-
Research casts doubt on plans by UK government to offer subsidies for carbon capture attached to the power source
Burning wood for power generation can be worse for the climate than burning gas, even when the resulting carbon dioxide emissions are captured and stored, new research has shown.
The findings cast doubt on plans by several governments, including the UK, to offer subsidies or other financial support for carbon capture attached to wood-burning power.
Continue reading...
-
Sarah Finch is among six recipients of the Goldman Environmental prize, awarded to honour grassroots activists around the world
The woman whose campaigning set a legal precedent in the UK that stopped thousands of tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions has been awarded one of the world’s most prestigious environmental prizes alongside five other women from around the globe.
A supreme court ruling in a case brought by Sarah Finch has been cited in decisions against new oil concessions in the North Sea, the UK’s first new deep coalmine for 30 years and even plans for new large-scale factory farms.
Iroro Tanshi, a Nigerian conservation ecologist who launched a successful, community-led campaign to protect endangered bats from human induced wildfires;
Borim Kim, a South Korean activist who won the continent’s first successful youth-led climate litigation, finding her government’s climate policy to be in violation of the rights of future generations;
Alannah Acaq Hurley, a leader of the Yup’ik Indigenous people led a campaign that stopped what would have been the continent’s largest open-pit mine, in Alaska’s Bristol Bay region;
Yuvelis Morales Blanco, a youth activist who mobilised others in her Afro-descendant community in Puerto Wilches against two drilling projects, preventing the introduction of commercial fracking into Colombia;
Theonila Roka Matbob, of Papua New Guinea, whose campaign forced Rio Tinto, the world’s second-largest mining company, to sign an agreement to address devastation caused by its Panguna mine.
Continue reading...
-
Conservationists in Denbighshire ‘angry and heartbroken’ after Nant-y-Ffrith site emptied during breeding season
More than 1,000 toads may have died after a reservoir important to the local ecosystem was drained by a water company, conservationists in north Wales have said.
Volunteers at Wrexham Toad Patrols help toads returning to the Nant-y-Ffrith reservoir on the Llandegla moors in breeding season, this year assisting 1,500 of the amphibians to cross busy roads to help protect the declining species.
Continue reading...
-
Data shows 224,000 new EVs were registered in March, with Norway leading way in terms of switching
Sales of electric cars soared 51% in continental Europe last month, amid a rise in petrol and diesel costs driven by the Iran war.
Data shows that 224,000 new electric vehicles (EVs) were registered in March, and 500,000 across the first three months of the year – a 33.5% increase on a year earlier, according to analysis of national sales data in 15 countries by New AutoMotive and E-Mobility Europe, a trade body.
Continue reading...
-
As the rising number of vessels in the icy waters increases the risk of environmental disaster, scientists are scrambling to find potential solutions
Last winter, inside the subarctic Churchill Marine Observatory in Canada, scientists embarked on an experiment they hoped would result in a gamechanging remedy for polluted Arctic waters. They released130 litres of diesel into an ice-covered pool filled with raw seawater pumped in from Hudson Bayand added oil-eating microbes. The technique had been used successfully during the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, and the scientists wanted to see if they could break down oil in colder waters.
The microbes were sluggish in response and the population showed little change after the first three weeks, says Eric Collins, a microbiologist at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, who led the project. But that did not last. “When we went back eight weeks later, we saw that there was a big change,” Collins says. “One particular bacterium grew to a very high abundance in the tanks and it was clear that it was feeding on the oil.” But two months is too long to wait should an oil spill occur. Time is of the essence.
Continue reading...
-
Zoological Society of London commissions poet laureate for animation to mark its 200th anniversary
Over its two centuries, acclaimed writers and artists have found inspiration at London zoo, from Edwin Landseer’s Trafalgar Square lions, to AA Milne’s naming “Winnie” after resident bear Winnipeg, and Sylvia Plath’s poem Zoo Keeper’s Wife.
Plath’s husband, Ted Hughes, who would become poet laureate, worked at the zoo briefly as a dish washer, an experience said to have helped fuel his inspiration for The Thought-Fox.
Continue reading...
-
Seville could see 34C this week and parts of Brazil could hit high 30s, while storms forecast in southern Africa
Over the course of this week, temperatures in Spain are expected to soar well above the seasonal average. Daytime temperatures could reach about 30C in Madrid on Tuesday, 10C above the norm, while Seville may experience 34C, about 9C above its late April average. An area of low pressure situated out in the Atlantic will allow for a south-westerly flow, introducing warm air from north Africa. In addition to this heat, a notable dust plume is expected to travel northwards from the Sahara, covering the skies above Iberia and south-western France, which may lead to some particularly orange or red skies at sunrise and sunset.
In Brazil, high temperatures are forecast for the states of São Paulo, Paraná, Mato Grosso do Sul and Santa Catarina over the next few days, eventually spreading into Minas Gerais. Here, daytime maximum temperatures are expected to reach the high 30s celsius later in the week, about 5-10C above the seasonal average.
Continue reading...
-
One way to pay for wildlife conservation is to allow the rich to bag a few animals for high prices. But critics see this approach as an exercise in neocolonialism
You can kill almost anything if you’re willing to pay. Big or small. Land, water or air. Ten a penny or one of the last of its kind. There’s nearly always a way, though it might not make you popular. The Niassa special reserve, a vast reservation larger than Switzerland, stretches for 190 miles along the northern rim of Mozambique, taking in 4.2m hectares of woodland and rivers. The reserve, one of the world’s largest protected areas, is home to elephants, leopards, hyenas, zebras and about 1,000 wild lions.
That word, however: protected. It applies to some, but not all, of its animal inhabitants. Each year, a specific number are set aside for sacrifice, for the greater good. Not long ago,I joined an expedition in Niassa, with one of Africa’s top game-hunting companies.
Continue reading...
-
Kerbside wheelie bins have been used in Australia since the 1980s but the recycling rate is stuck at 44%. Will another recycling bin make a difference?
There’s no garbage truck in Kamikatsu.
Instead, the Japanese town’s 1,400 residents take their waste to the local recycling centre, or “Gomi station”, and sort it themselves into more than 40 different categories.
Sign up to get climate and environment editor Adam Morton’s Clear Air column as a free newsletter
Continue reading...
-
Sarah Finch’s fight against drilling led to a landmark ruling on fossil fuel emissions – and a leading environmental prize
It started with a notice in the local newspaper and ended with winning one of the world’s most prestigious environmental prizes. In 2010, Sarah Finch was flicking through the local planning notices when one caught her eye: a proposal to drill for oil at Horse Hill in Surrey, just outside Crawley, over the border in West Sussex, 6 miles (10km) from her home.
Surrey is not the kind of place one expects to find the oil industry. It’s a county of little villages, farms, woods and commuter railway stations. Its semi-rural landscape stretches off towards the horizon in a typically English green patchwork. It is difficult to envision it littered with nodding donkey pumpjacks and gas flares.
Continue reading...
