By Paul Brown A sustainable food policy which ends red meat meals has improved student diets and boosted a university catering service’s profits. The University of Cambridge in England, one of the richest and most famous universities in the world, has ended red meat meals in its outlets. Beef and lamb are off the menu […]
By Tim Radford Only a small percentage of the wild plant ancestors vital to human life can be considered safe from extinction. Botanists who have monitored the conservation status of almost 7,000 species—the wild forerunners of plants that humans use for food, medicine, shelter, fuel and livestock feed—found that most could be counted as not […]
By Tim Radford If average global temperatures rise by just 3°C, then Europe’s drought risk could increase to double the area faced with drying out. Right now, just 13 percent of the continent can be counted as a drought-prone region. As the thermometer soars, this proportion could rise to 26 percent. And 400 million people […]
By Tim Radford The world’s unregarded forests are at risk. Intact forest is now being destroyed at an annual rate that threatens to cancel out any attempts to contain global warming by controlling greenhouse gas emissions, according to a new study. A second study finds that trees in the tropical regions are dying twice as […]
By Kieran Cooke The U.S. solar industry is losing its shine. Although solar power is seen as a key way to avoid the use of climate-changing fossil fuels, U.S. solar companies are cutting investments and laying off workers. An industry employing more than 230,000 people and with an estimated worth of $28 billion is now […]
By Tim Radford Think of it as the day a comet set the earth on fire. Researchers have evidence of widespread and devastating forest fires around half the world—a blaze to blot out the light of the sun—and all of it at a geological boundary called the Younger Dryas, 13,500 years ago. The evidence, they […]
By Alex Kirby The Earth’s protective ozone layer is not recovering uniformly from the damage caused to it by industry and other human activities. And scientists are not sure why it isn’t. An international research team says the ozone, which protects humans and other species from harmful ultraviolet radiation, is continuing to recover at the […]
By Tim Radford The probable changes as the world heats are so great that climate adaptation to cope with the inevitable is now essential, scientists are warning. Forest damage, drought and floods, for example, will all worsen, and tidal ranges are already changing. More than half of all the natural vegetation of California is at […]
By Alex Kirby Water scarcity is now a real threat in two developing countries at the forefront of efforts to reduce climate change, India and South Africa. This is not the tragically familiar story of extreme weather, stunted crops and foreshortened lives. It is a different sort of threat: to urban life, to industrial development […]
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