London’s cycle hire scheme has become a prominent fixture in the capital’s transport network since it opened in 2010. Known as “Boris Bikes”, it is Barclays Bank that has provided commercial sponsorship…
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Environment – Articles, Analysis, Comment
Displaying 3976 - 4000 of 4510 articles
We are inclined to think that trees are a renewable natural resource. Yet precious hardwood trees have already been almost completely logged out from many countries across the tropics. Myanmar is the latest…
That eating beef is environmentally costly is by now widely appreciated. But little has been done to curtail the amount of cattle farmed for meat consumption. To try and address this, my colleagues and…
With each monsoon season India waits with bated breath for forecasts from the India Meteorological Department and other international forecasting agencies. This year’s forecast suggested a weakened monsoon…
Government should budget to spend £10 per cyclist by 2020 in order to make bicycle travel safer, according to a committee of MPs. The report of the Transport Committee also called for a “change in culture…
The challenges of growing enough food to feed the world have grown more severe in the 21st century. We need to feed more people with limited agricultural land and resources. We need to make better use…
When my six-year-old daughter is stressed she bites her fingernails. Children in maths lessons often respond to the anxiety that doing mathematics causes by swinging their legs. Arturo the polar bear at…
Lurking beneath the authorities’ radar is a vast, international underground movement that stretches from Africa and Europe to the Americas: guerrilla gardening, the un-permitted colonisation of land, is…
The Mediterranean Sea holds some of the most heavily fished waters in the world, and a recent paper has revealed the extent to which the sea – which has 19 nations on its shores – has been exploited. Academics…
The French Ministry of Ecology and Sustainable Energy Development has launched a trial scheme where commuters are paid to cycle to work. For six months, 20 companies with about 10,000 employees between…
When the UK Environmental Audit Committee investigated the issue of protecting our marine environment last month, it concluded that there had been a woeful lack of decisive action from the government so…
The 2014 World Cup in Brazil is over. It brought much joy, and huge disappointment for the hosts – perhaps even worse than the Maracanazo in 1950. Now attention in Brazil will turn to hosting the next…
It may be the fastest animal on earth, but the cheetah is struggling to outrun the threats to its extinction. With only 50 to 70 animals estimated to remain in Iran, the Asiatic cheetah is on the verge…
The last few surviving Asiatic cheetahs live in Iran, where they stalk the hyper-arid landscape, where temperatures swing from -30°C to 50°C. This is the only place in the world a cheetah, most of which…
Iraq has a long and rich heritage, home for thousands of years to mighty empires – Assyria and Babylon, the Abbasid caliphate – that ruled the region once known as Mesopotamia, widely held as the cradle…
A Japanese jeans maker has found a new way of capitalising on zoo animals. Zoo Jeans are producing jeans “designed by dangerous animals”. Denim is wrapped around tyres, which are then thrown to the lions…
Take a hard look at the painful process of de-carbonising the UK’s electricity supply, and it’s clear that the options on the table are not great. From the outset, changes to the system generate further…
How can animals, from ants to people, form social groups with individuals working successfully together for a common good? So Charles Darwin asked in 1859, perceiving the existence of cooperative behaviour…
The eastern Caribbean island of Montserrat has suffered more than its fair share of natural disaster. In 1989, Hurricane Hugo struck the island, causing massive destruction with more than 90% of the island’s…
For all the huge, hulking buildings of concrete and steel that house coal, gas or nuclear power stations, or towering 100-metre-tall wind turbines, generating electricity is in fact a very precise and…
Bovine tuberculosis is a major problem in the UK: in 2013 around 8m cattle were tested and 32,000 slaughtered at a cost of an estimated £100m, including compensation – a huge economic burden that makes…
London’s Victorian sewerage system is creaking and in dire need of renewal. The proposed solution: a 25km “super-sewer”, the Thames Tideway Tunnel, running from west to east across the capital at an estimated…
The National Trust has reported that the seasonal activities of plants and animals in the UK have been exceptionally early in 2014. Spring and summer have come early – and observations from some parts…
The plan to use baited traps to catch and kill sharks off the coast of Western Australia caused considerable controversy when it was announced last year, with critics calling the shark cull ineffective…
Red wolves were one of the first carnivores Europeans encountered in North America. Unfortunately, this meant red wolves were also one of the first to be exterminated. Fuelled by fear and superstition…