-
Similar initiatives have been launched from Barcelona to Bogotá, but they have misinformation, political pressure and vested interests stacked against them
Ten years ago, Alastair Harper was an advocate for young people’s health sitting in a stuffy meeting room in London planning an air pollution campaign. “My phone started buzzing,” he said. “I took the call, and then told the room I needed to leave immediately.
“I had to get to UCLH [one of London’s major hospitals]. My own child was headed there in a blue-lit ambulance because she was struggling to breathe London’s toxic air.”
Continue reading...
-
Surge in proposals follows Labour’s lifting of de facto ban, with about 45 plans submitted in the year to March
Plans for new onshore windfarms in England have reached their highest annual level in a decade, after the government overturned the Conservatives’ de facto ban in 2015.
About 45 applications for new onshore windfarms were submitted in the year to March,according to a Guardian analysis of government data.
Continue reading...
-
North Sea oil, once the driving force of the UK economy, may be dwindling but it remains a symbol of prestige and a rich resource for political debate
When oil was first discovered off the north-east coast of Scotland in September 1969, industry folklore has it that the duty superintendent on the rig carefully poured it into a pickle jar commandeered from the canteen and took it back to Amoco’s Great Yarmouth office in Norfolk. There, it was emptied into an ash tray, sniffed and then set alight.
From that modest start, North Sea oil – as the huge basin of oil and gas reserves quickly became known – emerged as a driving force of the British economy and a symbol of national power and renewal as the UK emerged from the Opec oil crisis.
Continue reading...
-
Exclusive: campaigners warn 600-year-old New Barn at Harmondsworth could be ‘shaken to pieces’ by vibrations
Six hundred years after it was built, England’s largest surviving medieval timber-framed barn could now be “shaken to pieces” by aircraft vibrations, campaigners warn.
The public has until 1 September to submit objections to the Heathrow airport expansion, which could threaten the survival of the New Barn at Harmondsworth, considered a remarkable example of medieval architecture.
Continue reading...
-
Experts say fires caused by wrongly discarded lithium batteries, such as those in vapes, are putting lives at risk
Fires at recycling centres caused by wrongly discarded lithium batteries such as those found in vapes are occurring at the rate of more than 10 a week, according to new figures.
Experts say the sheer volume of battery fires now occurring at waste facilities has reached a crisis that is putting lives at risk, costing £1bn a year and frustrating fire chiefs.
Continue reading...
-
Athletes faced last-minute cancelling of 2.4-mile swim, as experts say pollution and extreme heat are causing blooms
As far as athletic accomplishments go, few are held in higher regard than completing an Ironman triathlon.
The amount of training required to tackle the 2.4-mile swim, 112-mile bike ride and 26-mile run that make up the course, as well as the expensive equipment required to train in the first place, means that only about 50,000 people in the world complete a full race and earn the title of Ironman every year.
Continue reading...
-
Experts say more must be done to adapt to changing climate, after two trains derailed within 24 hours during a recent heatwave
Railway companies are racing to prepare for another brutal summer next year, as a developing El Niño could see 2027 break more heat-related records.
Britain’s railway system has already been under stress from extreme heat this summer, with several operators reducing timetables and train speeds.
Continue reading...
-
An 1857 decree to drain swamps and plant a monoculture, detritus from the trees and global heating combined to produce the conditions for the Gironde inferno
The ruinous fires that overran parts of France this summer have burned more land than ever recorded, forced more people from their homes than at any point since the second world war and caused what scientists suspect is the country’s first firestorm thundercloud. The smoke from France’s biggest inferno in nearly 80 years choked Limoges, a city 125 miles (200km) from the flames, with more toxic dust than Delhi residents inhaled on the city’s worst day of smog last year.
The blaze that tore through forests outside Bordeaux in late July took just a few weeks to reforge France’s relationship with fire, but the conditions behind it were centuries in the making.
Continue reading...
-
Since Hurricane Sandy in 2012, a growing labor movement has addressed the climate crisis and economic inequality
Ryan McElroen had spent years repairing the New York City subway underground when he got the opportunity to work in the middle of the ocean.
“I had no views other than the darkness at work,” he said. “Then I went polar opposite.”
Continue reading...
-
The state’s bird emblem is an indicator species for H5N1, with high visibility populations and low survival rates. Experts are warning of ‘significant mortality’
When the black swans start dying, Western Australians will know that bird flu has truly arrived.
The birds are an “indicator species” because once they are infected with the H5N1 virus, they are more likely to die than survive, according to the University of Queensland virologist Kirsty Short.
Continue reading...