Environment news

• How fossil fuel burning nearly wiped out life on Earth – 250m years ago

  27-05-2015 15:05 via theguardian.com
  
  New evidence shows that catastrophic climate change probably destroyed 96% of species at the end of the Permian period. It could happen againDo you want to know the real reason for the advances by Islamic State in Iraq and Syria? Changing lightbulbs in America. This is the explanation given by John McCain, Republican chair of the Senate armed services committee. At the weekend he blamed Barack Obama’s inability to magic away Isis on the president’s belief that climate change is “the bigges
  
  Read more

• Will Labour’s 2030 green energy goal cost more than 2035? They should come clean | Nils Pratley

  27-11-2024 06:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Ed Miliband argues the UK should race towards becoming a ‘clean energy superpower’, but costs to the consumer shouldn’t be ignoredThe government’s plan to decarbonise the UK’s electricity system by 2030 is a vast undertaking. Energy companies will throw £40bn-plus annually at the effort, backed by financing that ultimately affects consumers’ bills. So it is extraordinary that no official body seems able to answer this question: will it cost more to compl
  
  Read more

• The Guardian view on cruise ships: a licence to pollute | Editorial

  26-11-2024 19:46 via theguardian.com
  
  The environmental harm caused by this shapeshifting, underregulated industry must be tackledLocal pushback against cruise ships in the world’s top tourist destinations is nothing new. More than three years ago, these vast vessels were barred from Venice’s lagoon on grounds of the risk they posed to the city’s historic buildings. This summer, cruise ships in Amsterdam and Barcelona were targeted by protesters, on grounds of chemical pollution but also as part of a wider movement
  
  Read more

• More than 500 properties in England and Wales were hit by Storm Bert floods

  26-11-2024 19:30 via theguardian.com
  Ministers reveal extent of damage as Met Office issues latest severe weather warning for parts of southern England More than 500 homes and businesses were flooded across Wales and England during Storm Bert, it has emerged, as forecasters issued another severe weather warning for rain in parts of southern Britain.In Wales, the first minister, Eluned Morgan, said 400 homes had been damaged as well as businesses and infrastructure, and reviews were being done to find out why some householders appea
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• Storm Bert flooded 500 properties in England and Wales

  26-11-2024 17:36 via theguardian.com
  
  Welsh first minister to ask UK government for more money to make coal tips safe after Cwmtillery landslipMore than 500 homes and businesses were flooded across Wales and England during Storm Bert, it has emerged, as forecasters issued another severe weather warning for rain in parts of southern Britain.In Wales, the first minister, Eluned Morgan, said 400 homes had been damaged as well as businesses and infrastructure, and reviews were being done to find out why some householders appeared not to
  
  Read more

• Environmental grants promised to farmers in England frozen

  26-11-2024 17:07 via theguardian.com
  Scheme to fund activities such as hedge-planting paused owing to budget constraints, sources sayGrants promised to farmers in England for planting hedges and cleaning up waterways have been frozen by the government.The capital grants scheme, which was opened by the government to allow farmers to invest in infrastructure such as slurry storage so animal excrement does not go into rivers, has been abruptly paused. Farmers have said this will make it difficult for them to run their businesses in an
  
  Read more

• Water companies in England ‘using loopholes’ to avoid paying for outages

  26-11-2024 16:28 via theguardian.com
  
  Ofwat CEO says rules must be changed so that customers left without water get compensation automaticallyWater companies in England are using loopholes in order to not pay people who are left for days without running water, the CEO of the regulator has said.Tens of thousands of homes across the country have been left without water for days this year as ageing pipes burst. Continue reading...
  
