Around The Web

Erik Solheim resigns after audit found travel irregularities and internal rule breaking, leading nations to drop funding

The UN’s environment chief Erik Solheim has resigned following severe criticism over his globetrotting travels and internal rule-breaking which led some nations to withhold their funding.

The Guardian understands Solheim was asked to resign by the UN secretary general António Guterres. Sources at the UN Environment Programme (Unep) said that countries unhappy with Solheim’s conduct were holding back tens of millions of dollars, threatening an imminent financial crisis at the body.

Continue reading...

When anti-whaling activists arrived in Albany, they planned to convince the town that their future was in watching whales, not killing them. Forty years on, they remember the moment commercial whaling ended in Australia

The message came over the radio and was relayed into the engine room of the Cheynes IV whale chaser, where engineer Bob Reeby was at work.

“That was it: ‘Home speed, we’re going home’. That was the end of an era. It was a pretty sad moment,” Reeby recalls.

Continue reading...

A dead whale that washed ashore in eastern Indonesia had a large lump of collected plastic waste in its stomach, including flip-flops and 115 drinking cups, a park official has said, causing concern among environmentalists and government officials in one of the world’s largest plastic-polluting countries

• Indonesia: dead whale had 1,000 pieces of plastic in stomach

Continue reading...

After a photo appeared online depicting a giant rat, several experts offer their view on how it came to be so large

A rat-catcher has caught a giant rat. A photograph of the rodent, stretched out from nose to tail, beside a tape measure shows that it ran to 53cm (21in). Or it did before it ran into the rat-catcher’s manchester terrier.

“There’s a definite increase in rat numbers and a definite increase in size,” says Terry Walker, who caught and measured the creature in Bournemouth, Dorset. (He happened to have a tape measure on him for repairs, not to measure rats.)

Continue reading...

Analysis finds toxic air trims lifespans by 1.8 years, making it main threat to human health

Air pollution cuts the average lifespan of people around the globe by almost two years, analysis shows, making it the single greatest threat to human health.

The research looked at the particulate pollution produced by the burning of fossil fuels by vehicles and industry. It found that in many parts of the worst-affected nations – India and China – lifespans were being shortened by six years.

Continue reading...

The dead sperm whale, which washed ashore in Indonesia, had ingested nearly 6kg of plastic waste.

The Guangdong carbon exchange on Tuesday announced another small auction of offsets eligible for use in the provincial emissions trading scheme, with the minimum bid price set at only around half the clearing price of last week’s sale.

Sperm whale washed up in Sulawesi had flip-flops, bottles, bags and 115 drinking cups in its stomach

A dead whale that washed ashore in eastern Indonesia had a large lump of plastic waste in its stomach, including flip-flops and 115 drinking cups, a park official has said, causing concern among environmentalists and government officials in one of the world’s largest plastic polluting countries.

Related: 'Sad surprise': Amazon fish contaminated by plastic particles

Continue reading...

The entrepreneur would not reveal why he had renamed the craft, which has still not yet been built.

There is debate around how much Albert Einstein's first wife, Mileva, contributed to his discoveries.

The $21.4 million Australian Heritage Grants program will run over four years and is aimed at strengthening the recognition, management, conservation and public engagement on Australia’s National Heritage List places.

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

Large Canadian emitters to be regulated by the federal government’s output-based pricing standard (OBPS) from 2019 will face a compliance unit deficit of nearly 12 million tonnes during the market’s inaugural year, according to a new report released Monday.

Wind and solar now beat coal in China and India, and nearly all major economies, while solar and batteries beat new coal and gas plants in Australia, according to BloombergNEF.

The post Unsubsidised wind and solar now cheapest form of bulk energy appeared first on RenewEconomy.

At an international summit in Egypt this month, nations will hopefully make progress towards recognising the economic value of wildlife and other environmental assets. Michael Vardon, Associate Professor at the Fenner School, Australian National University Carl Obst, Honorary Research Fellow, Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute, University of Melbourne David Lindenmayer, Professor, The Fenner School of Environment and Society, Australian National University Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

Governments are not expected to offer much clarity on how the CDM will transition into the post-2020 Paris Agreement era as year-end UN talks in Katowice get bogged down in other issues, observers say.

The Oregon Clean Fuels Program (OCFP) in Q2 saw more deficits than credits generated for the first time in the regulation’s history, data showed, while a state agency approved a minor amendment package to expand eligible credit types.

Origin Energy will broaden demand management offering after SA trials deliver "significant savings" on both electricity costs and emissions for C&I customers.

The post Origin to take demand management trial national, after “significant” success in SA appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Corporate contracts are now one of the major drivers for large scale wind and solar projects, with Victoria and manufacturing emerging as the hot-spots.

The post Corporate renewable energy contracts are a new force for Australia wind and solar appeared first on RenewEconomy.

An overwhelming majority of Australian business and industry think the government should strengthen its climate ambitions and develop a suite of market-based policies to meet them, a survey has found.