Environment news

• The Guardian view on Labour’s 2030 clean energy target: Britain should go for it | Editorial

  05-11-2024 19:39 via theguardian.com
  As a new report makes clear, the timetable is dauntingly tight. But the potential rewards on offer are hugeOne of Labour’s first acts in government was to lift the de facto ban on new onshore windfarms introduced by the Conservatives in 2016, which closed off one of the key pathways to clean, cheap energy by the 2030s. This week, progress was resumed as plans were outlined for what would be the most productive onshore windfarm in England. According to developers, the Scout Moor scheme in G
  
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• ‘There’s so much confrontation’: Valencians sick of political bickering after Spain’s floods

  05-11-2024 16:32 via theguardian.com
  
  A week on from deluge that devastated the town of Chiva, morale is low and there is anger as politicians play familiar blame gameEveryone in Chiva has their own memories of what happened here a week ago. For some it is the frantic phone calls to loved ones; for others, the disbelief as this small Valencian town, like so many others, was swallowed up by flood waters that bore away cars and trees as if they were paper boats.For Lourdes Vallés, it is the sound of a car horn sounding through
  
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• ‘People do not want to believe it is true’: the photographer capturing the vanishing of glaciers

  05-11-2024 13:55 via theguardian.com
  Christian Åslund was shocked at the difference between what he saw in 2002 and what confronted him this summer Standing in blinding sunlight on an archipelago above the Arctic Circle, the photographer Christian Åslund looked in shock at a glacier he had last visited in 2002. It had almost completely disappeared.Two decades ago Greenpeace asked Åslund to use photographs taken in the early 20th century, and photograph the same views in order to document how glaciers in Svalbard w
  
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• ‘I do an illegal job, stealing’: the women forced to scavenge in Bolivia’s tin mines

  05-11-2024 11:00 via theguardian.com
  Some work underground, others pick over tailings; all are running huge risks. But in the town of Huanani, the mines are the only way to support a familyMost nights, under cover of darkness, Sandra* ventures underground into the Huanuni tin mine, about 40 miles (60km) south of the city of Oruro, in Bolivia. She walks for around nine hours collecting about 35kg of rocks containing the mineral before heading back the way she came, hiding from anyone who might be patrolling the tunnels.She sells wha
  
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• A rebuke to those who said clean power by 2030 was unachievable: they were wrong, we were right | Ed Miliband

  05-11-2024 10:30 via theguardian.com
  
  Expert analysis backs our policy and its benefits for the country. Defeatist critics should take noteEd Milband is secretary of state for energy security and net zeroLabour fought and won the last election on the argument that every family and business in the country was paying the price of the previous government’s failure to deliver clean homegrown energy for Britain.Families and businesses know from the cost of living crisis that our dependence on fossil fuel markets controlled by dicta
  
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• Sea angels and devils: could plankton unlock the secrets of human biology?

  05-11-2024 09:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Scientists use new technology to sequence the DNA of microscopic ocean creatures for the first time Off the west coast of Greenland, a 17-metre (56ft) aluminium sailing boat creeps through a narrow, rocky fjord in the Arctic twilight. The research team onboard, still bleary-eyed from the rough nine-day passage across the Labrador Sea, lower nets to collect plankton. This is the first time anyone has sequenced the DNA of the tiny marine creatures that live here.Watching the nets with palpable exc
  
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• Plans for biggest onshore windfarm in England to be submitted this week

  05-11-2024 07:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Cubico project at Scout Moor north of Manchester could power the equivalent of 100,000 homesPlans to build what would be the biggest onshore windfarm in England will move forward this week, the first since the Labour government lifted the de facto ban put in place by the Conservatives nine years ago.An independent renewable energy developer has submitted plans to erect 21 wind turbines next to an existing windfarm north of Manchester. Continue reading...
  
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• Country diary: Reflecting on a moonlit night | Mark Cocker

  05-11-2024 06:30 via theguardian.com
  
  Burnlaw, Northumberland: Sleepless at 4am and studying our sole satellite, I’m struck by the remarkable journey light takes to make it into our viewI have a habit, if I wake some nights, to get up and go downstairs to read. Last night was noteworthy because I could see the moon as a mere horn repeatedly swallowed then reborn from the passing clouds. Through binoculars, however, I could make out the other portion of the whole lunar sphere as a sort of ill-lit inference.It was Leonardo
  
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• 'Nuclear will drive up the cost of electricity': Matt Kean clashes with former colleagues – video

  05-11-2024 01:56 via theguardian.com
  
  Former NSW Liberal energy minister Matt Kean debated his former Coalition colleagues about the cost of nuclear power in a parliamentary estimates hearing on Monday. Now chair of the Climate Change Authority, Kean debated Nationals senator Ross Cadell over CSIRO analysis which found nuclear was the most expensive form of large-scale energy available‘No bigger rent-seeking parasite’ than nuclear industry, Matt Kean tells former Coalition colleagues in heated debate Continue reading...
  
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• Britain’s green energy pledge ‘credible’ if planning fixed, says system operator

  05-11-2024 01:01 via theguardian.com
  
  State-owned Neso says Britain could be net exporter of green electricity by end of decade at no extra costA plan to create a clean electricity system by 2030 promised by Labour before the election is “immensely challenging” but still “credible” if ministers take urgent action to fix Britain’s sluggish planning system, the energy system operator has said.Britain could become a net exporter of green electricity by the end of the decade at no extra costs to the energy
  
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