  Read more

• In Wales, we’re one more flood away from another disaster like Aberfan | Aaron Thierry

  26-11-2024 13:00 via theguardian.com
  
  It is only a matter of time before a mountainside is brought down. We need climate adaptation help – and we need it nowAaron Thierry is an Earth-system scientist and environmental campaignerIt’s “raining old ladies and sticks” is the Welsh equivalent of cats and dogs, and boy did those old ladies mean business when Storm Bert poured out nearly a month’s worth of rain on the Bannau Brycheiniog (Brecon Beacons) over Saturday night. By Sunday, the deluge was surging in
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• Record number of English bathing sites classified as having poor water quality

  26-11-2024 12:48 via theguardian.com
  
  River water quality distinctly worse than that of coastal bathing sites, results from tests for harmful bacteria foundWater quality has been designated as poor in a record number of bathing areas this year after 16 rivers were included in summer testing for harmful bacteria, figures reveal.The push to clean up England’s rivers has led to an increase in demand for bathing water status at river locations across the country. Rivers suffer from water company sewage pollution and agricultural p
  
  Read more

• How the battle of Claremont Road changed the world: ‘The whole of alternative London turned up’

  26-11-2024 11:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Thirty years ago, more than 500 activists united to save a street – and their actions marked a major turning-point in the environmental movementWalking through Leyton, in east London, you could easily miss Claremont Road. It is hardly a road at all, but a stubby little side street between terrace houses that ends abruptly in a brick wall. But when it comes to the history of direct action, this could be one of the most significant sites in England. Thirty years ago, in November 1994, the sc
  
  Read more

• Selfies and surf simulators: the young cruisers driving boom in sea holidays

  26-11-2024 08:00 via theguardian.com
  A new generation is taking to the ocean in growing numbers – and fears over the environmental impact of cruise ships appear not to be denting their popularityRead more in this seriesThis summer was the first time 31-year-old Daisie Morrison had been on a cruise when she set sail on a two-week holiday with two friends, also in their early 30s.“One of my friends suggested it,” she says. “She had seen different influencers on Instagram going on cruises. You go to so many pla
  
  Read more

• How late $300bn deal left a sense of dissatisfaction and betrayal at Cop29

  26-11-2024 07:00 via theguardian.com
  
  While an agreement on climate finance was eventually reached in Baku, many poorer countries were outragedThe Lamborghini showroom and a Tiffany branch sit at either end of Baku’s long boulevards beside the Caspian Sea. Adorned with grand 19th-century mansions, all plaster nymphs and columned facades, that were built by the first oil millionaires, they are a testament to the enduring power of fossil fuels. Oil has been very good to Azerbaijan.It flows out of the ground here, and gas has see
  
  Read more

• Backroom deals and betrayal: how Cop29’s late $300bn deal left nobody happy

  26-11-2024 07:00 via theguardian.com
  While an agreement on climate finance was eventually reached in Baku, many poorer countries were outragedThe Lamborghini showroom and a Tiffany branch sit at either end of Baku’s long boulevards beside the Caspian Sea. Adorned with grand 19th-century mansions, all plaster nymphs and columned facades, that were built by the first oil millionaires, they are a testament to the enduring power of fossil fuels. Oil has been very good to Azerbaijan.It flows out of the ground here, and gas has see
  
  Read more

• Country diary: A gothic masterpiece reaching out of the ground | Jan Miller

  26-11-2024 06:30 via theguardian.com
  
  Halkyn Mountain, Flintshire, north Wales: This area of ancient, undisturbed land is rich with fungi. Star of the show is the Cordyceps, scourge of nearby ghost mothsAlthough this autumn has been very mild, the air is still scented by the rotting breakdown of the previous season’s abundant growth. That means mushrooms, those marvellous and mysterious things. The US poet Marvin Bell wrote: “Each mushroom was a button, each a flowering, some glow in the dark … The dead man has se
  
  Read more

• ‘Travesty of justice’: Cop29’s controversial deal – podcast

  25-11-2024 20:03 via theguardian.com
  
  Madeleine Finlay hears from the Guardian’s environment editor, Damian Carrington, about the controversial climate finance deal that brought Cop29 negotiations to a close in the early hours on Sunday morning in Baku, Azerbaijan. Developing countries asked rich countries to provide them with $1.3tn a year to help them decarbonise their economies and cope with the effects of the climate crisis. But the final deal set a pledge of just $300bn annually, with $1.3tn only a target. Damian tells Ma
  
  Read more

• Revealed: how a San Francisco navy lab became a hub for human radiation experiments

  25-11-2024 20:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Operations at a cold war lab exposed at least 1,073 people to radiation. Risks to the nearby communities persistExposed: The Human Radiation Experiments at Hunters Point is a special report by the San Francisco Public Press, an independent non-profit news organization focused on accountability, equity and the environment. In September 1956, Cpl Eldridge Jones found himself atop a sunbaked roof at an old army camp about an hour outside San Francisco, shoveling radioactive dirt. Continue reading..
  
