Around The Web

The British jet-powered car goes faster still during trials on a dried-out lakebed in South Africa.

The UK needs 1.5bn new trees to tackle the climate crisis – a Northumberland project is showing one way forward

“This whole area wants to be a wood,” says Edward Milbank, sweeping his arm across the former hill farm in Northumberland. Small saplings of birch have invaded the cleared ground, but many more trees are being pushed into the soil by hand.

The bracken and rhododendron that had overrun the hillside took heavy machinery three months to rip out. “When you disturb the soil, it becomes a wood very quickly,” says Milbank.

Continue reading...

Illegal fishing by Chinese-owned trawlers is costing the country millions – and one of the officials trying to stop it has now been missing for months

In his cramped living room in an Accra backstreet, Bernard Essien pulls out a sheet of paper – a statement signed by his elder brother Emmanuel and addressed to the Ghanaian police. Two weeks before 28-year-old Emmanuel vanished at sea, his handwritten account and accompanying video footage alleged illegal fishing by a trawler he had been working on. If the allegation was proved true, the ship’s captain faced a minimum fine of $1m.the case of a

Emmanuel Essien was a fishing observer, one of Ghana’s front line defenders against an overfishing crisis that is among the worst in west Africa. Illegal and destructive practices by foreign-owned trawlers are draining the Ghanaian economy of an estimated £50m a year. For those living along Ghana’s 350-mile coastline, overfishing has driven small pelagic species known as “people’s fish”, the staple diet, to the verge of collapse.

Continue reading...

A daily summary of our news plus bite-sized updates from around the world.

Experts are differing greatly on the potential supply of eligible carbon credits that could be available under ICAO’s global aviation offset scheme, and specifically on the amount of available CDM units, which are poised to play a key role.

Industry associations have suggested charging ships a $2/tonne fuel tax, in one of several measures discussed at the UN’s maritime body IMO this week as the sector strives to avoid regulation under the EU ETS.

This week we find out how people are coping in the aftermath of fire; and what's worrying farmers about water in the southern Murray-Darling basin?

Transport emissions should be falling with better technology, but policy inertia has left Australian motorists – and the environment – worse off

“An electric ute would be great,” Rhys Jones says from the driver’s seat of his ute while waiting out the front of the work site.

“I don’t know how much it would cost in terms of set up and all that, but I’ve been on jobs where I’ve seen electric cars. They sneak up on ya. There’s no motor in them, so the engines run silent.”

Continue reading...

Over the course of the week, three pairs of shoes bite the dust, soles detached from uppers in the 45 degree heat, one microphone's glue melts and there are about a billion bush flies drinking from sweaty backs. But despite the heat, Karajarri country has a draw towards it stronger than the pull of the sun.

A bipartisan group of US senators from the Northeast unveiled a bill Thursday to encourage the expansion of the country’s two regional cap-and-trade programmes, including by creating a new division with the EPA.

The satellite that will maintain the "gold standard" measurement of ocean height is nearly complete.

The pick of this week’s best flora and fauna photos from around the world, including a sleepy tiger and sea goldies

Continue reading...

The Environment Agency is worried about further flooding this winter after near-record rainfall.

The government says leaf blowers are "fatal to insects", which are in dramatic decline in Germany.

EUAs extended their one-month low early on Friday as prices reached a key technical support level below €23.50 before recovering.

Activists travel by canoe in risky mission to highlight threats to rainforest and learn from indigenous communities

The search for solutions to the climate crisis does not get any more radical, far-reaching or deeper into nature than the alternative climate conference currently taking place in the heart of the Amazon rainforest.

In the past few days, European climate strikers and Extinction Rebellion youth activists have travelled by motor canoe deep into a region known as Terra do Meio to share ideas with indigenous leaders, forest dwellers, environmental activists and Brazil’s leading climate scientists, anthropologists and archaeologists. The Russian punk anarchist Nadya Tolokonnikova, of Pussy Riot, was also set to join the gathering along with local artists and Catholic bishops.

Continue reading...

Closing prices, ranges and volumes for China's regional pilot carbon markets this week.

Scientists say rising temperatures are having a big influence on the scale and frequency of extreme weather events.

After some frustrating technical glitches, the land speed racer is upping its pace again.

EU’s lending arm to become first ‘climate bank’ by ending financing of oil, gas, and coal projects after 2021

The European Investment Bank has agreed to phase out its multibillion-euro financing for fossil fuels within the next two years to become the world’s first ‘“climate bank”.

The bank will end its financing of oil, gas, and coal projects after 2021, a policy that will make the EU’s lending arm the first multilateral lender to rule out financing for projects that contribute to the climate crisis.

Continue reading...