Cities such as Zurich and Dublin found to have key services accessible within 15 minutes for more than 95% of residents
When Luke Harris takes his daughter to the doctor, he strolls down well-kept streets with “smooth sidewalks and curb cuts [ramps] for strollers at every intersection”. If the weather looks rough or he feels a little lazy, he hops on a tram for a couple of stops.
Harris’s trips to the paediatrician are pretty unremarkable for fellow residents of Zurich, Switzerland; most Europeans are used to being able to walk from one place to another in their cities. But it will probably sound like fantasy to those living in San Antonio, Texas. That’s because, according to new research, 99.2% of Zurich residents live within a 15-minute walk of essential services such as healthcare and education, while just 2.5% of San Antonio residents do.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
09/16/2024 - 10:00
Cultural protection order has been framed as a push to curry favour with inner-city seats, ignoring grassroots campaigns from Indigenous and non-Indigenous locals
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Among the concerns listed by the 2,000 farmers who converged on the lawns of Parliament House in Canberra last week was the protection of prime agricultural land from renewable energy developments.
It has become a common refrain. The National party leader, David Littleproud, warned at the party’s annual federal council on Friday of the risk to prime agricultural land from energy transition projects. The mining magnate Gina Rinehart took to the stage at a business event last year to warn that one-third of Australia’s prime agricultural land could be “taken over” by renewable energy projects. In almost every campaign against a proposed development in the bush, the potential impact on prime agricultural land is raised as a key concern.
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09/16/2024 - 10:00
There have been moments of modest progress, but the Albanese government has not lived up to its early rhetoric
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It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Back in the heady new government days of July 2022, Tanya Plibersek told the National Press Club that change was coming for environmental protection in Australia after a decade of disaster and neglect.
Releasing the five-yearly state of the environment report, which the previous Coalition government had received months earlier but put in a drawer until it was turfed from office, the new environment minister said it told a “story of crisis and decline in Australia’s environment”.
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09/16/2024 - 10:00
Birds practicing kleptoparasitism – harassing each other until they drop their saliva-covered food – seen as ‘plausible pathway’ for arrival of H5N1
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Scientists have identified a new way for an aggressive strain of bird flu to enter Australia, via the habit of some migratory birds of harassing other birds and stealing their food and potentially their viruses.
Australia is the only continent to have so far escaped a virulent H5N1 strain of avian flu – known as 2.3.4.4b and discovered in Europe in 2021– that has devastated bird populations in other parts of the world.
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09/16/2024 - 07:28
Czech Republic, Poland and Austria fear worst may yet be to come as thousands are evacuated to higher ground
The death toll from torrential rain and flooding in central and eastern Europe has risen to at least 16, with several more people missing, as authorities reported deaths in the Czech Republic, Poland and Austria and warned the worst may yet be to come.
The number of victims in Poland rose to five after a surgeon returning from work drowned in the south-western town of Nysa, where the hospital was evacuated and patients rescued by raft. Four more people had died in the southern towns of Bielsko-Biała and Lądek-Zdrój, firefighters said.
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09/16/2024 - 07:00
North Carolina, New Jersey and New Mexico petitioned regulators to classify some PFAS as hazardous air pollutants
Three US states are formally demanding that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) begin regulating PFAS “forever chemical” air emissions, as the toxic threat that the pollution poses to the environment and human health comes into sharper focus.
So far, federal regulators have focused on water pollution, but state environmental agencies in North Carolina, New Mexico and New Jersey last week filed a petition calling for the EPA to categorize four types of PFAS compounds as hazardous air pollutants and to begin regulating them under the Clean Air Act.
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09/16/2024 - 05:23
Storm Boris has caused several deaths, and thousands have been evacuated from their homes across Austria, the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia
Europe floods – latest updates
‘Dramatic’ flooding in central Europe continues
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09/16/2024 - 05:00
Locals called it a ‘miracle’ when the steel plant in JD Vance’s home town got $500m for an upgrade. But Trump’s running mate calls shifting the US to cleaner energy a ‘green scam’
A hulking steel plant in Middletown, Ohio, is the city’s economic heartbeat as well as a keystone origin story of JD Vance, the hometown senator now running to be Donald Trump’s vice-president.
Its future, however, may hinge upon $500m in funding from landmark climate legislation that Vance has called a “scam” and is a Trump target for demolition.
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09/16/2024 - 05:00
Soaring sea temperatures have made the celebrated gastropod lethargic and infertile, so scientists are helping the threatened species to reproduce
Of the many novel initiatives dreamed up by scientists to protect threatened species from the ravages of record ocean temperatures, Florida’s new “speed dating for shellfish” programme might be about the most extraordinary.
Researchers are acting as matchmakers for the queen conch, a mollusc with iconic status in the Florida Keys, by removing them from the heat of their nearshore habitat and relocating them to deeper, cooler waters where a plethora of potential new partners awaits.
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09/16/2024 - 04:00
River wildlife is on the up and there’s little evidence that storm overflows are being used more often. But protest is still vital
Public outrage over river pollution has been heartening to see. Over the past few years, stories about sewage contamination in rivers have captured public attention, and prompted campaigns and protests, such as the forthcoming River Action UK march for clean water on 26 October in London. It is important to protect our rivers because they are biodiversity hotspots and essential for human health. However, as a freshwater ecologist, I know there is more nuance to the story than you may have been led to believe. From my perspective, there is some good news when it comes to our rivers. I would even say that some rivers in England are in the best state they have been in for hundreds of years.
Many rivers in England are polluted, but we need to recognise that this is not an emerging issue but a much longer-standing one that has been largely ignored by the media and politicians for decades. Much of the recent furore over pollution has to do with increased awareness, rather than a sudden increase in pollution itself. It’s only by understanding how these ecosystems have changed over time and reflecting on previous successes that we can make real progress.
Michelle Jackson is associate professor of freshwater/marine ecology at the University of Oxford. Prof Jackson previously conducted one study that received funding from a wastewater treatment company, and currently has no industry funding.
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