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The Florida Keys are still closed until further notice. On the far side of the blockade that inhabitants of the lower Keys negotiate to return to their homes, the US One highway, a tarmac spine over the limestone vertebrae of the islands, makes its way 127 miles down to Key West, battered and torn. Key West, final south-easterly outpost of mainland North America and the self-styled “last resort”, is, still, four days after Hurricane Irma hit, almost completely out of contact with the outside world.
Related: Hurricane Irma: how the Florida Keys' paradise became a 'humanitarian crisis'
Continue reading...UN agencies warn conflict and climate change are undermining food security, causing chronic undernourishment and threatening to reverse years of progress
The number of hungry people in the world has increased for the first time since the turn of the century, sparking concern that conflict and climate change could be reversing years of progress.
In 2016, the number of chronically undernourished people reached 815 million, up 38 million from the previous year. The increase is due largely to the proliferation of violence and climate-related shocks, according to the state of food insecurity and nutrition in 2017, a report produced by five UN agencies.
Related: Poll reveals 85% of Americans oblivious to hunger in Africa and Middle East
Continue reading...New report paints a bleak picture for wildlife in a country that is home to a quarter of the Earth’s wetlands, 8,500 rivers and more than 2m lakes
A new analysis looking at the long-term trends of more than 900 species of wildlife in Canada has found that half of them have seen their populations decline, including several species already listed as threatened or endangered.
The Living Planet Report Canada, released on Thursday by World Wildlife Fund Canada, paints a bleak picture for wildlife in a country that is home to a quarter of the earth’s wetlands, 8,500 rivers and more than 2m freshwater lakes.
Related: Big oil v orcas: Canadians fight pipeline that threatens killer whales on the brink
Climate change is being witnessed in the Arctic at a rate really not seen elsewhere in the world
Related: Why do endangered right whales keep dying off the coast of Canada?
Continue reading...Author and academic Nancy MacLean says cynicism about the motives of public servants, including government-backed climate scientists, can be traced to a group of neoliberals and their ‘toxic’ ideas
You’ll have heard that line of argument about cancer scientists, right?
The one where they’re just in it for the government grant money and that they don’t really want to find a cure, because if they did they’d be out of a job?
Related: A despot in disguise: one man’s mission to rip up democracy | George Monbiot
Related: Maybe Charles Koch isn't worried about climate change because he doesn't get the science
Related: Irma and Harvey lay the costs of climate change denial at Trump’s door
Continue reading...Posturing and blathering has become far more important than substance, and reflects the collective hole Australian politics finds itself in
Congratulations Australia. Two years have passed without a leadership coup being launched against a sitting prime minister. In our unhinged system, that level of stability is a genuine achievement.
So, hooray for #auspol. Except the voters are still ropeable, and politics doesn’t feel all that stable, does it?
Related: Tony Abbott calls for end to all energy subsidies, including on coal
Related: Turnbull government secures deal to scrap media ownership controls
Related: Coalition's public shaming of AGL another assault on imaginary energy enemies | Katharine Murphy
Continue reading...Just over a year ago, Black Lives Matter UK successfully shut down London City airport. Our aims were to call attention to three things: Britain’s historical responsibility for global temperature changes, while the UK remains among the least vulnerable countries to the direct effects of climate change; second, that black people and poor people globally suffer the most from environmental impacts; and third, that safe freedom of movement is a reality only for the privileged, wealthy and mostly white.
Many people are increasingly being forced to flee their homes owing to environmentally driven conflicts, such as those in Sudan, whose plight was named by the UN as the tip of a melting iceberg when it came to increased forced climate-related migration and conflict. Ten years on, we are witnessing another year in which hundreds do not survive their attempts to reach British and European shores.
Continue reading...The race is on to prove that CO2 can be taken from the air and recycled into profitable, carbon neutral fuels. But cost and investment obstacles remain
In an industrial greenhouse about 30km from Zurich, plump aubergines and juicy cherry tomatoes are ripening to perfection. Growing Mediterranean crops in Switzerland would traditionally be energy intensive but these vegetables are very nearly carbon-neutral. The greenhouse uses waste energy from a nearby refuse plant, and carbon dioxide from the world’s first commercial direct air capture plant.
The facility, designed by Zurich-based start-up Climeworks, pumps the gas into greenhouses to boost the plants’ photosynthesis and increase their yield, it hopes, by up to 20%. Climeworks says it will extract around 900 tonnes of CO2 a year from the air.
Related: Indian firm makes carbon capture breakthrough
Continue reading...A convincing family drama merges with our heedless despoiling of the planet in this futuristic novel of climate breakdown
Reading Australian James Bradley’s “cli-fi” novel as large areas of Asia and Texas are flooded ramps up the disturbing effect of its incrementally apocalyptic scenarios. Bird die-offs, mass fish deaths, wildfires and storms are just the beginning as Bradley zooms into the future via a sequence of linked narratives. The “clade” of the title is the set of all the descendants of Adam Leith, a climatologist; each chapter focuses on the next generation of Adam’s family (and naturally his name has symbolic resonance), enabling Bradley’s predictions for Earth to fast-forward at Koyaanisqatsi-like speed while the human actors replay their inherited traits of awkwardness, poor communication skills and attachment issues. The structure, at once intimate and epic, works well as a means of delivering human-scale stories against the backdrop of the most human story of all: our heedless despoiling of the home planet. Almost inevitably, there is something of the blockbuster movie about this: the beleaguered family battling to stay together as the world ends. But Bradley’s deft merging of near-future predictions and cutting-edge science into a convincing setting for his family drama enables us to focus on the interactions between the characters. The apocalypse is happening, even as our messed-up lives distract us.
• Clade is published by Titan. To order a copy for £6.79 (RRP £7.99) go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99.
Continue reading...With neoliberalism in crisis, it’s time to emphasise the importance to people of belonging and co-operation, argues this optimistic call to action
That which is dangerous can also be thrilling. Many liberal democracies are engaged in something dangerous, as questions of identity, community and nationhood are being asked with a fresh urgency, with some of the answers turning out to be deeply disturbing. But is there also something thrilling going on? The capacity for democracy to throw up surprises, such as Britain’s 2017 general election result, is mesmerising. Brexit may be a famous act of economic self-harm, but something new will be born one way or the other. Still the danger persists and may be growing.
That this is happening now, as opposed to 10 or 20 years ago, is a direct consequence of the disintegration of the economic policy framework that has held sway in Britain, the US, the European commission and many multilateral institutions for much of the previous 40 years. That framework is often referred to as “neoliberalism”, even if the term irritates a certain class of pundit, for whom it is some sort of swearword without any clear referent. Its disintegration is producing conflicting sympathies, as many on the left come to realise the xenophobia that can be unleashed in the absence of stable market-based rules.
Related: Neoliberalism: the idea that swallowed the world
Continue reading...High mountains of Asia hold biggest store of frozen water outside the poles and feed many of the world’s great rivers, including the Ganges
Asia’s mountain glaciers will lose at least a third of their mass through global warming by the century’s end, with dire consequences for millions of people who rely on them for fresh water, researchers have said.
This is a best-case scenario, based on the assumption that the world manages to limit average global warming to 1.5C (2.7F) over pre-industrial levels, a team wrote in the journal Nature.
Related: Planet has just 5% chance of reaching Paris climate goal, study says
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