-
Nature and farmers’ groups cautiously welcome spending review as there were fears Treasury wanted bigger cuts
Labour is cutting the farming budget in England by £100m a year, spending review figures show.
Despite the decrease, the budget has been cautiously welcomed by nature and farming groups, as there were fears the Treasury had wanted to reduce the funding further.
Continue reading...
-
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...
-
IADB’s proposals involve lenders using public money to buy up renewable energy loans in poor countries
An innovative plan to use public money to back renewable energy loans in the developing world could liberate cash from the private sector for urgently needed climate finance.
Avinash Persaud, a special adviser on climate change to the president of the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB), who developed the proposals, believes the plan could drive tens of billions of new investment in the fledgling green economy in poorer countries within a few years, and could provide the bulk of the $1.3tn in annual climate finance promised to the developing world by 2035.
Continue reading...
-
Cold drop, upper-air trough and heat dome combine to create severe weather and 85mm hailstone
Severe thunderstorms swept across France last Friday, killing one person and injuring another. Two systems were involved, prompting orange weather warnings: the first came from the west via Brittany and hit the north of the country, and the second arrived via Spain and affected south-west France.
More than 30,000 lightning strikes were recorded between midnight on Friday and early Saturday. Eure, north of Paris, was worst hit with 4,326 strikes. Strong winds lashed Normandy – Rouen recorded a 76mph (123km)/h) gust that broke the 64mph record set in 2019. Hail affected several areas, leading to infrastructure and crop damage.
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...
-
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...
-
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...
