The Guardian
Should one use a private jet to campaign over climate crisis?
Prince Harry has faced flak for his carbon footprint but others face similar dilemma
Their style could hardly be more different, though their aims are the same: as Greta Thunberg sailed into New York last week on a low-carbon high-tech yacht to highlight the climate crisis, Prince Harry faced flak for taking private jets for short-hop breaks while campaigning against global heating. But the contrast between the two reflects broader dilemmas in the environmental movement.
On Tuesday, the Duke of Sussex invited further ridicule as he flew into Amsterdam – a direct Eurostar train from London takes three hours and 41 minutes – to unveil a new initiative for the tourism industry, Travalyst, aiming to reduce the impact of holidaymakers – while encouraging travel.
Continue reading...Swooping magpie shot by Sydney council after 'particularly aggressive' attacks
Hills Shire council said it had received 40 complaints over three years about the magpie, and several people had been injured
A local council in Sydney’s north west has said a decision to shoot dead a “particularly aggressive magpie” that had allegedly swooped and injured people for years was “not taken lightly”.
The Hills Shire council had received 40 complaints over the past three years, with confirmed injuries, including people sent to hospital as a result of being swooped by the magpie on Old Windsor Road in Bella Vista.
Continue reading...Floods wreaking havoc on Great Lakes region fueled by climate crisis
Depths of lakes that hold about 90% of US’s freshwater spiking to record levels, from 14in to nearly 3ft above long-term averages
This summer, as rain relentlessly poured down on the Great Lakes region, Detroit declared a rare state of emergency. The swollen Detroit River had spilled into the low-lying Jefferson Chalmers neighborhood – an event not seen near this scale since 1986.
Volunteers sandbagged the area as the city’s overwhelmed sewer system spilled raw sewage into the river, which connects Lake Huron and Lake Erie. Across the channel from Jefferson Chalmers, water damaged the historic boathouse on Belle Isle, an iconic 982-acre island park that remains partly shut down because of flooding.
Continue reading...'They eat everything in their path': Spain's shellfish farmers turn on starfish | Stephen Burgen
Galicia has agreed to a cull of the creatures, which are turning up in unusually large numbers and feasting on the region’s key export
Galicia, in north-west Spain, has declared war on an apparently inoffensive creature that is putting livelihoods under threat.
The region’s shellfish farmers say that an unusually large population of starfish has begun devouring their crop of mussels, cockles and clams. They recently obtained permission from the regional government to cull the starfish, and divers have been hauling up hundreds of kilos a day.
Continue reading...'It's scary': wildlife selfies harming animals, experts warn
Concern in New Zealand that trend of taking photographs with penguins and other creatures is having impact on feeding, breeding and birth rates
At the International Penguin Conference in New Zealand, the experts were worried. Among sobering discussions about the perils of the climate crisis and habitat loss, the unlikely issue of wildlife selfies photobombed the agenda, with increasing concern that the celebrity-fuelled search for that perfect shot is affecting animal behaviour.
Professor Philip Seddon, the director of Otago University’s wildlife management programme, said: ‘We’re losing respect for wildlife, we don’t understand the wild at all.”
Continue reading...Manchester Extinction Rebellion activists glue themselves to banks
Barclays and HSBC targeted on final day of protests against fossil fuel investments
Environmental protesters have glued themselves to banks in Manchester to protest against fossil fuel investments on the final day of Extinction Rebellion’s action in the city.
Nine activists stuck themselves to the pavement outside Barclays in Piccadilly Square, with a further two following suit at HSBC in St Ann’s Square on Monday.
Continue reading...Global heating: geese shift migration stop-off northwards
Barnacle geese have begun forsaking traditional feeding stop south of Arctic circle, study finds
Barnacle geese are shifting their migratory patterns northward in response to global heating, new research has found, in a stark indication of how wildlife is being affected by the changes in climate.
