Environment news

• Millennials are making frozen food hot again, but can they stop killing everything else?

  14-05-2018 20:34 via theguardian.com
  Frozen food is the latest industry millennials have been credited with saving. But it’s too late for gum, soap and thongsFrozen food is super hot right now. According to David Palmer, an analyst at RBC Capital Markets, sales volumes have grown for the first time in five years. And millennials are largely responsible for this, spending 9% more per shopping trip for frozen foods last year than other groups, according to Reuters.So why are millennials, a supposedly foodie generation, buying s
  
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• It's no surprise emissions keep going up. There's no price on carbon | Greg Jericho

  14-05-2018 20:00 via theguardian.com
  The only thing close to climate change policy is the national energy guarantee. It’s not enough
  Late last Friday, the government quietly released the latest data on greenhouse gas emissions and, as has been the case since the ending of the carbon price, they show emissions are increasing. But the figures also highlight that the government’s current plan to focus almost exclusively on electricity, through its national energy guarantee , means Australia will be unable to meet its commi
  
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• Investors urge fossil fuel firms to shun Trump's Arctic drilling plans

  14-05-2018 20:00 via theguardian.com
  Oil extraction in Alaskan wilderness area would be an ‘irresponsible business decision’, trillion-dollar investors say
  Investors managing more than $2.5tn have warned oil firms and banks to shun moves by the US president, Donald Trump, to open the Arctic national wildlife refuge (ANWR) to drilling.Companies extracting oil and gas from the wilderness area in Alaska would face “enormous reputational risk and public backlash”, the investors say in a letter sent on Monday to
  
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• Almost half of Australian big business moving to renewables

  14-05-2018 20:00 via theguardian.com
  Climate Council says capacity of firms to generate solar power has doubled in less than two yearsSign up to receive the top stories every morning
  Almost half of Australia’s large businesses are actively transitioning to cheaper renewable energy, including many going off the grid by building their own generators and battery storage, as power bills threaten their bottom line.A new report by the Climate Council details the increased speed of a business-led transition to renewables as power bi
  
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• 'Memory transplant' achieved in snails

  14-05-2018 19:31 via bbc.co.uk
  Memories are transferred from one snail to another in a laboratory.
  
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• Black gold: can homegrown caviar catch on?

  14-05-2018 19:25 via theguardian.com
  Can caviar from North Carolina stand up to the cheaper Chinese product? A local farm tries to get Americans to bite The chamber inside LaPaz Farm is so clean it almost feels like an operating room. Before we walked into the room, Sabine Mader, the manager of the farm, asks us to put on white coats, gloves and hair nets – and a beard net for my husband. Inside the chamber, a fish-cutter is waiting with a freshly dispatched, female Russian sturgeon on the table, one of five to be harvested t
  
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• Banning plastic bags can be a lifesaver | Brief letters

  14-05-2018 18:54 via theguardian.com
  Rwanda’s plastic bag ban | Sugar in recipes | School funding | Autocorrect | Tessa JowellWhile “other East African nations are considering following suit” (Nairobi feels the force of world’s most draconian plastic bag ban, 26 April), Rwanda banned plastic bags in 2008. Plastic bags can trap pools of water which host mosquitos so their ban helps fight malaria.
  Alex Morton
  London• In Saturday’s Feast Ottolenghi’s tamarind recipes all call for
  
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• UK ups the ante on Galileo sat-nav project

  14-05-2018 18:35 via bbc.co.uk
  London warns Brussels that it is prepared to block Galileo technologies from leaving the UK.
  
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• Lloyds launches £2bn Clean Growth Finance scheme

  14-05-2018 14:03
  Lloyds Banking Group has announced it will be providing a further £2bn of funding for sustainable investments, increasing its total UK green finance commitments to £3bn.
  
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• 'My partner convinced me of the facts': readers on changing their opinion on climate change

  14-05-2018 13:43 via theguardian.com
  We asked you to tell us about the time you crossed from one side of the debate to the otherI first thought it was fake as I used to watch Fox News with my family. In 2015 I met my partner Stephen who knew that the facts of climate change couldn’t be ignored. He took it upon himself to try to convince me. We started watching documentaries on the subject on Netflix. The first documentary that caught my attention was Cowspiracy directed by Kip Andersen and Keegan Kuhn. This documentary really
  
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• Tesco cuts carbon emissions 13% in a year

  14-05-2018 13:35
  Tesco has revealed that it reduced its carbon emissions by 13% in 2017 against a 2016 baseline, as it strives towards a science-based target of becoming a carbon-neutral business by 2050.
  
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• The state of sustainability 2018: edie publishes final insight report for UK businesses

  14-05-2018 13:04
  edie's year-long sector insight report series concludes today (14 May) with the final edition which rounds up the key sustainability drivers, challenges and opportunities facing Britain's biggest industries.
  
