Environment news

• Former Tesco boss wants to send power from Morocco to Great Britain using subsea cable

  01-12-2024 18:00
  
  Dave Lewis says the near-constant stream of clean electricity could supply the grid as early as 2030In the south-west of Morocco, a sprawl of wind and solar farms stretching across an area the size of Greater London could soon generate the green electricity powering more than 9m British homes.This is the unflinching vision of Sir Dave Lewis, the former Tesco boss who is hoping to build the world’s longest subsea power cable in order to harness north Africa’s renewable energy sources
  
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• ‘The taste of our home’: inside an Afghan restaurant in Arizona run by former refugees

  01-12-2024 17:00
  
  As neighbors face an uncertain political future, the city’s only Afghan restaurant provides a sense of community – and ‘a bit of happiness’An aromatic blend of spices and bolani, stuffed pan-fried bread, and the voice of Asad Badie, an Afghan pop singer who rose to stardom in the 1980s, foreshadowed a meal experience that one could easily believe was taking place thousands of miles away.In reality, it was almost 1pm in Tucson, Arizona, when Ritiek Rafi and Ahmad Bahaduri
  
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• Could Tenbury Wells be the first UK town centre abandoned over climate change?

  01-12-2024 16:24
  
  Worcestershire town has been flooded seven times in past four years and shop owners can no longer afford insuranceIn the aftermath of its latest flood, the town centre of Tenbury Wells was a scene of chaos. The main street was caked with a layer of mud, shop windows were smashed and piles of sodden furniture and wares, all ruined, were heaped in the street.“On Monday when we came in we wanted to leave, lock the doors and just disappear,” said Richard Sharman, the owner of Garlands Fl
  
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• Could Tenbury Wells be the first UK town centre abandoned due to climate change?

  01-12-2024 16:24
  
  Worcestershire town has been flooded seven times in past four years and shop owners can no longer afford insuranceIn the aftermath of its latest flood, the town centre of Tenbury Wells was a scene of chaos. The main street was caked with a layer of mud, shop windows were smashed and piles of sodden furniture and wares, all ruined, were heaped in the street.“On Monday when we came in we wanted to leave, lock the doors and just disappear,” said Richard Sharman, the owner of Garlands Fl
  
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• International talks on curbing plastic pollution fail to reach agreement

  01-12-2024 15:11
  
  Chair of talks in Busan says progress has been made but ‘a few critical issues’ are unresolvedNegotiators have failed to reach agreement on a landmark treaty to curb plastic pollution, the diplomat chairing the talks has said.Nearly 200 nations are taking part in a meeting in Busan, South Korea, which is intended to result in a landmark agreement after two years of discussions. A week of talks has failed to resolve deep divisions between “high-ambition” countries seeking
  
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• Australia is connected to the world by cables no thicker than a garden hose – and at risk from sharks, accidents and sabotage

  01-12-2024 15:00
  Last month two Baltic Sea cables were damaged and experts say Australia’s cables are not immune from threats. How worried should we be?Follow our Australia news live blog for latest updatesGet our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcastMore than 1m kilometres of cables snake along the world’s ocean floor, ferrying data between distant lands. Fibre-optic filaments whisk emails, Netflix and military secrets through deep water, where the cord – about as thick as a gard
  
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• Wake up and smell the coffee: rising food prices show destabilising impact of climate crisis | Heather Stewart

  01-12-2024 13:31
  
  Policymakers must act as extreme weather events put more pressure on food inflation and production worldwideYour morning – and afternoon – coffee is the latest staple threatened by climate chaos: the price of quality arabica beans shot to its highest level in almost 50 years last week, amid fears of a poor harvest in Brazil.It follows warnings that orange crops have been wiped out by the catastrophic floods in Valencia, Spain; and the soaring cost of olive oil over recent years, as t
  
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• ‘If I’m sent to Japan, I’m not coming home’: jailed anti-whaler defiant in face of extradition threat

  01-12-2024 09:00
  
  Sea Shepherd’s Paul Watson talks about his arrest on behalf of the Japanese government, his ‘interesting’ Greenland prison, and separation from his childrenThe humpback whales watched by Paul Watson from his prison cell this summer have long since migrated from the iceberg-flecked Nuup Kangerlua fjord to warmer seas. It is over four months since Watson – an eco-terrorist to some and a brave environmentalist to others – was brought here to Anstalten, a high-security
  
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• If we delay the UK’s drive for electric vehicles, our rivals will overtake us | Jonathan Reynolds

  01-12-2024 08:00
  
  The government is determined to work with the car industry to increase take-up, boost jobs and hit emissions targets• Cheaper loans on table to drive UK motorists to electric, plus cuts in EV fines for firmsThe push to electric vehicles is not about a culture war. It is a simple choice. Do we set UK industry up to take advantage of the changes that are coming? Or do we sit it out, allowing our competitors to lap us while we decide whether to change our tyres or not?The previous government,
  
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• It’s too late to halt the climate crisis

  01-12-2024 07:00
  Nature is going to solve the problem by eliminating the modern humanIn response to Ashish Ghadiali’s story last week (“Yes, there is a lot of greenwashing, but Cop summits are our best chance of averting climate breakdown”, Comment, last week), nearly 70 years ago Gilbert Plass coined the term “climate change” in a paper in the journal Tellus.Most of that 70 years has been spent arguing over the reality of climate change, an argument by vested interests that continu
  
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