Environment news

• UK appoints first nature envoy to tackle species decline

  20-10-2024 19:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Ruth Davis named special representative for nature ‘to put climate and nature at the heart of our foreign policy’The government has appointed the UK’s first envoy for nature, a former environment campaigner described as “the environmentalist’s environmentalist”, who will be charged with forging global agreement on halting the precipitous decline of species.Ruth Davis, the new special representative for nature, is in Colombia for the start of two weeks of vital
  
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• The ride of our lives: why the horse is crucial to human history

  20-10-2024 16:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Humans and horses have been entwined throughout history, one could not have thrived without the other, according to a new book that explores a unique bondIt was a heart-stopping sight. On 24 April this year, blood-drenched horses galloped through rush-hour traffic in central London, smashing chaotically into a tourist bus and a taxi, before careening along pavements in blind panic. The horses, which serve in the Household Cavalry Mounted Regiment guarding the king, were on their daily morning ex
  
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• Degrowth has an image problem it desperately needs to overcome | Larry Elliott

  20-10-2024 12:58 via theguardian.com
  
  We need to deal with the climate effects of global capitalism the way we deal with inflation – by applying the brakesThe impact of the climate crisis is evident everywhere. Finance ministers meet in Washington DC this week for the annual meeting of the International Monetary Fund in the wake of two devastating hurricanes in the US within a month. Parts of the Sahara have been flooded for the first time in half a century.Scientists attribute the growing number of extreme weather events to a
  
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• ‘It’s a monster task’: can culling ferrets and rats save one of the UK’s largest seabird colonies?

  20-10-2024 09:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Puffins, Manx shearwaters and kittiwakes on Rathlin Island in Northern Ireland have been dying. Now islanders and experts think they have the solutionThe dramatic sea cliffs, crags and stacks of Rathlin Island, county Antrim, rise more than 200 metres above the Atlantic Ocean and host one of the UK’s largest seabird colonies, including hundreds of endangered puffins, attracting up to 20,000 birders and tourists a year.On a spectacularly sunny day in September, the cliff faces are devoid of
  
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• Cop16: Colombia prepares to host ‘decisive’ summit on biodiversity

  20-10-2024 09:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Experts say UN event will be critical for world’s declining wildlife population as host nation pushes for inclusivityWorld leaders, environmental activists and prominent researchers have begun to arrive in Cali, Colombia, for a biodiversity summit that experts say will be decisive for the fate of the world’s rapidly declining wildlife populations.The host nation is also hoping that the summit, which formally opens on Sunday evening, will be the most inclusive in history. Continue rea
  
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• Does air pollution cause dementia? UK scientists launch study to find out

  20-10-2024 08:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Research at the Francis Crick Institute could lead to new drugs to counter progress of diseases like Alzheimer’sBritish scientists are about to launch a remarkable research project that will demonstrate how the air we breathe can affect our brains. This work will be vital, they say, in understanding a major medical problem: how atmospheric pollution can trigger dementia.In recent years, scientists have discovered that air pollution is one of the most pernicious threats to human health and
  
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