The Guardian
‘Mind-boggling’ palm that flowers and fruits underground thrills scientists
New species named Pinanga subterranea as Kew botanists admit they have no idea how its flowers are pollinated
A new-to-science palm species has been discovered in Borneo with the remarkable ability to flower and fruit underground. How the rare palm – named Pinanga subterranea – has survived is a mystery, as most plants have evolved to develop their flowers and fruit above ground to facilitate pollination and the dispersal of seeds.
“Pinanga subterranea is the only known species of palm to flower and fruit below ground,” said Dr Benedikt Kuhnhäuser, a future leader fellow at Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, who was part of the research team that collected specimens and ascertained that it was a new species. “Flowering and fruiting below ground is mind-boggling and seemingly paradoxical because they appear to prevent pollination and dispersal. We now know bearded pigs eat and disperse Pinanga subterranea’s fruits, but we’ve yet to find out how and by whom the flowers are pollinated.”
Continue reading...Gorillas, jaguars and other wildlife vulnerable to human activity even in nature reserves
Research finds tropical mammals suffer impact of deforestation even if they live in protected areas
Wildlife sanctuaries fail to fully protect tropical animals from harmful human activities, a major study has found.
Mammals including the jaguar, the mountain gorilla, and the Sunda pangolin were all found to be affected by human activities, even when they resided in the depths of a nature reserve.
Continue reading...Shipping emissions could be halved without damaging trade, research finds
Findings come as nations gather in London to discuss new carbon levy
Greenhouse gas emissions from shipping could be halved by 2030 without damaging trade, new research has found, as countries prepare to meet to discuss a potential new tax on carbon produced by ships.
Emissions from maritime transportation amount to about 3% of global greenhouse gas emissions, and there are few alternatives to the cheap, heavy and dirty diesel oil used by ships.
Continue reading...Curious humpback whale swims alongside kayaker off Bondi beach in Australia – video
A drone pilot captures footage of a humpback whale following a kayaker near Bondi beach. Up to 50,000 whales are expected to pass Australia’s east coast during the annual migration from Antarctica to the Great Barrier Reef. Humpback whales were removed from Australia's threatened species list last year after a significant increase in numbers, from just 1,500 at the height of the commercial whaling industry to an estimated 40,000
Young humpbacks ‘full of beans’ as whale-watching season takes off in Sydney
Humpbacks spotted having whale of a time at underwater ‘day spa’ off Gold Coast
‘Coastal squeeze’: the fight to save shoreline habitats from rising tides
Seawalls are causing intertidal habitats to vanish as ocean levels increase. But eco-entrepreneurs say artificial rockpools and crevices can save wildlife
The rain has just stopped falling when Nigel George walks down to the beach in Sandown Bay on the Isle of Wight. He crosses the coastal road and descends a concrete stairway, a sheen of sand covering its lowest steps. The place is quiet, with only a few walkers animating the shoreline.
He’s here to inspect a wooden groyne – a kind of jetty, designed to prevent erosion – which stretches out into the sea and towards France. The groyne has been fitted with a series of small, basin-like, rough concrete, structures. George peers inside one: a congregation of limpets, barnacles, seaweed, and a single sea snail peer back at him.
Continue reading...Misting fans and cooling canal swims: China’s north bakes in record heatwave – in pictures
Residents seek respite from the heat as temperatures above 40C (104F) have been recorded for a third consecutive day in Beijing for the first time
Continue reading...Farmers on frontline as Dutch divided by war on nitrogen pollution
Government’s buyout scheme is meeting fierce resistance from farmers in Netherlands
Veal farmer Wim Brouwer sits on his terrace, an “emergency” red flag flying outside and his laptop open on a page revealing he is one of the Netherlands’ peak polluters, due to the nitrogen excreted each year by his 1,360 calves.
His business sits in one of the most intensively farmed parts of Europe’s most intensively farmed country, a huge exporter with more than 110 million livestock, including cattle, chickens and pigs.
Continue reading...‘A symbol of what humans shouldn’t be doing’: the new world of octopus farming
Plans for the world’s first commercial octopus farm are well advanced – just as science discovers more about this curious, intelligent and affectionate animal. Can it be done ethically?
The sterile boardroom, much of it taken up by a lengthy white table, is at the heart of the sprawling building in northern Spain. The corporate chatter that fills this room these days, however, is dominated by the scene playing out one floor below, where about 50 adult male octopuses are in a tank the size of a budget hotel room.
