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Emissions from exported oil would not count against carbon budget, insiders say – reasoning likely to draw dismay from climate campaigners
The giant Rosebank oilfield can be approved without breaching the UK’s emission targets, according to government insiders, in a boost to those in the cabinet who are pushing for it to be given the go-ahead.
The Guardian revealed last week that Miatta Fahnbulleh, the energy secretary, was leaning towards rejecting the project, but her position has put her at loggerheads with cabinet colleagues, including the chancellor, John Healey, who are lobbying for an approval.
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Scientists uncover ancient hills and swamps that disappeared as sea levels rose across northern Adriatic
Venice is famed for being a floating city, but research shows the land it sits on once lay many miles inland. Dramatic changes in sea level over 10,000 years have reshaped the northern Adriatic coastline, with much of the land that our ancestors roamed now lying beneath the waves.
Samuele Ongaro, at the University of Southampton, and colleagues combined seismic data with sedimentary cores from the coastal basins of northern Italy, Slovenia and northern Croatia to model changes in sea level across the region and reconstruct past landscapes over the past 10,000 years.
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The radical Stern report showed that a low-carbon future is also good economics. But it seems that capitalism needs a reminder
Saving the only planet we have makes good economic sense. There is, after all, no money to be made on a dead Earth. There may be costs involved now, but they are worth paying to protect our children from certain destruction.
These propositions seem self-evident now. But two decades ago, mainstream economists had very different ideas. They had proved that the climate crisis would be a mere economic blip, easily absorbed by growing economies and therefore not worth spending money on. In their accounting, they considered ice caps and glaciers functionally worthless, that trees only add to GDP when they are cut down, and that a livable climate shouldn’t even merit a line on a spreadsheet.
Fiona Harvey is an environment editor at the Guardian
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Extreme heat accelerated disappearance of Triglav glacier from mountain revered as a symbol of Slovenian identity
The final ice patch has vanished from Slovenia’s Triglav glacier, the latest Alpine casualty of Europe’s scorching summer.
The once mighty ice mass lost 93% of its surface area between 1983 and 2003, shrinking to cover less than a hectare of overheated rock, but went on to surprise researchers who feared its imminent demise, clinging on to the mountain for two more decades.
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A striking transformation takes place along the coast of Qinqdao in autumn, when a native seepweed turns a brilliant shade of red.
The ‘red beach’ phenemon can be seen in the salt marshes and wetlands on the coast of China’s Shandong province, where the Suaeda glauca plantmatures and absorbs water, changing it from green to crimson between September and November
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Wharram and York, North Yorkshire: It’s the nervy few days before a ceremony that will honour our local waterways, and I have work to do
I visit the source of the tiny stream called the Gypsey Race now and then, drawn by the everyday miracle of its water welling to catch sunlight like a plaything and alchemise it into colours and sparks. Today, though, is different, because I’ve come to ask for something. Something like permission, or approval maybe.
I’ve been helping to organise a gathering of river advocates to co-draft a regional charter of river rights – making explicit our responsibilities towards them. We will be holding a ceremony to blend waters from across Yorkshire to make ink in which the charter will be written. I want to collect water from the Gypsey, but I also want some of its potent reputation. Its course is regarded as auspicious thanks to an extraordinary concentration of nearby prehistoric barrows, cursuses and henges, not to mention England’s tallest standing stone. Local folklore insists that its capricious flow holds the power of prophecy.
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Chris Packham says £24bn earmarked for projects with ‘ludicrously uncertain results’ should be redirected to help lower bills and cut emissions
Campaigners are calling on the chancellor to cut the government’s £24bn spending plans for “fairytale” carbon capture technologies in favour of funding green schemes that can reliably cut emissions and lower energy bills.
The environmentalist Chris Packham is leading an 11th-hour appeal for the Treasury to use this week’s budget to scale back the government’s “exorbitantly expensive” support for carbon capture, which is now more than the planned spending for the US, the EU, Norway and Japan combined.
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My mother was a keen swimmer, and she lived with depression. I wonder if she found the same respite in the water that has helped heal me since she passed away
It was early morning in late September, off the coast of Kaş in Turkey. Watching the slightly choppy sea from a boat, the last thing I felt like doing was embarking on another 5km (3-mile) swim. Mind fog had sapped my energy, and my mood was decidedly Eeyore-like. But as I pulled on my cap and flippers, adjusted my goggles and took the plunge, something shifted.
Head in the water, the knotted feeling in my throat began to loosen. Breathing came properly. There was respite.
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All it took was one or two careless teenage girls giving the vermin a taste of their snacks and they became the most well-fed animals imaginable
I’ve written a fair amount about my boarding school years in Nigeria in the 90s, but never about the rats that accompanied my school experience. Picture it: thousands of girls from across the country, each bearing a suitcase or two of a term’s worth of “provisions” – cornflakes, sugar cubes, powdered milk, hot chocolate powder, and so on. All it took was one or two careless girls giving the rats a taste of the exotic and they became among the most well-fed rats in the country, enjoying a steady stream of delicious teenage-girl snacks.
I will never forget the sight of rats – six or seven deep – congregating at dusk on the scraggly lawn next to my dormitory, like an illegal gathering of political dissidents. They were large (what with their rich diet), thick tails twitching, noses pushed together, damn near whispering. At first, they would scatter when humans approached. Then we had to clap and stomp to get them to shift. Like the proletariat, the rats began to understand their power, and stand their ground. They were no longer pests but now a sort of predator. If this sounds like the beginning of a highbrow horror, that’s how it felt.
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Company imitates reflection of sun from mirrors, prompting pushback from some scientists, environmentalists and California locals
Locals in a rural area of California were recently startled to see dazzlingly bright light shining down from nearby mountains at night, illuminating a swathe of the desert below.
Unbeknown to them, the strange nocturnal illumination was the latest step in a company’s plan to erect thousands of giant mirrors in space to reflect sunlight on to the Earth during night-time.
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