Environment news

• Search restarts for area willing to host highly radioactive UK waste

  21-01-2018 16:52 via theguardian.com
  Right geology and local consent are key in consultation due to be launched this weekThe government is expected this week to begin a nationwide search for a community willing to host an underground nuclear waste dump to store highly radioactive material for thousands of years.Britain has been trying for years to secure a site with the right geology and local communities who would volunteer to host a £12bn geological disposal facility (GDF), as a long-term solution for the most dangerous was
  
  Read more

• Lloyd's of London to divest from coal over climate change

  21-01-2018 16:35 via theguardian.com
  World’s oldest insurance firm to exclude coal companies from investment strategy from 1 AprilLloyd’s of London, the world’s oldest insurance market, has become the latest financial firm to announce that it plans to stop investing in coal companies.
  Lloyd’s will start to exclude coal from its investment strategy from 1 April. The definition of what is a coal company and the criteria for divestment will be set over the coming months.Continue reading...
  
  Read more

• Trump administration could be sued over pesticide threat to orca and salmon

  21-01-2018 14:45 via theguardian.com
  Fishing industry and environmentalists mull lawsuitsEPA tried to delay report detailing chemicals’ harm to wildlifeCommercial fishermen and environmental groups could file lawsuits against the Trump administration, if it fails to follow a recommendation by one of its own agencies to protect salmon, sturgeon, orca and other endangered species in the Pacific north-west.Related: Common pesticide can make migrating birds lose their way, research showsContinue reading...
  
  Read more

• Class war in the American west: the rich landowners blocking access to public lands

  21-01-2018 12:00 via theguardian.com
  Private landowners present a rising threat to the millions of acres set aside for public use by blocking access to public landsThe Diamond Bar X is a postcard-perfect slice of Montana solitude. A former cattle ranch that’s been parceled up into sprawling home sites, it sits not far outside Augusta, a cowboy town beneath Montana’s Rocky Mountain Front, where the Great Plains crash into majestic snow-peaked mountains to dramatic effect.The area is prime habitat for elk and grizzlies, p
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• We must hope for real answers about Carillion. We don’t usually get them

  21-01-2018 08:00 via theguardian.com
  Underbidding for contracts to bring in cash – if that is what has happened – is a dangerous practice. We need to knowThe collapse of Carillion, the building and outsourcing company, throws up so many questions about the state of UK business and government services it is difficult to know where to begin.Lifting the lid on Carillion’s strategic plans, it is clear that the company’s board mistook tactical nous for strategy. Not that there was much common sense in taking a bu
  
  Read more

• Are diesel cars always the most harmful?

  21-01-2018 02:15 via bbc.co.uk
  Some in the car industry claim that modern diesel engines have been unfairly maligned.
  
  Read more

• Australia's biodiversity strategy a global embarrassment, green groups say

  21-01-2018 01:29 via theguardian.com
  Extinction prevention plan branded ‘deeply inadequate’ after environment department publishes paper without targets The federal government’s latest strategy to protect Australian plants and animals facing extinction has been branded “deeply inadequate” and “a global embarrassment” by environment groups.The Sydney Morning Herald revealed that a new 13-page document had quietly replaced the old 100-page biodiversity conservation strategy just before Christ
  
  Read more

• On the Amazon’s lawless frontier, murder mystery divides the locals and loggers

  21-01-2018 01:05 via theguardian.com
  The Ka’apor tribe fight a daily battle in Brazil’s Maranhão state to protect their forestsSairá Ka’apor patrolled one of the most murderous frontiers in the world, a remote and largely lawless region of the Brazilian Amazon where his indigenous community has fought for generations to protect their forest land.Armed with clubs, bows and arrows, GPS trackers and crude guns, he and fellow members of Ka’apor Forest Guard drove off – and sometimes attacked
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• Britain risks losing green protections after Brexit

  21-01-2018 01:05 via theguardian.com
  Friends of the Earth, National Trust and others voice ‘serious concerns’ that UK will not cooperate with EUA coalition of leading environmental groups says there is a “significant risk” that British environmental protections will be reduced after Brexit, despite the government’s positive rhetoric.Greener UK, which represents 13 campaign groups including WWF, National Trust, RSPB, Friends of the Earth, Green Alliance and the Wildlife Trusts, says there are “ser
  
  Read more

• Gloucestershire is building a big bonfire of waste. To last for eternity

  21-01-2018 01:04 via theguardian.com
  A 70-metre-high waste incinerator is being built next to the M5Marooned on the flatlands between the Severn river and the Cotswolds escarpment, Stonehouse in Gloucestershire isn’t the sort of place to make the news. But, of late, outrage has been the dominant emotion here as construction traffic has brought what was a country village to a standstill. Blue plastic barriers proliferate, mobile traffic lights are set down apparently at random and workers clad in hi-vis saunter about with the
  
  Read more

Follow @UK_Environment on Twitter!