A handful of the octopuses – the fifth generation to be born in this Spanish multinational’s concrete-and-glass office and research centre – skim through the shallow waters, some brushing up against each other while others tuck into the tank’s barren corners. A low-intensity light casts a pale glow as researchers lay the groundwork for one of the world’s most controversial endeavours: the first commercial octopus farm.
Continue reading...Labour must do no more backsliding on commitments to create a green economy | Andrew Rawnsley
They’ve talked the bold talk. Sir Keir Starmer regularly claims that a government led by him will transform the UK into “a clean energy superpower”. Rachel Reeves declares that she will be “Britain’s first green chancellor”. Ed Miliband, the shadow cabinet’s most ardent champion of the green industrial revolution, proclaims that Britain can be a winner in “the biggest transformation of the global economy in 300 years”.
Talking is a whole lot easier than doing. When the crunch comes, when a Labour cabinet faces the horribly tough choices that are going to confront them in power, will their fine words turn out to be little more than hot air?
Continue reading...We don’t have to be overwhelmed by climate anxiety. Feel the pain, then act | Susie Orbach
It doesn’t matter which week we choose. There is always a climate emergency; an emergency we can close our ears and eyes to. Two weeks ago, it was the blanketing of New York in a cloud of smoke from Canada. Last week, Beijing recorded the hottest June since records began. All over the world, sea levels rise. Drought or flooding ensues. And the loss of habitats and species. We can get frightened and find it hard to hold the knowledge of what is occurring.
As filmmaker Josh Appignanesi shows in his new film My Extinction, which will be released on 30 June, allowing himself to feel the real-time effects of climate change is uncomfortable. Appignanesi, who recycles yet makes car commercials, turns the camera on himself as his climate concerns start to make him feel disgruntled. He feels put out and inconvenienced. And he ends up getting far more involved in climate work than he’d ever thought possible.
Continue reading...Fast-growing BYD launches Dolphin EV, Australia’s cheapest electric car. Here’s how it compares
Latest vehicle from Build Your Dreams, which in less than a year has become our second-biggest electric vehicle seller, has a starting price of $38,890
Many Australians haven’t heard of BYD, the Chinese brand now selling the country’s cheapest new electric car.
BYD, or Build Your Dreams, is the biggest threat to Tesla globally and has garnered a cult-like following that’s translating to sales success locally.
Continue reading...It felt good to care about my community – before I was sent down a moral cul-de-sac | Rachel Cooke
In Sheffield, my home town, the council has at last apologised for misleading the public, the media and the courts during the dispute over its unfathomably stupid and vicious campaign to fell 17,500 of the city’s street trees, many of which it now accepts were perfectly healthy. This development is, of course, welcome, if long overdue. But it doesn’t really change anything. Who will ever be able to forget the chainsaws? Beloved limes and sycamores are gone. Most of us will be long dead before their replacements reach anything like maturity.
Thinking about this horrible, unnecessary business all over again, I’m struck by the default accusations of nimbyism on the council’s part, an attitude that persists even now. In its statement, it said that it had misrepresented those who protested against the destruction as “primarily interested only in their own streets”.
Continue reading...Caught short: lack of recycled toilet paper in UK ‘fuelling deforestation’
Less office waste material during Covid has led big lavatory roll makers to cut amount of recycled paper in tissues, according to consumer body
Hoarding during the Covid-19 pandemic underlined just how important loo roll is to the British public. But working from home had another unexpected effect: less waste paper from offices, which means less recycled material to make toilet roll.
New research by Ethical Consumer magazine shows that the three main toilet brands have cut the amount of recycled paper in their tissues. It said the use of virgin wood pulp was fuelling deforestation, although paper-industry advocates dispute this.
Continue reading...New windfarm could be used to power North Sea oilfield
Electricity generated on Shetland could be used to fuel the proposed Rosebank field, instead of homes
Electricity from a new onshore windfarm could be used to power the biggest undeveloped oilfield in the North Sea, campaigners are warning, ahead of an imminent decision over whether to approve the project.
The huge Rosebank oilfield is three times bigger than the controversial Cambo field that was put on hold more than a year ago. It has the potential to produce 500m barrels of oil and its final approval is expected to reach the energy secretary, Grant Shapps, in the next few weeks. It is expected to be approved after Rishi Sunak hinted last month that it would be “economically illiterate” not to invest in UK oil and gas because Britain will remain reliant on fossil fuels for “the next few decades”.
