy warship, the Lieutenant de Vaisseau le Henaff, its crew standing to attention while a tug pulled it past the Royal Navy pontoon. Rainbow Warrior III sounded its horn. | ['environment/greenpeace', 'uk/uk', 'uk/london', 'environment/activism', 'environment/environment', 'music/glastonbury', 'tone/news', 'music/michael-eavis', 'type/article', 'profile/estheraddley', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/uknews'] | environment/activism | CLIMATE_ACTIVISM | 2011-11-10T20:28:47Z | true | CLIMATE_ACTIVISM |
uk-news/2016/jan/27/flood-warnings-in-place-as-met-forecasts-icy-conditions | Flood warnings in place as Met forecasts more rain for UK | The Met Office has issued yellow warnings for rain across much of the country as the tail-end of the storm that battered the US at the weekend continued to sweep in from the Atlantic with more heavy rain expected on Friday. More than a dozen flood warnings remain in place for parts of north-west, north-east and south-west England and Wales. The Cumbrian village of Glenridding was flooded on Tuesday for the fourth time this winter. The Lake District village was flooded three times in December, and on Tuesday businesses were hit once again and schools sent children home. The owners of the Glenridding hotel said they had been flooded again. “We are feeling very emotional here as we are receiving the full brunt of the water yet again. Feeling devastated, tired and defeated,” they wrote on their Facebook page, alongside photographs of floors submerged in water. The Environment Agency has issued 16 flood warnings – six in the south-west, four in the north-east, three in the north-west and three in Wales. Flood warnings mean flooding is expected. More rain is expected later in the week, with a cold snap at the weekend, bringing icy conditions. “It’s going to be wet and windy on Friday and then we have colder air moving in with some icy conditions for a brief cold spell,” said a Met Office spokeswoman, adding that conditions were “flip-flopping” considerably. Troops were put on standby and the EA deployed temporary defences and pumps in preparation for further flooding, from which some communities are still reeling following the storms last month. Pictures and videos posted on social media by Cumbria residents on Tuesday afternoon showed heavy rain and blocked roads. Local police forces have urged drivers and people walking near the coast to take care, while a handful of schools closed. Paul Mott, a forecaster for MeteoGroup, said rainfall was not expected to be as high as on Tuesday, when up to 100mm (3.9ins) fell in northern areas. He said: “We have got outbreaks of rain spreading east across England and Wales and strong southwesterly winds, with the strongest gusts up to 60mph over Wales and northern England. “Localised flooding is possible but we are not quite seeing the heavy rain we saw yesterday. There may be a bit of snow over the Scottish Highlands but most areas will be mainly a bit drier into the afternoon.” The Met says a cold and showery start is expected for most on Sunday, with showers falling as snow on hills, and possibly to lower levels at times in the north. Conditions for next week are expected to remain changeable, especially in the north-west, with bands of rain interspersed by colder, showery conditions, with snow at times in the north. Temperatures should be near or slightly above average, though briefly dipping below average with some night frost in any colder periods. | ['uk/weather', 'uk/uk', 'uk/scotland', 'uk/wales', 'environment/environment-agency', 'environment/flooding', 'uk/lake-district', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/marktran'] | environment/flooding | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2016-01-27T11:22:48Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
world/2005/jan/27/tsunami2004.internationalaidanddevelopment5 | The American missionary (Thailand) | Ricky Sanchez, 34, team leader, Mennonite Missions Services International We've been laying a foundation for the first house. We're calling it our model home. The government has given us a little piece of an island off Ban Nam Kem [a fishing village destroyed by the tsunami] and we are building 41 permanent homes for local people. We're busy little beavers. The biggest challenge is doing it the Thai way. We thought that by the end of this week we'd have the first home fully built but we've let the Thai foremen do it their way and our own builder says they are building them like the White House. But it's OK, it's within our budget. There are 24 of us living in one large air-conditioned tent, 10 minutes from everything. We've got mattresses and we're using old coffins for shelves for food and medicine. We're bringing back life where there was death. We've made a lot of spiritual inroads. We've been able to put our arms around people and say, "Can we pray for you?" People are hurting and they are searching, wanting more in life. I am due to wash peoples' feet in the refugee camp. Thais haven't had their feet washed by westerners before. Usually we're the ones who come here, have our foot massages and go away again. The word is out in camp - the Christians are giving foot massages. | ['world/tsunami2004', 'world/world', 'global-development/global-development', 'type/article', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/g2', 'theguardian/g2/features'] | world/tsunami2004 | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2005-01-27T09:24:31Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
environment/2004/dec/28/religion.comment | Martin Kettle: How can religious people explain something like this? | The modern era flatters itself that human beings can now know and shape almost everything about the world. But an event like the Indonesian earthquake exposes much of this for the hubris that it is. Perhaps we have talked so much about our civilisation's potential to destroy the planet that we have forgotten that the planet also has an untamed ability to destroy civilisation too. Whatever else it has achieved, the Indian Ocean tsunami has at least reminded mankind of its enduring vulnerability in the face of nature. The scale of suffering that it has wreaked - 20,000 deaths and counting - shows that we share such dangers with our ancestors more fully than most of us realised. An entirely understandable reaction to such an event is to set one's face against any large questions that it may raise. But this week provides an unsought opportunity to consider the largest of all human implications of any major earthquake: its challenge to religion. A few days after the 9/11 attacks on New York, I had dinner with the Guardian's late columnist Hugo Young. We were still so close to the event itself that only one topic of conversation was possible. At one stage I asked Hugo how his Catholicism allowed him to explain such a terrible act. I'm afraid that's an easy one, he replied. We are all fallen beings, Hugo declared, and our life in this world is a vale of tears. So some human beings will always kill one another. The attack on New York should therefore be seen not as an act of God, but as an act of fallen humanity. Then he paused, and added: "But I admit I have much more difficulty with earthquakes." Earthquakes and the belief in the judgment of God are, indeed, very hard to reconcile. However, no religion that offers an explanation of the world can avoid making some kind of an attempt to fit the two together. And an immense earthquake like the one that took place off Sumatra on Sunday inevitably poses that challenge afresh in dramatic terms. There is, after all, only one big question to ask about an event of such destructive power as the one that has taken place this week: why did it happen? As with previous earthquakes, any explanation of this latest one poses us a sharp intellectual choice. Either there is an entirely natural explanation for it, or there is some other kind. Even the natural one is by no means easy to imagine, but it is at least wholly coherent. The tsunami took place, say the seismologists, because a massive tectonic rupture on the sea bed generated tremors through the ocean. These unimaginable forces sent their energy coursing across thousands of miles of water, resulting in death and destruction in a vast arc from Somalia to Indonesia. But what do world views that do not allow scientists undisputed authority have to say about such phenomena? Where do the creationists stand, for example? Such world views are more widespread, even now, than a secularised society such as ours sometimes prefers to think. For most of human history people have tried to explain earthquakes as acts of divine intervention and displeasure. Even as the churches collapsed around them in 1755, Lisbon's priests insisted on salvaging crucifixes and religious icons with which to ward off the catastrophe that would kill more than 50,000 of their fellow citizens. Others, though, began to draw different conclusions. Voltaire asked what kind of God could permit such a thing to occur. Did Lisbon really have so many more vices than London or Paris, he asked, that it should be punished in such a appalling and indiscriminate manner? Immanuel Kant was so amazed by what happened to Lisbon that he wrote three separate treatises on the problem of earthquakes. Our own society seems to be more squeamish about such things. The need for mutual respect between peoples and traditions of which the Queen spoke in her Christmas broadcast seems to require that we must all respect religions in equal measure, too. The government, indeed, is legislating to prevent expressions of religious hatred in ways that could put a cordon around the critical discussion of religion itself. Yet it is hard to think of any event in modern times that requires a more serious explanation from the forces of religion than this week's earthquake. Voltaire's 18th-century question to Christians - why Lisbon? - ought to generate a whole series of 21st-century equivalents for all the religions of the world. Certainly the giant waves generated by the quake made no attempt to differentiate between the religions of those whom it made its victims. Hindus were swept away in India, Muslims were carried off in Indonesia, Buddhists in Thailand. Visiting Christians and Jews received no special treatment either. This poses no problem for the scientific belief system. Here, it says, was a mindless natural event, which destroyed Muslim and Hindu alike. A non-scientific belief system, especially one that is based on any kind of notion of a divine order, has some explaining to do, however. What God sanctions an earthquake? What God protects against it? Why does the quake strike these places and these peoples and not others? What kind of order is it that decrees that a person who went to sleep by the edge of the ocean on Christmas night should wake up the next morning engulfed by the waves, struggling for life? From at least the time of Aristotle, intelligent people have struggled to make some sense of earthquakes. Earthquakes do not merely kill and destroy. They challenge human beings to explain the world order in which such apparently indiscriminate acts can occur. Europe in the 18th century had the intellectual curiosity and independence to ask and answer such questions. But can we say the same of 21st-century Europe? Or are we too cowed now to even ask if the God can exist that can do such things? martin.kettle@theguardian.com | ['environment/environment', 'world/religion', 'tone/comment', 'world/natural-disasters', 'world/tsunami2004', 'society/society', 'environment/climate-crisis', 'type/article', 'profile/martinkettle'] | world/tsunami2004 | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2004-12-28T15:56:14Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
environment/2024/apr/19/ocean-spray-pfas-study | Ocean spray emits more PFAS than industrial polluters, study finds | Ocean waves crashing on the world’s shores emit more PFAS into the air than the world’s industrial polluters, new research has found, raising concerns about environmental contamination and human exposure along coastlines. The study measured levels of PFAS released from the bubbles that burst when waves crash, spraying aerosols into the air. It found sea spray levels were hundreds of thousands times higher than levels in the water. The contaminated spray likely affects groundwater, surface water, vegetation, and agricultural products near coastlines that are far from industrial sources of PFAS, said Ian Cousins, a Stockholm University researcher and the study’s lead author. “There is evidence that the ocean can be an important source [of PFAS air emissions],” Cousins said. “It is definitely impacting the coastline.” PFAS are a class of 15,000 chemicals used across dozens of industries to make products resistant to water, stains and heat. Though the compounds are highly effective, they are also linked to cancer, kidney disease, birth defects, decreased immunity, liver problems and a range of other serious diseases. They are dubbed “forever chemicals” because they do not naturally break down and are highly mobile once in the environment, so they continuously move through the ground, water and air. PFAS have been detected in all corners of the globe, from penguin eggs in Antarctica to polar bears in the Arctic. The Stockholm researchers several years ago found that PFAS from ocean waves crashing are released into the air around shorelines, then can travel thousands of kilometers through the atmosphere before the chemicals return to land. The new research looked at levels in the sea spray as waves crash by testing ocean samples between Southampton in the UK and Chile. The chemicals’ levels were higher in the northern hemisphere in general because it is more industrialized and there is not much mixing of water across the equator, Cousins said. It is unclear what the findings mean for human exposure. Inhalation of PFAS is an issue, but how much of the chemicals are breathed in, and air concentrations further from the waves, is still unknown. Previous non-peer-reviewed research has found a correlation between higher PFAS levels in vegetation samples and proximity to the ocean, Cousin said, and his team is undertaking a similar study. He said that the results showed how the chemicals are powerful surfactants that concentrate on the surface of water, which helps explain why they move from the ocean to the air and atmosphere. “We thought PFAS were going to go into the ocean and would disappear, but they cycle around and come back to land, and this could continue for a long time into the future,” he said. | ['environment/pfas', 'environment/environment', 'environment/pollution', 'us-news/us-news', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/tom-perkins', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/us-news'] | environment/pollution | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE | 2024-04-19T11:39:58Z | true | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE |
technology/2015/nov/16/smartphone-battery-huawei-technology-charge-48-per-cent-five-minutes | New smartphone battery can charge to 48% in five minutes | A smartphone battery that lasts longer than a day might be out of reach of most people for the moment, but a large one that charges to 48% in five minutes is on the way. Huawei’s new fast-charging battery is capable of charging 10 times faster than that of normal lithium ion batteries and uses a new electrode design, according to the company. The batteries were developed by the Huawei-owned Watt Lab, and were demonstrated at the 56th Battery Symposium in Japan last week. The new batteries have a catalyst built into the anode that speeds up the conversion of electrical energy from the grid into chemical energy without shortening the battery’s life or reducing the amount of energy it can store. Two types of batteries were on show. One 3,000 milliampere-hour (mAh) battery that could be charged to 48% in five minutes and a smaller 600mAh battery that hit 68% in two minutes. For comparison, Google’s Nexus 6P phablet has a 3,450mAh battery while Apple’s iPhone 6S has a 1,715mAh battery. Current quick-charging, such as those using Qualcomm’s Quick Charge or the faster charging capability built into the new USB-C connector takes around an hour to fully charge a large smartphone battery. The technology was demonstrated using batteries that fitted into a smartphone, but which use standalone chargers. Huawei expects to be able to integrate the chargers directly into smartphones in the near future. Battery technology has lagged behind the rapid advancements made in processing power and other areas of technology, becoming the major hold up and primary pain point for smartphone users. Part of the problem has been the limitations of the chemistry of the batteries. Producing cells capable of storing more energy safely and reliably has proven difficult. While various charging techniques, including wireless charging and faster charging, have helped make regular topping up more convenient, creating a battery that lasts longer between charges is still the ultimate goal. Why your phone battery is rubbish | ['technology/smartphones', 'technology/gadgets', 'technology/technology', 'technology/mobilephones', 'technology/research', 'world/japan', 'world/asia-pacific', 'world/world', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/samuel-gibbs'] | technology/gadgets | UNRELATED_TO_CLIMATE | 2015-11-16T14:44:38Z | true | UNRELATED_TO_CLIMATE |
environment/2020/jan/24/david-attenborough-citizens-climate-assembly | David Attenborough to appear at citizens' climate assembly | Sir David Attenborough will address members of the public who are taking part in the UK’s first climate assembly this weekend. The TV presenter and naturalist will appear in Birmingham, where the 110 members are meeting to address how to reduce emissions to zero by 2050, to thank them for taking part. “I am grateful to the 110 people from all corners of the United Kingdom who are giving up their weekends to take part in this very important discussion,” Attenborough said. “These people have been picked to represent our population as a whole, they come from all walks of life, and together they will deliberate carefully on behalf of us all. We should listen closely to their recommendations.” The climate assembly has been set up along the lines of the citizens’ assembly in France, instituted by the president, Emmanuel Macron. The assembly was selected to be a representative sample of the population after a mail-out to 30,000 people chosen at random. About 2,000 people responded saying they wanted to be considered for the assembly, and the 110 members were picked by computer. The UK climate assembly differs from the French model in that it was commissioned by six select committees, rather than by the prime minister. Its views, which will be produced in a report in the spring, will be considered by the select committees but there is no guarantee the government will take up any of the proposals. The assembly will meet for four weekends this spring. On the third weekend it will begin making decisions about ways to meet the net-zero target. Prominent business, faith and civil society leaders from across the UK have sent messages of support to the assembly. Prof Lord Krebs, a former member of the climate change committee, said: “Climate change is the defining issue of our time. Without action now, we will leave an uninhabitable planet for our children and their children. “The climate assembly will play a key role in helping to inform all who need to take action: individuals, businesses, local government and community groups and, crucially, central government.” | ['environment/climate-crisis', 'tv-and-radio/david-attenborough', 'tv-and-radio/tv-and-radio', 'culture/culture', 'environment/environment', 'environment/carbon-emissions', 'uk/birmingham', 'uk/uk', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/sandralaville', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/uknews', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-environment'] | environment/carbon-emissions | EMISSIONS | 2020-01-24T07:00:18Z | true | EMISSIONS |
environment/2016/jun/24/mail-order-wine-pioneer-becomes-australias-biggest-environment-donor | Mail-order wine pioneer becomes Australia's biggest environment donor | David Thomas, who became wealthy by pioneering mail-order wine, has become Australia’s biggest philanthropist to the environment, announcing a bequest that takes his donations to about $60m. “Barbara, my late wife, and I – it was always our intention that we’d give about 50% of our wealth away during our lifetime and then we’d give the other 50% away when we died,” Thomas told Guardian Australia. The $30m bequest was announced at a dinner in Sydney on Thursday night, hosted by Pew Charitable Trusts, the Australian Environmental Grantmakers Network and the Nature Conservancy. The dinner was a celebration of conservation philanthropy in Australia and Thomas was held up as an example of what could be done. “With this bequest, he would be, without a doubt, the largest donor by quite a long shot,” Amanda Martin, chief executive of the grantmakers network, told Guardian Australia. Over the years, Thomas has contributed to groups including the Australian Wildlife Conservancy, Bush Heritage Australia and the Nature Conservancy. Since selling his wine business, Cellarmasters, in 1997, Thomas and his wife created 6m hectares of land under private conservation or Indigenous protection. He has expanded to invest in marine conservation, helping create the Great Kimberley marine park and funding the Fight for the Reef campaign – a collaboration between WWF and the Australian Marine Conservation Society, which has fought to stop dredging at Abbot Point and the dumping of dredge spoil on the Great Barrier Reef. The money has been donated through the Thomas Foundation, which was set up to run for 20 years, ending in 2018. Thomas said he was looking forward to enjoying Australia’s environment in retirement after that. Besides his direct philanthropy, Thomas has encouraged other wealthy Australians to give money to environmental causes. “What often happens in philanthropy, if one person gives a substantial amount of money, it inspires others to give,” Martin said. She said Thomas’s public giving had leveraged a lot more money than he could give on his own. “Many of our members have been inspired by what David has done. He’s really raised the bar on philanthropy in Australia.” Barry Traill, Australian director of Pew Charitable Trusts, told Guardian Australia Thomas’s donations and his work in getting others to donate had had a direct impact on the survival of species. “We have tens of thousands of species found nowhere else on the planet,” Traill said. “So that means that your dollars, your giving, does literally save species from extinction.” | ['environment/environment', 'society/philanthropy', 'australia-news/australia-news', 'environment/great-barrier-reef', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/michael-slezak', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/australia-news'] | environment/great-barrier-reef | BIODIVERSITY | 2016-06-23T21:42:14Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
world/2014/apr/18/george-brandis-sidelining-climate-change-deniers-deplorable | George Brandis: sidelining climate change deniers is ‘deplorable’ | George Brandis says it is “deplorable” deniers are being excluded from the climate change debate and people who say the science is settled are ignorant and medieval. The attorney general called the leader of the opposition in the Senate, Penny Wong, the “high priestess of political correctness” and said he did not regret his comment that everyone has the right to be a bigot in an interview with the online magazine Spiked. He said one of the main motivators for his passionate defence of free speech has been the “deplorable” way climate change has been debated and he was “really shocked by the sheer authoritarianism of those who would have excluded from the debate the point of view of people who were climate-change deniers”. “One side [has] the orthodoxy on its side and delegitimises the views of those who disagree, rather than engaging with them intellectually and showing them why they are wrong,” he said. He referred to Wong as standing up in the Senate and saying the science is settled as an example of climate change believers trying to shut down the debate. “In other words, ‘I am not even going to engage in a debate with you.’ It was ignorant, it was medieval, the approach of these true believers in climate change,” he said. Brandis said he was not a climate change denier and was on the side that believed in anthropogenic global warming and believed something ought to be done about it. He said his comment in a Senate debate that “people have the right to be bigots” was in line with Voltaire’s philosophy and he did not regret making the point. “Because if you are going to defend freedom of speech, you have to defend the right of people to say things you would devote your political life to opposing. Your good faith is tested by whether or not you would defend the right to free speech of people with whom you profoundly disagree. That’s the test,” he said. Brandis is the driving force behind the government’s plan to change section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act which makes it illegal to offend, insult, intimidate and humiliate based on someone’s race. He wants to remove the words offend, insult and humiliate and make it illegal to vilify someone based on their race or intimidate them so they fear physical harm. “The moment you establish the state as the arbiter of what might be said, you establish the state as the arbiter of what might be thought, and you are right in the territory that George Orwell foreshadowed,” he said. Brandis said there had been an inversion in the past few decade where the left had moved towards arguing for censorship and the right had moved away from it. He said most of the great social causes since the second world war such as women’s liberation and gay liberation had been led by the left but now it wanted to control opinion. “The left has abandoned the discourse of liberation … because they have a new construct which is all to do with power relationships in society,” he said. “They are so concerned with rearranging power relationships, so as to disempower the empowered and elevate the disempowered, that they are prepared in the service of that end to sacrifice liberty. Nowadays, they regard liberty as the defence mechanism of the empowered.” He also defended the columns of Andrew Bolt which saw him charged under the act, saying the judge partook in “political censorship” when Bolt was found to have breached the act in writing about light-skinned Aboriginal people. | ['australia-news/australian-politics', 'australia-news/australia-news', 'environment/climate-change-scepticism', 'australia-news/coalition', 'australia-news/liberal-party', 'world/race', 'world/freedom-of-speech', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/bridie-jabour'] | environment/climate-change-scepticism | CLIMATE_DENIAL | 2014-04-18T01:56:08Z | true | CLIMATE_DENIAL |
world/2008/aug/31/uselections2008 | Hurricane Gustav prompts rethink over Republican convention | The Republicans' presumptive candidate for president, John McCain, today called into question the appropriateness of going ahead with the party's national convention in the light of the threat posed by hurricane Gustav. McCain is due to officially receive the nomination at the convention, scheduled to begin in Minneapolis tomorrow. But he said that going ahead with a big party while residents in New Orleans and elsewhere on the Gulf Coast suffered would be insensitive. "I'm afraid … that we may have to look at that situation and we'll try to monitor it," he told Fox News. "But you know it just wouldn't be appropriate to have a festive occasion while a near-tragedy or a terrible challenge is presented in the form of a natural disaster. So we're monitoring it from day to day and I'm saying a few prayers too." Some governors of Gulf Coast states have already cancelled or postponed their attendance at the convention. The White House today said that President George Bush, who is due to address the convention tomorrow, was unlikely to attend and would instead focus on organising disaster planning responses. When hurricane Katrina struck three years ago, Bush was widely criticised for not altering his itinerary and failing to provide leadership during the crisis. Bush, who was due to visit the headquarters of the Federal Emergency Management Authority this morning, could address the convention by satellite link. Temple University professor Marc Lamont Hill told Fox News that Republicans must be "praying for tornadoes" to give Bush an excuse to skip the convention, where the unpopular president's presence would be unlikely to help McCain's campaign. McCain is due to accept the Republican nomination in a speech on Thursday but, if the storm is as fierce as some predict, he may now speak by satellite from the disaster zone. The presidential hopeful and his running mate Sarah Palin, a surprise choice announced on Friday, are due to arrive in Mississippi today to check on preparations ahead of the approach of Gustav. Despite today's comments by McCain Republican officials have insisted the convention will still go ahead. | ['us-news/republicans2008', 'us-news/us-elections-2008', 'tone/news', 'world/natural-disasters', 'us-news/johnmccain', 'world/world', 'us-news/hurricanegustav', 'us-news/republicans', 'us-news/us-politics', 'type/article', 'profile/haroonsiddique'] | us-news/hurricanegustav | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2008-08-31T12:03:57Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
environment/2008/aug/18/water.waste | Millions risk health by eating food grown with polluted water, says UN report | At least 200 million people around the world risk their health daily by eating food grown using untreated waste water, some of which may be contaminated with heavy metals and raw sewage, according to major study of 53 world cities. Urban farmers in 80% of the cities surveyed were found to be using untreated waste water, but the study said they also provided vital food for burgeoning cities at a time of unprecedented water scarcity and the worst food crisis in 30 years. The study from the UN-backed International Water Management Institute (IMWI), said the practice of using waste water to grow food in urban areas was not confined to the poorest countries. "It's a widespread phenomenon, occurring on 20m hectares across the developing world, especially in Asian countries like China, India and Vietnam, but also around nearly every city of sub-Saharan Africa and in many Latin American cities as well," said IWMI researcher Liqa Raschid-Sally. "Nor is it limited to the countries and cities with the lowest GDP. It is prevalent in many mid-income countries as well", she said. The report, launched today at World Water Week in Stockholm, Sweden, found the practice "widespread and practically inevitable". "As long as developing countries lack suitable transport to deliver large quantities of perishable produce to urban areas, urban agriculture will remain important. In the face of water scarcity generally and a lack of access to clean water, urban farmers will have no alternative except to use … polluted water", write the authors. The report found that few developing countries have official guidelines for the use of waste water in agriculture. Even if they do, monitoring and enforcement rarely happen and may not be realistic. As a result, though the practice may be theoretically forbidden or controlled, it is "unofficially tolerated." Earlier in 2008, the UN's World Health Organization stated that a global environmental and health crisis was unfolding with more than 200m tonnes of human waste a year being dumped untreated in water systems, exposing hundreds of millions of people to disease. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), said on Sunday that rivers around the world are now seriously polluted "to the brink of collapse". "Many rivers in developing countries and emerging economies are now polluted to the brink of collapse. For example, the Yangtze, China's longest river, is suffering because of pollution by untreated waste, agricultural run-off and industrial discharge", said a spokesman. | ['environment/water', 'environment/food', 'environment/waste', 'environment/pollution', 'environment/environment', 'world/world', 'tone/news', 'type/article', 'profile/johnvidal'] | environment/waste | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE | 2008-08-18T11:28:19Z | true | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE |
global-development/2014/feb/13/valentines-day-ethical-gifts-green-red-rose-chocolate | Valentine's Day ethics: how green is your red rose? | Janise Elie | The influx of overpriced flowers, tacky heart-shaped chocolates and the distant sound of a stampede to the card shop can mean only one thing. The nightmare before Valentine's Day is upon us again. But before you snap up that bargain-bucket bouquet, have you ever wondered where it has come from? Just how green is the red rose? Are your sweet treats slave-free? Around 70% of the roses being sold in the UK this week were cut in Lake Naivasha in the Great Rift Valley, according to the Kenya Flower Council. The industry is dominated by multinationals, which own vast farms, and about 800m flowers will be dispatched from Kenya to Europe in the runup to 14 February, making them the country's biggest export earner. While the industry's carbon footprint is far from fragrant, there's also the issue of low-pay and harsh employment conditions for pickers to consider. The plight of Colombia's mainly female flower workers is among the many such issues to trigger concern. The Latin American country is the world's second-biggest exporter of cut flowers; it employs 80,000 workers, 70% of whom are women. According to War on Want, women toiling in greenhouses in the flower region of Bogotá frequently earn less than $1 a day and endure exploitative working conditions. They tend to earn less than their male counterparts, are hired on short-term fixed contracts of just three to six months – which are not renewed if workers become ill, pregnant or attempt to form a union, the anti-poverty charity says. Meanwhile, the world's growing appetite for chocolate has prompted similar concerns. Valentine's Day may not be widely celebrated in Africa, but the continent lies at the soft caramel centre of the chocolate industry. The majority of cocoa beans are produced there, which means the chocolates handed to you by your beloved most likely began life in African soil. Just two countries, Ghana and Ivory Coast, supply 75% of the world's cocoa market. In west Africa, cocoa is grown primarily for export, and as the world gorges on ever greater quantities of chocolate, the demand for cheap cocoa has risen exponentially. One in four Ivorians relies upon the proceeds of cocoa to feed their family. But with many farmers barely seeking out a living from selling the beans, some have resorted to the use of child labour to keep their prices competitive. The proliferation of such practices has triggered international condemnation in recent years, prompting human rights groups to pressure some of the world's biggest chocolatiers including Hershey, Mars and Nestlé to crack down on child exploitation. In 2001, several industry heavyweights signed an agreement to stamp out such practices. But concerns over working conditions at rival firms remain. So how can you do your bit to help? What can you do to promote trade justice and ensure a slave-free Valentine's Day? Oxfam has a few ideas. Its charity gifts scheme has 30 ethical gifts from just £5 that include a breeding pair of locally sourced, fully vaccinated goats to nets to better protect people from mosquitoes. The charity will also send a card with a personalised message to the person on whose behalf the livestock has been dispatched. Similar schemes are being touted by Christian Aid and Green Tulip, with the latter also offering a selection of eco-friendly toiletries and Fairtrade jewellery. But if you're more of a traditionalist who believes nothing says I love you like roses and chocolates, there's a growing selection of ethical retailers online to choose from. To guarantee a fair wage is being paid to flower workers, try Arena, which is among a number of UK firms selling ethically grown flowers. You can snap up a dozen red roses on their website for £49.99 or bouquet of white lilies for £44.99. Alternatively, look out for the "fair flowers fair plants" label on your blooms, which guarantees the product comes from growers who operate in a fair manner. For ethically produced confectionery, Divine Chocolate believes its mini love hearts – which are individually wrapped in red, gold and silver foil – make the perfect gift. The chocolatier is 45%-owned by cocoa farmers and ensures they receive a better deal for their produce and have a stronger voice in the industry. Other "slave-free" brands include Choc Affair and Green & Black's. Are you among the hopeless romantics planning to celebrate Valentine's Day? Will you opt for an ethical gift? Do you care where your chocolates and flowers come from? We would like to hear from you. Please post your comments in the thread below or add to the debate on Twitter @Gdndevelopment. If you have any problems posting, or would prefer to comment anonymously, email us at development@theguardian.com and we'll add your views to the thread. | ['environment/environment', 'global-development/series/modern-day-slavery-in-focus', 'world/africa', 'global-development/global-development', 'world/kenya', 'tone/blog', 'world/world', 'food/chocolate', 'business/fooddrinks', 'global-development/environmental-sustainability', 'global-development/fair-trade', 'food/food', 'society/society', 'environment/ethical-living', 'type/article', 'lifeandstyle/lifeandstyle', 'global-development/food-security', 'business/business', 'environment/sustainable-development', 'lifeandstyle/valentines-day', 'profile/janise-elie'] | environment/sustainable-development | CLIMATE_POLICY | 2014-02-13T12:55:00Z | true | CLIMATE_POLICY |
