Environment news

• Asheville restores drinking water 53 days after Hurricane Helene - but not all are ready to sip

  22-11-2024 18:23
  
  Residents concerned as North Carolina city lifts boil advisory and scientists detect lead in water at area schoolsWhen the western North Carolina town Swannanoa was battered by Hurricane Helene in September, two large trees crushed Stephen Knight’s home. His family of six was launched into a complicated web of survival: finding a temporary home, applying for disaster relief, filing insurance claims.The new logistics of living included the daily search for food and water. Until earlier this
  
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• Electric shock: carmakers battle strict UK electric car rules as big fines loom

  22-11-2024 17:35
  
  As Ford announced cutting 800 UK jobs it said rules forcing companies to sell more EVs each year are ‘unworkable’ When Ford announced this week that it was cutting 800 jobs in the UK, the US carmaker also had stern words for the government. It has joined in a chorus of criticism of rules that force car companies to sell more electric vehicles each year. The rules, known as the zero-emission vehicle (ZEV) mandate, are simply “unworkable”, Ford said.Someone should have told
  
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• Cop 29: new draft text criticised as ‘totally unacceptable and inadequate’ – as it happened

  22-11-2024 17:20
  
  Text ‘decides’ on $250bn for developing countries by 2035 – but faces criticism from African Group of NegotiatorsA new text of the Cop29 deal has yet to emerge, but civil society activists have not given up hope, reports Damian Carrington, Guardian environment editor.Hilda Nakabuye, 27, from Fridays for Future campaign group in Uganda, said:We are holding on to hope. As a mother I am here to represent my people, my community, but also future generations that we hold close and d
  
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• Where does the Fogo go? The challenge of recovering Sydney’s green waste – and how you can help

  22-11-2024 15:00
  Food and garden rubbish is sorted and then cooked to produce rich compost at this waste management centreGet our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcastAsh Turner sizes up a four-metre-high, 60-tonne mound of food waste and garden rubbish and points out the problematic interlopers amid the grass clippings, hedge trimmings, mango seeds, calla lilies and biodegradable bags full of food.“So that’s a biodegradable bag … that’s not … that’s oversized,
  
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• ‘Cate Blanchett looks stylish in a bee-suit’: Martha Kearney on her wild new interview series

  22-11-2024 15:00
  The former Today presenter has swapped news coverage for grilling A-listers on their love of nature while out for a walkAs a presenter of the Today programme and Newsnight’s political editor, Martha Kearney spent decades seeking “gotcha” moments in hard-hitting interviews. Now the broadcaster is unearthing rather different revelations for her new Radio 4 interview series.Here comes Hollywood star Cate Blanchett rocking a beekeeper suit, the wildlife presenter Hamza Yassin expla
  
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• Cop 29 live: new draft text criticised as ‘totally unacceptable and inadequate’

  22-11-2024 14:14
  
  Text ‘decides’ on $250bn for developing countries by 2035 – but faces criticism from African Group of NegotiatorsA new text of the Cop29 deal has yet to emerge, but civil society activists have not given up hope, reports Damian Carrington, Guardian environment editor.Hilda Nakabuye, 27, from Fridays for Future campaign group in Uganda, said:We are holding on to hope. As a mother I am here to represent my people, my community, but also future generations that we hold close and d
  
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• ‘The air is killing us’: why Delhi’s pollution problem runs deeper than smog season

  22-11-2024 13:56
  Leaders of Indian capital must tackle transport and heavy industry rather than seek quick fixes, say campaignersAs winter sets in across north India – usually around the time of the country’s biggest festival, Diwali – the air in Delhi becomes thick and brown with visible pollutants. To breathe in is to taste toxic fumes. The visibility is often so bad that famous monuments are reduced to smoky blurs on the horizon. It is, as one writer once put it, as if a burial shroud has cl
  
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• ‘It’s really an honour’: people of oil-rich Azerbaijan welcome climate summit

  22-11-2024 13:51
  Cop29 is taking place in a country whose economy has long been dependent on its oil reservesOil runs deep in Azerbaijan, the host country of this year’s UN climate summit. Just 30 minutes south-west of the Cop29 conference centre lies the site of the world’s first industrially drilled oil well, opened in 1846.Just metres away sit a handful of operating oil wells, nodding away. The Guardian spoke to an employee of Azerbaijan’s state-owned oil and gas company, Socar, who was work
  
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• Will China step up if Trump takes a step back on climate change?

