Energy & the Environment News and Discussions

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Sri Lanka facing marine disaster from burning ship: Environment official
29 May 2021

NEGOMBO, Sri Lanka: Sri Lanka is facing its worst beach pollution crisis as tonnes of plastic waste from a burning container ship wash ashore, a senior environment official said Saturday (May 29).

Fishermen have been banned from an 80km stretch of coast near the Singapore-registered MV X-Press Pearl as an international firefighting operation went into a 10th day.

"There is smoke and intermittent flames seen from the ship," navy spokesman Captain Indika de Silva told AFP. "However, the vessel is stable and it is still in anchorage."

Authorities are more worried about millions of polyethylene pellets washing up on beaches and threatening fish-breeding shallow waters.

The affected seafront is known for its crabs and jumbo prawns as well as its tourist beaches.
https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/as ... r-14910244
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Recycling textile waste: ‘A solution exists, we can’t go backwards’
Sat 29 May 2021

An Australian startup working on a process to recycle textiles by turning worn-out fabric into raw materials says it has funding to build a world-first commercial-scale plant in Queensland.

The federal government held a first national roundtable on textile waste on Wednesday – recognition of a piling-up problem that results in Australians discarding an estimated 780,000 tonnes of textile waste each year, according to a 2020 national waste report.

The problem is exacerbated by the lack of an effective recycling process. Studies show many large-scale garment recycling systems provide negligible benefits and can be as environmentally harmful as producing raw fabrics.

BlockTexx, an Australian company that has developed its process with researchers at the Queensland University of Technology, hopes it can help “close the loop” by diverting textiles from landfill, and at the same time replacing virgin material.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... -backwards
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‘Black Wednesday’ for big oil as courtrooms and boardrooms turn on industry
The world’s patience with the fossil fuel industry is wearing thin. This was the stark message delivered to major international oil companies this week in an unprecedented day of reckoning for their role in the climate crisis.

In a stunning series of defeats for the oil industry, over the course of less than 24 hours, courtrooms and boardrooms turned on the executives at Shell, ExxonMobil and Chevron. Shell was ordered by a court in The Hague to go far further to reduce its climate emissions, while shareholder rebellions in the US imposed emissions targets at Chevron and a boardroom overhaul at Exxon.

“There is no doubt that this week’s news has been not so much a shot across the bows as a direct hit to the hull of Big Oil,” says Mark Lewis, the chief sustainability strategist at BNP Paribas Asset Management. “They will have to recognise now that no amount of patching up the hole will do; shareholders and society want the vessel completely overhauled.”
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Clean energy summit ready to start virtually in Santiago, Chile
May 31st 2021

The Global Clean Energy Summit is to be held for the first time in Latin America and it is due to span from Monday, May 31, through Friday, June 4 in Santiago, Chile, albeit in a virtual format.

Leaders from 27 countries will convene at the Clean Energy Ministerial (CEM 12) which will be held concurrently with the Mission Innovation Ministerial (MI-6).

The main topics to be discussed are decarbonisation, electromobility, green hydrogen and the innovations necessary to achieve carbon neutrality.

“We are at a turning point, in which we have to take the necessary actions to push the energy transformation to achieve a real change that allows reducing global warming before it is too late,” said Chile's Minister of Energy and Mining Juan Carlos Jobet.

“This summit seeks precisely to reach agreements that allow for the adoption of the technologies and innovations necessary to achieve this and is the prelude to what will be COP 26 in a few more months.”
https://en.mercopress.com/2021/05/31/cl ... iago-chile
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Covid sent Australia’s carbon emissions plummeting in 2020 to lowest levels in 30 years
Mon 31 May 2021

Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions dropped last year to levels not seen in more than 30 years due mostly to the coronavirus pandemic that put a handbrake on fossil fuel burning in the transport sector and slowed economic activity.

New government data released Monday shows sectors where emissions fell sharply in 2020 due to factors beyond the government’s control – the global pandemic and the end of a sharp drought – were starting to rebound.

In the final quarter of 2020, transport emissions – which includes road and rail movement as well as domestic air travel – rose by 11% on the previous three months, reflecting the easing of lockdown restrictions and increases in domestic air travel.

Increasing levels of solar and wind energy was continuing to push out coal in the electricity sector that accounts for a third of the country’s emissions.

