-
Richard Tice says voters will turn on government unless energy bills fall
Labour will back down on its policies aimed at achieving net zero greenhouse gas emissions, the deputy leader of the Reform has predicted.
Richard Tice, the energy spokesperson for Reform and MP for Boston and Skegness, told the Guardian his party would withdraw from the 2015 Paris agreement that tries to limit global heating to 1.5C.
Continue reading...
-
Rushall, Norfolk: It’s not an uncommon insect to find in your trap, but its design – and place in the world – is worthy of close consideration
As I sat with my friend at dusk in his garden, it came to me as a revelation. Perhaps he’d like to see who lived here once we’ve closed the door and gone to bed? So, I set my moth trap, which happened to be in the car and, post-breakfast, we went to meet the locals.
I’ve long likened opening every moth trap to Christmas morning: a moment when you have no idea what joy will be there. Nowadays there is as much fulfilment in seeing first responses from friends as there is in the magic of the insects themselves. I was engrossed by a lozenge of sunlit straw called a delicate (Mythimna vitellina), which is a scarce migrant from continental Europe. How extraordinary, I thought, that it may have been in Belgium or Holland the week before. It’s a journey that vastly expands our idea of what an insect might be.
Continue reading...
-
A slew of global leaders met in the south of France to discuss the future of the oceans. There was ‘momentum’ and ‘enthusiasm’, but there were critical voices too
The sea, the great unifier, is man’s only hope … and we are all in the same boat.” So said Jacques Cousteau, the French explorer, oceanographer and pioneering film-maker, who notably pivoted from merely sharing his underwater world to sounding the alarm over its destruction.
Half a century later, David Attenborough, a year shy of his 100th birthday, followed Cousteau’s trajectory. In the naturalist’s acclaimed new film, Ocean, which highlights the destructive fishing practice of bottom trawling, he says he has come to the realisation that the “most important place on Earth is not on land but at sea”.
Continue reading...
-
Among other concerns, the US military parade will produce as much pollution as created to heat 300 homes for a year
Donald Trump’s military parade this weekend will bring thousands of troops out to march, while dozens of tanks and armored personnel carriers roll down the streets and fighter jets hum overhead.
The event has prompted concern about rising autocracy in the US. It will also produce more than 2m kilograms of planet-heating pollution – equivalent to the amount created by producing of 67m plastic bags or by the energy used to power about 300 homes in one year, according to a review by the progressive thinktank Institute for Policy Studies and the Guardian.
Continue reading...
-
Continue reading...
-
Welfare of sows confined to farrowing crates was compromised and they displayed signs of extreme stress, experts say
The use of restrictive pens to temporarily house pregnant pigs in the UK severely compromises their welfare, can traumatise them and should be banned, experts have said.
Analysis by Animal Equality UK of footage collected from a farm in Devon showed that three pregnant sows in farrowing crates spent more than 90% of their time lying down, with one not standing up at all for a day. On average, between them they bit the bars (a sign of extreme stress) more than once an hour.
Continue reading...
-
When historian Galo Ramón uncovered a long-forgotten pre-Incan water system in Ecuador, he set about restoring it, and helped transform the landscape and livelihoods
One day in 1983, while studying a hand-drawn map from 1792 of his home town in Ecuador, Galo Ramón, a historian, came across a dispute between a landowner and two local Indigenous communities, the Coyana and the Catacocha. The boundary conflict involved an ancient lagoon, depicted on the map.
“The drawing depicted a lagoon brimming with rainwater,” says Ramón. Ravines were depicted forming below the high-altitude lagoon, indicating that it supplied watersheds further down – contrary to the typical flow where a watershed feeds into the lagoon.
Continue reading...
-
Mark Lynas has spent decades pushing for action on climate emissions but now says nuclear war is even greater threat
Climate breakdown is usually held up as the biggest, most urgent threat humans pose to the future of the planet today.
But what if there was another, greater, human-made threat that could snuff out not only human civilisation, but practically the entire biosphere, in the blink of an eye?
Continue reading...
-
From fungi-based wall panels to 3D printed bricks made of seaweed, biomaterials are increasingly being used in construction. But how close are they to a home near you?
The average person might simply see green goop, but when Ben Hankamer looks at microalgae, he sees the building blocks of the future.
Prof Hankamer, from the Institute of Molecular Bioscience at the University of Queensland, is one of a growing number of people around the world exploring ways living organisms and their products can be integrated into our built environment – from algae-based bricks to straw or fungi wall panels, and render made from oyster shells.
Continue reading...
-
Baldío in Mexico City is part of a new wave of restaurants embracing a regenerative ethos – with delicious results
Hunched over the pass in the open restaurant kitchen, a team of chefs are dusting ceviche with a powder made from lime skins that would, in most cases, have been thrown away. The Mexico City restaurant where they work looks like most restaurant kitchens but it lacks one key element: there is no bin.
Baldío was co-founded by brothers Lucio and Pablo Usobiaga and chef Doug McMaster, best known for his groundbreaking zero-waste spot Silo London. “In my eyes, bins are coffins for things that have been badly designed,” says McMaster. “If there was a trophy for negligence, it would be bin-shaped.”
Continue reading...