In their spring journey from the UK to their breeding grounds on Svalbard, one population of the geese has been forsaking a traditional feeding stop in Norway’s Helgeland, south of the Arctic circle, in favour of a stop further north in Vesterålen, far into the Arctic circle.
Continue reading...River Thames home to 138 baby seals, latest count finds
Scientists’ analysis reveals English river’s ecosystem is thriving
It has been a highway, a sewer and was declared biologically dead in the 1950s but the River Thames is now a nursery for 138 baby seals, according to the first comprehensive seal pup count.
Scientists from the Zoological Society of London analysed photographs taken from light aircraft to identify and count harbour seal pups, which rest on sandbanks and creeks in the Thames downstream from London during the summer, shortly after they are born.
Continue reading...Clever cockatoos learn to open Sydney wheelie bins and drink from bubblers
Sulphur-crested cockatoos’ ‘novel behaviour’ in Australia’s urban environments is being mapped by researchers
Sulphur-crested cockatoos that have learned to open wheelie bins and turn on taps are the focus of a group of researchers who have appealed to the public to help document the birds’ behaviour.
Ecologists from the University of Sydney and the Max Planck Institute of Ornithology have been observing the cockatoos across Sydney parks and gardens and are using an online survey to map the behaviours across the country.
Continue reading...Greta Thunberg responds to Asperger's critics: 'It's a superpower'
Teenage climate activist responds to criticism, saying ‘when haters go after your looks and differences ... you know you’re winning’
Greta Thunberg has spoken about her Asperger’s syndrome diagnosis after she was criticised over the condition, saying it makes her a “different”, but that she considers it a “superpower”.
Thunberg, the public face of the school climate strike movement said on Twitter that before she started her climate action campaign she had “no energy, no friends and I didn’t speak to anyone. I just sat alone at home, with an eating disorder.”
Continue reading...UK funding to tackle climate crisis 'must double', government warned
Charities write to Sajid Javid requesting increase of spending from £17bn to £42bn over next three years
Britain’s biggest environmental groups have warned the government that funding to tackle the climate emergency must be more than double next year to avoid an even greater cost from catastrophic ecological breakdown in the future.
Writing to the chancellor, Sajid Javid, as he prepares to announce on Wednesday his spending priorities for the year ahead, more than a dozen leading environment charities, including Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth as well as other leading organisations such as Oxfam and Christian Aid, said urgent action was required to raise spending.
Continue reading...AgForce backs calls for review of consensus science on Great Barrier Reef
Exclusive: top Queensland farmers’ group supports controversial scientist Peter Ridd’s questioning of climate science
Queensland’s most influential farm lobby group, AgForce, has backed calls for a review of consensus science on the Great Barrier Reef, as the state’s agricultural sector intensifies its campaign against proposed water quality regulations.
On Friday the release of two key reports painted an alarming picture of the state of the reef. The Queensland-led water quality report – which rated the water quality at inner reefs as “poor” – highlighted the impact of land management practices that contribute to the degradation of the reef due to sediment and nutrient run-off.
Continue reading...A chilling truth: our addiction to air conditioning must end | Letters
Kudos to Stephen Buranyi for drawing attention to the growth of air conditioning worldwide and the accompanying taste for cold in a time of global warming (Blowing cold and hot, The long read, 29 August). Having lived and worked in the American south, I can attest there are even more pernicious dimensions to this addiction to cold. Restaurants and bars are kept uncomfortably chilly, thus encouraging higher levels of consumption (heat dampens the desire to eat), fuelling not only profits but the obesity crisis.
Cold has become a mark of prestige: the fancier the establishment, be it office block or shopping mall, the colder it is likely to be. Anecdotally, moving between these absurd temperature extremes several times a day seems to increase the incidence of colds. When I requested that the AC in my workplace (a public university) be set to a warmer level, the response of the facilities staff was to provide a heater for my office. Here in New York, a hotel on my street keeps a roaring fire in the lobby – in August – while the ambient indoor temperature is freezing. All this amounts to what Richard Seymour has recently called “climate sadism” – a form of masochism outwardly and ostentatiously directed, consumptive and destructive madness. May we find ways not to get caught up in its drive.
