Environment

Once a booming timber area, Grays Harbor County is the site of three proposed oil terminals. The local fishing industry sees the uptick in oil movement as a big risk, with limited economic benefits.

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Rising population will hit UK’s self sufficiency if government continues to ignore British food production, say NFU

More than half of the UK’s food will come from overseas within a generation, as a rising population and stalling farm productivity combine to erode what remains of the UK’s self-sufficiency, according to farming leaders.

The UK’s failure to produce more food will leave households more vulnerable to volatile prices and potential shortages, the National Farmers’ Union will say at its annual conference on Tuesday. The farming body will call on politicians to encourage new investment in farming, and develop a national plan for a higher degree of food self-sufficiency.

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Hexham, Northumberland: The river Tyne is surpisingly low

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A schoolboy from rural Victoria returned home to find a koala behind the wheel of his family’s Land Rover. Sam Box, 15, told Nine News that he had just stepped off the school bus when he noticed the koala ‘trying to drive’

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First steps towards producing shale gas meet with increasing concern among Bolivian civil society

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Many coastal communities that harvest shellfish could soon be hurt by ocean acidification, a study finds. The Pacific Northwest and New England are hot spots, as are estuaries along the East Coast.

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Many coastal communities that harvest shellfish could soon be hurt by ocean acidification, a study finds. The Pacific Northwest and New England are hot spots, as are estuaries along the East Coast.

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Big metal shipping containers are often used to import food from around the globe. Now, two Boston entrepreneurs are modifying those containers to grow local produce hydroponically, 365 days a year.

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Big metal shipping containers are often used to import food from around the globe. Now, two Boston entrepreneurs are modifying those containers to grow local produce hydroponically, 365 days a year.

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EA refuses permit for farm designed to house 24,500 pigs owing to intolerable impact on locals, with proposed Derbyshire site within 100 metres of homes

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A major UN climate summit in Paris later this year should call on countries to make tough carbon cuts to avoid dangerous global warming, EU document says

The world’s states should commit to a legally binding emissions cut of 60% by 2050, with five-yearly reviews, in a Paris Protocol to replace the moribund Kyoto agreement at a climate summit later this year, according to a leaked EU document.

But environmentalists have questioned the integrity of the headline 60% figure, and a strategy which is seen as overly-tilted towards the US.

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New book investigates climate prediction accuracy to determine who’s credible

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Richard Berman routed funding for at least 16 studies and five front groups attacking Environmental Protection Agency rules on power plant emissions

To Washington insiders he is Dr Evil: the hidden orchestrator of industry campaigns against the Humane Society, Mothers against Drunk Driving, and other seemingly uncontroversial groups.

Now Richard Berman, a one-time lobbyist turned industry strategist, has zeroed in on another target: Barack Obama’s new power plant rules.

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Delhi police investigating accusations made by a 29-year-old female researcher that she was sent unwanted emails, text and WhatsApp messages

The chair of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Rajendra Pachauri, has pulled out of a high level meeting of the organisation after police in India began investigating an allegation of sexual harassment against him.

Pachauri, 74, is accused of sexually harassing a 29-year-old female researcher from soon after she joined his Delhi-based research group, The Energy and Resources Institute (Teri). The lawyers for the woman, who cannot be named, said the harassment by Pachauri included unwanted emails, text messages and WhatsApp messages.

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Tim Cook says Apple’s two data centres, in Ireland and Denmark, will be among the largest in the world and have most advanced green building designs

Apple has announced £1.25bn plans to build two data centres in Europe powered entirely on renewable energy.

Chief executive Tim Cook said the developments in Galway, Ireland and Jutland in Denmark would be Apple’s largest-ever European project and would “introduce some of our most advanced green building designs”. At 120,000 sq m each, the centres will be among the largest in the world.

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Norman Ellis Gregory’s primary mode of transport was Lancaster bombers during the war, but he never gave up his bike. These days he cycles up to 5,000 miles every year

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European Green Capital for 2015 becomes first city in the world to roll out One Tree Per Child initiative

All of Bristol’s 36,000 primary school pupils will get the chance to plant at least one tree as part of a global initiative launched by the pop star and actor Olivia Newton-John.

Bristol is the first city in the world to roll out the One Tree Per Child initiative, which will also involve experts going into schools and talking to youngsters about the environment.

Related: Is Bristol a worthy Green Capital of Europe – or is it all for show?

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Liu Xiang says experience so far of the NSW project on edge of Liverpool Plains did not tally with Australia’s ‘proclaimed enthusiasm for offshore investment’

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ABC program criticised a report by the Australian’s environment editor which claimed a study by Steven Cooper found people living near windfarms faced a greater risk of health problems

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Stalbridge, Dorset: This stone, locally known as forest marble and of the same make-up as Cotswold stone, is hard oolitic limestone

Beside our road, on the way south into Dorset, a great length of old and remarkable dry stone walling always catches the eye. Some sections are still compact, three metres high and topped with coping stones, but others are crumbling. The entire wall, five miles long, encircles Stalbridge Park, enlarged and enclosed by an 18th-century owner.

It turns off the main road at the county boundary, where, beside Landshire Lane, parts are reduced to heaps of rubble; on the opposite side, at a blocked gateway, a sign tells you that Stalbridge Quarries, formerly close by (and handy to supply walling stone) has moved. So I went to find it.

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