-
Lib Dem Tim Farron seeks law to protect fund as Treasury tries to take control of £11m
Fines from water companies that pollute rivers must be ringfenced by law to be spent on restoring water quality in rivers, MPs will urge.
The Treasury is trying to take control of £11m in fines from water companies, which was intended for small charities to restore rivers, in a move criticised by river restoration campaigners as “appalling”.
Continue reading...
-
Baby shark Yoko hatched in early January, flummoxing staff and experts at a US aquarium
Birds do it, bees do it. Even educated fleas do it, according to Cole Porter’s classic song on the universal nature of sex.
But a baby swell shark born in a Louisiana aquarium that houses only females has flummoxed marine experts and raised the possibility that the species may not require such earthly pleasures to produce offspring.
Continue reading...
-
The Hollywood actor was stopped mid-scene as a man and a woman climbed on stage at London's Theatre Royal Drury Lane. Hayley Walsh, 42, a lecturer from Nottingham, and Richard Weir, 60, a mechanical engineer from Tynemouth, set off a confetti cannon and held up a banner referring to the 1.5C global temperature rise as a 'shipwreck', a nod to the Shakespeare play that features a ship sinking at sea
Continue reading...
-
Welburn, North Yorkshire: I watch shadows playing out across the walls, tree trunks and scrambling roses finding their way inside
I’m a hibernator. The season doesn’t get me down so much as simply insist that I sleep, but this year I’ve done even more than usual, having succumbed to a festive double whammy of influenza and respiratory syncytial virus (aka thatcough,you know the one).
During convalescence, struggling to focus on reading or a screen, I found myself watching wall shadows for hours. In the bedroom, framed in the cross-hatches of our small-paned Georgian windows, I noticed strange, smouldering upright forms, which I eventually realised were the trunks of trees growing on the steep bank that rises opposite the house, their outlines fuzzied by a long focal length. At this time of year, the sun never makes it above them. Instead it scans them like a woody barcode, projecting daylong shadow plays which gradually traverse my walls, marking time. In the kitchen, the arboreal shadow-wraiths are joined by the more defined shades of ivy and scrambling roses growing just outside. And in my study they are illuminated by sudden flares of gold from gilded lettering on the spines of shelved books.
Continue reading...
-
Net increase of 80,000 deaths a year projected in hottest scenario, with milder winters failing to redress balance
Dangerous temperatures could kill 50% more people in Europe by the end of the century, a study has found, with the lives lost to stronger heat projected to outnumber those saved from milder cold.
The researchers estimated an extra 8,000 people would die each year as a result of “suboptimal temperatures” even under the most optimistic scenario for cutting planet-heating pollution. The hottest plausible scenario they considered showed a net increase of 80,000 temperature-related deaths a year.
Continue reading...
-
Marathon Petroleum said a massive fire at its Louisiana refinery caused ‘no offsite impacts’. Reporting by the Guardian and Forensic Architecture raised doubts about this claim
Oil giant Marathon Petroleum is fighting an expanded class-action lawsuit fueled by an investigation by the Guardian and Forensic Architecture, which examined a huge toxic blaze at the company’s sprawling refinery in south-east Louisiana in 2023.
Parts of the oil refinery, the third largest in America, caught fire for over three days in August 2023 after a large storage tank containing the toxic and flammable hydrocarbon naphtha leaked for more than 13 hours unbeknown to the predominantly Black low-income communities that surround the facility.
Continue reading...
-
Across the continent, millions of hectares of land are being used and run by local people coexisting with wildlife in spaces where both can thrive
- Photographs by Nicoló Lanfranchi
Africa’s first national park was created 100 years ago by the Belgian colonial state in the Congo, and since then hundreds more have been developed – but in many areas there is more wildlife in protected areas run by local people.
Tens of millions of hectares across the continent are home to community-run “conservancies”, managed by herders, farmers and hunter-gatherers, who coexist with herds of large animals such as elephants, giraffes and buffalo.
The Nashulai conservancy in southern Kenya. The country now has more than 230 community-run reserves covering 16% of the country. Conservancies have helped wildlife recover while benefiting local people
Continue reading...
-
Royal Botanic Gardens scientists are heading to the Victorian national park in search of plant survivors amid the charred landscape
The Grampians globe-pea, a critically endangered wiry shrub, had finished flowering and was fruiting when fires tore through its home in the Grampians national park, in western Victoria. The spiny plant with vibrant orange and yellow flowers is extremely rare and restricted to a handful of sites, including areas within the 76,000 hectares that burned over December and January.
Finding the globe-pea will be a priority when a plant rescue mission led by Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria heads to the Grampians to search for survivors and signs of life amid the charred landscape.
Continue reading...
-
‘It was striking that the White House memo included toilets and shower heads as a presidential priority,’ said one expert
From crusading against showers he feels don’t sufficiently wash his hair to reversing protections for a small fish he calls “worthless”, Donald Trump’s personal fixations have helped shape his first environmental priorities as US president.
While withdrawing the US from the Paris climate accords and declaring an “energy emergency” were among Trump’s most noteworthy executive orders on his first day in office, both were further down a list of priorities put out by the White House than measures to improve “consumer choice in vehicles, shower heads, toilets, washing machines, lightbulbs and dishwashers”.
Continue reading...
-
The TV wild man complains about silly game shows and steamed potatoes, munches toast and goes outdoors with his amazing dog
What’s first? I’ll take my dog out. I’m totally his servant. He doesn’t leave my side. If I sit in the woods, he’ll sit in front of me and watch in the same way. He’s amazing.
Sunday grub? Maybe a bit of toast. Nothing exciting. I like a Sunday lunch, but it’s a rare event. We might go out, but it’s getting harder to find somewhere that does a decent roast.
Continue reading...
