Environment | The Guardian
29 Νοεμβρίου 2023
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Former world leaders seek $25bn levy on oil states’ revenues to pay for climate damage
28 Νοεμβρίου 2023
Gordon Brown leads those signing letter to Cop28 and G20 presidents calling for levy to help fill ‘loss and damage’ fund
The bumper revenues of oil-producing states should be subject to a $25bn levy to help pay for the impact of climate disasters on the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people, a group of former world leaders and leading economists has said.
Seventy international figures led by the former UK prime minister Gordon Brown signed a letter calling for the measure before a crucial UN climate summit, Cop28, that begins in Dubai on Thursday. The signatories include 25 former prime ministers or presidents.
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Guardian environment pledge 2023
28 Νοεμβρίου 2023
Six things the Guardian is doing to confront the emergency facing our climate and the natural world
- Why the Guardian’s climate and nature journalism is needed now more than ever
- What impact does the Guardian have on the natural world?
- Around the world, around the clock: how we report on a world on fire
- Support urgent, independent climate journalism today
Four years ago, we took a stand. Of all the crises facing the world, the most alarming is climate breakdown. We asked ourselves: what can the Guardian do? The answer: to report relentlessly on this emergency each day – its causes, consequences and solutions. To keep pressure on governments and businesses to act now, to make changes for the better, to make good on their promises. And to look at our own organisation to ensure we are practising what we preach.
Now, we are updating our readers and supporters on the progress we have made on six vital promises – including, this year, a stronger commitment to the natural world.
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First transatlantic flight using 100% sustainable jet fuel takes off
28 Νοεμβρίου 2023
Virgin Atlantic flight, partly funded by UK government, hailed by ministers but criticised by campaigners
The first transatlantic flight by a commercial airliner fully powered by “sustainable” jet fuel has taken off from London Heathrow.
Tuesday’s Virgin Atlantic flight, partly funded by the UK government, has been hailed by the aviation industry and ministers as a demonstration of the potential to significantly cut net carbon emissions from flying, although scientists and environmental groups are extremely sceptical.
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The sex lives of animals: three hours of foreplay – and mass orgies on the move
28 Νοεμβρίου 2023
New research has revealed the extraordinary mating habits of serotine bats. They are far from the only creatures to take an unexpected approach to intercourse
On a dark November afternoon at Southampton’s City Farm, the animals are going about their business. They are all rescues. Penny the pig, a clutch of former battery farm chickens, three pygmy goats and Salvatore the cane snake, so orange and shiny he looks as though he is glowing from within as he twines around my arm in loving, even sensual embrace.
All little miracles in their own right. But none so strange as the dull-looking brown shells in the glass tank in the corner. “Who’s that in there?” I ask Hannah, in whose charge they lie. “They’re African land snails”, she tells me. “They’ve just laid their eggs. They were both females, but being hermaphrodites, one changed sex. It was quite a surprise.”
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Housebuilders in England may be made to look after trees they plant
28 Νοεμβρίου 2023
Minister says aftercare must be included in targets, after concerns from woodland experts that many trees are dying
Housebuilders who “just shove trees in the ground” to meet planting targets will be made to ensure they survive by watering them properly, as part of plans being considered by ministers.
Under the government’s legally binding environment improvement plan targets, which replace EU nature rules, the aim is to increase England’s woodland cover from 10% to 16.5% by 2050. The government has therefore set tree planting targets and asked private businesses to contribute in return for funding or as part of a biodiversity net gain plan.
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UN human rights experts express alarm over PFAS pollution in North Carolina
28 Νοεμβρίου 2023
Evidence of Chemours-operated plant contaminating region is ‘alleged human rights violations’, say experts appointed by council
A new investigation by human rights experts appointed by the United Nations has expressed alarm at evidence of pollution from a North Carolina PFAS manufacturing plant, describing it as “alleged human rights violations and abuses against residents”.
