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ANZ 'will not finance' dirty coal plants and pledges $10bn for clean energy

Bank rules out funding ‘conventional coal-fired power plants’ that do not use proven technologies to significantly reduce emissions

ANZ bank has pledged not to finance traditional coalmining projects and to provide at least $10bn in funding for renewable energy, reforestation and energy efficiency.

In the most significant steps yet by one of Australia’s big four banks on climate change, ANZ said its new policies would help a “gradual and orderly transition” from fossil fuels to clean energy such as solar and wind.

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Source: Guardian Environment

New species of 'hog-nosed' rat discovered in Indonesia

Bandicoot-like rodent with long hind limbs, huge ears, a pointed face and a flat nose found in a remote mountainous area of Sulawesi Island

Related: Sneezing monkey and walking fish among new species discovered in Himalayas

Victorian scientists have discovered a new mammal, the hog-nosed rat, with features not been seen by science before.

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Source: Guardian Environment

Albatross Island: the remote outcrop where conservation counts – in pictures

Off the coast of Tasmania, Australia, lies a small island on which 10,000 rare shy albatross live. Their declining population is a concern for conservationists including Dr Rachael Alderman, who has spent the past week on the island monitoring the birds. Photographer Matthew Newton has visted the island on three occasions over the past 12 months, recording the spectacular sight of the colony and the conservationists at work

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Source: Guardian Environment

Dutch unveil world's biggest wave as they aim to save dykes from destruction

Concrete channel, three years in the making and 300 metres long, will help engineers develop better flood defences

Studying the oceans is a matter of survival for the below-sea-level-dwelling Dutch, and scientists in the Netherlands have now unveiled the world’s biggest manmade wave to prepare for the worst.

“Here we can test what happens if enormous waves hit our dykes,” said infrastructure minister Melanie Schultz van Haegen as she inaugurated the giant wave machine in the city of Delft on Monday.

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Source: Guardian Environment

Andrew Adonis and the UK’s real infrastructure needs | Letters

Cutting carbon emissions is but one aspect of the changes needed for the infrastructure and mode of operation of the UK (Osborne reveals deal with former Blair ally, 5 October). On the energy side, we need to increase development and installation of a variety of renewable energy sources. These need to be supported with energy storage schemes. Tidal barrages provide an obvious way to combine both opportunities. We also need to develop and use technology to improve energy efficiency. This involves both more efficient operation of energy use and the reduction in use that is not socially useful. We make many things that add little benefit to life – for instance our overpackaging of many small retail items with moulded plastic. All of this needs to be viewed in ways to make our living more sustainable in the long run in terms of the use of world resources.
John Chubb
Cheltenham, Gloucestershire

• Whatever one’s political party, the establishment of a National Infrastructure Commission will be welcome if it drives forward the painfully slow process of government commitment to the projects the UK needs if it is to compete, thrive and survive in a global economy. Not least among its priorities must be a renaissance in low-carbon rapid rail links around the UK and not just HS2.

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Source: Guardian Environment

Alternatives to plastic bags must be greener | Letters

The plastic bag levy will damage the environment unless the alternatives have impeccable environmental attributes – and most of them don’t (New plastic bag tax does not go far enough, say campaigners, 5 October).

The exemptions alone will undermine most of the putative savings. Not only that, but, if we had a better waste-disposal system using efficient combined heat and power incinerators, we could capture the energy from the “borrowed oil” which plastic bags represent. Only 5% of crude oil is used to make all of the plastics we use, and plastic bags are only about 5% of that. A single car trip to the supermarket each week wastes more energy and creates more pollution than a dozen plastic bags.

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Source: Guardian Environment

Earth’s rising population spells trouble ahead | Letters

Mark Carney warns that climate change will lead to financial crises and falling living standards unless companies (have to) come clean about their current and future carbon emissions (Report, 30 September). In the same issue George Monbiot notes that there is water flowing on Mars and asks if there is intelligent life on Earth. Monbiot also reminds us the world has lost half of its vertebrate wildlife in the last 40 years. It’s surely no coincidence that the human population has doubled in our lifetime (we were born in the 1940s). Sadly, population control seems to have become an issue that we are reluctant to discuss.

As biologists, we know that great population growth of a species is frequently ended by a cataclysmic population crash. Is that what we want? Climate change is being driven not just by what we do but by the sheer numbers of us doing it. We are already seeing crop failures, desertification, soil impoverishment and water shortages.

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Source: Guardian Environment

Joyce Magor obituary

Expert in the forecast and control of locust plagues

Locust plagues are at least as old as recorded history. The desert locust is the locust of the Qur’an and the Bible’s eighth plague of Egypt; they have probably been insect pests since man first began to grow crops. When, in the late 1980s, swarms of desert locusts extended from Mauritania and Senegal to the Persian Gulf, Joyce Magor, who has died aged 82, was sent to Dakar as a locust forecaster to help international efforts to control the swarms that were threatening farming livelihoods in the Sahel region.

This was the first plague in nearly 40 years – and African countries were unprepared and highly vulnerable. Donors were faced with providing nearly $300m in emergency aid to cope with the crisis. The plague, which declined in early 1989, triggered an extensive international effort to develop improved methods to predict the size of locust populations locusts and more environmentally sensitive ways to control them.

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Source: Guardian Environment

What happened to wildlife when Chernobyl drove humans out? It thrived | @GrrlScientist

People were evacuated after the Chernobyl accident, but what happened to the local wildlife? A new study shows that wildlife in the Chernobyl disaster zone is thriving, indicating that the presence of humans is more damaging to wildlife than is radiation poisoning

After a fire and explosion destroyed the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in 1986, more than 100,000 people were permanently evacuated from the area to avoid radiation levels that were twenty times greater than the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings. But what happened to the local wildlife? According to a letter published today in the journal, Current Biology, scientists report that the Chernobyl disaster area is home to a rich and varied wildlife community, indicating that the mere presence of people is more damaging to wildlife than is radiation poisoning.

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Source: Guardian Environment

Wildlife thriving around Chernobyl nuclear plant despite radiation

High numbers of elk, deer, boar and wolves show long-term effect of world’s worst nuclear accident is less damaging than everyday human activity, say scientists

Wildlife is abundant around the site of the Chernobyl nuclear plant, despite the presence of radiation released by the world’s most catastrophic nuclear explosion nearly three decades ago, researchers have found.

The number of elk, deer and wild boar within the Belarusian half of the Chernobyl exclusion zone today are around the same as those in four nearby uncontaminated nature reserves.

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Source: Guardian Environment