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Donkeys can grow so sick from mourning the loss of a companion that they die

When a donkey brays it is as though every rusted gate nearby is opening and closing at once; as though the iron seesaws and swings and roundabouts in one hundred abandoned playgrounds have begun to move by themselves: squeaking, creaking, screeching.

“Better to be born a limpet in the sea than a load-bearing donkey,” they say in Sicily. But the first load I ever heard of a donkey bearing was rather grand: Christ himself, riding a beast of burden into Jerusalem. People grabbed their cloaks, cut branches from palm trees “and strawed them in the way” for the donkeys to walk on. “Behold, thy King cometh unto thee, meek, and sitting upon an ass, and a colt the foal of an ass.”

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Five Washington state senators this week reiterated their support for significant changes made to a recently-passed low-carbon fuel standard (LCFS) bill, saying any final proposal must maintain its ties to a comprehensive transportation funding package and legislative reauthorisation to earn their backing.

Instead of stopping unnecessary air travel, the UK is considering measures that would make it cheaper

This week the French national assembly voted to ban domestic flights on routes that could be travelled via train in under two and a half hours. The new rule, which is the result of a French citizens’ climate convention established by Emmanuel Macron in response to the gilets jaunes (yellow vests) movement, will capture 12% of French domestic flights. Though it’s more moderate than the convention’s initial proposal, which sought to ban all domestic flights on routes with rail alternatives of less than four hours, this is the first time any major economy has prohibited domestic air travel for environmental reasons. It’s also far more drastic than anything the UK has done to curb flight emissions.

The huge blow the pandemic has dealt to the aviation industry could be an opportune moment to rethink the future of flights. Before Covid, air travellers rated around half of all flights as unnecessary. Apart from a few exceptions in particularly remote regions, domestic flights in small countries must be among the least necessary of all. Just over half a million flights were taken every year between London and Manchester before the pandemic, a journey that takes around two hours by train. Because so much of the pollution from any given flight takes place during take-off and landing cycles, the emissions produced per kilometre for each passenger on a domestic route are 70% higher than long haul flights – and six times higher than if the same journey was made by rail.

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California’s WCI-linked cap-and-trade floor price is on track to rise near $19.00 in 2022 due to higher inflation in March, according to federal data released Tuesday.

Australia's Clean Energy Regulator has issued just over 230,000 carbon credits in a little less than a week, while the government has opened funding applications for its new biodiversity pilot scheme.

Without the app, mapping reefs usually involves high amounts of data and low-quality photos, which leads to slow analysis

Less than 1% of the ocean floor consists of coral reefs. But more than one-quarter of marine animals live in them. With rising temperatures bleaching corals across oceans, Nasa scientists turn to an unlikely tool: a smartphone app.

A team of Nasa scientists in Silicon Valley has developed NeMO-Net, a game to classify corals, into a tool for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa).

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To avoid the grimmest outlook posed by warming oceans, we need to extract heat-trapping gases from the atmosphere

The climate emergency is bigger than many experts, elected officials, and activists realize. Humanity’s greenhouse gas emissions have overheated the Earth’s atmosphere, unleashing punishing heat waves, hurricanes, and other extreme weather – that much is widely understood.

The larger problem is that the overheated atmosphere has in turn overheated the oceans, assuring a catastrophic amount of future sea level rise.

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A carbon tax of $25/tonne could put a significant dent in Asia-Pacific greenhouse gas emissions, but would have to be raised to three times that level to be in line with a 2C or lower global warming target, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

With record high CO2 levels and destructive tornadoes, Ben Rich has more on extreme weather around the globe this spring.

An emissions trading scheme with steadily tightening benchmarks and increased use of auctioning could cut CO2 emissions from China’s power sector by over 1 billion tonnes by 2035, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).

The shortlist, runner-up and overall winners from the Mammal Society’s 2021 photography competition, the theme of which was mammals during lockdown

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Most experts say it's a normal and safe practice but environmentalists and locals are not happy.

Yes, some of this is normal seasonal transition. But at least a portion of it is due to a particularly vigorous cold front that swept across southeast Australia over the weekend. Sarah Scully, Senior Meteorologist, Australian Bureau of Meteorology Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

Should we go for oat milk? Seaweed-fed cows? But then there’s the packaging to worry about … Every choice seems bad

I have a problem with milk. Well, multiple problems. Let me elaborate. (Are you excited?) Cow’s milk is, of course, bad news for the planet: three times worse in greenhouse emission terms than any plant milk. I have known for ages, but pretended not to, because tea is horrible with oat milk.

I do, however, seek out the least bad dairy. I get my milk from cows fed on seaweed, which reduces bovine belching: research has recently found this can cut methane emissions by up to 82%. So, great? Well. First, it comes in a plastic bottle, not a glass one. Worse, as a household we finish our two pints of seaweed milk precisely six days after our weekly delivery. If I ordered another two-pint bottle, most of it would end up down the sink. I have tried holding out, but I feel bad imposing my eco-guilt on my younger son, who has the smallest carbon footprint of any of us, and just wants milk on his cereal, so I end up buying a pint of Bad Milk from the corner shop. The household vegan is disgusted by dairy, but drinks a litre of oat milk a day delivered in packaging the council does not recycle.

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NZ to introduce new mandatory climate risk disclosure requirements for financial services sector.

The post New Zealand to force banks and insurers to disclose climate risks in world-first appeared first on RenewEconomy.

AGL to offer onsite renewables and storage to its biggest energy users, signing deal with energy services provider Wärtsilä.

The post AGL and Wärtsilä offer onsite solar and battery solutions to big energy users appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Remote control: Network ability to switch off rooftop solar is to be extended to EV chargers, air conditioners, hot water and pool pumps.

The post Solar “switch-off” rule to extend to EV chargers, pool pumps and air con appeared first on RenewEconomy.

ABC Four Corners program says Taylor's office pressured Scott and Zibelman over their failure to embrace his pro-gas policy.

The post Taylor reportedly put pressure on Schott and Zibelman over gas plans appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Plant more bean-like crops in Europe and consider ‘healthy diet transition’ to beat climate crisis, say scientists

Adding the likes of peas, lentils, beans, and chickpeas to your diet, and farming more of them, could result in more nutritious and effective food production with large environmental benefits, scientists have found.

Researchers calculated a “nutritional density” unit for different types of crops. They found that swapping cereals for leguminous plants in European crop rotations provided more nutrient-rich produce for both animal and human consumption. Thanks to the way that legumes grow, it also reduced synthetic fertiliser use and pollution.

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New report lays out dire situation facing the most imperiled rivers but environmental activists say situation is salvable

Dams, mining, factory farms and global heating are among the gravest threats facing America’s endangered rivers, according to a new report.

The Snake River in the Pacific north-west is ranked the most endangered US river of 2021, where salmon runs are on the brink of extinction because of four federal dams obstructing the free flow of water, according to American Rivers’ annual report.

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