news/2015/aug/19/weatherwatch-dukes-middle-east-heatwave-alaska-landslides-hurricanes-atlantic-pacific-el-nino | Weatherwatch: Waterlogged in Alaska’s archipelago | Searing heat continued to take its toll in the Middle East in the past week as the heatwave that began in late July showed little sign of ending. Temperatures above 46C in Egypt have led to the deaths of more than 100 people, mostly elderly. Meanwhile, at the other end of the weather spectrum, downpours have led to tragedy in Alaska; in Sitka, in the south-east, more than 60mm of rain fell Tuesday morning in just six hours, triggering large landslides, causing logs, mud and debris to pour down the hillside and damage homes. A state of emergency was declared and three men were missing presumed dead. The Atlantic-Caribbean hurricane season, which typically runs from June to November, has had a very slow start, which is often the case in El Niño years, such as this. However, on Tuesday, Tropical Depression 4 strengthened into Tropical Storm Danny, which was expected soon to reach hurricane status with winds exceeding 74mph on its extremely slow route towards the Windward Islands. The hurricane was thought unlikely though to affect any land until next week. Danny follows Ana, Bill and Claudette, but none of these made hurricane status. El Niño years are usually not conducive to hurricane formation in the Atlantic because winds aloft are stronger than normal and this upper airflow often disrupts events, essentially blowing the top off storms before they get really severe. But El Niño does not provide such favours to the Pacific, and following on from the deadly Typhoon Soudeler this month, Taiwan was bracing itself as Typhoon Goni strengthened in the western Pacific and was forecast to reach the island by Sunday. | ['news/series/weatherwatch', 'science/meteorology', 'environment/elnino', 'world/landslides', 'world/hurricanes', 'weather/index/middleeast', 'us-news/alaska', 'world/taiwan', 'us-news/us-weather', 'science/scienceofclimatechange', 'environment/environment', 'tone/features', 'type/article', 'profile/michael-dukes', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/weather2'] | news/series/weatherwatch | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2015-08-19T20:30:00Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
commentisfree/2018/dec/22/looking-forward-vegan-christmas-turkey-meat-environmental-impact | Why I’m looking forward to my first vegan Christmas | Damian Carrington | This Christmas is the first time I won’t be eating turkey. I’ve become a vegetarian. Actually, at home I’m a vegan. And very occasionally, when travelling, I’ll eat chicken, when it’s that or go hungry. I wonder what you think about that. That I’m a patronising hypocrite? That I’m deeply confused? Maybe you couldn’t care less. Few things are more personal than what you choose to eat, but few choices have more impact on the health of our bodies and our planet. That’s a recipe for a very challenging debate, so let’s tuck in. I have changed what I eat because of the now overwhelming evidence of global environmental damage caused by meat and dairy production. It produces more climate-warming emissions than all cars, trains, ships and planes combined. If the world’s diet doesn’t change, we simply can’t beat climate change. The ongoing annihilation of wildlife – an incipient mass extinction – is also driven by the destruction of wild places for farmland, much of which is used for raising and feeding cattle. These thirsty beasts and the crops they are fed require huge amounts of precious water. Their slurry creates vast dead zones in rivers and oceans and the fumes stoke air pollution. The overuse of antibiotics to fatten animals up is driving the rise of superbugs. All these impacts fulfilled my appetite for change – it is the single biggest and fastest way to cut my impact on the Earth. Choosing to have fewer children has a big effect, but only over decades. But there is more. In rich nations, people eat far more meat than is healthy. If Britons actually followed their government’s official advice on a healthy diet, they would eat 89% less beef, 63% less lamb, but 86% more beans and 54% more fruit and vegetables. Doing so would prevent huge numbers of early deaths from heart disease, stroke, diabetes and cancer and healthier diets do not cost shoppers any more. It might well be cheaper. But one diet does not fit all: in poor parts of the world more meat and dairy might be valuably nutritious. When considering your food choices, there’s a third issue on the menu, that of animal welfare. Many cattle, pigs and chickens are raised in appallingly cruel conditions, which most of us are happy never to see or even contemplate. Animals can be raised more kindly, but they still make much less efficient use of land than growing crops for people to eat – cutting out the middle-cow, if you like. With such a potent pot of issues, it is no wonder the debate can quickly become toxic. A calculation by Oxford University researchers of how high a meat tax would need to be to mostly cover the health costs incurred by eating it found that the price of bacon and sausages would double. “What claptrap. Bacon is an important contributor to my wellbeing,” shot back former UK environment secretary Liz Truss. She was backed up by the current environment minister Thérèse Coffey, who asked: “What next … No spag bol?” Even climate change minister Claire Perry joined in the furore. Encouraging people to eat less meat would be the “the worst sort of Nanny State ever” she stated. The political short-termism was not confined to the Tories: Tom Watson, deputy leader of the Labour party, also came out against it. The rightwing thinktank the Institute of Economic Affairs described such a meat tax as a “sin tax” and dismissed the study as “the same combination of junk science and dodgy economics that led to the sugar tax”, while the Taxpayers Alliance railed against “tiresome puritans”. The IEA and the Taxpayers Alliance refuse to reveal who funds them. So we will never know if, or how much, the meat industry is influencing their pronouncements. It’s clear that, despite the weight of academic evidence, people have a strong gut reaction when told eating less meat would be a good thing. The stereotype of vegans – fanatics wanting to rip the burger from your jaws – does not help, as plenty of them acknowledge. The lack of a better word for those who choose to eat less meat does not help either: flexitarian, reducetarian and climatarian don’t really trip off the tongue. I prefer “plant-based”, with its helpful ambiguity about whether that means 100% plant-based or not. But for all the noisy backlash, people are voting with their knives and forks, especially the young. A third of Britons are now avoiding or reducing meat, and supermarkets are whipping up plant-based food ranges. You might worry that soya milk and tofu also drive deforestation. Don’t – South American soya is fed to cattle, with just 1% used as products for humans. Unsustainable palm oil is however more concerning and best avoided. All choices can be catered for. If you feel passionately about animal rights, you can eat a strict vegan diet. If health is your motivator, choose wholefood, plant-based meals. If environmental protection is your carrot, new companies are rapidly developing tasty beef-free burgers. If it’s all of these reasons to some degree, mix and match. And if it’s none and you want to continue eating as much meat as you like don’t complain if at some point in the future a meat tax is levied to cover the damage caused. Eating meat is, and should remain, a personal choice. But those wanting to eat less, or none, should be encouraged not castigated, especially by our political leaders. Is that really so hard to swallow? • Damian Carrington is the Guardian’s environment editor | ['commentisfree/commentisfree', 'lifeandstyle/veganism', 'environment/food', 'lifeandstyle/christmas', 'lifeandstyle/lifeandstyle', 'lifeandstyle/vegetarianism', 'food/meat', 'environment/meat-industry', 'environment/farming', 'food/vegan', 'environment/environment', 'tone/comment', 'uk/uk', 'type/article', 'profile/damiancarrington', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/journal', 'theguardian/journal/opinion', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-opinion'] | environment/farming | BIODIVERSITY | 2018-12-22T06:00:21Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
environment/2013/jul/03/planet-earth-resources-population | We keep moaning about population, but ignore consumption habits | At any public meeting on the environment over the past decade , there's one question that almost always came up. It is a variation of 'Why will no one talk about population?' As a result, population is discussed endlessly while people grumble that no one ever talks about it. The same oddly circular conversation happened in the Observer Review section in an article relating to the new book, 10 Billion, by Stephen Emmott, head of Microsoft's Research Lab. Five full pages of extract and interview warned, 'we're ignoring … the biggest crisis in human history.' Yet it's hard to ignore, in the circumstances. We have World Population Day, the UN Population Awards, numerous organisations dedicated specifically to the issue, and just two weeks ago the UN published its latest, and widely reported, update on global population figures. Government policies around the world on population are untiringly controversial and debated, from countries in Europe (like Germany) worried about declining populations, to those in Asia (like China) worried about the opposite. Emmott, of course, does not appear to be anti-people, just concerned about the impact we're having on the planet, with climate change being key. He covers what is now very familiar ground describing human pressure on resources, talks generally about the need to reduce consumption, identifies rising population more specifically within poorer countries and suggests that we could be facing a world of 28 billion people by the end of the century (a dangerously loose and wildly unlikely figure to use for someone with a scientific reputation). It's welcome to have such a senior, corporate figure concerned about the prospects for life on earth. The tone and alarmism echo Paul Ehrlich's 1968 classic, The Population Bomb. You might expect from someone associated with a dominant, hard-nosed global corporation like Microsoft, a hard-nosed strategy and business plan to sort the problem out. But, having lamented 'the debate we urgently need,' on 'how billions more want to live, behave and consume,' it was frustratingly difficult across five pages to find a single, specific, constructive proposal about what we might do differently. New energy from 'artificial photosynthesis', which Emmott mentions as one possible solution, might have novelty appeal but, you suspect, might be some way off from solving immediate problems. It was disappointing too because less novel but far more proven approaches are common knowledge. We've known for decades that universal primary education for women and good health services will do more to relieve the pressure for large families than any fiddling in the 'magic bullet' food lab. Three years ago the science writer Fred Pearce, a knowledgeable and long-term observer of climate change and other natural resource issues, published a book called Peoplequake. Although expecting population to grow (and level off later in the century), Pearce came to quite opposite conclusions. Future historians, he wrote, would look back on this period in history as marked by a, "dramatic decline in fertility and the transformation of the role of women in society." In recent years, writes Pearce, fertility rates have generally fallen off a cliff. If there is an explosive problem, he wrote, it is to do with consumption, and it is a problem for a wealthy minority of humankind. The poorest three billion people on earth, short of half the world population accounted for about 7% of carbon emissions, while conversely, the richest 7% of people accounted for about half of all emissions. More recently still the economist Danny Dorling wrote Population 10 Billion, accepting head-on that rising number. But Dorling too, like Pearce, is more sanguine. And, like many before, he makes the point that with better, much more equal distribution of resources, managing the needs of a rising population is far from impossible. 'There is more than enough to go round,' he writes. The last point is no throw-away line. Current, extreme global inequality makes eradicating poverty impossible within planetary boundaries (and therefore impossible per se). That is because relying on trickle down, within a growth model already transgressing those boundaries, and in circumstances of great inequality creates the paradox of the already rich and over-consuming having to consume ever more for ever fewer benefits to reach the bottom of the income pile. This might be tastelessly political for some, but sharing better the resources we have to enable a rising number to thrive on a finite planet is also just plain maths, physics, biology and chemistry. An asymmetric consumption explosion remains our great problem. Last week, President Obama waded into the climate debate saying, "We don't have time for a meeting of the Flat Earth Society ... I am here to say we need to act." A few years ago speaking in Cairo he said, 'Given our interdependence, any world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another will inevitably fail.' Apply that principle to the economy everywhere and we could solve several problems at once. • Onehundredmonths.org | ['environment/series/100-months-to-save-the-world', 'environment/climate-crisis', 'world/population', 'world/world', 'environment/environment', 'environment/sustainable-development', 'tone/blog', 'books/books', 'environment/blog', 'type/article', 'profile/andrewsimms'] | environment/sustainable-development | CLIMATE_POLICY | 2013-07-03T11:40:25Z | true | CLIMATE_POLICY |
sustainable-business/new-carbon-offetting-schemes-emissions-development | New carbon offsetting schemes aim to reduce emissions and aid development | Many may think that carbon offsetting has had its time, but you might be surprised to discover that leading sustainable businesses are reviving their faith in the idea. Aviva, the UK's largest insurer is one such organisation. The company's humanitarian and environmental work in Kenya, where it helps fund gravity-fed water filters, and in India, where it supports the use of clean energy cookstoves, has been a pioneering success. Not only has it made the lives of 200,000 people safer, it has also offset more than 126,000 tonnes of CO2 in two years. The insurance company is carbon-neutral, offsetting all its emissions and supporting projects such as these through specialist partner ClimateCare. "It's what our customers and investors expect," says Zelda Bentham, head of environmental and climate change at Aviva, adding that the model brings reputational benefits too. Aviva's approach to these projects represents a signpost for the future. Instead of concentrating on just one type of scheme – environmental or humanitarian – the insurance firm is bringing them together. Supplying water filters, for instance, saves people in Kenya from boiling water on open fires, which emits considerable carbon dioxide. It also makes their daily lives easier and safer. While helping deliver a measurable social benefit, Aviva can use the reduction in C02 emissions to meet its own carbon-offsetting targets. Jamal Gore, chair of the International Carbon Reduction and Offsetting Alliance (ICROA), says the social aspect of these "dual schemes" helps businesses explain the value of what they are doing. "In many cases, [benefits to people] are the features of the projects that stand out when publicising carbon neutrality," he says. The networking potential of such schemes, whether with local government representatives and suppliers or with NGO and community leaders, offers an additional incentive for organisations to get involved, according to Rob Stevens, head of client relations at ClimateCare. "Multinationals are, increasingly, seeing their growth coming from emerging markets," says Stevens, who helped co-ordinate Aviva's offset programme. "And these projects provide an amazing platform to strengthen their networks." In a similar vein, efforts to promote economic development in these emerging markets should theoretically reduce the socio-political risks associated with future investments there. What's the price tag? Anyone can support these climate and development projects, buying as little as one tonne of carbon on the ClimateCare website. However, corporate partners are increasingly looking at a project's long-term sustainability and want to get involved upfront with bespoke projects so that they can claim greater ownership for the project delivery. Developing a new project to provide a community with biomass-fuelled portable cookers with ClimateCare costs around £125,000, according to Stevens. Stevens is confident that the kind of holistic offsetting model proposed by ClimateCare represents a viable approach to tackling development challenges as well as climate change. "There is a growing feeling in the private sector that they have got to take action themselves because governments aren't leading," he says. "Companies are seeing climate change, resource restrictions and community development as future risk, and they aren't waiting for governments to force them to take action." That's not to say the road ahead will be easy. The wider offsetting market has suffered some high-profile failures in the recent past. The criticism levelled at the government-backed EU Emissions Trading Scheme will leave many business leaders wary. Likewise, reports of bogus projects under market-based initiatives such as the UN's Clean Development Mechanism have heightened public scepticism. As a consequence, many have found it too easy to discount offsetting, without fully understanding the facts. Unlike most major offsetting initiatives, the combined climate and development model advocated by the likes of ClimateCare is helping change this perception. It remains early days for many companies when it comes to investing in community projects overseas. International law firm Osborne Clarke is typical in focusing most of its budget domestically. But that could change, says company spokesperson Simon Marshall: "As we grow increasingly international as a firm and we do more business in developing countries I think we'll have a greater international dimension to our CSR [Corporate and Social Responsibility]." Fellow law firm Herbert Smith Freehills also anticipates augmenting its range of programmes as it expands its offices in the developing world. At present, the London-based firm runs a free legal assistance facility for government officials in Sierra Leone. Developing a more human side to offsetting promises to go down well with employees and customers too. Zelda Bentham at Aviva is sure that these two key stakeholder groups will increasingly want and expect large corporations to commit to humanitarian and environmental causes. Bringing the two aims together produces "more of a resonance" with both parties, she insists: "More of our employees are picking up on our carbon offsetting. There's bigger and more positive feedback." This content is brought to you by Guardian Sustainable Business in association with ClimateCare. Produced by Guardian Professional to a brief agreed and paid for by ClimateCare. All editorial controlled and overseen by the Guardian. | ['sustainable-business/series/in-focus-carbon-finance-for-development', 'sustainable-business/sustainable-business', 'tone/sponsoredfeatures', 'environment/carbon-offset-projects', 'type/article', 'profile/neasamacerlean'] | environment/carbon-offset-projects | EMISSIONS | 2013-11-27T07:00:00Z | true | EMISSIONS |
world/2018/nov/18/jair-bolsonaro-election-sparks-fears-for-brazil-biodiversity | Jair Bolsonaro's rise to power casts shadow over UN environment conference | Jair Bolsonaro’s rise to power in Brazil has cast a shadow over the first global environment conference since the ultra-nationalist was elected to lead the most biodiverse nation on Earth. Participants at the the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, which opened in Sharm el-Sheikh on Saturday, expressed concerns that the former army captain would disrupt international efforts to prevent the collapse of natural life support systems in the same way that Donald Trump is undermining cooperation to stabilise the climate. Bolsonaro will not enter office until January, but he has supported a weakening of protections for the Amazon, the richest area of biodiversity in the world. This would mean that less land is controlled by indigenous and forest communities and more is open to agribusiness, miners, loggers and construction companies. Much of his support during the election came from these interests. This move is likely to put him on a collision course with the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, which aims to draw up a new deal for nature by 2020 that would halt and reverse the worst decline of life since the extinction of dinosaurs. Every nation except the US is a signatory. Marco Lambertini, the head of WWF, said he hoped Bolsonaro would look at the bigger picture once he takes office. “Some of his statements are worrying, but we don’t want to prejudge. Politicians often say one thing in a campaign and another when faced with the reality of holding power. We’ll wait and see,” he said. Lambertini added that the risks facing the Amazon were enormous. “This is an ecosystem that is fundamental for the whole world. Research papers have shown the loss of another 20% of the forest would be super-dangerous, pushing the Amazon past the point of no return so it would no longer be a rainforest but a savannah. This would affect rainfall patterns far beyond Brazil’s borders.” He said that has faith in the Brazilian public on the issue: “We have seen a huge level of support for biodiversity protection in Brazil. I don’t think people voted for Bolsonaro because of his environmental agenda.” Lambertini also urged other countries to offer more support to Brazil because it is home to a disproportionately large area of vital ecosystems such as the Amazon and the Cerrado. UN officials and country delegates were reluctant to publicly comment on the incoming leader. However, several expressed fears off the record about what would happen to forest protection, indigenous rights and already weak global action to support the world’s natural infrastructure. Delegates have bombarded the Brazilian participants with questions and sympathy, knowing that Bolsonaro has previously decried environmentalists, saying on one occasion: “This cowardly business of international NGOs like WWF and so many others from England sticking their noses into Brazil is going to end! This tomfoolery stops right here!” The official delegation is wary of commenting during the transition period. They will be announcing a huge new demarcation of marine protected areas on Monday. That would normally be an achievement to celebrate, but lack of clarity about the future may mean a more muted mood. Bolsonaro was once penalised for fishing in protected waters and has expressed his fury about this. The president-elect’s environment ministry transition team includes four military officers and the head of the agribusiness lobby, and priorities are likely to shift. Biologists say Brazil is the world’s most biodiverse nation. Although it covers only 5.6% of the Earth’s land, it is home to 20.8% of plant species, 17.6% of birds, 13.6% of amphibians and 11.8% of mammals. No figure is available for insects but this proportion is likely to be even higher. The country has been a key player in global climate and biodiversity talks and by cutting deforestation rates, it has set an example of what can be achieved. It has also helped bridge the diplomatic gap between wealthier and poorer countries to secure international agreements such as the 2015 Paris climate agreement and the 2010 Nagoya Protocol. Marcel Kok, the international biodiversity programme leader at the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, said world politics was shifting in a direction that made it harder to take concerted global action. Kok told delegates at a side event: “If we compare the situation to 2010, it has become much more difficult to get international cooperation, due to the rise of populism and nationalism.” Brazil’s position will become clearer in the coming months. Bolsonaro is expected to select a new minister for the weakened environment portfolio in the next few days. He recently chose Ernesto Araújo to become Brazil’s foreign minister. Araújo believes that international efforts to solve global problems are part of a cultural Marxist plot to curb growth in western economies and promote the rise of China. | ['world/jair-bolsonaro', 'world/brazil', 'world/americas', 'environment/environment', 'environment/conservation', 'environment/amazon-rainforest', 'world/indigenous-peoples', 'environment/deforestation', 'environment/forests', 'type/article', 'world/world', 'tone/news', 'profile/jonathanwatts', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-environment'] | environment/deforestation | BIODIVERSITY | 2018-11-18T12:37:04Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
australia-news/2014/nov/21/great-barrier-reef-julie-bishop-sent-us-a-briefing-after-obama-criticism | Great Barrier Reef: Julie Bishop sent US a briefing after Obama criticism | Julie Bishop has said she was not embarrassed by a speech Barack Obama gave at the G20 in Brisbane that urged prompt action to protect the Great Barrier Reef – but the Australian foreign minister confirmed her office sent the White House a briefing after the comments. Bishop said on Friday the government did not believe the reef was in danger – a comment that contradicts the scientific consensus that it is. The 2014 outlook report from the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority said: “Climate change remains the most serious threat to the Great Barrier Reef. It is already affecting the reef and is likely to have far-reaching consequences in the decades to come.” Unesco will consider next year whether to list the reef as officially in danger. Bishop has taken the unusual step of pushing back publicly against the Obama administration in an effort to minimise the domestic political fallout from the recent step-change on climate action by the US. Bishop told the ABC on Friday morning her office had sent a briefing to the White House after Obama’s speech in which he highlighted the vulnerability of the reef to the effects of climate change. The foreign minister said she had met the US secretary of the interior, Sally Jewell, in Sydney before the G20 and outlined “in considerable detail Australia’s commitment and capacity to preserve the Great Barrier Reef”. “And I pointed out that we were working with the heritage committee and with Unesco to ensure that the barrier reef remains as healthy and protected as is humanly possible,” Bishop told the ABC. “I pointed out that mining and drilling and gas exploration are banned by law from the Great Barrier Reef region and that we had acted to prevent the dumping of capital dredge waste in the marine park. Indeed, [environment] minister Greg Hunt announced that during the World Parks Congress, that we will ban that by law.” Bishop said the briefing went to specific policy actions Canberra was taking with Queensland “to not only halt but reverse the decline in the quality of water entering the Great Barrier Reef, which is one of the causes of coral degradation”. She said the Abbott government was very confident current policies would preserve and conserve the reef for generations to come and that was the message she had conveyed during her meeting with Jewell. Bishop said she was “surprised that it appeared President Obama hadn’t been briefed on that”. In a separate interview with Sky News, Bishop said the government did not believe the reef was in danger. “Of course, the Great Barrier Reef will be conserved for generations to come,” she said. The Abbott government has been put on the back foot by the recent announcement that the US and China will work collaboratively to reduce their emissions, and by comments from world leaders during and after the G20 summit highlighting the importance of global action to address climate change, including contributions to the international Green Climate Fund. Even Canada, a country that previously lined up with Australia against contributions to the global climate fund, has now come on board with a $300m contribution. On Thursday in Berlin 30 countries pledged $9.3bn to the fund. The foreign minister also took exception to a recent report from the United Nations suggesting Australia would not deliver on its emissions reductions commitments. “I don’t accept Australia won’t meet its target. I don’t know where this report came from because they certainly didn’t consult with agencies in Australia.” Bishop said the UN’s assessment seemed to be predicated only on the repeal of Labor’s clean energy scheme, and not on the replacement policies the Coalition had enacted, including the Emissions Reduction Fund. Labor’s foreign affairs spokeswoman, Tanya Plibersek, said on Friday the diplomatic pushback against the US was “petulant”, and underscored how isolated Australia now was on climate change. Plibersek said in Sydney the Abbott government had tried to keep climate change off the G20 agenda, but the prime minister had been outflanked by other world leaders. Labor’s environment spokesman, Mark Butler, said the scientific consensus on the vulnerability of the reef was clear. “Just this year, the World Heritage Committee ‘noted with concern’ the Abbott government’s lack of action to protect the Great Barrier Reef, and went on to recommend the reef for consideration on the list of ‘world heritage in danger’ sites in 2015,” Butler said on Friday. “It seems it’s only the Abbott government that fails to accept that climate change is going to take a significant toll on our Great Barrier Reef, unless we act now,” he said. “It is embarrassing.” | ['australia-news/julie-bishop', 'australia-news/australia-news', 'us-news/barack-obama', 'environment/climate-crisis', 'environment/environment', 'environment/great-barrier-reef', 'australia-news/australian-politics', 'world/unitednations', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/katharine-murphy'] | environment/great-barrier-reef | BIODIVERSITY | 2014-11-21T00:57:08Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
australia-news/2022/jun/23/nsw-police-overreached-in-treatment-of-protesters-after-botched-raid-civil-groups-say | NSW police overreached in treatment of protesters after botched raid, civil groups say | Unions, human rights groups and environmental organisations say police overreached in their treatment of protesters arrested after a bungled raid on the weekend, and have urged officers to act responsibly amid plans for climate action across Sydney in coming days. The police operation targeting Blockade Australia protesters in the Colo Valley, in Sydney’s north-west, unravelled on Sunday when an activist at the remote property noticed two people wearing camouflage gear in bushland to the rear of the camp. The activists claimed that when the men were confronted they only said: “We’ve been compromised.” Seven protesters were then arrested after attempting to prevent the men leaving in a car which had come to collect them, but the lawyer for the protesters, Mark Davis, said he will argue none of the officers identified themselves as police prior to the confrontation. An eighth person has since been arrested and charged. On Thursday, 18 civil society organisations expressed alarm at the New South Wales police operation, and called for the force to act “responsibly, with integrity and respect for human rights” in response to protests planned to start on Sunday. Amnesty International Australia, the Environmental Defenders Office, Maritime Union of Australia, New South Wales Council for Civil Liberties, and Greenpeace Australia Pacific were among the signatories to the statement. “Sending in 100 armed police officers to threaten and intimidate people planning a peaceful protest is alarming and disproportionate,” the Human Rights Law Centre legal director, Alice Drury, said. “NSW police and politicians should commit to protecting protest for the health of our democracy.” But the deputy premier, Paul Toole, who is also the police minister, and the head of a police strike force targeting environmental activists instead condemned Blockade Australia as a group intent on dangerous disruption rather than peaceful protest. “This isn’t peaceful protesting, these are people pulling stunts that put lives at risk and stop people trying to get [to] work and get their kids to school and police simply won’t tolerate it,” Toole said in a statement. The acting assistant commissioner and commander of Strike Force Guard, Paul Dunstan, said: “These activities are not only dangerous to themselves, but they put the lives of members of the public and those rescuing them at risk.” “It is incredibly disappointing that they want to cause this inconvenience to good people who are just going about their business, especially given the hard times many have gone through in recent years due to the pandemic.” Sign up to receive an email with the top stories from Guardian Australia every morning The NSW Greens have lodged a request for papers regarding the Sunday operation which they hope will uncover information about what led to the investigation. NSW police have declined to answer questions from Guardian Australia, but Dunstan said on Sunday that the officers had been on the property lawfully, and then obtained a further search warrant after the camouflaged officers were confronted. He said investigations had been brought forward by “a day or two” because of the confrontation. Late on Thursday, the Greens planned to move a motion in the NSW parliament calling for protest laws introduced in April to be disallowed, but expected the motion to be voted down. The motion by upper house MP Abigail Boyd had been supported by unions and civil and legal groups. | ['australia-news/australia-news', 'australia-news/police-policing-australia', 'world/protest', 'australia-news/new-south-wales', 'environment/activism', 'environment/environment', 'australia-news/sydney', 'australia-news/australian-greens', 'australia-news/new-south-wales-politics', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/nino-bucci', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/australia-news'] | environment/activism | CLIMATE_ACTIVISM | 2022-06-23T09:22:33Z | true | CLIMATE_ACTIVISM |
environment/2017/mar/29/western-consumers-fuelling-tens-of-thousands-of-air-pollution-related-deaths | Thousands of pollution deaths worldwide linked to western consumers – study | Western consumers who buy cheap imported toys, clothes and mobile phones are indirectly contributing to tens of thousands of pollution-related deaths in the countries where the goods are produced, according to a landmark study. Nearly 3.5 million people die prematurely each year due to air pollution, the research estimates, and about 22% of these deaths are associated with goods and services that were produced in one region for consumption in another. The analysis provides the first detailed picture of the extent to which consumer demand in the US and western Europe contributes to pollution in developing countries, with profound health consequences. “If the cost of imported products is lower because of less stringent air pollution controls in the regions where they are produced, then the consumer savings may come at the expense of lives lost elsewhere,” the authors conclude. The study also reveals how emissions from industrial hotspots affect the health of people in neighbouring countries and, to a lesser extent, more distant regions, as pollutants circulate on global air currents. About 12% (411,100) of early deaths globally were related to air pollutants emitted in a different region of the world, the research found. The study focused on the emission of fine particulate matter pollution (PM 2.5) from power stations, factories, aeroplanes and shipping in 13 regions, taking in data from 228 countries. Particulates are thought to account for more than 90% of the global mortality from outdoor air pollution, raising the number of deaths from heart disease, stroke, lung cancer and asthma. The tiny particles can trigger asthma attacks in the lungs and can cross from the air sacs in the lung into the bloodstream, where they can cause inflammation, alter the way blood clots, and make blood vessels more permeable. Particulates have also been shown to migrate into other tissues, such as the liver, kidneys and brain, although it is less clear what the health consequences are in these organs, and the effects also depend on the chemical makeup of the particulates. “In general, air pollution links to general ill health,” said Matthew Loxham, a toxicologist at Southampton University who was not involved in the study. “It’s a range of different conditions.” The scientists used a combination of air pollution data, emissions measurements and models of global air currents to tally up where pollution was emitted and where it ended up in 2007. An economic model, based on data from the Global Trade Analysis Project, was then used to attribute air pollution to the demand of consumers for finished goods, although the results were not broken down by product type. Chinese emissions caused more than twice the number of deaths worldwide than the emissions of any other region, followed by emissions produced in India and the rest of the Asia region. The scientists calculated that PM 2.5 pollution produced in China is linked to more than 64,800 premature deaths in other regions, including more than 3,000 deaths in western Europe and the US. However, this figure was significantly outweighed by the 108,600 premature deaths in China linked to consumption in western Europe and the US. Steven Davis, a co-author based at the University of California, Irvine, said that the paper simply aimed to lay out the evidence for the benefit of policymakers. “It’s not really up to us to say what’s fair or not,” he said. In a press briefing this week, his co-authors called for international action on the issue. “For greenhouse gas emissions we have a global agreement. People can argue about whether its been effective or not – but at least we have a global framework,” said Dabo Guan, a professor in climate change economics at the University of East Anglia and the paper’s senior author. “People have thought air pollution was a local issue.” Guan cites the example of mobile phones made in China, which might be sold for $200, around 70% of which goes to the company that designed the product and just $5-6 to the Chinese manufacturer. “On average every six months we change our phone,” he said. “It has a health cost on the other side of the world.” For countries like China, whose economies are dependent on exporting cheaply-made goods, improving environmental standards has to be balanced against potential negative economic impacts. “Some other country would step up and say hey, we’re willing to let our people die to have that business,” said Davis. Improving pollution control technologies in China, India and elsewhere in Asia would have a disproportionately large health benefit in those regions and worldwide, according to the analysis in the journal Nature. Qiang Zhang, another author from Tsinghua University, Beijing, said that consumers in Europe and the US who buy cheap imported toys and clothes also bear a responsibility. “We need to move our lifestyles away from cheap and wasteful,” he said. Oliver Hayes, a pollution campaigner for Friends of the Earth air pollution, said: “No-one should be denied the right to breathe clean air, whether they live in Beijing or Barking. But air pollution doesn’t recognise borders, and it’s clear that the devastating impacts of polluters can be felt many miles from their activities. | ['environment/pollution', 'environment/environment', 'science/science', 'society/health', 'society/society', 'type/article', 'environment/air-pollution', 'profile/hannah-devlin', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-science'] | environment/air-pollution | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE | 2017-03-29T17:00:03Z | true | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE |
