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by Lucie GODEAU Agence France-Presse JAKARTA, Indonesia (AFP) — Every year, pounding rains wash away mountains of plastic waste from the streets of Jakarta, with some of it ending up as far away as Bali’s beaches. So scientists are turning to satellites to trace the rubbish and figure out how to tackle the problem. Indonesia allows more waste to enter the ocean than any other country apart from China. The archipelago of nearly 270 million […]
by Nina LARSON Agence France-Presse GENEVA, Switzerland (AFP) — Climate change has become the biggest threat to UN-listed natural world heritage sites like glaciers and wetlands, and has pushed Australia’s Great Barrier Reef into “critical” condition, conservationists said Wednesday. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) revealed in a new report that shifts due to the changing climate now imperil a full third of the 252 UNESCO-listed natural sites around the globe. Overall, 94 […]
WINDHOEK, Namibia (AFP) — Namibia’s environment minister on Thursday defended a decision to allow oil and gas drilling in a biodiversity hotspot and near UN-listed cave paintings believed to be thousands of years old. Canada-based firm ReconAfrica is set to begin drilling this month in the Kavango Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area (KAZA) — a unique ecological site spanning parts of Angola, Botswana, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe. The petroleum exploration company secured rights in 2014 to drill […]
by Robin MILLARD Agence France-Presse GENEVA, Switzerland (AFP) — This year is on course to be one of the three warmest ever recorded, the United Nations said Wednesday, as the UN chief warned the world was on the brink of “climate catastrophe”. The past six years, 2015 to 2020, are set to make up all six of the hottest years since modern records began in 1850, the UN’s World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said in its provisional […]
by Mihaela RODINA and Ionut IORDACHESCU Agence France-Presse PETROSANI, Romania (AFP) — In the large, dark locker room of southern Romania’s Lonea coal mine, 20-year-old Liviu dons his uniform and helmet before embarking on a six-hour shift in a vanishing industry. “I found this job interesting because you retire faster, when you reach 45 years old,” Liviu tells AFP before descending 400 metres underground in an elevator dubbed “the birdcage” by his fellow miners. But whether […]
by Guillaume Bonnet and Joseph Schmid Agence France-Presse PARIS, France (AFP) — After two months of trekking across France, a French-British duo have completed their campaign to stop mask litter during the coronavirus crisis, having picked up every discarded face covering they spotted while walking to Paris from the Mediterranean city of Marseille. Edmund Platt, a British environmental activist, and his French friend Frederic Munsch set off on October 1 to follow the high-speed TGV […]
by Joe JACKSON Agence France-Presse LONDON, United Kingdom (AFP) — Britain will ban petrol and diesel vehicle sales from 2030 as part of a 10-point plan for a “green industrial revolution” to be unveiled Wednesday by Prime Minister Boris Johnson. The British premier has earmarked £12 billion (13.4 billion euros, $15.9 billion) for the wide-ranging plans, which he hopes will secure up to 250,000 jobs and help meet a target for the UK to become […]
by Patrick GALEY PARIS, France (AFP) — The three largest glaciers in Greenland — which hold enough frozen water to lift global sea levels some 1.3 metres — could melt faster than even the worst-case warming predictions, research published Tuesday showed. Until 2000, the main driver of sea level rise was melting glaciers and the expansion of ocean water as it warms. But over the last two decades, the world’s ice sheets atop Greenland and […]
NEW DEHLI, India (AFP) — A massive oil well fire that raged for more than five months in northeast India has finally been extinguished, officials said Sunday. Oil India engineers had battled the blaze in Assam state since an explosion in June, weeks after the well blew out and began discharging huge quantities of natural gas. Two employees of the state-owned company died in the blast, which sent a wall of flame and massive plumes […]
NEW YORK, New York (AFP) — The Trump administration on Monday invited oil companies to choose proposed drilling territories as it pushes ahead with a controversial Alaska leasing plan in its final days in office. The Bureau of Land Management said it will Tuesday officially open a 30-day period to accept nominations and comment on some 1.6 million acres (650,000 hectares) in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The move aims to open up to development […]
by Marlowe HOOD Agence France-Presse PARIS, France (AFP) — Even if humanity stopped emitting greenhouse gases tomorrow, Earth will warm for centuries to come and oceans will rise by metres, according to a controversial modelling study published Thursday. Natural drivers of global warming — more heat-trapping clouds, thawing permafrost, and shrinking sea ice — already set in motion by carbon pollution will take on their own momentum, researchers from Norway reported in the Nature journal […]
SYDNEY, Australia (AFP) — Small, portable laser pointers could be used to guide lightning strikes, with a study suggesting the technology may prevent bolts from sparking wildfires, a researcher told AFP Thursday. A team of international scientists have shown storm clouds could be “short-circuited” by using a hollow laser — like a pipe of light — to deliver particles into the clouds and draw lightning strikes, research co-author Professor Andrey Miroshnichenko from the University of […]
