Around The Web

Switch to an ethical bank account and invest in renewable energy, not fossil fuels

Giving to charity, while highly recommended, does not make you an activist. It makes you a charity donor. Great in its own right, but move your bank account and then you’re edging into activist territory. As motivation, read a new report from Christian Aid that unpicks the global banking industry, zeroing in on the Big Four, which hold almost all of our money. What emerges is a picture of a system rife with dysfunction.

Despite the falling costs for renewables and their increasingly swift take-up, your money, via private banks, still primarily bankrolls fossil fuels. If this continues, by 2050 the global economy will have invested $23tn into fossil fuels, sinking the targets of the globally agreed Paris Agreement, our best hope of avoiding catastrophic climate change.

Continue reading...

The fires, which blanket much of south east Asia in dense smoke each year are lit deliberately to clear forest for palm oil plantations.

What does your world sound like? We asked, and you sent us earworms from planet earth. Close your eyes and take a trip.

At UN climate talks in Bonn, Gore is heading an unofficial group trying to stop climate change – in the face of scepticism from Trump administration officials

Al Gore has accused Donald Trump of surrounding himself “with the absolute worst of climate deniers” and said he has given up attempting to persuade the president to reverse his dismantling of policies combatting global warming.

However, both Gore, the former US vice-president, and Jerry Brown, governor of California, told the Guardian they were confident the US will regain its leadership position on climate change if Trump is defeated in the next presidential election.

Continue reading...

Kathleen Hartnett White struggles to answer basic questions posed by the Senate committee on environment and public works on Thursday. Hartnett White, Trump’s nominee for the environmental quality council chair, had difficulty answering questions from Senators Ben Cardin and Sheldon Whitehouse on green house emissions and climate science 

Continue reading...

Emissions trading benefits big polluters, say Maxime Combes et al. And the UK Treasury continues to subsidise certain highly polluting diesel engines, say Matthew Farrow et al

While the EU is extolling its “climate leadership” at the UN climate talks in Bonn, in Brussels it has just agreed to prolong its emissions trading system – providing big polluters with billions of euros in subsidies.

Some EU member states could use a sizable chunk of these funds to carry on burning fossil fuels, with Poland, for instance, looking to prolong the lifespan of its ageing coal infrastructure. Using emissions trading revenues to extend the life of coal-fired power plants is extremely irresponsible and works directly against efforts to halt catastrophic climate change.

Continue reading...

One of US’s only public events, originally billed as promoting clean energy, has since been changed to favour coal and nuclear power

The US has changed the focus of one of its few public events at the Bonn climate talks to emphasise coal and nuclear power, in a sign of the Trump administration’s goals at the talks.

An event next Monday, opening the second week of the ongoing UN negotiations, was originally billed as promoting clean energy. However, it has since been changed to emphasise coal and nuclear power.

Continue reading...

The week’s top environment news stories and green events. If you are not already receiving this roundup, sign up here to get the briefing delivered to your inbox

Continue reading...

Big quantities of nitrate chemicals from farm fertilisers are polluting the rocks beneath our feet.

Pintail ducks, an elephant seal pup and an osprey in action are among this week’s pick of images from the natural world

Continue reading...

The advance party sent in to open up Britain’s mothballed Antarctic base say it is in good shape.

Two species of seahorses are among the unexpected creatures found living in London.

Paul Bodnar believes US president has ability to hamper progress towards a lower carbon economy – but that market forces will ultimately stop him

Donald Trump could slow down US progress towards a lower carbon economy, but he will be unable to halt it because businesses and local governments have committed to a low-carbon path, a former climate negotiator for the US has said.

Through measures such as slapping import tariffs on solar products, scrapping incentives to renewable energy and promoting coal power, the US president could try to alter the economics of pursuing low-carbon energy.

Continue reading...

With political agreement making slow progress and direct action becoming more dangerous, we must find alternatives

In the medieval legend made famous by the brothers Grimm, the German town of Hamelin is besieged by a plague of rats, until the mysterious pied piper appears and agrees, for a fee, to rid them of the infestation. The mayor then reneges on payment and the piper exacts a savage revenge on the town’s ingrates by luring away their children, who are never seen again.

The tale could also be an allegory for today’s grim intergenerational smash-and-grab – the global economy. As environmentalist Paul Hawken put it: “We have an economy where we steal the future, sell it in the present, and call it GDP.”

Continue reading...

Bici Palermo Tuning – a group of teenagers from the Sicilian capital – spend anything up to €1,300 customising their bikes with car batteries and multiple speakers to develop thunderous sound systems. The police are not impressed

Continue reading...

Waltham Forest’s new zero-emissions delivery service aims to replace polluting trucks for local deliveries of food, online purchases and more

Each morning Oscar Godoy unlocks a door in a railway arch in north London, organises the day’s deliveries, and assigns jobs to his cargo bike riders. They manoeuvre the hefty bikes from the narrow lane out on to the road, past assorted vehicles from the MOT garage, the car wash and vehicle repair outfits at either end.

In the afternoons Godoy does the deliveries himself. Two weeks after the scheme’s launch he heads out, on an electric trike with a large white metal box across its rear axle, filled with the day’s first consignment from a local organic vegetable box scheme.

Continue reading...

Australian Museum teams up with IBM to monitor the country’s native frog population by having their calls recorded

The Australian Museum has teamed up with IBM to count the country’s native frog population via a world-first app that records their calls and sends them to experts for identification.

App FrogID will give the public the chance to carry out Australia’s first such national count, which begins on Friday and is intended to support researchers’ efforts to save endangered native species. Australia has 240 named native species of frog, but the museum wants to identify what it believes are dozens more still ribbiting under the radar.

Continue reading...

BHP has distanced itself from moves to strip environment groups of their tax deductibility status. Why does the Big Australian see value in defending them? Samantha Hepburn, Director of the Centre for Energy and Natural Resources Law, Deakin Law School, Deakin University Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

ESB chair Kerry Schott says it will be up to the states to act if they want higher emissions targets.

Schott says NEG modelling assumes "low end" of wind and solar costs, defying recent evidence. But ESB did admit there is much work to do on policy, dispatchability had yet to be defined, new coal unlikely to get a look in, and states free to pursue own targets.