media/2008/feb/14/yahoo.rupertmurdoch | Rupert Murdoch will struggle to win over Yahoo investors | Rupert Murdoch might seem an unlikely white knight, but the reported talks between News Corporation and Yahoo have presented a characteristically ingenious alternative to the Microsoft takeover. When Yahoo's share price rocketed after Microsoft's $44.6bn (£22.65bn) takeover offer was made public on February 1, many in the technology industry predicted that the beleaguered web company would try to push for a higher offer while continuing to appeal to alternative buyers. So along with the latest reports of renewed talks with News Corp over a business alliance, Yahoo is also said to have discussed possible tie-ups with suitors ranging from Disney to AOL and Google since Microsoft's takeover bid. However, that strategy has not placated Yahoo's investors, with chief executive Jerry Yang under intense pressure to accept the Microsoft deal. The Yahoo board's rejection of Microsoft's first offer this week could even land them in court. The Michigan-based fund the Wayne County Employees Retirement System is suing the board for rejecting the latest offer, which was 62% above Yahoo's languishing share price before the Microsoft approach. And earlier this month, two US law firms filed a suit against Yahoo for allegedly failing to look after the interests of shareholders when it rejected Microsoft's first takeover offer last year. So far, Yang is sticking to his guns, reiterating the Yahoo board's view that the initial Microsoft offer undervalued the firm in a note designed to reassure shareholders yesterday. "I want you to know that your board is continuously evaluating all of Yahoo's strategic options in the context of the rapidly evolving industry environment, and we remain committed to pursuing initiatives that maximize value for all our stockholders," he said. Yang repeated that Yahoo had 500 million users worldwide, a healthy cash balance and has made investments in computing infrastructure. He also said the firm is uniquely positioned to capitalise on the global growth of web advertising - expected to be a $75bn business by 2010 - and said Yahoo was the market leader in online display advertising. Global advertising on social networking sites is predicted to rise from $1.2bn in 2007 to $4.1bn in 2011, according to eMarketer. None of those strengths will have gone unnoticed by News Corp, which has previously held talks with Yahoo about a deal to combine their online businesses. In June last year, Rupert Murdoch confirmed that he had talked to former Yahoo head Terry Semel about an idea to trade MySpace for 25% of Yahoo. Murdoch told Time magazine that "Semel was enthusiastic about it. We were looking to see if it was a good idea. I wasn't sure". The deal now back on the table is a swap of News Corp digital assets - including MySpace - for a 20% stake in Yahoo. This arrangement would secure News Corp's stake in the growing internet market and give Yahoo a powerful ally. For shareholders, however, a takeover by Microsoft offers a far clearer, more secure future for the firm. Writing on the Wall Street Journal's AllThingsD blog, business journalist Kara Swisher said "the mash-up with News Corp would likely be a hopelessly complex deal, especially compared to the cleaner and simpler giant-pile-of-cash-and-stock that Microsoft is offering that big shareholders are likely to prefer". She quoted one major Yahoo investor who said the deal would be too complex compared with Microsoft. For Yahoo's management, the crucial point will be to retain the credibility of its brand - something which an asset swap with News Corp would allow by keeping the company independent. But for shareholders, who will dismiss Silicon Valley talk of Microsoft's uncool image, the only credibility that matters is the bottom line. · To contact the MediaGuardian newsdesk email editor@mediatheguardian.com or phone 020 7239 9857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 7278 2332. · If you are writing a comment for publication, please mark clearly "for publication". | ['technology/yahoo-takeover', 'media/rupert-murdoch', 'technology/yahoo', 'technology/microsoft', 'technology/google', 'media/media', 'technology/technology', 'media/digital-media', 'business/business', 'type/article', 'profile/jemimakiss'] | technology/yahoo-takeover | UNRELATED_TO_CLIMATE | 2008-02-14T12:53:01Z | true | UNRELATED_TO_CLIMATE |
environment/2018/jun/17/high-risk-food-shortages-pesticides-chemical-giant | High risk of food shortages without pesticides, says chemical giant | The world is likely to face food shortages within 20 years if pesticides and genetically modified crops are shunned, according to the head of the world’s biggest pesticide manufacturer. J Erik Fyrwald, CEO of Syngenta, also said the technologies to produce more food from less land are vital in halting climate change, but that better targeting will mean farmers around the world will use less pesticide in future. The widespread use of pesticides is coming under increasing pressure as their negative effects on bees and other wildlife become more apparent. The EU banned neonicotinoid insecticides from fields in April and gave the weedkiller glyphosate a shorter renewal period than expected in November. In an interview with the Guardian, Fyrwald said that shunning agricultural technology will have serious consequences, with the global population expected to rise by 1.5 billion people by 2050 and global warming continuing to rise. “If we don’t keep getting better with technology that helps feed the world with less greenhouse gas emissions, I think we are going to have food availability issues and the climate is going to get much worse from agriculture,” he said. “There could very well be, 10 to 20 years from now, significant issues around feeding the world.” The necessity of pesticides has been challenged by a series of recent reports, with a UN study calling the idea that pesticides are vital to feeding the world a “myth”, a scientific study showing many farms could slash pesticides use without losses and another warning that their industrial-scale use cannot be assumed to be safe. Fyrwald does not agree, but does say farmers will use less pesticide in future: “Absolutely, and they are going to do it because [of] new technologies that are more targeted. Digital technology is going to enable precision agriculture, where it will be spraying much more at where the weeds, insects and diseases are. “We believe in strict [pesticide] regulation, but it needs to be science-based and regulators need to be independent,”said Fyrwald. “If they make a decision that a product is not right, we fully accept that decision and move on.” However, Fyrwaldsaid the EU ban of Syngenta’s neonicotinoid was “very political” and not scientific, and the company has mounted a legal challenge against the way the decision was made: “We are not anti-democratic, but in a democracy the regulators have a job.” Nonetheless, he does accept public trust in pesticides is a problem: “I do think there is a trust issue – I think we have to listen more, engage more.” Syngenta has been criticised for selling some pesticides long banned in Europe, such as paraquat and atrazine, in other parts of the world. But Fyrwald says they remain approved in countries with “very high standards”, such as Brazil and the US. Syngenta is also a major seed producer but has given up on genetically modified crops in Europe, where public opposition remains high. “It is something we are not even attempting to work on any more,” says Fyrwald. The consequence for the EU of eschewing the technology will be it becoming a net importer of food, he says: “Agricultural outputs will not keep up with the rest of the world.” Syngenta was bought a year ago by the Chinese government, through the state-owned company ChemChina, and other major seed and pesticide companies have recently merged: Bayer with Monsanto and Dow with DuPont. This leaves about two-thirds of the world’s seed sales and pesticide production in the hands of very few businesses, but Fyrwald said people should not be concerned, saying regulators required various divisions to be sold off before the mergers: “I think there will continue to be plenty of competition. We are very committed to offering farmers choice and competitive products.” China, which has 21% of the world’s population but only 6% of its arable land, bought Syngenta to help ensure its people remain fed in the coming decades, Fyrwald said: “President Xi Jinping grew up during the [Great Leap Forward] , when farming failed and 35 million Chinese people starved to death. So I don’t think he and others in his senior leadership will ever forget that. Assurance of food supply is a big deal for the Chinese.” “The Chinese government wanted to make sure we continued to invest in the technologies that are going to help to absolutely assure there is always plenty of food for the Chinese people,” he said. China is also a major food importer, and so needs global agriculture to be productive as well, Fyrwald says. Agriculture must also improve to tackle global warming, Fyrwald says, with the sector responsible for almost a quarter of all greenhouse gas emissions, from deforestation, fertiliser use and livestock. “How can deforestation stop? By having less land in agriculture not more, and you can do that with technology,” he says, arguing that organic farming is a “great marketing approach” but delivers low yields. How the world feeds itself without destroying the environment remains one of the biggest questions of the age, but there is little agreement on the answer. Fyrwald says: “I think the most important thing that we do here is open up a conversation with government, NGOs, food companies, consumers and farmers and get people to sit down and talk about what is sustainable agriculture.” | ['environment/pesticides', 'environment/farming', 'environment/food', 'environment/gm', 'environment/environment', 'science/science', 'world/china', 'world/world', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/damiancarrington', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/uknews', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-environment'] | environment/farming | BIODIVERSITY | 2018-06-17T11:00:12Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
commentisfree/2023/aug/06/amazon-mark-ruffalo-indigenous-peoples-world-rainforest-life | Look at the crisis in the Amazon and understand the stakes: we’re battling for life itself | Mark Ruffalo | Some of the most fulfilling moments in my life as an actor are when I play roles that speak to the challenges facing humanity. In The Avengers, for example, in which I play the Hulk, the team tries to undo the “the snap” – an apocalyptic event brought about by the villain Thanos to eradicate half of all living beings. As a good friend of mine says: “Fantasy is not an escape from our world, but an invitation to go deeper into it.” The simple fact is that humanity has triggered extinction events – and the collapse of the Amazon is a disaster that will be terrible for all of us in real life. We are on the brink of what scientists are calling a “tipping point” for the Amazon basin, meaning that the destruction will get to a point where the forest can no longer regenerate. This is Earth’s endgame. Over 10,000 species could be wiped out, starting a domino effect that would affect our planet’s climate, our water, and food supplies everywhere – taking many human lives with it. So even if you live on the other side of the globe, this is very much your problem, too. Scientists tell us that we don’t have much time to reverse this – and to do so, we must protect 80% of the Amazon and sustainably manage the other 20%. The good news is that there are real-life Avengers showing us the way. Because while we have been playing at consuming and destroying, Indigenous peoples have been conserving almost all biodiversity this planet still holds. No joke: 80% of the planet’s remaining biodiversity is on Indigenous land. Silently, they have proven that the smartest way to save us all is to recognise and protect their territories. But tragically, these Indigenous peoples are being removed, attacked and even killed by multiple villains: hostile governments, powerful lobbies, trafficking, loggers and mining. And this coming week, they will face an important battle: the Amazon summit. Leaders from all Amazon countries will gather in Brazil to decide the future of the forest. And our Amazon saviours will be fighting to guarantee we get all the protections we need. It is time for reinforcements to arrive from all sides, and for all of us to realise and come to terms with how high the stakes are. Indigenous wisdom says that the decisions we make today should result in a sustainable world seven generations into the future. This is a calling from the children of the generations that will follow us. We are all being asked to assemble and awaken what is heroic in us. Let’s pledge together to help them. We need to turn all eyes to the Amazon summit as a decisive moment for the whole world. The best way to do this is by making leaders aware that we are all watching what they do. And that public gaze is already bearing fruit. In July, thanks to action by the new Brazilian government, deforestation fell by at least 60% compared to the same month last year. Now we need them to commit to recognising Indigenous territories and protecting 80% of the forest now, in line with scientific recommendations. I’ve heard it said that there used to be many “environmental issues”. But now, it’s all one struggle: for life itself. Such a struggle reminds me of Avengers: Endgame barrelling towards its conclusion and of the 14,000,605 timelines that Doctor Strange witnesses: of all of them, there was only one in which they won. The odds were stacked against them just as they appear to be against us. But as with the Avengers, only our actions together can beat the odds so that life on Earth wins. Let’s do this. Mark Ruffalo is an actor, producer, activist, and co-founder of The Solutions Project Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. | ['commentisfree/commentisfree', 'environment/amazon-rainforest', 'environment/deforestation', 'environment/conservation', 'environment/environment', 'environment/forests', 'world/indigenous-peoples', 'world/world', 'film/avengers-endgame', 'film/film', 'culture/marvel', 'type/article', 'tone/comment', 'profile/mark-ruffalo', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-opinion'] | environment/forests | BIODIVERSITY | 2023-08-06T11:00:09Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
environment/2010/jul/26/plastiki-recycled-boat-arrives-sydney | Plastiki completes Pacific Ocean crossing | A sailboat largely constructed from 12,500 recycled plastic bottles docked in Sydney harbour on Monday, after four difficult months crossing the Pacific Ocean in a bid to raise awareness about the perils of plastic waste. The crew of the Plastiki, a 60-foot catamaran that weathered fierce ocean storms during its 8,000 nautical-mile journey, left San Francisco on March 20, stopping along the way at various South Pacific island nations including Kiribati and Samoa. "This is the hardest part of the journey so far – getting it in!" expedition leader David de Rothschild yelled from the boat as the crew struggled to manoeuvre the tough-to-steer vessel into port outside the Australian National Maritime Museum. De Rothschild, a descendant of the well-known British banking family, said: "It has been an extraordinary adventure." De Rothschild, 31, said the idea for the journey came to him after he read a United Nations report in 2006 that revealed how plastic waste was seriously threatening the world's oceans, and considered that recycling plastic to build a boat could highlight the problem – and a solution. The Plastiki, named after the 1947 Kon-Tiki raft sailed across the Pacific by explorer Thor Heyerdahl, is fully recyclable and is powered by solar panels and wind turbines. The boat is almost entirely made up of bottles, which are held together with an organic glue made of sugar cane and cashews, but includes other materials too. The mast, for instance, is a recycled aluminum irrigation pipe. According to the UN Environment Programme, more than 13,000 pieces of plastic litter are now floating on every square kilometre of the world's oceans. Around 8m items of marine litter are thought to enter the oceans and seas every day, about 5m (63%) of which are solid waste thrown overboard or lost from ships. 100,000 turtles and marine mammals, such as dolphins, whales and seals, are killed by plastic marine litter every year around the world. "The journey of the Plastiki is a journey from trash to triumph," said Jeffrey Bleich, the US ambassador to Australia, who greeted the team after they docked. During their 128-day journey, the six-member crew lived in a cabin of just 20 feet by 15 feet (6 meters by 4.5 meters), took saltwater showers, and survived on a diet of dehydrated and canned food, supplemented with the occasional vegetable from their small on-board garden. Along the way, they fought giant ocean swells, 62-knot (70mph) winds, temperatures up to 38C and torn sails. The crew briefly stopped in Queensland last week, after battling a brutal storm off the Australian coast. Skipper Jo Royle also had the particular challenge of being the only woman on board. "I'm definitely looking forward to a glass of wine and a giggle with my girlfriends," she said. Vern Moen, the Plastiki's filmmaker, missed the birth of his first child though he managed to watch the delivery on a grainy Skype connection. He met his son for the first time after docking in Sydney. "It was very, very surreal to show up on a dock and it's like, 'Here's your kid," he said. Although the team had originally hoped to recycle the Plastiki, de Rothschild said they are now thinking of keeping it intact, and using it as a way of enlightening people to the power of recycling. "There were many times when people looked at us and said: 'You're crazy,'" de Rothschild said. "I think it drove us on to say: 'Anything's possible.'" | ['environment/recycling', 'environment/waste', 'environment/oceans', 'environment/pollution', 'environment/environment', 'world/world', 'tone/news', 'type/article'] | environment/recycling | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE | 2010-07-26T10:46:23Z | true | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE |
artanddesign/2022/oct/27/plastic-remaking-our-world-victoria-albert-dundee | Fantastic plastic: is there a future for the wonder material? | In one sense the story of plastic is a straightforward cautionary tale. What was initially hailed as a wonder material that would solve so many of the world’s problems turned out to be a potentially existential threat to planetary health. But how did one thing lead to the other? And is that narrative arc quite as smooth and quite as depressing as it appears? A new exhibition at the V&A Dundee seeks to interrogate the history of the material through its inventors and industries, designers and advertisers, consumers and protesters. Perhaps more urgently, it also asks what is the future of this now ubiquitous substance. “Up until the middle of the 19th century, people had looked to the natural world for the sort of materiality that we now associate with plastics,” explains curator Charlotte Hale. “Materials such as shellac, ivory, tortoise shell and horn could be subjected to heat and pressure to make them malleable and durable and capable of being shaped into coveted and luxurious household items.” But with industrialisation and rising demand came attempts to synthetically mimic these properties, though early scientific advances were habitually undermined by commercial failure. Perhaps surprisingly, imitation ivory billiard balls were one success, despite early examples having the unfortunate effect of making colliding balls sound like a gunshot, laughs Hale, “prompting bar owners in America to complain that customers were actually drawing their weapons in response”. The big breakthrough came via Belgian chemist Leo Baekeland in the early 20th century. His Bakelite was light and malleable yet hard and strong, was heat resistant, a good insulator and could provide an appealing finish. It was used for luxury goods in the 1920s and 30s, but during the second world war Bakelite’s adaptable and comparatively inexpensive characteristics were adopted wholesale by the military. With a shortage of natural materials the same was true of other synthetic materials – nylon, polyethylene – and between 1939 and 1945 the production of plastics nearly quadrupled. Following the war, huge marketing campaigns, aggressively financed by petrochemical companies, saw these new products and materials adapted for mass domestic use. Kitchens became wipe-clean rather than scrubbable. Radios, lamps, clocks and telephones adopted sleek curves and increasingly vibrant colours. Chairs and tables were moulded into futuristic new shapes and baths and basins appeared in colours other than white as plastic made its unstoppable progress through the home. Many of these products would become collectors’ items, but their mass accessibility, and the explosion of cheaper objects and plastic packaging, marked a change: the era of plastic as something disposable rather than precious had begun. But it was during the next big boom – in the 1960s space age when 20 of the 21 layers of Apollo astronauts’ suits were made by chemicals company DuPont, a trend quickly picked up on by clothes designers back on Earth – that marine biologists first published articles on plastic particles found in the sea. Since then, the understanding of its environmental impact has only become more alarming. But, as Hale points out, the rewards of plastic are still there, and in many ways it remains the wonder material it always was. It is integral to modern telecommunications and medicine and so many other essential aspects of life. Something as simple as a light, cheap, easily transportable plastic tent has saved maybe millions of lives. And cotton or paper carrier bags have significant environmental costs attached to them, too. The exhibition also looks at initiatives to clean up the oceans and the efforts to control the excesses of plastic, in particular in eradicating single-use products. There are sections on repairing and recycling. “Ultimately, plastic has run unchecked and unregulated for 150 years,” says Hale. “Many good things are happening, but it’s only with stringent regulation – through the entire product life cycle from concept through production, distribution and disposal – that real change will come about. We don’t advocate a zero-plastic strategy. Instead, we ask when and how plastic can be used to maximise its incredible properties. We need a fundamental revaluing of plastic in a world in which there is no silver bullet.” Mould-breaking: Four pieces from the V&A exhibition Smoker’s cabinet, 1916 Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s wooden cabinet was one of the first pieces of furniture to utilise plastic as an inlay. The pieces of yellow casing are made from a material called Erinoid, produced by drying curds of milk into a powder that was then combined with water, heated and extruded. “It could be seen as a precursor to Formica,” explains Hale. “Unfortunately, the product was prone to shrinking, which meant it wasn’t a viable long-lasting development.” Bakelite leaflet, 1930s (main image) Where previous plastics had used plant materials such as cellulose, Bakelite was the first truly synthetic product. A market trajectory from luxury goods to battlefield weapons to household devices lived up to the company’s marketing of it as “the material of a thousand uses”. John Bates wedding ensemble, 1966 Bates was best known in the 60s for designing Diana Rigg’s outfits for The Avengers. This is the wedding ensemble he made for Marit Allen, then fashion editor of Vogue. Drawing on the influence of 60s sci-fi, with its silver buttons and shiny trim, it incorporates an early usage in clothing of PVC. The Ocean CleanUp/Everwave/Sungai Watch This image is from a video of the Ocean CleanUp project “harvesting” plastic from the sea. The organisation also works to intercept plastic in rivers before it reaches the ocean. “Both elements are extremely difficult and essential,” explains Hale. “But it becomes a much more resource-efficient strategy to clear plastic before it has broken down to microplastics.” Plastic: Remaking Our World is at V&A Dundee from 29 October until 5 February. | ['artanddesign/art', 'artanddesign/artanddesign', 'artanddesign/exhibition', 'environment/plastic', 'environment/environment', 'culture/culture', 'type/article', 'tone/features', 'profile/nicholaswroe', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/saturday', 'theguardian/saturday/culture', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/saturday-magazine'] | environment/plastic | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE | 2022-10-27T07:00:23Z | true | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE |
global-development/2017/nov/03/sheep-turn-black-mosul-iraq-war-toxic-legacy-erik-solheim-un-environment | When the sheep turn black, war's toxic legacy can no longer be ignored | Erik Solheim | The smoke that billowed from the burning oil fields was so thick it blocked out the sun. By the time I reached Qayyarah, where Islamic State fighters had set fire to 19 oil wells, a film of black soot had settled over the Iraqi town like toxic snow. Even the sheep had turned black. Pools of thick oil ran in the streets. In the sky above the town, the black smog mixed with white fumes from a nearby sulphur plant that the jihadists had also set on fire as they retreated. The plant burned for months, spewing as much sulphur dioxide into the atmosphere as a small volcanic eruption. Hundreds of people were hospitalised. The fires may have been extinguished, and Isis ousted from the city, but the environmental devastation caused by the battle for Mosul will linger for decades. The destruction of hospitals, weapons factories, industrial plants and power stations has left behind a toxic cocktail of chemicals, heavy metals and other harmful waste. Many of these pollutants are mixed up with unexploded bombs and mines in the vast amount of rubble generated by the fighting. Our team has already found high levels of lead and mercury in Mosul’s water and soil. This is the toxic legacy of one of the fiercest urban battles of the modern age. When we measure the brutality of war, we often count the dead bodies, the destroyed homes and the lives upended by violence. Rarely do we pause to consider the environmental devastation that wars cause. In the din of battle and the rush to treat and shelter its survivors, the toxic legacy of war is often ignored – as is the long-term damage to the health of millions of people forced to live amid the pollution. There is nothing new in the waste generated by war. Parts of Belgium and France are still suffering from the contamination of heavy metals used in the weapons of the first world war. In Vietnam, the herbicide Agent Orange, sprayed to strip trees of foliage that gave the enemy cover, has caused birth defects, cancers, skin disorders and mental disability. When bombs fall, the environment suffers. In Colombia, which hosts 10% of the planet’s biodiversity, half a century of war has destroyed some of the world’s most vibrant ecosystems. The mining of gold, which funded rebel forces during the conflict, has polluted the country’s rivers and land with mercury. In Ukraine, three and a half years of fighting in the heavily industrialised country has contaminated the groundwater. Decades of conflict in Afghanistan has destroyed more than half the country’s forests. Often, the environmental destruction is deliberate. Environmental infrastructure is increasingly targeted to drain the enemy of popular support. When power plants, water facilities and sewage systems are destroyed, disease and pollution spread and civilian health plummets, prolonging the suffering of people whose lives have already been devastated by violence. Failing to respond appropriately when the bullets stop only generates more environmental calamity. Plans to rebuild Mosul with sand and gravel dredged from the Tigris would be disastrous for a river that irrigates about two-thirds of Iraq’s agricultural land and supplies water and electricity to millions of people. Instead, recycling the debris so that it can be used to reconstruct the shattered city would save millions of dollars, limit quarrying and generate 750,000 days of work for some of Mosul’s long-suffering residents. The environment isn’t just a silent victim of war. When poorly managed, the environment can also trigger and fuel armed conflict. In Syria, severe drought drove millions into cities that were ill-equipped to cope with the burden. Popular anger grew inside some of the country’s poorest urban areas, fuelling protests that erupted into a civil war that has killed more than 400,000 people and sparked one of the largest humanitarian crises of our time. Around the world, natural resources are funding militias, prolonging violence and making it even harder for peace deals to stick. The wars of tomorrow will increasingly be fought over natural resources, as populations boom and supplies of food and water dwindle in regions most vulnerable to the impact of climate change. Never has it been more important for the world to place the environment at the very heart of how we prevent, solve and respond to conflict. There are encouraging signs that the world is beginning to wake up to this need. Social media, smartphones and satellite imagery are making it easier to identify pollution hotspots, allowing governments and aid agencies to respond faster and more effectively to reduce the harm to human health. The UN is drafting new laws to protect the environment during conflict, laws which have barely evolved since the 1970s. And the international criminal court may soon try cases that involve the destruction of the environment and the illegal exploitation of natural resources during conflict. In December, the third UN Environment assembly will take place in Nairobi. Curbing pollution – in all its insidious, life-threatening forms – will dominate the agenda. Worrying about the environment during war may seem like a luxury. But this is not about birds and butterflies. This is about protecting the soil, air and water that all of us depend on to survive. When we destroy the ecosystems that sustain us, when we pollute the rivers and land with heavy metals and toxic chemicals, we cripple our health and our ability to rebuild amid the ruins. If we continue to ignore the environmental toll of conflict, then we will continue to perpetuate the misery of war and prolong the suffering of those caught in the crossfire. | ['global-development/conflict-and-development', 'global-development/environmental-sustainability', 'environment/sustainable-development', 'environment/environment', 'global-development/global-development', 'society/society', 'world/iraq', 'world/islamic-state', 'world/middleeast', 'world/world', 'world/mosul', 'type/article', 'tone/comment', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/global-development'] | environment/sustainable-development | CLIMATE_POLICY | 2017-11-03T13:18:10Z | true | CLIMATE_POLICY |
business/article/2024/jul/23/british-berry-growers-costs-supermarkets | Two-fifths of British berry growers could go bust by end of 2026, study finds | Two-fifths of British growers of strawberries and raspberries could go out of business by the end of 2026 amid rising costs and poor pay from supermarkets, according to a study. Almost half of British growers said they no longer make a profit and 53% reported the financial health of their business as bad or very bad, according to a survey by British Berry Growers (BBG), an industry body that represents farmers producing 95% of the berries sold in the UK. If problems are not addressed BBG warned of “a future massive reduction in the supply of fresh British berries”. More than a third of those surveyed – 37% – are already considering reducing their production or moving out of berry farming entirely, while 39% said their relationship with retailers had never been this bad, according to the study. Nick Marston, the chair of BBG, said: “We must take this survey as a wake-up call and a sign to take urgent action. The future of this great sector hangs in the balance. It would be a travesty to lose British berries. “We need support from retailers in the form of fair returns, but we also need support from the government to ensure we have an uninterrupted supply of pickers during our peak season.” The cost of production has risen 30% for growers but this has not been reflected in the prices paid by retailers, he added. While the cost of a punnet of strawberries in the shops went up by an average 27p between 2021 and last year, for example, growers’ returns only increased by 3.5p. “Our belief is that growers are not seeing their fair share of that inflation,” Marston said. Supermarkets are working hard to source food locally and ensure consumers can “afford the essentials”, said Andrew Opie, the director of food and sustainability at the British Retail Consortium trade body. “Food retailers source, and will continue to source, the vast majority of their food from the UK and value the strong relationships they have with farmers,” he added. “Retailers are also working incredibly hard to limit price increases for consumers given many people are struggling to afford the essentials.” But Marston warned that the problem was already having an effect as production of strawberries was down 5% this year despite good growing conditions as farmers moved out of the market altogether or reduced their planting area. BBG wants the government to increase the length of the seasonal worker scheme visa for overseas pickers from six to nine months so that people are available throughout the growing season. It also wants improvements to the export system to make it easier for growers to take advantage of market opportunities in the EU and farther afield. Marston said the volume of berry exports had fallen to a seventh of pre-Brexit levels because of the introduction of complex rules such as phytosanitary checks since the UK left the EU. | ['business/fooddrinks', 'business/business', 'campaign/email/business-today', 'environment/farming', 'environment/environment', 'uk/uk', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/sarahbutler', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-business'] | environment/farming | BIODIVERSITY | 2024-07-23T13:02:54Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
artanddesign/2019/jun/10/bp-portrait-award-2019-charlie-schaffer-wins | Charlie Schaffer wins 2019 BP portrait award | A portrait of an English literature student posing in a fake fur coat has won one of the UK’s most prestigious art prizes, which has been overshadowed by criticism of the oil company BP’s sponsorship of the award. The Brighton-based artist Charlie Schaffer was announced as the winner of the 2019 BP portrait award, with the judges saying the composition had a strong sense of a living presence and managed to be traditional and contemporary at the same time. Imara in her Winter Coat was created over a four-month period, with Schaffer taking inspiration from Titian’s Portrait of Girolamo Fracastoro. The sitter is an English literature student he met after moving permanently to Brighton from London, who wore her fake fur coat because of the cold conditions in Schaffer’s studio. The judging panel said Schaffer’s portrait was a skilful “combination of several different textures including faux fur, hair and skin are revealed by prolonged looking and together these produce an image that is traditional, but clearly contemporary”. Born in 1992 and originally from London, Schaffer studied at Central Saint Martins before graduating with a degree in fine art from the University of Brighton in 2014. This year was his first entry into the competition. Sandi Toksvig presented Charlie Schaffer with the £35,000 prize and a commission worth £7,000, which is to be chosen by the National Portrait Gallery trustees. Schaffer’s winning portrait competed with 2,537 other submissions from 84 countries. This year’s announcement follows criticism of the National Portrait Gallery by groups taking issue with its acceptance of funding and sponsorship from BP. Eight artists who have all been involved in the BP prize previously, including Paul Benney, Henry Christian-Slane, Raoul Martinez and Darvish Fakhr, gave their support to the groups, which claim the sponsorship helps to launder the oil industry’s image, and that companies such as BP are making the climate emergency worse. “As the impacts of climate change become increasingly apparent, the gallery will look more and more out of step by hosting an oil-branded art prize,” the judge and artist Gary Hume wrote in a letter to the gallery’s director, Nicholas Cullinan. “Continuing to promote BP as the climate crisis intensifies will do unacceptable damage to the NPG’s reputation, relationships and public trust. I urge you to commit now to finding an alternative.” More protests are due to take place with activists from Extinction Rebellion planning to disrupt the Royal Opera House’s BP Big Screens event in Trafalgar Square on Tuesday. Second prize went to the Norwegian painter Carl-Martin Sandvold for The Crown, his “self-portrait in existential thought”; while third went to the Italian artist Massimiliano Pironti. The BP young artist award went to another Brighton-based artist, Emma Hopkins. This year’s winners will be on show at the National Portrait Gallery from 13 June to 20 October before touring to venues including the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh (7 December until 22 March) and Ulster Museum in Belfast (April to June 2020). | ['artanddesign/national-portrait-gallery', 'business/bp', 'artanddesign/art', 'artanddesign/artanddesign', 'culture/corporate-sponsorship', 'culture/culture', 'uk/uk', 'business/oil', 'environment/environment', 'environment/activism', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/lanre-bakare', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/uknews', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-home-news'] | environment/activism | CLIMATE_ACTIVISM | 2019-06-10T19:00:14Z | true | CLIMATE_ACTIVISM |
