Environment news

• Emissions increases approved by regulator may wipe out $260m of Direct Action cuts

  18-02-2018 18:00 via theguardian.com
  Exclusive: Nearly 60 industrial sites get green light to increase emissions, cancelling out cuts paid for by Coalition using public moneyNearly 60 Australian industrial sites have been given the green light to increase greenhouse gas pollution, potentially cancelling out hundreds of millions of dollars of public spending on emissions cuts under the Coalition’s Direct Action climate policy.The increases have been quietly approved under the “safeguard mechanism”, which was introd
  
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• Don’t feed the fatberg! What a slice of oily sewage says about modern life

  18-02-2018 15:00 via theguardian.com
  
  A chunk of the monster Whitechapel fatberg is now a superstar museum exhibit. It shines a horrifying light on our throwaway age – but will it stop people clogging up the sewers with the grease from their Sunday lunch?The fatberg that went on display this month at the Museum of London is proving something of a sensation. Visitor numbers have more than doubled; there is a palpable air of half-term excitement when I visit; and the fatberg fudge – modelled to look like the rough-hewn fat
  
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• The village that took on the frackers

  18-02-2018 09:00 via theguardian.com
  Documenting fracking protests in Kirby Misperton, photographer Gary Calton found a surprising mix of people uniting to protect Britain’s countrysideIt’s early February and the mood at the anti-fracking camp in the embattled village of Kirby Misperton, North Yorkshire, is one of cautious optimism. The camp, a collection of makeshift wooden buildings in a muddy field outside town, has been running since December 2016, but it’s only in the last five months that demonstrations agai
  
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• Owl Sense by Miriam Darlington – review

  18-02-2018 09:00 via theguardian.com
  The author’s mission to track down all 13 species of owl in Europe seems less a labour of love than a book-writing exerciseOne darkish evening not so long ago, the nature writer Miriam Darlington stood in a wood somewhere in Devon, her feet buried in wild garlic, her nose filled with the scents of mulch and moss. Through the treetops, she could see the rising moon and a flitting bat, sights that were soundtracked by birdsong (thrushes, blackbirds, rasping rooks) and her own small contribut
  
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• Should we give up half of the Earth to wildlife?

  18-02-2018 01:05 via theguardian.com
  Populations of all kinds of wildlife are declining at alarming speed. One radical solution is to make 50% of the planet a nature reserveThe orangutan is one of our planet’s most distinctive and intelligent creatures. It has been observed using primitive tools, such as the branch of a tree, to hunt food, and is capable of complex social behaviour. Orangutans also played a special role in humanity’s own intellectual history when, in the 19th century, Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wa
  
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• How long can we treat the suffering of animals as an inconvenient truth? | Michael Brooks

  18-02-2018 01:02 via theguardian.com
  A revolution is coming in our relationship with ‘lower’ creatures, provoked by a greater knowledge of their cognition. Labour’s new plans for animal welfare are just a startScientific insight is a powerful thing, but will it ever override the human lust for health, prosperity and, saddest of all, convenience? This question entered my head as I read of the Labour party’s newly announced policies for animal welfare “informed and underpinned by the latest evidence on a
  
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