Labour leader says it was ‘most efficient form of transport’ from Wales and party has offset the carbon
Keir Starmer has admitted he used a private jet to travel to a campaign rally in Scotland where he promised to create “tens of thousands” of clean energy jobs with a new publicly owned energy company in the country.
Responding to media questions after speaking to activists in Greenock, Inverclyde, Starmer said: “We did use a private jet because we did need to get very quickly to Scotland from Wales yesterday and it was the most efficient form of transport in the middle of a very busy general election campaign.”
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
05/31/2024 - 07:08
05/31/2024 - 07:00
Rules target contaminants such as mercury, benzene and lead released by coke ovens used by facilities to burn coal
New Environmental Protection Agency rules aim to crack down on toxic air pollution from US steelmakers by limiting pollutants such as mercury, benzene and lead that have long poisoned the air in neighborhoods surrounding the plants.
The rules target contaminants released by steel facilities’ coke ovens. Gas from the ovens creates an individual cancer risk in the air around steel plants of 50 in 1,000,000, which public health advocates say is dangerous for children and people with underlying health problems.
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05/31/2024 - 06:16
RHS fears non-native fungi could alter microbiology of soil when grown in gardens or disposed of in compost heaps
A boom in the popularity of mushroom-growing at home could lead to a biodiversity disaster, UK garden experts have warned.
There has been a rise in the number of people growing mushrooms in their gardens, and this year, the RHS Chelsea flower show’s plant of the year award included a mushroom – the tarragon oyster mushroom, thought to be found only in the British Isles – in its shortlist for the first time, despite it being a fungus, not a plant.
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05/31/2024 - 04:14
Zoo welcomes 11 Humboldt chicks, its highest number in a decade, including Thistle and Daffodil
In previous years Chester zoo’s new penguin chicks have been named after crisps – Frazzle, Wotsit – and local football club owners – Ryan, Rob – but the names p … p … p … picked this year are notably less frivolous.
“We’ve decided to go with plants,” said Zoe Sweetman, the penguins and parrots team manager at the zoo. Two of the spikier new arrivals have been named Nettle and Thistle while two others with “colourful personalities” have been named Daffodil and Tulip.
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05/31/2024 - 03:10
EPA says proposal to keep Hunter Valley Operations mines going to 2050 would release almost 30m tonnes of CO2
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The New South Wales environment watchdog says a plan to extend the life of a Hunter Valley coal-mining complex to 2050 is the “largest coal-mining proposal ever put forward” in the state.
Plans by Yancoal and Glencore to keep its joint-venture Hunter Valley Operations (HVO) mines in the Upper Hunter region going would see almost 30m tonnes of CO2 released, the EPA said in a letter to the state’s planning department.
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Week in wildlife – in pictures: playful baby lemurs, kingfisher tug-of-war and a beautiful bee-eater
05/31/2024 - 02:00
The best of this week’s wildlife photographs from around the world
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05/31/2024 - 01:00
Negative scientific and press reports on the efficacy of carbon credit projects has led to a ‘direct pullback in buyer investment’
The market for carbon offsets shrank dramatically last year, falling from $1.9bn (£1.5bn) in 2022 to $723m in 2023, a new report has found. The drop came after a series of scientific and media reports found many offsetting schemes do nothing to mitigate the climate crisis and biodiversity loss.
The research by Ecosystem Marketplace, a nonprofit initiative that collects data about the carbon market from brokers and traders, found the market had shrunk 61%.
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05/31/2024 - 01:00
Campaigners suspect block on new applications for at least two years was imposed to limit burden on water firms
The government has suspended all applications for bathing water status in waterways, delaying the cleanup of rivers and coastal waters for at least two years.
River campaigners fear the block on new applications to create bathing water areas, which are regularly tested for water quality, has been introduced to stop water companies facing huge resource implications to tackle poor water quality in new bathing areas.
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05/31/2024 - 01:00
For many on Ghoramara, the general election is about the climate crisis and survival. The island, 150km south of Kolkata and named the ‘sinking island’ by the media, has lost nearly half its area to soil erosion in the past two decades and could disappear if a solution is not found.
As voters across India cast their ballots on issues ranging from the cost of living to jobs and religion, politicians trying to win votes in Ghoramara need to put the climate crisis to the fore as the island’s dwindling population fight to save their homes from the sea amid rising water levels and increasingly fierce storms
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05/31/2024 - 00:00
Meeting WHO guidelines would avoid many cases of diseases and save the NHS millions, research shows
A study has revealed that cleaning up the air in the West Midlands could prevent the early deaths of about 2,000 people a year.
If the region were to meet World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines for air pollution, it could also avoid 2,000 new asthma cases, 770 new cases of heart disease, 170 new lung cancers and 650 strokes annually, the study found.
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