business/2006/aug/06/nuclearindustry.environment | Nuclear power links to 'sham' energy review | Key consultants working on the government's controversial energy review, which recommended a new generation of nuclear power stations, have strong links to the nuclear industry, The Observer can reveal. Experts on both sides of the debate criticised the use of AEA Technology, formed by the privatisation of the Atomic Energy Authority, to handle hundreds of submissions to the review's public consultation earlier this year. The company has sold most of its nuclear businesses, but still has a nuclear waste unit, and senior executives and staff have links to the old authority and other parts of the nuclear industry. Critics claim objections to nuclear energy were ignored or misrepresented in AEA Technology's report. However, The Observer can reveal that the report found nuclear power got by far the lowest support of 15 energy options. The revelations will add to widespread criticism that the review, published last month, was a 'sham', designed to push through nuclear energy because it was favoured by the Prime Minister. Dai Davies, the independent MP whose question in the House of Commons forced ministers to reveal the identity of the consultants, said he was not anti-nuclear but was worried the company's industry links would undermine public confidence in the review. 'I wondered why it [nuclear] was being pushed and pushed and pushed,' said Davies, who stood as an independent after quitting Labour because he felt it had changed too much. 'Vested interests is the worry... Unless we are open and honest and debate openly, that suspicion is going to be with us for a long, long time.' David Moorhouse, chief executive of Lloyd's Register, the risk management group which has analysed risks in the energy industry, said he also does not oppose nuclear, but was worried about using a company 'whose livelihoods depended on nuclear up until their sale into the private industry'. He said: 'While AEA may have given this its absolute best and neutral approach, it doesn't smell like that to the average man.' Other experts who made submissions said they felt their evidence was underplayed and misrepresented; that there were concerns that ministers allowed only 12 weeks for the consultation; and that it was done before other important studies on nuclear waste and safety regulation were published. There was praise, however, for AEA's publication of a summary table of the most-supported low-carbon technologies, which showed that nuclear power was the only one of the 15 to get more opposition than support. The widest support was for wind power, solar and bio-fuels. Of the 18 responses included in the summary which commented on nuclear, 10 were opposed to the nuclear option and eight were in favour. The 10 opposing submissions were all from individuals, the eight favourable responses were all from organisation. 'There's a great gulf between what's in the review and what's in the submissions,' said Bob Everett, lecturer in renewable energy at the Open University. 'When I think of all the people who sent in submissions, I think they'll be very, very angry, but not surprised.' AEA Technology defended its professionalism, saying it wins work around the world because it has wide expertise beyond the nuclear industry and by 'being respected for the quality and independence of our work'. The company's clients include the European Commission, the World Bank and the UN. 'AEA Environment is a large independent environmental and energy consultancy,' it said. 'As well as covering the full breadth of environmental issues, we are acknowledged to be experts in energy efficiency, renewable energy, and clean coal technology. We are also acknowledged to have experience and skills in independently assessing the results of consultations on these and other environmental issues.' The DTI said AEA Technology was chosen to help with the review because of its 'experience of this kind of work and in a broad range of sustainable energy issues'. A spokesman also defended the resulting review. 'We considered evidence received on energy policy in the round - both demand and supply - and the outcomes are a balanced package of measures on energy efficiency, on renewables, on cleaning up fossil fuels and on nuclear energy,' he added. Last month Stephen Hale, the former special advisor to the previous Environment Secretary, Margaret Beckett, wrote in The Observer that the energy review was a 'sham' and the Prime Minister 'refused to consider the alternatives'. Since the review, nuclear power has suffered a number of set-backs. The Finnish government announced that construction of the first of a new generation of nuclear power stations in Europe, seen as an important forerunner for the UK, would be delayed by a year. During the recent heatwave nuclear reactors in mainland Europe have had to be shut down, and others allowed to release harmful hot water into rivers. The US-based Nuclear Information and Resource Service opposition group also reported uranium prices have risen 600 per cent in five years, threatening nuclear's traditional operating cost advantage. | ['business/business', 'environment/environment', 'environment/nuclearpower', 'uk/uk', 'type/article', 'profile/juliettejowit', 'publication/theobserver', 'theobserver/businessandmedia', 'theobserver/businessandmedia/news'] | environment/nuclearpower | ENERGY | 2006-08-06T01:00:07Z | true | ENERGY |
environment/2021/nov/01/biden-cop26-speech-climate-change-action-us-lead-example | Cop26: Biden urges action on climate change and vows US will ‘lead by example’ | Joe Biden has warned that the climate crisis poses “the existential threat to human existence as we know it” and urged other world leaders to embark upon a transformational shift to clean energy, as questions linger over the US president’s ability to deliver this vision at home. Biden, addressing a sparse chamber at crucial UN climate talks that have begun in a frigid and drizzly Glasgow, said that the conference must act as a “kickoff of a decade of ambition and innovation to preserve our shared future”. The president added: “We meet with the eyes of history upon us. Will we do what is necessary? Or will we condemn future generations to suffer?” Biden’s administration is attempting to reassert America’s credibility at the gathering of nearly 200 countries in Scotland, known as Cop26, after Donald Trump’s decision to pull the US from the Paris climate agreement and his dismissal of climate science. Scientists have warned the world is badly off track to avoid disastrous climate change, with leaders of poorer, vulnerable countries using the talks to warn their populations face looming cataclysm. “We will demonstrate to the world the United States is not only back at the table but hopefully leading by the power of our example,” Biden said in his speech, in a tacit acknowledgement of Trump. “I know it hasn’t been the case, which is why my administration is working overtime to show our climate commitment is action not words.” “Right now, we are falling short, there’s no time to hang back, sit on the fence or argue amongst ourselves,” the president continued. “This is the challenge of our collective lifetimes, an existential threat to human existence as we know it and every day we delay the cost of inaction increases.” Biden said that wealthy, major polluters such as the US have an “overwhelming responsibility” to aid smaller countries that are struggling to cope with growing floods, fires and heatwaves spurred by global heating. Before arriving in Glasgow, Biden also took aim at some other leading emitters for not doing enough to prevent global heating surpassing 1.5C. He said these countries are “not only Russia but China (which) basically didn’t show up in terms of commitments to deal with climate change. I found it disappointing myself”. At a side event, Biden also effectively apologized for his predecessor. “I guess I shouldn’t apologize, but I do apologize for the fact that the United States – the last administration – pulled out of the Paris accords and put us sort of behind the eight ball,” Biden said. But climate activists, many of whom gathered outside the Glasgow venue that hosted more than 120 world leaders on Monday, argue that Biden is failing to live up to his own words. The president touted vast proposed climate legislation that would be the “most significant investment to deal with the climate crisis that any advanced nation has made, ever,” but the bill remains stalled in Congress, after being winnowed away by a senator who has extensive ties to fossil fuels. “Biden is at Glasgow empty handed, with nothing but words on paper,” said Varshini Prakash, executive director of Sunrise Movement. “It is humiliating and fails to meet the moment that we’re in.” Biden has also been attacked over his administration’s reluctance to drastically scale back oil and gas drilling in the US. The president’s narrative of “climate leadership” contradicts the daily suffering by communities on the frontline of gas and oil production in the US, activists say. In the first six months of the Biden administration, about 2,500 new oil and gas permits were authorized – a figure Trump’s administration took a year to reach. Speakers outside Cop26 on Monday – only 23 civil society observers were allowed in to hear the leaders’ speeches – included Black and Indigenous leaders whose communities are on the frontline of fossil fuel extraction impacts, including air pollution and contaminated drinking water and land across the US. Tom Goldtooth, Native American leader from the Indigenous Environmental Network, said: “We’re here as the original people of the US to denounce the polluters conference – it’s not a climate conference – it’s been taken over by corporate interests. If we Indigenous people don’t come we’ll be on the menu. We’re here to defend our people, we want to live.” Biden’s speech came shortly after an official opening of Cop26 that acknowledged the growing anguish over the escalating, and largely unchecked, climate crisis. Boris Johnson, the British prime minister, said “the people who will judge us are children not yet born”, adding “if we fail they will not forgive us”. Antonio Guterres, the secretary general of the UN, warned that “we are digging our own graves” due to the failure to dramatically cut planet-heating emissions. | ['environment/cop26-glasgow-climate-change-conference-2021', 'us-news/joebiden', 'environment/climate-crisis', 'environment/environment', 'us-news/us-news', 'world/world', 'us-news/us-politics', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/oliver-milman', 'profile/nina-lakhani', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/uknews', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/us-news'] | environment/cop26-glasgow-climate-change-conference-2021 | CLIMATE_POLICY | 2021-11-01T17:01:29Z | true | CLIMATE_POLICY |
us-news/2017/dec/08/wildfires-southern-california-forcing-120000-to-flee | California wildfires: 120,000 forced to flee as blazes tear through south of state | Wildfires driven by strong desert winds continue to rage through southern California, destroying hundreds of buildings and forcing 120,000 people to flee a phenomenon that could last until Christmas. Donald Trump approved California’s request for an emergency declaration on Friday, speeding federal help to firefighters and communities who are battling multiple blazes with fleets of aircraft, fire engines and garden hoses. “It’s wind event after wind event,” said Stan Ziegler, a fire captain in Ventura County, which has been ravaged by the most destructive blaze, the Thomas fire. The blaze has grown to 180 sq miles (466 sq km) and destroyed 430 buildings since it broke out on Monday. Dry, desert winds from the east known as Santa Anas, which fanned the flames, gave way to a respite of cooler onshore winds, then the easterlies roared back, said Ziegler. Fire officials said they could be battling blazes for several more weeks because of the speed at which the wind is causing them to spread, raising the highly unusual prospect of a Christmas of wildfires, which in California traditionally end in November. Swaths of Los Angeles have choked on air filled with ash and smoke, prompting hundreds of schools to close. Along the coast between Ventura and Santa Barbara tiny beach communities were under siege as fires leapt from steep hillsides across US highway 101. The massive blaze threatened Ojai, a scenic mountain town of 7,000 people nicknamed Shangri-La and known for its boutique hotels and spiritual retreats. Plumes of smoke have extended more than 1,000 miles into the Pacific. Erratic wind patterns raise the danger, said the Ventura County fire department public information officer, Scott Quirarte. “Firefighters will need to pay attention to the winds and the type of terrain they’re on.” In Sylmar on the northern fringes of Los Angeles, Patricia Padilla, whose family own a ranch and live up the hill from it, said they were awakened by flames from the Creek fire and told to leave. “All I could think about was the horses, the horses, the horses. And they were like: ‘Get out, get out, get out,’” she told the LA Times. “The structures can get rebuilt, but the lives of the horses can’t … That’s my biggest heartbreak.” The family lost 29 horses. Another blaze, which broke out north of San Diego on Thursday, tore through a training centre for hundreds of elite thoroughbred racehorses in San Diego, forcing them to run for their lives. It is feared many did not make it. The fire north of San Diego began next to state highway 76 with strong winds carrying it across six lanes to the other side. It exceeded six sq miles within hours and burned dozens of houses as it tore through the tightly packed Rancho Monserate Country Club. Rows of trailer homes in a retirement community were among the buildings engulfed by flames, leaving charred and mangled metal. Three people were burned while escaping the fire, said Capt Nick Schuler of the California department of forestry and fire protection. As the flames approached the elite San Luis Rey Downs training facility for thoroughbreds, many of the more than 450 horses were cut loose to prevent them from being trapped in their stables if barns caught fire, said Mac McBride of the Del Mar Thoroughbred Club. Herds of horses galloped past flaming palm trees in their chaotic escape. A horse trainer, Scott Hansen, said some of his 30 horses at the facility had died. “I don’t know how many are living and how many are dead,” he said. “I guess I’ll have to figure that out in the morning.” It was not yet clear how many horses had died but all of Friday’s races at Los Alamitos racecourse were cancelled as the racing community mourned. Schools and casinos were being used as shelters. Cynthia Olvera, 20, took refuge at Fallbrook high school but was moved to another shelter as the flames approached the building. She said she had been at her Bonsall home with her younger sister and nephew when her father called from the family nursery to say the fire had reached the gate of their sprawling property. After starting to drive away, the family turned around to recover forgotten personal documents but it was too late. Trees were ablaze and flames were within 10ft (3 metres) of the house. “I didn’t think it would move that fast,” she said. | ['us-news/california', 'us-news/los-angeles', 'world/wildfires', 'world/natural-disasters', 'us-news/us-news', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/rorycarroll', 'profile/haroonsiddique', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/international', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/west-coast-news'] | world/wildfires | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2017-12-08T18:55:57Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
world/2009/mar/14/al-gore-climate-change1 | World will agree new climate deal, says Al Gore | Al Gore, the former US vice-president, delivers an upbeat assessment of the global response to climate change today, saying he believes a "political tipping point" has been reached which will enable leaders to avert environmental catastrophe. In his first newspaper interview since the US election, the Nobel peace prize winner tells the Guardian that Barack Obama's arrival in the White House, combined with a growing realisation of the problem among business leaders, means there is now enough political momentum to tackle the world's greatest environmental threat. He believes a global climate deal will be agreed at the UN-brokered climate talks scheduled in Copenhagen for December. "There is a very impressive consensus now emerging around the world that the solutions to the economic crisis are also the solutions to the climate crisis," he says. "I actually think we will get an agreement at Copenhagen." While admitting there is a big challenge ahead, he says he is seeing signs of hope. "[Obama's election] is one of the main factors," he says. "But we also have a big ally in reality the planet is under assault. This collision with human civilisation ... is increasingly dire." Gore, awarded an Oscar for his 2006 documentary An Inconvenient Truth, held private talks with Obama in December in which they reportedly discussed the "green" components of the $787bn US stimulus package signed into law on 17 February. Gore says he has also detected a shift in the view of many business leaders. "They're seeing the writing on every wall they look at. They're seeing the complete disappearance of the polar ice caps right before their eyes in just a few years," he says. "They're seeing the new US administration. They're seeing Gordon Brown and David Cameron both advocating dramatic changes here in the UK." Gore warns business leaders who did not yet "get it" that they should look to the collapse of the sub-prime mortgage market as a warning. "We now have several trillion dollars worth of sub-prime carbon assets whose value is based on the assumption that CO2 is free and there is nothing wrong with 70m tonnes of it entering into the atmosphere every 24 hours," he says. "That assumption is also in the process of collapsing and the remedy for it will include ... a change in business practices." Responding to James Lovelock, the originator of the Gaia theory, who said the European trading system for carbon was "disastrous", Gore says: "James Lovelock has forgotten more about science than I will ever learn. But in analysing political systems he is perhaps allowing his ... frustration ... to obscure some of the opportunities for change in the political system. There are tipping points in nature, but there are also tipping points in politics." | ['us-news/algore', 'world/world', 'environment/climate-crisis', 'environment/environment', 'tone/news', 'us-news/us-news', 'environment/copenhagen', 'environment/global-climate-talks', 'type/article', 'profile/leohickman', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/topstories'] | environment/global-climate-talks | CLIMATE_POLICY | 2009-03-14T00:01:00Z | true | CLIMATE_POLICY |
australia-news/2023/dec/05/coles-woolworths-aldi-responsibly-sourced-salmon-labels-misleading-watchdog-told | Coles, Woolworths and Aldi ‘responsibly sourced’ salmon labels may be misleading, watchdog told | Major supermarkets may be misleading consumers that their salmon products are responsibly sourced as some is produced in Tasmanian farms that are “far from sustainable”, environmental groups say. The Environmental Defenders Office, acting on behalf of four environmental groups, has made a complaint to the consumer watchdog, urging it to investigate whether “responsibly sourced” labelling on seafood products and promotional material used by Coles, Woolworths and Aldi have broken consumer law by misleading consumers. They allege the claim by supermarkets that salmon is responsibly sourced is unqualified and may constitute greenwashing. They claim about 10% of Tasmanian salmon is sourced from Macquarie Harbour salmon farms. In September, the federal threatened species scientific committee reported the degraded water quality in Macquarie Harbour due to the salmon industry was having a “catastrophic” impact on the Maugean skate, an ancient fish thought to be found only in the vast harbour on the state’s west coast. “When a company makes false claims about its products, it wrongfully gains a competitive advantage by misleading customers who want to do the right thing,” said Kirsty Ruddock, a lawyer at the Environmental Defenders Office, which made the claim to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) on behalf of Living Oceans Society, Neighbours of Fish Farming, the Bob Brown Foundation and Ekō. “Our clients allege Aldi, Coles and Woolworths may have used misleading or deceptive statements to capitalise on the public’s strong preference to buy sustainably farmed salmon.” The environment minister, Tanya Plibersek, launched a consultation in November to examine whether the salmon industry had the approvals it needed to operate in Macquarie Harbour. The move came after an application was made under the environment laws by the Australia Institute, the Bob Brown Foundation and the Environmental Defenders Office, who argued the industry was affecting the Maugean skate. In July, more than 80 organisations around the globe called for two international accreditation schemes – Best Aquaculture Practices (BAP) and Global G.A.P (GGN) – to revoke sustainability certifications for salmon and trout farmed in Tasmania’s Macquarie Harbour, arguing the certification was misleading. The complaint to the ACCC by the Environmental Defenders Office points out the RSPCA and the Aquaculture Stewardship Council no longer endorsed certified salmon sourced from Macquarie Harbour farms after its environmental impacts became known. In August, the environmental groups wrote to Woolworths, Aldi and Coles pointing to evidence of the Maugean skate’s decline due to salmon farming and requested they stop procuring salmon from the farms and remove the “responsibly sourced” logo from the packaging. “No urgent due diligence by way of removing the product from shelves, or at the very least the removal of environmental claims, has been taken by the supermarkets or certifications to date,” said Kelly Roebuck, the SeaChoice representative from Living Oceans. “Marketing extinction as ‘responsible’ and ‘best practice’ is greenwashing at its worst.” A spokesperson for Woolworths, whose seafood sourcing policy states it prefers to source seafood that is certified by the Aquaculture Stewardship Council and is assessed against BAP and GGN standards, said it had stringent protocols to ensure products met its policy. “We are aware of the concerns regarding Macquarie Harbour farms and take this matter seriously,” a spokesperson from Woolworths said. “We note that the industry, state and federal governments are taking this matter seriously and that a review is under way along with investment into research to better understand the issue and protect the Maugean skate. “We will continue to closely monitor developments.” Coles was contacted for comment but did not respond before deadline. Aldi declined to comment. | ['australia-news/tasmania', 'environment/fish', 'australia-news/australia-news', 'australia-news/tanya-plibersek', 'australia-news/australian-competition-and-consumer-commission', 'business/coles', 'business/woolworths-australia', 'business/aldi', 'environment/marine-life', 'environment/farming', 'environment/wildlife', 'environment/environment', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/jordyn-beazley', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/australia-news'] | environment/wildlife | BIODIVERSITY | 2023-12-04T14:00:45Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
global-development/poverty-matters/2013/feb/11/bhutan-first-wholly-organic-country | Bhutan set to plough lone furrow as world's first wholly organic country | Bhutan plans to become the first country in the world to turn its agriculture completely organic, banning the sales of pesticides and herbicides and relying on its own animals and farm waste for fertilisers. But rather than accept that this will mean farmers of the small Himalayan kingdom of around 1.2m people (according to Pema Gyamtsho, Bhutan's minister of agriculture and forests; the World Bank estimates it at around 740,000) will be able to grow less food, the government expects them to be able to grow more – and to export increasing amounts of high quality niche foods to neighbouring India, China and other countries. The decision to go organic was both practical and philosophical, said Gyamtsho, in Delhi for the annual sustainable development conference last week. "Ours is a mountainous terrain. When we use chemicals they don't stay where we use them, they impact the water and plants. We say that we need to consider all the environment. Most of our farm practices are traditional farming, so we are largely organic anyway. "But we are Buddhists, too, and we believe in living in harmony with nature. Animals have the right to live, we like to to see plants happy and insects happy," he said. Gyamtsho, like most members of the cabinet, is a farmer himself, coming from Bumthang in central Bhutan but studying western farming methods in New Zealand and Switzerland. "Going organic will take time," he said. "We have set no deadline. We cannot do it tomorrow. Instead we will achieve it region by region and crop by crop." The overwhelmingly agrarian nation, which really only opened its doors to world influences 30 years ago, is now facing many of the development pangs being felt everywhere in rapidly emerging countries. Young people reluctant to live just by farming are migrating to India and elsewhere, there is a population explosion, and there is inevitable pressure for consumerism and cultural change. But, says Gyamtsho, Bhutan's future depends largely on how it responds to interlinked development challenges like climate change, and food and energy security. "We would already be self-sufficient in food if we only ate what we produced. But we import rice. Rice eating is now very common, but traditionally it was very hard to get. Only the rich and the elite had it. Rice conferred status. Now the trend is reversing. People are becoming more health-conscious and are eating grains like buckwheat and wheat." In the west, organic food growing is widely thought to reduce the size of crops because they become more susceptible to pests. But this is being challenged in Bhutan and some regions of Asia, where smallholders are developing new techniques to grow more and are not losing soil quality. Systems like "sustainable root intensification" (SRI), which carefully regulate the amount of water that crops need and the age at which seedlings are planted out, have shown that organic crop yields can be doubled with no synthetic chemicals. "We are experimenting with different methods of growing crops like SRI but we are also going to increase the amount of irrigated land and use traditional varieties of crops which do not require inputs and have pest resistance," says Gyamtsho. However, a run of exceptionally warm years and erratic weather has left many farmers doubtful they can do without chemicals. In Paro, a largely farming district in south-west Bhutan, farmers are already struggling to grow enough to feed their families and local government officials say they are having to distribute fertiliser and pesticides in larger quantities to help people grow more. "I have heard of the plan to turn everything organic. But we are facing serious problems just getting people to grow enough", said Rinzen Wangchuk, district farm officer. "Most people here are smallholder farmers. The last few years we have had problems with the crops. The weather has been very erratic. It's been warmer than normal and all the chilli crops are full of pests. We are having to rely on fertilisers more than we have ever had to in the past and even these are not working as well as they initially did." Dawa Tshering, who depends on his two acres of rice paddy and a vegetable garden, says that for decades his farming was chemical free. "But its harder now because all our children are either in the capital or studying. Nobody wants to stay, which means we have to work harder. It's just my wife an myself here. We cannot grow enough to feed ourselves and take crops to the market, so we have to use chemicals for the first time. We would like to go back to farming how we used to, where we just used what nature provided." But in a world looking for new ideas, Bhutan is already called the poster child of sustainable development. More than 95% of the population has clean water and electricity, 80% of the country is forested and, to the envy of many countries, it is carbon neutral and food secure. In addition, it is now basing its economic development on the pursuit of collective happiness. "We have no fossil fuels or nuclear. But we are blessed with rivers which give us the potential of over 30,000megawatts of electricity. So far we only exploit 2,000 megawatts. We exploit enough now to export to India and in the pipeline we have 10,000 megawatts more. The biggest threat we face is cars. The number is increasing every day. Everyone wants to buy cars and that means we must import fuel. That is why we must develop our energy." Agriculture minister Gyamtsho remains optimistic. "Hopefully we can provide solutions. What is at stake is the future. We need governments who can make bold decisions now rather than later." • This article was amended on 13 February 2013 to attribute the figure given for the population of Bhutan | ['global-development/poverty-matters', 'global-development/global-development', 'global-development/environmental-sustainability', 'environment/sustainable-development', 'environment/environment', 'world/bhutan', 'world/world', 'tone/blog', 'type/article', 'profile/johnvidal', 'profile/anniekelly'] | environment/sustainable-development | CLIMATE_POLICY | 2013-02-11T07:00:00Z | true | CLIMATE_POLICY |
environment/2012/sep/28/flooding-north-east-england-homes-demolished | Flooding leaves homes facing demolition in north-east England | Residents of a block of flats near Newcastle have been told their homes will have to be demolished after their foundations were washed away by heavy floodwaters earlier this week. Dramatic pictures of the damage to the flats in Spencer Court, Newburn, showed the building looking perilous after the torrent left it in danger of collapsing. The pilings holding up the four-storey development were exposed by the flood, which was reportedly caused by a collapsed culvert. Residents moved out after concerns about their safety and on Thursday people in neighbouring developments were also asked to leave. At a public meeting on Thursday evening residents were told that some properties would be demolished, although it was not clear which homes were affected. Northumberland Estates, which represents the Duke of Northumberland's business interests, owns part of the flooded land. The Spencer Court development was built by Dunelm Homes. Newcastle city council said the planning application was properly processed, with consultation from Northumbrian Water and the Environment Agency. Meanwhile, a couple who were led out of their flat with their three-year-old son in the early hours of Tuesday said they had not yet been allowed to return. Lorraine Avery and Colin McGiven told the Newcastle Evening Chronicle that they had only one clean pair of clothes each. She said she was angry during the public meeting, held at a local school, saying the developers "haven't got a clue". There are currently 27 flood warnings in place; 25 in north-east England, one in the Midlands and one in Wales. The Environment Agency said river levels remained high in North Yorkshire and it was continuing to monitor the River Ouse below York at Cawood, near Selby. Floodwaters are subsiding and the number of flood alerts and warnings are expected to reduce. A bridge remains closed in Tadcaster and a free bus service has begun to reconnect both sides of the town. Engineers from North Yorkshire county council said they were poised to inspect the bridge. A number of roads remain closed across York and North Yorkshire. In north Wales, police investigating the deaths on Wednesday of a couple in their 20s in a fast-flowing river, said their deaths were being treated as a tragic accident. The victims, who were walking dogs by the river Clywedog, near Wrexham, were Alicia Williams, 27, and David Platt, 25. | ['environment/flooding', 'world/natural-disasters', 'environment/environment', 'uk/newcastle', 'uk/uk', 'uk/wales', 'tone/news', 'type/article', 'profile/helencarter'] | environment/flooding | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2012-09-28T11:17:29Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
australia-news/2021/apr/09/a-win-for-fossil-fuels-green-groups-critical-as-former-origin-energy-boss-named-chief-of-climate-body | A ‘win’ for fossil fuels: green groups critical as former Origin Energy boss named chief of climate body | Environment groups and the Greens have questioned the appointment of former Origin Energy chief Grant King as the new chairman of the Climate Change Authority, while former members of the authority have described it as a “win” for the fossil fuel industry. The energy and emissions reduction minister, Angus Taylor, announced King’s appointment on Friday, along with Susie Smith, the chief executive of the Australian Industry Greenhouse Network, and John McGee, the former managing director of the Bank of New York Australia, as fellow members. Taylor said the authority would be expected to provide “robust” advice to government on emissions reduction policy. He said King, also a former president of the Business Council of Australia, had already made a significant contribution to emissions reduction policy development as a member of the government’s technology investment roadmap advisory council and as the chair of a review that was charged with examining ways to cheaply cut emissions. But Clive Hamilton, a former authority board member, said the announcement was a win for the fossil fuel industry at a time when governments around the world were becoming more ambitious about cutting greenhouse gases. “It’s fascinating that the Morrison government should attempt to disinter the Climate Change Authority – which has been a zombie organisation for several years – but it’s brought it back to oversee its retro greenhouse gas policy,” he said. “I don’t think it will have any credibility at all other than with the crypto deniers within the government.” Economist John Quiggin, another former member of the authority, said the appointments were “disappointing but unsurprising”. He claimed that after trying but failing to abolish the authority when Tony Abbott was prime minister, the government had effectively achieved its goal by “appointing representatives of the leading opponents of effective climate action”. “With this leadership, the [authority] seems sure to pursue the discredited technology of carbon capture and storage, as well as the government’s unsustainable gas-based strategy,” Quiggin said. The Climate Change Authority was created under the Gillard government as part of a deal with the Greens and country independents on climate policy. Its role is to give science-based advice on emissions policy. In 2014, it recommended the government set a 2030 climate target equivalent to a 45-60% cut in emissions below 2005 levels. The Coalition ignored the advice, setting a 26-28% reduction target. The Greens leader, Adam Bandt, said the government was making another attack on the authority’s independence by “appointing as its new chair someone who tried to tear down the package of legislation that set it up in the first place”. “When the Greens and Labor set up the Climate Change Authority, Grant King was on the front lines pushing to tear down our world-leading climate package,” he said. The independent MP, Zali Steggall, said the new appointments were “completely at odds with the authority’s purpose to give independent advice on climate, science and policy to the government”. “The Morrison government continues to only listen to vested interests in fossil fuels. We need a truly independent Climate Change Commission, as the UK has had since 2008, to advise the government if we want a chance at achieving net zero by 2050,” she said. King has championed the expansion of Australia’s LNG industry, while the Australian Industry Greenhouse Network has been labelled the “greenhouse mafia” for its lobbying efforts for the fossil fuel industry. “The Australian Industry Greenhouse Network has been an opponent of climate policy for 30 years,” said Dan Gocher, the director of climate and energy at the Australasian Centre for Corporate Responsibility. “It’s another in the long list of appointments by the government that is in opposition to climate ambition.” Gavan McFadzean, the climate program manager at the Australian Conservation Foundation, said King had been “completely attached to the idea of a gas led recovery, now widely recognised as a bad choice when it comes to pollution, jobs and tax revenue”. Emma Herd, the chief executive of the Investor Group on Climate Change, said dedicated climate change advisory bodies had been critical to helping other countries navigate and accelerate decarbonisation. She hoped Australia’s could do the same, provided it had adequate resourcing, independence and respect from government. “The United States is set to announce a new 2030 emissions reduction target, other countries including Japan are vowing to strengthen theirs, and the Paris agreement has obligations for all parties including Australia to review and ratchet ambition,” Herd said. “Given this, it may be an opportune time for the authority to again review the ambition of Australia’s emissions reduction target for 2030 compared to what would be a fair and science-based contribution from our country to achieving the global Paris goals.” In response to the criticism, Taylor said: “The Morrison Government rejects those assertions”. “Grant King is perfectly suited for this important role with his extensive background across many parts of the energy sector,” he said. “He’s demonstrated his policy capability with the King review which is currently being implemented by the government. “I look forward to working with Grant in this new role.” The Climate Change Authority declined to comment. The authority’s act requires members to have substantial experience or knowledge in areas including climate science, economics, industry, energy production and supply, technology development and adoption, greenhouse gas abatement and social policy. | ['australia-news/australian-politics', 'environment/climate-crisis', 'australia-news/australia-news', 'environment/environment', 'environment/paris-climate-agreement', 'australia-news/angus-taylor', 'environment/carbon-emissions', 'environment/fossil-fuels', 'type/article', 'profile/lisa-cox', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/australia-news'] | environment/carbon-emissions | EMISSIONS | 2021-04-09T02:44:29Z | true | EMISSIONS |