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• Interior official's meetings with Koch-linked ex-employer raise ethics queries

  14-05-2018 13:01 via theguardian.com
  Douglas Domenech held meetings with Texas Public Policy Foundation, which was involved in suing the departmentAs allegations of ethics violations mount at the US Environmental Protection Agency, new evidence is raising ethics concerns about key Trump-administration appointees at the interior department.Records reviewed by the Guardian and Pacific Standard show that a high-level interior official, Douglas Domenech, held meetings with a previous employer, the Koch-linked Texas Public Policy Founda
  
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• Interior department faces ethics queries as official meets with Koch-linked group

  14-05-2018 13:01 via theguardian.com
  A review of records by the Guardian reveals Douglas Domenech held meetings with Texas Public Policy Foundation, which was involved in suing the departmentAs allegations of ethics violations mount at the US Environmental Protection Agency, new evidence is raising ethics concerns about key Trump-administration appointees at the interior department.Records reviewed by the Guardian and Pacific Standard show that a high-level interior official, Douglas Domenech, held meetings with a previous employer
  
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• Dipton opencast mine protesters dig in ahead of deadline

  14-05-2018 12:14 via theguardian.com
  Local people and environmentalists have 16 working days left to stop the first spade going into the ground at a beauty spot in Co DurhamFour months after the UK government announced it was phasing out coal, campaigners are digging in to stop what they say will be the devastation of opencast mining at a beauty spot in the north-east of England.Local people and environmentalists have 16 working days left to stop the first spade going into the ground on 71 hectares of grassland, fields and woods in
  
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• How to make caviar sustainable

  14-05-2018 12:00 via theguardian.com
  Can homegrown caviar from North Carolina stand up to the cheaper Chinese product? A local farm tries to get Americans to bite The chamber inside LaPaz Farm is so clean it almost feels like an operating room. Before we walked into the room, Sabine Mader, the manager of the farm, asks us to put on white coats, gloves and hair nets – and a beard net for my husband. Inside the chamber, a fish-cutter is waiting with a freshly dispatched, female Russian sturgeon on the table, one of five to be h
  
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• California, battered by global warming’s weather whiplash, is fighting to stop it | Dana Nuccitelli

  14-05-2018 12:00 via theguardian.com
  Hit by record droughts and rainfall and wildfires, California leads the way in tackling global warmingIn 1988 – the same year Nasa’s James Hansen warned Congress about the threats posed by human-caused global warming – water expert Peter Gleick wrote about the wet and dry extremes that it would create for California:California will get the worst of all possible worlds – more flooding in the winter, less available water in the summer. Continue reading...
  
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• Developing nations call for 'urgent' action to develop Paris Agreement rulebook

  14-05-2018 11:53
  A network of some of the least developed countries in the world has called on developed economies to turn "concepts into action" by accelerating the implementation of a 'rule book' for the Paris Agreement through increased climate finance.
  
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• Almost too late to save ancient woodland - Country diary archive, 16 May 1968

  14-05-2018 07:00 via theguardian.com
  16 May 1968 The planting of alien conifers and poplars is changing this superb example of primeval clay woodland out of all knowledge Norfolk
  I have just been revelling in the glories of one of Norfolk’s few remaining ancient woodlands, seated on glacial boulder clay almost exactly in the centre of the county. The Domesday record shows this wood to have been a notable one in 1088, when it afforded a pannage of acorns for a hundred pigs. Over the centuries its trees and plants of the underg
  
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• Country diary: bog bean adventures

  14-05-2018 06:30 via theguardian.com
  New Forest: Janet Elizabeth Case braved treacherous sink holes and snagging briars to see these enchanting flowers 80 years agoFascinated by JEC’s account of her search for the bog bean (Menyanthes trifoliata) in a Country diary dated 5 June 1933 (I’d come across it in the slim grey selection of her diaries published posthumously in 1939), we tried last year to relive the adventure. Continue reading...
  
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• Gas boom fuels Australia's third straight year of rising emissions

  14-05-2018 06:14 via theguardian.com
  LNG was major contributor to 1.5% rise in year to December 2017, government data showsSign up to receive the top stories in Australia every day at noon Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions continue to soar, increasing for the third consecutive year according to new data published by the Department of Environment and Energy.The Turnbull government published new quarterly emissions data late on Friday which reveals Australia’s climate pollution increased by 1.5% in the year to December
  
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• Plant 'thugs' crowd roadside flowers

  14-05-2018 04:35 via bbc.co.uk
  It is claimed the UK's roadside wild flowers are suffering because of pollution and poor management.
  
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• Ebola's return

  14-05-2018 01:42 via bbc.co.uk
  It is unrealistic to think Ebola will ever be eradicated, but it is now easier to prevent a crisis.
  
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