RHS says ensuring access to green space as part of housebuilding push could help ease pressure on NHS
Requirements for gardens and the planting of trees must be included in Labour’s planned new rules for housebuilders, green groups have said.
The Labour government is drawing up its future homes standard for new developments and it is not yet clear what requirements there will be for green space.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
10/23/2024 - 12:00
With no power, no water and soon-to-spoil food, Asheville residents fired up their grills and emptied their freezers for communal meals
Erin Kellem’s Asheville, North Carolina neighborhood is a short drive from the city center, but feels remote. The Haw Creek area’s culs-de-sac are fronted by spacious yards and surrounded by thick woods that might give the illusion of isolation.
Hurricane Helene changed that, dropping an ocean of rain on the southern Appalachian mountains. Floods of biblical proportions killed dozens. Power outages left thousands without electricity for at least two weeks in most places. There was no gas or cell phone service for days following the storm, and most of the city is still without potable water. Roads disappeared under rushing water and mud. The help that was on its way had no way in, and those stranded in their homes had no way of checking on loved ones.
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10/23/2024 - 11:06
US firm Wolfspeed and German car parts supplier ZF postpone plans over doubts about viability
A project to build a €3bn factory making microchips for electric vehicles once hailed as part of a “return of the industrial revolution” in Germany has been put on hold, as the crisis in the country’s hi-tech manufacturing industry deepens.
The US company Wolfspeed and the German car parts supplier ZF have postponed plans to build an EV chip factory, adding to problems caused by a delay to two large-scale factories belonging to the US chip giant Intel and possible factory closures being considered by Volkswagen.
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10/23/2024 - 09:17
US readers are responding to the reality of the climate crisis by adapting their homes, from insulation as a refuge from heat to removing yard debris in case of wildfires
Rose, 62, was living in a remote area of Washington, west of Seattle, when the scorching “heat dome” of 2021 hit the Pacific north-west. As the house Rose shared with her then 93-year-old mother grew hotter, and their two air conditioning units struggled to make any dent on the wall of heat, Rose’s heart rate climbed, and she watched as all the rubber bands in the house liquefied.
The heat dome – which broke local records to reach highs of 120F (49C) – buckled roads, melted electrical cables and caused about 600 excess deaths, and research showed it was “virtually impossible” without climate change. It’s just one example of a worsening picture for US extreme weather driven by human caused global heating: including more frequent hurricanes, wildfires and devastating floods.
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10/23/2024 - 09:00
Danish political scientist Bjorn Lomborg told the US cable host its biggest threat was not the climate crisis, but do his claims stack up?
Great Barrier Reef’s worst bleaching leaves giant coral graveyard: ‘It looks as if it has been carpet bombed’
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Instead of an existential crisis for species worldwide, or threatening to submerge entire Pacific nations and coastal cities where hundreds of millions of people live, or a phenomenon driving unprecedented heatwaves and wildfires, the climate crisis was characterised somewhat differently on major US cable show Real Time with Bill Maher.
Climate change was “a problem”, Danish political scientist Bjorn Lomborg told comedian Maher, but would only shave a few percentage points off global GDP by the end of the century and in any case, he claimed, by then people would be much richer anyway.
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10/23/2024 - 09:00
Greens MP says number of mortalities is ‘enormous’ and ‘most likely the result of overstocking’
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Environmentalists are calling on the Tasmanian salmon industry to explain why more than 1,000 tonnes of salmon died in fish farms in Macquarie Harbour over seven months last spring and summer.
A government document published after a request by the Neighbours of Fish Farming, a group that campaigns against commercial salmon operations, suggest 1,150 tonnes of fish died in farms in the vast harbour on the state’s west coast between September and March.
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10/23/2024 - 08:23
Rachel Reeves urged to shelve fuel duty plans and overhaul taxes amid expected switch to electric vehicles
A pay-per-mile road pricing system must be brought in now, according to Tony Blair’s thinktank, which is urging the chancellor to overhaul motoring taxes.
Rachel Reeves is widely expected to confirm the end of a temporary 5p cut in fuel duty, and possibly announce an inflationary rise in the tax paid on petrol and diesel at the pumps, in her budget next Wednesday.
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10/23/2024 - 08:00
Oceanographer Stefan Rahmstorf explains why Amoc breakdown could be catastrophic for both humans and marine life
The dangers of a collapse of the main Atlantic Ocean circulation, known as Amoc, have been “greatly underestimated” and would have devastating and irreversible impacts, according to an open letter released at the weekend by 44 experts from 15 countries. One of the signatories, Stefan Rahmstorf, an oceanographer and climatologist who heads the Earth system analysis department at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, explains here why he has recently upgraded his risk assessment of an Amoc breakdown as a result of global heating – and what that means for Britain, Europe and the wider world.
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10/23/2024 - 07:27
Long-delayed regulations for England may ‘encourage’ housebuilders to equip homes with solar panels, rather than requiring them
Labour is considering making solar panels optional on new homes in England, after pressure from housebuilders, in a move that would weaken low-carbon regulations, the Guardian has learned.
Ministers are preparing to publish long-delayed regulations for new homes, known as the future homes standard, which would ensure that all newly built homes are low-carbon.
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10/23/2024 - 05:06
Villagers in Barekuri, Assam, have lived closely with endangered hoolock gibbons for generations. A new Guardian documentary shows their bond – and the fight to protect them
On a misty winter morning, farmer Mohit Chutia sits on the ground outside his home rocking his grandson in his lap. He sings about the hoolock gibbons, the only ape species in India. High in the tree canopy above, the gibbons leap gracefully from branch to branch. Below, Chutia and his family watch.
It is a picture of the coexistence that has endured for generations between the endangered gibbons and villagers in Barekuri in Assam, in the remote east of the country.
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