environment/2021/oct/27/human-rights-group-uranium-contamination-navajo-nation | ‘Ignored for 70 years’: human rights group to investigate uranium contamination on Navajo Nation | Rita Capitan has been worrying about her water since 1994. It was that autumn she read a local newspaper article about another uranium mine, the Crownpoint Uranium Project, getting under way near her home. Capitan has spent her entire life in Crownpoint, New Mexico, a small town on the eastern Navajo Nation, and is no stranger to the uranium mining that has persisted in the region for decades. But it was around the time the article was published that she began learning about the many risks associated with uranium mining. “We as community members couldn’t just sit back and watch another company come in and just take what is very precious to us. And that is water – our water,” Capitan said. To this effect, Capitan and her husband, Mitchell, founded Eastern Navajo Diné Against Uranium Mining (Endaum). The group’s fight against uranium mining on their homeland has continued for nearly three decades, despite the industry’s disastrous health and environmental impacts being public knowledge for years. Capitan’s newest concerns are over the Canadian mining company Laramide Resources, which, through its US subsidiary NuFuels, holds a federal mining license for Crownpoint and nearby Church Rock. Due to the snail’s pace at which operations like this can move, Laramide hasn’t begun extraction in these areas, but is getting closer by the day. While the US legal system hasn’t given them much recourse to fight the mining, Capitan and other community members see new hope in the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. Endaum and the New Mexico Environmental Law Center made a substantial evidence filing last week with the commission, alleging that the US government and its Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) have violated their human rights by licensing uranium mines in their communities. The petition with the commission won’t necessarily offer Endaum legal recourse. However, a favorable recommendation could help them in future legal proceedings against uranium mine projects while also guiding future advocacy on mining policy, said Eric Jantz, senior staff attorney at the New Mexico Environmental Law Center. He said it would also be a form of vindication: “There is moral value in having an international human rights body lay bare the abuses of the nuclear industry and the US government’s complicity in those abuses.” While these mines haven’t begun operation yet, the impending threat hangs over local residents’ heads – especially considering the deadly history of mining for the radioactive metal on the Navajo Nation beginning during the cold war. “There are four generations of Navajo folks who had to deal with existing contamination and who live essentially in the middle of or next door to radioactive waste dumps,” Jantz said. “And the federal government has ignored those communities for the last 70 years.” The type of mine in question uses in situ leach technology (ISL), also known as in situ reach (ISR), the most common form of uranium extraction. It involves drilling holes into the earth to reach the mineral deposit. A chemical solution is pumped underground, often into the aquifer, to dissolve the uranium deposit. This solution is then pumped back to the surface with the mineral in tow for processing. “The mineralization at Crownpoint has been previously shown to be amenable to ISR techniques,” Laramide says on its website. Residents, however, are deeply concerned about the risks of pollution. On the Navajo Nation, most uranium deposits sit in aquifers. Drilling into these aquifers can cause radioactive uranium to leach into the water, contaminating both the underground supply and the water absorbed from the surface. Laramide did not respond to a request for comment. On its website it says it has an “aquifer exemption on the property” from the Environmental Protection Agency. More than 500 abandoned uranium mines sit on Navajo Nation land today, each one a potential vector for unleashing more radioactive particles into the air and water, on top of the damage that’s already been done. Uranium mining operations have caused higher rates of cancer, respiratory diseases and kidney conditions among Navajos. From the 1970s to the 1990s, cancer rates on the reservation have doubled, according to its government. To this day, no mining company has fully cleaned an aquifer it polluted with in situ leach mining, according to the non-profit group Earthworks. Laramide’s proposed uranium mining operation would involve drilling in the Westwater Canyon Aquifer – which supplies water to about 15,000 Navajo people. For many Church Rock and Crownpoint residents, more uranium mining is simply a nonstarter. Larry King, a Church Rock resident who used to work on a uranium site, has problems breathing and a heart condition, according to testimony filed with the commission. He’s been advocating against Laramide and other uranium projects for more than two decades and says those fights have robbed him of any normalcy. “Those 24 years, those should have been the best years, when I could have been enjoying my life. I did not,” King testified. | ['environment/nuclear-waste', 'world/indigenous-peoples', 'world/native-americans', 'environment/mining', 'environment/environment', 'us-news/us-news', 'environment/energy', 'type/article', 'tone/features', 'profile/cody-nelson', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/west-coast-news'] | environment/energy | ENERGY | 2021-10-27T10:20:28Z | true | ENERGY |
commentisfree/2018/may/21/the-guardian-view-on-ai-in-the-nhs-a-good-servant-when-its-not-a-bad-master | The Guardian view on AI in the NHS: a good servant, when it’s not a bad master | Editorial | Technology helps us live better and for longer; in fact it has been doing so since the birth of modern medicine. And as each new technology comes into use, it turns out to have medical uses, even though these are not always the ones that are sold hardest: in the 1920s the American press was full of advertisements for the health benefits of radium, which was then a mysterious and powerful substance just as artificial intelligence (AI) is today. AI won’t work miracles or make death unnecessary by letting people upload their minds into silicon, but it might catch cancers earlier. The prime minister on Monday said that 30,000 lives a year would be saved by 2030, mostly through earlier and more accurate diagnosis. This is about 10% of the annual cancer death rate in Britain. It is possible to object that the money would be better spent on less glamorous initiatives, such as hiring enough care workers, nurses and doctors and paying them all properly. But while that is certainly very urgent, there is no need to choose between the two approaches. We need both. At the same time, one of Britain’s biggest health trusts, University College London Hospitals (UCLH), announced a partnership with the Alan Turing Institute, a body that collects the AI expertise of British universities, which looks realistically promising. It starts from the question of how the NHS can use AI, rather than asking how AI can rescue the NHS, which of course it can’t. There is a huge contrast here with some of the earlier attempts in this direction, in particular the partnership between Google’s subsidiary DeepMind and the Royal Free hospital, which was widely and rightly criticised because Google gained access to the benefits of data that had been collected from patients and by the trust without any of the patients having consented to this. Indeed, they could not have given informed consent in many cases, because the use to which their data would be put was literally unthinkable at the time when it was collected. Privacy alone is an inadequate framework in which to place all the problems that arise with the collection and exploitation of data. Yet because machine learning techniques require enormous quantities of data to be trained on, the possession of such data hoards is what really distinguishes the big players from the rest. So the most important piece of news to emerge from recent announcements has been the assurance from the UCLH trust that it will maintain control over all the data that is to be examined, and that examination will be done in house. This is necessary for privacy, but, almost more importantly, because the application of machine learning techniques is – even more than most software development – more like gardening than architecture. The work is never done or perfected. The data changes over time, and with it the techniques that can extract what users need to know. In the short term, there are already some well-established successes in the field of image recognition. Some programs have achieved or even surpassed human performance when it comes to recognising skin cancers. They could provide a useful second opinion to the human operators, even if they can’t and shouldn’t replace them entirely. In the long term, the hope is that AI will help hospitals in the management of patients as well as their diagnosis; it might sort the queues in A&E so that the most dangerous symptoms were prioritised even when they weren’t obvious. We have often argued that the giant tech companies make bad masters. But here is a field where the technology itself can make a good servant to the NHS. | ['commentisfree/commentisfree', 'technology/artificialintelligenceai', 'society/nhs', 'technology/data-protection', 'uk/uk', 'technology/big-data', 'tone/editorials', 'tone/comment', 'technology/computing', 'science/consciousness', 'technology/technology', 'society/health', 'society/society', 'science/medical-research', 'science/science', 'society/hospitals', 'uk/london', 'type/article', 'profile/editorial', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/journal', 'theguardian/journal/opinion', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-letters-and-leader-writers'] | technology/big-data | UNRELATED_TO_CLIMATE | 2018-05-21T17:42:06Z | true | UNRELATED_TO_CLIMATE |
news/2023/mar/16/time-to-watch-out-for-the-wheatear | Time to watch out for the wheatear | Despite its name, the wheatear has absolutely nothing to do with ears of wheat. Instead, the name is a corruption of an Anglo-Saxon phrase meaning “white-arse”, from the bird’s bright white rump, which it reveals as it hops on to rocks, or flies away. From the middle of March onwards, long before most migrants have returned, I expect to see one or two wheatears down on the Somerset coast. The first sighting is always a special one, because although chiffchaffs and blackcaps usually arrive a week or two beforehand, those species are short-distance migrants. The wheatear, in contrast, has flown all the way here from sub-Saharan Africa, from Senegal in the west to Kenya in the east, where they have spent the northern hemisphere winter in warmer and more benevolent climes. The key dilemma facing these long-distance travellers is timing. If they arrive too early, they risk not finding enough food, and perishing before the breeding season has even begun; but if they leave it too late, the best territories will be taken, and they may fail to raise a family. Early spring arrivals like the wheatear appear to be benefiting from the climate crisis – at least for now. But if droughts affect their winter homes, they may not survive to return at all. | ['news/series/weatherwatch', 'uk/weather', 'science/meteorology', 'world/world', 'type/article', 'tone/features', 'profile/stephenmoss1', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/uknews', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-weather'] | news/series/weatherwatch | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2023-03-16T06:00:20Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
science/2020/mar/31/terrawatch-plastic-rich-canyons-forming-in-the-deep-ocean | Terrawatch: plastic-rich canyons forming in the deep ocean | The Earth’s oceans are the graveyard for almost everything eventually. Fragments of rock, twigs and old leaves are carried there by glaciers and streams; desert sands hitch a ride on the wind and tiny plankton die, decay and settle to the ocean floor. Last year a survey of ocean floors, using seismic reflection data, revealed that the oceans contain a whopping 3.37 x 108 cubic kilometres of sediment – approximately enough to cover Earth’s continents in a 2km thick layer. However, the sediment is thicker in some places than in others, and now a new study shows how a very modern form of sediment – plastic – is forming plastic-rich channels on the deep ocean floor. Using a flume tank, scientists mimicked what happens to a mix of sand and microplastic pieces when they emerge from a river mouth and enter the sea. Microplastic fragments tended to get stuck among the sand grains, and travelled with them as they fell in an avalanche off a mock ocean shelf. The results suggest that in the real world around 99% of the plastic arriving in the ocean is being whisked down to the far depths by underwater avalanches, potentially travelling thousands of kilometres across the ocean floor, and accumulating in deep sea canyons. | ['science/series/terrawatch', 'science/science', 'environment/plastic', 'environment/environment', 'environment/pollution', 'type/article', 'tone/features', 'profile/kate-ravilious', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/weather2', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-weather'] | environment/plastic | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE | 2020-03-31T20:30:02Z | true | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE |
business/2023/aug/02/drax-denies-use-of-subsidy-loophole-to-avoid-639m-payout-to-households | Drax denies use of subsidy loophole to avoid £639m payout to households | The owner of the Drax power plant has been forced to deny that it used a loophole in the government’s subsidy scheme to avoid paying almost £650m to households since the start of the energy crisis. An investigation by Bloomberg found that the FTSE 100 company idled one of the generating units at its giant North Yorkshire power plant for much of 2022 when the energy market crisis plunged millions of homes into fuel poverty. The report claims that if Drax had kept running the unit, which earns a fixed subsidy levied on energy bills, it would have been required to return an estimated £639m to bill payers as of last month. Instead the FTSE 100 company was able to use a surge in the global price for wood pellets to make more money from selling them on than it could by using them to generate electricity, according to Bloomberg. Although Drax is not alleged to have broken any market rules, a previous energy minister accused the company of acting against the national interest. The leader of the Liberal Democrats, Ed Davey, who was energy secretary when the government negotiated the subsidy deal, said: “It looks like they are acting in bad faith.” Under the terms of the subsidy contract, which has handed Drax about £1.4bn to date, energy projects receive a fixed price for each megawatt of electricity generated. Usually companies receive a payment levied on energy bills which tops up the earnings from the wholesale market to the agreed “strike price”. But in the past year market prices have been significantly higher than the subsidy level, requiring companies to pay the difference back to consumers. Drax has denied that it intentionally shut its biomass unit to avoid making these payments in favour of profiting from the resale price of its wood pellets, branding Bloomberg’s investigation “false, inaccurate, and misleading”. The company said the surging price of biomass had made the generating unit “uneconomical” to run at the agreed subsidy level, which assumed the average cost of biomass would be about $181 a tonne. In 2022 the price reached a peak of $467 a tonne. A Drax spokesperson said: “The Russians’ invasion [of Ukraine] created unprecedented challenges to the electricity market due to constrained fuel supplies, leading to an increase in both the demand for biomass and the price of pellets. “Given this, we had to make responsible decisions on our winter hedging to minimise risk to Britain’s energy security and our business … No serious observer of the energy system would advocate that we ought to have exposed Britain’s power grid and our business to increased risks.” A government spokesperson said the subsidy scheme had been “hugely successful” in securing more than 26GW of new low-carbon electricity capacity since it began in 2014. They added that generation decisions are “a matter for private energy companies” and would take account of wider market conditions. | ['business/draxgroup', 'business/energy-industry', 'uk/uk', 'business/business', 'campaign/email/business-today', 'environment/biomass-and-bioenergy', 'politics/ed-davey', 'environment/energy', 'environment/environment', 'politics/politics', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/jillian-ambrose', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/uknews', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-business'] | environment/energy | ENERGY | 2023-08-02T13:07:20Z | true | ENERGY |
environment/2010/mar/10/feed-in-tariffs-turbine-solar | Feed-in tariff 'killing off' burgeoning UK small turbine industry | UK small wind turbine manufacturers say they will lose out to foreign solar panel manufacturers in the race to cash in on the UK government's new feed-in tariff scheme. They claim their products will be penalised because solar panel owners will receive higher government subsidies than wind turbine buyers. As the arrangement stands, a wind turbine would qualify for 26.7-34.5p per KWh in government subsidies, while solar panels would typically bring in 41p per KWh. Turbine manufacturers will also have to pay a fee of up to £100,000 to have their models certified for the scheme, and they argue that planning rules make it harder for customers to get approval for turbines. Due to come into effect on 1 April, the tariff – also known as Clean Energy Cashback – will offer home owners a government subsidy for installing small-scale renewable energy technologies, including solar panels and wind turbines. Alex Murley, RenewableUK's head of small systems, said: "Small wind is the only microgeneration technology which UK manufacturers dominate the market for. If we don't get this right we could be shooting ourselves in the foot and killing off a burgeoning UK success story." According to Renewable UK, planning applications for small wind turbines have traditionally taken up to 14 months to process. Britain's oldest surviving small wind manufacturer, Ampair, has accused some local authorities of "systematically rejecting" applications. The government promises to allow households to install small turbines without planning permission from June, but turbine manufacturers say the current planning allowance is too limited, restricting domestic wind turbines to a hub height of 10 metres and 2.2 metres blade diameter. This will allow a 1.5KW turbine, producing an average of 800KWh a year in windy conditions – less than a fifth of the average UK household's electricity needs. By comparison, UK panel installer Solarcentury has estimated that the typical 18 metre square domestic solar panel installation would on average generate just over 2,000KWh – nearly half the average household's electricity consumption. The government's Energy Saving Trust said that although such limitations are fine for urban roof top turbines, wind turbines in rural locations need to be bigger for small wind turbines to generate a significant amount of energy for the UK. It is these rural locations that will generate the lion's share of energy from "small" turbines. EST figures published last year show small turbines could meet 4% of the UK's electricity demands but only 4% of that energy would come from small turbines in urban locations. UK manufacturers currently produce four-fifths of the country's small turbines, 3,500 of which were installed in the UK in 2008. All larger wind turbines and the vast majority of solar panels are manufactured abroad. David Sharman, managing director of Ampair, claims the UK government is penalising its own manufacturing industry through inequalities in the feed-in tariff. He also claims that the rigorous tests to qualify for the tariff's quality assurance certificate, the Microgeneration Certification Scheme (MCS), are prohibitively expensive at at £50,000-£100,000 per product certified. No small wind turbines have so far been MCS accreditedbut the government has set up an MCS 'transition list' for small wind turbines, which allows them to temporarily qualify for the tariff for one year while they complete the accreditation scheme. Responding to criticism of planning restrictions for wind, a spokesperson for the Department of Energy and Climate Change said: "We consulted on the proposals to find the right balance for these technologies. We want to enable homeowners to install microgeneration easily and also make sure we're fair about planning permission for larger installations. Different homes will be suitable for different technologies based on a number of factors – it's not a one size fits all." | ['environment/feed-in-tariffs', 'environment/windpower', 'environment/renewableenergy', 'environment/energy', 'environment/environment', 'business/utilities', 'business/manufacturing-sector', 'business/business', 'uk/uk', 'tone/news', 'type/article'] | environment/windpower | ENERGY | 2010-03-10T13:06:54Z | true | ENERGY |
world/2005/sep/10/hurricanekatrina.usa3 | Disaster chief loses hurricane relief role after CV allegations | Michael Brown, the head of the Bush administration's disaster relief effort, was relieved yesterday of his role coordinating the response to Hurricane Katrina, after allegations that he had embroidered his professional record and had no emergency management experience. A US coast guard commander, Rear Admiral Thad Allen, took over relief operations from Mr Brown, the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema), who was recalled to Washington. Announcing the move, Michael Chertoff, the homeland security secretary, said that "Mike Brown has done everything he possibly could" in leading the response. Fema, he added, had "a lot of other responsibilities" that required Mr Brown's oversight. Amid signs that he is haemorrhaging public confidence, President George Bush is to make a third visit tomorrow to the disaster zone, where hopes were rising that Hurricane Katrina's human cost might not be as high as some local officials had first feared. In New Orleans, as police and troops moved door to door looking for survivors and bodies, Terry Ebbert, the city's head of homeland security, said: "I think there's some encouragement in what we've found in the initial sweeps that some of the catastrophic deaths that some people predicted may not have occurred. "Numbers so far are relatively minor as compared to the dire projections of 10,000." It was news the president badly needed. Mr Brown's credentials have become an embarrassment at the centre of a debate over Fema's slow response to the disaster. Yesterday's polls suggested that the relief debacle is draining public faith in President Bush. The Pew Research Centre found only 38% of Americans approved of the way he was handling the crisis, and the president's overall approval rating fell sharply, to 40%. Former secretary of state Colin Powell criticised the relief effort, saying "a lot of failures" occurred at all levels of government. Mr Powell, the highest ranking black official in Mr Bush's first term, said he did not believe race was a factor in the slow delivery of relief. "I think there have been a lot of failures at a lot of levels - local, state and federal," he told ABC News. "I don't think it's racism, I think it's economic." In the 10 years before joining Fema, Mr Brown's job was to help run shows for the International Arabian Horse Association, but he left under pressure from management after the association was sued over his handling of some of its events. According to his official biography, Mr Brown's only directly relevant experience was 25 years ago as an "assistant city manager with emergency services oversight". However, Time magazine's online edition reported yesterday that in his three years working for the local authority in Edmond, Oklahoma (population 70,000), Mr Brown was "more like an intern", with oversight over nothing. An Edmond spokeswoman, Claudia Deakins, said official records said only that he was employed as "an assistant to the city manager" - not an "assistant city manager". Mr Brown was hired as Fema's deputy director in 2001 by an old college friend, Joe Allbaugh, who ran the agency until 2003. Mr Allbaugh, Mr Bush's former campaign manager, was hired this year by Haliburton, vice-president Dick Cheney's former company, to provide advice on disaster relief. Haliburton has been awarded the first big reconstruction contacts in the wake of the storm. Under "honours and awards" in an online legal directory, FindLaw.com, Mr Brown is listed as an "outstanding political science professor" at Central State University. Charles Johnson, of the University of Central Oklahoma, as it is now known, told the Guardian: "The only thing I can tell you is that he graduated in political science in 1978. I do not have a record indicating he was a political science professor." Yesterday, Mr Brown accused the media of bias against him and said his removal was Mr Chertoff's idea. He was "anxious" to return to Washington "to correct all the inaccuracies and lies". | ['world/world', 'us-news/hurricane-katrina', 'us-news/us-news', 'type/article', 'profile/julianborger'] | us-news/hurricane-katrina | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2005-09-10T01:19:56Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
environment/2011/apr/26/inside-chernobyl-control-room | Inside Chernobyl's control room, 25 years on | The control room where Soviet atomic staff fought a losing battle to prevent a nuclear disaster is quiet and cold as a tomb. Even through a face mask, anti-radiation suit and large industrial boots one feels a deep chill – plus rubble underfoot. The size of the space is hard to fathom. It is pitch black until suddenly illuminated by the flash on my camera. In the burst of light a huge V-shaped console desk looms battleship grey in the distance, its top pock-marked with dozens of tiny holes. It is easy to imagine that a fireball swept through the nerve centre of the Chernobyl power plant's reactor No 4 on theday of the world's worst atomic accident, 25 years ago. In fact the instrument panel was not stripped of plastic switches by fire; rather more mundanely it has been raided by souvenir-hunters among the decommissioning staff. The rest of this the room is badly damaged but there are still areas oddly untouched. There are complex diagrams on the wall that once gave the control room staff valuable information on how the 3,200 megawatt plant was behaving. There are frayed cables worming their way out of holes and crevices, and there is shattered glass. The silence is broken by the sound of a Geiger counter crackling behind me. I am with an Italian journalist who has had the foresight to bring a handheld device to monitor his exposure to the radioactivity still emanating from this place a quarter of a century after it blew up. We have already been furnished with our own official monitors pinned to our chests. Elaborate precautions have been taken by the staff here to reassure us we are safe. Chernobyl was to have been the biggest nuclear plant in the world, with six reactors. The accident put paid to reactor No 4 while condemning the whole site to closure. Now the only workers here are very slowly dismantling the buildings and defuelling the reactors. We are bundled into the same protective clothes when we enter the main administration building on the sprawling industrial site. Dark blue jackets – padded against the freezing temperatures outside – are donned last, along with bright orange hard hats and white masks. Underneath we are instructed to wear mint-fresh white cotton wraps complete with hoods. In the neon lights, with the hospital green walls and Cyrillic script signs, it feels like being sucked into a scene from Alexander Solzhenitsyn's Cancer Ward. A Soviet nightmare might have been easy to imagine, but it is also not hard to envisage the central planners' dream a couple of miles down the road from the plant. There the town of Pripyat was built for 50,000 Chernobyl workers and their families with everything that could be needed, including 15 primary schools, 10 gyms and a hospital. That purpose-built utopia – along with the myth of the USSR's industrial supremacy – was blown away that night of 26 April 1986. Along with the plant, the city was abandoned within 48 hours of reactor No 4 going critical. Now as one walks down the tree-lined avenues all one can see is decaying apartment blocks and a rusting ferris wheel erected to celebrate May Day. The silence is deafening in this urban nuclear graveyard. | ['environment/chernobyl-nuclear-disaster', 'environment/nuclearpower', 'world/ukraine', 'environment/environment', 'world/europe-news', 'world/world', 'tone/news', 'type/article', 'profile/terrymacalister', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/uknews'] | environment/nuclearpower | ENERGY | 2011-04-25T23:05:00Z | true | ENERGY |
news/2011/aug/28/weatherwatch-emmenopterys-henryi | Weatherwatch: Emmenopterys henryi blossoms | Britain's mild maritime climate does not have enough extremes to some continental plants. Winter is neither cold enough nor summer sufficiently hot to get their breeding instincts going. But last December's cold snap and the warm spring stirred one rare and reluctant Chinese tree, now more than 40ft high, to flower for the first time since it was planted in 1928. Alongside it a second, younger specimen is blossoming too. The deciduous tree is from south-west China, has only a Latin name Emmenopterys henryi, and was introduced to Britain in 1907 by the plant hunter, Ernest Wilson. He described it as one of the "most strikingly beautiful trees of the Chinese forests." This is partly because it has reddish purple shoots in the spring and red leaves turning glossy green as summer progresses. However, Wilson did not realise the tree needed freezing Chinese winters and hot summers to induce it to produce its beautiful clusters of white flowers. The species was recorded flowering in Europe first in Italy in 1971 and then in 1987 at Kew Gardens' country outpost, Wakehurst Place in West Sussex. The two trees flowering side by side this year are also in Sussex at the Borde Hill Garden in Haywards Heath. They look slightly different, with the younger one having smaller leaves. This flowered first in 2010 when a cold winter was followed by a warm summer spell. It took this year's slightly more extreme conditions to trigger both trees into action. | ['news/series/weatherwatch', 'uk/weather', 'uk/uk', 'tone/features', 'environment/environment', 'world/china', 'world/asia-pacific', 'type/article', 'profile/paulbrown', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/weather2'] | news/series/weatherwatch | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2011-08-28T22:01:01Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
world/2017/sep/21/have-you-been-affected-by-hurricane-maria-in-puerto-rico | Have you been affected by hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico? | Hurricane Maria has knocked out electricity across Puerto Rico, after strong winds and flooding brought down the island’s power service. The storm made landfall early on Wednesday morning with winds of 155mph (250kph). Widespread flooding is affecting the capital San Juan, and a flash-flood warning has been declared in central Puerto Rico, where river levels are at a record high. Take part If you’ve been affected by the hurricane and would like to share your story, please contribute using the form below. You can also share pictures and videos by clicking on the blue Contribute button on this article or via WhatsApp by adding the contact +44(0)7867825056. We’d also like to hear from people who are helping in the relief effort. Your stories will help our journalists have a more complete picture of these events and we will use them in our reporting. Your safety is most important, so please ensure that you’re taking this into account when recording or sharing your content. | ['world/hurricane-maria', 'world/world', 'us-news/puerto-rico', 'type/article', 'tone/callout', 'profile/guardian-readers', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-communities-and-social'] | world/hurricane-maria | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2017-09-21T15:41:58Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
environment/shortcuts/2013/oct/21/hinkley-point-nuclear-power-station | Hinkley Point nuclear power station: a new type of nationalisation | Rejoice! Britain's first new nuclear power station in a generation is to be built at Hinkley Point in Somerset, and David Cameron could not be happier. "This is a very big day for our country," he said yesterday, "the first time we've built a new nuclear power station for a very long time." There is only one snag: "we" are not building it at all. Thanks to an amazingly cushy 35-year deal agreed with the government, the plant to be known as Hinkley C is the responsibility of a consortium largely split between the French energy giant EDF and two Chinese setups, the China General Nuclear Power Group and the China National Nuclear Corporation. EDF is 85% owned by the French government; the Chinese state owns all of the latter two companies. Nationalisation, it seems, is back – only it's a new kind, whereby it is overseas governments who get to buy up our national assets. Just look at the evidence. At the last official count, a third of British infrastructure was overseas-owned – but what's particularly interesting is the amount of government money involved. EDF – it stands for Électricité de France – already owns two British coal-fired power stations, eight UK nuclear plants and a couple of British wind farms. Germany's Deutsche Bahn is a 100% state-owned railway company, and since 2010, it has also owned Arriva, which controls an array of British bus services as well as the majority of trains that run in Wales, and a whole load that serve Birmingham (prior to buying Arriva, DB had already bought the Chiltern main line, overground services in London and Tyne and Wear Metro). DP World owns 60 or so ports across the planet, including the Port of London and the Port of Southampton – and is controlled by Dubai World, an investment company that acts on behalf of Dubai's government. The state-backed China Investment Corporation owns nearly 10% of Thames Water and a similar-sized chunk of Ferrovial, the Spanish-owned conglomerate that has a big stake in the airports at Heathrow, Southampton, Glasgow and Aberdeen. Those airports are also 20% owned by Qatar Holding, which slings money around on behalf of Qatar's rulers. Oh, and just to bring things up to date, among the big investors that bought thousands of shares in Royal Mail were sovereign wealth funds whose money comes from the governments of Kuwait and Singapore. The Hinkley Point deal is traceable to a memorandum of understanding on infrastructure investment, agreed by the governments of China and the UK in 2011, and boosted by George Osborne's recent trip to Beijing (where he announced that another state-owned Chinese company is to get involved in Manchester airport). There will, it seems, be much more of this stuff – not least, perhaps, when it comes to the new high-speed rail line that will run between London and Birmingham and beyond. Among the firms who are interested in a piece of that particular action are the state-owned China Railway Group, though while in China, Osborne said talks about all that were "for another day". Strange, perhaps, that the same Tories who warn of the perils of government intervention in the economy and our supposed loss of sovereignty to the wicked old EU should be going down this road, but there we are: state ownership is obviously fine, so long as it's someone else's state that's doing it. | ['environment/nuclearpower', 'news/shortcuts', 'environment/energy', 'environment/environment', 'business/edf', 'business/energy-industry', 'business/business', 'world/france', 'world/china', 'tone/features', 'tone/blog', 'type/article', 'profile/johnharris', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/g2', 'theguardian/g2/features'] | environment/nuclearpower | ENERGY | 2013-10-21T15:31:19Z | true | ENERGY |
