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Climate
Buying or building a home in Australia? Here are the energy efficiency features worth paying for | Peter Mares
As climate change makes heatwaves more dangerous, here’s how homeowners can mitigate extreme heat
- Change by Degrees offers life hacks and sustainable living tips each Saturday to help reduce your household’s carbon footprint
- Got a question or tip for reducing household emissions? Email us at changebydegrees@theguardian.com
When the summer sun hits the west-facing windows of our 20th floor apartment in Melbourne, my resistance to switching on the air-con soon wilts.
This generally happens about 4pm, soon after we’ve lost access to cheap electricity under our solar sponge tariff.
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Continue reading...Will There Be Enough Power to Remove Carbon From the Sky?
The Guardian view on supporting vaccines: humans can work miracles – so why wouldn’t we? | Editorial
Global immunisation programmes are under risk as the US slashes its aid programme and the UK considers cutting funding
It is easy to become so used to scientific and social advances that we take them for granted. But sometimes we should pause to celebrate – to feel genuine awe – at the wonders that we have seen. Amid all the wars, the disasters and the crimes of the last half century, we have witnessed nothing short of a miracle.
Vaccination, in addition to clean water, sanitation and improved nutrition, has been one of the greatest contributors to global health. It is responsible for much of the astounding fall in child mortality, which plummeted by 59% between 1990 and 2022. It has saved more than 150 million lives, mostly of infants, since the Expanded Programme on Immunisation was launched by the World Health Organization in 1974. Initially designed to protect children against diseases including smallpox, tuberculosis, polio and measles, the scheme has since been extended to cover more pathogens. Then, in 2000, came the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation (Gavi), a public-private organisation that provides financial and technical support for vaccination in poorer countries and negotiates with manufacturers to lower costs.
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Continue reading...Trump’s Funding Freeze Raises a New Question: Is the Government’s Word Good?
Revealed: ‘extremely concerning’ industry influence over UN aviation body
Exclusive: Firms outnumber green groups at environmental talks, with related events sponsored by fossil fuel companies
Aviation industry delegates outnumbered those from green groups by 10 to one at the previous conference of the UN’s committee on aviation environmental protection (CAEP), an analysis has found.
Other recent meetings held by CAEP’s parent body, the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), were sponsored by large fossil fuel companies and airlines, including Saudi Aramco and Etihad. Critics accuse the ICAO of having been captured by the industry, resulting in slow efforts to tackle the climate crisis by reducing the carbon emissions from aircraft.
Continue reading...‘No one wants to pay $25 for breakfast’: US restaurants are cracking under inflation
It’s not just eggs, but coffee, orange juice and bacon, making life especially hard for diners, bakeries and brunch spots
Most menu items at the popular Philadelphia breakfast chain Green Eggs Cafe are – true to its name – made with eggs.
Its co-owner Stephen Slaughter said that about 90% of its dishes depend on eggs, ticking off a short list: “Our French toast, our pancake batters, our hollandaise sauce, obviously eggs and omelets.” So when his vendors started charging $8 for a dozen eggs, all six Green Egg Cafe locations felt the pinch.
Continue reading...FEMA Quietly Eases Rules Meant to Protect Buildings in Flood Zones
I met the ‘godfathers of AI’ in Paris – here’s what they told me to really worry about | Alexander Hurst
Experts are split between concerns about future threats and present dangers. Both camps issued dire warnings
I was a technophile in my early teenage days, sometimes wishing that I had been born in 2090, rather than 1990, so that I could see all the incredible technology of the future. Lately, though, I’ve become far more sceptical about whether the technology that we interact with most is really serving us – or whether we are serving it.
So when I got an invitation to attend a conference on developing safe and ethical AI in the lead-up to the Paris AI summit, I was fully prepared to hear Maria Ressa, the Filipino journalist and 2021 Nobel peace prize laureate, talk about how big tech has, with impunity, allowed its networks to be flooded with disinformation, hate and manipulation in ways that have had very real, negative, impact on elections.
Alexander Hurst is a Guardian Europe columnist
Continue reading...EVs and datacentres driving new global ‘age of electricity’, says watchdog
Forecast for rising global electricity use likely to stoke fears of rising costs and stalled efforts to fight climate crisis
The world’s electricity use will grow every year by more than the amount consumed annually by Japan because of a surge in electric transport, air conditioning and datacentres, according to the world’s energy watchdog.
The International Energy Agency has raised its predictions for the world’s rising demand for electricity, pegging the growth at almost 4% a year until 2027, up from its previous forecast of 3.4% year.
Continue reading...Brake pad dust can be more toxic than exhaust emissions, study says
Research shows move to electric vehicles may not be enough to enable pollution from cars to be eradicated
Microscopic particles emitted from brake pads can be more toxic than those emitted in diesel vehicle exhaust, a study has found.
This research shows that even with a move to electric vehicles, pollution from cars may not be able to be eradicated.
Continue reading...Weatherwatch: Hadley Centre shows Thatcher understood value of climate science
Thirty-five years after she opened it, climate change centre can claim that for every £1 invested, the UK economy benefits by £33
When Margaret Thatcher opened the Hadley Centre for Climate Change in 1990 journalists suggested she was attempting to appear to be doing something about global heating rather than implementing any policies.
Fast-forward 35 years and the Hadley Centre’s science is world-leading and makes the claim that for every £1 invested, the UK economy benefits by £33. This calculation is based on the predictions scientists are able to make, and advice they can then give about incoming weather and its impacts.
Continue reading...