Environment news

• Top anti-Heathrow Tories will miss vote on third runway

  08-10-2016 21:11 via theguardian.com
  
  Theresa May set to support expansion and spare opponents including Boris Johnson and Justine Greening embarrassmentThe most high-profile cabinet critics of a third runway at Heathrow – Boris Johnson and Justine Greening – will be “unavoidably away” when the Commons votes on the issue.With the prime minister expected to announce her support soon, No 10 is devising a strategy to avoid embarrassment for key figures. Continue reading...
  
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• Welsh tidal lagoon project could open way for £15bn revolution in UK energy

  08-10-2016 20:28 via theguardian.com
  
  A prototype system of dams and turbines in Swansea Bay could provide Britain with a major zero-carbon source of powerBackers of an ambitious proposal to transform the UK’s power supply will learn in the next few weeks if they are to be given the go-ahead to build tidal lagoons to generate electricity. The green light could see a series of major lagoon projects costing more than £15bn being constructed around the coast of Britain.A tidal lagoon generates electricity from the natural r
  
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• Ruling party in ex-Soviet Georgia declares victory in parliament vote

  08-10-2016 19:35
  By Margarita Antidze TBILISI (Reuters) - The ruling Georgian Dream party declared victory in a parliamentary election in ex-Soviet Georgia on Saturday after two exit polls put it in first place following a tense vote widely seen as a test of political stability. Criss-crossed by strategically important oil and gas pipelines and traditionally buffeted between Russia and the West, Georgia hopes to join the European Union and NATO one day even though that is something that Russia, its former coloni
  
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• New Hampshire college heats campus with used cooking oil

  08-10-2016 17:06
  KEENE, N.H. (AP) — Things are heating up at New Hampshire's Keene (KEEN) State College, which is now using 100 percent used cooking oil to keep more than a third of its campus warm.
  
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• We have money to fight climate change. It's just that we're spending it on defense | Kenneth Pennington

  08-10-2016 14:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Stopping one fighter plane program would save enough to build wind farms to power 320,000 homes. We need to drastically reassess our prioritiesOne year ago this week, I was sitting in a cramped hotel room with 15 other staffers in Las Vegas for Bernie Sanders’ first debate for the presidential nomination. The question came from CNN: “What is the greatest national security threat?” Pundits criticized and mocked him for weeks after he answered “climate change”. But he
  
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• Georgians cast ballots in election seen as test of stability

  08-10-2016 13:15
  By Margarita Antidze TBILISI (Reuters) - Georgians voted for a new parliament on Saturday in an election seen as a test of stability of the ex-Soviet state criss-crossed by strategically important oil and gas pipelines and traditionally buffeted between Russia and the West. Voting, which got under way at 0400 GMT, was brisk, with lines forming outside several polling stations in the capital Tbilisi. A fifth of Georgian territory remains under the control of pro-Russian separatists following a sh
  
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• Brighton gears up for new fleet of solar-powered buses

  08-10-2016 09:00 via theguardian.com
  
  A fleet of 10 electric buses operating around town will be charged overnight at a bus depot which has solar panels on its roofThe bright yellow Big Lemon buses are a familiar sight – and smell – on the roads of Brighton and Hove. For nine years the Community Interest Company has run all its vehicles on waste cooking oil from local restaurants, recycled into biodiesel, but now it wants to go one step further.The Big Lemon wants to install solar panels on the roof of its east Brighton
  
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• 'Walking into the unknown': rural England weighs up the reality of Brexit

  08-10-2016 08:00 via theguardian.com
  
  The EU helped shape the UK landscape with both money and a swath of rules and directives. In places like Crediton, a picture-perfect corner of rural Devon, locals fear the change to come – but also smell opportunityThe landscape around Crediton in Devon is picture-postcard perfect – a patchwork of fields, thick hedges, woods, rolling hills with rivers, streams and deep lanes meandering through. Continue reading...
  
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• Predatory menace of the peregrine in the pylon

  08-10-2016 06:30 via theguardian.com
  
  Airedale, West Yorkshire We have kestrel and sparrowhawk here, buzzard and kite, but nothing quite matches the peregrine for dramatic oomphI’ve spent a lot of time lately staring up at the electricity pylon across the river. Hawks, wrote JA Baker in his 1967 classic book The Peregrine, grow out of dead trees, like branches; I’ve learned that peregrines can also sprout from steel lattice and aluminium alloy.David, a local birder, pointed out the peregrine on the pylon one morning in l
  
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