technology/2014/dec/04/sphero-ollie-review-the-remote-control-car-reimagined | Sphero Ollie review: the remote control car reimagined | Christmas is coming, and no Christmas is really complete without a novelty gadget toy making beeping noises under the tree. The Sphero Ollie promises to be the robotic remote control car for 2015, but is it any good? Ollie is the second toy from robotics startup Sphero. The first was a robotic ball controlled by an iPhone or Android smartphone, which could be programmed to perform certain moves and tricks and ushered in a new era in physical gaming. Sphero identified that a large proportion of users simply wanted to drive the robotic ball as fast as possible, so took the motors out, added two wheels and created Ollie. Tony Hawk’s in a toy Ollie is driven a bit like a character in a video game, but on a smartphone and with a virtual joystick on one side and a trick pad on the other. Once calibrated to know which way is forward, the little cylinder freely rolls around with a touch of the thumb. Getting going is easy, but mastering fine control is actually quite difficult. Ollie is designed with jumps and tricks in mind – akin to a Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater game, but in the physical world. It can spin, flip, drift, jump and perform mid-air tricks, and the smartphone app rewards players with points, based on the difficulty and execution of the trick – yes, just like a skateboarding game. Pulling tricks is as easy as swiping a thumb across the trick pad, but steering the little robot into a ramp at high speed (it can hit 14mph at maximum clip and travel up to 30m from the smartphone) is tricky and will require practice. From a 10cm ramp Ollie can reach heights of 1.5m, but is tough enough to survive significant falls and crashes. Full hour of driving per charge Because it relies on weights for generating momentum, leaning forward or backwards like humans do, Ollie can get stuck on lips of doors, but pulling a trick normally gets it going again. Charging via microUSB is straightforward like a smartphone and takes an hour, powering Ollie for a full hour of continuous play on a single charge, which is often longer than you’ll want to play with it in one go. Beyond gaming, Sphero has developed a suite of apps that allow kids – and big kids – to program moves, dances, tricks and routes using either code or simple visual commands. The free apps for both Android and iPhone also come with lesson plans and resources to help teach programming in fun ways. Price Ollie costs £80 and comes with two nobbly tires, which it can be removed for drifting. Other tyres and colours, ramps and accessories will be available at a later date in the UK. Verdict Ollie is fun, robust and lasts for ages on a single charge, which makes it a great toy for kids and gadget fanatics alike. The gaming apps make it more than just a toy car replacement too, while there are some decent educational elements for teaching kids to code. The potential downside is that you have to give kids a smartphone or tablet to control it, so best put one in a bulletproof case. Pros: fast, fun, robust, tricks, easy to control hard to master, lasts 60 minutes on a charge Cons: smartphone required to operate which could be the fragile bit, can get stuck Other reviews • Parrot Minidrones Rolling Spider review: an indoor drone for big kids • Parrot Minidrones Jumping Sumo review: rolling, jumping robo • Artificial intelligence powers Anki Drive to pole position on the indoor racetrack | ['technology/gadgets', 'technology/robots', 'technology/technology', 'lifeandstyle/toys', 'technology/apps', 'games/games', 'technology/android', 'technology/iphone', 'technology/smartphones', 'type/article', 'tone/reviews', 'profile/samuel-gibbs'] | technology/gadgets | UNRELATED_TO_CLIMATE | 2014-12-04T12:46:23Z | true | UNRELATED_TO_CLIMATE |
environment/2020/mar/10/ecosystems-size-of-amazon-rainforest-can-collapse-within-decades | Ecosystems the size of Amazon 'can collapse within decades' | Even large ecosystems the size of the Amazon rainforest can collapse in a few decades, according to a study that shows bigger biomes break up relatively faster than small ones. The research reveals that once a tipping point has been passed, breakdowns do not occur gradually like an unravelling thread, but rapidly like a stack of Jenga bricks after a keystone piece has been dislodged. The authors of the study, published on Tuesday in the Nature Communications journal, said the results should warn policymakers they had less time than they realised to deal with the multiple climate and biodiversity crises facing the world. To examine the relationship between an ecosystem’s size and the speed of its collapse, the authors looked at 42 previous cases of “regime shift”. This is the term used to describe a change from one state to another – for example, the collapse of fisheries in Newfoundland, the death of vegetation in the Sahel, desertification of agricultural lands in Niger, bleaching of coral reefs in Jamaica, and the eutrophication of Lake Erhai in China. They found that bigger and more complex biomes were initially more resilient than small, biologically simpler systems. However, once the former hit a tipping point, they collapse relatively faster because failures repeat throughout their modular structure. As a result, the bigger the ecosystem, the harder it is likely to fall. Based on their statistical analysis, the authors estimate an ecosystem the size of the Amazon (approximately 5.5m km2) could collapse in approximately 50 years once a tipping point had been reached. For a system the size of the Caribbean coral reefs (about 20,000 km2), collapse could occur in 15 years once triggered. The paper concludes: “We must prepare for regime shifts in any natural system to occur over the ‘human’ timescales of years and decades, rather than multigenerational timescales of centuries and millennia. “Humanity now needs to prepare for changes in ecosystems that are faster than we previously envisaged through our traditional linear view of the world, including across Earth’s largest and most iconic ecosystems, and the social-ecological systems that they support.” The paper says this could be the case in Australia where the recent Australian bushfires followed protracted periods of drought and may indicate a shift to a drier ecosystem. Scientists were already aware that systems tended to decline much faster than they grew but the new study quantifies and explains this trend. “What is new is that we are showing this is part of a wider story. The larger the system, the greater the fragility and the proportionately quicker collapses,” John Dearing, professor in physical geography at the University of Southampton and lead author of the study, said. “What we are saying is don’t be taken in by the longevity of these systems just because they may have been around for thousands, if not millions, of years – they will collapse much more rapidly than we think.” Dearing said he was concerned that one of the possible implications of the study was that complete destruction of the Amazon could occur within his grandchildren’s lifetimes. “This is a paper that is satisfying from a scientific point of view, but worrying from a personal point of view. You’d rather not come up with such a set of results,” he said. A separate study last week warned the Amazon could shift within the next decade into a source of carbon emissions rather than a sink, because of damage caused by loggers, farmers and global heating. Experts said the new findings should be a spur to action. “I think the combination of theory, modelling and observations is especially persuasive in this paper, and should alert us to risks from human activities that perturb the large and apparently stable ecosystems upon which we depend,” said Georgina Mace, professor of biodiversity and ecosystems at University College London, who was not involved in the studies. “There are effective actions that we can take now, such as protecting the existing forest, managing it to maintain diversity, and reducing the direct pressures from logging, burning, clearance and climate change.” These views were echoed by Ima Vieira, an ecologist at Museu Emílio Goeldi in Belém, Brazil. “This is a very important paper. For Brazil to avoid the ecosystem collapse modelled in this study, we need to strengthen governance associated to imposing heavy fines on companies with dirty supply chains, divestment strategies targeting key violators and enforcement of existing laws related to environmental crimes. And we have to be quick.” However, the methodology was not universally accepted. Erika Berenguer, a senior research associate at the University of Oxford and Lancaster University, said the regime shifts paper relied too much on data from lakes and oceans to be useful as an indicator of what would happen to rainforests. “While there is no doubt the Amazon is at great risk and that a tipping point is likely, such inflated claims do not help either science or policy making,” she said. The authors said their study was not a forecast about a specific region but a guide to the speed at which change could occur. | ['environment/amazon-rainforest', 'environment/deforestation', 'environment/conservation', 'environment/environment', 'environment/forests', 'environment/climate-crisis', 'environment/biodiversity', 'environment/wildlife', 'world/peru', 'world/ecuador', 'world/colombia', 'world/brazil', 'world/americas', 'world/world', 'world/venezuela', 'world/bolivia', 'world/suriname', 'world/guyana', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/jonathanwatts', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-environment'] | environment/deforestation | BIODIVERSITY | 2020-03-10T16:00:36Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
environment/2021/mar/13/australia-to-miss-plastic-reduction-targets-without-tougher-enforcement-waste-industry-says | Australia's voluntary and state-based schemes are failing to enforce plastic targets | Australia is likely to miss all of its own targets to rid the environment of plastic unless there is a major overhaul of its management and enforcement, conservationists and waste industry representatives say. A government review found no state or territory had investigated or penalised a company over their performance on packaging waste in the past four years. WWF-Australia said it showed the federal government’s chosen approach of voluntary schemes and state-based measures was failing. And the Waste Management and Resource Recovery Association of Australia, a leading industry body, has written to the federal environment minister, Sussan Ley, warning the government is likely to miss its packaging targets unless there are significant reforms. The government last week launched a national plastics plan that repeats a promise that all packaging used in Australia will be either reusable, recyclable or compostable by 2025. Under the government’s approach, companies that produce and use packaging and have an annual turnover greater than $5m have two options. They can sign up to the Australian Packaging Covenant or choose to be regulated by states and territories under national laws introduced in 2011. But an independent review of the 2011 law, commissioned by the Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment and published last month, found there were no reported compliance actions, investigations or complaints from states and territories in four years. “This does not indicate an absence of non-compliance from liable brand owners, but an absence of compliance and enforcement action by states and territories,” the review said. The Australian Packaging Covenant Organisation (APCO) has more than 1,500 members, including major supermarkets and some of the world’s biggest food and drinks brands, such as Nestle and Coca-Cola Amatil. The organisation told the review it had sent a list of 1,919 “potentially liable non-signatories” to its covenant to states and territories. A further 98 brands have also withdrawn from the covenant, either because of “non-compliance” or they had “elected to withdraw from the covenant and report directly to state jurisdictions”. In a submission to a review of the laws, which closed on Friday, WWF-Australia said the states’ and territories’ failure to enforce the law had resulted in “a system characterised by free-riders, where brands can choose to voluntarily meet APCO targets or be governed by regulations that aren’t enforced”. The organisation’s plastics campaigner, Katinka Day, said there needed to be penalties for companies that were not part of APCO. “We cannot feel confident that Australia’s packaging targets will be met unless they are made mandatory to all companies putting packaging on the market,” she said. A submission by the Waste Management and Resource Recovery Association of Australia (WMRR), representing 2,000 members including some state and local governments, said the review came at a “pivotal point” in Australia’s journey towards a circular economy. It said work to date had not been successful and was likely to fail to achieve packaging and waste targets if allowed to continue on in its current form. A “paradigm shift” was needed for the entire packaging supply chain. The chief executive of the association, Gayle Sloan, said the review could be an opportunity to overhaul the whole system “if there is the will”. “It’s very clear that business-as-usual when it comes to packaging won’t work,” she said. APCO’s chief executive, Brooke Donnelly, said the overarching objective was to drive a change “in the behaviour of various participants to achieve a positive environmental outcome”. She said there were always “non-compliant stakeholders” in any line of work, and supported steps that would raise consumer awareness and pressure on industry and government, and create industry guidelines and incentive schemes. “The reality is there are always non-compliant stakeholders in any program of work,” she said. But she said regulatory interventions were a “particularly heavy-handed approach” and change could be achieved through industry and government collaboration. The assistant federal minister for waste reduction and environmental management, Trevor Evans, said the government was reviewing whether the laws and covenant were “achieving the environmental protection goals set out within them”. “The terms of reference for the review include consideration of compliance and the issue of free-riders,” he said. Evans said any companies kicked out of the covenant for non-compliance would be assessed for “potential liability” under state and territory regulations and policies. | ['environment/series/environmental-investigations', 'environment/plastic', 'environment/waste', 'australia-news/business-australia', 'australia-news/australian-politics', 'australia-news/australia-news', 'environment/recycling', 'environment/environment', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/graham-readfearn', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/australia-news'] | environment/plastic | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE | 2021-03-12T19:00:41Z | true | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE |
commentisfree/2011/mar/14/fukushima-nuclear-industry | What will spark the next Fukushima? | John Vidal | The gung-ho nuclear industry is in deep shock. Just as it and its cheerleader, the International Atomic Energy Agency, were preparing to mark next month's 25th anniversary of the Chernobyl accident with a series of self-congratulatory statements about the dawning of a safe age of clean atomic power, a series of catastrophic but entirely avoidable accidents take place in not one but three reactors in one of the richest countries of the world. Fukushima is not a rotting old power plant in a failed state manned by half-trained kids, but supposedly one of the safest stations in one of the most safety-conscious countries with the best engineers and technologists in the world. Chernobyl blew up not because the reactor malfunctioned but because an ill-judged experiment to see how long safety equipment would function during shutdown went too far. So, too, in Japan, it was not the nuclear bits of the station that went wrong but the conventional technology. The pumps did not work because the power supply went down and the back-up support was not there because no one had thought what happened was possible. Even though Japan had been warned many times that possibly the most dangerous place in the world to site a nuclear power station was on its coast, no one had taken into account the double-whammy effect of a tsunami and an earthquake on conventional technology. It's easy to be wise after the event, but the inquest will surely show that the accident was not caused by an unpredictable natural disaster, but by a series of highly predictable bad calls by human regulators. The question now is whether the industry can be trusted anywhere. If this industry were a company, its shareholders would have deserted it years ago. In just one generation it has killed, wounded or blighted the lives of many millions of people and laid waste to millions of square miles of land. In that time it has been subsidised to the tune of trillions of dollars and it will cost hundreds of billions more to clean up and store the messes it has caused and the waste it has created. It has had three catastrophic failures now in 25 years and dozens more close shaves. Its workings have been marked around the world by mendacity, cover-ups, secrecy and financial incompetence. Sadly, the future looks worse. The world has a generation of reactors coming to the end of their days and politicians putting intense pressure on regulators to extend their use well beyond their design lives. We are planning to double worldwide electricity supply from nuclear power in the next 20 years, but we have nowhere near enough experienced engineers to run the ever-bigger stations. We have private companies peddling new designs that are said to be safer but which are still not proven, and we have 10 new countries planning to move into civil nuclear power in the next five years. It gets worse. More than 100 of the world's reactors are already sited in areas of high seismic activity and many of 350 new stations planned for the highly volatile Pacific rim where earthquakes, tsunamis and other natural hazards are certain to happen. We still have not worked out how to store waste and, we now know that we cannot protect stations from all eventualities. What the industry and governments cannot accept are the two immutable laws of life – Murphy's law and the law of unintended consequences. If something is possible to go wrong then it will, eventually. It may be possible to design out the technological weaknesses but it is impossible to allow for the unknown unknowns. Next time the disaster may have nothing to do with an earthquake or a tsunami, but be because of terrorism, climate change, a fatal error in an anonymous engineering works, proliferation of plutonium or a deranged plant manager. If there were no alternatives than employing nuclear power to light up a bulb or to reduce carbon emissions then the industry and governments might be forgiven. But when the stakes are so high, the scale is so big and there are 100 other safer ways, it seems sheer folly to go on in this way. | ['commentisfree/commentisfree', 'world/japan-earthquake-and-tsunami', 'world/natural-disasters', 'world/japan', 'world/world', 'environment/nuclearpower', 'environment/energy', 'environment/environment', 'tone/comment', 'world/asia-pacific', 'environment/fukushima', 'type/article', 'profile/johnvidal', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/commentanddebate'] | environment/nuclearpower | ENERGY | 2011-03-14T16:12:58Z | true | ENERGY |
us-news/2021/jun/08/arizona-wildfires-latest-telegraph-mescal | ‘Incredibly scary’: Arizona wildfires scorch more than 138,000 acres | A pair of wildfires burning in Arizona have scorched more than 138,700 acres, with nearly 1,000 firefighters battling to protect communities, power lines and highways. The Telegraph fire, burning near a district called Top-of-the-World, east of Phoenix, remained at 0% containment as of Tuesday morning, while crews made progress on the Mescal fire south-east of Globe, Arizona, now at 23% containment. No deaths or injuries have been reported so far. “Dry grasses and manzanita brush are burning actively after dark due to night-time downslope winds,” officials said of the Telegraph fire in a Tuesday incident report. The fire swelled to 71,756 acres overnight, even as fire crews worked around the clock, continuing burnout operations and securing areas in the fire footprint. Evacuations are still in effect for several communities south of US Route 60. The fires come as Arizona and the rest of the American west are mired in drought, foreshadowing what officials and researchers believe could be another record-breaking season of blazes. Fueled by gusty winds and temperatures approaching 100F (38C) on Sunday, both fires are believed to be human-caused but the ignitions are still under investigation. “Today was incredibly scary across the region,” said Mila Besich, the mayor of Superior, Arizona, where evacuation notices are still in effect, in a Facebook post. “This fire is very unpredictable, but the crews are doing all they can to protect all areas,” she added. “The orange glow is less bright for us, but our neighbors in Globe/Miami are seeing that fierce, intimidating bright orange glow. We stand with our neighbors, praying for their protection, as they have done for us.” The Mescal fire, which has already consumed close to 67,000 acres, is burning in a remote and rugged terrain, complicating containment efforts, but officials report that crews have been successful in “reducing the fire threat to important infrastructure, resources and communities”. The Arizona department of forestry and fire management reported that last year the state had one of the worst fire seasons in a decade, with nearly a million acres burned. “Fire danger levels are definitely above normal. Right now, most of the state of Arizona is in extreme to exceptional drought,” Marvin Percha, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Phoenix, told AZ Central. “All it takes now is some dusty winds and hot temperatures, and that is a recipe for extreme fire danger levels.” | ['us-news/arizona', 'world/wildfires', 'us-news/us-news', 'world/natural--disasters', 'environment/drought', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/gabrielle-canon', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/west-coast-news'] | environment/drought | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2021-06-08T19:31:24Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
australia-news/2018/apr/04/scott-morrison-new-coal-fired-power-station-not-the-answer | Scott Morrison: new coal-fired power station not the answer | The treasurer, Scott Morrison, has smacked down a backbench push for the Turnbull government to back a new coal plant, arguing that high-efficiency coal does not mean cheap energy, and taxpayers would also be left on the hook. Morrison used a public appearance on Wednesday to rebuff fresh positioning by conservatives on coal, declaring it “false to think that a new coal-fired power station will generate electricity at the same price as old coal-fired power stations”. The treasurer pointed to the price differential between the electricity produced by existing assets and the newer high-efficiency coal plants. He said existing plants were bidding into the national electricity market at $30 or $40 per megawatt hour while a new high-efficiency plant, which would take several years to build, would be bidding into the system at about $70 or $80. “So you don’t just open up one down the road and all of a sudden it is producing power at the same price as Bayswater or any of the others,” Morrison said. “That is just not an economic fact.” Morrison’s comments won a rebuke from Tony Abbott – who is at the forefront of the fresh round of lobbying. The former prime minister pointed out that Morrison had once waved a lump of coal around in parliament to make a political point. “Scott Morrison himself came into question time one day a few months ago and waved around a big lump of coal and said to the Labor party ‘This is coal, this is a good thing, don’t have coal-phobia’,” Abbott told 2GB. Abbott noted caustically that the previous intervention from Morrison made “a lot more sense” than his intervention on Wednesday. The renewed Coalition in-fighting comes as the Turnbull government has redoubled efforts to secure a potential buyer for AGL Energy’s ageing coal plant, Liddell. The government has approached the Hong Kong-owned Alinta Energy, and the company has now signalled it will bring forward an offer on Liddell by the end of this month. The government wants to extend the life of Liddell past its planned closure in 2022 to ensure system stability until the expanded Snowy Hydro scheme comes online. Last December AGL confirmed it would close Liddell in 2022 and replace the coal plant with a mix of renewables, gas power for peak periods and battery storage. But senior government players are concerned AGL wants less competition in the market in order to boost its own profitability, and point to the company’s lack of guaranteed financial commitment for all stages of its proposed transition plan after it mothballs Liddell. Alinta has been keen to boost its market share, recently acquiring the Loy Yang B power station in Victoria, and the company is also close to finalising a $400m investment in the Yandin Wind Farm in Western Australia. AGL confirmed on Wednesday it had been approached by Alinta with a preliminary expression of interest in Liddell, but it was not yet in receipt of an offer. “Should a formal offer for Liddell be received, it would be given consideration in order to meet our obligations to customers and shareholders,” the company said in a statement. Both the government and Alinta have ruled out taxpayer support in the bid, which may need to be as high as $1bn given upgrades would be required to keep the plant operational. Alinta signalled on Wednesday it would want to take possession of the plant in August or September of this calendar year, and was prepared to sell power back to AGL to allow the company to proceed with its planned transition. Conservative government MPs, including the former prime minister Tony Abbott, have been campaigning on coal for many months. A new ginger group, dubbing itself the Monash Forum, has emerged this week with a manifesto – a bout of positioning ahead of the anticipated loss of the 30th Newspoll in a row next week. Abbott will take his annual charity bike ride, the “pollie pedal” through Victorian coal communities next week, including past the decommissioned Hazelwood power station site. The former prime minister noted on Wednesday he would be in the area around the time the next Newspoll was published. While one of the aspirations in the manifesto is public investment in a new high-efficiency coal plant on the site of the now decommissioned Hazelwood coal-fired power station in Victoria, Morrison declared on Wednesday the government was not interested in subsidising any source of energy. “The days of subsidies in energy are over, whether it is for coal, wind, solar, any of them,” the treasurer said. “That is the way I think you get the best functioning energy market with the lowest possible price for businesses and for households and that is what the national energy guarantee and our energy policies are deigned to achieve.” The national energy guarantee will go to a meeting of state energy ministers later this month for consideration. | ['australia-news/energy-australia', 'environment/energy', 'australia-news/coalition', 'environment/coal', 'australia-news/australian-politics', 'australia-news/australia-news', 'type/article', 'profile/katharine-murphy', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/australia-news'] | environment/coal | ENERGY | 2018-04-04T07:33:31Z | true | ENERGY |
environment/2024/apr/07/st-pirans-hermit-crab-an-opportunist-with-stunning-eyes | St Piran’s hermit crab – an opportunist with stunning eyes | Saint Piran was a young Irish priest, it is said, who preached against King Óengus of Munster for planning to ditch his wife for a younger lady of the court. Piran was tied to a millstone and thrown off the highest cliffs into the sea. But the stone floated and Piran was blown over to Cornwall, where he made another new home, enjoying feasting and fine wines and bringing Christianity to the druidic masses. His spells as a hermit attracted particular admiration and, when he rediscovered tin, his popularity among the locals became legendary. Fifteen centuries later, a competition on BBC Springwatch led to (one of) Cornwall’s patron saints lending his name to an equally charismatic opportunist and hermit. St Piran’s hermit crab only grows to 15mm and, like its saintly namesake, has a similar aptitude to making himself a new home. The crab takes up residence in empty periwinkles, dog whelks and other gastropod shells. Historically, it has been a creature of warmer Mediterranean and eastern Atlantic waters. The coast of Cornwall became its new northern-most outpost when it colonised them in the 1960s. But it vanished not long after it arrived: populations entered a death spiral in the years after the Torrey Canyon oil spill in 1967. The detergents used to clean up the oil-wrecked rock pools and shoreline of the west coast did not help it either. In 2016, it was discovered having returned to the south Devon coast – probably swept by currents from its nearest colonies in Brittany and the Channel Islands. Now warming seas appear to be assisting its spread around the south-west coast. It was recently found on Newquay beaches. This crab is a good looker, with striking black-and-white-spotted eyes mounted on red eye stalks, bright red antennae and vivid blobs of red and electric blue on its legs and claws. Unsurprisingly, given its size, it is shyer than the common hermit crab, and likes to curl up inside its shell and wait out all dangers. So why not vote for an invertebrate that shows the resilience of the natural world, and cheer on the return of St Piran’s hermit crab – and our own capacity to appreciate such small miracles of life. Welcome to the Guardian’s UK invertebrate of the year competition. Every day between 2 April and 12 April we’ll be profiling one of the incredible invertebrates that live in and around the UK. Let us know which invertebrates you think we should be including here. And at midnight on Friday 12 April, voting will open to decide which is our favourite invertebrate – for now – with the winner to be announced on Monday 15 April. | ['environment/series/uk-invertebrate-of-the-year', 'environment/environment', 'environment/wildlife', 'type/article', 'tone/features', 'profile/patrickbarkham', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-environment'] | environment/wildlife | BIODIVERSITY | 2024-04-07T12:18:45Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
environment/2014/nov/25/todd-stern-fossil-fuels-ground-climate-change-obama | Obama’s climate change envoy: fossil fuels will have to stay in the ground | The world’s fossil fuels will “obviously” have to stay in the ground in order to solve global warming, Barack Obama’s climate change envoy said on Monday. In the clearest sign to date the administration sees no long-range future for fossil fuel, the state department climate change envoy, Todd Stern, said the world would have no choice but to forgo developing reserves of oil, coal and gas. The assertion, a week ahead of United Nations climate negotiations in Lima, will be seen as a further indication of Obama’s commitment to climate action, following an historic US-Chinese deal to curb emissions earlier this month. A global deal to fight climate change would necessarily require countries to abandon known reserves of oil, coal and gas, Stern told a forum at the Center for American Progress in Washington. “It is going to have to be a solution that leaves a lot of fossil fuel assets in the ground,” he said. “We are not going to get rid of fossil fuel overnight but we are not going to solve climate change on the basis of all the fossil fuels that are in the ground are going to have to come out. That’s pretty obvious.” Last week’s historic climate deal between the US and China, and a successful outcome to climate negotiations in Paris next year, would make it increasingly clear to world and business leaders that there would eventually be an expiry date on oil and coal. “Companies and investors all over are going to be starting at some point to be factoring in what the future is longer range for fossil fuel,” Stern said. The UN, in its landmark IPCC climate science report last year and in another report earlier this month, warned that the world is close to blowing through a carbon budget, which would lead to warming of above 2C. The UN Environment Programme warned last week that global emissions must peak in the next decade, fall by half by 2050, and then decline to zero to remain within that budget. Obama said in an interview last June that the US was going to have to start getting off fossil fuel - but he has also simultaneously pursued an “all of the above” energy strategy that has ramped up domestic oil and gas production. In an interview for the Year of Living Dangerously series, Obama said: “We’re not going to be able to burn it all. Over the course of the next several decades, we’re going to have to build a ramp from how we currently use energy to where we need to use energy. And we’re not going to suddenly turn off a switch and suddenly we’re no longer using fossil fuels, but we have to use this time wisely, so that you have a tapering off of fossil fuels replaced by clean energy sources that are not releasing carbon … But I very much believe in keeping that 2C target as a goal.” Such statements, coupled with Obama’s support for natural gas industry, have frustrated and confused some campaigners. At the same time, Obama has pursued an ambitious domestic and international climate change agenda – despite opposition from Republicans who now control both houses of Congress after the mid-term elections. In a surprise announcement, Obama and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, announced last week they would take steps together to curb emissions. A few days later, on the eve of the G20 summit in Brisbane, Obama announced the US would give $3bn to an international fund to help poor countries cope with climate change. Stern, in comments to reporters following his appearance, said the moves had helped to build momentum ahead of the meetings in Lima. “You are not suddenly going to make the hard issues all vanish,” he said. “I don’t know whether you are going to see any shift in Lima, for example.” China and other countries would be watching closely to see whether Obama can move forward, with the Republican leadership in Congress already threatening to block the main pillar of his climate plan, cutting carbon pollution from power plants. But the envoy said the deal between the world’s two biggest carbon polluters – and antagonists as Stern called them – had improved the atmosphere going into the last stretch of negotiations for reaching a climate deal in Paris at the end of next year. “We will see what transpires but this is a very big step,” he said. “Generally if you are holding stock in the Paris negotiations your stock will have gone up after this announcement.” | ['environment/climate-crisis', 'environment/ipcc', 'us-news/obama-administration', 'us-news/us-news', 'us-news/barack-obama', 'world/g20-brisbane-2014', 'world/g20', 'world/world', 'world/unitednations', 'environment/global-climate-talks', 'environment/environment', 'tone/news', 'type/article', 'profile/suzannegoldenberg', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/international'] | environment/global-climate-talks | CLIMATE_POLICY | 2014-11-25T00:09:53Z | true | CLIMATE_POLICY |
environment/2000/oct/30/weather.climatechange1 | Britain hit by worst storms for 13 years | The worst storms in 13 years have lashed southern Britain, leaving a trail of death, carnage and transport chaos. At least three people have been killed, and hundreds injured as the storms flooded homes, towns and roads. The 450ft high Millennium Wheel was closed after being damaged by the storms. Trips on the London Eye were suspended after six of the 32 capsules suffered glass damage as horrific winds lashed at them across the Thames. Gusts approaching 100mph upended trees and tens of thousands of homes have been left without power in the worst weather since the great hurricane in 1987. A man in his 50s was killed and two people, thought to be a married couple, were seriously injured when a tree fell on two vehicles on the A3, near Hindhead, Surrey, yesterday evening. Another man died last night when his car hit surface water and skidded into a parked car and then a bus in Sutton, south London. A tube train driver on the London Underground was badly injured when his train hit a tree on the Piccadilly Line. And another man was reportedly killed when his motorbike was believed to have a hit a tree on the A387 at Wrantage, near Taunton, Somerset. This morning, a tornado swept through Selsey in West Sussex, tossing caravans into the air, leaving two people injured from flying glass and a trail of wreckage. The tornado hit West Sands Caravan Park less than 48 hours after a similar incident in nearby Bognor Regis. At sea, the 33-year-old captain of a Dutch ship was killed last night as he was swept off balance and thrown down 30ft into the hold of his ship, anchored off Torbay. Sailings were cancelled from Dover and ferries were unable to dock, leavinf 6,000 passengers on vessels forced to shelter from force eight gales. The port of Fowey, near St Austell, was cut off by fallen trees blocking the roads, and a 20,000-tonne vessel ran aground in rough seas and force nine gales off Cornwall overnight. Train services into London were reduced to a trickle as weary commuters, already battered by recent rail delays, suffered again. Among the casualties were all services operated by Thames Trains, Wales & West, First Great Western, Central Trains, South West Trains, Midland Mainline, Valley Lines and Connex. Additionally, all Virgin west coast services were suspended between Euston and Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester, Glasgow and Carlisle. On the roads, large sections of the M25 around London were closed as drainage channels failed to cope with the sheer volume of water, while other main arteries were reduced to a crawl. The high winds brought chaos to air schedules with dozens of flights cancelled. By mid morning, British Airways had cancelled 66 flights from Heathrow and 22 from Stansted. More than 21,000 homes were left without electricity in the south east, according to power firm Seeboard. Power cuts also spread as far north as Cheshire. The west country was one of the worst affected regions. Avon and Somerset Police closed all roads into flood-hit Taunton to everything but emergency traffic. The Environment Agency said its staff were coping but warned that householders had to take more responsibility as climate change threatened to make such storms more likely. The number of severe flood warnings across the country, currently 25, could rise later this afternoon, he said. Up to 80mm of rain fell in 24 hours. Green lobby groups were today urging politicians to act now over wild weather conditions. The gales and storms battering Britain "are just a taste of things to come" according to Friends of the Earth. The deputy prime minister, John Prescott, and the environment minister, Michael Meacher, are preparing for major international climate change talks in the Hague next month. However, Mr Meacher, said: "It would be wrong, every time there is a climatic impact, to assume that it is climate change, global warming." He did, however, acknowledge that the gales "almost certainly have climate change as a contributory cause". He said: "We have to deal with that and the UK has to make a contribution, along with other countries ... but a lot of these climatic impacts are irreversible. We have to adapt to them. We have to give warning alerts which the Environment Agency is successfully doing." Mr Meacher said that much was being done to prevent people being continually flooded, especially in high-risk areas. The Ministry of Agriculture had now put £4bn into capital improvement works to strengthen flood defences over the next three years, he said. Friends of the Earth said that extreme weather worldwide in the last three months has included storms in Taiwan, Brazil and Canada, floods in Bangladesh, Japan, Vietnam and India, fires in the US, Italy and the Balkans, and droughts in Burundi, Croatia, Kenya and Iran. Useful links Map: worst hit areas Photo gallery: storm-hit Britain NetNotes: the best weather links Special report: weather watch | ['environment/environment', 'environment/climate-crisis', 'environment/flooding', 'uk/weather', 'world/tornadoes', 'environment/environment-agency', 'type/article'] | world/tornadoes | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2000-10-30T17:11:32Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
