Environment

Department for Exiting the EU publishes position papers on Euratom treaty and European court of justice

The Department for Exiting the European Union (DExEU) has published position papers on the UK’s stance in the Brexit negotiations on the European atomic energy community (Euratom) and the role of the European court of justice (ECJ).

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Global Witness uses an extensive network of local contacts and other techniques to gather evidence every time a defender is reported as killed. Because so few killings happen in populous places, very few make the official list

• Read more from the environmental defenders project here. You can see the names of those who have died so far this year here

Who are land and environmental defenders?

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185 people were killed while defending the environment or land in 2015, with Brazil, Nicaragua and the Philippines among the countries with most deaths

• Read more from the environmental defenders project here. You can see the names of those who have died so far this year here
  

José Antônio Dória dos Santos (Zé Minhenga)

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Exclusive Activists, wildlife rangers and indigenous leaders are dying violently at the rate of about four a week, with a growing sense around the world that ‘anyone can kill environmental defenders without repercussions’

• See the names of all defenders who have died so far this year here. Read more from the project here.

• Read this article in Spanish

Last year was the most perilous ever for people defending their community’s land, natural resources or wildlife, with new research showing that environmental defenders are being killed at the rate of almost four a week across the world.

Two hundred environmental activists, wildlife rangers and indigenous leaders trying to protect their land were killed in 2016, according to the watchdog group Global Witness – more than double the number killed five years ago.

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In Guatemala, one of the world’s largest silver deposits reaps millions for its Canadian owners but for local farmers the price is their land and even their lives

Deep underground, buried in the lush hills of southern Guatemala, lies a veritable treasure trove: silver, tonnes of it, one of the largest deposits in the world.

But it’s above ground where the really dangerous activity goes on. On a dusty highway, about 50 peasant farmers stand praying in a circle, a makeshift roadblock intended to stop trucks reaching the mine. They have already been violently dispersed by police teargas. Now they fear the army might move in.

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This year, in collaboration with Global Witness, the Guardian aims to record the deaths of all people killed while protecting land or natural resources. At the current rate, about four defenders will die this week somewhere on the planet

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200 people were killed while defending the environment or land in 2016, with Brazil, Colombia and the Philippines among the countries with most deaths

• Read more from the environmental defenders project here. You can see the names of those who have died so far this year here

Anowarul Islam (Angur)

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Increase in peak electricity demand could be more than capacity of planned Hinkley Point C nuclear power station by 2030

A dramatic growth in electric vehicles on Britain’s roads could see peak electricity demand jump by more than the capacity of the Hinkley Point C nuclear power station by 2030, according to National Grid.

The number of plug-in cars and vans could reach 9m by 2030, up from around 90,000 today, said the company, which runs the UK’s national transmission networks for electricity and gas.

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IEA says growth in production as fracking opens up shale oil and gas deposits will mean US rivals Russia and Norway

The American shale gas revolution will enjoy a second wind as rapid growth in domestic production sees the US join the world’s club of top gas exporters, a leading energy authority has predicted.

Fracking has already opened up US shale oil and gas deposits, leading to a fall in gas prices and a drop in greenhouse gas emissions as power generation switches from coal to gas, as well as reducing America’s historical reliance on fossil fuel imports.

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With one elephant killed every 25 minutes, the poaching crisis continues. But with the commitment and activism of a growing global network – dominated by women – laws and attitudes around the world are changing

If dedication and hard work were all it took, Maria Mossman would have saved every last elephant by now. Despite having two children, aged five and seven, and a part-time job for a large corporation, she also spends 35 to 40 hours a week as an unpaid activist. It was even more time when the children were younger. “I used to come home from work at about 4pm and then sit on my computer, networking with other groups and activists until two o’clock in the morning,” she recalls.

Mossman, 41, got heavily involved in elephant activism in 2013. As well as founding Action for Elephants UK (AFEUK), she’s one of the key organisers of the global elephant and rhino marches. “It’s really hard work,” she says. “Really stressful. Just before the marches you say: ‘We’re not going to do this again.’ And as soon as one is over you start planning the next one.”

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As a Trump appointee pushes for televised slanging match, a New York magazine cover story sparks a different debate – should we talk about how bad global warming could actually get?

In the United States, people who refuse to accept even some of the basic tenets of climate science are calling for a heated debate.

“Who better to do that than a group of scientists … getting together and having a robust discussion for all the world to see,” the boss of the Environmental Protection Agency, Scott Pruitt, told Reuters.

