Ed Miliband sets new rules on solar panels and approves three giant solar farms as Labour seeks to end years of Tory inaction
Keir Starmer’s new Labour government today unveils plans for a “rooftop revolution” that will see millions more homes fitted with solar panels in order to bring down domestic energy bills and tackle the climate crisis.
The energy secretary, Ed Miliband, also took the hugely controversial decision this weekend to approve three massive solar farms in the east of England that had been blocked by Tory ministers.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
07/13/2024 - 13:14
07/13/2024 - 09:28
Johannes-Harm Hovinga has to take painkillers to complete 20-day artistic protest at Museum Arnhem
Every day for the last two weeks, Johannes-Harm Hovinga has sat at a raised table in Museum Arnhem, using a two-hole page puncher to systematically perforate the 7,705-page sixth assessment report produced by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
He has printed it out on coloured paper and the result is a vibrant heap piling up at the artist’s feet.
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07/13/2024 - 09:00
Experts say devastating hurricane so early in season is ‘big wake-up call’ – and predict even more powerful storms
The poignancy was unmistakable: prognosticators at Colorado State University amended their already miserable seasonal tropical cyclone forecast on Monday precisely as Hurricane Beryl was filling Houston’s streets with floodwater and knocking out power to more than 2m homes and businesses.
“A likely harbinger of a hyperactive season” was how CSU researchers characterized Beryl, which set numerous records on the way to its Texas landfall, including the earliest category 5 hurricane, strongest ever June storm, and most powerful to strike the southern Windward Islands.
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07/13/2024 - 07:28
Campaigners welcome ‘seismic shift’ and urge museum bosses to review links with other fossil fuel sponsors
The Science Museum has been forced to cut ties with oil giant Equinor over its sponsor’s environmental record, the Observer can reveal.
Equinor has sponsored the museum’s interactive “WonderLab” since 2016, but the relationship is now coming to close, a move that will be seen as a major victory for climate change campaigners.
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07/13/2024 - 04:00
Southern Water says it wants to protect rare chalk streams, but campaigners say it could pollute the Solent
A proposed £1.2bn scheme to recycle effluent from the sewage system and turn it in to drinking water has been criticised as a threat to the environment and a potential costly “white elephant”.
Southern Water wants to treat effluent – wastewater from the sewage system – at a plant at Havant in Hampshire and pipe it into a nearby spring-fed reservoir to boost water supplies during droughts. The scheme would ensure less water is extracted from two rare chalk streams: the Rivers Test and Itchen.
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07/12/2024 - 19:00
The Campbell’s keeled glass-snail was officially extinct until March 2020, when a local citizen scientist found it on the remote Norfolk Island. 40 of the thumbnail-sized snails were taken to a dedicated and quarantined captive breeding facility in Taronga zoo. 40 baby snails were born in the last fortnight, after initially struggling to reproduce in captivity
Lion brothers make record-breaking 1.5km swim in hope of finding mates - video
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07/12/2024 - 15:32
Residents suffer sleepless nights without air-conditioning as energy company blames fallen trees for outages
Nearly 800,000 Houston residents remain without electricity five days after the category-1 Hurricane Beryl downed power lines across the city. The outages come as the city is under heat advisory, with heat index values over 100F (37.8C).
Residents have described insufferable heat, sleepless nights, and fear for the wellbeing of elderly parents, young children and disabled relatives amid scorching temperatures.
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07/12/2024 - 11:41
Lakes, with their rich biodiversity and important ecological services, face a concerning trend: rapidly increasing temperatures. A recent study by limnologists and climate modelers reveals that if current anthropogenic warming continues until the end of this century, lakes worldwide will likely experience pervasive and unprecedented surface and subsurface warming, far outside the range of what they have encountered before.
07/12/2024 - 10:00
Donations grew dramatically after Australia’s black summer but animal carers say they didn’t receive enough
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Australia’s largest wildlife rescue organisation faces a landmark vote on Sunday, as members unhappy with the distribution of donations after the black summer bushfires attempt to change its constitution.
The income of the Wildlife Information, Rescue and Education Service (Wires), based in NSW, ballooned from $3m to more than $100m thanks to the success of its fundraising campaign after the catastrophic fires of 2019-20, which burned millions of hectares of land and reportedly killed or displaced 3 billion animals.
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07/12/2024 - 09:14
Four animals released in Wallington estate in Northumberland last year have transformed the landscape
The first beavers in Northumberland for more than 400 years have been stupendously busy. There are new dam systems, as well as canals and burrows, new wildlife-rich wetlands and, thrillingly, a baby beaver.
Whether it is male or female remains to be seen. “Beavers don’t have external genitalia,” said Heather Devey, an expert. “They are really hard to sex. It’s really only through their anal glands that you can tell.”
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