environment/2021/aug/27/pollutionwatch-how-a-narrow-focus-on-air-pollution-limits-can-backfire | Pollutionwatch: how a narrow focus on air pollution limits can backfire | The environment bill is due to return to parliament in the autumn, providing an opportunity to redesign our pollution laws for the 21st century. The British Medical Association, more than 20 nursing colleges, the Lancet and the British Medical Journal have added their voices to those calling for tighter air pollution limits in the bill, to match the current World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines. This year a coroner’s report on the death of nine-year-old Ella Kissi-Debrah also called on the government to adopt the WHO guidelines as legal limits. Legal limits on poor air were first set across the UK and Europe in the 1980s. But we now know there is no safe threshold to use as a legal limit. This was the conclusion from two recent studies that looked at the health records of 61 million people in the US and nearly 9 million Canadians, and two studies that researched daily changes in air pollution and the health of people in cities around the globe, one looking at 652 cities and the other at 398. In fact, a narrow focus on limits can have undesired outcomes. Clean-up efforts become focused on the most polluted hotspots rather than the places where the most people are exposed. Rather than being a minimum standard, they also become a ceiling to pollute up to. For example, professional guidance for UK local planning creates barriers to new pollution sources in areas that do not meet legal limits, but makes it much easier to add air pollution in places where legal limits are met. So, accepting that there is no safe threshold requires a new approach. In Canada, government guidance says locations that meet limits should adopt a process of “continuous improvement” and “keep clean areas clean”. Another approach would follow the Swedish idea of “vision zero”. Starting in road safety, vision zero says the only acceptable death toll should be zero. Air pollution harm would be designed out of our environment at every opportunity, with each new building or road layout, for example. Other research points to lifelong impacts from the air pollution that we breathe when we are young. This should focus efforts on improving the air around schools and where young people are exposed. Meeting current WHO guidelines in the UK would reduce the health impacts of air pollution, but new evidence suggests that we also need to go further and focus on continually improving air pollution for all communities, especially the young. | ['environment/series/pollutionwatch', 'environment/air-pollution', 'environment/pollution', 'environment/environment', 'type/article', 'tone/features', 'profile/gary-fuller', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/weather2', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-weather'] | environment/pollution | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE | 2021-08-27T05:00:09Z | true | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE |
commentisfree/2017/sep/12/why-hurricanes-harvey-irma-otherworldly-omens-human-trangression | Why do we see hurricanes like Harvey and Irma as otherworldly omens? | Philip Hoare | The strange and terrible news from our meteorological world seems to collide ominously in our unsettling times. Last week a scientific report was published, indicating that the remarkable and tragic stranding of 29 sperm whales on North Sea coasts last January may have been caused by solar storms that confused the animals’ geomagnetic navigation – and drove them on to shallow beaches to die. Meanwhile, the second apocalyptic weather event in as many weeks struck the Caribbean and the southern US. Even in our supposedly rational world, it is hard not to see these natural disasters as omens. Great whales dying because of the same solar activity that has sparked the beautiful but eerie curtains of northern lights in our skies. From creation myths to The Tempest, storms and sacrifices and signs go hand in hand with the way we try to understand our chaotic world. They wreak havoc – with lives, with political careers (witness George W Bush’s inept response to Hurricane Katrina). The modern expression “weather bomb” takes on an awful meaning. In his recent book Sea of Storms, the US academic Stuart B Schwartz observes that the uber-storms of the 21st century have a new power over us. “In a way, the hurricanes and how societies deal with them have become symbolic of competing world views.” East and west, north and south: the new world order encompassed by compass points. We account for disaster not in our own culpability as drivers of climate change and instigators of the Anthropocene, but in dreams and myths and faith. It is the sense of the unseen and the unpredictable that disturbs us. In the storms of 2014 that raked the soft southern coast of England – vulnerable shores lacking the rocky bulwarks of Cornwall, Wales or Scotland – we seemed to have been taken by surprise. Used to experiencing the world through the manipulable screens in our hands, those swirling patterns graphically represented in the nightly weather forecast had become vividly, dangerously alive. At least the sea is visible in its rage; the wind is an unseen monster. You do not hear the wind; you hear what it leaves in its wake. Its sound is defined by the shape of everything else – trees, buildings, waves; by what gets in its way. Perhaps that’s why it preys on our imagination so disturbingly. It is the sound of the world’s motion, as if the invisible spinning of the globe had suddenly become tangible; a world blown out of kilter. For what sins are we being punished? What have we done wrong? In Caribbean hurricanes during the 17th century, Spanish priests would toss crucifixes into the waves or hold the Host up into the wind, for fear that the transgressions of their flocks were responsible for God’s displeasure. The contemporary equivalent is the virally popular social media call from Ryon Edwards for his fellow Floridians to shoot at Irma - “LET’S SHOW IRMA THAT WE SHOOT FIRST” - despite warnings that their bullets would fall to earth, with fatal results. Sometimes it seems we have not moved far from such superstitious gestures at the elemental. In 1520 the German artist Albrecht Dürer travelled to the half-land, half-sea coast of Zeeland in the Netherlands, in search of a stranded whale. It had disappeared by the time he reached the location, but instead he caught a fever that would eventually take his life. That whale, whose demise we might now scientifically ascribe to astronomical forces, became aligned in Dürer’s mind with the omens he saw in the skies: comets and other phenomena that echoed or even predicted European fortunes, good or bad. The genderless angel in his celebrated engraving Melencolia I, looks up at just such a comet. Dürer sought to rationalise, even as he aestheticised, the natural world. Yet we still anthropomorphise the elements. We name “weather events” – storm Doris, hurricane Irma – as if to bring them into our dominion. Donald Trump creates a supposedly reassuring narrative by expressing his awe – “Hurricane looks like largest ever recorded in the Atlantic!” – as if a 140 character tweet will magically extend his power over the storm, like the Wizard of Oz, even as he denies our responsibility for it. His gesture is no more effective, perhaps even less so, than those Caribbean priests holding up their Hosts against the wind, or the call to shoot at Irma. Hurricane Katrina was an augury of the end for George W Bush. Who knows what these new storms will hold in store for our world leaders? • Philip Hoare is an author, whose books include Leviathan or, The Whale; The Sea Inside; and RISINGTIDEFALLINGSTAR | ['commentisfree/commentisfree', 'world/natural-disasters', 'world/hurricane-irma', 'tone/comment', 'us-news/hurricane-harvey', 'us-news/us-news', 'world/world', 'us-news/us-weather', 'uk/weather', 'uk/uk', 'type/article', 'profile/philip-hoare', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-opinion'] | world/hurricane-irma | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2017-09-12T07:00:28Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
world/2018/jul/14/like-losing-family-time-may-be-running-out-for-new-zealands-most-sacred-tree | 'Like losing family': time may be running out for New Zealand's most sacred tree | New Zealand’s oldest and most sacred tree stands 60 metres from death, as a fungal disease known as kauri dieback spreads unabated across the country. Tāne Mahuta (Lord of the Forest) is a giant kauri tree located in the Waipoua forest in the north of the country, and is sacred to the Māori people, who regard it as a living ancestor. The tree is believed to be around 2,500 years old, has a girth of 13.77m and is more than 50m tall. Thousands of locals and tourists alike visit the tree every year to pay their respects, and take selfies beside the trunk. Now, the survival of what is believed to be New Zealand’s oldest living tree is threatened by kauri dieback, with kauri trees a mere 60m from Tāne Mahuta confirmed to be infected. Kauri dieback causes most infected trees to die, and is threatening to completely wipe out New Zealand’s most treasured native tree species, prized for its beauty, strength and use in boats, carvings and buildings. Despite stringent efforts by local iwi [Māori tribes] to combat the spread – most commonly through infected soil tramped in on walkers’ boots, or the hooves of wild pigs – there is no cure, and native tree experts are calling for international help to slow the spread of kauri dieback and save Tāne Mahuta. Amanda Black from the Bioprotection Research Centre at NZ’s Lincoln University, estimates Tāne has only three to six months before becoming infected – if he is not already – as his mammoth root system spreads in excess of 60m underground. An advisory panel was launched by the government in June in a bid to tackle the spread of the disease, but Black says the panel was the equivalent of “shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic.” She wants Tāne soil tested immediately to confirm whether or not the tree is infected, but this option is proving controversial. On Thursday, Black was invited to attend a hikoi for Tāne in Waipoua forest, held by the local tribe, Te Roroa, who prayed for the tree’s safety and wellbeing as the disease inches ever close. “We don’t have any time to do the usual scientific trials anymore, we just have to start responding immediately in any way possible; it is not ideal but we have kind of run out of time,” Black says, adding that although there is no cure for kauri dieback there is a range of measures which could slow its progress. “Tāne is the nearest thing to a sentient being that we can measure time by. For Māori in particular, it is their ancestor. For them to lose trees like that is equivalent to losing family members,” she says. Taoho Patuawa, a spokesperson for Te Roroa, says solutions being discussed include closing the entire forest and felling nearby infected trees. Presently, raised boardwalks and boot-cleaning stations are the frontline defence, as well as conservation department rangers, Māori guardians and volunteers who patrol vulnerable forests. Last year Auckland tribe Te Kawerau a Maki issued a rāhui (temporary ban) over the Waitākere and Hunua ranges to the west of Auckland, prohibiting anyone from entering the forest. Auckland council added its support and surveillance to the ban this June, but biosecurity experts say locals feel “entitled” to enter the bush, and are largely to blame for ignoring warnings and bans. “Closure is the best thing we’ve got, especially if the authorities got behind it and enforced it. The forest needs to rest,” says Black. Conservation minister Eugenie Sage said Kauri dieback was “devastating” for New Zealand’s unique flora and fauna, but said the department of conservation [DOC] was confident the risk of the disease spreading by human traffic was “very low”, and wild pigs were now in the crosshairs. Dead Kauri trees take on a ghostly white appearance in the landscape, and according to Northland residents, dead Kauri trees are now visible from all the roads surrounding the Waipoua Forest. “Sometimes people are overwhelmed and end up crying,” Vanessa Rapira of the Te Roroa tribe told the Guardian last year. • This article was amended on 18 July 2018. An earlier version said Tāne Mahuta was 13.77m across. That is the tree’s girth. | ['world/newzealand', 'environment/forests', 'world/asia-pacific', 'environment/environment', 'type/article', 'tone/features', 'profile/eleanor-de-jong', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/international', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/australia-foreign'] | environment/forests | BIODIVERSITY | 2018-07-14T01:24:01Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
environment/2019/may/05/hares-ban-shooting-breeding-season | New move to ban shooting of hares in breeding season | The nation’s deep affection for the hare, once a common sight in fields, is recorded in prose, pub names and poetry. Writers including Shakespeare, Lewis Carroll and Ted Hughes have paid tribute to the UK’s fastest land mammal, while any English county will boast at least one pub with the word hare in its name. But now a failure to revive numbers after a century of decline from an estimated four million to under 800,000 has triggered moves to protect hares during their breeding season. Former agriculture minister George Eustice is introducing a private member’s bill that would make it illegal to shoot hares from February to September. “England and Wales are among the few remaining European countries that do not have a modern close season on shooting hares during their breeding season, which is a terrible oversight,” Eustice said. The Born Free Foundation claims that more than 300,000 hares are shot for sport each year. Most of the shoots take place in February, when the pheasant season ends, and the female hares are already pregnant or nursing their young. Born Free said that this results in the death of leverets through starvation or predation, and the loss of breeding females. “Seeing a spring hare sitting bolt upright or zigzagging at speed across a field is a real treat. Sadly it is one that is becoming increasingly rare on our islands,” said Dr Mark Jones, head of policy at Born Free. “Concerted action is urgently needed to protect these magical and mystical animals, not least from those who would shoot them for sport during their critical breeding season.” Both brown and mountain hares are listed as “priority species” under the UK biodiversity action plan, but government attempts to increase their numbers have been unsuccessful. “A former government action plan to double hare numbers by 2010 failed disastrously and now hares face a new threat from disease,” said Paul Tillsley, head of conservation and education at the League Against Cruel Sports. “Scotland introduced a close season for killing brown hares and mountain hares in 2011, so it is long overdue that England and Wales follow suit.” A 2011 early day motion calling for a close season attracted 146 MPs’ signatures. “Mr Eustice does have influence as a recent agriculture minister, and we would hope that, even if his bill doesn’t succeed directly, it will put the issue on the government’s agenda, with the possibility of the government tabling its own bill,” Jones said. Calls to save the hare follow the row over farmers’ rights to kill pigeons and crows. This was made illegal last month following a legal challenge from animal rights groups, only to be revoked following protests by countryside campaigners. Currently, hares are protected under an arcane act more than a century old. Eustice said: “Even the Victorians recognised the importance of protecting hares during their breeding season, but the 1892 Hares Preservation Act was delivered through a ban on sale and its provisions are no longer effective, nor enforced.” | ['environment/wildlife', 'environment/environment', 'environment/conservation', 'environment/farming', 'environment/mammals', 'uk/uk', 'tone/news', 'type/article', 'profile/jamiedoward', 'publication/theobserver', 'theobserver/news', 'theobserver/news/uknews', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/observer-main'] | environment/farming | BIODIVERSITY | 2019-05-05T05:00:36Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
environment/ethicallivingblog/2009/feb/19/fashion-sustainable-action-plan-defra | London Fashion Week: Government's masterplan for greening the fashion world | The only place politics and fashion used to meet was on T-shirt slogans. But now the government is planning to take a more active role in your wardrobe. I can exclusively reveal that tomorrow the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, is using London Fashion Week as a launchpad for its new Sustainable Clothing Action Plan - not new regulations, but a series of green pledges from high street retailers. Government departments don't normally vie with the likes of Matthew Williamson on the catwalk. So this is new territory and conjures up disturbing visions of runway shows featuring ill-dressed ministers. But unless Lord Hunt, minister for sustainability, wears something truly spectacular, it'll be a straightforward but significant announcement about government and industry working together to combat throwaway fashion. The big deal is the calibre of high street signatories behind the plan, many of whom have come in for environmental criticism before: • Marks and Spencer, Tesco and Sainsbury have signed up to a range of actions to increase their ranges of Fair Trade and organic fashion, the take-back and recovery of unwanted clothing and supporting fibres and fabrics that enable clothing recycling. • In addition, M&S and Tesco are supporting green clothing factories, animal welfare across their cotton supply chain and increasing consumer awareness on washing at 30C. • Tesco is extending its traceability programme across cotton supply chains to ban cotton from countries known to use child labour. It's also adding carbon labelling of Tesco laundry detergents. • Nike will apply its Considered Design ethos to improve the sustainability performance and innovation of all its product ranges. And then there are contributions from those who arguably were already leading the ethical space already: • Adili and Continental Clothing: Continental Clothing has measured and reduced the carbon footprint of its clothing products. They are now working with sustainable online retailer Adili to promote carbon labelling to consumers. • T Shirt and Sons - Already using organic cotton to manufacture their T-shirts, T Shirt and Sons is now developing the first Global Organic Textile Standard (GOTS) certified system for eco printing on organic cotton. • Association of Charity Shops, Oxfam, Salvation Army Trading and Textile Recycling Association – will open more 'sustainable clothing' boutiques of high-quality second-hand clothing and new sustainably-designed garments. • The Fairtrade Foundation will increase the volume of Fair Trade cotton products, with a view to achieving least 10 per cent of Fair Trade cotton clothing in the UK by 2012. • Centre for Sustainable Fashion at the London College of Fashion – a centre to provide practical business support to the clothing sector on sustainability and fashion. As one of the "stakeholders" who has been to some of the meetings to come up with this action plan, I'm heartened by a couple of points. At the first ever meeting I raised the question of cotton production and the use of child labour in Uzbekistan and Egypt being given "the brush off" by major retailers and players. To paraphrase, the response was almost universally "dear girl, there is no way we can trace cotton from a global market and know whether child labour has been used." I'm glad some retailers appear to have now found a way. But will this action plan actually reverse, halt or slow down the problematic environmental footprint of our fast fashion binge culture that – lest we forget – means that the clothing and textiles sector in the UK alone produces around 3.1 million tonnes of CO2, two million tonnes of waste, and 70 million tonnes of waste water per year, with 1.5 million tonnes of unwanted clothing ultimately ending up in landfill? And do these voluntary initiatives really address the evils lurking in the global fashion closet? Unless there's a big surprise tomorrow, there is no mention here of a living wage or any commitment for overseas producers. They may not be fashionable concepts during a recession but it's still a fact that in Bangladesh garment workers cannot afford to buy food thanks to the rise in commodity prices. Finally, I've got between 5-7 minutes tomorrow with Lord Hunt, who is the face of the report (in the way that Kate Moss is the face of TopShop). Got any short yet fashionable questions for him? Let me know below. | ['environment/waste', 'environment/environment', 'tone/blog', 'environment/blog', 'environment/green-living-blog', 'type/article', 'profile/lucysiegle'] | environment/waste | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE | 2009-02-19T14:50:23Z | true | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE |
us-news/article/2024/aug/17/north-carolina-house-collapse-beach | North Carolina beach house collapses dramatically into sea | The home on a beach of North Carolina’s Outer Banks leaned against the surf before the pilings below it sagged, then gave way, toppling the entire structure into the sea. A beachgoer posted video of the collapse on Instagram on 16 August. “A Rodanthe NC house was consumed by the ocean right in front of me!” the caption read. The National Park Service said the home collapse was the seventh to happen in Rodanthe in four years, and warned visitors to stay away from beaches near the Cape Hatteras national seashore. Public entry was closed from Rodanthe to Jug Handle Bridge as debris from the collapse washed ashore, bringing jagged pieces of metal and wood planks riddled with nails on to the beaches. Officials said many other homes in the Rodanthe area appeared to have sustained damages: “Dangerous debris may be present on the beach and in the water for more than a dozen miles.” An alert from the park service warned of “exposed hazards, such as house-related septic systems, wires, pipes and broken concrete parking pads”. The beach house, which had been an active vacation rental until earlier this summer, was unoccupied and no injuries were reported in the collapse. The property is owned by a couple from Hershey, Pennsylvania. The collapse was probably caused by increased ocean swells due to Hurricane Ernesto, which made landfall in Bermuda early on Saturday, bringing winds of 85mph and waves exceeding 35ft (10.5 metres), and the result of beach erosion – a normal part of beach living that has worsened due to rising sea levels linked to the climate crisis, experts say. Indeed, as the house on East Corbina Drive collapsed into the Atlantic Ocean, powerful waves could be seen slamming into the walls of the structure, tearing off a large porch and breaking it into pieces, video shows. Arrangements to remove the debris had not been made by the property owner as of Friday, prompting the park service to consider a removal effort of its own. “The [park] does not expect significant debris removal efforts to occur until after the elevated sea conditions subside early next week,” officials told the News and Observer. | ['us-news/northcarolina', 'environment/climate-crisis', 'us-news/us-news', 'world/hurricanes', 'environment/oceans', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/diana-ramirez-simon', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/west-coast-news'] | world/hurricanes | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2024-08-17T19:49:17Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
world/2017/sep/12/florida-hurricane-irma-pickup-truck | 'You go when you go': the 70-year-old man who spent Irma in his pickup | You have to wonder: does Ronald Sandelé, a 70-year-old resident of Key Largo, care about protecting the life of a seagull more than saving his own skin? I met him as I was trying to find gas in Key Largo in the Florida Keys – no easy task in the wake of Hurricane Irma, when looking for fuel has become an obsession for millions of Floridians in the absence of power, food and water. He suddenly appeared, shirtless and in shorts, and walked perilously out into the road to rescue the bird that was lying stricken on the tarmac, its wings clipped by a passing car. “Nice birdy, nice birdy,” he said, as the bird bit hard on his fingers with its beak in distress. “I only need four fingers,” Sandelé said. Having laid the bird gently on the grass, he got back into his grey pick-up truck. I was curious about this older man who was so concerned to save the life of a seagull, even amid such human devastation after the hurricane on the Florida Keys. He said he’d been living in his truck for the past three weeks, after he was thrown out by his landlord from the home he had rented for 31 years. For the past three weeks? So where had he spent Sunday, when Irma passed through the Keys as a blazing category 4 hurricane, chewing up everything in its path? “In the truck,” he replied, to my astonishment. In a pickup truck in the middle of a huge hurricane – that must be one of the most dangerous spots on earth. “It was kind of rock’n’roll at the back end of the hurricane,” he said. He described how the vehicle began to shake violently and then its rear started to lift up into the air, as though it were about to flip over and soar into the sky. Like a bird. He must have been scared, I said. “No, not scared. I believe in providence: you go when you go. And what’s the point of being scared? It paralyses you. You function better without fear.” And then he said, talking to me from the driving seat of the truck which now passes as his home: “It was fun, actually. Irma tossed the truck around like a toy. I never knew a hurricane could do that.” | ['world/hurricane-irma', 'us-news/florida', 'world/hurricanes', 'world/natural-disasters', 'us-news/us-news', 'type/article', 'tone/features', 'profile/edpilkington', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/us-news', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/west-coast-news'] | world/hurricane-irma | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2017-09-13T00:24:18Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
world/2015/jun/28/pope-francis-environment-rome-naomi-klein-climate-change | Pope Francis’s environmental message brings thousands on to streets in Rome | Thousands of campaigners and religious leaders have marched through Rome, backing Pope Francis’s uncompromising environmental message ahead of a Vatican conference on climate change, and urging world leaders to take action. Holy See officials will this week discuss the environment with activists and scientists at a meeting at which Naomi Klein, a prominent social activist, will take centre stage alongside Cardinal Peter Turkson, one of the pontiff’s most senior aides. Soon after the release of Pope Francis’s encyclical on the environment, regarded as a landmark intervention in the global climate change debate, campaigners on Sunday travelled to Rome from across the globe to thank the Argentinian pontiff for his papal letter. In the encyclical, Francis directed sharp criticism at global leaders for their failure to combat climate change. It was greeted with a hugely positive response from environmentalists, who have seized on the pope’s message ahead of a United Nations climate change conference to be held in Paris in December. The UN summit is aimed at reaching a global deal on climate change, but as the pontiff noted, previous meetings have ended in disappointment, with decision-making paralysed by disagreements. Alongside Klein and Turkson, the conservation group WWF has been invited to this week’s Vatican conference and had a strong presence at the rally on Sunday, described as a “historic event” by Samantha Smith, leader of the organisation’s global climate and energy initiative. “We have seen that climate change is such a big and important issue that you can’t solve it in a corner with environmental groups,” Smith said. “That’s why the mobilisation of people of faith, including the Catholic church, is so important.” Activists at the One Earth, One Family event broke through the silence enveloping early-morning Rome with singing and chanting, waving paper birds high over the central Piazza Farnese before marching to the Vatican. “The reason we are here is to thank Pope Francis, but above all it is to bring a message to the people and politicians on the Paris climate change conference – to make strong, ambitious and binding commitments,” said Andrea Stocchiero, from the voluntary group Focsiv, co-organiser of the event. While a few hundred people began the multifaith march, holding banners and sheltering from the sun under giant paper leaves, organisers said about 5,000 were present at the end of the march in St Peter’s Square. There, Francis exhorted a multifaith effort to help protect the environment. “I encourage the collaboration between persons and associations of different religions on behalf of an integral ecology,” he said. Among them was Yeb Saño, the Philippines’ former chief climate change negotiator at the UN, who is now a spiritual ambassador for the march co-organisers, OurVoices, a multifaith environmental group. Saño praised the pontiff for his “courage and leadership” and said the march represented “a particularly amazing day to celebrate”. “We know that the adverse impacts of climate change are hitting the Philippines and it’s unfair, because we have very little contribution to the causes of climate change and we are at the receiving end of it,” he said. Pope Francis visited the predominantly Catholic country in January, little over a year after a devastating typhoon killed thousands of people in the Philippines. The November 2013 storm was the strongest recorded to hit land and was seen as an example of the archipelago’s vulnerability to the elements. The pope’s encyclical was released five months after his Asia trip. While Pope Francis has ensured Catholic voices reach the centre of the climate change debate, organisers of the Rome march were keen to fulfil his wish of going beyond the Christian faith. Kiran Bali, who travelled from Yorkshire in the UK on behalf of the Hindu community, said it was imperative that religious leaders such as herself get involved. “It’s so clear that the world is at a crucial tipping point due to climate change and it’s so important that faith leaders take action on this important issue,” she said. “Now is the time to unite, to come together and to really make a difference to protect the earth from further destruction.” Representing the global Anglican community, David Moxon said a global response was necessary as ultimately all would be affected by climate change. “The challenge facing Europe and all of the industrialised and industrialising world is very important – we’re going to choke or cook unless we do something about it,” he said. Massimiliano Pasqui, from the Institute of Biometeorology at Italy’s National Research Council, said the bel paese has even greater reason than its neighbours to act on climate change. “For us in Italy – in the middle of the Mediterranean – we’re in one of the most vulnerable places. It’s necessary for us to build strategies because in respect to other countries in northern Europe, what we are up against has a bigger impact on our society.” | ['world/pope-francis', 'world/catholicism', 'world/christianity', 'world/religion', 'world/the-papacy', 'world/world', 'environment/climate-crisis', 'environment/environment', 'environment/cop-21-un-climate-change-conference-paris', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/rosie-scammell', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/international'] | environment/cop-21-un-climate-change-conference-paris | CLIMATE_POLICY | 2015-06-28T15:43:58Z | true | CLIMATE_POLICY |
australia-news/2021/feb/11/nsw-minister-matt-keans-call-for-national-environment-watchdog-at-odds-with-federal-coalition | NSW minister Matt Kean's call for national environment watchdog at odds with federal Coalition | The NSW environment minister, Matt Kean, has backed calls for the introduction of a national environment regulator with the power to enforce the law, putting him at odds with his federal Coalition counterparts. Responding to a once-in-a decade review that found Australia’s conservation laws are failing, Kean said the regulator should be similar to the NSW Environment Protection Authority and independent of government. He said the Morrison government should also ensure that strong new national environmental standards, as recommended in the review by the former competition watchdog Graeme Samuel, were in place and formed the basis for negotiations over the transfer of environmental decision-making powers to the states and territories. “I think we should have strong environmental standards and those standards should be enforced by a strong environmental watchdog, just like we have in NSW,” he said. At a media conference on Thursday with the federal environment minister, Sussan Ley, Kean welcomed the final report of the Samuel review of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act, which called for a major overhaul of the laws. Samuel made 38 recommendations, including establishing new independent bodies to take on responsibility for monitoring the environment and enforcing compliance. The centrepiece was the creation of a new set of environmental standards that “should be adopted in full and immediately implemented”. Kean said he had written to Ley to express the NSW government’s view that the Morrison government should adopt strong standards that were independently enforced to ensure that any changes to national laws did not water down environmental protection across the country. The Morrison government has been trying to pass a bill through the Senate that would clear the way for state and territory governments to take on more responsibility for approving developments that affect the environment. Ley said bilateral agreements between Canberra and the states, supported by environmental standards, would reduce the time it takes to assess and approve developments and “more importantly” improve environmental protection. “We will lift standards and lift environmental protection across the country,” she said. “I understand and have always said that we will have an independent cop on the beat”. The Morrison government, however, has given no indication of what form an “independent cop” would take and has previously rejected calls from conservation groups for a separate national environmental protection authority. Samuel recommended the transfer of approval powers occur only alongside legally-binding national environmental standards that had independent enforcement. His report included a set of interim standards that he said the government should adopt immediately. Speaking later to Guardian Australia, Kean said he did not want negotiations between the Morrison government and the states and territories to result in NSW having its standards “watered down to appease other states”. “The Samuel report should be the starting point for any reform,” he said. “I would be very concerned about any reforms that would be less than what Graeme Samuel recommended.” | ['australia-news/australian-politics', 'australia-news/new-south-wales-politics', 'environment/conservation', 'environment/biodiversity', 'environment/endangered-habitats', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/lisa-cox'] | environment/endangered-habitats | BIODIVERSITY | 2021-02-11T04:43:49Z | true | BIODIVERSITY |
environment/2023/sep/07/uks-largest-electric-vehicle-charging-hub-opens-in-birmingham | UK’s largest electric vehicle charging hub opens in Birmingham | The UK’s largest electric vehicle charging hub has opened at Birmingham’s NEC conference centre with the power to charge up to 180 vehicles at a time in as little as 15 minutes. The multimillion-pound site will provide the UK’s highest concentration of super-fast chargers in one location after the biggest-ever private investment in Britain’s charging infrastructure. The hub offers motorists in the West Midlands 150 seven-kilowatt AC charging bays and a further 30 superfast, 300kW DC charging bays, which can be used to charge up a typical passenger vehicle in about 15 minutes. The charging zone is located on the outskirts of Birmingham at the hub of the UK motorway network, with access to the M42, M6 and A45 and what will eventually become the new HS2 rail station. The site was officially opened on Thursday by the chancellor, Jeremy Hunt. He said the “groundbreaking” investment marked “a significant step in our rollout of electric vehicle charging infrastructure across the country”. “This is the biggest private investment in electric charging in the UK and is a huge vote of confidence in Britain’s role as a leader in green industries,” Hunt said. Andrew Cole, a director at the NEC Group, said the conference centre’s campus, which has 7 million visitors a year, could now charge about 1,000 electric cars in every 12-hour day. The “Gigahub” was developed between the NEC, independent charging infrastructure company EV Network and BP Pulse, which operates the site. Akira Kirton, the vice-president of BP Pulse UK, said the company, which is owned by the oil company BP, would invest up to £1bn to accelerate the development of the UK’s EV infrastructure by delivering “the right charging speeds, in the right locations”. “We plan to roll out hundreds of hubs this decade in places EV drivers needs them – urban areas, on trunk roads and motorways and at destinations such as restaurants, retail parks and hotels,” he said. Reza Shaybani, the co-founder and chief executive of EV Network, warned that the UK’s existing grid infrastructure was “a key bottleneck in developing future robust infrastructure for fast charging”. “This is why sites like [the Birmingham NEC] are all about the grid connection and their vicinity to electrical infrastructure,” he said. “We’re envisaging a situation where 30 cars turn up at the same time and draw maximum power. The site is designed in such a way that if all the sockets are in use at the same time the grid can cope with providing enough power for everybody.” • This article was amended on 8 September 2023. An earlier version referred to the “M46” instead of the M6. | ['environment/electric-cars', 'environment/carbon-emissions', 'environment/environment', 'environment/ethical-living', 'technology/motoring', 'technology/technology', 'uk/birmingham', 'uk/uk', 'business/automotive-industry', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'uk-news/west-midlands', 'profile/jillian-ambrose', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-business'] | environment/carbon-emissions | EMISSIONS | 2023-09-07T11:00:02Z | true | EMISSIONS |