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David Slater has been fighting for years over who has the copyright to photos taken by monkeys using his camera, and says he’s struggling as a result

A US appeals court has debated whether or not a monkey can own the copyright to a selfie, while the photographer whose camera captured the famous image watched a livestream of the proceedings from his home in the UK.

David Slater could not afford the air fare to San Francisco to attend the hearing on Wednesday. Nor can he afford to replace his broken camera equipment, or pay the attorney who has been defending him since the crested black macaque sued him in 2015, and is exploring other ways to earn an income.

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Blockchain-enabled energy trading could help lower carbon emissions but efficiency and privacy issues must first be overcome

The blockchain. It is the much-hyped, virtually foolproof digital ledger that allows cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin to flourish without the need for banks and governments, and promises to enable everything from the creation of ethical supply chains, to the ensuring of instantaneous payment on delivery of goods and services agreed to in immutable smart contracts.

The techno-utopian predictions for this system ignore one crucial detail, however. The intense data processing required by blockchain pulls in an extraordinary amount of electricity, and widespread use of it would drag global energy markets into the abyss – and bring the world’s carbon emissions budget down with it.

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Labor criticises ‘appalling intervention’ by Craig Kelly, who is chair of backbench energy committee

Renewable energy will kill people this winter, Craig Kelly, the chair of the Coalition’s backbench environment and energy committee has claimed.

Kelly, a Liberal backbencher, said the deaths would be caused by people not being able to afford to heat their homes in winter. He blamed rising fuel costs on the government’s renewable energy target.

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How about a national network to link people who undertake to pick up just one piece of litter every time they go out, suggests Wendy Harvey

What can we do about litter? It spoils our streets and countryside and ends up being washed out to sea, polluting our oceans. It frustrates and saddens many of us, and no one seems to know what to do about it. As soon as it is cleared up it reappears in a never-ending cycle. So here’s an idea: how about launching a positive-spirited national network to link together people who undertake to pick up just one piece of litter every time they go out (Andrew Mayers: I pick up plastic waste to save it from landfill. It’s lonely but worth it, 4 July)?

Why might this work where other approaches have failed? Because it is such a small easy thing for each person to commit to, but if many people did it the cumulative results could be surprising. Being a lone litter-picker can feel like being Sisyphus, doomed to push his boulder up the hill again and again. If each person knew they were part of a network doing the same thing, results would begin to be seen.

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Electric taxis | Pay caps | Unpaved gardens | Medieval monks | True north? | Coining it in

How welcome to see an electric taxi, and we should hail it by all means (Financial, 12 July). But is it the first? Far from it, apparently. Electric taxis first appeared in London at the end of the 19th century, but the “hummingbirds”, as they were known, were very quickly hounded off the road by their horse-drawn rivals. The London Electric Cab Company, which built them, went bust. See Rethink by Steven Poole, reviewed by you July 2016, bought by me July 2017.
David Beake
Budock Water, Cornwall

• Yet again a government department pits public sector workers against taxpayers, as though these are two distinct groups (May under fire as teacher pay held at 1%, 11 July). I fear that as public sector pay becomes more and more eroded, many will indeed find themselves paid below the threshold to start paying tax – could this be the ultimate aim of this damaging cap?
Deirdre Burrell
Mortimer, Berkshire

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In Boigu, part of Australia but just six kilometres from Papua New Guinea, roads are being washed into the sea

Torres Strait residents face being forced from their homes by climate change, as their islands are lost to rising seas.

On Boigu Island, the most northerly inhabited island in Australia, just six kilometres from Papua New Guinea, the community’s cemetery faces inundation and roads are being washed into the sea. A seawall installed to protect the community is already failing.

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Government’s preferred choice of Oxford economist Dieter Helm is controversial owing to criticism of wind and solar power

An academic who is a vocal critic of the price of renewable power is the government’s preferred choice to head a review of the financial cost of energy in the UK.

Dieter Helm, an economist at the University of Oxford, has been chosen by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) to carry out the review, the Guardian has learned. The Conservative manifesto promised that the resulting report would be the first step towards “competitive and affordable energy costs”.

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Drinks giant’s proposals to reduce plastic waste are unambitious and vague, say some enviromental groups

Coca-Cola’s plan to reduce the millions of plastic bottles that end in the world’s oceans every day has been criticised by environmental groups as unambitious “PR spin”.

The world’s biggest drinks brand, estimated to produce more than 100bn plastic bottles every year, raised its 2020 target for the amount of recycled plastic used in its bottles from 40% to 50%.

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Scientists say the iceberg is one of the largest seen by satellites. But the full implications of its separation off remain to be seen.

(Image credit: John Sonntag/NASA)