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Archive for March 25th, 2016
Scotland closes its last coal-fired power plant
Posted by Grist: None Given on March 25th, 2016
Grist: Scotland may be home to golf, haggis, and Sean Connery - but it`s no longer hospitable to coal. On March 24, Scottish Power shut down Longanett power station, its last standing coal-fired power plant.
Weirdly enough, the act of silencing the plant`s turbines was exactly what you might imagine - granted, it would probably never occur to you to imagine something like this, but if you were going to: A crowd gathered `round a very retro control room as a man pressed a large, red button to the tune...
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Italy has just passed a law making supermarkets give their unsold food to charity
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 25th, 2016
Independent: Italy has passed a law which will make supermarkets donate more of their waste food to charities.
The country is now the second in Europe to pass such a law, after a bill was introduced in France in February which fines retailers who throw away unsold food.
The bill received strong support from all parties, and was passed by the Italian parliament's lower house on Thursday. It is expected to get approval from the Senate this week.
Rather than penalising retailers who throw away food, the...
Feds Start Public-Land Coal Review Process
Posted by Hill: Timothy Cama on March 25th, 2016
Hill: Federal officials started the process Thursday toward a comprehensive environmental review of the way the government leases public land for coal mining.
The Interior Department’s notice of intent for a Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement is the first part of what will likely be a three-year process to evaluate how to better account for climate change in coal leasing, something that’s likely to increase the costs of mining coal on federal land.
Officials are also using the process to...
Tropical species are especially vulnerable to climate change
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 25th, 2016
PhysOrg: Changes in temperature and weather patterns pose a serious threat to the millions of animal, plant and fungi species found in the tropics. In an article published in Science, lead authors and biology Ph.D. students Timothy Perez and James Stroud explain how species found in environments such as the tropics have lower tolerances to climate change. With greater amounts of thermally sensitive species than environments found at higher latitudes, the threat of global climate change puts tropical species...
Malaysian palm oil giant IOI suspended from RSPO
Posted by Mongabay: Philip Jacobson on March 25th, 2016
Mongabay: The green image of one of Malaysia’s largest conglomerates suffered a major blow on Friday with its suspension from the world’s largest association for ethical palm oil production, the RSPO. IOI Group was one of the founding members of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil, but it has been suspended over its operations in the Ketapang area of Indonesian Borneo, where three of its subsidiaries are alleged to have violated a raft of RSPO standards meant to prevent rainforest destruction and social...