  Read more

• Forecasters and flood defences under scrutiny after UK’s Storm Bert ordeal

  25-11-2024 19:35 via theguardian.com
  
  Hundreds of properties flooded and Welsh town hit by landslip as major incident declared in NorthamptonshireForecasters, environment officials and politicians have been strongly criticised over the warnings issued before Storm Bert and the fitness of flood defences to cope with increasingly common extreme weather.A huge clear-up is under way across swathes of Wales and England, with hundreds of properties flooded and a former Welsh mining town hit by a landslip from a coal tip, leaving buildings
  
  Read more

• ‘No lessons have been learned’: as floods recede, anger rises in south Wales valleys

  25-11-2024 19:05 via theguardian.com
  
  In the towns devastated by Storm Bert, residents question whether enough was done to warn of flood riskAfter the anguish, came the anger. As flood waters subsided across the south Wales valleys and devastated residents and business owners surveyed the damage done by Storm Bert, questions were being asked about whether warnings were adequate.Many of the overwhelmed towns and villages experienced similar devastation in 2020 when Storm Dennis swept through – yet those interviewed by the Guard
  
  Read more

• Here’s what I learned at Cop29. Rows aside, an unstoppable transition to clean energy is happening | Ed Miliband

  25-11-2024 17:31 via theguardian.com
  
  Britain wanted much better outcomes on many issues, but seeing the ambition at the conference gives me hope for the futureThe climate crisis is all around us. And the world is not moving nearly fast enough. In that context, the Cop process for climate negotiations feels frustratingly slow. Yet it is the best mechanism for multilateral action we have, so we have to use it to do everything we can to speed up action.The UK went to Cop29 determined to play its part in a successful negotiation becaus
  
  Read more

• I'm glad we got a deal at Cop29 – but western nations stood in the way of a much better one | Mukhtar Babayev

  25-11-2024 15:00 via theguardian.com
  
  My negotiating team tried in vain to push up support for the global south. Lessons must be learned before the next summit in BrazilMukhtar Babayev is president of the Cop29 UN climate change conferenceChina was willing to offer more in climate finance, says Cop29 presidentNine years after the Paris agreement, and after 11 months of multilateral diplomacy and two weeks of the most intense negotiations at Cop29 in Baku, we have a deal. Under the terms of the Baku breakthrough, the world’s in
  
  Read more

• ‘I feel guilty and angry’: the captain turned campaigner trying to keep cruise ships at bay

  25-11-2024 13:00 via theguardian.com
  After spending most of his life on commercial vessels, Guillaume Picard is now fighting to keep these vast liners out of the French port of MarseilleFew people know the sea better than Guillaume Picard. He grew up on a boat moored in the port of Hyères in southern France after his parents left 1960s Paris. His first job was on a sailing boat. Then he spent 30 years in the merchant navy before becoming a commercial captain, ferrying tourists and containers across the Mediterranean for more
  
  Read more

• Drugs, hormones and excrement: the polluting pig mega-farms supplying pork to the world

  25-11-2024 12:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Mexico is a leading international pork producer, but Yucatán residents say the waste oozing from hundreds of enormous hog farms is destroying the environmentThe stink of excrement was the first thing the residents of Sitilpech noticed when the farm opened in 2017. It hung over the colourful one-storey homes and kitchen gardens in the Maya town in Yucatán, and has never left. Next, the trees stopped bearing fruit, their leaves instead covered with black spots. Then, the water from t
  
  Read more

• Multilateralism faces a toxic brew of debt, climate crisis and war. It’s time for a reboot | Mo Ibrahim

