-
Green Finance Institute report said further pollution could cut 12% off GDP by 2030s
The destruction of nature over the rest of the decade could trigger a bigger economic slump in Britain than those caused by the 2008 global financial crisis and the Covid pandemic, experts have warned.
Sounding the alarm over the rising financial cost from pollution, damage to water systems, soil erosion, and threats from disease, the report by the Green Finance Institute warned that further breakdown in the UK’s natural environment could lead to a 12% loss of gross domestic product (GDP) by the 2030s.
Continue reading...
-
The Marches, Shropshire:These glorious so-called weeds are everywhere at the moment, undimmed by the lack of attention
Dandelion days. There is such wild energy in the air, the weather blows from hail, through showers, to bright sunshine, and dandelions pop up everywhere. There’s old “piss-a-bed” with its fang-root biting into an abandoned cemetery memorial: the white marble one with pillars, wreaths and adoring wives.
Anywhere dandelions grow they are local; antisocial Joneses there’s no keeping up with. This rude intrusion into a display of fortune – dressed up as the pride and grief of three generations – flowers in the homeland of the great war poet from Oswestry, Wilfred Owen, who speaks from over the edge of the precipice we’re all facing now and asks: “For this the clay grew tall?”
Continue reading...
-
£2.2bn-worth of oil processed in China, India and Turkey – to whom Russia supplies crude – was imported in 2023, data shows
The UK has been accused of “helping Russia pay for its war on Ukraine” by continuing to import record amounts of refined oil from countries processing Kremlin fossil fuels.
Government data analysed by the environmental news site Desmog shows that imports of refined oil from India, China and Turkey amounted to £2.2bn in 2023, the same record value as the previous year, up from £434.2m in 2021.
Continue reading...
-
British Medical Association says decision to take Dr Sarah Benn off medical register for five months ‘sends worrying message’
Doctors groups are calling for urgent consideration of the rules for medical professionals who take peaceful direct action on the climate crisis, which they say is the “greatest threat to global health”, after a GP was suspended from the register for non-violent protest.
Dr Sarah Benn, a GP from Birmingham, was taken off the medical register for five months on Tuesday by the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service (MPTS), the disciplinary arm of the General Medical Council (GMC), over her climate protests. The tribunal said Benn’s fitness to practise as a doctor had been impaired by reason of misconduct.
Continue reading...
-
From ancient olive groves to root vegetables, foreign pests introduced via the bloc’s open import system are causing damage worth billions – and outbreaks are on the rise
The plants slowly choke to death, wither and dry out. They die en masse, leaves dropping and bark turning grey, creating a sea of monochrome. Since scientists first discovered Xylella fastidiosa in 2013 in Puglia, Italy, it has killed a third of the region’s 60 million olive trees – which once produced almost half of Italy’s olive oil – many of which were centuries old. Farms stopped producing, olive mills went bankrupt and tourists avoided the area. With no known cure, the bacterium has already caused damage costing about €1bn.
“The greatest part of the territory was completely destroyed,” says Donato Boscia, a plant virologist and head researcher on Xylella at the Institute for Sustainable Plant Protection in Bari.
Continue reading...
-
A dawn chorus of flutes, whistles and chirps once flowed through my Cambridge window, but there has been a shocking collapse in birdlife. What can be done?
Every year from February through to June, the early morning chorus of birdsong is one of the most evocative manifestations of spring. During late winter I open the bedroom window before going to sleep, to hear that incredible mix of flutes, whistles and chirps that begin before first light, when I wake. I listen for the layers of song that simultaneously come from close by and far away.
This year though, the dawn chorus that once was the soundtrack for spring in central Cambridge has collapsed. It was noticeably quieter in 2023, and this year strikingly so. Blackbirds are depleted and song thrushes no longer heard at all. The dunnocks – once one of the most common garden songsters – have disappeared, as have the chaffinches, whose early February song was among the first audible confirmations of lengthening days. The cheery chatter of house sparrows is absent and the once familiar sound of coal tits has fallen silent. Long-tailed tits are now rare, and so far this year I’ve heard no blackcaps. Great and blue tits, robins and goldfinches, are still present, but down in number.
Continue reading...
-
Researchers in the Netherlands find climate change is increasing vulnerability of some species
Climate change is causing apparently healthy trees to die after periods of heat and drought. Many may not die immediately but repeated periods of hot weather seem to increase the vulnerability of some species more than others.
Researchers studied 20 species of conifers planted 100 years ago in the same place in the Netherlands, taking tree ring samples to see how they did in droughts between 1970 and 2013. From the distance between the rings it is possible to tell how much each species’ growth was affected.
Continue reading...
-
The divestment movement has a long history among US student activists, including in the overlapping movements of today
Cameron Jones first learned about fossil fuel divestment as a 15-year-old climate organizer. When he enrolled at Columbia University in 2022, he joined the campus’s chapter of the youth-led climate justice group the Sunrise Movement and began pushing the school in New York to sever financial ties with coal, oil and gas companies.
“The time for institutions like Columbia to be in the pocket of fossil fuel corporations has passed,” Jones wrote in an October 2023 op-ed in the student newspaper directed toward the Columbia president, Minouche Shafik.
Continue reading...
-
The biggest cities in the US are mourning animals who fostered a rare sense of connection. Art is preserving their legacies
Working near Central Park, one New Yorker regularly witnessed one of its most beloved residents: Flaco the owl, who became a celebrity after escaping the nearby zoo. The woman took the bird’s message to heart, re-evaluated her life and decided to quit her job. Now, she’s one of dozens with a Flaco tattoo.
“They’ll be walking around the rest of their lives, that name and owl on their arm,” says Duke Riley, an environmental artist who spearheaded a special sale at his tattoo parlor this month. Customers flocked to East River Tattoo in Brooklyn, where, for $150, they could walk away with ink memorializing Flaco. The line stretched around the block, Riley says.
Continue reading...
-
As diplomats search for a deal to curb the world’s growing problem of plastic, piles of bottles, buoys, nets and packaging keep building up in what should be a pristine environment
As our small fishing boat slows to a halt in a shallow bay south-east of Puerto Ayora, Santa Cruz, in the Galápagos Islands, a green turtle surfaces next to us, followed by a second, then a third a few metres away. A spotted eagle ray glides underneath the vessel.
The skipper, Don Nelson, steps on to the black volcanic reef, slippery with algae. We follow, past exposed mangrove roots and up on to higher ground. Pelicans swooping into the trees and small birds, perching on branches, ignore our approach.
Continue reading...