Continue reading...March on UK Home Office over plan to deport jailed Just Stop Oil activist
German national Marcus Decker in prison for climbing Dartford bridge faces automatic deportation, say campaigners
Hundreds of protesters were expected to march to the Home Office on Saturday demanding deportation proceedings be called off for an environmental activist imprisoned for scaling the Dartford Crossing.
Marcus Decker is serving one of the longest sentences ever passed for a non-violent protest in British history after a Just Stop Oil demonstration in October. He is a German citizen with leave to remain in the UK, but he faces automatic deportation after serving the two years and seven months sentence.
Continue reading...When it comes to rich countries taking the environment seriously, I say: vive la France | George Monbiot
Emmanuel Macron’s government is at least doing the bare minimum to avert the planetary crisis – and putting the UK to shame
While we remain transfixed by a handful of needy egotists in Westminster and the crises they manufacture, across the Channel a revolution is happening. It’s a quiet, sober, thoughtful revolution, but a revolution nonetheless. France is seeking to turn itself into an ecological civilisation.
Like every government, the French administration should be going further and faster to address the greatest predicament humankind has faced: the gathering collapse of Earth systems. But you can measure the seriousness of the government’s plan by its institutional commitment. France now has a ministry for ecological transition. By the end of next year, the nation’s 25,000 most senior civil servants will have been trained in the principles behind this transition. By the next presidential election, in 2027, every public sector worker will have had this training, tailored to their sector. Think about that: 5.6 million people will be taught about the biodiversity crisis, the climate crisis and the natural resources crisis – how these phenomena relate to the public services they supply and how public sector workers can use this knowledge to change the way they work.
Continue reading...El Niño: how the weather event is affecting global heating in 2023
Planet is being hit by double whammy of global heating and emerging El Niño
The planet is being hit with a double whammy of global heating in 2023. On top of the inexorable rise in global temperature caused by greenhouse gas emissions is an emerging El Niño. This sporadic event is the biggest natural influence on year-to-year weather and adds a further spurt of warmth to an already overheating world. The result is supercharged extreme weather, hitting lives and livelihoods.
The last major El Niño from 2014 to 2016 led to each of those years successively breaking the global temperature record and 2016 remains the hottest year ever recorded. However, El Niño has now begun and may already be driving new temperature records, with record heatwaves on land from Puerto Rico to China and record heatwaves in the seas around the UK.
Continue reading...South East Water blames working from home for hosepipe ban
Utility’s head says demand for drinking water has risen 20% since pandemic, outpacing supply
A water company has blamed more people working from home post-pandemic for a new hosepipe ban.
South East Water, which supplies more than 2m homes and businesses, will impose the first hosepipe ban of the summer on Monday, affecting households across Kent and Sussex.
Continue reading...Paris finance reforms could untie poor countries’ hands in climate crisis
Changes to the World Bank could unlock developing states access to loans and to the means of staving off disaster
The Netherlands has almost the same amount of solar generating capacity as the whole continent of Africa. That must be, in part, because the interest on a loan to set up a windfarm in Africa is about 17% more than one to do the same in Europe.
Many poor countries enjoy vast natural resources of wind and sun yet struggle to access renewable energy because of the crippling cost of capital imposed on them. Private sector companies perceive far greater risk in poor countries, penalising most heavily the countries in greatest need of investment.
Continue reading...The sudden warming of Britain’s seas will tear through ocean life like a wildfire | Philip Hoare
What happens when the chill of our seas turns to a soupy stew? Fragile ecosystems will be destroyed and food sources for wildlife will disappear
Last weekend, at the very easternmost edge of England, tens of thousands of people of all ages gathered at a beach festival in Lowestoft to celebrate the sea joyously. To dance to trance music and listen to Linton Kwesi Johnson recite his poetry, and to hear marine scientists explain to seven-year-olds exactly why the sea smells the way it does. It was an idyllic scene. From dusk to dawn and back again, everyone was drawn to the vast and glorious element that connects us to the rest of the world.
But then, amid the revelry, a solemn procession appeared. Two dozen festivalgoers carried a series of blown-up photographs into the sea. They were portraits by the artist Gideon Mendel of people, many of them from the global south, standing amid the floods that had overturned their lives. Suddenly, in the face of their fates, the sea seemed not so benign after all. It was a reminder that sea levels are rising around the world; and that here in the UK we face our own potential disaster – the drastic sudden warming of the sea off Britain and Ireland.
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