-
East Midlands electric car club helps residents and cuts emissions – but the need for a volunteer-led scheme reflects a much wider problem
In the aftermath of the Covid pandemic Miriam Stoate, a regenerative farmer from rural Leicestershire, noticed that too many people in her small village in England’s East Midlands were struggling to get around.
Although there were plenty of cars parked in Tilton, too often she found some of the village’s residents did not have access to one when they really needed it.
Continue reading...
-
Sarah Eberle hopes to inspire people to nurture where town and countryside meet and nature is need of protection
Stinging nettles, buttercups, broken crockery, fly-tipped flowers and a discarded gnome are not the usual hallmarks of an RHS Chelsea flower show garden.
But this year’s On the Edge garden by Sarah Eberle – the most decorated designer at Chelsea – is designed not to look like a garden at all, rather to transport its visitors to the liminal spaces on the outskirts of towns where the countryside begins and nature is in critical need of protection.
Continue reading...
-
Emissions understated by factor of five in Essex plans for tech giant, while Greystoke’s Lincolnshire plans show similar error
Developers working for Google have significantly misstated how much carbon two proposed AI datacentres will contribute to the UK’s total emissions in planning documents reviewed by the Guardian.
The tech company wants to build two huge datacentres – one 52-hectare (130 acre) project in Thurrock and another at an airfield in North Weald, both in Essex. To do so, developers are required to submit planning documents calculating how much carbon these projects will emit as a proportion of the UK’s total carbon footprint.
Continue reading...
-
National Geographic photographer and WWF ambassador Jasper Doest joined conservation teams during the latest mountain gorilla census in Bwindi Impenetrable national park, taking pictures of the apes and the people essential to their survival
Continue reading...
-
With the war on Iran, Ukraine, AI and climate breakdown increasing the likelihood of a nuclear war, the clock stands closer to midnight than ever before. So who decides how many seconds we have left – and can we buy ourselves more time?
The Earth is getting hotter. Conflicts are raging, in the Middle East and Ukraine, each increasing the chance of nuclear war. AI is infiltrating almost every aspect of our lives, despite its unpredictability and tendency to hallucinate. Scientists, tinkering in labs, risk introducing new, deadly pathogens, more destructive than Covid. Our pandemic response preparedness has weakened. The Doomsday Clock – a large, quarter clock with no numbers, keeps ticking, counting down the seconds until the apocalypse. Tick. Tick. Tick. In January, we reached 85 seconds to midnight. Experts believe humanity has never stood so close to the brink.
“What we have seen is a slow almost sleepwalk into increasing dangers over the last decade. And we see these problems growing. We see science advancing at a rate that defies our ability to understand it, much less control it,” says Alexandra Bell, CEO of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the organisation that sets the Doomsday Clock. She speaks of the “complete failure in leadership” in the US and other countries, which are doing little to address global, catastrophic threats, even as they feed into one another. Climate change increases global conflict, for instance, and the incorporation of AI into nuclear decision-making is, frankly, terrifying.
Continue reading...
-
Findings come after third-hottest April on record globally and amid fears of more brutal European summer weather
Economic inequality adds more than 100,000 deaths to the vast toll from heat and cold in Europe each year, research has found.
Cutting levels of inequality to match that of Europe’s most equal region, Slovenia, as measured by the Gini index, would reduce temperature-related mortality by as much as 30%, equating to 109,866 people, the study found.
Continue reading...
-
Brigg, Lincolnshire: We work these vehicles hard and they will have problems, but today was really not the day for a steaming bonnet
There’s never a good time for a tractor to break down, but this was exceptional timing. Late April was very dry as predicted, and with a change in weather prospects, the birdfood seed needed to go in. The purpose of this “crop” is to fill the birds’ winter hunger gap, and it has to be sown in a narrow window: after the early May frosts, but before the soil dries out too much.
We had just delivered the trailer of seed to the field, and were on the road returning to the farm, to collect the rolls that press the seed into the soil. As we passed through Brigg, the lights appeared on the dashboard and steam started to appear from the bonnet. This was our smallest and newest tractor. Hurriedly, we pulled into a driveway, water pouring from under the engine. Half on and half off the road, we started to collect traffic behind us. A quick look justified a call to the tractor dealers – it was a tricky job and the clock was ticking.
Continue reading...
-
Vitória Régia imagines rightwing Bolsonaro plot succeeded with US help – and highlights threats facing Indigenous peoples
The year is 2025 and far-right coup plotters have annihilated Brazil’s democracy, assassinating the president, closing the national congress and surrendering the Amazon rainforest and its untold riches to the United States.
“Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Amazon of America,” a thick-accented North American soldier tells a group of journalists being taken on a propaganda tour of an oil refinery in the newly annexed jungle realm. Nearby, a replica of the Statue of Liberty has been carved out of the wilderness to celebrate Washington’s tutelage over more than half of Brazil.
Continue reading...
-
Council’s plan will leave Federal Emergency Management Agency ill-equipped to respond to extreme weather events, experts say
Sweeping changes may be in store at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema), the nation’s frontline emergency response coordinator, that experts warned could further erode US capacity to handle disasters as the risks of extreme weather fueled by the climate crisis continue to rise.
Fears about a fundamental overhaul of Fema’s form and function have been brewing since Donald Trump returned to the White House. After castigating the agency over claims that it was too expensive and “doesn’t get the job done”, Trump set to gutting Fema as an early priority for his second term.
Continue reading...
-
In record 40C heat on 19 July 2022, 18 homes were lost in village of Wennington – a signal for firefighters to adapt, but UK response remains fragmented
When neighbours urged Lynn Sabberton and her partner, Terry, to flee from their home in Wennington one day in 2022, the couple weren’t sure they should bother. A fire was burning in their village, on the eastern edge of London, but Terry thought it was too far away to be a problem. Struggling with a lung disease made worse by the record 40C heat that day, 19 July, he was wearing only his underwear and refused to budge from his armchair.
Lynn remembers two police officers kicking open their front door and shouting that it was time to go. Lynn pleaded to be allowed to get Terry some clothes and was bundled upstairs to find them. Could she grab some papers? No. Her purse? No. Her cat, Jack? Also no.
Continue reading...
