Environmental News

Plan to eventually roll out scheme across England to let GPs prescribe boilers, insulation and double glazing to fuel-poor patients . The UK government is preparing a national programme for doctors to prescribe boilers, insulation and double glazing to fuel-poor patients suffering from diseases exacerbated by cold homes.

EU environment watchdog blames governments for failing to act on air pollution warnings saying it will lead to premature deaths across the countries. Hundreds of thousands of Europeans will suffer a premature death in the next two decades as the result of governments’ failure to act on air pollution, Europe’s environmental watchdog has warned. In…

Series of resolutions asks six of Denmark’s pension funds to drop their ‘black money’ investments in coal, oil and gas projects that cause climate change. Hundreds of thousands of academics, engineers and lawyers in Denmark are set to vote on divesting their €32bn (£23bn) pension funds from the fossil fuels that drive climate change. The…

Manmade warming in past decade has likely been offset by cooling from natural cycles in the Pacific and Atlantic – but effect will reverse in coming decades. Manmade global warming over the past decade has probably been partly offset by the cooling effect of natural variability in the Earth’s climate system, a team of climate…

Unarmed Black Mambas recruited from local communities are guarding nature reserve inside the Greater Kruger national par. The battle against the poaching that kills a rhino every seven hours in South Africa has acquired a new weapon: women. The Black Mambas are all young women from local communities, and they patrol inside the Greater Kruger…

Science and technology committee damns EU rules on authorisations for genentically-modified crops as politicised and unscientific. The UK should be handed the regulatory power to green light genetically-modified crops because the EU’s GM rules are politicised and unscientific, an influential committee of MPs have said.

Shell has shelved plans for a major new tar sands mine in Canada, the largest project yet to fall victim to low oil prices. The company has withdrawn its application for the 200,000-barrel-per-day (bpd) Pierre River project and will instead concentrate on boosting the profitability of its existing 255,000-bpd oil sands operations.

A major UN climate summit in Paris later this year should call on countries to make tough carbon cuts to avoid dangerous global warming, EU document says. The world’s states should commit to a legally binding emissions cut of 60% by 2050, with five-yearly reviews, in a Paris Protocol to replace the moribund Kyoto agreement…

Rising population will hit UK’s self sufficiency if government continues to ignore British food production, say NFU. More than half of the UK’s food will come from overseas within a generation, as a rising population and stalling farm productivity combine to erode what remains of the UK’s self-sufficiency, according to farming leaders. The UK’s failure…

Wind power has surged while gas use has fallen by over a fifth, putting UK on course to meet 2020 clean energy and climate goal. The UK is on track to meet its renewable energy goals, with wind power substituting for gas and coal use and driving down greenhouse gas emissions, according to new analyses.