The ongoing PFAS crisis in North Carolina has been linked to a Fayetteville Works plant operated by Chemours, a chemical giant that was spun off from DuPont in 2015.
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‘Forever chemicals’ found in drinking water sources across England
28 Νοεμβρίου 2023
Exclusive: Experts ‘alarmed’ after potentially toxic chemicals detected in sources at 17 of England’s 18 water firms
Potentially toxic “forever chemicals” have been detected in the drinking water sources at 17 of 18 England’s water companies, with 11,853 samples testing positive, something experts say they are “extremely alarmed” by.
Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) – a group of 10,000 or so human-made chemicals widely used in industrial processes, firefighting foams and consumer products – were found in samples of raw and treated water tested by water companies last year, according to the Drinking Water Inspectorate (DWI), the Guardian and Watershed Investigations has found.
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Levels of toxic PCB chemicals found at 30 times ‘safe’ limits in stranded whales
28 Νοεμβρίου 2023
Studies of cetaceans stranded in UK waters show high levels of toxins 20 years since global ban of most PCBs, say scientists
Nearly half of the whales and dolphins found in UK waters over the past five years contained harmful concentrations of toxic chemicals banned decades ago, an investigation has found.
Among orcas stranded in the UK, levels of PCBs, a group of highly dangerous and persistent chemicals that do not degrade easily, were 30 times the concentration at which the animals would begin to suffer health impacts, researchers said.
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Country diary: A tale of three churches | Mary Montague
28 Νοεμβρίου 2023
Trawbreaga Bay, County Donegal: Overlooking the windblown coastline, their locations are not a coincidence
In the saltmarsh fringing where the Ballyboe River dissolves into Trawbreaga Bay, a little egret wears its plumage like a windblown stole. Our car swoops across the 10 arches of Malin bridge and we park along the village green. Malin is almost as far north as you can get on the island of Ireland. It was a “planned settlement” that emerged from the Ulster plantation, a colonial project that “planted” the region with people from England and Scotland during the 17th century. Along the base of the green’s triangle are the tree-lined grounds of the local Church of Ireland (Anglican communion). The modest church building is the foundation on which the green, and thus the village, stand. Jackdaws spill from the bell tower, which is oriented not, as you might expect, towards the village but rather towards Malin Hall, the former landowners’ family home.
Driving north-west, the estuary appears trapped between low‑slung hills and a ridge of high dunes. On a narrow lip of land, almost within the tide’s grasp, is the splash of whitewash that is Malin Presbyterian church. Unwelcome in the village because of the 17th-century penal laws that suppressed Protestant dissenter and Catholic congregations, the original meeting house was reputedly built on shifting sands below the high water mark. Graceful as the hull of an upturned cutter and gleaming like the inside of a razorshell, this church both defies and answers to its raw location. We get out of the car to a chorus of wildfowl: the drib-drib of brent geese, the piping of oystercatchers, the shrills of wigeons.
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Does the way we talk about the climate crisis numb people with fear, rather than energising them? | Roger Harrabin
27 Νοεμβρίου 2023
Phrases such as ‘green economy’ turn voters off, it seems – and Labour has already reframed its language
- Roger Harrabin is a former BBC climate correspondent
As Cop28 approaches, the Swiss solar aviator and environmentalist Bertrand Piccard says he will be given a platform at the conference to argue that we need to rethink the words we use to discuss climate change. He says many climate termscan numb people with fear instead of inspiring them into action, and proposes new language that will reframe our situation as an opportunity, rather than a crisis.
Take the key phrase “green economy”: Piccard says this motivates environmentalists but repels those who discern an assault on their lifestyle or a rise in their bills. Why not, he says, rechristen it the “clean economy”, because no one likes “dirty”. Likewise “clean energy” instead of “green energy”. He has come up with an entire list of terms in common use that he believes need a rebrand.
Roger Harrabin is a fellow at St Catharine’s College, Cambridge and a former BBC correspondent
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