us-news/2024/oct/02/mark-robinson-hurricane-helene-state-emergency-north-carolina | Mark Robinson skipped vote to declare Hurricane Helene a state of emergency | Mark Robinson, North Carolina’s lieutenant governor and Republican gubernatorial candidate, skipped a vote on declaring a state of emergency in advance of Hurricane Helene’s arrival to the southern state, according to a report. Robinson, who has been under attack recently over alleged racist and explicit posts on a pornography website’s message board, was the only council of state member who did not vote on Democratic governor Roy Cooper’s emergency declaration, WRAL News reported. Cooper sought the declaration from top North Carolina electeds in the state’s executive branch on 24 September so he could mobilize a robust response to Helene. The vote enabled Cooper to more easily mobilize rescue vehicles and issue evacuation orders. Eight of the nine council of state members voted for the declaration, according to WRAL – everyone except for Robinson. Cooper has since sent more than 700 members of North Carolina’s national guard to areas reeling from the wrath of Helene, which has left at least 166 dead and hundreds missing in six states; Joe Biden also green-lighted the governor’s request for expedited federal help. Guard members have rescued more than 400 people and numerous animals in western North Carolina in the wake of historic flooding and landslides that washed out roads, dramatically complicating search efforts. More than 347,000 remain without electricity in North Carolina. Some of the hardest-hit areas, including Asheville, are struggling to find clean water. Some residents are boiling water and bathing in creeks, according to The Washington Post. Robinson has hammered on Cooper’s response to Helene even though he didn’t vote on the emergency measure, saying on social media Tuesday: “The time for politics is over. We are talking about saving people’s lives here.” “North Carolina must follow the lead of successful governors like [Florida Republican governor Ron DeSantis]. Cut the red tape. Stop waiting on federal resources and allow private industry in to assist with rescue and recovery efforts, and repair infrastructure immediately.” “This is a life and death situation,” he said. WRAL said it remained unclear why Robinson did not respond to the vote. Robinson’s office did not comment directly to WRAL on why he opted out. His chief of staff, Krishana Polite, said that he was visiting areas impacted by Helene. “All hands on deck means just that, including the hands of every single elected official in this state,” she said in a statement obtained by WRAL. “We need to be boots on the ground, working to rescue the citizens of this state – just as Lieutenant Governor Robinson and his team have been doing 24/7 for days now.” Robinson is running against Democrat Josh Stein, the state’s attorney general. Numerous Republicans have distanced themselves from Robinson in the wake of the controversy over alleged message board posts, which he has denied writing. | ['us-news/northcarolina', 'us-news/hurricane-helene', 'us-news/us-politics', 'us-news/us-news', 'us-news/republicans', 'us-news/us-elections-2024', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/victoria-bekiempis', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/us-news'] | us-news/hurricane-helene | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2024-10-02T15:47:38Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
business/2019/sep/23/budweiser-to-stop-using-plastic-for-all-its-uk-beer-four-packs-before-2021 | Budweiser to stop using plastic for all its UK beer four-packs before 2021 | Brewing firm Budweiser is to phase out single-use plastic pack rings from its entire range of UK-produced beer – which include the bestselling brands Stella Artois, Budweiser and Bud Light – by the end of 2020. The group is investing £6.3m on upgrading production at its two UK factories to produce alternatives to single-use plastic, which include recyclable paperboard as well as wraps and boxes. It said the switch would help it eliminate 850 tonnes of plastic each year – the same weight as 425 black cabs, 67 double-decker buses or 10 blue whales. This includes removing 250 tonnes of plastic rings previously used to hold packs of beer cans together (117m plastic rings in total) and 600 tonnes of shrink film, mostly used as extra packaging around trays when shipping. Part of AB InBev, the world’s biggest brewer, the group has some of the UK’s biggest beer brands in its portfolio, including Beck’s, Bud Light, Budweiser, Corona, Michelob Ultra and Stella Artois, and manufactures more than 870m cans a year. Paula Lindenberg, the president of Budweiser Brewing Group UK & Ireland, said: “This announcement ensures that the UK’s favourite beers will soon come in recyclable paperboard packaging, so consumers can make better choices. We’re proud of the work we’ve already done but we realised more needed to be done to address the issue of single-use plastics.” The brewer is also switching to 100% locally sourced barley and 100% renewable electricity from solar power. It hopes the removal of plastic rings from all its UK products, including the Stella Artois pint can four-pack – the biggest selling small pack format – will have a significant impact in removing plastic from supermarket beer shelves. Plastic pack rings, known in the industry as hi-cones or yokes, are used to hold together multipacks of canned drinks, particularly beer. A standard packaging device for more than 50 years, they have become an environmental scourge by contributing to growing ocean plastic pollution and posing a threat to marine life. Last year, in a quest to find an alternative, Carlsberg announced plans to replace the rings with recyclable glue. Diageo has started phasing out plastic packaging from multipacks of its Guinness, Harp, Rockshore and Smithwick’s beers and replacing it with 100% recyclable and biodegradable cardboard packs. Last week, Coca-Cola said it was ditching plastic shrink wrap packaging used for multipack soft drink cans and replacing it with 100% recyclable cardboard across western Europe. The new cardboard multipacks will be introduced on four, six and eight packs of cans across all brands, including Coca-Cola, Diet Coke, Dr Pepper, Fanta, Lilt and Sprite | ['business/anheuser-busch', 'environment/plastic', 'food/beer', 'business/fooddrinks', 'uk/uk', 'business/business', 'society/alcohol', 'environment/environment', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/rebeccasmithers', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-home-news'] | environment/plastic | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE | 2019-09-22T23:01:12Z | true | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE |
world/2019/dec/01/new-zealand-begins-genetic-program-to-produce-low-methane-emitting-sheep | New Zealand begins genetic program to produce low methane-emitting sheep | The New Zealand livestock industry has begun a “global first” genetic program that would help to tackle climate change by breeding low methane-emitting sheep. There are about six sheep for each person in New Zealand, and the livestock industry accounts for about one-third of the country’s total greenhouse gas emissions. The livestock industry’s peak body, Beef and Lamb New Zealand, already uses a measure called “breeding value” to help breeders select rams with characteristics they want to bolster within their flocks. Within two years breeders will be able to select rams whose traits include lower methane emissions. “Farmers are more interested than I anticipated,” said a stud breeder, Russell Proffit. His family has been producing rams for more than 40 years. “I’ve undertaken the [methane] measurements because I believe an animal that is healthy and doing well should produce less methane and I wanted to test that. “I don’t know if that’s the case yet, but either way breeding for less methane complements what we are working to achieve on our stud. That is, more robust rams that require [fewer] inputs and make less demand on the environment.” Breeders who want to produce low-methane rams will need to measure a portion of their flock in an accumulation chamber, where their gas emissions are measured. Sheep spend 50 minutes in the chamber, and must be measured twice with an interval of more than 14 days. The resulting data is used alongside other genetic information to calculate a “methane breeding value”. Farmers who want to participate are expected to have access to breeding rams within two years, given the time it takes to breed the rams on a commercial scale. The pastoral greenhouse gas research consortium, which is jointly funded by the agricultural sector and the government, said the concept was to take advantage of variations in levels of methane emissions and research that found the differences were passed on to the next generation. “This is a global first for any species of livestock,” the consortium’s general manager, Mark Aspin, said. “Launching the methane breeding value gives New Zealand’s sheep sector a practical tool to help lower our agricultural greenhouse gases. This is significant. Up until now, the only option available to farmers wanting to lower their greenhouse gas emissions has been to constantly improve their overall farming efficiency. “This takes us a step further – towards actually lowering sheep methane emissions, in keeping with the sector’s commitment to work towards reducing its greenhouse emissions.” Progress via breeding could be about 1% a year, but it would be cumulative and have no negative impact on farm productivity. Aspin said amounts of feed were the biggest factor that contributed to methane emissions, and the consortium was working on three technologies that aimed to reduce amounts of methane generated by feed. “So by breeding sheep that produce less methane per mouthful eaten – as other methane-reducing technologies come on stream – the influence of these sheep on the national flock’s methane production becomes compounding.” Beef and Livestock New Zealand’s chief executive, Sam McIvor, said recent research of 1,000 farmers found that information about reducing greenhouse emissions was among farmers’ top five priorities. | ['world/newzealand', 'environment/pollution', 'science/agriculture', 'world/asia-pacific', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/ben-smee', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/australia-news'] | environment/pollution | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE | 2019-12-01T00:11:37Z | true | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE |
environment/2017/sep/18/how-to-win-the-battle-against-sanitary-waste | How to win the battle against ‘sanitary’ waste | Letters | Perhaps it is no coincidence that the record-breaking fatberg was discovered during a week of coordinated nationwide beach clean-ups, run by volunteers (Monster fatberg found inside London sewer, 13 September). Fatbergs like the “monster” found in Whitechapel could easily be avoided, but it’s time for an honest discussion about the causes. It’s not just cooking oil but a range of other items that we flush down our loos. Tampons are widely believed to be flushable but swell up in sewers, combining with oil to create impenetrable blockages. Blocked sewers overflow into rivers, leading to the oceans, hence the huge clean-ups needed every year to rid our beaches of so-called sanitary waste. We can’t address this until we’re prepared to use the word “tampon” in discussing the problem. Five of the major UK water companies give out free FabLittleBag disposal bags to householders as a crucial preventative measure. We hope Thames Water will join them to save millions in costly repairs – which is passed on in our water bills – as well as to prevent the horrific aquatic pollution. Martha Silcott CEO, FabLittleBag • Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com • Read more Guardian letters – click here to visit gu.com/letters | ['environment/waste', 'tone/letters', 'environment/environment', 'environment/pollution', 'type/article', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/editorialsandreply', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-letters-and-leader-writers'] | environment/pollution | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE | 2017-09-18T17:48:13Z | true | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE |
australia-news/2022/aug/09/bushfire-recovery-groups-blindsided-by-reports-resilience-nsw-might-be-axed | Bushfire recovery groups blindsided by reports Resilience NSW might be axed | Community groups from a bushfire-ravaged village in the hinterland of the New South Wales south coast fear they will be abandoned amid reports the new government agency established to coordinate disaster recovery might be axed. But critics of the organisation, created in response to the Black Summer bushfires in May 2020, say Resilience NSW is an ineffectual layer of bureaucracy whose funds would be better spent on frontline services. About 100 people involved in the recovery effort in bushfire-hit communities were part of a Resilience NSW-hosted meeting in Goulburn on Thursday when news broke that the agency could be dramatically scaled down. Cobargo Community Access Centre’s Chris Walters was among those gathered in Goulburn whose home town was engulfed in flames on New Year’s Eve in 2019. Walters said a lot of the services set up to support people in the wake of the inferno were soon abandoned, first when Covid struck and then because the remits for short-term emergency responses expired. She said Thursday’s meeting had been productive, with experiences heard and plans analysed to answer a key question: how could things be done differently and better next time? But then Walters read the news that the days of the organisation – which was supposed to be putting these plans into practice – appeared numbered. “I can’t repeat what I said – let’s just say it started with ‘F’ and ended in ‘K’,” she said. “Short-term thinking is really damaging to people, because they end up feeling abandoned. If this happens to Resilience NSW, that will be just one more abandonment.” As of Monday afternoon, the report from the inquiry commissioned in response to this year’s floods was yet to be released. But, according to the Sydney Morning Herald, the report’s authors – the former police commissioner Mick Fuller and the former NSW chief scientist Mary O’Kane – will call on the state’s premier, Dominic Perrottet, to cut the agency, reassign its responsibilities to existing government departments, and sack its boss Shane Fitzsimmons. According to reports, the former public servants will recommend a new deputy police commissioner be appointed to emergency and disaster management. The NSW Labor leader, Chris Minns, has said the evidence was overwhelming that “the massive bureaucracy that is Resilience NSW” had not worked. Resilience NSW also has opponents among some rural independents, including former MP Tony Windsor, who has said the organisation was a “diversion” from the start. Fitzsimmons was the NSW Rural Fire Service’s commissioner during the black summer bushfires, a role for which he was awarded NSW Australian of the Year. Windsor said he believed the then premier Gladys Berejiklian decided to “utilise the euphoria” surrounding Fitzsimmons. “He was seen as the hero,” Windsor said. “He was the sympathetic, the empathic man. And that was used to cover over a lot of the inept responses to the fires.” But the Cobargo Community Bushfire Recovery Fund’s president, Zena Armstrong, said her community was better prepared for the next devastating fire than they were two-and-a-half years ago. Where there was previously no water to fight fires in the main street of Cobargo, now there are large underground tanks, funded by the community. The evacuation centre has been “hardened” and people have been trained on where to go if they can’t get there. Farms have solar panels and batteries so they can pump water to fight fires if the grid is out, while the town is working on its own microgrid. “That’s the sort of resilience building that Resilience NSW is encouraging,” Armstrong said. She and Walters bristle, too, at the idea of more disaster-related responsibilities being assigned to police. They said they can’t forget the riot squad’s attempts to evacuate people from Cobargo to Bega on “unsafe roads”, and they fear centralised “command and control” over community-led responses. “What the ‘F’ do the police know about recovery and resilience?” Walters said. | ['australia-news/new-south-wales', 'australia-news/new-south-wales-politics', 'australia-news/bushfires', 'environment/flooding', 'australia-news/australia-news', 'environment/environment', 'world/wildfires', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/joe-hinchliffe', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/australia-state-news'] | world/wildfires | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2022-08-08T17:30:05Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
australia-news/2023/feb/22/australia-faces-unprecedented-grassfires-next-summer-supercharged-by-global-heating | Australia faces unprecedented grassfires next summer ‘supercharged’ by global heating | Australia should prepare for grassfires on a scale not experienced before, with new analysis warning spring and summer 2023-24 could see widespread fire risk “supercharged” by the climate crisis. The report, by the Climate Council and Emergency Leaders for Climate Action, says there is also an increased risk of more grassfires breaking out in New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia during the current fire season up to April. Firefighters have battled multiple grassfires this summer, including in regional Queensland and NSW. Fire authorities have said back-to-back La Niñas in eastern Australia have led to prolific vegetation growth. The Climate Council’s report noted fuel loads in some inland areas had a normal range of between 0.5 and 1.5 tonnes a hectare but were now between 4.5 and 6 tonnes a hectare as a result of heavy rains. Heatwaves and dry conditions were now turning those areas yellow and brown, creating what the report described as “powder keg” conditions for future fires. Models used by the Bureau of Meteorology indicate three years of above-average rainfall may give way to a hot and dry El Niño period this year. Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup The founder of Emergency Leaders for Climate Action and a former commissioner of Fire and Rescue NSW, Greg Mullins, said the summer of 2023-24 would almost certainly see a return to normal or above normal fire conditions. He said all levels of government “need to understand the escalating risk of devastating fires and ramp up preparedness now”. Grassfires, while generally less intense than forest fires, can be just as dangerous. They can move up to three times faster than a bushfire and can catch people out with their speed. The report states Australia’s most widespread grassfires followed a long La Niña in 1974 and 1975. The climate crisis has worsened since then and intensified extreme weather, leading to concerns that if extensive grassfires broke out now they could be more destructive and deadly. “Firefighters fear that grass fires occurring in hot, dry and windy conditions worsened by climate change could unfold on a scale never before experienced, potentially overwhelming emergency services at times, and placing communities at great risk,” Mullins said. David Karoly, a climate scientist and Climate Council councillor, said t hot conditions in many parts of Australia had led to rapid drying and curing of grasses. “We’ve got now already very high risks of grassfires and they have already occurred in parts of NSW, SA, Victoria and WA,” he said. Karoly said that risk would move to northern Australia through the winter dry season and then back to the southern states from spring. “This is again because of climate change-elevated temperatures and an elevated rate of drying and curing of the fuels,” he said. He said even if spring and summer did not see the return of El Niño conditions in south-eastern Australia, a more normal season would still bring “massive fire risk for both grass fires and bushfires”. The Climate Council and Emergency Leaders for Climate Action make several recommendations, including increased funding for emergency services and land management agencies to respond to disasters. Their report has called on the federal government to develop a single, integrated climate adaptation and disaster resilience strategy and for more funding for education and resilience projects in communities. It says emergency management agencies and state and local governments need permanent – rather than ad hoc – arrangements in place for long-term disaster recovery efforts. | ['australia-news/bushfires', 'australia-news/australia-news', 'environment/climate-crisis', 'campaign/email/afternoon-update', 'environment/environment', 'environment/la-nina', 'environment/elnino', 'australia-news/australia-weather', 'world/wildfires', 'type/article', 'tone/news', 'profile/lisa-cox', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/mainsection', 'theguardian/mainsection/international', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/australia-news'] | world/wildfires | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2023-02-21T14:00:05Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
fashion/2024/jan/22/sydney-festival-2024-house-of-fast-fashun-event-tumbalong-park | ‘Oh my God, I can put a shoe on my head’: waste walks the runway at Sydney festival | Over the weekend, a shed draped in 250 kilograms of clothing waste was constructed in Sydney’s Tumbalong Park, in the busy tourist precinct of Darling Harbour. Its walls were covered in T-shirts and singlets. Underwear and bras hung from the roof. Four pairs of jeans dangled in the doorway. The House of Fast Fashun [sic], created by a Melbourne-based art collective of the same name, was the backdrop for a two-day series of workshops and runway shows, held as part of Sydney festival. Another 750kg of used, damaged clothes was scattered in large piles on the lawn surrounding the house. Fast Fashun comprises Sebastian Berto, Luna Aquatica, Sarah Seahorse and Teneille Clerke (AKA Tenfingerz). They invite members of the public to create outfits from waste and wear them in runway shows. At the Sydney festival event, these were staged on the hour. “There’s so much fashion waste in the world and it’s such a massive problem,” Berto says. “When you create something out of trash, your sense of value for the fabrics and things that you’re using changes when you wear it.” Sign up for a weekly email featuring our best reads The exhibition featured one tonne of textile waste in total. Just a fraction of the 227,000 tonnes of textile waste Australians send to landfill every year. An additional 190,000 tonnes is donated to charity, but over half of this is exported to countries in the Middle East and Asia. People of all ages, ranging from small children to grandparents, clambered over and rummaged through the piles on the first day of the exhibition, pulling out everything from doonas and curtains to fur stoles and hats. There were several sewing machines set up on trestle tables around the park. Parents helped kids piece together outfits, offering words of gentle encouragement. Repair and hand-making skills were on proud display. Scissors were taken to garments. Hems were sewn. Fabric was tucked, pinned and tied. The pace picked up when Tenfingerz announced there were just 15 minutes left until the first runway show. Then, participants were ushered inside the house where dance music played loudly. Brendan de la Hay opened the runway show, popping out from between the jeans-door wearing a pink pattern sheet, ruched up and turned into a poncho. It was a display of joy that set the tone for every outfit that followed. De la Hay threw an enormous piece of white tulle, that doubled as both veil and cape on top of their ensemble. It came off with a flourish at the end of the catwalk. De la Hay is a designer and stylist by trade. It was their first experience with House of Fast Fashun, but it won’t be their last. “I love working with recycled products,” De la Hay says. “It’s so fun to see the community getting involved and super fun to walk.” As the next participant came down the runway in a sheer curtain expertly fashioned into a gown, Tenfingerz told the crowd to clap and cheer “any time anyone does anything”. The collective staged their first runway show in 2012, in a warehouse in Melbourne’s Brunswick, but it wasn’t until 2019 that they made fashion’s inherent excess the focus of their events. They procured clothing waste from charities, asking only for products too damaged to sell. The Sydney festival event was supported by Vinnies, while in Melbourne they work with clothing recyclers Upparel. After each show, the clothes that haven’t been rescued by attenders are returned to the partner organisation. “We learned when we did the first one how powerful it is for people to get hands-on with the waste and to see the scale of it,” Tenfingerz says. Lenka, who walked with her son Quinn in the runway show, found it alarming to see the volume of perfectly good clothing getting thrown away. “There’s a lot of good stuff here. Beautiful stuff,” she says. “It’s a really great initiative, to be just coming face to face with that and thinking creatively about what we put on our bodies.” A percentage of the clothes were pilled, stained or torn, but some were just a little worn and in otherwise good condition. The brands on the tags were familiar: Shein, MJ Bale, Bonds, Arthur Galan, Peter Alexander and YD. Although raising people’s awareness of waste and the dangers of consumerism is one focus, for the artists, the takeaways from the exhibition shift and change all the time. It’s important that the experience of Fast Fashun is fun, empowering and engaging. “Often people just come to watch, and they’ll watch one runway show and be like, oh my God, I can put a shoe on my head and they’ll be in the next one,” Tenfingerz says. Giving people confidence is key to undoing some of the social conditioning that drives consumers to wear the latest trends, they say. “It might feel frivolous with the state of the world to be playing and doing silly stuff with fashion,” Seahorse says. “But actually, it’s really important for people to realise that you can talk to strangers. You can meet new people. You can have discussions about fashion and waste.” This story was corrected on 25 January 2024, a previous version stated that any clothing leftover after Fast Fashun events would be taken to the tip. While this has been the case previously, Fast Fashun now return clothing to their partner organisations. | ['fashion/australia-fashion', 'fashion/fashion', 'environment/waste', 'environment/environment', 'culture/sydney-festival', 'culture/festivals', 'culture/culture', 'lifeandstyle/australian-lifestyle', 'campaign/email/five-great-reads', 'type/article', 'tone/features', 'profile/lucianne-tonti', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/australia-lifestyle'] | environment/waste | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE | 2024-01-22T01:50:49Z | true | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE |
world/2005/jan/01/uk.tsunami2004 | Girl, 5, is youngest Briton killed | Britain's youngest victim of the tsunami disaster was yesterday named as five-year-old Isabella Peatfield. Isabella, from Mappleton, near Ashbourne, in Derbyshire, was swept to her death in a Sri Lankan resort where she was on holiday with her father and mother, Tristan and Kim. They told how they got separated from their daughter, known as Bellie, when the waves forced them out of their bungalow into the lagoon behind them on Boxing Day. "We tried desperately to stay together but the force of the water separated us," they said. "We found each other after two days of searching. Bellie had been found and sadly did not survive the force of the water. "We were later reunited with her and we now mourn the loss of our beautiful daughter. "Bellie will always be wonderful to us. She was unique. She loved life with a passion and embraced anything new and adventurous in front of her." The couple had chosen Sri Lanka for a last-minute Christmas break because they had honeymooned there six years ago. Isabella had dreamed about elephants on the island since seeing them in her parents' photographs and they wanted her to see them for real. Her brother Oliver, 10, preferred to celebrate Christmas with the rest of the family and stayed in Britain. Isabella's parents are urging everyone to donate to the Disasters Emergency Committee fund. | ['world/world', 'uk/uk', 'world/tsunami2004', 'type/article'] | world/tsunami2004 | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS | 2005-01-01T00:07:59Z | true | EXTREME_CLIMATE_IMPACTS |
environment/2019/jul/09/lets-curb-car-use-so-children-can-breathe-clean-air | Let’s curb car use so children can breathe clean air | Letters | Your article (Birmingham’s toxic air ‘cuts half a year off children’s lives’, 8 July) shines a light on the UK’s air quality crisis and demonstrates the need for urgent action to protect children’s health. Children are most at risk from polluted air as it can increase the likelihood of developing asthma and lead to a rise in the number and severity of asthma attacks. The UK has the highest prevalence of childhood asthma in Europe. A recent report, Healthy Air, Healthier Children, reveals the severity of air pollution in the places where children spend most of their time – at school. It showed the presence of nitrogen dioxide inside and outside all classrooms, a pollutant predominantly from traffic, and also found high levels of carbon dioxide. Until we end our reliance on motor vehicles for local journeys, the plague of pollution over our streets and inside schools will continue. The government needs to show leadership by making 20mph the default in residential areas and delivering a network of safe walking and cycling routes to schools so that every child is able to travel by foot, cycle or scooter safely. The failure to resolve this denies our children their basic human right – to breathe clean air. Rachel White Head of public affairs at Sustrans • We need to reduce car use if we are to stop cutting children’s lives short. Air pollution is harmful to everyone, but for children it’s even worse – stunting their lung development and causing lifelong complications. Over 70% of air pollution is produced by road traffic. Electric vehicles won’t solve congestion on our roads, and claims that they are zero emission are severely misleading as they still produce lung-harming particulate matter. By prioritising investment in walking and cycling, our decision-makers can help people change their travel habits. We need to introduce clean-air zones in our major cities without delay if we hope to tackle this crisis. Becki Cox Principal technical adviser, Living Streets • Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com • Read more Guardian letters – click here to visit gu.com/letters • Do you have a photo you’d like to share with Guardian readers? Click here to upload it and we’ll publish the best submissions in the letters spread of our print edition | ['environment/air-pollution', 'tone/letters', 'environment/environment', 'society/children', 'society/society', 'uk/uk', 'type/article', 'publication/theguardian', 'theguardian/journal', 'theguardian/journal/letters', 'tracking/commissioningdesk/uk-letters-and-leader-writers'] | environment/air-pollution | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE | 2019-07-09T17:28:56Z | true | POLLUTION_AND_WASTE |
sport/2009/mar/03/pakistan-australia-tests-england | Cricket: Australia officials confirm they are in discussions to play their Test series against Pakistan in England in 2010 | Cricket Australia confirmed today they have begun discussions to play their postponed Test tour of Pakistan in England next July – as they seek a neutral venue for the contest in the wake of today's shooting in Lahore. Australia have been reluctant travellers to Pakistan – they have not toured since 1998 – and pulled out of a scheduled tour of the country last year because of security fears. Those concerns have been heightened following today's shocking events in Lahore, when the touring Sri Lankan team bus was targeted by gunmen as they made their way to the Gaddafi Stadium for the third day of the second Test. Seven Sri Lanka players were injured and the team was this afternoon awaiting a flight back to Colombo to bring a premature end to what was the first Test tour of Pakistan by any team since October 2007. Today's events mean Test cricket is unlikely to return to Pakistan any time soon and Cricket Australia's spokesman, Peter Young, said the world's No1-ranked team are in discussions with the Pakistan Cricket Board to play their postponed Test tour elsewhere. While Young admitted those discussions were only at an initial stage, a three-Test series in England next July looks the most likely scenario. Australia are due to tour England in June next year for five one-day internationals, with the Pakistan series likely to be played immediately after that. Young revealed the England and Wales Cricket Board had also been included in discussions and were "comfortable" with a scenario that would see the series being held in the country. "We are currently talking to Pakistan about playing Test cricket," Young said. "Those discussions are a work in progress and I would not like to forecast a likely outcome. However, one option we have discussed with them is playing three Tests in England in mid-2010 or thereabouts after the ODIs we are due to play against England in England. "I understand that England is, in principle, aware of and comfortable with that possibility, subject to details that might develop." Last week the PCB announced the postponed one-day international series with Australia had been rescheduled for the United Arab Emirates next month. India had pulled out of their January tour as well, with Sri Lanka's visit hastily arranged to fill the gap and bring an end to 16 months of Test inactivity in Pakistan. Cricket Australia's chief executive, James Sutherland, earlier said that, for the moment, the one-day series in the UAE was unaffected by today's events. Pakistan are due to co-host the 2011 World Cup, but those hopes are also now under threat, with the ICC president, Haroon Lorgat, saying they would now re-evaluate that decision. The International Cricket Council's president, David Morgan, said: "Things will have to change dramatically in Pakistan, in my opinion, if any of the games are to be staged there." Sri Lankan officials will now come under pressure to justify their trip to Pakistan although the team manager, Brendon Kuruppu, insisted they were right to travel. "I don't think it was a mistake to come to Pakistan in the first place," he said. "The Pakistan Cricket Board has given us all assurances that everything would be fine. We are lucky that none of the players were injured critically. It is a very sad situation, but we would have to take this incident into consideration when we plan future tours to this country." The Sri Lanka wicketkeeper Kumar Sangakkara added: "It's very unfortunate that this has happened. Everything had gone on very well until this morning, but it just goes to show that nothing is as it seems. I don't regret coming here to play cricket because that's what we have been doing all our lives. That is our profession. "But I regret this incident, what has happened and the situation that we have had to go through. All we want to do now is to go back home to our families, get back home and be safe." Australia's cricketers have personally contacted Sri Lanka's players to express their shock. Ricky Ponting, the Australia captain, released a statement from South Africa, where Australia are touring, saying the entire cricket community was stunned by the incident but relieved none of the Sri Lanka players were killed. "An act of violence like this is a terrible thing and when it involves those who are part of our cricketing family, players the world over are affected," Ponting said. "The wider cricketing community has been shocked by what has occurred and our thoughts and full support is with those involved." South Africa's captain, Graeme Smith, said the attack had put yesterday's defeat to Australia in the opening Test at the Wanderers firmly into perspective. "The word 'tragedy' is often used to describe a setback on a sporting field but this is a real tragedy," he said. "It is a tragedy for all the people of Pakistan and Sri Lanka, it is a tragedy for cricket and it is a tragedy for all decent people. "There is a tremendous brotherhood between players around the world and at this moment the South African team extends its sympathy to all those who have been affected by this terrible event. "We are hurting after our defeat yesterday but this puts into perspective what real suffering is. Our thoughts are with the players and we hope that they arrive home safely to their families." Three Australians were caught up in the attack – Sri Lanka's head coach, Trevor Bayliss, and the umpires Steve Davis and Simon Taufel. Bayliss was on the team bus while the two umpires were following in the convoy. All three escaped injury. | ['sport/australia-cricket-team', 'sport/pakistancricketteam', 'world/sri-lanka-cricket-team-attack', 'sport/sri-lanka-cricket-team', 'sport/cricket', 'sport/sport', 'world/pakistan', 'world/srilanka', 'tone/news', 'world/south-and-central-asia', 'type/article'] | world/sri-lanka-cricket-team-attack | UNRELATED_TO_CLIMATE | 2009-03-03T14:04:05Z | true | UNRELATED_TO_CLIMATE |
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