Emissions in this sector have dropped 21% since 2009. A milder December meant people had used less power for cooling than usual, helping cut emissions further.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... n-30-years
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Fears raised over risks of water contamination as result of HS2 works
Mon 31 May 2021

Environmental campaigners have raised concerns about potential contamination of the drinking water supply during the construction of the HS2 high-speed rail link, after the company was ordered to disclose internal documents that provide frank assessments of the risks.

The documents were revealed following a battle lasting more than two years. A Green party member, Sarah Green, unsuccessfully tried freedom of information requests and the information commissioner to gain access to the internal analysis of risk to water supplies from the HS2 project before a tribunal ruled in her favour, ordering the rail company to disclose three unredacted water risk assessments to her.

These documents reveal that six public water sources, including at Blackford and Northmoor in Hillingdon and West Hyde, Amersham, Chalfont St Giles and Little Missenden in Buckinghamshire, may need additional treatment works. Some may need to close during construction and others are awaiting planned closures.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/202 ... -hs2-works
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Glasgow to plant 18m trees as city readies for Cop26 climate summit
Tue 1 Jun 2021

Councils in the Glasgow area have pledged to plant 18m trees – equivalent to 10 trees for every resident – as the city prepares to host a global climate summit later this year.

The Clyde Climate Forest (CCF) project hopes to increase tree cover in urban areas of Glasgow to 20% and ensure that a fifth of the region’s rural landscape is forested or planted with native woodland over the next decade.

Glasgow is the host city for the Cop26 climate talks in November, when world leaders are expected to set much tougher targets to combat global heating, as evidence grows that the world is close to breaching the 1.5C limit agreed in the Paris climate treaty in 2016.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/202 ... ate-summit
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Alaska: Biden to suspend Trump Arctic drilling leases

Published 3 hours ago

US President Joe Biden's administration will suspend oil and gas leases in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge pending an environmental review.

The move reverses former President Donald Trump's decision to sell oil leases in the refuge to expand fossil fuel and mineral development.

The giant Alaskan wilderness is home to many important species, including polar bears, caribou and wolves.

Arctic tribal leaders have welcomed the move but Republicans are opposed.

Covering some 19 million acres (78,000 sq km), the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) is often described as America's last great wilderness.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-57322511


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World’s soils ‘under great pressure’, says UN pollution report
Fri 4 Jun 2021

The world’s soils, which provide 95% of humanity’s food, are “under great pressure”, according to a UN report on soil pollution.

Soils are also the largest active store of carbon, after the oceans, and therefore crucial in fighting the climate crisis. But the report said industrial pollution, mining, farming and poor waste management are poisoning soils, with the “polluter pays” principle absent in many countries.

Pollutants include metals, cyanides, DDT and other pesticides, and long-lasting organic chemicals such as PCBs, the report said, making food and water unsafe, cutting the productivity of fields and harming wildlife. However, it said most releases of pollutants that end up in soils are not easily quantified and therefore the true damage remains highly uncertain.

The global production of industrial chemicals each year has doubled since 2000 to 2.3bn tonnes, the report said, and is projected to nearly double again by 2030, meaning soil pollution is expected to increase further. The UN also warns of emerging contaminants including pharmaceuticals, antimicrobials that lead to drug-resistant bacteria, and plastics.

“Global soils are under great pressure,” said Qu Dongyu, head of the UN food and agriculture organisation. “This thin crust of the Earth’s surface, the soil, supports all terrestrial life and is involved in many key ecosystem services that are essential to the environment and to human health and wellbeing.”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... ing-mining
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The battle to save England’s chalk streams, one of the planet’s rarest habitats
Sun 6 Jun 2021

Conservationist Allen Beechey remembers a time, in the 1990s, when trout swam along the River Chess as it meandered through the centre of his home town of Chesham. “It was a gentle, reassuring sight and it helped trigger my love of nature,” Beechey said last week.

Then came the droughts, the river dried up – sometimes for several years at a stretch – and the fish died out. They have yet to come back to the Buckinghamshire town.

But Beechey has a dream that one day trout will return to this part of the river, which is one of most important chalk streams in England. It would be a signal that this critically important but highly endangered habitat was returning to good health after years of damage caused by increasing water abstraction and other threats.

These hopes were raised recently when the local water company, Affinity, announced it had stopped abstracting water from the Chess. Previously it had been taking out about 6m litres a day from the river from two pumping stations at Chesham and Chartridge, a nearby village. This abstraction has now been halted and water for the region is now being piped in from other areas of southern England, including regions close to the Thames.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... t-habitats
"We all have our time machines, don't we. Those that take us back are memories...And those that carry us forward, are dreams."

-H.G Wells.
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