When ‘There is No Planet B’ first hit our bookshops, this companion to saving the planet became an instant classic. We talk to its author, Mike Berners-Lee. “Humans have quite suddenly become the biggest thing to affect the ecosystem,” says Mike Berners-Lee. What this new-found influence over the health of the planet means, says the … Read more
An Australian research voyage is under way to investigate how life in the Southern Ocean captures and stores carbon from the atmosphere. A fleet of new-generation, deep-diving ocean robots will be deployed in the Southern Ocean in a major study of how marine life acts as a handbrake on global warming. The automated probes will … Read more
Greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere have continued to increase during 2020 despite unprecedented falls in emissions driven by the coronavirus pandemic. While lockdowns around the world have cut emissions of many pollutants and greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, the drop experienced is no larger than normal annual fluctuations driven by the natural variability … Read more
A new type of soil created by engineers at The University of Texas at Austin can pull water from the air and distribute it to plants, potentially expanding the map of farmable land around the globe to previously inhospitable places and reducing water use in agriculture at a time of growing droughts. The team’s atmospheric … Read more
India has pledged to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions and carbon footprint as per the Paris Agreement. A transition from fossil-fuel vehicles to electric vehicles (EVs) is a move in the right direction. The electrification of EVs needs to be ramped up and power hybridised to become more efficient. Karnataka is preparing the ground as … Read more
The first half of 2020 has seen the largest-ever drop in carbon emissions in a single year, with bigger falls than the financial crisis of 2008, the 1979 oil crisis and even World War II. An international team of researchers estimated that the world saw 8.8 per cent less carbon dioxide emitted in 2020 than … Read more
Tesco has joined a group of large businesses including Dixons Carphone, E.ON, Heathrow, Lime and SSE that have called on the Government to bring forward the date for when new petrol and diesel vehicles should be banned from sale to 2030. The original 2040 date for the ban was announced in 2017, although some MPs … Read more
China announced new measures designed to fight climate change over the weekend, during a virtual UN summit in which all countries were asked to declare a “climate emergency” by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. China, which is currently the highest carbon emitting country, now plans to cut its emissions per unit of GDP by over 65 … Read more