Around The Web

IETA is recruiting for a position of EU Policy Director in its Brussels office from March 2020 to March 2021 (maternity cover) with a possible extension.

The impact of humans on nature may have been far greater and longer-lasting than we thought, say scientists.

But it rejects a claim by a man whose Pacific Island nation is threatened by rising sea levels.

Malaysia will not become "the garbage dump of the world", says the country's environment minister.

Bioluminescent algae in Jervis Bay, Australia, glows in a captivating night time display.

EUAs extended a January high early on Monday, only to fall back on a feeble auction, faltering energy complex, and predictions that the MSR's supply-curbing powers may be temporarily weakened this year.

The jobholder will coordinate the Embassy’s work to combat climate change, including diplomatic action to support delivery of the 26th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP26) in December 2020.

The quantity of EU carbon allowances to be removed from the market over the 12 months from this September by the supply-slashing MSR will be reduced by tens of millions of tonnes due to the UK being suspended from auctioning and allocations.

More demand for meat sets nearly 2 billion farm animals on the move a year despite concerns about poor transport conditions and inhumane slaughter

• ‘It would be kinder to shoot them’: Ireland’s calves set for live export
• The global trade in live animals in eight charts

The global trade in live farm animals has more than quadrupled in size over the past 50 years, but patchy regulation means animals may be put at risk on some journeys, or exposed to cruelty when they reach their destination.

Every year nearly 2 billion farm animals are loaded on to trucks or ships and sent to new countries in journeys that can take days and sometimes weeks. Every day, at least 5 million animals are in transit.

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An unwelcome byproduct of a booming industry, male dairy calves can endure a short and brutal existence

• Live export: animals at risk in giant global industry
• The global trade in live animals in eight charts

It would be “kinder to shoot” the hundreds of thousands of unwanted male dairy calves due to be born in Ireland this year, rather than export them to the Middle East or let them die on the farm, experts have told the Guardian.

Irish farmers have hit a streak of gold on dairy exports, and as a result the industry has rapidly expanded, with the national dairy herd rising from about 1m in 2010 to 1.6m this year.

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The world’s seas and roads are awash with farm animals, with almost two billion pigs, cattle, sheep and chickens trucked or shipped as exports in 2017

• Live export: animals at risk in giant global industry
• ‘It would be kinder to shoot them’: Ireland’s calves set for live export

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This week we’ll be taking a closer look at the reality and risks of the huge industry supplying the growing demand for meat

Over the next week the Guardian’s Animals farmed series will focus on the global live animal export trade, which, despite welfare and disease concerns, has been growing at a pretty steady pace over the past 50 years.

It’s not an industry that most of us think about very often, though meat consumption has become one of the big discussions of our time. But most of us struggle to grasp the full complexity of the modern farming system, where an animal may be born in one location before being transported to another for most of its life, to a third – if it is a beef cow – for fattening, and at last to a final place for its death.

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Environmentalists say incinerating a vast stockpile of firefighting foam containing harmful PFAS is putting communities at risk

The Department of Defense is polluting the environment with toxic chemicals by continuing to incinerate a vast stockpile of firefighting foam in a move environmentalists say is in breach of new regulations.

In a letter sent last week to the secretary of defense, Mark Esper, several environmental organizations argue the defense department is already out of compliance with new provisions regulating the disposal of the material and insist that it “immediately cease” incineration of the foam – called AFFF – which puts communities at risk.

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Sainsbury’s, Lego and H&M feature on list that rewards shift to renewable energy and reducing emissions

Sainsbury’s, Lego and H&M are among the businesses to make a prestigious A-list of companies that are deemed to be at the forefront of the charge to tackle the “existential” climate crisis.

The list is compiled by non-profit group CDP which scores companies based on the environmental data they voluntarily disclose on its platform. Just 2% of the 8,000 companies it scores made the A-list, with Nestlé, Unilever, BT and Walmart among the 179 to make the cut. A focus on the climate emergency was not at the expense of business success, CDP said, with companies on the A-list also outperforming peers on the stock market by 5.5% a year.

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One of the world's biggest users of plastic plans to phase out most single-use items by 2025.

We asked locals in the Belgian city to tell us how things have changed since the shake-up

The city has become a pedestrians and cyclists’ joy, especially for people like me who live in the city centre and have no car. As I type, they are busy turning our street into a low-traffic, communal woonerf or ‘living street’. It has become easier and safer to navigate the town on foot or by bike. Having recently returned from the Middle East the changes are even more striking, especially when it comes to my son. We were not ready for him to cycle before but teaching him to cycle on the roads here has been a fun and relatively stress-free experience. The changes have made an enormous difference to people’s quality of life. Khaled Diab, journalist and writer

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Ghent’s transformation produced shorter journeys, cleaner air and a cycling explosion

Birmingham – once, proudly, the UK’s “motorway city” – has announced plans to entice people out of cars and on to bikes and buses. If officials get their way, the city will be split into zones, and, rather than driving direct, motorists will have to use the ring road for all zone-to-zone journeys.

Those travelling by foot and bicycle in the new Brum won’t be inconvenienced: their journeys will be simple and – with fewer cars – safer. With cars out of the way, bus journeys will become swifter and more reliable.

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Ahead of the World Economic Forum, Elizabeth Maruma Mrema urges governments to take definitive action on climate, deforestation and pollution

Humanity will have given up on planet Earth if world leaders cannot reach an agreement this year to stop the mass extinction of wildlife and destruction of life-supporting ecosystems, the United Nation’s new biodiversity chief has warned.

Elizabeth Maruma Mrema, the acting executive secretary of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, has implored governments to ensure 2020 is not just another “year of conferences” on the ongoing ecological destruction of the planet, urging countries to take definitive action on deforestation, pollution and the climate crisis.

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Record customer participation in demand response cuts risk of blackouts and delivers more than half a million dollars to savvy households, new data shows.

The post Victoria slashes grid outage risk with record demand response uptake appeared first on RenewEconomy.

It's been a deadly summer for Australia's wildlife. But beyond the fires, we need to act now to protect bats -- which make up a quarter of Australian mammal species -- from a silent overseas killer. Christopher Turbill, Senior Lecturer in Animal Ecology, Western Sydney University Justin Welbergen, President of the Australasian Bat Society | Associate Professor of Animal Ecology, Western Sydney University Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.