El Niño: food shortages, floods, disease and droughts set to put millions at risk
Agencies warn of unchartered territory as strongest-ever El Niño threatens to batter vulnerable countries with extreme weather for months The UN has warned of months of extreme weather in many of the world’s most vulnerable countries with intense storms, droughts and floods triggered by one of the strongest El Niño weather events recorded in 50 […]
Coal is not the solution to energy poverty, warn aid agencies
Clean energy is preferable to coal-focussed policies which could leave a billion people still without electricity, analysis suggests Coal power plants are not the solution to help billions of people without electricity or clean cooking facilities, aid agencies have warned. Analysis by Cafod, Christian Aid and thinktank the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) suggests that continuing […]
Gates Foundation would be $1.9bn better off if it had divested from fossil fuels
Analysis of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation health charity, and 13 other major funds, reveals moving investments out of coal, oil and gas and into green companies would have generated billions in higher returns The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation would have had $1.9bn (£1.3bn) more to spend on its lifesaving health projects if […]
How Unilever was left off George Monbiot’s list of palm oil ‘laggards’ | Chris Elliott
None of those involved in the decision to remove Unilever’s name from the column were aware that the Guardian had any commercial relationship with the company There are many checks and balances within a newspaper. There is the original author, the news or commissioning editor, and a system of revising the work of subeditors. While […]
China’s bottled water industry eyes up the Tibetan plateau
Tibet is encouraging companies to tap the Himalayan glaciers for premium drinking water, but the environmental stakes are high In the last two decades China has become the world’s largest bottled water consumer and a major producer. With per capita consumption 19% lower than global average, the market is expected to continue to grow. Although […]
Is Growing at Home the Future of Food?
The case for a localised, even home-based food growing system is being made by the Open Agriculture Lab (OAL) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). They recently suggested that as much as 40% of an urban diet could eventually be produced in a domestic context, cutting down on transportation costs, while providing fresher and […]
The Ultimate Hacking Keyboard and “Making Better Things”
In Circulate’s most recent feature piece, “To make things better, make better things”, Rapanui co-founder Martin Drake-Knight makes the point that good economics and a healthy environment are too often represented as oppositions. He argues that the best of both worlds is achievable through the combination of creative design, business and communication choices. The article […]
Footfall scares the wood-pigeon and attracts the robin: Country diary 100 years ago
Originally published in the Manchester Guardian on 19 November 1915 After bumping over frozen ruts in lanes bordered by frost-decorated hedges, I reached the mere, only to find the fog hanging in a dense curtain; indistinct lumps on the water, just beyond the fringe of ice, were birds, but what kinds it was almost impossible […]
Fireworks are fun – but the effects are not
The sparkles from fireworks last a few seconds but the air pollution can linger in our cities for hours. Firework smoke is rich in tiny metal particles making it very different to normal urban air pollution. These metals are used to make firework colours in much the same way as Victorian scientists identified chemicals by […]
Jonathan Holliman obituary
My twin brother, Jonathan, who has died aged 69, helped ignite the modern environmental movement. In the early 70s he was a founding member of Friends of the Earth UK, set up the National Union of Students’ environment committee, and was an organiser of the first United Nations youth conference on the human environment. A […]