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Far more must be invested in adapting to warming, says new global commission that aims to rebuild political will after US withdrawal from Paris agreement
Far too little is being done to protect people from the heatwaves, storms and floods being supercharged by climate change, according to a high-level international commission. It aims to rebuild the political will to act that was damaged when US president, Donald Trump, rejected the global Paris agreement.
The Global Commission on Adaptation is being led by Ban Ki-Moon, Bill Gates and Kristalina Georgieva, CEO of the World Bank. It involves 17 countries including China, India, South Africa, Indonesia, Canada and the UK.
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Big six energy firm drops fossil fuels for generation and say cheap green energy is the future
Scottish Power has ditched fossil fuels for electricity generation and switched to 100% wind power, by selling off its last remaining gas power stations to Drax for more than £700m.
Iberdrola, Scottish Power’s Spanish parent company, said the move was part of its strategy to tackle climate change and would free it up to invest in renewables and power grids in the UK.
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Almost 900,000 unsold meals are chucked out a day, according to food waste app Too Good To Go
Almost 900,000 perfectly edible, freshly prepared meals end up in the bin in the UK every day, new figures reveal, because they haven’t been sold in time by restaurants and cafes.
This means that more than 320mmeals are thrown away by British food establishments every year – enough meals for everyone in the UK five times over, according to food waste app Too Good To Go.
Continue reading...As a trained paramedic I understand emergency situations. In the face of catastrophic climate change, protest is a moral obligation
I was arrested yesterday for blockading Cuadrilla’s fracking site at Preston New Road in Lancashire for more than 12 hours. It was the first day of fracking after a seven-year delay due to earthquakes, powerful local opposition and legal challenges.
As a trained paramedic, I have a good appreciation of emergency situations. Climate change is the biggest emergency of them all. I join more than 350 people who have been arrested for disrupting Cuadrilla’s site in Lancashire over the last two years. People driven to take such action range from local councillors to faith leaders, students to grandparents. In the past fortnight, three people were sentenced to up to 16 months in prison for climbing on top of lorries that carried key fracking equipment.
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The ocean is threatened by climate change, pollution and fishing. I urge world leaders to agree to establish a sanctuary
I thought it would be cold. Not just cold, but colder than anything I had experienced in my life. I had visions of bedraggled explorers in blizzards with ice-covered beards.
But standing there, in the bright Antarctic sun, watching creaking blue icebergs, penguins bursting in and out of the water, I felt utterly content in this glistening wilderness.
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Instead of contributing to smog by burning stubble, farmers are learning that waste products can be turned into profit
Deep breath. Autumn in India is smog season, the worst time of year for some of the world’s most polluted cities.
There’s a reason for this. In addition to everyday problems such as traffic, industry, domestic cooking and road dust, this is the time of year when farmers set fire to their post-harvest fields. It’s called “stubble burning” – a cheap and easy way to deal with crop residue that needs clearing for the next planting season.
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Beekeepers are sounding the alarm about the latest developments in genetically modified pollinators. By Bernhard Warner
The spring of 2008 was brutal for Europe’s honeybees. In late April and early May, during the corn-planting season, dismayed beekeepers in Germany’s upper Rhine valley looked on as whole colonies perished. Millions of bees died. France, the Netherlands and Italy reported big losses, but in Germany the incident took on the urgency of a national crisis. “It was a disaster,” recalled Walter Haefeker, German president of the European Professional Beekeepers Association. “The government had to set up containers along the autobahn where beekeepers could dump their hives.”
An investigation in July of that year concluded that the bees in Germany died of mass poisoning by the pesticide clothianidin, which can be 10,000 times more potent than DDT. In the months leading up to the bee crisis, clothianidin, developed by Bayer Crop Science from a class of insecticides called neonicotinoids, had been used up and down the Rhine following an outbreak of corn rootworm. The pesticide is designed to attack the nervous system of crop-munching pests, but studies have shown it can be harmful to insects such as the European honeybee. It muddles the bees’ super-acute sense of direction and upsets their feeding habits, while it can also alter the queen’s reproductive anatomy and sterilise males. As contaminated beehives piled up, Bayer paid €2m (£1.76m) into a compensation fund for beekeepers in the affected area, but offered no admission of guilt.
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Invaders continue to seize land within the Chaparrí ecological reserve, one of Peru’s most biodiverse forests
Shortly after sunset, along an isolated stretch of highway leading out of a dusty hamlet in northern Peru, a band of five weary farmers clad in reflective neon vests and armed with traditional whips made of bull penises set out on a solemn march.
The Ronderos – self-governing peasant patrols – are resuming their nightly rounds five months after the brutal killing of their lieutenant governor, Napoléon Tarrillo Astonitas.
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On a planet of billions, nine represent the strong minority battling murder in the global corruption of land rights
Individually, they are stories of courage and tragedy. Together, they tell a tale of a natural world under ever more violent assault.
The portraits in this series are of nine people who are risking their lives to defend the land and environment in some of the planet’s most remote or conflict-riven regions.
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Nearly two years after the signing of a historic peace agreement, violence in the country continues
Enrique Fernández cannot remember the last night he slept peacefully.
He is tall and heavyset, and does not look like someone who scares easily, but as he sits in his humble rented home in western Colombia, his eyes dart nervously from left to right, scanning for any threat.
Continue reading...MPs debating the stigma surrounding eating disorders say the "medical profession are failing patients with eating disorders".
The presenter says he watched all 67 episodes of Game of Thrones "to pass the time" during treatment.
When his dad collapsed, Aaron Groves says the training he got as a scout made all the difference.
Consumer group Which? urges parents not to use three models of stair gates, saying they could be unsafe.
More than 23,000 people died last winter as Scotland experienced its worst flu outbreak in seven years.
GPs in England are to prescribe "social" activities, such as dance and cookery lessons, to tackle loneliness.
Pregabalin and gabapentin to be reclassified as class C drugs from April, the government announces.
An inquest is being held into the deaths of three patients of Sudip Sarker who was jailed earlier this year.
A report by child health experts warns England is falling behind other countries unless policies change.
Chioma Udeogu's daughter Favour was stillborn after failings on a Welsh maternity ward.
It's one of many bold claims made by the late physicist Stephen Hawking in his final book, "Brief Answers to the Big Questions," published posthumously.
The first animal to evolve on Earth was probably a sponge that existed around 640 million years ago.
The Billion Oyster Project collects used restaurant oyster shells and uses them to build oyster reefs to shore up New York harbors.
This foliage map from SmokeyMountains.com is a handy, up-to-date guide to fall leaf season all over the country.
Archaeologists in Bulgaria have unearthed two skeletons pierced through the chest with iron rods to keep them from becoming vampires.
So what if millennials killed mayonnaise and golf. Baby boomers killed the stuff that really matters — like the climate.
In "Ay, Mariposa," conservation filmmakers highlight the people, animals, and fragile habitats impacted by the barrier at the border.
Egmont Key National Wildlife Refuge is rich with wildlife and history — and it's under siege from the waters that surround it. And it's only to get worse.
Leafcutter bees emerge from egg chambers composed of pollen and nectar rolled up in a leaf.
A new study reveals how bees reacted to the 2017 Great American Eclipse, with help from citizen scientists and elementary schoolers.
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