  25-11-2024 08:00 via theguardian.com
  
  The stakes are high for donors at next month’s IDA summit in Seoul, but not investing in development means more instability globallyMultilateralism is under attack. A toxic brew of multiplying conflicts, worsening climate impact, new pandemics and spiralling debt has brought the system to its knees, appearing almost incapable of properly addressing these converging crises. Adding the unknowns of a Trump administration into the mix will do little to allay concerns.My own critiques of the cu
  
  Read more

• Foreign firms taking billions of litres from UK aquifers to make bottled water

  25-11-2024 07:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Coca-Cola extracts largest amount of freshwater of any drinks company in England, FoI request finds‘It’s not drought - it’s looting’: the Spanish villages where people are forced to buy back their own drinking waterForeign multinational companies are extracting billions of litres of water from British aquifers to sell as bottled water, the Guardian can reveal.Coca-Cola extracts the largest amount of freshwater of any drinks company in England, the data obtained through fr
  
  Read more

• Polluted rivers, uprooted farmland and lost taxes: Ghana counts cost of illegal gold mining boom

  25-11-2024 06:00 via theguardian.com
  Estimated $2bn lost in missed taxes from environmentally destructive practice some blame on political corruptionFelicity Nelson remembers her 17-day detention last September vividly. The 34-year-old Ghanaian activist was one of 53 people arrested at a road junction in Accra after demonstrating alongside hundreds of other youths against illegal mining.In detention, the group found a 54th person in their midst who had not been at the protest but was apprehended after visiting Oliver Barker-Vormawo
  
  Read more

• Carnival cruise line emitted more CO2 in 2023 than Scotland’s biggest city – report

  25-11-2024 06:00 via theguardian.com
  
  World’s largest cruise line named Europe’s most climate-polluting, despite investing millions in cleaner technologiesThe world’s largest cruise line company is responsible for producing more carbon dioxide in Europe than the city of Glasgow, a report has found.Analysis by the Transport and Environment (T&E) campaign group, provided to the Guardian, found Carnival to be the most climate-polluting cruise company sailing in Europe in 2023. Continue reading...
  
  Read more

• As Cop29 wraps up and the climate crisis gathers pace, Australia’s dash for gas is confounding | Bill Hare

  25-11-2024 01:27 via theguardian.com
  
  Nearly all observers believe Chris Bowen is strongly committed to action. Most agree that can’t be said for his partyCop29 in Baku has concluded but its outcome is disappointing – in many dimensions. Its decisions on finance – agreeing that the developed world would provide US$300bn a year by 2035 – come nowhere close to what’s needed. Ultimately, it may even be poisonous because of its lack of ambition and muddled scope – it does not even cover loss and damag
  
  Read more

• At least five dead amid ‘devastating’ flooding as Storm Bert batters UK

  25-11-2024 00:11 via theguardian.com
  
  Major incident declared in Wales and England and Scotland hit by power cuts due to rain, floods and windSeveral people have been killed as Storm Bert battered the UK and a major incident has been declared in south Wales.At least five deaths have been reported in England and Wales since the storm hit amid strong winds and flooding brought by heavy rain and thawing snow. Continue reading...
  
  Read more

• Several people killed amid ‘unprecedented’ flooding as Storm Bert batters Britain

  24-11-2024 20:20 via theguardian.com
  Rhondda Cynon Taf declares emergency as at least four deaths reported across England and WalesSeveral people have been killed as Storm Bert battered the UK, with a major incident declared in south Wales.At least four deaths have been reported in England and Wales since the storm hit, with thousands of homes left without power. Continue reading...
  
  Read more

• The Guardian view on Cop29: poor-world discontent over a failure of rich countries to deliver | Editorial

  24-11-2024 18:42 via theguardian.com
  
  A rushed final text in Baku strains trust between nations, as inadequate climate finance commitments leave vulnerable countries calling for justiceThe hasty imposition of a deal at the UN climate conference, Cop29, in Azerbaijan, over the objections of poorer nations has fractured global trust and undermined recent progress. This was supposed to be the “finance Cop” when two dozen industrialised countries – including the US, Europe and Canada – promised to pay developing
  
  Read more

Follow @UK_Environment on Twitter!