Emanuela Bianchi
New York
Fracking will see the UK miss net‑zero emissions targets | Letters
Ian Duncan, the UK’s minister for climate change (Letters, 31 August), vaunts our achievements and “ambitions to become one of the cleanest and most innovative energy systems in the world”. He allows a generous 30 years before a “net-zero emissions economy is achieved”, when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has made it clear that real change must be evident in fewer than a dozen years.
How can he hope to realise his longer-term targets while pursuing fracking as a transitional fuel? Investment in the hugely expensive development of fracking denies proper support to cheaper renewables, and delaying the switch ties the operator and investor into the production of a fossil fuel until a return is achieved. That exposes communities to the harms already documented, and contributes – by combustion, extraction and transportation – to the climate change the government hopes to mitigate.
Continue reading...Fracking protesters 'priced out' of Cuadrilla legal challenge
Judge denies costs protection over injunction restricting protests at Lancashire site
An environmental group has been forced to withdraw its legal challenge to a wide-ranging injunction by the fracking firm Cuadrilla after being “priced out of court”.
Three fracking protesters are facing court action after the energy company obtained the injunction restricting protests at its shale gas exploration site in Lancashire.
Continue reading...‘To save our fish, we must first find ways to unblock UK’s rivers,’ say scientists
Swansea University scientists say the proliferation of weirs, dams and culverts is now creating a threat to wildlife
Near the mouth of the River Afan in Port Talbot, south Wales, a pair of seagulls were to be seen last week pecking in a leisurely way at a dead salmon lying on a gravel bank. It was an unusual sight. Salmon are rarely found in the Afan these days.
The scene may have been unexpected, but it nevertheless illustrates a growing problem, say researchers – one that already affects rivers across Europe and could pose even greater threats to habitats and wildlife in future. Increasing numbers of dams, weirs, sluices and other barriers built in rivers over the past 200 years are, they say, fragmenting waterways, isolating habitats and weakening wildlife populations.
Continue reading...How did the bat cross the road? By going to a safe red-light area
Bats in Worcester are to get their own red-light area. LED bulbs that emit a red glow will provide bats with a 60-metre-wide crossing area on the A4440, near to Worcester’s Warndon Woodlands nature reserve.
Worcestershire county council said research had shown that some species of bat are light shy and will not cross roads lit by white lights, which can stop them finding food and water. Standard street lights also attract insects that bats feed on, reducing the supply available in their feeding areas.
Continue reading...World's fastest shark added to list of vulnerable species to regulate trade
A record number of countries voted to restrict fishing of mako sharks in an effort to protect the endangered species
A record number of countries have voted to protect the world’s fastest shark from extinction in a move welcomed by conservationists as a “wake up call” for fishing nations who have ignored the endangered species’ decline.
In Geneva this week, governments voted under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) to regulate the international trade in both species of mako shark – long and short fin – in addition to 16 vulnerable species of sharks and rays.
Continue reading...Butterflywatch: where have the small tortoiseshells gone?
This summer has brought a bounty of butterflies to the buddleias, but not the small tortoiseshell, which is in precipitous decline
Every summer, I read despairing messages about the absence of butterflies on buddleias. These observations fit my own experience.
The buddleias from my Norfolk childhood in the 80s and 90s reliably contained a dozen nymphalids – brightly-coloured small tortoiseshells, peacocks and red admirals.
Continue reading...Greta Thunberg joins hundreds of teenagers in climate protest in New York - video
Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg was joined by hundreds of American teenagers protesting outside the UN headquarters in New York on Friday calling for adults to act on the crisis of global heating. Holding her trademark “skolstrejk för klimatet” (Swedish for “school strike for climate”) sign, Thunberg sat in the middle of the rally where young activists gave speeches calling for action on the climate crisis
Continue reading...