  22-11-2024 13:07 via bbc.com
  
  How future talks will play out if another superpower comes to the fore, just as the US steps back
  
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• ‘I find hope in sticking together and keeping each other warm’ – This is climate breakdown

  22-11-2024 13:00
  
  When the rain kept coming down, people began to worry. We were afraid the dam up the hill might not hold up. This is Jie’s storyLocation Guangdong, ChinaDisaster Extreme rainfall, 2024Li Jie lives in Xianniangxi, a mountainous village in southern China’s Guangdong province with her family, where she is a social worker for a rural non-profit organisation and also works in the fields. The climate crisis has increased heavy rainfall in Guangdong and exacerbated floods in the province in
  
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• Cop 29 live: call for $1.3tn in climate finance by 2035 in new draft text

  22-11-2024 12:31
  Text ‘decides’ on $250bn for developing countries by 2035 and calls for nations to make additional contributionsA new text of the Cop29 deal has yet to emerge, but civil society activists have not given up hope, reports Damian Carrington, Guardian environment editor.Hilda Nakabuye, 27, from Fridays for Future campaign group in Uganda, said:We are holding on to hope. As a mother I am here to represent my people, my community, but also future generations that we hold close and dear to
  
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• Cop 29 live: UAE steps in amid Saudi blocking of commitment to transition away from fossil fuels

  22-11-2024 11:27
  
  Saudi Arabia trying to avoid reaffirmation of resolution as UAE tries to defend commitments made at last year’s CopA new text of the Cop29 deal has yet to emerge, but civil society activists have not given up hope, reports Damian Carrington, Guardian environment editor.Hilda Nakabuye, 27, from Fridays for Future campaign group in Uganda, said:We are holding on to hope. As a mother I am here to represent my people, my community, but also future generations that we hold close and dear to our
  
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• Cop 29 live: Poor countries may have to compromise on climate funding, says former UN envoy

  22-11-2024 10:37
  Negotiations continue amid disputes over climate finance goals and previous commitments on transitioning from fossil fuelsA new text of the Cop29 deal has yet to emerge, but civil society activists have not given up hope, reports Damian Carrington, Guardian environment editor.Hilda Nakabuye, 27, from Fridays for Future campaign group in Uganda, said:We are holding on to hope. As a mother I am here to represent my people, my community, but also future generations that we hold close and dear to ou
  
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• ‘Make the beans your bitch’ – how to join the leguminati, plus five great recipes

  22-11-2024 10:00
  Pulses and legumes (basically beans and peas) are much tastier than people realise, and not difficult to cook. Plus they have major environmental benefits‘It’s like a secret’: why do the leguminati want to change the way we eat?Beans can seem a little intimidating. That plastic bag of funny-looking pebbles at the back of the cupboard, bought in a fit of good intentions, seems to defy food logic. But really it’s quite simple. Here’s how you can initiate yourself into
  
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• ‘It’s like a secret’: why do the leguminati want to change the way we eat?

  22-11-2024 10:00
  
  Fans of legumes say a worldwide shift towards eating beans rather than meat would hugely benefit human health and the environment‘Make the beans your bitch’ – how to join the leguminati, plus five great recipes
  For decades they have been working underground, establishing mycorrhizal-like networks of commerce and influence, taking root in academia and institutions, and even extending their tendrils into supranational governance.Their goal is to transform the diets of people acro
  
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• Weather tracker: Deadly bomb cyclone batters north-west US

  22-11-2024 09:15
  
  Low-pressure system brings deaths and power outages to region, while an Arctic blast sweeps swaths of EuropeLarge parts of the US have been battered by severe weather this week, as low pressure developed over the north-west coast. The weather system intensified into a phenomenon known as a bomb cyclone, which rapidly intensified to an estimated central pressure of 942 hectopascals (hPa) – close to the lowest pressure recorded in that area.To be classified as a bomb cyclone, the central pre
  
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• Week in wildlife in pictures: a naughty weasel, guard bees and a Sopranos bear

  22-11-2024 09:00
  
  The best of this week’s wildlife photographs from around the world Continue reading...
  
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• Look at the farmers’ protest, and then ask yourself: how will we ever make tax fairer amid such grumbling? | Polly Toynbee

  22-11-2024 09:00
  
  Labour inherited a dire situation that needed desperate change – but powerful lobbies make any tax reform near-impossibleThat was a state-of-the-nation image, those thousands of farmers in Whitehall protesting about inheritance tax (IHT). Their little inheritors on toy tractors could hardly have offered a better portrait of a Britain where even modest reforms of wildly irrational tax reliefs are near-impossible. The country loves Old MacDonald and detests IHT.This is a symbol of the great
  
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• Holding a grudge – is it a petty character flaw or a desire for justice in an unjust world? | First Dog on the Moon

  22-11-2024 07:08
  
  Who better to ask than corvidsSign up here to get an email whenever First Dog cartoons are publishedGet all your needs met at the First Dog shop if what you need is First Dog merchandise and prints Continue reading...
  
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• Weatherwatch: UK’s neglect of tidal power was all too clear amid 10 days of gloom

  22-11-2024 07:00
  Plentiful but untapped source of renewable energy could have helped fill shortfall during record cloud coverThe 10 days of anti-cyclonic gloom at the start of November broke records for length and the thickness of the cloud. It is rare, even in the darkest days of December, for the solar panels on my roof in Bedfordshire to record less than a kilowatt hour of electricity production a day. During the gloom only 5.1kWh were produced.Slow wind-speeds over the same period meant renewable energy made
  
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