The UK government is being sued after it gave permission for a large new gas powered power plant despite the fact that local planning refuse permission due to the carbon emissions it would produce.
Andrea Ledson overruled the local decision-making process. Drax the power producer, talked about adding carbon capture processes in the future, but not while building. If completed, this power station will emit 75% of the carbon dioxide emissions set aside for power generation in the government’s plans. Added to the plans to increase the size of the coal power plant in county Durham, it suggests a total lack of seriousness over Global warming with the UK government. Given our hosting of the next carbon cutting conference later this year, the governments behaviour is highly embarrassing and thoroughly foolish.
Their supposedly world-leading decision to make the country carbon neutral by 2050 is undone by their continued decisions that go against this aim. On the one hand they demand praise for an aim they have put in law, but on the other hand continue on with business as usual decisions that makes that aim impossible to meet.
African wild dog are some of the most efficient hunters on the planet. Significantly smaller than lion or leopard, often even than cheetah, African wild dogs are astoundingly efficient when they come to hunting, with one of the highest percentage success rates in the animal kingdom. Due to their need for huge reserves, to have a viable population, it is not unusual for them to spread into unprotected land.
12 of the African wild dogs in the West Midlands Safari Park got out of their enclosure. Before they could be caught, they had killed six Persian Fallow deer and 10 Barbary sheep. Their escape was not down to negligence or incompetence, but down to storm Clara.
Wild dogs are small predators compared to Lions or Leopards, but are highly effective. They have a higher success rate than any other savannah top predator. Although in the wild they would run if approached by humans, when escaped from a zoo they will be scared and so their behaviour would be unpredictable
However because of this need for large amounts of space they are seriously endangered. This means that more than many other animals In order to ensure their long-term survival as substantial population of captive wild dogs need to be built up in case they need to be reintroduced to the wild.
It should be noted that despite the damage, the wild dog whenever anywhere they were capable of attacking people. It should also be noted That generally wild dog are not a danger to humans.
Due to their need for large areas of land, there is only thought to be about 1400 wild dog left in the whole of Africa.
One of the recognition’s worldwide is that if we are to avoid the worst of global warming the majority of carbon left in the earth must remain there. This particularly applies to coal.
Steven mnuchin has suggested that Greta thunberg’s call for immediate fossil fuel divestment suggest that she does not know the first thing about economics and that she should therefore go and study it.
The arrogance of him suggesting that she does not know about economics is incredible. What are his qualifications for the role apart from as an entitled investment banker- the rich have had an extra large impact on the environment.
To the contrary given all of the assessments from reputable environmentalists ( possibly working on the Donald Trump Steve mnuchin will not have met many of these recently) and virtually all economic forecasts suggest that we can either spend billions of pounds changing our market now ( divesting from fossil fuels and investing in carbon neutral alternatives) or trillions of pounds doing so in the future.
It does not take a maths degree to understand that divesting now is the better option. Even had the nerve to suggest that America still leads the world in it’s moved to world carbon emissions reductions, and that all trump has done is moved the Investment of the public book and into private companies.
Forget the fact that the American Secretary of the Treasury thinks that saving billions of pounds now at a cost of trillions to our children is acceptable, or that is acceptable for him to behave in such a despicable way as to attack of 17-year old as his boss did; the simple fact is that the American government is determined to continue to operate as the worldwide pariah when it comes to trying to fight and Survive climate change, despite all studies showing that America will be hit harder than almost every other country on the planet: American citizen should take note, any alternative in the next election will lead to a better outcome, as it is clear under Trump the American government will not do what is required to look after its own people.
Equatorial Guinea lies on the west coast of Africa above Gabon. Sightings of the gorillas were made within the Monte Alen National Park. In the past gorillas with plentiful in this area that horrific poaching was thought to have eradicated them from this part of Africa.
Polar bears retreat into dens under the snow in order to have their cubs. Until recently this was an entirely sensible thing to do as these stems would survive very effectively until warm enough for the bear’s to emerge.
Back at the beginning of 2017 a vast peatland was discovered deep in the Congo Basin. Storing an astounding amount of carbon dioxide, equivalent to 3 years of world carbon emissions, covered by primary rainforest that was completely undisturbed with large populations to the forest elephants and gorillas this was a real success story. Despite storing so much carbon is there only accounts for 4% of the Congo Basin
Remote Congo peatland swamp to be deforested
Fast forward 3 years, and there is a new and less encouraging story in the Press. Intention is to drain portions of this area so as to be able to drill through it and access the oil underneath. While this would not release carbon emissions equivalent to the world’s population it would be equivalent to Japan’s entire CO2 emissions.
It is thought that this peatland bog sits over 395 million barrels of oil.
While it is frustrating that this country is going back on on agreements it made, it really is in trouble. As with many countries in Africa it has borrowed much money from the rest of the world during various catastrophes, this amount of oil with completely change the country’s finances.
Congo brazzaville president Denis Sassou-Nguess said that the work would not destroy the forest all the majority of the peatland and as the oil reserves lie on the edge of this vast area ( this area is an equivalent size to England). However analysis done on reports from their country re done by their own scientists estimate at the area that would need to be drilled which store release more than 1 gigaton.
There is also arguments as to how much all there really is there. After initial surveys were done both Total and Shell rejected the offer to be involved in extracting the oil. An expert from Shell argued that there was nowhere near as much oil as the government was claiming and that therefore for the risk reward balance was not good enough to be worth continuing. With all this risk it is highly unlikely that any Western Business or bank would be willing to invest, unfortunately there are substantial numbers of banks in places such as China who do not worry about the same things. Time will tell if sense prevails in this issue.
Perhaps this country could agree to set aside twice as much land lost in this reserve elsewhere in the country? There are many unprotected areas of pristine rain forest in this country. If the country where to do something like this they could reassure the global community that they take conservation seriously while at the same time developing this oil field.
The Gathering of world leaders and ultra wealthy at Davos in Switzerland has just occurred. There is a great deal of talk about the environment and cutting climate warming gases such as CO2 ( attendees that increasingly aware of the hypocrisy of a riding on private jets to an event like this).
At this event five young environmental campaigners had come to speak to people and they were photographed together. Unfortunately despite the above picture showing all 5, associated Press made a copy available to its members in which the only African woman in the group Vanessa Nakate was cut out of the picture. While associated Press argued that they had nearly at the picture so is to remove the building from the background and it has not gone down well. Africa is responsible for a very small portion of the carbon emissions of the planet.
A recent analysis has shown that the the Dam that would cover 90% of the Tapanuli orangutan population has had the prospects of positive outcomes hugely hyped by it’s backers, and minimising negative facts about the Dam have been buried.
The region is already well connected to the grid with almost all Communities already served. Due to the astounding amount of Forest that would be lost if this damn were to be created, if it were to ever reduce carbon emissions it would take many decades if not centuries for the carbon cost of the dam to be offset by the electricity it creates. Given that in order to stop catastrophic climate change we need to be cutting carbon emissions now it will not help in this fight whatsoever.
For over a decade there has been an argument in the UK about adding additional Airport runways to the area around London.
planes in a line, coming into Heathrow
Certainly it is true that Heathrow Airport is close to capacity. Indeed from many parts of London you can see the planes coming in and usually you can see two or three in the sky at the same time on approach to the runway.
